Missing scene from Deadly Impostor, set between the end of the episode and the tag.
The two men sat for long minutes, staring out the windshield of the red Torino, seemingly lost in thought. Finally, one man spoke.
“Your place or mine?” Detective Sergeant David Starsky quietly asked his partner.
Not turning, Detective Sergeant Ken Hutchinson responded. “I’ve got beer.”
Starsky started the car and pulled out of the police garage.
Minimal words were exchanged as they headed towards the cottage on the Venice Canals. Even when Starsky pulled into their favorite pizza place and Hutch got out, no words were needed.
When Hutch got back into the car, pizza in hand, they quietly continued to Hutch’s bungalow, each man struggling to understand the events of the past few days.
Their friend, John Colby, had come back into town. They hadn’t seen him since he left the Police Academy all those years ago. They were happy to reconnect with him, to remember old times and to have the chance to catch up. They had been saddened by his story of being a prisoner and being injured in the war. When he told them of his search for his former wife and young son, both men were anxious to help. Even while working a murder case, they used all of their resources to help track down John’s family. And they had been successful!
But it had all been a lie. One giant, elaborate lie.
John was a hired assassin. His target was a protected witness. And he had lied to them and used them to track that witness down.
Working together, the two detectives had prevented the assassination. The witness and his family were safe. John Colby was arrested and in jail. The reports were written and on their captain’s desk.
Now the two men were left to try to understand.
Starsky pulled the Torino up next to the house, cut the engine, and climbed out of the car. Hutch came around the front of the car and both men moved up the path. As they neared the door, Hutch handed the pizza to his partner and retrieved the key from the lintel. Unlocking the door, he returned the key to its hiding place and walked in, heading directly for the kitchen.
Following slowly, Starsky dropped the pizza on the coffee table then sat down on the floor, his back against the sofa.
Hutch returned to the living area, carrying four opened bottles of beer. Placing two bottles on the table in front of his partner and the other two across the table, he also sat down on the floor, the table between them.
Each man, still caught up in their own thoughts, drained the first bottle. As he placed his empty back on the table, Starsky flipped open the pizza box and nudged it towards his partner. Hutch glanced at the box then at his partner before returning his eyes to the empty bottle in his hands.
“Eat,” Starsky said as he nudged the pizza closer to Hutch.
With a sigh, Hutch selected a slice then waited for his partner to do the same. They ate in silence, still not yet ready to put their thoughts into words.
Finally, after one slice of pizza and one and a half beers, Hutch spoke.
“I just don’t understand it, Starsk. How could we have been so wrong?” He looked up, catching his partner’s eyes. “How could he have become a killer like that? I mean…what happened to him? Did we ever really know him? Did Viet Nam change him that much?”
“No,” Starsky replied quietly, picking at the label on his beer bottle. “I don’t think it was ‘Nam. I think John always had it in him. I mean, yeah…’Nam changes everybody who was there but…”
“It didn’t change you.”
Starsky looked at Hutch, catching his eyes, a small, sad smile on his face. “Oh, it changed me alright. You have no idea.”
“Tell me.”
Starsky shook his head. “We’re talkin’ about Colby here, not me.”
“Okay,” Hutch conceded, knowing that he couldn’t press his friend, not about ‘Nam. Starsky would share that information only when he was ready. “You said John always had it in him. Tell me why you think that.”
“You and me, we’re close. I mean, from the very start, we shared everything. Good or bad, we shared it all. And, when we were at the Academy, we thought John was doin’ the same. We were the Three Cork…”
“Corsicans.”
“Right, the Three Corsicans. But, if you think about it, Hutch, John didn’t really share that much. I don’t think we really ever got to know him. And, lately, it got me to wonderin’.”
“About what we didn’t know?”
“Yeah. So, while you were finishin’ up the reports, I was doin’ some checkin’ into John’s past. I found out a coupla things that sorta got things to make sense to me.”
“Like…?”
“Well,” Starsky pushed aside the beer bottle and folded his arms to lean on the table. “Remember that first day of classes? You introduced yourself and then introduced me to John.”
“Yeah. He was my roommate.”
Starsky nodded. “Then we went to lunch. After we ate, John started with the ‘twenty questions’, ya know…’where were you born’, where’d you go to school’, remember?”
Hutch nodded.
“He asked you about your parents.”
“And I told him my father was a lawyer and my mother was a homemaker.”
“Right. And I told him my mother lived in New York and my father was a cop but he was killed.”
Hutch nodded again.
“And John, he said his father was a pilot, a Major in the Air Force and that his mother was gone. That’s all he said about her, that she was gone. I thought it was a bit odd, the way he said it but I figured she was dead and he didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Starsky shook his head. “But she wasn’t dead. I found out that, when John was six-years-old, his mother divorced his father, hooked up with another guy and moved away. She married the guy, had a coupla kids, a whole new family, and never saw John again.
“Now, I’m not makin’ any judgments here…I don’t know what was goin’ on in their lives…but, as far as a little six-year-old boy was concerned, his mother abandoned him. She didn’t love him enough and she abandoned him. Now, his father, I don’t know what kinda man he was either but, being in the military, he wouldn’t have a whole lotta time for a little kid. So here’s John, growin’ up, abandoned by his mother and tryin’ to make sure his father loved him, tryin’ to do whatever he could to make him proud.
“So he grows up with this need and he gets to college. Now he really wants to go into the Air Force…you know he always talked about wantin’ to fly…but he can’t do that. His father, the only important person in his life, he’s a big deal pilot, with skills and the medals and a reputation to go with them. He could never compete with that. So he has to decide what to do. He takes something else…Mechanical Engineering, wasn’t it?”
Hutch nodded in agreement.
“But after college, he still didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to be an engineer; he wanted to be a pilot. But he couldn’t do that so he decided to try somethin’ he thought was almost exciting. He decided to be a cop. Remember, at the Academy? John was driven, always tryin’ to be the best at everythin’.”
Hutch nodded. “Yeah…he was definitely a competitor.”
“Yeah, but, unfortunately for him, he ran into us. You had all that book work locked up. He could never be the best there. And the physical stuff, you two were evenly matched, always neck in neck. He couldn’t be the best there, either.”
“And you had the pistol range locked up. Nobody could beat you there.”
“Right. So, as hard as he tried, he could never be ‘the best’. And that’s when things took a turn.”
Starsky took a sip of his beer before he continued.
“Remember, one day he suddenly tells us he was quittin’ the Academy, that he’d joined the Air Force? I was shocked, we both were. But later, I got to wonderin’ why now? Why hadn’t he joined the Air Force to begin with? It just didn’t make sense to me. Until now.”
“What did you find?”
“About a week before John quit the Academy, he’d been notified that his father had been shot down over the DMZ, near Khe Sanh and that he was classified as MIA.”
Hutch was shocked. “But why didn’t he tell us?”
“There was a lot he didn’t tell us, babe. I think he was torn. I mean, think about it. The only important person in his life was gone…but he also saw this as his chance.
“His father, the man he felt he could never be better than, was outta the picture. I think he figured he could join the Air Force, which is what he really wanted to do, and he could be the best at it, without having to really compete with his father. And, according to the information I found, John was good at what he did.”
“He said that on the beach. He said the killing was real easy and that he was good at it.” Hutch shook his head sadly. “He finally gets to do what he wants and he gets shot down, held prisoner for five years.” He looked up to see Starsky shaking his head.
“It was all a lie, Hutch. He was never shot down, he was never held prisoner. It was all a lie.”
“To get us to help him find Carpel?”
Starsky nodded. “He was injured in ‘Nam but it was in a ground battle, not in the air. According the reports, not long after he arrived, his base was attacked by the VC. He fought well, saved a coupla fellow pilots but then he got injured. He took a bullet to the head, a grazed wound, actually. Not enough to put him outta commission but enough to screw up his peripheral vision. He would never fly again. He got evaced to Hawaii and mustered out.”
The both sat quietly for a few moments, digesting the information.
“All his life he tried to make his father proud, to be the best at something and, when he finally finds it, it was all taken away,” Starsky said softly. “He must have felt so alone. He didn’t have anyone. There was no one there to save him.”
“But somebody was there to save you?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a slight smile.
“Tell me.”
Hutch’s quiet request touched his partner’s heart. They had shared so much, knew practically everything there was to know about each other. But Starsky had never shared his experience in Viet Nam or the time after his return.
Taking a sip of his beer, he let out a sigh. “I’d had a pretty good life, once I got here to California. Uncle Al and Aunt Rosie, they treated me like their own kid. I never doubted, not for a moment, that I was loved.
“I had friends, did good in school, stayed out of trouble…well, most of the time.” He smiled at the memories. “Between Uncle Al and John Blaine, I didn’t have a chance to go wrong, ya know? And I had plans. I was gonna grow up and be a cop, just like my dad. That was always my goal, the target I was shootin’ for.
“But when I got outta school, I was still too young to apply to the academy. I knew there wasn’t gonna be college…there was no money and scholarships were hard to come by. So I joined the Army. I thought it’d look good on the Academy application, ya know?”
He took another sip of his beer.
“I didn’t even think about the war. I mean, I knew it was happenin’ but…it was just somethin’ in the news. It wasn’t something that was real in my mind. Boy, did I get a rude awakening!”
He glanced at his partner to see Hutch nod, then he continued.
“When I got shipped over there, I was scared to death. I had never really been scared about anything in my life but now I was scared every minute of every day. And every day, I had one thought…’Don’t get killed today and tomorrow you can go home.’ That was my goal, Hutch…Don’t get killed today. I convinced myself that, if I could just get home, I could step right back into my life and everything would be okay.
“But when I did get back, nothin’ was right. I felt out of step with everything, like I was on the outside lookin’ in. I went back to New York, thinkin’ I’d make a new start with my family but…” He shrugged his shoulders and took another mouthful of beer. “Ma tried to help, told me I was searchin’ for somethin’. When I asked her how I’d know when I found it, she told me I’d know…in my heart and in my soul, I’d know.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t sure that she really understood.
“So I came back here but everythin’ still felt off. I didn’t understand how everything had changed. It was John Blaine; he helped me understand that I was the one who’d changed, that war does that to a man. He said I’ve have to figure out who the ‘new’ me was gonna be.
“I didn’t know about the ‘new’ me but I did know I couldn’t stay with Uncle Al and Aunt Rosie. I didn’t belong there. So I traveled around a while, even spent some time in Mexico, but I wound up back here, still at loose ends, still searchin’.”
“What were you looking for, babe?”
Starsky was quiet for a moment, lost in the memories. “I was lookin’ for home. That place where I felt like I fit, where everythin’ fell into place…that place where I belonged. When I got back from Mexico, I was at my lowest point. I coulda done somethin’ really stupid then, Hutch. I was that low.”
They both sat for a moment, not speaking, letting that statement sink in. Hutch knew there was more but he wanted his partner, his friend, to be able to take this at his own pace.
Starsky drained his beer bottle then placed it gently on the table before he continued.
“Huggy came to my rescue. He got me a place to stay, helped me clean up my act.” He shook his head and chuckled. “I was smokin’ about two packs a smokes a day! Huggy put an end to that. Things still weren’t right but, with his help, they were better. Then John Blaine convinced me that the Academy was still the way to go. When I got accepted I thought I’d found my place but…” he shook his head “I was still out of step.”
“What changed? What saved you?”
Starsky looked at Hutch, catching his eyes. “It was you.” The shock on Hutch’s face made him smile.
“Me? What did I do?”
“Nothin’. Everythin’.” Starsky shrugged. “When I got to the Academy, I still felt out of place. I spent the days before classes checkin’ everyone out, getting the lay of the land. I saw you the day you arrived.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I saw you climb out of that cab, with your suitcase and book bag. You looked around like you were in total awe of the place. I immediately dubbed you ‘Country Boy’ and figured you were too naïve. I was sure you were gonna wash out in the first coupla weeks. Then I watched as you climbed the steps to the Admin Building. You tripped, your suitcase went one way, your book bag went the other. That was the moment I decided that I’d have to watch your back ‘cus I figured these city boys were gonna chew you up and spit you out.”
He looked at Hutch, glad to see the smile on his face.
“Over the next few days you managed to change my opinion of you.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I watched you. I couldn’t help it. I watch you work out. You were focused. And you were strong. I watched how you interacted with the other guys. You knew who to be friends with and who to steer away from. There was somethin’ about you that intrigued me, that drew me to you. I didn’t understand it but I didn’t question it either. It just felt…right. Then you introduced yourself. Do you remember that?”
Hutch nodded.
“It was the first day of classes. We had just finished a round in the gym and you came over, told me your name and offered me your hand. The moment I shook your hand…” Starsky shook his head. “I can’t explain it, Hutch. It was like two magnets, pullin’ together. In that one moment, everything clicked into place. I knew…I just knew I’d found my home.”
Hutch reached across the table and took his partner’s hand, bringing it to his lips to place a gentle kiss on his fingers. “We found each other that day, babe. And you saved me, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you about it someday. But right now,” Hutch stood up, leaned over and kissed his partner. “Let’s go to bed.”
He picked up the pizza and walked into the kitchen, sticking the box into the refrigerator. Coming back into the living room, the two men came together in another kiss then moved into the bedroom.
Tomorrow they would return to their lives of hiding in plain sight, pursuing women to ensure the myth. But tonight they would hold each other in comfort and make slow and passionate love, strengthening the home they had found in each other and the love that began that day in a gym with a handshake.
John Colby never made it to trial. Within days of his arrest he was stabbed to death in the jailhouse shower.
And, once again, there was no one to save him.
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