Starsky and Hutch are being targeted by an unknown assassin playing a game of cat and mouse with them. What will happen when they finally confront him?
Originally published in the zine Blue Eyes and Blue Jeans in 1995 by Linda McGee.
The high point of an endless, tedious day came late in the afternoon, when an informant called with information they had been waiting for. The Torino was at the curb, catching a breeze from the hot dog stand, and by four-thirty Hutch was hungry enough to actually salivate a little as he watched his partner hand over a few bills and collect a motley assortment of food and drink.
Four hot dogs, two Cokes, a half-dozen donuts, juggled in the crook of his right arm while his left hand delved into his back pocket for his wallet. Long fingers fished for it, molded to a supple, shapely buttock in an artlessly seductive display that made Hutch smile. And he wasn’t the only one. The two young women waiting in line behind Starsky for the services of ‘Leapin’ Leroy,’ the Jamaican hot dog man, were as intent on the blue jeaned backside as was Hutch.
Their veiled glances and unabashed giggles aroused Hutch’s humor, and he slid green sunglasses onto his nose as Starsky, blissfully oblivious, turned back to the car and orbited the long scarlet hood. The girls watched him come around to Hutch’s side to pass the hot bags and cold cans in through the rolled-down window, but their claim on any portion of Starsky’s anatomy ended with a covetous gaze and a wolf-whistle. All else belonged to Hutch.
The whistle made Starsky look around, but instead of turning to the girls he automatically scanned the sidewalk for thirty yards in either direction, looking for the female bombshell he expected to see. Hutch grabbed the food and drink before they could spill, and grinned up at him through the window. “Forget it. They’re whistling at you, Starsk.”
‘Huh?’ Starsky’s brows rose. “Whistlin’ at me? Who?”
“Those girls,” Hutch told him with a chuckle. “And don’t try saying, ‘What for?’ Your dumb act hasn’t fooled me for years.”
Momentarily nonplussed, Starsky just grinned and came back around the hood with a definite swagger in his stride. He could give classes, teach that walk. Hutch only chuckled again, shook his head in an expression of exasperation, and turned his attention to the food. A mélange of aromas, onions, and spices, arose from the bags. As Starsky’s door slammed, he reached over for a waxed carton and popped off the top. Inside was a generous serve of saffron colored rice, and taped on the side was a plastic fork.
“The man tells me it’s a Jamaican delicacy,” Starsky said, extricating a hot dog from its paper with one hand and thrusting the fork into the rice with the other.
“It’s rice,” Hutch said drily, “whichever way you cook it. Rice is rice.”
“Tell that to my Aunt Greta,” Starsky argued. “Fried rice, sweet rice, pineapple rice, rice ‘n shrimps, vinegared rice and raw fish rolled in seaweed leaves. Japanese,” he added lucidly. He angled a sidelong glance at Hutch. “If you drink enough beer you can choke it down.”
“Urbane as ever, Starsky,” Hutch observed. He took a sniff at Leroy’s specialty and scooped up a morsel on one fingertip. ‘That’s not bad.”
“Beats hell out of sushi ‘n seaweed,” Starsky added, through a mouth already full of sausage and onions.
The day had been long and uneventful, and since noon Hutch had been watching the time, silently begging for the end of this shift. He was tired, hungry, thirsty, and his back was a constant nagging ache. It was on days like this when he realized, the majority of the time it was only Starsky that made the job bearable. But for his presence, his off-the-wall humor, the patented Starsky vigor and his zeal for a trade that had long ago ceased to be a genuine vocation for Hutch, there was one cop at least who would have soon been moving on to greener pastures, if indeed he had not left already.
But leave Starsky? The thought was absurd. And the truth was, Starsky was a cop, right through to the middle. Like his father before him, he would be a cop until someone or something came along to change his mind, change his heart. Not that he might never be persuaded, Hutch thought, licking fragments of succulent onion and melted butter from his fingers and taking a swig of Coke. Several times, even Starsky had been on the edge of turning his back on his career and just walking away. Once, when the system turned viciously against Hutch and he found himself with a warrant in his hand, for the arrest of his best friend. And before that, when he put a bullet in a young boy who had tried to kill him, and a madman launched into a senseless, cop-killing rampage.
Both times, Starsky had come close to walking away; both times, Hutch would have gone with him. But Hutch would never leave without him, and somehow Starsky always came back. Hutch shifted uncomfortably in his seat, working his back around to a new position to alleviate the persistent ache.
And Starsky saw. He was so attuned to Hutch’s every word, expression, his body language, that even with peripheral vision he could read his partner. “I’ll straighten that out for you, when we get home,” he promised. “You need a quick rub now? Listen, I been reading this thing about massage. Acupressure—”
“No needles,” Hutch warned sharply. “I hate needles.”
“I said, acupressure, dummy,” Starsky repeated. “I know you got a phobia about needles, and I know why.” He glanced deliberately at both of Hutch’s arms. Since that time, even the sight of a hypodermic, or any kind of needle, made Hutch come out in a cold sweat. “Acupressure,” Starsky said gently. “Bunch of pressure points, y’know? You rub ’em, put on some pressure, and the pain goes away.”
“Uh-huh,” Hutch said dubiously. “Starsk, I think you might have to be a specialist to practice that.”
“Not if they printed it in a magazine,” Starsky argued. He crumpled up the paper bags and drained the Coke can to the bottom. “If you print stuff in magazines, people are gonna try it, right? If you don’t want ’em to try it, don’t print it. So, if they print it, it’s okay to try it.”
“I cannot fault that screwball, Starsky-brand logic,” Hutch said with all due caution. He took a quick, catlike swipe at his mustache, ensuring that it was neat and clean after eating. “Which magazine was this?”
“Yoga International,” Starsky said, pulling tissues from a pack in the footwell at Hutch’s feet to clean his hands.
“That’s not exactly your usual reading,” Hutch observed. “Since when did you take an interest in Yoga?”
Starsky favored him with that familiar lopsided grin. “Since they started printing pictures of chicks doin’ the exercises in teeny bikinis. Nah, that’s not true. Well, maybe half true. I started looking at Yoga when you injured your back. The crash. You couldn’t move it for a week, and then I noticed you were getting stiff as a phone pole. I mean, your spine,” he added, with a lowering of lids over indigo eyes, a flutter of long, dark lashes. “Then the physical therapy you were getting started working. Y’recall, for a while it didn’t do shit for you.”
Oh, Hutch remembered. For two months after he had been trapped in the wreck of that car, it seemed his back had become an instrument of torture, his personal rack, installed beneath his own skin. The physical therapy had been useless at first; after a session he would be almost in tears of frustration, pain and anger. In those months it was Starsky’s hands that had kept him sane, kept him working, and Hutch had never been sure if it was the physical therapy or the Starsky Special that had worked the magic in the end.
He smiled sidelong at his partner, all banter abandoned for the moment. “You mean you swatted up on Yoga, because of me? That’s one I owe you, Starsk. Another one I owe you.”
“Forget it,” Starsky scoffed. “Now, turn around some, lift up your jacket.”
“This isn’t the time or the place,” Hutch remonstrated.
“The time,” Starsky argued, “is whenever you get that screwed-up look of pain on your face, and the place is whichever part o’ the United States you happen to be standing in when it starts. Turn around, will ya? Dammit, Hutch, anybody’d think I was plannin‘ to rape you!”
Subsiding in exasperation, defeated by both the logic and the simple human compassion of the man, Hutch turned to face the breeze from his window and lifted the brown leather jacket. “We’re going to get some pretty funny looks from people in the street,” he warned.
“Queer looks, huh?” Starsky wisecracked. “Sides, there’s nobody on the street right now, far as you can see, only Leapin’ Leroy, and he won’t care if he sees us.”
“There’s a lady coming, walking a poodle.” Hutch groaned as Starsky’s fingers zeroed in unerringly on his problem zone, rubbed, pressed, and the relief was immediate. “Oh, that’s… I could get addicted. And why wouldn’t Leapin’ Leroy care?”
Starsky gave a snort of ribald good humor. “He’s gay. You didn’t know? He lives with that half-Irish yo-yo, what’s his name?”
“The one who sells ice cream between Lincoln and the marina? Damn, I never knew.” Hutch chuckled. “You sure about them?”
“Sure I’m sure. S’why Leroy came to the States. So he told me, anyway. Being gay’s a big deal in Jamaica.” He paused, even his fingers stilled for a second.
“Like the ‘hood where I grew up.”
Brooklyn, Hutch thought with a flicker of affection. One hell of a neighborhood, half Catholic, half Jewish-Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Austrian—where you could be a hoodlum, a gangster, hustler, hooker, draft dodger, anything, and people would forgive you… but don’t be gay. That, no one forgave. It was a one-way express ticket to hell. Small wonder Starsky grew up half-blind to the people around him, and to his own feelings. He was an adult before the conditioning began to gradually erode. It was not until he slowly, inexorably and yet so gently fell in love with Hutch that his eyes finally opened fully and he came to realize, love was love, gender mattered only in the minds of people who didn’t understand what the word ‘love’ really meant.
It had taken years, and Hutch had practiced the kind of patience which he might once have believed beyond him. Men had been canonized for less. But in the end, forbearance paid off. Eyes open, heart well and truly lost, Starsky discarded the outmoded prejudice of his forebears and surrendered to what he knew instinctively was right for himself and Hutch. Perhaps he had known it all along, but the time and the emotional climate had to be right, the way wine matured according to its own schedule and could not be hurried.
“Oh, that’s good,” Hutch groaned. “You got magic fingers, babe.”
“The Amazing Starskarino,” Starsky declared in a terrible Italian accent. “For my next trick…”
“Leroy’s looking,” Hutch warned.
“So let him look.” Starsky was still intent on Hutch’s back, where the damage done to deep muscle fibers in that crash might never fully heal. “You enjoyin’ this or not?”
“You have to ask? But I’d like it a whole lot better at home,” Hutch told him plaintively. “In bed.”
“You dropping hints?” Another snort of amusement. “So. I’ll do it all again when we’re home.”
“Promise?” Hutch murmured, teasing.
“Word of honor.”
It was then that the radio interrupted with a crackle of white noise and the dispatcher’s voice. “Zebra Three, Zebra Three, there is a call for Detective Starsky, from a Thomas Ryan.”
Flopping back into the padding of the seat, Starsky reached for the radio. “Zebra Three, Starsky. Patch him through.”
They had been waiting the whole day for Ryan to call, and Hutch groaned again, this time not in pleasure, as he noticed the time. If Ryan’s information produced the action they hoped for, their working day could extend to midnight or beyond. Just what they needed. A long, boring day before the case broke at an hour when normal human beings, working normal hours, were headed home.
Ryan was a snitch, and usually a good one. He had his ear to the ground, was always hungry for a fast twenty, and his contacts were reliable enough for Starsky and Hutch to act on his information.
They wanted to know who drove the blue ’65 Mustang that almost ran Hutch’s LTD off the road three days before, not a block from Venice Place. Hutch had not been able to catch a glimpse of the driver; he would have assumed it was simply a jerk behind the wheel, a casual near-accident, but when he jogged up to his apartment he found a message taped to his door.
Typewritten on yellow paper, with a ribbon faded to translucent gray, the message said, ‘Not this time, Hutchinson, but soon.’
A prank? A bad joke? Sweat had prickled Hutch’s ribs, and he picked up the phone at once. Starsky had gone back to bis place to clean house and stock up the refrigerator, but two words from Hutch brought the Torino over to Venice in a tire-smoking hurry. As he walked through the door Hutch handed him the paper, and a beer, and described the incident on the road.
Was it a dumb joke? Starsky didn’t think so, and Dobey’s face was grim. The Mustang was APB’d, but in hours it was reported stolen from a front yard in Westwood. The car itself vanished, and for it to vanish for three days probably meant it had been chopped or dumped. Which led Starsky and Hutch directly to Ryan.
He claimed to know every chopping shop in the city, every outlet for hot spare parts, particularly those for classic vehicles, like the ’65 Mustang. And he owed the two cops he called his personal nemeses a few favors.
Before nine that morning Ryan had called Hutch at home with a few terse words. He said he might have information later in the day. Starsky was still in bed, chin cupped in his left palm, lazily watching Hutch move around the apartment, when the call came in. Hutch had just showered, his skin was still streaming, a towel tucked haphazardly around his hips. Starsky swore he liked to ‘look for the joy of looking,’ and Hutch had no complaints, even if those sleepy blue eyes could raise a blush on his fair cheeks from time to time.
“What you got for us, Ryan?” Starsky demanded as Hutch tossed the debris of their meal into the rear of the car. Out of sight out of mind. Starsky flashed him a glare and mouthed, ‘This ain’t your heap, you make a mess in here, you clean it up!” Hutch responded with an obscene gesture.
“Got an address.” Ryan sounded nervous. “Six-forty San Luis. Apartment six. You got that?”
“Got it,” Starsky assured him. “The man’ll be there?”
“He oughtta be,” Ryan muttered. “The name’s Mitchell. Look, I gotta go.”
Starsky angled a frown at Hutch, but said to the mike, “What’s wrong, Ryan? You sound a little spooky.”
“I gotta goddamned right to be spooked!” Ryan snapped. “Jesus Christ, Hutchinson, a guy could get killed!”
“I keep telling you,” Starsky said drily, “I’m Starsky, he’s Hutch. Or do all cops look alike to you?”
“Yeah, past a certain point, they do,” Ryan informed him. “They’re all kinda blue, with ‘You have the right to remain silent’ written all over ’em. Look, it’s six-forty San Luis, look for a big dude, name of Mitchell, and that’s all you’re getting from me this time.”
The line went dead as he hung up, and Starsky handed the mike to Hutch. “The perfect snitch. Full of the milk of human kindness.” Then he made a face. “San Luis… in this traffic?”
“Take Olympic to Robertson.” Hutch pointed northeast.
“Gotcha.” Starsky gave him a grin. “You should’ve been a cabbie.”
“I had an apartment over there,” Hutch admitted, easing himself down in the seat as the Torino’s big engine fired eagerly and began to growl.
“I forgot.” Starsky’ waited for a break in the oncoming traffic and jumped into it. You and the lady.”
“Last place we lived as a not-so-happy couple, before she filed. Divorce is a dirty word.” Hutch stretched. “You know, I think that acupressure stuff of yours might work.”
“Told you.” Starsky gave him a slightly smug smirk. “Magic fingers.” Then he applied those fingers to the wheel and gear shift, taking the Torino fast through the jumble of late afternoon traffic.
* * * *
Six-forty San Luis was an apartment house not dissimilar to Hutch’s own, save that the class of resident here was a touch lower. The girl mooching at the corner looked like a hooker waiting for passing trade, the music thundering out of an apartment, three floors up, did not quite cover the screams of a couple apparently trying to kill each other, and as Hutch got out of the car he stepped on something in the gutter that smashed. Looking down, he saw a syringe, and glanced over the roof of the car at his partner.
“Cute place,” Starsky commented. “Wall to wall sleaze.”
“Yeah. Well, wipe your feet on the way out,” Hutch suggested, leading the way to the door, and on up the stairs.
Apartment six was on the left, one floor above the street, in a short corridor where the walls had been liberally adorned with graffiti, maybe an attempt to brighten them up. On the door was a ridiculous sign, proclaiming the place to be ‘Graceland.’ Starsky muttered, “Grossland, maybe,” as he drew the automatic from his holster. He leaned both shoulders on the wall by the door, where he would not at once be seen. His brows quirked at Hutch, who nodded, and knocked.
From within came odd noises, footfalls, furniture, something overturning. Hutch slackened the Magnum in his own holster and took out his badge, before rapping smartly on the door again. This time it opened a crack, and a woman’s face looked out, above a security chain. Hutch gestured with the badge. The woman was brunette and looked about forty; she wore a kimono, and so much makeup, her face had almost the aspect of a kabuki mask. A draft of powerful perfume assaulted his nostrils, and Hutch resisted the urge to sneeze.
“Police,” he said tersely. “We’re looking for Mitchell.”
“You’re looking for who?” The woman did not seem in the slightest troubled. “Sorry, cutie, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
You could always tell when somebody was lying. A cop soon learned to read people, faces, and voices, and when someone was scared, trying to hide something, to deceive, it was painfully obvious. This woman, Hutch knew at once, was telling the truth. He looked at Starsky and gave a minute shake of his head. Starsky huffed, slid away his gun and showed himself clearly. “Ma’am, we’re police officers. Would you like to open the door?”
“I wouldn’t like to,” the woman said, “but I guess you’ll bust it in if I don’t.”
“They do that on television.” Starsky favored her with his most charming smile. “Detective Hutchinson and I never, ever do anything like that. Do we, Hutch?”
“We wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” Hutch said sweetly.
She looked skeptically at them, and opened up with a sigh. “Okay, come on in, you win. I guess you’re on duty, so I won’t offer you a drink, but there’s coffee and juice… before you bust me.”
The apartment looked like a boudoir in a French cathouse, circa 1900. Like something from the Barbary Coast. Hutch hid a grin. “Now, why should we bust you… what’s your name?”
“Penelope Dale.” She was in a silk nightdress and high heels, and as she arranged herself on the sofa she artfully displayed an alluring length of leg. “You’re not going to bust me?”
Starsky’s eyes were glittering with amusement. “Can’t see anything to bust you for. But maybe you can help us.”
She shifted her legs, and Hutch hid a grin. “Not like that, Miss Dale. We were given this address by an informant. A man called Mitchell is supposed to live here.”
But Penelope only shrugged and fluttered luxurious false eyelashes at them. “I don’t even know anybody by that name, and there’s sure as hell no Mitchell lives here. I got no reason to lie. Especially since you’re being awfully nice to me, if you take my meaning.”
“Uh, yeah. Okay, love, I believe you.” Hutch sighed. “Looks like we got a bum steer,” he said in Starsky.
“And there’s a snitch who’ll be getting a fat lip,” Starsky added drily. He dropped a mock bow before Penelope. “Sorry to bother you. And,” he added, almost on an afterthought, “if Mitchell does show up here… for tea… call this number.” He had written their names and number on a sheet torn from the back of his notebook, and put it in her hand as Hutch stepped out of the apartment.
The door closed, and Hutch stood, fists on hips, at the top of the stairs. “Ryan’s got one coming.”
“One of these days,” Starsky agreed, “pow, right in the kisser. Damn, I thought we could trust him.” He started down the stairs.
“So once in a while, he’s wrong.” Hutch followed, never more than a pace or three behind. “Ryan’s only as good as the information he’s given. He gets a bum steer, he passes it on.”
The shadows were lengthening and the wind had turned in the last hour, blowing more northerly, and much cooler. Hutch turned his face to it, loving the fresh sensation as it lifted his hair, and watching it stir his partner’s dark curls. “Home?” he suggested as Starsky stood trying to figure out what the hell the graffiti meant.
Blue eyes turned toward him. “Days like this, we’re lucky the excitement doesn’t kill us. Your place or mine?”
“Yours. It’s closer.” Hutch swung open the long scarlet door and plunked into the seat. “You got anything in to eat? I mean, anything I eat?”
Starsky gave him a reproachful look as he slid in under the wheel. “I always have stuff in for you. I bought yogurt and salad and ham, and strawberries. I,” he added as he turned the key in the ignition, “am having a pizza. Pepperoni and anchovy, with double mushrooms and extra cheese.”
“Your stomach must be like a garbage grinder,” Hutch observed, the old, familiar banter, a tradition they continued because it was like balm on sore nerve endings. “You should take out a patent.”
With a chuckle, Starsky took the big Ford through a tight arc and headed back the way he had come in. Driving against the traffic, they made slow time, and Hutch was waiting for his partner, sitting on the hood of the car in the parking lot of Papa’s Pizza Kitchen just minutes from Starsky’s place, when the radio crackled for attention. He hopped down, leaned in for the mike, and was surprised to hear Dobey’s voice.
“The car that almost wiped you out,” Dobey said without preamble. “The ’65 Mustang. It just turned up, Hutch.”
Pulse quickening, Hutch peered through the wide glass window of the store where Starsky was a dim shape beside the cash register, and a girl was handing over a box and relieving him of his cash. ‘That’s great, Captain. Where’d it show up?”
“Not so great,” Dobey told him. “It’s in about a million pieces. They pushed it off the road, it’s in the bottom of a canyon half way to Ventura. The only good thing is, it didn’t burn. A forensic squad might find some prints on what’s left of it.”
The news was like a punch, and Hutch mulled it over quickly. “Then the note tacked to my door really is a warning. Not a joke. I’d started to think it was just a prank-neighborhood kids getting it up for the local cop, you know.”
“I know what you mean. That happens from time to time,” Dobey said, “but not today. Where’s Starsky?”
“Getting a pizza,” Hutch said drily, smoothing his light mustache with one fingertip.
“You got your eyes on him?” Dobey demanded.
Warning bells chimed in Hutch’s ears and he licked his lips. “Yes, I can see him. What’s happening?”
“There was a call for him here at the station,” Dobey said sourly. “A man, on the line for maybe thirty, forty seconds. The guy says, ‘It’ll be soon, Starsky. It’ll be real soon.’ Then he hangs up.”
“Christ.” Hutch rubbed his face. “Who took the call?”
“Powers. And it’s on tape, but how in hell do you analyze eight words?” Dobey paused. “But we can be sure of one thing, Hutchinson. It’s no hoax. And both you and Starsky are targets.”
“So we’ll do like we always do,” Hutch said quietly, as Starsky stepped out of Papa’s Kitchen. “We’ll cover for each other.”
“Stick close,” Dobey said sharply. “Choose one apartment, stay put, and I’ll get you some surveillance. Where you headed now?”
“Uh, Starsky’s,” Hutch said just a little awkwardly. Even now, no one knew that he and Starsky had grown close as two fingers in the same mitt, in every way.
From the very first they had made the deliberate decision to be careful, in the office and on the street. They kept two apartments, but one was always empty while the other accommodated two; they ran two cars, banked separately, and most shrewdly of all, they continued to date women. What only their girlfriends knew was that the dinner dates, concerts and jaunts to the ballet and theatre ended with a ride home and a kiss. The trick was to change girls so often that the relationships were too brief and insubstantial to leave a pretty girl wondering why the sex she had expected just wasn’t happening. Hutch found it all absurd, even cruel, and the most ridiculous thing of all was the necessity to do this while 1980 loomed on the horizon like a thunderhead, and the world seemed to have grown up, matured, in every other context.
A man did what he must to get through the day; and through the night. “We’ll head for Starsky’s,” Hutch told Dobey.
“And stay put,” Dobey barked. “When you leave, you’ll be tailed.”
Starsky slid in and slammed the door just in time to catch this last, and with one glance at Hutch’s face he knew something was wrong. Hutch held up one finger for silence as he said, “Will do, Captain.” He shut down, and without taking a breath went on to Starsky, “We got trouble, buddy. You had a call, Powers took it. Some creep, I assume the same bastard who taped a message to my door, said, ‘It’ll be soon, Starsky. It’ll be real soon.’ And the Mustang turned up… total wreckage, bottom of a canyon. They might get some prints off it.”
“Shit.” Starsky studied the dashboard, fingers drumming on the pizza box. “So Dobey’s giving us some surveillance?” He gestured at the radio. “We’ll be tailed, he said.”
“From your place.” Hutch took the pizza from him. “In the morning.” He paused, watching Starsky closely, almost able to hear his brain ticking over, but not quite. “What you thinking?”
The engine started with a growl, and he revved it hard once, twice. “That we’ve made somebody so angry, he wants to waste us, and that ought to tell us who it is.”
“Sure,” Hutch agreed, “except that we’ve made so many enemies in this town, they’re standing in line to take a crack at us.”
“The price of fame,” Starsky said moodily as he swung out of the lot and joined the stream of slow, homeward bound traffic.
Before the Torino had drawn to a halt outside Starsky’s building, they picked up the plain, unmarked black Dodge at the other end of the block. “That’s Chaffey,” Hutch said softly, knowing the car.
“He’s good.” Starsky was out, locking the driver’s door as he went and twisting the key ring to get at his door key. His eyes flickered this way and that, and he made a wry sound. “You ever get that watched feeling?”
“Chaffey’s watching us.” Hutch jogged around the car and joined him on the sidewalk, under the dusty trees that graced a patch of garden by the door.
“That ain’t what I meant,” Starsky said darkly, on his way into the building. “If our guy’s a marksman, even showing our noses on the street could be risky.”
“Long range hit?” Hutch had to admit the possibility. God knew, they had been targeted before, it could happen again. And for the moment there was nothing either of them could do about it.
The windows faced east and the apartment was already dim. Starsky flicked on the lights. The door closed, and he deliberately set the locks. “Chaffey’ll have called in, told ’em we’re here.” He set his pizza on the side of the sink and turned back to Hutch, one arm extended. “That over there, partner, is what we in the business call…” enunciating in the best formal radio procedure “…a closed door. So?”
“So.” Hutch went to him, slipped one big arm around him and tugged the smaller body into a firm, warm, welcome embrace. Starsky’s arms went around his neck and he looked up the two inches that separated them in height. But there was no smile tonight, and Hutch observed, “You’re worried.”
The dark, curly head nodded. “I’m worried. I don’t want to see you get hurt again. Enough’s happened to you to last a lifetime.”
“See me get hurt?” Hutch echoed. “You’re prone to getting shot yourself, Starsk! You’ve been wounded three years running…”
“Luck of the draw,” Starsky said indifferently.
“…Poisoned, abducted, worked over…”
Starsky’s mouth silenced him with a deep, thorough kiss, to which Hutch was pleased to surrender. The apartment was silent for some time, but for the soft, moist sounds of shared affection, and when they broke apart at last Hutch was pleased to see a faint blush on his lover’s cheeks, a smile on his lips. He laid his fingertips on Starsky’s mouth, chuckled as Starsky’s pink tongue-tip flicked out, and for a moment rested his forehead against the softness of those curls.
Then Hutch slid reluctantly out of the embrace and shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. “You mind if we put this on hold while I grab a shower?”
“Hot water on that back of yours?” Starsky cocked his head at him. “Go ahead. It’s a good place to start. Then eat, and rub you down.” Hutch was moving away toward the bathroom when the offer floated after him. “What’ll ya eat? I’ll cook.”
“You’re offering to cook?” Hutch performed a double take. “What did I do to deserve this?”
His reply was not a grin but a dark, sultry look. “You ain’t done it. Yet,” Starsky informed him. “Ham salad, a little low-fat coleslaw on the side, creamed corn, noodles… canned peaches, fresh strawberries and organic yogurt?” He waggled suggestive eyebrows.
“You know me pretty well by now,” Hutch admitted.
“I should,” Starsky retorted, tossing his jacket at a chair and yanking his shirt out of his pants. The holster and sidearm followed the jacket, and as Hutch stepped into the bathroom the refrigerator was open to disgorge a selection of cartons and tubs.
The same performance took place at his own apartment, when they headed for Venice instead. Just as Starsky shopped for him, so Hutch had added a good stock of Starsky’s favorite highly-spiced, indigestible fare to his shelves. Not all of it was appalling, Hutch admitted as he stripped and stepped under the water. Starsky was capable of whipping up a more than passable pasta, with a variety of sauces. He did an improvised Mexican-Italian Provençale, with hot salsa and Romano added to the basic tomato, that was delicious—if it didn’t burn the tongue out of your mouth. Where he found the recipes, Hutch never knew, but he suspected Starsky made them up, throwing things into the same dish until it tasted right.
The thought made him smile and the hot water eased his back with a magic second only to his lover’s hands. The new water heater would run for at least twenty minutes and Hutch made the most of it, wallowing in luxury for as long as he liked… or until the bathroom door opened and Starsky’s voice called through the steam, “You done? ‘S on the table, lover. And I’m hungry.”
“Done and done.” Hutch turned off the water and hastily patted himself half-dry. He tucked a rowel about his hips and regarded his face in the mirror with a curious expression. He looked, he thought, better than he had in a long while. There was a definite glow on his skin, a brightness about his eyes. “You ought to be in pictures,” he told his mirror self. “Being in love suits you, kiddo, you know that? Course you do. Being in love suits him, too. He’s getting more gorgeous… or is it the way I look at him?”
A heaped plate awaited him, while on the other side of the table the pizza box was open and Starsky was already eating. Hutch drew up a chair and poured his beer from can to glass. They concentrated on the food in silence until hunger was assuaged, and then Starsky patted his lips with a napkin and said, “Joe Trevena. I just remembered, we sent him up for twelve, he got paroled about a month ago.”
“Uh-huh.” Hutch chewed methodically. “Benny Kraemer. We busted him in ’75. He was out last week.”
Starsky nodded thoughtfully. “Jack Varney. Should’ve been serving fifteen, but he went over the wall two months back, when they moved him to the farm.”
“Billy Melville,” Hutch added. “He’ll be seventeen years old now. He never forgave us for sending his big brother up for life.” He rested his chin on his hand and looked soberly into Starsky’s face. “This isn’t going to do us any good.”
“It’s a place to start,” Starsky argued. “Dobey’ll have had R&I drag out every file. Halfa those guys are still looking at the wrong side of the bars. A lot more’ve been out six months or a year, They’re not gonna make trouble. It’s got to narrow the field, Hutch.”
“It’s still a hell of a big field.” Hutch looked away. “And all we have is a note taped to my door, a phone call to the station, a stolen car. And,” he added, “a stupid steer from that air-head, Ryan!”
“Yeah. I’ll be giving him a piece of my mind,” Starsky muttered. He stood, shrugged off his shirt before he flopped onto the couch.
“You think, maybe, the address is right and the timing’s wrong?” Hutch wondered. “Like, Mitchell might show up at the lady’s?”
“That’s not what we called a ‘lady’ when I was a kid,” Starsky quipped.
“Or maybe,” Hutch went on, “when he goes there he uses a different name.” He quirked his brows at Starsky and, acting on impulse, went to the phone. He punched digits with sharp forefinger taps. “It’s ringing.”
“He won’t be home,” Starsky warned. “That yo-yo never is.”
“Yeah, I know, but… ah, yes, hello.” Hutch pressed the phone to bis ear. “Give me Thomas Ryan.”
It was a woman answering, and he knew what she would say. “He’s not here, honey, but take a message if you want to leave one.”
“It’s Hutchinson. He knows me. Tell him to call me back, soon as he gets in,” he said with a touch of circumspection Ryan appreciated. Few snitches liked their family and friends to know what they were doing. He gave Starsky’s number and had the woman read it back. She could be Ryan’s wife, mother, sister or girlfriend, there was no way to tell.
When he hung up Starsky was watching him, still sitting on the couch, comfortably shirtless and deceptively relaxed. His head was back against the cushions, one hand extended in open invitation. Hutch felt his body stir and glanced down at himself. He was wearing only a towel, but Starsky didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Starsky seemed to positively approve. There was a light in those astonishing blue eyes that made Hutch quiver with a mix of pleasure, excitement and anticipation.
The couch gave comfortably under their combined weight, molding around them, and Hutch pulled Starsky across his lap. One hand splayed over the silk-furred chest and Starsky heaved a sigh as he arched his back to press his nipple into Hutch’s palm. Hutch knew what he liked, and he reveled in the intimacy as he rubbed the hard little nub and bent his head to Starsky’s waiting mouth.
Homecoming was always the same. Opportunities to touch or be intimate in any way were rare during the working day. Once or twice they had taken risks, and had narrowly escaped. Necking in the car, groping one another in the locker room or in bushes where they were positioned on stakeout was just plain dumb, but in the early days after friendship crossed the line into sensuality, they had been too newfangled, too much in lust, as well as in love. The risks were worth the reward, and perhaps the element of danger added spice.
But those were kids’ games, and Hutch admitted to himself as he lapped leisurely at Starsky’s open mouth, neither of them was a kid any longer. Neither of them was so desperate for sex that he had to run those risks.
Well, not often.
He smiled against Starsky’s lips, counting his lover’s large, white teeth with the tip of his tongue and then delving deeply inside until Starsky moaned, bass and stunningly masculine in his arms. Hutch felt the tickle of his chest, found himself with his arm under the curly head, supporting its weight, while Starsky’s dexterous left hand caressed every square inch of Hutch’s bare skin he could reach.
Musk rose between them, heady as perfume; Hutch fancied he would recognize the pheromones anywhere, and he lifted his head to look down into his friend’s face with a smile that did not mock. Starsky was a curious mix of mellow and teasing tonight, spoiling for mischief yet gentled by the comfort and familiarity of being home, being with Hutch; knowing he was cherished more than anyone else in the world. All this glittered in the eyes Hutch could never resist, and he said, mesmerized, “You’re beautiful, Starsk, you know that?”
“You want your eyes checked,” Starsky argued.
“I had them checked already. You still look gorgeous to me.” Hutch’s right index finger traced the shape of his lover’s features. “You know what they say. It’s in the eye of the beholder.”
“They do say that,” Starsky said, low and husky, almost reflective as he looked up into Hutch’s face. “I always thought you looked like an angel, straight off a Christmas tree.”
Hutch ouched. “I think I’ve just been insulted.”
“Beautiful,” Starsky murmured, and caught Hutch’s head to pull him down to another kiss.
It was the best way they knew to banish the tensions and frustrations of the day, and Hutch was eager to comply. Not that it had ever been difficult to yield to Starsky’s sensual whims, any more than Starsky ever hesitated to capitulate to Hutch’s. It was more a case of one partner making an offer and the other eagerly accepting.
The zipper churred down on Starsky’s jeans, and Hutch slipped his hand into the body-warm denim, searching for him. His own cock was more than half hard, caught deliciously under Starsky’s weight. With a moan, Starsky humped his hips with an action like ocean breakers rolling onto the beach, and Hutch’s breathing deepened as he began to move smoothly into the give and take of lovemaking…
The rap of knuckles at the door made them both jump out of their skins, and Starsky shot bolt upright with a gasp, almost butting Hutch under the chin. “Shit! Who the hell…”
“Starsky? Hutch?” The voice called through, urgent and horribly familiar.
Dobey. Half panicked, Hutch dragged a hand through his hair and glanced down at himself. His towel was off, his cock was a nine inch pole, stubbornly determined that it would not subside. Momentarily, Hutch’s mind blanked and he looked wildly about for inspiration.
“Get in bed,” Starsky whispered.
“What? That’s… your bed?” Hutch protested hoarsely. “But he’s—”
“Stop arguing, just get in bed!” Starsky swiped the towel from Hutch’s hips and propelled him forcibly into the bedroom area. He whipped the covers off, shoved Hutch in and pulled the covers back up fast. Slightly rosy in the cheeks he called loudly, “Won’t be a second, Cap!” And he deliberately hung Hutch’s towel around his own bare shoulders. A quick glance around the apartment in search of anything incriminating as he zipped his jeans, and he went to the door.
Not knowing whether to be mortified or amused, Hutch pressed his face into the pillow. Inspiration struck, and he grabbed blindly for a magazine from the bedside, anything for camouflage. The locks released with a metallic snapping sound, and Starsky opened up. “We didn’t expect you,” he told Dobey. “I was just about to take a shower, but you’re welcome. We already ate, but there’s coffee, unless you want a beer.”
“A beer would be just fine,” Dobey said, barreling into the apartment and looking around. “Where’s Hutchinson?”
“I told him to sack out,” Starsky said with complete candor. “His back’s been acting up all day. He needs to get it flat on a mattress, or he’s gonna be right back in therapy.”
Steeling himself, Hutch lifted his head and waved with the magazine as Dobey’s face appeared. Damn, it was a copy of Yoga International. Why hadn’t he noticed this reading material in Starsky’s place before? “Evening, Captain. What brings you here?”
The look on Dobey’s face was worth paying money to witness. They could have sold tickets in the squad room, made a fortune. He looked from Starsky to Hutch and back to Starsky. Not with one syllable uttered did he tell them he was not believing this Emmy Award winning performance, but the wry ‘Uh-huh’ was there in his face. He took a can of Bud and a glass as Starsky fetched them, and Hutch subsided onto the familiar mattress with a sense of resignation. He knows. God help us, he knows. And then, Of course he knows, how blind do you think the man is? He’s probably known for months. Ah shit.
“Forensics are taking apart the wreck of the car,” Dobey said, more gruffly than usual, as if he was trying to cover either disapproval or amusement, and Hutch just could not tell which. “They dragged it out the canyon, hauled it into the shop… turns out, it’s a shell of a Mustang.”
“The people who stole it had to dispose of it,” Starsky mused, “and instead of wasting a valuable resource, they chopped it. The guts are for sale to shops that work on classic cars.” He paused. “Prints?”
“Eight, maybe ten clear enough to use, spread out over the body,” Dobey told him. “We should know by morning who they belong to. But we lucked out, Starsky.”
“We did?” Hutch propped himself on one elbow, looking eagerly through at Dobey, who stood in the living room area.
“We got a description of the guy who stole the Mustang,” Dobey said in round tones. “It was taken out of a front yard, six a.m., Monday. We had the uniform boys knock on doors, and got lucky. Turns out, the teenager across the street saw the thief. He was in his yard, trying to creep into the house. He’d been out the whole night.” Dobey’s brows rose. “Kids!”
“The description?” Starsky pressed.
“Big guy, Caucasian, blond, maybe thirty, thirty-five. Leather jacket.”
“That could be anybody,” Hutch said acidly.
Starsky gave him a look. “Sounds like you.”
“Cute, Starsky, real cute,” Hutch muttered.
“It’s a place to start,” Dobey said sharply. “I don’t suppose the name Mitchell means anything to you two?”
But both detectives could only shake their heads. “We never busted a guy by that name,” Hutch mused. “So far he’s just a snitch’s contact.”
“But,” Starsky went on, continuing the thought as if it were his own, “that name could be an alias…”
“Or,” Hutch proceeded, “Mitchell is the creep’s name, but he’s not one of our busts. He’s a buddy, brother, something, of someone we took out.”
“That’s my thinking,” Dobey agreed. “Problem is, that makes the field so wide we might never figure it. I’ve had R&I send over every file, every bust you guys have made. It’s two feet thick. You’ve been busy boys.”
“We try,” Starsky said ruefully. “You could have phoned us with this.”
Dobey drained the beer and slapped the can inro Starsky’s hand. “I could, but I thought I’d stop by and personally look over your security. You got Chaffey at the end of the block and Vasquez in the vacant apartment opposite. And when you leave here, you’ll be tailed.”
“That doesn’t cover us against a long range hit,” Hutch said thoughtfully.
The captain nodded, sobered by the suggestion. “So wear your vests and get to the car fast. Forensics should have turned up something we can work with by morning. In the meantime, you—”
The clamor of the phone intruded, and Starsky scooped it up, in no good mood. “Who is this?” And then, “Oh, it’s you, Ryan. You know you gave us a bunch of crap? We went to that address. A guy called Mitchell? Not unless he does the best drag act this side of Vegas. If that wasn’t a working girl, I need eyeglasses!”
The repartee made Hutch snicker behind the folded magazine. Starsky listened, grunted an affirmative a couple of times, and then said, “Okay, okay, I get the message. You seen this Mitchell with your own two eyes?” Another pause. “Describe him.” He looked over at Hutch, face taut. “Uh-huh. Right. Yeah. O…kay. We’ll be in touch, Ryan.” The phone hung up and Starsky padded closer to Hutch. He stood, hands on hips, frowning first at Hutch, then at Dobey. “Mitchell’s big, blond, blue eyes, thirty years old.”
“Now we’re cooking,” Hutch said softly. “If his prints show up on the wreckage…”
“If they don’t,” Dobey added, “we might be able to get a make on whoever chopped the car and dumped it.” He nodded slowly, then shook a finger at the younger men. “You two, stay put. You’re safe where you are, but if you make targets of yourselves, somebody’s going to try a pop at you.”
Starsky shook his dark head slowly. “The guy’s going to try his hand sooner or later anyway, Cap’n.”
“Yeah,” Dobey agreed bluffly, “but it’ll be in our good time, in a place we choose. First thing I’m going to do, and right now, is stake out Penelope Dale’s little pleasure palace. If this blond guy shows, using whatever name he prefers, we’ll take him right there.” He marched to the door, and at the last moment turned back and gave them both that wry look. “Is there… anything you think you should tell me?” One brow arched at them. “Anything you think I should know?”
A blush stole over Hutch’s honey colored cheeks, and his lips opened and closed like a stranded goldfish. He silently prayed that Starsky could find his tongue, and a moment later his partner said with a commendable show of complete innocence,
“Any info we come by, Captain, we pass it along, soon as we get it.”
‘Uh-huh.” This time is was verbalized, and Hutch felt even his ears grow warm at the tone of Dobey’s voice.
As the door clicked shut and Starsky reset the locks, Hutch flopped down on the bed, tented the magazine over his face and said passionately into the printed paper, “Shitshitshit!”
“Eloquent,” Starsky observed, on his way to the bed.
The mattress depressed at Hutch’s side, and the magazine was lifted away. He looked up into Starsky’s face, seeing a faint blush on his cheeks also. “You’re using the big words these days.”
Starsky laid a fingertip on the end of his nose. “You used to fire ’em at me, like hittin’ me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. So I bought a dictionary. It’s chock-full of all those big words, Hutch. Just bustin’ at the seams with words like ‘eloquent,’ and ‘academic’… and ‘verbose’ and about forty thousand more just like ’em.”
“Forty thousand?” Hutch was amused, bemused, bewitched. As usual.
“Starsk, the man knows. Dobey’s made us.”
“I noticed.” Starsky leaned down and kissed Hutch right between the eyes. “Question is, what’ll he do about it?”
“He could fire us,” Hutch said. “Come to bed, lover.”
“He won’t fire us—and I don’t mind if I do.” Starsky stood to unzip his jeans and drop them unceremoniously at the bedside. “We’re the best he has. Fire us, and get who to replace us?”
“Flimsy reasoning,” Hutch argued absently, intent on the long, tapered legs, by some quirk of fate only lightly dusted with hair, and on the elegant, stirring genitals framed by surprisingly sturdy thighs.
“Flimsy?” Starsky lifted the quilt and Hutch scooted over to make room. “Fact is, Dobey won’t jettison the best he has, until or unless we turn into a liability. And there’s another big word!”
“You’re getting good at them, little boy.” Hutch snaked an arm about his lover’s neck and drew him close. “Wanna make love?”
“Damnit, you read my mind. Howdya do that?” Starsky punched a pillow to the right shape and consistency and settled his head on it. “How’s your back, love?”
“Oh… not too bad.”
“Meaning, not too good either,” Starsky added. “Turn over.”
Hutch angled a look at him from beneath lowered lashes. Starsky had it in him to be a tease; or a complete sweetheart. Or a mix of the two. He could be crazy, exasperating, endearing, or just plain gorgeous. Most often, Hutch admitted, the latter.
“Turn over,” Starsky purred. “We1ll get to that later, but right now I want to straighten your back out.”
“Impossible,” Hutch murmured as he turned onto his belly, which pressed his swollen cock into the bed and inspired a groan. “Where you’re concerned, Starsk, I don’t think any part of me could be straight.”
A kiss fell in the curve of his back, and cool air caressed his buttocks as Starsky lifted down the bedding. And then his lover’s weight settled lightly astride Hutch’s thighs, the hands of an artist began to play him like an instrument, and the big blond capitulated with a little wounded sound of pleasure.
Baby oil drizzled down Hutch’s spine and across the area of the old injury, and Starsky’s clever fingers seemed to be drawn to Hutch’s hurts. He kneaded, pressed, employing what he had read in that magazine, and from time to time asked, ‘How’s this?’ or, ‘This okay?’ and ‘How’s this work?’
Pain diminished, receded, and seemed to smoke off inro the air as if it had never been, and at the same time Hutch’s whole body began to thrum with deep pleasure. Nobody had ever made him feel this good. Starsky stroked in the last of the baby oil, until his skin was just soft and smooth, no longer slick, and with a sigh he settled full-length on Hutch’s back.
It was then that Hutch felt the burning heat of a big erection pressed into the cleft of his buttocks, and he welcomed it. “Got you going, have I, babe?” he chuckled, reaching back with his right hand to find Starsky’s left. Their fingers meshed, and Starsky laid his cheek, deliciously night-stubbled, on the plane of Hutch’s shoulder.
“Got me goin’,” he confessed. “You can get me goin’ with a look, you know that!”
“I know that.” Hutch wriggled under him, smiling at the tickle of his lover’s chest and belly. “God, you feel good. Gonna hump me?”
“Mrnrnrn.” Starsky was nuzzling his ear. “I’d love to be in you.”
“Half as much as I’d love having you there,” Hutch confessed.
Starsky’s tongue rimmed his ear, gentle teeth nipped his lobe. “Is your back up to it?”
“After that massage? There’s nothing wrong with my back! Nothing wrong with my whole body,” Hutch declared. “Well… nothing wrong that a good fuck won’t fix.”
“Then, in that case…” Starsky reached for the bottle of baby oil. Hutch had to do no more than lie still, spread his legs and relax.
* * * *
Four months, they had been doing this. The four best months of Hutch’s whole life, since a long, long friendship blossomed into a new and indomitable love. And it was a woman who brought it about in the end, precipitating the scene that thrust them into one another’s arms.
The feeling of betrayal they shared when they realized how Kira had used them both was the catalyst. The pain Starsky was feeling when his last attempt to find love with a woman flew apart, as all the others had done, was mirrored in Hutch. For so long, Hutch had wanted nothing more than to be a buffer between his friend and that kind of pain. Time and again he had watched Starsky battered, physically or emotionally, and in the long term, Hutch was sure, the emotional punishment was worse.
The body healed, and Starsky’s body in particular healed with almost miraculous swiftness, because he was young, strong, vital. But the heart and mind were not the same. Hutch had been able to do little but stand aside and watch, comforting as and if he was able, as Starsky lost Terry, and then duped himself into believing that he could find love with Rosey, when he must have known, deep inside, that it was impossible, given the Malone ‘family business.’
And last of all, Kira, whose name might as well have been Shiva, creator and destroyer. She might have destroyed the partnership… Hutch almost believed she had intended to, for whatever personal reason. They might never know. She might have destroyed Starsky, left him so embittered, even soured, that the open, loving heart that Hutch had always cherished most about him became closed, locked.
But instead of pushing Hutch away, Starsky literally demanded that he come close, give account of himself. Straighten it out, one way or another. Straighten it…? The night of anger and bitterness was branded into Hutch’s cortex, just as he would always carry the marks of the following morning. Not destruction, but creation. Dawn light broke through the window, gilding Starsky’s pillow-tousled curls, his shoulder, even the tips of his eyelashes. They had separated in the wide bed just enough to finally get some sleep after they threshed through their anger and realized, most of their wounds this time around were self-inflicted. Starsky had been infatuated; Kira had been physically attracted to him, but she was also attracted to Hutch. The only lips to mention the word ‘love’ were Starsky’s, and in the dark of midnight he realized, it had been a fantasy. Kira was gone, and he was alone again, as he had always been.
No. That wasn’t right, and Hutch waited patiently for Starsky to make the right connections. He was lying, exhausted, in Hutch’s arms, and when he lifted his head to look into his friend’s face, it was all there. The great awakening, the opening of eyes that had been half-blinded by the traditions and prejudices of another generation, and by his own impossible dreams. He blinked repeatedly, as if his vision was clearing, and his hands tightened on Hutch’s arm and shoulder. Then Hutch kissed him, and after so many years, it began at last. They began.
Fireworks exploded between them, tempered by the long friendship, sweetened by the precious fact that they already knew each other so well. They fit together like hand and glove… sword and sheath. And four months later, it was even better.
Hutch had lost count of the times they had made love. In the early weeks it was twice a night—three times, if they woke before dawn. And in the afternoons, too, when they scored a day off. Those weeks they were absent from disco, restaurants, even The Pits, until Huggy called, wondering if they’d quit the force and left the state. The truth was, when they had time to be together they headed home and locked the door, because circumspection was the only ace they had to play. Gays on the force? A stoning offence. Except that there were probably thousands of gay cops… and almost every one of them kept his love life for the sanctuary of home. Only a few like John Blaine ran the risks, and sometimes paid a terrible price.
Hutch would have liked to wine and dine his new love, his last and best love; to give him red roses and champagne at the best restaurants, then dance him around the floor of a disco where the music was mellow and romantic. It was impossible, but he entertained the fantasy with a fond smile. These things would have to wait until the left the force and moved on. Perhaps they would move to San Francisco, where they would blend with the scenery and not even cause an eyebrow to raise. That would be nice. But not until Starsky felt the need to go. Hutch had made that silent pledge, a long time ago.
* * * *
He relinquished the cherished fantasy and opened himself wide to Starsky, giving him everything he could. That morning, when dawn was still pink and powder blue over the hills, and the early morning LA smog lay like a golden blanket over the drowsing city, they had done this the other way around. It was Starsky making tiny wounded sounds that were not expressions of pain but of inexpressible pleasure as his body was opened. Hutch was inside him again, as if striving to be part of him, get lost in him. Locked together, they rested and whispered endearments, tasted salt-sweet kisses and then began to rock together.
The rhythm was the same tonight. To Hutch, it had ceased to matter, if it ever had at all, who was doing what to whom. It was all the same. Every act of love blended into the next and the last, until there was no end, no beginning. Just the lush expression of affection.
Starsky moving inside him made him whole, even as his balls churned and his cock became a white-hot poker. He struggled to get to his knees, and Starsky lifted up far enough to help him, ever mindful of his back. He need not have worried. Hutch was healed, and he had grown so accustomed to the persistent ache, most of the time he barely even noticed it. Starsky had his aches too: he had taken bullets in the back and the leg, he had broken his ankle in a bad fall back in the Academy, and his collar bone, when the police car he was driving, still in uniform, in ’71, had broadsided into a parked truck. In the years since they had sold their souls to the LAPD, both men had accrued their share of injury. More than their share.
The rhythm picked up and Hutch rotated his hips to intensify both his own pleasure and Starsky’s. He caught his breath as Starsky’s deep-buried cock raked his prostate, and a long fingered hand reached underneath him, closed about his own shaft and began to work.
“Oh, I love this,” Starsky panted in rhythm with both his thrusts and his clever left hand. “Love this cock of yours. Big and beautiful. God, feel this! Feels like it’s a foot long!”
Well over nine inches, when it was hard as steel… but Hutch didn’t volunteer the information. He was too breathless, too dizzy, flying too high to speak. Somehow, Starsky’s brain and tongue were always in contact and the words flowed like sparkling wine, unless his mouth was actually full. Hutch never knew how he did it, and might have been envious if he had not been too busy flying like a kite in the wind.
The dual sensations of his lover’s cock and hand were too much. The bed was heady with their musk, and Starsky’s hand was slick with Hutch’s pre-come. Hutch shuffled on his knees, felt his balls pull up tight, inhaled a deep breath and froze. He might have warned Starsky that he was about to come, or maybe Starsky just knew. The hand that had loved him now cupped over him to catch bis cream, and Starsky moaned, deep and bass, as he stilled to let Hutch come, just let the contractions of his powerful ass muscles do the rest for him.
Knowing that he could literally pull orgasm out of Starsky with the rippling clench of his muscles was devastating for Hutch. His own coming burst in his mind as well as his loins, and when Starsky gave that high, fox-like cry, he would not have changed places with any other man in the world. ‘Pleasure’ was too mild a word.
They went down on the bed, spent and limp for long moments. Starsky was still inside him, still pillowed on his back, and Hutch was more than content to have him there. He turned his head on the pillow and felt the draft of bis lover’s breath on his cheek. Long, thick eyelashes tickled him, and Starsky said hoarsely, “I’ve died. This is heaven. And you’re an angel. I just fucked an angel. You think God’ll be ticked?”
The suggestion was so Starsky-brand charming-bizarre, Hutch began 1n laugh, and the spasms of laughter made Starsky’s softened, dwindled cock slip out of him. A little sore, measurelessly content, complacent of the man lying against him, Hutch reached for him and hunted for a kiss. “You’re a lunatic, Starsky. And I love you.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” Starsky told him. “Got something for you.” He rubbed Hutch’s back in big, lazy circles, and something tickled between his palm and Hutch’s skin. Hutch knew what it was, and smiled.
“There’s a legend,” he told Starsky.
“Huh? What legend?” Starsky’s eyelids were heavy, his eyes like indigo.
Their heads were close on the same pillow. “Cleopatra. The legend says she used to bathe in milk, kept her skin like a child’s, all her life. The story was translated to read asses’ milk. But the original legend said…”
“Lemme guess.” Starsky managed an exhausted grin. “I just massaged a handful right into you.”
“You win the cigar.” Hutch hauled himself upright. “Damn. I have to use the can. Be back in a minute.”
“Take your time, beautiful,” Starsky sang after him. “We got plenty of it.”
I wonder if we do, Hutch asked himself as he stepped into the bathroom. Ever since the miracle of this love affair was born out of the jaws of disaster, he had never been sure how long they had. A still, small voice in the back of his mind kept whispering to him that he and Starsky had it too good, and nothing this good was without its price. The longer they enjoyed this soul-deep perfection, the greater the price would be, when at last it came to be paid. And perhaps it would be so high that one of them would not survive.
The thought made him shiver as if an icy wind had blown over him, and he banished the idea. It would happen when it happened. He would place himself between Starsky and everything, everyone that threatened him. And when the day came to pay the price for this happiness, then his only prayer was, Let me pay it, not him. And if that price was to be exacted by a man called Mitchell?
Some sixth sense told Hutch the reckoning could not be long coming. If it was not this Mitchell, then it would be someone else. They were due for it. It was just the way life worked out.
With a sigh, masking his fears behind a smile, he flushed, rinsed his hands, stepped out of the bathroom and slid back into the warm welcome of Starsky’s waiting arms.
* * * *
Breakfast was scrambled eggs, waffles, and coffee. They caught up on the night’s news on television, and while Starsky shoved a load of linen into a bag for the laundromat, Hutch called the office. They were still under surveillance, though Chaffey had been relieved in the early hours of the morning by Weinstein. Vasquez was still yawning over his binoculars in the apartment opposite, and Hutch was satisfied.
“Starsk? Gotta go,” he called as he wound his watch and shrugged into shoulder holster and jacket. He checked the Magnum from force of habit, and slid it away.
Starsky tossed the bag of linen down by the door and fetched his own sidearm. The Beretta fit his hand, suited his quick-fire, quicksilver personality. Hutch watched him check it, drop the clip out and slap it back in. The hands that had loved him last night might kill today, and Hutch acknowledged a tiny shiver.
In brand new blue jeans, still unfaded and not even slightly frayed, and a black turtleneck, Starsky looked slender and elegant. There was something of the Jewish prince about him, prideful, perhaps even arrogant. Certainly haughty and disdainful of any man who threatened him. How much of it was bravado? Even Hutch was unsure. He crossed the apartment and embraced his partner before Starsky could reach for the brown leather jacket, and they kissed long and slowly. Parting at last, Starsky used light fingertips to stroke across Hutch’s mustache, and gave him that lopsided smile.
“One word, and I’ll shave it off,” Hutch offered.
“Nah, I like it.” Starsky shrugged. “Might even grow one myself.”
“Right, that’s the word… It goes,” Hutch said emphatically. “You, with a mustache? My God, what a horrible thought.”
“Okay, I won’t grow one,” Starsky said easily. His eyes glittered. “Yet.”
He turned away to get his jacket, and Hutch swatted his backside firmly. “Was that a threat?”
Long, inky eyelashes flapped at him, and Starsky danced lightly through the door, leaving Hutch feeling as if he had just been caressed. How the hell did Starsky do that?
But the pleasure was short lived. Slamming the door to engage the deadlocks, he hurried in his partner’s wake, into the bright morning sun, but when he joined Starsky on the curb it was to see a taut look on his face. A piece of yellow paper fluttered in his hand, and without a word Starsky handed it to him.
Blinking at it, Hutch read, “‘Maybe today, Starsky. Maybe tomorrow.'” Anger and frustration made Hutch’s hand clench on the paper, crushing it into a ball. “Damn! Where was this?”
“Tucked under the wiper.” Starsky gestured at the Torino’s dusty windshield.
His eyes were steely. “Chaffey or Weinstein shoulda seen the guy who left it there!”
“And I… feel a tiny bit exposed,” Hutch muttered. “Get in the car.”
“You thinking, maybe there’s a gun on us?”
“Just get in the car, Starsk,” Hutch said tersely.
They were in, in moments, and Starsky fired the big engine at once. He revved it to warm it and took off slowly, the first start of the day. The Torino rolled only as far as the white Plymouth that stood where Chaffey’s Dodge had been the night before, and drew up level with the driver’s window. He glared across at the dark, wary Weinstein, who took off his sunglasses and glared right back.
“What’s your problem, Starsky?”
Starsky gestured with the paper. “You saw who left this under my wiper?”
“I never saw it,” Weinstein swore. “Must’ve been before I got here. Talk to Chaffey.”
“I will,” Starsky growled. “Okay, hot shot, you’re supposed to tail us. So tail us!”
In the passenger’s side, Hutch sighed and watched the buildings and trees slide by as Starsky headed them for Parker Center by a long-familiar route. “Some surveillance,” he muttered. “If Chaffey saw anything it’d be in his report. Dobey’ll have it.”
But the report was a blank. Chaffey listed only a few people walking dogs, a couple of kids on skates, and a cab that double parked right beside the Torino, ten minutes after midnight, while a fare stepped out. Hutch drummed his fingers on the report sheet and looked from Starsky to Dobey and back again. “That has to be it. The cab obscured Chaffey’s and Vasquez’s view. Our man was so close, he could move under cover of the cab.
“Unless our man was the fare that got outta the cab.”
Starsky had leaned one elbow on Dobey’s water cooler and was cradling a paper cup. “I think he just wanted to let me know that he knows where I live.”
“And where you both were,” Dobey added. “All he has to do is follow that car of yours, Starsky. And it’s not hard in pick out of a crowd!”
“You want to use my ride today?“ Hutch looked at his partner.
But Starsky shook his head. “Point one, if we run into trouble, I want to know we got the horsepower to get out faster than we got in, and that heap of junk you call a ‘ride’ won’t cut it. And two, Hutch, there’s no point hiding. I want this bastard to take a crack at us, so we can finish it.”
“So long as we pick the time and the place,” Dobey agreed. “You got Weinstein right behind you all the way today. I’ve had Dale’s apartment staked out since I talked to you last night. The lady’s been busy, but no big blond guys showed up. Next move?”
“Talk to the kid who saw the Mustang stolen, get him and Ryan in here, get an artist’s sketch,” Starsky suggested, “have them compare notes, make sure we’re talking about the same guy. Then show the sketch to Penelope Dale and… watch the look on her face.” He quirked his brows at Hutch.
“Right,” Hutch agreed. “Forensics come up with anything on those prints from the wreck?”
“Uh, yeah.” Dobey opened a folder and shuffled papers. “Ten clear prints, could belong to three guys. One’s still in prison but two are on the street: Eduardo ‘Eddie’ Martinez, and Roy Coleman. Both busted for grand theft auto, armed robbery, various vehicular offenses. They’ve been out six months. Parole officers say they show up on time, give no trouble.”
“Christ, they’re too busy chopping cars to make trouble!” Hutch snapped. “I’m surprised they can find time in their busy schedule to drop by the parole office!”
“Send the uniform boys to pull ’em in?” Dobey hazarded. “Warrants are being issued for their arrest, for the theft of the Mustang, even as we speak.”
But Starsky made negative noises. “One word o’ warning, one glimpse of a black ‘n’ white in their place, they’ll rabbit. We better do this ourselves. No offence to the boys in blue, but they don’t call ’em flat feet for nothing. You got an address there, Cap’n?”
“They work out of a body shop on Alameda.” Dobey pushed a paper across the desk, and stabbed a finger at them. “Connect with Weinstein, and don’t shake him. You may need eyes in the back of your heads.”
“We hear you,” Hutch agreed. “And in the meantime, bring in that kid who saw the car stolen. We’ll find Ryan and get him here. Starsk?”
“Best shot we’ve got,” Starsky agreed, and headed out of the office without looking back.
They picked up their tail as they rolled off the precinct parking lot, and as Starsky drove Hutch went through the ritual of checking every weapon in the Torino, right down to the rifle they used so seldom. Starsky watched him without a comment, through the green lenses of sunglasses. At last, satisfied, Hutch straightened in the seat to look out for the body shop called, surprisingly, Fast Eddie’s.
It lay tucked between a warehouse selling discounted oriental rugs on one side and a GMC dealership on the other. Outside the rolled-up doors was a row of vehicles in various stages of dismemberment, each a victim of the war that seemed to be waged on the road, twenty-four hours a day.
“No shortage of work for paint and body shops,” Hutch commented as the Torino rolled in at the curb, just out of sight of the doors, and Starsky killed the motor.
“But you’ll never get rich in this game,” Starsky added. “And these guys have the ambition.”
“We all have the ambition,” Hutch muttered as he swung open the door. “Only, most of us can tell reality from pixie-land.” He angled a look at Starsky over the roof. “Watch yourself.”
“You watch me,” Starsky said glibly. “And I’ll watch you.”
The sunglasses were slid away into a pocket before they entered the comparative dimness of the workshop. One car was up on the hydraulic press, another was on the ramp over the pit. A power tool screamed, a wrench chimed on the stained concrete as it was dropped, and the air smelt sharply of old oil, gasoline, leftover paint fumes. On the walls were an assortment of lewd calendars and posters, and Hutch paused momentarily to blink in disbelief at a girl with the biggest breasts he had ever seen, the rest of her thin as a fence post, squeezed into the tiniest bikini bottoms. She adorned a calendar issued by a biker magazine. Surprise.
Three men were working in the shop, but if Hutch had hoped to see a tall blond, he was disappointed. The one who had to be ‘Fast Eddie’ Martinez was short, so muscular that he looked almost square, with faded Latin good looks, a receding hairline and a pair of goggles banging at the neck of greasy coveralls. Of the other two men, the scrawny forty year old with the straggling beard and the ripped jeans could only be Roy Coleman, because the third guy was a teenager, probably underage, definitely undersized. Hutch dismissed the runt without a second glance and fixed the scrawny man with a look.
“Roy Coleman?”
The man stuck out his chin. “Who wants to know?”
“I’ll take that old cliche as a yes,” Hutch said drily. “If you were anybody but Coleman, you’d do like any normal person, and just say he’s not here right now. You’re under arrest.”
“And that,” Starsky said acidly, “makes you Fast Eddie.” From his hip pocket, he took out his badge. “And you’re also under arrest. I’d read you your rights, but you’ve heard ’em so often, you must have ’em memorized.”
Eddie Martinez’s eyes were too close together, his nose had been broken and set crookedly and his mouth was lipless. He recoiled, physically backed up a step and bared his teeth. “What you talking about, man? I ain’t done nothing. rm on parole.”
“I know,” Starsky said shortly, “and if you had even half a brain in that skull, you’d have wiped the Mustang wreck before dumping it. Prints,” he added. “You and Coleman left your prints all over it.”
Hutch was intent on the stringbean. Coleman was showing the whites of his eyes and every nerve in Hutch’s body screamed a warning. He was going to bolt. The Magnum slid smoothly out of its holster and Hutch thumbed back the hammer. “Don’t even think about it. Why don’t you turn around, put your hands on the car and spread ’em?”
For a moment it seemed Coleman would comply, and then the man’s fear overrode whatever sense he possessed, and he made a dive toward the doors, past Hutch. With a roar, the gun kicked hard against Hutch’s wrist, just once, and the bullet nicked Coleman’s flank, spun him around and tossed him down. At this range, and especially since Coleman was unarmed, Hutch could afford to be clever with the shot. Coleman went down shrieking, clutching his hip, and Hutch turned toward Martinez.
Perhaps the gunshot stunned Fast Eddie into immobility, but he was docile as Starsky grabbed him by the collar of his coveralls and slammed him into the side of the green Pontiac he had been working on. The cuffs snapped on, and Starsky marched to the phone on the wall.
As Martinez slid down to sit on the concrete and Hutch bent over the whining Coleman, Starsky was saying, “Get me an ambulance.”
Hutch turned his eyes to the ceiling, or the gods. It had all the distinguishing marks of another perfect day.
* * * *
The wound in Coleman’s flank was trivial. Four stitches closed it, and he was transferred directly from the hospital to an interrogation room at Parker… five hours after the incident at Fast Eddie’s. Martinez had spent the whole time in the same room, drinking coffee, chain smoking and steadfastly refusing to speak.
As Coleman was fetched in, Starsky got a grip on his rapidly kindling temper. How Hutch did it, he would never know. Parked on a chair, drinking an orange juice through straw, he was a portrait of composure. Cool and blond, even at three-thirty in the afternoon of another day that had been steadily chewing Starsky’s nerve fibers to the nubs.
They were waiting for the snitch, Thomas Ryan and the kid, their teenage eyewitness, Craig Borden, to get in. Ryan was on his way, promising to put in an appearance after his ‘personal appointments,’ and Borden had classes and couldn’t get off the campus before four. The stakeout of Penelope Dale’s economy sized suburban bordello had yielded nothing useful—except that a nickel-and-dime politician, a policeman, and three ex-cons, all married, had blown through. But no big blonds answering the same general description of Detective Sergeant Hutchinson.
Big blonds, Starsky thought with a rare smile. He was leaning on the wall by the door, looking down at Hutch, who sat easily, cowboy-fashion, on a chair at the end of the table, intent on his juice. The longer hair suited him, Starsky thought. Come to that, so did the mustache-and he knew why Hutch had grown it, anyway. One of them had to show a little maturity, he’d said.
They had been watching the late show, an all-night marathon of old Alan Ladd movies, and without Starsky troubling to say a word, Hutch made the connection himself. Okay, so he was two people bigger than Alan Ladd. But the angel face that had made the actor’s career could be a disadvantage in a world where it paid to be tough. Ladd never had to mix it on the streets where Hutch worked every day. Starsky hid a smile, diverting himself from Martinez and Coleman.
Hutch was a beauty, he decided, and simultaneous with the thought-or part of it—came another. He’s mine. Smug yet overwhelmed, bewitched and enthralled, exhilarated and a little frightened, all at once, was Starsky. It was still new. So new that his fingers itched to sift through the soft yellow silk of Hutch’s hair, to feel the warmth and hardness of his body, smell the special scent that surrounded him. Or just look into the depths of sky-blue eyes until he felt that he was drowning.
Belatedly he realized Hutch was talking to him, and he forced his mind to concentrate. “Huh? Whaddaya say?” Oh, lucid, Starsky. He’s going ‘to start wondering if you’re playing with a full deck… like some of your fives and tens are missing.
“I said, d’you want a candy bar?” Hutch repeated. “Because if you’re going out to the machine, you can bring me back one. I could use the sugar.”
“Oh, yeah.” Starsky shrugged away from the wall, searching a pocket for coins, but before he could make it to the door it swung open and Dobey appeared—with Roy Coleman, who limped theatrically to the nearest chair and sat down with a sullen look. Starsky returned to the wall, set his shoulders against it and glared broodingly at Coleman. To Dobey he said, “Fast Eddie ain’t said a word.”
“Fast Eddie won’t have to,” Dobey barked. “We got him and Coleman dead to rights. We don’t need a confession when we have these.” He slammed a folder onto the table between Coleman and Martinez. Opened, it displayed photographs of the prints lifted from the wreck, and the file pictures of Coleman’s and Martinez’s prints, taken at the time of their last arrest. Coleman visibly flinched, and Martinez just shut his eyes.
It was Hutch who kicked this meeting into gear. He stood, arms folded on his white-shirted chest, and regarded Coleman indifferently. “You’re going away till you’re gray this time.”
“For chopping a car?” Coleman whimpered. “We didn’t even steal it, just took it apart and dumped the junk!”
“Oh, no.” Hutch drew level with Starsky, leaned on the wall beside him, their shoulders touching. “For conspiring to kill two cops. Uh-huh. Me and him. You won’t breathe free air till you’re past sixty years old.”
Martinez was half way to his feet in a flat-out panic. Dobey’s large paw weighed on his shoulder, physically shoving him back into the chair. “Siddown!” he thundered, and Martinez wilted.
“We never killed no cops,” Fast Eddie whined. “I never heard nothing about this. We just chopped a car, man… just a goddamned car!” He looked wildly from Hutch to Starsky and back again. “I never even seen you guys before today.“
“But you ran when you saw the badges,” Hutch said icily, giving Coleman a glare that would have stopped a truck. “Why was that?”
Coleman’s mouth flapped for several moments before he could find his voice. He and Martinez would have managed half a brain between them, and they were spooked now. Badly. “You were fuckin’ arresting us,” Coleman gobbled, as if trying to swallow his tongue. “Oh, man, I don’t wanna go back to the joint.”
“You should have thought of that,” Starsky snapped, “before you took up your own line of work. Chopping cars can be hazardous to your health.”
“Okay,’ Fast Eddie panted. “Okay, so we do cars. What’s the big deal? We get two years, maybe three… less if we behave. I can take that, man, like a risk-but we don’t kill no cops. I swear by Christ Almighty, we don’t kill no cops!”
Starsky looked at Hutch, and Hutch’s fair head nodded minutely. “Whaddaya say, Hutch? You buying this crap?”
“That’s pretty convincing, Eddie,” Hutch said slowly. “And I don’t think you’re that good an actor.” He flicked a glance at Coleman, and then up at Dobey. “Say we believe you’re telling the truth. You’d better tell us the whole truth. Because someone’s gunning for us. From where we stand it looks like you’re part of it, and the only thing suggesting your innocence is your mouth!” His voice rose sharply, making Martinez and Coleman wince visibly.
“The Mustang,” Starsky suggested almost affably. “How did it come into your grasping little hands?”
“From a guy,” Coleman babbled “He wanted to get rid of it. I said we’d paint it, change the plates, grind off the engine numbers…”
“But he said it had to vanish,” Martinez went on, “so we cut it for engine parts, took off the wheels, towed the chassis and body out of town and—”
“And dumped it,” Dobey finished. “You didn’t tow it far enough, and you clean forgot to wipe your prints off it.”
“Ah… shit.” Coleman buried bis face in his hands.
Starsky almost chuckled, practically able to hear the moron saying, ‘I knew there was something we forgot, huh, Eddie?’ He looked at Hutch, shared his partner’s sparkling-eyed look, and walked around the table. Palms flat on it, he looked into Martinez’s wooden face. “Okay, forget the car. We already went through all that. Tell us about the man who sold it to you.”
“Uh… Mitchell,” Fast Eddie said with a shrug.
“Alec Mitchell,” Coleman added.
“Description,” Hutch prompted, and looked at Starsky over the top of Coleman’s head.
“Uh, like, big and blond,” Martinez stammered “Blue eyes. Maybe thirty. And he has a tattoo.”
That news made Starsky’s brows rise, and his pulse quicken. “What kind of tattoo, and where?”
“On his arm. Right arm.” Coleman indicated the biceps of his own right. “He was wearing a tee-shirt, rolled the sleeves way up, flaunting his muscles. The bastard He never said squat about using that car to grease no cops.”
“Describe the tattoo,” Hutch pressed.
“Kind of like a biker thing,” Martinez said slowly. “A skull, in an old-style helmet, pair of goggles on it, cigar in the teeth. I never saw nothing like it.”
Starsky looked once at Dobey, and the captain nodded. The phone was on the wall beside the door, and he picked it up a moment later.
“This is Dobey. I need a sketch artist, right now…”
“I’ve seen that tattoo somewhere before,” Hutch said quietly, taking Starsky’s attention. ‘Tm sure I know it from somewhere. You?”
“Yeah,” Starsky said in the same undertone. “But it’s a long, long time ago. So long, I just don’t remember where. A biker thing?”
With a shrug, Hutch backed up against the wall and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe if we can get a sketch, we can find a tattoo parlor where an artist recognizes it. If it’s a biker gang emblem there should be any number of guys walking around with them.”
“And a lot of artists who’ve done ’em,” Starsky added.
With that, Dobey hung up the phone. “The artist will be right in, as soon as she’s through with that snitch of yours, Ryan, and the kid.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “They’re using my office. Maybe you’d like to wander along and pump them for a few details?” He opened the door and raised his large voice. “Crocker, get your butt in here!”
Barry Crocker was a uniform man, charged with the serious business of baby-sitting Martinez and Coleman until they were back in a cell. He took station beside the door.
As Starsky stepped out he gave Fast Eddie and his air-head friend a look. “You mind your manners. We’ll be back.”
From the look on Martinez’s face, he was resigned. “Hey, man, you believe us, don’t ya? We don’t kill nobody. Specially not cops. We just chop freakin’ cars.”
“And if you can help us find the guy who unloaded the car on you,” Starsky said dryly, “you’d be happy to… just so long as it gets your charges reduced from attempted cop-killing to receiving hot Mustangs.” He stabbed a warning finger at Martinez. “Feed us crock, and your feet won’t touch the ground” He left the two hapless prisoners to Crocker, and jogged to catch up with Hutch and Dobey. Falling into step with Hutch he said, “I think maybe we can trust those bozos. They’re so scared, they’re twitching.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Hutch opened Dobey’s door. The captain plowed inside, and Hutch stood back, passing Starsky through, one arm across bis shoulders. The tiny contact was electrifying, and Starsky smiled sidelong at his lover as Hutch closed the door. Not a syllable was spoken, but for the space of a few seconds they were close, as if they were the only two people who existed.
Ryan and the kid were arguing, and the sketch artist was looking perplexed. Mary Trimble was fifty years old, stout as a grandmother, with raven’s wing hair and a hand with any art materials that was astonishing. She had done service as a court artist, and had worked with psychics, committing their visions to paper. She usually had a flair for taking the haphazard thoughts of others and rendering them into two-dimensional reality.
“Trouble?” Dobey asked her.
“Oh, no,” Mary said fatuously. “Here we have a perfect description of a tall short guy, with pale black hair, one blue eye, one brown eye, and the other one’s green.”
Despite the hour and the situation, Starsky felt humor surge to the surface, and spluttered with laughter. “That good, huh?”
“Yeah, that good.” Mary sighed and turned the sketch pad around to face them. “Still, we’re half way there. Okay, seriously, folks. They both agree that he’s tall, blond, clean shaven, has strong brows, big nose, wide mouth. That’s as far as young Craig goes. Remember, he was watching the guy from the other side of the street. Mister Ryan adds that our man has a mole on his chin, maybe a scar on the other side of his face right here.” She indicated the cheek. “But Craig says he has a rounder face, Ryan says he has a bony face. So I split the difference and… there you have it.”
“That’s not bad, Mary,” Hutch said approvingly. “In fact, that’s pretty damn good. You finished?”
She stood, tore the sketch off the pad and collected her materials. “I don’t think we’re going to get any more.” She gave Dobey a plaintive look. “Can I go home now? I got a husband and two kids who’ll be sending out the St. Bernard’s soon.”
“Just one more job, it won’t take five minutes,” Dobey solicited. “Uh-huh.” Mary nodded. “Read twenty-five.”
“And forget the bus… I’ll get you a ride home in a police car,” Dobey offered.
She brightened. “You got a deal.”
He steered her out of his office, toward the interrogation room, and Starsky lingered behind to give Ryan a glare. “You stay in touch, you hear? I’m not done with you. You sent us knocking on a hooker’s front door.”
Ryan’s fists clenched. “That’s not what I heard! I heard that was Mitchell’s address. I read ’em like I hear ’em.”
“Yeah, and maybe you’ve started needing a hearing aid,” Starsky muttered. He swung Dobey’s door wide. “Go home, both of you. And you,” he added to Ryan, “keep—”
“In touch,” Ryan finished. “I know, God help me, I know.” He bolted by Starsky like a startled rabbit.
The last Starsky saw of him was his backside, heading for the exit. The teenager hung around, hands in pockets, feet shuffling, and Starsky gave him a wary look. “You want something, kid?”
“There wouldn’t be a reward?” Craig asked. “For information leading to an arrest?”
The audacity was commendable, and Starsky had to hand it to him. He had a future in hustling, if nothing else. “If there is, you’ll be the first to know. The door’s that way.”
When he returned to the interrogation room, the sketch of the tattoo was already almost finished. Mary Trimble worked fast, just putting the finishing touches to it as Martinez and Coleman remembered this or that. Hungry, frustrated and tired, Starsky pulled a chair up to the table and sat with his chin cradled in his palm, looking up at Hutch, for the solace of looking. This time of day, his face felt scratchy, he needed to shave, soon, he was itching for a shower and he’d been listening to his stomach rumbling for the last hour.
How come Hutch always looked so cool, and never seemed to be overdue for a shave, if you overlooked the caterpillar? Must be that special kind of Hutchinson magic, Starsky thought, bemusedly. Don’t ask how it’s done, just enjoy it. Like David Copperfield—did he really want to know the secret? Somehow, knowing the secret made the magic go away. The thought delighted Starsky, and when Hutch looked up at him, catching his eye, Starsky smiled. A faint blush stole across Hutch’s cheeks and the light in here was bright enough for Starsky to see the slight dilation of his lover’s pupils. Damn, but someone else was going to notice sooner or later. And when they did…
“That’s it,” Mary said, tossing down the Magic Marker with which she had quickly inked the pencil sketch, as soon as Coleman and Fast Eddie were through with their arguments over exactly how it looked.
“I’ll get this copied,” Dobey said tersely.
“You gonna APB a tattoo?” Starsky demanded drily.
“You got a better idea?” Dobey challenged.
“Yeah.” Starsky got to his feet and worked his shoulders. “Make us a coupla xeroxes of this and the sketch of Mitchell’s face. Hutch and me’ll hit the streets. With that tattoo to go by, we might find him.”
Dobey’s eyes narrowed. “Parlors, artists?” He shook his head. “You’ll be wide open to that crazy taking a shot at you.”
“And maybe we’ll flush him out into the open,” Hutch suggested. “When he shows himself we’ll take him.“
For some time Dobey was silent, and then he said acidly, “I hate it, but I see where you’re coming from. You either grab this bull by the horns or you go to ground, spend six months hiding.”
“And at the end of it,” Starsky added, “this guy’ll be waiting for us. The next time we show our faces, he comes out from under his rock…” He looked at the two sketches, lingering over the tattoo with a perplexed little frown, and gave Mary a nod. “You did great.”
“Don’t applaud,” she said, swiftly packing up, “throw money. And I could use that ride home, Captain.”
“You got it, honey.” Dobey was on his way to the door. “Crocker, get these gentlemen into a nice, comfortable cell. And as for you, Starsky, Hutchinson, you two go nowhere without backup.”
Hutch was reaching for the jacket he’d hung on the back of a chair. “Who’s on standby?”
“This time of the day, it’ll be Kravitz and Duggan,” Dobey said, without needing to consult the roster.
Starsky accepted the offer with a nod. “They’re okay. Look, Cap, give us a chance to take a shower, get something to eat. Then we’ll cruise the tattoo places… Thing is,” he went on, tone changing to one of introspection, “Hutch and me, we could swear we know this design. We’ve seen it before.”
“But a long, long time ago,” Hutch agreed, coming to stand behind Starsky and look over his shoulder at the drawings. One hand rested lightly on Starsky’s back. No one was standing behind them; no one noticed that the hand gave a very slight rub. A gesture of companionship which Starsky deeply appreciated.
“I’ll have the xeroxes done and assign your backup.” Dobey was collecting the sketches. “Thirty minutes?”
“An hour,” Hutch corrected. “Give me time to feed the boy.”
The older man angled a look at them, and though he said nothing his face conveyed one clear message. He knew. He knew about them, and he was not about to kick their butts off the force.
As the door closed behind Dobey, Starsky turned to his partner and his brows gave that characteristic quirk. “He knows.”
“We worked that out last night,” Hutch said drily. “And he’s not firing us, Hutch.”
“Yet,” Hutch added. He squeezed Starsky’s shoulder tightly and propelled him out of the room. “Shower, shave, food. What’ll you eat?”
They had stopped arguing about food years before. Using the phone in the locker room, Hutch called out for the makings of a meal, without so much as a comment as to what he was ordering. For himself, chicken salad with low-fat mayo, apple pie, and Vienna coffee from the takeout around the comer. For Starsky, four extra-large everything-on tacos from the Mexican place two blocks down, two chocolate candy bars from the vending machine in the hall, and soda. Only when he had hung up the phone and joined Starsky did he mutter a comment.
“How your digestion handles it, never know.”
Starsky looked sidelong at him from beneath lowered lashes. “It’s a talent. You either got it or you ain’t.”
“Every rule in the book says you ought to be dead by now,” Hutch told him.
In fact, Starsky had never felt more alive in his life. He had to forcibly tum his back on Hutch and concentrate on the hot water of the communal shower, or the proximity of the lithe, naked and golden body beside him would have been the end of him. There was a trick to this: he just didn’t look, didn’t let himself think about all that.
“Besides,” he told Hutch, over his shoulder, back to back with him, as if Hutch also was being deliberately careful, “it’s the food you grow up with. My Mom’s cooking would have burned the roof out of your mouth.”
“Horseradish?” Hutch guessed.
“Anything kosher,” Starsky said philosophically. “She used to make some stuff you could use to fuel a flamethrower. Makes Mexican glop taste mild by comparison. Hey, you mind if I use your razor?”
“Go ahead.” Hutch ducked his head under the water, quickly added a spot of shampoo, rinsed and came up shaking like a wet dog.
And that was another thing Starsky loved and envied about him. Not just that smooth, golden body, the kind of body Starsky had always wished he had himself, but hair that you could wash and dry that easily. Damnit, but when he washed his hair it went into a million ringlets and then pulled into tight little curls that had to be toweled, combed, roweled, combed, until they were dry, otherwise he looked like he’d been electrocuted. An expensive cut helped a lot; at least he had something to work with. But as for casually ducking his head under the water…
With a sigh he wrapped a towel around his hips and busied himself with Hutch’s shaving gear and cologne. He had a change of clothes in his locker and was half dressed when Hutch joined him. The food arrived at the same moment, and he was glad to park his backside on a bench and eat while Hutch finished his ablutions.
Cream slacks molded around Hutch’s long legs, and Starsky watched from beneath lowered lids as he lifted first one foot, then the other one onto the bench opposite, to lace his shoes. The view was magnificent, and Starsky sighed. Somehow Hutch heard, although it was a very small sigh, and he looked over his shoulder with a cheeky grin. “Not now, Starsk!”
“I know.” Starsky gestured at the carton of chicken salad. “You keep on tellin’ me. Later, Starsk, not here, Starsk, this ain’t the right place, Starsk…”
“There are times,” Hutch said patiently, “when you worry me.”
Starsky just handed him his food and buried his nose in the last of his tacos.
The xeroxes were waiting for them when they returned to the squad room, and so were Kravitz and Duggan. They were younger than Starsky and Hutch by a scant few years, still learning, but already very good. If or when the day came when Starsky and Hutch quit, or were invalided off the force-or fired off it, Starsky added, on account of the recent shift in their ‘orientation’—then Kravitz and Duggan were probably just waiting to step into their shoes. Starsky wished them joy.
The younger men were heavily armed, and they took the job seriously. No clowning around, no attempt to trivialize the situation. They followed Starsky and Hutch into the parking lot, and Starsky watched them get into a ghost gray Dodge Charger. “Well, at least they’ve got the horsepower,” he commented to no one in particular as he started the Torino.
* * * *
Time had slithered by unnoticed, and the sun was just down. Twilight was thickening, soupy under the days smog. The Torino backed around, and the Dodge was maybe forty yards behind as Starsky headed toward the red light district. If you were looking for tattoos, roughnecks, urban wildlife, there was no better place to start.
The sidewalks were thronging, music blaring, hookers strutting their stuff. ‘We could’ve made a dozen busts in the last hundred yards,” Hutch observed drily as Starsky hunted for space t,o stop.
They had just passed a tattoo parlor, but the parking space was hard to come by. “Yeah, but as fast as you bust ’em they’re back on the street,” he said indifferently. “Working girls gotta make a living too.”
“And working boys?” Hutch nodded at the youth hustling his wares almost right in front of them.
“This,” Starsky demanded, “from the man whose philosophy of life is that—and I quote—it takes all makes and models to fill that four-lane highway we call life.”
“Touché,” Hutch conceded, “and make a right. I see some space.”
The alley was in shadow, very dark, but it would do. “Hey, lock it,” Starsky warned as they got out of the car. “I don’t mind losing the occasional set of hubcaps, but I draw the line at losin’ the whole car!”
They were on the street then, brushing shoulders with some of the city’s more colorful nightlife. Starsky only smiled at the antics going on around him. It wasn’t his job to bust pimps and hookers. Leave that to Vice. He looked at the goods on offer… and then he looked at Hutch. No contest. Absolutely no contest. Just then Hutch turned toward him with an expression that let Starsky know he was thinking the same thoughts. They shared a grin, shared a chuckle, and Starsky stood aside to usher him into the tattoo parlor ahead of him.
Jimi Hendrix wailed out of the radio, and somebody was groaning and moaning with an almost orgasmic sound, behind a screen. That wasn’t the sound of desire, but of pain, and Starsky felt a shiver travel up his spine. He’d toyed with the idea of getting a tattoo himself, when he was fourteen or fifteen. So he asked how it was done—and spent the money on new tires and chain for his bike instead.
Behind the desk was an enormous woman, Starsky’s height and double Hutch’s weight. Her massive arms were covered in tattoos, and she was painting her talon-like fingernails blood scarlet. She looked up at them from beneath thick false eyelashes and a straggle of peroxide blond hair. “You wanna tattoo, you’ll have to take a seat. Merve’s busy right now.”
“No, ma’am, no tattoo,” Hutch said swiftly, delving into his breast pocket for the folded xeroxes. “We’re police officers. We’re trying to find an artist who might recognize this tattoo—or this face. We think it might be the emblem of a biker gang.”
The woman peered at the design and shook her head slowly. “It’s no touring club I ever knew. Believe me, sweetie, when it comes to tattoos, ve seen ’em all.” Then she raised her voice and bellowed, “Merve! You got a minute, honey? We got the cops out here, they want a word.”
Footsteps announced the artist-a weedy little man with a straggling Zapata mustache and jeans so tight, his legs looked like spaghetti. Starsky gave Hutch a glance, hid his expression of humor and turned the xerox toward him. “You recognize this? Biker design, maybe?”
At first Merve shook his head, and then all at once he hesitated. “It might be… but not from LA. You don’t see this out west. At least, I think I’m remembering right. It’s been ten years, maybe twelve. Last time I saw anything like this, it was… New Orleans, or maybe Texas. I don’t remember too well. Coulda been Miami. Keep asking around, though. Somebody’s gonna know this. See, Juliette and me only been in this business the last four, five years.”
“Juliette?” Starsky angled a look at the enormous woman. “That’s me, sugarpie,” the Valkyrie purred.
“All makes and models,” Starsky muttered to himself.
“Okay, that’s a start,” Hutch mused. He laid the sketch of Mitchell over the xerox of the tattoo. ” I don’t suppose you’d know this man, then?”
And as they expected, Merve shook his head. “Sorry, can’t help you.”
“Okay, thanks for your time.” Hutch gathered the papers, returned them to his pocket and headed back for the street. He passed Starsky out before him, and left his hand on Starsky’s back as they stood outside Merve’s and Juliette’s dirty window glass for a moment. “New Orleans or Texas. And that tattoo. Starsk, it means something, but I can’t get a grip on it.”
“I know what you mean.” Starsky rubbed his temples with thumb and forefinger in an effort to remember. “Damnit, it’s there. We know this guy, Hutch.”
“We were kids,” Hutch murmured. “Something about this says… water, and… ah, I don’t know.”
“We’ll get it, babe.” Starsky dug out his keys. “Next parlor?”
“We could walk,” Hutch suggested. “It can’t be more than a quarter-mile.”
“And when we get back, there’ll be a big empty space where my car oughtta be,” Starsky added, leading the way back into the alley.
They approached the Torino from the rear, and in the dim, steel gray of the late twilight they were in and the lights were on, bouncing back off the walls, before they saw the windshield.
A hand seemed to grip Starsky’s heart and squeeze, and he swore luridly. Written on the windshield in what could only be lipstick, but looked like blood, were the words, ‘Dead Meat.’
“Hey… Starsk,” Hutch began, and Starsky nodded. The same thought occurred to them both in the same instant.
If the car had been wired, the explosive was obviously not attached to the doors, or they would already be dead. And the car had not been forced, so it could not have been wired to the ignition. “We didn’t leave it for longer than ten minutes,” Starsky said breathlessly.
He and Hutch shared a look, and then as one they dove into the back for the flashlight, and flattened out on the ground to look under the car.
“Nothing,” Hutch muttered. “Not one damn thing.”
So it’s another warning,” Starsky concluded. “Soon, but not yet. Next time or the time after, not this time.” Anger galvanized him then, and he groped in the back for a bundle of cleaning rags. “He’s playing with us, cat and mouse. Making us sweat.”
“He wants us to know we’re going to get it, maybe he’s trying to teach us what fear means.” Hutch got to his feet, his own temper short. “I’ll take a look…”
“Don’t make a target of yourself. Where’s Kravitz and Duggan? Call ’em, let them look.”
“Okay.” Hutch lowered himself back into the seat and snatched up the radio. “Cruiser One, this is Zebra Three.”
“Go ahead, Hutch,” Duggan called through a mess of static.
Starsky heard no more, scrubbing the mess from his windshield. The lipstick was stubborn, he would need a solvent to be rid of the last smears, but he could get most of the blood-red off the glass. Angry, he tossed the rags into the back and fired the engine. “Lemme guess. Kravitz and Duggan didn’t see nothing?”
“Got it in one,” Hutch affirmed. “That only means our man came in from the blind end of the alley. It’s pretty dark.”
“Yeah, right.” Starsky jumped the clutch out and sent the Torino fast, backwards, toward the street. “Next parlor coming up.”
Five parlors latter, they had drawn a complete blank and were on the point of quitting when the radio dispatcher cut in, interrupting the furious train of their thoughts and the terse, humorless conversation that had replaced their usual banter.
“Zebra Three, Zebra Three, see the woman at six-forty San Luis.”
“Penelope Dale?” Hutch picked up the mike to respond, and threw an arm over the seat to brace himself as Starsky rolled the Torino fast through a corner to head them in the opposite direction.
“Penelope Dale,” Starsky muttered. “What the hell does she want?”
“The speed you’re driving, we’ll soon know,” Hutch said acidly, leaning out to thump the red flasher on the roof as Starsky tripped the siren. “If we make it there alive!”
“Stop worrying,” Starsky told him. “You’ll get wrinkles.” As a gap opened up in the traffic he crammed his foot down hard. In the seat beside him Hutch just sighed and rolled more or less comfortably with the movement of the car.
Hutch still grumbled occasionally, but there were times when he had cause to drive the Torino himself, when speed was of the essence. One time Starsky partially sprained his wrist, and it had been his turn to have that heart-in-the-throat feeling, as Hutch flung the big red Ford all over the road, in a series of high speed pursuits. His only comment at the time had been, if they’d been in the LTD they wouldn’t have stood a chance—the ‘heap’ didn’t have the horsepower and the suspension would have collapsed under the punishment. Hutch only grinned, giving Starsky the distinct impression that he could damn well enjoy speed himself, if or when he was in the mood.
They parked outside Dale’s building, to the accompaniment of the rumble and shout of acid rock issuing from at least two apartments. With a grimace Hutch headed directly up the stairs, and Starsky jogged to keep pace with him. He was angry, and he was anxious. Starsky could read him like a book, more so lately than ever. He had that cat-on-the-prowl quality. And the mice better beware.
The woman opened up to them at once, and they stepped inside the ‘pock.et size bordello. The place smelt of cigarette smoke and cheap cologne, and Dale lit up again as Starsky closed the door. She was in dark blue silk, high heels and black nylons, somewhere between chic and tacky—as if tacky had just become a fashion.
“You wanted to talk to us?” Hutch prompted. “We’re here.”
Her eyes were like gimlets, boring into them. “I had a call. Guy wouldn’t say who he was, but he was scared. Shitless. Told me you’re after a man called Mitchell, and I told him, I knew that, you’d already been here. I don’t know any Mitchell.” Anger and fear made her face seem older. “So he described the man, right down to the scar.”
Starsky shot a glance at Hutch. “So, you do know him?”
“He doesn’t use that name around me,” Dale swore. “I didn’t lie to you. When he’s here, and he often is, he calls himself Logan. Dean Logan. All you gave me was a name. I wondered why in hell you came here.” She took a drag and licked her ruby red lips. “My anonymous caller tells me, I can get into deep shit, just knowing this guy. You want to tell me what it’s about? Because I swear to God, I know nothing about it.”
“We know that,” Hutch told her. “We can smell when someone’s lying, and you also learn to smell when someone’s telling the truth.” He had slipped the photocopies from his pocket, and passed them into her hands. “This your man?”
“Just don’t call him ‘my man,’ okay?” Dale muttered. “Yeah, that’s him. Dean Logan. Whatever his real name is. Mitchell?”
“That probably ain’t his name either,” Starsky said drily. “What’s he to you, Penelope? A friend, relative?”
“Don’t kid around,” Dale scoffed. “He rents my back room. Uses this as his mailing address. Keeps his stuff here.” She shrugged. “Hey, look, I don’t ask many questions. I figured, the guy probably just got out of the joint. This street was a good address a few years ago, before the trash moved in and turned it into a slum. It’s still a better mailing address than a skid-row boarding house. I figured, Logan… Mitchell… whatever, was trying to make time, get a decent job. So I didn’t look too close.” Her plucked brows rose. “Who the hell is he?”
Hutch looked at Starsky, and then back at Dale. “We don’t know, Penelope. Right now wish we did.”
“So what do you want him for?” she pressed.
“He’s a loony tune,” Starsky said in acerbic tones, “who would like to spread both of us, very thinly, over a wide swathe of LA. Trouble is, we don’t know why. If we could figure that part, we might know who he is.”
She dragged deeply on her cigarette. “Well, lots of luck. And you’ve got a buddy somewhere out there.” She gestured at the phone. “He did me a favor. He calls me, tells me I’m wading ankle deep, just knowing this asshole who wants to waste a couple of cops. And he says, ‘If you want to keep your ass out of the joint, call Starsky and Hutch.’ ” She looked at Hutch. “So, Detective Starsky, who’s my mystery caller?”
The blond head turned, blue eyes sparkled in Starsky’s direction. “I’m Hutchinson. And I don’t think we can reveal the identity of your benefactor. If he wants to collect on the favor you owe him, he’ll let you know.”
“So, I’m off the hook?” Dale crushed out her cigarette and reached for another.
“Off and swimming,” Starsky assured her. “Right now we need to see his room. In the back, you said?”
They might have hoped for a revelation, but the room revealed nothing much.
An overnight bag, several changes of clothes, toiletries, several paperback novels of the pulp, sexy variety. Not so much as an envelope showing a return address, or a discarded letter. Mitchell, or Logan, kept his clothes here, had his mail delivered here, perhaps crashed here if he had no alternative, but there was no personal touch on the room or anything in it.
“He’s traveling light and living rough,” Hutch observed as they stepped out and closed the door.
“Keeping a low profile,” Starsky added. “As you’d expect. He watched as Dale reached for yet another cigarette, backing up swiftly before she could light up again. His lungs were already burning with that ashtray feeling. One thing he and Hutch had in common was the fact they didn’t smoke, never had, and couldn’t stand to be around smokers for too long. He gave Dale a sketch of a salute. “We’ll be in touch.”
The street air smelt sweet by comparison to Dale’s mock-French boudoir, and he filled his lungs to the bottom. Hutch leaned on the side of the car, head tilted back, eyes searching for stars. The moon was up and Starsky saw a glimmer of its light reflected in his lover’s eyes. He was enchanted, and came closer, like a human gazing into a magic pool where the future could be read.
“That’s one we owe Ryan! Finally, he did something righteous, for the good of his fellow man. Or woman. So what do we know?” Hutch mused. The street was dark, no one was in sight—even their tail, Kravitz and Duggan, were three blocks away, so as not to make themselves obvious—and to all intents and purposes they were alone. Hutch’s hand rested on Starsky’s hip, and Starsky replied by moving a little closer and laying his hand on Hutch’s shoulder. “We got a guy from Louisiana or Texas. Maybe just out of prison…”
“That would make sense if he’s gunning for us,” Starsky reasoned. “We probably put him in there.”
“Okay. Certainly, he won’t, or can’t, use his real name, and—ah, Christ, I’m tired. What time you got?” He grabbed Starsky’s left hand and turned it to the moonlight. “It’s after ten. Home?”
“Home,” Starsky agreed “My place or yours?”
“Mine’s closer,” Hutch judged.
“By a half-mile,” Starsky said glibly. “That’s okay. I like sleepin’ in that big brass bed of yours.” He dropped his voice to a lion-cub growl. “Like being fucked in it, too.”
“Keep talking like that, babe, and we won’t make it home,” Hutch warned.
“You know how hard it is for me to keep my hands to myself all day? The last time I laid a finger on you was eight-thirty this morning! It’s tough, Starsk, and it’s not getting easier with time.”
“I know.” Starsky felt the first flickers of heat in his groin, and deliberately took his hand from Hutch’s shoulder. “It must be love. You shoulda seen yourself in the shower. You make an…inspiring sight.”
Hutch looked him up and down in the moonlight. “So do you, Starsky. Sometimes you drive me so wild, I wonder how I’m going to get through the day.”
“I do?” Starsky was delighted. And excited. He took a calculated step back. “Home, please, before I do something I ain’t done since I was fourteen.”
“Oh yeah, and what might that be?” Hutch teased.
“Never you mind,” Starsky told him, grateful for the darkness and the cool night air. “But an otherwise perfectly clean pair of jeans and shorts get washed, if you get my drift.”
A soft laugh was his reward for the self-mocking humor, and he cherished the sound as he orbited the long hood and slid into the car. Before starting the engine he unhooked the radio. “Zebra Three to Cruiser One. We’re gonna call it a night.”
“Roger that, Zebra Three,” Duggan responded. “We’ll tail you back to your place, and then Vasquez and Chaffey take over.”
“We’re heading for Venice,” Starsky told him. “Let us get ahead, don’t let the punk see you.” The Torino purred like a big steel tiger as he pulled out into the road, and in the mirror he saw driving lights turn on, three blocks behind. He worked his neck to and fro to ease the stiffness of tiredness and frustration. “You know, it’s that bloody tattoo that bothers me, Hutch. I know that thing. I just can’t remember where I know it from, and it’s bugging me till I could yell.”
“Same here,” Hutch said slowly. “But we were kids, Starsk. I get flashes… you and me and… water. I’m sure it was something like that.”
“Water?” Starsky grasped after the image Hutch was glimpsing, but there was nothing in his memory except… “Heat,” he mused. “You and me, young and skinny, and it’s hot as hell.”
“Summer of ’71, ’72?” Hutch guessed. “Were we in uniform at the time?”
They had left the uniform division, transferred to Homicide, in 1972, seven long years ago. So much had happened since then, the years were so filled with incident that Starsky often had difficulty remembering what had happened in what year. He had never been the kind who kept diaries, and his only reference point was the paperwork he filed literally day by day, throughout his own career and Hutch’s. He looked sidelong at his partner. “Dobey had R&I send over every file, every bust we ever made. You think we ought to go through them?”
“In the morning,” Hutch agreed. His hand curled around Starsky’s lean thigh, and he wriggled down in the seat until he was half lying. “Tonight I just want to share the shower with you, and hit the mattress.”
“The original offer I can’t refuse.” Starsky reached down and covered Hutch’s hand with his own for a moment, before he needed both hands on the wheel again.
Venice Place was a quiet block in a quiet place. The neighbors were better than Starsky’s, to begin with: no domestic brawls at three a.m., not too much rock music at any hour of the day. Not that Starsky minded rock music-far from it. But Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Paint It Black were the wrong music for sleeping to, or making love to. A time for everything, and everything in its time. Mick Jagger included.
The stairwell was deserted, and they walked up together, arms linked. A closed door, locks set for the night, and Hutch made a grab for Starsky that knocked the breath out of him, startled and utterly delighted him. What exhilarated him most was to know that he had the ability to get to Hutch, get under that cool, honey skin and make a beautiful man so excited that he had to physically grab his lover and make free with him.
Carried to the floor, Starsky went down without a complaint and grinned up at the yellow haired demon who had straddled him. Hutch’s hands were cupped about his breasts, and Starsky’s breath caught in his throat as his nipples were teased erect. His cock followed a scant moment later, and Hutch stooped to kiss him, tongue deep in Starsky’s mouth.
They might have wrestled, but it took two to make a match, and Starsky wasn’t about to fight. Instead, his arms closed about Hutch’s larger body and dealt him a bearhug that made him wince. Hutch lifted his head and was laughing as he looked down into Starsky’s face.
“You don’t know your own strength,” he accused.
“Betcha I do,” Starsky said complacently. “Thought you said you wanted a shower.”
“Yeah.” Hutch took a sniff at himself and grimaced.
“You’re imagining things,” Starsky told him. “There’s nothing to smell. Nothing but you, and you smell gorgeous.”
“This, from the man who eats pepperoni and cream cheese on garlic bread,” Hutch said dubiously.
“So, I like pepperoni and cream cheese,” Starsky protested. “At least I don’t put desiccated liver in a milk shake.” He mimed a retch. “You want disgusting? That’s disgusting.“
“Oh…” Hutch seemed to search for a piercing enough retort, but was too tired and at last settled for “Phooey,” as he got to his feet.
“Phooey?” Starsky echoed. “Did you say, ‘Phooey,’ or is my hearin’ gear deceiving me?” He cupped a hand behind his ear, presenting it to Hutch for an action replay.
Hutch thrust out a hand to hoist him up also. “If you want to get laid in that big old brass bed, pal, put a lid on it,” he warned darkly.
“My lips,” Starsky assured him, “are sealed.” But he was chuckling all the way to the bathroom.
Hot water eased a multitude of tensions, and the slide of warm, wet skin on skin was like nothing else. Desire throbbed through Starsky’s entire body, and he knew Hutch was the same. His cheeks were pink, his breath was short, his eyes dark-dilated. He never looked so lovely as at these times, Starsky thought, filling his hand with that big cock, stooping to study it, kiss it hello for the first time since morning.
“The boss is getting interested,” he informed Hutch. “See here?” He thumbed the head of Hutch’s shaft, working his foreskin back and forth—something that always fascinated him about Hutch, since Starsky possessed no such thing. He often wondered how it felt; did it make Hutch more sensitive, or less? Did it tickle, did it feel good?
Hutch caught his hand gently but firmly. “Hey, babe.” Deep and throaty. “If you want to get laid… better not do that.”
“Huh?” Starsky looked up, aware of the heat coursing through him, somehow reducing his knees to water. “I wanted to suck you.”
“Another time,” Hutch begged. “I’m just too close, and a bit too tired to finish this round and start again.” He pulled Starsky up into his arms and they stood under a slowly cooling cascade, mouths sealed in the kind of kiss Starsky had begun to dream about. When Hutch slipped his tongue out of Starsky’s mouth and laid his cheek against his lover’s, he whispered into Starsky’s ear, “Oh, babe, I want to be inside you.”
“God, yes,” Starsky breathed, and fumbled to turn off the water.
They dried each other sketchily on the way to the bed, stumbling in haste and urgency, laughing at each other like kids. The KY that belonged at this apartment was right where they had left it; Starsky knew where to lay his hand right on it, and after a hasty, off-center kiss he tumbled himself flat on his back in the middle of Hutch’s bed, and pulled Hutch down with him.
“One thing about you, Starsk,” Hutch panted as he knelt between his lover’s long, uplifted thighs, “I never had to sweat and fret about whether you liked this.” He had coated his fingers with the lubricant, and tossed the tube into the pillows. “I always got knocked down in the rush!”
“I don’t like it, I love it,” Starsky groaned, and then was inarticulate as Hutch’s fingers speared into him, preparing the way.
“This, from the guy who once was so shocked to find out he’d had a gay friend without knowing it, that I believed you were a homophobe,” Hutch muttered distractedly, eyes half closed as he concentrated on Starsky’s insides.
“Oh… phooey,” Starsky gasped. “That’s enough, Hutch, I’m ready, I’m ready. Just get into me, please. Hutch!” It was as if his body had caught alight and only Hutch’s bulk and heat inside him could make it bearable. He maintained a love/hate relationship with this part of their sex, more than half believing his hunger for it to be indecent—certainly, if Hutch had teased or chastised him for it, he would have felt deep pangs of shame.
But Hutch never did that. Instead, he sheathed that long, beautiful, honey-and-roses cock, went down heavily into Starsky’s embrace and smothered him with a kiss, whispering, “You’re incredible. You’re like no one else I ever knew. Christ, Starsk, I love you.”
That was all Starsky needed to hear. He was already poised on the edge, rotating and humping his hips to meet Hutch every inch of the way, and when Hutch’s hand closed about his cock, it seemed as if two live wires had touched. Passion exploded along his nerves, and he was dimly aware that, for a while, Hutch was just hanging on for the ride.
Orgasm was… huge. No other word for it. Brain-blowing. All-encompassing. As if the universe ceased to exist. Did the world really move on its axis, or did Starsky just imagine it? It was a long time before he drifted back to his wits, and he found Hutch lying along his side, warm, soft/hard, his mouth clinging to Starsky’s shoulder. With a groan, Starsky turned toward him, spent and now just eager to hug and be hugged. In all the world, being in Hutch’s arms was second only to having Hitch inside him and so excited he could barely breathe—unless it was being inside Hutch—while his blood turned to liquid fire.
“Oh, that was good,” he moaned.
“Mmmm,” A whole sentence, before Hutch yawned to the bottom of his lungs and leaned over to nuzzle first one of Starsky’s nipples, then the other. “You want to use the bathroom?”
“You’re so romantic in the afterglow.” Starsky stretched till he heard his toe joints crackle.
“I’ll get a wash cloth,” Hutch promised.
“You got the strength to stand up?” Starsky asked doubtfully.
Sky-blue eyes smiled at him. “Just about. And besides, I take my vitamins and I eat a hell of a lot better than you do—and one of life’s pleasures is pampering you.” He leaned down, kissing Starsky right between the eyes. “Sweetheart.”
“Ah… Hutch.” Starsky wrinkled his nose and felt himself blush faintly. “You know I love the mushy stuff.”
“I know. I know you.” Hutch threaded bis fingers into bis lover’s soft hair and massaged his sensitive scalp. “Stay right there. I’ll be back.”
Being pampered by Hutch was as wonderful as pampering him, and Starsky reveled in it. Hutch padded to the bathroom, returned with a warm, soapy cloth, bathed his belly, turned him over and bathed the center of him too. Once, the terrible intimacy would have made Starsky awkward, but not now. Once, the whole concept of loving a man, sleeping with him, wanting him so much that the day could be a century long—all this would have been way outside his imagination.
Hutch changed that, slowly and gently breaking through his barriers, with such subtlety and tenderness that when each one went down, Starsky felt enlarged, enriched, not violated. One by one they fell, and when at last he discovered that John Blaine had been gay, he only showed Hutch a mild reaction—quiet verbal protest, the denial he had to make, because there was still a vein of misplaced and mistaken ‘morality’ in his subconscious. The age-old custom and tradition of his forebears, that now made him sigh for all the time he had lost.
What Hutch could not know was that if Starsky had discovered John Blaine’s homosexuality a decade before, there would have been a violent eruption of negative emotion… because back in the old realm of Starsky’s childhood New York, John would have been shunned as a pariah, spurned by his family, rejected by his friends. And arrested by the police. A kid was, Starsky mused as he settled to sleep, more or less what his elders and so-called betters made him. And the adolescent Dave Starsky could only grow up imprinted with the sexual bigotry of the community that nurtured him. It took Hutch to break through, and what had taken ten years to build up took almost as long to break down. But Hutch did it, one day at a time, with his beauty and compassion, humor, patience, and his tolerance for all people. Starsky would never be the same man again, and he was damn glad.
He drifted to sleep, comfortable and content, with his nose tucked into the curve of Hutch’s neck, tickled by the yellow silk hair that fascinated him, not simply because it was so lovely, but because it was so different from his own. But as soon as he was asleep his deep mind began to churn, and his dreams were colored dimly.
The tattoo. Water, and heat… bright light. Himself and Hutch. And being uncomfortable in a uniform. And then smell of… of…
Old fish, fuel oil, brine? The sea? The dock? A boat?
And all at once the whole picture crystallized out, so suddenly that Starsky wrenched himself awake and sat bolt upright, gasping, his body bathed in a cold sweat. Hutch was awake too, hands on his back, trying to soothe, when Starsky didn’t want to be soothed, because he knew!
“Hutch, I’ve got it!” He groped for the light, screwed up his eyes as his pupils protested, and turned toward Hutch’s anxious face. “The tattoo. It ain’t a biker mark. I know where we saw it.” He rubbed his face hard, raked his hands through his hair, focusing his thoughts with an effort. “It was ’70, we were in blues. July, September, and it was hot, Hutch. So hot, you got blistered, just standing there. You and me were both on the same call out… we were rookies, riding with two different guys, but we were working the same area and we responded to the same emergency call-out…”
Already, Hutch had it. He pressed a hand to his forehead. “That’s it. Jesus, Starsky, that’s it. There was a boat at the dock… the first cocaine bust we ever had a finger in. It was coming into the country as payment for weapons.”
“That’s right, and the weapons were for South America.” Starsky licked his lips. “And there was this guy on the boat…”
“Big, blond, just a few years older than us,” Hutch went on, as if they were sharing the same thought patterns now. “And he had a tattoo.”
“I remember somebody told me at the time, it’s a mercenary unit tattoo,” Starsky said triumphantly. “The guy was from Texas, they’d raised the whole mere outfit there, and in Mexico. They called themselves 0151”
“Black Lightning,” Hutch filled in. “They were working for some drug boss in Paraguay. And we were there when the whole crew of that boat was arrested —except the blond guy made it out.”
“Over the side,” Starsky went on. “We figured he’d drowned, because he was handcuffed. I lost contact with the case after the Feds took it over. I knew they were dragging the harbor, looking for the body. I just assumed the prick was dead.”
“I knew they hadn’t found a body,” Hutch mused, “but at the time they said it’d probably been chopped up by boat propellers, and the fish would get a good feed. He was gone. I was naive enough to believe that crap, I never thought anything more of it.”
Starsky nodded. “Okay. So the guy made it out. He’s alive. But that tells us the who, Hutch. Not the why. We were just a couple of rookie cops, skinny kids looking for experience, responding to a call. If this jerk wanted to shaft anybody for the bust, it wouldn’t be us. We didn’t lay a finger on him.”
“Unless,” Hutch added, “we’re the last on the list.” His brows quirked. “Has he worked his way through every officer involved that day?”
“Damn.” Starsky rubbed his face. “No, or we’d have heard about it. That many cops get wasted, they make a big stink. And why would he wait nine years? No, that can’t be it.”
“Point.” Hutch climbed out of bed and reached for his robe as his skin prickled in the cool night air. “Coffee?”
“And something to eat,” Starsky agreed, peering at his watch. “It’s four a.m.”
“Then we can get to the office early and start looking at those files,” Hutch said moodily. “That’s the part of this job I hate most, but I think the answer’s in there somewhere. We can find the prick’s name, and then we can track him down.”
“To Paraguay?”
“Probably. He sure as hell didn’t show up again in the States, or the DEA would have opened a fresh file on him, and we’d have heard something, because we were there on the day.” Hutch picked up a can of instant coffee, but for a moment just stood, engrossed in his thoughts. “You know what I think, Starsk? It’s the same guy, we just ID’d him, I’m sure of that—but whatever he wants to kill us for today has nothing todo with what happened in ’70.”
That made sense. Starsky punched three pillows into shape behind him and sat propped against the brass headboard. “Okay, I’ll buy that. And when we have his name,” he added darkly, “we’ll find out why he wants us dead.”
“Yeah.” Hutch’s fair head nodded, and then he followed through to make the coffee. “Yeah, we will. From here, we figure a way out of this mess.”
* * * *
It was daybreak when they arrived at the office, and by eight-forty when Dobey appeared, still yawning, with his keys in one hand and a coffee mug in the other They had already plowed through a massive stack of paperwork. R&l’s wheels had been in motion for two hours, and they had half of what they needed.
The name of the man who wanted them dead was Dirk Foster: born in Austin, Texas, in 1944, educated there, received his draft notice in 1966, served two tours in Vietnam, honorable discharge… unemployment, and then Foster’s complete disappearance. He did not reappear until September 7th, 1970, when he was fleetingly arrested on a boat called the Isabella, at an L.A dock, when Customs stumbled over suspicious items. A brief firefight ensured, ending with the deaths of two men from the Port Authority, and the serious injury of three more. Police units raced from every direction, and when Starsky and Hutch arrived it was almost over.
They were there when Foster made his escape. He went over the stem of the big oceangoing yacht, and they were there when the DEA officers arrived to take charge of the six men still in custody. A full-scale search of the harbor was already in progress, but no body was found. It was a reasonable assumption that Foster had drowned because he was cuffed; the tide was pulling out at the time, and four assorted vessels were leaving. It was also safe to assume he had been ‘prop-chopped.’
But the rest of the files—every bust with which Starsky and Hutch had been involved, even before they moved to Homicide and were teamed together—were a complete blank. They had never even been close to Dirk Foster, and the nearest they could come to a whiff of an answer was a drug bust eight months before, and that only because of its Paraguayan connections. Three people were in custody, awaiting trial and two more were dead, following the seizure of over a hundred kilos of both cocaine and heroin. But only the word ‘Paraguay‘ connected any of it to Foster.
All this, Hutch gave to Dobey in a single speech, while Starsky went out to scare them up some breakfast. Tired, gritty-eyed, feeling much less than perky, Hutch massaged his neck. “We’ve got two options now, Captain, as we see it. We need to make a connection, figure out why Foster wants to grease us. Or we set a trap, wait for him to take the bait, and—”
“Take him, before he takes you.” Dobey looked through the window at the bright haze of the morning sky. “It’s going to come to a baited trap either way, Hutch. You know that. The man’s… a shadow. We’ve had an APB out on him, but it’s like he doesn’t exist. Yet he’s always close enough to tape a message to your door or write on your windshield.”
“And it feels like we’re shadow boxing,” Hutch agreed. “Punching and rolling around an opponent who isn’t there.”
“He’s there, but you only ever see his shadow.” Dobey huffed a sigh. “And you can’t spend the rest of your lives like this. Whatever you did to this guy, it was bad. Bad enough for him to hunt you down, even if we gave you new names, new identity, shipped you right across the country. He’d known what was going on, he’d follow you. You either finish it now, here, with the backup of the department…”
“Or we face it alone, someplace else, somewhen else,” Hutch finished. “Of the two, Captain, I think we’ll take our chances right here.”
“Uh-huh.” Dobey pulled up a chair, just as Starsky stepped back into the squad room. “I’ll see what I can find out. It’ll take a call to the DEA, possibly the CIA, to trace Foster’s exploits outside the US. I’ll start with his connections in Paraguay, work from there.”
Starsky had set an assortment of rolls and fruit on the desk, and popped open a soda. “And meanwhile, Hutch an’ me are gonna take our chances, you were saying? Take our chances with…?”
“Bait a trap to draw Foster out,” Hutch said quietly. “Our place, our time. It’s either that, Starsk, or we run.”
“Since when did we ever run?” Starsky demanded. “I been thinking about this. What worries me is bystanders, Hutch. We gotta get this show out of town, or people could get hurt.”
“Crossfire, overshoots,” Dobey agreed. “Or Foster finds out he’s overmatched and he takes a hostage.” He nodded. “So, where?”
Hutch looked up into his partner’s tense face as Starsky perched on the back of a chair, sneakered feet on its seat. “On the road,” he suggested. “I’d say the park, the docks, but there’s always people. Starsk?”
“On the road.” Starsky heaved in a breath and let it go. “Only question is, when?”
“Today,” Hutch said without pausing to think or even breathe. “I’ve had enough. I’m angry, I’m tired, and I’m… sick of shadow boxing.” He licked his lips, drew the fingers of his right hand across his mustache. “Today?”
“Hell, this morning,” Starsky agreed. “We just head east, get on the road to Vegas, and go slow. Foster’s been so close to us for days, he could spit on us. He’ll be right there when we leave town. Maybe he’ll figure we’re getting out. Doin’ the cut-an’-run routine. Unless he wants to give himself the chore of finding us all over again in Chicago or Atlantic City, he’ll make his move.” His brows rose, a mute question, asking for Hutch’s agreement and commitment.
Commitment? Hutch smiled slightly and nodded. If commitment was the consideration here, the word was forever. He got to his feet and looked from Starsky to Dobey and back again. “Let’s do it.”
Starsky pushed the food at him. “Eat,” he said tersely. “This ain’t a job to be done on an empty stomach.”
And yet Hutch always found it difficult to eat when he was nervous; and right now he was nervous. Starsky knew—of course he knew. But he kept his silence while they ate, and with Dobey’s sanction drew extra weapons and ammunition, a powerful shortwave and radio tracers.
They must appear to be alone on the road, and yet they could not be completely alone. The nearest backup car could be no closer than five miles behind them, or Foster would make the connection. And that meant their backup was never less than two to three minutes away, even at high speed. A lot could happen in three minutes—and using the radio until the moment of truth was out. Police scanners were plentiful in the hands of the public, journalists, bikers, anyone who needed to be appraised of police vehicle movements. They could be sure Foster would be monitoring them, and the long-range shortwave was to be used only when the show was over, one way or another. Dobey would be waiting.
For backup, they had Vasquez and Kravitz, in Vasquez’s show-pony, the electric blue Dodge Challenger, with the 440 cubic inch V6 under the hood. It was ostensibly slightly faster than the Torino, with just thirteen cubic inches’ more engine power, and a fractionally lighter body. But Starsky was scornful of this: Tony Vasquez didn’t know squat about tuning cars, he said, and in a straight drag from a standing start over a quarter mile, the Torino would leave him standing.
Today, as he stowed the special shortwave in the back and checked the gray AR-16, the Colt Industries .223 semi-automatic rifle, and his own sidearm, Hutch prayed Starsky was wrong, and Vasquez’s Challenger was the fastest thing on the road. They had been issued two of the AR-15s, ‘scoped, and a satchel of smoke grenades. Technically, they were on their own.
Still, Hutch was worried, and as Starsky rolled out of the precinct parking lot, headed east across the city, he angled a look at his companion. “You going to tell me, or do I have to guess?”
“Oh… I dunno,” Hutch said evasively. “It’s just… us, Starsk. We’ve had it so good lately. I get the feeling, we’re about to be handed the bill. It’s this.” He cupped his hand about Starsky’s knee and squeezed. “You and me. It’s too good. We put Kira behind us, we found each other. And nothing this fine comes without a price.”
Indigo eyes looked soberly at him. Starsky was not taking this lightly, and was not about to clown around. “This whole discussion sounds very karmic. That what we’re talking about?”
“Maybe.” Hutch patted his lover’s knee. “Probably. Everything in my life has come at a price, Starsk. I get nothing without paying for it. Good things don’t happen to me for free. Now… us. And l know we’ll pay.”
“Well, not today,” Starsky said stubbornly. “Maybe you’re right, and maybe there’s a bullet with your name on it, or mine, but not today. This one, we’re on top of it. Right?”
“Right,” Hutch agreed, but sounded much more sure than he felt.
He shrugged off the feeling of disquiet as they threaded through the eastbound traffic, and the oddest thing about the morning’s traveling was that Starsky was driving a great deal slower than usual. He was moving at a flat thirty. Driving like a little old lady on her way home from church-the kind of cute old grandma, he joked, who’s so short, she sat on a cushion in order to look through the steering wheel.
Every few minutes Starsky’s eyes went to the mirror, and Hutch knew he was trying to pick their tail out of the traffic. The highway was too busy, too filled with commercial traffic, for him to be able to pinpoint any one car. As fast as he thought he had it, the vehicle would be gone again.
They broke the slow, aimless journey at noon to eat at a truck stop, and their tail knew they had stopped: Vasquez and Kravitz were monitoring the radio tracer, a beeper, the only contact they dared risk. The greasy truck stop food seemed to delight Starsky, but it turned Hutch’s stomach. He ate only a piece of pie and cream, and drank two cups of paint-like coffee while Starsky demolished a burger and fries.
The afternoon grew steadily hotter and the wind was dry, off the desert. When they left behind the moderating influence of the ocean, and the city dwindled over the horizon, everything was dust… and the road became quiet. At forty miles per hour, Vegas lay a very, very long way ahead, and Hutch was painfully aware that there was nothing on the road behind them.
“Looks like it’s not going to work,” he said, rubbernecking to look back. “He’s not going to take the bait.”
“He will. Give it time,” Starsky argued. His hands were light on the wheel, his eyes inscrutable behind green glasses.
“There’s nothing inside of a mile behind us,” Hutch informed him.
“Doesn’t mean he can’t see us.” Starsky glanced at him. “Binoculars. He’s there. And if he ain’t, he’s not serious about this.”
“Shit,” Hutch swore as anger crested inside him, and he snatched up the radio mike.
“Hutch, whatcha doing? You can’t—”
“Yes, I can. Just drive.” Hutch hit the transmit key. “Foster. Dirk Foster, we know damn well you’re out there, and you’re monitoring this frequency. You want to waste us? This is your chance. You’ll never get another one.” Bluff now, God help us.
“We know who you are and we know what this is about,” Hutch went on. “Okay, so you want to take a crack at us. You want the truth? We’d like a crack at you! But not where innocent people can get in the way. Enough innocent people suffer from your line of work. Foster!”
A brief pause, while Hutch’s gut churned and his palms sweated, and then, not quite to his astonishment, the radio said, “Hutchinson, isn’t it? Or is it Starsky?”
“It’s Hutchinson,” Hutch snapped. “Where are you?”
“You’ll never know,” Foster said, deep, growling. “You’re dead meat. And you’ll never know where it came from.”
Then, silence. “Foster?” Hutch shouted. “Foster!”
But he was done, and Hutch tossed the mike onto the dash. Starsky took a fresh grip on the wheel and looked sidelong at Hutch. “Tells us one thing. He’s out here. That signal was clear as a bell. He’s close.”
“Yeah, but where?” Hutch’s fist slammed into his palm, an expression of frustration. “This is the only road…”
“The only highway,” Starsky corrected. “There’s dozens of dirt roads, they run in every direction.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “He could be anywhere. Soon as we got on this road, we had to stick with it.”
“And he’s near.” Hutch’s heart drummed heavily, and he licked his lips. “Slow down.“
“Slow down? I’m only doin’ forty!”
“So do thirty. Then use your eyes and look.” Hutch twisted in the seat and reached inro the back for one of the twin AR-15s.
“I’m using my eyes,” Starsky said acidly. “Mind telling me what I’m looking for? The road’s empty.”
“That!” Hutch had already seen it. “Jesus, Starsky, that! You see it?”
The bluster of pale dust blown westward by the wind off the desert, dust that could only have been raised by the tires of a vehicle, and from the speed at which that dust-cloud was advancing, the vehicle was really traveling. Starsky had it the instant Hutch pointed it out, and instead of cramming bis foot to the floor he braked down further. The dirt road intersected with the blacktop just ahead, and Hutch knew at once what Foster had intended.
“He thought he was going to get in behind us,” he panted.
“If there hadn’t been a wind to wave that dust around like a flag, he’d’ve done it,” Starsky said grimly. “He’s under brakes. Knows we’ve seen him. Can you get a shot at him?”
“Not from this side of the car,” Hutch muttered.
They were a scant hundred yards from the junction now and Starsky barked, “Grab something!”
Hutch barely had time to brace himself, one hand on the dash, one on the seat, before Starsky braked hard, put in the clutch, spun the wheel over, and sent the Torino ito a tire-scorching spin across the road. The maneuver reversed it, left them in a horrifyingly vulnerable position, with the gas tank presented to Foster and the car almost stationery. But it placed Hutch perfectly to take a shot, and he had two—perhaps three—seconds before Foster’s vehicle emerged from the cover of the low sand slopes.
Heart in his mouth, Hutch propped himself in the long window, eye to the ‘scope, the trigger like gossamer under his finger-and then, there it was, a black and silver 4×4, just coming up onto the road, tires scrabbling for purchase in the loose, marble-like gravel.
“Take him!” Starsky barked, with an edge of urgency in his voice, as if he could only think of the fact he had shown Foster the most vulnerable part of their anatomy—the gas tank. “Hutch, take him!”
A pulse drummed in Hutch’s temple as he squeezed on the trigger. A .223 round smacked into the side of the four wheel drive, and he was off-target, but the semi-auto AR-15 would cycle rounds as fast as he could squeeze the trigger, four or five per second. Hutch tracked down and ripped off three, aimed for the tires. He grunted with satisfaction and relief as he saw both the right side wheels go down. The 4×4 slewed, for an elongated moment it seemed the vehicle might roll, then it righted and came to a halt.
“Can’t see anyone,” Hutch yelled into the wind.
“Hold on!” Starsky was in reverse, and Hutch’s nostrils prickled on the acrid smell of burning rubber as the Torino came about fast. He took it off the road, positioned it almost broadside to Foster’s vehicle, with the engine block like armor between them and the incoming fire.
Then they were out, using the whole car for cover, and Starsky had paused only long enough to make a grab for his own rifle. Only thirty yards separated the two cars, and Hutch was listening, not daring to glance out of concealment. He heard nothing, only the sound of the wind in the grass.
“This is great,” Starsky muttered. “Stick your head out, and lose it. Any bright ideas?”
“Vasquez and Kravitz will be through in about two more minutes,” Hutch said. “We could use the backup. Foster can’t use that car as cover from two directions. He has to move when they’ve gone by him.”
As he spoke a rattle of fire ripped into the nose of the Torino, and there was the sound of breaking glass as a headlight burst. Starsky winced. “Oh, man, listen to that.”
“So the department’ll pay to fix it. This car’s had more nose-end rebuilds than it’s had new tires.” Hutch took a grip on the rifle. “Both together, you take that side. Now!”
They moved as one, as always, raking the side of Foster’s vehicle with four shots each, eight shots in a single second. Windows shattered, but there was no wounded cry. No spray of returning fire, either. Starsky ducked back into cover with a perplexed expression. “What in hell’s he doing? Something about this stinks, Hutch.”
“I know what you mean.” Hutch moved closer to his partner. “Here comes the electric blue speed machine.”
“Mine’s faster,” Starsky muttered.
“Bitch, bitch.” Hutch response was an automatic reflex. The Challenger came up fast, Vasquez was doing eighty or ninety, and he went straight through the scene without a flicker of brake lights—his and Kravitz’s single opportunity to recce the situation. “He’ll turn around and be back,” Hutch said quietly.
“I feel safer already.” Starsky angled a look at Hutch. “Vasquez drives okay, but he can’t shoot for shit.”
“Kravitz is a good shot,” Hutch argued.
“So long as he has something to shoot at.” Starsky cocked an ear to the other, bullet-pitted car. “Where is Foster? He should be shootin’ at us!”
“Maybe he’s wounded,” Hutch suggested. “One of us should go take a look. Cover me.”
“No.” Starsky caught his arm. “Vasquez and Kravitz can take a look when they get back here. Stay put.”
“But—” Hutch began, before Starsky’s glare quelled him. “Okay. Play it safe. Any way you want.” He listened then for the big Dodge, which would have overshot the junction by no more than a mile, for the sake of safety, before Vasquez turned it around. How long? Two minutes? Less? Hutch’s throat was dry as dust. It was as if he had a timepiece ticking away in his brain, and every beat coincided with the rhythm of his heart.
He heard the approaching growl of their backup, knew from the engine sound that Vasquez was braking. Foster should be shooting at them as they approached—or Kravitz should be trying for a shot out the window. Foster had only his car to use for cover, and couldn’t hide on both sides at once. Hutch heard no shots, and with a curse beneath his breath he leaned quickly out from the Torino, ready to pick off Foster, who must be visible now, if Kravitz did not have him in his sights.
Nothing. The man was nowhere, as if they were shadow boxing, and every time they thought they had connected with a single good punch, all they hit was a handful of air. Fury twisted Hutch’s insides into a knot—
Until Starsky’s voice yelled, sharp as a hunting wolf, “Cover!”
Hutch spun, going down flat in the dirt beside the Torino, clawing for the rifle, and he saw the man, saw what Starsky had seen. Foster had doubled back fast around the low sand slopes, under cover of the hip-high desert grasses, and had come in behind them. Mercenary tactics. Only an animal sixth sense had warned Starsky he was there—perhaps the intuition of one who had learned to fight and survive on the street, and then served his tour in Vietnam, while Hutch was in the bosom of a family that suffocated him, and pursuing a college degree. Whatever, the only thing that mattered was that they had a split second’s advantage.
They fired together, both dead on target, three rounds apiece. Foster’s finger tightened convulsively on the trigger, but his shots were wild, not even scarring the side of the Torino, as he pitched over backward into the grass and lay still.
Not surprised to find himself shaking with reaction, Hutch got carefully to his feet. Starsky was breathing hard, nostrils flared, chest heaving, as his body tried to level out after the adrenalin rush-but it was over. The Challenger came up level with them, Kravitz banging out of the window for a better view, and he was pointing at the body, shouting something. Hutch could not catch the words, but the tone was jubilant.
Trembling with the adrenalin overload, he followed Starsky up the shifting sand slope, and on the crest of it the found Dirk Foster. He was on his back, three rounds in his chest, two in his belly, one in his throat. His handsome face seemed merely surprised, his long blond hair was tossed back, blue eyes wide open. And there on his arm, displayed by the muscle shirt he wore, was the tattoo.
“Black Lightning,” Starsky said hoarsely. “Mercenary squad out of Texas and Mexico. The Paraguayan connection.” He looked at Hutch. “He’s dead, and we don’t even know what this was all about.”
“Dobey’ll find out.” Hutch shouldered the rifle and turned his face to the wind. “We better call it in.”
“Vasquez is already doing that.” Starsky slithered down the sand slope and marched away to the car, to survey the damage.
If theyhad taken a round in the engine or in the radiator, the Torino would need a tow in to the nearest shop. Hutch was not worried. The department was picking up the tab; they always did. That Torino was rebuilt two, maybe three times a year. One of these days it would be more patch than car. But Merle always worked magic; she came out of the shop looking like new every time. So long as the department was paying, Starsky was happy. And so long as Starsky was happy, so was Hutch.
Sighing, he followed, prepared for the worst, but Starsky was only muttering in that annoyed little way he had when nothing major was wrong. When his whole world shattered, he went silent, pale, large eyed, with a look about him that could tear the heart out of Hutch. So long as he was still grumbling, Hutch knew that things may not be fine, but they’d fix.
The hood was up, and Starsky was peering into the shadows beneath. The engine smelt hot and strong as Hutch leaned in to take a look. “We lost a headlight and some paint, and he missed the battery by this much.” Starsky held up thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. “We’re still rollin’, partner, if you want to head for home and file the report.”
“I do.” Hutch slid the rifle into the back seat and beckoned their backup. “Hey, Vasquez!” The Challenger reversed toward them. “Stay with the body; we’re going in,” Hutch shouted.
“We already called it in,” Kravitz yelled. “There’s a coroner’s vehicle and a couple of black and whites on the way.”
“You call Dobey?” Starsky yelled.
“Sure did.” Kravitz waved at him as the long scarlet hood slammed down.
“Then, we’ll be seeing ya,” Starsky waved back as he slid in under the wheel and tried the engine. It fired as if nothing was wrong, and Hutch was relieved. The afternoon was growing old, and they were a long way out. Reversing the Torino in the dirt and climbing back onto the road, Starsky shuffled to comfort and worked his way through the gearbox. “Put the flasher on the roof,” he said drily.
“We’re going home fast?” Hutch guessed.
“You see the time?” Starsky changed up again, and the Torino bolted forward. “I’ll give you ‘electric blue speed machine,” he chided.
“Starsky, I do not understand this preoccupation with speed. It’s juvenile,” Hutch accused, pretending exasperation, although he slapped the red spinner on the roof as instructed and silently gave thanks for the horsepower that would take them home fast.
“So it’s juvenile.” Starsky just smirked. “And I like it.” He directed the smirk at Hutch, and stuck out his chin. “You got a problem with that?”
Hutch laughed, and the humor felt fine. He settled back in the seat and closed his eyes. “No, no problem. No problem with your train set, your salami and cream cheese, or your Rolling Stones albums.” He sighed and permitted a self-mocking smile. “Maybe it’s love.”
“It better be,” Starsky scoffed. “I’d feel all kindsa goof if I was this crazy about you, and you didn’t feel the same.”
“Quit worrying.” Without opening his eyes, Hutch reached over, unerringly found Starsky’s knee and gave it a pat. “It’s love.”
“Thank God,” Starsky breathed. “Now call Dobey, willya? He’ll want to know what went down.”
* * * *
They were late arriving at the office, and the report took another hour. It was late, and Hutch was growing painfully fatigued before he took the paper from the machine at last and slipped it into its folder with an air of finality. Starsky had finished less than a minute before and had headed for Dobey’s office.
The captain had been waiting all afternoon for the arrival of a special agent from the DEA, and the man was also late. So late that he arrived just as Hutch let himself into Dobey’s office. A box of donuts was open on the desk and Starsky was already eating. Hutch normally wouldn’t deign to touch donuts, but his metabolism was sending him hate mail, and he knew he needed the sugar. As he sank his teeth onto the soft sweetness, the DEA man arrived.
He was what Starsky called a ‘gray suited spook,’ and to Hutch’s eyes, that analysis looked about right. His name was Jarman, he was ten years older than Starsky or Hutch, and he looked down a long nose at both the younger men. Admittedly, they were looking a little frayed around the edges tonight, in need of a decent meal, shower and shave, not to mention six hours sleep and fresh clothes. Hutch was in brown slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open; Starsky was in faded Levi’s and a year-old yellow tee-shirt. They hardly cut a sartorial picture, when measured against the DEA man in the three piece suit.
Jarman shook Dobey’s hand and accepted a chair. Dobey offered him coffee, but he declined, so the captain seated himself behind his desk and said baldly, “You took delivery of the body of Dirk Foster?”
“Marcus Dirk Foster,” Jarman affirmed. “We positively ID’d him by his prints an hour ago.”
“Really?” Starsky said, mock-fascinated. “We positively ID’d him about five this morning.”
“Starsky,” Dobey remonstrated quietly. “Mister Jarman is here to tell us what Foster has been into the past nine years, and maybe how he connects with LAPD Homicide in general, and you two in particular.”
“I’mm all ears,” Starsky assured the agent, in a kind of ‘golly-gee, golly-wow’ tone that made Hutch want to laugh, despite the fatigue.
The Fed was not oblivious to Starsky’s scorn, and looked disparagingly at the younger men, while addressing his conversation to Dobey. “Our man Foster had been working for a drug cartel with tentacles not only in Paraguay but in Columbia and Panama. They deal in violence, as well as narcotics. Weapons, explosives, aircraft, mercenary troops. Most of the hardware comes from the United States and is paid for in cocaine. Now, back in 1970, your two detectives were present, quite by chance, I might add, when we almost arrested Foster.”
“We know all that, Mister Jarman,” Hutch said shortly. “That has no bearing on the present that we were able to discover. I’d be surprised if Foster even knew we were the young cops on the boat that day. There’s more to it than this.”
And Jarman’s crop-haired head nodded. “You’re right. Late last year, you made one important bust. One hundred kilos of heroin and cocaine, ex-Paraguay. Two men and a woman are in custody, awaiting trial; one man and one woman died in the shootout. You recall?”
“We’re not likely to forget.” Starsky helped himself to another donut. “We expect to be in court soon. Foster was involved? We didn’t know.”
The woman you killed,” Jarman told him, “Emillia Fernandez, was his wife. Mexican national, born of a Mexican father, American mother. A beautiful woman, by all accounts. They married in Venezuela, six years ago.”
“Ouch.” Hutch rubbed his temples. “So it was a vengeance hunt.”
“But it’s eight months since the bust,” Starsky protested. “Why did Foster wait so long?”
“He was in prison for two years—until five weeks ago, in Panama,” Jarman supplied. “Serving a life sentence for drug related offenses. News travels slowly in that part of the world, gentlemen, and when Foster read of the death of his wife, he could hardly walk out through the main gate. He had to arrange his escape, and make it good.”
Hutch held up one hand. “You say, he read of Fernandez’s death? How?”
“An article in the newspaper.” Jarman stood. “You and Detective Starsky were credited with the seizure of the drugs, and the fatal shootings. I presume you were responsible?”
“Probably,” Starsky said in an irritable tone. “When you’re under fire, pinned down, just trying to get out alive, you don’t worry too much about if the person shooting at you’s male, female, black, white, young or old. You just see a gun pointed at you, ready to take off your head.”
“Yes.” Jarman frowned at Starsky. “As I recall, you were investigated yourself, Detective Starsky, for the fatal shooting of a sixteen year old black boy.”
Fury erupted like a red light behind Hutch’s eyes, and without even realizing what he had done, he put himself between Starsky and Jarman and was stabbing a finger, knife-like, at the man. “If you know that, you also know that Starsky came out of that investigation with a commendation! What he did that day was—”
“Hutch.” Starsky’s hand fell on Hutch’s shoulder. “You don’t have to defend me. There’s nothing to defend.” He spoke with a quiet dignity that was not very Starsky-like, and which quelled Hutch’s anger a few degrees.
“He’s right, Jarman.” It was Dobey ·snapping now. “If you’d done your homework, you’d know how that turned out. Now, thank you for your information, and I don’t want to hold up your doubtlessly busy schedule.”
It was a dismissal, and Jarman blinked, almost physically recoiling. “The DEA is grateful to be able to close the file on Foster once and for all,” he admitted as he retreated to the door. “I guess it’s one we owe you.” He tried a smile, but it was too little, too late. “Capt,ain.” Then he was gone.
Pacing the room like a caged cat, Hutch wished he could lash out at something, hit something, hard. But there was nothing, and he could almost feel the puffs of steam coming from his ears before Dobey said, “Starsky, why don’t you take him home and do whatever it is you do with him, before he wears a hole in my rug.”
“Uh, yeah. I’ll do that. Hutch?”
Starskys voice was deep, husky, redolent with such sensual invitation, Hutch almost shivered, partly in delight, partly in dread. He wanted to whirl around and beg, ‘Not here, not in front of Dobey, for god sakes!’ But when he turned Starsky was only looking at him, smiling that old familiar smile, and had one hand on the door while Dobey’s head was bent over the days final paper. Hutch subsided and surrendered.
“G’night, Captain,” he said resignedly.
“Take tomorrow off”, Dobey said, waving them away without looking up from his desk. “And… when the time comes,” he added drily, “when you want to come right out and tell me what you think I ought to know, be ready to listen.”
Icy fingers danced down Hutch’s spine. Halfway through the door he turned back. “You may not like what you hear.”
“I don’t think you’re going to take me by surprise.” Dobey merely glanced at them before he returned to his work. “I’m not easy to shock, Hutchinson, and I’ve been around a helluva lot longer than you. You’d be just amazed the places I’ve been, the things I’ve seen. Nothing you two juvenile delinquents could dream up is going to give me an ulcer.” He looked up at them again. “Or,” he added, “make me unload the two best men I have.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Think about it.”
“We’ll think about it,” Starsky promised, one flat hand on Hutch’s back, urging him through the door. He closed it behind them, and whistled. “Damnit, my ears are burning.”
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