Reflections of the Way Life Used to Be

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June, 1970

“Dave, if you want a cup of coffee, there’s nothing left except the grounds,” Vanessa Hutchinson said with her usual supercilious distain. Behind her, Ken Hutchinson was tying his LAPD regulation black shoes, his own coffee cup neglected on the table.

“No, thanks.” Starsky stood up from the chair, the vinyl seat squeaking against his holster. He looked up at the yellow clock on the wall with a sinking feeling. Unless they got onto the freeway in under five minutes, a feat that he’d never accomplished since he and Hutch had begun carpooling, they’d never make it to the precinct on time. “C’mon, Hutch, hurry up. We’re gonna be late.”

“Shoes tied, gun, handcuffs, badge, hat.” Hutch touched each item in turn, then tossed back his cooling coffee in one gulp. “May be late tonight, Van. Oliver Turner’s having a bachelor party.”

“If it’s anything like yours was, you’ll turn up blotto,” Vanessa snapped, her beautiful eyes narrowed in an accusatory stare. “Where is this so called party?”

“Shanahan’s,” Starsky supplied, hoping to forestall a fight. If Vanessa started in on Hutch as she often did, they’d be delayed by ten minutes or more. “Only beer for the both of us, Vanessa, I’ll swear on my mother’s blintzes. We gotta work in the morning.”

“I’ve got a shoot anyway,” Vanessa said, dismissing anything Starsky ever said without an ounce of apology. “Daniel Sylvester. On the beach, with the sun setting behind me. May get me in the Sport’s Illustrated swimsuit issue.”

Hutch froze with his hand on the front door, looking at her with such a mixture of emotion Starsky had to give him a push to get him going again. “Isn’t that what you said last week?” he asked over his shoulder, letting Starsky precede him out.

“I had to sign a contract, Ken.”

Her voice had taken on the arch, snide quality that set Starsky’s teeth on edge. He didn’t know how Hutch and Vanessa stayed together. Sure, she was gorgeous, and they made a stunning couple, but they were nothing alike. Vanessa seemed to want an escort who looked good on her arm and could spend a lot of money on her. Hutch was far more a homebody who enjoyed the simple pleasures.

The Hutchinson’s night life must have decreased drastically since Hutch had graduated from the police academy six months earlier. In Starsky’s opinion, which he had never shared with his friend, the marriage was doomed. Not that he was any expert on the subject, never having even come close to an engagement ring, much less leading a nice girl up the aisle to get hitched under the huppah, but Hutch and Vanessa went weeks with barely a civil word between them. Then, as if some fairy godmother had waved a magic wand, they’d be cooing like the lovebirds in the golden cage Starsky’s Aunt Esther used to have. The whole thing was a mystery to him, but the couple had been married before he’d ever met Hutch, and assumedly they were used to this decidedly stressful union. He just didn’t want to be stuck in the middle since his natural inclination would be to take his friend’s side.

“When did you get to be such a stickler for arriving on time?” Hutch pulled open the door to Starsky’s revamped 1967 Mustang, sliding in just as Starsky started the engine.

“Since I got put on report, remember?”

“I remember a guy who came in late three days out of five at the academy and still managed to charm the instructors into giving him a passing grade in attendance.”

Starsky glanced over at Hutch to judge just how far he could voice his opinion. If Hutch was all hunched up and defensive, then he wouldn’t bring up anything about the tension in the Hutchinson household. Hutch looked thoughtful, his brow slightly furrowed, so Starsky forged ahead. “I just didn’t want you two to get started, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said quietly, his cheeks coloring. “Sometimes, I think Vanessa just likes an audience.”

“Airing dirty laundry, my ma usta call it.”

“That’s about right. Things have gotten really tense between the two of us.” He took a deep breath, but didn’t say any more.

Hutch sat looking at his hands through two stoplights and the on-ramp to the freeway. Starsky had half a dozen questions but rejected each because Hutch might consider them too prying. They’d only known each other for one year, but Starsky had never had a friend he could talk to like Hutch. Still, there were things that just didn’t come into the conversation. Oddly, the old standbys like religion and politics were easy to debate. Hutch had been raised Lutheran, and Starsky Jewish, so there were many different points to compare and contrast. The current president and California governor were rife for discussion, but both stayed away from mentioning Hutch’s marriage.

The silence stretched out so long that Starsky was about to launch into a long story about the TV show he’d watched the night before on the newest cars on the market when Hutch raised his head.

“Starsk, Vanessa and I have decided to get a divorce.”

Starsky jerked, nearly sending the car careening ahead into the van in front of them. He stomped on the brake, glad that the stop and go traffic meant they were only going about fifteen miles an hour instead of sixty. He could have plowed right into the VW bus if he’d been going faster. “A divorce?”

“We sat up half the night arguing. Things haven’t been working out for a while. We both knew it, but it’s hard to…” He shrugged. “End things. I know you sensed something.”

“Yeah.” Starsky focused on his driving, his belly lurching. “I knew.”

 

June, 1978

“Knew what?” Dobey asked, holding out a steaming cup with Java Joe spelled out in coffee beans.

Starsky stared up at the man, totally disoriented. He shook his head to dispel the cobwebs of the past and accepted the cup. “Daydreaming, Cap,” he said by way of explanation. And what a daydream it had been. He glanced over at the clock-ten minutes had elapsed. Nancy Michaels was talking quietly to a pink smocked volunteer who had a cart piled with snacks. Under normal circumstances, Starsky never would have passed up the opportunity to try a donut or chocolate bar, but his belly lurched at the sight of the food. Why the heck had he been thinking about Hutch’s divorce on today of all days?

“What if?” Nancy started and stopped abruptly. She bit a bear claw and washed it down with coffee as the volunteer pushed her cart away. “Did the doctors tell you what they needed to do? How badly was he hurt?”

“Nancy, you don’t have to stay, it’s getting late,” Starsky said. “We could call you when he’s doing better.”

She blinked, eyes suspiciously bright. “I know this seems really strange. I mean, I barely spoke to Ken, even at Van’s funeral. But he was my first husband, and…I’ve known Ken Hutchinson since we were all sixteen.”

“Maybe you could speak to his parents, then,” Dobey suggested. “Tell them what happened?” She nodded, and took another bite of the pastry.

“I called, but there was no answer at the house,” Starsky said quietly, and then suddenly there were more people in the waiting area: Dr. Lincoln, the surgeon, clad in sweaty green scrubs with dark red stains on the front, and a nurse.

“Detective Starsky?” The doctor smiled calmly, and Starsky felt his heart drop back into place. No wonder he couldn’t eat or drink when that thing had been clogging up his throat. The surgeon looked far too relaxed for things to have gone badly.

“How is he?”

“Things went really well, we took a bullet out of his intestines. You probably don’t want a detailed explanation of what was nicked and punctured, but suffice to say that we had to create a temporary colostomy in his right side.”

“A colostomy?” Nancy echoed, sounding horrified. “He’ll have to wear a bag?”

“This is Nancy,” Starsky introduced. “Hutch’s…uh, ex-wife.”

Lincoln nodded in her direction, continuing, “It’s just temporary, as I said, to give the tissue surrounding the wound time to heal. For about a month, maybe.”

“You mean he’ll need another surgery?” Starsky tried desperately to get a handle on his wildly erratic emotions. He’d been sure that the doctor would give them good news. Hutch was alive, but at what cost? How long would he be off the force? Would he want to return after an injury like this one?

“Yes, unless the damage doesn’t heal as we’d hoped.” Lincoln looked at his watch. “Your partner will be in recovery shortly. I have to get back to my next case, but I’ll talk with you more later, when he’s in the ICU.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Dobey said formally, but even he seemed stunned by Hutch’s future.

“Excuse me?” The nurse, a small dark-skinned woman built on the lines of a fire hydrant, spoke up. “Which one of you is authorized to take this?”

“Oh, damn,” Starsky said softly. She was holding a plastic bag containing a small wad of bloodstained cotton. “The bullet?”

“That’s disgusting.” Nancy gagged on her bear claw and turned away.

“I’ll take charge of that.” Dobey showed his ID and signed for the evidence bag. “I’ll bring it over to the police lab personally.”

~*~*~

Nancy stayed until Hutch was settled in intensive care, and Starsky let her go in first for a quick visit. He was almost afraid to see Hutch attached to the ventilator, sprouting IV tubing from both arms, and hung back once Nancy left, staring at his pale, silent partner. All alone, he crept closer and perched on the chair beside the bed for the requisite ten minute visit before the nurse shooed him out at exactly 1:30. The moment he left the tiny cubicle, Starsky regretted it. He felt like vomiting and wondered if that was the result of seeing Hutch so very still and injured, or simply the gallons of bad coffee he’d drunk.

He waited for another hour in the waiting room before washing his hands again for another ten minute visit. In the interim, Hutch hadn’t moved, but the nurses had been busy. Even Starsky’s untrained eyes could see that there were different bottles of fluid hanging from the IV poles, bags of red blood and other more mysterious things flowing into Hutch’s veins, to help stabilize his traumatized body.

“What’d you see out there, Hutch?” Starsky whispered, clasping his hands together to keep them still. He shuddered, too worried to leave and too afraid of Hutch dying to touch the lax hand lying on the drab green blanket.

“Time’s up,” a nurse with a pen stuck through her untidy bun reminded.

“If anything should happen,” Starsky began and didn’t want to finish the sentence. “You’d call, right?”

“We have your contact number,” she assured him, for the tenth time in the last two hours. “You really need to get some sleep.”

 At home.

She’d emphasized the last. There was no space in Hutch’s tiny ICU cubicle for Starsky to stay, and nurses would be with him at all times. He needed to sleep.

Reluctantly, Starsky left. He’d never forgive himself if Hutch died when he wasn’t there, but when he nearly hit a light pole navigating the Torino out of the hospital parking lot, he paid more attention to his driving. Hutch would never forgive him if he killed himself driving home, especially once Hutch survived the night.

Starsky arrived back at his house at three a.m. He was so tired he could barely summon the energy to trudge up the angled staircase to his front door. Pausing on the sixth step, he leaned against the railing, letting the cool air settle around his aching body.

Starsky bent his neck back, stretching cramped muscles. Even with the light pollution from LA’s neon and halogen signs, it was a beautiful night, inky black with only a sliver of a moon. The wind had blown away all the smog and the heavens shone with millions of bright stars. Starsky picked out the familiar constellations, hearing Hutch talk about each with that slightly professorial tone he got sometimes, the one that usually drove Starsky crazy. He’d give anything to have Hutch pontificating on the fact that the cluster of stars which looked like a big pot was called Ursa Major and not the Big Dipper.

Not sure whether he was about to laugh or cry, Starsky continued upward, cursing the stairs. The day Starsky bought the condo, Hutch had predicted that he would grow to hate the long staircase. Not that Hutch had anything to boast about, his Venice Place apartment had nearly as many steps. The pang of loss hit hard just as Starsky opened the front door and dropped his keys on the floor.

Oh, God.

Hutch lying on the sidewalk, covered in blood.

Who would have wanted Ken Hutchinson dead? A hit like that had to have a specific purpose, because there’d only been the one shot. Or as far as Starsky knew, there had been. Had the crime scene techs searched the area for other empty cartridge shells or misplaced bullets? Had they found the exact spot where the shooter had waited for the right moment? Was it possible that Hutch wasn’t the original target? What about the screaming Irish girl-Siobhan whatever. Maybe the IRA was after her? Or an irate old boyfriend? What about the Hamburger girl? He couldn’t even remember her name.

And Hillsborough. Maybe he’d read some x-ray wrong, misdiagnosed a patient who died and the family was now on the rampage?

Starsky rubbed his eyes wearily, this was all too confusing and he was exhausted. He sat down on the couch to take off his sneakers, meaning to take a shower before crawling between the sheets. He gave up trying to peel off the stinky socks and lay down, pulling the afghan off the back of the couch, and fell asleep instantly.

Sirens shrilled through his dreams. Ambulances, fire engines, and the Torino with the mars light spilling eerie red light over him and Hutch, all screamed down endless streets, going no where. Starsky jerked awake, still hearing an incessant ringing.

The telephone.

He dashed across the carpet, nearly colliding with a chair and an end table before grabbing up the receiver. “H’llo?” he slurred, sleep drugged and bleary-eyed.

“Starsky. It’s Parker Davidson-from the lab. Dobey told me to give you a call.”

Starsky peered across at the coffee maker, but he hadn’t set it on automatic to brew a fresh pot for the morning. Damn. He needed a jolt of caffeine to get his brain in gear. “Yeah?”

“We did a rush job on the bullet the hospital sent over.”

Starsky’s belly flip-flopped, remembering the blood stained wad of cotton.

“We’ve got some interesting news for you. We actually found a match for the bullet-same weapon. Only had that new ballistic computer up and running for a week and this is the first time it’s worked like it was supposed to. Having to enter all the data from every crime involving bullets during the last ten years was a pain in the rear, if you know what I mean, but man-“

“Parker!” Starsky stopped himself from adding a few choice swear words. The man could talk your ear off.

“Someday, if we could link this baby to other precincts, we probably could solve lots more crimes, but luckily, your shooter used this gun once before, right here in Bay City.”

“When?” Starsky ground out.

“1970. You remember the name Simon Conrad?”

At this point it was doubtful he could remember his mother’s maiden name, if asked. “No. Who is he?”

“Brother to Anne Benson, and if you don’t remember her, think back to your rookie days-a hot day in June, on the last day of school,” Davidson said. “Hutch wrote that in the official report.”

“It…” Starsky cradled the phone to his ear, massaging his temple with the palm of his left hand. “I know that name. Anne Benson. A car accident combined with a drug bust.” Biggest arrest he and Hutch had made in their first year as police officers. “What about it?”

“You were shot at, and a bullet was retrieved from your patrol car,” Davidson continued on, oblivious to Starsky’s stunned silence. “That ballistics computer will search for any bullets that match, and when we put in the one that hit Hutch yesterday, it came out with a match for a gun registered to Simon Conrad. Same gun, same man-you think?”

“After all these years?” Starsky wondered aloud. “Give me an hour, Park. I’ll be in as fast as I can.”

Despite his words, Starsky sat unmoving, contemplating his big toe coming through a hole in the right sock. Simon Conrad and Anne Benson. Yes, he did remember them. Strange how the whole scene suddenly came back to him, as clear as if it had happened yesterday.

 

June, 1970

Hot, dry, no wind whatsoever. Standing on the sidewalk was like being in Death Valley, except there were buildings instead of cactus. Hillsides were already parched a golden brown in this drought year, even the leaves on the trees hanging limply. The mercury must have topped ninety-five degrees, breaking records that went back decades, heat shimmers dancing across the black topped streets like weird demons on the loose. Being the last day of school, children dragged their unneeded sweaters and lunch boxes behind them as they raced home.

Hutch and Vanessa had already seen a lawyer about their divorce, and Starsky had spent the morning trying to lift his best friend’s spirits with goofy stories about his cab driving days. Nothing had worked. The trial separation was already doing a number on Hutch, and there was no jollying him out of his gloomy mood. Starsky almost wished he were still with his first partner Bill Raintree, a twenty-five year veteran who used to sit in the passenger seat of the squad car and stink up the interior with his cigars. At least that guy would tell bad jokes for the entire shift. Hutch slouched in the seat, his fair skin bright red from the heat, and glowered.

Starsky glanced over at his blue uniformed partner, his natural optimism beginning to dim in the face of an increasingly morose Hutch. They’d been partners in the black and white for almost six months now. Since just before Christmas when Bill Raintree retired, and he didn’t begrudge Hutch the bad mood. Still, it was an ordeal to have to sit next to the guy as he bemoaned his marriage, and pined for the days when he and Vanessa got along.

“Seen any good movies lately, Hutch?” Starsky asked hopefully. “I went to see M*A*S*H last night. Y’know they use the word fuck- a lot. My Ma’ll never go see that one. And that Sally Kellerman-she’s a knock-out.”

“Huh?” Hutch looked up, but obviously hadn’t heard a word Starsky was saying.

“I might as well be talking to a brick wall.” Starsky gave his partner a resigned look before driving through the upcoming intersection.

“Sorry, Starsk.” Hutch rolled down his window to let in a little more of the breeze produced by the car’s faster speed. The pale hair on his forehead ruffled in the wind, but the air was far too hot to cool off the interior of the car. “Just thinking.”

“I know.” Starsky shifted, his uniform shirt sticking wetly to the vinyl seat.

“We’re supposed to meet the judge on July second. For the divorce.”

As if he’d been talking about anything else. “Rotten day,” Starsky commented.

“This one or that one?” Hutch shaded his eyes against the glaring sunlight. “We should go out past Sorvetti Elementary soon. They let out at one today.”

“Next stop, Sorvetti School.” Starsky swung a right, braking just enough to let a dog trot across the street before heading four blocks over to the elementary school. He liked to keep watch when the kids were walking home. There had been an increase in drug related crimes in the area, with slime-bucket pushers trying to entice ever younger clientele for their product. “How’s that hotel where you’re living?”

“The Pink Flamingo?” Hutch shrugged with a predictable grimace.

Starsky could sympathize. The place was barely above the level of a rooms-rented-by-the-hour hooker paradise, but it was all he’d been able to afford when Vanessa locked him out.

“Livable,” he continued. “But I can’t stay there forever, it’s already been a couple of weeks.”

“Why don’t you move in with me?” Starsky didn’t move his head, pretending to watch the road, but he slid his eyes sideways to gauge Hutch’s reaction. “I got lots of room.”

“Starsk, you have no beds.” Hutch swept his eyes along a line of tiny family owned shops, watching for anything suspicious. “Why’d you sell your bed to that girl?”

“She didn’t have a bed, either. I figured that if she owned mine, then maybe we could share.” Starsky laughed at his own delusions. “Unfortunately, she and I weren’t on the same wavelength.” He grinned. “My couch is more comfortable anyway.” Starsky watched a blue Toyota slip through the intersection seconds before the yellow light turned red. He was never going to meet this month’s ticket quota. “I got thirty bucks for that bed. If you provided your own place to sleep, why couldn’t you live with me? Even for a little while, it’s certainly got to be better than that pink walled cesspool. And cheaper.”

“I’ll think about it.” Hutch took in a deep breath, wiping his chest where a damp stain of sweat was starting to show. “You have to put up with my rotten moods all day. I’m likely to be grouchy for a good while longer.”

“At least you’re honest.” Starsky pulled the patrol car over to the curb across from the rambling, one story school. “And I’ve gotten used to your moods before you get a cup of coffee in the morning.”

They’d arrived just in time. A teenaged girl in an orange crossing guard vest walked solemnly out to the middle of the crosswalk, holding her stop sign aloft. Very soon she was surrounded by small girls and boys clutching art projects and last day party cupcakes. School was over for three months, and they were all in celebratory mode, bursting with high-octane excitement.

Many of the children knew Starsky and Hutch from their frequent patrols of the neighborhood and also the school’s “The Policeman is our Friend” campaign. Starsky had particularly loved handing out sticky-backed plastic badges, and letting the kids turn on the siren.

“Hi,” said a small voice coming from the sidewalk, although no child was visible over the edge of the car window.

Hutch grinned at Starsky and eased the car open to reveal a pint-sized girl in a red Mickey Mouse t-shirt and short blue skirt. “Hello, Melissa. How are you today?”

“Very fine, Mithtar Tharth-ky,” she lisped, tongue showing through the gap where her two front teeth should be. Tiny black braids, each tipped with a blue or red barrette, bobbing up and down when she spoke.

“Hey, Melissa!” Starsky clutched his chest, all wounded indignation. “I’m Starsky, he’s Hutch!”

“I forgot.” She dimpled. “Are you gonna arretht thombody t’day?”

“Only if we have to.” Hutch tugged on one of her braids. “You haven’t done anything wrong, have you?”

“Got a thilver medal for thpelling!” Melissa shuffled the load in her arms and pulled a red ribbon topped with a glittery star out of her Barbie lunchbox.

“Outstanding!” Hutch congratulated.

“Melissa, have you ever seen the movie of The Music Man?” Starsky hummed Seventy-six Trombones.

“No.”

“Watch it the next time it’s on TV. You and that little red-haired kid have something in common.” Starsky winked at her.

“There’s my mama!” Melissa pointed to a yellow Chevy pulling into a driveway down the block. “Th-ee you when I’m in the thecond grade!” She dashed off with her lunchbox banging up and down against her leg.

“Hope she gets some front teeth soon.” Starsky made a huge deal wiping his face dry of the spray from her lisp in the hope that it would produce a smile out of Hutch. His partner didn’t even notice, seemingly absorbed in watching the crossing guard signal a line of cars through while holding the last children from the school on the sidewalk.

“I sounded just like that when I was six,” Hutch said.

“A stutter and a lisp? Every other kid in class must have picked on you.”

“I don’t stutter!”

“You do. Every time the sergeant says your name in morning roll you sound like you’re gonna panic.” Starsky shifted his butt, trying to get a little airflow on his back. The heavy polyester uniform was uncomfortable in the winter, but in the summer it just exacerbated the sweat potential. He was drenched, and the shift wasn’t even half over.

“You’re exaggerating.”

When the school grounds had cleared, Starsky started up the motor, waiting until two cars passed by. He saw a green Pontiac speed around the corner in his rearview mirror, the driver obvious to other vehicles, the twenty-five mile an hour speed limit, and the black and white patrol car. It whipped past them, narrowly avoiding the frightened crossing guard who dashed for the curb with a shriek.

Giving two quick bursts of the horn, Starsky pulled out in pursuit, which only made the Pontiac go faster. Cursing at the danger of chasing another car in a residential area, Starsky pressed his foot to the gas pedal, going from twenty to forty in a split second. Any faster and he’d be unable to maneuver the narrow streets.

“Dispatch, this is Adam 9 pursuing a green Pontiac west on Sorvetti Street just crossing Los Pasadas. License Charlie Baker Tango 8-8-6,” Hutch said tersely into the radio mike. “Requesting backup.”

Starsky gripped the wheel, Hutch’s voice barely registering. He’d excelled at the Academy in defensive driving, impressing the instructors, but this was one of the first times he’d had to use the expertise learned on the obstacle course. He had to keep focused on the green car, alert for pedestrians, roadblocks and other hazards not found on a closed course.

~*~*~

“They’re on us. Drive faster!” Arthur Benson said tightly, looking over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching police car. “It’s all your fault. If you’d listened to what I told you instead of belly-aching the whole way, we would have been there by now!”

The pregnant driver stifled a reply, biting down on her lip. The baby inside her was doing frantic cartwheels, and it was all she could do to keep her hands on the wheel when she wanted to hug her belly close and protect her child. “But-“

“Anne!” he snapped. She cringed, that tone enough to make her obey. “You want to get caught? Faster!”

“This is the police!” a voice amplified by an electronic bullhorn called out. “Pull over and stop immediately.”

“If we get caught, we could be sent away for a long time for the stuff we have stashed.” Arthur reached under the seat for the gun. “Then what would happen to your precious baby?”

Anne trembled, afraid of what he might do to her if she stopped now. “Art, what stuff? What did you do?” Not drugs, not again. Please, God, not when their lives were turning around. “The cop will just give me a speeding tick-“

“Be quiet and speed up! We can lose the pigs easy in this maze of streets.” Benson slid the clip of out the pistol to check the ammunition and then rolled down the window. “Take a left and a couple of rights real fast.”

Her eyes on the gun, Anne swung the wheel too far to the left, her round belly scraping the steering wheel, and had to fight to steady the car at the speed they were going. “Art, w-what are you doing?”

“That’s my business. You just keep driving!” He peered back at the oncoming black and white, steadying the gun on the open window ledge. “I’m not going down without a fight here. This was my big break. Idiots don’t understand what it takes to survive in this world with a house and a kid coming.”

Anne screamed when he fired the first time, the car careening around a corner with a raw scrape of metal on concrete. Did Art even realize they were still headed in the direction of her brother’s house? Should she try to lure the cops away? A cramp crawled up her belly from her pelvis, far stronger and more painful than the light pseudo contractions she’d been having all day.

No, baby boy, not now, she prayed silently, her heart up in her mouth.

Art snarled when the car bumped up on the curb, hitting a mailbox. “Fucking shit, Anne! Learn to drive!” The last word was punctuated by the roar of his pistol and a corresponding blast smashed through the rear window, cracks radiating across the glass.

Grunting, Art clutched at his shoulder where the bullet had finally lodged.

“Art! You’re hit!” Anne shrieked. He fell against her, knocking her hand off the steering wheel, and another sharp contraction tightened her abdomen. There was a slick wetness between her legs, the seat soaked with fluid. Her water had broken.

“Oh, God! The baby!” This had gone too far, she had to stop, had to explain somehow to the police. Anne grabbed for the steering wheel but the out-of-control car was speeding directly toward a stone wall with a metal plaque announcing  “Glenbrook Park Homes.”  She was tromping frantically on the brake without success, the scent of acrid burning rubber nauseating.

“Anne!” Benson shouted as the front of the Pontiac slammed into gray stone, metal folding up like a collapsible fan. Bracing herself, Anne pulled the wheel to a hard left, so that the car hit at a slant, the passenger side receiving most of the impact.

~*~*~

“Motherfucker cocksucker!” Starsky exploded when a bullet shattered their windshield, narrowly avoiding hitting Hutch in the arm as he grabbed the rifle bracketed next to the radio. “This is way more than some lady tryin’ to get her ice cream home from the grocery.”

“You figure that one out yourself?” Hutch snarked over the whine of the siren. He leveled the rifle barrel on the open window ledge, but didn’t fire.

“Try for his tires!” Starsky hunched over the wheel, scared that he’d hit some little old lady while trying to drive like Mario Andretti. He didn’t focus on anything but the tail of the Pontiac, sticking to it like a magnet to iron. The green car swung wide, corrected, and clipped a mailbox.

Hutch pulled the trigger bare seconds after the other shooter, but the cruiser hit a pothole just as the Pontiac lost control completely. Hutch’s shot went wild, angling up through the back window.

The rifle blast broke Starsky’s concentration. He inhaled painfully, lungs burning from holding his breath for too long, and fought with the wheel, pumping the brakes for all he was worth to avoid running into the car in front. The Pontiac smashed into a low stone wall, water whale-spouting up from the smashed radiator. Hutch jumped out of the patrol car even before it had stopped, running to the driver’s side.

“I’m in labor!” a dark haired woman sobbed, her wails of pain a weird counterpoint to the siren from the patrol car. “You shot my husband!”

“Ma’am.” Hutch yanked on the door, managing to pull it open without much trouble. He was glad when the noise from the siren died away, and could hear the hisses and pops from the staticky radio as Starsky called dispatch requesting an ambulance. “How far along are you?”

“I’m in labor!” she insisted, stumbling from the car, pressing her hands up under her gravid belly as if trying to keep the baby from being born. She lurched around the back of the car, fighting off Hutch’s restraining arm. “Get my husband!”

A man wearing a puffy blue jacket came running from a house across the street, his red face slack with shock. “Anney! What the hell?”

“Simon!” Anne stopped, contorting from the contraction Hutch could actually see tensing up her abdomen. “Help Art, help Art!”

“Ma’am, you have to lie down,” Hutch directed, estimating that she was in the most immediate need of medical attention. Not only was she in obvious labor, but there was also the mitigating factor that her left leg was slicked with blood from a gash on the thigh. “An ambulance is on the way.” He had the feeling he should be more concerned with why the couple had tried to elude the police, but their safety was the first priority. Once he got the woman lying down a few feet from the car, he glanced at the driver’s side, checking for weapons. There had to be a gun, the slug was buried in the seat of his patrol car.

Simon had shimmied around on the passenger side and was wrestling with the damaged door, reaching in to feel for a pulse in the man’s neck.

“How is he?” Hutch asked, taking a preliminary look at the rest of the car’s interior. There was no way he could make a more thorough search until the wounded man-presumably the shooter-was out, but there wasn’t a gun of any sort lying in plain view.

The other rescuer shook his head, gulping reflexively. “Dead. Damn. They were just about to have a kid.”

“You know them?”

“My sister,” he identified. “And her husband.”

“Mister….”

“Conrad, Simon Conrad.” He grimaced at the blood on his fingers and wiped them callously on his brother-in-law’s sleeve. “Uh-that’s Art Benson.”

“Mr. Conrad, stay with your sister until the ambulance arrives. I’ll call for the fire department to get your brother-in-law out,” Hutch said, not mentioning the morgue wagon that would be necessary, as well. He needed to find that gun first.

“Hutch!” Starsky called, the hint of panic in his voice so subtle no one but a close friend would be able to tell. “You wanna come over here?”

Standing, Hutch noticed they’d collected quite a crowd. People from the neighboring houses had gathered to ogle at the grizzly scene, whispering to each other with a horrified fascination that he found sickening. Like Romans watching lions slaughtering the slaves, these people thrilled at the gruesome spectacle suddenly present in their front yards.

“Everybody stay back!” Hutch called, shooing them as far back from the car as possible. Luckily, the water still spewing from the front end had kept all but the most curious away from the crime scene. Rule number one at the academy was establish a crime scene and maintain a vigilant watch until detectives arrived. The question was-what exactly should he be looking for? The gun wasn’t immediately obvious, but the fact that Benson had fired on police in a residential area clearly indicated that there was something he’d wanted to hide.

“Si-mon!” Anne cried out, panting in a rhythmic pattern. “Where’s Art?”

“Hutch!” Starsky’s ability to make a one syllable word into two, or even three, usually amused Hutch, but today it just told him something was wrong. “This baby wants out.”

Jogging over to the two men bending over Anne, Hutch frantically reviewed what little he knew about childbirth. He’d taken a smattering of pre-med courses in college before switching to criminology, but nothing that would be helpful in this situation. Anatomy and biology were wonderful for an overview, so he knew how a baby was conceived and what orifice it should come out of, but little else. The police academy had given a class in emergency childbirth, which had mesmerized Hutch at the time, mostly because he’d still harbored hopes that Vanessa would want to have his baby. Now, the whole lesson was a blur, and Starsky would be no help in that department. He’d hidden his eyes and made gagging noises all during the educational film.

“Where’s the damned ambulance?” Hutch asked, noting that Anne was hunched on her side in a vaguely fetal position, grunting with the forceful contractions. Her eyes were closed and she was crying, her brother rubbing her back while murmuring soothing words.

“Freeway’s backed up, a big rig jackknifed just before noon. May take a while,” Starsky hissed in a stage whisper. “You like this kinda medical stuff. Look at that!” He pointed between Anne’s legs. Her skirt had been hiked up and panties removed so that the bulging head of a baby was plain to see. “I’m getting the first aid kit!”

“Starsky!” Hutch made a grab for his fleeing partner, but Starsky was already at the patrol car.

“She was due any day,” Simon Conrad said. “Can’t you do anything? She needs a doctor. Her leg is bleeding, too.”

“I don’t want to have my baby in the street!” Anne wailed. “Oh, God!”

“M-m-Mrs. Benson.” Hutch nearly bit his tongue, frustrated by his nervous stutter. “I want you to lie back, and try not to push.” The jagged wound in her left leg looked bad but he didn’t have time to assess the severity with the imminent birth.

“He’s coming!” she screamed.

Starsky was back with a measly first aid kit that had nothing whatsoever useful for childbirth. There was a package containing a sterile drape, which Hutch shoved under Anne’s buttocks, while Starsky arranged another over her raised knees to use as a privacy shield. The woman was alternating between gasping screams and holding her breath with forceful intensity.

“Damn,” Starsky said faintly, when Hutch slipped one finger into Anne’s vaginal opening to touch the baby’s head. “You find a gun in the car?”

“No.” Hutch appreciated Starsky’s need to distract himself from the very primal act, but now was most definitely not the time to be discussing this. He cupped his hands around the slick skull, feeling the incredible pressure of the uterine muscles intent on expelling the infant.

“The shooter?”

“Dead,” Hutch mouthed silently, not wanting Anne to hear the awful news at the moment her child came into the world.

“Would you look at that!” Starsky said simultaneously with Anne’s guttural groan as the infant’s head popped free.

The new baby gave a distinctly unhappy cry, and suddenly Hutch had his hands full of squirming naked baby.

Rubbernecking locals surged forward to witness the new life, the ear-splitting siren from a fire truck scattering the rest of the neighbors when the long yellow truck pulled into the street. Hutch carefully wrapped the baby in the same blanket he’d used to shield Anne, placing the whole bundle on her chest. She was gulping back sobs, clutching at her son with frantic need.

“A boy,” Simon said happily, wiping the sweat off his sister’s forehead. “Anney, you had a boy.”

“Where’s Art?” Anne asked dazedly, repeating the question to everyone within earshot.

“Ambulance?” Hutch asked the first fireman to the scene. He knew the guy from a fire only a week earlier, but couldn’t recall his last name. Jerry something. “She needs to be seen by a doctor, the umbilical cord is still attached.”

“We’re local. The only hospital that can handle babies is five miles away.” Jerry did have oxygen and bandages but they’d have to wait for transportation.

“Just a little longer,” Hutch said gently to the new mother, still in awe that he’d actually delivered a baby. June 12th, 1970 would be a date he’d remember for a long time to come. Benson, baby boy had entered this world with the help of one Ken Hutchinson, soon to be divorced. What a kick in the head.

“Where’s Art?” Anne asked again.

Four firemen set to work freeing Arthur Benson’s body from its metal prison. The extraction necessitated pulling the car away from the wall, and a great deal of time was spent waiting for a tow truck and another emergency vehicle. Luckily, the ambulance made a belated appearance, bearing away the new mother and child. Two more patrol cars came in its wake to set up barricades around the perimeter of the car and prevent the lookiloos from trampling on the scene.

Starsky, amazed by Hutch’s apparent coolness under fire, or more specifically, the act of childbirth, stationed himself as guardian of the car until the pistol was found. His own patrol car had already been impounded so that the lab crew could dig the bullet out of the upholstery, and he found himself imagining being buried under the mountain of paperwork this case would generate. He’d be up half the night writing out reports and signing requisitions for a new car. Damn, there went any chance of a night at the movies with Susan Cole from records.

Hutch had delivered a baby! Right out on the side of the street, a real life version of some hokey episode of Adam 12. Watching the baby burst forth with a gush of bloody fluid, Starsky had to take a couple of Lamaze breaths himself to keep from passing out. Blood was not his thing. Which brought matters back to the late Mr. Benson. Starsky’s stomach gave a threatening lurch when a spurt of dammed-up blood splashed the two firemen as the Jaws of Life finally succeeded in separating the door from the side of the car.

Turning away under the guise of watching Hutch question Simon Conrad, Starsky tried to shut out the whine of the electric saw slicing through metal and bone to free the body from the wreckage.

“Hey, Starsky, come here!” Mike Hoskins, a veteran of the fire department whom Starsky remembered from fire prevention workshops he’d attended when he was in Bay City Junior High, called out.

After the body was removed and placed on a gurney, Starsky approached cautiously. He didn’t want to be a wimp but this was the closest he’d ever been to such a gory corpse. He took a steadying breath, sticking his head through the gaping hole in the side of the car. The saw’s sharp blade had cut through the vinyl upholstery seat cover, exposing the Pontiac’s hidden treasure. Piled amongst the coiled seat springs like round, smooth plastic sardines were baggies full of white powder. Very familiar looking white powder.

Not really wanting to touch the car’s bloody interior, but knowing this was his job, Starsky reached inside the ripped cushion and extracted a bag.

“Is that heroin?” Hoskins asked.

“We’re supposed to wait for the lead detectives,” Starsky said, hefting the bag in his hand. Felt like a kilo to him. And from what he could see, there were at least six bags secreted in the front seat. There could be even more in the back seat.

Damn, this was the kind of case that could punt him right out of uniform and on the fast track to plainclothes, where all the action was, and it had fallen right into his lap. His heart was racing with excitement-they had to find the pistol now. This was the brass ring, and he was determined to grab hold. “No wonder they didn’t want to get pulled over for a traffic violation.” He looked up to see Hutch giving Conrad a consoling pat on the arm before the man walked back to his yellow and white house directly across from the crash site. “Hutch!” he yelled, waving to get his partner’s attention. “Over here!”

Threading his way between patrol cars, fire trucks, and miscellaneous emergency vehicles, Hutch stopped short when an unmarked sedan pulled into the chaotic parking lot. Detective Vince Barnaby and his partner Eric Dana got out to greet Hutch and all three walked over to the wreck.

“Starsky,” Barnaby said without preamble. “What’ve you got?”

“Big ol’ stash under the seat.” Starsky passed the bag to Barnaby. “Think it’s heroin?”

“The lab boys will have to mix up their magic potions to check the purity,” Eric, the older of the two, said with a laugh. “You gonna test some on your finger, Barn? Last time put you in the hospital.”

“Learned my lesson.” Barnaby squinted at the bundle as if he’d love to make the diagnosis there in the field. That was a dangerous and possibly deadly practice, however, since many pushers cut their product with other white powders that could be as innocent as baby laxatives or as harmful as arsenic.

Starsky knew that Barnaby had been out for a week after a close encounter with heroin mixed with PCP, a powerful hallucinogen, but the urge to show off, to prove his metal with the big dogs, made him yearn to sample the merchandise himself.

“Keep a close eye on this stuff all the way in to be logged as evidence. Don’t want any hint of anybody tampering or stealing these bad boys,” Barnaby said.

“No, sir!” Hutch agreed solemnly.

“You questioned the witnesses?” Eric asked while Starsky and Barnaby unloaded the drugs. “Find out where the car was headed?”

Hutch took a deep breath and ducked over his notepad. Starsky stole a glance at him, almost laughing. Hutch looked like a teenager reading his report in front of the entire class. His cheeks were pink and he tripped over his first few words, but eventually managed to relate the pertinent facts about Anne and Arthur Benson. “The man helping us said he was Anne Benson’s brother Simon Conrad, of 188 Glenbrook Terrace, over there.” Hutch pointed to the house. “He said they were coming to visit him.”

“With six kilos of heroin.” Eric whistled. “And a pregnant wife about to pop-not a coincidence, I’d say.”

“You think they would have gotten away if I hadn’t…” Hutch stopped. “Shot him? That probably caused the crash.”

“They crashed ’cause they were doin’ seventy in a neighborhood filled with little kids!” Starsky said indignantly. Hutch had no reason to feel responsible. “If she’d a’ just pulled over when she was supposed to, none of this would have happened. ‘Course, we never would have found the drugs, and she’d gone into labor anyway.”

Hutch’s smile was tentative but grew into the genuine article, his eyes shining when he looked over the hood of the car at Starsky. He didn’t have to say thanks in words, Starsky heard it loud and clear.

“Where is the gun?” Eric asked.

“Can’t find it.” Starsky steeled his resolve and shoved a hand underneath the bloody car seat to see if the weapon had been lodged somewhere. “It disappeared between the time we stopped the car and Hutch came over to get the lady out.”

“A gun doesn’t just disappear!” Barnaby flared.

“What, you think we’re lying here?” Starsky retorted, his temper igniting in an instant.

“Did you check around the car?” Barnaby asked as if talking to a child.

“Gee, no, why didn’t I think of that.” Starsky took a step forward, anger making him reckless. Barnaby was a tall, rangy man with the strong upper arms of a weight lifter, and he outweighed Starsky by a good fifty pounds. Not to mention that he was a detective second class and Starsky had only just passed his ten month mark on the force.

“Starsk,” Hutch said softly, his hand suddenly flat on Starsky’s belly. Probably meant to stop Starsky’s forward aggression, it also worked to calm his nerves. Hutch stuck his hand back in his own pocket, but Starsky could feel the warm support on his abdomen for a long time afterward. “I didn’t see Benson throw the gun out the window, but it could have happened.”

“Can’t have a loaded weapon fall into the wrong hands,” Barnaby growled, flashing his partner a look of annoyance before hauling the cache of heroin back to the unmarked sedan.

“We’ll fan out, look in the bushes,” Starsky said stiffly. “Martin! Gonzalez!” He signaled two of the officers who had been handling crowd control. “Start a grid around that end of the car and I’ll head out that way.” The area just before the entrance to Glenbrook was a tangle of untrimmed weeds on the edge of a vacant lot, and Starsky didn’t relish having to sift through the entire field, but the gun had to be found.

“Good work, Officer Hutchinson, we’ll take it from here. You two get gold stars for this kind of police work,” Eric was saying as Starsky walked off. “And don’t let those review board guys scare you over having to pull your piece. It’s never easy, but sometimes these things happen for a reason.”

~*~*~

“So, the gun was never found, Officer Starsky?”

Starsky shifted on the hard wooden seat. He’d already been questioned by Internal Affairs detectives for over an hour, and they kept coming back to the same thing. It was a little like being interrogated by enemy agents in a black and white movie.

“Four men, myself, Hutchinson, Martin, and Gonzalez looked all around the crash site for nearly two hours,” he said wearily. “No gun, no where. Not in the car or anywhere outside the car.”

“So what happened to it?” The lead investigator, Inspector Fenelli, had a craggy face that would have looked right at home with the other stone visages on Mount Rushmore.

“You got me.” Starsky held up his hands in defeat. He’d been elated at the sight of the drug stash, but since then the reality of the situation had hit hard. He’d ridden on a crest of adrenaline half the day, but looking for the damned weapon in ninety-five degree heat had just left him with a sunburn and mosquito bites. Didn’t look like this case was going to be his ticket to the big time, after all.

He was even more concerned about Hutch. There was already a mandatory three day suspension for discharging his weapon, as well as an equally long interrogation on just why he’d felt it was necessary. Just the kind of thing that could exacerbate the man’s acute depression.

“Was Simon Conrad questioned about the pistol?” Lieutenant Manning asked.

“Uh-Hutchinson talked to him,” Starsky said, wishing like hell he’d taken a moment to speak to the brother.

“Conrad said he knew nothing about the drugs hidden in the car and didn’t know his brother-in-law owned a gun,” Manning read from the official report. “What was your impression of his state of mind when he arrived? Did he exhibit any suspicious activities?”

“His sister was about to have a baby!” Starsky said for at least the fourth time. “But I was callin’ in to dispatch, securing the area. I didn’t talk to him.”

“Did he remove anything from the car-the green Pontiac?” Manning persisted.

“Hutch was at their car, helping Mrs. Benson, so I couldn’t say. He went over to the passenger side to check on Benson, that’s all I know.”

“We have your partner’s account of the incident-was the shooting justified, in your opinion?’

“Hell, yeah,” Starsky exploded, then softened his tone when he saw the judgmental expressions on the two men’s faces. “Benson shot at us. Did you see the windshield of the patrol car? Yeah, the civilians coulda gotten hurt, but luckily that didn’t happen.”

“How did Hutchinson’s shot hit Benson?”

Starsky was tempted to give a snide “by magic” but he didn’t think the joke would go over well. “Hutch, Officer Hutchinson, was aiming for the tires of the Pontiac, but we hit a pothole just as they swerved. He’s a good shot under ideal conditions.”

“And these were less than ideal,” Manning said gruffly. “The bullet hit him high on the back, in the shoulder area. Where was Benson’s arm when he was shooting at you?”

Starsky visualized the scene, trying to shift his focus away from the back of the Pontiac and his own driving and over to what must have been Hutch’s vantage point. “I was trying to keep the cruiser on the road-but I think Benson had his arm outside, resting on the car window ledge. I could kind of see him though their back windshield.”

Fenelli nodded, giving nothing away, and scratched a note on his pad. “So, how many shots did Hutchinson take?”

“Just one.”

“And Benson?”

“He fired three, as far as I could tell,” Starsky answered, wishing for some coffee. A chocolate bar. Even a cup of tea, as long as it had caffeine.

“That would be easy enough to verify if the weapon had been found,” Manning sighed.

“But it hasn’t been,” Fenelli growled. “Officer Starsky, how, pray tell, do you explain that?”

And they had once again looped around to that all nagging question. What had happened to the pistol? Starsky shrugged, tired beyond anything he’d experienced in a long, long time.

“The drugs, Starsky? Were they immediately visible when you went over to the car?” Manning asked, taking a different tack. “Did you get the impression that Benson was bringing them to Conrad’s house?”

“Could be, sir,” Starsky hedged. “But that’s pure speculation. I never spoke to the man. He went to the hospital shortly after the ambulance left with his sister and the baby.”

“Lieutenant Loving interviewed him at Memorial,” Fenelli read off the report in front of him, peering briefly at Starsky over the half-moon of his glasses. “He said, and I quote “I knew my brother-in-law had had some drug dealing in the past but he said he was turning his life around with the baby coming. I thought he’d stopped all that.” Loving goes on to write that Benson was distraught about his sister’s condition, her injured leg, and Benson’s death. He was cooperative but difficult to interview under the circumstances.”

“He could also be using all that as an excuse to cover up any involvement,” Starsky put in, not sure how the older detectives would take his conjectures.

“True.” Fenelli closed the file. “He’ll be coming in to sign his statement, but if he had the gun, I doubt he’d be stupid enough to keep it around.”

“I’ll call the lab, see if they’ve got anything yet,” Manning said, getting up to leave. “We’ll keep Conrad on the hot seat for a while longer. This isn’t over by a long shot.”

Once he’d left, Starsky resisted the urge to squirm in Fenelli’s presence. His shirt was so wet he felt like he’d taken a dip in the ocean. Now that sounded like a good idea-going swimming.

“Back to the shooting, and subsequent accident, Starsky,” Fenelli said sharply. “Could you tell if Mrs. Benson had been heading toward Conrad’s house?”

“No.” Starsky used his finger on the tabletop to illustrate the two cars racing along Sorvetti Avenue. “In fact, I think she meant to turn left, which would have put them in the opposite direction of Conrad’s. But when he-uh, Benson-shot at us, she swerved and went wide, swinging onto Glenbrook. She could have been planning to lead us away from her brother’s house.”

Fenelli nodded absently, the overhead lights glinting off his glasses as he wrote down what Starsky had said.

“You think Conrad could be their connection?”

“Crossed my mind,” Fenelli said, surprising Starsky with his candor. “Loving may not have known all the questions to ask initially. Now we do, and they will be asked.” He capped his pen, looking up. “That will be all for now, Starsky. You may go.”

Feeling like he’d just been dismissed from the principal’s office, Starsky walked into the hallway. After the stuffy heat of the small room, the hall felt practically cool. The air conditioner in the building had gone belly up with the recent heat wave, and the smell of the place was getting so bad that arrested felons were beginning to complain. Just the freedom to walk without Fenelli’s dark, beady eyes boring into him was close enough to heaven that Starsky wanted to celebrate.

Seeing Hutch waiting on a bench next to the soda machine notched his mood up even higher. The day had been shit on wheels, but maybe they could untie some of the knots with a night on the town. Do them both some good.

“Hey!” Starsky called out. Hutch’s expression was troubled, almost melancholy when he looked up. “Hey,” Starsky said more softly, leaning against the soda machine. “I thought you’d be long gone out of here by now.”

“Waited for you.” Hutch shrugged as if it wasn’t much of an excuse. “No where to go.”

“What you say we go out, get something to eat? I know a place that makes great burgers, and it’s in a real barn!”

“Haven’t you got a date? With that girl from records?” Hutch shook his head. “A bachelor like you shouldn’t give up on a night with his girl because an old married man is separated from his wife.”

“Aw, Hutch, you over-estimate my love life.” Starsky rolled his eyes. “Remember, I told you Janice split with my mattress. What could I offer Susan? She’s probably seen M*A*S*H already.”

“You’ve seen M*A*S*H already,” Hutch countered. “I’m not very hungry.”

“C’mon Mr. Gloomy, I’m driving you t’my place.” Starsky got Hutch standing and pushed him a little to get him walking toward the police department garage. “I happen to know that The Great Escape is playing on TV tonight, and we can pick up some ribs at that place where Gina works.”

Starsky kept up a screen of light chatter until they were on the road, forcing Hutch to stay involved, but it was hard going. Hutch seemed determined to be morose.

“Hey! Now that you’ll be free soon, you gonna start dating?” Starsky asked with forced brightness. “Gina’s got a great set of -“

“Starsky, I don’t know.” Hutch sighed for the millionth time. “Maybe getting a divorce is premature. I mean Vanessa and I really didn’t even try to work things out, go to counseling. If I’d tried harder the first time, maybe….”

“Hutch,” Starsky began, but he was cut off.

“I’ve been thinking about that baby. Anne Benson’s baby. She’ll probably end up going to prison, so what happens to that little boy? I don’t want him to get lost in the foster care system.”

Starsky shook his head, sensing a very bad idea coming from his partner. “You can’t be serious.”

“I always wanted children. Vanessa can’t…she isn’t able to carry one.”

Privately, Starsky thought it was more that she probably didn’t want to get fat, but he kept his big mouth shut.

“We talked about adopting, for a while. This-this brought that all back.” He held out his hands as if still carrying Benson, Baby Boy, aloft, his face glowing with a special light that Starsky hadn’t seen since the day they’d graduated. “I delivered a baby today, Starsky!”

“You sure did. I was all kinds of proud of you, you know that?”

“I’ve got a couple of days on my hands right now. Maybe, if I talked to Van-before the hearing. Maybe we could discuss our priorities, lay them out, hash out the bad stuff. Have dinner, talk about the baby. I could bring her to the hospital, show him off.”

Starsky let Hutch get it all out. His life was fouled up with past divorces and looming ones, court actions and mandatory suspension. He needed the support of a friend, not questions and unasked for advice. If Hutch went any further in his attempts to adopt the Benson child, Starsky would give his opinions then, but he would never criticize his friend’s need to reconnect with his wife, no matter how bad Starsky considered the move.

 

June, 1978

Starsky came back to himself with a jolt that was like landing hard on a wood floor without remembering how he’d fallen. His whole body ached, and the pounding in his head didn’t bode well for the rest of the day. He was still sitting on his own couch, toes still sticking out of his socks. Where they hell was he supposed to be going?

Fuck. Parker Davidson, the ballistics test. Hutch was in the hospital after a near fatal shooting. And the bullet had reached back eight years to connect with a crime from their rookie days.

Scrambling to brew some coffee, grab a shower, and dress in the shortest time possible, Starsky was out of the house before he even noticed he’d only slept for three and a half hours. He arrived at Metro with only the barest memory of driving through early morning traffic.

Dobey was already there, back to his usual sartorial splendor-blue and green plaid suit, navy blue shirt printed with stars, and a green and blue tie that managed to be all the wrong shades for the jacket. On a better day, Starsky might have suggested that Dobey and Huggy Bear have a dress-off to see who could assemble the most eye-boggling ensemble. On a far better day than this one. As it was, the only reason he even noticed the clash of colors was because Minnie Kaplan made a passing comment when she delivered the report from Davidson.

“Starsky!” Dobey called out, the loudness factor coming far below his usual bellow. It was his version of being discreet. “In my office, now!”

Starsky bypassed the donuts without even a cursory glance, but Minnie’s hand on his arm brought him up short.

“He’s strong, Starsky,” she said softly, and there was no need to identify who “he” was.

Starsky merely nodded, not willing to be molly-coddled then, something Minnie always seemed to instinctively understand. Why hadn’t he ever asked her out? They could have some fun together. Currently, he only had enough energy to think about Hutch. Another day, then. Another day he’d call Minnie for a date. When Hutch was out of the woods.

He wanted to call the hospital in the worst way and hear Hutch’s voice. First thing, the minute Dobey was done chewing him out.

Dobey had two stacks of files on his desk, the taller of the two threatening to tumble over onto his breakfast bagel sandwich. “There’s a bagel with cream cheese in the bag. Eat it.” He thrust the sack into Starsky’s hands and sat down, opening the report Minnie had brought.

“Davidson had to go out, murder-suicide in the canyons, sounded messy,” Dobey said, eyeing Starsky until he sat down and pulled the bagel out of the bag.

The captain had never provided him with breakfast before. Starsky hardly knew how to accept the offering. Say thank you? Promise to pay him back? For an odd moment, he recalled Hutch telling him about the night he’d been kidnapped by Simon Marcus’s creepy bunch. That Hutch, Huggy, and Dobey had sat eating sandwiches in Dobey’s office, trying to figure out the madman’s riddles before the deadline for Starsky’s life. Was this the same kind of thing? Something to lull him into a false sense that they were actually doing something to find Hutch’s shooter? Or simply Dobey’s way of being supportive by offering food. Very Jewish mother of him.

Starsky had no appetite to speak of, but he took a big bite of bagel anyway. Dobey’s dark eyes watched him, a quiet understanding of what he must be going through easy to read in their kind depths. Starsky took another bite and sat down in the chair he and Hutch so often occupied.

“Davidson said he already told you, that this bullet ties into a case you worked in 1970?”

“I don’t see how, though, Capt’n. Probably some weird coincidence.” Starsky rubbed his eyes, and ate some more of the bagel. “That gun was never found. It’s been eight years. Probably changed hands two or three times since then.”

“Records pulled the files, anyway. I want you to check up on this.” Dobey pointed to the pile on his left. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Meanwhile, the Irish girl, Siobhan Penrhys, is supposed to give a statement later today.”

“Good. What about the hamburger girl?”

“Neek-a-la…” Dobey mangled the first part. “Puti? Neek-uh?”

“Her.” Tossing his sandwich in the trash, Starsky pulled the statement over. Toya Neekelaputi had seen “that good looking blond man” walking toward “the girl with the red skirt on” apparently to help her with her groceries, when they both stumbled. For a moment, she’d thought the girl was shot, too. The blond man fell, bleeding from his belly, and from then on, her memory was less precise. She had seen a blue car drive away, the same one Starsky saw. And she furnished a partial plate number, to boot. ONN. She remembered because it was her brother’s initials-Omprakash Naveen Neekelaputi. Of the shooting suspect, she recalled very little. A dark flash of a man-she was sure it was a man-in a dark jacket and slacks. White man, maybe mid to late thirties, but she wouldn’t swear to it. She couldn’t pick him out of a mug book, and apologized for being of so little help.

ONN. Blue Dodge Coronet.

Something fell straight down, Starsky could feel the weight of it crushing his chest-that damned other shoe had dropped. He’d seen that car, and not just at Bernie’s Burger Barn. He and Hutch had even joked about it-that they must have been issued their license plates on the same day because the numerals were only two digits different.

“535 ONN, Blue Dodge Coronet,” Starsky said past the damned boulder lodged in his throat. “That car followed us.” He couldn’t believe how blind he had been, not to have realized sooner. “When we picked up Chickie on his usual corner, we both saw the car.”

“When was that?”

“‘Bout an hour earlier, before we went to Bernie’s. Chickie earned a Jackson, gave us the time of a drug buy goin’ down today.” He winced, there was no way he was going to make that bust. “Car was parked across the street, same as later.”

“Give everything you know about the drug buy to Simmons and Babcock,” Dobey said. “I know there’s no way I can keep you off this investigation.”

Starsky opened his mouth, then shut it in surprise. He’d expected just the opposite, that Dobey would assign the other detectives to investigate the shooting while he had to work a less important-to him-case.

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Don’t make me regret this, I told you to take two days off not twelve hours ago, and yet here you are.” Dobey leveled a meaty finger at Starsky. “You go off half-cocked and I’ll pull you right off. No private parties. I’m your partner on this one, and you keep me informed every step of the way, do you hear me?” His voice had risen with the last four words and Starsky was oddly cheered by the normalcy of it all.

“Yes, sir.” He pulled off a sloppy salute that would have earned him KP duty when he was in the Army. Dobey merely shook his finger once more and shoved the old case files at him.

Starsky schlepped the whole pile over to the desk he usually shared with Hutch, an achy weariness bone deep from lack of sleep and not enough food. If he felt bad, Hutch must feel much, much worse, and Starsky couldn’t rest until he found the answer to why anyone would want to kill Ken Hutchinson.

A quick call to Memorial assured him that Hutch was in a morphine-induced slumber but that he had awakened briefly earlier. His ex-wife had called to say she was coming by. Starsky still had a hard time understanding why Nancy had re-surfaced after all this time. Was she trying to re-connect with the little family she had left? He knew that both Rutherford parents had died some time ago, possibly back when Hutch and Vanessa were still married, so now Nancy was alone. She’d said she was dating a cop but was there some reason she was setting her sights on Hutch again? Just the idea was ludicrous, wasn’t it? Then why did it make him so uneasy?

A second phone call went to the DMV. Starsky’s usual contact there, a lovely elderly woman by the name of Angharad House, assured him that she’d have the information for him by then end of the day, and promised to send over a batch of his favorite cookies, too.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Hutch,” Angharad said, sounding very distressed. “What he’ll need is something to help him recover. My Aunt Clementine’s Rose Hip Jelly is perfect for a convalescent. I’ve already got the rose hips-haven’t been keeping up with my pruning. I can make some up for him right away!” she declared.

“Don’t go to a lot of trouble.” Starsky thought that sounded revolting, but perversely, Hutch would probably relish the stuff.

“Rose hips are a wonderful source of vitamin C!” She pronounced vitamin with a British accent. “He’ll be right as rain in a tick.”

“Keep the faith, Angharad.” Starsky hung up, wishing she had some faith to spare. How was Hutch doing, lying all along in the ICU? It felt distinctly wrong to be working the case without him.

Flipping open the old files, Starsky scanned the paperwork. A mug shot of a young woman stared back at him without the usual sullen, barely disguised anger many felons showed to the camera. She looked terrified, the kind of deer in the headlights expression more often seen on the victims. Anne Benson.

Starting a priority list, he put Anne’s name at the top of the list, followed by her brother Simon’s. There was no mug shot for him, which surprised Starsky a little. For some reason, he recalled that the investigating detectives had been suspicious of Conrad, but had been unable to find anything to pin on the brother. He scanned the pages bound in the case file without satisfaction. There was a cursory background check on Conrad, and two interviews, both mainly focused on the Bensons’ activities, but nothing much about the owner of the gun.

Writing “talk to Detective Barnaby,” on his pad, Starsky chewed on the end of his pencil. The other two detectives involved had both died; Dana of a heart attack, and Lieutenant Loving during a still-talked-about-undercover-sting. Loving had been deep under as a drug dealer for months when his body was found in an alley, a single bullet hole to the back of the neck. Starsky and Hutch had been assigned to the murder of one of their own. The revelation that Loving had been killed by the mafia, and the arrest of a mid-level gunman, had done nothing to alleviate the deep-seated sadness of most of the force over what the job could do to a nice cop.

Unfortunately Barnaby wasn’t available to relive the old days. A simple glance at the duty roster told Starsky that he was on summer vacation and would not be back for several days.

His third call of the morning was to San Fernando Valley Women’s Penitentiary. Within seconds he was speaking with the warden. “I have reason to believe that Anne Conrad Benson, one of your inmates, may have links to a current investigation into a shooting that occurred yesterday. Can I come down there today and speak with her?”

Starsky felt a stunned chill take over his body when she replied, “I’m sorry, Detective Starsky, Anne Benson was released over a week ago.”

He hadn’t quite believed that Benson would have anything to tell him after all this time, the past ownership of the gun not withstanding, but the fact that she was out of prison so recently shed a whole new light on things. “Uh-do you have an address?” he managed with a suddenly dry mouth.

“Certainly, let me get her file.” Warden Foster put him on hold, and he listened impatiently to an agonizingly bad version of Eleanor Rigby that had absolutely nothing in common with the Beatles’ tune for three long minutes. “Here we are, do you have a pencil?”

Starsky wrote down 28993 Loma Linda Road, Marina Del Rey. “Thank you, ma’am. Once last question, did she have any visitors?”

“Yes, her visitor’s log is in with the file. A Simon Conrad visited sporadically-usually at holidays, with the little boy.”

“Robin,” Starsky said with a pang, the name coming to him completely out of the blue.

“Yes, Robin. He’s a sweet child, I saw him a number of times. Looks a lot like his mother. Her lawyer visited, of course. She didn’t have many friends, poor woman. A model prisoner, worked in the school program helping other inmates get their GEDs, but she mostly kept to herself. I liked Anne very well, and I hope she’s able to have a good life from now on.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Starsky tapped his pencil on the desk. “Did anyone come to pick her up?”

“Yes, a man.”

“Her brother?”

“No, this was a black man. I happened to be on my way out to a lunch meeting, and I saw Anne get into a car.”

“Blue Dodge?” Starsky asked hopefully, even though Toya Neekelaputi had said the man she had seen was a white man.

“No, one of those small pick-up trucks. I’m not much good with cars. White, with a top on the bed of the truck.”

“Could you describe the man?”

“Average looking, maybe a little on the shorter side. Yes, he wasn’t much taller than Anne, who is five-five. I saw them standing side by side. He held open the car door for her like a gentleman, and they drove off. She never looked back.”

Starsky didn’t blame her, he wouldn’t have either. “You didn’t get his name?”

“No-if he’d come into the visitor’s room, he would have had to sign in, but he waited outside the fence.”

“Thanks for your time, Warden.” Starsky disconnected with a churning belly. What the heck was going on? Of all the cases he’d ever expected to come back and bite him in the butt, Anne Benson’s arrest and conviction for drug trafficking was not one of them. He wanted to visit Hutch at the hospital, but going to see the recently released Anne was top priority, if only to set his mind at ease.

~*~*~

The address that Warden Foster had supplied turned out to be a one story white house that was trying very hard to look middle class, but not quite pulling it off. The place had probably been built after WWII when there were scores of soldiers starting families on the GI bill. Lots of little identical houses went up, two bedrooms, one bath, living room in front, kitchen behind. Small yard, Lilliputian driveway. Maybe once it had been a loved house, now it was just sad. Paint had long since gone to a weathered gray, the shutters hung just slightly askew, and a front lawn that was more crab than grass. Starsky pushed open a storm fence gate and walked up the front path past a Big Wheel trike, a plastic horse mounted on springs like the one his brother had had when he was five, and a lackluster sprinkler that got more water on the cement than on a row of freshly planted petunias.

The woman that opened the door had aged in seven years. He’d last seen her at the trial, if he remembered correctly. She’d been slender, with mousy brown hair and large, almost startlingly pale blue eyes. He’d always found her eyes eerie. Anne Benson looked blind to him, even though she was not.

Her light brown hair was now streaked with gray, the overall effect one of a woman who could have faded into the woodwork. She was wearing shorts and a nylon football jersey, which partially disguised an almost sickly thinness-an old woman at the age of twenty-eight.

“Anne Benson?” Starsky held up his detective badge.

“Yes,” she said, peering at his ID from a gap in the door. “You’re…Starsky, aren’t you?” She glanced past him, her eye almost transparent in direct sunlight. “Where’s Hutchinson?”

“That’s what I’d like to talk to you about, Mrs. Benson,” Starsky said. “Could I come in?”

“My son has the chicken pox.”

“Would that be Robin? I thought he lived with his uncle.”

“Not any more,” Anne sighed and held the door open wearily. “Come on in. Simon stayed with Robin in this house, but he’s gone now. Left me with a sick kid.”

“Well, chicken pox is contagious, isn’t it?” Starsky couldn’t recall whether he’d had the itchy disease or not. One more question to add to his weekly call to his mother.

“I’ll come out.” She shrugged, apparently unable to stand up for herself for very long. The result of seven years in prison, or something more? “He’s asleep right now anyway.” She limped heavily while walking across the weedy lawn to retrieve two rusty chairs that had been arranged into some kind of fort.

Starsky hurried over and helped her pull them into the shade of an overgrown oak tree planted near the border between the Benson property and the next house. “Wasn’t it Robin’s birthday the other day?” he pretended to remember.

“Yeah, but he was sick so we didn’t exactly have a big bash with a piñata. What do you want?” Anne’s voice was almost sullen, overlaid with fatigue and the drudgery of a hard life. Starsky had never questioned her imprisonment. She’d been driving the car filled with heroin, but he’d always assumed she’d been mostly an accessory. In his rookie days, he’d been much more apt to believe that the guilty went to prison and the innocent were acquitted. Now he knew there were so many variables in life. So many influences that hid the real truths. Like what exactly had Simon Conrad had to do with all of this?

“The department recently had a ballistics computer installed,” Starsky started.

“Lucky you.”

“Which matched a bullet from a shooting yesterday to the one that your husband shot at my patrol car back in 1970.”

Anne would have made an excellent poker player, her expression barely changed except her eyebrows lifted. Starsky had watched her during the trial; trying to hide her misery and the resulting loss of her parental rights when she was incarcerated. She kept to herself, and didn’t reveal much. The news about the bullet genuinely surprised her.

“I’ve never used a gun in my life,” Anne said flatly.

“What about your brother?”

“Simon? The day I got out, he brought Robin home from school, stayed about ten minutes and left. He seemed really angry, I didn’t know why and didn’t care.” She rubbed her left leg absently, the way Starsky occasionally rubbed the scar on his shoulder.

He remembered hearing that the gash she’d received in the wreck had become infected in jail, resulting in some pretty serious nerve and tissue damage in her thigh. During the trial her lawyer had used that to try to garner sympathy from the jury, but it hadn’t worked. Being the early ’70s, so soon after the Manson slayings and other horror stories about heroin use, the very right wing jury had thrown the book at her. How could a pregnant woman get mixed up in something like that? Didn’t she have any sense to protect her unborn child? Weird how easily little things swayed rational thought. Starsky found himself seeing much of the trial through different eyes seven years later. What was it people said about twenty/twenty hindsight?

“Do you know where he went? If he was living here, did he have another home?”

“He didn’t tell me. He called two days after I got back, but Robin was sick then and I didn’t have time to chat,” she answered sarcastically. “You’re looking for him under the wrong tree, mister.”

“Have you read the recent papers?” Starsky changed his tack. She was either even better at lying than he remembered, or she really had no idea what her brother might be up to.

“You think I look like the kind of person who cares what President Carter is doing? I just got out of prison. I have other things to worry about.”

“My partner, Hutch-you noticed he wasn’t here.” Starsky took an extra breath to hide his own fears. “He was shot yesterday evening, at about seven. It was the headline in the BC Chronicle and the LA Times this morning.”

“I don’t get the paper, and I can’t get out much with Robin sick. No car and…” She almost flinched, but tucked whatever emotion back in, and frowned. “What in the hell? You think Simon shot Hutchinson?”

“The gun was still registered to your brother Simon Conrad.”

“That gun was never found.” Anne tapped her fingers restlessly on the arm of the chair, crossed her legs-left over right and then right over left. “I’ve got to get some cigarettes.”

“Go ahead, but I’m not leaving.”

She limped back to the house, looking back at him with an enigmatic expression before disappearing into the dark living room. Starsky could see the bright flash of a match and then the warm orange glow of the cigarette. Anne must have taken one or two puffs before she re-emerged because the cigarette was burned half down when she came out to lean against the doorframe. “Simon loaned us the gun when we went down to Mexico, for protection. But it was stolen, by one a’ yours, I always thought. To frame us.”

“Frame you?” Starsky laughed. “There was six kilos of pure heroin in that car. And we could prove you’d driven up from Mexico-so don’t give me anything about frame jobs.”

“I didn’t know about the….”

“I heard that at your trial, Anney.” With some suspects Starsky would have come on stronger, maybe pushed harder, or hounded her personal space, but Anne Benson, for all her defiant stance, was already so downtrodden. It was too close to harassment to relentlessly badger her. “My partner is fighting for his life right now at the hospital, and what I want to know is where your brother is. ‘Cause by my way of thinking, he’s the only one who could have that gun.”

“Never proven.” She blew out a long trail of smoke.

“For unexplainable reasons, your brother was never even charged with anything, which kind of boggles my mind, now that I think about it.” Starsky advanced on her, but stood just beyond the pall of smoke that circled her. “I wasn’t very smart in those days, kind of new on the job.” He watched Anne grind the cigarette butt into the baked dirt. “I’m a lot smarter these days. Got a gold badge and everything, and I plan to go after Simon with everything I got in me. Nobody shoots my partner and gets away with it, you hear me?” He hadn’t meant to get so fired up, but her blunted affect, coupled with the sullen voice, was getting to him.

Damn, Simon Conrad had to be the answer. Benson and Conrad had used Anne back then, that had always been fairly obvious, but the law was the law. She’d been driving the car carrying the heroin, she was charged and imprisoned. The question was, if Benson had lived, would the courts have been so hard on Anne? Starsky was becoming more and more convinced that Anne had been the dupe, brought into the deal because she’d looked so innocent. Who’d suspect a pretty, pregnant girl driving back over the Mexican border after a fun weekend with her husband? Still, that didn’t change the facts that, in all probability, Art had been bringing the drugs back to his contact. The same Simon Conrad who had gone free all these years, and then assumedly shot Hutch. Why?

“Art was bringing the drugs to Simon, wasn’t he?” Starsky asked. Anne appeared to be staring at the straggly petunias, and didn’t raise her head until he repeated the question a second time.

She nodded very slowly, her pale eyes so eerily transparent it was like he was looking right through them. “I always…listened to Simon. He was my big brother, my protector. I couldn’t…it was all Art.”

Not sure if she’d actually ratted out Simon or whether he was reading too much into it, Starsky re-worded the question. “Was Simon your contact? Did Art bring the drugs over the border in your car for Simon?”

“I thought we were going to Mexico for a vacation,” she said forlornly. “I didn’t know…Art said the car broke down and needed to be repaired, so we stayed for three days in this little hotel right off the beach. I loved it, just laid on the sand feeling the baby jump around inside. Felt like this was a whole new start. Felt like we had something.” Her face hardened again, casting off the sweet memories of a romantic twenty-year old. “We were between houses so we were goin’ back to stay with Simon for a couple days. I thought we were.”

“You didn’t know there were drugs in the car?” Starsky had heard all of this at the trial, but her supposed ignorance hadn’t made any difference.

“I didn’t know.” She fished the pack of Vantage cigarettes out of the pocket in her shorts, lighting up with a shaky hand. “I said that over and over, but nobody believed the little dumb fuck.” Blowing out smoke, Anne peered up at the wispy trails floating skyward. “Art sold drugs in college, but he told me he stopped when the baby was on the way. When we drove by the cops…you, I guess, huh?”

“Me and Hutch.”

“He shouted at me to speed up, make sure we didn’t get caught. I was so damned stupid. Thought I could have a life like everyone else, not just keep getting sucker punched whenever I tried to do something good.” Anne took a last drag on the cigarette and snubbed it out under her shoe. “What does it matter anymore, now? No sense crying over spilled milk. I did the time. It’s over.”

“It’s not over if the real criminal didn’t get caught,” Starsky said, anger building up despite his growing sympathy for Anne. “And if Simon shot Hutch, he’s in big trouble. I’m going to nail him to the wall. If he calls again, find out where he is.”

Anne visibly flinched this time, so violently that Starsky knew what the relationship between she and her brother, and most likely her husband, had been. “Did he hit you?”

“No! I told you Simon was only here about ten minutes before he split.”

“So, he didn’t hit you this time. Has he hit you before?”

“Brothers and sisters fight all the time.” She looked back at the house. “I think Robin is awake.”

“Did your husband beat you?” Starsky persisted. He wanted to grab her, shake the truth out of her, but he also needed her on his side. She was the only link he had to Conrad.

“What kind of question is that?” She scuttled back toward the front door and this time Starsky could hear a plaintive child’s voice.

“I need you to make an official statement of what really happened in 1970. We can put a tap on your phone.”

“No!” Her face went white and for a moment he thought she’d pass out. “He’d know. No. I’ll…” she glanced back at the house. “Robin, I’ll be right there! Listen, you better go, I’ll give you a call.”

“Anne, it’s Simon’s fault you had to go to prison. He should have been caught.”

She didn’t believe him, it was the first expression he could read from a mile away. “I love my brother, Detective Starsky. He’s my family.” Leaving him standing on the crabgrass, Anne shut the screen door and the heavier wooden one, too, but Starsky could see her outline in the living room, behind the sheer curtains. The glow of her cigarette gave her away, and then a smaller shadow walked in front of her. Robin.

Starsky stood a moment longer in the yard before heading back to the Torino. She didn’t trust him, and really, she had no reason to. He’d been part of the mob who sent her away in the first place. If he was going to solve this investigation, he needed Anne on his side. Alone there on the grass, he felt Hutch’s absence so keenly it was almost a physical pain. Hutch was the one who could talk a skittish witness into spilling all. Hutch had that voice that could gentle a wild fawn.

Besides, Starsky needed someone to bounce ideas off of. Why hadn’t the original investigating detectives bothered to dig further into Conrad’s background? He’d come off smelling like a rose while his sister and her husband were tarred and feathered with the stigma of drug dealers. Sure, Conrad was a handsome, likeable guy and he’d seemed genuinely shocked at the news about the drugs, but Starsky had been around long enough to know that good criminals usually were very good chameleons. Otherwise they’d get caught all the sooner. Simon Conrad probably had his fingers in some kind of illegal activities to this day, and Starsky was going to hunt him down if it was the last thing he did.

First things first. He was going to see Hutch. Starsky’s belly tightened in anticipation.

~*~*~

Blood

Confusion.

Pain.

Choking, and a tube rammed down his throat.

Images like out of focus negatives smeared with Vaseline flitted across his mind, but Hutch couldn’t keep them all straight. He didn’t want to. He needed the haze, cherished the confusion because the single time he’d surfaced completely, the agony had been overwhelming.

Nurses’ voices comforted him, told him he’d been shot. Told him lots of things he couldn’t quite comprehend.

“This will help with the pain.” That one he understood best.

 Yes, take away the pain. Take away the memory of falling, feeling something sharp and hot and heavy pushing in, ripping him apart.

“Mr. Hutchinson?” a soft voice said, while the blood pressure cuff on his left arm pumped up for the millionth time. Why did they need his vital signs so often?

Oh, yeah, he’d been shot. Make a note of that.

“Mr. Hutchinson, are you awake?”

Better answer her. “Mmm, yeah.” Hutch opened one eye, seeing a white cap perched on top of black hair. “Awake.”

“Good.” Nice smile. “Your ex-wife is here.”

Opening both eyes, Hutch stared in shock at Vanessa. His vision was fuzzy, but it looked like Vanessa. Did that mean he was dead?

No, wait. She was dead. He’d seen her body on his living room floor, covered her up with a sheet. The dead don’t haunt other dead people. So, he must be alive. That was certainly reassuring. He blinked, now seeing two women in identical blue jumpsuits. Vanessa and Nancy. He’d always been one of the few who could tell them apart, but right now he wasn’t at his best.

Since Van was dead, and talking to dead people was definitely a sign of hallucinations, Hutch focused hard on the second woman. Or maybe it was the first, he couldn’t quite be sure. “Nancy?”

“Hi.” She smiled, and so did Vanessa.

So they both were Nancy, and he was seeing double. Yep, when he turned his head, not a wise idea, there were two black haired nurses checking two IVs in both his right arms. At least something made sense.

“Whatcha doing here?” He was slurring his words, but his tongue was too big for his mouth and very dry. The idea of taking a drink didn’t hold much appeal, however.

“Came to see how you were doing.” Nancy laid the back of her hand against his cheek; she felt cool against his skin. He could smell the sweet aroma of her Chanel over the usual hospital smells of betadine and urine. “I was here last night, with Starsky and your captain while you were in surgery, so I had to come back to see you doing better.”

If this was better, he had a long way to go. Hutch tried for a smile, but obviously didn’t do very well from her expression. “I’ll heal.”

“Of course you will,” Nancy agreed. “I’m really glad we’ve re-connected lately, since…Vanessa’s service.”

“Yes.”

“And I want that to continue. For us to be friends, more than friends….”

“Mrs. Michaels,” the nurse said quietly. “Your time is up.”

“Oh, yes, well, Ken, I’ll be back to visit you. Bring some flowers next time.”

“Sorry, no flowers allowed in ICU,” the nurse reminded.

Hutch managed to wiggle his fingers in response to Nancy’s whispered goodbye and closed his eyes again. He was exhausted from a less than five minute conversation. And not that he didn’t enjoy Nancy’s company, but where was Starsky? Starsky was the one he really wanted to see.

“Nurse?” Hutch called out. When she didn’t answer, he opened his eyes again, squinting in the bright lights that always illuminated an ICU. He keenly remembered his stay in the same exact room just over a year earlier after he’d been trapped under a car for three days with a broken leg. Starsky had rescued him then, Starsky would be his constant now. If Starsky wasn’t here, then he must be out looking for whoever shot him. That must be the reason he wasn’t parked at Hutch’s bedside.

Closing his eyes again, Hutch floated weightlessly on a river of dreams, some happy, some frightening. His shooting became mixed up with other events, and then Nancy and Vanessa were both standing at the altar waiting for him, in a bizarre three-way marriage. He told them both that he wanted children, but Nancy cried and Vanessa laughed like a hyena, so he went to be with Starsky. He and Starsky lived in a small apartment with no windows and no beds, watching Butch Cassidy and Sundance get blown away into history by a spray of sepia toned bullets. In the dream, he put his hands on his abdomen and they came away covered in blood. When he looked down on the floor, Vanessa was dead, blood from a tiny wound marring her beauty.

He gulped in air, and groaned, the fire in his belly a fearsome thing. A hand slipped into his and squeezed gently, giving him strength. He didn’t even have to open his eyes to recognize the hand. This was no cool, smooth woman’s hand with elegantly painted nails, this was a man’s hand, thicker and stronger with calloused palms from years of holding a pistol. This was Starsky.

“Hey,” Starsky said softly. “The morphine giving you the creepy dreams? I had some real spine crawlers when I got shot that time.”

“Looked for you,” Hutch said, licking his dry lips with an equally dry tongue.

“Yeah, I been busy, hunting down the bastard who shot you.”

“Who?” Hutch grunted. It was hard to speak with thousands of sharp nails digging into his intestines.

“You remember Simon Conrad?” Starsky sat on the edge of the bed so that the mattress dipped with his weight and Hutch had to grit his teeth to keep back a cry of pain. That didn’t matter, because he wanted Starsky that close.

“Conrad?” Hutch repeated finally. His brain wasn’t working, nothing came to him, then all in a jumble he remembered a baby, a car accident and heroin. “Benson.”

“You got it.” Starsky laughed. Hutch almost laughed too, but didn’t. “Yeah, you delivered Anne Benson’s baby. Simon Conrad was her brother.”

“What’s he got t’do with this?”

“That’s the question, buddy-boy,” Starsky agreed. “That’s the sixty-four-thousand dollar question.”

“That was years ago.”

“The bullet matched the one from our squad car, remember that? And Mrs. Benson got out of prison last week. Other than that, we’re out of ideas, so I figured that since you were lying here doing nothing, you could come up with a few connections to tie up the loose ends.”

“Right on it,” Hutch said, the edges of his mouth turning up into half a smile. Starsky always had the power to cheer him up.

“I gotta go now, Dobey’ll be cracking the whip for sure with me having to pick up the slack while you’re on your backside.” Starsky squeezed his hand again and stood up.

“Wait.” Hutch opened his eyes for the first time, looking over at his best friend. Starsky didn’t look like he’d had a bit of sleep in the last day. Small wonder. “Where? Where was I shot? How bad?”

“Hey, I’m no doctor. Your surgeon’ll fill you in.”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“Mmm.” Starsky put a hand on his abdomen, right above his belt buckle. “Bullet went in here and I guess it bounced around some. Doctor said your intestines were torn up pretty good, but he could repair ’em. They put in a colostomy-you know what that is?”

Unfortunately, Hutch did. His grandmother had had one for the last years of her life. He almost vomited just from the idea.

“But the doc said it’s only temporary!” Starsky’s words tumbled out in a rush. “I didn’t even know what that was, but he said you’ll only need a bag for a month or so and then everything’ll be sewn back up the way nature intended.”

“Thank God,” Hutch whispered. He snaked his hand down under the covers to his right side where he could feel bandages and a plastic bag. The colostomy bag. Fuck.

“See now, I tol’ you the bad news and it got you all upset. Should leave that stuff to the doctors.” Starsky made a face.

“No, I’m glad you did.” Hutch could barely bring in enough air to speak audibly, but Starsky’s visit had comforted him greatly, despite the disturbing news. “Come back, buddy.”

“You think some damned ten minutes an hour policy could keep me away for long?” Starsky very lightly flicked his finger against the side of Hutch’s head. “Get better. I’m not used to working a case on my lonesome.”

And then he was gone, and Hutch felt very lonesome indeed. He drifted back to sleep and dreamed, but this one was not so much a mishmash of events melded into the craziness of his subconscious, but a re-creation of a past event, so real that he could remember the smallest details with precision.

 

June, 1970

Ken Hutchinson checked the sign on the hospital wall for the directions to the maternity ward. Strange to be going here as a police officer instead of an expectant father. The thing was, he felt a strong connection to the Benson baby. He’d been the first one to ever hold that tiny life, seen those wide blue eyes open onto a whole new world.

 There was no actual reason for him to visit the baby or the mother. The detectives had taken over the case, and he and Starsky had already been assigned a new squad car. The three day suspension for using a firearm was almost over and he’d be back on duty tomorrow. That was not the only reason for his improving mood. He’d talked to Vanessa, told her about his hope to adopt the baby, and she’d definitely been interested. Maybe, just maybe, he could get his life back on track. With Vanessa mothering a baby and the detective exam coming up in the fall, he could have everything he’d always dreamed of.

“Officer Hutchinson!” Simon Conrad came out of the nursery, almost running into Hutch.

“I c-came to see about the baby,” Hutch said, feeling a need to explain himself.

“A beautiful boy, Officer. We can’t thank you enough for coming to Anne’s rescue. Don’t know what would have happened…” He knocked on the window and a white uniformed nurse smiled and waved, flipping a blanket back so that a small, red faced baby could be seen. “There?” Simon pointed. “That’s him.”

“Really cute,” Hutch said with such longing that he wondered if Conrad knew exactly why he was there. The nurse changed Baby Boy Benson’s diaper with rapidity, going on to pop a bottle in the mouth of the little girl to the baby’s left. “What’s his name?”

“Not high on the priority list right now, what with Anney under arrest and Art dead.” He dry-scrubbed his face with one hand. “And the birth certificate lady’s been breathing down my neck. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this kid.”

“I spoke with social services,” Hutch said carefully. “If your sister goes to jail, the baby will go into foster care.”

“Oh, she’s going to jail, all right. The damned cops-uh, sorry.” He gave a half-guilty smile and shrugged. “They’re throwing the book at her. Six kilos, man, I never thought Art would do a thing like that to Anney.” His face screwed up into an expression of intense hatred for half a second, but smoothed out when he looked over at his squalling nephew. “She’s my kid sister, y’know? You got a sister, Officer?”

“Yes. You want to protect your sister.”

“Yeah.” Conrad shoved his hands in his pockets. “Anney was special, really smart. She could have gone to college, but she dropped out when she met Art. Just wanted to get married, have babies. I couldn’t stop her, she never listened to a damn thing I said. I could have-” He stopped himself abruptly. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? A danish? Something to thank you for delivering the baby?”

“A cup of coffee would be good,” Hutch agreed. He wanted to gaze at the infant for a while longer, but since he wasn’t legal family, he had no right. But he had hope. Hope that that little life could grow up to be his son.

“Now, with Art dead, and half a dozen drug charges on her head, Anney doesn’t want anything to do with the baby, can you fathom that?” Conrad led the way to the hospital cafeteria where he bought two cups of dark coffee and a piece of apple pie for himself. “Either she signs the kid over to me, or he goes up for adoption. She’s got to decide today, before she’s taken to the jail.”

“Adoption?”

“I dunno-I mean the kid’s my own flesh, y’know. I’m his…uncle.” He said the title as if he hadn’t quite gotten used to it yet. “I had a job, plans…that didn’t involve a kid.” Conrad stirred sugar into his coffee absently, his eyes following the antics of a set of twins running laps around the cafeteria to the consternation of their exasperated mother.

Hutch watched as one twin, dressed in a Batman t-shirt, tackled his brother and wrestled him to the ground. Their laughter bubbled up through the low level noise of the dining room.

“My wife and I were thinking about adoption at one time,” he said, concentrating on his coffee for fear of betraying his deepest wishes aloud. “We have no children. And I have to admit, I have a strong interest in the well-being of that baby.”

“Really?” Simon looked interested. “I don’t know what to do, this is all way outta my league.” He tapped the coffee stirrer on the edge of his cup as if trying to decide to confide in Hutch. “I was married a few years back, and my wife got knocked up right away.” He bent the red and white plastic stick with a surprisingly savagery. “But the bitch lost it. My kid died ’cause she was using, the doctor said.”

Stunned, something clenched deep inside, a memory Hutch rarely let himself dwell on. He didn’t know how to respond. Conrad wasn’t exactly the portrait of a grief-stricken father. More like an irate one. “I-I’m sorry to hear that,” Hutch said sympathetically.

“She killed herself after it happened.” He waved a dismissive hand, all signs of anger completely wiped away and dug into the apple pie. He chomped on a large bite. “I haven’t thought about Celia in ages. Got enough on my plate right now, right? Hospital’s gonna  release my…nephew in a day or two, and the social worker tells me whether or not I take him long term, he has t’go to foster care until they get all the paperwork straightened out.”

 Unsettled, Hutch focused on the burst of hope in his heart. This was a sign that everything would work out. “My wife and I…well, I have to admit, I talked to her about the baby last night. She was very interested, and I’d love to…be a part of the baby’s life. Maybe even adopt him.” He didn’t think it was necessary to point out that he and Vanessa weren’t even living in the same house at the moment. If they got custody of little boy Benson, they’d be back together, no question about it. Staying in Starsky’s bachelor pad was never meant to be permanent.

“That sounds good, Officer,” Conrad said with fake sounding enthusiasm. “A cop for a dad. Not what I’d expected for the kid. Hell of a lot different than the kind of life I’d give….”

“Don’t sell yourself short, you obviously have the baby’s best interests at heart.” Hutch could afford to be magnanimous, with such exciting plans for the future. “I’ll see what has to be done immediately.” He stood up, having barely drunk any of the coffee.

“Yeah, I guess that means we’ll be talking again.” Conrad stuck out his hand. “You may be the solution to all my problems. Y’think you could help with one more?”

“I can try.”

“The baby’s name. I don’t know what to call him.”

“What did your sister have in mind?” Hutch reveled in the thought of naming the boy, but he didn’t want to appear too eager. This wasn’t his child yet.

“Probably Art Junior, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea under the circumstances.” Conrad finished his pie. “Any name’ll do.”

“Any name?” Hutch was almost dizzy with the possibilities. Was this what fatherhood felt like? How to choose? A name was with a person for the rest of their life, it had to be the right one. He almost said Christian, after his grandfather, but he still didn’t have true legal kinship to baby Benson. Not yet, anyway.

“I got no imagination,” Conrad continued. “Named my dog Fido, same as on the dog food label.”

Hutch laughed at that, distracted for a moment by the antics of the noisy twins. He hadn’t noticed at first that the one dressed as Batman was missing one arm. That didn’t seem to slow him down any, and the other boy chased him around the tables, yelling “Batman!”

Batman and….

“That birth certificate lady’s up there right now, waiting on another family and then she said we’re next. Got to give the kid a name.”

“Robin,” Hutch said. A good name, strong and free, and just a little out of the ordinary. His own father’s name was Robert, so it was almost the same.

“That’s better’n nothing.” Simon nodded. “Robin Benson sounds good. Probably oughta put Arthur in there, huh?”

“Probably a good idea,” Hutch agreed, more than a little dazed. He’d named a child. A boy who might be his son.

“Robin Arthur Benson,” Simon repeated as if memorizing the name. “Thanks, Hutchinson.”

 

June, 1978

Hutch awoke crying, the memory of that day the only good one of that whole summer. Vanessa had never really been interested in the sudden adoption news. His own enthusiasm had blinded him to her disdain.

Without a wife, he’d had no chance at adoption, and Robin had been sent into foster care three days later. During the State of California vs. Anne Benson trial proceedings, Hutch heard that Conrad did eventually take the child, but he moved to a smaller house, using the money from the Glenbrook house to pay for Anne’s lawyer bills.

Robin. He must be about eight now. Dark like his dead father, or sandy haired with light eyes like his mother and uncle? Hutch ached with the lost possibilities, alone in his hospital bed.

~*~*~

“Anney! I mean Mommy!” a voice bellowed from the back bedroom. “I want….”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Anne replied, exhaustion anchoring her bones to the chair. All she wanted to do was sit in this chair and smoke, staring out the front window, and that kid kept yelling, day and night. Strange that when he was inside her, all she could think about was what he’d be like when he was a child, and now she could barely stand the sight of him. Seven years of one-hour visits every three months had not forged any sort of mother/son bond. Her own child was a stranger to her, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to get to know.

“Mommy!”

“I said I’m coming!” Anne snubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray already overflowing with butts, her attention caught by a man getting out of a long dark car parked in front of the house. Simon. What the fuck was he doing here? After that cop Starsky came asking about him.

She swung the door open, feeling a surge of emotion that was hard to pinpoint. Anger? Resentment? Fear? All of the above and something else. Simon always elicited a mixed bag of feelings. “What do you want, Simon?”

“Is that any way for a woman to greet her loving brother?” He was grinning, but it was a scary, almost feral smile. Anne felt cold sweat drip down her spine when his hand touched hers, transferring a bouquet of slightly wilted daisies and a grocery bag of food into her arms. “Figured Birdman would be getting hungry for some of his favorite foods by now.”

“He’s grouchy and scratching all the time, going to get scars.” Anne shifted the bag onto her hip, tossing the flowers in on top of the cereal packages. She’d always hated the smell of daisies. “You didn’t even call on his birthday.”

“Don’t get uppity with me.” Simon’s voice was like a knife blade, wickedly sharp, capable of slicing its victim in half. Anne almost wanted to run and hide, but Simon’s momentary wrath lifted and he shrugged, acknowledging his own imperfection. “He knows I was thinking about him. I’ll take him someplace when he’s better.” He followed her into the kitchen. “How does he like living with his mother for the first time?”

“How would you like it if you were sick?” Anne retorted. “Why didn’t you tell me he had the chicken pox before you left?”

“Didn’t know!” He tore open a bag of potato chips while she put away the rest of the groceries. “It’s like twenty days from when the kid is exposed to when those damn bumps come out. I did find out where he got it from-Maria, the Mex who comes clean the house. Her kid Miguel and Robin are big buddies. He was covered with pox.”

“He mentioned Miguel.” Anne nodded, glad to see that among the sugary cereals and chips, Simon had also bought a few nutritional things like bananas and strawberries. Judging from the ice cream and chocolate sauce, he’d probably meant the fruit for a banana split.

“Good thing I didn’t catch it. The doctor said that kinda thing can make a guy’s nuts dry up.” He cupped his groin, thrusting lewdly at her. Anne pretended not to notice, as if making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Robin’s lunch took all of her concentration.

“Why were you talking to a doctor? I thought you said you didn’t know Robin was sick.” She peeled a banana, and poured a glass of milk.

“One of my clients,” Simon said with a wave of his hand. He rummaged through the cupboards, getting out a glass and bowl. “I was driving the limo for these doctors to some kind of medical convention and we got to talking about kid diseases.”

 Adding some cookies to a plate for her son, Anne felt a bit like a real mom for once. Protein, bread, fruit, and a sweet. This was a fairly decent meal, according to the nutrition classes she’d taken in prison. She’d been almost motivated to go for a nursing degree. Almost. With a kid, it would be a hell of a lot of work going to school and holding down a job. Probably better to stay on welfare.

“I’ll be right back, just taking this to his room.”

Robin had heard his uncle’s voice and demanded to see him, but she reminded him to stay in bed and not scratch, adding some Tylenol to his tray. Maybe nursing really was a bad idea all the way around, she certainly didn’t enjoy taking care of a sick kid.

“How’s he doing?” Simon asked when she returned. Anne noticed he’d poured himself a hefty jelly glass full of bourbon and was eating a bowl of ice cream. Great lunch. For herself, she hardly felt hungry, just a dull gnawing in her belly that eclipsed everything else.

“Go in there and see for yourself!”

“I will, I will,” he soothed, holding up the drink. “You’re like a bitch in heat, Anney, need something to take the edge off?” He grinned wolfishly, jutting his noticeable erection at her.

God, no.

Struggling to keep the conversation on an even keel, Anne swallowed. “I don’t think you should be drinking at this time of day. Just like Daddy.”

“That old bastard was an alky. I’m just relaxing on my day off.”

Anne sat down wearily, the smell of the liquor almost nauseating to her, especially combined with the sweet smell of ice cream. Her brain kept looping back to what Starsky had said: that he could tap her phone, that he was going to track Simon down. Could he possibly have that damned gun after all these years? Why? What kind of idiot would hold onto something like that? “Is the limo service your only job?”

He stared at her, a malignancy deep in his eyes that scared her silly, even though his tone of voice was devoid of anger. “Yeah. Got some big-shot client all day tomorrow. Visiting from jolly ol’ England, so I’m going to drive him all around to see the sights, which gives me freedom all day today.”

Anne nodded, wondering what it would be like to live in another country, far away from this life. She became aware that she’d nervously folded her shirt into pleats, and untangled her fingers, reaching for a cigarette.

“Oh, hey, I know you don’t get the newspaper. Brought you one so you could look for a job. Here.” Simon fished a folded Chronicle out of his jacket pocket and tossed it over to her, going back to his ice cream with gusto.

Staring down at the headline that Starsky told her would be there, Anne felt as if someone had slapped her hard on the face. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from revealing anything to Simon, and listened to the sounds of some cartoon coming from the portable TV in Robin’s room.

Bam! Socko! Smash!

 She’d landed once again in the middle of things, and Anne Conrad Benson didn’t have the energy or the ability to fight back. She wished she knew how to weep. It always seemed to do those women on soap operas a world of good.

“Something the matter, Anney? Somebody upset you?”

How could he do that? See this headline, and not be…?

“I…it’s hard adjusting to life outside, is all,” Anne folded the paper inward, so that the picture of handsome Detective Ken Hutchinson didn’t show. “Simon, I’ve been wondering about something. Since the trial, really.”

“That’s all behind you now, Anney,” he said genially, but his gray-blue eyes were flat and hard. “Forget it.”

“I can’t!” she flared, glad of any emotion other than despair. “You two took away my life! My baby!” She savagely stubbed out the cigarette, wanting to grind everything to ash. “I was so stupid to think that either of you would do right by me! That Art would grow up, give up the drug dealing when we had a kid on the way. Stupid, stupid Anney.”

She’d learned to be quick in prison, used to keeping watch for sudden attack, and managed to avoid the hand that Simon swung at her. His face was crimson, just like her father’s used to be, and it emboldened her. He’d missed slapping her cheek, but only by half an inch. “What happened to the gun, Simon?”

“What gun?” he asked harshly, breathing loudly through his nose. He didn’t try to hit her a second time, but stood like an enraged bull watching the red flag.

“You know what the hell I’m talking about!” She flung the folded newspaper at him. “Detective Starsky was here to talk to me this morning!”

“What did you tell him?” Simon advanced one step, menace rolling off in waves.

“Nothing! I’m a Conrad, I don’t talk to the police, but I swear, if you did that…. “

“I did right by that kid in there, Anney!” Simon stabbed a finger at the hallway. “I took care of him for eight years. You should be damned grateful he wasn’t drowned in a lake like some unwanted litter of kittens. I protect my own, so don’t accuse me of stuff you don’t know anything about!”

Anne heard a tiny whimper. She looked past Simon, staring into the stunned face of her son from where he was standing in the hallway. He looked like a paper cut-out of a boy, sharply delineated against the dull cream of the wall, one hand clutching a Star Wars toy. There was a hole in the knee of his pajamas, the ones with the picture of Batman and Robin on the shirt.

God, he looked like her mother.

A good thing, too. Maybe it would help him escape the pure stupidity of the Conrads and Bensons.

“Uncle Simon?” Robin asked, a hitched breath between the two words proving he’d heard the entire damning statement.

“Hey, Birdman!” Simon changed so swiftly, he could have been a magician. “Your mother and I were just having an adult kind of thing. Sounds like we’re arguing, but…it’s just the way brothers and sisters talk. Remember I told you about that?” He gathered the boy into his arms, giving him a hug.

He was good, Anne had to give him that. He knew how to talk to a child, relate. Give comfort. All the things she’d never had time to learn and was afraid she never would.

“Did you…” Robin trailed off, burying his face in Simon’s shoulder. “I missed you. Where you been?”

“Working, little man, working. Got you something for your birthday!” Simon pulled out a five dollar bill from his pocket. “Ice cream in the fridge for today, and when you’re feeling better, we’ll go over to the miniature golf place, hit a few through the windmill.”

“Yeah!” Robin held onto the five as if it were a security blanket.

“Hey,” Simon said as if he’d had a stupendous idea. “What’s say we make a day and take your ma to Disneyland? See ol’ Mickey Mouse?”

“You mean it?” Robin glowed with happiness, his rashy, pox-marked face gorgeous.

“Sure thing, Birdman. Soon, real soon, when you’re all better.” Simon goosed him on the butt. “Now back to bed, and listen to your mother or I’ll whup you good!”

“Yes sir,” Robin said swiftly, his hand holding the toy over his bottom as if a plastic action figure could protect him. He glanced over at Anne, the first time he’d looked at her since he came in the room. It was like looking at a stranger, and she hadn’t a clue how to get to know this child. “I’ll be real good, I promise.”

Simon stood, watching the boy pad back to his room. “What the fuck did that cop say to you?” he asked in a whisper that made the hair stand up on the back of Anne’s neck.

“Asked a lot of questions about you, implied that you had something to do with that cop shooting yesterday.”

“And what did you tell him?” His breath was hot on her cheek, and she took a step back but he grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise. Cold sweat snaked down her spine.

“Nothing, I said! What do I know, anyway?” Anne shook off his arm, rubbing the sore place. The phone rang so loudly that she jumped. Looking over at Simon who glowered but made no move to answer it, she picked up the receiver. “Hello?’

“Mrs. Benson, it’s Dave Starsky, from the Metro Police.”

“Yes,” she said cautiously, praying that Simon was too far away to hear anything. “What do you want? I’m busy.” She unspiraled the phone cord as far as it would go, walking into the living room.

“I had one or two more questions. What kind of car does your brother drive?”

“I can’t talk right now.”

“Just quickly, is it a blue Dodge, license number 535 ONN?”

Anne turned away from her brother’s impatient scowl, looking out the window at the car parked at the curb. A dark, shiny Lincoln, property of the limo company. “No. Listen, this isn’t a good time.”

“I can come over again.”

“No.” Anne insisted, the gnawing inside her turning to a sharp awl drilling into her guts. She dropped the phone into the cradle on the wall. Could she get in trouble for hanging up on a cop?

“Who was that?” Simon demanded, reaching to grab the phone as if he could somehow discern who had called from the dial tone.

“A friend. He wanted to know about…” She thought quickly, anything to get Simon’s suspicions away from Detective Starsky. Abruptly Quantrell’s face came to her, his easy grin and molasses slow twang. “Dinner, asked me out.”

“You’re already seeing some lowlife?”

“No! I just know this man. He was a brother of my cellmate Opal. You met him, he drove me home from prison.”

Simon stared at her, his eyes narrowing with the same undercurrent of anger she’d sensed when Quantrell dropped her off. “I don’t want that nigger anywhere near you again. Did he touch you?”

“Simon!” Anne turned her back on him, wishing that Quantrell had. At least she’d have something good to think about instead of the appalling idea that Simon had gunned down Detective Hutchinson.

“Don’t ever talk to the cops again, you hear?”

She was quaking on the inside, but didn’t let it show. She couldn’t bear it much longer. This was a scene right out of her childhood, repeated on a never-ending loop. “I didn’t tell him anything.”

“I don’t know why that cop would be nosing around here.” Simon prowled the room as if caged. Anne knew the feeling of having four walls closing in on you. “That whole big mix-up with him and his partner happened eight years ago. Forget about it.”

“Big mix-up?” Anne echoed with an ironic laugh. As if the complete and utter ruination of her life was some comical Lucy and Ethel adventure off the TV. “You have such a way with words, Simon.”

“Okay, so it was more than that.” Simon’s hand cut through the heavy air. Anne stifled a cry that swelled in her throat like a terrified bird, and stepped further back. “He thinks I had something to do with shooting a cop?”

“Hutchinson,” Anne supplied. He was always so angry at her. What was that weird phrase her English teacher in prison used to quote? From one of Shakespeare’s plays-not that Anne had ever read any of them. “I think he doth protest too much,” she murmured, her heart contracting. Why in the world would he have kept a gun involved in a patrol car shooting all these years?

“I don’t know if he has any proof,” she said carefully, not mentioning the strange question about the blue car. “I couldn’t talk to him-not with Robin sick in the house.”

“You keep your mouth shut, Anney, you hear me? None of that has anything to do with you, and it never did.”

If it didn’t, then why did I have to go to prison? She wanted to ask him that, pick his brains for the answer, because she sure as hell didn’t know anymore. The whole thing seemed a colossal waste of time. What had seven years in prison accomplished? She’d gotten a little education and come back to a son who barely knew her and a brother who hadn’t changed one bit. She knew he had shot Hutchinson. The question was, why?

“Why’d you bring up the gun, Anney?”

“Because that cop was here.” She reached over to pick up Simon’s bowl, the pool of melted ice cream like sludge in the bottom of the sewer. She wasn’t about to ask him anything else, ever again. It was far, far too dangerous. Stay ignorant, that was her motto from this day forward. Stay ignorant and the cop would stop coming around.

If only Simon would stop coming around.

 Except she knew what she’d always been so scared of-that everything at the trial had been a lie, right down to what happened to the damned gun.

“That gun was lost in the accident, you hear me? Probably crushed into some fucking slab o’steel.” Simon was staring at her, his eyes as hard as marbles, like the hypnotist she’d seen once on TV. With just a few slowly pronounced words and a click of his fingers, the hypnotist had made two average women cluck like chickens and squat to lay eggs in front of a laughing audience. Anne had laid her last egg, by God. Simon couldn’t make her forget the truth that she harbored inside her. He’d shot that cop-with the very gun he kept insisting was lost.

The question was-what did she do about it? She couldn’t go to the cops.

“Say it!” Simon shouted.

“Robin will hear you!” she hissed, looking back toward the hallway. The sound of cartoons still caterwauled, animated violence like a basketball bouncing on a wooden court.

Bam! Biff! Sproing!

Simon hadn’t moved, his face like granite-pale and impenetrable.

“The gun was lost in the accident,” she repeated dutifully.

“See?” Simon grinned suddenly, all anger forgotten. He slung a brotherly arm around Anne’s shoulders, giving her a peck on the cheek. “Easy enough.”

His heavy arm was like a yoke around her neck. “I have to clean up,” Anne said submissively, shrinking away from his hand hovering over her breast. She plugged the sink, thankful when he let go, and squirted detergent in a squiggly line across the cracked porcelain. The crack that bisected one half of the sink from the other looked like a fault line-the Conrad-Benson fault, capable of shoving an entire family off into oblivion with just a single jolt of the earth. She flipped on the central faucet, angling the lever on top toward the word Hot engraved on the left. Bubbles burst forth, covering the fault until it was just a memory under the sea. Staring into her mini ocean, Anne slid the ice cream bowl under the foamy surface.

“Anney,” Simon said in a sing-song voice. “Little Anney. You know I love you.” He laughed, puffing out his chest. “And I’ll always protect you.”

 The way he’d protected her by taking away her child and sending her to prison. She hated him.

“I’ll always love you,” Simon continued, pulling on the end of her ponytail the way he’d done when she was little. “Just like Daddy did. We were meant to be together, little jewel.”

That didn’t inspire confidence, only a sick fear curling inside her. “Would you…” she didn’t want to voice the fear, give it credence. “Ki-hurt someone for me?” The hand on her hair tightened for a fraction of an instant before sliding off. “Simon?” she said more firmly, all the unrelated bits coalescing into something horrible. “Would you hurt someone because of me?” She twisted around to see him. His face was tight, muscles along the jaw jumping with tension.

“Of course. I take care of my own,” Simon vowed with a frightening intensity. “Has someone hurt you, Anney? If that nigger, Quantrell, so much as-“

“No!” She laid a pacifying hand on his arm, smelling the rank testosterone in the heavy air. This was not what she’d ever wanted. How had it all come around to attempted murder? “No, just a-what do you call it?” She heard her English teacher’s voice. “Rhetorical question. Nothing real.”

He stared at her as if trying to suck the truth out of her, but Anne kept her poker face in place. She’d learned to lie as a small child, even before seven years in a state facility. Prison had only refined her craft. She felt icy inside, and tucked her arms around her body in a vain attempt to warm her core. Strange to be so cold on such a hot day.

Terrifying that Simon had tried to murder someone on her behalf.

“Do you remember our daddy, Anney?” His eyes were remote, even looking straight at her, and she wondered if he saw a twenty-eight-year old woman, or a child with no breasts and scabbed knees. “No, you wouldn’t. He died when you were eight. I was fourteen and Mickey was twelve.” Anne squeezed herself tighter, truly frightened. Simon had never acted like this before, as if something internal were directing him. “Daddy said take care of your sister, she’s the only jewel this family has.”

“He really said that?”

“So I did. I punched out anybody who made unseemly advances toward you. Screened your boyfriends…” He tossed back the rest of the bourbon with a loud swallow.

She’d always known that the men in the family, particularly Simon and her Uncle Charlie, had monitored her boyfriends. That certainly explained why she hadn’t made it to the junior prom with Chester Mars. And why Eric Sladen had a black eye that night after she’d snuck out with him. Not that she was overly surprised. Simon had introduced her to Art Conrad. He’d directed her life in ways she hadn’t even picked up on before.

“Why?” she demanded, rubbing her arms to calm the goose bumps. Simon’s nearness was creeping her out.

“Because I had to, Anney,” Simon growled. “And I’ll keep doing it until you learn.” He whipped by her, tossing his empty glass into her sink of sudsy water with a violent splash. She heard him yell “Later, Birdman!” seconds before the front door slammed shut.

Learn what? Anney thought, fishing the glass out and draining the water. What was she supposed to learn?

~*~*~

Starsky stared moodily at the telephone, Anne’s strained voice still playing in his ear. Was she holding out on him, or truly unaware of her brother’s connection to Hutch’s shooting? When the phone jangled to life, he almost jumped back as if the thing were a live snake about to strike.

“Dave Starsky.”

It was Angharad House from the DMV. “David? Your blue Dodge Coronet with the license 535 ONN is registered to a Feral Jonsdottir, who lived in Laurel Canyon. But she’s dead. The car is presumably stolen or being driven by someone who didn’t file the proper registration.” Her indignant humph gave Starsky his first real laugh of the day since the brief visit to Hutch.

“Can you spell Feral Jonsdottir?” Starsky had to scribble fast to keep up with her, but he managed to copy down the information with a minimum of smudges and smears. The typical curse of a leftie destined to always be running his hand along words he’d just written down. “What kind of name is that?”

“Icelandic. Have you ever been there? The fjords are breathtaking.”

“No, sounds really cold.” Starsky shivered at the thought of an entire country covered in ice. Was it up there near Norway and Sweden where Hutch’s ancestors came from? “Thank you, Miss Angharad. You wait, when this is over, I’m taking you out for a beer and burrito at Pepe’s.”

Angharad giggled like the teenaged girl she had been when Sinatra was the idol of bobbysoxers everywhere. “You’re on, David. I’ll stop off with the cookies later on this evening, after my date.”

“You’re dating? Why didn’t I know this?” He kept up with her easy chatter with little difficulty but it took a lot more effort to keep his eyes open. Three and a half hours of sleep were catching up to him, and he had the strongest need just to lie down on the desk with his head pillowed in his arms.

“His name is Malachi,” Angharad said sweetly. “We’re meeting at the Senior center at five-Wednesday is Bingo night, and they have cocktail weenies and all the strawberry sherbet punch you can drink.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, Angharad.” Starsky imagined the elderly couple boogying around a hall crowded with seniors all shouting Bingo while chug-a-lugging pink frothy drinks. He was getting punch drunk himself, and hadn’t had a thing to drink. Or eat since Dobey forced the bagel on him-when? Hours ago.

Propping his cheek on one fist, Starsky pulled forward the old Benson/Conrad file, reading over his own written account to try and glean any new information. He resisted the first time his eyes slid shut, pushing up one eyelid with a finger pressed against his brow. The second time he didn’t even notice the lapse, sleep claiming him in an instant like a thief in broad daylight.

Hutch was standing in a partially frozen stream holding up a squalling baby towards a man wearing a puffy blue nylon jacket. Starsky stood on the bank of the river reaching for the baby but Hutch kept retreating from him, getting further and further away with every passing second.

“Hutch! Damn you, don’t leave me alone!” Starsky shouted over a roaring wind, hot as a sirocco blowing out of Libya. He stepped out into the icy water, but pulled back, his feet nearly frozen already. If the air was so hot, why didn’t it melt the ice? He waved his arms frantically, but Hutch had all but disappeared into a blue-gray fog, and Simon Conrad now held the baby close up against his chest, cuddled in the puffy down jacket.

“Hey, Starsky!”

Starsky jerked awake so suddenly his neck snapped back. Instant whiplash, pain shooting across his shoulders and cramping his upper back. “Damn,” Starsky groaned, reaching up gingerly to rub away the soreness. “Whatcha want, Babcock?” He eyed his colleague with annoyance.

“You were asleep.” Babcock pointed out the obvious. “Thought you might like to know that the drug bust went off without a hitch. Chickie’s info was right on the money. Simmons is downstairs now, processing Marty Cohen and ten kee’s of heroin.”

“Hey.” Starsky knuckled the sleep out of his eyes, hoping there was about a gallon of high octane coffee in the pot. He wasn’t sure he was going to keep going much longer without a great deal of caffeine. “That’s terrific. Didja get Cohen’s girl, Misty Mayhem, too? She’s his go-between.”

“The stripper?” Babcock poured himself a cup of coffee and apparently anticipating Starsky’s need, poured out an extra mug for him. “You want cream?”

“No, but give me three sugars. I need the boost.”

“Got a warrant out for Misty, too, but it looks like she skipped town.” He stirred creamer into his coffee at the same time that Starsky dumped all three packets of sweetener into his. Their spoons clattered raucously, only adding to the headache Starsky had brewing.

“Did you go over to the Royale Hotel? She used to be up on the third floor.”

“Yep, nothing in room 306 but a g-string and a ski jacket. Wouldn’t have taken Misty for a skier, would you? Even had a lift ticket from Big Bear on the zipper pull still.” Babcock took a drink from his cup. “Gotta go give Sim-“

“Did you say a ski jacket?” Starsky interrupted, his own cup halfway to his mouth.

“Yeah. No skis, just a jacket. Guess she rents by the hour. The skis, I mean.” He laughed at his own joke, but Starsky was no longer paying attention.

Blue puffy jacket, like something worn for the snow, only in mid June. A parka, big and bulky, big enough to hide something small in an inner pocket. “Oh, fuck,” he said into the empty room. “Captain!” Starsky yelled, slopping hot coffee onto his hand in his haste to push open his superior’s door.

“Starsky, don’t you ever knock?” Dobey groused. “And don’t spill coffee on my floor. The janitor is always complaining to me-“

“Captain!” Starsky waved the hand holding the coffee cup to silence him, spilling more liquid on the floor. He noticed just a trifle too late and contritely placed the mug on Dobey’s desk. “I think I figured out what happened to the gun.”

“Conrad’s gun?” Dobey clarified.

“It’s so simple, it’s stupid.” Starsky shook his head at his own stupidity. Why he hadn’t noticed such an odd detail back then just showed how green he’d truly been. “When me and Hutch arrived, just after the crash, Conrad came from his house. He was wearing a down parka.”

“I read the reports the morning. That crash was in June, wasn’t it hot?”

“Hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk,” Starsky agreed, remembering with odd clarity how his polyester uniform had stuck to his back with sweat. He’d been more than glad to make it to plainclothes later that same year. “He must have gotten the gun from his brother-in-law somehow. Hidden it in his jacket while we were dealing with Anne.”

“And Hutch delivered the baby.” Dobey nodded. “How can you be sure of this, Starsky? No where in either yours or Hutch’s accounts does it mention Conrad’s clothing.”

“The lab photos!” Starsky ran out to his desk, grabbing the strewn pages of the case file from off his desk. He very nearly knocked Pinky the pig off the edge and made a wild grab to keep the china bank from doing a double gainer onto the linoleum. Assorted coins clanked inside as he righted Pinky. He stood, holding the silly thing in his arms, his heart banging so hard against his ribs he could barely breathe.

Hutch.

Lying there in the street, blood as ghastly red as Pinky’s garish shorts splashed across the front of his shirt.

For a long minute Starsky was very glad he’d never drunk any of the highly sugared coffee. His vision swam as his esophagus tried to decide whether to reverse the usual direction of flow. He gulped compulsively, willing whatever was threatening to come up to stay down.

“Dave?” Dobey pushed him down into a chair, keeping one hand on the back of Starsky’s neck so that he had no choice but to sit with his forehead nearly on his knees. It helped to clear his head, but unfortunately hurt because of his stiff neck.

“Captain, I’m okay.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“What are you, my dad all of a sudden?” Starsky said irritably. He set Pinky back on the desk, carefully positioning him so that he was directly on the invisible dividing line between Hutch’s space and Starsky’s.

“No, but I was hoping that I was your friend as well as your boss.”

“Yeah.” Starsky rubbed his neck and wished for aspirin. Hutch usually kept some in his drawer.

“Then let me sort through these while you go get something from the cafeteria downstairs.” Dobey shoved the reports and pictures back into the file folder. “Get yourself a burger, something with protein, and bring me back a side of fries and a Coke.”

“You want a piece of pie, too?” Starsky stood carefully, still woozy enough to fear a tumble if he walked too quickly.

“If they have lemon meringue,” Dobey said with a curt nod, heading back into his office. “Just don’t tell my wife I’m cheating on my diet!” he threw back over his shoulder.

Starsky chuckled at that, and stared at the phone. Should he call the hospital? Check on Hutch or just make sure he got over there before visiting hours ended?

Phoning was faster. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Dobey was back in his office, all the while dialing the number for the ICU. No news was good news. Hutch was sleeping quietly. No temperature, and his surgeon was encouraged.

Starsky sighed, relief at Hutch’s moderate progress loosening the tension in his belly one notch. He needed to solve this case-today. The longer a shooting went unsolved, the colder the trail became. And this one was already eight years plus twenty hours cold.

The cafeteria had two slices of lemon meringue left, and Starsky ate his cheeseburger in the elevator on the way back up to the second floor from the basement. He polished off half of Dobey’s fries just walking through the squadroom, passing Marty Cohen, the drug dealer, handcuffed to a chair next to Babcock’s desk.

“How ya doin’, Marty?” Starsky greeted, feeling much more himself with food in his belly. “Want a fry?”

“I want a lawyer,” Marty snarled, tugging on his cuffs.

“He’s coming, Cohen,” Babcock said, fingers dancing across the typewriter keys. “You’re in luck. I hear he’s a new guy, just graduated last in his class at law school one week ago.”

“Fucking court appointed attorneys can’t…” Marty raved, but Starsky made it to Dobey’s office without hearing whatever the attorneys couldn’t do.

“You’re eating my fries.” Dobey snatched the small cardboard container away before Starsky ate every one.

“Just saving you from yourself, Capt’n,” Starsky drawled, setting the tray with the pie and drinks on the desk. “You’ll thank me for it someday. Did you find a picture of Conrad?”

“He was gone before any of the lab photos were taken, as far as I can tell.” Dobey gestured at the pictures with a French fry.

Holding up one glossy image, Starsky grimaced. He remembered the inside of the car all too clearly, blood drenching the ripped open seat with a few bags of heroin still inside the upholstery to show the location of the stash. There were more pictures of Benson’s body trapped in the twisted metal of the car, and several long shots of the front end of the automobile smashed into the low brick wall. The letters spelling out Glenbrook had been partially knocked off, leaving just “lenbro.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “What about the reporters?”

“This is the first time I’ve ever hoped the media got a good shot of a crime scene.” Dobey dug into his pie with gusto, his appetite unaffected by the gruesome photos. “Did you see any newspaper photographers or local news crews there?”

“I wasn’t paying any attention.” Starsky skimmed the meringue off the top of his piece of pie to eat first. “But there must have been ’cause there was a picture of Hutch on the front page of the BC Chronicle, “Cop Delivers Drug Mom’s Baby” in big black letters.” He tasted the smooth topping cautiously. Nothing like his mother could do on her worst baking day, but edible. “Thing is, I don’t think Anne Benson ever used drugs in her life. How’d she get so mixed up in all that shit?” He took a bit of the tangy lemon filling, savoring the flavor flooding his mouth. “When I was a rookie, things were so much more simple-black and white. Now I see all the mitigating factors. She went to prison and her brother went free.”

“She was driving the car full of illegal drugs, smuggled from another country. She was still guilty of a felony, whether or not she ever used any of the product.” Dobey gave a discreet burp and pressed his fork into the crumbs on the plate to get every last bit of pie. “Get on the horn, find out if the Chronicle or LA Times, any of the local stations like 11 or 32 still keeps their film from eight years ago.”

“I get the picture, Capt’n!” Starsky said, unable to resist the pun. He gobbled two last bites of pie and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You’d better,” Dobey growled. “Complete with a clear view of Conrad. Barnaby and Dana never could pin anything on the brother. Let’s see if we can rectify that this time around!”

Typical of any time in an investigation when Starsky wanted some piece of evidence now, there were delays and complications. The Times kept all the old prints in a warehouse miles from their main office and it would take two days to locate anything from 1970. Channel 11 no longer kept their old footage at all, but had sold everything to an archival bank, and the operator at KKBC-32 would have to have one of the newsmen get back to him when they returned from a location shoot.

 The BC Chronicle’s telephone was busy the first two times he tried to call, but third time was the charm. Not only had the reporter he talked to worked at the paper back in June of 1970, she recalled the actual report since her own son had been born around the same time.

“Terrific!” Starsky wanted to shout for joy, but Marty Cohen was still glowering across the room and he didn’t want to act like a fool in front of the drug dealer. At least he was doing something productive to solve Hutch’s shooting. “Can you give us every picture you took at the scene of the crash?”

“Probably not until tomorrow morning,” Solange Monteau confessed. “Will that be soon enough for you?”

“Better than any offer I’ve had all day, darlin’,” Starsky flirted. “I can come pick them up at eight, okay?”

“Sounds fine.” Solange sounded lovely on the phone and on any other day Starsky would have chatted her up, maybe proposed a dinner date, but he was far too tired. He just wanted to see Hutch, and get some sleep. Simply being in a chair weighed his whole body down and he wasn’t all that sure he could get up again. A nice nap on top of the desk?

“I’ll have them waiting for you at my desk, on the second floor,” she continued.

“See you in the morning,” Starsky promised, hanging up the phone. What time was it? He could almost hear Hutch say those words, feel Hutch’s fingers on his arm, turning Starsky’s wrist up to see his watch. “Aw, Hutch…” Starsky whispered, having to bring his own wristwatch into view. “I’m sorry.”

It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and Starsky had no idea where the time had gone. He’d been on the go since seven-thirty a.m. when Parker woke him. Would they be able to get proof that Simon Conrad was behind the shooting?

Starsky stood wearily, leaning on Dobey’s doorframe to deliver the news about the newspaper pictures.

“Those photos have waited for eight years, they can wait one day more,” Dobey said kindly. “Go home, Detective. Or visit your partner in the hospital. But get some rest.”

“Thanks, Cap.” Starsky grinned, and knew exactly where he’d go first. As he pulled on his jacket, the phone rang. Thinking it was the reporter from Channel 11 getting back to him finally, Starsky answered on the second ring.

“Dave?” Nancy asked, her voice low and elegant. “I didn’t want to intrude at the hospital any more than I already have-but have you heard anything more about Ken this afternoon?”

“Not much, honey. The nurse said no changes a little while ago,” Starsky said truthfully, but he was still confused. Why did she care so much, now?

“I know what you must be thinking,” Nancy said, as if she really could read his mind. “No contact at all and suddenly I’m acting like we’re the best of friends. I’m…I’m not trying to start anything. I have a boyfriend, and we’re moving in together. It’s just that…things went so badly between Ken and Van, and not really any better for Ken and me.” She sighed. “Maturity lets you see things in a different light, doesn’t it?”

Strange how she really was tapping into his thoughts. “I was saying the same thing a little while ago to my boss,” Starsky said. “You met him, Captain Dobey. We may have gotten a lead on Hutch’s shooting that links back to an earlier case.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“Yeah,” Starsky said and realized that Nancy could possibly clear up a few things that had privately baffled him from the break-up of the Hutchinson marriage. “Listen, can I ask you something? And if you can’t answer-or won’t, that’s okay. But Hutch wanted to adopt a baby back in 1970. He thought it would save their marriage. D’you know anything about that?”

“Oh.” Nancy took a deep breath, and Starsky was sure he heard a stifled sob. “Before I answer that, did Ken tell you why he and I were divorced?”

“He said it was annulled, ’cause you were both underage.”

“Sort of,” Nancy agreed. “Ken was my high school sweetheart. Took me to my first ever dance, Homecoming, all that. Vanessa always had the captain of the football team, whatever jock was in season, but I liked the quieter ones. Ken was gentle-he did wrestling, track, that sort of thing, but he wasn’t all he-man. He played guitar and wrote poetry, I adored him.” She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. “But Van was very competitive with me. What I had, she always wanted. So, I thought if I slept with Ken, I could claim him, I guess.”

This time Starsky could tell she was crying, even if she was trying very hard not to. He leaned back against his chair, exhausted, yet fascinated by this unexpected glimpse into his friend’s past. High school, with all the turbulent hormones, was an exciting, scary mixture of immaturity and growth. Nancy’s story wasn’t unique or unusual, and he realized he’d been a cop for too long when he anticipated the unfortunate ending without her having said a word. “You got pregnant.”

“Yes. 1962.” Each word was clipped short, still obviously painful after sixteen years. “Good girls didn’t do that. My father said we had to get married, right away, before I showed.”

Starsky felt a tight knot curl under his breastbone right over his heart, wishing he’d known Hutch then. Wishing Hutch had told him the truth instead of tucking it into a tidier version of the past. He’d suspected something along these lines, but had never pushed Hutch into a full confession. What would have been the point? He’d learned about the first marriage only by accident, one night when Hutch was drunk. “What about his parents?”

“They were going through a divorce themselves. They were already fighting over child support and stuff like that when Ken and I had to go to the justice of the peace and get married.”

“How old were you?” Starsky raised his head at a commotion across the squadroom. He’d been so pulled into Nancy’s tale that he’d forgotten there were other people in the room. Babcock was leading a cursing Cohen out of the room, and a man who barely looked out of his teens was trailing behind with a brief case in hand. The court appointed lawyer who’d just passed the bar.

“Ken was seventeen-it was the week of his birthday. I was sixteen,” she replied with sorrow in her voice, but the tears had stopped.

“But something must have happened?”

“I lost the baby two months later, and my father had the marriage annulled. Vanessa and I were sent to a private boarding school for the last two years of high school. I didn’t see…Ken again until he started at the university in Duluth. Vanessa put in her claws, and hooked him.”

“Yeah.” Starsky knew exactly what she meant by claws, he’d seen the scars they’d made on Hutch’s psyche ever since. “I’m really sorry to bring this all up again, Nancy, but I think I understand now why Hutch wanted to adopt so badly.”

“Van couldn’t get pregnant, even if she’d wanted to. Guess I was the lucky one.” She gave a derisive little laugh. “I get pregnant if a man looks at me cross-eyed.”

“You have a son, don’t you?” Starsky remembered seeing some picture of the child way back when.

“Two-they’re visiting their dad in Oregon right now. Ed and Douglas.” Nancy must have shifted her arm; Starsky could hear the phone bump against something. “That’s why I really want this thing with Jack Shellington to work-get established, settled. And maybe-heal some wounds between Ken and me… My sons are sort of his nephews, I guess you’d call it.”

“You want family again.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly. Family. Roots.” She laughed more freely this time. “Maybe not as tumultuous as that miniseries about Kunte Kinte, but I think you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” Could he grieve for a baby who was never born? Or at least for its father, his best friend? “Thanks, Nancy, for giving me the straight scoop-that took guts.”

“It’s a lot of water under the bridge,” she said wistfully.

“I’m going over to the hospital soon, see how Hut-Ken’s doing. The nurses keep saying he’s stable and sleeping, but I’ve got to see for myself.” Starsky had to gulp back the nervous flutter in his throat. He was almost afraid to go see Hutch looking so very vulnerable again. Once had almost been enough for the rest of his life. He wanted the old Hutch back. “I’ll keep you posted on his progress,” he promised. “Come visit him. He’ll be bored stiff laid up in the hospital.”

“I will,” Nancy said.

Starsky disconnected, staring at the phone in his hand before setting it back in the cradle. So many pieces of the puzzle, so many questions. Hutch had obviously known Van couldn’t conceive, so he’d bet on an adoption to heal their rift. But Simon Conrad had claimed the baby from foster care instead of Hutch, and Vanessa had taken her husband to the cleaners, using California’s community property laws to reduce Hutch to near poverty level for several years afterwards.

Why had Conrad kept little Robin when he could have given the child to a childless couple? No court in the land would have awarded custody to Anne while she was in prison. Starsky wasn’t sure the child was even legally hers now. From what she’d said, Simon had dropped out of the boy’s life once his mother was back. But then, child custody wasn’t something Starsky knew a great deal about. In all probability, Conrad had simply wanted to keep his nephew in the family and cared for the boy while Anne was incarcerated. He’d stayed clean all that time, too, since no arrest warrants or drug charges had surfaced under the name Simon Conrad. Was the guy really good at what he did, or as clean as the driven snow?

It was all too much for Starsky’s aching head. He rubbed his forehead, remembering that he’d never taken any aspirin. He opened the file cabinet where they kept their personal items, pawing through Hutch’s stuff for the familiar medicine bottle. Various papers fell onto the floor, including a small pocket-sized photo album. Starsky bent to pick it up and his headache flared, spiking across his brain like a lance.

“Damn.” He leaned against the cool metal cabinet, nausea flaring briefly.

“Starsky?” Minnie Kaplan put a gentle hand on the back of his neck and Starsky had the surprising wish that it was Hutch’s hand there. “Are you sick?” she asked.

“Just tired.” He downplayed the incident, easing himself into his chair. His head throbbed in tune to his heartbeat. “Hutch usually keeps aspirin in there, d’you see the bottle?”

“If it was a snake, it would have bitten you,” she teased, but her brown eyes were concerned when she handed him two white pills. “I can see how you’re doing, how’s Hutch?”

“Okay, I guess.” He swallowed them dry, grimacing at the taste. “Not that I understand any of that medical gobbly-goop the doctors spout off. I’m going over to Memorial right now.”

“Better wait until that stuff takes effect or you’ll plow the Torino into a ditch,” Minnie said with affection.

“Listen, we didn’t get much in the way of priors on Simon Conrad. Is there any way to find out if he has warrants under another name?”

“Not unless you know that other name, sweetie.” She winked at him, tidying up the mess he’d left on the floor. “I could look for a Conrad Simon, which sounds like a regular name, too. Did you drop this?” Minnie put the photo album on the desk, piling the other papers into a stack to be sorted later.

“Yeah, sorry, just leave all that there. Hutch’s filing stinks.” Starsky flipped open the album, curious to see what photos Hutch had saved. He’d seen the red leatherette cover on and off over the years, but never really delved inside. The two of them tended to know every last thing about the other’s business, but Starsky tried to give Hutch a little privacy when it came to his family. Hutch had rarely let out his feelings about his parents and their divorce, but the fact that he’d never told Starsky about nearly becoming a teenage father was a slightly disturbing. Had he felt he needed to hide that sad little truth?

Or maybe-Starsky thought back to the time in his life that he didn’t talk about; Viet Nam. It was hard to explain the horror and constant adrenaline/fear that was war to someone who hadn’t been there. Maybe Hutch felt the same way about losing his firstborn child? That Starsky would not have understood?

“I think you’re the one with the terrible filing habits,” Minnie commented. “These are all receipts and bills to hand in to Accounting. And I think they’re overdue.”

“Story of my life, Minnie. Just leave ’em. And tell that guy you’re dating in Accounting to be good to you. Buy you a corsage or something,” he joked feebly, the headache making it hard to breathe and think at the same time.

“Oh, you heard about me and Vinnie?” She laughed, cocking her head like a vamp.

“Match made in heaven, Vinnie and Minnie.” Starsky waved. She gave a saucy swing to her hips as she sauntered out the door.

Starsky looked back at the picture on the first page of the little album. Sentimental Hutch, there was the two of them graduating from the academy, hair regulation short, creases in their blue polyester pants, and broad smiles on their faces. The next one was Hutch’s pretty sister, Karen, with her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, holding a fat-cheeked infant to her shoulder. Tommy op Owen, if he remembered the unusual last name correctly. A sneak peek at the back confirmed his guess, the name was written neatly in Hutch’s handwriting.

 After that was a shot of Hutch and Karen as children, possibly twelve and eight, if Starsky wagered a guess, and on the second to last page was the old snap of Nancy’s older son, the one Starsky remembered having seen once before. He slid the picture off the plastic sleeve to check the son’s name and another came out at the same time, tucked in behind. Ed Michaels’s three-year-old image had hidden the much folded newspaper print of Hutch holding newborn Robin Benson cuddled up to his BCPD uniform just before he handed the baby over to his mother.

There were none of Hutch with Vanessa or Nancy.

~*~*~

An ICU is always busy, noisy, and, to a non-medical person, verging on chaotic. There were alarms going off, nurses and doctors bustling around, one patient crying out in anguished distress, and the constant awareness that every person in each of the ten beds was probably sick enough to be critical.

Hutch wanted out, very badly. His own bed at Venice Place would be so much more comfortable and quieter. The pain in his belly seemed to throb all the louder every single time an alarm went off on some monitor in one of the other rooms and a nurse would run to check on some patient, their voices echoing weirdly in Hutch’s ears. He’d drifted in and out of wakefulness for hours, but was now hyper-alert, overly sensitive to the noise and chaos of the place.

 When the doctors came on rounds, Hutch opened his eyes widely, trying to appear alert and on the mend, even though the walls of the room seemed to vibrate slightly as if the entire hospital was built on a foundation of gelatin.

A deep voice with a lilting African accent began, “In bed six is Kenneth Hutchinson, gsw to lower right quadrant of the belly. Temporary colostomy placed to allow the colon to heal. No loss of length of bowel or intestines. No signs of peritonitis, but he’s on forty-eight to seventy-two hours of prophylactic antibiotics…” Most of the doctor’s spiel of medicalese went over Hutch’s head, but he hung on, trying to interpret and understand his own diagnosis.

“Doctor,” Hutch called, waving a hand to get one of the men to notice him.

“I’ll be right there, Mr. Hutchinson,” the young doctor assured him. “We have two more patients to discuss.”

Just that much exertion had exhausted him. How was he going to convince them that he would be far better off in a small, hopefully private room on another floor if he couldn’t even raise an arm? He peered after the medical staff, but the numbers of men and women shifted and changed. Sometimes there were four white-coated doctors, sometime eight.

Hutch closed his eyes wearily, ignoring the one woman who simply sat over by the glass partition, staring at him snidely. He was fairly sure she was a morphine induced vision of Vanessa. He drifted, almost going back to sleep to escape the gnawing agony that kept growing in his belly.

“What was it you needed?” a voice asked.

“Y’re a doctor?” Hutch asked, forcing himself to be awake and alert.

“First year resident, Dr. Mabunde Demain,” he introduced himself gravely. His youthful visage was so similar to Kiko Ramos that Hutch wasn’t quite sure he was actually speaking to a real physician. Could be another hallucination for all he knew.

“I can’t sleep here,” Hutch complained. “I need a private room.”

“I am sorry, sir,” Dr. Demain said formally, his African accent slightly difficult to understand. “Policy decrees that you should to be monitored for twenty-four hours after your surgery. And since that concluded shortly after midnight, you will not be transferred to a less acute patient floor until the morrow.”

So Hutch was stuck between the car accident victim swathed in bandages he’d seen being wheeled into the room on his left, and the patient in the room on his right with the nonstop heart monitor alarm.

Damn, he wanted out.

He didn’t feel anywhere near strong enough to stand up and walk out on his own-not with fresh sutures in his belly. Sutures that felt like they were perilously close to ripping open every time he took in an agonizing breath. He was sore all over, completely drained of energy, high on morphine and just loopy enough to hallucinate. The phantom Vanessa had never left his room after her twin went home, and she was irritating as hell, sitting there against the wall not speaking to him, the expression on her face exactly the same one he’d seen for the last months of their marriage.

 

July, 1970

“I thought you’d be out for the day,” Hutch said tightly, clutching the boxes he’d brought to collect his possessions from the apartment on Toledo Court. “Some photo shoot with Daniel Sylvester?” Vanessa was dressed with stunning precision in a green micro-mini skirt, gold and green paisley top, open-toed gold sandals, and a gold purse big enough to be an overnight bag on her shoulder.

“I was just leaving. It’s down in La Jolla.” Vanessa avoided Ken’s eyes, looking down at Starsky on the street opening the trunk of his Mustang. “What’s he doing here?”

“Helping me pack. I’m going to be staying at his place.” Hutch brushed past her on the small staircase landing, not wanting to start a fight. The doorknob slipped in his hand, the lock not quite catching the first time he turned the key. The screws were stripped in the knob, and it hadn’t unlocked correctly for months. “Didn’t you ever call the landlord to come fix this?” he asked irritably.

“Good Lord, Ken, you don’t even live here anymore!” Van retorted, following him in and tapping her foot as if she was going to watch him pack to make sure he didn’t take anything she deemed as hers. “If you must know, I called Mr. Blanchard three weeks ago, but he needs a part. I dealt with the damned door, the same way I had to deal with every other thing that broke down around here while you were on patrol, or night shift, or some other excuse to be away from the house with your damned partner!” The last was said with a sneer that implied something very unsavory about Starsky and him.

“You get off Starsky’s back!” he snapped, loading his record collection into a box.

“Not before you do.” Van curled her lip. “Oh, quelle surprise,” she said in a snooty French accent. “Super Cop is coming up the stairs. Guess the two of you can’t be separated for five minutes.” She waited until Starsky had come warily into the room before shooting off her parting salvo. “Either one of you take anything that doesn’t belong to perfect Ken, and I’m calling the cops-the real ones.”

 She slammed the front door so hard the windows rattled and two plates propped up in the Rutherford family breakfront toppled over the railing. One hit the floor with a sharp crack and smashed into pieces. Starsky caught the other in a flying leap that would have won him the Heisman trophy if he’d been going long for a football in an all-stars game.

“Oops,” Starsky said into the bleak silence that boomed around the little living room. “Think I should make a run to Sears, pick up an extra dish to replace this one?” He stirred the broken shards with the toe of his sneaker.

“Can’t find that pattern at Sears.” Hutch was amazed to feel the left side of his mouth quirk upwards in an approximation of a smile when the rest of him felt as shattered at the china plate. If he gave into the tears that pricked the back of his eyelids and throat, would Starsky think him less of a man? His life was a heap of crap and things kept getting worse, piling up until he wondered if the next catastrophe would bury him alive. “Handed down for two generations-luckily from the Mattiessen family, my mother’s side, and not from the Rutherfords, or the even tonier Van Cleefs-Vanessa’s mother’s family.”

“So, I can smash this one, too?” Starsky asked with a strange gleam in his eye, turning the plate around in his hands.

“Go ahead. I just may join you once I’ve cleared all this stuff away.” Hutch gave a mirthless laugh and went back to sorting through the books, records, and photo albums. Starsky squatted down to help, leaving the unbroken plate with the elegant brown rosebud in the center on the table.

“Can I look?” Starsky held up a small red leatherette photo album.

“Nothing much in it right now,” Hutch paused, taping shut the top of the first box and starting on a second one. “I bought it when we thought…for baby pictures, but Van can’t…” He shrugged, unable to put words to the pain inside. How many children was he destined to lose? First Nancy, then Van, and now Anne-and he hadn’t even married the last woman. He still remembered the all-too-brief but wonderful feeling of holding Baby Boy Benson against his body, feeling the warmth and squirminess of a newborn.

 Hutch placed a baroque statue of embracing cherubim into the box and sealed it shut. “There’s a picture of Nancy’s son Ed, but not her second boy.”

“Cute,” Starsky complimented. The child was a pudgy, male version of his stunning aunt. “Nancy and Van sure must look alike.”

“They’re identical twins,” Hutch said sarcastically, then caught himself. Vanessa was out of his life; he shouldn’t be speaking to his best friend in the same tone of voice he used with her. “They’re mirror images. Nancy’s left-handed, like you.”

He walked on down the short hall to the bedroom. Although he’d taken most of his clothes when he moved out originally, there were still a few items and mementos he wanted to save. Going through the bureau drawers he discovered that Van had eclipsed any sign that he’d once kept his clothes there. It took some searching through the closet to find several garbage bags crammed full of his possessions, and he rummaged through the contents with a heavy heart.

Had his parents felt like this when they’d divorced? He’d been in high school, too involved with sports, music, and social life to really pay attention to their misery, but he’d known for years that his mother and father didn’t love each other. Robert Hutchinson traveled extensively and was rarely home for six months at a time, preferring to live in the foreign countries where his business ventures took him. Louise Hutchinson coped in the time-honored tradition of well-off women-luncheon with the girls at the club, and a high ball glass in her hand by mid-afternoon. She was a genteel drunk, sweet and unfocused. There were never any arguments or loud voices in front of the children, never any kind of a scene to shame the family name.

By the time Robert officially moved out for good, he hadn’t lived in the Hutchinson household for over three years. The actual divorce decree had almost seemed anticlimactic to seventeen-year old Ken, who was reeling from the woes of his own first aborted marriage. Had he simply not noticed the separation of household goods? Had his father come in one day when the rest of them were gone and snuck out his property like a thief in the night? He literally couldn’t remember.

Trying to tie each garbage bag shut, Hutch ripped the third one, accidentally dumping everything out. A tan leather jacket complete with fringe down both sleeves, one lone scuffed Fry boot, several used sex toys, and a tiny t-shirt trimmed in palest blue lay in a tangled heap on the floor.

The overwhelming grief was too much. Hutch picked up the baby shirt, meant for some future child who would carry on the Hutchinson name, and wept, spine hard up against the metal frame of the bed because there was nothing left to hold him up.

“Hey,” Starsky said with infinite sympathy. He didn’t chastise, didn’t castigate Hutch for giving in to unmanly tears the way Robert Hutchinson would have. Sinking down with his back propped against the bed, Starsky just sat, his shoulder butted up to Hutch’s, his thigh lying right alongside Hutch’s, absolute warmth, support, and succor in his presence.

Hutch cried himself out, feeling stupid and resentful, and absolutely empty. He didn’t know how to go on. He’d tried so hard, but nothing was ever enough to satisfy-whom? Himself or Vanessa? He wasn’t even sure anymore. If he’d been able to adopt Robin, would they just have ended up this way one year later, ripping up an innocent baby’s life in the process, too?

 He couldn’t deny that he’d stayed away in the last year to avoid Van’s blistering tongue and wrath, but there had once been love and tenderness. Where had that gone? He couldn’t even bring himself to like his wife-soon-to-be-ex-wife-any longer.

“You wanna get drunk?” Starsky asked, patting Hutch’s jean-clad knee.

“Blotto,” Hutch agreed.

 

June, 1978

The tears that wet Hutch’s cheeks were an irritant, just one more reminder of the past he’d longed to put behind him. How did these emotions worm their way to the surface? It was because he was weak and susceptible right now. His defenses were down. He hurt all over and the memory of all his failures over the years were just a reminder of how bad off he really was. Gillian had died, Jeannie, Abby, and Anna left him, and Diana stabbed him in the shoulder.

Good going, Hutchinson. What a winner with the ladies you turned out to be.

The words Van had hurled at him, her frequent insinuations, that he and Starsky were engaged in something dirty that had nothing to do with police graft, whirled in his morphine-hazed brain. Van had been the first, but not only person to ever imply that he and Starsky were more than good friends. Maybe she saw something he didn’t? Why did Starsky’s companionship mean more than any single other person’s on Earth ever had? Hutch had never trusted, believed in, or wanted to be with anyone else more.

But as for sexual feelings-that was absurd. He and Starsky weren’t queer. Not that he had anything against men who loved other men, he just wasn’t one of them.

“Ken, are you awake?” the nurse who’d cared for him since early that morning asked quietly. He nodded, furtively wiping away the wetness on his cheeks. “I just want to take some vitals,” Marian continued.

“Yeah.” Hutch opened his eyes, trying to appear more alert than he really felt. “What time izzit?” He glanced past the nurse’s well padded hips to the glass wall and was supremely grateful that Vanessa’s specter had disappeared. The walls still seemed to undulate with annoying instability.

“Nearly six, only one more hour of my shift to go,” Marian said. She reached up to the monitor above his head to fiddle with the knobs. The blat of the alarm sounded raucously before she silenced it. “Just making sure it works,” she explained. “You must do twelve hour shifts, too, as a cop?”

“Most days-but sometimes we can sneak off after eight hours, if the crime rate is down.” Hutch smiled to himself, remembering the times Starsky had convinced him to clock out for a two-hour dinner right at the eight hour mark, so that with traffic and paperwork, they really didn’t do a full twelve hours. It had only happened once or twice since he’d turned detective, but it was fun-although Hutch always felt a little like a teenager ditching high school. Starsky must have been a master at that universal symptom of senioritis from the way he relished those moments of freedom.

“Can’t imagine the crime rate is down any more often than our census of patients is down,” Marian chuckled, and popped a thermometer in Hutch’s mouth. “How’s the pain on a scale of one to ten?”

Hutch took a cautious breath in, hating the way his abdomen clenched up and pain radiated up and down his side no matter how much he tried to relax. “Maybe five or six,” he muttered around the thermometer.

“Too high. I can give you some more morphine, or something not quite so strong. The doctor wrote orders for two kinds of painkillers.”

“I hate taking narcotics. Whatever stuff won’t knock me out,” Hutch said, tucking one hand under the covers to feel that plastic bag taped to his side. With this thing, or even the resulting scar after he was sewn up once more, no woman would ever look at him again. “I don’t want to be out of my head. Any chance he changed his mind and would transfer me to another floor before tomorrow?”

“Sorry.” Marian pocketed her pen and eyeballed his IV drip. “Surgical patients stay twenty-four hours in the ICU, that’s the rule.” She straightened and smiled, seeing someone who was just out of Hutch’s sight. “But you have company, so maybe that will cheer you up.”

“Who is it?” he asked, even though he knew. Couldn’t be anyone else.

“That guy that came by this morning after your wife,” Marian said.

Ex-wife, Hutch corrected silently.

Out loud he said, “Starsky?” Hutch pressed a hand against his chest, the relief that his friend was back was almost palpable.

“I’ll let you two visit. Give me five minutes to get the good stuff for you-as long as Mrs. Sherman next door stays quiet.” Marian winked, walking out as Starsky walked in. Behind him, Hutch could see a covey of medical staff rushing a gurney past to another room, a high, keening cry of a woman in pain like the siren on the Torino.

“She’s not bad on the eyes,” Starsky commented. “She could help me recover any time.”

“I’ve sworn off nurses, remember Diana?” Hutch was surprised that even the searing pain in his belly seemed to lessen just with Starsky in the room. Was that possible?

“How could I forget?” Starsky peered at the IV tubing as if he knew what was in them. As often as either one of them was in the hospital, maybe he did. “You’ve been in this place more than your fair share in the last year, Hutch. You think we could swear off gettin’ shot and concussed?”

“I will if you will.” Hutch took Starsky’s hand and felt a jolt like electricity go up his arm.

“My New Year’s resolution,” Starsky vowed, squeezing their two hands together.

“New Year is long past.”

“Not Yom Kippur-that’s the start of the Jewish New Year.”

“You hardly ever go to temple.”

“How often do you go to church?” Starsky countered without heat, a tired smile on his face. Even tired, he looked as happy to be with Hutch as Hutch was to have him there. “I could resolve to go more often.”

“Starsk.” Hutch bit his lip as a wave of pain burned across his belly. He really did need that painkiller, whatever it was called. He tried to visualize Marian hurrying down the hall with syringe in hand.

“Hey, you doing okay?” Starsky sounded worried. He sat gingerly on the bed, but the movement intensified Hutch’s agony.

And then Starsky slid one arm under Hutch’s shoulders, lifting him up very slightly until there were two arms wrapped around him in a gentle hug. “Waitin’ for the painkillers is a bitch, ain’t it?”

He hurt way down deep, but once Hutch could settle back against his friend, he was almost comfortable. “We have way too much experience in this sort of thing.”

“At least you remember who I am this time around,” Starsky said against his ear. Hutch could feel the vibrations in the bones of his head. “You do know my name, don’t you?”

“Didn’t I just use it, dummy?” Hutch volleyed back, willing to endure the belly pain for an hour longer if only Starsky would stay like this.

“Tell me…” Hutch started and had to wait for a cramp in his belly to subside. “What exactly happened? Huh? Outside Bernie’s?”

“What do you remember?”

“People watching, nothing.” Hutch licked his lips, trying to re-create the scene, but beyond the almost hellish image of a giant hamburger looming above him, and a truck smashing against his body, there was little that made any sense.

“Gunman fired one shot from the building across from Bernie’s,” Starsky said succinctly. “I was too…” He made a short, disgusted noise. “Seeing you on the ground like that, Hutch, I freaked. I couldn’t think past getting you to the hospital, so I didn’t pick up much in the way of details.”

“But the bullet matched?” Hutch moaned, the pain piling up on his belly, layers upon layers.

“Matched the bullet pulled out of our first patrol car, the one we chased Anne Benson’s car with,” Starsky said, placing the flat of his hand on Hutch’s forehead. “You look terrible. You sure you don’t want me to run and get the nurse?”

Marian arrived just as he spoke and saved Hutch from begging for more morphine. The nurse injected something straight into the IV line. He could feel the rush of languid peace almost immediately. “Mr. Starsky, you’ve got ten extra minutes,” Marian said. “Since you seem to have a very soothing effect on your friend.”

“Thanks!” Starsky grinned. Hutch turned his head just enough to see the impish expression brighten Starsky’s weariness. “I guess those donuts I brought to the nurse’s lounge were a hit, huh?”

“I confess, I can’t pass by an old-fashioned buttermilk.” She patted the front of her white polyester uniform and hurried out to the next patient.

“You bribed the nurses?” Hutch took a deeper than average breath, feeling the pain slipping away. Blessed relief.

“Gotta keep ’em on your side, Hutch,” Starsky advised, rubbing his shoulders gently. Hutch groaned, half in pain and half with satisfaction. How could something feel so good and still make his whole body ache as if he’d been strapped to a medieval torture device? “You get pains in odd places from lying on the operating table?” Starsky asked, tenderly knuckling a knot between Hutch’s shoulder blades.

“Is that what the problem is?” He hadn’t thought of that with all the other aches and pains. Apparently he’d also bashed his knee pretty badly falling forward onto the sidewalk. There was a big scab there in exactly the same place he’d always had one when he was ten.

“I found out when I was on the table for the bullet in my back.” Starsky’s fingers stopped and then marked a small place in the upper left of Hutch’s back. “The one you told me was a shoulder wound.”

“I fabricated the truth a little.” Hutch missed the movement of Starsky’s hands across his muscles when Starsky carefully slid out from behind him and settled him solicitously against the pillows. “You were out of your head.”

“Hmmm,” Starsky murmured with amusement against the top of Hutch’s skull, the sound enveloping him like a protective shield around his body.

“Doctors had to go in at a funny angle, I guess, to get it out,” Starsky went on conversationally. He tucked the blankets up around him, always keeping one hand on Hutch’s skin as if reassuring himself that Hutch was still there. It certainly reassured Hutch. “My neck had the worst crick for more than a week,” Starsky said. “You don’t think about that when you’re hurting from the bullet, but later, it’s all you can think about.”

“I’ve been thinking about Vanessa and Nancy.” Hutch closed his eyes, sublimating all the background hurts so that he could stay in the here and now with his friend. “And Robin. Have you seen him?”

“Mrs. Benson said he had the chicken pox.” Starsky prowled the room, opening the curtains to look outside at the dark parking lot. “I didn’t want to go into her house in case I got them and gave ’em to you.”

“I’ve had them.”

“See, I didn’t know that. That’s good, huh?”

“Starsky, are you trying to avoid telling me something?” The way he was wandering the room made Hutch’s head swim. He couldn’t keep up with Starsky’s constant movement.

“We have another lead, I’ll know more tomorrow.” Starsky yawned widely. “About the brother, Simon Conrad.”

Hutch searched his memory, trying to follow the conversation but the yawning was contagious. He could tell he was drifting in and out. “The one who owned the gun?”

“That’s the guy. He may have had it all along. Can’t prove anything right now, but…” Starsky shrugged. “I gotta get out of here, Hutch. Marian’s giving me the old heave-ho, but I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Promise?” Hutch whispered, suddenly afraid that if he’d been shot then maybe Starsky was next. “What if he’s out gunning for you? What if you get shot?”

“I already had my quota of bullet holes for life. Don’t worry about me, pal.” Starsky rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, which wasn’t even made of wood.

“I still do,” Hutch said into the suddenly empty room. He could hear the shrill wails of the newest patient, the anguished cries sending shivers up his spine, which only exacerbated his own pains. Biting the inside of his cheek to keep from calling Starsky back, Hutch fell into a restless sleep where he and Starsky were trying to save a girl in a red mini skirt who threw oranges at them from the top of Bernie’s Burger Barn.

~*~*~

Lingering at the main desk of the ICU, Starsky watched several nurses, and a young doctor who barely looked old enough to vote, treat the screaming woman. He didn’t want to hang around any longer than necessary, but he needed to know Hutch’s prognosis. Hutch was in a lot of pain, although Starsky knew from past experience that that was to be expected. At least he didn’t seem to have a temperature.

“Mr. Starsky, can I help you?” Marian came out of the newest patient’s room, her white cap slightly askew on her dark hair.

“Uh-Dr. Lincoln? Any chance I can talk to him. He was Hutch’s surgeon.”

“I can have him paged,” Marian agreed, most of her attention still on the action going on in cubical three. She picked up the phone almost absently, asking the operator for a surgery page.

“That’ll be good,” Starsky agreed. A loud squawking alarm went off, and he jumped, his heart speeding up.

Marian didn’t even hang up, dashing over to cubical one right behind an older nurse wearing squeaky white shoes. Starsky reached over the desk, placing the receiver back on the phone, very glad that no one was running pell-mell into Hutch’s room as if one second separated him from life or death.

That was good, wasn’t it? He was very pleased that Hutch had wanted to talk. He’d missed Hutch all day, feeling like he’d lost a vital piece of his anatomy. He hated working without Hutch. Hated not being able to see those blond hairs fluttering in the wind of the Torino when they drove down the street. He’d felt Hutch’s absence keenly when going up to Anne Benson’s house. Usually, one of them hung back slightly, to keep an eye on the broader picture while the other questioned the suspect. He felt like half a cop doing the job on his own.

“You’re the police officer I spoke with last night,” Dr. Lincoln identified. “Ken Hutchinson’s friend?”

“How’s he doing, doc?” Starsky asked. “I mean, really? How long will he be in here?”

“You friend is amazingly strong, and the bullet did surprisingly little damage, all things considered. It could have hit the liver or the kidneys….”

Starsky glanced back at Hutch’s room nervously, all the fears from the night before washing over him again. Hutch could have easily died.

“Luckily, the colostomy is just temporary, to help the bowel and surrounding tissue to heal. We’ll probably re-anastomose in about a month,” Lincoln concluded and Starsky realized that he hadn’t heard half the explanation.

“Re-an-ast?” Starsky struggled with the unfamiliar word.

“That means we’ll sew his colon back together again. There’ll probably only be a small scar,” Lincoln assured. “I spoke to Mr. Hutchinson a few hours ago, but I’m not sure how much he remembers. The bottom line is, he’s doing very well. No post-operative infection, and with any luck, no adhesions or further set-backs.” He glanced at his watch, the exact model Starsky had lost the day he’d gotten shot in the abandoned barn. A Yamamoto. “I have to scrub up in ten minutes. Call me if you have any more questions.”

“Thank you,” Starsky said, relieved. Hutch was a fighter-Superman had nothing on him. Bullets practically bounced off those washboard abs. Practically. With the expertise of modern medicine, Hutch would be back to his old self in no time.

~*~*~

Anne stood just outside Robin’s room, smoke from the cigarette she held wrapped around her like a shroud. The light from the hallway was enough to let her see the sweet curve of her son’s cheek, his bangs hanging slightly too long over his closed eyes, and one fist close up to his mouth; the thumb not between his lips, but poised there in case he needed it in the night.

Who was this boy? The child who had once grown inside her and now had grown up without her, part of Simon’s family but not hers. Had he seen things no small boy should see? Simon had promised her, back when she was first taken away to prison, that he would abide by the law, to give Robin a stable home.

She’d believed him. She’d been desperate. She would never have taken the fall for the two men in her life if she’d thought for one moment that Robin would be in danger.

That was the main flaw in the logic right there. She’d never thought things through. She’d never acted independently in her entire life. Her existence had been one long flight away from what she feared most, and straight into the worst possible scenarios. Abusive childhood, destructive teens, the frantic, almost desperate dive into marriage had all led inexorably to prison. It was as if her life had been laid out before she was born and she was simply following a script.

Well, no more. Anney Conrad Benson was going to write her own story. The mere thought filled her with terror. She had no experience in going out on her own. She’d always listened to her father, to Simon, and then Art. After that, the prison guards and even more forceful inmates had bossed her around. She was a nobody, used to hiding her true self so deep down that she no longer knew who Anne was anymore.

Which meant, with work, she could re-invent herself.

Maybe nursing was a possibility. Or any career. She’d never actually worked for a living, gotten a paycheck and provided for any other person. In prison there had been payment for working, but she hadn’t considered those real jobs, ones that she’d applied for and gotten on merit and abilities. Now she had to think about Robin as much as herself.

She took a last drag on the cigarette, inhaling the smoke deep into her lungs. Sweet nectar, one of her few satisfactions in life. She loved smoking, loved the feel of the long smooth paper cylinder against her fingers, but if she was ever going to change, there had to be a starting place. With finality, she crushed the butt against the door frame, shivering as the ember flared and died, remembering the way it had once burned when held against her own skin until she screamed.

~*~*~

June 15th was a gray, dreary morning typical of the foggy weather so common in Los Angeles County in late spring. Citizens of Bay City simply termed the weather as the “June gloom” with a resigned shrug.

Starsky was far from gloomy. He’d gotten an unheard of eleven hours of sleep, having crashed immediately upon entering his house at seven p.m. and sleeping straight through until six a.m. His visit with Hutch the night before had been encouraging. Hutch might be in pain, but he was strong and would heal up quickly. The faster, the better. Starsky wouldn’t even mind if Hutch had to come back with the damned colostomy bag still on. At least he’d be nearby, and not in some hospital bed.

With that in mind, he dialed the now familiar number to the hospital. A nurse with a voice so deep that Starsky wasn’t sure if he was talking to a man or a woman answered.

“I’m calling about my partner, Ken Hutchinson?” Starsky asked.

“Oh, he’s being moved up to the fourth floor right now,” the androgynous nurse replied. “Just a minute and I’ll find out what room.”

Pulling on his jeans while he waited, Starsky imagined the nurse as a big boned woman with the broad shoulders of a linebacker. Or conversely, a thin little man with a disproportionately deep voice.

“He’ll be up in 419,” the nurse reported, the sound of the same wailing woman from the night before in the background.

“Can you tell him I’ll come later?” Starsky said, but the nurse had already hung up.

Starsky piloted the Torino through morning rush hour, which meant that he was hardly moving at all, and had time to eat the chocolate covered, raspberry-filled donut he’d bought for himself when he treated the nurses. He licked his fingers carefully to avoid getting any of the frosting on his steering wheel, keeping his eye out for the off-ramp to the Bay City Chronicle building. He’d been there numerous times in his career as a detective, usually to complain about the coverage some reporter had given to an ongoing case, so it felt quite different to saunter up to the receptionist’s desk with a smile on his face.

“Solange Monteau is expecting me,” he said, signing in and getting a small visitor badge.

“Go right on up,” the pimply-faced man said in a squeaky voice that suggested someone who hadn’t gone from soprano to tenor yet. He looked old enough to vote, but maybe the newspaper was recruiting from the high school journalism class.

“Thanks,” Starsky said with a grin, the hope that had buoyed him through the morning like a balloon full of helium. He could easily have floated to the second floor. This had to be the case breaker.

Solange was as exotically pretty as her name. Almond shaped black eyes suggested some long ago Asian ancestry, but her hair was reddish-brown and she was tall, topping Starsky by over an inch. “Nice to finally meet you, Dave Starsky,” she said, her handshake firm and decisive.

“Oh, yeah?” He couldn’t help but flirt, it was deeply ingrained. “My reputation preceded me?”

“Could be. Which reputation was that?” Solange responded in kind, her eyes sparkling with interest. “Your arrest record as one of BC’s foremost detectives, or the lady killer one?”

“Whichever is more important to you.” He winked.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve edited a piece with your name-and your partner’s. How’s he doing?” she asked, sitting down at a desk completely covered with files, scrawled notes, and half-edited articles with blue lines slashed through the text.

“Good,” Starsky said, wondering how Hutch was doing in the new room. He’d visit the hospital as soon as he had the photos in hand, to give Hutch the latest on whatever he found here. “He’s recovering better than they expected.”

“That’s wonderful-give us an update on his condition when you can. The readers hate to read that one of the city’s finest have been shot.” She lifted up two piles before finding the manila envelope she was looking for. “As to your lady killer persona,” she said, handing over the envelope. “Abby Crabtree is an old friend of mine.”

“Oh.” Starsky held out the two letters into a two-syllable word, laughing. “Why didn’t she ever bring a beautiful friend like you along as a double date for me when she was dating Hutch?”

“That old husband I used to have.” Solange waggled her left hand, but there was no evidence of a ring on the fourth finger. “He’s not around anymore. Met a junior reporter and went to file his briefs at her house.”

“Lawyer, huh?” Starsky eagerly unwound the string keeping the envelope flap closed. “Can’t trust most of ’em.”

“I never trusted him in the first place,” Solange said philosophically. “I just liked the way he held court in my bed.”

“Lookit this.” Starsky breathed out, no longer paying the least attention to the pretty reporter. He slid out a stack of pictures. The first one was the most familiar. He’d seen it just the day before in Hutch’s red leatherette album. On the back was a sticker which read: Ken Hutchinson, patrol officer, delivered a healthy baby boy at the scene of the crash of a drug dealer’s car. June 12, 1970. There were three or four quite similar to the first, then more shots which featured the car, the crowd watching, and Barnaby and Dana surveying the stash of heroin, and fireman working around the crash site.

Starsky almost didn’t want to look at the pictures by himself. Hutch deserved to see these, to be part of the investigation of Simon Conrad. “Thanks, Solange. These are great! Can I take them?”

“Copies.” She nodded, showing him where to sign on a form to relinquish the pictures into his possession. “They’re yours to keep. Hutch might like those ‘hero’ shots. There’s a couple of you there, too.”

Starsky shuffled through the stack, finally finding the print that nearly stopped his own heart.

Simon Conrad wearing the blue puffy jacket, better suited for a ski weekend at Tahoe than Bay City in ninety degree weather. “Damn, I was right.”

“You found what you were looking for?” Solange pushed her glasses more firmly up her nose. “Nice jacket.”

“It doesn’t prove my theory, but it goes a long way to showing probable cause.” Starsky grinned at her, shoving the photos back into the envelope. “Who took these?” Starsky examined the picture of Hutch and baby Benson again. At the bottom was stamped the name Steen Gutmeyer.

“Steen was covering a fire just a block away and heard the call to the fire truck.” Solange adjusted a pair of black cat glasses with tiny rhinestones on the top to peer at the picture. “He was there before the firemen were, since his car turned faster in those narrow residential streets. Don’t you remember him? He died a few years later from cancer.”

“Maybe.” Starsky shrugged. His curiosity got the better of him and he flipped quickly through the other photos. Firemen pulling the body of Art Benson from the wreckage, a very young Dave Starsky standing half in the frame of the picture, his face turned away. A long angle shot of the entire location, Anne bundled on a gurney with the baby in her arms, police grouped around her as if escorting her to the ambulance.

Starsky found it odd to see himself as someone else might have: a fresh-faced rookie officer in a blue uniform stained with sweat. He felt like a different person now-not just older and wiser, but a completely different being. One who’d been shot on three separate occasions since then, had weathered crime scenes far more horrible than that one and still clung to some kind of hope that there was more to life than brutality and cruelty. He’d gone into the Academy with a much more cynical attitude than Hutch. Back in the sixties, Hutch had the notion to save the world. Now, oddly, their positions were reversed. Starsky refused to believe that life was all bad, but Hutch was more easily disappointed and depressed by what was thrown his way.

Maybe these pictures, the hope in that young Ken Hutchinson’s face, would kindle some happiness in the Hutch laid up in the hospital.

 “Solange, it’s been a pleasure,” Starsky said with real appreciation. “Thanks for these.”

“Any time, Dave Starsky. And don’t forget the girl reporter when you have your next scoop-or even a free night and a thirst for a Manhattan.”

“More of a beer man, myself, but you want New York, baby,” Starsky deliberately used his thickest Brooklynese. “I’ll give you the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan, too.”

~*~*~

Hutch stared at the mid-morning TV line-up with a feeling of fascination and horror. How did the average housewife put up with such drivel? The hospital got four channels: the big three networks and local channel 11 which featured reruns of reruns-mostly I Love Lucy and The Donna Reed Show, both hosted by the nasal-voiced wife of the station’s owner. At each commercial break in the comedies, she reminded viewers to call in for a chance to win a de-luxe meal for two at Captain Jeff’s. Since Hutch had once accompanied the health inspector to Captain Jeff’s for violations in numerous areas, and nearly tripped over a rat during the raid, the idea of a meal for two there was nauseating. The fact that next week’s prize would be a meal for two at Bernie’s Burger Barn didn’t raise his estimation of the sponsors of Laugh Ladies on Eleven one iota.

“Robbing the American population of their brains,” he muttered, using the remote to flip back to channel 7, but the fare there was not much better. Irritated, he switched off the TV, shifting painfully in the bed.

 The plastic of the colostomy bag rustled against the sheet, sending a wave of revulsion through him. He’d tried to watch the nurse dealing with the horrible thing earlier, but had to look away. His own body was alien to him, something to be shunned and scorned.

 Once upon a time, he’d had great pride in his ability to attract women. He liked to think of himself as an intellectual, but the fact remained that he was a good-looking man, and he’d worked hard to stay that way. A good diet, regular exercise, and a healthy attitude towards sex had worked to his advantage. Women flocked to his feet, he’d had his pick, and if he were honest with himself, sometimes he hadn’t picked the right ones. Diana coming after him with a knife flitted through his mind. Vanessa using her nail against the back of his hand, hard enough to break the skin, was a sobering memory. Nancy…what a pair they’d been. He’d tried to ignore the downfall of his parent’s divorce by bedding every single girl in the senior class of Duluth East High. He’d liked Nancy Rutherford. She was beautiful, sweet, and musically talented, nearly the opposite in disposition to her sister Vanessa. So, naturally, in the smug, all-about-me attitude of a seventeen-year old, he’d gotten her pregnant.

Poor Nancy. Poor Ken.

He tentatively traced his finger around the plastic bag on his side, welcoming the pain that touching the recently sutured abdomen brought because it exacerbated his mood. What made him think about Nancy? His morphine-hazed brain was easily distracted, but the colostomy remained. Marked forever, all because he’d stopped to help a woman juggling her groceries.

Oh, God.

The feeling of being hit full force by a big rig came back, catching him off-guard, and he saw the redhead’s astonished face, her eyes wide with shock, blood- his blood-staining her pretty clothes. It was hard to breathe. He inhaled shallowly, wincing at the pull on injured muscles.

He needed something-make that someone-to pull him out of these doldrums, to point out the bright side of every dark cloud.

“Hey!”

At the sound of Starsky’s voice Hutch opened his eyes, stretching his lips in what he hoped would be a convincing smile.

Starsky came in, all bouncing cheer and brightness. “You don’t look very good.”

Starsky must have noticed the unconvincing smile in under thirty seconds. Had Hutch ever managed to hide anything from those probing blue eyes?

“Anything else go wrong, or just generally singing the ‘stuck-in-the-hospital-blues?'” Starsky pulled up a chair, straddling it backwards, the tight fit of his jeans emphasized by his widely stretched thighs. Hutch was surprised to find himself looking down the lean, well-muscled expanse of Starsky’s torso to the thick bulge outlined by his fly. “Least you got out of the ICU. You okay, Hutch?”

“Just-” Hutch filed away the gloomy thoughts of life as a near cripple who couldn’t even relieve himself out of the correct orifice, and concentrated on Starsky. Those elf-tipped eyes were watching him, seeing the dark clouds inside him without even trying. “The dearth of intelligent television programming on a weekday is appalling. It’s no wonder that most children can’t read. Their mothers watch asinine game show hosts hawking overpriced garbage and-“

“No more Let’s Make a Deal for you, Grouchy.” Starsky chuckled, dropping a large manila envelope onto Hutch’s lap. “What do you think is behind door number one here? A picture that could answer a lotta questions or a donkey?”

“More like an ass,” Hutch snarked, for Starsky’s benefit, supremely glad his best friend had come by. “What is this?”

“As my ma used to say, you forget how to use your hands?” Starsky propped his chin on one hand, gazing at his partner with a fondness that sent warmth to every part of Hutch’s soul. “A monkey could open that. Look at the pictures.”

“The crash from ’70,” Hutch said, flipping through the photos. It was disconcerting to see himself there, blond hair gleaming in the sun, a goofy proudness radiating from his face as he held up Baby boy Benson. Had he really been that young? It was hard to believe that eight years later he’d feel so old, so used and cynical. What had changed him?

“Geez, you’re slow,” Starsky complained, taking a stack of the prints and sorting through them. “Here, look at these two.”

“That’s Simon Conrad,” Hutch identified, confused. He compared the two images, one of Conrad talking to a cop, long since retired. The second shot showed Conrad standing on the far side of the wrecked green Pontiac, separated from the small group huddled around Anne, with one hand across his chest as if holding something against his body under his puffy down jacket.

“What d’you think?” Starsky asked as if he wanted Hutch to see what he saw, except Hutch didn’t.

“Starsk, I’m on painkillers, you’re gonna have to clue me in here.”

“That blue parka!”

“So?” Hutch frowned at the picture, wishing his brain would kick into detective mode but he couldn’t shake the depression that damped down intelligent thought and made him so supremely aware of the scars that deformed his body. “Maybe he was cold.”

“In June, Hutch?” Starsky made a derisive sound like a snort, tapping the photo. “It was ninety degrees that day, maybe more. Lookit my shirt, and yours.” He shoved other examples into Hutch’s hands. “We’re sweating like pigs, but he’s wearing a jacket made for skiing in the Sierras. And there’s blood on his hands and the coat, right there in the front.”

Hutch focused on the picture again, his breath quickening, picking out the details Starsky specified. “Fuck,” he whispered, bits and pieces of the crash coming back to him. The hot, almost sickening smell of blood when he leaned into the car and saw Conrad with his hands on his dead brother-in-law, and the sound of Anne Benson wailing in pain behind them. “Conrad was the first one to see Benson. He told me Benson was dead.”

“And took the gun,” Starsky said, hitting each word with a short, staccato rhythm. “That’s why it was never found, because he took it before either of us ever got to the car.”

“Addicts are always cold, even in the summer.” Hutch could barely hear himself speak above the blood pounding loudly in his ears. He’d gone through withdrawal, he knew. Even his short, forced addiction had left behind a painful legacy of poor temperature regulation and aching cramps in the guts for weeks after he’d kicked the heroin. When cold, he’d fantasize about the incredible warmth when that first hit of horse would spread through his body, like being blanketed in heated down comforters. Heaven, even when he’d despised himself for enjoying the fantasy. “I never-I never recognized him for an addict, but we never really considered him for a suspect until it was so late in the game.”

“‘Cause Anne’s lawyer wanted to point blame away from her,” Starsky agreed. “He looks too…healthy to be an addict, but he was sure hiding something with that jacket.” He re-arranged the photos into a relatively chronological order and rifled through them again. “I kept thinking that he was grasping at straws, ’cause Conrad showed up so shiny clean. Too clean, no criminal or drug history at all.”

“And now?”

“Still nothing, unless we can find an alias on him. There’s gotta be something on this creep. He let his sister go to jail for a drug rap, and shot you!”

“Starsk, there’s no proof.”

“Yes, there is.” Starsky flicked his finger against the picture. “That’s it. The gun is under his coat. I know and you do, too.”

“That’s not proof.” Hutch couldn’t find the passion Starsky had. Either it wasn’t in him any longer, or the drugs blunted more than just his pain. He sat up a little straighter in bed and heard the plastic bag on his side rustle in response.

Damn.

“There’s nothing concrete here, Starsk.”

“You know Conrad’s never had so much as a parking ticket?” Starsky stormed, jumping up from the chair so suddenly that it tipped over. He stomped around the small room, pacing back and forth in front of Hutch’s bed. “That’s not normal! He’s gotta be dirty-but we can’t pin nothing on him! Why doesn’t this just grind your guts?”

“They were already pulverized,” Hutch answered, demoralized.

“I’m gonna get that turkey bastard who shot you!” Starsky shouted, then stopped, grimacing at the unintentional volume as if suddenly realizing he was in a hospital.

A nurse poked her head into the door, her face stern. “May I remind you that-“

“Sorry, ma’am, sorry!” Starsky carefully righted the chair, sitting down like a chastised schoolboy. “Won’t happen again, I’ll be good.”

“Mr. Hutchinson needs his rest,” she said, making a quick note of Hutch’s vital signs while she was there. “Don’t abuse the visiting privilege by waking up every patient on the floor.”

“No, ma’am,” he promised.

Starsky waited quietly until she was gone, hands folded in his lap in a way that made Hutch want to smile, but even the desire was muted and insubstantial. Hutch squeezed his eyes shut, trying to retain that little joy that Starsky’s presence had brought.

“What’s wrong, Hutch?”

“Nothing.” Hutch took in a breath and let it out slowly, almost savoring the pain that brought, because it meant that he felt something strongly for a moment.

“Yeah, there is.” Starsky settled on the edge of the bed, his weight dipping the mattress down, and Hutch opened his eyes.

“You should go, Dobey must have a million things for you to-“

“You’re lettin’ this get to you.” Starsky brushed his fingers lightly over the blanket, just over where the colostomy was hidden. “Getting shot is no fun, I should know better’n anybody, but you just gotta wait it out. You heal up.”

“And when will that be?” Hutch felt a rush of intense anger, like a freakish storm tearing across the ocean to annihilate the city. “It’s June-probably won’t be put back together until July, then a couple of months of recovery and rehab. I can’t even take a deep breath without it feeling like every stitch is gonna come loose, and if I take this damn morphine any longer I’m gonna get hooked on narcotics again!” The emotion burned itself out quickly, he didn’t have the energy for anything more, but there was a curious lightness in his chest afterward, even if the black clouds seemed all the more densely packed over his head.

“Hey,” Starsky said softly, the small word wrapping around Hutch like those warmed down comforters, buffeting him against the world with Starsky’s love.

Hutch took another breath in, his smile uncertain and weak, but there nonetheless. “I know.” He clamped his fingers around Starsky’s hand, suddenly very afraid. “Who’s gonna…?” He couldn’t even voice his innermost fear, not even to Starsky. It was too raw and new, exactly like the opening that marred his abdomen. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Starsky were hurt, or worse, killed, hunting down the person who’d shot him first.

“You remember Michelle?” Starsky asked conversationally, squeezing Hutch’s hand in silent response.

“My Michelle, or your Michelle?” Hutch grimaced, trying to separate the two women in his memory. Make that three-he’d dated a Michelle with long glossy black hair of Asian descent, and another Michelle who’d been a flight attendant with an unstoppable sex drive and a tiny tattoo of a heart right over her clit. Starsky had dated a Michelle years before-maybe when they were rookies? No, later than that, but not by much.

“She was a nursing student the first time I was shot, remember? I was bummed ’cause it was our one year anniversary as cops, and you and me were going to go out and celebrate.”

“And instead you ended up in the ER with a big groove in your hair from the bullet that nearly went right into your head.” Hutch shuddered, emotions from that scary night coming back as if it was yesterday. He’d been terrified, refusing to leave the hospital until he was sure his best friend was all right despite the fact that he’d promised to meet Vanessa at a Christmas party. They’d been separated and back together half a dozen times in six months at the time, but still going through the motions of trying to patch things up. The fact that he’d missed that party had driven the final nail in the Hutchinson marriage. The party was some special deal to promote the photographer she’d had been posing for-and sleeping with-Hutch had always suspected. Van had raged at him for days afterward, accused him of loving Starsky more than her. Right then and there, Hutch had known that everything she said was true. “Michelle Hardy,” he said abruptly, the name coming unbidden from the depths of his memory.

“See, you do have a brain, Scarecrow.” Starsky ruffled Hutch’s long hair, then ran his knuckles down the side of his cheek. “Anyway, after I got out, when I had to sit around for a week, Michelle made me help her study for the nursing boards.”

“Yeah?” Hutch murmured to show that he was paying attention, but really he was trying to figure out why that simple caress of his cheek made his libido jump.

“She’d just been on a ward with surgical patients, and the class was required to read this kinky article on sex after surgery.”

“Required?”

“Yeah, I was blown away. There was lots of detail.” Starsky flipped the blanket back, revealing Hutch’s legs and the skimpy gown that barely covered his torso.

“Starsky!” Hutch protested, grabbing for the covers. A stab of pain slowed him down and the blanket remained where it was, just covering his lower legs. The scab on his knee only emphasized his vulnerability.

“That article said that stomas can be a real arrog-errogin-” Starsky cleared his throat, frustrated at his inability to pronounce the word. “You know, the place that turns you on.”

“Erogenous zone?” he corrected, appalled. Who would ever even want to look at something so hideous?

“Yeah.” Starsky ran his hand down Hutch’s thigh with a gentle, almost not there touch. “Can I see it?”

“No. You can not.” Hutch pulled the blanket tightly over his body, his pulse racing. What was going on here? How could Starsky be arousing him? Luckily, the morphine kept everything down below very limp, but there was definitely a little buzz running around his groin that was usually caused by a luscious blonde with big eyes and rounded, pert breasts, and not his curly haired, blue eyed, male partner.

“Aw, well, anyway. I mean, it’s gross, you know, when you first think about it-but the article said this one lady had her bag made outta black lace, and she’d make a whole show out of takin’ it off.” Starsky giggled, miming a weird little striptease. “And you know, I’ve uh-well, I’ve gone down a girl’s ass hole, if you want to know the truth, and that’s mostly the same as a stoma.”

“You’ve done that?” Hutch latched onto something he could talk about without major revulsion.

“Sure,” Starsky boasted, then winked. “Once, no make that twice. With Sandy. She wanted to try the whole Kama Sutra.”

“I dated her.” Hutch nodded. They hadn’t gone the back door route, but like with Starsky, she’d been adventuresome. “I wanted to try anal with Van but she wouldn’t do it.”

“So, you never have?”

“No.”

“You should try it-some day, really different. Tight.” Starsky got off the bed, gathering up the pictures that had begun to slide onto the floor. “I guess I better get outta here before your nurse reams me a new one, and not in a romantic way.”

“Hey.” Hutch watched his partner tap the photos into a stack, a tightness closing up his chest. “You think that some…” he almost said woman but changed his mind without totally understanding why. “Person could look at someone with a stoma and still be attracted?”

“Yeah, of course,” Starsky said confidently. “Hutch, I ain’t never had that on me, but I’ve been shot four times and got the scars to prove it. You won’t have that forever, honest. And there’s someone out there who loves you for yourself, I’m sure of it.” He wrapped the string around the button to close the envelope, the simple action taking far longer than it should have. Hutch was sure Starsky was about to say something else, something intimate, and his pulse suddenly raced with anticipation. Instead, Starsky laughed self-consciously and said, “You know they call me the bullet magnet down at Metro?”

Hutch took a cautious breath, unaccountably disappointed for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “Yeah, I’ve heard that.”

“There’s a poll goin’ around for when I’ll get shot next.” Starsky gave an overly elaborate shiver to bring out a smile from Hutch. It worked. “And where. Nobody even predicted it would be you.” He sobered with a sigh. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Hutch, to correct my pronunciation and kick me in the you-know-what. I’m gonna prove that Simon Conrad did this to you. I got to.”

“Thanks,” Hutch said and was rewarded when Starsky’s pensive mood vanished, replaced by a saucy grin. Starsky waved and sailed out the door past the nurse just coming in.

I love you, too.

He didn’t dare say the words aloud, but they settled into his brain, a permanent fixture.

~*~*~

Anne spent the night cleaning the entire kitchen, throwing out all packages of cigarettes, ferreting out the booze she found stashed in the oddest places, all the leftovers from when Simon lived there. She barely slept, spending a few hours on the couch before coming awake when the garbage truck lumbered onto Loma Linda Road. She was too groggy to run out and pull the garbage cans around to be emptied, but sat in the dull, filtered light of a foggy June morning, watching men with real jobs scramble around in the damp tossing trashcans around as if they were toys.

She had to become real, like they were. Get a real job, get a life, make Robin proud. That meant purging the old. With renewed determination, she tackled a closet overflowing with refuse, throwing threadbare winter coats and broken umbrellas into a heap to be tossed out.

“Whatcha doing?” Robin stood in the doorway to his room, knuckling the sleep out of his eyes. The Batman pajama bottoms hung low on his skinny hips and the hole in the knee had widened, revealing a pox-dappled calf. Guilt that she hadn’t done the wash in days added on to Anne’s other burdens.

“Cleaning the closet.”

“Can I help? Uncle Simon usta keep his stash in here.”

“His what?” Anne said the words on an exhalation, fighting to keep from screaming in anger.

“Y’know, all his stuff.” Robin shrugged without specifying. “He’d put it in that box.” He pointed to an old Harry and David box, a Christmas gift of Royal Pears sent some years before.

Sure enough, when Anne pulled the green and white box down, the address label was dated December 1972. Except it was addressed to a Connie Symmond, 28993 Loma Linda. Who was Connie Symmond?

Oh, God–

Simon had lied, just as she’d thought. Simon was Connie. She jerked opened the lid of the box, her heart racing. There was no drug paraphernalia inside, just old photographs, probably over one hundred of them.

“That’s me!” Robin crowed with delight, scratching a pox scab on his neck. “When I was little.”

Sitting down carefully to avoid putting too much pressure on her bad leg, Anne selected the uppermost photo, examining it carefully. She’d missed so much. There was Robin, possibly around the age of three, grinning infectiously at the camera and holding up a struggling kitten. Anne blinked, her eyelids suddenly prickly. “You had a cat?”

“Mary Jane,” he identified. “She usta scratch me. She got hit by a car.”

“Aw, baby.” Anne hugged him, a powerful rush of love for this boy surprising her. Even more surprising, he clung to her, his narrow chest pressed up against her ear so that his heart pounded loudly inside her head. Her son. Part of her body.

Robin settled down against her, his head on her shoulder and pulled out a handful of photos. Sure that any wrong word or movement would break the fragile spell, Anne was content to sort through the memories with her son, learning bits and pieces of his short life. Skinned knees, trips to the fair, and Disneyland. Pictures of people she didn’t know holding his hand, and two or three of a slender, black-haired woman and a small boy with Simon and Robin.

“That’s Miguel and his mom,” Robin identified, scooping up another stack with obvious delight. There were two more shots of him holding kittens, both different cats than the ill-fated Mary Jane, who’d all apparently ended up the same way. Under the wheels of a car. With growing rage, Anne suspected that Simon had simply brought the animals home and then, finding them too difficult to care for, strangled them. She had an unexpected memory of hiding behind the garage and seeing her father stuff kittens into a sack before dropping it down the well that had dominated the back yard of her childhood home.

“Robin, would you like a new cat?” she asked carefully.

“I don’t think Uncle Simon likes ’em too much,” he said with a weariness too old for his years.

“Uncle Simon doesn’t live here anymore,” she said firmly. “Just you and me, and I’d like a cat. What kind do you want?”

“I like the black and white kind,” Robin said with enthusiasm. “Like they’re wearing a penguin suit.”

“I like that kind, too. When you’re better, we can go to the pound and find you the perfect cat,” she promised, terror filling her belly at the mere thought of having to live up to his expectations. So this was what motherhood was like.

“Uncle Simon said he’d take me to Disneyland.”

Looking into those eyes so like her mother’s, Anne was filled up with hope. This was her future, she just had to keep believing there actually was one. “We can do both, Robin. How about a bath and some clothes before breakfast? I think those pajamas have seen their last wearing.”

“Got holes in ’em,” Robin agreed. “Can I get new ones? With Luke Skywalker?”

“You can have the moon, Birdman.” She stood up, laughing and then gasped, hearing what she’d just said. “Is it okay to call you that?”

“Yeah.” Robin grinned, all wiggly kid. He hugged her around the hips, and skipped off to his room. “Can we go shopping today? Get a kitten and pajamas?”

“If you’re not contagious. Not sure if we can go today, I’ll have to call the doctor.” Anne rolled her eyes, feeling joyful and full of light even though she’d only had three hours of sleep. The secrets and pain that she kept deeply hidden still weighed heavily, but she was resolved to toss out every part of her past as quickly as possibly. “Robin, do you know where Simon stays now that he’s not here?”

“Oh, probably at Maria’s.” Robin was butt up over his drawer, pulling out blue jeans and a striped t-shirt. Anne saw with dismay that all his clothes were shabby and full of holes. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? “He sleeps with her, y’know.”

Said so bluntly by an eight-year old. “No, I didn’t know. Where does she live?”

“Near Disneyland-that’s why he takes me there. So she and Miguel go with us. Then they get all kissy, and sometimes Miguel and I go on the Matterhorn. Sometimes we go…” He paused and shrugged.

“Oh, that’s how it is. Anaheim, huh.” The same city she was raised in. Using techniques she’d learned in prison, Anne hid the anger that filled her, pretending to be only mildly interested. How could Simon have exposed her son to this? “I forgot her last name, is it Gonzalez?”

“Nah.” Robin cocked his head as if she’d said something silly. “Gomez. Gonzalez is Jose’s last name.”

“They both begin with G,” she said lightly, leading the way into the bathroom. She filled the tub, adding soothing oatmeal for his chicken pox scabs, and helped him climb in, trying not to stare at her perfect, if pox-marked son. Her child-she wanted to count all his fingers and toes as if he were a newborn. She’d only held him a handful of times eight years before, barely enough time to imprint the smell of his newborn head, or memorize the shape of those gorgeous pale blue eyes so like her mother’s.

And hers, she realized with shock. How had she never noticed that Robin looked like her? “Use a wash rag,” she reminded. “Would you like Miguel to come over again?”

“Yeah! Anney-uh-Mommy, he has two Darth Vaders, and a real Millennium Falcon.” Robin sliced his hand through the sky like a streamlined battleship coming into the Death Star, represented by his closed fist.

“I’ll need his full address and phone number to call him up.”

“555-2899,” Robin rattled off, making explosion noises and splashing water up as the Millennium Falcon went into a steep dive after the Death Star. “Jose’s is 555-1111. Isn’t that funny? 555-1111.”

“That is funny. So, who is Jose Gonzalez?” She unfolded a faded blue towel with frayed edges as if the conversation wasn’t at all interesting.

“Uncle Simon’s business partner.” Robin faked a scream, clutching his chest from an apparently mortal wound and falling back into the water with a huge splash, soaking Anne’s slacks. She didn’t care in the slightest.

~*~*~

After phoning Dobey with the latest about the photo of Conrad from Huggy’s bar, Starsky chowed down on a burger with everything, and a tall glass of iced tea.

“Looks like you’re feelin’ better for the first time since Blondie got shot. He must be doing better, too, huh?” Huggy observed, lounging against the bar with one long arm hooked around the broom he was supposed to be pushing.

“Aw, man, Hug, this was rough. I don’t think I knew…” Starsky trailed a French fry through catsup. “I mean, that time when Hutch was trapped under the car and I didn’t know where he was, that was the worst….”

“Worst than the withdrawal?” Huggy asked sotto voce.

“I dunno, it’s all bad, but when he was in surgery and I really didn’t know if they’d get the bullet out and he’d live.” Starsky exhaled noisily, looking at the fry in his hand without remembering having picked it up. The thought that Hutch could have died from a bullet in the guts still had the power to terrify him. And the danger wasn’t completely over yet, since he still had to go under the knife one more time. Hutch’s doctor had assured them that it was best to let the guts heal from the original injury before sewing the edges back together. Still, that meant another surgery and more recovery time with more chance of infection and complications. The fact that he’d had a severe respiratory disease back in November of ’77 was an extra concern, since Hutch was more prone to repeated respiratory infections now. “I don’t think I really knew what Hutch musta been going through that time I was shot up in the restaurant. The waiting is like torture.”

“So, you’re going after this bastard with everything you got,” Huggy surmised. “You got any leads at all?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Starsky pulled the photos out to show his friend. “You’ve seen a lot of dealers, do you know him?”

“You white folk all look alike to me,” Huggy deadpanned. “He does remind me of someone who ain’t been around for a few years.”

“That would be about right, more like eight years.”

“Connie?”

“What?” Starsky jumped on the single name. “Connie who?”

“Starsk, you think I know every single guy who peddled a bag of China white around here?” Huggy asked irritably. He grabbed the broom, sweeping under the tables.

“Actually, yeah. ‘Cause you’re the man to go to. Huggy has his ear to the street.”

“Flattery may work on your studly partner, but it don’t do jack with me,” Huggy announced, but grinned. “Connie wasn’t big time, but he had some clients. Seems to me he worked outta the neighborhood bars, like Smitty’s Tavern down on Diamond Avenue-you know the place? About a block from Sorvetti Elementary.”

“Yeah, I know it.”

 

August, 1970

Air the consistency of industrial waste kept many citizens inside their homes, coddled by air conditioners and air purifiers. Late afternoon had the freeways clogged with gas guzzlers on their way home from work, and the drunks wandering into their favorite places to imbibe to hole up for the evening.

“I’ve found a place to stay, Starsk,” Hutch said conversationally as they cruised down Via Sirocco to Diamond.

“Yeah?” Starsky pounded Hutch on the back with glee at the improvement in his living conditions. It wasn’t like he hadn’t enjoyed having his best friend around for the last month, but his apartment really was too small for two men to live together. At least Hutch had found a second-hand day bed with a halfway decent single mattress, so he no longer had to sleep on the floor. “Where? Did you find something in Venice like you wanted?”

“I guess you could say that,” Hutch was evasive. He pointed out a furtive teen hanging out on the corner, but as they watched the boy was picked up by a woman in a station wagon only moments later. Probably not a drug deal, after all.

“So where?” Starsky persisted, pulling up into a hydrant zone across from Smitty’s Tavern.

“Toledo Street,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“With Van?” Starsky asked incredulously, staring at his partner for clues that this was some kind of sick joke. Hutch colored, then plastered on a car salesman’s grin.

“Starsky, we talked. Got past some of the bad stuff,” Hutch said brightly. “Vanessa wasn’t happy that I tried to get the baby without telling her first-but, maybe kids will come later, once she’s got her career going.”

“I thought you said she was sleeping with that Sylvester guy,” Starsky reminded.

“Yeah.” Hutch looked down at his hands. “She-she told me it was a one time thing, that he goaded her into it since I was going for a divorce. But we’ve been-” he laughed self-consciously. “I guess you’d call it dating, lately. It’s been really nice. Romantic. She has some issues with me being a cop.”

“Hasn’t she always?” Starsky watched a gaggle of teenyboppers clutching purchases from the nearby Bayview Mall cross the road over to a diner on the corner of Diamond and San Anselm Drive, and then switched his focus to observe the cars stopping at the red light. Looking anywhere but at his partner, who was surely going out of his mind. Picking up with Vanessa again? Starsky clenched his fists around the steering wheel so that he didn’t throttle Hutch. “Hutch, she threw dishes at you when you graduated from the academy.”

“Vanessa has always been high-strung.”

“She’s something, all right.”

“What does that mean?” Hutch flared.

Turning in his seat, Starsky tried to look Hutch in the eye, only to get his profile. “Can I say anything without you getting angry?”

“I’m well aware you don’t like Van.”

“And as far as I can tell, the feeling is mutual on her end.” Starsky took a deep breath to dispel the bad feelings he had about the reunion. Who was he to judge how they conducted their wildly erratic marriage? “You already started the divorce proceedings. From the time I’ve known you, you and Vanessa have fought, sometimes pretty viciously. I just wanna go on record that I support you one hundred percent, but I’m not at all sure about her.”

“Starsky.” Hutch sighed, his shoulder slumping. “I can’t be in between you two. I cannot.”

“I know.” Starsky gave one of those tense shoulders a gentle massage. “I wouldn’t do that to you, buddy. Just be careful that what you’re hopin’ for doesn’t blind you to what’s right in front of your eyes.”

“You don’t think we can make it work!” Hutch accused.

“I didn’t say that.” Starsky sat up straighter, the discussion forgotten. A chubby man wearing a too tight tee shirt supporting the Chicago Bears walked into Smitty’s Tavern. “Tiny Tim, right on time.”

“You could set a clock by him.” Hutch got out of the car, adjusting the fit of his polyester slacks across his groin, and Starsky couldn’t help but watch. He wasn’t sure why he always enjoyed this manly display, but it was one of Hutch’s many unconscious habits that Starsky always made a point of noticing.

The adjustments done, Hutch placed his blue uniform cap squarely on regulation short blond hair, and flapped the front of his blue polyester policeman’s shirt to dry his sweaty chest. Donning his own cap, Starsky pretended that he was really keeping his eye on the front of the faux stone bar and not his partner. No other man made Starsky look twice, just Hutch. And it wasn’t as if he’d like to tumble Ken Hutchinson into bed or anything, he was exclusively a female breast and leg man, himself. But there was just something about Hutch, whether it be his physique, his Prince Charming looks, or his personality, that stirred something deep inside David Starsky.

They crossed Diamond almost in step. Like soldiers going into combat, Starsky thought, half in jest. Only half. Despite that they were simply going to get some street info from Tiny Tim, there was always that one chance in a million that the simplest transaction-a beer in exchange for the whereabouts of a dealer-could cause sparks. Always be prepared.

“Were you a Boy Scout?” Starsky asked, holding open the tavern door with its Budweiser advertisements plastered over the glass panels.

“Sea Scout,” Hutch answered.

“What, you earned merit badges on boats?” He’d never heard of such a thing.

“Something like that.” Hutch’s long legs brought him over to the snitch’s table first. “Tim! Fancy meeting you here of all places.”

“Hey, Officer Hutchinson, Starsky!” Tim was probably trying for engaging and personable but every expression on his bloated, unshaven face was just unpleasant. And his odor was worse.

Hutch slid into the booth seat opposite, glancing up at his partner. “Looks to me like Tim could use a beer, Starsk. What do you think?”

“I could use a beer, it’s hot as Mars out there,” Starsky proclaimed sourly. Apparently he was the bad cop on this go-around.

“You’re on duty,” Hutch reminded. “Tim, you want a beer? Maybe a Polish dog?”

“With kraut?” Tim asked eagerly. “Sounds great, but I ain’t got much for ya, Hutchinson.”

“We just want to keep those pushers off the street, y’know?” Hutch said conversationally, making a sweeping motion as if removing all the drug dealers with a wave of his hand. He poked a finger at Tim’s unwashed overalls, never quite coming in contact with the material. “And you’re a big part.”

Tim beamed, which only made him look more imbecilic.

“You keepin’ clean, Tim?” Starsky gave the bartender a high sign for one beer at their table and sat down beside Hutch.

“I’m not using anymore, honest.”

“Starsk, he’s looking great.” Hutch beamed at him, playing the good cop.

“And you’re working hard at the job?” Starsky pressed, leaning as close to Tim as he dared. As long as he didn’t inhale, the intimidation worked great.

“My parole officer checks up on me.” Tim pouted, but brightened when the beer was delivered. Starsky backed off from the table, but crossed his arms, leaning on the booth Hutch was sitting in.

“Anything else?” The bartender asked tiredly.

“Polish dogs all around, with the works, kraut, onions, and pickles. Oh, and mustard, too,” Starsky ordered, pulling out the last of his cash until payday. Luckily, that was only a few days away or he’d be eating Campbell’s soup more often than he already did. It was worth it if Tim gave them a righteous tip. His last one had helped bring down a gang who were selling their wares to the students at the middle school three blocks away from Sorvetti Elementary. They were targeting younger and younger children, and that broke Starsky’s heart.

“Make mine a plain one,” Hutch called over to the bartender.

“I know two guys-ain’t sure about where they are, but one you’ve heard of.” Tim paused to gulp about half of the contents of the mug. “Jose Gonzalez and Connie Symmond.”

“Yeah, we know Gonzalez,” Starsky agreed. “Came up through the Gallo Negro gang. He was dealing when he was in juvie. I thought he went off to Chino.”

“Saw him th’other day. On San Anselm. He was with this other guy, an’ my buddy says, ‘That’s Symmond,'” Tiny Tim confided in a stage whisper that would have been heard by every patron in the bar, had there been anyone. Besides a drunk slumped at the end of the bar, and the bartender dosing sauerkraut on all three sausages, there was no one else in ear shot.

“Symmond?” Hutch prompted.

“That was his name.” Tim kept his eyes on the bartender, following his every move until three Polish dogs all covered with kraut were delivered to the table. Starsky and Tim immediately dove into theirs with obvious relish.

Hutch stared down at his lunch with a dejected expression. “I asked for a plain one.”

“Just scrape it off.” Starsky used a plastic fork to transfer a large portion of the pickled cabbage from Hutch’s hot dog onto his. “That okay?”

“It’s better,” Hutch muttered, pushing the last of it into a napkin before taking a bite of naked dog. “Tim, you remember anything else? This Symmond, what did he look like?”

“Uh-” Tim scrunched up his face, chewing with his mouth open. “Brown hair? Kind of ordinary. I didn’t know him. Jose had some yellow jackets-I like ’em, but I didn’t have any money.”

“You said you were clean,” Starsky accused, pointing his hot dog at the informant.

“I am! I swear! Honest! I didn’t buy any, didn’t have any money. I just saw him sellin’ ’em to some other kid.”

“At the park just off San Anselm?” Hutch asked tiredly.

“Yep, he’s always there. Just past the swings near the grass. The boys go play baseball, and he’s there, too.”

“Just how I always spent my summer-uppers and a game of ball.” Starsky hated this kind of thing, boys strung out before they were even old enough to drive. He was more than lucky that his mother had nipped his nascent gang days in the bud and shipped him out from New York to California when he was thirteen. Probably saved his sorry butt from a life on the streets, no doubt about it.

“Thanks, Tim,” Hutch said sincerely. “You remember, you stay clear of Jose. Keep that job at the Del Taco, and make some money.”

“Promise.” Tim awkwardly sketched a cross in the general location of his heart, leaving a smear of mustard and onions on his overall bib pocket.

Hutch handed over a ten-dollar bill. “For your mother. I know she’s been in the hospital.”

“Yeah.” Tim’s round shoulders sagged. “She’s real sick, but she came home. I take care’a her, I buy the groceries every week.” He stuffed the money in his pocket, finished his beer in one swallow, and stood.

“Good thing you got a job, then, huh?” Starsky eyed the remains of Hutch’s hot dog bun minus the meat, but still heaped with onions and a straggling of sauerkraut. He was still hungry; the meager breakfast he’d had in order to save up enough for a date with Dorinda Pauley, a part time police radio dispatcher, was a distant memory. “You going to eat that?”

“Go ahead.” Watching Tiny Tim leave, Hutch gave a small sigh. “We should be able to do more. Give back to the community. Help out families like his. We have so much and he and his mother are getting by on food stamps, hand-outs, and his $1.45 an hour job. How are they going to pay for medical bills?”

Starsky bit down savagely on his kraut sandwich. “He makes minimum wage, Hutch. Sure it ain’t what we make, but we ain’t rolling in dough, either.”

“Maybe you aren’t,” Hutch said cryptically. “I want to help.”

“You’re doing your part by getting Gonzalez off the street yet again.” Standing, Starsky bumped his hip against Hutch’s shoulder. “C’mon, mushbrain, we gotta get this info to the lieutenant. Maybe he’ll let us be in on the bust. I gotta get into plainclothes by the end of this year. This uniform’s about to strangle me.”

“Don’t eat so much.” Hutch shoved against his buddy to climb out of the booth.

 

June, 1978

“Minnie.” Starsky leaned against her desk panting, pressing one hand to his ribs to alleviate the stitch in his side. He’d run up the stairs from Metro’s first floor because the elevators were full of a Gypsy family coming to contest the arrest of one of their members. “I-uh….”

“Baby, take a load off those Adidas.” Minnie pulled over a chair, waiting until Starsky had taken another deep breath. “Now tell me what’s got you all in a lather.”

“Got something for you-maybe an alias for Conrad.” Starsky spied a glass jar full of M&M’s beside Minnie’s telephone and helped himself to a colorful handful.

“You be careful with those green ones,” she advised with a twinkle in her eye. “Vinnie says they’re powerful aphrodisiacs.”

“Yeah?” Starsky held up a green candy, examined it on both sides before popping it into his mouth. He didn’t feel any different. “No urge to kiss you.”

“Bummer.”

“I was talkin’ to Huggy and he reminded me of a turkey named Connie Symmond. I think this could be our Rosetta Stone,” he said triumphantly.

“I said that turning Simon Conrad’s name around would still sound like a regular moniker.” She pushed up her glasses, peering at her computer. “C-o-n-,” Minnie said aloud as she typed in the name.

 Starsky shook the M&M’s like a maraca, the clicky sound matching the bounce of his right knee. He was vibrating with an overload of adrenaline. This had to be the case buster. The longer he went without cracking who had shot Hutch, the colder the trail got. And this trail, with ties eight years old, had started out chilly.

Minnie selected a few of the M&M’s, waiting for the computer to grind through its memory banks and spit out any matches to the new name.

“How long is this gonna take?” Starsky asked, chewing on two reds and a tan.

“As long as it takes,” she said just as paper began to emerge from the clattering printer. “There you go, Starsky.”

“Connie Symmond-four arrests in the last ten years, two for drug possession, one assault, and one carrying a concealed weapon. Hardly any jail time, no convictions,” Starsky read off, shaking his head. “Just great. This is the man who raised Anne Benson’s kid? And there’s not one single bust under the name Simon Conrad?”

Minnie shook her head. “He’s slick. The boy obviously knows how to work the system and appear to be keepin’ his nose clean at the same time.”

“Least we can get a warrant now.” Starsky gazed down at the grim facts with satisfaction. Find Simon Conrad and he had Hutch’s shooting locked up.

“If you can find him,” Minnie said doubtfully. “He’s kept ahead of the law for a long time if he ain’t in jail for those four charges. These addresses probably ain’t worth the paper they’re printed on. He’s not going to stroll in and give himself up.”

“Oh, ye of little faith, Minnie.” Starsky grabbed another handful of candy, stuffing the long sheet of computer print-outs under one arm. “Let’s see. Known associates-Jose Gonzalez of the Gallo Negro gang.”

At the desk he shared with Hutch, Starsky carefully tore the print-outs along the perforated edge to separate them into regulation paper sized sheets. He’d never been good at the job and ended up with several pages with mangled edges and a paper cut to show for his effort. The phone rang just as he popped his index finger into his mouth. Waving his wet, throbbing digit in the air, Starsky said, “Hello? Detective Starsky speaking.”

“This is Anne Benson,” she said quietly. “I-can I talk to you? Privately, I mean. Not on the phone.”

“I can be over there in half an hour, Mrs. Benson.” His heart pounding with excitement, Starsky totally forgot his finger. He’d never really expected the prickly woman to call him. “You have more information?”

“Yes, but…” Anne hesitated. “I want to make things right. I…” she trailed off and took a deep breath, the sharp, deep cough of a smoker sounding like a gun blast through the phone lines. “I shouldn’t take Robin out so soon, but you can’t come here. The doctor said it was all right for him to go out-do you know Diamond Avenue? We’re going to Bayview Mall afterwards, to get him some new clothes and…there’s a diner there, on Diamond.”

“I know it,” Starsky agreed, stunned at how everything was narrowing in all of a sudden. He dredged up the name out of the recesses of his brain. “Demelza’s Diner.”

“Yes, Art used to take me there when I was pregnant.” Anne sounded wistful. “Meet me there at two-thirty?”

“You better believe it,” Starsky agreed. He was still starring thoughtfully at the phone when Dobey lumbered in from the basement cafeteria with a laden tray.

“Starsky, how’s the investigation going?” Dobey set his tray on top of the filing cabinet to pour a cup of coffee from the communal pot to go with his salami sandwich. “I spoke to Hutchinson on the phone not an hour ago and he said you had some pictures from the newspaper.”

“I didn’t show ’em to you?” Starsky smacked his forehead, his finger smarting all over again. Shoving the print-outs aside, he located the photos for Dobey and pointed out Conrad.

“Amazing that no one picked up on that one,” Dobey muttered, looking like he would have liked to shout a few choice words if he were a swearing man.

“And I may have a lead on where he is,” Starsky said. “Going to meet my contact real soon.” He pilfered the pickle from Dobey’s plate while the captain was going over the photographs. “How is Hutch doing? He’s letting this colostomy thing get to him.”

“My sister Ruby had one.” Dobey nodded, opening the bag of chips that accompanied his sandwich and eating a handful. “She had Crohn’s disease. Couldn’t eat anything without…” He rubbed his face tiredly and picked up the tray of food. “Let’s just say, the colostomy saved her life and her happiness. Got married a year later and had two children.” He brightened at the thought of his nieces. “Two girls, Garnet and Pearl.”

“Three jewels,” Starsky responded, thinking suddenly of Hutch’s nephews. There was probably no hope of grandchildren for his own mother, Rachel. His brother Nicky was a ne’er do well, probably one step above a criminal, and Starsky hadn’t found a woman anywhere close to the marrying kind since Terry.

“Rosie loves getting together with her cousins,” Dobey said proudly from his office. He bit down on his sandwich. “Get that Conrad, Starsky. Nobody gets away with shooting one of my detectives.”

“Nobody,” Starsky echoed.

~*~*~

The diner was just as Starsky remembered, gingham curtains in the windows framing half a dozen small squares of glass which gave the whole place the feel of someone’s grandma’s house. Certainly not Starsky’s, since she had lived in a tiny apartment above an Italian restaurant where the smell of simmering tomato sauce perfumed the air twenty-four hours a day. Still, he liked the coziness of the old fashioned cane backed chairs, blue checked tablecloths and sepia toned prints of 1900 Bay City when there was little more than four streets on the map and more dairy cows than cars in the barns.

Having arrived before Anne, Starsky took a small table by the window and ordered an iced tea to wait. The lunch at Huggy’s seemed long enough ago that the aroma of fresh apple pie was incredibly enticing, but he resisted the urge to indulge until he heard what Anne had to say.

The iced tea had a soothing flavor of mint, and he sipped to pass the time, staring out the window into his past.

 

June, 1970

“Starsk!” Hutch practically towed Starsky down the hallway of the hospital to the nursery. “You have to see him. He’s such a champ.”

“Hutch, are you sure about this?” Starsky laughed, thrilled to see Hutch in such a giddy, undignified mood. Very unlike the uptight, reserved man he’d first met at the police academy. Hutch had certainly changed in the short period of time they’d been cops. “I mean, you don’t have legal custody of the kid yet.”

“It’s in the works, I’ve already talked to the social worker, Starsky. And we’re just going to look.” Hutch stopped in front of the nursery window, grinning like a fool. “See, there he is. Robin, second on the left.”

“Cute.” Starsky stared at the infant. Now much cleaner than the first time he’d seen him, it was easy to see that the baby probably took after his mother. Had those same, weird pale blue eyes. Even paler than Hutch’s own, but he’d look enough like Hutch that nobody would ever know he was adopted.

A nurse smiled at them and threaded her way through the bassinets to open the door. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Who are you here to see?”

“Baby boy Benson,” Hutch said, already sounding like a proud father.

“Oh, are you Mr. Cianficci?”

“No, Ken Hutchinson.”

“You delivered Robin Benson!” she cried. “I saw your picture in the paper. I thought for a moment you were the foster family. We’ve been waiting all morning.”

“There’s a huge traffic jam on the freeway,” Starsky supplied, watching Hutch’s joy dim to half-wattage. “We took the surface streets.”

“Robin is going to foster care just as soon as-” she stopped, looking past Starsky and Hutch. “That must be them now.”

Starsky turned to see a couple in their early sixties, if he was any judge. The foster family. Introductions were made all around, and Nora Cianficci went in to cradle little Robin and dress him in a blue terrycloth sleeper. Hutch watched with a longing expression while exchanging addresses with Marco Cianficci.

“I’ll come out to visit the baby as soon as the social worker gives my wife and I the okay,” Hutch promised, one hand on the glass nursery window as if he could feel the baby’s soft skin through the barrier.

“I’m glad to hear he’ll be going to a good home,” Marco said sincerely.

 

June, 1978

A good home. What exactly did that entail? At the age of thirteen, Starsky had been sent by his own mother to live with relatives who had loved and nurtured him, but never managed to fill the void left by his mother and dead father. Robin Benson had been raised by a lying, drug dealer of an uncle who probably exposed him to the seamier side of life, and now was returned to his long absent mother. With any luck, she would give him some stability. Would having Hutch for a father have improved the boy’s life? Starsky certainly hoped it would have-although the turmoil from the acrimonious divorce with Vanessa would have caused upheaval before Robin was out of diapers. And the long hours Hutch worked as a detective would have left the boy with sitters half the time. What if, God forbid, they’d had a custody battle for the baby and Vanessa had won?

There were no ideal outcomes.

Hutch still seemed to yearn for a son judging from the photos of his nephews that he kept. He’d been a positive influence in Kiko Ramos’s life for years now, and spent time with Kiko’s foster sister Molly, as well. Would he ever have his own child?

Starsky had the strongest impulse to call Hutch right then and there to tell him that children were a wonderful gift, but having someone who loved you best was what mattered most. And Hutch already had that.

His fingers felt warm as if the brief caress of Hutch’s hairy thigh was still a tangible surface underneath instead of the restaurant tabletop. He would have given anything right then to have trailed his hand up higher, caressed Hutch’s wounded abdomen, and other places, too.

“Detective Starsky?” Anne was suddenly in front of him, looking exhausted but far less haunted than when he’d seen her the day before. “Thank you for meeting us here.”

“Hey! Sit down.” Shaking off his daydreams, Starsky stood like a gentleman, pulling out chairs for Anne and Robin. The boy who once might have been his almost-nephew. “Well, who is this?” he teased. “The Lone Ranger?”

“No.” The boy wrinkled his nose with distain. “I’m Robin.”

“Of Batman and?” Starsky mimed a one-two punch and Robin grinned, matching the pretend fisticuffs. “Holey Moley! You’re a famous guy, but I didn’t recognize you without your green tights and cape, Boy Wonder.”

“He doesn’t wear green tights,” Robin said. “He has green shorts and a red cape.”

“I stand corrected.” Starsky winked at Anne. She was watching her son with a sad smile. “Whatcha want to eat? I’ll buy.”

“Thank you, but…” she started.

“Mrs. Benson, if you can give me some solid information, I’m in your debt,” he said sincerely. “Hamburger for the caped crusader?”

“I wanna be Han Solo,” Robin proclaimed. “Cheeseburger and lots of French fries.” He punctuated his statement with a muffled blast like the Death Star explosion in miniature.

“I’ll have the same, no fries,” Anne ordered, looking over at the waitress who had walked up behind Starsky.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there!” He laughed. He hadn’t paid much attention to the waitress when he first came in but something about her was oddly familiar. He couldn’t quite place the tall, gangly girl with her hair styled in an afro puff like a black dandelion going to seed.

“Are you Officer Starsky?” she asked, the prominent gap between her front teeth peeking out every time she spoke.

“Detective, now.”

“I knew it!” she crowed. “I tol’ my auntie, I used to know him when I was in first grade. I’m Melissa Jefferson. You used to park near my house and watch the kids from Sorvetti get out.”

“I remember you!” Starsky shook her hand, stunned at how eight years had changed the little lisping child into a teenaged beauty. “You work here?”

“My Aunt Demelza owns it, always has.” She wrote down the orders for the Bensons. “Drinks or dessert?”

“Give me a piece of pie, Melissa.” Starsky resisted the temptation to pat her on the butt as he would have one of the policewomen at Metro. Didn’t want to look like a dirty old man in front of Anne, but damn, Melissa made him feel old, and he wasn’t forty yet.

“Robin, if I give you fifty cents, can you go over to the pinball machine in the corner and play until our order comes?” Anne asked, handing over two quarters.

“Sure, Anney.” He grabbed the money. “I mean, Mommy.”

“Whichever comes easiest for you, Birdman,” Anne said softly, stroking his straight hair just once before he dashed off.

“Having a hard time with the transition?”

“It’s not easy.” Anne shrugged, looking down into her water glass. “You must have worked in this neighborhood a lot back then? To know that girl so well?”

“We tried to know the people. Hadn’t ever met your brother until the day of the crash, though.” Starsky drank some of his tea, letting her set the pace. No good cop/bad cop here. No Hutch, and he missed him with a pang that went far beyond just having a partner to bounce ideas off of.

“I realize now that I barely knew him.” She smiled distantly at Melissa when the sodas were delivered to the table. “I wanted to believe in my husband. That he was going to do right for our child, and then…” The hurt and bitter disappointment was obvious even after all the years. “They used me and took my kid.” She covered her mouth, and scrubbed her palm across her eyes to gain composure. “I have to be the strong one now, and I never was before. But I have Robin, and can’t trust anyone else. Certainly not Simon.” Hauling up a leather-tooled purse, she dug through the contents, coming up with a sheet of lined paper. “This is all I could figure out. Simon used this name.” She pointed to “Connie Symmond” written in a sweet looped, very feminine hand. Starsky could almost see the little hearts she’d probably dotted her “i’s” with in high school.

“I just today figured that one out myself, but thanks for the confirmation.” He took the paper with grim satisfaction. Addresses-exactly what he needed to crack this thing wide open. “This is where he lives?”

“Maria Gomez lives there, and Robin says they’re involved. She used to clean his house. Her son Miguel is Robin’s best friend, and it’s very possible that Jose Gonzalez is connected to them, too.” She lowered her voice, her eyes on her son as he maneuvered his pinball through the complicated maze of flappers and bells. Disjointed chimes and sproings came from the machine as Robin won a round. “I called her, because Robin wants to see his friend, and to ask if she’d seen my brother. There was no one home.” She waited, tracking Melissa’s progress across the room with two plates of burgers and Starsky’s slice of pie. “But I have this feeling that he must be there. Where else would he be staying? He was living on Loma Linda until I got out of prison.”

With her meal in front of her, Anne didn’t look the least bit interested in food. She patted her purse, blushed and tapped her finger on the edge of the table with nervous energy. “I quit smoking.”

“Great,” Starsky congratulated, cutting into the wedge of boysenberry pie. How ironic-this was Hutch’s favorite, but not his own. Still, it was really tasty.

“This morning, it’s only been a few hours and already I want one bad.”

“Eat a fry.” He thrust it into her fingers and for a moment she held the strip of potato like a cigarette.

“I gotta make a change, y’know? But I can’t get Robin-or his friend mixed up in this. Just Simon, okay?” She bit the fry in two, chewing savagely. “You prove that Simon did this, and get him out of my life.”

“So, you’ve accepted that he shot Hutch?”

“He said he didn’t, but I don’t believe a word out of his mouth anymore. Not one word.” She struck the table with her forefinger with each word like tiny explosions. “My brother is just like my father was and…I would not put it past him. I can feel he did it.” She swallowed, her pale blue eyes glinting with unshed tears, but her face a hard mask. “I just don’t understand why.”

“Will you testify in court?” Starsky asked, finishing his last bite of pie crust. “If it comes to that?”

“Oh, God,” she whispered and then plastered on a grin like the rictus on a theatrical comedy mask. “How did you do, Robin?” Anne asked, all traces of her anger whisked out of sight when her son climbed into his chair.

“Ten thousand points,” he exaggerated. Even from across the room, Starsky could see the point counter on the game, and it wasn’t quite that spectacular. But, give the budding pinball wizard a few years, and he could be a contender.

“How do you like living with your mom instead of your uncle?” Starsky asked after Robin had devoured more than half of his sandwich and the entire mountain of fries.

He sucked soda through the straw, making loud slurping sounds, and gave a large belch. “It’s okay, ‘cept I had the chicken pox.” He held out one skinny arm to show a cluster of scabbed over pox. “I keep scratching. Uncle Simon wasn’t ever around much, though, that’s why Maria would come over. My mom’s stayed every day, so that’s neat.”

Anne flushed, biting down on her bottom lip, and toyed with her hamburger for a long time.

“Where’s your uncle work?” Starsky kept the conversation light, not wanting Robin to suspect he was being questioned.

“With Jose,” Robin said breezily. “At Jose’s place.”

“Where’s that?”

“I dunno.” Robin frowned, his eyes narrowing. “Why d’you want to know?”

“I’m a cop, gotta ask the tough questions. It’s in the handbook.” Starsky caught Melissa’s eye and signaled for the check, already planning his assault on Simon Conrad’s last known address. With any luck, he could get this thing wrapped up by nightfall. “Anne, do you have anything else to tell me?”

She’d finally eaten a quarter of her burger, her fingers fluttering ceaselessly between her mouth and the plate as if carrying a cigarette to her lips, and then knocking off the ash before resting the imaginary cancer stick on the edge of her plate. She picked up the last fry from Robin’s plate and toyed with it. “I-I think he may be watching me. That’s why I wanted to come here, away from our house and this is the only place I know, ’cause it was near…” She took a deep breath. “Birdman, did you know that Uncle Simon used to live a few blocks from here?” She pointed in the general direction of Glenbrook. “And your father and I used to live about two miles that way just after we were married.” She pointed down Diamond. “On La Cresta Way. In a pretty blue house.”

“Can I see it?” Robin asked eagerly.

“After we go to the mall.” She touched his hand and looked away when Starsky pulled out his wallet to pay the bill.

“Thanks, Schweetheart,” Starsky did his best Bogey for Melissa, handing her a hefty tip. “For your college fund.”

“You used to call me that when I was six.” Melissa giggled. “Come back and bring Officer Hutchinson, too.”

“Will do!” Starsky saluted with far more enthusiasm that he ever had in the Army. “Hey, Robin.” He pointed through the window to the Torino parked across the street. “That’s my car.”

“Wow.” The boy’s face was pure envy. “Can I ride in that?”

~*~*~

Hutch swam out of a half-doze when someone rapped lightly on the hospital room door. The soap opera, The Edge of Tomorrow’s Morning, or whatever it was called had lulled him to sleep far better than any sedative could.

“Can I come in?” Nancy called over the low sound of the fictional TV nurses discussing a brain cancer patient.

“Hey, it’s nice to see you,” he welcomed, pretending better spirits than he felt. His belly had been hurting most of the day, which the nurse assured him proved that he was healing, since he probably had gas. He didn’t like the cramping and bloating, for whatever reason she gave. At least room number 419 was much quieter than the one in the ICU, despite the lousy TV programs. He endured the pain, reluctant to take any more narcotics than absolutely necessary.

“I brought the plant connoisseur something unusual.” Nancy placed a delicate purple blooming orchid on the bedside table. “I hope you don’t have one.”

“It’s gorgeous, a Dendrobium.” Hutch touched the broad green leaf. “From a gorgeous lady.” He punched the button on the bedside control to cut the volume on the TV. Now the perfectly made-up nurses were smoothing the incredibly handsome cancer patient’s pillows and murmuring silent assurances to him.

“Well, thank you.” She fussed with the blue vest that matched her slacks, brushing off invisible dirt. “You’re looking far better than yesterday, too.”

“Every day is an improvement, isn’t it?” he quipped, the caustic bitterness an unintentional side effect of enforced bed rest and pain. He cleared his throat, going for a lighter tone. “Didn’t except to see you so soon. How are the boys?”

“Up in Oregon for the month of June-with Martin.” She smiled wistfully. “I miss them, even though it’s glorious to have all this free time. I can go out when I want, no cartoons at breakfast, see my friends….”

“You’re dating, aren’t you?” Hutch tapped his temple. “Memory’s gone with all these painkillers. I saw you with a cop at Van’s service.”

“Yes. Jack Shellington. He’s wonderful, loves the boys…” Her face crumpled up, chin quivering. Pressing perfectly lacquered nails against her lips, Nancy made an attempt at composing herself. “This all been so very hard, like a nightmare lately. I was terrified when I heard you’d been shot. And I haven’t even had the stone put up on Van’s grave…” She lowered her head, weeping into her palms.

Awkwardly leaning across the bed to rub his ex-sister-in-law-or was it ex-wife’s-arm, Hutch ignored the flare of pain in his belly. He couldn’t bear to see a woman crying, no matter what the cause. To see Nancy mourning her twin, when Hutch had yet to get over his anger at Vanessa’s duplicity, was difficult. He didn’t wish his second ex-wife her shocking and horrible death, and he had honestly shed tears at the funeral, but he’d ceased to love Van years before.

“I’m sorry. What a dope I am,” Nancy sniffed, knuckling the tears out of her eyes and checking a small hand mirror from her purse to see if her mascara had run.

Hutch held out the box of tissues the hospital provided. Nancy dabbed at her make-up, glancing up at the TV. “I always wonder how those ladies can cry without turning into a raccoon-eyed clown.”

“Believe me, you’d never look like a raccoon-eyed clown,” Hutch assured, leaning back. He pressed the flat of his hand over his abdomen, above the dreaded plastic of the colostomy bag. Pain punched against his diaphragm, making deep breaths almost impossible. “Don’t be sorry for missing your sister.”

“But you don’t, do you?” Nancy asked soberly.

“I…” Hutch considered how to answer without sounding like a heartless clod. “I miss the lady I married. The one who held my hand and walked in the rain the afternoon after our wedding. She told me that we were the luckiest couple in the world.” He could see Vanessa, standing just out of reach, wearing the designer wedding gown that her parents had paid for-a sum that was almost equal to his salary the first year he’d been on the police force. She was fierce, proud and vain, perfect features hiding a greedy heart.

Hutch shrugged self-consciously at the recollection, smiling ruefully at his first wife.

Nancy’s thirty-three-year-old self receded from his vision, replaced by the sweet sixteen-year old she had been in 1962. He remembered the smell of hairspray and the way her dark hair was puffed up on the top in the fashion of the day, the ends curling stiffly at her jaw line. She’d worn a simple pink dress to disguise the barely noticeable curve of her belly for their hasty wedding, and looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. No flowers, no frills for this grim ceremony. Just her parents as the witnesses.

When Nancy said “I do” after the justice of the peace asked if she took Kenneth Richard Hutchinson to be her lawfully wedded husband, Hutch had been struck dumb with the terror. Only his overwhelming love for her that day, his pride at the way she was handling her up-coming motherhood, had kept him from bolting from the judge’s chambers.

 “I miss you, too. I’ll always remember the way we held each other the night after your father drove us home from the court house.” He clasped her hand, the curve of her fingers into his palm so familiar he could have been back in Duluth with her, sitting in the football field bleachers sharing a milkshake. “I miss being in love.”

Nancy bit down on her bottom lip, but she had finished crying. “As much as I was scared that day, I was so happy, too. At sixteen, what do you know? I thought we would be married for the rest of our lives.”

“Instead, it didn’t last until the end of the year.” Hutch pressed against the pain again, hitching a breath.

“Are you all right?”

“Just gas, according to the nurse.” He inhaled carefully, keeping his eyes on the TV until the anguish of having to breathe with his belly stitched together had passed.

“You must have been in love since Van.”

“Every time it’s different,” Hutch said, and for some inexplicable reason, Starsky came to mind instead of Gillian or his most recent amour, Laura Kanen.

“Yes,” Nancy agreed, suddenly shifting back from the edge of the bed. “Love has to be, doesn’t it? A different love to match what you need at the time.”

“What do you need, Nance?”

“Security, devotion.” She shrugged ruefully. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that before.”

I have. Hutch thought, and Starsky’s face came to him again.

“No offense meant,” she said quickly.

“No.” He raised her hand, kissing the back with courtly affection. “We were kids. Teenagers want sex, passion, not some old person’s version of love.”

“Who’re you calling old, Grandpa?” Nancy chuckled. “Your birthday is two months before mine.” She dug through her purse, bringing out two small photographs. “Speaking of birthdays-it’s Eddie’s tenth next week. He always celebrates with his dad, and then we have another party when he comes back.” She handed over the latest pictures. “Doesn’t Doug look like Vanessa?”

“Like you.” Hutch smiled at his almost-nephews, seeing the features inherited from their father and which came from their mother and aunt.

“No, honestly, I think he’s Van’s boy. Looks like her, acts just a little like her.” She gave a very unladylike snort. “He’s brilliant, and knows it.”

“Still say he’s like you.” Hutch reluctantly handed back the snaps. “They grow so fast. Wish I could see them.”

“No, you keep them,” Nancy insisted. “That’s what I want, you to be a part of their lives. They don’t have any relatives at all on the Rutherford side-and you’re basically their uncle.”

“I’d like that.” He spread the pictures out on the bedside table, the top edges tucked just under the box of tissues so that he could easily see them. “My sister Karen’s boy is probably between your two.”

“Tommy?”

“Tommy op Owen-his father is from Wales.” Hutch glanced up at the TV without seeing the screen, the intense longing to get to know these children oddly embarrassing. He almost felt like crying. “Uh-maybe we can get together? After Ed and Doug come back? Maybe have a picnic. Starsky’s like one big kid, himself. They’d get along great.”

“I’ll call you.” She smiled, collecting her purse and jacket. “I’m sure I’ve stayed way too long and worn you out, but this….”

“Was good,” Hutch finished. “I’ve missed you, Nancy.”

“Take care of yourself.” She held out a finger, remarkably similar to the way he did when making a point.

“I’ll try,” he agreed. Sinking back into the pillows, he watched the sway of her hips out the door. Once upon a time, just looking at the sexy tilt of a woman’s hip, especially that of either of the Rutherford twins, made him automatically erect. He’d loved the way women walk, the way they moved. How most women felt in his arms, the roundness of their waists and hips a perfect place to fit his arms into.

Now, nothing. No twitch from the lower regions, no flush of arousal, no interest whatsoever. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was just him. Nothing was as exciting as it had once been. He still went through the motions with women, but the thrill was totally gone, and he wasn’t sure if it would ever return.

With a sigh, Hutch turned up the sound on the television again. With any luck, he’d catch a glimpse of that pretty girl who turned the numbers on the game show that came on after the daytime drama. She was the only thing worth watching from six a.m. until six p.m., aside from the news.

Unfortunately, a bulletin alerting the viewer to a special news report flashed on the screen, followed by anchorman Bill Benoit. “Our roving news van caught a shootout in progress. This is film of the street just after a man fired multiple shots across Diamond Street.”

Hutch gaped at the sight of the Torino on the TV screen.

~*~*~

“Would your brother harm you?” Starsky asked softly, holding open the door of Demelza’s Diner to let Anne Benson go out first.

“He scares me, I…” Anne’s mothering instinct kicked in with that eyes-in-the-back-of-her-head thing that Starsky always found fascinating. Just as Robin was about to leave the curb to dash across the street to the Torino, Anne grabbed his arm, hauling him back on the sidewalk. “Robin! Don’t ever….”

Starsky jerked back sharply, shoved against the diner with a force that knocked the breath out of him.

What the hell?

He tried to push away from the wall and the sidewalk slid sideways with a sickening drop, colors suddenly washed out pale and the sunlight far too strong. He wanted to vomit and run, all at the same time.

“Starsky!” Anne’s face swam in front of his eyes, her voice weirdly echoing in the dull roar in his head. “You’re bleeding! Somebody shot you!”

He hadn’t even felt the bullet hit. With blood dripping in his left eye, Starsky scanned the opposite side of the street, searching for the shooter but he couldn’t focus, couldn’t even think past the nauseating pain. “I have to go after him!” Starsky insisted when Anne grabbed his arm just as she’d done to her son.

“You have to sit down. You’ve been shot!”

“I’ve been shot before.” Starsky pulled away, his heart racing so fast he felt out of breath, adrenaline jacking up his pain tolerance. He darted across the street, dodging an oncoming Pinto, intent on going after the gunman. The atonal blare of the Pinto’s horn fed the agony in his head, and he ran faster just to get away from the sound.

 Had to be Conrad. It was too much of a coincidence that some other crazed asshole with a gun went after him only days after Hutch was shot. The question was, why? Conrad surely knew that the police were after him by now. Starsky pulled his automatic as he ran, the grip a solid weight in his left hand.

Too bad his fingers felt clumsy and awkward, unable to close properly around the gun. Probably wouldn’t be able to see well enough to aim with the way the blood was stinging his eyes, although he’d shot criminals under worse conditions than this.

Assuming that Conrad’s only straight shot could have come from the three-story apartment building down the block from Smitty’s Tavern, Starsky barreled past two stunned matrons on the sidewalk, only to be brought up short by the security door. “Open up, it’s the police!” he bellowed, swiping at the blood pouring down his face.

Conrad was getting away, all because of a fucking locked door meant to keep the law abiding citizens safe. He used the butt of his gun to smash through the ornamental glass panels on the door, twisting his hand through the space to turn the doorknob from the inside.

The lobby was empty, discarded newspapers and restaurant flyers which had been piled untidily under the bank of mailboxes now blowing in the wind coming through the broken window. Starsky went up the stairs without any thought except to find the culprit. At Hutch’s shooting, they hadn’t found enough clues to absolutely point to Simon Conrad-no fingerprints, obvious outlines of knees on the rusty fire escape, or incriminating size ten shoe prints leaving the scene of the crime. He had to find proof or the flimsy material evidence that Conrad had once owned the same pistol that shot both Hutch and their 1970 police cruiser was useless.

His breath whistling in his lungs from his headlong sprint to the top of the building, Starsky was careful not to get his own prints on the doorknob opening onto the roof, especially since his fingers were slick with blood. He stepped outside with extreme caution. He wasn’t at his best between the head wound and the three-floors-in-under-a-minute race. Conrad could get the drop on him so easily, taking him by surprise from behind the door.

No Conrad. No one at all. The roof was deserted.

As if someone had pulled a plug, Starsky felt the adrenaline whoosh out, leaving him woozy. His legs barely supported him as he inspected his barren surroundings. The building faced east, and the only logical location for a gunman to shoot and hit Starsky in the head was from the center front overlooking the street. Starsky had never liked heights on the best of days, and this was certainly not one of them.

Approaching the edge, he held in his lunch by force of will alone. There was no way he was going to foul the crime scene by throwing up like some dumb-assed rookie on his first assignment. He hadn’t tossed his cookies seeing Arthur Benson nearly cut in half in the wreckage of his car eight years ago when he had been a rookie, and he wasn’t about to now.

Starsky also couldn’t look over the side of the building. He stood about two feet away from the ledge, feeling the whole building pitch and sway like a ship under sail. This was no earthquake, just his own phobia on top of a bullet to the head. He should leave, get medical attention.

Down below, he could hear the scream of sirens and excited chatter of voices. Reinforcements had arrived, and by rights, he should go back down the stairs to tell what he knew, which was next to nothing.

There had to be something he could use against Conrad. Some damned little clue that would tie that bastard to all the crimes. Squeezing his eyes shut, Starsky hardened himself against the throbbing violence in his head. He could barely see and just standing there on the hot, baking roof was akin to being in Hell. He swallowed, opening his eyes.

Please God, just one clue.

“Detective Starsky!” a male voice called. Cops were following in his wake up the stairs, the trod of their heavy shoes like thunderous dinosaurs on the risers.

Starsky planted his feet. This was his. He would take Conrad down, for Hutch’s sake.

Something glinted on the granite ledge, far too close to possible free fall off the edge for Starsky’s queasiness. He gulped, got hold of himself, and reached, leaning into open air for a precarious second. His fingers closed around the tiny object, smearing blood on the evidence.

Fuck, fuckfuckfuck.

He never remembered dropping to his knees and ripping his blue jeans on the gravel of the roof.

He held a gold button in his hand.

~*~*~

“Police are only telling us that a detective was shot in a routine investigation,” anchorman Bill Benoit said, pointing to Demelza’s Diner on the corner of Diamond and San Anselm. “He was not seriously injured and has already been taken to the hospital. The gunman was shooting from the roof of 1182 Diamond, an apartment building, but we don’t have any more information than that. Police took a woman and her son into protective custody and are questioning various witnesses, including a waitress from this diner.”

Hutch let himself breathe when he heard the words “taken to the hospital” and levered his legs over the side of the bed. This was the closest medical center to Diamond Street, and it had the best trauma center in Bay City. If Starsky had been shot, he’d be taken here.

“Mr. Hutchinson!” A nurse arriving with his afternoon painkiller held out her hands like a traffic warden holding off a line of cars. “You can’t get out of bed by yourself.”

“The hell I can’t,” Hutch growled, pressing his elbow against the bag stuck to his belly. “My partner’s most likely down in your ER and I need to find out how badly he was shot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was on the news.” Hutch stood and very nearly pitched forward onto the nurse. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to flee from his brain, leaving him light-headed. “My partner. He’s hurt,” he said weakly, clutching at the side rail of the bed for support. Standing tall didn’t appear to be a viable option just now. His abdominal muscles protested vehemently any attempt to straighten completely and he was sure his intestines would simply tumble right out on the linoleum if he did.

“That Starsky who keeps calling here?” She eased Hutch back until he was sitting on the mattress and swiftly injected the medication into his IV line. “You can go down but we do it my way. Wheelchair for you. I push, capiche?”

“You sound like he does when he’s the bad cop.” Hutch grinned at the memory, the liquid warmth of the drug easing all his pains down to a manageable level.

“My name is Danica.” She captured his wrist, pressing her finger against his pulse. “You’re not quite up to walking down to the ER by yourself, plus your cute derriere would be hanging out. I’ll get you a wheelchair and a pair of pajama bottoms if you promise to wait.”

Hutch finally took a good look at his obstacle. She was slender as a reed, tall and broad shouldered. There was a twinkle in her eye like Starsky when he’d found the latest trivia book or a new gastronomical nightmare of an eatery. “We have a deal,” he agreed, his concern for his partner only partly mitigated by common sense.

What the hell had happened out there?

He’d told Starsky to be careful, but that was not Starsky’s way. Starsky’s way was to dive right in, bust heads, rile people up and deal with the consequences.

And who had been the mother and child the police took into custody? Anne Benson and Robin? If so, why had they been on Diamond? That was close to where Conrad once lived, the destination of the green Pontiac eight years before.

Hutch sighed. He felt befuddled, the meds making him spacey so what might normally have connected and made sense were so much confetti in the wind. Torn up snatches of evidence that didn’t add up to a whole sheet of paper.

“Here we are!” Danica announced, pushing in a wheelchair.

Just proving how out of it he was, Hutch hadn’t really registered her departure. Which made him angry. “This is taking too long. My partner was shot, damn it.”

“I already checked. The paramedics did bring your friend Starsky in about twenty minutes ago. He’s in exam room three downstairs.” Danica held out a baggy pair of blue and white checked bottoms. “Now put these on and we can go.”

~*~*~

“I gotta get upstairs,” Starsky insisted for at least the sixth time, but his nurse, a woman with long brown hair and a dry wit, pushed him back down flat on the exam table.

“You’ll be upstairs when Dr. Brennan says so. Besides, I heard you’ve already been up three flights of stairs, dripping blood all over the place like Hansel leaving a trail of crumbs behind.”

“Babcock tell you that?”

“One of the detectives let that slip.” She grinned. “If you want to talk to your partner, Hutchinson, I just heard he’s on his way down.”

“Aw, crap,” Starsky ground out, his head hurting enough that speaking was difficult. Looking up at the overly bright lights just compounded the agony, so he closed his eyes, cursing his own misfortunes. This just screwed things up royally. Dobey would never let him continue on the investigation if he had to spend the night in the hospital.

 The diagnosis was that he’d been grazed by a bullet. There was a long furrow plowed through his hair on the left side, just above the ear, that hurt like a son of a bitch. Just to complicate matters, he’d apparently sliced his wrist on the jagged glass in the apartment building door deeply enough to require stitches. Luckily, it was his right wrist. “Hutch shouldn’t be up yet.”

“But he is anyway,” Hutch said.

Starsky opened his eyes, the overhead lights causing weird flashes and spots to dance in his vision. He levered himself up on the left only to have Hutch push him down in the same way the nurse had.

“What the hell did you do?” Hutch asked roughly, but Starsky didn’t hear the angry tone. He sensed the undercurrent, the fear that Hutch was trying to hide.

“It’s nothing,” Starsky placated. “A coupla stitches, no big deal.”

“Yeah, bullet missed your brains by the thin depth of the skull and…” Hutch took a deep breath, letting out whatever else he was going to say. “You always did have a hard head.”

“See?” Starsky had to remember not to nod. Even the little movements involved with turning toward Hutch’s hand where it lay just next to his cheek added to the excruciating pain in his head. “I got a clue, though, Hutch. I found something up on that roof.”

“Start from the beginning.”

Hutch’s thumb grazed his cheek, soothing the hurt just enough to let Starsky relax. “Anne Benson called me, she gave his alias, an address where her brother might be. We met in a diner where she felt safe, but he must have followed us.”

“You’re sure it was Conrad who shot you?”

“Nothin’ else makes any sense.” Starsky closed his eyes, concentrating on the small concentric circles Hutch was making with his thumb on Starsky’s shoulder. Probably just an unconscious comforting motion but he still liked it. Liked the way Hutch had come immediately despite his own injury. Liked having Hutch beside him. “We’re a matched pair of jokers, huh? Bullet magnets.”

“You were the odds on favorite to get shot next.” Hutch’s voice cracked, revealing something deep and scared, but he didn’t pause, glossing over the little fault. “Any chance you put something in the pot? We could use the money to pay the hospital bills.”

“I wouldn’t bet on my own self!” Starsky protested.

“What about the inner department basketball game last year?”

“That was different,” Starsky argued. “I was…trying to screw with the odds so we’d get more when we won.”

“Didn’t work,” Hutch said succinctly.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” A doctor with M. Brennan stitched in red on his lab coat came in, his manner brisk and impersonal. He washed his hands first and gently removed the gauze covering the wound on Starsky’s head. “You need stitches in your scalp and wrist, Mr. Starsky, and I’d like to get started. Lizbeth will inject the lidocaine around both wounds. That should take about-“

“Twenty minutes. Had stitches, doc,” Starsky interrupted. “Any concussion? How soon can I leave? I’m working on an important case and the evidence can’t wait.”

“You passed out for-“

“A couple seconds!” Starsky put in.

 Dr. Brennan gave him a stern look and continued, “But from the looks of your x-rays and physical exam, there isn’t much to indicate a concussion. More likely the syncope was from exertion and blood loss.”

“Means you fainted,” Hutch explained into Starsky’s ear.

“I did not faint!” Starsky almost sat up but the nurse, Lizbeth, was back with her heavy hand to hold him down.

“Lie still or I could accidentally inject this into your eye instead of above your ear,” she cautioned and inserted the needle into his scalp.

 The topical painkiller burned like whiskey down a parched throat and Starsky bit his bottom lip when she repeated the process four more times to surround the long furrow. By the time his wrist got another four injections, he had tears in his eyes and was trembling. “Never understood why the damned painkiller hurts so fucking much.”

“Hey,” Hutch said quietly.

“I always thought it was a great deterrent,” Lizbeth said. “Every time some hotshot comes in with some idiot injury from jumping his skateboard or riding his bicycle down a steep street, I get out my lidocaine and they whimper like babies.”

“Not a baby, either.” Starsky wiped away the frustrating tears with his good hand. The stuff was working, though. Already the pain was decreasing, his right wrist and the whole left side of his head going numb.

“I see no reason why you can’t leave after the suturing,” Dr. Brennan said, obviously ignoring the banter flying around him. “Get some rest, drink plenty of fluids, and no showers until the sutures are out.”

“Just as long as I can get out of here,” Starsky muttered darkly.

“What was the clue you found, babe?” Hutch asked, and he was laughing just a little.

“Found a button,” Starsky said, his eyes closing again. “It’s in my pocket-my jacket.”

“Are these his clothes?” Hutch asked.

Starsky grinned to himself, listening to the sounds of his partner searching through his pockets. Hutch was back in action, even for a little while. It helped, a lot.

“That’s all that he had on when he came in here. Blood all over the shirt and jacket,” Lizbeth said.

“I don’t know what it goes to,” Starsky added, experimenting by opening just one eye. Hutch looked remarkably good sitting there, blond hair all mussed, although he was far too pale. Hutch wiped dried blood off the button with a square of gauze. “That was where Conrad had to be to take the shot,” Starsky added.

“Which missed.” Hutch stroked Starsky’s bared neck just once, his fingers leaving an after image similar to the green/yellow effect caused by staring at a red and blue picture too long. Starsky missed the feel of Hutch’s fingers on his skin and wished to hell that he’d kept them there.

 “This looks like it came from a uniform of some kind,” Hutch said.

“Lemme see.” Now that he was more accustomed to having one eye open, opening both wasn’t so difficult. Either that or the lidocaine really worked well. His vision now was only slightly distorted. Everything in the room had soft, out of focus edges but as long as he looked straight ahead, it wasn’t a problem.

 Hutch dropped the gold button into his hand, pointing to the miniscule decoration. “That must be their crest, or shield, but it’s too small to read well.”

“I know that one!” Lizbeth bent over to examine the button. “It’s a limo company. My daughter and her date used them last week when they went to the prom.”

“You have a daughter old enough to go to the prom?” Hutch asked. “Don’t look old enough.”

“Well, thank you, sir.” She made a show of fluffing her hair and looking coy. “I was a teenaged mom and she’s a junior in high school. No babies after the prom for her, I made sure of that.” Lizbeth frowned, poking at the button with her finger. “Wish I could remember the name of the company.”

“So do I,” Starsky agreed.

“Do you have a phone book? Maybe one of the listings would look familiar?” Hutch suggested.

“Or that crest would be in the ad!” Starsky said a little too forcefully and regretted it when his whole head pounded with a mariachi rhythm.

“Out in the waiting room,” Lizbeth said to Hutch. “You don’t want to watch Dr. Brennan’s sewing skills?” Just as she spoke, the doctor returned, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as he walked.

“One of our traditions,” Hutch said flippantly. “Needlework is so personal.”

“Scaredy cat!” Starsky called after him, as Hutch propelled his wheelchair out.

“I’ll be back with the listings!” Hutch called.

~*~*~

Elegant Limousine Services was in a drab, low-lying building near LAX in a row of nearly identical buildings all lined with doors. A small shield to the left of the third door was the only identifier. Apparently, the limos themselves must be parked behind because Starsky didn’t see a single vehicle.

He took a slow breath, leaning his aching head against the steering wheel of the Torino for one minute. That was all the time he allowed himself. He already felt like the tortoise in a race with the hare-always behind. But didn’t the tortoise win in the end? Slow and plodding, that was him.

It had taken over an hour to get stitched up and discharged from the hospital, and his head and wrist hurt badly enough that he wanted nothing more than to curl up on his couch with a six pack of beer and a gallon of rocky road ice cream to numb the pain. The lidocaine had definitely worn off.

Before leaving, he’d accompanied Hutch back to his room, concerned that his partner had done too much. Hutch seemed more vibrant than he had the day before. The small amount of help he’d given to the investigation had been more of a cure-all than any drugs the doctors had in the entire pharmacy. He’d seen worry in Hutch’s eyes, and something more, something indefinable but fascinating which made him want to linger. Finding Conrad took precedence over the mysteries in Hutch’s eyes, though.

The fact that he wanted to gaze searchingly into Hutch’s eyes was a revelation in itself. Where had that come from? Why did the thought of the two of them having a quiet evening talking over nothing while eating pizza and drinking beer leave him slightly woozy? Must be the head wound because aspirin didn’t usually mess with his senses.

Talking Dobey into letting him continue with the investigation had taken every ounce of acting skill he’d ever possessed. Dobey’s probing eyes had been no less worried than Hutch’s but hadn’t left Starsky with the urge to sack out on the couch with his boss, thank goodness. That fatherly concern had simply made him more determined that he could get the job done in spite of a head wound. Dobey had come through in spades by getting the judge to issue a search warrant on the strength of a single gold button.

He got out of the car, feeling each ache and pain like a catalogue of his injuries. Best just to ignore all of them.

A woman with gray hair piled into the puffed imitation of a beehive opened the door to Elegant Limo and stood with her arms crossed, waiting for him.

“Ardeth Mc-” Starsky blinked to decipher the last name he’d written down. What was it with all the unusual names he’d encountered lately? “Mac-Dool?”

“McDholl,” she pronounced, with a burr of an accent he couldn’t duplicate.

“Thank you,” he said graciously. “My partner, Ken Hutchinson, called you to say I was coming?”

“Yes.” She glanced at him with distaste. “Your jacket is dirty.”

He’d hoped that the dark color of the windbreaker wouldn’t show the blood but apparently he was wrong. “I hurt my head earlier in pursuit of a felon.”

“Lucky for you I had to stay late this evening because one of the drivers never showed, and I had to call in a replacement.” She gestured that he could come into the small office. Starsky banged his knee on a filing cabinet because the quarters were so cramped. He hastily sat down in the only client chair. Ardeth took her place behind a desk that sat in front of another door. Presumably the boss’s, who was gone for the day, according to the information Hutch had gleaned. “During our busiest time, too,” she continued. “Lots of proms and end of the semester dances going on, and I’m a driver down. Very inconvenient.”

Starsky finally remembered to flash his detective’s badge. Ardeth McDholl glanced at it without a change in expression and lit a cigarette. “The other detective said you wanted to know about our employees. I have to tell you that we are a highly reputable firm and our clients expect the utmost privacy and security. We have no criminals working here. We guarantee that in writing. Our drivers are-“

“You may have to rescind your guarantee then,” Starsky interrupted.

“Just what are you getting at? I have paperwork to do. There was already an incident in Limo 5. One of the teenagers at Lincoln High ripped the upholstery with her shoe.”

So much for client confidentiality.

“Does this button belong to one of your driver uniforms?” Starsky held up the gold button, now encased in an evidence bag.

“Of course it does. We had them specially made.” She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Quite an expense, but the owner of the company-“

“It was found at the scene of a shooting,” Starsky explained, pulling the other critical piece of his arsenal out. “This warrant gives me access to your employee files. I’m particularly interested in whether you have a driver named Simon Conrad or Connie Symmond.”

“Let me see that!” She snatched it so quickly Starsky was afraid the ashes from the cigarette hanging off her lip would ignite the document. It would be downright inconvenient to have to run back to the court for another copy, and he didn’t have the energy for such a trip.

“Do you have a driver named Simon Conrad?’

“He didn’t show up today,” she said, placing the warrant squarely on her desk blotter. “How did you know?”

“He’s one of the suspects in an ongoing investigation,” Starsky gave the standard phrase, glancing around the closet-sized room. The file cabinet was so close he could have opened to the C’s without moving an inch. Which was good with the way his head was pounding.

“Simon Conrad is a loyal employee,” Ardeth started, her lips in a tight line. “Never had a single problem with the man. What kind of investigation are you talking about?”

Starsky debated revealing the whole thing. If Conrad wasn’t the culprit, it was slander. On the other hand, if he was, Ms. McDholl had the right to know. “The shooting of a police officer,” he said bluntly. “May I see his employee records?”

She gave a short nod, not a hair on her head moving one inch, and sidled around her desk to the bank of metal cabinets. For one moment Ardeth’s knee pressed into Starsky’s when she opened the correct drawer to extract a thin manila folder marked with the name Conrad, S. Starsky had to resist the urge to move back, but that would have put him out the door.

“If he doesn’t come back to work, then you’ll have to charge him with car theft, too,” she said, blowing out a cloud of bluish smoke. Her body was tense, back as straight as a poker, the physical description of disapproval. “He has one of our limos.”

~*~*~

“No luck, Cap,” Starsky said into the police mike, head back against the smooth upholstery of the car seat. He was so incredibly tired. “Conrad never showed up for work, but get an APB on a black Lincoln Towncar, vanity plate number ELS 6.”

“Babcock and Simmons went over to the address you had for Maria Gomez, but no one was at home. There’s a team on the house in case he returns there,” Dobey responded.

 Starsky had dearly wanted to go with them in the hopes of personally being able to put the cuffs on Conrad himself, but there was no way he could be in two places at once.

 “Anaheim police are coordinating with us-it’s their detectives doing the stakeout since that’s out of our jurisdiction,” Dobey added.

“Not likely he’ll go back,” Starsky said, exhaustion making it difficult to form words. Was this the same day he’d awakened happy and sure the case would break? He was still the tortoise and the hare was probably racing up the freeway in a Lincoln, away from Southern California as fast as he could move. At least, if Simon Conrad had any brains in his head, he would be. Shooting Hutch, and then following that up by shooting Starsky, was not to be tolerated under any circumstances. “What about Anne Benson and her son?”

“They were questioned and escorted home,” Dobey answered. “She was devastated at the idea that her brother might be involved. I talked to her myself and didn’t get the impression that she had any actual knowledge of the shooting or his motives.”

“I think he threatens her,” Starsky revealed. “Maybe even abuse. We gotta find out more about this schmuck.”

“You’re off for the night, Detective,” Dobey said, the kindness in his voice covered by the usual growl. “You were shot, in case you forgot. Get some sleep.”

“Oh, I didn’t forget.” Starsky rubbed his right temple, the left was far too tender to touch. “I’m at the hospital now.”

“Are you checking yourself in? Is your head worse?” The mike took that moment to crackle with static, but Starsky still heard Dobey’s concern loud and clear.

“Nah, just going to say goodnight to my partner before I go home.” Starsky looked up at the brightly lit hospital, trying to figure out which room might be Hutch’s.

“Tell him goodnight for me, too,” Dobey said.

“Tuck your own kids in, Cap,” Starsky chided with half a smile.

Before going up to Hutch’s room, he stopped by the gift shop and the cafeteria for provisions. Hutch couldn’t eat yet-at least not the things he might usually want to eat-but he could read and do crosswords, so Starsky loaded up on intellectual stimulation for his friend.

“You decent?” Starsky called by way of knocking on room 419.

“Never,” Hutch answered. He was grinning sleepily when Starsky entered, juggling his load. “What have you got there?” Hutch shoved the over-the-bed table to the left so that Starsky could dump everything on top.

“Food for me and books for you.” Starsky waved his right hand in the air over the assortment, and then winced, pain racing the length of his arm. His thumb throbbed where he’d been gripping the edge of the cafeteria tray. “Lemme eat first.”

Hutch selected one of the magazines, contentedly poring over the front pages while Starsky wolfed down the pastrami sub he’d bought. It needed more mustard and rye bread instead of the bland white roll but it filled the hole in his stomach. After the afternoon he’d had, it was surprising that he had any sort of appetite at all, but he was ravenous. Ripping open the wrapper on a chocolate bar, he watched Hutch reading an article on pruning in the most current Western Gardening magazine.

Hutch’s eyes met Starsky’s over the top of the magazine. “You look terrible,” Hutch said, going back to the photo essay on how to espalier a grape plant.

“You must have learned the art of the compliment attending that fancy prep school,” Starsky retorted. He was more than happy to be sitting there with Hutch, bantering as they should, even with his head about to split open from the pain and Hutch’s belly decorated with a plastic waste bag.

Starsky had often noticed that Hutch’s eyes changed color with his emotions. He wasn’t at all sure his darker blue ones did the same-he’d never paid attention, but Hutch’s lighter blue could shift through wintry pale when he was pissed to glacier solid blue when he was truly on a rampage to welcoming summer blue when happy. Tonight they were the amazing shifting blues of the water off China Beach in Viet Nam. When Starsky had been there, just before being sent home from the war, he’d been fascinated by how many different blues there were, mixed together in one sea. How inviting and how warm blue could be.

Strange that he’d never thought about it before. Never really wondered what those eyes would look like close up-say, the distance of a few inches when lips were touching lips. He’d seen his reflection in Hutch’s eyes on any number of times, when they’d hugged after a long, difficult case, or held each other close to prevent a fall. But, kissing Hutch…what would that feel like, and why did the need, the overwhelming want of it burst forth precisely then?

 He heard himself make a small sound, like the coo of a sleepy bird, and cleared his throat, embarrassed by his own weakness. “I…uh…couldn’t find Sunset magazine. I know you like that one, but…” He trailed off when Hutch focused directly on him, those laser blues burrowing into him, finding scared places and filling them up with love.

“It comes in the mail, at home,” Hutch said softly, and Starsky had the distinct impression that they weren’t really talking about magazines at all, but what exactly was the real subject, he couldn’t fathom. “Easy enough to pick up with the rest of the letters,” Hutch continued, and his voice had this deep, deceptively soft quality that slid over Starsky’s skin like cashmere. “You didn’t have to bring anything. I’m amazed you can still stand upright.”

“Been doin’ it all my life, no time to change now,” Starsky bluffed.

“The l-last time-” Hutch stopped himself, emotions obviously bubbling up from some hidden place inside him. He hitched a breath, pressing against his injured side and smoothed over the rough patch. “That time you got shot in the head on our one year anniversary-which you reminded me of last night-you stayed off the job for over a week.”

“I’m older and tougher now.”

“You gotta be careful, Starsk. I knew this was going to happen, as surely as I knew you’d come tonight. You have no fear.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, bucko,” Starsky said and leaned forward until he could see his reflection in Hutch’s eyes. He had so much fear. Losing Hutch, that was number one with a bullet.

What he didn’t fear, what suddenly became crystal clear, was the knowledge that Hutch was inviting him in, willing him to come over onto the bed. “Hutch?” Starsky moved without moving, flowing into Hutch. Their lips met somehow, without plan or actual intent, but as naturally and perfectly as if they’d been meaning to do this all their lives and just never quite made the leap.

“Oh,” Hutch murmured, but he didn’t stop or push Starsky away. Instead, he was hanging on, his hands around Starsky’s wrists where they were hooked over Hutch’s shoulders.

Starsky lived and breathed and blossomed in the course of seconds. Then he came back to his body because of the pain throbbing the length of his right forearm.

“Damn!” Starsky was the one who pulled away first, cradling his wrist against his chest.

“Didn’t the ER doctor give you something for that?” Hutch asked with irritation.

“We just kiss and my wrist gets your attention?” Starsky gritted his teeth.

“It got yours!” Hutch took his right hand, stroking the palm until Starsky relaxed his tight fist. “We just kissed, and that got my whole, undivided attention.” He planted a kiss on Starsky’s palm and smiled when Starsky made the little coo again. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That I wanted you to do that. That I-” Hutch stopped again, some sort of mental edit going on behind those clear blue eyes. Starsky could see him ponder how to say what he meant, that he rejected one phrase and thought about another until apparently going back to the original sentence. “That I’ve been wanting you to do that for a long time.”

“I can read you, Hutch,” Starsky said simply.

“Good, because I was getting really confused there for a while.” Hutch traced the lifeline in Starsky’s hand. “Feeling this energy between us, and nothing whatsoever when I looked at a woman. Or very little, anyway.”

“It’s the drugs.” Starsky winced, the stitches in his wrist too sensitive even to endure Hutch’s caress for very long. “Got you all muddled up.”

“Then what caused you to kiss me?” Hutch smiled at him, and there was just a gleam of wickedness in the lines around his eyes. Starsky had never realized how scheming Hutch could be.

“I didn’t make the first move.”

“You did.” Hutch measured a tiny square of air between his thumb and forefinger. “By that much.”

“Guess I shoulda taken more painkillers, myself,” Starsky conceded. “Maybe I’d kiss you again.”

“Which brings up the point-where’s your prescription?” Hutch asked. “My evening nurse will be coming in with my dose in about ten minutes or so. And the doctor told me they’re weaning the dose, which is a good thing because I’ve been dreaming some strange stuff lately. But you got shot today.”

“Ain’t how I hurt my hand. You were shot and nearly died, needed surgery!” Starsky wasn’t exactly sure how the discussion had degenerated into an argument, or why he felt the need to point out that Hutch had been hurt worse.

“Touché.” Hutch raised an eyebrow in his very irritating imitation of Mr. Spock. “Does that make yours less dangerous?”

“Yes!”

“I doubt that your doctor’s discharge instructions contained the words ‘continue an investigation into your partner’s shooting,'” Hutch said archly. “In fact, I know he told you to take it easy for a few days. You ever heard of infections? Delayed reaction? Shock?”

“I’m fine. But just in case, I’m in a hospital!” Starsky threw up his hands in utter defeat and winced again. “My head hurts like I got spikes through my ears. How’s your belly?”

“Only hurts when I laugh,” Hutch chuckled, pressing his right arm against his abdomen.

“Mind if I lay down on the other bed?” Starsky stood, pretending that his grab at the bedrail wasn’t because he was suddenly light-headed.

“Be my guest.” Hutch flipped a page in the magazine. “I’ve got all this pruning to read up on and then there’s the…” He consulted the rest of the pile. “The TV Guide Crossword, One Thousand Astonishing Facts, and Goofy Laws Still on the Books. They’ll keep me busy all night.”

Starsky stretched out on the bed, lying on his right side to protect the bandage on his left temple which meant he was facing away from Hutch. That was unfortunate, because he wanted to watch Hutch. To see the way the light played tricks with his hair, silvering one strand and darkening another until he seemed to be wearing a halo. Wanted to admire those blue eyes again, and see himself reflected in their depths.

God, he was in love with Hutch.

God, I am in love with Hutch, he repeated, and knew that it was the answer to a prayer he wasn’t conscious of ever making.

“I want to kiss you again,” Starsky said, having to content himself with the distorted reflection of Hutch in the night-dark window. Hutch’s cap of blond hair nearly glowed against the flat blackness. “I’m not sure I’d do you justice right now.”

“You were better than anyone else I ever kissed,” Hutch whispered.

“Last year you said I wasn’t even a good kisser.” Starsky yawned widely, finding it difficult to keep his eyes open.

“Don’t you remember?” Hutch teased. “I recently had amnesia-forgot everything I ever said about you before that.”

“Huh.” Starsky snuggled into the pillow, wishing he was lying right next to Hutch instead of one bed away. What would it be like to sleep with Hutch? To wake up with Hutch-and all that went between those two possibilities?

To have sex with Hutch?

“I must be hit worse than I thought,” he murmured. “I forgot.”

~*~*~

“Aww, Robin, we never got to the mall, did we?” Anne groaned at the sight of her son in his holey Batman pajamas. “Hell-I’m sorry, I should have….”

“Are you gonna go back to prison?” Robin asked, staring down at his bare feet. He looked so small and frail, like some illustration of an abandoned child. He tore out Anne’s heart. “Is that why we got arrested?”

“No, sweetie, not ever. We weren’t arrested, no! We were witnesses. In fact, the police, you know, Detective Starsky, is working to prove that my going to prison was all a big mistake.” It was the first time she’d said it out loud, accepted that there was really someone on her side for once. And she craved a cigarette-bad-but was proud of herself for resisting the urge all day. Almost twenty-four hours without a damned nicotine fix. “Uncle Simon may have done some things….”

“He didn’t shoot Starsky, he wouldn’t!” This time Robin looked her square in the eye, his chin jutting out in a challenge. He didn’t want his uncle, the man who had raised him from a baby, to be a criminal. “Sometimes, he goes out with Jose, and they got stuff they gotta do. Y’know, ‘dult stuff that kids can’t know about. But me and Miguel, we heard them talking about heroin and cocaine. I know you ain’t s’posed to use that stuff, they told us in school.” His pale eyes filled with tears. “I never told anyone, honest, Anney. I never told anyone I knew he had heroin.”

“Birdman, none of this has anything to do with you!” Anney grabbed the boy, hugging him fiercely. How could she fix this? She barely had control of her own life, how was she supposed to keep the two of them away from Simon, much less keep their heads above water long enough to get a decent job? Nursing school would take years. She needed something secure right now. “Get that right out of your head. That nice captain, the one who gave you the ice cream, he said Detective Starsky was going to be fine, remember?”

“Jake Dellums didn’t bleed that much when he split his head open falling off the jungle-gym,” Robin mused.

“The paramedics took him straight to the hospital and the nurses and doctors fixed him right up,” she declared staunchly. God, she needed a cigarette. There must be some left, somewhere, she only had to find one. And maybe just a shot of that whiskey Simon had brought over. It was probably still right on top of the trash where she’d tossed the bottle. “You ready for bed?”

“I-” Robin chewed his bottom lip, pushing hair out of his eyes. “I guess so.”

Here was where she was so completely inadequate as a mother. She didn’t know how to comfort, didn’t have all the tricks and routines that she should have. She’d missed eight years of dealing with her son. “Umm, you want me to…” What had her parents done in the evening, besides argue and fight? What charms got children off to bed? “Warm milk?” she suggested.

“No.” Robin wrinkled his nose, making gagging noises.

Anne suddenly recalled with that total clarity that comes at the oddest moments, her mother, long brown hair pulled messily into a bun, almost translucent blue eyes ringed with matching bruises from her husband’s fists, and skinny arms bundled in a ratty sweater even though it was mid-summer. She used to tuck her daughter in with a glass of warmed milk and read from a story out of the Big Golden Book of Bible Stories for Children. Where had that come from? Her mother had disappeared before she was seven, her father a year or so after that.

“Well, what do you like before bed? A story, the tickle monster, a song?”

Robin’s smile was a thing of wonder, all purity and awe. “A song? Nobody ever sang to me.”

Now she’d put her foot in it-what the hell could she sing? She didn’t know anything from Sesame Street or any kid’s records. “Sure, I can sing,” she bluffed. “C’mon, get into bed. Tuck those feet under the covers.”

Robin giggled, diving into his blue and green mismatched sheets. Anne smoothed out the covers until there was the perfect outline of a boy directly in the middle of the bed.

Inappropriately, the first song that came to her head was “Why Don’t we Do it in the Road” by the Beatles. Art used to call it their song, but she hadn’t listened to it in years. Not exactly lullaby material for an eight-year old. But the Beatles did have a few songs that did qualify.

“Golden slumbers fill your eyes, smiles awake you when you rise,” she started, the song coming to her out of the blue. “Sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby.”

“You sing good,” Robin said drowsily. “Maria used to give me horchata before bed, but not hot or anything.”

“There you see, I didn’t know that.” Anne stroked his fine brown hair. Her son, her mother’s grandson. Part of her, and her responsibility. It was terrifying. “We should start a special nightly custom to tell each other something we didn’t know before. I promise, tomorrow, we’ll go out and get you new pajamas, a kitten, and some horchata.”

“Yeah.” Robin squeezed her hand. “You tell me something now.”

“When I was younger than you, my mother used to bring me warm milk and read me a story before bed. You look just like her.”

“Uncle Simon said I look like you.”

“Then we’re both lucky, because she was beautiful. Her name was Zipporah Nicene Webber Conrad, but most people called her Zippy.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“It’s a name from the Bible, Zipporah was Moses’s wife.”

“I know who Moses is. Maria usta take me and Manual to Mass sometimes,” Robin said, suddenly distant. “To pray for Uncle Simon, she said. He….”

“What?” Abruptly her heart raced, sweat breaking out down her back. She had to force herself not to run away and tear the house apart to find a cigarette. She didn’t want to know anything more about Simon. How much before she fell apart completely?

“I’m not supposed to tell,” he whispered into his pillowcase.

“I’ll tell you one more new thing, then,” she said, her whole body going numb. She wasn’t supposed to tell, either. Not ever. Long, long ago, Simon had sat on her bed, just like she was doing with Robin, and slipped his hand underneath the covers, ever so slowly, one hand over her mouth so she didn’t make a sound. “My daddy, Nick, used to hit my mommy with his fist.” There, she still hadn’t told the really bad secret, just the shameful one.

“Yeah, like that,” Robin agreed in a tiny voice. “Maria didn’t want anyone to know, she used lots of makeup to hide it.”

“We’ll be safe together, and not keep secrets, okay?” It was hard to keep her voice neutral and not scream.

“Are you gonna stay with me?”

“Forever, Robin. Forever and ever.” Love swept over her like an ocean wave, leaving her breathless and shaking. She could still feel the slight weight of him in her arms from the two times she’d ever held him as a newborn. The way he’d turned into her breast, seeking her milk.

She’d had to deny him that basic instinct, a pain that hadn’t dulled for eight long years. Tonight, that wound started to close.

“Sing that golden song again,” Robin urged, tugging on her shirt.

“Smiles awake you when you rise,” she managed, closer to tears than she’d been in nearly a decade. “Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry, for I will sing a lullaby.” She watched his eyes shutter down, body growing still, breath slowing until he was utterly relaxed and asleep. Why hadn’t she done this before, watched him sleep? Why hadn’t she seen her own child the first week she was home?

Fear. She’d been so elated to leave the concrete walls of the prison. So excited to ride in Quantrell’s car for the first time, shyly holding his hand at the stop lights, and then the reality had set in. She was alone. Simon hadn’t stayed five minutes past her arrival. Just a brief “welcome back, see you around,” and he was gone, leaving her with a cranky boy she barely recognized. The chicken pox had broken out the next morning.

She’d barely been able to stand being in the same room with Robin for those first horrible days. Every time another symptom revealed itself, she’d wanted to run further away. Fever, pox, runny nose: a miserable, whining boy… she’d trembled in the kitchen, smoking one cigarette after another, sure that this was more of a prison than the women’s correctional institute.

She hadn’t recognized her own joy, her own child. Herself as a mother.

Anne sat for a long time, the darkness of the silent house like a comfortable blanket over her shoulders. It was still hot as blazes, even with every window in the place open to catch some breeze. Closing her eyes, she cast out her senses as she used to do while sitting in her cell. First she could hear the light shirring of Robin’s breath against his pillow, then the cat from down the block yowling in challenge. A distant police siren which made her heart jump until she remembered that she was one of the law-abiding people now.

But what about Simon? Had he really taken a shot so close to his own sister and nephew? What was wrong with him? How could he have done something like that? She was almost positive that Simon didn’t use heroin-she’d seen enough addicts in prison to know the signs at a glance. He wasn’t a junkie, so what? A dealer? Maybe even a pusher? After all these years? When he knew what kind of hell she’d been through because of Art’s gamble on a load of horse?

Idiot. A damned selfish, blind son-of-a-bitch. Hate didn’t even begin to describe the wealth of emotion she had for him. He claimed to protect her. He claimed he’d kept her safe all these years. How had he kept her safe by putting her in prison when it had been his heroin all along? Art had transported the shit for Simon.

She’d truly never put the pieces together that exact way before. At first, she’d been too shaken, in shock from Art’s death and the speed of her trial. Prison left her in a perpetual state of denial. There would be an appeal, some kind of reprieve that would release her and reunite her with her baby. When that hadn’t come, she’d curled inward, bowed down with the weight of it all, determined just to get through the ordeal with her sanity intact.

She’d been a model prisoner. Had even gotten an education. Had opened her eyes to new possibilities, and gained her parole.

So that Simon could ruin her life all over again.

Well, that would not happen. She had to change the outcome this time. For Robin’s sake-and her own.

Anne took a deep breath, the mouth-watering scent of a menthol flavored tobacco smoke hitting her hard. She peeked through the blinds into the yard next door where an older man was smoking a cigarette while waiting for his dog to do its business.

A cigarette. There must be one left in the house. Her whole body ached for that first perfect hit of nicotine.

The jangling of the phone was overly loud. She dashed down the hall to the kitchen, grabbing the receiver before the noise woke Robin up. “Hello?” she answered breathlessly, still mentally searching the house for a pack of smokes.

“Hey, Baby,” Quantrell’s lazy drawl had the power to send shivers down her spine in a good way. A very good way.

“Are you in BC again?” she asked eagerly.

“Been to Florida and back,” he answered. “Avocados down and grapefruit back. The long haul.”

“I missed you.” That much was true. More than true. She wanted to explore what he’d insinuated on the trip up from the prison. Wanted to be a woman to a man once more.

No need to tell him what was going on with Simon, not yet.

“Where are you?”

“Kicking back. Can you come out wit’ me? Maybe shoot some pool, couple of beers, that kinda thing?”

“I’m here with Robin, but…” Should she suggest it, with her son asleep in the next room? “Can you come over here?”

“Sure, baby. I’ll pick up a six-pack. You want anything else?”

She wanted cigarettes, she really, really did, but she didn’t say it out loud. Maybe there was a left over pack at the bottom of her prison duffle bag. Maybe the craving would go away.

“I’ve missed you,” she said into the phone, and her body tingled in a way that it hadn’t in years, eons, more like it. She shouldn’t but she wanted to.

“I’ll be there soon, Anney. Real soon.”

~*~*~

Hutch stared at the dark ceiling above him, trying to figure out exactly why he was suddenly alert, his heart pounding. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just the rumble of a laundry cart trundling down the hall. He listened as the nurses and doctors made their rounds, their feet clattering on the linoleum. Up until now, the combination of pain and narcotics had helped filter out the noise, but that apparently wasn’t working anymore. Hutch decided he must be getting better if he couldn’t manage to sleep through the raucous night. Naturally, Starsky slept undisturbed in the other bed. And he was snoring.

After that, the noises of the nurses talking, a patient retching in the next room and the wail of the ambulance arriving in the ER bay downstairs all conspired to keep Hutch awake. They weren’t the only things keeping his brain going: there was one other momentous occurrence. Starsky had kissed him.

It was earth-shattering. It was scary-and it had been fantastic. Hutch had had some amazing kisses in his time. Both Nancy and Vanessa had excelled in kissing. There had probably been half a dozen of the girls he and Starsky had wooed and kissed and bedded that had made it into the Hutchinson Hall of Fame for various reasons, most notably kissing, but not one had spun his head around like Starsky’s kiss. And with so little effort.

He looked over at Starsky and smiled. For whatever reason, he had surprisingly few worries about the two of them. Whatever they had, however this played out, he knew the truth-they loved each other. There was no other reason that Starsky would have kissed him.

The question was, could he live happily if nothing else ever happened again? What if Starsky pretended to forget the kisses in the morning? What would happen then?

Although the room was dark, there was just enough light spilling from the open hall door to see Starsky’s dark hair against the pale pillow case. He looked, unabashedly admiring the man he knew so well and yet not well enough. What would it be like to make love to him? To slide their naked bodies against each other?

He’d seen Starsky nude before: the showers at Metro, and even as far back as the police academy dormitory bathrooms which had very skimpy shower curtains. Plus, all the times they’d stayed over at one another’s houses, passed each other between shower and clothes. The evenings they’d entertained together, when he’d feign interest in whatever girlfriend was giving him head while watching Starsky work his current squeeze.

Still, he’d never seen Starsky undress just for him. Never seen those blue eyes go dark with desire just for him. Could he count that brief moment last night when he knew that Starsky wanted him? Wanted someone with recent scars and an ugly bag hanging off his waist?

Hutch slid his hand down his abdomen, feeling the plastic protecting the small hole in his side. The doctors said it was temporary, but what if it wasn’t? What if they never re-connected him and he remained a freak for the rest of his life? What then?

He watched Starsky’s back rise and fall with each breath, let the slow rhythm lull him to peacefulness. Starsky would stick by him. But out of friendship or sympathy?

Starsky moaned in his sleep. Hutch struggled to get up, putting out a hand just as Starsky changed positions and came awake with a small gasp.

“Bad dream?” Hutch asked, as if he hadn’t been spying on his partner.

With one arm over his eyes, Starsky exhaled loudly. “We both got shot.”

“Not a dream, then.”

“That was a nightmare. And I got this itchy feeling that the worst isn’t over.” Starsky flopped over onto his side so that he was finally facing Hutch, using his bent arm to cushion the bandage on the left side of his scalp. “What are you doin’ up in the middle of the night? What time is it, anyway?”

“You’re the one who has a watch fetish,” Hutch countered, not willing to admit he was ruminating on just exactly what that kiss had meant.

Peering at the illuminated dial on his left wrist that was already so close to his face, he announced, “It’s 4:30 a.m., time for all the bakers and milkmen to be up getting ready for breakfast.” Starsky levered himself up until his legs were hanging over the edge of the bed, but he didn’t look happy about being upright. The muscles of his jaw were so tight he could have cracked eggs with his teeth, and there were brand new lines across his forehead from grimacing.

“Starsk.” Hutch said to stop himself from going over and smoothing away those lines of pain. “What decade are you in? There are no milkmen in Bay City-probably not in all of urban USA.”

“Yay for us. We have to buy our milk from a store.” Starsky scratched around his bandage. “If I was on dayshift, I’d have to get up in an hour, anyway, so I’m up. Don’t you need a pain pill or something? When’d you get the last one?”

“You were here, midnight.” Hutch had a suspicion that while his abdominal incision hurt with a dull but very insistent ache in his belly, and he had gas to boot, it was nothing next to Starsky’s fresh head wound. “I get another at six a.m. What about you? Did you fill your prescription?”

“Hutch.” Starsky batted away his concerns. “I got Bayer in the car. That’ll do me. I wanna get downtown, write up my report, and then talk to Anne Benson again, maybe check on the APB on Conrad’s limo. Then I can knock off early and come back here.” He grinned a little at that, and Hutch was positive that Starsky blushed. Hard to tell when the only real light came from the hall outside the room, but Starsky suddenly looked very young and sweet, with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“You have anything specific planned?” Hutch asked, putting out tentative feelers. “For when you get back?”

“Sure, yeah.” Starsky stood, wavered just a little and balanced himself at the head of Hutch’s bed. Their faces were very close together. He glanced over Hutch, then ducked down until their mouths barely touched. “Something like this.”

 The kiss was a hummingbird-soft, light and swift. Hutch felt a fluttering deep inside that awakened something primal and strong as if the bird had gone into his soul and liberated him. He wanted the kiss to last a lifetime, but Starsky pulled back with a laugh, his attention on the doorway.

“Your nurse is comin’,” Starsky said lightly.

“Did she see?”

“Nah, the door isn’t open all the way, just enough that I can see people walking around. Blood work’s in your future, Stanley.”

He’d momentarily forgotten about the morning vampires who drained quarts of blood for the daily labs. The doctors always wanted to know every last value before they went on rounds at six a.m. sharp, meaning that blood had to be drawn in the wee small hours. “Great-just the thing first thing in the morning. How could I forget?”

“Must be ’cause of all that amnesia stuff,” Starsky remarked. He tapped Hutch’s temple with a smirk.

“You’re going to remind me of that until the day I die, aren’t you?”

“Ammunition, Hutch. Gotta stockpile it when I can.” Starsky ran his fingers lightly down the side of Hutch’s face, the touch of a lover. “And I wanna know you until the day I die, not you.”

“You’re going to die first?” Terror shot through him, hurting far more than his belly did. That was unthinkable.

“You don’t think so?” Starsky shrugged. “I always figured it would happen that way. I ain’t the kind who’s gonna live until I’m 145.”

“Gotta eat more yogurt.” Hutch mentally shoved away the murky shadows that crowded his brain showing him images of uncertain futures. Starsky on the ground, bleeding. Himself alone, the bag hanging conspicuously from his right side. A car bomb exploding. Terrible visions that threatened to pull him into a dark depression.

“Hey,” Starsky said as if he could easily see what was going on in Hutch’s head. “Don’t go there. Ever. Stay here, now.” He ruffled his hand in Hutch’s hair. “We’re both alive, it’s gonna be cooler today-at least according to the weather girl last night on KKBC.”

“Starsk, you just got shot.”

“I got grazed,” Starsky corrected.

“You need to be careful, go home. Take a day off.”

“Good morning, Mr. Hutchinson.” A slender woman with an accent from somewhere deep in Africa knocked politely on the partially open door and came in. “I’m here to draw some blood.”

“That’s my cue.” Starsky ducked into the bathroom for the length of time it took for the nurse’s slender brown fingers to palpate a blue vein on the back of Hutch’s hand, slide the needle in and extract three vials of dark red flood.

Hutch winced when the needle bit, oddly fascinated by the process, in spite of himself. What mysteries did his blood hold? That same stuff had almost convicted him of Van’s murder a bare four months ago. Could it reveal anything today? That his heart had turned a corner and found the person he’d been searching for his whole life right in front of him?

“No lollipop?” Starsky lounged against the bathroom door, not quite looking in Hutch’s direction until the nurse had gathered up her vials and tourniquet to go.

“Not on his diet,” she said, flashing a piquant dimple.

“It is on mine, sweetheart,” Starsky drawled, all flirty charm and wit. “I like cherry.”

“So do I.” She licked her full top lip, grinning.

Hutch watched Starsky watch her leave, saw him take a deep breath in when she bumped the door closed with her hip. Starsky still wanted women, there was no doubt about that. He felt a pain deep inside that clamped down on his already aching belly. Was Starsky just giving him what he thought Hutch needed to feel better about himself?

“Starsk…” If he backpedaled, acted as if he didn’t need Starsky’s love just to get through the day, maybe Starsky wouldn’t feel so obligated.

“Hey, who brought you the flowers? I didn’t notice ’em last night.” Starsky bent down to sniff the purple-white blossoms. “Don’t smell like anything.”

“Orchids don’t have any scent,” Hutch said stiffly. What had changed so abruptly? He touched the taped cotton ball on the back of his hand. Only moments before the nurse came in they’d been kissing. Now Starsky seemed farther away than just a few feet from his bed. “Nancy brought that one.”

“Oh…” Starsky paused as if about to say something and nodded vaguely, rubbing the broad leaf of the Dendrobium. “She’s been coming around a lot. Called me up-told me…why you two got married. I mean, I knew, y’know, but not all of it.”

“And?” Hutch squirmed in the bed, uncomfortable. Was Starsky avoiding looking at him or was he just imagining that?

“Did you…” Starsky shrugged, losing interest in the orchid. He pushed his thumbnail under the edge of the bandage on his right wrist, worrying up the corner of the tape. “You and me, I mean, it doesn’t have to lead anywhere. It’s just us, right? If you want to see Nancy….”

“No!” Hutch assured. “She’s seeing another cop, Shellington. What about you?”

“Me and Nancy?” Starsky asked in confusion.

“What-what do you want out of this?” Hutch could barely say the right words. How did he admit that being with Starsky, in any capacity, but especially one that encompassed a loving, sexual relationship, was all that he could hope for?

Starsky grinned self-consciously, suddenly not the assertive, assured partner anymore, but a man who’d never stepped over that particular line until the night before. “You, man. I mean…” He shrugged, looking over at Hutch with a sweet bewilderment. “This is the last thing I ever expected, and it’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about for…a while. We’re guys.”

“And I love you.”

“Yeah.” Starsky laughed, his eyes shining with something Hutch wasn’t sure could be labeled tears, but maybe they were. Happy tears. “Love. You,” Starsky said it fast, as if not sure how it would sound aloud. He ran a thumb across his eyes with a guilty smile. “She brought you pictures of her kids, too, huh?”

“Eddie and Doug. Ed’s going to be ten soon.”

“Double digits is always an important birthday,” Starsky said. “Hutch…” He paused as if about to say something and apparently thought better of it. “Hey, I should get going, you know-“

“What were you about to say?” Hutch asked hesitantly.

“I told you, I talked to Nancy and she explained about…getting knocked…uh, pregnant.” Starsky inhaled, staying neutral, which Hutch appreciated. “I thought we could talk about anything and…since you’d told me about getting’ married, why’d you leave out…the rest?”

The door to a very old secret cracked open in Hutch’s soul. The grief, mixed with a large portion of teenaged relief, came pouring out. “Nancy is, literally, the only person I’ve ever talked about it with-and, we haven’t even mentioned the b-baby to each other since the sixties.” Hutch thought back to those difficult years full of turmoil and strife, and was glad he was past them. “I was so-ashamed of the way I felt when she miscarried. Because I was absolutely in love and, conversely, terrified of being tied down before I finished high school.”

“I know you,” Starsky said, running a barely there hand across the back of Hutch’s head. It felt like a soft breeze was ruffling his hair. “You had plans, wanted to change the world and getting tied down wasn’t in ’em. Except, you wanted that baby.”

How did Starsky understand him so completely? “Nancy tell you that?” Hutch asked carefully, a tight anguish closing off his throat. How could he cry for something he’d never really had, so many years after the fact?

“No.” Starsky kissed him sweetly on the cheek. No sexual innuendo, just compassion and assurance. “I told you, I know how you think. You’ve been beating yourself up for sixteen years, thinking you should have known better and she would never have gotten pregnant, all the time looking for some kid to father.”

“He’d be sixteen?” Hutch said in wonderment. He’d never thought about that. Never thought about having a teenaged son, exactly the same age as he’d been when he and Nancy got together. “Now that’s a scary thought.”

“Did you think I’d think less of you?” Starsky smoothed the hair he’d tousled and Hutch nodded with a sigh. “Only makes you human, mushbrain.”

“It’s more I didn’t want to remember…failures in life.” Hutch saw himself as a teen: tall, angular, and full of dreams for the future. And felt the longings he’d had ever since when he saw a young couple with a child-particularly a son. Not that he’d ever known the sex of Nancy’s fetus, just that he’d imagined the baby to be a boy.

“I know that feeling.” Starsky grinned at him sheepishly. “There’s stuff about ‘Nam that I don’t wanna think about much, if ever.” Outside the room, they both could hear the rumbled voices of a doctor inquiring about his patient and the nurse’s response. Very soon the nurse would probably be in to take a set of vitals on Hutch. “You don’t have to go searching for somebody to love you more than anyone else, Hutch. You got me-forever.”

“I know.” Hutch grasped his hand, squeezing tightly, deeply touched, although a vague melancholy had descended.

Starsky glanced at his watch with a grimace. “I really got to get out of here so I can come back, later.”

“I’ll be right here, all day long,” Hutch said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. He shouldn’t feel that way, but damn, Starsky was out there investigating the case, getting into trouble, while he was stuck in bed with a hole in his side. “No where to go.”

Starsky snapped his fingers, all ten-year-old-boy-with-a-plan. “What you need is something to cheer you up! Y’know when you had a broken leg, everybody came to sign your cast.”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Hutch clutched at his side, the plastic crackling under the covers. He didn’t want any one to see the disfiguring wound. The sight disgusted him; he couldn’t believe Starsky harbored the slightest curiosity about something so gruesome looking.

“I got it! You need some stickers!” Starsky announced enthusiastically. “Stars, those ‘Great job!’ apple things that teachers put on the top of school papers….”

“Starsky, nobody wants to put stickers on a waste receptacle,” Hutch insisted firmly. When Starsky got some cockamamie scheme into his head, it was best to put a kibosh on the thing right from the start or he’d just get carried away beyond all reason. “You coming back in one piece tonight is all I need to cheer me up.”

“You sure?” Starsky leaned his hip and forehead on the door, right hand resting lightly on the knob.

 It was a casual pose, one meant to deceive the viewer into thinking that he wasn’t tired and hurting. Hutch wasn’t fooled for a minute, but he knew full well that if Starsky had been the one lying in a hospital bed, he would have moved heaven and earth to find out who put him there, so he didn’t protest. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“‘Cause I could call Rosey Dobey up, get her supplier.”

“Rosey has a supplier? You’re making her sound like an addict.”

“For stickers-little hearts and black cats. Really cute. Remember she sent me a birthday card she made herself?”

Hutch remembered. “Starsk, get out of here. If I can’t have breakfast, then I want to sleep until ten a.m., at least.”

“Suit yourself!” Starsky called out, waggling his butt when he walked out.

Hutch appreciated that waggle. He really, really liked it, a lot.

~*~*~

Anne squirmed in her sleep, just enough aware to wonder why her leg was numb from knee to ankle and her right arm prickly with the pins and needles of reduced circulation. She tried to roll and nearly pitched off the couch; the heavy body pinning her to the cushions was all that kept her from landing ass first on the carpet. Pain shot up her bad leg which was always stiff in the morning, but after a night on the couch she could barely bend the knee.

Long shadows fanned across the floor to the west wall where Simon had hung pictures of the Conrad family as children. Anne wiggled her fingers gingerly, trying to ease herself out from under Quantrell. She was still too dopey with sleep and no longer accustomed to drinking beers. It had been over eight years since she’d had anything stronger than a cola, and the two beers had gone straight to her head. She never should have let Quantrell stay, or do the things he’d done.

Very nice things, but-she was a mom now. A responsible person who shouldn’t have her boyfriend stay the night on the couch.

What time was it?

Lowering her leg, Anne winced as the blood rushed back into her foot, but she was able to slide completely out from under Quantrell and push herself to a stand. She looked up, straight into the pale blue eyes of the mother she’d barely known. Shivering at the eeriness of having her mother watch over her sleeping with her new lover, Anne examined the picture more closely. She hadn’t looked at it in years-far more than just eight. Funny how she’d barely thought of her mother for over a decade and suddenly, the long dead woman was on her mind night and day.

Because she was a mother now, herself?

 Zipporah sat stiffly on a photographer’s bench, baby Anne held tightly in the crook of her left arm, which meant she was twenty-two when the picture was taken. Simon stood as tall as a six-year old could, his insolent smile revealing two missing top teeth. Mickey was on their mother’s right, his gaze slightly unfocused as if he were not really present. He was the only one of the three children who really resembled their father. Nick Conrad lurked behind his family, heavy hands clutching possessively at his wife and eldest son, mouth twisted into something that didn’t resemble a smile in the least.

Anne’s belly contracted with sudden, vague anxiety. Just looking at the picture brought back feelings she hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge since her teens. Fear of large, sweaty, white hands touching her legs, the smell of Camel cigarettes, complete darkness on a hot, oppressive night. Sweat broke out down her spine causing goose bumps. She needed a smoke really bad, could already taste the dry paper of the cigarette on her tongue.

Where was this coming from?

She focused on her mother’s thin face, looking for solace. Zippy was the only person in the picture she really wished she had known. The others could go to hell. Of course, she’d already been there.

“Anney?” Quantrell said sleepily from the couch. “What time is it?”

Big black hands. Anne smiled, the squirrelly feelings dropping away as she remembered long, slender chocolate fingers curving around her waist, gentle and loving. She could get used to those hands, nothing like Art’s or Simon’s-or Nick’s.

Gasping at the revelation, she braced herself on the wall so that Quantrell didn’t see her anguish, her inner thighs suddenly numb. The golden rays from the rising sun lit up Zipporah’s face like a Madonna in a museum painting. Anne wanted to cry. Instead, she said, “uh-after dawn, Quan. You should probably get dressed before Robin hears us.”

“Wish we could…” Quantrell came up behind her, those skilled fingers questing along her ribcage.

“We can’t,” Anne said, abruptly moving away from his embrace. She smiled, finding his dark eyes gazing at her with something she barely recognized. Sweetness, happiness-possibly love? “Come back? Maybe tonight? I just…” She let herself be distracted by those wide perfect lips kissing her. “Robin….”

“Anney? Mommy?” Robin’s voice jolted them apart.

Quantrell smirked, rubbing his hand over his tangled ‘fro. He didn’t appear the slightest bit contrite.

Robin was grinning from ear to ear, which surprised Anne. Had she seen her mother kissing her father, she’d have been stunned.

Of course, Quantrell wasn’t Robin’s father.

And she’d never seen her parents kiss. This was entirely different.

“Are we gonna get a kitten and new pajamas today, Anney?” Robin asked impatiently. “He can come, too, but I wanna get my kitten.”

“Thanks for the invite, little man.” Quantrell pulled on his jeans. Anne was sincerely glad that both of them had had the presence of mind to fall asleep partially dressed after their lovemaking the night before so Robin didn’t find them in their birthday suits. “This is your time with your mama. I got a run to Kansas and back for the next coupla days but I’ll be looking forward to seeing your new cat soon enough.”

“The mall doesn’t open until ten a.m.” Anne shoved her long hair out of her face, wondering what she looked like after a night on the couch. Probably pretty repulsive, but Quantrell was still giving her little side glances that said she was prettier than Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith put together. “You need clothes on, breakfast…uh….”

“Cartoons, mama,” Quantrell drawled in a deep voice that made her nipples tingle. He pulled on his blue t-shirt and work boots before cleaning up the scattered beer bottles.

“Cartoons!” Robin agreed, jumping up and down.

“Two against one,” Anne grumbled, but secretly she loved it. This was what she’d never had. This was what a real family was supposed to be like. She followed Robin into the kitchen where he’d already pulled out the Cap’n Crunch and was rummaging in a drawer for spoons. The sound of the front door opening didn’t faze her, that was probably Quantrell taking the garbage out.

Until she saw him behind her, dumping the bottles in the trash.

Who the hell was in the living room?

~*~*~

Starsky walked into the detective’s squadroom at Metro in one of those surreal moments when the place was completely deserted. Too early for day shift to arrive, and too late for night shift to be finishing their arrest reports, it had the feel of a frozen moment in time when the world was waiting for something to happen. Good or bad, that couldn’t be determined yet.

The coffee pot was empty and slightly scorched on the bottom. “Shit,” he muttered, taking it to the restroom to rinse out the pot and fill it with fresh water. He needed the jolt of caffeine to function with any semblance of intelligence. Plus, he hurt all over. How sick people got any rest in a hospital bed was beyond him. Not only was his head splitting, and wrist throbbing, but his back was threatening to seize up at some inconvenient time, probably just at the moment he had Simon Conrad cornered in a shoot out.

 At least he’d gotten something to wear that wasn’t covered in dried blood. When he stopped for gas on the way to Metro, the gas station was having a promotion for the Little League team they sponsored. Buy ten gallons of gas and get a free shirt emblazoned with a winged tiger and the team’s logo, “The Flying Tigers.”

He sat heavily in his chair, poking at the red overalled piggybank to see if there were any quarters for the vending machine. Just the jingle from a couple of pennies. That meant levering himself up again to make it downstairs to the cafeteria in hopes that the morning shift brought fresh donuts in. Which was not always a sure thing-and it wouldn’t be open for another half hour.

Manila files littered his desk, but Starsky ignored them, indulging in the rare solitude to think about Hutch. He’d have given anything to curl up in a bed-not that damned hospital torture rack, but a real bed with a huge, flat California King mattress-and romance his partner. He could see Hutch’s long, pale legs sprawled out over the coverlet, could easily picture their reflections in the mirror suspended above his bed. His dark curls against Hutch’s golden hair.

The idea of actually making love-sliding his hand down Hutch’s thick shaft, feeling the life pulsing through his cock, was just a little intimidating and exciting at the same time. What if he didn’t know what to do?

He hadn’t needed any instruction to kiss his partner’s lips. Exactly like kissing a woman, only so much better. Jacking him off couldn’t be all that difficult: he knew what he liked. A little pumping, then a tight squeeze to the….

He hadn’t realized he’d dozed off until two detectives stomped in arguing over the evidence in their suicide/murder case. Starsky sat up too fast and froze as a cramp shot across his shoulders and neck, adding to the brain ache he already had.

Terrific.

“Hey, Starsky, what you doing here?” Detective second grade Bob Haskell yelled across the desks. He sniffed the newly brewed coffee and helped himself to a steaming cup full. “Heard you got shot yesterday and spent the night in the hospital.”

“You jokers got nothing better to do than gossip all night?” Starsky groused. “The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated. Give me one of those, will ya?”

“How’s Hutch doing?” Haskell’s partner Steve Weatherly asked.

“Doing better, thanks.” Starsky took the mug of coffee, gulping down half the contents in one go. It burned his tongue, but also burned away the cobwebs clogging his thinking. Now he could get something done. First order of business, find Simon Conrad, fast.

“Oh, Minnie was in Records about ten minutes ago-looking for you,” Haskell said, stuffing paper into his typewriter. The paper kept going in crooked, twisting up the bottom edge. He balled it up and started over with a fresh sheet.

“She’s here this early?” Starsky wondered aloud just as the woman in question marched through the doors. Instead of her usual neatly pressed policewoman’s uniform, Minnie had on bright red tights and a red and white striped leotard covered with a floaty skirt that parted on the right side to flash a little leg every time she took a step. “Minnie! Are you going undercover in a dance studio?”

She laughed, doing a complicated series of energetic dance steps in time to an off-key rendition of the theme song from Grease. Haskell whistled when Weatherly attempted to copy her lead. Starsky just felt achy, but he applauded the routine, laughing when Weatherly nearly fell over on his butt.

 “Jazzercise, boys, it’s fantastic for aerobic exercise. Gets the heart pumping and body moving. Five-thirty a.m. in class over at the gym on 4th,” Minnie explained, and slapped the file she’d been holding onto Starsky’s desk. “Steve’s got the beat, all right. Bobby, with your gut, you should be signing up for classes pronto.”

“Dance routines? I thought for a minute you were talkin’ about erotic exercises.” Haskell finally got his paper in correctly and typed rapidly. “That’s the only kinda exercise the wife lets me do.” He leered. “You just need a husband, Minnie.”

“I’d propose but she’s too much woman for me,” Starsky bantered with a smirk.

“Trashy boy,” Minnie admonished, bopping him lightly with her hip. “You look beat, Starsky. You should have stayed home.”

“How can I when that whippo Conrad’s out there and we don’t know where he’s going to turn up next,” Starsky said far more savagely than he’d meant to.

Minnie adjusted the thick frames that had slipped down during the dance number and regarded him silently with concerned brown eyes. “Won’t do Hutch any good if you’re down for the count,” she said seriously. “But this may help. Since the computers only search for matches in this precinct, I called around to other cities in Los Angeles County and nearby counties, too. This one was sent over from Orange County. Fingerprints matched some on a cold case from ’57.”

“Simon Conrad’s? Uh-” Starsky marshaled his waning brain cells. What was the guy’s alias? “Connie Symmond’s?”

“Exactly. In a routine check, the detectives on this case took everyone in the family’s prints to rule them out, even the kids. I guess it did, because they never found the killer for a Nicholas John Conrad.” She tapped the file, pulling out a photo of a dead body slumped against a wall, dark blood staining his chest and matting his hair. At least two bullet wounds.

Starsky felt the air rush out of him. “Did Barnaby print Conrad in ’70?”

“Doesn’t look like it. He was never arrested, only questioned as a material witness,” Minnie answered, sifting through the folders piled haphazardly on the desk until she found the Art Benson case. “But even if they had, unless the prints match ones in our files, in Bay City, most detectives aren’t going to go city to city looking for a match. Too time consuming.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Starsky had always hated the tedious, eye-straining job of comparing the swirls and loops on a fingerprint card. The fact that computers could be programmed to do the job was something to cheer about, in his opinion.

“Where’d this Nick Conrad live?” Starsky scanned the report, his heart speeding up with every single word. He found the answer even before Minnie pointed to the address. Anaheim-probably a half hour’s drive from BC. Shot twice in his own garage on the night of January 27th, 1957, leaving three minor children. Their mother had died the year before. The murder was never solved, but detectives at the time concluded that it must have been intruders, or possibly an altercation over money. Nick Conrad had a rap sheet half a yard long. Included in the crime scene photos was a family picture of the children-Simon, Mickey, and Anne, being escorted from the house by a woman in a dark, fifties style coat.

It was undeniably eerie to see the woman he’d had lunch with the day before as an eight-year old, and a small one, at that. Anne appeared shell-shocked, her pale, almost translucent eyes vague and unfocused, light-colored hair braided into two messy pigtails. She was wearing a nightie with roses decorating the neckline. A woman, assumedly from social services, held her hand and that of a boy about twelve with the vacant expression of mental retardation. The oldest son was a hulking Simon. He was as tall as an adult, with the same glib, charming appearance that Starsky remembered from 1970. Despite that, there was a subtle air of menace about him.

“You think Conrad could have killed his own father?” Minnie speculated, perching on the edge of the desk.

“He’s big and strong. A gun is a good equalizer in a fight, anyway.” Starsky leaned his aching head on the heel of his left hand. The right one throbbed like a sore tooth but he had enough mobility to flip the pages over as he read the entire report thoroughly. “If so, then he’d have no compunctions about murdering somebody else. Taking a shot at Hutch….”

“And you,” Minnie reminded.

“Musta been a walk in the park for him. The question is why?” Starsky mused. “I mean, why after eight years? Anne’s out of prison, so what made him come after us so long after the crash that killed Benson?”

“He maybe killed his own father, then apparently had no concerns about touching his newly dead brother-in-law to take the gun off the body, and sells drugs to minors, if your old snitch can be believed.” Minnie ticked off the details Starsky had told her about the case. “Shoots at the two of you. I don’t think this guy has a single scruple in his entire body.”

“What’s the official term for a guy like him? Hutch would know.” Starsky groaned. Too much thinking involved and all he wanted to think about was making love -with his male partner. “A psychopath?”

“You better watch yourself, Starsky.” Minnie shook her head. “He doesn’t sound like anyone I’d like to come across in a garden spot at noon, much less a dark alley.”

“Worried about me, doll?” Starsky let his finger slide up under the edge of her filmy skirt, deliberately tickling her thigh. Minnie grinned at him and moved her leg just enough to be out of range. Starsky pretended to be rejected, raising his palm in resignation. “All I’m planning to do is take a run over to Loma Linda Road to talk to Anne Benson, find out if she can think of any other place her brother might hole up and see what she remembers about her father’s murder.”

~*~*~

“Who opened the d-?” Anne started and froze when she saw her brother crossing the living room.

With his back to the archway that separated the two rooms, Quantrell frowned, reaching for her. “Baby, what’s wrong? You look like you seen a ghost.”

Anne felt Quantrell’s large hand around her elbow, pulling her into a comforting embrace, but the rest of her went numb, irritating sweat dripping down her spine. She couldn’t breathe, images of terror on dark, hot nights coming back to her in a sickening rush.

“Uncle Simon!” Robin hopped off the stool he’d been using to reach the bowls, running full tilt across the scuffed linoleum to throw his arms around the man. “Didja come back to take me to Disneyland? I want to go on the Matterhorn and the-“

“Not now, Birdman,” Simon said gruffly, pushing him back just enough to pull a pistol out of his pocket. “What the hell is that nigger doing in my house?” he shouted.

“Hey, man, it’s cool, I just wanted to-” Quantrell started.

“Simon!” Anne knew; knew even before she saw his fingers tighten on the trigger. Knew with sickening certainty what was going to happen, and she shoved Quantrell with all her might, screaming at her son. “Run, Robin! Get away!”

The gun boomed deafeningly loud in the enclosed space, ripping through Quantrell with a force that knocked him into the refrigerator hard enough to rattle the bottles in the door.

“No!” Anne grabbed for him, sure the bullet had torn through her heart. Quantrell tried to get up, his suddenly weak hands pushing ineffectively against the avocado green fridge. Blood was already pooling rapidly under him. “Robin, get out of here!” Anne cried, wanting to save them both and unable to be in two places at once.

“Don’t move, boy,” Simon commanded in a rough voice. He no longer looked anything like the brother she’d known all her life. His face was hard as stone, mouth a savage line. Although he wore the neat shirt and dark slacks that were part of his chauffeur uniform, he seemed feral and crazed.

Robin had gone white, his eyes wide and filled with tears. He made a small submissive sound, dropping the box of cereal. Cap’n Crunch skittered across the floor, small yellow squares rolling through blood to rest against the baseboard.

“Sit down and keep quiet.” Simon took a menacing step toward him, waving the pistol.

 Robin obeyed so promptly that Anne knew he’d seen this side of his uncle before. Please God, she couldn’t bear it if Robin had endured what she had as a child, but she was afraid to know the truth.

“It’s okay, Robin,” Anne forced herself to speak. “This’ll be over soon.” She grabbed a dishtowel from the rod next to the sink and pressed it against the gore slicking Quantrell’s dark skin. He groaned at the pressure, opening the gorgeous brown eyes that were now dull with pain. “I’m s-sorry,” she whispered, feeling him shudder. Just hours ago his orgasm had echoed her body’s trembling climax. She’d have given anything to take back that ecstasy if it meant he would die because of her.

She had to be strong for her family-one that did not include Simon. “What the hell are you doing?” she hissed at Simon, pitching her voice low. Much more effective than hysterical screaming.

“You’re coming with me,” he growled, looking her up and down with a disgusted expression. “Did he fuck you? You’re naked.”

“I have on as much as a bathing suit,” she retorted, resisting the urge to cover the white bra and panties with the arm not putting pressure on Quantrell’s wounds. Her lover had gone limp, his big hands like brown stars on the floor, and she wanted to weep. This was getting them nowhere. “You have to leave. The police are coming.”

Why she threw that in, Anne would never know. But the threat emboldened her.

Simon’s angry mask slipped momentarily, but he waved the pistol in an intimidating manner. Robin squeaked and covered his mouth like one of the see-no, hear-no, speak-no monkeys. “Get away from him,” Simon said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

 “The police are doing extra drive-bys, keeping watch on the house,” Anne continued, trying frantically to come up with a logical plan that kept Robin safe and got Quantrell to a doctor. “They’ll find you here. Mrs. Bendijian probably heard the gunshot, you know how nosy she is. She calls the cops when that dog down the block barks too much.”

Robin hiccupped, a single sob breaking loose before he hid behind his hands again. Even over the rank odor of blood and gun powder, Anne could smell urine. He’d wet his pants.

“Get some clothes on.” Simon spaced out each word like separate knife stabs into her soul, ripping out every single shred of familial loyalty she might ever have had. He jerked her up, pulling her away from Quantrell. “And get something for the kid. We’re leaving in five minutes. If you aren’t dressed, woman, I’ll just take you in the nude and beat the modesty into you once we’re at the house.”

“Please, Simon.” Anne paused for a moment, hearing the exact same phrasing that had once come from her long dead father. History was repeating itself. Simon had turned into Nick. But she wasn’t her own mother-and wasn’t about to allow what had happened to Zippy to happen to her. “I don’t understand….”

Her brother made no sound, just raised his gun to the level of her heart and mimed shooting her. Barely able to breathe around the boulder in her throat, Anne ran to find some clothes. She didn’t even wash Quantrell’s blood off her hands, just grabbed a pair of jeans and a striped t-shirt for herself and similar things for Robin. Shoes for both of them. She was still stuffing her arms into the shirt sleeves when Simon grabbed her arm, dragging her toward the front door. Robin followed along behind them like a silent wraith.

“We have to call an ambulance!” Anne insisted, managing to pull her shirt down to her waist and not drop the other clothes. “Quantrell could be dying!”

“He violated you and had to be punished,” Simon stated flatly. He scared her. He’d always been possessive, screening her dates and telling her where and when she could go when she was in her teens, but once she married, she’d thought that all changed. Was Art as much of a puppet for Simon as she had been?

“Simon!” Anne tried to get free, twisting away from him. Her bad leg almost buckled under her, but she managed to stay standing. Up close to her brother, she could smell the heavy scent of whiskey on his breath. “Just tell me why. I need to know why!”

“You’re mine,” he said simply as if it were completely obvious, but tightening his hold so much that her fingers felt tingly. “The family jewel. Dad told me to take care of you. To protect you. So I did.”

There was a late model white Chevy in the driveway that Anne had never seen before. Her heart was hammering painfully fast, making it hard to speak and breathe at the same time. She had not done seven years of prison time to take this kind of abuse from a shit like Simon. Everything that had brought her to this day made her stronger. “Where’d you get this car? Where are we going?” she asked desperately, stalling for time. Surely Mrs. Bendijian would look out the window and see them. Or a paper boy. Someone.

“Get in the car, Birdman,” Simon ordered. The boy did as he was told, the whites of his eyes showing all the way around his pale blue irises. “Wife, if you say one more word, I’ll silence you good.”

“I’m not your-” Anne started to retort. She ducked the fist that came at her, but not fast enough. His knuckles glanced off her cheekbone, propelling her against the bumper.

“You’re my wife now,” he said and hauled her into the passenger seat of the car.

~*~*~

Starsky parked alongside the curb in front of Anne Conrad Benson’s little white house. The yard had the same neglected, weedy appearance it had the first time he’d been there. There was no car parked in the driveway and the front door yawned open.

The hairs prickling on the back of his neck, Starsky shifted his shoulders, settling the holster under his right arm more comfortably in case he needed to pull the Beretta free. He started up the driveway when something blue and black caught his eye on the right, almost under a mangy looking pyracantha. Examining the balled fabric more closely, Starsky recognized it as a pair of small, boy’s Batman pajama bottoms. He didn’t have to pick them up to smell the rank odor of urine, and the sudden recollection of the night his father was murdered came back in a sickening rush. He’d been twelve, far too old to wet the bed, but that night he had. Embarrassed, he’d tossed the soiled pajamas down the garbage chute, dreading being alone in his room without his dad sleeping down the hall.

The pajamas must be Robin’s. So what the hell were they doing out in the yard? Filled with trepidation, Starsky ran lightly across the yard, pausing at the front door. “Anne?” he called. “It’s Dave Starsky, can you come out?”

Nothing, but this close to the dark interior of the house, the strong scent of cordite was unmistakable. Pushing past the door, Starsky drew his gun, very conscious of Hutch’s absence. He didn’t have time to dwell on that pang of sadness, but advanced cautiously across the living room, his heart pounding loudly in his ears. The shadowed cavern of the hall could have hidden any number of gunmen, but Starsky followed his nose straight across the carpet, the stink of blood and other body fluids overwhelming. He could see a bare foot on the kitchen floor through the archway. Ignoring the voice in his head that sounded like Hutch’s, telling him that regulations said he should scope out the house first, he ran over to identify the victim.

Please not Anne. It would tear his heart to shreds. The rational portion of his brain acknowledged that the foot was too large, too dark-skinned, and too masculine to be either of the Bensons, and for a second, Starsky hoped that it was Simon Conrad.

Dropping down beside the unmoving black man, Starsky felt for a pulse with his right hand, keeping his automatic fisted tightly in his left, trying to watch for anyone coming up behind him at the same time. The body was warm, a faint pulse throbbing in his neck, despite the large pool of blood. Breakfast cereal spilled on the floor proved that Robin most likely had witnessed whoever had shot the man. No wonder the poor kid had wet his pants.

“Who are you, buddy, and what happened to Anne and Robin?” Starsky asked rhetorically. He scanned the room and finally made a quick circuit of the rest of the house. Drawers in the bureaus in both bedrooms were yanked open, the contents churned in disarray as if someone had grabbed clothing in a hurry and left.

It didn’t take a genius to guess that Simon Conrad could have had something to do with the Bensons disappearance. Where had he taken his sister and nephew? And why? He was already the chief suspect in Hutch’s shooting, and renewed investigation into some other crimes could charge him with a damned sight more than that. Not that he was probably aware of that, but why would he go on the lam encumbered by a woman and child?

After placing a blanket over the wounded man, Starsky dashed back to the Torino to call in for all the emergency services: ambulance, lab crew, the works. Anyone who could help shed some light on where Simon might be.

“They drove off ’bout ten minutes before you come.” A rotund woman wearing a puce green striped bathrobe stood on the edge of her property, shading her eyes against the morning sun.

“What’d you say?” Starsky asked, hand on the mike.

“Car with the woman who lives here now, and the man who used to live here, drove off ’bout ten minutes ago,” she repeated and puffed heavily on a cigarette.

“Keep that thought!” Starsky held up a finger that would have done Hutch proud, stilling the woman, and called in for back-up. He holstered his gun, giving a silent plea for Hutch to recover with record speed so that he wouldn’t have to work on his own anymore. He hated the solitude more than anything else, the sense that no one was watching his back. Most of all, he hated having to deal with these sorts of witnesses. Just the tone of the neighbor’s voice put his hackles up. He could charm little old ladies, small children-most of the time-and teenaged girls with a crooked grin and a flirt, but women like this one, who acted like the world owed her some kind of favor and she’d better get some compensation for her troubles, made Starsky want to slug them. Hutch had the poise and graciousness learned in finer schools than Starsky had attended to deal with these kinds of people.

“Ma’am?” Starsky gave her his best ingenious smile, going for sincere and non-threatening even when his pulse was racing and his first impulse was to jam out of there in his car and find Anne Benson before she was another statistic. “You have some information for me?”

“You got some kind of ID?” she challenged.

“Detective Sergeant Starsky, metro police.” Starsky held up his gold badge. She peered at it for so long he began to wonder if she couldn’t read. “You saw Anne Benson and Simon Conrad?”

“That her name?” She coughed, hacking up phlegm and stubbed the cigarette out on the side of the house. Dozens of burn marks showed this wasn’t the first time.

“What’s your name?” Starsky countered, pulling his notebook out of a back pocket in case she told him anything useful.

“Honoria Bendijian,” she said, drawing herself up with the air of a deposed royal. “They’s all riff-raff in that house. Man came over late. I bet that woman had sex with him. She’s been in prison, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know. Is that the man’s truck?” Starsky asked, pointing to the white Ford pick-up parked at the curb.

“He come in ’bout ten p.m., maybe later. I was watching my program and heard the damned loud engine. Some people should be more considerate.”

“Did you see anyone else drive up?” Starsky asked desperately, about ready to pull his hair out. The whoop of a siren sounded disturbingly loud when the ambulance pulled around the corner, a black and white right on its tail.

“Conrad came in this morning, like I just said.” She regarded him as if he were a moron. “White Chevy-like they been showing on the ads. All shiny and new. He probably stole it.” She narrowed her eyes. “I heard gunshots. He kill somebody? That nigger, most likely.”

“A man was shot.” Starsky hastily wrote out his telephone number and shoved it in Honoria’s hand. “If you think of anything else, please give us a call.” It always paid to be civil, even with a bitch like her, but he didn’t want to waste any more time. “You’ve been a real help.”

The paramedics were already unloading a stretcher and supplies when Starsky ran back across the lawn. His head was throbbing, and even though it was barely past dawn, he was sweating like a pig. Lying in a big bed next to Hutch was looking better and better all the time.

~*~*~

“I don’t know where to go next, Hutch.” Starsky braced his elbows on his knees to rub his right temple, slumped in the chair by Hutch’s hospital bed. “The guy we found bleedin’ out on the floor is already downstairs in surgery, but he lost about half his blood volume, so the ER doc wasn’t too optimistic on his chances. Got his name off his truck registration. Quantrell Murphy, from Ventura, but unless he wakes up, we won’t be getting any information out of him anytime soon.”

“You want some of this?” Hutch offered his first official meal of green jello and apple juice. Oddly, after all this time, he wasn’t all that hungry, and Starsky looked ready to fall over.

Starsky glanced at the fare and shook his head. “It’s your breakfast. They always let you out of this place a whole lot faster if you eat the food. It’s like some kind of a test.”

Hutch spooned two cubes of jello into his mouth and thought about feeding Starsky something other than what the dietician termed clear liquids. Something much more substantial and arousing; something long, thick, and erect, and then shut that thought out of his mind for another day. Suddenly finding his partner desirable and receptive was definitely going to make working side by side with him much more of a challenge. Enjoyable as it was to imagine Starsky naked on a fluffy rug in front of a roaring fire, he couldn’t keep conjuring up sexy pleasures on the job or they’d never catch another Bay City criminal ever again. “Dig deeper, Starsk, find out more about Conrad.”

“You’re the one who actually spoke with him back then!” Starsky grimaced, sounding like a whiney child for a moment. “You didn’t get any kinda vibe off him? Talk about his background or anything?’

“I’m not a mind reader,” Hutch snapped, feeling as if he’d failed somehow in 1970. He really hadn’t checked into Simon Conrad at all because he was a patrol officer at the time, and Detectives Barnaby and Dana had concentrated the lion’s share of their investigation on the Bensons. “He seemed like a genuinely nice guy, trying to help his sister by raising the baby.”

“Robin.” Starsky filched a square of jello and jiggled it between his fingers before popping it in his mouth. “Cute kid. We have to find him.”

“Robin,” Hutch repeated, the warm, solid weight of a newborn ghosting his arms. “We talked about the baby, we talked about his name, that was about it. Once the foster/adoption thing fell through for Van and me,” he paused, the memory of that time still hard to bear. “I assumed that Conrad was going to raise the baby in the house on Glenbrook Terrace until I heard he sold it during the trial.” He drank some of the apple juice, pleased that his gut didn’t feel like it was going to turn inside out. It felt normal to be eating. The pain in his belly was much better this morning, and with any kind of luck he’d be off the strong narcotics in a day or so. “You said Minnie found a file on the father’s murder? Where did they live?”

“Anaheim in Orange County, which, come to think of it, is the same city where Conrad’s girlfriend lives.”

“Maybe he still has ties there? Other family?” Hutch asked. He liked this. No, he loved this-tossing around ideas with Starsky, contributing to the case. Hell, it was his own shooting, he had a right to be involved in the investigation. “Who took care of Simon and Anne after their father died?”

“I figured they went into foster care, but I didn’t check,” Starsky said. “There was another boy, too. In the picture, he had the same look Lisa Graham gets sometimes. Not stupid, just . . .lost, like he doesn’t understand anything that’s going on.”

“Maybe he had mental . . .delays?” Hutch asked, trying to use the most humane term. Since working with Terry Roberts at the special needs school, and knowing Lisa since babyhood, he’d become much more sensitive to retarded children.

“Yeah, I think so. Name was Mickey, according to the report. He’s older than Anne, must be thirtyish by now. He’d probably need care for the rest of his life.” Starsky grinned, joy animating his eyes. He was enjoying their interaction, too. “Hutch, if we were anywhere else, I’d…” he whispered the rest. “Kiss you right now.”

“You can drink from my straw,” Hutch offered. Bits and pieces of the conversation with Conrad kept coming back to Hutch. There was something more, just out of reach, though, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “We’d still be sharing spit.”

“You’re such a romantic.” Starsky rolled his eyes. “The officers watching Maria Gomez’s house haven’t seen hide or hair of her, but maybe they can give us a line on Mickey Conrad. Too bad Conrad’s never been married…ex-wives always-“

Regardless of the lurking pain in his belly, Hutch leaned forward and planted a big wet one on Starsky, delighted. “Ex-wife! He was married, at least he told me he was.”

Starsky licked his bottom lip, clearly enjoying the spit exchange. “You remember her name? Because Minnie didn’t find anything in the Bay City records.”

“Cecelia?” Hutch mused. “Conrad told me she lost the baby, must have been before 1970, and I think she was an addict.” He took another sip of apple juice and thought longingly of a strong cup of coffee. The caffeine was just what he needed to kick-start his narcotic befuddled brain. “Not Cecelia. Celia. She died.”

“You’re a genius, and don’t you forget it!” Starsky selected another chunk of jello and fed it to Hutch. “Wonder where she died? Or where they got married? Just my luck it’d be a quickie in Vegas.”

The bedside phone rang and Starsky automatically picked up. “Ken Hutchinson’s Jello Diner, all colors of jello on the menu.” He held out the phone so that Hutch could hear the caller. “It’s Minnie.”

“How are you feeling, baby?” Minnie asked Hutch. “If the doctors have you on jello already, you must be on the mend.”

“Getting there, Minnie. Thanks for sending over the card.”

“I’d have sent candy but I know that boy Starsky would just eat it all.”

“I can’t help it if I need a lot of fuel,” Starsky protested. “Did you find out anything new, Minnie?”

“Patrol officers found an abandoned Lincoln Towncar registered to Elegant Limousines on Pico Boulevard,” Minnie reported. “The woman at the limo service verified that it was the one Simon Conrad was driving.”

“Minnie, isn’t there a Chevrolet dealership on Pico?” Starsky asked, snapping his fingers.

“Yeah, near the corner of Vermont,” Hutch agreed. “Why?”

“The old witch who lives next door to Anne said that Conrad was driving a brand new Chevy, that he probably stole it,” Starsky said. “Wanna bet that dealership had a robbery last night? He also stole the car he was driving when you were shot, accordin’ to Angharad at the DMV.” He grabbed two more green cubes, stuffing them in his cheeks. “Minnie, I’m going over there. Hutch, tell her about Mickey, Celia-all of it. We need the address of where Mickey is, info on the family….”

Starsky shoved the phone at his partner and started out at a run. He only paused one moment to look back at Hutch with such adoration and love that Hutch felt like a bulb planted inside him was bursting into gorgeous bloom.

“Hutch, what was he going on about?” Minnie laughed.

Hutch heard himself relating their theories on Anne’s older brother but he wasn’t even paying much attention. All his thoughts were on Starsky, who must have made it to the Torino and out of the parking lot in record time. He had the sick fear that Starsky was barreling right into danger and there was nothing he could do about it while hooked up to an IV in the hospital.

~*~*~

Anne alternated between thinking up ways to jump out of the speeding car onto the highway with Robin in her arms, and dreading what would happen when they got to whatever was their destination. Simon terrified her. He kept calling her his wife, and one time stuck his hand into her pants, trying to push down to her clit while driving seventy on the freeway. Luckily, since she was clutching Robin in her lap, that wasn’t possible.

He was out of his mind. Did he really expect her to simply lie back and allow him to abuse her the way he’d done from the time she was eight? A lot of water had gone under the bridge since then, and while prison had not been an experience she ever wanted to repeat, it had given her teeth. She’d learned when to be passive and when to bite back. There was no fucking way she was exposing Robin to this life any longer.

Because she was so focused on her own thoughts, Anne didn’t completely pay attention to the direction they were going until Simon took a familiar off-ramp. The massive sign for Disneyland was visible for several blocks and Robin perked up, wiping his snotty nose on the back of his hand.

“Are we going to-” he started with naïve hope.

“Shut up!” Simon roared, nearly swerving into an Oldsmobile in the next lane when he raised his hand to shove the gun he still held into Robin’s face.

The boy squeaked in fear and hid his face against Anne’s neck.

“Simon, what are we doing here?” she said, and recognized the neighborhood with a shock. She hadn’t been back here since her late teens before she’d moved in with Art Benson. Down Garden Grove, turn right on Magnolia, and there it was, the house she had been raised in. The park where she’d run to escape the chaos of her family was only one block away. The house had been painted a muted brown with darker brown shutters since she last saw it, but that wasn’t enough to change the appearance completely. Just the sight of the place sent a river of sweat down her back, her belly cramping with remembered pain.

“Noooo,” she moaned, then clapped her hand over her mouth almost as Robin had earlier.

“Get out, Mickey’s waiting for you,” Simon said in such a normal sounding voice that Anne stared at him, stunned at the sudden change. He put the pistol in his pocket, smiling like a benevolent lover, but it was a smile that didn’t hit his eyes. They still glowed with a maniacal fire that scared the crap out of her.

“Mickey?” Anne found her breath. “I thought …” Truthfully, she hadn’t thought about him in years. A hulking giant of a child, he’d pummeled and kicked her from toddlerhood, switching to sexual abuse when puberty hit him. He didn’t have the mental capacity to comprehend his actions, at least according to the social workers who had paraded through their house when she was younger, and he’d been strong enough to lift the end of a small car off the ground. All of which had made him even scarier than Simon. At least when he’d wanted sexual favors during her teens, he’d tried to console and bribe her, unlike Mickey’s brute force. Anne had considered Art Benson to be a blessing after the men of her family, and Benson had beat her regularly. “You’ve kept him here all this time?”

“Been waiting for you, Jewel,” Simon said, holding out his hand to guide her around the car.

“Sweetie, can you get down and walk?” Anne gently placed Robin on the driveway just as the front door opened up and Mickey burst out, waving his arms wildly.

Robin took one look at his uncle and backed up. “I hate him,” he said faintly.

“You’ve been here?” It was all too much-she felt like puking, and the guilt and worry about Quantrell was eating her up inside. How could this be happening? How could she get help? Get away?

“Mickey’s mean and really dumb,” Robin said from behind her. “Me and Miguel been here when…” he stopped, his eyes too wide for his narrow face, looking both scared and embarrassed at the same time. “Maria and Uncle Simon used to go…y’know.”

“Sim’n! Sim’n!” Mickey was chanting, grabbing his brother’s hand. “You came back. Maria’s makin’ soup. She’s makin’ soup for us.”

“Look who I brought, Mickey. It’s Anney. Remember little Anney?”

 The voice Simon used with his younger brother was gentle and syrupy sweet. Anne had to repeatedly swallow to keep herself from throwing up into the dandelions growing rampant in the weedy lawn. Luckily, her bum leg slowed her down enough that she’d gotten herself under marginal control by the time Mickey threw his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground in a rib crushing bear hug.

“Anney! Anney!” He danced her around with her feet bobbing against his knees.

“Mickey.” She smiled with her teeth, hoping he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “I’m happy to see you, too. You have to put me down, though.”

“Put you down?” he repeated, slack-jawed. Mickey was as dark as the rest of the family was light-flat brown eyes wide set in a moon face, and brown hair shaggy enough to slightly conceal his bulging brow and low set ears. “You want some soup?”

“Yes, that would be good. Soup,” Anne agreed, staggering when he basically dropped her as his attention turned to Robin.

“You’re Rob’n!” Mickey declared. “I seen you before.” Robin swerved around his uncle and disappeared into the front door.

“Come on,” Simon ordered, the tight anger back in his voice. He glanced warily up and down the quiet street, pushing Mickey up to the porch. “Get in the house before….”

“Someone sees us?” Anne finished, her hackles up. “Who are you worried about seeing us, Simon?”

She ducked his first swing but pain flared in her leg when she twisted and she couldn’t avoid Simon’s backhand. It sent her into the frame of the door with a sickening crack. Her teeth bit down hard on her bottom lip, the taste of blood flooding her mouth.

Unable to put up a fight, Anne couldn’t resist when Simon shoved her onto the floor in the front hall and bolted the door. She wanted to pass out, Mickey’s high-pitched giggling like the soundtrack to a horror movie. She vomited instead. It had been a long time since she’d eaten anything other than beer, and very little came out. Still, she quaked inwardly, terrified that she’d have to clean the floor with a toothbrush or even lick up the mess as her father had once forced her mother to do.

“Maria’s makin’ soup! Maria’s makin’ soup!” Mickey sing-songed happily.

“Sit down, all of you!” Simon announced. “This is a family meeting.”

Anne listened as chairs scraped on the floor in the kitchen just yards from where she lay, wondering how long she could play possum before anyone else noticed. The craving for a cigarette was so strong she had to touch her lip to convince herself that there was no butt to suck on there. Her fingers came away dotted with blood.

“Anne, if I have to say it again, there’ll be hell to pay!” Simon roared, her father’s wrath handed down from one generation to the next.

By the time she was able to stand and hobble to a waiting chair, Mickey and Robin were seated. The infinite sadness in her son’s face firmed up Anne’s resolve. She would find a way to rescue him.

 Simon was pacing across the faded yellow linoleum that must be twenty years old, talking too rapidly to be understood. He jerked the curtains closed, peering suspiciously through the gap, giving Anne time to examine her surroundings. She hadn’t expected to see two extra faces in the room, a woman and a boy about Robin’s age. She recognized them both from several of the photos in the picture box. Maria and Miguel Gomez. Had it only been twenty-four hours since she and Robin had bonded over those old memories?

Maria stood with one hand braced on the counter next to the stovetop and the other supporting her very pregnant abdomen. Her face was a shocking mask of bruises in every color of the rainbow. Both eyes were blackened and her lower lip was even more swollen than Anne’s felt. It wasn’t until Anne settled into her chair that she noticed why Maria hadn’t sat down. A metal cuff with short length of chain was wrapped around one puffy ankle and bolted to the oven door, keeping her at her station.

They were all Simon’s prisoners.

“We’re a family now,” Simon threw out his hands to encompass them all. “Taking care of each other.”

Judging from Maria’s face, he wasn’t doing a very good job of that, but Anne didn’t speak. She had to keep low, lull him into a false sense of complacency until the time came to escape. There had to be a way to call for help. David Starsky’s kind face came to her, providing comfort. He had believed her. She should have told him everything.

“We look out for each other.” Simon stabbed a finger at each one of them. Robin gasped, tucking his shoulders down like a turtle pulling his neck into the shell for protection. Miguel was silently crying, gazing at his mother for protection. She offered none in return.

“That means I am in charge and you are my wives and children, do you understand?” Simon continued.

The shocked silence seemed to enrage him further. “I said do you understand?” he shouted, spittle splattering from his lips, his face as red as a glowing ember.

“Yeah!” Mickey piped up, grinning inanely.

Each one of them was prompted to agree with his demands, Anne last of all. She hated herself when she repeated, “I understand, Simon.”

“There’ll be rules and anyone who disobeys will be punished, right, Maria?” He took one step in her direction and the pregnant woman bobbed her head in fear.

“Si, Simon. I remember, I obey. Promiso.” She never looked at him once, her eyes cast downward like a broken slave.

“Rule number one-stay quiet. Rule two-do as you’re told. Rule three-don’t talk to anyone,” Simon listed, one hand on the butt of the pistol protruding from his pocket.

Anne looked at her son, vowing protection to her dying breath.

~*~*~

The white Chevy that Honoria Bendijian had seen in front of the Conrad house had indeed been stolen from Dan Steward’s Chevrolet on Pico Boulevard. When Starsky arrived, he found a black and white parked next to the brand spanking new 1979 Chevys looking like a pinto workhorse next to the glossy show ponies.

“Owner arrived this morning and noticed that a white car had been driven off the lot,” Paul Wilkie, a first year rookie, reported with far more enthusiasm than Starsky could muster after the morning he’d had. “He’d only gotten ten of the ’79s, five white and five blue, so the missing one was easy to spot.”

“Did the thief,” Starsky didn’t say Conrad just in case it was some other perpetrator, “break into the office? Steal any money or files?”

“Just the car, as far as Steward can tell. No vandalism or destruction to the building.” Wilkie pointed to the enormous glass fronted showroom which featured a black 1940s style Chevrolet that Starsky recalled seeing his Uncle drive in the mid-fifties. “There was a video security camera but it doesn’t swivel or take in the whole parking lot, so he doubts that there’ll be any shots of the theft in progress.” Wilkie glanced down at his notepad as if hoping there was more to tell.

“Thanks, Paul,” Starsky said sincerely, wishing his head didn’t hurt quite so much because the pain made it difficult to remain polite and focused. He had the strongest urge to bang his forehead against a brick wall to see if the old adage that one pain canceled out the other was really true. “This is probably the car my suspect is driving. He shot a man and may have two hostages with him, a woman and an eight-year-old-boy.” The thought of Simon harming or even killing the mother and child was eating at Starsky’s belly. He’d liked Anne this time around and had a strong sense of culpability for her current state. Sure, she’d been an accomplice in the drug deal that sent her to prison, but if the investigation in 1970 had just dug deeper, they might have netted Simon right from the beginning and changed the entire course of Anne Benson’s life. “There’s an APB out on Simon Conrad, driving the white Chevy. He’s probably armed and dangerous, and a real threat to his sister and nephew.”

Back in the Torino, Starsky rested his head against the steering wheel, the morning sun boring through the windshield to fry his neck. God, he was tired. Where the hell had Conrad taken Anne and Robin?

“Come in, Zebra Three!” Mildred from dispatch called, various squawks and staticky pops punctuating her words.

Starsky depressed the talk button on the mike without raising his head off the steering wheel. “Zebra Three,” he answered.

“Wait for a patch through from Captain Dobey,” Mildred intoned.

“Starsky! I thought I told you no private parties!” Dobey started in on a rant, and Starsky winced, his brain throbbing.

He mustered a grin to keep himself from hurling the mike out the window and high-tailing it all the way to Anaheim at top speed. “Cap, I’m just following the clues. Hutch and Minnie knew where I was going at all times.” More or less, he thought, crossing his fingers just in case.

“I’ve already spoken with Officer Kaplan,” Dobey said sternly, his anger palpable even this far away. “This goes by the book, Starsky, or all your hard work is for nothing. What have you learned so far?”

“Conrad musta stolen a Chevy off a lot and grabbed his sister and her son,” Starsky said, even though Dobey had to know that much. “After that, I don’t know. If we had some kind of destination. Some place Conrad would hole up, but he hasn’t been back to his girlfriend’s house in Anaheim.”

“Captain!” a female voice called. From Starsky’s perspective, she was barely audible, the sound quality of the telephone transmitted through the police band radio not up to conversations with other people in Dobey’s office.

“What?” Dobey demanded. “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” A loud crash, probably the sound of the receiver hitting the desk blotter exploded over the wire and Starsky winced, closing his eyes tightly enough to see red and blue stars. After several seconds of garbled voices, Dobey came back on the police band more calmly. “Minnie uncovered the original address for the Conrad family in Anaheim. Apparently, the house is now owned by Simon Conrad.”

“Give me that address!” Starsky shouted, starting up the Torino.

“665 Magnolia,” Dobey related. “I’ll get Anaheim PD on the horn. They can surround the place, check for hostages.”

“Tell ’em to wait for me, Cap!” Starsky insisted, barreling down Pico toward the freeway onramp. “This is mine! Besides, both Anne and Robin know me and trust me.” He didn’t want to think about what might happen if the police spooked Conrad into shooting anyone in the house, if that was in fact where he’d taken the Bensons.

“Starsky! You coordinate with their command chief,” Dobey reminded brusquely. Starsky could just picture his face going darker with frustrated anger and the way he would rise out of the chair behind his desk as if ready to run after his errant detectives. “Hutch wouldn’t want you going in reckless on this one! And neither do I.”

“I’m on the freeway, Cap’n.” Starsky hung up without the final “Zebra Three out.” Somehow, it didn’t feel right to say Zebra Three without Hutch in the car with him.

~*~*~

“Sergeant Starsky?” A barrel-chested man with the buzz cut of a former Marine gave Starsky a once over with flinty gray eyes. Starsky had the distinct impression that he didn’t measure up to the Anaheim cop’s standards. “Lieutenant Chuck Lawton. We had a report from the neighbor across from the house in question. They saw a man hit a woman and drag her inside. We have the perimeter established but haven’t approached the house yet. Your Captain outranks ours, so we’re waiting, but I’ll tell you right off, I don’t like it one bit.” His stubbly hairline fairly bristled with irritation. “I don’t molly-coddle kidnappers.”

“Neither do I, Lawton.” Starsky pulled out his Beretta to check the clip, even though he knew the little display was like the pissing contests he’d had when he was thirteen. Show the bully who had the largest dick. Problem was, Lawton was carrying firepower to rival the cannon Hutch wore under his left arm. Starsky’s might be smaller, but he had a driving motivation to avenge his best friend’s-and, dare he even think, lover’s?-shooting, not to mention getting Anne and Robin out of harm’s way.

“I got no intention of marching in there like some Nazi storm trooper and blowing ’em all away, and you better hold off those SWAT team guys,” Starsky snarled, standing tall without going up on his toes to be eye to eye with Lawton. “If the Bensons are in there, then I got a rapport with them already. This is my case, and your people better listen to me.”

“Detective.” Lawton took an aggressive step forward but a squawk from his walkie-talkie stopped him. “What, Alverez?” he growled into the hand-held.

“Lieutenant,” a slightly accented voice said urgently. “Neighbors say that there’s been increased activity in the house in the last few days and that a brand new car drove up only about two hours ago.”

Listening to the rest of the report with half an ear, Starsky walked down to the corner where he could get a good view of the house. The command post had been established down the block from Magnolia and on a side street to avoid alerting the inhabitants of 665 and, so far, there didn’t appear to be any sign that Conrad was aware he was now under surveillance. The brown house looked quiet, and the car out front at least proved that it had come from Stewart’s lot on Pico. The frame around the empty rectangle where a license plate should be proclaimed Stewart’s Chevys “best in the west!”

“Did you hear that?” Lawton asked, coming up behind him. It was all Starsky could do not shudder from the sudden intrusion. “A neighbor in the blue house, one Choi Quan, says that a Mexican woman and a boy moved in recently. This may the Maria Gomez who lives on North Cannon.” Starsky nodded, a logical conclusion since no one had been back at her house all week.

 “Quan’s wife spoke to her once,” Lawton continued, shading his eyes to watch the house. “She said her name was Maria and that she was the wife of the man who owned the house. Since the Quans only knew about a retard and his caretaker living there, this Choi was concerned and called police two nights ago when he heard screams and shouting.”

“Yeah?” Starsky picked absently at the bandage around his right wrist, unraveling a thread. His belly was clenched so tight that it was difficult to take a breath. What was going on inside that deceptively peaceful looking house? “They do anything about it?”

“One of my patrol officers, Wiskositz, spoke to Simon Conrad.”

“Good, then the bastard does live there.”

“Reported that Conrad said the TV was on too loud and he told Maria to turn it down. According to Wiskositz, she did have a black eye but refused to talk or even make eye contact.” Lawton cracked his neck, his jaw muscles jumping. “You got a plan, Sergeant, or do I go in my way? Because if there really are hostages inside, I’m only waiting so long before I give the order to throw in tear gas and storm the front door to get them out.”

“There are possibly two children in there!” Starsky protested. “We wait! Did you get a phone number?”

Lawton’s eyes were like two flat rocks without a single ounce of human compassion. He flipped the switch on the walkie-talkie, calling up Alverez again. “Got the phone line hooked up?”

“In the garage,” the accented voice answered.

“Back there.” Lawton jerked his thumb at the cheery yellow house with a ‘for rent’ sign out front. “You got thirty minutes, Sergeant.”

Deliberately walking away without responding to Lawton’s bluff, Starsky could almost feel the brush of Hutch’s hand against his, and the bump of Hutch’s hip, when he walked through the small door in one side of the garage. Just imagining Hutch beside him helped calm his nerves, at least a little bit. His head throbbed with the force of a jackhammer pulverizing concrete, and it was an effort to think clearly. What he wouldn’t give for a whole night of uninterrupted sleep and maybe a triple strength cup of coffee.

The smell of coffee hit him before his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the garage. The hastily assembled command center consisted of a couple of officers, a phone line and snacks. Starsky grabbed a cup of coffee without even registering doing so. The first swallow was awful and the second was as bitter as battery acid. At least it woke him up.

“You Alverez?” Starsky asked the short, stocky man with the face of a Mexican Indian.

“Since I came out of my Mama’s womb.” He flashed a toothy smile, radiating good-humor and competence at his job. Starsky relaxed marginally. “Reuben Jesusito Alverez. And you’re Dave Starsky. My cousin works in Parker Center. She dated you for a little while.”

“Small world,” Starsky muttered, trying to remember any girl who resembled his round, brown face. Nothing came to him.

“Lupe Vallecito.” Reuben handed over a phone receiver, not looking the least offended that Starsky didn’t instantly recall his cousin.

“She doesn’t look anything like you!” Starsky said, picturing a petite dark-haired beauty with a birthmark on her left cheek and a fiery passion for sex. Not at all a good little Latino girl, and he’d had fun with her.

“Good thing, huh?” Alverez laughed and dialed the phone.

Steeling himself, Starsky listened to the rings, counting six before someone picked up.

“Who is it?” a man challenged.

“Simon Conrad?” Starsky said, not giving him a moment to respond. “This is Sergeant David Starsky of Metro Police.”

“What makes you think I want to talk to you?” Conrad growled.

“Because you shot my partner, and took a couple at me. Seems to me that you got something to say. Thing is, I don’t know what that is,” Starsky said as reasonably as possible. He missed playing good cop/bad cop with Hutch. Hutch was just plain better at good cop than he was. “I’m willing to talk, but I need assurances.”

“I don’t bargain with cops.”

“But you bargain with lives?” Starsky countered.

~*~*~

Anne woke to the repeated br-iing of the telephone. She sat up abruptly before memories of the morning assailed her and she sank against a metal headboard with a barely stifled moan. Her whole body ached; her belly, thighs and genitals throbbing as if she’d been pried open, ripped apart, and hastily reassembled. She pressed hard against her lips, holding back the tears and shame, and replacing them with her earlier anger.

No matter what Simon did to her, she had to fight back.

The distant phone had stopped ringing, and she could hear Simon’s voice but not the words. Good-he was otherwise occupied, giving her time to try to escape.

The one drawback was the handcuff locked around her wrist and the short length of chain securing her to the headboard. After the sickening mockery of a family meeting, Simon and Mickey had dragged her into her old bedroom. She’d fought, kicking and then biting at them, but Simon had gotten the cuff in place with surprising dexterity. While Mickey watched, crowing with delight, Simon had unzipped his trousers to show off a turgid penis ready for bludgeoning her. He’d jerked down the pretty panties she’d worn for Quantrell with such force the lace ripped with an audible pop. Simon’s brutality had only grown with age. He rammed into her with no preparation, no foreplay or gentleness. Just primitive rutting, the man claiming his bride with cruel force.

Anne tugged at the solid cuff. When she was in high school, a friend had taught her how to jimmy the locks on the assigned lockers with a hairpin. She was fairly certain she still remembered the skill but her old bedroom didn’t yield such a useful probe. The only thing that remained from her growing-up years was the bed covered with the same coverlet she’d always hated, and a bureau. She took a calming breath, looking around with determination. There had to be something.

She wasn’t all that sure she could walk, even if she got free. Her thighs were shaking, the old wound on her left leg as painful as it had been moments after the crash.

“Fuck off!”

She flinched at the rage in Simon’s voice, her heart galloping.

He couldn’t see her, he was in another part of the house.

“Get out, Anney,” she chanted to herself. “Get out. No more prisons.” She concentrated on a better future, brighter days-something other than the hell of her brother’s madness.

The same squeal of hinges that always heralded one of her male relatives stealing in for a midnight grope nearly sent her into a true panic.

Not again, no.

“Anney? Mommy?” Robin whispered, his voice strained with fear.

“Robin!” she grabbed the ancient bedspread with its faded cabbage roses to hide her nakedness and lurid bruises. “Do you know where the back door is?”

~*~*~

“How was your breakfast, Mr. Hutchinson?” The morning shift nurse cast a critical eye at the breakfast tray, no doubt noting that Hutch had not eaten the cup of bouillon.

“It stayed down.” Hutch gave the short answer instead of complaining about the meager jello and apple juice. He was in no mood for pleasantries until he heard back from his partner.

She picked up his tray and replaced it with a brightly colored pamphlet entitled Understanding Your Ostomy Care.  “The ostomy specialist left this off for you,” Merrily said. “She’ll come talk to you after you read it over to help you with changing the bag before you leave the hospital.”

“When will that be?” Hutch asked, not the least interested in anything she had to teach. He could barely bring himself to touch the bag, and she expected him to actually look at the gross deformity?

“Your doctor will know more about that,” Merrily went on, obviously not put off by his attitude. “Also, you have a friend coming up. A Huggy Bear? Is that really a man’s name?”

“I don’t want to see anyone,” Hutch said coldly. He could almost picture Starsky rolling his eyes at this childish display of pique.

“Too bad, Blondie, I be already in the place.” Huggy swept in, doffing his blue denim cap at a surprised Merrily. “The name is Huggable A. Bear, my dear. And yours is?” He bowed over her hand, kissing the tips of her fingers.

“Merrily,” she giggled. “What does the A stand for?”

“Adorable, Merrily. Or Merrily, we’d make an adorable couple,” Huggy schmoozed. Hutch couldn’t help it, he laughed, and was surprised to discover that he found much of anything funny.

“I’ll have to tell my husband that,” Merrily replied, reclaiming her hand. “I’ve got to check on the fresh post-op in 415. I’ll be back with your painkillers in an hour, Mr. Hutchinson.”

“Your name is Hugo,” Hutch said straight-faced, suddenly glad that his friend had joined him. He picked up the pamphlet and shoved it into the bedside drawer. Huggy’s brown eyes followed the movement but he made no comment. “What are you doing here?”

“Comforting a friend in need, my blond brother!” Huggy announced, placing a large sack on the edge of the bed.

“Starsky call you?” Hutch asked with a pang.

“He did, indeed.” Huggy removed a bottle that vaguely resembled a champagne bottle and a deck of cards. “Bubbly, the non-alcoholic kind of sparkling cider, and some entertainment of the legal sort while we wait for your wayward partner to return.”

“Hug, you don’t have to do this,” Hutch hedged.

“Au contraire, mon ami,” Huggy said in a dreadful French accent. “Would I leave you hanging? Besides, the power went out on my block. A semi took the corner too tight and wiped out a street light, the side of the dry cleaner’s, the fire hydrant and a power pole. No lights, there’s live wires sparkin’ in the roadway, and the early shift hookers are trying to make time with the electrical crew.”

Hutch got the picture. “So, no chance of selling any booze until the street is safe again.”

“According to the boss of the crew, it’ll take them two hours minimum to put the wires back into place, transform the transformer and turn the power back on. So, you got me for an hour and a half.” Huggy waved his hands like a magician. “Then, presto-chango, Huggarino the magnificent is gonna make a mint selling his fine brews and elegant wines to the thirsty crew.”

“Pour me a round, then.” Hutch gestured at the bottle. He’d just had flat apple juice, maybe the carbonated kind would help the pain in his belly. He didn’t really think so, since it was only partially from the surgery. Most of it was stress worrying about Starsky. He chafed at not being able to help more. “Starsky went to Anaheim-the main suspect, Simon Conrad, is apparently holed up there.”

“He did sound distracted in our brief conversation.” Huggy finished pouring the libations. He tasted the juice and smiled ruefully, probably wishing for the version with more of a kick.

The sparkling cider was far tastier than the generic apple juice the hospital provided. Hutch recalled that the nurse had told him that if he drank enough fluids, he could get off the IV, so he finished the glass in two swallows. “More, bartender. You remember anything else about that Connie Symmond, which is apparently Conrad’s most common alias and the one he was arrested under?”

“You think I possess an eidetic memory?”

Hutch favored Huggy with his most Spock-like distain. “Your vocabulary is impressive, but that wasn’t the question.”

“Symmond never hung at the Pits or my earlier place but his name was on the periphery, you dig? I don’t hold with the tactics of the Gallo Negro gang, and he was one o’ their main dudes, ‘cept he wasn’t in the gang.”

“Friends with Gonzales?” Hutch asked, drinking his second glass more slowly. The bubbles made him burp which did help his tummy troubles. “Unusual that a white guy would be so tight with a Mexican gang.”

“He must have some heavy connections,” Huggy concluded. “Or dirt on somebody.”

“Or a little of both,” Hutch said thoughtfully. “Blackmail can work both ways.”

“Mexican stand-off kind of thing?”

“Could be. Not like either Gonzales or Conrad is likely to go to the cops under any circumstances, but…” Hutch trailed off, trying to marshal his easily distractible thoughts. While it was invigorating to throw out ideas with Huggy, he’d much rather have been doing it with Starsky. In the Torino. Beside him in Anaheim, watching his back.

With his belly the way it was, Hutch was very worried that he and Starsky wouldn’t work together for a long time. What would that do to their blossoming relationship? Would Starsky want to come home every night to a near-cripple who couldn’t even pull his own weight and had a hideous thing hanging off his side?

Sex was certainly out for the foreseeable future. The doctors had assured Hutch that the colostomy was only temporary. It would be…what was the damned complicated word Lincoln had used? Talk about Huggy’s new improved vocabulary, Hutch’s was getting a work-out with all the medical terminology. He’d learned all sorts of new words he didn’t really want to know. Colostomy and….

Re-anastomose. That was it. Meant re-connect.

Funny, how getting shot up had re-connected him to Starsky in the most wonderful way possible. But the physical reality of the injury was keeping them apart. At least, Hutch was reluctant to let Starsky see the damned thing.

Except, Starsky had actually wanted to see the bag. So the reluctance was all on Hutch’s end. Was he being overly vain? He should be at least as mature about it as Starsky was. Or as perverted.

But there was no way he was wearing a black velvet bag attached to his belly.

“Earth to Captain America?” Huggy called. “You orbiting the moon, my man? Want me to get that pretty Merrily to come back in with the good stuff?”

Hutch came out of his surprisingly raunchy daydream with a jerk. Starsky had been running his hand down Hutch’s belly toward the southern regions wearing an aroused smile and nothing else.

Hutch had just said, “Love me, love my ostomy?” when Huggy interrupted.

“No more drugs.” Hutch shook his head to dispel the last of the erotica and the room dipped sickeningly. No more drugs of any kind if he could manage the bellyache. “They’re why I’m spacing out so easily.” He pressed his hand over his abdomen. “Uh-maybe Gonzalez has something on Conrad and vice versa, keeping them both in a mutual accord. Neither of ’em dare to get out of the partnership because the other could so easily slam him down.”

“If that’s true, they’ve worked together for a long time.” Huggy idly shuffled the cards, doling out five each.

Picking his up, Hutch was amused to see that he’d gotten the King of Hearts. The man portrayed on the pasteboard had dark curly hair and sparkling blue eyes to go with his bright blue bandolier and Revolutionary War style blue uniform. Captain Starsky fighting in the war between the American colonies and Britain. “What are we playing?”

“What else, five card stud?” Huggy smirked. “We could play for your bar tab. If I win, you gotta pay up.”

“Not likely to happen,” Hutch said, finally noticing all of his cards. He had a royal flush, the first he’d ever been dealt. Not all in the same suit, but still impressive. “Starsky thinks that Conrad killed his own father when he was a kid. That could be what Gonzalez knows about him. And I match the bar tab plus a month of free drinks.” Huggy’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, probably more from the revelation about Conrad than the bet until Hutch laid down his cards. Then Huggy just glowered.

~*~*~

Starsky cursed and would have thrown the entire telephone down on the cement floor of the garage but stopped himself just in time before he cut off the only communication they had with Simon Conrad.

“Trouble in paradise?” Alvarez asked with a click of his tongue.

“The bastard refused to deal in any way,” Starsky ground out, slugging back the remainder of the bitter coffee. “Said he was just taking what was his and we’d better back off.”

“Or else.” Alvarez pretended to cock his finger and fire a bullet. “That how you got the shiner and the snappy head wear?”

“Gossip gets around that fast?” Starsky asked wearily, the nasty aftertaste of the coffee lingering in his mouth. He wanted to spit. “Conrad admitted to grabbing his sister and nephew. He sounded like one of those cult guys-startin’ his own tribe, just his kids and a bunch of wives. It’s sick.”

“Fuck like that probably has a bunch of guns in there, maybe even Army surplus grenades and shit.”

“Anyone ever tell you you were an optimist?” Starsky scraped his tongue on his teeth. “‘Cause they were wrong.” He got up, restless and tense. The garage was too small to move around easily, especially with all the equipment the police had dragged in. “It’s been great, but I gotta move. I need to see the house.” He paused at the door, slitting his eyes against the glare of the sun after being in a dimly lit room. “Your cousin was a nice girl-how’s she doing?”

“Got knocked up, married, all in the last couple of months. I think the baby’s due at the end of summer.”

“Tell her I said hi.” Starsky went out into the heat, sun beating down on his aching head, thinking of babies. Robin Benson’s abrupt birth after the car wreck had almost been a catalyst for everything that happened since then. Or maybe it was just the car wreck. If he remembered correctly, at the trial Anne admitted that she and Art had recently moved out of a rental apartment and had no permanent address in June of 1970. After returning from a trip in Mexico, they were planning to stay with her brother until Art could get a job and save up some money. What if Simon Conrad had always had less than brotherly interest in his sister? What if….

Starsky’s belly twisted and he gulped down the even more vile taste of bile rising in his throat. Anne had said that Simon didn’t hurt her but, in his experience, abuse victims frequently covered for their abusers, even years after the actual cruelty.

He stared over at the brown house on a quiet block now ringed with police. It looked so ordinary, so mundane, but what if life in that house had far from average even after Conrad allegedly murdered his own father? Was Conrad truly taking what was his? What if Robin Benson was his kid? When Hutch had tried to take the baby away, Simon was forced to either give up his own livelihood or his sister. Giving up Anne must have been the lesser of two perceived evils because at least he could provide for Robin while Anne was in prison. Once she was out-why had he suddenly snapped and come after Hutch?

Too many questions and not enough answers. Starsky shoved his sunglasses on, which cut the sun’s glare in half but did nothing for his headache.

He needed Hutch. Wanted Hutch by his side, to volley back ideas that countered Starsky’s bleak theories. Simon Conrad must have seen his carefully constructed world coming unraveled at an alarming rate and struck back at the one person he considered the original threat. Hutch had shot Art Benson and tried to adopt Robin.

“Didn’t get anywhere negotiating with a criminal, did you?” Lawton sneered, tramping over a bright clump of roses in the far corner of the yellow house’s yard.

“This takes time!” Starsky growled back, even though his own gut told him to rush the house and grab the hostages. “We gotta find Conrad’s weak spot without endangering the women and children.” He took in the SWAT team gunmen poised behind a row of police cruisers, all with their guns at the ready to blast the house and stabbed a stiffened finger at the lieutenant. “You remind them that these are people who they are supposed to protect and serve, not slaughter, you hear me?”

“Your captain will hear from me,” Lawton said with quiet malice.

Starsky jutted out his chin, challenging the man’s authority without speaking and stalked away to his only refuge, the Torino. His insides were as agitated as Hutch’s blender on full speed, churning all the stress of the last few days into a poisonous brew. How the hell was he supposed to rescue the Bensons and fight Lawton on his own?

Hutch!

Just as he touched the driver’s side door handle of the car, Starsky felt a warm presence against his right side, as if Hutch’s thigh, and then his whole leg, were pressed alongside his own. The pressure grounding him, Starsky took in a deep breath.

No one was next to him. No one was even close by. The nearest person was the first of the annoying news reporters setting up just beyond the sawhorses erected as a barrier to keep out the public. Starsky got into the car to avoid being seen by the persistent Channel 7 anchor. He’d had dealings with Matt Grindell in the past and they inevitably ended up with shouted accusations and complaints that the police were preventing the TV station from reporting the news. After his run-in with Lawton, Starsky didn’t have the patience or the energy to go at it with Grindell, as well.

He thumbed the switch on the mike, staring out the windshield at the brown house. What secrets did it hold?

Dispatch connected him to Minnie after a series of loud squawks and an entire minute of white noise that nearly burned a hole in his brain. Damned out-moded equipment.

“Hey, Starsky, can you hear me?” Minnie’s voice was crackly with static and it was obvious that she had repeated the question more than once.

“Just talk quick, Minnie,” Starsky said succinctly. “You got anything for me?”

“Yeah, baby, I do. And the captain sends his love, too.” Minnie laughed. “Quantrell Murphy woke up in the recovery room after his surgery. He couldn’t talk because of that breathing tube in his throat, but he scribbled out answers when Babcock questioned him. He and Anne Benson were seeing one another. Conrad burst in and shot him-he didn’t know why.”

“Damn.” Starsky nearly cracked his jaw trying to keep the word from coming out. Dobey had a fit when his officers swore on air. “It all fits, Minnie. Conrad was getting rid of the competition.”

“That’s not all,” Minnie added, static underscoring everything she said like ominous background music in a horror movie. “Since we got such a good response from Orange County on that…sociopath, I cast my net out wider. Got a hit in Kern County now. In 1972, a Hispanic woman charged Connie Symmond with rape and repeated abuse. He’d hired her to care for his baby and she claimed he imprisoned her, forcing her to prostitute herself in exchange for drugs while he beat her and got her pregnant. She lost the baby.”

“Same thing all over again,” Starsky sighed. How had a monster like this slipped through the cracks so many times? “I’m bringing him down, Minnie, for good this time.”

“Don’t get into any trouble.”

“Not if I can help it,” Starsky agreed, clicking the off button. He should get back into the garage with Alvarez. Try to establish some kind of connection with Conrad before the situation spiraled any more out of control than it already had. First, he just needed two minutes more of quiet to unwind.

Bracing his left elbow on the car window, Starsky leaned into his hand, absently sucking on his pinkie. He was parked two houses down on the same side of the street as the Conrad home and because he had come in from a different direction than most of the original patrol cars that had staked out house, he was now boxed in by the orange caution tape and the cluster of reporters behind. There were very few cops on this side of the street, but he could easily see Lawton’s sniper brigade arranged stiffly on the other end of Magnolia. They’d advanced closer since he’d first arrived. There was no way the inhabitants couldn’t see the threatening horde. With Conrad already on the defense, this outright attack had to be jacking up his paranoia to monumental proportions. Anything could happen.

The car’s interior was stifling, dulling the senses. Starsky’s eyes drifted closed and his arm slipped, his teeth coming down sharply on his littlest finger. “Shit!” He shook his hand, now hurting almost as much as the right one, and stretched, forcing alertness. A flash of red caught his eye and he turned, searching the bushes of 667 Magnolia.

Must have been his imagination. The whole block had been quietly evacuated.

Massaging the kinks in his neck, Starsky climbed out of the car just as Lawton and two other men, both in dark suits and ties that would show up well on camera, came over to the caution tape to speak to the media. The blond haired man with the insincere smile of a car salesman must be the spokesperson for the Anaheim PD. He handed out some papers to the reporters who swarmed around him and held up a hand for silence.

“We can’t make any specific comments on the ongoing investigation, or give names at this time, but I can answer general questions on camera for your viewing audiences,” he said genially. Lawton glowered at his side, his arms crossed over his bulletproof vest. A smaller man with a narrow nose and distant black eyes stood next to him, probably the captain that Dobey outranked.

The reporters all surged forward, demanding answers to the mid-day drama unfolding in a quiet neighborhood, the recording lights on two TV cameras blinking to life.

Not wanting to get swept up in the melee, Starsky cut around the hood of his car to the sidewalk, watching the house. Could he get in? What if he walked right up on the front and knocked? Would Conrad shoot?

Starsky wasn’t ready to find out; he’d been in the line of fire once already. He was about to get back to his phone link-up when the sound of rustling leaves caught his attention, and there-half concealed in the bushes dividing 667 and 665 Magnolia-there was another flash of red and white.

Starsky started over to the privet hedge, so absorbed he didn’t notice Lawton coming up behind him.

“You’ve got some private agenda going on, Sergeant Starsky. If you interfere with my handling of this situation, I’ll have you up in front of IA so fast your….”

Starsky ignored the lieutenant, about to push aside the greenery when a timid voice asked, “Can I ride in your car now?”

“Robin?” Starsky knelt, sitting back on his heels so that he didn’t loom over the crouched child. A tear-streaked face peered solemnly back at him. Robin Benson wasn’t tall for an eight-year old, and hunched over his knees, concealed in the bushes, he looked impossibly small. The broad red stripes of his t-shirt were what Starsky had seen amongst the green leaves. “How’d you get here?”

“Who is this?” Lawton asked so gently that Starsky was momentarily distracted. So the gruff man did have a softer side hidden under all that military bearing.

“Robin Benson, I reported him missing this morning.” Starsky held out a hand, encouraged when Robin grabbed on with a desperate grip and allowed himself to be drawn from his hidey-hole. The boy clung to Starsky, his whole frame shaking when Starsky pulled him into a tight embrace. “You’re safe now, kid, you’re safe.”

“I couldn’t stop…Uncle Simon shot Anney’s friend!” Robin blurted, his words tripping over each other in the rush. He wiped his runny nose on Starsky’s jeans, narrow chest heaving with the effort to speak. “I didn’t want t’go with Uncle Simon, but he made us!”

Concerned for the boy’s privacy, and afraid of alerting the ears of the rabid media who were still pestering the PR guy with questions, Starsky glanced around for a place to sit. His car was right in the middle of the press conference, but the SWAT van was parked diagonally over on the opposite side of the street, beyond the line of gunmen. “You think we can take this out of the circus?” he asked.

Lawton followed his gaze to the ominous black truck and gave a curt nod. “You’ll aid this investigation if you can give us a visual of the interior of Conrad’s abode,” he said to Robin, walking slightly behind Starsky to shield the boy still clinging to his savior from the press.

They had to go the long way around to the SWAT van, which meant walking in front of the Torino to cross the street, leaving them in the public eye, and in view of anyone who might be looking out the front window of the house, for longer than Starsky liked. He was more than glad when they reached the relative shelter of the phalanx of police cars and black-uniformed SWAT team.

“Huh?” Robin wrapped his fingers tightly around the loose end of Starsky’s belt but looked up at the two men with a quizzical expression, no longer crying.

 Catching sight of the slight smile on Lawton’s face, Starsky almost laughed. The guy did have a sense of humor. “He wants you to tell us what the inside of your uncle’s house looks like.”

“It’s Mickey’s house, not Uncle Simon’s,” Robin said indignantly, but shrank back, pressing against Starsky when confronted by the huge shiny black van. “Looks like where Darth Vader would live.”

“That house?” Lawton asked, obviously not following a child’s logic.

Starsky snorted a laugh. “The van does look kinda like the Death Star, except not so round,” he agreed. “Step on up. I’ll bet there’s donuts in there, unless I’m off the mark by a mile.”

“Donuts?” Robin immediately hopped up the stairs and inside. “With sprinkles?”

“That we do have,” Lawton said dryly.

Robin ate his first donut so quickly Starsky was about ready to perform the Heimlich maneuver if necessary. He waited until the boy had taken a long drink of water and burped before starting his questioning. Lawton, looking uncomfortable, crossed his arms over his chest again, resting one hip on an empty gun rack.

“Robin, who else was there with you besides your uncle?” Starsky asked, repressing his tension by gobbling a glazed old-fashioned. The heavy sweetness managed to clear the drowsiness from his brain but sat heavily on his stomach.

Robin’s lower lip quivered, but he didn’t start crying. “Uncle Simon chained Maria up!”

“That would be Maria Gomez?” Lawton asked.

He nodded, licking the icing off another chocolate donut. “Maria was at the stove, and Miguel wanted to be with his mom, but we had to sit at the table with Mickey.” His shudder told them exactly how he felt about his other uncle. “Uncle Simon hit Anney, my mom.” This time he hitched a sob, tears falling down wan cheeks. “I didn’t-I shoulda helped her.”

“Listen, you’re helping her now.” Starsky leaned forward, hands on his knees, keeping the boy’s attention focused on him. “But we need to know all that you know. How did you get out of the house? Is your mother still in the kitchen or somewhere else?’

“We’re wasting time,” Lawton muttered, looking out the open door of the van. “The captain is on his way back.”

“C’mon, Robin. You’re the one who’s been inside the house,” Starsky encouraged, watching the boy’s almost transparent blue eyes widen. He had his mother’s eyes. What color were Conrad’s? For that matter, what color had Art Benson’s been? Blue that pale was extremely rare. “Where was Simon the last time you saw him?”

“He was talking on the phone, in the kitchen.” Robin pointed unerringly toward the house, even though they could no longer see it inside the van. “He’s horrible! He promised me we’d go to Disneyland if I stayed with Anney-I mean, my mom, and then…I thought she’d be all mean ’cause she’d been in prison, but she was nice … and he hurt her.”

Starsky wanted to race right up the front walk, shoot out the lock on the door and slam Simon Conrad into a wall. Anything to bleed off the righteous anger building inside him. Robin was too shaky, it was taking too long. “Gotta work with us here, kid,” he prompted.

“My mom’s in a bedroom, near the… There’s a back door-a little bathroom at the end of the hall, and a little room with the-uh …” He hiccupped, sucking chocolate off his lip. “Y’know, where you wash the clothes?”

“Laundry room,” Lawton supplied in a voice that was pure grade-A steel.

“I unlocked it.”

“Good man!” Starsky high-fived him, so ready to move that his leg muscles twitched and jumped of their own accord.

 Hutch, this one is for you!

“I can go wide around 663, go through the yard and approach the fence without him seeing me,” he planned out loud. Robin watched him nervously, tearing tiny bits of cake out of his donut and rolling it into mini balls.

Lawton’s walkie-talkie took that moment to squawk loudly. “Lawton,” he identified.

“Captain Standish came in here and got Conrad back on the phone,” Alverez reported. In the background, a man’s voice could be heard urging someone to calm down. “And it ain’t going well. Conrad claims he’s gonna start shooting real soon if we don’t back off.”

“Pull your team off the line!” Starsky said so sharply that Robin whimpered. “I can do this! In the back, solo, as long as Standish or you keep Conrad occupied.”

Lawton ground his teeth, the veins in his neck bulging, and he looked over at Robin with an enigmatic expression. “Tell the captain we’re going in soft,” he replied. “The team is standing down.”

“Are you gonna save my mom?” Robin asked, his bottom lip tucked up under the top lip. “Like Luke Skywalker rescues Princess Leia?”

“I’ll try, kid,” Starsky said, feeling absurdly like a world-weary Han Solo. He was down the stairs, one foot on the grass when a hand wrapped in his jacket jerked him back. Pain surged from his wrist up to his shoulder as his sleeve caught on the bulky bandage.

“Sergeant.”

Starsky let himself be stopped but he turned, shaking off the lieutenant’s grasp. The abrupt movement jarred his head and his vision swam, neat lawns and cracker box houses swaying lazily in the sun. He put his left hand on the sleek side of the black van with casual nonchalance, pretending he wasn’t as dizzy as hell.

“I have twin grandsons,” Lawton said by way of explanation. “I’m following your lead on this one.”

Grateful and surprised at the glimpse of his private life, Starsky said, “Thanks.” He would have nodded, but just keeping his head upright was so difficult he didn’t want to jinx things by jiggling the contents of his brain. “Give me twenty minutes to get inside and find the women.”

“Ten.”

“Fifteen?” Starsky countered, hoping he didn’t look as shocky as he felt. The sun was hot enough to melt the bullets in his gun. If he was lucky, Conrad had the air conditioner on high inside the house.

“I’ve already started counting,” Lawton said with a grim smile. “My men ram the front door at twelve-fifteen exactly.”

“It’s already noon?” Starsky chuffed a mirthless laugh. “Musta missed my luncheon engagement.” He broke into a trot, using the hulking van as cover to make it to the sidewalk. Number 663 was a creamy yellow accented by green shutters. A tall privacy fence divided the yard from Conrad’s house. That was both a blessing and a curse, since it kept him hidden, but also meant he had to scale the thing without the help of a boost or ladder to get him over. He and Hutch would have argued amiably about who had to be on the bottom and who stood on the other’s head, using the banter to lighten the stress. Now the tension pulled at him, making it hard to breathe, much less concentrate on the task ahead. The dizziness persisted and every step jarred his head so that the grassy earth appeared to shake and jiggle like Hutch’s green jello.

Starsky didn’t let himself think, pure instinct to protect and survive taking command. He was over the fence and sliding behind a huge unpruned cypress tree so quickly he was sure he’d beaten his personal best on the police academy obstacle course back in his cadet days.

The backyard was a weed-infested mess without a discernable garden. Here and there plants struggled to make a comeback, but the heat worked against them, crisping delicate green leaves and parching the dirt. Starsky ducked down, careful not to rustle the branches of the cypress, gauging his chances of getting across the dry ground. The door Robin had unlocked was just opposite him, at the end of the house, and the vent for a dryer jutted out just below a small window. To the left of the door were two windows, assumedly bedrooms along a long flat wall and then protrusion of a larger room with sliding glass doors leading out onto a cracked patio. Starsky could see the figure of a man with thick dark hair watching a flickering TV set. Mickey Conrad?

Mickey was facing the sliding door and would be able to see anyone standing exposed in the yard. Starsky took a step back, staying concealed in the foliage. How long had it been? The numbers on his watch seemed to jump and dance, shifting positions on the face like some Salvador Dali painting come to life, but he was sure it had only been five minutes. Ten to go. The distance to the laundry room door from his current position was barely five feet, but it was five feet where he would be vulnerable to attack. Better to gauge the situation first, even if it meant losing precious minutes.

He could hear a phone ringing ceaselessly inside the house and then the sudden blare of a voice on a megaphone.

“Simon Conrad! You are surrounded!” Lawton’s amplified words seemed to bounce off the neighboring houses.

The noise galvanized Mickey, who jumped up and ran past the sliding glass door, presumably to the front of the house.

Starsky would have cheered if he could spare the energy, and took the opportunity he’d been given, racing across the yard to the unlocked door.

“This is the police!” Lawton announced. “You will throw down any weapons and come out with your hands in the air.”

~*~*~

“You’re doing really well, Mr. Hutchinson,” the physical therapist enthused, guiding him toward his bed with one arm anchored at his waist and the other holding his elbow.

Hutch wanted to slug her. That or slice her belly open, sew it back together, and see how she felt trying to walk standing upright. But he was raised to be a gentleman, so he didn’t. He just let his imagination run rampant.

With every step, he was sure the sutures securing his abdomen were going to burst open and spill his intestines out onto the linoleum like so much cooked spaghetti. That they had not done so thus far was only sheer, unadulterated luck on his part. Four steps to the bathroom, using the toilet the way a man should, and four steps back to the bliss of his bed should have been far more of a victory, but Hutch had only one thing on his mind: Starsky’s safety. The morning packed with visits from every single member of the ancillary medical staff charged with getting him ready for discharge, not including Huggy’s visit, had been grueling and more than aggravating when he wanted to concentrate on his partner.

“I’ll be back this afternoon for another fifteen minutes,” Lopita said with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader boosting the spirits of the losing team.

“Why?” Hutch demanded. He was being surly, and he didn’t care.

“Your doctor’s orders!” she insisted happily, running off to torment some other patient.

Hutch pressed a palm against his belly, easing back onto the pillows, resenting the rustle of plastic when he did so. Damned colostomy. Damned shooting. He needed to be by Starsky’s side, going into battle shoulder to shoulder, not lying like some damned invalid unable to cross the entire length of the hospital room floor.

Invalid. As in in-valid. No longer of any use.

Hutch cursed under his breath, pulling the covers up so he didn’t have to look at the lower half of his body. The ostomy specialist that Merrily had mentioned had come by just after Huggy left, and had presented him with yet another pamphlet to get him used to the hideous bag on his belly. He stared at the glossy publication illustrated with a cartoon stick figure jogging along in a park.

 Know Your Ostomy. Fuck your ostomy was more like it.

He sucked in a savage breath, his throat raw from holding back his emotions all morning. He was fully aware that his current state was not the fault of Lopita or the hapless psychologist who’d come in suggesting they discuss his feelings on his shooting. He’d shouted the poor guy out of the room and gotten a reproachful look from Merrily.

For the first time since Starsky left, there was no one else in the room. No one telling him how he ought to be grateful to be alive. No one motivating to get him to work on his recovery by getting out of bed and jogging the length of the fourth floor corridor.

Nobody.

Hutch closed his eyes wearily. At least when Huggy was here, the thought of Starsky’s love had given him something good and strong to look forward to, but as the morning wore on, even that little gem had eroded into so much dust.

Starsky. Where was he right now? Both Dobey and Minnie had called with updates earlier, but nothing in over an hour, closer to two. Hutch’s belly ached, and not because of the unexpected jaunt to the bathroom. He was afraid for Starsky. Afraid he’d never see his best friend ever again. He hated being this dependent. Hated that Starsky was going after the man who had shot them both, alone.

He crumpled the pamphlet, ripping the cover page, and would have thrown it across the room except Starsky’s face came to him, cheeks pink with embarrassment at the subject, but accepting of Hutch, no matter what. He’d stroked the back of Hutch’s thigh and said: “I’ve gone down a girl’s ass hole, if you want to know the truth, and that’s mostly the same as a stoma.”

It would never be the same, by Hutch’s way of thinking. Not even close, but he had to get some kind of perspective or this was going to be a bleak summer for both of them. He smoothed out the cover of the pamphlet and turned to the first page with deliberate calmness. With every page, he chanted “it’s only temporary” and got through the whole chapter on attaching the appliance to his skin before Merrily came in with a meal tray.

“Some lunch, Ken,” she said, placing the tray on the bed table. “You did so well with the clears this morning, you’ve advanced to soft diet.”

“Whoopee.” Hutch twirled a finger in the air, not even faking real interest.

“Scoff all you want, but eating and walking gets you out of here.” She handed him a thermometer. “A quick set of vitals before you drink anything cold and I’ll get out of your hair. Want the TV on while you eat?”

“Anything but soap operas or game shows,” he grumped, sliding the slender glass tube under his tongue.

“That leaves the news or reruns of Bewitched.” She switched on the channel 7 news.

 The weatherman came on describing the heat wave, indicating the temperatures of local cities on a colorful map. He tapped his pointer on Bay City. “BC comes in at ninety-three at noon today, with ninety-three for Los Angeles, Torrance, Santa Monica and Venice, too. Anaheim over there in Orange County is a sweltering ninety-nine degrees. Santa Ana is just as bad. In the Valley, we have triple digits, and the cool spot today is Long Beach with an even ninety degrees due to off shore breezes.”

Hutch glanced at the thermometer when he handed it back to the nurse. His was a normal ninety-eight. At least something was normal around here.

“You keep this up and the doctor will have to send you home,” Merrily teased, jotting down the number on her notes. “How’s your pain level on a scale of one to ten?”

Hutch regarded his lunch, considering the question. He was surprised to realize that despite the exercise, his wound wasn’t agonizing. “Four or five,” he said, taking a spoonful of tomato soup. “I’m okay.”

“You can have one more dose of morphine now, if you think you need it, and after that you’re on Tylenol with codeine, or Motrin for pain.”

“No more morphine.” He tasted the soup. It was good, sweet and tangy the way tomato soup should be.

“Okay, Tyco it is,” she said with a nod. “I’ll bring it back soon.”

“The San Francisco Giants won against the St. Louis Cardinals, eight to five,” the sports reporter on the TV said with excitement. Footage showed a batter striking out and the whole Giants team going wild with glee, smacking each other on the rump and throwing caps in the air.

Hutch finished the soup, glancing up when the sports segment ended and anchorman Bill Steadman came back on screen. “We have another update on that situation out in Anaheim,” he read off a sheet of paper. “Police are still surrounding the home of a man suspected of shooting Bay City Police Detective Ken Hutchinson on June 13th. Apparently the suspect has several hostages inside his house, including his wife and two boys.”

The screen changed to a shot of a street teeming with police cars and one bright red Torino with a dashing white stripe. Hutch dropped his container of milk on the tray, paying no attention to the slosh of white liquid when he learned forward to concentrate on the recorded press conference.

With Lawton’s voice booming in his ears, Starsky ran full tilt across the yard, jerking the laundry room door open and skidding inside. His heart pounding so hard it felt like it was trying to escape from his ribcage, he plastered himself against the wall of the laundry room. He angled his Beretta toward the door to the hall, consciously slowing his breathing to focus on the dimly lit corridor. Nothing moved, the only sounds coming from the bullhorn out in the street.

Starsky advanced into the hall slowly, looking to the left and right. Four other doors, two on each side of him. Robin had said the laundry room was next to the bathroom and Anne’s room was next to that. He pushed gently on the first door, seeing a glimpse of avocado green sink and moved on. The next door was locked.

Bingo.

Waiting two beats, Starsky slammed into the door just as Lawton yelled, “It will go easier on you if you release the women and children, Conrad!”

“Get off my property!” Simon screamed.

The door crashed in with a jolt and Starsky nearly fell to his knees as he turned, sweeping the area with his pistol. Anne was braced on one elbow, turning a dowel in the headboard. She regarded him with such a quizzical expression that Robin’s Star Wars analogy came back to Starsky and he almost expected her to say “You’re a little short to be a stormtrooper.”

Instead she pulled on the handcuff chain attached to the dowel. “Shoot this off!” Anne said urgently.

Starsky shook his head, motioning her to silence. He could still hear noises from the street as the SWAT team readied for attack. Simon and Mickey were talking in the front room, not quite loudly enough for him to hear their actual words, but if he could hear them, they could also hear him.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he whispered, giving only half a notice to the fact that she was obviously nude, although partially covered with a bedspread. Simon had done a number on her, one eye was almost swollen shut, her lip was split, and she was covered with bruises. “Most cuffs have a universal key.” He dug his own handcuff key out of his pocket, sending a silent plea to whomever watched over them to make this work. “Can you walk?” he asked, sliding the tiny key into the lock. It fit, and the cuff parted easily.

“Damn it!” Anne pulled the coverlet over her shoulders. “I have no clothes!”

“We can get you something as soon as-“

“Where’s Robin?”

“He’s out there, he told me how to get in.” Starsky gave her a little push to get her going. “There’s very little time.” His internal clock told him the entire fifteen minutes must be gone. Where was the cavalry when you needed it?

“Maria!” Anne said, not moving, her ravaged face resolute. “She’s locked in the kitchen!”

His heart sinking, Starsky tried to convince himself that rescuing Anne was enough, but he knew it wasn’t. If Hutch had been there, one of them could have gone for the other woman. But he wasn’t there, which left only one person for the job. “You have to get out, I’ll go find her. Where’s the boy?”

“I’m gonna kill her!” Simon roared from the other room, the blast of a gunshot like an explosion in the confines of the house. Someone screamed, high pitched and terrified.

“Oh, God!” Anne’s face crumpled. “She…she can’t even get away!”

“Run, Anne! Run out the back door now!” Starsky shoved her hard down the hall and took off in the opposite direction, afraid of what he might find in the kitchen.

“No more chances, Conrad! We’re coming in!” Lawton bellowed over the loud speaker. “One!”

Starsky dashed into the deserted family room, past the flickering TV. Bob Barker encouraged some game show contestant to take a guess, and Starsky shoved his gun into the kitchen.

“Two!” Lawton’s words came at the exact moment of a second gunshot from Conrad. Return gunfire peppered the front of the house, shaking the walls.

“Madre Maria, Madre Maria….”

“Son of a bitch!” Conrad snarled, sending another shot out the window. Starsky could hear glass shattering but couldn’t see around the side of the room to where the brothers stood.

“Get ’em, Simon!” an excited voice babbled. “Kill ’em!”

 “La Madre de Dios, me protégé,” Maria was praying ceaselessly. “Llena de tolerancia.”

Her face was a crimson mask. Blood matted in her long, thick hair and spattered the front of her shapeless maternity dress. The bastard had shot her in the head. Miraculously, she was still conscious, her eyes dark, empty voids, the whites shocking against the gore. The only signs of life were her endless loop of prayers and the way she clutched a black-haired boy at her side.

Starsky crept forward, the linoleum surprisingly cool despite the sweltering heat of the house. No air conditioning here. His shirt was wringing wet, stuck to his skin with sweat.

“Jesu-Cristo…hijo del dios, neustro padre…..”

“Maria, shut the fuck up!” Conrad shouted, firing in rapid succession at the police in the street. He ejected the clip and inserted another like a pro. “Mickey! Do something about her!”

“She’s bleedin’, Maria’s bleedin’!” Mickey giggled.

They had to move fast! Starsky tried to remember the kid’s name, and couldn’t. He crouched down, hiding behind the long bar that separated the kitchen from the dining area and crept closer, ignoring the too-fast heartbeat that matched the throb of pain in his head. This was his only chance to get them out. Maria was looking straight towards him but didn’t seem to notice his approach at all. The boy did, shifting his weight ever so slightly so that he could watch Starsky with wary black eyes.

Starsky beckoned him, silently holding up his badge. The boy shook his head, pointing to his mother’s restraints. Damned fool, Starsky thought with irritation, doesn’t even know when to run when he has the chance.

“Madre Maria, llena de tolerancia….”

“THREE!” Lawton’s voice came at the same instant as a barrage of bullets obliterated what was left of the glass in the front window and took down Mickey and Simon simultaneously.

Starsky lunged for the Gomezes, covering both with his body. Bullets were flying everywhere, smashing through furniture, toppling pictures from the walls and gouging holes in the floor. He didn’t pay any attention to the mayhem and shoved the handcuff key in the lock with hands that shook so violently that he bent the key at right angles.

The front door crashed open, SWAT members swarming in like ominous black-booted stormtroopers, automatic rifles held at the ready. Miguel screamed, terrified. Maria swayed when the cuff dropped away from her ankle, no longer supported by the stove or her son. There was a bloody red line scoring her flesh all the way around her lower leg.

“Jesu-Cristo….”

“This one’s dead,” a SWAT officer said flatly, his face mask obscuring any sign of humanity. He kept his gun on Simon while checking for a pulse in Mickey’s neck.

“Hijo del dios….”

“Get an ambulance in here!” Starsky shouted, holstering his pistol. He hurt all over, his back burning with pain, but Maria’s injuries were far worse than his own minor complaints. He’d made it this far, he could keep going as long as he sat down for a while, with his arm around the boy.

Lawton appeared, parting the sea of black, and Starsky’s anger returned, sweeping away all the momentary aches. “What the fuck did you think you were doing, Lawton?” Starsky surged upright, going for the man’s jugular. “There were still hostages inside. You could have gotten us all killed!”

“You had your fifteen minutes,” Lawton replied without raising his voice, his tone authoritarian. He didn’t flinch at Starsky’s attack, just raised an arm to ward off the blow aimed at his face. Starsky wobbled on impact, falling back, weak and trembling with rage. “Benson got out and I didn’t know if you were still alive,” Lawton said. “We had to retaliate and secure the area before Conrad took down any of my men.”

“Your men!” Starsky seethed. “Conrad shot Maria in the head because your team was pressuring him!”

“I am not having this argument with you now,” Lawton said unflappably reasonable. “You’re bleeding. When the ambulance team gets here, get some medical attention.” He turned on his heel, dismissing Starsky. “Gabriel, check the rest of the house! Are they both dead?”

“Looks like that one is still alive,” Gabriel replied, still guarding the Conrad brothers with his rifle.

“Round up all weapons and ammo,” Lawton commanded.

“Maria, madre de Jesus….”

Starsky glanced over at Mickey’s unmoving body and the whole room swooped sideways like a jet in heavy turbulence. His stomach lurched, and the smell of blood was so sickening he had to swallow repeatedly to keep from barfing. Simon glared murderously from the floor where he lay, hands cuffed behind him.

“Mama!” Miguel shrieked when one of the police tried to separate him from Maria.

“Leave him alone!” Starsky snapped, bracing himself against the table. The floor was still tilted at an odd angle and he wasn’t sure he could walk, but anger kept him grounded. “Let him stay with her.”

“Stand down, Smith,” Lawton called before marching out of the room.

 The SWAT member took a step back, letting Miguel take his mother’s hand. Starsky was surprised to see that Maria was lying down because he didn’t remember seeing her move on her own. She still prayed with a weakening voice, the plea reminding Starsky of the cantors in the synagogue his grandmother used to attend. The rising and falling intonations were weirdly otherworldly and soothing at the same time.

“Paramedics coming through!” a voice yelled just as two men in blue uniforms pushed past the troopers tramping around the house. Glass covered the floor, crunching under foot, and Starsky noticed with dispassionate interest that a crime scene tech had already drawn a chalk outline around Mickey Conrad’s body.

“She’s got a bullet in the head,” Starsky said, finding it more difficult than usual to speak clearly.

One of the paramedics immediately started checking Maria’s vitals but the other, a thin-faced boy with chocolate skin and a pimple on his chin, parked in front of Starsky, shining a light into his eyes. “Where were you shot, sir?” he asked politely. “Do you know your name?”

“Starsky!” he snapped. “I was shot yesterday, not…” The light hurt his eyes, leaving after images that flipped and blurred like a TV with a broken vertical hold. Starsky blinked, irritated at the idiot kid. “When did the fire department start hiring teenagers to work as paramedics?” He shoved the light away and felt the room sway lazily back and forth.

“I’m over twenty-one, Mr. Starsky,” the paramedic replied with a grin. “You’d better sit down before you fall down. My name is Tyrone.”

“Tyrone, take care of people who were actually hurt,” Starsky said, grateful for the assist to the linoleum. He leaned back against the wooden paneling of the bar and yelped when pain coursed the length of his spine.

~*~*~

The phone rang just as Hutch was about to go out of his mind. If he’d had clothes to wear, he would have been dressed and calling a cab for the long drive to Anaheim just to get some information. Naturally, the TV news was no help at all, having returned to your daytime dramas already in progress.

“Starsky!” Hutch shouted. It hadn’t even occurred to him that it might not be Starsky calling. It could have been his mother. In fact, he should have called his mother to tell her he was still among the living.

“We got ’em. Everybody’s out and safe,” Starsky said so quickly that Hutch had to mentally insert spaces between the words to understand him. “Well, except for Maria, she was shot. But she’s alive.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Conrad took the women and kids hostage-“

“I saw the damned newscast! I mean why didn’t you call me? I-” Hutch stopped cold, hearing the desperation in his voice. Was this how it was going to be? The two of them even more entrenched in each other’s lives, going crazy with worry whenever they were apart? “You okay?” he asked more carefully. Starsky sounded exhausted.

“Just tired, Hutch. Got some scratches fightin’ off the bad guys. You know.”

He knew. He knew they’d both survive, despite his own topsy-turvy moods. They’d weathered bad cases, injuries, and dark places before. As long as they were together, little else mattered.

Hutch let out a slow breath. “Huggy and I talked about Conrad and that guy who used to run with the Gallo Negro, Jose Gonzalez. They must be linked by more than just drugs.”

“You ever think about being a detective?” Starsky chuffed a laugh. “I know about him, just haven’t had time to do the digging.”

“Give Babcock and Simmons something else to do,” Hutch suggested. “You headed back here?” He tried for casual, but all he wanted was to put his arms around his partner and hug the daylights out of him.

“Soon as the fucking newshounds get their van out from behind my car,” Starsky complained. “I’m coming in a minute!” he called to someone who was obviously trying to get his attention.

“Who was that?” Hutch asked suspiciously.

“Paramedics just want to give me the once over. Nothing major,” Starsky lied smoothly, but Hutch knew a hedge when he heard one.

“How bad?”

“Hutch-” Starsky stalled. “I just need a couple stitches. Nothing. I’ll be over there as soon as I can make it.” He hung up before Hutch could ask where he needed more stitches for the second time in two days.

~**~

It was amazing what a burst of adrenaline could do, Hutch thought after the fact. The moment Starsky came in to his hospital room, Hutch was out of bed and across the floor faster than he’d managed with Lopita’s help four hours earlier.

“No hugs, no hugs!” Starsky tensed up, holding Hutch off with both hands.

“Okay if I kiss you?” Hutch said, not the least put off by Starsky’s retreat. He cupped Starsky’s elbows, pulling him gently forward, very aware of the stiff manner Starsky held himself.

“Yeah,” Starsky murmured, melting against Hutch’s chest.

Careful to keep his hands around Starsky’s upper arms, Hutch kissed him, just grateful to be able to do so. He could feel Starsky’s exhaustion masked by the usual bravado and machismo. Starsky would never back down until forced, and Hutch was about to put his foot down and insist that his partner take the night off. He steered Starsky over to the chair and sat down on the bed, watching how gingerly Starsky bent forward and sat down. The t-shirt and windbreaker he’d worn when he left in the morning were gone, replaced by a turquoise green scrub top like surgeons wore.

“How’s your back?” Hutch asked. He didn’t have to be told that was where the newest damage was. Starsky’s rigid posture told the tale.

“Seven pieces of glass, most not much bigger’n a splinter,” Starsky said succinctly. “Basically shrapnel from the windows breaking when the fuckin’ SWAT team attacked like they were destroyin’ some VC village in ‘Nam.”

“Starsk….”

“I haven’t seen anything like that since ’67! They had no consideration for the women and children in there, Hutch!” Starsky kicked the side of the bed and Hutch felt the mattress shake as if a minor earthquake had hit.

The right side of his belly cramped up, pain taking over as if the edge of a serrated knife was being systematically shoved in and out of his colostomy. He bit down on his lip, gasping at the unexpected pain.

“Hey!” Starsky was right there, surrounding him as gently as he had just done to Starsky. “Damn, Hutch, you okay?”

“Gas,” Hutch managed, even though the spasm was intensifying. It was almost as if he could feel the pain moving along the intestines, lower and lower until-relief. He took a completely unencumbered breath with a happy sigh, very glad of Starsky’s shoulder against his own.

“Look at the pair of us.” Starsky chuckled, knuckling the back of Hutch’s neck with affection. “All we need is a flag, a flute, and a guy with a gimpy leg, and we could be those battered soldiers in the July 4th parade.”

“You’ve got the head wound and the bad arm,” Hutch agreed, picturing the King of Hearts on the playing card. “But it’s a fife.”

“What’s a fife?”

“The flute is a fife.”

“The flute is a fife?” Starsky echoed, staring at Hutch with comical confusion. “I thought the flute was a flute.”

“And a flute player is a flautist.” He was overwhelmingly, supremely happy, and kissed his love again, both of them lingering on the simple show of affection. Hutch moaned with arousal when Starsky pulled him close, threading his fingers through the small hairs at the back of his neck, which sent splendid shivers all the way down Hutch’s spine.

“Oh-uh…” Nancy sputtered, standing with one hand on the doorknob. “S-sorry! I’ll come back….”

“Nancy!” Starsky and Hutch said simultaneously.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt!” Nancy was blushing a bright pink, which was all wrong with her plum lipstick.

“Knew I shoulda closed that door,” Starsky said with a rueful grin.

“It’s all right, Nance,” Hutch held out the hand that wasn’t gripping Starsky’s shirt, and then noticed and let go of Starsky to coax his ex-wife into the room. His own heart was beating just fast enough to make him sweat despite the air conditioning. “It is all right, isn’t it?”

“Fine by me.” Starsky shrugged, but his cheeks were rosier than usual. He grabbed one of the pillows, fluffing it over-exuberantly before shoving behind Hutch’s back so that he could duck his head against Hutch’s shoulder with a helpless huff of laughter.

“I-um.” Nancy smiled, her green eyes dancing with mirth at the awkward and very funny situation. “I think it’s wonderful, truthfully. I guess you found your devotion, Ken?”

“Huh?” Starsky asked.

“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Hutch promised, wiping the moisture off his upper lip. “Please sit down, I’m happy to see you. Starsky just came in and…” he laughed self-consciously, pressing against his side, pleased that it didn’t really hurt that much even with all the activity.

“When I was here yesterday…was I just not cluing in on something?” Nancy took the bedside chair, putting her purse over the armrest.

“Starsky and I…talked last night after your visit.” Hutch looked over at Starsky desperately, but didn’t get anything but a mysterious elfin grin that made him just a little crazed. “I don’t think we had ever…really realized the…” He searched for the right word, watching Nancy’s face for any judgmental condemnation. There was none. “Totality of what we had.” That didn’t explain things at all, and yet was somehow right.

“Oh, this really is new.” Nancy took both their hands, giving them a little bounce. “Then congratulations are in order. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. It’s unexpected.” Starsky fiddled with the water pitcher on the nightstand. He looked a bit desperate. Starsky never was one for social niceties and small talk.

“An unexpected revelation,” Hutch finished for him. How did he explain what Starsky meant to him when he only barely understood it himself? Starsky was his life. “That answers questions I’ve had for a long time, and changes everything.”

 “There anything to drink in this thing?” Starsky held up the plastic pitcher.

“There’s an ice machine down the hall and sodas at the nurses’ station,” Hutch directed. “Get me something?”

“How come I’m always the errand boy?” Starsky grumped, obviously glad of a reason to escape.

Hutch would have flipped Starsky the bird, but didn’t out of respect for their visitor. He stared up at his best friend, telling him to scram for just long enough to chat pleasantly with Nancy so they could get back to other things. Something in the way Starsky shifted his eyes evasively away from his gaze told Hutch there were things his partner hadn’t mentioned yet.

“Nice to see you, Nancy. He’s looking better, huh?” Starsky deliberately broke the connection with Hutch and sauntered out as if he weren’t hurting in a hundred different places.

“You are. You look…in love,” Nancy said.

Hutch wasn’t listening to her. Instead, he strained to hear his partner’s footsteps going down the hall. He was almost sure he could actually hear the whirl of Starsky’s thoughts-his triumph at bringing down Conrad and rescuing the women tempered with the anger at the SWAT team, the still fresh and tender nature of his love for Hutch overlaid with confusion about being with a man ‘that way’ and the spiky, discordant notes of his fatigue coloring everything. Each mirrored Hutch’s own thoughts, although his had the added dark despair because of his wounds. Starsky’s would heal far sooner than Hutch’s-and he didn’t know how to deal with the depression that ate at him, undermining every single thing he did. His emotions were so out-of-control, he wasn’t even sure what he felt from minute to minute.

“Vanessa used to complain about the way you two talked, as if you weren’t just using words, but like you could communicate telepathically,” Nancy said as if she could read his mind, too.

“You talked about Starsky and me?” Hutch jerked out of his reverie to find Nancy scrutinizing his face with a bemused expression.

“You know Van.” Nancy shoved her long hair off her shoulders. In deference to the heat, she was wearing a gauzy peasant style blouse belted at the waist over slim, form-fitting slacks. Hutch could admire her shape and feel the old attraction without caring anymore. She was his past, and he treasured her part in his maturity, glad she had become a friend. “She had to have something to complain about. When you were married, we still talked a lot, but after a while, I got tired of her gloating over who’d won you. After all that time, she still considered me competition.” Nancy twisted her hair into a knot and groped in her purse for a banana clip to pin it onto her head. “I don’t think she would have liked anyone who threatened her hold on you. She hated Starsky from the day she laid eyes on him.”

“Everything straightened out here?” As if on cue, Starsky came back in loaded down with soda cans, and the pitcher filled with ice hanging from his crooked left pinkie. In fact, he was toting everything in his left arm, which reminded Hutch of how badly Starsky had mangled his wrist less than twenty-four hours ago.

“Let me grab that.” Nancy was up immediately, the perfect hostess. She set up a mini-bar on the nightstand, pouring drinks into plastic cups.

“Just like your mother taught you,” Hutch said, but his eyes were on Starsky who had turned away just enough that Hutch couldn’t quite see what he was pulling out of his pocket. “Starsk?”

“I gotta go talk to Anney,” Starsky said. He downed two capsules with a splash of Sprite straight from the can before shoving the pill bottle back in his pocket without letting Hutch see the label. “Ambulance took that bastard Conrad to Anaheim Gen but Anney didn’t want to be anywhere near him so I brought her and Robin back with me. Doc said they can stay overnight here so the kid doesn’t have to go to…foster care.” He stopped, obviously done-in but still going out of sheer willpower.

 “Can’t someone else take her statement?” Hutch asked with annoyance. Nancy had picked up a gardening magazine and sat sipping her soda without saying a word. “Starsk, you’ve been through-“

“Would you let someone else do it?” Starsky asked simply, stopping Hutch’s tirade. “I’m the one she trusts. How can I say no?” He patted Nancy’s arm. “Thanks for coming in to keep him company, Nancy. Make him stay in bed and I’ll come back to tell him a bedtime story later on.”

“It’s only three-thirty in the afternoon!” Hutch reminded. Hell, he was on the mend. It was Starsky who needed the rest.

“So? Take a nap, you just had surgery,” Starsky said too sharply and had the honesty to look abashed. Pain lingered in his eyes and a kind of dangerous fire that Hutch didn’t want to probe too deeply. What had happened in Anaheim?

 “What floor is Anne on?”

“Fifth,” Starsky’s voice floated back as he walked out.

“Wait!” Hutch ground out, angry now for reasons he couldn’t even name.

“Hutch, I don’t…” Starsky stopped, learning against the door, bracing himself with his left hand.

“You two already sound like an old married couple,” Nancy observed, gathering up her purse. “I think I’ll come back another time, Ken.”

“Nance!” Hutch sighed. He’d lost control of every aspect of his life. “Thanks. Yeah, I really want to talk to you more when things are calmer. Starsky, I’m coming with you.”

“You’re not supposed to get out of bed,” Starsky protested.

“My physical therapist has a different opinion.” Hutch ignored the twist of pain in his gut and swung his legs over, belatedly remembering that he was still wearing the open-in-the-back hospital gown. Luckily, he’d put on boxers before the walk with Lopita. “I need some clothes.”

“I’ll go ask the nurse, I’ll bet she can find some real pajama pants, at least,” Nancy volunteered.

“Hutch, this isn’t one of your best ideas!” Starsky said fiercely after Nancy left the room.

“So, you get to pretend you aren’t hurting and shot, but I have to act like an invalid?” Hutch stalked across the room, more angry at Starsky than he’d been in a long time. Since–the car accident came back to him, his irrational anger of that morning the one thing he remembered clearly. He really had had minor amnesia that hadn’t lasted past the ER, but his anger had, enough that his resentment that Starsky had ignored his pleas to slow down had turned into an ill-conceived attempt at revenge.

The old saying, “we only hurt the ones we love,” flashed through his brain, but he took no notice. He wasn’t about to let Starsky ignore him again. “I have a-what did you say one time? A vested interest in this case. And let me tell you, if you think I look bad right now, you haven’t looked in a mirror lately, pal.”

“I gotta go. Dobey’ll be up there by now.”

“What did you take?” Hutch stalled, grabbing at the pocket he’d seen Starsky stash the pill bottle. A typical pharmacy issue plastic bottle fell out onto the floor. There was no way Hutch could have bent down to pick it up and then straighten up again, so he had to wait for Starsky retrieve it. Even that movement proved how truly unsteady Starsky was. Hutch saw his pallor when he smacked the bottle into Hutch’s outstretched hand.

“You happy?”

“Very.” Hutch peered at the tiny print. Darvocet. Probably equivalent to the Tyco he’d taken an hour before Starsky and Nancy showed up. “Hey,” he said by way of apology, tucking the bottle in Starsky’s tight jeans pocket. “You need back-up, I’m right behind you.”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Starsky sighed tiredly when Hutch fit his hand against the sharp jut of Starsky’s hipbone. Starsky curved into him just long enough for both of them to shore up a little store of energy.

Nancy brought back a pair of drawstring pants and a white cotton bathrobe before saying goodbye. Starsky got the nurse, Merrily, to insist that Hutch go upstairs in a wheelchair. As much as Hutch appreciated that he wasn’t quite up to walking the entire distance, he strongly suspected that Starsky just wanted to push the chair so that he had something to lean on. It wasn’t until he was putting on the clothes that he really noticed that Starsky hadn’t stood unsupported since he’d come in.

When this was all finished, he wanted Starsky in bed-his own, preferably, but that would have to wait. The black pressure of depression descended with astonishing swiftness. Hutch sat in the elevator with his head against Starsky’s left hand holding the wheelchair handle, trying to breathe past the bleak clouds that surrounded him. If Starsky hadn’t been right next to him, he was sure he would have lost his way in the black maze of his own brain.

A blue uniformed officer guarded the door to room 526, and the first voice that Hutch heard was Dobey’s deep rumble, speaking gently to Anne Benson. “…full participation of the Bay City Police Department, Mrs. Benson.”

“Tryin’ to butter her up, Capt’n?” Starsky said brightly, pushing Hutch in

“Starsky.” Their superior nodded. “Hutchinson, what are you doing here?” Dobey asked, with a frown. Hutch almost smiled at the normalcy of the question, as if he weren’t wearing pajamas to an interview. Dobey often covered his concern for his men with a pompous authority; his way of making it through the difficult situations with any kind of decorum.

“Came with my partner,” Hutch said simply.

“Hey, Anney.” Starsky parked Hutch to one side of the bed. As if by magic, he’d discarded the exhaustion, tucking it away behind his signature Starsky strut and gregarious style. “D’you remember my partner, Ken Hutchinson?”

Hutch would never have recognized the woman sitting in the hospital bed as the same one he’d once testified against in court. If he and Starsky were walking wounded, Anne was the poster model for Prevent Battered Women’s Week with her red-black bruises, but there was something in her pale eyes that held the sympathy at bay. The shuttered, haunted expression she’d worn every day of the trial in 1971 was gone, traded in for a tough-girl shell that was only barely hiding the horror of the day she’d had. He could see it leaking out of her the way she rolled a pencil around in her fingers with sharp, jerky movements, every once in a while bringing it to her lips as if she’d forgotten it was a yellow number two and not a cigarette.

“You look better than I expected,” she said, relief softening her stiff posture. She pressed the pencil eraser against her bottom lip, chewing absently on the red rubber. “He…I never even knew you were s-shot until Starsky told me.”

“The more Starsky investigated your brother, the more it became clear that you weren’t involved, except as a catalyst,” Hutch said. “Do you have any idea why he would want to shoot me?”

“Like mixing two volatile liquids together to make an explosion?” Anne murmured with a kind of sad amusement. “That would be us, all right. Simon’s obviously…I don’t know, cracked up?”

“Yesterday,” Starsky said softly, “right before he took a potshot at me, I asked you if he’d ever hurt you. You said no, but that wasn’t the truth, was it?”

The bathroom door banged open and a small boy emerged wearing almost the exact clothes that Hutch had on. His pajama bottoms were child-sized, but the robe fluttered out behind him like the cape of a superhero. He froze, surveying the assembled crowd with healthy distrust for strangers. Honing in on his mother, he scuttled over to the bed, climbing up on the end.

Hutch held his breath, seeing the child he’d delivered for the first time since June of ’70. How would his life have been different had he adopted this boy, even had him in his home for a few months as a foster child? Would he still be married to Vanessa? And if so, years later, would she have still resorted to stealing diamonds as a way to make some easy cash? Each tiny alteration in life, each step not taken in one direction sent him off on another, completely unknown path. Had Vanessa’s ultimatum of no children, and her animosity toward Starsky made it easier for him to break it off with her? If they’d stayed married for one or two more years, would that have changed today? Last night? What had brought Starsky and him together, and how could he make sure he didn’t screw up this chance for a real relationship with Starsky?

“You look like Luke Skywalker,” Robin said, pointing at Hutch. “In that white coat like a Jedi Knight.”

“Does that make him Ham?” Hutch asked, indicating Starsky.

“Han!” Robin corrected, one hand on his mother’s knee, connecting himself to her. “Han Solo. You saw Star Wars?”

“I made him go. He’s not much for spaceships and light sabers, but he liked the movie,” Starsky said with a glint in his eye. “I could tell.”

“Robin.” Anne bumped her knees up and down, making her son’s hand pop up like a Jack-in-the-box. “I have to talk to Starsky and Hutchinson about Uncle Simon. Do you think you could go down the hall with Captain Dobey to that playroom we saw before? There was an air hockey game there.”

“C’mon, son,” Dobey encouraged. “I’m the air hockey champion of the First Congregational Church for three years running. I need a new opponent.”

“Captain, I never knew!” Hutch faked a laugh, unable to look away from the boy who might have been his son. He could feel Starsky’s eyes on him, fitting little warm, bright spaces into the dark depression weighing him down. He shifted in his wheelchair, pressing an elbow against his colostomy bag.

“Anney-mommy?” Robin said plaintively, loss naked on his face. He’d seen too much, too quickly, for one eight-year old to come to terms with.

“I’ll be right here, I promise. They’re not here to take me to prison, Birdman.” Anne kissed him on the forehead. “We’ll be going back to our own house tomorrow.”

“Cross your heart?” Robin hedged.

“Cross my heart,” Anne agreed, using the pencil to sketch an invisible X over her breastbone.

“You and your mom are heroes, Robin,” Starsky told him. “I’m gonna put you both in for some kinda commendation for helping us with this case.”

“What’s that?” Robin asked, still skeptical.

“A medal.” Dobey helped the boy off the bed. “I’ll make sure you get a medal-and I can probably spring for some ice cream, right now. What flavor do you want? Vanilla, like the other day?” He led Robin down the hall, leaving Starsky and Hutch alone with Anne.

“I guess you want to hear everything, huh?” Anne asked tightly. She tapped the pencil on her bottom lip and bit on the eraser again.

“Whatever you can do, Anne,” Starsky said softly, taking the chair Dobey had vacated. He punched the button on a cassette recorder set up on the over-bed table, identifying who was in the room into the tape. “Take it at your own pace, start where ever you want to. You are not a suspect in this case, and we know you were not a witness to several of the crimes that Simon Conrad will be charged with.”

 Hutch sat back, letting Starsky lead. His belly hurt, and he was weary to the bone, the slight buzz he always got from the codeine ingredient in the Tyco completely gone already. Maybe this hadn’t been his best idea, but it let him feel part of the team again.

“After my mother died,” Anne started in a slow, disconnected way as if she were reciting a monologue at an audition. “My father said that I was the woman of the house-and he meant that I,” she stopped, taking a slow unsteady breath. “They all could…” Anne shook her head, tears in her eyes. “Use me.”

“God,” Hutch whispered.

“I was around eight, I forget exactly, when it first happened. Just my Dad, then later Simon and Mickey after-“

“Is that why Simon killed your father?” Starsky interjected.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged miserably, the tears on her cheeks making the bruises stand out with shiny clarity. “I remember being taken from the house in the middle of the night. I was embarrassed because I was in my nightgown, but after only one night with these nice people who bought me a new dress for my father’s funeral, my Uncle Charlie came to live in our house. He…” She knit her fingers together with the pencil poking out of the gap between her thumbs. “Do I need to tell you all of this? Really?”

“Did Charlie-” Starsky started, and Hutch saw something move in his eyes that gave him an ache deep inside that had nothing to do with his colostomy.

Anne nodded, looking down at her hands, her hair covering her eyes. “I just tried to stay out of the house most of the time in high school, but that was hard because Simon didn’t…he just told me the other day that he screened my boyfriends. Big surprise, huh?” Her hands were shaking, the pencil bobbing side to side like a metronome. “Then, there came Art Benson and I thought I had a real shot at getting away from them. All of them. Now I know Simon was still controlling me, holding Art like a carrot in front of me to lure me into…oh, what’s the damn word?” She bit down hard on her bottom lip and winced. “Complacency? My English teacher in the Pen would be so proud.”

“You didn’t know Art was a drug dealer?” Starsky asked.

“I did.” Anney gave a jerky affirmative. “That didn’t seem so…bad…when I was eighteen, but when I got pregnant, stuff changed. Then I wanted the whole package. A house, mom and dad raising the kid. Like I had any right to something like that.”

“You had every right,” Hutch said, remembering his own dreams.

“Damaged goods. I should have known. Should have suspected that I didn’t matter in the scheme of things,” Anne said bitterly. “I really didn’t know the whole…how deep Simon was in. He’s still dealing, isn’t he?”

“As far as we know,” Starsky agreed. “He’s been arrested multiple times under the name you gave me, Connie Symmond.”

“And he had Robin all that time. Actin’ like he was some big shit law-abiding citizen every time he brought my child to visit me in San Ferd’s prison.” Her mouth was twisted into a hard, angry line. “Like I was the one who needed to be locked away! I was just …” Anne looked up at Hutch, her pale eyes blazing like the hottest fire in a gas jet. “What’s that little piece in a chess game?”

“You felt like you were a pawn?”

“Yeah. And you know what was worse? That I let them do this to me.” She smacked her knees with both hands, making Starsky jump. Hutch saw her rage, buried under years of abuse, coming out with blazing intensity. “That all through everything-even after I was married to Art, Simon still…he held me so tightly, never letting go. So I thought…” Tears slipped down her face but she ignored them. “I thought he’d protect me, that in the end, he’d keep me out of prison.”

“Instead, he handed you over,” Hutch said softly.

“And took my baby.”

Hutch abruptly wondered if Robin was even Art’s child, but he kept it to himself. Those eerie blue eyes.

“So, when you got out of prison, what happened?” Starsky prompted, to keep the questioning going forward. His voice was rough as sandpaper, ragged with fatigue. Hutch found himself thinking back to long nights spent finishing up some case together, he and Starsky alone in the squadroom, sharing a cup of coffee and leaning into each other, both of them beyond exhausted but high from the adrenaline rush of solving the unsolvable.

“Quantrell drove me home.” She rubbed at her eyes, swiping her hair back with an inpatient hand and took up the pencil again. “He’s hanging on, the doctor said. I asked the minute we got here.” Her voice was infused with such hope, revealing some other emotion besides anger and pain. “I was so afraid he was dead…he was bleeding all over the kitchen floor.”

“Quantrell drove you home, in early June, to the house on Loma Linda?” Starsky restated.

“Simon was really strange, kind of distant, which surprised me. I could tell he was angry but it had been so long since we’d lived together that I…I think I changed in prison, and he didn’t. He expected me to be the same person when I came back.” She smiled just a little at that, obviously proud of her maturity. “He took off, leaving me with Robin, who had the chicken pox.” Anne turned the pencil around and around. “I wasn’t going to take up with Simon again-but it was strange the way he was acting. Like he was really angry at me. And then, Starsky came to the house and told me Simon s-shot you.”

“And you have no idea why?” Hutch sat forward, his wounds almost forgotten.

“Actually – this sounds so conceited, but I’ve been thinking about it.” She raised her chin in a defiant gesture. “I think he was angry because I wasn’t his anymore.”

“And in his mind, Hutch started it,” Starsky said, sounding like he’d found the lost piece to a puzzle. “Hutch shot Art, and then tried to take the baby away.”

Hutch grunted, guilt smacking against him like an ocean wave. He chose to ignore the despondent feelings that threatened to emerge, concentrating on the conversation, and tucked the guilt away to examine at a later date. “Simon must have decided to use you and Art as his scapegoats, to keep his own business flourishing. He sacrificed Anne for his own needs and kept Robin as a kind of ransom. Did he even threaten Robin?”

Anne started to cry, gulping, gasping sobs, her shoulders heaving with the effort to stay quiet. “I barely got to hold him, they wouldn’t let me breastfeed. Simon told me he’d give the baby away if I….”

“Damn,” Hutch whispered, his own participation in the deceit unwitting but still galling. Starsky glanced over at him with such sadness in his eyes. “So, when you agreed to perjure yourself, he promised to keep the baby safe?”

She nodded, taking the tissues Starsky held out. “I didn’t know very much. Not about the drugs hidden in the car, anyway. I was such an idiot. I wanted to believe that Art and I were starting over with a trip to Mexico.” Anne sloppily wiped at her nose. “Stupid.”

“No, like you said, they were using you,” Starsky put in. “And you wanted a good life, not the hell you’d been raised in. It wasn’t stupid.”

“After you came over, on Wednesday, Simon came with some groceries. He was scary, but I asked him about the gun. He said it was lost in the crash.”

“Which we know isn’t true,” Starsky said.

“I think…” Anne started and then stopped as if trying to untangle her thoughts. “Charlie took care of Mickey for years, and I never knew that Simon was over there so much, until Charlie died at Christmas time, last year.”

“In December of 1977?” Hutch clarified, belatedly remembering that this was supposed to be an official recording.

“Yes, and maybe Mickey had the gun. Maybe there were a lot of things at the house. I hadn’t been there since…I don’t know? 1969? Maybe even earlier. I never wanted to see Mickey again, ever. If Simon is bad, Mickey is worse because he doesn’t understand how…strong and cruel he is.”

“Who beat you today?” Hutch asked.

“Simon mostly, but Mickey helped some.” She touched her bruised cheek. “Simon came to the prison at Christmas. Robin had made me a present-one of those little net bags full of flower petals. And he told me that Charlie was dead, and Mickey needed a caretaker. I didn’t even know he’d been supporting the two of them all this time.” She shrugged. “I don’t know so much. I need to learn. I need to get some kind of control over… everything’s so screwed up.”

“So, when your brother came to your house this morning, you didn’t know what his plans were?” Starsky cradled his right wrist in his left hand, pain etched on his face like an old, well-known story.

“No!” Anne insisted. “When he shot Quantrell, I thought he was crazy! And then, he kept insisting that I was his wife. He’s just plain nuts-just like my father was. I kept trying to think of ways to escape from the car the whole way to Anaheim-to the house where I grew up. I couldn’t believe…and he hauled us into the house, all the time rambling on about us being a family, that I was his first wife and Maria…” She covered her mouth, her eyes wide with the effort to suppress sudden heaves. “He shot her.”

“In the head,” Starsky confirmed, raspiness giving his voice a hard, tough edge. “But she never gave up.”

“Oh, God, poor Maria. I’d tried to call her the other day, right before we met you at the coffee shop,” she said to Starsky. “But didn’t get an answer. He must have kept her chained like that for days. The way he’d talked about her, I thought he didn’t even like her.”

“I talked to the doctors at Anaheim Gen before we left.” Starsky pressed his fingers against his forehead until the tips were white, a sure sign his head was killing him, but he didn’t give any other outward sign. “They said Maria was incredibly lucky to be alive. The bullet’s in her brain, but she’s aware and talking. If they can get it out, everything should be good.”

“I’m so sorry,” Anne moaned. “I feel like I could have….”

“He was crazy, Anne,” Hutch assured her. “I’m not sure we’ll ever get rational reasons for your brother’s behavior, but you are not to blame. Don’t think that way.”

Anne straightened her shoulders as if buoyed up by his comment, and started to say something else when Robin burst into the room, his face animated with joy. “Mommy! I won against the champ!” He pointed back at the bemused Captain Dobey, jumping onto his mother’s bed with an exuberance that made her cringe momentarily.

She successfully hid the sign of pain and smiled brightly at her boy. “That’s great, Robin. Did you get ice cream, too?”

“Yeah, not…” Robin almost deflated, his upper lip disappearing under his front teeth. “Not the kind that Uncle Simon used to bring, Butter Rum, but…” He gave a brave smile at Dobey. “Chocolate’s good, too.”

All of them hiding behind such masks. Hutch wanted to rip Starsky’s off and pull his partner into his arms, so that they both could admit how much life hurt right now. But sometimes the masks were necessary, like Anne’s attempts to keep things light for Robin. If what had happened was hard for adults to comprehend, how much worse for an eight-year old, exposed to violence that a child should never, ever see?

“Did you get what you need?” Dobey cleared his throat, looking around the room with a paternal attitude. Starsky nodded mutely, switching off the recorder and slumped into his chair with a loose-limbed sprawl.

“Enough that we have a pretty good picture of what went on,” Hutch said softly, watching Starsky. Memorizing Starsky. This was his anchor, even in the worst of times, Starsky kept him constant. What exactly had Starsky seen in that hell house?

 “I’ll have Agnes type up the transcripts,” Dobey said decisively. “If there’s anything more the detectives need to go over, we can talk with you again, Mrs. Benson.”

“Do you need to…” Anne looked at Robin, and then turned away with tears in her eyes as if she couldn’t quite contain every stray emotion. “Need to talk to him?”

“I think that can wait,” Dobey said.

~*~*~

Pushing Hutch back to his room, Starsky stumbled getting off the elevator, bumping the wheelchair hard enough to bounce Hutch forward. Pain shot up Starsky’s back as if the painkiller he’d taken just an hour ago hadn’t worked at all. “Sorry ’bout that, not as good with a chair as I am with a steering wheel.” He steadied himself on the handlebars, guiding the wheelchair over the gap between elevator and floor.

“That’s debatable,” Hutch snarked tiredly.

“There you are!” Merrily proclaimed, hands on her well-padded white clad hips. “We were about to send a search party for the both of you.”

“Official business, Merrily,” Hutch said, glancing back at Starsky.

“Well, I didn’t know that Mr. Starsky had been admitted earlier, and now I’m behind on all my work.”

“You didn’t tell me…” Hutch started.

“I don’t have time to lie around here!” Starsky growled. “This is an ongoing investigation and I have piles of paperwork to do….”

“What about my paperwork?” Merrily said, taking Starsky’s unbandaged left arm and fastening a white plastic bracelet around his wrist. “There, now it’s official. Since you slept in the bed next to Mr. Hutchinson last night, you can sleep there again.”

“Starsky, better not argue with her, she’s tougher’n nails,” Hutch advised.

“Some back-up you are!” Starsky stared at his partner, surprised to see a kind of relief in his eyes. Hutch wanted him here-beside him, which should have made him feel better, but damn, he had so much to do, and having to spend time as a patient just didn’t fit in with those plans. He straightened, gathering what dignity he had left and steered the wheelchair back to room 419. “You’d think a guy’s partner would…” He gritted his teeth as the cuts on his back flared with pain.

“There’s a gown on the bed in there!” Merrily called back from the nurses’ desk. “Put it on so I can change your bandages and take your vitals.”

“Starsk, you can barely stand up.” Hutch rose carefully from the chair, holding onto the head of his bed for support. “Take one night off.”

“Seems to me you said something similar last night, and look where that got us?” Starsky said bitterly. There was a vice around his head and some cruel joker was twisting the crank ever tighter. If he did lie down in the bed, he wouldn’t get up for a couple of days.

“What do you mean by that?” Hutch asked and there was such anguish in his voice that Starsky looked up from trying to unzip his jeans.

“Hutch!” he whispered, stricken. “Not about us, never about us. I meant, if I coulda gotten to Anne’s house sooner.”

Hutch’s smile was achingly sweet and sad, but it was all surface. Starsky could sense the deep depression Hutch was unsuccessfully hiding. “You probably would have been shot again, and that’s too many times in a single week, even for you.”

Starsky winced, sitting on the edge of the bed, close enough to touch Hutch sitting on his. “Oh, God, Hutch, I don’t know…how this could have turned out any worse.”

“You’re alive, and so are Anne, Robin and that woman Conrad shot-Maria?” Hutch said quietly. “That’s good odds in my book.”

“Not to mention Maria’s kid, Miguel. I don’t know what kind of demons that kid is going to have, seein’ his mother like that.” Starsky shivered, shoving the scrub top over his head. Every movement hurt, but he couldn’t stop for long or the images of Maria covered with blood, pleading for mercy while bullets flew in every direction flashed across the movie screen in his brain, in vivid, nauseating Technicolor. He wondered vaguely if he was going into delayed shock. Of course, would he know if he was going into shock? Or did it just happen? He couldn’t remember how he’d felt any of other times when he’d been hurt. But this disconnected, dizziness, his skin so cold he wanted that old Mexican sweater he used to wear instead of the open-in-the-back hospital gown took him back to ’75 and lying on the cold floor of an Italian restaurant.

“Starsky?” Hutch asked softly. “Starsk?” His voice rose sharply and Starsky looked up, his head snapping back on his neck in a way that cleared the cobwebs out.

“I’m okay, Hutch. I’m fine,” Starsky assured. He bent over to pick the hospital gown off the bed and heard Hutch’s sharp intake of breath.

“You said ‘not much bigger than a splinter’,” Hutch quoted. “Some of those gashes must be a couple of inches long!”

“Stop looking at my back.” Starsky turned around so Hutch couldn’t see the results of being showered with glass shards. He pulled on the gown but couldn’t manage the ties, which was just as well because Merrily came in and told him to lie on his belly so that she could change the bandages.

Starsky resented his weaknesses and lay staring out at the late afternoon haze over the hospital parking lot, trying to blot out the feel of tape being pulled off the hair on his back. He fell asleep before Merrily had removed the last of the bloody gauze pads.

The delicate strains of the theme from M*A*S*H were playing when Starsky woke from a freaky dream where Simon Conrad was mowing the entire Anaheim SWAT team down with an elephant gun and laughing maniacally. His face had just transformed into the leering visage of Simon Marcus, with a bloody cross etched on his forehead, and Starsky gasped, his heart thundering in his ears. Starsky stayed very still, listening to Hawkeye compliment Trapper John on getting an ulcer that could send him home from the Korean War. He recognized the dialogue. An old repeat, then.

Hutch chuckled at something Radar O’Reilly said. Hutch always liked Radar. If he and Hutch were Hawkeye and Trapper, which one would he be? Probably Hawkeye, but Hutch was more B.J. Hunnicut than Trapper. Except Hawkeye loved Trapper more.

Like Starsky loved Hutch.

Two people linked forever together, no matter what life threw at them.

So, why did he have this fearful ache that acknowledging that love wasn’t going to magically make things all better?

“You awake?” Hutch asked softly when a commercial blared, the Pillsbury Doughboy extolling the virtues of his new biscuit dough. “Having bad dreams?”

“You could say that.” Starsky crawled to his knees. His head felt like a lead balloon, too heavy to lift, but at least the vice had loosened up and he could think whole thoughts again. He inched ahead until he could sit on his butt, leaning forward so that his back didn’t contact the mattress or pillow in anyway. Holding himself up on his hands had revived the pain in his wrist and he fiddled with the dirty, frayed bandage that Merrily hadn’t changed.

“Merrily left some dinner for you,” Hutch said.

Starsky looked at the silver dome covering a tray on the bedside table and felt no interest in eating. “You have dinner?”

“Full diet now. Good progress, the surgeon said. I could probably get out of here in less than a week, when all the antibiotics are done.”

“Why don’t you sound happy about that?”

“Because, I’ll be going home with a bag taped to my side. Can’t even take a crap like a normal human being,” Hutch said vehemently. “Won’t be normal until they sew me back together and then….”

“What?” Starsky looked over at the man he loved and felt real fear. He and Hutch were so out of sync. They kept trying to connect the way they had the other night, but it was forced and awkward. Both too wrapped up in badness.

“Starsky, I have to be honest.” Hutch sighed, and held out his hand, bridging the space between their two beds. Starsky raised his right hand, grasping Hutch’s fingers, wanting to hold on for all he was worth. “You mean everything to me. You’re what I have to look forward to, but I don’t think I’ll be very good company for a while.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Starsky teased to get a rise out of him. Hutch looked so defeated, even when he smiled. “On your best days, you ain’t very good company.” He squeezed their linked hands. “But you’re the only one I want to sit next to any day of the week, Blintz. It’s rough right now, I know. But I’m not backing off, you hear me?”

“I do,” Hutch vowed, tears filming his eyes.

“Neither of us is ready for the Kama Sutra.” Starsky eyed Hutch’s bed, wondering how it would feel to have the two of them snugged together like a couple of spoons. Sore, in his current state. “But I love you, right? You know that.”

“It’s the only real thing there is.” Hutch nodded, staring up at Hawkeye and Trapper partying with the rest of the 4077 th.

~*~*~

“Can’t he sleep in my room?” Anne kept one hand on her son’s shoulder, hoping to have him near her for the rest of the day. She knew it wasn’t logical-hell, it didn’t even sound like something she would have asked just two weeks earlier. What had happened to the tough con who’d been in prison for seven years? She’d kept her head down, avoided conflict with the other inmates, and locked away every single emotion stemming from the overwhelming pain of losing her child and her husband in one day. It was the only thing that kept her sane. She’d gotten a reputation as quiet and strong, someone who could be relied upon to keep a secret and not rat out another gal.

That woman was absolutely gone, bowled over by a short, sandy-haired boy with limpid blue eyes. She’d become the mother she’d been afraid to be, and she was not going to be separated from Robin by even one hospital corridor. Not for the entire night.

“Well.” Micheline didn’t look over twenty-one herself, although Anne figured she had to be that old to have graduated from nursing school. And she was easily won over.

“He’s been through so much today.”

Robin looked indignant at the suggestion that he couldn’t handle himself. “I had my birthday already! I’m eight.”

“His room on the peds floor probably has a mother’s chair, for moms who stay overnight.” Micheline said. “But you’re a patient, too.”

“You’ll know where I am,” Anne wheedled, and coughed. The craving for a cigarette blossomed so hard and fast she had to bite down on her bottom lip to stop from running straight down to the gift shop to buy the first pack of unfiltered she could grab. “Robin, indulge me. I’m the one who needs a guy by my side tonight.”

“Oh, yeah.” He nodded wisely. “C’mon then, I know where my room s’posed to be.”

“I’ll tell my charge nurse and the charge nurse on peds,” Micheline sighed with an indulgent smile.

The nurse assigned to Robin had a cap of short black curls and a round, deep brown face. Her name was Orene. She took one look at her charge and his battered mother and swept the both of them into a grandmotherly hug. Anne hadn’t felt so coddled since she was four years old. In short order they were tucked into a cheery room decorated with Mickey and Minnie Mouse, set up with hamburgers and limp fries for dinner and the promise of popsicles for dessert.

Halfway through The Donny and Marie Show, when Marie was warbling a plaintive, but distinctly perky country-western song in a gingham dress and bouncy Shirley Temple style black ringlets, Robin fell asleep, even before Orene came back with his orange popsicle.

It was the first time Anne felt herself relax since Quantrell had hugged her moments before he was shot down. She itched to call him, but Micheline had already told her the ICU didn’t have individual phones. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow she’d tell him how sorry she was. She wasn’t sure she even had time for a man in her life right now. Robin was enough. Robin was the one thing that had always carried her through. She’d try to deny the connection with her own child, and in discovering it, had found strength.

Now, if she could only ignore the driving need to go mug the first smoker she saw. Good thing the peds floor didn’t allow smoking.

Anne watched Donny and Marie wave bye-bye to their studio audience, both grinning matching toothy smiles, and switched off the TV. Donny and Marie were family-they must resemble their parents, since they seemed as alike as two peas in a pod. She and Robin. How had she ever denied that he looked just like her? She’d seen her mother in him from the first day, and severed her own relationship to the child of her womb to save her brother’s sorry excuse for a life.

“Never, ever again, Birdman. Never again,” Anne vowed, touching the puffy bruising that distorted her left eye.

 

June, 1970

“Please,” Anne whispered, the sobs she held in her throat almost choking the life out of her. “He’s my child. I need to….”

“You’re a felon now, Anney,” Simon said harshly. His eyes were flinty, as pale as a wax works dummy’s. “The cops got you dead to rights. Art smuggled heroin over the border in your car! It’s registered to you. What did you think was going to happen?’

“I didn’t know! I need to see the baby,” she pleaded, her arms empty.

“That can’t happen, sister. Not after this.” Simon shook his head, unforgiving. “I’m putting the baby up for adoption. There’s already somebody nosin’ around who wants the kid. Even helped me name him.”

“You named him?” She grabbed onto any nugget of information about the infant she’d protected with her body until two days ago.

“Robin Arthur, although, it’s not like that fuck should get any credit for the kid, huh?” Simon sneered. “What a miserable loser he turned out to be.”

“He’s the father of my…” Anne tried to convince Simon, tried to convince herself, just as she’d done for the last nine months.

“And we know that just isn’t so, it is, Anney?” Simon came in close, the way he always had, and Anne froze, just as she always had.

She hated seeing his eyes so close that she had a blurry reflection of her frightened face made infinitesimally small. Cold sweat always slicked down her spine when she felt his breath on her face, his hand twisting her hair in to a tight fist as if he could rip the strands right out of her scalp. He’d taken out a patch the size of a quarter right off the top, the year she started high school. She’d had to cut her hair short in a pixie style and wear a bandana for a month to hide the evidence. The black eye that had come with the scalping had reduced any desire to go outside, anyway.

“Everything you ever got, you got from me. You hear that?” He tipped her head back and forth like a doll’s. She had to move with his hand or risk having her hair pulled out. “If you turn over on me, you say one thing about the gig I used to have. Used to have, you hear me? You’ll never see that little brat ever again.”

“Yes, Simon,” she promised, because she had to.

“You tell ’em it was all Art. He bought the heroin, he smuggled it. You were only coming to my house to stay the night.” Simon’s fist loosened on her hair, but Anne didn’t pull away. She was good. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Sweet Jewel.” He leaned over and kissed her mouth, hard and forceful, as always. “I’ve got a present for you,” he said in a much more jovial voice, like an indulgent uncle out to boast about his newest nephew. “Got a picture of Robin.” He handed over a small two by two inch photo of a sleeping newborn, his eyelashes like pale fringe on fat, round cheeks, one pudgy fist just touching his perfect lips.

“Oh, please,” Anne whispered again. She’d be so good, so convincing to the cops. What could they do to her anyway? She hadn’t known a thing ahead of time. And she’d been injured in the wreck. Surely that counted for something.

“I’ll tell that detective that I didn’t know what Art was up to. Figured you two were on a second honeymoon in T’juana.” Simon shrugged. “I’ll take care of you, Anney, just like I always have, huh?”

“Yes.” She traced her thumb over Robin’s portrait, her engorged breasts aching with unused milk.

“Looks like me, doesn’t he?” Simon said smugly and walked out as the nurse came in to change the bandages on Anne’s leg.

 

June, 1978

Anne looked over at the sleeping boy in the bed next to her, saw the way his pale lashes lay against boyishly angular cheeks, and smiled at the fist pressed against his bottom lip. He still slept exactly the same.

“I’ve got your popsicles,” Orene called out as she came in. “Oh, he’s gone to sleep has he, poor lamb?” She shook her head. “Best thing for him, then. Do you still want one? Your nurse Micheline said she’d be over to take some vitals real soon.”

“No thanks, but I’d love a cup of coffee, if you have some?” Anne said softly. She had plans to make, a future to build. No time for sleep right now.

“I’ll bring you a cup from the nurse’s lounge.” Orene winked. “Much better stuff than the swill they sell in the vending machine.”

“Thank you.” Anne didn’t ask for a cigarette. She could fight that habit. It just took will-power and determination. Two things she wasn’t sure she had, but she was going to find out.

Just as the nurse turned to leave, Anne asked her one final question. The scariest one of all. “Orene? Where did you go to nursing school and how long did it take?”

~*~*~

Starsky dreamed about confronting Simon Conrad and smashing a fist through the man’s face for all the cruelty, abuse, and evil he’d perpetuated. He was fairly certain that Dobey wouldn’t allow it. Starsky was too close to the case. He had no perspective left, whatsoever.

Lying in the hospital would get him nowhere, and Starsky couldn’t stay still any longer. He snipped the patient ID band from his wrist, going into the bathroom at exactly the same time two nurses came to wheel Hutch down to x-ray. With the coast clear, he took the stairs to the bottom floor and walked out of the building. The early morning air was damp and cool, ethereal wisps of fog draped around the cars parked in the lot. He shivered, having forgotten that his jacket was torn to shreds and probably now in the incinerator back at Anaheim General. The scrub top he’d pulled on over the bandages on his back offered very little protection against the June gloom. Luckily, he had extra clothes in his locker at Metro. At least, he thought he did. If not, Hutch always did. And Hutch wouldn’t need them for a while.

His thoughts on pulling together the loose ends of the case, Starsky paid little mind to his injuries. He was upright and walking, and that was all he cared about. Conrad would certainly be charged with kidnapping, abuse, and probably a dozen other felonies, but Starsky still wanted to go back to the beginning. Prove that Simon was the one behind the heroin smuggling in the first place. Prove that Anne had been used by her brother and her husband, both.

For that, he still needed to talk to the former detective on the case, Barnaby. The prospect didn’t thrill him. He was far more interested grilling that bastard Conrad until he confessed. Dobey had to be working on transferring the prisoner from Anaheim to Bay City, but who knew when that would happen. Starsky knew there was no way that Lawton would allow him to interrogate Conrad on Anaheim turf.

The only shirt in Starsky’s locker smelled so strongly of old sweat and perhaps a hint of rotting vegetables that he tossed it into the trash. “Ugh.” He vaguely remembered wearing the tattered blue tee about a month earlier when he’d foraged through a dumpster for a fleeing robber’s gun.

Starsky opened Hutch’s locker to find the guitar shirt. He stared at it, wondering when Hutch had actually remembered to bring hangers from home to keep his clothes hung neatly. Not something Starsky would have ever done in a million years. If he wore the guitar shirt, everyone would know he was wearing Hutch’s clothes. Not like people didn’t already gossip about the two of them. He’d heard the rumors: that he and Hutch were closer than two guys ought to be.

He’d occasionally bristled at the implication that he and Hutch had something to be ashamed of. And that was before he’d thought of Hutch as anything but a best friend.

Now he knew they had nothing to be ashamed of and everything to celebrate. Hutch was his love.

His lover. The fantasy had such appeal. With any hope and luck, someday they’d be lovers.

Starsky rubbed the soft, fraying embroidery of the guitar on the back of the cambric shirt, picturing Hutch wearing it, the pale blue the exact shade of his eyes. When had he ever noticed that? When had the idea that Hutch’s eyes were bluer than the summer sky, but not as dark as his own, entered his mind? Because he cherished the memory of Hutch’s eyes looking deep into his.

Damn, he was getting as sappy and romantic as a fourteen-year-old-girl mooning after some unattainable rock star. Those painkillers were doing a number on his brain.

Behind the guitar shirt was a much more generic white cotton button down with one button missing right at the level of his nipples. Starsky put the shirt on anyway. Girls were always accusing him of flaunting his chest hair. Was it his fault if the buttons just fell right off? He liked the feel of the smooth fabric on his arms and the lightweight cotton didn’t press against his damaged back.

His holster was another matter. Just settling the leather straps across his shoulders made him tense up with pain. He’d never be able to walk around all day with the thick band chafing across the uppermost wound. It wasn’t the biggest, but the ER doctor had said it had taken four stitches to close the laceration. He finally went back to his own locker again for the seldom used ankle holster. So he’d have to bend over to draw, better than pulling open stitches and bleeding all over Hutch’s shirt.

 “I thought Dobey said you were on medical leave, honey?” Minnie clucked sympathetically when Starsky emerged from the locker room. “Weren’t you in the hospital?”

“I got discharged,” Starsky lied. Hutch would be angry, no doubt, but understanding. At least, he hoped so. Hutch had to be back from x-ray by now, and well aware that Starsky was gone. Would he lie for his friend, and cover for his disappearance, or would the doctors be calling over here looking for him?

“Doctors don’t know a darned thing, then.” Minnie pushed her glasses up her nose as if she was going to go down to the hospital and give them all a piece of her mind. “You look like you need about six days in bed with a warm bowl of chicken soup every three hours.”

“That’s a lotta soup,” Starsky scoffed, careful to sit down on the edge of the chair so his back didn’t touch the chair back. “Wouldn’t mind some coffee, though.” He sighed at the mess on his desk. The usual daily paperwork had been dropped on top of Conrad’s file so that he had to shove aside flyers for next month’s inter-police department baseball rosters, shift assignments and reminders to turn receipts into accounting every two weeks. All that crap he could do without. He wanted to get the goods on Conrad.

“Coffee,” Minnie said, plunking the mug down on the desk. “And you didn’t hear a word I said.”

“Huh?” Starsky looked up at her. She was all soft-focus around the edges and kind of leaning slightly to the left. He definitely wasn’t taking any more of those painkillers again.

“I said, Dobey already put in a request to have Simon Conrad transferred back here, but Babcock and Simmons are now assigned to the case, so you have no reason to be here,” Minnie informed him brusquely, but she couldn’t quite pull off the correct severity of the tone. Dobey would have done a much better job. “Go back to the hospital.”

“Hutch is the one who had surgery,” Starsky brushed her off. “Listen, where is that arrest report you pulled up for Connie Symmond? I need to know what he was into back in the spring of ’70. I think he was running with Gallo Negro.”

“You’re crazy, baby. That’s a Mexican gang.” She threw up her hands. “Let me help you put this mess in some kind of order. Don’t you know how to file anything?”

“Hutch does it,” Starsky said, taking a big gulp of the overly hot coffee. It scalded his tongue and throat. What was Simon Conrad doing eight years ago? Tiny Tim had been the person who’d first mentioned the elusive drug dealer, even if Starsky hadn’t recognized the significance back then. So, Conrad had been peddling drugs to school children, and must have been a low level dealer to have stayed under the radar for so long. He apparently had a damned good lawyer, too, to have avoided any convictions.

People to talk to: Tiny Tim. Was the kid even still around? Starsky couldn’t remember his address anymore and didn’t know how to get in contact with him, but Huggy might. Conrad’s lawyer.

Starsky pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose – one of Hutch’s gestures. Maybe it would make him think more like the blond member of the team. He’d always been the one who could made logical connections in a case. Starsky was more the seat-of-his-pants, intuitive one who found some tiny clue and built it into a major piece of evidence.

Like the button he’d found which had led them solidly to Conrad. So, now he needed Hutch’s abilities.

As if thinking about his partner had opened a conduit to the other man, the phone rang. Starsky didn’t even have to pick up the receiver to know who it was.

“Hutch, I had to get out of there!” he said quickly before Hutch had a chance to yell. “I was going stir crazy.”

“Damn it, Starsk!” Hutch snarled. “Don’t you think I wish I could just walk out of here, too? The doctors and nurses were all in an uproar, and for a couple of minutes, I was afraid something had happened to you.”

“But you came to your senses?” Starsky said, taking the file Minnie handed to him. Everything else in the room faded away except for him and Hutch.

“Not exactly, but I knew where you’d gone,” Hutch answered more calmly. “You need to take a break. The bastard is in the hospital jail ward, you caught him.”

“I need to…” Starsky tucked the phone between his shoulder and cheek, needing this connection to Hutch more than he’d realized. “Get him on all the other charges he slipped away from. Give Anne Benson her life back. She didn’t deserve any of that shit.”

“Starsk,” Hutch sighed, his exhalation noisy over the phone line. “Where are you going with this?”

With the file in front of him, Starsky read off the list of Conrad’s arrests under the name of Symmond and added the one from Kern County that Minnie had told him about the day before. “I gotta find Jose Gonzalez,” Starsky said. “I think he’s a major key to unlock the whole mess.”

Jose Gonzalez. According to Anne, Gonzalez was Conrad’s supposed partner. He was well known in the drug trade as a middle level pusher with a great deal of clout. He’d never done much jail time either, and he was a secretive man who kept his business dealings quiet. No doubt why Conrad had remained free all these years.

“Huggy said he’d heard that Conrad-or Symmond and Gonzalez were tight.”

“Anne Benson gave me a list of names that included his, but that was just before I got shot and I haven’t the foggiest what happened to that piece of paper,” Starsky said ruefully. “Gimme a minute.” He put one hand over the receiver, scanning the room. Minnie had apparently gone off to fulfill her other duties, and two junior day shift detectives had come in. Both were working at the far end of the desk and Starsky didn’t want to have to give a whole long explanation of what he needed.

“Obviously, I need help here. You think you could set up a command post there in room 419?” he said into the phone, picturing Hutch lounging there in his bed, maybe just wearing the pajama bottoms so his broad expanse of chest showed.

Damn. He was suddenly very hot, his cock swelling with hope. Probably not the best idea to fantasize about something like that when he was in the squadroom.

He cleared his throat. “Not used to working by myself, babe.”

“Yeah,” Hutch said just above a whisper. “I’d be there in a heartbeat.”

Starsky saw Minnie walk back in, and regretfully redirected his thoughts back to criminals, arrest warrants and tracking down drug dealers. “I gotta go.”

“Starsk,” Hutch said with more urgency. “Don’t…” He took a deep breath as if dismissing whatever advice he was about to impart. “No more hero stuff. Let somebody else work the rest of the case. Get the evidence and then let go, huh?”

“That’s the hardest thing of all,” Starsky admitted. Hutch was right, though, which he’d never, ever say out loud. “But I’ll try.” He hung up before he could be seduced away, and straightened his shoulders, feeling the burning strain of healing skin held together with sutures. “Minnie, can you pull up some information on a Jose Gonzalez? Gallo Negro gang, probably a nice long rap sheet.”

“You got it,” she said cheerfully. “Thing is, sweetie, the name Jose Gonzalez is real common. There are probably half a dozen in the system right now and that’s just BC. If we cross-referenced the whole Los Angeles County, there are probably upwards of fifteen or twenty.”

“I know, I know.” Starsky’s enthusiasm was waning, but he wanted to finish what he had started. “Do what you can, huh? I’ve got faith in those facile fingers.”

“Facile?” She grinned at him, wiggling her long, nimble digits. “Oh, I have a surprise for you. Lieutenant Barnaby is back from his vacation in Tahoe if you want to reminisce about a certain case with him.”

He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to or not. Starsky had always liked Barnaby and the partner he’d had back then, Eric Dana, and he didn’t relish the idea of having to point out their shoddy detective work. Here again was something Hutch probably could have done with much more finesse. Although, in a case like this, if the tables were turned and Starsky was the one lying in a hospital bed, maybe not. Hutch could hold a grudge like nobody’s business. “Yeah, that sounds good.” He stood up, careful not to scrape his back on the chair, and gathered up the scattered pages of the file.

“Starsky!” Captain Dobey bellowed, his voice practically echoing off the walls of the squadroom. The two junior detectives nearly jumped out of their seats, but Starsky was far more used to the man’s bark. Minnie rolled her eyes and waved, going out to her computer room.

Plastering on as sincere a smile as he could muster, Starsky tucked the file under his right arm to get the mangy wrist bandage out of eyesight. “Hey, Captain, I was just going over to talk with Lieutenant Bar-“

“That can wait until we have a talk of our own.” Dobey puffed out his chest, all indignant fury. “Get into my office.”

“Whatever you want, sir,” Starsky said with what he hoped was sincerity. Could he help it if there was a drop of sarcasm in there, too? It was his nature.

“Your doctor gave me a call this morning,” Dobey growled, holding open the door to the inner sanctum. “While I was in an inner departmental Captain’s breakfast meeting. The eggs were strangely crunchy, but the ham was excellent. I didn’t get the message until I was out, but he was concerned that you’d left AMA.”

“Yeah, well-I wasn’t hurt that bad.”

“When did you get a medical degree, Starsky?” Dobey took the chair behind his desk, folding his hands on the blotter.

“Captain, I’m on a roll!” Starsky changed tactics fast, pacing the room so that he didn’t succumb to the lure of another chair. He might not get up again. “I got a lead on an associate of Conrad’s, a drug dealer named Jose Gonzalez, and I need to talk to Barnaby. Lots of stuff.”

“As of today, Detective,” Dobey said with quiet authority. “You hand over any additional information you have to Simmons and Babcock and you go out on sick leave until next Tuesday.”

“Yes, sir,” Starsky answered, cowed by the man’s genuine concern. How could he fight every important person in his life?

“You did what many might have thought impossible,” Dobey continued. “You found the real criminal from a cold case, and solved a current one as well. Isn’t that enough?”

“I feel like I owe something to Anne Benson,” Starsky said slowly. “To… I don’t know, prove that the cops don’t just rip a family apart and then leave the victims flapping in the breeze. We gotta take one step further, and help the woman who was most affected by all of this.”

“Noble sentiments,” the captain agreed. “And a Christian ethic to be proud of.”

“And me without a cross,” Starsky said, which earned him a stern look from his superior.

“But there are other agencies to guide Mrs. Benson to.” Dobey sighed, obviously affected by all this, as well. “I wasn’t just talking through my hat when I told her that the BCPD will do its utmost to correct this miscarriage of justice, but there is a time when you have to sit back and give other people a chance to do their jobs, too.”

“Yeah,” Starsky agreed reluctantly. This would not be the first time he had difficulty separating himself from the plight of the victim. The fact that Hutch had been a casualty in all this was making it all the harder. “Okay, just give me a little more time to tighten Conrad’s case and I’ll get out of your hair.” He headed for the door, only glancing back when the captain spoke again.

Dobey’s head was already bent over his own pile of morning reports and duty rosters and he barely seemed to be paying attention to Starsky any longer. “Take care of yourself, Dave.”

Starsky grinned tiredly at the use of his first name, and went to find Barnaby.

The recently appointed head of Vice was deep in discussion with a cop Starsky only knew slightly, Derf LaPierre, so Starsky helped himself to another cup of coffee from Vice’s pot and propped himself against a filing cabinet to wait. He’d heard that LaPierre was originally christened Fred at birth but flipped the spelling around to avoid confusion with half a dozen other relatives also named Fred in the LaPierre family. There actually were two other Fred LaPierres in the Bay City police department.

“Hey, Starsky,” Barnaby greeted. “Derf’s just out of here.”

“Going for the upscale pimp on the street look this week, LaPierre?” Starsky joked.

“You don’t consider purple velvet a fashion statement?” Derf asked, holding out his arms so that the full effect of his bright jacket and purple and black striped slacks could be seen. “Linda Baylor and I are doin’ some play acting today, followed by an afternoon of arresting johns.”

“I think that’s eggplant,” Starsky said straight faced.

“My mother from the Islands would call it Aubergine,” Derf said with a strong Caribbean accent. “Keep on trucking, fellows.” He bumped elbows with Starsky and slid a long fingered black hand against Starsky’s palm before boogying out.

“I’ve heard you’re dipping back into old cases, Starsky,” Barnaby said.

Not sure if he actually heard a slightly defensive tone in the other man’s voice or only imagined it, Starsky nodded, sipping his coffee. “The Anne Benson arrest for drug trafficking up from TJ. Did you guys ever seriously consider the brother, Simon Conrad, for more than a minute?”

“You have no business coming in here after eight years and accusing us of conducting a sloppy investigation.” Barnaby didn’t lean forward or make a menacing move but Starsky was suddenly much more aware of the man’s size. He had a way of projecting himself that must make criminals pee in their pants. In 1970, he had been bigger than Starsky, now years and mileage had added even more bulk to his broad shouldered frame.

“Did I say a single word about the way you did your work?” Starsky asked, throwing just a hint of steel into his voice. If this was the way Barnaby wanted to play it, he would not back down, even if the guy could easily steamroll right over him.

“Everybody in the department knows what you’ve dug up-seen those press photos,” Barnaby said. “Doesn’t throw a very good light on me.”

“I never said you and Dana didn’t work your asses off on this one,” Starsky countered. “I just wanna know how much you dug on Conrad himself?”

Barnaby took a slow breath as if pulling back and crossed his arms. “The guy was slick. And there was no reason we had to suspect anything from him. So Benson and the guy’s sister were coming to stay with him. Didn’t mean Conrad had anything to do with the drug smuggling. He had a steady job at the time, owned a home, paid taxes, the whole nine yards.”

“And Benson had been in Mexico, had a record and no visible means of support,” Starsky added, having memorized large chunks of the file by this time. “Did you ever go looking for who financed the drug buy in the first place?”

“Wasn’t Conrad, that I can tell you. Aren’t his bank records in there? We checked-he had no large payouts or deposits around that time.”

“Under the name Simon Conrad, no!” Starsky threw up his arms, frustrated. This was getting him nowhere. “What about Anne? Why’d you go down so hard on her?”

“Ever heard of the war on drugs, Detective?”

“No, gee, I just let those nice druggies go about their way, Lieutenant,” Starsky snarked, angrier now. He leaned against a file cabinet because it was better than succumbing to the lure of a chair.

“The trial started in early February of ’71, the same year Nixon began a major assault on drug use. Every state, every city, every department, had already stepped up enforcement under the newer drug laws.” Barnaby grit his teeth and ran a hand through his hair. Starsky was suddenly very aware of how frustrated the older man must have been investigating the case. If Conrad was hard to get a handle on now, with the advanced computer data available, then he’d been a shadow back then. “If we’d shown one iota of latitude on the woman who drove the car full of drugs over the border, the public outcry would have been heard all the way back to Sacramento. We could not condone Anne Benson just because she’d just given birth and claimed innocence. How many criminals actually admit their guilt?”

“So, your hands were tied and your back against the wall.” Starsky blinked hard, trying to ignore the pounding beat in his head which would not go away. “But, you must have suspected Conrad?”

“We questioned him, several times, which, if you’ve read the report, you’d know. We were not fucking magicians, Starsky, just overworked slobs.”

“You were a grandstander who liked living on the wild side,” Starsky said, remembering Barnaby’s hospitalization for taste-testing narcotics.

“That’s calling the kettle black.” Barnaby turned his back, grabbing up a folder full of paperwork. “I’m busy. You’ve proved that we didn’t follow through on every lead, is that enough for you?”

“So, you didn’t find a money trail? Who was Benson going to sell the drugs to? Who’d he buy them from?” Starsky followed him, nearly getting clipped when Barnaby tried to close the office door in his face. Starsky shoved the door back open, standing in the doorway until he got at least a partial answer. He hadn’t meant to be so confrontational, but even with the arrest of Simon Conrad, the case felt unfinished.

“There was a guy, Gallo Negro gang,” Barnaby said quietly, fiddling with the pen he’d picked up to sign documents with.

“Jose Gonzalez.”

“Yeah. Eric, you remember him, died two years ago from a coronary.” Barnaby looked old and tired, the memories brutalizing him. “He wanted Gonzalez bad, kept after him for years. We busted that guy half a dozen times and he always slid out of our hands like a greased pig. If you could nab that ratfuck on solid charges, Eric would be smiling down from heaven.”

“He’s tied to Conrad. We may have some gold,” Starsky said softly. “If I could get a statement from Anne Benson and her son, we might put out a warrant on him today. He must have financed the drugs from all the way back. And Conrad has been working with him ever since.”

“Then do it.”

~*~*~

Hutch stood carefully, grimacing at the pull of sore belly muscles. Walking was still far more of a pain than he liked, but human beings were meant to be upright, and he was damned tired of lying on his back all day long. After helping interview Anne Benson with Starsky, he felt like he was on the road to recovery, and loitering in the bed was for wimps.

“Would you like me to help you down to the solarium at the end of the hall?” Danica asked, tidying up the supplies she’d used to draw blood samples and take vital signs.

“I can walk by myself.”

“You could fall on your face, too, and then I’d have to fill out all sorts of insurance forms, not to mention incident reports…” She put out a hand indicating a foot-high stack of invisible papers.

“I get the picture. Your job is as paper happy as mine.” Hutch pressed a hand against his aching belly. It would be a long time before his abdominal muscles were rock hard again. The surgery to close the ostomy would just tear him up again, and put him further behind in his physical fitness. What a hell of a way to pass the summer. No days lingering on the beach watching…girls. He almost smiled at that. Starsky was all he really wanted to admire these days, especially since they hadn’t had been able to consummate their new relationship in any way yet, but he still liked to look at a nubile young woman wearing a teeny bikini in the noonday sun. That would probably never change.

“So, the wheelchair for transportation, or you get an escort,” Danica said with finality.

“Escort, if you must.” Hutch rolled his eyes, feeling like a recalcitrant child. “I’d have thought you’d be glad to get rid of me for an hour. So you can do all those nurse duties like make the bed without a patient in it.”

“And give up the thrill of getting a glimpse of your backside when you roll over so I can tuck in the sheets?” Danica winked at him. “Come on, then. I have to pick up some more IV tubing for room 416 from the supply room, anyway. It’s right next to the solarium, so you won’t feel like I’m going out of my way.”

Hutch walked slowly, very aware of the nurse beside him. He was having a hard time coordinating his breathing and walking without feeling like his abdominal muscles were stretched to the max, but on the other hand, he also felt far more normal than in the last few days. The future looked very bleak with more surgeries looming. He’d probably get stuck at a desk for months instead of going out on the street with Starsky. How would that impact their blossoming closeness? Would Starsky be paired with some new upstart? Or worse, a cop who put him in danger?

Hutch scowled when they arrived in the sunny room, not even seeing the bright flowers planted along the southern end.

“Do you want to go back?” Danica asked, sounding concerned, which annoyed Hutch all the more. He wasn’t some child that needed looking after every second of his life.

“No!” he said more forcefully than he’d meant and was immediately guilty for the hurt on Danica’s face. She was only doing her job, after all. “No, really. I want to sit by myself for a while. If anyone comes to visit, just send them this way.”

“See you in about an hour.” Danica hurried off.

Hutch settled into a small sofa across from the flower display, watching absently as two elderly women in pink smocks tended to the garden. They were planting petunias and he wanted to tell them that the red and purple flowers wouldn’t last long in this room where the sun came in strongly in the afternoon, but he kept silent. What did it matter to him, anyway? Pretty things, good things, that made a person smile never lasted very long. Someone would see the flowers today, and that was all that was necessary. No permanence.

Nothing gold can stay.

The phrase drifted around in his brain like one of those infuriating pop songs that repeated endlessly in his head on a boring day. Who had written those words?

Robert Frost. Nineteenth century poet who must have had the same cynical life view as Hutch did, judging from that poem, at least.

Hutch had no illusions about happiness. He clung to love and joy when he had it, knowing that it would ultimately leave. Which didn’t bode well for his relationship with Starsky unless he could get some kind of perspective. He wanted this to last, of all things in his life. Nancy had been fleeting, as all teenaged love affairs are meant to be. Vanessa? There was a quagmire of anger, resentment, lust and passion all burned to dust. Had he learned from that? Not much. He’d whipped through a succession of women after Vanessa, several just as self-destructive as his marriage had been. His tract record was abysmal. Abby had been sweet, if slightly obsessive about her eating habits, and wonderfully kinky in bed. Gillian-ah, there was one doomed from the beginning. He’d imagined her a completely different person than the one she actually was. Innocent deceit, if there could be such a thing.

With Starsky, there was only honesty and trust. A willingness to give as well as take. Sincerity. And peace. All the things Hutch had missed with just about every woman he’d bedded. Some of his past dalliances had had some of those traits, but few had had every one. When Nancy said she was looking for security and devotion, Hutch knew that was what he’d found-all in the package of one goofy, complex, exasperating partner.

Starsky had stuck by Hutch through some pretty rough times-for both of them, and he would, in all probability, still be there, holding out his hands when Hutch was patched up and ready to go back on the force. The big question was, would they both be able to hang on to a sexual partnership? It wasn’t that he thought that Starsky would be swayed by another man, but another woman-maybe.

Neither of them had had sex with another man. Starsky was one of the first men he’d ever been drawn to. He’d looked at a few other guys, many years ago, but never acted on that. Never had any real desire to bed a man until Starsky. So, if he was basically still attracted to women, it stood to reason that Starsky was, too. In fact, Starsky had assumed that Hutch was renewing his interest in Nancy.

Maybe this intense longing for Starsky was just a temporary thing, after all? Maybe all the stress and anxiety of the last few months, culminating in Vanessa’s murder, where Starsky had given him total support and trust, to the anger just before-and after-the Torino crashed, had forced the two of them into a place they weren’t meant to be?

No.

The attraction and arousal were mutual. Starsky had been just as interested in exploring new realms as he had. If this hadn’t come about recently, just exactly when had he first felt a desire for his male partner? When had the first seeds of lust been planted?

July, 1970

“Hutch, did you have to bring so many plants with you?” Starsky shoved at a spider plant, breaking off one of the many miniature spiderlings, and Hutch winced in sympathy.

“Vanessa wouldn’t have watered them,” Hutch said with a sigh. He took a swig from the second bottle of beer he’d drunk in under ten minutes. The heat, combined with the argument with Van back at his former apartment, and then his breakdown, complete with tears, in front of Starsky had left him exhausted with the mother of all headaches battering his skull. They’d loaded Starsky’s car with as many of Hutch’s possessions as they could remove from the Toledo Court apartment, ripping his already unstable marriage further asunder. He couldn’t have gotten up to help Starsky stow the hapless vegetation on the window ledge if he tried. Starsky’s tiny studio apartment was now jam packed with boxes and Hutch’s battered suitcase.

“I can see why.” Starsky overturned the box they’d used to carry the plants in, setting the last two, a Christmas cactus and a Wandering Jew, on top. “Must take an hour to get this jungle under control.” He brushed his hands off, adjusting himself as he came to a stand and Hutch’s eyes were drawn to the rounded bulge in the front of Starsky’s worn jeans. “You and the jungle are welcome to stay as long as you need, Hutch, but I may get a machete if the vines start growing across the floor.”

Taking a long breath, Hutch finished his beer. He leaned back against the curve of the futon Starsky had bought the week before. At least Starsky now had a bed to sleep on. The cover was ultra-soft brushed cotton, like the jeans Vanessa had worn the last time they’d made love. He’d peeled her out of the tight pants and rubbed his cheek against the warm, hard thickness hanging between her legs… Gasping, Hutch sat up abruptly, dropping the empty bottle on the hardwood floor.

Where the hell had that come from?

“Something wrong?” Starsky asked, using the edge of his linoleum counter to pop the top off a bottle of Bud. “You look like the beer went bad all of a sudden.”

“Uh-no, went down the wrong pipe.”

“You didn’t even choke.” Starsky eyed him as if fully aware that Hutch wasn’t telling the truth and tipped his head back, his Adams apple bobbing as he drank.

Hutch watched this display, his mouth watering, and grabbed another beer. God, he was thirsty. He had every intention of drinking himself into a stupor so that the total wreck of his life didn’t keep him awake another night. The last few days at the Flamingo Inn, he’d sat hunched against the wall shared with the neighboring room, listening to a series of couples going at it with alarming regularity. A series of men, that is, all with the same woman.

In desperation, Hutch had waited until he could hear the rumble of the john’s voice paying the hooker for services rendered and stepped out of his room just as the other man was getting into his car to drive off.

The woman couldn’t have looked less like Vanessa if she’d tried. She was tiny, barely coming up under Hutch’s chin, with skin the color of pie crust just out of the oven, like his Grandmother used to make. A puff of brown-black hair surrounded her narrow face like a soft cloud and she was wearing just enough to cover her assets without leaving anything to the imagination. She looked over the age of consent and surprisingly alluring for someone who’d just gone three rounds and then some.

“Well, hello,” she’d said with a smirk, glancing over at Hutch. “Were we too noisy? I swear the walls here are made of rice paper.”

“It’s not as much fun listening as it is joining in,” Hutch had replied, appalled at his own bravado. He was a cop, for Christ’s sake, not some idiot cheating husband out for a night on the town. If the vice squad got wind of this, he’d lose his badge in a heartbeat. But the craving to have a warm body against his was overwhelming. It’d been weeks, if not longer, since he and Van did anything more than snipe at each other.

She’d crooked her finger, beckoning him in. “You wanna have some fun?”

Throwing caution to the winds, he’d followed her into the next room.

Watching Starsky attempt to organize the moving boxes into a better configuration, Hutch sucked on his bottle morosely. The third beer quickly followed the first two and he finally felt himself loosening up. The buzz was not as good as sex, but closer than most things. “Starsk, when was the last time you-“

“Got laid?” Starsky grinned wolfishly, coming over to sit on the futon next to him. The dip in the middle when the stuffed cover sagged against the folded frame dumped him up against Hutch with their legs squashed together from hip to knee.

“Are you always this crass?” Hutch asked irritably. His belly rumbled. He probably should put real food inside, but the remainder of the six-pack of beer was close by and as far as he knew, Starsky had no edible food in the house. He opened another bottle and poured half down his throat. Much better.

“Sleep with, make love, beaver hunting… take your pick,” Starsky continued, making a dirty gesture with his fist.

Fortified with fermented hops, Hutch nodded. “I-uh-used the services of a working girl last night.” He breathed out, very aware of the press of Starsky’s leg against his own. The beer was doing nothing for his need, which seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds. Probably because he’d seen Vanessa earlier at the apartment. Regardless of the argument, damn, the woman had looked good in that green band-aid of a skirt and nearly see-through paisley blouse. He wasn’t blind. He could still see her beauty, even if her cruel taunts about his job and partner, and her belligerent attitude spoiled the view.

He’d really liked the way the gold straps of her Roman-style sandals criss-crossed up her ankle, emphasizing the curve of her calf.

God, he needed relief.

“You went to a hooker?” Starsky yelled, splashing his beer on the futon when he jumped up to stare at Hutch. “Are you nuts? We haven’t been on the force a full year and you want to jeopardize your whole career that way?”

“I wasn’t thinking about that!” Hutch said harshly. Starsky’s explosion had accomplished one thing, Hutch’s erection had started to deflate.

“I guess not. Didja at least use a rubber?” Starsky kicked a box full of LPs out of his way, stalking around his crowded living room. “You could get a VD.”

“I’m not stupid, Starsky. She gave me a hand job.”

“Well, that’s thinking with your little brain ‘stead of the one in your head,” he snarked. “I thought you were the college boy. Don’t they teach you anything in those ivy colored halls?”

“Ivy covered…” Hutch started, then gave up. He drank down the rest of his fourth beer, the flavor doing nothing to cover up the bitter taste in his mouth. “It’s nothing, Starsky. Besides, Van was the one who gave me the clap-last year. She was sleeping with the guy who got her first magazine shoot. While we were in the academy.”

Starsky stopped, his mouth open but sound coming out. His surprise would have been almost comical under any other circumstances. “You never said.”

“I don’t tell you everything,” Hutch said, leaning back on the futon again. He was so tired, and his head was light as a feather, about to float off his neck. Probably a good thing. He’d sleep so much better if he didn’t think so much. “It wasn’t long after I met you. You probably don’t remember that I had to get an afternoon off-to go to the doctor for a shot.”

“In the butt?” Starsky asked, going on when Hutch nodded. “Hurts like hell.” He left his bottle on the army locker cum coffee table next to the dead soldiers Hutch had placed there. “I got it in the Army. From a girl in China Beach.”

“Vietnamese?” Hutch asked, not really interested in Starsky’s past exploits, but wanting a conversation-to really talk to someone he liked, rather than have to spend the night listening to mindless sex acts again. He claimed his fifth beer since Starsky was still nursing his first.

“Nah, donut dolly.” Starsky smacked his lips, tracing voluptuous curves in the air. “Blond hair and blue eyes. She had fantastic…pastries. Sweet and so good to eat.”

“Crass, I’ll say it again.”

“Listen to you.” Starsky rolled his eyes in mock distain and lowered himself down on the futon again.

The temperature in the room must have been close to eighty-five and with Starsky so close, Hutch thought he would spontaneously combust. They’d been good friends since the first weeks of the academy but this was the first time he’d been aware of Starsky’s raw sexuality-and the way he constantly moved when he was sitting. It was very distracting and Hutch was hard again.

He really needed to get some regular sex. That’s all there was to it.

“You want me to call Pizzaboy’s?” Starsky asked, tossing his empty bottle at the army locker and missing. “I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving. Do you know how much fat is in one of those pizzas? All that cheese, pepperoni, and sausage.”

“Okay, I’ll compromise with you. Some mushrooms on the top and only sausage.” Starsky snagged the cord of the telephone resting on the floor and pulled over to him.

“That makes it so much better,” Hutch said with just a dash of sarcasm for spice. He liked this. He liked it a lot. He and Starsky, relaxed and mellow. No Van digging her manicured nails into his arm. No nameless lady of the night with her powder puff of hair tickling the inside of his thigh as she knelt between his legs. “Got any more beer?” Maybe rooming with Starsky was the right thing for his peace of mind, after all. He just needed to find a secondhand bed so he didn’t have to sleep on the floor.

“In the fridge.” Starsky pointed, smiling at him before he placed his pizza order over the phone. “My booze is your booze.”

“You’re a kind and generous man, Pizzaboy.” Hutch affectionately punched his pal without getting up. He hadn’t quite emptied the one he was holding and Starsky was empty-handed. He’d have to get up soon enough to get another and would probably bring Hutch another one, too. Starsky was like that. Van had never been a giving person.

Starsky hung up the phone and squirmed around, trying to fit his fingers into the tight pocket of his painted on jeans. He finally extracted a five and some coins after some elaborate gymnastics that nearly landed him in Hutch’s lap. Hutch laughed, shoving Starsky off.

“I’m two bucks short.” Starsky shook the coins in his hand. “You got any cash?”

“In my jacket pocket.” Hutch pointed to the leather jacket Van had bought him when she still liked him and wanted a handsome escort on her arm at night.

Starsky collected the bills, counting out the correct amount. “Hold that.” He dumped the money onto Hutch’s lap, noticing his friend’s erection with a lifted eyebrow. “If you need to take a shower, the pizza won’t be here for forty-five minutes. And the water’s always cold, no matter how much supposedly hot water you add.”

“I’ll remember that,” Hutch said, letting his eyes close. First a nap, and with any luck, a very, very nice dream. Starsky’s jeans covered groin was one of the last things he saw before he went to sleep.

 

June, 1978

“Detective Hutchinson?”

The wrong voice woke Hutch up from his doze. With his eyes closed, he tried to place the soft, rough tone. Not the nurse, Danica. Not Starsky. Not even Nancy, who he’d seen more in the last few days than in the sixteen years since they were married.

“Huh?” he muttered, coming fully awake. “Anne?”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have bothered you,” Anne Benson said. She stood awkwardly in the entrance to the solarium, holding a plastic bag marked ‘patient’s belongings.’ Robin, full of energy and life, dashed past her to peer out the large windows.

“Look, Anney! I can see the ocean.” Robin pressed his nose against the glass, pointing at the distant waters riding the horizon. “Can we go to the beach sometime?”

“I don’t think I have a bathing suit, Birdman.” She smiled apologetically at her son and looked over at Hutch. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“You’re being released?” Hutch asked. She looked ravaged, her face covered in bruises and her eye was still so swollen she couldn’t possibly see on that side. “How’d you talk the warden around here into that?”

“It’s all surface, no internal damage, according to the doctor.” Anne shrugged, glancing over at Robin who was now chatting happily with the pink smocked gardeners. She sat down, rubbing her left knee with a grimace. “The only thing I have to worry about is…” Her eyes flicked over at the boy, and Hutch saw the guilt and fear she was hiding. “Getting pregnant. I don’t think that’s possible. Wrong time of the month, but….”

“It’s happened before?” Hutch finished quietly.

“Yeah.” She licked her lips and straightened her shoulders with a defiant air. “But I’m… what do you call it? Turning over a new leaf. Thinking positively. You saved my life.”

“Not me.” Hutch held up his empty palms. “Starsky did that.”

“And I’m gonna be thankful forever.” She shook her head, “You started it all, though, back eight years ago. Every time I saw you and Starsky at the trial, I’d think what if Art had lived. What if he’d shot one of you two, instead.”

“Starsky always indulges in the ‘what ifs’,” Hutch said, not admitting to his own current tendencies in that area.

“The first few weeks in prison, I kept thinking I’d get out, that somebody would realize it was all a big mistake. What if I hadn’t gone with Art to Mexico?” She sat, silently twisting her hands in front of her. “And after a while-what if I’d never met Art, then I wouldn’t have been involved at all. What if I’d been born into another family? Had a dad who went to an office job, a mom who baked cookies after school. You can’t ever just find the one time, the one moment when it all changed, can you?”

Exactly the same philosophical conundrum he’d been mulling over. Was it ever possible to know in advance which moment in life was special and which was just another in a series of minutes that changed into hours, days and so on into years? “The what-ifs can grind you into the ground if you’re not careful.”

“That’s it!” Anne said, her damaged face somehow beautiful, the purity of her new ideals shining through. “I needed to change, even if I didn’t know it in 1970. I got smacked hard in the face, something I was used to, believe me. And then I had to grow up. I wonder, if you didn’t shoot Art, what would have happened?”

“Impossible to know,” Hutch said. What if he’d never have met Starsky? Or even further back than that- what if he hadn’t defied his family’s expectations and moved west with his new bride and then joined the police academy? What would have happened? How many lives would have been different? Not just his, Vanessa’s and Starsky’s. Anne and Robin Benson’s, not to mention the hundreds of others who he’d encountered as a cop.

“So, I’m looking ahead, now. Which ain’t my normal thing.”

“Anney! Mommy!” Robin rushed up, his words tumbling out like snakes released from a joke can of peanuts. “Remember you said we could get a cat? Remember? That lady, Mrs. Allen over there. Her cat had kittens. She said they’re all black except one is white….”

“Slow down,” Anne laughed, fending him off. “Not today. We have to go home now, Robin. We have to….”

Robin went absolutely still, all joy evaporating in a single instant. “Home to Loma Linda Road, right?” he asked, sounding desperate. “Not Mickey’s house, right?” His voice squeaked on the last word, the tension in his body painful to see. Hutch ached for the child who would never be his.

“Our house, Robin.” Anne said softly. “Captain Dobey said we could go to our house, on Loma Linda. He even had it cleaned. Isn’t that nice?”

“What about your friend? The guy who got shot?” Robin made a gun with his fist and index finger, his face pale.

“Quantrell is better, and we can visit him in a couple of days.” Anne patted him gingerly, still obviously not completely comfortable as the mother figure. “Give us all a couple of days, huh?”

“Listen, Robin, I know two boys about your age-Ed and uh…” Hutch concentrated, trying to remember Nancy’s other son’s name. “Doug Michaels. Eddie will be ten soon. How’d you like to come to a barbecue for his birthday in a few weeks? So you could meet some new friends? I’d be there, and Starsky, too.”

“I guess so,” Robin answered tentatively. He lifted one thin shoulder in an uncertain shrug.

“We’d love it, thank you,” Anne said more graciously. “Maybe-would it be all right if we called his friend Miguel, too?”

“Yeah!” Robin perked up with a little bounce of excitement.

“The more the merrier,” Hutch agreed, easily imagining a backyard game of touch football with that many boys to make up the teams.

“I spoke to Maria’s mother on the phone this morning-at Anaheim General. They think she’ll be all right. She didn’t even lose the baby.” Anne’s voice broke briefly but she kept going without acknowledging the lapse, patting her own flat belly. “I can’t even imagine what she went through.”

“I think you, of all people, can,” Hutch said softly. “The two of you might have something to talk about.”

“Anney, I’m hungry,” Robin whined, pointing to a vending machine set against the wall. “Can I have some chips?”

 “Not right now. We must have something to eat at home,” Anne told him, sounding very much like every mother Hutch had ever known. “You will get a kitten, Birdman. And new pajamas, which I’ve promised about three times already. Give me time. And when you go back to school, I will, too.”

That made the boy laugh. “You’re too old to go to school. You’re a mom.”

“Adults go to school all the time,” Hutch said, watching Anne attempt to keep her composure. She furtively wiped at her swollen eye and dug around in the belonging bag for a tissue.

“I’m going to learn to be a nurse,” Anne declared, wadding the Kleenex up into a ball. “Or at least try.”

“And work with sick people?” Robin wrinkled his nose in disgust. “That’s yucky.”

“It’s a real paying job, and if you keep growing out of pajamas, I’ll need to buy new ones,” Anne said. She looked up at the clock with surprise. “Damn, is that the time?-uh, sorry, I shouldn’t use those kind of words, huh?” She made a comical face at her son which was all the more gruesome because of her injuries, and took his hand. “I’m supposed to talk to my parole officer today. We should be going. Say goodbye to Detective Hutchinson.”

“Goodbye,” Robin parroted obediently, then twisted away from Anne. “Can I ride in Starsky’s car next time?”

“I promise.” Hutch laughed, knowing Starsky wouldn’t mind at all. He waved, resisting the urge to follow them down the hall to catch one last glimpse of the child he’d delivered so long ago on a hot afternoon in June. It didn’t usually pay to look back, because life kept moving into the future. Except, in this case, examining the past had completely altered perceptions from every angle. Like one of those cardboard tubes with bits of colored glass in one end. Turn the tube one way and the glass formed a red, blue and green star, but when turned the other way, it became a random pattern of jagged colors sharp enough to wound.

Hutch rubbed his belly, pressing against the cramping ache. Three parts hunger to one part ache, which was getting better with every passing day. He was astonished that he felt content. Not truly happy, not yet, but content was an improvement.

He had a home, a job-which would be a dull desk job for the foreseeable future, and he had life. More than many had.

Most of all, he had Starsky. Starsky was his constant. He always had been, and always would be. It didn’t matter exactly when their-whatever it was called: attraction, relationship, love-had started. It just had. No looking back. No second guessing each other.

He knew the journey together wouldn’t be easy, and it wouldn’t always be fun, between his tendency to depression and brooding, and Starsky’s stubborn, hot-headed intensity, but they would always stand shoulder to shoulder as partners, and hand in hand as lovers, looking forward.

~*~*~

Jose Gonzalez’s arrest was surprisingly anti-climactic once Maria Gomez provided the answers to many of the questions the police were asking. She was still hooked to a ventilator after brain surgery in the ICU when Lt. Lawton questioned her with the aid of a Spanish interpreter. Maria laboriously wrote out her responses with a paper and pencil, and despite her injuries, Maria was able to communicate quite well. She knew names, addresses and had surprising connections to the criminal world.

“Who’d have believed a nice woman like Maria Gomez would have a sister married to you, huh, asshole?” Starsky sneered at his handcuffed prisoner.

“No habla con el policia,” Jose Gonzalez snarled. “Mierda.“

“Language, shithead.” Starsky wasn’t particularly well-versed in Spanish, but he’d heard that particular expletive countless times in his career, and could easily translate the meaning.

“He must have over fifty grand in his desk. I guess business is good.” Babcock whistled. “You don’t believe in banks, Jose?”

 Since Babcock and Simmons had taken over the case, they’d driven over to the address supplied by Maria Gomez in their vehicle with Starsky riding along. Luckily for BCPD, Gonzalez worked inside the LA County lines, putting the arrest in their jurisdiction.

“He doesn’t talk to cops,” Starsky said with a roll of his eyes. He kept hold of Gonzalez’s arm down the short hall of drug dealer’s office into the intense heat of the afternoon. The temperature still hovered in the high eighties, heat waves shimmering on the cement sidewalk. “But you’ll be talking to the police for a long time to come, buddy boy. Didn’t you hear that your old pal Conrad tried to blow away a whole street full of SWAT guys? And he’s singing like a sparrow to anybody who’ll listen about his supplier.”

“That crap don’t make no sense.” Gonzalez hunched his shoulders, keeping himself as far away from Starsky as he possibly could.

“There’s the lab boys.” Simmons flagged the dark VW van down. “They can bag all that cash and bring it into evidence. I get a crick in my neck from counting packs of hundreds.”

“There’s so much coke residue on most of the money, you could get a contact high just from inhaling.” Babcock mimed snorting cocaine and rubbed his nose until he sneezed. “Heroin, Cocaine, marijuana… you’re a regular illegal pharmacy, Jose.”

“I already tol’ you that ain’t my shit,” Gonzalez said. “Connie left that crap in the back. I din’ even know it was there.”

“What d’you want to bet that Connie claims you’re his supplier?” Starsky suggested.

“Connie don’t know his nuts from a bag of rocks,” Gonzalez said. He jerked away from his captor and kicked his foot out but Starsky managed a nimble side step as he escorted him over the waiting unmarked car.

“Be nice to Senor Gonzalez, Starsky, or we won’t let you play in our sandbox anymore.” Babcock leaned against the back fender, his arms folded over his chest so that his holstered pistol was in plain view. “We want him looking pretty for his mug shots. Wouldn’t it be unfortunate if he should have some kind of accident-maybe bang his head on the edge of the car getting in.” He grinned savagely.

“Really unfortunate,” Starsky agreed, giving Gonzalez just enough of a shove that he stumbled.

“Hey!” With his arms handcuffed behind him, Jose couldn’t catch himself and would have done exactly as Babcock described but Simmons grabbed his arm just in the nick of time and helped fold him into the backseat.

Starsky leaned into the open car door, pushing right up into Gonzalez’s face. He could smell the stale odor of sweat, beer and marijuana. “Guess I’ll have to ride in the back with you, bicho, and there’s only one seat belt. Wanna toss a coin to see who gets it?”

Gonzalez puckered his lips and Starsky stepped back swiftly, slamming the car door. No way did he want that fucker’s spit all over him. The little wad went splat against the car window and slid down in a slimy line.

“Don’t you know we don’t do windows, Starsky?” Simmons complained. “Guess you can sit in front with us.” He held open the passenger door, letting Starsky climb in the middle while Babcock took the wheel.

“You spit again, you get my fist jammed between your teeth,” Starsky warned.

“I have rights, y’know!” Gonzalez roared. “This ain’t the first time I been nabbed. I got a lawyer who can get me out in half an hour. You take the cuffs off me an’ turn this car around, I could make it worth your while.”

“Wait a minute.” Starsky looked up, staring at Gonzalez’s reflection in the rear view mirror. “Babcock, did that sound like a bribe to you?”

“Sounded like one to me,” Simmons confirmed. “He does have a bunch of cash just lying around. There’s probably more in a safe.”

“What do you think this guy is worth?” Starsky mused. He felt revved with energy, totally unlike earlier in the day. The excitement of getting Gonzalez’s address from Lawton and then being asked to come along with Babcock and Simmons had revived him.

That Gonzalez had actually been at his downtown office, apparently preparing to flee when they arrived, was the cherry on top of the sundae. He’d been alone and totally surprised when they walked in. No shots fired, no chases down a dark alley, no rough stuff. Although Starsky would have loved to plant his sneakered heel right into the slimebag’s head and grind him into the dust, he had refrained. The arrest had gone smoother than any he’d been involved with in a long time. If Hutch had been there, instead of Babcock and Simmons, Starsky would have been truly happy.

“He’s been a dealer for what-ten years?” Babcock mused.

“That ain’t never been proved!” Gonzalez yelled.

“At least eight.” Starsky watched Babcock steer. The man had a smooth, easy rhythm to his driving, rarely too fast or too slow-far more sedate but safer than Starsky could ever manage. It wasn’t often that he was in a car with someone else driving. And when he was, ninety percent of the time, it was Hutch at the wheel. He kept turning his head and expecting Hutch to be in the car, somewhere. It just wasn’t normal to be in on a bust without him. “What’s heroin go for on the street these days?”

“By the kilo or smaller?” Simmons asked as if none of them were aware exactly how much it took make a buy in some shady alley.

“Jose!” Starsky said loudly without turning around. “You sell your product in large quantities, or you break it up with some cheap arsenic and sell it to innocent school children in the park? And when they don’t have enough dough for another fix, do you beat ’em senseless just because they can’t fill up your cash box?”

“I ain’t saying nuthin’,” he grunted.

“I think he’s an all purpose abuser,” Starsky said with a grin. This was truly demented fun. “Nobody’s too good for our boy Jose to bring down to the dirt. He probably even taught Conrad all he knew about good marital relations-get a girl high, pregnant, and then chain her up so she can’t run when you shoot her in the head.” The last words came out in a dark, angry manner that even surprised him.

“That’s my sister-in-law you’re talking about! I treat my women right!” Jose retorted, kicking his feet against the seat back so they jammed right into Starsky’s sore back. “That fucker tried to murder mi hermanita.”

Lit firecrackers would have made less of an impact. Starsky clamped his jaw shut, so Gonzalez wouldn’t have the satisfaction of knowing that he’d inflicted pain. He was glad when the prisoner kept right on talking because it gave him time to breathe through the agony. Simmons looked over at him with a concerned frown, but Starsky wiped the sweat off his forehead, keeping his hand from shaking by sheer strength of will.

“Conrad is loco, man,” Gonzalez said. “He’s always doing whacked-out stuff. My wife, she cryin’ all the time since she heard ‘bout Maria in the hospital.”

“So, you were such a loving husband you forbade her from visiting, huh?” Simmons pretended to dab away a tear. “Play us another weeper, Gonzalez, you’re breaking my heart. Maria told the cops that Almalita called to tell her you were moving south of the border. Trying to run?”

“I just trying to get far away from this fucking situation with Connie…” Gonzalez started, then stopped, his stunned expression comical. All three police laughed, and exchanged high fives. Starsky smacked Simmons with his right palm so hard it sent a jarring jolt across his wrist.

 He sucked in air, trying to suppress the impulse to shake out the pain, and watched Gonzalez in the rear view mirror as the prisoner tried to figuratively pull his foot out of his mouth. “So you don’t talk to cops, huh?” Starsky asked dryly. “Oh, look, we’re here. Your new home until the big yellow bus comes to take you down to Lompoc.”

“Get me my lawyer,” Gonzalez muttered, his chin dropped down on his chest.

There was a prisoner transport van bellied up to the backdoors of Parker Center, blocking their way. Babcock started to back up to drive around the other side of the parking lot just as a gun-toting guard opened the rear doors of the van. A second guard reached in to unlock the prisoner’s leg shackles to let him down, and Starsky saw who he was at the same time Gonzalez did.

“You put me near Connie, I gonna cut his eyes out with a plastic spoon,” Gonzalez exploded, nearly coming over into the front seat in his rage.

“Shut the hell up!” Starsky yelled, enough adrenaline rushing through his veins to obliterate the pain he’d been fighting. “You’re already in major shit, Gonzalez, but you cooperated with your arrest and that gives you Brownie points. Don’t blow it now.”

“We’ll just give them some time to get Conrad inside,” Simmons said evenly, but he’d pulled his pistol out and leveled it at the man in the back seat. “Which coincidentally, will give ol’Jose time to calm down, comprendo, hermano?”

“You think I play nice just ’cause you talk in Spanish, fucker?” Gonzalez spat, but aimed it down at the floor boards.

“I can’t wait to get him outta here,” Babcock said with a sigh. “We’ll need to clean out the car with industrial strength bleach.” He’d backed up enough to swing around the far side of the huge blacktopped area crowded with cars, but Starsky didn’t take his eyes off Conrad until he disappeared through the main doors leading to the jail.

“Simmons, let me out,” Starsky said quickly. He really wanted to get a crack at Conrad before the guy was surrounded by lawyers. Chances were that he’d been questioned extensively in Anaheim, but Starsky just wanted to ask him why. Why shoot Hutch? Why do any of the shitty things he’d done?

“Starsky!” Simmons yelped, pushing open the door and getting out the moment the car stopped so that Starsky didn’t crawl right over his lap.

“I’ll meet you inside!” Starsky called, already at a dead run across the parking lot without looking back. Hutch would have understood. He wasn’t sure Simmons and Babcock did, but that didn’t worry him much. It was their case now. He just wanted one chance to look Conrad straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell.

Conrad and his guards had already moved inside the lock-up area by the time Starsky got in the building. Starsky looked around, frustrated. With any luck, they’d take him straight to an interrogation room, but which one?

“Starsky!” Dobey came striding down the hall, moving pretty quickly for someone of his bulk. “Didn’t you pick up Gonzalez?”

“Babcock and Simmons have him.” Starsky tried to squeeze past his superior but Dobey knew him too well.

“This isn’t your fight anymore, son. I thought we went through that already.”

“Captain, I just…” Starsky clenched his hands into fists, feeling the ache in his right wrist. The pain focused him, reminding him of all that Conrad had done.

“Lieutenant Lawton already interrogated the man for hours. Said Conrad is a raving psychotic. According to the emergency psychologist they called in when Conrad just kept repeating the name Mickey over and over, the death of his brother may have…” Dobey shuffled the papers in his hands, looking for a particular passage. He pointed one meaty finger at a typed paragraph. “Precipitated a complete break with reality. The only other thing he says is that you and Hutchinson ruined his life.”

“So that’s it?” Starsky whispered, adrenaline draining out of him as if giant had pulled out a plug. He could feel the energy falling away, leaving him light-headed and sick. “He’s nuts, so nothing? Nothing? That bastard better stand trial! He nearly killed Hutch, not to mention what he did to….”

“He was transferred back here since our case preceded the one in Anaheim, although both counties will be bringing charges against Simon Conrad,” Dobey said. “And with some of the information Minnie is uncovering after you sent her on a hunt through the system, there may be even more to come. His lawyers have him locked up until next week waiting for a full psych evaluation to determine if he is stable enough to stand trial.”

“Fuck.” Starsky nearly sent his fist into the wall, but Dobey’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. Good thing, since Starsky had unconsciously swung with his left hand. Had he slugged the solid wall, he probably would have broken a few bones, and been completely disabled. “That’s wrong, Cap. The guy planned his attack on Hutch, he knew exactly where I’d be when he shot at me-not to mention that he managed drug sales for years without getting caught. He’s not crazy! The guy is smart, slick and knows how to work the system. Odds on that asshole lawyer tutored him to act nuts.”

“Possibly,” Dobey agreed. “But if you want the arrest to stick, then you stay away. Do you hear me? You wait for the DA to question you and do not under any circumstances approach the prisoner unless you want to end up behind bars yourself for obstruction or harassment.”

“Starsky!” Simmons called, walking in front of Babcock and Gonzalez. “We’re headed up to interrogation number two. You coming?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way,” Starsky said wearily. He didn’t have any fight left in him. He’d never liked the wrap-up of a case as much as the hunt, anyway. Too much paperwork, too much red tape binding the hands of those on the side of the law. He wanted nothing more than to corner Conrad and batter him with bare fists, feel the pure, clean sense of revenge. Wading through the morass of legal briefs, countless hearings and meetings with lawyers never had the same feeling of retribution.

“Starsky.” Dobey held out two shiny dimes. “Can I interest you in a candy bar? I was going to get one myself, but Edith tells me never to eat alone.”

“I thought that was never drink alone.” Starsky managed a smile for Dobey’s generosity.

“That’s never been my problem.” Dobey inserted the money in a vending machine just outside the corridor leading to the jail area. He punched the button for two Hershey bars with almonds. Starsky would have preferred his plain, but he didn’t say a word. “Prepare yourself for a long haul on this one, son. If the Feds get involved, since there was kidnapping across county lines, then this could drag in the courts for years.”

“I know.” Starsky retrieved the Hershey bars from the bottom well of the vending machine and handed over Dobey’s snack.

“Then take a deep breath and save all that anger for where it will do the most good.” Dobey virtuously broke off only two small squares and ate them, with a sigh of satisfaction. “When you have to testify. Until then, we’ll all help with building this case. It’s not just your fight. No one’s shoulders are that big.”

“You implying a lack of height?” Starsky pretended to be insulted and drew himself up. He and Dobey were nearly head to head, but the older man was maybe half an inch taller and weighed probably one hundred pounds more. “I want to batter down doors, Cap. Hutch can keep me from butting heads, some of the time….”

“Some of the time is right.”

Starsky unwrapped his chocolate and took a savage bite, which ended up too big for his mouth. He chewed, hardly enjoying the candy until the last swallow when the sweetness lingered on his tongue. “Let Simmons and Babcock do some of the work, huh?”

“That’s the spirit.” Dobey nodded his approval.

“I’ll try, Cap’n.” Starsky saluted with what was left of his candy bar, walking off with a lighter step.

Attempting to question Gonzalez was an exercise in futility. His legal counsel, Bruce Hilton, was in with Simon Conrad for the better part of the afternoon, making everyone have to wait around until he arrived in room two. Starsky ate another candy bar, this time without almonds, and drank another cup of coffee. Simmons and Babcock spent the time getting up to speed on the case, and the pretty assistant DA who arrived to take the case kept trying to flirt with every detective in the place. A cop groupie, unless Starsky missed his guess. Simmons spurned her with a single glance and Babcock waggled his left hand with the wedding ring on the fourth finger at the pretty DA.

By the time she turned her big brown, overly mascaraed eyes at Starsky, he marveled that she wasn’t turning him on. She filled out her elegantly tailored brown suit very nicely, and had left the top buttons of her lacy blouse open to highlight the creamy mounds of breast held captive by what must be one heck of a bra. In the past, he’d have itched to investigate that bra, maybe toy with the clasps in the back through the fabric of her blouse. Now, he admired her cleavage and thought about Hutch’s smooth, flat chest. Hutch naked, wearing nothing but that bag on his side, covered in black lace.

Starsky almost laughed, which definitely wasn’t the reaction that assistant DA Kathleen Link had in mind. She pouted prettily. “Did you think I was joking?”

“Uh.” What the hell had she been saying while he was staring at her chest, picturing Hutch? “No, I… Oh, look, here’s Gonzalez’s mouthpiece, at last!” Starsky gave a sigh of relief when she straightened her rumpled skirt and stood to meet her opponent. He was too tired for this crap. He’d finally remembered to take the Darvocet but it had been hours too late and the drug had been no match for the accumulated pain. After waiting so long, his interest in questioning the prisoner had waned.

It waned even further ten minutes later when Hilton announced that he wanted an uninterrupted hour with his client and an immediate bail hearing before a specific judge.

“That cannot be accommodated!” Kathleen argued, and the two lawyers went into legal jargon that spun right over Starsky’s head.

“Think we’ll get a word in edgewise before nightfall?” Babcock asked tiredly. “I’m thinking about pastrami on rye just about now.”

“Make that two.” Simmons pulled out a five dollar bill. “You want to make a run to Manny’s Deli, or should I?”

“I’ll go, it’s either that, or I fall asleep.” He nudged Starsky. “Hey, you nodding off?”

“No.” Starsky opened his eyes deliberately wide. He’d been dozing for the last five minutes.

“You want pastrami?” Babcock asked.

He wanted to go to bed. He wanted Hutch in the bed right next to him. He wanted lots of things, but suddenly, sticking around to question a suspect who really didn’t have much to do with the case he was interested in was not what he wanted at all. “Nah,” Starsky eyed the two lawyers. Hilton was going back into room two to confer with his client on whatever point he and Link had discussed. “I’m heading out. You guys know what to ask him. He’s yours.” It did feel like a weight had slipped right off his shoulders.

“Thanks, Starsky,” Simmons said sincerely. “Get some rest, you look like you went ten rounds with the champ.”

“He looked worse,” Starsky countered and grinned. He was going home, to Hutch.

~*~*~

Hutch got to go home three days later. He was elated and Starsky felt panicked.

“You just had major surgery! I still don’t understand how they could send you home so soon!” Starsky protested. He didn’t stop stowing Hutch’s belonging in the trunk of the Torino, though. The faster they got out of the vicinity of a hospital, the better off he was. He just needed to vent.

“Because I’m healing. I’m eating, my internal plumbing is working.”

“You’ve been jackin’ off in the hospital?” Starsky asked, both interested and disappointed. He’d been there most of the last few days, how had Hutch managed that without his knowledge? Especially since he would have been glad to lend a hand-or two.

“Not that kind of plumbing!” Hutch smacked Starsky on the butt before tentatively levering himself out of the wheelchair to get into the car. The deep seat of the Torino proved more difficult to get into than he’d anticipated, and he groaned aloud.

“Hey, hey!” Starsky wrapped his arms around Hutch’s waist, carefully guiding him down. He buckled the seat belt into place, adjusting the fit so that it didn’t rest directly over the colostomy bag. “You’re gonna have to let me see how that thing works some time soon if I’m going to be helping you with dressing changes and stuff.”

“Not right now,” Hutch said, leaning into Starsky’s embrace for a few precious seconds.

Hutch’s reassuring warmth shored up something broken inside of Starsky. His back still reminded him that he’d had stitches very recently and tiny twinges of pain cat-walked up and down his skin. He breathed out, feeling Hutch’s ribcage mimic the action. This was how it ought to be except that anyone could see them, out here in the middle of all the cars.

 Hutch cleared his throat self-consciously. “You planning on driving this parade float anytime in the next hour?”

“Oh, yeah.” Starsky laughed, jamming his hand into his jeans pocket to retrieve the keys. “My casa is your casa.”

“Starsky…” Hutch started to protest. Starsky could see the stubborn glint in his eyes, but then he stopped and waved a hand. “Did you at least pick up my mail and get me some extra clothes until I can go home again?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Hutchinson, sir!” Starsky said in a fair approximation of Jack Benny’s Rochester.

~*~*~

The ride was quiet, both of them unwinding in the comfortable silence. Roadway construction caused a detour to the freeway on-ramp that took them one block off the usual route Starsky used between his house and the hospital, but he didn’t even consider the significance until he heard Hutch’s loud exhalation.

The balloons were gone in front of Bernie’s Burger Barn, as well as the long-legged Burger babes, and the plastic shell of the giant burger gleamed brightly in the mid-day sun. From the number of cars in the parking lot, Bernie’s had a sizable lunch time crowd, but Starsky wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to eat there again.

“You interested in takeout from Alda’s on the way home?” Starsky said with forced cheeriness. “I hear the lentil soup is really good.”

“You heard that from me. You’ve never eaten a lentil in your life.” Hutch looked over at the garish structure with an ironic smile. “They have great food at Bernie’s. Their décor could use a little improvement, but he makes a mean steak sandwich. Grilled to perfection. The old place had great boysenberry pie. Wish I’d had a piece before…maybe another time.”

“Didn’t that doctor give you a big long list of foods to avoid until you get sewed back up?” Starsky asked. He was sure he’d seen it among the mounds of discharge medications and information.

“Nothing with seeds, not much meat, low fat, low sugar.” Hutch rubbed his belly. “Three weeks until I go back under the knife. Feel like I’m in a holding pattern.”

“I’m right beside you, Hutch, circling the airport.” Starsky eased the accelerator up to sixty-five on the freeway, heading for his house in the canyons.

“Nancy called this morning. She’s going to Oregon to pick up the boys next week, and the birthday barbecue should be the week after that.”

“You mean on Fourth of July?” Starsky asked, mentally calculating the days.

“All those drugs must be messing with my brain worse than I thought.” Hutch pressed against his forehead. “Yes, on the Fourth. I invited Robin Benson.”

“We can call up Kiko and Pete, too. Make it one hell of a party.” Starsky signaled his lane change and headed down the narrow ramp onto the frontage road. Two more turns and he was on Ocean, winding up the steep street to his place.

“All my family,” Hutch said softly.

“What?” He slotted the car into the driveway and killed the motor. Hutch had a sweet, almost confused look on his face that made Starsky want to pull him over and kiss the stuffing out of him. Instead, he climbed out of the car, pausing to adjust the annoying hard-on that had sprung up from just the thought of kissing Hutch. Talk about Pavlovic conditioning. If he got an erection every time he sat next to Hutch in the Torino, working together would be very, very interesting from now on.

“I used to think I needed to have the perfect family.” Hutch swung his legs out of the car, grasping the door frame to straighten slowly. He grimaced once, but managed to stand by himself.

Starsky knew enough about recovery to let him. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d had a bullet wound in the leg, and had the humiliating experience of Hutch carrying him up the entire stairway to his own house. That only happened once. After that, he’d have shit bullets rather than have Hutch tote him around like an infant. Even when Hutch kicked the cane right out from under him right in front of Joey, he’d put on the macho face instead of crying out.

He knew.

Hutch needed this show of strength, to prove he was still a man. That Starsky didn’t think any less of him because his unorthodox method of pooping didn’t matter. Hutch had to find out for himself that Starsky would love him no matter what.

“A man married a woman, had a son and then a daughter. Succeeded, made money, bought a big, ostentatious house to show everyone that he had the balls to crawl over the little guy,” Hutch said as if he were talking more to himself than Starsky.

“Hutch, that ain’t you.”

“It was my father.” Hutch leaned against the stair railing, waiting while Starsky unpacked the trunk. “I quickly rejected most of his values early in life. His way hadn’t done anything but drive both my parents apart. They both drank too much and never said a word to one another. Nothing good or bad, not one word. Their divorce was a blessing for the entire family.” He reached out to take the smallest of the bags, the one containing his prescriptions, and started slowly up the long staircase.

Starsky followed behind, watching Hutch for any sign of fatigue or weakness. He was secretly proud when Hutch made it successfully to the landing. A week after abdominal surgery and he was doing that well. Maybe there was something to breakfast shakes made of black strap molasses and vitamin E.

Hutch looked done in when he dropped heavily on the couch, sending a chill of fear through Starsky. Should he have made Hutch go slower? Would all that stair climbing undo the surgeon’s work?

“That last step’s a doozy,” Hutch said, out of breath. He dropped his head on the back of the sofa so that his longish blond hair spread out around his head, pale as wheat against the multi-colored bands of the Mexican blanket.

“Yeah, never liked it myself,” Starsky said, sitting down next to him, careful not to jostle Hutch too much.

“It’s no worse than my place, though.” Hutch stretched out his fingers on the couch cushion, hooking them around Starsky’s. “Mi casa, su casa, like you said. What’s mine is yours, because we’re family.”

“Just family?”

“What do you want me to say, because you’re my lover?”

“S’got a good ring to it.”

“Like the sound of a bell.” Hutch braced one hand against his belly in what was becoming a familiar gesture and leaned into Starsky for a kiss that lingered long, sweet and passionate. “We waited too long for this.”

“Yeah.” His lips were tingling like when Novocain was wearing off. Few women had that effect on him. Starsky licked his bottom lip, his tongue encountering Hutch’s lip in the process, and they kissed again. “Why’d we wait?” Starsky asked drowsily. He could get so used to this.

“Because even after I knew I’d never live up to my father’s ideals,” Hutch said, falling back against the sofa again. “I still wanted the-“

“Wife, two point four kids, dog and picket fence?” Starsky nodded. For too long he’d wondered if that was unobtainable. Even now, there was a sharp little pain situated down in the middle of his being that realized by choosing Hutch, he was giving up all the old-fashioned expectations.

“When Van died, a little part of me went with her,” Hutch said, infinite sadness coloring his words. “Not because I still loved her, even though there was something left even after all that time, but because she seemed like my last connection to family. I felt alone-except for you.” He tugged Starsky closer until they were sitting aligned from hip to knee. “You never turned your back on me. Never believed I would have killed her.”

“You think I’m stupid? You’d criticize a person to death, but you don’t shoot ’em for no good reason.”

Hutch laughed. “Thanks, I think.”

“So, what is it you’re trying to say here, Hutch?” Starsky watched his face and marveled at how much love he could feel for this man. How different it felt to sit like this, closer than close, just the same as they always did, but now there was another layer on top of their friendship binding the two of them together. They’d married without ceremony and, so far, without consummation. That last would change, if he had any say in the matter.

“I thought that I had no family left because I couldn’t see the one I had right in front of my eyes. That family can be made from the people closest to you, instead of just the ones you’re related to.”

“You didn’t know that?” Starsky swatted Hutch’s knee. “Big dumb blintz.”

“Just when I thought I was lost, family started coming out of the woodwork,” Hutch said in wonderment. “Nancy and her boys. Robin….”

“Your legacy,” Starsky said softly. “Kiko and Pete.”

“Molly,” Hutch corrected automatically.

“Way more than two point four.”

“I’ve always been an overachiever. I went after you, didn’t I?”

“You went after me?” Starsky crossed his arms, going for as stern an expression as he could pull off when he was deliriously happy inside. “Seems to me, I remember making the first move.”

“I was incapacitated.” Hutch gave a martyred sigh.

“And I was damned afraid that I was gonna lose you,” Starsky said, the terror of that first night waiting for news from the surgeon slamming back into him. Primal, dark fear that would haunt him for a long time. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Hutch. Don’t get shot.”

“If I promise, then you’d have to, too, and from your track record, I think I’d lose the bet.” Hutch reached up, fingering the small scabbed line that parted Starsky’s curls.

“Leave it alone, that hurts.” Starsky pulled away. “It’s been four hours, you have meds and….”

“You can’t even pretend to promise that one, can you?” Hutch said sadly.

“Hutch.”

“Can you promise me anything?” Hutch asked, looking away. “That we’ll settle for this-new definition of a family? That we’ll be happier together than apart, and when some gorgeous, desirable woman comes along, it won’t matter, because we’re…whatever the hell you want to call this?’

Starsky didn’t know how to answer that. He was damned if he said yes and damned if he didn’t. “Which part do you want me to answer, Hutch? I love you, more than anything. You’re more part of me than…my own arm.” He wrapped his fingers around Hutch’s, needing to stay connected. “But this is all new, you and me as lovers. I want it, but it’s scary, you know?”

“It’s all I think about,” Hutch admitted. “One minute I’m turned on and the next I’m terrified.”

“Least we’re on the same page.” Starsky unbuttoned Hutch’s plain white shirt to reveal the plastic bag taped to his abdomen. He traced his finger around the thick adhesive wafer that held the bag in place, feeling Hutch’s muscles ripple under his fingertips. “You’ll always be beautiful to me. This isn’t a defect, it’s proof of survival, babe. Like a Purple Heart.” Hutch’s skin was warm and slightly sweaty from the heat, and he hitched a ragged breath when Starsky leaned down to reverently place a kiss over his bellybutton. “Does that turn you on?’

“Oh, yeah,” Hutch whispered, weaving his fingers through Starsky’s hair.

“Another thing we agree on.” Starsky splayed his fingers wide, thumb to thumb, hands flat over Hutch’s pectorals. “You’re strong, you’re built like some fucking god.”

“With a hole in his….”

“Don’t,” Starsky warned, something dark and savage spiraling up to protect the one he loved, especially from self-flagellation. “This is temporary. I want us to be permanent, Hutch, but I can’t see the future any better than you can. For now, can’t we just be?”

“It’s going to be a long time before I can do anything more than this,” Hutch apologized. “I don’t stay hard right now because of the damned meds and….”

“Don’t care.” Starsky rubbed his thumbs over Hutch’s nipples, with a gentle stroke that was almost more soothing than erotic. “Been a long time since I necked.”

“First base?” Hutch was melting with the massage, his muscles pliable and soft under Starsky’s probing fingers.

Starsky didn’t go anywhere near the week-old surgery site and ostomy bag, keeping his hands above the waist, just as his high school health teacher had taught. The restraint didn’t help much, his cock was demanding attention in the worst way. Every time his groin brushed Hutch’s thigh, he couldn’t breathe for a second as his dick tried to escape from his jeans. So much for mere petting.

“Or is this second?” Hutch considered, angling his head to get at Starsky’s jaw. Their noses butted until he turned the other direction.

“Kissing’s first,” Starsky said, planting one on Hutch’s mouth. “Petting and touching is second.”

“I thought that was third.” Hutch pushed his fingers under the waistband of his sweatpants to pull out his cock. It was erect after all the upper body stimulation.

“Going all the way…” Starsky couldn’t wait any longer. He liberated his cock from its prison. Just the rub of his calloused palms on the sensitive skin was electric, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to give a standing ovation. “Is a home run.” He watched Hutch fisting his own shaft and matched him stroke for stroke, keeping it slow and easy for his partner’s sake.

 Hutch was panting, his chest heaving with effort, and Starsky had a sudden stab of guilt when he thought he saw Hutch grimace in pain. Maybe they shouldn’t have started this so soon? He hadn’t read every single line on the discharge papers; was there some stipulation against masturbation?

It was like having a bucket of water thrown over him. “Hutch!” he cried just as Hutch climaxed. “Don’t!’

“What?” Hutch gasped, his head thrown back, his neck veins pulsing. He gulped a few breaths of air through his mouth and winced, pressing both hands over his healing abdomen. “What’s the matter with you?”

“What if…” Starsky stopped, confused. He’d lost all amorous feeling, but his concerns had obviously been for nothing. Hutch was fine; no gushing blood or loops of intestines popping out. “You could have pulled some stitches or something.”

“Don’t think so.” Hutch probed his belly gingerly. He was obviously in some discomfort but everything else seemed in working order.

Starsky flopped onto the sofa with relief, then bolted straight up again with a strangled curse. The wounds on his back were still sore enough to remind him not to put all his weight on them. “Walking wounded, that’s us.”

“Hey.” It was Hutch’s turn to give a small measure of comfort. He stroked Starsky’s cheek with the flat of his thumb, a tender gesture that held immeasurable love, and pulled him over until Starsky was leaning against his shoulder so that his back wasn’t flush with the couch cushions. “Thank you.”

“For what?” Starsky squirmed around enough to tuck himself back in. There was certain to be another time, he promised his rebellious cock.

“Giving me what I need.” Hutch eyed Starsky zipping his pants up. “Even if you didn’t get what you wanted.”

“You home, that’s what I wanted,” Starsky said honestly, feeling such a mixture of emotions. Happiness, trepidation, elation, and uncertainty. He’d solved not one but two cases-maybe even more counting the arrest of Jose Gonzalez. He’d found his way to Hutch’s side against all odds, discovered a well of love that they’d both kept hidden from one another. He had everything he wanted, and more. “You alive. You getting a woody, that was a bonus.”

“I was afraid…it wouldn’t happen.” Hutch looked him right in the eyes.

Caught in that blue gaze, Starsky felt like he was falling in, like Alice going through the looking glass, except the Cheshire Cat and knight weren’t there playing a giant game of chess. Just Hutch. Unpredictable, supercilious, annoying, charming and good. His Hutch.

“Because you’d never done it with a guy before?”

“No! Maybe because I thought it would change who…what we are to each other.” Hutch tipped forward, bumping foreheads with Starsky. Their clasped hands, linked them together. “This isn’t the road I expected to take.”

From their bowed positions, both of them were looking right down at Hutch’s belly. Starsky didn’t have to be told that Hutch was no longer talking about the two of them as lovers, he meant the whole of what had happened. Maybe even everything in the last few months, from Van’s murder to the ill-conceived amnesia scam.

 “You’re the best thing in my life, Starsk. The one person who keeps me going when I wander into the rough.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, first baseball and then golf,” Starsky told him and was rewarded with a small huff of laughter. At least, he hoped it was laughter.

“We managed to change the past,” Hutch said, raising his head to kiss Starsky. “And I can’t see what the future holds. Be with me now.”

“I will,” Starsky promised, and hummed a plaintive little tune. “Until the twelfth of never.”

“And that’s a long, long time,” Hutch finished the refrain.

 ~**~

“Wow!” Robin Benson swung his sparkler in a wide arc, scattering fiery stars into the twilight sky. All around him, the other children were waving their sparklers above their heads, earth-bound celestial beings trailing flickering comet tails behind them. “Look Anney-mommy, isn’t that cool?” Robin called.

His mother smiled, watching from the picnic table while sipping a glass of lemonade.

“Look at this, Robin!” Molly Edwards-Ramos tossed her sparkler end over end in a move she’d learned as a flag twirler in the freshman high school marching band and then flipped it up into the sky. Sparks exploded in the air like mini-fireworks. She missed grabbing the shaft on the downward arc, and it hit the ground, burning a tiny black mark in the grass before Hutch stomped out the single flame.

“Careful there, Molly,” he chided with a wink. “You’re not a fire-swallower, yet.”

“I seen a guy swallow fire at the circus with my dad, right, Ed?” Doug Michaels piped up, poking his sparkler into the smoldering coals in the barbecue. “He didn’t even get burned.”

“Well, you boys be careful, anyway,” Nancy Michaels said indulgently. “I don’t want to have to call the fire department on the Fourth of July.”

“Just the cops, huh?” Hutch teased, raising his ice tea in a toast to his ex-wife. It had been a perfect day for Ed’s belated tenth birthday party. The assorted kids, from the two freshman, Kiko and Molly, through the Michaels boys and down to the youngest kids, Miguel Gomez and Robin, had all stuffed themselves on burgers, baked beans, potato salad and corn on the cob. The adults had eaten almost as much and even Hutch, who still had to be careful what he ate, had indulged in the feast. The chocolate birthday cake that had featured a Star Wars theme and ten candles was reduced to mere crumbs on the plate.

Starsky had snagged the last piece. He lay on a chaise lounge with the plate balanced on his flat belly, taking a forkful every few minutes as if he couldn’t decide between a siesta and finishing his dessert. Hutch very much wanted to lean over and press his lips against his partner’s to taste the succulent flavor of chocolate, iced tea and original Starsky.

“I have the oddest urge to sing ‘You Light up my Life’ right now,” Nancy laughed, nudging her fiancé, Jack Shellington.

Hutch hadn’t ever met Jack before, but he liked the guy. A good cop, if the scuttlebutt from the other precinct was anything to go by, and a nice guy who obviously loved Nancy and her boys.

“I knew buying that Debbie Boone album was a mistake,” Jack said with just a hint of sarcasm. “Ed, are  there any sparklers left?” He went over to help Miguel and Robin light the last few in the orange-red briquettes.

“Yes, Birdman, Miguel, once those burn out, we have to go!” Anne called out, tossing her paper plate and empty cup in the overflowing trash can.

“Now?” Miguel asked plaintively.

“Miguel!” Maria Ramos burst out of the house, beaming, and speaking in rapid Spanish. This caught the boy’s attention and he dropped his sparkler in the barbecue, dancing around with glee. Hutch understood the gist of Maria’s news with a gladdened heart. Maria Gomez had delivered a healthy baby girl, despite being shot in the head two weeks earlier.

“I got a sister!” Miguel grabbed Robin’s arm, laughing happily. “I got a sister!”

“Wha-hoo! That sorta makes her…my cousin, right, Mommy-Anney?” Robin did a cartwheel with his sparkler still in hand, the bright points of fire swirling around his body in a perfect circle.

“What’s her name?” Starsky asked, coming out of his doze. Hutch put out a hand to pull Starsky upright and was pleased to notice that the strain barely twinged his abdominal muscles. He was healing just in time to go under the knife again.

“I don’t think she has one yet, but Miguel’s abeula says they are all very thankful for the prayers and gifts that you’ve been sending to Maria while she was recovering,” Maria Ramos reported.

“I got a sister!” Miguel sing-songed.

“It will never be enough,” Anne said savagely under her breath, her fingers clenched against the edge of the picnic table.

“Hey,” Starsky said, coming in close to keep the discussion private. Jack and Nancy had joined Maria in cleaning up the debris from the party. “You’re not to blame.”

“No, but she’s part of my family now.” Anne watched Kiko organize the younger boys in a relay race, Ed and Doug handing their sparklers off to Miguel and Robin while Molly stood at the finish line to judge the winning team. “The baby is sister to both boys.”

“Are you going to tell Robin?” Hutch asked, sitting down beside Starsky on the narrow bench.

“No more secrets in our family,” Anne vowed. “I’m just not sure right now is the best time. He’s…we’ve been working with a therapist. She’s great, but he’s…we both gotta get our feet on solid ground first, you know?”

Hutch did indeed. He’d been alternating between depression and elation since he got out of the hospital. Being with Starsky was so incredible that he could almost forget his humiliating present circumstances. His health was improving and Dr. Lincoln was completely optimistic about the surgery to close the colostomy and reconnect everything back the way nature intended it to be. That was what Hutch kept focused on, reconnecting with his new life.

“Sounds like you’re doin’ everything right,” Starsky encouraged. “And you said something about a job earlier?”

“Yeah. Which is why we need to get back home.” She fluttered her fingers, still searching for that imaginary cigarette, and briefly touched a forefinger to her lips. “I’m starting training to be a ward clerk at Memorial. I’ll learn medical words, which will help a lot if I get into nursing school.”

“When!” Robin said staunchly, coming up behind her. He snagged the last of the strawberries out of the bowl in front of his mother.

“He’s my number one supporter,” she said proudly, smoothing down his flyaway hair. “I saw you win the race there.”

“Aw, Doug was faster’n’me.”

“He’s got longer legs.” Hutch gave the boy a one-handed shoulder hug. He wanted so much to be part of Robin’s life, to get just a glimpse of what being his father would have been like, but he had move slowly. Robin knew Starsky a little better, and even with him, he kept a certain distance. Life had taught the boy to withhold trust. Robin needed to get to know his mother first. Any time Hutch spent with the members of his patchwork family was precious, and he wouldn’t trade a moment. “Next time we get together, you’ll have to challenge him to a rematch.”

“Can we, mom?” Ed called out. “Can we have another picnic with Robin and Miguel? I wanna see their sister.”

“Me, too,” Molly piped up. “I need another girl on my side.”

“She’s newborn!” Maria Ramos chuckled, wrapping her arms around her adopted daughter.

“But at least she’s female.” Molly leaned into Maria’s embrace.

“We should get together every few weeks,” Nancy agreed. “Maybe the beach next time?”

“Beach sounds good,” Jack spoke up from where he was spreading the dying coals in the barbecue pit.

“You didn’t used to care so much,” Kiko chided, popping a strawberry into his mouth. “You used to be one of the guys, Pete.”

“I’m growing up,” Molly said, proudly showing off her more feminine curves.

 Hutch tried not to stare. He’d barely noticed the change until just now. He still remembered her as a little lost girl with sad eyes and a defiant nature, holding fiercely to her baseball glove. How things changed.

“She wants a date to the sophomore prom the minute we get back to school.” Kiko poked an elbow at his sister. “She’s in love with Manolo Davalos.” He gave the parting shot and ran off like a shot.

“I am not!” Molly dashed after him.

“Nancy, thank you so much for inviting us,” Anne said politely. “I-I have to get used to making friends again.”

“You’ve got one here, Anney,” Nancy assured. “Call me any time. Ed and Doug would love to hang out with your boys.”

“My boys.” Anne’s mouth went up in a surprised smile. “That sounds so…normal.” She glanced over at Starsky and Hutch with an odd expression. “Not used to that yet, either. Miguel’s been over so often that it’s like having another kid. C’mon, Miguel! Robin!”

“Keep doing what you’re doing, and things’ll be terrific!” Starsky said. “See you later, Birdman!”

“When are you gonna take us in your car?” Robin demanded.

“Soon as I get a new wax job,” Starsky promised. “Wouldn’t want you drive you around in a dirty car.”

“Kiko, help Jack take the trash around to the front before we leave!” Maria directed, carrying the last of the empty platters and bowls into Nancy’s kitchen.

Hutch sat contentedly at the picnic table listening to the goodbyes as the party wound down. Ed and Doug went into the house and turned on the TV, the sound of the Boston Pops playing the Star Spangled Banner spilling out into the darkening yard. Half-thoughts of the ‘what-ifs’ drifted around his skull, interfering with his satisfaction. He used to think that life’s turns only resulted from good opportunities, but more and more he was finding out that whichever path he took, there were good times ahead. He just had to find them. He’d lost his wife, and found Starsky. Those two things seemed so linked, he wasn’t sure how to untangle them. There was no doubt that he was losing Vanessa from the day he entered the police academy-she’d never wanted that life. She’d made that abundantly clear. Yet, if Vanessa had already been receding by that point, he had found a good friend in her stead. Starsky was his constant, his compass to help guide him forward.

He’d gotten shot and found his first wife again-this time as a sort of sister, complete with her own family and somehow, all of that had allowed him to really see Starsky for the partner that he truly was. Not just a friend, but a lover.

If he hadn’t gotten shot, would they have turned to one another? Maybe it would have happened, maybe not. One of those paths that Hutch couldn’t see through the obscuring fog of infinite possibilities.

“Ready to go, Z-12?” Starsky put his hands lightly on Hutch’s shoulders, a permissible caress in public. Nancy knew about them, but it was important to keep up a ‘straight’ front to protect their careers.

“Aren’t we Zebra Three?” Hutch asked, twisting around to look over his shoulder. He dropped his head against Starsky’s forearm, rubbing his cheek against the smooth inside of his wrist.

“It’s from Star Wars. One of Luke’s buddies.”

“You’ve been hanging around with Robin and Ed too much.”

“Did you see that cool X-wing fighter that Jack gave Ed?” Starsky made an X with his stiffened hands, swooping them in an aerial attack on an imaginary Death Star. “I should start collecting some of those action figures.”

“I always said you were really only ten years old,” Hutch teased, climbing to his feet.

Nancy came out of the house with some leftover corn in a baggie. “Some for the road, guys?”

“Corn’s kinda hard to eat while driving,” Starsky said, adding the donation to a bag he was carrying. “You need anymore help cleaning up?”

“No, Maria did the lion’s share. Jack’s turning on the dishwasher as we speak.” She gave each of them a sisterly kiss on the cheek. “When’s your surgery. Ken?”

“On Monday, the tenth.” He pressed a hand to his belly in what was now a familiar gesture, feeling the hated bag under the silky fabric of his bowling shirt. Less than a week to go, and he was more than ready to be rid of the thing. “First time I’ve ever looked forward to going under the knife.”

“Me, too.” Starsky shuddered and frowned. “I’d prefer not havin’ surgery at all, but being unconscious and not knowing what’s going on beforehand is a heck of a lot better than all these doctor appointments, exams and giving blood in advance.”

“Good luck with the whole thing and keep me posted,” Nancy said sweetly. “I need to get those two boys to bed. This was fun tonight.”

“The beach in a couple weeks,” Hutch promised. “When I can wear a bathing suit again.”

“It’s a deal.”

“I’d like to look at you in a bathing suit,” Starsky said when they were out of earshot of Nancy and walking over to the car. He tossed the bag in the backseat. “Anywhere, anytime, babe.”

“You always had a blind spot,” Hutch replied, keeping the bitterness out of the comment since the loving expression on Starsky’s face made up for almost everything.

“You sayin’ love is blind?” Starsky laughed. “I got eyes like an eagle and they see every inch of you, Blintz. Warts and all.”

“I don’t have warts!” Hutch would have slugged him but Starsky slipped into the driver’s seat too quickly.

The ride in the Torino had a mellow quality that lulled Hutch into a doze. When they pulled up in front of the house, Hutch looked up in confusion. “I thought we were going to my place tonight.”

“Got a surprise for you.” Starsky leaned over and kissed him, his lips parting to pull in Hutch’s tongue.

Hutch surged upward, wanting every part of himself aligned with Starsky and found the gear shaft wedged between their bodies. At first, the liquid heat of Starsky’s mouth surrounding his own took precedence over anything else, but as his erection swelled, the intrusion of the gear shaft became much more apparent.

“Starsk,” Hutch gasped, shoving a hand down to protect his now aching assets. “We need to find a more comfortable place to do this.”

Starsky grinned at him just as a loud explosion reverberated overhead. On any other night, Hutch might have jumped and pulled his weapon, but on the Fourth of July, the sound of Roman candles and exploding colored snakes was commonplace.

“Perfect timing,” Starsky announced.

“For what?” Hutch asked suspiciously. He climbed out of the car, looking upward but the fireworks starting somewhere below Starsky’s hillside house weren’t visible from the street.

“Some more-uh-adult oriented fun that doesn’t involve relay races or stuffing our faces with chocolate cake.” Starsky grabbed Hutch’s hand, urging him up the stairs. Another muffled rumble sounded down the valley from them, and this time Hutch saw the hint of rose and purple lighting the sky just over the edge of the tree line.

“You had two pieces, Gordo,” Hutch reminded. “But if I get your drift….”

“And you usually do.”

“Then I know exactly what I want to stuff my mouth with.”

Starsky’s chuckle could have been used as the laugh track for a really kinky pornographic movie. It sent pleasant, very erotic chills down Hutch’s spine and he hurried after his partner. Inside the house, the repeated booms from the unseen fireworks made it sound like they were under attack. Hutch had barely stepped inside the house when Starsky pushed him up against a wall and proceeded to divest him of his clothes. Within seconds, Hutch was naked and Starsky was kissing him again, rubbing himself against Hutch with frantic need, the squeal and whump of bombs going off around them.

“Hey!” Hutch said between kisses. “We got time, Starsk. We have all night.”

“Must be the fireworks-got me all lit up.” Starsky skimmed his hands down Hutch’s body, past the bag, down to his very willing and eager cock. “I have plans for this guy.”

Although this was not the first time he’d been completely nude in front of his lover in the last few weeks, Hutch couldn’t stop the flush of embarrassment at his appearance. He made a grab for the bowling shirt on the floor.

“Don’t,” Starsky said softly. He unabashedly stripped off his own red t-shirt and pulled down his jeans to reveal red, white, and blue bikini underwear that were losing the battle to contain his thick cock. “Hutch, I already got more scars on me. It doesn’t matter.” He touched the plastic bag and kissed Hutch’s jaw line. “It’ll be gone sooner than you can say Geroge Pushinwalter Shafinsky Shimmelfennig.”

Forgetting his ambivalence for a moment, Hutch peered at him in consternation. Starsky was losing his mind. “What?”

“Gotcha!” Starsky giggled. He kissed Hutch again, tracing a path across his collar bone and up to his mouth again.  “George-“

“You’re going to make me say that, aren’t you?” Hutch let the wall support him, melting under Starsky’s assault.

 “Oh, yeah, I got you right where I want you.” Starsky brushed his lips across Hutch’s right nipple.

Hutch gasped, and the light touch sent an electric charge straight down to his groin. His cock felt like it had been stung by a bee and was now swollen three times its usual size. “G-george Push?” He’d say anything to keep Starsky doing that.

“Pushinwalter,” Starsky repeated and knelt, kissing Hutch down low, just above his taut erection.

“Pushinwalter.” Hutch wanted to go to his knees, too. Standing up with this kind of stimulation was an accomplishment of major proportions. It was too much, too overwhelming. The only thing keeping him on his feet was Starsky’s knees bracketing his legs.

 Oh, God.

Starsky ghosted his fingers along the thick shaft, his lips still pressed to Hutch’s abdomen. The muted sounds of the fireworks going off in the valley below had nothing on the fireworks going off in Hutch’s body. Each day with Starsky was better and better. Starsky knew exactly where to touch, to tease, to tempt, to get Hutch to respond.

He tightened his fist around Hutch’s cock, making Hutch go up on his toes when Starsky nailed that perfect place on the back, just up against the balls. “Shafinsky,” Starsky said.

“Starsk!” Hutch wailed, needing the release right now. There was no way he could split his brain in two. Sex was taking up every single molecule of intelligence he had right then. How Starsky had the ability to talk and give the hand job of his life was beyond him.

“Not Starsky,” the annoying one corrected, taking the time to pump Hutch twice.

 Not enough to finish him off, but quite enough to start steam rising out of Hutch’s ears. At least it felt like he was boiling. For this brief moment in time, he didn’t care that he’d been maimed, that he was unclean-because Starsky proved that all his fears were untrue.

“Shafinsky,” Hutch parroted, shaking like a leaf.

“You’re doing great, Hutch! Just one more name.” Starsky laughed and pressed his lips to the base of Hutch’s cock.

He was already so hot that Starsky’s lips felt like a cool, soft compress against his heated flesh. “You can’t be serious!”

“Shimmelfennig,” Starsky finished and ran his tongue down the length of Hutch’s shaft.

“Shimmering pennies from heaven…” Hutch blathered, lost to everything but the sensation of Starsky licking his cock. He came, hard and fast, Starsky’s delighted laughter dancing in his ears.

Hutch panted, stunned at the strength of the orgasm and slid down the wall to plop down on his butt. Outside, the whoop and percussive thump of the fireworks exploding over Bay City echoed the thud of Hutch’s heart. “I’m done in.”

Starsky smirked, his hands on his hips. “And here I thought you could run a mile in under ten minutes. You really are out of shape.”

“That’s-” Hutch started to protest. He’d been laid up for weeks, unable to do the simplest exercises without cramping pain and then saw the merriment on Starsky’s face. This was all a ploy, a clever deceit to pull Hutch out of the depression that kept swamping him when he least expected. Starsky knew him too well.

 “Come on, let’s get more of our own fireworks going.” Starsky helped Hutch to his feet and opened the sliding glass door leading to the wooden balcony perched over the wooded valley.

“Slave driver,” Hutch pretended to grouse. He always felt like he was floating in a tree-house high above the world. The rear of Starsky’s place was built down the side of a ravine so there was another condo-currently unoccupied-below, hidden from the street. From their lofty perch, they could see Bay City spread out far to the west, and with sudden spectacular brilliance, the pyrotechnics of the fireworks display. A red chrysanthemum lit the sky, smaller yellow and green starbursts exploding on either side.

“I didn’t know you could watch the show from here.” Hutch was very aware that they were both naked and out of doors. The temperature was perfect, cooler than the high of ninety earlier in the day, and with a light breeze that brushed over his bare shoulders, but he was slightly chilled, nonetheless.

“Nobody below, remember? And the Changs went out of town,” Starsky whispered against the smooth skin of his back, pointing to the house next door just visible through a growth of eucalyptus. “Just us, Hutch. Us.” He kissed Hutch between the shoulder blades. “Even dug the old futon out of the garage, just for you.” He guided Hutch back two steps and plopped him down on the reminder of another time. Another apartment. Another Hutch. “Can we do this? We been getting so close since you came off all the pain pills and last night was, I gotta tell you, the best yet.”

“Yeah.” Hutch relaxed back, still half watching the flashes of purple and blue that danced across the heavens. Last night had been wonderful. They’d both perfected their oral techniques to the appreciation of the other, and discovered the giddy fun of showering together. Which was exactly why he wanted to go down on Starsky again. Despite what Starsky had just done for him, that old, damnable shame kept creeping in where it shouldn’t be. That he was damaged. That he was unworthy. That Starsky could have found another woman who …

“Don’t,” Starsky said again. “Don’t think, just feel. What’d you want to do right now?” He kissed Hutch quick and sat back on his heels, the reflection of an electric blue meteor shower causing Starsky’s eyes to glow with inhuman light. He radiated, and Hutch wanted that radiance inside him to blot out all the dark depression that he couldn’t completely get rid of.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Hutch said impulsively.

“Now you’re the blind one,” Starsky scoffed, ghosting his palms up Hutch’s smooth, muscled chest. Hutch had discovered that Starsky really liked to do that. In fact, he did it every chance he got, as if he enjoyed the contrast between Hutch’s hairlessness and his own hirsute torso. Hutch liked it very much, too.

“Sit back,” Hutch instructed, still watching Starsky. “S-spread your legs.” Stupid time for his stutter to butt its head in. He let out a frustrated breath, managing to relax when Starsky grinned fecklessly at him, scooting back until he was against the soft support of the futon with his legs spread wide. “Yeah,” Hutch said in a whisper, running his hands down Starsky’s furry belly and lingering on the narrow line of hair that pointed right down to his pulsing erection. “Oh, yeah.”

“Hutch?” Starsky moaned, obviously telling him to get on with it without using so many words.

Planting a kiss on the unblemished belly, almost exactly in the same place where his body was marred, Hutch knelt and bowed over Starsky’s groin, breathing in the heady scent of him, the desire to take in the whole length immediately so powerful that he forced himself to pause. The whole thing was still new, still precious and he didn’t want to go dashing in without appreciating-no, savoring every single set along the way.

“Stopping to smell the roses?” Starsky asked in a tight voice, sounding like he was caught between amusement and the sheer cliff of arousal.

He needed relief as much as Hutch did, and the thought that Hutch was the one who could provide the perfect antidote was almost stupefying. Hutch nuzzled Starsky’s shaft, getting an instantaneous gasp of pleasure and a thrusting from his lover. Starsky very much wanted this to continue, that much was blatantly obvious.

Using his tongue to tease and soothe, simultaneously, Hutch applied the lessons he’d learned under the shower the night before and experimented with a few skills he remembered from Abby and Gillian in particular. Vanessa had never been a cocksucker, as she’d used to say in that icy tone of hers, and Nancy had been a virgin and very timid the three times they’d ever had sex before she got pregnant. But it had been his most recent dalliance, Laura Kanan, who taught Hutch the combination of swirly action with the tongue and tickling squeeze to the nuts that sent Starsky into outer space in under five minutes.

“Oh, Hu…utch…” Starsky drew out the one syllable into a virtual symphony of vowels and crisp consonants, turning the familiar nickname into something precious and new. Hutch almost came himself from the way Starsky said his name. How could he have every doubted Starsky’s love or sincerity?

“I’m…” Starsky gasped and pulled out just enough so that he didn’t inundate Hutch with fluid when he orgasmed, jerking spasmodically from the physical sensations cascading over him.

Hutch ran his hands up Starsky’s thighs, steadying himself and grounding Starsky. Very soon, Starsky cupped his palms around Hutch’s hands. “You been practicing?” he panted.

“Only time I scrimmage is with you, Cake-boy.” Hutch smiled at him, entranced by the ever changing reflection of the fireworks in Starsky’s eyes. Golden tracers cork-screwed in the sky behind them. Hutch couldn’t see the actual display but he could hear the shriek after detonation and watch the splash of color in his lover’s eyes without turning his head. Nothing was better.

Starsky slouched on the futon, his spread knees a perfect resting place for Hutch’s head. They both rested in the afterglow long enough that the pyrotechnic extravaganza wound down to the last, stupendous blow-out, dozens of fireworks synchronized to a faint version of the 1812 overture.

“Bombs burstin’ in air…” Starsky warbled in a hoarse voice. He chuckled again. “Think that’s all the way over from the Hollywood Bowl?”

Hutch didn’t raise his head, but considered the question from his comfortable pillow on Starsky’s left thigh. “Could be, it’s a clear night and acoustics are very good….”

Starsky wiggled and nearly bumped Hutch off his perch, which wasn’t such a bad thing because Hutch became far more interested in exploring more of his lover’s body. The position of Starsky’s legs afforded an excellent view of a tiny, puckered opening sheltered between the luscious curved globes of his ripe ass. The echo of Starsky’s comment, “I’ve gone down a girl’s ass hole, if you want to know the truth,” revolved lazily around his brain and he drew a finger up the slope of Starsky’s groin and underneath the weight of his sac to the anus, a very exciting ache building in Hutch’s recently satiated cock. He was amazed that he could be aroused so soon.

What would it be like to plunge into that dark recess, plunder the depths of Starsky’s deepest realms? The same as penetrating a woman? He was suddenly very interested in investigating that mysterious little opening.

Starsky shuddered and hitched a strangled breath, his lower lip caught in his teeth. “Hutch, you want another….”

“I’m taking my turn,” Hutch said with far more confidence than he actually felt. Would Starsky allow him to go where no man had ever gone? Or woman, for that matter.

He pushed inward with two fingers, a far narrower spear than his own turgid length, to test just how much Starsky could take. Starsky rose up with a cry and Hutch cringed, jerking his fingers out immediately.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t…” His belly churned, dismay damping down his arousal.

“No! It was…amazing. I liked it!” Starsky grabbed at his wrists, holding him in place. “I don’t think this position’s gonna work, though. You gotta get off your knees. You had surgery a couple-“

“Now is not the time to be discussing my medical history.” Hutch kissed him quickly on his swollen lower lip, relief flooding his chest so fast he could barely breathe. “It was really okay?”

“More’n okay, Hutch. Way more,” Starsky assured, rubbing a narrow hip against Hutch’s groin to help swell his cock again. The friction started a warm, fantastic glow that electrified every nerve ending in Hutch’s body. He literally vibrated with need, his genitals so tight he had to step back or risk coming before he was buried inside his partner’s body.

“We need something. Lubrication?” Hutch asked. Starsky always accused him of being the practical one. In this case, he was out of his element and working off of instinct, which told him that where he wanted to explore wasn’t exactly a moist, slick environment.

“Gotcha covered,” Starsky said faintly, pointing at the bag he’d lugged in from the car. Hutch only had to stretch out one long arm and snag the grocery bag closer. Under the sack of corn and a couple of extra sparklers was a pristine tube of lubricant.

“You thought of everything,” Hutch said in awe.

“Had a long time to prepare for this night,” Starsky whispered, licking his top lip with lust in his eyes.

 Hutch removed the cap with unsteady hands and anointed himself with the slippery stuff. He was so very close that even his own touch was too much and he had to pinch down on the base to bank the spike of arousal. Starsky watched with rapt interest, his fingers flexing as if he wanted to help but Hutch kept him away. If Starsky touched him one more time, Hutch would blow like a volcano.

“How’re we…?” Starsky wiggled around until he was lying with one knee up over the top of the raised back of the futon frame and the other bent at right angles. From Hutch’s perspective, the elusive target winked at him seductively. “This gonna work?”

“I always thought I’d have to go in from behind.” Hutch tentatively circled his finger around the anus again, anticipating the correct way to probe. He was less certain now, even with Starsky’s assurances that he wanted the new level of intimacy. This was like diving off the high dive on the first week of swim class-scary and exhilarating.

Hutch inhaled, dropping down into a space where he didn’t over-think, didn’t allow himself to obsess on what might or might not be right. Desire blossomed, giving him courage, and he shoved two fingers in again, going deeper this time. Starsky moaned and clamped his hand around Hutch’s wrist.

“Keep going, Tiger,” Starsky urged. “But no more fingers, put that log where it’s s’pposed to go.”

“Starsky, I could hurt you!” Hutch hedged, even though he wanted to plant his cock inside Starsky more than anything.

“Not going to happen,” Starsky whispered, easing Hutch’s fingers out of his ass and hooking his right leg around Hutch’s body. That put his anus in exactly the right location. Hutch only had to thrust forward and he’d be sheathed inside Starsky, the two of them telescoping into one.

“R-ready?” Hutch smiled, drinking in Starsky’s face, feeling the trust and love down to his very soul. Starsky bracketed his opening with both hands pressing back his butt cheeks, and coaxed Hutch with a wicked little wink.

Hutch brushed the crown of his cock against Starsky’s anus, the initial contact as shocking as a lightning strike. His whole body quivering, Hutch pushed, feeling the tight ring of muscle just past the opening. Starsky keened, a long needy sound. Taking that as further invitation, Hutch advancing to breech the first barricades and pass into the narrow, heated place he was seeking.

Absolute bliss! He was buoyed up and anchored down by Starsky’s body at the same time. Starsky’s inner walls clamped down around him and he had to move, had to shove, but he held himself still, waiting to gauge Starsky’s reaction.

His partner had his head thrown back, his throat long and vulnerable, his lip clamped in his teeth again. He groaned, tucking his hands under his hips to hoist himself higher. In the process, that pulled Hutch deeper inside. They both cried out in unison.

“God, Starsk…” Hutch rocked forward and Starsky yelled, pain and pleasure so mingled that Hutch couldn’t have distinguished which was which but he knew he’d hurt Starsky more than he wanted to.

“Deeper, damn it!” Starsky shouted, dispelling any lingering doubts. “Hutch, so help me, if you don’t….”

Hutch let go with a roar, rocking forward to glove himself completely inside. He was surrounded, enrobed, engulfed in his lover, and he toppled headfirst into the heady joy of their coupling. He and Starsky, closer than they’d ever been, and yet he wanted to be closer still, wanted to stay linked like this-his milky white skin melding into Starsky’s duskier hue the way a river flowed into the sea. All one, all the same part of a single being.

“Starsk!” he prayed. “Always.”

“Forever,” Starsky vowed, curving in toward him. Hutch tucked his shoulders, bending until his forehead touched Starsky’s to form a closed circle. Infinity.

Hutch tightened his hold on Starsky’s ribcage, afraid to let go and lose one second of this precious gift. He had life, love-nothing else mattered, ever. With a bone-jarring shudder, Hutch climaxed for a second time in one day, zingy aftershocks fizzling through his fingers and toes as if he could launch himself into outer space. It had never been this good, with any woman. Only Starsky, for the rest of his life.

“Are the fireworks still going off?” Starsky muttered drowsily, dark eyelashes inky against his cheek.

“Just you and me, babe,” Hutch replied. He’d lost all his bones and there was absolutely no way he’d be able to move for a month, at least. Not that he cared, because he was willing to say this way, tucked safely into Starsky’s body for that long. Well, until the tenth, that is. He’d have to pull out sometime before the start of surgery. Dr. Lincoln would probably balk at having such Siamese twins on the OR table.

His back was beginning to ache, too. And Starsky must be feeling some new and different sensations about now, even as his muscles continued to spasm weakly around Hutch’s length.

“How do we-get untangled?” Starsky asked with a raspy laugh.

“You started this,” Hutch accused, smirking at him. He angled his hips back and twisted slightly, Starsky’s inner muscles reluctantly releasing hold with an audible pop.

“Me?” Starsky giggled helplessly. “I just laid back and thought about…England.”

“Queen Victoria you aren’t.”

“Y’know she used Marijuana when she had her babies?” Starsky grimaced as Hutch slid free and then sighed, easing back on the futon.

“Where did you read that?”

“Guinness book of Records.” Starsky tucked himself into the curve of Hutch’s boneless sprawl. “Which is exactly where your performance belongs. Ten outta ten, the judges all agree.”

Hutch kept imagining Starsky doing the same thing to him and it had a definite allure. “Did it hurt?”

“Kind of but not really,” Starsky confessed, shifting his pelvis so that he bumped Hutch’s hipbone. The futon had always been too narrow for two of them at the same time. Hutch had discovered that eight years ago when they’d watched baseball games together in the heavy heat of a summer afternoon and fell asleep over beer bottles and pizza. “I think I know how ma felt when she gave birth-but it’s a good ache, you know?”

“You’re comparing what we just did to giving birth?”

“Yeah,” Starsky said, a mischievous grin transforming him into a gleeful imp. “Not the parenthood part, but the part where you start a whole new life with a love so true it makes you into a different person.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Nuts about you.” Starsky poked him in the side. “You up for anything else? We can take a page from Michelle’s kinky nursing book and try-what’d that chick, the ostomy specialist call it?” He mimicked her overly perky delivery with far more skill than he’d ever mimicked Bogey. “Having a temporary orifice such as a stoma can be a positive experience.”

“Starsk.” Hutch stabbed his long forefinger under Starsky’s nose, the same finger that had very recently gone up a different opening. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Okay by me, as long as we put all the permanent orifices…ore-fic-i?” Starsky laughed so contagiously that Hutch joined him, holding onto his belly and not caring when his fingers encountered a plastic bag on the side because he was gloriously happy. “All the holes we normally got to good use!”

“Like this?” Hutch kissed him on his laughing mouth.

The future was bright, and he was through looking into the past.