Hutch entered the squad room several minutes after Starsky left and groaned inwardly. Officer Matthew Schlenko was sitting at Starsky’s desk, rifling through the files that had once been stacked neatly on the desktop.
“What are you doing?” Hutch asked, not even trying to conceal the irritation in his voice.
“Oh!” Startled, the rookie dropped the files he had been holding. Scores of papers fluttered gently downward as Schlenko made a manic attempt to catch them before they hit the floor. In his haste, he inadvertently tipped his chair a little too far and started to topple over. Now thoroughly panicked, he grabbed frantically for anything to break his fall. Unfortunately, his flailing hands made contact with a half-empty cup of coffee that Starsky had left there earlier. The cold coffee went one way and Schlenko went the other, ending up in an unsightly heap on the floor.
“Uh...sorry...,” the rookie stammered as he scrambled to his feet. He started to bend down to retrieve the scattered files and risked a quick glance at Hutch who had, as yet, not uttered a sound. What he saw stopped him in mid-motion. Hutch stood before him, his once impeccable clothing now liberally spattered with coffee. As Schlenko watched in perverse fascination, a drop of the dark liquid that was suspended from Hutch’s chin lost its tenuous hold and dropped to the floor.
Schlenko was mortified. Abandoning his attempt at cleaning up the scattered files, he plucked a paper towel off Starsky’s desk and ineffectively dabbed at Hutch’s face and clothing, trying to blot out the worst of the stains. Oddly enough, every place the towel touched was now not only coffee stained, but was smudged a mysterious yellow color. Mystified, the hapless rookie examined the paper towel in his hand to find that it was smeared with mustard. He once again stopped his actions and looked at Hutch, smiling apologetically and nervously licking his lips.
The look on Hutch’s face was unreadable to Schlenko, but several of the other officers who had been watching the scene with open amusement now stopped their chuckling and actually moved away from the enraged officer. All noise and activity in the room ceased and all eyes were riveted on the tall blond as he glared into the eyes of the junior officer.
Finally, after a very long, uncomfortable silence, Hutch began to speak very, very quietly. “First of all, officer, that is my partner’s desk and I never, and I mean NEVER, want to see you sitting there again. You got that?” At the younger man’s effusive nodding, Hutch continued, wagging the index finger of his right hand in the man’s face for emphasis. “Second, you have exactly five minutes to clean up this mess you’ve made and meet me in the parking garage. Third, you will come in when we get off duty this afternoon and re-type every single report you just ruined. Do I make myself clear?” Hutch towered over the other man menacingly, his gaze never wavering.
Officer Schlenko licked his lips again and managed to croak out an unintelligible reply, his whole body shaking and his face bathed in a nervous sweat. “Good,” Hutch continued, still keeping his voice low and level. “I’m going to my locker to change clothes and if you’re not in the garage in five minutes, I will leave without you. From the look of things, that might just be my best chance of making it through this shift.”
Hutch stalked out of the squad room, leaving the rookie to make a hurried job of cleaning up his mess. As he walked toward the locker room to change his clothes, Hutch was fervently hoping that Starsky was faring better than he was.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was not the case. When Starsky climbed aboard the laundry truck, he discovered that there had been an attempt made on the witness at the first safe house. Just as the witness had been loaded into the transport vehicle, several of Caruso’s men had opened fire. The federal agent assigned to protect him had been killed, leaving only the driver and the witness to evade Caruso’s men on the trip into the city. Fortunately, there were no more signs of pursuit and the driver felt confident that they were not being followed. Unfortunately, this left Starsky to guard the witness by himself as there had not been time to get another agent involved. Losing an agent had not been part of the original plan and the Feds weren’t exactly known for their flexibility.
The rest of the trip to the Westermeier was uneventful and Starsky managed to sneak the witness, a man by the unlikely name of Harold Higginbotham, into his room without anyone paying any attention. He got Higginbotham settled and comfortable and, after double checking the doors and windows, set about exploring the small space that would be his prison for the next 48 hours.
The room itself was actually a suite of rooms that someone, in years past, had ambitiously dubbed “The Presidential Suite”. Starsky was fairly certain that no self-respecting president would ever have darkened the threshold of that room if he could have at all avoided it. The main sitting room was decorated in muted earth tones which gave the small space a grayish aura, and the furnishings consisted of a small, dusty sofa, an overstuffed armchair, and a tiny kitchenette, complete with a round table the top of which was no bigger than an average wooden barrel. Two small bedrooms and an even smaller bathroom, its fixtures stained brown from the rusty water which continually dripped from the faucets, opened off the main room. The overall impression was that of a flophouse in the ghetto and Starsky wondered idly whose idea it was to house the witness here. It was definitely not the location he would have chosen.
Perhaps the worst feature of the dank, dusty room was its ancient construction which made for very drafty conditions. Even though all of the windows were securely closed and locked, one could actually hear everything that went on down on the street – from the lackluster Santa on the corner, hopelessly ringing his bell in a futile attempt to solicit donations, to the overall hum of the daily traffic, complete with honking horns, squealing brakes and shouted curses. Starsky was convinced he could hear everything that happened on the street better from his vantage point in the hotel room than if he’d actually been standing on the street itself.
Never one to dwell on unpleasantries, Starsky hunched further down into the armchair and turned his attention back to the Gene Autry western that was just starting on the television. He had rearranged the furniture so that no blue flickering from the set would be visible from the street below, and he had even managed to smuggle in a large bag of potato chips, a bag of chocolate chip cookies and several bottles of root beer. He was just about to pop the top on the first bottle when a voice from behind stopped him.
“What are you doin?” Harold Higginbotham was nervously twisting a towel in his hands as his eyes darted compulsively around the room.
“I am watching television,” Starsky spoke slowly and clearly as if trying to explain something to a rather dull child. “What do you want?”
“Someone
tried to kill me today! Shouldn’t you
be protecting me?” Higginbotham began
pacing around the room, slapping the towel against every piece of furniture he
passed. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good
idea after all. Maybe if I get out now
I can go to Mexico or Bermuda or somethin’ and Caruso won’t even bother to try
to find me. Or maybe I should just
shoot myself and save him the time and trouble…”
Starsky jumped from his chair and grabbed the distraught witness before he
could get to the front door. “Hold on
just a minute there, Harry. Whatta ya
talkin’ about? Forget the whole
thing? That’s crazy! Even if you did back out at the last minute,
Caruso would never believe that you didn’t rat him out and he’d find you no
matter where you were, just to make an example out of ya. If you do things our way, Caruso gets nailed
and you get a new identity somewhere nice and safe so you can start over
again. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“But you’re not protecting me!” Higginbotham whined loudly making Starsky wince. “You’re watching some stupid movie on TV when you should be…” his voice trailed off as a look of confusion flitted across his face.
“Exactly.” Starsky answered calmly, steering the man into one of the small bedrooms. “I am doing everything I can to protect you right now, and if someone comes after you, they’re going to have to go through me to do it, and that ain’t gonna happen. Why don’t you just lie down and relax and let ol’ Starsk do his job? Hmmm?”
Higginbotham sighed deeply and flopped down onto the bed. “You promise you’ll protect me?”
Starsky nodded his head. “Even if it means missing part of one of my movies, I’ll see to it that no one gets to ya. Okay?”
The witness looked skeptical. “You don’t even know me. Why should you care if I get my head blown off? In case you’ve forgotten, we’re on opposite sides of the law, ya know.”
Starsky leaned forward and looked intently into the other man’s eyes. “Look, Harry. All I care about is that Caruso gets put away for a very long time and I am willing to do whatever it takes to see that it happens. If that means I have to get my head blown off to keep you alive, then so be it.”
“Man! What a crummy job. How’d you get so lucky to be the one to look after me anyhow? You make somebody mad?”
“Nope,” Starsky answered cheerily, heading back toward the armchair and the movie marathon. “I lost the coin toss.”