Chinese whispers

AN: Usually I write a story and Anja gets inspired to do some artwork. This time I'm responding to a picture she sent me.

Events in this story reflect two of my earlier stories “The Jungle and how to survive it” and “Blind justice”….Starsky's past will always fascinate me; and never stop coming back to haunt him.

The dispatcher announced a report of shooting. Hutch was nearly home but some deep down sixth sense told him to go over there. He and Starsky had been working a long hard case, skipping leave and even meals to get the threads woven together into a net that hauled in some of the city's biggest drug pushers. Biggest, that was, until their replacements took over. Starsky disappeared down the steps of the precinct while Hutch was hunting for his keys in the chaos of his desk drawer. “See you in a week, buddy; I'm going to do some serious sleeping,” he called over his shoulder “ alone !” he shrugged and winked. When Hutch got to the street the Torino was already out of sight.

The call gave an address on route between the precinct and Starsky's new house on Ridgeway. Hutch figured that his partner would have had the same reaction when he heard the call. He slowed down for a moment. Starsky can handle it if he has to; there'll probably be a patrol there by now anyway. Instinct got the better of him and he took two right turns to head in the direction of the call.

The Torino was there; parked at an angle that indicated that Starsky had arrived at full speed. There was a Black and White there too, next to a coroner's wagon….and an ambulance was driving away. Hutch parked behind the Torino and ran into the grocery store. The street was in a neighborhood favored by Vietnamese and other Indo-Chinese refugees that had made their way to the States in the wake of the war. He scanned the group of people in the middle of the store, seeking out the familiar wild black curls. Starsky was nowhere to be seen. The small crowd parted to allow the coroner's team to pass; Hutch stopped them and zipped the body bag; he held his breath.

The temptation to cry with joy was hard to keep back when he saw the dead man's face. The victim was Indo-Chinese. He gently covered the face and went on into the store. Starsky was probably somewhere talking to witnesses. Hutch found one of the uniformed officers. “Where's Starsky?”

“Who?”

“Dave Starsky, my partner.” He flipped his badge as he spoke, “that's his car out there.”

“He's a cop?”

Hutch stared at the man. “Yea he's a cop; he's a detective with BCPD. What planet are you from?” The cop shook his head. “I'm sorry detective…uh?”

“ Hutchinson .”

“Detective Hutchinson , I was transferred in here from Bakersfield a week ago; I haven't had much time to get to know all the detectives on the force yet. And you have to admit that is one hell of a wild car for a cop to drive.”

Hutch smiled and touched the man in the shoulder. “That's what everyone thinks…except Starsky. One day when you have time get him to explain the theory. Now where is he?”

“I guess they're at Memorial by now.”

Hutch raced to the hospital with his siren wailing and the mars light flashing on the roof of the car. If the Torino cut a dashing but unlikely figure as an unmarked police vehicle; his battered LTD was probably even less likely to attract attention without the noise and fury. Much as he hated “the striped tomato” he wished he'd taken it now; the extra verve of Merle's handiwork under the hood would have been useful. He parked as close to the Emergency entrance as he could, taking care to leave all outward signs of police business visible to avoid getting a ticket for illegal parking.

The Emergency waiting area had the usual mix of the poor and the huddled masses trying to make space between themselves and the junkies and victims of the first wave of the night's inevitable harvest of the wounded and the battered. Hutch made his way to the front of the line. A big black woman tried to block his way; “hey whitey, you all get back into line and wait like the rest of us.” Hutch pulled out his badge and shook his head. “My partner's in here somewhere lady.” “I saw them taking a gurney into that room over there,” she said gently.

Hutch followed her gaze and ran over to the examining room. A nurse saw him and drew a screen around the bed but Hutch caught a glimpse of Starsky on the examining table; he had an oxygen mask over his face and a monitor reported the steady beating of his heart. A nurse was inserting an IV needle into his arm and there was a bag of blood already dripping into another tube attached to Starsky's arm. The door closed.

“He'll be OK.”

Hutch recognized the doctor as the man who had fought against time to keep Starsky alive when a grief-crazed chemist had poisoned him. “He'll be cranky for a while – but he'll live.” Hutch questioned him; needing to know the what, the why, and the how; the doctor held up a hand. “Hey slow down. All I can tell you is that he was shot in the chest. It isn't as bad as it sounds; the bullet glanced off the sternum but the x-ray showed a chip of bone a little too close to his lung for my liking. I'm going to remove it; believe me, Hutch, it is as easy as taking out his tonsils.”

Hutch grinned; “as long as he can have ice cream after the operation he'll be happy.” The doctor laughed and went back to accompany his patient to the operating block.

Hutch went to sit in the waiting area. He sat leafing through a few magazines; TV schedules that were a year old, a couple of magazines full of helpful hints for adolescent girls in their search for the perfect boyfriend and a muscle magazine with photographs of men who made Hutch feel like the proverbial ninety pound weakling in the Charles Atlas ads. He dumped the last magazine on the table and became aware that he was not alone.

Two women sat staring at the door to the main part of the hospital. He guessed that they were Vietnamese and that they were waiting for a family member. The younger woman was comforting the older woman; Hutch was pretty sure that they were mother and daughter.

They kept glancing at him and then chattering to one another in their own language. Hutch had no idea what they could be saying. A nurse appeared and beckoned to the older woman. “He's going to be just fine.”

“Can I go to him?”

“Not just yet; I'll come and get you when he is in his room again.”

The older woman sat down and started to rock back and forth on her chair keening quietly. Her daughter put an arm around her shoulder; she whispered something and Hutch thought he heard her say ‘David'. He decided that his own worry was getting the better of his imagination. He decided to get a coffee and wait it out. The machine poured tea on his foot and spat the cup out followed by a shower of unwanted sugar. Hutch shrugged; the coffee shop was just the other side of the waiting area it wouldn't take more than five minutes to get something likely to help him stay awake.

When he returned the older woman was gone. He settled down with his coffee and a brownie that tasted nearly as good as it looked. The younger woman was very calm. Hutch leaned forward. “Is it someone very close to you?”

“To my mother, yes. And you?”

“My best friend and my partner,” he shook his head at her questioning look, “we're cops. He was shot this evening and he wasn't even on duty.”

“David?”

Hutch nearly dropped his coffee.

“Yes. But…I don't understand.”

“They saved each others lives. Mother recognized him when he came into the store. She tried to warn him but she was too late.”

Hutch ran a hand over his face. “Tell me about it.”

He sat in silence as Connie (“my Vietnamese name is Cong Sorn – it means ‘music'”) told the story of how Starsky had saved her life and her mother's.

“My mother was the village teacher; her parents must have known that she would be the one to learn all the traditional stories and make sure that whatever happened when the French pulled out and left us at the mercy of the Viet-Cong those traditions would continue; they called her Xuan Huang – it means poetess.”

Hutch sipped his coffee and rejected the brownie after all; suddenly he wasn't hungry.

“My mother was telling an old tale to the children when the Communist soldiers came through the village. We could hear the helicopters in the distance and we knew that the Americans couldn't be far behind. The Congs hid in the huts and the rice fieldz but our men chased them out. They didn't want the shame of being connected with these people. The truth is, all they wanted to do was survive and bring in the harvest.

When the American soldiers arrived we were relieved; we ran out to greet them. And…”

She stopped and choked. Hutch braced himself. He'd heard tales of atrocities and the odor of the My Lai revelations still hung heavily in the air all over the world. He began to understand why Starsky had been so shocked when Colby announced he was going to join up instead of finishing the Academy. Starsky had seen war at first hand; and he still refused to tell Hutch about what he saw. He griped about having to hang around when they were on stake-outs; he was a sharp-shooter and he knew a few tricks of unarmed combat that Hutch preferred not to think about, but he refused to say anything more. Even when pressed to explain his slight limp and the scar that showed by his eye and made it seem bigger and lees mobile than the other when he was tired, all he would say was “I made it home Hutch, that's enough for me.”

Connie had paused, waiting for Hutch to give her his attention again.

“We ran towards them waving and clapping. The men were still holding their tools from the fields…at first we believed that the soldiers must have thought that they were weapons. Then we understood. There were heard stories from other villages; even a little girl of eight had heard them. Slowly we understood that the stories were true.

The soldiers started shooting; rounding up the men and killing them were they stood. Then they turned on the women. My mother grabbed me and we started to run to the jungle. I remember hearing men laughing and women screaming. I saw a baby with no head. One of the soldiers ran towards us. He held out his hands and he was smiling. He even spoke a few words of our language. “Don't be afraid,” he said. I was terrified. He had a nice smile and I saw that my mother instinctively understood that she could trust him. He led us to the jungle; he even shot at the soldiers who were following us. The last time we saw him he was falling into a trap that the Viet Cong had left behind. My mother knew that if the other soldiers caught up with him they would punish him for turning against them. She told me to run into the jungle and go to my uncle's village. She ran in the other direction – to where we could hear more helicopters landing. I couldn't leave her. I climbed a tree and I watched over the trap while my mother ran for help. The bad soldiers went on to my uncle's village; my mother returned with medics. They pulled our soldier out of the trap and took him away. His leg looked like it was on the wrong way. My mother asked his name.”

“Starsky, David Starsky.”

“Yes….when we came to California I thought he would be waiting for us. My mother told me not to be silly; if he was alive he had probably forgotten all about us anyway. And then, after all these years, he walked into the store…”

“I don't think he forgot, Connie. Starsky tells me everything – but he's never talked about this. I guess he never forgot and it still hurts too much to talk about it.”

A nurse came over to them. “I'm sorry Detective Hutchinson; we didn't realize that the young man Mrs. Nguyen was waiting to see was your partner. You can go in now.”

Hutch and Connie walked into the room. Starsky was pale against the pillow and Connie's mother was sitting watching him as he slept.

“Tomorrow I will return with food for him. Food in hospitals is very bad. He needs good soup.”

Hutch offered to drive them home. In the car the silence spoke volumes. “You love your friend?”

“Yes.”

“He is a good man. You are lucky.”

“I know.”

The next day when Hutch arrived at the hospital ready to brave the world's worst patient's crankiness he found Mrs. Nguyen sitting spooning soup into Starsky's mouth. Starsky raised an eyebrow and smiled round the spoon.

“Don't tell Aunt Rosa.”