Hearing Voices

 

            You don’t know me, but my name is Mildred. I’m not a movie star, or a model, and you wouldn’t recognize my face if you passed me on the street. But if you work in Parker Center, at the Ninth Precinct Metro Division, and you have a radio in your car then you’ve probably heard my voice. I’m your friendly neighborhood police dispatcher.

            When I graduated high school, and was all set to step into the big, bad world, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I didn’t particularly like school, so college was definitely not high on my list of things to do, but neither was waiting tables. I wanted to do something that would make a difference, but at no risk of bodily harm to me. When I saw the ad for police dispatcher in my local newspaper, the job instantly appealed to me. I never thought of myself as a voyeur, but sitting at a desk within the safety of a police station enables me to live vicariously through the officers I deal with every day.

            These young men are the cream of the crop. They took an oath to serve and protect, and they wear their badges like a second skin. Whenever I send them on a call, they never know what to expect. A routine traffic call could be just as dangerous as rushing to a 211 with their sirens blaring. They see the worst humanity has to offer but manage to hold on to their optimism, and the belief that what they do makes this city just a little bit safer for everyone. I’m as proud of my guys as any mother would be of the children she gave birth to.

            As a case in point, take the two hunks that go by the call letters, Zebra Three. Starsky and Hutch are closer to living legends than any other team on the force. The “Zebra” in their designation means they’re more than just ordinary cops. They’re part of an elite unit of undercover detectives that also patrol a beat. This duo jumps in the gutters and crawls around in the slime of the inner city. Spending the day with them, via their radio, is better than reading the most popular detective novel out there.

            There have been times when I’ve shook my head at some of the predicaments they get into, and when I’ve almost laughed myself sick at some of their antics. Although Hutch does own what I will charitably call a car, most of the time, Starsky does the driving. The souped-up, red Torino with the white stripe is his baby. He took what was supposed to be a family car and made it into a criminal’s worst nightmare. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the squeal of tires as he’s chased a suspect, and I could swear that I almost smelled the tires burning. Come to think of it, some of that odor could have been coming from Hutch. The quieter half of the duo has been known to make a few choice remarks about his partner’s driving after a particularly grueling pursuit, or so I’ve heard.

            There was even a time when Starsky got a little overzealous during a chase and ran the Torino, and his partner, right into the back of a truck. The story about how Hutch got his revenge by pretending to have amnesia has been told around many a water cooler in the station. The more seasoned officers always get a kick of telling the new recruits about how Hutch finally confessed his deception, and how Starsky naturally saw a way to get some extended time off by continuing the charade with their Captain. It might have worked if one of the nurses hadn’t spilled the beans. As a result, the Torino was the only member of the team that got the vacation. It sat in the parking lot while Starsky and Hutch pulled a temporary stint at traffic duty. The moral of that story is you can fool your partner some of the time, but never try to fool your commanding officer. I have to admit, though, that they did look awfully cute in their uniforms.

            If I had to pick my favorite tall tale, I’d have to say it was the time Starsky and Hutch ended up chasing the Torino. Mind you, it wasn’t Starsky’s Torino, but if you put the two cars side by side, you couldn’t tell the difference. It seems that a renegade district attorney decided to discredit the daring duo by hiring doubles for all three members of the team: Starsky, Hutch and the car. It all worked out in the end, but when I heard Hutch say they were in pursuit of a red Torino with a white stripe, I thought one of us had lost our minds.  When I heard him say that the bad guys were in the first car, and they were in the second car, I was glad they were too engrossed in the chase to hear me laughing. Even now, when I think about that crazy ride, it still brings a smile to my face.

            Unfortunately, all of my memories of them aren’t that entertaining. The worst day in my life was when Starsky was shot down in the police garage. It had started out to be a normal day when I thought I heard firecrackers popping outside the building. It never occurred to me that someone was actually shooting. This was Parker Center, the safest place for a policeman to be. I couldn’t imagine anyone being insane enough to attack one of my boys. I really didn’t accept it until I heard a hundred feet thundering past my room, and a dozen voices shouting in panic. For the first time in my career, I left the radio unmanned and followed the stampede out of the building. I wasn’t really worried about it, to be truthful. There wasn’t anyone left for me to call. Every cop in that station was headed for the garage.

            The scene that I found will haunt me for the rest of my days. When I pushed my way through the crowd, Starsky was lying against a bullet-ridden Torino, his jacket soaked with blood. Hutch was sitting beside him, his face as white as the jacket he was wearing. His gun was still in his hand, but I could tell that he didn’t even notice it, or the men standing around him. His eyes were only for the still form of his partner. He sat quietly, not saying a word or making a move, until the ambulance arrived. The only time I saw any emotion on that shocked face was when one of the EMT’s tried to move him out of the way. It took Dobey and three strong officers to tear Hutch away from Starsky as the attendants gently put him on a stretcher. One of the paramedics tried to keep Hutch from crawling into the back of the ambulance with Starsky, but one look at that cold, icy stare quickly changed his mind. Come Hell or high water, Hutch was going with his partner, and no one was going to stop him.

            I’m happy to report that this story had a happy ending, too. Despite all odds, Starsky not only survived, but recovered enough to go back to the job he lived for and the partner he loved. It took a long time, and we all know that he’ll never be quite the same, but the team that made Bay City famous is back on the streets once again.

This story will soon join the others as new faces come into the station, and old ones pass the gauntlet on. Even the most cynical cop can’t keep the respect for this team out of his voice, nor can the new kids on the block hide the awe they feel for these legendary detectives. But I think I can safely say that no one is as happy to have the guys back as I am. The streets, and my life, were much too quiet without them.

 

 

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