RUSTED
The kid held up his find and fingered it carefully before going back to
his daily rummage in the dumpster near his home.
The area had never recovered from the each successive new glitch in the
economy. The whole neighborhood seemed to reel punch drunk from every blow.
Other parts of the city got facelifts and metro projects and new parks; but
this backwater of humanity was just like it had always been. The flea pits were
still full of drunks and addicts. The drunks were still on wine or whisky or whatever
they could find; but the addicts had moved on from heroin to crack and
methadone. The cocaine market had moved to the neighborhoods where the rich
lived.
Corpses were less picky.
The kid saw something under a trash sack and moved the black plastic to
one side. It looked like a dummy from one of the stores in the block across the
street; it was wearing the same kind of latex jumpsuit that he’d seen him mom
pull on one day when she was late home from one job and had to change to go to
the next. He thought his mom would like
this one – it was a nice bright red. He pulled at one of the feet and leaped
out of the dumpster like he’d been burned.
He knew where to go.
**********
Huggy had put on a little
weight but he was still the man with his finger on the pulse of the city. Times had been good to him and The Pits was
now one of the most popular bars in
The kid slipped into the bar
just as Huggy was opening the door for the lunchtime custom. “Hey you can’t
come in here kid – you’re a minor.”
“I came to see you. You are
Huggy Bear aren’t you?”
Huggy looked at the kid
carefully. His flaxen blond hair and
pale blue eyes made Huggy stop and stare. “How do you know that?”
“Ali…my mom talked about you
a lot. She always said that if I was in big trouble I should go find you.”
Huggy led him into the bar.
“I guess that means you are in trouble.” The kid swallowed. Huggy put a hand on
his shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me your name; then we can talk about the
problem.”
“Ricky.”
It was Huggy’s
turn to swallow. It added up. The kid was about ten years old and
“Your mom’s name
“She’s dead.”
Huggy spotted the tear and
wiped it with his finger. “When did she
die?”
“I don’t know, I
just found her.”
Huggy took him upstairs to
the apartment that doubled as an office. He switched on the TV and gave Ricky
the remote. He pointed to a shelf, “The tapes there are OK for a kid. Stay
here. I’m going to make a few calls.”
****************
The trouble with being a
Lieutenant meant you had to spend more time behind a desk and Starsky hated
sitting on his butt all day. He was griping about the paper work that he and
Hutch were working on; a big case for the DA to push to the top of the court
schedules.
“I’d rather be on a stake
out.”
Hutch raised an eyebrow and a
finger. “Well if you hadn’t been so determined to take the exams we could still
be out there.”
Starsky stared at him. “Don’t
raise that finger at me Hutch! What else did you think I was going to do while
I was out there getting straight? And at
least I knew you were safe at home studying instead of tilting at windmills.”
Hutch was about to ask what
he meant when the phone rang and Starsky reached out to answer it without even
looking up from what he was doing.
“Starsky. Yeah hi Huggy….where?...”
He listened to something Huggy was telling him and turned away from Hutch. “Ok
we’re on our way.” He was already on his feet as he put the receiver back onto
its cradle. “C’mon Sancho; time to
get back on the trusty steed.”
“Quixote.” Hutch pronounced
it correctly; aspirating the ‘x’. “Huh?”
“It was Don Quixote who went
for the windmills Starsk.” His partner bowed and ushered him out of the
door then placed a well-aimed but harmless kick on his butt.
“I know that but, I’m sure as
hell not going be Sancho Panza!” Hutch decided that whichever of them was the
knight this time discretion was the better part of valor and said nothing.
Starsky’s new car was parked
in his magic spot. It was the newest
model from Jeep, a Cherokee that Merle had transformed with a paint job that
even Hutch admired. The car was deep blue and a discerning eye picked up a
slight hint of glitter as it moved. But once the car was parked under a
streetlight at night the glitter turned into a thousand subtle stars. It was Merle’s little joke. “Stars in the sky for my buddy, Starsky.” Needless to say
Merle had paid attention to the engine too and Hutch clicked the rally-style
safety harness into place before Starsky hit the gas.
“Where are we going?”
“Huggy’s;
he’s got a kid there says he found his mom dead.”
Hutch swallowed. These things
never got easier to handle. Starsky’s silence made him wonder if there was
something he hadn’t been told.
****************
Huggy was waiting for them in
the alley. “The kid’s upstairs,” he said to Starsky. Hutch went to follow but Huggy held him back.
“Let Dave talk to him; he knows where the kid’s coming from, remember? I’ll tell you what I know.” Hutch nodded his
agreement; he would never be able to get the image of Starsky with tears in his
eyes unable to go to Molly as she wept over her slain father in an alley. Hutch
took over with Molly to save his friend’s heartache; the compliment was about
to be returned.
Starsky walked into the room
quietly; he stepped over to a chair and sat down to look at the kid.
“My name’s Dave and I used to
know your mom.” And I still know your
dad.
Ricky stared ahead but he
wasn’t watching the screen. Starsky knew what he was doing, he did it himself;
you stare at something hard enough you don’t see the images burning holes in
your mind. But the tears were rolling down Ricky’s cheeks and Starsky couldn’t
let that continue. He held out a clean
white handkerchief
(Hutch called it his damsel
in distress kit) and waited in silence while Ricky repaired the damage as best
he could.
“It’s Ok to cry Ricky. It
takes a real man to cry whatever some dumbass might
have told you.”
Ricky handed him back the
hankie and Starsky folded it neatly and placed it on the table where Ricky
could pick it up if he needed it.
“You know my mom?”
“Knew. I haven’t seen her for years; not since she...uh…moved
to a new job.” If Ricky didn’t know what
“In a dumpster in
the alley near our house.”
Starsky swallowed hard. “What
were you doing in the dumpster Ricky?”
“I find things in there
sometimes. Toys and stuff to trade and…”
Starsky leaned forward from
the waist; keeping his back straight. “How old are you Ricky, ten? Eleven?”
“Ten.” (He sniffed and
reached for the hankie again).
“I was thirteen when my dad
died. He was killed and I saw it. It was in an alley near our apartment. So if
I say ‘I understand how you feel’ you know that I really do. Now some people are going to say that to you
Ricky and you’re going to want to yell ‘no you don’t!’ but remember that they
are just trying to be kind. But I do
know Ricky and that’s why I came up here to talk to you and my partner is
talking to Huggy. So you and I are going to sit here and talk about your mom
and all the good times you had with her and all the nice things you remember
and then, when you’re ready you’ll tell me about how you found her and you
won’t even notice you’re doing it.”
Ricky looked up at him and
found himself drawn to Starsky’s deep gaze; he felt like he couldn’t let go of
it. It was a lifeline. He started to talk about his mom and all the things they
did together and soon he was telling Starsky about the ‘catwoman’
outfit and how at first he thought that it was a dummy in the dumpster and how
the outfit was like his mom’s and she would like it.
“But it was my mom; it wasn’t
a dummy. It was my mom in there and her head is like it is round the wrong
way.” He burst into sobs and Starsky drew him into his arms. He enfolded the
child and let him cry himself out.
****************
There was no easy way for
Huggy to break it to Hutch. He had carried a flame for
“And the kid upstairs is her
son?”
“Yes.”
Hutch ran his hand over his
face and stood up but Huggy stopped him with a slight shake of his head. “Let
Starsky handle it Hutch.”
Five minutes later Starsky
called to Hutch to join him
“I’m going to call this one
in, Hutch. It’s too close to home for
both of us.”
Hutch looked at Starsky’s
face and saw the reflection in his deep blue eyes of the painful memories he
had lived with since he was thirteen.
Then he looked a the child and his heart felt as if it would burst out
of his mouth and scream with pain. The blond hair and blue eyes were clue
enough and Hutch knew that Starsky had seen more than anyone else could have
seen. Their eyes met and Starsky nodded. “Spitting image of his dad, isn’t he?”
Hutch was frozen to the spot;
he wanted to pick his son up in his arms but something held him back.
It was Ricky who broke the
ice. He looked up at Hutch and held out his hand to reveal the object that he
had been gripping ever since he arrived in The Pits. Hutch took it and grinned.
“Hey look at this Starsky.”
He held out the toy car, its
red and white paint was damaged with time but the shape was easily
recognizable.
Starsky chuckled, “I guess
we’d better take it to Merle, it’s kind of rusted.”