Day by day, Charlie told himself. Take it one day at a time. That’s how you get through the rough patches. By all the early signs, this might be a mighty rough patch. J. Edgar Hoover made Joe Steele seem downright friendly by comparison. Charlie wouldn’t have believed anyone could.
He got a postcard from Mike, letting him know he had a half-Japanese niece named Brenda. He started making notes for a novel about brothers whose lives went different ways. His working title was Two Roads Diverged. Nobody didn’t like Robert Frost.
He was drinking more again, but Esther didn’t nag him about it. She knew what was wrong. Hoover wasn’t even sixty yet-he was just a handful of years older than Charlie. He might be Director a long time yet, unless somebody like that funny-looking assistant attorney general from California brought him down while he wasn’t looking. Talking about things like that, Esther started drinking more herself.
No matter what, you never thought it could happen to you. When the knock came, it was actually closer to one in the morning than to midnight.