Act of God

man.”
    “I’m not in it. We’re just standing here talking, everybody watching.”
    Greg surveyed the sea of faces, didn’t seem to find what he wanted in it. Then he noticed that the other couple and his girlfriend weren’t there anymore.
    “The fuck? Hey, Joey? Annette?”
    “Long gone, Greg.”
    He looked at me.
    I said, “Crowd like this, the cops’ll be here soon, maybe Joey and Annette bringing them.”
    He tried to process that, too.
    “Wouldn’t sit so well with the coach, your hitting a woman, all these witnesses and a formal complaint to boot.” The kid looked around now, more wary.
    “I were you, Greg, I’d head north. At the gallop.”
    He took a last look at me, then started to run, north along the boardwalk, the circle parting for him before he had to shove anybody out of the way.
    When I turned around to move toward my car, the black male in the couple with the kid in sunglasses was standing by himself, the woman and the child off to the side.
    He said, “Where you from?”
    “ Boston .”
    A nod. “Didn’t sound like from around here. Which department?”
    “None.”
    He raised an eyebrow? “Never?”
    “Just the service.”
    Another nod, extending his hand. “Nate Imes. Newark .”
    “John Cuddy.” I shook with him. “Wouldn’t have been such a smart thing, you diving in with family here.”
    A grin. “No, but if the Boz there started driving your head through the planks, I sort of figured I’d have to, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction.”
    “Thanks.”
    Imes said, “You’re a little long in the tooth for us, but you ever think about relocating, give me a call.”
    “No offense, but not from what I’ve seen so far.”
    A sad nod this time. “I can believe that.”

    Sunday morning I showered and channel-surfed on the cable while my hair dried. One station was showing Infectious Disease, two gray-haired doctors enthusiastically discussing methods of transmittal. Next was something called Lip Service, contestants trying to recognize the lips of a “famous” singer belting out a song, after which the contestants got to lip-synch one, being graded on “accuracy,”
    “body mechanics,” and “overall entertainment value” by a panel of judges including Linda Blair and Tiny Tim. Next was some kind of law prep program, a female talking-head lecturing in a shrill, nasal voice about essay and multiple-choice questions.
    My hair still wet, I had breakfast in my motel’s coffee shop and thought about checking out, then decided to burn another night’s worth of William Proft’s money to give me a base of operations for that day. On my way out of the coffee shop, I saw a bunch of kids in Little League uniforms half-running down the hall toward the function room with the show in it. I checked my watch, then followed them.
    It was three bucks to get in the door, but things were just opening up, so I figured to kill some time before starting out with Darbra’s photo again. There were tables set up around the perimeter of the room and another group in a square at the center of it, like a wagon train drawn up to defend against Indians. The vendors or collectors already were standing behind their tables, Styrofoam cups of coffee or tea or something a little stronger in their hands but away from their wares. Most of the cards were from the ‘seventies and ‘eighties, encased in plastic or under glass cases like rare gems, which from the prices some of them might have been. The ones that caught my eye, though, were from my time as a kid. Hitters like Mays, Mantle, Musial. Famous pitchers like Koufax and Drysdale, crafty ones like Early Wynn and Bobby Shantz. One man in a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey had a great display of the old Boston Braves, before they moved to Milwaukee in 1953, Warren Spahn and Sibby Sisti and Del Crandall. A woman in a Hawaiian shirt had a ton of Red Sox, including Ted Williams, Jackie Jensen, and Carl Yastrzemski, some of them autographed in blue ballpoint. “Can I show you anything?” she said.
    “No, thanks. Just remembering.”
    “Lots of folks do that.”
    She said it in a way that made it hard to tell if she was putting me down for not buying.
    At the far end of the room, several strapping young men were signing autographs. There were eight-by-ten staged poses pinned to the wall above each table, I guess to tell the fans which line to get on for which player once the lines got longer and the players harder to see. Walking by, I heard a black kid