The chair was ready, and background music
from Chet Baker was filling the atmosphere. I wanted Mr. Bosch to feel
comfortable. The man himself arrived, dressed in a suit and tie. It was a very
colourful tie, so I knew it had been chosen by his daughter Madeline.
“Please take a seat Mr. Bosch. Would you like something to drink?”
“No thanks, I have been swimming in coffee all day in the office. Those old cases are sure tough ones sometimes.”
“But today you have the help of computers to find all the details Mr. Bosch.”
“Just call me Harry, and it’s a thing with those computers. Some can do it and some can’t.”
“Which group are you Harry?”
“So let’s continue, what do you want to know.”
It seems that Harry Bosch was not so computer literate. I decided to change the subject.
“Seems you had an unhappy childhood Harry.”
“If you had been christened Hieronymous, you would have had one as well. I learnt it the tough way in the orphanage, the name did not help. I thought things would get better when I found my real father, but he was a Haller. Now who wants to be Harry Haller, a character in a book, Steppenwolf, that no-one really understands.”
“But by finding your father, you had a family.”
“Yea, some family. Each one of us had a different mother, although Mickey Haller was the best of the bunch. We had fun on a couple of cases.”
“You wife met a tragic end, being murdered in Hong Kong. Was that the reason you never remarried?”
“Not really, I had a couple of nice dames on the line; all in a similar business as mine. No, no marriage, I think my creator Michael Connolly found he was onto a good thing so he kept me fancy free. Cooked up a couple of problems in the female relations.”
“But you are not the youngest any more Harry. You was born in 1950 and are getting to retirement age. How does the future look?”
“I am not too sure. Connolly said he was earning too much money with me and Haller to stop writing about us. I heard a rumour about a serial killer in an old people’s residence. Seems one of my suspects in an old case is now lying low in a Rest Home up in the hills on Mount Olympus. He is using the money he got from killings to finance a good life style. I think the idea is that I move into the home under a false name and we have a showdown somewhere in the forest. That is where we find a few dead bodies of some old ladies he brought round the corner: strangled them in bed with their diamond necklaces. I think that story will be a success. Of course I fall in love with one of the surviving ladies. She used to work for a bank as a guard before being retired. Turns out she had a machine gun stashed under her bed in the residence and shot the killer just in time, before he was going to put a knife in my back.
“That sounds great Harry. Do you know the title of the book?”
“Not sure, but something like “Strangled with Diamonds at Mount Olympus”. And now I have to go, duty calls. We have a Chinese Restaurant under suspicion that are dealing with panda smuggling on the side; lots of rich people in Los Angeles want a pet panda, it’s big trouble today. Afterwards I have to be home. Mandeline is taking me to a rock concert down at the Hollywood Bowl, although I would prefer a nice quiet evening in a jazz club downtown. Just can’t have everything these days.”
“Thank you very much Harry for spending your precious time for this interview.”
“No problem, a nice comfortable chair and jazz in the background, just like home. See you on Mount Olympus.”
Harry left as he came, quietly and determined. He stepped back into a page of one of his cases.
“Please take a seat Mr. Bosch. Would you like something to drink?”
“No thanks, I have been swimming in coffee all day in the office. Those old cases are sure tough ones sometimes.”
“But today you have the help of computers to find all the details Mr. Bosch.”
“Just call me Harry, and it’s a thing with those computers. Some can do it and some can’t.”
“Which group are you Harry?”
“So let’s continue, what do you want to know.”
It seems that Harry Bosch was not so computer literate. I decided to change the subject.
“Seems you had an unhappy childhood Harry.”
“If you had been christened Hieronymous, you would have had one as well. I learnt it the tough way in the orphanage, the name did not help. I thought things would get better when I found my real father, but he was a Haller. Now who wants to be Harry Haller, a character in a book, Steppenwolf, that no-one really understands.”
“But by finding your father, you had a family.”
“Yea, some family. Each one of us had a different mother, although Mickey Haller was the best of the bunch. We had fun on a couple of cases.”
“You wife met a tragic end, being murdered in Hong Kong. Was that the reason you never remarried?”
“Not really, I had a couple of nice dames on the line; all in a similar business as mine. No, no marriage, I think my creator Michael Connolly found he was onto a good thing so he kept me fancy free. Cooked up a couple of problems in the female relations.”
“But you are not the youngest any more Harry. You was born in 1950 and are getting to retirement age. How does the future look?”
“I am not too sure. Connolly said he was earning too much money with me and Haller to stop writing about us. I heard a rumour about a serial killer in an old people’s residence. Seems one of my suspects in an old case is now lying low in a Rest Home up in the hills on Mount Olympus. He is using the money he got from killings to finance a good life style. I think the idea is that I move into the home under a false name and we have a showdown somewhere in the forest. That is where we find a few dead bodies of some old ladies he brought round the corner: strangled them in bed with their diamond necklaces. I think that story will be a success. Of course I fall in love with one of the surviving ladies. She used to work for a bank as a guard before being retired. Turns out she had a machine gun stashed under her bed in the residence and shot the killer just in time, before he was going to put a knife in my back.
“That sounds great Harry. Do you know the title of the book?”
“Not sure, but something like “Strangled with Diamonds at Mount Olympus”. And now I have to go, duty calls. We have a Chinese Restaurant under suspicion that are dealing with panda smuggling on the side; lots of rich people in Los Angeles want a pet panda, it’s big trouble today. Afterwards I have to be home. Mandeline is taking me to a rock concert down at the Hollywood Bowl, although I would prefer a nice quiet evening in a jazz club downtown. Just can’t have everything these days.”
“Thank you very much Harry for spending your precious time for this interview.”
“No problem, a nice comfortable chair and jazz in the background, just like home. See you on Mount Olympus.”
Harry left as he came, quietly and determined. He stepped back into a page of one of his cases.
Not a fictional character I'm familiar with, but an interesting interview nonetheless :-))
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