Table of Contents
Part One: A glimpse into the life of David Michael Starsky as told from his POV.
Part Two: A glimpse into the life of Kenneth Hutchinson as told from his POV.
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Part One
Part One: A glimpse into the life of David Michael Starsky as told from his POV.
Prologue
My name is David Michael Starsky. And today is my thirty-eighth birthday. A few months ago, there was some question as to if I would even be around to see this particular birthday. A few months ago, I was laying in hospital bed more dead than alive, my body torn apart by three bullets to my chest and my abdomen. According to my doctors, it’s a miracle that I’m still alive. They can’t explain it and neither can I. I guess god decided he had something else in mind for me. Not that I’m complaining. I’m grateful to be alive and to be able to share this day with my friends and my family.
I’ve been a police officer with the Bay City Police Department for almost fifteen years. For thirteen of those years, I’ve been a Detective First class working undercover. That’s why I was shot. In a few months, a medical review board will decide if I can go back to the job that I both love and hate. Until then, I’m still recovering from my injuries and receiving disability payments from the department.
Being a cop is a big part of who I am. It defines me as a person and gives me a sense of fulfillment that I have never been able to find anywhere else in my life. And I’m good at it. I’m damn good at it. My partner, Hutch and I are the best team in the department or at least we used to be until I was shot. I just hope that I will have the chance to be that person again.
Being a cop gets into your blood. And me, I’ve always lived on the edge. So living with the danger that goes along with the badge just feeds that addiction. But to me, being a cop also means caring about people and wanting to help make their lives better, to protect the victims and to make the bad guys pay for what they have done. I’d like to be able to say that things work out the way they should but the truth is that isn’t always the case. Sometimes it seems like the system protects the bad guys more than it does the victims which makes my job more difficult. Sometimes I think I’m crazy to do the things I do day after day but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’ve never been the kind of guy who analyzes things or thinks a lot about cause and effect, that’s more Hutch’s style than mine. But after coming so close to death the way I did after I got shot, it does change your outlook on things. It changes you. It changes who you are, what you want out of life, even how you view the world around you. Things that used to drive me crazy or make me madder than hell don’t seem to bother me that much anymore. I’m more grateful for the things I do have. My friends, my family, my home, but most of all my life.
I guess we all want to leave something behind when we go something for people to remember us by. I guess for most people that would be their children but that’s one blessing I don’t think I will ever have the joy of knowing. Not when I’m thirty-eight and still single. I’m pretty much set in my ways and on my way to being a confirmed bachelor for life. Not that I haven’t come close to settling down a time or two but something always seemed to happen that kept those relationships from becoming permanent ones. I know that my work as a cop will leave behind a legacy in the department but I doubt if anyone will remember my name fifty years from now.
So as I sit here tonight, alone, drinking a beer, I decided that I would write down my most precious memories and share them with you. Maybe when I’m done, you’ll all have a better understanding of just who David Michael Starsky is and the influences in my life that have made me the man that I am today.
POP
I was born in New York City, Brooklyn to be exact, the oldest son of Michael David and Rachel Starsky. I have one younger brother, Nicky, who is six years younger than me. We lived in a modest three-bedroom frame house where my mother still lives today.
My father was a cop and I proud of him. I can remember sitting on the front stoop waiting for him to come home when he worked the day shift and feeling a burst of pride when I saw him in his uniform. We go inside and after he had changed, he’d tell me all about his day. I realize now that there were a lot of things he didn’t tell me but the things he did tell me sure sounded exciting to an impressionable five-year-old. I loved my dad and I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. I guess my becoming a cop had a lot to do with those stories I heard during my formative years. It was a way for me to honor my father’s memory.
My dad was of polish descent and my mother was Italian which explains my olive complexion and blue eyes. We were also Jewish. Even though I don’t consciously practice my religion today, I was raised in the Jewish faith. In a mixture of cultures, today I celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. When I was a kid, I don’t remember anyone treating me any differently just because I was Jewish. That didn’t happen until I was an adult. Everyone tells me that I favor Pop more than I do Ma. I’ve got pictures of him and there is a strong resemblance so I guess they are right.
Pop was the one who did the whipping in our house. He’d take me down the basement and take off his belt. That’s when I knew that I was in for it. I didn’t get punished that often but I did get into my share of trouble. When I was a kid the neighborhood I lived in wasn’t all that bad, not as bad as it got as I got older. Now, Ma didn’t leave all the punishment to pop. She’d swat me on the backside with her hand if I smarted off to her. I learned not to do that too often.
Between Ma and Pop, they both came from big families, so I had a lot of aunts and uncles who had kids my age, so I had plenty of cousins to play with when I was growing up. My Pop’s mother, my Nana Mary, lived about an Italian restaurant not far from our house and I used to spend a lot of time there when I was little. She always had a special treat for us to share when I came to visit. I used to go there after school everyday and stay until suppertime. She’d tell me stories about the old country and about my dad when he was my age. She spoke in a combination of broken English and Yiddish and I loved her dearly. I was heartbroken when she died just after I turned nine-years-old. I wear a silver ring on my left pinky finger that used to belong to her along with a gold ring that belonged to my Pop.
Because there was a six-year-age difference between me and Nicky, I was able to do more things with my Pop than Nicky could. I still remember Pop taking me to Coney Island, to the movies on Saturday afternoons and even to the police station with him sometimes. I used to love to go there with him. All his cop buddies would tell me what a great guy he was and tease me about looking just like him. He’d laugh and sit me on his desk with his hat on my head. It was so big that it would fall down over my eyes but I felt good knowing that Pop was proud of me.
Pop used to help me with my school work every night after supper. Now I’ll be the first one to admit that I never did care much for school but Pop had a way of explaining things to me so that I could understand them better. He always told me that it didn’t matter what kind of grades I got as long as I did my best that was all he asked for. And I tried my best. I really did but school was never easy for me. I always learned things better when somebody showed me how to do it instead of expecting me to learn it by reading a book. But I loved playing sports. Football, basketball, baseball. I even ran track for a while in high school. I’d always been highly competitive and when I played, I played to win.
Ma and Pa always tried to make birthdays and holidays special days in our house. We celebrated all the traditional Jewish holidays and even though Pop didn’t make a whole lot of money, he always made sure that me and Nicky had what we needed and tried to get us something really special for our birthdays. The house would be filled with delicious aromas as my Ma cooked all Pop’s favorite dishes along with the more traditional Jewish dishes. It was a good life. At least until I was twelve. That’s when my world as I knew it changed forever.
I’d been at Nana Mary’s and was on my way home. When I turned onto my street, I saw the crowd of people and the police cars. Instantly I knew that something was drastically wrong. I started running towards my house and that’s when I saw Ma standing in the middle of the street with Nicky in her arms. I could tell that she was crying. I didn’t know why until I ran up beside her and saw them loading my Pop’s body on a stretcher.
His face was so white and the front of his uniform was soaked with blood. The pavement at my feet was stained with his blood where he had been gunned down. I did my best not to cry but didn’t have much luck. That was my Pop who was hurt. When they put him in the ambulance and drove away without turning on the siren or speeding, I knew that he was gone. My Pop was dead and I was numb.
I shut down and pushed my feelings of grief and pain deep inside of me, refusing to let anyone know how devastated I really was. Ma was just as devastated as I was, her own grief turning her inside out. Luckily, Nicky was too young to really realize what was going on so he was spared the intensity of the grief that Ma and I both felt. All I knew was that someone had gunned down my Pop right in front of our house and taken him away from us forever. It wasn’t until I was older that I heard the rumors that it had been a mob hit because Pop was getting too close to busting up one of their operations. There were also rumors that Pop was on the take and that he got greedy but I knew my Pop. I knew he would never do anything like that. He had too much integrity to take the mob’s blood money.
I don’t remember much about the funeral. I remember all the other cops in full uniform and the twenty-one gun salute at his gravesite but I don’t remember much more than that. Except my Ma crying softly the entire time. I heard her crying at night too behind the closed door to her bedroom. That was the only time I cried. When I was safely locked in my bedroom away from prying eyes. My grief was slowly being replaced by a deep rage that I didn’t know how to control, rage at the men who had killed my Pop at the age of thirty-six. My Ma was so wrapped up in her own grief and pain that she didn’t see what was happening with me.
It was just after Pop’s murder that one of the local Mob bosses started coming by the house. He even helped pay for Pop’s funeral. To me, he was Uncle Tony. A friend of the family that I had known my entire life. I didn’t know at the time that he was connected with the mob. It wouldn’t be until I was an adult that I learned his side of the story when it came to his involvement with my family, especially after Pop’s murder. They never did find out who was responsible for my Pop’s murder and it remains unsolved to this day.
Losing Pop the way I did at such a young age set in motion a chain of events that would change my life forever. And although it didn’t feel like it at the time, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me.
MA
My Ma always was a special lady. She had to be to put up with the things she’s had to contend with in her life. Widowed at thirty-four and left alone with two young sons to raise on her own. It was rough. That’s why even today I send her money each month to help her out. And I call her every Friday night just to talk to her. I know that she loves me. Everything she did when I was younger; she did out of love and in my own best interest, even though I didn’t see it that way at the time.
Ma was the one who made our house a home. She never worked outside of the house until after Pop was killed. So when we were little, she was always there when I got home from school or from Nana Mary’s house. I could always count on a glass of milk and a plate of freshly baked cookies waiting for me.
Rachel Starsky devoted her life to her husband and to her children. She was strict and so was pop. They taught me and Nicky respect for our elders and to mind our manners from the time we could walk. I knew that she worried about us getting into trouble when we got older and getting messed up with one of the local gangs. She tried her best to make sure that didn’t happen but with me that was a lesson that took some drastic measures to prevent.
Ma was the one who set most of the rules for me and Nicky. Where we could go. Who we could hang out with. What time we had to be home. And for the most part I followed them. Because I was the oldest, I was expected to set an example for my younger brother and to be more responsible. I had to watch him if Ma had to go to the store or if her and Pop had one of their rare nights out.
Sometimes I got jealous of Nicky. It seemed like he got more attention because he was the youngest. I knew that I was Pop’s favorite but I often felt that Nicky was Ma’s favorite. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that Ma sometimes favored Nicky more because she almost died having him. The doctors told her she could never have any more children after that. She’d suffered four miscarriages after I was born and came close to losing Nicky more than once during her pregnancy. She had always wanted a big family and a lot of kids but she had to settle for just the two of us.
Ma was the one who was more strict about observing our faith than Pop was. She was the one who taught us the prayers and the traditions that went along with being Jewish. She was the one who took us to Temple on the holy days. She was the one who taught me to be proud of my heritage. She taught me to be proud of myself. And even though I don’t practice my faith today the way Ma would like me to, I still know what I am. I am Jewish and I am proud of it.
Ma never had much and she sacrificed a lot for her family. But that was just her way. In Ma’s eyes, her family came first. She taught me that loyalty to the family was the most important thing. Everything that Ma did, both before and after my Pop died, she did for her family. Ma’s three older brothers lived in Florida and her sister lived in California so she didn’t get to see them too often but they stayed in touch through letters and phone calls.
Ma was the one who made sure me and Nicky got to bed on time and then tucked us in and read us a bedtime story. She was the one who got us up in the mornings and made sure we had a big breakfast before we went to school. In our home, comfort food was the answer to everything from a scraped knee to a broken heart. Ma was a fantastic cook and I’ve yet to meet anyone who can cook my favorite foods the way she can. Although, my Aunt Rosie comes awful close. She’s a great cook too and she knows all my favorite foods. She’s also used to my weird eating habits. I can be satisfied with Root beer and cold pizza for breakfast. ( A habit that drives Ma totally insane.)
Ma is always on my case about settling down with some nice Jewish girl and starting a family. I know she’d like to be a grandma but I think she’s starting to accept the fact that if that’s going to happen, it’s going to have to be Nicky who gives her the grandchildren. She understands even better than anyone how my job makes it hard to hold on to a relationship. It takes a pretty special lady to put up with being involved with a cop. That’s why the divorce rate is so high among police officers. Our commitment and our marriage is to the job. It always comes first.
Ma was proud of me when I decided to become a cop but I knew that she was terrified too. She had already lost her husband to the job. She didn’t want to lose me the same way. And she’s come close to having that happen quite a few times but never as close as this last time. She came out to California after the shooting and stayed for almost six weeks to help take care of me after I got out of the hospital. I have to admit that even though I was an adult, it still felt good to have mom there helping to care for me. I don’t think I’d be doing nearly as good as I am right now if it hadn’t been for Ma and Hutch being there for me. They babied me, pampered me and gave me plenty of TLC. And I needed that just to survive and to be able to regain some control over my life again.
People look at my mom and see a nice, attractive lady but I’m here to tell you that she also has a backbone of pure steel and you don’t want to cross her. She has a temper and a sharp tongue that can cut you to ribbons in a heartbeat. Pop had a bad temper too and so I guess I come by my own temper naturally. I tend to act first and think about the consequences later. That tends to get me into trouble sometimes but that’s just the way I am. And Hutch is always telling me that I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. That tends to get me into trouble a lot too but Ma taught me not to let anyone push me around and I don’t.
I can remember when I was ten-years-old and was having trouble with the neighborhood bully after school. When Ma found out, she went after the bully herself and then paid a little visit to his folks. I never had trouble with him again after that. Ma could be like a mama lioness protecting her cubs when it came to me and Nicky. It was just another way of expressing her love for her family. My Aunt Rosie is pretty much the same way.
When Ma lost Pop, she lost a big part of herself. They had been together since she was fifteen and she had built her life around Michael Starsky and their life together. She has never remarried or even gone out with another man since he died. He was her one true love and she has preserved his memory for herself and for his sons. It wasn’t easy for her after he died but she survived. And she did what she had to do to make sure that his sons survived too.
I guess you could say that my relationship with Ma is extremely close and yet complicated at the same time. It helped to shape me into the man I am today and gave me a firm set of values and beliefs to fall back on. She installed in me from an early age a sense of responsibility, a respect for myself and my family, pride in my heritage, and a zest for life. She gave me the foundation on which I have built my life and all of the things I have accomplished in my life, I owe to her and to her love. I am my mother’s son and I’m proud of it.
DISPLACED ANGER
After pop died, I became a very angry child filled with a rage that I didn’t know how to control. And Ma had her hands full trying to control me. I became disrespectful and withdrawn, a kid just looking for trouble. I kept my pain and my fear locked away deep inside of me where nobody could touch it. I started to resent everything and everybody in my life. And I started hanging out with a bad crowd of kids, worrying Ma to death.
My grades dropped drastically and I started cutting school to hang out on the streets with my new friends. When Ma tried to rein me in, I would explode and just walk out of the house. I didn’t care about anybody but myself. Overnight, I turned into a totally different kid. Twelve is a hard age for any boy but it’s even worse when you’re hurting the way I was. I wanted to strike out. I wanted to make everyone around me as miserable as I was. And I pretty much succeeded in doing that and came so close to ruining my own life in the process.
I’m not proud of it but I became involved with a local street gang. I learned how to do a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been learning how to do at that age. I learned how to hotwire a car, I learned how to shoplift, I learned how to smoke and I learned that the girls all seemed to like what I had to offer. I learned all about life on the mean streets of Brooklyn and I learned to adapt to it.
In one way I was pretty lucky. Most of the cops in the area knew me because they had known my Pop. So they tended to look the other way when I got into trouble. They’d just take me home to Ma instead of taking me to Juvie like they should have. Their intentions were good but it was the wrong thing to do. I just kept doing what I was doing because I knew I wouldn’t have to suffer the same consequences the other kids did if they were caught. I was on the fast track to hell and I didn’t care.
Ma tried everything she could think of to keep me in line. If she’d ground me, I’d just sneak out the first chance I got. I knew how to get money if I needed it so taking away my allowance wasn’t an option. Even a whipping didn’t do much good. I’d just stand there and take it, then go right back out on the streets. Yeah, Ma had her hands full with me all right. I stopped doing my chores, I only went to school when I had to, and I talked back to Ma all the time. I thought my new friends were the greatest and that being part of the local gang was cool. A bad attitude for a kid as angry as I was.
Ma put up with my behavior for as long as she could then something happened that made her decide to take drastic measures to save me from my self-destructive behavior. The day had started out just like any other day. I got up and cut school, meeting some of my friends at the local arcade. We spent a couple of hours just hanging out, showing off to each other and flirting with girls. Then one of the guys, Billy, decided to head over to another street corner when a rival gang hung out. We all knew it wasn’t a good idea to trespass on another gang’s territory but none of us thought much about it at the time. We were just kids and didn’t think about getting into any trouble with the other gang members. Things were okay at first until Billy started mouthing off to one of the other gang members and called him some very unfriendly names. Next thing I knew, one of the other kids had pulled a knife and stabbed Billy three times in the chest. Everybody took off running when he fell to the ground, his blood seeping out onto the sidewalk. Everybody but me. I just stood there, staring at him and remembering the day that Pop died. Billy was thirteen years old, just a few months older than me at the time.
I guess I kinda went into shock seeing Billy die like that right in front of me. I don’t remember the cops showing up or trying to ask me questions about what had happened. I don’t know how I got back home. I found out later one of the cops knew my dad and he was the one who ended up taking me home and telling Ma what had happened. I shut myself in my room and refused to come out or talk to anybody for three days. While I was shutting myself away from the world, Ma was on the phone with her sister, Rosie, in California making plans for my future.
Ma decided that the only way to save me from myself was to get me away from the streets that I called home and the local gang members that I considered my friends. Even if that meant sending me three thousand miles away to live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al in California. I wasn’t given any choice in the matter. The decisions and the plans were made without me knowing anything about it.
I can still remember when Ma finally came into my room four days after Billy was killed and told me that I was going to go and live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al out in California for a while. I can remember screaming at her, threatening to run away if she tried to send me away and feeling so lost and alone at that moment. I felt abandoned and hopeless, as if Ma had stopped loving me and no longer wanted me around. I was so wrapped up in my own anger that I didn’t see the tears on her face as she tried to explain that she was doing this for my own good. I sure didn’t see it that way at the time. All I knew was that I was being sent away from my family and the only home I had ever known to live with an aunt and Uncle that were literally strangers to me.
Ma always told me that I was as stubborn as a mule when I wanted to be and her decision to send me away just made me that much madder at the world in general. I shoved all of my other emotions deep inside of me so I wouldn’t have to deal with them and started building a wall around myself that would become almost impossible for anyone to penetrate. In less than a year since Pop’s murder, my life as I knew it had ended.
My aunt and Uncle drove to New York from California to pick me up and take me home with them. I guess Ma was afraid to send me out there on a bus by myself and that was probably a wise decision. I would probably have disappeared into the streets of another city along the way long before I ever got there. I made everybody’s life miserable in the meantime. I refused to talk to Ma. I told her she didn’t love me anymore or she wouldn’t send me away. And I refused to talk to Aunt Rosie or Uncle Al when they finally showed up to take home with them to a place I had only read about in books. I hated everybody, myself included. At that time, I had no way of knowing that my life was about to change again in ways that I never expected it to.
AUNT ROSIE AND UNCLE AL
I turned thirteen just a couple of weeks after I moved to California. Talk about culture shock. Everything was different than what I was used to. The weather was something it didn’t take me long to get used to though. I hated winter time in New York. It seemed amazing to live somewhere where it never snowed. Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al lived in a three-bedroom ranch style house in a middle class neighborhood that seemed downright boring to me. I missed my friends, I missed Ma, and I missed my old life. Heck, I even missed Nicky even though I hadn’t spent a lot of time with him since pop died.
Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al went out of their way to make me feel welcome but I fought them every step of the way. They were both a lot older than Ma and Pop and had already raised two sons that were both in College by the time I arrived. It didn’t take me long to discover that Uncle Al lived by the motto ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ and it didn’t take me long to be re-acquainted with the belt. I also got my mouth washed out more than once with soap when I used some of the language I used with my friends back home.
I know there are a lot of people now days who don’t believe in whipping their kids, especially with a belt, but that was the way kids were disciplined back then and it didn’t hurt me none in the long run. The most whacks I ever got at one time was six and that was when I was fifteen and got caught drinking and driving. (I also ran Aunt Rosie’s car into the side of the garage)
I wish I could tell you that I straightened up when I came to California but that would be a lie. I was still too full of anger and now I felt abandoned by Ma on top of everything else. So Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al had their hands full too. But there were two of them and they were better equipped to handle me than Ma was. But I still seemed to be pretty adapt at seeking out the other kids like me to hang out with and started getting in trouble again.
And I absolutely hated school. Because I had cut so much school back home, I was way behind the rest of my classmates, which made it harder for me to keep up with the work. Plus, I was singled out for ridicule because of my heavy Brooklyn accent and the chip on my shoulder. So fights at school became pretty common. I wasn’t very big for my age but I fought dirty and I could hold my own with the best of them. It was in school that I also first encountered scorn and prejudice because I was Jewish. That just gave me another reason to fight.
It was at Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Al’s that I celebrated Christmas for the first time. Rosie was raised Jewish and Uncle Al was raised Catholic. So when they got married, Aunt Rosie converted and became a Gentile which meant they celebrated Christmas instead of Hanukkah. To this day, as an adult, I still celebrate both holidays.
Since Aunt Rosie was no longer practicing Judaism, that’s where I started to slip away from the teaching of my faith, although I hadn’t gone to temple since pop died. Since I’ve gotten older I have resumed some of the teachings, such as observing Hanukkah and some of the other holy days, even though I still don’t go to Temple.
When I was fourteen, I got into trouble with another kid for getting caught riding around in a stolen car. I didn’t steal it, he did but I was still with him when he got caught.
And the cops here weren’t as understanding or sympathetic as they were back home. Out here, I wasn’t Michael Starsky’s kid, little Davy Starsky. I was just another snot nosed little punk with a bad attitude. But I lucked out again. Somebody must have been watching out for me. Since it was my first offense (at least the first one I had gotten caught at that could have earned me some hard time in Juvie) I was basically released to Uncle Al and Aunt Rose with a stern warning to stay out of trouble.
That’s when I met John Blaine. He was a man who became very important in my life and helped to shape the rest of my future without even realizing it at the time. John Blaine was a cop, an ordinary beat cop at the time. He took a special interest in kids like me; kids he could sense were worth saving for some reason. He was a close friend of Uncle Al, so he knew my history and knew how I had come to live with them. He started spending a lot of time with me, acting as a combination big brother and surrogate father.
One of the things he helped me to do was catch up with the rest of my classmates in school by tutoring me in the evenings and on the weekends. I still didn’t care much for school but at least I could keep up with the work now.
Somehow, we just seemed to click. Slowly, brick by brick, he chipped his way through that wall I had built around myself and helped me to find better, more constructive ways to deal with my anger. We spent a lot of time together and I started to trust him more and more. And as I started to trust him and turn to him for advice and guidance, my attitude improved and everyone else around me started to notice a difference in my behavior. It didn’t happen overnight by any means. I still got into a lot of fights, especially when anyone called me names or riled me up about something, but I was learning to control my more violent tendencies and outbursts. Maybe I was just starting to grow up. But if it hadn’t been for John Blaine, I do believe that my life would have turned out differently. I would probably have ended up just like the hardened criminals that make my job so difficult.
John had a real passion about his job just like my Pop had and I loved to sit and listen to his stories about his life on the streets. It comforted me and reminded me so much of the times I sat and did the same thing with Pop. Of course, now that I was older, John filled in his stories with a lot more details than Pop ever did. Needless to say that made them a lot more interesting to me.
I wanted to drop out of school as soon as I turned sixteen but John talked me out of it and encouraged me to graduate. He stressed the importance of a diploma and although I didn’t see it at the time, I did stay in school simply because he wanted me to. He also helped me to get a part time job after school and on the weekends working for a friend of his that owned a garage so I learned a lot about cars, something that has come in handy the older I got. I saved up my money and bought my first car when I was seventeen. It wasn’t much; just a twenty-year-old piece of junk but it got me from one place to another most of the time.
By this time I had discovered girls in a big way and was having the time of my life. John was the one who counseled me on the finer points of ‘safe sex’ I’m not really sure who was more embarrassed by that particular conversation, me or him but I followed his advice religiously and never found myself in an unwanted situation like so many of my friends did at that age. I sure wasn’t ready to be a daddy at seventeen. I didn’t even want to be tied down to just one girl at that age. Still don’t as a matter of fact, not anymore anyway.
John and I remained close friends throughout the years. The biggest shock of my life came when he was murdered and the news leaked out that he was gay. I couldn’t believe it. I was angry and hurt, not because he was gay. I didn’t care about that. I was angry and hurt because he never trusted me enough to tell me the truth. I know he felt he was doing the right thing by not telling me but I still wish that he had. It would have made it easier than finding out the way I did.
John was there along with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al the night I graduated from High School. Ma and Nicky were there too. Everyone told me how proud they were of me and how I had turned my life around. Ma cried when I gave her a big hug and told her how much I loved her. For several months after she sent me to California, I refused to even talk to her but slowly, I began to understand why she had done what she had done. I know now that was the hardest decision she had to make in her life and one that she regretted even though she knew it was for the best in the long run. For the last couple of years I’ve been trying to talk Ma into moving out here to be close to me but she continues to refuse. She still lives in the same house and the same neighborhood and intends to stay there until she dies.
To me graduation meant freedom to work full time at the garage and to decide what I wanted to do with rest of my life. Little did I know that another major lifestyle change was about to take place. One that would once more change my life forever in ways I had never expected. Two months after I graduated, I got my draft notice.
HELLO VIET NAM
Viet Nam that’s where I was going to be shipped as soon as I finished basic training. And deep inside, I was terrified but I was determined not to let anyone else know just how scared I really was. Most of the other guys I was in basic training with were being shipped there too. And we all knew that some of us wouldn’t be coming back home again except in a pine box.
I was only a few months short of my nineteenth birthday and I still felt like the kid that I was inside. But I was supposed to be an adult now, capable of taking care of myself but all I really wanted to do was run back home and let Aunt Rosie of Ma take care of me for just a little while longer.
I knew that I would end on the front lines. I had qualified as the best sharpshooter in my unit. Somehow using a gun just seemed to come naturally to me. I scored high in anything that had to do with physical activity. Basic training sucked but I adapted and learned to follow orders just like a good little solider should. The rigid routine and discipline helped to curb the lingering anger that still hung over me and gave me a way to channel it in more constructive ways… But I knew that the real test would come when I got to Viet Nam.
I don’t think about or talk about my time over there very much. The memories are too painful and I’ve pushed them deep inside of my mind behind a closed door that I keep securely locked. But the things I saw over there, the things I did, and the things that happened to me have all shaped the destiny that I now follow. So, to get a clear picture of who I am today, I have to share some of those experiences with you. I have to journey back to another world and another lifetime, one that I have tried my best to forget.
I thought that I suffered culture shock when I moved from New York to Bay City, but that was nothing compared to leaving the states and ending up in Viet Nam. Everything there was totally different. The people, the customs, the food, the weather, even the insects and the other animals. You quickly learned not to trust any of the locals, not if you wanted to stay alive. Even a child or young girl could be carrying a knife or a bomb and to them, you were the enemy. You were the one who was invading their land and trying to change their way of life.
My unit was sent out into the brush less than twenty-four hours after we set foot on foreign soil. Four men didn’t come back from that first mission. One of them had been my best friend in basic training. He stepped on a hidden trip wire and was blown to pieces right in front of my eyes. I don’t think I slept at all for the first week that I was there.
A lot of us got sick when we first arrived because of the water and the strange food. But we still had to do our jobs. We didn’t have the luxury of taking time off because we were sick. And in time, our bodies adjusted but I would have sold my soul to the devil for a Big Mac and a large order of fries. If you’ve ever had K-rations then you know what I mean. I don’t see how the army could possibly call that food.
As I said before, besides sniper attacks, hidden booby traps, trip wires, bombs, mortar shells and even friendly fire, you also had to watch out for snakes and other nasty little insects and bugs that could make you deathly sick if they bit you or stung you. I got bit a few times myself and almost lost my leg to one particularly nasty snake bite. As a matter of routine, we tended to kill every snake we saw in or near our camp, even the harmless ones. And the insects carried diseases like Typhoid fever, so an insect bite could be just as dangerous. It was easy for the bites to get infected too, they itched like hell and it seemed like my arms were always bleeding where I’d scratched at my most recent bites or stings. But, after awhile you got used to it and it became a matter of routine that you learned to ignore.
And it always seemed to be wet, damp or raining over there. And the humidity was enough to take your breath away. I always seemed to have trouble breathing when I was over there, a lot of the guys in my unit did. Everybody’s feet got infected with a fungus similar to Athlete’s foot from the dampness and it never really healed, not until we left that god forsaken place.
Sleep was another luxury that you soon learned to do without much of. You learned to constantly be on alert, even when you were trying to rest. You could never really relax completely and let down your guard. Even when you were asleep, there was still a part of your mind that was listening and waiting, ready to leap into action at any minute. Most of us suffered from a certain amount of exhaustion and sleep deprivation.
Another thing you quickly learned to avoid was much contact with the local woman. You never knew what kind of disease they might have and most of them did have some kind of venereal disease. There always seemed to be a few of them hanging around camp, offering to do just about anything you could imagine for just a few dollars. I always figured that I’d rather be sexually frustrated than take a chance. I made up for it anytime I managed to get into Saigon for a few days on leave.
You grow up in a hell of a hurry when you find yourself in the middle of a war. It does something to a man living from day to day, minute to minute, knowing that you could be killed at any time. And watching your friends die around you, some of them even dying in your arms. Even after the fighting was over, I could still the screams of dying men in my head and it never seemed to go away. I became bitter and disillusioned a walking time bomb ready to explode. All I wanted to do was go home and get out of this living hell that I found myself trapped in.
I was one of the lucky ones. I survived eighteen months over there. I came home with all my limbs intact but my mind messed up pretty bad. I came home to protesters spitting on me and calling me a baby killer. I came home to people shunning me because I was a Viet Nam vet. I had nightmares and flashbacks for months. I’d close my eyes and find myself right back over there in the middle of the action. To survive without going insane, I pushed my memories of that time and that place deep inside of my mind and closed the door on them for good.
HUTCH
Like I told you before, I was pretty messed up in the head when I first got back from ‘Nam. Hell, most of us were that managed to make it back home in one piece. Today they would call it post traumatic stress but back then they didn’t have a name for the nightmares and the flashbacks we all experienced to some degree or another when we got back. I drove a taxi for a few months until I decided that what I really wanted to do was be a cop just like Pop. I applied just before my twenty-first birthday and managed to pass all the written and physical tests to qualify.
I don’t think my decision really surprised anybody. And I was looking forward to it. I eventually wanted to work undercover as a detective and I knew that someday I would achieve that goal. I had no idea when I went to the police academy that I would meet a man who would become the best friend I could ever hope for. My partner, my friend, the other half of my soul. Hutch.
Now I wasn’t too fond of Ken Hutchinson when we first got paired together as roommates at the academy. I thought he was a just a spoiled rich kid who had no idea what he was getting into. See, Hutch’s family had money and so he’d been raised with all the advantages that money could buy. He’d also gone to college for three years studying pre-med. You could just tell by looking at Hutch that he had what most folks would call ‘class’ and ‘breeding’.
It only took me a few days to realize that underneath the nice clothes and good looks, Hutch was a contradicting mess of insecurities, vulnerabilities and uncertainties. I’m not sure which one of us was the most surprised when we ended up such close friends after the initial misconceptions from our first meeting. I guess being roommates and being around each other twenty-four hours a day for six months while we were in the academy had a lot to do with it. You learn just about everything there is to know about another person under those conditions. There isn’t much else to do after lights out except to talk.
I soon found out that Hutch wasn’t that close to his family. They had high expectations for their only son and they were bitterly disappointed when he dropped out of college and decided to go to the police academy. He hadn’t even talked to them in months. From the bits and pieces he told me in those early days of our friendship, I learned that he had been raised in a cold, sterile environment without much affection or love. That was the reason he was so insecure and vulnerable. He had turned his back on everything his father held sacred to make his own way in life and to become his own man.
He was also in the middle of a nasty divorce from a woman that had married him for his family’s money and the prestige of being a Hutchinson. I only met the future ex-Mrs. Hutchinson a couple of times in those early days and she came off as a cold, unfeeling bitch. She didn’t like me and I sure didn’t like her. I found out much later that she had tricked Hutch into marrying her by getting pregnant and then aborting the baby when she found out the marriage couldn’t offer her all the things she thought it would. She really messed up his head when it came to women and relationships. Taking a close look at his relationships with women since then, Hutch just seems like the kind of guy who attracts all the crazies there are out there.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I would never have made it through the academy without Hutch’s help. School work and books had never been one of my strong points and in the Academy; we had more than our share of both. If it wasn’t for Hutch helping me with that part of the training, I would never have been able to keep my grades high enough to graduate. We soon discovered that we each had our own strengths that helped to balance out the other one’s weaknesses and we learned to use that to our advantage.
I take credit for giving Hutch his nickname. Hutchinson just seemed to be too much of a mouthful and Kenneth seemed so formal, so I’m the one who started calling him Hutch. It caught on and he’s been Hutch to his friends ever since. And he’s called me Starsky or Starsk from the beginning. So there we were, a tough streetwise guy from New York and a classy guy from Minnesota, on our way to becoming the best of friends. We vowed back then that someday we would be partners.
We each spent eighteen months as probationary officers working different beats while still in uniform. I was eligible to take the exam for detective first and I passed with flying colors. I was assigned to the Metro Division and Hutch joined me there a couple of months later. We were finally partners just like we had always planned and we became the best team in the department with the highest arrest and conviction rate of anyone. We started making a name for ourselves almost immediately and soon the most difficult and high-risk cases starting coming our way. Today, we’re considered somewhat of a legend in the department.
We were a Zebra three unit from the beginning. What that means is that even though the majority of our cases dealt with homicides, we also handled other kinds of cases too and had our own sector that we patrolled. A Zebra unit is an elite unit within the police department. And we were both proud to be known as Zebra Three.
Hutch and I have always spent most of our time together, both on and off duty. It just seemed to come naturally to us and helped to strengthen our bond even more. Even though we both have our own apartment, it isn’t unusual for one of us to end up spending the night with the other one at their place. Our friendship and our bond goes far beyond our relationship as partners on the job. We really are the best of friends and always will be. We are even closer than brothers, we are the other half of each other and sometimes it seems as if neither one of us was complete until we met. Karma and fate brought us together and it’s that same Karma and fate that has made us as close as we are. We would gladly die to protect one another and we have each made our share of sacrifices for each other. Very few people are ever lucky enough to find someone like Hutch to share their lives with. I know that if anything ever happened to him, my life as I know it would be over.
Hutch and I are so close that we share a unique form of communication, almost as if we can read each other’s minds at time. A look, a gesture, that’s all it takes for us to know what the other one has in mind or is going to do. Sometimes we even have a habit of finishing each other’s thoughts or sentences. It can be unnerving to be around us if you’re not used to it. Ask some of the women that we’ve double dated with. But it’s that same communication that makes us so good on the streets as a team. In a tense situation, we know exactly what the other one is going to do before he does it.
There have always been rumors floating around about me and Hutch and our unique relationship. Usually we just laugh them off and make a joke out of it. People just can’t seem to accept the fact that two men can have the deep friendship we have and not be gay. But, I’m here to tell you that Hutch and I are both normal, straight guys who just happen to love each other dearly. Of course part of the misconception about our true relationship comes about because we are not ashamed to show our feelings for one another and to be openly affectionate with each other.
Most of that comes from my own upbringing and my family. Everyone in my family is big on hugs, kisses and showing affection. It just comes second nature to me. And once Hutch thawed out, it started becoming second nature to him, at least where I was concerned. We’ve held each other when we were hurt, physically or emotionally, and comforted each other with our touch. There is a tender, sensitive side to Hutch that most people never see but me. We’ve even shared the same bed a time or two without even thinking anything about it. We trust one another completely and without question, with our lives, with our secrets, and with our souls. Together we are one, opposite sides of the same coin.
Sometimes it isn’t easy being Hutch’s friend. He can be intimidating, cynical, and downright obnoxious. He can be cold as ice one minute and then warm and friendly the next. But I know how to deal with his moods and he knows how to deal with mine. We level each other out and keep each other grounded. We keep each other sane in the crazy world we live in day by day. I will always be there for him and he will always be there for me. Nobody and nothing will ever come between us. We are joined at the heart for all eternity.
NICKY
Since I’ve told you about Hutch, I guess I should tell you a little bit more about Nicky. Nicholas Marvin Starsky, my little brother. My relationship with Nicky is a complicated one and it’s hard to understand sometimes, even for me. But he is still my brother and I owe him a certain amount of loyalty. And I do love him even if he makes it hard for me to sometimes. That doesn’t mean that I understand him or condone the way he’s chosen to live his life.
Part of the problem with Nick is that he was only six years old when pop died and he had just turned seven when I got sent out to California. All of a sudden, his big brother wasn’t around anymore to take care of him and to fight his battles for him. In order to survive, Nick became a product of the streets. I look at Nick today and the way he’s turned out and I know that, but for the grace of God, it could have been me in his place.
It’s hard to admit that my brother is nothing but a two bit hustler and a petty criminal, as much as I hate to I can’t lie to myself about Nicky’s shortcomings. I guess there’s a part of me that feels guilty and I blame myself for the way things turned out for Nicky. Maybe if I had stayed in New York, things would have been different for him. I know that Ma tried the best she could but, like a true Starsky, Nicky was stubborn and headstrong. He was even more rebellious than I was at that age. He’s the one who joined up with the local street gang and spent his teenage years in and out of Juvie. Once I moved to California, I only saw Ma and Nicky once or twice a year and by the time he was ten years old, he had turned into a stranger I didn’t even know. I still don’t know him, even today.
The only time I hear from Nicky today is when he’s in trouble and expects me to bail him out or he needs money. That’s usually about once a year or so. Nicky always has some kind of scam going trying to make an easy buck without having to work for it and usually his schemes aren’t exactly legal, which puts me a bind since I am a cop. As long as he not into something really heavy, I try to look the other way unless Nicky makes it impossible for me to do that.
Nicky and Hutch can’t stand each other. Hutch is always on my case for helping Nicky out when he gets into trouble or calls me for money. Hutch can see right through Nicky and he knows that Nicky can manipulate me and Ma. And he’s not above using my own guilty feelings about our relationship to do that. The truth is Nicky is jealous as hell of Hutch and our relationship. He believes that Hutch has taken Nicky’s rightful place in my life and he’s right. But then I know that Nicky doesn’t really care about anyone but himself, not even me or Ma. And he knows not to push things too far. If it came right down to it, he knows that I would choose Hutch over him any day. But he’s still my brother and I can’t change that fact.
I look at Nicky and I see so much of myself. Not just a family resemblance but we also share the same temperament, the same basic personality, the same determination and the same strong will. But while I’ve learned to use my personality traits constructively, Nick uses his to con his way through life. The saddest part is that I know that Nicky will probably never change. He doesn’t want to. I’m the one who got a second chance to make something out of myself, Nicky didn’t.
So, Nicky may be my brother by blood, we may share the same parents, but in all the ways that count, Hutch is my real brother. My soul mate. The one person who means more to me than anyone else. He’s the one I know will always be there for me no matter what happens not Nicky. But Nicky is still blood so I can’t just turn my back on him.
TERRI
I guess I’ve always been lucky when it came to the ladies. They like me and I like them. I had my first girlfriend when I was thirteen. Her name was Mary Sue Thomas and she was a cute little blonde with freckles that I met just after I moved to California. She was my first serious case of puppy love and the first girl that I ever had sex with. She was more experienced than I was and she taught me a thing or two. We only went out for a couple of months and then she dumped me for another guy. Dang near broke my heart at the time. But I got over it in a hurry when I met Peggy Jean Magito and life went on so to speak.
I had been raised to respect the ladies I went out with and I’ve always tried to do that. I’ve had my fair share of one night stands and casual affairs. Ma was always on my case wanting to know when I was going to settle down but somehow things just never seemed to work out for one reason or another. Besides, I kinda liked being free and single. But as I got older, I found myself wanting more. I wanted the white picket fence and the kids and the wife waiting for me when I came home at night. And I came close, so close, to having that once.
Her name was Terri and I loved her with my entire being, my heart and my soul. She wasn’t just my lover; she was like a breath of fresh air in my chaotic life. She always said I was her best friend and she was one of the few women I ever met who really understood and accepted my relationship with Hutch. Other women had been jealous of Hutch and had gotten tired of sharing me with him. A couple of ex-girlfriends had ever said that it was obvious that Hutch would always mean more to me than they did. But Terri never did anything like that. She just accepted the way it was with me and Hutch. She didn’t care if I spent half my time with her talking about Hutch or if he came along with us when we went out together. She liked Hutch and he liked her.
Terri was a teacher. She worked at a school for special children. And they loved her. She loved them too. She was so gentle and kind, so loving. That’s what made her such a good teacher. I never believed in love at first sight until I met Terri. Until I met her, I never knew what real love was.
We’d only gone together for a few weeks when she was gunned down during a robbery at a carry out near her apartment. At least that is what it looked like at the time. But it was all a set up. Terri was a deliberate victim, shot by a man named Prudem. He was an ex-con who blamed me for the death of his son. He’d already tried to get revenge on me before by killing two cops I didn’t even know, trying to force me to resign from the force. A mix up at the mental hospital where he was being treated led to him being released and he came after me again.
This time it was my darling Terri who would pay the price. She wasn’t killed outright in the shooting. She ended up with a bullet in her head that the doctors couldn’t remove without killing her. But leaving it there would kill her too. The only question was how soon. I didn’t want to believe the doctor when she gave me the news that Terri was going to die. My heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest, leaving a hole that could never be filled. Terri had a choice. If she stayed in bed, flat on her back, she might live for a year or more. If she got up and moved around, went on living her life, she could die at any time. Regardless, the bullet in her head would eventually shift positions and kill her. Terri chose to live.
I didn’t want to lose her. I tried to block it out of my mind; pretend she was going to be okay even though I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I asked her to marry me. I wanted to at least have that before I lost her. I wanted to make her my wife. But she refused. She said she couldn’t do that to me. She had more guts than I did. All I wanted to do was fall apart. Prudem was caught and returned to prison but that didn’t chance anything. He still got his revenge. I was still going to lose my Terri because of him.
We had a little over a week together before the bullet shifted and I had to rush her back to the hospital. I was there with her when she died. The last thing she said to me was that she wasn’t afraid anymore. She also promised that she would always be with me, that all I had to do was close my eyes and she would be there.
I don’t remember much about those first few days after I lost her. I was in too much pain of my own. I know I stayed drunk for a couple of days. It was the only way to make the pain go away just for a little while. If it hadn’t been for Hutch, I probably would have gone crazy or ate my own gun. I was so lost, so alone, and it hurt so badly. And Hutch was there with me, hurting too because he had cared about her almost as much as I did.
It felt as if the best part of me had died along with her. My dreams for the future died with her and the little house with the white picket fence and the kids no longer meant much to me.
I’ve never gotten over Terri and I know that I never will. A part of me changed after that. Since that day, I have never allowed myself to get too close to another woman. I’ve built a wall around a part of my heart that no woman will ever penetrate because it still belongs to Terri and it always will. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will probably never marry. I had my chance and it was taken away from me, destroying a part of me in the process. And to this day, it still hurts to think about her and what I lost when I lost her. But at least I still have Hutch and as long as he’s by my side, I can go on living even if I have to go on living alone.
SHADOW OF DEATH
May 15th, 1979. That’s a day I will never forget because that’s the day I almost died in the basement parking lot at police headquarters. Hutch and I were leaving the building, laughing and talking between ourselves, ready to call it day and head for home.
I was unlocking the car door on the driver’s side of my Torino when several things happened almost simultaneously. I heard the sound of one vehicle apparently hitting another vehicle, I heard Hutch scream my name and I spun around reaching under my jacket for my gun, sensing danger but not knowing the source.
Then I felt an agonizing pain that seemed to engulf my whole body and it felt like I’d been hit in the chest with a wreaking ball. I remember falling forward and then there’s nothing after that but blackness. I know that that two men disguised as Police officers and armed with sub-machine guns had tried to kill me and Hutch as we got into the car. Hutch saw them in time to duck down and was protected by the opposite side of the Torino. I was the one who got hit three times, caught in the open with no place to hide, when they started shooting.
Hutch told me later how he found me lying on the pavement beside the car, my head resting in the rear wheel well, my blood pouring onto the pavement around me, bleeding out from my wounds. Because the attack happened in the police garage, medical help was there almost immediately, just one of the things that probably saved my life that day. Even then, the doctors told me that I should have been killed instantly by the bullets that riddled my body that day but I wasn’t. I should have died before they ever got me to the hospital. But I didn’t. I should never have survived the four hours of emergency surgery to repair damage to my insides, but I did. My beating any and all of those odds alone was considered miraculous.
The damage to my body was massive. I had four broken ribs, a shattered left shoulder blade, and a broken collar bone. My left lung was literally shredded. My right lung was partially collapsed. I had massive internal and external bleeding. There was damage to my left kidney; they had to remove my spleen and a small portion of my liver. And my entire digestive track had been torn to pieces. One bullet nicked my heart and another bullet barely missed hitting my spine. The doctors told everyone that day that I was going to die. They told them that the injuries were just too massive and that my body was too damaged to survive.
Hutch refused to accept that. Like an avenging angel, he tracked down the man responsible and brought him to justice. He was doing just that when my heart stopped beating. Captain Dobey managed to get hold of him and tell him to get back to the hospital right away. My heart was stopped for almost five minutes. The doctors were ready to give up. They had already tried shocking me three times with no success. Captain Dobey told me later that at almost the same second that Hutch burst through the door, yelling my name, my heart suddenly kick started and began beating again. The doctors were stunned and amazed. To this day, they still can’t explain it. I was dead and I shouldn’t have come back. But I did.
I may not be that religious anymore but in my heart I believe that it was Hutch’s love that kept me here. That somehow, even when my heart stopped, his love reached out and pulled me back, refusing to let me go. No one else seems to have a rational explanation. The doctors told everybody that I was still wasn’t out of the woods but damned if I wasn’t still alive. That was an honest to god miracle.
I was in a coma for almost two weeks. I don’t remember anything about any of that time. What I know about it is what I’ve been told by others. But somehow, even through I was in a coma, I could sense that Hutch was there by my side, comforting me and soothing me. Encouraging me to live. As I started to come out of the coma, I remember the awful pain, being barely able to breath, and being so scared. I didn’t want to come out of the comforting darkness; I wanted to stay there where the pain couldn’t reach me. But I could hear Hutch’s voice, pleading with me, begging me to open my eyes. So I did.
I still don’t remember much about those first couple of weeks after I woke up, except the pain, being in so much pain that I didn’t think I could stand it. They had me on some pretty heavy drugs but they didn’t seem to do much. They didn’t make the pain go away. I can remember wanting to just curl up into a ball and cry, it hurt so bad. That’s when Hutch started climbing into the hospital bed beside me and just holding me in his arms, to comfort me and help ease the pain the only way he knew how. And as long as he was there with me, lying by my side, I felt safe and protected and I could sleep.
I was in the hospital for almost two months. The doctors still couldn’t believe that I had survived. I was their miracle patient, a testament to their skills and their expertise. Even when I was finally released from the hospital, I was far from being recovered. I still needed almost twenty-four-hour a day care and couldn’t do anything for myself. The only way I was able to go home was because Hutch moved in with me to help take care of me and Ma came to stay with me for almost six weeks. Between the two of them, I slowly regained my strength and started to be able to do things for myself. Do you have any idea what it feels like to be able to finally take a piss by yourself after almost four months of needing someone else to help you do that? Or just to get out of bed by yourself without feeling like your body is gonna rip wide open and leave your insides lying on the floor?
I lived with so much pain for so long that when it finally started to fade away, I wanted to cry from sheer relief.
I was on so many different kinds of pills that my bathroom looked like a miniature pharmacy. I took pills for the pain, pills to help keep me regulated, stool softeners, antibiotics, pills to regulate my blood pressure, pills to help with my digestion, pills to keep the fluids from building up in my body, and some pills that to this day I’m not sure what the hell they were for.
My chest looked like a roadmap from all the scars from the bullet wounds and the numerous surgeries I had to have in order to repair all the damage (over eight of them all together in a three-month period of time.) And the healing scars and incisions hurt. They ached and itched and tightened up, pulling at my skin as they healed. Hutch used to give me massages that the physical therapist showed him how to do to break loose the scar tissue and keep it from drawing up so tightly. He also used a special aloe based cream that helped to keep the scars smooth and subtle. Because of his excellent care, today the scars are still there but they aren’t that noticeable unless you are really looking for them. Of course it also helps that the ones on my chest and stomach are covered by my body hair.
It was six months before I recovered enough to start physical therapy. Up until then, in the hospital and at home, I was given range of motion exercises by the nurses or by Hutch that helped keep my joints and muscles from tightening up and contracting. They were painful but they were nothing compared to Physical Therapy. I had to relearn how to use my left arm all over again (and that was really difficult since I am left handed)
For months, I had no feeling in my fingers on that hand at all. I also had to regain the flexibility and the mobility in my left shoulder. In addition, I had to regain my strength and my stamina, and rebuild my muscle tone. It was a long and painful process that took another six months to complete.
My stomach continued to give me problems and I had to entirely change my diet. I was forced to give us the rich spicy foods that I love so much but my stomach could no longer digest so many of the foods that I had eaten before. Since Hutch is a health food frantic, that made him happy because I had to eat healthier. More salads, more fruits and vegetables, and less red meat. (Although I do still sneak a burrito now and then but we won’t tell Hutch that)
My lung caused the most concern and took the longest to heal. The doctors told me that I would probably never regain full lung capacity again but I have managed to regain 94 per cent of it which is still more than they ever anticipated. But I still have to be careful because I am more susceptible to lung infections and bronchitis.
I have been warned that if I get shot again in the future, it will probably kill me. . The repairs were so extensive that if anything inside is damaged again, it will be beyond repair the next time. There just won’t be enough healthy tissue left to repair again.
I have to face the fact that I may never work the streets again as an undercover police officer. But I am alive and I survived an attack that would have killed any other man. So I have to believe that God had a reason for sparing my life that day. If I can’t return to the streets as a cop then I don’t know what I will do. I will be able to draw a disability pension from the department for the rest of my life but I can’t see myself just sitting around all day doing nothing but watch TV. But no matter what happens or what I do from now on with the rest of my life, I know that Hutch will be there, beside me just like he has always been. Me and Thee forever.
Now that I have shared my memories with you, I hope that you know David Michael Starsky a little bit better. I hope that you know now some of the things that have happened in my life that have helped to shape me into the man I am today. My joys, my sorrows, my personal losses, and my pain. I’m not a saint by any means; I’m just a man trying to live his life the best way he knows how. Hoping that along the way, I’ve touched someone or left a part of myself behind that will be remembered even after I’m gone. After all, isn’t that what we all want? God bless you all.
Part Two
A glimpse into the life of Kenneth Hutchinson told from his POV.
PROLOGUE
My name is Kenneth Richard Hutchinson but the only people who call me Kenneth are my parents. My younger sister calls me Ken. Everybody else has called me Hutch for most of my adult life. For the past ten years, I have been an undercover detective with the Bay City police Department. I’m good at my job but it’s getting harder and harder to face going out there on the streets every day trying to get the bad guys.
To most people, I’m the last person they would expect to become a cop. My family had money, so I was raised with all the advantages that money can buy. Good schools, a nice house in a good neighborhood, nice clothes, all the good things in life. “Good Breeding” is what my grandmother used to call it.
My partner is always kidding me about having a certain “air of sophistication.” and ‘class” that shows through in the way I dress and the way I behave. I don’t really see myself that way, although I suppose some of my tastes in music, clothes and literature are the result of my formative years. Engrained parts of my personality that I can not change. It took me years to find out who I really was and to be happy with my life the way it is today.
I’ve spent my life trying to make a difference. Sometimes I think I have at least with a few people I’ve known over the years. I’m not the same wide-eyed, idealistic young man I used to be. Too many years on the streets of this city have made sure of that. I’ve become bitter and disillusioned with a lot of things in my life. I’ve seen so much pain and suffering, so many people throwing their lives away for a fix and a cheap thrill, that nothing much fazes me anymore. Some days it takes everything I have to just get out of bed in the morning. Most of the time, I can’t even remember why I ever wanted to be a cop in the first place.
The only thing that’s kept me going has been my partner and my best friend in the whole world, David Starsky. He’s as close to me as a brother, even closer actually. There’s no way to explain the unique bond we share. We can communicate without speaking, almost on a psychic level. With just a look or a glance, we know what the other one is thinking. We feel each other’s pain, each other’s sorrow and each other’s joy. Together we are complete. Apart, we are missing a vital part of ourselves. It’s been that way almost since the first day we met fifteen years ago in the Police Academy. We would give our lives to protect one another and almost have more than once out there on the streets. I can not picture my life without Starsky in. Without him, I wouldn’t have a life, not one worth living anyway.
I came so close to losing Starsky almost a year ago. The doctors told me he was going to die, that there was nothing they could do. The gunshots to his body had done massive damage and they didn’t think it could be repaired. I refused to accept that. I couldn’t face him dying and being left alone without him by my side. Through some miracle, he survived, even though he still has not recovered completely from his injuries. Coming so close to losing the one person that meant more to me than anything else in the world made me take a closer look at my own life.
I found myself thinking about the different events in my life that had shaped it and made me into the man I am today. And I realized that some things were more important to me than other things. I have some major life decisions to make and I hope that this look back on my life and the things I’ve done, the events that have happened that have changed my focus and my ideals, will help me to make those decisions with a clear mind. And maybe sharing my memories with you, will help me decide what I need to do next. So here, is a glimpse into my life, both past and present.
THE HUTCHINSON LEGACY
I was born in Duluth, Minnesota. It is located at the westernmost tip of Lake Superior and is halfway between Minneapolis/St Paul and the Canadian Border. Originally settled by the Sioux and the Chippewa Indians, at once time Duluth was home to more millionaires (per capital) than any other city in the world. Even today, most of the residents are of the city are fairly well to do. One out of every seven residents is employed in the healthcare field, including my father, Doctor Richard Hutchinson.
My father specializes in heart surgery. He has done very well for himself in that profession. My grandfather and my great grandfather were also doctors so it was a family tradition that I was expected to follow as the eldest son. That expectation was pounded into my head from the time I was a small child. My parents only had two children. Myself and my sister, Karen. She is five years younger than me so we weren’t very close when we were growing up, although we are today.
My family had money and we lived quite well. By Duluth standards, our house was not a mansion but it was ‘comfortable’ We had a housekeeper who took care of the day to day running of the house, a nanny who supervised myself and my sister, and a caretaker who took care of the outside property. From an early age, my sister and I were taught to be competitive over achievers. I still tend to be that way even today. Striving to be the best in everything I do seems to be an inborn Hutchinson trait.
My sister and I seldom saw my father. He had a lucrative practice and spent long hours at his office and at the hospital. My father came from a generation who believed that children should be seen and not heard. When he was home, we were expected to be on our best behavior and not to speak unless we were spoken to. He was a strict disciplinarian and wasn’t opposed to using the strap on me or my sister if he felt we were out of line. In our house, his word was final and you were expected to do things his way or not at all. It had been ingrained in my upbringing to obey my father without question.
Most of the time, I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes. I never felt as if I lived up to his expectations for me as his son. Even though I was an honor student, active in sports and various other activities, I never received any praise from my father for any of my accomplishments. Richard Hutchinson was a cold, distant and overbearing man. He always succeeded in pushing my buttons and making me defensive Nothing I’ve done in my life has ever been good enough for my father but I still continued to jump through hoops trying to please him, hoping that someday I would make him proud. To this day, my father and I do not get along and we barely talk to one another.
My mother, Joanna Hutchinson, married my father when they were both in college. She came from a similar background except her father was a lawyer. My mother was involved in various charities, committees and the country club. She also did a lot of volunteer work. And, like my father, she had very little time to spend with her children. My sister and I were basically raised by our nanny and the housekeeper. Mother was seldom home during the day, although she was there in the evenings. She had a warmer personality than my father but still seemed mystified when it came to dealing with her own children. Mother was aware of her standing in the community and her social status. She reinforced impeccable manners and good breeding.
As a child, I had my own room with my own TV, my own stereo, and my own phone line. I went to the best private school in the area and my friends were carefully screened. But the one thing I never felt like I had was love. I can’t remember either one of my parents ever telling me that they loved me or that they were proud of me. It was the nanny or the housekeeper that made my meals, got me up for school, took me to my various activities and tucked me into bed at night, not my parents. And I thought that was normal.
I inherited my good looks from both of my parents equally. My entire family was very attractive. Personality wise, I am more like my mother than I am my father. The only trait I share with my father is my aloofness with most people and a strong drive to succeed. As I got older, I began to resent my parents, especially my father, and the plans that he had mapped out for the rest of my life. But pride in the Hutchinson name, our social standing, and good breeding prevented me from rebelling against the Hutchinson legacy until I was old enough to leave home.
COLLEGE DAYS
My first real battle with my father came about when it came time for me to go to college. He expected me to go to Princeton, his Alma Mater. But I had other plans. I still intended to go into Pre-Med, continuing with the Hutchinson tradition, and with my scholastic record, I could pretty much pick and choose which college I wanted to attend. And I intended to California State University, putting over 3000 miles between me and my father.
My father was not happy about my choice and made his feelings well known on the subject. But since I had been offered a full scholarship based on my academic record, his threat of cutting me off financially wasn’t enough to stop me. In addition, my grandparents had left me a substantial trust fund that I would have access to when I turned twenty-one. Once my father finally realized that he couldn’t stop me from going to the college of my choice, he reluctantly relented but he never forgave me for refusing to bend to his will.
When I moved to California and into the college dorm, for the first time in my life I found myself on my own, making my own decisions without my father watching every move I made. I had always prided myself on being more open minded and liberal than some of my friends back home but at home I still tended to blend in with my peers and follow a certain set of rules and expectations. Now, I was free to make my own rules and live by my own standards, making my own mistakes. I soon became involved in various ‘causes’ usually the ones that involved the rights of someone less fortunate than I had been.
I did not serve in the military like most young men my age. I was given a college deferment from the draft. Even if I hadn’t been given a deferment, I have no doubt that my father would have found a way to ensure that his son was not drafted into the military. Like so many other young people my age at the time (especially college students) , I became very vocal about the military’s involvement in Viet Nam, even participating in several peaceful youth rallies against the war. It wasn’t until later in life when I met some men who had served in Viet Nam that I began to understand just how much they had sacrificed for their involvement in that war.
In spite of my outside activities, I still maintained a 4.0 average in my college classes. I carried a full class load and spent long hours studying to maintain my grades. School work had always come easy to me and I was blessed with an excellent memory, as well as a methodical and logical mind. The importance of a good education had been installed in me from an early age.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find the time to have fun. I had more than my share of dates. Girls had always seemed to be attracted to me but I could never be sure if they were interested in me because of my good looks, my family’s money, or if they really liked me as a person. Sometimes, even today, I still don’t know. For some reason I’ve always tended to be attracted to women who either overly possessive or cold and distant. Don’t get me wrong, I love women and I respect them but my relationships just never seem to work out very well or to last for very long. Just another reason for my parents to be disappointed in me.
All in all, my college days were good ones and I grew tremendously as a person. I began to develop my own set of values and ideals that had nothing to do with those that my father held dear. Slowly, my image of myself and my life began to change. I was in my second year of college when I met Vanessa Lynn McDonald, the future Mrs. Kenneth Hutchinson.
VANESSA
Vanessa Lynn McDonald. A chapter in my life I would rather forget but one that I have to include in the category of both some of my best and my worst memories. She was in a literature class I was taking and I was attracted to her immediately. But then, so was every other red blooded man in the room. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen with long dark brown hair and big brown eyes along with the face and the body of a high fashion model. She was actually doing some modeling on the side when we met.
I should have seen the signs right away but lust is blind and I ignored her shortcomings until it was too late. She was fun to be with and she knew just how to wrap a man around her little finger. She came from a similar background was the perfect blend of sophistication, cool perfection, and social status. With the contrast in our coloring, we made a very attractive and photogenic couple. Even back then, Vanessa was never one to pass up an opportunity to get herself noticed.
We had been dating for almost six months when Vanessa told me that she was pregnant. By then I was head over heels in love with her and her pregnancy gave us the perfect excuse to get married. Needless to say, my parents were less then thrilled but they liked Vanessa. That alone should have clued me in that I was making a big mistake. As far as my father was concerned, it was just another excuse for him to lecture me on my irresponsibility for getting her pregnant. As far as my mother was concerned, our wedding became the social event of the season and she went out all planning it down to the tiniest detail.
As a married student, I had to move out of the dorm. Vanessa and I rented a tiny efficiency apartment not far from campus and tried to adjust to our new status as married students. It wasn’t long before Vanessa informed me that she was dropping out of college and that she expected me to continue to support her in the way she had become accustomed to. So besides being a full time student, I also took a full time job in the evenings working at a minimum wage job to support myself and my new bride. It wasn’t long before we started fighting over Vanessa’s outrageous spending. In less than six weeks, she ran my one credit card up to over two thousand dollars. She had expensive tastes, especially in clothes.
We had only been married for three months when Vanessa told me that she had decided she didn’t want to have a child after all and that she’d had an abortion. I was stunned and deeply hurt. I didn’t realize how much I had been looking forward to being a father until that was taken away from me. I suppose most men would have left her or even beat the hell out of her, but by then I was so wrapped around her finger that I was willing to let her walk all over me. I had always believed strongly in the sanctity of marriage and I was determined to make my marriage work, even if I was the one who had to make all the sacrifices to keep Vanessa happy.
And Vanessa was an expert at manipulating me. She knew just which buttons to push to get her way. She could be a cold, heartless bitch or a shameless seductress that knew every all the ways to please a man. If I wanted any peace in my marriage, I quickly learned to do things her way. I couldn’t see back then what she was doing to my self esteem and to my confidence. Or just how much like my father she was. If our marriage was on rocky ground after less than a year, it was about to really hit the skids when I decided to drop out of college and join the police academy.
DISINHERITED
I was in my third year of college when I realized that I was totally dissatisfied with my life. I wasn’t happy in my marriage and I was totally disillusioned with pre-med. When a police recruiter came to the college to speak to the students, I suddenly found myself thinking about joining the police force. The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. I thought that would be a way to really help people and to make a difference. Idealistic and simplistic but I really started to believe that was what I was meant to do with my life. Then an ex-girlfriend of mine got raped and I saw first hand how compassionate and concerned the cops were that dealt with her attack. That was the deciding factor that helped me make my decision. I wanted to be a cop.
Needless to say, that decision did not go over well with my parents or with my wife. My father disinherited me, wrote me completely out of his will, and swore that he would never speak to me again. His attitude did not surprise me or even really bother me. What hurt was when my mother took his side. And my dear wife, screamed at me for days and said that I was destroying her future and my own. But she didn’t leave me, not then anyway. She was convinced that eventually she could get me to change my mind and see the error of my ways. Or maybe she just wasn’t through making my life miserable yet.
To say that my life was pretty screwed up when I joined the police academy would be a vast understatement. That first day, I knew that I was totally out of my element and that I would have trouble fitting in with the other cadets. But that was also the day I met a cocky, self assured, displaced New Yorker who would become the best friend I’ve ever had. I noticed David Starsky right away. He was hard to miss. That man didn’t just walk into a room; he strutted in with a confident swagger that automatically set him apart from everyone else. My first impression was that he was the most irritating and obnoxious man I’d ever met. It took me two weeks to find out that just how wrong my first impression of Starsky really was.
Starsky and I could not have been more different. Our backgrounds, our personalities, even our ideals were direct opposites of one another. While I came from what most people would consider a cultural background, Starsky was a pure product of the mean streets of New York where he’d spent his youth. His father had been a beat cop who was gunned down in the streets when Starsky was nine. His mother had sent him to California to live with his Aunt and Uncle when he was twelve to try and keep him from getting involved with the local street gang in his old neighborhood. He had also recently returned from an eighteen-month tour in Viet Nam. His military background had already given him a in depth knowledge of firearms and he was an expert sharpshooter, the best in our class.
Where Starsky seemed to get along with everyone in our class, I was a loner, sticking pretty much to myself. I know most of the other cadets thought I was overbearing and stuck up but the truth is I just didn’t know how to relax and interact with them. There were three cadets, Billy Holmes, Scott Emerson, and Tommy Barnes, who decided to make my life hell in an attempt to get me to drop out of the academy. They began harassing me every chance they got.
I had motor oil poured on my dress uniform while it was hanging in my locker, I had unnecessary force used against me in some of the training exercises in the academy gym, I had vulgarities spray painted on my car, and I had textbooks torn up and destroyed. It all came to a head one afternoon in the locker room.
I was the only one in the showers when Billy and his friends came in. I tried to ignore them but before I knew it, they had me backed into a corner. Now I can hold my own in a fight when I have to, but Billy and his friends were all my size and outweighed me by twenty to thirty pounds. Still, I got in a few good punches before they got me on the floor and started beating the crap out of me. Next thing I know, I heard a cold, deadly voice say, “Is this a private party? Or can anybody join in?”
“Get out of here, Starsky.” I heard Billy snarl through his teeth as he aimed a vicious kick at my stomach that knocked the wind out of me. “This ain’t any of your business.”
“How about if I make it my business?” Starsky said in that same calm but deadly voice. “Even up the odds a little?” His open challenge was all it took for them to forget about me and turn on him. Starsky was lithe and quick and he could fight as dirty as any street punk when the situation called for it. Within seconds, Scott was knocked out and lying on the floor at his feet. I staggered to my feet and took on Tommy while Starsky squared off with Billy. In a matter of minutes, the fight was over as quickly as it had began. Shoulder to shoulder, Starsky and I emerged as the victors. Billy and Tommy grabbed a still groggy Scott, turned tail and ran.
Grabbing my arm, Starsky led me out to my locker so I could clean up and get dressed. I had a split lip and a gash on my left cheekbone, along with some nasty bruises on my right side. Leaning back against his own locker which was three down from mine, Starsky watched me with a faint arrogant smile on his face.
“You handle yourself pretty good, baby blue.” He said in his New York drawl. “But you really need to pick your playmates better cause those three don’t like to play nice.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” I said in an irritated voice as I pulled on my pants and reached for my shirt. “Why’d you help me?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” He replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a crooked smile. “I coulda just let ‘em kick your ass.”
“Why didn’t you?” I snapped, “You don’t like me any better than they do.”
“Maybe I didn’t wanna see ya get your pretty face smashed into the floor.” He chuckled good naturedly “You got a lot to learn if you plan on working the streets otherwise you ain’t gonna last long out there.” I pointedly ignored him as I finished dressing, annoyed by his cockiness. He surprised me when he said, “Come on, slugger. I’ll buy ya a beer.” I was even more surprised when I heard myself accepting his offer.
We went to a bar not far from the Academy where most the cadets hung out after classes were done for the day. I was amazed to discover myself warming up to the curly headed man with the cocky attitude and the crooked smile. It didn’t take me long to find out that Starsky had a unique ability to fit in no matter where he was and that he made a sincere effort to get to know the people around him. Underneath the tough, street smart exterior, he was actually a very complex and complicated man. I actually found myself liking him and enjoying the time I spent with him. I could talk to him more easily than anyone else I’d ever known, a rarity for me.
Over the next few weeks, I got to know Starsky even better and we quickly became friends. Since I was better at academics than Starsky was, I started helping him with the class work and his grades rapidly improved from just passing to being in the top ten in the class. In return, he helped me with some of the more physical exercises like hand-to-hand combat and defense techniques.
Being friends with Starsky helped me to fit in better with my fellow cadets too. I went from being a loner to being part of the gang. Slowly, I began to let down the walls that I had built around myself over the years and Starsky kept chipping away at the rest until there were no barriers between the two of us any longer. Starsky was the one who gave me the nickname ‘Hutch’, stating emphatically that Hutchinson was just too much of a mouthful and Kenneth sounded too formal.
It didn’t take me long to find out that Starsky was a ‘toucher’, openly affectionate in a way that I was uncomfortable with at first. He had no hesitation about giving me a friendly pat on the back or even the ass, to sling his arm around my shoulders when we were talking, or to push himself into my personal space. Touching came naturally to Starsky and was just another facet of his unique personality. And with my ‘sterile’ childhood, I was an adult who was starved for that kind of touch and open expression of affection and friendship. Some of the other cadets who didn’t care for me or Starsky (primary Billy and his group of friends) started vicious rumors about me and Starsky but we blew them off and didn’t let the false accusations bother us.
Vanessa and I were still living together but our relationship as man and wife was pretty much over by then. She hated Starsky with a passion and he wasn’t fond of her either. He could see through her and she knew it. She also knew that he was the one person she couldn’t control and manipulate. The lines between those two were drawn early on and never changed. When Vanessa finally left me and filed for a divorce, Starsky was the one who was there to pick up the pieces when I fell apart.
God only knows why, but I was convinced that I still loved the woman. I realize now that it was more the idea of a failed marriage that I had trouble dealing with. Just one more thing for my parents to throw up in my face. It was a long and bitter battle to finally get free from Vanessa. She used every dirty trick she knew to try and get her hands on the bulk of my trust fund. It was during that time that I also found out that she had lied to me from the beginning about being pregnant and having an abortion. She had used the oldest trick in the book to get me to marry her and hadn’t even been pregnant to begin with. When she found out she couldn’t trust my trust fund, she settled for taking everything else she could, our furniture, my car, all the money in our joint account. By that point I didn’t care, I let her have everything. I just wanted my freedom back. Our divorce became final just after I graduated from the police academy.
Starsky and I were on probationary status for eighteen months after we graduated. While Starsky was assigned to work the inner city, I worked in Venice and took an apartment for myself in that area. Even though we weren’t working together during that time, we stayed in touch and our friendship continued to grow stronger. We started spending most of our off duty time together just hanging out. We both took the Sergeant’s exam at the same time, just two years after we graduated and we both passed with flying colors. Starsky was promoted to Detective shortly after that, his long time dream, and was assigned to the Metro Division. I was promoted to detective a couple of months later and managed to get assigned to the same division.
Starsky and I immediately requested to be assigned as partners and after an initial training period with older more experienced detectives, our request was granted. We were assigned to a Zebra Unit, a unique and elite unit that dealt mainly with homicide investigations but covered over crimes as well. Each Zebra unit had its own assigned section within the district and Starsky and I were both proud to be designated as Zebra three.
We quickly started making a name for ourselves within the department. Because of our close friendship, we became one of the best teams in the entire department. We started taking on the tough cases and solving them. Before long, we had the highest conviction rate in the city. Our methods were considered unorthodox at best but they got results and we never stepped over the line. As our reputation grew, so did our friendship.
We became closer than brothers, joined at the hip, no longer just friends and partners but the other half of each other’s soul. We had almost a psychic bond between us that tended to shut out everyone around us. We often finished each others thoughts or sentences and communicated in our unique form of shorthand, a simple glance or gesture and we instantly knew what the other one was going to do without speaking. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, we were a force to be reasoned with and one that nobody dared cross. We were willing to die for each other to protect each other out there on the streets. Our lives had become so interconnected and entwined that it was hard to tell where one of us ended and the other one began. Me and thee against the world, that had become our motto and it was one that we lived by day by day.
There aren’t any words to even begin to describe how I feel about Starsky or how much he means to me. I love the man. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. As simple and as complicated as the man himself. I know his moods and he knows mine, we balance each other out and we bring each other peace. We comfort each other, we care for each other and we protect each other. We know each other inside and out. We’ve seen each other at our best and at our worst. We are the best friends either one of us has ever known or ever will have. Simply put, David Michael Starsky is the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. He is the other half of my soul, without him I am not complete. We are true soul mates in every sense of the word.
GILLIAN
After my failed marriage with Vanessa, I was definitely gun shy when it came to women. Not that I didn’t date, I just shied away from getting too serious with any of the women I went out with. I had no intention of ever getting married again. Vanessa had torn out a part of my heart and left a hole that couldn’t be filled.
I guess my taste in women left something to be desired. I seemed to have a tendency to attract every nut case and weirdo out there. One of the women I dated one time became fixated on me and actually came after me with a knife. She decided if she couldn’t have me, then nobody could. Others were self-centered and shallow (almost perfect replicas of Vanessa) Most of the time Starsky and I both dated flight attendants. No promises, no commitments, no complications. Heck, Starsky and I even shared a woman between us a time or two.
Then I met Gillian. Gillian Ingram. She was a beautiful blue-eyed blonde with a lot of class. I actually met her at the park one afternoon where I’d gone on my lunch break while Starsky was busy testifying in one of our cases. We struck up a conversation and I was pleased when she agreed to go out to dinner with me. She told me that she was a free lance writer and I had no reason not to believe her.
I think I fell in love with her almost immediately. She was funny, she was intelligent and she made me happy. For the first time in years, I felt like a teenager in love again. And Starsky even seemed to like her when I introduced them at the bowling alley once night. And she seemed to like Starsky. That was a definite point in her favor because any woman who went out with me or Starsky soon discovered that we were a package deal and if they wanted to have a relationship with us, they had to accept our friendship and not get jealous or overly possessive when it came to our unique bond.
At the same time I was seeing Gillian, Starsky and I were also working on a case involving the harassment of some of the shops and businesses along “porn row”. We got a tip about a woman named Grossman and her son who had come into town from Cleveland and were trying to muscle their way in and take over. Starsky and I went to a massage parlor where the Grossman’s had their offices and had a talk with them. When we were getting ready to leave, Starsky decided to see if someone could give him a massage to try and work the kinks out of his shoulder that he had gotten bowling.
I agreed (remembering with a grin the girl who had ‘volunteered’ to help him with his shoulder and her voluptuous figure) I went outside to wait for him in the car. He came out a few minutes later and I noticed immediately that he seemed to be distracted. He hadn’t gotten a massage after all. He said he couldn’t find the girl who had offered and let it go at that. Now, I’d known Starsky long enough to know when to back off and let him alone. Something was up but he obviously didn’t want to talk about it. I knew that he would when he felt like it and not before. Little did I know that my world was about to come crashing down around me.
Late the following afternoon, I got a call from dispatch for me to meet Starsky at Gillian’s apartment. Puzzled, I drove over to her building, a high rise in a nice neighborhood, and parked behind my partner’s car. When I got to Gillian’s apartment, I found the door unlocked and went inside. Starsky was standing on the opposite side of the room, a stricken look on his face. Confused, I asked him what was wrong and then I saw Gillian’s body lying on the floor beside him, the front of her blouse stained with blood. I’d been a cop long enough to know that she was dead.
I sank to the floor beside her body and pulled her close, all the while firing questions at my partner trying to find out what was going on. What he told me was the last thing I expected or wanted to hear. He told me that Gillian worked for Grossman and his mother. She was a high price prostitute who had come with them from Cleveland. I refused to believe him at first and in my pain and grief, I turned my rage on him, punching him in the jaw. Instead of punching me back which he would have under any other circumstance, he kept talking, telling me what he had found out about the woman I loved. Finally, I broke down, sobbing in his arms. It hurt so much to know that everything she had told me had been a lie.
Starsky told me that he had seen her at the massage parlor with a ‘customer’. Later, he had gone to her apartment and confronted her. She promised that she was going to tell me when I saw her that evening. Starsky told her if she didn’t tell me that night, he was going to tell me the next morning. We both knew that she must have told Grossman that she wanted out and that was what had gotten her killed. My heart was ripped apart but I was still a cop and I swore to bring Grossman and his mother down.
Starsky and I went after Grossman in a theatre that they owned, where he had a film playing when we arrived. A porn film starring my Gillian. He was shot during our confrontation and his mother was arrested. I found out later that Gillian had gone to Mrs. Grossman to tell her that she wanted out and that they had gotten into an argument. When she tried to leave, the older woman had tried to stop her and Gillian had slapped her so she could get away. Her son had gone after her when he found out and he was the one who had killed her. The case was solved but my heart was broken once more.
True to his nature and our relationship, Starsky was there to pick up the pieces and to help to put me back together again. But something inside of me had been broken beyond repair when it came to trusting women. Everything Gillian had told me was a lie and there was a part of me wondered sometimes if she had lied about loving me too. Starsky told me several months after she died that Gillian had made the comment when they spoke that it would be nice to be me and to have two people (Gillian and Starsky) who loved me so much in one lifetime. I may have doubted Gillian’s love but I have never doubted the way Starsky feels about me because I feel the same way about him and I always will. Women may come and go but Starsky is the one constant in my life and for that I will always be grateful.
BETRAYAL OF TRUST
There was one woman who came dangerously close to destroying my friendship with Starsky. Another blue eyed blonde with a dynamite body. She was a police woman and her name was Kira Reynolds. Starsky and I had both seen her around headquarters around the same time and we both flirted with her outrageously. It wasn’t the first time that we’d had a little friendly competition over the same woman but the situation with Kira got out of hand pretty quick.
Blonde dancers at a club downtown were being killed, so the department decided to send me and Starsky into the club as regular customers and Kira as one of the dancers to try and catch the killer. It was one of those clubs where the men paid to dance with the girls. I’m sure some of the dancers weren’t above a little hanky panky on the side if the money was right but that wasn’t why we were there, so we all kinda looked the other way on that score. We were there to try and find a murderer.
And even though I knew that Starsky had gone with Kira a few times, at the time I didn’t see anything wrong with making a play for her too and she sure didn’t seem to mind. She came on just as strong with me as she did with Starsky. And I fell for it. She was a very beautiful and very sexy woman. I knew that Starsky wasn’t happy about it but for the first time in our relationship, I ignored my best friend’s feelings and I went after Kira too. It wasn’t long before Starsky and I were short tempered with each other and bickering almost constantly. But I can be as stubborn as my hot headed partner and neither one of us was willing to back down.
Finally, Starsky tried to work things out between us. He told me that he was in love with Kira and that he believed she was in love with him. I was shocked and surprised to say the least. And I was pissed. I was pissed because I thought that Kira cared about me too. So after I left Starsky that morning, I went straight to Kira’s apartment.
When I told her that Starsky had told me that he loved her and asked her if she loved him, she just looked at me with a slight smile on her face and told me that she did love him. I was disappointed but I could accept that and I told her so as I turned around to leave. That was when she floored me by telling me that she loved me too. I stood there in stunned silence as I listened to Kira explain that she was in love with both of us and didn’t see anything wrong with that. Somehow, she made her warped sense of logic sound reasonable to me. I’m not proud of myself and how I acted that day. I let other parts of my anatomy overrule my common sense and I ended in bed with Kira.
We had just finished making love and I was getting dressed when Starsky arrived unexpectedly. I will never forget until the day I die the hurt look on his face and the pain in his eyes when I walked out of her bedroom, stuffing my shirt into my jeans with half the buttons still undone. It doesn’t take much for Starsky to blow up under normal circumstances and this was anything but normal. I had just betrayed my best friend. We got into a violent argument that soon led to punches. It would have been a lot worse except Kira intervened and ordered both of us out of her apartment. But the damage had already been done and Starsky and I weren’t talking to each other.
But we were still partners and we still had to work together on our current cases, including the undercover assignment at the dance hall. Everyone around us steered clear, knowing immediately that Starsky and I were fighting with each other. When we went to the dance hall that night, Kira acted as if nothing had happened, acting the way she always did with both of us, which didn’t help Starsky’s mood or his frame of mind at all. And it didn’t do much for me either. I hated fighting with Starsky and this time I knew that I had nobody to blame but myself.
We ended up catching the killer that night, a disabled Viet Nam Vet, who suffered from delusions and was killing blondes thinking in his warped mind that they were Viet cong spies who had dyed their hair. He almost killed everyone in the club when he threw a life grenade into the middle of the room. I shot him and Starsky grabbed the grenade, throwing it towards a back room where it exploded without injuring anyone seriously. Our case was officially closed but my relationship with Starsky was still shaky at best.
A few days later, Starsky and I both arranged to meet Kira at The Pits, a bar where we hung out downtown. I was the one who took the first step and apologized to my outraged partner. He was still deeply hurt and betrayed, with good reason, but agreed that our friendship meant too much to him to let a woman come between us. We both realized that Kira had used both of us for her own selfish reasons and had no intentions of making a commitment to either one of us. Unfortunately, Starsky was the one who got hurt by both of us. When Kira met us as arranged, we basically double teamed her and let her know in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t have either one of us anymore.
We walked out of the bar that night with our arms around each other but it still took months for us to repair the damage that had been done to our friendship. I had hurt Starsky more deeply than anyone else ever had. I had betrayed his trust and that trust was a vital part of our partnership and our relationship. Even after Starsky had told me how he felt about Kira, I had still gone to her and let her seduce me into her bed. I’m not putting all the blame on Kira. I’m the one who chose to go to bed with her. Granted, I never expected Starsky to show up when he did and catch us but I still betrayed him, something I had never done before.
We had almost let a woman destroy the best friendship either one of us had ever had and we both regretted that deeply. Starsky forgave me because that’s just the way he is. When he cares about someone, he is fiercely loyal to them and willing to overlook their faults. But down deep inside, there is still a part of myself that has never forgiven myself for what I did to him that day. I can be a selfish bastard at times and that character flaw almost cost me my best friend. Kira is a subject that Starsky and I carefully avoid discussing these days. She transferred out of the department shortly after that so thankfully she wasn’t around as a constant reminder of my betrayal of my best friend’s trust and love. I know that I don’t deserve a friend like Starsky, not after what I did to him that day, but I thank god every day that I still have the right to call him my friend.
A DARK DAY IN MAY
May 15th, 1979. The worst day of the life. A day that is burned into my memory and into my soul. It’s the day that I almost lost my best friend. It’s the day that Starsky almost died. It had started out just like any other day. They were painting the squad room so we couldn’t really use to do our reports. Someone had moved in a ping pong table and Starsky and I were playing a game, teasing each other and bantering back and forth the way we always did. Starsky won and was clowning around about his victory as we left the building and headed across the police parking lot towards his car to head out on our usual patrol.
I was on the passenger’s side of the car waiting for Starsky to unlock the doors so I could get in when I heard a crunching sound, the kind of sound a car makes when it hits another car. I glanced up in time to see a black and white pull out of a parking spot behind us, hitting the car beside it as it did. Instinctively, I screamed at Starsky to get down and hit the pavement myself, pulling my gun from beneath my jacket even as I fell. I heard the sound of several gunshots as the car roared past us. I sprang to my feet and fired after the other car as it disappeared out of the parking lot but the black and white was already out of sight. Suddenly, it registered in my mind that I didn’t hear Starsky returning fire along with me.
“STARSKY!” I screamed as I ran around the front of the car “STARSK!” I skidded to a stop, my heart pounding with terror when I saw Starsky lying on the pavement beside the car, his head resting in the rear wheel well. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood and a puddle was rapidly forming beneath his still body. For a moment I was too terrified to move, to terrified to even breathe. I remember falling to my knees in front of him and reaching out with a trembling hand to press my fingers against the side of his neck. I frantically searched for a pulse, positive that he was dead. I let out the breath I didn’t realize that I was even holding when I felt a faint, fluttering pulse beneath my fingers. He was still alive but just barely. He was rapidly bleeding out right in front of me. I could hear the rattling sound in his chest as he struggled to breath, a sound I knew far too well. The death rattle that someone makes as they are dying.
Suddenly, I became aware of people running towards us from every direction. Uniformed officers, undercover officers, Captain Dobey, the department Doctor. Somehow, they were all there, yelling orders and trying to access the situation. I felt Dobey taking my arm and gently pulling me to my feet, away from my dying partner. Briefly, I tried to struggle out of his grasp, desperate to get back to Starsky’s side. I didn’t want him to die alone and I knew that he was dying right there in front of me.
“Ken,” Dobey said gently “Let them take care of him now….” My knees almost gave out on me as I leaned heavily against my Captain’s side. An ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were frantically trying to access Starsky’s condition and get him ready to transport to the hospital. I felt Dobey pulling my arm, leading me towards his car to take me to the hospital. I followed docilely, my mind numb and my body going into shock. I barely remember the ride to the hospital. I didn’t even notice that I had Starsky’s blood on my hands, my shirt and my jeans until we got to the hospital and I noticed the curious stares from other visitors as we stalked into the emergency room.
The Captain guided me over to a vacant sofa at the far end of the waiting room and we sat down to wait for the news that neither one of us wanted to hear. Within half an hour, the waiting room began to fill up with people as other officers began to show up to show their support for a fellow officer who had been mortally wounded. It wasn’t long before Huggy Bear showed up to join us in our lonely vigil. It was almost two hours before a doctor finally came out through the swinging doors that led to the emergency room, his scrubs stained with blood, Starsky’s blood. Before he could even speak, I was on my feet with the Captain by my side, demanding to know if my partner, my best friend, was dead.
I was amazed when the doctor told us that Starsky was still hanging on and had been taken to emergency surgery. He was the one who told us that Starsky had been shot three times in the torso and had lost almost half of his blood volume before he got to the hospital. Even though he was still alive, the prognosis wasn’t hopeful. Even if he survived the surgery, he still wasn’t expected to live through the night. The injuries were just too massive and too severe. His lungs, his stomach, and his kidney’s had all been compromised. One bullet had actually grazed the sac that surrounded his heart. My heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest, leaving behind a gapping hole, as my mind screamed over and over that Starsky was dying. He was dying and I had to accept that.
Seven hours later found me, Huggy and the Captain sitting in the hallway on the Intensive Care Unit, staring blankly through the large glass window that looked into the room where Starsky lay on the bed. He was as white as the sheets beneath him, being kept alive by the machines that surrounded the bed and monitored his vital signs. His stomach and chest was heavily bandaged and the respirator beside him forced the air in and out of his lungs. Somehow, he had managed to survive the surgery to repair the worst of the damage to his body but the doctors still believed that he was going to die. The human body can only stand so much damage and his injuries were so devastating and so life threatening, that we all knew we were on a death watch.
There is no way to describe how it feels to have someone tell you that you are going to lose the one person that means more to you than anyone else in the world. A part dies too, especially when the doctors keep telling you that there’s no hope, no medical miracle that can save him. The pain cut so deep that I felt like I was dying too and in a way I was. When Starsky died, the best part of me would die too, leaving only a hollow shell of a man behind. I had already decided that I would stay there until Starsky drew his last breath and then I would leave and go home. And my life would end to, at my own hands. A life I no longer wanted to live if Starsky wasn’t there by my side.
Sometime during that long lonely night, I got up to go to the men’s room. I almost collided with an intern coming out. Excusing myself, I went into the bathroom and leaned heavily against the sink, splashing some water on my face and watching with morbid fascination as the water ran red, finally rinsing Starsky’s blood from my hands. Glancing at my own harried face in the mirror, from the corner of my eye I saw a man’s leg sticking out from underneath one of the stalls.
Spinning around, I shoved open the door to the stall and saw a man lying unconscious on the floor, dressed in white scrub pants and a tee shirt with a stethoscope hanging around his neck. I raced out of the men’s room, my eyes scanning the hallway for the intern I had almost collided with on my way into the men’s room. I saw him disappearing into a room at the end of the room and barreled down the hall after him. Somehow, my cop’s mind knew that he was there to finish the job on Starsky. Bursting into the room, I grabbed him and slammed him back against the wall, relishing the look of fear I saw in his eyes.
He slammed his knee into my groin, catching me by surprise, and loosening my hold on him long enough for him to slip away. Even as I staggered out of the doorway behind him, I saw him running down the hallway with two uniformed officers running after him. Captain Dobey immediately got on the phone and ordered a round the clock guard on Starsky’s room. Nobody was allowed in except me, Dobey, Starsky’s doctors and his primary nurses. I realized that whoever had tried to kill me and Starsky was still out there and they were looking to finish the job. The one thing I could do, the only thing I could do for my fallen partner, was to find out who they were and bring them down. Then I could end my own life at least knowing that I had brought them to justice.
Captain Dobey decided to set up a temporary command post at the hospital so he would be there when Starsky died and I’d be free to see if I could find out who had arranged the hit. With Huggy’s help, I found out the name of the woman who had paid for the hit and immediately went to her apartment. She refused to tell me anything but I had enough to arrest her for paying for the hit on the two of us. When I called the hospital to report in to Captain Dobey, he told me that I needed to get back to the hospital as quickly as I could. I knew immediately that he was telling me that it was almost over, that Starsky was dying and that I needed to be there to say good-bye.
I broke every speed limit in the book to get back to the hospital, slamming though the front entrance and running through the hallways like my life depended on it. I skidded to a stop in front of Starsky’s room just as the doctor was coming out of the room. In a stunned voice, he told me, the Captain and Huggy that Starsky was still alive. Still not out of the woods but still alive. I wasn’t sure what had happened exactly until after the doctor left and the Captain told me that Starsky had flat lined. His heart had stopped. The trauma team had worked on him for over six minutes before they finally got his heart started again, just as I arrived on the floor. I almost collapsed on the floor myself, as my adrenaline let down. I felt the Captain slipping an arm around my shoulders and leading me over to a chair. I followed blindly, my heart still pounding frantically and close to hyperventilating. I said a silent prayer in my mind, thanking god for not taking Starsky away from me. At least not yet.
Once I was certain that he was out of danger, at least for the moment, I hit the streets again. Over the course of the next two days, I found out that a man named James Gunther was behind the assassination attempt on Starsky and myself. Gunter was a powerful and ruthless man who had managed to stay one step ahead of the law for years. Nobody had ever been able to bring him down. But I did. With every resource at my disposal, I found the evidence I needed to connect him to the hired hit. And I made sure that I was the one who went to his office to arrest him myself. By the time I arrived, he was already expecting me. He had poisoned his right hand man because Starsky had survived the attack on his life and the other man’s body was still sitting in a plush chair in the luxurious office when I arrived to arrest Gunther. Gunther had a gun but he wasn’t used to getting his own hands dirty, he was used to hiring someone else to do the job for him, so it wasn’t hard to overpower him. I had to use every bit of restraint I could manage to keep from killing the man with my bare hands. He had almost killed my partner, my best friend, and even though Starsky was still alive, it would take him months to recover from his injuries.
Starsky was in a coma for almost a week. I was with him when he opened his eyes for the first time after the attack and I had never felt such a overwhelming surge of relief in my life. I wasn’t even aware of the tears that were streaming down my face when I saw those sapphire eyes staring at me. He was only awake for a few seconds before his eyes closed again but somehow I knew in my heart that he was going to beat the odds this time. He was going to live. In spite of the doctor’s dire predictions, in spite of the massive damage he had suffered, he had survived. And I swore that I would be by his side to make sure he recovered from the attack, no matter how long it took. God had given us both a second chance and I intended to make the most of it.
Starsky was in the hospital for almost two months. He was heavily medicated most of the time and didn’t remember the shooting or the first couple of weeks in the hospital. But he was still alive and that was the only thing that mattered to me. Captain Dobey agreed to put me on indefinite leave to care for him until he was back on his feet. He’d lost a partner that he cared about almost as much as I cared about Starsky and he knew how I felt. And even though he didn’t come right out and say it, Starsky and I both knew how the Captain felt about us too. We were all family and we were all grateful that Starsky’s life had been spared.
AFTERMATH
When Starsky was finally released from the hospital it was on the condition that someone could stay with him for awhile and that someone was going to be me. I had to be the one to nurse him back to health. I still blamed myself because I couldn’t protect him from being hurt in the first place. He was still so weak and so vulnerable. He couldn’t do much for himself at all and still needed almost constant care, care I was only too willing to provide. He had beaten the odds and survived even though the doctors had given him up for dead when he was admitted. He was their miracle patient and to me, he was just a miracle. I still had my best friend and my partner by my side in spite of all the odds against him.
He was still heavily medicated. He had to take pills to regulate his blood pressure, stool softeners, pills to keep his body from retaining fluids, antibiotics, pills to help boost his immune system, pills to help with his digestion, pills for his anxiety and panic attacks, pills to keep his lungs clear, and some heavy duty pain pills for the terrible pain he was still in from his injuries and the various surgeries to save his life.
He couldn’t get out of bed by himself, or walk any distance at all. He couldn’t go to the bathroom without assistance and I had to give him sponge baths since he couldn’t take a shower or a bath until the stitches were all removed. Sometimes, he cried because the pain was so bad and the only thing I could do was curl up on the bed beside him and hold him to try and comfort him the best way I could. I gave him massages to work out the cramps in his legs and to loosen the knots in his muscles. I applied ointment to the healing scars to keep them from tightening up too much and I did the best I could to encourage him to eat so he could regain the weight he’d lost since the shooting.
Since he was on a restricted diet, it became a challenge trying to fix food that would tempt him to eat. He couldn’t have any of his favorite junk foods and it became a real challenge to get him to eat enough to start to regain both his weight and his strength.
Some days the best I could hope for was to get him to drink the special milk shakes I made for him or to eat a bowl of his favorite ice cream. Even then, far too often, his body would reject the food I so patiently got down him and we’d have to start all over again.
His mother came to stay for six weeks to help out but I was still his primary care taker. But having her there did take some of the pressure off me and left me a couple of hours a day free to do the shopping and errands that needed to be done. Starsky still slept most of the time so I tried to plan my other activities around the times I knew he would be sleeping. Three times a day, I did range of motion exercises to keep his joints flexible and to help rebuild his muscle tone. I hated that most of all because I was forced to cause him more pain when I did the exercises, each time moving the joint a little farther than the last time to keep it loosened up. It was the hardest with his left hand and arm. He had very little use of that arm because one of the bullets had done so much damage to his left shoulder and since he was left handed, it was imperative that he regain use of that arm and hand.
At night I would lay awake beside him and listen as he struggled just to breath normally. The doctors still weren’t sure if he would ever regain full use of his left lung or not. And regardless of how much lung capacity he did regain, he would always be more susceptible to lung infections. Even a simple cold could easily turn into life threatening pneumonia if he wasn’t careful.
It was almost two months before he could begin the more rigorous physical therapy that he needed to regain his mobility and his stamina. It took that long for him to regain enough strength and lung power to be able to endure the more strenuous activity it would involve. Physical therapy began a new torture for my resilient partner. He had to attend daily sessions for almost six months, then they were cut back to twice a week for another three months. The sessions left him exhausted and in terrible pain. After a session, he would have to take a pain pill and then he would sleep for the rest of the afternoon. But Starsky is the most determined man I know and he fought with everything he had to give in order to recover. It was a long slow process but he prevailed. Six months after the shooting, he was able to care for himself again but I stuck around, unwilling and unable to give up my caretaker role completely.
I watched as he fought every step of the way to regain his strength, his stamina and his independence. And I was right there by his side every day, encouraging him and coaxing him, even bullying him when it seemed like he couldn’t go on any more. I was there to help him through his bouts of depression and self pity and to rejoice with him with each new achievement. We became closer than ever during his recovery. It was hard for me when I finally realized he didn’t need me as much any more and I had to back off, for his sake and for my own.
In a few weeks, he will go in front of the review board, almost a year after he was shot, to see if they will clear him to go back to active duty. I know that is what he wants but I’m terrified to see him back out there, putting himself back in the line of fire again. But either way, I will be there by his side no matter what happens. If he is cleared to go back on the streets, I will be there watching his back as usual. And if he can’t go back on active duty, then neither will I. I will not work the streets with another partner besides Starsky. He knows that. We have already talked about it. Regardless of the outcome of the review board, he knows that I will always be there beside him.
Captain Dobey has already told us that if Starsky can’t return to the streets, then he will contact a friend of his at the Academy to try to get us jobs there as instructors. It is an option that we are both considering. It was too close this time, I couldn’t go through something like this again and neither could Starsky. I gave up my apartment and put my things in storage when I moved in with Starsky to care for him and we have discussed finding a larger apartment or maybe a house together once the review board makes their decision. I can’t stand the thought of leaving him alone, our lives have become too closely entwined for that. Since the day we first met, it’s been me and thee and it will continue to be that way for the rest of our lives, no matter what we end up doing. Maybe that has been our destiny all along. We’ve left our mark as policemen and found a enduring friendship and bond that will continue for eternity. Maybe that’s what god had in mind for both of us from the beginning. I believe it is.
THE END
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