Angle of Investigation: Three Harry Bosch Stories

“I don’t need an appointment. Where is Mr. McKinzie?”

He held his badge up, a foot from her face. She looked at it for a long moment-longer than it took to read it-and then cleared her throat.

“He’s in one-oh-seven. Down the hall on the left side. He’s probably sleeping.”

Bosch nodded his thanks and headed down the hall.

The door to 107 was ajar. The light was on in the room and Bosch could hear television sounds coming from inside. He knocked softly and didn’t get a response. He slowly pushed the door open and stuck his head in. He saw an old man sitting in a chair next to a bed. A television mounted high on the opposite wall was droning. The old man’s eyes were closed. He was gaunt and depleted, his body taking up only half of the chair. His black skin looked gray and powdery. Despite the thin face and loose skin gathering below his chin, Bosch recognized him. It was Sugar Ray McK.

He stepped into the room and quietly came around the bed. The man didn’t stir. Bosch stood still for a moment, wondering what he should do. He decided not to wake the man. He put the instrument stand down on the floor in the corner. He then cradled the saxophone in it. He straightened up, took another look at the sleeping jazzman and nodded to him in some sort of unnoticed acknowledgment. As he headed out of the room he reached up and turned off the television.

At the door he was stopped by a raspy voice.

“Hey!”

Bosch turned. Sugar Ray was awake and looking at him with rheumy eyes.

“You turned off my box.”

“Sorry, I thought you were asleep.”

He came back into the room and reached up to turn the television on again.

“Who are you, boy? You don’t work here.”

Bosch turned to face him.

“My name is Harry. Harry Bosch. I came-”

Sugar Ray noticed the saxophone sitting in the corner of the room.

“That’s my ax.”

Bosch picked up the saxophone and handed it to him.

“I found it. I saw your name in it and I wanted to get it back to you.”

The man held the instrument like it was as precious as a new baby. He slowly turned it in his hands, studying it for flaws or maybe just wanting to look at it the way he would look at a loved one long gone away. Bosch felt a constriction rising in his chest as the jazzman brought the instrument to his mouth, licked the mouthpiece and then held it between his teeth. His chest rose as he drew in a breath.

But as his fingers went to work and he blew out the riff, the wind escaped from the weak seal his lips made around the mouthpiece. Sugar Ray closed his eyes and tried again. The same result sounded from his instrument. He was too old and weak. His lungs were gone. He could no longer play.

“It’s all right,” Bosch said. “You don’t have to play. I just thought it should be back with you, that’s all.”

Sugar Ray cradled the instrument in his lap as if he were protecting it. He looked up at Bosch.

“Where did you get this, Harry Bosch?”

“I took it from a guy who stole it from a pawnshop.”

Sugar Ray nodded like he knew the story.

“Was it stolen from you?” Bosch asked.

“No. I had it pawned. A fellow here did it for me so I could get money for the box. I don’t like being in the dayroom with the others. They’re all suicides waitin’ to happen. So I needed my own box.”

He shook his head. His eyes went up to the tefy'up to tlevision on the wall over Bosch’s shoulder.

“Imagine, a man trading the love of his life for that.”

Bosch looked up at the tube and saw a commercial where a Santa Claus was drinking a cold beer after a long night of delivering presents and cheer. He looked back at Sugar Ray. He didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about what he had done. He had returned an instrument to a musician who could no longer play it.

But as this indecision gripped his heart he saw Sugar Ray pull the saxophone closer to his body. He held it there tightly, as if it were all he had in the world. He brought his eyes to Bosch’s and in them Harry saw that he had done the right thing.

“Merry Christmas, Sugar Ray.”

Sugar Ray nodded and looked down. Bosch knew it was time to leave him alone. He reached over and gripped his shoulder for a moment.

“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.”

Bosch looked at the instrument in the old man’s gray hands. He remembered the day on the Sanctuary as clearly as he remembered any other moment of his life.

“You played ‘The Sweet Spot’ and then ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ ”

“I played the ‘Tennessee Waltz,’ too. By request of a young man in the front row. He’d lost both his legs and he asked me to play that waltz.”

Bosch nodded solemnly.

“Bob Hope told us his jokes and Connie Stevens sang ‘Promises, Promises.’ A cappella. In less than an hour it was all over and the chopper took off. Man, I can’t explain it but it meant something. It made something right in a messed-up world, you know? I was only nineteen years old and I wasn’t sure how or why I was even over there.

“Anyway, I’ve listened to a lot of saxophone since then but I haven’t heard it any better.”

Bosch nodded and stood up. His knee creaked loudly. He guessed it wouldn’t be too long before he was in one of these places. If he was lucky.

“I just wanted to tell you that,” he said. “That’s all.”

“You were in the tunnels over there, huh? I heard about them.”

Bosch nodded.

“Coulda used you going about this bin Laden character.”