Passages

by Zebra 3 and Me

Dark drama and angst are in these Starsky and Hutch stories.

PASSAGES

By TLR

::::::::::::::::::::

Stories

C21 H23 NO5-After the Forest affair, H receives a visitor.

Close Range-Will the partners survive this tragic turn of events?

Justicia-Intervention from an unexpected source.

The Tesla Effect-Can Joe Collandra figure out what happened to S?

Super Natural—(An Alternate Universe). Partners forever.

6. Good With a Gun—Just one of many ways the partners could have met.

7. Shining Armor—S helps H in a sticky situation while investigating the murders of prostitutes.

8. Kiko Ramos, A Man-Kiko has finally arrived.

9. Life In The Key Of Starsky (A Twilight Zone crossover)-The partners in an unbearable place in time.

C21H23NO5

By TLR

After Ben Forest was booked, Hutch and I walked out of the police station toward the Torino, taking our time because we were numbed and emptied by the day's events-Hutch almost being overdosed by Ben's guy on the street, and losing Jeanie.

We were both still physically tired, but some inner energy drawn from worry for each other's lives had kept us going emotionally.

Now that the danger was over and we could breathe easier, the adrenaline started to drain, leaving us quiet and close, but wordless. We just didn't have words, and I didn't know if we ever would.

Of all the cases we had had before, this had been the most personal, the most heartrending for me. Put a knife in my back. A bullet in my heart. Either would be easier for me than watching my best friend suffer the way he did.

I couldn't wait for him to get back to work, to see him smile again, to do something that would help shed some of his scales. A few of the scales would stay with him, I knew. But in time they would turn into something that was easier to live with.

When we got in the car and drove away from the precinct, I said, "So what do you want to do now?"

"I need to get my car."

"Where is it?"

"I think they said they put it in their garage."

I nodded, grateful for the simple, small task. I didn't want any more major mishaps today. The distraction would help.

XXXXXXXXXX

A short while later I parked in front of the house.

"This the place?" he asked as he looked around.

You don't even know where they kept you?

"This is it," I said as we got out of the car and walked over to the garage.

He reached down for the door handle to pull it up, but didn't quite have the strength.

I reached down too, and we raised it together.

"There it is," I said when I saw his car. "The rattle trap we all know and love."

"You don't love my car, Starsky," he said as he went to the driver's side and opened the door.

"I'll follow you home," I told him.

He was too tired to object.

XXXXXXXX+

When we got to his cottage, we just sat down on the couch to rest, finally; letting the silence envelop us and allow us our thoughts.

We sat that way for about five full minutes before the knock came at the front door.

"I'll get it," I said as I got up and answered it.

When I opened it, I saw that it was Thomas Hutchinson, Hutch's father, standing on the porch.

My mind searched for something clever to say to make him go away and come back later, but he moved past me before my stalled brain could think of anything.

I saw Hutch stiffen a little, even before the man said anything. With difficulty he pushed himself off of the couch and moved back a step, obviously trying to create distance between the two of them.

Hutch never spoke of his father. What little I knew, I got from Huggy, who said he was a rich land developer who loved money more than his son, and that his annual phone call was always to tell Hutch to leave police work for a better profession.

"A reporter called me at home to confirm or deny a rumor that you were on heroin," he said walking over to Hutch. "Is it true?"

I could still see the haunted shades around my partner's eyes. The abrasions, and the tired drop of his eyelashes. And I knew if I could see it, Thomas could see it too.

My nerves were shot. Hutch's defenses were down.

"Yes," he answered quietly, and lowered his eyes. "But there's an explana-"

Thomas slapped him, snapping his head to the side.

"How could you do that, boy?"

I started for him, but before I could cross the room, Thomas hit him again.

"Do you know what this could do to my business if this gets out? I have important clients. I have important colleagues. An image and a name to think about, in case you have forgotten."

I grabbed the man's arm and pulled him away.

Hutch stood with his head down.

"Why can't you do anything to make me proud of you?" Mr. Hutchinson asked his one and only son. "I had high hopes for you."

Hutch's head bobbed slightly with fatigue and his eyes rolled a little as he took a step to the side of the couch to move away from Thomas, even though I had a firm hold on the man's arm.

"A gangster got him hung up," I said. "It wasn't his fault."

Thomas jerked his arm away from my grip.

"Do you really expect me to believe that?" he asked looking at me, then Hutch. "This job has turned you into a regular street punk. What do you get out of police work? All you do is interact with criminals all day long. And now you finally managed to become one. Congratulations."

I grabbed his arm again.

"Now wait just a-"

Then he looked at me.

"You're the reason he's in police work. You're the reason he won't get out."

To Hutch he added, "This Jew friend of yours put all of those lower class ideals into your stupid head. When will you ever grow up and stop playing cops and robbers? When will you ever stop being a disappointment and a failure?"

I spun the man around and put my finger in his face. "Watch your mouth, you-"

Thomas yanked free a final time, then backed toward the door, determined to get his last few words in.

"I give up," he said as he opened the door to leave. "I'm through trying to make a man out of you. You don't like the Hutchinson name anymore? I got a new one for you. C21H23NO5."

He went out the door, and even after his father was gone, Hutch still stood at the arm of the

couch with his head still down.

How could he just stand there like that and take it? He wasn't acting like the Hutch I knew. It was like he was used to it. Like a routine.

I'd seen my partner scared before, but never so scared that he couldn't defend himself or say anything, or take up for me.

I walked over to him and turned his harshly-red cheek toward me a little, seeing a trickle of blood from his nose from the first slap, and a trickle of blood in the corner of his mouth from the second.

I didn't know which had been worse, the physical attack or the verbal one.

As if to confirm my suspicions, he said quietly, "It's not the first time."

"But it will be the last," I told him gently as I took his arm. "Come on. Let's go to the bathroom and clean you up."

Calmly he just slipped his arm out of my hand, went to the bathroom, and closed the door.

Softly I rapped on it with my knuckles. "Hey. I'm comin' in."

When he didn't say anything, I quietly opened the door. He stood at the sink, leaning on the heels of his hands, refusing to look in the mirror.

I walked up behind him and wet a cloth, then turned him around so he could lean back against the sink.

"Tell me about him," I said gently as I cleaned his face, and he did.

End

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX+

CLOSE RANGE

By TLR

It was after midnight when Starsky slowed the Torino to a stop in front of Venice Place.

"There you go, Bronco. See you in the morning. Don't forget those phone numbers Huggy gave you."

"What phone numbers?" Hutch asked getting out onto the sidewalk.

Starsky shook his head. Fell for that one.

Hutch closed the passenger door and smiled through the open window. "Just kidding."

"I know."

Starsky smiled back and squealed tires as he left the curb.

"Hey!" Hutch called after the departing car. "Don't call me tomorrow! I'm sleeping in!"

But he doubted that Starsky heard him.

Taking the stairs to his apartment, he released a tired sigh along with a slight smile. He and Starsky had worked relentlessly the past month to bust a child prostitution ring, and had finally succeeded. With the guilty parties behind bars and the grade-school victims returned to their parents, guardians, and foster parents, it was now time to give in to their exhaustion and try to re-charge with rest and personal time, even though it would only last the weekend.

Come Monday morning they would jump into new cases, new suspects, new victims, and do it all over again with fresh determination.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Come on, man," the teenager said to his friend as he reached for the bottle of whiskey. "Don't drink it all."

"Get your own," Kiko said as he took the last drink of the bottle. "I bought it, so it's mine."

The other three nudged him off the sidewalk and into the street, and he hopped unsteadily back onto the curb with them just as a honking car whizzed by.

When Kiko's three friends saw the Torino slowing beside them to match their pace, they took off down the sidewalk and disappeared into an alley.

Kiko turned, saw Starsky leaning toward the passenger door to speak to him.

"Oh man," he said rolling his eyes toward the night sky. "Can't I do anything without you or Hutch knowing about it?"

"You do a lot without me and Hutch knowing about it," Starsky said opening the passenger door. "Get in."

"My mother will kill me."

"You want to go to juvie tonight?"

"I'm just drunk," Kiko said as he dropped heavily into the passenger seat. "It's not like I robbed someone."

Starsky took the empty whiskey bottle and looked at it. "Impressive. You're still on your feet. Hutch'll want to give you a blue ribbon for that."

"Don't bring Hutch into this."

"He cares."

"He shouldn't. What I do is none of his business. And none of yours for that matter. I have a right to live my life the way I want to. None of my friends have a Big Brother who sticks his nose into everything I do. Two weeks from now I'll be eighteen, and I won't need one. I'm gonna cut him loose."

"That right?"

"That's exactly right."

"You may cut him loose, but he won't cut you loose."

"He'll have to. If I have to leave here to get away from him, and my mother, I will."

"You'd leave home?"

"Started to plenty of times."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because! You and Hutch would kick my-!"

"Eighteen's the magic number, huh?"

"You know it."

"Where would you go?"

"Why would I tell you, Sherlock?"

"That would really hurt your mother. And Hutch."

"So? It's my life. I'm not a kid anymore."

Starsky slowed the Torino down in front of Kiko's house. "Got that right."

Kiko fumbled for the door handle, found it, then stumbled out. All of the lights were on in the house, including the one on the back porch. Starsky got out of the car and walked with him to the back door, where the teenager stood digging in his pants pocket for his house key.

Starsky knocked, but no answer came at the door.

"My mother is asleep," Kiko slurred as he tried putting the key into the lock. "She tries to wait up for me, but she gets too tired."

"Could be because she works two and a half jobs."

"I make money too."

"Cards and pool."

"Hutch did a good job, didn't he?"

"He did his best."

"Wrong key," Kiko said reaching into his jacket pocket, and when he did, Starsky saw something metallic sticking up from his belt just inside his jacket.

"What's this?" Starsky asked taking the snub-nose pistol from his belt.

"That's mine," Kiko said holding his hand out. "Give it back."

"What the hell are you doin' with a gun?"

"Protection, what else? Me and my friends got these guys at the pool hall breathin' down our necks all the time. What would you do?"

"You're in no condition to carry a-"

Kiko grabbed for the gun and tried to get it from Starsky's hand, and that's when the shot blasted the night air.

Kiko watched in stunned disbelief as Starsky's red hand reached for him from his doubled over, sinking position.

"Kiko," he gasped as he pawed for the boy.

Eyes wide, Kiko pushed Starsky off of him, watching petrified as the detective stumbled back against the side of the house next to the door and slid down to a slump, red hand falling away from the patch of blood that spread across his stomach, head dropping to his chest.

"KIKO!" Mrs. Ramos screamed as she ran outside and took a quick look around.

The pistol dropped into the grass as Kiko backed off the porch and into the yard; then he turned and ran.

Mrs. Ramos ran after him, screaming for him to come back.

XXXXXXXXXX

Mrs. Ramos had called Hutch and the ambulance at the same time, but Hutch arrived at the house first, jumping from his car and running to the back porch where neighbors had gathered

following the sound of the gunshot.

"Move," he panted as he pushed them aside and made his way through to his partner, to find him still slouched against the side of the house, head down, eyes closed.

Mrs. Ramos was pressing a large neatly-folded towel against his stomach as she turned tormented eyes to Hutch.

"I think he's still breathing," she said in a shaking whisper. "Is he going to be all right?"

Hutch lifted back part of the towel to examine the wound as he took a pulse in Starsky's neck.

The medics arrived with a stretcher, telling the neighbors to stand back.

"Ken," one of them said pulling him away. "Let us in there."

Hutch stumbled off the porch and took a few dazed steps away, staring down at the ground. The sound of the busy medics and concerned neighbors distorted into one long muffled noise in his head.

"He didn't mean it," Mrs. Ramos said as she approached him and touched his arm. "I'm so sorry. I tried to find him, bring him back. I don't know what's happening to him. I feel like I'm losing him and I don't know what to do."

But her voice had blended in with the others in a swirl of white noise.

"Come on," one of the medics said grabbing his arm as they took Starsky past him. "You can ride with us."

XXXXXXXX+

"He's in surgery," Dobey told Huggy in a low voice as they stood inches apart just inside the waiting room. "Lost a lot of blood. Internal bleeding. They said we could lose him before the morning."

Huggy looked down and bit his lower lip, then his eyes went to Hutch, who sat leaning forward in a chair, elbows on his knees, gazing impassively at the floor.

Dobey turned toward Huggy a little more, his back to Hutch. "Hutch hasn't said a word. Had to get it all from the mother. I got a couple of guys on the kid."

Huggy walked over to Hutch and perched on the arm of the chair, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'll wait with you."

Hutch gave no response. Dobey walked over to a magazine stand, picked up a book, but didn't open it.

"Hutch?"

In the doorway, a familiar voice; but different. Cracked, aged, like old glass. A quiet figure; his hands wore faint, pink tinges of blood where he had tried to wash them.

"I'm sorry," Kiko said. "It was an accident. It just went off."

At the sound of his voice, there was only a slight change in Hutch at first. He closed his eyes, but when Kiko took a step into the waiting room, ran at him and grabbed his shirt, driving him back out the door and against the wall across the hallway.

"WHY!" he yelled with tears in his eyes.

"I told you! I didn't mean to do it! He took it away from me and I tried to grab it back-"

Dobey and Huggy grabbed Hutch just as his fist came back, but he had already frozen, and they allowed him to step back, where he turned and walked down the hall, trying to stifle a sob against the back of his wrist.

Kiko started after him, but Huggy pulled him back by the arm, and then Dobey did.

"You're looking at serious consequences," the captain told him. "Come with me."

XXXXXXXXXX

Words tossed around at the police station:

-"Carrying a loaded firearm."

-"Reckless endangerment."

-"Criminal negligence."

-"Battery."

-"Assault with a deadly weapon."

-"Assault with a firearm on a peace officer."

If he dies...

-"Negligent homicide."

-"Involuntary manslaughter."

-"Will be tried a juvenile."

-"Will be tried as an adult."

-"We should consult Starsky."

-"We should consult Hutch."

-"What about his mother?"

-"What about his father?"

XXXXXXXX+

The nurses at the ICU station noticed Hutch slipping into Starsky's room later in the night, but continued talking to each other as though they hadn't.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Come on, Starsk," Hutch whispered as he held his friend's hand and sat down in the chair next to his hospital bed. "You can do it." His chest tightened and he pinched tears from his eyes, uncertain as to whether the tubes and machines were indicators of death or indicators of life. "I love you, buddy. I'm pulling for you."

He was exhausted. Both he and Starsky had been up thirty-six hours straight wrapping up the last of the child prostitution case, and his phone had jarred him from the bed just as his head had hit the pillow after Starsky had dropped him off.

Now he had gone another night without sleep, it would be morning soon, but as tired as he was, as heavy as his eyes and as drained as his mind were, he was too unstrung to sleep.

He was waiting, for one small sign, one change toward the positive, and it was a little after dawn that he got it. A slight squeeze on his hand from Starsky's; a faint moan. Just what he'd been waiting for.

"Hey," Hutch said as he took his partner's face in his free hand and turned it toward him, smiling at the soft, medicated twinkle in his eyes. "Gonna stay with me here? You're coming around. Come on. That's it."

He buzzed for the nurse through new tears. These, tears of relief.

XXXXXXXXXX

Dobey was at his desk reaching for his Rolodex when the phone rang.

"Hello?" he said into the receiver.

He listened for a moment, then said, "I don't know, Ms. Healey. That depends on a lot of factors, as you well know. I would advise against it for the time being. Maybe in a few days. Yes, he survived the surgery but he still has some recovering to do."

XXXXXXXX+

Starsky's mumble woke Hutch up from his doze in the chair.

For the third time this morning the blond leaned up to the bed and took his partner's hand.

"It's okay, buddy," he whispered. "You're hallucinating. It's not real."

"Blood," Starsky murmured with his eyes open as his head moved on the pillow and his free hand twitched faintly. "On the sheets."

"No blood, buddy. Just the painkillers."

"It's drowning me."

"Sshh. It isn't. You're okay." Hutch swallowed hard, wishing he could do more to help him, but all he could physically do about it was offer his hand.

Starsky began to quiet some as Hutch's hand stroked his forehead over and over.

"Sleep, Starsk. Try to sleep."

XXXXXXXX+

Diane carried a tray of clean glasses behind the bar, set it down, then looked at Huggy, who seemed to be lost in a world of his own as he stood behind the bar too, but up at the opposite end, staring down at Starsky's paperback copy of The Guinness Book of World Records in his hands.

"Don't worry," she said walking up to him and stroking his arm. "He'll be back to get it."

XXXXXXXX+

Kiko was escorted down the hall to a recovery room at Memorial Hospital by Captain Dobey and his attorney, Ms. Healey, a small woman in her fifties with a near punk haircut and a busy attitude.

The teenager stood in the doorway for a while and silently watched as Hutch helped Starsky move in achingly small steps from the bathroom to the hospital bed, his left arm securely around him, his right carefully rolling the IV stand.

"Easy does it," Hutch whispered patiently. "Almost there."

Starsky, hunched over and pale with pain as he held his bandaged abdomen, reached for the bed.

"Made it," he said in a thin voice, perspiration dampening the front of his hospital gown.

Hutch helped him sit down, then noticed Starsky looking toward the doorway.

"What the hell are they doing here?" Hutch asked Dobey. Then, to Kiko: "You've done enough damage." He turned back to Starsky and helped him lie back on the pillow. "Slowly. Let me do the work."

When Starsky was lying against his pillow again and Hutch drew the sheet up to his shoulders, Starsky said, "Kid wanted to come."

"Oh yeah? So they can work out an easier plea agreement?"

"I want to apologize," Kiko said.

Hutch ignored him, standing with his back to the three as he held a glass of water and straw for Starsky to sip.

"Starsky," Kiko said with troubled eyes as he walked over to the bed with his hand extended. "I'm sorry."

Hutch turned with a dangerous flatness to his face, standing between Kiko and the bed. "Don't touch him."

Starsky took the blond's wrist. "It's okay." He put his hand out to grip Kiko's, but Kiko had to take a step closer to clasp it.

"That's enough," Hutch said backing the boy up a step after their handshake. "Now get the hell back to jail." He glared at Dobey. "Thanks for asking."

"Cap did ask," Starsky said. "He asked me."

Hutch turned back to his partner and poured a glass of water for himself. "Do you need anything else?" he asked, then drained the glass in one long drink.

Starsky's head moved no, then his eyes blinked lazily as he grew tired and looked at Kiko. "Tell your mother hello for me, huh?"

Kiko looked at Hutch and opened his mouth as if to say something, but then took a couple of steps back, turned, and joined his lawyer and Dobey at the door.

"Kiko," Hutch said as the three turned to leave.

"Yes?" Kiko said as he looked back.

Hutch looked at him over his shoulder. "You're lucky my partner is a good man, and that he pulled through. Because if he had died..." He started toward Kiko again with renewed fierceness and reached for the front of his jacket. "If you had killed him..."

The lawyer, who had seen Hutch nothing but cool and collected in the courtroom, conference rooms, and police station, took a step back, holding to Kiko's arm.

"Hutch," Dobey said moving Kiko and the lawyer out the door, then turning toward him. "Calm down and go take care of your partner. I'll let you know what happens on the boy's case-"

"I don't want to know," Hutch said backing up, his finger pointing toward Kiko, who was no longer even in his line of vision but somewhere out in the hall. "I don't."

He turned and went back to the bed, leaving Dobey nodding a goodbye to Starsky as he left the doorway, closing the door behind him on his way out to give the partners privacy.

"He apologized," Starsky said.

Hutch paced back and forth at the foot of the bed, rubbing both hands down his face. "That's not the point."

Starsky started to say something else, but was too worn out to continue. Hutch noticed his closing eyes and moved up to stand next to him, smoothing the sheet on his chest.

"Rest, huh? You're worn out."

XXXXXXXXXX

Two weeks later, those present in the courtroom for Kiko's disposition-lawyers, juvenile

caseworkers, Kiko and his mother, a few cops and other officers of the court, and the

judge-turned to watch as Starsky walked slowly and carefully up the center aisle to take a seat,

Hutch hovering closely and helping him to sit down next to Captain Dobey.

"This is unexpected," the judge said as he looked at both of them.

Kiko, who stood with his mother before the bench with Ms. Healey, gave a quick glance in the detectives' direction, then looked back at the judge.

The judge, who had presided over many cases with the detectives before, gave the pale, quiet one a close look.

"Are you all right, Detective Starsky?"

"Yes."

"No," Hutch answered. "He insisted on signing himself out."

Starsky held up his pharmacy bag, which appeared to be almost too heavy for his hand. Although a small movement, it allowed the judge a view of the white bandage between the gap in two buttons of his shirt. "Just fine, Your Honor."

The judge picked up two sheets of paper. "Mr. Ramos, you turn eighteen tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

"I have here a letter from Detective Hutchinson recommending that you receive the strongest punishment allowed by law. I have a letter from Detective Starsky recommending outpatient treatment and home incarceration at his residence during his recuperation."

Hutch slowly shook his head no and moved as if to get up and say something, go to the bench, or leave the courtroom, but his hands gripped the edge of his seat and he stayed in place.

"Mr. Ramos," the judge said. "My order is one year probation, home incarceration with Detective Starsky, and outpatient treatment."

He rapped his gavel once, and Mrs. Ramos smiled through her tears as she looked Starsky's way.

"Thank you, Dave."

Those attending the hearing started gathering their briefcases and files to leave for lunch.

Kiko gave a skittish look in Hutch's direction as he took a few steps away from the bench.

This time Hutch did get to his feet, his tight-lipped expression suggesting that it was a struggle to keep quiet as he cast the judge a dark look and stepped aside to allow Kiko to take Starsky by the arm to help him up.

"No," Hutch said returning his attention to Kiko and Starsky. "Let me show you how to do it properly."

XXXXXXXXXX

Hutch was silent as he drove Starsky home; Kiko in the back seat. Starsky and the teenager made small talk about movies and baseball, with Kiko doing most of the talking after Starsky's voice grew faint and breathy with fatigue.

XXXXXXXXXX

When they arrived at Starsky's house, both Hutch and Kiko helped him up the stairs and inside.

Once they were in, Kiko hurried to straighten a big wrinkle in a rug, turned the lights on, and put

Starsky's medication on the coffee table.

"I need the john," Starsky muttered as he looked at Kiko.

"Sure," the boy said as he helped him across the floor.

When the phone rang, Hutch went to answer it.

"Hello?"

It was Huggy.

"Hey, Hutch. You dudes make it home?"

"No problem."

"Need anything?"

"Not with the new gun-slinging caregiver around."

"Come again?"

Hutch told him what had transpired in the courtroom, then Huggy said, "You don't sound too thrilled."

"You don't either."

"Not my call."

"Nor mine, evidently."

"If you need me for anything, let me know. Tell Kiko and Starsk the same."

"Yeah."

Hutch hung up, then turned to see Kiko helping Starsky from the bathroom and toward the bedroom.

"Just need a nap," Starsky murmured tiredly. "Be fine in no time."

Hutch observed from the living room as Kiko helped Starsky into his bedroom and over to his bed, assisted him in lying back, and settled him in.

"Pills and some water," Starsky said as closed his eyes with a wince and put a hand over his stomach.

Kiko rushed to the kitchen for a glass of water, then picked up the bottles of pills to take them to the bedroom. After he gave Starsky a dose, he said, "Just tell me when you need anything. I'll fix

something for you to eat while you're asleep."

But Starsky was drifting off to sleep without responding.

Kiko walked back into the living room and avoided eye contact with Hutch as he passed him on his way to the kitchen, where he hunted for a can of soup and a pan.

"You should have been this conscientious the night you shot him."

Kiko's eyes glanced Hutch's way, but he didn't stop looking for the soup and pan.

"My partner has had some wild ideas in the past," Hutch continued, "but this one tops them all."

The teenager found a can of soup, along with a pan, and began to open the soup.

"No," Kiko said as he poured the soup into the pan at the stove. "It was my idea."

"Hey, why not?" Hutch shrugged. "Get a light sentence and ease your guilty conscience at the same time. The judge must have been in a really generous mood today, you had Starsky vouching for you, and I'm sure Captain Dobey put in a few good words for you too."

"Yes!" Kiko said as he turned from the stove and charged toward him, gripping the front of his jacket with tears in his eyes. "I begged them. But not to get off easy. I know I deserve jail and whatever else you want to do to me. But Hutch, I have to do this. I have to help him."

Hutch had tears shining in his eyes too. "I almost lost him two years ago to James Gunther, and now you."

"I know."

"He has to fight all over again. I have to see him struggle. Again."

"I'm sorry."

Hutch pushed Kiko back a step.

"Hutch...if you really want me to go...I will. I'll tell the judge to put me away. I don't want to hurt you anymore. But now I see the mistakes I made, and I want to make amends. You taught me that. Starsky said...he said he forgives me. He said me helping him and seeing my mistake in this house every single day, and living with it and thinking about it every time I look at him...would do more for me than juvie. And...I think he's right. At the hospital, when I actually saw what I did to him...I knew I had to do something."

He suddenly fell apart like a broken pot of clay and covered his face.

"I almost killed him," he sobbed into his hands. "Please give me another chance."

Hutch pulled him close and held him.

"I will."

"Show me what I need to do to help him."

"I will."

End

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX+

Justicia

By TLR

"It's important to set goals in life," Hutch told twelve-year-old Kiko on the way home from their fishing trip. "Like we did with this little adventure. We set out to catch some fish, we baited our lines, and we waited patiently. And finally…"

"We caught some," Kiko finished.

"We got what we set our minds to. You should do the same thing with life. Get a picture in your head of what you want, and then take the appropriate steps to get there."

"You make it sound easy."

"It isn't always easy, but it's worth it when it happens."

The interior of Hutch's car was quiet as he made his way around the winding road and through the night hills.

"Your mother is worried about you."

"I know. She always worries."

"She says you stay in your room too much. Something on your mind?"

"Is that why you brought me fishing? To talk about goals and stuff?"

"No, not really. Just to spend some time with you, and tell you that if you ever want to talk about anything…"

"Yeah, I know." You've said it a thousand times, his tone said.

The idyllic scenery was interrupted by headlights piercing the rearview mirror and highlighting the interior.

"What's his problem?" Hutch asked as he adjusted down the mirror and slowed his speed to let the vehicle pass.

When the vehicle didn't pass, Hutch sped up.

"Teenagers," Hutch grumbled. "Don't be a teenage jerk like that, Kiko."

Kiko turned his head toward the window to hide a grin. "I won't."

Hutch was about to reach for the Mars light when blue light filled the car.

"Great," he said as he slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. "I can't believe I'm getting pulled over by a cop."

Kiko smiled at him. "You were speeding."

"Yeah," Hutch said opening his door to get out. "Not a good example, huh?"

He got out of the car and turned in the glare of the headlights as he reached for the ID in his hip pocket.

"Hold it!" a voice yelled in the flood of lights. "I didn't say to get out of your car! Stay in your vehicle!"

Hutch brought his ID out with one hand while the other tried to block the light.

"I'm Detective Hutchin-"

Compromised by the light, he was blindsided by the sudden blow to his head from the officer's baton.

Kiko saw him falling against the driver's side door and jumped out.

"Stop it! What are you doing?!"

Hutch's eyes rolled and he sank toward the ground as his hand fumbled under his jacket for his gun, but the large man in uniform kicked him in the face, knocking him onto his back.

Kiko ran at the officer.

"He's a cop! Leave him alone!"

The officer shoved him against the trunk of Hutch's car.

"He's under arrest."

The officer reached down and pulled an incoherent, bleeding Hutch to his feet, pushing him face-first against the door of his car and cuffing his hands behind his back.

"You can't do this," Kiko said with tears jumping to his eyes. "He didn't do anything."

"Shut up, wetback."

"We were just driving."

When the officer shoved Kiko to the ground, Hutch ducked and plowed his head toward the officer's mid-section, but the officer brought a knee up into his face and Hutch dropped facedown next to his car, this time silent.

A kick to the head.

"Get up!"

A kick to the chest.

"He can't!" Kiko said lunging for the officer again.

A kick to the stomach.

"On your feet!"

Hutch coughed blood onto the ground as Kiko came and tried to help him up.

"Come on, Hutch. Get up."

But Hutch's eyes were fluttering closed and he lay gasping on his side.

The officer stepped over to Hutch's ID on the ground and picked it up.

"I told you he was a cop," Kiko said.

The officer came back to Hutch, crouched down, unlocked the handcuffs, then walked back to his unit and drove away.

Kiko scrambled to the front seat of Hutch's car for the police radio, yelled for help, then hurried back to Hutch and knelt down.

"I called for help, Hutch," he said sitting down with his back against the rear tire and lifting Hutch's head onto his lap. "Don't die. Please don't die."

XXXXXXXX:

Starsky ran through the emergency room doors, head turning in the activity of the doctors, nurses, and patients to find his partner.

"Hutch!"

A doctor, Daniel Garcia, walked over to him, taking his arm. "We're taking care of him. You can't-"

As a privacy curtain parted, Starsky saw red-stained blond hair and a bloody face.

Two doctors and a nurse were tending to Hutch.

"Hutch!" he panted as he grabbed for the curtain.

A nurse joined Dr. Garcia in leading him aside.

"Tell him I'm here," Starsky said toward the curtain. "Tell him to hang on."

"He hasn't regained consciousness yet," Garcia said. "We'll let you know something as soon as we can, and we'll let you know when you can see him. Now please go talk to the boy. The sheriff is sending deputies to question him. He told us what happened."

As they escorted him from the area and around the corner into a hall, Starsky thought he saw a level of personal investment in the doctor's eyes. Brief, kind, the sort Captain Dobey was skilled at suppressing on most days but this young doctor had yet to master.

A nurse was bringing Kiko toward them.

Garcia and the nurse left them to talk together in the hall while hospital staff, visitors, and patients milled about.

Kiko stood looking down, his bloodstained hands going inside his jacket pockets.

"He's gonna be okay, kiddo."

"You don't know that. They said he may not make it. He's not waking up."

"He needs you to be strong. Some deputies are comin' to talk to you, and I'll be with you when they do, but I want you to tell me first. What happened?"

Kiko's voice was low and flat as he described the events that took place on their way home from the fishing trip.

By the time he was finished, he was leaning against the wall, exhausted and empty.

"You got help for him," Starsky said. "You did just what you were supposed to do. If you hadn't-"

Kiko's head came up and he stiffened at a voice he heard around the corner, his eyes trained on a large man in a uniform flanked by deputies walking in their direction.

"Sergeant Starsky!" the large man said in a hardy voice as he extended his hand. "Sheriff Stone! I want to apolog-"

Starsky grabbed the front of his uniform and slammed him into the wall. "You-"

"Hey! Easy!" he said as he raised his hands while the deputies pulled Starsky back. "This is all just a little misunderstanding." He winked at Kiko. "I'm sure the boy told you his side of things. Now listen to mine."

Starsky looked at Kiko, saw how tense he was, and calmed down, the deputies releasing their grip as he relaxed.

"It's exactly like this," the sheriff said as he hitched up his holster. "I had a few at Randy's Bar and was on my way home. Hell, I came up behind your partner's car and he was going pretty fast, so I tried to get him to pull over. Then when he finally did, and got out without my okay and without stopping like I told him to, I just over-reacted to his resistance of law enforcement and lost my temper. I thought my life was in jeopardy. Any officer would've."

"How does police brutality sound? Or if he doesn't make it, manslaughter? You better have a damn good lawyer, because you're gonna need a roomful by the time I get finished with you."

The sheriff looked at him for a moment, then at Kiko, then turned with a laugh as he walked toward the exit doors with his deputies.

"I'll have your badge!" Starsky called at his back. "Count on it!"

When they were gone, Garcia came around the corner to talk to them.

"He wanted in to try to talk with your partner. I told him he hadn't regained consciousness yet. But if he comes back…"

"I'll be right outside his door. He won't get past me."

"Look, uh…it's none of my business. But Sheriff Stone…makes his own rules. Don't expect a lot to happen with any type of investigation. He's above the law. He's done things…gotten away with things…you may not know how some small towns are. No one seems to care here. Not even the county attorney or anyone else in a position to do anything about it."

"Present company?"

"I've filed my complaints. They don't go anywhere. My car and my house have been shot at. County attorney's too. It tends to keep you pretty quiet, especially when you have a family to worry about and no guarantees of protection."

"So you just keep your head down and go about your business."

"There's nothing else we can do. He runs everything. Look. I've said too much already. I hope your partner makes it. And if you can take the sheriff down, well, that's just icing on the cake."

Starsky started to say more, but the doctor was already around the corner.

Kiko looked up at Starsky. "So he just gets away with it?"

"Not a chance," Starsky said as he sat down on a bench against the wall.

Kiko sat down too, the clock on the wall reading one in the morning.

XXXXXXX

Hours later Starsky roused himself awake in a chair in the hallway just outside of ICU, surprised that he had fallen asleep. But the long drive here and the last few days of working cases with Hutch with very little rest slipped up on him and took him down into a blank sleep.

He sat up and looked around for Kiko, whose chair was empty.

"Kiko?"

He looked down the hall in time to see the kid exiting through the ER doors with Hutch's Magnum down at his side.

"Kiko!"

Starsky shot out of the chair, and started to go after him, but Daniel Garcia came around the corner grabbing his arm.

"I think he heard me talking to the nurses. Ken's in a coma."

Torn between Hutch and Kiko, Starsky finally ran after the boy.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he panted as he raced down the hall.

XXXXXXXXXX

The sheriff moved around his kitchen making an egg sandwich and pouring a glass of milk, then

picked up the plate and the glass and headed for the living room to answer the knock at his door.

"Otto, I told you I didn't want to hear anything about-"

Garrison Stone stood staring at the gun in his face, then at the boy who held it.

"I think that gun's a little too big for you, boy."

Kiko's eyes held everything but fear. There were tears, anguish, hatred, sincerity. But no fear.

"A little," he said in an even voice.

"Why don't you come on in here so we can talk about this man to man?"

"No. I want you to go with me to see a judge, and tell him what you did."

Stone laughed. "You got to be pulling my-"

Kiko blasted a hole in the floor between his feet, stumbling back a little from the recoil.

The sheriff stumbled back too, his plate, sandwich, and glass of milk flying through the air.

Hunting dogs barked in the distance. The sky was just waking up with a pale dawn. The closest neighbor was a half a mile away, and the two-lane highway was quiet this time of morning. Only one school bus was out, and Kiko had caught a ride on it, telling the driver he had to see the sheriff about an emergency.

"NOW WAIT A MINUTE, KID!"

"I already called him. He's waiting for you."

"You little-"

Kiko shot at the ceiling this time, this time using both hands. Again the gun kicked him back, but he was ready for it, and recovered quickly.

Stone ducked with arms over his head to defend himself from falling plaster.

"DAMN IT! HOW OLD ARE YOU?"

This time Kiko aimed at his face.

"Go. We're going to his house in your car."

Stone stood crouched over, arms still over his head, eyeing Kiko, gauging his chances if he were to jump the kid.

"If you think this will work, you're craz-"

Kiko walked toward him in determined steps, arms out stiff and straight as he leveled the gun. "OKAY!" Stone shouted with a cringe. "OKAY! YOU GOT IT! YOU GOT IT!"

The sight of a red car with a white stripe barreling into his front yard and an incensed Starsky spilling from it was almost a relief to the sheriff.

XXXXXX

The sight of Hutch's bruised, swollen face took Starsky to a seat next to his hospital bed, where he reached for a quiet hand and held it.

"Hey, partner," he said as he swallowed tears, anger, and hope.

"I'm here too," Kiko said in a cracked voice.

Hutch's head rolled toward them, and a heavy eyelid came open, then closed again. "That's it," Starsky said squeezing his hand. "Come back."

Hutch said nothing, but he looked from one face to the other, and offered a slight smile.

Starsky pushed the call button on the bed to let the nurses know he was awake, and smiled at Kiko. "He's gonna be okay."

Kiko nodded and swiped the cuff of his shirtsleeve over his eyes.

Starsky turned his head back to his partner, surprised that his eyes were still open.

"Sheriff's goin' down, Hutch. Got so many cops and attorneys and TV reporters on this it looks like a circus."

Hutch gave a little nod.

"You can thank Kiko for that," Starsky said almost proudly. "He got that turkey to confess to a judge."

End

XXXXXXX

The Tesla Effect

(A Joe Collandra story)

By TLR

I went to JC's Cafe a little after dark and found Joe drunk in his kitchen, sitting on the floor between the refrigerator and the grill with his back against the wall, a near-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand.

Good thing he didn't have any customers at the time.

But I guess he knew it would be a slow day.

"What's wrong with you?" I asked as I walked over to him.

He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes that had seen better times. "Can't you just leave a guy alone for a second?"

"Huggy found Starsky wandering the street this morning. I want you to come with me, and find out what happened to him. He's been with me all day, and he can't tell me anything. He can't talk. It's like he...he can't even think."

"Good! Maybe I'll catch a break!"

I grabbed him by the front of his apron and yanked him to his feet.

"Is that why you're plastered? You don't want to think about anything?"

"You try being a human antenna! So what if it helps me forget the screaming head of that little boy I saw in a dresser drawer, or the mind-bending terror of that little girl who got her body torn apart by the pervert down the street, or the agony in your heart, Hutchinson."

I stared at him.

"Of course I know," he said almost accusingly. "Who do you think you're talking to? This," he said holding the bottle up, "keeps it stuffed down, under the mud."

I took the bottle out of his hand.

"I am sorry about that, and I know a little bit about what it's like to have those pictures stuck in your head, but you have to help me before I take him to the hospital. Whoever grabbed him is going to hear he's alive and come back. I have to know what happened and who did it."

"It's no good. I don't know what happened to him. I don't know where he was. I don't know who. I don't know why. I don't get anything from him. He's just a blank."

"That's what I'm talking about. He shouldn't be. What did he do, block it out?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"I want you to come and put your hands on him."

"I don't have to touch a person to get a read."

"I know that."

It could be a photograph, a handkerchief, or a piece of jewelry. These personal items somehow sharpened the images for him. And sometimes he saw his pictures without even touching the items. Sometimes he just plucked scenes out of the blue. But what if...

"You've done it before, haven't you?"

He tried to move away from me. I pulled him back.

"Joe. Touching a person does help, doesn't it?"

He wouldn't answer. And then he said, "That's how I found out my wife was cheating on me."

I gave him a long look. "What have we got to lose?"

"Are you kidding me? My sanity? My health? I lost ten pounds over the last kidnapping you and your partner dragged me into, and if Starsky hadn't been found this morning, you'd have dragged me into his too. And now you're asking me to go touch him."

"I know you don't want to, but..." I could feel my eyes becoming hot liquid. My heart constricting. Damn. "He's been gone a month, and..." I turned my head.

I can't leave him like this, Joe.

"Let me get my coat and lock up."

XXXXXXX

On the ride over to my place, he sat coiled down in the passenger seat like a cat ready to spring.

Then the closer we got to my apartment, the more relaxed he became.

Too relaxed for Joe. More like...like Starsky had been when Huggy brought him to my building that morning. Like putty; body and spirit.

"Starsk?" I had asked as I started running down my stairs.

Huggy was leading him up, and we met halfway.

But the moment that should have been relief turned into one of dread and confusion.

He was a passive figure, eyes vacant and cast out into the air.

His clothes, jeans and a powder blue zippered sweatshirt, were dirty. His face was scraped and smudged. No life-threatening injuries, but his wrists were bloody shreds where he'd worked to get free, and his skin was reddish and slightly swollen with tiny twin dot burns in numerous places. Possibly drugged, but his respirations and heartbeat seemed regular.

Normally when he was hurt, he reached for me, held onto me, for a connection, a lifeline. But this time...

I reached for him. Held his head, turned it up and looked into his eyes, tried to assess, understand.

His eyes now gazed somewhere up the stairs.

"Say something," I whispered.

But he didn't. He didn't draw away; he didn't come closer. He was in a stupor.

"Starsk, what happened?"

When he didn't answer, I looked at Huggy.

"He's been like this the whole time," he told me.

"It'll be all right," I said putting my arms around him. "I'm going to ask you some questions, and I want you to answer them."

To my surprise, his arms came up to hug me back, loosely, but he refused to let go or move, so I sat down on a step, helping him to sit on the one below me, and held him against my chest, where he lay weak and quiet.

I held him for hours, trying to comfort him and question him, until my arms ached, until hopeful words began to sound like desperate ones. Nothing worked.

Huggy brought water down from my apartment, but Starsky didn't seem to see it or even try to take a drink.

Huggy sat with us and tried to elicit a response too, but there were no changes.

Finally I looked at Huggy and said, "I have to get him to a hospital, but I need to know what happened. They need to know. Whoever had him will come back."

"I'll see what I can find out," he said getting to his feet.

"That's not what I mean," I said pulling him back down. "Sit here with him. I'm going to see if Joe can help us. Keep an eye on his breathing. Call an ambulance if you have to. And if you even think somebody's coming up these stairs to hurt him..."

I put my gun next to him on the step.

XXXXXX

I looked at Joe in the passenger seat, who now looked through the windshield with vague eyes and was starting to slump down in the seat.

"Joe? Are you afraid of what you'll feel?"

"No," he said in a hoarse voice. "I'm afraid there won't be anything there to feel."

XXXXXXX

We went inside my apartment building, and I saw that Huggy was still holding Starsky on the stair steps much the same as I had been.

Joe looked at my partner's limp form sort of draped over Huggy's left arm. It looked like he would stay that way forever. Unresponsive. No life. No heart.

Huggy looked like he had aged ten years in the time I was gone.

"Do somethin'," he said looking at me.

I knew what Joe was thinking: This Starsky figure couldn't be the man who'd bullied him into helping us locate a missing toddler forty-five days ago.

He didn't say anything to Starsky, or to Huggy, or to me; he just started up the steps. When he got to him, he planted a knee on a step, next to him, wrapping one hand around Starsky's lethargic forearm. Even though his visions could be excruciating, and he wasn't always sure what he would find, I think he wanted to get to the bottom of this as badly as we did. I didn't know how much more of my partner's autistic-like state I could stand.

XXXXXX

"Catatonic," Joe mumbled as his hand remained around Starsky's lax forearm.

An even bigger reason to uncover the underlying cause. I needed to get him to the hospital for treatment as soon as possible.

"Cloth," Joe continued. "Soaked in..." He coughed and wheezed. "Can't breathe. Let me go."

His free hand wiped at his throat, a film of sweat forming on his face. He leaned over, until his forehead touched a step, a choking sound in his throat.

I reached for him, to help steady him, but he kicked his leg back without even looking at me and almost knocked me down the stairs.

"Don't touch me, Hutchinson!"

I regained my footing, this time staying an arm's length away, but close enough to see Starsky's face, which was still expressionless.

Joe was hunched over, the palm of his free hand gripping the edge of the step his head leaned against.

His back was to me. Sweat soaked through the back of his shirt.

"No," Joe rasped as his head worked back and forth. "Don't put me in there. That's not for humans. That's for-let me out. Gotta get out of-Hutch!"

Huggy and I exchanged a glance. I lunged toward Starsky-I'm not sure why. To help him somehow, I guess. Instinctive. But Huggy's hand came out and kept me back.

I froze on the steps, willing myself to stay put, telling myself I had to for my partner's sake.

"Cage," Joe whispered. His knuckles were white on Starsky's arm, but Starsky didn't seem to know it. "Let me out of here."

Huggy closed his eyes, his arms tightening around Starsky even more.

"Stun gun," Joe gasped, then jerked, a groan escaping him. "No, don't. No more. Stop it. You can't-" He collapsed forward onto the steps, panting, moaning, his eyes blinking. "Again. Again. Again."

My mouth was suddenly dry with shock.

"Got out of the ropes," Joe whispered. "Opened the cage and ran."

I stared at him, then at Starsky, who was still a silent ragdoll.

"Dwayne Stewart," Joe groaned as he folded his free arm onto the step and burrowed his forehead into the crook of his arm.

Huggy and I looked at each other again, the name registering with both of us simultaneously: A gang member whose brother died while in police custody after Starsky and I arrested him. His brother's name was Morris, and was also the leader.

We had nothing to do with his death. He went for an officer's gun just as he was being put into a holding cell, a struggle happened, and Morris was shot by another cop.

Starsky and I weren't even there when it happened, but obviously Dwayne blamed us for Morris being at the police station in the first place.

"What else?" I asked Joe.

I didn't even know if he could hear me. He seemed immersed in the moment.

"Sshh," Joe whispered. "Whiteout. Blackout. Sshh."

The chaotic images seemed to be winding down to nothing. He waited a few more seconds, then let go of Starsky's arm. He was finished.

"Let's get him to the hospital," I said to Huggy as he and I helped lift Starsky to his feet and then helped him go down the stairs.

When we reached the last step, I left Starsky with Huggy and turned and went back up to Joe.

"Thank you," I said touching his back. "Come on. You need a ride. We'll drop you off on the way."

"No," he said just short of a sob as he turned over and sat up, using his apron to wipe tears and sweat away. "Just get the hell out of here and leave me alone."

I hurried down the steps and reached Huggy, who was still waiting for me with Starsk.

"Buddy, it's okay," I said as we led him out the door. "We're going to get you some help."

XXXXXXX

After telling the ER doctors everything I knew by way of Joe, Huggy and I were told to have a seat in the waiting room, so we did, both of us spent.

Huggy usually had plenty to say, but not this night.

"If he don't come out of it," he said as he gave me a look, "you're gonna have one mad Bear on your hands."

XXXXXX

Later I called Captain Dobey and filled him in, gave him the information he needed to go after Dwayne Stewart, then went back to the waiting room to sit with Huggy, and that's when one of the ER doctors, Louise Browne, came in.

"The bad news is that your friend Joe is right. He is in a state of catatonia that is a symptom of the trauma he endured. We're running a series of neurological, psychological, and medical tests to determine the nature and extent of the damage. But the good news is that we've already started him on some drugs that will help, we'll be monitoring him closely, and he's on his way to recovery. He's in Room 325. He'll sleep through the night, but you can see him anytime you like."

XXXXX

He was hooked to an IV, a heart monitor, and a respiration monitor.

Huggy and I didn't say it out loud, but we both felt it: His physical condition would heal a lot faster than his mental one.

"You go first," Huggy said quietly, and so I did, taking my partner's sleeping hand, thankful he'd managed to escape and survive a hit meant to kill him.

XXXXXXX

The first few times he opened his eyes, they blinked a little and he fell asleep again. He looked at me but didn't seem to see me.

And then came the first time that he really saw that it was me.

"Hi, Starsk," I said in a quiet voice. "How you feeling?"

When I squeezed his hand, he flinched back.

"Sorry," we said in the same voice.

"It's okay," I said as I took my hand from his. "You're in a hospital now. The doctors are taking good care of you."

"Not sure what happened," he whispered weakly.

He looked like he wanted to say more, but he just looked at me quietly, waiting for me to talk to him.

"Dwayne Stewart is what happened. You got away, somehow found your way back. Huggy picked you up and brought you to my place. Stewart's already been picked up. Joe helped out."

This time he did reach for me, and when I squeezed his hand, he didn't pull away.

"Starting to remember," he said. "Thought I was gonna die in that...cage."

His eyes grew wet with tears.

I put my hand to the side of his head. Even though I already knew the details, it was important that he could relate them to me.

"I'm listening," I told him. "Take your time."

I would like to think that he could feel support and friendship in my touch; just like Joe had felt fear and pain in his.

The End

XXXXX

Super Natural (An Alternate Universe)

By TLR

I stood watching them pull the wreckage of my car from the bottom of the ocean-side cliff.

Another fine mess I've gotten myself into.

Starsky arrived in the Torino, ran to edge of the cliff, and looked down.

"Hutch!"

I grabbed his arm.

I'm all right, Starsk! I'm right here!

I wasn't getting through to him. He started down the jagged hill but some uniforms held him back.

"NO!" he screamed as he strained against them. "I NEED TO GO!"

One of the cops shook him and shouted, "He's not there, Starsky!"

"HUTCH!"

Starsk! Why don't you see me? I'm right here! Look at me!

He sat at the top of the cliff and stared all day. Long after my car was pulled up and away. Long after the cops and other official vehicles were gone.

I know how you feel, Starsk. I know how I would feel.

Dobey came. I tried to talk to the captain too.

I'm worried about him, Captain. Keep your eye on him.

And then Starsky again.

Please, Starsk. Please talk to me.

But he just sat there, staring out into the ocean.

Huggy came later on in the day. Starsky barely registered his presence.

Huggy sat down on the other side of him, leisurely, patiently, as if he had all the time in the world.

Huggy, you have to help him. You have to take care of him.

Starsky got up and walked toward the Torino.

"I don't think you should drive," Huggy said climbing to his feet and walking after him.

"I have to," Starsky said finally. His first words since he had screamed my name. He was numb.

"Ride with me," Huggy told him, but Starsky was already getting in the car.

"Then I'll follow you," Huggy said in resignation.

It's okay, Huggy. I'll ride with him.

Starsky went to the funeral. He had been robotic. No tears until today. Not until he saw me lying there. It was the hardest day of his life.

I put arm around him.

Don't cry, Ollie. It'll be all right. Just hang in there.

He went to his apartment, empty. Walked around in a daze for hours, unable to sit down or even think. Then he went to my place and used his key to get in. He took one long last look around, touching my things, telling me goodbye.

He opened my closet and took out my worn-out tan suede jacket, then hugged it close, as if he were holding me.

Oh, Starsk. Please. I'm right here. It'll be okay. You can make it.

He stayed there for a few more hours, just sitting on my sofa with his hand on my jacket, stroking it, and then Huggy came, figuring out where he was.

"Come on, brother. Time to go."

He finally left, and went home to his own apartment, taking my jacket with him. He would go back later for a few more things: My guitar, a couple of books, a few paintings and record albums. But the jacket was first.

He existed in limbo for days, caught between living and dying, love and grief.

Captain Dobey gave him some time, and then he came calling.

"I need you back on the force, Dave."

Starsky took his shield out, held it in his hand, looked at it.

"I'd like to have Hutch's."

"I'll see that you get it. It's still with..."

"I know where it is."

Dobey looked at him for a long time, then his shield for a long time.

"Hutch would want you to come back."

Starsk nodded.

"I know what he would want, but I don't think I can."

"If you ever want to talk things over..."

Starsky nodded.

The captain walked to the door and left.

Go back, Starsk. I'll go with you.

It took a couple of more days, but he went back, welcomed warmly by the guys in the squad room.

Starsky didn't smile. He wasn't sure he could do it, but he was willing to try.

Going to our desk was the hardest few feet he ever had to walk. He picked up one of my good pens and turned it between his fingers.

I told you I'd be here for you, Starsk. Now be ready. Your instincts will kick in ten minutes from now. A cop hater with a machine gun will walk in here to try to blow everyone away, so you need to be ready. You'll hear a commotion in the hall, and it'll be him, coming. Be 'll be all right, but be ready.

End

XXXXXXXXX

GOOD WITH A GUN (A How They Met Story)

By TLR

We police academy cadets had moved on from book work to firearms training. A lot of us were eager to get going, but not me. This is the only part of training that gave me pause, made me think about what I was doing and what I was getting myself into.

Could I kill a man? Even to protect myself? Or to protect an innocent civilian?

I had watched my grandfather with a squirrel rifle on his farm, and he let me shoot at some tin cans a few times, but that was it. I'd never killed anything before; not even a rabbit. Yet this job required that I be prepared to take a life at a moment's notice. I had to get good with a gun. I had to learn how to kill.

The Starsky kid didn't seem to have any trouble with it.

The Starsky kid.

That's what I called him in my mind before we formally introduced ourselves, even though I knew we had to be about the same age.

I watched him in classes and saw how he operated. Half the time it looked like he could be daydreaming or dozing off, or distracted by something out the window. He barely looked at the books in class, took few notes, but when it came time for questions and answers and tests, he aced them every time. I, on the other hand, had to study my head off to get my good grades.

I was always eager to volunteer when an instructor asked for one to demonstrate something, and he was one to sit back and watch with arms folded across his chest or would mouth off a line from an old gangster movie.

This police training seemed to come easy for him, like he was born to do it. I thought it was coming easy for me too, until I held the gun in my hand on the firing range.

But here, on the shooting range, the Starsky kid seemed to shine.

We were all lined up in a row side by side taking our practice at some cardboard targets, and he fired shot after shot with a fixed intensity on his face I hadn't seen in the classroom.

In the classroom he was friendly and precocious and funny. Here, standing next to me now to my

right, he was deadly. With a gun in his hand, it looked like he was ten years older.

Crack, crack, crack. Each bullet hit its mark. It wasn't luck, and all of us knew it wasn't. Gradually the gunshots of everyone else stopped, and he was the only one left shooting. We were all staring at him and his unbelievable skills.

No one said anything for a long time. The air was silent except for his shooting. Even the instructors stopped what they were doing to watch.

Then he stopped shooting and paused, about to reload when he noticed all of us looking at him.

Then one of the cadets down the line laughed and said, "Yeah, it's easy to hit a cardboard dummy or a bull's-eye. How about in the real world?"

He didn't answer. Just gave the guy a brief look like he didn't owe him a response, then started to reload.

Was that guy kidding? The Starsky kid could have shot the damn cap off his head without grazing a hair on his scalp if he'd wanted to.

The others finally resumed their shooting, and the range became noisy with their firing again.

The show was over. Maybe they were envious.

I watched him reload, how he handled the gun like he'd used one all of his life; like he should be the trainer.

"You're really good," I told him. "How did you learn to shoot like that?"

"Army," was his answer. His head was still bent, involved with the pistol.

"Oh."

That explained a lot. A few of the guys here had been in the Army, but none could shoot like this one.

"Special training or something? Sharpshooter? Sniper?"

"Nope," he said, then raised his head to look at me. "Just stayin' alive."

He raised the gun up and I watched again as he shot at a fresh, bullet-free target, hitting the head or heart each time.

He noticed that I was watching instead of shooting, and lowered his gun to look at me.

"Somethin' on your mind, college boy?"

College boy.

He had a name for me too.

"It's Hutchinson."

"I'm Starsky."

We shook hands, and then I said, "Yes, there is something on my mind. How does it feel to...shoot a person?"

He looked at me for a while, then said, "Just like you think it feels."

I laughed a little, a cover for my sudden reservation.

"You don't have to like it," he said. "But it will keep you alive."

It's like he could read my thoughts. It made me feel kind of exposed. He knew I was a college boy. He knew I had misgivings about using a weapon.

What else did he know about me?

Well, about as much as I could guess about him. His old shoes and worn out clothes told me he hadn't been the richest kid in the world and wasn't exactly into fashion or image. The letters to his mother that he wrote in class instead of studying told me he was close to her. The way he fought in self-defense class suggested that he had probably been a street kid. His street smarts and playful attitude belying a clever mind told me was multi-faceted.

Talking to him was easier than I thought it would be. He could be a little reserved toward others, I noticed in class and around the academy grounds. Friendly enough, but guarded when it came to making close friends. He had a roommate that I never saw him with or talking to.

"I never thought I would feel this way about police work," I said. "Dying for the job seems a given. But killing for it? I thought I was ready."

"You will be. And if you didn't have a second thought or two, or worry what it's like to use your piece on someone, you wouldn't make a good cop anyway."

I liked him. The sureness he had, the way he didn't have to justify himself to the others, the way he respected my hesitation.

"Don't worry," he said. "Instinct will kick in." He took his forefinger and put it to my head. "When you got a loaded gun to your head..." Then on my chest. "...or to your heart, or to the head or heart of an innocent person you're sworn to protect, you'll do what's required."

I nodded, hoping that I would never have to find out what he meant, but knowing I probably

would someday.

"My pop was a policeman when I was a kid," he said. "He was the first to teach me about guns. One night some wiseguys busted into our house and started shooting. My ma held onto my little brother, and my pop tried to get to his gun, but he wasn't fast enough. They shot him and the gun fell on the floor. I grabbed it up to shoot back, but by the time I picked it up, the hoods were gone."

Hell. I didn't know what to say.

"How old were you?" I asked.

"Ten."

Now I really didn't know what to say.

"That must have been...awful."

He glanced down and gave a little shrug. Such a small gesture, but with such big hurt and vulnerability in it.

"I'd like to get really good with this thing," I said holding up my gun.

"Here," he told me as he reached for it. "Let me show you."

I never called him the Starsky kid after that.

I called him friend.

End

XXXXXXXXXXX

Shining Armor

By TLR

Another dead body. Another dead hooker. Rookies Boyle and Caldwell responded to a call of a dead body wrapped up inside yards of white paper. The kind, I offered, that was used in a deli, butcher, or meat packing plant.

Meat. That's what Boyle called the last one. I thought it a bit crass coming from a fresh cop.

"She's a human being," Hutch informed him hotly, taking the words right out of my mouth like he did about ten times a day. "Her name was Bonnie."

Boyle ribbed his partner, Caldwell. "Why's he on a first name basis, huh?"

Hutch stepped toward him like he wanted to do something. I pulled him back.

It was hot. We were tired. It wasn't worth it.

Hutch read all this in my grip, and nodded.

Bonnie was taken away to the morgue, the tenth hooker in the last two months to be killed and packaged in that weird wrapping paper.

Dobey just now assigned us the case. Took it from two other detectives, Bennington and Howell, who seemed to be getting nowhere with it.

Hutch and I tried tracking down the origins of the paper. Questioned all the butchers, deli owners, and meat packing people in the area who used a lot of paper, but all led to dead ends. Everyone had an alibi, no one had a motive, they used dissimilar paper. We were at a kind of stand still.

"Bennington and Howell aren't giving it the steam it needs," Dobey told us in confidence in his office. "I'm giving it to you two."

"Hey," I shrugged. "Leave it to Hutch and me to be invested in the welfare of some hookers."

Hutch gave me a look that I didn't quite understand. At first. And then, it was, Oh hell. Gillian.

I shot him an apologetic look, and his eyes softened, almost teared up as he nodded understanding.

We didn't talk about the case; we just went through the mechanics of it. Questioning the victims' fellow prostitutes, what few relatives they may have had, their drug dealers, their pimps, their johns.

One nasty pimp who liked to bruise up his ladies was at the top of my list of suspects, but it was only his violent reputation that made me think of him. If the girls shorted him by one dollar, he beat them into compliance, and they never shorted him again.

Then there was the fact that the killer was preying on independent hookers too, which is what led Sweet Alice to our station.

For a working girl to show up at a police station asking for help...well, it said a lot about the fear the girls had of the killer creep we were trying to nail.

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Hutch and I could read it on her face and in her body language. She was scared and lost. And Hutch was Hutch, doing his Hutch thing. Putting his arm around her, holding her close, telling her we were gonna catch the guy as soon as we could.

It didn't work with her. Not that she didn't believe him. She was just that scared. She clung to

him like he was a life raft, and at that moment, I guess that's what he was to her. She had no family to call her own. Her friends were other hookers. Other cops would bring her in on a heartbeat. Or worse. Dismiss her fear.

The two of them were off between some filing cabinets in the corner like a couple of high school kids talking in secret between some lockers, but I could still hear them.

"It'll be okay," he whispered as he put an arm around her. "I'll make sure of it."

"How? I want to believe you, but...ten? Will I be eleven? Bonnie and I were close. I'm scared, Hutch."

I knew Hutch had something cooking inside. I could tell by the look on his face as his eyes met mine.

I have to do something, they said. I have to protect her.

He whispered something in her ear, gave her the key to his apartment, and walked her from the squad room and out into the hallway.

I joined him in the hall and watched her walk down the corridor to the elevator.

"Sure that's a good idea?" I asked as the doors opened, then closed with her inside, swallowing her up like a fragile bird in a cage.

"Was Sharman a good idea?" he asked, then walked back inside the squad room, raising my worry up another notch.

Usually when he walked away from me, he didn't want to hear my side of things, so I just let it go for a while and tried to accept what he was doing, even if I had misgivings.

It wasn't like I had to intervene whenever he did something I wasn't sure of. He actually did have a mind of his own, and used it very forcefully whenever he felt like it.

But when he clammed up and didn't talk about things...well, I knew it was a signal that he himself wasn't so sure about the matter at hand and didn't want me trying to talk him into or out of anything or expressing my opinion for his own good.

The next couple of weeks when I stopped by his place to pick him up, she was right there under his wing, looking protected and safe. And he was looking and feeling like he'd just won the lottery. Helping her made him feel like he was doing what he was meant to do in this world. Being a helper. A giver. A good citizen. A man with a heart and a soul so full of love he had to give it to others or die. It just spilled over.

She was cooking for him, cleaning for him. He took her out to expensive restaurants, gave her money, bought her clothes, read her poetry, wrote her songs, played the piano for her, picked her

flowers, painted her picture.

It grew to be no longer about protection, but about a relationship. Hutch and I still worked the case of course, but it mingled with the romance that bloomed like a field of flowers, and soon it was difficult for even me to tell the two apart.

I will say one thing for the situation. It made him work that much damn harder to find that nut case we were after. I said to focus on the paper, and he trusted my instincts. We were like bloodhounds on the trail of that stuff, which came from large rolls or spools, and we dreamed that paper day and night, tried to track it down like we would a fingerprint.

Talk about déjà vu. It wasn't exactly the alley thing all over again. But close. He was so fixated on Alice I think he was about to propose. He was gushing about how wonderful she was and how she was transforming into a butterfly right before his eyes and she even said she was going to leave the business and get a legitimate job; maybe with his help even at the station as a receptionist.

Then we get a call about another dead body found in a dumpster in an alley. Another dead hooker. Near his place.

"Ali," he barely managed in a strangled whisper.

"Sweet Alice" was no longer used. Not even Alice. It was just Ali.

He froze up in the passenger seat. His brain. His muscles. His heartbeat. His breath. He just locked up.

I put the light on and sped up to get to the alley, praying to whatever God in my mind that it wasn't her. Hutch didn't deserve it.

Boyle and Caldwell were there again, standing by the dumpster smoking cigarettes while Hutch ran up to look in.

Boyle snickered through his smoke.

"They pay you extra to cry, Hutchinson?"

It was a blonde, but it wasn't Sweet Alice.

Boyle winked at Caldwell. "He knows this one too."

Hutch grabbed for Boyle; I grabbed him back. But this time I couldn't stop him. He punched Boyle one time in the face, and the guy dropped like a bag of bricks, out like a light.

Caldwell just stared at Hutch like he'd seen a mild-mannered fellow transform into a ferocious creature. And he had.

"Sorry, man," Caldwell said to Hutch as he went to see about Boyle. "He's got a mouth sometimes."

Hutch ignored him as he examined the girl in the dumpster.

I took note of it too. The same white paper. Yards of it. Barely holding her guts in.

"Who knows paper?" I asked him.

Hutch was still staring at the body, seeing Alice. Even though it wasn't Alice. Seeing Gillian.

Even though it wasn't Gillian.

He didn't even hear my question.

"Can't help her now," I said gently as I took him by the arm and led him to the car to call for a crime lab and coroner.

"I could've save her," Hutch said numbly as I picked up the mike.

"You couldn't," I said, hating that I had to point out the obvious to him. It showed me how befuddled he was. "You don't know who it is."

He just stared at the indifferent, bland dumpster.

It went deeper than this dead body.

"You couldn't save Gillian from Grossman, Hutch. You didn't know. You're trying to redeem yourself with Alice? Make it right? Trying to prevent another Gillian? I admire you being the hero and all, but buddy, you didn't earn this self-condemnation, and it kills me when I see you unable to save the world."

He shouldered past, bumping me hard, and I dropped the mike as I grabbed onto the Torino's door to keep from falling.

As he walked out of the alley he said, "I'm not trying to save the world. Just the people I care about."

When he was completely out of sight, I turned half of my attention to Boyle, who was finally coming to. I finished my call on the mike, then backed out of the alley and drove down the street.

He was almost to his apartment. Going inside just as I pulled up alongside the curb.

"Hey!" I said as I jumped from the car and ran after him.

He stopped halfway up the stairs and looked down.

"More words of wisdom?" he asked. "Just twist the knife in a little tighter. I can take it."

"Hutch..."

He waited. With all that was going through his mind, he still waited for me to say something.

Maybe wanted me to say something, drag him back to reality.

"The paper," I said. "It doesn't just look like meat paper. It looks like art paper. The kind you have. Where do you buy it?"

He stared at me, his thoughts now zeroing in on mine, and a lead was dropping into place much like the perfect fit of a lock and key.

The paper was what bugged the hell out of me to begin with. I knew I'd seen it before. Rolls of it. And now I remembered. It was in Hutch's own greenhouse, where he stored his art supplies. For sketches he always bought huge spools of white paper.

It wasn't meat packing paper at all. It was art paper.

"Damn," he said just above a whisper. "Let me check on Ali," he said, then ran up the stairs.

He didn't have to tell me. We could read each other like a book. Our next round of stops would be art supply stores.

Five minutes later he bounded down the stairs with a newfound energy on his face.

"She's okay," he said breathlessly. He may as well have said, "I love her." It was all over his face.

We jumped in the car and followed the thread of our new lead.

XXXXXX

We got lucky with our first stop, but what we learned chilled us to the bones. One customer on the shopkeeper's glowed up at us like neon, and it was Darren Boyle.

Hutch and I looked at each other, the cards falling into perfect place like a neatly shuffled deck.

He and Caldwell had been at almost every crime scene. He had a particularly nasty attitude toward prostitutes and anyone who had an ounce of concern about them. A background check showed that he had been a product of the foster care system because his mother, herself a prostitute, had given him up at birth.

"I don't think there's enough to search his house," Dobey said in his office. "You're talking about a very promising rookie."

"No," Hutch said leaning over the captain's desk. "We're talking about a serial killer."

"It'll be a stretch for the judge," he said reaching for the phone. "But I'll give it my best."

His best usually worked for us. The judge finally granted the search warrant, and what we found at Boyle's flat astounded even Hutch and me once we were inside: Home movies of some of the murders. Sketches of some of the victims, the way they looked before he sliced them open with a cake knife. And spools and spools of the art paper he'd wrapped them in.

XXXXXXX

There was only a minor bit about it in the papers. Hooker slayings aren't as appealing as, say, the death of a young mother or an innocent child. The only thanks we got was from Dobey and from the hookers, but that was enough. Hutch and I didn't need recognition or applause to do our job. We did it because we wanted to.

"Damn law enforcement," Sweet Alice drawled softly the day we took her to Huggy's for dinner. "Should have known." She smiled sweetly at Hutch. "No offense."

He moved to kiss her, and she gracefully drew back, saying, "I have appointments. I have to go."

He gave her a confused, puppy-dog look, but let her out of the booth, and she made her charming, sensual way from the table.

He watched her until she went out the door and disappeared.

"What's she doing?" he asked me.

I gave a shrug. "No idea."

She's leaving, Hutch. Just like Abby did.

His eyes burned into me.

"Starsk, did you lecture her?"

"Why would I?"

"I need the john," he said as he started to get out of the booth. But then he stopped, and picked up a folded sheet of paper that she must have left in the seat.

He put it on the table next to his plate and looked at it for a long time without reading it.

I watched his face, then reached for the note, and he nodded permission.

I unfolded the page and read it, then looked at him.

"Want to hear it?" I asked.

"Why not? I could use a nightcap."

Instead of reading it aloud, I put it down in front of him. In her pretty script were the words, Dear Handsome Hutch. I love you with all my heart, but I'm not what you need right now. Maybe later, when things are different for both of us. Thank you for being there when I needed you most. You truly are a bright sun in a sometimes dark universe, and I appreciate your tender loving care. Thank you. Always your Sweet Alice.

He didn't look at me, but I could still see the tears sparkling beneath his eyelashes.

"How about a drink?" I offered as I looked around for Huggy. "Think I could use one myself."

He nodded, and smiled a little as he folded the note and slid it into his shirt pocket.

The End

XXXXXXXX

Kiko Ramos, A Man

By TLR

I couldn't get used to seeing Kiko in a cop's uniform, but Hutch said he looked perfect in it. Guess it's because I had my doubts about the kid getting off the streets and making something decent of himself, and Hutch never doubted it for a second. He always envisioned Kiko doing great things, and tried to steer him in every positive direction every chance he got.

An investment that culled treasured returns, in Hutch's eyes. Pride beamed from Hutch every time the kid walked into the room.

Hutch was still single and didn't have a kid, so I guess Kiko Ramos was the closest he would ever come to the real thing. It wasn't forced or anything. Hutch was involved because his heart was in it. He really believed in the boy.

I showed an interest too, but not nearly as big as Hutch. My participation was connected to my partner's hopes and dreams for the youngster, and that was about it.

Well. Maybe. If you twisted my arm. I could say that if something ever happened to Hutch, I would try to step in and be a mentor to the kid.

But he wasn't much of a kid anymore. He was a kid standing on his own two feet. Had his own place, across town from Hutch's. Had his own girl. Own hobbies. Which included collecting movie memorabilia of all things. Something I know a little bit about and don't mind sharing with the kid.

I wanted to connect with him. I mean, we were alike in some ways. Both street kids. Both poor or on the brink. Both had strikes against us. But there was this barrier somehow between us, that kept us from clicking the way he and Hutch clicked. It was Hutch who had bonded with him. Hutch who knew what his next move would be. What his hurts were like. How could that be? Hutch was never a street kid. He had advantages. He could walk away or be too busy whenever he wanted. But he never did. He was committed. About as committed to the boy as he was to me, and I don't say that lightly.

As corny as Hutch could come off to me at times, it was as real as the concrete under my feet. He meant every word he said, every idea he thought. It wasn't just idealism. It was realism. Life. The way it was meant to be lived. Hutch is the purest man I know. He's no phony. As coy and lofty as he sounds, he is the man he wants to be.

I think Kiko learned so much from that too. He couldn't have been matched to a better hero. Hutch did not set standards for anyone to live up to. He knew that was impossible. But somehow he seemed to embody the ideals that others admire and aspire to.

Maybe that's why I was never led to be a Big Brother. I think I'd be a good one. But not for Kiko.

The kid needed larger-than-life, not a polished version of himself, and that's what Hutch was.

Even to me. I saw what the kid saw: Hope, and humanity, and warmth.

I had street smarts, but Hutch had been wise, since birth it seemed. And not just book smarts. I mean a wisdom that comes from experience. He had no street experience, yet he understood the plight of the overlooked. Somewhere he had to have experienced a pain of some kind that helps him appreciate the pain of others.

I don't know what that is. He's never told me. But I see it every day. In his eyes. In every case.

Every victim. Every tear. Something happened to him. Something long ago. And deep. So deep

I'm afraid to ask him about it, even though it's quite evident in him every day.

That is why he understands people. That is why he cares. He is giving to others the very thing he needs and never obtained.

It leeches out in his dreams, though. When he's crashed out in the back seat during a stakeout, and he cries out unintelligible words, irretrievable memories. It's there.

"You okay?" I ask, my heart pounding with worry as I look in the rearview.

"Um," he mumbles rubbing a hand down his face. "Oh. Yeah. Fine. Some dream. Weird. I don't even know what it was."

I always have to let it go. There's nothing to talk about. Nothing that comes to his mind anyway.

What could a guy like him and I guy like me have in common to begin with anyway? At five. At twelve. At sixteen. At twenty-one. What vein runs between us? Rich kid, poor kid. Privileged kid, street kid. Doted upon, kicked around.

Sometimes I think he is the street kid at heart, and I am the privileged one. I had all the pampering you could ask for, from a mother who adored me and from a father who was dead. He had all the hardships you could imagine, from a mother who was cold and neglectful and from a father who was alive but never around.

But maybe that is all fantasy or philosophy.

I don't know why I say all of this. Except that it just goes to show that life is full of contradictions and oxymorons and any other paradox you want to mention.

I guess the stars in the universe have a way of aligning at just the right time for just the right people. And it did, not just for me and Hutch to become friends, but for he and Kiko to connect the way they did.

The stars seemed to be lining up perfectly the day Kiko walked into Huggy's smashed on his feet, still in uniform, as drunk as I'd ever seen a guy when he was on duty.

"Enjoying your day off?" I offered.

What a line.

But something about the way he was defacing his own badge, his own image, that day, rubbed me the wrong way, and I wanted him to know it.

Hutch was kinder, of course.

"Hey," he said taking Kiko's arm and leading him to a stool. "What's going on?"

The kid? Rather, "man", I should say. Over twenty-one now. Weaved over the bar in his drunken state and motioned for Huggy.

"Bottle," he slurred, his head dipping lower toward the bar.

"Of what?" Huggy asked sincerely.

"Whatever the hell will make me hit the floor," he said, then laughed as he lowered his head onto folded arms, muffling a laugh that became a sob.

Hutch squeezed his shoulder.

"Kiko..."

His dark head moved back and forth. Hiding his face, his eyes.

Hutch looked at me, then Huggy, then the three of us moved the rookie upstairs to Huggy's so no one in the bar could be entertained.

"Messed up," Kiko murmured as we put him down on the bed. "I messed up big time."

"What happened?" Hutch asked as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

Kiko's head moved to and fro on the pillow. Huggy went to the bathroom and came back with a cold, damp cloth, which Hutch put across the kid's forehead.

"Talk to me, Kiko."

"How?" he asked as his dark eyes settled on Hutch in a moment of focus. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Hutch asked as he squeezed the boy's arm.

Kiko turned away from Hutch, onto his side facing the wall.

For a second I thought he had passed out, but then his words started to come, quietly, a mixture of the kid I once knew, and the man I was beginning to become familiar with.

"I found a little girl yesterday," he said, so quiet it was almost a whisper. "Hung in a closet by her stepfather."

A seasoned cop. Years on the job. Countless corpses. Yet Hutch teared up like he had seen it himself. Tears that were as much for Kiko as for the little girl.

"He said she was making too much noise," Kiko finished lamely. "He was just sitting there in a rocking chair. Trying to watch a ballgame. He said she was making too much noise, so he hung her to shut her up."

Kiko's shoulder started to move with sobs.

"She was just three," he finished. "Three."

"I know," Hutch said in a quiet voice. "I know, Kiko."

"I don't want to see it," he said. "I don't want to do this every day."

Hutch kept his hand on Kiko's shoulder.

"You don't have to," Hutch said. "You can quit any time you want to."

The silence was long and thoughtful between them. Then Hutch finished with, "But your caring is what's going to help this world. The streets need men like you. Tears like yours. You just have to...think of it as a gift. A tool. Maybe even a weapon."

The air was silent, just like the room. I knew when Hutch's words had gotten through to someone, and they had gotten through to Kiko, even if neither one of them recognized it at the time.

"So," Kiko said carefully. "It's...normal? To want to puke? Or run away? Or rip your eyes out? Or kill somebody?"

"Yes," Hutch finally whispered, as if that were the answer to the universal questions.

A few minutes passed, and then Kiko turned back over to look at Hutch, his countenance somehow shifting to an older, experienced version of himself. A student looking at his teacher. A son looking at his father.

"Thank you," he breathed out in a hot sob, reaching for Hutch's neck.

Hutch pulled him up into a hug.

"Anytime," he whispered into the boy's collar. "Please come to me."

End

XXXXXXXXX

LIFE IN THE KEY OF STARSKY (A Twilight Zone crossover)

By TLR

Starsky parked in front of the new restaurant, Jager's, and we got out, fine aromas wafting from inside.

"Man," he said as he opened the door for me, "it sure smells good."

It was a really nice place, one that made me wish I were dressed a little nicer, but the smell of the food was too tempting to leave and go home and change.

The maître d approached us, glancing at our jeans, shirts, and leather jackets, but not saying anything.

"Table for two please," I said as I looked around.

The ambience was inviting. Warm, relaxed, intimate lighting from chandeliers and small lamps on the white tablecloths, with classical music floating somewhere in the background; the waiters and decor reminiscent of an earlier era.

There were no diners, and I thought that was a little odd given that it was a new restaurant, but didn't have time to ponder it because we were already on our way to a table.

After we took a seat at the elegant table, the man said, "Someone will be right with you."

"Thank you."

After the man left, Starsky looked around and said, "Not what you would call busy."

"That's just what I was thinking. How long has this place been open?"

"Not a clue."

I picked up a menu, but before I could even open it, the maître d returned to the table.

"We don't serve Jews," he said to Starsky, then gestured toward a sign on the wall.

We both looked, and both saw it. Small, discreet, in fanciful script.

"What?" I said with my mouth falling open. "What is this?"

Starsky glanced at the waiter, then at me.

"Well, um...guess I'll be goin'."

He was too hurt to be shocked or angry. This had never happened before. At least, in my presence.

He stood up to leave, but I was on my feet first, glaring at the waiter.

"Let me tell you something," I said to the man, but Starsky came back for my arm and pulled me along, and that's when a group of uniformed men approached us with their guns out, blocking our way to the door.

We reached for our own guns, but were jumped before we had the chance to get at them.

Before we had time to wonder just what the hell was going on, the butt of a rifle smashed into my face and I went down like a bag of cement.

XXXXXXXX

I came to lying alone in the back of a cold military truck, my eyes roving over the canopy I saw

above me. My gun and jacket were gone.

The truck wasn't moving. so I just lay still with my head pounding, trying to listen.

Voices outside the truck:

-"Proselyte."

-"Skill."

-"Sympathetic."

-"The Jewish problem."

Starsk. Where are you? What's happening?

Worry and fear prompted me to slowly roll over onto my side, where I braced both of my hands on the floor of the truck and pushed myself to my hands and knees, then paused to gather my senses and footing before rising on up to my feet.

Once I did, I parted a flap in the canopy a little to peek out, and when I did, saw what looked like a snow-covered compound in a rural area, a couple of dozen or so brick buildings behind barbed wire fences, men of varying ages in blue and gray striped uniforms with yellow stars, and a sign. The ones who hadn't been given a uniform yet stood in their street clothes which bore blue and white Star of David armbands around the sleeve. Some wore yellow stars on their chests. Others wore badges of different colors.

Auschwitz. A sprawling, immense network of camps. One, two, three. And sub-camps.

I saw it all.

The administration buildings. The infirmaries. The barracks. The men's labor camp; the women's labor camp. The gas chambers and crematoria, some functional, some converted, not far away. The watch towers.

This couldn't be. I had to be dreaming. It had to be a nightmare.

Please let it be a drug. I'll take all the drugs in the world. Go through any withdrawal. Just let it be a dream. Let him be okay.

I looked at the words on the front gate: Work Makes Freedom.

And then I saw him inside the fence in a line of other men who were being examined. One soldier held his arms behind him while another chopped at his hair with a knife. He struggled, shouted that he was a police officer, but they only laughed.

"We were told that you are good with your hands," one of the soldiers laughed.

Please give him a job, my mind pleaded.

Give him a gun and he'll show you. He can conduct an investigation. Use a camera. Build models. Change a tire. Strum a guitar. Crack a few heads. Type. Cook a little. Render First Aid.

First Aid was not a high priority in the camp, and it wouldn't be wise to let them know how good he was with a gun.

Please let him work.

An elderly frail-looking man beside Starsky fainted, prompting another soldier to shoot him in the head.

I jumped down to go help Starsky, but two officers grabbed my arms and held me back.

He hurried from the other side to come toward me, but was caught and held back too.

If we had reached through the fence, we would have touched each other.

He wore striped clothes like the others. His hair was short against his head. I choked down tears when I saw the registration number they had put on his left arm.

I couldn't speak to him. They could kill him if I did.

Starsk. I'll get you out of here somehow.

He could see it in my eyes. He nodded, then the guards took him away. He fought them, but it only made them brutal.

STOP IT! my mind screamed after them as they dragged him inside a building. ANIMALS!

The officers pulled me back to the truck and shoved me onto my knees in the ice, where they held rifles to my head.

"You were placed under arrest, partisan," one of them said. "For illegally entering a restaurant. And you now have a choice. Go to jail. Die now. Or join."

I looked at their well-trained faces, their important uniforms, their proud boots. I didn't want to join them, but I couldn't help him if they killed me or locked me up for being a sympathizer.

"All right," I told them. "I'll join."

XXXXXXXX

I didn't know the date and was afraid to ask, because I didn't want to be turned in for appearing "mentally deficient", but could deduce that it was probably early December of 1944 because of the Christmas music I heard from one of the buildings. Later than January of 1945, the complex would have been delivered.

XXXXXXX

The next time I saw Starsky, he was taking pictures of the day's snow-covered dead that had been loaded onto a wagon. We had seen some terrible things on the job, and he had been in the Army, but still he hadn't seen or done anything like this before. Some of the other prisoners slipped away from their own duties to talk to him, no doubt warning him to keep his head down and his mouth shut. His head was already down as he kept studiously at his work, but for a different reason: To hide the tears he had for them.

It wasn't long, though, that his brilliant eyes became numb for the task.

XXXXXXX

There were rules for every place and every thing-wear your cap to roll call every morning or you will be shot; stay away from certain zones or you will be beaten or killed; refuse to go to work and you will be executed, take someone's food and you will be severely beaten or taken to the prison inside the prison; always salute an officer; and many more-enforced by the Shield Squadron. Or worse, the prison trustees, who were still ruthless convicts, identifiable by the green triangles they wore. Sometimes the rules were broken by the staff, and sometimes they were changed, and it was hard taking orders from criminals you would ordinarily be rousting.

Roll call was twice a day, and it took hours. It didn't matter how cold it was. In bad weather, the SS officers stayed inside a booth.

Work was every day except for Sundays, and those days were for cleaning and showering.

I realized that resisting only made things worse. We had to feign compliance, even though everything inside said to fight. It was the only way to buy time to come up with a plan to escape. Escape wasn't impossible, but if it failed, the consequence could be a public hanging. It wasn't as if we could get out on good behavior or by working hard. Some of the bodies of the ones who tried to escape were left near the front gate as a warning against such an attempt.

XXXXXXXX

After a week of living in the packed barracks, I was put in cleaner quarters just outside the administration buildings and near the officers' quarters, given better treatment as an aide. On the first day of my new duties, I saw a calendar that read December 9 and read newspaper headlines from the same day that I had found in the trash. This made me go about my tasks with a little more energy. If one officer told me to deliver an envelope to another or some files to a prisoner hearing, I did it. If one told me to play the piano, I did. If another told me to smuggle cigarettes or jelly to a preferred prisoner, I did. I served coffee to the officers in their meeting rooms.

Polished their boots. Made their drinks. Administered First Aid to them. Set out rat poison in the buildings. Overheard war strategies. And every time I heard the sound of a car or truck, I told myself if Starsky and I could get to it, we could just drive away. Every time I saw a telephone, I wanted to pick up the receiver and try to phone someone. But who would I call? What would I say? They would murder me. When a Red Cross inspection team came to the camp, the officers brought me in to an office to answer questions as to how I was being treated. They chose me because I looked healthy and because I was a preferred prisoner. I wanted to tell them about the conditions of the others, but knew if I did, I or someone else would pay the consequences, and there was no guarantee that this particular team could be trusted to relay the true facts.

As I crossed the grounds to carry out my assigned tasks during the day, my eyes constantly searched for Starsky, flinching with every gunshot and dying a little inside with each one, wondering if he had been killed. Then I searched again at night for him inside the barracks and in the mound of bodies outside the toilet block.

There were days I had to turn my head when I saw men fighting over scraps of bread. I smuggled food to them whenever I could. The Jews called me a Nazi, and the Nazis called me a Jew.

I wanted a number too, even though they never put one on me. I wanted Starsky's number.

The contradictions in this place were maddening. The same SS officers who had tricked women and children into gas chambers attended the prisoners' orchestra on Sundays and applauded. The doctor who had passed out candy and compliments to the kids ended up doing inhuman procedures on them. Renowned scientists and researchers were here, yet their work included injecting prisoners with poisonous chemicals straight into the heart. The camp was one big experiment. The SS valued family, friendship, and faith, yet refused to acknowledge the worth of Gypsies, Blacks, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, and other so-called undesirables. Some days the prisoners seemed hopeful, like they had a reason to live; and other days those same prisoners walked around with death in their eyes, their skin as pale as ashes. To be different was to be euthanized. The prisoners were animals to the SS; their lives not sacred. The more who perished, the better they liked it. The camp had some of the physical characteristics and social features of a town, including a post office, grocery store, restaurant, library, cinema, art classes, live theatre, coupons, religion center, brothel, sauna, swimming pool, sports field (for the preferred, fittest prisoners) economics, fraternizing, legal aid, connections, gossip, money, alliances, diplomacy, betrayals. Yet it was also a massive killing factory with a single-minded goal: Keep the Aryan bloodlines pure.

But always in the background was the continuous buzzing of the fence, a constant reminder that hope belonged only to the very brave.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

After seven days of being an errand boy, I was put in a kitchen to prepare "meals" for the prisoners. Sometimes bread, sometimes soup. Three hundred calories or less a day to keep a person alive and working. I tried to put more on the plates, but whenever I did, I had a gun in my face. To keep my mind off of their hunger, I listened to the camp orchestra as they rehearsed, but

even the effect of that distraction began to wane because it was the music that had accompanied thousands of prisoners to their deaths.

I was promoted to an officers' kitchen at the SS's resort to cook for them almost a week later. Life among the officers was much different than life among the prisoners. Their tables were lined with sumptuous food, bottles of wine, the best money could buy. More food went into the waste bin than went into their stomachs. That was the second time I saw Starsky. He was brought in to wash the dishes, and we acted like we didn't even know each other. Another survival tactic.

It was December 22.

The officers watched us with amusement the whole morning. They could kill us anytime they wanted to, and there didn't have to be a reason.

We spoke to each other without even opening our mouths, letting our eyes do the talking like we had done so many times on the street and in our lives.

But where had the street gone? Where had our lives gone?

We had to play it cool because there were only two choices: Plan an escape or wait for freedom. The question was, would we live to do either one?

We weren't naive enough to think that they would ever trust us, but we took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself at lunchtime, and their guard came down a little.

While the officers were eating, Klein, a crisply handsome high-ranking SS camp commander with a soft voice, started choking on a small chicken bone and was turning purple. We ran into the dining room and had about fifteen Lugers in our faces while Starsky grabbed the man around his middle to do the Heimlich Maneuver.

The bone popped out, and once we put him on the floor, I began mouth to mouth and CPR on the blond-haired, blue-eyed man.

When he was breathing regularly again and sitting up on his own, the other officers stared at us in silence.

We didn't expect that this act would set us free. We were just hoping that it would buy us some life.

XXXXXXXX+

We didn't quite understand why we had deserved our privileged positions as kitchen workers before the choking incident, but a request from Klein to meet him in private that same afternoon began to bring things into focus.

Six armed guards stood outside of his office of course, and he was the only one inside, seated

behind his desk; grandiosity he didn't have to cultivate because everyone knew that you lived or died on Hagan Klein's word.

A telephone, typewriter, small lamp, and an empty inbox and outbox were situated across his desk in an orderly fashion. A plant in the corner. A clock on the wall. Books in a bookcase. Normal things in an abnormal place.

A tape dispenser, a pencil sharpener, a radio, a carafe of chilled water, a crystal candy dish, a napkin holder. Items that spoke of a world outside that seemed farther away and more foreign each day.

Something in me wanted to pick up the radio, just to feel it.

A small Christmas tree was on a stand in the corner of the room.

But a rifle also lay across the desk in a silent threat, keeping me grounded in reality.

We could go for the rifle. He would shoot one of us for certain, but the other could run with the gun.

To where? The six armed guards outside?

And then where? Even if one of us had all seven rifles, how could we get past all of the others that would be waiting?

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" he asked.

"No," we said together.

"Fine," he continued. "There is a hierarchy within the camp, as you know. Even with the workers. The more skilled you are, the better treatment you can receive. When the two of you first arrived, we had our doubts. We thought we would have to kill both of you during the first week. But we watched you. And I must say, I am very well pleased. It takes a certain level of adaptation to survive, and you have shown a great capacity for that. If you continue on this positive course..."

He stood and picked up his rifle, then came around the desk, walking behind us, looking us over.

"It's almost Christmas, and I'm in good spirits. You're highly favored in my eyes, with the potential to become..."

I forced myself to stand still when he touched my chin.

"...special."

He moved his hand down Starsky's back.

"Very special."

I wanted to say, I thought that was a punishable offence, just like being old, infirm, or anyone violating the race laws.

But I didn't.

Had our survival boiled down to this?

"Meet me for dinner tonight in my quarters, please," he said. "Both of you. I'll have someone bring you some decent clothes."

Starsky and I looked at each other.

I believe that one reason we were so appealing was that we were new, and we still looked normal compared to the others. Maybe he wanted to keep us around like exotic pets to remind him of the real world, and maybe even to tell himself that he was a merciful guy.

It seemed to be our only chance.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Freshly showered and clean-shaven, we were silent as we dressed for dinner that night in starched white shirts and black pants.

"We can change it," Starsky told me. "The rest of it. If we get out of here, we can help them. We know who to talk to, what to say."

"Starsky! We don't know. Maybe we shouldn't interfere. We could make it worse."

"Are you kiddin' me?"

"Think about it. What happened, happened for a reason. Maybe it was supposed to happen."

"Supposed to happen? What reason? I don't know about you, but I don't feel comfortable allowing one more person to die in this hell hole, let alone the thousands, maybe millions more that we could save."

"You're assuming we can do something about it. What if it's impossible?"

"What if it isn't?"

"What if whatever we do makes no difference whatsoever? What if no one listens or does anything? No one did before, until it was too late."

"Then we can say we tried. I don't want to die in this place, and I don't want you to die in this place, and when we leave, I'd like to take as many as we can with us. Escape has to include everybody."

"I don't want to make it worse than it already is. We're not supposed to be here."

"How do you know? How do you know we're not here for a reason?"

"Starsk..."

"Whatever happens, we have to leave here with dignity. Dead or alive."

"I'm not saying we shouldn't try to help anyone or stop this. I'm saying we don't know what the best thing is, and we should be careful. The Russians are on their way."

"I know that."

A rap came at the door.

"Herr Klein will see you now."

XXXXXXXXXX

Fine china, good silver, Handel's music.

Dinner in Klein's quarters was a quiet affair, just the three of us, with the officer doing most of the talking, about other officers, food, the art of politics, the politics of war, and work in the camps, as if he were discussing production activity in normal manufacturing companies.

Someone else had cooked for the occasion. The food smelled delicious, but Starsky and I did more listening than eating. We couldn't eat a wonderful meal while just a few buildings away our fellow prisoners were picking lice from their black bread. It seemed to escape him that his two guests had dropped some weight and had stomachs that probably couldn't withstand a heavy meal at the time.

After we had a glass of Cognac, he walked to a coat stand next to the window, unbuttoned his decorated uniform coat, and hung it on a hook. Without it, in just shirtsleeves, he looked like anyone else.

"Please stand on the rug over there."

We got up from the table and moved onto the rug that was just a couple of feet away.

"Thank you," he said as he set his empty glass down, then came and sat on the front edge of his desk while he unbuttoned his shirt. He slipped his left arm out and raised it, looking at Starsky.

"You're not the only one with a tattoo."

I saw an inked Gothic B in the pit of his arm.

"My blood group," he said. "Should I ever need a blood transfusion."

Or to be identified as an SS officer when you're arrested for war crimes and human rights violations.

He looked at me. "You're one of the few here without one."

He slipped his shirt back onto his shoulder, buttoned it, then said, "I'd like to see the two of you first."

At first we stood perfectly still, the music the only sound in the room.

Klein stood only a couple of feet away, waiting and watching, his pistol visible on his belt.

This really was life and death, and in a way it would have been funny if it weren't for our lives being at stake. But there was nothing to laugh about here. The officer was dead serious.

An hour ago Starsky and I were in a heated discussion about whether our actions could, would, or should impact the course of history. Now the subject was basic survival.

Starsky and I looked at each other, and just as I wondered which of us would make the first move, both of us brought our hand up at the same time and caressed the face that we had seen and cared for, for the past seven years.

Touching him was easy. I had done it a hundred times. I loved him and he loved me. Moving toward him and holding him was easy. He had held me so many times in comfort before.

It was only a little different this time.

I would do anything for him if it meant he would live.

"I love you," I whispered into his ear, and I meant it.

Klein moved a little bit closer to us, studying us as if we were specimens on a microscope slide.

Starsky hugged me back.

I felt him trembling against me, and I know he felt the same tremor from me.

Fear, embarrassment, venom. I wasn't sure.

"It's okay," he whispered back. "It's just us."

I nodded, both of us silently agreeing that anything we did would be okay.

I had held him when he was sick, injured, or lost and scared; and he had done the same for me. If we had to make love to each other...I could think of worse things...if we had to become Klein's doll boys to save our lives...to get through until we got out of here...

The man moved a little closer to us still, his breath hot on my neck.

"Go on," he whispered.

A knock interrupted, startling him so badly he jumped.

"Hagan! Some of the prisoners are trying to escape!"

Infuriated that his evening was interrupted, he stalked over to the window, unlatched it, and pushed it open a bit, where we could see a handful of prisoners running in the darkness toward the barbed wire.

Klein walked over to the door and opened it. "Why tell me?!" he yelled at the soldier. "You know what to do!"

The soldier nodded and ran away from the door and outside, where we could hear gunshots as the prisoners were being killed while running for the fence.

Wails and moans could be heard from some of the workers. Orders from the soldiers to get back to the barracks or away from the fence. Guard dogs barking. Sirens sounding an alert.

The ones who did reach the fence died from electrocution, and it slowly dawned on me that they weren't trying to escape at all; they were killing themselves. Their only way out of the camp.

Starsky and I looked at each other, wondering if there would ever come a day when we would be running for the fence too, even with the knowledge that freedom was just around the corner.

But no. We would somehow gather weapons and try to organize an assault on the place before that happened.

Klein walked over to the coat hook and pulled his uniform jacket on.

"Utter foolishness," he muttered as he walked toward the door again, where he was met by four armed officers.

"Segregate these two asocials," he told them. "Criminal indecency."

Klein left to see about the suicides, and the four officers moved toward us.

"Hold it," Starsky said as he held his hands up. "It's not what you think-"

One of them cracked the butt of a rifle across his face and he went down, and when I knelt to help him, got the same thing.

XXXXXXXXXX+

The illusion of whatever special treatment we thought we had been afforded was gone by the next morning.

We were given different striped uniforms, this time bearing a pink triangle, and were set apart in a barracks of about two hundred other men who also wore pink triangles. Inside the barracks we were stacked on shelves like neglected library books. Outside the barracks, the dead were stacked like discarded suitcases.

"Do not talk to the general prisoners," our barrack's chief told us. "Do not go near their blocks. You can only wear your nightshirts to bed, and your hands must remain outside of your blanket at all times. Do not turn off the lights. There will be nightly checks. And God have mercy on your soul if you try to seduce someone."

We kept our mouths shut, because we had seen the treatment that these men received, which appeared to be much harsher than that of the rest of the prisoners in the camp. They were so fearful that they rarely even spoke to one another, let alone those prisoners who didn't wear pink triangles.

After a breakfast of old bread and a cold cup of what they considered to be coffee, we were outside moving snow from one pile to another. No shovels, no gloves; just our bare hands. We were freezing, weren't dressed warm enough to be comfortable, and signs of blisters and frostbite were visible on some of the workers.

"What's the purpose?" I asked one of the others. "I mean, what are we actually doing this for?"

A guard heard the question and came for me, ramming his rifle into the middle of my back and driving me onto the pile of snow.

Starsky tried to help me, but a few of the workers held him back.

"Don't," they told him. "They'll kill both of you."

"Yeah," I heard him say, "they've been practicing."

I pushed myself to my feet, struggling for breath, to keep Starsky still and to keep the guards off of him.

"I'm okay," I wheezed as I scooped up some snow from the pile closest to me and carried it toward the other one.

He calmed down somewhat and started back to work, ignoring the vicious swollen bruise on his own cheek where the rifle butt had connected the evening before.

"Okay, Starsk?"

"Yeah," he said as he continued to work.

But we weren't okay. None of us were. We were stiff and trembling from the cold.

One of the workers bent down beside me to pick up some snow. His hands were cracked and red.

He wasn't supposed to talk to me, but he did when the camp officials weren't looking.

"If you keep giving them trouble, they'll take you to the hospital."

"Good. My friend and I may need one before the day is over."

"Not the regular one. They have one just for us. And sometimes, when we go, we don't always come back."

I stared at him.

"You're talking about medical experiments?"

"How did you know?"

"I've...heard things."

"You don't have to be a homophile to get a pink patch. The accusation is enough."

"I know."

"They say they don't tolerate it in their own party, yet I know of a few high-ranking officers..."

"I've heard that too."

"Some of the other prisoners in here...the green triangles, the red ones, the black ones, the purple ones, the other ones...gang up on us because it makes them look good to the guards, or they're afraid not to, or they simply detest us. As you are finding out, we don't last long."

I looked around at all of the pink triangles, who were fewer, thinner, and weaker than the rest of the prisoners.

With Starsky and I being relegated to this vulnerable, expendable group, our chances for survival were growing thinner.

If we could stay alive until January 27, we would be free.

"What's your name?" I asked the man.

He tapped the number on his shirt.

"No," I said again. "Your name."

"Sid Miller."

XXXXXXXXXXXX+

Christmas time was another contradiction. Christmas Eve day was bittersweet. Some men seemed saddened, angry, or indifferent by the holiday, but some seemed comforted. The officers must have been in a very good mood, because they allowed all prisoners to receive the gifts and mail from whatever families and friends they still had left outside the camp. Even all of the asocials could get their Christmas package if one had arrived for them-including the criminals. The only people who weren't allowed to get their packages were the Jews. Not even the ones who wanted to observe it or simply enjoy it.

When I brought it up to Starsky, he just gave a little smile. "It's okay," he said patting his heart. "My Christmas is right here."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Christmas day was still another contradiction. The SS knew that the war wasn't going exactly the way they had planned, yet they had parties and played music and exchanged presents and trimmed big trees as if there were no problems.

This mirrored activity among the prisoners. Death happened every day, yet people ate, laughed, sang, danced, had relations, formed friendships, and went on almost as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

"They have to," Starsky said. "Life has to go on."

I noted that he used the word "they". We both did, for a short while.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

We knew it would be over in just a matter of a few weeks, so we did all we could to help those who needed it, but we ourselves were becoming thinner and weaker, and wondered if we would even be alive to see freedom. Starsky no longer talked about changing the events, escaping, or saving everyone. Those romantic notions were tucked away for the time being. Escape could mean the death of everyone in the camp. It came down to staying alive each day, each hour.

The next few mornings we woke up to find a few more dead in the bunks. Men who slept right

next to you just died during the night. There were no windows or insulation in the pink building.

Starvation and disease were taking over.

At night tears were shed for them, and the next day their pockets were searched for food or something to use as currency. Exploitation was a necessary way of life.

Starsky talked to me about home: The food we would eat, the places we would go, the people we would see. Like the buzzing of the fence was a constant reminder of death, his words were a constant buzzing of life.

"One day at a time," he said. "We get up, keep movin', keep doin'."

The "they" was now officially "we".

When I saw only despair and destruction, he saw hope and future.

Waiting wasn't easy. We still had to do backbreaking work in the freezing snow, the prisoners still milled around like walking corpses and died of exposure or were killed, and the pink triangles were still the lowest in the hierarchy. We had to take the dead with us to roll call every day, because everyone had to be accounted for. The staff had to get the numbers. Numbers, patches, categories, records, and rank were very important here.

XXXXXXXX+

The guards and privileged prisoners came around to harass us out of boredom, hatred, and entertainment every day.

"Come with me, Jew," Klein said one day as he approached our snow pile and put his Luger in Starsky's face.

We had tried to keep a low profile each day, just marking off the days in our head for the time we would be out of here. We talked very little, offered no complaints, did our work, gave no one a reason to even be concerned with us.

And now this.

"What's goin' on?" Starsky asked as he tried to straighten, but working bent over all day every day made his response a little slow. That and his weakened condition from very little food and water. I could see the retort in his eyes-upset that your evening was interrupted?-but he didn't say it.

Klein put the gun against Starsky's forehead and slowly pushed him onto his back against the pile of snow, keeping it there and smiling down at him.

"I ask the questions."

My hands tightened into fists at my sides. All I had to do was hook one arm around his throat, squeeze, and he would be gone.

But there would be another officer to take his place, I would be killed, and Starsky would probably be killed too.

"Get up, please," Klein said, and Starsky did what he was told.

He didn't even look in my direction when Klein marched him away. He wanted to keep the officer's attention on himself instead of me.

When the two of them disappeared around the corner of a barracks, one of the pink triangles said, "I think he's taking him to our infirmary."

Or for dinner, I thought darkly. Neither possibility seemed good.

XXXXXXXXXX+

My mind fled in circles after Klein took him away. I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't move.

If they killed him, leaving here alive would mean very little to me.

I had to find some way to get to him, to stop them from hurting him. They could drug him, castrate him, or kill him.

Involving the pink triangles was a dead end. They were too frightened, too indifferent, and too interested in their own survival to do anything.

I was in no one's favor anymore. The only official who had shown me any preferential treatment at all was now the one who held my partner's life in his hands.

I had no plan. There didn't seem to be one that we could survive.

A sharp crack in the air with his first cry took me three steps away from the pile, but Sid pulled me back and shoved me toward the snow. A guard looked my way, but Sid pushed some snow into my hands.

"Work," he said.

But I could barely breathe or think, let alone work.

What was I thinking? If I tried jumping any of them, he would be killed instantly and so would I.

But I didn't know how many of his cries I could endure.

A second snap and a yelp, taking me to my knees. He was just around the corner.

Sid pulled me back up, shoved me at the pile again. The other men worked dully and unconcerned.

It won't be long. It won't be long. The 27th is almost here.

Two officers and two trustees moved a few steps toward me.

A third cry. This one weaker.

I wanted to cover my ears but I couldn't. I wanted to run but they would kill him.

Please dear God, let it stop. Help him.

Sid started singing, to cover the sounds so I wouldn't hear. But it didn't work. I could find his voice in a million others.

No longer yelps; but moan after moan.

Then just the popping sounds. Twelve of them.

And then silence.

I couldn't hear him anymore.

My brain was melting. My heart crumbling. I wanted to disappear.

My mind went to the electrified fence, where I understood with perfect clarity now just how someone could be driven to run himself into it, and even take someone he loved along with him.

And then my body took over. I just started running toward the corner of the building.

I didn't know what I would do; I didn't know what would happen. If I found him dead, I would turn right around and run at the fence. They would probably shoot me before I reached it, but I didn't care. I was losing my mind.

Camp guards came with guns and clubs to beat me down, but so did Klein, holding a whip in one hand and walking a dazed, shuffling Starsky toward us with the other.

"Back to work," Klein said as he shoved Starsky into me. He looked at the guards. "The same for you."

When the guards left to go supervise nearby work, Klein said to me, "The next time I see the two of you, you will be standing with your backs against the execution wall."

When he walked away, I sank with Starsky to the snow because I was too weak and frozen to hold him up.

How do you sleep at night, Klein? How do any of you sleep?

I already knew the answer: Very well. We all have a job to do. If I thought of these people as human beings, I couldn't continue.

"Hold on a few more days, Starsk," I whispered through chattering teeth as I held him against my chest. "Just a few more. You can do it."

He shivered. From shock or icy air, I couldn't be sure. Sid came over, and, risking a beating or death, helped me lift him to his feet and move him toward the snow pile.

I took my shirt off and draped it around his shoulders, wincing at the bloody lashes I saw through his torn clothing. I was trembling too.

"Few more, huh?" he mumbled dazedly as he huddled against me. "I think I can do it."

Thankfully it was the end of the shift and it was time to go back to the barracks.

Once there, I tried to help him up onto his bunk, which was above mine, but he was too weak to climb and I was too weak to lift him. The others stood around or tried to find themselves something to eat, talking about the locked bread box that was in every barrack leader's compartment and how they would love to find some way to get at it. Seeing brutality in this place was an every day occurrence, and most were now numb to the suffering and death around them.

"Trade bunks with me," I said as I helped him onto mine, turned him onto his side to keep him from lying on his shredded back or possibly choking, then covered him with his blanket and mine except for his hands.

"Where am I?" he moaned softly, and it was hard to tell if he were falling asleep or falling into unconsciousness.

A small retching sound came to his throat, but his stomach was empty.

"You're with me," I said as I sat on the frost-layered planks next to the bunk and dabbed his pale, perspiring face with the edge of the blanket. My hands shook so badly from the cold I could barely control them. "You need medicine for your back, but we don't have any, so you'll have to stay calm, okay? I won't leave you until they make me."

"Here," Sid said as he brought me his blanket.

If a barracks chief discovered later in the night that he didn't have it...

"Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked him.

"I can get another."

I folded it under Starsky's legs to prop them up.

"Thank you," I said, and sat down to monitor his pulse and respiration.

Sid also smuggled in his cup of soup after meal time and showed it to me.

"Sid, I can't take this. What about you?"

He looked like a living skeleton already. He needed all the nourishment he could get.

"I won't need it."

I looked at his gaunt face, the eyes that were clinging to humanity by a thread.

"What are you talking about?"

He looked down, then he looked toward the door.

"Freedom is at the fence."

I found myself moving my head no, even though I had been in his frame of mind just today.

"No, Sid. Just wait."

"For what? For me to dry up into a stick figure like the others? They control how I live. I would at least like to control how and when I die."

"We're going to get out of here. Soon. All of us."

"Are you insane? You could be killed for talking of escape. And an uprising was already attempted. They collected some weapons and tried to blow up some buildings a couple of months ago in the other camp. It didn't work. Those involved were executed."

"I'm not talking about an escape or an uprising. I'm talking about liberation."

The word made his weathered eyes light up, even though he had no idea of what I was talking about.

Just the sound of the word made my heart beat faster.

Liberation meant life.

I didn't really want to tell him. I didn't want to risk anything. But I also had to do something to keep him from running for the fence. He had helped us when no one else would.

"Tell me about it," he said with wonder in his voice and hope in his eyes as he leaned his head toward me like a child waiting to hear a fairy tale.

And, with my hand squeezing Starsky's for dear life, I began to tell him one.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Starsky barely made it to roll call. He had to force himself to stand upright, and I thought he would collapse or faint any second. If the officers thought he was unfit for work, they would shoot him.

After roll call, he followed me to the snow pile, where he again forced himself to move in pitifully small, frozen motions.

He needed the infirmary, but I wasn't about to send him.

"I'm okay," he mumbled whenever a guard came to supervise, and picked up a handful of snow to prove it. "I'm okay."

Sid made sure Starsky got back to the barracks after the shift. I had to work an extra one moving snow by myself because one of the men told the barracks leader I had given Starsky my bunk and blanket the night before. In exchange for this bit of news, the informant received a potato.

"You know being robbed is a crime," an officer said as he stood over me and watched my red hands struggle with the snow.

Of course I knew. Just like being a Jew or a supporter was a crime.

"He didn't rob my blanket. I gave it to him."

"Do you want me to have this matter taken up in court?"

"No."

"Do you want to lie forty-eight hours in the snow and have water poured on you?"

"No."

"Then tell me the truth. He stole it from you."

"I told you he didn't. I gave it to him. It was my idea."

He stood and watched me for a while longer, then said, "I'm having some coffee," and walked away.

I was thankful that he was too cold for further debate. Or maybe it was a show of decency.

When I returned to the barracks around midnight, I was almost frozen stiff. Sid brought heated cans of food for me to hold in my hands, and warm cups of tea to drink. Then, too weak to get up, Starsky secretively wrapped my hands in some rags from where he lay on the second bunk, while Sid took my boots off and wrapped my feet in dry material.

"Get to bed," Starsky whispered. "See you in the morning."

I nodded the best that I could, then crawled into bed in cold jerks. My fingers were too numb and stiff to reach for my blanket, so one of my bunk mates put it over me, and even gave me half of his.

"Th-thanks," I whispered through shaking teeth.

He turned back over and went to sleep.

Later that night the barracks elder came to my bunk.

"I want a queer tonight," he said pulling off my blanket.

I was too cold and stiff to even talk, let alone move or protest.

I looked around at the sleeping men wedged against me, wondering how many of them had been used at the word of a superior. What was I willing to do to stay alive? Cheat? Screw? Beg? Kill? How long could I hold on to my civility? Would I stop being human? Could I live with myself?

I thought my compromise and begging had ended with heroin.

"Will I do?" Sid asked as he walked up to the barracks chief, who looked from me to Sid, deciding, I guess, that for the moment he preferred a thawed body to a frozen block of meat.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

That night I dreamed Starsky and I were walking next to the ocean at home, watching the waves, feeling the warm sun on our faces, the silky sand under our feet. In my dream we were free.

The next morning he was holding a hot cup of tea to my lips and telling me to take a drink.

I didn't think he even had the strength to get off his bunk, but here he was nurturing me.

I would wonder why I never had nightmares there, but then I realized I didn't have to, I was living one.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Sid managed to smuggle in some ointment from a worker who cleaned one of the infirmaries, plus some extra soup, and even a bar of chocolate, so Starsky's back got better with each passing day. I started to ask him how he got all of these additional little things without getting caught, but I didn't, figuring that it didn't make any difference since we all had to do whatever was necessary to stay alive.

There was a network of underground groups in the camp that received smuggled items like food, cigarettes, coffee, or liquor; and smuggled out items like letters, pictures, a little bit of money, and evidence; but Starsky and I avoided them except for the occasional item or two that Sid gave us on his own, and the stuff we gave to others when we had it. We thought it safest to stay to ourselves and keep out of trouble until the day of freedom arrived. Through the network it was rumored that Soviet troops were on the way, but the prisoners were skeptical. Some refused to believe it.

It seemed the closer it got to the 27th, the stronger Starsky's spirit became, and the weaker mine became.

One night I heard, or thought I heard, the voices of singing children from faraway. It sounded

beautiful, but mysterious and ethereal, almost ghostlike. Maybe it was a dream, maybe it was

real. Why were they singing? Didn't they know what was happening? Why were they outside? How could they be singing as they walked to their deaths in the biting snow? All I could do was lie there on the planks and let the tears slide down, but silently, because I couldn't let anyone hear me or there would be consequences. Someone would turn me in for an extra piece of bread.

More and more prisoners were dying, and we could do little to stop it. The officers and guards worked overtime shooting them for the smallest infraction, or for no reason at all. We could only watch stupefied as the weakest workers were shot down around us like tin cans. The guards and officers began to drink heavily through the day carrying out their duties. Sometimes I think that was the only way some of them coped. One night the man who slept next to me had a seizure, and the barracks leader came and shot him in the bunk, telling us not to do anything with his body until the next morning.

When I was given the detail of replacing a lock on one of the warehouses, I opened the door to find a mountain of clothes burgeoning toward me, from the ceiling to the floor, and from wall to wall. There wasn't enough room for me to even step inside or even look inside if I had wanted to. These were the clothes that the murdered had once worn. A mountain of clothes meant a mountain of people.

When I was given the job of cleaning block ten for a few days, I thought it would be better than moving snow, but it wasn't. I had to pretend that I didn't see the human organs and severed limbs of men, women, and children used for the medical experiments.

When I piled body on top of body in the ice and snow, I tried to ignore the work. I tried not to think of them as people who had had jobs, parents, children, plans, and smiles. If I did, I would go crazy. I kept telling myself that they were sticks of firewood just to get through it. That they were just numbers. But it didn't last long. Some of the women still had their children wrapped in

their arms. Some of the men were holding hands. On the third day I broke down and hid behind a pile of them, and Starsky came to crouch with me.

"There's no God in this place," I said into my shaking hands.

He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close.

"That's not true, Hutch. I know He's inside of you. And inside of Sid. You gotta hold on. It won't be much longer."

It was his strength and goodness that kept me from unraveling like a thread. When I was ready to give in, he helped me find the will. They may have our bodies, Hutch, but not our minds. I always did better with a reason greater than myself, and it was usually him. He always did better because it was reason enough. In a way he was like one of those little children I heard singing in the night.

That night as he lay in his bunk above me, he read some poetry out loud. As I listened to it, I realized he wasn't reading it for himself, but for me, and the sweetness in the gesture brought tears to my eyes. Although he had a poetic nature, he was not what you would call a poetry guy, but he knew that I was, and that maybe I needed a little something to help my soul.

None of the other men said anything, but I knew they were listening too. Having something like a book, in the pink barracks, and then reading from it, could have brought a beating or a bullet for him, but none of the men told, and the barracks chief never mentioned it.

"How'd you get that book?" I asked him the next morning.

"Don't worry about it," he said.

He didn't want me to know should someone ever question.

Later Sid told me that Starsk had traded a day's worth of his meager meals for it.

That was my friend. Willing to risk his life to keep me who I was.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The days of frenzy set in, when evidence such as records and some of the remaining ovens and gas chambers in the surrounding camps were burned or destroyed. We could hear explosions in day and night from as the dismantling took place. Some of the prisoners were assigned to assist.

Then came the day for the last roll call; the day the camp exploded in panic. The SS began an evacuation, marching thousands of prisoners along the road, where most would die on the way from sickness, the cold, and from being shot if they fell behind. Prisoners too sick to travel were left behind in the compound to die because they were already near death or were to be shot by another SS unit that was to be dispatched to the site for that purpose. We hid the best we could

while everyone scurried around like frantic rats. It was this confusion that spared us. In their hurried flight, the SS had neglected to kill us.

The Germans simply left, including Klein, because the Red Army was coming. He walked briskly toward the main gate, where his jeep was parked outside.

I started for him, but Starsky held my arm.

"Nine days," he told me.

We had been left alive, and help was nine days away.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Each day seemed like one year. Starsky and I wanted to tell the thirteen hundred or so prisoners that remained that we would soon be free, but we didn't want to jeopardize the outcome.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The morning of the 27th the three of us could barely contain ourselves. We woke up around five like we all did every morning, and I handed out medicine and extra blankets while Starsky made sure everyone got a bite to eat in the barracks. He was still weak and sore, and I told him to take it easy, but he wouldn't listen. He found a few sugar cubes and gave one to me, then started collecting the women, children, and babies, telling them to get ready for something good to happen. There were almost two hundred kids. Most of them were frail and sick twins, survivors of the medical experiments conducted by the doctors. Sid waltzed around as if on air trying to lighten everyone's spirits. It was the first smile I had ever seen on his face. He was actually singing. This time with joy.

The others looked at us as though we had lost our minds. They just didn't understand that their lives would be altered later on that very day. But they did take advantage of the lack of security, and some of them did break into those bread boxes to hand some out to everyone.

The white carpet of snow covering everything actually began to look beautiful to me again. There was something pure and clean about the way it looked, and it made me feel that way inside.

Then, by afternoon, the soldiers arrived in white uniforms and fur caps to circle the camp, looking as romantic and pristine as the snow as they broke down the barriers.

"Come out!" one of the officers shouted at the fence. "You're free!"

When they came closer, through the gate, a sea of able prisoners surged forward to meet them, crying, laughing, reaching, falling on their knees, kissing their hands.

The soldiers seemed overwhelmed, their faces relaying shock at what they saw before

them-incapacitated men, women, and children instead of German soldiers. They passed out a few sweets to the kids, which was about all the food they had on them, then began to escort some of the people out.

"Go," I said as I gently pushed Sid toward the fence.

Now that they were here, it was hard for him to believe his own eyes. It had been so long since anyone in a uniform had shown any mercy. The prisoners had almost forgotten that there were caring, sympathetic people in the world.

Starsky and I wrapped ourselves in extra blankets, then helped each other toward the fence. He kept looking back at the dozens of dead prisoners on the ground that didn't live to see this day.

XXXXXXXX+

The weakest camp survivors were treated on the spot, and hospitals were immediately set up to help them; but stronger ones, like Starsky and I, were told to get into trucks that would transport us to the hospital.

We wanted to stay behind to help. Some of the survivors were so weak and confused they were afraid to come outside the fence and had to be coaxed and reassured by the soldiers. Many were so glad to be free that they just started walking down the road together, trying to find a way to get back home and not caring how far it was or how long it took or how they were going to get there.

Starsky wanted to go with them.

"I want to give a statement," he said. "We need to give a testimony."

My turn to stop him.

"They will," I said as I gently took his arm and pulled him back. "We have to go now."

Things had to keep moving forward. We couldn't stay. We were free, but we weren't home, and we didn't know if we ever would be.

XXXXXXXXXX+

After the stronger of us helped the weaker into the back of one of the numerous military trucks, I helped Starsky inside, then started to climb in with him, but saw Sid starting to get into the one next to us.

"Goodbye, friend," he said raising his hand to me.

I went over and gave him the simple hug he deserved and that had been forbidden behind the

wire.

"Goodbye, Mr. Miller," I said, then helped him inside.

Once he was in, he turned and smiled at me with tears in his eyes.

"Do you know how long it's been since anyone has called me Mr. Miller?"

I just returned his smile, then climbed into the truck with Starsky and some of the other camp survivors, where the medics began to check us out.

Some of the soldiers asked us questions, while some of them just stared.

There was a lot I could tell them, about what they should know, what they should do, what was going to happen, but I didn't want to upset whatever delicate balance might be at play.

Starsky and I sat bunched up next to each other with our backs against the truck as the convoy started rumbling down the icy road. We were cold, tired, and in need of food; but on our way.

Most of the survivors were happy about leaving, but others weren't so optimistic. Time in the camp had altered their reality.

"Where are you taking us?" one asked fearfully. "What are you going to do with us?"

Starsky put an arm around the guy. "It'll be okay. You'll get some help."

But it wouldn't be easy to lose those instincts. He would hide bread, fear showers, and resist injections for a long time.

I looked at one of the soldiers. "Did you hear anything about Hagan Klein? Was he arrested?"

"I hope he's in a POW camp," Starsky said.

"He's dead," the soldier said. "He took a cyanide capsule. They found him in his jeep."

Another soldier held a small silver case out to me.

"Cigarette?"

"No."

"A drink?"

"No, thanks."

"How about some food?"

"That would be good," Starsky answered.

"Just rest then," he said. "I'll let you know when we get to the city."

He didn't have to say it twice. My eyes were already closing, and I could finally allow myself to lean my head back against the truck in blessed relief with my best friend.

He put his other arm around me, and I went to sleep with a smile on my face.

We made it, partner. Now we just have to find out how to get back home and get back to our life, if that's even possible.

XXXXXXXXXX+

I'm not sure what time it was when we woke up, but it was dark, the truck wasn't moving, and the soldiers were gone, along with the camp survivors.

I could hear street noises outside, so I parted the canopy and looked out, taking in the hospital, a busy street with cars, pedestrians, brightly-lit shops, restaurants, and hotels.

The smell of food was enticing.

I patted Starsky's sleeping face. Even though he had an uncanny way of recovering from misfortune, he couldn't hide the fine white hairs I saw curling at his temples.

"Hey," I said moving him a little. "You doing okay?"

He opened his eyes and looked around.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"You know, I've been thinking."

He smiled. "Been meaning to talk to you about that."

"Yeah. If...if we're stuck here. If we can't go home to the way things were before..."

"I know."

We've survived so much already. We'll just have to face the future together, and try to live a normal life, lend our voices with the others in telling the truth if we have to stay here.

"Starsk, I want to...thank you for holding me together." For being pure and alive. For saving my humanity.

"Hey. We held each other together."

We helped each other up, then jumped out of the truck and looked around, realizing where the wonderful aromas of sausage, bacon, hash browns, fresh bread, and chocolate brownies were

coming from.

A sign over the restaurant read Jager's.

We looked at each other, then walked toward the door and went inside.

The End