Comments appreciated at: tunecedemalis@yahoo.com

Rated: PG

Author’s Note: Just a series of missing scenes, prompted by Lynn’s observation that, at least sometimes, McC wears his watch to bed. Does this show, as she suggested, a proclivity for semi-nefarious nocturnal escapades? Or is it just force of habit?

For those who haven’t been poring over the episodes recently, those referenced are (in order of appearance): Rolling Thunder/Flying Down to Rio, Mr. Hardcastle Goes to Washington, The Homecoming, Ties My Father Sold Me, You and the Horse You Rode in On, Do Not Go Gentle, and If You Could See What I See (with a wink and a nod at the end to my own first H&McC effort: ‘Delirious’).

Thank you, Cheri, for fast, reliable beta-ing every time.

It had been on the flight back from San Rio, a red-eye, non-stop, six-hour Miami to LA haul, where the moon seemed to stand still over the larboard wing, that McCormick had first confessed to him the story of The Watch, the Tape Recorder, and the Parole Officer. Okay, well, maybe it was more regaled than confessed. And yes, the judge had laughed. The idea of the kid pulling it off on the fly like that, and under Hardcastle’s own nose, practically, well-

“Did Dalem ever figure it out?” he asked, as he caught his breath and wiped a tear from his eye.

“God, I don’t think so,” McCormick replied, with a touch if sincerity under the smile. “And I hope he never does.” The shudder wasn’t entirely fake. “He could still have me up on a technical.”

And then it hit him; even though he was, in principle, the kid’s parole officer--had been for three months now--he had moved into a different category. There was no question McCormick had pulled his hash out of the fire in San Rio, but this was different.  

He trusts me.

The judge smiled. “Yeah, better he not know.” And then he looked down at McCormick’s wrist. The fated watch was still there. “And you still have it, after it almost cost you like that? That thing must stop once a day.”

The kid shrugged, looked down, smiled with a little chagrin, and gave it a gentle shake. “You’ve just got to have the knack. Anyway, it’ll always be right twice every twenty-four hours.”

It had been the first night after McCormick’s unexpected arrival in Washington. He watched the kid drop into bed, leaving his shirt and pants in a heap on the floor nearby, and looking like a man who was dead beat.  

Hardcastle’d done the math. There must have been some very fast sections on the interstate to have made the trip in a little over thirty-six hours. That, and a midnight stretch through the Appalachians, it was a miracle he hadn’t wound up in the bottom of a ravine somewhere.

And he’d arrived just in time to forestall a kidnapping and murder. Your kidnapping, your murder.  

“Hey,” he said.

“What?” McCormick muttered back, wearily.

“Thanks.”

“For what?” came the mumbled reply.

Hardcastle opened his mouth, then shut it again. The surprise was that complete. He does it on the fly, and his watch doesn’t even work half the time. He looked down at McCormick’s wrist. The watch was still there.  

“Hey,” he said

“Hey what?”  

“You forgot to take your watch off.”

“No I didn’t,” McCormick replied, rolling over and tucking the arm under his pillow.

It had been on the drive back to LA from Clarence, a damn-near straight shot across on U.S. 40 that McCormick seemed to think was good practice for Le Mans.  

“We don’t have to do it in one stretch, you know,” Hardcastle complained. “We could stop in Holbrook, or Winslow.”

“I’m not that tired,” McCormick insisted. “We could be home by two at the latest.”

“Don’t see how,” the judge shook his head. “It’s past eleven already.”

“What?” McCormick said, sparing a quick look at his watch, then shaking it gently, then looking again. “Damn. Must’ve been when I . . .”

Even as he heard the younger man’s voice trail off, the judge finished the thought. Christy had given him a very vivid description of the kid’s desperate search in the reservoir. Must have been when you thought I was dead.

“Not waterproof, huh?” he asked gently.  

“Not hardly,” McCormick stopped shaking his wrist. “Okay, well, I can have us home by dawn at the latest,” he added insistently.

“What’s the rush?”

“No rush. I just wanna--”

“Be home?”  

“Yeah.”

It had been on another red-eye, from Philadelphia to LA. No moon, this time, though they were above the low cloud cover. No regaling--not much talk at all. McCormick sat next to him on the window side, staring out into what was pitch black, except for the metronome flash of the wing light.

And Hardcastle noticed the watch. The old one. Well, he supposed, they hadn’t had a lot of time before leaving for Atlantic City. And what McCormick had been thinking about hadn’t been watches.  

Mark seemed to sense he was being stared at and glanced back to his right. The judge lifted his eyes, but not quite quick enough; the kid had caught the direction and now was staring down himself.  

“Oh . . .” he exhaled quietly, looking a little embarrassed. “I was in a hurry. I--”

“It’s okay. You’re mind was on other things,” the judge smiled. “I understand.”

“It’s a very nice watch.”

“Well, it actually works,” Hardcastle added. “It’s waterproof . . . well, water-resistant. Down to fifty meters.”  

“Judge, if I ever wind up further down then fifty meters, it’ll be because I’ve got on a pair of concrete overshoes,” McCormick had finally found a smile, “And I think if I stay out of Atlantic City from now on, that’ll be less likely to happen.” The smile drifted away. There was a long moment of silence. Another mile closer to home.  

“But, anyway, thank you for the watch.”

It had been a moment of satisfaction so deep that it took him off-guard, seeing that glint of gold in the bottom of the aquarium in Waverly’s office. A Rolex tossed away, the sort of spit-in-your-eye grand gesture that had McCormick’s name written all over it. He hadn’t just quit the operation, once the judge had pointed out the crookedness of it all; he’d quit with intent.

The kid has come a very long way.

It had been the first night out on the boat, anchored just off Santa Rosa, with The Fury rolling ponderously on the long, slow swells, McCormick curled up on the bunk looking green, and the judge sitting on the bunk opposite, studying him critically.

“You’d be better off up on the deck. You drink some ginger ale, and you look at the horizon.”

“No, I think I’ll lay right here,” Mark gritted his teeth and swallowed once, “and try not to puke my guts out.”

“We could go back,” Hardcastle suggested quietly. “It’s only a couple of hours to Santa Barbara.”

“No,” the younger man said, with a vehemence that surprised the judge. “I’ll be okay. Give me some more time. I’ll get used to it.”

Hardcastle had to smile. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a worse sailor. Maybe you should’ve found that out before you bought a million-dollar boat and set off for Tahiti?  

“What time is it, anyway?” the kid interrupted his thought.

Hardcastle looked up. “Dunno--you’re the one with the watch,” he pointed out.

“Oh, yeah,” Mark mumbled and turned his wrist up, squinting. “Only nine-twenty?” He closed his eyes and let his arm drop back down. “God, too soon to take some more Dramamine?”

“Probably not.” The judge reached for the bottle, opened it, and shook two tablets out onto his palm. “You didn’t keep the last dose down, anyway. Here,” he tipped the pills into McCormick’s outstretched hand. “I’m gonna go get you some ginger ale.”

“Oh, no. No ginger ale.” Mark groaned. “The bucket.”  

The judge grimaced as he nudged it into position. Just the dry heaves now. He watched the kid dry-swallow the Dramamine and close his eyes, then he watched a while longer, as the ragged breathing evened out into something that was consistent with a light doze.

We could be in Santa Barbara before he wakes up. He edged off the bunk, stooping a little under the overhead. He moved quietly toward the steps that led up to the hatch. Mark stirred. The judge froze where he stood. The kid’s eyes were half open.

“Sorry,” he heard him mutter.

Hardcastle eased back down onto the bunk. “For what?” he asked.

“For . . . this,” he lifted his hand off the bed and made a vague gesture in the direction of himself. “But no Santa Barbara. We’re not giving up before we even get started.” Mark let out a deep breath. “Talk to me,” he swallowed again, “about something other than ways to cure seasickness.”

“Okay.” Hardcastle shook his head and settled further back on the bunk. “How come you wear your watch to bed?”

McCormick’s eyes opened a little further, holding his wrist up again and looking at it. “It’s just a habit. And I don’t always do it.” He frowned.  

“I just wondered,” Hardcastle shrugged, “that’s all.”

“Lots of guys do it,” McCormick added, a little defensively, “where I come from.”

“New Jersey?” The judge’s eyebrows rose a notch.

“No, prison.” The kid gave him a look that implied a vast gulf in understanding that was at least twice as deep as it was wide. “New Jersey,” he muttered, putting one hand to his forehead. “Come on.”

“Oh,” Hardcastle nodded, “prison, makes sense. So it wouldn’t get stolen.”

“Well, yeah. There’s that,” McCormick conceded. “But, also, if you didn’t have a watch, how the hell were you supposed to know any time has gone by at all? It’d make you crazy; every day is just like every other day. And the nights . . .”

His voice had trailed off. The silence that followed was only broken when the judge finally inquired, mildly, “Feel better?”

McCormick blinked, lifted his head off the bed for a moment, and said, “Yeah.” Then, in mild surprise, “How’d you do that?”

“Distraction,” Hardcastle grinned. “It’s another age-old cure for seasickness. Think you can sleep now?”

“Um,” McCormick let his head drop back down onto the pillow, “yeah, I think so.” He turned on his side.

“Wanna take the watch off?”

“No,” the kid muttered, a little stubbornly. “And no sneaking off to Santa Barbara.”

It had been in the registration area of the emergency room.  

“The patient’s name?”

“McCormick, Mark.” He heard his own voice; it sounded raspy, harsh, like someone who’d been up all night. He gave the address. The phone number. He gave them the birth date. And when they got to next-of-kin he barely hesitated before he gave his own name.  

He wanted someone to come and tell him how the kid was doing. The last glimpse of him he’d had was as he’d been loaded into the ambulance. But no one came. Let them do their job, he admonished himself.

He went to the family room to wait with Millie. Eventually a nurse appeared, but only to say everything was being done, and he’d be going up to surgery soon, and here were his personal effects. Would you like to take charge of them?

Mark’s wallet, the St. Jude medal, that damn set of lock picks. Why was he carrying those? He knows better.

And the watch--its crystal cracked and a trace of moisture beneath the glass. Hands stopped at ten-twenty seven. “Broken,” he said, without realizing he had said it out loud. Millie was looking over at him, concern written on her face.  

“I’ll get it fixed,” he added, a little louder. “It was a gift.”

She nodded.  

It had been in the room, in surgical intensive care, after a night of nightmare-ridden fever.  

“Dammit Hardcase, don’t you have a bed at home?”

The judge had been caught in a doze, and he’d almost jumped to his feet, half expecting another outburst of raving. If Mark pulled out his IV again, they would both be in a lot of trouble. But, no, for the first time in almost two days, the kid was both awake and calm.

McCormick was looking at his wrist, frowning, puzzled, but not saying much.  

“The crystal’s broken,” Hardcastle patted his own pocket. “I haven’t had a chance to take it in to be fixed.”

Mark reached up, almost instinctively, for his neck, and touched the chain and the medal briefly. The judge was glad he’d gotten that back in place in time.  

“How long?”  

“Tuesday, morning.  

“Umm . . .”

“It was Saturday night. Remember?”

“Ahh.” Mark made a face. “Yeah. But, umm, I got a couple days missing here.”

“I’ll fill you in,” the judge assured him, as he watched the younger man’s eyes drifting shut.

“Yeah,” Mark replied, and he was out again.

He awoke to the sound of someone moving nearby in the dimly lit room. Late afternoon or early morning, hard to say. Tuesday, or, maybe not. The movement was a nurse, doing something up above the head of the bed. She smiled at him when she noticed his eyes were open.

“I’m Beth,” she said.

He nodded slowly. He recognized the fuzziness around the edge of his mind as the effect of some fairly serious pain medication. His eyes passed over the empty seat not far from the bed.

“We shooed him out of here,” Beth explained. “I thought he was going to fall out of the chair. He said he’d be back later.”

“Good,” Mark murmured. His eyes tracked over to the other side of the bed, and something encircling the top rail, taped into position. He squinted, trying to bring it into better focus. It didn’t stop being what he had first thought it was.

“He left it here.” Beth had caught the direction of his gaze. “He said you’d need it. It’s yours?”

“No,” Mark said slowly. “Mine’s broken . . . only right twice a day.” He squinted again--Tuesday, January 7 th, 4:47 P.M.  

He smiled. “That one’s his.”

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