The Black Echo

They drifted into their own thoughts again. Leaning against the door with his head against the side window, Bosch rarely took his eyes off the vault. Traffic on Wilshire was light but steady. People heading to or from the clubs over on Santa Monica Boulevard or around Rodeo Drive. There was probably a premiere at nearby Academy Hall. It seemed to Bosch that every limousine in L.A. was working Wilshire this night. Stretch cars of all makes and colors cruised by, one by one. They moved so smoothly they seemed to float. They were beautiful, and intriguing with their black windows. Like exotic women in sunglasses. A car built just for this city, Bosch thought.

“Has Meadows been buried?”

The question surprised him. He wondered what tumble of thought led to it. “No,” he answered. “Monday, over at the veterans cemetery.”

“A Memorial Day funeral, sounds kind of fitting. So his life of crime did not disqualify him from being placed in such sacred ground?”

“No. He did his time over there in Vietnam. They’ve saved a space for him. There’s probably one there for me, too. Why did you ask?”

“I don’t know. Just thinking is all. Will you go?”

“If I’m not sitting here watching this vault.”

“That will be nice of you. I know he meant something to you. At one point in your life.”

He let it drop, but then she said, “Harry, tell me about the black echo. What you said the other day. What did you mean?”

For the first time he looked away from the vault and at Eleanor. Her face was in darkness, but headlights from a passing car lit the interior of the car for a moment and he could see her eyes on his. He looked back at the vault.

“There isn’t anything really to tell. It’s just what we called one of the intangibles.”

“Intangibles?”

“There was no name for it, so we made up a name. It was the darkness, the damp emptiness you’d feel when you were down there alone in those tunnels. It was like you were in a place where you felt dead and buried in the dark. But you were alive. And you were scared. Your own breath kind of echoed in the darkness, loud enough to give you away. Or so you thought. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Just… the black echo.”

She let some time slide between them before she said, “I think your going to the funeral is nice.”

“Is something wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I said. The way you’re talking. You haven’t seemed right since last night. Like something-I don’t know, forget it.”

“I don’t know, either, Harry. You know, after the adrenaline wore off, I guess I kind of just got scared. Made me start thinking about things.”

Bosch nodded his head but didn’t say anything. His mind drifted and he remembered a time in the Triangle when a company that had taken heavy casualties from sniper fire stumbled onto the entrance to a tunnel complex. Bosch, Meadows and a couple of other rats named Jarvis and Hanrahan were dropped at a nearby LZ and escorted to the hole. The first thing they did was drop a couple of LZ flares, a blue one and a red one, into the hole and blow the smoke in with a Mighty Mite fan, to find the other entrances in the jungle. Pretty soon ribbons of smoke started curling out of the ground at a couple dozen spots for two hundred yards in all directions. The smoke was coming up through the spider holes the snipers used as firing positions or to move in and out of the tunnels. There were so many of them, the jungle was turning purple from the smoke. Meadows was stoned. He popped a cassette into the portable tape player he always carried and started blasting Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” into the tunnel. It was one of Bosch’s most vivid memories, aside from his dreams, of the war.

He never liked rock and roll after that. The jolting energy of the music reminded him too much of the war.

“Did you ever go see the memorial?” Eleanor asked.

She didn’t have to say which one. There was only the one, in Washington. But then he remembered the long black replica he had watched them installing at the cemetery by the Federal Building.

“No,” he said after a while. “I’ve never seen it.”

After the air in the jungle cleared and the Hendrix tape was done, the four of them had gone into the tunnel while the rest of the company sat on backpacks and chowed and waited. An hour later, only Bosch and Meadows had come back. Meadows carried with him three NVA scalps. He held them up for the troops above ground and yelled, “You’re looking at the baddest blood brother in the black echo.” And so came the name. Later, they found Jarvis and Hanrahan in the tunnels. They had fallen into punji traps. They were dead.

Eleanor said, “I visited it when I was living in D.C. I couldn’t make myself go to the dedication in eighty-two. But a lot of years later I finally got the courage. I wanted to see my brother’s name. I thought maybe it would help me sort things out, you know, about what happened with him.”

“And did it?”

“No. Made it worse. It made me angry. It left me with this need for justice, if that makes sense. I wanted justice for my brother.”