Yes, he was, of course, making stupid mistakes, ones that maybe seemed small in the context of the Rat Pack bacchanalia but were nonetheless out of character. There remained so much in Charlie that was good—not just his virtue, but his tenderness with Lucy and Dwight, his kindness to her mother, his devotion to her. Margaret would help him. The fundamental issue she had, she knew, was not with her partner; it was with their enemies, those who sought the erosion of standards and fundamental decency. The American way of life was built on the honor system, but that depended on all the players having a sense of honor. Others might not, but Charlie did, and that was all that mattered, truly. Yet both of them had become so focused on the minutiae of day-to-day decisions and slights, they were blind to the overall wonder of their lives.

Hop-jump-skid…

She stopped to catch her breath and turned to look up the mountain. There was nothing but the letters, illuminated by both the floodlights and the pinkish-orange light preceding the rising sun to the east, past the reservoir. The shooter and Sheryl Ann were both gone. Before her, the glittering grid of Hollywood and the sprawl of Los Angeles, Inglewood, Compton, Lakewood, Torrance. And beyond that, the inky black where the Pacific rumbled. She would run to the bottom of the hill, get into her car, and go find Charlie. He would help her, she would help him, and they would defeat the nefarious forces that once again had found them and were trying to destroy them. She would do whatever she needed to get him back to full strength. They had no choice; she had no choice.

As Charlie rolled over, he caught a glimpse of the imprint his face had made in the muddy bank of the fake river; it looked like the death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte. He tried to sit up, but a foot suddenly came at his chin. Charlie jerked away and the kick bruised his shoulder.

When Charlie had told John Wayne about his hand-to-hand training at Fort Benning, he meant every word of it. He’d learned to fight dirty, to kill or be killed. His instructor, Master Sergeant Tom Ladzinski, would repeatedly say, “Fuck the Marquess of Queensberry” while demonstrating how to rip out a man’s throat. Ladzinski destroyed the idea that men should put up their dukes and instead showed them how to tap into the viciousness within themselves.