Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them. This is a work of fiction, as are all of the characters within.

Rated: PG-13

Author's Note: This is a sequel to The Fix and takes place five years after that story. In the original tale, Mark goes to the island of San Roque to do a bit of routine legal paperwork for a friend of a friend of Hardcastle's. He winds up in a San Roque prison. Hardcastle springs him using a bit of subterfuge that almost winds up costing McCormick more prison time back home.

Arthur Farnell is the charming international thief who was run to ground in the episode 'School for Scandal', but who escaped punishment in Owlcroft's Scam I Am, and is residing in San Rio in her story Sundazzle. Thanks for the loan of the back-story, Owl.

Aggie Wainwright is the aviatrix from San Rio who assisted the guys in the episode 'Flying down to Rio'.

Oh, and Kathy is 'One of the Girls from Accounting'.

Paul is mine, from Road Trip and The End of Civilization as We Know It. Westerfield is the property of the Gulls Way Collective, on long term loan to me.

Okay, got all that? ;-)

And many thanks to Cheri and Owl for beta-ing.

The Martingale

By L. M. Lewis

Prologue—Christmas, 1990

Left-over turkey sandwiches, and Mark cross-legged on the floor, fussing with the CD player that had been his and Kathy's gift to him that morning. He got the Tony Bennett album going ("It's a disc, Judge, not an album."), and then scooted back, till he was leaning against the sofa where she was curled up.

Eggnog all around. No reason not to, Mark and Kath were staying in the gatehouse tonight and leaving for the airport by cab first thing in the morning. For the umpteenth time since he'd made the suggestion, Hardcastle was glad that he and Mark had decided to shut up the shop between the holidays. He hadn't been able to pry the kid loose from the law clinic for more than a long weekend, for over a year now.

Of course he'd had to promise to stay out of there, too ("And you will absolutely not serve any subpoenas yourself. That's what process servers are for. They'll starve if you do all their work for them.") So the offer from Pasquel Narbona, newly-elected President of San Roque, had been timely as hell.

"He's gonna go write a constitution for them," Mark had informed Kathy, with what seemed to be an element of personal pride, earlier that afternoon over turkey and cranberries. "And this time it won't be one of those slapdash jobs that needs a lot of amendments even before the ink is dry."

"I'm just a consultant—English common law and fundamental rights—"

"'You have the right to remain silent—'" Mark had intoned solemnly, barely avoiding a kick under the table from his more considerate wife.

"Yeah," the judge had admitted grudgingly, "that one, too. They're all important. Even the new-fangled stuff."

"'New-fangled' being anything after 1781." Mark had been grinning outright by that point. "San Roque is in for a shock."

"Well, you can bet San Roque in December will be a heck of a lot nicer than Philadelphia was that summer."

And if there'd been a shadow of doubtful recollection on McCormick's face, it had passed quickly. New régime, and Hardcastle an honored guest of el Presidente Narbona, nothing at all like Mark's first visit there nearly five years earlier.

But they'd said nothing more about that, and now, hours later, they were all comfortably ensconced in the den. Hardcastle had lost track of the conversation for a moment, and snapped his eyes up from the gently crackling fire in the seldom-used hearth.

"—and we'll be back the same day you are, if we don't get snowed in," Mark smiled as he considered the possibility. "But it'll be okay, even if we do; we don't have anything on the board for that first week in January yet."

"I thought we weren't gonna talk shop. Next thing you'll have Kathy taking out our tax files and starting the prep. Drink your eggnog."

Mark ducked his chin and took an obedient swig. "Good stuff."

"Ought to be," Hardcastle nodded. "The rum came with the invitation from Narbona. San Roque's finest."

"And here I thought their only industry was casinos."

"Yeah, well, rum is kind of a cottage industry for them. Casinos are where the real money is at, nowadays. Most of their tax base comes from them and the tourism they bring in. And that's where the main opposition to the new constitution is going to come from; money can buy votes."

"I think you're talking shop again," Kathy interjected. "You want me to just go ahead and get out the tax forms?"

The 'No' came in unison from both men. Then there was a moment of group eggnog contemplation.

"It was a very nice Christmas," Mark said quietly.

"One of the nicest," Hardcastle added.

"Not that we haven't had a few more interesting—"

"Yeah, well, you know what they say about interesting times."

Mark nodded. "And a few of them were flat-out awful."

"Aw, come on—not that bad."

"The one you spent in jail," Mark said pointedly. Kathy uncurled a little, looking interested.

"You were in prison, Judge?"

"Jail," Hardcastle harrumphed. "There's a difference."

"On Christmas? What in heaven's name for?"

"Murder," Mark said flatly. "We found the body, um." He was pointing with the glass in his hand, wavering a little uncertainly. "'Bout there, was it?"

Hardcastle nodded.

There was a slight but visible shiver from Kathy.

"It was a frame," Mark added, hopefully unnecessarily. "But it was a pretty good one."

"They wouldn't set bail?" Kathy asked, having spent enough time at the dinner table with the other two to know the right questions to ask.

"Well, yeah, they had," Mark answered first, "but it was the holiday, see, and his accountant—hell, everybody—was out of town. And I couldn't get a bail bondsman to touch it with a ten-foot pole."

"But he did spring me," Hardcastle added with a slight smile.

"How?"

"He hocked the Coyote, came and got me out on Christmas afternoon." The judge's smile faded into an unasked question.

"Yeah," Mark slipped back into the conversation from somewhere a little further off, "and there he was playing King Rat the whole time." He smiled up over his shoulder at Kathy. "I found him running a law clinic on the inside." Then he cast a quick glance at the judge. "I'm surprised you could tear yourself away from your new practice long enough to get out and solve your own case."

Hardcastle frowned slightly. "Well, it wasn't all that peachy-keen. A guy tried to shove a knife in me the first afternoon I was there."

Mark's face sobered considerably. "You never told me that."

The judge shrugged. "Must've been somebody Martin Cherney hired. Didn't want to worry you."

"See," McCormick shook his head in disbelief, "that's the problem. I can't trust that you aren't not trying to worry me, so I gotta just do the basic low-grade worrying thing all the time."

He paused for a moment, as if to check to see if maybe he hadn't slipped one too many negatives into that statement. Then he shook his head again and took another swig of eggnog. "Anyway, what makes you think it had to be the guy who framed you? It's not like there weren't plenty of other guys in there who hated you on general principle."

Hardcastle gave this a puzzled look and took a sip of his own drink. He didn't have a plane to catch until the next afternoon He finally got back round to the question he had come up with a few moments earlier.

"So that's why you were in such a hurry to get me out? Hocking the Coyote and all? Was it 'cause you thought there'd be guys lining up in there to have a whack at me?"

Mark blinked once, as though he was surprised by the question.

"You were in jail . . . It was Christmas."

"Yeah, well . . ."

"I've been in jail on Christmas . . ." Mark frowned down into his eggnog, higher math skills having abandoned him. He finally looked up again and said, "five times. Well, once was jail, three times prison."

Kathy leaned forward a little and caught his eye. "That's four."

"Oh, the other was juvie. I think that was maybe the worst."

Kathy made a small 'oh'.

"Well, you know, Christmas is when you ought to be able to let your guard down, 'good will to all', that kind of thing, and in juvie, hah, the kids all try to out-tough each other. Too cool to be scared. But they're all about one inch from snapping, and Christmas, well, that's kinda hard on some of them, if they had anything before they went in."

There was something in the way he'd said that last bit that made Hardcastle think Mark might have considered himself one of the lucky ones who wasn't used to anything better. He kept this idea to himself.

"And that year the place I was at—it was kind of a cross between a barracks and a dormitory—it had one bathroom, down the hall, and this kid had gone in there, cut his wrist with a piece of metal stripping that he'd found and sharpened up. Blood all over the place." Mark made a face. "But not enough. So he was holding his wrist under water, in the sink, to try and make it bleed more. Maybe the water was too cold. I dunno. Everyone else must've known something was up; they stayed out of there. But I go wandering in, and he's cussing a blue streak at me, says I'd better keep my mouth shut or else . . ."

"What did you do?" Kathy asked quietly.

"I kept my mouth shut." Mark was staring at the fire. He shrugged once. "We both knew he'd screwed it up. He sat down on the floor. He cussed till he cried, and then some staff came and took him away. Dunno where he wound up."

Kathy said nothing. Not 'God, that's awful,' not 'I feel so sorry for you.' Hardcastle was impressed with how well she seemed to know the guy who was sitting on the floor in front of her, and that he was willing to open up a door to one of the dark places, fairly certain that none of it would scare her off.

"This eggnog," Mark said slowly, after a brief silence, "is sneaky stuff."

"It is," Hardcastle agreed. "Very sneaky."

A bit of awkward silence passed. "But Clarkville wasn't so bad," Mark said, as if to make up for what he'd already said.

Hardcastle suspected he was putting on the rose-colored glasses for this bit—he knew Mark had seen at least one suicide at Clarkville, and the fourteen months he'd spent there had been no picnic.

"I think the second worst one was in the L.A. County jail," Mark added, after a moment's thought. "Yeah, it was, 'cause I'd just gotten busted for the Porsche. That was right before Christmas, 1980."

"December nineteenth," Hardcastle said quietly.

Mark looked up at him suddenly. "Yeah," he said, almost smiling, as though he was surprised he'd known.

"You told me once."

"Yeah." It was a smile now. "You remembered."

Hardcastle shrugged.

"Well, nobody was trying to kill me, but I was plenty angry. Being angry in the lock-up is kind of like a force field. You start hearing this sort of buzzing noise, maybe that's all you hear—all that anger sparking up against other people's. At first I was just angry because there'd been this big mistake, and I couldn't figure why the hell it was taking so long to straighten out. I thought maybe because it was because of the holiday, and everyone was just too busy to look into it. Wasn't until about, oh, the twenty-sixth, that I realized it wasn't a mistake—at least nobody else thought it was."

"That's what you meant?" Hardcastle asked, "I mean, about being in jail, and it was Christmas."

"Maybe," Mark conceded. "Maybe I just didn't want you to think I wasn't trying, that you'd just been left there and nobody gave a damn."

"I knew it wasn't like that," Hardcastle smiled reassuringly.

"Good," Mark said, with a sharp nod of his chin.

The conversation shifted again, to lighter things—Mark swearing solemnly that he would stick to the bunny slopes until he had a basic grasp of the concepts, Hardcastle accepting admonishments that, even if he were to trip over a major criminal endeavor while in San Roque, he would leave law enforcement in the hands of the local authorities.

Eventually the eggnog caught up to them all. Tony Bennett was on his second round of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and the last remaining log had burned down to embers.

A set of goodnights at the door—no need to get up in the morning to see them off, really—a veiled request for no sunrise hits against the backboard. The cab would be there early enough.

"See you next year." They smiled and laughed and Hardcastle got a hug from Kathy and then they were off, the two of them heading up the drive, leaning gently into each other.