Closing in on Three A.M.

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Starsky & Hutch have to get information out of a reluctant Fat Rollie and a slightly deranged bartender called Crazy Eyes. They have different methods of approaching the problem. Originally published in the SHareCon 2014 zine.

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You remember Cars and Mars, don’t you? That show biz partnership a lot of people wondered about (especially since their best known routine was called Mr. Posey and Mr. Pansy.) You know the one I mean: they lisped and sashayed around as interior decorators and brought down the homophobic house.

Their act was immortalized on film in the why-did-they-ever-make-this-musical, Colorado Campus Cuties. Remember the big production number where everyone was dressed in glittery cowboy and Indian costumes and square danced to a song about Custer’s Last Stand? Desi Arnaz as Custer, played a conga drum, and Ronald Reagan (looking a lot like Howdy Dowdy) called the steps? You don’t?

How about Club 522?

In 1945, the comic, Buddy Cars (aka: Isaac Karznovitch) and the singer, Tony Mars (aka: Antonio Marzetti) borrowed money from the gangster, Bugsy Siegel (aka: future corpse courtesy of the mob). And, they opened their own nightclub. They called it Club 522 to honor the birthday of dancer, Jane Wilde (aka: Gertrude Flundersen; the ex-Mrs. Cars; ex-Mrs. Mars).

They all took turns performing on the big round stage twice a night. (What they did together backstage is anybody’s guess.) Cars opened with the laughs and Mars sang. He ended every show with his big hit I Love You Whenever I’m Lonely. Wilde and The Wilde Kats, dressed in pink and black pussy cat costumes swung their tails and sexed up the place. (Between numbers, the girls sold cigarettes and themselves.)

There was dining and dancing. People gambled in a secret room upstairs that everybody knew about. The money rolled in. There was laughter and noise and fun. It was a swinging hot spot, big stars came to see and be seen. Now, all that was gone. But, Club 522 hung on.

In 1975, it was clinging to life in the shadows as a watering hole for scum suckers, leeches, looney tunes, drunks and derelicts. I got the feeling that it still remembered the good old days and was only waiting for Swing to come back. Or Stephen King to write a novel about it called The Shithole. Or someone to send it out in a blaze of glory with gas-can-and-matches-urban-renewal.

It was way past last call. And, there I was in that sad old dive. I was sitting at 522’s big L-shaped bar drinking whiskey with the night manager, Fat Rollie. (Okay, I was sipping and he was slurping.) What had my life come to that I’d be buying drinks for this outstanding citizen?

What it’d come to was: 38 hours into a homicide case, one Jane Doe, who got into the wrong car and ended up dead on the side of the road, one mystery john, no eye witnesses except maybe somebody named Frank, who ran some girl, who might have seen something or knew the stiff or was the runner-up for Miss America. Or not.

What it’d come to was: I needed information. Fat Rollie usually had information.

He also had a serious drinking problem and hated to drink alone. While he guzzled, I sipped, grimaced and tried to learn something. Because I needed names. I needed names now. (And, I needed them before Rollie fell off the bar stool.)

“So?” I asked with real understated desperation. (Nonchalance being my middle name.)

“So?” said Rollie with real disinterest.

“So, you seen him?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Frank.”

“Might have,” said Rollie as he savored his bottom shelf bourbon.

“When?” I asked nasally as I attempted to not breathe Eaux de Fat Rollie.

“Maybe like a day or two ago? Maybe last week?”

“Can you be more specific?” (Can you also be less disgusting and bathe? I wondered. Detecting unwashed ass under B.O.)

“It’s hard to say.” Rollie signaled the bartender, Charlie Calhoun (aka: Crazy Eyes) to top him off.

Charlie poured. Some of the booze spilled on the bar. Probably because he couldn’t see, probably because he was wearing neon orange cheetah print sunglasses. Night or day, inside or out, the man wore really cheap, really dark, really ugly sunglasses.

My partner, Ken Hutchinson (aka: Hutch), named him Crazy Eyes the first time we saw Charlie without his shades. That was around the same time we started working Bay City’s District 3 (aka: The Toilet) and Charlie went mental. He had to be locked up in the Psycho Ward at County General for going schizoid. (In the good old days, he played in Club 522’s piano bar and wrote songs for Mars. In the bad new days, he tended bar and tried to remember to take his meds.)

“Well, can you tell me who you’ve seen?” I asked.

“I seen George Raft,” Charlie volunteered as he cleaned the sticky bar with a dirty rag that looked like it’d been around since the club first opened.

“I’m not looking for him,” I explained.

“Uh huh, yeah. I seen Bugsy when he used to be alive. Right here at this here bar.”

“So you said,” I smiled politely at the skinny old coot who was wasting my time and spreading E-coli.

“Uh huh, yeah. And, I seen Clark Gable and Gary Cooper and…”

“What about Frank?” I asked Rollie.

“Sinatra?” Charlie butted in. “I seen him.”

“Where’d you see him, Charlie?” Rollie asked.

“Right here at this here bar.”

“That’s terrific.” I said. “So, Rollie about…”

“Uh huh, yeah. It was around midnight when he came in that time with Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich.”

“What was she wearing, Charlie?” Rollie egged him on.

“She was dressed like a man.”

“Okay, real choice bit of Hollywood trivia there, Charlie,” I babbled. “So…”

“Uh huh, yeah. It was a tuxedo.”

“Okay. Great. Now, Rollie, about the…”

“What color was it, Charlie?” Rollie asked.

“Uh huh, yeah. It was black.”

“Black,” said Rollie. “How black?”

“It was black as night,” Charlie said as he bobbed his head to some internal rhythm only he could hear.

“Really? That black?” Rollie persisted.

“Black as midnight. Black as a whore’s heart. Black as a witch’s tit.” Charlie’s upper body was moving now to his obsessive beat.

Oh oh, I thought. Not good.

“It wasn’t THAT black was it?” Rollie wanted to know.

“It was BLACK!” Charlie tore off his sunglasses and Crazy Eyes popped out. “BLACK like her hair. BLACK like when I found her. BLACK like blood from a dead body turnin’ BLACK.” He grabbed the filthy rag and rubbed it into the unwashed bar with a vengeance. Like he was hoping if he polished hard enough and long enough he’d get the image of his wife’s suicide out of his head. (And, the fact he was out of town and didn’t find her for days.)

Oh, Christ. I thought. Not the black as black dirge. Not the dead wife! He was in the neighborhood of nuts and starting to move in. I had to distract him. I had to! “How ‘bout a song, Charlie?” I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“What did you say? Did you say you want a little tune?” Crazy Eyes popped his peepers on me. I swear, his eyes were looking in two different directions and spinning in his head. (The purple and green neon lighting over the bar contributed to the special effects, no doubt.)

“I sure do.” I smiled at him like you would with a rabid dog. (You know, with a calm and warm expression that says: nice doggie, nice doggie, don’t eat me.) “Hey, how about that great one you wrote for Tony Mars?” I gushed with frenzied enthusiasm.

“Which one?” Crazy Eyes looked at me warily. (Shit, was this a trivia quiz?)

“Uh,” my mind went blank. “Uh…”

“Ask him to play Black Magic, why don’t you?” Rollie suggested with a smirk and a sip.

“Play the one with ‘I love you’ in the title,” I urgently ad-libbed.

“You want I Love You Whenever I’m Lonely or I Love You Whenever I’m Gone? Or I Love You Whenever I’m Away? Or I Love You Whenever I Miss You? Or I Love You Whenever You Love Me? Or…”

“PLAY THEM ALL!” I yelled.

“Uh huh, yeah.” Charlie seemed to reappear as he put on his animal-print sunglasses. “I gotta go turn on more lights so’s I can find the pianny, though.”

“Terrific. You do that.”

“Yeah, you do that, Charlie,” said Rollie. “This place is black.”

“Black?” Charlie said with a Crazy Eyes/rabid dog tilt to his head.

“BACK! BACK! He said BACK!” I jumped up, grabbed Charlie by his boney old arm and pushed him in the direction of the back room.

“Uh huh, yeah. I’ll just go find the fuse box, so’s I can turn on more light, so’s I can find the pianny, so’s I can play.”

“Sounds great. Can’t wait. I’ll be here. Take your time. No hurry.” I gushed and smiled as I shoved him into the shadows beyond the bar. (If any ghosts were waiting for him, too fuckin’ bad.) I turned and went back to sit by Rollie.

“Nice to have you back, Starsky. Or should I say black?”

“Very funny, you fink. Did you see Frank or not?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“It’s really hard to say.” (Hard to say? Just open your big mouth and say it!) “Maybe Thursday?”

“When?”

“Maybe around midnight?”

“He with anyone?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Rollie shrugged. (Here we go again! Down the rabbit hole with Alice in waste-your-time-with-my-bullshit Land.)

“Can you be more specific?” I looked at the bottle that sat between us and wondered if a light tap on his greasy head would jog his memory.

“Maybe a girl?”

“Can you describe her?” (I could describe me: tired, hungry, and afraid that Crazy Eyes was back. Because someone was banging around in the back of the club, swearing and throwing things while Charlie looked for the fuse box.)

“I’m not sure,” said Rollie.

“Black, white, tall, short, old, young?” I said helpfully while still eyeing the bottle as a potential memory jogger.

Rollie tapped the bar in front of the bottle with his index finger. Apparently, further info about ‘maybe a girl’ required a down payment. I put down a ten. He gave it a look-see and tapped the bar again. I laid down another ten. His finger snaked out again. I grabbed it and pulled back on it. Hard.

“Shit. That hurts.”

“What did she look like?” I applied a tad more pressure before letting go.

Rollie shook his hand and said, “Not too tall or short, kind of blonde maybe. White, but it was dark in here, so maybe not. That’s all I know.” He shot his hand out and the money disappeared in his pudgy paw.

“You don’t know much, do you, Rollie?” I said as I got off the wobbly barstool.

“I know more than you do, Dee Fective,” he said with a smirk and a sip.

With each blue Adidas sneakered step, my feet stuck to the floor as I walked out of Club 522. I got out of the fog of cigarette smoke, and emptied my lungs of old piss and stale beer. I breathed in a healthy hit of car exhaust, garbage and trash. It felt good to be in the fresh air.

Why did I bother? I wondered as I came round the Candy Apple Red Torino with the sporty white stripe. Same crap different day. No one was saying nothing about nobody no how no way. What’s it all about, Alfie? I thought as I opened the car door.

My partner, Hutch (tall, blond, first cousin to a Viking), was taking a cat nap in the front seat. His arms were crossed on the dashboard and his head was on them. The last time he fell asleep like that he got a watch impression on his forehead. “Huh? What? I’m up,” he jerked out of his car coma when I slid in beside him.

“And, I’m Tinker Belle,” I said as he yawned and rubbed the back of his neck. I thought about reaching over to help, but I was too tired to move.

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘black’ and Charlie went ape-shit and turned into Crazy Eyes until I talked him down.”

“Sorry I missed it.”

“Like hell you are.”

“Rollie say anything else?” Hutch asked as he stretched.

“He said Frank may have been there with a girl on Thursday around midnight.”

“Early Thursday or early Friday?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Who’s the girl?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What does she look like?”

“She might be black or white, short or tall, with maybe blonde hair. Or not.”

“Stop being cute.”

“I am simply stating the facts, m’am.”

“Starsky,” he pointed his index finger at me, “we need to find this guy. We need to ask him what he knows.”

“And, when he knew it. Yeah, yeah, I hear you, Sherlock.” I yawned with huge sincerity.

Then, I got a look. It wasn’t The Look. That was reserved for the criminal underclass who were especially rancid. I just got the ‘I want to go home. I want to take a shower, have scrambled eggs cooked in real butter, with two pieces of wheat toast slathered in boysenberry jam, and drink 2 glasses of orange juice and one beer. Then, I want to stretch out my long, leanly muscled naked body on my brass bed. And, go the hell to sleep!’ (You can sleep on the couch, if you want.) And, all that in a look? Did I know my partner or what?

“How much did this priceless information cost us?” Hutch asked.

“Twenty bucks and a bottle of Ol’ Rotgut.”

The corner of his mouth went up at the joke. “FYI, your breath stinks,” he informed me.

“FYI, so do your feet,” I informed back.

“I feel like my socks are now a permanent part of my body.”

“Just put your shoes back on, is all I ask. You’re polluting my custom carpet covers.”

“Fine.” He slid his feet back into his big brown lace-up Earth shoes.

“Now what?” we said simultaneously.

“I came up with Fat Rollie,” I said. “It’s your turn.”

“I came up with 522.”

“I had to listen to Black is Black with Crazy Eyes.”

“I had to talk to your mother when you forgot to call her on Friday.”

“I got to inhale Eaux de Fat Fuck.”

“I got the anal retentive finger smeller last week. Remember?”

Damn. I knew that favor would cost me. But, once I realized what the guy was doing with his finger and what was on it, I had to bug out and let Hutch deal with it. (Yeah, Charlie Brown let Lucy have the football.) So, now I had to play ‘It’s Your Turn to Think of Something’.

“How about we talk to Carl/Carla?” I said, opening with a weak what-about-this-idea?

“He/She’s in Arizona,” Hutch countered with a Jack/Queen.

Shit. My turn again. “How about going to The Crown and talking to Bob Royal?” I threw down my King.

“He’s in County for a Domestic.”

“Huggy Bear!” I played my ace. (Huggy straddled the law like a kid on a seesaw. He knew a little something about everybody.) “I win.” I put my arms behind my head, slipped my shoes off and savored my victory.

Hutch paused. Then, turned to me with a superior smile and said, “He’s shacked up with Rita. She’s in town for a week of do-not-disturb.”

“Know it all,” I muttered as I put my arms down in defeat.

“Sore loser,” he said under his breath.

Well, I’d just have to wait him out. He was the idea man, the brain. He had the college degree. (He had his shoes on, for chrissakes.) So, I waited. So did he. So did I. I wiggled my ass in the seat, settled in and got comfy. I peeked at my watch. It was goin’ on 3 a.m.

There we were parked in front of Club 522 at the crack of we-need-to-come-up-with-something. And, we were waiting. I knew what that meant. A round of ‘Stalemate’ was beginning. I planned my strategy as I crossed my arms and hunkered down. Because this time I was going to win. I would not get impatient, squirmy, or agitated. I would practice the Zen of Riding Out the Stalemate. And, the stoic beside me would waver, weave and wobble in defeat. I would vanquish that Viking. (And, look darkly handsome doing it, too.)

Yeah, I knew that Hutch was a bird watcher, chess player and reader. (He loaned me his copy of The Complete Works of Edgar Alan Poe: which I sort of misplaced, which he made me replace, and then only let me read it at his place, and not borrow it because I lost the first one in the first place; which really wasn’t my fault, because we got drunk and it somehow ended up in the empty pizza box which HE threw out. So, how is that MY fault?) He enjoyed looking at clouds in the sky and waves on the ocean. So, I knew that he could sit and do nothing. Plus, he went to the opera. That took real ass-in-seat power, in my opinion. (He took me once.)

But, I could sit. I could sit and watch baseball on TV while he ran amok with boredom.

So bored that he’d wash my dirty dishes, clean my fridge, comment on me not having anything healthy to eat, go out to the store, come back with what he called ‘salad fixins’ and make me a huge salad with his homemade vinaigrette. Then, serve it to me and say, “Is that game STILL on?” (The salad wasn’t half bad with the pepperoni pizza I had delivered while he was gone.)

I could sit and wait for him to write up his perfectly spelled reports. (I gave up on report writing years ago, after both Hutch and Capt. Dobey got on me for creativity in spelling, punctuation and content.) I could sit and watch him eat crabgrass while I enjoyed a big thick greasy burger. Oh yeah, I could wait.

I could wait for him outside the Advanced First Aid Classes he took for Certification.

I could wait for him to finish his three bowls of annoyingly crunchy cereal in the morning. I could wait for him to realize that he was more to me than my partner and best friend in all the world. I could wait for him to get over his ex-wife. I could wait for him to finally talk to me about that drunken night on that long week-end when we woke up in bed together naked and hung over, with Poe purloined in the pizza. (You bet your Tell Tale Heart and sweet ass, I could wait!)

But, so could he. And, while he waited he called in our location to headquarters, updated our run’s clipboard log, drank the last of the water in his cup in the cup holder, unwrapped a stick of Doublemint gum, put it in his mouth and started chewing. (He offered me a piece, which I declined. I didn’t want to show weakness while I waited.)

I waited some more. I looked at the litter on the sidewalk and the trash at the curb. I looked at the flickering street light that couldn’t decide if it was on or off. I looked at my partner who couldn’t decide if he was straight or gay. I looked at my preferences, was I a Robert DeNiro top or an Al Pacino bottom? I started humming If I Were a Rich Man.

Hutch turned his head like a raptor, catching the scent of my brewing boredom. I quickly shut up. I remembered the disastrous ‘Show Tune Stalemate’ where my tuneful little version of Fiddler on the Roof was crushed by a man who knew all of The Sound of Music, including parts sung by nuns AND Nazis. (Sometimes I had no doubt about him. What with the show tunes and the primping.)

Which had started now. The visor came down and the lighted mirror came on. He looked at himself and frowned. Next the glove box opened and the little green pouch appeared. The little pouch had everything my partner needed to look gorgeous again. He unzipped it and took inventory. (I knew this was a classic stall.)

I could wait it out. I could read the sports page except I threw it out when I spilled my drink on it. I sighed and got more comfortable. I wasn’t fidgeting. And, he couldn’t say I was, even though he saw the movement peripherally. I re-crossed my arms and tried to look patient.

He got out some roll-on deodorant, unbuttoned a couple buttons on his shirt, and used it under each arm. Put that back. Pulled out a small white comb and started combing his soft blond hair. The cowlick in the back was standing up like a feather. He shook his head in disgust. And hit it with the comb again. Then, he licked his hand and ran it over his head. (He looked like a big cat taking a tongue bath.)

I was doing fine. I was totally goin’ with the flow here and waiting him out. I decided to pick out a mental roster of my baseball dream team. I had Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Don Drysdale, and myself, of course, to begin with. Then, I got a kink in my neck so I started rolling my head. He saw the movement and smiled. I scowled and started sullenly tapping on the steering wheel.

He dug in the pouch again and pulled out a little bottle of aftershave; he poured some and rubbed his hands together. He patted his face and neck with it and ran his hands up and down his arms. Then, he poured a tiny bit more and put his hand on the top of his head to smoosh down the wild wisps. Then, back in the pouch it went.

Ha! I thought: short of you finding some way to take a shower in the back seat you are done primping and pretending to wait. There’s nothing more for you to do. And, I am winning this test of wills by sitting the hell still and not humming. I did notice that my tapping had become louder, though.

And, so he zipped up the pouch and… But no! What have we here? No! Not a tiny metal file. Not the manicure. He had ten fingers. This could take a while. He started cleaning under each nail and getting rid of any ick on a napkin leftover from the last time we ate. (Which, I think, was yesterday, but don’t quote me.) One–nail–at–a—time. Slowly. So slowly I could hear my hair grow. But, I wouldn’t crack. I would wait. I would wait and drum on the steering wheel. He looked over and grinned. (I hated him at that moment. And, if I had a Cask of Amontillado, I’d bung him up in it!)

He put the file back in the pouch. I started to relax. Then, out it came again. He noticed a hangnail that he had to file. Then, being an all or nothing kind of guy, he proceeded to file each nail very very slowly. That’s when I stopped beating time on the wheel with my hands and started beating my head.

I was goin’ nuts. He knew it. I wanted to jump out of the car screaming: You figure it out! You come up with something! Stop with the manicure already! I give up! (You look very nice, by the way. But, you are a miserable cunt with all your prissing and poodling.) I started rubbing my forehead instead.

“Ooh, did you hurt yourself,” he asked sweetly.

“I think I’ve got a dent,” I said as I pooched out my bottom lip and played the sympathy card.

“You need to calm down,” he advised from his position of neat and tidy.

“You need to get your blond ass in there and see what the hell YOU can do,” I said with a macho growl and my patented flirtatious/persuasive eyebrow maneuver.

He shrugged and put on Cherry Chapstick. Then, he zippered the pouch, put it away, shut the glove box, looked in the mirror one more time, and approved of what he saw. So, up the visor went. The gum went into the napkin and into the litter bag. Then, he opened the car door and got out. (Finally, I thought.)

But, no. I thought too soon. Because he had to make sure his gun and holster were secure. Then, he had to unbuckle his belt, unzip his brown cords, reach down and reposition his dick, then tuck in his green and brown preppy plaid shirt. He re-zipped and re-buckled, brushed off his pants, smoothed his shirt, straightened the collar and checked his fly. (I was thinkin’ of grabbin’ his gun and taking us both out, when he finally shut the car door.)

“I’ll be right back,” he said through the open window.

“No rush,” I said as I watched him clump off in his size 13’s. (And, best of luck with the Maybe Man, partner.)

Ten, fifteen minutes later, Hutch was back. He got in the car and said, “Her name is Kelly Green. She’s usually trying to cop around 4 a.m. behind Ernie’s Bar and Grille. She’s white, brunette, medium height, and around thirty-years-old.”

“What’d you do? Blow him?”

“No. I just told Rollie that we’d have to take him and Charlie in for serving after hours. And, they’d have to share a cell. And, we’d have to ask Charlie about his wife.”

“That’s cold, man,” I said as I started the car.

“Uh huh, yeah.” He reached out and twirled one of my dark curls around his index finger. “When I was leaving, I called out to Charlie and asked him, if he knew Paint It Black.“

“Right there in that there bar?” I grinned and revved the engine. He gave my knee a quick squeeze. Then, I popped the clutch and we peeled out into the night.