The Mercy Rule

Half an hour later Sarah was eating a Sno-Kone, watching the teams warm up. Ising appeared from somewhere and sat next to her. ‘So, you been seeing my star a long time?’

‘Couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘You live in the city?’

‘Yeah.’ She glanced out the side of her sunglasses. ‘How’d you find Graham?’

‘I knew his dad.’

‘Sal?’

‘You knew him too?’

‘Graham talks about him a lot.’

‘Yeah. Hell of a fu

‘That’s nice.’

‘He’s mature, you know, a leader.’

She smiled. ‘I like him already, Craig. So what was it? You bought fish from Sal?’

‘Naw.’ He lowered his voice. ‘He had protection, you know? He was good luck.’

Sarah felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. ‘What do you mean, protection?’

The game had started and the shortstop for the Hornets took a hit away from the first batter, going deep into the hole. When Ising sat down again, Sarah repeated her question.

‘I’m just curious. Protection from what? This kind of thing fascinates me.’

Ising, impressing the pretty girl, unraveled the mystery for her. ‘He was co

‘So how did you meet him?’

‘One of my friends. I do a little betting, maybe Graham told you, these games, other things. So sometimes cash moves around downtown.’

‘You’re saying Sal carried this cash?’

He playfully hit her lightly on the knee. ‘Hey, you got a knack for this, Sarah, I’m not kidding you. Yeah, you give Sal a paper bag and a bill and off he goes. He stopped lately. He must have known he was getting forgetful, didn’t want to lose track of anybody’s money.’

All those names, she was thinking, all those numbers. They weren’t the people who supplied his fish to him. Could it be they were gamblers – high-stakes gamblers? ‘Did Graham know about this?’

‘I don’t know, you ought to ask him. Hey, by the way.’ He was fishing in his pockets for something and came out with a business card – his name and a number. ‘Don’t take this wrong, but it wasn’t real clear. Are you and Graham an item?’

She shrugged. ‘Close. Kind of.’

‘Well’ – he handed her the card – ‘if it doesn’t work out, give me a call. I have a pretty good time.’

‘I can see that,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

Right after Hardy got up Saturday, he’d called Glitsky to apologize again and the na

Then, while he was telephoning, he’d tried Graham Russo’s home for the fun of it and gotten the expected result. Nothing.

Then Fra

She’d told him! Didn’t he remember? Of course he did, he had told her, although this was a lie. He said he was just teasing her.

So for three hours Hardy had baby-sat. Although, as his wife never tired of telling him, he shouldn’t think of it as baby-sitting. They were his children. He wasn’t merely watching them. He was their father, responsible for their guidance and development.

Too true, he admitted every time this topic surfaced. He even believed it. But there were moments – as for example when five pre-ten-year-olds were playing some kind of parade game with every pillow, blanket, cushion, and stuffed animal in the entire house on the living-room floor – that his parental role seemed limited, more or less, to just baby-sitting. Neither his kids nor their friends really cried out to have old Dad guiding their development at that particular moment.

This was not to say there was not a great deal of crying out in general – and screaming and giggling and fighting and ru

Finally, Fra

Until three years before, Hardy had been religious about ru

Fra

He had never given the workout much thought; it had been part of his daily routine. Today, before he’d even made the fifteen or so downhill blocks to the beach, he was truly winded. But never one to let a little physical discomfort stand in his way, especially when he thought it could be overcome by an act of will, he turned south and kept jogging.

Frustrated by the burning in his lungs and leg muscles, he decided he’d just show his uncooperative body who was boss and run in the soft sand, not the hard pack by the breakers.

When he finally realized that the cramp that stopped him a mile farther on was not a fatal heart attack, he was in a real pickle. He hadn’t brought either his wallet or keys.

So now, at the farthest possible point from his house, he was stopped in agony, without cab fare or ID. He was going to have to walk, or limp, home.

He’d better start walking. Getting back home wasn’t going to be quick. It was sometime after noon and the wind off the ocean had picked up. His sweat glands worked fine, and the dampness of the sweats he wore made it even colder.

He wasn’t going to make it home. He would die here, limping on the beach. The fine-blowing sand would imbed itself into his damp sweatsuit, his very pores, and turn to cement, and leave him permanently frozen in place.

He could see it clearly: generations hence, tourists would flock to San Francisco, to the binoculars at the Cliff House, and pay a quarter to look down the beach and marvel in wonder at the origins of the manlike form that had magically appeared one day in the late nineties, an eternal sandstone monument to middle-aged flabbiness and stupidity.

It took him nearly an hour and a half to get home from the beach. He had a bath, tried Glitsky and Graham again to no avail, got in a twenty-minute nap. He was going to survive, although the next few days might not be much fun.

That night, he and Rebecca were having their own ‘date.’ The word had a lot of emotional resonance in the family due to the traditional Wednesday ‘Date Night.’ They’d instituted something of the sort with their kids – Hardy with the Beck, Fra

He and his daughter got to North Beach with time to kill before their di