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February 17 - February 22, 2025
James M. Cain once said that the premise of all his plots was the tragedy that befalls us when we eventually get what we want. Of course, he was writing about the materialism and consumerism that drives the American economy. In effect, he was saying the American dream is the American nightmare.
Bosch knew he had his reputation going for him now. Harry Bosch: a loner, a fighter, a killer.
Salazar looked down at the body of Billy Meadows and began: “The body is that of a well-developed Caucasian male measuring sixty-nine inches in length, weighing one hundred sixty-five pounds and appearing generally consistent with the stated age of forty years. The body is cold and unembalmed with full rigor and posterior dependent fixed lividity.”
The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers’ bathing suits. It was a beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.
The photos were of the smiling faces of young men who had dropped down into hell and come back to smile into the camera. Out of the blue and into the black is what they called going into a tunnel. Each one was a black echo. Nothing but death in there. But, still, they went.
You must assuage these feelings in your waking hours before your sleep time can progress undisturbed. But the doctor didn’t understand that what was done was done. There was no going back to repair what had happened. You can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.
She was tall and lithesome with brown wavy hair about to the shoulder with blond highlights. A nice tan and little makeup. She looked hard-shell and maybe a little weary for so early in the day, the way lady cops and hookers get.
Harry Bosch was a problem, he thought. A good cop, a good detective—actually, Irving grudgingly admired his homicide work, particularly his affinity for serial slayers. But in the long run, the deputy chief believed, outsiders did not work well inside the system. Harry Bosch was an outsider, always would be. Not part of the LAPD Family. And now the worst had come to Irving’s attention.
“You are an institutional man, Detective Bosch. Your whole life. Youth shelters, foster homes, the army, then the police. Never leave the system. One flawed societal institution after another.”
Out of the blue and into the black. That’s what he said going on a tunnel mission was. We called it the black echo. It was like going to hell. You’re down there and you could smell your own fear. It was like you were dead when you were down there.”
“Very short time to receive documentation. May 14. That’s ten days after arrival this guy gets a visa. That’s too fast for the average Joe. Or in this case, the average Ngo.”
“If you have a source at State, somebody with access, they might have better luck than me. I’m just the token beaner in the bean-counting department.
So we have to be very careful, about who we talk to and what we’re doing.” After a moment he looked straight into her eyes and said, “Do you believe me?” It took her a long time, but she finally nodded her head. She said, “I can’t think of any other way to explain what’s happening.”
Bosch didn’t want to go back up to the bureau. The information from Ernst was amphetamine in his blood. He wanted to walk. He wanted to talk, to storm. When they got in the elevator he pushed the button for the lobby and told Eleanor they were going outside. The bureau was like a fishbowl. He wanted a big room.
In any investigation, it had always seemed to Bosch, information would come slowly, like sand dropping steadily through the cinched middle of an hourglass. At some point, there was more information in the bottom of the glass. And then the sand in the top seemed to drop faster, until it was cascading through the hole. They were at that point with Meadows, the bank burglary, the whole thing. Things were coming together.
Surveillance jobs were the bane of most detectives’ existence. But in his fifteen years on the job Bosch had never minded a single stakeout. In fact, many times he enjoyed them when he was with good company. He defined good company not by the conversation but by the lack of it. When there was no need to talk to feel comfortable, that was the right company.
“Did you ever hear what J. Edgar Hoover said about justice?” she asked. “He probably said a lot, but I don’t recall any of it offhand.” “He said that justice is incidental to law and order. I think he was right.”
“You were the only thing left to chance in the whole goddam plan. And what happens? The one chance something will happen, it does. You’re Murphy’s fuckin’ Law, man, in the flesh.”
Hopper’s Nighthawks. It was the piece he had seen above her couch that first night he was with her. Bosch hung the print in the hallway near his front door, and from time to time he would stop and study it when he came in, particularly from a weary day or night on the job. The painting never failed to fascinate him, or to evoke memories of Eleanor Wish. The darkness. The stark loneliness. The man sitting alone, his face turned to the shadows. I am that man, Harry Bosch would think each time he looked.
