The man sidestepped Charlie’s lunge and tripped him. Charlie staggered and turned just in time to take a judo kick to his abdomen, which knocked the wind out of him, bringing him to his knees. The man attempted to kick Charlie in the chin, but Charlie grabbed the man’s leg, lifted him, and tossed him onto his back.
He suddenly wondered if this man truly sought to kill him and whether lethal force was necessary. It was in that moment of hesitation—the precise second-guessing that he’d been warned about at Fort Benning—that Charlie heard the click of a switchblade, then saw its metal gleaming in the moonlight, the foil grip held in the right hand of his opponent.
The knife came for Charlie, the assailant lunging for his abdomen; Charlie jumped to his right, splashing into the shallows. He snapped to it, chasing away any questions about whether both men would be able to walk off this beach. He ran and dived into the man and felt the tip of the blade enter the back of his left shoulder. He felt it again and again, going into the muscle in his back. Then the man tried to bring the knife to Charlie’s throat. Charlie grabbed the man’s head, ripped off his glasses, and plunged his thumbs into his eyes.
He locked his elbows, sat forward, pushed his thumbs deeper, and dragged him headfirst into the water. The man writhed and splashed, swinging to bring the blade back to Charlie’s throat. Charlie looked away as the man’s spasms weakened. A sign at a nearby wooden building advertised AUNT JEMIMA’S PANCAKE HOUSE.
The man stopped resisting.
The knife fell into the water.
Charlie felt light-headed. He vomited, violently, into the faux river until everything inside him, every drop of liquor that wasn’t in his bloodstream, dissolved in the water. He felt utterly sick. In his body, in his heart. The bile and alcohol, like poison in his throat, on his lips.
He crawled out of the water and collapsed from exhaustion. Minutes passed; Charlie didn’t know how many. Then his mind reentered the full context of his situation. Music echoed from down the river.
A whispered voice: “Charlie, that you?”
It was Sammy Davis Jr., standing at the edge of New Orleans Square. Violet was with him. In the dark of night, neither of them seemed to see the corpse in the water. Or if they did, they didn’t acknowledge it.
“We gotta get out of here,” Davis said. “Now!”
Chapter Twenty-ThreeSanta Monica, California
April 1962
The morning sun had already begun to beat down on the beach town when, half a block from the Miramar Hotel on Ocean Avenue, a blue Rambler American swerved up to Lawford’s Ghia and honked. Charlie sat, spent, in Lawford’s back seat, Violet asleep with her head on his shoulder. Neither of them paid attention to the horn. Lawford followed the Rambler into a Howard Johnson’s parking lot a mile away.
Few words had been spoken during the drive from Anaheim. In the front, Lawford and Davis spun the radio dial between music and news. Violet had nodded off immediately, almost as if she were trying to catch up on years’ worth of sleep. She was only sixteen but she looked ten years older, Charlie thought, and not just because of her dress and makeup. He wasn’t sure if the trauma she’d experienced was as bad as what he’d gone through during the war, and there wasn’t much sense in trying to compare the two; he just knew she’d be fighting to get back to who she’d been forever. She’d learn to numb herself, forget her pain for a few minutes here and there.
Despite the events of the past few hours and the stab wounds that throbbed and continued to bleed beneath his makeshift bandages, Charlie felt more like himself than he had in years. He knew intellectually that in the weeks to come, he would start second-guessing his actions on the riverbank, but had he not killed the man in the floral shirt, Lucy and Dwight would be without a father and Margaret would be a widow, to say nothing of Violet being left in hell. Saving his niece, bringing her back to his wife, filled him with pride, an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Heads up, Charlie,” Sammy said from the front passenger seat. He pointed to the Rambler as Lawford pulled up alongside it.
Charlie looked up to see Margaret running to him. His heart jumped as she opened the Ghia’s door and gave him a tight hug.
“Guess who I found,” Charlie said. Margaret reached over to touch her niece, caress her cheek. Violet woke up and they all got out of Lawford’s car; Violet buried her face in Margaret’s shoulder and began heaving with tears.
Charlie turned and was stunned to see Isaiah. They shook hands, Charlie so overwhelmed he was tempted to hug him, though he could muster only enough energy to add his left hand to the shake.
Feeling no such inhibitions, Davis stepped in and gave Street the strongest embrace a person of his diminutive stature could manage.
“Sorry about the detour; I saw some shady characters staking out the Miramar lobby,” Street said. “I called up to your room and told Margaret to sneak out the back, then we drove up the block and waited for your car to arrive so as to warn you.”
“Who are they?” Charlie asked.
“Dunno,” said Street. “Some fishy-looking white people. Undercover cops?”
“Maybe the same people who have Sheryl Ann,” Margaret said.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“She’s been snatched,” Margaret said. “We need to find her. Now.” Charlie nodded.
“Where were you?” Street asked.
“Disneyland,” Charlie said. “Long
