“Is that your ‘phone or mine?” David Starsky leaned forward across the table in the coffee shop where he and his old friend and partner Ken (Hutch) Hutchinson always met for breakfast.

Once it would have been Hutch who complained about the venue; now the tables were turned. The place was one of those chains that served a hundred variations on the same theme – lousy coffee dressed up to be something else.
Hutch had his “skinny latte with extra milk” and he was sipping it through the hole in the lid. Starsky was eyeing what the “caffista” had assure him was an expresso, with more than a little suspicion. Instead of a small cup of strong coffee he was sniffing a goblet the size of a mug half-filled with dark thin black liquid. He pushed it away in disgust. “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.”
Hutch grinned; “too much caffeine is bad for you. It is your ‘phone you know.”

Starsky fished into the pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out the tiny cell-phone. It was no longer playing “Hotel California” but had switched to Santana’s “Samba Pa Ti”; he grinned and flipped it open. He pressed a button and held it to his ear; shrugged and changed ears – he was over fifty now and his hearing wasn’t what it used to be.
“I think we have a job. Come on.”

Hutch picked up his coffee and followed his partner to their office a half block away.
They went into the foyer of the office building and as usual Starsky stopped to flirt with the receptionist and check if they had any messages or mail. Hutch held the “door open” button in the elevator and tried to ignore the mechanical voice that was reminding him that ‘the door is open’. Starsky joined him. Hutch watched as his partner came towards him – he still had that strange slightly bowlegged strutting gait but the last bad injury had turned the hint of a limp into a full blown one. They used to be cops. They used to be the best cops in Bay City; until someone arranged for hit men to put four bullets in Starsky’s back. After nearly a year of pain and pig-headedness Starsky had been fit enough to go back to work – but neither of them wanted to be cops any more. They set up their own PI agency and were regularly called upon for a helping hand by their old friends from BCPD and their old sparring partners from the FBI. Now they were even talking about retiring!

Hutch held the door open and sketched a mocking salute a Starsky walked into their office.
Starsky switched on the computer and as soon as it had booted up began to check their e-mail. Hutch started to check the paper mail; he didn’t even pretend to understand how the computer worked. He never had been a fan of modern technology and codes and passwords whereas Starsky treated all the latest gadgets like new toys. If possible he dismantled them to see how they worked and sometimes when he put them back together again they had a few functions that the manufacturer had never thought of.

Somewhere in Starsky’s pocket “Hotel California” started to play again. He flipped the ‘phone open and squinted at the screen before taking the reading glasses that he kept permanently hooked on the neck of his sweater and pushed them up his nose. He pressed the green button and said “Yes Ms Madrigal I was about to call you back. I’m reading your e-mail right now.”
Hutch put down the letter he had been reading and gave Starsky’s conversation his full attention.

“When did you first try to contact them….OK…and did you contact them through their contact form?...I see…why did you do that?....yeah I do the same to be honest…OK….yes…..and when did you try again?. One last question Ms Madrigal…how did you find us?” He chuckled. “It’s still a good way to find a ‘phone number I guess!” He flipped the phone to close it and end the call.

“How did she find us Starsk?”
“Yellow Pages!”

Starsky tapped a button on the computer and Hutch recuperated the pages as the printer spat them across the room.
“You’re gonna have to explain this to me Starsk.”

Starsky leaned back in his big leather chair and grinned.

“Ms Madrigal is a member of a web site and she’s been having a lot of trouble getting a reply from the support team. She has specific problems and so far she can’t get any help from them. She started asking around on other sites she is a member of and people started telling her much the same story. They contacted the support team and got no reply.
Then yesterday she tried again and got an undelivered mail response.”

Hutch looked up. “A what?”
Starsky sighed. “It’s like return to sender but it’s an e-mail!”
“Oh yea; I see. So she wants up to go see what the problem is.”
“Yeah.”

Hutch stood up. Starsky looked at him with one raised eyebrow. “Where are you going?”
“I guess you have an address for these guys so….”
“Sure I have an address; but we can’t go check it out.”
“Why not?”
“Sit down Hutch. It’s an e-mail address; it could be anywhere in the world.”
Despite his age Hutch was still as liable to blush as he was over thirty years ago when Starsky first called him Blintz; and for the same reasons…he was being dumb!”
But not that dumb! “Starsky, how can we find anything out if we don’t know where they are?”
“I’m looking for them right now.”

Starsky started tapping away at the computer. He was already on the website in question and in the process of creating himself an identity, ‘Flashingredlight’ and a password, ‘Torino’.

Now he was searching around the website and scribbling notes on a legal pad at his side.
It was like Greek to Hutch…or Geek!
Soon Starsky had written down and IP number and a couple of other long codes.
He closed the site and started to type in another http address. Soon he was tapped into one of the most secret databases in the world. He clicked and tapped for a while and then grinned. “Found ‘em.”
Hutch held his breath. “Where are they?”

Hutch had given up driving years ago after he totaled a car. Starsky remarked at the time that you wouldn’t have noticed a difference in the body work. Somewhere in the late eighties Starsky got environmentally conscious. He had already sold his beloved car to a collector of unusual cars – an over-tuned Ford Torino with a wild paint job fitted the guy’s collection to the tune of seventy five Gs and Starsky whistled all the way to the bank. He bought a Jeep. When people started blaming SUVs for the hole in the ozone layer he got worried. His problem was that the car was perfect for their line of work…but it hurt his conscience. Then a Japanese company started marketing hybrids. He took one look at the sedan on offer and shook his head sadly; “I guess I’ll just have to wait to be green. That thing is ugly and it doesn’t have any performance either!” The day the same company announced its hybrid SUV Starsky put his name on the waiting list.
Hutch had to admit the thing was a whole lot more comfortable than the old Torino. Plus as Starsky pointed out – “the back end goes the same direction as the front end!” The car came equipped with Bluetooth and a screen that displayed the trajectory when reversing (Starsky ignored it); and also showed when the engine was switching from gas to it’s own electricity. Those were the things Hutch understood – the rest was far too complicated for him. Starsky had added a few extras – a laptop computer permanently connected to the internet through the Bluetooth connection, a GPS system that would have made NASA weep and a couple of personalized features, including a seat that had been custom built to ease the arthritic pain in his hip – the result of a war injury.

They were cruising up PCH; Starsky made a right turn and they were soon driving through what looked like a campus. He was looking around as he drove and then spotted his destination. He parked the SUV in front of a sign that said ‘staff only’ and lowered himself to the ground. Hutch eased himself out of his side of the car and they made their way to the building that bore the name of the Web site that Ms Madrigal had been trying to reach.

“She’s been trying for over a month now Hutch. All she needs is a small technical explanation and she’s heard nothing. Not so much as an acknowledgment of her e-mail. No support ticket; nothing. It ain’t right!”
Hutch heard the anger in his friend’s voice. Starsky could be hot-headed and in the past his temper had been ugly and sometimes violent…but he put a lot of importance on being polite and people who didn’t answer requests for help made him mad.
“You know Hutch there are a couple of possibilities. They don’t really give a damn about their site members – it’s free; no don’t ask me how they finance themselves…. Or they are totally inefficient. Or they are rude. So let’s go in and find out which it is.”

Starsky led the way. Hutch was getting ready to smooth ruffled egos in his partner’s wake.
The receptionist smiled at Starsky who flashed his best lop-sided grin. His dark blue eyes hadn’t lost their twinkle over the years. Hutch smiled too.
“Excuse me...” Starsky started. He leaned forward and peered at her name badge; “…Polly; we were wondering if we could talk with someone in the support department.”
She smiled at him. “Oh sure. Well at least…I mean I guess…you see usually people e-mail them.”
“Well my friend here is kind of old fashioned and he prefers to talk to people face to face.”
Polly smiled as if to say ‘poor old guy maybe he needs to watch their lips.’ She explained the way to the support offices. They had to leave the building and go over to another one just across the parking lot.

Hutch pushed the door open. The building seemed strangely quiet. He beckoned to Starsky and they made their way to a door at the back of the foyer. The panel indicated that this was where the site’s support team worked.
Hutch knocked. There was no reply. Starsky stood next to him and turned the door handle. They stepped into the room.
“Aw shit!” Starsky said. Hutch gazed into the room
A young man was slumped over his computer keyboard. Hutch went over to him. “He’s dead.”
They looked at one another and shook their heads.
“Cause of death?”
Starsky walked over to the corpse and lifted its head by the hair. The front of the dead man’s white T-shirt was stained.
“Well the red is blood so I guess he was stabbed but…” Hutch allowed himself a grim smile. “Didn’t you tell me that this site is a writer’s forum or something?”
“Yeah and Ms Madrigal needed technical support to post her work. That’s why she contacted them.”
Starsky was staring at the stains…”red is blood and blue is….ink!” He pulled a latex glove and a plastic bag out of his pocket and crouched down beside the dead man’s chair. “I have a murder weapon. He held up an old fashioned fountain pen…the nib had been carefully sharpened.

Hutch shrugged. “I guess Ms Madrigal wasn’t the only person who was pissed at not getting a reply.”

THE END