Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who had silken hair like spun gold and big blue eyes as brilliant as a cloudless, sunny sky. The little boy lived on a farm in a realm of four seasons with his mommy and daddy who took care of magnificent horses that leapt into the air as if they had wings like birds. The farm of magnificent horses had belonged to his grandfather, his daddy’s dad. The little boy was happy. He was happy and light and free as the horses his mommy and daddy trained, fed and sheltered in barns behind their cozy home that seemed a palace to him.

The little boy was happy, for he did not know what loss meant and he did not know what aging meant and why time stopped for no one, not even for his great and tall daddy who was king of his world.

Then one day, mommy and daddy had to leave home for a while. To visit some friends of theirs in another realm, they told him, and so, every day that mommy and daddy were away, he sat at the window in his bedroom and read his storybooks and gazed outside at the steel gates of his home. He waited for them to open, for mommy and daddy to come back and bring him back presents from another realm and hug him and tell him they loved him.

One day, the steel gates of his home opened. A black and white car with blue and red lights on top drove through them and up to his home. His minder, a lady like his mommy, opened the door and there were two men in dark blue clothes with their hats in their hands. They were guardians of the land and the law. They were telling his minder something, but he didn’t understand what they were saying or why his minder started to cry. One of the guardians knelt down in front of him and ruffled his hair. He didn’t know why the man’s smile was so sad. He didn’t understand what the man meant, that mommy and daddy weren’t coming back and someone else was going to take care of him and make sure he was alright.

Mommy and daddy always came back home. Mommy and daddy promised him they would.

So, in another room in another house that wasn’t his home, he sat at the window and gazed outside at tall buildings and people he didn’t know and waited for mommy and daddy to come back and take him home. He waited for a very long time. Different people drove him to different houses in different cars. He didn’t know anyone and nobody knew him or listened to him when he pleaded to go home to be with mommy and daddy. He waited for a very long time for his mommy and daddy to find him and hug him and tell him they loved him but they never came, and one day, he stopped waiting for them.

He stopped waiting for them and started wishing for something else, for the magical mirror of a Snow Queen who travelled the world with the snow and had an enchanted palace and vast ice gardens in the lands of permafrost. The mirror’s magic made the heart cold and strong. It made the heart cold and strong and took away the pain inside it, and he really wanted this magical mirror – or even just a sliver of it – because the pain inside his heart wouldn’t go away no matter how much he cried or screamed or smashed everything in his hands. He wished and wished and wished every single day for it. He wished with all he had that the chill of the magical mirror would take away the pain inside his heart. Take away everything in it, if it meant the hurting stopped.

And one day, eventually, his wish came true.

& & & & & &

Hutch is shocked into silence that he is where he is right now, here on his back on his bed in his Venice Beach canal cottage with Starsky – his incredibly masculine, fucking hot and naked partner and best friend – straddling his hips and lowering himself onto his rock-hard cock. He’s naked too. His skin is covered in a sheen of sweat after all the kissing and licking and sucking of each other’s bodies and oh fuck, the head of his cock is disappearing into Starsky’s tight heat and Starsky’s stunning blue eyes are shut and Starsky is groaning and spreading those lean legs wider as if Starsky really, really wants to be filled to the innermost core with him.

“Oh god … Hutch … Hutch …”

Starsky is staring down at him through those lush, dark eyelashes now, mouth open as if his cock’s entering it as well and it had entered Starsky’s mouth just minutes – or was it hours? – ago when they were still on the couch in the living room and they’d been watching but not really watching some late night movie he doesn’t remember at all. One moment they’d been sitting side by side on the cushions, the next moment Starsky’s left hand was on his thigh and then Starsky was kneeling on the floor between his legs and pressing a head of short, dark curls against his burgeoning groin and then, then Starsky was unzipping his jeans and tugging down his underwear and enveloping the first couple of inches of his erection with those lips and then here they are, doing what neither of them ever imagined they’d do with each other and enjoying the fuck out of it.

“Oh, oh … so fucking big … oh Hutch …”

Half his cock inside Starsky, and already he’s nearing the brink, gasping and gripping Starsky’s hips with both hands and locking gazes with Starsky.

“Starsk … Starsky, don’t – you don’t h-have to –“

Starsky makes an odd sound that’s an amalgam of an amused laugh and a low groan.

“Yeah, Hutch … like you’re – aahh – like you’re gonna just pull out when you – when you look like that.”

A challenge, if Hutch has ever heard one, and it’s a challenge he knows he’s lost before he can even accept it and Starsky knows it. Starsky’s sinking down some more, down, down and both of them are panting hard, working together like they always do, pushing in synchronization and then he’s in, all the way.

“You’re inside me. All of you,” Starsky whispers.

While Starsky’s right hand is grabbing his left shoulder, Starsky’s left hand has flown from his other shoulder to press against a trim lower belly, precisely over where his cock is filling Starsky up so deep and good. Starsky, filled up and split wide open by no other, never the same again.

“Starsk …”

“Want you, Hutch ... want you. Now. Please.”

Oh god, oh fuck, Starsky’s clenching around him, like a fist, squeezing all the caution and apprehension out of him and his hips move on their own accord and pull back, just a little, and then shoves back in and he can feel Starsky opening up even more, feel the tremor of sheer pleasure coursing like lightning through Starsky’s arching body. Sweat has broken out on Starsky’s furred chest. It’s also running down the side of Starsky’s flushed face, plummeting from that strong jaw onto his own flushed face and neck.

Hutch tries to say something in return, something like I want you so much too, something like I love you, but his voice has fled him and his body is speaking on his behalf instead. He lifts Starsky by the hips, pulls out again, completely, and then plunges in to the hilt in one stroke and then he’s thrusting hard and fast and Starsky is clinging onto his shoulders again and cries out with each slam of his hips. So fucking gorgeous, the way Starsky’s meeting his every stroke, eagerly swallowing him up until there’s nothing left of him outside, grinding down against him and swiveling those graceful hips until they’re moaning in unison and god, can this really be the first time Starsky’s ever done this? Is he that lucky enough a bastard to be the only man in the world to see and hear and feel Starsky this way?

Starsky’s writhing, shouting, and when he wraps one hand around Starsky’s rigid erection and works it from base to its leaking head, Starsky slams down on and around him one last time, stiffens and comes like a geyser all over his stomach and chest, bright and scorching-hot and breath-taking. The lightning surges from Starsky into him and with vestiges of strength he hadn’t known he has left, he raises his upper body and gathers a Starsky gone limp into his arms. He pushes one last time into Starsky, his mind blown to nirvana as he shoots his seed, his everything, inside his partner.

Still cradling Starsky in his arms, he falls back onto the bed. His head hits the pillow with an audible whoomph. Starsky is still panting, a soft whimper marking the end of each breath, and Hutch listens to them along with his own thundering heartbeat and feels the luxuriance of Starsky’s thick hair brushing his cheek and lower jaw and breathes in the scent of a replete, utterly relaxed and thoroughly fucked – no, loved – Starsky.

Beautiful. So damn beautiful.

He caresses Starsky’s back, from expansive shoulders to those ample buttocks and revels in the smooth skin, in the bunching of firm muscles underneath his palms and fingers. It’s all his, all his.

“Starsky –“

Starsky’s fingers are suddenly over his mouth.

“Sshh, no, don’t talk.”

Starsky’s voice is rusty, as if Starsky hasn’t spoken in eons. As if Starsky is afraid that his voice will shatter … something.

“Starsk –“

“Don’t talk, Hutch. Please, don’t, just …” Starsky is staring down at him again, into his eyes but there’s something lurking behind Starsky’s, something that shouldn’t be there when they’ve just made love – the best lovemaking Hutch has ever experienced yet in his life – and they’ve just gone to heaven and back, together. “Just kiss me, huh?”

Even in the diffused light of the bedside lamp, Hutch sees the glistening of Starsky’s eyes. Before he can speak again, Starsky’s lips are crushed against his and Starsky’s tongue is delving into his mouth and there is a desperation in the kiss, in Starsky’s stroking of his face and neck and chest, like Starsky’s scared that everything’s going to end and he’s going to disappear. He can’t help responding, rolling them so Starsky is lying face up on the bed now, wrapping those legs around his waist and still kissing him and robbing him of his breath and his sanity and control.

Starsky is still slick with lube and his semen, still loosened enough that three of his fingers slide into Starsky with little resistance. Starsky moans and arches off the bed, electrified from the inside out, constricting around his fingers and reminding him of the rapture he already misses like crazy. Into his lips, Starsky rasps, “Fuck me, babe. Give it to me good and hard,” and the lust – the love – in Starsky’s voice drives him wild, drives him to spread Starsky’s legs high and far apart and haul Starsky by the waist onto his lap, bending Starsky to his complete mercy.

“Yeah, c’mon, Hutch, c’mo-oh, oh, OOH –“

Oh fuck, fuck, Starsky’s still so damn hot and tight and taking him in so perfectly like he was made to fit deep inside Starsky, inside where there’s no room for anyone else except him and his greatest joys and his darkest fears. He plunges in unrelentingly, unable to restrain himself, until the blond wisps of hair on his groin are scraping Starsky’s skin and Starsky is throwing his head back and biting on his left hand balled into a fist and keening anyway.

Then there’s no more talking, only raw sounds of need, of rapid, near-violent thrusts in and out, in and out and in, getting the right angle and directly striking that special spot that leaves Starsky gasping for breath and calling out his name in a litany. Yeah, yeah, that’s it, that’s what he wants to hear, his Starsky adrift in a storm of pleasure, a storm of his making. He maintains his pistoning motion and fluid rhythm, gasping for air himself, and he leans down and kisses Starsky on the cheek, on the lips and licks the sweat off Starsky’s bared neck. Nips down the length of that neck, then bites the left side, over the hammering pulse, just enough that Starsky quivers from head to toe and lets out a sharp cry of assent.

Mine, Hutch thinks to himself. All mine.

This time, Starsky comes without any warning whatsoever, clamping so hard and oh so good around him that he yells and comes as well and rides the waves of ecstasy with Starsky, keeping his eyes peeled open so he can watch stark white semen fountaining from Starsky’s cock and splattering Starsky’s heaving chest and the downy hair on it. It takes him a minute to realize that Starsky is watching him too, doing his best to keep those stunning eyes open and drink in the sight of him in the throes of an overwhelming orgasm and once he’s floating down from nirvana for the second time tonight, he leans down again to kiss those eyes and that prominent nose that he loves so much and those lips that widen into such charismatic smiles that he loves likewise.

Starsky’s fingers are carding through his hair. Starsky is murmuring something against his forehead but he can’t hear what Starsky’s saying and he closes his eyes, just for a while. When he opens them once more, to mere slits, it is dawn and Starsky is already in a black t-shirt and jeans and sitting on the side of the bed putting on red socks. Hutch thinks that this should be the moment he sits up and greets Starsky with a good morning kiss … but something – the same something he saw in Starsky’s eyes last night – is telling him that won’t be a smart move and it perturbs him although he can’t explain why. He lets his eyes droop shut again. He does it in the nick of time for Starsky is turning around on the bed to look at him. He can sense Starsky’s gaze travelling from his face to his neck and bare shoulders, down to his bare chest and then to his flat belly upon which his left forearm and hand are resting above the edge of a blanket. The gaze touches him like a physical caress, like Starsky is literally recording him, piece by piece, into memory forever.

Starsky studies him for some time. Minutes probably, but to Hutch who’s yearning for Starsky’s hands and mouth, for Starsky’s everything, it feels like centuries.

Starsky crawls across the bed, sitting next to him, gazing down at him.

Then, a kiss on his forehead, a kiss of such sweetness and tenderness that beneath his eyelids, his eyes burn wetly.

And then Starsky is slithering off the bed and exiting the cottage soundlessly save for the click of the door, leaving Hutch to stare at it with a heavy heart until the sunlight seeping through the curtains and onto his face can’t be ignored anymore.

& & & & & &

One month, and Hutch has made love to Starsky at least once or more every two to three days throughout that time. Every session begins the same way: Starsky makes the initial move, usually in his cottage, be it a hand gliding its way up Hutch’s thigh to his already hard cock or a glance brimming with lust from those big, sultry eyes or a full body press from behind, Starsky plastering himself to his back and nuzzling the side of his neck and shoulder, and he reacts accordingly. The first couple of times they made love, Hutch had simply seized Starsky’s hand and rushed them both to the bed where he’d tear off Starsky’s clothes and devour every inch of Starsky’s skin he could reach till Starsky was a mindless, helpless, quavering heap of desire, begging him to fuck him fast and hard.

And fuck Starsky fast and hard he does, every time Starsky implores him in that vulnerable, undeniable tone, without fail. Every experience so far has been nothing short of amazing, but their most recent bout of lovemaking, about four days ago, is the one that has stuck in the forefront of Hutch’s mind lately.

Starsky had to go to court that day, to take the stand for a robbery case. He’d worn a suit, a dark grey suit with a red tie the same color as his beloved Torino and damn if Starsky all debonair and professional didn’t get his blood boiling and give him a serious case of sore blue balls. When Starsky did what he had to do and was out of the building and getting into his Ford LTD just before lunch, all it took was one searing glance from Starsky for Hutch to stomp on the accelerator and drive them back to his cottage at Mach 10 speed. (Of course, Starsky would argue that it’s impossible for his car to even reach a mildly dangerous speed before disintegrating into a pile of junk, much less reach Mach 10, but both of them had other much more important matters on their minds then.)

They never made it to the bed. After kicking the front door shut and locking it, Hutch had swept Starsky up into his arms and dashed to the living room and thrown the sputtering guy onto the couch and yanked off Starsky’s shoes, pants and underwear before Starsky could articulate any sensible words. Even as Starsky babbled about the bed being more comfortable and less likely a location for them to fall on their heads or accidentally break something useful, Hutch was manhandling Starsky onto hands and knees on the couch, his cock so fucking hard in his jeans and ready to drill Starsky into the floor at the vision of Starsky’s exposed, well-padded rear sticking up in the air. He dug between the cushions for the tube of lubricant he’d stashed there, pressing his cheek against one side of Starsky’s buttocks, biting it gently when Starsky whined for Hutch to hurry up, doing it again when Starsky cried out and bucked his hips. What a hot, hot man his partner was, so open and receptive towards his every touch and kiss and word.

He lubed himself up but not Starsky, coating his erection liberally and he gave Starsky the chance to just glance over a shoulder at him and then, still fully clad but with jeans unzipped and bunched around his thighs, swathing Starsky on top from head to the back of spread thighs, he aimed his cock at the entrance into Starsky’s lithe body and pushed in, no halting, no hesitation till his groin was flush against Starsky’s bottom. Ooh god, Starsky felt even tighter, and Starsky definitely felt the burn of his relentless thrust, toes curling, moaning loudly and shuddering and arching against him.

Guilt engulfed him immediately.

He hugged Starsky’s clothed torso with his left arm and stammered into Starsky’s ear, “Starsky, I … d-did I hurt you?”

His guilt rocketed at Starsky not answering him and collapsing face forward onto the cushions, arms too weak to hold himself up. Starsky was still shuddering, like a newborn foal incapable of even the effort to stand up, and Hutch began to panic and withdraw.

“No!”

Muffled as it was in a cushion, Starsky’s reply – Starsky’s command – ingrained itself on Hutch’s brain in a millisecond. He arrested all movement, still deep inside Starsky, trembling like Starsky and oh, Starsky is digging fingers into his left hip, encouraging him forward and Starsky’s clutching his left hand now and dragging it down to a cock as unyielding as iron and curving up towards Starsky’s abdomen, enfolding his hand around its throbbing base and oh fuck, Starsky’s hurting, alright, hurting big time for his equally unyielding cock embedded in Starsky’s ass.

“Gonna come. Gonna come so hard my head’s gonna explode,” Starsky murmured, having turned his head to the side, eyelids fluttering and Hutch gave the base of Starsky’s erection a squeeze, not letting go as Starsky abruptly convulsed and whimpered and spurted a tiny amount of pre-come onto his hand.

“You’ll come … when I let you come,” Hutch growled. He was inwardly surprised at the stability of his own voice, surprised that he himself hadn’t already come from feeling Starsky’s muscular, bowed body wracked by a massive almost-orgasm held at bay solely by his left hand. Goddamn, every time he figured there was no way he could be more turned on by his partner, his best friend in the whole world, Starsky just had to blow him away with something even hotter.

“Oh god, oh god, oh Hutch, Hutch, fuck me, Hutch. Fuck me!”

Hutch waited. Panted, waited and then tortured them both for a millennia by pulling out and sliding back in so, so slowly, battling the frantic clenching of Starsky’s inner muscles along his cock with every ounce of willpower he had, resting his upper body on top of Starsky’s and using his right hand to grip Starsky’s waist and hinder Starsky from moving. He took immense satisfaction in seeing Starsky sink pearly teeth into a full lower lip, seeing Starsky’s fingers claw at the couch and hearing Starsky’s carnal hisses and gasps.

Hutch waited, waited for the signal.

“Hutch … please.”

There it was, that one word, whispered so exquisitely. Hutch started to shake, in that really good way when his body was about to burst into swift, heart-drumming action, and then he was tangling his fingers in the collars of Starsky’s white dress shirt and jacket, raising Starsky’s upper body off the cushions, pushing the wet, hot head of his cock at the wrinkled entrance of Starsky’s body once more. Pushing in, in, in, stretching Starsky there and inside and boom, his hips were snapping back and forth, setting a punishing pace, driving a thrashing, hoarsely and incessantly moaning Starsky out of his damn mind.

Oh damn, damndamndamn, Starsky’s ass was clasping his cock so snugly, as if Starsky didn’t want to ever let him go, as if Starsky never wanted this to be over. Starsky’s cock was dripping more and more pre-come, all over his hand and onto the couch and the instant Hutch released Starsky’s cock, the instant his fingers detached themselves from Starsky’s mouth-watering, aching length, Starsky came with the ferocity of a firing cannon, blasting semen all over the velour of the couch and screaming his name to the invisible stars above and oh shit, oh damn, oh fuuuuck, there he went with Starsky, hurtling to the highest level of paradise, pumping falteringly into Starsky who’d collapsed onto the cushions again.

Hutch stayed deep inside, breathless, his instincts compelling him to brace himself on straightened arms to keep his weight off Starsky, shaky as they were. Starsky was motionless, quiet, arms folded under a lax body, legs splayed, the right leg hanging off the couch and trailing the floor. It astonished Hutch that Starsky came so fiercely that he blacked out, astonished and gratified him so much that he could give that much pleasure to Starsky.

I love you, Starsky. I love you.

He traced the length of Starsky’s right leg with his fingertips as he patiently awaited Starsky’s return to consciousness, from the rounded heel of a foot still in its nearly knee-high black sock, up shapely calf muscle, lingering on the smoothness of the back of the knee then up the back of a sturdy thigh with such soft skin on its inner side. He gave Starsky’s right buttock a squeeze, marveling at its suppleness. Feeling steady enough, he lowered himself on top of Starsky, planting affectionate kisses on the nape of Starsky’s neck above the dress shirt’s collar, tonguing the rim of Starsky’s ear. Whispering words of eternal love and devotion into said ear, words Starsky wouldn’t allow him to speak, especially after their physical unions of that love.

When Starsky’s eyes flickered open, Hutch tried to speak them once again, despite knowing the inevitable outcome.

“Starsky, I –“

Once again, Starsky’s fingers were pressed against his lips, hushing him.

“Don’t talk, Hutch. Please.”

Hutch was getting tired of this … avoidance. It just wasn’t like Starsky to shut him up like this when he wanted to share his most intimate thoughts, when he and Starsky talked just fine with each other while on duty and listened to each other and didn’t brush each other off.

“Starsky, why can’t we talk about th-“

“No! Just, no, okay?” Starsky was squirming onto his side beneath him, dislodging him from the haven of Starsky’s bottom and both of them made low noises of disappointment at the separation, Starsky more so. “Please?”

Starsky was gazing up at him with wide, ingenuous eyes now, eyes that beseeched him to comply with that one simple request and Hutch was torn, trapped between longing to demand for answers anyway and respecting Starsky’s entreaty, trapped between a fallen angel and the deep, blue cold.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a minute, their breaths the only sound in the air.

“Okay … okay.”

Upon Hutch’s mumbled reply, Starsky flopped back onto the couch, holding his hands close against a broad chest and drawing him down to lie with his full weight on Starsky’s back. Starsky didn’t object to him kissing his ear and temple and cheek. Neither did Starsky object to him entwining their legs on the cushions like Starsky had entwined their fingers and squashed their hands and forearms between Starsky’s torso and the couch.

Starsky hadn’t objected to anything that didn’t involve talking that day.

Tonight, face to face with Starsky, Hutch is getting really tired of the No Talking About What’s Going On rule.

“So what brings you here tonight, Blondie?”

Here, to be specific, is Starsky’s Ridgeway apartment, with its prints of vintage cars and an actual working traffic light and barber pole and posters on white walls. A place Hutch has visited numerous times since they’ve been partnered up as homicide detectives of the BCPD. A place at which he has eaten numerous meals with Starsky, watched television numerous times with Starsky. Slept over, even, on the couch after exhausting days of cracking cases and too much celebratory drink at night.

A place where Hutch has yet to make love with Starsky.

Until tonight. If Hutch finally gets to call the shots too.

Isn’t that how things are supposed to be between lovers? Aren’t lovers who love each other supposed to be equals?

“Wanted to see you,” Hutch says in a low, husky voice, gazing explicitly at Starsky’s face and strangely, Starsky – attired in a denim shirt half buttoned up and jeans – responds with nothing more than what appears to be a nervous smile and an ambiguous shrug.

“S’always great to have you around,” Starsky says, smile becoming more genuine, becoming blinding and inviting and to Hutch, it is the signal he’s been waiting for. Dying for.

He crosses the living room with hasty steps and embraces Starsky forcefully, his lips seeking out Starsky’s, discovering them parted and moist and so ready for him. Starsky’s hands are flat on his chest, pressing against it and for a second, they seem to Hutch to be trying to jostle him away but that can’t be, they’re lovers and Starsky loves him and absolutely relishes their bouts of lovemaking and oh, oh yeah, Starsky’s arms are going around his shoulders now, around his neck and then they’re on Starsky’s couch, savagely ripping at each other’s clothes.

Hutch flips Starsky onto his back and nibbles and licks and suckles his way down Starsky’s neck and chest and nipples as he unfastens the other buttons of Starsky’s shirt. Four days, just four days and yet it’s as if it’s been hundreds of years since he last tasted Starsky on his tongue or felt Starsky’s chest hair tickling his nose and cheeks or felt Starsky wriggling under him like this, tossing that head of cropped, dark curls on the cushions.

“Oh, Starsky … Starsky, my gorgeous Starsky …”

Starsky’s fingers are in his hair, wrenching it, and Hutch can’t decide if Starsky’s trying to guide him lower down the delicious body displayed before him or trying to pull him away. And why would Starsky do that, why –

“Hutch, please don’t talk, don’t –“

Hutch doesn’t quite hear what Starsky’s saying. He’s totally focused on licking a path down the linea alba of Starsky’s abdomen, following the treasure trail to the copper button and zip of Starsky’s jeans that he pops with his fingers and tugs down with his teeth.

“Do you know how much I think about you, Starsky? How much you mean to me?”

He’s peeled Starsky’s jeans down to mid-thigh, watching Starsky’s erection straining within its cotton confines, watching the stain of pre-come expanding across the snug cloth.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, dreaming about you –“

“Please, don’t –“

“I could be with you like this forev-“

“DON’T!”

Starsky’s yell, so piercing with anger, stabs him in the heart like a sword of ice. Hutch flinches and topples backwards and lands hard on his ass on the living room floor, breathing hard. Starsky is breathing just as harshly, sitting up on the couch, putting some distance between them by drawing up legs squeezed together against a heaving chest, by nestling into the backrest of the couch.

Hutch stares up in silence at a Starsky who won’t look at him for about thirty seconds before his mouth betrays him.

“Don’t what? Don’t what, Starsky?” Hutch asks, his calm tone edged with steel. “Don’t make love to you? Don’t tell you that I lo-“

Starsky’s next yell is even more piercing, jagged and lethal and rending wider the wound to his heart.

“We’re just buddies fucking around! That’s all! It – it doesn’t mean anything, okay?! We’re straight guys, Hutch! We love women!”

Hutch once believed that no pain could ever match the pain he’d felt from his parents’ untimely death but he’s wrong, so very wrong after all for deep within the recesses of his heart, where that sword of ice had stabbed him, is a cold, cold sliver of something terrible and powerful that has been biding its time for reemergence. Biding its time for the day its owner suffers that horrible, horrible pain again – that pain of the permanent loss of love and completeness – the day it receives its opportunity to grow and grow and encase the heart in which it’s entrenched and turn it cold and strong and free of pain.

Free of everything.

“Buddies fucking around,” he says, calm as ever though the edge is gone, staring at a spot on the couch next to Starsky’s elbow. “Just buddies.”

“Hutch, we – we’re straight. We’re not gay.”

“Yes … You’re right. We’re buddies. That’s … good enough.” From far, far away, Hutch senses Starsky’s head snapping up towards him, but he continues to stare at that spot on the couch, frozen in his pose. Frozen inside. “I’m sorry. It was my mistake.”

“Hutch?”

Starsky sounds so small. So … lost.

Hutch stands up in a single, elegant movement, not glancing once in Starsky’s direction. He smooths down his white t-shirt and buttons up his flannel shirt as he saunters away from the couch towards the apartment front door, his back straight, his head held high and his shoulders squared. He is eerily composed, eerily devoid of any emotion, even fury. Even sorrow.

“Hutch!”

Hutch’s hand is on the door knob, but he turns around, his face shadowed. He sees Starsky standing a dozen feet away, jeans zipped up, denim shirt still spread open, still exhibiting that incredible, well-built body, a body he’ll never make love to again.

Truly, a fallen angel.

“Hey, hey, look, you – you don’t have to go.” Starsky takes a few steps towards him, then wavers, crossing fidgety arms over that furry chest he’ll never caress again. “How about we grab something to eat and –“

“I think it’s best that I leave now.”

“Oh. Yeah … okay.”

Hutch doesn’t understand why Starsky is hugging himself like that, like Starsky’s this close to splintering into a multitude of shards when none of this means anything to Starsky. Just buddies who were fucking around, right? Isn’t that what Starsky said himself?

Hutch turns back to the door and opens it. The illumination from the rows of houses surrounding Starsky’s apartment is soaking into the night sky above, tinting the darkness with orange and yellow. It looks to be another serene, uneventful night for Starsky’s neighborhood.

“Hutch!”

Hutch doesn’t turn around this time.

“We … we’re still pals, right?” A pause, and then Starsky asks in an oddly croaky voice, “We’re still partners, right?”

“Of course we are.”

There is a miniscule part of Hutch, a part rapidly vanishing beneath a stratum of snow, that is astounded at the evenness, the coolness of his voice. Coolness as blistering as permafrost.

“I’ll – I’ll pick you up tomorrow?”

“Sure. See you tomorrow.” Hutch turns his head to the side, just a bit. “Good night, Starsky.”

The click of the door shutting behind him echoes with a blunt finality. He walks down the stairs to the ground floor unhurriedly, staring fixedly ahead at a blurry world as he passes Starsky’s Torino to his battered car. He feels nothing, nothing at all, and curses the frigid wind of summer for the stinging of his eyes and the rain from an unclouded, starlit sky for the dampness spilling down his face.

& & & & & &

Five years, gone in the blink of an eye. Five years, and Hutch’s heart resides in a fortress of impenetrable ice surrounded by vast gardens of snow, untouched save for the rare occasions when Hutch had foolishly permitted himself to consider a future – a house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids, a pet dog or two and all that – with a girlfriend. A girlfriend like Jeannie, beautiful Jeannie with her flowing, blonde hair who’d been a drug lord’s former girl, a drug lord who forced her to return to him by stringing Hutch out on heroin. A girlfriend like Abby, sweet Abby with whom he thought he had an actual shot at for some sort of happiness, who left him after psycho killer Tommy Marlowe assaulted her in Hutch’s apartment and replaced her love with fear.

A girlfriend like Gillian, lovely Gillian with hair as thick and blonde as Jeannie’s, who’d turned out to be a prostitute giving other men handjobs and blowjobs and her body behind his back. A girlfriend who was murdered in cold blood in her own apartment and discovered that way by Starsky.

Starsky, whom he had punched across the face for daring to tell him the truth about her.

Starsky, who had then embraced him with open arms and comforted him while he cried.

Starsky, his partner. His best friend.

His friend, just a friend. Nothing more. Starsky has certainly reminded him of that, time and again, with his own share of women. Beautiful women, all of them, beautiful, appealing, curvaceous and female. Always female, and nothing at all like Hutch, and Hutch is fine with that. Hutch is grateful for that. Starsky deserves someone he can love, someone he can marry, who can bear him children and live with him and their children and a pet dog or two in a house in the suburbs. Not Hutch. Hutch can’t give him any of that.

Starsky’s his friend. Just a friend, nothing more, and if Hutch ever risks committing the ultimate idiocy of even thinking about Starsky as more than a friend again, all Hutch has to do is recall Starsky’s poorly reined-in aversion when Starsky’s childhood mentor and their friend, Lieutenant John Blaine, was outed as a closeted homosexual after he was suffocated to death in a seedy motel and they had to interview Blaine’s lover, Peter Whitelaw, a former teacher running for public office. The way Starsky had gaped at Whitelaw’s banners exclaiming ‘A gay candidate for a straight deal!’, the way Starsky blatantly did his damnest to avoid looking at Whitelaw, like he itched to get the hell away from the homosexual man, had made it very tempting to Hutch to say some choice words to Starsky.

Like, hey Starsky, scared people will take one look at you and know how much you loved getting fucked hard and fast in the ass?

But as quickly as he thought them, Hutch had mortared the damning words with a planet’s worth of snow and entombed them into non-existence. No. No, no thinking of Starsky in that way. Not anymore.

And should Hutch still forget that, Starsky has no qualms about reminding him of it whenever he gets too near for Starsky’s comfort to Starsky’s ass. Starsky would snarl at him, “What are you doing back there?” or stiffen up or recoil from him as if his mere presence scalds Starsky. It doesn’t happen often. Sporadically at best, Hutch admits with relief, and it hasn’t happened for a long time now but he remembers each incident as vividly as when they occurred and slathers more snow upon those memories every time his mind evokes them against his will.

Sometimes, thinking about not thinking about Starsky as more than friend has a habit of making him think even more about the what ifs of his life. Like, what if John Blaine hadn’t been killed and outed as a gay man leading a double life? What if Starsky had never found out his childhood mentor was gay? What if Hutch had kept his big, dumb mouth shut instead of asking Starsky whether two guys like them, who spend seventy-five percent of all their time together, have such tendencies too?

What if Hutch had kept his big, dumb mouth shut and not joked that Starsky wasn’t even a good kisser?

Damn, the way Starsky had glared at him after retorting, “How do you know that?” and he’d glanced back at Starsky and seen the livid challenge in Starsky’s big blue eyes, daring him to dredge up that talk that never came to pass years ago in Starsky’s old Ridgeway apartment. Daring him to accuse Starsky of being a closeted homosexual too, or accuse them both of being closeted homosexuals, hiding in the lonely dark, convincing themselves the dark was good enough.

Well, Starsky could have the darkness in the closet all to himself.

Hutch had his fortress of ice and its vast gardens of snow, and nothing could touch him as long as he was there and that was good enough for him.

Nothing, not even Starsky’s graphic gloating the very next morning in the squad room, in full hearing of every other cop there, about a really hot and heavy night with some random woman he met at some club whom Starsky never spoke about again.

No worries, buddy. Got the message loud and clear.

Then there was Meredith, Starsky’s temporary partner when Hutch was shot in the shoulder by a girl whose heart was even colder than Hutch’s, a young black woman Starsky had also gloated to him about having had a hot and heavy night with while he was still recovering in the hospital. He had said nothing in reply. Had not asked Starsky what Starsky would say if he replaced his partner with someone else.

Then there was Kira, yet another woman in Starsky’s life who inevitably hurt the guy, a woman Hutch had fucked after Starsky had told him that he loved her and no, no, damnit, he had not fucked her because he was jealous of Starsky loving her and not him.

Then, there was the shooting in the Metro’s car park, and Hutch’s fortress had endured months and months of nonstop onslaught against its icy ramparts while doctors and surgeons waged war with death and infection for Starsky’s life and sewed Starsky back up like a rag doll and helped the severely injured man the best they could to heal and return to a former semblance of himself. When Starsky’s heart had stopped on the day of the shooting, the fortress hadn’t caved in. Instead, it had frozen up even more, cutting off all light and air to Hutch’s heart and Hutch would have died too if Starsky’s heart had not resumed beating once more the moment he laid eyes on Starsky again, laid his hand on the glass partition separating him from his comatose partner.

Perhaps portions of Hutch’s heart had died that day, from lack of something more precious than light or air.  Perhaps something that had once been beautiful and good had died that day along with Starsky and hadn’t come back with Starsky, something that used to make their relationship – no, friendship, friendship – work so efficiently and winningly because they definitely aren’t functioning in sync anymore and they definitely aren’t in tune with each other anymore.

It has been almost six months since Starsky’s reinstatement as a BCPD homicide detective, and Hutch is no longer sure how long he can endure this extra-tetchy, morose, antagonistic version of his partner who seems to find a perverse delight in pissing him off for no reason whatsoever. Like Starsky can’t stand his physical presence. Like Starsky wants to drive him away and preserve a respectable distance between them after months of him hanging around Starsky throughout Starsky’s arduous recuperation. Like Starsky is fighting him, fighting him when there isn’t a conflict to begin with, or fighting something that has to do with him.

It makes no fucking sense to Hutch at all. None of it.

And Starsky thinks he’s the weird one?

“So whaddaya say, Hutch?”

Starsky is unexpectedly well-behaved today, busy abusing the typewriter instead and banging on its keys to write up a report for their larger-than-life captain. 

“To what?”

“To some pizza and a movie tomorrow night.”

The tip of the pen Hutch is writing with skids to a halt on white, lined paper. Hutch stares down at the squiggle, his mind blank for a minute. Starsky, asking him out for pizza? And a movie?

God, how long has it been since Starsky asked him out? Since Starsky asked him over to his place? Weeks? Months?

And why does it have to be tomorrow night, the very night he’s unavailable and definitely can’t cancel his plans?

As Hutch reaches for a bottle of Liquid Paper next to his notepad, he continues to stare down at the squiggle and says, “Sorry, can’t do tomorrow night.”

The banging of the typewriter’s keys doesn’t decelerate.

“Why not?”

Hutch’s mind goes blank for the second time. Shit, he hadn’t anticipated that question, and he isn’t sure how to frame his answer. He’s successfully evaded telling Starsky about his girlfriend – his steady girlfriend, Stacey – for at least three weeks now and the squad room is not where he wants to go into details about her, not when this is the first time Starsky will hear about her.

Not when this is the very first time he has kept a girlfriend secret from Starsky.

But he can’t lie to Starsky for long. He just doesn’t know how. (Well, except when Starsky double-clutches him into a truck, which isn’t what’s occurring at the moment.)

“Got a date,” he says, hoping Starsky will drop the issue.

“Yeah? Met a new girl?”

Squeezing out some white-out liquid over the damn squiggle, still not looking at Starsky, Hutch replies, “Depends on your definition of new.”

Starsky’s typewriter goes silent.

There is a gravid pause, a pause chock-full of something that discourages Hutch even more from glancing up.

Then Starsky says quietly, “You been seeing someone for a while?”

Hutch sighs and glances up at the other man at last. Starsky is poker-faced, revealing nothing on those attractive features.

“Yeah. About three weeks.” Hutch scratches the back of his head and adds, “Met her at a vegetarian grocery.”

Starsky doesn’t snicker. Starsky remains poker-faced.

“Oh … Well. That’s great.” The banging of typewriter keys recommences, and it’s probably just Hutch’s imagination that Starsky is forcing the keys down harder, angrier, and that Starsky’s tone has developed a subtle acidity. “It just figures, a vegetarian grocery. Takes a freak to know another freak.”

A riposte almost flies off Hutch’s tongue at Starsky referring to Stacey as a ‘freak’, but he detects the ends of Starsky’s lips slightly curving up and the terse words in his mouth perish and yield to a small smile of his own. It also just figures that Starsky still abhors vegetarian food. Guess some things really never change.

Hutch doesn’t think much about his knee-jerk reaction to Starsky’s comment until they’re sitting side by side in his LTD during a boring night stakeout on 4^th and Main a week later. Starsky is asking him out for food and a movie again, with an outwardly casual voice, and Hutch cusses internally at the coincidence of him having already confirmed a date with Stacey on the night Starsky’s chosen.

Starsky swiftly and accurately concludes from his hesitancy that he won’t be able to make it this time as well.

“Got a date with your lady again?”

“Yeah,” Hutch says with a sincere shade of regret. He truly wants to have a night out with Starsky. Just the two of them, painting the town red and having a ball, like the old days. It’s been so long that he can’t hark back to the last time they did that.

Wasn’t there a time when he wouldn’t have thought twice about shelving a date if it meant spending quality time alone with Starsky?

Wasn’t there a time when Starsky would have done the same for him?

Wasn’t there a time when he wouldn’t have thought twice of telling Starsky about the latest girlfriend, about her bodily attributes and her character and the little quirks that make her who she is? Of asking Starsky his opinion of her, to see whether Starsky likes what he’s heard and seen or not?

But now, it’s … different. Now they’re different. Now Hutch doesn’t even know if Starsky is seeing anyone either, or if Starsky’s mad at him for not spilling the beans about Stacey earlier or if Starsky’s just plain mad at him for something he’s done, something that’s hurting Starsky and wait a minute, shouldn’t he be the one who’s mad at Starsky, mad at the stubborn, infuriating guy for ending their –

No. No, no, no. Not going there, Hutchinson. No.

While Hutch piles on snow by the ton across his mental landscape, Starsky murmurs, “So what’s her name?”

Hutch blinks and turns his head to gaze at Starsky. Starsky is staring forwards through the windshield, face unreadable. Hutch finds it rather perturbing to see Starsky – normally so animated and energetic – so … static instead. Like a television showing a snowy noise pattern.

“Stacey. Stacey Davis.”

“What’s she do?”

“She does administrative work. For Bank of America.”

“Oh.”

“She likes burritos.”

“Vegetarian burritos, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Vegetarian burritos aren’t real burritos.”

Glancing out the side window, Hutch smiles at the playful defiance in Starsky’s tone. There he is, there’s the Starsky he knows.

“Maybe you can tell her that yourself,” he replies mildly, hoping Starsky will acknowledge the memo between the lines.

Starsky says nothing for a long while. When Hutch looks at the other man again, he sees that Starsky is still staring out the windshield although Starsky has folded his arms over his chest now. Still straight-faced.

“Were you ever gonna tell me about her?”

The quietness of Starsky’s voice, the letdown vibrating from it, leaves a scratch – a grave one – on one wall of his icy fortress. Resentment, annoyance, he’d envisaged, but not this.

“Yes. I was. I just … I just wasn’t sure how to go about it.”

“Why?”

Hutch rubs at his forehead with a forefinger.

Because I don’t know who you are anymore. Because I don’t know who WE are anymore. Because I don’t know why you’re always so angry at me, why you seem to be doing everything you can to keep me away and yet act hurt when I don’t share my personal life with you and decline your offers of food and movies.

Because you … hate me now.

Do you, Starsk?

Please say no.

But Hutch says, “I guess I wanted to wait until I was – I was sure about her.”

It’s probably Hutch’s imagination again, that the temperature in the car suddenly plummets several degrees and that Starsky has frozen in his seat. That’s his gig, isn’t it? To be frozen and strong and free of everything?

Hutch has no idea why the mere notion of Starsky frozen and emotionless causes something in the alcove of his left chest to ache appallingly.

“You talking wedding bells here, Blintz?”

Starsky is staring at him now, stunned, eyes wide and lips parted.

Hutch has no idea, either, why Starsky calling him by a mere nickname causes that thing in his left chest to ache even more. How long has it been since Starsky has called him with fond monikers like that? How long?

“It’s … possible,” Hutch mumbles. It is a truthful answer. Yeah, okay, it’s true he hadn’t considered marriage at all when he met Stacey for the first time. Not when she smiled at him and he smiled back and they ended up strolling the aisles of the vegetarian grocery together, chatting away about healthy foods and regimens and where you can buy the best cranberry spinach salad in town, trading recipes for sweet potato casseroles, trading phone numbers. Not even when they had sex for the first time on Stacey’s bed in her bungalow home on Alabama Street in Willowbrook, or the second time two days later on her sofa as the radio played soothing blues.

No, he’d considered marriage with Stacey only when he talked to her about Starsky for the first time (except that one month, of course, that one month he should never be thinking about again) and vented his frustrations over Starsky’s unexplainable ill-treatment of him for the past six to seven months and Stacey had said kindly to him, “He’s hurting, Ken. He’s been through a lot. I can tell just from what you’ve said that he cares a lot about you, and you him. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to tell you that he’s hurting inside,” and then, “I’d like to meet David. He sounds like a good guy.”

None of his previous girlfriends had ever wholly accepted Starsky as an integral part of his life, of his future. Certainly not his ex-wife Vanessa, god rest her soul despite that last selfish act she pulled on him that nearly cost him his job and his freedom and Starsky who’d been willing to do jail time with him, such was Starsky’s loyalty.

How can he not care for Stacey? Stacey, who understands him and his foibles? His dedication to his partner?

“Oh. Wow.”

Starsky sounds dazed. Hutch can’t blame the guy for feeling that way.

“It’s just a possibility right now, Starsky. Nothing concrete.”

Hutch rubs at his forehead again, staring out the windshield as well.

“I wanna meet her, Hutch.”

It’s Hutch’s turn to stare at Starsky’s profile instead.

“Really? Y-you really want to meet her?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Starsky says. Starsky is smiling, that sideways smile that makes him appear a youthful imp. “I mean, the future Mrs. Hutchinson.”

“Just a possibility, Starsky,” Hutch reiterates, but he’s also smiling, glad that Starsky is okay with him being in a relationship with Stacey. Okay with them being married one day, even. “Why don’t you join us for dinner?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Stacey really wants to meet you too. She’s great. You guys will hit it off, I’m sure of it.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

Hutch leans his head back on the headrest. He stares out the windshield once more like Starsky is, already conjuring up images of the three of them bantering and laughing together over dinner at The Pits tomorrow night, absolutely unaware of Starsky’s left hand – concealed from his sight by the folding of Starsky’s arms – compressed into a fist so tight that the fingernails are burrowing deep into skin, breaking and bleeding it.

& & & & & &

Starsky is atypically subdued. Scarcely eating his linguine and clams, and Hutch struggles with the urge to ask Starsky if Huggy’s linguine and clams is just that awful or if the dish is reminding Starsky of the night he got shot in the back in that Italian restaurant by hitmen hoping to knock off a mob boss, Vic Monte.

“Stacey, did I ever tell you about the time Starsky double-clutched me into a truck?” he says to Stacey who’s attired in a divine, sleeveless red dress and sitting between him and Starsky at the round table upon which their meals are served. Not intentionally, since he was the one who’d dragged out the chair for her and then sat himself across the table from Starsky. Not intentionally.

Stacey grins at him and shakes her head. Hutch glances at Starsky, expecting Starsky to be grinning along and getting all riled up about how Hutch had tricked him into believing he had severe amnesia and cunningly prompted him to tell stories about their past escapades, but Starsky is just … sitting there. Coiling cooling linguine round and round the spines of a fork and not eating the pasta or the clams. Just sitting there not looking at Stacey, like he wants to sprint out of the place like a bat out of hell before they even sat down but can’t. That would be damn rude, in any case.

Hutch doesn’t understand what’s going on with Starsky tonight. At all.

The evening had started fine enough, at least to Hutch. He’d picked up Stacey from her house and driven straight to The Pits since Starsky had informed him he was going there in the Torino. Stacey had no problem with the arrangements. She wanted to see Starsky’s car anyway, to see with her own eyes the mythical Torino Hutch had spoken about so often to her. She has a thing for cars like Starsky does, which is another reason Hutch had been so convinced yesterday she and Starsky would connect.

Starsky had shown up a couple of minutes after them, parking the Torino behind his LTD in front of Huggy’s bar and bistro as they were getting out of the car, and Stacey had greeted Starsky with that charming smile and hugged Starsky and then cooed over the Torino, genuinely appreciating the vehicle. If Hutch hadn’t been standing a distance away to observe the interaction between his girlfriend and Starsky, he would very likely have missed seeing the way Starsky had gone rigid upon laying eyes on Stacey for the first time. The way Starsky had gawked at her as if Starsky couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, the way Starsky’s smile had diminished once Stacey shifted her attention to the Torino.

Maybe it’s the coincidence that Starsky is also wearing red – a red t-shirt, to be exact – that’s caused Starsky to behave so bizarrely. Or maybe Starsky knows her, or knows something about her but if that’s the case, Starsky would have reacted upon hearing her name and details last night. Starsky hadn’t, so it probably isn’t that.

Whatever it is, Hutch wishes he knew it, if only to lift this fog of inexplicable melancholy off Starsky. His best friend. Who won’t look him in the eye.

To Hutch’s dismay, Huggy’s appearance at their table ends up exacerbating that melancholy.

“Well, well, and who is this beaaaaaautiful lady in red?” Huggy drawls, already bowing graciously and giving the top of Stacey’s right hand a chivalrous peck that sends Stacey giggling with delight. Or maybe just giggling in amusement at Huggy’s flamboyant neon purple-on-orange and yellow suit and its polka-dot tie. Probably the latter.

“Huggy, I’d like you to meet Stacey, my girlfriend. Stacey, this is Huggy Bear, the owner of this fine establishment.”

“A fine, classy and truly one-of-a-kind establishment,” Huggy adds, and when Hutch jests, “Yeah, Huggy, where else can you get fresh salmonella on rye?”, it takes Huggy a few seconds to realize what Hutch had said. By the time he does, Stacey is giggling again and Huggy is directing a mock glower at Hutch and Starsky is … not laughing at all.

“This spinach lasagna is delicious, Huggy,” Stacey says.

Huggy brightens up in a flash, smiling broadly at her.

“Why, thank you! I made it myself.” Huggy bends down between Hutch and Stacey to stage whisper to them, “I’m thinking of including it in my menu, for my esteemed vegetarian customers. What do you think of that?”

Hutch snorts, then says, “Ten bucks says I’ll be the only regular customer of yours who’ll touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

“Now, Ken, for all you know, if Huggy does add it to his menu along with other vegetarian dishes, it might encourage more vegetarians to dine here!”

Huggy looks at Stacey with twinkling eyes. Then, he turns his head to look at Hutch and says with a smile, “I like the way she thinks, Hutch.”

Hutch chuckles with Huggy and Stacey … and is excruciatingly conscious of the fact that Starsky hasn’t uttered a word. Huggy is, also, for Huggy straightens up and says to Starsky with mock distress, “Starsky! You haven’t eaten a single mouthful of your linguine and clams! I cooked that myself too, you know! Is it really bogue or something?”

Starsky seems startled by Huggy’s interjection, jerking out of a reverie, and blushes when it dawns on him that Hutch, Huggy and Stacey are gazing at him with inquiring eyes. Starsky clears his throat and hurriedly says, “Sorry, Huggy. It’s good, really. It’s good. I’m just … not feeling too well today. That’s all.”

On their own volition, Hutch’s eyes scrutinize Starsky’s face, noting the gauntness that wasn’t there before, the paleness of Starsky’s pursed lips, the disturbing murkiness in the depths of Starsky’s heavy-lidded eyes. The dark moons under those eyes, as if Starsky hasn’t had a decent night’s slumber in ages.

What’s going on, buddy?

What’s happening to you? To us?

“You are looking a little pale around the edges,” Huggy comments like he’d read Hutch’s mind. Huggy smacks Hutch on the shoulder. “This blond turkey here making you do all the work now that he’s a national hero? Hutch! Starsky only got back on the streets six months ago! Give the poor man a break!”

Starsky smiles. It’s one of those wide, extraordinary smiles. One Hutch has missed acutely, for a very long time.

“Nah,” Starsky murmurs, and then the smile fades, a cloud blocking out that inner sun. “S’got nothing to do with work.”

Then, Huggy is chatting with Stacey about popular vegetarian dishes, but Hutch doesn’t hear any of the conversation because Starsky is finally gazing at him and all of a sudden, all the noise in the world dwindles into a hush and there’s no one and nothing in the world except them, just the two of them, staring into each other’s eyes. There is a light in Starsky’s eyes now, a peculiar light. An unsettling light, the sort you only see when the universe is about to cease its existence and all the suns in it have exploded and died and become empty husks, never to shine again.

Starsky is smiling once more. It is a smile Hutch has never seen before. It’s cataclysmic, devastating as a supernova in spite of how tender it appears, how unguarded it is with its toothless, slight curve and … and sound is returning, but it is a ghastly sound. A deafening, droning sound that’s saying to Hutch, there’s no turning back.

A ghastly sound saying to Hutch, this is the end.

A ghastly sound saying, goodbye.

“Hey, Huggy, ya know you’re talking to the future Mrs. Hutchinson?”

Hutch stares at Starsky who is no longer gazing or smiling at him. He thinks he’s shaking his head, thinks he’s saying no, he’s not, she’s not, and he thinks that they’ve heard him and all this confusion is just a straightforward issue of misinterpretation and … Huggy is grinning at him, brown eyes wide with surprise. No, oh no –

“You don’t say! Hutch, my man, is your other half for real or is he just playing me for a fool?”

“He’s –“

“Geez, Huggy, ya gotta ask? They’re both vegetarian weirdos! What else do you need to know? It’s a match made in heaven.”

Hutch begins to scratch his right eyebrow with his thumbnail. A subconscious tic. A tic that’s just the tip of a goddamn iceberg of more no and oh no and no, that’s not true, Starsky, why did you say that, why –

“Well, congratulations, Hutch! That is off the hook! Why didn’t you say anything?!”

He doesn’t feel Huggy’s triumphant slap to his upper back. He doesn’t feel anything, not even when he glances at Stacey and sees that she isn’t looking at him but at Starsky half-heartedly chewing on a forkful of cold linguine, the peculiar light in her eyes now.

What is she seeing, looking at Starsky with that light in her empathetic eyes?

What is she seeing that he can’t see?

“Sorry, lady and gents,” Huggy abruptly says to them, peering over their heads at the bar. “I think dear Anita is in some need of assistance. You’ll have to excuse me. Peace.”

Starsky waves him off, and before Hutch can even mentally exclaim, no, Huggy, you got it wrong, you got to listen to me, Huggy is gone, darting to the bar on sprightly feet to handle a dispute between his head waitress and an irritated, obviously drunk patron.

“Hey, uh, I think I gotta take a rain check.”

Starsky has folded his napkin and set it on the table next to a three quarter-full plate of pasta and clams. Hutch blinks, flits his gaze between Starsky’s averted face and Starsky’s barely consumed food. It’s a rare thing, Starsky not finishing a meal. A bad thing.

“Are you alright, David?”

Stacey is resting the fingers of her right hand on Starsky’s forearm. A gentle touch of compassion.

“Yeah, yeah, I just … don’t feel so good,” Starsky replies, sending her a smile, a wobbly one that makes Hutch wish to shut his eyes and swallow visibly. “Think it’s better if I go home now.” 

“Maybe Ken can drive you home if you really don’t –“

“No! No, it’s okay, Stacey. Really.” Something inside Hutch skips a beat at Starsky winking at them as Starsky stands up and smooths down the lapels of his black leather jacket. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds be. Nobody likes a third wheel, I know. Don’t worry about me. Enjoy yourselves, ‘kay?”

“It was nice meeting you, David. Ken and I will be holding you to that rain check!”

Starsky sends them another smile – a more persuasive smile – and then, Starsky is gone too, practically running out of the joint before Hutch can even think, no, Starsky, wait, stay. Hutch watches Starsky’s brusque exit through the front entry doors, unaware of Stacey doing the same or of the contemplative, discerning glint in her eyes. Unaware as well of Huggy doing the same, or of the concern in his eyes for his two longtime friends who are becoming less and less friends of each other.

“Is he going to be alright?”

Stacey’s question dumbfounds him. She’d said it in a tone he’s unconfident of processing, a tone asking him something else entirely … and he doesn’t know what.

He tells her the first sensible answer that springs to mind, “Yeah, I’m sure he will. He’s a tough guy. He’ll be good as new come Monday.”

“Hmm.”

Hutch feels as if he’s just failed a test he didn’t know he’d been given, and he doesn’t know why.

“Hey.” He reaches across the table to grasp her delicate hand. “I know Starsky. I’ve known him a long time. I know when he’s really ill, and I’d never let him be alone if he was. Especially not after the – after what happened at the Metro. I’ll call him later, okay?”

Stacey squeezes his hand once.

“Okay,” she says, smiling at him, dazzling as a star.

And with relief flooding through him, Hutch sighs and smiles into her big blue eyes, and elevates his hand to caress her thick, dark curls.

& & & & & &

Starsky’s side of their desk is vacant. There’s nothing on it. Not a single pencil, paper, paperclip or eraser. Not even the Porky Pig piggy bank.

Hutch stares at the emptiness, at the Starsky-shaped void, and he can’t comprehend it. The last time he’d sat here at their section of the squad room desk, Starsky’s side was jam-packed with all sorts of junk, like piles of case files and random papers strewn all over the table top and food wrappers and their mugs of coffee and even toys. You just have to look at a desk to know Starsky had been there.

But today, there’s nothing. Nada. Bupkis. Just the dark grey, nonglossy surface of the desk.

It’s like Starsky was never there.

Like Starsky’s just … ceased to exist.

Hutch stares at the emptiness some more. Then, in a trance-like state, he glances around the room at the other detectives occupying it, searching their shuttered faces for an explanation for this Starsky-shaped void that has materialized out of nowhere. All of them are dodging his eyes, uncharacteristically engaged with their paperwork, unforthcoming with any sympathetic words, much less enlightenment. Even Simmons and Babcock, the resident clowns of the squad, are downcast and speechless and only sneak inquisitive glances at him when they think he’s not looking at them.

What the hell is going on here? What the hell is going on, that he saw Starsky just last Friday – a good day in which they’d arrested a sibling pair of robbers who’d been targeting grocery stores owned by people of ethnic minorities – and Starsky’s stuff was very much still where they always were, on the opposite side of the desk from his?

Hutch waits, but he receives nothing from his fellow detectives. Just the clearing of throats. Rustling of papers. The squeaking of pen tips on paper.

The door of Dobey’s office swings open.

“Hutchinson. Get in here.”

Dobey isn’t roaring. Dobey is speaking softly, like something horrendous has occurred, like the end of the world – Hutch’s world – and Hutch is frightened, very much so, of obeying his captain and walking into Dobey’s office to learn firsthand about the horror.

He does it anyway.

“Close the door.”

As Hutch does so, the snow starts to fall onto the vast gardens of permafrost within him, and more ice is freezing around the fortress in which his heart still resides. Preparing for its worst blitzkrieg yet.

Dobey motions to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Hutch sits on the left chair, bolt upright, forearms on the armrests. He mutely observes Dobey settling back in his chair behind his desk and spending a minute or two skimming through some folders and sighing heavily to himself. Dobey won’t look at him.

The snowfall grows denser.

Out of the blue, Dobey smacks his right hand on the table top and leans forward and stares Hutch in the eye.

“You going to tell me what’s going on between you and Starsky?”

Hutch’s brows furrow into a frown of puzzlement.

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

Hutch is telling the truth. He seriously has no clue what Dobey is querying, since he and Starsky have been getting along better lately. Gone is the extra-tetchy, morose, antagonistic version of his partner who had seemed to find a perverse delight in pissing him off for no reason whatsoever, gone and supplanted by a Starsky more like the Starsky he knew. A more levelheaded and considerate Starsky, a nicer Starsky who isn’t jumping down his throat at the drop of a hat anymore or aggravating him without cause, who has dutifully picked him up every morning and driven him home in the evening for the past two weeks.

In all the years they’ve been partners, Starsky has never done that before.

It has to be an indication of improvement in their friendship.

Right?

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Hutchinson. You telling me that there’s nothing wrong between you two?!”

Hutch stares back at Dobey. He’s at quite a loss for words, and privately, he wonders if this is just another straightforward issue of misinterpretation. Either that, or maybe Dobey’s having a really bad day today and has simply mistaken Hutch and Starsky for another set of partners who’re having troubles or –

“If there’s nothing wrong, tell me why the hell Starsky asked for a transfer and a new partner!”

It isn’t a blitzkrieg that assails Hutch’s fortress. It’s a cudgel of fire, a cudgel bigger than anything the fortress has ever dealt with, a gargantuan weapon that bludgeons suddenly fragile ice barricades and smashes straight through to the shielded heart in its core. Mashing and razing it to a bloody, charred pulp.

Dobey is still staring at him. Awaiting an explanation, from him, but all Hutch sees is Starsky sitting in the driver’s seat of the Torino, gazing at him as he says good night to Starsky and climbs out of the car, for the last time. Gazing at him with those big blue eyes, and smiling at him, that smile he’d seen at The Pits during their dinner with Stacey. That smile of suns dying and universes ending … that smile with that deafening, ghastly sound that Hutch is hearing once more, reverberating inside his skull.

There’s no turning back.

This is the end.

Goodbye.

Hutch and Dobey continue to stare at each other across the room in tense silence for another minute, Hutch blindly so. Then, slowly, Dobey straightens up, his authoritative features going slack with comprehension. Dobey pinches the skin between his eyes.

“I’m going to kill him,” Dobey mutters to himself.

Hutch says nothing to that. His eyes are seeing Starsky’s Torino still parked by the sidewalk in front of Venice Place as he ambles to the entry leading up to his apartment, parked there as if Starsky is watching him walk away and out of sight.

As if Starsky wants to see as much as of him as possible. Before he can’t anymore.

”He didn’t tell you, did he?”

Snow is falling again, cold and merciless, across a noiseless, wrecked cerebral land scattered with colossal chunks of ice, remnants of the towering fortress that had taken years – a lifetime – to construct. Beneath one of these chunks of ice lies Hutch’s heart, cowering in its shadow, shocked senseless by the carnage. Shocked by the damage it’s sustained, an abysmal corroding of its flesh that won’t stop no matter how much snow it rolls in.

It’s burning, burning till it’s numb and dead.

“No, sir,” Hutch murmurs eventually, his back ramrod straight, his eyes wide and typhlotic. Feeling nothing. Nothing at all.

Dobey sighs heavily yet again, then says, “Starsky submitted a request for a transfer out of Homicide three weeks ago. He wouldn’t say a thing to me when I asked him about it.” A long pause, after which Dobey asks benevolently, “You’re honestly telling me there’s nothing wrong between you two? Nothing going on I ought to know about?”

Something very much like hysterical laughter almost gurgles its way out of Hutch’s dry mouth.

Sure, Captain, Starsky and I were lovers for a whole month about five years ago. It was the best month of my life, Captain, because I thought Starsky loved me the same way I loved him and I thought I’d finally found the Real Deal and that he and I were going to be forever but, hey, guess what, we were just buddies fucking around and it was my mistake for assuming it was anything more than that and now Starsky doesn’t even want to be my partner anymore. Talk about your typical shitty Hutchinson luck, huh?

But Hutch just says, “I … don’t know, sir.”

Dobey scratches the side of his head, sighs another time and then picks up one of the files on his desk and holds it out towards Hutch.

“This is the file on your new partner. He’s coming in the day after tomorrow. Be here at nine.”

Hutch gets to his feet by placing his hands on his chair’s armrests and pushing himself up. His hands aren’t shaking, no, they aren’t, and neither are his knees weak and rickety as he takes the folder from Dobey. It’s undeniable this time that Dobey is avoiding eye contact.

Hutch shuffles to the door. His feet have become so cumbersome, like they weigh a thousand pounds each, but Hutch doesn’t look down at them. He can’t. He’ll fall if he does, fall and just not get up again.

“I’m taking you off the roster for today and tomorrow.”

Hutch doesn’t turn around and opens the door without a word.

“Go home, Hutch. That’s an order.”

The kindness in Dobey’s gruff voice is the last thing he wants to hear. It singes him, singes that dead thing inside him.

The click of the door shutting behind him echoes in the spookily quiet squad room. Hutch doesn’t notice the curious glances aimed at him as he shuffles past the long desk still occupied by other detectives. Doesn’t hear the scrape of chair legs against the floor, as Simmons begins to stand up and call out to him only to be shushed by Babcock who shakes his head in negation of Simmons’ intended action.

He doesn’t sense the polished wood of the squad room doors under his hand as he shoves them open and shuffles through them. He doesn’t sense the polished floor underneath his feet as he shuffles down the staircases and hallways to the main entrance, or the cement as he shuffles to his LTD parked by the sidewalk. He doesn’t sense the steering wheel in his hands as he drives away from the Metro, as he drives and drives and drives till the sun is setting and his lips are cracked from dehydration and his eyes are prickling and his cheeks are mystifyingly damp. Damn, is there a hole in the LTD’s roof or something? Is it raining?

He doesn’t remember arriving at Venice Place. He doesn’t remember coming in from the dark, switching on the lamp on the side table by the couch in the living room. Doesn’t remember sitting on aforementioned couch. Staring at the phone, at its black buttons with their white numbers, picturing himself jabbing a very familiar series of numbers and saying to the other person on the line, what the hell is going on, Starsky, what the HELL is going on with you, with US?!

But there is no us anymore. He’s gotten Starsky’s message loud and clear, and Hutch stays where he is, staring at the phone for a very long time and cursing his rotten luck that not only is his LTD’s roof leaking warm water but also his apartment’s roof. And of all places, right on his face, his damn face, no matter where he staggers around, even in the greenhouse on his patio where he attempts to chat with his plants and he sees mysterious droplets of water emerge out of nowhere on their leaves or flowers every time he bows his head.

And everywhere he goes, everything he sees and touches reminds him of Starsky.

There’s that silly pet rock Starsky bought from Huggy, there on his shelf of books and an assortment of antiques and other trinkets, little silly things Starsky had purchased on a whim and then left them with him, like Starsky had always planned to buy them for him and not for himself. There’s that luridly colorful Falsa blanket Starsky had purchased when they’d gone on vacation to Mexico several years ago, folded over the backrest of the couch, colorful and velvety and smelling a bit like Starsky after a cool shower. There’s his guitar on its metal stand in the corner of the living room, its strings almost two years old, purchased by Starsky after the old ones had snapped while he and Starsky were relaxing and singing together one weekend. Just them, the two of them.

Not anymore.

He doesn’t remember going back to sit on the couch. He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there. All he knows is that the leaking hasn’t halted yet, that it probably isn’t going to for a very, very long time.

Without warning, the phone rings, and Hutch turns his head to stare at it. It continues to ring even after Hutch has counted to ten. Is it Starsky? Has Starsky found out that he knows about the transfer, the partner reassignment now?

What did I do wrong, buddy?

Tell me what I did wrong, so I can make it right and fix things. Fix everything.

Hutch picks up the phone. It’s Stacey, greeting him with her comforting, mellow voice, asking him how he’s doing today and whether he and Starsky had a productive day of catching criminals and cleaning up the streets of Los Angeles.

Oh, it was an interesting day, honey. I had to find out from my captain that my partner of nearly eight years – my partner who once told me I was his best friend he’s got in the whole world – decided to ditch me behind my back and leave Homicide and partner up with someone else. Yeah, really, just like that. No word. Nothing. That’s how much I mean to Starsky these days, I guess. How was your day?

He thinks that’s what he’s said to Stacey. He thinks he’s probably said it in a relatively nonchalant voice, but Stacey is silent, really silent, and then she’s telling him she’s coming over right now, telling him to stay where he is and not do anything rash and he finds it rather funny. He tries to laugh. The sound that emits from his mouth doesn’t sound anything like it.

He puts the phone receiver down and remains seated on the couch, staring at the folder Dobey had passed him. He doesn’t remember leaving it there on the coffee table. In the illumination of the lamp, the name printed on a white sticker at the top of the folder is glaring in black ink.

Joseph Callahan. The man soon to be his … new partner.

“Ken?”

Stacey is sitting beside him on the couch. Her thick, dark hair is a riot of curls. She has no makeup on. She has a suede jacket on, but under it she’s wearing a plain white t-shirt and dark grey sweatpants, the sort of clothes she usually wears at home. She must have hastened over immediately after her call and entered the apartment using her key.

She is a vision of beauty to Hutch’s sore eyes.

She says his name again. She touches his cheek, and when he looks her in the eye, she bites her lower lip and whispers, “Oh, Ken,” and hugs him tightly, stroking the back of his head. Hutch doesn’t understand why there were tears in her eyes, or why she’s telling him that everything will be alright, that everything’s going to be just fine and Ken, are you thirsty, have you eaten anything, at all?

He thinks he tells her no, he hasn’t, he isn’t hungry. He isn’t certain. He returns to staring at the folder on the coffee table after she kisses him on the top of his head and leaves the living room. Soon, he hears the sizzling sound of something cooking on a frying pan. Eggs. Scrambled eggs, from the smell of it. And something else made from potato. Must be the hash browns in his fridge.

Hutch eats the food reflexively, very conscious of Stacey watching him eat, making sure he eats all the scrambled eggs and hash browns and drinks all the coffee in his mug. He tastes none of it. He says nothing when Stacey picks up the folder from the coffee table and opens it. She studies a photographed portrait in it, a portrait of Callahan. Hutch doesn’t look at it. Won’t look at it.

“Have you spoken to David yet?”

Hutch doesn’t answer. It is an answer in itself.

Stacey places the folder back on the coffee table, then takes the empty plate and mug from him and goes back to the kitchen to wash them. Within minutes, she’s sitting beside him once more, saying nothing and yet everything with her mere presence, with her warm hand gripping his lifeless one.

It singes him. Singes the dead thing inside him, reminding that dead thing of a warmth – an incredible warmth with the most charismatic smiles, the most seductive voice and the most erotic, furred male body – that it’ll never feel again.

“I won’t be good company tonight,” he rasps.

He hates himself for not being able to look at her.

Stacey replies him with a tender kiss on his temple and murmurs words of consolation there. She reassures him that he’s free to call her any time of the night, that she’ll be there when he needs her and he shuts his eyes, agonizingly cognizant of how unworthy he is of such love from her. He nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t watch her leave.

Everything he does afterwards is mechanical and dispassionate, from his ablutions in the bathroom to crawling into bed nude, sluggishly like a geriatric man with arthritis. He’s tired, so very tired. He lets his aching eyes flicker shut. He tosses and turns under the covers, peaceful slumber eluding him like a fallen angel slipping through his numb fingers, soaring away while he screams pleas to the angel to stay with him, to not go, don’t go, please don’t leave, Starsky, please don’t.

On the icy tundra of his nightmares, Hutch rebuilds his ruined fortress, block by block, snowy layer by layer.

Alone again, naturally.

& & & & & &

In the morning, Hutch’s first deed of the first day of his Starsky-less life is to shave off his moustache. He is surprised at how easy it is, not because he’s shaved his face thousands of times over the decades but because he’d had the moustache for at least two years. Two years is a long time in moustache years.

It looked like a moldy caterpillar, Blondie. Good riddance!

Standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring at the mirror, at the hairless skin above his upper lip, he scowls. No, he did not shave it off for Starsky who’d disliked it. He shaved it off for himself.

It’s just him now. Not me and thee.

There’s no more of that crap.

You want change, Starsky, I’ll show you change.

He stares a little longer at that strip of skin, and zealously steers clear of looking himself in his inflamed, puffy eyes.

While he waits for the redness of the shaved area and his eyes to vanish, he prepares and ingests a modest breakfast of wheat germ and cereal in cold milk. He still isn’t all that hungry due to the meal Stacey cooked for him last night. He makes a mental note to call her to thank her for it or take her out for lunch, if she’s free. Buy her a nice gift, like jewelry with ammonite or a painting of birds. She’s taken an interest in Chinese calligraphic paintings of birds lately. Perhaps he’ll find one in Chinatown.

Later, donning a green shirt, jeans and his aviator sunglasses, he drives to his hairstylist’s shop – about ten minutes away from his apartment – and flabbergasts her by requesting a haircut radically different than his customary choice when he hasn’t altered his style in ... at least two years. He ends up with a short, spiky, low-maintenance style with a dry, matte, deconstructed finish that draws the admiring attention of every other client. It’s different, alright, sharp and sophisticated and assertive. Just the look he needs to confront his … new partner tomorrow morning.

Confronting? He’s not your enemy, Blondie. He’s going to be your partner.

Hutch almost tells Starsky to shut up, but he catches himself and manages to show a thankful smile to his hairstylist who is also satisfied with the outcome.

Oh, yeah? And whose fault is it that I’m going to have a new partner?

Oh, great, he’s arguing with Starsky-like voices in his head now. He must have boarded the train to Crazy Town last night and not known it. He wonders what Stacey will think of that.

After his haircut, he heads for the nearest shopping mall and buys himself a new black leather bomber jacket, a few dress shirts and pants of various colors and a new pair of tan, leather boots. He draws even more admiring glances from customers and mall assistants alike throughout his shopping spree, particularly while he poses in front of mirrors to inspect the fitting of his new clothes on his figure, and politely declines numerous invitations for a drink or lunch or dinner. One of those invitations had been from a young, strawberry-blond man, an assistant in the store where he bought the bomber jacket. Hutch hadn’t been offended at all, and had even smiled when the man sighed to himself, “Ah, the good ones are always taken,” and sincerely wished the man luck on finding someone good too.

Wearing his new leather jacket, he drives to the branch of Bank of America where Stacey works and takes her out for lunch at their favorite vegetarian restaurant on Willow Street. She likes the new jacket very much as well as his updated hairstyle and lack of moustache, and this pleases him and he tells her so. Stacey smiles at him in return. He holds her hand on the lacquered, wooden table top, brushing the silkiness of her skin with the pad of his thumb, and does his damnest to not think about the silky skin of another hand, a larger hand with calloused fingers that had touched him like no other.

They dine on fresh vegetable and fine egg noodle soup, parmesan-crusted sandwiches stuffed with tomatoes, sliced avocados and alfalfa sprouts, and a huge slice of creamy key lime pie in a contented silence. Hutch is the one who broaches the subject of his partner reassignment as they eat their slice of pie for dessert.

“He’ll be at the Metro tomorrow morning. Dobey’s ordered me to be there by nine.”

Hutch doesn’t bother identifying the person to whom he’s alluding.

“Hence the major fashion makeover?” Stacey asks, her amused smile half-hidden by her cup of tea as she sips from it.

Hutch smiles as well and replies, “Why not, right? It was about time for a change anyway.”

“Have you read that file on him?”

Hutch glances out the window next to their table, at the people of all walks of life strolling to and fro past the restaurant, at the cars zooming up and down the street on a busy weekday.

“No.”

He hears her put down her cup on its ceramic saucer, gently.

“You’d rather get to know him in person?”

“Something like that.”

He senses rather than sees Stacey gazing out the window too. They do so for some time, in a not-so-contented silence now.

“Have you heard from him?”

Hutch knows precisely to whom Stacey is referring, and it’s not the him they were talking about.

“No. And frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The next two minutes pass in a certainly-not-contented silence.

“When did you say David submitted the request, again?”

Hutch carries on staring out the window. Under the table, his right hand has instinctively balled into a fist.

“Dobey said three weeks ago.”

Stacey has moved her gaze from the window to his face. He doesn’t look back at her. He doesn’t want to see the expression on her face, whatever it is.

“I miss Huggy’s spinach lasagna.”

Hutch sighs. He is very relieved for the instant shift in their dialogue.

“It was that good, huh?” he says, smiling at her, hoping to any deities listening that the smile appears blasé and isn’t screaming, yeah, I know, I’m the one who started it but thank god we aren’t talking about HIM anymore.

“I enjoyed it, yes.” A small smile flashes across her face. Then, it weakens in brilliance, acceding to solemnity. “When was the last time you went to The Pits?”

Hutch props his chin on his left hand  and gives the question some thought.

“Man, it’s been so busy at the Metro for the last few weeks. I think the last time I went to The Pits was with you. Yeah, you know, that dinner with …”

He lets the sentence trail off, incomplete. Great. Just great. Stacey drops the subject and there he goes, picking it back up pronto as if every goddamn conversation he has with her has to involve him in some way or another all the time.

No more me and thee, Hutchinson. Get with the fucking program already.

Hutch has no idea whether it is his own inner voice that said that, or that tormenting Starsky-like voice that he wishes he could purge from his brain with industry-grade bleach. Either way, it makes him stack the blocks of ice of his new fortress all the more faster, stack them high up and over the dead thing inside him. It’s cauterized now, tougher than ever and strengthened by its scars.

Hey, Blondie, why does something dead need its bleeding wounds to be sewn up?

Pursing his lips into a thin line, Hutch tells the smartass Starsky-like voice to shut the fuck up and go away.

“Three weeks ago, right?”

Hutch blinks and then glances at Stacey with quizzical blue eyes.

“Hm?”

“We went to The Pits for dinner with David three weeks ago.”

There’s something odd about the way she’s gazing at him. Like she’s hoping he’ll figure something out but … what about their dinner with Starsky three weeks ago?

So the transfer request was submitted to Dobey three weeks ago as well. Big deal. It’s why Starsky was all weird at the dinner and wouldn’t look at him or Stacey and had no appetite and left so early, that’s all.

Right?

“Yeah … yeah, that sounds about right,” Hutch murmurs faintly. Then he sits up and smiles at her. “Hey, since you really liked the spinach lasagna, we could go there for dinner again. Maybe this weekend. What do you think?”

Stacey is sipping her tea again. Her face is partially obscured by her cup, and Hutch is unable to decipher her expression. It’s not one that cheers him up, that much he knows.

“Sure,” she replies insouciantly, but the sinking sensation in the pit of Hutch’s stomach merely deepens. He can’t explain it. It’s the same feeling he had during the dinner at The Pits. Like he’s failed some test he doesn’t know he’d been given, a test he can’t even see.

Stacey glances at her watch.

“Oh, I have to be back at work.”

Hutch pays the bill despite Stacey wanting to go Dutch, buys her another slice of the key lime pie and then drives her back to the bank. He feels somewhat better when she kisses him on the lips and tells him he can pick her up after work and they can have dinner together. Yeah, he’s just being paranoid about Stacey being disappointed with him, he has to be. She has no reason to feel that way about him, least of all in regards to Starsky. If there’s anyone who deserves disappointment now, it’s him.

What sort of a pal just ups and leaves without a single word anyway? After eight years of the closest friendship he’s ever had?

After everything they’ve been through?

It makes no fucking sense to Hutch. None of it.

His moderate mood perseveres only till evening, just as he is about to head out and pick up Stacey from work. She’s called him to let him know that she’ll have to work late tonight and take a rain check for their dinner tonight. Hutch reassures her that it’s fine, that they can have dinner together tomorrow, but when he puts the receiver down, the walls of his apartment are looming and converging on him, like they’re going to crush him and he dashes down to the LTD and spends the night driving aimlessly instead.

He really, really hates himself for driving into Starsky’s neighborhood multiple times. (By accident, of course. Or just old habit that he wants to exterminate as soon as possible.) The one time he actually drives past Starsky’s apartment, he glances at it long enough to ascertain that the Torino isn’t there, that Starsky’s out and phew, that means Starsky won’t know a damn thing about him having been here tonight.

The thought ought to gladden him.

It doesn’t.

When he arrives home, it’s two hours to midnight and he’s hungry. He grills himself a mozzarella and basil Panini, and munches on it while he watches the television. He doesn’t look once at the folder on the coffee table. Stacey calls him again, just before he retires for the night, to wish him luck for his meeting with Callahan in the morning and he thanks her and sends her a good night kiss over the phone, grateful for her presence in his life. Maybe she really is the future Mrs. Hutchinson. Maybe.

At nine o’clock on the dot, he strides into the squad room in his new black bomber jacket, a cream-colored dress shirt, dark brown dress pants and his new boots, Callahan’s folder in hand. The air is instantaneously teeming with appreciative catcalls, hoots and whistles, and he can’t help smiling as he sets the folder down on his desk and mentally readies himself for the inescapable meeting in Dobey’s office.

“Hey, Hutchinson!” Simmons exclaims with a grin. “You trying to get onto the cover of GQ magazine?!”

Hutch laughs along with his fellow detectives. Heh, no, he hadn’t set out to look like a magazine model, but considering how positively everyone in the room is responding to his transformed appearance, he’ll accept Simmons’ jibe as a compliment.

If the gleam in Dobey’s eyes is anything to go by, the big man approves of his new mien as well.

“Hutch, this is Detective Joseph Callahan. Formerly of the NYPD,” Dobey says to him, gesturing towards a tall, dark-haired, young man in a grey, pinstriped suit seated in the right chair in front of Dobey’s desk.

For one long minute, Hutch stands stationary halfway between the door and the chairs, his mind still reeling from the last word of Dobey’s latter remark as Callahan stands up and faces him.

The NYPD? Callahan is from New York City?

“Detective Hutchinson, it’s a true honor to be your partner, sir.”

There’s no doubt about it, that’s a New York accent, alright. An accent just like Starsky’s.

Callahan is holding out his right hand towards him. It’s a large hand with long fingers, befitting of Callahan’s lanky albeit sinewy figure. Callahan is as tall as he is, with pale skin and thick, dark hair fashioned stylishly in a feathered hair style and oh shit, big, double-lidded blue eyes, thick eyebrows, a patrician nose and a broad smile just like Starsky’s and shit, what is Dobey trying to do, kill him by assigning him to a guy who’s just like Starsky?

Hutch sucks in a deep breath and then shakes Callahan’s hand, returning Callahan’s smile with a courteous one and noting the firmness of the other detective’s grasp. Okay, okay, calm down, Callahan isn’t that similar to Starsky. Callahan’s taller than Starsky, for one. Callahan’s coloring comes from dark Irish stock, not Polish, and Callahan is young, much younger than he is. Can’t be older than thirty.

What the hell is Dobey doing partnering him up with such a young buck?

“Callahan recently moved from NYC and applied for work in this division.” Dobey is glowering at him and obviously knows he hasn’t read the file on Callahan. “He’s worked in Homicide, has a stellar record, and I’m sure you two will get along.”

The way Dobey growled the last portion of the last sentence, he might as well have smacked Hutch across the head as an equally effective admonition to behave and not be a bastard to Callahan.

No worries, Captain, I’ll be on my best behavior. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Hutch knows, though, that claiming something and doing that something can be two very different things.

The situation quickly veers into awkwardness once he and Callahan are out of Dobey’s office and back in the squad room. The hubbub decreases to near silence as he and Callahan approach the desk. He can tell the other detectives are observing Callahan’s every action even as they’re slogging away, speculating whether the newcomer will be capable of filling the shoes left behind by Starsky, if at all.

For Hutch, the answer to that question is one he isn’t going to share with anyone anytime soon, not if he doesn’t want the whole world to know about that month.

The tension in the room is dense enough to cut through with a knife when Hutch stands at his usual end of the desk, facing the other detectives, facing the section of the desk where he and Starsky used to sit, face to face. He can’t bear to sit down in his usual spot because it means having to tell Callahan he’s free to sit in Starsky’s spot and … yeah, Starsky’s already upped and left, but Hutch can’t bear to have anyone else sitting there. Not today. Not yet.

So he stands, and so does Callahan who does so placidly and with a dignity Hutch rarely sees in a kid of Callahan’s age.

Damn, when did he begin perceiving people in their late twenties as kids?

He is getting old.

“So you worked Homicide in NYC?”

Hutch has to stand totally upright to look Callahan in the eye. It’s going to take a while for him to get accustomed to it.

“Yes, sir. For two years.”

“Please, call me Hutch.”

Callahan smiles upon hearing his benign request.

“Yes, si- Hutch.  I’m truly honored to be partners with you. You’re a legend even in NYC.”

A stifled snicker waffles its way to Hutch’s ears. He doesn’t know who the culprit is, but he also doesn’t care to know. He feels like rolling his eyes or slapping one hand over his eyes and sighing. Oh, great, a hero worshipper. That’s the last thing he needs in a new partner, thinking he’s a legend.

“Even my Pop and his buddies talked about you after you took down James Marshall Gunther.” Callahan pauses, then says, like an addendum, “Oh, my Pop was an NYPD detective too. Worked the Special Victims division.”

Is that how you got this job, kid?

Before Hutch has even completed the thought, he is already ashamed of it. It doesn’t help that, right then and there, that Starsky-like voice in his head speaks up.

Give the guy a chance, Blondie. You don’t even know him yet. And a file says shit all about a man’s heart.

How pathetic is he, that an imaginary, non-corporeal version of Starsky that exists only in his brain is giving him solace right now?

“I’m Danny Simmons, nice to meet ya.”

Oh, Simmons has come up to them. Simmons is as tall as they are and looks them both easily in the eye. Simmons’ hair is similarly cut like Callahan’s too, except Simmons’ style has a right parting while Callahan’s has a middle parting. 

Simmons’ wide grin is affable and authentic as he points with a thumb at Babcock sitting at the desk and says, “That’s my partner, Kevin Babcock, over there. I like to call him Babs. Hey, Babs!”

In response, Babcock smiles and flips the bird in Simmons’ direction with his right hand while carrying on writing on a notepad with his left. Simmons cackles and says to Callahan, “Don’t worry, that’s for me, not you.”

Callahan chuckles, then shakes hands with Simmons.

“Joey Callahan. Nice to meet you too.”

Hutch takes note of Callahan’s truncation of his first name and jots it down on his mental rolodex of identities.

Simmons’ smile widens upon hearing Callahan’s accent.

“Hey, guys, he’s a New Yorker!” Simmons says to the others who are overtly listening to the conversation. Then Simmons asks, “Where were you posted in NYC?”

Callahan’s self-effacing reply stuns both Simmons and Hutch.

“Hell’s Kitchen.”

“You serious?” Simmons asks after a few seconds of speechlessness.

“Yeah.”

Hutch scrutinizes Callahan’s face again, this time with the eyes of a compeer. Nope, he hadn’t gotten it wrong the first time, Callahan can’t be older than thirty. But to be that young a cop in Hell’s Kitchen, the home territory of the extremely violent Irish-American gang, the Westies, notorious for dismembering, sometimes torturing to death their victims and for being a contract killer crew for the Gambino family … damn.

“So you, uh, had to deal with quite a lotta bad shit back there.”

Callahan chuckles again and replies, “That’s one way of putting it. My partner and I were mostly assigned to gang or mob-related murders in the area, yeah.”

“Westies-related crimes?”

“Yeah.”

Simmons whistles in approbation.

“Not the type to shy away from the gruesome stuff, huh?” Simmons says, giving Callahan a friendly smack on the upper arm. Then, expression more somber though no less pleasant, he asks, “Got too rough?”

Callahan’s expression also becomes somber.

“In some ways.” A brief pause, and Callahan adds, “My partner passed away.”

Hutch glances sharply at the younger man. He senses Simmons’ eyes on him, and fuck, he knows exactly what Simmons is thinking about and now he’s thinking about it as well, about a ping pong game and bantering over food and … and gunshots and bullets, so many of them, plowing their way through Starsky’s torso, shattering the Torino’s windows. The screeching of wheels on cement, more gunshots from his Magnum and his bellowing of Starsky’s name.

And the soundlessness, the soundlessness as he scurried around the front of the Torino and saw his worst nightmare come true: Starsky, sprawled on his side, head cradled by the back wheel’s rim, with blood running in rivulets from his mouth. All that blood drenching Starsky’s shirt, running to the ground in a widening lake of crimson under Starsky’s blighted body.

Starsky, looking like he’s already dead, beyond Hutch’s reach.

Over a year after the shooting in the Metro’s car park, here in the present, Hutch grits his teeth and recites an old invocation that had once supported him through dark, desolate nights in a hospital’s ICU room: Starsky’s alive. Don’t forget that. Starsky’s alive.

Hutch raises a hand to Callahan’s shoulder and squeezes it.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Callahan,” he says compassionately.

Callahan’s smile, though bordered by despondency, is also one of gratitude.

“Please, call me Joey.”

With that, an invisible wall between them crumbles, and even as Simmons smacks Callahan on the upper arm for the second time and says, “Welcome to the squad, Joey. Good to have ya with us,” other detectives are approaching them and introducing themselves to the newest member of the team. The hubbub of the squad room is coming back at full force, perhaps even more lively than before in spite of Dobey standing in the doorway of his office with that gleam in his brown eyes again … and Hutch has the strangest feeling that it isn’t quite the end of his world, after all.

& & & & & &

Two days later, Hutch learns from Simmons that Starsky has transferred to the Narcotics department. Hutch is bowled over by this news, in view of the catastrophe that went down between him and Starsky and two (now former) Narco detectives when a joint drug bust had ended with a million dollars’ worth of cocaine going missing.

“Say, Hutch, didn’t you and Starsky bust two bozos from Narco a couple of years ago?”

Leave it to Simmons to bring up the very issue he’d rather not discuss in the squad room, regardless of it being lunch time.

“Yeah,” he replies at length, mindful of Callahan who’s sitting opposite him at the desk and reading through the file on their first case’s victim again, a young woman called Shania Thomas whose future was marred by drugs and prostitution and whose life was cut short by strangulation with a rope, her corpse abandoned in an alley just three blocks away from her pimp’s house where she’d lived. They’d already interrogated the pimp, a sleazy, greasy-haired, emaciated man in apparel more expensive than Hutch’s entire wardrobe, and Hutch got to see his new partner in action, up close and personal and with a fair amount of grimacing.

If that pimp hadn’t treasured his testicles before, he sure must be after Callahan had kicked a foot in a leather, wing tip shoe straight into them.

Not that the fucker didn’t deserve it, what with bragging and spitting into their faces about how easy it is to replace a ‘useless whore bitch’ like Shania.

Shania was only twenty years old.

“Burke and Corman, right?”

Hutch rubs his forehead with his thumb and forefinger, then takes a sip from his half-full cup of coffee. As much as he likes the guy, Simmons can be pretty obtuse sometimes.

“Yeah.”

“A little birdie chirped in my ear that the only reason Starsky got into Narco so fast is ‘cause one of the old-timers recently resigned.”

Glancing at Simmons, Hutch says, “Resigned because of what?”

Simmons shrugs. Simmons is sitting next to him, chowing down on a salami sandwich, feet crossed at the ankles.

“Word is the guy wanted to, as he told everybody, ‘spend more time with his wife and kids’.”

“Seems reasonable to me,” Callahan says, not looking up from the folder.

Simmons gulps down another mouthful of his sandwich and then says, “Yeah, but the thing is, just a few months ago, the guy was gunning for a promotion. Like, the guy really wanted it. And he just quit! No warning whatsoever.”

Hutch stares at Simmons with a small, amused smile. Where does this guy find the time to gather all this intel on people here and still maintain such a decent arrest record?

“Simmons, people can change their mind.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but lemme ask you, Hutch. Would you just quit the force, just like that, ‘cause you wanna spend time with the wifey and kids when you were going all out for a major promotion?”

Hutch ruminates on the question for a minute. If somebody had asked him that five years ago, he would have laughed his ass off and said hell no … but now? With Stacey in his life, a woman he can actually see as his future wife?

“I don’t know … If I love my wife and kids more than my job, and I have good reasons for it, I just might. Who are we to question the guy’s reasons for resigning?”

“I’m just saying, it’s weird, that’s all,” Simmons mumbles, seconds before Babcock stomps into the squad room with a heap of computer print-outs that he lobs onto the table in front of Simmons.

“Yeesh, Sims, I go to the Computer Center for twenty minutes and you’re still eating your stupid sandwich.”

“What, haven’t you ever heard of something called enjoying the finer things in life? Get some culture, man.”

“I’ll culture your lazy ass –“

“Excuse me, but who saved your ass yesterday from Dobey –“

Hutch and Callahan exchange amused smirks as Simmons and Babcock initiate yet another domestic-like squabble over the most random of things. The way they bicker daily, they should just get married and be done with it.

Hey, Blondie, if gay marriage really becomes legal one day, would you marry me and live with me and get that retirement home in Rio together?

Hutch runs fingers through his short hair, over the crown of his head all the way down to the nape of his neck.

Gee, it’s kind of difficult to get to the marrying stage when friendship isn’t even on the table anymore. And whose fault is THAT, hm?

The Starsky-like voice doesn’t reply him. Hutch – 1, imaginary, non-corporeal Starsky – 0. Hutch ignores the rational part of his brain that tells him arguing with himself is no cause for celebration and probably more a sign of psychological imbalance.

“Hutch.” Callahan has closed the folder and is resting his forearms on the table. “I think we should go back to Ozerenko’s house instead of grilling him. Talk to the women he has living there with him. Let him stew. We got him in custody anyway.”

“You thinking about talking to the redhead?”

“The one who kept looking at us the whole time Ozerenko was rampaging around like a nutcase?”

“Yep.”

Callahan smiles at him, eyes glinting.

Hutch smiles back and says, “Okay, let’s go talk to a redhead.”

With Ozerenko safely behind bars for possession of eight grams of cocaine for now – or until he gets around to paying bail – Hutch and Callahan return to the pimp’s house on Elm and 2^nd in Hutch’s LTD. Soon, not only are they listening to the redhead, Danielle, spilling the beans on Ozerenko but all three of the other women too, all in their early twenties at most and garbed in florid t-shirts or tank tops and short shorts. Ozerenko’s account of being indoors the whole time the night Shania was murdered is confirmed by Amanda, a leggy blonde, who’d been with him in bed till dawn. Despite the coke he had, Ozerenko had drunk himself into oblivion with a combination of vodka and white wine instead. And despite his vehement indifference towards Shania’s death, Danielle discloses that Shania had always been Ozerenko’s favorite girl and had pampered her the most, frequently buying her branded bags and shoes and giving her a bigger cut of the dough than the other girls.

“That isn’t fair towards the rest of you, is it?” Hutch says.

His real question is crystal-clear.

“We’d never hurt Shania,” Danielle replies, her cat-like, green eyes flaring. “Yeah, Sergey gave her more money, but he doesn’t know that she split the bonus with us. She is - was our …” – her rounded face crumples for a moment – “She was our friend. She was like a sister.”

“But Ozerenko, would he hurt her?”

“Naw,” Amanda says with a Southern accent, shaking her head, gazing blatantly at Callahan although Hutch is the one who asked. “He may be a greedy sonofabitch, but he ain’t like that.”

“So why did Ozerenko say what he did this morning?” Hutch says. “He sure didn’t sound like somebody who remotely cared about Shania.”

“Pride,” Danielle says. She’s dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “You’re two tough, handsome cops who were going to drag him to jail. In front of us.”

“He’s probably bawling his eyes out in jail right now,” mutters Zoe, a wavy-haired brunette, rolling her humongous hazel eyes. “He can be a real crybaby. He’s a screamer, not a hitter.”

Hutch and Callahan share a glance, then return eye contact with the four women seated on the sofa or floor of the carpeted living room.

“Did Shania have any regulars?” Callahan asks as he scrawls the details so far onto a pocket-sized, black notebook with a pen.

“Yes.” This time it’s LeeLee, an Asian woman with jet-black hair, who speaks. “But … they’re not men. Shania, uhm, likes women clients. She prefers them over men.”

“All her clients were women?”

Callahan isn’t batting an eyelid. Neither is Hutch. Throughout his years of police service, Hutch has borne witness to many dreadful, traumatizing acts and incidents, some of which still have the power to literally make him holler and lurch awake in bed from nightmares about them. Prostitutes going gay-for-pay, voluntarily so, is low on the list of those dreadful acts … particularly in comparison to callous murder by strangulation.

LeeLee nods. She and the other women trade glances, and then she says, “One of Shania’s regulars is obsessed with her. Calls her a lot and writes her lots of letters. The client puts the letters in the, uh, mailbox herself. I caught her once at it, but she drove away before I could see her face.”

“Tell me you got a look at the license plate,” Callahan says, and LeeLee’s pert features break into a broad smile. She is indeed a beautiful girl, with eyes far too old and cynical for her youthful face.

As LeeLee recounts the car’s registration number to Callahan, Hutch asks the other women, “Did Shania keep these letters?”

“Yeah. They’re really creepy stuff.” Amanda shudders, then asks, “D’you want them?”

“Yes, thank you,” Hutch says, smiling at her. She reminds him a great deal of Sweet Alice, who still calls him Handsome Hutch and is still willing to go straight and leave the same profession one day, just for him. He hasn’t seen her in a long time. He hopes she’s out of harm’s way, wherever she is.

Amanda comes back from one of the bedrooms with a gigantic stack of envelopes. There must be at least thirty letters. No address or stamps on the envelopes. Just Shania’s first name, handwritten in red. Hutch opens up the topmost one on the stack and comprehends straightaway why Amanda had described them as such. Whoever the writer is, she’d written with black ink in excessive detail of her objectives to enslave Shania, lock her up in a soundproof room and bind her in a variety of intricate bondage styles, amongst other alarming things.

“Domina ... Gotta be a nickname,” Callahan murmurs, frowning as he scans through another letter.

“BDSM, you think?” Hutch asks.

“All this slavery and tying up talk, and the name … yeah, gotta be.”

“We were really disgusted when we read them,” Danielle says. Her eyes are dry, face composed once more. “I thought all of it was sick. But …”

“But?” Hutch encourages.

“But Shania didn’t. She – she said she liked it. I couldn’t believe it!”

Hutch and Callahan share another meaningful glance.

“Dan, it was her thing,” Zoe says, her nose wrinkled, her arms crossed over her chest. “You heard what she said. She said the client freed her, made her realize things about herself that she never knew.”

“No! She wasn’t like that! That woman – that woman changed her, that’s what happened!”

“Does it matter whether she liked it or not? Shania’s dead. Somebody killed her,” Amanda murmurs, her head bowed, her lips twisted downwards and a profound dejection befalls all four women, hushing them. Stripping off their thick-skinned facades to reveal them for what they truly are: Four young women who are living a grueling life together, whatever the circumstances might be that had brought them under one roof, and have just lost of their own.

Hutch and Callahan put away letters into their envelopes, giving them a few minutes’ reprieve.

Then, Hutch quietly asks, “Does Ozerenko know about all this?”

Zoe shrugs.

“Yeah, he knows about the client and the letters. He thought it wasn’t a big deal as long as the client didn’t hurt Shania and paid a lot. Which she does. A lot.”

“How much?”

“Hundreds of dollars each time,” Danielle replies. “One time, Shania said she was paid a thousand for staying overnight with the client even though she never asked for more.”

“At the client’s residence?” Callahan asks.

“No. In a hotel. They always met up at hotels. Except the … the last time ... I think ... I don’t know.”

“We got a buddy system,” Zoe says, subtly edging closer on the sofa to Danielle who is now staring at the floor, face blank with delayed shock. “We always tell Sergey and each other where we’re going with a client. Shania, she – she wouldn’t tell us where she was going that night. Like it was something private to her and she didn’t want to share it with us.”

“And she’d never done that before,” Hutch says.

Zoe shakes her head.

“No. Never. Not until this creepy client came along.”

Hutch glances down at the stack of envelopes in hand, then looks up again at the four women and says, “Thank you very much for your cooperation. You’ve all been very helpful. Can we keep these letters?”

“Do whatever you want with them,” Zoe says. “We don’t want that shit lying around anyway.”

As Hutch and Callahan turn to leave the living room, Amanda abruptly jumps to her feet and approaches Callahan, gazing at him with coy blue eyes. She is face to face with him when she sighs and says ruefully, “Gosh, if I’d lived a different life, I think I could have had something with you.”

Callahan’s face reddens, but he is also smiling cordially as he replies, “Please take care of yourself, ma’am.”

“You too, handsome.”

Hutch and Callahan are halted in their tracks a second time while they’re walking away from the main entrance of the house to the LTD, by Zoe who’s opened the door again and is standing there, her hazel eyes raging.

“You’re gonna get her, right?”

They turn around to fully face her, standing side by side on the tiled path winding through the grassy front yard.

“If she is the murderer, yes,” Hutch says with confidence. “We will.”

“Good.” Zoe folds her arms over her chest, squaring her shoulders. Her diffident expression and lowered eyes, however, are at odds with her posture. “Cops usually don’t care about – about us whores.” She hisses out the last word like a curse, as if she’s heard it spewed in her face countless times. “Like we aren’t human beings.”

With less distance between them now, Hutch notices for the first time the makeup caked around Zoe’s humongous eyes. Swollen, glistening eyes.

Her gaze flits all over the place as she mumbles, “Thanks. For … you know.”

Hutch nods and says kindly, “We’re just doing our jobs.”

Zoe nods back, still avoiding eye contact. Then, without another word, she shuts the door, and Hutch and Callahan resume their journey to the car. Once they’re on the road and heading back to the Metro, Callahan, who is frowning again, says, “There’s something I don’t get. What Zoe said about Shania and her client, Domina.”

“That wherever she was going seemed like something ‘private’ to her?”

“Yeah. Why would Shania suddenly break habit, a habit that could make the difference between life and death? And for this particular client? The money?”

Hutch keeps his eyes on the road as he ponders on the questions and on Zoe’s statements. Hmm … something private, something Shania didn’t want to share with others. It can’t be money, since Shania was apparently generous enough that she would divide the extra cash she received from Ozerenko with the other women –

Remember the times when it was just you and me, Blondie?

Hutch is very glad that the LTD has stopped at a red light or he would have most certainly rammed the car into the crate-laden truck in front. Fuck, of all the times for imaginary Starsky to show up! And to say that, of all the goddamn things, and remind him of that month when it’d been just him and Starsky, him and Starsky and no one else as they made lo-

“Hutch?”

Hutch straightens up in his seat, his blue eyes gone wide.

“Joey … maybe to Shania, Domina was a client … until she wasn’t a client anymore.”

Callahan stares at his profile, speedily following his line of thought.

“You mean, they became lovers?”

“Yeah. Could be.” Hutch turns his head and gazes back at Callahan. “Danielle said that Shania liked what she read in those letters. That’s why Shania kept them, not because she wanted them as proof of Domina’s tendencies or anything like that. She kept them because they were love letters.”

“But she couldn’t really tell the other girls that, because they were already disgusted by their content. And Zoe … didn’t she say that Shania said Domina, what, ‘freed’ her and helped her to ‘know things about herself’?”

“Exactly. To them, Shania’s just doing her job and this client of hers is a – a freak. But to Shania – if this angle is accurate – to Shania, it’s not about selling her body for money anymore, it’s about being in an actual relationship with Domina.”

“Somebody with the same fetish.”

“Yeah. If the attraction between them wasn’t mutual, Shania would have been freaked out by all the letters, the calls, the obsession.”

Callahan nods.

“Okay … yeah, let’s go with that angle.” The younger detective fidgets in his seat, then says, “So if you’re in love with somebody, or at least in a mutually beneficial relationship, why would you kill that person? And leave their body in an alley?”

“Lovers’ tiff gone nasty?”

“If Shania was so confident about meeting Domina alone, to the point of hiding the address from the others, a fight that bad is probably the last thing she’d have expected.”

“But it doesn’t exclude the possibility that that’s what happened,” Hutch says as the light changes to green and he steps on the accelerator.

“Yeah … but how often do you hear of crimes of passion involving a rope to strangle someone? According to the ME, the bruising around Shania’s neck showed that the rope had been tightened around it for quite a long time pre-mortem but there’re no signs of struggle elsewhere on her body. Nothing under the fingernails, even. I mean, if you were being strangled, even by a lover, you’d fight like crazy. Grab at them and scratch them.”

“And the other bruises and scratches on her body weren’t fresh ones. Inflicted at different times.”

“Yeah, that’s why we focused on Ozerenko. Pimp beating up one of his prostitutes, maybe he went too far this time. Typical scenario.”

“Except Ozerenko pampered Shania and took good care of her.”

“Yeah,” Callahan says, then lets out a heavy sigh.

Hutch taps his fingers on the rim of the steering wheel.

“What if Shania consented to being strangled? Like maybe Domina wanted to do it and she consented because …”

“Because the customer’s always right?”

“Yeah. Or master, if we’re going to go with the BDSM angle.”

Callahan mulls on this for a couple of minutes.

“I think that’s a bigger possibility. Hutch, I was looking at the pictures of the crime scene again, at lunch, and it kept bugging me, the way her body was left in the alley. When we were still thinking Ozerenko was the perp, it didn’t quite make sense, how she was carefully laid out on her back, with her clothes all neat and buttoned and zipped up like that. When you’re mad and you’re looking to dump a body as fast as possible, you’re not going to worry about how the body looks like when you dump it.”

“But if you loved that person …”

“You gotta be seriously fucked up to dump the body of somebody you loved in a filthy alley.”

“Not arguing with you there, Joey, but my point still stands. If you loved that person, you would worry about how the body looks, because you’re still emotionally attached to that person. You’re still seeing the person as a person, not just a corpse. That would explain the neatness and care to Shania’s body even after death.”

“Hutch … it’s possible this isn’t a murder at all.”

Hutch sends Callahan a questioning glance. Callahan is gazing out the windshield, his brows creased in concentration.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said it, maybe Shania consented to being strangled. Maybe this was a BDSM session gone wrong.”

“Maybe. Domina did write in her letters that she wanted to tie Shania up in all sorts of ways. And a rope had been used to strangle her.”

“And there’s erotic asphyxiation.”

The glance Hutch sends the other man this time is a mixture of surprise and amusement, with one of his eyebrows quirking up. He smirks when Callahan’s complexion becomes ruddy.

“I read about it before, okay?”

“Okay, okay, I believe you. So you think this might be a case of erotic asphyxiation gone too far?”

“It fits. It explains the lack of struggle on Shania’s part. And tox came back clean, so she wasn’t drugged. And you’d have to really trust somebody to let them do that to you.”

“Good point,” Hutch says as he parks the car in front of the Metro. “Once we get Domina’s address, we can ask her for ourselves.”

As they get out of the LTD, Callahan says, “Hey, Hutch, where’d you learn about erotic asphyxiation?” and Hutch snickers and runs up the steps to the main entrance before Callahan can ask him again.

First, they submit the letters they’ve collected to Property as evidence for their case. Then they take an elevator up to the Computer Center where former Traffic Coordinator and martial arts aficionado Minnie greets them both with a bubbly smile from behind a reception counter. Her smile bubbles even more when she lays eyes on Callahan for the first time.

“Oh, heeeeeello, handsome!” Minnie says to a red-faced, smiling Callahan. “You must be the new guy everyone’s talking about!”

“Hi,” Callahan replies, not quite looking Minnie in the eye and scuffing his shoe on the floor, and Hutch has cover his amused smile with one hand when Minnie stage whispers to him, “He’s so cuuuute! Is he single?!”

“Minnie, this is Detective Joey Callahan, just moved from New York City. Joey, this is Officer Minnie Kaplan, a beautiful, smart lady of many talents,” Hutch says when he’s able. “One of which is to karate fight to ear-splitting disco music.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Officer Kaplan,” Callahan says, extending his right hand for a handshake and still smiling and very much red from forehead to chin.

“Everybody calls me Mother Minnie, but you, you can call me Honey.”

“Be gentle with him,” Hutch says to Minnie, deadpan, and has to cover his mouth another time at Minnie holding onto Callahan’s hand long after they’ve stopped shaking hands.

“So! How can I help you?” Minnie asks, her sparkling eyes seeing only Callahan now.

“We, uh, we need the, uh, address for this car registration number.”

Hutch props himself up against the counter, leaning sideways with his hands crossed in front, not bothered to conceal his grin of amusement anymore as Callahan, his right hand still held captive by Minnie, tussles one-handed with the jacket of his plaid two-piece suit for his black notebook in its inner pocket.

“I, uhm, I need my, uh, right hand, please.”

Minnie reluctantly releases it only six seconds after Callahan’s stammered request.

“Oh, I’m sorry! What was I thinking, not letting go of your big … warm, wonderful hand.”

For the sake of his aching sides, Hutch turns and rests his back against the counter, facing away from Minnie, in the ongoing battle with mirth. Ah, in all the years he’s worked here, Minnie has scarcely shown as much interest in him as she is in Callahan. Then again, maybe Nordic men simply aren’t her type. Maybe she prefers guys with thick, dark hair and prominent noses and huge smiles.

Like Starsky.

Just thinking the name sobers him up fast. Shit, Minnie has to know by now that Callahan is his new partner. She’ll surely ask him about Starsky, sooner or later.

His prediction comes true in just four minutes, after Callahan has given her the car registration number to search in the computer system and they’re waiting for the results.

“You’re looking really good too, Hutch,” she says, her eyes crinkling with genuine warmth and approval. “Love the new hairdo and the jacket!”

“Thanks, Minnie,” he replies, smiling too although his gut is clenching. Oh boy, here it comes –

“So … have you seen Starsky lately?”

He doesn’t really understand why there is such a marked difference in him thinking the name in his head and listening to someone else say it directly to him, a difference akin to being in a helicopter above an active volcano and actually being in the volcano, vaporizing in its lava. Maybe it’s the way Minnie said it, like she misses Starsky and wants to see him again and talk to him and goddamnit, no, that is not how he feels. No.

Several planets’ worth of snow amasses itself around the ice fortress within him, dampening that menacing heat, that heat that he knows fuck all where it’s come from that’s trying to get to his heart. Oh no, no, no, no way is he letting that heat anywhere near again. Not after the annihilation it triggered the last time.

“No. I haven’t.” Before Minnie can say anything, he smiles grimly and asks brusquely, “You got that address?”

He pays no attention to Callahan silently gazing at his face. Callahan can look at him all he wants, he has no problem with that. There’s nothing to see there anyway, just his face, nothing new. Nothing.

The drive to the address associated with the car registration number, 10500 National Boulevard, is a tense, nonverbal one, a total turnabout from the previous drive. Hutch can sense the nervousness in Callahan now, towards him, and he’s pissed at himself for causing the formation of the foundations of their working relationship to be set back this way.

Great going, Hutchinson. Partners for less than seventy-two hours, and now he thinks you’re an asshole.

Hutch is beginning to dislike this inner voice as much as the Starsky-like one. At least that one calls him affectionate nicknames.

After parking the LTD in front of the apartment block and turning off the ignition, Hutch turns to Callahan and says mildly, “Ready to say hello to Domina a.k.a. Tina Bonham?”

“Ready when you are.”

They breeze through the lobby and take an elevator up to the fifth floor. No one responds when Hutch knocks on the solid oak door of apartment 5G, so Hutch knocks harder, calling out Bonham’s full name and identifying themselves as police.

No answer.

“Break in?” Callahan asks him nonchalantly.

Hutch nods and gives the door a swift and mighty kick. The door slams open on the first attempt, banging against the wall to the right. The first sound Hutch hears is the shower running, and for one second, Hutch is embarrassed as hell that he might have just unnecessarily broken down someone’s front door but Callahan already has his gun drawn and has darted to the end of the hallway and is peering around the corner.

“Hutch, the bathroom door’s open,” Callahan whispers.

With his Magnum out as well, Hutch traverses the open living area with Callahan behind him, agilely slinking around tatty furniture and a kitchenette towards the bathroom. Its door is half-shut. Through the gap, Hutch sees a white porcelain sink and a rectangular mirror hung on a tiled wall above it. Steam is fogging the mirror.

Hutch gesticulates with his thumb to his chest then the bathroom door that he’ll go in, then with his head towards the shut bedroom door. Callahan nods in acknowledgement. Hutch hears the click of the bedroom door opening as Callahan enters it. He sneaks up to the bathroom door and nudges it with the muzzle of his gun. It swings open with a creak.

The shower is running at full blast. Really hot water, based on the high temperature that blasts Hutch in the face as he steps inside.

He glances downwards.

The white tiles of the floor are streaked with red.

“JOEY!”

The next six minutes are a haze of flurried, fraught actions by both Hutch and Callahan to tow a semi-conscious, soaked Tina Bonham in her underwear, gravely bleeding from multiple, self-inflicted gashes to her forearms, out of the shower and into the bedroom to administer first aid to her. Hutch rips a bed sheet into wide strips and bandages Bonham’s forearms with them while Callahan calls for an ambulance using a phone on the bedside table.

“We need an ambulance at 10500 National Boulevard, I repeat, 10500 National Boulevard! Apartment 5G, NOW!”

The water and blood from Bonham’s limp body are saturating the bed underneath her. She’s sprawled on her back, her hazel eyes staring blindly up at the fractured plaster ceiling. Her pallid lips are moving soundlessly.

“Ms. Bonham, Ms. Bonham,” Hutch says, pressing his hand against the side of her face. Her skin is unnaturally warm. “Ms. Bonham, can you hear me?”

“… I didn’t … mean to …”

“Hutch. Ambulance is coming.” Callahan is on the other side of the bed now, gazing down at Bonham, scowling. “Five minutes.”

Hutch nods at him, then also gazes down at the still semi-conscious woman, now pressing his hand on the crown of her head, on her scraggly, wet, chestnut hair.

“… I didn’t mean … to … I …”

“Ma’am, you’re going to be alright,” Callahan says, but his blue eyes are opaque with worry as they fleetingly glance at the makeshift bandages around her forearms. They are already turning crimson.

“… she … I did as … she asked …”

“Ms. Bonham, Tina, who’s she?” Hutch asks gently. “Who’re you talking about, Tina?”

“… Sha … Shania … she … giving it all … up … for me …”

And all of a sudden, Hutch is in another place and another time, in another apartment that had belonged to another woman he had loved long ago. A woman who had been a prostitute, a lovely, blonde woman on the floor with her head turned away, dead.

And there’s nothing you can do or say that’s gonna change that fact … or the fact that she loved you, and she was about to give ALL this up, just for you.

Stroking Bonham’s hair in a consoling manner, Hutch swallows thickly, the ice of his fortress thawing and the snow around it melting, if only for a while.

Oh, Gillian.

Oh, Starsky.

“… she wanted … try it again … she said … tighter …”

Hutch and Callahan look at each other. Then Hutch asks Bonham in the same sympathetic tone, “Tina, tell us exactly what happened to Shania.”

“… she … the rope … wanted it tighter … felt good … so I did … she … didn’t move …”

Bonham’s eyes abruptly widen, till the whites around the irises are visible.

“Shania? Where … where’s … what did I …”

Bonham is lifting her arms above her face, staring at the bandages, at the blood. Hutch knows what’s coming, that gargantuan cudgel of fire, but this time it’s hurtling down towards someone else’s fortress, an ineludible force of devastation and Hutch sees the very instant it strikes and obliterates Bonham’s fortress to dust, in the scrunching of Bonham’s facial features, the tears that flow from her eyes, her shriek of anguish. It is a heart-wrenching sound, a sound Hutch is all too familiar with, inside and out.

“No … no, NO, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t, I didn’t know … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Shania … Shania, no …”

Hutch pays no heed to the blood besmirching his dress shirt as he enfolds his arms around her quaking shoulders and tucks her head under his chin. He stares sightlessly at a wall as Callahan sits on the side of the bed, hands on knees, head bowed, and they listen in muteness to a woman’s sobs of remorse, of love lost forever, and the distant blaring of an approaching ambulance.

An eon later, Hutch and Callahan are back at the Metro, sitting before their captain. Hutch’s white shirt is streaked with dried blood. The garish color is startling against its austere backdrop. Hutch has yet to have the opportunity to clean himself up or change his shirt due to accompanying Bonham in the ambulance and hanging around in the waiting area of the hospital until Bonham was treated and able to speak. Callahan had followed the ambulance in the LTD, and had been at his side when Bonham, propped up on pillows in bed with her forearms bound in beige dressings, divulged in a splintered voice her double life and the events leading up to Shania Thomas’ ill-fated death.

Bonham had used a false identity for the car and the rented National Boulevard apartment. Her real name is Tina Bennett, twenty-six years old, an insurance clerk for a hospital. Married to a Larry Bennett, a thirty-eight-year-old human resource manager for another hospital, since she was nineteen. He has no clue about her homosexuality. They live in a middle class house in Agoura Hills, about forty minutes’ drive from National Boulevard on a good day. They have a young child. Five years old. First year of kindergarten. A little boy who looks just like his dad.

She’d rushed into marriage with Larry in the hopes of it turning her straight. It hadn’t. She’d had a child with him, in the hopes of it turning her straight. It hadn’t.

She’d met Shania while shopping for shoes, a year ago. Shania had smiled at her, she said, and said hello. They’d talked, had coffee together at a cafeteria. When Shania told her candidly what she did for a living, she did what she thought she’d never have the courage to do and asked Shania for contact details so they could meet again. Just talk, get to know each other, maybe become friends. And Shania did so, with a sincere smile, and they’d met again a few days later, and again, and just like that, she’d found someone who wasn’t just a friend but more.

Someone who accepted her, as she is. Someone who finally understood her and her … alternative tastes. Someone as enthusiastic to experiment with, to be herself with and not fear ostracization, fear for her life.

But Shania, who’d been prepared to give it all up just for her, is dead.

An accident, after which she’d lost her mind and has no memory of leaving Shania’s corpse in an alley. An accident, by her hand, and nothing she says or does is ever going to change that fact.

“A young woman dead, and another tried to commit suicide, and her family will never be the same again. A damn tragedy, all around.”

Dobey is shaking his head, his expression lugubrious. Hutch and Callahan are of the same opinion, but they say nothing.

“Go home, you two. Especially you, Hutch,” Dobey orders in a low voice, eyeing Hutch’s tarnished shirt. “You can submit your reports tomorrow. But I expect you both back here at eight o’clock sharp in the morning. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Callahan replies for both of them.

Just as they are about to leave the office, he hears Dobey say, “Good work.”

It is the scarcest of praise from Dobey, and Hutch manages to give his captain a faint albeit earnest smile in return.

The walk to the LTD in the car park is a quiet, introspective one. Callahan’s handsome face is set in a frown, like he’s upset that he’s powerless to do anything about so much of the evil in the world. Hutch relates to that frustration.

“Hutch,” Callahan murmurs as Hutch drives him home, to an apartment on Orange Grove Avenue. “Do you think things might have turned out differently for Tina Bennett if she didn’t need to hide her sexuality?”

Hutch thinks on this for a while, then says, “Who knows, Joey. The same thing could have just as easily happened in a heterosexual relationship.”

“Yeah … but the fact that she had to hide it, you know? Living a double life like that, pretending to be two different people when only one of them was the real her …” Callahan sighs and shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe the whole damn mess might have been avoided if she … if she had people she could talk to about the truth. People who won’t judge her. People who’ll accept her like Shania Thomas did. Maybe things might have been different for her then.”

Hutch purses his lips, gazing forward at the road ahead.

Gee, Hutchinson, that situation sounds REAL familiar, doesn’t it? Getting a dose of déjà vu there?

Hutch doesn’t have the energy to even tell the obnoxious voice to fuck off. Even worse … it’s right. Technically, that was what he and Starsky did, pretend to be just best buddies in public while they were lovers in private.

Correction, Hutchinson, just buddies fucking around. It meant NOTHING to Starsky, remember?

Hutch’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel, till his knuckles go white. Just … damn, how fucking sad is it that he’s envious of the real connection Tina Bennett had with Shania Thomas?

Eight years. EIGHT years, Hutchinson, of being your best friend, and he ditched you with less care than the body of a young prostitute by her lover who accidentally choked her to death and went nuts.

Hutch waits for the Starsky-like voice to pop up. It doesn’t. And for some reason, it makes snow fall over the vastness of his mental landscape, white puffs drifting down from a gloomy, sunless sky. The chill is lulling. Numbing.

“It might have been different. Or it might have been worse,” Hutch murmurs eventually, forcing himself to relax. Callahan is gazing at his face. “Living a completely honest life has its consequences too.”

“But at least you can sleep well at night. And look people in the eye.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

At a red light, Hutch drums his fingers on the steering wheel, and then says, “Joey, here’s a question for you.”

Callahan angles his head, blue eyes bright with curiosity.

“Say there’re two men who spend seventy-five percent of all their time together.” He almost expects Callahan to say, you mean, three-quarters, but when Callahan simply continues to look at him, he asks, “Do you think those two men may have homosexual tendencies?”

Callahan seems taken aback. The younger man blinks and tilts his head even more, a groove appearing between his eyebrows.

“You mean, just from spending seventy-five percent of their time together?”

“In this case, yeah.”

“Well … I think the amount of time you spend with somebody doesn’t determine or change your sexuality. If that was true, all you gotta do to turn gay is spend lots of time with a gay person. And if you apply the same reasoning to gay people interacting with straight people, wouldn’t there be gay people turning straight the same way too? It doesn’t add up.”

Hutch can’t help the upward curving of the ends of his lips in spite of the depressing, morbid day he and Callahan have had. If other young people of Callahan’s age are thinking similarly, perhaps there is hope for a future with tolerance and acceptance of gay people.

Hey, Blondie, at this rate, maybe gay marriage WILL become legal one day, huh?

Oh, now the imaginary, non-corporeal Starsky decides to show up … but Hutch doesn’t have the energy to be angry. He doesn’t have the energy either to blot out the image surging to the forefront of his thoughts: Starsky, in a tailored tuxedo, smiling, as a ring molded from the most precious metal on earth is slipped onto the left hand’s fourth finger. Smiling that huge, happy smile. At him.

The snow falls ever harder, and still, Hutch’s heart curls in on itself inside its solitary fortress towering once more over a frozen land.

“I mean, gay people are people, like everyone else,” Callahan says, waving his hands in emphasis. “Like cops are people. Prostitutes are people. Pimps are people.” Callahan falters for a second. “Even murderers are people.”

“That they are.”

“I think – I think what counts is whether you’re good people or not. You commit a crime, especially when you harm or kill someone else, and you gotta pay your dues, no matter what job or ethnicity or sexuality you got.”

Hutch smiles genially at Callahan.

“If only the whole world thought the same way, huh?”

Callahan snorts, but is also smiling.

“My Pop once said that if something like that happened, the whole world would just implode on itself because it’d be too perfect to exist. And we cops would be out of a job.”

“And dead from the planetary implosion.”

Their shared chortle, ephemeral as it is, is one that feels good and chases off the gloominess, even if it’s just for a while.

When Hutch is back at his Venice Place apartment, he heads straight for the bathroom and takes a long shower, scrubbing his skin clean of sweat and Tina Bennett’s blood. He throws the bloodied dress shirt into the trashcan. Wearing only his robe, he goes to the living room and sits on the couch, staring at the phone on the side table. He’s thinking about calling a certain person with thick, dark curls and big blue eyes … and it isn’t Stacey, who is probably asleep by now.

He stares at the phone, thinking about affectionate hugs from muscular, strong arms, about tender touches to his face by large, calloused hands. About fond, empathetic smiles on lips that his own still remember, as if he had only kissed them yesterday. Lips he misses, more than ever.

You did good today, Blondie. I’m proud of ya.

When Hutch shuts off the lamp on the side table and trudges to his bedroom, the phone is still where it is, its receiver never picked up, its buttons never pressed.

When Hutch crawls into bed naked, he spends hours staring up at the ceiling, and tells himself that all of it means nothing to him too.

Alone again, in his fortress of ice. Naturally.

& & & & & &

The next three Starsky-less weeks stream away like grains of sand through Hutch’s fingers, steadily, uncomplicatedly. Simmons, his fountain of intel on two legs, casually informs him at the water cooler four days after the Shania Thomas case that Starsky is currently incognito for a Narco mission. Has been for the past five days.

Well, that explains why Hutch hasn’t seen him around.

“I dunno any of the Narco guys, but Diaz knows some of them and one of them told him that Starsky and his new partner are working undercover.”

Bartholomew Diaz is one of their fellow homicide detectives, a happily married Mexican-American in his late forties with two sets of teenage twins. A real nice guy with whom everyone gets along with, including Hutch and Simmons. It’s no bombshell to Hutch that Diaz is friends even with cops from the Narcotics department.

“Team effort, or just Starsky and his partner?”

Hutch prides himself on his voice not hitching at the last word.

“Four Narco guys. Starsky, D’Amato and another set of partners. No word on what they’re doing or where they are.”

Hutch also prides himself on his hand not trembling as he drinks the cool water from a paper cup.

Starsky, out there with someone else. Out there under a false name, a false identity, in what must be a perilous situation … and Hutch isn’t there to watch his back. It’s going to take Hutch a really long time to get accustomed to that. Particularly after what occurred in the Metro car park.

“Diaz is asking around some more about D’Amato. Seems the guy’s got his hooks in lotsa snitches on the streets and plays hardball hard, if ya know what I mean.”

Hutch hadn’t asked Simmons or Diaz to inquire about Starsky’s new partner, but he isn’t going to discourage them. A masochistic part of him is undeniably curious about the guy, starving for info on the person who’s … replaced him in Starsky’s life.

So have YOU replaced me with YOUR new partner, Blondie?

Hutch drains his cup and then chucks it into the trashcan next to the cooler.

Maybe I should. You couldn’t wait to do it to me, so you’re not one to talk.

Imaginary, non-corporeal Starsky doesn’t reply, and Hutch adds another point to his score.

“What else do you have on D’Amato?” Hutch says cautiously as he and Simmons saunter away side by side from the water cooler towards the squad room down the hall. There are ears everywhere.

“Tony D’Amato,” Simmons says just as cautiously. “Forty-one years old. Italian-American. LA native. Divorced. No kids. Been in Narco for over ten years.”

“And his former partner?”

“A Joe Rivera. He and Diaz are acquainted. I’ll talk to Diaz and find out more about him.”

Hutch gives Simmons’ upper arm a friendly punch.

“Thanks, Simmons.”

“Oh, if you’re worried about any tension between Starsky and his, uh, new pals, don’t worry. Seems the other Narco guys never liked Burke and Corman.” Simmons smirks. “You and Starsky did them a favor by busting them.”

The relief that deluges Hutch upon hearing that is intense. If that drug-related shitfest with Stryker has given Starsky an advantage with his new co-workers, Hutch is okay with that.

What’s the matter with you? You’re supposed to be PISSED OFF at him, Hutchinson, not WORRY about him.

Hutch doesn’t think twice about telling this voice to fuck off and go die in a swamp.

After the Shania Thomas case, Hutch and Callahan go on to solve three more cases in those three weeks, the first one a domestic abuse case featuring an enraged husband who caught his wife cheating on him and took matters into his own hands. Literally, with a baseball bat. The next two cases are straightforward gang-shooting cases in which Callahan’s experience serves them well. One of their apprehended criminals is from New York City, and recognizes Callahan.

“Hell’s Kitchen, right? Yeah, that’s where I saw ya before. You and that other fat, piece a’ shit cop! Is he dead?”

Callahan replies the perp with a fist to the face. Or he would have, if it isn’t for Hutch’s hand wrapping itself around his fist.

“Joey, no, don’t give him the satisfaction,” Hutch says into a glaring, panting Callahan’s ear, glaring at the handcuffed perp being shoved into a police car to be booked. Callahan barely says a word for the rest of the afternoon, glowering at the typewriter as he types his report for their latest case and replying to Hutch’s comments and questions with monosyllabic answers or grunts. Hutch feels no affront at Callahan’s surly behavior. He’s been down this road himself, many times. If somebody had called Starsky a ‘fat, piece of shit cop’, after making them run ten flights of stairs into a shootout on the rooftop of a rundown apartment building, he would have been furious too.

Newsflash, Hutchinson, Starsky ISN’T your partner anymore!

Hutch doesn’t react to that, and carries on typing up his own report, internally reiterating, Joey Callahan is my partner now, till the sun is setting.

An hour after dusk, Hutch and Callahan clock out of another productive day of work. They’re in the LTD when Hutch asks, “So, what do you fancy eating?”

Callahan is surprised by his question. The younger detective glances sharply at him, lips twitching a bit, as if unsure of whether to smile or not. It belatedly crosses Hutch’s mind that this is the first time he’s asked Callahan to have a meal with him outside of work hours.

How long had it taken him to ask Starsky out for dinner after they first met?

Four hours, Blondie. You told Vanessa not to wait up for you because you were gonna be late that night, and you treated me to a big steak and beer and played pool with me the whole night, remember?

Hutch smiles wistfully to himself. Remember? How can he ever forget?

“You pick,” Callahan says, mood noticeably blither.

“No,” Hutch replies, patting the other man once on the forearm. “It’s my treat tonight and I want you to pick.”

“Really? Wow, okay. I was thinking of …” Callahan, who is now smiling, is also scratching the side of his neck in discomfiture. “I … ah, you’re gonna laugh, man.”

Hutch smiles, pearly teeth gleaming in the illumination from the headlights of cars that zoom by.

“Try me.”

“I …” Callahan rolls his eyes self-deprecatingly, lets out an explosive sigh and then mutters, “I like vegetarian food.”

Although Callahan isn’t looking at him, Hutch schools his features into a poker face.

“Like, black bean and avocado guacamole?”

Hutch is this close to laughing aloud at Callahan turning his head slowly to gawk at him with wide eyes.

A mirth-tinged hush reigns over them for a minute. Then, Callahan says, “Curried chickpea salad?”

Still deadpan, Hutch replies, “Sweet and spicy BBQ tofu?”

“Holy shit, you like vegetarian food too!” Callahan exclaims, rearing backwards in a dramatic fashion and pointing a finger at him, and both of them erupt into guffaws at the same time. Ah, it feels good to have a nice, long laugh. He hasn’t had one of those for a while.

The lousy mood Callahan was in has dissipated by the time they’re halfway to the vegetarian restaurant on Willow Street. Callahan tells him that he’s hoping to purchase a car this weekend, preferably a tire-smoking, high-speed one, and Hutch has to bite his tongue to thwart himself from saying, are you going to have it spray-painted tomato red and add a white stripe to its sides too?

“Maybe a Chevelle Malibu. The 1977 Classic Coupe model.”

“You like your cars fast and big.”

Callahan chuckles, his blue eyes crinkling.

“I want a car that gets me where I want as fast as possible and protects me while I’m on the road too, you know?”

“I hear you on that. That’s why this beautiful babe’s mine,” Hutch replies, fondly tapping the car’s dashboard with his right hand.

“Hutch?”

“Yeah, Joey?”

“No offense, but your car’s a pile of junk. Did you get it out of the dump?” Hutch laughs good-naturedly at that, even more when Callahan, who is laughing along, says, “Tell me it’s not some condemned car you got from the dump!”

No, I was the one who got the car from the dump for ya, Blondie, despite my excellent taste in vehicles.

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but it was condemned,” Hutch says, his laughter waning. “I lost my previous car in an … accident. Crashed down a ravine and it got totaled.”

“Ouch. Slippery roads?”

“More like a slippery toad who tried to get me killed off by hiring someone to run me off the road. My legs were trapped under my car for two days.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve gone through some pretty crazy stuff, huh?”

Kid, you don’t even know the half of what I’ve gone through with Blondie here.

Hutch isn’t sure whether to smile or weep at the fact that this make-believe Starsky voice in his head is apparently here to stay and butt into every conversation he has with real people. He’s just damn glad nobody else can hear it, or he’ll be on a one-way trip back to Cabrillo State and he won’t be an undercover nurse this time.

Hutch isn’t sure whether to smile or weep, either, at the fact that he’d rather have make-believe Starsky in his head than no Starsky at all.

“Yeah, I guess I have. But I bet you have your own stories of crazy experiences to tell too,” Hutch says with a slight smile.

Once seated in the popular restaurant, they order portabella mushroom enchiladas, angel hair pasta primavera, sun-dried tomato and walnut penne pasta and two slices of peach crumb pie. They devour the enchiladas within minutes, ravenous as they are after their wild perp chase earlier today. As they wait for their main dishes to arrive, Callahan murmurs, “My Pop thinks I’m such a weirdo for liking vegetarian food.”

Recalling that the younger man’s father had been an NYPD detective, Hutch grins and says, “Let me guess, he’s a steak and beer sort of guy.”

Callahan also grins and replies, “Yeah. So was I, until I became a homicide detective.”

“Why’s that?”

Callahan shrugs.

“The bodies.”

It takes Hutch a couple of seconds to comprehend the concise answer.

“Ah. You said you and your partner were assigned to Westies-related murders.”

“Yeah. They like chopping people up.” Callahan shrugs again. “It’s the sort of thing you don’t forget, you know? When you see it for the first time.”

“I know what you mean. The first corpse I saw was of a man in his late fifties. Gunshot to the chest.”

It’d been his second plainclothes assignment, the first being a drug-related case in a high school (that would have grave repercussions for Starsky in the years ahead). The man had been found dead in Elysian Park in the early hours of morning by a homeless man, less than a mile away from the Police Academy. There was no wallet or any form of identification on the body. Hutch had surmised that it was a robbery gone real bad, and he was proven right just three hours later when a 24-hour convenience store, about three miles away from the crime scene, was robbed by a man in his early twenties with a pistol. The robber had unknowingly dropped his first victim’s wallet on the floor of the store in his haste to flee.

Luckily for Hutch, the robber had also dropped his own wallet, packed with wads of money from who knows how many other robberies and, oh yes, an ID.

It was my second plainclothes case too, Blondie. OUR case. Remember how I ran after him and jumped onto his back and flattened him on the sidewalk? That was fun!

“Gunshot to the chest … I saw one of those back in NYC, but it was a suicide. Sort of. It was a woman who actually paid somebody to kill her.” Callahan shakes his head. “I think when I started seeing all these dead bodies, especially the dismembered ones, my brain kinda rewired itself. Every time I want to eat meat, red meat, my brain will dig up all my memories of crime scenes. The goriest ones. And then I lose my appetite.”

Just then, the waitress arrives with their pasta, and she gives Callahan an odd look as she serves their dishes. Callahan immediately flushes and presses his lips tightly together while Hutch’s shoulders shake with noiseless mirth.

“Perhaps we should postpone our discussion on dismembered corpses till later,” Hutch says, straight-faced.

“Yes, let’s,” Callahan says, also straight-faced.

Hutch finds the angel hair pasta primavera to be delectable and sadly all gone into his belly all too soon. In spite of their topic of conversation, Callahan’s appetite right now is as robust as ever, and Callahan has already wiped his mouth with a napkin and is nursing a hot cup of coffee when Hutch eats the final mouthful of angel hair pasta and then puts down his fork.

“That was good. I’m gonna have to remember the address of this place.”

“It’s my girlfriend’s favorite restaurant as well,” Hutch says, wiping his lips with his own napkin. “She’s a full-fledged vegetarian.”

“Yeah? So does that mean you’re a vegetarian-but-not-always-a-vegetarian like me?”

Hutch’s eyes twinkle as he replies, “Yeah. Don’t tell her.”

Ya know it’s a bad sign when you’re hiding things from your girlfriend, right, Blondie?

Hutch gazes down at his empty plate as he folds his napkin and then places it on the table.

It’s anything better than being a two-faced liar about being just best buddies when you’re having mind-blowing sex with said best buddy, don’t you think?

He receives no rebuttal, and adds yet another point to his score.

“Hey, Hutch?” Callahan is scratching the side of his neck again, a gesture Hutch has learned signifies embarrassment.  He wonders if Callahan is conscious of it. “Thanks for holding me back from doing something stupid today.”

“I know how tempting it is to just lash out.” Hutch draws in a deep, languid breath and then exhales as languidly. “When I was finally face to face with Gunther, I was really, really tempted to execute him right there and then. Blow his brains out all over his desk.”

There is no judgment on Callahan’s face or in his blue eyes.

“It would have been so easy, to point the gun at his head. Pull the trigger. Bang!” Hutch makes a finger gun gesture with his right hand, recoiling it like he’d actually shot a bullet from it. “And that would have been the end of James Marshall Gunther. The man who sent two assassins after me and Starsky.”

Hutch doesn’t elaborate on what the bullets from the assassins’ machine gun had done to Starsky. Callahan knows all the grisly details by now on account of Simmons and the other guys in the squad. Something else to thank Simmons for, him not having to narrate the horror to Callahan himself.

“But I didn’t. If I had, I would have been no better than him. Maybe worse, because I know the consequences of doing such a thing.”

Like breaking up your partnership with Starsky by landing yourself in jail, hmm, Hutchinson? Newsflash again, the partnership’s kaput anyway!

For what must be the hundredth time, Hutch tells this particular voice to get lost and rot.

Callahan nods. There is a reflective, solemn expression on his face.

“Alfie, my former partner, he told me that he was once really tempted to shoot a guy too. A pedophile. Caught molesting his neighbor’s little kids, and had been doing it for years without the parents’ knowledge. Alfie’s partner at the time had to put him in a chokehold to stop Alfie from killing the guy.”

“Alfie was older than you?”

“Yeah, he was in the force for at least eighteen years before I became his new partner.” Callahan smiles. It’s a bittersweet one. “He kinda reacted like you, the first time we met. Wondering what the hell the captain was doing pairing him up with somebody straight off the patrol beat to work in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Hutch takes a sip of his coffee, the white porcelain cup conveniently shielding his face from view. Damn, had he been that transparent during his first meeting with Callahan in Dobey’s office? Or is Callahan just extrapolating off his past experiences with his previous partner?

“I was only informed of my partner reassignment the day before we met,” Hutch says as he puts down his cup back on its saucer. “I was … in a bit of shock.”

Callahan nods again, and Hutch is grateful that the younger detective doesn’t ask him to expound. He doesn’t know how much Callahan has figured out on his own by now, or what the other guys in the squad have told him.

“Yeah, I can understand. Kinda like waking up one day and finding out your partner’s gone for good, huh?” Callahan glances out the window, expression solemn once more. “Alfie, he was a good guy. If you didn’t know him, all you’d see was this really big, intimidating, bearded guy who looked more like a Hells Angel member than a cop. But once you did get to know him, he was a great guy. He was really dedicated to the job. He taught me most of what I know today, about surviving on the streets, using my noggin to solve cases and help people.”

“If there’s something else a cop never forgets, it’s their mentor.”

“Amen to that. Detective Sergeant Alfred Tennyson, may he rest in peace.”

Hutch bites his lower lip.

“Alfred Tennyson?”

Callahan chortles.

“Yeah, his Ma had a thing for poets, and she just so happened to marry a guy surnamed Tennyson. Everybody else called him Alfie.”

Their slices of peach crumb pie arrive and are served by a different waitress who smiles at them. After a few mouthfuls, Callahan murmurs, “Alfie died from a heart attack two months ago. Went to sleep one night and never woke up. His wife called me first thing in the morning, crying her eyes out. She didn’t know whether it was something natural or …” Callahan shrugs another time. “We were getting lots of death threats at the time. Anonymous letters, phone calls, bricks through the window, the works. My car’s windows were smashed. One time Alfie found a decapitated cat’s head left in a paper bag at his front door, and a note telling him that was how he was going to end up if he didn’t back off.”

“Jesus.”

Callahan’s smile this time is a dour one.

“Guess we pissed off certain people who didn’t like that we were doing our jobs.”

“Do you think Alfie’s death was from natural causes?”

“Alfie drank and smoked now and then, but he wasn’t addicted to either. No family history of heart disease. So … I don’t know. My Pop certainly didn’t think so. He said he’d heard of certain drugs that can induce heart attacks and be totally untraceable in the blood stream after a certain period of time.” Callahan lets out a faint sigh. He’s gazing down at his half-eaten pie, poking it with a fork. “Ever since my Ma passed away from cancer when I was fourteen, my Pop’s always been protective of me. I’m an only child. Her death hit him hard.”

Hutch remains silent, letting the other man talk, open up. It’s a golden opportunity to learn more about this young New Yorker who has become a constant part of his life.

“Her death hit me hard too. I went a little strange for a while afterwards.” Callahan sits up and hurriedly clarifies, “See, my Ma loved baking. She had this secret recipe for coconut cookies that everybody loved, especially my Pop. When I was a kid, I used to help her out with the dough and all that, and I learned how to make it myself. After she passed away, I … I was compelled to make them all the time, when I had the time.”

Callahan pauses, as if expecting Hutch to laugh or ridicule him for it. Hutch doesn’t.

Instead, Hutch says, “It’s not strange, Joey. It’s human to grieve, to grieve in all sorts of ways.”

Callahan smiles back. Then, gazing down at the table, he murmurs, “My Pop got so mad at me when he found out about it. At first I thought he was mad because he thought men weren’t supposed to do things like that, or something.” Callahan goes quiet for a minute. “Then one night, after I’d baked a batch and I was watching TV, he came home from work and went to the kitchen. I thought he was gonna yell at me again, but when I went into the kitchen too, he was sitting there at the table, staring at the cookies. Weeping. And then he told me how much he missed my Ma.”

Hutch gives Callahan an empathetic smile. He, of all people, understands what it feels like to lose a parent. He’s lost both.

“Ever since then, we’ve been real close. He’s always watched my back, on and off the job. Sometimes I think he gets too protective, you know?”

“You’re his only child. You’re all he has left of your mom, in a way.”

“Yeah … But when I became a cop, the other cops didn’t think that way. They assumed I got in nice and easy because of my dad being a well-respected detective in the force. Made me pretty mad.” Callahan snorts. “So I requested to be posted in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“You really don’t do things by halves, do you?” Hutch asks, grinning, and they chuckle together, the atmosphere around them buoying up.

“Oh man, my Pop was so pissed at me. We fought like hell for weeks over it. He kept telling me I was too inexperienced to work in a neighborhood like that, that I oughta start slow and safer, and I wouldn’t have it. Yeah, I know I’m his only kid … but I’m a cop too. I gotta do what I gotta do. If the mere thought of danger scares me, then I’m not cut out to be a cop in the first place.”

“Did your father know about the death threats?”

“Yeah. Started the fighting between us all over again.” Callahan shakes his head, smiling sheepishly. “I knew he was mad out of love, though. He was scared for me, scared that Alfie’s death was actually murder and that the mob was gonna come after me next. When Alfie passed away, I think maybe my Pop saw it as a chance to get me out of NYC and ship me off somewhere far away. Without a partner, I had to be assigned to temporary desk duty until I got a new one anyway.” Callahan makes a tsk sound with his tongue. “At first, I really didn’t want to leave. NYC’s my home. Lived there all my life. Felt like I was being a coward, running away with my tail between my legs.”

"Joey, it isn't cowardly if you retreat so you can fight another day."

“Huh. I never saw it that way before.” Callahan grins at him, and for a moment, the grin reminds him so much of Starsky that something deep inside him aches. “I liked working in Hell’s Kitchen, despite how bad it got in the end. I liked the place, the people. Maybe it’s the Irish blood in me, huh?”

Hutch smiles and says, “Maybe. So you ended up here because of death threats from the mob.”

“Kinda.”

At Hutch raising his eyebrows in inquisitiveness, Callahan says, “That’s only part of it, a small part.” Callahan sips some more coffee. “About a week after Alfie passed away, my Pop called me up for dinner. Said he had an important offer from California to discuss with me. At the dinner, he told me that an old pal of his in Bay City told him there was an opening in the Homicide department of the BCPD’s Metro division, for a detective. He wanted me to go for it, and I said hell no! Move to the other side of the country when I’m doing just fine as a cop in NYC? No!”

Hutch chuckles at this.

“Yeah, you can tell I love NYC, huh? So anyway, my Pop wouldn’t give up. I got into a bad mood because I thought he was just that desperate to get me out of Hell’s Kitchen, you know? And then, he said to me, ‘Joey, the cop there who needs a new partner is Detective Kenneth Hutchinson. That guy who singlehandedly brought down James Marshall Gunther and crippled entire drug cartels across the West Coast. Your answer still no?’” Callahan sniffs. “I sent my resume and application by FedEx the next morning.”

Hutch laughs affably.

“I didn’t think I was gonna get the job, to be honest. I assumed the competition would be stiff. I mean, who doesn’t want to work with the Kenneth Hutchinson?”

A certain David Michael Starsky who hates your guts now, for one. Right, Hutchinson?

Hutch buries the tactlessly frank voice under a volley of snow, shutting it out.

Humbled by Callahan’s respect for him, Hutch says, “I’m just a guy. Just a regular guy who’s a cop.”

“Just a guy who singlehandedly brought down James Marshall Gunther and crippled entire drug cartels across the West Coast. Yeah, just a regular guy,” Callahan teases, lips twitching, and Hutch is grinning while they finish their dessert.

When they’re back in the LTD and Hutch is driving Callahan home, Callahan says, “I wasn’t kissing ass when I told you it’s a true honor to be your partner. I meant it. The experience you’ve had on the job, I know I’ll have much to learn from you, like I learned from Alfie.”

“Thank you, Joey. I’m honored to be working with you.”

“Why? I’m just a regular cop.”

Hutch glances at Callahan, surprised at Callahan’s real bewilderment and pleased at the equally real modesty in the younger man’s tone.

“Do you listen to yourself when you talk about your work experience in NYC?”

Callahan’s thick eyebrows furrow in even more bemusement.

“Uh … no. Why?”

“Joey, the crime scenes you’ve seen, and the harassment you had to go through … there’re many cops who never experience what you’ve had to in their whole careers. And those who have, not all of them would have handled it as well as you obviously have.”

Callahan angles his head in contemplation.  Then he says insouciantly, “It don’t make me special or anything. Like I said, I gotta do what I gotta do, that’s all.”

I like this guy, Blondie. He’s got a good soul. I told ya a file says shit all about a man’s heart, didn’t I?

Hutch smiles to himself. Yeah, he likes the guy too. Pretty much struck gold with his new partnership. Heh, maybe his luck isn’t as shitty as he thought it was. He hopes, for Starsky’s sake, that Starsky’s new partner is a decent guy as well … or the guy’s going to say hello to his fists. For starters.

There’s something seriously wrong with you, Hutchinson. You shouldn’t even be giving a shit about your EX-partner anymore. Have you already forgotten what he DID to you?!  

Hutch simply laughs internally, feeling too serene to care, and his pessimistic inner voice scuttles away, defeated for now.

“Did you become a cop because your dad was one?” he asks Callahan while they’re cruising the Golden State Freeway and are passing Griffith Park.

Callahan cogitates on the question for a few minutes, gazing out the windshield.

“I guess so. I’ve never thought about it much. For as long as can I remember, I’d be listening to my Pop talk shop at the dinner table with my Ma, who was a part-time police dispatcher, or whenever they had friends in the NYPD come over for dinner. Cop stuff was life as usual. Must be in my blood too.” Callahan glances at him. “How about you, Hutch? Why did you become a cop? If you, uh, don’t mind me asking.”

“No, of course I don’t.” Hutch takes his turn to cogitate on the same question, pursing his lips in deliberation. Then, keeping his gaze on the road ahead, a bittersweet pang long submerged rising to the fore within him, he says, “I was born in Duluth, Minnesota. Lived on a horse farm, that was passed down to my father by his father, with my parents. My parents died when I was six years old. They were visiting friends in St. Paul and were killed in a car crash on the way home.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Must have been rough, losing your parents so young.”

Hutch gives Callahan an appreciative smile.

“Yeah. I didn’t understand what death was, at the time. All I knew was that they promised me they would come back ... but they didn’t.” Hutch pauses for a moment. “The first time I ever met a police officer was the day two of them came to my family farm and informed my babysitter – a neighbor called Debbie who lived a few miles from us – that my parents were dead. I remember one of them coming up to me and kneeling in front of me, ruffling my hair, smiling sadly at me as he told me my parents weren’t coming back.

“I didn’t understand what he meant at the time. But I remember his kindness. His strength as he carried me to the patrol car. It reminded me of my father. For years afterwards, my meeting with that cop stayed with me. And all the while, I was constantly moved from relative to relative all over Minnesota because they couldn’t … handle me.”

“Because you were grieving in your own way and they couldn’t understand?”

Hutch gives Callahan another appreciative smile.

“Something like that, yeah. As a pre-teen, I had terrible fits of rage. Sometimes even I was scared of myself. I was fourteen when I ended up with a relative who could deal with me. My Aunt Lillian, my mother’s cousin who’d just moved back to Duluth from the United Kingdom.” Hutch chuckles to himself, blue eyes glimmering with nostalgia. “Boy, did that lady kick my ass. Told me to accept what happened and move on and make something of myself, or just throw myself off Eagle Mountain already.”

Hutch chuckles louder at Callahan’s aghast expression.

“The thing was, her realism and her treatment of me as a person really did the job. My other relatives never bothered to get to know me or talk to me, even. Most times I was just a troublesome extra mouth to feed. But Aunt Lil was different. I think her English husband suddenly passing away before she moved back had a lot to do with us bonding and understanding each other. I cleaned up real good under her guidance. Went from being an antisocial boy filled with anger to being the guy voted ‘most likely to succeed’ and the class valedictorian.

“After I graduated from university, I finally told her one night about my meeting with that cop. The next day, she handed me a stack of police recruitment brochures and looking at them, that was when it really hit me that I wanted to be a cop. A cop like the one who’d been kind to me. A cop who can make a difference, and save lives.” Hutch sighs feebly. “And maybe, if I became a cop, and I manage to save somebody and that somebody has a family, has kids … they’ll get to go home to those kids who’re waiting for them. And those kids won’t have to know what it feels like to lose a mother or a father. Or both.”

Neither Hutch or Callahan speak for some time. Callahan’s eyes are incisive and his expression meditative while he processes Hutch’s divulgence. Then, eyes warm, Callahan says, “Well, I’m glad you did choose to become a cop. You have saved lives. Many lives.”

“As unbelievable as it sounds now, I almost didn’t. I was a lifeguard while I was in high school. I had this thing for the sea – still do – and I thought about becoming a sailor or a captain of a ship, living at sea. Then I went to the University of Minnesota Duluth, took my time to work out a future for myself. Even considered becoming a professional wrestler after becoming the intercollegiate wrestling champion for two years but … I guess I was fated to become a cop.”

“Why California, and not Minnesota?”

“Ah, now you’re going to laugh. After graduating from university, I came up with this half-assed plan that if I couldn’t make it as a cop, then maybe I could make it as a singer.”

Callahan grins in amusement at him.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. That’s why I moved from Duluth to Los Angeles. Can’t be cop, might as well jump straight into the entertainment business.”

“You any good at singing?”

Hutch smiles broadly, thinking of the oodles of songs he’s written in notepads and his beloved guitar back in his apartment.

“I’ve been told once or twice I should give professional singing a shot and record an album. One day, I just might.”

“Next you’re gonna tell me you’re a certified pilot who speaks French.”

Deadpan, Hutch replies, “I am. And I do. Although I only studied one year of it in high school.”

He senses Callahan staring at the side of his face for a whole minute. Although everything he’s said is the truth, he has to fight the urge to laugh.

When Callahan blurts out, “You’re unbelievable. Regular guy, my ass!”, Hutch loses the battle and laughs merrily with the younger detective till his eyes tear up. Wow, he hasn’t connected with another guy like this since –

Well, Blondie, I guess we’re even now, huh?

Callahan doesn’t notice his swift sobering.

“I bet you volunteer for some charity or non-profit organization to help kids in need, too.”

Hutch blinks his eyes clear. Then he murmurs, “Yeah, I do, actually. For the Big Brothers, Big sisters of America. The ‘little brother’ I’m mentoring is a boy called Kiko Ramos. He’s about fifteen now. Really great kid.”

“Unbelievable.”

When Hutch turns his head to look at Callahan, he sees that Callahan is staring out the windshield, shaking his head but also smiling in what seems to be admiration. Hutch swivels his gaze back to the road ahead, smiling softly as well. Seeing himself from Callahan’s point of view, it’s damn difficult to feel miserable about himself. If Starsky wants out of his life so bad, inhibiting Starsky from doing so would have just made them both miserable.

And really, is it his loss … or Starsky’s?

He waits for a rebuff from imaginary, non-corporeal Starsky to that question. He receives none, but doesn’t add any points to his score. He doesn’t have the heart to do so.

The remainder of the drive to Orange Grove Avenue is tranquil. Hutch steers the LTD languorously down the street, heedful of the other residents whose homes have gone lights out for the night. He maneuvers the car onto the driveway of Callahan’s apartment with a swing of the wheel and parks there.

Callahan isn’t making a move to leave the car.

“Hutch?” Callahan says, and straightaway, Hutch knows without a doubt that the other man is going to ask him about a certain other New Yorker who’d once been such a constant part of his life.

“Yeah?” he says gently, relaxed in his seat, his hands loose on his thighs.

“Sorry if it’s not my place to ask this, but …” Callahan scratches at the side of his neck, eyes averted. “What happened to your partnership with Starsky?”

Inside Hutch, new layers of ice are creeping up over the walls of his fortress, solidifying them. Fortifying them.

Before Hutch can reply, Callahan hastily mumbles, “I mean, the other guys told me that you and Starsky were close as brothers. Closer than brothers, even. And I’d read that article by Christine Phelps about how you two worked together and the other articles about the mayor’s ceremony and, I was just … well …”

Hutch sighs, then says as gently, “The decision to end it wasn’t mutual. He requested for a transfer out of Homicide without … telling me.”

“Oh.”

"I wish I could tell you why, but I don't know the reason myself."

Callahan runs long fingers through thick, dark hair. Eyes still averted, he says, "I'm sorry … I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked –“

"No, you have the right to. You're my partner now."

Hutch is inwardly astonished that his voice didn’t crack, or that the world hadn’t ceased to exist the instant he uttered those words. Callahan is looking him in the eye again, studying his face.

Callahan displays a small, poignant smile as he asks, “You don’t realize it, huh?”

Hutch blinks with incomprehension.

“Realize what?”

“Every time somebody mentions Starsky’s name or asks you about him, you … freeze. It’s kinda like … these walls of ice come up, and suddenly nobody can touch you.”

Hutch stares at Callahan, speechless. Did Callahan just coincidentally choose those words, or is he just that astute?

“I … ah, geez, I’m sorry, Hutch. I’m being outta line here –“

Hutch rests one hand on Callahan’s shoulder, a benevolent hand.

“No, Joey. No, I’m … thank you for being honest with me. I’m glad you told me.”

“You really didn’t realize it, huh?”

Hutch gives him a benign, tight-lipped smile, then says, “Pick you up same time tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Till I get my new car.”

“Then you’ll be picking me up, right?”

“Damn straight!” Callahan says jubilantly, and they chuckle and then bid each other good night.

Hutch ruminates on Callahan’s observations all the way back to his own apartment, driving leisurely on the 405, lulled into a torpor by the vivid lights from other vehicles on the freeway and suave jazz playing on the radio. That night, after his call to Stacey to chat with her, see how she’s doing and let her know how he’s doing, he has a slumber undisturbed by dreams of Starsky. It is the first in a long, long while.

In the morning, he has to tell himself that not dreaming about his former partner is a positive thing.

In the afternoon, as he’s ambling to the squad room with Callahan, bouncing ideas back and forth over their latest case, he has to tell himself that he isn’t dreaming when he runs into Starsky in the hallway.

Hutch has never seen Starsky in a black t-shirt and black jeans before. The t-shirt is close-fitting around Starsky’s stocky torso, a torso that’s all muscle with nary an ounce of fat, slimmer as if Starsky has lost some weight. The black jeans are even more snug – at least to Hutch’s eyes – than Starsky’s regular jeans, enwrapped around Starsky’s lean legs like a second skin. The Nike shoes that had replaced the blue Adidas shoes last year are no more, substituted by modish, dark brown lace-ups … but what has Hutch dead in his tracks is Starsky’s hair.

Starsky’s thick, dark curls are gone. Starsky has had them shorn at some point after their partner reassignment, and his hair is exactly like it was when he and Hutch were just beginning to work together as homicide detectives.

Like it was, when they’d been more than just best buddies.

When they were – yes, damnit – lovers.

And Starsky is gaping at him too, at his face, his hair, as if in immense disbelief at the changes he’s made to his own physical appearance. Without those unruly curls, Starsky’s blue eyes seem even larger, like pools of crystalline water in which Hutch had once found succor. But now, his imagination is wreaking havoc on his rationality and he can almost swear that all the noise in the world is dwindling into a hush and there’s no one and nothing in the world except them, just the two of them, staring into each other’s eyes, and there is a light in Starsky’s eyes. A light he’d seen, once upon a time, whenever Starsky gave him those humongous smiles or those rib-crushing hugs. A radiating pinprick of light in a cosmos of lifeless darkness that’s saying to Hutch, I’m sorry.

A radiating light saying to Hutch, please forgive me.

A radiating light saying, I miss you so much.

Hutch swallows past a lump in his throat. No, it’s just his imagination messing with him. It has to be.

“Detective Starsky?”

Callahan has stepped forward and is, interestingly, holding out his left hand towards Starsky. Hutch can pinpoint the precise moment that the fragile, transient link between him and Starsky severs, in the abrupt return of sound, in the flickering of Starsky’s eyelids, as if Starsky is awakening from a dream and is struggling to stay asleep, to stay in that dream.

“I’m Detective Joey Callahan. It’s an honor to meet you,” Callahan says, and Starsky is staring up at the taller, younger man now, blue eyes shuttered and face impassive. Without having to glance around at their surroundings, Hutch knows that they are being observed by other cops who are nearby and either walking past them or grabbing a drink at the water cooler.

It seems a century before Starsky raises his own left hand and shakes Callahan’s.

“You from New York too, huh?” Starsky says, one end of his lips arching upwards in that distinctive sideways smile, and Callahan grins and replies, “Yes, sir, I am. Lived and grew up on 76^th Street, near Lenox Hill Hospital.”

“Call me Starsky, okay?”

Starsky tells Callahan that he’d lived on 84^th Street, near the Mays, when he was a young ‘un,  and then the two New Yorkers are swapping short stories about life in Manhattan in different decades but all Hutch hears is the familiar, reviving burr of Starsky’s voice and all Hutch sees is the splendor of Starsky’s attractive, amiable face and gorgeous body, propped up against the wall with such graceful sinuousness. All he sees is the man he’d been willing to die for, again and again, the man he’d loved with every cell in his being, once upon a time.

The man he … still loves … and misse–

“STARSKY!”

The startling roar from the end of the hallway causes Hutch to flinch from its ear-splitting volume and brashness. Callahan is alarmed as well, rendered wordless and grimacing. Starsky, on the other hand, merely drags one hand down his face and then turns around to face the source of the roar: A six-foot-tall man in a navy-colored Macintosh, grey round-neck shirt and black slacks, with slicked back, dark hair, an aquiline nose and thin lips. The man’s eyes are narrowed in impatience, lips contorted into a conceited sneer that Hutch somehow just knows is always there on the man’s face.

So this is D’Amato.

Hutch abhors the man on sight.

Starsky sighs, then turns back to face them. The weariness Hutch sees on Starsky’s face now seems bone-deep. The last time Hutch had seen anything close to it, it’d been during Starsky’s physical therapy sessions at the hospital, when his therapist – a white-haired, Greek woman called Eirene – had goaded him till he was flat out on the floor, sweating buckets and paler than the moon, unable to budge even a finger.

What the hell is this D’Amato guy doing to Starsky?

“It was nice to meet ya, Joey,” Starsky says, his smile a parody of the one he’d shown Callahan minutes ago. The two men shake hands again, and then, Starsky is gazing at Hutch and across Hutch’s cerebral land, the snow starts to melt even as he is frenziedly mounding more snow around his fortress, his heart bolting in fright from the rays of heat incinerating their way through ice towards it.

Starsky is gazing at him, and it’s all Hutch can do to not seize Starsky by the hands, into his arms.

“Starsky,” he rasps in greeting, in farewell.

“Hutch,” Starsky says as raspingly, and there goes Hutch’s imagination again, telling him that it’s fondness he’s hearing in Starsky’s tone, fondness born from his absence. That Starsky doesn’t want to leave and wants to stay here. With him.

“STARSKY, COME ON, ALREADY!”

D’Amato’s second bellow ensures that Hutch will never know for certain. With one last small, strained smile aimed at them, Starsky pivots around and strides away, a rigid figure comprised of lines of suppressed ire, hands fisted at his sides. It perturbs Hutch, very much so, to see Starsky like this. Starsky isn’t the kind of guy who copes with his fury bottled up inside him and given time to fester into something truly detrimental. He’d witnessed Starsky lose his temper many times, be it when the now incarcerated George Prudholm threatened to kill a busload of children unless Starsky resigned or when young, artistic Emily Harrison had lost her vision as a result of Starsky’s (justified) actions in a shootout with robbers who were her accomplices, or even when he’d feigned amnesia at the hospital to teach Starsky a lesson about being a maniacal driver and Starsky finally caught on. Every outburst had mitigated the pressure within Starsky, releasing all that exasperation so that Starsky could do his job and do it well.

If Starsky doesn’t have the necessary respite, and the fury grows and grows –

Hutchinson! You should be HAPPY about this! The jerk’s getting his just desserts for ditching you!

Hutch doesn’t respond, and the spiteful voice scuttles away, defeated yet again.

There is a hand squeezing his shoulder, a gesture of forbearance, of support. Only when Starsky has turned the corner and disappeared from view does he glance at Callahan who is back to standing beside him. A small, accommodating smile is curving up Callahan’s lips. He smiles back, uncertain of what how it appears, but Callahan’s smile expands and then Callahan is asking him, “So, what was it you were saying about Timothy Jones’ priors?”, and in a snap, he’s readjusting to his Starsky-less life again. Like Starsky had never been there in the hallway, so gorgeous and sensual and everything Hutch wants. Like Starsky had never been there, gazing at him with those big, stunning blue eyes that seemed to be saying what he so acutely yearns to hear.

Like Starsky has ceased to exist, and isn’t haunting the corridors of his fortress again as he goes about his nightly routine of cooking and eating dinner – a simple Greek feta tortilla sandwich wrap – and a shower before vegetating in front of the television or reading a book. Stacey isn’t available tonight due to a late staff meeting at the bank, which means he has the entire night to himself, to do whatever he wants.

With an opened, unread book on his lap, he sits on the couch facing the switched off television. He stares at the phone on the side table, at its black buttons with its white numbers, and he’s thinking about dialing a very familiar number and saying to the other person on the line, do you miss me as much as I miss you, Starsky, do you?

When Hutch shuts off the lamp on the side table and trudges to his bedroom, the phone is still where it is. Its receiver never picked up, its buttons never pressed.

When Hutch crawls into bed naked, he spends hours staring at the curtained window, and he wonders why the snow and the ice of his lands of permafrost seem to burn him now, like fire. And as slumber prevails over him, as his eyes flutter shut, he also wonders why is it that Starsky had been in the hallway outside the Homicide department when the Narcotics department is two floors above.

& & & & & &

Two days later, alone at lunch break, Hutch goes to the Computer Center to pay a certain perky martial arts aficionado a visit of apology for his impoliteness during the Shania Thomas case.

“Oh, Hutch,” Minnie says, giving his hands on the reception counter a demonstrative squeeze. “It’s okay! You don’t have to apologize. I know how hard things must have been for you.”

Hutch requires no clarification of the ‘things’ to which Minnie is referring.

“No, it’s no excuse for my behavior then.”

“Hutch, really, I’m good!” She’s smiling one of those bubbly smiles at him, and it makes him smile too. “I already forgot about it!” She squints at him through her gigantic spectacles. “Have you been brooding about it for the past two weeks?”

Hutch feels his cheeks go warm.

“Oh my god, you so have. That’s just like you!” Minnie exclaims cheerfully, and Hutch chuckles in accompaniment to her giggle. It amazes him sometimes that Minnie doesn’t have a boyfriend or isn’t married. She’s an absolute sweetheart, a quirky, adorable lady with a smile that’ll appease even the sternest of judges. Starsky had once seriously considered taking her out on an official date, but later changed his mind, claiming that her friendship was too important to jeopardize with sex. Bearing in mind how often Starsky had flirted with her in the past, Hutch had made a bet with himself that Starsky would change his mind again. Starsky hadn’t … and Hutch wonders what Minnie would think of that, if she ever learns about it.

“I’m glad you’re still you.”

Hutch sends Minnie a sharp glance. Huh? What does she mean by that?

“You’re still you, but …” Minnie’s smile is now tinted with something akin to melancholy. “Starsky’s changed. A lot.”

Hutch blinks, then scrutinizes Minnie’s face. She’s looking to the side, downwards, as if she’s suddenly become anxious in his presence, and it hits him hard that she’s worried she’s upset him again by bringing up Starsky.

“Minnie, are you free for lunch?” he asks, smiling authentically, and Minnie looks at him, her brown eyes wide.

They gaze at each other for three seconds. Then, an even bigger smile emerges on Minnie’s face, and she replies, “Yes!”

As they go down by elevator to the cafeteria in the basement, Minnie tells him that she has to eat in because she’s waiting for some urgent information for an Arson Squad case that the computer is processing. Hutch is fine with it. He’s been curious about the recently renovated cafeteria and its new menu anyway. It has supposedly improved a great deal.

“You haven’t eaten here in over a year?”

“Yeah. I can’t believe it either.”

He and Minnie have found a table in the corner of the now multihued, luminously lit cafeteria, next to a half-wall divider with planters on top. Other similar half-wall dividers are segmenting the cafeteria, providing some privacy to diners, and in the center of the large room is a ceiling-to-floor pole with hanging pots of iridescent anthurium, hibiscus and Kalanchoe flowers. All fake, of course, since the cafeteria is where it is, but Hutch is delighted with the sheer sight of greenery anywhere in the building. The place needs more flora, damnit. Preferably the living type. The more of it, the better! And healthier!

“So, where’s Cutie Pie?”

Minnie’s eyes are twinkling.

Hutch smiles at her and says, “Joey’s having lunch with his father’s friend. A semi-retired captain from another precinct. The guy helped Joey get the job here.”

“Remind me to send him a thank you gift.”

Hutch laughs good-humoredly.

“Okay, I can’t believe I’m saying this either, but this is yummy.”

Hutch is speaking of his baked eggplant parmesan casserole stuffed with sliced eggplants, tomatoes, basil leaves, mozzarella and parmesan cheese. Minnie is dining on Moroccan lamb skewers with saffron rice, and it also looks scrumptious to Hutch.

“It’s great, isn’t it? All the food’s cooked by a new chef now. He was hired earlier this year, straight out of the LA Trade-Technical College.”

Hutch chows down on another big mouthful of eggplant parmesan and says, “If the quality of the food stays this way, I hope he sticks around.”

They eat their meals in a sedate quietness for a couple of minutes. Minnie gives him a piece of her Moroccan lamb for him to try, for which he thanks her and finds it to have an impeccable blend of paprika, cumin, ginger, cinnamon and garlic. He might just order this the next time he dines here, vegetarian diet or not. He gives Minnie a piece of his eggplant parmesan casserole too, which she likes, particularly the blend of cheeses.

“You know, when I saw Starsky with that box that Friday night … I thought I was never going to see him again.”

Hutch gazes at her face. She’s looking down at her plate, cutting up the Moroccan lamb into more edible slices with her spoon and fork.

“Box?”

“Uh hm. He came back here quite late. After driving you home, I think. I saw him heading for the car park as I got out of the elevator.”

That Friday … Minnie’s talking about the last day he’d worked with and seen Starsky before Dobey had informed him about Starsky’s transfer request. The box must have been what Starsky had used to carry his stuff from his desk, after clearing it.

Hutch puts down his fork and sips his cup of hot coffee. Then he asks, “Did he see you?”

“Nope. I was heading for the car park, too, but I was behind him. I don’t think he would have noticed me even if I’d called out his name.”

“Why’s that?”

Minnie also sips her tea, then murmurs, “When he walked outside, I stayed at the exit, watching him. I just … I just knew he needed space. He was walking like he was tired to the bones, his shoulders all hunched, his head bowed. Like all that sexy confidence was just gone, you know?” She sips her tea again, her eyes downcast. “I thought he’d quit and didn’t tell anybody about it.”

Hutch lowers his gaze to the table. Well, Starsky did quit, in a sense, and hadn’t told him about it.

“He really didn’t tell you?”

Hutch glances at her and shakes his head.

“On Monday, everybody was talking about … you know.” At Hutch’s nod, she continues, “People were saying that you were the one who requested for it.”

Shock must have engraved itself on his features, for Minnie says, “At first, I thought so too, when I remembered the way Starsky behaved that Friday night. But then you and Joey came to the Computer Center, and when I asked you about Starsky, I … I saw the hurt in your eyes. And that’s when I knew it couldn’t have been you who requested it.”

Hutch lowers his gaze to the table a second time. Minnie’s hand glides over and covers his on the table surface.

“When Starsky got into his car, he sat in it for a long time. He was too far away for me to see his face clearly, but … I saw him cross his arms on the steering wheel and rest his head on them, like he was …” Minnie leans forward, the volume of her voice decreasing to a whisper. “Just between you and me? It was like he was crying.”

Head still swimming, Hutch doesn’t say anything. His inarticulateness prompts Minnie to say, “But this is Starsky we’re talking about, right! Starsky’s one of the toughest guys I know. It was probably just my imagination.”

Minnie is right in that Starsky isn’t a guy who cries … but Hutch has seen Starsky in tears before, and each time, he’d been impelled to tears himself by Starsky’s pain, by being helpless to do anything to take away that pain except embrace Starsky and rock them both. If Minnie hadn’t imagined it, if it is true that she’d seen what she did …

Oh, Starsky. My friend. My best friend. What has happened to us?

“The other girls are scared of him now.”

Hutch simply stares at Minnie, confounded once more. What? Female officers of the Metro, scared of funny, attractive, flirty Starsky?

“It’s true, Hutch. Ever since, well, you know, the other girls don’t dare to talk to him. He doesn’t talk to us or flirt with us like he used to anymore. He’s all business. Always has a fierce look, like he’s angry all the time. You know Marcia, in Accounting? She said that Starsky used to chat her up all the time, try to get her out for drinks. When Starsky showed up at Accounting last week, he didn’t even smile. And the craziest part? He actually gave her all his receipts by date and on time, and not a single one was written on a napkin, and then he just walked off without a word. It freaked her out! She thought maybe she’d offended him in some way she didn’t know.”

Hutch scratches his right eyebrow with his thumbnail, frowning. That doesn’t sound anything like the Starsky he knows. Starsky enjoys flirting with the ladies like he enjoys his burritos: All the time, every time.

“At least he still smiles at me and talks a bit. But … I don’t know, Hutch, it’s like the light inside him just stopped shining. You know?”

Minnie’s last remark lopes around and round in his mind for days afterwards, even as he and Callahan investigate a case involving a spate of poisonings at a residential home. He is unable to envisage a Starsky without light, a Starsky without smiles and kind words. That’s not the Starsky he knows. That’s a … shadow of the Starsky he knows. A mere shadow.

A week after his lunch with Minnie, Hutch is alone and sauntering back to the squad room after lunch in the cafeteria. Callahan is spending his lunch break driving his second-hand, souped up, silver Chevelle Malibu around town for the third day, and as much as Hutch had relished the rides in Callahan’s newly purchased car, he’d declined a ride today to go for the cafeteria’s vegetarian special, an egg salad bento lunch consisting of egg salad on lettuce, diced celery, broccoli florets and cherry tomatoes, slices of pumpernickel bread with bittersweet chocolate chips and a salubrious serving of yoghurt-tossed banana slices and blueberries. He’d savored the meal so much that he went into the kitchens to personally commend the chef, a young Japanese-American, for the superb food.

Four steps away from the entrance of the squad room, he hears Simmons inside saying, “So, what do ya all think of Callahan?"

Hutch almost trips over his own feet in his rapidity to flatten himself against the wall next to the entrance and eavesdrop on the ensuing conversation.

“He’s a good guy. I like him,” says Andrew Chen, one of the younger detectives on the team, partnered with Bartholomew Diaz.

"Yeah, he does a good job. Decent guy."

Babcock, who sounds like he’s sitting farther away from Chen and the doors.

"Good guy and a real tough guy. Don't let his young looks fool you. Callahan's got guts of steel. He’s seen at least six dismembered corpses. Six! In just two years! Shit, if it was me and I had to go look at a dismembered corpse in the middle of the night with nothing but a flashlight and a chopped off head rolled onto my shoe, I don’t think I could sleep for a year!”

That’s Diaz, with his gravelly voice that belies a five-foot-seven height and slim figure.

"Yeah, he's a good guy. We all like him, but ..."

That’s Phil Sweeney, one of the oldest detectives in the squad who’s seen many cops come and go in his decades of service, currently partnered with Douglas Schmidt who seems to be absent or is saying nothing.

“But what?” Simmons asks.

“Well … he’s not Starsky,” Diaz replies at length, and the room goes silent for a moment.

Then, Chen says, "What kinda guy does that to his partner? Seriously, the hell Starsky was thinking, just suddenly transferring to Narco like that?"

"Yeah. Betcha a hundred bucks it wasn't a mutual decision to end the partnership,” Sweeney adds.

"Yeah, did you guys see how shocked Hutch looked that day? It was like he got hit by napalm or something,” Babcock says.

“Hey, Diaz, you know the Narco guy who quit, right? Rivera?" Simmons asks.

"Yeah. Joe Rivera. We're not that close, but we know each other enough to meet up for drinks now and then. Really surprised me when I heard he'd resigned. Just a week before he left the force, we were having a drink at El Cholo and he was going on and on about finally getting promoted to lieutenant. Said his wife was real happy he was going to get a higher pay and all that."

The other detectives mutter amongst themselves.

Then Simmons says, "Something’s off, man. I still don't buy it that he quit for the sake of his family."

"Well, who knows. Sometimes lots of things can change in a single day,” Babcock says.

"Yeah,” Chen mumbles. “Like Starsky and Hutch no longer being partners."

The room goes silent again, for a longer period.

Simmons resumes the discussion with, "It doesn't make sense, ya know? Starsky and Hutch, they were tight, we all know that. You guys remember when Hutch was hounded by IA for his ex-wife's murder? Remember Starsky shouting at us, when we were talking about it and we were wondering whether Hutch did kill her? Closer even than brothers, that's what he said to us. He and Hutch were really, really close, closer even than brothers, and he’d die for Hutch, he said."

There is a thudding sound, as if Simmons has propped his feet on the table.

"Just makes what he did all the worse,” Chen mutters. Chen is plainly displeased with Starsky’s actions. Hutch has never realized how keenly the Chinese-American detective feels about the partnership he had with Starsky, until now.

"Like I said, it just doesn't make sense. Hutch's a great guy. Great partner. Just look at how determined he was to bring down Gunther after Starsky got shot."

Murmurs of agreement waft to Hutch’s alert ears.

"And Hutch took six months off, just to be with Starsky at the hospital,” Sweeney says.

"Six months of unpaid leave,” Simmons says.

“My wife Imelda loves me,” Diaz jests, “and even she doesn't love me that much."

The others chuckle with amusement. Even Hutch smiles, knowing how understated Diaz’s comment about his wife really is. He’s met Imelda a few times since he became a BCPD homicide detective. A person would have to be blind as a bat to not see the profound love Diaz and his wife have for each other, even after twenty years of marriage.

"With support like that,” Simmons says, “we all knew Starsky would work his ass off to get back on the squad, and he did. You'd figure they'd be back stronger than ever after that, right?"

"I think they were doing alright when Starsky got back to work,” Babcock says.

Chen sighs, then says, “I dunno, Starsky did act like an asshole sometimes. Especially towards Hutch. Like, remember when they were working that double homicide case, the one where that engaged couple were shot dead in a hotel car park? Starsky was all up in Hutch’s face all the time, like Hutch was doing something to piss him off or like it was Hutch’s fault they died. And Hutch did nothing about it! Just let Starsky push him around.”

The legs of a chair scrape across the floor, as if someone is pushing their chair back.

"Chen, give the guy a break,” Diaz says with a staid tone. “Starsky got shot three times. He almost died. Hell, if what Hutch said is true, Starsky did die. Think that allows him to get frustrated now and then."

"Yeah, but after all Hutch's done for him? You don't act that way towards a good pal like that."

No one opposes Chen’s opinion.

"Hey, guys, we dunno the full story yet. Could be lotsa things we dunno that'll explain everything." Simmons hesitates, then says in a low voice, "Starsky told me Hutchinson's gonna get married soon. Hutch even said to me the other day that, hypothetically speaking, if he loved his wife and kids and had good reasons, he just might quit."

The squad room erupts into a verbal melee of enthused comments and questions.

“Are you serious, Sims?”

“Hutchinson’s getting married?!”

“Well, shit, I didn’t see that coming.”

“You know what, I bet she’s a real beauty.”

Hutch, still standing against the wall next to the squad room’s doors, stares unseeingly at the opposite wall. Starsky … told Simmons that he’s going to get married soon? Why did Starsky say that to Simmons, when he has barely chatted with Stacey about marriage? And didn’t he tell Starsky that it’s just a possibility?

A possibility isn’t reality.

Not yet, anyway.

"Yeah, Hutch's with a lady from ... which bank was it, again?" Sweeney asks, snapping his fingers.

"Bank of America,” Simmons replies.

"Yeah, yeah! Like Chen said, betcha she's beautiful."

"This is Hutch we're talking about here, of course the lady's hot stuff!" Babcock says vehemently, and everyone in the room sniggers.

Hutch is stuck between smirking and rolling his eyes. He ends up doing both at the same time. On one hand, it’s fascinating to hear his fellow detectives’ forthright opinions of him and Starsky, opinions he would never have heard otherwise. On the other hand, he had not expected them to be so riveted by his love life.

Gee, Hutchinson, just think of what they’ll say if they knew you used to fuck Starsky the Tough Guy in the ass till he screamed the house down.

Hutch grinds his teeth, and focuses on Diaz speaking.

"So is Hutch thinking about leaving Homicide too?"

"I dunno,” Simmons says. “Haven't heard any news like that. But Starsky said Hutch's pretty serious about his girlfriend. Like, ring-on-the-finger serious."

Silence, once more.

Then, Diaz says, "Maybe Starsky just got the ball rolling faster on ending the partnership, for Hutch's sake."

"So why didn't he talk to Hutch about it? The way Hutch looked that day, you know he didn't."

"Who the hell knows, Phil. Maybe there was something going on between them that we don't know."

Hutch stiffens, his breath strangling in his throat. Shit, what’s Chen implying with that?

"You guys ever hear the rumors about them?" Chen adds, and Hutch begins to hear the thunder of his rushing blood through his ears.

"What, that they're ..."

Hutch doesn’t have to glance into the room to know that Sweeney is probably flapping his hand in an exaggerated, effeminate manner.

"Yeah."

"C’mon, they're not gay! They’re like, pure machismo on legs!” Simmons retorts, causing Hutch to choke down a hysterical laugh. “Have you seen the women they've been with? Some of them were like goddamn supermodels! And Hutch was married!"

"I got a cousin who's gay,” Babcock says casually.

Hutch can practically hear the creaking of necks as the other detectives turn their heads to gawk at Babcock.

"No kidding,” Simmons says as casually.

"No kidding. He lives in West Hollywood. Before he came out to everybody, he was married for eight years. Just saying, just because a guy's been with ladies and married them don't mean he's definitely straight."

“Babs, how come you never told me about that –“

"Who gives a damn whether Starsky and Hutch were more than pals or not! What matters is whether they do a good job. And they do!” Hutch is surprised, pleasantly so, at the indignation in Diaz’s voice, at Diaz’s defense of him and Starsky. “Even if the rumors were true, it's their business, not ours! Would you like your love life to be public knowledge?"

More mumbling, unanimously concurring that the answer to that question is a resounding no.

Then Chen says, "Either way, Starsky's out of Homicide, whether Hutch likes it or not."

"But if Hutch gets married and settles down, there's no way he and Starsky could have gone on as they were anyway,” Sweeney says.

"You mean, wild and death-defying with a dose of are you fucking nuts?” Simmons says, and everyone laughs. Outside, Hutch can’t help smiling in wistfulness, for he wholly agrees with Simmons’ comical assessment of the partnership he had with Starsky. Yeah, he and Starsky had some outrageous, zany experiences together … and he treasures them all, more so than ever.

Diaz sums it up in just two sentences.

"All things have to end sometime. Even a partnership like theirs."

There is another letup in the discussion, in which Hutch hears the rustling of papers and someone sipping noisily from a cup and someone else clearing their throat. Then Sweeney asks, "Hey, Simmons, you're the pro-schmoozer, how come you haven't talked to Hutchinson about Starsky yet?"

"You kidding me? Ya think I haven't thought about it? Problem is, I dunno how to bring it up. Every time he even hears Starsky's name, he turns into a block of ice."

Hutch’s blue eyes go stark. There it is again, somebody associating his behavior with ice, with coldness.

"He must be pissed off,” Chen says.

"I know I would be, if Babs did that to me."

"Don't waste your breath, Sims. I hate your guts, remember?"

"Oh, Babs, I love you too!" Simmons wails in a falsetto tone, and everyone laughs again and at that instant, Hutch pushes himself off the wall and through the doors of the squad room and yeah, there’s Sweeney, sitting closest to the entrance, and there’s Diaz and Chen sitting at their habitual spots and Simmons and Babcock sitting farther down the long desk. Schmidt must be out, since the guy’s usually attached at the hip to Sweeney. Hutch nearly bursts out laughing at everyone pretending so hard to act normal and not as if they’ve been blathering about him behind his back. Ah, how can he not love these guys?

Hutch gets a pretty good idea of how much they love him when Simmons approaches him while he’s browsing through some folders in the squad room’s tall file cabinets, five days after the not-as-private-as-they-thought discussion about him. Simmons dives straight into things with him.

“So, how do ya feel about Callahan?”

Hutch glances at Simmons and with a small smile, he says, “Joey’s a good guy. Works real hard and knows his stuff. I’m glad to be working with him.”

Callahan has gone down to Records and Identification, which is why Hutch easily states his opinion of the younger detective. Dobey has gone out as well, which is why Simmons can afford to lounge around chatting.

Simmons nods and says, “That’s good, that’s good. The guys like him too.” Simmons glances at the trimmed fingernails of his left hand, then back at Hutch. “How about D’Amato? What do you think of him?”

Hutch spends a minute or two pulling up some files, flipping through them and putting them back in, his expression blank. Simmons doesn’t seem to mind waiting for a reply, and Hutch takes his time fabricating what he hopes will be a civil answer.

“I’ve yet to speak to him, and I’ve only seen him in person a few times so I don’t know what his character is like. But if he works well with Starsky, he’s probably an okay guy.”

After he pulls up the files he’s searching for, he shuts the file cabinet drawer and looks at Simmons. Simmons’ expression is deceptively indifferent.

“What do you think of him?” Hutch asks.

Simmons examines his fingernails again and says dispassionately, “Hate him.”

From the desk, Babcock mutters, “He’s a fucking asshole.”

Farther down the desk, Chen says, “A fucking racist asshole,” and Diaz, sitting opposite him, stretches an arm across the table and gives him a smack across the head.

While Simmons rolls his eyes, Hutch covers lips twitching with mirth with his fingers. Simmons waves a hand in the air, smiling in acknowledgement of Hutch knowing everyone else is listening in on them, then says to him, “Well, ya heard the crowd. Now tell us what you really think of him.”

Hutch places his files on top of one cabinet and faces Simmons, propping himself against the cabinet.

“I’ve yet to speak to him, and I’ve only seen him in person a few times … but my gut instincts tell me he’s probably an arrogant asshole who won’t think twice about stepping on other people to get what he wants.”

Simmons’ smile is more wicked now, a smile a conspirator shows to another.

“I think the only guy who’ll disagree with you is D’Amato himself.”

Hutch snorts.

“You telling me everyone thinks that of the guy?”

Hutch stands straighter at Simmons nodding in seriousness, the impish smile gone.

“At least the people I’ve spoken to. Lotsa birdies been chirping in my ear, Hutch, and none of it good things,” Simmons says, voice somber, and Hutch is now all ears, his full attention on the other man. “D’Amato is not a nice guy.”

“Something tells me you’ve got proof to back it up.”

Simmons purses his lips, crosses his arms over his chest then murmurs, “You and Minnie up in the Computer Center are pretty close, right?”

Hutch nods, holding his breath, his mouth dry. Fuck, what has D’Amato done to Minnie?

“Couple of days ago, Babs and I were at the Computer Center getting some info for a case. While we were waiting, D’Amato showed up and demanded to talk to Minnie, and by demand, I mean he yelled the place down. Banged his fists on the counter and even kicked it while he was at it, like he owns the whole damn building. When Minnie came running out asking him what his problem was, he just ripped right into her like she’d run over a dozen kids or something. Screamed in her face and called her all kinds of names for allegedly fucking something up with a computer print-out and harming his investigation.”

Hutch is oblivious to his hands compressing into taut fists, or that his expression is now a fearsome one.

“What sort of names?” he grinds out.

Frowning, feeling mutual wrath, Simmons says, “There’s a reason Chen called him a racist asshole.”

The silence in the squad room is stifling. Hutch runs one hand down his face and paces the small area between the file cabinets and the desk, stabilizing his breaths, seeing red, blood red.

“And before you ask, you bet Babs and I had a few words with him.” Simmons nods his head in Babcock’s direction, his frown intensifying. “There’s a reason Babs’ been favoring his shoulder.”

When Hutch glances at Babcock, he sees the seated detective shrug and stretch his left shoulder, gingerly.

He turns to Simmons and growls, “What happened to Minnie after that?”

“After Babs and I had our disagreement with D’Amato, Minnie was gone. Didn’t know what happened or where she went until I saw my lady that night.” Simmons coughs and says quietly, “Uh, Sheila, she works in the Missing Persons Bureau. She and Minnie are friends. She told me that when she went to the Computer Center later in the day, the other officers there were talking about what happened and told her Minnie had taken the rest of the day off. She called Minnie up, and Minnie told her she was so upset she couldn’t work and went home and cried her eyes out.”

Hutch would have slammed a fist into one of the file cabinets if it isn’t for Callahan entering the squad room at that moment, two files in hand.

“Hutch, I got the records on James Crawford and Edmund … Vargas,” Callahan says, trailing off upon nearing him and Simmons at the file cabinets. Callahan glances first at his face, then Simmons’, then back at his, but doesn’t say anything else.

Hutch gives the younger detective a nod. It seems an adequate enough a reply, and Callahan goes to sit at the desk, glancing again at him. He turns back to Simmons, standing closer to the other man, calm enough to say coolly, “There’s no way Starsky knows about this. He would have torn the bastard to shreds for treating Minnie that way.”

“And you would be right,” Simmons replies as coolly, still quietly. “Seems Starsky doesn’t have a clue about D’Amato’s two-faced bullshit. Whenever Starsky’s around, D’Amato tries to come across as a good cop who’s just rough around the edges, a Mr. I Ain’t A Racist Hypocrite Asshole, so Starsky’s probably never seen D’Amato without the act.”

“Have you –“

“D’Amato sticks to Starsky like a leech. Believe me, I’ve tried to talk to Starsky, man, but D’Amato’s always around. It’s like D’Amato won’t let other people near him.”

Hutch rubs the skin above his upper lip, an old habit from his moustache days that hasn’t quite vanished yet.

“And speaking of Starsky, word is that he isn’t doing too good.”

Hutch looks sharply at Simmons, the groove between his eyebrows pronounced. Simmons’ gaze in return is steadfast, concerned.

“You were saying, that if Starsky works well with D’Amato then D’Amato’s an ‘okay guy’, right? Well, he isn’t, and they aren’t. Diaz heard from his pals in Narco that Starsky and D’Amato are always blowing up at each other anyway despite D’Amato’s act. Like mixing fire with gasoline. They do their jobs, but … all that conflict all the time makes for a less than pleasant work environment, ya know what I mean?”

“So the Narco guys aren’t so happy to have Starsky onboard now?”

“D’Amato’s been one of them for years. They’re not gonna go after their own, no matter how much they may hate him. Just think about Burke and Corman.” Simmons sighs, then mutters, “Look, Hutch, Starsky clashing with D’Amato isn’t the only reason they’re getting cranky about Starsky.” Simmons scratches the side of his head, averting his eyes. “People are also saying that Starsky’s … that he’s, uh … gone dirty.”

Hutch’s hand moves far swifter than his brain. In a flash, Simmons’ jacket lapel and dress shirt are scrunched in his fist and he’s hauling Simmons up and towards him, already in fight mode. He hears the shrill scrape of chair legs across the floor. Senses all eyes on him. Watching with bated breath.

“Hutch, Hutch, I’m just the messenger here, okay? I’m not the enemy. I’m just telling you what I’ve heard.”

Simmons has lifted his hands up, palms forward. A motion of peace.

A second ticks by, then another, and another, and Hutch releases his clutch on Simmons’ clothes. He smooths down the crumpled jacket and shirt, smiling apologetically, mumbling, “Sorry … sorry.”

Simmons pats him on the upper arm, eyes condoling.

“It’s okay. I get it. We get it. We don’t believe that bullshit about Starsky either, none of us.” Simmons gesticulates with his right hand at Callahan who had swerved his chair to face them. “Hell, I bet Joey here wouldn’t believe it either.”

“Believe what?”

Callahan’s poker face betrays nothing.

“That Starsky’s gone dirty,” Simmons says, and instantaneously, Callahan’s eyes narrow in condemnation of the allegation.

“See?” Simmons says, smiling.

“Who said that about Starsky?” Hutch asks, eyes blazing.

Simmons’ smile quickly fades to a solemn expression.

“I don’t know. I wish I knew, though. One minute everybody’s talking about Starsky transferring to Narco, the next minute everybody’s whispering that Starsky’s not as clean as he likes people to think he is. That maybe he’s decided the other side is looking more profitable.”

“That’s bullshit. Starsky will never do that.”

“Yeah, we know that ‘cause we know Starsky. But the Metro’s a big place … and you and Starsky have never really been chummy with IA, right?”

Hutch reads Simmons’ meaningful glance loud and clear: Starsky better watch his back and not do anything stupid, or Simonetti and his partner will be gunning for him again. Till he’s down for the count.

“Even if IA goes after him because of that bullshit, they won’t find anything because he is not a dirty cop.”

You THAT sure, huh, Hutchinson? You, the sorry sap who didn’t even see it coming, Starsky dumping you like trash.

Swallowing down what tastes like a ball of bile, he reiterates heatedly, “He’s not a dirty cop.”

Simmons nods in agreement. Then he smacks Hutch on the upper arm, and says, “I find out the source, I’ll tell ya ASAP.”

“Thanks, Simmons,” Hutch murmurs gratefully.

“Hey, gotta look out for our own, right?”

As the last word rolls off Simmons’ lips, Dobey clomps in through the squad doors, expression stormy. With a speed a cheetah would be envious of, Simmons scurries to Callahan’s side and rests an arm across the younger man’s shoulders and says jauntily, “Heeey, Joey! Say, you, uh, you been baking any of those coconut cookies again?"

Dobey sends Hutch an enquiring look as he opens his office’s door. Hutch simply shrugs and picks up his folders from the top of the file cabinet and ambles to his seat at the desk. No, sir, everything’s normal, sir, no rumors about Starsky being a dirty cop, no, not at all, sir.

"Sims, leave the guy alone. Do you know how sad you are, asking the guy for coconut cookies?"

"Says the guy who stuffed his face with a dozen of them!"

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Babs, I have a personal record of your swelling pants sizes, man, so don’t even bother trying to convince me you’re slim.”

“You have a record of my what?!”

Smiling outwardly in amusement at yet another Simmons-Babcock squabble, Hutch sits down and scans through his files, counting his blessings for having co-workers – friends – like Dobey and Callahan and Minnie and Simmons, Babcock, Diaz and the rest of the squad. Friends who are looking out for him … and for Starsky, in spite of it all.

Starsky.

Still his friend. His best friend who he still dreams of in the night, in spite of it all.

That afternoon, he makes a brief trip to the Computer Center to look for Minnie, but discovers that she’s out and no one else there knows when she’ll be back. He leaves a message for her asking her to look him up if she returns or call his apartment after his shift is over. In the evening, during the ride home in Callahan’s Chevelle Malibu, Callahan only brings up the rumors about Starsky once, asking, “So what was Simmons talking about, Starsky ‘going dirty’?”

“He claims that that’s the rumor going around the Metro about Starsky. That Starsky’s possibly working for the mob now.”

Just speaking the words makes Hutch feel sick.

“Starsky? No way, man. I know I’ve only spoken to him once, but I know he’s not dirty.”

Hutch gives Callahan’s shoulder a squeeze of gratitude.

That night, around half past nine, Minnie calls him as he’s strumming his guitar on his couch and listening to Buddy Holly, alone. Minnie is her jovial self, right up until Hutch mentions the rumors about Starsky and by extension, D’Amato.

“He was … he was awful, Hutch.” Her voice is brittle, delicate. Heart-wrenching. “I felt lower than dirt after he treated me like that. If it wasn’t for Simmons and his partner, everyone would have seen me lose it, including him … and it wasn’t even my fault. It was an error by the DMV, not our computer system. But he didn’t care. He kept screaming at me, saying I’m not fit to be a – a cop and he said he was going to report me and he called me that – that slur –“

Listening to Minnie sob once and then apologize for it, he consoles her with compassionate words and a promise to have lunch with her tomorrow, and lobs D’Amato straight to the #1 spot on his Scumbag List, sharing aforesaid spot with Gunther. If D’Amato so much as crosses his path from now on, he’s going to give the bastard a mighty taste of his own medicine. And if D’Amato so much as treats Starsky the same way he did Minnie … there won’t be anything left of the fucker to put six feet under after Hutch’s done with him.

As sworn, Hutch meets with Minnie for lunch, taking her out along with Callahan to the vegetarian restaurant on Willow Street. Callahan’s ebullient presence engenders an enormous smile on her face. Though Callahan hadn’t been so jolly – downright infuriated, actually – when Hutch had told him about Minnie’s lamentable experience with D’Amato earlier in the morning, Hutch is pleased that Callahan doesn’t mention it at all but gives her a hug and then plies her with jokes and humorous stories that make her smile more and laugh throughout their meal. Yeah, Callahan’s a good guy. Hutch is glad the rest of the squad have accepted him as one of their own.

When they return to the Metro and Hutch and Callahan are in the squad room examining old case files involving poisoning, Simmons approaches Hutch to inform him that Starsky and D’Amato have gone incognito for another mission. Nobody knows when they’ll be back.

“Really? That’s too bad. I was hoping D’Amato would meet my friend, Mr. Right Fist, and his friend, Mr. Left Fist,” Hutch says, deadpan.

“What a coincidence,” Callahan says, eyes on his notepad as he jots down annotations, smirking. “I, too, happen to have such similarly named friends who’d like to meet D’Amato.”

Three days after the lunch with Minnie, Simmons approaches Hutch again, this time in the Metro’s cafeteria in the afternoon. The cafeteria is almost vacant. Perfect for a conversation about sensitive issues.

“Wish I had good news to tell ya, Hutch.”

Simmons is drinking a cup of black, unsweetened coffee while Hutch is munching on his second egg salad sandwich. He’d missed out on lunch earlier due to a drawn-out interrogation of a perp for their residential home poisoning case. The case had been rather vexing until they received an anonymous tip about a nurse who’d been recently fired from a hospital just five minutes’ drive away from the residential home. Once they’d checked her out and then apprehended her, it was a matter of getting her to talk. That had taken hours of persistent grilling, largely on Hutch’s part whenever he played the good cop to Callahan’s bad cop. By the time she’d written and signed her confession and was taken away to be booked, both of them were fatigued and famished. Callahan had gobbled down his food – a giant bowl of Japanese soba noodles in soup – in record time to return to completing paperwork as soon as possible, and the utensils are still on the table, pushed to the side.

“Hit me with it anyway.”

“It isn’t pretty. The rumors about Starsky are even worse now. People are saying he deliberately transferred to Narco ‘cause he’s secretly working for an up-and-coming mob boss, a big player who’s looking to move in on Gunther’s territory and take over the major drug lines along the West Coast. Some guy called The Fin.”

Hutch snorts derisively.

“That’s insane.”

“You’re telling me. But that’s what I’m hearing, through Ballistics to the Gambling Squad to Vice. Whoever spread it around did one hell of a job.”

“And IA hasn’t checked it out and debunked it yet?”

Simmons exhales audibly and sucks in his lips. Then, eyes averted, he mutters, “Simonetti’s sniffing around.”

The plastic casing of Hutch’s sandwich crunches in his hand.

“Yeah, Simonetti and his partner, Dryden. They haven’t made any moves yet, but they’ve been sniffing around and asking about Starsky’s, uh,  extra-curricular activities. If he has any.”

Hutch says nothing for a minute, prying open the compacted plastic casing so he can chuck the leftovers of his sandwich into it.

“Hutch –“

“Starsky isn’t a dirty cop. They can sniff all they want, they won’t find anything.”

Simmons raises his hands and says, “Look, I agree with you. I’ve worked with you and Starsky for years, remember? Years.”

Hutch sighs, then gives the other man a small smile and says, “Yeah. I know.”

“The thing about people is, people can change. And when they do change, sometimes it can happen just like that. You agree with that?”

Hutch gazes at Simmons’ face, silent, blue eyes unwavering.

“Shit.” Simmons runs the fingers of his right hand through his hair, agitatedly. “There’s no nice way to say this, man.” Simmons’ hand lands with a slap on the table top. “Starsky’s hitting the bottle. Unfortunately, this one’s no rumor.”

Hutch’s gaze turns frosty.

“Diaz ran into Starsky in the car park about nine days ago, late afternoon. He managed to talk a bit with Starsky and he … he smelled the booze on Starsky. The hard stuff. And the smell was the kinda smell only somebody who’s been drinking a lot has.”

“Starsky does not drink on the job,” Hutch states calmly, too calmly, but Simmons isn’t daunted.

“Diaz isn’t the lying type, Hutch, you know that. He wouldn’t bullshit about something as serious as this.”

“No.” Hutch points a finger and jabs the air with it. “He does not drink on the job. Full stop.”

“Hutch, that was the Starsky we knew. The Starsky before he left Homicide.” Simmons glowers back at him, lips pressed into a line. “When was the last time you spoke to Starsky? The last time you knew what was going on with him?”

Simmons’ questions strike him like whacks from a steel baton. He turns his head to the side, scowling, glaring at the floor.

“Ya think I like saying stuff like this to you, Hutch?” Simmons’ tone is sympathetic now. “I don’t, man. But I’m thinking, after being best pals for at least eight years, despite him transferring and partnering up with someone else, you still care about him. Right?”

Hutch doesn’t answer. He hears Simmons sigh.

“Okay, it’s not my place to question you about whether you still keep in contact with him or not. I don’t blame ya if you aren’t. The other guys don’t, either.”

He rubs at his forehead with the pads of his fingers, eyes shut. He takes one deep breath. No, he shouldn’t be taking out his frustrations on Simmons. The man’s done a lot for him lately, without expecting anything in return, and even stood up to D’Amato when D’Amato was harassing Minnie and he didn’t have to make it his business.

“Apart from running into him once, I haven’t spoken to Starsky at all,” he says, opening his eyes to look at Simmons. Simmons is resting his forearms on the table, gazing at him with genial eyes. “And he’s never contacted me.”

“So it definitely wasn’t you who requested for the partner reassignment, right?”

“Right.”

Simmons presses his lips together tightly again.

“Damn.”

Hutch looks sharply at him.

“See, if it was you who wanted the partnership to end, then Starsky moving to Narco was a chance thing. Since he was the one who wanted out, you just know Simonetti’s gonna see that as a premeditated move.” Simmons takes a sip of his coffee, then says, “Starsky wasn’t the only guy Diaz’s run into lately. He saw Rivera alone at El Cholo when he took his wife and kids there for dinner two nights ago. Rivera was friendly and all … until Diaz asked him about his resignation. Diaz said that Rivera went paler than a ghost, like he was gonna keel over from fright.”

Hutch leans forward on the table, also resting his forearms on its surface.

“Didn’t you say Rivera claimed he’d resigned so he could spend time with his wife and children? Despite an upcoming promotion to lieutenant?”

“Exactly. So why would the guy lose his shit just being asked about the resignation, right? When Diaz tried to push the issue, Rivera just kept telling him that same old line about his family, like a damn parrot. Wouldn’t say anything more about it, and left as soon as Diaz went back to his table.” Simmons crooks one eyebrow up. “So now do ya think it’s fishy, too?”

Hutch presses one fist against his lips, his brows creased in cogitation.

“So Rivera’s resignation isn’t as voluntary as it seems.”

“Nope. Not if his reaction to Diaz was real.” Simmons takes another sip of his coffee. “And about Rivera’s partnership with D’Amato, it turns out Rivera was the Mr. Nice Guy to D’Amato’s Mr. Racist Hypocrite Asshole. Rivera was the PR extraordinaire of the duo who kept D’Amato’s batshit behavior behind the scenes so D’Amato could keep playing hardball, ya catch my drift?”

“D’Amato pushed Rivera around and got away with lots of crap because the guy would always clean up after him.”

“Bingo. He’s probably pulled the same shit he did on Minnie on lotsa other people. We just don’t know about it.”

“But Starsky’s not the sort of guy who can be pushed around, if ever.”

“Yep. Hence the constant conflict. Oh, and there’s something else. Sweeney’s got a pal in Robbery/Burglary, a young detective who’s been hoping to transfer to Narco for some time. Ya know how Narco’s been on the lookout for reliable members since the, uh, situation with Burke and Corman, right? So this friend of Sweeney’s finally decided to go for it about three months ago and sent in his request for a transfer to Narco. Decent record, decent guy with recommendations, figured he would get it easy.”

Simmons’ voice lowers to a cautious murmur.

“So get this: Just days after he submitted his request, there he was, having a nice meal with his wifey and baby girl at home when a buncha goons in ski masks paid him a visit. Crashed through the door and smacked him around and told him that if he didn’t withdraw his request ASAP, they were gonna make him pay by killing his whole family before his eyes. And if he told any of his cop pals, or anyone else, about their visit, they’d make good on their threat. He withdrew the request the next day.”

Hutch stares at the other man, appalled.

“The only reason Sweeney even found out about it was because he and the guy had drinks at the guy’s house and his pal’s tongue got loosened by all the alcohol.”

“Then Sweeney told you.”

Simmons nods.

“As Sweeney put it, his pal had told lotsa people about his transfer request so it wasn’t some secret or anything. Word must have spread onto the streets and gotten into the ear of whoever those goons work for.”

“And those goons might have also paid visits to other cops who submitted transfer request to Narco at the time, if there were any others.”

“Yeah. But even if we knew who they are, what sane guy would blab when professional goons are watching his family and itching to kill them?” Simmons shakes his head, then says, “Sweeney thinks it’s no coincidence his pal was threatened to stay away from Narco around the same time Rivera quit. I think Rivera got a visit from those goons too.”

Hutch rubs the skin above his upper lip, his frown deepening.

“Three months ago … that was around the time Starsky submitted his request for a transfer.”

“Hutch, do ya believe in coincidences?”

There is a glint in Simmons’ eyes, a glint reflecting in Hutch’s own eyes.

“I think it’s time I started looking up old friends in the know,” Hutch says, thinking of a certain wily, well-groomed owner of an all-night bar and bistro, and Simmons shows him an eloquent smirk.

“And I’ll continue to do the same.”

As Simmons begins to stand up, Hutch murmurs, loud enough only for Simmons to hear, “Danny, be careful, okay?”

Simmons nods and then winks at him, straight-faced.

“Don’t worry. They don’t call me the Legendary Schmoozer of the Metro for nothing.”

They share a surreptitious smile, but Hutch’s smile wanes as soon as Simmons is out of sight, drowned by apprehension. The apprehension lingers in him all the way till evening, while Callahan is driving them to a pizzeria called Casa Bianca. Callahan had mentioned he was hankering for some good pizza since moving from New York, and before Hutch had even finished saying, “Hey, I think there’s a place in Eagle Rock that serves good Italian-style pizza,” Callahan had bundled them into his Chevelle Malibu and stomped the accelerator (but never over the speed limit, of course).

“You want to talk about it?” Hutch glances at Callahan and the younger man adds, “Whatever it is that’s making you look like you want to rip apart the whole city looking for something. Or someone.”

Hutch flushes, unsure of how to reply to that.

“Simmons talked to you again about Starsky, right?”

Callahan is smiling, a perceptive smile, and Hutch unwinds and says, “Yeah. None of it good.”

He tells Callahan everything Simmons had imparted to him in a subdued voice. By the end of his soliloquy, Callahan’s expression is pensive.

“Somebody wanted Starsky to get into Narco real bad, Hutch.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t think it’s true, do you? That Starsky’s working for this … what’s his nickname again, The Fin?”

Hutch stares out the passenger window, chewing on his lower lip.

“My head tells me that the chances of Rivera’s resignation and those goons threatening other cops away from Narco being pure coincidence are … extremely low.”

“What do your instincts tell you?”

The edgy silence in the car endures for several minutes.

Then, Hutch says distinctly, “Starsky would rather throw himself into the ocean with cement blocks around his feet than work for the mob and let mob goons threaten fellow cops.”

“Then that’s what we’ll work with.”

Hutch turns his head away from the window to gaze at Callahan. Callahan’s expression has transformed into one of resolve.

“Okay. Let’s treat this like a case,” Hutch says, smiling softly.

Callahan also smiles, then says, “Since Starsky’s undercover and unavailable for questioning until further notice, all we got right now is Simmons’ information and your extensive knowledge of Starsky. So, going with the belief that Starsky’s clean and that the rumors of him going dirty are just bullshit, who stands to gain the most from Starsky falling from grace?”

“You want the list in alphabetical order?”

Callahan snorts and replies, “You two made that many enemies?”

“Enough that I can name at least a dozen people off the top of my head.”

“Okay, so we gotta shrink the suspect list. Who stands to gain the most from Starsky falling from grace now?”

Hutch leans his head against the headrest and stares up at the black headliner above.

“There’s only one name that comes to mind.”

“Gunther?”

Hutch closes his eyes.

“Yeah. Except he’s rotting in jail, and he’s staying there for life. If he’s still seeking revenge, I should be the target, not Starsky. I was the one who arrested him and put him there.”

“If anything happens to you – or Starsky, again – everyone will be pointing fingers at Gunther. He may be a sociopathic criminal with no conscience … but I don’t think he’s stupid.”

Recalling the enmity in Gunther’s near-colorless eyes, as the former head of the fourth largest holding company in the country stared at him in the court room during the nationally-publicized trial, Hutch senses a shiver zigzagging down his spine.

“He’ll hate my guts till the day he dies, but no, I don’t think he’s that stupid. And he’s lost his power. His whole empire.”

“Hence all the other mob bosses vying for his throne and territory.”

“Yeah. They’re all coming out of the woodworks now, including this Fin guy, whoever he is.”

“The Organized Crime squad is gonna have their hands full for a while, huh?” Callahan pauses, then says, “You think we should ask them about The Fin? If there’s somebody at the Metro who’d know about him, it’d be them.”

“I’m thinking of asking someone else who’s … closer to the streets. Someone I implicitly trust.”

“A Mr. Huggy Bear of The Pits on 1348 E 6^th Street?”

Hutch sends the younger detective a glance of surprise. Callahan is smiling again.

“I’ve done my homework,” Callahan says, smile broadening, and Hutch also smiles and then says, “Yeah. Huggy’s a good guy. A good friend. He’s been an invaluable source of information for as long as I can remember.”

A good friend you haven’t seen or spoken to for almost two months, Blondie. What’s up with that?

Before Hutch can conceive a reply to that, Callahan says, “Hutch, Simmons said he always heard the rumors throughout the Metro, right? What if it’s another cop who started them, and has been encouraging them to spread?”

Hutch gazes out the windshield, frowning in contemplation.

“D’Amato?” he says, and Callahan replies, “I thought that, but I’m not too sure he’d gain anything from badmouthing Starsky. Starsky’s his partner now, so badmouthing Starsky by making people think he’s dirty is gonna look bad on him too. Sure, D’Amato’s a Grade-A asshole and I can see him being childish enough to lash out like that, but I bet his ego’s the size of the Pacific and won’t stand for any bad talk about him either. Starsky’s been his partner for, what, just two months? What are people gonna think if he talks shit about Starsky? Especially when it’s an accusation of Starsky working for the mob? IA is sure to put him under a microscope with Starsky and demand to know where he’d gotten such info from and why he’s spreading it around instead of reporting it directly to IA.”

“And Rivera quitting meant D’Amato lost a partner who was willing to put up with and even clean up his bullshit for years.”

“Yeah. I’m thinking D’Amato is probably pissed as hell that Rivera left him without a scapegoat. If he’s gonna badmouth somebody, it’d be Rivera, not Starsky.”

The conversation lulls as Callahan maneuvers the car through Exit 139A out of the Golden State Freeway and onto the Glendale Freeway, as per Hutch’s directions. Hutch returns to staring out the passenger window, his blue eyes seeing not other vehicles speeding alongside the Chevelle Malibu but the interiors of a bedroom in a canal cottage, a diffusely lit room with its king-size bed and Starsky sprawled on its light blue covers.

Starsky, nude in all his glory, reaching out with his left hand and smiling that humongous, beautiful smile at him, as if they had never parted. As if all of it had meant everything to Starsky too, like it did to him.

Like it still does.

I miss you. Miss you so much.

Hutch feels the cotton twill of his jeans beneath his clenched hands and the firmness of the leather seat under him and against his back, but inside, it is cold and wintry and high up in a fortress of ice, his heart aches for warmth from a sun it hasn’t seen for an eternity. It doesn’t like the cold anymore. The cold doesn’t make it strong anymore.

“Is there anyone else at the Metro who might have a grudge against Starsky?”

Hutch opens eyes he doesn’t realize he’d shut. The world before them is blurry.

“The first person Starsky and I arrested as plainclothes cops was a nineteen-year-old guy called Gary Vincent Prudholm, for pushing drugs at McKinley High School. He was killed in a knife fight while in city jail, and his father, George Prudholm, blamed Starsky and I for his death.”

“Wait a minute … this Prudholm was the guy who killed two cops and then ended up in a mental institution, right?”

“Yes. Prudholm promised he wouldn’t stop killing cops until Starsky resigned for shooting sixteen-year-old Lonnie Craig during a liquor store robbery. The two cops were Officers Dan Tinker and Jack Forrest. Tinker was shot by Prudholm. Forrest was killed by a bomb in a gas station’s bathroom. And yeah, they had friends who were not happy with Starsky.”

“Are these friends of theirs still on the force?”

“I don’t know. I never got their names, so I don’t even know where to start asking without stirring up bad memories better left undisturbed. The last thing Starsky needs now is for people to remember the Lonnie Craig shooting.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Still … that was years ago. Almost five years.”

“And for them to talk shit about Starsky now, after what happened to Starsky? Talk about carrying an old grudge, huh?”

“Yeah … Well, there’s Simonetti and Dryden, but it’s been two years since Starsky and I have interacted with them in any way. And as much as it pains me to say it, although Simonetti ended up taking it a little too personally, they were just doing their jobs as IA cops while investigating me for my ex-wife’s murder. It’s one thing to investigate another cop for homicide, it’s something else to spread unfounded rumors about a fellow cop working for the mob.”

“A fellow cop who returned to active duty after recovering from multiple gunshot wounds only, what, eight months ago?”

“Yeah.”

The conversation lapses into silence a second time, until they’re exiting Glendale Freeway and the car is heading for Colorado Boulevard towards Broadway.

“It’s not looking good for Starsky, Hutch.”

Hutch says nothing and waits for Callahan to explicate.

“Like you said, it’s too much of a coincidence that Rivera would quit and Sweeney’s pal in Robbery/Burglary would get threatened by goons to stay away from Narco around the same time Starsky transferred to Narco. Now we know Starsky isn’t the kinda guy to go dirty, but Simonetti and the rest of IA aren’t going to see it that way. The way it’ll look to them, especially if Simonetti is gunning to take down Starsky this time, is that Starsky’s gone on The Fin’s payroll and moved to Narco as his mole. So in order to make sure Starsky got a post ready for him, The Fin sent his goons to smack Rivera around and get him to quit. Then he sent his goons after anyone looking to transfer to Narco around the same time as Starsky. At least, until Starsky got the job.

“If Simmons managed to find out about The Fin and the death threats, no doubt IA will too, sooner or later, and they can dig as deep as they want into the paperwork and get the names of the cops who’d requested to transfer to Narco around the same time. Then it’s just a matter of IA interviewing them and linking the death threats with Starsky’s transfer, if they talk. And if Simmons’ intel is right on Rivera, it must have been a piece of cake for the goons to get Rivera to resign. Him being a pushover, pushed around by D’Amato for years on end, it’s probably why The Fin targeted him.”

Hutch considers what Callahan said, then replies, “But that would also imply that The Fin’s been keeping an eye on Narco for some time.”

“I’ll bet my paycheck on that, if he’s really that big a player and he really intends to take Gunther’s place and control the drug lines.”

“So if he is … does that mean he already has Metro cops on his payroll before Starsky transferred?”

Hutch’s question leaves them both disconcerted.

“Geez, this is like jumping outta the pan and straight into the fire.”

“Gunther had dirty cops on his payroll too. One of them was responsible for reporting to him about my daily routine at the Metro. Mine and Starsky’s. That’s how those … assassins knew exactly where we’d be that day and when we’d leave the building to go to the car park.”

Callahan shakes his head, an introspective frown etched on his handsome face.

“This is what I don’t get about all this ... Starsky got shot by assassins sent by one of the most powerful mobsters in the country, and then he goes and becomes a lackey for another big shot mobster? The only reason I can think of that could possibly force Starsky into doing something like that – if he’s gone dirty – is if he’s being, I don’t know, blackmailed or something.”

The word sends another shiver zigzagging down Hutch’s spine. Starsky, blackmailed … for what? What could anyone, much less an up-and-coming mob boss like The Fin who Hutch had not heard of till today, have on Starsky that could coerce Starsky into going dirty?

The tantalizing image of Starsky naked on his bed arises once more, but this time, all Hutch feels is intense dread. His fingernails burrow into his palms. Can it be, that someone knows about that one month? That someone has some sort of evidence of their sexual relationship and is using it to blackmail Starsky? Someone like The –

That was five years ago, Blondie. We were real careful. Always closed the curtains and locked the doors and windows. Why’d you think I always insisted on being at the cottage? It was YOUR home, your domain. I felt safe there. I knew you would protect me. And you did. Every time.

The world is blurry again, and Hutch blinks hard.

Except that one time, Starsk. That one time, when I failed and you died … and then came back to life. For me.

The luminosity from the headlights and taillights of other vehicles sear his eyes.

“It’s kinda ironic, that the death threats are helping us, in a way.”

Hutch glances wordlessly at Callahan.

“The longer it takes for Simonetti and Dryden to look up  the cops those goons harassed and get information out of them, the more time it buys until Starsky tells us his side of the story.”

A entire minute passes before Hutch mutters, “That’s if Starsky even wants to talk to me.”

They’re on Colorado Boulevard now, passing small apartment buildings and motels. The pizzeria’s neon blue-and-pink sign stating ‘Pizza Pie’ is ginormous, conspicuous even blocks away, and Callahan says nothing in reply to him as he searches for a parking space. It is only when Callahan has parked the car in a spot less than a block away and turned off the ignition that the younger man says, “I think he does … but maybe he just doesn’t know how.”

Hutch’s eyes widen at the déjà vu he senses upon hearing that. He’s heard that before, not phrased precisely the same way but –

He’s hurting, Ken. Maybe he just doesn’t know how to tell you that he’s hurting inside.

Hutch can feel Callahan’s gaze on his face. He looks out the windshield, thinking about a lovely, smart woman with thick, dark curls and big blue eyes, thinking about how long it’s been since the last time he’d seen her and how many dates he’s had to cancel on her because of work.

Oh no, Hutchinson, don’t lie to yourself now. You KNOW why you’ve been avoiding her. This is one grave you dug for yourself.

“I don’t know,” Hutch says, in reply to both Callahan and that goddamn voice in his head that just has to be right. “I don’t know.”

Callahan squeezes his shoulder.

"We'll get to the bottom of all this, Hutch.” Hutch hears the clack of the driver’s door opening. “C’mon, let’s go fill our bellies with some good pizza.”

For the next few days, Hutch’s mind seems as foggy with smog as the city itself. The days are spent catching up on tons of paperwork and thinking about Starsky who is out there on the streets, without him. Thinking about Stacey, about why it’s so difficult lately to picture her face or her voice or the way she moves when he can evoke memories of Starsky by category and keyword with each and every heartbeat. Memories of Starsky’s smiles. Of Starsky’s various laughs, of the way his eyes crinkle at the sides and the way the sun seems to glow from within him whenever he’s joyful. The softness of his lips. The copiousness of his dark, curly hair and the lushness of those long eyelashes. The smoothness of the skin of his long neck, undulating as Hutch kisses and nibbles it, and the low groans as Hutch licks a path down his broad, hairy chest and the higher-pitched moans as Hutch licks and sucks lower, lower down.

Starsky, suffusing his every thought, even while he is on a long overdue date with Stacey and they’re dining at a new vegetarian-friendly restaurant in town that she’s wanted to check out for quite some time. He doesn’t remember what they’ve been chatting about or what he’s ordered for dinner and every time he looks at her, he sees someone else, someone who’s out there on the streets, without him. Someone who should be here at his side, instead, suffusing the snow-laden landscape of his mind with life-giving sunshine.

Stacey has obviously noticed his unintentional detachment, and indicates her disgruntlement by ending their date straightaway after dinner. She requests him to drive her home although they’d planned to go to the cinema after dinner to see the latest Robert De Niro film, Raging Bull, and he does so without complaint. Her good night peck on his lips is feeble, forgettable. The weightiness on his heart as he watches her walk to the front door of her house and unlock it and enter it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she doesn’t glance back at him once.

Back at his apartment, he brews himself a hot cup of coffee and sits on his couch in his robe, sipping the coffee and thinking, thinking, for a long time. He ignores the phone on the side table. There’s no point in staring at it tonight, as the one person he so desires to call won’t be there to answer. After an indolent shower, he slinks into bed and attempts to read Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, a book he’d bought months ago. He doesn’t remember a single word from pages his eyes peruse for the next half hour.

When Hutch switches off the bedside lamp and lies down on the bed, he falls asleep within minutes, swathed from nose to toes in a luridly colorful Falsa blanket from Mexico that still smells a bit like Starsky after a cold shower.

& & & & & &

Hutch’s first meeting with Huggy at The Pits, since the dinner with Starsky and Stacey, does not go well.

“Well, well, if it isn’t Lazarus, back from the dead.”

Huggy’s big brown eyes, typically welcoming, are circumspect. Skeptical. Huggy’s attire today is conservative and low-key: A denim jacket, a white t-shirt highlighted by a red scarf around the neck, jeans and a beige hex hat.

“Hey, Huggy,” Hutch says, hoping his smile appears as amiable as he wishes it to be. He seats himself at one of the few available tables left during the hectic lunch hour as Huggy moseys up to it.

Huggy wastes no time in declaring his mind.

“Is my lowly establishment too square for you now?”

Hutch has to grit his teeth to hinder himself from wincing. Yeah, Huggy’s noticed his prolonged absence from the bar and bistro, alright.

“Huggy, it’s nothing like that.” He shrugs, his smile changing into a contrite one. “Things at work have just been ... a little complicated lately."

“So I heard,” Huggy replies, and Huggy’s tone is the chilliest Hutch has heard in ages. A tone that speaks volumes of how Huggy feels about being left out of that loop.

Hutch is unable to continue looking Huggy in the eye. He lowers his gaze to the small, unlit candle vase on the table, then murmurs, “Has he been here?”

He is flabbergasted by the hostility in Huggy’s voice as Huggy replies quietly, “And why would you care about that?”

“Huggy, I –“

“Burger and fries, as usual?”

“Huggy –“

Hutch curses inwardly as Huggy strides away without glancing back, then leans his elbows on the table top and cups the side of his face with his hands, propping his chin on his palms. He sighs once, heavily. A standoffish Huggy is an unfamiliar Huggy to him … but a standoffish, protective Huggy is one he can still comprehend, to some extent. If he’s reading Huggy’s comment right, then Starsky has been here since the dinner with Stacey … and if he’s reading Huggy’s antagonistic mood right, Huggy must have learned something or another from Starsky that’s incensing Huggy and making the guy give him the cold shoulder. But what is it? And shouldn’t Huggy be fuming at Starsky, not him, for ending the partnership? Or is Huggy really that offended that he hasn’t come around in months?

He stares at the candle vase. It’s about the only thing in the whole damn place that’s safe to look at, that doesn’t remind him of the man who was once his partner, in more ways than one. It’s safe, unlike the bar with its black-and-white Barbara Streisand photograph hanging behind it that Starsky adores, the bar where they had chosen each other over Kira and walked out with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Safe, unlike the jukebox in the corner, upon which Starsky would lean on and stretch that gorgeous body like a big cat while idly picking his favorite Fats Domino songs.

Safe and merciful, unlike the pool table in the center of the room, the very pool table where he and Starsky had played so many games and made so many bets. Where Starsky would play little tricks on him to sabotage his shot. Smile at him and laugh with merriment, even when he won and Starsky didn’t. Touch him, on his arm or his back or his belly, and sometimes even hug him, just for the sake of hugging him.

Starsky is everywhere around him, and it’s all Hutch can do to not fragment into a million, irreparable pieces.

A plate bearing a bulky burger and a generous helping of fries materializes before his eyes on the table. He glances up and sees Huggy setting down a mug of what smells like piping hot coffee and a fork and knife next to the plate. Although his usual order is a burger and fries with beer, he’s glad for the coffee. It’ll repel the pall of winter. The winter outside, that is.

The winter inside him will always be there as long as his sun, with its rejuvenating warmth and caresses and hugs and humongous smiles, is gone.

“Thanks, Huggy.”

Huggy responds with a long, reflective look and then a nod. The aloofness in Huggy’s expression and body language has decreased, as if Huggy has amended his opinion about him – or something regarding him, anyway – and isn’t so certain whether Hutch deserves the cold shoulder or not anymore.

Recognizing the futility of talking with Huggy for now, Hutch says nothing else and delves into his meal. When he bites into the burger, he nearly gags in amazement at the utter lack of meat in it. It’s a vegetarian burger of grilled, juicy Portobello mushrooms paired with tahini paste, sliced tomatoes, baby spinach and mashed avocado, and it’s heavenly. The roasted fries are also savory, succulent and sprinkled with caraway seeds, paprika and stock powder. Before he knows it, his plate is empty and spotless and he is sighing in repletion between sips of his still-hot coffee, mellowed by Huggy’s endeavor to serve a vegetarian meal even though the man’s upset with him.

He asks Anita for the bill and pays it rather than put the meal on his tab. He smiles at the nonplussed expression on her face but doesn’t enlighten her about the payment. If there’s one thing that’ll grab Huggy’s attention, it’s him paying his bill upfront for once.

Later that evening after he and Callahan have clocked out, he returns alone to The Pits in his LTD for dinner. Callahan had declined dinner with him because of a prearranged date, something Hutch teased Callahan about all afternoon as the younger detective wouldn’t relinquish any details whatsoever about his date and simply smiled enigmatically. Hutch had presumed Minnie to be the date, except when he and Callahan passed her in the hallway as they were leaving the Metro and chatted with her, there had been no romantic overtures between her and Callahan and she’d mentioned she’ll be working late tonight. So, not Minnie. Perhaps not even a woman, seeing how reticent Callahan was about it … but Hutch draws the line at more speculation than that.

Callahan has the right to see whoever he wants, be it woman or man, society’s bigotry be damned.

The Pits is bustling tonight, crowded with festive folks who are having dinner or milling in small groups along the bar and around the pool table, beer or cue sticks in hand. Hutch finds a sequestered spot at the end of the bar farthest from the entrance and sits on a stool there. He fiddles with the collar of his dark aqua green zip-up turtleneck while he waits to be served, and graciously turns down the advances of two young, good-looking women, both brunette and doe-eyed. They’re disappointed that he won’t dine with them but are apparently not giving up so easily either, for they give him their phone numbers scribbled onto a paper napkin along with their names. This he accepts graciously too, wishing them an enjoyable dinner with a mannerly smile.

“How about a beer and tonight’s special?”

A swath of cooled dampness presses against his hand resting on the counter top. He pivots around on his seat to see Huggy standing behind the bar, gazing at him with somewhat amused eyes. Huggy has dispensed a brimming mug of beer for him.

He takes it with both hands and says, “Thanks, Huggy, that’ll be great.”

Huggy goes off to take more orders from other patrons, leaving Hutch to drink in peace. He doesn’t look once at the paper napkin with its scrawled numbers and names. It is already sopping wet from the condensation from his mug. Illegible. He stares at the photograph of Barbara Streisand, at her profuse curls and big, alluring eyes and prominent nose, at her individualistic beauty. She reminds him a bit of Starsky, Starsky and those thick, dark curls in which he’d nuzzle his nose to smell their fresh scent, those big blue eyes that used to gaze at him with all the love in the world, and that nose, that nose he’d tap affectionately and kiss, just to hear that innocent giggle that he’s sure only he has ever heard.

Starsky.

His friend, his best friend. His everything.

"It just don't look right."

Huggy is back with tonight’s special, and has set it down on the counter top in front of Hutch along with a spoon and fork. The aroma hits Hutch first. It’s an aroma he’s gotten a whiff of before, of garlic, onions, sun-dried tomatoes and white wine.

"What?" he mumbles, staring down at the plate of linguine tossed with white wine-flavored clams. Starsky had ordered this dish that night. The dish Starsky couldn’t finish eating because he hadn’t felt too good. Or so the guy claimed.

“It just don’t look right,” Huggy restates, shaking his head slowly, “when the two of you ain't together."

For a second, Hutch considers feigning ignorance and saying, oh, yeah, Stacey’s not with me tonight because she’s been so busy at work nowadays and not because she’s unhappy with me now. But he doesn’t. He can’t, not with Starsky imbuing everything around him. Imbuing him.

He doesn’t glance up at Huggy and promptly wolfs down his dinner, forking the pasta directly into his mouth rather than twirl it around the spines of his fork. If Huggy had cooked this particular plate of linguine and clams as well, then Starsky must have been ill that night to not enjoy the tasty meal. The littleneck clams are tender, sweet and briny with clam juice and white wine. The linguine is seasoned with parsley, salt and ground black pepper, and neither too chewy nor too limp, just right.

“Yeah. He’s been here. Several times. Alone.”

Huggy is still standing there behind the bar, wiping some beer mugs dry with a clean cloth. Huggy isn’t looking at him. Indeed, to anyone else, Huggy seems to be doing his own thing and paying him no mind.

Huggy still isn’t looking at him as he adds, “The first time he was here, he couldn't even take more than three bites of his burger."

Hutch gulps down a mouthful or two of his beer, gazing at the polychromatic display of stacked liquor bottles behind Huggy. If this is how Huggy wants to play it, well, two of them can play at this game.

"Wouldn’t say a word to me. Looked like his heart got torn right outta his body, still beating. Looked like he watched it get stomped on the ground till there was nothing left of it."

Hutch resists the impulse to glance at Huggy. He resumes eating the linguine, and tells himself that his hand grasping the fork isn’t quivering.

"If I didn't know better, I'd swear he looked just like a really lovesick guy who's convinced he'll never love again."

Hutch has to inhale deeply through his nose before he can swallow his mouthful of linguine and clams.

Stop it, Huggy. Stop giving me hope.

“So he’s got problems with his girlfriend, or whatever,” he murmurs impassively, scooping up another forkful of linguine.

“I know for a fact that he isn’t seeing anyone, period.”

Huggy is gazing at him now, folding the cloth and placing it on the counter top. Huggy’s expression is inscrutable. They stare at each other for a minute. Then, smirking, trusting his expression and droll tone to camouflage the emotions roiling within him, Hutch replies, "Starsky? Not seeing anyone? Sometimes you're full of shit, Huggy."

Huggy isn’t affronted in the least by his last remark.

"You wanna see a guy who's full of shit, take a look in the mirror sometime,” Huggy says, expression as inscrutable as ever, those brown eyes suddenly too shrewd for Hutch’s comfort, and Hutch looks away, back at his half-eaten meal. He hears Huggy walk away, farther down the bar and out of his view, and though Hutch should be feeling relieved about that, he isn’t.

The back of the display of liquor bottles, from top to bottom, is overlaid with panels of mirrors that are reflecting jocund soirees occurring around him. Reflecting his stricken expression.

What remains of Hutch’s meal is getting cold when Huggy comes back to the bar and mixes up Cosmopolitans for an order. Huggy is observing a stream of vodka flow into a cocktail glass from a bottle of Stolichnaya in his hand as he says, “When he gave up trying to eat that burger, do you know what he ordered, Hutch? Nuh uh, it wasn’t beer Starsky wanted. Oh no, Starsky’s no beer man anymore, see. He likes the hard stuff now. Whisky, straight up.”

Hutch stares at Huggy’s face, his mouth dry and devoid of words. Huggy is now pouring some Triple sec liquor into several glasses.

“He comes in here, alone every time. He orders at least two to five shots of whisky straight up and says nothing else, to anybody. Just a lean, mean, brooding machine all in black. Like he’s in mourning. Like nothing can touch him, not even all the pretty ladies who go up to him and shake their tushies at him.” Huggy pauses for a couple of seconds to pluck up a bottle of cranberry juice from behind him and then says, “One night, while he’s sitting right where you are, drinking his whisky and looking like his heart’s gone, up comes this sexy, foxy mama with long, golden hair all the way to her hips and large, brown eyes and luscious, red lips. A perfect ten, more beautiful than Lady Godiva herself, cuddling up to him and whispering the kind of promises most men in this world can only dream of … and do you know what Starsky does?”

Huggy snorts and pours some lime juice into the concoctions, shaking his head in incredulity.

“He acts like she don’t even exist. Like it ain’t her he wants to see. When she doesn’t get the hint, do you know what Starsky does next? He tells her to fuck off and leave him alone. A perfect ten, Hutch, the kind of chick even a Casanova like Starsky will only come across once in a lifetime, and he tells her to fuck off. Freaky-deaky behavior for our Starsky, don’t you think so?”

Hutch’s response is to gulp down another mouthful of beer, his chest constricted, his stomach churning. He doesn’t know what the hell to make of Huggy’s disclosure. He’s witnessed Starsky drunk quite a few times, and every time, Starsky became even more outgoing and cheery, all smiles and unconstrained physical affection. Particularly towards him.

Who is this wrathful, menacing, whisky-chugging Starsky who tells beautiful women to get lost?

It certainly isn’t the Starsky he knew. The Starsky he knew would have pounced on such a woman like white on rice and had his carnal way with her till kingdom come. And then some!

No, Hutchinson, you mean the officially 100% heterosexual, overcompensating Starsky would do that. The Starsky you REALLY knew loved getting fucked in the ass fast and HARD. All the time, all over the bed, the couch, the kitchen counter, the wall, and even that motorcycle you had in the living room. Remember?

Hutch’s hands clamp around his quarter-full beer mug.

“Another night – and probably one of the most exciting nights The Pits has ever had yet – Starsky decides he wants more than a few shots of whisky.” Huggy has handed over the cocktails to a waitress and is gazing him in the eye, forearms on the counter top. “Starsky decides he wants the whole bottle, all to himself, and there I am, thinking to myself, well, shit, the last time he had more than six shots of whisky straight up, I almost had to call in a professional clean-up crew just to scrub his radioactive puke off my floor. So I say him, ‘Starsky, don’t bogart the whisky. A man’s only got so much space for it in his belly,’ and dude, did things get heavy or did they get heavy!”

Huggy shakes his head again, his expression this time a rueful one.

“He already had four shots before that. Didn’t eat anything, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t eat anything before coming here either ‘cause, there he is, all over the place, hollering his head off to the max when he can’t even stand without throwing himself across the bar and clinging onto it like some crazy squirrel, and thank heavens it was closing time so only a few unfortunate patrons were privy to a really drunk, violent Starsky calling me out over a bottle of whisky.”

Hutch gapes at Huggy, his lips parted.

“Starsky fought with you?”

“It wasn’t Starsky, Hutch. It was the drink in him fighting with me. I had to yell for my good brotha, T-Bone, to pry his hands loose from the whisky bottle I was holding onto and drag him off the bar and haul him upstairs to bed … well, once he gave up fighting and puked his guts up on the floor again. I’ve seen Starsky pardy hardy before, but that night? He took partying to a whole new level.”

T-Bone, short for Trombone Coleman, is Huggy’s seven-foot-tall chef two years and counting, a giant of a man and former bouncer of some of the most popular clubs in town. All muscle, including a heart as big as the man himself. The image of T-Bone carrying a drunk, nauseated Starsky up the two flights of stairs to the office on the first floor is a believable one. A heartrending one.

Huggy is staring at him now, those large eyes wide with realization.

“You really didn’t know about all this, did you?”

Hutch says nothing. He simply stares back, at a loss for a reply.

“Hutch, when was the last time you saw Starsky?”

There is something in Huggy’s tone, something that smacks of self-righteousness. Perhaps it’s just Hutch’s imagination that it’s there, that it’s just the reality of Simmons’ assertions about Starsky hitting the bottle sinking home, that he should have done something after Simmons had told him about Diaz’s run in with Starsky and all he did was … nothing, while Huggy –

“Why’d you let him drink himself that sick? Why didn’t you stop him!”

He doesn’t know whether he’d snarled or shouted the words at Huggy. He can sense eyes on him, the eyes of other nearby customers who’ve quietened and are watching the confrontation develop. He glowers at Huggy, his scowling face thrust forward, and he doesn’t recoil or look away when Huggy leans forward even more, till there is a scant three inches of space between the tips of their noses and Huggy is glowering too, lips pursed and downturned.

“You think I would really let a good friend hurt himself? You think me a chump who doesn’t care about Starsky? What would you rather I pick, Hutch, let Starsky drink his ass off in my establishment where I can keep an eye on him, or let Starsky book it to some dive that doesn’t give a damn about him, hmm? Some dive that might just give him whatever he wants as long as he pays for it and let him drive all drunk and end up killing himself on the road!”

Their showdown of glares lasts a mere five seconds.

Hutch is the first to avert his gaze, bowing his head, his ferocious expression transmuting into a crestfallen one. He stares at the leftovers of his linguine and clams, his shoulders slumped. He swallows visibly at Huggy’s hand touching his shoulder and then squeezing it.

“Hutch,” Huggy says compassionately, and he raises his head to look Huggy in the eye. “We are gonna talk all this out. Tonight. Ya dig it?”

The ends of Hutch’s lips curve up in a small, reassured smile.

“I dig it.” His smile broadens. “You got any more of those fries?”

Huggy also smiles, then gives his shoulder a slap.

“One big bowl of fries, coming right up.”

The rest of the night coasts by like white smoke unfurling from a lit cigarette, airily, swimmingly, while he sits where he is at the bar, munching on fries like the ones he had for lunch today. Anita refills his beer an hour before closing time, at Huggy’s bidding. At half past one in the morning, once the last patron has departed and the tables and bar have been cleared, Hutch assists Huggy in stacking up chairs on their respective tables. The brief workout burns the somnolence of alcohol out of his system, and he is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he and Huggy sit side by side on stools at the bar. Huggy decants them both fresh mugs of beer from a full pitcher left on the counter by Anita before she went home.

“You can quit the Ice Man act.”

Hutch sends Huggy a sharp glance. Huh, here’s another person who’s associated ice with him. Is he seriously that transparent these days?

"You ain’t fooling me, Hutch. I know you still care about him. You wouldn't have sat there listening to me talk about him, much less waited the whole night, if you didn't. Just can't freeze the love out of your heart, can you?"

Huggy is smiling fondly, but Hutch can’t bring himself to smile at the blunt truth and takes a sip of his beer instead. No, in Huggy’s case, it isn’t transparency, it’s a matter of he and Huggy having been close friends for so many years. Huggy is one of the very few people in his life who he trusts unconditionally with it. One of the very few who’d accepted him and Starsky as two halves of a whole, without reservation, from the very beginning.

Hutch sets down his mug on the counter top. Then, staring at it, he murmurs, “I thought I’d be over it by now, you know? It’s been over two months since he … it’s been over two months since, and here I am, back at square one. Kicking the Starsky addiction.”

“Is that how you see your relationship with Starsky? An addiction?”

Hutch displays a half-hearted smirk. Heh, talk about a Freudian slip, and to the only other person who’d beheld him in the agony of a vicious heroin withdrawal.

“What else do you call it? Caring about a guy who obviously doesn’t give a crap about you anymore. Certainly isn’t healthy.” Not waiting for a reaction from Huggy, he leaps to his feet and paces the floor between the bar and the pool table, his hands clenching and unclenching. He does it for a while before he mutters, “I can’t figure it out, Huggy. I can’t figure out why everything’s different now. Can’t figure out why he – he … damnit, I try not to think about it, about what he did, but the more I try not to, the more I do and then I start thinking about him all the time and then I have to keep telling myself it’s useless, it’s illogical to think about the whys and what ifs now. Starsky made his choice, he’s gone, vamoosed, and there’s nothing I can do to change it now. My – my brain knows that, but my … but my fucking heart just won’t accept it!”

His bellowed words resonate off the walls of the bar and bistro. Standing with his back towards Huggy, he sucks in a deep breath, then exhales and deliberately relaxes his body.

"Feels good, doesn't it? Letting it out."

There is no mockery in Huggy’s voice. Hutch swivels around and sees the support in Huggy’s kind, brown eyes.

“Feel better, yeah,” he replies, smiling softly. He shuffles back to his seat at the bar, and a minute of easy silence passes as Huggy drinks from his own mug. Then, Huggy surprises him with two sincere words.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I thought you knew. About Starsky’s … issues. Thought you knew and …”

“Didn’t care?”

Hutch smiles again, to soften his reply, and Huggy smiles in apology and nods.

“I get it now. Why you hadn’t come around for so long. He’s everywhere in here.”

Hutch doesn’t deny it. Without looking at it, he gestures at the pool table.

“Especially there.”

He senses more than sees Huggy turn on the stool to glance at the bounded table with its flat, quarried slate covered by green cloth.

“Yeah, I hear you on that. The two of you played a lotta games on it.” Huggy turns back to face him. “You know, Starsky behaved just like you, every time he came here. Wouldn’t look at anything unless he had to. He’d just stare at his drink or at the bottles on display, and ignore everyone else except me till he was too drunk to know which way was up. I’d say, to him, you were everywhere in here, too.”

Hutch lowers his gaze to his mug of beer, his heart weighty with nostalgia. Huggy’s just being nice to him, that’s all, consoling him by making him think that Starsky feels the same way he does, that Starsky can’t forget him either and sees him in everything, everywhere. That Starsky misses him too.

That Starsky loves him, still.

“I’m as baffled as you are about all of it,” Huggy says, frowning mildly. “When I heard the word that you and Starsky were no longer partners, I thought it was some sick joke somebody was playing on me. I didn’t believe it for a second. I just assumed you two were gonna swagger in here like you always do and we’d have a good laugh over the rumor and then … when Starsky came here alone for the first time, I took one look at him, at his face, and I knew it was the cold, hard truth.

“I almost didn’t recognize him with his new haircut and threads. Got so used to his curly head, I thought it was some dude who just really looked like him, until he sat his lily-white ass down right here and looked me in the eye with bloodshot baby blues and demanded two shots of whisky, straight up. It … it scared me, seeing him that way. It was like someone else was wearing Starsky’s face. Somebody bad to the bone, somebody with a lotta self-hatred inside him.”

Hutch glances at the other man, then says, “Self-hatred?”

“Yeah. I’ve been around long enough to know when a guy hates the world and wants to destroy it … and when a guy hates his own guts and wants to destroy himself.” Huggy sighs deeply. “Happy people don’t drink themselves into a coma, Hutch. Only people trying to run away from reality do that.”

Hutch fiddles with the handle of his mug.

“You might want to add a lot of Hutch-hatred to that self-hatred.”

Huggy looks hard at him for a moment, then asks, “You think Starsky hates you?”

“How else do you explain what happened to – to us?”

“When have you ever known Starsky to hate somebody?”

Hutch glances down at the bar’s counter top, still fiddling with the handle of his beer mug. Huggy has a good point there. Hutch has seen Starsky in all sorts of moods, ranging from child-like elation to dreary depression to fiery rage. But hatred?

Starsky had every right to hate George Prudholm, after the insane sonofabitch escaped from the mental institution and shot Starsky’s girlfriend, Terry, in the head out of vengeance and caused her consequent death. Starsky had the opportunity to execute Prudholm by his own hand, twice … but both times, Starsky had chosen justice over vigilantism. Both times, Starsky had chosen good over evil.

Of course, that was the Starsky he knew. The Starsky no one would have even dared hint at being a dirty cop working for an up-and-coming mobster.

What is the Starsky of today like?

“I never thought Starsky would ever drink himself sick on a regular basis and start fights with you over whisky either.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that.” Huggy shifts on the stool, to a more comfy position, then says, “The way he was so tattered, I thought it was you who wanted the partnership over. That was the word going around at first.”

Hutch shakes his head.

“I didn’t ask for the partnership to end. I never did. I didn’t even know Starsky had planned to do that at all until he was already gone.”

Again, Huggy gives his shoulder a squeeze and again, there is a minute of silence. Hutch gulps another mouthful of beer.

“So … what’s happening with you and Stacey?”

Hutch attempts to smile sanguinely, but it falls short and the smile emerges as one of defeat, of resignation.

“Starsky was wrong ... There won’t be a Mrs. Hutchinson.” Hutch pauses, his throat scratchy. “If ever.”

“Hutch, you ain’t even forty yet. You telling me you don’t intend to ever get married? That you’re giving up on finding the one?”

I’ve already found the one, Huggy, eight years ago. And he’s no woman.

Hutch replies verbally with, “I’m tired. I’m tired of it all.”

“So, you and Stacey …”

“The last time we spoke, it was on the phone, and she was very clear about her displeasure with me and my … lack of presence lately. And I don’t know what to do about it. I … I think that, maybe, I don’t want to do anything about it.”

Huggy says nothing to that. His commiserating expression is enough for Hutch.

“You and Stacey were dynamite that night, when you two had dinner here with Starsky. She’s a sweet and smart lady.”

“Yeah, she is. But …” Hutch runs the fingers of his right hand through his spiky hair, then rests an elbow on the counter top and props his head up with his hand. “That night, right after Starsky left, Stacey was acting … strange. She asked me if he was okay and I told her yeah, he was. Starsky’s a tough guy, and I should know, I watched him come back from – from three bullets to his chest.”

“That he did.”

“Yeah. So a little cold wasn’t going to take him down, right? For some reason, I don’t know, for some reason she seemed unhappy that I wasn’t going after him. I told her I’d call him up after dinner and see how he’s doing, and she cheered up after that. And I did call him, after I’d driven us back to her home, and he seemed alright. He just sounded like he had a bad cold. You know, sniffling, hoarse voice, like his nose was blocked, and I could hear him …”

Hutch is abruptly struck dumb as his mind conjures up the memory of that phone call, at its richest in detail since the actual night. As Starsky was mumbling to him, persuading him to stop worrying about him already and have fun with Stacey, he’d heard … the clink of glass. The clink of glass against glass, and then … the sound of liquid, sluicing –

“You could hear him what?”

“I could hear him … pouring something. From a … bottle.”

Huggy’s eyes widen in stupefaction.

“Starsky had a bad cold … and he was drinking?”

Hutch gives the other man a pointed look.

“I don’t know for certain, Huggy. For all we know, it could have been just orange juice. I can tell you this, I never smelled booze on him while we worked together in the weeks after that. Never.”

“It don’t mean he wasn’t already drinking. He could have, at night. When you weren’t looking.” Huggy angles his head, eagle-eyed. “You only remembered the drinking bit just now, didn’t you?”

There goes Huggy, making another sorely insightful point. What other significant details about the situation has his mind overlooked?

“I don’t know. I just …”

Hutch takes several swigs of his beer. As soon as he puts down his mug on the counter top, Huggy replenishes it.

“Gimme the skinney on what the two of you did after that night, until he transferred to Narco,” Huggy says benignly.

Hutch doesn’t bother asking how Huggy knows to which department Starsky has been reassigned. It would be like a slap to the guy’s face.

“When I saw him the next day, he was just fine. He said it was just some ‘twelve-hour cold’ or something. Never heard of such a thing myself, but I didn’t question him about it.” Hutch sighs. “Things were better after that. It was like … the old days again. Like our first year as partners, when we were clicking and we read each other like books that no one else could read. After all those months of him being all argumentative and crabby, he was suddenly … just like his old self again. He stopped snapping at me. Stopped shutting me out. He started spending time with me again. Lots of time.”

“Well, you two turkeys didn’t spend it here,” Huggy says with a mock glower and a slight smile, and Hutch also smiles and replies, “It wasn’t like we were avoiding you or anything like that. Starsky, he wanted to do all these things he never wanted to before. Like, go to museums with me to look at art, or watch plays he could never stand, or go joyriding in the Torino for hours and just talk about random stuff or even go swimming at the beach, and you know how much Starsky hates water.”

“As much as he hates my mustard green broth.”

They snicker in reminiscence of another time Starsky had contracted a bad cold, after hurdling off a pier into glacial waters because he’d presumed Hutch was drowning. Starsky had felt so terrible that he required two blankets from chin to toes and a heated towel draping his head, and he’d sounded terrible too, as if his voice was grinded on a cheese grater.

But then, Starsky hadn’t sounded anywhere as terrible as when Hutch had spoken with him on the phone, after the dinner with Stacey. Sure as hell wasn’t drinking either. If that’s what Starsky was doing when he called the guy.

If. So many goddamn ifs.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Starsky was trying to cram a whole lifetime of experiences with you into a couple of weeks.”

Hutch’s expression becomes saturnine.

“Doubt it.”

“Why? ‘Cause you think Starsky hates you?”

“You tell me, Huggy. What sort of pal just ups and leaves after eight years of partnership? Without a word?”

He knows the bitterness in his voice is evident as Huggy gazes at him with that inscrutable expression again, like Huggy is seeing something in him that he can’t. Won’t.

“Hutch, I know you’re hurting, and you got the right to be. But I’d like you to think about this too: If he really hates you like you think he does, why’d he spend all that time with you? Why’d he make the effort to do all those things that you like, with you? Sure don’t sound like hatred to me.”

Hutch shuts his eyes.

Stop it, Huggy. Please. Stop giving me all this hope.

“Dobey told me Starsky had submitted his transfer request around the time we had dinner here with Stacey. Or after. I don’t know,” he whispers, opening his eyes to slits. “Starsky was just doing all those things because he was … he was saying goodbye.”

Huggy takes his time in refilling his own mug, emptying the pitcher. Then, out of the blue, Huggy asks, “Do you remember the months when Starsky was in the hospital?”

Hutch blinks, his brows furrowing.

“Of course I do. I was there almost every day until Starsky was discharged.”

Huggy leans sideways against the bar, propping himself up with one bent arm on the counter top. That discerning gleam is back in Huggy’s eyes.

“There were a few times that you weren’t there when I visited him. Whenever it was just me and him, he was always quiet, bundled up in blankets to his neck, like a big baby. Like he was saving his energy for when he really needed it. For a while, I thought I was just thinking too much about it for my own good … but then one time, I was there with him first before you showed up, and when you stepped into the room …” Huggy grins and shakes his head in awe. “Man, it was like the sun was shining again in Starsky’s eyes. Never seen him smile that big at anyone else.” Huggy gives Hutch another hard look. “You never noticed the way Starsky looked whenever you visited him at the hospital?”

Hutch gazes at the other man, but what he sees now are the pristine white walls of a hospital room, the opened, olive-colored curtains exposing a vista of morning sunshine on the splendid purple-blue flowers of Jacaranda trees bordering the hospital’s visitor car park, and a bed. An occupied bed, with white, fluffy pillows buttressing a head of thick, dark curls and woolen blankets keeping a frail, recuperating body warm. Starsky is asleep, his mending chest rising and falling stably, his big blue eyes closed, his lush eyelashes fanning haggard cheeks that Hutch caresses with the back of his fingers as he silently watches Starsky slumber.

He is stroking Starsky’s hair when Starsky’s eyes flutter open. They are glazed with weariness, but when they focus on him, on his face, they crinkle and … there it is, there’s that humongous, charismatic smile, and there’s that light in Starsky’s eyes, shining like a newborn star in a universe thought to have died.

That light, for him, and him alone.

“So I ask you again, Hutch, you think Starsky hates you?”

Hutch says nothing in reply to Huggy. The colossal lump in his throat is doing a damn good job of rendering him speechless.

Another minute of silence passes as Huggy drinks his beer and Hutch stares downwards into the distance, into the past, a time when Starsky would have been here at his side, nudging him in the side to share a dumb joke with him or pilfering a sip of his beer although Starsky has his own mug of the brew. Smiling at him, as if the two of them, just the two of them, was all Starsky needed.

Eventually, Hutch murmurs, “When Starsky … drank too much, did he always end up upstairs?”

“Yeah. Every time.”

Hutch grimaces. Huggy has yet to specify how many times Starsky has been here, and Hutch is now afraid to ask.

“I always had the hunch that Starsky didn’t want to go home. That he drank himself till he was down for the count so I’d have no choice but to accommodate him upstairs.”

“Why?”

Huggy gazes him in the eye, then says, “The bed upstairs is the same one you slept in.”

Hutch frowns in befuddlement. What the … he’s never slept upstairs in Huggy’s office before. In fact, he can count the number of times he’s been in the office on one hand, and he never went near the bed, not once. Huggy must be mistaken, unless … oh.

“You mean … you moved the bed from your other place? That it’s the same bed when I was …”

“Yeah. Saw no reason to buy a new one for the office here.”

Hutch runs his fingers through his hair a second time. Okay, yeah, he has slept in Huggy’s office before, in Huggy’s first bar and bistro. He just can’t recall because he’d been out of his mind at the time, in limbo in a world of pain while his wrecked body struggled against itself, against the craving for more heroin … and Starsky had been there with him for all forty-eight hours. Embracing him with those muscular arms, stroking his cheek and underside of his jaw with those large hands. Hugging him tight to a sturdy, stocky body when the craving began to really hurt and gnaw its way under his skin and through his flesh. Rocking them both from side to side, humming to him his favorite tunes.

Kissing him on the forehead, and murmuring words into his hair, words that he couldn’t hear though he’d so longed to do so.

Starsky, an addiction even greater than heroin.

“Did he … ever say anything while he was upstairs?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Huggy’s gaze is steadfast albeit considerate, and Hutch returns the gaze and nods.

Huggy rubs the back of his neck, beneath the denim jacket and white t-shirt, then says, “He doesn’t talk. When he’s still conscious enough for it … he just calls out your name.”

The lump in Hutch’s throat comes back bigger than ever, threatening to choke him. It just … it just doesn’t make sense. None of it. If Starsky wanted to end their partnership so badly that Starsky was willing to pretend to his face for almost three weeks that everything was just fine … why resort to such heavy drinking now? Why the extreme change – negative change – in behavior, if Starsky got what he wanted?

Why call for him at all, if what Starsky wanted was to get away from him?

Unless … that’s not what Starsky wanted.

And if that’s true, then what is it that Starsky wants? What did Starsky hope to achieve by ending their partnership and transferring out of Homicide to Narco? Is it just coincidence that occurred … or are the rumors not really rumors after all?

“Huggy … is there talk on the streets about Starsky? That he’s ... possibly gone dirty?”

Huggy bows his head, then lets out a long sigh.

“Yeah.” Huggy lifts his head. He is scowling in disapproval, though not at Hutch. “And believe you me, I kicked out every nark who was rash enough to talk such shit in my establishment.”

Hutch sends Huggy a small smile of appreciation. Huggy’s abiding loyalty is just one of many positive facets of the slender, sly man’s character that has endeared him and Starsky to the guy. Such allegiance – such friendship – is rare, what more to say one between a white senior detective and a black, street-wise cool cat.

“But I can’t help thinking about it either,” Huggy adds, his scowl changing into a troubled expression. “I didn’t believe the word about Starsky working for The Fin. Not for one damn second. I still don’t. It’s just not possible, man.”

“Did you hear anything about a former Narco cop called Joe Rivera?”

When Huggy shakes his head in negation, Hutch imparts to him all he knows about Rivera, Sweeney’s friend in Robbery/Burglary plus Callahan’s considerations on the situation. He feels his stomach plummet at the blanching of Huggy’s face.

“I won’t deny it, Hutch. This is bad. It is one hell of a coincidence that all that happened when Starsky transferred out of Homicide. Maybe too much.” Huggy rubs at his temple with one palm, gazing downwards, lips downturned. “And the fact that he did it behind your back, that he’s changed so much and he won’t even talk to me about anything anymore …”

“I know.”

Huggy goes back to leaning sideways on the counter. He sucks in his lips and then shakes his head.

“We’re missing a lotta pieces of the puzzle here. Too many gaps to fill in, too much space to make the wrong assumptions.”

“What do you know about The Fin?”

Huggy’s brown eyes are piercing with trepidation.

“I only heard about him about eight months ago, a little while after Starsky returned to active duty. The streets were buzzing about a really big player in town who’d laid low for a long time, till Gunther went down. So big, he owns multiple mansions around the country and rides around in Rolls Royce Phantom VI cars imported direct from England. Deals mainly with drugs, the pure, hard stuff, by the kilos. He doesn’t think twice about getting rid of anyone who gets in his way. He’s bad news. Real bad news, and I don’t mean your usual poh-leece fanfare of bad.”

Hutch’s stomach plummets even more.

“How bad we talking here?”

“Word is that he has a fondness for …” Huggy swallows visibly. “Having people killed by slicing their throats open from ear to ear. Slowly. While they’re awake.”

The gory imagery is nauseating even to Hutch who has seen many corpses in a variety of states since he became a homicide detective. To kill another human being in such a manner speaks of true cruelty, of a revelry in another human being’s suffering in their final moments of life.

“What’s really scary about him is that he doesn’t kill indiscriminately. He’s got a brain and he knows how to use it. He knows what he’s doing, Hutch. I think he’s right up there with Gunther. Maybe even worse.”

Hutch rubs at the skin above his upper lip. It’s becoming stubbly. He ignores the slight tremor of his fingers.

No, no way. Starsky would never become the cohort of such a sadistic monster. No.

“Now The Fin, he’s the kinda guy Starsky could hate, not work for,” Huggy says, echoing his thoughts. “There is just no way Starsky’s part of this guy’s hood.”

“Unless he’s … being blackmailed.”

Huggy glances at him sharply.

“Blackmailed? What could there be out there to blackmail Starsky?”

Oh, I don’t know, Huggy, maybe pictures of him being fucked in the ass by his cop partner and loving every bit of it?

Hutch runs one hand down his face.

“Hutch?”

“It’s … it’s just speculation, that’s all,” he mumbles, leaning both forearms on the bar’s counter top and letting his head fall forward.

“You sure of that?”

He doesn’t look at Huggy. He stares down at rings of water on the counter top, at his face reflected in the counter top’s burnished surface. He’s got that groove between his eyebrows, the one he has every time he’s worried, worried enough for the anxiety to go deep into his marrow and extract all energy from it. His lips are pressed into a straight line. His eyes are narrowed, shuttered.

His eyes had been narrowed too on that day, that sunny day when he and Starsky had made love for the fourth time in his Venice Beach canal cottage. The sunlight was cascading into his eyes as he drew the curtains of his bedroom shut. Once he did that, the room dimmed into a cozy, enclosed space, still lit to some degree by the sunlight filtering through the pastel-colored cloth of the curtains.

Starsky was half-way stripping off his dark blue t-shirt, head and arms enveloped by the shirt. Starsky had emitted a rather unmanly, muffled squeak as Hutch rushed over from the windows to Starsky standing at the side of the bed and playfully pushed Starsky onto the bed on his back, confining Starsky’s head and arms in the t-shirt by gripping Starsky’s wrists with one hand above Starsky’s head. Starsky had chortled gleefully, arching and twisting that well-built, furry body against his, grinding their still-clothed groins together, and then Starsky’s laughter became moans and gasps as he licked, nibbled and sucked his way down Starsky’s neck and across Starsky’s hairy chest, from the left nipple to the right one, laving them ardently with his tongue.

Starsky was panting and curling toes as he unzipped Starsky’s jeans and tugged them off shapely legs. Starsky wasn’t wearing any underwear, and it didn’t surprise Hutch. He wasn’t wearing any under his own jeans either. Starsky pleaded with him to remove his socks as well, to remove his t-shirt so they could kiss. He did away with his own clothes and then Starsky’s shirt but not the socks, and before Starsky could complain about that, he swooped in for open-mouthed, tongue-dueling kisses that left them both winded and feeling so damn good.

C’mon, big boy. Show me what ya got.

Starsky was grinning at him. Folding those lean legs around his hips and drawing him closer, till they were molded from chest to groin and their foreheads were touching. This up close, he could feel Starsky’s eyelashes brushing his skin, feel Starsky’s warm breath against his lips. Feel Starsky gazing into his soul, deep inside where no one else had ever been, and he’d kissed Starsky once more, entwining the fingers of his left hand in Starsky’s short curls while his right hand fumbled around beneath the pillows for the tube of lubricant there.

Want you long and deep, Hutch. So deep you’ll never leave.

Starsky had whispered those words into his lips, and they’d driven him wild, compelling him to devour Starsky’s mouth again and slather a copious amount of lube on his aching cock and on and around the entrance into Starsky’s body and oh, Starsky was grasping his cock and guiding him in and ooh, Starsky was so fucking tight and amazing around him, smooth, clenching heat taking in all of him. Starsky was arching up, throwing his head back, eyelids flickering, mouth open in a soundless cry. Fingers clawing into his lower back, urging him to plow even deeper though he was already as deep as he could go, and when Starsky grinned at him again, he was done for, eager slave to his furiously thrusting body and Starsky’s high-pitched groans and Starsky’s thighs clamping his waist and Starsky’s arms squeezing his shoulders until they were coming, coming hard together.

So beautiful. So damn beautiful, and everything he’s ever needed.

“Hutch?”

Starsky had fallen asleep while stroking his hair, head turned to the side and right arm on the bed, and he’d reached out with his left hand to interlace their fingers. He listened to Starsky’s stabilizing heartbeat. Felt Starsky’s chest rise and fall underneath his cheek, and smiled and stared with half-shut eyes at the curtains. The closed curtains.

Yes, they had always closed the curtains. Unless there was some new-fangled camera years ago that was capable of seeing through curtains and walls, the chances of someone having physical evidence of his – yes, damnit – relationship with Starsky is … nil.

“I’m sure, Huggy. I’m sure.”

Blinking a few times, Hutch sits up and turns on his seat to face Huggy. He lets Huggy scrutinize him, unperturbed by Huggy’s reluctance to accept his answer immediately. Whatever Huggy sees on his facial features seems to mollify the man, and Huggy huffs out a breath and then relaxes against the counter.

“You know what else has been bugging me about all this?” Huggy says. “I’d bet fifty bucks upfront that Starsky knows about the rumors by now. You would think he would say something in his own defense.”

Hutch crosses his arms over his chest, suddenly sensing the day’s lassitude bear down on him.

“I don’t know. Maybe he just doesn’t care about them. Maybe he … he trusts us to trust him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t care about anything anymore.”

Hutch’s head snaps up in response, his blue eyes wide.

“A man who’s on self-destruct mode like he is … is a man who’s got nothing left to lose.”

“You talk about him as if he’s got a – a death wish,” Hutch murmurs, and Huggy, his expression somber, says, “Maybe he does, Hutch. Maybe he does.”

Hutch gets no slumber at all that night, plagued by imaginings of a comatose Starsky with numerous gunshot wounds, a Starsky who’d died and didn’t come back. He is bleary-eyed and dog-tired in the morning when Callahan picks him up for work.

“Wow,” Callahan says to him once he’s slumped in the passenger seat of the Chevelle Malibu. “Long night with your lady?”

“Nah. Stacey didn’t join me for dinner. Stayed till half past two at The Pits.”

“Long night with Mr. Bear then.”

“Yeah. He told me what he knew so far about The Fin.”

When Hutch doesn’t say more, Callahan asks, “Bad news, I take it?”

“Depends on your definition of bad.”

“Gambino bad?”

“Maybe. Probably. He’s a really big player, but not a new one. Filthy rich. Deals with hard drugs, by the kilos. Came out of the woodworks after I arrested Gunther and took him off the streets. He has a thing for …” Hutch pauses and waits for the churning of his cereal and milk-filled stomach to settle. “For cutting people’s throats from ear to ear. And making sure they feel it.”

He sees Callahan’s lips compress and brows crease.

“And Starsky?”

“Seems Starsky’s playing the dark, silent archetype to the extreme. Huggy has yet to get anything resembling a conversation out of him.”

“So we’re still on the same square.”

“Yeah. Square one,” Hutch says with a sigh.

“We’ll talk to him when he gets back, Hutch.”

“Yeah. Hey …” Hutch turns his head to look at Callahan. Callahan is garbed in that grey, pinstriped suit but has a different tie on today, a light blue paisley one. Callahan appears well-rested and in top form. “How’d your date go?”

The tips of Callahan’s lips curve up in a small albeit buoyant smile.

“I had a good time.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?”

He chuckles along with Callahan and doesn’t inquire more. If Callahan had a good night, that’s all he needs to know.

The rest of the drive to the Metro is hushed apart from the noises of other vehicles zooming past them on the Santa Monica freeway, of the latest hits, including Diana Ross’ Upside Down, playing on the radio. They are almost on the Rosa Parks freeway when the radio intercom buzzes with an incoming call from Dispatch who connects them to Diaz.

“Diaz, what’s up?” Hutch says into the palm microphone.

“You didn’t hear yet?”

“Hear what?”

“Simmons got jumped by some thugs in ski masks last night. Beaten up pretty bad. He’s at Mount Sinai. Babcock’s there with him.”

Hutch has to force himself to ease his crushing hold on the microphone before saying, “Thanks for the heads up. Going right now.”

Hutch gives directions to Callahan to take the upcoming exit on the left to La Cienega Boulevard, and then left again after several miles onto Beverly Boulevard on which the hospital is located. Neither man speak as Callahan drives down George Burns Road and then maneuvers the car into the visitors’ parking lot on the right that’s in front of the Steven Spielberg building that houses the hospital’s ambulatory care center. Even this early in the morning, the parking lot is almost full, and Callahan has to circle the area twice before encountering a free space. They walk briskly out of the parking lot, across and down George Burns Road and then down Gracie Allen Drive to the visitors’ entrance in the South tower of the hospital, still saying nothing, their breaths perceptible mist in the winter air. At the information desk, Hutch asks for the whereabouts of Simmons’ room, and they go up to the fifth floor via elevator.

They find Babcock, in a black, woolen pea coat, white t-shirt and jeans, sitting on a chair beside the bed upon which Simmons is reclined under a blanket. Hutch’s teeth grind at the sight of the appalling contusions disfiguring Simmons’ entire face. Both of Simmons’ eyes are bruised and swollen. Simmons’ left cheek is at least twice as distended as the right one, and the lower lip is split on its left side, indicating that whoever punched Simmons is right-handed. There is a strip of medical tape and a bandage across the bridge of Simmons’ puffed-up nose. Possibly broken.

Babcock glances at them as they enter the room and saunter to Simmons’ bedside. The fury in Babcock’s eyes doesn’t alarm Hutch. He knows exactly how Babcock is feeling, how frustrating and galling it is to be powerless to do anything when your partner has been harmed.

“’Ey, ‘utch.”

Simmons’ red eyes are opened into slits, and they gaze at him with an amiability that makes his throat constrict.

“Hey, Simmons. How you holding up?”

He gently pats Simmons’ right shoulder above the blanket, uncertain of what other injuries Simmons may have sustained.

“Look worse … tha’ it feels.”

Hutch gives Simmons a reassuring smile.

“Takes more than this to bring down the Legendary Schmoozer of the Metro, huh?”

“I found him early this morning in his apartment, About four o’clock,” Babcock says. Hutch and Callahan look at him and listen attentively. “He managed to crawl to the phone after those fuckers beat him up till he couldn’t even sit up.”

“Thugs in ski masks?” Hutch asks.

Babcock nods, scowling intensely.

“Yeah. Four of them. Pros, from the looks of it. They thrashed his place up good. Thrashed everything, even the goddamn furniture.”

“’utch.”

Simmons has raised a wobbly right hand from beneath the blanket and clutches Hutch’s left wrist with it. There are welts on Simmons’ hand as well. Simmons had fought back, and with any luck, given some of those thugs shiners of their own.

“Dobey was ‘ere … an’ Simonetti …”

Hutch goes ice-cold inside, but on the outside, his expression is composed and he places his right hand over Simmons’ in a gesture of comfort. Dobey coming in to see Simmons is a given, knowing their captain’s kindheartedness and devotion to his men … but Simonetti –

“Simonetti and Dryden had no reason to come around, but they did anyway. Simonetti kept asking him to describe what the goons wore and whether they said anything to him. Kept asking him if Starsky had anything to do with the attack,” Babcock says. “He told Simonetti nothing about it.”

Hutch gazes down into Simmons’ bruised eyes. Simmons gazes right back, although more dully.

“About what?” Hutch asks Simmons.

“One a’ the goons … ‘e said somethin’ to me … ‘fore I blacked out.” Simmons sucks in a shallow breath, then murmurs, “’Starsky says hi … an’ to … keep yer big fuckin’ mouth shut.’”

Hutch stares at Simmons, his eyes stark and his chest frozen. Shit … shit, now there’s an actual link between Starsky and these unidentified thugs in ski masks, and Simonetti is now unquestionably gunning for Starsky. The only reason Simonetti would demand to know what the thugs were wearing is if Simonetti has similar testimonies of assaults by such thugs and needs corroboration for his investigation … which also means that Simonetti has probably found out about the assaults on the other cops involved in the situation. It’s only a matter of time until Simonetti and Dryden hunt Starsky down. And Starsky’s out there somewhere, and Hutch can’t get to him and talk to him about all this.

Where does he go from here? What the hell can he do to help Starsky? And what the hell is he going to do, if Starsky doesn’t want his help?

If Starsky wants to destroy himself, like Huggy averred?

“They fu’ up, man … they fu’ up …”

Simmons is .. snickering.

“Simmons.” Hutch squeezes the reclined man’s hand, just a bit. “Danny. What do you mean?”

“Ya think Starsky wou’ … let a goon … use ‘is name like tha’ … ‘less they were … s’ppose to kill me?” Simmons sucks in another shallow breath. “Why Starsky? Why no’ The Fin … huh? Goons work … fo’ th’ boss … not another … goon.”

Hutch exchanges glances with Callahan, then with Babcock.

“Stinks too much … o’ a set-up now … They were … teachin’ me a lesson … S’all. Wan’ me alive … so they can use me to … fit up Starsky.”

Simmons’ eyes are shut, his right hand limp in Hutch’s grasp. As Hutch gently shifts the hand from his wrist to the bed, Babcock stands up and rearranges the blanket so that it is covering the hand again. Then, with Hutch and Callahan watching, Babcock pulls the edging of the blanket up to Simmons’ chin and tucks it around Simmons’ neck, as if Babcock knows that this is how his partner prefers it.

Hutch’s throat constricts again. He, too, had once taken care of Starsky this way, and been rewarded by the sweetest of smiles and face nuzzles against his neck while he cuddled Starsky in his arms and they snuggled underneath the blankets.

“See?”

Simmons’ eyes are still shut, but he is smiling.

“What?” Babcock says.

“Knew you care ‘bout me,” Simmons mumbles, and for the first time, Hutch sees Babcock turning beetroot red from forehead to neck.

“Don’t make me smack you,” Babcock replies, sitting back down and looking anywhere except at Hutch and Callahan standing on the other side of the bed.

Simmons simply continues to smile.

Then, when they all become aware that Simmons has gone to sleep, Hutch asks, “How bad is he?”

Babcock’s scowl returns.

“Lost one or two teeth. Busted some of his ribs. Hairline fracture on his left radius bone. Bruised everywhere. Doctor thought he had some internal bleeding in his belly and he almost ended up in surgery, but he didn’t. Hospital will probably let him out in a day or two. He’ll be staying at my place.”

Hutch gazes down at Simmons’ face again. Ruthlessness like this adds up with what Huggy had told him about The Fin. If these thugs really are The Fin’s henchmen and this is their idea of just ‘teaching a lesson’ …

“This was a message to us,” Hutch says, frowning. “These guys mean business.”

“Simmons had a point though, Hutch,” Callahan says, and Hutch turns to look at the younger detective. “The boss gives the orders, not another goon.”

“Unless Starsky isn’t just a goon,” Babcock says.

Hutch and Callahan glance at the seated man.

“Maybe Starsky’s become The Fin’s right hand man. Or at least somebody wants us to think that.”

“You think it’s a set-up too?” Hutch asks.

Babcock sits back on the chair, folding his arms over his chest.

“Hutch, Sims and I, we’ve worked with you and Starsky for many years. Long enough that we know Starsky would never do this. Not his style. He’s got a temper, yeah, but if he really wanted to hurt somebody, he’d do it himself. Not be a fucking coward who sends other guys to do the dirty work. I agree with Sims. It stinks of a set-up to make Starsky look real bad. If Simonetti and Dryden get hold of this, Starsky could go down and stay down, even if it turns out to be just nasty talk.”

“Who wants to back up a dirty cop who hurts other cops, right?” Callahan says quietly, and Babcock nods.

“I know I’d think twice about helping out a cop who’d do this to a fellow cop.” Babcock gesticulates with his right hand towards Simmons who’s now snoring. “This crosses the line, man. Whatever the hell Starsky’s gotten into, he’s in deep shit if this is the lengths these fuckers are willing to go to just to frame him.”

“Or alienate him,” Callahan says. “Maybe that’s what this is really all about. To slowly cut Starsky off from support from other cops.”

Hutch rubs the edge of his lower jaw with his thumb and forefinger, eyebrows furrowing.

“And it isn’t like Simonetti and the rest of IA can just go up to The Fin and ask him if Starsky’s on his payroll … and even if Starsky is innocent and IA doesn’t find any evidence of Starsky being a mole, the damage’s already done.”

“But alienate him for what reason?” Babcock asks, sitting up, propping his hands on his knees. “What’s the motive for cutting Starsky off from the rest of us? And why associate Starsky with The Fin?”

“Maybe … maybe there’s a third party. Maybe we aren’t the only ones being played here,” Callahan says. “What we can be sure of now is that these goons aren’t The Fin’s. It doesn’t make sense that The Fin would risk exposing one of his spies like this, regardless of whether it’s true or not that Starsky’s working for him. If you just got yourself a new mole in the police force – a mole with a rep like Starsky’s – and you’re a smart guy, the last thing you’d do is allow your goons to blab his name while beating up a cop.”

“Yeah. A cop you leave alive to talk about it,” Babcock replies, gazing at his sleeping partner. His relief that Simmons will be alright is palpable.

“So someone’s playing us and The Fin?” Hutch’s brows furrow even more in deliberation. “But who?”

All of a sudden, Babcock smacks himself on the forehead and mutters to himself, “Shit, I can’t believe I forgot about this!”

“Forgot what?” Hutch asks, and Babcock sits up even more and says, “Sims told me earlier this morning that he met up with a few of his snitches last night and had a good talk with one of them. The guy claimed that there’s been a mole in Narco for a long time … and it’s not Starsky.”

Hutch stands straighter upon hearing that. Callahan glances at him, at the side of his face.

“How trustworthy is this informer?” Hutch asks.

“Sims didn’t stay awake long enough to tell me which one he spoke to. If I knew who he was, I’d be able to tell you. All Sims said was that the mole’s somebody who’s worked in Narco for years, so it can’t be Starsky. He’s only been there for months.”

“Hutch … didn’t Simmons tell you that D’Amato’s been in Narco for at least ten years?”

Hutch looks sharply at Callahan, then says, “Yeah, he did ... And it was Rivera who suddenly quit the force just before Starsky transferred –“

“Which conveniently freed up D’Amato to be partnered with Starsky.”

“Yeah.”

“Problem is, guys,” Babcock says, “there are a lotta cops in Narco who’ve worked there for years. We dunno more than that right now. And there’s the million-dollar question: If D’Amato is this Narco mole, is he working for The Fin, or for another mob boss? That third party Callahan brought up? There’s no link so far between D’Amato and these goons or The Fin, apart from Rivera quitting under fishy circumstances and him becoming Starsky’s partner in Narco. As much as I hate the racist asshole, I gotta admit, we don’t even know for sure if he is dirty or not.”

Hutch sighs heavily and scratches the back of his bowed head. Then he mutters, “Not yet.”

“If he’s responsible for the rumors, for Simmons getting beat up, we will find that link and make him sorry,” Callahan says with a grim smirk, clearly recollecting D’Amato’s treatment of Minnie.

Their discussion comes to a rapid halt when a nurse enters the room and politely notifies the three detectives that the doctor will be coming around to check on the patient and that they’ll have to leave the room soon. Hutch and Callahan take this as their cue to depart and head back to the Metro before Dobey cuts their heads off and puts them on a platter for being really late today.

“Hutch, you gotta talk to Starsky, man, get him to talk. Before Simonetti and Dryden do,” Babcock says as he ambles with them to the elevator.

“I know, Babcock, I know.”

“And you better warn your pal too. Hugo Bear?”

Hutch smiles at the error. He wonders if it’s a possibility that Hugo is Huggy’s real first name.

“Huggy Bear.”

“Yeah, Huggy Bear. You better warn him to watch his back. If these goons dared to attack a cop in his own home, who knows what they’ll do to somebody who walks the streets and asks too much about The Fin.”

“I will,” he replies as he and Callahan step into the elevator.

Unfortunately, Babcock’s advice will prove to be a little too late.

 & & & & & &

It’s forty-three minutes past eleven. Over three hours since Hutch’s visit to Mount Sinai.

At this time of the day, The Pits should be already be open for lunch, but it isn’t. Its imposing, wooden entry doors are shut and locked. The white, plastic sign proclaiming ‘We’re Closed’ in red, cursive letters is still hanging outside from a nail on the right door. All the windows are shut and locked as well, barring from the view of the world the ominous scene progressing inside the bar and bistro.

Its owner, in a maroon-colored suit with gold stitching and a bolo tie, is standing behind the bar with his two waitresses, Anita and Rosalia, and Gene, a young, black chef assistant in a white apron and uniform. T-Bone is out cold, his massive physique sprawled on top of the bar and his head drooping over the edge of the counter as if someone had clobbered him and then unceremoniously discarded him there like a floppy toy. Huggy and his other employees are immobile, silent, anxious.

A mob goon in a dark brown suit is also standing behind the bar, four feet away from T-Bone. The gun he’s gripping is aimed straight at Huggy.

Hutch and Callahan are standing side by side between the pool table and the bar. They’re facing the one table that’s occupied, their faces emotionless but their gaze razor-sharp. There is a man sitting on a chair at that table, attired in a silver suit, white dress shirt and a bright red tie, and from the neck up, he is concealed in the shadows of the dimly lit, noiseless place. Behind him and about three feet to the left is another mob goon, a pasty, hulking goliath of a man who is as tall as T-Bone and even broader in the chest and shoulders. The goliath’s hands appear to be almost as big as his head.

Hands that can hurt another man bad. Bad enough to bust ribs and fracture arm bones and bruise a man’s face beyond recognition.

“Everybody okay?” Hutch asks without turning his eyes away from the seated, silver-suited man.

“We good. T-Bone’s not so good though.” Huggy’s voice is low and poised. He’s been in such a predicament many times before. “The big dude there knocked him out with one blow. Be careful, Hutch. He’s got fists like sledgehammers.”

Hutch doesn’t reply. He stares at the seated man, at the man’s obscured face. He doesn’t like it one bit that he can’t see the man’s facial features or expression while the man can see his. The bastard’s already exerting control over the arena before the battle’s even begun, laying down the board square by square, coercing him to make the first move in order to see any steps beyond the square upon which he’s standing.

Well, fuck it. He’s no coward, and he sure as hell isn’t the villain here.

“So you’re The Fin, huh?”

The silver-suited man gestures towards another chair on the opposite side of the table.

“Detective Hutchinson, I’ve heard so much about you.” The man’s tongue is apparently as silver as his suit and of a British accent. His voice is suave and fluid like fine whisky, a smoky voice of textures and undertones, a voice that Hutch doesn’t expect to hear at all from a psychopathic criminal with a penchant for slit throats. “Please. Come, sit with me.”

Having no other choice, Hutch strides over to the table and sits down, facing the mob boss and his goon who’s giving him the stink eye with beady green eyes. He disregards it. He hears Callahan’s steps come to a stop behind and a bit to his left. Callahan makes no move to sit down.

“I’d rather stand,” Callahan growls, and even without glancing at the younger detective, Hutch knows that Callahan is sending the mob boss a glare lethal enough to disintegrate titanium if looks could kill.

In spite of the shadows, Hutch also knows that the man before him is smirking.

“Suit yourself, boy.”

And even without glancing at Callahan this time, Hutch knows that Callahan is bristling at the supercilious snub.

“To answer your question, Detective Hutchinson, yes, I am The Fin. Although I have no fear of also going by my real name, Lorcan Finlay.”

Hutch mentally jots down the name straightaway. He is unfamiliar with it, but is anticipative of learning more about Finlay by investigating it and searching it through the Metro’s computer system … if he gets out of this tête-à-tête unscathed.

"Living up to your name?"

Callahan’s tone abounds with disdain.

“Ah, you know your Irish, boy."

Hutch notes that a bit of Irish brogue had crept into Finlay’s accent when Finlay spoke to Callahan. It reminds him of Matt Coyle, the owner of fine food supplier, Coyle Provision, and the instigator of several protection scams and informer to the late Captain Mike Ferguson. Coyle’s Irish accent, however, is phony since he was born in Jersey. Finlay’s is real, but is being veiled with the sort of British accent Hutch would hear in British films, with flawless pronunciation and no distinct regional inflections. Is Finlay willfully speaking in a different accent to deceive people about his origins, like Coyle did?

Hutch watches Finlay lean back on the chair and steeple long fingers with neatly trimmed nails and, intriguingly, a gold band around the left ring finger. Is Finlay married? Or is the ring just an accessory worn to promote that notion?

"One can only wonder what my dear mother was thinking when she named me as such. Did she so desire a cruel and fierce son?" Finlay’s rumbling laugh is a disconcerting sound. "Well, she got her wish. And learned it firsthand."

Hutch stares at Finlay, only the slight widening of his eyes giving away his revulsion. Fucking hell, did the guy just confess to wounding, perhaps even murdering his own mother? What sort of beast is he?

“I’ve been hearing rumors about me as of late. Rumors involving a certain cop who was your partner for nearly eight years, Detective Hutchinson, but is now in the Narcotics department of the BCPD’s Metro division. Detective Sergeant David Michael Starsky, yes?”

Hutch says nothing and merely glowers at Finlay. So the bastard’s done his research. Or just fucking with him to see his reaction to the mention of Starsky’s name. Or both.

“You must be dying to know if those rumors are true.”

A glint of light ricochets off a spot on the lower half of Finlay’s face. The bastard is smiling at him.

Hutch’s back goes ramrod straight, and strengthening his glower, he snarls, “Got a thing for sending thugs to beat up cops?”

Finlay’s nonchalant reply dumbfounds him.

“No. That’s boring. What’s the point if they know they’re only getting beaten and put up a bold front?” Finlay shifts his legs so that he is sitting with his right leg crossed over his left. “I don’t send my men to beat up people. I send them to finish people.”

In his stomach, Hutch feels an iceberg forming, an iceberg squashing the breath and warmth and bravado out of his body. Finlay isn’t even bothering to honey-coat his smug statements of crime and slaughter. Is Finlay that confident of evading the clutches of the law?

Or does the mob boss intend to slay them all after this conversation is over?

"Oh, yeah?” Hutch says with an outwardly intrepid voice. “Like using a knife across the throat, from ear to ear?"

The glint of light ricochets off Finlay’s face a second time. Then, Finlay sits up and leans forward, revealing his entire visage. Like the suit, Finlay’s hair is silver but of a lighter sheen, styled in a pompadour reminiscent of James Dean’s. Hutch is struck by the agelessness and attractiveness of Finlay’s face, for he had expected the man to be like Gunther, old and craggy and monstrous, not Hollywood-handsome with heavy-lidded, steel blue-gray eyes, a Roman nose, high cheekbones and …

For one moment, rational thought flees from Hutch’s brain as it strives to work out what his eyes are seeing when Finlay’s smile transforms into an extensive, ghoulish grin. Finlay’s teeth, every single one that Hutch can see, have been filed down and sharpened to deadly points, just like the teeth of a –

“Do you know how a Great White shark hunts for its prey?”

Hutch has to dig his fingers into his thighs under the table to not flinch as Finlay blatantly examines his face.

“It lurks in the dark, out of sight. It stalks and circles its victim, watching, waiting, getting close enough to see what its victim is doing. Thinking. Smelling the scent of its blood. Of its life.” Finlay angles his head to one side, his glacial eyes fixated on Hutch’s blue ones. “And when the moment comes, the moment to attack and kill, its victim never sees it coming. And the pain, the terror its victim feels as it’s being ripped apart …” Finlay grins again. “Incredible.”

Finlay moves back into the shadows, lounging on the chair with an arrogant air.

“Slicing someone’s throat from ear to ear is the closest I’ll probably ever come to killing like a Great White shark. The feel of the serrated blade biting into flesh, and all that blood spraying and gushing out as they struggle for their lives in vain … incredible.”

Hutch grits his teeth hard, a muscle in his lower jaw twitching. Finlay’s a beast, alright, a beast worse than an actual animal. Even Great White sharks only hunt for food, not for vile pleasure.

“You’re a sick fucking bastard, that’s what you are.”

The goliath standing behind Finlay takes a step forward, growling deep in his throat. Finlay elevates one hand in an unambiguous signal.

“Het is oke, Hans. Laat Detective Hutchinson spreken zijn geest.”

The goliath, Hans, squints maliciously at Hutch. Hans’ hands have become formidable fists.

“Ik wil hem pijn doen, baas. Laat mij deed hem pijn.”

Hans’ voice is like the reverberation of a faraway earthquake. Hutch returns Hans’ glare, his whole body tensing, calculating how swift and far backwards he has to leap to dodge Hans’ fists. He doesn’t have a damn clue what the goon’s saying – it sounds like an European language, Dutch maybe – but there’s no mistaking Hans’ malevolent intentions towards him.

Hutch presses his feet against the floor. His thighs harden, preparing to propel him up and away to safety.

Hans’ right foot begins to lift off the floor.

“Nee,” Finlay states coolly.

Hans freezes instantaneously, as if that one word is akin to a blade jabbing him in the flesh underneath his lower jaw.

“Niemand doet hem pijn. Begrijpen?”

Whatever it is Finlay says to Hans, it motivates the gigantic thug into stepping backwards to his original position with nary a grumble, and Hutch loosens up and lays his hands flat on his thighs. Heh, Hans is giving him the stink eye again.

“As you can see, Hans doesn’t take kindly to anyone insulting me. Normally, I would let him hurt you as he requested … but I am in a very good mood today, and I find your portrayal of me to be rather amusing. A sick bastard, you say?”

Finlay is tapping one foot on the floor in a steady rhythm.

“Did you know that one of the most significant reasons for humankind being what and where it is today is that some Homo species began to eat meat? Before that, their diet was wholly vegetarian, and they were small and weak. Their bodies and brains couldn’t grow on their miserable diet and so they were stunted. They were useless. But all that changed the day they killed and feasted upon the flesh of other creatures. Some even ate others like themselves. And over the hundreds of thousands of years …” The tapping stopped. “They evolved into us.”

“So that’s your excuse for being a sick bastard?” Hutch says with an ostensible indifference.

Finlay makes a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue.

“Oh, Detective Hutchinson, perhaps I might have overestimated your intelligence.”

Hutch maintains his blank expression, but inside, he is starting to seethe. He is getting really bored of this guy. If all Finlay wanted to do was give him a lecture on human evolution, Finlay should have just skipped the part of the plan that said ‘Go to The Pits with my thugs and threaten Huggy Bear and staff with torture and death unless Hutchinson shows up’ and called him up himself rather than make Huggy do that at gunpoint.

Then again, if Huggy and his employees weren’t being held hostage to begin with, Hutch would have charged in here with a battalion of cops instead of coming only with Callahan in tow.

Sick fucking cunning bastard Finlay.

“What I’m saying is that we humans have always thirsted for blood and hungered for living flesh. Lusted for bloodshed and violence and death. Think of all the wars that have come and gone on our Earth since time in memorial, of how common it was for people to kill each other by the thousands, the millions, simply because they could. Think of how common it still is. The two world wars, the Korean war, the war in Vietnam, just to name a few from this century.”

“The brutality of the past doesn’t justify your present actions.”

“Does the brutality of the present serve that purpose, then?” Finlay shifts forward into the light once more. His lop-sided smirk is as unnerving as his grin. “You don’t mean to tell me that you actually believe humankind is now civilized and beyond the control of its reptilian mind, do you? You, a homicide detective!” Finlay lets out a malignant snicker. “We’re nothing more than animals that wear clothes and live in concrete jungles and hide under a false veneer of politeness, decorum and cleanliness. Hypocritical animals, trying so hard to pretend they don’t have the stench of death.”

“Okay. You’ve made your point. But you’re still a sick fucking bastard, no matter how many others out there are like you.”

“A matter of perspective, Detective Hutchinson, just a matter of perspective.” Finlay is examining his face again, as if he’s an insect on a microscope slide. “Speaking of sick fucking bastards like me, I should thank you for getting rid of Gunther. Saved me the trouble of doing it myself.”

Hutch’s eyes narrow in antipathy. Oh, that’s just great, his deed of vengeance on behalf of Starsky is now being twisted into a favor done for a sadistic, screwy mob boss who thinks he’s a human shark. Fuck that.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Hutch snarls, finally displaying emotion.

The smile Finlay has now is a closed-lipped one, but no less unsettling.

“No … not for me, no,” Finlay murmurs, and a chill weaves its way up Hutch’s spine at Finlay’s evocative tone. Just how much research has Finlay done on him? On Starsky? And is Starsky on Finlay’s payroll after all?

Is that why Finlay set up this meeting, to personally behold his reaction to Starsky having become a dirty cop for such a pitiless, dangerous psychopath?

“It must be quite frustrating, knowing that Gunther is alive and well and being cared for with taxpayers’ money. Your money.”

Hutch doesn’t take the bait.

"He'll spend the rest of his life in a six by eight prison cell. If some of my money goes to keeping him there, I have no problem with it,” he replies calmly.

“And if you were to, say, hear of news of his untimely death … how would you feel about that?"

Finlay is subtly dragging his right thumb from one corner of his lower jaw to the other, across the throat.

Hutch stares at the silver-suited mob boss, motionless and taciturn. What is Finlay playing at? What does Finlay stand to profit from the demise of Gunther who’s incarcerated for life and therefore no longer a threat?

Finlay puts on an act of throwing up his hands, then says, “Ah, silly me. It would be improper for a police man of your gallant reputation to say anything honest about such circumstances, wouldn’t it?”

Hutch remains taciturn, even when Finlay shocks him with what he says next.

“I like you, Detective Hutchinson. You’re noble, loyal to a fault and so idealistic despite your mask of cynicism and disinterest. It’s almost touching, really, your belief that what you do is making the world a better place. But, as you said yourself, there are others like me, others like Gunther. There will always be others like us, no matter how many of them you throw into jail.”

“If that was your best shot at persuading me to quit my job, it was pathetic.”

Finlay snorts in amusement.

“On the contrary, I hope you’ll be around for a long time. It’s only a matter of time until someone else ascends to the throne Gunther forsook, and where would we all be if you aren’t here to contend with its successor?”

"Let me guess. You're hoping it's you."

"Correction: I know it will be me."

Hutch’s eyes taper into slits at that. Egotistical, patronizing fucker. Who the hell does Finlay think he is?

Finlay lets out another acerbic snicker, then says, “Alright, alright, I’ll put you out of your misery ... Detective Starsky is not on my payroll. Not for lack of effort, though.”

If relief could embody itself physically, Hutch would have felt it as an excruciating wallop to his belly. As it is, it is an inner force so tremendous that it radiates through him from head to toe, leaving him shaken within.

Starsky isn’t working for Finlay, which means Starsky isn’t dirty like those goddamn rumors claimed.

Which means … Starsky has a different reason altogether for transferring out of Homicide and into Narco. But what?

“I know every cop on my payroll,” Finlay adds. He grins over Hutch’s shoulder at Callahan who’s been silent all this while. “Oh yes, there are many cops under my thumb, and you have no idea just how many of them are willing to do the worst things for a mere bang and buck.” Finlay’s grin alters into a sneer. “Some of them have been willing to bow to me even for something as ridiculous as love.”

Hutch has to bite his tongue from sarcastically pointing out the ring on Finlay’s finger. If Finlay really is married, may all the deities have mercy on the poor woman chained to him … unless she’s as evil as he is. What sane woman can stand to be wedded to a man like Finlay?

And who in the right mind would kowtow to Finlay and turn into a dirty cop for the sake of love?

“Everyone has a price, Detective Hutchinson. I wonder what yours is.” Finlay is staring at his face and smiling that disturbing, closed-lipped smile once more. “No, it’s not money. Gunther would have bought you out from the start if it was money. Women? Hmm … no, I don’t think so, not if your wretched lack of contact lately with your girlfriend is anything to go by.”

Hutch’s breath snags in his throat. Finlay’s been spying on him? And Stacey? For how long?

He’s been through enough hell during his service as a cop to be extra vigilant on the road, and he’d never noticed any cars tailing his LTD. Never noticed anyone tailing him while he was on dates with Stacey either … but someone must have, for Finlay to know that much about the status of his relationship with Stacey.

“If you do anything to her, I swear –“

“Oh, come off it,” Finlay cuts in, smirking as if Hutch’s warning is just a joke. “I’m not going to waste my time on her. She’s not the one to whom you’re truly committed, is she?”

Hutch doesn’t answer that. He hopes the blood hasn’t drained completely from his face, or Finlay’s going to know for sure that he’s hit the nail on the head, that Starsky is his true Achilles’ heel. His price.

Ironically, Hans is the reason he is spared from being psychologically dissected by Finlay any further.

“Baas, je ontmoeting met de kapitein.”

Finlay stares at him a little while longer, then turns his head to the side in Hans’ direction.

“Ah, yes, of course. Thank you for the reminder, Hans. How time flies when you’re having fun, hm?”

Hans steps forward to deftly pull back the chair as Finlay stands up. Finlay’s movements are nimble, belying the impression of old age due to his silver hair. Hutch stands up as well, but not out of respect. He is not going to give Finlay the satisfaction of physically looking down at him when the mob boss has already done that verbally in spades. He stands beside Callahan, solaced by the younger detective’s contemptuous glare towards Finlay. Good, Callahan isn’t letting Finlay daunt him either.

“I enjoyed our conversation very much, Detective Hutchinson. It was indeed a pleasure to meet you,” Finlay says, walking up to him and looking him straight in the eye. Then, turning towards Callahan, Finlay says in a lower tone, “As for you, boy –“

"The name's Joseph Callahan."

“Callahan … O Ceallachain. A strong name, derived from Ceallachan of Cashel, the king of Munster in the tenth century.” There is a glimmer in Finlay’s eyes now, the sort Hutch has seen many times in the eyes of criminals who see him and Starsky as mortal foes. “I will remember it.”

Callahan doesn’t shrink back at all as Finlay invades his personal space, until there is less than two inches of space between their noses.

“Beidh muid ag bualadh le chéile arís, Callahan.”

“Líon ar sé,” Callahan replies through his teeth, and Hutch sees the glimmer in Finlay’s eyes magnify into something treacherous, something predatory. Something he’d seen before, in Gunther’s eyes as he and Gunther had stared each other down in the old crook’s extravagant study.

The white knight confronting his dragon. His destiny.

“Wij vertrekken.”

At Finlay’s command, the goon keeping his gun trained on Huggy and the others backs away from them while Finlay, defended by Hans from behind, saunters away cavalierly from Hutch and Callahan towards the main entrance of The Pits without so much as a glance back. Hans growls at Hutch as he passes them, and Hutch has to hold onto Callahan’s right wrist to prevent the younger man from doing something very reckless. If Hans could deck T-Bone with one punch, there’s no telling what will be left of Callahan’s face once the goliath is through with it.

No one moves or says a word until the doors of The Pits slam shut in the mobsters’ wake.

At that instant, T-Bone jolts awake, rearing up like a tsunami but lacking the ocean’s grace in his writhing and bellowing. Anita and Rosalia are startled and cringe from T-Bone’s flailing arms while Gene, wedged between the bar and the waitresses, can only peer over their shoulders as Huggy darts to the big man’s side.

“Be cool, brotha,” Huggy says, pacifying the flustered, semi-conscious man with a squeeze to the back of the neck. “They’re gone … they’re gone.”

“Mr. Bear? I – I tried to … I failed … Sorry, Mr. Bear.”

T-Bone’s words are slurred. His head is lolling although he’s now standing still, supported on either side by Huggy and Callahan who’d hurried to the bar to lend a helping hand. A trickle of blood is winding its way from split lips down to his chin.

“It’s not your fault, man. That dude ain’t human.”

With assistance, T-Bone manages to stagger from the bar to a chair nearby and collapse onto it. Hutch is concerned by T-Bone’s disorientation and stupor.

“He might have a concussion,” he says to Huggy who is now standing opposite him, to T-Bone’s left. “We should bring him to a hospital.”

“No … no, Mr. Hutch, I’m good … Had concussions before. Don’t have one.”

The bar and bistro brightens as someone switches on all the ceiling lamps. Hutch raises T-Bone’s head into the light to look into the man’s brown eyes, and he sees that both pupils are the same size.

“Your pupils aren’t dilated, but you’re showing other symptoms of a concussion.”

“I’m good, Mr. Hutch, I am … Just gotta get my wind back.” T-Bone is rubbing the left side of his face, grimacing. “Last time I met a guy who could punch me out … I was seventeen … an amateur boxer.”

“Been a while, huh?” Hutch says, smiling softly, and T-Bone chuckles and replies, “Yeah … won’t mind facing that gorilla again … in a boxing ring, fair and square. He played dirty. Attacked me from behind.”

Anita appears with a damp cloth in hand and bends down to dab at T-Bone’s split lips and bloody chin.

“Thanks, Anita. Feels better,” T-Bone murmurs, sitting docilely with his eyes closed.

Hutch turns his head to glance at Callahan standing next to him, to his right. Callahan has his black notebook out and is feverishly scrawling notes on it with a pen. Hutch smiles at this. Then, expression more solemn, he asks, “What did Finlay say to you?”

Callahan concludes whatever he’s writing and puts the notepad and pen back in his suit jacket’s inner pocket.

“He was speaking Irish Gaelic. He said we’ll meet again.”

“Threat?”

“More like a promise.”

Hutch gazes at Callahan’s face for an instant, then says, “Where’d you learn to speak Irish Gaelic?”

Callahan smiles and replies, “I’m a second-generation American. My grandparents were from Dublin. They learned it from their parents who were from the Iveragh Peninsula in southwestern Ireland. They taught me to speak it since I was a baby.”

“That means you’ve got one up on me in the language department. You can speak two languages fluently.”

Callahan’s smile becomes an amused smirk.

“You still got the big trophy where it counts, though. I’ve yet to cuff a criminal of Gunther’s rank.”

You just might, one day, Hutch almost says, recalling the showdown of glares between Callahan and Finlay, but he doesn’t. The last person who deserves to be The Fin’s target for assassination is Callahan, and Callahan going after Finlay like some prize is guaranteed to make that nightmare a reality.

“I owe you another one, Hutch.”

Huggy has ambled over to stand in front of them, and has one hand on Hutch’s left shoulder. Hutch places his hand on Huggy’s upper arm and pats it.

“Friends don’t owe each other anything,” he says, and he and Huggy smile at each other, relieved that they have survived yet another dire situation and come out of it intact.

Huggy then turns to Callahan, offering his right hand for a handshake.

“Huggy Bear, owner of this fine establishment and this blond turkey’s savior on more than a few occasions,” Huggy says, still smiling, and Callahan laughs, his blue eyes crinkling. “I wish we didn’t have to meet under such a stressed state of affairs, but sometimes life doesn’t give you what you want.”

“Joey Callahan. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bear,” Callahan says, shaking Huggy’s hand.

“Call me Huggy. All my friends do.” Huggy’s smile becomes one tinged with gratefulness. “Thanks for coming here with Hutch. I’m gonna guess he told you he had to come here alone and told you to stay put?”

Grinning, Callahan nods and says, “You know him really well.”

“Indeed I do. He’s noble and loyal to a fault … just like he said.” Huggy’s smile fades. “Man, I thought we were all gonna die today. It seemed like any other day until he showed up with his goons out of nowhere. That big dude, he was fast for his size, so fast none of us saw him coming before he dropped T-Bone like a sack of potatoes.”

“Sorry, Mr. Bear.”

T-Bone now has an ice pack pressed to his bulging left cheek. The giant man seems to be more alert and stable.

“Like I said, it’s not your fault,” Huggy says, patting T-Bone’s right shoulder. “I’m glad you’re okay. And I’m glad they didn’t do anything else to us.”

“After what you told me about The Fin, I wasn’t about to risk anything or anyone,” Hutch murmurs.

“I know. I think he knew that too. Might be the only reason he held us hostage rather than shoot us dead.”

“Hutch,” Callahan says, “do you think he was telling you the truth? About Starsky?”

Hutch and Huggy glance at the younger detective. Hutch nibbles on his lower lip as he ponders on the questions.

“Yeah ... I believe he was. I don’t think he set up this meeting just to lie to my face. What he said about himself, about the … killing, he enjoyed telling us all that. He was proud of it, and he wanted us to know it.”

“Hearing it straight from his mouth was something else,” Huggy says, his expression fearful.

“Still, he had no reason, no gain in telling us that Starsky isn’t on his payroll,” Callahan says. “So why’d he do it? Why’d he go to all this trouble, just to tell us that in person?”

“Maybe he wanted to see if he could establish a line of communication with Hutch,” Huggy replies. “Maybe he wants to earn Hutch’s trust.”

Hutch snorts and says adamantly, “Like hell I’ll ever work for him.”

“Hutch, you heard what he said.” Huggy is gazing pointedly at him. “Some of the cops on his payroll, they’re not on it for money or power. They’re on it for love.”

Hutch gazes back at Huggy, into Huggy’s large eyes but in his mind, he is seeing another pair of large eyes on another very familiar face. Large blue eyes with lush, dark eyelashes that had once often grazed the side of his neck in the night, after bouts of lovemaking in his canal cottage. Starsky had always nuzzled his neck, as if Starsky needed to feel the beating of his heart against his cheek, even in slumber.

Starsky. His friend, his best friend who is still his big-hearted, honorable self, after all.

“What are you saying?” Hutch asks, his tone cool and not accusatory.

“The Fin was right about one thing, Hutch. Everyone has a price.”

Hutch looks away from Huggy to the floor, sensing Callahan’s and Huggy’s eyes on him. No, no way will he ever work for Finlay, or any other mob boss in town. Starsky would never forgive him for it. Their working relationship – much less their friendship – would never have endured such betrayal of their principles. No way will he ever go dirty, not even if –

Suddenly, Hutch is seeing Starsky standing before him, surrounded by darkness. Starsky’s eyes are bleak with fright, begging him for rescue. The muzzle of a revolver is pushing against Starsky’s right temple, held there by a man in a silver suit, and when the hammer of the revolver is pulled back, the resounding click causes Starsky’s eyes to widen, till the whites around the blue irises are visible.

Hutch, help me. Please.

Hutch’s hands tighten into fists of frustration.

Would he be willing to turn into a dirty cop, if Starsky’s life is at stake?

His knee-jerk answer to that question petrifies him.

“Everyone has a price. Even you,” Huggy says, placing a hand on his left shoulder again. “Be careful, my friend. Watch your step. The Fin’s gotten a taste of you now.”

The distressing imagery of Starsky’s head exploding from a bullet haunts Hutch for the rest of the day, and it evidently shows on his face for Minnie asks him if he’s alright after he gives her Finlay’s full name and description at the Computer Center. He smiles at her and swears that he’s okay, and it convinces her for now. Callahan isn’t as easily misled but doesn’t inquire Hutch for details on what’s upsetting him. Callahan is pensive throughout the afternoon too, preoccupied like he is with paperwork that doesn’t seem to ever stop.

That evening, both of them return to Mount Sinai to see how Simmons is doing. Simmons is being bolstered by pillows into a sitting position on the bed. He’s just had dinner, hospital food on a tray that’s still on the over-bed table. He greets them with a wave of his right hand and a skewed smile. Babcock is sitting at his partner’s bedside, in a different set of clothes from this morning. Babcock must have gone home at some point. He gives them a nod of greeting as they walk up to Simmons’ bedside on the left.

Hutch sits on the edge of the bed, near Simmons’ right thigh, while Callahan stands beside him. After some small talk, Simmons and Babcock are astounded into silence by Hutch’s recounting of his meeting with The Fin earlier today. Their expressions are dour by the end.

“Lorcan Finlay, huh?” Babcock mutters. His arms are folded over his chest, his shoulders hunched. “Never heard the name.”

“Me neither,” Simmons says. His voice is somewhat distorted by his swelled-up cheeks and lips. The contusions all over Simmons’ face are now magnificent shades of purple and blue-black. “What a sick bastard.”

“That’s what I said,” Hutch says, smirking. His smirk then vanishes as he adds, “Unlucky for us, he also happens to be a damn wealthy, educated bastard who speaks at least three languages fluently.”

“You believe him, Hutch? That he wasn’t responsible for this?” Babcock asks, angling his head at Simmons.

Hutch exchanges glances with Callahan, then asks Simmons, “What did the thugs who beat you look like? How tall and big were they?”

“Uh …” Simmons scratches his upper left arm, just above the cast wrapping his forearm. “Kinda like me and Babs, I guess. Regular guys.”

“Did any of them speak Dutch?” Callahan asks, and both Simmons and Babcock give him looks of astonishment.

“Dutch? No, English.”

“Any foreign accents?” Hutch says.

“No. American. I’m sure of it.”

Hutch and Callahan exchange glances again.

“So, definitely not Finlay’s men then,” Hutch says to Callahan, and the younger detective replies, “Unless only his personal bodyguards speak Dutch.”

“You said Finlay said he doesn’t ever send goons out to beat people up, right?” Babcock says to Hutch, frowning. “You believe him on that too?”

“Yeah. I do. I think if Finlay had sent his goons after Simmons, he’d be dead now. Finlay wallows in suffering and killing. It isn’t enough for him to just hurt someone.”

Hutch smiles to himself when Babcock extends one hand to lay it on Simmons’ left upper arm. It’s a very unexpected demonstration of affection from Babcock for his partner, but Hutch doesn’t comment on it. For all of Babcock’s supposedly disparaging remarks in public towards Simmons and their constant squabbling, there’s no denying Babcock’s faithfulness to Simmons.

Hutch relates to that faithfulness very well.

“He’s one scary sonofabitch, huh?” Babcock says, more subdued now.

“I haven’t been that creeped out by somebody in a long time,” Callahan says, and Hutch glances at him and says, “You sure didn’t show it.”

“Can’t afford to. Men like Finlay, they’re like … sharks. You let them smell your fear, it’s like smelling blood to them. They’ll mark you as a victim and hunt you down, and they won’t stop until they’ve destroyed you.”

Hutch nods in response. Wise words, born from hard-hitting experience.

“You know what?” Simmons says. “The crazy bastard’s got a code of honor, man. Like The Godfather.”

“How so?” Hutch asks.

“That thing about Gunther … I think he really does see it as a favor. In his sick mind, maybe he sees murdering Gunther as a way of repaying you for taking out the competition. Like, eye for an eye kinda thing.”

Hutch rubs his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

“Jesus. Like I need an insane mobster who thinks I’m his pal.”

“Hey, Hutch, why don’t ya tell him to clean up this whole mess for you, since he likes you so much?” Simmons jests, and the four detectives snicker at the preposterous thought. The humor uplifts the atmosphere in the room, and Babcock’s posture is considerably less tense as he taps Simmons on the leg and says, “I told them about the Narco mole.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, the mole.” Simmons taps Hutch’s forearm in turn. “One of my birdies chirped to me that an old-timer in Narco’s been a dirty cop for years.”

“And now we know for sure Starsky’s clean and not a mole,” Babcock says.

“How legit is your informer?” Hutch asks.

“Very. He’s always come through for me and Babs. He hasn’t given me bad intel yet.”

Hutch doesn’t ask for the name of the informer. The resilience of a rapport between a cop and his snitch relies substantially on trust and secrecy. A cop who dishes the dirt on his snitches won’t have them as sources for long.

“Did he tell you how long exactly this Narco old-timer’s been dirty?”

“About two to three years. Feeding info to one of the really big guns on drug raids and such. But that’s all he knows so far.”

“D’Amato, you think?”

“I dunno, Hutch. We’ve eliminated Starsky from the list of suspects, but we still don’t have enough to pin D’Amato as the mole my birdie chirped about. If he’s the one. Lots of the cops in Narco have worked there for more than three years.”

“He smells dirty to me,” Babcock mutters, and Simmons sniggers and says, “Yeah, he must rub a gallon of stinky wax into his hair to make it look like a helmet.”

Babcock then says to Hutch and Callahan, “Anyways, Sims will be out of the hospital tomorrow morning. Doctor said there’s nothing more to be done for him here. Just painkillers and lots of rest. Dobey’s relegated us both to desk duty until he recovers. Told me to keep an eye on him at home, and that a patrol car will be assigned to my street.”

“Dobey’s taking this very seriously,” Callahan says.

“Yeah,” Simmons says, smiling as much as he can with his battered face. “The Cap’s always looked out for his men.”

After a minute of comfortable hush, Hutch asks, “Simmons … what did you tell Dobey about the attack?”

Simmons sends Hutch a meditative gaze before replying, “I didn’t tell him what the goon said to me about Starsky, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Hutch glances at a spot on the wall near Simmons’ head and murmurs, “I don’t know whether to talk to Dobey about Starsky or not.”

Babcock scratches the side of his head while Callahan remains standing, quiet. Simmons eventually says, “Starsky may not be in Homicide anymore, but he’s still one of us. Dobey isn’t gonna hang him out to dry just ‘cause he’s in Narco now.”

Hutch runs one hand from the crown of his head and down to the nape of his neck, and sighs.

“Finlay’s thug, the really big one, I think he was telling Finlay they had to meet someone. He said something like … kapitein. I think it’s captain in Dutch.”

All three men are staring at Hutch now.

“Hutch …” Simmons mumbles. “You don’t think Dobey’s –“

“No, I know Dobey’s not dirty, but he might be friends with a captain who’s dirty and not know it. I just … I don’t know if telling him about Starsky and Finlay will put him in Finlay’s sights.”

Simmons nods in understanding.

“Wouldn’t be the first time Dobey’s been a target. But Finlay’s a whole other breed of nastiness, huh?”

“Yeah,” Hutch says, thinking about Dobey’s wonderful wife, Edith, and their two children, adorable, little Rosie and mature, dependable Cal. He can still recollect Edith’s panicked scream as he jumped out of the Torino in front of the Dobey residence and sprinted to her to hug her and calm her down, years ago. A masked thug had attempted to break into her home in the middle of the night, and if it hadn’t been for Dobey insisting that a loaded gun be kept in the house, that thug might have very well murdered Edith and the kids.

To put the Dobey family through something like that again, at the hands of even more brutal thugs, thugs who won’t rest until their victims are dead … Hutch is aghast just thinking about it.

“So since Starsky isn’t dirty and working for Finlay, who’s spreading that bullshit about him?” Hutch asks. “And why?”

“And who’s the real asshole behind the attack on Sims and those other cops?” Babcock growls.

“That, too,” Hutch says. “It’s not Finlay, that much we know now. It’s got to be same person who’s behind the rumors. Somebody who wants to set Starsky up, like Simmons said. Somebody who wants to set Finlay up as well.”

Simmons nods then says, “None of my birdies had anything concrete to tell me about the Starsky business. They just said one minute, the streets had nothing on Starsky and then the next, everybody was talking about him. My birdies heard the word from other birdies and they claimed they heard from other birdies –“

“And they heard it from other birdies, right?”

“Yeah. It’s like that telephone game, except the line’s so long now that the source of the call’s become untraceable.”

“Or hiding in plain sight,” Callahan says. The other three detectives look at him. “At first, Hutch and I thought maybe it was a cop who started talking about Starsky, like a personal vendetta or something. But now, it sounds to me like snitches were the ones who did. Who’s to say some of them weren’t paid to spread the rumors about him? At least one of them has gotta know the mastermind.”

“Callahan, do you know how many snitches there are on the streets?” Babcock says. “You talking about shaking down all of them?”

Callahan shrugs and replies, “It’s either that, or we wait till Starsky comes back from his undercover job. Who knows how long that could be, or what Finlay intends to do about the situation.”

Simmons sinks into the pillows propping him up. Fatigue is beginning to manifest itself on Simmons’ face and in his slouched pose.

“You guys can’t do this alone,” he murmurs to Hutch and Callahan, his eyes shut. “This is getting bigger than all of us. You gotta talk to Dobey. You can trust him.”

Hutch stands up and pats Simmons’ right arm.

“I know. And I will.”

Once Simmons falls asleep, Hutch says to Babcock, “Let me know when you bring him to your house, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Babcock then shakes his head and smirks to himself. “I almost feel sorry for the asshole behind all this.”

“Why’s that?” Hutch asks, surprised.

Babcock glances at his face, eyebrows shooting up.

“Would you piss off a guy like The Fin by talking shit about him? Only somebody with a death wish would do something like that.”

“Or somebody with nothing to lose anymore,” Callahan says, and Babcock nods in agreement.

The stroll to Callahan’s Chevelle Malibu in the hospital’s car park in front of the North Tower is a contemplative one. Hutch is rattled by the déjà vu of Babcock and Callahan unsuspectingly repeating what he and Huggy had said to each other about Starsky last night. (God, just last night!) For a couple of minutes there, he’d had the appalling theory that Starsky is the one who’d purposely started the rumors just so Finlay would track him down and slay him … but that’s total lunacy.

If Starsky really has a death wish, all he has to do is take his gun and point it at his temple and –

Hutch presses one hand over his lips, unable to complete the dismaying idea.

Too many pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Too many gaps to make all the wrong assumptions.

Hutch and Callahan say nothing to each other as they get into the car, or as the car departs from the hospital’s car park and heads onto La Cienega Boulevard. It is when they’re on the Santa Monica Freeway and halfway to Hutch’s apartment that Callahan finally speaks and breaks the silence.

“Finlay really is like a shark.”

Hutch looks at Callahan, at the other man’s handsome profile.

“And I don’t mean just his teeth. I think Huggy was right, that Finlay wanted to meet you today to check you out way more than tell you about Starsky.”

Hutch doesn’t say anything to that. He’s spooked as it is that a psycho like Finlay is fascinated with him.

“Even the way he checked you out today was how a shark would do it. See, unless a shark’s very sure that its targeted victim is one of its preferred food, it doesn’t automatically go in for the kill.”

His interest piqued, Hutch asks, “So what does it do?”

“It gives the victim a test bite. A non-fatal bite to see if you’re food or foe. And if it deems you to be food, it’ll return and launch its full attack then.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Callahan smirks, his blue eyes gazing out through the windshield as he maneuvers the car to a different lane.

“That means either you taste awful … or it’s scared of you.”

“You think Finlay might be scared of me?”

“You’re the guy who took down Gunther. He spoke to you today like an equal.”

Hearing that ought to assuage Hutch, but it doesn’t. The last time he had such a nemesis, Starsky almost died. He doesn’t want Starsky to ever go through such travail again. He doesn’t want Starsky to ever hurt like that again.

“I’d rather he never knew Starsky and I exist.”

“Yeah. What was it Huggy said?”

“Sometimes life just doesn’t give you what you want,” Hutch murmurs, reading Callahan’s sequence of thoughts seamlessly.

That night, Hutch dreams of drifting in a vast, arctic sea, a sea from melted snow and ice that is pure darkness as far as his eyes can see. There are voracious beasts in the waters with him, gliding past him in the murkiness, circling him. Watching. Waiting. Smelling the scent of his blood. He kicks his legs desperately, toiling his way up to the surface but there is no surface to breach, just darkness everywhere … and the glint of light reflecting off sharp teeth bared in ravenous grins.

Something silver, silver and coarse and immense, bumps into him. He sees teeth, enormous sharp teeth charging at him and icy water is flooding his mouth, throat and lungs and just when the teeth are about to bite him, to consume him, there is an extraordinary eruption of light.

He sees wings, lustrous, luridly colorful wings that stretch far above the receding darkness, above beasts abruptly puny in their radiance. He sees a halo of thick, dark, curls and big blue eyes, eyes that gaze upon with all the love in the universe, and he senses strong, muscular arms encasing him, sheltering him from the retreating beasts turned spineless.

A fallen angel, come to deliver him from iniquity, like the days of old.

When the first rays of sunlight streak across Hutch’s face through his curtains, they find him in a tranquil sleep. Warm, safe, and cocooned in a luridly colorful Falsa blanket, with a small smile upon his lips.

& & & & & &

In his hand is Stacey’s key to his apartment. It’s a golden key, with the initials ‘VP’ inscribed onto its clover-shaped bow. He’d had it made years ago, after Diana Harmon –  a mentally unbalanced nurse with whom he had a one night stand – attempted to stab him to death in his own apartment. He’d never left his house key on the ledge above the front door again, and all his girlfriends since Diana had received this golden key for safekeeping for the duration of the relationship.

It’s a golden key, two-and-a-half inches long, and right now, it has the weight of the entire world and all its farewells in its tiny form.

“Do you know that you’ve never told me you love me?”

Stacey is standing before him in his living room, next to his sofa, in a cream-colored turtleneck, jeans and an elegant wool winter coat. She is hugging herself, her hands clinging to her upper arms, her shoulders drooping. Her big blue eyes are gazing into his, and they are filled with resignation, with acceptance of the end. Her voice is faint, unchallenging. Forgiving.

It makes Hutch hate himself with every fiber of his being.

“Stacey, of course I –“

"Do you know how many times you've told me you love David?"

Hutch’s hand clenches around the key. He lowers his eyes, clueless as to how to respond to her incisive question said with the same forbearing tone.

“You don’t say it outright … but you don’t have to. When you talk about him, you … glow. Like the sun. You come alive every time you talk about him. And when you don’t, it’s as if … you’re asleep. Hibernating, until you say his name again.”

Hutch yearns to touch her cheek, her dark, curly hair. He yearns to embrace her, to tell her that that’s all in the past, that Starsky’s gone from his life and that he really does love her and want her to be the future Mrs. Hutchinson. But he doesn’t. He can’t. Not when it means feeding her lies, lies that she doesn’t deserve at all.

“I never had a chance, did I?”

Her smile of profound sadness burns him. Burns and melts some of the ice within him, and the water seeps into his eyes, turning hot and stinging.

“Stacey, please, it’s not like that –“

“Ken, now, of all times, please be honest with me.”

Hutch swallows hard. Then, his lips curve up in a wavering smile, and he gives her a jerky nod.

“I – I really wanted to be with you. I really meant it when I said I was seriously considering marriage with you. About settling down with you.”

“Past tense,” Stacey murmurs, still smiling that smile of profound sadness.

Hutch blinks a few times. His vision clears, but only a little.

“I’m sorry,” he rasps, unbearably aware of how inadequate his apology is.

“Don’t be. I’m glad I got to know you. I’m glad for the time we spent together.” She quickly wipes at her eyes, brushing the skin beneath them with the pads of her fingers. “Sometimes, you can’t help falling in love with someone who doesn’t feel the same way.”

Hutch gazes down at the key in his hand a second time. This golden thing, this tiny golden thing, has come to signify loneliness for him now. After tonight, it will never be passed into the hand of a woman again. He’s going to break it, hammer it to dust if he has to, until there is nothing left of it.

He’s tired. Tired of it all.

“Sometimes I wish people can help it,” he whispers, and he and Stacey are able to share a smile, one last heartfelt smile.

“I know you cared about me. That you still do. I will always remember that.” She strokes his cheek with her right hand, once. “I know you still care very much for David, too, even though you aren’t partners with him anymore. Don’t give up on him. He's hurting inside. More than you know."

Hutch says nothing, his sight hazy, his throat prickly and his tongue frozen. Something inside him throbs terribly when he looks at her, something that craves to leave its foreboding, desolate fortress of ice and its inert lands of permafrost. Something that knows there’s no turning back. That this is the end.

“Goodbye, Ken.”

He shuts his eyes when she kisses him on the lips, for the last time. He doesn’t watch her leave. He lets the key plummet from his hand to floor, unconcerned where it lands.

Minutes, perhaps hours or even a whole lifetime later, he shuffles to his greenhouse on the patio, wearing just his robe and slippers. It’s a tepid night for winter, with scarcely a breeze. He wonders whether those mysterious droplets of water are going to materialize onto the leaves and petals of his flowers and plants tonight, but he sees none as he greets the iridescent denizens of his garden with gentle murmurs and pettings.

There’s Harold, his Giant Saguaro cactus in the left corner, and there’s his Yellow King Humbert Canna lily with its yellow-and-red-spotted flower clusters, Lillian, next to it. There’s his shrub of evergreen, pink Hydrangeas with their large pom-pom flower heads, Minnie, near the bench in the center of the greenhouse, and there’s Gillian, his tropical Red Mussaenda shrub, in the other corner, and his pots of white, pink and scarlet begonias, Rosie, Calvin, Edith, Joseph, Daniel, Kevin and Bart.

The flower he carries with him to the bench, however, is a Golden Yellow Cymbidium orchid, two long stems of it arranged reverently in a blue vase with gold speckles. Its sprigs of large flowers with broad, waxy gilded petals seem to shimmer under the hanging lamp of the patio. It’s his most favorite flower of all, for it had been a gift to him by someone whose doctors had been so certain would never return to active duty as a police officer again.

It’s a golden beauty, just like you, Blondie.

With the vase secure between his thighs, Hutch strokes the orchid’s petals, smiling tenderly at it.

“Hi, Michael. How have you been?”

He bends his head down and sniffs its citrus and vanilla scent. It’s invigorating, so much like the scent of its namesake.

“I see you’re growing really well. I was afraid for a while there that I haven’t been watering you enough. Work has been overwhelming for the past three days, not to mention what happened to Simmons earlier this week, and that business with Finlay. And the latest case Joey and I had to deal with, a burnt down house with a corpse in it.”

He leaves his nose nestled in the petals, and stares at the ceramic tiles of the floor through half-lidded eyes.

“It never seems to stop, you know? All this violence, this death. I put one criminal behind bars, and ten more seem to pop up to replace him. I thought putting Gunther behind bars would, I don’t know, do something good, and instead … there’s Finlay. And who knows how many other fucked up guys like him are out there, just waiting to grab a piece of the pie for themselves. I don’t … I don’t know if it’s worth fighting anymore, when it just never seems to stop.”

Hutch sighs.

“I’m – I’m happy for Stacey. I’m happy that she’s moving on, that she’s not stuck with a crazy guy like me. Yeah, sure, I’m not hearing those voices in my head anymore, but look at me, I’m talking to a plant. Good thing I never told her about them, huh?”

Predictably, Michael doesn’t say or do anything in reply.

“She’ll find someone better. Someone who’ll love her for her, and not because she reminds him of somebody else. Somebody he still loves. Always will.”

Hutch has to swallow down a lump in his throat before speaking again.

“I think I’ve finally figured it out, why I like surrounding myself with greenery so much. It’s not just the therapy I had with Aunt Lil. I told you about that, right? About how she used to encourage me to just talk and let out all the bad stuff inside before it festered and infected me. I think her advice saved my life back then. Really. She always had the best advice, and – and I forgot. I locked it all up inside me. Inside all that ice. I thought maybe … maybe I could freeze everything and that would make everything better, because when you’re numb, you’re not supposed to feel anything, right? And not feeling anything’s supposed to make you stronger, right?”

Hutch rubs one cheek against the yellow petals.

“But you know what I also forgot? I forgot that you can’t grow anything in ice. You can kill all the bad feelings … but you can’t grow any good ones either, and even when you try, sooner or later it just … dies. So I surround myself with life. Because nothing can grow in the cold inside me.”

Hutch sighs again, then closes his eyes. A few minutes of silence pass with no movement from him.

Then, almost inaudibly, he says, “I miss him. I miss him so damn much. He’s the very first thing I think about when I wake up. The last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I even see him in my dreams, walking up to me, saying hello. Smiling at me. And when that happens, I don’t want to wake up. I want to stay asleep forever, if it means he’s with me again and he … and he still … loves me.”

More minutes of silence pass, fragmented now and then by the distant noises of vehicles zooming up and down the road in front of Venice Place.

“I don’t know what to make of all the things Huggy told me, about Starsky. He’s not working for Finlay, which means something else is bothering him, something so bad that it’s making him damage himself like he is, making him act like there’s nothing to live for anymore, and I don’t know what it is. Something so bad that he can’t even share it with me … that he left me rather than tell me about it. So that means … it must be something about me.”

Hutch straightens up and gazes down at the orchid once more, tracing one petal with a forefinger.

“Huggy’s right … it doesn’t make sense anymore if I assume he ended our partnership because he hates me. But how does it make any more sense to think that he ended our partnership because he loves me? You’d want to stay close to the one you love, right? You’d want to be with them all the time, spend time with them, do things with them and … and …”

And even as his eyes stare at golden flowers, Hutch is seeing Starsky in a white t-shirt and white khaki shorts, racing towards him across white gold sand and laughing and seizing his hand. Starsky is telling him that it’s a perfect morning for a run, that the waters are fine and that they should make the most of it while the beach is still theirs alone and Hutch is happy, so happy that after all the months of an extra-tetchy, morose, antagonistic Starsky, his old Starsky – his beloved Starsky – is back. An equally happy Starsky, towing him along by hand across the sand, laughing some more, laughing with him as they run with the wind like the amazing horses his parents had once trained, fed and sheltered on their farm. They run, straight into cooling, salty waves where they splash seawater at each other and hop on each other until they topple into the water, swept off their feet by huge waves.

Do you know your hair shines like gold in sunlight, Hutch?

They’re sprawled on the sand now, catching their breath. Water is dripping off Starsky’s nose, chin and hair onto his face and neck. Starsky’s face is shadowed by the sun behind, but Hutch guesses from the bunching of Starsky’s cheeks that Starsky is smiling at him. He says something tongue-in-cheek about Starsky needing an off switch for his corny romantic lines, and Starsky draws away, not just physically but emotionally as well.

Hutch shifts onto his elbows to better look at Starsky’s face. It’s still shadowed. Sphinx-like.

You thought about what kinda ring you’re gonna get your lady?

Starsky’s mumbled question bowls Hutch over. It slashes like a blade, rending a hole in the fabric of their private world where it’s just them, them and no one else. He tells Starsky that there’s no plan to buy a ring for Stacey, that he hasn’t even thought about proposing to her … and there’s that smile on Starsky’s lips again, that smile that makes Hutch feel as if someone has just walked over his grave, over the grave of his friendship with Starsky. He sits up and vehemently reiterates his answer, that no, he’s not going to buy a ring and no, he’s not going to propose to Stacey, not yet anyway and –

“No … it can’t be,” Hutch whispers in the present, to himself, to the Golden Yellow Cymbidium orchid in his clasp. “Did I know what it was, all along?”

And then, he is in a different instance in the past, and he is standing outside and next to the doors of the Homicide squad room, listening to his co-workers chatting about him. About Starsky. About Starsky abandoning him, abandoning them –

But Starsky said Hutch's pretty serious about his girlfriend. Like, ring-on-the-finger serious.

Maybe Starsky just got the ball rolling faster on ending the partnership, for Hutch's sake.

Simmons’ and Diaz’s voices seem to resonate in his skull, off the walls of the patio, pommelling him with those incriminating words.

“Oh, Starsky,” Hutch whispers, louder, sturdier. “What did I do, when I told you it was possible I might marry Stacey one day? What did I do?”

And then, he is hurtling even further back into the past, to that night at The Pits where he and Stacey have spinach lasagna and Starsky has a plate of linguine and clams for dinner. But this time, it’s him who’s eating that plate of linguine and clams and this time, he’s seeing Starsky there at the table with a beautiful, leggy blonde with big blue eyes and golden hair that shines in the sunlight. Starsky’s girlfriend, steady girlfriend whom Starsky had concealed from him for weeks before telling him about her, before telling him that it’s a possibility that he’ll marry her one day. Soon, perhaps … and the mere thought of Starsky getting married, to this beautiful, leggy blonde – who can give Starsky what he wants, who is everything Hutch wishes he is, if it means giving Starsky everything he wants – makes Hutch sick to his stomach.

Makes him lose his appetite. Makes him itch to run away from Starsky and his beautiful, leggy blonde, run out of The Pits like a bat out of hell. Run far, far away where won’t be tormented by the spectacle of Starsky gazing and smiling at someone else with all that love on his gorgeous face, of Starsky holding her hand and caressing her hair, as if he isn’t there at the table with them. As if he doesn’t exist.

“But that’s because … I’m in love with him,” Hutch says, oblivious to the fact that he’s been stroking the yellow flowers of the orchid with both hands for some time, still staring blindly at the floor. “And Starsky, he can’t be in love with me. It’s not possible. He said it himself, to my face, he said it – it didn’t mean anything to him. That he only loves women … right?”

And oh god, he’s hurtling back years into the past, to that fateful night in Starsky’s old Ridgeway apartment, in Starsky’s living room and he’s sitting on the floor, dazed, blinking, while Starsky is on the couch, knees drawn up, huddled against the cushions like a turtle hiding in its shell. Starsky’s face is turned away from him, as if it shames Starsky to look at him and no, nonono, he doesn’t want to hear those words again, not even in memory –

We’re just BUDDIES fucking around! That’s all! It – it doesn’t MEAN anything, okay?! We’re STRAIGHT guys, Hutch! We love WOMEN!

Hutch is oblivious, too, to his arms clinching the orchid’s blue vase tautly now.

“He wouldn’t look at me. He wouldn’t … look at me.”

Yeah … that’s right, Starsky’s head was turned away from him then, even when – no, particularly when Starsky was shouting those words at him. Starsky always looks him in the eye when the guy has something important to say to him, and the only time Starsky doesn’t, can’t look him in the eye is when he’s … lying.

Hutch’s arms descend from around the vase to his thighs, listlessly. His eyes are wide and seeing, truly seeing for the first time in a very long while.

Did Starsky lie to him that night? Did Starsky lie, after all, about their lovemaking meaning nothing to him? Did Starsky lie, after all, about loving him too, as so much more than just buddies?

And if that’s so, why did Starsky lie in the first place? Why did Starsky persistently tell him to not talk?

“Every time,” Hutch murmurs to Michael, petting the orchid’s petals, “every time after we made love, he’d shush me. Tell me not to speak, as if he was afraid of what I’d say. As if he was afraid I’d tell him I love him, really love him, and back then, after that night, I … I thought it was because he really didn’t feel the same way, that he was telling the truth when he said it was just fucking around to him. But now …”

Hutch lapses into silence, his head bowed, his lower lip sucked into his mouth. Now, he has something he never believed he’d have again: Hope, in all its blazing glory, a rising star in an infinite cosmos of diminutive, twinkling ones. Hope, that perhaps he was wrong, that Starsky not only loved him the same way then, but still does, even now when they’re worlds apart … and if Starsky had acknowledged their love, their relationship as lovers, how would their lives have turned out?

Would they have been happy together? Would they have worked together as well as they did, despite the romantic and sexual aspects of their relationship? Would they have remained friends, the best of friends, instead of being strangers to each other like they are now?

“Remember when I told you about Tina Bennett? You know, my first case with Joey. The one about the closeted lesbian who was in love with a – a prostitute.” Hutch glances at the Red Mussaenda shrub, envisioning its namesake, a lovely, blonde woman he’d loved and grieved for enough to punch Starsky across the face when Starsky had dared imply she was a hooker. “I thought about her a lot in the weeks after that case. I thought a lot about what Joey said to me, about how things might have been different for her if she had people she could talk to, people she could trust. People who would have accepted her as she is, and not what they expected her to be.”

Hutch glances back at the Golden Yellow Cymbidium orchid in front of his face.

“I’d like to think that if Starsky and I had become lovers back then, that everything would have been perfect. That we’d still be together today, that we’d still love each other and be in love with each other … but that would be me being naïve, wouldn’t it? That would be me doing a disservice to both Starsky and I, closing an eye to the realities of the situation.”

Hutch shakes his head, a sad smile very much like Stacey’s gracing his lips.

“We would have had to lie to everyone, just like Tina Bennett did to everyone in her life. We would have had to pretend we were two different people. That outside, we were straight, macho cops who only loved and fucked women like there’s no tomorrow, while inside … we were simply two people in love who loved each other madly and just happened to have the same type of genitals. We would have had to go out with women at some point, if we didn’t want the other guys to start talking about us, and I don’t think I would have handled that very well, Starsky sleeping with other people when he – when he would have been mine.

“And there’s IA to think about too, who would have sniffed around us to check the rumors about us being gay lovers, and what would have happened then if IA did find out about our sexual relationship? Starsky and I, we would have been … separated. We’d never be allowed to work together again as cops. Maybe even lose our jobs. Lose the respect of many, if not all of our peers, and probably get harassed by them and every other homophobe who knew the truth.”

Hutch’s sad smile turns into one of resolve.

“But, Joey, he’s a smart young man. Living an honest life does have its consequences, but he’s right: You’ll sleep on a pillow of petals and not thorns, and you’ll have the courage to look people in the eye. The courage to be yourself, to love yourself and others. To be … warm, and to let love grow within you, even if it means possibly losing it one day … and maybe it’s worth the pain, to be alive.”

Michael, as anticipated, says and does nothing in reaction to Hutch’s life-altering revelations.

When Hutch stands up and carries the orchid with him inside his apartment, his steps are livelier, mightier. He places the orchid on the coffee table and then meanders to his shelf of books, antiques and trinkets, removing a three-inch thick photo album from the bottom ledge. After sitting on the floor and putting the photo album on the coffee table next to the orchid’s blue vase, he cleans away the thin layer of dust on the photo album’s cover with swipes of his hand. He hasn’t browsed through it in at least one and a half years. Maybe longer.

He smiles fondly at it, at the vertical white stripes on its candy apple red cover. He’d come across it in a gift store during Christmas shopping with Starsky a long time ago. He hadn’t wanted to go, what with him being the Grouch Who Hates Christmas as Starsky eloquently put it, but Starsky had implored him with big puppy dog eyes and a pout and damnit, he could never deny Starsky anything whenever Starsky pulled that look on him. So there he was in one of the city’s biggest shopping malls swarming with harried customers, moping over the excessively capitalist, superficial nature of Christmas these days while Starsky scurried around like one of Santa Claus’ elves buying gifts for his Ma, his younger brother Nicky and his girlfriend of the week (and him, of course) … and there it was, this garishly red photo album on display along with a collection of other similarly red Christmas gift items.

Hey, Blintz, it’s nice to see my good taste finally rubbing off on you.

“Your namesake liked this photo album so much, he insisted on buying it for me on top of the Christmas present he already got me,” Hutch says to the orchid, sliding his fingers down the album’s smooth leather, still smiling. “Said the red would bring out the beauty of my eyes even more.”

He flips the album open, and his breath hitches at the very first photograph he lays his eyes on.

“We had this picture taken on our first day as plainclothes cops,” Hutch says, his voice huskier, “It was winter time too, and I think it was pretty cold that day, which is why Starsky’s got that wool-knit sweater.”

In the picture, he and Starsky are sitting side by side on the edge of a sidewalk, so close together that their bodies are molded from shoulder to knee. The headlights and bumper of the Torino can be seen to the far left of the picture. He’s wearing a plaid shirt, jeans and light brown jacket. Starsky is wearing a light blue, collared shirt, that black toque and jeans and yes, that bulky, double-knit wool sweater with its unique sirdar pattern that is encircling both their shoulders, cosseting them from the chill. Their cheeks are pressed together as they gaze at the camera. They’re grinning from ear to ear, as if laughing at a joke known only to them.

Them, just them, against a cruel world that would one day divide an ideal whole into two incomplete halves.

Hutch flips the page and sees another photograph of him and Starsky, snapped in Huggy’s former bar and bistro. It had been his thirty-fourth birthday, and Starsky had surprised him with a huge birthday cake and an impromptu date with a twin pair of very busty blondes from Norway (or so they claimed).

“Now this one was taken by one of the twins, after we had dinner and several beers each. I’m looking at the camera just fine, but Starsky, look at him, he’s … looking at me.”

Indeed, in the photograph, Starsky is gazing at him as he smiles at the camera, a soft smile on those expressive lips, an even softer glow emanating from those big blue eyes. He hadn’t noticed Starsky look at him that way at all that night. A mere hour or so after the picture was shot, they had driven over with a twin each to the Sunset Tower on Sunset Boulevard and fucked like bunnies in the twins’ hotel room there. No, not each other, but their respective busty blonde on individual beds, and the whole time he was fucking his writhing, moaning date, he was watching Starsky fucking his date from behind, on hands and knees. Starsky was holding her face down by the neck, his fingers curled in her short hair, thrusting in and out of her hard and Starsky’s eyes were squeezed shut, as if he was in pain ... or as if he didn’t want to see what was occurring on the bed next to his.

And when Hutch’s eyes, wide open, drank in the sinuous play of Starsky’s muscles, Starsky’s agonized expression and Starsky’s mouth falling open in ecstasy like it would when he used to make love with Starsky, Hutch was a goner, gone with shooting stars and bursting nebulae as immeasurable as galaxies. Gone, then floating back down like a feather, back to his panting, sweaty body, to the sensation of big blue eyes with lush eyelashes staring at him, drinking in his face slack with pleasure, his smirk at another job well done after he glanced down and saw his passed out, smiling lady of the night.

Starsky, prone on top of another slumbering Norwegian woman, staring at him as if he was all there was in Starsky’s universe.

Swallowing visibly, Hutch’s gaze flits to another photograph on the opposite page, a photograph that is nearly a decade old.

“I think it was Starsky’s mom who took this picture,” Hutch murmurs. “It was our graduation ceremony at the Academy in Elysian Park. We were two of thirty-two people who graduated that year. There’d been at least five hundred guests at the event. Five hundred, imagine that.”

In the photograph, he and Starsky are in their dark blue, immaculate uniforms. He’s carrying Starsky in his arms, one arm under Starsky’s knees and the other around the middle of Starsky’s back, his hat lopsided on his head. Starsky’s right arm is around his neck and over his shoulders and Starsky’s left arm is flung out, brandishing his hat while Starsky’s right leg is straightened, pointing up towards the sky. They have the widest shit-eating grins ever, Starsky’s being open-mouthed and his exposing both rows of teeth, such was his exultation then.

They were so young, then. So young and full of faith and bravery.

Hutch no longer says anything as he peruses the rest of the photo album with sedate flicks of the pages, as he studies the dozens and dozens of photographs that have captured many precious moments of his past with Starsky. There are so many pictures of him and Starsky together. Standing together, sitting together, eating together, talking together, laughing together. Playing basketball. Playing pool at Huggy’s. Posing on the hood of the Torino. Posing with silly faces for snapshots during their various vacations in and out of the country. Posing in tuxedos. Posing in a variety of costumes. There is even a series of pictures of them just goofing around on a long flight of outdoor stairs, constantly touching or hugging each other. Huggy had snapped those for them, citing ‘perfect blackmail material to make them turkeys pay their tab’ as his reason for doing so. Huggy’s plan obviously hadn’t worked.

Hutch smiles most at pictures where Starsky is grinning at the camera, less so when the pictures include other people, especially ex-girlfriends. When he sees a photograph of him and Starsky with Terry – a smiling, cheerful Terry with her arm around Starsky’s shoulders – his breath hitches again.

“Before she … passed away, she left me a letter requesting me to make sure Starsky and Ollie, the teddy bear she gave Starsky, never changed.” He touches the photograph, the pad of his forefinger on top of Starsky’s heart. “I failed her. It was her last wish in life, and I failed her.”

Hutch is glad that orchids can’t speak. Or condemn.

He flips the photo album shut placidly, a forlorn weightiness upon his shoulders. He gets up onto his knees, the photo album in hand, and is about to stand upright when something rectangular and almost a half inch thick slips from the album and falls onto the coffee table, landing with a slap on its glass surface. It’s a dark yellow envelope, with what feels like a stack of photographs in it. He puts down the photo album, then picks up the envelope and pulls out its contents.

“What the … where did these come from?”

Hutch sits back down on the floor and skims through the random pictures of him, bewildered by them. He still has his moustache and longer hairstyle, which means the pictures are at least two to three months old. There’s one of him in his greenhouse, watering his begonias. A side shot. There’s one of him in the kitchen, cooking something at the stove. A shot from the back, and just enough to the side to see a portion of his face, his small smile. And there’s one of him in his robe, the very robe he’s dressed in right now, and in this picture, he’s sitting on the side of a bed with a tray of food on his lap. He’s trying to open what looks like a white plastic bottle of … medication.

A white plastic bottle of medication he used to keep in his bathroom cabinet, along with Starsky’s other prescriptions.

Hutch skims through the stack faster, seeing a few more shots of himself, and then, after six more, he sees a picture of Starsky. A familiar one, one he’d taken some days after Starsky’s discharge from the hospital. Oh, this stack of photographs, they’re from his camera, and they’re at least nine months old. He recognizes the ones of Starsky, but the ones of himself … Starsky must have snapped those without his knowledge. And then had all the photos developed, also without his knowledge.

Why didn’t Starsky tell him about them? Why did Starsky leave the envelope with the photos in it in the back of his photo album, hidden?

He takes his time now to scrutinize the photographs Starsky had taken of him. There are eleven in total, random shots without any theme to them other than him being the unwitting subject. They become more intimate in perception with each one, and in each and every one, regardless of what he’s doing – be it reading a book or watching television or shaving his face in the bathroom or strumming his guitar – he is smiling. He is happy.

These photographs, they’re him through Starsky’s eyes. They’re what Starsky sees when Starsky looks at him, and what Starsky sees is –

Something in the left side of Hutch’s chest skips a beat as he stares at the white back of one of the photographs, a portrait of him standing by the living room window, illumined by twilight rays, smiling at something outside, something he can’t even recall anymore. Starsky had written one word there, in that cursive, energetic penmanship: Beautiful.

One word, just one word, shouldn’t be affecting Hutch like it is, but his hands grasping the photograph are trembling and more ice within him is thawing, metamorphosing into hot wetness behind his eyes. He was wrong … he really was wrong in believing that Starsky wanted him to keep his distance after being discharged from the hospital, that Starsky couldn’t stand him. If Starsky had thought of him this way so recently, mere months ago … did Starsky also think the same of him throughout all their years of partnership? Even after that month? Even in spite of all the relationships with women Starsky had since?

A straightforward issue of misinterpretation. That’s what this has been, from the start. A straightforward issue of misinterpretation on his part.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but that Finlay, he was right about something else too … It really is all a matter of perspective.”

Hutch reaches out to sweep his fingers over and down the large sprigs of flowers of the orchid. Then, he scrutinizes the photographs of Starsky he’d taken, photographs as intimate in perception as the photographs of him. There are seventeen altogether, and in most of them, Starsky is gazing at the camera, either about to smile or smiling already. There’s that picture of Starsky in the greenhouse, clutching in his hands the same Golden Yellow Cymbidium orchid that’s on the coffee table right now. Starsky is looking away from the camera, seeking a good spot to set the orchid down. Starsky is still pallid in complexion and gaunt from his lengthy recuperation in the hospital, but there is a tender smile on Starsky’s lips and Starsky’s blue eyes are crinkled with contentment.

Starsky, you don’t have to buy that for me –

I want to. It’s a golden beauty, just like you, Blondie.

Aw, Starsk. And here I thought you hated flower shopping.

Dying has its way of making ya see lotsa things really differently.

“There’s a huge garden center about nine minutes’ drive from here, on Sepulveda Boulevard,” Hutch says to the orchid, mapping out Starsky’s features with his fingertip. “That’s where we got you from, along with some Mandevillas for the trellis in the greenhouse. I think it was … the second day after Starsky’s discharge from the hospital. I thought he would have wanted to stay indoors while I went to the garden center. He never shopped for flowers and plants with me before, until that day.

“And what’s just as weird was that when I picked him up from the hospital, he didn’t want to go back to his own apartment. He wanted to come here. I had to go over to his place to get more of his clothes because he insisted on staying here with me for almost a week. Said that I needed the company and that he had to be here to ‘chase the boogiemen away’.” Hutch’s features soften into a toothless smile. “And you know what? He really did chase the nightmares away, when he was here. Maybe I chased his away too.”

Hutch gazes at the next photograph in the stack, a photograph of Starsky at Merle the Earl’s auto mechanic shop, admiring the revamped Torino with its new windows and refurbished doors and fenders. Starsky – in that dark blue t-shirt and jeans – has one hand on the roof of the car and the other touching the driver’s window. His thick, dark curls are being tousled by a breeze, and he’s grinning at the camera, as restored as his cherished car.

Hutch, tell me how much the repairs cost. Right now.

Nope. I’m not saying a word.

Huuuuuuuutch, c’mon! Merle won’t tell me either!

Not saying a word about it. Just be happy the Torino’s back!

I am, I am! Really, I am. But I can’t let you pay for all of it. Lemme pay half, how about that?

Nope. Now get in the driver’s seat and take me for a ride.

Where?

Anywhere you want.

What if I’m already where I wanna be?

And where’s that?

“Starsky never did answer me,” Hutch murmurs, smiling at the photograph, at Starsky’s bliss. “He just turned red as his car and hopped into the driver’s seat like I told him to and took us joyriding for hours. You should have seen how happy he was behind the wheel. It was worth every cent I paid.”

The following photograph makes Hutch laugh aloud. In it, Starsky is gobbling down a piece of pizza at one of Starsky’s favorite Italian restaurants, his cheeks ballooned like a squirrel’s with nuts, and those big blue eyes are closed in gastronomical delight. The last time Starsky got to eat pizza before that was over seven months ago, before the shooting in the Metro car park. If photographs were capable of storing audio information as well, anyone seeing this picture would hear Starsky’s jubilant moan as he chewed on his oversize mouthful of pizza, and Hutch can hear it in his head, an amusing sound that had also made him laugh back then.

“I didn’t even mind when he went on about Italian restaurants and his grandma again. Hearing him talk about it, it was like a sign that everything was okay again. That we were back to normal. That he didn’t change.”

And in retrospect, now that he thinks about it methodically, Starsky hadn’t changed then, not yet. As a matter of fact, Starsky was at his cheeriest all through that week that Starsky stayed here in his apartment, as if Starsky had been searching for something for a very long time and found it here, with him. As if he, just he and no one else, was all Starsky ever needed.

“It was when we went back to work,” Hutch says, his voice lower, more lugubrious now. “That was when it began, the change. That was when he began to get frustrated, angry all the time, as if he didn’t like the job anymore, and he was taking it out on me all the time, because … he knew I could handle whatever he dished out. That I wouldn’t desert him, no matter what. But then, if he really didn’t enjoy the work anymore, the only logical conclusion I can come to is that he came back … for me.” Hutch shuts his eyes, props his elbows on the coffee table and then lets his head fall forward into his hands. “And then Stacey came along, and he … thought I’d chosen her over him. Which I did. Because I had no idea. Shit.”

This time around, Hutch isn’t as glad that orchids can’t speak. He’d do well with a loving word right about now. Preferably in a nasally voice with a pronounced New York accent like his orchid’s namesake’s.

When he opens his eyes, he sees yet another photograph of Starsky, in which Starsky’s eyes are closed and Starsky is reclined on a bed, sound asleep. He tugs it out from beneath two other photographs and holds it between his thumb and forefinger. There are parallel bands of sunshine across Starsky’s abdomen while the rest of the slumbering man is shrouded in mild shadows, as if the curtain’s partially drawn. Starsky’s denim shirt is open and spread to the sides, and though Starsky’s chest hair had grown back by the time this picture was shot, the scars crisscrossing his chest are still noticeable.

“Took this on the last day he stayed here,” Hutch whispers, staring at Starsky’s face so boyish in sleep. “He took a nap on my bed, after we went out for burritos for lunch. It was really hot that day. I took a shower while he slept, thinking he’d wake up when I was done, but when I came out of the bathroom …”

He becomes quiet as the memory of that afternoon rushes back to him in Technicolor. He’d come out of the bathroom with his towel around his hips, his hair still wet, and he had halted in his tracks at the sight of Starsky napping like he was. He’d tiptoed into the bedroom and to the side of the bed, snatching his camera from the dressing table along the way, then cautiously sat himself down on the edge of the bed, near Starsky’s knee. Snapping the picture took only a second.

Moving away from Starsky, when Starsky appeared just like he did when they still made love, when they were still lovers, was a totally different game.

A game Hutch lost immediately, as he slid up the bed, nearer and nearer to Starsky’s bare belly and chest.

He’d gasped when Starsky raised hand to his face, touched his lips with warm fingers. Starsky’s eyes were barely open. Starsky was murmuring something under his breath, something Hutch hadn’t wanted to hear then. Something Hutch, as he is lucidly recollecting the moment now, is finally hearing with utter clarity:

Don't talk, Hutch, please.

Don't let the real world in and tear us apart.

Hutch had bolted from Starsky then, terrified of hearing Starsky reject him again, but now, now he is bolting to his phone, almost knocking it off the side table in his haste to finally pick up its receiver, to finally press its black buttons with its white numbers and listen to the monotone ringing as he nervously waits for his call to be connected, hands clamped around the receiver.

The ringing continues for an entire minute.

Halfway into the second minute, Hutch lets the receiver drop back onto the phone, terminating the call. He sighs, shaking his head self-critically. Of course Starsky won’t pick up the phone. Starsky isn’t at home. He’s still out there in his Narco undercover job, and who the hell knows when Starsky will be back?

“Diaz.”

Hutch glances at the clock on the wall next to the shelf. It’s about five minutes after ten. Diaz ought to be still awake and at home. If there’s somebody aside from Simmons who’d have any inkling at all about Starsky’s current whereabouts, it’s Diaz and his contacts in Narco.

Diaz picks up on the fifth ring.

“Hey, ustedes dos! Dejar de luchar por la televisión! Usted debe estar durmiendo ya!”

Hutch rears back from the receiver, grimacing at the strident volume of Diaz’s admonishment. Diaz’s kids must still be up too, and probably quarrelling over the television.

“Vete a dormir! AHORA!”

“Diaz? Is this a bad time –“

“Hey, Hutch! ¿Qué pasa?”

Hutch smiles although Diaz can’t see it, and says, “Just wanted to talk to you about –“

Diaz’s voice sounds faraway again as he roars away from the phone, “Humberto! Golpear a tu hermano en la cabeza para mí!”

Hutch chuckles to himself when he hears the ruckus of teenage boys bickering in the background. Yeah, he remembers the days when he was that age. He’d had his share of clashes with other teenage boys in the neighborhood where he’d lived with Aunt Lillian in Duluth. There was even one girl with whom he almost brawled with, a girl a lot like Pete AKA Molly Edwards,  who’d stayed overnight in his apartment just before Christmas four years ago, whose father was murdered for diamonds he’d stolen and hoarded. Pete’s still living with Kiko and his mom, and is just a year away from graduating from high school.

God, how fast they grow up.

“Sorry about that, my twin boys were fighting over the TV when they should have gone to bed already.”

“It’s okay, Diaz.”

“You wanna know the true meaning of hell? Try living with four hormonal teenagers with mood swings bouncier than the jugs of a can-can danc – ¡ay!”

Hutch sucks in his lips so as to not laugh as Diaz’s wife, Imelda, smacks Diaz for his vulgar quip and chides him in Spanish. Imelda smacks Diaz a second time when her husband says in a honeyed tone, “Imelda, mi amor, dame un poco de cerveza de la nevera, ¿verdad?”

Hutch soon hears the pop of a beer can, then the noises of Diaz taking a gulp and sighing in satiation.

“I’d hand you a can, mi amigo, but you’re all the way in Venice and I’m in La Brea.”

Hutch chuckles again, and says, “Thanks for the thought though. How’re things with you, apart from hormonal teenagers with wild mood swings?”

“I’m good, I’m good. Me and Chen been working on a case in Chinatown. Young Asian girl, an immigrant from Hong Kong, was murdered in her studio apartment. Dobey handed the case straight to us for obvious reasons.”

“Chen’s fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, right?”

“Yeah. He’s a godsend in this case. Wouldn’t know a damn thing anyone was saying without him translating everything for me. Think the case’s getting to him a bit though. He’s got a younger sister around the same age and build. You know how it is sometimes.”

“Yeah. I do,” Hutch says, relocating himself from the floor to the more comfy sofa.

“You and Callahan, you were working on that mystery corpse in that burnt down house in Atwater Village, right?”

“Not such a mystery anymore. Homeless guy broke into the home of a family away on vacation. Lived there for two days and then the whole place went up due to a gas leak.”

“Damn. What a way to go.”

“Yeah. Identification was possible only because of dental records. The guy had loads of amalgam fillings.”

“Hey, Hutch, I visited Simmons three days ago.”

Hutch sits up straighter.

“Yeah? How was he?”

“I dunno what the hell kinda meds he had. He was loop de loop outta his head, man. Kept asking Babcock to just marry him already so they can have tax breaks.”

Hutch laughs with Diaz even as he glances at the photographs of Starsky on his coffee table. It’s a rather shrewd (if lily-livered) tactic, to ask a guy to marry you when you’re high on meds and you’re a guy yourself. He might just try that with Starsky one day … if he ever gets to talk to Starsky again, and Starsky wants to be part of his life again.

“But yeah, once he was more down to earth, he had a lot to say. He told me about The Fin, and that the rumors about Starsky really are bullshit. Thank fuck.”

Smirking, Hutch asks, “Shouldn’t you be saying, ‘Thank god’?”

“Nah. That’s my wife’s deal, not mine.”

Hutch isn’t all that surprised by Diaz’s reply. Although Imelda is a staunch Christian (last checked), Diaz has always been skeptical of religion in general but attends church on Sundays with Imelda and their children for her sake. Imelda isn’t pleased about Diaz’s disbelief but, well, you just can’t help who you fall in love with, sometimes.

“Hutch, you gotta watch your back. This Finlay psycho is not somebody to be taken lightly. He sounds like one seriously sick muthafucker.”

“I know.”

Diaz sips his beer, then says, “You wanna know whether Starsky’s back in from the cold, huh?”

Hutch smiles in amusement at Diaz’s choice of words. There’s something very apt about them, about the imagery it brings to his mind. Yeah, he’d like to bring Starsky back in from the cold, back to his side so they can both be warm once more.

“I’ve become that predictable, huh?”

“Heh. Like nobody knows how tight you and Starsky are.”

Hutch also smiles at Diaz’s use of present tense. It infers a great deal to Hutch, a great deal of positive sentiment.

“You talked with your pals in Narco lately?”

“Yeah. After visiting Simmons and hearing everything from him, I figured you’d be worried about Finlay going after Starsky. Spoke to McLaughlin and Liu soon as I could. They’re partners in Narco, been there for about three years. Chen’s real tight with Liu. And before you ask, I highly doubt either one is the mole Simmons’ birdie was talking about.”

“Good to know.”

“Seriously. McLaughlin and Liu like Starsky. According to them, Starsky actually gets along fine with most of the Narco guys. It’s just when D’Amato sticks around in his personal space too much that he blows up, and who the hell likes having somebody in their face all the time, right?”

Hutch lays back on the couch, slouching on the cushions and propping his right arm on the armrest.

“What is up with that?”

Diaz snorts and says, “Who knows. Maybe D’Amato’s jealous of the closeness you and Starsky had in your partnership. Damn big shoes he had to fill, considering you’re the guy who took down Gunther.”

Hutch scratches the top of his head, murmuring, “Not going to deny that.”

“By the way, Rivera finally came clean with me. I had a chat with him after I paid him a surprise visit and told him that I knew what’s really going on with him. I took a big risk, I know, but I got tired of pussyfooting around waiting for him to crack. It was worth it. He caved instantly and told me everything.”

Hutch sits upright again, his eyes wide with anticipation.

“What did he say?”

“Just like you suspected. The same goons in ski masks crashed his home and threatened to kill his whole family unless he quit pronto. They said they worked for The Fin, but based on what you and Simmons know now, that’s probably bullshit.”

“Yeah. Finlay’s thugs are foreign guys who speak Dutch but can understand English. Simmons said the goons who attacked him spoke English with an American accent.”

“That’s what Rivera said too. English only, American accent. And yeah, Simonetti and Dryden looked him up a while after the attack. Grilled him about his resignation and the goons, but he didn’t spill to them. He was scared shitless the goons were watching his house and would assume IA’s visit meant he’d talked.”

“Did the goons ever return?”

“Nope. He never saw or heard from them again. I’m thinking the intimidation crap was all they were paid to do. And ya know what’s interesting?”

“What?”

“Rivera said that Simonetti asked him way more about D’Amato than Starsky. Like maybe Simonetti’s actually gunning for D’Amato and not Starsky.”

Hutch shifts on the couch, folding his right leg beneath him.

“That is interesting. Could be IA’s got something on D’Amato that we don’t know about.”

“Could be.” Diaz takes another gulp of his beer. “McLaughlin and Liu, they don’t like D’Amato either. They kinda wish he was gone, but he’s been around a long time, and he’s quite chummy with Lisner.”

“Lisner?”

“Yeah. Captain Charles Lisner of Narco. He’s been the department’s head honcho for at least seven years. I think he and Dobey are pals.”

Hutch’s eyes narrow with suspicion. Captain Charles Lisner … an old-timer, and someone in a position of power, someone with abundant influence over Narco’s administration and employment of cops to its service. Someone with the authority to promptly green-light the transfer of a cop from Homicide into his department. 

What are the chances that Captain Lisner is the same captain Finlay was scheduled to meet that day?

“You know anything else about Lisner?”

“McLaughlin said that Starsky and Lisner get along really well, even better than D’Amato does. McLaughlin also said Simonetti was wheedling Lisner earlier this week, after Simmons got attacked. Trying to get Lisner to bring Starsky and D’Amato back in from their undercover mission. Did that for a day or two, and then Simonetti suddenly backed off on Starsky, like he’d lost interest.”

“So maybe it’s true that Simonetti’s actually gunning for D’Amato instead.”

“Maybe. It’s not like it‘s a secret he had a beef with you and Starsky, right?”

“Right.”

“Took McLaughlin and Liu just one day to find out why. They had to look up a few of their snitches for a case, and they were told that some big-ass thugs have been going around beating the living shit outta other snitches for the last couple of days. Their snitches were so scared, they had to pony up several Ben Franklins just to get the snitches to meet with them.”

“Big-ass thugs who happen to speak Dutch?”

“They didn’t ask about language. All they were told was that the thugs were big and bad, especially one guy. One snitch claimed he was over seven feet tall and just as wide.”

“Hans,” Hutch whispers to himself.

“What?”

“Nevermind. What else did they say?”

“The snitches? They said the beatings are happening because other snitches were spreading around misinformation about The Fin and are paying the price for it.”

“The misinformation being that Starsky’s a dirty Narco cop working for The Fin.”

“Yeah. Guess Finlay really doesn’t like people spreading lies about him.” Diaz clears his throat, then says, “Either that, or he’s doing it on your behalf.” When Hutch groans and covers his eyes at that, Diaz adds, “C’mon, you don’t think it’s a coincidence these beatings are happening after Finlay met you, do you? Starsky’s been in Narco for months now. Why would Finlay wait till now to wreak his revenge?”

“What does he gain from doing that for me?” Hutch asks, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his left hand.

“It’d please you to have Starsky’s name cleared, right?”

Hutch is silent for a few seconds before saying, “Yeah. It would.”

“I told you, do not take this psycho lightly. He wants to gain your favor, and it looks like he’s willing to do quite a lot for it.”

“And like I told Joey, Simmons and Babcock, like hell I’ll ever work for him.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” Diaz gulps down two more mouthfuls of his beer. “Hutch, as far as McLaughlin and Liu know, Lisner’s made the decision to pull Starsky and D’Amato out of their undercover job. Word is that they’ll be back at the Metro by tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, at latest.”

Hutch’s blue eyes flutter shut upon hearing that, in acute relief.

“Thanks, Diaz.”

“Isn’t it your day off tomorrow? I heard Dobey yelling through his office door for you to keep your ass outta the Metro for the next two days.”

“Heh, yeah. Doubt Dobey will mind me showing up to finish paperwork though.”

“Fucking paperwork,” Diaz mutters, and Hutch sniggers and says, “Yeah, fucking paperwork.”

A dense hush reigns in Hutch’s apartment after Hutch bids Diaz goodnight and puts down the receiver. He feels as buoyant as air, and even though it’s less than an hour till midnight, he feels wide awake. Geared up. Primed and all set to tackle the upcoming day, to finally talk face to face with the man who is his fiery sun, the man he loves and wants to be with for the rest of his life.

“Starsky,” he whispers, staring once more at the photograph of Starsky slumbering on his bed, sweet and beautiful.

Tomorrow, his ice age will reach its end at last. Tomorrow.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Translations

From Dutch:

Het is oke, Hans. Laat Detective Hutchinson spreken zijn geest.
- It's okay, Hans. Let Detective Hutchinson speak his mind.

Ik wil hem pijn doen, baas. Laat mij deed hem pijn.
- I want to hurt him, boss. Let me hurt him.

Nee. Niemand doet hem pijn. Begrijpen?
- No. No one hurts him. Understand?

Baas, je ontmoeting met de kapitein.
- Boss, your meeting with the captain.

Wij vertrekken.
- We leave/We are leaving.

From Irish Gaelic:

Beidh muid ag bualadh le chéile arís, Callahan.
- We will meet again, Callahan.

Líon ar sé.
- Count on it.

From Spanish:

Hey, ustedes dos! Dejar de luchar por la televisión! Usted debe estar durmiendo ya!
- Hey, you two! Stop fighting over the TV! You should be sleeping already!

Vete a dormir! AHORA!
- Go to sleep! NOW!

¿Qué pasa?
- What's up?

Humberto! Golpear a tu hermano en la cabeza para mí!
- Humberto! Hit your brother on the head for me!

Imelda, mi amor, dame un poco de cerveza de la nevera, ¿verdad?
- Imelda, my love, get me some beer from the fridge, will you?

mi amigo
- my friend