Prologue:
Harry Dick is a detective.
Harry Dick is a detective.
He’s investing murders in a trendy revitalized area in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The murders are alarming and start occurring more frequently with a pattern the media aids in bringing to the public attention placing law enforcement under the spotlight.
Harry is casing spots that the murdered seems to be using us stalking grounds - hipsterville spots - including the mothership of maintaining that dandy hipster look Mister Grooming & Goods.
Harry is secretly buying the hair trimmings from hair cuts and “the quiky” which is basically nothing more than a quick beard trim. The rugged lumber jack, beehive, Amish, 1800’s mill worker, chimney sweep looks have to be worked on as a skilled craftsman carves a pictorial scene out of wood.
Harry becomes obsessed with the hipster culture as the murders create a frantic pitch of fear in the media among the public and the fact that the killer is definitely targeting “the hipster.” Male hipsters are his target. And new evidence suggests the killer is a cannibal.
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Chapter 1: Chops and Hops
“They don’t like us looking up at the sky,” she spoke with an amused austere tone. “Who’s they?!” Detective Harry Dick sarcastically replied. She laughed in a mocking manner, “the people you work for - the government.” Her eyes as green as “go” and her hair as black as the coal mined from the hinterlands beyond the city limits. Her white milky skin only made her red lips shine like the red stained specialty manufactured in Pittsburgh factories more than a century ago. Neon and electric stained glass was a good way to describe the revitalized neighborhood now thriving once again at night time after work on a weekday.
Chops and Hops was a newer restaurant that met the criteria of blending that old rustic rugged charm and simplistic brilliance with the new-new in innovations. After all, along the banks of the Allegheny, part of western Pennsylvania’s civil war arsenal was recently discovered. Cannon balls recently excavated reminding the city that Lawrenceville housed a huge armory. It was working class hustling and bustling part of town at one time. It wasn't always that way. It happened organically and wasn't part of the masterplan for a big industrial city. Today it is part of the master plan for attracting talent who might work for Google, Facebook, Oracle, Amazon, Uber, Carnegie Mellon University or Pitt. Once flourishing farmland up in the hills above smoky downtown, Lawrenceville was a little paradise. An idyllic town where the father of American music was born and his bones rests to this day after a world class career and living in Manhattan.
The old lamplighters lit up the sidewalks, streets and bench parks of the 1800’s neighborhood until neon light signs were invented in Pittsburgh as part of the glorious gritty story. From being the industrial hub of three rivers and river valleys and their hinterlands which accounted for the iron and steel powerhouse Pittsburgh had made itself into among other competing northern cities. it was a smoggy city with dense air pollution. Coal trains rain down the tracks of mainlines directly into Philadelphia, New York City and Chicago. Steam boats and barges filled the waterfront wharfs as does litter unveiled by the melting spring sun of March. Funicular inclines carried goods, live-stock, supplies, wagons and even automobiles and people up and down the steep cliffs of mountanious terrain of the Appalachians.
Nevertheless Chops and Hops was a select place to be on a Friday night in a neighborhood that was not only a premier location in the city however Lawrenceville and, the East End in general, have been written up in ink by current journalists and bloggers as the coolest neighborhoods in America. From the father of American Music, Stephen Foster, to the lead singer of Rusted Root renting a building on Butler Street across from the Thunder Bird Cafe to house a studio, rehearsal space and music gear storage for the constantly touring and recording lifestyle of 90’s rockers still managing to keep on keeping on! … and onward it does go. Across the 40th Street Bridge is Millville and Mr. Small’s Theatre which helped put Pittsburgh on the music map along with the previously mentioned late great Stephen Foster. Mr. Small’s Theatre also rooted in Rusted Root 90’s rock stardom. This is a scene for sure. Children's Hospital now commands respect among the city scape instead of giant mills with their billowing smoke stacks.
Normally Rhonda and Detective Harry Dick would not be paired up together talking in a bar named Round Cantina with narrow dimly lit exposed brick walls forcing them to sit even closer together so that their knees were touching. Hers bare. Showing the slightest sensation that she was athletic and probably in quite good shape despite the black goth exterior meets Austrian outback pub life well furnished and supplied by Robert Redford’s SunDance Catalogue. No, Harry Dick was exhilarated by hunting deer up near his parent’s farm in Evan’s City, Pennsylvania. Outside of Pittsburgh’s big city lights and nostalgic fiery glow of long gone haunted memories of slag being urged from the mill’s machinery into the river. Outside the city where men and women still snapped the necks off of chickens and canned vegetables and made homemade sausage and salami and deer jerky.
Harry Dick knew how to shave sheep. He knew how to butcher an animal. Animals such as goats, and pigs and rabbits and, of course, deer.
Men around these parts were obsessed with hunting deer. In fact, Harry Dick’s mind was wandering to his tree stand in the woods and to tracking his buck for the season. He could smell the young buck’s virile fur after urinating and secreting feces that Harry Dick would pick up bag & tag and study. Detective Harry Dick soon recalled why he was in hipsterviile to begin with meeting with some tattoo clad, pierced everywhere 27 year-old female about 5 foot 9 sprite yet slightly jaded and apathetic but driven for success.
Rhonda owned and operated the mothership of men’s prized identity as a “hipster.” Rhonda owned Mister Grooming and Goods. If you wanted to maintain that dandy hipster look and rock an Amish beehive looking beard or chimney sweep mustache a fellow dandy barkeep would notice and serve you first in a crowd that looks like the cast of Oliver meets early to mid 90’s MTV music videos back when MTV actually played Music on TV instead of reality shows, Mister was the place to go. Yes, Rhonda drove a Prius and Harry Dick a Ford F150. Harry Dick felt the surge Donald Trump was giving to all enforcement and moaned at the notion of NFL players taking-a-knee for the National Anthem and Rhonda calmly believed and stated that Donald J. Trump and his brainless zombie followers were missing the point! It’s about criminal justice reform not the flag, not the troops.
“Is this the guy, Harry?” Rhonda said into her glass of East End Big Hop with a nod while asking. “Yes, that’s him,” Harry answered. “Yeah, he’s a client a Mister. Why him, Harry? Because he has a beard with oil in it, wears patchouli to mask the smell of grilled meats and has a pompadour with a sweet fade and a chain wallet? That’s reasonable suspicion?!” Rhonda thought Harry Dick was a total tool. And Harry Dick didn’t particularly like the strong minded independendt uppity queen of Hispterville. And though their fates were intertwined. “No, because his job here at Round Cantina is to butcher meat,” Harry curtly countered. "If the murders are not random and are connected and the work of a serial killer, it appears the killer knows a thing or two about the anatomy of mammals and how to slice and dice them so to speak for eating. Also the killer appears to be someone that has an interest in preserving the good parts for eating by the method of canning.” Harry Dick was penetrating the crowd with a steel glaze so intense it burned as bright as the bulbs in the mason jars hanging from the ceiling.
"Who's Eating Harry Dick" _ a modern day crime caper _ prologue and chapter one
CopyRight 2017 by John Alan Conte, Jr. mystrawhat.com
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