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Cairo smiled and took a short compact flat black pistol out of an inner pocket. "You will please," he said, "clasp your hands together at the back of your neck."

Dashiell Hammett - The Maltese Falcon

Violence at Work

Weapons of the 1940s come in both revolver (6 bullets) and semi-automathic (7 bullets) flavour.

Basic calibres are

• .22 : a lady's toy - 1D6 damage
  Cairo's short compact flat black pistol
• .32 : general purpose - 1D8 damage
• .38 : cops and robbers - 1D10 damage
• .45 : heavy duty - 1D10+2 damage

Basic skill for all of the above is 20%.
Revolvers fail on a 00 roll, autos on a 99 or 00 roll.

Easy.   

Heavier firepower is usually absent from noir movies. Even the otherwise ubiquitous Tommy Gun & Sawed-Off  Shotgun are rarely seen in action in proper Noir. 

Keepers are advised to remember that both in hard-boiled and noir films violence was more hinted at than actually shown. So these weapons are more for menacing people, not so much to kill them off. Of course players will not stick to this rule, and you can find all the stats you like in the Main Rulesbook, any edition.

Other means of inflicting violence upon your neighbour are

• Blackjack - a leather pouch filled with lead pellets, the weapon of choiche to precipitate your foe in a gulf of darkness for a few hours so that he can wake up in the office with the dead guy and the cops coming up the stairs to ask unpleasant questions. Give it 1D8 damage plus any bonus that applies, and concede the wielder the possibility to stun the target. Starts at 40% skill.
• Brass Knuckles - a tough-guy standard, can be replaced by a small roll of quarters. Gives a +2 bonus to punch damage, it hurts a lot and will be used any time someone has to be given "a lesson". Girls packing one of these are usually considered comedy relief.
• Broken Bottle - counts as a nasty knife (1D4+2 damage, basic skill 25%), and unless you are in a casual barfight it means you are facing one sick guy that will use it on your face.
  Go and see a doctor for that cut.
• Garrote - downtown stuff, probably used by foreigners living in the docks area or specialist killers for the mob (in which case it can be considered some kind of signature weapon). The base skill is 15%, and the victim has to face suffocation (apply drowning rules).
• Knife - up-close and personal, the problem-guy kind of weapon; Roman Polanski uses one to slash Jack Nicholson's nose in Chinatown. Assume 1D4/1D4+2 (plus damage bonus when feasible) for switchblades and dirks. The basic skill starts at 25%
• Poison - a dame kind of thing, but also a good alternative to a blackjack application; Sidney Greenstreet uses a mild poison to knock out Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Poisons have a characteristic POT that must be crossed on the Resistance Table as an active characteristic against the characters passive CON. A narcotic will have generally a POT of 15, while strong poison will be over 20. Times of action can vary depending on the Keeper's choice. An antidote could not be available, giving you only a few hours of life (cfr. D.O.A.)

To the above, the enterprising keeper can also add all the damages that can be inflicted by a band of tough-guys (possibly led by Lee Marvin) that simply get to the character and then

• throw him down a few flight of stairs
• punch him and then kick him while he is down
• throw him through a shop-window (usually a florist)
• push him off a bridge
• throw him off a train, or under it
• you can imagine the rest...

Eventualities such as being hit by a runaway car in a back-alley or being pushed off-road by a car by night on a solitary stretch of road are also not to be excluded.

And talking about cars...

Simulated accidents will also be a common occurrence, as they both hide the hand of the killer and will help him (or her, or them) to fraud the insurance company.
Therefore, once the character has been made unconscious either by poison, alcohol overdose or by a rightfull application of the blackjack, he or she will face a death threat ranging from the commonplace - locked in the garage with the car motor running (Ida Lupino does in her husband Alan Hale in They Drive By Night) - to the truly vicious - placed at the wheel of a car running down a mountain road (Martin Landau tries to see Cary Grant off in North by Northwest, which is not a proper Noir but...)