Hopscotch

_______________________________________

by

TERI WHITE

Artwork: Ruth Kurz

Proofreading: Ellen K.

Published October 1979 by Teri White.

 

You say that you are fearful for
the future and you have grown
suspicious of the past;
You wonder if the dreams we shared
together have abandoned us or we
abandoned them…
and you cast about and try to find
new meaning, so you can feel that
closeness once again.
–Mann/Yarrow/Weill

I

While in the Los Angeles Public Library one day, he saw a book by John Steinbeck, the title of which seemed to sum up his emotional state perfectly. It was called THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT. The title intrigued him so much that he took the volume from the shelf and thumbed through it a little. In the end, though, he replaced it and continued to his original destination, the mystery section, to pick out a couple of books for Starsky.

Why read about it when he was living it?

The winter of Ken Hutchinson’s discontent had begun in September and lasted for over six months. More than one hundred and eighty days had passed since Starsky had been gunned down in the department parking lot. What began as pure and unadulterated terror rapidly degenerated into a constant and increasing irritation. The days of doubt, of not knowing whether or not Starsky would survive the massive damage that had been done to his body, wore harshly on Hutch — although he later joked about it, reducing it all to nothing more than a good way to drop twenty pounds he needed to lose anyway.

The irritation arrived somewhat later, when it was certain that not only would Starsky live, but that in all likelihood he would some day be able to come back on duty. After that was safely established, things began to get boring. Somehow, Hutch’s time off never seemed to coincide with the hospital’s visiting hours. After the infamous and impromptu dinner party in Starsky’s room, the officious beings in charge of such things had cracked down and enforced the rules, so Hutch was reduced to dashing in for a few minutes during the day. Beyond that, they just spent a lot of time talking on the telephone.

Things got a little better once his partner was allowed to go home. Well, not home exactly, since the doctor gave strict orders that Starsky was not to overdo. So he had moved, bag, baggage, and Fats Domino records, into Hutch’s place. That experience, once they had exhausted the pleasures of midnight pizza parties and marathon Monopoly games, proved to Hutch that sometimes no matter how much you love a person, it’s not always easy to live with him. It was with affectionate and sincere sighs of relief that they finally parted company when Starsky took up residence in his own apartment again.

The next weeks were rough on Starsky because he felt fine and wanted desperately to come back to work. Everyone else in the world, though, seemed involved in a conspiracy to keep him away. Well, not everybody in the world. Hutch sympathized and faithfully nagged Dobey daily to let him have his partner back, even on a limited basis. Dobey, thoroughly weary of listening to the blond detective register complaints (bitching, as Dobey muttered to his wife) about every other officer he was assigned to work with, held off as long as he could and, after consulting with the doctor, finally offered a compromise.

At least, he called it a compromise. Starsky called it something much less polite. Hutch just snickered. When all was said and done, though, Starsky decided that even serving temporarily in the supply room filling requisitions was better than one more day of the “Hollywood Squares” and the “Dating Game.” Admittedly, he would sort of miss “All My Children.”

So he came back to work, subbing for the vacationing Bigalow. At least he would be around the station and he would be doing something. Plus there were fringe benefits. Hutch could drop in a couple of times a day to shoot the breeze. And Starsky could make frequent visits to the cafeteria and talk to the cops there. He quickly became the favorite coffee break entertainment for several of the secretaries in the building.

It didn’t all go smoothly, of course. In direct violation of all departmental regulations, Starsky flatly refused to don a blue uniform. In fact, he seemed perversely determined to look even raunchier than usual, reaching his nadir one day by coming to work clad in his ragged jogging cut-offs and an old University of Minnesota T-shirt that had somehow vanished from Hutch’s premises at the same time Starsky moved back home.

Suffice it to say that David Starsky was not a happy man.

It might be added, in passing, that no one else was particularly thrilled with his work in the supply room either. Rumors of a planned lynching were thought by most observers to be somewhat exaggerated, but there was considerable support for a petition drive aimed at assigning the irascible supply clerk to school-crossing duty. Preferably somewhere out near Pasadena.

**

Spring that year was a long time coming. It finally arrived in the unlikely guise of a fat black police captain. Dobey strolled up to Hutch’s desk one sunny morning and dropped a folded piece of paper in front of the detective. Hutch glanced up from the report he was typing. “What’s that?”

“Look at it,” Dobey said, rocking back and forth on his heels, a thoroughly self-satisfied smirk on his face.

Hutch picked up the paper and unfolded it. As he read, a slow grin appeared on his lips. “This for real?” “You think I forged the Chief’s name? It’s for real.”

“Starsky’s really okay to go back on the street?”

“According to the doctor.”

Hutch smoothed the paper like a miser might caress his first dollar. “Jeez. I was beginning to think….” He broke off and looked at Dobey. “Can I go tell him?”

“Of course; who else?”

Hutch wasted no time in heading for the supply room. When he was still halfway down the hallway, he could hear all too clearly the angry shouts emanating from the area of Starsky’s domain. Having heard those (exaggerated) rumors of a necktie party, he quickened his steps and arrived in the middle of what looked like a touchy situation. To put it mildly.

Detective Mullins, a man who rivaled King Kong in both size and disposition, was poised at the counter, giving the distinct impression of being about ready to leap over the barrier and grab someone roughly by the neck. Since Starsky was the only person behind the counter, that someone was probably him.

Starsky did not appear to be the slightest bit intimidated by what gave every evidence of being his impending doom. He was, in fact, yelling at Mullins. The resulting confrontation more than vaguely resembled an attack by a pesky fly on a medium-sized elephant. Hutch leaned against the wall to watch. “I don’t read numbers!” Starsky yelled. Those four words had lately been the litany of the supply room. “Tell me what you want!”

Mullins rested both his beefy hands on the edge of the counter and Hutch flinched a little. “I told you three times — I want a B2482J.”

“Take your B2482J and shove it,” Starsky replied pleasantly. Stalking back to his desk, he sat down, propped his feet up next to the typewriter, and proceeded to ignore Mullins.

Mullins stared at him for one tense moment, while Hutch had terrible visions of his partner spending more time in the hospital; then the huge man muttered something under his breath and charged out of the room. Hutch held the door open for him. “Hi,” he said cheerfully, approaching the counter.

“Yeah,” Starsky replied.

Hutch pulled the requisition pad closer and carefully filled out one slip. “Could you get this for me, please?”

Starsky grunted and got up. He swept the form from the counter without looking at it and disappeared into the maze of shelves. Hutch could hear him muttering as he conducted a search. In about two minutes, his curly head peered out from around a corner. “There ain’t no such number.”

“Come on, Starsk,” Hutch said impatiently. “I’m busy. This is no time for games.”

“Yeah, well, you might be a big shot detective with lots of important cases to solve and I might be nothing but just a clerk,” Starsky said, glaring at him, “but there still ain’t no such number.”

“There has to be.”

Starsky came over and dropped the paper onto the counter. “Nope.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Beats me. What the hell is it you want anyway?”

“Like it says. A Z11100Y. I gotta have it, Starsk.”

Starsky gave him a dirty look. “Don’t give me a hard time, Hutch. I don’t read numbers. Write it out.”

Hutch nodded agreeably and bent over the paper to scribble a few words. Again without looking at what it said, Starsky took the order and vanished. A moment later, he wandered out of the storage area looking a little dazed. “Hutch,” he asked plaintively, “is this a joke?”

“Starsk, do I ever joke around on duty?”

Starsky just kept looking at him, his expression like that of a little boy who desperately wanted the Christmas present to be a new bicycle, but was afraid it would turn out to be only socks. “What’s it mean?”

“It means that I’m here to requisition one partner. I’m damned sick and tired of the substitutes they’ve been tossing at me and I want the real thing again.” He smiled faintly and held out the return-to-work order. “You may be a pain in the neck, Starsk, but I’m used to you.”

Starsky took the order, holding it as if the paper were a piece of priceless crystal. “You mean I’m really going back on the street?” he whispered.

“As of tomorrow.”

Starsky’s shout echoed all the way to Dobey’s office.

**

Gerald McPherson was perfectly aware of the fact that he was an object of some ridicule around the police department locker rooms. He’d once been a street cop and he knew all too well how the work he was doing now would be regarded in some quarters. It had been bad enough when he was a cop and a college student; the jokes made about his dedication to his studies would have filled a book.

But he had endured and it had all been worthwhile. Now he had the job he’d always wanted. Doctor Gerald McPherson was the departmental psychologist. He dealt day in and day out with members of the force, men and women who faced the occupational hazards of depression, hostility, fear. Many of those officers who made jokes in the locker rooms were also his patients.

McPherson was a tall, skinny redhead with a dry sense of humor that served him well. He smoked a pipe because, image-wise, he thought he should, at the same time worrying about getting cancer of the mouth.

Ken Hutchinson relaxed against the over-stuffed leather chair in McPherson’s too-small office. (The inadequate facilities were a reflection of his standing in the department; even the higher-ups who recognized his usefulness did not want too much priority given to him.) Hutchinson was grinning. “Good news, Doc,” he said before McPherson could even say hello.

“Really, Ken? What’s that?”

“My partner is coming back to work.”

McPherson was struggling to light his pipe. “Back to the street?”

“Right.” Hutch lightly, absently, tapped the arm of the chair. “Tomorrow. We’ll be working together again.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Hutch blinked. “What do you think? I’m damned glad.” There was a pause. “Hey, look, I know I’ve been a real bastard complaining about the other detectives I was working with. But it’s just that… Starsky is my partner, you know?”

McPherson nodded. Thinking he saw a flicker of flame, he sucked frantically. “No fears?” he mumbled after a moment.

“Fears?” Hutch frowned and leaned forward a little. “You mean, am I afraid of something? Like what? Getting killed? Starsky getting killed? What?”

“Anything.”

Hutch opened his mouth, then closed it again. In the past eight weeks, he’d discovered that flippant answers, unconsidered responses, wouldn’t work with the sharp-eyed McPherson. He thought for several minutes. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m not afraid.”

“Everybody’s afraid of something, Ken. It’s just that most people are too scared to admit it.” He smiled wryly. “They’re afraid of being afraid, especially cops. It’s not macho to admit that you might get the shakes or sweaty palms.”

“I got over the macho trip a long time ago.”

“When?”

Hutch grimaced; the man was never satisfied. “Well,” he said, “I think it happened when I was in Vietnam. I mean, going off to war, that was a sort of jock thing to do, you know? From collegiate athletics to the battlefields. A natural progression.” His tone was vaguely self-mocking. “Don’t you think?”

“Could be.”

“But once I was there… man, it all changed. One night I was walking through Saigon with three other MPs. Starsk was one of them. He and I were arguing about something… shit, something stupid, like who pitched the winning game of the 1948 World Series or something.” Hutch was gazing at an eight-by-ten color glossy of McPherson’s wife and two kids. “A VC infiltrator set off a bomb inside one of those little cafes. The whole thing blew up right in our faces. I went flying through a plate glass window and landed ass over heels. Starsky landed right next to me. I looked up and saw him bleeding all over the place. ‘Course, I was bleeding, too. He probably thought I was dead and I figured he was a goner for sure.”

He was quiet for a moment, rather vaguely watching his hands clench into tight fists. “The other two guys were dead. It looked like a fucking river of blood. People were screaming and there was a fire. Starsky just grabbed my hand and held on. That was the night we became partners. And even though it was awhile before we ended up together on the force, that night made us friends.” He sighed, seeming to shake off the memory. “What the hell was I talking about? Oh, macho trips. I think when you’ve got somebody else to consider, somebody else’s life to watch out for, then you can’t waste time on any power trip. You don’t need it any more.” He looked at McPherson and shrugged. “If that makes any sense.”

McPherson only nodded; he never committed himself.

“If I’m afraid of anything,” Hutch said, getting back to the original question, “I guess it would be losing control of my life.”

“That makes sense, Ken.”

“Yeah.” Hutch glanced at his watch. “I better go.”

“Same time next week?”

“Ahh…” Hutch started toward the door. “You know, I don’t think I need to come any more, Doc. Really. And you said in the beginning that the length of this whole thing was up to me. I feel a lot better about things now.”

“Because Starsky is coming back to work, you mean?”

“Yeah. I think it was just working with all those other people that was getting me down. I’ll be fine now.”

McPherson banged his pipe against the ashtray. “If you think so. But, Ken — ”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll be here, you know, if you want to talk again.”

“Thanks.” Hutch nodded. “Thanks a lot.” He left and walked quickly down the hall away from McPherson’s office.

II

Night.

Some cities are made to be nocturnal creatures; they do not really come alive until the artificial lights infuse them with existence. Paris is such a city, a huge, sleeping whore in the daytime, masking its real face behind a façade of staid business activity, and then turning frivolous and slightly naughty when the night falls. Or anyway, that is her reputation. Maybe, as in the case of many another fallen woman, the rumor exceeds the reality.

New York is another city that ought to exist only at night. During the day, it is nothing more than a grimy, bustling metropolis. The night people are the ones who really make that city the unique place it is. Whether they be the rich bitches flaunting what they have in the phony glamour of the discos or the dangerous street people who haunt the alleys and tenements, it is the people of the darkness who are the heartbeat of New York.

But then there’s Los Angeles. A different kind of place. Los Angeles does not really exist after dark. That city needs the glaring, smog-diffused sunshine in order to live. Maybe it’s because the City of Angels is more a dream than a reality, more the creation of movie makers than insurance salesmen. The sunshine disguises the hard edge of the hustling that goes on. Under its benevolent glow everyone looks tanned and successful, ready to take a meeting on the biggest break of their lives. It’s all lights, camera, action. The whole city is “on.”

It all changes at night, though. Like a middle-aged starlet exposed to the harsh reality of electric lights, Los Angeles suffers after dark. Its glamour fades. The worst part of it is that no one in the city seems to realize it and they go on pretending. The sunlit phony excitement seems to ripen as the golden glow fades. Sometime between midnight and dawn, it all goes bad. The rot is almost palatable.

That’s Los Angeles.

**

“Hutch?”

There was no answer.

“Detective Hutchinson?”

Silence from the other side of the car.

“Hey, Baby Blue!”

“What?” Hutch said wearily.

“Well, finally. Thought maybe you were turning petrified there.”

“Maybe I am. I feel petrified.”

“What time is it?”

Hutch didn’t even bother to glance at his wrist. “It’s five minutes later than it was the last time you asked me. When the hell are you going to buy a new watch?”

“Soon. I just don’t want to rush into anything.” Starsky raised his arm and studied it, as if visualizing the ideal timepiece upon his wrist. “When I buy one, I want it to be perfect. I intend for my next watch to last a lifetime.”

“A watch is a watch,” Hutch said flatly.

Starsky gave him a disgusted look. “Sometimes you can be a real peasant.”

“This is my final warning, Starsk. Buy a watch, or I’m going to start charging whenever I have to tell you what time it is.”

“Terrific,” Starsky mumbled.

The sleepy repartee dwindled away. If either of the detectives gave even a passing thought to Starsky’s most recent watch, an inspired timepiece constructed of white gold and sporting seven dials that he’d almost learned to read, neither of them mentioned it. Hutch didn’t even remember what he’d done with the broken pieces of glass and metal that he had so carefully collected from the parking lot at headquarters. Undoubtedly the remnants still bearing their grisly traces of dried blood were resting in a box or drawer someplace, just waiting to be discovered one day when he least expected it. By then, perhaps, the shattered fragments of jewelry would be just a half-forgotten souvenir of some terrible once-upon-a-time. Maybe. Hutch had a lot of memories shoved away in boxes and in the dark corners of his mind. Too many.

Starsky shifted slightly in the seat and pulled from beneath his butt a paper bag half-filled with French fries. “You’re a lot of fun sometimes.”

Hutch leaned forward and rested his chin on the steering wheel, staring glumly into the slowly-dying Los Angeles night. “Fun?” he muttered. “You want to talk about fun? Well, partner, let me say that spending ten hours cooped up in a car with you and your moveable delicatessen is not exactly my idea of a good time, either. In fact, it ranks just behind an attack of the stomach flu.”

Starsky sampled a flattened French fry. “You know,” he commented morosely, “if I was a sensitive kind of guy, I might be deeply hurt by some of the things you say to me.”

Hutch pulled his jacket closed against the pre-dawn chill. “S’at so?”

 

 

“Yes, that’s so.” He was still eating. “But luckily, I have a very thick skin, so none of your sarcastic cracks bothers me at all.”

“That’s nice.”

Finishing the last fry, Starsky crumpled the sack and shoved it into the already overflowing litter bag. He groped around on the seat again and came up with a half-finished Forever Yours bar. A Jack Homer expression crossed his face. He studied the teeth indentations in the chocolate. “Is this mine or yours?”

Hutch gave the candy — or maybe his partner — a scathing glance. “You’re not serious?”

“I guess it’s mine,” Starsky said sheepishly.

“Good guess.”

For several minutes the car was quiet, save for the sounds that accompanied the complete destruction of the candy bar and the subsequent disposal of the wrapper. “Hey,” Starsky said finally, licking the last of the chocolate from his fingers.

“What?”

“Do you know how many hours we’ve spent on all-night stakeouts?”

“All together, you mean?”

“Right. The sum total.”

Hutch thought about it for a moment, but his brain was too tired to work on the logistics of the problem, so he shrugged and gave up. “No. How many?”

“A lot of hours,” Starsky said firmly. “That’s how many.”

Hutch managed, barely, to resist the urge to pound his head against the steering wheel. “You’re a genius, Starsk, you know that? Somebody ought to certify you.”

“Thanks for saying so.” Starsky yawned hugely and a vague hint of burrito wafted across the car toward Hutch. “You don’t care, maybe I’ll try to get some sleep.”

“Good idea,” Hutch said, figuring that the sound of Starsky snoring was bound to be less annoying than the absurdities of his late-night conversation. Besides, if he didn’t sleep, he’d probably start with the card tricks next and Hutch didn’t think he was up to that. “Hey, watch out!” he added sharply as an Adidas-clad foot sideswiped his head.

“Sorry.” Starsky dropped heavily into the back and tried to stretch his 5’11” frame out comfortably in the somewhat smaller seat of the Torino. Despite his best efforts, one foot lingered in the front, dangling approximately three inches from Hutch’s ear.

He closed his eyes, determined to ignore the dismal fact that the only part of him destined to get much sleep in this position was his cramped left arm. Already he could feel it getting numb.

Hutch spent a couple of minutes humming to himself. “Starsk?” he said finally. “You asleep?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“What’d you want?”

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

He opened his eyes. “You might as well tell me now.”

“I just had an idea….”

“Should I get out my notebook and write it down?”

“You want to hear what I have to say or listen to your own wisecracks?”

Starsky tried to massage some feeling back into his arm. “I’m dying to hear your idea, Hutch.”

“What about taking some time off work and driving up the coast? Maybe spend a couple of days in San Francisco?”

“Like a vacation, you mean?” Starsky said thoughtfully.

“I guess if we took a couple of days off work and went to San Francisco that could be called a vacation,” Hutch replied sarcastically. He rubbed the bridge of his nose wearily, thankful that Starsky, while he didn’t have the hide of a rhinoceros as he liked to think, did have the ability to ignore remarks that he knew weren’t exactly intended to sound the way they actually came out sounding.

Starsky flexed his fingers and his whole arm tingled. “Sounds okay with me, if you want to.”

“Yeah, I want to,” Hutch said simply. The quiet words masked his sense of desperation, an emotion that was becoming increasingly familiar. He’d been so damned sure that it was all behind him and that everything would be okay once Starsky was back at work. But things had been back to normal for six weeks now and Hutch still had that tight knot in his chest most of the time. “I really want to,” he repeated.

“Okay. If we can get Dobey to go for it.”

“Good.” Hutch smacked the steering wheel lightly. “Go back to sleep.”

This time, Starsky did manage to slip into a restless, dream-cluttered sleep.

**

Hutch kept his eyes on the shabby grey house perched at the top of the hill. All the lights in the place had been out since shortly after ten and if anything untoward were going on inside, it certainly wasn’t obvious from where they were sitting a block away.

He was beginning to wonder if Tyler Monroe was even inside the house at all. Maybe Starsky’s snitch had only been blowing wind. Hell of a life they had. Dependent for much of their information on all those people who lived their lives in the gutter — hustlers, petty criminals, petty people. Human beings (and he used the term loosely) who would sell their mothers for the price of a drink or a fix or whatever their particular vice might be. People who wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to lie to a dumb pig who waved a bill in front of them and said “talk to me.” Sure, they’d talk. But how much of what they said was pure bullshit?

Hell of a life they had.

Hutch sternly ordered himself to quit thinking along those lines. Self-defeatism, the Chief called such thoughts in those cheery memos on departmental morale that he kept sending around. Gotta clean up the old attitude, Hutchinson, he thought. After all, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Every cloud has a silver lining. He who lives by the sword shall… nope, wrong maxim.

He quit thinking altogether and just watched the house like he was supposed to. Not paid to think anyway. Only paid to watch the house. Getting to listen to Starsky toss and turn and mumble in his sleep was a fringe benefit.

“No,” Starsky said suddenly, clearly. “Hutch?”

He glanced around, but Starsky was mumbling again. Just a dream. Hutch leaned back against the seat, crossing both arms across his chest, and stared out through the windshield again. Yeah, just a dream. Well, he could certainly get into that. Had, in fact, experienced some of those same nightmares himself. There was one that he was particularly crazy about, in which he was being chased down an endless white corridor, pursued by a gigantic machine that looked just like the heart monitoring device they’d had Starsk attached to. Except that this one had four spindly legs and a leering face. So? Dreams were weird, as Doc McPherson once said.

Well, he hadn’t actually said that. Hutch had said it and McPherson had given one of his damnable nods.

One of the curtains in the house seemed to move a little. Hutch picked up the binoculars for a better look. Maybe the action was going to spring their way for a change. They were overdue.

**

Starsky thought at first that the sudden explosion of noise and light and shattering glass was just a part of his dream. A too-familiar part. Noise and light and shattering glass. And the sound of Hutch’s voice yelling at him. It had all happened before. He squeezed his eyes closed more tightly and tried to protect his head with both arms. “Nooo,” he moaned.

“Starsk!”

Before he could react, two hands grabbed him, dragged his unresisting form over the front seat and shoved him out the door. He bounced and rolled with teeth-jarring force across the pavement, stopping only when he crashed into the curb. All he could see were two blinding headlights racing down the hill toward his car. As he blinked and tried to focus his sleep-heavy eyes, a barrage of bullets came from the speeding vehicle, smacking into the street inches from his head. “Oh, shit,” he mumbled. “Ohshitohshitohshitohshit.”

He scrabbled toward the brick retaining wall, instinctively reaching for his gun, but somehow not quite touching it, conscious only of the desperate need to get away. “Hutch?” he yelled hoarsely as he pushed himself up and rolled over the low wall. He landed on the other side, clutching at the grass to keep himself from sliding down the sharp incline.

Get your gun! his mind screamed. Damnit, do something!

The side of his face stung from cuts made by the chips of flying concrete and there was a painful stitch in his left side. “Hutch?” he shouted again.

“Keep down, Starsk!”

He heard Hutch’s warning and heeded it. A split second later the roar of the Magnum filled the air once and then again. That was followed by the almost instantaneous breaking of glass and the high-pitched frantic squeal of brakes coming closer and closer to where Starsky was huddled.

He pressed even closer to the ground and closed his eyes again. “Nonononono,” he whispered into the grass.

The car impacted against the wall and exploded. The blast shook the ground beneath him.

Starsky uncovered his head slowly and spit out a mouthful of dirt. “Hutch?” he said, then spit again. Raising himself slowly, he peered over the top of the wall. “Hey?”

“Yeah, okay, I’m here.” Hutch climbed over the wall on the other side of the street and crossed toward him. The flames from the burning car cast strange, leaping shadows as he reached down with one hand and pulled Starsky up. They leaned against the wall, fighting for breath. “You all in one piece?” Hutch gasped out.

Starsky leaned forward to slap the dirt from the front of his jeans, hiding his face from Hutch’s fire-brightened gaze. “The blast didn’t hurt me at all,” he said, his voice muffled. “But I think you broke three of my ribs when you threw me out of the car.”

“Sorry about that.”

Starsky straightened and their gazes met, acknowledging the moment. How many times, Starsky thought fleetingly, had they looked at one another in mutual recognition of the fact that, against the odds, they had survived. From that first time in the shattered Saigon cafe to now on this dark Los Angeles street. So many times that he’d lost count.

Hutch sighed. “I’ll call it in.” He walked over to the Torino. The door was open and he stretched across the seat, reaching for the mike.

Starsky watched him for a moment before turning again to stare at the flaming thing that had once been a car. Anyone inside never had a chance. Beneath the gasoline-stinking roar of the flames he could hear Hutch calmly calling for fire truck, back-up car, meat wagon. He realized with a faint stab of surprise that he was trembling. His hands clenched into tight fists as he watched Hutch scoot out of the car and walk back over to him. “Think that was Monroe?” Starsky asked, nodding toward the wreck.

“Yes.”

“I guess he didn’t want to talk to us very much.”

“I guess. Damn.” There was no emotion except weariness in the word. One more corpse. A punk, sure. A rapist and a pusher and probably there had been a killing or two in the checkered thirty-two years of Tyler Monroe’s life. Now he was just one mere corpse in the checkered career of Kenneth Hutchinson, cop.

The cop shook his head.

Lights were coming on in the houses up and down the street and a few doors opened a crack. “We’re cops!” Starsky yelled. “Go back to bed.” It wasn’t until then that Starsky really noticed the shattered windshield on his car. His face dropped. “Goddamn!” he shouted. “Will you look at that? I almost just got that thing in perfect running condition again and now look at it.” His gaze went vaguely heavenward in pained supplication. “Why won’t they leave my car alone?”

Hutch was reminded of an old song where some guy kept wondering why everybody was always kicking his dog around. He patted his partner’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Starsk.”

“How can I take it easy? Look what he did to my car.” Starsky heard his voice crack and he turned away quickly. There was a moment of silence. “Damnit, Hutch,” he whispered. “I froze back there. I froze and couldn’t even get my fuckin’ gun out.” The sound of sirens drifted up the hill toward them. “I was scared.”

Hutch, staring at the approaching lights, didn’t answer.

“Did you hear what I said?” Starsky asked him in a roughened voice. “I said I was scared.”

“Who the hell wasn’t?”

“But you performed; you did what you were supposed to do.”

“So does a trained seal,” Hutch replied bitterly. “But I don’t see anybody throwing me a fresh fish. Forget it, buddy. Everybody gets a little gun-shy once in a while. Doesn’t matter.”

Starsky gave him a strange look, filled with a kind of yearning doubt; he wanted to believe. “What does matter, Hutch?” His voice was quiet, almost lost in the raucous shouting of the sirens. “Can you tell me what the hell matters?”

Hutch sighed. They stared at one another for a fragment of painful eternity. “We survived, babe,” Hutch said finally. “That’s always the bottom line. Survival.”

**

It took nearly an hour to get the whole mess cleared away. They reached a mutual and unspoken decision that Dobey could wait a little longer to learn the bad news that Tyler Monroe was dead and therefore useless to them. Hutch had a familiar, uncomfortable feeling that too often they determined the worth of a person solely by his usefulness to the system, meaning themselves. The Captain, they knew, was not going to be pleased by this turn of events.

Dawn was turning the sky pink before Starsky, peering through the shattered glass, drove Hutch home. The city was about to come alive again. Or most of it was anyway. A new day, filled with promise, was about to begin.

Starsky and Hutch didn’t much care. They were both quiet during the ride, the constant static of the radio playing a soft background to their solitary thoughts. Starsky left the engine idling in front of Venice Place as Hutch got out. The detective, looking like a bruised and shattered knight, leaned in through the window. “Hey.”

Starsky, a streak of dirt slashing across his cheek like a wound, looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “Huh?”

“Is it still okay about the trip?”

“What trip?”

“The drive up the coast we were talking about before.”

He rubbed one hand across his face, smearing the dirt. “Oh, yeah. Sure. Sounds good.”

Hutch smiled. “Okay. See you in a couple of hours. Stay awake until you get home.”

“Will do. Sleep tight.”

Hutch watched until the Torino had disappeared around the corner and then he went into the building. It seemed almost more than he could manage to put one foot in front of the other and climb the stairs.

Once inside, he greeted his plants with somewhat less enthusiasm than usual. They returned the greeting with a discreet and welcome silence. It was at times like this that Hutch was glad he lived alone. If he had been expected, then, to make conversation with someone, to cheerfully discuss the minutiae of his day, he didn’t think he could have done it.

What, after all, could he have said? “I just spent ten hours sitting in a car with a man who smells like a cheap Mexican restaurant and who thinks he does a great Bogey imitation.” That was sure great conversation, wasn’t it? Or how about: “Somebody tried to kill me tonight, but I got lucky and killed him instead.” Great. “And by the way,” he could add whimsically, “my partner froze tonight and couldn’t get his gun out. See, he almost died awhile back and this was the first time he needed his gun since then and he couldn’t get it out of the holster.”

What woman would want to sit and listen to that, even if he felt like telling it to her? The memories of his marriage were still too clear in his mind, made more poignant, perhaps, by the fact and circumstances of Van’s death. He had no longer loved her by the time she died, but they had once shared a life, or at any rate a brief passion, and that had to mean something. Didn’t it?

But on nights like this he could only remember with brutal honesty all those nights he’d come home weary to the bone, wanting only to strip off the blue uniform, hit the shower, and then the bed. Van would want to talk. Inevitably, they would end up screaming at one another. At first the arguments ended in bed, where their lovemaking would seem even better than ever. There came a point, though, where that didn’t work anymore. It got so bad eventually that when Starsky would arrive to pick him up for their next duty shift, the fight would still be going on. Or else there would be only an icy silence in the kitchen. Starsky would eat toast and pretend not to notice. Of course, it was hard for him to remain oblivious after the infamous morning when Van, whose aim always left a great deal to be desired, threw the coffeepot at Hutch. The pot missed its target, though, and collided instead with Starsky’s skull. It took seven stitches to close the wound.

It was better this way. Now there was only the comfortable solitude of his apartment and the disinterested gaze of his African violets. It suited him. There was, of course, no guarantee against an occasional attack of loneliness. But he had friends, male and female, to fill the corners of his life. And Starsky, of course. Overcome with a sudden need for conversation at three A.M., he could always call his partner. Starsk would bitch and moan about being disturbed, but once that was over, he would listen. More than just listen; he would understand. Hutch was reminded of a former lady friend of his, an educated, classy broad (not unlike Van, now that he thought about it) who once asked him how he could put up with a clod like Starsky day in and day out. He had only laughed. Bed was no place for a discussion of his relationship with his partner. Besides, he didn’t know why Starsky and he were so damned close. Except that how many guys would let their partner’s wife bounce a coffeepot off their heads and never mention it?

Hutch peeled off his clothes and stepped into a hot shower, letting the warmth flow over him, unkinking his cramped, chilled body. After a full five minutes, he turned the water off, dried himself with a huge Turkish towel, and pulled on clean pajamas. Seconds later he fell, already asleep, into bed.

III

Tyler Monroe was dead, but that didn’t mean the police department was finished with him quite yet. There was still the paperwork. Necessary, Starsky supposed, but a pain in the butt to get through nevertheless. It was his least favorite part of the job. Unless you counted all the dying. Of course, in this job, more dying invariably led to more paperwork. As the night follows the day.

Starsky jerked the page from the typewriter and glanced toward the clock again. Eleven-fifteen. Hutch should be out of court any time now. He was testifying in one of the cases he’d handled while Starsky was still recuperating. He’d gone off in a disgruntled mood; court appearances were his least favorite part of the job.

Anyway, the report on last night’s fiasco — Dobey’s word — was done. Starsky signed his name to it with somewhat more flourish than the dismal facts deserved and got to his feet to take it into Dobey’s office.

The captain glowered at him. “Just heard from the D.A.,” he said.

Starsky tossed the report in the general direction of Dobey’s in-box. “Yeah?”

“Wilberforce got off.”

“What?” Disbelief and anger mingled in Starsky’s tone. Hutch had seemed so confident when he left for court. “He got off? Cap’n, we had that son of a bitch cold. Hutch’s testimony….”

Dobey opened a desk drawer, forgot what he was looking for, and slammed it closed again. “He never got on the stand. The judge threw the case out.”

Starsky slammed his hand against the wall. “That bastard killed his wife,” he said, “and now he’s on the street? Why?” This case was one he and Hutch had spent hours discussing on the phone while he was still in the hospital. It was “his” case, too.

“Some technicality. Again. Some legal foul-up.”

“Not in Hutch’s bust. That was a good, clean bust.”

“How do you know?” Dobey said sourly. “You weren’t even there.”

“Hutch told me all about it.”

“Such faith in your partner is touching. But Wilberforce got off.” That seemed to say it all.

Starsky made a hopeless, helpless gesture and stalked out of the office. He threw himself down into his chair and began unbending paperclips, one after the other, glaring at the door.

The swinging door crashed open suddenly and a hapless clerk jumped back just in time to avoid being knocked flat by the six foot, one inch form of Ken Hutchinson. The blond detective yanked his chair from under the desk and dropped into it, a barely-contained bundle of energy. He stared at the neat pile of straightened paper clips on the desk. “What’s that?” he asked.

Starsky carefully twisted the curls from another clip and added it to the stack. “That’s a pile of paperclips,” he said softly. “Eleven of them.”

Hutch shook his head. “Detective Starsky.”

“Yes, Detective Hutchinson?”

“Can I ask you something?”

Starsky gestured expansively. “You’re my partner, right? Ask me anything.”

“Why the hell are you sitting there straightening paperclips?”

Starsky added number twelve to the pile and smiled pleasantly. “Because it makes as much fucking sense as anything else we do around this place.”

Hutch nodded. “I can’t argue with that.”

After a moment, Starsky swept his collection from the desk into the wastebasket. “Isn’t there a story,” he began irrelevantly, “about some guy cleaning out this barn or something, but he never gets finished, ’cause every time he gets rid of one pile of shit, another one appears?”

“The Augean Stables. Hercules.”

“Yeah… well, that’s us, buddy. We keep shoveling and it don’t do one damned bit of good.”

“You have a point.” He rubbed the top of the desk, not looking up. “I made a good bust on Wilberforce.”

“I know, man, I know. The system screwed up, not you.”

Hutch consciously relaxed his muscles and settled back into the chair. “Did’ja talk to Dobey?”

“Huh?”

“About some time off.”

“Oh. No.”

“Look, if you don’t want to go, we can just forget it,” Hutch said.

“I want to go; how many times do I have to say it? I just didn’t get a chance to ask him yet.”

They glared across the desk at each other. “Hell,” Hutch muttered, crashing to his feet. “I’ll ask him myself.”

“Fine,” Starsky said shortly. “You do that. I gotta get this file back to DMV.” He left the room.

Hutch sighed, absently picking up a paperclip and straightening it. A second later, he noticed what he’d done and scowled. “Damn.” He dropped the clip into the wastebasket and went into Dobey’s office without knocking.

The captain’s mood suited his own. He frowned as Hutch sat down. Neither of them mentioned Wilberforce. “What’s up?”

“Captain, we need some time off.”

Dobey was shuffling papers on his desk. “Who doesn’t? Next month, all right?”

Hutch shook his head. “No, next month isn’t all right. Starsky and I need the time now.”

The captain stopped what he was doing. “What’s wrong?” he asked, fixing Hutch with a steely gaze.

“We just need to get away,” Hutch said evasively.

“Need? Not want?”

Hutch was staring at the floor. “Need.” He bit his lower lip. Maybe what he was about to do constituted a breach of confidence, but he had to do it anyway. “Cap’n, if I tell you something, will you keep it to yourself?”

“I’m not known as a blabbermouth, Hutchinson,” Dobey said dourly.

It was a full minute before Hutch spoke, sixty seconds during which his eyes darkened and he glanced at the closed door to the squad room. “Starsky froze last night,” he said softly. “He never pulled his gun.”

Dobey picked up a pencil and slid it through his fingers. “I knew a guy once,” he said absently, “toughest bastard I ever saw. Then one day he got shot. Bad. Almost died. But he pulled through and came back to work.” He paused. “The guy only lasted a month. He was scared. Too scared to pull his gun. He became an insurance salesman.”

Hutch was watching him now, his eyes narrowed. “That’s not Starsky.”

Dobey looked at the pencil closely, examining the eraser as if he’d never seen one before. “Of course, some guys don’t get scared. Some get mean. An over-reaction, I guess.”

Hutch shook his head. “Starsky’s not scared and he’s not going to turn into some kind of punk with a badge,” he said fiercely. “I’m just saying he needs some time away. To sort of put everything back into focus.” He looked at his hands, surprised to find them gripping the arms of the chair with knuckle-whitening force. Finger by finger, he relaxed each hand. “Hell, I need the time as much as he does. Just a few days, Cap’n.” His face suddenly reflected the bewilderment he was feeling. “You know, we’ve never even talked about what happened? About him almost dying? We just shoved it aside and hoped it would go away. But it hasn’t.” He shook his head. “It hasn’t gone away,” he repeated. “I think we need to talk.”

For a long moment Dobey was silent, his gentle-tough cop face thoughtful. “All right,” he said finally. “Take next week.”

Hutch expelled his breath slowly. “Thanks.”

Dobey cleared his throat. “You’re my best men. I don’t want to lose either one of you.” His voice turned gruff again. “When you get back, you both better be ready to work your butts off.”

“We will be,” Hutch promised. He got up. “See you later.”

Starsky was sitting at the desk, holding but not drinking a cup of coffee, and staring at the wall. Hutch watched him for a moment and then sat down. “What time should I pick you up in the morning?” he asked.

Starsky jumped a little. “Huh?”

“If we’re driving up the coast tomorrow, I think we should get an early start. Eight o’clock, okay?”

“Eight? Yeah, I guess — ” Starsky set the coffee mug down with a bang. “You’ll pick me up? No way.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to San Francisco or anyplace else in that damned pedal car of yours. We probably wouldn’t even make it to the city limits.”

“Come on, Starsk. Belle will give the trip some class. Besides, your tomato will be in the shop.”

Starsky just glared at him.

After a minute Hutch shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I’ll rent something.”

“Terrific.”

“Gentlemen,” Dobey said from the doorway, “you’re not on vacation yet. Don’t you have a beat to cover?”

Both conceded that they did and left the squad room quickly.

Dobey watched them go.

IV

It had been their noble intention to adjourn to their respective apartments right after work so that they could both get a good night’s sleep and be fresh for the next day’s journey. However, as has too-oft been quoted, the best laid plans….

Well, it was logical to grab a quick dinner, right? After all, they each had to eat. So why not go by the Pits and sample whatever the special was? It was a hamburger, of course, as always. No problem. The complication came a little later when Huggy Bear, the host extraordinaire, decided to turn the evening into an impromptu bon voyage party for the soon-to-depart cops.

It was a great party that went on into the wee hours.

Consequently, when Starsky’s alarm went off the next morning he was not exactly inclined to jump from the comfort of his bed and start packing. What he did was roll over, moan, turn the alarm off, and go back to sleep, pulling the midnight-blue sheet up over his head to close out the hideous sunlight pouring into the room.

Unfortunately, the sheet proved to be inadequate protection against a pan full of cold water. He came up from under, sputtering and coughing. “What the hell?” His partner stood by the bed, a canary-swallowing grin on his face and an empty pan in his hand. Starsky wasn’t a detective for nothing. “You poured water all over me,” he deduced instantly. “What kind of thing is that to do to a sleeping man? I coulda drowned.”

“I’ve been waiting downstairs for over twenty minutes. Thought you were supposed to be ready by eight o’clock?”

“Ugh,” Starsky said, heading for the bathroom.

“Are you packed?”

“Almost,” came his reply from the other room.

Hutch looked around skeptically. He finally saw a suitcase lying open and gapingly empty, save for one lonely sweat sock tucked neatly in the corner. He sighed. “Why don’t I just finish up for you?” he suggested.

There were some muffled sounds from the other room that he chose to take as acquiescence. He opened the closet and mulled over the selection carefully. By the time his partner emerged from the bathroom, showered, shaved, clad in Levis and a blue work shirt, and almost awake, Hutch had packed a small, but carefully coordinated collection of slacks, shirts, and socks. He added some undershorts. “Everything the well-dressed tourist needs,” he said with satisfaction.

Starsky ignored him and walked over to peer at the contents of the bag. He nodded, then proceeded to add his cut-offs, three T-shirts rolled into balls, and another pair of Levis. And a camera. And a small toilet kit on top. “Close it up,” he ordered breezily.

“What am I, your valet?” Hutch muttered.

But Starsky was already in the kitchen, chug-a-lugging orange juice from the bottle. “All right,” he said briskly, “let’s hit the road, huh? I like to get an early start when I travel.” He grabbed the suitcase and led the way downstairs.

“Surprised you didn’t order me to carry your bag,” Hutch said, still disgruntled.

Starsky reached the sidewalk and came to a dead stop. “My god.”

Hutch’s jaw set firmly. He had anticipated this.

Starsky walked slowly around the bright red Volkswagen looking like a man who had a lot to say if only he could remember how to talk. “This… is… a… bug,” he finally managed to get out.

“It gets great gas mileage,” Hutch said.

“What?”

“I said, it gets great gas mileage. There is an energy crisis, or haven’t you heard?”

Starsky didn’t answer. He crammed his suitcase into the back seat and very carefully got into the passenger seat. “I will not drive this… automobile,” he enunciated precisely.

“Okay, fine, I don’t mind.” Hutch got behind the wheel, restraining himself from grunting at the effort it took to get his legs tucked into place. “I’ll just keep thinking about all the money I’m saving.”

The first fifteen minutes of their vacation passed in total silence. Starsky finally sighed a sigh of exquisite martyrdom. “If only it wasn’t so… red,” he said.

Hutch, stopped at a traffic signal, shot him a glance of total amazement. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I picked this particular car because it was red. I figured you liked red cars, damnit. Your car — ”

“My car,” Starsky broke in gently, but firmly, “is candy apple red. This car is fire engine red.” He was quiet for the next five miles. “But thanks anyway,” he said.

Hutch kept his eyes stonily on the road ahead. “What?”

“I said, thanks anyway. For getting a red car.”

“Yeah, well.”

Starsky settled back in the seat, looking like a man determined to enjoy himself despite all those forces operating against him. “When do we stop for lunch?” he asked cheerfully.

Hutch reached for a map on the dashboard. “You’re in charge of plotting the route,” he said. “Food, fuel, and rest stops are when I say so. I know you. A stop every fifteen minutes. Unless you want to drive?”

Starsky looked at his partner, really looked at him for the first time that morning and whatever words he had been ready to say promptly fled his mind. “My god,” he said for the second time.

“What now?”

“Your face.”

Self-consciously, Hutch lightly fingered his upper lip. “Oh. Yeah.”

Starsky was still staring. “You shaved it off.”

Hutch was beginning to be embarrassed by the conversation concerning his newly-shorn condition. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” he said shortly.

Starsky tilted his head for a different perspective. “It looks kind of… naked. I was just starting to get used to it.”

“Why don’t you read the billboards, Starsk.”

“You know, I don’t think it’s fair.”

Hutch sighed. “What?”

“Shaving off your moustache without telling me. Warning me. I mean, it’s the kind of thing partners should talk about.”

“Starsky?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Starsky snickered. The only noise in the car was the crackling of paper as he opened the map and buried his face in it.

**

Starsky fell asleep before they reached Santa Barbara and didn’t wake up until they were on the outskirts of Atascadero. Hutch didn’t mind; he’d always found solitary driving relaxing. As they left Los Angeles farther and farther behind, he could feel some of the tightness in his chest easing.

“I’m hungry,” were the first words out of Starsky’s mouth when he woke up.

“We’ll stop in Atascadero.”

“Okay,” Starsky agreed cheerfully. The nap seemed to have restored his good humor and he apparently had decided to forgive Hutch for both the red car and the missing moustache.

Atascadero was a nice enough little town. There was a lake and a zoo and a winery. They decided, however, to bypass all of those pleasures and went directly to the small cafe just opposite the Rancho Tee Motel. There were more people than one might have expected having lunch there and so it was nearly five minutes before the waitress led them to a booth and handed them menus.

Hutch decided on the chef’s salad and Starsky a cheeseburger with fries. ” — and raw onion,” he said loudly to the disappearing waitress.

“Thanks,” Hutch muttered.

“Huh?”

“Never mind.” Hutch unfolded the paper napkin and spread it on his lap. A moment later he picked it up and folded it again. “Hey, Starsk,” he said suddenly.

His partner didn’t glance up from the placemat, which was printed with a profusely-illustrated account of Atascadero’s history. “Huh?” he said again absently.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” Hutch said, watching a small boy make a mess of a plateful of spaghetti. “While you were off work, I was going to see Doctor McPherson for awhile.” There. The words he’d been trying to say for weeks were finally said. He didn’t know exactly what kind of reaction he’d expected from Starsky, but he had at least expected some reaction. He looked at his partner.

Starsky was still reading. “Oh, yeah? Nice guy.”

“You know him?”

“Just from the candy machine.” For the first time, Starsky looked up. “He’s a Payday freakie.”

Hutch nodded. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “I just thought you’d like to know. Thought you had a right to know.”

After a minute Starsky smiled. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

 

The food arrived then, putting an end to the conversation. Lunch was good, even if Starsky did insist upon having some horrible concoction of ice cream, hot fudge, a brownie, and whipping cream for desert. When they finished eating, Hutch decreed a brisk ten minute walk around the town before they hit the road again. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but he was soon given cause to regret it.

Among the shops in the town was a small, expensive-looking jewelry store. Like a homing pigeon, Starsky moved toward the shining window display. Hutch followed him quickly, but by the time he got there, it was too late. Starsky was in love.

“Look at that,” he said sounding a little breathless.

“That,” of course, was a watch. Not just any watch. A GMT Master Chronometer, according to the sign. Stainless steel, with a matching bracelet. “And a rotating bezel,” the salesman said a moment later.

“Oh, yeah?” The watch was already on Starsky’s wrist.

“It’s too expensive,” Hutch stage-whispered from the doorway. He refused to venture closer, fearing that might lend credence to this foolishness.

“With a twenty-four hour hand that will give you the time in two different zones simultaneously.”

“Terrific.”

“Oh, great,” Hutch said. “You’re often in two time zones simultaneously, right?”

The salesman glanced disdainfully toward him. “Pressure-proof down to 165 feet.”

“For all the deep-sea diving you do, Starsk.”

Starsky deliberated briefly, considering his already creaking credit card. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll take it.”

Hutch groaned and went out to the car to wait, unable to witness the sight of a man committing financial doom so he could know what time it was in two places at once.

It was almost thirty minutes before Starsky emerged from the store, the watch gleaming on his wrist. “Took long enough,” Hutch muttered, starting the VW noisily.

“Had my name engraved on the back.” Starsky tried to show him, but Hutch wouldn’t look. “No extra charge,” he added.

“Ha. Can you still afford to take this vacation or should we just go home?”

“Ahh, come on,” Starsky said, “lighten up. It’s a terrific watch. You’re the one that’s been on my back to get one.”

“Yeah?”

They were back on the highway, heading north again. Starsky watched the scenery go by for a while. “What’d you talk about anyway?” he asked suddenly.

“Huh? Oh, you mean with McPherson.” Hutch shrugged. “Nothing much.”

Starsky shifted in the seat a little. “It’s all private stuff, I guess.”

Hutch was quiet for a time. “It was mostly about the job. Why I became a cop. Why I stay a cop.” He maneuvered the small car around an eighteen-wheeler. “Just stuff.” He gave a short laugh. “Life. Death. Infinity.” Hutch wasn’t trying to evade the question — hell, hadn’t he told Dobey that one of the reasons for this trip was so that they could talk about what had happened? But it wasn’t easy to get started.

“Why do you stay a cop?”

“I don’t know. Habit? Maybe.”

Starsky checked the time in California and New York. “They told me about my heart stopping. That I was actually dead for a little while.”

“Yeah.”

“Musta been… scary.”

There was another pause. “I was scared,” Hutch said.

Starsky sighed.

“And I was mad. Dobey was going to give me a new partner.”

“He was?”

“I told him I didn’t need a new partner.”

“Shit, I guess not.” Starsky managed to sound vaguely indignant. “He could’ve waited until the body was cold, at least.”

Hutch glanced in the rear view mirror. “I would’ve quit.”

“If I’da stayed dead, you mean?” Starsky nodded in agreement. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

They smiled faintly at one another and then Starsky returned to watching the passing scene. There was much more to be said, of course. They had just begun. But that was enough for a start.

**

The coastal town of San Manuel was celebrating its Founders’ Days.

A red-white-and-blue banner stretched across the highway announcing the festivities and inviting all the passersby to join in the fun. Starsky thought it sounded like a terrific idea.

“We’re supposed to be going to San Francisco,” Hutch protested.

“We’re on vacation. What difference does it make if we get there today or tomorrow? Come on. It said there’s going to be barbeque and a dance and, everything. Even an art show. You’d like that.”

Hutch sighed, wondering if everybody raised in New York City had the same almost childlike enthusiasm for the mundane activities of small town America. “Oh, all right.” He pulled off the highway and turned the car in the direction of San Manuel.

It was a pretty town at first glance, tossed almost carelessly on the edge of a white sand beach, surrounded by huge craggy rocks and twisted cypresses and pines. The narrow streets were crowded with natives and tourists cheerfully jostling one another. The tourists were distinguishable by the cameras and shopping bags they carried; most of the natives, in the spirit of the celebration, were bewhiskered and dressed in pioneer clothes.

“See?” Starsky said after a few minutes. “Aren’t you sorry you shaved off your moustache? You woulda fit right in.”

“Would you please look for a motel that isn’t filled up? I want to park this thing before I squash somebody.”

“Ha. More likely that somebody will step on this bug and squash us.”

They drove for a few more minutes, entering what was obviously the older part of San Manuel, where the architecture was strongly Spanish.

The Mission Motel had a small vacancy sign hanging out. Hutch pulled into the circular drive and a few minutes later they were ensconced in the last remaining room.

Starsky picked up a newspaper in the lobby and began to read through an agenda of events. It was decided that a walk down to the wharf should be first. Starsky grabbed his camera and they took off on foot.

San Manuel seemed, to Hutch anyway, like a city suffering from a mild case of schizophrenia. The place was hovering somewhere between the past and the present, early Spanish mingling with pop art modern. And to add to the confusion, there was a heavy layer of big business encroaching on all sides. The Old Town, even clogged with sightseers, still reeked of atmosphere. The stone streets were lined with clay buildings. There was an encompassing smell of ethnic food hanging over the streets that set Starsky’s nostrils twitching. Hutch ended up carrying the camera while his partner consumed several local delicacies.

The so-called New Town was very artsy-craftsy. Bearded artists mingled with bare-footed girls in patchwork skirts, sometimes with babies strapped on their backs. Most of the artwork on display was mediocre, at best. At least the paintings were. The crafts were better. Woodcarvings. Some clay pieces. Leatherwork. The revival in the old-fashioned crafts had really caught on in San Miguel.

The wharf was busy, crowded with commercial fishing boats unloading anchovies, cod, kingfish, sole. A fish-processing plant was built on the dock. Along the wharf were novelty shops and various other businesses designed to catch the eye — and the wallet — of the tourist trade.

Starsky and Hutch moved with the crowd. It took nearly three hours for them to wend their way back to the Mission Motel and the cool dim room. Starsky stopped at the soda machine in the hallway and bought two Cokes. Hutch, stretched out on his bed, took one. His throat was dry.

“Nice little town,” Starsky said, kicking off his shoes and stretching out on the other bed.

“Yeah,” Hutch said noncommittally.

“We going to the dance tonight?”

“I guess.”

“Should be some nice girls there. A lot of nice ones walking around.”

“There’re a lot of nice girls in San Francisco, too.”

“Oh, sure,” Starsky agreed. He was quiet for a few minutes, holding the cold soda can against his forehead. “Hey,” he said.

Hutch, half-asleep, didn’t open his eyes. “Huh?”

“This trip was a good idea.”

“Yeah.”

Starsky looked at his partner. “You’d sleep better if you took your gun off,” he said.

Hutch grunted something unintelligible.

“Shoulda left it at home. We’re on vacation.” When there was no reply at all, he glanced over at the other bed again. Hutch was already asleep.

V

Hutch slept for a long time.

Starsky finished his Coke and then amused himself by reading through the San Manuel telephone directory. Finally, moving as quietly as he could, he showered and shaved. When he came out of the bathroom, toweling his hair dry, he found Hutch awake and unpacking. “Well, Sleeping Beauty.”

“I spent the day driving,” Hutch replied, “not dozing in the passenger seat.”

“Right.” Starsky began pulling clothes from his suitcase. “I’m ready for dinner.”

“Five minutes,” Hutch said and in five minutes he was ready to go.

They left the motel and walked a block to a seafood restaurant. There were no tables free, so they were ushered into the dimly lit bar to wait. It was not so poorly lit, however, that they didn’t both immediately spot the two young women sitting at the end of the curved bar.

“A dance is a lot more fun with a date,” Starsky muttered, moving in that direction.

“I hate going stag,” Hutch agreed, right on Starsky’s heels.

“Dibs on the blonde.”

“Naturally.”

“Excuse me,” Starsky said to the women, “but we’re strangers in town. Unless you’ll both come to the dance with us tonight, we’ll be forced to go alone.”

“And that’s bad,” Hutch added, “’cause we both insist on leading.”

The blonde smiled a little; her companion not at all. Starsky chose to take the faint smile as willingness to continue the conversation and he plopped himself onto the stool next to the blonde. “My name is Dave. And that’s Ken.”

“Maura,” she said after a moment. “And my friend is Kimberly.”

Hutch sat down. “Hi, Kimberly.”

“Hello.” She was a porcelain-skinned redhead, with startling, almost shockingly green eyes. Her dress was the same electric green.

The bartender came over and they ordered drinks. Starsky took a peanut from the basket on the bar. “We’re serious about the dance. If you’re not tied up… we could grab some dinner here and then paint the town red.”

Hutch grimaced. “Excuse my friend, the silver-tongued orator. Known far and wide as the man of a thousand clichés.”

Kimberly almost smiled.

Starsky handed Maura a peanut. “Whattaya say?”

“Well…?” She glanced at Kimberly, who nodded slowly. “You sure?” Kimberly shrugged elegantly. “Why not?”

“Okay,” Maura said to Starsky. “Dinner and the dance it is.”

Since there was still no table available, they had another round of drinks.

**

Dinner, when they finally got it, was good, if more expensive than they might have wished. They topped off the meal with some decent brandy and then left for the town square, site of the outdoor dance. They rode over in Kimberly’s lemon-yellow sports car. It was a bit snug, but nobody complained.

The square had been done up for the occasion in bunting and tiny blinking Christmas lights. Starsky and Maura headed straight for the raised wooden platform that was serving as a dance floor. Hutch and Kimberly secured one of the small tables scattered around the fringes of the dance area and ordered beers from one of the gingham-clad waitresses.

“We’re from Los Angeles,” Hutch said, although she hadn’t asked.

She nodded and lit a cigarette.

Hutch sighed and sat back to watch the dancers. Kimberly was not exactly the easiest person in the world to have a conversation with. She spent a lot of time apparently lost in some kind of deep thought. When she wasn’t glancing over her shoulder. “On our way to San Francisco,” he added rather hopelessly.

“On business?” she said absently.

“Vacation.”

Her neon eyes swept over him. “Are you a good guy or a bad guy?”

“What?”

“You’re carrying a gun.”

Startled, Hutch looked down. The sport coat he was wearing seemed to him at any rate, to conceal the weapon adequately. “We weren’t that close in the car,” he said lightly.

She sipped the beer as if it were rare vintage wine. “My father is a very important man. He feels the need to surround himself with armed guards. I grew up around men who wore guns. They used to play hide-and-seek with me. The jacket hangs in a very special way.”

Hutch smiled sheepishly. “I see. Well, whether we’re good guys or bad guys depends on your point of view, I guess. We’re with the L.A.P.D.”

“Cops. How interesting.” She didn’t sound particularly interested.

A little amused, perhaps.

“What does your father do?”

“He owns San Manuel.”

Hutch raised his brows. “All of it?”

“Mostly. And what he doesn’t own yet, he will.” She crushed out the cigarette and immediately lit another. “He’s an extremely shrewd businessman, my father.” She watched Starsky and Maura dance. “You said that your friend is a cop, too?”

“Yes.”

She glanced at Hutch. “He’s not armed.”

Starsky had no jacket on over his shirt. “Obviously,” Hutch said dryly.

“But you are?”

Hutch shrugged. “I don’t go visit my mother without my gun.”

“How utterly Freudian.”

Their conversation dwindled off then and they sat in silence for ten minutes until Starsky and Maura joined them. “You two ain’t dancing?” Starsky said after downing the rest of Hutch’s beer.

Hutch shook his head.

“Well, having seen you dance, buddy,” Starsky said, grinning, “you might just be doing the right thing.”

Maura giggled.

Kimberly suddenly gathered her cigarettes, lighter, purse. “Let’s go down to the Strip.”

“Where?” Hutch asked.

“The Strip. A lot more action down there. This dance is for jerks.”

Starsky, who’d been enjoying himself, looked a little offended, but he willingly followed the others back to the car. At Kimberly’s suggestion, Hutch took the wheel this time.

**

The Strip, it turned out, was the red-light district of San Manuel, a part of town they had missed on their afternoon walk. Snuggled between the commercial fishing dock and the older, shabbier port facilities, it was an area of small bars, a porno movie house, and several rundown hotels that obviously did a rapid turnover business.

There was also a noisy penny arcade and it was there they made their first stop. Kimberly waited as Hutch got a handful of change, then guided him to a bank of pinball machines. Starsky and Maura vanished into the crowd.

Kimberly planted her feet in front of the Bank-a-Ball game. She dropped a quarter in and pulled the plunger. Her face was a study in concentration as she aimed each shot carefully, passing the ball from one flipper to another with a practiced skill that soon attracted a crowd of onlookers. When she had defeated the machine three times in a row, Hutch took a turn. “Put a little body English on it,” she urged. “Come on, whack it. Hit it now. Nudge. Come on, I can’t hear you grunt. Get into the machine.”

He lost and gave a philosophical shrug.

Before she could start another game, Starsky and Maura reappeared.

She was holding a quickie snapshot of the two of them dressed like characters from some old pirate movie. Hutch realized that they both were getting pretty drunk. Kimberly seemed as coldly sober as ever and he himself didn’t seem to feel any reaction from all the liquor he’d consumed. Maura, though, held onto Starsky’s arm as she walked and Starsky was on the verge of giggling.

“Maybe we should call it a night,” Hutch suggested, feeling a vague sense of unease. Maybe it was the surroundings, the noisy, smoky dockside arcade, or maybe he was just tired, but suddenly he wished they hadn’t come here at all. Wished he was back at the motel sleeping so that they could get an early start for San Francisco the next morning.

Kimberly smiled suddenly and brightly, taking his arm. “Ah, Ken, don’t be a bore. We haven’t even been to the Whistling Parrot yet.”

“What’s the Whistling Parrot?” Starsky asked.

“A bar. It’s just up the street. We can walk from here.”

“I think,” Hutch began. He paused, then shrugged. “Okay. But just for a quick nightcap.”

The Whistling Parrot was not just a bar. It was the kind of dive he and Starsk went into only in the line of duty and then reluctantly. The place was jammed with men who obviously came from the foreign freighters in the nearby port and women who were there for business purposes, not for kicks.

Kimberly, strangely, seemed right at home. Her name was called several times as they made their way through the room to a booth, and she answered the greetings with a cheerful wave. Hutch wished he didn’t have the feeling that everybody in the place knew he was a cop. His sense of unease increased.

Even Starsky seemed less than delighted. “Isn’t this place out of some old movie?” he asked.

“This place is out of every old movie,” Hutch replied. He pulled a little at Kimberly’s arm. “Look, why don’t we go somewhere else for a drink?”

“I like it here.”

“Look, Kimberly, why don’t we….”

She jerked away from his grip. “Damnit, Hutch,” she said, her voice louder than necessary. “Stop it.” She lowered her voice and smiled humorlessly. “Are all cops such stiffs?”

“Hey,” Starsky said, “let’s everybody cool it, huh?” He smiled at Kimberly and patted Hutch’s shoulder. “Let’s just all sit down and have a drink, okay?”

They scooted into the booth and a moment later a fat man in a dirty white apron appeared at the table. “Hi, Jose,” Kimberly said. “The usual for me.”

“A Scotch,” Maura said.

Starsky ordered a shot and a beer and Hutch just the beer.

A jukebox nearby was playing some loud rock music, making conversation difficult at best. So they just sat and drank the first round and somehow a second round appeared and they drank that, too.

Hutch finally excused himself to go to the men’s room, which he finally located behind the bar. It was about as bad as he had expected. He was washing his hands — without benefit of soap — when the door opened and Starsky came in, walking unsteadily. “Hi,” he said with a grin.

“Hi, yourself.” Hutch looked uselessly for a paper towel and finally dried his hands on his pants.

Starsky looked around, as if he were vaguely surprised to find himself in the bathroom. Shrugging, he availed himself of the facilities and then came back to the sink. “You know something, buddy?”

“What?”

“I think… I think I’m drunk.”

“No kidding? Anybody ever tell you that you oughta be a detective?”

Starsky giggled.

“Hey, Starsk, you about ready to cut out?”

“Yeah.” Starsky held his dripping hands in the air helplessly. “Yeah,” he repeated. “We gotta hit the road tomorrow, right?”

“Right.”

“Gotta hit the old road for San Francisco. Good idea, this trip.” They started for the door. “Hutch, buddy?”

“What?”

Starsky stopped, leaning against the wall. He stared vacantly at Hutch for a moment, as if he couldn’t remember what it was he wanted to say. He sighed and rubbed one hand over his face. “How come… how come I couldn’t get my gun out the other night?”

Hutch wished he could be drunk, too; maybe it might make this a little easier to face. “I don’t know, Starsk. I guess maybe you were scared.”

Starsky nodded. “Yeah… guess so. Shit. It won’t happen again.”

“I know.”

Starsky grabbed Hutch by both arms and held on. “No, I mean it. It won’t ever, ever happen again. The next time you need me, man, I’m gonna be there.”

“Sure,” Hutch said.

“You believe me?”

“I always believe you, Starsk.”

Starsky stared at him for one more moment, then nodded. “Okay, man.”

Something in Starsky’s tone bothered Hutch and he pressed his shoulder against the door. “Starsky.”

“Huh?”

“I know you’ll be there, man.” He felt that it was important to convince Starsky that his faith and his trust were as strong as ever. “Hell, you’re the best partner a guy could have.”

Starsky smiled. “Thanks, man. We’re gonna have a great time in Frisco, ain’t we?”

“Sure.”

They left the john and went back to the booth. “Time to call it a night,” Hutch said briskly.

Kimberly raised no more objections and they left the Whistling Parrot. Hutch got behind the wheel again for the drive to the motel. It was much later than he’d thought and the hilly street was deserted except for the small yellow car.

Hutch started down the hill. The little car moved swiftly. They approached a curve and he applied the brake. Nothing happened. He pressed harder and the car kept barreling down the hill. “Starsk,” he said quietly. Then, when there was no answer from the back seat, again, sharply, “Starsky!”

“Huh?”

“No brakes.”

“Oh shit.”

Kimberly tried to grab Hutch’s arm. “My god, what’s happening?”

Hutch brushed her aside. “Gotta stop or we’ll end up in the water.” He saw several construction barriers sitting on the shoulder of the road. “Everybody duck and hold on tight,” he said tersely, turning the wheel sharply.

The car hit the barricades at an angle and slid to a stop. The sound of the collision filled the empty night air, but none of them heard it.

**

He woke up slowly.

There was nothing but the rhythmic pain in his head. He felt cramped and twisted. Someone was lying heavily against him. He pushed the other body away. It was a girl and he thought he should know who she was, but he couldn’t concentrate. He pushed and shoved his way free of the wreckage, but he couldn’t stand up yet. “Hey,” he whispered, but nobody answered.

The other two bodies were twisted together. There was some blood, not much. He carefully rested the girl against the ripped seat cushion. She was breathing steadily.

He turned to his partner. “Buddy?” he said softly, but there was not even a flicker of response. “Oh, shit, man.” He trailed one hand down the other man’s face. “Okay, babe. I’ll get help. Take it easy, buddy. Hang in there.” He gripped his partner’s hand desperately. “Oh, please, hold on.” He squeezed the hand. “I’ll be right back.”

He got to his feet and started back up the hill toward the dock area and the Whistling Parrot. Help. He had to get help. The hill seemed impossibly steep and he fell a couple of times. Never gonna make it, he thought numbly. But I gotta make it… gotta get help… I promised him.

After a few minutes walking, he turned into the black entrance of an alley, thinking that it might be a shortcut. For a time that seemed endless he wandered along the dark, twisting path. Finally his legs gave out and he fell heavily. Oh, damn… gotta keep moving…. He could scarcely remember what it was he had to do. There was only a painful sense of urgency propelling him. He dragged his body a few feet along the pavement.

The footsteps were a welcome sound. “Help,” he whispered.

Two dark shapes leaned over him. Rough hands began to frisk him swiftly and efficiently. “Get the wallet,” a hoarse voice said.

“Please,” he whispered. “Need help… accident… my partner… the others… please… help me.”

They ignored him. They took his wallet, stripped off his watch, even pulled the boots from his feet. Then, for good measure, one of them kicked him in the ribs. He moaned and felt the world turn a little blacker.

Finally they were gone.

He started to crawl again, moving toward where he thought help might be found. The crawling sent sharp pains through his ribs. His head was pounding. He cried as he crawled because it all hurt so damned much. What hurt most of all, though, was that his partner was waiting for the help he’d promised and he couldn’t do it, couldn’t bring the help, couldn’t keep his promise.

“Helphelphelphelphelphelp,” he whispered into the night.

When he heard someone coming, instead of being relieved, he almost wanted to hide. Maybe they would hurt him again. But he didn’t hide, couldn’t. It was a chance for help. “Hey,” he said as loudly as he could.

Two men crouched next to him. “Whaddaya think?” one asked.

“Looks like he was rolled.”

“Yeah. No serious damage, though.”

“Please, help.”

“Yeah, buddy,” one of the men said cheerfully. “We’ll help, all right. When you wake up, you’ll feel a whole lot better.”

The other man laughed. “Sides, don’t they say that a sea cruise is good for the health?”

He felt the needle slip into his arm. He tried to move away, but the drug began to wash over him too quickly. “Please,” he whispered once more.

The world drifted away from him. He tried to grab it and hold on, but everything was gone, gone, and even asleep he cried bitterly, because he didn’t think he’d ever get it back..

VI

He was jolted suddenly into wakefulness.

The scene was, at once, familiar and very strange. He’d been to enough accident and crime scenes in his life. The bright lights, the sound of sirens, the noise of cops doing their job. It was all something he knew about. But this seemed different, somehow. He tried to sit up.

Someone put a firm hand on his shoulder. “Stay still, Mac,” a gruff voice said. “I’m Sheriff Collins.”

He opened his eyes and found himself staring at a large man in a brown uniform. “Huh?” he said.

“Keep quiet until the doctor here has a chance to look you over.”

Hutch shook his head, not in denial, but trying to clear away the fog. It helped a little. He started to remember. The little car. No brakes. A crash. He blinked. As he focused, the scene came in more clearly. A body on a stretcher was being carried past; a plastic sheet covered the body. Hutch tried again to sit up and again the hand pushed him down.

“Stay still.” It didn’t sound like medical advice; it sounded like an order.

“Who’s that?” Hutch asked.

Collins looked at him. “Who do you think it is?”

Hutch closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “Somebody got killed in the crash? Oh god… I was trying… to stop us. Who was it?”

“I think you know.”

Hutch didn’t understand why he couldn’t seem to get through to Collins. “Where’s my partner?”

The doctor straightened. “He’s okay, Bud. A knock on the head is all.”

“Okay, Doc, thanks. What’s your name, Mac?”

It took just a moment. “Hutchinson. Ken Hutchinson. Hey, my partner?”

Collins crouched in front of him. “All right, Hutchinson, you listen to me real good. You understand what I’m saying?”

Hutch nodded.

“Okay.” Collins took a deep breath. “You have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?”

“Huh? Yeah,” Hutch said, bewildered.

“Fine. If you choose to give up that right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, but — ”

“You have the right to speak with an attorney and to have that attorney present during questioning. If you wish to speak with an attorney and cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you without charge before questioning. Do you understand all these rights as I have explained them to you?”

Hutch moistened his lips. “Yeah, sure… sure, look, I’m a cop… I know the law… but I don’t….”

“A cop?” Collins exchanged a glance with one of his men. “That explains the gun.”

“Yep.”

Hutch felt that if somebody didn’t answer his questions pretty soon, he’d start breaking heads. “Man, what the hell is going on? Where’s my partner?” He realized that his nose was bleeding a little and he wiped at the red trickle with the back of one hand. “You booking me for something? I wasn’t drunk. I had a few drinks, yeah, but I wasn’t drunk.”

“You giving up the right to remain silent?”

“Yeah, yeah, hell, just tell me what’s going on. You booking me for drunken driving? Where’s my partner? Was he hurt bad? Lemme see him, huh?”

“Hutchinson, we’re arresting you for murder.”

He thought he’d heard wrong. “What?”

“I said, you’re under arrest for the murder of Kimberly Wright.”

Hutch stared at him dumbly. “Murder? I didn’t… I didn’t.” He wiped more blood away. “Where’s my partner?”

“Think you can walk to my cruiser?”

“I can walk.” Hutch swatted away the helping hand offered by Collins. “I can manage,” he said tightly, “but I’m not moving one inch until you tell me what happened to my partner. If he’s… dead, I want to know it now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Hutch spoke very precisely. “I’m talking about my partner, David Starsky. He was in the back seat with… with the other girl. I don’t remember her name.” He took a deep breath. “Tell me where he is.”

Collins shook his head. “Hutchinson, that hit on the head must’ve scrambled your brains. There was nobody in the car but you and Kimberly Wright. And she was dead, shot once in the head. There was a gun in your hand. No other girl. Nobody else.”

Hutch stared at him. “But… but that can’t be.”

“Come on, man.”

He quit fighting. They pulled him to his feet and propelled him toward the car. Hutch stumbled twice before he was shoved into the back seat. He realized numbly that he had been cuffed, without knowing when it had been done. Collins got into the front and turned to face him. “Want to tell us about it?” the cop said in a friendly tone.

Hutch shook his head. He found that he was shivering and couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t want to talk anymore. Call my captain. Captain Dobey, L.A.P.D. He’ll tell you….”

“You can make a call when we get to the station,” Collins said sounding disgusted.

It only took ten minutes.

The police station was in the center of San Manuel, a pseudo-Spanish style building lit by a glaring array of lights. Someone had apparently alerted the local press, because a photographer was poised at the doorway. He snapped a shot of Hutch as the deputy pushed him toward the door. The bright flash made Hutch flinch and raise his hands protectively.

He was ushered quickly through the lobby and given a chair in a small interrogation room. Collins came in and sat across from him. A stenographer took her place in the corner. “You feel like talking now, Hutchinson?”

“I want my phone call.”

“Oh, sure, no problem. We want everything kept nice and legal.”

He waved at someone in the hall. A phone was brought in and placed on the table. The cuffs were removed.

Hutch wiped one hand on his jacket front, smearing some blood, and lifted the receiver. As well as he knew it, he had to think a moment before Dobey’s home number came to mind. The phone rang four times.

Obviously Dobey had been sleeping. He grunted something into the phone .

“Captain? It’s Hutch.”

“Yeah? Huh? Hutchinson?”

“There’s some trouble.”

There was a pause and when Dobey spoke again, he was wide awake. “What’s up?”

Hutch wiped his eyes. “They just arrested me, Captain. They say I killed some broad.”

“Where are you?”

“San Manuel.”

“You’ve actually been arrested?”

“Yeah.”

Dobey swore softly and Hutch could hear a woman’s voice in the background. “You okay?”

“Yeah… I just… I don’t know what the hell is happening.”

“You sound like it. Is Starsky there?”

Hutch shook his head. “No. He’s gone.”

There was another pause. “What do you mean, gone?”

“I don’t know,” Hutch whispered. “I don’t know.”

“Let me talk to whoever’s in charge.”

 

Hutch handed the phone to Collins. The sheriff didn’t talk long. His eyes never left Hutch. In a couple of moments, he hung up. “Your captain said to tell you he’s on his way. With a lawyer.” Collins leaned back, propping his foot on the edge of the table. “Says you’re a good cop.”

“What do you say?” Hutch mumbled.

“I say cops — even good cops — sometimes go bad.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Collins shrugged. “I’m not a big city detective like you. To a simple country cop you look guilty as hell. But that’s only my opinion. I expect we’ll have to let a jury decide.”

Hutch shook his head. “Collins, will you for god’s sake listen to me? I did not kill Kimberly Wright. I don’t know what happened after we hit the barricade.” He leaned forward a little. “I do know that my partner, David Michael Starsky, and some other girl… Mary or Maura, that’s it, Maura Something, they were in the back seat. I want you to find my partner.”

Collins sighed. “Hutchinson….” He shrugged and signaled the patrolman standing just outside. “Book him, Dan.”

**

“Right hand first,” the booking clerk said.

His fingers went into the black ink. This is a joke, right? It has to be.

“Left hand.”

The process was repeated. They really think I killed her… my god….

“Step up on the platform, please.” A placard was shoved into his hands. “Hold this, please.” He was photographed again. 21345. “Face front.”

Maybe that knock on the head is making me dream this.

“Face left.”

Where’s Starsky? Where’s Starsky?

“Face right.”

Damned flash… if this is a dream, why don’t I wake up? Wake me up, Starsk, please? I don’t like this dream.

“Over here. Empty your pockets into the box.”

They inventoried: One blk. leather wallet, contents as follows: two credit cards, one California driver’s license issued to Hutchinson, Kenneth Richard, one library card issued from L.A. Public Library, four photographs, and 125 dollars cash. One blk. leather badge case with police I.D. from L.A.P.D. issued to Hutchinson, Kenneth Richard, Detective Sergeant. One set car keys. 74 cents in change. One silver good luck piece on a chain. One green plastic comb. One room key from the mission Motel. Leather shoulder holster. One gold ring. One watch. One gold chain with half-moon.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Don’t whisper. Speak up.”

“Nothing else.”

“Sign here.”

He signed his name.

“Take him.”

The guard led him down the hall, pausing to unlock a door and then locking it again after they were through. The cell block was dimly lit. They went to the fourth cell. It was a busy night in San Manuel. The festivities had brought out a lot of celebrants, some of whom had seen fit to celebrate a little too enthusiastically.

One such unfortunate fun-seeker lay stretched out on the lower bunk, snoring loudly. Hutch stood in the center of the cell, his hands at his sides. The cell stank of urine and vomit and too many dirty bodies that had passed through over too long a time. Already the odor seemed to attach itself to him, working its way into the center of his being. The filth and the corruption crept through him. He carefully wiped one hand and then the other on the front of his shirt.

The important thing, he decided, was to just stay calm. Hang loose. Keep his cool. Dobey would be here in the morning and everything would get straightened out. These local yokels would realize that they had made a mistake, a big, big mistake. Damn, they’d be stumbling all over themselves trying to apologize.

And tomorrow Starsky would show up.

Yeah, Starsky would show up. By noon, probably, they could be back on the road to San Francisco. Tomorrow night they would have dinner on Fisherman’s Wharf. Fresh shrimp, maybe.

Hutch nodded once sharply. This was a nightmare, sure, but it would be ending very soon. Dawn would chase away the hobgoblins. He took off his jacket and hung it with care over the foot of the upper bunk. He draped the tie next to it.

The man in the other bunk stirred. “Lemme alone,” he mumbled drunkenly.

Hutch hoisted himself up. “Shut up and sleep,” he said wearily.

“Bastard.”

Hutch curled on one side and stared out into the shadowed corridor. Someone in another cell was crying, hoarse, masculine sobs that echoed from one end of the block to the other.

“Shut the fuck up,” another voice said.

Hutch closed his eyes, trying, as well, to close himself off from the place he was in.

VII

The first thing he heard the next morning was the sound of someone throwing up.

He rolled over and watched his cellmate bend over the sink. The man splashed some water on his face and stumbled back to the cot. “I’m gonna kill that motherfucker,” he said loudly.

Hutch didn’t answer. He slid off the bed and went to stand by the bars. A guard sat behind a desk at the end of the hall. “Hey,” Hutch said.

The guard glanced his way and then went back to reading his magazine.

“Hey,” Hutch said again.

After a moment, the guard heaved a put-upon sigh, tossed the magazine onto the desk, and walked to the cell. “Listen, pal, breakfast ain’t for twenty minutes yet.”

“I don’t want breakfast. I want to find out if my captain… Captain Dobey of the L.A.P.D. was supposed to be arriving sometime this morning. Is he here?”

The man shrugged.

“Could you find out?”

“Can’t leave my post.”

Hutch rested his forehead against the bars. “Maybe you could make a call? Please?”

“You’re Hutchinson, right? They got you for wasting the Wright girl?”

“I didn’t… waste anybody.”

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing. Could you call?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” He ambled back to the desk and sat down.

Hutch couldn’t hear what was being said, but only a minute later the guard walked back. “Well?”

“Sheriff Collins said this captain… Dobey was on his way over and they’d let you know when he gets here. Oh, he also said to tell you that your prelim is scheduled for tomorrow morning.”

Hutch only nodded.

He was still standing by the bars when a deputy delivered two breakfast trays. The drunk roused enough to carry his tray back to the cot. He began to eat the chilly powdered eggs with apparent relish. Hutch stayed where he was and managed to down a cup of lukewarm coffee. Just as he finished, a guard appeared and unlocked the cell door. “Hutchinson?”

Hutch nodded and dropped the empty metal cup back onto the tray. Grabbing his jacket and tie, he followed the officer down the hall. As they headed for the same interrogation room he’d been in the night before, Hutch draped the tie around his neck and shrugged into the jacket.

Collins and Dobey were waiting in the room, along with a young man in a grey pinstripe suit. Dobey stood as Hutch came in. “Ken, you okay?”

“Yeah.” He smoothed at his hair.

“You look terrible,” Dobey said gruffly.

Hutch tried to tuck his shirttail in. “Yeah, I slept in this.” His voice cracked a little. He cleared his throat.

“Sit down, Hutchinson,” Collins ordered. Hutch obeyed. “This is Mr. Phipps from the District Attorney’s office. He’s going to ask you some questions about last night.”

Dobey sat down again. “Detective Hutchinson won’t say anything more without his lawyer.”

Dobey’s words hit Hutch like a physical blow and he reeled back a little. Until that very moment, Hutch had truly believed that once Dobey arrived, bringing a voice of sanity from the outside, this whole thing would end. He would wake up and the nightmare would be over. But now Dobey was here and it wasn’t happening like that. It felt as if the very ground under Hutch was beginning to crumble. He wanted to thrash out and grab onto something safe. It was another jarring blow when he realized that there was nothing and no one to grab. He squeezed his eyes closed briefly, then looked at Dobey. “Where’s Starsky?” he asked.

Dobey met his gaze. “I don’t know.”

Collins was lighting a small black cigar. “He took off,” he said bluntly.

Hutch looked at the sheriff. “You do believe he was there now?”

“We talked to the people at the Whistling Parrot. I believe there were four of you when you left the bar. Maybe you all got into the car together.”

“We did.”

“Hutch,” Dobey said quietly, “wait for the lawyer.”

Hutch nodded.

The room fell silent, except for the sound of Collins puffing on the cigar, Hutch leaned back in the chair, watching the doorway thoughtfully. Well, Dobey couldn’t fix it. Obviously he couldn’t fix it himself. This lawyer, maybe? Well…. No, if he was going to put his trust in somebody to get him out of this, he would put it right where it had always been.

It was up to Starsky. Okay, no problem. Starsky could handle it. Captain Marvel.

“Did that injury receive treatment?” Dobey asked suddenly.

“Huh?” Hutch lightly touched the bruise on his forehead. “Oh. I guess.”

“The doc checked him at the scene,” Collins said.

“I assume his rights were read to him?”

Collins eyed Dobey. “We know how the law works, Captain, even here in San Manuel.”

“I’m sure you do. But I just want to make sure that my man doesn’t get run over in some precipitate rush to justice.” Dobey paused. “I saw the paper.”

Collins seemed a bit abashed. “You know how the press is.”

“We have newspapers in Los Angeles, too.”

“You have to remember, Captain, that Kimberly Wright wasn’t just some hooker he picked up in the Whistling Parrot.”

“I picked her up in the Lobster Pot,” Hutch muttered.

Collins shot him a glance and then continued. “She was the daughter of Owen Wright. An important man in this town. This case is going to be very carefully watched.”

“Indeed,” Dobey agreed rather obliquely. “Oh, here’s Mr. Kramer.”

Kramer came into the room, a well-built black man who looked more like a linebacker than an attorney. He dropped a bulging briefcase onto the table and smiled. “Harold, good to see you.”

“Sam. This is Ken Hutchinson.”

They shook hands. Kramer greeted Collins and Phipps with only a little less ebullience and pulled another chair to the table. He opened the briefcase. “Could I have a few minutes alone with my client, Sheriff? Then, I’m sure Mr. Hutchinson will be glad to answer any questions you have.”

Collins and Phipps left the room.

“It’s Detective Hutchinson,” Hutch said softly.

“Sorry, of course it is. Harold told me that. Well, why don’t we just make it Ken and Sam?” He waited for Hutch’s nod before going on. “You want to tell me exactly what happened last night? Try to remember everything, no matter how insignificant it may seem.” Kramer smiled again. “But then, you know that already, don’t you?”

Hutch nodded. He waited as Kramer took a yellow legal pad and a pen out of his case. “We went into the Lobster Pot for dinner,” he began.

“Why were you in San Manuel?” Kramer broke in.

Hutch sighed and started over, started way back before they even left Los Angeles, telling Sam Kramer why he and his partner had wanted a vacation. As he talked, he toyed idly with the ends of the tie draped unknotted around his neck.

Dobey paced the room during the recitation.

It took a long time to tell the whole story and when he was finally finished, Hutch slid down in the chair a little, exhausted. He stared at Kramer. “Is anybody looking for Starsky?” he said after a minute.

“Everybody,” Kramer replied dryly.

“Good.”

“There’s a warrant out on him. Accessory to murder. And probably a couple of other charges before the day is over.”

“Shit.” There ~as a newspaper shoved into Kramer’s briefcase. Hutch reached over and pulled it out. There he was on the front page, the picture that had been snapped as he was first entering the police station. He almost didn’t recognize himself. The man in the picture looked pale, scared, and guilty. He stared at it for a long time.

Finally Kramer reached over and gently took the paper from him, folding it out of sight. “You ready for them now?”

“Could I have something to drink?”

“Sure.”

Dobey went out to the soda machine in the hallway. When he came back, Collins and Phipps were with him. A moment later the stenographer arrived. Hutch wrapped his hands tightly around the Coke can and waited for it to begin.

VIII

PHIPPS: Give us your full name, address, and occupation, please.

HUTCHINSON: Kenneth Richard Hutchinson, 1027½ Ocean. Apartment 2. I ‘m a detective sergeant in the Homicide Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department.

PHIPPS: When did you arrive in San Manuel?

HUTCHINSON: Uh… yesterday. Yeah, yesterday afternoon.

PHIPPS: What time, please?

HUTCHINSON: Uh… it was… it was a little after seven in New York… that would make it….

PHIPPS: Shortly after four?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah, I guess.

PHIPPS: Why did you come to San Manuel?

HUTCHINSON: We just —

PHIPPS: We? You were with someone else?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS : Who?

HUTCHINSON: My partner, David Michael Starsky.

PHIPPS: Thank you. Why did you come to San Manuel? I understand you were on your way to San Francisco.

HUTCHINSON: Huh… oh, we just stopped for the hell of it. Starsk thought… we thought it might be fun. Because of the, ah, festival or whatever it is.

PHIPPS: Okay, go on, What did you do after you arrived?

HUTCHINSON: We checked in at the motel… the Mission Motel.

PHIIPPS : Then?

HUTCHINSON: I… took a nap, I guess. Then we went out to dinner.

PHIPPS : Where?

HUTCHINSON: To the Lobster Pot.

PHIPPS: Why there, in particular?

HUTCHINSON: Why the hell not?

PHIPPS: That’s not an answer.

HUTCHINSON: We went there because it was close. Starsk wanted lobster, I guess.

PHIPPS: What happened when you reached the restaurant?

HUTCHINSON: We saw the two girls… Kimberly and… uh, Maura sitting at the bar.

PHIPPS: Maura who?

HUTCHINSON: (No response)

PHIPPS: The stenographer can’t record a shrug, Hutchinson.

HUTCHINSON: I don’t know her last name. Just Maura.

PHIPPS: You and this Starsky approached the girls?

HUTCHINSON: You make it sound… we didn’t “approach” them… we just introduced ourselves and asked if they wanted to have dinner with us and then go to the dance.

PHIPPS: The town dance in the square?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah.

PHIPPS: The girls agreed to this arrangement?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS: And then?

HUTCHINSON: Look, can I ask a question?

PHIPPS: Later. You just answer for now. What happened next?

HUTCHINSON: What do you think? We had dinner. And before you ask, both the girls had shrimp. I had stuffed salmon. Starsky had the lobster. It was all very good and we all cleaned our plates.

PHIPPS: Lot of drinking going on with dinner, was there?

HUTCHINSON: We had some drinks, sure, but —

PHIPPS: A lot?

HUTCHINSON: I guess that depends.

PHIPPS: Depends on what?

HUTCHINSON: Oh, hell, I don’t know.

PHIPPS: How much did you have to drink?

KRAMER: Excuse me, was a sobriety test done on my client?

COLLINS: No… it should have been, I admit. It was an oversight. However, let me just check my notes here… when asked at the scene, Hutchinson denied being intoxicated. He said, “I wasn’t drunk… I had a few drinks, yeah, but I wasn’t drunk.” End quote.

KRAMER: Had he been informed of his rights at the time he made that statement?

COLLINS: Yes, and he waived his right to counsel.

PHIPPS: How much did you have to drink, Hutchinson?

HUTCHINSON: A couple drinks before dinner. Some wine. A snifter of brandy. And some beer later.

PHIPPS: But you weren’t drunk?

HUTCHINSON: No.

PHIPPS: What about the others?

HUTCHINSON: Huh?

PHIPPS: Were any of the others drunk?

HUTCHINSON: Not drunk. Kimberly was all right. Maura was a little loaded.

PHIPPS: What about this Starsky?

HUTCHINSON: He was… a little high. Not much.

PHIPPS: Could he walk?

HUTCHINSON: Of course.

PHIPPS: Okay. So what happened after dinner?

HUTCHINSON: Could I have another Coke?

PHIPPS: Sure. Collins, get him a Coke, please. What happened after dinner?

HUTCHINSON: We went to the dance.

PHIPPS: How did you get from the restaurant to the dance?

HUTCHINSON: In Kimberly’s car.

PHIPPS: Who drove?

HUTCHINSON: She did.

COLLINS: Here.

HUTCHINSON: Thanks.

PHIPPS: You were with Kimberly, is that right?

HUTCHINSON: What do you mean?

PHIPPS: She was like your date, right? And Starsky was with Maura?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah.

PHIPPS: Why?

HUTCHINSON: (No response)

PHIPPS: He still can’t record a shrug, Hutchinson.

HUTCHINSON: I don’t understand the question.

PHIPPS: Why were you with Kimberly?

HUTCHINSON: Who knows? ‘Cause Starsky has a thing for blondes, I guess.

PHIPPS: So you went to the dance?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS: Have a good time?

HUTCHINSON: Not particularly.

PHIPPS: Why not?

HUTCHINSON: I don’t know.

PHIPPS: Maybe Kimberly wasn’t cooperating? Was that it?

HUTCHINSON: Cooperating? What the hell does that mean?

PHIPPS: Maybe you wanted her to be a little friendlier than she was? Could that be it?

HUTCHINSON: No, that’s not it. Look, I didn’t pick her up with the idea of jumping into bed. We only thought it would be fun to have a little company at the dance. Is there anything wrong with that?

KRAMER: Take it easy, Ken.

HUTCHINSON: He keeps asking me all these stupid questions that don’t mean anything and he won’t answer my question.

DOBEY: Hutch, you know how these things go down.

HUTCHINSON: Yeah, I know.

PHIPPS: So you didn’t enjoy the dance. Why?

HUTCHINSON: I was tired, I guess. Kimberly didn’t want to dance, so we just sat at one of the tables and talked.

PHIPPS: What’d you talk about?

HUTCHINSON: Nothing special. She asked me about my job.

PHIPPS: You told her that you were a cop?

HUTCHINSON: Yes. It’s not a secret.

PHIPPS: What else?

HUTCHINSON: Ah… she told me about her father.

PHIPPS: What about him?

HUTCHINSON: Just that he’s some kind of big shot in town.

PHIPPS: I see. Okay, what happened next?

HUTCHINSON: Well… Kimberly suggested that we should go down to the Strip.

PHIPPS: She suggested it?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS: Not you?

HUTCHINSON: I didn’t even know about it, man.

PHIPPS: Who drove?

HUTCHINSON: I did.

PHIPPS: Why?

HUTCHINSON: I don’t know.

PHIPPS: What happened after you reached the Strip?

HUTCHINSON: We went into the penny arcade.

PHIPPS: What’d you do there?

HUTCHINSON: Played the pinball machines for a little while.

PHIPPS: Anything else?

HUTCHINSON: No… oh, Starsky and Maura had their picture taken in one of those quickie places. Did you find the picture in the car?

PHIPPS: No. Then what?

HUTCHINSON: I was ready to go. Back to the motel.

PHIPPS: Oh?

HUTCHINSON: Not with them. I just wanted to get some sleep. We were supposed to drive on to San Francisco today.

PHIPPS: But you didn’t go back to the motel?

HUTCHINSON: No… well, Kimberly insisted we go have a nightcap.

PHIPPS: Kimberly insisted?

HUTCHINSON: Yes. So we went over to the Whistling Parrot.

PHIPPS: Not exactly the kind of place to take a couple of ladies into, is it, Hutchinson?

HUTCHINSON: No. It was her idea. In fact, I suggested that we should go somewhere else, but….

PHIPPS: But you stayed?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS: Had a few more drinks?

HUTCHINSON: I had two beers.

PHIPPS: The girls?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah… they each had a couple… I don’t remember what.

PHIPPS: And Starsky?

HUTCHINSON: He had a couple. Whiskey, I think. With some beer.

PHIPPS: Anything happen in the bar?

HUTCHINSON: Like what?

PHIPPS: Like anything. A fight, maybe?

HUTCHINSON: No.

PHIPPS: You were together, the four of you, the whole time?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah… well, except, I went to the john once. To take a leak, if you want me to be specific.

PHIPPS: Starsky was alone with the girls?

HUTCHINSON: For a couple minutes. Then he came into the john.

PHIPPS: Was he sick?

HUTCHINSON: No. He was drinking beer. He had to piss.

PHIPPS: You talk?

HUTCHINSON: Of course.

PHIPPS: What about?

HUTCHINSON: Nothing. We just decided that it was time to call it a night, ’cause like I said, we wanted to get an early start.

PHIPPS: That’s all?

HUTCHINSON: Yeah….

PHIPPS: What next?

HUTCHINSON: We left the bar and got into the car.

PHIPPS: You driving again?

HUTCHINSON: Yes.

PHIPPS: Kimberly was next to you?

HUTCHINSON: Uh-huh.

PHIPPS: Maura and Starsky — ?

HUTCHINSON: They were in the back.

PHIPPS: How fast were you going?

HUTCHINSON: Not fast.

PHIPPS: So what happened?

HUTCHINSON: The car had no brakes.

PHIPPS: What do you mean?

HUTCHINSON: That was a simple enough statement, wasn’t it? There were no brakes on the fucking car. I tried to slow down for the curve and there were no brakes. The emergency brake was gone, too. I saw the barricades and figured I could bring the car to a stop. It worked.

PHIPPS: What happened next?

HUTCHINSON: Nothing.

PHIPPS : Nothing?

HUTCHINSON: The next thing I knew, Collins was bending over me.

PHIPPS: You don’t remember what you did, is that what you’re saying?

HUTCHINSON: I’m saying I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything.

PHIPPS: You don’t remember taking your gun from the holster and shooting Kimberly Wright once in the head?

HUTCHINSON: (No response)

PHIPPS: It was your gun, Hutchinson. You were holding it. No other prints on the weapon.

HUTCHINSON: I didn’t kill her.

PHIPPS: Where’s your partner?

HUTCHINSON: I don’t know. Christ, haven’t I been asking you that?

PHIPPS: Was it an accident, Hutchinson? Maybe you didn’t mean to kill Kimberly. Maybe you were aiming at someone else, maybe even Starsky, and you hit her by mistake.

HUTCHINSON: My god. You think I’d shoot my own partner?

DOBEY: Take it easy, Ken.

HUTCHINSON: Do you hear what he’s saying? I’ve had enough of this crap. Sam, do I have to listen to anymore of this? Do I have to talk to him?

KRAMER: No, Ken.

HUTCHINSON: I don’t have anything else to say.

IX

Dobey was waiting in the visitor’s room a couple of hours later when they brought Hutch in. The captain was pacing the room like an angry black cat. “You all right?” he asked again.

Hutch started to nod, then only shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m losing my mind. Maybe I’ve lost it.” He sank down into a chair and waved one hand. “Down the rabbit hole. Through the looking glass.”

“I brought you some clothes and things. They’ll give ’em to you.”

“After they make sure you’re not smuggling in a file or anything, right?”

“Right.” Dobey smiled faintly. Hutch only looked at him blankly. “Thought you might like to clean up a little before the hearing tomorrow.”

“Will it matter?”

“What’s that mean?”

Hutch leaned forward, resting both arms on his knees. “Is it just me, Cap’n, or does everybody already have me sent up the river for this thing?”

Dobey avoided his gaze. “The town is pretty keyed up. Wright is an important person and he’s raising hell all the way to the statehouse.”

“So they need a scapegoat,” Hutch said flatly.

“Yes. And with the evidence they have, there’s not much doubt they’ll get an indictment.”

“What evidence?”

“Come on, Hutch, you know as well as I do. Good Lord, man. It was your gun. You were holding it.”

Hutch got to his feet so swiftly that the chair went crashing to the floor. “You think I did it, too, don’t you?” he yelled.

“No, I don’t think that,” Dobey shouted back. He smashed one fist into his open palm. “But I don’t know what the hell I can do right now,” he said more quietly.

Hutch bent to pick up the chair. “Sorry,” he said his voice muffled. He sat down again. “Any word on Starsk?”

Dobey shook his head.

“You think maybe the killer snatched him and Maura?”

“It’s possible.”

“What’s the official version of what happened?” Hutch had been a cop long enough to know that there was an “official” version of every crime. Sometimes it happened that the official version coincided with the truth. Sometimes it didn’t.

“They don’t seem to know. Most popular at the moment seems to be a theory that you and she got into an argument, probably when she ‘refused your advances’ as Collins so nicely puts it. Enraged, you pulled the gun and shot her. The crash came then.”

Hutch shook his head. “Jesus. How do they explain Starsky and Maura disappearing?”

“Probably just got scared and took off. Didn’t want to get involved. Or there’s a sort of splinter-group theory that Starsky and you conspired in the whole thing and he probably killed the other girl. They’re looking for her body.”

Hutch shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

“I know, Ken, but Sam is a good man. Everything will work out.”

“Yeah?” He stood and began to pace the small room. “Why do I feel like I’m on a runaway roller coaster?”

“Hutch, I’m going to ask you just one question and I want you to answer it straight. Don’t waste any time getting mad at me for asking it. Understand?”

“What?” Hutch stood poised behind the chair, staring at Dobey with bloodshot eyes.

“You told Sam everything, right? There’s nothing you held back?”

Hutch opened his mouth immediately to retort, closed it again, and finally shook his head. “No. Except….”

Dobey stiffened. “Except what?”

“It has nothing to do with this.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“It was just a stupid conversation Starsky and I had in the john at the Whistling Parrot.”

“What about?”

“He was talking about the Tyler Monroe thing. Wondering why he couldn’t pull his gun. He was upset about freezing.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.” Hutch ducked his head. “He was pretty uptight about it, ’cause he was afraid I wouldn’t trust him. Stupid bastard. He said, ‘It won’t ever, ever happen again. The next time you need me, man, I’m gonna be there.'” Hutch cleared his throat and after another moment, raised his head. “Damn. I didn’t know I could quote his words. Guess that proves I wasn’t drunk.” He lifted the chair and moved it a couple of inches to the left and set it down again. “I told him he was the best damned partner in the world.”

“How drunk was he?”

“Not that drunk.”

“What’s that mean?”

Hutch straightened his shoulders and met Dobey’s gaze. “Not drunk enough to kill somebody and run off, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything of the kind. But — ”

“Oh, to hell with it. I’m tired. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

He signaled through the window to the guard that he was ready to go.

“Cap’n, thanks… and if there’s any word, anything at all….”

“I’ll let you know immediately. And I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

His previous cellmate had departed, theoretically, at least, a more sober and a wiser man. He had been replaced by a sullen young man in blue jeans and bare feet. He sat on the upper bunk and glared down at Hutch.

Hutch stood just inside the cell door. “Upper bunk’s mine,” he said quietly.

The young man lit a cigarette with the arrogance of his generation. “Yeah?” he said. “I didn’t see no sign with your name on it.”

“I slept in it last night.”

“So tonight you’ll have a change of scene.”

“I’d rather not.”

“What the hell are you, some kind of big shot? Just cause you’re a cop that gives you rights?” He laughed harshly. “Way I see it, a cop in the joint is just one more con.”

Hutch took a deep breath. It had been a long day, almost the longest day in his life. He was worn out and he was scared. And he was tired of getting his ass kicked around by other people. Before the young man could react, Hutch was across the cell. He grabbed the other prisoner by the shirt front and pulled him off the bunk. “I said that’s my bed,” he muttered, shoving him away. “So keep your butt off it.”

The man looked for one moment as if he might like to challenge Hutch. After a fleeting consideration, he apparently decided against it. “Oh, hell, man, who cares so much about a frigging bed?” he mumbled.

Hutch didn’t answer. He climbed into the bed and stretched out.

So. Here it was. Reality was staring him in the face. Let Dobey say all he wanted about Sam Kramer being a good lawyer. Didn’t matter. Let Dobey himself do all he could. That wouldn’t matter either. Hutch had been around long enough to recognize a fast shuffle when he saw one. Kimberly Wright was dead and somebody was going to take a long fall and he was it.

Innocent men sometimes went to jail.

That was a fact he had always known, but only considered in the abstract. Had given it a little thought, perhaps, back when Van was killed and a warrant had been issued citing Hutchinson for murder one. But there had been something he could do that time. Something they could do. This time, he was locked up. Helpless. Alone.

The guard brought their dinner trays to the cell, but Hutch turned his back on it, staring at the grimy wall with its scribbled graffiti. JESUS SAVES. JOE WAS HERE. FUC YOU. Hutch closed his eyes.

Where the hell was Starsky? Was he dead, like Kimberly Wright? As the hours went by and there was no word from him, it began to appear that he might be. What else could keep him away?

The next time you need me, man, I’m gonna be there.

Hutch hurt. I need you, man, I need you, so where the hell are you? His eyes squeezed shut more tightly. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of breaking him. His head hurt from the blow it had received in the crash. He ached from the night spent in the damp cell and from the tension of holding his body in tight restraint all day when what he really wanted to do was bust out and start smashing everything in sight.

He didn’t care much about his pounding head or his aching body.

The worst thing was the way his heart was hurting, aching with fear and loneliness. “Ahh, Starsk,” he whispered into the thin mattress.

Finally he fell asleep and the unshed tears dried behind the lids.

X

A guard escorted Hutch to the shower room the next morning. He leaned against the wall, obviously bored, as Hutch washed, shaved, combed his hair and donned the clean slacks and sport shirt Dobey had brought. Then he was taken hack to the cell and drank the coffee from his breakfast tray.

The courthouse was directly opposite the police station, so, cuffed and escorted by three deputies, Hutch walked across the grassy mall separating the two buildings. The local press was out in force, as well as some reporters from Los Angeles. Someone reached through the cordon of police and shoved a microphone in his face, shouting a question at him. Hutch only shook his head and kept moving. He could see Dobey and Sam Kramer standing on the steps of the courthouse waiting for him.

“Morning, Ken,” Kramer said with a smile.

He nodded.

“You look better today,” Dobey said, determinedly cheerful.

“Any word on Starsk?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He didn’t say any more. They went down the hallway to courtroom B and took their places at the defense table. The media and the just plain curious crowded the room. A hush descended suddenly as a tall man in a well-cut and expensive Italian suit entered, flanked on either side by a couple of musclemen. His eyes met Hutch’s for a long moment.

Kramer leaned closer. “That’s Owen Wright,” he said in a low voice.

“I figured.” Hutch turned his head away. “Cap’n, what happened to all our stuff at the motel? And the car?”

“I’m taking care of it, Hutch.”

A moment later the judge came into the room. Kramer, Phipps, and Hutch approached the bench. To anyone who is unfamiliar with the procedure, a preliminary hearing can be a confusing, unintelligible experience. None of the spectators could really hear what was being said. They could only watch as Phipps spoke fervently for a time, gesturing often to make his points, and presenting pages of written testimony. Kramer spoke briefly and quietly. Hutch stood a step back from the attorneys, his gaze directed at some point above the bench. Once the judge spoke directly to him and Hutch shook his head in response.

In only a few minutes, the principals returned to their seats. Dobey patted Hutch’s shoulder as he sat down. The judge studied the papers in front of him, then raised his head to address the room. “This court finds that there is sufficient evidence to justify binding Kenneth Hutchinson over to the Grand Jury on the charges presented.” That was all he said.

Hutch got to his feet, feeling numb all over. Wright, on his way out of the room, paused at the defense table and stared at Hutch. Kramer reached up to pull Hutch down into his chair and Wright left. “Ken, they had the Grand Jury sitting by, so this is going to move very fast. I expect they’ll schedule the arraignment for late this afternoon. I’m going to try and get a reasonable bail set so we can keep you from being sent out to the county jail.”

Hutch smiled faintly. “Reasonable bail? I’d say the chances of that are pretty piss-poor, wouldn’t you?”

“We can try.”

“They’re sure in one helluva hurry to get rid of me, aren’t they?” He sighed and shook his head. “You’ll take care of my stuff at the motel, Cap’n?”

“Don’t worry about it, Hutch.”

“And Starsk’s stuff? You’ll take care of that, too?”

“Of course. Man, you’re talking like you’re all ready to give up. We’re going to fight this, Ken, all the way.”

Hutch nodded. “Sure, sure.” The guard was waiting and Hutch stood slowly. “Except that I’m tired, Captain. I’m just tired.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “I’m off the force, right?”

Dobey looked away. “Until this is all cleared up, Hutch. You know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah. I sure do.” Hutch straightened his shoulders and followed the guard to the holding room to await the word from the Grand Jury. Kramer came along. Dobey went out for hamburgers.

Kramer sat in one corner of the room pouring over his notes, talking quietly to himself. A guard stood just outside the door. Hutch sat at the table, his feet propped up, his face a blank.

“Ken,” Kramer said shortly.

“What?”

“I want to ask you some questions. If anything I say makes you mad, just remember that I don’t know you and I don’t know anything about David Starsky, either. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“You and he were partners for a long time?”

Were? What the hell kind of a word is were? “A long time. Over eight years. A long time.”

“Must have been a good partnership.”

“It is.”

“You friends?”

“Yes.”

Kramer was making unintelligible notations in purple ink on yellow paper. “What kind of a man is he?”

Hutch shrugged.

“Too vague? Well… okay. He honest?”

“Yes.”

“Smart?”

“Yes.”

“Loyal?”

Hutch kicked a small tin ashtray across the table and it fell to the floor. “He’s a goddamned boy scout, Kramer, is that what you want to hear?” Kramer didn’t reply and the explosion ended as quickly as it had begun. Hutch took a deep breath and spoke more softly. “David Starsky is… a good man.”

“You think he’s dead?” Kramer spoke with a bluntness that forbade any emotional reaction.

Hutch did not react; he met the other man’s icy black gaze with his own icy blue one. “I don’t know. I hope not. Sometimes I think he must be, though, or else he’d be here.”

“Maybe he’s scared. Maybe he’s hiding.”

“And letting me go through this?” Hutch shook his head. “No.”

“Not even to save his own skin?”

“Hell.” Hutch smiled. “Like you said, Sam, you don’t know Starsky.”

“You trust him completely?”

“No.” Kramer glanced up in surprise; he’d obviously not been expecting the negative response. “Not completely. I wouldn’t trust him to pick out a blind date or a car. With my life, I trust him.”

Dobey came in carrying two paper bags. “Food, Hutch. You better eat, because you’re starting to look like death warmed over.”

Hutch tried. He took a couple bites of the cheeseburger and a few french fries. Dobey scowled at him, but he only shrugged apologetically. “Sorry.” He turned to Kramer. “Assuming I can’t make bail, what happens?”

“They’ll take you straight out to county.” Kramer grimaced. “I think they’ve got a driver standing by.”

“Terrific.”

Dobey gave him a sharp glance and again Hutch shrugged.

Kramer was arranging his papers. “If that happens,” he said, “I’ll do what I can to make it easier for you. After all, a cop inside is not the most popular inmate.”

“Right. As my current cellmate said, a cop in the joint is just another con.”

“Worse than that,” Kramer said, but he didn’t elaborate. He didn’t really have to.

They seemed to have exhausted the conversation. Kramer went back to his solitary mutterings; Dobey, his hands clasped behind his back, paced the small room repeatedly. Hutch just sat. None of them was really there, anyway; they were on the second floor of the building, in a richly-paneled room where the Grand Jury held its deliberations.

**

The dictionary defines an arraignment as the “calling of a prisoner before a court to answer an indictment.” The same book defines a formality as “compliance with formal or conventional rules.” What happened in the San Manuel courthouse later that day was a little of both. Kenneth Richard Hutchinson was, in fact, summoned before the bench to answer the charge of murder in the second degree. But the entire affair seemed staged. Everyone knew the right words to say and said them right on cue. Sam Kramer was a persuasive man, a damned good lawyer. But his opponent was not just Phipps, from the district attorney’s office. Kramer was also fighting an outside force, a man not even in the courtroom. That man was Owen Wright.

Hutch barely listened to the proceedings. He spoke only once, saying a soft “not guilty” in response to a question from the judge. Otherwise, he just slouched in his chair at the defense table and stared at the wall.

Bail was set at $500,000. Someone in the room whistled at the amount, but Hutch only shrugged. When it was made clear to the court that the accused, a hard-working, underpaid police officer, had no way to raise the necessary $50,000, the judge remanded him immediately to the county jail. Kramer requested that his client be put into protective custody, citing the acts of violence often committed against law officers incarcerated in penal institutions. Without making any promises, the judge said that all necessary precautions would be taken to watch over Hutchinson.

That was pretty much it.

Kramer and Dobey came with him back to the holding room for a few minutes to await the prison van. Hutch seemed resigned to what had happened. “Cap’n,” he said, “my plants at home… the neighbor was going to take care of them for a week, but….”

Dobey seemed to have aged ten years in the last twenty-four hours.

He nodded slowly. “I’ll take them to my place. Edith will watch over them for you.”

“Thanks. And Belle… could you — ” He lost the thread of what he had been saying.

“I’ll take care of the car, Ken.”

“Better close up my apartment.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. This is kinda funny… all the people I’ve sent away and I never gave a thought to… what they did with the pieces of their lives.” He paused again. “And Starsky’s place. His car is over at Merle’s getting a new windshield. It was supposed to be ready by the end of the week. Maybe if you talked to Merle, he’d store it. Belle, too, maybe.”

Dobey gripped Hutch’s shoulder. “Listen, don’t worry about any of those things. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

Kramer gave him an encouraging smile. “We haven’t had our chance yet, Ken. When it gets to trial, we come to bat.”

Hutch sighed. “Starsky’s into sport metaphors, Sam, not me.”

A guard appeared in the doorway and signaled that the jail van was waiting. Hutch got to his feet. “Okay,” he said, “I gotta go.”

“Ken — ” Dobey gave his shoulder another squeeze. “We’re going to beat this.”

“Sure, Cap’n.” He walked to the door, then stopped. “There is one more thing you can do for me.”

“What?”

“Find my partner. Find Starsky.”

There was a long pause. “I’ll try, Ken,” Dobey said quietly.

“Thank you.”

He walked out into the hallway. The guard cuffed his hands and feet. Hutch looked back once to where Dobey and Kramer stood watching and then he walked away, moving with the characteristic shuffle of the prisoner, his head bowed.

In a moment, he was out of sight.

**

 

Hutch was taken back across the mall to the jail and escorted into a small changing room manned by a complacent deputy with a fleshy, bored face. The cuffs were removed. “Strip,” the deputy said around a huge wad of gum.

“What?” Hutch said vaguely.

“What’re you, a blushing virgin? I said strip. Take it off, Mac, all of it.”

As Hutch slowly took off his shirt, trousers, underwear, the deputy tagged each item and dropped it into a plain brown bag. Naked, he endured a superficial body search, a task the deputy accomplished to the tune of his popping gum. “Okay,” he said finally, handing Hutch a much-washed white coverall. “Put this on.” The large manila envelope with Hutch’s personal effects was dropped into the sack as well.

When he had donned the coverall, the cuffs and leg irons were put back on and Hutch was led down a dimly-lit corridor to the garage. Two other prisoners watched without interest as he joined them in the van and was duly cuffed yet again, this time to the crossbar of the seat.

As the van pulled out of the garage and started away, Hutch looked through the barred window and saw Dobey and Kramer standing on the front steps, watching. He tried to raise his hands to wave at them, but he couldn’t lift them high enough.

Hutch settled back in the seat as the van passed through San Manuel, going by some of the same places he and Starsky had seen… when was it? Two days earlier? God, it seemed like an eternity. This nightmare had gone on forever. As they reached the edge of town he saw the Mission Motel and, in the parking lot, the shiny red VW.

. . . my car is candy apple red… this car is fire engine red…

That idiot. Red was red.

Hutch shook his head, trying to get rid of the thoughts that kept threatening his efforts at self-control. He became aware that one of the other prisoners was speaking to him. “What did you say?”

“I said, I thought pigs never got busted. Ain’t that a rule? You ain’t supposed to bust another pig. So how come you got busted?”

Hutch shrugged. “There’s no rule like that.”

The young black man smiled. “I guess not, cause here you be, right?”

“Right. Here I am.”

“Bet it feels kinda funny, don’t it?”

“Yeah.” Hutch moved his hands against the chains. “Yeah, it feels funny.”

A sudden and unexpected look of something very like compassion crossed the other man’s face. “Well, it ain’t so bad once you get used to it. It’s just boring, is all. Nothing to do, you know?”

Hutch only nodded.

It took an hour and a half to get out to the county jail. There was no more conversation until the gray and white walls of the Diablo Correctional Facility came into view.

“Home sweet home,” the black man said in a mournful tone.

The jail was set in the middle of a small valley that was very green and might have been pretty, except for the huge grey mass in its center. There were some houses scattered around the edge of the valley, pastel-colored stuccos, and a few other buildings with no purpose immediately evident. But the whole valley was dominated by the prison.

The van turned onto an asphalt drive, and after a brief pause at the gate, drove into a yard and stopped. The deputy unlocked the cuffs and leg chains and the three prisoners filed off the van. They went through a doorway and into a cramped concrete room with sickly green benches along the wall.

A man, by his insignia a sergeant, came in. “Welcome to Diablo Correctional Facility, gentlemen,” he said in a singsong, faintly mocking tone. “We have just a little business to get through before we can get you tucked away in your new home, so let’s all just cooperate and keep it moving.” He gestured them through another doer marked Receiving and Release.

It looked much like the booking room back in Los Angeles. More wooden benches, a chipped and scarred wooden counter. A camera stood in one corner. A painfully thin trustee was fiddling with the adjustments on the camera. He ignored them as they sat down on one of the benches.

“Mug shots first,” the sergeant said pleasantly. “Everybody all clean-shaven and pretty?”

Hutch was the first in front of the camera. The trustee adjusted a card with large black numbers in front of him. A new facility, a new number. 217890. Hutch stared at the sign which read LOOK HERE and the flash went off.

“Face to the left,” the trustee droned.

He turned. Flash.

“Face to the right.”

Turn. Flash. All of this, he decided, had nothing to do with him at all. It was happening to some stranger. Not to Ken Hutchinson. Not to Detective Kenneth Hutchinson of the L.A.P.D.

“Thank you. Step aside. Next please.”

When the other two were finished in front of the camera, the sergeant got to his feet. “Okay, coveralls, shoes, and socks off. Dump ’em into the basket there. All personal effects into the bin. Nothing goes inside with you.”

Again he stood naked. The sergeant started with the black man, but in a moment he was ready for Hutch. “Arms over your head.” He peered into the armpits. “Run your fingers through your hair. Mouth open. Wider. Okay. Skin it back. Lift your balls. Turn around and bend over. Spread ’em. Straighten up. Lift your right foot. Left foot. All done.”

Trembling a little, Hutch walked over to receive one of the faded blue coveralls and a pair of blue cloth slippers. Staring at the floor, he donned the garments and returned to the bench. When everyone was ready they left the room and walked through still another door, this one leading into a small open courtyard.

“Hutchinson, you first,” the sergeant ordered.

A middle-aged woman, with beginning-to-grey hair and wearing a white jacket, sat behind a desk. “Have a seat,” she said cheerfully.

He sat, his knees pressed together, hands gripping his legs.

“I’m Doctor Fisher, Mr. Hutchinson. Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes.”

“I see that you were in an automobile accident recently. Any problems?”

“I have a headache.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I have a headache,” he repeated more loudly.

“Do you want something for it?”

“Maybe some aspirin?”

She took a bottle from the drawer, shook out two white pills, and poured a cup of water.

He swallowed both aspirin in a gulp. “Thank you.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“When did you have your last physical examination?”

He tried to think. “Three weeks ago,” he said finally. “From the department doctor.”

She nodded slowly. “Oh, yes, that’s right, you were a policeman.” Her smile was warm. “Well, then, I think we can assume you’re in good physical condition. If you have any problems, just come in.”

“Thank you.”

The next stop he made was in another small office, this one occupied by a balding man in a baggy flannel suit. “I’m the resident shrink,” he said with a faint smile. “Any hang-ups you’d like to talk about?”

Hutch shook his head.

“You walk in your sleep?”

“No.”

“Wet the bed?”

“No .”

“You gay?”

“No.”

“Gee, you’re almost normal, aren’t you?”

Hutch shrugged.

He was sent next to the distribution center, where he was given everything he would need for his life now: two unbleached muslin sheets, a muslin pillowcase, two woolen blankets, a small metal mirror, a teaspoon, a comb, a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, a bar of soap in a plain wrapper, a razor and pack of blades, and a book listing the rules and regulations of the prison. Finally, he was handed a pair of blue denim pants, a blue work shirt, underwear, socks, and a pair of heavy brown shoes. That was it. The sergeant led them across the empty courtyard.

Diablo was built in a pod design, groups of twenty cells arranged around a central dayroom. Hutch followed one guard to the last group of cells. They stopped in front of J-I and Hutch stepped in through the door. He stopped. “I’m supposed to be in protective custody,” he said. “That means a cell by myself.”

The door clanged shut. “Yeah, well, we’re a little jammed up right now, so you’ll have to hack it here.”

“But — ” Hutch started to object, but the guard was gone.

His cellmate was somewhere else at the moment, but the cell was filled with evidence of his presence. Pictures torn from magazines, a calendar from some drug store, and a couple of black-and-white photos decorated the walls. The lower bunk was neatly made up.

Hutch dropped his bundle onto the floor and climbed onto the upper bunk. Somewhere a bell rang. He leaned forward, covering his face with his hands. “Oh, god help me,” he whispered. “Please….”

XI

His second day in Diablo.

He woke even before the shrill alarm and slipped out of the bunk. Before Garcia was awake, Hutch had washed, shaved, and dressed. He stood by the bars, waiting to be released for breakfast.

Garcia stirred and sat up. “Shit, man,” he mumbled. “You a real” early bird, ain’t ya?”

“Am I?”

“Never saw nobody so hot to get the slop they feed us.”

Hutch shook his head. “It’s not the food. I just want out.”

“Cabin fever, huh? Well, you’ll get used to it.”

They kept telling him that, but he knew that it wasn’t true. He would never get used to being caged up. He jiggled the bars restlessly. Behind him, Garcia snickered, farted, and rose to greet the new day.

Breakfast.

Powdered scrambled eggs. Bacon that was either half-raw or burnt to charcoal. Cold toast and warm orange juice. Coffee. He took only coffee and toast, but he ate very slowly, so the meal would last as long as possible and he could put off going back to the cell. If he were an ordinary prisoner, he could have gone to the day room or the exercise yard, but for “his own good” he was restricted to his cell. He didn’t even eat in the central dining hall. As a concession to the fact that he was supposed to be in protective custody, he was fed, along with ten others under similar restrictions, in a smaller room next to the hall.

A message reached him while he was still eating that his lawyer was waiting to see him. He quickly finished and was taken to the special room set aside for attorney visits. Sam Kramer was there, his by-now-familiar bulging briefcase on the table. “How’s it going, Ken?” he asked.

Hutch shrugged and sat down.

“I thought you’d want to know that a trial date has been set. A month from today. However, I can get a postponement if we need it.”

“Why? Won’t make any difference.”

Kramer glanced at him sharply. “When I took this case, Harold told me you were a fighter. But you’re acting more like a man who just wants to give up.”

Hutch looked at him for a moment. “I’m a realist,” he said.

“Maybe you think you deserve to be punished.”

“What the hell does that mean? You think I killed her, is that what you’ re saying?”

“We’re talking about what you think, not what I think.”

“I… did… not… kill… Kimberly Wright.”

“Okay. But guilt is a funny thing. Sometimes people think that although they’re innocent of a specific crime, they might well deserve punishment for other acts they committed and didn’t get caught at.”

“Crap. You a lawyer or a shrink?”

Kramer shuffled some notes. “I had a long conversation with Dr. McPherson on the phone last night.”

Hutch tensed. “Why?”

“Harold suggested it. Just thought it might help me understand you a little better.”

“What I talked about with him was private,” Hutch said tightly.

“Of course. He didn’t violate any confidences. He did say that if you wanted to see him, he’d be glad to come here.”

“No.”

Kramer nodded. “Fine. You do know that your visits to him are a matter of record and can be used by the prosecution?”

“You mean they’re going to try and make it look like I’m a killer because I went to see McPherson?”

“We don’t know what they might do yet, Ken.”

Hutch was quiet for a moment. “Any word?”

“What?”

“On Starsky.”

Kramer shook his head. “He seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Nobody just disappears.”

“Nonsense,” Kramer said briskly. “People disappear all the time. You know that as well as I do.”

“Not Starsky.”

“He’ll turn up, Ken.” Kramer began shoving things back into his case.

“What are we doing?”

“My investigator is in the field, asking questions. The usual routine. You just hang tough and if you think of anything that might help, call me.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“They treating you okay?”

“I guess.”

Kramer left and the guard took Hutch back to his cell.

**

Garcia had a transistor radio. He kept it tuned to a Spanish music station, but in a mood of fleeting generosity, he gave Hutch permission to listen to whatever he wanted when he was alone in the cell.

After Garcia had departed for the dayroom, Hutch fiddled with the dial for a while and finally located a powerful Los Angeles station. The tinny voice of a newscaster filled the small cell.

“…and the manhunt continues today for suspended L.A. Detective David Starsky, wanted for questioning in the murder of Kimberly Wright, daughter of businessman Owen Wright. The search for Starsky has been expanded to four western states. Meanwhile, former Detective Kenneth Hutchinson has been indicted on murder charges in the shooting of Miss Wright. He is being held in the Diablo Correctional Facility awaiting trial. On the energy front — ”

Hutch switched the radio off.

**

Visiting hours: six to eight P.M., Monday through Thursday. Saturday and Sunday, two to five.

The guard came to the cell where Garcia sat hunched over the radio and Hutch sat staring at the wall. “Hutchinson, you’re wanted in the visitor’s room.”

“Huh?” He looked around slowly. “Who is it?”

“Man, he didn’t send a calling card back. I don’t know who the hell it is. You coming or not?”

The visitor’s room. A long, brightly-lit place, divided down the middle by a pane of unbreakable glass. Each cubicle had a phone on both sides of the glass. You talked, but you didn’t touch.

Hutch walked in and went to the seventeenth cubicle. Dobey sat on the other side of the glass. They each picked up the phone. “Captain.”

“Hi, Ken.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“There’s been a development,” Dobey said bluntly.

Hutch tightened his grip on the phone. “What?”

Dobey reached into his pocket and took out a watch. He held it up against the glass. “You recognize this?”

Hutch reached for it. His fingers collided with the glass. “Yeah. Yeah. Is it engraved on the back?”

“Yes. Apparently they didn’t have time to scratch it out.” Dobey turned the watch around and Hutch saw the name David Starsky engraved in script on the back.

“He bought it in… ah, Atascadero. When we stopped for lunch. Paid a fortune for it. Where’d you find it?”

“The San Manuel cops took it off a couple of punks they arrested for rolling drunks.”

Hutch was still staring at the watch. “What’s their story?”

Dobey snorted. “They claim some guy approached them and offered to sell it at a good price. Said he needed some ready cash because he had to get out of town in a hurry.”

“And of course those dumb cops believe that?”

“Who knows? They admit the guys are punks, but this explanation fits their theory so nicely, I think they want to believe it.” Dobey put the watch away.

“What happens to it now?”

“It’s evidence. I have to get it back to them.”

“Can he get it back after?”

“Yes.”

“Good. He was really crazy about that stupid watch.” As Hutch realized what he’d said, a stricken 1ook crossed his face. “He is crazy about it,” he corrected, but it was too late. The damage was done.

“Hutch, I’ve got to get back to L.A.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

“But I’ll be back for the trial. Or before that, if you need me.”

“Okay.” Dobey was his last link to what had been and when he was gone, Hutch would be totally engulfed by this new life. He would be alone.

He held onto the phone and watched as Dobey left the room. After a moment he hung up slowly and went back to his cell.

**

 

The next day they told him he had a phone call. The guard didn’t know who it was. Hutch followed him to the phone opposite the day room. A large sign hung over the phone. ALL CALLS MAY BE MONITORED. “May be” was something of an understatement. All calls were routinely recorded. Most of the time, the tapes were given a quick listen and then erased. No one would be stupid enough to say anything he didn’t want overheard. The most common result of the taping process was the reprimanding of the inmates for the excessive use of profanity on the phone.

Hutch leaned against the wall and lifted the receiver. “Hello?” he said tentatively, wondering if maybe…. “Hello?”

“Ken? It’s Dad.”

“Dad? Oh.”

“Hi, son. How’re you doing?”

He stared across the hall into the day room, watching a ping-pong game in progress. “I… I’m okay, Dad. I didn’t… well, I wasn’t expecting you to call.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” The air conditioning wasn’t working right in the hall and sweat began to trickle down Hutch’s face. “I guess in here you kind of forget that there’s anybody out there.”

“Your Captain Dobey has been in touch with us right along.”

“He didn’t tell me that.” The ping-pong ball flew off the table and rolled out into the hall. Hutch lightly kicked it back. The game reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

“Dobey is a good man,” his father said.

“Yeah. Dad, I didn’t do this thing.”

“You don’t have to say that, Ken. We all know it.”

“Nobody believes me.” His voice cracked a little.

Don’t cry down my hack, baby, you might rust my spurs.

“Everybody who knows you does.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want me to fly out there, son? I was all set to come, but Dobey said maybe I should check first.”

Someday the phone won’t ring, darling, and you’ll know it’s me.

“Don’t come, Dad. There’s nothing you can do here. Stay home.”

“Well, it’s up to you. But I’m coming for the trial, for sure.”

The beer that made Milwaukee famous made a fool out of me.

“We’ll see, Dad, okay? How’s Mom?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Fine. Maybe next time, she’ll get on the phone, but… she just couldn’t quite yet.”

“Yeah, I understand, it’s okay.”

“Is there anything you need? Money or anything? We want so much to help.”

“There’s nothing. They give me everything. Dad….”

“Yes, son?”

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

“Did he tell you that Starsky is missing?”

“Yes. Has there been any word?”

He rested his forehead against the wall. “No, not yet. Everybody thinks he ran out.”

“That can’t be, Ken. Your mother and I… we know that Dave would never do that to you. He cares too much.”

“I know.” Furious at himself, Hutch tried to hold back the tears that threatened. He wouldn’t burden his parents with that. “He wouldn’t, I know. Oh, damn… I’m sorry, Dad… I….”

“It’s okay, Ken. Crying is no sin.”

“Yeah… I better go, Dad.”

“Okay. We love you.”

“I love you all, too. Bye.”

The connection was broken.

**

 

There was a dream he kept having.

It was always the same. He was standing at one end of a long, dark corridor and at the other end he could see his partner. There was blood on Hutch’s face and he was crawling toward Starsky, crawling and crawling, but never seeming to get any closer. “Help me, Starsk,” he kept saying. “Please… you promised… help me.”

But Starsky just stood there watching and did nothing at all to help his partner until finally Hutch stopped crawling, stopped begging, and Starsky knew that he was dead. Somehow, then, he was beside the body, holding Hutch in his arms, crying, and pleading with him not to die.

He kept having that same dream.

**

Every time he woke up, he was sick to his stomach, throwing up in a bucket that sat beside the cot. The gentle rolling motion of the boat, combined with the aftereffects of whatever drug had been pumped into his arm, kept his body in a state of constant turmoil. He was helpless. He would roll to the side of the bed, vomit, and then sleep again. Dream again.

The door opened and a giant came in. He was so big that he seemed to fill every corner of the small cabin. “I brung you some food,” he said cheerfully, setting a tray on the foot of the bed.

Starsky leaned forward, lifted the tray with both hands, and threw it against the wall. “l… want… out,” he said thickly. “Lemme outa here. Where’s Hutch?”

The giant seemed bewildered. “There ain’t no more food,” he gently reprimanded. “You’ll just have to wait until dinner now.” With that he left, not bothering to clean up the mess.

Starsky got to his feet and staggered to the door. It was locked.

He used the primitive toilet and went back to the cot. His head still pounded, but he felt a little less sick.

He wished he knew where the hell he was and what was going on. He tried to think about it, but everything was a blur in his mind. After a time, bits and pieces of memory same through, like photographs slowly developing in his head. A car. Something going wrong. And then Hutch, hurt, and bleeding, and needing help. The dream came back and he shivered suddenly, wrapping both arms around himself in an effort to get warm.

“Hutch?” he whispered. “Oh god, Hutch, I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”

It was the same huge man who brought the next tray. Again Starsky heaved it against the wall. “Lemme out!” he shouted. “I gotta help him.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t oughta keep doing that. And besides, you can’t go nowhere. We’re out in the ocean, way far out. Two days from land.”

Starsky blinked twice. “What?” he said, but the man was gone.

In the middle of the ocean? That had never even occurred to Starsky. He knew he was on board a boat of some kind, but he’d assumed that it was moored at the dock. He curled on his side in the cot, gathering strength. When the chance came for him to make his move, he wanted to be ready. Then he’d get back, swim if he had to, find Hutch, get everything together again.

Realizing that no one was going to clean up the food he threw and that it was a long time between trays, Starsky decided to give up that particular form of protest and he accepted the third tray. Besides, he figured, if I’m going to have to swim the goddamned ocean to get back, I better eat.

The man looked pleased when Starsky started to eat the thick fish stew and crusty bread. Instead of leaving the cabin immediately, he sat down and pulled a comic book from his pocket. For all the man’s size, his face held a strangely blank expression.

“Good story?” Starsky asked casually, dipping the bread into the soup in an effort to soften it.

“Yeah,” the giant said. “Spiderman. I like Spiderman.” He watched Starsky eat. “My name is Frankie. Who are you?”

“David.” He chewed thoughtfully; the soup was terrible, so bad that he figured it had to be healthful. “Can you tell me what’s going on here, Frankie?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why am I here?”

Frankie’s face wrinkled in consideration of the question. After a moment, it cleared. “‘Cause they brung you.”

“Who brought me?”

Something in the urgency of his tone seemed to frighten Frankie. “I ain’t supposed to talk about that. Eat, David, that’s all. Just eat.”

So he ate.

When he was finished, Frankie picked up the tray and headed for the door. “Frankie?”

“What?” he said with obvious reluctance.

“Who can I talk to?”

“Mebbe the captain. If he wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him I want to see him. Will you do that for me, Frankie?”

“Sure.” He gave a cheerfully stupid grin and left.

Starsky leaned against the wall, staring at the door, and waited.

It didn’t take long. The door opened again and another man came in. He was dark-skinned, with straight black hair, and weary eyes. He leaned against the door and surveyed Starsky with a hint of amusement. “Frankie said you wanted to see me.” There was a faint and indistinguishable accent in his voice.

“You the captain?”

“Yeah. Menzetta. Frankie said your name is David.”

Starsky nodded slowly. “Starsky. Actually, Detective David Starsky, L.A.P.D.” He watched Menzetta’s face and saw the amusement replaced by shock.

“They brought a cop? Holy Jesus.” He shook his head. “Christ.”

“Who brought me here? And why?”

It didn’t take Menzetta long to recover his composure. “Who and why? The why is simple. Because I paid them to. Who? I only know them as Rossi and Wong.”

“Why did you pay them to bring me?”

Menzetta shook his head. “Let me make it clear. I didn’t pay them to bring you; I paid them to bring a warm body. Any body. You just happened to be it this time.” He seemed to realize that Starsky still didn’t understand what was going on. “I have a big turnover on my crew. Wong and Rossi serve as sort of an… employment service.”

“They kidnap men for your crew,” Starsky said flatly.

“I never asked. They deliver and I pay.” Menzetta’s eyes sharpened suddenly. “Starsky?” he said. “You’re the one….”

“One what?”

“Never mind. Look, we’ve been carrying you for three days now. Time you started earning your keep. There’s clothes in that cupboard. Change and report to the first mate.”

“If I don’t?”

“We don’t carry dead weight,” Menzetta said coldly, “and it’s a long swim back to shore. I think you’ll work.” He left.

After nearly five minutes, Starsky got up from the cot and changed into the work pants and shirt he found in the cupboard, as well as a pair of beat-up tennis shoes. The pants were a little snug, but otherwise acceptable and even preferable to his own stinking, filthy garments.

This, he decided, was a game. Let’s pretend, it was called. Make believe that this whole crazy thing was just another assignment. He was certainly used to undercover role-playing. So he would go with it for a while. At least until… well, until he could figure out what the hell to do.

There was only one rule in this game. He would not, could not, allow himself to wonder what had happened to Hutch. He shoved to the back of his mind the last memory of his partner, lying bleeding in the wrecked car. Waiting for him to bring help. Bleeding. Maybe… dying.

No. Savagely he tied the tennis shoes. No. If he thought about that very long, it would screw him up. So he wouldn’t think about it at all.

It was a shock when he stepped out onto the deck and realized that he was indeed in the middle of the ocean and that the vessel he was on looked like a very small, grimy, barely seaworthy ship. A few sullen-looking men worked at various points along the deck, under the watchful eyes of a husky black man. Starsky walked over to him. “You the first mate?”

“Yeah.”

“Menzetta told me to report.”

“King is my name.” His deep voice had the lilt of the islands in it. “You know anything about engines?”

“No.” He knew how to tune his car, but maybe ignorance was the safest course.

“Hell. Why can’t I ever get a mechanic? Okay, you’re a painter. Grab a paint scraper and get busy.”

Starsky did as he was ordered. As the long, grueling day passed, he kept his eyes and ears open and his mouth closed. Gathering data. Doing what he had done so many times before. He pushed the scraper along the deck, removing layers of dried paint, and listened to the conversation of the other men.

He pretended that there was some way everything he learned was going to help him get out of this.

XIII

The days all ran together in their sameness and Starsky lost track of how long he had been on the boat. The troublesome engine gave out at one point and, lacking a good mechanic, they drifted for several days, until finally King managed to coax the machinery into action again. Starsky spent hour after hour scraping and painting, or in the galley, or just standing watch.

There were thirteen in the crew, plus Menzetta and King. He was never quite sure how many of the men were there voluntarily and how many had been “drafted” like himself. For a little while, he toyed with the idea of a mutiny, but it didn’t take him long to realize that he would stand alone in any such action. Even those men who seemed to have come on board unwillingly at first had apparently decided that life on shore had little to offer. They were, it appeared, content. That option eliminated, Starsky developed an alternative plan. Sooner or later, he knew, this floating disaster area would have to dock somewhere and when that happened, he would get off, even if it meant swimming.

He chafed bitterly under the self-imposed waiting period. It went against his nature. Dave Starsky was a man who thrived on action — hit the streets, chase down a snitch, hustle, move, move, move. That was the way they broke cases. But he knew that any aggressive action here wouldn’t do a damn thing to help and it might even hurt. So he waited.

Frankie had turned into his biggest fan. The huge, gentle man seemed to greatly enjoy Starsky’s company. He would read his omnipresent comic books and listen to Starsky talk. Often he would come out and pass the long hours of the midnight-to-eight deckwatch with Starsky.

One night he came out carrying a large mug of coffee which he handed to Starsky.

“Thanks,” Starsky said, scratching at his emerging beard. There were some communal razors floating around the crew, but he had no inclination to use them. Besides, Hutch would get a good laugh out of seeing his partner with a beard.

Frankie sat down next to him. “Gonna storm, David,” he pronounced cheerfully.

“Is it?”

“Yep.” He raised his head and sniffed the air. “Wind has the smell of a storm. I been a sailor for a long time. I know.”

“I guess you do.”

“You like the BLUE LADY better now, David?”

Starsky shook his head.

“She’s a good boat,” Frankie said sincerely.

“Are you really happy here?”

“Oh, yeah. This is the best place I was ever at. Why don’t you like her, David?”

He took a gulp of the cooling coffee and stared out over the water, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to be looking at. “I want to go home, Frankie.”

Frankie was obviously bewildered. “This is home.”

“Not to me.” He didn’t bother to tell Frankie how much he hated it — the dampness that seeped into his bones and would not be banished, the constant motion, the unchanging view.

There was a silence. Starsky finished the coffee and set the empty mug on the deck. Frankie pulled a comic book out of his pocket, but he didn’t open it to read. Instead, he twisted the book between his massive hands. “I guess maybe you feel kinda lonely, huh?”

“Yes.” God, yes. That was the worst part. At night, alone in his closet of a cabin, he talked to himself, composing a report on his day, and pretending that someone was listening.

“I know about lonely. When my Momma took me to the orphanage and left me, I felt real lonely for a long time.” He realized suddenly that he was wrinkling the pages of Spiderman’s adventures and he smoothed the cheap paper lovingly. “She always meant to come back, I think, but I guess something happened so she couldn’t.” He looked at Starsky. “Don’t you think?”

“Sure, Frankie.”

“Cause no Momma would go off and just leave her little kid. Would she?”

 

“No.”

The wind was picking up as they talked and the stars were slowly vanishing behind a curtain of blackness. Frankie read two pages before he spoke again. “Can I ask you something, David?”

“What?”

He seemed embarrassed by what he wanted to say. “I heard the captain tell Mr. King that you used to be a cop. Is that true?”

“I am a cop.”

“I don’t like cops. They’re mean. Sometimes they hit me. You ain’t mean, David, so how can you be a cop?”

“There are good cops, Frankie.”

But Frankie only shook his head; it seemed beyond his comprehension that his friend David could actually be part of a group he’d always viewed as an enemy.

“Can I ask you something now?” Starsky said.

“What?”

“When the hell do we get somewhere?”

“Huh? Oh, you mean, when we gonna dock?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty soon.” Frankie pushed his bulk up and patted Starsky on the back. “Pretty soon, David,” he repeated reassuringly. He ambled off and disappeared into the darkness.

Starsky leaned back against the dinghy and stared at the water. Although it was still warm, he felt, as always, chilly and damp. The choppy sea was making the boat, and consequently his stomach, roll and lurch.

“Hey, Hutch,” he said softly, “what would an old sea scout like you do now? What I need is some advice, buddy mine. Just a hint, man. Put your goddamned college-educated brain to some use. See, it’s like this. We’re a team. And, by god, we’re the best damn team on the streets. You know that and I know it and I guess a lot of other people know it, too. Especially the skells we bust. I guess when two guys work together for such a long time, they get into certain habits. Like depending on each other a lot. Maybe I got so I depended too much on you. I mean… hell, I was a cop before we were partners. And I was a good cop, too. But not so good as I was… as I am with you. Hell, why am I sitting here talking to myself? Must be going crazy. Except that it’s so goddamned strange not to be able to turn around and say ‘what now, buddy?’ What happened to you, Hutch?”

Starsky shut up. That kind of thinking was against the rules of this game. Hutch was all right and pretty soon they’d be a team again. It would all work out. Soon. He pulled on the ragtag windbreaker against the increasing spray that showered the deck and resumed his restless pacing.

**

It was twenty-four hours before the storm that Frankie had predicted struck. Starsky, not on watch that night, was lying awake in his cot, vaguely aware that the sound of the wind and the swell of the waves were steadily increasing. He tried to ignore the ominous sounds by pulling the grimy sheet up around his neck and closing his eyes.

A sudden fury of water and wind tossed the boat from side to side and Starsky was flung from the cot onto the floor. For a moment he stayed where he landed, hoping that the churning motion of the boat would ease. When it didn’t, he pushed himself up and grabbed his windbreaker.

The strong wind left white streaks of foam down the backs of the waves that he could see silhouetted against the night sky. He gripped the railing and tried to move along the deck. He heard the roaring crescendo of an approaching wave and suddenly the boat was caught in the crest and hurled forward, white water boiling up all around. Out of the water and the blackness, the slicker-clad figure of King appeared. “What the hell are you doing out here?” he shouted into Starsky’s face.

“I don’t know,” he yelled back, getting a mouthful of water.

“Get down below before you go over the side.” He shoved Starsky back toward the steps.

Starsky slid part way down, recovered his balance, and went on into the galley. Most of the crew members were sitting around the long table playing cards. None of them seemed particularly disturbed by the storm. Frankie sat at the table, his head bowed over a comic — Superman this time. He looked up as Starsky sat down across from him. “Told you it was gonna storm, didn’t I?” he asked.

“You sure did.”

“Want some coffee?”

Starsky’s stomach lurched at the thought of the bitter brew and he shook his head. “Is this almost over, you think?”

Frankie grinned. “Mebbe. Sometimes these storms don’t last long.”

“Thank god.”

“‘Course sometimes they go on for three or four days.” He closed the comic book. “I guess you really ain’t much of a sailor, are you, David?”

“No,” Starsky said firmly. Someone had left a pack of cigarettes on the table and more for something to do than because he really wanted it, Starsky took one and lit it. He smoked for a moment in silence. “A friend of mine used to be a sea scout,” he offered. “That guy, now, he loves the water, ships, all that.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I remember one time we were working undercover on this cruise ship and….” His voice dwindled off and he stared at the glowing tip of the cigarette.

“What happened, David?” Frankie urged.

He shrugged. “Nothing.”

There was a pause. “Is your friend a sailor?” Frankie finally asked awkwardly.

Starsky smiled faintly. “No. Hutch is a cop.”

Frankie considered that. “I never much liked cops.”

“Everybody likes Hutch.”

Frankie finished his coffee. “I once had this friend named Will, but one night somebody stuck a shiv in his gut and he died.” It was said matter-of-factly.

“That’s too bad,” Starsky said. “Hey, Frankie, where the hell are we going anyway?”

“Oh, the BLUE LADY goes a lot of places. I’ve been most everywhere there is on this old ship. Africa, even.”

“Yes, but where are we going this time?”

“Macao, I think. Yeah, that’s what the captain said. Macao.”

A wide open port in the South China Sea.

The words came so clearly into his head that Starsky was startled and he glanced around, almost expecting to see Hutch standing there saying it again. A wide open port in the South China Sea. He tried to think in what context he had heard his partner say that, but the specific case escaped him for the moment. Whatever it was, the subject of Macao had come up. He sighed and crushed out the cigarette. “What happens when we get there?”

“We take on cargo.”

“What cargo?”

“I don’t know. Stuff. And then we go on somewheres else.”

Not me, Starsky thought. The only place I’m going is home.

The galley door swung open suddenly and King entered. “Hey, all you guys, into the cargo hold. We’re taking on water.”

Everybody got up and started pulling on windbreakers and boots. Starsky looked at Frankie. “Are we sinking?” God, wouldn’t that be great? He could go down with this hunk of wood out here in the middle of god knew where and they’d never find a trace of him.

Frankie shook his head. “No, man, we just gotta bail a little. The BLUE LADY ain’t gonna sink.”

Not very reassured, Starsky followed the others from the galley, wondering as he went what Hutch must be thinking about his vanishing act.

**

During the next five hours he had no time for thinking about anything except bending and bailing. He was drenched from head to toe, his back was breaking and he was more than a little scared. His dislike of all things nautical had increased tenfold and he resolved that his first act upon getting home would be to take the model ship he’d painstakingly put together (after Hutch had given him the kit) and smash it into several million pieces, none of which would be identifiable as having once belonged to a ship.

When finally the storm eased just after dawn and the leaky cargo hold was once again secure, the weary men staggered back into the galley and this time he was glad for the inky black coffee, quickly downing three warming cups.

He lit another cigarette and sat slumped at the table, staring around with bleary, bloodshot eyes, not really seeing anything. He was startled to realize that King was sitting across from him. The first mate was wet, but seemed otherwise unfazed by the past few hours.

“Getting your sealegs yet, Starsky?”

He shrugged.

“We’ll be hitting port before too many more days have gone by.”

“Macao.”

King looked a little surprised. “Yes, that’s right.” He poured himself more coffee. “I don’t know what plans you might have,” he began, “but I hope it’s nothing stupid.”

“Stupid?”

“As a cop, you might get ideas.” King smiled. “But, then, you’re not exactly in any position to go to the authorities yourself, are you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You want to play it dumb? Well, okay, it’s your business. But if you’re not inclined to play it smart, the captain might have to confine you to quarters for the duration.” He didn’t seem to expect any response to that and Starsky made none. After a moment, King gulped the rest of his coffee and left the galley.

The room was empty now, except for Starsky. He wanted to get up and go back to his cabin, crawl into bed, and sleep, but he didn’t have the strength to make the effort. Instead, he folded his arms on the table, rested his head on them, and fell asleep right where he was.

XIV

Macao, looking lush and green, loomed before the BLUE LADY. The harbor was crowded with junks, sampans, and boats from many nations. Starsky stood on the deck, shading his eyes from the glare of the hot sun, and stared hungrily at the land. They dropped anchor just beyond the stone jetty that separated the outer wharf from the inner one.

He leaned over the railing toward the land, where he could see narrow streets climbing the hillsides, streets that were lined with brightly-painted houses bearing colorful flowerpots. None of that meant anything to Starsky at the moment, however. All he felt was a deep yearning to have the land under his feet again.

King was watching him. Not wanting to give the first mate any cause for suspicion, Starsky walked casually away from the railing and ducked down into the galley. Frankie was there. “Want some coffee, David?” were, as always, the first words out of his mouth.

Starsky shook his head, then shrugged. “Okay.” He took the cup that Frankie offered, sat down, and lit a cigarette.

“Macao’s pretty, ain’t it.”

“I guess.” Starsky sipped the coffee, which tasted even worse than usual. “You going ashore, Frankie?”

“Mebbe.”

“How do you get from here to there?”

“There’s a launch.” Frankie seemed strangely disinclined to talk.

Starsky shut up, too, and lost himself in planning. First thing to do, he figured, was find an American embassy or consulate. There would probably be a hassle, because he didn’t have any passport or I.D., but once he told his story, it would all work out. They’d probably let him use the phone. Who to call? Well, Hutch, of course, but where? It didn’t stand to reason that he was still in San Manuel. Unless he was in the hospital or something.

Now that Starsky was so close to going home, he allowed himself to think about that for a moment. Hutch hadn’t appeared to be badly hurt after the crash, but then he himself hadn’t really been in any condition to judge. And he did remember a bump on Hutch’s head. Head injuries could be tricky.

Hell, he told himself quickly, this was no time to be a frigging pessimist. If everything moved as quickly as he hoped, in an hour he would be talking to his partner. “I better… get up on the… deck,” he said, wondering why his tongue suddenly felt thick and unwieldy. He pushed the coffee mug aside and stood.

His legs wouldn’t support him and the room was spinning. He turned to leave, but instead everything went black as he pitched forward and fell onto his face.

**

When he woke up, he was in his cot. Frankie, looking dismayed, was bent over him, a wet cloth in his ham-like hands. “You okay, David?”

Starsky fingered a growing lump on his head. “You drugged me,” he said hoarsely. “You son of a bitch.”

“It’s for your own good, David. I’m your friend. I tried to catch you before you fell, but I couldn’t….”

“My own good? Frankie, I gotta get off this boat. I gotta go home.” He wiped angrily at the sudden and unexpected tears that sprang to his eyes, tears of anger and frustration.

Frankie wiped Starsky’s face with the cloth. “The captain told me to do it. To protect you.”

Starsky laughed bitterly. “Protect me? From what?”

Frankie folded his hands in his lap. “The captain told me,” he said carefully, “that if you go to Macao, the police will arrest you.”

“Why?” Starsky was trying to fight his way out of the fog that still enveloped him. “I know I don’t have a passport or anything, but once I tell them….”

Frankie was shaking his head stubbornly. “No. Captain Menzetta said it would be very bad for you.”

“Please….”

“You just stay here and you’ll be safe.”

“Oh, god… ” Starsky grabbed Frankie’s arm. “Will you do something for me, Frankle?”

“What?”

“Go ashore and make a phone call. Call the States.”

Frankie frowned. “I never done that before.”

“It’s not hard. Gimme that paper and pencil and I’ll write it all down.” After a moment, Frankie complied. Starsky carefully wrote Hutch’s number down on the scrap of paper. It wasn’t easy to hold the pencil in his numb fingers. “Try this number first. Call collect and ask for Ken Hutchinson. Tell the operator that you’re calling for Starsky. Got that?”

Frankie didn’t answer quickly, seeming to carefully think over what Starsky was telling him. Finally he nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”

“Okay. If you can’t get him there, call this number.” He put down the precinct number. “Ask for Detective Hutchinson.”

Again Frankie nodded. “This won’t get you in no trouble, will it?”

“No. You’ll be saving my life, Frankie. When you reach Hutch, tell him where I am. He should contact the local authorities as soon as possible. Should I write all that down?”

“No, I can remember.”

“It’d be so much easier if you would just help me get off the boat,” Starsky said trying once more.

“I can’t, David.”

“But you will make the call? Tell Hutch… tell him where I’m at… tell him that I need… never mind, he’ll know. You will make the call, Frankie?”

“Sure, David, sure. I’ll be back later.”

Frankie left. After he went out, Starsky heard a small click as the door was locked. Frankie was taking his job very seriously. Starsky rested back against the cot and closed his eyes. In a little while the phone would be ringing in Hutch’s apartment. His partner would probably be sleeping and it would take him a minute to collect his thoughts — Hutch was never at his best when awakened out of a deep sleep. But once he understood what was coming down… shit, he’d be surprised.

His eyes still closed, Starsky frowned. What the hell had Hutch been doing all this time? What did he think had happened to Starsky? It must have been very strange, waking up after the accident, and finding his partner gone. It had been so long. Weeks. Starsky didn’t know how long. He didn’t even know what day it was now. Hutch had probably been going crazy. God, it would be good to see his ugly mug again. To get home. See the apartment. Get his car out of Merle’s. Go down to Huggy’s for a cold beer. See Hutch.

He drifted into a drug-tinged sleep and dreamed that the BLUE LADY was cruising right up Wilshire Boulevard, and he was standing on the deck, waving at the crowd. Above the noise of the cheers that greeted him, he could hear Hutch laughing. It was a good sound and it made him laugh, too.

**

It seemed like a very long time before he heard the click of the key in the lock and the door opened. Frankie came in, looking sweaty and frazzled. Starsky sat up on the edge of the cot. “Thought you’d never get hack,” he said. “Did you talk to Hutch? What’d he say? Is he okay?”

Frankie sat down and took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Here. I got these for you.”

“Thanks.” Starsky took one out of the pack and lit it. “Well?”

“I done just like you said to, David.”

Realizing that Frankie would tell the tale in his own way and could not be rushed, Starsky bit back his impatience and took a deep breath, trying to calm his jangled nerves. “What happened, Frankie?”

“I went into the Hotel Bela Vista. That’s a real nice place. They have some phones in the lobby and I used one of them.”

“You talked to Hutch?” Starsky broke in.

Frankie’s brow was furrowed. “I called that first number, like you said.”

“And?”

“It was just a… a record, like, you know?” He took the paper out of his pocket and studied the words scribbled there. “It was a record that said the number was… disconnected. That means it’s no good anymore,” he added helpfully.

Starsky shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“That’s what the operator told me.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Hutch disconnect his phone?”

Frankie shrugged.

“So? Did you call the other number?”

“Yeah, I did. The police station. And I asked for Detective Hutchinson, just like you said to.”

“Yeah? Was he there?”

Frankie folded the paper a couple of times, not looking at Starsky. “The man what answered the phone said there wasn’t no Hutchinson there.”

“Maybe he was in the car. They could’ve patched the call through.”

Frankie shook his head. “I don’t think so, David, ’cause when the operator asked when Hutchinson would be available, the man said that he wasn’t on the force no more.”

Starsky sank back against the wall. “What?”

“He said that Hutchinson wasn’t on the force no more.”

Starsky felt like somebody had pitched a cannonball into his gut. “But… but why?”

“I don’t know nothing else, David.”

Starsky’s hand trembled a little as he crushed the cigarette out against the wall. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he mumbled. “Hutch has to be there. Unless….” He remembered with sudden and shocking clarity the sight of Hutch lying in the twisted wreckage of the car on that dark road in San Manuel. Maybe he’d been hurt worse than it had looked. Maybe when Starsky hadn’t brought the help he’d promised, Hutch had died. He felt cold. Turning his back on Frankie, he curled on the cot. Frankie touched him lightly on one shoulder. “David? Don’t be mad. I done just like you said.”

“You did fine, Frankie,” he said hollowly.

“Hey, David, I gotta go. Captain Menzetta wants me up on the deck.”

“Go on.”

Frankie opened the door, then hesitated. “I’m real sorry, David.”

“Yeah, I know you are.” The door closed and was locked and Starsky was alone. Alone. He rolled over to stare at the ceiling. Hutch wasn’t on the force? His home phone was disconnected? Could there be any explanation except that his partner was dead? Dead. Hutch was dead.

“Hutch is dead.” He said the words aloud and they echoed in the cabin. Undoubtedly it happened because Starsky had failed Hutch at the one moment he needed him most of all. Hutch had lain in the wrecked car waiting for help that never arrived and he died there.

Angrily, Starsky wiped away the tears that were sliding down his face. Guilty as he was, there was blame for this that went beyond him. What were the names that Menzetta had told him? He closed his eyes in the effort to think. “Wong and… and Rossi,” he whispered in a moment. The two bastards that snatched him, that kept him from getting help back to Hutch.

The two bastards that killed his partner.

Starsky sat up abruptly and swung his feet to the floor. The black grief that was welling up within him would have to wait. There was no time now to dwell on the pain Hutch might have suffered, the feelings of betrayal he must have had when Starsky never returned. No, he couldn’t think about the death right now. The life gone; the laughter gone. He couldn’t stop to think about the funeral, about Hutch being lowered into the ground, alone.

Starsky smashed his hand against the wall. And then again. And again.

It was almost five minutes before he could breathe normally and before the trembling eased. He nursed his throbbing hand between his knees and tried to think. There was only room for one thing in his life now and that was revenge. A filthy word. Getting even. It was possible that he really thought that if he could punish Rossi and Wong severely enough that might somehow restore Hutch to him. Maybe that futile hope lurks behind every act of revenge.

His body ached with the urgency toward action. Life might not be worth much right now, but at least he had a mission. Once the two most responsible had been dealt with, he could begin to wonder what to do with himself. First things first though, as his partner would say. He had to get off the BLUE LADY and back to San Manuel.

He stood and went to the door. Flimsy, like the rest of this tub. Wouldn’t be that hard to just crash through it. How many doors had they smashed through? One going in high, one low. Teamwork. One going in just a split second before the other. They took turns going in first. It was nothing that had ever been talked about; it just was.

The problem here was noise. He stood very little chance of making it off the boat without a fight if they knew what he was up to. However, it seemed obvious that Menzetta had no intention of letting him out of the cabin until they were well away from land. And any chance he might have of overcoming Frankie was laughable.

So. Noise or not, there seemed just one logical alternative available to him. He bent down to take off his shoes. It was a long swim and the less encumbered he was, the better. Following that line of thought, he also left the windbreaker on the cot. Jeans didn’t make the best swimming attire, but he couldn’t very well arrive in his shorts, so there was no choice.

Finally, barefooted, clad in jeans rolled to his knees and a black T-shirt, he was ready. He paused for one more moment to visualize the layout of the boat. Out the door, a sharp right, up the steps, dodge the dinghy and over the rail into the water. Simple. Yeah, sure.

He wiped both hands on the front of the T-shirt and took a few steps back from the door. Muttering a brief prayer under his breath, he rammed the door with his shoulder. It trembled and almost gave way. Not waiting to see if there would be any reaction to the noise, he hit the door again and it crashed open.

He fell into the narrow corridor, jumped to his feet, and charged up the stairs. Someone, be couldn’t tell who, was standing at the top of the stairs. He shoved whoever it was aside and kept going.

“Hey!” It sounded like King’s voice.

“David!”

Starsky reached the railing. In a single vaulting move, he was over the side and plunging downward. He hit the water feet first, sank quickly for a few seconds, then splashed to the surface and started swimming. Behind him, he could still hear shouts coming from the BLUE LADY, but he ignored them, pulling himself through the water with long, powerful strokes. It was beginning to get dark and he dodged the other boats that rose out of the gathering dusk.

He reached the stone jetty and pulled up on it to rest for a moment. Not daring to stay long, he waited only until he’d caught his breath and then immediately plunged back into the water. There were people on the junks and sampans that cluttered the inner harbor, but they paid him very little mind, as if a crazy man swimming by had nothing at all to do with them.

Starsky didn’t know how long it was before his feet touched solid ground and he half-walked, half-crawled out of the water. He did know that the dim sound of a police whistle could be heard getting louder and that everyone was looking at him. Sudden and inexplicable panic seized him. Wouldn’t it be logical to simply wait for the cops to arrive and tell them what had happened? But what if they didn’t believe him? They might lock him up until the story could be verified and god only knew how long that would take. And besides, he’d heard horror stories about Americans being tossed in foreign jails and practically disappearing for years. He couldn’t take that chance. Also, maybe Frankie’s warning about the police might have had more truth in them than he’d first thought.

So he didn’t wait. He moved quickly into the crowd that jammed the sidewalk. He rolled down his sopping pants legs and smoothed back his hair. In the darkness maybe no one would look closely enough to see that he was drenched and shoeless.

He walked without any idea of where he was going, walked until he reached a quiet, flower-filled garden. A sign in English, Chinese, and Portuguese proclaimed that he was in the Luis Camoens Grotto and Garden. The name meant nothing at all to Starsky, but the area was quiet and, for the moment at least, deserted. A refuge. He stretched out behind a high hedge and rested his head on his arms.

For the first few minutes he did no more than try to steady his tortured breathing and calm the trembling in his body. Without quite knowing why, he suddenly found himself on the other side, the side that ran from the police. He was totally alone, without the knowledge that somewhere he had a partner willing to back him all the way.

After a long time, he fell asleep there on the grass.

**

A hand gripped his ankle and shook gently. He woke instantly and saw Frankle crouched beside him. “David?”

Starsky sat up, tensed to move. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Why?” Starsky pulled tentatively against the hold on his ankle and Frankie let him go.

“‘Cause I was worried about you. Captain Menzetta told me to find you and tell you to come back to the BIIJE LADY before the police find you.”

“I’m not going back, Frankie,” Starsky said flatly.

“But why?”

“Because I have to go home.” He moved a little against his clothes, which were stuck unpleasantly to his body. “You have any cigarettes? Mine got wet.”

Frankie tossed him a pack and Starsky lit one. “Captain Menzetta said — ”

“Fuck Menzetta,” Starsky broke in viciously. Frankie recoiled a little at his tone. “He keeps saying that the cops are after me, but that’s just to scare me. He doesn’t want me to blow his tight little ship right out of the water.”

Frankie shook his head. “No, David, it’s really true. I saw the Frisco paper. It had your name in it. Mr. King has a copy he got before we left port.”

Starsky sighed. “What exactly was in the paper?”

Frankie tried to remember. “It was something about you killing somebody and how the police was looking for you.”

“Killing? But I didn’t kill anybody.”

“They think you did.”

Starsky knew that Frankie was not lying, was probably incapable of lying with any degree of believability, so what he was saying had to be true. But he couldn’t understand any of it. Unless… a possible explanation began to take shape in his mind. He gnawed on his knuckle thoughtfully. Maybe they thought he’d been driving the car and that he had fled after the accident. Then, after Hutch died, (Hutch is dead, he reminded himself) they charged him with something… something like vehicular homicide. He was accused of killing Hutch.

It was absurd. It made him want to throw up.

“David? You okay?”

He was pulled back to the present. “Yeah… yeah.”

“Now that you know, are you gonna come back to the BLUE LADY?”

“No. I can’t.” Frankie started to object, but Starsky shook his head. “Let me tell you, Frankie. Listen. I didn’t kill anybody. But somebody did. Wong and Rossi killed my partner. They killed Hutch and I have to go back and make them pay for it.”

“You gonna kill them?”

After a long moment, Starsky shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know.” He really didn’t. “But I have to go back.”

“Yeah, I guess you do.”

“Will you help me?”

“Sure. We’re friends, ain’t we?”

“Yeah, we are, Frankie. I’ve got to get off Macao and figure out how to get home.”

Frankie frowned thoughtfully. “You gotta stay someplace tonight.” He brightened. “I know a place.”

“Where?”

“With this girl I know. Come on.” They walked through the streets of Macao, staying in the shadows just beyond the casinos. The nightclubs were filled with tourists clad in evening clothes, playing the games of chance and skill like fantan, boulle, chemin de fer, and roulette. Frankie seemed to know his way through the back streets well and in a short time they reached a small apartment building just beyond the casino area.

They went to the second floor and Frankie tapped lightly on the door. They could hear the soft scurry of feet and then the door was opened by a young lady clad in a bright red silk negligee. She was not especially pretty, but her face, reflecting the Chinese-Portuguese heritage of Macao, was lively and her long hair gleamed. “Hi, Frankie,” she said in accented English. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Hi, Sallee. This is my friend David. Can we come in?”

“Sure thing.” They followed her into a room that was engulfed in red and black, all highlighted by a bright red lamp. She gestured them to the sofa. “What’s up?”

Without going into much detail, Frankie told her that Starsky was on the run from the cops — which seemed to amuse her — and that he needed a place to stay until he could get off Macao. Without hesitation, she nodded. “Sure thing, Frankie. He can stay.”

A few minutes later Frankie was ready to go, promising to be back in the morning with clothes and, hopefully, some information about how Starsky might get away. After he was gone, Sallee and Starsky sat looking at one another for a time. “You stink,” she said finally.

He shifted uncomfortably on the brocaded sofa. “Sorry.”

“Would you like to take a bath?”

“Yes, if it’s okay.”

She showed him to the bathroom (more red), ran a tub of hot, bubble-filled water and left a man’s blue robe. “Put this on. I will make some sandwiches and tea.”

The fragrant steaming water eased his tense muscles and he stayed in the tub until it cooled and goosebumps appeared on his flesh. During that time, he did not allow himself any conscious thought. After he was out, dried, and wearing the blue silk robe, he stared at himself in the mirror. The beard would stay, he decided. It would help disguise him. There was a pair of scissors in the medicine cabinet and Starsky trimmed the beard and his hair a little. As he worked, he tried to avoid looking into his own eyes. The flat, empty gaze frightened him.

“David?” Sallee called from the other room. “Food is ready.”

He went out and sat on the sofa again. “Do I smell better now?” he asked, making an effort at lightness.

“Much better. Like a field of wild flowers,” she replied, pouring tea and handing him a sandwich.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She sat with her feet tucked under the negligee and watched him eat. “You were hungry. ”

“I guess.”

“Are you frightened?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. More mad, I guess.”

“Are the police really after you?”

He shrugged. “Does that bother you?”

She smiled. “The police and I are old friends.”

“Could I ask one more favor?”

“What?”

“Could I use your phone to call the States?” The idea had been stirring in his mind since his arrival at the apartment. “I’ll pay you back whatever it costs as soon as I can. Promise.”

Her only reply was a negligent wave toward the phone. Nodding his thanks, he lifted the receiver. There was no sense in calling Hutch’s number; more than being wasted effort, he honestly didn’t think that he could stand to hear some frigging recording telling him that the number had been disconnected. So he placed a call to Dobey’s home.

He struck out. According to the singsong voice of the operator, all the lines between Macao and the States were out — something to do with a storm someplace in the middle of the Pacific. She had no idea when service might be restored. He slammed the receiver down. “Damn.”

Sallee got to her feet and lifted the tray in one fluid movement. “You need some sleep, I think. The bed is in there.”

“The couch will be fine.”

“Really?” Again she looked amused, “All right.” He waited while she fetched a blanket and pillow and switched off the ghastly red light. “Good night, David.”

“Good night.” From beyond the open window, Starsky could hear the faint sounds coming from the casinos. People having fun. Music. Laughter. It all sounded vaguely obscene to him suddenly. He crushed the pillow over his ears so that he wouldn’t have to endure the sounds of a life that no longer included his partner or himself. Even the pillow, though, couldn’t block out the sounds of his memories.

**

“David?”

“No… please… no!”

“David, wake up.”

He jerked into wakefulness and his eyes flew open. “What!”

Sallee was sitting on the edge of the couch. “You were dreaming, David.” One slender hand reached out and, feather-light, touched his cheek. “And crying.”

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he said hoarsely. Dream images still hovered on the edge of his vision. He rubbed his eyes, trying to vanquish the terrible scenes.

“Shh. To cry so, like a child, in your sleep must mean you are very sad. I like to see only happiness. Why are you crylng?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He shook his head a little.

“Were you dreaming?”

“Yes.” He stared at her. “I was dreaming. My friend was calling to me, begging me to help him. I tried to help, I tried, really, but I couldn’t. And he died.”

“It was only a dream.”

Starsky sighed. “But it’s real.” His hand clenched. “It’s real.”

“Let me help you,” she murmured, moving a little. The red gown slipped from her shoulders and fell wispily to the floor. “I will make you forget the sadness, David.”

He watched as she stretched her body, the color of coffee with cream, out next to him on the couch. “Sallee….”

“Shh.” She leaned toward him gracefully until their lips met, her mouth open expectantly.

He was tentative at first, a little bewildered, not sure if he wanted this to happen at all. It didn’t seem right to be screwing around when Hutch was dead. It seemed like a betrayal of something that he couldn’t quite define. Caressing her small breast, he teased the nipple into a firm, pointed cone.

She pulled the robe from his body and it joined the gown on the floor. Starsky felt a surge of emotion that was only partly passion and the rest a strange blend of anger, bitterness, fear, and grief. He grabbed for Sallee because she was there, sharing the night with him, and he couldn’t bear the loneliness for one more moment.

Sallee pressed her thighs and pelvis against him, reaching for and finding his swollen flesh. She sighed, taking his hand and putting it on her thigh. As his fingers moved against the warm flesh, he felt the tightly curled triangle of hair and the damp softness beneath. She made soft noises.

“Louder,” he said.

“What, David?”

“Please, louder… drown out the sounds. Drown him out, please.” He listened to her, trying not to hear the echoes from his dream. She wriggled under him and in a moment he entered her. She sighed. Her knees were drawn almost to her chest. He covered her mouth with his and felt her tongue against his tongue, her hands pulling him closer. It seemed to take a very long time. He worked very hard over the lovemaking, trying to turn it into an act of exorcism. Like all such rituals, it didn’t work. His mind refused to lock onto the woman or the act; he worked harder, faster, more frantically, just trying to bring this ritual, this strange betrayal, to an end.

She whimpered finally, raking his shoulders with her nails. He came a moment later, the climax feeling more like a sigh of relief than a release of passion. He pulled away immediately and sat up. She rested her head on his thigh.

“Thank you,” Starsky whispered.

 

“I wanted to make you happy, but it didn’t work, did it?”

“It’s not your fault.”

They were quiet for a long time and then Sallee got up from the couch.

She picked up the negligee and put it on. “Go to sleep, David,” she whispered. She left the room, left him alone with the noise of the city.

Starsky wondered, as he listened, if the people in the casinos ever gave up and went to bed. Or did they just keep playing their stupid and dangerous games of chance all night long, thinking that the next hand of cards, the next spin of the wheel, the next toss of the dice would surely bring that one big stroke of luck.

Starsky pulled on the robe and went to the window. From where he stood, he could see the dancing lights of the gambling palace. Poor stupid people, hoping for a big win. Didn’t they know that if you kept on rolling the dice, kept on taking such stupid, dumb chances, that the day would come when it all went sour? Everything would be gone before the poor bastards knew what had hit them. Nobody ever came up a winner.

Instead of getting back into bed, he sat on the window sill, letting the faint night breeze cool his body. Tired as he was, he didn’t want to sleep again. Sleep led to dreams and in his dreams he had thoughts that he couldn’t control. It was better to stay awake. He would just sit here on the sill and wait until morning. After all, the new day had to come sometime. Didn’t it?

**

Frankie, true to his word, showed up early the next morning, bringing Starsky a clean pair of jeans and a shirt, as well as his shoes retrieved from the cabin of the BLUE LADY. Starsky dressed quickly and joined Frankie and Sallee at the table for breakfast. Sallee greeted him with a smile and a cup of tea. He returned the smile fleetingly.

“Got something for ya,” Frankie said around a mouthful of egg and toast. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a U.S. passport case and a small roll of bills. “Now you can get off Macao.”

Starsky picked up the passport and opened it. A bearded face that bore some resemblance to his own looked back at him. “Where’d you get this?”

Frankie shrugged. “Happens all the time in Macao. Everybody wants passports.”

“You stole it?”

“Yeah.”

It didn’t bother Starsky as much as he thought it should. In fact, when he placed it in the proper perspective of his mission, it didn’t bother him at all. He thumbed through the bills. “Where do I go?”

“Hong Kong. From there you can get to the States.” Frankie looked at him anxiously. “Did I do okay?”

“Yeah. Fine.” Starsky shoved the passport and the money into his pocket. “You can show me how to get over to Hong Kong?”

“Yeah.”

“Frankie, what do you know about Rossi and Wong?” he asked abruptly.

“Who?”

“Rossi and Wong. The guys who brought me to the BLUE LADY.”

“Oh.” Frankie shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about them. I seen them bring guys to the boat a couple of times, but I never even spoke to them.”

“Do they always work out of San Manuel?”

“No, I don’t think so. They just kinda move up and down the coast.”

“Terrific.” He finished the lukewarm tea in a gulp and stood. “All right, let’s go.” After a brief hesitation, he bent and kissed Sallee on the cheek. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Sure thing. Next time you’re in Macao, drop in.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Frankie and he made their way to the ferryboat pier, which was crowded with Chinese and Portuguese passengers and those seeing the travelers off. A number of children swam around the ferryboat, begging for coins, which they retrieved and held between their teeth. There were also many policemen in their impeccable white uniforms, with pistols, rifles, or machine guns tucked under their arms. Starsky purchased his ticket for the ride to Hong Kong and walked toward the gangplank. Frankie followed as far as he could. They stopped at the foot of the plank and Starsky turned to face the other man. “I want to thank you, Frankie,” he said holding out his hand. “Without your help, I never would have made it.”

Frankie shook his hand vigorously. “You’re welcome. I hope you get the guys that killed your partner.”

“I will.” Starsky held Frankie’s hand a moment longer before dropping it and hurrying onto the ferry, trying to lose himself in the crowd. None of the police paid him any more attention than they did the rest of the passengers, but he was relieved to be on the boat, away from their watchful eyes.

He left the deck quickly, going into a spacious salon with wide-open windows. He sat in a small wicker chair, opposite an old man with a curlicue reddish beard and huge tortoise-shell glasses. Despite the earliness of the hour, he was drinking a glass of Madeira, dark blood color. He was talking in a fluent mixture of Chinese and Portuguese to a young Oriental girl. They made a strange pair, the old man in his Western-style suit and the girl in her Cantonese cheongsam, with its tightly fitted lines and slit sides.

Starsky took a cup of tea offered by a porter in a jacket that had once been white, but which now bore the leavings of many voyages. The salon was crowded with passengers smoking, drinking, playing mah-jong, computing figures on abacuses, or simply cooling themselves with big fans made of fine yellow palm leaves.

There was something about being all alone in the unfamiliar surroundings that made Starsky want to pull even more into himself. It reminded him of his first days in Vietnam, when he’d been confronted with an entirely new culture and people. He’d been very homesick during those early days, more affected by loneliness than by the war itself. He sipped the bitter tea absently. That had been when he’d met Hutch. The memory made him smile faintly. His first reaction to the young blond M.P. hadn’t exactly been positive. It had served to prove his frequent contention that the Army brass didn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground. Somebody must have really been reaching to team him up with Joe College. Ken Hutchinson was a recruiting poster soldier — always military, with the proper crease in his trousers and a perfect spit shine on his shoes.

Hutchinson, it could be assumed, was also less than thrilled by an order that had him walking patrol with a man who looked like he’d slept in his uniform. Or whatever parts of his uniform Starsky might be wearing at any particular time. Still, ill-matched as the team appeared to be on the surface, they got along all right. As they walked the streets of Saigon, they would talk. Lots of good conversation they’d had.

It was good, Starsky thought, that they had never run out of things to say to each other. The only things they’d run out of were time and luck. He realized suddenly that the young girl and the old man were looking at him curiously. He set the teacup down carefully and wiped at the dampness that he hadn’t known was on his face. They were embarrassed to have been caught staring and they resumed their conversation softly.

A Chinese man in an ill-fitting brown suit approached Starsky. “Your passport, sir,” he said.

“What?”

“May I have your passport, please?”

“Why?”

The man smiled, showing a mouth full of gold. “It is the rule. Your passport, please.”

With a sinking feeling, Starsky took the passport from his pocket and handed it over. The man moved on, making the same request of the man and the girl. They complied immediately, without breaking their conversation. The man disappeared through the doorway to the engine room. Starsky watched him go. The girl leaned closer to him. “He will return it,” she said in a soft musical voice. “Do not fear.”

Starsky managed a small grim. “Thanks.”

“You are an American?”

“Yes.”

“I know that because Americans worry a great deal about their passports.”

“With cause,” the old man said. “A document like that is worth many thousands of dollars in Hong Kong. Sometimes it is worth a life.”

Starsky wondered belatedly if Frankie had injured or maybe even killed someone to obtain the precious piece of paper. The thought was uncomfortable and he pushed it aside. A sudden, ear-splitting whistle blasted through the air. Starsky jumped. “What’s that?”

“We are soon arriving in Hong Kong,” she said.

A few minutes later the man with the gold teeth returned, bearing a pile of passports and immigration papers, which he tossed with disdainful abandon onto a table. Two other officials, both heavily armed, sat down and began to stamp each passport. The passengers swarmed around the table, chattering and grabbing at the stamped documents. Starsky elbowed his way to the front and searched until he found his passport. Or rather the passport of one Lasko, Jerome. The precious paper in his hand again, he worked his way out of the crowd and went back to the deck.

The boat was rapidly approaching the dock, making its way through the harbor, which was jammed with hundreds of junks, fishing boats, freighters, and regatta boats. Above the sounds of the boats and the mingling of voices in many tongues, Starsky could hear the raucous cries of the gulls overhead.

It didn’t take long for the boat to reach its mooring and Starsky found himself disgorged upon the pier into a mass of teeming humanity. He let the noisy crowd sweep him along for a while, not knowing where he should go or what he should do next.

He decided to find a bar someplace, sit in a corner, and have a drink. Maybe two. Maybe a whole bottle. Hell, it made sense, didn’t it? Shouldn’t a guy have a fucking wake for his partner? He started looking for a cheap bar. If anybody deserved to have a drink downed in his honor, it was Ken Hutchinson.

**

The Orange Blossom Bar tried very hard. It had a sort of plastic Susie Wong atmosphere, over laid with an aura of genuine decadence. He sat for two hours, drinking American whiskey for which he paid too much from his small cache of bills. When he first sat down in the booth, he was joined by a bar girl who sipped cherry brandy and apparently refused to be put off by his unsociable demeanor. She merely tapped her long, blood-red nails on the table and sighed frequently. After a long time, she turned to him and blinked her endless lashes. “You want to have some fun?”

Starsky waved for another drink. “I’m having fun, honey,” he replied. “Can’t you tell? I’m having one hell of a good time.”

Ritualistically, she reached one hand under the table and gave his thigh a squeeze. “We go my place? Not far. I give you one hell of gooder time.” She giggled.

He frowned. “I do not think,” he said, speaking very precisely, “I do not think that you are showing the proper amount of respect. I mean, do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

Playfully, she shook her head. “No, honee, what’s going on here?”

He took another gulp of whiskey and sat quite still for a moment, letting its stinging warmth fill him. Maybe oblivion could be found at the bottom of the glass. In a moment he probed delicately at the fringes of his consciousness. No oblivion yet; it still hurt. “Well, I’ll tell you. What we have here is a wake.” His voice roughened. “I’m talking about a dead man. This is no frigging game.”

“Dead man is no frigging game,” she agreed.

“Right.” He nodded solemnly. “Right you are, baby. Fun and games is all over. It’s all gone, ’cause Hutch is dead. Dead.”

The bar girl exercised an unexpected philosophical streak. “Everybody die, honee.” She waved a hand as if to illustrate the fleeting quality of all existence.

“Why?” Starsky said, sounding like a petulant child.

She shrugged. “That’s life.”

Starsky leaned across the table toward her. “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

“Life sucks,” he said distinctly. He was quiet for a moment. “I wonder how much it costs to fly to California.”

“A whole lot.”

“Yeah. More than I got, that’s for damned sure.”

“Why for you want to fly to California?”

Starsky drank more whiskey. “‘Cause that’s where Rossi and Wong are.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to do except go after them. What else can I do?” He surveyed the room glumly.

 

She was rapidly losing interest in the conversation. “You like dance, maybe? I put some hot American music on the jukebox.”

Sliding out of the booth, he pushed some change across the table toward her. “Yeah, sweetheart, that’s a good idea. Play some music. I gotta make a phone call.” There was an old-fashioned wooden phone booth in one corner of the room. Walking with intoxicated deliberation, Starsky went over to it, sat down, and closed the door. He watched for a moment as the girl made careful musical choices and then he lifted the receiver depositing several random coins. “I want to make a collect call to the States,” he told the operator who spoke in crisp British tones.

“Yes, sir?”

“I want to call Harold Dobey in Los Angeles.” He gave her the number and then waited for what seemed like a very long time before he could hear the ringing of a phone in the Dobey home. It rang three times.

“Operator,” Starsky said suddenly, panic-stricken.

“Yes, sir, the number is ringing.”

“Never mind,” he said quickly. “Forget the call.” He slammed the phone into place. No. He couldn’t talk to Dobey now. It would mean hearing the awful words being said aloud by someone else and that was something he couldn’t bear right then. Once another person said “Hutch is dead” it would be a true and unchangeable fact. Maybe there was still a small fragment of hope somewhere inside him that it was all some kind of dreadful mistake. He couldn’t take the risk of having that hope — no matter how futile it might prove to be — destroyed at a time when he’d need all of his strength just to keep going. One part of him had apparently accepted the seeming inevitability of his partner’s death, but another part of his mind or his heart was hanging onto a fragile thread, a tenuous prayer. He couldn’t lose that, so he wouldn’t talk to Dobey now.

He left the phone booth and walked back to the table. The girl was dancing alone in the middle of the room and she waved at him. “Come. Dance with me.”

Starsky shook his head. “No. I have to go.” Lifting his drink, he held it aloft for a moment, remembering that this was, after all, supposed to be a wake. But he was screwing it up. As usual. He was such a dumb bastard that he didn’t even know how to have a good wake for his best friend. Maybe, he thought, I should say Kaddish. That he knew how to do. He’d done it for his father. But he couldn’t do it for Hutch yet. Not yet. “Stop dancing,” he ordered the girl. “Pick up your drink.”

Humoring him, she obeyed.

Starsky was staring at her, not seeing the young Oriental girl, not seeing anything at all really, except a past that shone golden in his memory. Better to see that and bask in its reflected warmth than to look upon a future that was only a grey void. A cold, colorless place.

“We have a toast?” the girl said brightly.

“Yeah. A toast.” That sounded good. His slightly muddled mind sorted through words and thoughts and finally he shrugged. “This here is for Kenneth Richard Hutchinson,” he said softly. “My partner. Hutch. With love.” In one gulp he finished the rest of the drink. He tossed a bill onto the table and left without looking back.

**

Starsky walked for a long time, sobering slowly. Clearly the solution to his problems did not lie in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. He couldn’t even get blindly drunk and forget. Well, probably that was for the best. If he had discovered blissful oblivion in the alcohol, he might have been content with that. Might have been glad to forget revenge, forget trying to get home and find out just what had happened, forget trying to deal with Hutch’s death. If only he could’ve drowned all that, he would have gratefully. But it was obvious that he couldn’t. The truth wasn’t going to go away, so he might as well face up to it. Maybe when he had completed his mission, maybe then he could deaden the hurt with booze. After all, he had to de something with the rest of his life.

He finally went into an airline ticket office. The man behind the counter was an American. “May I help you?” he asked somewhat doubtfully, causing Starsky to wonder for the first time just what he must look like.

“Yeah, maybe you can help me,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Can you tell me what a one-way ticket to Los Angeles will run?”

“Tourist?”

“Whatever the cheapest way is.” The man consulted a book before giving his answer, an amount which stunned Starsky. He’d been expecting that it would be expensive, but even so…. “Okay. Thanks.”

Back in the street, he gave in to the raging despair that filled him and slammed his fist against the side of the building. “Damn. Damn.” Weren’t things ever going to turn his way? Where the hell was it written that David Michael Starsky had to get all the world’s crap dumped on him personally?

As if in response to his anguished question, it began to rain. Starsky shrugged and started to walk again. Probably there was something kind of funny in this whole thing. Big-fucking-shot cop, undercover operator, Captain Marvel-type, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to help himself. The cops were after him. His partner was dead. He was thousands of miles from home. And he was scared. He was even more scared now than he’d been the night of the Tyler Monroe stakeout when he couldn’t pull his gun. Maybe because this time there was no Hutch to back him up This time he was alone. Alone on this tiny island jammed with people.

Starsky was jolted from his gloomy introspection by shouts coming from down the block, shouts followed by the familiar sound of a police whistle.

For one terrifying moment he thought they were after him, but almost immediately he realized that they weren’t. A slight figure in black pushed by him going at a dead rum.

“Stop thief!” someone yelled in English above the chorus of Chinese voices.

Instinct took over and Starsky set off in pursuit. He followed the fleeing man for several blocks, until the thief ducked into an alley, Starsky right on his heels. Finally he launched himself, football style at the man’s legs. They connected and both fell in a heap. “Naughty, naughty,” Starsky said, grabbing a black leather bag. Sitting on the hapless criminal’s stomach, Starsky opened the bag. “My god,” he whispered when he saw what was inside.

Starsky could hear the police whistle getting closer. There was no time to think. He clutched the bag to his chest, jumped up, and ran into the maze of buildings that surrounded the alley.

He kept running until long after the sound of the pursuit had been lost in the noise of Hong Kong, until a painful stitch in his side forced him to stop. He slumped down behind a low brick wall that fronted the vast green lawn of some government building, out of sight both of the street, and by virtue of a clump of thick hedges, of whatever prying eyes might be looking out the windows of the building. It took nearly ten minutes for his breathing to return to normal. When the pain in his side had finally subsided, he sat up and almost timidly opened the bag again.

It hadn’t been a dream. The bag was crammed with money.

“Thank you,” he whispered to whatever force had suddenly smiled upon him. The cash was in several different currencies — American, British, German, and some he didn’t recognize, so Starsky had no way of knowing how much he had in all. But the American bills, at least, were all in large denominations and if the others followed suit, he was holding a great deal of money. Enough, maybe, to get home on.

I’m a thief, he thought suddenly. He was turning into the kind of person Hutch and he had spent years chasing down, busting, getting off the street. But his faint sense of guilt — and it was faint — was overshadowed by a sense of rightness. His grandmother used to say, “What God does not choose to give, you cannot take.” The money, he decided, was meant for me. It was just the wheel finally turning his way. An honest-to-god lucky break. His hold on the money tightened. This cash was his way home. Back to… well, back to whatever waited for him there. The jolt given him by the cash allowed a peeking through of that same faint hope that had kept him from calling Dobey earlier. It was possible that Hutch wasn’t dead. It was possible. In which case, something was very wrong, wrong enough to make him leave his apartment and quit the force. If so, Hutch needed him.

“The next time you need me, man, I’m gonna be there.” That’s what he’d said to Hutch and he meant it. Even if the only help he could give his partner was to track down the men responsible for his death and exact a full measure of justice.

Starsky took the money out of the bag and shoved it into several pockets, pushing the bag itself out of sight beneath the bushes. It didn’t take him long to make his way back to the airline office. The American had been replaced by a young Chinese man. “I want to go to Los Angeles,” Starsky said without preamble. “One way.”

“Of course.”

He began pulling crumpled bills from his pockets. “I’m paying cash.” He glanced up and saw the clerk watching him curiously. “I, uh, won a big pool,” he said by way of explanation. “You just take out how much the ticket is and then give me the rest back. Can you do that?”

“Yes… yes,” the clerk said, beginning to uncrumple the money. “When do you wish to leave, sir?”

“Today. Now. As soon as possible.”

The clerk frowned professionally. “I’m afraid that the earliest seat is not available until the day after tomorrow.”

“You sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Starsky sighed. “Okay, I’ll take it. Do I have enough money?”

There was enough and just a little left over, which the clerk handed back. It took only a few minutes to complete the purchase in the name of Jerome Lasko, and then Starsky left the office.

Night was slowly descending upon Hong Kong. He walked past several cafes, from which loud radio music was pouring as people began gathering for the evening. Lovely young girls, most of them Chinese refugees, prowled the streets like taxis looking for customers. There were few policemen, only crowds of youths standing on the corners, smoking, or lurking in the doorways of the cafes. Neon lights reflected blood red or green on their waxy faces. Over it all, there was an air of danger just waiting to be unleashed, of violence yearning to break out.

Starsky stopped at a corner kiosk to buy another pack of cigarettes and lit one before walking on. He had to find a place — a cheap place — to spend the next two nights and he had to eat. He stopped momentarily in an effort to get his bearings. A young tough bumped into him and kept going after a snarled remark in Chinese. Lousy punk. Somebody oughta toss the creep. Probably got a gun or drugs or something. Oughta throw him against the wall and frisk him good.

A few minutes later he saw an American-style fast food joint and stopped in front of it. The crowd swirled around him impatiently as he stared at the bearded, grubby stranger reflected in the plate glass window. Who was the haunted, alien figure? And would he ever be able to find himself again?

When it came to that, who was the real David Michael Starsky?

He moved a couple of steps closer to the window, trying to get out of the way of the never-ending stream of humanity that flowed up and down the sidewalk. There were some questions that he’d never been very concerned with. Like the question of identity. He knew, by god, who he was. The grandson of a rabbi he never met. The son of a cop shot down on the streets of New York. The lover of Terri, shot down on the streets of Los Angeles. The partner of Ken Hutchinson. He was a cop.

There was more, of course. Even he realized that every person was the sum total of a lot of different things. That sounds like something Hutch would say, he thought. Yeah, I’m a big sum total. I like pizza and Dr. Pepper and Adidas shoes and tight blue jeans and my car and Humphrey Bogart pictures. And tacos. And Ed McBain mysteries. And STAR TREK. I hate yogurt and violin music and writing reports and doing laundry and funerals and HAPPY DAYS.

So. Add all that up and the sum total is — what? Me? Except that I’m not a cop now. My grandfather the rabbi is dead and my father the cop is dead and my girl Terri is dead and my partner Hutch is dead. Subtract all that from your frigging sum total and what the hell is left?

What was left was the man in the window staring back at him. What was left, he figured, was just David Michael Starsky. What was the line about being true to yourself? But didn’t that mean you also had to be true to all those little bits and pieces of yourself? The stranger in the glass was as much a part of him as the goddamned hero cop roaming the streets of Los Angeles.

Starsky straightened his shoulders a little. This is life, buddy, he thought, and I might as well get used to it. After another moment he sighed and went into the restaurant, hoping he could get a cheeseburger.

XV

The jail was never quiet. Even in the middle of the night there were noises — the steady, rubber-soled pacing of the guards and the low hum of their idle conversation. The elusive echoes of rather sleepy vigilance. The prisoners made their own sounds. A symphony of snores and adenoidal breathing and bad dream sounds. There were other, more illicit noises — the slap of card against card in two-handed poker games, quiet battles between cellmates, quiet confrontations of another sort that were also battles in their own way, battles against the terrible loneliness.

Hutch heard it all. He didn’t sleep well and before long he knew what was happening up and down the cellblock and could even predict what would happen next just from the sounds he heard. He knew when the guard named Laker was coming, because the fat man made a different noise as he walked. Another guard made his way to the end of the block every night between one and two and paused there long enough to emit a gaseous belch. Garcia, in the bunk below Hutch, dreamed every night of his wife and woke up to fulfill the imagery in solitary labor. Hutch simply learned not to listen.

He spent the days learning, too. Learning not to feel. Not to think.

Not even to hope. He simply survived.

Three days before his trial was scheduled to begin, Hutch had a summons to go to the visitor’s room. He walked in and saw Dobey sitting in one of the cubicles. The captain looked dismayed as Hutch sat down opposite him. Hutch knew he looked like hell. He’d lost weight and his hair was longer. The planes of his face were angular and deeply shadowed. Sometimes he could hardly recognize himself in the shaving mirror.

“How are you, Hutch?” Dobey said into the phone.

“I’m okay.” Hutch tapped one hand against the table. “Kramer says we’re ready for the trial.”

“Yes, I’ve been keeping in touch with him. Your father called me, too. He was a little disappointed that you’d asked him not to come for the trial, but he understood.”

“Good. Cap’n, I gotta find a way to get out of here.”

“You will, Hutch. Soon.”

“Nobody else can do it,” Hutch went on, as if he hadn’t heard Dobey at all. “They’ve been screwing it up all this time. So it’s up to me.”

“What is?”

Hutch was surprised. “To find Starsky, of course. What else?”

Dobey sighed. “You should be worrying about yourself right now.”

“I am. I’m worried about the fact that my partner is missing.”

“We’ll find Starsky.”

“I will. That’s why I have to get out of here.” He glanced around and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’ve been thinking lately… maybe I should try getting out on my own. Just… leave. It happens. A guy escaped just last week.”

“Don’t even think about that,” Dobey said quickly. “That’s damned stupid.”

“If I could get to one of the guards, maybe bribe him… it might be done.”

“Hutchinson,” Dobey said harshly, “stop it. Stop it right now! Have you lost your mind?”

Hutch looked at him. “What?”

“Do you hear what you’re saying? Are you listening?”

“I…” Hutch shrugged.

“You just stop thinking about escaping. It can’t be done.”

Hutch sighed. “You don’t understand,” was all he said. They were quiet for a moment. Hutch looked around the room vaguely. “You know,” he said finally, “I’ve been doing a lot of reading.”

“Have you?”

“I was reading this book the other day and it was talking about amnesia. I had an idea that maybe he got hit on the head in the accident. Maybe he has amnesia.”

“Might be.”

Seemingly encouraged by Dobey’s unenthusiastic agreement, Hutch leaned forward and spoke with increased intensity. “Look, what I want to do is, check all the hospitals in the San Manuel area. Farther than that even, ’cause who knows how far he might have gone? Check them out and see if they have any patients with amnesia. Let me flash Starsk’s picture around and maybe I can come up with something.”

He sounded, Dobey thought, like a cop for the first time in a long time. Like a cop on the trail of a hot tip. It was Hutch as he had been. Dobey felt like smashing something in a sudden swell of anger against the fates. He felt like crying. “Hutch,” he said softly. “Hutch….”

“You can see why I have to get out of here, can’t you?”

“Detective Hutchinson, you cannot get out until after the trial. You’re here. I’ll check the hospitals again. We checked once, but I’ll do it again. We are trying to find Starsky.”

“But….” After another moment, Hutch nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said in a half-whisper. “You check it out. Please.” He switched the phone to his other ear. “I was reading another book. About insanity. I wonder if I’m going crazy.”

Dobey shook his head.

“I can’t sleep. Did you ever lie awake all night listening to the water pipes leak? They get louder every night. Or I listen to the guards.” Hutch switched the phone again. “My cellmate jacks off every night. He thinks I don’t know. Or maybe he doesn’t care.”

“All this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, Hutch. You’ve been a cop long enough.”

Hutch didn’t seem to hear. “I can hardly eat the food. He would love it, of course.” He paused. “The two guys in the next cell screw each other twice a week. They take turns.” Another pause. “What about the bay?” he said suddenly, irrelevantly.

“What?”

“Dragging the bay. Did anybody think of dragging the bay? In case he maybe walked that way, got dizzy, and fell in.”

“Hutch, please.”

Abruptly Hutch got to his feet. “I better go. You’ll check out all those things I mentioned?”

“Yes.” Dobey watched him leave the room. He sat there for a long time after Hutch was gone.

**

McPherson came the next day. Hutch was taken to a special room, one without the barriers of the visitor’s room. He walked in and sat down opposite the psychologist.

“Dobey sent you,” he said flatly.

“He suggested I come. Do you mind?”

Hutch shrugged.

“You look terrible.”

“Yeah. Well.”

“Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“No. Dobey over-reacted. Just because I’m worried about finding my partner he thinks I’m over the edge.”

McPherson took his pipe from his pocket and began the ritual of lighting it. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “I had a thought, though, if you’d like to hear it.”

“What?”

“What would you say about being hypnotized?”

Hutch blinked. “What for?”

“If we could take you back to the night of the murder, you might remember something.”

“I already told them everything. I was unconscious.”

McPherson puffed frantically. “Maybe. But there’s a chance you might have had some degree of awareness that, if we could find it, might give a clue as to what happened.” He had finally succeeded in getting the pipe lit and he gave a small sigh of satisfaction. “Of course, whatever we find out would be totally confidential. It couldn’t be brought up in court.”

Hutch thought about it. “You think it might help, really?”

McPherson shrugged. “I think it might be worth a try, Ken.”

“All right. When?”

“Might as well be right now.” He set the pipe aside and took a small Lucite ball on a gold chain from his pocket. “There’s absolutely nothing mystical about my use of this pendulum. It’s merely a device for gaining information from the subconscious mind.” He held the chain between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, with his elbow resting on his knee, so that the ball dangled freely. “All right, Ken, I want you to watch the pendulum carefully as you listen to my voice.”

Hutch leaned forward a little in the chair, trying to concentrate, not really aware of what words McPherson was saying, but very conscious of the low, soothing tone he was using. “You can’t lift your arms, can you, Ken? They’re too heavy. You try, but they won’t move.”

Hutch tried. “They won’t move,” he repeated.

“Very good. Now, though, if you want, you will be able to move them. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’re going to talk about the night of the accident. You remember the accident, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You remember hitting the barricade? Tell me what’s happening, Ken.”

“There aren’t any brakes… Starsk, no brakes… everybody duck and hold on tight… oh, god — ” His arms flew up as if to protect his head and face. He sat very still.

“Ken, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Hutch whispered.

“What’s happening?”

“I… hurt… can’t move… everything is all… dark.”

“Can you hear anything at all?”

“No… wait… somebody moving… I hear… a voice.”

“What do you hear, Ken?”

“… buddy?… oh shit man.”

“Whose voice is it?”

“Starsky.”

“Is he saying anything else?”

“Okay, babe… I’ll get help — ” Hutch’s voice changed a little, taking on a vaguely nasal, New York tone. “Take it easy, buddy… hang in there. Oh, please, hold on. I’ll be right back.”

“Anything else?”

“No… touching.” Hutch’s hand lifted and lightly caressed his own cheek. “He’s touching my face… and holding my hand… too tightly… hurts.”

McPherson waited for a moment. “Ken?”

“No more… he’s gone… I’m waiting for him to come back.”

“What’s happening now?”

“Somebody’s coming… Starsk? Oh god, Starsk, I’m glad… no. No, it’s not Starsky… somebody else… voices… somebody is taking my gun… no… ”

His voice changed again, getting higher in pitch. “I’ll show you… rich bitch… it’s mine… richbitchrichbitch….” Hutch shuddered. “Shot… loud….” He stopped, looking bewildered. “That’s all… everything’s gone now… all dark.” He slouched back against the chair.

“Okay, Ken, relax. I’m going to count to three and then you’ll wake up. You’ll feel rested and he able to remember everything you just said. One, two, three.”

Hutch shook his head vaguely. “Hey.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “He never came back.”

“Somebody came, though. Somebody came and shot Kimberly Wright.”

“Something happened to Starsk and I have to know what it was.”

McPherson picked up the cold pipe and toyed with it absently. “Well, at least we know he didn’t just run out.”

“I already knew that.”

They were quiet for a time. “Harold told me you were talking about trying to escape, Ken. You know that’s not very smart, right?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess. You think maybe whoever killed… her, the broad… ”

“Kimberly Wright.”

“Yeah. Her. You think maybe the same person followed Starsky and killed him, too?”

“I don’t know, Ken. It’s possible.”

Hutch got to his feet. “I better go.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“I got some thinking to do.” He glanced around the room vaguely. “There’s a lot to do.” He took a step toward the door, then stopped. “The next time you talk to Dobey, ask him about the dragging operation in the bay, will you?”

“Okay.”

Hutch stepped back out into the hall where a guard waited to escort him back to his cell.

**

They caught up with him as he left the library. Usually the guard walked back to the block with him, but there was some kind of a problem in the M-wing and the guard answered a summons. Hutch didn’t feel like waiting for him to come back. He was about halfway back to his cell, carrying three more books, when the three men stepped from the shadows of the building. He nodded and tried to step past them, but they closed ranks around him. “Shove off,” he said quietly.

“Is that friendly, Hutchinson?” one said. Dirty blond hair hung to his shoulders. “We only want to talk.”

“About what?” Hutch replied, edging away slightly, until his way was blocked by a skinny black man.

“Well, it’s like this,” Dirty Blond said. “We got a friend name of Dago. You know Dago?”

Hutch shook his head, shifting the books carefully.

“Well, Dago knows you. He seen you come in that first day and he’s been keeping an eye on you ever since.”

“Why?” Wondering what would happen if he just dropped the books and ran, Hutch glanced around the courtyard. Where the hell was the guard?

“Why? ‘Cause he likes you, is all. That very first day he liked you. Dago, he says to me, I like his looks. He’s a mighty pretty cop. We don’t get a whole lot of pretty cops in here. So Dago sorta took a fancy to you.” The man chuckled. “If you get my drift.”

“I get it.” Hutch took a firm step and found his way blocked. “Tell your friend Dago to go screw himself.”

“Dago wants you. And he don’t take no for an answer.”

After a moment Hutch took another step and this time they let him pass.

He walked away slowly, not looking back. When he reached his cell, he slammed the door closed.

**

The guard escorted him to the shower room and waited in the entrance way. Hutch soaped quickly and rinsed, watching the soapy water spin down the drain. He stepped out of the stall and wrapped the towel around his waist. It was then that he heard the noise from just beyond the door. A noise like a heavy body hitting the floor. Fat Laker was the guard waiting for him.

“Laker?” Hutch said, “is something — ” He broke off as a dirty blond and the skinny black man came into the room, taking up positions on either side of the door.

A third man came in. “My name is Dago,” he said softly, his eyes moving slowly over Hutch.

Hutch forced himself to turn and walk over to the mirror. He picked up the razor and began to shave. “I’ve got no time to talk now.”

Dago, a husky, good-looking young man with slightly pockmarked skin, smiled. “That’s okay. I ain’t much for talking anyway.” He moved closer. “I just want to be your friend.”

Hutch finished shaving and carefully rinsed the razor. His clothes were hanging on a hook by the door. He dried his hands and took a step in that direction. “I have all the friends I need.”

“That’s not what I hear. I hear you got no friends at all.” Dago took another step toward him. “Maybe you been saving yourself for the right guy?” 

 

Hutch moved toward his clothes. The black man reached for them, rolled them into a ball, and tossed it into the hall.

“Hey,” Hutch protested, “those are clean, man.” He ducked a little, then straightened, swinging both arms into the blond’s chest. A homemade knife appeared in the black’s hand. Hutch backed away, groping behind him for the razor.

“Hutchinson,” Dago chided, “take it easy. Who knows? You might even enjoy it.” He gave a sudden lunge and ripped the towel away from Hutch’s body.

Thought fled. Hutch charged-forward, but the other two grabbed him and held on. He struggled uselessly. They pushed his face down hard against the sink and he felt a rush of hot blood from his nose. He gagged. They held him bent over the sink.

The sound of Dago unsnapping his trousers echoed like an explosion in Hutch’s ears.

“Nononono,” he whispered, swallowing a mouthful of blood and bile. “Ohchristnoplease,” he said, not even knowing that he was speaking. “Nochristpleasestarskhelpmepleasestarsk.” He felt Dago’s hands on his shoulders, sliding down his spine, touching his ass. “No… ”

He kicked. This could not happen. Must not happen. He would die first. Let them kill him. He almost giggled. Fate worse than death. Rape was nothing new. He could look at it objectively. How many women had he interviewed after they’d been raped? And a few men. But now, maybe for the first time, it was real.

“Ohchrist… don’t touch me… oh jesus… ohstarskplease… don’t let this happen to me… ohbabepleasehelpme.” His whispered words crashed against the sink. As Dago’s fingers moved over him, Hutch gave a gurgling roar.

Dago’s hands tightened on his ass. “Okay, pretty boy. I like it rough, too. I like it when you fight.” He moved closer, pressing his body against Hutch.

“Please… no… I’ll kill you.” Above the blood roaring in his ears, Hutch could hear Dago laughing.

The door crashed open. Fat Laker and another guard stood there, two guns leveled at Dago.

“Stop,” Laker said quietly. “Never learn, do you, Dago?”

Abruptly, Hutch was free. He slumped against the sink, the taste of blood mingling with bitter bile and the saltiness of unshed tears. My face will look like hell in court tomorrow, he thought distantly.

Someone handed him his clothes and he started to dress. Dressing was a normal, rational thing to do. When he was finished, the guard took him by the arm and led him toward the infirmary. He kept saying that he was all right. It was all very calm and efficient. Nobody knew that he was screaming inside.

XVI

Although with the beard, dark glasses, and phony passport he felt fairly safe, Starsky didn’t really relax until he was through customs and walking out into the Los Angeles evening. He almost felt like dropping to his knees and kissing the asphalt parking lot, but he didn’t. Instead, he caught a taxi and gave the driver Dobey’s address. He didn’t know for sure why he’d picked Dobey’s house as a destination. Maybe it was as simple as one place being the same as another. After all, where else was there? Not his apartment or Hutch’s, that was for sure. Huggy’s maybe. But the Pits was a popular place, not only with Hutch and him, but with a lot of other cops, too. Dobey was a cop, of course, but Dobey was their captain. He wouldn’t betray Starsky.

The house was dark when he arrived. He pried open the back door to the garage and went inside, sitting on a work bench in the corner. Leaning back, he lit a cigarette and watched its tiny orange glow in the blackness. Jet lag was catching up with him. He fell asleep sitting there.

The dream came back, the one where he saw Hutch at the end of the long corridor. But this time Hutch wasn’t saying anything. He was only standing there, looking at Starsky and there were tears in his eyes. Starsky wanted so much to go to him. Wanted to take Hutch into his arms and hold him tight and tell him that he loved him. Hutch knew it, of course, but he wanted to tell him anyway. Wanted to hold on tight and never let him go. But in the dream, Hutch just sort of faded away.

Starsky woke with a jerk when the cigarette burned his fingers. “Damn,” he said into the empty garage.

A few minutes later the front door of the garage creaked electrically up and a car pulled in. Starsky crouched in the darkness until the headlights went off and he heard the car door open. Then he stepped from the shadows.

“Captain?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Dobey froze. “Who’s there?” he said, one hand reaching toward his gun.

Starsky stepped closer. “It’s me.”

Dobey opened the car door wider, sending a shaft of light through the darkness. He stared for a full minute. “Starsky? My God. Dave.”

“Yeah.”

Dobey shook his head. “My God,” he said again. “Where have you — wait, let’s go inside before we talk.” He led the way to the side entrance of the house. “Edith and the kids are visiting her sister,” he explained rather vaguely as he unlocked the door. They stepped into the kitchen and Dobey waved Starsky to a chair. He didn’t speak until he had poured two shots of bourbon and joined him at the table.

“Dave,” he said again. “We thought….”

Starsky took a gulp of the liquor.

“Cap’n,” he said, “is he dead?”

There was no need for Dobey to ask who “he” was, of course. Still, a somewhat bewildered look crossed his face. “Dead?”

“Is Hutch dead?”

“No.”

There was a long pause. Starsky took another drink.

“Hutch isn’t dead?” he said in a whisper.

“He’s alive. We thought… we thought you were dead.”

Starsky lowered his head onto his arms and cried. Dobey sat and waited, sipping the bourbon.

In a few minutes Starsky raised his head again. He took a paper napkin from the holder on the table and blew his nose loudly. “Where is he? I have to see him.”

Dobey reached over and poured Starsky more bourbon. “You don’t have any idea what’s been going on here, do you?”

Starsky shook his head. “Hell, I’ve been halfway around the world.” He brushed it off. “Hutch?”

“He’s in jail. Hutch goes on trial tomorrow for the murder of Kimberly Wright.” Dobey watched the disbelief fill Starsky’s face and the black man began at the beginning, telling him everything that had happened since Hutch woke up in the wrecked car. Including the fact that there was a warrant out on Starsky himself.

Starsky slumped on his spine in the chair, drinking, smoking, listening, his face revealing nothing. 0nly the way the fingers of his right hand gripped the edge of the table showed the tension he was feeling. When Dobey finally finished, the cheerful red-and-yellow kitchen was quiet for a few minutes.

Dobey got to his feet. “Why don’t I make us some food?” he suggested. “A bacon and egg sandwich sound okay?”

“Whatever,” Starsky said absently. He stood and began to pace the room as Dobey busied himself with a frying pan and food. “You have any idea who’s putting the frame on Hutch?”

“No. Kramer and I have explored every angle we could think of and all we have to show for it is a big zero,” Dobey replied, carefully arranging bacon strips in the pan.

“I’ll find out.” It was an oath the way he said it.

“Starsky, where the hell have you been? The San Manuel cops think you ran out.”

“I was… kidnapped. Took a boat trip — ” He lit another of the cheap Hong Kong cigarettes. “What does Hutch think?”

Dobey gave a forced laugh, needing suddenly to try to lessen the almost unbearable tension in the room. “Your partner is full of theories. Everything from maybe you got amnesia to maybe you fell in the bay. I think he wanted us to drain the whole damned harbor.” He knew that his attempt to lighten the mood had fallen flat.

Starsky scratched at the beard. “Shit.” A sudden thought struck him; it was a thought that hurt. “Hutch doesn’t think I ran out, does he?”

“That never once entered his mind,” Dobey said firmly. He turned the bacon. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I have to.”

“You should turn yourself in.” The words were said without emotion.

“Oh, yeah? Why, so they can maybe give Hutch and me adjoining cells?” He stopped his restless pacing and stared at Dobey. “You gonna turn me in?”

“I had to say that, Dave.”

“I know.” Starsky sighed. “I know this puts you in the middle, Cap’n. You want I should take off and we both pretend I was never here?”

“Don’t talk like an idiot.”

“First of all,” Starsky said after a moment, “I have to see him.”

“You plan on just walking into the Diablo Correctional Facility?”

“Not me. Jerome Lasko. His I.D. got me into the country, it should get me into some shitty county jail.”

Four eggs slithered into the pan. Grease splattered and popped. “You’ll be taking a chance.”

Starsky shrugged and sat down again. They were both quiet as Dobey made toast, piled the eggs and bacon on top, and poured more bourbon. As they ate, Dobey questioned Starsky about what had happened to him. Despite their best efforts, there seemed no way they could tie in his kidnapping with the murder of Kimberly Wright. The two incidents were unrelated. Just as they finished, the phone rang. Starsky reached for the receiver and handed it to Dobey.

“Yes? Oh, Sam, there’s something — what?” Dobey glanced over at Starsky, who was lost in contemplation of his drink. “What happened? When? Was he hurt bad?”

Starsky straightened slowly, his deep blue eyes suddenly sharp. “What happened?” he said.

Dobey waved him quiet. “What about the trial? Okay. Hey, Sam — since this happened, you think they’d let a visitor in? Okay, thanks for calling. See you tomorrow.” He hung up slowly, not looking at Starsky.

“What happened to him?”

“A couple of punks jumped him in the shower room. Beat him up a little.” Dobey cleared his throat, wondering just how far he could stretch Starsky’s endurance. “Sam says… they were trying to… rape him.”

Beneath the beard, Starsky’s tanned face went deathly white. “Did….”

Dobey reached out and gripped his arm.

“No, Dave,” he said, “the guards got to him in time. But he got pretty bruised up. Sam said he thought about asking for a delay in the trial, but Hutch refused.”

Starsky got up and moved around the room, barely reining in the fury he was feeling. “I gotta see him.”

“Sam said he thought they’d let a visitor in.”

“How fast can we get there?”

Dobey was already dialing. “I went up on a charter flight before. Let’s see if we can get it again.”

Starsky only nodded. He stood in the middle of the room, massaging the back of his neck wearily.

Less than three hours later Starsky was waved through the door of the visitor’s room at Diablo. It was very late and the jail seemed to be asleep. The room was lit by only two dim lights. He sat down in the first cubicle and waited.

Another door opened and a tall, skinny man with shaggy blond hair came in. His face was bruised and his nose looked swollen. He didn’t even bother to look up as he crossed the room and sat down. It was as if he had absolutely no interest in who his visitor might be.

“Hutch,” Starsky whispered. Uselessly, because neither of them had lifted the phone.

It was another minute before Hutch lifted his gaze. He blinked twice.

“Hutch,” Starsky said again. He wanted to touch his partner. Raising one hand, he pressed it against the glass. “Oh, babe.”

Hutch seemed not to trust what he was seeing. It took a very long time before he slowly lifted his hand and pressed it opposite Starsky’s. They stayed that way for a few minutes, before Starsky picked up the phone and waited for Hutch to do the same. Even then they didn’t speak right away.

 

“You came back,” Hutch said hoarsely.

“I been trying for a long time, man.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry it took so long.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

“You okay?” It was a dumb question, of course, and Starsky knew it.

Hutch nodded. “Yeah.”

Starsky wanted to let it drop, but he needed desperately to know for sure. “They didn’t… hurt you?”

“They didn’t rape me,” Hutch said flatly. They sat, looking at each other, each seeming to drink in the sight of the other.

“I thought… I thought you died,” Starsky said. “Because I didn’t bring back the help I promised. I thought you died and it was my fault.”

“No, I didn’t die.” Hutch glanced toward the door. “They won’t let you stay long.”

“I know. But I’ll be back. We’re going to beat them, Hutch. All of them. And then we’re going to tell them to take their whole fucked-up system and shove it.”

“I want to get out, Starsk.”

“You will.” Starsky wanted to smash the glass that was keeping them apart. He remembered the dream, Hutch asking for help, and he not able to give it. He remembered wanting to take Hutch in his arms to reassure him and to tell him how much he cared. His fingers moved against the glass. “I’ll get you out, Hutch, if I have to blow up the whole frigging place.” His voice lowered, although there was no one but Hutch to hear. “I love you, man.”

“I know.” Hutch looked at him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

The guard opened the door and gestured.

“I have to go,” Hutch said softly.

“Damn. Hey.”

“Huh?”

“We’re together again, so it’s gonna he okay, buddy.”

For the most fleeting moment a smile hovered on the edges of Hutch’s llps. “Together again?” he said. “Hell, man, we were never really apart.” He pulled his hand away and then was gone from the room. Starsky stared at the closed door for a long time.

Back outside, in the grey light that preceded the dawn, Dobey was waiting, his stolid bulk pacing noiselessly. He stopped and watched Starsky cross the pavement. “Is he all right?”

Starsky didn’t answer immediately. He yanked the cigarette pack from his pocket and lit one. “I gotta cut these out,” he mumbled. “Hutch’ll kill me.” He took a long drag; releasing it into the slightly chill air. “What the hell have you people done to him?” he asked softly, almost casually.

“What?”

“You should have done something!” It was a shout this time.

“Dave, we’ve been trying — ”

Starsky’s hand crashed down on the hood of the rented car. “Shut up! Don’t tell me that. My best friend is locked up like some kind of animal. He’s going crazy in there and nobody has done nothing.” He stopped, turning to stare at the walls of Diablo. “I’m going to do something. If I have to… no matter what I have to do, I’ll get him out.” He got into the passenger seat and slammed the door. After a moment, Dobey got behind the wheel and they drove away.

XVII

He made a phone call and set up a meet with an astonished Huggy Bear.

It was nearly noon when Huggy showed up at the Keith Motel, located on the outer fringe of San Manuel. Starsky opened the door to him and they looked at one another for a long moment.

“Hi,” Starsky said.

“The Prodigal Policeman returns,” Huggy said lightly. A handshake turned into a slightly awkward embrace, then they sat down.

Huggy looked around the dismal room, raked Starsky’s appearance shrewdly, picked up the cigarette pack and sniffed at it. “How’s the boy?” he asked finally.

“I need help.”

“Hope you aren’t askin’?”

Starsky smiled faintly. “No. I was assuming.”

“Damned well better.”

Starsky sat silent for a moment, Organizing his thoughts. He was feeling a little shook. The phone call to his mother had been an emotional, yet necessary task. Now that it was done, he could relax a little. She knew he was alive and well, and that no one must know yet except herself.

“I need some I.D.,” he said finally. “Jerome Lasko has done about all he can for me. I need some wheels. I need a gun — something inconspicuous.”

Huggy nodded. “Okay.”

“And I need it all like yesterday.” He reached over for a glance at Huggy’s watch. “He’s in court right now. I gotta get over there.”

“That ain’t too smart, is it?”

“Nobody knows me.” He slipped the dark glasses on. “Can you be back here sometime tonight with the stuff?”

“You don’t want much, do you?”

“I want whatever it takes,” he replied shortly.

Huggy pulled his lanky frame up from the chair. “We all want Hutch out of this, man.”

“I know. Oh, one more thing — Dobey has a box of my clothes at his place. Can you bring them?”

Huggy promised that as well and then he gave Starsky a lift over to the courthouse. The single cop on duty waved him through the door and he slipped into the back row. Jury selection was in process. He stared for a long moment at the defense table, where Hutch sat between Kramer and another man.

Hutch turned around suddenly and saw Starsky sitting there. He smiled faintly. Starsky lifted one hand in a half wave and Hutch turned his attention frontward again.

**

The jury selection process is tedious, repetitive and crucial. Starsky tried to keep his mind on what was happening, although he itched to leave and get busy… to do something instead of just sitting. But there was something he needed to do here first.

At last the judge called a halt to the activity and dismissed the court for lunch. Starsky edged his way through the crowd to the defense table. Hutch watched him approach and when he reached the table, they stared tentatively at one another. This time there was no glass between them, but there was the watchful eye of the guard. Still, Starsky reached out one hand and Hutch clasped it like a drowning man might clasp a life preserver.

Kramer watched, obviously aware of who Starsky was, but not saying anything.

“I hafta go,” Starsky said after a few moments.

Hutch nodded, but didn’t let go.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Starsky managed to pull his hand free from the almost painful grip Hutch had on it. “I hafta go,” he repeated.

“I know. Hey — ”

Starsky, turning away, stopped. “Yeah?”

“You be careful.” He sounded like himself for the first time.

Starsky rewarded him with a real grin. “Tell them to be careful.”

Hutch watched his partner stalk from the room and then followed Kramer to the holding room, where Dobey waited with lunch. He sat down and toyed unenthusiastically with a tuna on white toast.

Kramer eyed him. “What does Starsky think he’s up to?” the lawyer asked around a huge bite of corned beef on rye.

“Huh?” Hutch took a sip of iced tea. “Oh. He’s gonna get me out.”

“How?”

“By finding out who killed Kimberly Wright.”

Dobey was eating and listening.

“What makes you or he think he can do that on his own? The police had no luck. The P.I. we hired had no luck. Why should Starsky be able to do more?”

Hutch was a long time answering. He studied the crumbs on the paper plate, moving them around with a fingertip.

“Two reasons,” he said finally, softly. “First of all, Dave Starsky is the best damned cop I’ve ever seen.” He took a bite of the sandwich. “A lot of people don’t know that. But when he gets all the wheels turning, he can leave the rest of us eating dust.”

“You said two reasons.”

“Yeah. He’ll do a better job because he’s not doing it for money or duty or even to see that ‘justice is done.’ Whatever the hell that means.” Hutch looked at Kramer. “He’s doing it out of love.”

They finished lunch in silence.

**

Starsky walked to a nearby drug store and downed without really tasting a hot dog and a Coke. He asked for and got directions to the public library. His movements now were tight, yet with an undercurrent of freneticism. He had to keep his emotions in check. That was the only way he could operate now and do what had to be done. Just like when he was on the BLUE LADY, he could not let himself think much about Hutch. About his partner’s bruised and ravaged face. About the way Hutch had gripped his hand so desperately in the courtroom. For at least a little longer, Dave Starsky had to keep thinking and acting like a cop.

The plump redhead behind the information desk displayed some curiosity when Starsky requested that she provide him with the local, Los Angeles, and Frisco papers for the day of the murder and those days immediately after. He smiled at her in his practiced charming way until all of the newspapers were piled on a table in front of him and then forgot her. In a moment, she gave a sniff and went away.

He spent three hours ensconced there in the corner, devouring everything that had been written on the case. Finally, his fingers blackened with newsprint, he straightened, rubbing his stiff neck and craving a cigarette. He noticed that the redhead was staring across the room at him. His smile this time was absent-minded.

The steps of the library were still warm in the late afternoon sun and he sat down to have a smoke before walking to the bus stop for the ride back to the motel. Had the last three hours been worth it? What did he know that he hadn’t known before? Not much really. He now knew just who Kimberly Wright had been. And who Owen Wright was. He knew about Wright’s rags-to-riches success story. How the son of a junkman had accumulated a fortune and learned to hobnob with presidents and international celebrities. He knew about the triumphs of Wright and also about his tragedies. The death of Kimberly was not the first blow of ill-fortune to strike the Wright family. Their first child, a daughter called Torrie, had been kidnapped at the age of thirteen months and never found. That blow seemed to strike hardest at Mrs. Wright. There were hints of a breakdown and subsequent trouble with alcohol, problems that seemed not at all alleviated by the birth of a second daughter, Kimberly, two years later.

It was obvious why Hutch had been railroaded. But he was no closer to knowing why Kimberly Wright had been killed. Or who might have done it. After a few minutes, Starsky sighed and crushed out the cigarette. Dobey had promised to get him copies of all the police reports. Maybe there would be something in them. Maybe, but he wouldn’t count on it. What it came right down to was the fact that there was nothing he could count on, no one to depend on, except himself.

**

Dobey was waiting for him back at the motel, carrying a thick file folder. He followed Starsky into the room and dropped the folder onto the bed. “If it ever comes out that I gave you those,” he muttered, “my ass will be in a sling.”

“Yeah?” Starsky said, walking into the bathroom. “They get the jury all picked?” he asked through the half-closed door.

“Yes. It could be worse.”

Starsky came back, zipping his jeans. “Won’t matter. The case won’t get that far.”

Dobey settled himself into the one chair in the room. “Starsky, don’t get your hopes up. You’re new in this. Kramer and I have been over the same damned ground half a dozen times.”

“I won’t fail.” Starsky seemed unable to be still. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet and shadowed-boxed in front of the cracked and yellowed mirror.

“How can you be so damned sure!” Dobey exploded suddenly. They both knew that his outburst was caused by frustration and worry.

“Because I can’t fail.” Starsky moved aimlessly around the room for a moment. “It’s like… remember when Hutch was so sick and we were waiting for Callander to turn himself in?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Everybody else kept saying ‘what if he doesn’t come in.’ But I knew he would.” Dobey looked at him blankly and Starsky sighed patiently. “Because he had to come in or Hutch woulda died,” he said simply. It made perfect sense to him.

After a moment Dobey got to his feet. “I better go. Trying to run the damned department by long distance.” He handed Starsky a roll of bills. “Here, this should keep you going for awhile.”

“Thanks. Pay you back when Hutch and I collect all our back pay.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You going to court tomorrow, Cap’n?”

“Sure.”

Starsky was quiet, staring at the floor. “Tell him….” He shrugged. “Never mind. He already knows.”

Dobey, his hand on the doorknob, nodded.

“Just tell him I said ‘hi’, willya?”

“I will.” Dobey nodded and left.

Starsky ran across the street to a quickie fried chicken place and brought some dinner back to the room. He sat cross-legged is the middle of the bed and ate the chicken, cole slaw, and fries, while watching a KOJAK rerun on the fuzzy black-and-white TV. When he was finished with the food, he settled back to read the police reports.

By the time he heard a soft tap at the door, Starsky was half-asleep. He struggled to the surface and staggered over to open the door. Huggy, clad in a lime green jumpsuit and matching beret, bounced into the room. “Howdy,” he said.

Starsky waved him to a chair and went to splash cold water on his face. “Whatcha got for me?” he mumbled through a towel.

“Why everything you asked for, of course,” Huggy said. “Plus one or two surprises.”

Starsky dropped onto the bed. “First things first. A car?”

“A jaunty little subcompact is parked right outside your door. The blue job.” He tossed a key and Starsky caught it with one hand.

“Thanks.”

Next Huggy took a brown envelope from his pocket. “Driver’s license and a couple of credit cards, plus the first little surprise I mentioned.”

“What?”

“A private snoop’s license. Figured it would make your poking around look a little more legitimate.”

Starsky smiled. “Terrific. Should I ask how you happened to get your grubby little fingers on all this stuff?”

“Not unless you want to cause yourself undue worry,” Huggy said lightly. “Just say I have a friend with a most handy printing machine.”

“Suits me. They haven’t been fair in what they’ve done to Hutch, why should I fight fair against them?” He thought fleetingly of the stolen passport and the money he’d ripped off in Hong Kong. To hell with it. It was to save Hutch. “There’s more?”

Huggy handed him a Browning .25 automatic. It was no larger than a pack of cigarettes. “Guaranteed to be clean.”

“Yeah?” He turned the small weapon over in his hands. “Hope I don’t have to go in after any elephants,” he said sourly.

Huggy snorted. “Knowing you, you’d go after them with your bare hands.”

Starsky smiled again. “The mood I’m in, you may be right.”

“Glad you ain’t on my case.”

“You said there were two surprises?”

Huggy gave a self-satisfied smirk. “Been doing a little digging in my family tree and I think I finally found something. A connection for you here in San Manuel.”

“A connection?”

“A cousin of mine. Lived here for years. He owns a place down on the docks. Granny says what Cousin Abraham don’t know ain’t worth talking about.”

“I love your granny.”

“Oh, she’s crazy about you, too. For a honky, she say, you an all right dude.”

Starsky laughed briefly. “You have cousins everywhere?”

“Probably. Anyway, I called him and said you’d be coming to talk.”

“Thanks.” Starsky rubbed his eyes with the heel of one hand.

“You better get some sleep, man, before you crash.”

“Sleep?” Starsky said dryly. “What’s that?”

“See what I mean?” Huggy dropped a slip of paper onto the nightstand. “There’s Cousin Abraham’s address. I gotta run.”

“Where you going?”

“A friend is waiting to drive me home.” Huggy smiled. “She don’t like waiting.”

Starsky walked him to the door. “Thanks, Hug,” he said.

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I know.”

Huggy opened the door. “Look, man, you gotta have faith. Hutch is gonna come through this okay. Don’t the White Knight always win in the end?”

“I guess.”

Huggy touched Starsky’s shoulder lightly. “But it ain’t gonna do him no good if you get wiped out in the meantime.” Starsky shrugged. “When Hutch gets out, man, he’s gonna need you. He’s gonna need you bad.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Starsky said slowly.

“Damned straight.” Huggy left and Starsky closed the door. The low buzz of television conversation was the only sound in the room. Starsky stripped off his clothes and crawled naked between the sheets. He switched off the lamp and stared at the TV screen. Johnny Carson was talking to somebody Starsky didn’t know and the audience was laughing. Starsky wondered what Hutch was doing. Blearily, he planned his itinerary for the next day. He hoped Hutch was okay.

After a while, Starsky curled on his side, shoved the pillow over his head, and went to sleep, leaving Tom Snyder droning on.

XVIII

Cousin Abraham operated a small tackle and bait shop next to the Strip. His age was impossible to determine — he might have been fifty or twice that. He sat on a small camp stool in front of the battered grey shack that housed his business and watched as Starsky approached. “‘Lo,” he said around the corncob pipe in his mouth.

“Hi,” Starsky replied, leaning against the dock rail.

“No good going out today,” Abraham offered. “They ain’t biting.”

“Why not?”

The old man shrugged. “Some days they does and some days they don’t. I ain’t in the business of understanding fishes. Hate to see my good bait wasted, is all.”

“Well,” Starsky said, “to tell the truth, I’m not here for the fishing anyway.”

Abraham eyed him shrewdly. “No?”

“Huggy sent me.”

“Well, to tell the truth, I had that figgered out.”

“You did?”

“Anybody could tell by looking that you ain’t no kind of a fishingman.”

“Wish somebody would tell my partner that.” They were both quiet for a moment, watching several small boats drift by. “Huggy tell you why I wanted to talk?”

“Not exactly. Said it had something to do with that girlie what got herself killed.”

“Right.” Starsky sat down on a crate and took out the last of his Hong Kong cigarettes. “My partner’s in jail. I want to get him out.”

“You figger he didn’t do it?”

“He didn’t.”

Abraham nodded. “Cousin Huggy said that, too.” He puffed thoughtfully on the foul-smelling tobacco in his pipe. “I don’t generally like to get mixed up in matters involving the po-lice.”

Starsky smiled a little. “This is all very unofficial.”

“Considering that you be something of a fugitive yourself, I guess it would have to be, wouldn’t it?”

“What can you tell me about Kimberly Wright?”

“Miss Kimberly Wright? Well, she was a rich girl. Her daddy about owns this town.”

“I know that.”

Abraham seemed a little miffed by Starsky’s apparent impatience. “I gotta have time to get my thoughts organized, boy,” he said sharply.

“I’m sorry.” Starsky hunched forward a little and spoke intensely. “It’s just that every minute this takes, every second, means more hurting for Hutch. My partner. That hurts me, understand?”

“Yes, indeedy I do,” the old man said, speaking gently now. He sighed. “So much trouble in the world. Born in pain, live in pain, die in pain. She was a bad girl.”

“Kimberly? What do you mean, bad?”

“I watched her grow up. Back when I was younger, I runned a charter boat and her daddy liked to go fishing with all his fancy friends. The little girl was all the time running around the docks. Even then, she had a bad streak in her. She liked to tease the other childrens.”

Starsky arched the cigarette butt into the water. “Yeah?” was all he said.

“Wright finally sent her away to some fancy school back east. She was gone until just a few years ago. But when she come back, I could see right away that she hadn’t changed none. She begun to run around, drinking and carrying on with a bad crowd.”

“Men?”

“One after the other. Some from the fancy pants country club and some of them sailors who ain’t worth spit.”

Starsky was listening carefully. “You know a girl named Maura?”

Abraham was quiet for a moment. “Can’t say I recall the name. But I seen Kimberly with a little blonde birdie a few times.”

“That’s her.” Starsky bit his lip. “Yeah, that sounds like her. What else can you tell me?”

“Well… for a time, Kimberly was running with a bad penny named Lucas.”

“Lucas?”

“That’s all I ever heard.”

After another minute Starsky got to his feet. “Okay.” He reached for his wallet. “Thanks, sir — ”

“I ain’t taking no money. Huggy say you both be like family.”

Starsky nodded. “Okay.”

“Hope you git what it takes to help your friend.”

“I will.” They contemplated one another solemnly for a moment.

He left his car where it was and walked over to the Whistling Parrot Bar, stopping at the cigarette machine in the entrance to dig enough change out of his pocket to buy a pack. At that hour there were only a few patrons in the place and none of them displayed the slightest interest in Starsky as he crossed the room and sat down at the bar.

“Yeah?” the bartender said, taking a swipe at the counter with a filthy rag.

“Beer.” He waited until the bottle was set in front of him. “Seen Lucas around lately?”

“Who wants to know?”

Starsky glanced around the room. “Anybody else asking?”

“Nope.”

“Then I guess it must be me who wants to know.”

The other man was silent, rubbing the rag in a haphazard circle on the bar. “You a friend of his?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, he ain’t been around in a while.”

Starsky lit a cigarette. “How about Maura?”

The bartender only shrugged and moved away to wait on another customer. Starsky sipped beer and waited. They had what looked like a Mexican stand-off until the bartender finally wandered back. “Maura left town, I heard,” he reluctantly offered. “You a cop?”

Starsky pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to his private investigator’s license. “Arnie Schwartz,” he muttered. “Private cop.”

“Who you working for?”

“Ahh,” he demurred, “I can’t really say.”

“Uh-huh. You want another?” the man asked, gesturing toward the bottle.

“Yeah, I guess,” Starsky replied, although he didn’t. “Does Maura have a last name?”

Another bottle of beer was opened and set in front of him. “This have anything to do with the Wright girl’s murder?”

“What makes you think so?”

“‘Cause the cops was asking about Maura, too, right afterwards.”

Starsky took a swallow of beer. “What’d you tell them?”

“Nothing.” He sounded proud of the fact.

“Why?”

“Why should I? Pigs never done nothing for me but make trouble. ‘Sides, they already had the guy that did it, so they didn’t much care.”

His attitude was tiresomely familiar to Starsky. Except that this time he was grateful for it. He took a bill from the wallet and tossed it onto the counter. “Keep the change.” He gave the man a minute to pick up the twenty and fold it. “You have anything to tell me? Maybe we can make the pigs look like a bunch of stumbling idiots.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like what if they’ve had the wrong guy locked up all this time?”

The bartender thought about that for a moment and then he chuckled softly. “You think so? Well, I don’t know Maura’s last name. But I know she used to live down on the beach somewhere… a boarding house just below the canning factory. Usta bitch about the smell all the time is how I know.”

“Lucas?”

He shrugged. “Ain’t seen him since before the killing.”

“Just before?”

“He was in that night. Not since. But he comes and goes a lot, so that don’t mean nothing.”

Starsky finished the beer and slid from the stool. “Thanks,” he said, already moving toward the door.

He paused on the sidewalk to light a cigarette. Through the grimy window he could see the bartender lift the phone and dial. Starsky smiled tightly. So. He was already beginning to make waves. Good. Before this was over, he’d cause a goddamned tidal wave, big enough to drown them all, all the bastards that had done this to Hutch.

**

Hutch felt strangely detached from what was happening in the courtroom, almost as if it were all just some movie on TV and not a very interesting movie at that. He listened impassively to the medical examiner’s testimony concerning the death of Kimberly Wright, listened to the first officer on the scene describe what he’d found there, and listened to Sheriff Collins’ account of the arrest. As they talked, he made doodles on a pad of scratch paper.

When the lunch recess came, he ripped off the used sheets of paper and shoved them into his pocket. Kramer left for a fast meeting on another case, so he ate alone, except for the sullen company of a guard. Dobey arrived just as Hutch was finishing. “How you doing?”

“Okay.”

“I had to make some phone calls. Sorry you had to eat by yourself.”

“Doesn’t matter. I wasn’t very hungry anyway.”

Dobey looked at him. “You can’t let this part of the trial get you down, Hutch. Just remember, our turn will come.”

“Uh-huh.” Hutch gathered the remains of his lunch and shoved it into the wastebasket.

“Oh, by the way — ” Dobey glanced toward the guard. “A friend of yours said to tell you ‘hi’.”

Hutch smiled. “Yeah?”

The guard got to his feet. “Time to go, Hutchinson.”

“Okay. Cap’n?”

“What?”

“You got a pen?”

“Yeah….” Dobey took a green Spree out of his pocket and handed it to him.

“Thanks. Mine went dry just before lunch.” He followed the guard out the door.

**

There were a lot of cheap boarding houses along the dock and Starsky was in and out of four of them before he struck paydirt. The landlady, a scrawny woman carrying a copy of TRUE ROMANCE in her hand, answered his knock. She carefully studied his investigator’s license, giving Starsky cause to wonder why that cheap piece of cardboard seemed to carry more weight than his badge had. Or maybe it just generated less hostility. She nodded sagely at his question. “Maura? Yeah, I remember her. She moved out, though.”

“You know her last name?” Starsky pulled a small notebook from his hip pocket.

“Yeah… something foreign, I think. Gonzalez. Maura Gonzalez.”

Starsky felt a twinge of doubt. Admittedly the evening he’d spent with the girl was hazy in his memory, but she hadn’t seemed Mexican. Maybe she was the wrong girl after all. “Gonzalez? You’re sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Although she kept saying that she was gonna go back to her maiden name after the divorce.”

“Gonzalez was her married name, you mean?”

The woman gave him a look of pity such as one might cast upon an idiot. “Ain’t that what I just said?”

“Would you happen to know what her maiden same was?”

“Nope.” She rustled the pages of her magazine “I got things to do, ya know.”

“One more thing, please… what was her husband’s first name?”

“Never met him.” She paused, studying Starsky a little more closely. “She always just called him ‘that bastard Rico.'”

“When she left, did she leave a forwarding address?”

The woman gave a sigh of saintly patience. “Nope. Blew in here one night, shoved all her clothes into a suitcase, and took off. Give me not one word of notice.”

“Was she alone?”

“I don’t remember.” She thought for a moment, during which time Starsky read the title of the story she was itching to return to — I HAD MY BROTHER’S BABY. “Wait, there was somebody with her. A man. He waited out in front in a oar. It was dark and I don’t know what kind of car,” she added quickly.

“Maura ever mention a man named Lucas?”

“No.” She raked him once more with a glance that seemed strangely regretful and started to close the door.

“Wait — did Maura leave town the same night that Kimberly Wright was killed?”

That gave her pause. She chewed her lower lip for a minute and then nodded. “Now that you mention it… yeah, yeah, it was.”

“Thank you very much,” Starsky said as he started down the steps.

“Sure thing, honey,” she replied with rather surprising cheerfulness.

Starsky drove to a McDonald’s on the edge of town and went inside. He sat in a corner booth and downed two Big Macs, fries, and a large Coke as he mulled over the results of his morning. Well, it was progress, no matter how slight. He had some names. Lucas. Maura Gonzalez or whatever. Rico Gonzalez. He swiped at his chin with the napkin. Yeah, the case was shaping up. Wait until he told Hutch.

He glanced up at the clock. Court was probably in its afternoon session. But that wasn’t his concern at the moment. The next logical step for him was to try the local Records Bureau and see if there was any record for either a marriage or divorce for Maura and Rico Gonzalez.

Unfortunately, when he reached the neat adobe building that served as the county hall of statistics, there was a sign on the door informing all and sundry that this was the afternoon the office closed at twelve o’clock. He gave an impatient and useless kick at the door and went back to his car. So much for that.

Lacking any other brilliant inspiration for the moment, he went back to the motel and caught some sleep. Feeling somewhat less foggy when he woke, he called Dobey, who was just out of court. “How’d it go?”

“Oh, you know,” the captain replied vaguely.

“He okay?”

“I guess.” Dobey lowered his voice. “He’s down, you know?”

Starsky started undressing. “Yeah? Well, look, tell him I’ll come out for visiting hours tonight.”

“If you keep coming around, Starsky, somebody’s liable to spot you.”

“Naw. Tell him I’ll be there, huh?”

“All right, all right.” Dobey turned official again. “You uncover anything?”

“Yeah. Things the pigs here woulda found if they’da taken their noses out of their asses for a minute. You wanta run a check for me? Rico Gonzalez. And Maura Gonzalez, although her name is probably different now.’

“That the missing broad?”

“Yeah. Look, I gotta grab a shower and head out for Diablo. Talk to you in the morning.”

Within a few minutes Starsky had showered, changed into a somewhat less grubby outfit, and was walking out the door. Whistling, he climbed into the ear, inserted the key into the ignition, and felt the cold metal of a gun barrel suddenly pressed against the side of his neck. Goddamn, he thought with more exultation than fear. Goddamn, if my frigging tidal wave ain’t washing a few creeps up on shore already.

**

Hutch finished dinner even more quickly than usual and went back to his cell to wait for the beginning of visiting hours. Even though he realized that it might be stupid and possibly even dangerous for Starsky to come hack out to Diablo, he’d be so damned glad to see him that it didn’t matter. Maybe this time they could really talk. He gave himself a fast shave, carefully skirting the bruises, and changed into a clean work shirt. All ready, he sat on the floor and waited impatiently for the summons to the visitor’s room.

Garcia had left a deck of cards in the cell and Hutch finally started a half-hearted game of solitaire to pass the time. He lost three games before finally winning, his attention distracted by the flow of inmates through the corridor. He kept playing until the lights blitzed to signal the end of visiting hours.

 

 

He got to his feet, carefully hung the shirt back on its hook, and pulled off his trousers. Just as Garcia came back into the cell, Hutch climbed into bed and closed his eyes.

His dreams that night were muddled, almost feverish. Over and over he relived the moment in the parking lot, the instant when he came around the corner of the Torino and saw his partner lying sprawled on the pavement. That moment when the nightmares of years seemed to have come crashing in on him with a dreadful reality.

He woke up drenched with sweat and listened to Garcia jerk off in the cot below. The soft moans of the other man seemed to echo in the room, mingling with the memory of Starsky’s dying groans that day in the parking lot, until Hutch felt he was going crazy with the sound. He shoved the pillow over his head and waited for morning. Seemed like this night had lasted a very long time.

**

A blindfold was pulled across his eyes and his hands were tied. Someone searched him and took the gun and the I.D. Then he was dragged across the parking lot and shoved into the back seat of another car. The ride didn’t last very long, so he figured they were still in San Manuel when they stopped and entered a building that stank of cheap booze. Starsky was shoved into a chair and, apparently, forgotten.

After a while, he could hear soft voices coming from the next room, but he couldn’t make out what was being said. The rope around his wrist was tight enough to bring on gangrene if left there long enough. It was visiting hours at Diablo and Hutch was probably waiting for him. And here he sat. Shit.

He didn’t know how long it was before the door opened and what sounded like two people came into the room. They stood in silence for a moment.

“Forgive me for not standing,” Starsky said finally.

“What’d you say this funny guy’s name is?” an almost musical male voice said.

“Schwartz. Arnie. He’s a P.I.”

“Is he?” Someone walked around the chair with measured steps. “Mind telling me just what it is you’re privately investigating here in San Manuel, Schwartz?”

Starsky sighed. “Well, it’s like this. If I went around telling every Tom, Dick, and Harry who snatched me off the street just what I was investigating, it wouldn’t stay private very long, would it?” he said.

Someone slapped Starsky on the side of the head and he fell halfway off the chair. A hand jerked him back up.

“That ain’t an answer, Schwartz.”

His ear throbbed from the blow, but Starsky only shrugged.

“Forgive Eddie. He gets a little impatient sometimes.”

“Have you considered trying a leash?” Starsky muttered.

The man chuckled. “I like you, Schwartz. Why are you snooping around the Kimberly Wright case?”

“Is that what I’m doing?” Starsky jerked his head away, but this time the blow struck him across the cheek.

“Why are you snooping around the Kimberly Wright case?” the voice asked again, calmly.

“To find out who did it,” Starsky spit out.

“But everybody already knows that. The pig from L.A.”

Starsky only shook his head.

“Who you working for?”

He managed a smile. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“See, this guy snatched me off the street one night and blindfolded me and tied me up. He said, ‘Hey, Schwartz, go snoop around the Kimberly Wright murder and see what you come up with. I do all my business this way.”

The third blow hit him square in the face, knocking both the chair and him over backwards. His head collided against the floor with a dull thud and he felt a warm stickiness begin to cover his hair. Everything went fuzzy for a minute. Someone jerked him up by the front of his shirt and lifted him back into the chair.

“We don’t want to hurt you, Schwartz, so we’re just going to make this a friendly warning. Leave San Manuel and leave the Wright case alone. We’re happy with the way things are. The cop is going to take a long fall for this.”

“He… didn’t… do it,” Starsky mumbled through swollen, bloodied lips.

A hand grabbed a fistful of hair and jerked his head back painfully.

“We don’t give a damn,” the whisper said. “Understand?” He was pushed away. “Get rid of him.”

Still groggy from the blow to his skull, Starsky felt himself being half-carried and half-dragged back out to the car. This time they rode for what seemed like hours as he passed in and out of consciousness. At last the car stopped.

“Nice night for a walk,” Eddie said with a chuckle.

Starsky felt his wallet and gun being tucked neatly back into place and then, rather surprisingly, the ropes on his arms were loosened.

He was shoved out the car door and slid down the side of a ravine. The car door slammed and he was alone. After a few minutes he sat up. Even with the ropes loosened, it took nearly two hours of diligent and painful twisting, turning, and swearing in three different languages before his hands were free. He sat for a moment, trying to catch his breath, and then whipped off the blindfold.

He couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch dark out in the middle of nowhere, the only points of light a few stars peeking through the clouds. His head was pounding; his wrists were bleeding; and he thought two teeth were loose that hadn’t been loose before. Inventory over, he got to his feet and began to walk along the road, hoping he was going in the right direction. Every few steps he had to stop and spit out some blood.

So much for Arnie Schwartz’s first day on the job. Not exactly what you could call ending up on a high note. But not all bad either, Someone was getting worried. Someone had something to hide.

Yeah, he was on the right trail. He stumbled and nearly fell. Shit. A guy needed a partner at a time like this, somebody to back him up, to hold him up if it came to that. A partner was a definite help.

He peered at the black ribbon of the road ahead and tried singing a couple verses of STOUT-HEARTED MEN. Didn’t help his morale much, but it was better than the silence.

XIX

Hutch waited only until the guard had gone out and shut the door of the holding area before he leaned across the table toward Dobey and spoke urgently. “Where is he?”

Dobey barely glanced up from the morning paper’s account of the trial. “What?”

“Where’s Starsky?”

“Hell, I don’t know, Hutch. Out playing private eye, probably. Why?”

Hutch sat back in the chair gnawing at a hangnail that had been annoying him for days. “You told me he was coming out last night. He never showed.”

“No?” Dobey folded the paper. “Well, something probably came up.”

“Something came up?” Hutch waved a hand and swept the newspaper to the floor. “Like what? He told you he was coming. Starsky wouldn’t say that and then just not show up. Something’s wrong.”

Kramer was gathering his papers. “We gotta go, Ken.”

“Hutch, don’t worry so much. Starsky’s fine. He’ll turn up before the day is over,” Dobey said reassuringly. “You’re just… uptight.”

Hutch was going out the door behind Kramer, but he stopped and turned to look at Dobey. “You call him.” He raised his hand and pointed a finger at Dobey. “Call him.”

 

Every day the courtroom was jammed with the press and the curious, but Hutch was hardly aware of them anymore. He walked to the defense table, taking his usual chair, and pulled the scratch pad and the green Spree from his pocket. A moment later the judge entered and court was convened. As the first witness was called to the stand, Hutch picked up the pen and began to doodle. He did so absently, not paying any more attention to what he was drawing than he paid to what was being said on the stand. The testimony was like a faint whisper on his consciousness.

His drawing this day was mostly a series of question marks — big ones, small ones, question marks that looked like S’s. As each page was filled, he carefully tore it off and set it aside. Kramer didn’t like it, having already pointed out several times that it might have a negative effect on the jury. “Even when the accused is innocent,” the lawyer had explained, “the jury would like him to sit there looking just a little bit guilty and contrite. As if he was sorry for having gotten himself into such a position and causing everyone else so much trouble.”

But Hutch only shrugged off Kramer’s words and kept drawing. It helped him not to think.

He didn’t see Dobey again until lunchtime when the captain came into the holding room, looking harried.

Hutch pushed aside the lunch he hadn’t touched anyway. “Well?”

Dobey sat down, sighing heavily. “His car is at the motel, but nobody’s seen Starsky since late yesterday when he came in. The bed looks like maybe somebody took a nap, but it wasn’t slept in overnight. His dirty clothes are on the bathroom floor.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”

“All?” Hutch stared at him, fighting down a sudden surge of fear. If anything happened to Starsky, his case was lost. He’d never get out. If anything happened to Starsky….

Kramer stuck his head in the doorway. “Come on, Ken,” he said.

Hutch, looking and feeling like a shellshock victim, pushed himself to his feet and followed Kramer wordlessly. Dobey watched him go. Alone in the room, the heavyset policeman smashed his fist against the table. A paper cup half-filled with coffee tipped over and sent a small brown river across the floor.

**

Three cars had gone down the highway all morning. Each time, he tried to flag the vehicle down and each time, after slowing down just long enough to get a look at the filthy, bloodied man trying to get him to stop, the driver sped by. Each time Starsky flipped them the finger as they vanished.

His progress was slow. It was early afternoon when the Highway Patrol car came down the road at a rapid clip and squealed to a stop.

One tanned cop stuck his head out the window. “Somebody called us, said there was a guy needed help out here. You must be him.”

Apparently one of the speeding drivers had suffered an attack of delayed conscience.

Starsky leaned against the side of the car. “Yeah, I must be.”

The cop reached to open the door and Starsky fell in across the back seat. “Accident?”

“Uh, not exactly.” The soft seat made him want to sleep. “It was more like a… difference of opinion.”

“You mean somebody beat you up and dumped you?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You got a name?”

He had to think for a minute. “Arnie Schwartz.”

“From San Manuel?”

“Staying there for a while.”

They drove him to the hospital, where, despite his protests, Starsky was checked over. They shaved a small patch of his hair and put four stitches in his head, and also taped both wrists. The Highway Patrolmen waited for him, but when Starsky made it clear that he had no intention of pressing charges or of pursuing the matter any further at all, they left.

Starsky caught a cab and went back to the motel. Not bothering to shower, he only changed clothes quickly and drove just within the legal speed limit to the courthouse. Despite all his hurrying, it was too late. The van had already left to take Hutch back out to Diablo.

Dobey and Kramer stood together in the parking lot and watched as Starsky walked over.

“What the hell happened to you?” Dobey asked.

“I got caught up in a tidal wave,” Starsky mumbled.

Kramer tossed his briefcase into the car. “I have to tell you, Starsky, that your partner is in pretty bad shape.”

Starsky leaned against the car wearily. “What do you mean?”

The lawyer got behind the wheel. “He’s hanging on by a thread. When you didn’t show up last night and nobody heard from you all day….” He studied Starsky’s face, as if trying to gauge the depth of his caring. “That guy sits and draws pictures all day in court and do you know why?”

“Uh-uh. Why?”

“Because he’s decided that the trial doesn’t matter. Ken has put all of his hopes squarely on you.”

Starsky straightened slowly. “That’s okay. I won’t let him down. We’re partners. Don’t you know what that means?” Kramer only looked at him. “It means that we count on each other.” He shook his head. “I better go. Get out there and cheer him up a little.” He smiled, lightly touching the bandage on the back of his head. “We can compare injuries.” The smile faded. Starsky stood there a moment longer, looking around the lot vaguely. “I better go.” He walked toward his car, favoring his left foot, which had a large blister.

Dobey and Kramer watched him go.

The captain swore under his breath. “Damnit, Sam,” he said. “Those two… they’re like part of my own family. Best street cops I ever saw. And now I’m just standing here watching them both fall apart.”

Sam started his car. “Think Starsky can pull it off?”

“If anybody can. The question is, what happens if he doesn’t?” Kramer had no answer for that.

Dobey stepped aside and watched the lawyer drive away.

**

The guard stopped in front of the cell. “Hutchinson?”

“Yeah?” Hutch said, not lifting his head from the cot.

“Visitor.”

He rolled over and looked at the guard. “What?”

“You gone deaf? I said you got a visitor. You coming or should I say you ain’t receiving tonight?”

Hutch followed the guard down the hall, not allowing anything as alien as hope into his being. Hope was a long forgotten emotion. He only went where he was told and not until he was actually sitting in the cubicle did he look up and see Starsky sitting on the other side of the glass. Hutch picked up the phone. “Where the hell have you been?” he said almost savagely.

“I’m sorry,” Starsky said faintly, startled.

“You were supposed to come last night — ” Hutch broke off suddenly as he saw the gleaming white bandages Starsky wore. “Oh, damn,” he said. “What happened?”

Starsky smiled. “I’m making progress. Somebody’s getting itchy.”

Hutch leaned forward a little. “Yeah?”

Quickly Starsky told him what had happened. When he was finished, he sat back, a small smile still lingering. “How’s that? These idiots around here couldn’t do anything, but old Arnie Schwartz gets on the case and things start to happen.”

Hutch looked at him blankly. “Who the hell is Arnie Schwartz?”

“Me. That’s my new moniker, sweetheart,” he Bogeyed. “Arnie Schwartz, private eye. I work fast and cheap.” He grinned.

Hutch laughed. “Shit,” he said after a moment, “I haven’t laughed… in a long time.” He was staring at the wall. “Sometimes I thought I’d never be able to laugh again.”

His partner sighed and didn’t say anything.

“I love ya, man, ’cause you can always make me laugh.”

“Yeah, well, everybody has to be somewhere, right?” Starsky said lightly.

“You know what I wish, Starsk?” Hutch said after a time.

“What, buddy?”

“I wish we could be on one of those damned all-night stakeouts. Where we could just talk as much as we wanted, you know?”

Starsky nodded. “I know.”

The visit was going too fast. Hutch gripped the phone so tightly that his fingers were beginning to ache. “Or even just not talk. Just sitting together and not talking. Is that stupid?”

“No.” Starsky’s brow wrinkled thoughtfully. “One good thing, though. We don’t have any regrets.”

“What?”

“I mean… we don’t ever have to say, shit, think of all the time we wasted. Cause I don’t think… I don’t feel like a single moment of it was wasted. Whether we were talking or not or fighting or whatever. Every second mattered. Every second still matters.” He paused, smiling wryly. “I’m no frigging philosopher like you. Probably what I’m trying to say doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“It makes sense. You’re a pretty good frigging philosopher, actually.”

“Been hanging around you too much. Next thing, you’ll have me eating boiled walnut shells or something.” He glanced around the room; the visitors were beginning to drift away. “You okay?” he asked quickly. “I mean, nobody’s bothering you or anything?”

Hutch shook his head. “No.”

“Good.” Starsky took a deep breath. “Look, things may get a little hot and heavy the next couple of days, so if I don’t come around, you just hang loose, okay? I ain’t saying I won’t show up here or in court, but I also ain’t promising. Got that?”

Hutch nodded and smiled a little, fully understanding Starsky’s motivation in saying what he did. “I’ll keep my cool,” he promised.

“All right. And, listen, if things get a little boring in court, maybe you could get some paper and a pencil, and write down anything you can think of that might help me. We’re supposed to be partners, right? Why should I do all the work?”

“Okay, Starsky. If I can think of anything.”

Starsky grinned. “Great. We’ll get the team of… ah, Schwartz and Hutchinson rolling and the bad guys won’t have a chance.” He glanced at the clock. “I better go, buddy.”

“Yeah, I know. You be careful.”

“Sure thing.” Starsky hung up, gave him a quick thumbs up gesture through the glass and was gone.

**

Starsky picked up some tacos and took them back to the motel. He turned on the TV and sat in the darkened room to eat, the only light coming from the flickering images on the screen. His whole body ached. He wished that he could still feel some of the optimism he’d fed Hutch earlier. Sure, somebody was getting nervous because Arnie Schwartz was asking questions, but that was a helluva long way from cracking the case. And if the Gonzalez clue led nowhere, he would be right back to square one. Hutch, he knew, was in bad shape. Like Kramer had said, hanging by a thread. Well, maybe the busy work he’d given him to do would help. Who knew? Hutch just might come up with something.

Starsky shoved the remains of the dinner into the wastebasket, undressed, and got into bed, leaving the TV on. He fell asleep quickly and dreamt about busting Hutch out of Diablo armed only with his Browning .25 automatic and Arnie Schwartz’s P.I. license.

XX

Starsky was waiting at the door when the Records Bureau opened the next morning. The woman who let him in gestured him to a chair and then proceeded to be very busy making coffee.

“Excuse me,” he said after a few minutes, “I need some information — ”

“You’ll have to wait for Mr. McCaffery,” she broke in briskly. “I’m the secretary.”

“But if you could just….” His voice dwindled off when he realized that she wasn’t paying him any attention. He lit a cigarette and slumped farther down into the plastic chair. There was no ashtray in sight, so he used the cuff of his jeans to dispose of the ashes.

It was nearly fifteen minutes before the door opened again and a short plump man in a yellow-and-brown plaid suit came in. Starsky jumped to his feet. “Mr. McCaffery?” he said.

“Yes. Just a moment, please. I’ll have my coffee, Miss Harris.” He took the cup she handed him and positioned himself behind the counter. He next spent several minutes carefully arranging paper and sharpened pencils in front of him. Not until the entire counter was aligned to his satisfaction did he look up with a practiced smile. “Yes, sir?”

Starsky, who’d been watching all of the little man’s machinations in disbelief, sighed. “I wonder if you could give me some information.”

“We always endeavor to be helpful.”

“I’m trying to find a record of either a divorce or a marriage for Maura and Rico Gonzalez. Specifically, I’m attempting to track down Maura Gonzalez’s maiden name.”

McCaffery was nodding as Starsky spoke. “And may I inquire as to why you are seeking this information?”

He took out his wallet and flipped it open. “I’m Arnie Schwartz.”

“A private detective?” McCaffery studied the license and then Starsky carefully. “Are you investigating a crime?”

“I’m trying to find someone who may have witnessed a crime, yes.”

“I see.” McCaffery rubbed his double chin thoughtfully. “What year did the marriage take place?”

“I don’t know. The divorce is recent, within the past six months or so. It may not even have been granted yet.”

They decided, therefore, to start with the divorce records. It was a path that quickly led nowhere. If, indeed, the Gonzalez’s had filed for divorce it had not been within this county.

Starsky received the news with a sigh, but no great sense of surprise.

That would have been too easy. “Well, we better try the marriage licenses, I guess,” he said.

“Oh, dear, that does complicate matters, if you have no idea at all when the marriage took place, because all of those files are arranged chronologically by year.”

“Oh, dear,” Starsky echoed. “Well, why don’t we just start with the records beginning five years ago and work our way forward?”

McCaffery nodded, reaching for paper and pencil. “The names again?”

“Gonzalez. Maura and Rico.”

“Very good, Mr. Schwartz, if you could come back the day after tomorrow — ”

“What? Hey, I need this like now,” Starsky said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but we do have other work and — ”

Starsky tapped the counter sharply. “Look, could I go through the records myself?”

“That’ s not usual… ”

“This could be a matter of life and death,” Starsky said, feeling like a TV hero. And also like an idiot. Except that it was true.

McCaffery pursed his lips. “Well, all right. Come this way.” He led Starsky to a small table in the back room and indicated several file drawers. “Maybe what you need is in there.”

“Thanks,” Starsky said, yanking open the first drawer. McCaffery watched him for a moment and then went about his own supposedly more urgent duties.

**

Sam Kramer made a quiet, unemotional opening to the defense’s case. In it, he characterized Ken Hutchinson as a dedicated, compassionate young police officer, bewildered by the web of accusation in which he had so inexplicably found himself entangled. Hutch listened for a few moments and then picked up the green Spree. Instead of drawing pictures this time though, he carefully printed across the top of the page NOTES ON THE K. WRIGHT MURDER. Pausing to think, he chewed on the end of the pen and watched as McPherson was sworn in and took the stand. The testimony began, but Hutch was only half-aware of it, like a radio talk show going on in the next room.

“Dr. McPherson, what is your official capacity?”

“I serve as a staff psychologist for the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“And in that job, what is your primary function?”

“To serve as a… well, as a sounding board for the men and women on the force. Being a police officer is not an easy job, never has been, and it’s getting harder everyday.”

Hutch wrote a neat number one on the left side of the page.

“You advise the officers?”

“I suppose you could say that, yes.”

“They come to you with mental problems?”

“With emotional problems. Caused by the stresses of the job.”

“I see. Not an easy task, I imagine, dealing with those people.”

“Not easy, no. But I find it rewarding.”

1. WHO KILLED KIMBERLY WRIGHT?

“I’m sure. Doctor, in your official capacity did you ever have occasion to meet with Mr. Hutchinson?”

“Yes. Ken paid me several visits, a number of visits, over a five-month period.”

“What were your impressions of the defendant?”

2. MOTIVES: SEX? MONEY? JEALOUSY?

“I found him to be an intelligent, capable young man.”

“Burdened by the stresses you mentioned earlier?”

“To some degree, yes.”

3. WITNESSES: MAURA?

“Why did he come to you? Let me rephrase that. Did he come voluntarily or was it at the order of his superior?”

“He same on his own.”

“Why?”

4. STARSKY SNATCH RELATED? HOW?

“Ken was going through some difficult times.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“He was doubtful that the work he was doing was entirely worthwhile. A not uncommon feeling among police officers, I might add. Also, his partner had recently suffered a near-fatal injury in the line of duty. Ken was… very upset by that.”

Hutch stared at what he’d written, feeling like there was something to be found there, if only he knew what to look for.

“What form did the defendant’s difficulties take?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How did his problems manifest themselves?”

“In rather traditional ways. Difficulty sleeping. Loss of appetite. Depression. Primarily depression.”

“You treated Mr. Hutchinson for these problems?”

“We discussed his feelings in some detail. Frequently that’s all that is necessary, someone to listen.”

“The prosecution has attempted to portray Kenneth Hutchinson as a cold-blooded killer with a badge. A man so used to violence and death that he thought nothing of murdering a young woman who refused his sexual advances. Does that in any way tally with your own impressions?”

“Absolutely not. Ken is… he is actually repelled by violence. That’s one reason why he came to me in the first place. He’s basically a very gentle young man.”

“Not a killer?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

Hutch went back to number three again. WITNESSES: MAURA? He added some more words, writing precisely. THE ONES WHO TOOK STARSK??? Then he underlined the words.

“Doctor McPherson, a few questions. The defense attorney claims that Hutchinson is incapable of random violence. You agree?”

“Yes.”

“How many men has he killed in his life?”

“I have no idea.”

“He never said?”

“No.”

“It didn’t concern him?”

“Of course it did. But as a police officer he had come to realize that some violence, some death, is almost inevitable.”

“I see. Was he cured of his emotional problems when he left your care?”

“I must clarify… he was not ‘under my care’ in the way you mean. He simply visited me to talk about some of the things that were troubling him.”

“Very well. We accept your… clarification. Was he less troubled by the time you released him from care?”

“It was his decision to stop coming in.”

“Did you agree?”

“I felt… I felt at the time that he could have been helped by further visits. It wasn’t my decision to make, however.”

“You felt no compunctions about letting a man with emotional problems operate as an officer of the law and carry a gun?”

“No. He was fully competent.”

“Why did he quit coming to see you?”

“He felt… well, his partner was coming hack to work and Ken felt capable of dealing with his… doubts on his own.”

“What was your opinion?”

Hutch was aware of a long pause. He carefully tore off the sheet of paper upon which he’d been writing, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket. His blue gaze, vaguely curious, rested upon McPherson. “My opinion was — and still is — that Ken Hutchinson is a basically moral, gentle man, who went into police work because he saw an opportunity to help those who needed it. A man who had suffered innumerable disillusionments, who had faced death frequently, who had been threatened with the loss of his partner, also a close friend. A sad man.”

“And possibly a desperate man. Thank you, Doctor.”

Court was adjourned for lunch.

**

McCaffery went to lunch, but the secretary ate a sandwich at her desk, watching Starsky with flat gray eyes. The search went slowly, but finally Starsky found what he was looking for, a marriage license issued to Rico Gonzalez and Maura Kennedy. He read it swiftly, smiling a little. Miss Harris seemed to sense a threat in his happiness.

“You may not remove any files from this office,” she said.

“Don’t need to,” he mumbled. “I’m done.”

He went from there to the drugstore on the corner. Before sitting at the lunch counter, he pulled the phone book from the booth. He ordered a cheeseburger and as he waited for it, his eyes studied the book. There were six Kennedys listed in the San Manuel directory and Starsky jotted down each number and address. When he paid for the cheeseburger, he took his change in dimes.

He ate quickly, then shut himself in the booth and began dialing. It took five calls. “Hello,” he said for the fifth time. “May I speak to Maura, please?”

“Maura ain’t here,” a husky female voice said.

Starsky grinned to himself. “When will she be back?”

“She ain’t coming back.” The woman hung up.

Starsky left the drugstore and walked back to his car; he walked with a slight swagger in his step. He was beginning to smell success. The address he had was in an area that once would have been known as being on the wrong side of the tracks. It was a description that still fit. The house was a small wooden shack dumped in the middle of a sparse lawn littered with the skeletons of two cars, several bicycles, and the bulk of an old icebox. Starsky picked his way through the junkyard to the door and knocked.

“Yeah?” It was the same husky voice. She came to the door, a skinny woman wrapped in a filthy cotton bathrobe, carrying a glass in one hand.

He flashed the I.D. which she was too drunk to see anyway. “I’m trying to find Maura Kennedy.”

She took a gulp of the drink. “What the hell is this, National Maura Kennedy Day?”

“I’m the one who called.”

“Yeah?”

“I want to ask you some questions about Maura.”

After a moment she shrugged and stepped aside. “Come in.”

The living room smelled of whiskey, stale food, and, faintly, soiled diapers. A restlessly sleeping baby was propped carelessly in an over-stuffed chair.

“My daughter’s kid,” the woman said. “Bet you’d never think I was a grandmother, wouldya?”

He figured the question was rhetorical. Shifting a pile of un-ironed laundry, he sat down on the sofa. “Maura?”

“My niece. But I brung her up from six months on, after my brother-in-law and his wife was killed. Took her in like she was my own. And what thanks do I get?”

This question she apparently expected an answer to.

“What thanks?” he said right on cue.

“No thanks at all, that’s what. She was always a smart-mouthed brat. Giving herself airs. Thinking she was better than the rest of us. Making up stories. Why, one day she done told all the neighbors she was the illegitimate daughter of the Queen of England, if you please.” The woman snorted drunkenly.

“Where is Maura now?”

“Who knows? She come running back here after that Spic husband of hers kicked her out, but my husband said she made her own bed, let her lay in it. So she got a room somewheres.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Gee, I don’t know for sure. Been awhile. I think she left town.”

“Did she ever mention a man named Lucas?”

“Mebbe… she always had some man or another hanging around. But I don’t remember any names.”

Starsky glanced around the room and felt a sudden sympathy for the girl Maura trying to escape this place. “If she did leave town, do you have any idea where she might go?”

The woman shook her head and Starsky got to his feet. He scribbled his name and phone number on a piece of paper.

“If you hear from her, will you call me at this number?” He paused before adding, “There’ll be something in it for you.”

She took the paper and tucked it into the pocket of her robe. “Okay.”

“I can let myself out.” He cast one look at the whimpering baby and left. Back in the car, he sat for a moment, glad to be out of the filthy, depressing house and away from the woman. He lit a cigarette. So he had a name. Maura Kennedy. A girl who probably left town. Possibly with a man. A man named Lucas? Maybe. Maybe not. Some of his earlier confidence began to seep away.

Sighing, he started the car and pulled away.

**

They caught up with him in McDonald’s when he stopped to have a cup of coffee and mull over his next step. He had just started to eat the hot apple pie when the two men slid into the booth, one next to him and the other across the table. It was a good technique; Hutch and he had used it a lot.

“How’s the pie?” one asked casually.

“Depends,” Starsky replied.

“On what?”

“How hungry are you?” He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully.

“Let me guess,” he said around the bite. “This is a survey of San Manuel’s classier eating places and you want my opinion. Right?”

The man next to him was playing with several sugar packets. He looked like a cheap muscle man crammed into as expensive suit. “Wrong. Guess again, Schwartz.”

“Gee, you know my name. What can I call you?”

“How about sir?”

“How about turkey?” Starsky finished the pie and swiped crumbs from his face. “Look, this has been fun and we gotta do it again real soon, but I have places to go and things to do, so….” He started to slide out and was not the least bit surprised when the turkey didn’t move to let him by. “Yeah?” he said wearily.

“Somebody wants to talk to you.”

Starsky picked up one of the sugar packets and twisted it in his fingers. “Well, I’ll tell you something. The last time somebody wanted to ‘talk’ to me, I ended up with four stitches in my head. Conversations like that get a little boring.”

“This is just for talk, that’s all.”

Starsky didn’t really have to think about it at all. He was foundering and he knew it. There wasn’t much he could tell anybody. On the other hand, he stood to maybe learn something that might help. “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “Where’s this talk supposed to come down?”

“Follow us.”

A very large black car was parked behind the building. It didn’t look like whoever was inside just dropped in for a quarter-pounder with cheese. The turkey opened the back door and Starsky got in. A slender, grey-haired man in a pale green suit sat there, smoking a thin black cigar. “Mr. Schwartz, I assume?”

Starsky nodded. “Yeah. How come everybody knows my name and I don’t know who any of you are?”

“My name is Owen Wright.”

This was no big surprise. “Kimberly was your daughter.”

“Yes. So maybe you can understand why I’m anxious to know why a cheap detective named Arnie Schwartz is snooping around the case.” Wright exhaled a grey cloud toward Starsky.

Starsky pulled the cigarette pack from his pocket, took one out, and lit it with deliberation. “Maybe I just like to snoop.”

“Word is you don’t think Hutchinson did it.”

“I know he didn’t.”

“How do you happen to know that?”

Starsky almost told him the truth — I know it because Hutch is my partner and I know him even better than I know myself and he isn’t a killer. But he didn’t say any of that; instead, he just struck an Arnie Schwartz pose and blew smoke across the car toward Wright. “Let’s just say I know it,” he mumbled.

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Yeah?”

“Who are you working for?”

Starsky grinned. “I may be a cheap detective, Wright, but I know the rules just as good as the three-hundred-dollar a day boys. One of the real big rules is don’t tell who your client is.”

Wright tapped the seat impatiently. “What is he paying you?”

Starsky didn’t even bother to answer that.

“I’ll double it.” Wright waited. “Triple it, if you get off the case and leave town right now.”

“Triple?” Starsky said thoughtfully.

“In cash, right now.”

Again, he was tempted toward honesty. Tempted to say that there was no way Wright could pay him enough to equal what he was getting from his “client.” Money couldn’t buy a partner. Or a friend like Hutch. Starsky rolled the car window down and flicked the cigarette out. “Sorry, Wright,” he said. “There’s another rule. Don’t get bought off.”

“I’m disappointed, Mr. Schwartz. You don’t look stupid.”

“Sorry about that.”

Wright’s face changed subtly. “Try to see this from my point of view, won’t you, please?”

“Okay,” Starsky said agreeably.

“My daughter… my only child is dead. Killed violently just at a time when her life was beginning.” He was silent for a moment, staring at his cigar. “We lost another child, you know.”

“Yes.”

“My wife never recovered from that. If we could only have known what happened to her…. With Kimberly, at least, we do know. Can’t you begin to understand that I only want to have it all behind us as quickly as possible? Otherwise, my wife…. The man who did it is on trial. Let justice run its course. Why go around trying to… to upset the apple cart?”

“Is that what I’m doing?” Funny, Starsky mused, and here I thought I was just foundering. But I was upsetting the apple carts of an important man like Owen Wright. Funny. “If Hutchinson is as guilty as you seem to think he is, then what harm can I do by asking a few questions?”

“What’s the point?”

“Maybe to amuse myself.”

“Let my daughter rest in peace,” Wright said tightly.

“Even if an innocent man has to pay?”

There was a pause. Wright’s cigar had gone out and he fumbled for a silver lighter. “Hutchinson is guilty,” he said mechanically, as if he’d learned the words by rote. His eyes turned icy. “Get off the case, Schwartz. I’m breaking one of my rules by giving you a warning. There’ll only be one. Leave it alone.”

The turkey standing just outside opened the door and Starsky got out. He nodded at Wright and walked away, the skin on his spine prickling a little, as he waited to see if maybe the bit about the warning had just been a bluff. Maybe a sudden shot would blow him apart. Who knew what the punishment for upsetting apple carts was in San Manuel?

But nothing happened. He reached his car and got in, slamming and locking the door. So. Now they were chomping at his heels from two directions. Whoever it was that had split his head and Owen Wright himself. Terrific. And all he had to do was find Maura Kennedy. Because maybe she knew something, Of course, maybe she didn’t. He shook his head wearily. Poor Arnie Schwartz. It began to look like he was swimming out of his league.

XXI

Two days went by and it began to look like Arnie Schwartz should have chosen some other line of work. Detection did not seem to be his forte. Starsky had tried everything he could think of to find Maura Kennedy and he had nothing to show for it. He began to think that she — or maybe he himself — was floating somewhere in the twilight zone. Neither had he come any closer to finding out who “Lucas” might be. As desperation began to set in, he even spent half a day trying to find Rico Gonzalez, thinking he might know where his ex-wife was. He did manage to trace Gonzalez to his last job as a vacuum cleaner repairman, but nobody in the hot, noisy factory seemed to know where the man was now.

By the end of the second day Starsky felt totally exhausted, drained, near the point of OD-ing on black coffee and cigarettes. It was late afternoon when he got back to the motel room, spread his wrecked body on the bed, and stared dumbly at the ceiling.

“Oh, hell, Hutch,” he said aloud. “I don’t know what to do next. What an ass. Look, everybody, come watch Captain Marvel fall flat on his face. I had to play hero, right? Screw everybody else, ’cause David Michael Starsky is gonna come in and single-handedly save his partner. Oh, yeah!”

He sighed. Hell, I need… what do I need? To talk to Hutch. Yeah, that’s what I need. He got up, washed his face, and drove out to Diablo, stopping on the way for a fast pizza and arriving just in time for visiting hours.

Hutch smiled as he took his chair. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself.”

There was a pause. Hutch stared at him, the smile fading slowly. “Hey,” he said softly. “What’s wrong?”

Starsky rubbed his eyes, which felt like they were full of sand. “Hutch,” he said, “I… goddamn. I’m falling all over myself. Captain Marvel is taking a nosedive. Nothing’s happening. For two days I’ve been running all over trying to get something to go on, some little thing I can get a grip on and there’s nothing.” He spread his hands helplessly. “There’s not a goddamned thing.”

“You look beat, man.”

“Beat?” Starsky laughed a little. “Shit, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.” It was suddenly hard to breathe and he took a gasping gulp of air. “I showed up and told everybody I was gonna do it. Hutch is my partner, I said, and I’ll take care of this, I’ll get him out. I thought, I really thought that it would all just fall into my lap like it used to for us. Or, I mean, it didn’t exactly fall into our laps, but it worked. Somehow it always worked, you know?”

“I know,” Hutch said quietly.

“And Christ, I’ve been trying, harder than I ever tried on anything, but every lead I get just goes nowhere. I can’t make it happen.” He seemed to run out of breath completely.

“Hey,” Hutch said again. “You’re going to get it, buddy.”

“Stop believing in me!” The words came out as a hoarse shout and Starsky looked around the room quickly. “Please,” he said more softly.

“No.” Although Hutch spoke softly as well, his voice rang with such intensity that it startled Starsky. “No,” Hutch repeated. “I will not stop believing in you. That would be like losing faith in myself.”

“But what if I can’t do it?” Naked anguish cut through Starsky’s words like a blade.

Hutch smiled. “Then I guess you’ll just have to bust me out, sweetheart,” he said, giving a poor imitation of Starsky-as-Bogart.

After a moment, Starsky returned the smile. “Hell,” he muttered. “All this time I thought I was supposed to be the funnyman in this relationship.”

“You ready to talk now?” Hutch asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, good.” He paused. “I think I came up with something.”

Starsky’s gaze sharpened. “Yeah? What?”

“It may not be worth much. Nothing, maybe, but… do you think it’s at all possible that the jerks who snatched you might’ve seen something?”

“Wong and Rossi?” Starsky thought about it for a moment; funny, since finding out that Hutch was alive, he’d almost forgotten all about those two.

“Wong and Rossi?” Hutch repeated. “You must be kidding. They sound like a vaudeville team.”

“Oh, yeah, they’re a million laughs all right.”

Hutch was quiet for a moment. “You haven’t said much about what happened to you.”

Starsky shrugged. “Later, man. Some night real soon we’ll get totally drunk and tell each other stories.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Me, too. Sounds goddamned wonderful, if you want the truth.” Starsky glanced at the clock and grimaced. “Damn. It always goes so fast.”

“So whattaya think?”

“About Wong and Rossi?” He nodded slowly. “You might have something there. Yeah. Hell, I knew that once we could get the old Hutchinson grey matter working, everything would start to fall into place.”

They were silent briefly. Hutch sighed. “I’m going on the stand in the morning.”

“Is that Kramer’s idea?”

“Yes. I guess he doesn’t know what else to do. So far… well, let’s just say the defense case hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. He wants me to get up there and look innocent.”

“You are innocent.”

“Ahh, well, babe, that’s reality. What goes on in the courtroom has very little to do with reality. I sit there and listen to these people talk about me and about my life and I wonder… whatever happened to me? I don’t recognize myself anymore.”

Starsky nodded, remembering his own thoughts that night on the Hong Kong street, when he didn’t even recognize his own reflection in the window. “I know who you are,” he said a little awkwardly. “Do you want me to come to court tomorrow?” He didn’t really want to — he wanted to keep hacking away at the undergrowth surrounding this case, but he made the offer.

“Hell, no. You better get out there and beat the bushes for that frigging song and dance team.”

“Okay. I’ll be thinking of you.”

“I know that.”

It was time to go.

“Okay,” Starsky said. No matter how many times it happened, he hurt every time he had to walk away and leave his partner in this place.

“Hey,” Hutch said.

In the act of hanging up, he paused. “Yeah, buddy?”

“You watch out, huh? You have this unsettling habit of disappearing.”

He grinned.

“Gottcha.” Starsky turned and walked away quickly.

**

Hutch was awake for a long time that night. Part of the reason for his sleeplessness was the fact that he was nervous about going on the stand the next day. Not for the first time, he wondered if Sam Kramer was right in insisting that he must testify. But it had been decided and there was nothing he could do about it now.

Besides, there was something else nagging at him. Starsky. His partner, usually so confident, damned cocky in fact, had looked like hell earlier. And Hutch knew why: Starsky was scared. That simple fact scared Hutch more than anything else. He didn’t like being scared. It made him angry at himself and it even made him angry at Starsky. And that was dumb. It wasn’t as if Starsky was deliberately betraying him. He was trying his best.

Hutch slammed one fist into his pillow. Now he was really mad at himself. What the hell was he thinking of? His partner was putting his neck right on the line and just because he hadn’t yet performed any miracles, no rabbits pulled out of a hat, Hutch was ready to start doubting him. Jesus. He didn’t deserve a friend like Starsk.

He punched the pillow again. Now that was really stupid; he could just imagine what Starsky would say to that. His partner would lean back and crinkle up his eyes in a disgusted grin. “Shit, Hutch,” he’d say, “for somebody who’s supposed to be so damned smart, you’re a real ass, you know?” True, Hutch thought. They deserved each other. They were stuck with each other.

He smiled a little into the darkness. Sometime he’d tell Starsky about his late night doubts. Maybe on that infamous night of total drunkenness they’d talked about. It might seem funny by then. Or, at least, it might serve as a sort of confessional, wherein Starsky could confer forgiveness.

Hutch squeezed his eyes closed and tried to go to sleep.

XXII

Cousin Abraham might not have moved since the last time Starsky visited him. He sat on the same camp stool and watched with no surprise as Starsky walked along the dock toward him. “Howdy-do,” he said.

“Hi,” Starsky said, crouching next to him.

“They be biting today, if you’re interested.”

“Nope .”

Abraham studied him for a moment and then grinned toothlessly. “You don’t look like no typhoon to me, boy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The old man chuckled. “I been hearin’ about you. Folks say that this boy Arnie Schwartz been stirring things up around town. Something like a storm blowing in.” He tapped his pipe against the side of the stool lightly. “Frankly, I’m a mite amazed to find you still all in one piece.” He glanced at the bandages. “Though it do appear you have been a trifle disturbed.”

“Just a trifle. It’s nice to hear that I’ve been noticed.”

“That you have been.” He began stuffing tobacco into the pipe. “I don’t figger you came by just to pass the time of day with me.”

“No. I wanted to ask you something.”

“I ‘m listening.”

“You ever hear anything about a couple of guys named Rossi and Wong?”

Abraham’s lips tightened on the pipe stem. “Thought you was interested in the Wright girl’s murder. Why for you asking me ’bout them?”

“You do know them, then?”

“Mebbe. Why?”

Starsky stared out over the water, watching a small sailing skiff make its way past. “Because maybe they saw something the night of the murder. Something that might help me track down the killer. So I can get my partner out of jail.”

“You brings to mind a puppy dog I once had,” Abraham said mildly. “Sixty or seventy years ago down in ‘bama. Dingy little mutt, he was. Name of General Grant. I mean to tell you, boy, let that dog git something in his mouth and no amount of persuasion could get him to get him to let go. He’d worry a bone or a stick plumb to death. You like him. You got this thing in your mouth and you ain’t inclined to let go.”

“I can’t let go,” Starsky said fiercely.

“Yeah, I knows that,” Abraham said with a sigh. “Jest like poor old General Grant. He died ’cause he wouldn’t let go of a rope. A wagon wheel ran him over. Cut him right in half. And when we found the danged mutt, he still had that rope clenched tight between his teeth.”

“Rossi and Wong?” Starsky insisted softly.

“They ain’t much liked around here. Very mean. They involved in a dirty business.”

“I know all about their business. But that’s not what I’m interested in. I only want to talk to them.”

Abraham cleared his throat and spit. “They both a good deal like the vampire bat. Don’t think they ever comes out in the daylight. Best time to see them, assuming any good Christian would want to, is at night. They’re usually prowling around somewhere.” Abraham studied Starsky and grinned again, showing toothless gums. “Or any good Israelite, either.”

“Have they been around lately, do you know?”

“Seems like I heard they been in town the last couple of days.” Abraham paused. “Assuming you finds them, you won’t let on where you heard? They have been known to deal harsh with folks who cross them.”

“I won’t say a word.” He took a bill from his pocket and tucked it into Abraham’s tackle box. “Buy yourself a drink. And thanks.” Starsky started away.

“Hey, boy,” Abraham called.

He paused. “Yeah?”

“You keep old General Grant in mind, hear?”

“I will.” Starsky waved a quick farewell.

Back in the car, he deliberated. Since there didn’t seem to be much he could do about finding Wong and Rossi until nightfall, he decided to go over to the courthouse. Maybe he could at least offer a little moral support to Hutch.

**

He slipped into the last row of seats, sitting next to a reporter who was busily scribbling notes into a steno pad. Hutch was already on the stand. He looked pale, but calm, wearing slacks and a plaid sport jacket that had once been carefully tailored to fit, but now seemed to hang on his thin frame. His knees were pressed together and his hands rested on the arms of the chair.

Sam Kramer paced in the front of the room. “What happened next, Ken?”

“We got into the car.” Hutch’s voice was soft, but clear. “I was driving. We started down the hill and then I realized that the car had no brakes.”

“And so you hit the barricade?”

“Yes.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Nothing.” He glanced toward the jury box and repeated, “Nothing.”

As his gaze moved hack toward Kramer, he saw Starsky sitting in the back and some of the stiffness seemed to leave his body. Starsky gave him a smile.

Before Kramer could ask the next question, Starsky felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and a large man in a brown uniform gestured at him. Starsky got to his feet and followed the man into the hall. He could feel Hutch’s gaze on him as he left. They stopped just outside.

“Yeah?” Starsky said neutrally.

“I’m Sheriff Collins.”

“Yeah?” he said again.

“You wouldn’t be Arnie Schwartz, would you?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Why?”

“Call it professional curiosity. Mind if I take a look at your license? I understand you’ve been flashing it around town the last few days.”

Slowly Starsky pulled out the wallet; it seemed unbelievable that the man didn’t recognize him, but he was so busy playing macho lawman and lording it over the insignificant private eye that he wasn’t paying any attention to Starsky at all, not really. “No law against the business of detecting in San Manuel, I hope?”

Collins leaned forward a little and carefully studied the license. “Nope. We are kinda down on troublemakers, though.”

Starsky flipped the wallet closed and put it away. “Have I been making trouble?”

Collins smiled, making Starsky think of a mako shark on the prowl.

“If you had been, we would’ve met before now. Let’s just say I’ve been made aware of your activities.”

“Okay,” Starsky said cheerfully. “We’ll just say that.”

“People get the impression you’re trying to stir up the Wright case. This town would rather put the whole thing behind us and forget it.”

“I didn’t think a case was over until the guilty party was convicted.”

“Well, see, that’s just about to happen in that courtroom.”

“I don’t happen to think that Hutchinson is guilty.”

“No?” Collins wasn’t smiling now; his tanned face was hard. “I happen to think my men did a bang-up job on this investigation.”

Starsky looked at him through the dark glasses. Oh, yeah? he thought. Well, I happen to think that your men couldn’t find their pricks in a pay toilet. He didn’t say that, of course. “I’m sure,” was his mild response.

“We wouldn’t be too happy if some stranger same to town and started trying to fault our police. Why not just let justice take its course?”

“Even if justice San Manuel style runs right over an innocent man?”

“The question doesn’t arise. Hutchinson is guilty.”

Starsky leaned against the wall, hoping to hell he looked more relaxed than he felt. “Everybody keeps saying that, but I ain’t convinced yet. My mother always said I was too stubborn for my own good.”

Collins took off his hat, straightened the brim carefully, and put it back on. “Let’s hope she wasn’t right.” He nodded pleasantly and walked toward the door.

Starsky stood there for a moment. His first instinct was to cut out as quickly as possible, but he knew that first he had to let Hutch know that everything was cool. Just as he started back into the courtroom, the crowd began to flow out, adjourning for lunch. He pushed his way through until he reached the defense table. There, he rested one hand on Hutch’s shoulder. Touch was a rare commodity these days. “Hi.”

Hutch looked up in obvious relief. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. He was just rattling his sabers.”

“Jesus. I figured he was measuring you for the cuffs.”

“Not quite. Only because he hasn’t thought of a reason yet. Look, buddy, I gotta go. Lots to do before tonight.”

“What happens tonight?”

Starsky didn’t want to go into detail. He might be getting himself in too deep, but there was no sense in having Hutch worry about that now. “The plot’s gonna thicken, babe.” He lowered the dark glasses to look at Hutch. “I got a feeling.”

“What?”

“That little itch I get on the back of my neck when a case is about to break. So hang in there.” He squeezed Hutch’s shoulder and they exchanged a brief smile. Starsky pushed the glasses back up on his nose, nodded once to Kramer, and walked out.

Kramer picked up his briefcase. “Ken, has anybody ever told you that he’s a little crazy?”

Hutch smiled again. “A little crazy? Sam, he’s a total maniac. The man should be confined to a padded cell somewhere.”

Kramer snorted and shook his head as they went for lunch.

**

He looked at himself in the motel room mirror and gave a grunt of self-satisfaction. A fast visit to the local army surplus store had provided him with a couple of items to complete the image he felt was appropriate for his nightime sojourn to the waterfront.

His own thoroughly disreputable Levis were topped with a heavy plaid work shirt and a worn black sweater. He pulled a black watch cap over his curls and added the ever-present dark glasses. He figured he could pass as a crewman off one of the ships in the harbor. This could get confusing, he thought, shoving a couple of cheap cigars into his pocket. Who was he now anyway? Starsky posing as a sailor? Or Dave Starsky posing as Arnie Schwartz posing as a sailor? He grinned. Oh, well, what the hell?

Even eliminating the Whistling Parrot from his plans left him with a dozen or so bars to choose from. He tossed a mental coin and went into a place with no name at all, just a rather faded purple neon sign that flashed the self-explanatory word BAR into the night every other second. He swaggered in and took a place at the bar. “Whiskey.”

The glass was dirty. He gulped the cheap liquor and felt it burn his gullet all the way down. Actually, it made him feel kind of good. So he gulped again. By then he figured it was safe to case the joint a little. He swiveled around casually studied the crowd.

It was a little disappointing that no one came over and introduced himself as either Wong or Rossi. He finished the whiskey and ordered another.

“Just get in?” a voice said from his left.

He turned. “Yeah. How’d you guess?”

She smiled, sweeping a lock of platinum hair from in front of her eyes. “You got the face, honey. Sort of a lean and hungry look. Like a man on the prowl.”

Illo Bearded Starsky with cap & scary sunglasses

“You’re a great judge of character.”

“Sure. I work as a shrink in my spare time.”

He smiled. “Have a drink?”

They sat in silence while both their glasses were re-filled. The woman was older than he’d first thought, probably in her forties. Her make-up looked like it had been put on many hours ago; it was beginning to crack around the edges. She sipped at her drink with ladylike care. “My name’s Monique.”

“Arnie,” he said, not ready to cope with a third name. Someone turned the jukebox up and conversation waned for a moment.

“Hey,” Starsky said when the sound dimmed a little.

“Yeah, honey?”

“I’ve been trying to find a friend of mine, a guy named Rossi.”

“Rossi?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

She had turned wary. Her face seemed to have closed. “I know a lot of people.”

“How about Rossi? You know him?”

She swiveled away from him and slid from the stool. “Look, baby, I can’t make no money talking.”

He grabbed her by the arm and turned her toward him again. “Wait.” He took a bill from his pocket, carefully folded it, and tucked it into the front of her dress. “That buy a little conversation?”

She glanced down at the money. “A little.”

“Rossi?”

“My name won’t be brought up?”

“I forgot it already,” he promised.

“It might not be the same guy. Could be a lot of guys named Rossi running around.”

“I’ll give it a shot.”

She fingered the errant lock of hair. “There’s a guy named Rossi hangs out around Joe’s down at the corner.”

“Thanks, honey.”

She watched as he paid for the drinks. “You a cop?”

“Me?” He smiled brightly. “No, ma’am, not me. I got too much class for that kind of work.”

Joe’s was not much different from the place he’d just left. Before going in Starsky stood in the alley and pulled his shirttail out, arranging his face in a properly drunken expression. He staggered in through the door and fell twice before finally getting himself onto a stool. “Whiskey! ” he shouted.

He sat there for fifteen minutes, downing two more drinks and making a general pest of himself. Then he slid from the stool, making his way out the door and into the alley. He sensed that someone followed him, but forced himself not to turn and look.

 

 

Slipping one hand into his pocket, he fingered the gun. A fairly worthless weapon in most circumstances, but used with a little discretion, it might prove effective. He fell to his knees once, got up and walked a few more steps, then slumped to the ground and lay motionless. His hand felt sweaty on the gun as he tried to keep his breathing steady. Timing, his Uncle Moishe the comedian used to say, was everything. Moving a little early would render his gun harmless as a toy; delay beyond a certain point might mean his veins would be filled with the knockout drugs again and he would wake up on the way to hell.

The footsteps approached slowly as Starsky stayed perfectly still. He could sense two men standing over him.

“So?” one voice said. “Whattaya think?”

“Why not?”

Someone bent close and Starsky moved. The hand with the gun jabbed upwards, the barrel pressing against the man’s neck. Starsky’s other hand grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled backwards. “If you or your friend make a move,” he whispered tightly, “he’s gonna be short one business partner and you… well, you’re gonna be dead.” He tightened his hold on the man’s hair. “Believe me when I say I won’t have any hesitation in blowing you away.”

“Hey, man,” his prisoner protested. “We were only trying to help. Saw you fall down and figured you might be sick or something.”

“Oh, yeah,” Starsky said getting to his feet carefully and pulling Rossi with him. “Oh, yeah. Wong and Rossi, the two great humanitarians.”

They looked a little startled.

“I think you’ve got us confused with two other guys,” Wong said with a twitching smile, his eyes on the gun at Rossi’s neck.

“I don’t think so.”

“Look,” Rossi said, “this is all some crazy misunderstanding. Why don’t we just — ”

“Shove it, Rossi. I got no time to dance with you. You know and I know all about your dirty little business. I’ve already been on one cruise, compliments of Wong and Rossi Associates. I’ve got no intention of taking another.”

“I’m sorry,” Rossi began.

“Forget that for right now. Maybe later we can talk about that. Right now, I want to talk about something else.” He saw Wong’s left foot slide a little toward him. Before either of them could react, he pulled his hand out of Rossi’s hair and gave him a sharp karate chop to the right side. The sound of bone cracking filled the air and Rossi bent over in sudden agony. Starsky entangled his fingers in the man’s hair again and jerked him upright.

“Tell Wong to hold tight,” he said softly. “Or we can work our way through your ribs one by one.”

Rossi waved a hand and gave an anguished grunt in Wong’s direction.

Wong froze.

Starsky nodded in satisfaction. “Okay, I think we understand each other now. I want to talk about the Kimberly Wright murder.”

“Hey, we didn’t have anything to do with that,” Rossi said between his teeth.

“I know that.” Starsky’s hand was beginning to cramp around the small gun. “You didn’t kill her, but you were around when it happened.”

“How do you know that?” Wong asked.

“‘Cause you snatched me that night not far from where the murder took place. I want to know what you saw that night. Everything.”

“That was a long time ago,” Rossi said.

“I know. A long time. And a good friend of mine has been in jail ever since. I know he didn’t kill the broad and I want you to give me something so I can prove it. You must have something and I want it. Cooperate and I may not kill you.”

“We didn’t see nothing, man, I mean… ”

Starsky raised his knee a little so that it pressed lightly into Rossi’s side. The man groaned. “You better think harder. I saw a guy once who had a broken rib and it pierced his lung. You think about it. There was a car crash just down the road.”

“Yeah… yeah,” Rossi said eagerly. “You remember that, don’t you, Lin? We saw the car against the barricade.”

“I remember,” Wong agreed. “But there wasn’t anything else….”

“There better be.” Starsky’s voice was soft, almost caressing.

There was a silence. For three minutes, Wong and Rossi stared at one another, both obviously thinking desperately. Starsky just waited.

“Well,” Rossi said finally, “there was another car.”

“Good,” Starsky crooned. “Tell me about it.”

Rossi closed his eyes. “It was… dark… green, I think.”

“Yeah, dark green, that’s right, Tony.”

“License?”

Rossi opened his eyes and stared at him as one might stare at a madman. A madman with a loaded gun. “Come on! Whattaya expect?”

“I expect an answer.”

“Nevada,” Wong said suddenly. “They were Nevada plates.”

“Good. Now we’ve got a dark green car with Nevada plates.”

Wong moved a half inch and Starsky’s knee poked into Rossi’s side. Rossi made a sound halfway between a groan and a scream.

“You better tell him one more time,” Starsky warned.

“Lin, for chrissake… he’s killing me.”

Wong stopped. Starsky’s knee relaxed. Rossi took several deep breaths. “I hope you don’t expect us to come up with the number?”

“That would be nice.”

“Look, man, this was a long time ago. It was dark. We didn’t care.”

“You saw a car accident and you didn’t care?”

“We were working.” Rossi didn’t seem to find anything funny in that remark. “Besides, we saw the other car stopped and we figured they’d help.”

“They? How many people were in the green car?”

“Two, I think. Two men.”

Wong, who had been staring at the ground, looked up suddenly. “No numbers,” he said flatly. “There were no numbers on the plate.”

“What?” Starsky waited.

“It was letters, not numbers. A name, like.”

“Vanity plates?” Starsky shifted his hold on Rossi a little. The man was quiet, staring at his partner. “What name?”

Thirty seconds passed. “It was… L… something. Lucas. That’s it. L-U-C-A-S.”

Starsky expelled his breath in a long sigh. “A dark green car, Nevada plates, Lucas. Two men. Anything else?”

They shook their heads simultaneously.

“No, man,” Rossi said. “That’s it. Really.”

Starsky figured that it probably was. “Okay. Now there’s just one more little thing.”

“What?” Wong asked.

“You better take this act somewhere else. Somewhere a long way from here. Because if I ever hear about you operating again, I’ll personally come back and break more than just a rib. Got that?”

“We got it,” Rossi said.

“Fine. I suggest, Wong, that you better get him to a doctor.”

“Yeah.”

“But for now, Wong, disappear. When you’re gone, I’ll release Rossi.”

Wong hesitated a moment, but Rossi felt Starsky’s knee twitch and he waved him away. Wong moved quickly out of the alley. After he had turned the corner, Starsky released his hold on Rossi, who nearly caved in, but then started lurching after his partner, groaning a little with each step.

Starsky kept the gun in his hand as he walked back to the car. Checking the back seat carefully, he slid behind the wheel and locked the doors.

The whiskey glow he’d felt earlier was gone and now he was chilled and very tired. Time to go back to the motel and bed.

Before he could sleep, though, there were two things he had to do.

First of all, he placed a call to the Nevada authorities, passing himself off as representing L.A. Homicide, and requested information on the Nevada plates. That garnered him a whole name — Lucas Mahoney — and an address in Vegas.

All that information carefully recorded in his notebook, he next took a sheet of motel stationery and scribbled a fast note that he could drop off at Dobey’s motel on his way out of town early the next morning. When the note was sealed in an envelope, Starsky dropped onto the bed and fell asleep fully dressed.

XXIII

They had a meeting the next morning over coffee and pastry Kramer had brought. Hutch picked at the icing on a roll. “So? Did I do myself any good yesterday?”

Kramer finished one roll and reached for another. “Well, you didn’t do any harm.”

“Great.”

“Today is what really counts.”

“Yeah. And I suppose the courtroom will be packed so everybody can see Phipps tear me apart. I feel like the main event in the Coliseum.”

Kramer glanced at him sharply. “You just stay cool.”

“Oh, yeah. Cool is my watchword.”

Dobey came in, looking determinedly cheerful. “Morning, everyone.”

Kramer smiled, while Hutch only grunted and took a gulp of coffee.

“Here,” Dobey said handing him an envelope. “This was shoved under my door this morning.”

Hutch turned the envelope over and saw his name scrawled across the front in Starsky’s unmistakable style. He ripped it open. “Dear Hutch,” he read quickly to himself, “Following a hot tip to Vegas. Back as soon as possible. Give the bastards hell on the stand today. We gottem, boy. Love, Starsk.” He folded the note and slipped it back into the envelope, then put it into his pocket. “Gone to Vegas,” he said in answer to Dobey’s questioning glance.

“Why?”

Hutch shrugged.

“Come on, Ken, time to go.”

He took a deep breath and stood. “Think this will go on all day?”

“It might, Ken. You’ll be fine.” They walked out of the room in single file.

Phipps smiled. “All right, Mr. Hutchinson, since the defense has brought up the subject of your job, let’s talk about that a little.”

“Okay.”

“Do you like being a police officer?”

Hutch could feel small drops of sweat forming on his palms, but he did not allow himself to wipe them off. “Sometimes.”

“And sometimes not?”

“I don’t know anybody that likes their job every minute of every day.”

“You may be right. What parts do you like?”

“What? Well… I like it when we make a good clean bust.”

“You mean when you arrest somebody?”

“Yes. When we track down somebody who deserves to be caught and we catch him. That’s a good feeling.”

“Anything else you like besides arresting people?”

Hutch wondered how two people could be talking about the same thing and it could come out sounding so different. “Making a good clean bust.” That made him feel good, just to say the words. They’d made a lot of them, gotten a lot of animals off the street. That was good, wasn’t it? Then why, when Phipps said, “What else do you like besides arresting people?”, why did that come off sounding tarnished, almost dirty?

“Would you like me to repeat the question?”

“Uh… yes.”

“I said, what else do you like besides arresting people?”

Hutch sighed. “We help a lot of people.”

“For example?”

“You mean you want me to be specific?”

“Why not?”

Hutch rubbed the bridge of his nose. “There was a girl kidnapped one time. We saved her.”

“Commendable, I’m sure.” Phipps shuffled through some papers, read something and nodded to himself. “Did you make what you call a ‘good clean bust’ on the kidnappers?”

Hutch glanced at Phipps, who obviously already knew the answer to the question he was asking. “No. They were killed.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hutchinson, I don’t think the court could hear you. Speak up, please.”

“No, we did not arrest them,” he said loudly and distinctly. “They were killed during pursuit.”

“Were you pursuing them?”

“No. My partner was.”

“Oh, yes. The elusive Mr. Starsky.” There was a pause. “Any other cases you’d like to mention?”

“This is absurd,” Hutch exploded. “To try and give examples — ”

“Your Honor, would you please instruct the defendant to confine himself to answering my questions?”

“Mr. Hutchinson — ”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Hutch wiped his palms on his trousers and leaned forward in the chair a little. As he moved, he could hear the envelope in his pocket crackle. The noise was reassuring.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve been accused of murder, is it?”

“Objection!”

“Mr. Phipps — ”

“Very well, I withdraw the question.”

Hutch moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

“How many people have you killed in the line of duty?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“Lost track, have you?”

“Would it make you feel better if I cut a notch in my gun for everybody who died?” Hutch asked bitterly. “I’m a cop. People die. It happens.”

“Yes, Mr. Hutchinson, we know. However, let’s get back to the point for a moment.”

“Is there a point?”

Phipps glanced at the judge, but apparently decided to let it pass. “What don’t you like about your job?”

“I don’t like killing people,” Hutch said.

“But it happens. What else?”

“I don’t like hassling with people who don’t know or care very much what we’re up against out there on the street.”

“How do you feel about your gun?”

Hutch looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“Shall I repeat the question?”

“I understood what you said, but I don’t understand why you said it.”

“I said it because I want to know how you feel about your gun.”

“That’s like asking a carpenter how he feels about his hammer.”

“To the best of my knowledge, most carpenters don’t kill people with their hammers. Also, they rarely take their hammers with them on what is supposed to be a vacation. Why did you have your gun with you that night?”

“I don’t know. I just did.”

Phipps glanced toward the jury and then looked at Hutch again. “You don’ t know?”

“That’s what I said. I’m just… I’m just used to wearing it.”

“And using it, apparently.” Phipps consulted his papers again. “Let’s change the subject for a moment.”

“Fine.”

“You claim not to have any idea what happened after the car hit the barricade .”

“That’s right. I was unconscious.”

“No idea who killed Kimberly Wright?”

“No.”

“Or what happened to the other girl?”

“No.”

“Or where Starsky went?”

There was a slight pause. “No. I was unconscious.”

“You have no explanation at all for what happened?”

“Only that I didn’t kill her. Someone came and took my gun and shot her.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true, damnit!” Hutch was tired. He slumped back against the chair and wiped his hands dry again. Ahh, Starsk, he thought, you know how much I hate being in court. His hand slipped into his pocket for a moment and he touched the note. Starsky was out there cracking the case. Soon now, it would be all over. Hutch took a deep breath and looked up, his gaze clear, as he waited for the next question.

**

Starsky wondered why they’d never made another trip to Las Vegas. They’d always planned to. But something always seemed to come up and their big weekend never materialized. So now he was back, but nothing was the way he’d planned. For one thing, he was alone. He was also tired and hungry. He got a motel room downtown and tried a shower instead of a nap. Didn’t help much. Next he went over to the cafe for a heavy dose of caffeine. As he ate and gulped coffee, he studied a map of the city.

A wall of heat hit him as he emerged from the building and walked across the parking lot to his car. The small gun in his pocket pressed against his side. He felt as if he were running on pure adrenalin. By the time this whole thing is wrapped up, he thought as he got into the car, I’m gonna need three days sleep.

The houses on the street weren’t expensive, but most of them were well kept. Several children played soccer in the middle of the street. Starsky parked about half a block from the house he was interested in and settled back to watch. For an hour nothing happened. It was just another stake-out, like so many he’d been on. Except that it wouldn’t have been any fun to practice his card tricks when Hutch wasn’t around to get annoyed. Besides, he didn’t have any cards. He slouched in the seat, staring at the house and wondering how things were going in court.

Poor Hutch, Starsky thought. He hates going to court even worse than I do. And that’s kinda funny, him being so… smooth and all. You’d think he could handle a simple thing like court. But put him on the stand and he starts to stumble over his words. Starsky remembered an article he’d read somewhere — Reader’s Digest? — about people sending thoughts to one another over long distances. Hang in there, babe, he transmitted. Hang in there, cause we’re gonna beat the bastards. We’re gonna wipe ’em out.

When another thirty minutes had passed with no sign of activity around the house, Starsky got out of the car and walked casually up the sidewalk. He went to the front door and knocked, waited a moment, and then knocked again. There was no answer. He glanced up and down the street before strolling around the corner of the house to the back door. Not unexpectedly, it was locked. He gripped the knob, braced himself against the flimsy frame, and pushed. The latch gave and he was in.

The house was empty. Not just temporarily vacated, as if the occupants had just gone out to do a little shopping or to work for the day. No, this house had been abandoned. It was hard to know how he could be so sure of that. The place was full of furniture and all the accouterments of daily life. There were even clean dishes in the Rubbermaid drainer. But he was certain that Lucas or whoever else had been living here was gone. It was discouraging. Starsky wandered through the silent rooms a couple of times, trying to see if maybe the departed had left a clue. Like maybe a roadmap with their route and destination clearly marked. Or something. But there wasn’t anything.

Well, almost nothing. He peered into the wastebasket in the bedroom and found something. Nothing that would be any help in finding Lucas, but at least it was confirmation, if he needed it, that he was on the right track. He reached down and pulled up a crumpled photo. It was a black-and-white snapshot of Maura Kennedy and himself, dressed in pirate hats, grinning drunkenly at the camera. He stared at himself in the photo.

Or was it him at all? He didn’t feel like the same man any more. Too much had happened. And he knew that even if things turned out okay — when things turned out okay, he amended quickly — even then, he’d never be able to go back to what he had been.

“I’m tired,” he whispered to the empty room. “So damned tired.” And it wasn’t the kind of weariness that could be cured by three days or three weeks sleep, either. This went too deep. His life could never be the same again. It was a very frightening thought. What would he do?

He shrugged it off. Not now. Later. Time enough to deal with all that later. The only important thing right now was to get Hutch out of jail. Then he could think about the future. They would think about it together. After all, they could always don sequined masks and make porno flicks. He smiled humorlessly.

He tore the picture in half, shoving the part with Maura on it into his pocket and dropping the rest back into the wastebasket, then made one more tour of the house. Nothing else. He went out through the back door and saw a woman watching him from the next lawn. After pretending to lock the door, he strolled over. She was wearing a halter top and shorts that showed her stretch marks and there was a garden trowel in one hand.

“Afternoon,” Starsky said.

“Hello. Are you going to buy the house?”

“Is it for sale?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. I just figured.”

“When did they leave?”

“The Mahoneys? Two days ago. I saw them putting suitcases and stuff in the car, so I figured they were moving out. She said they moved around a lot, because of his job.”

“Any idea where they were going?”

“No.” She looked at him again. “I guess you’re not interested in the house.”

“Actually, I’m more interested in the people.”

“I didn’t know them very well,” she said quickly. “Just to say hello and good-bye to mostly.”

“I see.” They stood there for a moment, both looking at the empty house as if there was some message in its very structure that would enlighten them, if only they could decipher it.

“Nothing you can tell me at all?” he asked.

“She once said something about San Francisco.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That’s all, really. She was quiet-like, you know? Dreamy. I sort of got the idea she was scared of him.”

“Scared?”

“More like intimidated, maybe. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Are they in trouble?”

“I just want to talk to her is all. Okay, thanks.” He nodded good-bye.

Starsky got behind the wheel of the car and sat there. So here he was again. Nowhere. He wondered if there was any mention in the Guinness Book of World Records for detectives foundering on cases. Or ex-cops going down for the third time.

“Shit,” he said, starting the car. He felt like he’d been dog-paddling for at least five years. That should rate at least a footnote.

 

 

He could sit in the motel room and look down on all the people gathered around the pool. Everybody already had a tan, but they were all soaking up more sun like a parched man soaked up water. Idly, he rated the figures of the females and discovered a couple of sevens, but none higher. A mediocre collection, at best. Well, he decided after a few minutes, enough fun and cheap thrills. Time to get back to work. Fine. The only problem was, he didn’t know what the hell to do next. Well, it was said that citizens in trouble could always turn to the local police. It was worth a shot.

The desk sergeant studied Arnie Schwartz’s I.D. with well-concealed curiosity. It looked like the man didn’t care at all that he was in the presence of a real live private eye from Los Angeles. In fact, he even looked a little bored. He tossed the wallet back across the desk. “So?”

“I need some information about a guy named Lucas Mahoney.”

“Uh-huh. What for?”

It was easy to see why this guy was on the desk; he obviously had a quick grasp of any situation. “Because I want some answers. In relation to a murder case I’m investigating.”

“Murder?”

“Right. As in dead.”

It took a few more minutes before he was directed to the desk of one Sergeant Galenta, who sat behind a desk piled high with files. Galenta almost glanced up as Starsky sat down. “Yeah?”

He didn’t bother to pull out the I.D. again.

“My name is Schwartz,” he said laconically. “What can you tell me about Lucas Mahoney?”

Galenta rummaged through the papers on the desk and Starsky thought hopefully that he was going to emerge with a plump file that would give him all kinds of facts about Mahoney, including even his current address. In a minute Galenta straightened, a half-eaten doughnut clutched in his fist. Starsky sighed.

“Mahoney?” Galenta mumbled around a bite of doughnut.

“That’s what I said.”

“I know him.”

It must be the sun in Vegas, Starsky decided. Fried their brains. He stopped being Arnie Schwartz for a moment and reverted to Sergeant Dave Starsky. “Listen, Galenta,” he said tightly, “I’m trying to find out who murdered a young woman. If I don’t find out, then an innocent man is going to take the fall. That innocent man happens to be a very, very good friend of mine and I have no intention of letting him rot in jail. Tell me about Mahoney.” He sat back, glaring at Galenta.

The detective looked at him and the shifting of mental gears could be read in the man’s black eyes.

“Okay, Schwartz,” he said, reaching into a drawer. This time, he emerged with a file folder. “Mahoney. A small-time punk. Mostly fraud and bunco. Spent some time in Q on a rape charge. Paroled.”

“Anything to connect him with a man named Owen Wright?”

“Wright?” Galenta was quiet for a moment and Starsky decided that maybe the man wasn’t as dumb as he’d thought. “This have something to do with the murder of Wright’s daughter? The one they nabbed the cop for?”

“That’s right.”

Galenta was still looking at the file, not at Starsky. “I talked to him — Hutchinson — a couple of times on the phone, back when he was on the force. He seemed like an all right guy.”

“He is an all right guy.”

“This is a bum rap?”

“Yes.”

“I hear his partner disappeared. They find him yet?” Now Galenta was staring at Starsky.

Starsky stared right back at him. “No.”

Galenta only nodded. “I can’t find Wright’s name in here anywhere,” he said finally. “But I know Mahoney has a lot of ties in California.”

“I went to a local address from the DMV but he was gone.”

“Yeah? Doesn’t surprise me. We’ve been keeping an eye on him and he gets itchy.”

“Rumor has it he went to Frisco. That make sense?”

Galenta nodded again. “Yeah. He’s done some work there for a man named Leroux. Jerome Leroux,” he repeated, as Starsky pulled out his notebook and wrote it down. “A shady lawyer. He has an office in the Kelly Building.”

“Okay. The name Maura Kennedy mean anything? Or Maura Gonzalez?”

“No. Should it?”

“She’s living with him, I think.”

“Could be.” Galenta closed the file and shoved it back into the desk. “Afraid that’s all I have that might help.”

“I appreciate it.” He put the notebook away and got to his feet wearily. It took a lot of effort just to stand. “So long.”

“Hey, Schwartz,” Galenta said.

“Yeah?”

“Good luck. Hope you get Hutchinson off.”

“I will.” Starsky smiled and left.

The next thing he did was call Dobey. “Get me all you can on a Leroux, Jerome in San Francisco,” he ordered. “And fast.”

“All right. What’s his connection?”

“Damned if I know. Just something I’m checking on. How’d it go today?”

There was a pause. “All right.”

“Just all right?”

“Hutch did his best. Phipps was pretty rough on him.”

“Damnit. Okay, look, I gotta figure my next move. When do you think you can get back to me on Leroux?”

“Hell, Starsky, I don’t know. I’ll get it.”

“Well, look, I’ll call you then, okay?” They hung up a few minutes later and Starsky wandered over to the window. The only ones left in the pool now were a couple of kids playing some obscure game with a balloon and a water pistol. The last thing he felt like doing was climbing back into the car and driving to San Francisco, but he didn’t seem to have much choice. Hell. He walked back to the bed and stretched out. A nap first. God, he thought, I’m getting sick of motel rooms. Sick of everything. He started to make a mental list of all the misfortunes he was getting tired of, but he only got as far as lumpy mattresses before he was asleep.

**

Hutch walked down the hall to take the phone call. “Hello?” he said tentatively.

“Hi, it’s me. Arnie Schwartz.”

Obviously Starsky had been warned about the bugged phone. “Hi, Arnie.”

“How’s it going, boy?”

“Trial’s over.”

There was a pause. “All over?”

“Closing statements tomorrow.” Hutch leaned against the wall. “Kramer’s real optimistic.”

“Is he?”

“Yeah. Except for all those times he keeps mentioning possible grounds for appeal. That makes me a little nervous.”

“For sure.”

“How’s it going on your end?”

“Hey, great. I know who did it. Details later.”

“You know, really?”

“Yeah. I’m going to Frisco. Think my man is there.”

Hutch gave a short laugh. “Tell Fisherman’s Wharf hello for me, huh?” Starsky didn’t say anything; he didn’t laugh either. “Buddy, they’re gonna convict me. I know it. I can read that jury and they’re gonna find me guilty unless something happens real soon.”

“I’m doing my… I’m trying… it’s about to break, Hutch, really.”

Hutch slapped the wall repeatedly with his open palm. “Well, something better break. But what if it doesn’t? What then? And don’t you start feeding me any crap about appeals. I get enough of that from Dobey and Kramer.”

“I won’t.”

“Buddy?”

“What?”

“I don’t think I can take jail much longer.” He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“I know it’s rough, Hutch.”

“Rough?” He felt like laughing again. “I’ll kill myself.” He hadn’t planned to say that; the words just came out and there was nothing he could do about it. There was a silence on the line that went on so long he thought they’d been disconnected. “Hey?” he said. “You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Thought you hung up on me.”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“I hafta hit the road.”

“Yeah, all right. Thanks for calling.”

“Hutch… ?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “All right. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for thinking it or just sorry for saying it to me?”

“Both, I guess. Mostly sorry for saying it.”

Starsky took a deep breath. “There’s an old joke my Uncle Moishe used to tell me. I can’t remember anything but the punch line. Something like, if you kill yourself, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“I never heard that joke.”

“Yeah, well, Uncle Moishe was into ethnic humor.”

“I guess.”

“Hutch, I’m going after the guy. He’s a killer. I got nothing but one shitty little gun like my grandmother might use. I got no partner to back me up. I got nothing, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t need something else to worry about. Something that might distract me. I mean, I could get my frigging brains blown out because I’m worrying about that stupid crack of yours.”

Hutch’s head was pounding. “I’m sorry.” He paused, then realized that Starsky was waiting for him to say something else. “I won’t do anything,” he said softly. “I promise.”

“Okay. I hafta go, buddy. I’ll be in touch.”

“Uh-huh.” Hutch hung up.

Starsky sat still long enough to smoke two cigarettes, wishing that Hutch was standing there so that he could haul off and smash him one. He deserved it. Talking about killing himself. Goddamn.

What would happen if he failed and he couldn’t bring this off? Then, if anything happened to Hutch, it would he his fault and his alone. He remembered reading about somebody who once broke out of a Mexican jail in a helicopter. Maybe they could try that. Not that he had a helicopter or even any idea about how to go about getting one. But that seemed a minor inconvenience. He could rent one. Then he could swoop down over the yard at Diablo and neatly pluck Hutch to safety. They could fly off to someplace they’d never he found. That sounded like a good idea. Starsky slammed to his feet. God, he thought. I’m getting punchy. Stupid idea. But he didn’t discard the idea completely; he just sort of filed it in the back of his mind.

Since he hadn’t had time to unpack anything, all he had to do was throw the suitcase in the back seat and take off. He kept the radio playing loudly so he wouldn’t fall asleep.

XXIV

It was late the next afternoon when Starsky arrived at the Kelly Building to confront Jerome Leroux. Jerome, Dobey had relayed, was one of those shadowy figures existing on the underbelly of society, never quite emerging as a power, but always there somehow. He was billed, somewhat ambiguously, on the lobby directory as an investment manager. The receptionist-cum-secretary in the seventh-floor office eyed Starsky doubtfully, apparently not seeing a major investor behind the beard and ratty clothes. Nevertheless, she told Mr. Leroux that Mr. Schwartz wanted to see him.

Leroux sat behind a large desk in an office that was about as personal as the YMHA lobby. He smiled, looking like a friendly barracuda. “Yes, Mr. Schwartz?” he said when Starsky was sitting opposite him. “How may I help?”

Starsky was tired. Tired of being nice, tired of pussy-footing around.

He could feel time slipping away from him much too quickly. “I’m a private detective,” he said shortly. “You know a turkey named Lucas Mahoney and I want him.”

“Mahoney?” Leroux said thoughtfully. “No, that name doesn’t ring a bell, but I meet so many….”

He got no farther. Starsky lurched across the desk at him and closed his fingers around Leroux’s collar. “Look, creep, you may have an office and a secretary and everything else you need to look respectable, but to me you’re still just a punk, no better than the lowest pimp or pusher I bust on the street. I’m tired, man, you understand? Tired. I got no time to waste on you and I won’t waste any. You tell me what I want to know and tell me now, or I swear to god, I’ll get the information out of you myself. I hope that’s clear?” Leroux, who was beginning to turn purple, nodded, and Starsky resumed his chair. “Talk to me.”

“All right. I know Mahoney. What about it?”

“Where is he?”

“He lives in Vegas.”

“Oh, very good. Except that he left there a few days ago.”

“He could be a lot of places.”

“Yeah, and one of them is Frisco.”

Leroux was still rubbing his neck. “He might be in town.”

“Where?”

It looked for a moment as if Leroux might defy him. Starsky moved a little in the chair and the smaller man waved a hand. “Okay, okay. He sometimes shacks up at his sister’s place.”

“Gimme an address.”

He hesitated, but only fleetingly. No wonder the guy was still a little fish in his pond, Starsky thought contemptuously, he was a coward. Leroux scribbled an address on a slip of paper and shoved it toward him. “Is that all?” he asked bitterly.

“Yeah. Unless I need more and if I do, I’ll be back.” Starsky got up and sauntered toward the door. His hand on the knob, he paused. “Oh, there is one more thing.”

“What?”

“I’d like my little visit to be a surprise. More fun that way. So I wouldn’t like to find out that you tipped him off. Understood?”

Leroux nodded.

The address Starsky had was in a classier neighborhood than he would have imagined. There was even a doorman at the building. The old man in his royal blue and gold uniform might have been an annoyance, but luckily he became engrossed in helping a very fat woman out of a taxi, meanwhile trying to juggle her shopping bags and an irate poodle on a leash. Starsky slipped in through the front door, quickly scanned the mailboxes, and was in the elevator before the doorman could extricate himself.

It took two rings before the door was opened. Under other circumstances the woman standing there would have been well worth waiting for. Dressed in gold lame pajamas, with a mound of shiny black hair piled on top of her head, she was either very rich or very expensive. Maybe both. “Kara Mahoney?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m looking for your brother.”

Her red lips thinned a little. “You a pig? Why don’t you jerks lay off Lucas? Every time somebody gets his pocket picked, Lucas takes a fall.”

She was trying to shut the door, but his foot was in the way. “This isn’t about a pocket picking and I’m not a pig. I only want to see Lucas.”

“He’s not here,” she said sullenly.

“Then where?”

“Someplace off with that bitch.”

“Maura?”

“Maura? Yeah, that used to be her name. Not anymore. She changed it.” Starsky pulled the picture out of his pocket. “That her?”

“Yeah. ‘Cept her hair isn’t blond anymore.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s sort of a reddish-brown.”

“What’s she calling herself now?”

“Victoria. How’s that? Victoria. Acts like the Queen of the May or something. And Lucas is eating out of her hand. God, men.” Her tone was filled with contempt. “Show them a hot little piece and they’re all alike, even my brother. He’d jump off a bridge if she asked him to.”

Starsky replaced the picture. “Or do anything else she asked, right?”

She clammed up. “What’s this about anyway?”

“You have any idea where they are?”

“No.” She nibbled on her thumbnail for a moment. “The bitch in trouble, is she?”

It was an angle that might prove helpful, so he played it. “Could be. Could be she’s in real big trouble.”

That pleased her. “If Lucas could get clear of her, he might be able to make something of himself. He had a nice little business once, you know? Car rental. But he got a lot of bad breaks and lost it.”

“Uh-huh.” Starsky had long ago gotten his fill of poor dumb guys who got a lot of bad breaks.

“Well, if it’s mostly her you want… ?”

“It is,” he lied. “Just give an address, please.”

She was quiet for a second, then mumbled an address. “It’s about ten miles east of town,” she added.

“Thanks. You, ahh, won’t tell her I’m coming, will you?”

Kara snorted. “I wouldn’t tell her the time of day.”

Starsky grinned and headed for the elevator. This case got funnier every step of the way. Why was Maura Kennedy Gonzalez changing her name and her hair color? Until this point, he’d been thinking of her only as a probable witness. Was it possible she was more than that? The name Victoria tugged at his memory. It seemed like there was something he should connect with the name, but his groggy brain couldn’t put it together.

He still hadn’t made the connection by the time he arrived at the address. He parked and got out, palming his gun, and went to the front door. No one answered his knock, but that didn’t surprise him much. Seemed like he’d been knocking on a lot of doors lately and nobody had been answering. He walked back to his car and slouched in the seat. Time to wait again. So he waited.

**

Dobey read the newspaper while Kramer mulled over his notes, chewing on a pencil that had seen better days. Hutch just sat. Somebody had given him a deck of cards and he started a game of solitaire, but his mind wasn’t on it and the game just sort of dwindled off. “The longer the jury takes, the better for us, right?” he asked Kramer at one point.

The lawyer looked up and took the pencil out of his mouth. “That’s what some people think. Some think it’s the other way around. I don’t think it matters very much at all.”

“Well, that’s encouraging,” Hutch muttered. He tapped the tabletop for a moment. “Maybe you should check and see if there’s a message from Starsk. He might be trying to reach us.”

“I left word,” Dobey said without looking up from the paper. “If there’s any news, we’ll get it.”

“He should have let us know by now. Something.”

“If we haven’t heard anything, Hutch, it’s probably because there’s nothing for him to tell us.”

Hutch couldn’t sit still. He got up and paced the small room. “There must be something. He sounded really confident the last time we talked. Like he was just on the point of smashing the whole case wide open.”

Dobey sighed and folded the paper. “You know Starsky. Sometimes he thinks with his heart and not his head. Maybe he wasn’t as close as he thought .”

But Hutch shook his head. “No, he had something. He’s probably on his way here now. I bet that’s it, huh? He probably decided not to call, but just to come on back.” He gave a self-satisfied nod and sat down again, his eyes on the door.

Kramer and Dobey exchanged a long look.

**

It was dark before anyone approached the house. A taxi pulled up in front and a man got out. He went to the door, knocked once, and when there was no answer, used a key to let himself in. Starsky watched, bemused, then got out of the car. He did a couple of deep knee bends to get the kinks out, took the gun into his hand once more, and walked up the steps. He was thoroughly fed up. He was also mad about having to spend all those hours sitting in the car, when god only knew what was going on down in San Manuel.

In view of his mood, he didn’t bother to knock. He simply used his foot and all of his pent-up anger to kick the door open. He half-fell, half-charged into the room, his gun held high. “Freeze, creep!” he yelled. It felt good. Felt like he was in charge again.

The man dropped the bottle of beer he’d just opened and it broke against the floor. “What the hell — ” he sputtered.

“Assume the position.” The man was no novice; he knew the routine. His hands went against the wall and his feet were spread. Starsky frisked him and took a gun from his pocket. “You Lucas Mahoney?”

“No.” The man laughed a little. “Hey, if it’s Lucas you want, man, you got the wrong guy. My name is Eddie Kray.” He glanced over his shoulder and suddenly recognized Starsky. “Hey, you ain’t a cop. You’re Schwartz.”

“Right, Eddie. And I remember you, too. I remember you four stitches’ worth. Where’s Lucas?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t give me any shit, creep, I’m running out of time.” He had a picture in his mind of one of those egg timers, the kind with the sand in it, and the sand was running out too fast. What would happen to Hutch when the sand was gone?

He twisted Kray’s arm viciously. “I want Lucas, creep.”

“He’s supposed to meet me here.”

“Good, then we’ll just wait.” Starsky, keeping the gun leveled at Kray, opened the closet door and found a couple of ties draped over a hanger. He used them to tie the man to the radiator. “You just keep your mouth shut,” he said. He pushed the door closed, switched off the lamp, and sat down in the corner of the darkened room. It was hard to keep still. The nervous tension that had kept him running for too many days to count was still surging through him. He tapped at his leg with one hand, holding Kray’s gun in the other. It wasn’t his own weapon, but it was certainly better than what he’d had. He could be effective with it. If a bad case of nerves didn’t screw him up. He took a couple of deep steadying breaths.

“What are you gonna do?” Kray asked.

“I don’t know yet,” he replied. It was the truth.

“Look,” Kray said, “could I get something straight right up front?”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with shooting that broad.”

Starsky restrained a snort. “Yeah, sure. You were just an innocent bystander, right?”

Kray seemed relieved to be so quickly believed. “Right, you got it. It was all their doing.”

Starsky wondered if all the crooks in the world got their dialogue out of the same book. “Save it for the court, why don’t you?” he suggested pleasantly. “Maybe you’ll be lucky and get a real jury of your peers and they’ll believe everything you tell them.”

“Hey, I’m not bulling you, Schwartz.”

Suddenly, now that the end was so near, Starsky was tired of all the games. “My name is Starsky,” he said flatly. “David Starsky.”

 

 

“Oh.” Kray seemed to accept as natural the fact that a man might have two names, his real one, and one he used in his business. “It was Lucas who did the shooting.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She talked him into it.” Kray was silent for a moment. “Lucas, he ain’t a bad guy, you know?”

“I’m sure he’s a real sweetheart. I’ll probably love him on sight.” Starsky only wished the guy would shut up; he had a headache.

“No, really. He and I have been kicking around together for a long time and he’s okay. Was, anyway, until he hooked up with that bitch.”

Nobody seemed very fond of Maura Kennedy. Starsky tried to remember her, tried to reconstruct the few hours they’d spent together such a long time ago, but everything was shrouded in a kind of haze. He sighed and rubbed at his temples wearily. “Shut up, Kray, wouldya please?” he said.

Kray shut up.

At least an hour went by, very slowly, before Starsky heard the sound of a car stopping and then footsteps approaching the door. He braced himself to move. The front door opened. Starsky slapped one hand against the switch and flooded the room with light; at the same instant, he went into the crouch position.

“Freeze or I’ll blow your fucking brains all over the room,” he said, not shouting this time, but speaking in an almost-whisper instead.

The man froze.

“Sure,” he said. “No hassle.”

“You Lucas Mahoney?”

“Yes.”

He wasn’t quite the monster Starsky had pictured, but then they seldom were. Mahoney looked a lot like his sister, with the same slender body, dark hair and vaguely foreign cast in his face.

“You’re under arrest,” Starsky said, although he had no authority to do so. He even gave Mahoney his rights, which the man listened to with only mild interest. Starsky had to restrain himself from giving a shout of pure and unadulterated joy. So this was how it all ended, so quietly. And now Hutch would be cleared. Mahoney could be broken. Or if not him, then Kray. “We’re going to be taking a little trip,” he said. “Back to San Manuel.” He tried that thought transference thing again. It’s all over, Hutch, all done, babe, we’re heading for the finish line now. He allowed himself a grin and to hell with the headache.

**

“You okay, Hutch?”

“Yeah, Cap’n, I’m fine.”

“You look pale or something.”

Hutch shrugged. He felt sick to his stomach. They’d been sitting in this room for hours, waiting for the jury to reach a verdict.

“S’cuse me,” he said a minute later. He hurried into the adjoining bathroom and leaned over the toilet bowl as his stomach heaved. When it was over, he felt shaky. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face. He splashed cold water on it and dried with a paper towel. His reflection stared back at him from the mirror.

Okay, Starsk, he thought, where the hell are you? Man, we’re about down to the wire. This is it. You trying for the fucking grandstand play? You wanta pull a Perry Mason and come busting into the courtroom at the last minute? Is that what this is all about?

He knew it wasn’t, of course. Not deliberately. He practiced smiling in the mirror. It made his face look askew, not right.

Dobey looked up as he walked out of the john. “You all right?”

“Yes,” he said, sitting down. “It takes a while to drive from Frisco,” he said, although no one had asked.

“Hutch,” Dobey began.

“Don’t say anything, Cap’n. He’ll get here. He said he knew who he was after. It was only a matter of wrapping it all up. Don’t you remember how Starsky is when he’s getting close?” Hutch turned to Kramer, who had finally put away his notes and pencils and was, like them, just waiting. “I mean, he’s the most tenacious bastard I ever saw, Sam.” Kramer only nodded. “I remember when we were trying to break that drug case in the state hospital and I wanted to pull the plug on the whole thing, but he wouldn’t let me….” Hutch’s voice dwindled off and he rubbed at his face. “Tenacious bastard,” he murmured more to himself than to the others.

A deputy stuck his head in. “Jury’s done,” he said shortly.

“Done? You mean finished for the night?” Kramer asked.

“Verdict’s in.”

The three of them stood, not looking at each other as they filed out and went into the courtroom. All right, babe, Hutch thought, glory time. Pull your fucking hero act and get your ass in here. Please, babe….

The judge came in, followed by the jury looking tired and grim. At the clerk’s order, the Foreman stood. “Have the jury agreed upon a verdict?”

“Yes, we have.”

Kramer stood and after a moment, Hutch got to his feet as well.

“As to the indictment charging the defendant with murder in the second degree, how do you find, guilty or not guilty?”

Hutch sighed, glancing over his shoulder at the door. The foreman glanced toward the defense table and then away quickly. “We find the defendant guilty as charged.”

Kramer cleared his throat. “Your Honor, I request that the jury be polled.”

The clerk asked each member of the jury to rise and affirm the verdict and one by one, they did so, none of them looking at Hutch.

Hutch kept waiting for the door to open and Starsky to come in and put a stop to all this. He didn’t hear the judge’s words of thanks to the jury or even notice when the jury filed out. He watched the door as it was ordered that he be returned to Diablo Correctional Facility to await sentencing. Kramer entered a request that the sentencing be carried out as soon as possible and he went to the bench to confer on the details.

After the judge left the room, Kramer sat down again and pulled Hutch down next to him. “Ken,” he said urgently, “you know this isn’t the end.”

Hutch shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “Where is he? I thought… he promised….” He looked at Dobey, his blue eyes fogged with vagueness. “They think I killed her. Where’s Starsk? Why didn’t he come like he promised?”

“I don’t know, Ken,” Dobey said heavily.

“We’re going to appeal, Ken. Right after the sentencing, I’ll file.”

Hutch stared at him blankly. “What? Oh. It doesn’t matter. I’m too tired to think about that right now. I only want to sleep.” He followed the deputy from the room.

Dobey and Kramer watched him go. “So, Harold, what do you think?”

“I think,” Dobey said savagely, “that I’m going to be sick.”

“About the missing Starsky, I meant.”

“Well… either the killer got to him first or… or he couldn’t pull it off and he couldn’t face coming back.”

Kramer picked up his briefcase. “The hero couldn’t face failing?”

“It’s possible.” They left the courtroom together.

**

Hutch was temporarily alone in the cell; Garcia had been paroled. He crawled into bed before the lights were out and pulled the blankets up. He was so cold.

“You promised, you bastard,” he whispered. “You promised. Oh, damnit, Starsk… what happened?”

He closed his eyes, trying to force the oblivion of sleep to submerge him. Maybe if he was lucky, he’d never wake up.

**

Afterwards, he could never quite reconstruct what had happened. He remembered pointing the gun at Mahoney. Remembered feeling so damned good about it. Remembered thinking that it was all over at last and now Hutch would be free and… and that was all he remembered.

When he woke up, he’d taken Kray’s place tied to the radiator and the late afternoon sun was warming the room. He’d been out for hours. His head was throbbing and there was a warm wetness that probably meant his stitches had been ripped open again. Kray, Lucas, and Maura or whatever she was calling herself now, were sitting around the room eating carry-out hamburgers and ignoring him.

“I guess,” he said after the room stopped spinning so much, “I guess that this is the time for me to ask what happened?”

“I like you,” Lucas said cheerfully. “You’re a real funny guy. Even if your name isn’t Schwartz like you told me before.”

“I like you all, too. It’s been a lot of fun chasing you around the country.”

Maura giggled. “Poor Dave.” She looked different with her hair cut short and dyed auburn.

“You know what, though? I would appreciate it if you folks would stop using my head as a target. Now that I’m not on the force anymore, my medical coverage has been cancelled and this could start to get expensive.”

“You should just quit sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong,” Kray said, waving a French fry to make his point.

“You should have killed him the first time you had a chance,” Maura said. “Then he wouldn’t have caused us all this trouble.”

“Hey, sweetheart, what’d I ever do to you?” Starsky asked.

She didn’t answer him. “Turn on the TV, Lucas. It’s time for the news.” There was a small black and white set in one corner of the room and Lucas fiddled with the controls until he had a pretty good picture. They listened as the anchorman talked about SALT, a teachers’ strike, and the president. “A local trial came to an end late last night,” he said finally.

Maura leaned forward. “Shh,” she said, although nobody was making any noise.

“The jury found former Los Angeles police officer Kenneth Hutchinson guilty of second degree murder in the killing of Kimberly Wright, daughter of businessman Owen Wright.” As the newsman spoke, they rolled a film taken in the courtroom. Hutch’s face filled the screen. Starsky stopped listening and just stared at his partner, scared by the expression in Hutch’s eyes. There was a peculiarly lifeless look in his gaze.

“I’ll kill myself.” He heard Hutch’s voice saying the words again. Starsky strained against the ties holding him to the radiator. “Damn you all,” he said hoarsely. “Why are you doing this to him?”

Maura got up from the chair and moved around the room. “We don’t care about him, Dave. He was just convenient. We were waiting for the opportunity and he provided it. You might say he’s going to jail because he was in the right place at the wrong time. Wrong time for him, that is.”

“Maura — ”

“That’s not my same. My name is Victoria.”

“You change names like I change socks.”

She stopped in front of the mirror and smoothed her hair almost lovingly. “My true name is Victoria Wright,” she said.

Now he remembered why the name Victoria has sounded familiar. It was the name of the first Wright daughter, the one they called Torrie, who’d been kidnapped as an infant and never found. “Is that your name?” he asked.

“Yes.” Lucas and Kray were watching her warily. She tossed her head and struck a pose. “Now it all belongs to me, don’t you see? Now that Kimberly is dead, I can go home to Momma and Poppa and take my true place.” She smiled sweetly. “I must go pack now.”

Starsky looked at Lucas. “Is she for real?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It all started as a… a put-on, you know? But I think she really believes it now.”

Kray crumpled a paper sack and threw it across the room. “She’s a nutcase,” he said flatly. “I been telling you that all along, Luke. The broad is a nutcase and we’re all gonna take a fall for this.”

“No, man, how can we? The cop just took the fall. The case is over and done with. Nothing to do now but get her into the Wright house. Pretty soon, we’ll be sitting on easy street.”

“Oh, yeah?” Kray laughed. “Man, you been talking to me about easy street since we were fourteen years old and we are still sitting in a dump eating cheap hamburgers.”

“Not for long,” Lucas insisted.

“I hate to put a damper on all this,” Starsky said, “but what about me?”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “What about you?”

“I could just promise to go away and forget the whole thing.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure, why not? I promise to go away and forget the whole thing. So why don’t you just untie me and I’ll be on my way?”

Lucas just smiled. “And what about Hutchinson? You were all hot to save him before. Don’t you care no more?”

“I tried my best, didn’t I? Hell, am I supposed to get myself killed over it? I mean, a partner is one thing, but getting dead is something else.”

“You must think my mother raised nothing but fools,” Lucas said.

Starsky shrugged.

“We’ll take care of you. Most everybody thinks you’re dead already, so when they find your body, they won’t be too surprised.”

Kray upset a bottle of beer and let it spill. “For all our lives, Luke, we got by without killing nobody. All of a sudden, you get tied up with this bitch and we already killed one and now we’re going for two?”

“There isn’t anything we can do about it, Eddie. He’s the last loose end.”

Starsky slumped hack against the radiator. A loose end, huh? That was a helluva way to end his life. A loose end for a couple of punks. Well, at least when they found his body, Hutch would know why he hadn’t delivered on his promise. Oh, yeah, he thought bitterly. That should be a great comfort to Hutch. He listened to Lucas and Kray talk, without hearing what they were saying. Vaguely, he was aware that they were leaving, telling Maura they’d be back later, leaving a gun in case Starsky “got any ideas.”

Not until they were gone and he was alone in the room did Starsky straighten. His eyes scanned the room and finally came to rest on the beer bottle Kray had dropped when he’d burst in. Some of the pieces lay just beyond his feet. He slipped down as far as he could and angled his foot; his toes touched a large shard.

Praying that Maura took a long time over her packing, he wriggled the foot and the leg, slowly, painfully, pushing the hunk of glass closer. It seemed to take years, but finally his fingers could grasp it and he began to saw away at the ties that held him bound. He could feel the sharp edge scrape against the tips of his fingers and against his wrists, but he didn’t stop long enough for the pain to reach his brain. Finally one end of the tie snapped and then the other. He was free.

Still holding the piece of glass between his fingers, he tiptoed up the stairs. He could hear Maura singing softly to herself as she moved around the bedroom. He waited until she moved past the doorway again and then he stepped up, circling her neck with one arm and holding the razor-sharp edge against her throat. “Game’s over, honey,” he whispered.

She sagged against him.

“Don’t kill me,” she said. “Please. I don’t want to die.”

“Nobody wants to die. Kimberly didn’t. I don’t. My partner doesn’t. That doesn’t make you special.”

“But you don’t understand, I’m going to be rich now. I’m going to have it all. I won’t be a nobody anymore.”

He remembered the garbage dump where she’d grown up as an unwanted intruder, and knew that he should have felt some pity for her. But maybe his heart had gotten too hard. He was only feeling sorry for himself and for Hutch. There wasn’t anything left over for anybody else, not anymore. “You’re gonna have nothing, honey,” he whispered, “except a long time in jail.”

“I didn’t kill her. Lucas did. He did it, not me.”

“Maybe he pulled the trigger, but you killed Kimberly Wright.”

“No, no, he did it, he did it!”

“Shut up.” He moved to the bed and picked up Kray’s gun. “We’re going down the stairs and if you try anything, I’ll blow your frigging head off. Understand?”

She nodded.

They made it down the stairs and were halfway across the living room when the door opened and Lucas and Kray came in.

“What — ?” Lucas lunged forward a little, pulling a gun at the same moment.

“Kill him!” Maura screamed, jerking away. “Kill him!”

A shot exploded from the gun Starsky held. There was one split second of total silence and then Lucas, looking vaguely surprised, toppled over and hit the floor. Kray, in the act of going for Lucas’s fallen gun, froze. “Don’t shoot me,” he said.

“Just stay still and I won’t.”

Kray had no fight left in him. “Can I check Luke?” he asked softly.

Starsky nodded. “Yeah. Slide the gun away first.”

The revolver slid across the floor. Kray reached Lucas and gently turned him over.

Maura was leaning against the wall. “Listen,” she said quickly, “my daddy is real rich and he’ll pay you a lot of money if you just take me home and forget all this.”

“He’s dead,” Kray said. He looked up, not at Starsky, but at Maura. “Are you satisfied, you bitch? Luke is dead. You killed him. You killed Luke.”

“My daddy will pay you, too.”

Starsky grabbed some more ties from the closet. “Put her hands behind her back. Make ’em tight.” She didn’t like Kray touching her, but he brutally bound her as Starsky had directed. When he was finished, Starsky tied Kray in the same way. Finally, he tied the two of them together and rested against the wall.

“What happens now?” Kray asked.

“Now we get into the car and go to San Manuel. And you both better hope that nothing has happened to my partner or I’ll take care of you myself and screw the system.”

Leaving Lucas’s body where it was, they walked out of the house. Starsky shoved the two of them into the back seat and got behind the wheel. His mind was so numb that the only clear thought he had was that he must drive like hell to the courthouse and make them let Hutch go. Maura was crying, but Kray was huddled silently in the corner of the seat. Starsky only hoped that it wasn’t too late. The expression in Hutch’s eyes when the guilty verdict was announced haunted Starsky throughout the night.

**

He gave a lot of thought to composing a suicide note. Dumb, he knew, but it helped him get through the night. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much dumb as it was premature. There was that promise he’d made to Starsk. As long as that was hanging over him, he was pretty much bound to go on living. The promise would be binding until further notice.

Dobey and Kramer walked with him into the courtroom for the pre-sentence hearing. Many of the observers had apparently lost interest now that the verdict was in, but the press was still there, and a few of the reporters that had been there since the beginning gave him friendly nods. He sat at the defense table, his hands folded. Kramer was talking to him and he kept nodding, pretending to listen, but his mind was someplace else. Where, he didn’t really know. He was wondering, absently, how far he would make it if he just jumped up and started running. It might work, at that. Anyway, maybe it was time for him to take his fate hack into his own hands again.

Idly, he measured the distance between the table and the door.

**

 

He parked behind the courthouse and leaned against the steering wheel for a moment to consider his next move. There were probably any number of rational, correct ways to handle this situation. But he decided that it was too late for any of those. Where had following the rules got Hutch? He got out of the car and opened the back door.

“Come on.” Moving slowly, they did as he ordered. “We’re going in,” he said. “Somebody will probably try to stop us, but I won’t be stopped. I’ll do whatever I have to. Understand?”

Not waiting for an answer, he pushed them ahead of him, squinting a little into the glaring sun.

They were in the hallway and halfway to the courtroom before they were even noticed. A passing deputy stopped to look. “Hey, there,” he said rather uncertainly.

Starsky knew what they must look like — two people tied together, being shoved along by a man covered in dirt and sweat and blood. He grimaced at the officer. “We gotta go in,” he muttered, flashing the P.I. license.

“Yeah?” It looked for one moment as if he might simply let them go in. But then his hand crept toward his holster. “Just hold it,” he said.

Starsky pulled the gun out and placed the barrel against Maura’s head. “We’re going in.” He spoke quietly.

More cops began to gather and Starsky pushed Maura and Kray along more quickly. She began to pull against him. “Don’t let him kill me!” she screamed at the deputy. “Please! ”

“Shut up!” Starsky yelled. “We’re going in. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I’m going in there! Stay back.”

There was a lot of yelling now. He kept his eyes on the door at the end of the corridor and he saw Collins take up a position next to the door. “Schwartz,” he said calmly, “what the hell are you doing?”

They stopped a few feet short of the door.

“My name is David Starsky,” he said. “I have new evidence… have to get in there… damnit, Collins, let me through. They killed her, don’t you understand? They did it, not Hutch.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe,” Starsky said, giving up. He shoved Kray and Maura brutally, giving a wordless roar of frustration.

**

At first, everyone tried to ignore the noise in the hallway, but it got louder and louder, until finally the judge looked up in aggravation. “Will someone please see what’s going on?”

Hutch heard the yell and recognized Starsky’s voice. He jumped to his feet. “That’s him,” he whispered. “It’s my partner.”

A deputy moved quickly to stand next to him.

The courtroom door burst open and a man and woman stumbled in, followed by a bearded, bloodied madman holding a gun. Near silence reigned in the room, broken only by the harsh gasps of Starsky’s breathing.

Hutch was still standing, watching, unmoving.

Starsky leaned against the wall, still holding the gun. He wiped at his sweaty face. His gaze sought Hutch, found him, and the eyes smiled a little. “Your Honor,” he said loudly, “these people killed Kimberly Wright.”

Maura tried to run forward, but was jerked up short by the tie . “She had it all,” she said reasonably. “She had it all and it should have been mine. You can see that, can’t you?” She appealed to the judge, to the watching press. “It was only right that she should die. Everyone can see that, can’t you?”

The judge leaned forward. “Do not say anything more, young lady. Anything you say can be considered incriminating.”

Kray, who had been watching Maura blankly, now turned a look of disbelief upon the judge. “She’s crazy! Can’t you see that? She made Luke kill the broad. Gonna be rich, he told me. Gonna be on easy street. She filled his head with a lot of promises and what did it get him? Nothing but a chest full of lead. It’s all her fault. Luke pulled the trigger, but she’s the one with blood on her hands. And maybe me, because I didn’t stop it.”

Hutch kept staring at Starsky, feeling like everything was swirling around him in slow motion. Vaguely, he was aware of Kramer and Phipps approaching the bench. Dobey was talking softly and quickly into his ear and Hutch kept nodding, not hearing a word he was saying.

Crowded as the room was, Hutch felt like Starsky and he were alone, isolated from the activity of the others. They watched one another carefully, almost warily. Everything that was going on acted as a barrier between them, keeping them apart. But that was good in a way, because it gave them time. Time to let the emotions cool a little, to step back a few paces from what was happening and study it.

On the surface, Starsky seemed oblivious to everything. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, looking casual and deadly. Occasionally, he would give an enigmatic half-smile.

After nearly fifteen minutes the judge gaveled order back into the room. Everyone sat down except Starsky, his prisoners, his guards, and Hutch.

“This is most… extraordinary,” the judge said after a moment. “After conferring with the attorneys for both sides, it has been decided that any further activity on sentencing will be set aside until this entire matter can he cleared up.” She paused, looking at Hutch. “Additionally, the bench has decided that the prisoner will be released upon his own recognizance until the matter is resolved.”

Hutch only half-heard. “What? What’d she say?”

“You’re out,” Dobey said. “Free.”

He shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. As soon as the judge had left the room everyone else moved. The reporters surged toward Hutch. Deputies disarmed an agreeable Starsky, taking Kray and Maura into custody. It all seemed, to Hutch, like part of a dream. He needed a piece of reality that he could grab onto and hold. Reporters were shouting questions at him, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. He looked around vaguely and saw Starsky pushing his way through the crowd. When the others wouldn’t get out of his way, Starsky gave an impatient gesture and made a vaulting leap over the railing, reaching Hutch a moment later.

“Thank you,” Hutch whispered.

Starsky understood. He didn’t dismiss the words or the emotion behind them, didn’t brush off the conventional expression of gratitude as unnecessary. “You’re welcome,” he said almost formally. An instant later, he grabbed Hutch with both arms and gave him a tight hug.

Hutch held onto Starsky, held onto that fragment of reality, held on for dear life, ignoring the reporters, ignoring everything but the moment. Almost simultaneously, they took deep breaths and pulled away, each keeping an arm around the other. They faced the reporters.

“Gentlemen,” Hutch said loudly, “this is my partner.”

The questions started again and he tried to answer, speaking softly, but clearly. It was all still a dream. Nothing seemed real except for the firm pressure of Starsky’s arm around his shoulders. But that was all he needed. Hutch couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

 

XXV

It was a clear night and the whole city seemed aglow with lights. He could sit on the balcony of this hillside house and watch the line of traffic move along Hollywood Boulevard. It all looked very peaceful from up here, but he knew that the closer one got, the less beautiful it would all seem. Those glowing circles of light camouflaged all the violence and despair that the city held. All the nights he’d spent roaming that place seemed to have evolved into one long vista of misery. Death waited down there, waiting to leap when least expected, disguised in a hundred different ways. The narrow line of wilderness that stood between them and the city served as a fragile harrier against the horror.

He rubbed absently at one cheek, still not quite used to not having the beard. “Hey,” he said languidly.

“What?” Hutch’s voice came from a dark corner on the other side of the patio.

“You getting hungry?”

“I don’t know. You?”

Starsky shrugged. He patted at his pockets helplessly.

“You quit, remember?” Hutch said.

“I’m trying to quit,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

“You’re doing great. I’m proud of you.”

Starsky snorted and patted his pockets again. “What did Dobey say when you talked to him before?”

“That he’d call back sometime tonight.”

“Terrific.” Starsky got up and began to pace the patio. He watched the flashing lights of a police car far below. The past two weeks had been very strange. Once it was all over in San Manuel, it had dawned that neither of them had a home anymore. Edith Dobey scurried about and managed to rent this place temporarily. So they had been sitting on top of the world for fourteen days now, watching it all pass beneath them. “Hutch?”

“What?”

“What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you?” It was part of the game they kept playing — a sort of macabre Twenty Questions, in which they poked and probed at the edges of their wounds.

Not to answer would be cheating. “When I was seven years old,” Hutch’s voice said from the blackness, “I was playing in my grandfather’s barn and all of a sudden I saw this rat, must have been two feet long, and it had a crazy look in its eyes. Rabid, I guess. It was standing just a couple of feet from me. I just sat there in the hay and looked at it. That was the first time I ever looked into a pair of eyes that wanted to kill me.”

Starsky shivered a little in the evening air. “What happened?”

“My uncle killed it with a shovel. Beat it to death. He hated rats, my uncle did, worse than anything. He just kept hitting it and hitting it, until there was nothing left except….” He left it unfinished. “I guess he went a little crazy.”

Starsky stopped at the small table and added some more white wine to his glass. “I can understand how he felt,” he said, shoving the cork back into the bottle. “I’ve felt the same way.”

“When?” That was how the game kept going, one question leading to another, as they peeled away the layers of protective coloring built up over the years. No fair not answering or answering lightly.

“When?” Starsky was silent for a moment, swirling the wine in the glass. “A couple times, I guess. The first time was in Vietnam. Before we met. A little girl got blown up on the street one day by a bicycle bomb. There wasn’t enough left of her to put in a small box. If I coulda got my hands on whoever did that… I would’ve been like your uncle.” He sipped the wine. “When Terri died, just for a minute. When you got blasted through the store front that time and I thought you were dead.” He shrugged. “When I came into the courtroom in San Manuel. I think I would’ve killed anybody who seriously tried to stop me.”

“There were a couple of times I thought you weren’t going to come through for me,” Hutch said suddenly. The confession floated around the patio for a couple of minutes. He was grateful that his face was hidden in the darkness. Absolution was contained in a fleeting, twisted grin. “What scares you the most right now?” Hutch asked after a moment.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I mean it,” Starsky said flatly. “Nothing. Anything that would happen now, I’d more or less expect. Something can only scare you when it’s unknown. What could happen? A maniac could be hiding in those trees, just waiting for a chance to blow my frigging head off.” He turned around and faced the night, as if to give the mythical madman a better target. “Or I guess there could be an earthquake, maybe the biggie they keep talking about, and we’d both go sliding into the sea. Nothing I can do about it. If I know one thing now, I know that we’re not in charge. Things just happen. Like the fact that everything that just happened came about because of a stupid broken brakeline. If the car hadn’t been defective….” He faced Hutch again. “So? What should I be afraid of?”

“How about being alone?”

“I’ve been alone, man. It sucks. But it doesn’t scare me.”

“Why not?”

“Because now I know that there are only two options. Either I cope or I cash in my chips. Big deal.”

Hutch finished his wine and stood. He walked out of the darkness to the circle of light by the table and poured some more of the golden white liquid into his glass. “You gave me hell for talking about suicide and here you are doing the same thing.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Well, shit, man.” The anger wasn’t real; the emotion was. “I was still out there operating. You weren’t just giving up on yourself. You were giving up on me. On us. That’s not allowed. When I talk about cashing in my chips, that assumes certain things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as that I got no partner out there hustling his ass off to save me.”

They watched the traffic for almost five minutes before Hutch broke the silence. “Dobey’s gonna be calling back anytime. He wants to know what we’re going to do.”

Starsky shrugged. “To hell with it.”

“He deserves an answer, Starsk. Not the force; we don’t owe them anything. But Dobey deserves an answer.”

“Yeah, I know.” Starsky’s voice sounded tired. “Hey,” he said.

“What?”

“How about taking a walk?”

“Where?”

“Let’s walk all the way down the mountain. We can grab a burger someplace and then come back.”

“That’s a long walk.”

“Yeah.” Starsky finished the wine in a gulp.

Hutch smiled faintly. “Okay.” He looked the patio door and they started down the stone steps dug into the side of the hill. They hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the phone inside the house began to ring shrilly. “That’s Dobey,” Hutch said unnecessarily.

“I guess.” Starsky patted at his pockets again, but there were still no cigarettes there.

“What are we going to do?”

Starsky didn’t answer for a moment. His face was turned into the shadows and Hutch couldn’t see his expression. “Let it ring,” he said shortly. “He’ll call back.”

“Starsk… ?”

He looked at Hutch then, his eyes dark. “Later, Hutch,” he said. He turned and moved down the steps more quickly.

Hutch glanced back toward the house once more, then hurried to catch up, pulling his windbreaker closed against the cool night air. Side by side they moved down the hill, moving inexorably toward the lights of the city, toward the traffic, toward the people who swarmed all over Los Angeles, making that City of Angels into a little piece of hell. Finally the sound of the ringing phone ended and the only noise left was the shuffling of their feet across the ground.

Soon even that sound was drowned out by the echo of the traffic as the noises of the city rose to greet and then submerge them.

Carry on, my sweet survivor,
Carry on, my lonely friend,
Don’t give up on the dream,
Don’t you let it end.
Carry on, my sweet survivor,
Though you know that something’s gone,
For everything that matters, carry on….
You carried it so long: so it may come again….
Carry on…

FINI

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