XXIV

It was late the next afternoon when Starsky arrived at the Kelly Building to confront Jerome Leroux. Jerome, Dobey had relayed, was one of those shadowy figures existing on the underbelly of society, never quite emerging as a power, but always there somehow. He was billed, somewhat ambiguously, on the lobby directory as an investment manager. The receptionist-cum-secretary in the seventh-floor office eyed Starsky doubtfully, apparently not seeing a major investor behind the beard and ratty clothes. Nevertheless, she told Mr. Leroux that Mr. Schwartz wanted to see him.

Leroux sat behind a large desk in an office that was about as personal as the YMHA lobby. He smiled, looking like a friendly barracuda. "Yes, Mr. Schwartz?" he said when Starsky was sitting opposite him. "How may I help?"

Starsky was tired. Tired of being nice, tired of pussy-footing around.

He could feel time slipping away from him much too quickly. "I'm a private detective," he said shortly. "You know a turkey named Lucas Mahoney and I want him."

"Mahoney?" Leroux said thoughtfully. "No, that name doesn't ring a bell, but I meet so many . . . ."

He got no farther. Starsky lurched across the desk at him and closed his fingers around Leroux's collar. "Look, creep, you may have an office and a secretary and everything else you need to look respectable, but to me you're still just a punk, no better than the lowest pimp or pusher I bust on the street. I'm tired, man, you understand? Tired. I got no time to waste on you and I won't waste any. You tell me what I want to know and tell me now, or I swear to god, I'll get the information out of you myself. I hope that's clear?" Leroux, who was beginning to turn purple, nodded, and Starsky resumed his chair. "Talk to me."

"All right. I know Mahoney. What about it?"

"Where is he?"

"He lives in Vegas."

"Oh, very good. Except that he left there a few days ago."

"He could be a lot of places."

"Yeah, and one of them is Frisco."

Leroux was still rubbing his neck. "He might be in town."

"Where?"

It looked for a moment as if Leroux might defy him. Starsky moved a little in the chair and the smaller man waved a hand. "Okay, okay. He sometimes shacks up at his sister's place."

"Gimme an address."

He hesitated, but only fleetingly. No wonder the guy was still a little fish in his pond, Starsky thought contemptuously, he was a coward. Leroux scribbled an address on a slip of paper and shoved it toward him. "Is that all?" he asked bitterly.

"Yeah. Unless I need more and if I do, I'll be back." Starsky got up and sauntered toward the door. His hand on the knob, he paused. "Oh, there is one more thing."

"What?"

"I'd like my little visit to be a surprise. More fun that way. So I wouldn't like to find out that you tipped him off. Understood?"

Leroux nodded.

The address Starsky had was in a classier neighborhood than he would have imagined. There was even a doorman at the building. The old man in his royal blue and gold uniform might have been an annoyance, but luckily he became engrossed in helping a very fat woman out of a taxi, meanwhile trying to juggle her shopping bags and an irate poodle on a leash. Starsky slipped in through the front door, quickly scanned the mailboxes, and was in the elevator before the doorman could extricate himself.

It took two rings before the door was opened. Under other circumstances the woman standing there would have been well worth waiting for. Dressed in gold lame pajamas, with a mound of shiny black hair piled on top of her head, she was either very rich or very expensive. Maybe both. "Kara Mahoney?"

"That's me."

"I'm looking for your brother."

Her red lips thinned a little. "You a pig? Why don't you jerks lay off Lucas? Every time somebody gets his pocket picked, Lucas takes a fall."

She was trying to shut the door, but his foot was in the way. "This isn't about a pocket picking and I'm not a pig. I only want to see Lucas."

"He's not here," she said sullenly.

"Then where?"

"Someplace off with that bitch."

"Maura?"

"Maura? Yeah, that used to be her name. Not anymore. She changed it." Starsky pulled the picture out of his pocket. "That her?"

"Yeah. 'Cept her hair isn't blond anymore."

"It's not?"

"No. It's sort of a reddish-brown."

"What's she calling herself now?"

"Victoria. How's that? Victoria. Acts like the Queen of the May or something. And Lucas is eating out of her hand. God, men." Her tone was filled with contempt. "Show them a hot little piece and they're all alike, even my brother. He'd jump off a bridge if she asked him to."

Starsky replaced the picture. "Or do anything else she asked, right?"

She clammed up. "What's this about anyway?"

"You have any idea where they are?"

"No." She nibbled on her thumbnail for a moment. "The bitch in trouble, is she?"

It was an angle that might prove helpful, so he played it. "Could be. Could be she's in real big trouble."

That pleased her. "If Lucas could get clear of her, he might be able to make something of himself. He had a nice little business once, you know? Car rental. But he got a lot of bad breaks and lost it."

"Uh-huh." Starsky had long ago gotten his fill of poor dumb guys who got a lot of bad breaks.

"Well, if it's mostly her you want . . . ?"

"It is," he lied. "Just give an address, please."

She was quiet for a second, then mumbled an address. "It's about ten miles east of town," she added.

"Thanks. You, ahh, won't tell her I'm coming, will you?"

Kara snorted. "I wouldn't tell her the time of day."

Starsky grinned and headed for the elevator. This case got funnier every step of the way. Why was Maura Kennedy Gonzalez changing her name and her hair color? Until this point, he'd been thinking of her only as a probable witness. Was it possible she was more than that? The name Victoria tugged at his memory. It seemed like there was something he should connect with the name, but his groggy brain couldn't put it together.

He still hadn't made the connection by the time he arrived at the address. He parked and got out, palming his gun, and went to the front door. No one answered his knock, but that didn't surprise him much. Seemed like he'd been knocking on a lot of doors lately and nobody had been answering. He walked back to his car and slouched in the seat. Time to wait again. So he waited.

**

Dobey read the newspaper while Kramer mulled over his notes, chewing on a pencil that had seen better days. Hutch just sat. Somebody had given him a deck of cards and he started a game of solitaire, but his mind wasn't on it and the game just sort of dwindled off. "The longer the jury takes, the better for us, right?" he asked Kramer at one point.

The lawyer looked up and took the pencil out of his mouth. "That's what some people think. Some think it's the other way around. I don't think it matters very much at all."

"Well, that's encouraging," Hutch muttered. He tapped the tabletop for a moment. "Maybe you should check and see if there's a message from Starsk. He might be trying to reach us."

"I left word," Dobey said without looking up from the paper. "If there's any news, we'll get it."

"He should have let us know by now. Something."

"If we haven't heard anything, Hutch, it's probably because there's nothing for him to tell us."

Hutch couldn't sit still. He got up and paced the small room. "There must be something. He sounded really confident the last time we talked. Like he was just on the point of smashing the whole case wide open."

Dobey sighed and folded the paper. "You know Starsky. Sometimes he thinks with his heart and not his head. Maybe he wasn't as close as he thought ."

But Hutch shook his head. "No, he had something. He's probably on his way here now. I bet that's it, huh? He probably decided not to call, but just to come on back." He gave a self-satisfied nod and sat down again, his eyes on the door.

Kramer and Dobey exchanged a long look.

**

It was dark before anyone approached the house. A taxi pulled up in front and a man got out. He went to the door, knocked once, and when there was no answer, used a key to let himself in. Starsky watched, bemused, then got out of the car. He did a couple of deep knee bends to get the kinks out, took the gun into his hand once more, and walked up the steps. He was thoroughly fed up. He was also mad about having to spend all those hours sitting in the car, when god only knew what was going on down in San Manuel.

In view of his mood, he didn't bother to knock. He simply used his foot and all of his pent-up anger to kick the door open. He half-fell, half-charged into the room, his gun held high. "Freeze, creep!" he yelled. It felt good. Felt like he was in charge again.

The man dropped the bottle of beer he'd just opened and it broke against the floor. "What the hell—" he sputtered.

"Assume the position." The man was no novice; he knew the routine. His hands went against the wall and his feet were spread. Starsky frisked him and took a gun from his pocket. "You Lucas Mahoney?"

"No." The man laughed a little. "Hey, if it's Lucas you want, man, you got the wrong guy. My name is Eddie Kray." He glanced over his shoulder and suddenly recognized Starsky. "Hey, you ain't a cop. You're Schwartz."

"Right, Eddie. And I remember you, too. I remember you four stitches' worth. Where's Lucas?"

"I don't know."

"Don't give me any shit, creep, I'm running out of time." He had a picture in his mind of one of those egg timers, the kind with the sand in it, and the sand was running out too fast. What would happen to Hutch when the sand was gone?

He twisted Kray's arm viciously. "I want Lucas, creep."

"He's supposed to meet me here."

"Good, then we'll just wait." Starsky, keeping the gun leveled at Kray, opened the closet door and found a couple of ties draped over a hanger. He used them to tie the man to the radiator. "You just keep your mouth shut," he said. He pushed the door closed, switched off the lamp, and sat down in the corner of the darkened room. It was hard to keep still. The nervous tension that had kept him running for too many days to count was still surging through him. He tapped at his leg with one hand, holding Kray's gun in the other. It wasn't his own weapon, but it was certainly better than what he'd had. He could be effective with it. If a bad case of nerves didn't screw him up. He took a couple of deep steadying breaths.

"What are you gonna do?" Kray asked.

"I don't know yet," he replied. It was the truth.

"Look," Kray said, "could I get something straight right up front?"

"Why not?"

"I didn't have nothing to do with shooting that broad."

Starsky restrained a snort. "Yeah, sure. You were just an innocent bystander, right?"

Kray seemed relieved to be so quickly believed. "Right, you got it. It was all their doing."

Starsky wondered if all the crooks in the world got their dialogue out of the same book. "Save it for the court, why don't you?" he suggested pleasantly. "Maybe you'll be lucky and get a real jury of your peers and they'll believe everything you tell them."

"Hey, I'm not bulling you, Schwartz."

Suddenly, now that the end was so near, Starsky was tired of all the games. "My name is Starsky," he said flatly. "David Starsky."

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"Oh." Kray seemed to accept as natural the fact that a man might have two names, his real one, and one he used in his business. "It was Lucas who did the shooting."

"Uh-huh."

"She talked him into it." Kray was silent for a moment. "Lucas, he ain't a bad guy, you know?"

"I'm sure he's a real sweetheart. I'll probably love him on sight." Starsky only wished the guy would shut up; he had a headache.

"No, really. He and I have been kicking around together for a long time and he's okay. Was, anyway, until he hooked up with that bitch."

Nobody seemed very fond of Maura Kennedy. Starsky tried to remember her, tried to reconstruct the few hours they'd spent together such a long time ago, but everything was shrouded in a kind of haze. He sighed and rubbed at his temples wearily. "Shut up, Kray, wouldya please?" he said.

Kray shut up.

At least an hour went by, very slowly, before Starsky heard the sound of a car stopping and then footsteps approaching the door. He braced himself to move. The front door opened. Starsky slapped one hand against the switch and flooded the room with light; at the same instant, he went into the crouch position.

"Freeze or I'll blow your fucking brains all over the room," he said, not shouting this time, but speaking in an almost-whisper instead.

The man froze.

"Sure," he said. "No hassle."

"You Lucas Mahoney?"

"Yes."

He wasn't quite the monster Starsky had pictured, but then they seldom were. Mahoney looked a lot like his sister, with the same slender body, dark hair and vaguely foreign cast in his face.

"You're under arrest," Starsky said, although he had no authority to do so. He even gave Mahoney his rights, which the man listened to with only mild interest. Starsky had to restrain himself from giving a shout of pure and unadulterated joy. So this was how it all ended, so quietly. And now Hutch would be cleared. Mahoney could be broken. Or if not him, then Kray. "We're going to be taking a little trip," he said. "Back to San Manuel." He tried that thought transference thing again. It's all over, Hutch, all done, babe, we're heading for the finish line now. He allowed himself a grin and to hell with the headache.

**

"You okay, Hutch?"

"Yeah, Cap'n, I'm fine."

"You look pale or something."

Hutch shrugged. He felt sick to his stomach. They'd been sitting in this room for hours, waiting for the jury to reach a verdict.

"S'cuse me," he said a minute later. He hurried into the adjoining bathroom and leaned over the toilet bowl as his stomach heaved. When it was over, he felt shaky. A thin sheen of sweat covered his face. He splashed cold water on it and dried with a paper towel. His reflection stared back at him from the mirror.

Okay, Starsk, he thought, where the hell are you? Man, we're about down to the wire. This is it. You trying for the fucking grandstand play? You wanta pull a Perry Mason and come busting into the courtroom at the last minute? Is that what this is all about?

He knew it wasn't, of course. Not deliberately. He practiced smiling in the mirror. It made his face look askew, not right.

Dobey looked up as he walked out of the john. "You all right?"

"Yes," he said, sitting down. "It takes a while to drive from Frisco," he said, although no one had asked.

"Hutch," Dobey began.

"Don't say anything, Cap'n. He'll get here. He said he knew who he was after. It was only a matter of wrapping it all up. Don't you remember how Starsky is when he's getting close?" Hutch turned to Kramer, who had finally put away his notes and pencils and was, like them, just waiting. "I mean, he's the most tenacious bastard I ever saw, Sam." Kramer only nodded. "I remember when we were trying to break that drug case in the state hospital and I wanted to pull the plug on the whole thing, but he wouldn't let me . . . ." Hutch's voice dwindled off and he rubbed at his face. "Tenacious bastard," he murmured more to himself than to the others.

A deputy stuck his head in. "Jury's done," he said shortly.

"Done? You mean finished for the night?" Kramer asked.

"Verdict's in."

The three of them stood, not looking at each other as they filed out and went into the courtroom. All right, babe, Hutch thought, glory time. Pull your fucking hero act and get your ass in here. Please, babe . . . .

The judge came in, followed by the jury looking tired and grim. At the clerk's order, the Foreman stood. "Have the jury agreed upon a verdict?"

"Yes, we have."

Kramer stood and after a moment, Hutch got to his feet as well.

"As to the indictment charging the defendant with murder in the second degree, how do you find, guilty or not guilty?"

Hutch sighed, glancing over his shoulder at the door. The foreman glanced toward the defense table and then away quickly. "We find the defendant guilty as charged."

Kramer cleared his throat. "Your Honor, I request that the jury be polled."

The clerk asked each member of the jury to rise and affirm the verdict and one by one, they did so, none of them looking at Hutch.

Hutch kept waiting for the door to open and Starsky to come in and put a stop to all this. He didn't hear the judge's words of thanks to the jury or even notice when the jury filed out. He watched the door as it was ordered that he be returned to Diablo Correctional Facility to await sentencing. Kramer entered a request that the sentencing be carried out as soon as possible and he went to the bench to confer on the details.

After the judge left the room, Kramer sat down again and pulled Hutch down next to him. "Ken," he said urgently, "you know this isn't the end."

Hutch shook his head. "I don't understand," he whispered. "Where is he? I thought . . . he promised . . . ." He looked at Dobey, his blue eyes fogged with vagueness. "They think I killed her. Where's Starsk? Why didn't he come like he promised?"

"I don't know, Ken," Dobey said heavily.

"We're going to appeal, Ken. Right after the sentencing, I'll file."

Hutch stared at him blankly. "What? Oh. It doesn't matter. I'm too tired to think about that right now. I only want to sleep." He followed the deputy from the room.

Dobey and Kramer watched him go. "So, Harold, what do you think?"

"I think," Dobey said savagely, "that I'm going to be sick."

"About the missing Starsky, I meant."

"Well . . . either the killer got to him first or . . . or he couldn't pull it off and he couldn't face coming back."

Kramer picked up his briefcase. "The hero couldn't face failing?"

"It's possible." They left the courtroom together.

**

Hutch was temporarily alone in the cell; Garcia had been paroled. He crawled into bed before the lights were out and pulled the blankets up. He was so cold.

"You promised, you bastard," he whispered. "You promised. Oh, damnit, Starsk . . . what happened?"

He closed his eyes, trying to force the oblivion of sleep to submerge him. Maybe if he was lucky, he'd never wake up.

**

Afterwards, he could never quite reconstruct what had happened. He remembered pointing the gun at Mahoney. Remembered feeling so damned good about it. Remembered thinking that it was all over at last and now Hutch would be free and . . . and that was all he remembered.

When he woke up, he'd taken Kray's place tied to the radiator and the late afternoon sun was warming the room. He'd been out for hours. His head was throbbing and there was a warm wetness that probably meant his stitches had been ripped open again. Kray, Lucas, and Maura or whatever she was calling herself now, were sitting around the room eating carry-out hamburgers and ignoring him.

"I guess," he said after the room stopped spinning so much, "I guess that this is the time for me to ask what happened?"

"I like you," Lucas said cheerfully. "You're a real funny guy. Even if your name isn't Schwartz like you told me before."

"I like you all, too. It's been a lot of fun chasing you around the country."

Maura giggled. "Poor Dave." She looked different with her hair cut short and dyed auburn.

"You know what, though? I would appreciate it if you folks would stop using my head as a target. Now that I'm not on the force anymore, my medical coverage has been cancelled and this could start to get expensive."

"You should just quit sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong," Kray said, waving a French fry to make his point.

"You should have killed him the first time you had a chance," Maura said. "Then he wouldn't have caused us all this trouble."

"Hey, sweetheart, what'd I ever do to you?" Starsky asked.

She didn't answer him. "Turn on the TV, Lucas. It's time for the news." There was a small black and white set in one corner of the room and Lucas fiddled with the controls until he had a pretty good picture. They listened as the anchorman talked about SALT, a teachers' strike, and the president. "A local trial came to an end late last night," he said finally.

Maura leaned forward. "Shh," she said, although nobody was making any noise.

"The jury found former Los Angeles police officer Kenneth Hutchinson guilty of second degree murder in the killing of Kimberly Wright, daughter of businessman Owen Wright." As the newsman spoke, they rolled a film taken in the courtroom. Hutch's face filled the screen. Starsky stopped listening and just stared at his partner, scared by the expression in Hutch's eyes. There was a peculiarly lifeless look in his gaze.

"I'll kill myself." He heard Hutch's voice saying the words again. Starsky strained against the ties holding him to the radiator. "Damn you all," he said hoarsely. "Why are you doing this to him?"

Maura got up from the chair and moved around the room. "We don't care about him, Dave. He was just convenient. We were waiting for the opportunity and he provided it. You might say he's going to jail because he was in the right place at the wrong time. Wrong time for him, that is."

"Maura—"

"That's not my same. My name is Victoria."

"You change names like I change socks."

She stopped in front of the mirror and smoothed her hair almost lovingly. "My true name is Victoria Wright," she said.

Now he remembered why the name Victoria has sounded familiar. It was the name of the first Wright daughter, the one they called Torrie, who'd been kidnapped as an infant and never found. "Is that your name?" he asked.

"Yes." Lucas and Kray were watching her warily. She tossed her head and struck a pose. "Now it all belongs to me, don't you see? Now that Kimberly is dead, I can go home to Momma and Poppa and take my true place." She smiled sweetly. "I must go pack now."

Starsky looked at Lucas. "Is she for real?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. It all started as a . . . a put-on, you know? But I think she really believes it now."

Kray crumpled a paper sack and threw it across the room. "She's a nutcase," he said flatly. "I been telling you that all along, Luke. The broad is a nutcase and we're all gonna take a fall for this."

"No, man, how can we? The cop just took the fall. The case is over and done with. Nothing to do now but get her into the Wright house. Pretty soon, we'll be sitting on easy street."

"Oh, yeah?" Kray laughed. "Man, you been talking to me about easy street since we were fourteen years old and we are still sitting in a dump eating cheap hamburgers."

"Not for long," Lucas insisted.

"I hate to put a damper on all this," Starsky said, "but what about me?"

"Yeah," Lucas said. "What about you?"

"I could just promise to go away and forget the whole thing."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Sure, why not? I promise to go away and forget the whole thing. So why don't you just untie me and I'll be on my way?"

Lucas just smiled. "And what about Hutchinson? You were all hot to save him before. Don't you care no more?"

"I tried my best, didn't I? Hell, am I supposed to get myself killed over it? I mean, a partner is one thing, but getting dead is something else."

"You must think my mother raised nothing but fools," Lucas said.

Starsky shrugged.

"We'll take care of you. Most everybody thinks you're dead already, so when they find your body, they won't be too surprised."

Kray upset a bottle of beer and let it spill. "For all our lives, Luke, we got by without killing nobody. All of a sudden, you get tied up with this bitch and we already killed one and now we're going for two?"

"There isn't anything we can do about it, Eddie. He's the last loose end."

Starsky slumped hack against the radiator. A loose end, huh? That was a helluva way to end his life. A loose end for a couple of punks. Well, at least when they found his body, Hutch would know why he hadn't delivered on his promise. Oh, yeah, he thought bitterly. That should be a great comfort to Hutch. He listened to Lucas and Kray talk, without hearing what they were saying. Vaguely, he was aware that they were leaving, telling Maura they'd be back later, leaving a gun in case Starsky "got any ideas."

Not until they were gone and he was alone in the room did Starsky straighten. His eyes scanned the room and finally came to rest on the beer bottle Kray had dropped when he'd burst in. Some of the pieces lay just beyond his feet. He slipped down as far as he could and angled his foot; his toes touched a large shard.

Praying that Maura took a long time over her packing, he wriggled the foot and the leg, slowly, painfully, pushing the hunk of glass closer. It seemed to take years, but finally his fingers could grasp it and he began to saw away at the ties that held him bound. He could feel the sharp edge scrape against the tips of his fingers and against his wrists, but he didn't stop long enough for the pain to reach his brain. Finally one end of the tie snapped and then the other. He was free.

Still holding the piece of glass between his fingers, he tiptoed up the stairs. He could hear Maura singing softly to herself as she moved around the bedroom. He waited until she moved past the doorway again and then he stepped up, circling her neck with one arm and holding the razor-sharp edge against her throat. "Game's over, honey," he whispered.

She sagged against him.

"Don't kill me," she said. "Please. I don't want to die."

"Nobody wants to die. Kimberly didn't. I don't. My partner doesn't. That doesn't make you special."

"But you don't understand, I'm going to be rich now. I'm going to have it all. I won't be a nobody anymore."

He remembered the garbage dump where she'd grown up as an unwanted intruder, and knew that he should have felt some pity for her. But maybe his heart had gotten too hard. He was only feeling sorry for himself and for Hutch. There wasn't anything left over for anybody else, not anymore. "You're gonna have nothing, honey," he whispered, "except a long time in jail."

"I didn't kill her. Lucas did. He did it, not me."

"Maybe he pulled the trigger, but you killed Kimberly Wright."

"No, no, he did it, he did it!"

"Shut up." He moved to the bed and picked up Kray's gun. "We're going down the stairs and if you try anything, I'll blow your frigging head off. Understand?"

She nodded.

They made it down the stairs and were halfway across the living room when the door opened and Lucas and Kray came in.

"What—?" Lucas lunged forward a little, pulling a gun at the same moment.

"Kill him!" Maura screamed, jerking away. "Kill him!"

A shot exploded from the gun Starsky held. There was one split second of total silence and then Lucas, looking vaguely surprised, toppled over and hit the floor. Kray, in the act of going for Lucas's fallen gun, froze. "Don't shoot me," he said.

"Just stay still and I won't."

Kray had no fight left in him. "Can I check Luke?" he asked softly.

Starsky nodded. "Yeah. Slide the gun away first."

The revolver slid across the floor. Kray reached Lucas and gently turned him over.

Maura was leaning against the wall. "Listen," she said quickly, "my daddy is real rich and he'll pay you a lot of money if you just take me home and forget all this."

"He's dead," Kray said. He looked up, not at Starsky, but at Maura. "Are you satisfied, you bitch? Luke is dead. You killed him. You killed Luke."

"My daddy will pay you, too."

Starsky grabbed some more ties from the closet. "Put her hands behind her back. Make 'em tight." She didn't like Kray touching her, but he brutally bound her as Starsky had directed. When he was finished, Starsky tied Kray in the same way. Finally, he tied the two of them together and rested against the wall.

"What happens now?" Kray asked.

"Now we get into the car and go to San Manuel. And you both better hope that nothing has happened to my partner or I'll take care of you myself and screw the system."

Leaving Lucas's body where it was, they walked out of the house. Starsky shoved the two of them into the back seat and got behind the wheel. His mind was so numb that the only clear thought he had was that he must drive like hell to the courthouse and make them let Hutch go. Maura was crying, but Kray was huddled silently in the corner of the seat. Starsky only hoped that it wasn't too late. The expression in Hutch's eyes when the guilty verdict was announced haunted Starsky throughout the night.

**

He gave a lot of thought to composing a suicide note. Dumb, he knew, but it helped him get through the night. Well, maybe it wasn't so much dumb as it was premature. There was that promise he'd made to Starsk. As long as that was hanging over him, he was pretty much bound to go on living. The promise would be binding until further notice.

Dobey and Kramer walked with him into the courtroom for the pre-sentence hearing. Many of the observers had apparently lost interest now that the verdict was in, but the press was still there, and a few of the reporters that had been there since the beginning gave him friendly nods. He sat at the defense table, his hands folded. Kramer was talking to him and he kept nodding, pretending to listen, but his mind was someplace else. Where, he didn't really know. He was wondering, absently, how far he would make it if he just jumped up and started running. It might work, at that. Anyway, maybe it was time for him to take his fate hack into his own hands again.

Idly, he measured the distance between the table and the door.

**

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He parked behind the courthouse and leaned against the steering wheel for a moment to consider his next move. There were probably any number of rational, correct ways to handle this situation. But he decided that it was too late for any of those. Where had following the rules got Hutch? He got out of the car and opened the back door.

"Come on." Moving slowly, they did as he ordered. "We're going in," he said. "Somebody will probably try to stop us, but I won't be stopped. I'll do whatever I have to. Understand?"

Not waiting for an answer, he pushed them ahead of him, squinting a little into the glaring sun.

They were in the hallway and halfway to the courtroom before they were even noticed. A passing deputy stopped to look. "Hey, there," he said rather uncertainly.

Starsky knew what they must look like—two people tied together, being shoved along by a man covered in dirt and sweat and blood. He grimaced at the officer. "We gotta go in," he muttered, flashing the P.I. license.

"Yeah?" It looked for one moment as if he might simply let them go in. But then his hand crept toward his holster. "Just hold it," he said.

Starsky pulled the gun out and placed the barrel against Maura's head. "We're going in." He spoke quietly.

More cops began to gather and Starsky pushed Maura and Kray along more quickly. She began to pull against him. "Don't let him kill me!" she screamed at the deputy. "Please! "

"Shut up!" Starsky yelled. "We're going in. I don't want to hurt anybody, but I'm going in there! Stay back."

There was a lot of yelling now. He kept his eyes on the door at the end of the corridor and he saw Collins take up a position next to the door. "Schwartz," he said calmly, "what the hell are you doing?"

They stopped a few feet short of the door.

"My name is David Starsky," he said. "I have new evidence . . . have to get in there . . . damnit, Collins, let me through. They killed her, don't you understand? They did it, not Hutch."

"Are you crazy?"

"Maybe," Starsky said, giving up. He shoved Kray and Maura brutally, giving a wordless roar of frustration.

**

At first, everyone tried to ignore the noise in the hallway, but it got louder and louder, until finally the judge looked up in aggravation. "Will someone please see what's going on?"

Hutch heard the yell and recognized Starsky's voice. He jumped to his feet. "That's him," he whispered. "It's my partner."

A deputy moved quickly to stand next to him.

The courtroom door burst open and a man and woman stumbled in, followed by a bearded, bloodied madman holding a gun. Near silence reigned in the room, broken only by the harsh gasps of Starsky's breathing.

Hutch was still standing, watching, unmoving.

Starsky leaned against the wall, still holding the gun. He wiped at his sweaty face. His gaze sought Hutch, found him, and the eyes smiled a little. "Your Honor," he said loudly, "these people killed Kimberly Wright."

Maura tried to run forward, but was jerked up short by the tie . "She had it all," she said reasonably. "She had it all and it should have been mine. You can see that, can't you?" She appealed to the judge, to the watching press. "It was only right that she should die. Everyone can see that, can't you?"

The judge leaned forward. "Do not say anything more, young lady. Anything you say can be considered incriminating."

Kray, who had been watching Maura blankly, now turned a look of disbelief upon the judge. "She's crazy! Can't you see that? She made Luke kill the broad. Gonna be rich, he told me. Gonna be on easy street. She filled his head with a lot of promises and what did it get him? Nothing but a chest full of lead. It's all her fault. Luke pulled the trigger, but she's the one with blood on her hands. And maybe me, because I didn't stop it."

Hutch kept staring at Starsky, feeling like everything was swirling around him in slow motion. Vaguely, he was aware of Kramer and Phipps approaching the bench. Dobey was talking softly and quickly into his ear and Hutch kept nodding, not hearing a word he was saying.

Crowded as the room was, Hutch felt like Starsky and he were alone, isolated from the activity of the others. They watched one another carefully, almost warily. Everything that was going on acted as a barrier between them, keeping them apart. But that was good in a way, because it gave them time. Time to let the emotions cool a little, to step back a few paces from what was happening and study it.

On the surface, Starsky seemed oblivious to everything. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, looking casual and deadly. Occasionally, he would give an enigmatic half-smile.

After nearly fifteen minutes the judge gaveled order back into the room. Everyone sat down except Starsky, his prisoners, his guards, and Hutch.

"This is most . . . extraordinary," the judge said after a moment. "After conferring with the attorneys for both sides, it has been decided that any further activity on sentencing will be set aside until this entire matter can he cleared up." She paused, looking at Hutch. "Additionally, the bench has decided that the prisoner will be released upon his own recognizance until the matter is resolved."

Hutch only half-heard. "What? What'd she say?"

"You're out," Dobey said. "Free."

He shook his head. It didn't make any sense. As soon as the judge had left the room everyone else moved. The reporters surged toward Hutch. Deputies disarmed an agreeable Starsky, taking Kray and Maura into custody. It all seemed, to Hutch, like part of a dream. He needed a piece of reality that he could grab onto and hold. Reporters were shouting questions at him, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. He looked around vaguely and saw Starsky pushing his way through the crowd. When the others wouldn't get out of his way, Starsky gave an impatient gesture and made a vaulting leap over the railing, reaching Hutch a moment later.

"Thank you," Hutch whispered.

Starsky understood. He didn't dismiss the words or the emotion behind them, didn't brush off the conventional expression of gratitude as unnecessary. "You're welcome," he said almost formally. An instant later, he grabbed Hutch with both arms and gave him a tight hug.

Hutch held onto Starsky, held onto that fragment of reality, held on for dear life, ignoring the reporters, ignoring everything but the moment. Almost simultaneously, they took deep breaths and pulled away, each keeping an arm around the other. They faced the reporters.

"Gentlemen," Hutch said loudly, "this is my partner."

The questions started again and he tried to answer, speaking softly, but clearly. It was all still a dream. Nothing seemed real except for the firm pressure of Starsky's arm around his shoulders. But that was all he needed. Hutch couldn't seem to stop smiling.

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**

XXV

It was a clear night and the whole city seemed aglow with lights. He could sit on the balcony of this hillside house and watch the line of traffic move along Hollywood Boulevard. It all looked very peaceful from up here, but he knew that the closer one got, the less beautiful it would all seem. Those glowing circles of light camouflaged all the violence and despair that the city held. All the nights he'd spent roaming that place seemed to have evolved into one long vista of misery. Death waited down there, waiting to leap when least expected, disguised in a hundred different ways. The narrow line of wilderness that stood between them and the city served as a fragile harrier against the horror.

He rubbed absently at one cheek, still not quite used to not having the beard. "Hey," he said languidly.

"What?" Hutch's voice came from a dark corner on the other side of the patio.

"You getting hungry?"

"I don't know. You?"

Starsky shrugged. He patted at his pockets helplessly.

"You quit, remember?" Hutch said.

"I'm trying to quit," he corrected. "There's a difference."

"You're doing great. I'm proud of you."

Starsky snorted and patted his pockets again. "What did Dobey say when you talked to him before?"

"That he'd call back sometime tonight."

"Terrific." Starsky got up and began to pace the patio. He watched the flashing lights of a police car far below. The past two weeks had been very strange. Once it was all over in San Manuel, it had dawned that neither of them had a home anymore. Edith Dobey scurried about and managed to rent this place temporarily. So they had been sitting on top of the world for fourteen days now, watching it all pass beneath them. "Hutch?"

"What?"

"What's the scariest thing that ever happened to you?" It was part of the game they kept playing—a sort of macabre Twenty Questions, in which they poked and probed at the edges of their wounds.

Not to answer would be cheating. "When I was seven years old," Hutch's voice said from the blackness, "I was playing in my grandfather's barn and all of a sudden I saw this rat, must have been two feet long, and it had a crazy look in its eyes. Rabid, I guess. It was standing just a couple of feet from me. I just sat there in the hay and looked at it. That was the first time I ever looked into a pair of eyes that wanted to kill me."

Starsky shivered a little in the evening air. "What happened?"

"My uncle killed it with a shovel. Beat it to death. He hated rats, my uncle did, worse than anything. He just kept hitting it and hitting it, until there was nothing left except . . . ." He left it unfinished. "I guess he went a little crazy."

Starsky stopped at the small table and added some more white wine to his glass. "I can understand how he felt," he said, shoving the cork back into the bottle. "I've felt the same way."

"When?" That was how the game kept going, one question leading to another, as they peeled away the layers of protective coloring built up over the years. No fair not answering or answering lightly.

"When?" Starsky was silent for a moment, swirling the wine in the glass. "A couple times, I guess. The first time was in Vietnam. Before we met. A little girl got blown up on the street one day by a bicycle bomb. There wasn't enough left of her to put in a small box. If I coulda got my hands on whoever did that . . . I would've been like your uncle." He sipped the wine. "When Terri died, just for a minute. When you got blasted through the store front that time and I thought you were dead." He shrugged. "When I came into the courtroom in San Manuel. I think I would've killed anybody who seriously tried to stop me."

"There were a couple of times I thought you weren't going to come through for me," Hutch said suddenly. The confession floated around the patio for a couple of minutes. He was grateful that his face was hidden in the darkness. Absolution was contained in a fleeting, twisted grin. "What scares you the most right now?" Hutch asked after a moment.

"Nothing."

"What?"

"I mean it," Starsky said flatly. "Nothing. Anything that would happen now, I'd more or less expect. Something can only scare you when it's unknown. What could happen? A maniac could be hiding in those trees, just waiting for a chance to blow my frigging head off." He turned around and faced the night, as if to give the mythical madman a better target. "Or I guess there could be an earthquake, maybe the biggie they keep talking about, and we'd both go sliding into the sea. Nothing I can do about it. If I know one thing now, I know that we're not in charge. Things just happen. Like the fact that everything that just happened came about because of a stupid broken brakeline. If the car hadn't been defective . . . ." He faced Hutch again. "So? What should I be afraid of?"

"How about being alone?"

"I've been alone, man. It sucks. But it doesn't scare me."

"Why not?"

"Because now I know that there are only two options. Either I cope or I cash in my chips. Big deal."

Hutch finished his wine and stood. He walked out of the darkness to the circle of light by the table and poured some more of the golden white liquid into his glass. "You gave me hell for talking about suicide and here you are doing the same thing."

"That's different."

"Why?"

"Well, shit, man." The anger wasn't real; the emotion was. "I was still out there operating. You weren't just giving up on yourself. You were giving up on me. On us. That's not allowed. When I talk about cashing in my chips, that assumes certain things."

"Such as?"

"Such as that I got no partner out there hustling his ass off to save me."

They watched the traffic for almost five minutes before Hutch broke the silence. "Dobey's gonna be calling back anytime. He wants to know what we're going to do."

Starsky shrugged. "To hell with it."

"He deserves an answer, Starsk. Not the force; we don't owe them anything. But Dobey deserves an answer."

"Yeah, I know." Starsky's voice sounded tired. "Hey," he said.

"What?"

"How about taking a walk?"

"Where?"

"Let's walk all the way down the mountain. We can grab a burger someplace and then come back."

"That's a long walk."

"Yeah." Starsky finished the wine in a gulp.

Hutch smiled faintly. "Okay." He looked the patio door and they started down the stone steps dug into the side of the hill. They hadn't gone more than a few feet when the phone inside the house began to ring shrilly. "That's Dobey," Hutch said unnecessarily.

"I guess." Starsky patted at his pockets again, but there were still no cigarettes there.

"What are we going to do?"

Starsky didn't answer for a moment. His face was turned into the shadows and Hutch couldn't see his expression. "Let it ring," he said shortly. "He'll call back."

"Starsk . . . ?"

He looked at Hutch then, his eyes dark. "Later, Hutch," he said. He turned and moved down the steps more quickly.

Hutch glanced back toward the house once more, then hurried to catch up, pulling his windbreaker closed against the cool night air. Side by side they moved down the hill, moving inexorably toward the lights of the city, toward the traffic, toward the people who swarmed all over Los Angeles, making that City of Angels into a little piece of hell. Finally the sound of the ringing phone ended and the only noise left was the shuffling of their feet across the ground.

Soon even that sound was drowned out by the echo of the traffic as the noises of the city rose to greet and then submerge them.

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