Kisses Are Like Bullets

Chapter 1

The street light above my head died. This was just great. As I stood in the darkness, the wind picked up the soft falling snow and threw it in my face. A minute ago, the air was as still as the silence in my apartment, but now it was angry and loud. Everything around me was warning me about the situation I was about to walk into.

I looked at my watch as I waited for the red hand to turn into a white walking stick figure. "Three minutes to twelve-thirty in the morning," the two skinny black hands told me. Why a girl wanted to meet me in the middle of the night, I had no clue.

When the light changed, I raced across the street as fast as my two bad knees could carry me. Getting old sucks.

I yanked open the door to the bar so hard I could have sworn the five stickers that spelled out the word "Carl's" flew off the door. That was the name of the bar that was my hangout: Carl's.

It was what you would call a "drinking bar." There aren't too many of those around anymore. The glass door with the white lettering and its grey metal handle with its gray metal lock was the only thing that didn't seem to belong in the place. The rest of the inside consisted of black painted brick walls and wood. There was no music, no TVs, and no other distractions. The L-shaped bar stretched from all the way in the back where the restrooms were to two feet from the door. Twelve chairs surrounded the bar: Three close to the door and nine around the long end. Six tables stood in the way between the residents and the restrooms. Each table had between two and four chairs around it ready to sit and serve those who were ready to taste the finest craft beer the city of Rockford, Illinois had to offer. It was the perfect place for a first date. But the reason I was there wasn't a date. It was to meet a client. I used to be a cop, a detective to be more specific. Now, I'm a private investigator and this client woke me from my restful retirement to tell me to get to the bar near my apartment complex and fast.

"Alright, where is she?" I shouted as I walked into the bar. It wasn't the best approach to sell yourself to a client, but I was lucky she wasn't around to hear me hollering.

"Calm yourself," the man behind the bar said, "She just went to use the restroom. She'll be out in a minute."

I did as he said and I calmed myself down.

The almost seven-foot-tall three-hundred-pound pale monster behind the bar pouring everyone's drinks knew how to calm anyone down. I still to this day, don't know his real name. We only call him by his nickname: Cream. Cream as in the stuff you put in your coffee. We called him that because his skin was so pale, the only thing lighter than he was in the bar were the paper towels he used to wipe up the spills from people who didn't know how to hold a drink in their hands.

I took off my coat and set it on the back of one of the chairs before toning my voice ten notches down from what it was when I came into the joint. "Well, it took me more than a minute to walk here," I said before taking my snow-covered porkpie hat and throwing it on the slab of wood that was holding everybody's drinks.

"You could have taken your car," the big man said before pouring me a glass of the latest craft beer they had on tap.

"It would have taken longer to heat up the dang thing than it would have to walk over here, " I said before grabbing the glass and pouring a quarter of the brown liquid down my throat. When I finished, I took my sleeve and ran it across my face before saying, "You made it sound like this was an emergency when you called me at twelve-fifteen to wake me up before telling me to get down here ." Let this be a lesson to all of you, never give your bartender your phone number.

"Well, I consider a beautiful girl coming in here and telling me she wants to see you is an emergency," he said before pouring me another glass of exactly what I wanted.