PREVIOUS

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

"There better be something I can do!"

Maybe the words were for himself rather than for Huggy or for Dobey. Riding the elevator to the basement garage became a process of stepping back into a world which held other people again, but the shocked, cold loneliness remained, something those others could do nothing to dispel. The sense of isolation was part of the private, enclosed world of nightmare which he now inhabited with his partner. The wall of silence had risen between himself and all the others -- save one, and the two of them, it seemed, were apart in their own frozen stillness -- had been so from that second when he had know what he must find on the Torino's far side. Only five minutes before, there had been the exchange of trivia, carefully designed to put an opponent off his stroke without actually cheating...the precious normality of plans for next day. And then, in moments, the phony police car, his own sharp warning, his own unanswered shout -- the last real sounds his spontaneous words.

Every utterance afterwards had been, he knew, no more than the programmed repetition of some automaton. "Massive damage...." The phrase took hold. It was as if, by repeating it aloud, he could begin to take in the impossible truth which they had always known that bottom line could hold. Saying it made it begin to be intelligible.... But the numbed unacceptance stayed....

Maybe it was Dobey's words that had pushed him back into a kind of life. Deliberate? Taking into account work still needing to be done -- urgently -- beyond the hospital? So Dobey had won that point? -- the intolerable offer producing the calculated effect? "I already have a partner!" True. So hang on to that.... And "there's always hope." Always? Even now? So doing something, even lacking any real guidelines, seemed the next necessary step in a world that had come to a stop, in this emptiness which might soon be absolute.... It wasn't absolute -- yet. Or did we already use up the last reprieve?

Certain old illusions were vanishing with the speed of light...all these crazy notions of going by the book. Hutch recognized, with total clarity, that there, in that basement garage, he could have killed. By design. Efficiently, accurately, fast. His two shots past the hitman's head had been in full seriousness, no empty threat. For the first time ever, the rage and the grief of loss would have made it no problem at all to ensure that the next shot was final. For the first time, now, he understood, not by any route of rationalization but with emotional impact, involvement, how Starsky had felt when he had gone after the kidnapper's car that day. The vivid memory, never far below the surface, returned...lying there on the sidewalk in the shattered glass, bleeding, breathless, opening his eyes with effort as Starsky had held him, called his name, had needed to do something to repudiate what he had seen. This was knowledge from the inside, cutting out as irrelevant the old, reasoned arguments, short-circuiting all those in this once-for-all sureness of vision of essentials and priorities.

Fleetingly, he recalled another time, another place, from years back...his partner's unspoken empathy at the time of Corman's shooting...sitting there on the cabin floor, watching dumbly as Starsky took charge, his steadying glance from across the room substituted for his sustaining hand, as the telephone call was made. And then, only a little time later, his own grief joined with Starsky's when Lonnie Craig had died. Me and thee. Still? And for how much longer?

The untasted coffee grew cold beside the telephone as he reached for the hospital number...there better be something I can do. Saying it for me...for you too, Starsk. He punched the number, dropping the phone as he took in the first words, letting the ping-pong ball talisman bounce away. There better be something. He was out of the door, the words a counterpoint to concentrated purpose, driving out every other thought.

Better be something.... He burst through the silently swinging doors, halted as he caught up with the little group at the observation window. Dared to face the consultant as he came towards them.

"Alive -- still alive --" Hang in there, babe. He turned back to his partner, the words beginning to register. Say them over -- alive. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the partition. Hi, Starsk.... He was watching the machine, devouring, absorbing, the pattern of the heartbeat. Hey -- how about I write my name on the glass?

We made it...this far.... Told him -- I already have a partner....

NEXT