“Why?” Sugar Ray asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you do this for me? You think you’re playing Santa Claus or something?”

Bosch smiled and squatted down next to the chair. He was now looking up into the old man’s eyes.

“I did it to try to make us even, I guess.”

The old man just looked at him, waiting.

“In December nineteen sixty-nine I was on a hospital ship in the South China Sea.”

Bosch touched his left side, just above the hip.

“I got bamboo-bladed in a tunnel four days before. You probably don’t remember this but-”

“The USS Sanctuary. Off Danang. Of course I remember. You were one of the boys in the blue bathrobes, huh?”

Sugar Ray smiled. Bosch nodded and continued.

“I remember the announcement that the show was canceled because the seas were too high and the fog too thick. The big Hueys with all the equipment couldn’t land. We had all been waiting on deck. We saw the choppers coming in through the mist and then just turning around to go back.”

Sugar Ray raised a finger.

“You know, it was Mr. Bob Hope who told our pilot to turn that son of a bitch around again and put it down on that boat.”

Bosch nodded. He had heard it was Hope. One chopper turned again and came to the Sanctuary. The small one. The one with the headliners onboard.

“I remember it was Bob Hope, Connie Stevens, you and a beautiful black girl from that TV show.”

“Teresa Graves. Laugh-In.”

“Man, you remember everything.”

“Just ’cause I’m old doesn’t mean I can’t remember. The man on the moon was there, too.”

Bosch smiled. Sugar Ray was filling in details he had forgotten.

“Neil Armstrong, yeah. But the rest of the band-the Playboy All-Stars-was on one of the other choppers and it went back to Danang. It was only you and you carried your own ax. You played for us. Solo.”