“Persistence of Vision”

by Pepper Ckua

 

Starsky was acutely aware of the bright beam of the flashlight.

 

In fact, it was all he could see, like a supernova in his face. After an innumerable amount of time in total darkness, the light was painful. Surely his rescuers would know this.

 

He was aware of rough hands on his face. They held his chin, turning his head one way, then the other.

 

Then he felt himself backhanded, felt the scrape of a ring or fingernails on his cheek. The back of his head hit the wall he was sitting against. Starsky felt chips of paint or something fall down the back of his shirt.

 

No, these were definitely not rescuers.  Rescuers would have brought him a blanket. Or a drink of water. And while he knew paramedics would like to have him conscious, slugging him was probably not one of their methods of achieving this goal.

 

“Stupid pig,” an unfamiliar voice rasped, “You’re worth nothin’ but five hundred bucks to me.”

 

A foot kicked his thigh, causing Starsky to make a loud, inelegant bark.

 

The voice offered an explanation for the blow. “And that’s for the punch you gave me in the car, for splittin’ my lip.”

 

Starsky felt something warm on his thigh. He knew it wasn’t urine; he’d reluctantly pissed himself long ago. It must be blood, which is why his thigh and belly hurt so much. Starsky remembered a knife, a cheap Woolworth’s thing with a flimsy blade, making a sad arc towards his body.

 

Starsky’s brain focused on the fire in his leg.

 

For one odd moment, he wondered if the light he was seeing in his face was from a bonfire on his thigh. Starsky thought he could even hear the crackle of flames.

 

Then the flashlight’s illumination moved away from him, and Starsky could hear the sound of a door closing.

 

He could see the after-image of the flashlight’s light, not unlike the remains of a quick, direct glance at the sun.

 

Starsky closed and opened his eyes a few times, testing the after-image. The total darkness did nothing to change what he saw, this ghost of a light, a light not even there any more. In fact, it didn’t seem to matter if his eyes were open or closed, something Starsky couldn’t understand.

 

His body felt alien.

 

He tugged at his hands, thinking if he could touch his eyelids, he’d know more.  But his hands were secured tightly behind him, Starsky suspected with his own cuffs.

 

After a while, the comforting after-image was gone. And Starsky was left in total blackness.

 

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Hutch was shouting in Dobey’s office. He wasn’t shouting at Dobey.

 

Dobey was with the lab boys, trying to get a fix on the two types of blood found in Starsky’s car. One appeared to be Starsky’s, the other a possible clue to his abductor.

 

Hutch was on the phone, bawling out someone in R & I.

 

“Roger, tell me precisely, exactly, what you mean when you say two to three days? Does that mean what I think it does? That you can’t get a make on the fingerprints because it’s the weekend?”

 

Hutch’s voice was rough with worry. “You know what? I am being calm.” He rubbed his face, as if he were trying to erase himself from the whole situation. “Yes Roger. Yes. Yes. Okay.”

 

Hutch’s voice softened a bit.  “Fine. Just call me as soon as you know.”

 

He slammed the phone down. It made a strangled half-ring.

 

“Hutchinson, go destroy your own phone!” Dobey had just entered the office. He had a yellow file in his hand. “Get a hold of yourself. You make enemies with every department, we won’t get the assistance we need. How’s that supposed to help the situation?”

 

“I don’t know, Cap. What I do know is that every hour Starsky is missing is one hour too long.”

 

Hutch looked at the clock on Dobey’s wall. “Six o’clock. That’s almost three days gone. Three fucking days.”

 

Dobey’s phone rang. He answered it, bellowing, “Yeah? What now?”

 

Dobey was quiet a moment. “Sorry, honey. Yes, I know I shouldn’t.” He pulled at his collar, twisting his tie. “No, I’m not. You’ll have to put it in the icebox. Maybe I’ll have it when I get home tonight. Yeah.”

 

Dobey sighed. “Tell the kids I’m sorry too. Okay?”

 

He hung up the phone.

 

Hutch looked at the file Dobey had brought back from the lab. “Two sets of blood, one appears to be Starsky’s. There’s a fair amount of it.” Hutch’s face was pale as he spoke, he felt overloaded, like a fuse waiting to blow.

 

He continued. “The other set, the lesser amount is A negative, fairly rare, though this doesn’t help us a whole lot.”

 

Hutch tossed the folder back onto Dobey’s desk. “It’s too much blood, Captain. Makes me sick.”

 

“You and me both.” Dobey dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Now, I don’t have to tell you, this case is getting the highest priority.  I got six guys on it alone. Squads have been given the information at the last roll call. You know what you need to do.”

 

“I sure do, Captain.” Hutch grabbed his jacket. “First stop is Huggy, then I’m hitting the streets again. There’s gotta be someone out there who knows something.”

 

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Herschel hated his boss; the asshole seemed to go out of his way to make Herschel’s life hell.

 

First it was snatch the cop and kill him. Then it was snatch the cop and stash him. Then it was leave the cop alone, no water, no nothin’. Then it was keep the cop alive, but just give him water.

 

Herschel wanted to say, “Make up your mind already. You want him dead or alive?”

 

Personally, Herschel didn’t care one way or the other. All he wanted was his payment. And he needed the experience; no one would hire a mechanic in this city without some references, references he was hoping to get from his current employer.

 

So on the fourth day, with the directions to provide the cop with some water, Hershel went back to the basement. He closed the outer door behind him, flicked on the flashlight, and went through the second door.

 

It was the smell that stopped him for a moment.

 

Herschel was reminded of when he was a kid and would sneak into the City Zoo. The outdoor cages weren’t too bad, but the building that housed the lions stunk to high heavens.

 

He smelled that smell now, the strong aroma of old urine and shit. Guess the pig was just showing his true nature, Herschel thought.

 

He made his way down the steep stairs and over to the cop.

 

For a moment, Herschel thought the cop was dead. The flashlight revealed the man’s head lolled to one side, his face was white, the jagged cut across his face was gaping and ugly, and one leg was black with blood.

 

“Man, he stinks, “was Herschel’s first thought.

 

“Man, I’m in trouble, “was Herschel’s second thought, knowing a dead cop was no good to his boss.

 

Then the cop groaned, opened his eyes and tried to blink the light of the flashlight away.

 

“Got you some water, cop. Ya want it?” Herschel got no answer.

 

 He asked again. “You want it or not?”

 

“…esss…” The man’s reply sounded like a shadow.

 

Herschel had a problem. He didn’t want to actually touch the man with his bare hands, but there was no way water was going to get into that mouth without help.

 

“Jesus Christ.” Herschel pulled his shirt sleeve down to his wrist and knelt. He used his lower arm to push the cop’s chin up and poured water into the half-open mouth.

 

The cop choked and sputtered, spilling most of the water down his chest. 

 

Herschel waited a bit and went again. This time was better. The man kept his eyes closed against the flashlight’s light and greedily swallowed the remainder of the water in the thermos. Realizing there was no more, the cop’s neck drooped, his head rolled weakly to one side.

 

“You don’t even got any questions for me, huh? Not like I’d answer them anyway. ” Herschel didn’t bother with a kick this time. He headed back up the stairs.

 

His statement was met by silence.

 

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Starsky had a dream. He thought of ice-cold lemonade. He thought of ice chips. He remembered the heat of sun on the Torino’s hood. He thought of Snow Cones and hot coffee.

 

Starsky dreamed of the blast of a fire hydrant hitting him full in the face.

 

This last dream appeared to have some reality to it, as he felt wetness on the front of his shirt. It made him shiver. He also noted his mouth was less dry.

 

Feeling better, he inched his way up the wall a bit, easing the pull of the cuffs on his hands. This movement made his thigh throb, but it helped the ache in his back.

 

It also made him all too aware of the stench of his own body and what he was sitting in.

 

Starsky swallowed hard. Just one more indignity to suffer, assuming he ever got out of there. His favorite pair of jeans too, though with what he figured to be a knife wound in his thigh, his pants were ruined anyway. Or maybe the gouge wasn’t in his thigh? Maybe it was higher up, in his belly? The total darkness was playing havoc with his senses.

 

Starsky had lost track of time in his world of no night, no day and lots of pain.

 

As far as he could tell, he’d been in the cellar perhaps a day or so. Or maybe it had been more like a month? That was possible too.

 

“Can’t even scratch the days off on the wall for satisfaction,” he thought grimly.

 

He tried twisting around, trying to get a read on how he was attached to the wall. All he succeeded in doing was loosening up more large, brittle paint chips. Starsky could hear them fall to the bare dirt floor.

 

He thought they sounded a little bit like gravel hitting the underside of the Torino.

 

Why he had allowed Hutch to drive right now was a mystery, but Starsky knew he’d better tell Hutch to slow down.

 

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Huggy Bear’s joint was really rocking. It was the last night of the pool tournament, the contest down to four teams.

 

Huggy was racking in the extra revenue the tournament was generating; drink orders that night had doubled. He had to call Diane in from her night off to help out.

 

Huggy cruised by Hutch, a full tray of beers and one Grasshopper deftly balanced. He delivered the beers and handed the bright green drink to Whopper Willie, who was possibly the largest man Hutch had ever seen.

 

Huggy returned to Hutch’s booth and sat down. Huggy adjusted the hat on his head, a bright kofia. Hutch remembered Starsky teasing him about the African hat just last week.

 

“Huggy, you bugged out of the Pits for eight straight nights to watch “Roots.” Starsky had pointed out. “You put pumpkin soup on the menu. Now you’ve got that ethnic hat. What gives?”

 

And Huggy had answered, “If I gotta explain it to you, Starsk, then I ain’t even startin’.”

 

Starsky’s reply had been a shrug of his shoulders.

 

That conversation seemed like a long time ago. In fact, this whole nightmare was disrupting Hutch’s sense of time.

 

Hutch heard the clack of pool balls and then he heard Huggy say, “Three days now and no word. That’s bad, man, don’t gotta tell you that.” Huggy shook his head, his eyes looked sad.

 

Hutch nodded tersely. “Hug, you have to have heard something. Why kidnap a cop and not demand something? It doesn’t make any sense.”

 

“Unless it’s to make you more desperate, ready to deal. But even then, the longer he’s gone the more likely it is he’s…” Huggy looked down.

 

“What you’re saying is, maybe he was taken for a reason, but something went wrong? That he’s dead and of no use to them now?”

 

“Maybe?”

 

“I can’t accept that, Huggy. You know that. “

 

“I know. But I’m just sayin…”

 

“Don’t.” Hutch got up, laid a fifty on Huggy’s bar tray and left without another word.

 

Meanwhile, Whopper Willie beat out Frisco Fats, setting him up to go against Miss Angel Delight, a dark horse shark from downtown.

 

Miss Angel Delight belted back a scotch and water, chalked her cue and went on stage.

 

Whopper Willie signaled Huggy for another Grasshopper.

 

Huggy went to the bar, dug out another fancy glass and poured some more crème de menthe in the blender. He turned to get the other two bottles from the back of the bar.

 

Hutch couldn’t envision Starsky dead, but Huggy could. He knew how possible it really was.

 

Huggy didn’t know if Hutch’s persistence was one of flat-out denial, or something more. Hutch was unquestionably one of the most determined men Huggy had ever known, and certainly on par with Starsky.

 

This made Huggy think of things which made his head hurt.

 

Plugging in the avocado-colored Sunbeam, he concentrated on the task at hand.

 

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“Zebra Three, Zebra Three. A patch-through from Captain Dobey.” Hutch heard the call as he was driving to the Star Bar.  He grabbed the mic.  “Hutch here. Go ahead.”

 

“Got some news for you, Hutch.” Dobey’s voice rumbled. “A body was found in the dumpster between 4^th and Hayes, behind the liquor store. It matches the description of Mickey, Starsky’s stoolie.  It appears Mickey was mugged; his wallet’s missing, as well as his shoes.”

 

Dobey paused. “Hutch, there was a note in his front shirt pocket, a note about Starsky.”

 

Hutch felt his stomach drop into his groin, where it made a brackish lurch. “What’s it say, Cap?”

 

“It’s a ransom note, dated five days ago. It says Starsky will be released if we return the seven kilos of coke from the Rice heist last week. That, and release the little weasel we arrested with it.”

 

“Five days! Mickey’s been rotting in a dumpster for five days, five precious days when we could have been moving on this?” Hutch switched lanes. He took a left on Wall, his destination no longer the Star Bar.

 

“Moving on what, Hutch? There’s no way the D.A. is gonna allow those kilos to get out of evidence and it certainly won’t go for the release of Wally the Doorman. You know that.”

 

“Maybe not, but we’re five days behind the ball.  We could’ve had a plan by then. Could’ve been doing something other than chasing our tails all over…never mind.” Hutch barely stopped for a red light. “See you in five, Cap. Hutch out.”

 

Hutch put the mic down, put the mars light up and headed to the station.

 

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“What’s with cop honor these days?” Stu Pessel asked Herschel, punching some numbers into an adding machine. “You’d think they’d at least make some dipstick move to get one of their own back.”

 

Herschel didn’t dare say anything, didn’t dare answer Pessel’s rhetorical question, worried that the words coming out of his mouth would be, “You’re a fucking idiot.” It was certainly on the tip of his tongue.

 

“Any chance maybe Mickey didn’t deliver the message?” Pessel asked Herschel. The sound the paper made ratcheting out of the adding machine made Herschel’s skull hurt.

 

Pessel hadn’t looked up once. Herschel stared at the bald spot on Pessel’s head and imagined hitting it with a brick.

 

“No way. For a hundred dollars, Mickey would slit his own throat in front of you,” Herschel told his boss. “The little bastard wouldn’t even ask for an extra fifty bucks to fall over dead.”

 

Herschel thought with distaste of the creepy little fink with the shaking hands. 

 

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen Mickey around lately, not at the The Rail, not at the Star Bar, not cruising the streets, not anywhere. It was kinda weird.

 

“You still keepin’ the cop alive?” Pessel asked, writing in a column of his black ledger book. “I can’t make a deal with a corpse. I won’t get my stuff back with a dead body,” he told Herschel.

 

Pessel’s obvious statement made Herschel feel like an idiot.

 

“As of yesterday, he was still breathin’,” he told his boss. “I’m headed over there now to give him some more water.”

 

“Good. Keep me apprised,” Pessel punched more numbers in the adding machine.

 

“I sure will, fucker,” Herschel thought.

 

For two terrifying seconds, he thought he had said it aloud. He watched the top of Pessel’s bald head, holding his breath but Pessel didn’t look up.

 

Herschel let his breath out with a sigh of relief.

 

What Herschel didn’t know was that Pessel, at that exact point, had decided to can the whole plan, the cop, the drugs, Herschel and all.  Everything.

 

It had been a bad idea all along, he thought, with Herschel the expected weak link. Pessel didn’t know where it had gone wrong, aside from the obvious moment when his runners were caught and made seven kilos lighter.

 

As soon as Herschel was out of the room, Pessel was going to cut his losses and disappear, maybe start all over in Seattle. He was sick of all this Bay City sunshine anyway. It made people careless. 

 

Pessel stacked his ledger books in a cardboard box. He took the two handguns out of the side drawer of his desk. Then he made three phone calls.

 

And then Pessel left.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Starsky was thinking of the Charlie Chaplin movie he and Hutch had gone to a few weeks ago. Or was it a few years ago?

 

Starsky spent about seven months trying to decide when it was.

 

But while the timetable was confusing, he could conjure up the actual movie.

 

 Starsky remembered sitting in the dark and laughing his way through “The Tramp.”

 

Afterwards, as they walked into the lobby, he asked Hutch why the movie flickered like it did. Hutch explained a movie was made up of thousands of individual pictures that were run past the viewer’s eyes so quickly it appeared to be a fluid motion.

 

“Why,” Starsky asked, “couldn’t the movie be like real life, you know, one big motion?”

 

And Hutch had said a really interesting thing.

 

He said that the human eye didn’t see things like a camera, that what it records is a combination of motion and pattern detectors. The human eye sees things as though they were separate cells in a movie. That the eye’s information is constantly combined with expected information from the brain, information the brain needs to make sense of what the eye records. 

 

Hutch said there was term for it, but he had forgotten what it was.

 

Starsky teased him about being a walking encyclopedia, which had bugged Hutch.

 

“Why’d you ask me only to hassle me for knowing the answer? Save yourself the trouble, clown, and go look it up in World Book?”

 

“Cuz I like to get you going, Hutch. Cuz you’re beautiful when you’re exasperated. Why else?”

 

Hutch’s answer was a snort and later, a hassle at the Dairy Twist involving a chocolate-dipped cone.

 

But Hutch’s explanation gave Starsky pause. It was fascinating to think the brain was adding bits of material, expected data, in order to make sense of what the eye saw.

 

Starsky thought maybe the constant dark was making his brain get it all wrong right now, that his cranium didn’t have enough information to fill in the gaps of what his eyes couldn’t see anyway?

 

Maybe being in the dark for what must be close to a year now, his brain didn’t have anything to fill in anymore.

 

Maybe, thought Starsky, he wasn’t in a damp, dark cellar after all.

 

Maybe he was still sitting in that movie theater with Hutch?

 

Maybe he was in his own bed, his blankets half on and half off the bed, with four more hours to go before he went on duty?

 

Maybe he and Hutch, right now, were sitting at the Chubby Chicken, eating a double burger?

 

Maybe the beam of light in his face and the water going down his throat wasn’t really happening right now? Maybe the agony which had made its home in his thigh was in his imagination? Maybe the burning rash on his ass wasn’t real either?

 

Starsky thought maybe, in fact, he was dead and his brain hadn’t figured it out yet?

 

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Huggy had gotten a piece of paper with a license plate number on it.

 

He got the paper by way of Chatty Cathy, a hooker known for her amazing descriptive verbal abilities. Apparently Cathy’s success with words often made it possible for her to not have to advance to physical touch with the johns. She regularly achieved her goal by mere words.

 

This was, of course, Chatty Cathy’s intent.

 

The night before, Chatty Cathy had serviced an angry cat by the name of Smith. At his moment of completion, he shouted “Fuck Pessel,” through clenched teeth.

 

Cathy was grateful those clenched teeth weren’t hers.

 

Chatty Cathy, true to her name, hadn’t even had to lay a hand, or any other part of her body, on him.

 

She had described, by request, the act of pounding some dude to death. She combined this violent scene with a vivid chronicle of sucking Smith’s cock.

 

Afterwards, she aggressively teased him that Pessel was a funny name for a woman.

 

Smith angrily said Pessel wasn’t a woman. Pessel was his stinkin’ boss, a double-crossing idiot that most likely wasn’t going to even pay him for a week’s work.

 

Chatty Cathy jauntily asked him just what that job was.

 

“Holdin’ some guy in a cellar, trying to make him pay off his gambling debts, apparently the guy is some pedophile, a real nasty dude,” replied Smith. “I think he’s got about three wives too.”

 

He wiped himself off, zipped up his pants and handed Chatty Cathy the dirty hand towel and nineteen dollars, one dollar short the agreed upon payment.

 

 “What a pathetic shit,” Cathy thought.

 

Cathy was no fool. She knew Smith’s description of the guy he had imprisoned felt flat. Just like she knew Smith wasn’t the john’s real name, she suspected the guy in the cellar was possibly the same fellow Huggy Bear Brown was asking around town about.

 

Cathy figured, after paying off her pimp, she would need seven more dollars to be able to buy the Roget’s Thesaurus she saw at the bookstand downtown.

 

It was certainly worth a visit to the Pits. Huggy was known to pay well for valid information. He even handed out Jacksons for good tries sometimes.

 

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Huggy called Hutch with the license plate information Cathy provided.  Next, he handed Cathy fifty bucks.

 

Then Huggy put Chatty Cathy’s narrative to a first-hand test that earned her another fifty dollars.

 

“Sure enough,” Huggy thought later, “that woman could talk a bird right out of a tree.”

 

Which was exactly what Cathy did.

 

That bird just flew away.

 

Huggy thought perhaps it was quite possibly a whole flock of birds, madly beating wings, a hundred individual bits of warmth all moving as one, then gone.

 

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Starsky didn’t even feel hungry anymore. It was a strange feeling.

 

For the first year, he could think of nothing but hamburgers, milk, soup, salty fries and the crunch of raw carrots. Even Hutch’s health shake had sounded good.

 

The second year brought intense cramps, billowing through his abdomen.

 

Starsky remembered an article he had read about beavers caught in traps, beavers that gnawed off their own legs to escape. Starsky thought that perhaps if he could make his teeth reach his own arm, he might put his jaws to use, either to escape, or in a disturbing, frightening thought, to extract the calories.

 

But now, in what must be his second decade in captivity, food no longer held an interest. Neither did the water that the man forced down his throat every six months or so.

 

His thigh ached. It felt like someone had lit firecrackers and shoved them under his skin there. Starsky could feel their fuses burning. He kept waiting for them to go off, half in dread but also anticipating the heat they would provide, if just for a short time.

 

Starsky could feel the pull of the skin, tight and taut, against the fabric of his jeans. He could feel it when he shifted his body a few inches to one side or the other, trying to find relief from the rash on his butt.

 

At least, his pissing himself wasn’t an issue anymore; he never had enough water to make it that far.

 

He wondered when it was that Hutch stopped had looking for him.

 

He felt a brittle pang at the very thought of Hutch giving up, but surely after twenty years or so, even Hutch had to admit failure.

 

What had Hutch done these last few decades? Quit the force? Moved to Internal Affairs? Became Captain? Maybe the captain of a ship, he thought. Hutch always did like the sea. Starsky had an image in his brain of Hutch, dressed in a white captain’s suit and shiny buttons, ordered the firing of a hundred cannons.

 

Starsky remembered Hutch’s explanation of the flickering Charlie Chaplin movie, and felt the flicker in his own body, the slowing down.

 

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Hutch had put out an APB on the license plate he’d gotten from Huggy by way of Chatty Cathy.

 

It took only six hours to track down the blue Mercury, registered to a Jacob A. Herschel, a three-bit mechanic imported from Denver by a bad-news dude named Stuart Pessel.

 

Hutch put the Pessel connection on hold; tracking Herschel was the top priority, one he was currently honing in on.

 

He kept a safe two cars back from the Mercury, popped a red light near Lana’s Massage and moved one car back near the railroad tracks. Overtaking Herschel’s car by the Octopus Car Wash, Hutch allowed his Ford to be passed as the Mercury entered the skid row neighborhood in the twenty-second precinct.

 

Once Hutch determined the condemned duplex to which Herschel was headed, he radioed Dispatch to pinpoint his locale. “Give me twenty minutes, “he told Tammy, “then send me some backup, including an ambulance.”

 

Hutch cut the engine and checked the clip in his gun, never taking his eyes off Herschel. He watched as Herschel grabbed a red Coleman thermos and a flashlight and went into the second building.

 

Hutch got out of the car and shut the door, careful to do it without making a sound.

 

He sprinted to the duplex door, leaned his back up against the porch, gun drawn.

 

Not hearing any noise inside, he carefully opened the duplex door, thankful for the lack of telltale squeak. Prowling inside he caught the very last glimpse of Herschel’s back as he moved into the kitchen.

 

Hutch moved inside, keeping to the perimeter. He could hear the snick of a lock turning and then the sound of a door opening and closing.

 

Hutch moved forward, into the kitchen. The only door, except the one that clearly went out to the backyard, was a stained, scarred one to what must be the basement. The door looked like it had seen its share of angry kicks.

 

Hutch didn’t want to risk an altercation in the basement. It was most certainly dark and only had one exit. He didn’t need the disadvantages.

 

Hutch knew the best thing to do was to either wait for his backup or create some diversion, something to draw the man back upstairs.

 

Then he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and the sound of a door opening. Hutch had expected Herschel to be down there longer.

 

Ducking into the hallway by the bathroom gave him a vantage point, and one that Hutch intended to utilize.

 

Herschel came through the second door. Hutch gave him about three seconds to get halfway across the kitchen.

 

“Halt! Police! Put your hands in the air, “Hutch shouted. Herschel did neither.

 

He threw the thermos at Hutch and made a dash for the door. Hutch dodged the thermos, sprinted across the room and took Herschel down with a tackle. He reached for the cuffs on his belt and handily secured his prisoner to the pipe of the iron radiator next to the stove.

 

Hutch deftly avoided Herschel’s kick as he grabbed the flashlight. It had rolled close to his ankle. Herschel never said a word.

 

Flicking on the flashlight, Hutch flung open the first door.  He twisted the latch on the second door and barreled his way down the stairs.

 

The whole room smelled of ammonia, of fear and soil. The odor was enough to make Hutch’s eyes water.

 

He shined the flashlight across the single room, the cone of light illuminating a slumped figure in the western corner.

 

Hutch felt his body moving towards Starsky, even before his feet propelled him forward. He fell to his knees.

 

“Starsk, buddy, it’s me.” Hutch’s hands trailed over Starsky’s body, cupping his cheek and feeling the heat of fever, noting the wispy pulse on his neck.

 

Starsky didn’t stir. Hutch reached around Starsky’s back to untie him.

 

Discovering the handcuffs, he used his own key to free Starsky’s arms.

 

Starsky’s arms were stiff and cold. Pulling off his own jacket, Hutch gathered Starsky up against chest and draped the coat around his shoulders. There was still no movement from the body against him.

 

Taking Herschel down couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes; Hutch had expected more of a fight. He wished he had told Dispatch to send the ambulance and backup officers a lot sooner than twenty minutes. Leaving Starsky to call in and revise his orders was out of the question. There was nothing to do but hold him and wait. But even fifteen minutes was too long.

 

Hutch kept one hand on Starsky’s back and moved one hand to the back of Starsky’s neck. He made sure his partner’s head was turned to ease his breathing. Hutch leaning back a bit to keep Starsky’s limp body supported.

 

“Buddy, buddy, you’re going to be fine. It’s gonna be all right. Just rest against me,” Hutch whispered, his mouth moving against Starsky’s matted hair. “Hang on, hang on, babe. Hang on.”

 

If Hutch hadn’t felt the flicker of the pulse in Starsky’s neck, he would have thought there was no life left in his partner’s body.

 

Hearing the sound of sirens in the distance coming closer was the only reason Hutch wasn’t screaming out loud.

 

His backup was coming.

 

“Help this man,” Hutch prayed. “Please. Please. Please help this man.”

 

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“Hutch, take this.” Dobey handed him a white Styrofoam cup of coffee. It was nice and hot. Hutch sipped it appreciatively. He could feel the heat of the coffee move down his esophagus in comforting way. It made him think that maybe his body was working right, even if his mind didn’t seem to be.

 

Hutch felt strangely devoid of emotion. He was aware of Dobey watching him, looking for signs of shock. Hutch knew he would be doing the same thing if he was in the captain’s position.

 

Back at the duplex, Hutch realized the paramedics had made the same cursory assessment of him, suspecting they may need to treat a second patient.

 

Hutch recognized the sideways glances and questions they asked him as the same ones used to assess people in other difficult situations. Hutch had been a cop long enough to be present at far too many of them. He had even asked people the same questions himself, watching for collapse, for incoherency and other markers of shock.

 

Hutch wasn’t sure how, but he passed their test. He had been trusted to hold up one of the glass IV bottles, one of two the paramedics had started on Starsky. Hutch supposed the one of the bottles was a saline solution. He didn’t know what the other one was, but grimly held it aloft.

 

There wasn’t a whole lot the team could do for Starsky in the dark, filthy basement. Starsky had been strapped to a gurney, covered and transported to Midtown Memorial. Hutch had followed them in his car.

 

Hutch wasn’t allowed in the examining room. He had used the time to call in the rest of his report.

 

A uniform, the tentative Officer Eller came to gather Starsky’s soiled clothes as evidence.

 

Eller was accompanied by the police photographer. The photographer spent forty-five minutes doing his job in the treatment room. Hutch tried to horn his way into the room under the guise of photography assistant, but the man was clearly under direct orders to keep Hutch out. Hutch suspected they were Dobey’s orders, but they could have just as easily been the doctors’.

 

That just meant more pacing and more coffee for Hutch.

 

Three hours later, a doctor called Hutch into his office. Hutch felt fear prickle its way over his scalp as the doctor closed the door behind him.

 

“Your partner has had a rough time of it, to say the least. Right now he is resting comfortably, a strong course of painkillers is keeping David, we hope, pain-free.”

 

Hutch asked, “Are you saying he’s going to be all right?”

 

The doctor didn’t answer Hutch’s question. Instead he started on a medical laundry list of Starsky’s injuries and what had been done to treat them.

 

“David has been cleaned up and has had an antibiotic ointment applied to the places where his skin is raw and infected. The places on his body where this is the worst are his buttocks and wrists.”

 

Hutch looked down at his hands and realized he was shredding his coffee cup into tiny pieces.

 

The doctor continued his grim explanation. “The gash on David’s face required nine stitches. I will make an appointment with the plastic surgeon to see if any further action is needed there. The knife wound in his thigh required thirty-two stitches.”

 

The physician paused and wrote something down on his clipboard. He looked up at Hutch. “Are you doing all right, Officer? You want me to call someone?”

 

Hutch shook his head. “Just tell me if he’s going to be all right.”

 

The doctor didn’t seem to hear Hutch’s question, going on with his explanation. “We started David on the first round of a series of strong intravenous antibiotics. This IV will help, along with the topical ointment, both the thigh wound infection and the lacerations on both wrists.”

 

Hutch felt as though the doctor’s voice was coming from a long ways away. He felt puzzled as to why the room was getting darker. Hutch felt his head being pushed down to his knees.

 

The doctor was standing next to him. Hutch couldn’t remember the man even getting up, much less walking over to him.

 

The rushing in his head subsided, and Hutch sat up straight in the chair.

 

“You okay, Officer? It looks like the events of the day have caught up to you a little.” The doctor looked concerned.

 

 Hutch felt embarrassed; he was perfectly fine. It was his partner that was sick.

 

“Yeah, go on please, Doctor.”

 

The doctor pulled a chair up next to him. “As I was saying, David has lost quite a bit of weight, a lot of it water. I am concerned about his lack of food, but more concerned about his lack of liquids. That, combined with his other injuries, could be worrisome. The dehydration is a more serious problem, but there doesn’t appear to be any damage to his kidneys, which is amazing.”

 

One more day in that hovel, and the news would have been much less optimistic, explained the doctor.

 

Hutch thought it sounded bad enough, but knew how much worse it all could have been. He asked, “What about the lack of light? He was down there in complete dark for over a week. You worried about it?”

 

“That’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on.”  The doctor, feeling the stress of the day, didn’t appear to realize the pun he had made. “I’m going to ask for some advisement from our psychiatric department.” He made another note on his clipboard and stood up.

 

“Officer Hutchinson, I’m sure you’ll want to sit with him. I’ll send a nurse in to let you know as soon as David is settled. I also want you to get something to eat and to be aware of the shock your own body has gone through. “

 

Hutch nodded.  He thought of doctor’s word, “settled.”

 

Starsky settled.

 

Hutch had the vision of a settled Starsky, lounged on the couch after the Late, Late Show, the remains of a bag of Bell potato chips on the coffee table.

 

Hutch thought of a settled Starsky in the Torino’s back seat on a long stakeout, his soft snores interspersed with little twitches of his legs. Hutch sometimes thought if Starsky were a dog, he was seeing his partner dream of chasing an unfortunate squirrel. More likely though, Starsky was dreaming of chasing a crafty perp down a darkened alley. 

 

Hutch thought of a settled Starsky in a deep sleep when he should be in the shower getting ready for work. Hutch had been witness to the last scenario the morning before Starsky had disappeared. Hutch had shook his shoulder and sniped at him for being late, in fact for making them both late for work.

 

It wasn’t long before Hutch was sitting in a hospital room with a settled Starsky.

 

His partner was doped up on painkillers and deeply asleep, no twitching legs this time. 

 

Hutch knew his own body had been doing the physical stuff it should. After his arrival at the hospital, he remembered hugging Dobey back after a gruff embrace in the waiting room.

 

Hutch remembered pushing the button on the elevator to get to Starsky’s floor.

 

He knew he was now sitting in the bedside chair and watching his healing friend.

 

It was just that Hutch thought his own brain didn’t seem to be tracking; It was firing off bits of the strangest information.

 

Right now, it was filling in with odd memories of Starsky talking about his car, along with a few bits of some long ago argument about a union election they had disagreed on.

 

Hutch blinked a few times and watched the moving shadows of clouds on the opposite wall.

 

He heard the sound of a distant helicopter, heard it getting closer. It was probably a Medivac, landing on the roof or something.

 

Hutch sat and sat.

 

Hutch sat well into the second day.

 

Starsky hadn’t regained consciousness. The doctors seemed concerned, but not unduly so.

 

“His body has gone through a tremendous shock. It needs time to rest, “they kept telling Hutch, non-answers to his worried questions.

 

Hutch opened the paper sack brought over by Huggy that morning and fished out a sandwich. The sound of the aluminum foil made as he peeled it off made Hutch think of the gash on Starsky’s face, the moment of impact and the slice of Herschel’s ring.

 

Hutch’s brain was filling in not for his eyes, but for his ears.

 

Hutch looked down at his sandwich and lost his appetite. He tossed the food back into the bag.

 

Then he thought he heard the sound of crickets, which made no sense at all.  That sound faded and then stopped.

 

And Hutch went back to his vigil.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Starsky felt prick of something sharp in his arm. He was unable to move it.

 

When he was sixteen years old, he had broken his arm playing football, taken down by Warrick. That was before Starsky had figured out the sound the crowd made when the ball was in the air.

 

What Starsky remembered was the sound of his snapping ulna.

 

The breaking bone also made the same noise the snick of the lock on his prison door. Starsky thought he must be back in high school. Or back in the cellar.

 

Starsky felt pull of something on his cheek when he tried to flex his face. It made him think of Nicky and how they used to put Elmer’s glue on the back of their hands, watch it dry and then pull it off.

 

Starsky thought that maybe he was six years old, at home watching the Maxi Malone show, the roof of his mouth raw from eating half a box of Frosted Flakes without milk.

 

Starsky was aware of the burn and sting on his butt.  He hadn’t been spanked since his eighth birthday, the year he swatted a baseball through his dad’s car window. Even hiding in the closet hadn’t allowed him to escape that paddling.

 

Starsky figured if he opened his eyes right now, he would see a cake, blazing with eight candles, set before him.

 

Starsky felt weak and unable to even lift his eyelids. The last time he’d felt like that was after Prudholm’s poison, the final two hours after Hutch had been chased from the emergency room.

 

Perhaps if he opened his eyes, he’d see Dr. Franklin’s grave face staring down at him, the solemn faces of the nurses? Starsky thought it even smelled like a hospital.

 

But none of these scenarios made any sense, and certainly not when all put together.

 

Where the hell was he?

 

It was too much for him to assimilate. He felt his brain shutting down, going back to that suspended state in which he had spent the last half of his life.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Hutch thought he saw Starsky’s eyelids flicker. He thought he saw Starsky’s cheek twitch. Hutch thought he saw Starsky’s right arm make a small motion.

 

He dragged his chair closer to the bed.

 

“Hey pal. Hey,” Hutch said, stroking Starsky’s cheek with his knuckle. “Hey, wake up, buddy. Come back to me.”

 

Starsky’s eyes opened. He stared at Hutch.

 

Starsky blinked rapidly for about twenty seconds. Then he closed his eyes again.

 

Hutch continued, “Hey, hey, come back to me.”

 

But Starsky didn’t.

 

Hutch put his face into his hands. He thought if he pushed on his own eyeballs  hard enough, he could keep from crying.

 

Hutch was wrong.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Persistence of vision.  There, that was it.

 

That was the phrase Starsky remembered. That was the term Hutch explained after the Charlie Chaplin movie.

 

Starsky had taken Hutch up on his sarcastic suggestion and looked it up in the encyclopedia.

 

The brain filled in the missing pieces. The eye recorded in bits, and the brain filled those bits in. The brain got its information from experience, from what it remembered.

 

That was the part that impressed Starsky the most, that everything had to work together to make a reality.

 

When Starsky had opened his eyes, he had seen Hutch leaning over him. His partner’s mouth had been moving, but the words didn’t match his lips.

 

Starsky felt like he was in junior high, watching a filmstrip in science class, “Aluminum, Man’s Best Friend,” or the ever popular, “Noble Gasses,” the later guaranteed to bring on the snickers.

 

Sometimes the teacher would set up the filmstrip and then go to the lounge for twenty minutes to smoke a cigarette. Chester, the class troublemaker, would reach over and turn the knob to make the strip mismatch the accompanying audio by one frame. Or he would pick up the arm of the record player and place it randomly on the record. This would give the whole exercise a surreal quality, one that made sense on one level and was nonsense on the rest.

 

Once Chester had even switched the record for “Noble Gasses” with the filmstrip, “What Would We Do Without Cadmium?” This ensured Chester a lot of class admiration, as well as a trip to detention.

 

That is what it felt like when he thought it was possibly Hutch leaning over him and speaking. That maybe Chester had had a hand in Starsky’s confusion?

 

Starsky blinked and blinked, trying to see if the image of Hutch would flicker like a movie. Starsky noted that while Hutch wasn’t making sense with his words, his image didn’t flicker like “The Tramp” did.

 

That must mean Hutch was really there.

 

And while he looked tired and drawn, Hutch strangely hadn’t aged a bit. He certainly wasn’t in his fifties or sixties, as Starsky figured he’d be.

 

This observation threw Starsky’s sense of time out the window.

 

“Time to get a new watch,” he thought. “That’s what time it is.”

 

It was too much for him to think about.

 

“Next time, I’ll keep my eyes open longer,” Starsky thought, as he closed them, this time welcoming the darkness.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Hutch was busy doing a little clean-up in Starsky’s hospital room.

 

He added some water to the flowers the Department sent over.

 

He tossed several disposable coffee cups in the trash.

 

He stacked three day’s worth of newspapers onto the floor next to the chair.

 

He straightened the get-well cards on the window ledge. The card from Huggy had a picture of a duck holding a bunch of balloons with its bill. The inside said, “Feeling out of quack?”

 

Feeling out of quack was right.

 

Hutch went to the window, stared into the dark night and watched the traffic lights below.  The red glow from the exterior sign of the hospital gave the room a surreal tone, a moody glow.

 

Hutch pulled the blinds, keeping the room lit solely by a small bedside lamp. 

 

The night nurses stopped in, checked Starsky’s IV lines, took his blood pressure, changed the dressing on his thigh and switched the bag that was collecting his urine. The nurses turned him over to apply more ointment to his buttocks and change the pad underneath.

 

Hutch decided to use this time to go buy a newspaper in the hospital lobby. He returned by way of the cafeteria.

 

Coffee and paper in hand, he entered Starsky’s room.

 

Hutch left the door half way ajar. The nurses kept leaving it wide open. Hutch kept shutting it all the way. The half-shut door was their compromise, their truce.

 

The nurse were gone, but had left him another blanket, one of the many small kindnesses given to him these last three days.

 

Hutch set the coffee on the tray by the bed and settled in to read the front page. It didn’t take long to doze off.

 

xxxxxxxx

 

Starsky had been awake for ten minutes. He knew this because he had kept his gaze on the clock on the wall.

 

It was reassuring, Starsky felt, to see time pass right before his eyes, with no question about its length.

 

Starsky stared at the clock for five minutes. The steady, predictable movement of the second hand made him feel calm.

 

Then he decided to look around the room he was in.

 

He determined the light beside him didn’t come from a flashlight. And it didn’t come from birthday candles. Both realizations felt reassuring.

 

Starsky determined he was in the hospital, and there wasn’t a cast on his arm. He didn’t know why this mattered.

 

 He looked at the floor checking for cats but didn’t know why. He looked at the ceiling, looking for bats, but didn’t know why. He listened for the sound of screaming, though he didn’t know why.

 

Hearing no screaming, he allowed his brain to focus in on what he did hear.

 

Starsky heard the muted sound of an elevator door opening.

 

He heard the sound of a telephone ringing somewhere far away.

 

He heard someone knock on a distant door and say, “You’ve got a visitor, Mrs. Hahn. And look, he’s brought you some balloons!”

 

Starsky had to close his eyes for a short time to get all this information in line.

 

He also wanted to check the after-image.

 

Opening his eyes again brought him right back to the room he was just in. 

 

There was, in fact, no after-image at all.

 

“Okay,” thought Starsky. “So far so good.”

 

Starsky turned his head to the side. This movement made his cheek ache but it did allow him to focus his eyes on the man sleeping in the chair next to his bed. 

 

Starsky could tell the man’s hair could use a wash. He could see the line between his eyes, deep, even in sleep. He could see the missing button on the man’s shirt, the fourth one down.

 

Starsky’s eyes and cerebrum worked together to provide Starsky with his next reality.

 

Starsky felt the fitting of pieces in an intricate puzzle, moving closer together, then added, gently tapped down and put whole.

 

His brain and his eyes worked together to tell Starsky that this man was Hutch, his partner, and his best friend.

 

There was no flicker.

 

Hutch stirred and shifted in his chair. He opened bleary eyes and looked at Starsky.

 

Starsky gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. The pull of what felt like stitches in his cheek probably made the smile look more like a grimace.

 

It didn’t seem to matter to Hutch. “How are you, buddy?” he asked, leaning over Starsky in bed. “You hurt anywhere? Do you know where you are?”

 

It was too many questions for Starsky. He wanted to say three words, “Okay, yes, yes.” All he could manage was the word, “Hutch.”

 

Which was perhaps the best word of all.

 

Hutch smoothed Starsky’s sheets.  He smoothed Starsky’s forehead. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right,” Hutch told him.

 

And Starsky knew that it would.