STARSKY’S LADIES
A series of short snippets about the various ladies
in Starsky’s life told from his POV.
PROLOGUE
It’s raining and I can’t sleep. It’s been a long week at work and I’m exhausted but I just can’t seem to relax enough to rest. Hutch and I finally wrapped up the case we’d been working on at the dance club. And I couldn’t help but wonder if our friendship and our partnership was over along with the case. We’d let a woman come between us. Another police officer who’d been working the case with us. Words had been said that cut deeply, ripping open wounds best left alone.
It’s funny how a woman can get under a man’s skin and make him do crazy things, things he wouldn’t normally do. That’s what had happened with me and Hutch both. And the funny thing is, I really don’t think that the woman involved cared about either one of us, at least not the way she claimed she did.
I’ve been
with a lot of women in my life, but I’ve only loved a few of them. Some of
those relationships were puppy love, some more closely resembled lust than
love, but a few of them were the real thing. I let my mind drift back over the
other loves in my life, analyzing each relationship and trying to decipher what
had been so special about each woman. What had made me love them or at least
think that I loved them?
MARIA ROSA LOPEZ
My first
love was a Hispanic beauty named Maria Rosa Lopez. Big brown eyes, long black
hair, and a body built like the proverbial brick shithouse. Just the right
combination to put a thirteen-year-old boys hormones
into overdrive. We lived in the same run down neighborhood in
We had to sneak around to see each other. Maria came from a very traditional, culturally biased family. Her strict Catholic parents would never approve of her seeing a scrawny Jewish kid with an attitude and an increasingly bad reputation. During the day, at school, we ignored each other, hanging out with our own crowd of friends, pretending not to notice each other.
But, each night after dark, we’d both sneak away and meet at a nearby park. At night, the park was used as a popular meeting place and make out spot for couples. It wasn’t hard to find a nice quiet spot where we could be alone and not be disturbed. We’d spend a couple of hours, just kissing and making out.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Maria was a good catholic girl, her morals firmly in place from her rigid upbringing. To a budding Romeo wanting to get laid for the first time, she presented a unique challenge. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t good at being a cock tease because she was. She knew just how to drive me crazy and let me have just enough leeway to keep me coming back for more. As long as she didn’t let me go all the way, in her mind, she was following the teachings of her church and saving herself for marriage.
Maria gave me my first real blowjob and just about blew my mind. I’d never felt anything like that before. Maybe that’s why I like blowjobs so much today. She’s also the one who taught me how to French kiss and how to go down on a girl. Yeah, we had some real good times, Maria and me.
We saw each other secretly for almost six months before Maria’s oldest brother found out. Determined to defend his sister’s honor, Ricco and three of Maria’s other brothers came after me one day after school. They beat me half to death, using their fists, their feet and a couple of baseball bats. Believe me, I got the message loud and clear. Stay away from their little sister.
I spent
almost six weeks in the hospital. Adhering to the street code I lived by, I
refused to identify my attackers. I never saw Maria after that but I sure never
forget her either. When I got out of the hospital, my mother sent me to
It didn’t take me long to find older, more experienced girls to take Maria’s place. But while I was with her, I really believed that I was in love with Maria. It may have only been puppy love but that’s the most intense kind.
HELEN STEVENS
It was several years later before I met a woman that became my first real adult love. Her name was Helen Stevens and we were both police officers for the Bay City Police Department. Helen was beautiful with long chestnut colored hair and bright blue eyes that sparkled with life. And she was a fantastic cop. That’s one of the things that brought us together, our love for the job, and in the end, it was the thing that ripped us apart.
Helen had a fantastic sense of humor and loved to dance. So did I. We spent hours dancing at local discos, sometimes until closing time. Then we’d usually end up back at her apartment where she’d fix us something to eat and we’d end up in bed together. We were a perfect fit, or so it seemed at the time.
Most people look at me and see the rough, unpolished exterior, the streetwise, hard nosed cop. But when it comes to the ladies in my life, I’ve always been a hopeless romantic. I love quiet, candle light dinners, showering them with little gifts of affection, buying them flowers. Whispering sweet nothings in their ear while we’re making love. Normally, I hate soapy scenes but when it comes to the women I’ve loved in my life, I can get as soapy as anybody.
Helen and I talked about getting married and having kids someday. We both wanted at least four kids, preferably two boys and two girls. We talked about a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a dog. The typical American dream. Only fate had other plans for us.
I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a jealous, possessive lover. As I got closer to Helen, the ugly facts of our job, the danger that gave me such a rush, began to tear us apart. I didn’t want Helen getting caught in the middle of a dangerous situation that could get her hurt. I tried to dictate her actions on the streets. I wanted her to quit or to get a safe desk job at headquarters. Helen would have none of it. We started fighting about the job that we both loved and didn’t want to give up.
Helen accused me of being a chauvinist and I guess that I was, at least where she was concerned. We tried to hang on to something that we both knew was dying a slow death. It’s hard to admit that you’re wrong and it’s even harder to back away from someone you love. Helen was the one that made the choice and broke off our affair. Even though I understood and even agreed that it was the best thing for both of us, I was still devastated and it took me months to get over her.
Six months after we broke up, Helen was brutally murdered. At first it looked like she’d been killed because of a case she was working deep under cover on. But, in the end, it turned out that she’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The victim of a psychotic murderer who chose his victims at random.
TERRI ROBERTS
Terri Roberts, my darling Terri. The one true love of my life. My soul mate in every sense of the word. The one woman who made me happier than I’d ever been in my life. From the first minute I saw her, I was head over heels in love. I’d never fallen that hard or that fast before in my life. And I haven’t since.
We met entirely by accident when my partner, Hutch, and I went to the school for exceptional children where Terri was a teacher to give a presentation on safety to the kids. Terri came up afterwards to thank us for coming. She caught my eye immediately with her tiny upturned nose, her soft brown eyes and her heart shaped face. She had a more subdued beauty than Helen had but she was still a very attractive woman. She was a tiny thing, with a petite figure and her own unique style. I left the school that day with her phone number in my pocket and a date for that weekend.
Terri was different than any of the other women I’d dated. She was fiercely independent and totally devoted to the children in her class. She was an intelligent lady but she downplayed her education and her advanced degrees. She was easy to be with, laid back and fun to be around.
But even more importantly, she liked Hutch and accepted the unique bond that we shared, not only as partners on the job but as best friends too. That was important to me. I’d broken up with more than one woman in the past when they couldn’t accept my friendship and commitment to Hutch. But, Terri was never like that. She accepted Hutch from the start and often insisted on including him in our activities. It wasn’t long before she was one of Hutch’s best friends too.
And, she accepted my job and the crazy hours I had to work, especially if I was on a hot case. She never pouted or whined. She just told me to do what I had to do and that she’d be waiting when I had time for her. It takes a very special woman to be married to a cop and I knew that Terri fit that criteria.
I knew from the beginning that I loved Terri and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. This was the woman I wanted to marry, the woman I wanted to be the mother of my children. The woman I wanted to grow old with. But, like so many other dreams in my life, this one was not to be.
Terri was murdered, gunned down by a man seeking revenge against me because he blamed me for his son’s death. She was shot down in cold blood and left with a bullet in her head. It didn’t kill her right away, she lived for almost a week with a bullet in her head. I had a week left with the woman I loved, a week to try and store up enough memories to last me for a lifetime. The doctors told us from the beginning that there was no hope, that eventually the bullet would shift and kill her. They couldn’t operate and remove it or that would kill her on the operating table. Either way, my darling Terri was going to die and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it.
She made the choice without consulting me to live her last few days the way she always had. The doctors had told her that if she stayed in bed, flat on her back without moving around much, she might live up to a year. If she got up and moved around, went on with her everyday life, she could die at any time. Terri decided to live her life the way she always had even if it meant she would die sooner.
She lived for four days and ten hours. I was with her when she died. I held her in my arms as she slipped away from me forever. Before her death, I had asked her to marry me. Terri had refused even though she understood why I had proposed. I wanted her to live as my wife, even if it was only for a short time, I wanted her to die with my name. But, she turned me down, refusing to let me do something in my grief at losing her that would only hurt me more in the end.
I tracked down the man responsible for her murder and I would have killed him with my bare hands if Hutch hadn’t been there to stop me. Then I grieved for the loss of my Terri. I almost didn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for Hutch sticking by my side for weeks after her death, I know I would have given up and ate my gun. I felt so guilty and blamed myself for Terri’s death. She would still be alive if it hadn’t been for me and the fact that I was a cop. I still blame myself, even after all this time.
It took me almost a year before I started dating again. But I never forgot my Terri and I know that I never will. Ours was a love that only comes around once in a lifetime. And I still miss her more than words can ever describe. I know that I always will.
ROSIE MALONE
Rosie Malone was a mafia princess.
A beautiful willowy blonde whose father happened to be
one of the biggest crime bosses in the
She was cool and collected, blowing me off graciously and ignoring my efforts to make a date with her. Then when Hutch and I got to headquarters and ready to start our normal work day, we were called into our Captain’s office where I was shown pictures of me talking to Rosie in the park that morning. The men with the pictures were members of the justice department investigating her father, Frank Malone. They rubbed me the wrong way immediately when they started demanding to know how well I knew Rosie Malone. Until that moment, I didn’t even know her name.
Once I had managed to convince them that I didn’t know the lady, they wanted to use me to try and get close enough to her to see what she knew about her father’s operations. It wasn’t like I hadn’t done similar things in my career in the past, so I finally reluctantly agreed with more than a few reservations.
The next morning, I was waiting for her when she went jogging again and I struck up another conversation. This time, I got her to agree to go out with me on a date. I knew I had to be careful, I was playing with fire. I couldn’t let her find out that I was a cop. I never expected to fall in love with her.
It didn’t take me long to discover that Rosie was blissfully unaware of her father’s criminal activities. Oh, she knew the rumors but she refused to believe them. She thought he was a legitimate businessman. There was a certain innocence about her that intrigued me and made me let down my guard. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself falling love with her.
Then things fell apart when her father found out I was a cop and told her. She was angry and hurt, accusing me of using her and I felt guilty and ashamed of my actions. I tried to explain myself, to tell her that I had fallen in love with her, but she didn’t want to hear my excuses. I couldn’t really blame her. I had done everything she accused me of doing.
Then her father was
offered a deal and decided to accept it. He would testify behind closed
doors, giving the justice department the information they wanted, then he would
quietly disappear. The problem was he wanted Rosie to go with him. I tried to
talk her into staying with me but she refused. She told me that she loved me
but left with her father and I never saw her again. It hurt. It hurt bad to
lose her. She was the first woman since Terri that I had allowed myself to fall
in love with. But, in the end, love wasn’t enough to
keep her in
KIRA
Kira Richardson. A woman who used me and Hutch for her own pleasure and tried to destroy us both. A woman who claimed to love us both when in reality, she didn’t care about anyone but herself. A woman I’d just as soon forget but I know I never will.
I met Kira before Hutch did. She had transferred to our precinct from a precinct across town. She worked in Vice and I worked in homicide, so we didn’t really have any contact with each other in the beginning. But, it didn’t take long for Kira to make her presence know at headquarters. She was a beautiful woman with sun streaked blonde hair, bright green eyes, and both a face and body to die for. She was an outrageous flirt and liked to dress to show off her assets.
She approached me first. I had gone to the basement cafeteria to grab a sandwich when she came up and introduced herself. I’ll admit that I was strangely flattered when she told me that she’s heard about me from some of the other female officers gossiping around the water cooler and wanted to meet me. I realize now that was just part of her overall plan.
We made a date for later that night and I ended up spending the night at her apartment. Kira was sexually uninhibited and didn’t care who knew it. Her openness and willingness to try almost anything in bed was a strong attraction. She knew how to wrap a man around her little finger and she did me from the start. I was just too blind and stupid to see what was going on.
I never told Hutch when I started dating Kira. That was unusual because we usually told each other everything but something told me to keep my affair with Kira under wraps for now. Things had been kind of rough between me and Hutch for months. We seemed to be growing apart and I hated that but didn’t know what to do about it. I knew Hutch was getting burned out on the job but I never thought his dissatisfaction with the job would start to affect our friendship.
Then Hutch and I got assigned to the murders at the dance hall. Three murdered women, all blonds, within the past two weeks. The powers that be decided to send us in undercover as customers and a female officer in as one of the women who worked there. I still don’t know how it all came about but Kira managed to get herself assigned to work with us. That’s how she met Hutch.
At that point, I’d been dating Kira for about a month, a record for me since the fiasco with Rosie Malone. In my mind anyway, we were a couple. I was already beginning to think I was falling in love with her. She seemed like my perfect woman, a bizarre combination of Helen and Terri. In hindsight, I now realize that was exactly the image that Kira wanted me to see. She was playing me for a fool and I didn’t even realize it.
I sure noticed it when Hutch started paying a lot of attention to her, seemingly monopolizing her time when we were undercover at the club. What hurt the most was that he seemed to be doing it deliberately and trying to shut me out. I immediately got jealous and began watching the two of them closely. When Hutch tricked me and took Kira home one night instead of one of the other blondes as agreed upon, I got mad and confronted him about it the next day. He blew it off which pissed me off even more and we had words.
I was still seeing Kira and she was saying all the things I wanted to hear which really fucked with my head. One night I decided to go to Hutch’s apartment to have a serious talk with him. He didn’t come home until early the next morning with no explanation as to where he’d spent the night. I didn’t know it at the time but he’d been with Kira that night after I left her bed instead of spending the night like I usually did.
I tried to explain to Hutch how I felt about Kira. I told him that I’d been dating her for almost a month and I even went so far as to tell him that we were in love with each other. Hutch didn’t act like he believed me but he didn’t really say much. I left believing that we had resolved the issue between us.
I went back to my apartment and got a present that I had bought a few days before for Kira and headed for her apartment to give it to her. Imagine my shock when I saw my partner’s car parked in front of her tiny house on a quiet side street. I pounded on the door and Kira answered it, dressed in a silky robe with her hair tousled. Before I could ask her what was going on, Hutch came sauntering out of her bedroom, looking guilty as hell, and still buttoning up his shirt.
I saw red and attacked my partner without a second thought. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to pound my fists into his face and slam him into the wall. I did get in a couple of good punches before Kira started yelling at both of us, ordering us out of her house. Ignoring her and Hutch both, I turned and left, squealing away from the curb, blinded by my tears of hurt and rage.
Later that afternoon, I got a call on the radio that another blond from the club had been murdered. Hutch and I both arrived at the victim’s address at the same time. We barely spoke to each other as we went about our routine investigation. Everything that mattered between us, the bond that had held us together for so long, was in danger of being broken permanently. But, I was still too hurt and anger to realize that at the time.
We returned to the dance club that
night and in spite of our falling out and our anger towards each other, Hutch
and I were still partners and professionals. When one of the club’s regulars, a
The resulting explosion almost deafened me and I wrapped my arms around Kira’s waist and pulled her to the floor, using my body to shield her from danger. With the sound of the explosion still ringing in my ears, I raised my head, my eyes instinctively seeking out my partner. Hutch had brought Joey down by shooting him in the shoulder and was crouched beside him, standing guard.
I watched in stunned surprise as
Kira slipped out of my arms and crawled across the floor to comfort Joey. Hutch
and I were both forgotten. It turned out that Joey was
responsible for the murders at the club. Warped and scarred by his time in
Hutch and I went back to headquarters, along with Kira and we all wrote up our reports without really talking to each other. Then we each left separately. Now, here I stand at my living room window watching it rain and reminiscing about the women in my life. I felt so empty and alone. I realized now that Kira had never loved me and that knowledge hurt, cutting through me like a knife. But the betrayal I felt at Hutch’s actions hurt even more. He was the reason I felt so empty, so alone. Hutch had been a part of my life for so long that I couldn’t imagine my life without him I in it.
Was it over? Had I lost my best friend? Had I let a woman destroy the best thing in my life? I didn’t know the answers to my own questions and wasn’t sure I even cared anymore. I was tired, too tired to think about it right now. A knock on the door caught my attention. With a heavy sigh, I opened it to find my partner standing there on my stoop, his face drawn and tired, tears glistening in those ice blue eyes.
He reached out and grabbed me by the shoulders, burying his face against my chest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Hutch gasped out in a broken, choked voice. “God, I’m so sorry…Please forgive me.”
I felt something deep inside of me melt. I was still angry but I couldn’t turn my back on him now. I wrapped my arms around him and gently led him into my apartment. It was time for a long talk. Maybe we could still make things right between us.
THE END