Another Kind of Fix

People wondered whether it was courage or numbness that held Starsky together. They wondered what would make him crack.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
Ernest Hemmingway

A Sunday night on Hutch’s couch. A B-movie on the tube and a cold beer in his hand. Starsky wouldn’t ask for more.

But the phone always seems to ring right at the best part; like when the pretty blonde steps into the dark hallway oblivious to the danger lurking. “Don’t go that way,” Starsky stops himself from shouting at the screen by jamming a piece of pizza in his mouth.

Hutch pushes his legs away and reaches across the couch to answer the call.

After an exchange of barely five words with whomever was on the other end of the phone, Hutch slaps him on the thigh. “That was Dobey. They got a body in a house at Fifth and Lloyd. It’s another strangulation. Let’s go.”

Sammy’s grandpa was the first dead person Davey ever saw. The cloying scent of gladiolas filled the funeral parlor, a room fancier than in any house he – at six years old – had ever been in. Davey approached the gleaming casket with fearful fascination to see the man in peaceful repose, dressed in a fine new suit and cradled in satin.

He looked just like he was sleeping, the way he did when rocking in front of the TV. The old man would start to snore but then, when Sammy would poke him, he’d startle awake and insist he’d just been resting. Davey thought maybe if he poked him now the old man would snort and open his rheumy eyes. But he didn’t.

The second time Davey faced a corpse, he was old enough to know that death wasn’t the same as being asleep. The man hadn’t died peacefully. His father’s life had been taken in violence – the kind of violence he’d worked to stop. To keep the streets safe for Davey and his friends to play in, he used to tell him.

Davey had just turned thirteen. But his little brother, Nicky, needed their mother more. So Davey cried each night alone in his room, until one day the tears just stopped. It was as if something inside him had quit working, like a corroded spigot.

Starsky swallows down the pizza and feels his heart accelerate. This is the second body in that neighborhood this week. He’s determined there won’t be a third. He follows Hutch out the door of the apartment they practically share, strapping on his holster as he goes.

They jump into his Torino in perfect synchronicity. Hutch slams the Mars light on the roof as they speed down the street, the siren’s inhuman wailing in his ears.

The house is cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape and stone-faced uniformed officers wave them on. Starsky and Hutch approach with caution, taking in every detail of the scene. The roof is sagging and the front window is cracked. The screen door hangs lazily from its hinges. The structure looks barely habitable, but what some people consider home no longer surprises them.

Davey didn’t feel guilty when he skipped school or broke the neighbor’s window. He didn’t feel ashamed the way his mother told him he ought to when he gave Sammy a black eye. He didn’t bother to explain what Sammy had said to deserve it. He didn’t even feel sad when he boarded the plane to California. His mother said the move was for the best. It would get him away from the bad influences that seemed to have taken over him, but Davey didn’t feel influenced by anything at all.

As they cross the yard, their footsteps are choreography, they breathe practically as one. They know what they’re up against but they also know who has their backs.

Starsky pulls at the screen door, instantly recognizing the smell of death. It follows him like an evening shadow, he no longer tries to escape it. Down in the basement they find the body of a woman tied to a bed frame, a garrote of wire around her neck. The mattress she’s stretched out on is soaked with blood and other human waste. Her frozen features are shades of blues, grays and purples.

The report was right. She hasn’t been here long. A weaker stomach might have given up its meal, but Starsky had moved past that stage long ago. He circles the body taking in clues. A scratch pattern on the wrist, a scrap of fabric on the floor. They practically speak to him. He pulls out a note pad and pencil stub from his jacket pocket and begins to take notes. He knows what details to take in, which ones to ignore.

Davey hadn’t had a pet in New York. Animals weren’t suited to city life, his dad had said. So Davey hadn’t known what to do at first with the hairy, drooling creature that greeted him at Uncle Stu and Aunt Rosa’s house. But Buddy had seemed to know exactly what do with Davey. He’d chase a stick and bring it back on lonely afternoons. Then he’d pull him down the street at the end of his leash until Davey had gotten to know all the neighbors.

Buddy would even climb on Davey’s bed at night, allowing Davey to dig a hand through the thick, warm fur and feel his beating heart. He seemed to look at the boy knowingly, yet without judgment. Those were the times Davey thought he might not be so irreparable after all.

One day Buddy got hit by a car. Uncle Stu took the whimpering animal to the vet but told Davey to stay behind. Buddy never came back. Uncle Stu explained that the dog had internal injuries – he’d been bleeding inside and couldn’t be fixed. So the vet had given him a shot. He was assured that Buddy hadn’t felt a thing.

It was just another of death’s ways Davey had to learn.

Davey didn’t cry. It was stupid to cry over a dumb animal. His aunt and uncle praised him for being such a brave boy. But he wished there might be some kind of shot for him as well, because he knew he must be bleeding somewhere deep inside, too. Still, like Buddy, he didn’t feel a thing.

Hutch goes upstairs to scout out the rest of the house. Minutes later, Starsky is still so intent on his observations, he almost misses the sound of heavy footfalls coming from above. An object drops on the floor. The thought that it wasn’t like Hutch to be so clumsy at a crime scene tugs at him.

“Hutch?” he calls but receives no answer. He looks at the woman, her eyes fixed at something he can’t see. It’s his job to discover the secrets it’s too late for her to tell.

He feels a chill like a cloud eclipsing the sun again and calls once more. “Hutch?”

In ’Nam Sergeant David Starsky became at expert at death. The way it looked, the way it smelled. Sometimes he could even sense it coming. He learned that death was no respecter of persons. It came for soldiers, civilians, even women and children. A land mine could rip a body in half whether young or old, male or female, leaving a mangled corpse, its blood seeping into the muddy ground.

Battle fields had no place for parlors with satin-lined caskets. The putrid smell of fear and gun powder usurped the fragrance of funeral flowers in the heavy jungle air. There were no mourners either. War left no time to weep. It just took little pieces of one’s soul, bit by bit. With each appendage blown off, with each pair of glazed eyes he covered, Dave waited for it to be his turn. But somehow it never was.

Something’s wrong. He senses it the same as if he were stepping into a mine field. He bounds up the steps two at a time, then freezes in place. He cocks his head and follows the sounds of scuffling coming from the kitchen.

A man in a long gray overcoat embraces Hutch from behind. He’s been waiting or maybe he’s just done running. His features are obscured in the shadows. But that’s not what matters. The only thing that does are Hutch’s hands that pull at something around his throat. A wire that’s cutting off his air. Long, stringy hair whips about his attacker’s face in the struggle as his big hands tighten at Hutch’s neck.

Hutch’s mouth is open, gulping like a fish pulled from the water. His eyes widen for a split second as he sees Starsky, then he slumps forward and curls onto the ground.

When they smoked their cigarettes during down time, Starsky and his buddies would crack jokes and laugh like they were still in high school. They surrounded themselves with bravado the same way they holed up in thick brush. It was just another way to hide. But they saw each other’s fear in their hands that shook each time they struck a match. Starsky’s hand was always steadiest of all. Everyone wondered if it was courage or numbness that held him together. They wondered what would make him crack.

“HUUUUUUUTCCCHH!”

The strangler looks down at his newest victim, then steps back and grins. His teeth are grey, his eyes sunken in and soulless. Starsky’s gun burns into his back. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t feel. He pulls the gun in one smooth move and squeezes the trigger over and over. The man jerks back then crumples to join Hutch on the cracked and filthy linoleum. Five bullets riddle his body.

Starsky falls hard to his knees and pulls Hutch’s limp form into his lap. He puts a hand on Hutch’s head, and feels his carotid for a pulse with the other. Hutch’s hair is soft and golden. His neck is red and raw. Starsky feels nothing. Then suddenly he feels everything.

Starsky’s heart breaks like a dam as he convulses into Hutch’s chest. “Don’t die, dammit.”

After his tour of duty was over, going to the police academy seemed the natural thing to do. Where else could he put his special talents to such good use?

Starsky graduated with honors along with his new pal, Hutch. A living, breathing miracle. Hutch didn’t even seem to mind that Starsky was broken somewhere inside.

Hutch helped him leave his past behind. Yet death continued to draw him like a moth to a flame. He was driven to the homicide division where he became a detective. But Hutch had come to homicide with him, too. It wasn’t just death that drew him.

In the midst of death, it was Hutch that made life worth living.

His tears soak Hutch’s shirt. This is one loss he knows he can’t endure. His sobs dissolve to childish whimpers like he’s thirteen again. “Don’t leave me, too.”

Then he feels a quickening underneath his cheek. Starsky straightens and pounds on Hutch’s chest, trying to restart his heart the way Hutch has restarted his. He feels Hutch gasp and he gasps along with him.

“Shhhhh. S’okay, Starsk. I’m okay.” Hutch’s arms encircle him and Starsky’s sobs resume. He feels Hutch reach up and thread his fingers weakly through his hair.

“I almost lost you.” Starsky sniffs into Hutch’s shoulder. He suddenly realizes he’s crying.

“But you didn’t,” Hutch assures him. “You won’t.” No, Starsky realizes. What they have between them can never die.

After a few minutes as consciousness returns in full, Hutch asks, “What happened?”

Starsky sits back on his heels and rubs his eyes with his jacket sleeves. “I killed him.”

He pulls Hutch to a sitting position wraps a supporting arm around him. Hutch looks to the body a few feet away. The long dark coat covers the man like the loose dirt of a grave.

“I’m not sorry.” Starsky admits.

“Neither am I.” Hutch echoes and sends him a shaky smile. Starsky wipes his eyes and smiles back. He feels something falls back in place like a click of a tumbler.

Some things need to be broken before they can be put back together.

FIN