A steel capped boot ground fire into his tender and sensitive back where crusting wields and whiplash scars were only slowly beginning to heal. They hurt afresh all over again now as the boot pushed and prodded and bit into his skin with merciless force.
"Move it will you? You'd better wake up and pay attention or I'll have to do more with this boot than just poke at you. Get up and look alive. Mr. Calvetti wants you alert and interacting, not washed out like some dead zombie. Fuckin' sit up pig!"
A female voice cut in and the small part him that might have still cared paid heed when he realized it was not the voice of Cassandra the knife wielding witch, but a new voice, lighter, airier. It was still not enough to raise his interest and dead in his soul, he closed his eyes to both of them. Starsky lay still and unreactive, not even able to muster the energy to grit his teeth against the lancing pain of the boot on his back.
Nothing was worthwhile responding to anymore and nothing was worthwhile thinking too much about anymore. He was alone completely and there was no hope of him ever getting out of this hell pit, this room of torture and pain. Hutch was not coming. Hutch thought he was dead.
Perhaps he was dead – for each moment he felt himself slipping further into an abyss of darkness where there was no definable edge to reality and nightmare. Maybe this was before and after. Maybe this was the end of life and the beginning of death. He'd never been there before so he couldn't be sure – but he imagined it must be something like this. This slow descent into nothingness.
There was no hope anymore and with only hurt to light his future what was the point in "being" a part of what happened around him, what happened to him.
It would take more than a sharp booted prod in his back and the tinkle of a female voice to force him into perception.
You'd wanna have more than this you fucker Calvetti. That's not enough to bring me back to this room, to you, to what you want to do with me. Better here, in this place where I am. So…you'd wanna have more than this.
But of course he knew Calvetti would have more than this – much more. That was why he needed to stay inside of himself as long as he possibly could. There were no blankets or covers to hide under, no hard shell or exterior protection to buffer him from Calvetti's vices, no friend to comfort or protect him and shield him from this interminable pain. And so he had to use his own mind to lock himself away.
And he was doing ok with it too – this turtle shell act – but the lowlife thug was doing his best too, and the boot pressure changed from an insistent grinding jab into a swiftly place kick, low and deep into his back. Starsky was wondering how close the blow had come to his right kidney when the next blow most certainly found his left. He arched and screamed and thought wildly of a turtle's shell cracking open under the force of a sledgehammer. But it was still ok because he was inside the shell of his mind, and no amount of sledgehammering could penetrate its wispy layers.
A paroxysm of coughing overtook him and he doubled even tighter to brace his chest against the painful laboring for breath, knowing that it only served to expose his vulnerable back even more.
"Leave him be will you? Let me handle this. You'll only end up with him unconscious and that is not our goal at all. We're supposed to be getting him to a more awake state, not kick him to death. Hand me that cup with the drink in it – Now!"
Her light voice deepened a little as she commanded the brutish guard to follow her direction.
He scowled but conceded to her request.
Starsky was pushing down the pain, another round of endless pain, his lower back cramping as he rolled breathlessly onto his side, the coughing still gripping his airways, starving him of a decent clear shot of air.
"David, David? Can you hear me? Try to listen to me. I haven't spoken to you before but I know who you are. I've been watching you on the cameras so I know a little about you and I know you are very stubborn. But listen please. You have to drink something. You've had little fluid in days and you need to drink. It's my job to get you to drink, but you know your body needs it too don't you? Try to sit up a little and drink. You'll feel much better I promise you. Mr. Calvetti wants you awake now and if you don't wake up he's going to let this guard make you wake up by force. Here – just a little to start with – just a swallow or two."
Bleary-eyed and watchful he rolled a little to the side but remained silent as she tried again.
"Just a swallow please. Don't you think that's better than another kick in the back?"
Apathy was laced through his low murmured response.
"Why? Why should I bother to drink? Gonna die anyway. He just wants to drag it out."
She leaned in very close now and he tried to frame her face in his blurred vision. With disinterest he took in her heavily made up face underneath which he could easily see youth and vitality. This young woman had more of a sense of herself, and what she was about, a sense of individuality than he had recognized in Calvetti's work drone Cassandra.
She took the chance to exercise her individuality and sense of dare as she advised him softly, her pink glossy lips coming close to his ear with an almost urgent whisper.
"Look you might as well drink this stuff. It's not going to dope you out, but make you feel better, lighter – well a bit trippy you know? Wouldn't you rather that than how you're feeling now. You're so down, so – well you look terrible. Really terrible. This stuff is a chance to escape for a little while. He wants you to be like that. Mr. Calvetti. He wants it – so you can – well so you can enjoy yourself with me. Why not? I've got to do it anyway so you may as well be feeling free. Feel free David, just for a little while and I'll try to make you forget how trapped you are."
Did she know that her words were enough to bring fresh tears to his eyes? Did she in all her innocent youth understand what she was really saying? He wanted to laugh or at least smile at her and her youthful mixed up, naive psychological reasoning. Here she was, a young vamp, offering him up a serving of wisdom - a rationale to get high and wasted because - God knows he was going to be wasted anyhow. But he couldn't find a laugh or even a whimsical chuckle and in some paradoxical way she was making sense. Why not be free for a little while in the context of being imprisoned? Allow himself to be once more controlled by the woman and the drug so that he could be abandoned in himself just one more time?
"Last supper and you're giving me the wine honey? But we both know it's tainted. Everything he gives me or every way he touches me is tainted. You tainted too?"
"No I'm not tainted David and I promise you that you'll enjoy the taste of me and my effect upon you."
"You're tainted honey. Don't fool yourself. Everything in this place is – you're no different."
She was right however. He looked down at the cup and saw the shimmering liquid. What would it promise him if he drank it?
He thought of Hutch and what he must be doing right now, grieving his death, blaming himself for a burned body in a burned out red and white Torino. Blaming himself for something he couldn't have prevented or known was going to happen – but blaming himself nonetheless.
Alone somewhere in his apartment, guilt ridden and anguished. Alone as he himself was here in this small hemmed in room, pain ridden and anguished.
Nothing to be done. Nothing to hope for anymore. For either of them.
Could the high she alluded to take him high enough and far enough away from this misery to make him not think about the nothingness – just for a little while?
Would the liquid in the cup perhaps take him out of the room altogether, perhaps back to his home, to his apartment or to Hutch's place? Just for a little while? If he drank it would it allow him the chance to fly out of here to that safe place, to where his friend sat, grieving and sad, to at least be nearer to him and not here in this tortured desolation.
The allure of the fantasy pulled him in.
He opened his mouth for the cup and allowed her to assist him to drink steadily, his dry mouth treacherously gulping at the cool refreshing elixir. He drank until the cup was almost empty and rested his head back, willing the receptors in his brain to open up to the intoxication of the chemical.
Her smile blossomed into one of knowingness, relief that she had succeeded with him leaving her more confident. Almost seamlessly she moved into her seduction mode. He could tell she was preparing for her role, pulling on her sexy demeanor and shifting from tentative young woman into skillful actress.
Let her, he thought for it no longer mattered to him what the players around him wanted to be and how they followed their orders from the sinister Calvetti. Let her become whatever she wanted and – he would play at something different too just for a short time.
He would play at not being here.
He swallowed the remainder of the drink, and she gasped a little at his forthrightness, surprised that she no longer had to coax him.
"So there you have it darlin'. It's gone. You've done your job as ordered. If you're sure about this drink then pretty soon I'll be free. Set me free darlin'. I'm so tired of this shithole."
As he rolled onto his back and felt the first touches of the chemical licking his brain and senses he focused hard on the cameras on the wall. He knew the drug was taking its effect because a sense of renewed energy flowed into his bloodstream, and a fresh hatred for the man who had put him here, filled his aching muscles with new burning tension.
"You want another show Calvetti you sick motherfucker? Another little home movie for your collection? S'pose you've got your dick out already ain't ya? "
The raucous laughter bubbled up uncontrollably in him and the shock of it filling and expanding his tender chest, had him clenching his hands in pain. But as even as he became aware of the pain, he knew he was already dissociating from it. His mind was leaping ahead leaving his battle weary body behind on the bed.
The room began to tilt and morph, its edges and walls convoluting and the white sheen of the pain rippling with a texture that was only in his perception. He knew the sensations, he was expecting them – flashes of his younger years ran through his head when dabbling with street drugs took him on this same ride and then experiences in Nam where hallucinogens were par for the course – it all came back to him in a familiar but not altogether pleasant rush. The effects of the drug picked him up on the wave and rolled him forward into the heavy wash of outer body perception. He let the drug take him, a willing traveller when the journey took him anywhere but this room.
It felt different, better than it had in so many hours and he embraced the sensation of having altered feedback of pain to his brain. But it fell short, at least so far, of taking him out of this room, and away from this reality.
And of course the drug, as he knew it would, fell way short of taking him home.
The girl was up very close to him, standing in front of him like some sideshow stripper. He wanted to wince for her, to cringe at her uncouth parody of what she could not be just yet because she was far innocent still. The guard had disappeared and Starsky vaguely recalled him watching the girl as she peeled off her skimpy top and skirt his eyes getting a generous fill before he took his leave. Now they were alone. Just the two of them. He and this young woman who now stood in nothing but her brief panties. She stretched in an attempt at languorous appeal but fell short of the mark in convincing him, and held her small breasts up toward his face as she advanced closer toward the bed.
Her nipples were hard and rosy, dusty and peaked and her small body was perfectly proportioned, her face pleasant and sweet despite her act as a mature sex siren.
But she remained dislocated from his mind and body and although her proximity was near her intentions did little to touch him in any sense of the word, physical or mental.
His own body was as limp and devoid of expression as hers was ripe and full of promise. He was all inside his head, his mind was leaping and electric – alive and increasingly distant from his relentless pain for the first time in days.
She came to him, as he knew she would.
Taking her time to remove the last item of her clothing at its best vantage point, she stood right up against his face as he lay on the side of the bed seeing her but not really watching her, powerless to do anything but focus on her lurid performance. Tauntingly, painstakingly she slowly stripped her panties down over her hips, over her groin and then down her legs.
His dazed eyes took in her face, sheened with perspiration and intensive concentration as she pushed her hips and unclothed pubes up against his face and neck.
"All yours David. All yours…every bit of me. What you want to do with me huh? I'm all naked here for you and I'm getting wet just thinking about how strong you are and how tough you are. I've seen you fight David. Oh yeah. You're a real man and I want a real man. I know you're not well, I know you've been injured, but I can do all of the work for both of us David. You just have to lie there and let me touch you, love you….Would you like that David? Or you can touch me too? You can reach out and touch me and stroke me, kiss me. If you want to. If you have the strength. I think those nice drugs have given you the strength to do that David. Haven't they? You feeling it in your cock David? Feeling what you want to do with me? Hmmnnn….Look , I'm right here, right near your pretty face and mouth. My pussy is all wet just waiting for you to lick me. Come on David. Can you see how wet I am for you as I stand here so close to you with my pussy right in your face?"
She thrust her slim hips up against the bedside and rubbed her bare taut stomach against his buried face, her vagina close enough to his mouth and nose that he could smell her feminine musky scent.
But the game was all for Calvetti and he wouldn't play for him. Not if he could help himself. His mind might have been taken for a joyride by the drug, but his body was flat lined and his will and verve was even flatter.
Distantly he wondered at his own lack of reaction and failure to respond to this blatant showgirl come-on. It was not his usual form. Even in his worst physical states, beaten and sore, wounded and bleeding, he would not have been able to staunch his healthy sexual appetite, his insatiable hunger for a ripe female from at least responding a little to her advances.
But he was driven too low now. Too low for even his drug morphed brain, and heightened perceptual awareness to raise him up above his lowest ebb.
Confusion shadowed her painted face and uncertainty threatened her false sense of sexual prowess. He saw it in her eyes…
That he was not doing what she had expected him to do.
That he was not responding to her flagrant show of sensuality.
That he remained closed off in himself and even further away, further unattainable as the protective blanket of the hallucinogenic swept him up and away from her.
A part of him felt for her failure to induce what she was ordered to induce in him. She had not reached the goal, had not fulfilled task set for her.
In a bid to incite him she hastily climbed atop his body. A body that was languid and lax now with the effects of the drugs streaming through his veins, most of the pain and the discomfort catalogued as another sort of sensation, but mercifully for now not perceived as agony.
Within moments she had discarded his drawstring pants and laid him bare to her eyes and the eyes of the voyeuristic cameras. Her light hands traced his chest and shoulders, coming down to his strong abs and lingering softly on his wounded sites. Aware that most every part of his front chest and abdomen was a live representation in violent body art she carefully sat her light frame so that her weight was positioned across his groin and flaccid cock. The only part of his anatomy that was unscathed and not painful to touch.
Moving her questing hands away from the marked and injured areas of his body she focused on giving close exploration to his pelvic region.
A spurt of uncertain desperation filled her eyes as she continued to rub her self against him, her legs widespread and ensuring that her bouncing breasts were directly in front of his clouded blue eyes.
Bending at the waist she brought her mouth and teeth down to play around his neck and chest and whispered a little frantically against his shoulder.
"Come on…you've got to wake up and get into this with me. He's watching – watching us both. He wants to see you excited and getting off on this. You can't just stay tuned out like you are. He'll punish you and he'll punish me. It's my job! My damn job don't you understand. I'm here to pleasure you David. Come alive for me. What turns you on? What do you like? Tell me; show me with your hands. I want to bring you to the edge. I have to make you..God you're so sexy, even hurt and all messed up like you are. You're so hard and tight and tough. I'm going to make you want this David. Just let me do this for you because your body surely turns me on. Don't I turn you on just a little David? "
And slowly, so very slowly, the rhythmic movements of her hands and her moist wetness rubbing against him pushed its way through the deadness of his center. He felt his pulse quickening, his breath becoming more shallow and rapid as his mind locked on to the sensation of her fingertips and palm stroking and squeezing his genitals.
The room was a whirling mass of whiteness but now there were new colors and new images swirling in on him, and her voice became a force that led the way away from his dead center. Focusing on her mesmerizing voice and the pull and push of her eager hands he sensed his recalcitrant body beginning to respond. Her face meant nothing to him, instead he tuned in to hands, her suggestive words and the constant rubbing of her warm moist center over his own increasingly warm cock. The blood began to gravitate to his dormant member and gradually her persistence began to pay off. The flicker started in the tip of his cock and spread. More blood flowed and her hands brought more life to the fledgling erection. Once started he knew that the combined effects of the hallucinogenic with her sexual ministrations were beginning to work a slow but impressive magic on his libido.
His breath rate picked up a few more notches and where her hands traced there was now a film of slippery sweat that had quickly begun to coat his neck, shoulders and chest. It pooled in small rivulets to find a track down into his abdominal demarcations. She seemed fascinated by the glisten of the salty moisture and trailed her fingers through it before lifting them to her mouth, tasting the essence of him.
"I love the taste of you David. See you're coming alive now aren't you? You're feeling me loving you and turning you on. This sweat, this sweat is for me and tells me how much you want me David. Can you feel how hard you're becoming? All for me."
Vaguely he remembered the blinking cameras and willed his springing cock to behave itself. But now, once more his body was proving that it could prevail over even horrific physical assault. Her legs spread even wider, inviting him to visualize her sleek opening and her obviously own stimulated state. Lying flat as he was he had a direct view to her moist pink center and she held his head still and straight in her hands for a moment, trapping him so that he could look no where else but what she was offering him up. She sat with her knees spread wide her so that her pussy was opened wide to him, her hard little clitoris standing out for him to see and her hands ceaseless in their rhythm. He was fast approaching a full blow erection and his own tender lower back and hip area was rising up to undulate against the girl's pelvis as she continued her artful dance across his groin and hips with her lower body. Once or twice she lifted herself enough over his rigid cock before coming down to take his whole length into her warm folds but then only lingered briefly before pulling herself off again, his dancing cock alive and seeping for her.
The pull into carnal ecstasy was like an electrical force field – every part of him was tingling and hot, scorching for fulfillment, burning for some form of pinnacle.
Her hands changed their positions and with moments she was accelerating his level of horniness to record proportions. He knew it was the drug. The girl's behavior, her somewhat clumsy seductress act and the whole situation was not be enough to bring him to this point of almost unbearable sexual tension. Intellectually he could appreciate that the chemicals sweeping through his blood were having a dramatic impact on enhancement on his sexual imagery and primal urges.
Can't go home …but just let go for now…let yourself go with this and let her bring you to a point where your body will sing for you and give you some salvation from this torment. Oh yes…..Oh God, I'm getting so close to it now.
His throbbing hardness was almost exquisitely painful. Her hands held his taut balls now as she continue to bring him closer, his pulsing hard cock ramming up between her joined hands as he felt his cramped hip muscles loosen up with each wanton thrust.
So close now.
And her voice was singing, urging him on, coaxing and luring. Dirty words and dirty connotations spinning all around his semi crazed mind as she brought him to the pinnacle. Bending forward once more so that her small breasts danced on his soft chest hair and teased his hypersensitive nipples he watched her pink tongue come down to meet his mouth. Nipping at his closed mouth she had it open when he yelped in pain and her tongue was inside his mouth before he knew it, diving deep into his throat, twining about his tongue.
And then her hands were back to the engorged column that was now insatiably demanding of any and all stimulation. As though his cock had a mind of its own it nudged violently at her grip, seeking some form of completion. So near now…sweat dripped in his eyes, and coursed down his face, breaths were barely drawn, just enough air to suck in for a groan of deep desire and a hissing plea for her to bring him to the end.
And then she stopped.
Like that, the hands were removed, the friction gone, the slew of filthy promises seized in her throat.
But his desperate erection and desperate need to be fulfilled and taken over the edge remained.
His throbbing cock was bereft and his balls so tight and tense demanded relief.
Dazed eyes sought her out and caught her extricating her muscular body from his lower pelvis.
"Wh….wha….whatcha? Where? No don't stop…whatta ya doin'? Com' back. Ah come on, I'm so close now…..I'm fuckin' nearly here baby….where are ya?"
His words sounded distorted and drunken and he wondered how far out of it he really was now.
But she was suddenly so distant and her hands were no longer on his hard length and her hot words were no longer whispered against his ear.
"Ahhhh….come on. Shit no! Oh ….Oh man so close, I'm so close…gotta get there. Fuck, fuck, so good…"
Desperate now for completion his hands, numb with pain and stiffness at first refused to co-operate, but soon leapt into action. They descended on his tight balls and rigid weeping cock. Relief, he needed some relief through a final stroke or two of release.
And then he felt his hands caught and trapped. Snagged roughly as they were on route to his blood filled groin and held hostage in the hands of another person. He gave a momentary exclamation of joy thinking that he was not going to be left alone after all in this effort to bring himself to sexual completion.
A sound broke the mood of tense sexuality in the room and a heavy male scent joined the room once more. Starsky became aware again of the threat of the big boned guard as he advanced toward the hot sexual exhibit-taking place on the bed.
"Take his hands and hold them. He's not allowed to finish himself off. Let him struggle through it."
He heard the voice of his seductress as she relinquished her hold on his hands to the more forceful physical command of the guard.
"You bitch!"
He couldn't stop himself. The level of sexual frustration had him at self-combustion point. That combined with his hazy pain levels and jammed up muscles from too many beatings had him scrambling feverishly to kick out at her with his legs.
The pain in his groin was exquisite and he screamed out with the need to finish what had been started. Straining and pulling against the hands he was almost hysterical with the need to bring himself to orgasm.
He bucked and levered and rolled toward his side, trying to get his steel hard cock in contact with the mattress, in an attempt to finish himself off with friction alone – the mattress his only hope for abrasion and contact. But his upper body was held so firmly he could not twist enough. The rough hands pulled his arms up violently above his head, yanking hard and pinning his hands to the wall above him with an iron grip. The sensation of pain that had all but left his body returned with a lightening strike as the rough pulling of his arms above his head re-opened the knife wound on the top of his chest wall.
But the cry he emitted at the renewed pain was swallowed up his tormented lust filled cries.
"OH GOD! OH COME ON! Let me fuck something please! Just one more pull its all I need please. You! You! Come back, your hands. Just put your hands on my cock for …"
The sensation of unfulfilled sexual release was excruciating. Never had he felt this sort of discomfort. His whole body and mind was centered on his hot groin and taut testicles and their heightened state of physiological excitement. The blood was pounding his head and he felt the first crushing vice of a headache so extreme he feared his skull was splitting in two.
"You want me to die from a freakin' heart attack Calvetti? Is that what you want you fuckin' bastard? Cos I will die if you don't let…..oh shit….please let this be finished…."
The guard shifted his big weight forward as he held him down and with his ugly head hovering over Starsky's, laughed in his face. As he viewed him upside down Starsky thought his features were even more grotesque.
"Poor pig, can't get yourself fucked can you? Hurts doesn't it? Those drugs send you wild man, and you're not going to get to let go of it."
Then he lowered his head closer and Starsky smelled his smoke-filled breath as he taunted him.
"I'm getting a great view of you from up here. You're turning me on as much as you did when Calvetti was filming you. That's one helluva cock and I could help you out….want me to help you use that cock of yours? Want me to do it for you…to finish you off? Mr. Calvetti says I can….just this once have my turn with you. You want me? I can suck you off real deep, get my mouth all around that swollen rod of yours. How about it lover boy? "
Starsky groaned and twisted, self-disgust filling him and pure hatred pulsing for Calvetti for doing this to him.
"Fuck yourself. I don't want your filthy hands or your stinkin' mouth anywhere near me."
"You sure 'bout that lover boy? Cos from where I'm standing you're in pain and your cock is so ripe to be taken. I'm getting hard just looking at you squirm and twist let alone watching that rod you've got going in front of my eyes. Let me finish you off? I can bring in my friend too. Both of us can help you out. You ever had two guys on you at once Cop? One of us can blow you at the front while the other gets to give it to you up your ass? Just say the word and we'll do it. Calvetti wants to hear you beg for it. Gotta beg pig. Come on I know you're screaming for it inside."
"NO! NOOOOOO! Get him out of here Calvetti! I'll kill him if he touches me!" Starsky bellowed wild-eyed at the camera above him.
The face above him danced and morphed before his eyes and he could no longer be sure it was real or part of his hallucinations. He strained to lift his head, partly terrified that the guard already had his hands and mouth on his cock – so crazy and incoherent were his thoughts and so desperate was his turgid member for relief.
Was he willing that to happen?
Did he want the guard to do it?
Too much, too much, too much.
The trip to take him somewhere else had become just like all of Calvetti's games, a trip into a deep nightmare.
Tears of frustration seeped from his eyes.
Please let this end …just this one. Make this one end – this is so bad. One more ending that is all I will ask for.
Was he begging out loud? Bargaining with God or Calvetti?
He no longer knew.
The guard was still above him, leering at his nakedness, smiling at his pain, spitting out filthy suggestions.
Starsky did the only thing he could do.
Ceased to be part of this sick charade.
Forcing himself with an iron will he directed his body to remain still and quiet.
Breathing more steadily he tried to let his lower body go and disowned the tension and the unfulfilled lust in his body. Instead he concentrated on the fresh pain in his opened wound, tried to feel the blood slipping down his chest and visualize its track.
Feel the pain, the pain is better than this other thing, this desperate need that Calvetti has created in me, that is forcing me to humiliate myself and beg for any pair of hands, even these animal's hands to finish me off.
Gradually, so very gradually the burning need edged away and the gnashing teeth of desire to fuck something till it split open, faded away.
The guard was still holding him but nowhere near as tightly and he knew without looking that his erection was diminishing and that the guard was losing his opportunity to use his body.
Exhausted, spent physically, and mentally tormented to his limits, Starsky willed himself to take the remnants of his drugged mind and turn in on himself for the duration of its ride.
Closing his eyes against the disappointed growl above him Starsky wished he had the energy to curse at the man who had come so close to violating him.
Instead he spoke it to himself.
"Not in this lifetime you don't you sick fuck! You don't get to touch me or use me in this lifetime. "
SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH SHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH
It was well past midnight when he brought the Torino to a smooth stop outside the main gates of the secluded gated house. The address the man on the phone had provided him was as he described – well out of the city perimeters, high in the hills and …from first impressions in the moonlit light, majestically impressive.
Hutch forced himself to exit the car slowly as his feet crunched over the entranceway pebbles to the intercom. Everything he did now had to be a willful force – a force of holding himself back, pulling himself into calculated control and fighting his own overwhelming need to break lose and wreak havoc on everything around him.
He'd come alone, with no backup and not even a phone call to Dobey to prelude his passage. Dobey, as much as he was a support and an ally also represented bureaucracy, red tape and caution. Those three things alone were directly counterproductive to Hutch's resolve. By the end of this meeting he needed to know for sure one way or the other. Needed to know if in this house was the man who had held Starsky. The man in the film, the man with no face…..and the man who had done what he had done to his partner that had left Hutch shrouded in a haze of violent rage.
Burearacracy, red tape and caution would take too much time and would not put him at this gate pressing the intercom as he was now, until at least midway through the next day.
Hutch was here now. The only place he needed to be and the only place he would be at until he had the answers he needed.
Dobey would just have to deal with the consequences of his actions, as he knew he would too, tomorrow in the light of day.
Depressing the intercom, unable to stop himself from pushing all of his weight behind the press of the button key, he kept his finger down, the buzzing piercing into the night until a terse voice crackled through the box.
"Who the hell is this?"
"Is this the Calvetti residence?"
"Who is this? You know its past midnight and you won't be getting in here at this hour. Come back in business hours you idiot."
"No – you've got that wrong. I won't be coming back in business hours, I'm coming in now. Open the gates – it's the police. Open the damn gates now, and tell Calvetti I need to see him."
"It's late. Mr. Calvetti has retired for the evening."
"Well then I suggest you inform your boss that I haven't retired for the evening and unless he wants a far bigger commotion going on out here at the front of his house, he'd better be ready to talk to me."
Only a small interval of time passed before he knew a decision had been made following a brief consultation.
It didn't surprise Hutch to hear the click of electronics and to see the gates moving to open. Obviously Calvetti was prepared to look undaunted by the police calling upon him for an unscheduled visit well into the night or small hours of the morning.
Hutch drove the Torino up the drive all the while schooling his face and his mood to keep his true emotions and his real intent hidden during this preliminary interview. Running the risk of coming here without any authority put him in a precarious position to begin with and he couldn't afford to give Calvetti anymore advantage by accusing him out of line. He just needed to know if this was him, just needed to know for sure if this was the right track, then he would follow procedures in order to give Starsky the best chance of getting out of here alive.
But as he stood at the huge front door waiting for his admittance, only steps away now from the man that was in that film with Starsky, it took supreme effort to keep his curdling rage in check.
A woman showed him into a front room, an opulent expanse of décor, and he was advised that the "Mr. Calvetti" would be with him soon.
He was not kept waiting and as a dark-haired man with what looked like curly hair stood at the doorway in the dim light, Hutch did a double take and his whole body jolted into shock. The resemblance to his partner's features had him momentarily off kilter, till the man moved. His walk was nothing like that of Starsky's.
When the figure advanced further into the brighter interior of the room the light afforded Hutch his first full view of the man called Calvetti. Two things occurred almost simultaneously for him. The first was the sound of Starsky's familiar but pained voice playing in his head….
Is that what this is all about? Making up for your past? And whatever happened to your face? ….
And the second was his brain's response to the implication of those words. The implication which was standing right in front of him now. A man with a markedly disfigured face. Hutch's right hand almost automatically reached under his jacket, his fingers making contact with his magnum. It took him all of ten seconds to pull his hand back down and force it to fall by his side; his fingers still curled and ready to do what he so vehemently wanted to do.
To blow a hole through this man's chest.
But giving into his trigger finger fantasy could mean he might never get Starsky back alive and would also mean this monster would not suffer as he had made his friend suffer. So he uncoiled his gun hand, closed his eyes against the fantasy of his instant death. When he next looked up the man's face was a mask of aloof coolness.
He made Calvetti wait, staring him down before he flipped open his badge, his eyes never leaving the disfigured man's.
"Detective Kenneth Hutchinson – Homicide with Metro Police. I have reason to believe you may have something that I need."
"Need? At this time of night? Well whatever it is you're looking for, it must be damn mportant to you to come barging into my private home at this hour without an appointment Detective."
Hutch wanted to enlighten him in the most forceful way as to how close to the truth those words were, but again he flexed and unflexed his gun hand. Looking at Calvetti again, he saw something in the other man's normal eye which made Hutch realise he may have already stepped into the ring for round one of the games. Had Calvetti chosen those words purposefully to begin the mental sparring?
"Important? Yes, you're correct Mr. Calvetti. What I'm here for is very important – very important."
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