Eleanor Wish

Eleanor D. Wish, née Scarletti (d. 13 Sept 2009) was the younger sister of Michael Scarletti,

the ex-wife of Harry Bosch, and the mother of Madeline Bosch. She was a tall, lithesome woman with shoulder-length, wavy brown hair with blonde highlights, dark eyes and a small, crescent shaped scar on her chin, the result of a childhood accident. She had a dark tan and wore little makeup. She was married and divorced some years prior to meeting Bosch and she kept her husband's surname. She lived in a rent-controlled townhouse near the beach in Santa Monica with Jacaranda trees outside, a short commute to the Federal Building in Westwood. She was a jazz aficionado, as is Bosch. She had a framed print of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks hanging in her apartment, which she and Bosch both admired. Bosch said he had seen the original at the Chicago art Institute. In terms of her personality, Eleanor is a risk-taker and sometimes exhibits very poor judgement about other people and her own behavior.

She was a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She attended Penn State University as a criminal justice major with a minor in accounting before being recruited into the FBI. She began with the bureau in the white-collar crime unit in Washington D.C., later requesting a transfer to the bank-robbery/kidnap unit in the L.A. office. Her supervisor there was John Rourke.

When she discovered the truth about her brother's death, she set out to seek justice against the men involved, including Art Franklin, Gene Delgado, and John Rourke. Her transfer to L.A. had been motivated by the intent to work for Rourke. Because she used her ex-husband's last name, Rourke never suspected who she was. She talked Rourke into a plan to steal the diamonds owned by Ngo Van Binh and Nguyen Tran. This resulted in the tunnel break-ins of WestLand National Bank and Beverly Hills Safe and Lock. She began a romantic relationship with Bosch while at the same time deceiving him about her role in the crimes they were investigating. In the end, Bosch uncovered her guilt. She turned herself in and accepted a plea bargain. At that time she gave Bosch the print of Nighthawks. She was sentenced to serve prison time at a prison for women where she met fellow inmate Patsy Quillen. The exact prison is unclear. In one case, Bosch said he received a Christmas card from her from Tehachapi, but that prison switched to men only in 1952.

After she was released, Eleanor became a professional poker player in Las Vegas, rotating among several casinos – including the Mirage, the Flamingo, and Harrah's – that hosted live poker tables. She lived in a cheap, sparsely furnished apartment on Sands Avenue. Shortly after she arrived in Las Vegas, she looked up Patsy's uncle Terrence Quillen, who staked her poker career. Eleanor later learned that the money had come from Chicago Outfit associate Joseph Marconi, and she became indebted to Quillen for a $200 weekly street-tax, occasionally running surveillance on various individuals for Marconi.

In June of 1996, Eleanor played at a table with Anthony Aliso, who was murdered a few days later in Los Angeles; the following Monday, she encountered Bosch again at the Flamingo, and the two shared a drink. The next day, she was brought in by Metro Police because of her association with Quillen, but Bosch arranged to have her released. That night, she was picked up by Quillen and taken to an Outfit safehouse where she was held to test Luke Goshen. Two days later, Bosch and Jerry Edgar extricated her from the house, and Bosch bought her a plane ticket to Los Angeles.

In L.A., Eleanor stayed at Bosch's newly rebuilt house on Woodrow Wilson Drive. The two married in Las Vegas on June 13, 1996, enabling Bosch to stifle an IAD investigation brought about by his association with a convicted felon. They took their honeymoon in Hawaii where they spotted but did not confront Gretchen Alexander. By April of 1999, however, Eleanor had grown restless, unable to find work, and began spending days at a stretch playing cards at the Hollywood Park card room. While Bosch investigated the racially charged murder of civil rights attorney Howard Elias, Eleanor took the opportunity to leave Los Angeles and return to Las Vegas, ending her marriage to Bosch. At this time she was pregnant but did not inform Bosch.

In October of 2002, she was visited three times by Bosch after he ran afoul of the Department of Homeland Security in the private investigation of a 1999 murder. At this time she seemed to be doing better financially because she was driving a Lexus and she lived in a nice house with a daily maid. She mentioned to Bosch that she had qualified for the World Series of Poker. When Bosch first visited, she met him at the airport and drove him to a rental car agency where he immediately left again for Los Angeles after giving her his credit card with instructions to use it in order to confuse the DHS agents trailing him. He gave her his ATM PIN number, 0613, which was their wedding day. A few days later she picked him up at the airport again and spent the night with him in a room at the Bellagio before leaving him at the casino. At his third visit, she reluctantly introduced Bosch to his daughter, Madeline. She had not previously told him that she was pregnant.

In 2003, she moved with her daughter to Hong Kong to become a high-stakes professional poker player at the Cleopatra Casino in Macau. Initially they lived in the Intercontinental Hotel in Kowloon. Later they moved to Highcliff in Happy Valley where the casino paid for her apartment. She played with house money, earning a percentage of her winnings but not risking her own money. Many Asian men wanted to play against a gweipo (white woman), which made her a valuable asset for the Casino. At the casino she met Sun Yee and they became lovers.

On 12 September 2009, Eleanor received a phone call from Bosch informing her that he had received a cellphone video depicting their kidnapped daughter. She unfairly blamed Bosch for somehow exposing their daughter to such danger. Early the next morning, she and Sun Yee met Bosch at the airport, and the three traveled to Victoria Peak to triangulate the neighborhood where they believed Madeline was being held. They then headed to Wan Chai to procure a gun for Bosch before searching the nearby buildings for markings identified in Bosch's cellphone video. Once she and Bosch narrowed the search to the Chungking Mansions building, they headed to the fifteenth floor to search room 1514, which they found empty. As they were leaving, they were approached by two unknown men who opened fired, hitting and killing Eleanor before Bosch killed them both. Bosch initially believed the two men were connected with Maddie's abduction, but in the end it became evident that they were merely intending to rob Bosch. At the time of her death she was approximately 49 years old.