PROLOGUE
What am I doing here?
It must have been the 100th time in the last 24 hours he'd asked himself that question.
The answer?
I can't think of a way out.
He stood in the darkness, his blond hair glinting from the light ten feet ahead of him. Tugged at his clothes. Felt unaccustomedly light near his armpit, where a hunk of steel would normally be...and at his side, where a dark-haired man would normally be.
I gotta be crazy.
He wasn't supposed to be here. The case was supposed to have wrapped before he got to this point...long before. But it hadn't...and here he was. Dressed in white from head to toe, sword strapped to his side, with Shakespeare ricocheting through his head at breakneck speed. Palms sweating. Heart racing. More anxious, it seemed, than at about any other moment in his
undercover career.
Well, any non-life-threatening, no-tires-squealing moment, anyway.
Maybe he'd been more anxious that time when he'd been chasing his partner down at the old zoo, sure he'd never get there in time...or when he'd been neatly tumbled down a canyon and come to rest with his car on top of him...maybe then...
Hey. Hutchinson. Back to business, huh?
He strained to hear what was happening out on the stage, and breathed a slight sigh of relief. He still had a while before his entrance.
What the hell am I doing here?
101.
He knew, of course. There was something shady going down at this very sophisticated professional theatre, and the director was getting scared. First, one of his cast members had disappeared, and then, the lighting designer had been found shot in the alley behind the theatre. He had ended up in Captain Dobey’s office...who had, in turn, summoned Starsky and Hutch.
"Oh, no. You're not gettin' me out there. No way!"
Starsky's protests had been vehement, and his face and voice had warned that the issue was non-negotiable. Hutch had to admit that his partner, as adept as he was at undercover, was wholly unsuited for the role the director was looking to cast. Whereas Hutch, with his blond hair, elegant features, and resonant cultured voice, fit the bill perfectly. Throw in the unfortunate circumstance of high school theatre, and a double bachelor's degree in criminal justice and theatre...and well, he was stuck.
Except he hadn't acted in years except when he was undercover. And that was different.
Somehow.
And it wasn't just that the facts of the case, he argued with himself as he checked the action on the stage again. It was more puzzling than some, and even after four weeks of rehearsal they still didn't have all the pieces in place. As an unknown face, he was vulnerable to suspicion, and as an actor he was vulnerable to the same fate the other two company members had met. Worse, he couldn't bring his gun inside - - his costume fit him like a second skin, and the dressing room he shared with three other guys had no lockers and no privacy. There was nowhere he could put it where he wouldn't arouse suspicion. Worse still, there was nowhere to stash Starsky - - the crew was full, and the dark-haired detective wouldn't have known upstage from downstage if the proverbial gun had been at his head.
Nope. It was more than that. It was the sheer, gut-wrenching terror of going out there and making a total ass of himself.
The stage manager leaned forward and whispered to him, breaking his reverie. "Ready, Mr. H?"
Hutch nodded, took a deep breath, and ordered his lunch to stay in his stomach. The cue came. He slipped onto the stage, and hung unobtrusively to stage left corner as the director had envisioned, watching as the Queen and King held court. Despite the brilliance of his costume, he was lost in the shadow...until the appropriate moment when the King turned to him and spoke.
“How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"
"Not so, my lord," Hutch responded. Part of him was amazed at the strength of his voice and the sudden calmness he felt. "I am too much i'the sun."
The audience seemed to lean forward in its seat in a collective "Ah." The moment they had been waiting for had arrived.
Hamlet was in the house.
*****************************
Elsewhere in the theatre, two pairs of eyes watched the action onstage, both intently, but for different reasons.
When Hutch began to speak, one audience member in the back of the house seemed to lean forward more anxiously and watch more closely than the others around him. Starsky may not have been a Shakespeare fan, but this was his best friend and partner, so he knew what was expected of him. Even if it did mean sitting through this boring “cultural” crap; give him a hot dog, a can of beer, and a good baseball game over this stuffy nonsense any day of the week.
After a few moments, however, he was reluctantly interested...then frankly amazed. How long had he and Hutch known each other? Six years? And he’d had no idea that his partner had this in him. Hutch was--well, it was like watching another person up there on that stage.
He could hear Hutch’s voice, saying wryly in his head, “That’s kind of the point, Starsk.”
Despite himself, he sat back to give the production his full attention. He’d never admit it to Hutch, but he was startin’ to enjoy himself.
******************************
Shrouded by darkness, the expression was indecipherable, but there was little to see, anyway. Other than an occasional twitch in the cheek, the facial muscles were completely immobile. No one watching would have had a clue what was going on inside the mind...unless they looked up into the eyes. There, a malevolence shone that was at startling odds with the passive flesh.
The eyes flicked over the characters on the stage, while the brain registered the facts it had absorbed about each of the actors. The gaze lit briefly on the golden-haired figure in white, then fixed on the actor portraying Claudius, who was trying to persuade Hamlet to put aside the grief over his father’s death, accept Claudius as his mother’s husband, and remain in Denmark. As Gertrude joined her husband in his pleas, the facial muscles moved almost imperceptibly. Eyes narrowed minutely. The lips moved ever so slightly into a bloodless, humorless smile, then murmured, too softly for those around to hear:
“The play’s the thing...wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
*******************************
The production proceeded, and before long Hutch made his first exit. As he left the hot, brilliantly-lit stage for the cool darkness of the wings, he felt his legs trembling. So far, so good, but could he pull the whole thing off? With a nod of thanks, he accepted the bottle of water offered by the actor playing Horatio, and carefully patted some of the perspiration from his face and neck. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and again found himself thinking,
“What the hell am I doing here?”