Disclaimer: These are not my characters and I make no profit from them.
Author's Note: In the second season episode "Ties My Father Sold Me", Mark is on a mission to find the father who abandoned him and his mom twenty-five years earlier. His hunt takes him to a second-rate lounge in an Atlantic City hotel, where Sonny Daye does songs and jokes for a small and lukewarm crowd. Mark's disappointment only deepens when after the show he confronts his dad back in Sonny's dressing room. It's an awkward standoff, not a joyful reunion, and Hardcastle, who didn't know what he was getting into when he was dragged along on the trip, is there to witness it all.
Suzanne wanted to know what happened next, after Mark and Milt left Sonny's room. Heck, once she got me thinking about it, I wanted to know, too.
Two Men on the Town
by L. M. Lewis
He'd gotten Mark through the door and out of the dressing room—almost physically towing him—and the door safely closed behind them. There was still a lot of rigidity to the man, though the dangerously pent-up explosiveness Hardcastle had witnessed a few moments earlier had subsided, retreating back to whatever place Mark kept such things, for safety's sake.
He maneuvered him down the hallway, and back into the lobby of the hotel. Mark seemed to be willing to be led. The stiffness was gradually giving way. The situation called for a rapid decision, and only one of them had the capacity for making sound choices right now.
Off to the left, across the lobby, were the main doors, but Hardcastle was reluctant to take the kid back straight back to their hotel. He would have been hard-pressed to explain that out loud; he just realized that dealing with unpent emotions wasn't his strong suit, and Mark was more likely to let go in the privacy of that room.
On the other hand, the casino floor was a noisy mob scene and he didn't think either one of them was up to that right now. It would be a mockery—pretending that what had just happened hadn't happened at all.
Hardcastle scanned the other side of the lobby—the double doors that opened to one of the hotel's bars. It was dimly lit and undoubtedly quieter in there. A couple of beers—he thought they could both use one right now. He steered. Mark showed no signs of resistance. He got them both inside and spotted an empty booth toward the back. The place was quiet—just some mood music for white noise, and a scattering of serious drinkers.
At first he thought it might be a silent siege and his main job would be making sure he got the younger man out of here before he was served one too many, but shortly after they'd sat down Mark said, almost matter-of-factly, "You know, I barely remember the guy."
Hardcastle had still been considering that unexpected gambit when Mark forged ahead. "I mean, when you think about it, what does a four-year-old kid really remember? The routine, maybe—the kind of stuff you did every day—and a few really special moments, that's all."
It made sense. Hardcastle nodded.
There was a moment of near-reverent silence as the first beers arrived. After that was sorted out, and the waitress had departed, Mark went on, very calmly, "I don't think he was around much toward the end." He'd been keeping his eyes mostly elsewhere. Now he ventured a quick look toward the judge and added, "I probably just remember that birthday thing—maybe I'd been hoping he show up."
For the life of him, Hardcastle couldn't figure out what this explanation was all about. The puzzlement must've shown on his face. Mark responded with a shrug and said, "I just didn't want you to think it was some sort of big drama or something. Where I grew up, there were lots of kids whose dads weren't around. I mean, on TV it was all Ozzie and Harriet, but not where I was from."
He'd said this last bit with a casual indifference that had a studied edge to it and then glanced up again from his beer, as though he were gauging the effect of his performance. The judge nodded once, consideringly, took a swig from his own glass and said, "Yeah, always been lots of that. Real life's not perfect."
Mark nodded back at him.
This whole thing had been so unexpected, right from the moment Mark had walked into Sonny's—his father's—dressing room, that Hardcastle was still trying to catch up with it all. Still, he wouldn't have thought the bristling encounter of a few minutes earlier would have segued into this much philosophical acceptance. He frowned briefly. He didn't hold much with all that psychology clap-trap, but he had an inkling that this is what folks in that line of trade would call a defense mechanism.
He wasn't sure what Mark had expected, looking up a guy who'd never bothered to look him up, but obviously both the guy and the reception had not been what he'd been hoping for. In mid-thought, he became aware that McCormick was talking again, almost musing, half to himself.
"I could have passed him on the street and never recognized him. He must've been younger than I am now the last time I saw him." He shook himself free from that thought and took another long draught from his beer.
"How'd you find him?" Hardcastle heard the words slip out almost before he'd thought them through—it was just honest professional curiosity.
Mark frowned. He might have been reviewing the process with a censor's eye toward sensitive information. The judge added hastily, "Just the broad strokes, sport. Where'd you even start?" He shook his head. "Twenty-five years is a long time."
"Yeah," Mark sighed with some emphasis, took another drink, and eased back in his seat. "Well, I hadn't really thought about it for a while, not since I was a teenager. Then, I dunno, about six months ago I started wondering about it again—who he was, where he was. I knew what he called himself back then—Tommy Knight. My mom had a photo—that was the name on the back."
"She never talked about him, huh?"
Mark shook his head. "I coulda asked, I suppose, but, nah, kids know when a subject is off-limits. And, anyway, by the time I knew the right questions to ask, she was gone . . . and I sure as hell wasn't going to ask anybody else in my family about him." There was a hint of bitterness to the last part.
He picked up his glass and drained the dregs. Their discretely attentive waitress produced a replacement. Hardcastle was still nursing the first half of his.
"Long day," Mark observed, with a mildly guilty glance at the older man. Hardcastle waved it away with a dismissive gesture.
"So you started looking for this guys and—?"
"Dead ends. He got sent up the river on a robbery beef." He cast a look in Hardcastle's direction. The judge kept his expression non-judgmental. "That was it, like I said, a dead end. There was no Tommy Knight after that. I even hired a P.I.—nice guy, a friend of a friend. He took it on expenses, as a favor. He came up with a couple of other names that seemed likely, but those petered out"
The story seemed to peter out at that point, too, and Mark suddenly took a more serious interest in his beer. Giving it a moment's thought, Hardcastle decided he didn't want to know the further details, either. Still, it was a nice piece of background investigation. The kid knew his stuff.
"Thorough . . . persistent, too," the judge admitted.
He saw the younger man's expression approach a smile but that didn't pan out. "Yeah," Mark said quietly, "and look what it got me."
"You wanted to know. Now you know. It's better that way, isn't it?"
"You mean than sitting around imagining some big happy reunion? That kind of stuff only happens in Reader's Digest." Mark shook his head slowly. "Like the man said, if he'd wanted a son he would've taken out an ad in the paper."
The second glass was emptied in a few gulps. Mark set it down with emphasis and gave the waitress a nod and a wave.
"Better slow down there, sport. You hardly touched anything at dinner."
"Just beer," Mark muttered, starting in on the third with a determination that signaled he might be in for the long hall.
"Not the way you're drinking it," the judge observed dryly.
"Hmm," Mark lifted the new glass in a mock toast and took a sip. "Better?"
Hardcastle's nod of approval brought a quirky grin from the younger man.
"See, that's why I dragged you along. Kinda like having Jiminy Cricket on a trip to Pleasure Island."
"And I thought I was the donkey in this operation."
"You finally admit it, huh?" Mark's grin held a moment longer and then flattened into something more sardonic. "Nah, we gotta take turns. I think it's my week to make a jackass of myself. I dunno what I was thinking . . ."
"You were maybe thinking this guy was your father and you had a right to see who he was. Maybe even ask him stuff." Hardcastle shrugged. "Makes sense to me."
Mark seemed to be pondering that for a few moments, falling back into silence and working his way steadily through his beer. He finally propped one elbow on the table and let his chin rest on the heel of his hand.
"It was a mistake, but I suppose I've made worse."
Hardcastle thought he should object to that—that it had been a mistake at all, not merely a lesser one—but he couldn't come up with much of an argument. The waitress had appeared again. Mark seemed to have settled into a contemplative mood after that and was now pondering his fresh glass, rotating it slowly without picking it up. Hardcastle didn't have much to say, either, but figured he'd plead fatigue and get them both out to the cab stand before McCormick made it to round five and discovered that getting a buzz on was subject to the law of diminishing returns.
He was about to suggest that very thing when Mark, out of some distant place, heavily shaded with moroseness, said, "I was fine. Didn't even remember what the guy looked like. Hell, that thing about the tattoo—that just came to me last year when—"
He halted suddenly, dropping his gaze down to the table-top. Even in the dimly lit bar it was possible to make out the flush of embarrassment.
Hardcastle kept his mouth shut. It hadn't seemed like all that much of a stretch that Mark had some long-held memory of the tattoo on his father's arm—kids notice things like that—but that it might have been one of those subliminal things. He absentmindedly scratched at the arm which bore his own souvenir—left over from his army service.
"Yeah, well," he started, trying to drag the conversation back to higher ground, "we've all got lots of things we've half-forgot—you see something or . . ."
"Somebody reminds you of something," Mark finished.
"Yeah," Hardcastle faltered, "like that."
"Don't worry," Mark said, smiling a little beerishly, "you don't remind me of him at all."
Hardcastle's harrumph brought that digression to a close. And then he said, apropos to nothing at all, "We came all the way out here, oughta see the town a little, make a vacation out of it. We got all day tomorrow before—"
"We don't have to, you know." Mark interrupted. "I don't even know why I agreed to it."
"It's just a dinner . . . and we said okay, so we can't just stand the guy up."
Mark was giving him a long disbelieving look.
"Well, we can't," Hardcastle repeated firmly.
Mark threw his hands up with a sigh of concession. "Okay, we'll hang out tomorrow, meet him for dinner, and then let's get the hell out of town. Okay?"
"Sounds fair," Hardcastle said with a decisive nod. Then he signaled the waitress before glancing back at Mark. "And we oughta get some sleep—"
"Maybe," Mark said, not looking like he was counting on it.
The waitress brought the tab and the judge paid it, then ushered the younger man out of the bar and across the lobby. They stood there, just outside the door, inhaling the city air, only faintly tinged with ocean salt. Mark cast a dyspeptic look upwards at the backlit marquee that bore Sonny's name.
"I hope we won't regret this," he said.