Chapter 2

That evening, the staff sergeant sent them out with orders to get acquainted with their new beat. Hutch discovered that Starsky had served his time as a rookie in the club district. It was a little more upscale than most of downtown Bay City, Starsky told him. There would be plenty of action to occupy them on a typical night, but at the same time backup would never be far away.

"The next best thing to training wheels," commented an older officer.

Starsky just laughed. "Hutch, Simmons, Simmons, Hutch," he said, quickly. And before Hutch could manage a 'pleased to meet you', Starsky had him by the arm and was dragging him down the hall towards the parking lot.

Once on the street, Starsky kept stopping the patrol car to introduce Hutch to people with the same cheerful earnestness he'd shown in the precinct. Before long Hutch's head was swimming with names and details that he knew he'd never be able to keep straight. Had that last one really been named Huggy Bear? He had to have heard that wrong.

Hutch finally gave up and pulled out his notebook to try and create a crib sheet for himself. Maybe he could study it when he got home.

Adding to Hutch's discomfort was the fact that he had gone all day without smoking, and the nicotine craving was hitting him hard. Smoking in the car had been a matter of course with his previous partner, but the first thing Starsky had done when he signed out the car was throw a handful of change into the ashtray.

When Hutch had suggested that perhaps the ashtray could be used for, say, ashes, Starsky had given him a puzzled look and said, "What do you want to go stinking up the car for?"

With a sigh, Hutch flipped back to the beginning of his notes and reviewed what he had so far, absentmindedly chewing on the end of his pencil.

Starsky glanced over and saw what he was doing. "Don't worry about it," he said. "You'll get it. And until then, I've got it all up here." He tapped the band of his cap with one finger.

Hutch gave him a suspicious look. "This is revenge for all those nights I helped you study in the Academy, isn't it?"

Instead of answering, his partner suddenly shot upright in his seat, his head whipping around as something on the sidewalk seized his attention. "Did you see that?"

Hutch straightened. From the intensity of his partner's reaction, he expected to see a crime in progress. What he saw instead was a girl in hot pants, leaning over the hood of her car, her ample bottom facing traffic. "How could I miss it?"

Starsky was now looking out the rear window, his eyes glued to her rear, and Hutch's tone sharpened. "Will you keep your eyes on the road?"

Starsky turned to face forward. Palming the wheel and turning smoothly down a side street, he grinned at Hutch. "I was just practicin' my lip-reading."

"You're crude, you know that?"

"Don't tell me you weren't looking," protested Starsky, indignantly. "You're married, not dead!"

"What I'm interested in is the whole package," said Hutch. "Refinement, intelligence, sophistication…" He adjusted the knees of his uniform slacks, straightening the crease down the front of the leg, and brushing off an invisible bit of lint.

Starsky made a dismissive gesture. "Aw, that's too much work. Just give me a girl who knows how to have a good time."

"You mean like the one who stormed out of your apartment this morning? What did you say her name was? Karen?" Hutch smirked.

"No, that was Katie. I mean, Kathy." He frowned.

"You sure about that?"

Starsky snorted, and then narrowed his eyes as he slowed the patrol car. "Hey, Hutch? Check out that girl." His tone was deadly serious this time.

She was a bright spot of color against the drab streets: a brunette in a paisley patterned shirt and striped leggings, the black mini almost an afterthought. She drifted past the crowd lined up at the doors of a nightclub with the languid movements of someone moving through water. As they watched she collided with a man in a beret, gave him a sweet, vague smile, and stepped off the sidewalk directly in front of a taxi cab pulling up in front of the club.

The driver of the cab swerved, his tires squealing, and collided with a convertible traveling in the opposite direction. There was a metal crunching squeal, a bang, and then the sound of steam hissing from a ruptured radiator.

Cars on all sides came to a screeching halt, as the street was abruptly made impassable. And in the middle of it all, the girl stood looking around herself with uncomprehending eyes.

As Hutch bailed out of the squad car, he told himself traffic accidents were obviously the theme of the day.­­­­­­­­­

"Man, Lucy's flying high tonight," said Starsky as they pushed their way through the crowd. The taxi cab driver was yelling at the girl and gesturing emphatically at his damaged vehicle.

Hutch had hardly stepped between them when she threw himself at him, wrapping her arms around his waist with surprising strength. She was mumbling something, speaking almost too fast to be understood. "I touched the sun," she said. "But my wings melted. Now it's all bad karma..."

Hutch tried to pry her off, without success. Tilting her head back he found her pupils dilated so wide, the irises had nearly disappeared. What had Starsky said? Something about "Lucy"?

"I don't think she's on LSD," Hutch said. "Or, if she is, it's cut with something else, like PCP." He tried again to disentangle her, but it was like fighting with an octopus, and he didn't want to hurt the girl.

Helplessly he looked up at Starsky, only to find his partner smirking at him.

It was a relief when the paramedics finally arrived to peel her off of his hands, and his midsection, and his leg...

People were laughing. But it wasn't the girl's fault, Hutch reminded himself. She was scared, and messed up, and too high to make any sense. Gritting his teeth, Hutch did his best to hand her over with compassion and care.

An hour later he found himself back in the patrol car, his knees braced against the dash, filling out a report on the clipboard in his lap. He was craving a cigarette more fiercely than ever. Shift's almost over, he reassured himself.

To Starsky he said, "LSD doesn't cause quite that sort of behavior, in my experience."

The girl had rapidly flipped from a fear of falling to babbling about karmic auras, much to everyone's amusement but Hutch's. She seemed to think his was something special and had kept trying to knock his cap off and pet his hair.

Starsky pushed Hutch's knee to the side, and retrieved a thermos from under the dash. "In your experience? They got a lot of LSD out in the 'burbs?""

Hutch tried to think of an answer that wouldn't reveal too much, and then realized he'd let the silence stretch on too long. He looked over to find Starsky staring at him.

"Hutch? Did you ever?"

Hutch carefully slid the pen into the clip at the top of the board. He briefly considered making up some sort of plausible story, maybe about a friend of a friend, but then decided that a new partnership should be built on truth. "Well, back in '64 I was still in college."

"Uh-huh…"

"And there was this guy we were all reading about called Timothy Leary…"

A broad smile spread across Starsky's face as Hutch spoke. "You took LSD!"

Hutch winced. "Just once. When it was legal!"

"You jumped all over me for just renting an apartment from a pot-smoker, not even smoking anything myself, and yet there you are, taking acid. I can't believe it!" Starsky slapped the steering wheel, and to Hutch's ears there was something smugly satisfied about the sound it made.

"It wasn't the greatest experience, you know."

"Yeah?" Starsky was interested. "Did you act like that girl today? All floaty and happy?" He shook with barely repressed laughter, no doubt imagining a twinkle-toed Hutch floating down the street.

Hutch rolled his eyes. "Well, we were happy, but not like that. That's what I was trying to tell you. You don't get disconnected from the world on acid. Well, maybe you could if you took enough of it, I don't know. But generally everything's a lot more intense. It messes with your perceptions, makes stuff seem... more than it usually is."

He vaguely remembered what a bad place the kitchen had been, with its white tiles and the much-too-bright ceiling light. None of them had wanted to go in there, and even just walking past the kitchen to the bathroom had been an adventure of heroic proportions. If the girl had been on straight LSD, the flashing lights and noise of the street should have terrified her.

"So, what was wrong with it?" asked Starsky.

"Huh?"

"You said you only did it once, and that it wasn't great. What was wrong with it?"

"It was a lot of fun for about six hours. We sat around and laughed at everything. But then it didn't stop. I was tired and I wanted to go to sleep, and I couldn't! It just went on and on; the longest night of my life." Hutch was embarrassed. "I started worrying that I'd permanently messed up my brain chemistry."

"Ouch," said Starsky, his sympathetic response not entirely convincing.

Silence followed, but Hutch knew better than to assume Starsky was done. Sure enough, a minute later, Starsky said, "So, Hutch –."

The radio crackled, interrupting him. The dispatcher announced a fire on Fisher Avenue, requesting all available units in the area.

Starsky gulped the last of the coffee in the cap, and slapped it back onto the thermos, ignoring the droplets that splashed onto his sleeve. "Hutch, tell them we're responding!"

"Isn't that…?" asked Hutch, as he grabbed the mike.

"That's my street!" Starsky hit the siren as he accelerated away from the curb. "Tell them our ETA is about four minutes, and hold on tight!"

They arrived just behind the first fire truck, the wailing of sirens almost drowning out Starsky's muttered speculations. "Look, it's up at my end of the street. It must be one of my neighbors."

The flashing red and blue lights of the Emergency Vehicles set the shadows flickering into spastic motion, while the smell of wood smoke and burning plastic lay heavy in the air. A sudden eruption of sparks shot up into the nighttime sky, silhouetting the onlookers in black. An appreciative murmur rippled through the crowd.

"That's my house!"

Hutch flinched as Starsky's horrified yelp reverberated painfully in his left ear. He was still shaking his head when his partner jumped out of the squad car, and dashed directly towards the burning building. Hutch scrambled after him.

Starsky collided with a firefighter. The man reflexively grabbed him.

"That's my house." Starsky sounded almost plaintive, as if he was hoping it might all be some terrible misunderstanding after all.

"Sir," said the firefighter, calmly. "Stand back, please. You need to let us do our job."

The shock in Starsky's eyes gave way to something sharper and he hurriedly stepped back. "Sorry," he said. "Sorry... I'll just... uh..."

Damn, he moves fast, thought Hutch, as Starsky abruptly bolted into the crowd. Seizing a long-haired man by the shoulder, Starsky spun him around and grabbed the front of his Indian embroidered shirt. The man stumbled, almost losing a sandal.

"What the hell happened here?" Starsky demanded, his face inches from the smaller man's nose.

"Whoa, man. I know what you're thinking. What a bummer, huh?"

Hutch easily identified the nervous voice as belonging to Starsky's landlord. Former landlord, it would seem, based on the flames currently arcing up into the sky from the roof of the building. He glanced behind himself and saw the firemen working at unraveling a long hose from the back of the truck.

Starsky repeated his question, this time punctuating it with a shake that snapped Weezie's head back.

Weezie grabbed ineffectually at Starsky's hands, and gasped, "It was bad karma!"

Hutch reached for Starsky, hesitating a moment before touching him. He could almost feel the aggression radiating off of his partner. The man in his grip looked terrified. "Starsky…" He wouldn't really hurt him, would he?

Starsky didn't appear to hear him. "Bad karma?" His voice was disbelieving. Maintaining his hold with one hand, he used the other to gesture behind himself, the sweep of his arm taking in the whole scene. "Why's my house on fire?"

"Starsky," said Hutch, more urgency in his voice.

"I told you!" shouted Weezie. "It was bad karma!"

"I'll tell ya what's bad karma," snarled Starsky, pulling the smaller man to within an inch of his nose. "Bad karma is what you get when you don't answer my questions!"

This time Hutch did touch him, laying his hand on his partner's shoulder. "Starsky!"

A dark gaze flicked briefly his way, and then Starsky abruptly released his hold on Weezie, pushing him back so that he stumbled and almost fell. "Put him in the back of the cruiser, Hutch." Pointing at Weezie, Starsky snapped, "I'm not done with you!"

Swiveling on his heel Starsky strode off, shouting, "Okay, everyone, move back, give the firefighters room to work."

Glancing back, Hutch found Weezie attempting to discreetly disappear. Easily snagging the back of his shirt, Hutch said, "No, you don't!" He didn't know how Starsky had determined that Weezie was at fault, but he was willing to trust his partner's instinct. For the moment, anyway.

Weezie slumped in defeat and allowed Hutch to drag him over to the patrol car. As Hutch placed his hand on the top of Weezie's head to guide him in the door, he noticed that the side of his face was reddened, and his eye appeared swollen. Squatting, Hutch gently took hold of the man's chin, turning it until his cheek was angled into the uncertain light. "Hey, who hit you?"

"It was bad karma," was the baffling reply.

There was little the firefighters could do to save the old building. They focused their efforts on preserving the surrounding structures and preventing the flames from spreading. Most of the block was evacuated, and it was quite some time before Starsky had a chance to stop and appreciate the true scope of the disaster.

Everything was gone.

Sinking down on the curb, he dropped his head into his hands and stared wretchedly at the blackened rubble that used to be his home. The crowd had long since dispersed along with most of the emergency vehicles. A few firemen walked through the ruins, checking for hot spots, and looking for evidence with flashlights.

Starsky knew he had to make plans, to start thinking of some way to begin piecing his life back together, but it was all too overwhelming. He didn't have insurance. He didn't have a bed, or socks, or underwear. Even his toothbrush was gone. He'd never be able to replace the photos of his dad, or the fly ball he'd caught at the last game they'd attended together. Starsky sniffed, quietly, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. All he had left now were the contents his locker down at the station - a single change of clothes and an extra uniform.

And a nearly empty bank account. It was possible Weezie had been too stoned to make it to the bank with his rent check, but with the way his luck was running at the moment, he wouldn't be taking any bets on that.

Aunt Rosie would be willing to put him up, but she'd moved into that senior's apartment residence last year, her home was the size of a shoebox, and her couch was only about five feet long. Guess I'll be living out of my car for the next little while, thought Starsky.

Not far away he could hear his partner talking to the fire chief. Starsky noticed that Hutch was smoking. The red glow of his cigarette was a tiny reflection of the coals still glowing in the remains of his home.

"What have you got?" asked Hutch.

"Small time pot grower, had himself a hydroponics system going in his basement." The chief nudged a blackened pot with his foot. "Can't say yet whether it was arson or accident. The wiring in that place was a mess, looks like he rigged it up himself."

Oh hell, thought Starsky. It really was Weezie's fault.

Starsky heard a moan from the direction of the patrol car. He turned to see Weezie hanging out the window, as far as his one cuffed wrist would allow him, staring at the pot with a look of grief on his face. "Oh, poor Treebeard, you never had a chance…"

"Treebeard?" said Hutch.

Starsky thought he heard sympathy in Hutch's voice. He supposed it was something to do with being a fellow plant-owner. Even back when they'd been living in the Academy barracks, Hutch had always had a scraggly little row of plants sitting on the windowsill.

The fire chief was less forgiving. "Idiot! Messed with the wiring, and probably vented exhaust from the furnace, ramping up the humidity until the whole house was black with mold." He snorted. "This is the third one burnt down this month. It's just a matter of time until someone dies. And I'll bet you it won't be the dope-headed moron who's running the operation, either."

"Third one this month?" asked Starsky. "What was the cause of the other fires?"

The man shrugged impatiently. "What wasn't the cause? They were dives just like this one. Could pinpoint half a dozen ways for them to go up, and I'd still be surprised that they lasted even as long as they did." He turned and left, his heavy boots sending clouds of ash into the air.

Starsky sighed and pushed himself to his feet. Hutch was waiting for him by the squad car. He nodded at Starsky and dropped the butt of his cigarette, grinding it into the pavement with his heel. Bending down slightly in order to see the man inside the squad car, Hutch asked, "What's your real name?"

Weezie heaved a huge sigh, and turned sad eyes up at the two of them. "Leonard Wheeler. Hey man, you couldn't see your way to letting me just disappear, hop a train, make tracks?"

"Sorry, no can do," said Hutch, not unkindly. "Leonard Wheeler, you're under arrest for the production of a controlled substance, and other charges may be laid against you at a future time. You have the right to remain silent…"

Starsky leaned against the roof of the car and thought about the fact that if he'd simply busted Weezie, he'd still have a place to live. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he walked back to the remains of his home. He could smell the acrid scent of burnt plastic. The stucco hadn't held up well once the interior support beams had begun to burn.

After a moment, he realized that Hutch had joined him.

"Thanks," said Starsky, quietly.

Hutch shrugged, uncomfortably. "I wish I didn't have to."

Starsky supposed it was hard to work up much of a sense of accomplishment busting an eccentric little man with less than a dozen plants in his basement. "Yeah. Weezie's a nice guy... but what he was doing was stupid. The chief was right. Someone could have got killed tonight, just because he turned that place into a firetrap. I should have…"

Cutting himself off, Starsky gave his former home another mournful look. Losing everything seemed a harsh penalty to pay for overlooking just one little pothead, but that was the way it had played out, and there was no changing things now. From now on, he was busting every dope head he met, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Or butts, for that matter, thought Starsky, eyeing the remains of Hutch's cigarette.

Tobacco wasn't the same as pot, not by a long shot, but that didn't mean he wanted to be partnered with a smoker for the next several years. He'd had enough of breathing other people's smoke. He'd had enough of smoke, period.

"So what have we got now?" asked Starsky.

Hutch pulled his notepad out of his pocket and checked it over. "Well, the neighbors say they heard a fight about half an hour before the fire. Some shouting, some banging. Three big guys left Weezie's apartment, no solid description on them. From the look of him I'd say he got smacked around a bit." He paused.

"Do we have any kind of motive?" asked Starsky. Weezie wasn't worth beating up, but the guy who had broken in on him were another matter.

"I tried asking Weezie about that, but…"

"Let me guess," said Starsky, sourly. "He said it was bad karma."

"Yep." Hutch rubbed the back of his head, his uniform cap tipping forward into his eyes. "Do you suppose they wanted to shut him down, take over his turf?"

"Turf?" Starsky couldn't believe Hutch was talking about his former landlord like he was a big time dealer. "Weezie didn't have turf! He had Treebeard, Quickbeam, Leaflock, Skinbark…" He paused, trying to tick them off on his fingers. "Um, let's see, what were the other ones? I think the girls had names like Wandlimb…"

Hutch blinked. "Starsky, were you on a first name basis with Weezie's plants?"

"No!" He crossed his arms defensively.

Before Hutch could press the issue, a new voice intruded into their conversation. "Excuse me?" They both turned to see a harried looking fireman gripping an angry yellow cat in his thick leather gloves. "Which one of you is Dave?"

"That's me," said Starsky, his forehead crumpling in puzzlement. "But that's not my cat."

The man inclined his head over his shoulder, roughly in the direction of the patrol car. "He said I should give it to you."

They looked back to see Weezie once more hanging out the window of the car. "Dave, man!" he shouted. "You've got to take Frodo! He can't go to jail, he's innocent. And he's got no one else in the world but me!"

"Frodo?" asked Starsky, eyeing the animal in the fireman's gloved hands. It twisted suddenly and spat. He backed up a step.

"Don't let him go to the pound," pled Weezie. "He hasn't got the cute thing going for him no more. They'd give him the death penalty, for sure."

"Look, will you just take this thing?" said the fireman impatiently. "I've got other stuff I need to be doing."

"How am I supposed to take it?" asked Starsky, holding his hands up in front of himself defensively. "I don't have gloves like you do!"

Hutch stepped forward. "Here," he said, pulling Starsky up beside him. "Grip the cat here, at the back of his neck. That's right, take a good large fistful of skin, just like a mama cat holding her kitten."

The fireman began to let go, and Hutch stopped him firmly. "Not yet! Starsky, wrap your other hand around his chest, so he's resting most of his weight there. And hold him so that all his claws are facing away from you."

With a bit of coaching and a few hands-on adjustments, Hutch managed to get the animal transferred from the fireman to Starsky with no blood spilled. The cat kept up a fluent commentary in a tone of voice that was unmistakably rude, as it unsuccessfully tried to bring its hind legs up to rake the hand that had it gripped firmly, if somewhat nervously, around its chest.

"There," said Hutch, with some satisfaction. "You are now the owner of the ugliest damn cat I've ever seen." He leaned forward slightly and took a closer look, careful not to get too close to the flailing claws. "Oh, and it looks like Frodo's a girl."

Starsky examined the furious cat, gingerly holding it out at arm's length. He could feel the bones under the animal's skin, and the ropy muscles sliding in his hand. The cat had clearly been a little too close to the fire; it was covered with soot, and patches of his fur were singed black. Its whiskers were mostly gone, except for a few tightly curled and kinked strands.

"Thanks a lot, Nature Boy," growled Starsky. "What the hell am I supposed to do with a cat? I don't even have a place to live anymore!"

"Uh," said Hutch.

It occurred to Starsky that his partner seemed to know an awful lot about handling cats. "Hutch? Would you…?"

Hutch backed away, shaking his head. "No. No way. Vanessa would kill me if I brought that thing home."

Starsky turned on his heel and marched back to the car, the cat still held out at arm's length. "Weezie, I can't keep your goddamn cat!"

"No man, that's not any way to make friends," Weezie reached through the car window for the cat. Starsky hesitated a moment, and then shrugged and deposited the angry animal in the other man's lap. To his surprise, the cat didn't rip his former landlord to shreds. Instead it hunched down and stayed there, tail whipping furiously from side to side.

Weezie rubbed its back, saying, "You got to get into his headspace, see? Be mellow; spread a little of that love around."

"He's a she," commented Hutch. Starsky and Weezie ignored him.

"He's homeless now," said Weezie. "He didn't do nothin' to deserve this, man."

Starsky shifted guiltily. He'd never owned a cat. His father had been a dog person, and after he died, Starsky had lived with his aunt and uncle in Bay City. Anything with fur made his aunt sneeze, so there had been no pets, except for a tragically short-lived goldfish he'd won at a school fair. On the other hand, Weezie was right. The cat was innocent. It didn't seem fair to turn the poor creature out onto the streets.

"I don't know what cats eat," he said reluctantly.

"Cat food," said Hutch, just as Weezie in the same breath said, "Cheese."

"What?" asked Starsky, confused.

"Cheese, man," said Weezie. "Frodo likes cheese, and ham. Everything but the sandwich part, you know. Deli pickles make him a little crazy, though, so don't give him too many."

"No wonder that cat's so skinny," said Hutch, sounding pained.

Starsky decided that the animal had to be nicer than it looked, if it wasn't savaging Weezie. He gingerly reached into the car window, intending to take it back. As Starsky's hand came within reach, the cat grabbed his sleeve and launched itself up his arm, applying needle sharp claws to the task of scrambling up his whole height. Starsky lurched backward with a shout and grabbed it by the tail just as it dove over his shoulder. Ten little daggers sank into the back of his shoulder blade.

"Ow, ow, ow! Get it offa me! Huuutch!"

Laughing, Hutch carefully disentangled each of the small claws from Starsky's uniform shirt. The cat finally settled into Starsky's arms, sides heaving, ears still flattened to the sides of its narrow skull. Hutch shook his head, "Starsky, that is one ugly cat."

Starsky looked down at the cat. It swore at him again, just once, a low drawn-out imprecation that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep in its chest. Underneath all the soot and singed bits of fur was a cat that might have been handsome once, if a little on the underfed side. It was blond, long-limbed and definitely a fighter.

"I dunno, Hutch. He kind of reminds me of you."

To be continued...