The Wrong Side of Goodbye(38)

Bosch had been there. Wounded by a bamboo spear in a tunnel, he had been treated on the Sanctuary for four weeks in December 1969. The wound itself had healed quickly but the infection it had brought into his body had been more resistant. He’d lost twenty pounds off his already lean frame during treatment on the hospital ship but by the last week of the month he had recovered his health enough to receive Return to Duty orders for the day after Christmas.

Hope and his troupe had been scheduled for weeks and Bosch, like everybody else on board, had been looking forward to seeing the legendary entertainer and his featured guest, Stevens, a well-known actress and singer Bosch recognized from appearances on the television shows Hawaiian Eye and 77 Sunset Strip.

But on Christmas Eve high winds and heavy seas swept across the South China Sea and were having their way with the ship. The men on board started to gather on the upper deck, when four helicopters carrying Hope, his entertainers, and the band that would back them approached the fantail. But as the choppers got close it was determined that landing on the unstable ship was too risky. The Sanctuary had been built before helicopters had even been invented. A small landing pad built on the fantail looked like a moving postage stamp from the air.

The men watched as the helicopters turned and headed back toward Da Nang. A communal groan moved through the crowd. The men slowly started moving off deck and back to their berths when someone looked back toward Da Nang and yelled, “Wait— they’re coming back!”

He was only partially right. One of the four helicopters had turned again and was coming back to the Sanctuary. Its pilot made landing after three tense attempts and out of the sliding door climbed Bob Hope, along with Connie Stevens, Neil Armstrong, and a jazz saxophonist named Quentin McKinzie.

The roar that went up from the crowd returning to the deck could put an electric surge down Bosch’s spine when he thought about it almost fifty years later. They had no backup band and no backup singers, but Hope and company had told the pilot to turn that slick around and land it. Hell, Neil Armstrong had landed on the fucking moon five months earlier; how hard could it be to put a chopper down on a boat?

Armstrong offered words of encouragement to the troops and McKinzie laid down some solo licks on his axe. Hope told his one-liners and Stevens sang a cappella, breaking hearts with a slow rendition of the Judy Collins hit “Both Sides Now.” Bosch remembered it as one of his best days as a soldier.

Years later as an LAPD detective Bosch was called upon to provide plainclothes security at the Shubert Theatre for the West Coast premiere of a musical called Mamma Mia! A huge VIP turnout was expected, and the LAPD was asked to supplement the theater’s own security. Standing in the front lobby, his eyes moving across faces and hands, Bosch suddenly saw Connie Stevens among the VIPs. Like a stalker he moved through the crowd toward her. He took his badge off his belt and palmed it in case he needed it to cut through and get closer. But he got to her without issue and when there was a pause in her conversations he said, “Ms. Stevens?”

She looked at him and he tried to tell the story. That he was there that day on the Sanctuary when she and Bob Hope and the others had made the pilot turn that helicopter around. He wanted to tell her what it had meant then and now but something caught in his throat and words were difficult. All he could manage to say was “Christmas Eve, 1969. Hospital ship.”

She looked at him for a moment and understood, then just pulled him into a hug. She whispered into his ear, “The Sanctuary. You made it home.”

Bosch nodded and they separated. Without thinking he put his badge into her hand. He then moved away, back into the crowd to do his job. He caught several weeks of hell from the other detectives at Hollywood Division after he reported losing his badge. But he remembered seeing Connie Stevens at the Shubert as one of his best days as a cop.

“Still doin’ all right up there?”

Bosch came out of the memory, his eyes still on the photograph of the crowd on the Sanctuary’s upper deck.

“Yes,” he called out. “Almost done.”

He went back to studying the photo. He knew he was in the crowd somewhere but he couldn’t find his own face. He looked through all of Santanello’s photos once more, knowing that Dominick was in none of them because he had been behind the camera.

Finally, Bosch held and studied one photo that was a time-lapse shot showing the silhouette of Monkey Mountain lit from behind by white phosphorous flares during a night battle. He remembered on the Sanctuary how people would line up on deck to watch the light show when the communication hub on top of the mountain was frequently attacked.

Bosch’s conclusion was that Santanello had been a talented photographer and maybe would have had a professional career at it had he survived the war. Harry could have looked at the photos all day but he put them aside now to finish his search of the dead soldier’s belongings.

He next opened the red box containing Santanello’s camera. It was a Leica M4, a compact camera that could have fit in one of the thigh pockets of his fatigues. It had a black body to make it less reflective when he was out in the bush. Bosch checked the rest of the box and there was only an instruction manual.

Bosch knew Leicas were expensive cameras, so he assumed that Santanello was serious about his photography. Yet there weren’t many printed photos in the box. He checked the envelopes containing the negative strips and determined that there were far more frames of developed film than there were prints. He figured Santanello must not have had the money or access to print out all of his work while in Vietnam. He probably planned to do that when he got back home to the States.