Fortunately, it only takes about 30 pages of the novel, “The Black Ice” to understand what the phrase “Black Ice” references. There is a Hawaiian version of a drug mix called “glass” but Mexicans are able to reproduce it more cheaply, and deliver it more cheaply, and money talks, so the Hawaiians are selling less and less. The drawback is that the Mexicans are using a brown heroin in the mix and this lends it’s name to their “Black Ice.”
But, we start with a dead LA detective, Plaxico Burrus… no, Calixeco Moore who apparently has committed suicide with a double barrel shotgun, in a cheap motel room, and a good portion of his head has been disintegrated.
Harry and Moore had met once, outside of work, at a bar, the “Catalina Bar & Grill.” Harry gets an education on “glass” versus “black ice.” But Harry also sees that Moore is just a committed drunk. And now, several weeks later, just before Christmas, Moore’s body has been found. *So I thought this bar would be easy to find in Google Maps, but then you realize that “The Black Ice” was written about 1993, so that was about 31 years ago. There are quite a few restaurants & bars that don’t last anywhere near as long.
Harry’s nemesis, Irvin S. Irving, sends him to notify Moore’s widow of her husband’s death. Harry knows that the widow is a teacher and that at the time of Moore’s death, he was separated from his wife. In fact, this might have been a reason, or one of the reason’s for Moore to commit suicide. But, Harry can’t remember the widow’s name, which she later tells him, it’s “Sylvia.” Harry is attracted to her.
Sylvia tells Bosch that she teaches English, and that she assigns different books to her students that have something to do with the history of Los Angeles. There is a quote from one specific book, “The Long Goodbye,” that she likes, “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” She says it’s about a detective, and Harry says he’s read the book. *When does Harry read a book?
“The Long Goodbye” was written by Raymond Chandler in 1953, and it was released as a movie in 1973, featuring Elliot Gould as Detective Philip Marlowe. I know the movie, having just rewatched it in the last week. In the movie, Marlowe is living at the High Tower Apartments, the apartments with the iconic elevator in a tower (located very close to the Hollywood Bowl). Because I haven’t read the Bosch novels in the order in which they were written by Connelly, I read “Echo Park” early. Recall that in “Echo Park” a young woman had been killed 13 years before, and only her automobile had been found in one of the small garages at the High Tower Apartments. When I saw the name “High Tower Apartments,” I immediately thought of the Long Goodbye movie, although at the time it had been several years since I last watched this film. The film is iconic, for the elevator in the tower, and Marlowe’s finicky cat that only will eat a certain brand of cat food, Marlowe’s scantily clad, and sometimes even nude female neighbors, and even for the movie’s ending when Marlowe shoots and kills his friend, who had killed his wife (not Marlowe’s wife) and set Marlowe up for a roller coaster ride with the cops & gangsters. *And one of the gangsters included a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. ***Written in 1953, released as a movie in 1973 and referenced in a Connelly novel in 1993. Before I forget, I’m also a Sterling Hayden fan, who’s character commits suicide by swimming out into the Pacific Ocean. Henry Gibson is also in the film.
So I went to Target today to see if they had celery seeds. I hadn’t found any at Walmart, and had mentally gone through the various other grocers that might have celery seeds in their spices section.
I rarely go to Target, but have bought various items there in the past. I walked off to the side in the store to their grocery section, and then looked back to one of the shelves. I saw what appeared to be about four hardback books laying on top of each other. They weren’t displayed for selling the books, but just as a display of “some books on a shelf.” For some reason, I decided to walk over to see which books they were, and even thought that they were about the size of a Connelly novel. And what? Yes, there was “Resurrection Walk” with a discount of 30% off the listed price. That would be about $21 dollars, plus tax.
And, as I’m writing this, the first episode of “The Rookie” is coming on again and I see that it is set in LA also.
I forgot. There is a dead Hawaiian “mule” who had a stomach full of drug sausages, but he had been strangled, and this is Harry’s case.
So, I am trying to think of how this story will all come together. Who killed the Hawaiian? Was Moore killed, or did he commit suicide? Will Harry screw Moore’s widow? Will Harry close two cases, before January 1st so that the department can say they have solved more homicides that year, than failed to?
Yes, he does screw Sylvia Moore before he heads to Mexicali. *Now, my next question is, “Does Sylvia Moore get killed by the end of ‘The Black Ice’?” And, I am still wondering if Harry actually marries Eleanor Wish.
Hotel De Anza, Calexico, CA
Sunshine Canyon Landfill
Monumento a Benito Juárez Mexicali, Mexico
[ADDENDUM 03/15/24]: So I’ve finished “The Black Ice” and have now started reading “City of Bones.” It’s been about eight years, between the two stories and Bosch needs Teresa C, the Chief Medical Examiner of LA, to identify a bone as ‘human.’ He stops by her front door, at night, and she quickly authenticates it as a humerus bone, probably of a child of about 10 years old, and then dismisses Harry quickly as she is on her way to some event. It’s New Year’s Eve.
Now here’s the thing. You just have to go back and review the last time Teresa and Harry were together, intimately. Seems that Teresa had completed the autopsy on Calexico Moore and she had found evidence that he hadn’t committed suicide, but Harry doesn’t know this, but Harry is questioning her as to what evidence she has discovered. She reluctantly tells Harry, “you can’t tell anyone this because it will jeopardize my chances at work of becoming the Chief Medical Examiner and not just the “Acting Chief…” Harry agrees willingly to “keep mum” about whatever it is, and Teresa spills the beans, and then they make love. Afterwards, while Teresa is taking a shower, Harry calls a reporter friend at the newspaper and suggests that there is a conflict with Moore’s cause of death. A suicide or a homicide? And then Harry heads down to Mexico.
When I read this, I remember thinking, “If I were a male contemporary of Harry Bosch, and he treated me the way he had just treated Teresa, I would probably think Harry was a sorry piece of shit that couldn’t be trusted. The information she had given him, in confidence, and that he had agreed not to share, because it might cost her the job she wanted, he had shared, immediately with the newspaper, and it would be obvious where the “leak” had come from. If I were a male co-worker with Harry, I would write him off right then as being a lying son of a bitch that couldn’t be trusted, and there wouldn’t be anything he could do or say that would ever change that. *Even if he makes it in the end so that I get approval from Irvin S. Irving to become permanent Chief Medical Examiner, which Harry did. Harry would have betrayed the trust between us, and become just another self-serving dick. Make her out to be some self-serving bitch, but Harry was worse, a lying asshole that couldn’t be trusted. His word, was about as long as his dick.
[end NOTE]
Bill Gibson, II 