Independent 9,525 by Hoskins

9 comments on “Independent 9,525 by Hoskins”

1. Yup, plenty of trademark honest vulgarity from Hoskins today.

   I agree about the surfaces, though. I suppose in 24a, a shop selling exclusively sponges might just about plausibbly have occasion to revise and re-release some of its advertising (cripes) but 6d, ‘One in shot hen parties post for a cadet’ is pretty much alphabet soup, I think.

   I did like the McCartney clue, however, and ‘tomato’ was fun. Thanks to both.

2. I’ll defend EMI-and Hoskins.

3. I can take a bit of vulgarity in a crossword from time to time, so I did enjoy this one. For me, more importantly, it was tractable, and just right for the Monday slot (if such a thing still exists).

   Thanks to S&B, but I still don’t understand why blue is associated with Soho. I can’t decide whether I once knew that Love Apple was TOMATO, or whether I never knew it in the first place. Age. But it’s pomme d’amour in French, apparently because the fruit was believed to have aphrodisiac properties. Far too much sex in Harry’s puzzles.

4. Kathryn’s Dad @3 “Far too much sex in Harry’s puzzles” – gauntlet, meet floor!

   I agree with copmus @2 that there’s no problem with EMI. If Eden etc can be Prime Minister…
   I think we’ve seen (B)assist before, but that was a lovely new way to clue it. Tomato was good too, and inevitably reminded me of Nestor’s Love apple turnover from Yotam Ottolenghi? from a couple of months ago.

   Thank you, Hoskins and flashling.

5. Many thanks to The Flash for the super blog and to all who solved and especially those who commented.

   With regard the surfaces, I think I stand by them all – though I’d agree 6d is a bit of a mouthful. The idea there was that (and I’ve a feeling the length of the explanation might negate my defence here) it’s to be read as (feel free to pack a lunch and some warm clothing before reading this):

   A person in a photograph that a group of women in hen parties posted to social media for the benefit of a young and inexperienced type. The idea being that the women are rowdy on thier hen night and nudity is likely involved in the picture and they post it to embarrass the poor green youngster. Hmmmm, I think you might be right GB!

   As for gauntlet and floor – I’ve plenty of puzzles on sub to answer that one. But of late I have been drawn to 15th Fresco painting by Tittereto (a great laugh, according to the biographies and also a major influence on Frankie Howerd, apparently) so I’ll prolly be steering away from the cheeky in future. Actually, I’ve been thinking about trying to do puzzles with themes of love and loveliness, you know, just to get out of my comfort zone, but we’ll see how they go.

   Phew! I was beginning to think I might’ve started to ramble, but I think I’ve gotten away with my usual concise and brief post-pub[lication of course as I canna afford £3.50 a pint] reportage and so it is just a case of waiting for Mrs Jalopy and the Fabled FifteenSquared drinks trolley to come along …

   … what’s that you say? She’s run off with Mr Toodles from accounts and they’ve taken the trolley with them so as to make time in each others company more bearable? Hmmm, what to do now? Guess there’s only one thing for it and that’s to say see you next time around (or more likely tomorrow where’s there’s a nice crossie from Hob to continue our Indy week) and to tell you an old story of mine. So, are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin …

   The barkeep was a pug-faced kid of around twenty-two, a real looker. I remembered I’d had business with him before, but couldn’t place when. What I did remember was the business hadn’t gone smooth; the kid wouldn’t give up the guy I was looking for and I’d left the joint with a size ten workboot imprinted on the seat of my pants.

   Maybe it was because of that I rolled up to the bar looking like I had something to be sorry for, but probably it was because I knew I’d have to play nice: it was noon on Sunday and I wanted a drink.

   ‘You, huh,’ said the kid.

   I told him it was sweet of him to remember.

   ‘Beer and beer chaser, right?’

   ‘Just for starters,’ I said and he cracked a smile that told me what happened in the past was gonna stay there. I didn’t mind that – it was hell getting that footprint out of them pants.

   The kid went to fetch my brews and I took a stool next to a coupla grizzled old guys. They were drinking something came out of a pump marked Bud and seemed pleased about it. The guy closest, a real sad case who looked like a decrepit Mickey Rooney, leaned on over.

   ‘You drinking, friend?’

   I told him it was a bar.

   ‘Right.’ His leery eyes locked on the beers the kid was pulling out the cooler. ‘One of them for me?’

   I didn’t say nothing.

   ‘I say one of them for me?’

   Jesus. Some people just can’t stop.

   ‘I say one of them—’

   ‘And I say you got the dementia.’

   That shut him up for all of a second. But pretty soon he was telling me I had the prickitis. I thought on that a while, figured it about right and didn’t do nothing.

   The old guy what looked like Mickey Rooney turned back his pal and whispered something through ruined lips. Both men laughed. The feller on the right was a wheezer; decrepit Mickey was a real hacker. His laugh sounded like he was dying from the bronchitis and I hoped he might cough up a lung, but he didn’t.

   Same old story, I thought, and sat there waiting for the barkeep to set me up.

   #

   ‘Beer and beer chaser.’

   The kid lined up the bottles in front of me. I didn’t like to look at his mistake of a face so I looked at the beers instead. They seemed pretty.

   I took a few deep slugs and told the kid I was looking for a guy. The kid didn’t miss a beat and told me to try Raymonde’s Rainbow Room down the way, but I didn’t let it get to me.

   I said, ‘I’m looking for a guy name of Harry. Know him?’

   ‘Maybe.’

   ‘Surname he goes by is Hoskins. I been told he likes to drink.’

   ‘Lot of people called Hoskins,’ said the kid. ‘Even more like to drink.’

   Goddamn pat-a-cake. We’d be playing it a while unless I forced his hand. I pulled my wallet and slung it on the bar. It might’ve made an impression if only because it looked so starved. Either way, the kid didn’t say nothing.

   I tapped the wallet in a way I thought was cute. ‘Something in it if you know the name.’

   ‘Oh, yeah?’

   ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I got a president for you.’

   ‘Which one?’

   ‘One of the good ones.’

   ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘The good ones ain’t worth nothing.’

   I couldn’t argue with that. I hadn’t never seen Carter on no banknote. Still, I pushed on ’cause it was only five past noon and what else was there to do.

   ‘Harry Hoskins.’ I close-eyed the pug-faced kid. ‘You know the name or no.’

   ‘I know it. Funny looking sonbitch.’

   ‘You can talk.’

   ‘All the way from grade school up.’

   The kid had some style, I gave him that; but I had plenty years on him. There was no way anyone other than yours truly was gonna be leading the dance or asking the questions.

   He said, ‘why you want him?’

   I said, ‘what’s it to you?’

   ‘Maybe you want him for something.’ The kid scratched at his lank, blond hair like it’d help him think. ‘You know, something illegal. Maybe you gonna send him upstate. Maybe he goes upstate and this bar loses his beer money. Maybe the owner, my boss, gets to thinking your Mr Hoskins’ bar bill runs the same as my monthly wages. Maybe my boss gets to figuring something’s got to give and that something is me.’

   ‘That’s a lot of maybes, kid.’

   ‘Maybes is all we got, champ.’

   ‘What about death and taxes?’

   ‘Crap,’ he said. ‘They only a maybe in my mind. You think any other way you’re already beat.’

   I drained the rest of the bottle and started in on the second. The kid had a point, I’d always taken death too serious. Hell, that sort of serious can make a guy thirsty.

   ‘Don’t worry, kid,’ I said, ‘this Hoskins feller hasn’t done nothing bad. He’s just missing is all. You know … absent.’

   ‘I’ll think on it,’ said the kid, and he looked at me like maybe I was a little crazy.

   #

   I watched the scrawny hand of the bar’s old clock jerk round three times. The barkeep just stood there wiping glasses like nobody could think of anything better for him to do.

   ‘Crap,’ I said to pass the time.

   ‘Yup,’ said the barkeep.

   I was starting to like the kid. Sure, he looked like his Mama’s doctor got a little forceps happy, but some clever bastard once said looks aren’t everything so I said, ‘you gonna throw me some skinny on this Hoskins feller?’

   The kid pulled a face I recognised. I placed it somewhere around the time I tried to get Mary Wright to do something fun for a turn on my little red wagon.

   ‘I seen him around.’

   ‘When?’

   ‘Roundabout now or thereabouts.’

   I turned to scope the bar. It wasn’t much of a place: sticky carpet that was more beer than rug, a few flickering neon signs, and lamps dim as the poor saps what slumped beneath them. Hoskins wasn’t nowhere I could see.

   ‘Guy ain’t here.’

   ‘Maybe you ain’t looking close enough.’

   I got to figuring the kid was playing me for a sucker. I thought on that while I took my second beer all the way home, then paused to admire the way them beer pumps looked. Hell, if you was going to be a sucker – and I didn’t reckon there was much of a way not to be in this world – then them beer pumps were the kind of sucker I’d like to be.

   ‘Set me up, kid,’ I said.

   ‘You doing pretty fine at it yourself.’

   I thought that over while but couldn’t figure on it. The kid had a smart mouth to go with that messed-up face of his. I guess I’d need a diploma or something to understand what he was talking about, but I didn’t have a diploma; I didn’t even have a gold star from kindergarten. What I had was a thirst and a hunger to find Hoskins and that’d do me fine. Hell, a man should have two things going on in his life at least – you only got one and you is beyond trouble and all the way to lost.

   ‘Gimmie some more of that beer on beer,’ I said. ‘Draught this time and try to start in on telling me something useful, huh.’

   The kid sorta nodded and went over to the taps. Looking at him I didn’t hold out much hope, but he made up for it by filling up a coupla dirty glasses with that pretty liquid gold.

   #

   ‘Hey, fella.’

   I could smell it was decrepit Mickey Rooney talking. It surprised me he wasn’t dead yet because the stink coming off his chops told me he should be.

   ‘What you want, Mickey?’

   ‘Heard you’re looking for a man.’

   That got my interest popping. You never know what people might see. Sure, old Mickey mighta been blind drunk; hell, maybe all he’d seen was my famished wallet, but you shouldn’t never pass up a chance on account of none of us ever having one.

   ‘I say I hear you’re looking for a man.’

   ‘Yeah.’ I took a nice, deep slug of amber. ‘I’m looking. You know Hoskins, huh?’

   ‘Reckon I do.’

   Old Mickey smiled when he said that. His teeth were so British it made me wanna puke, but I held on to it because the beer in my gut hadn’t gotten to my head yet.

   ‘You do, huh.’ I figured to test old Mickey a little. ‘What’s he look like?’

   ‘Weee-ll.’ Mickey drew that word out like one of his lungs was deflating. ‘He about your height.’

   ‘Oh, yeah?’

   ‘Yeah. About your weight, too. Looks a little better than you last time I saw him. Man likes to drink good and smell bad.’

   ‘No need to get personal.’

   ‘No offence,’ said Mickey, and he cut a fart that just about slipped out of him like fat fella squeezing through a cat-flap.

   ‘None taken,’ I said. ‘Not like I’m tight with the guy. Just trying to find him for someone is all.’

   ‘Any luck?’

   ‘Never.’

   That about killed that conversation. Nothing you can say to the truth now is there.

   #

   The kid brought over my next brews. They glowed a pretty gold and the glasses twinkled under the neon signs. I didn’t mind that. I reckoned it looked a little like Christmas before God got all Santa Claus and Santa Claus got all fizzy-pop.

   ‘Hey, chief,’ said the kid, and I liked the way he said it. That kid woulda sounded alright even if he wasn’t the one working the taps. ‘You really looking for this Hoskins, huh?’

   ‘Been on it a month.’

   ‘Bout a month ago I first met you.’

   ‘That long, huh.’

   The kid raised an eyebrow and leant across the bar. ‘You doing alright?’

   ‘Same as always, I guess.’

   ‘Tell me about it?’

   ‘It’s Hoskins,’ I said. ‘Every bar I go in I feel I’m close, but I just can’t catch up to him. It’s like he don’t wanna be found. A real ghost.’

   The kid stared at me with an expression that looked like it might cost him something. ‘Keep this on the QT,’ he said, ‘but you ever thought about deep-sixing those beers? You know, just for a couple of days or something.’

   It was about that time I realised the kid, despite his smart mouth, was some kind of retard.

   ‘Gotta eat something,’ I said in my cutest voice, but the kid had already turned away and was pouring a twenty-five cent measure for a bum who’d come in off the street. Roundabout then I guessed friendship got trumped by cash every time and wasn’t surprised about it.

   #

   Things were going from bad to worse. The kid was making nice with the bum and I wasn’t getting nowhere nearer to finding Hoskins. Hell, that started me thinking whether I still had it. Then it started me wondering whether I could take it anymore.

   I grabbed my Greek wallet off the bar and looked for the card of the guy who’d hired me, but the skinny sonbitch didn’t give up nothing but my lapsed drivers licence and a ribbed rubber about two years past wearable.

   I took my booze down to glass half-empty and spent a long minute trying to remember my guy what was paying me’s face, but couldn’t do it. It came to me then that there were was a lot of things I couldn’t do. Most all of them where things regular-type persons take for granted, but I couldn’t do them.

   It was a bad way to be, but it wasn’t the pits. There were a few things I could do: I could bend an elbow, I could sit out in places and watch the world go by, and I didn’t mind not going anywhere or doing anything. Hell, when I looked at it that way I reckoned I could take it after all.

   I killed the rest of that beer and almost felt human.

   #

   ‘Set me up again, kid.’

   I hadn’t even started in on my fourth, but I knew I’d be needing more to get Hoskins off my mind and make the bar dip a little and then glow some.

   ‘Yessir,’ said the kid, and somehow he managed not to smile. I liked him for that.

   The juke kicked in like it did once in a while to try and hook someone into feeding it. The song was pretty good: Shane and the Irish boys telling it like it was. Hell, them boys always played fine and even the bum off the street started to feel it through the layers of dirt and life he wore as a face.

   Pretty soon the whole place was a chattering and a-humming. The grizzled old fellers were hacking and wheezing and laughing, the street bum was doing this crazy jig, and them dim lamps of people was glowing a little brighter, too. Yes, the place was getting warm for life at last. I even stopped worrying about Hoskins for a while. I guessed some guys don’t wanna be found and I figured there wasn’t much wrong in that.

   I raised up my glass and sent Hoskins some cheers, it mighta looked a bit stupid, but maybe it’d do him some good. Besides, the beer had worked its way up in my head by then and things seemed pretty nice.

   #

   The kid walked over with my new brews. The sloppy sod spilled a little when he laid them down and I thought about getting mad, but couldn’t manage it. The kid was sweet and the beer rocked a nice motion in the glass all worked up like that. I watched that liquid gold slip back and forth and figured it wouldn’t be a bad place to be; just rocking on that pretty gold rhythm like a kiddie in a crib.

   I took a sip, then a swallow, then another.

   I checked the clock.

   Twenty-five after noon.

   Not a bad days work, I figured. No sir, not too shabby at all. I had a place I hadn’t got kicked out of, and I seemed to have credit here. As for Hoskins, I figured he’d turn up somewhere. Christ, everybody gotta turn up somewhere after all. Maybe I’d check the morgues tomorrow, but couldn’t recall any bars down there so I just bent my elbow and got on with living.

   #

   🙂

6. 🙂

   Very nice scent of noir – or Hiaasen bouquet? 😉 [audience grows restless]

7. That, Michael, would be several parts Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Leonard and Thompson [Jim, not Hunter] shoved forcibly through a Bukowski lens and mixed with a generous dash of yours truly to provide an original, not likely to be repeated, Indy and FifteenSquared exclusive of crossword and story mix for anyone out there in the interzones. And not only that, but it’s free*

   *yes, for gratis is the only way I can sell ’em, of course.

8. Interesting influences – thank you for Spillane the beans. (Sorry, but I can’t be sure anyone got the Keeping Up Appearances pun.)

   http://www.justgiving.com/Hoskinsnovel You could still use the story as a foreword in a book of Hoskins crosswords, of course… ?

9. Hehe – that’s some nice punnage right there and yes, I missed the bucket and went straight for the novelist Carl via Google. Forgot to mention there’s a debt to Kinky Friedman in my above blah, too.

   Oh, should gives thanks for the donate page. The Just Giving has just kicked off with a not-to-be-sniffed at £3.50 donation from The Society of Friendly Boozers – great lot they are and it doesn’t seem too much for them to ask that I have their logo (a boot shaped like a never-fully filled pint glass on a furrowed brow) tattooed on me forehead to seal the donation deal … donations do require contracts, right?

   Having said that, and let’s face it that wasn’t something I was planning to say this morning, I reckon this thread might just have stretched the kind Gaufrid’s tolerance to the max and so I fancy that retirement to Bedfordshire and looking forward to the great Hob puzzle tomorrow is now the order of the day/morning/night/whatever.

   Good night to you Michael and good night to all – I hope it’s not been boring on my part even if it was none too skilled at all. 🙂

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