#harry hodie cross | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

icarus-suraki · 5 months ago

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When Issy left, it was too late to start anything. I pinned the Tumblr post on the wall and called it a night. At least Issy didn't steal my hat. Or maybe she kept it and that thing standing over there was the dextromethorphan getting to me.

When I woke up it was morning, which was different, and I was hungry. Hungry for answers, sure, but mostly for bacon. Good thing this lousy city is lousy with lousy places to eat lousy breakfasts. And if you know the right one, you might get some answers too.

My favorite place is the one on the corner with the big plate glass windows where you can sit inside like you're in "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper (1942). But it doesn't open until 2--am, that is. Funny thing about "Nighthawks" is that it might be connected to "The Killers" or "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place." Those're both Hemingway. Funny how things always seem to circle back around again.

Nighthawks was closed. Wavos was full of stoners that time of the morning. I settled on Johnie’s Coffee Shop. The Hollywood googie look isn't my scene, but they'll serve me.

I sat down at the counter.

"Hey, Harry," the waitress said.

"Hodie," I said.

"What can I getcha, dollface?"

"Fried egg, toast, bacon."

She shouted the order back to the cook in diner lingo that I don't feel like transcribing here right now.

"And coffee if you've got it," I said.

"Always got that," she said, pouring it.

I tried to look nonchalant and talk over the rim of my coffee cup but I drank too soon or talked too late and wound up blowing bubbles instead.

"What'd you say?" the waitress said.

"I said 'Seen Mr. Ellmann around at all?'"

"Now what's a big man like him doing in a place like this?"

I shrugged. "I thought maybe you saw him somewhere else. Maybe one of those Phi Beta Kappa meetings."

"Honey, I had to skip the last two to keep this place open."

She walked off and I turned to look out the front windows of this joint. The coffee was terrible; just how I like it.

All of a sudden there's a woman on the outside looking inside. Does she see me? I thought to myself. No, she doesn't really see me: from that angle, with these windows, she sees her own reflection. I turned back around since I was trying not to notice that she was hitching up her skirt and while she was straightening her stockings her hair had gotten wet.

Too bad. At least it wasn't raining.

While I chowed down on breakfast it was starting to dawn on me, like a sunny side up egg yolk over a bread horizon, that what we had here was a twofer. I lined up the toast on my plate for some visual representation for no one. See, what Issy wanted was to find Tricky Dick Ellmann and then, with Ellmann's know-how, see if the post was accurate. Artie might not be involved but that didn't mean jack when it comes to stories kicking around in this town.

Ellmann's house is up in the 900 block on Dewey Street, one of the big houses, so it's not like his place is hard to find. As for the man, he's either there or he isn't. And if he isn't, you just have to wait for him to come back. And for all the clue I had, he was somewhere out in the footnotes of the headlands.* I had my fill of bacon already so I wasn't looking for a steak-out. (Listen, my ma thinks I'm funny.)

So maybe--the waitress shorted me on coffee when she came around--the way to solve this is to figure out where this post came from and then get old Ellmann in all his wisdom to confirm it. That's a little more legwork but I like legwork more than stakeouts. I think better when I walk.

I was chewing the last bit of burnt toast when the waitress brought the check. $0.15, which was higher than last week. I paid with a quarter and got back out on the street.

I figured it was time to call my old friend Goggles.

*He isn't. I checked. --Issy

It was a rainy Monday night when she came up to my office. I saw her silhouette on my frosted pebbled glass door and I knew this was going to be trouble.

They don't make frosted pebbled glass doors like they used to. I had to source this one specially. I cut the door to fit it in myself. The landlord didn't like that but he doesn't understand aesthetics. Same reason I keep my blinds half-open all the time for those angular and linear shadows: aesthetics.

I put the decals for my name up on the door too: Harry Cross, Researcher. The letters were backwards for me on account of being inside my office: ɿɘʜɔɿɒɘƨɘЯ ƨƨoɿƆ γɿɿɒH

Then the letters were ||||| ||||| ||||||| when she opened the door.

"Hello, Hodie," she said.

"Hodie" is what they call me if they know me: Harry "Hodie" Cross. It was a long-ago yesterday that I got that nickname. I'll tell you why tomorrow.

"Hey, kid," I said.

You could call her a leggy blonde. Blondes come in only a couple of flavors in these kinds of stories: icy and honey. But she wasn't a blonde. She was pretty leggy, though, considering she had two of them. She'd be leggier if she had more but you take what you can get. So you could call her a leggy blonde if you wanted but I'm not about to. She was maybe somewhere between 17 and 43 and she looked like she had a lot on her mind. I'm telling you all this for your benefit; she's my cousin so don't get any ideas.

She took my hat off the rack and put it on as she walked over on those two legs; the hat looked better on her than on me.

"How're your brothers?" I asked.

"Fighting," she said as she sat down on the other side of my desk.

"Too bad," I said.

She shrugged. "It happens every night."

This kid here, Issy, she's got two brothers, Shem and Shaun and they've each got a share of the city. Shem's got a lock on the stationery business in this town and Shaun's got a mail delivery racket going. It never ends with those two and sometimes I think Issy just plays referee when they're brawling.

I kicked my feet up on the desk. "So what brings a girl like you to a nice place like this? The rain? The park? Other things?"

"I need you to find someone for me, Hodie."

"Yeah?" I lit another datura cigarette. I couldn't find the one I'd just had in my hand. "Who?" I lost my cigarette again.

"Ellmann."

I gave her a look. Two-ells-two-enns Dicky Davy Ellmann was another big man in this town, but for the right reasons. He was smart; he knew his stuff, and if he didn't know, he knew how to find out. A regular tome, that guy.

I found another datura cigarette in my hand and lit it. "With that blue and black jacket of his, he should be easy to find." I paused for a second. "You don't think he's…I guess some people would call it 'recycled'?"

"I don't think he's in the box."

We all know the old cardboard box where you end up when it's time to leave the city of letters.

"Still in the old place, then, huh? Why're you looking for him?"

"Because of this."

She slid a Tumblr post across the desk towards me:

I read it and gave a low whistle.

"I need to know if it's true, Hodie. And if anyone's going to know, it's Ellmann and nobody knows where he is."

I leaned back in my chair, which I also had to source specially as a vintage piece since the aesthetics demand something other than a pink gamer chair in this establishment, and kept looking at the post.

"Why not just ask the usual crowd?"

"With Artie out there causing trouble?"

She was right: Artie Intel was a thorn in everyone's side these days. He liked to talk but only about three words of what he said were true. It was all good language but it was all wrong--not even fiction, just plain wrong. Real gift o' the gab with this one. And a town like this might run on fiction but sometimes you just need facts. The problem was that people were starting to listen to old Artie and starting think what he was saying was making sense.

"Hodie, please?" she said. "You've got a nose like a bloodhound."

"It's not that big."

"You got droopy eyes, though."

She had me there.

"And droopy ears."

That was maybe going too far.

"All right," I said. "I'll take the case."

"I knew you would, Hodie. And I know you'll find him."

I tossed the post back onto the desk. "When I set out to find somebody I find 'em. That's why they pay me."

#noises from issy #harry hodie cross

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