“Fuck Canada. What do they know ‘bout beer? ‘Sides I want something harder.”

I waved over the bartender, Boomer, a big side of beef with a long scar down the right side of his face. He strolled over and flashed a toothless grin. “What ya want, Stick?”

I shook the ice in my glass. “Gimme another of these. And get her what she wants.”

Boomer’s unsightly smile dropped from his face as he eyed the cow. Maureen looked Boomer up and down like a cat in heat. Boomer’s eyes slanted and Maureen got the hint. “Uh,” she stumbled, “you got any Jack Daniels?”

When Boomer grunted in the affirmative, she ordered the southern whiskey mixed with Coke. Boomer grunted again and returned to the bar, Maureen staring at his ass while he walked away.

For a minute I watched an old man at the bar. He was probably seventy years old and hunkered over a half empty glass a beer. I knew it was Molson because I heard him order it over an hour before. The beer had to be nasty after that much time. I reminded myself to never get that old and lonely. I’d eat a bullet before that’d happen.

“So tell me what you want” I said to the heifer across from me.

She pried her eyes away from Boomer and looked back at me. The lust was quickly replaced by hatred. “I want you to kill a worthless cop.”

“Is there any other kind?”

“Not in my book. They’ve been fuckin’ up my life since I was a kid. My oldest boy’s in Walla Walla doing a fifteen year stretch.”

“What for?” I interrupted even though I knew the answer.

“He got framed for raping his girlfriend. I mean, how the fuck can you rape your girlfriend?”

“That sucks,” I lied.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “And then a month ago, some piece of shit cop killed my baby.”

“How’d that happen?” I asked.

Her ugly eyes focused in on mine. “Why you wanna know? You a reporter or sumpthin?”

“No, but I figure I got a right to know if I’m going to work for you.”

She made a sucking sound through her teeth and thought about my comment.

Boomer set her drink down in front of her and spilled some of the contents on the table. He carefully placed my glass in front of me. As he left the table he headed toward the old man at the bar.

Maureen took a sip of her drink before her face puckered up. I didn’t think it was possible for the woman to get uglier but she proved me wrong. “You call that a drink?” she whispered to me. “My piss is stronger than this.”

I actually felt my stomach turn.

She took a second pull on the drink and finished half the glass. “My baby, Wayne, got hisself killed by an undercover narc.”

“What did he do to get hisself killed?”

She continued without missing a beat. “He was with his criminal friends. My baby ain’t never done nothin’ wrong. His friends, they were no good and they got my baby in the situation with the cop. The fuckin’ pig shot him square in the face.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “He just shot him in the fuckin’ face and they ain’t goin’ do nothin’ ‘bout it!”

The old man slid off the stool and shuffled out of the joint. Boomer kept his head down and wiped a tattered towel across the mahogany bar.

I sipped at my drink and watched the cow compose herself. She sucked air for a couple of minutes until she wiped her eyes with an old Kleenex she pulled from her purse. When she was done gulping air like a fish she looked at me with evil swimming in her brown eyes.

“I want that bastard dead.”

“The cop?”

“Yeah, the cop you stupid shit. Who else?”

I absently shrugged. “What’s his name?”

“Matthew Stark.”

“Ever seen him before?”

“Nah. But if I did, I’d kill his ass. They ain’t showin’ no pictures of him since he’s working undercover now.”

“How much for the job?”

“I got twenty-thousand in my car outside.”

I sat there for a moment and realized I could smell the body odor of the beast. “Can I tell you a story?”

She scratched a breast through the moo-moo and made the sucking sound with her teeth again. When she shrugged her shoulders, I took that for an answer.

“When I was a kid, I was a bean pole. Skinny little goober. Not like now. That’s what years and beers will do to you. But back in school I was a tall, thin kid. When Boomer and I played baseball together he teased me that I was almost as skinny as the bat.”

The cow looked at her empty glass. “Is there a point to this?”

I ignored her question. “So when I was a freshman, Boomer called me Stick. Soon the whole school was calling me that. I hated it when I was little, but later when I filled out and started hitting the long ball, Stick took on a whole new meaning. In my high school yearbook, there’s a picture of me taking a big ol’ hack. The caption read, Stick Stark Swings for the Seats. I loved that picture.”

Silence hung in the bar for a minute before the beast set her glass down and slowly slid her hand off the table.

“Two officers died that night because of your son. They pulled up on us while we were arguing over his price for meth. They realized it was me when they approached so they let their guard down. That’s when Wayne started firing. I didn’t know he had a gun. And I was looking at the officers when he started shooting. One officer was a rookie, two months on the street. He didn’t even have his gun out when a bullet ripped through his neck. The other officer got his gun out but Wayne shot him in the groin, dropping him to the ground. I couldn’t get my gun out of my fucking ankle holster. It kept getting hung up on my jeans. I fought to get that son of a bitch out of the holster when Wayne walked over to the second officer and fired a shot into his eye. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

A black Sig Sauer appeared from under the table, covered in the mannish hand of the beast. Her face was pinched in anger. I watched her ugly paw and continued my story.

“Wayne turned to me laughing and hollering about killing a ‘fuckin’ pig’. His smile dropped when he saw the gun in my hand. He knew at that moment I was a cop. He dropped his gun and said, ‘I give up’. That’s when I shot him in the face.”

The beast pushed the Sig toward me and turned her head slightly, squinting in anticipation.

When the gun fired, I flinched and threw my hands up in front of my face. My ears screamed in pain. Blood sprayed everywhere and I felt my stomach tighten. I ground my teeth so hard I could feel my face shaking. I didn’t relax until the cow’s head hit the table on her way to the floor.

By the time she stopped moving, Boomer was already dismantling the stolen Glock in his hand. I’d kept it from a crime scene about a year ago.

I shook the cobwebs from my head and stood up. The ringing still bounced around my skull. Boomer put a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Stick, you alright?”

I looked at him. “Yeah,” I nodded. I held out my hand and Boomer laid the pieces of the Glock into it.

“I’ll get rid of the fat girl and the car,” Boomer said flatly as he studied the cow on the floor.

I walked over to the bar and picked up a half bottle of Bacardi. “She told me there’s twenty thousand in the car. It’s yours.”

Boomer looked at me confused. “Shit, half of it’s yours, Stick. I ain’t goin’ cheat you.”

I shook my friend’s hand as I walked passed him. “It ain’t cheatin’, Boom. I just want it to go away.”

The sun outside blinded me when I opened the bar door. The heat of the day hung lazily outside. I saw several filthy, beat-up cars parked out front. A mangy, three-legged dog ran across the street. The old man from the bar still shuffled slowly away. I shook my head as I stepped out into the world. Metaline in the summer was still a depressing place.