Starsky sat at the back of the bus, his eyes losing focus on a string of cards that baffled him. How could anyone's luck be so rotten? He glared around him at the crowd of gamblers slavering over the pile of potato chips in the middle of the table. He'd folded three times in a row, and another fold would mean losing more chips than he could afford. But these guys were keen. He hadn't bluffed them once and gotten away with it.
He was pretty sure Wallace was cheating. He knew for a fact that Samuel was cheating and the rest were just enjoying the show. He'd been the mark all along. And he called himself an undercover police officer!
"Come on, Sergeant Starsky." One of the guys cooed, mocking his accent. "We know what you're holding. Just give it up."
"You was destined to lose from the start, man." Another chuckled, and the cop had to admit that it was likely true. The crowd he was with had little else to do with their time but play cards. Some of them were smart enough, or talented enough to have developed the skills to count cards or make use of a little sleight of hand. Calling them on it wouldn't do him any good. He was surrounded.
The moment his handful of cards went face down on the table the crowd of delinquent boys around him burst into congratulatory cheers. Exclamations of "hell yeah" and "you lose, cop!" passed around the crowd of players and onlookers.
The sound easily reached the driver at the front of the bus. He glanced in the wide rear view mirror and watched the curly headed detective perform the walk of shame, leaving the crowd of juvenile delinquents turned card sharks to their own devices. And all the chips he'd brought with him for the bus ride.
"I can't believe you lost." Hutch said, shaking his head.
"Those kids are criminals!" Starsky protested, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. "Jacobs had a dozen cards up his sleeves, and I know Wilson was counting."
Hutch gave him a look, then turned back to the mostly empty highway lit only by the headlights of the vehicles around them and the half-moon overhead.
"Is it my turn to drive yet?"
Hutch gave him a look then said, "Tired of losing, are ya?"
"They took all my snacks." Starsky said with a shrug.
"You know that was a nice thing you did, playing with those guys. It's not necessarily part of this job to entertain them."
Starsky shrugged. "They're alright. Figure if they can meet a friendly cop not out for their hides just because they got a rap sheet. Might improve future relations"
Hutch was quiet for a moment, watching the road before he said, "They really liked your badge."
Starsky blinked, and turned a confused look toward his partner, trying to remember when, if at all, he had shown the crowd of twenty juvenile delinquents his badge. "What are you talkin' about?"
"When Immerson stole your badge, it made the rounds up here. They really liked it."
Starsky's hands went to his back pockets and he straightened, spinning in a circle. "He stole my badge!"
"Your wallet, too." Hutch said, smirking.
"He…! Those brats!"
Hutch chuckled, reaching a hand behind him and stopping his partner from storming back down the the bus aisle to bust heads. "I got your badge and your wallet here. Completely intact. Kid behind me snagged it, demanded the kids turn your money back over."
Starsky glanced down at the kid zonked out in the seat behind Hutch. "What makes him such a do-gooder?"
"He's a level 8. One more level and he's out."
"I thought there were 10 levels." Starsky said, sending a quiet glare toward the rear of the bus before he settled in the front most seat opposite Hutch.
"There are, now. He was grandfathered in. He's been in the system since he was 14." Hutch said. Starsky was quiet for a moment and Hutch knew what he was thinking. Any kid in the system from so young an age had to have done something truly reprehensible. Murder, rape, something along those lines. That the kid was being grandfathered out of the system, probably because he was turning 18 and would be too old to hold in juvie anymore, meant two things.
First, he'd spent four of his crucial formative years in survival mode. Second, it was going to be one hard, cold-turkey transition between juvie and the outs.
"You know this job has been just a little depressing." Starsky said finally, letting his voice drop under the growl of the bus engine.
"Yeah." Hutch said, squinting against the light of a passing semi. "You get used to seeing them as adults, you don't like to think that criminals come in smaller packages."
"I think I understand the strike a little better." Starsky said eyeballing the tattered, rundown bus they were driving. Most of the noise on the bus was from the rattle of metal screens that were barely attached to the bus windows. None of those windows opened and the three, tiny revolving fans meant to provide air conditioning were a joke. Some of the seats were loose. None of the kids in the bus were secured, either for their safety or for that of the officers with them.
The bus might have been built in the 50s, and it was the best, and biggest vehicle the juvenile justice department for Bay City had. The lack of money provided for the small department of officers had been a problem to begin with, and steadily grew worse until the policy of "Just pretend it's not a problem" became too much to bear.
Hutch shrugged. "No money usually means no way of growing. Ernsberger and his group have done more with nothing in the past few years than any other department could do."
The game in the back of the bus was breaking up. Each of the guys were heading to their seats to doze for the rest of the long ride, and only two remained at the small round table in the back, eating the last of their chips. Starsky watched the two, Kyle and Chatham, no more than sixteen, trading stories and swapping lies like anyone else who'd been in the prison system for a year. Like it was normal.
He didn't know which was worse. That the world was such that kids so young had to be institutionalized, or that the same world didn't care enough to fund the pit they threw their young mistakes into. The prison system in general was under a great big, decade long reform but the kids were getting the short end of the stick all around.
The strike, or prison flu, had robbed three juvie facilities in Bay City of most of its staff. They wanted better pay for their people, and repair money for facilities that were falling apart. Even more, they had been on the receiving end of a constant shipment of juveniles from other smaller towns that couldn't handle their own caseloads. They sent their first timers to the big city to "scare" crime out of them. Sometimes it worked. Other times the scared kids ended up stuck in the system because the "scare" snapped their young psyches in half and they turned out to be better criminals than the city kids.
Bay City Juvenile Department had finally said enough was enough. To take up the slack while the ungreased wheels of justice moved slowly, other cops in the city had been recruited to spend a day 'volunteering' once every week. Starsky and Hutch had offered to man a prisoner transport of non-native juveniles back to their home state.
It didn't hurt at all that the kids were all to be delivered to the same little town in Arizona, and they had been offered vacation for two days following the transport. The Grand Canyon was only a few hours away, and Las Vegas only a few hours away from that.
The late night nature of the run hadn't been part of the plan but it was working out. Most of the guys were tired, ready to sleep and they were only four hours into an 8 hour drive.
The drive had seemed interminable to Starsky until one of the kids produced a pack of cards, Starsky produced his bag of goodies and the poker game started. That had triggered about two hours of a slow bleed of chips, candy and jerky. The kids got their salt and sweet fix, and Starsky ended up hungry but a lot less bored.
As the last of the kids drifted off to sleep Hutch's partner started pestering him about driving until he quietly caved. They switched places without stopping the bus and Hutch stretched out in one of the seats, pulled a cowboy hat down over his eyes and tried to doze.
He might have managed two hours of sleep, or maybe three, before the shit hit the fan.
He remembered the bus rocking, the tires squealing on pavement. He'd opened his eyes to see the face of his partner in the glow from the dash, his arms rigid around the steering wheel. The bus was starting to tilt and one of the tires was flapping, like it'd gone flat and shredded. Then another tire popped and the bus, no longer sufficiently supported on the right side, tilted toward the pavement.
They hit the road and the window he was leaning against shattered under his back, as he watched Starsky disappear, thrown from the driver's seat. The lights of the bus illuminated the concrete wall and metal railing of the side of a bridge, then were extinguished as the front of the bus smashed through.
Hutch screamed, "Hang on!" over and over, watching the edge of the bridge disappear under him, knowing that gravity and friction were supposed to be slowing them down, but momentum could very well carry them over the edge. Metal and glass ground on asphalt and he'd managed to get his feet under him, standing on the braces of the window, before the vehicle tilted downward.
He saw the jumble of rock and brush below. Down an incline that offered too much of the first, not enough of the second. Hutch slipped from the cubicle like seat, let himself fall forward and wrapped himself around his partner. The bus left the bridge, hit the incline and rolled.