Here's my answer to the alphabet story challenge that originated on the "Me and Thee" fansite and migrated to the Yahoo gen S&H group, where several other writers have also taken up the gauntlet. My story runs from A to Z and relies on a rather unusual parallel. Hope it pleases.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from "Starsky and Hutch." I do occasionally borrow them, but never with fraudulent intent or with an eye to monetary gain.

The Good of the Hole

By e-pony

A new day was dawning over the mountains. Bay City was slowly coming awake.

Capt. Dobey grumbled as he gloomily sipped his lukewarm coffee. Dieting always made him surly. Edith, however, had been adamant this time. "Fat is not where it's at, Harold," she had admonished him, sounding suspiciously like Huggy Bear.

Good Lord! Huggy – now there was a character! Information from the streets was a useful commodity, but the skinny bartender always served it up with his own peculiar flair. Jive talk and slang colored his speech. Kinky innuendoes abounded whenever a buxom working girl sauntered past, her tube top-encased wares advantageously displayed like ripe melons on a vendor's stand. Language was an art, and Huggy considered himself something of a "artiste" when it came to mixing rhyme with his reason.

Much to Dobey's chagrin, he had found himself having to deal with the colorful character more and more as time went on. Not that he disliked the man, but to the upstanding captain, the fast-talking informant represented a gray area of his own profession he had never quite come to terms with.

Officers, in the line of duty, often had to make the hard decision to leave the less dangerous lawbreakers on the street in order to apprehend the more dangerous ones. Police work was seldom a straightforward matter of black and white. Questioning the right informant could lead to a closed case and the arrest of an elusive criminal.

Restlessly Dobey rose from his leather desk chair and moved to the open doorway of his office. Starsky, one of his best detectives, was just entering the squad room, calling a cheerful greeting to his partner and toting a large, white bakery box.

Tactlessly, the young detective waved the open box under his captain's nose and asked in an innocent-sounding voice, "Donut hole, Cap'n?"

Urgent messages rushed between Dobey's rumbling stomach and his beleaguered conscience, as he backed away uncertainly. Virtue battled temptation for a moment, before being overrun by the gray forces of practical reality. When police let small-time offenders off the hook, sometimes major felons took a fall, benefiting the community as a whole, and if a tiny donut hole could quell the desire for a larger, more harmful donut, then surely the end result would justify the means.

X-rated films, hard liquor, easy money, women – these were other men's temptations, but for the captain, a donut hole meant the compromise of his latest convictions. "Yeah, thanks, Starsky," he replied.

Zeroing in on the lone cherry-glazed donut hole, Dobey snatched it up and popped the delicious morsel into his mouth – a small concession maybe, or even a slight defeat, but it was all for the greater good… of course.