Facile

by L.M.Lewis

Mark's not the only one who's good at it.

Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.

Author's Note: It's a response to Owl's latest challenge. A story that mentions a once or occasionally appearing character and deals with the subject of 'truth'.

It's missing scenes and POV insertions from the series ender, "Chip Off the Ol' Milt", by Carol Mendelsohn and Marianne Clarkson, with a few lines of dialogue borrowed from the script.

Thanks, Owl, for the very speedy beta.

Facile

by L.M. Lewis

It was nothing unusual to find some seedy character loitering in Hardcastle's foyer, taking leave of the judge. Mark had met a few of them over the nearly three years he'd been in residence at Gull's Way. He supposed there were other, more reputable friends of Hardcastle's who numbered him in with that crowd.

Tonight, though, fresh from the rarified air of his law school classroom, and still mulling over his professor's unexpected job offer, he'd been momentarily surprised. And the advice the man had given, off the cuff and with perfect familiarity, on the subject of knives and guns, had been both surreal and eminently practical. He hadn't been able to assemble any response besides a quick nod of acknowledgement before the man was past him and gone.

He shook his head just slightly and tried to gather his own thoughts again. He'd made up his mind. Of course he'd made it up three times already during the drive home. But this time he thought it was final. Professor Malcolm's offer had been generous, and any smart young up-and-coming law student would have grabbed for it: a chance to be a paralegal in a big law firm like his—to learn at the feet of the masters. But he wasn't as eager as he ought to be.

He thought he had it figured out. Saying yes to Malcolm would mean an end to whatever it was that he had with the judge. Being Tonto wasn't a part-time job. Already, with night school and the surreptitious hours he spent briefing cases for class, he was stretched to the breaking point. Just prepping for tonight's presentation had cost him most of two nights' sleep. Then having to lie to Hardcastle—a relatively innocent white one—to explain yet another evening out, and this time dressed in a suit, it was taking its toll.

The only saving grace had been the distinct feeling that the judge had been slacking off recently. It seemed as though the past few months had seen far fewer files being carried up from the basement. Mark frowned. It might have been since Falcon and Price had tried to do him in back in January. The judge hadn't said it in so many words, but—

He shook his head again and entered the den. He wouldn't take Malcolm's offer. He wasn't ready. Not yet. A few months more—maybe when he finished his first term—then he'd confess all and accept the consequences, but . . . not yet. In the meantime he'd just have to get by on what sleep he could squeeze in between Hardcastle's cases and his classwork.

The judge was sitting in a chair, not at his desk, by which Mark figured the recently departed guest had been there more on a social call than business. Hardcastle's range of friends never ceased to amaze him. Ex-cons, even. He smiled to himself.

"So, who was that?"

"Just an old friend." The judge eyed his suit and added, "What are we all dressed up for?"

It was semi-comical, and Mark had gotten used to it by then—fending off the casual inquiries. "Just a date," he batted back. "What are we smiling for?"

The man was. It was a big Cheshire cat grin with maybe a hint of nervousness to it.

"Just happy," Hardcastle replied, slightly stiff.

He wasn't sure when it happened—somewhere between the bottom step and the chair. Maybe it was Hardcastle's good mood. Mark felt the truth rising up. It was coming—ready to bubble up right to the top and over. He covered for a moment, trying to arrange his thoughts, and then he blurted it right out.

"My parole's up."

The words rang in the brief silence that followed, and Mark became suddenly aware that there'd been a near echo: Hardcastle almost simultaneously informing him of the same fact.

It was utterly ridiculous. They'd obviously both been tiptoeing around it for months, and now there was no time to step back and examine that before they were talking again—squabbling, really—and somehow, in the midst of that, the announcement of Malcolm's offer came out.

He didn't notice it at first, in his eagerness to convince himself that it was really what he wanted. An office. A desk. A damn Rolodex. There was no future in being Tonto. He couldn't still be there, ten years from now, cleaning the pool and carting files up from the basement. In his flush of enthusiasm it took a moment to realize that Hardcastle was sitting there, looking stunned.

It didn't take much of a nudge, though, before the older man snapped out of it, and then the pointed questions came.

This is the part where you tell him about law school.

He didn't. He glossed over his port of entry into Malcolm's law firm, letting Hardcastle fill in the gaps with his own version of things. And from there on, the judge's enthusiasm seemed to take fire and exceed Mark's own. It was only a moment's imaginings before he had him moved out and into a place of his own, close at hand to his new employer and at Malcolm's beck and call.

Mark sat back in his chair. He could take a hint. His own concerns about not appearing to be a sponger came back to him in full force. It was fairly evident that Hardcastle was shutting the operation down. He'd only been looking for an opportunity to tell him so.

His smile had turned a little grim. "Do I have time to pack?"

00000

He had, of course, and he'd been more than a little relieved the next morning when he contacted Malcolm and found the job offer still stood. That had done nothing to ease the unsettled feeling, though, as he packed his essential belongings in a couple of empty boxes he'd purloined from the judge's basement.

All that waiting, all that wondering what would happen next, and the actual end had come upon him with sudden swiftness. He was driving away, with Hardcastle still visible in the rearview mirror, hands in the pockets of his coat on this unseasonably cold and damp day.

Why'd you hug him, dammit? He hates that stuff. But this was easier, he thought, than the other time, when he'd left in a huff after an argument about independence, practically thrown out, with nowhere to go and no job prospects. It was easier; he was sure of it, and yet he was left with the feeling that things were still unfinished between them.

You still haven't told him about law school. And when could he, now? How would it seem if the judge found out he'd kept it secret all this time, moved out without so much as a word about it?

Ungrateful, sneaky.

He'd almost pulled over and turned the car around, then and there. It was only the awkwardness of their parting moment that kept his foot on the gas.

00000

Mr. Malcolm himself had given him the tour of the place and had personally ushered him into his new office. A desk. A Rolodex. An assignment that didn't involve tailing a no-neck bruiser named Louie.

After Malcolm departed, Mark sank down into his new office chair and simply sat there in contemplation, surveying his new domain. After a moment he pulled his brand new, untouched Rolodex toward him and contemplated it, too. He pulled out a pen and paused, frowning slightly, then flipped through the index tabs until he reached the H. He pulled a card free and carefully wrote the judge's name on it. The telephone number followed, though he knew it by heart.

00000

After his brief but interesting trip to Sunset Acres, and then trying to run the errand Mimi had delegated to him, he'd returned to the law firm. He was puzzled—not worried or suspicious. Suspicion belonged to his old self, when every task had involved a list of suspects. This was the holy halls of a first rate legal firm.

Still, he'd thought the odd circumstances warranted reporting to his new mentor. Malcolm had been nothing but gracious, taking the time to explain Mimi's healthy financial condition to him, seeming just barely condescending about her unawareness.

Now he was back in his office. He repeated the phrase internally—almost mouthing the words: your office. He sat down, pulled the Rolodex toward him, and flipped it open to the L section. He gently freed a card and wrote down "Mimi LeGrande", followed by the number she'd given him and then tucked it back into its spot. Then he caught himself frowning for a moment.

She hadn't seemed all that dotty. Certainly not absent-minded enough to be unaware that she already had a substantial amount of money in a bank account.

He turned to the phone.

He didn't reach her right away. It seemed doubtful that the Sunset Acres residents spent much time in their rooms. They were kept busy. Occupied. He was frowning again. There was nothing wrong with all those dance classes and art lessons. He remembered the old Italian guys, in the neighborhood park near where he'd grown up--bocce ball and cigars.

He tried to envision Hardcastle with pastimes. His mind flitted briefly across an image of the man with a pipe in his mouth, skipping stones. Waiting to die. He shoved that to the side but started to reach for the phone again, fully intending to dial the only other number currently in his Rolodex. Then something suddenly halted him—his pride, maybe. He wasn't exactly sure.

00000

He stayed late at the office, requesting and receiving the Sunset Acres file: names, dates. It was a little sad, the names arriving and departing in due course, each one leaving only a few notations concerning their disposition. Surprisingly few even had any family to mourn their passing. Nearly all had died with little more than the boxful of mementos that Mimi's roommate had left behind.

He finally had to shut it down for the night. He was reluctant to admit that the office was a pleasanter place than his temporary residence—a low-rate motel out in the sticks. His first paycheck wasn't due for another two weeks and his student loan had already been taxed by the buying of textbooks for the next term.

But eventually he had to go there—the small, dumpy room with the view of the neon vacancy sign and the sound of eighteen-wheelers rumbling by on the state highway nearby. He turned on the ancient TV for background noise—companionship. He wasn't sure when he'd lighted on the John Wayne flick, but that's when he'd stopped looking for something that suited him.

He had peace and quiet, and could sit there with his textbooks spread out around him on the bed, briefing cases with no eye toward secrecy. He cringed slightly, and then let the movie distract him for a moment. It was a fight scene in an Old West saloon: Duke and his buddy, back to back against all comers.

He became absorbed in it. He felt a brief twinge of self-pity and at the same time realized he could fix things. Just call the man up, for Pete's sake. This is stupid. Tell him everything and get it over with.

He reached for the phone and dialed, half holding his breath. Then he let it out again, all his courage escaping with it. He hung up on the busy signal.

00000

He went to Sunset Acres again to give Mimi the news of her financial condition personally. He found her outside, on one of the garden walkways. He didn't want to admit that he needed a friendly face. They talked, and by the time they were finished his puzzlement had returned. It was a strange enough problem—too much money to account for, rather than too little. He didn't know what to make of it, except that he'd gradually become aware of just how condescending Malcolm's remarks about Mimi had really been.

He's your boss—your professor. He cringed internally, but then heard himself promising Mimi that he'd look into it further. And there she was, looking at him with an implicit faith that had absolutely no grounding in the reality of the situation.

He gave her his card—brand new and such a novelty that he still felt self-conscious foisting them on anyone—but this time he added Hardcastle's name and number, too. That somehow gave the gesture weight—solidity.

00000

That settled it, he thought, and thinking about it, he wondered if that hadn't been part of his motivation. He couldn't very well be handing Hardcase's telephone number out to people without explaining to him who might be calling and why.

Still he couldn't bring himself to just drop by Gull's Way and see the man, certainly not to tell him that he'd been sneaking around behind his new boss's back, talking to one of the firm's clients. Instead he went to Harper. It wouldn't hurt to get the lay of the land, he thought.

And Harper had dropped the bombshell. Hardcastle had a new hobby and it wasn't stamp collecting or croquet. What had possessed the man to take up McCormick's old line of work was an utter mystery and one which had occupied Mark's roiling thoughts all the way to the address Harper had given him.

He had to admit, on arrival, that Hardcastle's new hangout rivaled even his own digs for dumpiness. This is insanity, he thought, and then for a horrible moment he wondered if there wasn't some truth to that hyperbole. Maybe the man had actually snapped.

But, no, he was no crazier than usual, sitting behind the desk in that cluttered excuse for an office, looking as unjudicial as a man possibly could. Mark listened to his song and dance about how he'd fallen into this unlikely opportunity. It was all bad enough until he heard Hardcastle utter the words "me and Leroy".

He'd managed to hold his expression firm, he thought, despite the sensation of the ground shifting out from under him. Meeting Leroy a half-moment later did nothing to get his center of gravity back. The whole thing was so damn wrong that he completely lost track of his original reason for having come. He heard himself volunteering to take Leroy's place for a job that night. It was a reflex, he supposed, the one constancy left in all this disorientation.

Then he and Hardcase went to a hot dog place on the beach and there, with foot-longs and fries to occupy them, he found he was unburdening himself to the man. It was the first time in a week that he'd felt comfortable.

Maybe too comfortable—a moment later they'd slipped into an argument. He wasn't sure how it had started. No, he was; it had been an offhand remark from Hardcastle, questioning his judgment. Just that, and he'd been so raw, so full of self-doubt himself, that he'd snapped back something about Leroy.

Things went downhill from there, with them lapsing into a silence that lasted all the way back to Hardcastle's new place of business. It was only then that Mark remembered he'd promised to stick around and help out. He couldn't back out of it. The idea of Hardcastle going it alone on a repo project gave him the unholy shudders.

Still, the silence sat heavily between them, only lifting for a few sniping remarks that had culminated in a near-disaster when they'd actually undertaken the job. It was only after they'd gotten back to the repo office, and Mark had talked to a frightened and anxious Mimi by phone, that he realized that Hardcastle had—almost as reflexively as himself, it appeared—agreed to help him with the mystery of Sunset Acres.

00000

Of course it had only taken the judge a few minutes of conversation with Mimi, and a quick inspection of her junk mail, for Hardcastle to produce an informed guess about the financial shenanigans going on at the nursing home. But now what might have been merely fraud was overshadowed by a probable murder.

Mark clutched his mixed feelings inside him, watching his hard-won position of trust with Kenneth Malcolm ground into the dust beneath the hooves of Silver as the Lone Ranger mounted up yet again. It seemed certain that he'd have to choose, and if it came down to a decision between his new loyalties and his old, he knew without a shadow of a doubt which way he'd go.

By the time they got to Frank's house, he thought he was reconciled. He stayed calm, even when Frank pointed out the obvious. Hardcastle was asking for a subpoena for the records of McCormick's soon-to-be ex-boss.

But there was an edge to Mark that he hadn't realized was there, and when Hardcastle had offered him a backhanded complement he'd turned on him with the anger born of frustration. He felt caught between two existences. He wasn't really Tonto anymore, and there was no telling what would happen to his law school prospects if they somehow bollixed this investigation of his esteemed professor.

It didn't surprise him that Frank had walked away in disgust in the middle of their spat. Eventually they'd let themselves out.

In the truck, Hardcastle had tried for a more conciliatory stance.

"You can write up your letter of resignation tonight. I'll go with you tomorrow, if you want."

"I don't need somebody to hold my hand," Mark muttered grumpily. "I've been fired before."

"You're not hanging around, waiting to be fired," the judge said sharply. "You're quitting, and it's on account of you figured out your boss is a crook."

"If we get some evidence. If we don't, he's . . ." Mark held back. He'd almost said: —my professor and I don't think I'm going to get any extra credit for this assignment. Instead he bit down hard and swallowed the rest of that sentence, then stumbled into a make-do, "—he'll get off scot-free."

Hardcastle was looking at him curiously, as though he'd seen the deeper meaning. This must have been an illusion, though, because he only added a grunt of disbelief and said, "Don't worry—he won't."

This sufficed for conversation until they were back at the repo office, where Mark had reluctantly left the Coyote many hours earlier. Now he was glad they'd begun the night's adventures from this neutral starting ground. All he had to do was climb into the thing and drive away, back to his one-room dive. Leaving the estate again would have been painful, and having Hardcastle drive him home—'home'? he paused on the thought and almost shook his head in disgust—would have been painful and embarrassing.

00000

Despite the late hours of the night before, he was up early. Trying to sleep had been pointless and he now had only one desire: to get in and out of Malcolm's law office before the man himself arrived. He was beginning to regret not having taken Hardcastle up on his offer of moral support. It might have been a nice thing to have someone to cover his back while he set fire to his bridges and watched them burn.

No, he thought, I'm perfectly capable of doing that without help—always have been.

He was in luck, being outside the door before Margie, the office manager, arrived, keys in hand. He hadn't been issued any yet. She showed no surprise at his early arrival, probably chalking it up to ambition. His plan having worked so well thus far, he was bold enough to ask her for the Sunset Acres files.

"The rest of them," he said calmly. "Mr. Malcolm's files."

It made perfect sense. After all, it was what he'd been working on the past few days and Malcolm himself had been shepherding him around. Margie didn't even blink before turning to a cabinet, unlocking a drawer, and thumbing through the contents, then withdrawing a meaty manila file. She handed it over, saying only, "Just be sure you give it directly back to me when you're finished. Mr. Malcolm doesn't like things left lying around."

He nodded and then retreated to his office. He didn't know how much time he had and he was fairly certain he couldn't copy this file or remove any part of it, not without muddying the legal waters considerably. Anyway, he'd already decided what was important. He just had to know for certain that Hardcastle's educated guesses were the truth about Malcolm. He had to see it for himself, just once, and he would walk out of here with an easy conscience, even if it meant scrapping any hope of finishing law school. Maybe he was intended to be Tonto, first to last. Maybe his ambitions should never have exceeded getting the front hedge perfectly straight. Maybe he'd never have to tell Hardcastle about his aborted career in the law.

He opened the folder and scanned the first few pages, peripherally aware that he understood what he was looking at in a way that wouldn't have been possible three years and umpteen files ago—that his time with Hardcastle had been more of an education than his months in law school.

It was all there, just as the judge had predicted. Mark sighed and closed the file. He took a piece of paper from the bottom drawer of his desk and a pen from his pocket. His letter of resignation was short and succinct, mentioning nothing about his motives for leaving, except in the most general way. "Philosophical incompatibility" was the term he chose. It would read like hubris to anyone who wasn't aware of the circumstances, probably to Malcolm himself—a fish like Mark having any claim to a philosophy of anything. He drew the line at thanking the man, though. This part of his education had come at too great a cost in faith.

He stood, went to the closet, and took out the box he'd only unpacked a few days earlier. He loaded his personal things into it, scrupulously leaving everything that the firm had provided. When he got to the Rolodex he hesitated, then leafed through it one last time, carefully extracting the two cards he'd filled out and tucking them into the pocket of his suit.

He stood there a moment, scanning the room and sighing again. Blind ambition, he thought—an ugly thing. He was lucky to have escaped again, he assured himself. He tucked the box under one arm, and picked the file up in his other hand, along with the letter, folded into an envelope and addressed to Malcolm. He'd hand both file and letter to Marge on his way out the door.

He didn't care if the man knew he knew. It didn't matter. His mentor was a thief and most likely a murderer.

00000

He'd taken his box back to the motel, dropping it heavily onto the desk there. Then he'd gone out, driving aimlessly at first, and then eventually finding himself in the neighborhood of Hardcastle's new haunt. It wasn't coincidental; he knew he'd eventually have to go there and admit the man was right.

He was glad Leroy wasn't there when he showed up. "Called in sick," Hardcastle harrumphed, "a migraine."

Mark merely nodded, hands in his pockets, also glad the judge wasn't immediately quizzing him on his morning's activities. He finally said, "Frank come up with anything yet?"

Hardcastle shook his head. "You know this stuff takes time."

Mark nodded again. "He'll find it, though, if he subpoenas Malcolm's files on the retirement home. The guy is very thorough." He hesitated and then finally added, "He must have thought he was completely above the law, that no one would ever suspect him of anything."

"No one is," Hardcastle said gruffly. "Above the law, I mean."

"And not above suspicion, either, huh?" Mark said with a half-hearted smile.

Hardcastle's returning grin was almost lupine.

Mark looked around at the shop, hands still in his pockets. He finally turned back to the judge and said, "You got a car I can fix?"

00000

A badly neglected Dodge Charger had sufficed to take up what remained of the afternoon. When dusk fell and Frank still hadn't called, Hardcastle mentioned another repo job that was hanging fire.

"What the hell, why not?" Mark said with the insouciance born of not giving a damn anymore. Every passing hour had increasingly convinced him that Malcolm was right—he was above both the law and suspicion.

It wasn't until after their encounter with the Elm Street Neighborhood Watch that he realized there were situations worse than merely being demoted back to yard man. Being in the lock-up, with every prospect of going back to prison as a three-time loser, was one of them.

And then, sitting together in that quiet cell, Hardcastle had dropped his own bombshell. Once he heard it, Mark was equal parts astonished and embarrassed—that the judge had bought the repo place for him had never even entered into his assessment of the situation. But more than that, some other part of him was standing aside and observing: He lied to you.

A white lie, of course, and hastily resorted to when Mark had presented the better offer that Malcolm had made. It was all so obvious now, and why it hadn't occurred to him earlier was a complete mystery. He floundered just momentarily, and then produced a smart remark.

Hardcastle called him on it, and that was all it had taken. Maybe one confession called for another. He didn't know, and he didn't have time to think about it. He heard it coming out, though the truth wasn't so bubbly anymore: Malcolm was his professor and he was in law school.

It was probably inevitable that so much truth would end in yet another squabble. Anything else would have been mortifying, all that truth in one dose. Still, if it hadn't been for Mark's lingering fear that this time the charges would stick—for him at least, maybe even for both of them—the relief would have been enough to have made it all worthwhile. Never mind that he had only told him about law school when the likelihood of him continuing on there had become nil. It didn't seem to matter. The judge hadn't said a word about being lied to, perhaps because he had his own lie to admit to.

00000

That's how Harper found them, and Mark wasn't sure why he was happier to see the man: the getting out of the lock-up or a chance to end the all-too-intense conversation. He was still mulling that one over on the silent drive back to the estate. Neither man had suggested anything but heading straight back there. Mark thought he was too tired to think anymore.

His fatigue fled the moment he saw Mimi on the front steps of the main house. He didn't have time to digest her news—that Malcolm and the retirement home director were getting ready to skip out.

The Lone Ranger was back in the saddle, and Mark was drawn along by the irresistible momentum, without a chance to do much more than tuck Mimi between them in the front seat of the truck. They still beat Frank there, and it was obvious that things had come to a head, with Malcolm and Feldman cornered by the residents.

In the end, the two went down without much of a fight, having probably never in their lives had to fight for anything, Mark thought. Everything given. Always above suspicion. No one ever thought such men lied.

There, in the hallway, he watched Malcolm walk away. Not running—there would have been no point; the police were finally arriving. Still, Mark followed—a slow paced, almost dignified pursuit into a dead-end hallway.

He had one question. It had been niggling at him, ever since the evidence against Malcolm had become incontrovertible. He had to ask it, even if the wrong answer would be the finishing nail in the coffin of his barely begun legal ambitions.

"Did you hire me because you thought I was stupid? Or because you thought an ex-con would roll over and look the other way?"

He hadn't noticed that Hardcastle was behind him. He saw him there now, but it was too late to take the question back.

Malcolm spoke, with the calm dignity of a man who had accepted defeat.

"I hired you for exactly the reasons I told you."

Mark half-nodded. He accepted it, not because it was what he wanted to hear—and certainly not because he trusted the man—but because there was no longer any reason for Malcolm to lie.

00000

He was gathering up his stuff again, this time from the low-rate motel, which he couldn't even afford, now jobless. He hadn't done it right away, being paid up through the week and still uncertain about where his arrangement with Hardcastle stood. It had been an awkward six days, back and forth to the station and the D.A.'s to give statements and then discuss them with the initially disbelieving prosecutors.

He thought the long, low whistle of the one assistant DA (a guy barely out of law school himself), followed by the aside, "You really know how to get yourself noticed, huh?" was particularly telling. He'd avoided his class that Tuesday night, and then heard the next morning that it had been cancelled, with only the hasty notice that Professor Malcolm had taken an emergency leave "for personal reasons".

But now a week was up, and there hadn't been any official notification of a change in his standing with the university, not even an informal request for an explanation from the administration. He was beginning to get the notion that they intended to ignore the situation—just pretend it had never happened. And sometime during their third or fourth mutual visit to Harper's lair, Hardcastle had said, "When the hell are you coming home?"

It had been while they'd been off in a corner, briefly left alone—a situation Mark had tried to avoid recently. He supposed he ought to have been pleased, although the issue of his uncertain status still hadn't been settled.

"That place you've been staying at has gotta cost something," Hardcastle plowed along through an argument that they weren't even having, "and you only have so much money on your loan—makes more sense for you to stay in the gate house."

Mark felt obligated to offer an alternative. "I thought maybe you were still figuring I could get another job—some paralegal work."

Even as he said it, he recognized that the suggestion was fraught with the possibility of another squabble, but this time the judge didn't bite.

"You could, I suppose." Hardcastle looked doubtful but quickly clarified that with, "It'd have to be with some outfit that didn't have any shenanigans going on." He smiled and then, almost as quickly, his expression was reduced to something tentatively hopeful. "I just thought maybe you'd want to come back . . . You don't have to."

Mark stood there, frozen. He didn't even notice that one of the investigators was heading in their direction again, probably with some more questions.

"Yes," he finally said. "Yeah, I'd like that." He ignored the man who now hung at their elbows; they both did. Hardcastle was smiling again, just a little goofily, and Mark supposed his expression wasn't much less so. It was only a gruff clearing of the third man's throat that rescued them both from that.

So it had been settled, as easily as if the issue had never been there in the first place. He was loading his things into the Coyote, having turned down Hardcastle's offer of the truck and assistance. Somehow having him see this place would have still been too embarrassing.

And he'd driven up the drive to the estate just as easily as he had a thousand times before, with no notion of what it was that had ever made the thought of returning so hard.

Hardcastle was there, with a letter from Mimi which he read out loud. It was a warm reminder of just why the Lone Ranger saddled up—not just to defend some obscure sense of justice. There was more to it than that. There were people, like Mimi and Myrtle—and the indomitable Bob, who'd died on account of Malcolm's greed.

Mark found himself in an unusually philosophical mood, the kind where principles trump everything else. He told the judge he was going to sell the Coyote—he'd already made his mind up about that the night before. He thought Flip would understand.

Hardcastle's sporting proposition must have come from an equally philosophical mindset, and one which realized that there was only so much outright largess that a man could accept. The judge must've recognized that in the heat of the battle, on the court, all other concerns would be set aside.

They were, and with just a little nudge—from the Fates, or from Hardcastle's own sense of justice—Mark sank the winning basket and settled the matter of his law school tuition.

00000

The judge fired up the grill. It was a celebration of sorts, Mark supposed: endings and beginnings. They hadn't sorted out the details yet, but the rough outline was already there. He'd stay on at the estate, attend law school full time, and help out where he could.

It was only after the burgers were eaten, the empty bottles of beer had been stowed in the trash, and the sun was casting red-gold ripples across the ocean, that the conversation went back to the past two weeks.

"How come you couldn't tell me?" Hardcastle asked, in a tone that harbored more curiosity than offense.

A dozen reasons flashed through McCormick's mind, all perfectly valid and all ones which he'd pulled out and used as exhibits in his ongoing mental debate. But finally the most truthful one emerged on top, and that was the one he said out loud.

"I dunno, not exactly. I just couldn't. I guess everything was going along fine, and I didn't want to rock the boat." He cast a long sideward look at the older man. "How come you couldn't tell me about the repo biz?"

Hardcastle shrugged. "Well, didn't seem like it could hold a candle to Malcolm's offer."

Mark winced at the mention of the name. "Honest work," he said thoughtfully, "I should hope I've learned at least that much . . . that and sticking to the truth. It's the best policy."

"Whenever possible," Hardcastle amended slightly.

"Yeah." Mark smiled. "Mostly."