Echoes of the Past, Part Two

168

Unable to ignore the unanswered questions about his father’s murder, Starsky asks Hutch to accompany him to New York in hopes of learning the truth.

 

Artwork by Becky.

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Starsky sat on the sawhorse in the garage, watching his uncle tinkering with the engine in the ’65 Mustang that was his pride and joy. Starsky had learned all he knew about the functions–and malfunctions–of engines in this very place, under Al’s tutelage. The Mustang, however, was not to be entrusted to anyone but Al himself. Even his grown nephew was not considered skilled enough to tune this engine.

“You haven’t spent a day over here sittin’ around the garage since…well, I can’t remember how long.” Al wiped his hands on an old towel that was draped over the fender of the car. “What brought you over here today?”

“Sorry I haven’t been comin’ around very much. Guess I haven’t been over to spend the day since–”

“Since you got shot.” Al pinned him with an intent gaze. “What’s her name?”

“What?”

“The girl–the one you’ve been spendin’ all your weekends with.” Al chuckled.

“There’s no girl, Uncle Al. I just got outta the habit after the hospital, I guess. I was in rehab for a while and not getting around so good, and I sorta got used to spendin’ my days off with Hutch.”

“I suspected a leggy blonde, but that wasn’t the one I had in mind,” Al said, laughing a little as he walked over to the grimy old refrigerator he’d had in the garage as long as Starsky could remember. When he was a child, seeing Al head for the refrigerator had made his mouth water like Pavlov’s dog, because it always meant his uncle was going to break out the cold root beer, which was honestly his favorite part of working on cars on a hot summer day. “You want root beer or beer-beer?” Al asked.

“Root beer,” Starsky responded, smiling at the memory as much as the offer. His uncle opened two bottles of it and handed one to Starsky.

“Your aunt says I drink too much of the other stuff anyway.”

“Can I ask you something?” Starsky ventured, looking at the root beer bottle as he turned it in his hands a bit nervously.

“Anything you want. Won’t necessarily answer ya, but you can ask it.” Al sat on the other nearby sawhorse now and cast an eye over at a half-finished bookcase. “Got the sawhorses out to work on that for Rose. That was last month,” he added, snorting a little laugh. “I think she’s gonna take an axe to that car one’a these days.”

“What do you know about the investigation into Pop’s shooting?” Starsky looked up to have eye contact with Al, who frowned at the question.

“What makes you ask that now?”

“I’m a cop. Guess it’s my nature to wanna know what happened to my own father.”

“You’ve been a cop a lotta years, son. You never asked before–not since you were a kid.” Al’s tone was gentle, despite the evasiveness of his words.

“There are a lot of things I didn’t wanna think about connected with my father. I guess I felt like talking about him again was gonna dredge it all up.” Starsky took a drink of the root beer. “I gotta know, Al.”

“I don’t know as I can tell you a whole lot you don’t already know. We talked about how it happened when you were sixteen–remember when you asked me about it?”

“Yeah, I remember. You said he got out of his car to go into a bar downtown to question somebody, and this other car just drove by and somebody in it shot him. Nobody saw anything, no arrests were ever made.”

“There’s not much more to tell, Davey.”

“Where was he shot?”

“He took three slugs in the chest and stomach. I guess they opened fire on him–they weren’t very precise, fired lots of shots.” Al paused as Starsky shuddered. “I know…but you’re still alive, kid. That’s what counts.” Al reached over and squeezed Starsky’s shoulder. “Believe me, Rose and I thought a lot about your father’s shooting when you were shot.”

“I knew they opened fire on him. I didn’t know where the bullets hit.” Starsky took another drink. “Gives me chills.”

“Your mother got the call about three in the morning, I guess. She called us about three-fifteen.”

“There had to be an investigation back then. A cop doesn’t just get shot down in the street without one. Joe Durniak said it was ‘wiseguys’ who shot him. Now Durniak’s dead and I can’t ask him either.”

“Rachel said there were a lot of theories, but the cops couldn’t prove any of them. They questioned Durniak’s people pretty intensely but couldn’t make anything stick, and they questioned another one of the bosses they thought was more likely behind it than Durniak–Mike had busted one of his gambling and prostitution operations and apparently was putting some serious heat on bookie joints.”

“Who?”

“Name was Giacamo Cincinelli–Jackknife was his nickname. Guess he liked to cut up folks who crossed him. They figured he was on the verge of becoming a major player in the ‘family,’ but your father’s ongoing investigation into his dealings was jeopardizing that.”

“There wasn’t enough evidence then to nail Cincinelli himself?”

“When you were complaining a few years back about that jerk…oh, what was his name again? The one who had the hookers riding around in hearses?”

“Amboy?”

“Right, Amboy. It was like that. He’d bust a few of the guy’s cronies, but they were all paid well enough not to talk, and there was no hard evidence. Nothing that could link him back into the whole thing.”

“So what did this prince do for a day job?”

“Owned a luxury car dealership–which Mike thought was a money-laundering operation, since it was rare to see one of the overpriced heaps on the lot ever get sold.”

“The weapon and the car that were used in the shooting were never found or ID’d then?”

“Not that I ever heard about. Then I only heard the details through your mother, and she could only handle talking just so much about this before she’d break down.”

“She really loved him,” Starsky said, nodding solemnly, thinking back of Kay Jenkins.

“Look, Cincinelli’s an old man now–if he’s even still alive. Durniak’s dead. Your two prime suspects aren’t really a threat to anybody. What’re you gonna gain by goin’ out there and digging all this up again?”

“Maybe the truth.” Starsky stood up and walked over to the garage window. “I think there’s somethin’ more to this than what I know. Maybe than what you know. My instincts are telling me I gotta go to New York and find out.”

“What did Rachel have to say to that idea?” Al asked. Starsky turned back from the window to look at him.

“She doesn’t know. I haven’t talked to her about coming back there yet.”

“I know you’ve probably got lots of questions about your father, especially the way things happened before he died. I understand that. But this isn’t gonna bring about anything good, diggin’ into the past like this. You know it’ll hurt your mother.”

“It might make her sad, but it won’t hurt her. If Cincinelli’s really a harmless old man and no threat anymore, and Durniak’s dead, who could possibly be hurt by my asking some questions?”

“What’s really behind this, David? There’s something you’re not tellin’ me, and you’re not lookin’ me in the eye–you’re lookin’ at the floor. Same way you used to do when you were a little kid and you were tryin’ to get away with somethin’.”

“Never worked anyway,” Starsky said, snorting a little laugh at the memory.

“I used to tell you then, and I’m gonna tell you now–you don’t have to be afraid to tell me somethin’, even if it’s bad.”

“It was hard gettin’ used to that,” Starsky admitted, sitting on the sawhorse again. “Pop only got really…it only was really bad when he was drinking….”

“But when he was sober, he wasn’t against lettin’ you have it pretty good when you got in trouble.” Al sighed. “My dad was the same way–figured it was the best way to teach kids to mind. I think it’s the best way to teach ’em how to be sneaky. No kid wants a whippin’, so they’re gonna try to get out of it. You were a good little kid and you’d had more’n your share of havin’ to be afraid of grown-ups. Kid’s gotta feel safe sometime.”

“I guess I never thanked you and Aunt Rose–”

“Ah, forget about that. You gave more than you took, son,” Al said gruffly, getting up and patting Starsky on the shoulder as he went back to the car. “When’re you gonna upgrade from that red thing you’re drivin’ and get a grown-up car, huh?” Al needled and, despite the lingering warm feeling of what his uncle had just said, Starsky laughed. It was an old running joke between them.

“I figure maybe I oughtta get me a Chevette. Y’know, save on gas.” Starsky walked over and watched his uncle work on the engine for a moment.

“So what’s really behind the trip to New York?” At Starsky’s silence, Al looked up. “Hey, I may be gettin’ older but I’m not that senile yet. I didn’t forget I asked.”

“It feels like Ma knows something she isn’t telling me.” Starsky watched his uncle for a shocked reaction, but all he got was a confused expression.

“Like what?”

“There was this case–it involved a child abuse situation–and I talked to Ma about…about Pop and the past, and she just started cuttin’ me off about it, saying she had no choice or did the best she could. She was gettin’ upset, so I stopped talking about it.”

“Your mother went through hell with that situation, Davey. She did the best she could with it. She probably doesn’t wanna relive it all again.”

“Uncle Al?” Starsky felt his stomach tie into a knot, and he tried to cling to the words his uncle had always said when he was afraid to tell him something. We might get mad but we’ll still love you anyway. Still, the fear that sentiment wouldn’t hold for this particular revelation killed the words before they were spoken.

“Yeah?” Al finally looked up from his work.

“Uh…thanks, for fillin’ in some blanks. I gotta get goin’.”

“Hot date?”

“Yeah.” Starsky smiled. “I got a cute blond makin’ dinner for me tonight.”

 

 

When Starsky walked in the door of his apartment, the smell of homemade bread and something delicious in the oven almost took his breath away. The craftsman behind the olfactory delights was busily working on tossing a salad.

“I thought you were just cookin’ something simple,” Starsky said, breathing deeply, as if he could taste dinner just by sucking in enough of the scent.

“After spending half the day fixing your leaky showerhead, I was ready for something a little more creative.” Hutch looked over his shoulder now, still tossing the salad with the large utensils. There was a little evening sun giving the room a warm glow–and bringing to life the silky gold of Hutch’s hair. It still amazed Starsky how anyone could look so damn gorgeous in a white t-shirt and an old pair of cut-offs.

“Sorry I was gone so long. I got talkin’ with Al–”

“How’d it go?” Hutch asked, wiping his hands on a towel that lay on the counter. He turned to face Starsky, who had joined him in the kitchen now.

“He gave me some more details about the shooting,” Starsky said lifelessly, leaning back against the refrigerator. “I…I went chicken shit and didn’t tell him, okay?” he shot back, not sure why he was so defensive when Hutch had said nothing to provoke him.

“What changed your mind?”

“I just told ya.” Starsky stalked into the living room and sat against the back of the couch. “I started to say something and then all of a sudden…I couldn’t.”

“There’s no rush, buddy,” Hutch said gently, joining his partner on the couch back, sliding an arm around him. “It’ll be a lot for them to get used to.”

“I feel like a hypocrite. I want you to tell your folks and then I go see Al and can’t even get the words out.”

“When the time’s right, you’ll tell them. Right now, this thing with your father’s case is most important.” Hutch squeezed Starsky’s shoulders before going back into the kitchen and taking a casserole dish out of the oven. “Better wash up. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“I love you, y’big dumb blond,” Starsky said, moving up to slide his arms around Hutch from behind. Then he rested his head on Hutch’s back, his forehead brushing against soft hair that was still damp from a shower. “Love ya so much.”

“You’re just saying that because I made dinner,” Hutch teased, turning around to return the embrace. There was no rejoinder from Starsky. “Hey, I’m not mad about you not telling Al and Rose. It’s okay, buddy.”

“I’m gonna tell ’em.”

“I know you will.” They were quiet a few moments, just standing there together, holding on tightly. “I made cheese bread,” Hutch whispered against Starsky’s ear, and the other man snorted a laugh and moved away. “Let’s eat, and you can tell me what Al told you about the case.”

After washing up and changing into a blue tank shirt and white shorts, Starsky returned to the kitchen and sat down at the table that was spread with his favorite foods; the Paul Muni special took center stage, complemented by a loaf of the homemade cheese bread, the salad and a bottle of wine–good wine. Hutch lit a single candle in the middle of the table.

“You run outta candles, babe?” Starsky joked, noticing that one of the matching holders was still sitting, empty, on the kitchen counter.

“No.” Hutch went to work dishing up the food. “You get seconds if you can figure out the significance of the one candle.” Hutch finished procuring his own portions of the dishes and settled in to eat.

“It’s not some kind of anniversary or something, is it?”

“No.” Hutch was eating now, seemingly unruffled by Starsky’s struggle to figure out the riddle.

“I give up,” Starsky finally conceded.

“So easily?” Hutch smiled and had mercy on him then. “It’s symbolic. What used to be two, is now one,” Hutch said, taking Starsky’s hand in his. “I love you, too, in case I haven’t said it yet tonight.”

“That’s really beautiful.” Starsky felt his emotions surge toward the surface, and he used his free hand to pick up the wine glass and take a drink. “You’re spoilin’ me–the dinner and the wine…and the candle,” Starsky added, glancing at their tiny shared flame.

“I just got thinking today, while I was screwing the pipe together in the bathroom, that you d-deserve the candles and the good wine instead of the overhead light and a couple of cold ones.” The trace of Hutch’s stutter touched Starsky’s heart almost as much as the romantic words themselves. Hutch was not only courting him the way he felt a lover deserved to be courted, but he was nervous and a little flustered about it.

“Guess you wouldn’t think I was too sappy then if I told ya that your hair is all gold and magical in the candlelight,” Starsky said, freeing his hand from Hutch’s to lightly run his fingers into the soft hair, “or that sometimes you’re just so damn beautiful to look at that I can’t stop starin’ at ya.” Starsky smiled when Hutch ducked his head a little and smiled. He could practically recite a sonnet on Starsky’s charms when he was in the right romantic mood, but a little flattery directed his way always brought a vivid blush to the fair cheeks.

“The f-food’s gonna get cold,” Hutch said, clearing his throat.

“To one candle, babe,” Starsky said, holding up his wine glass. Hutch tapped his against it lightly. “Burnin’ bright and hot.” Starsky leaned over and Hutch met him halfway, their lips joining in a long kiss, sharing the flavor of the wine and each other.

Deciding the carefully prepared meal deserved their attention for a while, the two of them dived into the food, neither having eaten much else of substance all day. Starsky filled Hutch in on all the details Al had provided.

“Smart money would be on Cincinelli or one of his goons,” Hutch opined, cutting off another piece of the cheese bread for himself. “I got the impression that Durniak and your father had a sort of uneasy alliance.”

“Makes him sound like Iron Mike,” Starsky responded, sighing. “Maybe that’s exactly what it was like.”

“I don’t think Durniak was handing your father a string of busts so he could pad his arrest record and clean up the streets. I just think that guys like Cincinelli were probably a damn sight worse than Durniak, and your father knew that. Maybe one of the reasons he didn’t bust Durniak was because Durniak was the best defense against Cincinelli taking over.”

“Could be. It would make sense.” Starsky stared at his plate a moment. “I want to think that was why he didn’t bust Durniak…why Joey paid for the funeral.”

“Maybe he felt it was the least he could do for your father. After all, he was the one who lost the battle with Cincinelli. Durniak was still alive in the end.”

“He had a lot more years than my father did before it caught up to him.” Starsky took another drink of wine. “I just wish now I’d pressed Joey harder before he died…asked him to name those names. Now I got nobody to ask.”

“Like you said before, some of the guys who worked with your father must at least still be alive, even if they’re retired. We’ll do what we can.”

“Thanks.”

“For what?” Hutch paused, a little puzzled.

“For goin’ with me. And…and for not jumpin’ to conclusions.” Starsky looked up to meet Hutch’s eyes. “I know how some’a this looks. I always knew how it looked, and you never said anything about it. Never made me feel like you were thinkin’ there was anything wrong with it–even if you thought about it sometime, you…you never made a big thing out of it.”

“What would be the point of that? Making you pay for something your father may or may not have done? There’s no hard evidence he ever did anything wrong, and even if there were, it has nothing to do with you. It sure as hell wouldn’t change how I feel about you.”

“Even if we find out somethin’ really…awful?”

“Starsk, your father could be Al Capone and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. I know what you are.”

“I hope you didn’t make anything fancy for dessert.”

“No, just a pie–and I bought that.”

“Good, ’cause I really want to make love with you right now.” Starsky rose and held out a hand to his lover, who stood and took it. Then he paused, cocking his head slightly. “What kinda pie did you get?”

“Want to know which one to eat first, huh? Me or the pie?” Hutch joked.

“I’m gonna have both before the night’s over, but I still want to know what kind.” Starsky’s arms circled Hutch’s waist and pulled them close together.

“Banana cream–from Maggie’s Bakery over on Lexington.”

“Bring the pie,” Starsky said devilishly, releasing Hutch and heading for the bedroom.

Thinking this was one of the kinkier things he’d taken to bed in his life, Hutch took the pie out of the refrigerator with a bemused little smile and headed for the bedroom. When he got there, Starsky was lighting a single candle on the dresser.

“Get the light, will ya?” he asked, shaking away the flame from the match and then walking over to the clock radio on the nightstand to tune in some soft music.

“Uh, where do you want the pie?” Hutch asked, suddenly feeling absurd, standing there in a candlelit room, soft music playing, holding a pie box.

“You have no idea, Blondie–but for now, just put it on that nightstand,” Starsky said, indicating the one that didn’t hold the radio: the side that had officially become Hutch’s. After shifting a number of his own possessions out of the way, he set the pie box down and looked up at Starsky, who seemed very amused by the whole thing. “You’re movin’ yourself right in there, aren’t ya?”

“I probably should take some of this stuff out of here. I mean, if somebody came in and saw my stuff–”

“You leave it right where it is. Nobody wanders around in my bedroom anymore except you and me.”

“Better not.” Hutch crossed the room and reached for the hem of Starsky’s shirt, pulling upward.

“Hey!” Starsky batted his hand away. “I ain’t that kinda girl. You gotta at least dance with me first.”

“You already got dinner out of it. Next thing you’ll want is a movie.”

“Well, yeah, that’d be nice. They’re running ‘Deathwish’ over at the Rivoli.”

“Oh, good, something different–hoods and shooting. Nothing like escapist entertainment.”

“If you wanna go see some weird movie with the dialogue written out, that’s okay, too.”

“Subtitles, Starsk. They’re called ‘subtitles.’ And there are a lot of really excellent foreign films if you take the trouble to read a few reviews to find them.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever.” Starsky ignored the speech about the movies and pulled Hutch closer, swaying back and forth slowly to the music on the little radio.

Hutch found that having his lips so close to the flesh revealed by the low neck of the tank shirt was a little too much to resist. He planted a kiss on the curls of chest hair, then reached out for the same sweet spot with the tip of his tongue. A little groan came from low in Starsky’s throat, and Hutch took it as an invitation to continue his exploration of the partially-bared chest. Finally pulling the shirt over Starsky’s head and casting it aside, he kissed his way to a nipple, circling it with his tongue before sucking it hard into his mouth, the sensation bringing a little cry from Starsky as powerful fingers slid into Hutch’s hair to keep his head right where it was.

Letting his hand slide down to the front of the tight shorts, Hutch gently squeezed the mound there, feeling the straining hardness trapped behind the fabric.

“Bed,” Starsky whispered against Hutch’s ear. “Naked.”

“Thought you wanted me to dance with you first,” Hutch teased, moving up to claim Starsky’s mouth in a prolonged, deep kiss.

“That was before you raised the stakes,” Starsky said a little breathlessly, grinning ear to ear.

The two men quickly undressed, deciding they preferred the speed and ease of shedding their own clothing to the fumbling of undressing each other. Starsky was eager, and Hutch was still dying to know what role the pie was going to play in the night’s festivities. When the clothes were tossed aside, Starsky tugged back the bedspread in a gesture he’d become expert at since the start of their sexual relationship. Nobody could turn back a bed with the speed, efficiency and accuracy of Starsky when he was turned on.

They came together again in another kiss, and Starsky pulled them down until they fell on the cool sheets, lips still joined, hands roaming almost frantically over newly exposed flesh, as if they’d never made love before. Somehow, the first moment together, when they started making love, always had a sort of burning intensity that Hutch hoped it would never lose. When he finally pulled back to look at Starsky, lips parted, moist and slightly reddened from the passionate kissing, he doubted it ever would.

“You took care’a dinner. Let me serve dessert,” Starsky suggested, rolling them over so he was on top and they were in the middle of the bed. He reached over and rescued the pie box off the nightstand, bringing it awkwardly down to rest on the mattress. Flipping the top open with one hand, he distracted Hutch from the activity by kissing him, his tongue pushing past the soft barrier of lips into the hot wetness beyond.

Starsky broke the kiss, moved up to his knees, and drew a startling line of something cool down the center of Hutch’s chest. At the blond’s little gasp of surprise, Starsky just grinned, reaching back to the pie box for another dollop of the creamy filling, which he used to complete the path from Hutch’s heart to his groin. With great concentration, Starsky made a design, then sat back on his heels to survey his work.

“Figured I oughtta draw myself directions.” Starsky was reaching back in the pie box as Hutch raised up enough to see that a sloppy banana cream arrow had been drawn, pointing directly at his rapidly hardening cock. Before he had a chance to really think too much about Starsky’s art project, the cream-coated fingers were back, decorating his chest with paths of the sweet dessert leading from the center line to each nipple. “Don’t move!” Starsky bounded out of the bed, and Hutch gaped after him, then down at himself. In a heartbeat, Starsky was back, holding a spray can of whipped topping.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” Hutch asked, his voice rising a little.

“Quit fussing, beautiful.” Starsky kissed the little crease between Hutch’s brows. “Scowlin’ like that messes up your gorgeous face.” Starsky straddled his lover and began shaking the can of topping. “Besides, everywhere I put somethin’ edible,” he began, ostentatiously swirling a peak of whipped cream over Hutch’s left nipple, “I gotta lick clean.” He matched his handiwork on the right nipple. Then he leaned in close and whispered in Hutch’s ear, “And that means I wanna get this stuff in a lotta places, because I’m gonna have my mouth on every part of your gorgeous body before we’re done here tonight,” he concluded, nipping at the earlobe playfully.

Hutch felt his whole body flush at the words, and his cock surged to full attention. He resigned himself to being patient while the “artist” finished his work, squirming and moaning a little as he felt the cool whipped topping swirl under his navel, onto his thighs and finally, one torturous line down the top center of his rigid erection.

Starsky moved up now, looking every bit like a panther prowling stealthily toward its prey. He took Hutch’s mouth again, kissing him until it felt as if there were no breath left in his body. The warm lips traveled along his jaw to his throat, where the hungry mouth fastened and began to suck.

“Starsk–” Despite Hutch’s longing for the sucking to go on, to feel Starsky mark him, he knew the mark would be visible on his pale skin, and this was not weather for turtlenecks.

“Shhh,” Starsky raised up long enough to reply. Then he licked over the spot and went back to his devilish business, the defiance of it making it that much sexier.

Realizing his arms were not restrained and no one was preventing him from joining in the fun, Hutch reached up to slide his fingers into the dark curls, his other arm going around Starsky’s body, trying to pull him closer. Starsky abandoned the bright passion mark and trailed his tongue down to the beginning of the banana cream path. He paused and kissed the center of Hutch’s chest, lingering there a long moment before beginning to lick the sweet cream off the rapidly heating skin.

“I like it served hot, babe,” he muttered against Hutch’s chest, finally making it to the little valley of Hutch’s navel, where he’d pooled more of the whipped topping. “Like it when you’re so hot for me the cream’s dripping off your beautiful body faster than I can lick it.”

“What about…what about up here?” Hutch gasped, shamelessly impatient for that hot mouth to fasten on one, then the second, of his nipples until he’d be screaming in ecstasy from that titillation alone.

“I’m savin’ those for later. Like cherries on my sundae,” Starsky responded, before lowering his head again and darting his tongue into the whipped cream filling and covering Hutch’s navel. He nipped playfully at the tender skin below it, then followed the line of banana cream to the point of the arrow, moving outward to lick away the sides of it.

Slowly, with wet sucking motions of lips and tongue, he licked and sucked the whipped cream from Hutch’s left thigh, then his right, smiling when the long, sturdy legs parted, trying to encourage more stimulation.

“I know what you need, blue eyes. Patience.”

Starsky kissed along the inside of a thigh, encouraging Hutch to bring his knee up and rest his foot flat on the bed. Then he moved to its mate and did the same until he had Hutch on his back, knees up, thighs parted in invitation. Grabbing the can of whipped topping, he pushed at the underside of a thigh, and Hutch pulled his knees back, fully exposing himself, feeling the cool air on the secret places of his overheated body. Then there was the cool, silky, incomparable sensation of the whipped topping, moving languidly around his balls and down his perineum until it stopped right over his center.

“Starsk…God, babe, you’re killin’ me!” Hutch groaned, unable to resist thrusting upward, anything in hopes of satisfying the burning desire that had driven him to full hardness.

“You won’t go down that easy, partner. Hang on with me,” Starsky soothed, a smile in his voice.

The tongue was back again, licking away the cream, setting his skin on fire wherever it touched. All Hutch could see of his lover were the dark curls between his own spread legs.

“Oh, God….” Hutch gasped as the hot mouth worked his balls, first one, then the other, until he was convinced he would come just from the delightful torture. Apparently sensing his lover was near the edge, Starsky trailed the warm wetness of his tongue along the tender skin of Hutch’s perineum, and took his time lapping up the whipped cream near his center. The soft, wet tickling of the tongue tip was almost more than Hutch could stand. Just when he thought he would come from that stimulation alone, it was withdrawn, and Starsky was reaching back to the nightstand for the tube of K-Y.

“Hurry, Starsk…I’m not gonna last….”

“You’re doin’ fine, darlin’. Just beautiful. Relax.” Starsky took his time preparing his lover, stretching and coating him despite his pleas for immediate action. When he’d applied a fine sheen of gel to his own rigid cock, Starsky moved closer and slowly, steadily, buried himself to the hilt inside Hutch. He hung there suspended for long seconds while Hutch’s body adjusted to its large visitor, and then he began pumping slowly in and out.

“Oh, yeah…harder, babe….” Hutch groaned, arching up to meet the thrusts. When he thought the sensations couldn’t get any better, Starsky leaned forward and licked a nipple clean of the whipped cream, then pulled it into the tight, hot suction of his mouth.

Unable to determine which part of his body he wanted to feel most, Hutch gave himself over to the erotic overload, incoherent little gasps and moans of pleasure dragged from him with each new move. It felt as if Starsky were doing everything Hutch liked best, only doing it longer, and less intensely…dragging out the pleasure as long as possible. His nipples were hard and wet, his chest heaving, his body filled to capacity with the man he loved, and now, when he’d almost given up on ever reaching that explosive final moment–and could no longer decide if he ever wished to reach a conclusion to this flood of sensation–Starsky changed the angle of his strokes just a little, rubbing over Hutch’s prostate with every thrust.

Their cries mingled as they both came, climaxes almost simultaneous as their release left them sated, exhausted, and tangled in a sweaty mass of limbs…and whipped topping. Starsky carefully eased out of his lover, making the supreme effort to kiss his collarbone. The journey to Hutch’s mouth was apparently just too far to travel in his current stupor.

“Oh, God,” Starsky gasped, struggling to catch his breath, stroking a sweaty thigh. “Oh, babe, that was….”

“I think ‘unbelievable’ works,” Hutch agreed, still too drained to do more than lie there, thighs splayed open, Starsky lying boneless on top of him. He wrapped his long legs around Starsky and smiled at the low, contented groan that evoked.

“The pie was great,” Starsky said, smiling as Hutch laughed. “Here, try some.” Starsky maneuvered himself up on one elbow and offered the box with the mangled pie in it to Hutch, who dipped a couple fingers in to pull out a gob of the dessert. He held them up to Starsky, who chuckled and took the food into his own mouth, then moved up to kiss Hutch, sharing the sweetness with him.

“Yeah, great pie,” Hutch opined, grinning.

 

 

After wrapping up as much of the paperwork as possible on their most recent bust, the two detectives signed out and embarked on their week-long vacation, which Dobey had approved. While he didn’t know all the details surrounding the trip, he had been told that Starsky was going to New York to help his mother with a family emergency. Since it was a rare thing for Starsky to ask for any time off to deal with family matters, Dobey approved the request. Knowing that Hutch would be of little use to the department if he were denied permission to accompany Starsky on such a journey, he gave in and approved Hutch’s departure as well. By mid-day on a Tuesday, they were on a flight to New York.

 

 

Hutch tossed his suitcase on the bed and went to the window, pushing it open to dispel some of the staleness of the air. The hotel wasn’t a bad place–it was the typical run-of-the-mill lodging for those who could do better than a fleabag but didn’t travel first class. There were two queen-size beds in the double room, which gave them an extra place to toss luggage, as well as the “cover” of being platonic travel companions. Starsky had initially insisted they could stay in his mother’s guest room, but once Hutch had drawn him a picture of an indefinite sexless “dry spell,” not to mention Rachel Starsky’s potential discomfort at having them sleeping together in the next room, he had agreed to the hotel option fairly readily.

“Somebody gettin’ mugged down there?” Starsky teased as he closed the door behind them.

“Just checking out the view,” Hutch quipped, referring to the parking lot and nearby office building.

“Well, it ain’t the slopes at Tahoe, but we coulda done worse.” Starsky added his suitcase and travel bag to the items already deposited on the bed.

“When’re you going to call your mother?” Hutch asked.

“Soon.”

“Starsk, if we start nosing around, she’s going to hear about us being here from someone else, and then she’s really going to be upset.”

“She’s going to be upset anyway.” Starsky sat on the foot of the bed next to his suitcase. “She didn’t want to stir this up, even on the phone. When she finds I’m here…that I’m tryin’ to reopen the case…she’s not gonna like it.”

“After all these years, I would think she’d want to know the truth.” Hutch opened his suitcase and started unpacking.

“It might be dangerous.”

“Having second thoughts?” Hutch asked, pausing between the bed and the dresser, a stack of folded underwear in hand.

“Sure, but I still wanna do it. Hopefully, what Al said was right–that Cincinelli is an old man now, so he won’t be looking for blood if somebody does some poking around. I don’t worry for me, but I always worry about Ma, y’know, after I go home.”

“Understandable,” Hutch concurred, putting more of his things into one side of the dresser. “You said you had some people for us to talk to when we got here?”

“Mostly some guys Al remembered Pop talking about. And a few’a Joey’s old friends,” Starsky added.

“They’re not exactly unbiased sources of information, buddy. Think about it. All they’re going to do is point a finger at Cincinelli–tell you what you want to hear so you can wrap this up in a neat little bundle and their operation comes out smelling like a rose.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m hopin’ there are a couple retired cops who would help us out.” Starsky pulled out his notepad. “Gary Bridges worked as a temporary partner with my father for a few months before he was killed. The guy who worked with Pop after his first partner died a couple years ago. Then there’s this guy–”

“Starsk,” Hutch interrupted, leaning his butt against the dresser, “if you were advising a rookie detective who he should speak to first, what would you tell him?”

“She already told me to let it lie. She’s not gonna say a whole lot more about it now.” Starsky was up and pacing now, tossing the notepad on the bed.

“You were talking about her marriage and your father’s–” Hutch hesitated, looking for an acceptable word for such unacceptable behavior “–outbursts,” he finished. “You didn’t ask her about his murder.”

“Every time I brought it up with her before…she’d just cry.” Starsky paused, looking at Hutch. “She’d get upset and she’d go over again about gettin’ the call and then she’d start crying.”

“So you never pushed her.”

“She’s my mother! I can’t question her like some…perp off the streets!”

“I’d never suggest you do that! Damn it, you know that. I care very much about her. She’s your mother, first of all, and secondly, you love her–so why would I push you to play hardball with her? It was your idea to open this back up, buddy, and you’ve gotta face that there are a lot of people, possibly including your mother, and maybe even Nick, who aren’t going to be thrilled by that decision. If you’re going to let that stop you from talking to everyone we need to talk to in order to get to the bottom of this, then let’s pack our bags and get the next plane out because we’re wasting our time here.”

“It’s not that cut and dried, Hutch,” Starsky said tiredly, sitting back down on the foot of the bed. “Nothing about my family is…black and white. It’s all muddled up. You wouldn’t understand.” Starsky got up again and walked past Hutch to look out the window.

“I wouldn’t understand? What do you think I am, some sort of idealistic, naive–”

“No, I think you come from a family where everybody obeys the law and everybody’s got what they need and nobody has t’do somethin’ that might go against their grain just to survive. I think you didn’t go to bed at night wondering when the guys who blew your old man away on the sidewalk were gonna do the same thing to your mother and your kid brother. It’s dirty and it’s ugly and it’s sordid. And the Hutchinsons might be a lotta things, but those aren’t some of ’em.”

“Hey.” Hutch came up behind his lover, his hand gently stroking the dark curls. “I know things weren’t easy or perfect for your family. I know digging all this up again hurts. I do. I’m not judging you. I’m sorry if I was pushing. I just want to be sure you’re going to be able to handle going all the way with this if we do find something…difficult.”

“Since when’s anything ever been easy?” Starsky asked, one corner of his mouth tugging upward slightly in a sad grin. Something constricted around Hutch’s heart as he tried to think of anything that had ever been easy for his partner. Only one thing came to mind, and he rested his forehead against Starsky’s temple to share the thought with him.

“Falling in love with you was the easiest thing in the world–unless it’s staying in love with you, which ranks right up there with breathing. Are you worried about what you’re going to find out, or what I’m going to find out?” Hutch asked gently, getting no response from Starsky but the rhythmic blinking motions of the long, dark lashes as he stared out the window.

Then, barely audible, “Both.”

“Whatever you have to face, we’ll face together, and whatever I find out that I didn’t know before has no chance of changing how I feel about you. Besides what I feel for you, I know what kind of man you are. I know your heart and your soul, and there’s no dirty laundry from your past or your parents’ past that’s going to touch that.”

Starsky was motionless another moment before turning and pulling Hutch into a tight embrace. He didn’t say anything, just held Hutch close, burying his face in the curve of his lover’s neck and shoulder.

“I’ll call Ma,” Starsky said softly, pulling away, swallowing a little and heading for the phone on the nightstand.

 

 

Starsky parked the rented gray Buick in a parking spot near the entrance to the apartment building where his mother now lived. She’d sold the house where Starsky had lived the first nine years of his life several years earlier, deciding that it was more than she needed now that she was alone. Nick had drifted back and forth between living with his mother and living on his own, but seemed solidly on his own by the time Rachel Starsky sold the family home and moved into her present apartment.

Located in a quiet neighborhood with sidewalks and tree-lined streets, the rent was a bit higher than her widow’s income would manage, but her elder son had readily and happily offered to pick up the slack. Knowing his mother was in a safe, comfortable place was well worth the monthly check.

“She’s on the fourth floor, right?” Hutch asked, pressing the button for the elevator. The building was about fifty years old, very clean and neat, with six floors.

“Yeah, Apartment 410,” Starsky said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Maybe we oughtta wait ’til after dinner to talk about this.”

“She knows you didn’t just fly all the way here from California to take her to dinner. She’s gonna press you for the reason you’re here the minute we walk in that door.”

“I know.”

They waited as an elderly couple got off the elevator and walked past them, then stepped inside. The elderly man was guiding his somewhat frail wife with a hold on her hand and a steadying hand at her back.

“What?” Hutch probed, noticing Starsky’s fixation on the elderly pair as the doors shut, breaking his focus.

“Huh?”

“Did you know those people? I thought maybe you knew them from when you came out here to help your mother move.”

“No. I was just thinkin’. Must’ve spent a lotta years together, those two.” Starsky pushed the “4,” letting the silence hang a moment. “Nice to have somebody to love and get old with,” he said, smiling at Hutch. “Ma should’ve had that,” he added, his face turning more serious. “She should’ve had somebody to love her and treat her right and get old with her.”

“Some things just aren’t meant to be, I guess. Doesn’t make it fair.”

“I keep hopin’ she’ll meet some nice old guy and maybe get a few years, y’know, of having somebody around to take care of her.” The elevator doors opened and they stepped out, walking down the hall toward 410.

“She’s still a pretty lady, Starsk. It might happen yet.”

“Yeah, maybe. Guess now that I got somebody, I want everybody matched up and happy,” Starsky said, flashing a little grin at his partner, who returned it as they paused in front of the white painted door with the brass numbers on it. Starsky knocked just below them, to the left of the peephole. They heard movement, and then Starsky smiled and waved at the peephole. There was a little feminine laugh from the other side of the door before it was opened, and Rachel Starsky enveloped her son in a hug.

“Oh, David, look at you!” she exclaimed. “You look wonderful!”

“I wasn’t lookin’ so hot when you visited me in the hospital, Ma. I’ve been workin’ out, gettin’ my strength back. I had a good nurse.” He looked over at Hutch, who was hanging back a bit awkwardly. This was their first face-to-face encounter with Rachel since she’d been told the news of their relationship. In the past, she had always included Hutch in the warm flurry of hugs and greetings, but now both of them regarded each other for a moment, as if neither quite knew what to do next. Then Rachel broke the stalemate and moved toward Hutch to give him the same kind of greeting hug he always got.

“You took good care of my son. He looks good,” she said, stepping back, smiling.

“I did my best. I guess he’s passable,” Hutch responded, smiling as the group chuckled a little, some of the tension broken.

“Come in! I didn’t mean to keep you two out in the hall.” She stepped aside, letting them walk into the apartment before closing the door. “I have some coffee on if you’d like some,” she offered.

“We thought we could take you out for dinner, Ma, like we talked about on the phone.”

“Sit down,” she said, smiling and gesturing toward the grouping of furniture in the small living room. Decorated in shades of blue, the couch was a light floral print, and the two chairs were a solid cornflower.

Rachel sat on the couch while her guests occupied the two chairs. Even at sixty-four years old, she still had a lot of dark hair blended in with the silver, cut into a fashionable and carefully done style that almost tamed the same wild curls that required her son to spend significant time on his own hair. Her striking features were highlighted with a bit of makeup here and there, and she wore a casual navy blue dress. It was easy to see that she had been a real head-turner in her younger years, and still retained a real attractiveness about her as she aged.

“You said you were coming out to visit, but I didn’t know it’d be so soon.”

“Ma, I didn’t really tell you why we were comin’ out here when we talked on the phone….” Starsky paused, glancing at Hutch and then back at his mother. “I…we…we’re going to investigate Pop’s murder.”

“What?” Rachel’s entire posture stiffened and the color seemed to drain from her face.

“It wasn’t solved, Ma. I wanna know what happened. I need to know.”

“No, you don’t.” She stood up and started pacing, wringing her hands as she approached the living room window, which overlooked the tree-lined street below. “It was a lifetime ago, David. Your father is dead and going over all of it again won’t change that. Let him rest.”

“This isn’t about letting him rest or not. This is about an unsolved murder. It’s about all the unanswered questions and the fact the case isn’t solved.”

“He’s dead, David. We all know who killed him. Al told me that he’d told you about Cincinelli. About how your father died. What more do you need to know? And if you prove it now, and arrest an old man who’s probably ready to die anyway, what is it going to solve?”

“What are you afraid of, Ma? Is it Cincinelli?” Starsky got up and approached his mother where she stood. “Do you think he’s gonna try something, maybe hurt you or Nicky if we dredge this up?”

“Cincinelli is in a rest home in Albany,” Rachel stated flatly. “He doesn’t know his name, the day of the week, and he dribbles his food down his chin when they feed him. He had a massive stroke three years ago.”

“How do you know that?” Starsky asked, frowning.

“A friend of your father’s kept tabs on him.” She moved away from where Starsky stood and returned to her seat on the couch. “So there really isn’t anything to be gained by all this. Cincinelli isn’t running any crime empires from his wheelchair in Albany.”

“This isn’t about Cincinelli. It’s about Pop.”

“Why? Why now, after all these years?”

“Don’t you wanna know?”

“I already know,” she said, slumping back against the couch, shaking her head. “Let it go, David. Get on with your life. This part of it is over. I wanted it over for you when I sent you with Rose and Al. I wanted you to have something better. Not to spend your life eaten up with your father’s…obsessions about nailing Cincinelli. Or ending up working for him.”

“You know Cincinelli’s operations didn’t just disappear. They’re still there, and somebody’s givin’ out the orders now, even if the old man can’t do it.”

“Listen to yourself!” She gestured angrily, moving to the edge of her seat. “If I close my eyes, I can see your father standing in the living room in the old house, vowing he was going to bring them all down! God knows it was the only thing he had any feeling for anymore! Your father is dead. Cincinelli is close to it. I don’t care if he has a successor. You know why? Because if you bring that one down, another one will take over. David, your life is on the opposite side of the country. And this isn’t some backward little town! This is New York City–do you really think you need to come here to show this police department how to investigate the shooting of one of its own?”

“Yeah, I do, because if they were doin’ such a red hot job, Cincinelli would be drooling in a prison cell, not some fancy old folks’ home while Pop is six feet under!” Starsky shot back angrily.

“Things happen the way they happen for a reason. If it’s God’s will–”

“Three bullets in the gut isn’t God’s will, Ma! If I sat back and accepted God’s will–or Hutch did–I’d be dead, too. There ain’t no way I’m supposed to even be standin’ here, breathin’, let alone healthy!”

“And I suppose you think you got around God to make that happen? You think you would still be here if he wanted you to be dead? You were meant to live, and there isn’t a day that dawns that I don’t thank Him for that. Your father wasn’t. That’s what we have to accept in this life.”

“Cops can’t write off murder cases to God’s will and let it go,” Starsky responded, finally sitting back down in his chair again. “It’s the will’a some jerk with a gun or a knife or whatever who decides he’s gonna kill somebody. And that’s the jerk we wanna find and throw in the can for the rest’a his life.”

“There wouldn’t be anything I could say that would change your mind about this,” Rachel said calmly, folding her hands in her lap. “In that one way, you are exactly like your father. You get something in your sights and then there’s no talking to you until you do it your way. You know how I feel about this, David. Let’s not bring it up again.”

“Rachel, David’s not trying to hurt you by bringing this up again. He needs to know the truth, to lay it to rest in his own mind,” Hutch said carefully, not exactly sure how best to keep the peace between two obviously volatile Starskys. “His father’s shooting was frighteningly similar to his own.”

“You think I don’t know that? When I finally got you to tell me the truth about how bad it was, and where the bullets hit him, do you think I didn’t realize that it was almost an exact replay of his father’s murder?”

“If David had died, I….” Hutch took in a deep breath and struggled to form the words, surprised at how the horror of that thought had rendered him almost incapable of voicing the rest of it, “I would have never rested until the man who did it, paid for it. Maybe this is a way we can finish the one thing that was so important to your husband.”

“You solved that case, Ken. And you did it quickly and it didn’t destroy your life or your life with a wife and children.”

“But if the situation had been different, my feelings wouldn’t have been.”

“Your feelings for my son are a little different than my husband’s feelings for his partner.”

“We weren’t together this way when I went after Gunther. I was doing it for my partner.”

“Oh, Ken, you’re kidding yourself if you think that.” Rachel smiled. “I can’t say that this is what I wished for my son–I hoped for a wife, children for–”

“Ma, don’t–”

“Starsk, it’s okay, just let her finish,” Hutch interrupted, holding up a forestalling hand toward his partner.

“What I started to say was that I realize the depth of what’s between you two–I knew it when I visited you in the hospital, David. Because when Ken came to pick me up at the airport, I looked right past him. The man who came to get me was so tired, so…so much older than the handsome young man I’d just seen a couple years before…I knew something had almost destroyed him, and he wasn’t recovered yet. I didn’t even recognize him until he came up and spoke to me.” She looked at Hutch. “But looking at him now, I see that handsome young man again, and I know it’s because you lived and you’re all right. That kind of depth…it doesn’t just happen overnight. Can you honestly say you never had…different feelings for David before he was hurt?”

“No,” Hutch responded softly, the word barely audible as he shook his head slightly.

“My husband wasn’t in love with his partner. He was obsessed with winning a battle between the cops and the robbers. Good guys and bad guys. He destroyed his family fighting that battle. Ultimately, he brought on his own death. There’s no mystery to solve here, David. Your father destroyed himself. The man who shot him was only the…means of that destruction.”

“So you think he deserved to get gunned down in the street?” Starsky asked, his eyes widening.

“Of course not. But I am saying that he shouldn’t have been surprised by it. When the call came,” she paused, her voice breaking. “I had been expecting it.” She rose and walked toward the short hallway leading to the bedrooms. “Excuse me.” A moment later, her bedroom door closed behind her.

“Great. Just great.” Starsky was up and pacing. “I didn’t mean to say that to her. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with me.”

“Pounding your head against a brick wall is a little frustrating,” Hutch said, not moving out of his chair. “Let her have a few minutes to calm down. Then you can talk to her.”

“The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt her with all this. Damn it.” Starsky returned to his chair, and Hutch got up, sitting on the arm of it.

“We’ll wait until she’s had a few minutes, and then you go talk to her. Maybe we can still take her out for some dinner, smooth things over a little.” Hutch ran his hand up and down Starsky’s back as the other man was leaning forward, elbows on knees.

“Do you think I’m bein’ selfish? Diggin’ all this up?”

“I think you’re doing something you need to do. It’s mostly for yourself you need to do it, but I don’t know as that makes it selfish in a negative way. It’s not unreasonable for you to want to know the truth about what happened to your father.”

“Or am I just tryin’ to make it up to him because when he got shot…I was…relieved?” Starsky asked in a hushed voice.

“You were a little boy. You had reason to feel that way. God, you had reasons to be all mixed up. You loved and hated him at the same time, and that’s natural, given what happened. You had good memories, good times the family had, and then you had these…nightmares when he was drinking….”

“I should go talk to her.” Starsky stood up and looked back at his partner. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else, buddy.”

Starsky tapped on his mother’s bedroom door, then ventured to crack it just a bit, peering inside. She was sitting in an old green upholstered chair that had always been her favorite, but had been deemed a bit too ugly and a tad threadbare for her new living room. It occurred to Starsky that this was her favorite spot in her new apartment, as he noticed the little lamp table near the chair was laden with books and other odds and ends, her reading glasses perched atop a particularly well-worn paperback. She didn’t appear to be crying or inordinately distressed, but was instead sitting in the chair with an odd, faraway look on her face.

“Ma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…I’m sorry.” He shrugged a little helplessly, not sure what to apologize for–it had always made little sense to him to apologize for something he planned to continue doing.

“I know you mean well with all this, David. I’m not angry at you. I suppose it’s natural you’d reach a point in time where bringing this all back up again seemed vital. I thought it would happen sooner, really. When you were a teenager, maybe, and started asking Al all those questions.”

“He told you about that, huh?” Starsky came into the room and sat on the foot of the bed, across from his mother.

“He said you were curious about the circumstances, that you were asking some more ‘grown up’ questions. I guess his answers were enough back then.”

“This is something I need to do.”

“Why?” she asked, pinning him with an intent expression. Just like Ma–cut right to the chase.

“Maybe because everybody’s tellin’ me not to,” he responded, surprising himself. He’d wrestled with a lot of motivations for what he was doing, and while he could attribute it somewhat to guilt over not grieving properly at the time, or the fact he was a cop and it was an unsolved crime, this was what it all boiled down to in the end. Everyone was encouraging him to let it lie, especially his mother. Something about that had turned every cop instinct on full alert that there was something worth discovering–something everyone else knew that he didn’t.

“Seems like a weak reason to put us all through this.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Ma, if there’s something you’re not tellin’ me, please, level with me. I think I deserve to know the truth.”

“So that’s it? You think I’m holding out on you? Like one of your suspects?”

“No, Ma, I didn’t mean–”

“What did you mean, then? You know I love you, David, but I’m not going to sit here and be questioned like one of your…oh, what do you call them…” She looked annoyed and gestured in the air. “Perps,” she concluded, a flare of anger in her dark blue eyes. Starsky wasn’t sure what startled him more–her anger or the word “perp” coming from his mother.

“I wasn’t tryin’ to do that, Ma.”

“You were doin’ pretty well for not trying.” She shook her head. “I know you didn’t have the kind of childhood you should have had, and I’m sorry that things weren’t perfect, but I did the best I could for you, to get you out of all this. I wanted you out of it–so you’d have a good, happy, normal life. Now I just ask that you stay out of it. Let the past stay there. It was no good then and it’s no good now.”

“What don’t you want me to find out?” Starsky persisted.

“Do what you have to do, David. You will anyway. You’re as headstrong as your father. Nobody can change your mind.” She sighed. “Maybe you and Ken can come over for dinner some night before you leave. I don’t feel like going out tonight.”

“I was kinda hopin’ we’d spend some time together while I was here.”

“You won’t have time to spend with me if you’re working a case. Your father didn’t have time to spend with me when he was wrapped up in a case, and we lived together as man and wife. I don’t expect to see you until you’ve gotten what you came for. Maybe then you can let this rest and we can visit a little before you go.” She stood up, but Starsky didn’t move off the foot of the bed. He was immeasurably grateful for the gentle hand she laid on his hair. “I love you, honey, you know that. I just wish you’d listen to me about this.”

“Why?” He stood up then, looking down at his mother. At 5’5″, she was significantly shorter than him and had been since early in Starsky’s teens. Her height would never matter; she’d always seemed incredibly strong to her son.

“Because going back to that time isn’t going to make you happy. You’re happy now. You’ve got a good life. Enjoy it and let the past stay buried.”

“I really am happy with Hutch. Things are really good with us.”

“I know. I wish things were easier for you…safer. That Hutch was a pretty young wife who could give you children–”

“Ma, come on, neither one of us is anybody’s wife.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, smiling. “I just wanted all those good things for you. And for me, too. For my first born to have a first born.” She patted his cheek. “But he’s good to you, and I see how he loves you–”

“I love him, too.”

“I know you do. You’re doing everything the dangerous way, David. First you were almost killed, and now you’re with someone it’s dangerous for you to be with, and…I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I can take care’a myself, Ma. And what I can’t handle, Hutch takes care of.” He kissed his mother’s cheek. “You sure about dinner?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Leave me the number where you’re staying and I’ll call you to come over for something homemade in a day or two, all right?”

“Okay. I love you, Ma.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

 

 

“Think your mother was feeling better about things when we left?” Hutch asked, digging into the salad that was a prelude to the steak he’d ordered. Starsky, for his part, was pushing his salad around with his fork, his appetite a bit subdued. Hutch hoped to draw the other man out with a casual question, rather than asking him what was wrong and why he was forking his food to death instead of eating it.

“I guess. She’s gonna call us to come for dinner.”

“She seems a little more resigned to the idea of us being together,” Hutch said, trying to find the one positive out of their odd, strained visit to Starsky’s mother.

“I think she’s accepted it. She knows how much we love each other, so even if she’s not thrilled, she knows I wouldn’t be happy without ya,” Starsky concluded, grinning a little at his partner.

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow? Visiting Gary Bridges?”

“He’d know most about how far the cops got. I’m hopin’ to get some solid info from Joey’s old pals, though.”

“What makes you think they’ll cooperate? Didn’t Joey sell out most of ’em?”

“Some of ’em. Not all of ’em. I had Minnie run a computer check on these names and only two of ’em came up dead. So I got four guys to visit. Names I remembered from the old days, guys who were always with him–like his own little security force. Those guys he didn’t sell out.”

“Your mother’ll come around, buddy. I think it’s just hard for her, all of this being brought up again.”

“Yeah, I s’pose.”

“Are you worried that she already knows what you’re trying to find out, and she’s not telling?” Hutch probed carefully. Starsky froze in the motion of pushing his lettuce around with the fork. He nodded slightly, not looking up. “Starsk, she might just be worried about you dredging it up again.”

“Maybe.” Starsky pushed the salad aside and leaned back in the booth. “Or she’s coverin’ for somebody.”

“Who? Who would she cover for about this? Maybe we’re just both too suspicious to take things at face value anymore. Maybe she just doesn’t want to deal with it being brought up again.”

“I hope you’re right.”

After a dinner unenthusiastically eaten, the two men returned to their hotel room and turned on the television. They shared a quick shower, then stretched out on the bed that had been selected for sleeping. Figuring the time difference would catch up with them in the morning, Hutch didn’t bother to disturb Starsky when he nodded off in the middle of the movie they were watching. He was on his side, facing Hutch, dead to the world, one hand holding onto the sleeve of Hutch’s robe. Of all the tangled positions they’d slept in since becoming lovers, Hutch wasn’t sure why this one should touch him so deeply, but somehow, that hand holding onto his sleeve wrapped something warm around his heart. Much more interested now in watching Starsky than the movie, Hutch flipped off the television and settled as best he could on top of the bedspread. When his motion disturbed Starsky’s grip, the other man, undaunted even in sleep, moved closer and snuggled against Hutch, wrapping an arm around his waist.

What was Rachel Starsky working so hard to cover up? Was her husband a dirty cop as well as a child abuser and wife beater? Did she know more about his connections to Durniak and others like him than she wanted to admit? Did she know who killed him? If they were walking into a trap by stirring it up again, why wouldn’t she warn them? Keep Starsky from getting hurt, or worse….

Hutch was restless and felt inclined to toss and turn, but the body curled around his prevented that. He watched the shadows on the ceiling made by the moonlight coming through the curtains. His body thought it was only mid-evening, and he wasn’t all that tired. Starsky slept through movies that bored him, and the one they’d found to watch appeared to have worked better than a sedative. It seemed that he could, and sometimes did, sleep longer than he had before the shooting. Hutch tried to dismiss that thought. He was guilty of hovering too much over his recovered partner as it was. Still, there was no denying that Starsky had to work harder now than before to keep up the pace their work demanded. He wouldn’t settle for moving more slowly, or doing less–or taking a back seat to any of the younger guys out there on the streets. Little wonder the pace caught up with him by the end of the day.

Hutch nosed the curls near his face, and instead of concentrating on his sleeplessness, focused on the warm weight of the body against his, the healthy motion of Starsky’s breathing and the look of total peace on the beloved features. He treasured quiet moments like these, when the danger of the job and the prying eyes of a bigoted world were safely locked on the other side of the door. When Starsky slept, healthy, warm and whole, tucked securely in his arms. Maybe lying awake for a few hours wasn’t so bad after all.

 

 

Gary Bridges had retired to a small bungalow on a quiet street in Carroll Gardens. His home wasn’t far from Starsky’s old neighborhood, and Hutch anticipated a full tour of all Starsky’s childhood haunts–from the house he lived in to the movie theater where he’d spent many of his afternoons and, last but not least, the Italian restaurant over which Starsky’s grandmother lived when he was a kid. Even though he’d seen most of these places at least once when he’d visited New York several years earlier, by now Starsky would most likely figure he needed a refresher course.

Starsky approached the door just slightly ahead of his partner and knocked, then looked back at Hutch.

“Sure is a hot one out here,” he complained, tugging his shirt away from himself, billowing it a little. It was heading rapidly toward ninety degrees and it wasn’t even eleven in the morning yet. A moment later, the front door of the light blue house opened, and a stocky man of nearly seventy stood on the other side.

“You’ve gotta be Dave Starsky,” he said, smiling and pointing at Starsky.

“That’s me. This is my partner, Ken Hutchinson.”

“Come on in, guys. The air conditioner’s on the fritz, so let’s go out back. Got some good shade trees out there,” he suggested amiably, leading the two men through the oppressively stuffy house to a large back porch. “You want a beer or something? I got Pepsi if you’re callin’ this an official visit.”

“Pepsi’d be great,” Starsky admitted, and Hutch concurred.

“Have a seat.” He gestured at the four lawn chairs that were on the back porch. All of them were shaded by a giant maple tree that grew close to the house. Once they were seated, Gary returned to the porch and handed out the two bottles of soda, having brought a beer out for himself. What was left of his gray hair was closely cropped, and he looked as if he hadn’t troubled himself with shaving that morning. Dressed in an old blue golf shirt and gray shorts, he looked every bit the part of the relaxed retiree. “I’m not sure what more I can tell ya than y’already know from the reports.”

“The reports aren’t worth much as far as the who or the why. I knew where and how before I read ’em,” Starsky said, referring to the reports that he’d gone over that morning. In extending professional courtesy to visiting colleagues from out of state, the local police had been very accommodating in pulling all the old paperwork on the case. Even in its entirety, it was less than impressive.

“I think we all knew who, but just couldn’t prove it. Cincinelli–I’m sure you heard that name before.”

“That was the popular cop theory, too, huh?” Hutch clarified.

“Well, it made the most sense. We investigated Durniak, too, but we couldn’t find anything on him. Besides, he was better off with Mike right where he was.”

“Meaning what?” Starsky asked, frowning.

“Meaning Mike thought Durniak was a hell of a lot better, on his worst day, than Cincinelli.”

“So he gave him some breathing room?” Hutch asked.

“I guess you could call it that. Mike was a good cop; he knew when to push it–go by the book–and when to look the other way. Durniak was no saint. He had his leg breakers and his pimps and hookers and bookies. He made a few people disappear. But Cincinelli was before his time, really–more like the hoods today. He was bloodier, more violent, and more aggressive than Durniak ever thought of being. He was part of the ‘new breed.’ With Durniak, there were people who tried holding out on him for the pay-offs, and he’d play the game with ’em a while. Anybody held out on old Jackknife, they were smashed up good–or dead. He was arrogant and he had a big operation. He threw a lotta money around at his flunkies, so when we busted them, they kept quiet. He’d take good care of families when these guys were in the joint, and pay ’em off when they got out.”

“What this amounts to is that everybody knew it was Cincinelli and nobody could prove it?” Starsky took a drink, feeling as if he were learning nothing new from Bridges.

“The MO was pretty similar to a hit attributed to Cincinelli a couple months before that. A guy who ratted out one of his pimps was killed the same way, outside the same damn bar. He’d do shit like that–send guys out to do a hit, just drive right by and blast ’em. Coulda been broad daylight, or in the middle of the evenin’ when everybody was out movin’ around.”

“The best description I found on the car was a black Oldsmobile, four door. Not too specific.”

“It happened fast, and the people who were out on the street at the time knew enough to duck. They weren’t spending time lookin’ at the car.”

“Is Cincinelli really laid up in an old folks’ home now?” Starsky asked.

“When he had his stroke, some guys from the precinct took a trip up there to see for themselves. They came up with something to question him about and drove there just to see if he was really fried or if he was just playin’ a game. Near as they could tell, it was no game. I s’pose he could’a paid off all the doctors and the nursing home people, but that seems like we’re gettin’ a little too paranoid.”

“Anyone trace the ownership of the nursing home?” Hutch asked.

“You’re good,” Bridges said, chuckling. Starsky and Hutch exchanged smiles at his reaction. “Yeah, they did. It was owned by some big conglomerate with no discernible ties back to Cincinelli. Sure, they could’a missed somethin’, but I don’t think so.”

“Are you comfortable with the conclusion it was Cincinelli?” Starsky prodded.

“Me? Not totally.” Bridges leaned back in his chair and took another long draw on his beer. Thankfully, a breeze rustled the trees and graced them with a slight cooling. “Cincinelli was smooth. He was arrogant, and he’d do some hits that left people scratchin’ their heads how he got away with it, but he did ’em. But this…nobody thought Mike was close enough to busting Cincinelli to make it worth him risking wasting a cop. All he had were bits and pieces, and while he liked to get up in old Jackknife’s face, he didn’t have a damn thing to hang his hat on to bring him in, and that’s what surprised the hell out of me when Mike bought it.”

“Could it be that he bluffed a little too well when he leaned on Cincinelli?” Hutch asked.

“Sure, that could be. Sometimes people fake stuff so good it gets ’em killed. There was a lady murdered in Queens the other day for a twenty-dollar bracelet. The dumb shit who robbed her thought it was real. Turns out it was a fake job she got at one of the fancy department stores. So she’s dead, and he’s probably gonna do life over a twenty-dollar bracelet and a good bluff. So sure, he could’a said the wrong thing to Cincinelli. But nobody, including his partner, knew about any meetings between him and Jackknife anytime close to the murder.”

“The file doesn’t list any other suspects except Cincinelli and Durniak. We’ve been cops now about as long as my father had been when he was killed. If one of us turned up dead, there’d be a list as long as your arm that could be suspects.”

“I wasn’t in charge of the investigation, Dave. I don’t know who all they questioned and who they didn’t. It’s possible that not everything’s in the file, either. Lots of guys did legwork on that case, myself included. I know I questioned more than just Durniak’s boys. I talked to some of your father’s old arrests, things like that. Most of ’em either had alibis, were still in the joint, or frankly didn’t act like they were all that interested in the cop that busted ’em.”

“Then the file’s pretty incomplete,” Hutch said, glancing over at Starsky. “Who did you question?” He looked back at Bridges.

“That was a few years ago, son. I’m afraid I don’t remember a lot of names, but I do know there was more to the investigation than a couple sessions with Cincinelli and Durniak. My job was mainly to talk to Durniak’s goons. I thought that was sort of a washout because I didn’t think he was behind it, and all’a those guys were busy pointin’ fingers at Jackknife and his cohorts.”

“I guess we need to find out who was involved in that investigation and go knock on some doors,” Hutch said.

“Well, there was me, there was your father’s partner, who’s dead now, there was Tony Callahan…I think he’s still on the force, but he might’a retired by now. I think old Captain Logan even questioned a few folks, but he died ten or twelve years ago. If all you read were a few interviews with Cicinelli and Durniak, somebody’s been messin’ with that file.”

“Can you think of anything any of you found out back then that would prompt someone to want to ‘lose’ information out of the file?” Hutch leaned forward in his chair, elbows on knees.

“Nothin’ I got. I don’t remember there bein’ much of anything unexpected. We used to all go out for a few beers every week or two and talk about the case, and nobody ever found anything out that led anyplace. You gotta know it was a dead end for them to shut down the investigation into a cop’s murder.”

“What I’m more interested in is why somebody wanted to lose part’a the file,” Starsky responded, standing up and pacing as much as the small area would permit. “Any risk there was somebody on Cincinelli’s payroll who had access?”

“Sure. There’s always risk’a that. The guys workin’ the case…they were one hundred percent. Good men. I don’t believe any of them would’ve tampered with the files, or been on the take from Cincinelli. But all he’d need in his pocket is a records clerk.”

“Ironic. Somethin’ important as that, and some low-level paper-pusher could blow the whole thing,” Starsky said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You think Callahan is still on the job?”

“He was ten years younger than me, so he might be. I’ve been retired a long time, and I lost touch with a lotta the guys from work. A lot of my old pals are dead or retired now anyway.”

“Thanks, Gary.” Starsky held out his hand. The other man rose and shook it, then shook hands with Hutch as he stood also. “We’ve got some more diggin’ to do here, but we appreciate your time, and your information.”

“Not a problem. Mike was a good guy. He didn’t deserve that, and he deserved to have the bastard who did it thrown in the can for the rest’a his miserable life.”

“I’m gonna do my best to make that happen,” Starsky answered decisively. “And to find out who doesn’t want it to happen.”

“There it is,” Starsky said, parking at the curb in a small business district not far from Bridges’ house. Getting out of the car, he gestured grandly toward an Italian restaurant. It was little more than a storefront with red velvet curtains in the window and apartments above it.

“The restaurant your grandmother lived over, huh?” Hutch said, smiling as he joined Starsky on the sidewalk. Despite the fact he’d gotten annoyed with Starsky more than once for bringing that up every time they crossed the threshold of an Italian eatery, there was something about his partner’s genuine enthusiasm that he couldn’t find anything but endearing.

“Yeah. Her apartment was right up there, where those two windows are together?” Starsky pointed up at the building’s second floor. “I useta walk here from school all the time, and she’d give me money to go downstairs and get some garlic bread or pizza or somethin’.” Starsky smiled a little sadly, then looked away from the building and shook his head. “I was livin’ in Bay City when she died.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen. I didn’t see her much anymore–just when I visited Ma in the summertime. When she started getting sick, she moved in with Uncle Sol and gave up the apartment. She used to watch for me, right up there in that window,” Starsky said, pointing up at the windows again. “If I look up there long enough, it’s like I can see her, the way she used to part the curtain a little, and then she’d see me down on the street and wave….”

“You loved her a lot, huh?” Hutch asked, smiling affectionately at his partner.

“Sometimes it seemed like she was my best friend. Sometimes…it feels like I deserted her, too.”

“Starsk–”

“I know it wasn’t my fault. I just can’t help feeling that I ran away and never looked back.”

“So what if you did? It’s what your mother wanted for you. What was probably best for you. There was nothing back here that would have led to any kind of good life for you. Don’t you think your grandmother would have been the first one to want the best for you?”

“She did.”

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for how things were when you were a child. You didn’t have any real choices, and what happened to you when you were little affected the choices you could make when you were older.”

“I really miss her sometimes, y’know? Isn’t that dumb? I mean, she’s been dead over twenty years now. But lookin’ up in that window, it’s like she’s gonna look out any minute now and wave….” Starsky swallowed and then cleared his throat. “You wanna have lunch here?”

“Sure, if you want,” Hutch agreed, resting a hand in the middle of Starsky’s back. It was the closest thing to the hug he wanted to give him that he dared venture there on the sidewalk.

The restaurant was small, with no more than ten tables and a few booths. In spite of himself, Hutch had to admit that it did resemble the Italian restaurant where Starsky had been wounded and nearly lost his life. They seated themselves at one of the tables, and before long, an older woman approached the table with an order pad in hand.

“We have lasagna and fettuccini on lunch special today, and our House Special Sandwich is a dollar off,” she said, handing out menus.

“What’s a House Special Sandwich?” Starsky asked, the emphasis amusing Hutch as his partner’s rabid lust for anything big, cheesy and generally unhealthy came to the foreground yet again.

“It’s grilled Italian bread with meat sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions, green peppers and our homemade spicy ham.”

“I gotta have one’a those,” Starsky decided, handing her back the menu.

“Lasagna,” Hutch decided, turning in his menu as well.

“Drinks?”

“Vino de casa,” Starsky ordered, winking at Hutch.

“I’ll be back with the wine and homemade garlic bread in a moment.” She smiled and turned to head back for the kitchen, through a swinging door at the rear of the room.

“This look pretty much like it did when you used to come here?” Hutch looked around the small restaurant, unconsciously scanning the other tables and deciding the patrons looked harmless enough. After the shooting incident that late, rainy night in the Italian restaurant back home, he’d honestly never relaxed very well in similar establishments.

“Not much has changed. See that door over there?” Starsky pointed to a door on the left hand wall of the dining room. “That goes to the stairs to the apartments. I don’t know if they still use it, or if they just use the outside entrance now, but they used to leave it open for Grandma so she didn’t have to go outside to come downstairs. Wonder if the same folks still own this place?”

“Starsk, your father was shot outside a bar where he was going to question somebody, right?”

“Yeah, right,” Starsky responded, looking a little confused at where Hutch was going with this. They waited until the waitress had delivered the bottle of wine, two glasses and the basket of hot garlic bread.

“Well, if there are a lot of family-owned businesses in the area, maybe including the bar, some of the same people might own and operate those businesses today.”

“And maybe there’s a witness who was afraid to come forward before who might talk to us now?” Starsky added, nodding. Then he paused. “I don’t know, Hutch. That was an awful long time ago. Even if somebody did see something, how could we be sure they remembered it accurately after all these years?”

“We can’t be sure, but maybe they are. There are some things you just don’t forget, and seeing someone shot that way….” Hutch paused, not only realizing he was talking about Starsky’s father, but being haunted momentarily by the horrendous vision that lived in the back of his mind forever–the sight of Starsky himself being shot down in a way not unlike his father was.

“Hey, you okay?” Starsky looked up from the garlic bread he’d been about to eat. “Hutch?” The hand on Hutch’s arm jerked him back to reality.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He flashed Starsky a weak smile and accepted a piece of bread out of the basket his partner held out in his direction. “I didn’t mean to put it so bluntly,” he said, preferring to concentrate on this case rather than get either one of them off on the subject of Gunther again.

“Not like I haven’t heard all the details enough times, with readin’ the reports this morning and what Al told me. Sometimes it’s hard to make the two pictures come together, y’know? The guy who took Nicky and me to Coney Island, the one who taught me how to build snowmen and model ships–not that I was as good at it back when I was a kid, but Pop was.” Starsky smiled as Hutch poured him some wine, the gesture in perfect synch with his need for a swallow or two. “Since we’ve been going back over this, and seeing his picture in the files this morning–”

“You shouldn’t have had to see crime scene photos, babe,” Hutch said softly, still angry at himself for not finding a way to keep those away from his partner.

“I’m not talkin’ about those.” Starsky took a drink of the wine. “Though I could’a stood not to see those either. I was talkin’ about the couple of snapshots of him in there in uniform, and the one of him in plainclothes with his first partner? All of a sudden, it was like wham! and I was back in the past, waiting for him to come home, or doing something together. They were good memories, Hutch. Sometimes it’s so hard to remember those, but since we’ve been back here, I remember alla the things in the past that I made myself forget because when I remembered those,” Starsky shrugged slightly, “I always wound up remembering how it all ended.”

“I think conflicted emotions are pretty natural under the circumstances. You loved him, but you were angry with him–and afraid of him.”

“Yeah, I guess. Must look pretty screwed up, huh?”

“I think the job took its toll on your father, and let’s face it, some people don’t handle alcohol well. For some it makes them mellow, and for others, it makes ’em mean. We’ve busted enough violent drunks to know that. Your father was, I think, basically a good man who snapped under some pressures from the job and didn’t handle his booze too well, and back in those days people didn’t get help for things like that as readily as they do now. Child abuse and wife beating…people handled it like your mother did–kept it private family business.” Hutch paused. “All that having been said, if he were alive today, I wouldn’t be able to sit in the same room with him.” Hutch downed the rest of his glass of wine.

“I know how I’d feel in your place. I know how I do feel about somebody messin’ with my partner.”

“One House Special,” the waitress announced, setting Starsky’s plate in front of him, “and one lasagna. Anything else today, gentlemen?”

“You still have tiramisu here?” Starsky asked.

“Homemade,” she responded, smiling.

“Save us two pieces, huh?” Starsky asked, grinning.

“Sure thing. Good thing you asked, because we’re running a little low and we’ve got quite a few customers,” she said, heading back to the kitchen.

“You’re thinking about dessert?” Hutch stared at the enormous concoction on Starsky’s plate. On the long oval dinner plate, there was barely any plate showing around the edges of the giant sandwich that oozed over it in all directions.

“You can have some if you want,” Starsky noticed the scrutiny, carving off a big chunk to begin eating.

“I think I’ll stick to the lasagna, thanks,” Hutch said, deciding the gastric nightmare could be Starsky’s. There were a few things in life that didn’t have to be shared. “Let’s go check out some’a those businesses after lunch, huh?”

“Okay. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Speakin’a which,” Starsky waggled his eyebrows. “Any chances’a me gettin’ lucky tonight?”

“I’d say pretty good chances, if you behave yourself.” Hutch felt the warm flush in his cheeks, and he knew it wasn’t the wine.

 

 

After lunch, they drove to the street where Starsky used to live, the rental car moving slowly as he took in the sights of the neighborhood, commenting here and there on the changes since he’d lived there. It had been a working class neighborhood then and appeared to still be so now, though the houses were, by Starsky’s assessment, in a more dilapidated condition than they’d been in the old days.

The former Starsky homestead was a fairly common-looking, two-story gray house with black shutters and a large front porch encased in badly-worn screens.

“It wasn’t screened when we lived there,” Starsky said, pulling up in front of the house. “Ma liked to sit out there, and sometimes one’a the neighbor ladies would come over and they’d talk on the porch. Laura and I used to yell back and forth to each other–her house was right there,” Starsky pointed to the green house next door. “She’d stand out on her porch and I’d stand out on mine. Then I’d show off by jumpin’ over the railing and goin’ over to her yard instead’a goin’ down the steps. When she was real young, she thought that was cool. Just before she left, she started rolling her eyes at me–sort’a like a little lady.”

“You liked her pretty well, huh?” Hutch prodded, and Starsky chuckled.

“It was before the hormones kicked in full force, but yeah, I liked her.”

“You want to look around? Outside, I mean?” Hutch asked.

“Nah. Doesn’t look much different except it’s not as neat and the porch is screened. It’s weird, though, sitting here. I feel like…it’s like there’re…ghosts all around.”

“Maybe we ought to go have a look at the bar, huh?” Hutch suggested, referring to the spot where Starsky’s father had been shot. Starsky nodded silently, starting up the engine and heading toward the business district where his father had met such a violent and premature end.

Just a ten-minute drive from what had been his home, Michael Starsky had been gunned down in cold blood on the sidewalk in the middle of a busy Friday night in front of dozens of witnesses. Witnesses who had proven useless to the police in nailing his killer.

Many of the storefronts along this dreary stretch of sidewalk were either boarded up or displaying “For Lease” signs. Hutch wondered if anyone would ever sign leases and open businesses in those spaces again.

“That’s it, up there,” Starsky said, slowing the car and pulling up to the curb across the street and about half a block away from the bar. It was still in business, still called Rudy’s Tavern, and still seemed to attract a seedy crowd. A rather shabbily dressed man with long greasy hair, his hands shaking from the effects of either alcohol or drugs, grasped the door handle and entered as they sat there watching.

“You okay, partner?” Hutch asked gently, resting his hand on Starsky’s arm.

“Uncle Sol brought me here when I came out for the funeral. I wanted to know where it happened. I haven’t been back here since.” Starsky took in a deep breath. “It’s weird, him bein’ shot almost the same way as me.”

“You survived.” Hutch wasn’t sure who needed to hear that more–Starsky or himself. As his hand flexed on Starsky’s very warm, alive arm, he knew the answer. The thought of what he’d nearly lost was like a horrible specter that tip-toed along behind him, waiting to spring up and remind him of what being without Starsky would feel like.

“I guess he was almost to the door when this car came by, going really fast, and someone just…opened fire.”

“The reports in the file said people couldn’t seem to identify the weapon or the shooter, just that it was a black Oldsmobile.”

“And according to Gary Bridges, some stuff’s missing outta those files.”

“Are any of these other businesses the same?”

“The dry cleaners across the street–still Smalley’s. I doubt anybody was workin’ there at nine o’clock on a Friday night.” Starsky craned his neck in both directions. “Bixby Shoes. But again, stores around here didn’t stay open at night. It was the bar, and the movie theater over there, and there used to be a hotel over that vacant store front there, but I don’t think it’s used anymore.”

“We could check out the bar if you want.”

“Probably oughtta. Not much point in comin’ here if we’re not gonna do that.” Starsky cut the engine and got out of the car, and Hutch did, too, meeting him to cross the street together. They walked along the sidewalk until they approached the bar, where Starsky stopped dead in his tracks.

“Starsk?”

“Right here.” Starsky seemed to shudder a little, but he ignored that, doing his best to approach this investigation like a cop. “What’d the file say? The car was traveling south?” Starsky looked up the street in the appropriate direction.

“Yeah, southbound, fast, tires squealed somewhere back there as they accelerated.” Hutch gestured in the direction Starsky was looking.

“He must’ve died right here…. Report said he was dead at the scene,” Starsky swallowed, looking down at the cement beneath their feet, as if he expected to see some evidence of the crime still there. Then, suddenly, he looked up again, taking in the scenery across the street. “Best vantage points were Smalley’s, Bixby’s, and there was a bakery in there, too…damn, what was the name of that place? The Bread Basket! Oh, yeah, and there was this old lady who ran it, and then I think she left it to her son…this fat kid with pimples who made friends by takin’ ’em back to the bakery for fresh donuts after school….” Starsky was racking his brain, trying to put a name with the less-than-attractive mental image. “Freddy…Freddy…something…Freddy Newkirk! That was it.”

“The only way anybody would have been a witness in any of those places would be if they were there after hours. Freddy probably wouldn’t have been there at night, even if his mother or father were.”

“His father was dead. His mother ran the place herself, and I think her father helped out. Let’s go inside.” Starsky turned and opened the door, holding it for Hutch as they left the increasingly overcast afternoon daylight behind to enter the dim, smoky interior of the bar.

A couple of scruffy-looking patrons sat on bar stools, leaning heavily on the bar. An old television suspended in one corner behind the bar broadcast some inane game show, while the bartender, a portly man in his fifties, polished glasses.

“What can I do you for?” he asked, setting down the glass he was working on to greet his new customers. He reminded them of an older version of Rollie–dark curly hair, receding from his forehead, streaked with gray.

“Actually, we’re doin’ a little research,” Starsky said, sitting on one of the bar stools. Hutch took the one next to his.

“Research? What kinda research?” the man asked, obviously amused by the term.

“About twenty-five years ago, my father was shot and killed right outside your front door. This isn’t a police investigation–the cops closed the case a long time ago. But it’s unsolved, and I’d like to know what happened to him.”

“That’s a long time ago, pal. I was livin’ in Jersey back then.”

“Anybody still work here who used to work here then? Where’s Rudy?”

“Rudy? I don’t even know who the hell ‘Rudy’ is. I only worked here since last September. Karen’s in the back room. She might remember. She’s been here a long time.” He ambled to a door not far from the bar marked “Employees Only” and, opening it, hollered, “Hey, Karen, some folks out here wanna talk t’you!”

Shortly after he returned to the bar, a tall woman with blonde hair emerged from the door. She was at least fifty years old, her hair dyed an artificial yellow blonde, dressed in jeans and a blue denim shirt knotted at her waist, which she’d kept quite trim over the years. Her skin was lined, and she had a somewhat coarse appearance and demeanor.

“Yeah? Who’re you?” she asked in a whiskey-rough voice.

“My name’s Dave Starsky, this is my partner, Ken Hutchinson–”

“You’re cops then?” She kept her eyes on Starsky, and when he’d said his name, there was a brief moment of recognition in her eyes.

“In California, not here,” Hutch clarified. “We’re not here in an official capacity.”

“Then what’re you doin’ here? Sight-seein’? The Statue’a Liberty’s that way,” she pointed vaguely toward the exit and turned to go back through the door.

“Do you remember a shooting on the sidewalk in front of the bar about twenty-six years ago?” Starsky asked quickly. The woman froze in the doorway and turned to look back at him.

“What do you know about that?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “You’re a little young to be workin’ that case.”

“The man who was killed–Sergeant Michael Starsky–was my father. I want to know what happened to him–and why.”

“He used to come in here sometimes, lookin’ for information. Met with his snitches right over there in that booth,” she said, pointing to a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. “He was a good-lookin’ man. I remember that.” She chuckled a little. “You’re not too bad yourself, honey. Must run in the genes.”

“Like diarrhea,” Hutch mumbled. The bartender snorted an ugly laugh at that, and after pausing a moment, Karen laughed as well. Starsky’s own chortle was a bit more uncertain, but he relaxed when he realized that the remark had broken the ice with their potential informant.

“Do you remember anything about the night he was shot? Did the police question you back then?” Starsky asked.

“Oh, yeah, they kept everybody who was in the bar here ’til about three in the morning, askin’ questions and checkin’ for criminal records.”

“Who was working on the case? Any chance you remember the cops’ names?” Hutch asked.

“Not really,” she said, frowning. “That was a long time ago.”

“Where were you when the shooting started?”

“I was serving drinks at a table right over there,” she said, pointing to a table not far from the windows, which were fairly high in the wall and not all that large. At Karen’s height, she could have seen out to the street. “I heard lots of loud, popping noises. Somebody had the jukebox goin’, and we had a good crowd–it was a Friday night–so I wasn’t real sure what I was hearing. Anyhow, I knew it was comin’ from outside, so I went out and this car was zoomin’ down the street, tires smokin’, and…there he was.” She sighed. “I yelled inside for Rudy to call an ambulance, but as soon as I got up closer to him, I knew he was dead, or close to it. There was blood everywhere–oh, shit, I’m sorry,” she said, as if suddenly remembering she was talking to the victim’s son.

“That’s okay,” Starsky assured. “Just tell us what you remember.”

“Mike was a good guy. He was a big tipper and he always had somethin’ nice to say when he saw me. So I went over to him, and other people were comin’ outta the bar by then, and some folks from the movie theater were runnin’ down here…. I knelt down next to him, and…he was still alive, but barely.” She paused, looking down. “He died holdin’ onto my hand.”

“Did he say anything at all?” Starsky asked, leaning on the bar, eyeing her intently.

“Yes, but it didn’t make any sense. I don’t think he knew what was goin’ on anymore.”

“What did he say?”

“Something about ‘service.’ I don’t know if he meant he was on duty, or he was gonna say somethin’ about…about his funeral–I don’t know what he was tryin’ to say. But he died right after he said that.”

“Did you notice anything about the car?” Hutch interjected, hoping that maybe she remembered something more distinct than the make and color.

“It was a big black Olds. I told that to the cops.”

“Did you see a license number, anything at all distinguishing about the car?”

“There was a man dyin’ on the sidewalk, Mister! I wasn’t watchin’ the car!”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that if there was any little detail you might have remembered over the years, it might help us find out who did it.”

“That’s all I remember about the car.”

“What about any of the other people who were there that night? Do you have any idea how we could contact any of them?” Starsky asked.

“Rudy’s been dead about six years. I don’t know what happened to the other girls who were waitin’ tables. The rest’a the people were customers. We had some regulars but they aren’t regulars anymore, and I never did know most of ’em by more than a first name.”

“Who else was in here that night that my father might have wanted to talk to?”

“It was a busy Friday night. I don’t really remember who was in here. I just know there were lots of ’em.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Starsky. “Look, kid, I wish I could help you–your old man was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to get shot down like that. But I don’t know anything else but what I saw, and all’a that I told the cops.”

“You told them about him saying ‘service’?” Starsky clarified.

“He was babbling…dying. He didn’t know what he was talkin’ about. I probably didn’t say anything about that, now that I think about it. You think it could be important?”

“You’re probably right–he probably wasn’t too coherent by then. But it’s worth knowing,” Hutch said, nodding slightly.

“Thanks very much for your time, Karen,” Starsky said, standing up and extending his hand, which she shook with a smile.

“So, you a good cop out there in California?” she asked, smiling back.

“We do our best,” Starsky responded.

“Don’t let him fool you. He’s one of the best,” Hutch said sincerely, and Starsky smiled at him.

“He’s the other one,” Starsky said, holding his partner’s gaze a little longer than he probably should have before averting his eyes back to Karen. “We’re a pretty good team.”

“That’d make your father real proud, I’m sure. Can I buy you boys a beer?” she offered. “You said you weren’t on duty,” she reminded.

“I guess we did say that, didn’t we, Hutch?” Starsky looked back at Hutch, who just smiled and nodded.

“That we did. Beer’d be great.”

After spending a short visit with Karen and the Rollie-lookalike bartender, reminiscing about the past and talking about the current state of the bar and the surrounding business district, the two detectives returned to their car and headed for the hotel to take a break and figure out their game plan.

“What do you make of ‘service’?” Hutch asked, tossing his jacket on the bed and unsnapping his holster and laying it next to the jacket. Starsky mirrored the gesture, then picked up the room service menu.

“I don’t know. Could’a been anything.”

“Think your mother might know?”

“Askin’ her would be a last resort. She doesn’t need to hear a bunch’a gory details about how it happened.”

“How about you?” Hutch knelt on the bed behind where Starsky sat and started gently massaging the taut muscles of his shoulders and neck.

“What?” Starsky leaned into the touch, tossing the menu aside. “That’s so good, babe,” he breathed, relaxing under Hutch’s hands. He let his head fall back on Hutch’s shoulder and closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of letting his partner take care of him.

“You had to hear a lot of ‘gory details’ today. You holding up all right?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Starsky was silent a few moments, just soaking up the closeness and the feel of those strong fingers finding all his tight spots. “Hutch?”

“Yeah?”

“Was there a lot of blood all over–when I was shot?”

“There was some on the ground,” Hutch said, his voice sounding tight and strained, as if it were costing him his very life to keep it steady. “A-and on your shirt…and the jacket. I noticed the shirt most because I…I went to you and was checking for wounds….”

“Hey.” Starsky reached back and stroked Hutch’s cheek lightly. “I shouldn’t’a brought it up. I’m sorry, Blintz. Didn’t mean to bring it all back like that.” He smiled when a large hand covered his and held it there while Hutch kissed the palm.

“It never goes away. I just…have to think about life…our life, what we have…and try to put it back in its place.” Hutch paused. “It’s pretty natural you’d be curious about the details. There was some blood on the Torino, but not a lot. It was mostly on you and the ground right beneath you. I think Karen might be remembering your dad’s situation as bloodier than it was.”

“I think you’re right. To a civilian–hell, to anybody who doesn’t see gunshot victims all the time–it probably looked like blood ‘everywhere’.”

“You’re tight as a bowstring, babe,” Hutch said, the frown clear in his voice as he continued kneading the stiff muscles. “You hurting someplace?”

“No, just lots to think about, I guess.” Starsky picked up the menu again. “Better get our order in. Don’t wanna end up waiting through the whole dinner rush to get something.” Starsky took the phone Hutch handed him and dialed, ordering a couple of burgers for their dinner.

“Maybe I can think of something to distract you from all that thinking for a while,” Hutch said, taking the phone away from his partner and setting it aside.

“Give it your best shot, you big, sexy blond.” Starsky dropped his head back on Hutch’s shoulder, looking up at him with a big grin.

“We should start with this.” Hutch unbuttoned Starsky’s shirt and with a little cooperation from the man himself, tossed it aside. “And these are far too tight to allow for proper circulation,” Hutch said with great seriousness as he unbuckled Starsky’s belt and unsnapped his jeans. The zipper traveled down slowly, and Starsky’s butt raised immediately to facilitate the garment’s removal. He toed off his shoes and kicked the jeans off in a pile. Down to a pair of midnight blue briefs, Starsky turned around to face his fully-dressed partner.

“I’m not gonna be the only naked guest at this party, Blondie.” Eager fingers unbuttoned Hutch’s shirt, pushing the fabric off his shoulders as warm lips began kissing their way down his neck as he shook off the shirt and wrapped his newly-freed arms around his lover. Tipping them back on the bed, Hutch figured his own jeans would be easier to remove this way. Within moments, Starsky set to work on that very project, and before long, both men were stripped down to nothing but their underwear. “The sun comin’ in the window’s reflecting on your hair,” Starsky said, reaching up to tangle his fingers in the soft blond strands. “God, you’re so beautiful, Hutch.”

“You’re biased.” Hutch moved in for a long kiss, but when he pulled back, Starsky regarded him with serious eyes.

“You don’t believe me that you’re beautiful, do you?”

“Come on, Starsk,” Hutch ducked his head and kissed Starsky’s mouth firmly, hoping to dissuade him from their current discussion.

“I’m not too biased to see you’ve got hair like an angel and eyes that look like the sky on a perfect summer day,” Starsky persisted softly, moving in for another kiss. “Someday, I’m gonna figure out how I got so lucky.”

“Would you believe I’ve got a thing for Jewish cops with curly hair?” Hutch teased, nuzzling Starsky’s neck.

“So that’s why you wanted to sit next to me in our Academy classes!” Starsky retorted, his hands straying down beneath the waistband of Hutch’s shorts, squeezing the firm ass with both hands.

“Yeah, that’s me. I was just jockeying into position to get in your pants,” Hutch countered, sliding his own hands down inside Starsky’s briefs, kneading the flesh there.

“Always take you ten years to get in somebody’s pants?” Starsky needled, grinning.

“Some pants are worth waiting to get into,” Hutch said, his voice losing its joking tone. “Some lovers are worth waiting a lifetime for,” he added, moving forward and capturing Starsky’s mouth, tongue sliding into the wet heat, hands flexing on the pliant mounds of flesh beneath his fingers. Keeping their mouths joined, Hutch pushed at the fabric until it slid over Starsky’s hips and down to his thighs. Starsky’s hands were working hard to accomplish the same with Hutch’s boxer shorts, but couldn’t quite reach that far.

Hutch finally released Starsky’s mouth, having felt the chest beneath his heaving for breath. He trailed wet kisses down Starsky’s chest while he slid the briefs down and off, tossing them aside. In an equally swift move, he slipped out of his own underwear and then turned back to his naked lover. Starsky held his hands up toward Hutch, palms outward, and Hutch matched them, lacing their fingers. Starsky offered him just enough resistance to be playful as Hutch pushed his arms back down against the sheets, loving the chance to “wrestle” with Starsky for the first time since before the shooting. Now, he knew those arms held the strength to wrestle with him again, and if Starsky’s arms were pinned to the sheets, that’s precisely where he wanted them.

Distracted momentarily by the sight of his lover willingly being “subdued,” Hutch was startled by the legs that wrapped around his hips and pulled him down tightly on top of Starsky. There was a rumble of laughter in the belly under his.

“Gotcha, Blondie.”

“Guess I need to show you who’s in charge here,” Hutch retorted.

“Already know that. I am.”

“Don’t look now, Gordo, but I’m not the one pinned to the bed.”

“Real cocky, aren’t ya?” In a move that was too swift for Hutch to see coming, Starsky reversed their positions. It had been a combination of surging strength and Starsky’s usual speed, and now Hutch found himself looking up at Starsky. “Who was that you were saying was in charge around here?” he teased, grinning.

“Starsk…you flipped me over.” Hutch gaped at him.

“What’s wrong, babe? Did I hurt ya? I was just playin’–”

“Starsky–you flipped me over.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, I thought you were havin’ a good time. I–”

“Starsky!” Hutch grabbed him by the shoulders. “Are you in pain?”

“No–what’s this about? Are you?” Starsky stared at Hutch as if he were a madman, and at that moment he felt like one. Starsky had not only mock-wrestled with him, he’d effectively outmaneuvered him. He’d lovingly manhandled Hutch into reversing their positions. In that one gesture, Hutch realized the power and the strength that had been lacking for so long after the shooting were back in those sturdy arms. Starsky had wrestled with him and won; he was panting a little but not hurting. He was smiling. A little worriedly, albeit, given Hutch’s bizarre reactions, but he was smiling nonetheless.

“We haven’t rough-housed since…before….” Hutch let the sentence trail off, not sure how to even express to Starsky what he felt, or why he was so happy.

“I didn’t even think about it. We were playin’ around and I just…did it.”

“And you’re okay.”

“And I’m okay.” Starsky smiled wider then, nodding. “Maybe now you’re gonna believe I’m not made outta crystal anymore?” he chided gently, caressing Hutch’s cheek.

“I’m working on it, buddy.” He kissed the palm of the hand on his face. “So, you’re the big boss now.” Hutch wrapped a hand around Starsky’s erection, pumping it slowly. “Tell me what you want,” he goaded. Starsky groaned at the stimulation, rising up so he was squatting, straddling Hutch’s body.

“I want….” Starsky finally reached down to still the pumping hand, then used his other hand to stroke Hutch’s length, “this, inside’a me.”

“Stuff,” Hutch mumbled, starting to move up a little.

“Got it.” Starsky leaned over him, pulling the tube of K-Y out of the nightstand drawer. “Figured we might need it handier than the bathroom,” he said, grinning and blushing just a little. There was little Hutch loved more than that slight flush of color in his lover’s face. “Just lie there and relax, babe. I’ll do the work here.”

Starsky coated two of his own fingers with the gel and leaning on one arm, his body lower and closer to Hutch now, he began preparing himself. Eyes closed, face a mask of concentration mixed with pleasure, Starsky stretched and lubricated himself, making his body ready for Hutch. The sight was almost enough to make Hutch come right then and there, and he reached down and stroked his aching cock, savoring the thought of feeling it slide into that tight, slippery heat.

“Let me do that ,” Starsky said in a husky voice, gently pushing Hutch’s own hand away from the rigid shaft, using his own greased hand to stroke and coat it, the same hand that had been inside his own body seconds ago. Hutch shuddered at the thought, and Starsky smiled at the trembling in Hutch’s body and let go of the slippery erection, moving up for a long kiss, then whispered hotly against Hutch’s ear. “I’m gonna sit on your big, blond cock, babe. You just lie there and let it happen.”

Starsky moved up a bit, straddling Hutch’s body just above his groin. Then Starsky’s hand was guiding Hutch’s hardness to probe between the firm cheeks, and a moment later, Hutch felt the head slip past that tight ring of muscle. He drank in the sound of Starsky’s groan as he slowly lowered himself until the rounded buttocks brushed Hutch’s groin. Wordlessly, they reached out and clasped hands.

“Don’t touch me, babe. Wanna come just from you moving inside me,” Starsky breathed as he began to rock back and forth on the cock that impaled him.

Hutch watched the muscles in Starsky’s arms and shoulders tense and un-tense, watched his chest rise and fall in the speeding respiration of sex, the fine sheen of sweat springing to the surface. Starsky’s head was thrown back, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted as little moans escaped through them with his heavy breathing.

The tightness and motion was incredible, and Starsky was moving faster than Hutch would have felt he dared move if they’d had sex in one of their usual positions. Starsky was setting the pace and it was dizzying, and had Hutch not been unwilling to relinquish the incredible sight of Starsky pleasuring himself by moving so wantonly on his cock, he’d have closed his eyes to savor the sensations as ends in themselves.

Realizing he was doing little to add to the experience besides just lying there and enjoying it, Hutch began to thrust upward as Starsky thrust down toward him.

“Yeah, babe, that’s it,” Starsky gasped, and after a particularly firm thrust, he let out a cry. “Right there, again… Oh, God…” Hutch repeated the motion and couldn’t stifle his own shout of pleasure as it mingled with Starsky’s. Hutch’s hips were rising off the bed now with each thrust, and the grip of their hands on each other was almost painful in its intensity. A series of gasping, staccato cries signaled Starsky’s climax as he trembled and came, bathing Hutch’s chest and belly as Hutch let out a guttural shout, reaching his own pinnacle and tumbling over as he shot deep into Starsky’s body.

Starsky disentangled their fingers, smiling a little at the momentary difficulty in doing so, and leaned in for a somewhat sloppy, exhausted kiss, his hands bracing himself on either side of Hutch’s shoulders. He raised up enough for Hutch’s spent cock to slip free of his body, then stretched out along Hutch’s side, head on his shoulder. Hutch readily wrapped his arms around the warm, damp body.

“Love you, sweetheart,” he mumbled into the dark curls, and felt Starsky’s smile against his chest.

“Love you too, darlin’. Was incredible, wasn’t it?” he mumbled.

“Always is, but that was one of the best ever,” Hutch agreed, reaching up to stroke Starsky’s hair. They lolled there a few minutes, and just as Hutch was on the edge of dozing, his lover’s stomach growled ominously.

“I forgot all about room service.” Starsky raised up on one elbow.

“Oughtta be here by now,” Hutch frowned, rubbing a hand over his face and trying to dispel his delicious fatigue. Food was the last thing on his mind, but Starsky had apparently satisfied one appetite and was interested in taking care of the other now. As he crawled reluctantly off the bed, Starsky’s departure left Hutch feeling inexplicably lonely.

“Think it already was.” Starsky pulled on his robe, pointing to a slip of paper that had been pushed under the door. “Yep, this is the room service ticket all right,” he said, chortling. Opening the door, he found a tray sitting in the hall with two covered plates bearing their meals. He brought it inside and kicked the door shut behind him.

“You mean they were out in the hall while we were–”

“I don’t think I would’a knocked either.” Starsky was trying to suppress a laugh as he set the food on the desk. “C’mon, beautiful. Dinner time.” Starsky walked over to the bed and reached down to give Hutch a pull. “Here, put this on, or I’m gonna wind up eating something besides the hamburger.”

“That’s not exactly a threat, Starsk.” Hutch took the robe Starsky held out to him and slid into it.

“I’m gonna wash up.”

“Yeah, think I’ll join you.” After a quick hand washing, they sat at the desk to dig into the food. It was a bit on the tepid side by now, but once he began eating, Hutch realized how hungry he was. He looked at Starsky, watching his profile as he ate, watching the flick of the dark lashes as he blinked, watching the graceful fingers select french fries…. He’d watched Starsky eat a million times before, but somehow, right now, even that act seemed magical when performed by his partner. Resigning himself to the role of lovesick sap, Hutch went back to eating his own food. Before long, he found himself the object of similar scrutiny.

“You’re really somethin’ after sex, y’know?” Starsky reached over and smoothed what Hutch imagined was scary-looking, bed-rumpled hair. He caught Starsky’s hand and kissed it.

“You’re really somethin’ all the time.”

“All soft and rumpled up, and lookin’ at me like I’m the only thing in the whole world.”

“You are,” Hutch responded simply, and it was the deepest of truths. Everything else in his world paled in comparison to the man beside him.

“Maybe we can take a real trip together one’a these days. Someplace nice. For a happy reason.”

“Someplace we both like.”

“Guess that leaves out Dobey’s place up at good old Crystal Lake.”

“Pine Lake, Starsk. Crystal Lake is the place where all the kids get murdered in those ‘Friday the 13th’ movies.”

“Oh, that’s right. Pine Lake just has Satanists who sacrifice virgins.”

“We’re both safe then, so what’s your problem?” Hutch joked, leaning over to kiss Starsky, who willingly ignored the rest of his meal as one kiss turned into several.

 

 

“Starsk?” Hutch raised up on one elbow and took in the sight of the figure sitting hunched at the desk, pen moving furiously over a piece of the hotel stationery.

“Service.” Starsky sighed. “Service entrance. Service revolver. Funeral service….”

“Military service,” Hutch added, sitting up and stretching now, resigned to riding out this wave of insomnia with his partner. It was three in the morning. “Service station.”

“The shooter was in a car, and presumably stayed in the car, according to all the witnesses in the file. So ‘service entrance’ wouldn’t mean anything. If he wanted Karen to get his gun, he wouldn’t say ‘service revolver’–he’d say ‘gun’.”

“True. Not likely he’d have anything to say to her about his funeral service.”

“I was even tryin’ to think if he was saying something to her, being she was a waitress. Like a last joke?”

“I remember somebody else with a bullet in him talking about getting a waitress,” Hutch said, shaking his head. “From a Starsky, it wouldn’t surprise me.” Hutch got out of bed and picked up Starsky’s discarded robe, draping it around his partner’s shoulders.

“I’m okay, but thanks,” Starsky said, smiling up at his lover, who leaned in for a long kiss.

“Don’t want you to catch cold, Gordo.” Hutch grabbed his own robe and slipped into it. Then he pulled up a chair and sat close to Starsky, running his arm along the back of his partner’s chair.

“It’s a weird word, Hutch. I mean, if it’d been Ma’s name, or the shooter’s name, or the name’a the guy he was there to see, it would make sense. But service?”

“She could have misunderstood him. He probably didn’t enunciate very clearly, and she was overwrought at what was happening. Might not be ‘service’ at all.”

“Maybe if she’d said something back then, it would’ve made sense to somebody.”

“It obviously didn’t even make sense enough to her to mention it.” Hutch moved his arm from the back of the chair and ran his hand along Starsky’s back in a soothing motion. “What do you say we try to get some sleep and figure this out in the morning? We’ve got a lot of people to talk to.”

“This word’s drivin’ me crazy, Hutch. I mean, if you were dying, and you could get one word out, wouldn’t you make it count?”

“Of course, if I could think clearly enough to choose it, and speak clearly enough to express it.”

“What else does ‘service’ sound like?”

“Surface, surplus, circus…I’m sure there are more.”

“Probably.”

“You sure you don’t want to ask your mother?”

“Maybe later, but not now.”

“Why don’t we just follow up the other leads and just let this one…simmer for a while.”

“Okay. I guess you’re right.” Starsky slumped back in the chair. “Let’s get some shut-eye.”

Together they climbed back into bed, Starsky curling on his side and Hutch spooning up behind him. Starsky’s body remained taut, his breathing nowhere near the peacefulness of approaching sleep. Hutch pulled him closer and kissed his shoulder.

“Hey, we’ll figure this out. Relax.”

“I feel like my instincts are all on full alert and I don’t know why. There’s something about this, Hutch…it’s just eatin’ at me.”

“You’ve been uneasy since your mother told you to drop it. Do you think that’s it?”

“That was part of it, but there’s something here that’s not adding up. There’s stuff missin’ outta the files, there’s this word we can’t figure out, and even with all the witnesses there were, nobody saw anything really identifying about the shooter or his car.”

“If it was assumed to be a mob hit, a lot of people would develop serious eyesight problems when it came to stepping forward as witnesses.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Tomorrow’s a new day, babe. Close your eyes.” Hutch ran his hand gently along Starsky’s chest and stomach, rubbing lightly. “Come on, relax, buddy.” He kept up the motion of his hand, and figuring he knew a sure way to put Starsky under, he started to sing in a soft voice near a curl-covered ear. He watched the telltale movement of Starsky’s cheek, eye and ear that told him a smile was spreading across his lover’s face. Singing the theme from “Love Story” earned Hutch a squeeze to his hand and, before long, the desired sounds of even breathing.

 

 

Milt Sims lived in an upstairs apartment in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. The occupants of the lower unit were not to be seen as the two detectives climbed the outside stairway, but the caterwauling of at least two of their young children carried out the windows into the summer breeze. It was another scorcher of a day, the morning sun already beating somewhat mercilessly on the two men as they stood outside the door, waiting for a response to their knock. After a considerable wait, but just before Starsky knocked again, the door jerked open.

“Yeah?” The man on the other side was in his underwear–tank shirt and boxers–and what was left of his graying brown hair was bed-rumpled. It was slightly after ten o’clock.

“Milt Sims?” Starsky asked.

“Who wants t’know?”

“I knew Joe Durniak, and he mentioned you as a man he could always trust.” Starsky waited while that registered.

“Fat lot more than I can say for that son-of-a-bitch. I did time for his deal with the cops. I thought the old bastard was dead–shot down before he testified.” He snorted. “Now there’s an irony you gotta love.”

“He is dead. Look, over twenty-six years ago, my father was shot on the sidewalk in front of Rudy’s Tavern. Word has it Cincinelli’s muscle was behind it.”

“So why ask me? I never worked for Jackknife.”

“Could we step in a minute?” Hutch asked, feeling as if the sun were drilling a hole through the top of his head.

“I guess.” The man pushed the screen door open and stepped back while they entered. Then he followed them into what was a cramped, impossibly stuffy living room. “If you wanna siddown, shove that stuff on the floor,” he said, gesturing at a worn couch littered with newspapers. A couple swipes of their arms cleared seats for both men while Sims took the load off in a nearly threadbare recliner. He scratched his stomach and stared at his two visitors. “So whaddya want with me, anyway?”

“My father’s name was Michael Starsky. Sergeant Michael Starsky. He knew Joey pretty well.”

“I know who he was. One’a Joey’s cops.”

“What do you mean, ‘one of Joey’s cops’?” Hutch asked, noting his partner’s troubled expression.

“Joey had some of New York’s finest in his pocket for occasions when he might need somethin’ takin’ care of. Mike Starsky was the top one–highest ranking. Most of ’em were street cops who looked the other way. Starsky was the one who greased the wheels when Joey really got himself in a jam.”

“You’re saying my father was on Durniak’s payroll?” Starsky asked, leaning forward on the couch.

“I’m sayin’ your old man did Joey some favors, and Joey did a few for him. They both had it in for Jackknife, so if some’a his muscle took out your father, it wouldn’t surprise me none.”

“You never heard any stories about the shooting? Durniak never shared any theories with you?” Hutch asked.

“I know who he is,” Sims said, gesturing at Starsky, “but who the hell are you?” he asked Hutch. “You sure as hell ain’t his brother.”

“Ken Hutchinson; he’s my partner.”

“Partner.” The other man stared at him. “You’re cops?”

“In California, not here. This isn’t an official visit,” Hutch clarified.

“Look, all’s I know is one night, Joey gets this call while we’re sittin’ around Miss Angelique’s joint–”

“Miss Angelique?” Starsky asked, raising his eyebrows.

“She had a nice little whorehouse not too far from here,” Sims said. “Joey had a thing for her. She was a hot little number, I’ll tell ya. Blonde hair, big blue eyes, great set’a–”

“What about the phone call?” Starsky interjected, and the other man looked annoyed at the interruption.

“Like I said, we were all over there havin’ a few drinks and gettin’ a little action, and this call comes in. Joey takes the call and asks a coupl’a questions and then hangs up. He told us Mike Starsky’d bought it.”

“What questions did he ask?” Starsky persisted.

“I had a naked girl in one hand and a scotch in the other. I didn’t really give a damn about the phone call.” Sims paused a minute, looking troubled. “There was somethin’, though….” Then he looked up at Starsky. “Joey didn’t seem too surprised.”

“About the shooting?” Starsky asked.

“Yeah. He seemed to get on real good with Mike Starsky, so I was sort’a surprised he went back to what he was doin’ with Miss Angelique without much notice of the phone call. I always kinda wondered if they had some sort’a fallin’ out and Joey wanted him gone.”

“You think that’s likely?” Hutch prodded.

“Didn’t seem like it. They met just two days before that, and when I saw ’em together, they were laughin’ about somethin’. Seemed real friendly. Plus, Joey never said anything to us about not trusting Starsky or him bein’ a marked man.”

“How about after the shooting?” Starsky stood up and started pacing. “Did he say or do anything after the shooting that seemed odd?”

“Payin’ for the funeral. Pretty obvious that Starsky was in his pocket for him t’do that.”

“What did my father actually do for Joey? I mean, with ‘fixing things’ for him?”

“Not a whole lot. Mainly kept focus off Joey and on old Jackknife. Made it clear to new guys that he wanted Joey’s operations where they were instead of makin’ room for Cincinelli’s boys to take over.”

“Before he died, my father said one word: service.” Starsky stared at Sims as if he knew what the word meant, and as if it should have some significance to Sims as well. Surprisingly, Sims was the first to break their eye contact, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“So that’s what you came to me for, eh? Trackin’ down Surfus? I don’t want any part’a that.”

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder, Sims. If you know who did it, and you know where he is, and you don’t tell us, you could still end up in the joint over this,” Starsky bluffed, pushing for information on something he knew nothing about.

“He’s pretty old now–in his seventies at least. I don’t think he’s out makin’ hits anymore.”

“You know where he lives,” Hutch made the statement flatly and with certainty.

“That kinda squealin’ can get a man killed. Look at all the good talkin’ to the cops did Durniak.”

“We’re gonna find him, Sims, and when we do, there’s no tellin’ he’s not gonna figure you squealed on him anyway.”

“He’s someplace in New York–got a real fancy house, I hear. That’s all I know. I swear.”

“How do you know that?” Hutch pressed.

“Word’a mouth. Some old friend spotted him in a bar a couple years back. Said he looked like a pretty weak old man now. Nothin’ like he used to.”

“At the time of my father’s death, where was Surfus?”

“He was hangin’ around with Joey–doin’ some muscle work for him on some collections.”

“Surfus’ first name was…?” Hutch got out his notepad. “We only had his last name.”

“J.T. I don’t know what it stood for. That’s the truth.”

“Okay.” Hutch tucked the notepad back in his pocket. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Sims,” he said, rising. Starsky and he headed toward the door, the other man walking behind them.

“Your old man…he was a good guy. He did all right by Joey. He got my fat outta the fire a time or two. Can’t believe it was really Surfus…that Joey ordered the hit. I never would’a guessed.”

“Yeah, well, this case is turning up a lotta surprises,” Starsky said, opening the door.

“Hey, your old man was no hood, kid. He made plenty’a busts. But when you got a turf war goin’ on, even the cops gotta take sides. Joey ran a good operation. Cincinelli–he ruined neighborhoods, got little girls workin’ the street corners, beat up little old grannies who didn’t pay protection for keepin’ their candy stores open on Sunday. Your father, and Joey, and a few other folks, kept him outta power. He operated outta these parts, but he was never in charge, and he never got Joey’s turf.”

“Thanks again for your help. When we locate Surfus, we didn’t hear about him from you,” Starsky said, and the other man nodded.

“Thanks. Better watch your own ass. Surfus may be gettin’ old, but I’d bet he can still handle a piece pretty good.”

“We’ll be careful.” Hutch pulled the door shut behind them and then retreated down the outdoor staircase and headed for their car. Once Starsky was behind the wheel, he sat there a moment, then hit it angrily with the heel of his hand.

“Joey told me I wasn’t gonna like what he had to say.” Starsky was breathing a little heavily, looking as if he wanted to smash something into a million pieces but couldn’t find the appropriate object upon which to vent his building rage.

“There’s probably some truth to what Sims said. Durniak was no prince but Cincinelli was worse. And your father couldn’t fight Cincinelli alone. Durniak could fight him on a level the cops couldn’t. If they’d removed Durniak from power, it would have left the field wide open.”

“I was so self-righteous about Iron Mike. That’s a laugh. Shit. My own damn father might as well have been named “Iron Mike” Starsky. What he did with Durniak was no better than what Ferguson was doin’ with Matty Coyle.”

“That’s not entirely true, Starsk. Matt Coyle wasn’t a…plug that Ferguson was keeping in place to prevent a bigger problem from taking over. Durniak was a flawed part of the solution to a bigger problem.”

“So you’re condoning him turning his head and ‘greasing the wheels’ for Durniak’s operation?”

“No, but I’m questioning how much good it would have done to lean on Durniak, maybe even bust him and take down his operation, and have Cincinelli and his goons step in and take over. Now, I met Durniak, and while I’m not naive enough to think that he wasn’t a felon just because he was a likable guy, I’d wager he was better than the alternative.”

“So why would Durniak have my father killed? It doesn’t make sense. He was on Durniak’s side in a twisted sort’a way.”

“That was a nice little piece of footwork in there, getting Surfus’ name out of him.”

“I was gambling that my father wouldn’t’ve wasted his last word on something useless. It had to mean something to somebody.”

“I didn’t ask him for a spelling–”

“S-U-R-F-U-S.”

“You knew this guy?”

“I’ve heard the name before. And his brother owned a moving company, so we used to see the truck around all the time.”

“What now?”

“Find Surfus.”

“Maybe we ought to talk to someone at the department–Captain Lieberman, who let us see the files.”

“The cops lost stuff outta the files, Hutch.”

“That could have happened years ago, buddy. When Durniak was still running the show here. That stuff’s probably been gone out of those files for years…since the case was closed. But what we’re talking about now is building a murder case, and we’re out of our jurisdiction. We need help.”

“If we go to the cops….” Starsky sighed, then took in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “My father was buried a good cop. If we go through official channels, I have to finger him as a dirty cop. I don’t know if they’d even still give Ma her pension if they started diggin’ into this and got a bunch of evidence against him. That’s not even sayin’ what it would do to her…or to Nick.”

“If we don’t bring the cops into it, there’s no way we can nail Surfus. Is there any point in even trying to find this guy if we’re not gonna bust him? What’re we gonna do when we talk to him–why are we going to talk to him at all?”

“I wanna hear it from him who ordered the hit on my father. I wanna know who did that. I came out here to find out the truth and I wanna know who wanted him dead.”

“Durniak,” Hutch supplied, confused at why that was not a forgone conclusion.

“It doesn’t make sense! Matt Coyle didn’t want to shoot Ferguson, and as soon as Ferguson was outta the way, we came along and busted him. Killing my father just cleared a path to Joey’s door. The top cop who was on his side was gone.”

“Maybe he did something your father couldn’t condone, and maybe your father knew too much. Nothing stays the same, buddy. Maybe they had a falling out that Sims doesn’t know about.”

“Maybe Surfus’ll know.”

“Why would he tell us?”

“Maybe because he doesn’t want us to go to the cops? Spend his golden years in the joint for killin’ a cop?” Starsky shook his head. “I wanna nail whoever ordered the hit. For Surfus, somethin’ like this is all in a day’s work. He didn’t care if it was my father or his own father, for that matter. Surfus was hired to do a job and he did it. The jerk who hired him wanted my father dead, and he’s the one I wanna talk to.”

“Starsk, your mother wanted you to drop this, the cops have conveniently lost parts of the file…maybe there’s something here you really don’t want to know.”

“No there isn’t. There might be something I don’t like finding out, but I want to know. I’ve spent my whole life not knowing what happened to him. Things didn’t end well between us, there’s no getting around that. I can’t change what he was or what he did, but I can do this one thing for him.”

“You feel like you owe him that?” Hutch asked, trying to find it within himself to consider Mike Starsky worthy of any loyalty from the son he’d put in the hospital with a concussion and a broken arm. The arm and shoulder that act up when he bowls…oh, my God…..

“What?” Starsky was staring at him now, frowning. He obviously knew that Hutch had left him mentally. “You’re thinkin’ I don’t owe him a damn thing because’a what he did.”

“I was just remembering…you said your arm and shoulder bother you when you bowl.”

“It was a bad break,” Starsky said quietly. “Doesn’t bother me usually, unless I strain it a lot with somethin’ repetitive like bowling.”

“I’m trying hard not to hate your father. I’m trying not to feel that….” Hutch let the sentence hang there, unable to say the words to his partner.

“Not to feel that he got what he had coming?” Starsky finished for him. “It’s okay, Hutch. God knows a part’a me was relieved when he died–I’d been afraid for Ma and Nicky, afraid he was coming back to get me and make me go home, and then all of a sudden, I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.” Starsky looked out the windshield for a moment. “Y’know, it’s weird…the times he…hit me like that?” Hutch nodded, and Starsky continued. “I’m not gonna say it didn’t hurt, because it did, but it hurt more in here.” He rested a hand over his heart momentarily. “I just didn’t understand why everything changed, why he…why all of a sudden he didn’t love me anymore.” The last words were barely a whisper, and Hutch ached to move over and pull Starsky into his arms. Their public setting kept him from doing more than reaching over and taking his hand.

“I think he did still love you, Starsk. He was just a mean drunk.”

“Yeah, I know. And I know lookin’ back that he had to still love Ma and Nicky and me. He tried to be a good father…. Sometimes I wonder if Ma did right sending me away instead’a tryin’ to fix things. When I got out to California with Rose and Al, they were so good to me and it was so different–no drinking, no hitting…not even that much yelling. Made Pop look like the monster under the bed, sending me to the other side’a the country.”

“She didn’t want you to get hurt again.”

“I know she didn’t have any choices, really. There’s just…lots’a regrets.”

“It wasn’t your fault how things turned out, or how you felt. You were a child.”

“I never thought about what Pop felt like. I know how I’d feel if I had a son and somebody took him away from me. I’d kill ’em. It’d rip my guts out.”

“Maybe he loved you enough to let you go to a better life. He could’ve made an issue of it. He didn’t have to cooperate with your mother’s plan to send you to live with Rose and Al. He could have fought that, and if he’d pushed it, you’d have been packed up and shipped home to New York. Rose and Al had no claim to you, and your mother didn’t have the legal right to decide your fate by herself. He backed off, Starsk. He backed off because he knew, better than anybody else, that the kindest thing to do was to let you go, to let you be safe and happy. He loved you enough to let go. In his way, he loved you as much as your mother does.”

“I never thought about it that way before.”

“What he did to you, to your mother…there’s no excuse for it. I can’t forgive him for that–if you can, that’s good, and you should. It’s probably healthier. For me, I have this overpowering need to do something about it and there’s nothing I can do. So I’m not looking for some pretty excuse to get your father off the hook or make him look better in your eyes. But objectively, looking at the fact he backed off and let you go…he could have made a lot of trouble about that.”

“Uncle Sol kind of pushed him into backing off.”

“You just said yourself how you’d react to someone taking your son away. Do you think that a couple stern words from your uncle would have kept him from coming after you if he’d had a mind to?”

“Probably not. And he had the cops on his side. Hell, he had Durniak on his side, from the looks’a things. I doubt he’d’a had to do something for fear of making Uncle Sol mad. The only reason Sol had influence on him was because my dad respected him a lot. Losing his love or his respect would’a weighed heavy on Pop’s mind. Still, you’re probably right…it probably wouldn’t have been enough by itself unless, deep down, he agreed with what was happening.”

“Guess we should start looking up ‘Surfus’ in the phone book, huh?”

“I kinda doubt he’s listed, Hutch,” Starsky started up the engine, chuckling a little.

“He’s an old man now. The guy could be hiding in plain sight. Or not hiding at all. It’s probably been years since he made a hit. If he got away with it all this time, why go underground now?”

“His brother oughtta be easy to find anyway. He owned a business that for all anybody could tell, seemed to be legit.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent in a library amid directories and microfilm of old newspapers, searching for the right branch of the Surfus family. Lloyd, the brother who owned the moving company, died four years earlier. Their sister, Marie, lived in Syracuse with her husband, and the closest thing they could locate to J.T. Surfus, the man they sought, was one of Lloyd’s sons by the same name, who did, in fact, live in Brooklyn with his wife and elderly mother. It was nearly dinner time when they came upon the final information on the closest locatable Surfus, and Hutch suggested putting off the visit to their residence until the next day. It had been a long day of legwork and often fruitless searching through dusty old reference materials, and neither man was at his best anymore. Starsky, for his part, had been understandably moody and preoccupied since their meeting with Sims.

“You want to eat out or get room service?” Hutch asked as they headed back toward the hotel.

“There’s a restaurant across the street. Let’s eat there. Did you see what room service wants for a hamburger?”

“Pretty steep, that’s for sure.”

With hearty chicken dinners and all the trimmings laid out on the table in front of them, the two men settled in to eat, not having had more than a small snack since breakfast. Hutch did his best to make himself eat a good meal, despite the fact his partner was picking at his own food without much enthusiasm. If Starsky had polished off one piece of chicken it was one more than Hutch was sure he’d eaten.

“Food’s pretty good, buddy. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, but you’re going to be lookin’ around for food later–”

“I just feel too…keyed up to eat. Like I need to be out doing something instead’a sittin’ here. Dobey’s not gonna give us weeks to finish this.”

“We accomplished a lot today. We’ll accomplish more tomorrow. From the looks of things, the Surfus we’re looking for is the only one who was in that line of work. These people we’re going to visit aren’t criminals–at least there’s no evidence of that. Playing hardball with them at dinner hour isn’t going to get us far. Besides, we might be further ahead to follow the guy to his workplace and approach him outside rather than questioning him in front of his family.”

“Good point. He might be more likely to admit somethin’ about his good old uncle if his wife and mother aren’t listening in.”

“Come on, buddy. Eat something.” Hutch watched as Starsky picked up the fork, then put it back down again.

“I’m not hungry. Look, I’ll ask for a doggie bag. Then if I get hungry later, I can eat.”

“Okay.” Hutch gave up, going back to his own meal, which held little lure while his partner was sitting there stewing. Maybe dessert could lure Starsky into slightly better spirits.

“Ma hasn’t called about dinner yet.”

“It’s only been–”

“This is the third night we’ve been in town, Hutch. The first night she didn’t wanna go, then there was last night and now tonight.”

“Maybe she left a message at the desk for us.”

“You called to check for messages while we were at the library. Nothin’.”

“She’s probably just giving us time to do what we came here to do. Besides, she doesn’t agree with you doing it, so there’s not much point in us all getting together and bickering over dinner.” Hutch paused, seeing that Starsky wasn’t placated by that logic. “We can call her when we get back to the room.”

“What’s the point?”

“If it’d make you feel better to talk to her–”

“And tell her what? ‘Guess what I found out today, Ma–Pop was a dirty cop in Joey Durniak’s pocket.’ She’ll love that.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be that big of a shock to her, Starsk.” Hutch was greeted with silence, and when he looked up, saw two intent eyes boring into him. “Your mother’s a very smart lady, partner. She’s been fighting you awfully hard about this. She might already know a lot of what we’ve found out.”

“She wouldn’t go along with something like that.”

“What choice would she have? She couldn’t tell your father what to do about his professional life anymore than she could–” Hutch stopped himself and took a deep breath, wanting to choose the next words carefully. “Anymore than she could help what was happening at home,” he said, more gently. “She did the best she could all the way around, buddy. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know the score about your father’s connections to Durniak.”

“Guess I’m the only one who didn’t know, then, huh?”

“Nick probably doesn’t know. Rose and Al…who knows what they know? Maybe your mother doesn’t know anything about it. I just think you should be prepared in case she does.”

“I’m gonna take a walk–maybe go across the street to the room. Go ahead and finish up, okay? You can bring the car when you come.” Starsky put the keys on the table, then pulled out some money.

“Yeah, okay,” Hutch responded. “I can get this one,” he said, and Starsky shrugged and stuffed the bills back in his pocket.

Hutch watched his partner walk out of the restaurant, the usual stride replaced by a sort of slump-shouldered, slow gait. Inwardly kicking himself for suggesting that Starsky’s mother knew the score all along because of what it seemed to be doing to his partner, Hutch still held that suspicion, and still had to admit to himself that getting hit with it now was probably better for Starsky than getting blindsided with it when he finally did talk all this over with Rachel.

Starsky obviously wanted a little time alone, so despite the fact his food held no lure, Hutch poked at it and made an effort to drag out sipping the beer he’d ordered. He finally did succumb to ordering dessert, and ordered a piece of banana cream pie to go for his partner. He hoped the sexy little joke would lighten Starsky’s spirits just a bit.

The blueberry cobbler was good, and so was the cup of coffee he’d nursed along for a good half hour. Figuring Starsky had probably had all the solitude he needed before getting worried about Hutch’s whereabouts, Hutch paid the bill and headed out toward the car, carrying the Styrofoam container bearing Starsky’s pie. He noticed the light was out in the section of the lot where they’d parked, and debated going back inside to tell the owner. Tired and ready to call it a day, he figured he could do his civic duty by phone once he got back to the hotel. He squinted in the shadows to place the key in the lock and barely had time to make the contact before he was shoved up against the car from behind, hard, his free arm twisted behind his back. An assailant’s powerful arm held his shoulders down against the car windows.

“We got a message for your partner,” a deep voice growled close to his ear. The breath-mingled booze and cigarette smoke. The grip was like solid steel. “It’s time to go home.”

 

 

Starsky came out of the shower and poked his head out of the bathroom, frowning when he found himself still alone. He’d fully expected to see Hutch back by now, and felt not the first stab of guilt at walking out on him that way at the restaurant. Still, he’d needed a few minutes to think, to clear his head–to cope with everything he’d learned about his father, and to come to grips with the thought that maybe his mother had known the truth all along. Once he had toweled off and his hair was dry, he slipped on his robe and wandered out of the steamy bathroom, checking the clock.

“Damn it, Hutch, I didn’t need this long.” Concerned, he went to where he’d discarded his clothes on the bed and was about to get dressed again and go across the street looking for his partner when there was a knock at the door. He opened it and saw Hutch, disheveled and bloody, holding a wad of tissues under his nose, supported on one side by a stout middle-aged woman.

“It looks worse than it is,” Hutch hastened to say before Starsky could open his mouth. His voice had a slight nasal quality from the pressure of the tissues on his nose. “This nice lady drove the car across the street for me. Maybe you can walk her back over to hers.”

“What happened?” Starsky reached out for his partner, taking over the task of leading him to the one overstuffed chair in the room.

“I was going out to my car and I saw some stuff spilled on the ground,” the woman interjected. “One of those white take-out boxes. Then I saw him lying there by his car. He was just coming to, and he said he wanted to come here instead of the hospital.” She ran a hand back through her curly blonde hair. “I thought he should see a doctor.”

“Thanks for bringing him here–”

“You don’t have to walk me to my car. My son works downstairs at the hotel here, in maintenance. I’ll just go visit him and he’ll walk me back there on his break.”

“You sure?” Starsky asked, one worried eye on his partner.

“I’m sure. But I still think he ought to go to the emergency room.”

“Yeah, maybe. Thanks very much for helping him. A lotta people would’ve been afraid to get involved.”

“People have to help each other out. Besides, he showed me his police ID before I got in the car with him.”

“Anyway, thanks. We appreciate it,” Starsky said, waving her off and closing the door behind her. “Hutch? What happened, babe? Let me take a look at you.” Starsky was on his knees then, in front of the chair, coaxing Hutch’s head up enough so he could see the damage, pushing the matted blond hair out of Hutch’s eyes, one of which sported a good-sized shiner. “You hurt anyplace else?”

“Just a couple gut punches. I’ll be okay.”

“Level with me, Hutch. How bad is it?”

“It hurts but I’ve had worse. I’m okay. I don’t need the hospital.”

“Okay.” Starsky rose from his crouch and grabbing his room key and money for the ice machine, raced down the hall and bought a bag of ice. When he returned to the room, Hutch was still slumped in the chair. “I’m gonna get some ice on your eye, buddy.” He went into the bathroom and prepared a makeshift ice pack and gathered up a couple other items to clean up his partner.

“I’m supposed to give you a message.”

Hutch’s words froze Starsky in his tracks, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a washcloth full of ice cubes in one hand, a wet cloth in the other and a towel over his arm. Hutch hadn’t called the cops, hadn’t even suggested they go after the perps themselves–he’d just taken the first help he could get to crawl back to the safety of the hotel room. It was my idea we go this alone. No cops, no back-up, just you and me against the world…only it’s you they beat up….

“Who was it?” Starsky barely recognized the cold, deadly quality in his own voice. He crouched by Hutch and put the makeshift ice pack in his hand, making sure it was pressed to the bruised face. Whoever had done this was going to pay, one way or the other.

“Just a couple of hired thugs, probably. All they said was to tell you it was time to go home. They seemed like professional muscle because I couldn’t even get a lick in before I ended up on the ground.”

“Did you get a look at ’em?”

“Not very clearly. One was a big, bulky type. I know he had dark hair, and he smelled of cigarettes and booze and some kind of bug spray they probably sell as cologne in some cheap drug store. There was another one, and all I saw of him were a pair of two-tone gray oxford shoes.”

“Let me take a look at this nose, huh?” Starsky eased the stained wad of tissue away from it. “Looks like it stopped bleeding.” He carefully washed the blood off Hutch’s upper lip and cheek where it had smeared. “Sons’a bitches,” Starsky muttered angrily. “They should’a come after me. I was out there by myself. They had their chance.”

“That’s not how the mob usually does it, is it? They start in on family.”

“Ma.” Starsky fled to the telephone and dialed his mother’s number with faltering fingers. His heart was thundering in his ears as the phone rang several times before it was finally answered. Then, he heard Nick’s voice on the other end of the phone. “Where’s Ma?” he demanded.

“Good to talk to you too, big brother. Ma said you were in town. What, you don’t got a phone in that hotel? Not gonna call your little brother?”

“Nick, damn it, I wanna talk to Ma.”

“Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.” There was some sound of movement, then Nick yelling to their mother. A moment later, Rachel Starsky’s voice came over the line.

“David, what is it?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, honey. Nick and I just got back in from dinner at Aunt Sophie’s. What’s wrong?”

“Can Nick stay with you?”

“Stay with…? David, what is this all about?”

“We’re gettin’ some important leads in the case, Ma. I guess they were better leads than we thought. Some guys beat up on Hutch in the parking lot of the restaurant across the street from our hotel. If they’re goin’ after family, I don’t want you or Nicky to be next.”

“Is Ken all right?”

“Just roughed up pretty good. But, Ma, if they’re tryin’ to give me a message, I don’t want ’em usin’ you.”

“David, go home and let go of this. Please.”

“What is it you know that you won’t tell me?!” Starsky shot back, and his demand was met with momentary silence.

“You found out your father had ties to Joe Durniak, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, Ma, I did,” Starsky said, closing his eyes as the impact of the words hit him full force. She knew.

“Things were complicated back then. You aren’t happy now that you know, and you aren’t going to be any happier if you keep pushing this. Go home and go on with your life. Don’t risk your life and Ken’s over this. It’s history. Dead and buried.”

“Ma, please…whatever you’re not tellin’ me…I’m gonna find out anyway.”

“You know what I didn’t want you to know. I knew how much it would upset you to hear that of your father. We all know he was killed because of the war that was going on between Joe Durniak and Jack Cincinelli. That was common knowledge then, and it is now. And you won’t be able to prove it now anymore than anyone could then.”

“Can Nick stay with you?” Starsky repeated the question.

“Just a minute.” She was gone for a moment, then came back to the phone. “He said he’d stay. But we can’t hide forever. Make your decision how much these answers are worth to you, and make it carefully.” She hung up the phone, and Starsky was left with the dial tone.

“Everything okay?” Hutch’s voice startled him out of his reverie.

“Nick’s gonna stay over with her.” Starsky went back to his partner, who was pushing himself up out of the chair with a groan. “Let’s get you outta these grubby clothes. Nose still okay?” Starsky checked but saw no signs of the bleeding starting again.

“I told you, Starsk. I’ve had worse. This was a garden-variety scare tactic. No serious damage. Ouch.” Hutch grimaced as Starsky pulled the shirt off his arm. He paused to look at the mottled bruises on the fair skin of Hutch’s wrist.

“Pinned your arm behind you, huh?” he said, pulling the wrist up to his mouth and kissing it. “I’m gonna find ’em, Hutch, and when I do–”

“They’re goons who work for either Cincinelli, or maybe Surfus himself. That’s an easy call. We knew we were running a risk of stepping on some toes.”

“I’m sorry I ran out on you tonight. If I hadn’t done that–”

“Starsk, don’t. It’s not your fault. I’m not hurt that badly. Just dinged up a little.”

“Aw, man, like hell you’re not,” Starsky said, running his fingertips lightly over the bruising on Hutch’s left side and stomach. “One of ’em kicked ya, didn’t he?”

“Starsk–”

“Didn’t he?” Starsky asked again, his voice taking on that same low and deadly quality that was nothing short of chilling.

“Yeah, Mr. Gray Oxfords.”

“I’ll get a hot bath for ya. It’ll make you feel better.”

Starsky went into the bathroom and concentrated on starting up the water and adjusting the temperature. His pulse was pounding in his head, echoing in his ears. When he felt the light touch on his shoulder, he nearly leaped a foot off the ground.

“Just me, babe,” Hutch said calmly. “Tub fills faster if you close the drain,” he said, smirking a little as Starsky had to chuckle in spite of himself. He closed the drain and the tub began to fill. He turned and pulled his naked partner into a careful hug, not wanting to put pressure on anything bruised.

“They’re not gonna get away with this.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of all this. It’ll be okay,” Hutch said softly.

“Do you think I should let it go? Maybe Ma’s right. Maybe I should forget it.”

“You’ll never forget it, Starsk. It’ll eat at you the rest of your life if you don’t get the answer and you know it.” Hutch pulled back and looked Starsky in the eyes. “You know you can’t let it lie.”

“It’s not worth you gettin’ hurt. Nothin’s worth that.”

“I’m okay, buddy. Besides, I already got worked over. Stopping now means I got worked over for no good reason. Now that would tick me off. Plus, it would mean that you’re less able than I am to handle what we’re doing for a living now that we’re together. This,” Hutch gestured at his face, “is chicken shit compared to getting shot. We run the risk every day of our lives of getting hurt in the line of duty. I know it kills me every time you’re in the line of fire…in danger. But if you can’t handle me getting slapped around a little, then we’re just about paralyzed with mutual fear and we can’t keep doing this at all.”

“I know.” Starsky nodded. Then he turned and stopped the flow of water just before the tub became too full. “Guess it’s just that every one’a those bruises…I feel ’em. Not on my body…but in my heart. I don’t ever want anybody to hurt ya, you old blond blintz. I love ya too much.”

“Ditto, partner. But we both know stuff like this is bound to happen sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know.” Starsky nodded. “I just feel like I made this one happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault. And if someone’s still out beating people up in parking lots to stop us from learning the truth, then it seems like it’s that much more important that we learn it. Apparently, it’s not such ancient history.”

“Get in the tub, Blondie. Let me take care’a you.”

Starsky carefully washed each long leg, soaped up and washed each foot, washed the lax genitals with the detachment of a nurse oddly mingled with the gentleness of a lover, then tended to the bruised torso and each arm. Hutch rested his head in the cup of Starsky’s hand while his hair was shampooed and rinsed.

After toweling off his partner and drying his hair, Starsky guided him into bed and found a bottle of Tylenol in his flight bag. He dumped two pills in his hand and returned to the bed with a glass of water and handed them to Hutch.

“That oughtta take the sharp edge off,” he said, waiting while Hutch took the pills. “You want me to turn on the TV for a while?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty early,” Hutch agreed, so Starsky turned on the television and then tossed his own robe aside, climbing naked under the covers with Hutch.

“From now on, we don’t go anywhere alone,” Starsky said firmly, staring at the ceiling instead of the TV.

“Maybe to the john.”

“Not in a public place,” Starsky countered, dead serious.

“Not in a public place,” Hutch concurred.

“I’m glad you’re okay, babe,” Starsky said, glad when Hutch moved into his arms, lying there with his blond hair on Starsky’s shoulder. He nosed the clean strands and snuggled in closer to his lover.

 

 

Hutch opened one eye, not entirely sure he wanted to make the commitment of opening both eyes and accepting it was morning. His body held the familiar aches of having been kicked and punched in all the right places, not aided by having one of Starsky’s leaden sleeping arms hanging over his bruised side. Love was grand, but not when your lover was hugging your sore spot.

“Starsk,” Hutch grumbled, pulling at the determined arm. Any other time, Starsky’s tenacity in sleep would have been endearing. When Hutch had to take a leak and the arm was on his bruises, it was just plain annoying. “Starsky!” he snapped.

“Huh?” The other man jerked awake and moved back, freeing Hutch from the death grip.

“I need to take a leak and you had me pinned, buddy,” he said, regretting a little now the wild-eyed, out-of-breath state he’d brought about in his partner.

“Sorry.” Starsky rolled over and snuggled under the covers, and Hutch stared at him a little venomously as the even breathing resumed. Don’t let me keep you up, Gordo, he thought to himself as he headed into the bathroom, heeded the call of nature, and took a good look at his face.

One large bruise surrounded his left eye, his nose was a bit swollen on one side, his lip split slightly near the right corner, and there was still some ugly bruising on his side and stomach, getting a bit more colorful as time passed. Catching the sound of snoring from the bed, he resigned himself to finding a comfortable position and trying to take a short nap before their alarm went off.

He climbed back into bed and spooned up behind Starsky, wrapping himself around the sleeping man and taking in the bed-warmed scent of his skin as he nuzzled the back of his neck. Starsky purred something in his sleep and snuggled backward, seeking out as much contact with Hutch as he could get. Hutch found his earlier ill humor melting away a bit at the contact. Maybe spending an hour wrapped around Starsky’s warm, naked body wasn’t such a bad deal after all.

 

 

At 7:30 a.m. sharp, Starsky and Hutch were parked a discreet distance from James T. Surfus’ house, waiting to see if the man did, in fact, emerge to go to work. A little before eight, he came out of the house carrying a briefcase, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and tie, and got into the black Buick Park Avenue that was parked in the driveway.

Fifteen minutes later, they were pulling into the parking lot of a large office building that housed a number of investment, insurance and law firm offices. Surfus got out of his car, and was startled when Starsky and Hutch appeared behind him.

“Mr. Surfus?” Starsky greeted. The tall man with the sandy hair and wire-frame glasses regarded him with some suspicion, then glanced at Hutch. Even the sunglasses Hutch wore didn’t quite cover the damage to his face.

“Yes?”

“My name is David Starsky, this is my partner, Ken Hutchinson. We’re detectives with the Bay City Police Department in California and we’re out here to work on an old homicide case. I was hoping maybe you could help us out with some information.”

“On an old homicide case?” The man frowned, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“We’re trying to locate people who may have been witnesses at the time,” Hutch spoke up, “and we think your uncle, J.T. Surfus, may have some information that could be helpful to us.”

“Look, gentlemen,” the other man began, checking his watch, “I have an eight-thirty meeting, and I need to get some materials together. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.”

“Do you know where we could find your uncle?” Starsky pressed.

“I know my uncle had a reputation of being into some shady stuff when he was younger, and maybe he was–I don’t know anything about that. What I do know is that he’s an old man who doesn’t do anything more sinister now than grow roses.”

“Grow roses,” Starsky repeated, deadpan.

“Yeah. He married this nice old lady and they have a big rose garden. Uncle J.T.’s pushing eighty, guys–and he has cancer. He’s not some big bad gangster.”

“My father was a cop, and he was shot and killed on a sidewalk in front of Rudy’s Tavern. The shooter just stuck his piece out the window and drilled three bullets into my father right there on the street. His dying word was ‘Surfus.’ Now one way or another, I’m gonna talk to your uncle. If you wanna do us the courtesy of givin’ us the address, we’d sure appreciate it. If you’re trying to keep us from talking to a murder suspect, then you could be an accessory after the fact. It’s not too late to take this case all the way.”

“For God’s sake, Detective–he’s an old man and he’s dying. His wife’s in her early eighties and she’s not all that well either. Putting him in prison now isn’t going to solve anything, is it?”

“Y’know, my father’s never gonna see eighty. Let me stop and see if I can feel sorry for your uncle,” Starsky shot back coldly.

“Mr. Surfus,” Hutch cut in, “right now, we’re investigating this on our own because we’d like to get whatever information your uncle can give us. Frankly, we have enough to turn it over to the police, and if that happens, you can pretty well rest assured they will arrest your uncle, regardless of his or his wife’s health.”

“If you think my uncle did it, why wouldn’t you want to call in the local police?”

“Because we think he was just doing a job,” Starsky said. “Whoever hired him–that’s who I want.”

“Look, I know he was into some…stuff back then, but a hired killer? There’s gotta be some sort of mistake.” Surfus laughed uneasily and shook his head. “This is like some sort of bad Jimmy Cagney movie.”

“This ain’t no movie and we’re not playin’ games. This is a murder investigation. Now are you gonna tell us where to find the old man or are we goin’ to the police and takin’ the SWAT team in to bust up his little rose garden?” Starsky demanded. The other man blanched a bit at the forceful overture, and with a defeated shrug, gave an address Starsky recognized as being in Park Slope, a fairly affluent area. Nice to know hitmen have good retirement plans, he thought, jotting down the address in his notepad.

“Look, take it easy on the old guy, huh? And have a heart with his wife? Gladys is a sweet lady, and she’s not very well.”

“We’ll do our best,” Hutch responded. “Thank you for the information.”

“You didn’t give me much choice,” he responded.

“You made the right one,” Starsky added as Hutch and he headed back to their car.

 

 

“Durniak must’a given out good pension plans,” Starsky commented as he navigated the rental car through the quiet, tree-lined streets toward the address Surfus’ nephew had reluctantly given them. Large homes sat amid trees that swayed in the summer breeze, carefully-manicured lawns divided at intervals by wide driveways and sidewalks. When they pulled up into the driveway of the home that bore the correct house numbers, Starsky cut the engine and sat there a moment.

“Quite a place,” Hutch said, taking in the view of the two-story colonial with its perfect white paint job and black shutters. Four white columns stood sentry over the entrance and supported the roof extending over a porch that stretched across most of the front of the house. On the porch was a swing, and window boxes full of colorful flowers. Perfectly-trimmed shrubs accented the front of the house, and multi-colored petunias had been planted on either side of the walk that led from the front steps to the sidewalk. A late-model white Lincoln Continental was parked in front of the large two-car garage.

“S’pose the nephew tipped him off we were comin’?”

“Probably.” Hutch got out of the car, a bit more slowly than usual.

“You doin’ okay, babe?” Starsky asked, meeting him at the front of the car so they could walk together up to the front door.

“Yeah, just stiff.”

“Stiff, huh?”

“Starsky, you can be really gross sometimes. I was talking about my side.” Hutch’s scolding was expected, and Starsky grinned under the chiding.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

They approached the white front door with the bright brass knocker, and Starsky beckoned the inhabitants with three sharp knocks. A few moments passed before a stout older woman in a maid’s uniform answered the door.

“Police. We’re here to see Mr. Surfus,” Starsky said, flashing his badge so she would see enough of his ID to believe he was for real, but not enough to see he was from California.

“Please come in. You may wait in the living room. I’ll get Mr. Surfus for you. He’s in the garden.”

She closed the door behind them and then escorted them into the large, airy room that contained two of the six windows that faced the front yard, and two others on the side. Despite all the windows, the room was cooled artificially by what must have been a very efficient central air conditioning system. After the maid left, Starsky looked down at his feet, which were literally sinking into the carpeting.

“I bet he paid more per square yard for this stuff than I paid to re-carpet my whole apartment.”

“Being a hitman apparently pays well.” Hutch took off his sunglasses, and Starsky winced when he saw the bruising again.

“Nellie said the police were here. You must be plainclothes, huh?” An elderly man stood in the doorway of the room. He was of medium height and build, with thinning white hair. Dressed in a white shirt, tan shorts and sandals, he certainly wasn’t the image of a deadly hitman. The pallor spoke of the illness his nephew had mentioned.

“J.T. Surfus?” Starsky said, pinning the man with an intent gaze. Surfus appeared to blanch a bit then, staring at Starsky as if he’d seen a ghost. “Detective Sergeant David Michael Starsky. Name sound familiar? This is my partner, Detective Sergeant Hutchinson.” Starsky took out his wallet, rifled around in it a bit, and produced a small photo of a man and a little boy. Hutch remembered seeing the picture once or twice, and knew Starsky kept it buried somewhere in his wallet. “You remember the man in this photo?” He handed it to Surfus, who reluctantly tore his eyes away from Starsky himself to look at the picture.

“Should I?” He handed it back, his cool veneer restored.

“That was my father, who was a patrolman and then a detective, with the NYPD. He was shot down in cold blood one night outside Rudy’s Tavern.” Starsky watched as the other man managed not to flinch. Only a small muscle twitched at the corner of his left eye. “The last word he said as he was dying was ‘Surfus’.”

“Really? There’s more than one ‘Surfus’ in the phone book. If that’s what he even said. Couldn’t have been speaking too clearly at the time, I imagine.”

“It can be difficult to enunciate with three bullets in you,” Hutch said, “but the witness was quite clear on what he said.”

“Look, Surfus, nothing would make me happier than to haul your ass in, and I’ve got enough new evidence to turn your orderly little paradise here on its ear. To put you through interrogations, probably an arrest–your wife oughtta love that. Your wife and your snooty neighbors.”

“I hear a deal coming,” Surfus surmised, crossing his arms over his chest. “Look, if you had what you say you have, I’d be in handcuffs right now, so apparently all you’re doing is blowing smoke out your ass, and I’ve been through that malarkey with cops for years. I went through it with your old man, only he was a hell of a lot more convincing. So why don’t you two snot-nosed twerps go play cops and robbers with a few street hoods who are impressed with your little act?”

“You’re right about one thing, Mr. Surfus. We are offering you a deal,” Hutch spoke up. “And we could have you in handcuffs right now, make no mistake about that. But then we’d have very little to bargain with, and no compelling reason for you to give us what we came here for.”

“Which is?”

“The name of the man who hired you to kill my father,” Starsky stated firmly.

“So now you expect me to admit to being a hired killer? This is getting more absurd by the moment.”

“Your nephew mentioned that you and your wife aren’t well. A trial could be hard on her, in that case,” Hutch said coolly. “You’d never see anything but the inside of a cell for the rest of your life.”

“Sick bastards. Leave my wife out of this. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

“She’s gonna have plenty to do with it when we come back here with the NYPD and rip this palace apart with search warrants!” Starsky shot back. “And when we haul your miserable old ass out of here in cuffs! And when you’re doin’ hard time for gunning my father down in cold blood in the street!”

“Jim, dear? What’s going on?” A small, frail woman with wavy white hair stood in the entrance to the room, behind Surfus. She wore a pale pink dress with a white sweater draped over her shoulders.

“Just a little difference of opinion, dear. Go back to the garden. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Should I call Daryl?”

“Don’t worry, dear. If I need Daryl, I’ll ring for him. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“All right,” she said, eyeing Starsky and Hutch suspiciously, then moving slowly out of the room.

“Seems like a nice lady. Be a shame to tear her life in half, wouldn’t it?” Starsky said coldly, staring at Surfus.

“If I give you the name, you’re going to leave me out of it? That doesn’t make sense. Once you turn the one you’re looking for in to the cops, they’re not gonna make deals with the shooter. And you’re not gonna like what I tell you.”

“Try me,” Starsky persisted.

“We want answers, Surfus. The person, or persons, who wanted this hit carried out are most likely either dead now or too old to pose a threat to anyone. There’s very little that would make us happier than slapping the cuffs on you, but the one thing that would make us happier is finding out the truth.”

“Sol Starsky ordered the hit on his brother.”

“You son-of-a–” Starsky lunged and Hutch effectively intercepted him before he could reach the elderly man. “You lying son-of-a-bitch! I’ll kill you myself! Let go’a me!”

“Starsk, come on, simmer down. Hear him out.”

“Hear him out?” Starsky stopped fighting Hutch’s restraint, realizing suddenly that he was probably only accomplishing hurting and straining his bruised partner while Surfus stood there smugly, pushing all his buttons. “What kind of crazy shit is that?” Starsky demanded of his partner, gesturing toward Surfus.

“Sol Starsky called Joey Durniak and told him something had to be done about his brother because he was beating on his wife. Joey asked me to handle it.”

“Joe Durniak ordered the hit then?” Hutch clarified.

“Yeah, because the cop’s brother asked him to take care of it.”

“What, exactly, did my uncle ask Joey to do about it?”

“I wasn’t there. Durniak told me that Sol Starsky wanted something done about his brother, who was beating on his wife.”

“And Joe Durniak was in the habit of playing marriage counselor with hitmen?” Hutch asked, raising his eyebrows a bit.

“Look, I got paid to do a job and I did it. Frankly, any jerk who pounds on his wife deserves anything he gets.”

“It’s always nice to know that someone who kills people for a living has principles,” Starsky retorted bitterly.

“I gave you what you asked for. Now I think you two oughtta hit the road. I think you can find the front door without Nellie’s help.”

“Everything okay in here, Mr. Surfus?” A tall, stocky man wearing a white shirt and gray pants stood in the doorway. “Mrs. Surfus said you might need some help in here.”

“What’s this, your watchdog?” Starsky asked.

“I feel it’s prudent to have someone here for security purposes.”

“I think we’re through here.” Hutch started for the door, and Starsky somewhat reluctantly followed, then he paused and held up the snapshot of his father and himself again.

“Take a good, long look. That man you gunned down wasn’t just a job. Not just an amount of money in an envelope. He was a human being with a family and job and friends…and the right to live to be as old as you are now. How many like him did you snuff out? How many corpses paid for this house, huh? For your ‘security’ man’s salary? For your respectable wife? Huh? How much blood is fertilizing that garden out there?”

“Come on, pal, time to move along,” the neatly dressed thug in the doorway stated, jerking a thick thumb toward the door.

“Starsk, let’s hit the road. We’re done here.”

Starsky finally turned, stuffing the photo in his pocket. As he was following Hutch to the door, he happened to glance down at the feet and legs of the thug who was following them toward the foyer. He wore a pair of two-tone gray oxford shoes.

Hutch spun around from where he’d had his hand on the front doorknob as he heard the unexpected sound of knuckles connecting with flesh, followed by a muffled grunt. Starsky had delivered an effective blow to the thug’s face, causing him to stagger back a step or two. Before Hutch could intervene, the larger man grabbed Starsky by the shirtfront and slammed him against the nearest wall. Drawing back a large arm, aiming his beefy fist at Starsky’s midsection, he swung with all his strength.

Starsky shifted his hips abruptly in the opposite direction, causing the man’s fist to connect with the wall instead. Hutch wasn’t sure if it was plaster or bone he heard cracking, but as the big man reeled from the error, Starsky delivered a left hook that sent him sprawling back on the floor. He then calmly approached the fallen man, who was holding onto his injured hand.

“If you ever come near my partner again,” Starsky took out his gun and aimed it at the man on the floor, “I’ll put a bullet through that miserable excuse of a brain.” Noticing Surfus’ movement out of the corner of his eye, he aimed the gun at him. “That goes for you, too, old man. I already owed you one, and now, I owe you two. Someday, we’re gonna settle accounts, you and me.” Starsky lowered his weapon but didn’t holster it. “Let’s get outta here.” He strode through the door, and Hutch barely had time to notice the injured man’s two-tone gray shoes as they left.

“That was a potential disaster,” Hutch stated flatly, getting into the car. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“You’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t’a done the same thing?” Starsky started up the car.

“Well, I didn’t say that,” Hutch admitted, smiling slightly. A little part of him had leapt for joy watching Starsky avenge him, while his more practical side had felt nothing but cold terror at the thought of that giant fist smashing into Starsky’s healed body.

“Nobody touches you without dealin’ with me.” Starsky backed out of the driveway with a suitable squeal of tires and drove down the otherwise quiet street. In a much softer voice, while reaching over to take a hold of Hutch’s hand where it rested on the seat, he added, “I love you too much to do things any other way, babe.”

Hutch responded by lacing their fingers and giving Starsky’s hand a squeeze.

“You know he was just spouting shit in there?” Starsky said, finally freeing his hand to maneuver the car through some mid-day traffic. “Uncle Sol handled his differences with Pop between them. I mean, this is crazy. He never would’a ordered a hit on his own brother.”

“We knew it was a gamble counting on Surfus for the answer….”

“What?” Starsky picked up on the tone in Hutch’s voice that indicated the statement had been left unfinished.

“How’d he know about the spousal abuse issue? Your mother didn’t tell anyone outside the family. How’d he know?”

“Maybe…maybe she told somebody. Or maybe Uncle Sol did say somethin’ to somebody. But he sure as hell wouldn’t order a hit on his own brother.”

“There’s one way to find out.”

“Oh, that’s good, Hutch. I’ll just drop in and say, ‘Oh, by the way, Uncle Sol, did you ask Joe Durniak to pop your own brother?’ Come off it, Hutch, I can’t do that.”

“We’ve come this far, Starsk, and we knew we might find something out we didn’t want to hear. I’m not saying I believe what Surfus said, but I am saying that if we don’t check it out, we’re negating the whole purpose of opening this can of worms in the first place. You wanted answers. This may not be it, but we’re never gonna know if we don’t follow it up.”

“I know you’re right. I just don’t know how to show up at Uncle Sol’s and ask somethin’ like that.” Starsky was quiet a few minutes. “Who do you suppose tipped off Surfus? Guess it had t’be Sims.”

“Or our buddy the bartender–he overheard Karen tell you about your father’s last word. Just because we didn’t get it doesn’t mean he didn’t.”

“He said he’d worked there less than a year.”

“Right, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t connected.”

“I suppose. I kinda doubt Sims would’ve squealed because he told us plenty more than he would if he were gonna try to stay on the right side’a Surfus or any of the old Durniak boys.”

“Where does Sol live, anyway?” Hutch asked, pulling the street map out of the glove compartment.

“He and Aunt Anna live in an apartment in Carroll Gardens.” Starsky was quiet a moment. “I should call there first. Make sure he’s alone when we talk to him. This isn’t something I wanna ask in front of my aunt.”

“There’s probably a phone booth in that shopping center over there,” Hutch said, gesturing toward a small strip mall.

“Yeah, okay.” Starsky changed lanes and turned in to the parking lot, cruising until they spotted two pay phones mounted on the side of the building.

“You got his number?”

“He’s listed,” Starsky responded, pausing slightly before opening the door.

“Hey,” Hutch took a hold of his arm. “I know this is rough, but it was probably just a bunch of crap Surfus was dishing out.”

“Yeah,” Starsky responded shortly, sounding completely unconvinced.

Hutch watched his partner check the listings, then deposit his coins and dial the number. Someone must have answered because Starsky was engaged in conversation for a little over a minute. When he returned to the car, he started the engine.

“Uncle Sol’s there on his own. Anna’s out grocery shopping.” Starsky pulled out into the lane of traffic and headed for his uncle’s neighborhood.

 

 

Sol Starsky was considerably taller than his nephew, but the strong features carried out the family resemblance. His hair was predominantly gray, and he wore a pair of dark-rimmed glasses, which he took off and tucked in the pocket of his shirt when he opened the door.

“David.” The greeting was the antithesis of what Hutch expected, having heard Starsky’s tales of the plentiful smothering hugs among reuniting Starskys at almost any family occasion. Starsky, too, seemed surprised by the greeting and finally, hesitantly, shook the hand Sol extended toward him.

“Uncle Sol, this is my partner–”

“I know who he is. Your mother told me.” The older man made no move to invite them into the apartment.

“Could we come in?”

“You come in. He waits outside.”

“Wait a second–you want Hutch to wait in the hall? There’s nothin’ I’ve got to say t’you that he hasn’t heard.”

“You’re my brother’s son, and for that reason I won’t turn my back on you. I won’t condone this perversion of yours. Your father would turn over in his grave if he saw you now.”

“Starsk, it’s okay, I’ll wait downstairs.”

“No, it’s not okay.” Starsky pulled out his police ID. “Hutch is my professional partner as well, Uncle Sol, and this can be official police business if that’s how you wanna play it. Or you can let us come in outta the hall and talk like civilized adults.”

“Don’t pull your badge on me, junior. It didn’t impress me any when your father did it and it doesn’t impress me now.”

“This is about my father. Your brother. About how he died. Now I think you better let us in before Aunt Anna gets home and asks a whole lot of tough questions about why we’re standin’ in the hall and why we’re here.”

“All right, but make it fast.” Sol stepped back to let them both enter and closed the door behind them. “Rachel said you were stirring things up about Mike’s death. I’m not sure what you’re hopin’ to find out, since the cops couldn’t make an arrest at the time.”

“I know who the shooter was,” Starsky said, and his uncle stared at him, his mouth slightly agape. “That’s right, I tracked down the shooter. I could’ve arrested the guy, too–might still, actually…but even more than nailing him, I wanted to know who ordered the hit, and the only thing I had to bargain with was not turning him over to the cops. Now that I know some’a the things I know about Pop’s ties to Joey Durniak, I’d rather leave the cops out of it anyway. Ma losin’ her pension wouldn’t be a nice ending to all this.” Starsky paused, noticing how pale his uncle seemed to have become since the conversation began.

“So he told you it was Cincinelli, I suppose,” Sol said, his words coming out a bit clumsily.

“No, he told me it was Durniak who paid him.”

“Durniak, huh?” Sol ran a hand back over his hair. “Son-of-a-bitch, after all Mike did for that jerk–”

“You can drop the act, Uncle Sol. I just left J.T. Surfus’ house and he told me that he was hired by Durniak to do the hit because you went to Joey and asked him to do something about your brother beatin’ on his wife,” Starsky hated the waver he heard in his own voice on those final words, but he kept his composure.

“That’s a lie. Get out. Both of you! You come into my home and accuse me of killing my own brother! It’s not enough you’re breaking your mother’s heart with this…this…sickness of yours, but now this! I always knew Rose and Al were lenient and overindulgent and this is what comes of it!”

“Leave them outta this. For that matter, leave Hutch outta this. This is family business, Uncle Sol. Dirty family laundry. It’s not Rose and Al’s fault, and it’s got nothin’ t’do with Hutch. I know you got in the middle’a things tryin’ to help when things got bad with Pop’s drinking. Did you go to Joe Durniak for help?” Starsky persisted.

“Let it lie, David. Please….” Sol turned away then, walking toward the window of the small living room, resting his forehead against the woodwork that surrounded it.

“Tell me,” Starsky demanded in a low, icy tone.

“After you left, things got worse. He was drinking more, and your mother was paying the price. She came to our house with Nicky in the middle’a the night. Nose all bloody, black eye, scared to death….” Sol shook his head. “Nothin’ I’d said to Mike sunk in. Lasted. He settled down for a while and then he went right back at it.”

“Why didn’t you talk her into leaving him? Offer to help her?” Starsky asked.

“Don’t you think I did? I offered for them to live with us, or that I’d pay her way out to California so they could join you with Rose and Al. By the next morning, she took Nicky by the hand and started out down the street for home, like she never planned on doin’ anything else.” Sol sighed heavily and shook his head, turning away from the window. “I knew she’d never leave him.”

“So you had him killed?” Starsky pressed, his voice barely making it past the tightness in his throat. He glanced at Hutch, glad in one way he was there and horrified in another at the revelations his partner was hearing about his family history. He found nothing in those eyes but concern, and nothing in the expression but love. He held onto that like a lifeline.

“I didn’t mean for any of it to happen that way. Dear God, how could you think I did?” Sol dropped into a chair near the window. Despite not having been invited to do so, Starsky finally took the matching chair while Hutch sat on the couch, a few feet removed from where the two men sat.

“But you asked Joe Durniak to–”

“To help us. To deal with Mike. Not to kill him!”

“What did you expect him to do?”

“I don’t know. Send out some’a his muscle, maybe throw a scare into him.”

“Is that why someone worked Hutch over in a parking lot last night? Did you send out that muscle, too?”

“Rachel told Anna you were working the case again. All I did was tell Surfus that if he had a way of puttin’ a scare into you without hurtin’ you, he should do it. Your mother doesn’t know anything about that. I didn’t know anybody was gonna get hurt! I didn’t even know you weren’t here alone. Rachel didn’t say anything about…about him bein’ here.”

“You got a real knack’a makin’ bad things happen without tryin’. You’re always innocent, aren’t you, Uncle Sol? Well, I’m not buyin’ that anymore! Surfus is a paid killer and you tell him to ‘scare’ me. Durniak was a mob boss–what the hell did you think was gonna happen when you asked him to ‘do something’ about Pop?”

“Maybe what happened was for the best!” Sol shot back, standing up and starting to pace.

“Your own brother bein’ shot down in cold blood?”

“It’s easy for you to be real high and mighty about this! What’d he ever do for you except smack your head into a banister?”

“He was my father! I loved him! He was messed up and he did wrong things and he should’a been held accountable for that, but it doesn’t mean he should’a been murdered for it!”

“Let me tell you somethin’ about your father, David. He took away from me the only woman I ever really loved and then he ended up beatin’ her when he had too much to drink. Yeah, that’s right–your father you loved so much took his own brother’s girl!” Sol shook his head.

“You and Ma…?”

“I met Rachel first, started goin’ out with her. I’m two years older than your father was, so I was already working at the newspaper and your father was just graduating from high school and gettin’ ready to go to the Academy. I brought Rachel home to meet your grandparents, to have dinner…not long after that, I found out they started seein’ each other.”

“You wanted Durniak to order a hit, is that it?”

“For God’s sake, no, I didn’t plan that. But I couldn’t watch him treat Rachel that way. Not when…not after…not when she meant what she did to me.”

“Even though she chose Pop over you?”

“You’d think that’d do it, wouldn’t ya? Doesn’t always work that way. Can’t always get your heart to follow your head.”

“Did you talk to Durniak after the hit went down?”

“Oh, yeah, I talked to him, all right. I went stormin’ into Delvecchio’s–remember that Italian deli place where he used to sit and stuff his fat face?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I started yellin’ at him, even turned over a table. He let me go nuts, a bunch of other customers ran outta the place, probably thinkin’ they were in the middle of a gang war. When I was about done, he wipes his mouth off with the napkin, blots his mustache real carefully, like he doesn’t wanna miss a spot, and then tells me that I should go ahead and talk to Mike’s friends at the department. That I should tell them how I asked him to ‘do something about’ my brother. And then I could fill them in on just how tight my brother was with him.”

“Why would Joey do anything for you? Did you pay him?”

“No.” Sol sank into his chair again and rubbed his forehead. “Joey grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same school…we all knew each other from way back. Joey’s old man used to drink and smack the family around. I thought he’d be sympathetic, maybe send out some’a his muscle to throw a little scare into Mike–let him know somebody worse than me was watchin’ him. Guess he got back at his old man by turning it into a hit instead–take out another guy who’s doin’ the same thing to somehow…make up for his father gettin’ away with it. He finally told me that any man who beats a woman deserves worse than what Mike got.”

“Guess it shouldn’t surprise me he was telling me what a great guy Pop was last time I saw him.”

“Joey always had a weird soft spot for kids–might shoot their old man down in cold blood, but he’d feel real sorry for the kids. Do things like pay for the funerals of the men he had killed. Probably didn’t see any reason for you to know the truth.” Sol shook his head. “What did you really solve here, David? Digging all this up?”

“I needed to know the truth, because there were too many questions.” Starsky hesitated. “Does Ma know?”

“No. She doesn’t need to, either. About…any of this.”

“Don’t you think she has a right to know why her husband was killed?”

“You mean why she stopped gettin’ black eyes and bloody noses? Why she stopped bein’ afraid of how many beers Mike’d had down at Rudy’s? Why she didn’t have to worry what was gonna happen when Nicky got old enough to start gettin’ in the middle’a things?” Sol let out a long sigh. “I never wanted Mike to end up dead. I never meant for that to happen. He was my brother, for God’s sake, and whatever he’d done, or whatever…differences we had, I still loved him. I never would’a talked to Joey if I’d’a thought he’d take it that far. But lookin’ back on it, nothing else would’a changed what was goin’ on there. Mike wasn’t knocking off drinking and Rachel wasn’t about to leave him, no matter how many offers she got from us or Rose and Al to get outta there.” Sol pinned Starsky with an intent look. “All I’m askin’ of you, David, is to let your mother live the rest of her life in peace. She’s happy now, she’s got a good life…for God’s sake, let her be. Don’t make her live through all this again.”

“She knows I’m looking into this–”

“So tell her you hit a dead end. It’s not too hard to believe. The whole damn NYPD hit a dead end. But then, Mike’s friends knew how closely he was tied into Joey’s operations, so they knew if the investigation went too well, Mike’d probably be discredited as a dirty cop, and that would’a left your mother with no pension.”

“I’m still tryin’ to picture Joey finishing off somebody who was helping him.”

“Some twisted code of honor? Maybe he was doin’ what he felt was right to help a lady in trouble. Maybe Mike knew too much and had outlived his usefulness anyway. All I know is that I’ve spent my whole damn life feeling guilty for putting that in motion. The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that Rachel had a decent life because of it. She misses him, and she grieved for him, but she’s safe.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.” Starsky stood up.

“What are you gonna do?” Sol asked, looking up at Starsky worriedly.

“I don’t know. I need to think.” He paused. “At least you were honest with me.”

“Would you have given up until you got the story, whether I told you or not?”

“No,” Starsky answered honestly. “And I never would’a given up until I found out who tipped off Surfus that ended up with Hutch gettin’ roughed up. I don’t forgive you for that, Sol, and I’m never gonna.”

“You’re just like Mike. Once he put his mind to something, you might as well go along, because he didn’t give in. Just like I know you’re gonna do what you want about telling Rachel no matter what I say.”

“Starsk, maybe we should go. Maybe stepping back from this would be a good idea right now. Take some time to think it through,” Hutch suggested, the first thing he had said since the encounter began. Despite that, in his heart, Starsky had been very conscious of his partner’s presence and unspoken support. Hutch was standing beside him now, and Starsky nodded in agreement.

“Don’t hurt your mother just to get back at me. If you think I’ve lived one day without paying for what happened to Mike, you’re wrong. I hated what he was doing, but I loved my little brother. Like you hate some’a what Nicky’s into, but you know you couldn’t hate him. I couldn’t finger Durniak after it happened without gettin’ myself, or half our family, hurt. Or goin’ to prison. By then, I was married to Anna and we had the kids to consider–”

“I’m not interested in makin’ everybody’s life miserable, even though that’s what everybody seems to think I wanna do. I wanted the truth, and I got that. Now I need to get outta here,” Starsky said tightly, feeling the impact of the last few hours slamming into his heart and soul full force. So many truths, none of them expected, and none of them bearable. All of them horrible. All of them better left dead and buried….

 

 

“Let’s go back to the hotel and take it easy for a while, huh?” Hutch suggested, watching Starsky’s profile as he drove away from Sol’s apartment building.

“I’m sorry about how he treated you. I didn’t even know Ma told him. I can’t believe you got worked over because’a my family.”

“We couldn’t expect smooth sailing. It’s okay.”

“Maybe Ma was right. Maybe I should’a just left this alone.”

“Do you really mean that, or did it just hurt finding out what you did? Is it worse than not knowing?”

“Sol….” Starsky swallowed, his hands gripping the wheel tighter. “Yeah, I think so,” he finally admitted softly.

 

 

Starsky tossed the car keys on the dresser and shrugged out of his shirt, which had been worn open over a t-shirt to conceal his holster, which he also removed now, tossing both in a heap on the unused bed. He leaned heavily on the back of the desk chair, his knuckles going almost white as he gripped it with both hands. The intensity of the grip was a last ditch effort to keep himself together. Hutch’s gentle embrace from behind derailed that effort before it left the station.

Starsky could feel himself shaking, feel the pain welling up and spilling out, but more than all that, he could feel Hutch turning him, holding him close, pressing his head against a familiar shoulder with one large, warm hand on his hair.

“I’ve got you, buddy. It’s okay. Let it out.” There were a few tears, but it was no easy catharsis of sobbing. There was nothing easy and clear-cut about any of this. Even the grief or the disillusionment or the anger…it was all mixed together, blended, jumbled. Jumbled together in a mess that defied solution. Maybe it was a mess that truly had no solution, which was the bitterest pill to swallow.

“I don’t know what to do, Hutch,” Starsky said, his voice barely above a whisper. “How…how do I do what’s right about this? I don’t even know what that is.”

“That’s a hard call, buddy. If we take down Surfus–”

“Sol could go with him. And Pop’s reduced from bein’ a dead hero to bein’ a dirty cop who got offed by the gangster he worked for.”

“What do you think your father would want you to do about this?”

“Probably nail Sol’s sorry ass to the wall.” Starsky pulled away, swiping at the few tears that had escaped. “I’m just not so sure…I don’t know if that’s the right thing t’do. I got no problem figuring out how to do this as a cop. I’m just running into a little trouble what to do as a Starsky. Aw, fuck it. I’ve never had to think of the two things as separate before.” Starsky sat on the foot of the bed.

“You were ready to flee the country with me if things didn’t pan out with Van’s murder.”

“That was part of a plan.”

“Oh really? And if the plan fell through, you were going to turn me in?” Hutch knelt in front of Starsky, forcing contact with the downcast eyes.

“No.”

“Sometimes we make decisions for love that aren’t decisions for duty. You know we’ve both done it before, for each other. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong…and I don’t have anything wise and easy to lay out as a suggestion for what to do about this. But no matter what you do here, it doesn’t make you a dirty cop.”

“Feels like it. God, Hutch, we were in a hitman’s house today. Heard a murder confession. Did we make a fucking arrest? No! We used him as an informant, Hutch. A paid killer.”

“An eighty-year-old former paid killer with cancer who probably wouldn’t live through a trial and wouldn’t serve more than a few years in the pen if he did. The one who’d suffer most there would be that sweet little lady in the pink dress who thinks her husband is a wonderful man who grows roses. I seriously doubt Surfus is out making hits anymore. He’s already been handed a death sentence, Starsk.”

“His thugs did this to you,” Starsky said, running his fingertips lightly over the bruising near Hutch’s eye.

“I didn’t say he was a choir boy, Starsk. I also didn’t say he didn’t deserve to pay for what he did. Anymore than Sol was right to go to Durniak to settle his family disputes, or to tip off Surfus to keep you from learning the truth. Do you believe him that he didn’t mean for it to be a hit?”

“I didn’t at first, but the more he talked…yeah, I believe him. He made a mistake. Got carried away because’a how he felt about Ma…. Joey raised the stakes from a simple muscle job to a hit. For whatever reason, he decided to turn vigilante against my father for what was goin’ on between him and Ma.”

“Maybe a little misplaced hostility from his own childhood. He was the big, powerful man this time who could stop the abuse. He couldn’t when he was a child, couldn’t help his own mother, but maybe he saw this as a way to help someone else. To make up for that.”

“Kinda how I felt with Kay and Danny Jenkins at a point. Like maybe helping them was somehow…fixing something from the past.”

“Yeah, kinda like that.” Hutch ran his hands lightly along Starsky’s thighs, the gesture platonic and soothing, despite the intimate location. “Whatever you do, Starsk, I’m with you.”

“I know,” Starsky pushed out past the lump in his throat.

“Maybe you just need to think about something else for a little while. Or nothing at all.” Hutch moved up then and covered Starsky’s mouth with his own. Starsky responded greedily, drinking in all that lush mouth had to offer, trying to be gentle, flicking his tongue out to lick at the split and bruise at the corner of it.

“Hutch….” Starsky breathed against his partner’s mouth before Hutch stood and caressed his hair with a gentle hand.

“Shh. Let me take care of you, babe,” he said, leaning down and kissing Starsky’s forehead in a gesture so tender it almost shattered Starsky’s already tenuous hold on his emotions.

Hutch shrugged out of his own light jacket and holster, then grasped the hem of Starsky’s t-shirt and pulled upward, Starsky willingly cooperating by raising his arms. He watched while Hutch shed his own t-shirt, then returned to unfasten Starsky’s belt, pushing him gently backward to lie on the bed. Somehow managing to avoid kicking his partner, Starsky toed off his shoes, making Hutch’s downward journey with jeans and briefs as smooth as possible. He peeled off his own socks and slid up on the bed while Hutch shed the rest of his clothes.

Carefully lowering himself on top of Starsky, Hutch supported some of his weight on his forearms, but that was only temporary as Starsky wrapped his arms around him tightly, pulling them together. For long minutes, Starsky soaked up that closeness, hiding in the warmth and security of Hutch’s arms, letting himself avoid the painful issues he was facing.

Finally, Hutch drew back a bit and kissed him, gently but passionately, his tongue teasing its way into Starsky’s mouth to find its mate. Starsky buried one hand in the fine blond hair, the other caressing the smooth skin of Hutch’s back. The soft lips left his mouth, moving down his chin to his throat, pausing to lick and kiss the little hollow there. Then the hot tongue danced a little trail to his left nipple, then sucked it into the hot mouth, lingering long enough to draw a moan from Starsky, who arched into the touch, his fingers flexing in Hutch’s hair, wanting to hold him in that delightful spot forever. The lips journeyed again to Starsky’s right nipple and began licking and sucking it to a matching hardness.

Starsky couldn’t help but thrust upward against Hutch, seeking some attention for his hardening cock.

“Patience is a virtue, babe,” Hutch said softly. “Good things come to those who wait,” he teased gently, smiling.

“He who hesitates is lost,” Starsky countered, grinning.

“Haste makes waste,” Hutch said calmly, kissing his way down to Starsky’s navel.

“Tempus fugit,” Starsky retorted, chuckling and groaning at the same time as Hutch’s tongue teased and played with his navel.

“Some things are too good to rush,” Hutch moved up to kiss Starsky’s mouth again, thoroughly. “You don’t gulp fine champagne or gobble down caviar–the finest tastes in life are meant to be savored.” He leaned in for another long kiss. “Next to you, that champagne is mouthwash, and that caviar is just a bunch of fish eggs,” Hutch rested his forehead against Starsky’s. “Get the picture?” he asked, smiling. Moved more than he expected by the flattery, Starsky swallowed and nodded slightly, feeling his eyes fill. “Relax, babe. Gonna make this so good for you.”

Hutch moved down on the bed, pointedly ignoring the stiff erection. He nuzzled and kissed the downy balls beneath it, encouraging Starsky’s thighs farther apart to give him easy access. He sucked one oval into his mouth, making Starsky cry out and grab onto the bedspread, unsure how long he could last. The devilish mouth moved to the second oval, treating it to the same hot suction. Just when he felt he would surge to climax from that alone, his cock was engulfed in the wet heat of Hutch’s mouth, firm hands grasping his hips with gentle control.

“Hutch…God, babe…I…I’m gonna…I….” Starsky felt as if he should apologize, after all Hutch’s beautiful words on savoring things and taking their time. His climax was racing up on him, spurting its completion into Hutch’s waiting throat, Starsky’s body shuddering as he called out Hutch’s name, holding the fabric of the spread tightly, not trusting his hands to be gentle on Hutch’s hair or his shoulders.

Finally, sated and spent, he felt himself being released, feather-light kisses planted along his sensitive cock.

“Oh, God, Hutch–your mouth. I forgot,” he said immediately, seeing a little fresh blood near the split. “Oh, damn. I’m sorry, I–”

“Hey, hey, come on,” Hutch wiped away the tiny trace of blood with his finger. “You didn’t do anything, buddy. It was my idea, remember? What good is a partner if he won’t bleed for ya a little?”

“That was great, babe. Let me take care’a you, huh?” Starsky took a gentle hold on Hutch’s shoulders, pulling him up for a kiss. “How do you want it, Blintz?”

“Inside you. All around you. So long that you’ll come again with me.”

“I love you.” Starsky fought down the lump in his throat, the love he felt for his partner so powerful at that moment that it took his breath away.

“And I love you.” Hutch rested his forehead against Starsky’s. “On our sides? Has to be my good side,” Hutch clarified, and Starsky turned to lie on his right side, so Hutch could do the same, avoiding the bruising on his left. “This is the best part of making love. Being this close. Feeling all of you against me,” Hutch said, kissing Starsky’s neck.

“Best part is just bein’ with you.” He covered Hutch’s hand where it rested on his chest. “Nothin’ else around us or between us. Just you and me and the rest’a the world out there someplace, away from us.”

Starsky felt the mattress shift and he knew Hutch was retrieving the lube. He relaxed and enjoyed the total intimacy of Hutch curling back around him, his fingers gently probing, stretching, coating. Hutch had been serious about taking his time. He turned preparation into an art form–into a kind of erotic massage that had Starsky’s body responding as if he’d never come at all. By the time Hutch made the deliberate effort to stroke his prostate, Starsky was already writhing with pleasure, and his voice came out in a broken moan.

Then the moving fingers were gone, and soon, the familiar hard fullness was sliding inside him, stretching him, filling him. Hutch’s body was wrapping around him, joining with him inside and out. There was nothing in Starsky’s world but the touch and scent and warmth of his lover, and he basked in it, his eyes closed, his head angling back for a kiss.

Hutch’s lips trailed from Starsky’s lips to his cheek, his ear, his neck and finally his shoulder, as the steady in and out rhythm began. Starsky joined that rhythm easily, moving in perfect synch with his partner, no words necessary to coordinate this dance…no words necessary to find the perfect harmony between their two souls that wound together as inextricably as their bodies.

The climax was slow-burning, and when it was reached, it was reached together, voices mingling with shouts and moans of each other’s names.

Starsky wasn’t sure how long they lay there motionless, sweaty, sated and fully joined. All he knew was that when Hutch finally gently slipped free of his body, it was too soon and the loss pierced his heart. He turned over then, wanting to hold and be held, to get as close as possible to his other half. Hutch’s own movements mirrored that need, long arms and legs wrapping around him, sheltering him like they always did. He felt drowsy, and yet a part of him didn’t want to slip off into sleep. This moment was for savoring. As if he’d read Starsky’s mind, Hutch spoke softly against his ear.

“Let’s take a nap, huh?”

“Part’a me loves sleepin’ in your arms, and the other part doesn’t want to. I don’t wanna miss out on being with you by being unconscious the whole time.”

“When all this is over, we’re gonna take a couple days off just for us, maybe go somewhere secluded–someplace with a great bed–and not get out of it until we go home.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” Hutch chuckled a little, and Starsky drank in the sound of the rumble in the beloved chest beneath his ear. Fantasizing about two days in a bed with Hutch, he drifted off to sleep.

 

 

A sharp knocking at the door jerked Hutch out of a sound sleep. The shadows of dusk were settling in the room, and Starsky still snored softly against his chest. Another knock disturbed that rhythm and Starsky raised his head, eyes blinking blearily.

“Somebody’s at the door,” Hutch said, his remark punctuated by another knock.

“Swell.” Starsky pushed up into a sitting position, then crawled out of bed and found his robe where he’d tossed it on the unused bed that morning.

“Hey, just a minute, buddy,” Hutch said as Starsky reached for the door. Grabbing his own clothes and tossing Starsky’s on the bed instead of in a wanton pile on the floor, Hutch dashed into the bathroom and started the shower.

“Fuck,” Starsky cursed softly, hating to have such a beautiful moment of closeness shattered by the intrusion–and the need to hide. The world had come knocking, uninvited, in what he’d hoped was their little retreat from it.

He opened the door and found his younger brother standing on the other side of it.

“Kinda early to be in bed, isn’t it?” Nick said, walking in past him without waiting for an invitation.

“I was up late. Needed to catch a few Z’s. Hey, don’t I even get a ‘hello’?” Starsky asked, closing the door.

“Uncle Sol’s in the hospital.”

“What? When? What happened?”

“Why don’t you–” Nick froze in his tracks and gaped at Starsky, who frowned in confusion at first, then glanced down at his robe, which was open almost to the waist. One of the long surgical scars was very visible.

“Sorry. Guess you haven’t seen the new…uh…additions.” Starsky crossed the sides of the robe more securely and tightened the tie.

“How many’a those have you got?”

“Just the…uh…just that one big one, and uh…entry and exit scars. There were three bullets–”

“Yeah, Ma gave me all the gory details.”

“She would’a had to, since you couldn’t make it to see for yourself.”

“Look, I was busy. I had…I had deals goin’ down, you know? Are you still sore about that?”

“No, Nick, I’m not sore about it.” Starsky hoped he didn’t sound as tired as he felt, or as emotionally spent as he was. “How’s Sol?”

“What’d you say to him? Aunt Anna was all upset, saying he’d said you came by, and an hour later, he keels over, grabbin’ at his chest.”

“How is he, Nick?” Starsky persisted, his voice rising slightly.

“They got him stabilized. On IVs and a bunch’a tubes and stuff. I guess he’s gonna be okay.”

“I’m glad. I didn’t know he had a bad heart.”

“Don’t think Aunt Anna did either.” Nick glanced at the bathroom door. “Hutch in there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“‘Cause I got somethin’ t’say to you, and I don’t wanna have ta have it out with your nanny standing over us.”

“My what?”

“You heard me. This is family business.”

“Then spit it out, kid, because you’re really startin’ to tick me off.”

“Yeah? Well, you showin’ up here, upsettin’ Ma, and now this with Uncle Sol–that ticks me off a little, too! She was up all night, pacin’ around the apartment. Lookin’ at Pop’s picture and cryin’. And for what? So you can come out here and play cops and robbers? What’s wrong, did you bust everybody back in Bay City and now you gotta come out here to New York and dig up twenty-five-year-old cases? Havin’ more stitches than Frankenstein ain’t enough for you? You gotta dig up somethin’ more? Maybe get shot again so you can be the big hero?”

“I never meant for this to upset Ma. You know damn well how I feel about her,” Starsky said quietly, ignoring the insults hurled his way. Nick always had a tendency to lash out with hurtful words when he was angry and hurting himself. “That doesn’t change the fact that our father was gunned down in the street and nobody seemed to know why, and if they did, they weren’t talkin’. Doesn’t that ever bother you just a little?”

“Why would it bother you? You took off and went to California to live in the big fancy house. We weren’t good enough for ya?”

“Nick, I told you what happened back then–”

“Lies! You told me lies! A bunch’a crazy shit about Pop bein’ this monster who drank and beat up on Ma. If he was so bad, why’s she still cryin’ over his picture, and why are you so worried about findin’ out who killed him?”

“Maybe because some people love not wisely but too well, and because he was still my father and I need some answers.”

“It’s all about what you need, isn’t it? That’s what it’s always been about! What David needs. David needs to go live in California. David needs to share your room all summer ’cause he’s comin’ home slummin’ for his annual visit. David needs to make up stories about Pop because it helps his conscience for runnin’ away from home! David needs to make everybody’s life hell to dig up answers David needs to know! You know what, big brother? I’m really sick’a what you need takin’ its half right outta the middle of our lives here.”

“Pop broke my arm and gave me a concussion! That’s why I went to live with Rose and Al, so he didn’t fucking kill me by mistake!” Starsky shouted angrily. “Is that what you need to hear? It’s not enough for me to say that Pop drank too much and smacked me around, so there it is! You wanna see hospital records? You want me to provide you with a medical history? You want to see the x-rays of the fractures in my arm? ‘Cause you just say the word, Nick, and we’ll go right down to Memorial Hospital and send ’em down to the basement or wherever they keep their old records and you can fuckin’ see for yourself!” Starsky advanced on his younger brother. “Is that what you need? Proof?!”

“What does that prove? Ma told me about you fallin’ down the steps at Uncle Sol’s! Don’t try to hang that on Pop.”

“Damn it, Nick, you know somethin’ wasn’t right. You know Ma didn’t trip and fall and bump into doors every coupl’a weeks. You just don’t wanna face it! You never wanted to face it! Ma didn’t run into doors and I didn’t fall down any flight of stairs at Uncle Sol’s!”

“I don’t wanna hear this.” Nick strode toward the door.

“You probably don’t,” Starsky’s voice was a startling soft contrast to the shouting that had come just before these words. “I love you, Nicky. You’re my little brother, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish things had been different. I should’a come back home after Pop died, stuck around and looked out for you. Ma thought I was better off with Rose and Al, and…and I was happy there. I know that’s awful and I guess I deserve you hatin’ me for it.” Starsky sighed. “I got no reason to lie to you. If you wanna believe in a fairy tale about Pop, you go ahead.”

“Ma’s scared to death somebody’s gonna come after us,” Nick said, his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t look back at Starsky. “Are they?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s real good, Davey. You don’t think so.”

“I…I’m going back to California as soon as I can get a flight, Nicky. I won’t be here stirring things up anymore. There won’t be any reason for anybody to bother you or Ma as long as I’m outta here. They’ll know I’m not doin’ anything about the case. There’s not much left to do.” Starsky paused. “Do you wanna know what really happened to Pop?”

“He got shot down because he was a good cop who made the wrong people mad,” Nick stated emphatically, so emphatically that it left no doubt in Starsky’s mind that the truth was no more welcome now than it had been several years earlier, when he’d tried to tell Nick the truth about their father. About the abuse. About what it was like hiding in a closet from a man whose drunken rage was further aggravated by a piece of birthday cake dropped on the carpet by a startled eight-year-old midnight snacker. What it had been like to see that closet door open….

“Stick with Ma until I go back to California, and then everything should be back to normal.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t come out to visit if it’s gonna be dangerous for Ma.”

“I won’t do anything that endangers Ma, Nicky. You know that.”

“Do I?” Nick turned briefly to look back at his brother. “You already hurt her, David. Don’t do it again.” He turned and walked out the door, slamming it behind him.

Starsky sat on the foot of the bed and stared at his reflection in the mirror above the dresser across from him. The man looking back at him seemed like a stranger–a tired, aging stranger with an ugly scar down the middle of his body that Starsky traced now with a slightly shaky finger.

“I heard the door slam.” Hutch walked out of the bathroom, towel around his hips. “I figured you two should have a chance to talk without me getting in the middle of it.” He sat on the bed next to Starsky. “Because if I’d come out, I’d have knocked the little puke on his ass.”

“Don’t blame Nicky, Hutch. He’s coping with this the only way he knows how. Hiding from it. He hid from knowing what was happening downstairs when he was little, and when I tried to tell him a few years back, he hid from the truth. Believing in Pop is real important to him.”

“So is hurting you, from the sound of things.” Hutch caressed the dark curls gently, sitting next to Starsky on the bed. “You okay?”

“I’m okay.” Starsky sighed, not knowing if it were really true or not. Then he looked at Hutch. He still had Hutch. How could he not be okay? “I got you. So I’m okay,” he said simply, leaning against Hutch, resting his head on a bare shoulder while Hutch’s arm came up around him. “Uncle Sol’s in the hospital. I wanna know he’s okay before we go home. And I…I need to talk to Ma one more time.”

“Do you think you should tell her?”

“Why?” Starsky swallowed, not bothering to fight the sting of hot tears behind his eyelids. “Maybe she needs somethin’ about Pop left to believe in, too.”

“What about you, babe? What do you need?” Hutch asked, and Starsky knew he was talking about the case. Still, there was only one answer that Starsky’s heart provided without hesitation.

“You.”

“You always have me, buddy.” Hutch closed the embrace and held Starsky close as a few quiet tears flowed.

 

 

The man in the hospital bed looked smaller, older and considerably more frail than the man they’d met at his apartment just the previous day. Sol Starsky was expected to pull through and most likely make a full recovery, provided he followed doctor’s orders. Starsky stood outside the window of the ICU room, watching his aunt sit by the bedside, clutching her husband’s hand. He closed his eyes, wondering if she realized that he was still in love with his brother’s widow. Forty years together, being each other’s one and only, except that one heart isn’t in it. Starsky thought that might be the saddest revelation of all.

“The doctor said his vital signs are getting stronger.” Rachel’s voice startled Starsky from behind, and when he turned toward her, she handed him a cup of coffee, then took a sip of the one she’d brought for herself.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Ma.”

“I know you didn’t.” She sighed. “To the last day of his life, your father always believed he could solve everything. Catch every bad guy. Keep control of the territory. He realized early in the game he needed help to do that. Jack Cincinelli was a cold-blooded killer. Your father had more than one informant tell him horror stories…stories he couldn’t back up or prove.”

“Joey Durniak wasn’t exactly a prince either.”

“No, he wasn’t. But he didn’t slice up women or beat elderly men to death for not paying protection money.” She paused. “No one would ever testify, but they were stories everyone heard. A shop owner’s pretty daughter gets her face cut and disfigured and it’s just a random street crime. An elderly store clerk dies from a beating he gets from two thugs, but they were just robbing the place. Those were the official stories, the way the police heard it. Then there were the stories behind those lies, the stories that people whispered about Jack Cincinelli because everyone was too afraid to cross him.” She took another sip of coffee. “Everyone except your father and his partner. His first partner, that is. Cincinelli had him killed, just like he had your father killed.”

Starsky let the words flow. His mother needed to believe in something good about her husband, that he was a noble hero who died in the line of duty…who died because he was too brave and diligent a cop. To learn that he was shot down in the street because Joe Durniak had some personal issues with wife beaters and because Sol Starsky set the wheels in motion would be too painful a replacement for this fairy tale.

“This is probably partially my own fault,” she said. “I told Sol about you and Ken. I shouldn’t have done that. That was your place. I needed someone to talk to, and I didn’t think Nicky should hear it from me, so I talked to Sol and Anna.”

“I know I should tell Nick, but sometimes I wonder why. He doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“Sol only ranted and raved about it. How unnatural it all was. I should have seen that coming. He was always very traditional, very moral.”

Dear God, Ma, if you only knew….

“He wasn’t very pleased to see us. He actually wanted Hutch to wait in the hall.”

“I can imagine you accepted that well,” she said, smiling.

“If I hadn’t needed to talk to him, ask some questions, I would’a left right then.”

“Did he have any answers?” She looked him in the eyes, and Starsky’s heart sank. He’d never looked his mother squarely in the eyes and lied to her. If he did that now, she’d know. And in his heart, he knew he couldn’t bring himself to betray her trust that way.

“Yeah, he did.”

“Did you find out what you needed to know?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered honestly, nodding.

“Good.” She forced a slight smile. “Go home, live your life, and remember the good times, when you were little. Before he drank so much, when we were happy. He loved you, David. To the last day of his life, he loved you. The…sickness in his soul, that made him drink and…and lash out like he did… He wasn’t like that when we were first married. He was handsome and romantic and funny, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his family. He loved me and he loved you and Nicky. But you were his first born, and even after you went to California to be with Rose and Al, he talked about visiting you out there, about all of us being a family again. Not a week before he died, we were having dinner with Sol and Anna, and your father said that he wanted to bring you back home, so we could be a family again. He’d been trying hard to control his drinking, and he was doing better.”

“Sol thought he was gonna bring me home?”

“Well, yes, we all thought that. We sent you out there to be safe, but your father missed you, and he never stopped trying to quit drinking. But then it would just happen again….” She shrugged. “But he was trying, and we hoped that we could all be together again. After he died…I realized that I had to work at least part-time, and while Sol and Anna were here for me, they weren’t rich people. They couldn’t support us. Nicky spent too much time with the wrong crowd. I knew it at the time but I didn’t know how to stop him.”

“You could’a moved out to California with us. Stayed with Rose and Al like I did.”

“Asking my brother to take in my son, when he and Rose wanted a child so desperately, was one thing. Asking them to support another whole family was something else entirely. You know Grandma Goldman wasn’t well, and she depended on me to be here.”

“Grandma Goldman was livin’ with Aunt Sophie.”

“She was my mother, David. I loved her, and I knew she was dying. I didn’t want to leave her.” She looked away, watching Anna through the glass, sitting there at Sol’s bedside. “Your father is buried here. My life was here. Everything and everyone I knew.”

“I was in California,” Starsky said, feeling pierced that he’d been excluded from that generalization.

“I didn’t love you any less because you were in California, David. I loved you too much to take away from you the new start you had. But I’m not a freeloader, I never have been. After your father died, I went to work part-time at the phone company, and I made enough along with your father’s pension to support Nicky and me, and to put a little away for a rainy day. I wouldn’t have moved to California and let Rose and Al support us, and I could barely keep track of Nicky–keep an eye on what he was doing.”

“You could’a–”

“David, I did the best I could. I know that you think Rose and Al are the answer to everything, and it makes sense you see them that way. But they weren’t rich people. Rose’s grandmother left her that house–and that made them look a lot more affluent than they were. Al didn’t make all that much from the car business. They managed, but they didn’t have enough to take on another whole family.”

“I know that. Aunt Rose keeps apologizing’ to me because she couldn’t afford to send me to college. Like she owed it to me or something. I probably wouldn’t’a gone back then anyway,” Starsky added, snorting a little laugh. “I guess I’m just lookin’ for a way to get back all’a those years we didn’t have, y’know?”

“I know, honey. There are days I think I did the wrong thing, that I should have brought you home for good after your father…died. But you were happy, and it would have killed Rose. I asked her to open her home and her heart to a child, the one thing she wanted most in the world.… To take that child away again would have been unspeakably cruel, and you were better off where you were.” She paused. “What time is your flight?”

“Four o’clock.” Starsky checked his watch. It was almost two.

“Where’s Ken? I wanted to say good-bye to him.”

“He’s downstairs in the cafeteria. I wanted some time up here on my own. I was kind of hopin’ to run into Nicky, and I think it’s just as well if Hutch and he aren’t in the same room together right now.”

“I know he went to see you. He told me that things would be safe again after you left. I wish you two could be closer now that you’re all grown up.”

“So do I. I can’t make him forgive me for how things went down in the past, and I can’t change the fact he hates me for reminding him that his image of Pop is a lie.”

“It’s not a lie, David. It’s just an image of how your father was before everything fell apart. I tried to keep that alive for Nicky, as best I could.” She smiled. “Just like I didn’t tell you boys about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny until the last possible moment.”

“What’re you sayin’, Ma? I shouldn’t keep leavin’ that tooth I lost a few years back under my pillow?” Starsky smiled, and his mother laughed, something he was relieved to see. He’d seen too little of that lately…actually, he’d seen too little of it all his life.

“Don’t be too hard on Nicky for keeping a couple teeth under his pillow, too.” She reached over and took Starsky’s hand, squeezing it.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Ma. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

“I know that,” she said, still smiling. “Your father would be so proud of you. I don’t know if that means anything to you anymore, but you’re all the good things he was, all the best parts of him. And I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.”

“Thanks, Ma,” Starsky managed, pulling his mother into a hug and somehow swallowing the lump in his throat. “It means everything.”

“Let’s go find Ken so I can say good-bye to him–and thank him again for taking such good care of my boy and making him healthy and whole again.”

“And happy, Ma. I don’t like to upset you, talking about Hutch and me too much, but…I…I just love him so much, and it’s so good bein’ with him…it’s like everything I ever wanted.”

“I’m glad, honey. Everybody should find that somebody to love so much. I wish things weren’t the way they were, but…but I know you love each other, and I know you’re happy. I want you to be happy.”

“So is there anybody special…y’know, somebody maybe around the apartment building or something?” Starsky probed as they headed toward the elevator.

“You’re checking up on my love life?” she asked, giving him a teasing smile as he pushed the button for the elevator. He looked at her, a little surprised. Somehow, the concept of “Ma” and “love life” didn’t really go together. He was a little surprised at the flash of childlike thinking, but he couldn’t help but smile at himself for it.

“I guess, yeah.”

“Well, there is a nice gentleman who just moved in on the third floor. His wife passed away a couple of years ago.” They got into the elevator and Starsky pushed the button to take them to the hospital lobby and cafeteria. “He’s a little taller than you, still has a nice head of hair…broad shoulders–”

“Ma!”

“What? I don’t have eyes? What did you want me to do? Look for one with a nice extra rocking chair?” she needled, barely suppressing a grin. “He drives a convertible, you know.” The doors opened and she stepped off the elevator, looking back to find her son still standing there, gaping a bit. “This is our floor,” she stated simply. Starsky wandered out, his mind too busy processing the vision of his mother riding in a convertible with this faceless, broad-shouldered, elderly Romeo.

“Should I meet this guy before I go home?”

“He’s in Minnesota visiting his daughter.”

“Minnesota? Hutch is from–”

“I know where Hutch is from, honey. I guess this family has a weakness for tall Minnesotans.”

“Are you…has he…are you…going out?”

“We’re co-chairing the building tenant association, so, of course, there may be times we simply have to get together in the line of duty.” She shook her head, smiling. “Much as it would pain me, I could endure spending a little time with him. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. I checked.”

“You checked?”

“I suppose you think you and your father were the only detectives in the family? I have my sources. Well, I have Sarah who lives down the hall from him and belongs to my synagogue. She keeps me posted, though she’s a little upset I won’t go out with nice Mr. Feinstein, who weighs about three hundred pounds and smells like mothballs.”

“Why doesn’t she go out with smelly old Feinstein if he’s so great?”

“She claims she’s still mourning her husband, who’s been dead for ten years. Maybe she is, but personally, I think she’s trying to get me to date that fat know-it-all to clear the road for herself with Mitch.”

“Mitch is the guy with the convertible?”

“Oh, and you should see it, David! It’s black with white leather seats…not a mark on it!”

“Maybe I should stick around. Keep an eye on you.”

“Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself.” She winked at him. “You better go get Ken. I’ll wait in the lobby.” She walked over to a waiting area and sat down, picking up a magazine. Even now, in her later years, she was a pretty lady. Starsky had to smile at himself. It would never matter how worldly he became–the thought of his “Ma” scoping out men, being dazzled by their convertibles, or dating would always seem…unthinkable.

Oh, well. If she can get over me bringing a guy home to mother, I guess I can get used to her dating. Besides, I sure didn’t go wrong with my tall man from Minnesota….

“You’re still here,” a voice startled him as he was about to go into the cafeteria. Nick stood there, hands stuffed in his jeans pockets. His designer jeans, topped off with an obviously expensive blue silk shirt, top-of-the-line leather boots on his feet. A small gold necklace glinted from around his neck. God, Nicky, where is all’a the money comin’ from?

“My flight leaves in less than two hours, so I’m as good as gone.”

“You see Uncle Sol?”

“Just through the glass. Anna was with him, and I figured that was best. I just wanted to know he was gonna be okay.”

“So you can go back to Bay City with a clear conscience?”

“No, because he’s Pop’s brother. Look, Nick, if this is just another go-round, I’m tired and I’m runnin’ late to go to the airport. I don’t wanna do this with you again.”

“No…it’s not. I gotta know, David. What’d you find out? I mean, was Pop dirty, or what is it that put Uncle Sol in the hospital?”

Starsky stared at his brother for a long moment, trying to discern if the younger man really wanted the truth or just a reassurance to lay to rest the nagging doubts that were there now since Starsky’s new investigation. Suddenly, images flashed through Starsky’s mind of Nick going off in a blind rage after Surfus and getting himself killed or thrown in jail for the rest of his life. Of him confronting Sol as he struggled to recover from this heart attack. Of what it would all cost his mother, who had already paid too dearly for things that weren’t her fault.

“Pop, you know, he worked around Joey Durniak a little, but it was a tactical move,” Starsky said, knowing it was roughly the truth. “I guess just me askin’ a lotta questions upset Sol. That’s all.”

“That’s it, huh? Man, that’s not much after all’a this hassle.”

“No, it’s not much,” Starsky agreed. “Look, Nicky, you be good. I don’t want you doin’ anything that’s gonna hurt Ma, you got it?”

“Since when would I do anything like that?” Nick demanded, affronted.

“You gettin’ hurt or arrested would break her heart, kiddo. I can’t talk you into walking the straight and narrow, and I’m done trying. I’m gonna butt out. But if you hurt Ma with getting yourself in trouble, I’m personally getting on a plane and comin’ out here and takin’ you apart. Clear enough?”

“You still think you’re in charge around here, don’t ya? Like you have any say in what I do.”

“No, I don’t have any say in it. But Ma’s gone through enough hurt and she’s happy now. If you mess with that, I’m gonna mess with you. So watch your step.”

“Okay, all right, I get it. No need to pull your Dirty Harry routine on me, big brother.”

“Be careful, Nicky. I’ve seen more’n one guy end up dead over a hot stereo.” Starsky paused, seeing the flash of irritation on his brother’s face. “You’re my kid brother, Nick. I love ya. I don’t wanna bury you.”

“Hey, what’s this about buryin’ somebody? I’m fine. I don’t get into anything heavy. Like I told you–”

“I know.” Starsky held up a forestalling hand. “Just watch your back, Nick, and be good.” Starsky pulled his brother into a quick, gruff hug and then stepped back, barely giving him time to return it. “I gotta get Hutch so we can hit the road. When Uncle Sol’s awake sometime, tell him….” What? I forgive him? I don’t exactly…I can’t…. “Tell him to get well soon, huh?”

“Sure thing.”

“‘Bye, Nicky.” Starsky watched his brother head for the elevators, and out of the corner of his eye, could see his mother had been watching the exchange from the waiting area. She was out of earshot, but concerned nonetheless. The seemingly placid farewell as Nick walked away left her with a slight smile, and she went back to her magazine.

“See ya ’round, David.” Nick got on the elevator and the doors closed. Starsky stared at them for a minute, wondering how much longer Nick’s luck would hold…how long before he’d get the tearful call from his mother that his luck had run out.

“Hey, there you are. We better get a move on, partner,” Hutch said, coming up beside him. “Starsk?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. I was just talkin’ to Nick.”

“That explains it.” Hutch looked annoyed and Starsky couldn’t blame him. Anyone who consistently pushed Hutch’s emotional buttons wouldn’t be high on Starsky’s list either.

“Ma wants to say good-bye to ya before we take off.”

“Did you tell her anything?”

“No.” Starsky’s expression darkened. “I hate walkin’ outta here, going home, knowing that Surfus is just gettin’ off the hook.”

“The guy’s already got a death sentence in place, Starsk. I doubt he’ll be around much longer anyway.” Hutch sighed. “I s’pose the cops know where he’s living without us tipping them off.”

“Yeah, and they don’t have anything concrete they can use to bring him in–just like before. But we do.”

“You could tip ’em off to talk to Karen over at Rudy’s.”

“Then I put her in the line’a fire. And we could turn all’a this over to the cops, testify ourselves…but I got no way’a knowin’ who Surfus is still in touch with. Ma’s never gonna leave New York and I can’t watch out for her from Bay City. It’d be way too easy to off Nicky and make it look like it was something to do with his own ‘deals’ he’s always talking about. It wouldn’t pass without somebody sending me a message. If they just came after me, that’d be one thing, but I won’t risk Ma and Nicky.” Starsky paused.

“Let’s go say good-bye to your mother and go home, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m ready for that.”

 

 

Hutch leaned back in the seat, letting the sound of the jet engines relax him. Starsky was reading a magazine, or rather staring fixedly at the same page since they’d taken off. The Starsky clan did, indeed, have an odd and tangled web of loyalty and secrets, and for someone as honest and forthright as Starsky, Hutch knew that fact ate at his soul. After all they’d found out, they ended up on a plane back home with nothing really changed, except Starsky knowing answers that seemed to hurt him more than the filmy stories he’d been told in their place.

The need to solve the case of his father’s murder had become a compulsion in recent weeks, and though it hadn’t resulted in any earth-shaking arrests or any inspirational triumph of justice, it was over. That was all Hutch could think of in its favor–it was over.

As over as it ever really is for someone who lives with the memories of being hurt as a child by a parent they loved and trusted. As over as it would ever be for Starsky, who vacillated between loving the father who played with him, taught him things, was proud of him…and the man who betrayed his trust by hurting him and his mother so badly. The man Rachel Starsky still mourned and never stopped loving. Hutch understood that kind of love now. Looking over at Starsky, he realized there was nothing anywhere in the stretches of his imagination that could make him stop loving his partner. You can be angry at someone, lose your respect for them, resent them or even be afraid of them…but you can’t turn off your heart and order it not to love them. Not loving Starsky would be akin to not breathing.

Hutch thought of what Starsky said to Nick in the hotel, what he’d overheard from his place in the bathroom. Maybe she loved not wisely but too well. Hutch knew he’d heard that old quote somewhere, and it was so true of all Starsky, his mother and his family had been through. Maybe Starskys tended to love too well when they loved. Selfishly, it warmed him to be the object of that kind of unwavering devotion, and it felt good to know he’d directed his own uncontrollable, unconditional love to someone who would always cherish it and return it manifold.

He reached over and slid his arm under Starsky’s, joining their hands and lacing their fingers. The other passengers were all either reading, napping or otherwise occupied, and he couldn’t resist the opportunity to indulge in the one little gesture of affection. Starsky squeezed his hand and looked at him with a smile that was pure love. Hutch smiled back, basking in that warmth.

Lucky for us that when we loved too well, we also loved wisely.

 

 

Two days after returning home from New York, Starsky and Hutch accepted a dinner invitation from Starsky’s Aunt Rose and Uncle Al. The get-together was really prompted by Starsky’s call to Rose saying he wanted to see them both to fill them in on the trip to New York, which Rose felt was the perfect time for her nephew and his friend to join them for a friendly family meal. Fortunately for all involved, Al did the cooking, providing the group with a feast of lemon pepper chicken and a host of side dishes. Apparently, life with Rose had prompted him to become as skilled in the kitchen as he was in the garage.

After eating a meal that was strained at best by attempts to maintain light small talk, Starsky, Hutch, Rose and Al sat with their coffee and cherry pie in the Goldman’s large living room. Decorated in shades of tan, beige and white, Rose had managed a décor that was both attractive and comfortable. Two large, tan corduroy couches with printed accent pillows and two overstuffed chairs surrounded a large, low coffee table. Bookshelves lined one wall of the room while a fireplace occupied most of another. The two large windows were adorned with ivory tie-back drapes.

“I guess we’ve been beating around the bush long enough,” Starsky said, setting his partially-eaten dessert aside. “You knew we were goin’ to New York about Pop’s murder case.”

“We figured you must have found something out when you called about getting together right away,” Rose said, taking a sip of her coffee. “Not that we aren’t thrilled to have you two here anytime, but you’ve been a little scarce lately.”

“It wasn’t Cincinelli,” Starsky said. “He had nothing to do with the hit on Pop.”

“That is a shocker,” Al said, shaking his head. “I would’a bet the farm on that one.”

“So would a lot of other people, but it didn’t go down that way. It was Joey Durniak.”

“Durniak?” Rose’s eyes widened. “But I thought–he paid for your father’s funeral! I thought they were friends…sort of.”

“They were, to a point. Durniak being in control of the territory kept Cincinelli out of it, so Pop gave him some breathing room to operate.”

“Did Mike go back on the deal or somethin’?” Al asked, frowning in confusion. “Doesn’t make sense Durniak’d want him dead.”

“Pop’s death had nothing to do with the war between Cincinelli and Durniak. It…it had to do with what was going on at home.” Starsky took a deep breath. “Sol talked to Joey about the fact that Pop was drinking too much sometimes and hitting Ma.”

“Sol told him that?” Rose’s eyes bugged. “But Rachel was so quiet about all of it, kept it to herself…I don’t understand. Sol is his brother–why on earth would he want to see him killed? It’s too…monstrous!”

“Sol said that he was hopin’ that Joey would send out some of his muscle just to give Pop a scare. He claims Joey’s the one who took it to another level, because his old man used to beat up his mother, and Sol thinks Joey turned it into a hit because of that.”

“I still can’t picture Sol going to Durniak.” Al shook his head. “Incredible. Does Rachel know?”

“I didn’t tell her. Nicky didn’t wanna hear anything except that Pop was a hero who got killed because he was trying to bust gangsters.”

“Sol could never say anything because since he’d asked Durniak to ‘do something,’ he was implicated in first degree murder,” Hutch spoke up. “So he kept quiet about it all these years.”

“There had to be more behind Joe Durniak killing your father than some marital problems,” Rose speculated. “Maybe there was something else wrong between Durniak and your father.”

“You mean this just lit the fuse?” Starsky asked, and she nodded. “Could be, but we’re never gonna know. Can’t ask him.”

“How did Rachel take it?” Al asked, the concern plain in his voice.

“I didn’t tell her. I know Nick doesn’t wanna hear what I got to say anymore now than he did back when I tried to explain to him why I moved out here.” Starsky slumped back in his seat on the couch he shared with Hutch, who was, as usual, there to lend quiet support. “The shooter is nearly eighty years old now and has cancer. Durniak’s dead. Sol’s getting over a heart attack. Nobody’s gonna gain anything by makin’ an arrest. Plus, if I dragged all of it out in the open, Pop’s ties to Joey would be looked at real hard, and if present-day IA decided he was a dirty cop, Ma could lose her pension. Not to mention how she’d feel about his name bein’ trashed like that.”

“For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing by knowing enough to let sleeping dogs lie at some point with this, David,” Al said solemnly. “You got your answers, and I know that was important to you, but I’m glad you didn’t put your mother through too much misery over it.”

“Hurting Ma was the last thing I wanted to do.”

“I can’t condone what he did,” Rose began, still poking somewhat disinterestedly at the pie on her plate, “but I also can’t help but think that this has been an awful thing for Sol to live with all these years. To think you were just ‘throwing a little scare’ into your brother, and then to have him gunned down instead? He must have paid for that every day with guilt…I can’t even picture it.”

“I called Ma last night to see how Sol was doin’. He’s off the critical list and awake and talking to everybody, so he’s gonna be okay. In a way, he’s been doin’ time for this since it happened.”

“I’m glad you told us the truth,” Al said.

“There’s something else I need to tell you the truth about, and you might not like to hear it, but you gotta know. You’re too important to me not to know.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is, Uncle Al.” Starsky took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “Remember before I went to New York, you thought I was seeing somebody special because I hadn’t been around too much?”

“I knew it!” Rose said triumphantly, smiling brightly. “I just knew there was someone–tell us about her! Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Uh, well, it’s someone you already know real well.” Starsky swallowed, glancing at Hutch a little uneasily. “And it’s not a ‘her’.”

“What do you mean, dear?” Rose asked, taking a drink of her coffee. “I thought you said there was someone in your life?”

“Rose, let him talk, honey,” Al chided with a smile.

“Hutch and I are…together.”

“You’re partners, of course you’re together. What does that have to do with–?” All of a sudden reality dawned, and Rose’s eyes widened. She looked at Al, who was more or less frozen in his chair, shock plain on his face.

“We’ve always been best friends, more like family to each other, you know that. After I got shot, we spent a lotta time together, and we started realizing that…that we didn’t want anybody else. So, um, we….”

“Deepened our relationship,” Hutch added, saving Starsky the struggle for words. There was a long ensuing silence.

“Say something,” Starsky finally pleaded, unable to take the blank faces and unreadable silence any longer.

“Does your mother know?” Rose asked finally.

“She knows. I told her a while ago. Nick doesn’t know. Ma told Sol, and he didn’t take it too well. He wanted Hutch to wait in the hall when we went to see him.” Starsky leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know this is a shock, and I know it’s the last thing you were expecting to hear from me. We both know it might take a lotta time to get used to the idea, but we wanted to be honest with you. You’re my family…I can’t lie to you about something this important, and you’ve always treated Hutch like family, and I’m just really hopin’ that doesn’t have to change.”

“After what I watched Maggie Blaine go through, I don’t know how I feel about this.” Rose stood up and walked slowly over to the bookshelves where a number of little angel statues were displayed. She turned one of the little figurines back and forth slowly, as if it were helping her think things through. “All those years John and Maggie lived next door to us–oh, my dear Lord,” she gasped, turning around to look at Starsky. “Oh, David, John never…tell me he didn’t–”

“No! Aunt Rose, no, John has nothing to do with this,” Starsky said, standing up and going over to his aunt. “John never said or did anything wrong to me. He was like another father. Besides, John’s situation wasn’t anything like this. John was living a double life. He was gay and he felt like he had to hide…and he did, if he wanted to stay on the force, be safe. With Hutch and me, we fell in love, and we’re not tryin’ to live that kind of lie. We can’t be open at work and we can’t even be very open anyplace else, but we’re not gonna marry women and have kids and use people to cover for us. I’m not judging John. He did the best he could and he might’a thought, back when he married Maggie, that he could make a go of things. I know he loved her, and maybe he thought it would be okay, that he could make himself go that way. It just didn’t work.”

“But all the women you’ve dated. You were so in love with Terry, and you felt so bad when she died…how could that have been a lie?” Rose asked, tears threatening her voice.

“I’m not gay.” Starsky paused, looking at Hutch, who shrugged. “Maybe people would call me that because I’m in love with another man. I don’t know. I never got together with men, or even looked at ’em, before I…before Hutch and I…before we….”

“Got together,” Hutch supplied calmly, knowing Starsky had backed himself into an embarrassing corner.

“Yeah. I love Hutch and it doesn’t matter to me that he’s a guy. I mean, I don’t want him to not be a guy, but it’s not a bad thing that he is–I’m not sayin’ this right.”

“I think what David’s trying to say is that we love each other, we want to have a life together, and the outside packaging just isn’t the most important thing.” Hutch paused. “I love your nephew with all my heart, and I’d love him no matter what form he came in. I can’t love anybody else that much, and I’d be living a lie if I tried.”

“You’re awful quiet, Uncle Al,” Starsky said, looking over at the heavy-set man as he remained situated in the overstuffed chair he occupied.

“I’m tryin’ to understand how you could go from a healthy, normal, red-blooded man to…to bein’ some kind of–”

“Al, don’t,” Rose interrupted. “Don’t say something hateful. Better to say nothing at all.”

“He wants me to say somethin’!” Al shot back, getting out of the chair now. “So now I’m sayin’ it! What’d we do wrong? Where’d we mess up? Was it spendin’ too much time with Rose and the gay guy next door and not enough time with a good male role model? Is that it?”

“Uncle Al–”

“Maybe we should leave and talk about this when we’ve all had time to calm down a little.” Hutch stood up now, too, feeling like Starsky’s and his welcome was definitely close to wearing out.

“There’s nothin’ to talk about. I don’t wanna hear about this,” Al said, storming out of the room and up the stairs. A door slammed hard somewhere on the second floor.

“David, give him some time. He was so upset when we found out about John, and the first thing he panicked about was that we’d let you spend so much time unsupervised with him. He was afraid maybe John had done something to hurt you.”

“When I told you, it was the first thing that crossed your mind, too.”

“It’s a natural thing to worry about, David. You were our responsibility. Your mother trusted us to take care of you, protect you…. We never would have let you spend so much time over at the Blaines’ if we’ d known-”

“Then thank God you didn’t know.”

“Rose, you haven’t said much about how you feel about this,” Hutch said carefully, not sure he should say anything at all, but feeling like Starsky shouldn’t be going through this completely alone.

“Shocked, I suppose. I don’t know how I feel. It’s a sin, David. My God, it’s a sin, how you’re living.”

“It’s a sin to love somebody? Just because they’re put together differently than somebody else?”

“It’s a sin to love them that way, to…to…indulge in that. I’m sure you don’t agree with me or even understand how I feel, but all my life, I’ve tried to obey the Church, and…and I can’t see how I can condone this and still uphold what I believe in.”

“Marryin’ a Jewish guy wasn’t exactly on the approved list for a Catholic either, Aunt Rose. You fell in love with Uncle Al because…because he was him, not because’a what religion he was. You got married outside’a the Church for love. So now I’m goin’ outside’a what the Church would approve of, for love. Can’t you find it in your heart someplace to still love me even if I’m not doin’ what you think I should?”

“Oh, David.” Rose pulled him in for a hug. “Honey, I’d love you no matter what you did. You’re like my own son. How could I stop loving you because of this?”

“I hope you can’t.” Starsky returned the pressure, swallowing hard to keep his composure.

“You have to give us some time to get used to this.” She pulled back, reaching up to pat Starsky’s cheek. “I’ll talk to Al. Give us a chance to…to talk about it, and to deal with it. I know he’s angry now, but he loves you, David. He always wanted children, just as much as I did, and you were the greatest joy in our lives. That kind of love…it doesn’t go away when it’s tested. It might bend and twist a little, but it doesn’t break.”

“I gotta know…if this is gonna be one’a those things where you deal with me ’cause I’m family and expect to leave Hutch outta things. Sol was tryin’ to do that, and I can’t handle that, Aunt Rose. I love Hutch, and if you can’t accept us together, then you can’t accept me on my own. It’s both or nothing.”

“Starsk, you don’t have to put conditions on this now. Let them have some time. Let’s go home and give them a little breathing room before we issue ultimatums.”

“My family would never accept Al,” Rose said, smiling at Hutch. “So I moved to the opposite side of the country and never saw most of them again. I understand more of this than you think I do. One thing I know is that you can’t accept someone without accepting the person they’ve chosen to share their life with. You’re part of our family, Ken. This is going to take time to get used to, but we’ll try. We just have to learn to think of you a little differently than we did before.”

“If it helps, we aren’t asking that you and Al deal with what we are to each other beyond just knowing it and accepting it without…hating us for it. We aren’t going to do anything inappropriate or tasteless around you or Al. We wouldn’t do that to you. We’ll be as discreet as you need us to be to feel comfortable with us in your home, or around your other friends.”

“I appreciate that,” Rose said, smiling. “You’re a very nice man, Ken. I’ve always enjoyed having you come over with David, including you in family get-togethers. It’s nice to know that you’re willing to do what it takes to make things easier for David with his family. It’s obvious you love him. That’s always been obvious. I know how much he loves you.”

“With all’a my heart,” Starsky said, looking over at his partner.

“You two go home. I’ll talk to Al,” she said, turning back to Starsky. “Remember that even if he’s not handling this too well, he does love you. He’ll come around.” She smiled. “I won’t give him a choice in the matter.”

“That sounds familiar.” Starsky leaned in to give her a peck on the cheek, and they hugged again quickly.

Having said their last good-byes to Rose, Starsky and Hutch got into the Torino and headed for Hutch’s place. They’d been spending more time at Starsky’s lately, and Hutch complained that his plants were feeling abandoned.

“I guess it could’a gone worse.”

“Rose is a terrific lady. She’ll bring Al around, I’m sure.”

“I hope so. They were so good to me, Hutch. I just…I really need them to be okay with this.”

“I know. Give it time, babe.”

“Yeah, I remember somebody telling me that some things are worth waitin’ for.” Starsky grinned at his partner before returning his focus to the road.

“Absolutely.” Hutch reached over and rested his hand on Starsky’s thigh. “And other things should be devoured the minute you walk in the door.”

“Let’s see how good Merle’s last tune-up was,” Starsky quipped as he pressed down hard on the accelerator, speeding toward Venice Place and the promise of good things he didn’t have to wait for anymore.

 

 

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