The Black Echo

“For a moment Bosch smiled at the department’s unceasing need for acronyms. It seemed to him that every unit, task force and computer file had been christened with a name that gave its acronym the sound of eliteness. To the public, acronyms meant action, large numbers of manpower applied to vital problems. There was HITMAN, COBRA, CRASH, BADCATS, DARE. A hundred others. Somewhere in Parker Center there was someone who spent all day making up catchy acronyms, he believed. Computers had acronyms, even ideas had acronyms. If your special unit didn’t have an acronym, then you weren’t shit in this department.”

Connelly portrays the LAPD as a bureaucratic institution first and foremost. The approval process—presumably both for funding and in terms of public opinion—relies not on the needs of investigators for certain tools but on marketability of those tools, the “sound of eliteness” and the illusion of a nickname earned through long-time use.

“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.”

Bosch reflects on the beauty of Los Angeles and how that beauty is often a deception. Something beautiful enough “ma[kes] you forget” the “ugly story” behind that beauty, whether it is the smog in a sunset, the sacrifice behind the Hollywood dream, or the over-aggressive policing behind peaceful neighborhoods. This imagery is highly reminiscent of the work of Connelly’s inspiration Raymond Chandler, whose noir novels also set in LA often feature similar observations.

“Your mind has repressed the anxiety you feel over your part in the war, the doctor told him. 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.”

Connelly analogizes applying psychology to war trauma to applying a Band-Aid to “a wounded soul,” suggesting that Bosch’s injury is not mental but spiritual. There is something that Bosch did in the war that he cannot forgive himself for; thus, he considers himself to be permanently broken without the capacity to improve.

“You grew up in foster homes, youth halls. You survived that and you survived Vietnam and you survived the police department. So far, at least. But you are an outsider in an insider’s job. You made it to RHD and worked the headline cases, but you were an outsider all along. You did things your way and eventually they busted you out for it.”

The Black Echo is in many ways about institutions: not only the LAPD but also the FBI, the army, and the Saigon police. Bosch is very experienced with being in institutions, but for him, they were never the support structures that they are designed to be. He has always defined himself as separate from them and thus was never embraced by them.

“Too much going with the flow is heading us into the sewer, he thought but didn’t say. Sometimes he believed that he took things just right and everybody else didn’t take them seriously enough. That was the problem. Everybody had an outside gig.”

Using the metaphor of a sewer system (a collection of tunnels), Bosch suggests that injustice is prevalent because the police department is not dedicated to pursuing and ensuring justice. The comparison reveals that Bosch believes that the system (the directional flow) is designed in such a way that it always goes bad unless you fight against it (swim upstream).

“You would have spent the rest of the afternoon getting her statement and booking that guy. In fact, it’s a state beef, so I would’ve had to book him. And it’s a flopper; can go felony or misdemeanor. And one look at that girl and the DA would have gone misdee if he filed it at all. It wasn’t worth it. It’s the life down here, Agent Wish.”

Bosch talks down to Wish, explaining why they shouldn’t waste their time booking a man for statutory rape. He demonstrates his knowledge of how and why the justice system doesn’t work, arguing that they should turn a blind eye here so that they can instead focus on something that they can control. The cynical, staccato line “It’s the life down here, Agent Wish” evokes the hardboiled world of tough people jaded by what they’ve seen; its resignation also evokes the famous ending of the noir film Chinatown: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

“I’d be trying to figure you out. You know, why you are here, doing this. I always thought, I mean at least I heard, that the bank squad over at the FBI was for dinosaurs and fuckups, the agents too old or too dumb to use a computer or trace some white-collar scumbag’s assets through a paper trail. Then, here you are. On the heavy squad. You’re no dinosaur, and something tells me you’re no fuckup. Something tells me you’re a prize, Eleanor.”

Bosch is attracted to Agent Wish because he recognizes competency in the way she has handled the Meadows case. He admires her skills as an investigator before he responds to her physical beauty—one way that Connelly updates the sexual dynamics of mid-20th-century noir detective fiction.

“There was a small, cigarette-scarred table and three chairs in the room. A handmade sign on one wall said No Sniveling! He sat Sharkey down in the Slider—a wooden chair with its seat heavily waxed and a quarter-inch of wood cut off the bottom of the front two legs. The incline was not enough to notice, but enough that the people who sat in the chair could not get comfortable. They would lean back like most hard cases and slowly slide off the front. The only thing they could do was lean forward, right into the face of their interrogator.”

Connelly describes the subtle strategies that the LAPD uses for interrogation, right down to the detail of the unbalanced—and thus disorienting—chair. This unfair advantage foreshadows the other way that Bosch manipulates the inexperienced Sharkey, including leaning into his space and mixing generosity with unpleasantness (such as ordering food he doesn’t like).

“You think he’s a little bastard now, wait another year, wait till he’s nineteen or twenty, if he makes it. He’ll be a monster then. Preying on people. This isn’t the last time he’ll be sitting in that room. He’ll be in and out of there his whole life till he kills somebody or they kill him. It’s Darwin’s rules; survival of the fittest, and he’s fit to survive. So no, I don’t care about him.”

Bosch cares for Sharkey because he sees himself in the teenager’s youth and potential for improvement; even though he recognizes that Sharkey is on a bad path toward a life of more dangerous crime, Bosch believes that Sharkey could turn toward a more prosocial lifestyle under the right influence. Bosch would have been in and out of interrogation rooms for the rest of his life too, if not for the army stint that put him on a better track.

“Most of the other guys were scared to go down there. […] I wanted to go. I didn’t know why then, but I think now that I was testing my limits. But the fulfillment I received from it was false. I was as hollow as the ground we fought on.”

Bosch and Wish read Meadows’s journals. In them, Meadows reflects on why he was the only soldier not afraid to go into the tunnels in Vietnam. He describes entering tunnels like an addiction—the fulfillment he derived from the experience was empty, which meant he had to keep chasing the feeling.

“Meadows had been part of this thing—the circle of connected events that had gotten him killed. But not Sharkey. He was street trash and his death here probably saved someone else’s life down then line. But he did not deserve this. In this circle he was an innocent.”

Bosch recognizes that Sharkey is guilty of various crimes and antisocial behavior but sees that in the context of “the circle of connected events” related to the bank heist and Saigon heroin trade, Sharkey’s death is no different than that of an innocent child’s.

“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.”

Connelly metafictionally describes the shape of his own novel using the simile of an hourglass. He must introduce all the important characters and deliver crucial exposition to the reader through the narrow funnel of Bosch’s investigation and point of view. But once all of the details have been established, the rest of the novel is full of action as the pieces Connelly has placed on the board go head-to-head.

“There was a warmness between them that Bosch felt but couldn’t explain to himself. He didn’t know this woman who sat across from him. One look at those hard brown eyes told him that. He wanted to get behind them. They had made love, but he wanted to be in love. He wanted her.”

After Bosch and Wish have sex, Bosch finds himself wanting to have a romantic rather than simply sexual relationship—to “be in love” rather than just “make love.” This craving for connection is surprising for a man who defines himself as a loner. Bosch’s desire to “get behind” Wish’s eyes implies the need to understand the world from her perspective; right now, all he has is physical attraction, which is not enough for a thorough detective who wants to know how everyone ticks.

“Beverly Hills Safe & Lock had all the appearances of a bank but was far from it. There were no savings or checking accounts. No loan department, no tellers. What it offered was what it showed in the front window. Its polished steel vault. It was a business that protected valuables, not money. In a town like Beverly Hills, this was a precious commodity. The rich and famous kept their jewels here. Their furs. Their prenuptial agreements.”

The Beverly Hills Safe & Lock brazenly displays its vault to the street, ironically selling the concept of security by abandoning one basic tenet of security: being hidden away. This is because they are selling the appearance of security more than security itself, as the vault turns out to be less impressive than its flashy features. Connelly portrays Los Angeles’s wealthy classes as caring more about appearances than function.

“I believe that shit happens. I believe that the best you can do in this job is come out even. Some people win and some lose. Hopefully, half the time it is the good guys who win. That’s us, Harry.”

Agent Wish describes the practice of law enforcement as a war—or maybe a sport—in which winning or losing is not as important as knowing that you are one of the “good guys.” Wish is trying to win Bosch over by appealing to his need to see himself as a morally upstanding cop who does what needs to be done to ensure justice, lumping herself into the same category: “That’s us.” Of course, here, she is lying to Bosch—but she is also hoping that he shares her belief in vigilantism and will approve of her criminal actions because they share the same philosophy.

“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.”

Bosch both doesn’t want to be alone and doesn’t want to have conversations with people. He likes stakeouts because they provide him with captive but quiet company. This alone-together motif also hearkens back to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, in which the man Bosch identifies with gets to be around people that he doesn’t need to actively engage with.

“He thought of the rage Eleanor must have felt because of her brother. The helplessness. He thought of his own rage. He knew the same feelings, maybe not to the same degree but from a different perspective. Anybody who was touched by the war knew some part of those feelings. He had never worked it out completely and wasn’t sure he wanted to. The anger and sadness gave him something that was better than complete emptiness.”

Connelly never describes Bosch as content or satisfied. After having sex with Wish, he is anxious about what it means about their relationship as partners and as romantic prospects. This worry comes from Bosch’s unfamiliarity with the gamut of feelings that a romantic relationship requires. Bosch’s main emotions are the anger and sadness he has carried with him since the Vietnam War; he is too afraid to process those feelings and let them go because he believes they define him.

“Then through the binoculars he saw Lewis draw his weapon from an underarm holster. Clarke did likewise and Avery started turning the wheel, the captain steering the Titanic.”

Bosch watches in horror as Lewis, Clarke, and the Beverly Hills Safe & Lock manager open the vault because he knows it will end in their death. Connelly uses the metaphor of the Titanic—an enormous ocean liner that famously sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912—to describe the vault’s fatal trajectory and also to comment on the hubris of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock: The vault surrounded by glass is a gaudy boast similar to the hubris of the oversized ship.

“You are good at what you do, Detective Bosch. Anybody knows that. But that doesn’t mean you are a good police officer. You refuse to be part of the Family. And that’s not good. And, meantime, you see, I have this department to protect. To me, that’s the most important job in the world. And one of the best ways to do that is to control public opinion. Keep everybody happy. So if it means putting out a couple of nice press releases and putting on a couple of big funerals with the mayor and the TV cameras and all the brass there, that’s what we are going to do. The protection of the department is more important than the fact that two dumb cops made a mistake.”

This speech, which Deputy Chief Irving gives to Bosch in the hospital, is a thesis statement for the Internal Affairs Division and the antithesis to Bosch’s approach to police work. Where Bosch would define “good” in the LAPD as the application of justice through the discovery and publication of facts, Irving defines “good” as the cultivation and safeguarding of the department’s reputation, including the suppression of justice and facts when necessary.

“An unexpected feeling came over him. A dread. He did not want to see those names, he realized. There would be too many that he knew. And what was worse was that he might come across names he didn’t expect, that belonged to men he didn’t know where here.”

The Vietnam War Memorial symbolizes the sacrifice of human lives for US anti-communist foreign policy. While for some, the memorial honors that sacrifice, for Bosch, the list of names has a more literal meaning: It is a record of who died in the Vietnam War. This reference scares Bosch because it is information that he would rather avoid.

“‘Thanks, Harry. This is going to be a good one. Heads are going to bounce.’

Bosch looked at the reporter and sadly shook his head. ‘No they aren’t,’ he said.”

Bremmer is excited about the article he is going to write. He claims to define the article’s value by whether people will be punished for what the article reveals, but Bosch knows that Bremmer is only saying this for Bosch’s benefit. Only Bosch really wants justice, and thinking that the article will accomplish change is wishful thinking.

“The reporter was not guided by any genuine sense of outrage or by his role as a watchdog for the police. All he wanted was a story no other reporter had. Bremmer was thinking of that, and maybe the book that would come after, and the TV movie, and the money and ego-feeding fame. That was what motivated him, not the outrage that had made Bosch tell him the story.”

Connelly was a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times when he wrote The Black Echo. In other words, he had the same job as Joel Bremmer. In his description of Bremmer’s approach to the job, Connelly is clearly being self-critical. Crime reporters are like everyone else—they go with the flow rather than fighting back against the system.

“Did you ever have one thing that was at your center, was the very seed of your existence? Everybody has one unalterable truth at their core. For me, it was my brother. My brother and his sacrifice. That’s how I dealt with his death. By making it and him larger than life. Making him a hero. It was the seed that I protected and nurtured. I build a hard shell around it and watered it with my adoration, and as it grew it became a bigger part of me. It grew into the tree that shaded my life. Then, all of a sudden, one day it was gone. The truth was false. The tree was chopped down, Harry. No more shade. Just the blinding sun.”

Wish builds a metaphor of her memory of her brother. She compares nurturing her heroic image of him to nurturing a tree. The realization that he didn’t die a hero was like chopping down that tree; the loss of the comfortable lie exposed the truth like the cut down canopy no longer protects someone under it from the “blinding” light of reality. Later in the chapter, she compares her blinkered admiration of her brother to “a cancer growing inside” (392), an image of rot and corruption that underscores the intensity of the anger she was left with once the fantasy was dispelled.