Thanks to Nik for the edits!

Alex

by Rae 7/07

In the dark alley, Starsky watched the light in the woman's eyes begin to dim. He looked up at Hutch, but there wasn't anything he could do for her either.

"Alex," she said, but so low and quiet that Starsky wasn't sure of it.

"Alex? I'm sorry. I couldn't hear you." He took her hand and leaned closer. It was all he could think to do.

She rallied for a moment, like other victims he'd seen. Did she think he was Alex? Was Alex her killer? Was she trying to tell them who'd killed her?

"Take care of him." She closed her eyes.

Shit. She had a kid. Another dead hooker with a kid stashed in front of the flickering blue TV, alone at home at eleven o'clock at night with a Swanson's and a Coke, and no mother.

"I will." He looked into her eyes so she could know he really would.

She nodded, and smiled like she was pleased—happy even. Content. That was it. She was going to die content. That was something anyway.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. For a second he thought it was her as she departed, that she was telling him thanks. But the hand moved to the back of his neck and squeezed a little in an old familiar way. He swallowed and leaned back into the support and warmth.

"The medics are here," Hutch said.

"Too late."

"I know."

What else was there to say?

The woman had no purse. No ID, no keys. It was hard to describe someone they'd only met when she was dying, but they did their best, and Sweet Alice knew who she was and the building where she lived. Said the girl's name was Annabelle Lee or Annalee Belle, "or somethin' like that, Handsome Hutch," though Starsky'd been the one to ask her. And of course she said she had an "appointment," which of course she knew they knew was really a john, and so she couldn't escort them there herself. She gave Hutch her soft lil ol' me smile, and Starsky turned away.

He didn't know why Hutch fell for that every time, but it worked for Alice, and what did it matter, anyway? A woman was dead. Hooker or not, she'd been murdered, and had left a kid behind. He'd been the one to run a little faster for once, and gotten to her first while Hutch learned from the witnesses that the killer had been equipped with fancy sneakers and a dripping knife. Also that he was probably hyped on something that gave him wings, because they told Hutch that he'd practically flown over the fence at the far end of the alley.

So now Starsky was stuck with a promise he really wished he hadn't made. Orphaned kids weren't in his repertoire. Hutch would have been much better at this. But, a deal was a deal, and he would honor his word.

And of course Perkowitz was already out in the field on some other case, and no one else would be available for at least two hours. It was the middle of the night, they said. Find the kid, then call them back, they said.

Terrific. Just terrific. Let's go find the kid and give him the good news, Hutch. C'mon, Hutch, let's go do that.

The apartment building was nicer than Starsky had expected, but the hallways still smelled like the ones where his grandmother had lived. The overfurnished little apartment above the dark Italian restaurant, with the back stairway that always smelled of last week's dinners, and of grimy floors under dingy carpets, and of dust frying on bare light bulbs. This place was three thousand miles away, and there was no restaurant, but it smelled the same.

"How's that possible," he said.

"What? How's what possible?" Hutch peered at the numbers on the doors. "Must be upstairs."

Hutch didn't have the kind of grandmothers who'd lived in old downtown apartments. He probably didn't get any flash memories when they went into buildings like this, but Starsky always did. He kind of liked those momentary visits to his childhood. Too bad the memory had gotten layered with that other Italian restaurant. Funny how that could happen . . . and he was thinking about anything he could so he wouldn't have to think about the face they were going to layer onto this familiar smell when they told Alex about his mother. God, he hoped the kid had a grandma somewhere nearby, who would make him some spaghetti with the meatballs, and give him hugs and play Parcheesi with him, so he wouldn't have to think too much about his dead dad. Uh, mom. His dead mom.

Shit.

Hutch stopped at a dark brown door and knocked, and called out the kid's name.

"She probably taught him not to answer the door," Starsky said. "You sure this is the right one?"

"Yeah.

Starsky decided not to ask how he knew.

"Knock again."

There were no sounds from inside, but out in the hall, light spilled from the three other apartments on the floor. All three doors opened the regulation two inches, just enough of a gap for one eye to peer out. So it was the right unit. Everyone else came to their doors except for the kid they wanted. Starsky told them all to go back to bed. Nobody did. Nobody said a word either. It was creepy.

There was a mat in front of the door. It had sunflowers on it. Hutch grunted a little when he bent down to look under it, and Starsky thought, you're hurting your back for no reason, chump. What hooker with a kid inside leaves a key under a mat? There was no key under it. And none over the door either. Apparently only cops were dumb enough to do that.

Starsky looked at the cracked-open doors. "Does anyone have a key to Annabelle's apartment? We need to get in." He showed off his badge, and the three eyes he could see all swiveled to look at it, but nobody said anything. "Does this building have a super?"

Behind door number two, someone said, "Yeah." No telling if it was a male or female. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Okay, well, not neither. It was just the creep factor doing things to his brain.

Hutch nodded, and headed down the stairs.

Starsky tried his casual lean against the wall, and his friendly neighborhood cop smile, and his easygoing nonthreatening body language. None of the doors opened any wider, but none of them closed.

"Any of you know the lady who lives here?"

One of them snickered. "Lady?" he said. "No, I don't know the lady."

Inside the apartment, Starsky heard a small bump, and then a second one. He turned back to the door and knocked again. "Alex! Open the door, please. I need to talk to you."

Behind him, someone laughed outright.

"You want Alex to open the door?"

They all laughed, and Starsky felt his cheeks get a little warm. It was too late at night for this kind of shit. Maybe it was time for a desk job. But he laughed too, like he knew the joke, was in on it.

"Well, I was kinda hoping, maybe . . ."

The middle door opened wider, and the woman behind it said, "You need coffee." She disappeared within, but she left her door open.

The guy on the right opened his wider, too. "Annabelle in trouble again?"

He looked concerned, and not disdainful. So Annabelle had been nice to her neighbors, and her neighbors had liked her. But none of them had a key to her place.

The woman of the open door returned with cups and a full coffeepot, and handed them around. The other two residents stepped out into the hall and started to ask questions that Starsky couldn't answer. They weren't being exactly quiet, but still the kid didn't open the door. Wouldn't open the door.

By the time Hutch came back, the shirtless superintendent lumbering up the stairs behind him, Starsky and the three residents were busy discussing the merits of homemade spaghetti sauce from scratch, and whether it was kosher to add some Ragu for a base. Starsky caught Hutch's eye, saw him grin and shake his head a little, and smiled back. Maybe they'd actually get home before it was time for more coffee and back to work. Maybe they'd even have time for . . . well, what they'd been planning to do, before they'd run toward the sounds of people screaming. So much for having a night off.

He turned to his new cronies, handed over his coffee cup, gave the lady a kiss on the cheek, clapped the two men on their shoulders, told them to have a good evening.

"Yes," said the woman, "You, too, Officer." She'd gone flirtatious. "Tell Alex I said hi, okay?"

The three residents laughed, and disappeared back inside their apartments. Starsky figured they were still watching through their peepholes, though, so he gave a last little wave and turned toward Hutch.

The sleepy super opened the door and stepped back. "Lock it when you're done. Gimme back the key." He had a clear gift for economy of words and apparently no natural curiosity. They could hear his heavy progress all the way back down to the basement.

Hutch looked at Starsky, asking silently if he wanted to go in first. Starsky shook his head.

"Alex?" Hutch said. "It's the police, Alex. We just need to talk to you."

Behind him, behind door number two, Starsky thought he heard a giggle, but he didn't turn around. He followed Hutch in.

No flickering TV, no signs of frozen dinners. No toys, no small jackets. No clutter, just some cheaply framed greeting cards on the walls, and fake flowers in a plastic vase on a green formica table. Crocheted pillows on a tired couch. Annabelle had tried, anyway, to make a home for herself and her kid.

Where was the kid, anyway? If he wasn't here, it would have been nice of her to tell him where she'd stashed him. Nice of her not to have got herself killed, for that matter, and stuck them with this midnight mission that neither of them was particularly enjoying. Right about now, in fact, if she'd been a little more considerate, he'd be nicely sticky, nicely drowsy, and Hutch would be asleep on his back, hair nicely tangled, mouth a little open . . .

"There's no kid living here," Hutch said.

"Well, what the hell are we supposed to do, then?" How was he supposed to take care of a kid he couldn't find?

"CPS can do it. Not our job."

"My job, though. Go home."

"You're kidding, right?" Hutch sat down on an overstuffed chair, and when it jiggled precariously under him, got up and moved over to the couch. There was a green and white blanket on it, and when he sat down, it squawked. "What the—?" He stood up fast. The blanket moved. Hutch backed away, fast.

Starsky felt like climbing up on one of mismatched chairs around the small table. Instead, he decided to be manly, though if Hutch wasn't, why should he? In fact, Hutch had his hand under his shirt where his gun was, and Starsky discovered that his own was headed that way, too.

The blanket moved again, and the lump grew. And then a sound came out of it, low and quiet at first, then louder. A buzz, or . . .

"It's a cat," Hutch said. "Alex is a goddam cat."

"Shit. No wonder they laughed at me."

"Who laughed at you, buddy?"

"Never mind. Now what are we supposed to do?"

Perkowitz and her crew would laugh, too. So would half the department. Or all of the department.

"We?" Hutch raised an eyebrow.

"Edith said no more guinea pigs, but maybe she'd let Rosie have a cat." He looked around for the phone.

"It's two a.m. pal. You're going to have to take him home." He stood up straight and took his hand off his gun.

"You take him home."

"I wasn't the one who promised, remember?"

"You better not be laughing. I mean it."

"Not laughing. Wouldn't laugh."

But he was laughing. Why couldn't he just admit it?

"Okay, well, find something to put it in. Find its food and stuff. And its bathroom. Make sure you find its bathroom."

"He's a him, Starsky. Don't call your new roommate an it."

"Why not? Better him than the one I'm kicking out."

"Aw Starsk, c'mon. Look at the bright side. You said you've always wanted to try a threesome."

"Not with two guys, though." He was starting to see the humor in this, though he wouldn't forget that there was a dead girl. It wasn't right to laugh in her apartment. But they didn't have to tell some kid about a dead mother after all, and it was probably relief that made them disrespectful. That didn't make it right, though, so he ducked his head to hide his own grin, and began to look for a box.

Alex took a tour of Starsky's apartment, twice around, methodically sniffing and peering under things. Maybe the cat was used to moving from home to home. He looked a little like the cat in that commercial, that supercilious orange cat who did nothing but eat and sleep. He found the blanket draped over the back of the couch, crawled under it, and that was the last Starsky saw of him. This cat seemed to be real good at sleeping.

Hutch sat on the other end of the couch, periodically offering suggestions or instructions that had Starsky gritting his teeth and thinking of retribution.

"You should put the litter box in the bathroom. You should give him bottled water, not tap water. He's probably hungry. You should give him some food. You should have dry food out for him all the time. Cats don't overeat, you know, like some people do. Don't sit on him, Starsky. You should give him a scratch under his chin, get to know him."

"You should stuff your head up your ass, is what you should do," Starsky finally said. He stood in the middle of the living room with the cat's water bowl in one hand and the food bowl in the other. Lucky for Hutch his hands were occupied, or he would have been stuffing something large and uncomfortable down Hutch's throat, and not in the good way either.

Hutch put his hands up in the air. "Just trying to help is all."

"Yeah, well just shut up for two seconds. That would be helpful."

Hutch smiled in a way that reminded Starsky a little uncomfortably of Sweet Alice, and for one second he understood exactly what she did and why it worked so well for her.

"Starting when?"

Starsky looked at the bowls in his hands, and said, "In a minute. Just give me a minute, okay?"

He filled the bowls and set them in a corner where he wouldn't step in them. He put the litter box where it belonged, in the bathroom on some newspapers. He lifted the blanket up and scratched Alex on the top of his head. Alex didn't move, but he started to purr, the same way he had back in his own apartment.

"Hey," Hutch said. "Where can I get some of that?"

"Right here." Starsky sat on the couch between Hutch and his new roommate. "Starting now."

Hutch didn't exactly shut up after that, not even for two seconds. Alex never budged.

Starsky took off his T-shirt. "What does he think we're doing, anyway?" he said. He kicked off his jeans, and reached for Hutch's belt. "Does he think we're taking off our skins?"

"You think more about your cat than you do about me," Hutch said, mouth to mouth.

"He's not my cat." Starsky grabbed Hutch where there would be no mistaking who he was thinking about, and tugged him not too gently to the bedroom. "Little privacy here. That's what we need."

And then he forgot all about Alex.

Three days later, Minnie said she'd found a good home for Starsky's cat. She gave him the number to call to make arrangements. That evening, when he went to make the call, he found he'd lost the paper with the number on it.

He never did ask Minnie for it again.

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