The Black Ice

He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in. There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.

Through studying the past we learn our future.

New Year’s Eve was a night for jazz, and the saxophone could cut you in half if you were alone.

Are you like him?” she asked. “Who?” “Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.” “Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.

It’s all a cesspool, man. Doesn’t matter if you’re on the bottom or the top. You’re still swimming in shit.

one of the crazies moved into the cone of light beneath a streetlight. It was a black man, high-stepping and making jerking movements with his arms. He made a crisp turn and began moving back into the darkness. He was a trombone player in a matching band in a world somewhere else.

You don’t like what you see out your window, you put up a wall.

All his life Bosch had lived and worked in society’s institutions. But he hope he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.

Trust no one. You may be working with the last honest cop in Mexicali, but why bet your life on it?

... he always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty.

What Bosch had were just parts of the whole. What he needed was the glue that would correctly hold them together. When he had first received his gold shield he had a partner on the robbery table in Van Nuys who told him that facts weren’t the most important part of an investigation, the glue was. He said the glue was made of instinct, imagination, sometimes guesswork and most times just plain luck.

It was a place to drink alone. A place for executive suicides who needed courage, broken cops who couldn’t cope with the loneliness they built into their lives, writers who could no longer write and priests who could no longer forgive even their own sins. It was a place to drink mean, as long as you still had the green.

There were elegantly made up women sitting on bus benches who were not really women and not really waiting for buses.

All his life he believed he was slumming toward something good. That there was meaning. In the youth shelter, the foster homes, the Army and Vietnam, and now the department, he always carried the feeling that he was struggling toward some kind of resolution and knowledge of purpose. That there was something good in him or about him. It was the waiting that was so hard. The waiting often left a hollow feeling in his soul. And he believed people could see this, that they knew when they looked at him that he was empty.

You can’t know people that well, man. Everybody’s got a private room.

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.

BOSCH DID NOT BEGIN TO FEEL WHOLE again until he reached the smogged outskirts of L.A. He was back in the nastiness again but he knew that it was here that he would heal. He skirted downtown on the freeway and headed up through Cahuenga Pass. Midday traffic was light. Looking up at the hills he saw the charred path of the Christmas-night fire. But he even took some comfort in that. He knew that the heat of the fire would have cracked open the seeds of the wildflowers and by spring the hillside would be a riot of colors. The chaparral would follow and soon there would be no scar on the land at all.

Must be tough," Edson said. "Working homicides." Bosch said what he always said when people said that to him. "Sometimes it's not so bad. At least the victims I deal with are out of their misery.

he hoped he had escaped institutional thinking, that he made his own decisions.

el funeral de un policía era el mejor día para saltarse un semáforo, exceder el límite de velocidad o hacer una maniobra ilegal, ya que no quedaba ni un solo guardia de tráfico en toda la ciudad.

Fear, though always unspoken, nevertheless stripped men of their carefully orchestrated poses. The adrenaline roars and the throat gurgles with fear like a backed-up drain. Sheer desire for survival takes over. It sharpens the mind, pares away all the bullshit.

In the Catalina crowd he stood out like a garbage man at a wedding.

There are times when having too much to say can be as dumbfounding as having too little.