Hutch got the call a few minutes after he arrived at work and found Starsky not there. He heard the words "Torino" and "crashed" and charged out of the police station, pushing the Ford Galaxie faster than it'd ever gone before. He had to reconfirm with dispatch the location of the crash and he vaguely heard them say the word fatality.
He arrived on the scene to find a distinct lack of ambulances or emergency personnel. Just one loan cruiser and the Torino. The front end was a mess. Whatever it had hit had been lower than the top of the hood and on the driver's side. But there was no second car, nor a likely building near enough to have caused the damage. Worse, there was no driver.
"Starsky...where's..hey you!" Hutch tried to get the attention of the cop that stood by his cruiser, unconcerned, smirking into his handset. "Where's my partner?"
The cop kept up his conversation pointing toward a bulldozer with a shovel on a hydraulic arm. At first Hutch was certain he was being ignored, but the cop pointed more emphatically and Hutch realized there was communication going on that he was missing.
He followed the pointed finger and jogged toward the machine, reaching for the jacket of the operator who was picking himself up off the pavement, looking as dazed as Hutch felt.
The man seemed dizzy under the hard hat and was struggling against Hutch even while he was trying to regain his feet.
"What happened?" Hutch demanded, shaking the man. The stitched name on his coveralls was Harry.
The hard hat rattled and Harry, the bearded operator, clamped a hand down on the orange plastic, "What the...what the HELL is going on today!?"
"I'm a police officer. See?" Hutch produced a badge and held it close to the man's face until two eyes focused on it and Harry nodded. "That Torino over there belongs to my partner."
"Then you wanna tell me why he hijacked my bucket and tried to kill a car with it?"
"He what?"
"He jumped up here, knocked me outta my seat and swung my bucket there right into that...what-you-call-it."
"A Torino, TORINO!" Hutch shouted. "Which way did he go?"
"Which one?"
"What do you mean which one? The guy driving the Torino!"
"That way…" Harry muttered, sweeping his hand toward a puddle filled alley. "They both went that way."
Both? The word caught up with Hutch halfway down the alley and he reached for his gun, skidding to a halt on mud and asphalt before he passed recklessly in front of a break in the solid brick wall. He bent his knees a little before jutting his head around the corner. The break lead to open road, if you could get through the clutter of cardboard boxes and trash cans.
Hutch kept going, tearing across the ground until the alley ended, spilling onto a side street. What looked like a deserted side street, he realized, feeling some of the immediacy of his impromptu chase bleeding out. After all...he had no idea what was going on, where Starsky was, why he was hijacking bulldozers.
The smart thing, he thought, heart pounding, lungs catching up, would be to put out an APB on his partner. The smart thing would be to go back and get a better idea of what had happened from that stunned bulldozer operator. The smart thing...would not be what he was doing currently.
That is, crossing the street and continuing down the narrow alley between buildings.
He was thinking about the smart thing, and not about anything that might have lead to fire escapes or rooftops, but something made him look up. He caught the heel of a blue Adidas disappearing from the top of a fire escape onto a roof of a building and he thought long and hard about his partner. Why would Starsky, as a rule afraid of heights, willingly climb to the top of a building?
It was an answer Hutch decided he had to know and he found a ladder that would get him closer to it. He made himself slow up as the berm of the building grew closer and leaned his head back from the edge before inching upward. What he saw was his partner either fighting with, or being beaten up by, a rather large blonde man in a leather jacket.
Starsky already had a bloody nose, and he'd given the blonde man a puffy lip and a cut over his eye, but as scrappy as the easterner was, he was looking woozy. Hutch pulled himself onto the roof and pulled his gun, keeping the muzzle trained at the gravel and tar paper. Just a show of force, he thought, grabbing his badge too.
"Police, freeze!" Hutch shouted, managing to sound confused under the authority of the statement. The muscle-bound blonde might not have caught the uncertainty, but his partner did, and he looked away at the wrong moment, taking a hard right to the jaw that spun him around and dumped him on the rooftop.
"Hold it!" Hutch shouted, pointing his gun more intentionally at the blonde. The big man put his hands up and backed away a few unsteady steps, while both of them watched Starsky orient.
Starsky coughed a few times, spat blood at the gravel that covered the roof, then got to his hands and knees.
"Put your hands on your head." Hutch shouted, and the blonde man looked resigned and angry, but did as he was told.
"Get on your knees." Hutch added, pocketing his badge and covering the length of tar between him and the blonde man, patting him down quickly and fitting, or trying to fit, one cuff around his wrist. The cuffs were almost too small.
"Anything wrong with your chest?" Hutch asked, keeping a knee in the small of the man's back. He still hadn't figured out how the Torino crashing into a shovel had turned into fisticuffs on a rooftop, but he wasn't about to risk accidentally killing someone who didn't deserve it beforehand. The giant blonde shook his head and Hutch said, "Alright, lie down. On your stomach. Don't move."
The blonde man did it, still out of breath from either the climb or the fight, or both.
Starsky hadn't moved much from getting to his hands and knees.
Hutch holstered his weapon before he analysed his partner from a distance. There was something just a hair off about his balance, his grip on the roof, the way he kept his body stiff-
Seconds later Starsky started to heave and Hutch nodded to himself. He got behind his partner, but stayed back, waiting for the sickness to pass before he helped a quivering Starsky away from the putrid puddle. Starsky's position had guaranteed that little of it went with him, and Hutch produced a handkerchief to take care of the rest.
"Starsk?"
"Hey Hutch."
The closer he got to his partner the more he could tell. Starsky was burning up. He smelled of vomit and cold medicine and probably an ill-planned beef burrito. He shouldn't have been on his feet, much less on the roof of the building. Hutch wanted to get him to a hospital and then in bed as soon as possible but Starsky didn't seem capable of climbing down just yet.
"What the heck's goin' on, buddy?"
"He...stole my car." Starsky managed, breathing narrowly through his nose, entirely focused on not throwing up again.
"Repo, repo'd your car." The blonde said, speaking mostly into gravel.
"He took your car, so you smashed it with a bulldozer?"
"What?" Starsky demanded weakly.
"He tried to kill me!" Blondie declared, grunting against the taut pull of the cuffs.
"Can you make it to your feet?" Hutch asked, concerned at the bewildered crease in his partner's brow, and deciding that the gory details of the fate of the Torino could wait.
Starsky was silent, focusing on controlling his stomach. "He hit me, Hutch."
"Yeah I can tell that. Looks like you hit him, too."
"He's crazy!" The blonde retorted, still face-down against the roof.
"Tried to steal my car, Hutch. Told him...it was my car."
"Yeah, it's your car alright. You know you got a fever, pal?"
"Hmm?"
Starsky was, by degrees, leaning back against Hutch's chest, until his partner was practically supine and unconscious. Exhausted, Hutch hoped, and not something worse. The brunet had looked a little worn out before the weekend had begun but had insisted that he was fine, and more, that he was going to take it easy.
Hutch didn't know what had happened between then and now, and he wasn't sure it mattered. Over his shoulder he asked the blonde hulk, "Were you the one driving the Torino?"
"Torino?" The blonde said, starting to grunt.
Hutch heard knees scraping on gravel and glanced over his shoulder to find the blonde face planting on the roof so that he could get his hind-end into the air. A precursor to getting to his feet. "Stay down." Hutch growled, feeling a little like he was trying to juggle three eggs in the air, one of which was fresh from a boiling pot of water.
The blonde grunted, but did what he was told, rolling to one side. "I got a repo order in my pocket. But it wasn't for no Torino. Plymouth Satellite Sebring. '73 Cherry red with a white blaze."
Hutch felt Starsky squirm a little and heard what might have been a snort, then a giggle. Then his partner made sick noises again and went still.
"What's the license plate number?" Hutch asked, bracing Starsk so that he could be flipped the minute anything substantial came up.
"637 ONN. Just like curly-top there."
"FIVE-three-seven…" Starsky slurred, struggling to rouse again.
Hutch decided getting his partner to his feet was a good idea and went with it, getting Starsky most of the way upright before his partner began to sag.
"No, no, no, come on. Walking."
"Walking...I don't want to walking." Starsky protested, wincing at the weight on his knees like a man of 80.
"You climbed up here, Starsk, you're gonna have to climb down."
"Climb?" Starsky's fevered brow came to rest against Hutch's chin, one of his arms slung across Hutch's shoulders. Hutch winced at how much heat was there.
There was no way. Hutch couldn't, on his own, get his partner down to the ground. There was a roof access door but it was chained, and he couldn't carry Starsky and bust through the chain and who knew how many other locked doors at the same time. Especially not without having an angry building owner and an angrier Captain Dobey on his case.
"What's your name?" Hutch called, looking to the blonde man still face down on the rooftop.
"Vaughn." The man grunted, rocking to the side again so that he could see the two cops.
"You work for a bank? Or are you freelance?"
"I work for an auto broker." The blonde grunted, irritated. "The car I was repo-ing. HIS car-"
"Not my car." Starsky retorted petulantly.
"That's right." Vaughn cooed. "It belongs to the autobroker now, cause you're short on payments."
Hutch found himself suddenly fighting a surge of energy from his partner, Starsky's sneakers leaving grooves in the gravel on the roof before his battered body protested. Starsky bent over the arms Hutch had hastily thrown around his waist and started to dry heave.
Hutch wanted to berate his partner then and there, but could he very well punish someone as sick as Starsky was? For protecting something that he loved, as much as Starsky loved that oversized stop sign? Hardly.
"Look! We'll settle this down at the police station. In the meantime you've been harassing a police officer who is, as far as I can tell, out of his mind with fever so you've got two choices. You can help me get him down that ladder...or you can stay handcuffed on the roof of this building until I manage to get him down on my own, to the hospital, home and settled and then-"
"Okay, I'll help. Jesus! The both of you are nuts!"
Starsky had managed to calm his stomach and straightened a little, thrusting his left arm over Hutch's shoulders again and practically asleep on his feet. He'd also, apparently, just noticed that his nose was damaged and was inspecting the blood on his fingers with intent confusion.
"Aw Starsk...you're a real mess, you know that?"
"S'not a nice thing to say, Hutch…" Starsky murmured.
Hutch focused on fishing in his pockets for the cuff keys, gradually getting Starsky and himself closer to the cuffed prisoner. Every few seconds he felt Starsky try to walk away, tugging him along with, like a puppy on a leash.
Getting him down the ladder was worse. With Vaughn, the blonde repo man, offering support from above, and Hutch down below the climb wasn't too bad until the time came to drop the five feet to the alley floor. Starsky's fear of heights kicked in tenfold and he clung to the ladder refusing to let go. He had what he must have thought was a convincing argument for an alternate solution. Something to do with an ambulance with wings and chopper blades, floating hospital beds and at least one submarine.
In fact his argument seemed so readily familiar that it only took Hutch a moment to realize that he was describing the sci-fi movie of the week that had been showing every night around midnight for the past seven days. With Vaughn prying Starsky's fingers from the ladder, and Hutch supporting most of Starsky's lower body weight and promising his partner icecream for a week, they finally managed to get the sick man down.
While Hutch convinced his partner that he was now on the ground, and no longer needed to fear falling to his untimely death, he noticed the brief glances of concern coming from Vaugn. Starksy may have ruined his day, but the big man likely had a heart sandwiched somewhere between the other overdeveloped muscles in his chest.
Once Starsky was (mentally) stable enough to move, Vaughn stepped in readily, offering support on one side while Hutch took the other. Between the two of them they got Starsky down the alley and into "...the ugliest cah this side of the continental divide...and you didn't know that I knew about that did ya, Hutch. But I do...I watched a special. I know all about the continental divide, and the titanic plates and earthquakes and everything…"
The drive to the hospital was long, made worse by midday traffic, with Vaughn cuffed again in the back seat, moaning about the unending narration provided by a delirious Starsky. Hutch focused on the road, and the chatter on the radio becoming more heated, and more intent. There was barely a second between Hutch registering the call for Zebra Three and Starsky's lunge for the hand set.
Hutch couldn't stop him in time.
"This is the Puce Goose and the Blonde Blintz, reporting for duty. What's happenin', Cap-i-tan?" Starsky blurted, breaking into giggles before Hutch managed to pry the handset from his grip.
"Starsky! Hutchinson! I-"
Hutch pushed down the call button, wincing slightly as he cut the captain off, not in the mood to hear what the man had to say. He held it down for a ten count then cautiously released the button, listening to the static for a bit.
He took a deep breath then calmly responded, "Captain, this is Hutchinson. I'm taking Starsky to the hospital and have a prisoner. I'd like to request that a black and white meet us there, and will happily explain the morning's events once Starsky has been admi- Starsky…"
The passenger door was open, Starsky was preparing to step out of the car, apparently unconcerned that it was moving. Slowly, but still moving.
His partner looked up, mildly surprised and doughy eyed.
"Where are you going?" Hutch asked, struggling to keep his tone even.
"To the hospital." Starsky slurred.
"We're not there yet."
"Oh…" Starsky responded, then tugged the door closed.
Hutch shook his head. "Gonna cuff you to the car next, if you don't stay put.." He muttered, toggling the radio. "Soon as I cut through this traffic, I'll meet you at County General, Cap."
It took him a minute to respond, but the Captain finally confirmed the plan and the radio went silent for a bit. Hutch hunted for the bubble, usually stored somewhere on Starsky's side, while they sat at a stoplight.
Eventually the light, the siren and Hutch at the horn cleared a path and they picked up some time. In between honks of the horn Hutch was throwing his arm toward his partner, dragging him back into the seat, or pushing him upright. His partner had always had a childlike enthusiasm for certain things, but never had Hutch pitied his partner's mother more. Sick Starsky was a handful.
The hospital had been prepped. Starsky's favorite nurse stood waiting under the ER bay with Captain Dobey, a doctor and a gurney. The transfer to the rolling bed was a breeze once Starsky recognized the blazing red hair and broad smile.
Even Captain Dobey's expression softened a little when he got a good look at his ill detective and harried partner. They stood under the ER bay long enough for Hutch to briefly explain the precious little he knew about the situation. Dobey knew where Hutch preferred to be, and after gruffly demanding a few more details out of the man he thrust a thumb over his shoulder.
"Go be with your partner. I'll take care of Vaughn, and I'll leave your car in the parking garage."
Hutch gave a hasty, but earnest, "Thank you, Captain."
He was through the sliding double doors before Dobey had even opened the back door of the car.
The tale that Hutch eventually worked out was only a little less bizarre than the 'arrest' had been. Mostly it was a fairly honest case of mis-identification. Apparently Merle, the automobile artist who had painted the stripe on Starsky's car to begin with, had gotten a little overzealous with the style shortly after detailing Starsky's Torino, and done a few other cars in the same way. One pinto, the Satellite Sebring and a VW bug, that he could remember.
It was to Vaughn's misfortune that the delinquent owner of the Satellite had a license plate number so similar to the Torino. And after visiting the auto broker to confirm Vaughn's identity and employment, Hutch had to agree that the body types were similar.
On this particular occasion, with Starsky reporting to work despite a raging fever, little food (and certainly none of any nutritional value) in his stomach, and dosed with cold medicine, Vaughn had found it relatively easy to step into the idling Torino at a food stop (the origin of the burrito). Once Starsky had heard the engine of his beloved car revving a little higher than it should have been, he responded instinctively, rushing toward the cherry red tomato and thrusting himself head and shoulders first into the passenger side window.
Somehow that had ended with Starsky dumped in the side alley, his nose bleeding and Vaughn struggling to get the car out of a stalled second. Starsky's solution to regaining his car hadn't been to pull his weapon, identify himself and arrest Vaughn (primarily because in his drug induced stupor, he hadn't brought his gun to work), but to hijack a nearby bulldozer and manipulate the levers until he had swung the bucket, at top speed, into the front of the Torino.
When Starsky woke he claimed that his plan had been to gently set the bucket down on the roof to prevent Vaughn from driving away, then he was going to arrest him. Hutch took a few hours to turn the explanation over in his mind before he finally put that down in the arrest report.
It helped that, by that time, Hutch had caught whatever Starsky had been suffering from, and was on a little bit of medicine of his own.
The report that Dobey got, before both detectives were ordered to stay home for four days until they were healthy and coherent again, even though it had been written by Hutch and not the more flamboyant Starsky, read like a comic strip. Dobey kept it on his desk, waiting until he could have a long conversation with both men about professional courtesy, creative policing, and a little recipe he'd had since he was a boy.
His mama's surefired cure for what ails ya. If he accomplished nothing else, he was absolutely determined to shove it down both their throats until they were healthy to his satisfaction. No matter how long that took.
Dobey Family Recipe
You will need…
-1 medium clove of garlic
-1 lemon
-1 teaspoon of honey
-Warm water
Directions
Crush up the garlic clove and place it in a glass along with the juice from the lemon. Top it off with the honey (you can add more to taste if you like) and then top it off with warm water. Give it a stir, and then drink entirely. Repeat 2-3 times a day for the duration of your symptoms.