Title: After the Storm

Category: Missing Scene -- “Snowstorm”

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made, no infringement intended.

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There was always something strange, even disconcerting, about a funeral on a bright, cloudless day. Sunny days were for little kids to play ball and eat popsicles while teenagers cruised the streets, impressing girls in their fathers' convertibles. Sunny days were not for mourning and saying goodbye and laying to rest in peace. It almost seemed insulting that Nature couldn’t take a moment to dim the lights out of respect for the dead.

But this was California, and if funerals could only be held on appropriately gray, moody days, hardly anyone would get any closure. So Hutch slid his sunglasses on and crossed the manicured cemetery grass in long, easy strides.

It was a new cemetery, with only a handful of mismatched gravestones and markers scattered around, so it hadn't been hard to find the only funeral scheduled here today. Still, he'd driven past the few parked cars, winding around the narrow road to park on the backside of the little hill. Unsure how his presence would be received by the family, he'd figured a low profile was the best plan. 'No profile' might have been the best choice, but that hadn't seemed right somehow.

Down the shallow hill, between a couple of old poplar trees, the usual assortment of wreaths and tasteful flower arrangements marked the coffin. A tiny knot of people stood gathered around the flowers, silent and staring. A priest of some unknown denomination presided over the gathering, his back to Hutch. His deep monotone voice was just low enough that Hutch couldn’t quite make out the words. Of course, he'd been to enough funerals that he didn't actually need to hear the words to know what was being said.

Or what wasn't being said. Funny how quickly the living tended to develop rose-colored memories of the dead.

A tall man near the back of the small group glanced up as Hutch approached. Kalowitz. He looked surprised. Hutch didn't blame him. Hutch was kind of surprised he'd come too.

Kalowitz backed away from the group and headed in Hutch's direction. So Hutch stopped under the shade of a big poplar at the opposite end from everyone else, just outside of earshot. The priest was busy reading from his oversized black Bible now. Probably that old standard, the 23rd Psalm. A lot of cops liked that one, seeing as how often they walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear the evil they'll find.

"Didn't expect to see you here." Kalowitz stopped several feet away from Hutch, just outside the shade. He didn't quite look at Hutch directly.

Hutch gave a small shrug, removing his sunglasses. "I wasn't sure I'd be welcome," he answered in a quiet voice.

Kalowitz nodded understandingly. Turned his gaze back toward the service. They'd caught the attention of the woman standing nearest the coffin. The widow, Hutch assumed. Her eyes moved from Kalowitz to Hutch, and he saw recognition pass across her face. Then something almost like embarrassment. Anger, confusion, guilt. She knew exactly who Hutch was.

The man who had busted and then killed her husband.

"Well, you're welcome in my book." Kalowitz sighed heavily, gesturing vaguely at the pitiful half-dozen mourners who'd shown up. "You're the only one from the whole department who came, you know that?"

Hutch glanced surreptitiously at Kalowitz. The man looked tired. Exhausted, actually. The kind of exhaustion that comes from betrayal. From finding out that men you'd known your whole career, that you'd ridden beside and trusted and backed up and drank with for years, had betrayed you and everything you stand for in order to prostitute themselves for a quick buck.

"Corman chose his own path, Bill."

"Phil was a good cop once." Kalowitz said to no one in particular. "Always one step ahead of the criminals. Smart and tough as nails. Didn't take anything from anyone." Suddenly, he was staring intensely at Hutch across the short space between them. "He was a good cop once," he repeated.

"I know he was." Hutch said gently. "And I'm sorry it went down the way it did. That's why I needed to come."

Another long sigh, Kalowitz' anger and defensiveness bleeding out into the harsh afternoon sunlight. "We all start out the same, you know? When we put the uniform on. Full of heroics and plans to make the world a better place and give our kids something to be proud of. But the years eat at you. The murders and the drugs and the rapes and the kidnappings and the assaults. They all eat at you until you can't even remember why you do this."

Like a big toilet bowl, Starsky had once called their world. And we're the bugs trying to stay afloat. Corman and Burke had just stopped trying to swim.

"And one day," Kalowitz went on, "you realize your kids are gone, you don't know your wife anymore, and you still can't even afford a decent car. You've spent your whole life doing the right thing and no one cares. It eats at a man, Hutch."

"That's not an excuse."

"No, it's not. But it is a reality. You'll find out, kid." Kalowitz pulled a pair of sunglasses from inside his jacket. "I asked for a leave of absence."

"For how long?"

"Don't know." He put the sunglasses on. "I guess until I remember why we do this."

"Hey," Hutch reached out to grab Kalowitz' forearm. "We've already lost two good cops over this. I'd hate to lose another."

"Two of my best friends stole cocaine and killed a man right under my nose, Hutch. How good a cop am I any more?"

"That's--"

Kalowitz smiled grimly. "Don't. We both know I should have seen what was going on in my own backyard. Even a couple of kids like you and Starsky saw it. And I'm thinking that maybe I chose not to know. Maybe I understood the temptation. Maybe somewhere deep down, it all eats at me too. And that scares the hell out of me."

//You'll find out, kid.//

That scared the hell out of Hutch, too.

Kalowitz disengaged from Hutch's grip, moving backward a step toward the others. "You take care of yourself and that partner of yours."

"Take care of yourself, too."

And he was gone. The funeral service was quietly breaking up. The priest had closed his Bible and committed Phil Corman's soul to wherever he'd believed it was going. Kalowitz joined the widow again, both of them carefully avoiding looking in Hutch's direction.

"Lousy way to spend your day off."

Hutch turned at Starsky's voice. His partner was standing just behind him, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, hands stuffed into the pockets of his navy blue dress jacket.

"What are you doing here?" Hutch asked.

"Figured I'd find you here."

Hutch shrugged slightly, offering explanation but not apology. "He may have been a lot of things, but he was also a cop for twenty years."

Starsky glanced toward the coffin, now standing alone in its bath of flowers and sympathy notes. "And look at what he did with it," he said disgustedly.

"Adam and Eve and the apple." Hutch pulled out his sunglasses and wiped absently at the lenses with the edge of his shirt. "You ever wonder what this job is doing to us, Starsk?"

"All the time." Starsky turned away from the funeral leftovers, choosing instead to look out across the neat cemetery lawn. A breeze was picking up now, noisily rustling the poplar leaves. "But what else are we gonna do? This is who we are. Sure, it's a rotten way to make a living, but at least it's a life."

//You'll find out, kid.//

"It was who Corman and Burke were once, too."

"Lemme tell you something," Starsky said sharply. "They didn't wake up Monday morning and decide out of nowhere to steal a million dollars' worth of coke. There were a whole lotta compromises that came for a long time before that."

"Made their own, bed, huh?"

"We all do. Hey," he smacked Hutch once on the shoulder, "at least you and me ain't makin' it alone. You done here?"

"Yeah," Hutch slid his sunglasses back on and stepped out of the shade of the tree, "I'm done here."

"Good. I'm starving." Starsky started up the short hill, confident that his partner was right behind him. "You can buy me lunch."

Two long strides brought Hutch up beside his partner. "I bought last time."

"No, I bought last time. It was Chinese food yesterday."

"Chinese food was Monday. It was Japanese food yesterday, and I bought."

"No, it was Italian food on Monday, and Japanese on that stakeout, and Chinese yesterday. And I bought."

Overhead, the sun continued to beat down on them. Because that was what it did, who it was. The sun would continue to beat down on the kids eating popsicles and the teenagers cruising for chicks and the caretaker burying Phil Corman. And Hutch knew it would beat down on the burglars breaking into houses and the drug dealers working back alleys and the pickpockets cleaning out tourists downtown, and invariably it would beat down on someone getting killed for some insignificant reason somewhere.

And then it would beat down on the two detectives trying to fix it all because that was just who they were. And all he and Starsky could do was hope that it was always enough.

//You'll find out, kid.//

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~~finis~~ Comments? Thoughts? Suggestions? Email me at entlzha@yahoo.com