“Tell It Slant” by Pepper Ckua

When the coroner pulled the sheet down past the man's belly, Starsky was reminded of a road map, one in a very flat state where the interstate was the only getaway route.

The abdomen was white and a thick line of black hair ran from the chest down to the smaller towel that draped his groin.

Starsky’s eyes followed that road just as Dr. Simpson lifted the cover at the crotch.

He heard Hutch make a wretched barking noise at the same time Starsky saw the remains of his genitals.

Dr. Simpson covered the area up. “Three or more bullets to the nuts will do that to a guy.” She pulled the second sheet back up, put her glasses on, and grabbed a clipboard from the counter by the sink.

“Michael Coulter, thirty-three years old, divorced father of two, worked at the California Department of Transportation, and while the autopsy will tell us for sure, it’s a good bet he died from massive blood loss.” She read off the stats like it was a laundry list.

Starsky knew better; her composure was a shield, the same sort he and Hutch used when faced with the ugliest aspects of their job.

Hutch’s voice dropped an octave while questioning Simpson and wrote notes in his little book.

And Starsky?

He had been thinking of raw hamburger, red-hot lava, and how parts of the human body could be reduced to something that looked like it had been stirred with a sharp stick.

XXXXXXXX

Mary Katzenberg is a mess.

The charges she is facing are far messier.

Starsky hates cases like this, ones that twist emotions and truth and intent.

He knows Mary has been read her rights, twice in fact.

The first time was by the arresting officer, half of the Adam Four unit that patrolled the fourth quadrant. It was in the report Starsky held in his hands, the file he slapped down on the table between them.

Starsky had read those rights to her a second time in the interrogation room in which they were now sitting.

She hasn’t asked for a lawyer, and despite his cop’s instincts, Starsky really wishes Mary would put her hand up and say, “I want counsel.”

Instead, she reaches out a trembling hand and asks for a cigarette.

Hutch has one, something that almost makes Starsky smile. Hutch had quit years ago, but was still at the ready for fragile, needy perps.

And for the ones that will spill it all for a bit of nicotine.

His partner lights the end of a Winston for the woman and then hands it over.

“Thanks. I’m sorry. I mean, I don’t even smoke. Well, not really. I gave it up two years when I thought I was going to have a baby. Turns out there was no baby, and I just never picked the habit up again.” She takes a long draw and coughs.

Then she closes her eyes and tilts her face toward the ceiling. “You’d think I would have begun again after my husband died.”

She’s been a widow for fourteen months. That’s in the report, too. “Miss Katzenberg, do you understand why you're here?” Starsky asks, wishing he could wave the cigarette smoke away, along with this whole situation.

She grimaces. “I’m here because some son-of-a-bitch raped me three weeks ago. And when he came back to my house to do it again, and I shot him.”

“And that man was?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Can you describe him?”

Mary looks like she’s going to cry. Starsky wants to put his hand on her shoulder, and then he thinks he’d better not.

“Sure, I can tell you just what he looks like. He’s bigger than me, his fist is probably bruised from hitting my stomach, his eyes are cold, and he’s got a dick the size of a baseball bat.”

“Miss Katzenberg, we don’t have any record of you filing a report about a rape three weeks ago.” Hutch gestured to the file on the table.

Mary puts the cigarette down in the black, plastic ashtray. She seems to be very interested in her hands.

“Miss?”

When she doesn’t answer, Starsky meets Hutch’s eyes.

Starsky tries again. “Miss Katzenberg, you didn’t report a rape.”

“Can you believe these hands actually killed a man? Now, that really astounds me. I thought they were only good for ringing up cards and shit at a Hallmark store.”

“Miss, are you admitting to pulling the trigger on a gun that killed Mr. Michael Coulter? And that then you stood there and watched him die.”

“Is that what his name was? I thought he was just the Devil. Yeah. I did it.”

XXXXXXXX

“Starsky, we got her on tape saying she murdered him. And to make it worse, the doc said there was a chance he wouldn’t have died if she had called for an ambulance. The woman waited nearly an hour before she picked up the phone.”

“She may have killed him, but it wasn’t murder.” Starsky is sure of this fact.

“What? You think she got the gun away from him and accidentally shot at least three bullets at his dick?”

“It was no accident, either.”

“Buddy, I don’t know what you’re getting at, but our job here is done. We’ve got a body, we’ve got the person who pulled the trigger, and we have a full confession.”

“Fuck her confession!” Starsky slams his open palm on the side of the vending machine they are standing next to.

Hutch’s face gets that look, the one that tells Starsky his partner’s on to something.

Only, this is something Hutch can’t get close to.

Starsky puts his hands in the air. “I’m gonna head out. I’ve got laundry to do, and there’s nothing but pickles, beer and chocolate syrup in my icebox. That means I have to stop at Vons on the way home.”

Starsky turns and leaves without looking up.

XXXXXXXX

Starsky bets Fat Moo Moo, Earl Pola and Vic Bellamy would have quite a bit to say to each other if they’d sat down for a beer.

He can hear it now.

Moo Moo would take a long swallow of Schlitz or Budweiser and start bragging about all the young girls he’d kidnapped and then had left to die and rot, how good it felt.

Pola would probably bob his head in agreement, a horrid supplicant at Moo Moo’s feet.

And Bellamy? The man would describe his meeting with that old fool of a professor, how he was only too happy to take that idiot’s money as well as the two syringes Jennings had handed him.

Starsky would like to bust up that party. He’d knock over the table they were sitting at and push their three flaccid faces into the wall.

And what does this trio have in common?

They’re the three men Starsky has killed deliberately, and without a single second thought.

But there’s a different reason, a much more complicated one as to why Pola and Moo Moo were taken out with a single merciful bullet and why, if Starsky's hand hadn’t been shaking like it had, he would have shot Bellamy’s body in a far different place.

Over and over and over again.

XXXXXXXX

It turns out Mary Katzenberg did indeed shown up at the Twelfth Precinct three weeks ago.

She’d given only her first name and had asked to speak to a policewoman. The Desk Sergeant remembered Katzenberg, saying her clothes were torn, and that she’d seemed upset. He’d tried to get her to speak to an officer, but she had insisted on talking to a woman.

Mary Katzenberg had waited in the lobby for ten minutes.

By the time the only female office on duty, Officer Sandra Molson, had been located, the woman had left.

As Starsky goes over the mug book, refreshing the current line-up of nut jobs in his mental library, he knows Hutch is right about the Katzenberg case. He and Hutch have done their job, and the whole thing is now one that has to be sorted out by lawyers.

It doesn’t stop Starsky from trying to see Katzenberg before she’s taken away.

He lies to Hutch, telling him he left his wallet at the Pits, and ducks out to find Katzenberg at the city jail.

They won’t let him in though; his name isn’t on her list of allowed visitors. Starsky sees that roster and scowls at all the lawyer’s names that were there.

Then he thinks releasing the legal beagles might just be her best bet.

Hutch stops by his place that night with a pizza in one hand and the latest “Motor Trend” in the other. “I thought you’d like to read about 1978 Top Ten. Rest assured the tomato's progeny’s not on it,” he says, tossing the magazine on the couch. “And by the way, what’s the deal with that lie you told me about leaving your wallet at Huggy’s? I stopped in to pay off our tab, and he said he hadn’t seen you since Tuesday.”

Starsky takes the pizza box from him and doesn’t answer the question. “I didn't expect visitors. I’m outta beer. You’ll have to stick with orange juice.”

“I can do that. But tell me, what was with the diversion this afternoon?”

“You don’t gotta know everything I do, Hutch.”

“True. But you don’t gotta lie to me either.”

“I know we’re joined at the hip, but what else can I do if I’ve got something goin' on, and I don’t want you to stick your beak in it?”

“Point taken.” Hutch grabs a piece of pizza and a plate, and sits down on the couch. “So what were you doing this afternoon?” he asks again, his mouth full of the Pappy's five-topping special.

“None of your business.”

Hutch looks at him for a moment. And then he switches the television on.

Starsky doesn’t think he has ever so happy to hear the opening theme music to “Mork and Mindy.”

XXXXXXXX

Starsky thinks he has a tight lid on it, which is funny as he’s always accusing his partner of being the one who’s the control freak.

Nine days after the Katzenberg arrest, they shake down a one-bit loser named Cherland.

Cherland’s a short guy who smiles at the oddest times, a big grin that cracks his face like a fault line.

He’s talking a whole bunch of trash, shit about his brother, his brother’s wife’s sister, and how if the chick his cousin’s accused of molesting didn’t really want it, then she shouldn’t have worn those shoes, the ones that screamed, ”Fuck me up against a brick wall.”

That’s when Starsky loses it.

He gets two good punches in before he feels someone’s slamming him up against the side of a dumpster. Starsky's ready to take that enemy on, too, before he realizes it is Hutch who’s got him pinned.

Both men are breathing hard, and Cherland looks like he’s going to sport at least one black eye. He’s wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and has an even meaner look in his eyes.

There’s a rushing in Starsky's ears.

He can barely hear Hutch telling Cherland to beat it, and that they’d get the shit they needed to bring Marco in without his sorry-ass information.

“I guess that’s part of why I keep you around, Starsk. You slug people so I don’t have to.” Hutch finally loosens his grip, letting him down slowly. “Seriously, though, what the hell’s going on with you?”

“I… I don’t know. I was listening to him talk about that guy molesting that girl, and I got it mixed up with something.”

Hutch’s eyes are very, very blue, and his mouth is set in the line that tells Starsky his partner is right on the edge of asking him something.

It doesn’t even take Hutch half a second. “What? What did you get it mixed up with?”

“I dunno. I forgot,” Starsky lies.

Hutch puts his hand on the side of his face, and gives him a very gentle slap. “You know I don’t believe you.”

Starsky straightens his jacket and runs his fingers through the hair at the back of his head. “Let’s go scare up Marco’s second wife. Maybe she’ll dish.”

XXXXXXXX

See, Starsky knows he shot Moo Moo and Pola point-blank, dead-bang dead, and the only reason he’s still got a job is that the kill shot was camouflaged as an unlucky one that hit the gas tank.

Fuck luck. It had nothing to do with it; Starsky's quite aware it was one hundred percent skill.

He’s glad no one ever looked up his sharp shooting records from the army, which in hindsight was damned careless of Internal Affairs.

He knows this, though: Shooting that car was going to be the final thing he did in the last few minutes before he held Hutch’s lifeless body in his arms.

That the Haymes girl’s situation didn’t even come into play is something that keeps him awake at night five long months after the fact.

But even adding that whole case to what had happened to him the previous year, Starsky tells himself he can take it.

Victor Bellamy is dead, gone, and buried.

Starsky hopes he’s rotting in hell.

Starsky had pushed something dark and ugly down deep into a very private place in his brain.

XXXXXXXX

Starsky has been having trouble at night.

He keeps finding himself trapped in some twilight zone between sleeping and waking, unable to tip over the edge to either.

“Look out!” voices say suddenly and loudly in his ear, or “I can’t hear you, what do you want?” as he half-dreams of intruders moving around his apartment, knocking over chairs, and fingering the clothes hanging in his closet.

Starsky knows the voices can’t be real, but it takes him a panicky eternity to drag himself awake to either confront or dispel them.

In the mornings, Hutch asks him if he’s got some secret chick who’s sucking the life out of him.

Starsky just laughs and says, “You’re just jealous.”

XXXXXXXX

They handle Terry Nash’s wild story and subsequent case, lay Joe Durniak to rest, and move in on busting up a ring of thieves fencing stolen cars from the east coast.

But when it all goes to shit, and Hutch is missing, Starsky feels that slide again.

Starsky knows his rage is barely under control when he jams that man up against the elevator wall, and in front of witnesses, nearly pushing the fucker’s nose into his brain.

If he’d had more proof of Hutch’s death at that point, nothing would have stopped him from shooting a proverbial bullet into that gas tank that was Victor Humphries, right then and there.

Starsky also didn’t care if the explosion took him and an elevator full of knitting grannies out as well.

When Vic Humphries, Balford and Lou Scobie are all laid out on a plate, Starsky is finally able to deal with the fact his partner had nearly died under that car.

He and Hutch deal with the broken leg and the brand-new, used car.

They even take down the two punks who’d stolen Hutch’s wallet as he lay pinned under the car. These arrests have the added benefit of making Harry Trask very sorry he’d ever decided he had envisioned a promising future as a pawnbroker.

Starsky tells himself things are fine, that a human being can stuff a lot of things down deep and hopefully pretend they never happened.

But he knows one squeezes in one place, and it comes out another.

You rush the front door of a bar, and the punks run out the back.

You lean on the little guy and the next dog in line barks at the moon.

Starsky remembers trying to hold in the guts of a woman who’d been shot with a rifle. He’d taken off his shirt and used it to apply pressure to her belly. At the exact moment he pressed, a geyser of bright red blood spouted from her mouth. The coroner told Starsky later there was nothing he could have done, and when Starsky described the way the blood gushed out, told him it had been pure coincidence that Starsky’s action coincided with her death gasp.

Starsky didn’t believe him.

He knew that pressure begets release.

And then what Starsky has been keeping locked up since battling Bellamy’s poison bleeds out into their next case in a terrible way.

XXXXXXXX

Two different neighbors call the police to report a disturbance.

One says it sounds like furniture is being knocked over in the apartment above him.

The other one says he’d heard someone yelling, “Shut up, bitch," and a woman screaming.

“I won’t get charged some city fee if it turns out it’s just a man and wife having a marital tiff, do I?” the second caller asks.

“Fuck, I hate domestics,” Hutch growls.

“I hate domestics on Sunday nights. Everyone’s hung over and dreading the next day at work.” Starsky checks his weapon and slides it back into his holster. He puts his hand on the door of the car. “You ready?”

Hutch nods.

A few minutes later, they are outside the last door on the fourth floor of the Kester Apartments, a shabby art deco building with a broken elevator.

Starsky can see Hutch is breathing heavily. His partner’s chest bellows up and down from their run up the stairs.

He can hear what sounds like a body being shoved up against something solid. It’s enough to make the door vibrate in its frame.

Their eyes meet, and then Starsky knocks on the door with the barrel of his Beretta. “Open up, this is the police!”

The noises stop, and there is the sound of a cut-off scream.

Both detectives nod to each other, and Hutch kicks in the door.

He goes high, and Starsky goes low.

They both train their guns on the scene in front of them.

It’s at that point, Starsky fully understands that the best way to a man’s heart is straight through his chest, a path carved with a knife.

The woman holding the kitchen cleaver at her quarry’s torso appears to confirm his adage.

Starsky can see blood spatters on the wall.

He thinks he can see how the individual droplets must have flown in slow motion, changed shape and dimension as they went skittering and bled down on the wall behind them.

Hutch jerks his weapon up towards the ceiling, and nods at Starsky. Both bring their guns down and try to appear nonchalant, like walking in on a bloodbath is a pretty everyday event.

Starsky hates how true this actually is.

The woman is naked, and her eyes roll in her sockets like a Magic Eight ball. Starsky can see blood on her thighs and on a gash in her head.

The man is squirming and every move makes the woman force the knife a little closer into his flesh. She drags it up his chest to his throat.

Starsky sees the line of blood, its track, and feels his heart do a horrid, little dance.

“How long ago did he… hurt you?” Starsky moves forward a bit.

She flinched. “Is that the word, hurt? He raped me. That’s what he did. And now I’m going to kill him.”

Yes, of course she is. It’s only right, Starsky feels like his whole being has lost its moorings and his brain is spinning in his skull with this revelation.

The thoughts he’s so carefully kept so neatly contained are forced from their box and now trying to come out through his eyes, his ears, his mouth, and his very fingertips.

And it’s all going to happen in front of his partner.

Starsky’s never been a violent man, but then he hasn’t admitted to himself, or anyone else, what Vic Bellamy did to him before he slid that needle in his vein, the one that measured his life out in hours.

There’s a meeting of eyes, is a flurry of movement, and then avenging angels everywhere.

Starsky does what needs to be done, knowing his partner is right along beside him.

But that’s the big problem.

Three hours later, Starsky realizes he’s not in Hell, holding Vic Bellamy's dick on a stick over an open flame.

He’s in a hospital waiting room.

XXXXXXXX

“I don’t need to be a detective to know something’s been off with you, Sergeant. Even just reading between the lines gives me enough of the story,” Dobey says as he hands Starsky a paper cone of water. “While you two managed to extract a bit of good news out of that situation by keeping the girl alive, especially considering whom she turned out to be, it’s still going to be a mess.”

Dobey got out a handkerchief and rubbed the sweat off his forehead. “And I don’t gotta tell you, we also got a dead perp, an unreliable witness due the amount of drugs he got into her, and then some frankly dodgy remarks on your end. Put your injured partner into that equation, and it all adds up to something less than desirable, even if I’m the only one who knows it.”

Starsky looked down at the cup in his hand. He wondered if he crushed it now, would the water wash away the hell he felt on his hands?

“On paper, you guys did fine. But knowing what I think I know means you’d better go sharpen your pencil; you’re going to writing jay walking tickets until the cows come home unless you go talk to someone about whatever it is that’s eating away at you… Son, look at me.”

Starsky does, feeling a little like Cal must when he got a dressing down for leaving his bike out in the yard.

“It’s my job to keep an eye on my men for the safety of civilians and as well as for themselves. But forget that I’m your superior officer for a moment here, okay? Tell me you’re going to… Dave, it doesn’t have to be the departmental shrink. You can find someone on your own dime. I know that something’s been tearing away at you, and it can’t go on. You gotta know that, too.”

He knows that if Dobey knew the truth, Starsky would be ordered into mandatory therapy and forced to share his feelings with hand puppets, dreadful things made out of socks.

Starsky could see it now: it would be a shrink with a notebook. He’d say nothing but questions and have a big basket of footwear.

Starsky would choose a long, skinny sock to be Hutch.

Fat Moo Moo and Pola would be a mismatched pair of polyesters with stupid googley eyes.

And Bellamy? He’d be a thick, stinking piece of wet wool riddled with holes. Starsky wouldn’t even give him a face.

Dobey puts his hand on his shoulder. “I need to run downstairs to handle the paperwork on Hutch and give a few words to the mob outside. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

The next hand on his shoulder is Dr. Franklin’s.

Starsky didn’t even hear the door open.

“First, I want you to know Detective Hutchinson is going to be all right,” Dr. Franklin gives a small smile. “We gave him a couple units of blood and a fairly impressive number of stitches. With luck, we'll be looking at a release by Friday.”

“That’s the first thing.” The doctor continues and takes off his glasses. “The second thing is something I need to hear from you, something I’ve been thinking about. When I treated you earlier this year, I stepped over a line, perhaps one I shouldn’t have.”

Starsky knows just what Franklin is going to say.

“You asked me to keep an aspect of the attack on you confidential, Detective, which I have. But I only did it with the promise that you’d follow up with some sort of professional help, that both as an officer of the law and a human being, you needed… listen, I don’t want you to answer me. I just want you to say you remembered your promise.”

“I remember what you said,” Starsky whispers.

“Good. I hope you’re a man of your word.” Dr. Franklin puts his glasses back on and looks down at the clipboard in his hand.

“Doc, can I see him? Is Hutch awake?”

"Of course you can, and yes, he is," Franklin says with another smile twitching the corner of his mouth. "You have fifteen minutes, tops. Then get the hell out of here, and let the man rest. Your partner’s had a busy day.”

"Anything you say. And I understand about that... that other thing," Starsky says, ducking around him and heading for the elevator.

XXXXXXXX

The first thing Starsky notices is that somebody’s washed Hutch’s hair. It looks like fly-a-way corn silk.

They’ve also cleaned the blood off his face and upper arms.

But Hutch’s too pale, and his eyes have a bruised, sunken look.

"Hey," he says weakly as Starsky comes in. "What took you so long?"

"I was talking to our captain. It turns out the girl was the mayor’s niece. Dobey says the reporters are going nuts,” Starsky says. "I managed to ditch’em all though."

"Reporters don’t stay ditched." Hutch looks at the water pitcher.

Starsky pours him a cup and passes it over. Hutch gets water all over the front of his hospital gown, despite the straw.

“Hey, how do you feel?” Starsky puts the cup back down on the table.

“I feel as okay a knife slash across the gut can feel. And you know what? Thirty seven stitches aren’t even close to what my crazy left-handed aunt could duplicate across an ugly hand-knit hat.” His voice is slightly slurred.

"Yeah, those nutty left-handers. You gotta keep your eye on them.” Starsky pulls a chair closer to the bed. “I only have a few minutes before I get booted out. And, well… the thing is, I suck at apologies."

"Yes, you do. But I have no idea what you need to apologize for," Hutch responds cautiously. He looks too white, like the Norwegian lefse bread stuff Hutch’s mother sends every Christmas.

Starsky hitches his shoulders, and it feels as if he’s throwing off a weight.

"Again, apologies and me, we’re not really a match made in heaven. But here you are, all helpless, and I figure here’s my chance; you got your painkillers, I’m wishing I had a beer, and I'm thinking we can kinda just sit here for a little while. Neither one of us will have to say anything. It’s the manly thing to do, right?”

Starsky hardly takes a breath. “Tomorrow, I’m going to do the right thing, the manly thing and… I have something I need to do, to take care of, something that’s gonna take some time, and not just a little energy. "

“Starsk… ” Hutch wheezed and started to cough. He put his hand on his stitches and groaned.

Starsky calls for the nurse. “Hang on, Hutch,” he says. “You’re gonna be fine.”

XXXXXXXX

It turns out the therapy isn’t so bad.

The shrink doesn’t have a thick accent or ask pointed questions about his father. And he doesn’t make Starsky cry, at least not very often.

Starsky looks at his partner, hunched over the typewriter like a Nordic gargoyle, typing with two fingers, and thinks of how Hutch supports him.

He lets Starsky drive on Mondays.

Hutch hands him the burger he actually asked for, and keeps the tuna patty with mushrooms for himself.

Hutch only hassles him about his ratty jeans when he swings by to grab Starsky’s laundry. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I could top off a load with your shit,” he said last Sunday when he took the basket from beside Starsky’s front door.

“Now, that’s true love,” Starsky shouted down the stairs at Hutch’s back.

“You’d better barkin’ believe it!” Hutch had yelled over his shoulder.

The end.

Self-challenge for the episode, “A Coffin for Starsky,” though “The Psychic,” “The Set-Up,” and “Survival” make some guest appearances.