The Black Echo Quotes
"Experience and long practice told him it was good. Nice and even. Smooth strokes, moving his whole arm while gently rolling his wrist."
"He didn't want to stop now, not until he had finished the tag with one uninterrupted stroke."
"Almost three in the morning and someone was coming. Why?"
"He buried his nose in the sock and drew in heavily on the paint fumes."
"He needed to reach the end of the tunnel before the light was gone and he was alone in the black."
"He was slumped in the living room chair again, the soft recliner that was the centerpiece of his meager furnishings."
"The lamp on the table next to him was on, and the TV against the wall, its sound very low, was broadcasting a Sunday-morning Jesus show."
"He reached his hand down to his belt and then around back to the area below his kidney."
"They didn't want to mess up a crime scene but then they go poking around the body with a stick. That's wonderful."
"Looking down the hill he could see one of the tourist trains moving between the huge beige sound studios in Universal City."
"A side of one of the block-long buildings was painted sky blue with wisps of white clouds; for filming exteriors when the natural L.A. exterior turned brown as wheat."
"The sky was gunpowder gray and the smog was a form-fitted shroud over Hollywood."
"Bosch had studied this barrier when he first arrived and wondered if the protection was for the people on one side of the fence or the water on the other."
"His sweat had stained through the underarms and back of both layers of clothing."
"He did not look back, for he knew the enemy was behind him in the black mist."
"The sound of traffic filtering up from the Hollywood Freeway almost sounded gentle from such a distance. Like a calm ocean."
"The most sympathy the dead man would get here."
"Checks out. 'Cept we didn't find him so fast that time, and with the sun and all beating on the pipe a couple days, he gets cooked in there."
"It's probly just some hype who croaked himself, Harry."
"He spread the twelve pounds of Sunday paper out on the kitchen counter, wondering how many trees died."
"A bullet that expanded on impact to 1.5 times its width, reaching terminal depth in the body and leaving maximum wound channels."
"He looked at his watch. Crowley, if the report came in at four A.M. why are you just getting to me now, nearly five hours later?"
"A cacophony of grunts and heavy gasps echoed from the mouth of the graffiti-scarred pipe."
"His eyes followed her, and he noticed that when she went by the pump house she deviated her course to avoid something."
"He looked up and saw the broken bulb in the socket above the pump house door."
"The animal was small and its coat was scruffy and completely missing some patches of hair."
"He thought of his dream and remembered the chopper that did not land."
"But Bosch had always trusted Sally and found that it sometimes helped to bounce other details of a case off him."
"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."
"It was a scary place to be during earthquakes, daring Mother Nature to twang those beams and send the house down the hill like a sled. But the view was the trade-off."
"From the back porch Bosch could look northeast across Burbank and Glendale. He could see the purple-hued mountains past Pasadena and Altadena."
"Bosch knew the view never failed to give him a sense of power which he could not explain to himself."
"The detective waited for the bottom line the detective waited for: What killed the person on the cold steel table? How? Who?"
"Bosch thought of the white dust in the rug in Meadows's closet. He wondered if the dust or the chunk from the shoe tread could be matched to the concrete that had guarded the WestLand Bank's vault."
"The sun hung like a ball of copper in the driver's-side window. He had the car radio tuned to a jazz station and Coltrane was playing 'Soul Eyes.'"
"Bosch closed the file. The case was too big for the bureau to slough off like a bank stickup."
"He stared at the photograph until fatigue and alcohol pulled him down into sleepy thought. Almost dreamlike."
"I refuse to answer any questions without an attorney present," Bosch said. "I cite my right to representation under California's Policeman's Bill of Rights."
"Detective Bosch, the department administration does not recognize that aspect of the Policeman's Bill of Rights."
"This is a direct violation of my civil rights. I request that a union rep and my attorney be present before we continue."
"It's going to be a pleasure to do you, Bosch."
"You'll be assigned to a desk at Internal Affairs where we can keep an eye on you."
"Either way, you're done in the department. You're over."
"You did good," Bosch said. "You should come out all right."
"I'm off the case and those two assholes are going to put paper in on me."
"I've got the afternoon and that's about it before I get the ROD."
"If you want to catch him there, you better go."
"Don't be expecting no whore when you get there."
"His mom, she doesn't look like the part she plays on the phone."
"We could probably relax each other a little bit, you know?"
"Okay," he said. "I can take you back here later if you want."
"I have no time to talk to more police," Veronica Niese said.
"As soon as I get him home he is out the door again."
"I wouldn't stay long. We could probably relax each other a little bit, you know?"
"You knew the body was there before you went in. You saw somebody drag it into the pipe, Sharkey. Look at me now and tell me the real story."
"We got a man dead, Edward. We've got to find out why. We don't care about faces. That's fine. Tell us what you did see, and then you're no longer in it."
"It was total horror, man. I could tell it was real, you know, a real dead body, just kinda by the way it fell on the ground."
"I stayed hidden till I couldn't hear the engine anymore. Then I come out."
"Sloppiness. Laziness. It wasn't the first time things had been missed and wouldn't be the last."
"But we might never get to court with what he's given us now. You just said yourself he's not that valuable."
"I'm putting him in a shelter because I want to know where he is in case we need him again. That's all."
"A bunch of papers and pictures in a file don't say anything about me."
"When you're alive but you're that close to dying, you think about those things. And then it does matter."
"It's like going to hell. You're down there and you could smell your own fear."
"Sleeping with your clothes on. You're a cliché cop, Bosch."
"Alcohol and jazz, he thought as he swallowed. Sleeping with your clothes on. You're a cliché cop, Bosch."
"It's not what I get. It's what the Lord gets."
"When you get a place like that, moving maybe thirty, forty cons through it a year, and only one in ten gets his ass in a jam again, then you are talking about a major success."
"You want to take a ride where you feel like going?"
"No matter what he did or what kind of fuckup he became after. Maybe if I had done more than make a few calls for him last year."
"You always get this way when a woman turns you down for dinner?"
"I wasn't talking about my little brother," she said. "He was my big brother, actually. And I was talking about a long time ago."
"It was the war that did it to them, that sent them the wrong way."
"You can't expect me to outline our structural security measures, but rest assured the vault is impregnable."
"We sell security. I know every vault client on sight."
"Our clients are a measure above that, Mr. Pounds. And so are we. You can appreciate that."
"The money is not the object. The peace of mind is."
"We're not asking you to go along with this. This is a federal operation."
"You take away our one advantage—surprise—and invite a firefight."
"They kill. Two people that we know about, including a witness. And that's only this week."
"We are going to have a long weekend ahead of us."
"If you let them know we are here, you take away our one advantage—surprise."
"Never mind the lookout. We put a SWAT team in that glass room and they can watch it on TV."
"No fucking way are we going to let them get away."
"We think they go with radio silence when they've got the explosives out."
"We're not going in after them. Too dangerous."
"We'll have every station in L.A. with a camera out on the sidewalk and traffic backed up to Santa Monica."
"It's his vault but his life would be endangered. We can prevent it."
"You can't change those things, Harry. And you're not supposed to be a martyr."
"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."
"You're looking at the baddest blood brother in the black echo."
"The best way to do that is to control public opinion. Keep everybody happy."
"The protection of the department is more important than the fact that two dumb cops made a mistake."
"I don't know what I think about things anymore."
"I've been thinking that maybe he wanted them to go down."
"It seemed like—I don't know, I'm very confused about things right now."
"Everything about the job has turned to shit."
"If Rourke knew we'd found the second vault and were watching it, why didn't he get his people out?"
"Maybe he knew it would work out that they'd go down shooting."