Five weeks out of the academy, Starsky and Hutchinson are paired up with two experienced cops, Officer Blaine and Officer Huntley. As their paths cross, the two rookies discover some things about their mentors, as well as themselves.
Originally published in the Boys In Blue zine, 2008, edited by Enednoviel.
“Tell me, dope, didn’t your stint in prison teach you new and better ways to break the law? You certainly would have had a lot of mentors there,” Sergeant John Blaine asked as he frisked the man’s lower legs, checking for a throw-down.
Franklin “Bub” Dillon’s hands were cuffed behind his back. The side of his face was against the rough wood of the fence behind the Senator Bar. He laughed. “Are you kidding? All of us were in the pokey because we got caught. Why would I take instruction from a bunch of fuck-ups?”
His laugh was quickly replaced by a hoarse cough and then labored breathing. Blaine suspected the hacking was a gift from a lifetime’s addiction to unfiltered cigarettes; their stench wafted from the man’s unwashed clothes and made him feel a little sick.
Dillon wheezed and Blaine gave him a minute. “You okay?”
He nodded, and Blaine turned to the officer next to him, a rookie eight weeks out of the academy.
“Read him that Miranda thing while we get our friendly neighborhood punk over to the squad. Then we’ll work on getting a statement from the guy in the bar.”
“Come on, let’s see if you can walk and listen at the same time.” The rookie grabbed Dillon. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”
It took the cop longer to read the warning than it did for them reach their destination. Blaine protected Dillon’s head as the rookie pushed him down into the back seat. “Well, that thing is quite a mouthful. It’ll slow us down some.”
The rookie laughed. “I think it will take more than that to slow you down, John. Tell me, how did you know Dillon was gonna head out that door? I would’ve figured he’d take the one by the kitchen.”
“Son, it’s years of experience, and one reason why you’re gonna be riding with me for six months.” Blaine cuffed the back of his partner’s head. “Watch and learn.”
Blaine picked up the mic. “Dispatch, this is Harry Six. Do you copy?”
“Dispatch, we copy.”
“We’ve got a 10-16 on a 484 here. Our 19-20 is 585 Patton and are requesting an 11-10.”
“10-4, Harry Six. ETA is six minutes.”
Putting the mic down, Blaine grinned at the rookie. “So, you catch all that, kid?”
Dillon piped up from the back seat. “If he didn’t, I did.”
“Talk about years of experience, Bub,” Blaine said over the seat. “You need a new hobby. Knocking over seedy bars can’t possibly be worth it.”
Dillon laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Hey, the way I figure it, if I get away with some cash, then I’m good for a while. And if I get caught, at least I’m guaranteed three squares, a bed and a doctor’s appointment.”
The man barked out a hoarse cough, one that made Blaine’s toes curl.
“Besides, copper,” Dillon said when he recovered, “I’m providin’ you with a job. What else would you be doin’ if you didn’t have guys like me to chase around?”
Indeed, thought Blaine.
***
Sergeant Luke Huntley didn’t like what he saw. Guys like Brad Anson shouldn’t be allowed to walk around like they owned the place. That hippy punk should still be in prison, not back on the street after only a year. Damn lawyers practiced their trade like it was some sort of a game.
Huntley had been a cop since ’54. Back then, things were a whole lot simpler: if a punk committed the crime, he did the time.
Now, as far as Huntley could tell, the criminals had more rights than the people they accosted. That Miranda Warning shit cops were now required to say was just one more example of lawyers making them all into a bunch of pansy-asses.
Huntley looked over at his partner, a still wet-behind-the-ears uniform, and wondered why a guy even became a cop these days. It couldn’t be for the money. And it certainly couldn’t be for the moral certitude.
Huntley just hoped this rookie paid attention. The last one he had washed out and ended up going to law school. It figured.
“You and that wife of yours still separated?” Huntley asked, trying to kill some time.
“We’re still separated. She’s got an apartment that I’m not welcome in,” the rookie said, staring out of the window.
“Not everyone gets as lucky as me, and I don’t just mean what goes on in our bedroom. Man, if I knew wanting babies made a woman so horny, I would’ve suggested it years ago.” Huntley noted the blush that washed across his partner’s face. “Don’t tell me you’re that shy, kid.”
“I’m not, but your wife might be. It might embarrass her to know you tell me things like that.”
“She’d have to find out, though, right?”
The radio crackled. “Adam Two, Harry Six is requesting an 11-10 at 585 Patton. What is your ETA?”
“Tell ‘um about six minutes,” Huntley said as he made a U-turn. “And put on the siren and lights, kid, would you?”
***
“Fifteen years on the force and I gotta transport some punk downtown?” Huntley grimaced, as he approached the squad sitting outside the Senator Bar. He leaned into the window. “Call it in, Curly,” he said to Blaine’s partner.
Blaine looked up. “Hey, I’m just happy we’ve got such good back-up.”
Blaine got out of the car, opened up the back door and hauled Dillon out. Handing him over to Huntley’s rookie partner, Blaine wondered if the new guy was aware he was riding with a cop who’d failed the detective exam twice. It wasn’t likely Huntley would bring it up, but there had to be talk in the locker room.
Blaine watched the two rookies give each other a nod. “You two were at the academy together, I suppose, seeing how you’re both just starting your ride-a-long.”
“Yes, sir, we were,” replied Huntley’s partner, a tall, blond cop with a smooth face.
“You two buddies?”
“Yes, sir, we are.”
The rookie finished up the call to Dispatch and got out of the car. Blaine touched him on the shoulder. “Come over for dinner Saturday, kid. Maggie’s making Swiss Steak and fresh snap beans.”
He looked at Luke Huntley. “Hey, thanks for the assist.” Blaine turned his back and started towards the bar. “Let’s get Frankie’s statement, kid.”
***
As he walked into Rhonda’s Café, Hutch thought of all those diners on the outskirts of Duluth. They had sticky Formica tables, specials written on a chalkboard, and the smell of hash browns permeated the walls.
All of these things were replicated here in this greasy spoon on Washington Avenue. He saw Starsky sitting in the corner booth and slid in across from him. Hutch took off his cap, set it down on the seat and reached for a menu.
“I don’t know why you’re even gonna look at that, Hutch. You always get the same thing.”
“Maybe I’ll get something different this time, you know, surprise the hell out of you.”
“Doubt it.” Starsky rolled a toothpick out of the holder and put it between his teeth.
“Besides, you should talk. I’ve never seen you order anything but that disgusting thing you always get here,” Hutch said, perusing the breakfast specials.
The waitress, a young woman whose hair made Hutch think of a party favor, approached the table.
Starsky looked up and gave her one of his trademark grins. “So tell me beautiful, what’s the special soup du jour of the day?”
“Same as it was yesterday, the day before and the day before that. In fact, it’s the same as it is all the time. Chicken Vegetable.”
“If it’s the same all the time, then why…”
“You gonna order the soup or not?”
“Ahh, no. I…”
“Didn’t think so. Your regular then? The spicy salami on an onion roll, melted pepper jack cheese, pickles, and a fried egg over very, very easy.” She turned to Hutch. “And you want your usual, too?”
Hutch nodded and felt strangely defeated.
After she left, Starsky asked, “You ever get sick of the salmon patty and mixed vegetable medley?”
“Not really. I know it’s got a lot of calcium in it. At least that’s what my mom used to say.”
“Then what’s with the sad look?”
“I don’t mind eating the same meal here each time, Starsk. I just don’t like that waitress thinking I’m so predictable.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a guy knowing what he likes and sticking with it.”
Hutch smiled. “I guess not. Say, how’s it working out with Blaine?”
“Acceptable, acceptable. Once I got past the oddness of riding with him as part of my job, rather than as his snot-nosed, sort-of-adopted kid, it got easier.’
“Now you’re just his snot-nosed, rookie partner instead.”
“That’s pretty much it. I still feel like an imposter in this uniform. And riding with Blaine? He’s the guy who taught me to fight, who got me back on the straight and narrow and ultimately, is the reason I’m a cop.”
“You’re pretty lucky, you know?”
“For hooking up with John Blaine then or now?”
“Both, but I guess I was thinking more about living next door to him when you came out here. When you lost your dad, you found your way to him. When I lost my dad, I just did stupid things.”
“Like getting married?”
“That was certainly one of them. Talk about my dick getting ahead of itself. I think my mom would have even been happy about the whole thing if Van were actually pregnant. At least she’d have a grandbaby to dote on.”
“What do you mean, if she were actually pregnant?” Starsky looked up sharply. “I thought Van lost the baby, Hutch.”
Hutch was just about to pretend he didn’t understand the question when the waitress brought their orders. She set two plates down in front of them. She gave Starsky the one with the salmon patty and then walked away without a word.
“Hutch, why do we eat at this place? The food’s not that great, it’s out of our way, and that waitress is mean to us. You’d think she’d like a couple of guys in uniform.
“Lots of chicks do.”
“Maybe it’s the uniforms that are the problem? Besides, I thought it was you that liked it here,” Hutch said, handing Starsky the plate with the salami sandwich.
“Shut up!” Starsky took it and handed Hutch the fish burger. “I thought it was you who liked it here.”
“Are you kidding? My mom was no cook, but even she could make a salmon patty that tasted better than this.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, Hutch, but have you ever really looked at the salmon that comes out of a can? It might as well be cat food. And the reason it’s got so much calcium in it is because you eat all the little bones, all the bits you’d pull out of an actual fish if they weren’t going to get all soft in a tin can.”
“You’re kidding. That’s what that crunch is? I thought it was just saltines or something that hadn’t been crushed up enough.”
“And you think my food is weird, Hutch.”
Hutch started picked at his vegetable medley, realizing the peas, diced carrots and corn all tasted indistinguishable from each other.
“You didn’t answer my question about Van,” Starsky persisted. “About the baby.”
“I don’t like to think about it. The whole thing makes me angry.” Hutch stabbed at his plate. “We got married in a hurry because she said she was pregnant. Then, two months later, she tells me she lost the baby. But the longer I think about it, the more I think there never was a baby.”
He looked up at his partner’s face. “Use your napkin, clown. You’ve got egg all over your face.”
Starsky wiped his chin. “You know, you’ve never really told me why you and Van busted up. It wasn’t because…”
“No, not because of that. I was careful.” Hutch wadded up his napkin and put it on his salmon patty. “She wanted to come out to Hollywood and be somebody. I think she thought the police academy thing was cute. Van thought I’d graduate and be a captain or something. She didn’t count on the whole idea of a uniform, being a beat cop, putting in years before being able to take the detective’s exam. So, we split.”
“You’re separated but not divorced.”
“Let’s just say she’s enjoying the fruits of my labors too much for that final step.”
“That’s not right.”
“No. It isn’t. But I don’t care enough about it right now to push things. Divorce at this point is just a word, Starsky.”
“It’s more than a word. It’s a legal word. You’re either married or you’re not. And if you’re separated but not divorced, then you’re still married.”
“Why do you care about the terminology so much, Starsky?”
“I care about them because words mean things, important things.”
“Just because we haven’t moved ahead with the divorce hasn’t made much of a difference one way or another. She lives her life, I live mine, and we keep away from each other. It’s not unlike when we lived in the same apartment. And hey, it certainly doesn’t stop me from sleeping with whom I want to now. Hell, it didn’t stop Van when I was living with her.”
“It sure didn’t.” Starsky looked cross. “Bitch.”
“Yes,” Hutch said. “And no.”
***
Jefferson Airplane was on the jukebox, belting out “Somebody to Love,” and the bar was hopping with a Friday night crowd.
Kim Fraiser sat at the bar, in a stool closest to the end. She liked the way her fingers looked as they dipped into the glass. She had seen a woman do it in a movie once.
The actress’ fingernails had been long and as she clicked them against the ice in her drink, it had attracted the attention of the handsome male star, leading to quick-paced sexual banter and a fade-out in the bedroom.
Kim hoped her fingers were doing that to some guy right now, and that it would lead to a paid transaction.
Kim wasn’t sure why she played this game in bars. It’s not that she really needed the money. Sure, the extra cash was nice, but her job at the Hallmark store paid enough to keep her in shoes and magazines.
Maybe selling greeting cards to people all day long, grinning like a happy shop girl, made her want to do something dirty, something risky?
Right, Kim thought. You just keep telling yourself that’s the reason you’re hanging out at Cahoots, suggestively fingering your Harvey Wallbanger, and playing at being a hooker.
She was just thinking about getting up to use the ladies’ room when a man sat down on the stool next to her. Kim could tell by the way he slightly bumped her shoulder that this was probably her evening’s entertainment.
“You know, I saw a movie once,” the man said. “It was one with Ava Gardner, and darn it, if I didn’t think of her when I saw you sitting here.” His voice was soft and low and did something enticing to the base of her spine.
“Is that so?” she said, not looking up.
“It is so. Can I buy you a drink?”
Kim nodded, looking up at the clock. Then she turned her eyes to him. The man looked like a nice enough fellow. He reminded her of the manager at the store, the one that was newly married and whose wife had a baby on the way.
A new glass was put in front of her, and Kim put it up to her lips. She watched the man’s eyes track her mouth and felt her blood ignite.
“Listen, you want to get out of here? Go somewhere quieter?” She loved saying this to men. It made her feel cheap and daring, like she wasn’t just cute Kim in an apron, selling the next holiday on paper.
“Sure,” the man said. He opened his wallet. Kim noted how he kept his thumb over his driver’s license, hiding his name and address. Well, that was fine with her. She wasn’t telling him hers either.
The man paid her bar tab and put his hand on the small of her back when they went out the door.
Jefferson Airplane was cut off in mid-wail as the door shut behind them.
***
Starsky thought of the corpse he’d seen his first week out of the academy.
It had been a junkie laid out on a bench seat of a ’56 Nomad station wagon. The fact that the seat was sitting in the middle of a vacant lot made it even more disturbing. Blaine had made a joke about the guy looking like he was taking a trip, one which turned out to be one way, and they both laughed a little uneasily.
But this body, the one right now? This was completely different.
As he watched the corpse being loaded in the coroner’s wagon, Blaine clapped him on the back and asked Starsky if he was all right.
“It’s not the first dead person I’ve seen,” Starsky replied, trying not to sound like a petulant rookie and deftly avoiding answering the question.
It was true, though, about his previous experience with the physical evidence of death. Of course there was his father’s body, laid out looking like he was taking a long nap. Everyone assumed he saw a lot of death in Vietnam, but his exposure there was to the live bodies in the supply room where he worked.
Then there was the one when he’d observed an autopsy at the academy. That one had been dissected, and it didn’t even look like a human anymore.
He’d seen the mangled body of a woman pulled out of a car accident by one of the movie theaters on Pico. In a way, that had been much worse than the junkie. She’d had with her a child, a little girl who wouldn’t stop screaming.
Then there was the corpse of an elderly man, dead in his bed. Blaine said he’d seen it before, the death of an old person who was probably unable to pay the electricity bill and died from the heat. When Starsky had looked down at the old man’s face, he thought he looked like he had just dropped off for a short nap.
But the thing they’d just seen, now strapped and covered and residing in a hearse? Those previous corpses, even put together, didn’t come close to making Starsky’s gut rise up like it was doing right now.
Later, Starsky was going to ask Blaine if he ever got used to something like this monstrosity.
He wasn’t sure what he hoped Blaine’s answer would be.
Would it be better if Blaine said no, that each corpse still carved a fresh hole in his gut? Or was it better to be like Luke Huntley? He’d taken Hutch out for a beer after a shift and told him about the time he’d found two heads in a dumpster. Luke had laughed and then told, “Two heads! That’s always better than one, right? Really, kid, it’s no big deal.”
Starsky heard Blaine on the radio, calling for a lab team and an extra squad.
He felt Blaine’s hand on his shoulder. “Son, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. If you need to sit down, go ahead. I’ll be over at the car, too, in a minute.”
***
Starsky was throwing up in the toilet when Hutch got to his apartment. Coming up behind, Hutch put his hand on Starsky’s back.
The sound of retching and the movement of Starsky’s muscles underneath his palm made Hutch wonder if he was going to be able to keep the contents of his own stomach intact.
“What are you?” Starsky asked in a strangled voice, “My spotter?”
“More like your back-up, pal, which is why I’m here.”
“Who called you?”
“Blaine. He said he thought you shouldn’t be alone.”
Hutch wet a washcloth in the sink, wrung it out and handed it to him. Starsky staggered to his feet.
Hutch thought his face looked way too pale. It made him lead Starsky to the couch. “Sit down. I’ll get you some water.”
Starsky leaned back and laid the damp cloth over his face. Then he started talking. “Christ, Hutch. I’ve never seen anything, anything like that. She wasn’t just dead, Hutch, she was mutilated. Her fucking tongue was cut out and lying next to her.” His voice was muffled as he spoke through the terry cloth.
“Her name was Kimberly Frasier. Her roommate said she worked at Carson’s Hallmark, that she was a nice girl from Indianapolis. Fuck, Hutch. That tongue, all that blood…”
“Hold onto it, Starsk. Just take a deep breath.”
And Starsky did just as he asked.
Because, he always did.
Later, it was Starsky who did the asking.
And Hutch answered in kind, because he always did, too.
***
Maggie’s nightgown was white with little, yellow roses on it. John thought it made her look like the innocent girl he’d married.
They were both in bed, each with a bedside lamp and a book.
John’s novel was the new Bradbury. Maggie’s was a mystery novel she’d been reading all month, one that starred two crime-solving dogs.
Blaine had teased her when she started the series, asking her if she thought his solve rate would go up if he got himself a dog.
She’d laughed. It had a bit of an edge to it. “John, I think you’d better be careful just what kind of pet you take in.”
She didn’t look at his face when she said it, which made John feel like a shit.
“You really were worried about David, weren’t you?” Maggie asked, shutting her book and putting it on the bedside table.
“It’s why I called his friend. It’s not like David’s not seen… stuff… but the one tonight was especially gruesome.”
“You want to tell me about it, John?”
John shook his head. If her ideas of bodies and crime were mostly cozy ones that happened in libraries and on the beaches of distant fishing villages, then why replace them with the crude things he saw on the job? Life was ugly enough already, and Maggie Blaine was one thing John had that was untouched by it.
At least he hoped this was true. Sometimes those odd comments she said made him wonder if she wasn’t as naïve as he thought she was.
He put his book down as well and turned to her. She moistened her lips and smiled. “Would it make you feel better?”
He nodded. Maggie got up and took off her nightgown. Her body was smooth and pale and defined by curves. It made John ache as he reached for her.
***
Luke Huntley had spent the day in court giving testimony and watching lawyers make their slippery moves. Hutchinson had been with him for half of that time before the rookie had to hit the firing range for a bump-up.
Luke had become quite fond of this new guy, Hutchinson. The kid was a quick study, and would go far if he could lose some of that rigid backbone stuff and loosen the fuck up.
The sound of the bathroom door opening made him turn over in bed. Doris stood in the doorway.
The light behind her made her look like an angel.
Or a ghost.
It made Luke’s breath hitch.
She was wearing lingerie; a silky two-piece number Luke had given to her on their last anniversary.
Luke knew the outfit was a signal that he was going to get some tonight.
It was confirmed when Doris reached for him and smiled.
Luke pulled her down and hoped he could give her the kid she so badly wanted.
***
“We both have a piece of equipment she didn’t approve of, David.” Blaine put their book back in the glove compartment.
“A gun?”
“A dick,” Blaine said with a wry grin.
“Is that why she clammed up like that?”
“Let’s just say the only way she’d tell us a thing is if we were wearing skirts and smelled a lot nicer. Maylou is one person who’d benefit from having more women on the force, and not policewomen as just jail matrons and file clerks.”
“Seeing how neither of us are interested in putting on a dress, how are we gonna get Maylou to talk to us?” Starsky asked. “Or more importantly, how are we going to get at Schneider?”
“We’ll try Maylou’s cousin,” Blaine said. “Bette takes in laundry at her place on Whittaker. She does it without a permit, which can both help and hurt us. While she’ll be eager to continue her business, we’ll have to be careful we don’t fish something out of her that isn’t true. It’ll be a fine line to straddle, but just follow my lead. I think we can make it work.”
“What’s the address?” Starsky asked, putting the squad into gear.
“1345.”
“That’s by the pool hall, the one with the burnt out ‘l.'”
“You’re shaping up, David. Pretty soon you’ll know this city like the back of your hand.”
“I can hardly wait,” Starsky grumbled, pulling the squad into traffic.
“You’re way too young to be grumpy like that, kiddo,” Blaine chided him. “Save that for when you’re old and burnt-out.”
Starsky laughed, “Like you?”
“Nah, not like me.”
Starsky took a quick look over at Blaine’s profile. A wave of affection washed over him. “You do know that I’m a cop because of you.”
Blaine put his hands in the air, “I’ll take full blame.”
“No, really. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you and Maggie.”
Blaine shrugged. “You’re a good boy. Al and Rose were determined to do their best by you. And they would have, too, if Rose hadn’t gotten sick.”
And then sicker and sicker, thought Starsky. His Aunt Rose had moved into the final stages of cancer only a year after he’d moved into his aunt and uncle’s well-kept house.
When Rose died, and Al was too distraught to properly care for his nephew, it was the Blaines who made it possible for Starsky to stay in Bay City.
Starsky continued to live with Al, but it was John and Maggie who watched over him, invited him to frequent meals and made sure he got his schoolwork done. Maggie made him write his mother and scolded him over poor grades, and John taught him to fight.
“To be honest, I don’t remember all that much about Rose,” Starsky said, feeling ashamed. “I was fresh from New York, pretty angry, and full of myself.”
“You were a pretty typical kid, a boy who’d lost his sister, who’d lost his poppa, and who’d been sent away to live with relatives.” Blaine’s voice was gruff. “Listen, Rose Starsky was a good woman and a terrible cook. She loved to laugh, sang off-key, hated to do laundry, and was very, very fair. Alfonse lost a good friend when she died.”
Starsky slowed for a turning vehicle. “She would have hated it when I went to Vietnam.”
“Yes, she would have. But she would have understood why you chose to go. A personal letter from Uncle Sam is pretty hard to ignore.”
“Really.”
“You did good work there, David. And you came home in one piece.”
“Three years as a supply clerk saw to that.” Starsky pulled the car up in front of 1345 Whittaker. “Still, it’s been a long, strange trip, John.”
“Kid, you’re only twenty-four years old. Trust me; it gets longer and much, much stranger.” Blaine put his uniform cap on.
Starsky did the same, and they went up to roust information out of an arthritic, paranoid laundry woman who ended up giving them a false lead to her cousin twice-removed.
***
The Arctic Circle Burgers building was shaped like an igloo.
Hutch wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with its main offering.
“Maybe it’s the fact that hamburgers and igloos are both round, hence the name Arctic Circle?” Starsky suggested. He grabbed an abandoned newspaper off the next table.
“More bad news out of Vietnam,” Starsky said as he read the headlines. “I think I got out of there just in time.” He put the paper down. “Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Jacob? He tried to enlist in World War Two, and was turned away.”
“Mental defects?”
“Hutch, he was a Starsky.”
“Again, mental defects?”
“No, it was a chomper issue.”
“He flew helicopters?”
“Hutch, think. It was World War Two.”
Hutch looked puzzled.
“Chompers. Teeth. You had to have six biting teeth and six chewing teeth lined up to have the military take you.”
“I’m assuming that Uncle Jacob didn’t fulfill the requirements.”
“Hutch, there was a reason his nickname was Gummy.” Starsky looked up as the waitress approached the table.
She frowned as she put two plates on the table.
“I guess it beats the treatment we get at Rhonda’s, though not by much,” Hutch grumbled. He took a bite of his burger, and then put it back down. “And I think I understand this joint’s name. This food is ice cold.”
Starsky took a bite of his own food. “Yeah, it sure is,” he said as kept chewing. “Hutch, we’ve been to dozens of restaurants since starting at the academy. Remind me again why?”
“At some point, we’ll find the perfect place, that’s why.”
“Perfect place for what?”
“We’re buddies, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And buddies need a place that’s like a home away from home. Matt Dillon had the Long Branch Saloon, Peter Gunn had Mother’s, McCloud had…”
“Hutch, there are two problems with this logic of yours. First, those guys are actors on television. This is real life. And second, none of those guys actually had a buddy.”
“They had friends.”
“But not a close buddy.”
“We still need a place, Starsk.” Hutch stood up and put on his jacket. “One where the beer is cold, the food is hot, and while the employees don’t have to love us, they at least need to tolerate us.”
“I’m there with you on that one.”
“Because if I wanted bad food and someone crabby to serve it to me, I’d have tried harder to stay married to Van.”
“Tried harder?”
“Let’s just say, I made it pretty easy for her to leave me.”
Starsky nodded. He could certainly see how that might have played out.
“Ronald Reagan is our governor,” Starsky said. “And he was in the movies. I wonder if he has a hangout.”
“Me, I’m wondering if he has six biting teeth lined up,” Hutch replied as he walked back out to the street.
Starsky followed him and tried to figure out what Hutch meant.
***
The janitor had gone home for the night, which meant Marianne North had to lock the building up with her own key.
Her feet were killing her. She’d spent thirteen hours at school, first as a third-grade teacher for a classroom of squirming students, then four more hours with their equally squirming parents in conferences.
As Marianne walked to her car, she thought she could kill for a hot dinner, one she didn’t have to make, and then eat, by herself.
Five months as a widow and what she’d learned, aside from how much it hurt to miss someone, was that she hated eating alone.
But Marianne didn’t have to worry about another solitary meal.
The man with a knife, waiting in the shadows by her car saw to that.
***
When Hutch pulled his partner down, it was with a sigh. They fit together like a lock and a key.
“Tell me what you want,” Starsky asked him.
“I want this… this here with you.”
“You gotta be more specific,” Starsky replied. “Please.”
“I’m going to put my head back, and I want you to suck my neck. I want to feel your tongue in the little indent there as I imagine doing the same to yours. I want you to move a little to one side and nip me right where my shoulder meets my neck. I want to feel your teeth… right… right there.”
“Tell me more, babe, I want to hear more words.” Starsky’s words resonated and vibrated against his skin.
“I want you to move down to my hips. I want to feel your hands on my dick. I want you to make it as hard as you can and then… yes…”
Starsky’s hands were on his cock, firm and sure. Then Hutch felt his partner’s mouth draw him in. It felt like a furnace, like he was being pulled into the gates of something strange and wonderful, and more than he could really…
He felt Starsky’s finger trace the line underneath his balls and make its way to his asshole. “That’s… that’s… right there.”
Starsky’s mouth took him farther in just as he felt his partner’s finger enter his body. Hutch looked down. He saw Starsky’s cheeks working and felt him add another digit. “There… harder, there, Starsk, I… I…” Hutch felt his balls draw up and the familiar, powerful contractions as he spilled himself into the body of his partner. He gripped the sheets with his hands and howled, a low sound that scared him just a little bit.
It was all so right, so good.
He just wished Starsky’s eyes were open so that he could show him… Hutch wasn’t sure what.
After a few moments, Starsky moved over him again. “That’s my Hutch,” he said. “He’s always got the right words.”
***
Roll call, usually a pretty dull affair, had taken on a real sense of urgency in the last few days.
Two women were dead, and in a manner horrendous enough to make even the seasoned cops shake their heads.
Lieutenant Roarke wrote on the blackboard, adding Marianne North’s name below Kimberly Frasier’s. It was a list no one wanted to see get any bigger.
“Listen up, officers. This killer is our top priority. He’s struck twice in two weeks which means he’s probably going to do a lot more damage fast unless we can stop him.” Roarke gestured to the names on the board.
“The public is breathing down our neck on this one, as right they should be.” Roarke glared at his audience. “The women in this city shouldn’t have to be worried about getting murdered in this manner.”
Blaine rolled his eyes. Roarke always was a bit of an idiot. The women in Bay City, as well as anywhere else, shouldn’t have to get killed in any manner.
Blaine glanced at Starsky and saw by the look on his face that his partner agreed with this opinion.
Out of the corner of his eye, Blaine watched Starsky look at Hutchinson. The blond man gave Starsky a small smile. For a moment, Blaine was reminded of how Scott would look at him when he needed to connect.
Blaine shook his head. He had no idea where that thought came from.
Roll call went on with twenty minutes of reminders about policies that had been breached, warnings about protocols of various sorts, reading out the lists of current interdepartmental stakeouts and current cases, and then finally to Roarke’s corny benediction “Now get out there and keep our city safe.”
That last line was always accompanied by a salute.
Christ, thought Blaine, the sooner I ditch this uniform the better. Roll call was for the birds.
Blaine caught Huntley in the men’s room a few minutes later.
Huntley was standing at one of the urinals. He zipped up just as Blaine zipped down.
“So, I hear you’re taking the detective exam this time around, Blaine.”
Blaine nodded. He’d come to the force after spending a number of years in the army. It meant Blaine had five years in uniform as opposed to Huntley’s fifteen.
He knew Huntley’s two previous failures to pass the test had put the man in a bad spot. One more poor showing, and Huntley would have used his last shot at making it out of uniform.
Not only was that policy, but also commonsense; there was a freshness issue going on. It was different if a uniform wanted to remain a beat cop; there were scores of excellent officers who kept the peace that way. But once a cop decided to take the detective’s test, it was an indication that the man wanted more.
Blaine noticed Huntley’s eyes linger a little too long on his dick, really only a split second, but in bathroom etiquette, too much time.
He felt like saying, “You like what you see, Huntley?” or “I may love a man, but lordy, lordy I still got a dick,” but instead said, “Word has it you’re sitting in on that exam, too. I wish you the best of luck.”
“Yeah, well, thanks.”
When Huntley left the room, Blaine noted it was before he washed his hands.
It was indicative of Huntley’s methods on the street, Blaine thought running his own hands under the water. Not terrible, but not complete either. It wasn’t anything Blaine hadn’t seen before, but as qualities for advancement?
It made him nervous.
As Blaine turned to wipe his hands on paper towels, he heard the door to the hall open.
It was Sergeant Mike Ferguson.
Ferguson had a stiff-backed stance that at first Blaine had written off to arrogance. But ever since he’d been in the john at the same time as Ferguson a few too many times, Blaine knew Ferguson’s posture wasn’t due to ego, but to chronic constipation.
Not wanting to be privy to Ferguson’s struggles again, Blaine tried to make a hasty get-away.
“Hear you and Huntley are both taking the exam this time around,” Ferguson said, hand on one of the two stall doors.
Blaine laughed. “Word gets around, Mike. And hey, you look surprised, which I find unflattering,” he joked.
“Not surprised, just glad you’re going for it. You’re one damn good cop, something we need more of,” Ferguson replied. Then he added, “That new guy Danny Slate, he just transferred from Boston, I hear he’s pretty good, too. And apparently his wife’s a real looker, so I’ve heard. Guys were talking about her down in the cafeteria.”
Blaine nodded to that, too. What else could he have done?
As he exited the john, Blaine thought, Christ, and people thought it was only the ladies’ rooms that were bastions of gossip?
***
Starsky and Hutch weren’t hearing anything about Dan Slate’s looker of a wife, but they were in the cafeteria.
The basement room had about much charm as a prison laundry, a place Hutch had vivid memories from the academy field trip to Bay City Penitentiary.
Both rooms apparently had the same tiles on the floor, steam rising from one corner and a bulletin board by the door.
Hutch remembered the prison’s flyers. They had been reminders about rules (“No food allowed in cells, No profanity, No smoking in the hallways.”), dire warnings about various dangers that lurked in the “community.” (“Please report all instances of violence to the guards”), and announcements regarding visiting feel-good dignitaries (“The Reverend Bicknell will give a special talk about the afterlife”).
As he stood reading the bulletin board in the cafeteria, Hutch noted reminders about rules (“No food is to be taken out of this room, No profanity or smoking in the hallways”), dire warnings about various dangers that lurked in the community. (“Please keep the whereabouts of your service revolver in mind at all times”), and announcements regarding visiting feel-good dignitaries (“Personnel will be giving a special talk about retirement benefits next Tuesday at noon”).
Starsky came up behind him. “You gonna eat, or read that thing all day?”
Hutch looked down at Starsky’s chipped, orange tray; it looked like a distress beacon. “That’s what’s cooking today?” He asked giving Starsky’s plate a once-over. Starsky looked glum. “Norma has it labeled ‘goulash,’ but I gotta tell you, goulash has more than four ingredients and they all don’t come out of a can.”
“I’m assuming the other choice is…”
“Soup, tomato soup, and it looked like a blood transfusion. No thanks.”
Hutch went with the goulash; a decision he was certain he’d regret later.
They sat down at the rookie table. When a rookie ate in the cafeteria and was with his more seasoned mentor, they sat wherever they pleased. But rookies alone were wise to know that their place was at the long table, close to the dish room, the worst spot in the place.
Hutch brushed off the table’s surface with his sleeve. He put his tray down and straddled the round stool.
Starsky took the seat across from him. “So, you hear anything more about the investigation about those two victims, Fraiser and North?”
“Huntley’s not said a whole lot. He’s pretty focused on bringing down that pawn shop dingo. I’ll tell you, Starsk, I’ve never seen a man so… focused. I’m in awe.”
Starsky looked up. “How so?”
“The man’s like a snapping turtle, Starsk. He’s gotten it in his head that whoever’s been ripping off these joints is a major crime wave. Huntley wants to be the one to bring him in.”
“I thought your partner wasn’t that interested in the small fry?”
“Nah, I think he gives that impression, that he’s too good to mess with the little stuff, but that’s all bluff.”
“Whatever you say, Hutch.”
“I say.”
“Back to this killer, blondie, I’m just wondering what the detectives are doing? I know they’re working on it, but it all seems so, I don’t know, secret. I don’t hear discussion, they’re in and out at odd hours, they make a lot of phone calls and they go into Roarke’s office and shut the door a lot.”
“Sounds like they’re doing their jobs, Starsky,” Hutch replied, moving orange noodles around with his fork. They made streaks on the white plate that looked like someone had dragged a body around on it, an image that came unbidden to his brain.
“I heard that Marianne North had a brand-new car, one of those Pintos.”
“It was a Gremlin, Starsk.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Blaine was commenting on how the detectives were singing that ditty from the radio, ‘I’ve got Gremlin on my mind, one thousand nine ninety-nine.'”
“What’s that ad got to do with the case?”
“I don’t know. I just nodded like I got it.” Hutch admitted. He figured it was part of the black humor cops got when things were especially disturbing.
“So, do you think the detectives are working on the angles, like did they go to the same church, stop at the same dry-cleaners, or bowl in the same league?”
“Starsk, I’m sure they are.” Hutch drained the rest of his milk from his plastic glass.
“What’s happening with that domestic you and Blaine got yesterday?”
Starsky shrugged. “The usual. Neighbors heard screams, called the cops, we got there, she had a black eye, he looked sorry but not sorry enough, and Blaine took her aside and convinced her to file charges.” He stood and picked up his tray. “Now we just got the paperwork. What’cha got coming up?”
“The usual. And of course, Huntley’s one-man show on pawn shop row.”
Hutch held the door open for Starsky, putting his hand on his back. “Catch you later, buddy.” Hutch looked around at the empty hallway and added in a low voice, “Or maybe if you’re very, very lucky you can be the catcher.”
“Countin’ on it.”
***
“I hate this.” Starsky punched the keys on the typewriter as if each one was personally insulting. “You and I are just couple of uniforms who get called into clean-up after the deed is done, John. We’re there to direct traffic, cover the body with a sheet and then do scut work. I want to do more about catching this guy who’s killing these women.”
Blaine looked at Starsky but didn’t answer.
“Hutch and I were talking at lunch. And we wanted to know what the physical evidence is so far. What has Records dug up? I’m assuming someone’s investigating these dead women and trying to come up with some connections. Have there been any witness interviews?”
“David, you know what? You’re thinking like a detective, which should tell you something about your possible future.” Blaine looked tired. Starsky wondered if he was coming down with something. “First, never call people, including us, as ‘just uniforms.’ It’s all-important work. And partner, we all got to put in our time in blues. It is experience we need, and it has a way of crystallizing things.”
“Crystallizing?”
“There are different kinds of cops out there. Some cops are happy enough to stay in uniform. Stockman is one, so is Bernie Glassman. He told me that being a beat cop is just what he wants to do, and that he has no intention of being anything else. Glassman takes pride in his job, which is an attitude everyone should strive for. And no detective can do his job without dedicated beat cops. They’d be fooling themselves if they thought otherwise.”
Blaine looked down at the report Starsky was typing. “Don’t forget to add the part where Winnie said her husband had threatened her before. That’ll make the charge go from second-degree to first-degree, pre-meditated.”
Starsky moved the roller up and peered at the paper. “Yup, I got that.”
Blaine continued. “David, some cops become detectives because they think remaining in uniform shows a lack of drive or motivation. Those cops often make pretty shitty detectives as the desire wasn’t for the job itself but to get out of another one. It’s the same with any other job, people getting promoted to just beyond their competency only because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do.”
Starsky nodded. He thought of the guy he’d gone to see at the bank the other day. When he’d asked about getting a loan to buy a car, it was clear the employee didn’t really know what he was doing. Starsky ended up getting the paperwork from a teller, a woman who’d rolled her eyes when she looked over his shoulder to the loan officer. “He should’ve stayed a teller. He was a good one,” she had remarked, shaking her head. “Guess he thought this job was just for ladies.”
Blaine went to the coffee pot in the corner and poured himself a cup. “Listening to your frustrations about wanting to do more investigating to get at the why and how of shit makes me think you’re going to be a detective for the right reasons.”
Starsky’s heart swelled at this compliment. He watched Blaine drink his coffee, put the cup down on his desk and run a hand over his face.
“Headache?” Starsky asked.
“Yeah. I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
“Job stuff?”
“That… and, well… no… Plus, I’ve been helping out in another district, a little favor for a friend. It’s something we’re putting together for Burglary there, kind of hush hush.” John looked uncomfortable, like he might have had something else to say.
There was a tense moment, and Blaine added, “Say, Maggie wants me to ask you over for dinner tonight. And this time, she says, have him bring his Minnesota friend.”
Starsky had to smile at Hutch being summed up like that. “We’ll be there. And hey, I’ll bring the grape.”
“Sounds good. And look at it this way. Us uniforms have pretty regular hours. If we were detectives on this current, ugly case, we’d all be working overtime heaped on overtime.” Blaine winked at Starsky. “So, let’s enjoy it while we have it. Really, no one wants to be called away from one of Maggie’s great meals.”
***
Hutch had Starsky up against the bathroom door.
He’d had meant to take a shower before their dinner with the Blaines, but the situation gave Starsky a fine opportunity for a sneak attack.
Hutch had quickly turned the tables and twisted the other man around. Starsky loved the way his partner had manhandled him, how he could use his own strength right back.
Hutch was pulling Starsky’s jeans down with one hand and not having a lot of luck. “Shit, Starsk, give me a hand here.”
Starsky took his hands off Hutch’s chest and got his pants down over his hips. Then he shimmied and kicked them away.
“No underwear?” Hutch teased.
“I didn’t do laundry this week.” Starsky didn’t feel like elaborating; his main goal was to get off, and get his partner off.
Hutch’s own body was naked, of course, and Starsky looked at him. “God, you’re beautiful,” he breathed, and then he drew in his partner’s scent, a mixture of sweat and musky arousal.
Then Hutch was rubbing and pushing his groin against his own. Starsky groaned at the pleasure he felt as Hutch’s smooth cock jousted and parried.
It was almost too much. Starsky grabbed at the robe hanging on the door behind him and knotted it in his fists while Hutch shouted and came all over his dick.
Starsky came, too, and at the moment of release, he said four short words.
When he was able to open his eyes, he saw Hutch looking at him very intently.
“What?” Starsky asked. “Do I have something between my teeth?”
“No.” Hutch put his head down. Starsky grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him towards his chest.
They stayed that way, breathless and wasted.
Then Hutch said, “We’d better get cleaned up. We don’t want to be late to dinner.”
***
Tawny Larson thought she’d seen, and done, just about everything in the four years she’d been hooking.
There was the john who could only come if he had a blanket over his head and Tawny sang “Onward Christian Soldier,” from the bathroom.
There was the john who pulled a waitress’ uniform out of his bag and fucked her while she recited the daily specials.
There was the john who instructed Tawny to pretend she was an alien from outer space, an extraterrestrial who needed to have everything explained down to which hole was for what.
And if Tawny had a nickel for every john who wanted her to pretend to be underage, she could take a yearly vacation in the Bahamas rather than that stupid three-day weekend at Hearst Castle where the only tour she could get was entirely in Spanish. That trip simply left Tawny confused and hating her shitty one-room apartment even more.
Those johns were all a piece of cake, nutty pieces of cake, to be sure, but still just slices off the same cracked plate.
But this guy? If all he wanted her to do was fuck him and then tell him she loved him, hell, she could do that in a second. Fucking lies were her specialty.
As he lay gasping above her, his sweaty chest pressed to hers, the man said, “Say, it. Say it now!”
“I love you.”
What he did next left her speechless.
And then it left her dead.
***
Hutch took the wet plate from Starsky, dried it with the flour sack dishtowel, and stacked it on the counter. “Maggie will have to put it away. I know how women are about their kitchens.”
“Not all women. My ma’s kitchen was a free-for-all.” Starsky laughed.
“I guess having a job didn’t leave her with much time to spend there.”
“No kidding. By the time she got home from the hotel, she was bushed. Sometimes she’d so tired, she’d go straight to bed. Nick and I pretty much fended for ourselves. We ate a lot of sandwiches.”
“Were you unhappy?”
“At times I was. Our apartment was a pretty shitty place to be a lot of the time. After Sandra died, things really were pretty bad. They say parents don’t ever get over the loss of a child, and I’d have to agree. I know Nicky probably never has, either. Even though it was an accident, I think there’s a small part of my brother that will always blame himself.”
“He was only five years old.”
“I know. And I was right behind Nicky. He had a head start down the hall, or it would have been me that hit the door that hard. When he pushed open the building’s main door, it knocked Sandra down the stairs to the sidewalk. My ma had her arms full of groceries and couldn’t catch her fast enough.”
“I didn’t know that was how it happened. When you’d say your sister died in an accident, I assumed it was a car smash-up.” Hutch took another wet dish. “Does Nicky ever talk about it?”
“Are you kidding? No one in my family talks about Sandra. After shiv’ah, it was like she had never existed. For a while, I’d almost forgotten about her. In fact, when my dad was killed, I read the notice in the paper, saw Sandra’s name as having preceded him, and realized I hadn’t thought about her in years.”
“I’m sorry, Starsk.”
“Why? You weren’t there. I was the one who challenged Nicky to a race to the lobby. I should be the sorry one.”
“Here you just got done telling me it was an accident, and now you’re blaming yourself?”
“I’m not blaming myself. I said I was sorry. There’s a difference, Hutch. I’m really, really sorry it happened. I’m not saying that I caused it.”
Hutch grabbed another plate, dried it, and then went to work on the glasses.
Maggie came into the kitchen. “You two! Here we invite guests over, and they end up doing the dishes. How wrong is that?”
Starsky leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Not wrong at all. And we’re not guests, we’re family. You know that.”
Maggie smiled. “Yes, I do. And thank you, David.” She flicked on the radio, a Sears Silvertone. “You two boys want to stay for cards? I can put on some coffee.”
Hutch looked over at Starsky. He looked like he was going to say something when all three of them heard the radio announcer start to read the nine o’clock news.
“This just in. The Chief Police has just confirmed there’s been another brutal killing in what is now being called the Tongue Killer. A young woman, yet unidentified, was found dead in the Ellsport Hotel on Franklin. Our reporter on the scene…”
John Blaine came into the room and flicked off the button. “You don’t need to hear that in our home, Maggie.”
“John, it’s…”
“No, really. And I don’t either. Not here.” He turned to Starsky. “Listen, I just got off the phone with Deever.”
“That cop over at the 1-5?” Starsky had told Hutch he knew him in name only. Hutch recalled that Starsky mentioned Blaine was helping Deever there in Burglary.
Blaine leaned over and kissed Maggie’s cheek. She touched her face and asked, “You’ll be home late then?”
“Very late. And in fact, I might just end up staying in the Deever’s spare bedroom if it gets much past three or so. No sense in making the drive that late.”
That was how all three men ended up out on the darkened driveway.
Blaine clapped Hutch on the back. “You’re doing a good job keeping this rascal in line,” he said jerking his head toward Starsky.
“Someone’s got to,” Hutch replied, laughing.
“And you, I’ll see you tomorrow at the station,” Blaine slapped Starsky’s back, too.
“Yes, sir.” Starsky said.
Hutch looked up at the house. All the lights in it were off, except for the light in an upstairs room. He could see Maggie at the window. She’d pulled the curtains aside and was looking down at them.
When she saw that Hutch had seen her, she let the curtains drop.
***
The bar was dark. Blaine liked the way the candlelight played across Scott’s face, highlighting the faint stubble on his chin. Scott was all angles and planes and so different from Maggie’s smooth, buttery features.
“You’ve been busy at work?” Blaine asked. “Is that new boss of yours treating you okay?”
“He’s fine so far. You always got to keep an eye on those east coast editors though; they’re often too big for their britches,” Scott said. He took a drink of his beer and grimaced. “Lord, this stuff is stale.”
Blaine put his hand in the air; the bartender nodded and said something to the waitress. She brought over two fresh bottles and Scott pulled his wallet out. Blaine tried to stop him, but Scott waved him back. “Relax, I got it. You picked up the last time. Besides, what else would I be spending my money on after that fat raise the Bay City Dispatch laid on me?”
“That was a fat raise? I thought you said it came out to one percent?”
Scott laughed. “You sly dog, you do listen to me when I talk.”
“Of course I do. I listen to all sorts of things you say. In fact, what do you say we head out of here and give ourselves the opportunity to listen to something other than conversation?”
“I’m with you on that one, Johnny.”
Blaine followed Scott out the door of the Red Lantern. He admired the man’s stride, one without a single wasted move.
The hotel room was dimly lit by the light from the hall streaming in through the transom window above the door. It was just enough illumination to see their way around, but not enough to reveal too much.
Blaine loved to breathe his lover in, both into his mouth and into his ass. He moved against the man and swallowed the soft noises Scott made into his own body. As Scott slowly moved into him, Blaine felt like it wasn’t just his lungs that were drawing in air, but his whole being.
Later, as Scott lay over him, Blaine felt an ache in two places. One was where Scott was still inside him.
The other was in his heart, the part where Maggie resided.
***
Officer Luke Huntley was right up in a local prostitute’s face. But it wasn’t on official business, and it wasn’t to run her in.
He was in room 635 at the St. Francis, and was soon to have two things lighter, his dick by about half an ounce and his wallet by fifteen bucks.
Candy wasn’t his usual fuck. She was a little too old and a little too skinny. Her nails were also entirely bitten down, making Huntley want to put his own hands into his pockets for safekeeping.
Unfortunately, he had to use those hands to hold her hips down while she bucked and twisted.
He looked down at her face. It was the color of cooked shrimp, pale and streaky. Huntley had the vision that if he turned her over, he’d see a thin, dark line run up the middle of her back.
As he poured into the hooker, Huntley thought of the sweet way Doris smiled. He had a little burp of conscience, one that made his stomach lurch.
He put his head down on the body underneath him and thought of candles, his wife’s eyes, and the sharp, ragged fingernails now on his back.
***
“We’ve never kissed,” Hutch noted. He rinsed out his glass and put in the drainer next to the sink.
“I’ve kissed you.”
“You’ve kissed a lot of other parts of me, but never my mouth.”
“Of course not. That’s… that’s what…”
“Not what, Starsk?”
“Nothing.” He turned his back to Hutch and wished he’d just drop this subject.
“Kissing. You were going to say that two guys kissing would make them gay.”
“You’re always trying to make me say I’m gay. Hutch, to me the word ‘gay’ means Stonewall Riots, it means losing my job, and it means being called a faggot. It means being in a tight situation and not having backup because our brother cops want to teach a queer a lesson. You think I’m stupid? And I’m not even talking about the worst thing. Hutch, that there’s no way I want to risk… us.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not suggesting you trumpet the word from a rooftop or hold my hand in roll call.” Hutch put his hand on Starsky’s shoulder.
Starsky felt like shrugging it off, but let himself be turned around. He looked straight into Hutch’s eyes and asked, “Why are we even talking about this? Because I feel like this gay thing is some sort of hoop you’re holding out, a hoop you want me to jump through.”
“A hoop?” Hutch looked angry. “That’s what you think?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know what, Starsk? Sometimes I think I know what… who we are and sometimes I don’t. You don’t think I find things confusing, too?”
“But Hutch, why do you always want to talk about it?”
“Because that’s the way I think!”
“How about this? Stop thinking about it! You’ll be happier.”
“Maybe I don’t want…”
“What? To be happier? Christ, Hutch, I feel like I’m fucking married here.” Starsky grabbed his jacket. “What are you going to accuse me of next, not bringing flowers or taking you out dancing like I used to?”
“Fuck you, Starsky.”
“That’s what seems to be the problem here. I need some space.” Starsky opened the front door and strode out. Slamming it shut behind him felt really, really good.
He stood outside the apartment for a few minutes, catching his breath and willing his heart to stop beating so quickly.
He could hear the record come to an end and envisioned Hutch walking over to the turntable and flicking it off.
That’s when Starsky realized he’d just walked out of his own apartment.
He sighed and opened his door back up. Hutch was standing in the same spot as when he left him, and the needle on the record album was making a scratch, scratch, scratch sound as it rested in the final groove.
“I forgot where I was and left my own apartment. Talk about a thin line between you and me.”
“Yeah.” Hutch grabbed his own jacket and moved towards the door.
“Wait, you don’t gotta…” Starsky didn’t step aside to let him pass.
“Yeah, I do. It’s… it’s okay. I’ll see you in the morning.” Hutch stepped to one side, and Starsky blocked him.
“Hutch…”
“Really. I get it. Listen, I’m bushed. And we’ve got work tomorrow.”
Starsky took a step to the other side, and Hutch went out the door.
***
There was an APB, a sight-and-report, on a punk named Skeeter. This didn’t stop Luke Huntley from chasing the man after they spotted him running out of the Vons on Brinkley Boulevard.
Huntley snapped at Hutch to pull the car over, and then was out the door before they’d come to a complete stop.
Hutch jacked the car into park and picked up the mic. “This is Adam-Two. We’ve got a suspect on a Sherburne, a possible 233 and are in pursuit. Over and out.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, taking off in the direction the Huntley had headed. Adrenaline flooded his body as Hutch dodged two turning cars, a group of gawking teenagers and a slow-moving woman pushing a shopping cart.
He caught up with Huntley and Skeeter in an alley behind a thrift store.
It was there he saw his partner beating the shit out of the perp.
Skeeter was down, and Huntley gave him one last kick before reaching for his cuffs.
“There you are, Hutchinson. It took you long enough.” He snapped the cuffs on the unconscious man. “Go call for an ambulance. I think I might have just taken down our tongue cutter.”
Hutch looked at him in disbelief. “You think this guy is the killer?” He looked at the man down on his belly. He was wearing a heavy jacket and the ground around him was littered with packages of meat. “He looks like a common shoplifter, Luke. There’s gotta be twenty pounds of pork chops here.”
“The fucker pulled a knife on me and threatened to cut out my tongue. That’s a pretty pot of truth right there.” Huntley nudged Skeeter with his foot. “He’ll be fine. He’s just gonna have a headache, which will be the least of his worries.”
“I don’t get it, Luke. You knew the APB was a sight-and-report. That means we weren’t even supposed to get out of the car, just simply report his whereabouts,” Hutch asked, puzzled. “So, how’d you make this call?”
“Cop instincts, I guess.” Huntley tapped his head. “Either you got them or you don’t.” Hutch heard sirens and looked up at the mouth of the alley. An ambulance was pulling in, lights flashing a steady pulse of red and blue.
Huntley looked at Hutch. “How did…”
“I followed procedure and called in our situation,” Hutch started to explain. “But I don’t know who called for an ambulance.”
“I did, officers.” The voice came from a large man standing in the thrift shop’s back doorway.
As the paramedics got out and retrieved a gurney from the back, Huntley said, “Hutchinson, you deal with that situation. I’ll take the statement from Mr. …?
“Roland Buckle. You can call me Rolly. And I can tell you anything you need. I saw the whole thing.”
Hutch noted that Rolly had that easy, glib way of talking, one that any cop would recognize; this guy was a man who’d been on the streets a while.
Huntley waved Hutch away. “Go see to Skeeter and his lucky medics. Make sure you bag that knife he pulled on me.”
Hutch gave him a long look. Huntley had his cop face on and was giving nothing away, not even to his partner.
He felt a touch on his arm. It was one of the medics. “We’re getting ready to transport here, Officer, and we need some information.”
“Right.” Hutch turned away. It seemed like he and Huntley should switch places. He should interview this Rolly fellow, and his partner, knowing more about what went down in the alley, should take on the other end of things.
He’d have to ask Huntley about the protocol later. Chances were Hutch was just missing a step here.
***
“You want another beer, Blondie?”
“No. Maybe…” Hutch said. “Yes.”
Starsky held up two fingers, and the waiter nodded. “This ain’t such a bad place,” Starsky said, looking around.
“Guess not. Though I’m not sure it’s wise for a couple of cops to be hanging out at a bar called the Innocent Bystander.”
“See, that’s the beauty of it. We can soak up some atmosphere, pick some grapes, and file them away in the Rolodex in our heads, all while enjoying some cold beer.”
Hutch didn’t say anything. Starsky was just about to ask about what had all gone down a few hours ago when the waiter put two glasses of beer on their table.
Starsky fished out two dollars and handed them to the man, a guy that looked a little bit like Hutch but a little older with longer hair and a moustache.
“Luke said, ‘Kid, he’s nothing but a skid mark of a man. And while he didn’t turn out to be the killer, he had it coming to him.'” Hutch looked up, and Starsky saw the conflict in his eyes. “The guy was a thief. He made his living stealing meat from grocery stores and selling it to bars.”
“Sounds like a skid mark to me.”
“Does a guy who stole forty dollars’ worth of raw meat sound like someone that deserved to have a ruptured spleen, a concussion, and a broken wrist?”
“Huntley said he pulled a knife on him. That’s self-defense.”
“So says Huntley. And so says that fat guy, Rolly. But it’s something Skeeter denies.”
“Of course he denies it. He might not be the killer, but why tack on another ten years for threatening an officer of the law?”
“It’s just that…”
“That what? It’s disappointing Skeeter wasn’t this animal, but it sounds like your partner was just doing his job.”
Hutch sighed. “I know. And it’s not like… Shit, Starsk, Luke’s a good cop. I know that. But…”
“Speaking of butts,” Starsky said, all of a sudden coming to a realization. “I just noticed that every single person in this bar is a guy. And some of them are wearing some awfully tight pants.”
“Starsky, I thought the only male ass that appealed to you was mine. Are you saying that your eyes are wandering?”
“Shut up, Hutch. I told you I wasn’t… just shut up.”
“So, your eyes aren’t wandering?”
“More like wondering.” Starsky got up and walked over to the jukebox. He was acutely aware of the heads that all turned his way.
“See, it’s just like I figured, Hutch,” he said when he returned. “Every record in that machine is fruity. There isn’t any Stones or Grand Funk Railroad. There’s some Judy Garland in there, plus a band suspiciously called Queen. I’d say that, combined with the fact that the guys in here are checking out my ass, that we’re in a gay bar.”
“Starsky, everyone checks out your ass. It’s hard to ignore.”
Starsky preened a bit. Then he said, “So what about all that gay music?”
“You think this is a gay bar because it doesn’t have two of your favorite bands, but it has Judy Garland?”
“Don’t forget Queen.”
“Oh, please. There’s a lot more to being…”
“Don’t say the word, Keith,” Starsky shushed him, but gave the name he called Hutch a little extra volume.
“Keith?” Hutch’s eyebrows rose.
“And I’m not just saying that because my name’s Victor,” Starsky said in a loud voice. He looked around at the patrons and felt nervous. “Keith,” he said. “We really should be going.”
“You are such an idiot, Stars…Vincent,” Hutch said as he got up out of the booth. “You know that, don’t you?”
Starsky stood up, too. He was just about to turn around when a man approached Hutch. “I haven’t seen you in here before.” He looked at Starsky. “Is he… with you?”
Starsky laughed. “You mean with…as in ‘with’?”
The man stared at him a moment, and then shook his head. He asked Hutch, “He always this slow?”
Hutch blinked his eyes. Starsky could see that they were very wide, and it made him nervous to not know exactly why.
“Yeah, he’s always that slow,” Hutch replied.
“Seeing how you’re not with him, blondie, what do you say I buy you a drink?” The man’s voice dropped an octave. It did something to the base of Starsky’s spine.
And then the whole situation did something that made him snarl, “Listen, chump, I know about twenty ways to knock your nuts to the back of your throat!” Starsky moved forward.
The man laughed and didn’t step back. Starsky had to give him credit for his bravery, if nothing else.
“For two guys that aren’t together, you sure are putting up a good act. And as for nuts to the back of my throat, I’ll skip mine, but would love to have you put yours there.”
Starsky felt his face burn with shame.
He felt his hand clench into a fist.
And then he felt Hutch’s hand on his arm. “Buddy, let’s get out of here before we become police radio chatter.”
A few moments later, Starsky felt the warm night air on his face. “Shit.”
“You can say that again,” Hutch said. Then he held up a finger in front of Starsky’s face. “But please don’t.”
“Sorry. I brought you out to get your mind off of the Skeeter thing, and then I ended up almost getting us in trouble at this place.” He gestured up at the sign over the bar.
“Well, you could say it worked, buddy. There’s nothing like the possibility of getting arrested, or better yet, having a handsome stranger buy me a drink to get my mind off what happened today.”
Starsky looked back at Hutch. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
“Beats me,” said Hutch, cuffing the back of his head.
***
The bar’s piano player was lost in some rambling, tinkling tune that made Blaine feel like he was in some old west saloon. He half-expected to see Miss Kitty saunter across the room.
The Counterpoint Bar was the standard Bay City venue, but at least the scotch was good. Blaine tossed back another drink. It burned all the way down. He wished it could burn away guilt as well.
Some sort of breaking point was looming on the horizon. He could feel it pushing down, crushing the breath out of him.
Holding his glass too tightly in his hand was making his knuckles ache. He loosened his grip and put it down on the polished wood.
“Can I get you another?” the bartender asked. He was a big man with a smooth, shiny face.
“No. No, thank you.”
“You okay, buddy?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Blaine looked up at this small bit of kindness. “Have you ever taken stock of your life and realized just how much you’ve had to hide, from everyone, from yourself?”
“I just did this morning. I looked in the mirror and said, Christ, how did I ever end up tending a shitty bar for sixteen years? And I hope the hell my wife doesn’t find out about my interest in vampires.” The bartender took a dry towel and started wiping down some glasses. “I think it’s something everyone does.”
“I’ve lost so much. And I’m a coward,” Blaine said, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. He laid a ten spot on the counter. “Keep the change, okay?”
Blaine walked out of the Counterpoint without waiting for a reply.
He’d been lucky so far but at some point, his double life would hurt people, certainly personally, maybe professionally. He’d seen the way good people got cornered by their secrets and became nothing but an unreliable witness at their own trial.
A coward, he was nothing but a coward and a lesser man, not for loving another man, but for not being the kind of husband his beautiful, beautiful wife deserved.
He felt empty.
Stepping out in to the street, he saw a flock of crows so black that they seemed to be cut from construction paper. They flew up, and around, and then they were gone.
***
Hutch was sitting across the street from an apartment building, a ten-story affair that reminded him of something on the Jetsons. It was where Van had moved three years ago.
The car’s radio was turned down low, and Hutch could only hear the high notes in the music a jazz station was playing.
Hutch wondered if Van was amazed at the difference between this place and the house she’d grown up in, a metal-sided, light-green rambler perched three miles up the hill from Lake Superior. If nothing else, the weather certainly couldn’t be any more different.
He sat listening to the radio and wondered, aside from Van’s supposed pregnancy, what had ever propelled him to marry the woman.
And now, three years later, whatever was propelling him not to divorce her.
Or she, him.
Soon after they’d separated, Van had gotten a modeling job at Casper’s, a downtown department store. Sometimes he saw her in the Sunday circulars, posing in stiff dresses and pantsuits, and once even a fur coat. She didn’t even look like someone he’d ever even known.
Hutch looked at the address over the building’s door. It matched the address to which he’d been sending a check every month. Considering the meager salary of a police rookie, Van was probably pulling in more money than Hutch, an irony that was not lost on him.
Those informal alimony checks, validated with a girlish signature and deposited in her bank account were the only contact they’d had for over three years, a kind of ghostly paper passenger pigeon transmitting the message, “still alive, still alive.”
The hourly news came on. An announcer went on about the postal strike, the mayoral election, and of course the recent grisly killings. Hutch listened for a few minutes and then shut it off.
He opened the car door and was startled at the screech. It made him feel like his heart had skipped a beat. Hutch could almost hear Starsky, “Ever think about putting some oil on that thing, buddy?”
He got out, crossed the street, opened the glass door to the lobby and studied the series of buttons on the security panel. He reached up to press 615, the one with “V. Hutchinson” on it.
Then he dropped his hands and rubbed his palms on his pants. Christ, what was he doing? If nothing else, he should have called first.
He could just turn around and walk out now.
But he didn’t. Hutch punched the button for 615 and waited.
“Yes?” Van’s voice sounded a little sexy, a little bothered and more than a little familiar. “Yes?” she said again.
“It’s, ahh… me… Ken, the guy who always had holes in his socks.”
There was a long silence. Hutch wondered if she had heard him.
Then she replied, “Ken, you can’t tell me you brought your socks all the way over here. What’s really wrong? Car trouble?”
“No. But I need to talk to you about something.”
“It’s not really a good time, Ken.”
“Is it ever?”
“Not really.” There was a long pause. “Fine. I’ll buzz you in, but give me about ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
The snarl the bell made was only long enough for Hutch to pull the door open. It felt like a test, that maybe if his reflexes were too slow, she wouldn’t allow him entrance. He half wished he’d failed and could go home right now.
Hutch decided to take the stairs up to the sixth floor. It would give Van some of her ten minutes.
And it gave Hutch more time to think.
At the first floor, he thought of the first time he’d seen Van. She was in a green bikini and sitting on a towel off the rocks of Park Point in Duluth. Her skin was so white it had almost taken his breath away. The nippy weather had probably been taking hers as well, as it took a brave girl to wear such a tiny swimsuit in a Minnesota June.
As he reached the second floor, Hutch thought of the way her breasts had felt when he brushed over them. Van had seemed to constantly, theatrically drop her school books, and Hutch just as constantly, theatrically had leaned down to pick them up.
At the third floor, he remembered the good times they had, sneaking out of the house, hanging with Jack Mitchell and his girl, throwing rocks at the ore ships at night hoping to get a spotlight turned their way and that last, seemingly endless summer before they’d graduated from high school.
The fourth floor ushered in memories of the next tumultuous four years, their off-again, on-again, mostly off-again relationship while he was in college at the U, and she at the community college, getting her two-year fashion degree.
As he started up to the fifth floor, Hutch remembered the afternoon Van told him she was expecting a baby. At first, he thought she had said something else, and his dumb response had been, “Huh?”
His second response was even stupider. It had gotten him a hard slap across the face.
By the time he reached the sixth floor, Hutch was well into reality, the fights they’d had, the hasty wedding, his police academy letter arriving, and then finally two tickets for the Greyhound bus.
Van’s parents didn’t come to the station to say goodbye. Hutch’s mom had been there, though. She put on a brave smile and had handed them a sack of tuna fish sandwiches. “Write lots, and call when the baby’s born. Maybe I’ll figure out how to get out there then.”
Hutch found himself at the front of Van’s door. Ten minutes or not, it was close enough. It took several rounds of knocking before she opened the door. Hutch figured that was par for the course, but also knew that by showing up without even a phone call gave him no real leg to stand on.
Van was wearing a bathrobe. Her hair was pulled back, and she had a wide, white headband cupping the top of her hair. Hutch thought she looked lovely.
“Excuse my outfit. I wasn’t expecting company and was just getting ready for bed.”
“You’re going to bed at 9:30 at night? Whatever happened to that late night girl?”
She shrugged. “I got a job and have to be up early in the morning. It’s a weeklong stint modeling cruise wear on site, and I have to be at the ship when the light’s good.” She stepped aside. “I guess I should invite you in, and you can only stay a few minutes.” She looked slightly embarrassed. “Sorry, that wasn’t very hospitable.”
“No need to apologize,” Hutch said moving past her. “I’m the one that’s out of line, coming over here like this.”
Hutch gave her living room and kitchen, a quick once over. It looked like Van was striving for an all-white scheme in her decorating. The rooms were both spotless. She must have the services of Rosie the Robot to keep it clean as the Van he knew certainly didn’t have the talent, or the inclination, to accomplish this task herself.
“Very nice,” he said, glad he didn’t have to live here.
“Thank you.” Van seemed a little nervous. It wasn’t a look Hutch would’ve associated with her. She was the most self-assured person he had ever known.
“I’d offer you a drink, but…” she shrugged. “As I said, I’m just headed to bed.”
“And I’d say no thank you. Listen, Van…”
“Ken, why are you here? Please don’t say you decided you wanted a little bit of old times.”
“No, nothing like that,” Hutch said quickly. “I… I…”
“Quit stuttering, Ken, it’s unbecoming.”
Hutch narrowed his eyes. “I gotta tell you, Van, you always did know how to push my buttons.”
“And you mine. Now, why are you here?”
“I’m thinking of going ahead with the final divorce paperwork. There’s no reason for it to be hanging on like it is.”
“Keep your voice down, Ken,” Vanessa snapped.
“Keep my voice down? I’m not even speaking that loudly.”
“You got some girl in mind you want to marry? Is that it?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then what’s the rush?”
“Rush? Van, it’s been over three years.” Hutch shook his head. “I know you’ve been getting the checks…”
“You know what? I’ve had enough of this conversation.” Vanessa opened the front door. “Please leave.”
Hutch took a deep breath. “I think I know why I’ve let this slide all these years. But I gotta tell you, I have no idea why you have.”
He walked to the open door. “And Van, about the baby. Was that for real?”
“Fuck you, Kenny,” she said as she shut the door.
Hutch stood out in the hallway thinking of the dirty footprints he’d left on her snowy, white carpet.
The visit had been less than five minutes, and while they were both out of each other’s hearts, he was glad he’d left that lasting impression.
He was just about to head back down to the car when he heard a man’s voice from inside the apartment.
“Can you tell me what the hell that was all about?”
“It’s nothing, Rick, just an old boyfriend who was sniffing around.”
“An old boyfriend named Ken? I thought that was the name of your husband, the one you said had been killed in Vietnam, who left you penniless?”
“There’s more than one Ken out there.”
“Why do I think you’re not telling me the truth?” The man’s voice was angry.
“Oh, but Ricky, I am. Please don’t yell. Ken used to yell, and it always made me really afraid.”
“Van…”
“Please, the yelling always came before the hitting. I know I’m a big baby, but I was glad when he was killed. I may have been left penniless, but at least I didn’t have to worry about him hurting me anymore.”
“Come here, babe,” the man said. “Yeah, just like that…”
Hutch was startled by the sound of the elevator doors opening.
An elderly woman walked out into hall. “Are you looking for someone, young man?”
“Ahh… no… I mean I was, but I think I finally found her.” Hutch replied as he walked into the elevator and hit the lobby button.
***
The bar on Wall was a mistake, and it wasn’t because the jukebox was broken or because the floor was stickier than the one at the Playpen Theater.
It was because of the food.
Hutch picked up his burger and then immediately put it down. The sandwich had an odd heavy feel and something slick coated the pads of his fingers.
Wiping his hands on this napkin, Hutch shook his head. “We should have known better than to eat at a place Fishstick recommended. The guy doesn’t even know what year it is. He lives the same day over and over again.”
“And not for what you’d expect. To Fishstick, November 22, 1963, isn’t the day Kennedy was assassinated so much as it was the day both C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died. He’s always talking about it. Maybe the guy’s some sort of damaged English teacher or something?”
“I’d say it’s more to do with drugs. The guy’s a walking pharmacy.”
“So, how come you and Huntley haven’t brought him in on drug charges? It can’t be due to his value with stellar restaurant recommendations.”
Hutch pushed his plate aside and picked up his milk. The glass was warm and he put that back down, too. “Huntley’s got some theory about Fishstick being useless in prison, but with proper management, he’s a good source of information for cops.”
“If you forget he’s living seven years in the past.”
“I never said it made a whole lot of sense.”
“You really like the guy, don’t you?”
“Fishstick?”
“No. Luke.”
“Look, I just want Luke to be a guy I can look up to. Like you, I lost my dad. Unlike you, I didn’t have a John Blaine in my life. Now, I know Luke’s not perfect. He might be a little rough around the edges, but I’ve never seen or heard of him doing anything unethical.”
“Maybe.” Starsky shrugged. “But he’s got fifteen years on us, buddy. Maybe he’s good at hiding it.”
No kidding, thought Hutch. It seemed people had a lot of secrets out there. Last night’s visit to Van’s apartment had shaken him up more than he’d like to admit. It wasn’t anything he was ready to tell Starsky about.
“Hutch, hey… it looked like you went away there for a minute.” Starsky waved his hand in front of Hutch’s face.
He shook his head “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“I was asking about Luke. Maybe he’s, you know, got secrets.”
“Secrets? What have you heard?”
“I haven’t heard anything, not really. I just know that Blaine shuts down in some weird way when Huntley’s name comes up. Blaine’s a straight-ahead guy, the finest I know, but sometimes don’t know what makes him tick.” Starsky stared at Hutch. “How much slack would you cut him, Hutch? Say if you knew Luke did something bad?”
“I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” Hutch said, wondering why he’d picked the word “when” rather than “if.”
Starsky looked at his watch, a cheap Timex. He scowled and shook his wrist and then looked at it again. “It could be time for work. And it could be time for bed. This damn thing isn’t making things any easier.”
He looked at Hutch and grinned. “Someday, man, someday, I’m gonna have a watch and a car I can be proud of. You’ll see, Officer Hutchinson.”
“I’m counting on all three, Starsk.”
***
Blaine, Huntley, Hutch, and Starsky were standing together around a Weber grill. Blaine had an apron on. It said, “Dad’s cooking tonight!”
There were about thirty other cops out on the patchy grass area directly adjacent to the precinct building. Folks were drinking Dr. Pepper and Fresca out of bottles and talking. Someone had put a radio out on a card table, and most people were standing around it, listening to the ballgame.
The event was a Friday afternoon social thing Captain Roarke put together. He’d sent around a memo saying that in the interests of camaraderie and getting to know people in other departments, that he’d buy ground beef and hot dogs and get some coals going. “Please try to attend and bring lots of NRG.”
“NRG? What the hell is that?” Huntley said. “I was hoping it’d be booze, but I can see I’m dead wrong there.”
Blaine cuffed the back of his head. “Say it out loud, stupid.”
“NRG, NRG,” Huntley said. “Huh.”
Starsky thought, the guy doesn’t get it, but doesn’t want anyone to know it. He’d been there and decided to bail Huntley out. “I’d say there’s tons of energy here, especially with the four of us. We’re regular balls of fire.”
Hutch laughed. “Great balls of fire, Starsk.”
“So, we were having this discussion in the locker room the other day. When the Beatles did that stunt last year, playing the concert on the roof of their record company, would you have liked to be one of the cops that had to bust them up?” Starsky asked.
Hutch shook his head. “Talk about upholding the law at the expense of your convictions. I’d have wanted them to play louder.”
Blaine flipped a burger over. “I’d have been fine with it. The cops were only telling them to turn the music down. It’s not like they were putting the Fab Four in jail.”
Huntley took a drink of Fresca. “Me? I’d have made them give me their autographs and then looked the other way.”
“Really?” asked Starsky.
“Really.” Huntley watched Blaine press down on the hamburgers with his spatula. “What are you doing? You’re gonna make them dry.”
Blaine looked at him. “You want to take over?” He held out the utensil.
Huntley stared at him for a moment and then shook his head. “And deprive you of the glory later? No thanks.” Huntley did a little boxing step and gave Starsky’s shoulder a couple of pulled punches. “Actually, Blaine cooks a mean burger, always has.”
“The Chief’s talking about starting a couple of softball teams, rookies against the older guys,” Hutch said.
Blaine groaned, “You young kids would kill us.”
“What are you talking about?” Starsky said. “Big Bad John Blaine, you’re not quite forty years old. Huntley, you’re about the same age. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t give us young rookies a run for our money.”
“True, true, we’re not in the nursing home yet, but Christ, you two ain’t even twenty- five,” Huntley said. He grabbed a paper plate out of the bag on the ground and handed it to Blaine. “I’d say soup’s on.”
***
Blaine and Scott sat alone at the little Italian restaurant down on the wharf. It had red and white checkered tablecloths, vinyl grapes hanging on the wall, and little yellow candles on the table.
It was nearly closing time, which meant they were the only ones there.
Blaine looked down at his empty plate. “I love a woman. I have sex with her. I have sex with you. And I’m gay.”
“Do you love me, John?”
“Do I what?”
“You heard me. You said you love Maggie and have sex with her. And you have sex with me, and you’re gay. But do you love me?”
“You’re not making any sense.”
Scott smoothed out his crumpled napkin with the side of his hand. “See, John, I think you do love me. But you just can’t say it.”
“Scott, don’t…”
“You can say you’re gay but why is the other thing so difficult?”
“Are you unhappy?” Blaine asked him, avoiding the question.
“I don’t know.”
“Scott, why are you hanging around with me?”
His lover looked down.
“Listen, I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for us,” Blaine leaned forward. “There’s someone at work who’s sniffing just a little too close…”
“How close, John?”
“I don’t know. I’m just nervous. I think that we need to slow this down before someone gets hurt.”
“Oh, people have already been hurt.” Scott drew out his wallet. “They just don’t know it yet.”
“It’s just a break,” Blaine said, his voice cracking. “You know it’s for the best.”
“No, I don’t know that, but I love you. And if this is what you need to do, then I can do it for you.” He touched the back of Blaine’s hand with the pads of his fingers. “Give me a call when you think you can, okay?”
Blaine picked up the telephone six days later.
***
They had the picnic table near the back. Trash had blown up near the chain link fence, and the grass had seen far better days.
“This isn’t a bad place, Hutch,” Starsky said around a mouthful of taco.
“No, no it’s not. But it still can’t be our hangout.”
“Why not?”
“It’s outside, dummy. And it doesn’t serve beer. And there’s no music.”
Just then a car drove by, David Bowie blasting from the open window. “There’s music,” Starsky pointed out.
“Idiot, that’s not music, that’s noise. Besides, you really want to depend on chance and someone else’s crappy taste for something that important?”
“Depending on chance has worked for me so far, blondie.” Starsky grinned. “I mean, here you are, and if I remember correctly, it was just dumb luck I met you.”
“I’d call it more like a clerical error.”
“Dumb luck, clerical error, I can’t help it I got your first academy grades. Too bad you couldn’t have kept them, as mine were better.
That reminder made Hutch crabby. He felt like picking a fight. He whispered, “So, Mr. Hot Shot, if you think you’ve got it all figured out, tell me again the reasoning behind you not describing yourself as gay.”
“Oh, good grief, not that label thing again. Get off it.”
“Yes, that label thing again.”
“I don’t know why you care so much.”
“Let me get this straight; you care less than I do, but you’re the one that can’t say it.”
“Hutch, what are you getting at? Is this about me putting that dent in your car door? Is it about your houseplant I poured beer on and killed? Is it about…”
“Let’s just focus on this argument, the one we’re having right now, and not worry about the ones we’re going to have in the future.”
“I’m not gay, Hutch,” Starsky whispered, looking around. “I’m having sex with you, not other guys. Chicks still do it for me. There’s a big difference.”
“But what about after me?”
“What do you mean, after you?”
“Let’s just say, down the road, we’re not friends like we are now. Or I’m dead. And a good-looking guy looks your way…”
“Not friends? Dead? Hutch, are you nuts? That ain’t gonna happen.”
“Excuse me? One of them will at some point. And the other one, how do you know?”
“The first one I’m certain of. And the second one, I just hope I go first,” Starsky’s voice was fierce.
“Thanks a lot. You know what they say, it’s always hardest on the one…”
“Shut up.”
“Starsky, tell me honestly, right here… no look me right in the eye and tell me that you haven’t looked at another guy and had any sort of a sexual thought about him.”
Starsky met Hutch’s face. His eyes were blue, so blue, and sometimes, like right now, they made Hutch want to draw him in so that there was no longer any space between them.
“Nope, no other guys, Hutch.”
“Starsky, look me in the eyes, not at my nose.”
“Nope, no other guys, Hutch.”
“My eyes, not my mouth.”
“Nope, no other guys.”
“Starsky…”
Starsky looked him in the eyes. “Well, I might be tempted, but he’d have to look just like you, Hutch. And sound like you. And think like you. And at that point, it would be because I got the two of you mixed up.” He looked away. “That doesn’t make me gay.”
Hutch sighed. He was all of a sudden very, very tired of rocking the boat, both with Van and with Starsky. It was also making him feel unnecessarily angry, something he realized as he baited Starsky with this vocabulary issue.
Starsky seemed to be satisfied with the hole in which he’d pegged himself. Maybe it was enough?
Hutch was sure pretty sick of pushing his way into Starsky’s little blind spot.
Because, in the end, Hutch wasn’t all that sure about what that word really meant either.
***
Looking back, Starsky would comment that it was probably written in the stars that both Adam Two and Harry Six were the first squads that made it to the parking lot next to St. William’s Catholic Church.
And Hutch would snort and say, “Pretty funny for a guy that claimed he depended on chance and dumb luck for his good fortune.”
The call had come over the radio as a 357, a “report of a disturbance, woman screaming.” Huntley barked at Hutch to turn on the lightbar and siren, and then he gunned the black and white.
Nine blocks away, Blaine told Starsky to do the same thing and made a wide U-turn.
All four men were out of the car and running towards the voice. She was screaming and yelling, “Get the hell away from me! I don’t love you! I don’t! You’re crazy!”
Starsky assumed it was a domestic. Some guy had gotten home from a bar, had too much to drink and decided to take out his aggressions on his woman. He hated those scenes for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they were so goddamned unpredictable. Blaine was always warning him about them. “Keep your eye on the ball, David, because it’s the victim that’s often just as dangerous.”
Starsky didn’t really know what he meant until he had gotten slammed in the back with a hand mixer as he had tried to handcuff a woman’s husband.
In the far corner of the parking lot, away from the single light pole, a man had a woman trapped.
She was wearing a pink, polyester pantsuit and had long blond hair. The man was older, perhaps in his forties, and reminded Starsky of his bank president, a solid man who’d shaken his hand when Starsky had opened a checking account.
The young woman’s back was to the man, and his arm was around her neck. In his right hand, the man had a knife.
Despite the dark, Starsky could see the whites of her eyes. They made a complete circle around her irises.
Drawing his weapon at the same time as the other three officers, Starsky thought back to the academy where he had been taught three things about this situation.
First, a man was always most dangerous when he was cornered.
Second, nothing was more important than getting the hostage out alive.
And finally, it was easy to let your emotions get the better of you, something that made you sloppy and quite possibly dead.
Blaine jerked his head to the left, and Hutch moved to take the space between the brick wall and a walkway.
Huntley barked, “Drop the knife, and put your hands in the air!”
The man’s response was to squeeze the woman’s throat harder, forcing her head back and exposing more of her neck. She made a gasping noise, and Starsky could see her hands clench into tight fists.
“I’m taking what’s mine,” the man howled. “She loves me and she’s mine, mine, mine!”
Blaine gave a nod to Huntley, holstered his gun, and put held up his hands in the same pacifying gesture he might use to coax a jumper off a roof. “Hey, what’s goin’ on? How about if you let this girl go? She seems really, really scared, and I don’t think you want to hurt her. You just want to get out of trouble, right?”
The man gave a little nod, and Starsky thought this whole nightmare would be over soon.
Huntley added, “Just do what he says.”
It seemed to break the rapport, and the man shouted, “Fuck you! You’re just trying to trick me.”
“No trick,” said Blaine. “No trick.”
“It is!”
“No, it isn’t. Why don’t you drop what you’re holding? You haven’t hurt anyone yet, just really scared her. And we’ll be able to work with that.”
“Haven’t hurt anyone yet? Are you crazy? I’ve hurt a lot of ladies. Really hurt them. I’ve killed four, one you haven’t even found yet. And I’ll keep killing them until I get what I want. And to get what I want, I’m gotta cut it, cut it right off.”
Starsky was aware that Hutch’s eyes had darted to Huntley, to Starsky and then back to the scene, as the whole situation took a decided turn for the worse.
“Blaine!” Huntley snapped. “We need to…”
The man jumped at those words. He lowered the knife and for a moment, Starsky thought he was going to surrender. Then in one smooth action, he shoved the knife into the woman’s side, pushed her body towards the cops, and ran.
Blaine shouted, “Luke, hold your…”
It stopped Huntley from shooting. Starsky understood why Blaine had yelled. The angle was all wrong; a bullet would have most likely hit the woman.
Blaine yelled, “David, Ken, see to her and call for help,” and followed Huntley onto the church grounds.
Hutch reached the woman first. He holstered his gun as he bent down to check her pulse. “She’s alive. We need an ambulance.”
Starsky ran to the squad car. Its door was still standing open, and the lightbar was flashing. He picked up the mic. “This is Harry Six and Adam Two. We have a 289 at St. William’s Church on Washington. I repeat, a 289 at St. William’s Church on Washington.”
The dispatcher responded immediately, “Copy that, Harry Six. I’ll send out a Code 3.”
Starsky grabbed the first aid kit, a flashlight, a blanket and ran back to where Hutch was. “How is she?” he asked, falling to his knees and opening up the kit. He ripped open a large gauze pad and handed it to Hutch.
“I don’t know, Starsk. It’s a lot of blood,” Hutch said, pressing the cloth to her side. “I’ve got this, Starsk. You’d better go see what you can do to help them.”
“Yeah.” Starsky stood up.
“And hey, be careful,” Hutch said, keeping his eyes on the woman’s face.
***
Starsky could see a side door to the church open. It looked like some sort of a service entrance, maybe a kitchen.
He pressed his back against the wall and listened. He could hear voices, but not the words. Starsky bracketed the open door with his gun, saw an empty hallway, and moved in.
Running in the direction of the voices, Starsky headed down a short flight of stairs and ended up in a basement area.
He heard two voices, that of Blaine and Huntley.
Starsky hunched against the wall, faced down the next hallway, and determined at least two of the men were in the room at the end. Bright, light spilled from it, in direct contrast to the dark hallway.
He crept along the wall, and heard Blaine shout, “What the fuck!” at the same time Starsky burst into the room.
Starsky got there just in time to see a man’s head explode. A corona of red mist came first. Then blood flew like a flock of cardinals and landed on the white, white wall behind him.
For a moment, there was no sound, no movement and no odor.
Then Starsky realized his ears were ringing from the sound of a gunshot in close quarters, he smelled something metallic and musty, and that Huntley was holstering his weapon.
Blaine slowly put his away, too.
“You all right, John?” Huntley asked. “I thought for sure he had you.”
“Luke…” Blaine said. Starsky thought his voice sounded odd, but it was due to the lingering resonance of the gunshot.
“Luke,” Blaine said again.
“We took that bastard down. He was going to knife us. Self-defense teamed with the fact that I’m betting he’s our killer, and we have ourselves a pretty righteous shoot.”
Blaine turned to Starsky. “Put your weapon away, son.”
Starsky did, forgetting he still had it out. He realized it was the first time he’d ever drawn his gun outside of the shooting range.
He could hear sirens in the distance and coming from two different directions. Knowing Bay City’s response time, Starsky realized only about five minutes had passed from the time he’d called in for backup.
It had seemed a lot longer than that.
“David, go out and meet the ambulance with Hutch. I’ll be up in a minute,” Blaine said in a flat voice.
Starsky finally took his first look at the thing on the floor. And wished he hadn’t.
He started to say something to Blaine, but the man had already turned away towards Huntley.
“Go on, David,” he said again.
And Starsky went outside to a carnival of flashing lights and sound.
***
The body had been removed, and Blaine and Huntley were standing alone by a squad car. Huntley lit a cigarette. “C’mon, Blaine. You know as well as I do that guy was a shit. It was clear that when he was born, his ma pushed him out the wrong hole.”
Blaine shook his head. “I’m not gonna debate with you about his character. My issue is that you decided to be jury, judge, and executioner. You know that isn’t how cops are supposed to operate. And you know that…”
“That what, Blaine?”
“Huntley…Luke. You know I gotta report how it happened.”
Huntley took a long draw off his Marlboro. He tossed it down in the alley and smashed it with the heel of his shoe. “You’re not gonna be reporting that, Blaine.”
“Like hell I’m not. What you did was…”
“What I did is rid the world of one nasty bastard, a man who thinks nothing of killing women and cutting their fucking tongues out. No one should get away with the heinous things he did.”
“You’re right, no one should. But that’s for the courts to decide, not us. Not you.”
“You’ve seen the way the wheels of justice work lately. Pinky was caught red-handed, and two days later, he’s out. Anson’s walking the streets a year after he killed that woman.”
“Luke, this isn’t about Pinky or Anson or any of the punks out there you think should have gotten worse than they did.”
“You’re right, Johnny, this is about an animal that cuts the tongues out of women and brutalizes them. He ought to be grateful I took him out with one quick shot.” Huntley’s face closed down. “I should have shot him in the nuts first.”
“Listen, we’ve both been in situations like this, Luke, where we’re staring down the barrel of a gun and know that it would only take one twitch to take some fucker out, a fucker that deserved it more than the devil himself. But you shot him without identifying yourself. Hell, he wasn’t even a direct threat to you or to me. He’d already put the knife down.”
“And you’re gonna put that in your report?”
“Luke, you know I have to.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to write up a report of my own, one that will go to Internal Affairs.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the visits you make to that bar on Western. The Red Lantern, isn’t that the name of the place?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
“So, what you’re saying is, you’ll scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours?”
“I’ll leave the actual back scratching to that fetching little number I’ve seen you with. And hey, John baby, I’ll take it to the grave.”
“I’ll bet you will, but only until you need it again. Then you’ll dig it right back up.”
“John, if you don’t want to play it this way, we won’t. But I guess I don’t need to remind you that the penalties for shooting a bum ten seconds before I should have will be pretty light compared to what IA will think of a cop taking it up the bum from a guy.”
Huntley lit another cigarette. “And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. See, I’ll get a reprimand, probably a brief suspension, and guys will probably cheer for me in the locker room. But you? Your career and your marriage will both be over. I can’t imagine the lovely Maggie sticking with you when your habits become common knowledge, much less the reactions of our brothers in blue.”
“You’re a fucker, you know that?”
“Better a fucker, than a fuck-ee, Blaine. But I don’t gotta tell you that now, do I?”
***
Blaine was in the fifth-floor john and splashing cold water on his face. He heard the toilet behind him flush and felt like that could very well be his career.
Detective Wilson from vice came out of the stall and started to wash his hands. Steam rose up from the sink, and he grimaced at the water’s heat. “How I manage to get in hot water here as well as in my job, I’ll never know.”
Blaine knew he was referring to the Stanson case, an ugly bit of backbiting politics mixed in with the sordid crime only one hyped-up psycho with a god complex could commit. Wilson had been caught in the middle of it, accused of being a little too rough with Stanson. Blaine couldn’t blame him after he heard what had really gone on in that interrogation room.
“There’s hot water everywhere, man,” Blaine said, drying his face with a paper towel. “I’m glad you’re being cleared.”
“Me, too.” Wilson took a paper towel as well. “Hey, I heard you were part of the team that brought the Tongue Killer down last night. Congratulations. I never had that much excitement as a uniform.”
He clapped Blaine on the back and left the room.
“Trust me, it’s not the kind of excitement you want,” Blaine said to the empty room.
He looked at himself in the mirror. Blaine saw a guy who was getting older, a man that wished a whole lot of things were different right now.
He wasn’t sure if he was the man Maggie saw when she looked at him. And Blaine didn’t think Scott saw the truth either.
What Huntley had done was wrong. It was a slippery slope for Blaine to be traversing here, turning a blind eye to the lack of Huntley’s all-important sentence, “Police, freeze, put your hands in the air,” and then shooting an unarmed man.
Those words were the difference between a righteous shoot and one that was murder. Blaine knew his meeting with Internal Affairs that afternoon was going to be the point where he said what he knew, or he said what he wished he didn’t.
He thought of Maggie, and the way her dark eyes would look if she found out about Scott. It would be almost as bad as when she had looked up at him over their little daughter’s hospital bed and said, “She’s gone, John. Linda’s gone.”
Christ, what was he going to do?
Blaine made his way to Homicide. He went the long way around, using the little used hallway by the supply room.
When he got to the squad room, he saw Starsky finishing their reports.
Starsky looked up when he heard the Homicide’s door open. “There you are. You’re just in time to sign off on this.” He pulled the report out of the typewriter. The grating noise it made coming off the roller made John jump.
“I just ran into the detective who was just down at the hospital. The woman’s name is Joanne Belker, and she’s a nurse’s assistant at the Veteran’s Center. She’s gonna be there a week, but should be fine. The guy, Mark Sinclair, cornered her while she was dropping something off at church.”
Blaine nodded.
“The detective said all Sinclair wanted was for her to say, ‘I love you.’ And that he was going to cut her tongue out so that it was the last thing she ever said.” Starsky took a deep breath. “That man was a monster.”
“He was insane, certainly,” though Blaine agreed more with Starsky’s choice of words.
He looked over the report his partner had finished, grabbed a pen off the desk, and signed it. “When’s your appointment with IA?”
Starsky looked at his watch. “In about twenty minutes. I’ve never had one of these before. Do you have any hints for me?”
“Only one. Tell the truth.”
Starsky smiled. “Seems pretty obvious.”
“You’d think so anyway.”
Later, as Blaine sat in his interview with Internal Affairs, he told the truth as well.
But only to a certain point.
When he went home to Maggie that night, she met him at the door with a worried look. “Did everything go all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess so.” He hung his jacket and holster up in the front closet. “There’s even talk of a commendation out of the whole thing.”
He pulled her to him and buried his face in her dark hair. She smelled like warmth and soap and his beautiful Maggie. “God, Mags. I love you so much.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
***
They were both sitting on the couch at Hutch’s place, beers in hand and the television on. Mission Impossible had bled into Love, American Style, which had faded off into Bonanza. Starsky hadn’t said a thing since Hoss had been elected sheriff of a town called Trouble and was finding out how much trouble it really was.
“Are you all right?” Hutch asked.
“Just thinking about the nefarious Clanton Gang, and how I’m glad they’re not my problem.”
“Is that that really what you’re thinking about?” Hutch reached over and turned the set off. “Because that was last week’s episode.”
Starsky kept staring at the blank screen. He put his head back against the sofa. “Hutch, I drew my weapon yesterday, and while I didn’t fire it, I saw someone’s head get blown off.”
Hutch put his hand on Starsky’s thigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Hutch put his head back as well and then let it shift so that their temples were touching. “We’ve got mandatory, paid time off and an appointment with the department shrink. At least the IA thing is over.”
“No kidding.”
“Mine wasn’t too bad, but then I wasn’t in the thick of it later, like you guys were. What exactly happened down in that basement?”
“What do you mean, what exactly happened? You’ve read the report. I made it into the room just as Huntley took Sinclair down. Apparently, he’d come after the both of them with a knife.”
“‘Apparently’? Did you use that word with IA?”
“I don’t remember. But since I didn’t actually see that part, I must have used a word like it. In any case, it all worked out well.” Starsky brought his hands up to his face and rubbed it. “Detective Collins cornered me in the parking lot today and congratulated me for my help in bringing down The Tongue, as the press is calling that sick guy. Collins said he’d been on the force four years before he ever had to draw his weapon.”
Starsky sighed. “I’m guessing he meant it as a compliment, but it mostly made me feel sad. And afraid. Hutch,” Starsky said, turning, moving Hutch’s head over. “It all happened so goddamned fast. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it happened at all. And then I think, one minute we get a call and the next minute I’m thinking this could be my, or John’s, last minutes on this earth.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing to bring up with the shrink?”
“Fuck that. I don’t need someone messing around in there. I just need a little time.”
“Maybe,” Hutch said. “And speaking of messing around…”
“Now, that’s the best idea I’ve heard all week, Blondie.”
***
A month later, Starsky and Blaine were patrolling the fifth sector. They’d been on the job for three weeks now, having finished their mandatory time off.
Starsky spent his time looking at car ads, walking on the beach and watching a lot of television.
He’d gone over to Ted McDermott’s place mid-week for supper. Ted’s wife, Ellen, was expecting a baby and moving slow, so Starsky and Ted theatrically made a meal of beans and wieners. They put Ted’s little sister in charge of setting the table and making coleslaw.
Then, he and Ted sat up late and talked about their jobs. Starsky felt a longing move through him as he thought of Ted, of Ted’s wonderful wife, their upcoming baby and comfortable home, and wondered when all that would feel right for him.
Starsky also spent a lot of time in Hutch’s bed.
He teased him, saying Hutch’s mattress was far more comfortable than his, a hand-me-down from one of Al’s buddies, a mechanic named Merle DuBois. That mattress was lumpy, but it also smelled faintly of motor oil, a comfortable odor that made Starsky have sweet dreams of sleeping in a car, one that shimmered red and white.
During that week, Starsky knew Hutch’s plants were enjoying the forced attention; he’d started several cuttings and had repotted the rubber plant, something Starsky had a great deal of fun asking about.
“Tell me again, Hutch, which plant got the bigger pot?”
“Shut up, Starsk.”
Starsky wasn’t sure how Blaine spent the week; Starsky wondered if he and Maggie went to a lot of afternoon matinee movies. He’d called once and gotten no answer.
When they got back on the job, Blaine had been morose company. He was quiet enough; Starsky had almost asked him if Maggie was all right, or if there was something else wrong.
He’d kept on eye on Blaine while he anticipated the scut work and did what he could to make things easier for the man.
Then after the first week, Blaine’s mood had started to improve, and Starsky began to watch him less.
“It’s awfully quiet out here,” Starsky remarked, looking out at the darkened streets. There had been a light rain that had done nothing but make things feel slightly damp.
“Quiet is good. That’s the way we like it, because you know now how fast things can fall apart,” Blaine said.
“Really,” Starsky said, remembering the night Sinclair had been shot. That whole thing had been surreal. When he thought about that night, Starsky felt as though his brain was full of monkeys leaping from one tree to another, screeching, howling and moving too quickly to track.
He wanted to ask Blaine about all this, but he was leery of messing with his partner’s possible fragile mood.
Starsky thought of how quickly things could become something else entirely.
Like when the flip of a switch makes a room go from light to dark.
Like the fraction of time it took for Huntley’s bullet to turn the complicated Mark Sinclair into liquid, bone, and very dirty laundry.
Like the arc of a heavy apartment door that caused Starsky’s parents to lose a daughter in the space of a few seconds.
A minute after receiving a 452 over the radio, Blaine and Starsky were chasing a guy down a darkened alley.
And then Blaine was down, blood pooling on the ground underneath him.
Starsky held his jacket against the wound.
Blaine’s eyes were half closed. “Hurts,” he mumbled.
“I know. Just hang on, John, hang on.”
“Hurts.”
“Hold on. An ambulance will be here soon,” Starsky said, thinking of the frightened face that poked out the third story window a moment ago, the one to which he’d yelled, “Officer down. Call it in!”
“Hurts.” John’s eyes closed a little more. “Scott… Maggie.”
“Shhhh. I’ll call her. You’re gonna be all right.” Starsky kept saying this last sentence over and over again until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He realized the alley was now full of sound and light. Where the hell did all that come from, he thought?
He looked up and saw Hutch. His face was pinched with concern. “You all right, Starsk?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. “But John…”
“He’s gonna be fine.” Hutch took his arm and pulled him aside, giving the two paramedics room to work.
Huntley knelt down. “John, you’re gonna be fine.”
Starsky couldn’t tell if Blaine had heard him or not. His eyes were almost closed, and Starsky could see just a sliver of blue. It didn’t look like he was focusing on anything.
Hutch helped Starsky stand. He reached over and picked up Starsky’s uniform coat, now dark with blood.
“I’ll take care of Blaine’s squad,” Huntley put his hand on Starsky’s arm. “Hutch will drive you to the hospital. Then I’ll catch up with you there for your report.”
“Maggie?” Starsky heard himself ask.
“I’ve already called her. Her sister’s bringing her to the hospital.”
Starsky felt a twinge of anger. Maggie shouldn’t have had to hear about this over the phone and from someone she didn’t know well. Starsky should have been the one to tell her and drive her over.
He helped the paramedics lift the gurney into the back of the ambulance and shut the doors. Starsky gave the door two sharp raps with his fist.
Then he allowed Hutch to herd him to a squad car.
***
Hutch thought that prison and hospital waiting rooms must have had the same interior decorators. They had the same faded linoleum tiles, molded plastic chairs and color of paint on the walls, a hue Hutch thought must have the name Early American Institutional.
But one thing prisons didn’t have were vending machines.
Hutch had just put too many quarters in the one in front of him and had administered a sharp kick as well. Finally, the thing spit out two cups and filled them with something that looked and smelled more like tea.
Hutch walked back to the room where Starsky was sitting. Starsky stood up quickly when he heard the door open. Hutch said sheepishly, “It’s just me. And two of the most expensive cups of coffee I’ve ever bought.”
Hutch handed one to Starsky and was surprised that he drank it without complaint. “Heard anything yet?” Hutch asked.
“Nope.”
“Where’s Maggie?”
“Her sister took her down to the cafeteria to try to find something to eat. Seeing how the joint’s probably closed, I think it was more for the change of scenery.” Starsky sat back down, put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Man, Hutch. One minute we’re fine, the next minute we’re…”
Hutch sat down next to him and put his hand on his thigh. “I know.”
Starsky sat for a moment and then said, “Hutch, John said two names in that alley. It seemed like he was asking for two people, Maggie and someone named Scott. I was thinking I should call this guy. The only problem is I don’t know who Scott is?”
“A brother?”
“John doesn’t have any brothers or cousins. And he and Maggie’s only child was Linda, and she died years ago of leukemia.”
“There’s no one at the precinct named Scott? Maybe it’s a last name?”
“I can’t think of anyone. I’ll ask Maggie about it.”
Just then, the doctor came around the corner.
And he was smiling.
***
Maggie handed Starsky a wooden spoon and a hot pad. “Stir that, would you?”
Starsky lifted the lid off the crock-pot and let the steam envelop his face. He stuck his pinky in it and licked it off. “Man, this is delicious.”
“David, it’s just sloppy joes, nothing special. I think it’s more like hunger is the best spice.”
“Maybe so, but even starving, my ma’s sloppy joes weren’t nearly as good…”
“Tsk, tsk. I’ll make sure I tell her that in my next letter.”
“…on the other hand, Ma’s goulash was a masterpiece straight from the old country.”
Maggie slapped Starsky’s hand before he could take a second taste. “Get out of there, David. Here,” she said, handing him a bottle of milk. “Go put that on the table. Then get the bowls and spoons.”
Starsky set the kitchen table, a grey-flecked, Formica dinette set. “John’s looking good.”
Maggie smiled. “He is, isn’t he? The doctors are impressed with his progress. And John says the timing couldn’t have been better. The six weeks he’s been on medical leave has given him a lot of time to study for the detective’s exam.”
“He’ll do fine on that thing.”
“Yes, yes he will.”
“Say, Maggie. I was going to ask you something. After John had been… injured, he asked for two people, you and someone named Scott. Who’s Scott?”
Maggie’s back was turned to him as she opened the oven door. “I think you must have misheard. He doesn’t know anyone named Scott.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”
She took a pie out of the oven and set it on the counter.
She turned the oven off.
Maggie washed her hands at the kitchen sink.
Then she turned around. “He was probably saying he’d been ‘shot.'”
Starsky sensed he shouldn’t press it, and he almost asked something about her sister.
“John’s a good man, David.”
“You’re always telling that, Maggie. I know he’s a good man.”
“I guess what I’m trying to tell you is…”
“Is that Maggie’s delicious apple pie I smell?” John stood at the doorway. He was leaning on a cane and had a bottle of wine in his hand.
“You’ve got a good nose, John.” Maggie wiped her hands on a dishtowel and took the bottle from him. “Wine with sloppy joes?”
“Your cooking can hold its own no matter what it is. But it’s not the food so much as the company. And I think this is a wine evening tonight.” Blaine moved over to the drawer and took out a corkscrew.
“I think the honors need to be done by someone with two hands.” He handed it to Starsky. “I’m just about ready to lose the cane, so the docs tell me, but I’ve got it a few more days at least.”
Starsky poured three glasses of wine, and Blaine made a toast. “Here’s to good friends, family, and good health.”
Starsky clinked his glass against Blaine’s and then Maggie’s. He wondered at the mysteries of true love as he watched them meet each other’s eyes.
“Now,” Blaine said. “Let’s eat.”
***
Huntley was on his second pack of cigarettes. He and Hutch were sitting in the living room and watching Mannix.
“You think Mannix and Peggy Fair are getting it on?”
“His secretary?”
“One and the same. She’s a dark treat.”
Hutch quickly looked over at the kitchen door. Doris was in there. From the sound of the running water, it sounded as though she was washing dishes.
He hated it when Huntley talked like that. He knew his partner loved his wife. Hell, Huntley adored Doris. He talked about her all the time and always with the utmost respect.
So what was with the crude comments Huntley made from time to time? Did he think it was the way to relate to a young, single rookie?
Hutch decided not to answer the question. “I hear you and Blaine are sitting in on the detective exam next week. Any worries?”
“You mean, will Blaine pass, and I won’t?”
“Of course not,” Hutch lied. “I meant…”
“I know what you meant, Kenny. And that’s okay. I’m thinking the third time will be the charm.” He made his hand into a gun, pretended to shoot it, and then blew on his forefinger. “That’s what they say anyway.”
Doris announced from the living room door that dinner was ready.
“That’s my lady.” Luke grinned. “She’s one fabulous cook.”
Hutch had to agree. She’d made French Onion Soup with melted cheese on top, had roasted Cornish game hens with herbs cooked under the skin and prepared a salad with sections of fresh grapefruit.
“Leave room for dessert, you two.”
Huntley patted his belly. “You’re gonna make us as fat as a couple of lions, Doris. You didn’t need to go through all this trouble.”
Hutch thought he saw a bit of hurt flash over her face. “It’s no trouble,” Doris said. “I’ve got the time. What else would I be doing, Luke?”
This time it was Huntley’s face that had a brief spark of pain. “I guess so.”
He looked over at Hutch. “I’m betting Doris has made her famous Tunnel of Fudge Cake. Am I right?”
“You are correct, Luke,” Doris said, rising to take Hutch’s plate.
He got up to help, but Luke pulled him down. “Doris has got this all under control.”
Hutch wondered what the look on Doris’ face was as she heard this remark. He was glad her back was to the table.
Later, when Hutch was getting ready to leave, Huntley went into the kitchen and brought out a paper plate with a piece of the bundt cake on it.
“Give this to Starsky to give to Blaine, would you? I hear Tunnel of Fudge Cake is his favorite.”
Hutch took it from the man and wondered about the real reason Huntley had gone through the trouble.
***
“I hear you’re back at work, and that you’re doing fine.”
“‘You hear’?” Blaine looked up sharply. “From whom?”
Scott took another packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee. It was a sign he was upset.
“Actually, no one. I’m just making a guess. But that’s the point isn’t it, John.” He looked up. “I never hear anything. We live in completely separate worlds.” His eyes looked sad. “You know how I found out you’d been shot?”
Blaine shook his head. He’d never asked.
“I made two trips to the Lantern, one on the night we usually meet and then one the next night, thinking that one of us got the date wrong, though after nearly two years it seemed unlikely. After both times I went home alone and was terrified. I didn’t know whom to call. I couldn’t call your house, call your partner, and we don’t have any mutual friends. Then I saw the shooting on the news. I gotta tell you, John, hearing you described as ‘area cop’ in the same sentence as ‘severely wounded’ just about killed me.”
John put his hand over Scott’s and then took it back. He’d forgotten they were at the Koffee Kup, a diner near the library. It wasn’t one of their usual haunts.
Scott looked down at their two sets of hands, now far apart. “It just got me to thinking. You could’ve died, and not only wouldn’t I have been told, but I would have had to do some pretty fancy footwork to appear at your funeral. Your dear ones would be in the front row, and me? I’d be this odd stranger hovering by the door.”
Blaine didn’t know what to say. What Scott said was true.
Scott looked at his watch. “You know, I’d better go. I’ve got a couple of clients coming in to talk about the Cooper account.”
“Scott, that’s not the truth. You closed the Cooper account two months ago.”
He looked up at Blair. He seemed to be embarrassed to be caught in the lie. “See, more proof you do listen to me. I didn’t think you’d remember that.”
“I always listen to you. But why the lie?”
“I guess I was just giving you an out here, John, a graceful way to point you home.”
Blaine shook his head. “I don’t want that, Scott. Not at all.” He picked up the diner receipt and put a five-dollar bill on it. “Let’s get out of here. Come with me to the St. Francis. No one’s expecting me home until three. I told Maggie I had a stake-out.”
Scott stared at his face for almost a full minute. Then he said, “Okay.”
***
He felt himself finally slip out of Hutch. They’d been lying together for ten minutes, basking in the afterglow of some pretty terrific sex.
“I’m gonna grab something. Don’t go anywhere, buddy.”
“Like I could move right now.”
“Luckily, one of us can.”
Starsky got up, went into the bathroom and wet a washcloth. He washed himself off and then rinsed the cloth for Hutch. “Here,” he said, as he handed it to him. “It’s even toasty warm.”
Hutch took if from him and wiped at himself. He dropped the rag onto the floor by the bed. Then he rolled over onto his belly and put his face in the crook of his arm. “Been thinking.”
Starsky thought, oh no.
“If you’re not… I mean… I need…” Hutch continued. “Starsky, I’ve been talking to a lawyer.”
“Hutch…” Starsky said carefully. “Have you been smokin’ something? What do you need a lawyer for?”
“I’ve been talking to Van.” His voice was muffled. “I’m going to finalize the divorce. Three years is long enough.”
Starsky felt like a concrete brick dropped to the bottom of his stomach. Was Hutch getting serious about a chick? He tried to think of who it might be. The bank teller who was bad at math? That veterinarian assistant who loved tennis more than animals? Or maybe it was that chick Hutch had mentioned, Kate Larabee, one of Van’s friends?
Carefully feeling his way through the conversational minefield, he ventured, “Why a divorce now? You got a woman in mind to settle down with?”
Hutch shrugged. “If I did, we’d certainly have to stop doing this. I take my marriage vows seriously.”
“We’ve been fucking for three years, and that whole time you’ve been officially married to Van. How serious is that?” Starsky said, feeling mean.
“We didn’t have sex before Van and I were separated. In my mind, that marriage has been over the whole time we’ve been, as you put it, fucking.”
“Christ, that sounds like some major hair-splitting.”
“No, at least not in my book. See, I know what it is I want. It’s you who are the hair-splitter, Starsky.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Van used to tell me that every time I lit a cigarette for her, she could tell I was lying. That used to piss me off.”
“Your point, Hutch, even though I think I know where you’re headed?”
“We have sex. Yet you tell me you’re not gay.”
Starsky hated the way Hutch kept bringing this up. Why couldn’t he just leave it the hell alone? So, they had sex? And Hutch was more important to him than a brother. And he figured he and Hutch would be together the rest of their lives, so what was with this crazy thing Hutch thought he had to do, putting a label on it. Who cared?
“I’m not gay. I’ve never kissed you on the mouth. I dig chicks, and we both sleep with them,” Starsky reminded him. “That means you’re not gay either.”
“You’re telling me we have sex out of boredom? Lack of opportunity?”
“Hutch, what the hell does your divorce have to do with this?”
“It’s just time to move on, that’s all.”
“Move on?” Starsky hated the way that sounded, like he was something to get past, to get over.
“Sure. It’s pretty clear what we do is just messing around, not that serious,” Hutch said, his voice quiet.
“What do you mean, not that serious?”
Hutch rolled over and looked at the ceiling. Starsky was glad he wasn’t looking at him. “This sex thing we do, it’s just screwing.”
“The hell it is!”
“If it’s more than that, then what is it?”
“Are you trying to get me to say that I’m gay? Is this what this is all about?”
“No.”
“Then why are you all of a sudden treating this like it’s nothing, or like it’s an illness we have to get over?”
“Starsky, I’m just saying that I’m finding this… this confusing. If I’m going to keep sleeping with chicks, then I need to have the possibility of maybe one of them being, you know… the one.”
“The one what?”
“The one I end up with. Fuck, isn’t that the whole big plan for men, for women?”
“The plan? Whose plan?”
“Starsk, there’s no way I’d ever be married and cheat on my wife, even with you.”
“It wouldn’t be cheating because… because I’m not gay.”
“Okay. You’re not. But if I’m going to move ahead, then… Starsky, I’d say we’d gotten off on the wrong foot, but that would mean I never had a chance to get off my fucking knees.”
Hutch’s words fell like anvils and made Starsky’s heart twist.
There was a long silence. Starsky asked, afraid of the answer, “You really mean that?” There was an even longer silence.
Hutch kept staring up at the ceiling. Then he made a choking sound. “No. No, I don’t mean it, and I… I can’t believe I said it. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, Starsk. It’s just my frustration talking.”
“Frustration? I don’t get it.”
“I know. Sometimes I think I don’t either.”
“Why do you insist on putting a label on it, Hutch?”
“You’re right. All it does is make both of us angry. And that’s not my intention. Life is complicated, Starsk, and who am I to try to figure it out?” His voice said one thing. His eyes seemed to be saying another. “I just think that hey, this is something we just shouldn’t talk about anymore.”
Starsky reached for Hutch and rolled him over to him. He could see moisture in Hutch’s eyes. It made something ache in the back of his throat.
“Oh, buddy,” Starsky said, putting his arms around him. The smooth, broad back under his body felt like home.
Suddenly, Hutch flipped him over and pinned him down. Hutch’s breath was at the back of his neck. “I love you, you know. That’s something I don’t want you ever to forget.”
“I know,” Starsky said. “And I want you to take what you need, because it’s what I need, too.”
***
The Last Call Bar wasn’t a bad place. The beer was cold, the john didn’t stink, and Starsky loved the idea of having permission to toss peanut shells on the floor.
He also like the old movie posters on the wall, especially the one of Bela Lugosi’s first film mounted above the cigarette machine.
“Here’s to our daring arrest, partner,” Hutch said, raising his beer bottle to Starsky.
Starsky gave it a slight tap, “And to many, many more.”
They both took a long drink.
Hutch put his bottle down on the newspaper between them. It was the Daily Dispatch, the edition that had just reported their apprehension of Deek, a mass murderer out of Indiana.
Deek was Starsky and Hutch’s first big arrest after being paired together in uniform.
It was Hutch’s good eye and Starsky’s good nose that led them to link a tip from Fred “Fig” Newton to information on the APB. It ultimately brought them to the careless Deek himself as the man pawned a watch for a lid of LSD.
Blaine, promoted to detective and working upstairs, had personally come to see them bring Deek into Lock-Up. He congratulated them both. “Maggie will be so proud.”
Huntley, now a detective at the Two Six, sent over a memo a few days later. “I caught this at roll call, Hutchinson, you sly dog, and now it’s all over the news. Seeing how I taught you everything I know, it won’t be long before you’re out of uniform, too. I’m betting on next year. And maybe you’ll drag that sorry partner along with you, too.”
“We did good, Starsk,” Hutch smiled and finished up his beer.
“That we did.” Starsky folded up the newspaper section and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“I’ve got to get going.” Hutch cleared his throat. “I don’t want to be late for Jennifer.”
Starsky didn’t look up. “What are you two doing tonight?”
“We’re going down to that theater by the university to catch the film I was telling you about.”
“That movie, ‘The Cow’? She’s braver than I am. And let me tell you, buddy, if your idea of foreplay is watching an Iranian movie about a man who goes insane after his beloved cow dies, then you weren’t going to get lucky with me tonight anyway.”
Hutch laughed. Then he took out his wallet, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and put it down on the table.
Starsky looked up for the first time. “Hey, don’t come by later even if you strike out, even if it’s early. I need my beauty sleep.”
Hutch nodded. “But we’re still on for tomorrow, right? You’ve got the tickets for the car show?”
Starsky patted the back of his jeans. “They’re right here. Two passes to see some of the finest pieces of transportation 1972 has to offer.”
“I can hardly wait. It’s hard to imagine anything beating a Gremlin or a Vega.”
“Those are shit cars. I’m gonna be on the lookout for the new Ford Torino model. My Uncle Al was talking it up last night.”
“Last night? I thought you had a date with Carol last night.”
“Nah. It was just me and Al, chili out of a can, and the ball game on the radio.”
“Sounds like quite the evening.” Hutch winked.
“It was, actually.” He looked up at the clock over the bar. “You leavin’ or what?”
“I am.”
Starsky watched him walk out of the bar.
He knew Hutch was working on his next broken heart. Jennifer would warm Hutch’s cockles and then disappear in a puff of post-coital smoke. It had been that way for years.
After the last one, a perky redhead named Buffy, Starsky had asked Hutch, “I’m amazed she lasted a month, pal. She didn’t like jazz, tennis, or me, for that matter.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Hutch had said.
“I thought she’d captured your heart.”
“My heart doesn’t even enter the equation, pal.”
Starsky thought back to that conversation and felt bad. He sighed and ordered another beer.
This place wasn’t so bad, he thought as he looked around. The jukebox was decent, the beer was cold, and you could get a frozen pizza from the place next door without even leaving the building. You placed your order through a tiny door by the bathroom, and picked your pizza up when the guy on the other side rang a little bell.
But even after coming to the Last Call Bar for the last month, it still didn’t feel right. Starsky thought about Hutch out on his date with Jennifer. They’d probably have some deep conversation about the symbolism of Persian food and wool rugs and cows before the night was over.
Starsky finished his beer and headed home. He fell asleep watching Honeymoon for One on the “Late, Late, Late Show.”
***
The next night, after the auto show, they went back to Starsky’s place.
As he pulled Hutch down to his body, Starsky smelled the lingering scent of motor oil, gasoline, and that new car smell.
He groaned as he felt his partner’s hands on his chest, the back of his neck, and fingers running through his hair.
Then, before he had a chance to think and stop himself, Starsky was touching another man’s mouth with his own and moving his tongue over Hutch’s teeth. He felt the intimacy of another part of his partner’s interior he hadn’t felt before.
Starsky took him in and felt Hutch respond, at first tentatively, and then they were feasting on each other like starving men.
Even as Starsky felt pleasure move through him like a lit fuse, he didn’t think he could talk about it later.
There was no way he could give it all a word.
But right now, right here, it all felt incredibly right.
***
They stood on the street and looked up at the sign over the bar. Hutch commented, “Oh, please, the name of this place sounds like some sort of pedophilic sex ranch.”
“It’s not. It’s supposed to be a great place with good food and cold beer. It’s just the place we’re looking for.” Starsky pulled his sleeve.
“Fishstick didn’t recommend it, did he?”
“Nope. I got this lead from the guy at the car wash.”
“Stan’s Spic and Span? I thought that place was closed down.”
“It is. But not before Freddie was able to clue me in.”
Starsky opened the door, put his hand on the small of his buddy’s back and ushered Hutch in.
A tall, black scarecrow of a man was tending bar. He was wearing stiff Wrangler jeans, a beret and a fringed, leather vest over an orange turtleneck.
The man looked up at them and said, “Well, what do we have here? A couple of shrewd dudes looking for good food, good brewed, and a good mood.”
Hutch looked at Starsky. Starsky looked at Hutch. And they both looked back at their host.
“You two want to order something or you just gonna stand there and stare?” the bartender asked.
They ended up taking a booth in the back and getting a couple of burger baskets.
Many years later, Hutch would laugh when this story came up, just like he was doing today.
They were sitting on the porch in lawn chairs, driven there by way of the back yard when the sun had gotten too intense.
Hutch’s feet were propped up on the rail. He had a glass of ice tea in one hand and the remains of a peeled orange on his belly was in danger of hitting the floor as he chuckled.
Starsky was next to him; his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose and a copy of Newsweek on his lap. “The first time we went to Huggy Bear’s, you said it sounded like a sex place.”
“Yeah. How was I to know it was a place that wasn’t too small, too big, too hot, too cold but juuuust right?”
“And remember what I said to you after we ordered those first two Huggy Bear Specials?”
“Not precisely, but I do remember you called me Goldilocks.”
“And you punched me in the arm,” Starsky reminded him.
“Yes, I did.” Hutch yawned. “I’m headed in for a nap.”
And Starsky said, “I think I’ll join you.”
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1 comment
Zinniat, I’m disappointed that you have no additional stories on this site. I really enjoyed this one. I’ll search for you elsewhere. Or maybe you’ll actually see this comment. ?