Harry's isn't a popular bar. Hell, it's not even a very good bar as bars go. It sits on the corner of two streets down in the older section of town and the windows haven't been washed in at least eight years that I know of. That's how long I've been going there on nights like tonight. The windows are painted over on the inside to keep out the sunlight, so I guess it doesn't matter.
The inside is worse. At one time, years ago, the floor was polished hardwood and the walls were painted white. After a couple decades of spilled drinks, tracked in mud and grime, and the occasional drunk who up-chucked his beer, the floor is pretty much an even shade of black with the original light brown only showing under the bar stools and booths.
The walls are a little better because they've been painted a few times over the years. The paint covered up most of the cracks in the plaster though the off-white color is now sort of a light gray. The ceiling is also sort of a white color, but there are yellow-tan places where the ventilation system has sucked in all the cigarette and cigar smoke over the decades.
Neither of those things matter much because there's very little light inside the place. A few beer signs on the walls try to shine their neon rays of red, white, blue, and yellow across the long, narrow room, but without much success. Even those signs are old and while some are well known brands, others are signs from breweries that have long been out of business.
The signs fit the usual customers of Harry's. That area of town used to be the bedroom community for the men who worked the factories that made machine tools and appliances or who worked in the foundry, welding shops, and machine shops that supplied those industries.
They didn't drink beer from craft breweries and compare aroma, subtle flavors, and aftertaste, and they didn't drink apple or mango martinis. They drank American brewed beers like Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, Falstaff, and Hamm's, sometimes with a shot of bourbon first, and they drank to relieve the stress of their jobs. I still remember watching the bears on the Hamm's beer commercials on our black and white TV when I was a kid. My dad always drank Hamm's.
Today, it's the bar where those same guys hang out because they're retired and don't have any other place to go. They sit and quietly talk about what they've done in life and sometimes about when they're going to leave it. The crowd gets a little smaller every year.
It's light enough to see the few people lined up on stools at the bar or sitting at the six booths against the opposite wall, but that's about it except for the two light fixtures over the racks of bottles on the wall behind the bar. They light the back bar and cast enough light over the wood bar you could read a newspaper if you had good eyes.
The owner of the bar and the bartender is Mathilda. Her mother, also named Mathilda, was a German national her father met at the end of WWII. They married and she came to the US with him. You're probably thinking with a name like Mathilda, she's probably blonde and has big tits with a big belly and a big ass to match.
You'd be wrong. Mathilda, who likes to be called "Hildy", has blonde hair all right, but the rest of her is pure sex on two really nice legs. Her tits aren't all that big, but the bras she wears under her tops give her some really nice cleavage. Her ass isn't tight like a teen-age girl's ass, but it's an ass that makes her jeans come alive when she walks.
Hildy inherited the bar from her dad when he died. She'd been working the bar since she was old enough to get a bartending license from the state and decided to keep it open by herself. She lives in an apartment above the bar. There used to be a stairway in back, but Hildy had that torn off and another put in from her storage room to the second floor. She told me she feels safer that way.
I don't quite understand that, because Hildy can handle herself pretty well. I know she has a.380 auto either under the bar or in a holster strapped inside her waistband, and she carries one of those 'flick open' knives in her jeans. I also know she knows how to use both. Her dad was in the Army in WWII and taught her.
As a result, Hildy's not like most women, but then, most women don't grow up in a bar fending off drunks wanting to do a little tit and ass groping before they go home. She's about thirty-five, I think. I've never asked. I know better.
I know all this about Hildy because Hildy and I have a rather unique relationship. That's because Hildy's taste in men is also a little unique. I happen to be that type of man. I'm a cop, or rather, a detective now after several years of wearing a uniform. Hildy needs a man who's strong and will take her the way she wants it, that being hard and fast without a lot of lovey-dovey shit in the process.
The first time I walked into Harry's, Hildy got my beer and asked what I did for a living. When I said I was a cop, Hildy looked at me kinda funny.
"What kind of cop? Traffic?"
"No, I'm a detective in Drug Enforcement."
"So you go breaking in doors and arresting drug dealers?"
"Well, usually, the SWAT guys do the door breaking thing. I do the arresting and questioning of suspects."
"Ever have to wrestle a guy to put on the handcuffs?"
"Yeah, more often than not."
"Ever shoot anybody", she asked.
"Yeah, two times."
Hildy frowned.
"Sounds like you're not a man to fuck with then."
I shrugged.
"It goes with the job."
With that, Hildy smiled and walked down the bar to another customer. I drank my beer and left.
The second time was different for us both. At least it was different for me. I'd gotten out of bed at one AM for a three AM raid on a suspected drug dealer's house. Some of his neighbors had complained about what was going on, so we took their statements and then watched the house for a week until we got enough for a warrant. SWAT did the door and we all rushed inside with drawn weapons.
I don't know how the guy reacted as fast as he did. When Nick and I opened the bedroom door, there was the guy standing there naked with a nine mil pointed at the door. Beside him, also naked, was a girl on the bed trying to pull the blanket over her bare ass.
Nick yelled, "Police. Drop the weapon."
I don't know if the guy thought Nick and I wouldn't shoot out of fear of hitting the woman or what. He didn't seem to care, because he pulled the trigger. Nick grabbed his neck and fell down. I put three in the guy's chest and then yelled "officer down" as I knelt to help Nick. It wasn't any use. He was already gone.
Since our suspect was laid out in the morgue, investigating the crime scene just meant searching the property and interrogating the woman. She turned out to be a hooker who was balling the guy for a steady supply of coke. She didn't know anything except that the guy always had drugs in the house and he bragged to her that he had half a dozen street dealers who worked for him. She didn't know any faces or names because the guy always made his deliveries and collected the money while she was at her apartment asleep.
I spent the afternoon writing my report about what happened. By the time I finished, I was pissed at pretty much the whole world. Nick and I had gone through the academy together and had both made detective at the same time. He had a wife and two kids. The police union had negotiated burial benefits, life insurance, and a pension for us, so his family would be OK financially, but they'd lost the man they loved because of a piece of dog shit drug dealer.
I was also mad at myself for killing the guy. Killing was much too quick a punishment for what he'd done. He should have sat his ass in jail for a couple months before his trial and then gone to prison for the rest of his life. At least then Nick's wife would know he was living out some of the hell he'd caused her to go through.
Like I said, I was really pissed at everybody and everything. I figured on dropping by Harry's for a beer or two to adjust my attitude and then go home and get something to eat.
I did have the first beer along with part of a bowl of peanuts Hildy sat down in front of me. I'd just about drained the bottle when she walked up again.
"You downed that beer pretty fast. Something the matter?"
"Yeah. I lost a friend today."
Hildy leaned her tits on the bar and that caused them to sort of well up out of her low-cut tank top.
"Wanna tell me about it?"
"No, not really. I would like another beer though."
Hildy brought my beer, then leaned on the bar again.
