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THE RESPONSIBILITY

Starsky pushed open the squad room door and headed for his desk, to find Minnie Kaplan already waiting there. She checked in the act of depositing a note beside the telephone.

"Oh -- here --". She held out the slip of paper. "Bernie Glassman's been calling you -- second time in an hour. I said I'd let you know."

Starsky accepted the proffered memo. "Thanks."

"He wants you to call back, says he needs to talk to you. Sounded urgent."

Starsky looked up from his scrutiny of the message, which Minnie had transcribed. "Yeah...right...."

Minnie didn't miss the brooding look. "Everything okay?" She didn't show a need to elaborate even though a Starsky without a partner, solitary occupant of this desk space for more than a week, could be construed as fair cause for comment. Dobey's APB was naturally common knowledge, obviously something likely to have bearing on Hutch's absence.

Starsky nodded reassuringly in answer to her tentative inquiry. "Sure, it's okay." He smiled his unspoken appreciation of her unspoken concern. "Nothing to worry about -- honest. He'll be back...in no time." The answer reflected rather more confidence than he felt.

"Good news," she commented as she moved away. "Your desk looks sort of unbalanced right now."

Starsky sat down, studied the few words of the message again. It was half-expected. That very brief encounter with Glassman, back in the alley, was bound to bring some sort of follow-up. Only to be expected. Their previous meeting had allowed no time for detailed exchanges; all of his attention had been focused on only one priority -- to get his partner off the street to some place of safety as fast as possible. Hutch's apartment? His own? But those could be the first targets for the perpetrators -- whose names he had yet to uncover.

The alley wasn't far from the Pits. Huggy's place -- a safe house? No more than fifteen minutes' drive from where they were. He recalled the journey now. It had seemed longer at the time with his half-conscious partner slumped beside him.

He reached for the phone, dialed the number, which Minnie had noted. The prompt linkup suggested that Bernie had been waiting for the moment, ready, maybe, to call a third time if he got no response to earlier attempts.

"Bernie -- so what can I do for you?" he asked ...as if I didn't know.

"One guess," Glassman offered. "You need me to spell it out?"

"No, but tell me about it anyway. Your report, huh?"

"Right. You know what's involved here as well as I do. And it's not only me. You forget the driver? -- his corroboration? Sure, Jenson stayed in the car, didn't see what I saw, but he knows who was involved. We'd already identified Hutchinson -- that missing cop on the APB." The rapid recital came to a stop.

"And --?" Starsky prompted.

"You have to ask? And now there's that little matter of the paperwork, the overdue paperwork."

From the outset, Starsky had recognized the inevitability of this scenario...the conflict between personal and professional aspects. He tried for deflation of its crisis potential.

"You can write what happened," he pointed out, "identifying him, finding him, the way I showed up."

"And just forget one material fact?"

"The responsibility --" Starsky began, but Glassman broke in.

"You can't take the responsibility. Not yours to take. I know what I saw. So do you. I know it's your partner here, but this isn't something we can keep to ourselves, just agree to forget."

At least, Starsky thought, he had an answer to that. "Calm down, Bernie," he urged. "I didn't."

"You didn't?" Glassman's bewilderment was clear.

"I didn't keep it just between the two of us. Dobey knows the score."

"Dobey? Your captain -- right?"

"I told him -- all of it. I told him same day as we found Hutch. Why don't you see him if you want advice, want to talk about it?"

"C'mon. Think about it. I take this to Dobey and not to our own precinct captain?" Glassman sounded impatient. "You know things can't work that way."

He had a point, Starsky conceded. "Look," he said, "give me until tomorrow. I'll talk to Dobey again. He could talk to -- uh -- Verhoff, isn't it? Maybe he already has."

"Make it fast, huh?" Bernie sounded doubtful but accepting.

"I'll talk to him now," Starsky promised as he replaced the receiver and mentally rescheduled the morning.

Responsibility. He'd known, back in the alley when he voiced that claim, that its implications were going to have to be faced eventually. No way could this ever stay a secret shared between Hutch and himself. But the fewer the people who had to know, the better.

Hours later, at Huggy's place, he'd called the captain, put him in the picture, filled in some of the details. Days later still, Dobey had shown understanding approval of the way the affair had been handled. Starsky had expected no outright promises, aware of the difficult and delicate path which Dobey might have to follow in the resolution of the problem. But it made good sense to leave it in his hands to decide the exact wording of whatever statements would find their way into the records. Dobey was best qualified to set at rest Bernie Glassman's valid questions.

And Hutch? Hutch hadn't started asking too many questions of his own -- yet. He knew that it was Glassman and his partner who had picked up the APB. It wouldn't be long before he would start asking some valid questions of his own. Starsky felt confident that Dobey would be able to deal adequately with those too.

And maybe -- soon -- any day now, even -- Hutch was going to be back on the other side of this desk. A thought occurred -- could be the ideal moment for opening the piggy bank. He picked it up, gave it an exploratory shake. It sounded and felt satisfyingly substantial.

"One man in a thousand, Solomon says,
Will stick more close than a brother,
And it's worthwhile seeking him half your days
If you find him before another.
Nine hundred and ninety nine depend
On what the world sees in you,
But the Thousandth Man will stand your friend
With the whole round world against you."
                      Rudyard Kipling The Thousandth Man

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