Long Term Investment

652

A story about a pig.

 

I wrote this story in September 2006 in response to the M&T Shootout Tag challenge. My lovely, encouraging and oh-so-patient beta, CC, convinced me to first publish it in the SHareCon 2006 Zine.

---

“Hey. You got any plans after this is all over?”

“That’s up to you.”

“After we get this all wrapped up, we’ll go down and knock off a couple of banks in Bolivia…”

***

Hutch was running late.

An hour before his shift was slated to end, he’d gotten slammed with the final returns from the drug bust he and Starsky had assisted on several months ago, and Dobey made it clear to him — in loud and no uncertain terms — that the paperwork had to be finished before he left. By the time he’d gotten out of Metro and on the road headed toward the hospital, the cheap Timex he’d bought to temporarily stand in for his pocket watch – while it was on loan to Starsky – showed he had only ten minutes left before visiting hours ended.

He glanced at the paper sack that sat in the passenger seat, then looked back down at his watch.

Oh, come on. Be fast. Can’t you please just be fast?

Hutch sped on.

—

“Sir, I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over. You can return tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, but I’m afraid that you’ll have to leave for this evening.”

The nurse, a short, stocky redhead with too many freckles to count, blocked Hutch’s path down the hall that led to Starsky’s room.

“It won’t take long.” Hutch smiled one of what he’d been told were his most dazzling smiles, and quickly checked the nurse’s name tag. “Mindy. Please. My partner-” he said, flipping out his badge, “-he was shot a few days ago. I haven’t gotten to see him since he got moved to his new room. I- I brought him something. I just want to give it to him and then I’ll go.” Hutch held up the bag fisted in his right hand, the paper softly crinkling under his fingers. “Please?”

“Well…” Mindy looked hesitant. She peered at his badge, then back at him. “Officer Hutchinson, I’m really not suppos-”

Hutch reached down and took one of her plump hands into his.

“Ten minutes. I swear.” He smiled again.

Mindy rolled her eyes at him, delicately extracting her hand from his grip. “At seven fifteen I start my next round with the patients’ meds. If you’re still there by the time I get to Mr. Starsky’s room, you won’t be allowed in again.”

Hutch raised a hand, as if to pat her cheek, but quickly aborted the motion at the folded arms and raised eyebrow he received for his effort.

“Uh… Thanks. I promise I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

“Uh huh.”

Hutch stared at her, waiting, until Mindy finally sighed, and stepped aside to let him pass. He fled her presence, ignoring the hushed, impatient tapping of her soft-soled shoe against the tiled floor.

Boy, they sure don’t make nurses like they used to.

—

When he reached Starsky’s room, Hutch stopped in the doorway for a moment, looking in. It wasn’t dark yet, and though the overhead light wasn’t on, the setting sun cast a red glow that seeped in through the blinds over the far window, warming the room. Both Starsky and his roommate — a guy who’d been in a car smashup a week ago, and who had bandages decorating every appendage — appeared to be dozing in the early evening’s muted light.

Hutch quietly slipped into the room, crossing over to the wall to pull up a chair to Starsky’s bedside. He sat, placing the bag at his feet, then laid a gentle hand over Starsky’s, smoothing his thumb across the back of Starsky’s wrist.

Starsky mumbled something, a quiet ‘hmm’ sound, before his eyelids fluttered, then slowly blinked open.

“Hey, partner,” Hutch said, his voice soft.

Starsky smiled, slow and lazy, still blinking sleepily. “Hey, Hutch.” His voice cracked, and Hutch saw him lick his lips and swallow before continuing, “Hey, I hadda dream…”

“Oh yeah?” Hutch kept stroking the back of Starsky’s hand with his thumb. “What’s that?”

Starsky squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them wide, apparently trying to wake up a little more. “You were worryin’ about somethin’…don’t know. Hutch, you’re not worried about anything, are ya?”

Ah, buddy.

“Not anymore.” He patted the back of Starsky’s hand reassuringly.

Starsky sighed, a long, slow contented sound, and his eyelids drifted to half-mast again. “‘s good. Don’t like it when you worry. Y’ try not to let me know that you do, but I know…get that blond head a’ yours all tied up in knots.”

He yawned, and then shifted, starting to lean forward as though he wanted to sit up – and abruptly stopped, inhaling sharply.

Immediately, Hutch was out of his chair and at the head of Starsky’s bed, urging him back down against his pillow with gentle pressure against Starsky’s good shoulder. “Hey, hey, what’s the rush, huh? Enjoy the bed while you can,” he quietly admonished. “Wish I had an excuse to lie here all day. Though I have to say, I could do without that Nurse O’Reilly you got.” Hutch slowly massaged Starsky’s right arm, hoping to distract him from the ache in his left.

Starsky melted back into the cushion, still wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “Sorry, sorry…wake up, I forget about it for a minute. Then I move, and everything goes to hell.”

Hutch reached over from where he stood to drag his chair up to the head of the bed, still rubbing Starsky’s arm. He let his touch grow gradually softer, until his hand was just skimming up and down the length of Starsky’s arm, fingertips brushing over still sleep-warm skin. After several long minutes, Starsky’s face eased, his eyes closed and breath coming in slower, more regular intervals, so Hutch finally sat.

“Hey, Starsk?”

Starsky didn’t open his eyes, but made an agreeable noise, so Hutch continued.

“Hey, hey, look what I brought.” He leaned down sideways, stretching to reach the bag where it still sat a few feet away. Managing to snag the curled edge of the paper with his middle finger, he towed the sack over in front of his chair.

“Wazzat?” Starsky muttered from somewhere above him.

Hutch opened the bag while it was still on the floor, and removed the item where Starsky couldn’t see, setting it on the ground while he crumpled up the bag.

“Hutch? Whatcha doin’ down there?” Starsky was sounding slightly more alert, and then a hand suddenly dropped down in front of Hutch’s nose, batting around investigatively.

“Just a se- will you hang on?” Hutch caught Starsky’s hand before it could investigate his right eye, and gently replaced it on the mattress, then bent once more to shove the brown paper ball under the bed, reaching out with his foot to nudge it further back near the wall. “All done.” He sat up, bringing the gift with him, and set it on his knees. “Ta da!”

Starsky looked at the thing in his lap, up at him, and back at the thing.

“You got me…a pig?”

“Piggy bank, Starsk, piggy bank.”

It was a bright pink, cheerfully cartoonish plastic pig, sporting a red cap and matching overalls, and eating a candy bar. Hutch had seen it in the window of a toy shop he passed on his drive to Metro that morning, and stopped to pick it up for Starsky. Somehow, it seemed to fit.

“Figure you won’t be up for knocking off any banks, at least for a little while. But we start saving our pennies, it’ll give us the in we need when we finally make it down there, huh? They’ll let us in to make our deposit and never know what hit ’em.”

Starsky continued to eye the pig, looking dubious, until he tiredly waved his hand at Hutch. “Well, give it over, then. Lemme see this guy up close.”

Hutch handed the pig to Starsky, who slowly rotated it, inspecting all sides. He tilted it to examine the stopper mechanism in the bottom, and a hollow rattling sound emerged from somewhere in its bowels. Starsky quirked an eyebrow at Hutch.

“Seed money, buddy. Thought I might as well get the ball rolling,” Hutch explained.

Starsky just shook his head and looked back at the pig in his lap, a small smile teasing at his lips.

“Anyone ever tell ya that you are one weird guy?”

Hutch grinned. “Oh, once or twice. Guess it takes one to know one.”

At that moment, Hutch heard the ominous squeaking of wheels — much like those on a medicine cart – coming from a place in the hall that couldn’t be very far from the room.

Damn.

He stood to leave. “Whoops, I gotta be going, partner, or the Irish Inquisition’s gonna string me up by my toenails.” He reached down to pat the back of Starsky’s hand again, but Starsky turned his hand over and caught Hutch’s, briefly linking their fingers. His eyes met Hutch’s, and they were bright, despite the gathering dark.

“I’m…I’ll be outta here soon.”

“I know.” Hutch softly squeezed Starsky’s hand. “‘Til then, you just watch that guy, okay? Make sure nobody steals him. I don’t trust this neighborhood,” he joked.

Starsky rolled his eyes and released Hutch’s hand, then waved him in the direction of the door. “Well, shoo already. Mindy catches you here, I don’t think any of us are gonna be happy campers.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see ya, Starsk.” Hutch made his way to the entrance, then turned to look back at Starsky, wanting to add something else — wanting to put off leaving for just another moment more. He shut his mouth when he saw that Starsky had once again closed his eyes, intending to go to sleep with the pig tucked into the crook of his good arm.

Hutch smiled and left.

***

Over the next few months, the pig migrated from place to place within Starsky’s home.

One week, Hutch noticed it perched next to the sink in the bathroom, the handle of Starsky’s toothbrush jammed into the slot in its hat. For about a month after that, it sat on top of Starsky’s fridge, situated between the old ceramic cookie jar and the bright yellow kitchen scale, watching over all the activity that took place below. Other times, Hutch didn’t see it at all, and only briefly wondered where it had gone before Starsky said or did something that made him laugh, derailing his train of passing thought.

It didn’t matter. Whenever he did see it, Hutch would fish around in his pockets for whatever loose change he had and feed it to the pig. It just made sense.

Then, Starsky got hospitalized.

Again.

This time, Bellamy’s poison waylaid him for the better part of three weeks, during which time Hutch visited with an array of oddments to keep Starsky un-bored: a Slinky, which Starsky kept dropping off the end of the bed until Hutch caught on that he was doing it on purpose and took it away from him until he promised not to do it anymore; an Etch-a-Sketch that Starsky used to make very square portraits of Dobey, which Hutch said didn’t look too far off from the real thing; an egg of Silly Putty that Starsky promptly lost two minutes after opening it via a particularly vigorous bounce out into the hallway (Hutch spent close to a quarter of an hour searching for it before giving up and going down to the hospital gift shop to buy another. He later confessed to Starsky, still bewildered, that he just didn’t understand what could’ve happened to it. Starsky patiently explained that that was simply one of the many magical properties of Silly Putty, and then showed him a skewed Putty print he’d made of Marmaduke, saying that was the only way to make the dog entertaining. Hutch had to agree); and, most memorably, an ongoing game of Monopoly that threatened to last just as long as Starsky’s stay — if not longer — until Hutch finally got a hotel on Boardwalk and bankrupted Starsky. Starsky pouted for all of ten minutes, saying he’d ‘never play that stupid game again’, and then turned around and begged Hutch for another round — who refused right up until Starsky offered to let him be the race car, which is when he knew that Starsky was desperate.

In the meantime, Hutch made routine stops by Starsky’s apartment to water his few plants, and check on the various forgettable things in life that, consequently, are so often forgotten when an inhabitant is unexpectedly away for a while.

Each time he visited, he fed the pig.

Not just coins, either. Hutch found himself reaching into his wallet and pulling out a dollar bill here, a sawbuck there, and folding each bill into thirds so he could slip it into the narrow slot. They fell on top of the bed of coins with a soft flutter, and the pig grew richer.

When Starsky finally came back to work, two days after the water incident at Metro, when the whole department got moved to a different floor, he brought the pig with him.

Hutch looked up with interest from his station at the coffee machine. “Hey, what’s this little guy doing here?” He returned to their new desk, blowing the steam from the surface of his coffee, and took a seat across from Starsky. He set down his cup so he could haul the pig over for a closer look.

Starsky leaned back in his chair, propping his feet up on his side of the desk. “As you well know, I had a lotta time on my hands lately, and I got to thinking.”

Hutch picked his cup back up and took a sip, nodding for Starsky to continue.

“Way I see it is this, Hutch.” He folded his hands behind his head. “This little guy’s kinda like our insurance policy. ‘F it ever gets to be too much, we just can’t take it anymore…we take this guy and split. Bolivia, Mexico…hell, the North Pole. Doesn’t matter. Point is, I didn’t think it was right, me keepin’ a joint policy like that.”

Hutch smiled over the lip of his cup. “Well, I can’t argue with logic like that.”

Starsky grinned back. “You kiddin’ me? Since when have you ever been able to argue my logic?”

Hutch smirked, and was about to remark on just exactly how Starsky’s logic compared to the rest of the population’s when Dobey banged out of his office, yelling for Starsky and Hutch to get in there already, which caused Starsky to overbalance in his chair and land — hard — on his ass. Hutch laughed at him, Starsky complained about the bruise for the rest of the morning, and Dobey acted like he’d had it up to here with the both of them.

And the pig stayed.

***

As time passed, the pig grew heavier. The idle nickel and dime deposits they both continued to make added up to a considerable heft, though they couldn’t have contributed much to the overall value.

But then, bad things kept happening. The most unlucky things imaginable. And every time they did, more greenery seemed to disappear into the pig.

One late night at Metro, while he and Starsky were finishing up some of the paperwork on the Grossman case, Hutch put down his pen and dragged the pig over. He stared at it, contemplating.

Starsky looked up from his own paper. “Hey…” His voice was low, despite the lack of anyone else that could overhear. “You wanna…?”

Hutch shook his head. He stood, shoving his chair away with the backs of his knees, and dug down into his pocket for his wallet. He unfolded it, the worn leather flopping open in his hand, and removed all of the bills it contained.

A few tens. Couple of fives. Ones to make up the rest. Halfway to payday.

He gazed at the green in his palm, feeling the faint, dry crisp of the paper fanned out over his skin. Then he watched, with a certain detached fascination, as his hand curled in on itself, fingers wrapping down and over and around the green until he ended up with a fist full of crushed paper. An unexpected rush of copper and salt covered his tongue, and Hutch realized he’d bitten his lip hard enough to bleed. He vaguely wondered how that had happened.

Abruptly, Starsky was there at his side, bumping up against his arm. He hadn’t heard him stand up, but there he was, rooting around in his own pocket for his wallet. Starsky finally drew it out and opened it, looking for a moment at the contents before he, too, took out everything that was in it.

Hutch’s throat clenched up. “Hey, do-” His voice failed him, and he swallowed, trying to make the lump disappear. “You don’t…” But Hutch didn’t know what he wanted to say. He blinked hard.

Starsky seemed to understand, anyway. “I know.” He folded up his money, and slid the thin wad into the slot. It made a dull thwap as it hit the pile at the bottom. Starsky’s hand came up around Hutch’s shoulders, but he stayed silent, communicating only with a gentle thumb that rubbed at the side of Hutch’s neck.

Hutch’s hands shook as he dropped in his bundle. The quiet voice at his right said, “Let’s go home. Can finish this tomorrow.”

So they did.

***

When Starsky got kidnapped, Hutch had a moment after visiting the cult’s whackjobs in hopes of a lead, after going out to the farm for more information and nearly getting killed, after the frustrating multiple interrogations of Simon Marcus — just one, lone moment — during which he gave up. Flat out gave up, and didn’t think he’d ever see Starsky again.

It was late, and the squad room was deserted. Dobey was still in his office, but the door was shut, and Hutch was, for the time being, alone.

He paced back and forth beside their desk, lost in anxious thought. Absently, he retrieved a dime from his pocket and fed it to the pig, then went back to pacing, his eyes flickering over the chair that shouldn’t have been empty, but was. His focus narrowed then, and he stopped, turning to look back at the pig.

That silly, stupid plastic pig with its forever grin and bright red overalls.

In that instant, he hated it and everything it stood for. What was the use in having a joint policy, if the other person wasn’t going to be around to share it?

Damn it, Starsk, it’s not supposed to-

Angrily, he swept it off the table.

The pig hit Dobey’s door with a loud thunk, then fell to the floor, spraying coins everywhere from the hole in the bottom where the stopper had come dislodged from the blow.

Hutch stared at the field of copper and silver scattered across Metro’s floor.

Gotta clean it up, gotta fix… can’t leave… I can’t…

His legs lost their strength under him, and Hutch sat, straight down, in the middle of the mess. His hands came up, covering his eyes, and small flares of color quickly flamed into life on the red dark where his fingers pressed in against his eyelids. For a moment, it blocked out the rest of the world.

He heard Dobey’s door swing open and slam into the file cabinet next to it, announcing the Captain’s presence with a loud bang. Hutch prepared himself for a round of the usual shouting – eyes still pressed shut, his own breath warming his face behind his hands – but the shouting never came. Instead, slow steps trudged over the money-covered floor, accompanied by the occasional metallic ping of coins being kicked against each other.

The colors behind his eyelids had begun to rearrange themselves into psychedelic checkerboards when a heavy hand came down on his shoulder. “Son, we’ll find him. We will. You have to have faith.”

Hutch dropped his hands to his lap, but didn’t look up.

Dobey sighed, then the hand lifted from his shoulder. Hutch expected Dobey to leave, so he was surprised when, with a hearty ‘oof’, Dobey joined him on the floor.

“Listen, Hutch. You give up now, Simon Marcus wins. That what you want?”

“Captain…”

“No, you listen to me! After everything you and Dave have done to take him down, giving up now lets him win. Do you want that to happen?”

Hutch scrubbed a tired hand across his face. “No. But Captain-”

Dobey cut him off. “You think Starsky wants that to happen either?”

“You know he doesn’t.”

“Good, I was just making sure we both did. Now, let’s get this cleaned up.”

He rose to a kneel, and Hutch quickly got to his feet to offer him a hand up. “I called Huggy Bear to come down, maybe he can give us some help.”

Hutch looked at him, surprised.

Dobey leaned down to brush the dirt off of his knees, avoiding Hutch’s eyes. “I know the value of a good snitch every now and again.” He straightened, finally meeting Hutch’s gaze. “But don’t you go thinking this means that I approve of the way you two treat him! Just because he has information doesn’t mean he gets to ignore the law.”

Hutch suppressed a small smile. “Quite right, Captain. I’ll tell him you said that.”

Dobey went back to his office with a last harrumph, and Hutch left to go find a broom.

By the time Hutch and the others figured out about the zoo and he left to go find Starsky, the pig had been refilled with everything he’d lost — plus interest, from when Dobey and Huggy dropped in quarters without really knowing why. All they knew was that every time Hutch looked ready to hit the wall, his muscles tensed, wound up and radiating all the aggravation and frustration of being unable to do anything, he instead would drop his arm, take a few deep breaths, and stalk out of the room to go feed more money into the pig. They’d hear him out in the squad room, dropping in a coin – or more, depending on how upset he was – with the dull chink of metal on metal as each piece fell in, one by one. Afterwards, there’d be silence for a minute, and then he’d come back, and his fists wouldn’t be clenched up quite so tightly as they’d been when he left – so Huggy and Dobey figured it was doing something good, even if they weren’t sure just what that something good happened to be.

During a short break when Hutch was out of the office and down the hall, retrieving yet another book from Records, they added their own silver, and hoped the talisman — whatever it meant, whatever it stood for – would work.

And Hutch got Starsky back.

***

Some months later, Hutch and his car took a tumble down a mountainside. After he was finally sprung from the hospital, Starsky took Hutch down to Metro — chauffeuring him in his new old car, complaining all the while – to visit the guys at the station.

After they made their slow, careful way up to the squad room, Hutch’s progress aided by a crutch under one arm and Starsky under the other, Starsky helped ease Hutch down into his chair, then hurried around the desk to grab his own chair from the other side and hauled it over so Hutch could prop up his leg.

Before he could speak again, a flurry of activity commenced, during which it seemed that everyone Hutch knew — and even some people he didn’t — came by to wish him well, rib him about the time off from work, and sign his cast. Starsky sat hoisted on the corner of their desk, positioned away from the center of the action. He still joined in all the jokes and the laughter, but seemed slightly distant, removed from the attention directed at Hutch.

Every once in a while, Hutch would glance back over his shoulder to see Starsky watching him. He’d catch Starsky’s eye, and Starsky would blink, then smile back, and Hutch would turn back to the next well-wishing visitor. Something tweaked at his brain, both in regard to Starsky’s behavior and to something else he couldn’t pin down — something small – but as much as he chewed at it, the answers eluded him. The thought was so insignificant that Hutch finally wrote it off as reacclimating to the station and to Starsky, after so much time away from both. He kept greeting his friends, and Starsky kept watching him, and Hutch figured that was just how things were going to be.

From his sideline position, Starsky somehow managed to keep all of the officers moving along so that Hutch could see everybody before his leg would, inevitably, start to hurt and send him home with the pain. After everyone had made their way by to visit Hutch and he was ready to go, Starsky helped him out of his chair, ready with a sturdy shoulder and his crutches for the short-but-felt-much-longer limp back to the car. Hutch looked around the office one more time before he left, then tapped his hand on Starsky’s shoulder, indicating he wanted to stop. He’d finally put a finger on what had been niggling at him since he came into the squad room.

“Starsk, where’s the pig?”

The muscles in Starsky’s back tightened under his arm, but Starsky just smiled when he turned to look at Hutch.

“He’s at home. Had ta give him a bath.” He leaned in closer to Hutch’s neck and sniffed loudly, making a show of wrinkling his nose. “Speaking of which, so should you. C’mon, let’s get you back.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Dirtball. I’ll have you know I showered this morning,” Hutch loftily replied, turning his own nose up at Starsky.

Starsky muttered something under his breath about how a sponge bath and a splash of cologne didn’t count, and Hutch muttered back that it had never stopped Starsky before, and they continued bickering, distracting Hutch from his question, as they made their limping way outside and back to his new car.

Then Hutch shut up. His eyes found Starsky’s, and Starsky gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. And that was the end of it.

When Hutch finally came back to work, the pig was back, too — albeit much lighter than before. Neither of them mentioned it.

And the saving started again.

***

Starsky called Hutch from the hospital one afternoon, briefly interrupting him from working on some of the more legalese-heavy parts of the Gunther case documentation. He was happy for the disturbance.

“Hey, when you come by…can you bring the pig?” Starsky’s voice was low and airy over the line, still weak from the trauma to his lungs.

“Well, sure, buddy. What for?” Hutch leaned back in his chair and tapped his pen against the pig’s plastic foot, mildly puzzled by the request.

“Tell ya later.” Starsky hung up.

Hutch replaced the receiver and sighed, wishing he could have talked longer to Starsky. Then he dove back into the pile of paperwork, and any questions he had about the pig were pushed out of his head before ten minutes had passed.

—

“Give it here.” Starsky reached for the pig.

“You sure?” Hutch’s voice was quiet.

“‘S okay. Had some meds an hour ago. ‘M not loopy, but it doesn’t hurt so bad.” He stretched an arm out over the side of the bed — not far, but far enough — only slightly wincing at the movement.

Hutch half-rose from his seat to hand it over, fingertips brushing Starsky’s in the passing. He sat back down, and brought his booted foot up to cross over his other knee, folding his hands in his lap.

Starsky turned the pig over in his hands, bit by bit, checking every angle. He looked like he was searching for something, like he expected — or maybe wanted — to find something suddenly new in it after all the years that had passed. That there might be some fundamental difference in the pigness of it that he’d somehow missed in the time between, a singular place that he could mark, could point to and say, “This is when it changed.”

But, of course, there wasn’t. It was the same piece of dyed, molded plastic it had always been — fairly lightweight once again, since it hadn’t gained back much of what they’d liberated it of during their brief jobless stint. Starsky stared into its wide, cartoon eyes, and then, with a sigh that sounded somehow final, set it down in his lap, turning to Hutch.

“Wanna cash it in, Hutch.”

It took Hutch a moment to realize what he meant. He sat up, dropping his foot to the floor to lean closer to the bed, and unconsciously repeated his earlier words, their significance now altered.

“You sure, partner?”

“All the way.” Starsky’s voice was firm, and his eyes gleamed bright against the dim of the room. The look was oddly familiar, and Hutch had the fleeting sensation of being two places at once — almost like the universe had doubled over on itself, matching certain lines here, crossing other planes there, so that even though things appeared the same as they’d always been, somehow…everything had shifted. Had taken just one small step to the left in the cosmic order of things.

It made all the difference that mattered.

Then Hutch shook his head, and the feeling faded somewhere into the sub of himself.

“There’s not much to go on…” he offered, wanting to be certain.

“Never did need much.” Starsky shrugged. “You with me on this?”

Hutch reached his hand up and placed it over Starsky’s on the hospital bed, running his thumb over the back of Starsky’s wrist as he’d done so many times before. Just as he’d probably keep doing until time stopped.

“All the way.”

And Hutch smiled.