“No. I pawned it. 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 waiting to happen. So I needed my own box.”
He shook his head. His eyes went up to the television on the wall over Bosch’s shoulder.
“Imagine, a man trading the love of his life for that.”
Bosch 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.
“Why did you do this for me? You think that 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 back at him, waiting.
“In December 1969 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 Da Nang. 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 was 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 Teresa Graves, that beautiful woman from Laugh-In.”
“The man on the moon was there, too.”
“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 Da Nang. 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 that 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 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 19 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.
“I just wanted to tell you that,” he said. “You take it easy. Sugar Ray.”
He headed toward the door and one more time Sugar Ray stopped him.
“Hey, Santa Claus.”
Bosch turned back.
“You strike me as a man who is alone in the world,” Sugar Ray said.
Bosch nodded without hesitation.
“Most of the time.”
“You got plans for Christmas dinner?”
Bosch hesitated. He finally shook his head.
“No plans.”
“Then come back here at three tomorrow. We have a dinner and I can bring a guest. I’ll sign you up.”
Bosch hesitated. He had been alone so often on Christmases past he thought it might be too late, that being around anyone might be intolerable.
“Don’t worry,” Sugar Ray said. “They won’t put your turkey in the blender as long as you’ve got teeth.”
Bosch smiled.
“All right, Sugar Ray, I’ll be by.”
“I’ll see you then.”
Bosch walked down the yellowed corridor and out into the night. As he headed to the car he heard Christmas music still playing from an open window. It was an instrumental, slow and heavy on the saxophone. He stopped and it took him a moment to recognize it as I’ll Be Home for Christmas. He stood there on the walkway and listened until the end of the song.