Title: The Ace Hotel
Directed by: Zetna Fuentes
Written by: Alex Meenahan
Air Date: April 17, 2020
Previous: Money, Honey
Next: Hard Feelings
Guest Starring: Lynn Collins, Julie Ann Emery, Mimi Rogers
"The Ace Hotel" is the 6th episode of the sixth season of Bosch.
Alicia Kent tells her lawyer, Honey Chandler, all about the plot to kill her husband, while still insisting that it was supposed to be a scheme to get him to sign away rights to Alicia's patent. DDA Alex Kennedy arrives and agrees to a plea deal that will get Alicia only two years in prison if she gives up the name of her lover/partner-in-crime. Harry Bosch is appalled.
Agent Sylvia Reece arrives at the station at Bosch's summons, just before Alicia reveals the name of the murderer: Cliff Maxwell, Reece's partner. At the instruction of the LAPD, Alicia phones Cliff and tells her to meet him at her apartment downtown. He doesn't show, and the cops suspect that he might have sniffed out the surveillance. Bosch notes that the apartment building is right across the street from the Ace Hotel, where Stanley's private investigator photographed Alicia meeting Cliff for a tryst. They go in and find that sure enough, Cliff has checked into room 703.
Bosch is trying to formulate a plan when Reece charges ahead and kicks in the door to Cliff's room. They find it empty, only for Harry to look out a window and see Cliff dashing away across the roof. Bosch and Reece go charging after Cliff and follow him into the large theater next to the Ace Hotel.note A search by flashlight through the dark, empty theater ends with Cliff running out through a fire exit. He takes the fire escape down to the alley only to find himself surrounded by cops. Cliff makes eye contact with Agent Reece, up on the fire escape. He goes for his gun, and she shoots him dead.
Later, a search of Cliff's burner phone shows that he sent someone a text of himself, talking to Craver. In other words, Maxwell burned his own snitch. That night, a depressed Reece joins Harry for drinks. She tells him that Cliff checked out a "sound car" on his day off a while back, which leaves Harry wondering what Cliff wanted to record.
Bosch and Edgar search Cliff's house. Harry finds a flash drive disguised as a tube of ChapStick. The flash drive contains the recording from the sound car in which Cliff says "it can't trace back to me" and Alicia says "We can use Stan's." Stan's gun, that is. This makes Bosch and Edgar very happy, as it's ironclad proof Alicia knew Cliff was going to kill Stanley.
The Daisy Clayton investigation continues. Bosch tells Elizabeth Clayton what McMullen the street preacher mentioned, that Daisy called a man to pick her up. Liz knows nothing about this but guess it might have been her lover at the time, a man named Roy Lewis. Liz herself tracks Roy down at a local bar, confronts him, and punches him in the face.
Eventually Bosch finds Roy, who tells him that Daisy and her boyfriend Alex Sands were running a pretty scuzzy "badger game
" in which underage Daisy would lure men to hotels, only for Alex to jump out of the closet with a camera and rob the men of their cash and credit cards, with the men being in no position to report their losses to the police because they'd have to admit to being solicited for underage sex. Amazingly, Alex still has that ten-year-old laptop with the videos on it, and Harry takes the computer away.
In other news, Vega complains to Pierce about Lt. Billets' touchy-feely style, and is unpleasantly surprise when Pierce says that he's now obligated to report it up the chain of command. Irvin Irving thinks to undermine Jack Killoran's attacks over the homeless population by organizing a task force, "Operation Safe Sidewalks", to deal with the homeless. Irving's campaign manager Jen Kowski recommends he ask Honey Chandler for an endorsement. And the sovereigns are still out there, as Waylon Strout gets out of jail. Charlie Dax films a video in which Waylon Strout denounces the tyranny of the federal government, and posts it to YouTube. While Harry dismisses Waylon's words as just empty words, we see Heather is building a bomb.
Tropes:
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Maxwell committed suicide by his own gun in the book. Here, he dies through Suicide by Cop.
- Dramatic Irony: Liz tells Harry about how Daisy went into the foster care system, and how hard she tried to get Daisy back, and says "You don't know what it's like." Of course Harry does know what it's like, as he was in the foster care system and his prostitute mother tried to get him back before she was murdered.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Harry pops the cap on a tube of ChapStick in Cliff's desk and finds a flash drive. Harry grins and says "Hiding in plain sight."
- Hired to Hunt Yourself: Cliff Maxwell of the FBI task force was the one who made Stanley Kent steal the cesium, and then killed him.
- Oh, Crap!: Reece says "What the hell?" when Alicia Kent names not SAC Brenner like they were expecting, but Reece's partner, Cliff Maxwell.
- The Place: The Ace Hotel in downtown LA.
- Roof Hopping: Reece and Bosch chase Maxwell across the roof of the Ace Hotel theater.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In the novel The Overlook Maxwell kills Alicia Kent before he runs for it. In this show Alicia stays alive.
- Suicide by Cop: Cliff clearly makes a deliberate decision to go for his gun so Sylvia will have to shoot him.
- Title Drop: Bosch remembers that Alicia and Cliff once met at the Ace Hotel, across from the apartment building.
