Tux by Lux was on Beverly Drive south of Wilshire, which put it on the more economical side of Beverly Hills. It looked like a business that moved a lot of product, as opposed to the by-appointment-only salons on Rodeo Drive that catered to clients headed to the Oscars and the Vanity Fair after-party.
Ballard sat in her city ride, sipping her coffee from Go Get Em Tiger, and waited for the front glass door of Tux by Lux to be unlocked for the day. It was 9:50.
Her phone rang and she saw it was Bosch. She took the call but kept her eyes on the glass door.
“Just checking in,” Bosch said. “I have the campaign button and am at the airport ready to board.”
“Sounds good,” Ballard said. “How was Juanita?”
“Fully cooperative but sick. She’s dying.”
“What?”
“Terminal cancer. I don’t know how much time she’s got left, but it didn’t look like a lot. No pressure but she said she’s hanging on because you gave her hope. She wants to live to see somebody get charged.”
“Oh, great, no pressure at all. What kind of cancer?”
“I didn’t ask. The kind that shrivels you up in the end.”
“God. Well, all we can do is do what we can do. I hope we make a case and she’s still alive to know it.”
“You in the car? I hear traffic.”
Ballard told him what she was doing, and as she spoke, she saw a man in his forties come to the glass door of the tuxedo store, unlock it at the bottom, and enter.
“I think he just opened the store,” she said. “I should get in there before any customers do.”
“I’ll let you go,” Bosch said. “But when you get back to Ahmanson, can you prime forensics on what’s coming? Maybe they can send a print car out to do it right there so we know whether this was a complete waste of time.”
“Will do.”
“Good luck.”
They disconnected and Ballard got out of the car. She was pleased that she had not said “Roger that” to Bosch’s request about forensics.
Ballard entered the store, carrying a file with two photos in it. Racks of tuxedos lined the wall on the right, and floor-to-ceiling shelves of white shirts lined the left. There was a mirrored fitting area in the back and a checkout station in front. Two glass cases with bow ties in one and assorted cuff links in the other extended from either side of the cashier’s desk.
There was no sign of the man Ballard had seen unlock and enter the store.
“Hello?” she called out loudly.
“Hello?” a voice came back. “I’ll be with you in one moment.”
Ballard walked over to the glass counter and looked down at the cuff links. They ranged from the tasteful and exquisite to the off-putting and tacky. She was leaning over a pair that were silver silhouettes of a woman posing with arms back and chest out, an image familiar from the mud flaps of 18-wheelers.
“How can I help you?”
Ballard turned and saw the man she had seen unlock the store. She pulled her badge off her belt and held it out to him.
“Renée Ballard, LAPD. I’m looking for Sandy Kramer.”
He raised his hands.
“You got me!”
He then dropped his arms and put his wrists together for the handcuffs. Ballard gave a perfunctory smile. It wasn’t the first time someone she badged had reacted this way, thinking they were being clever.
“I need to ask you some questions about a homicide investigation,” she said.
“Oh, shit, my bad,” Kramer said. “I guess I shouldn’t have been joking, huh? Who’s dead?”
“Is there a place we can talk privately? I’d rather not be in the middle of this when a customer comes in.”
“Uh, we have a break room in the back. It’s kind of small.”
“That will be fine.”
“I don’t have any appointments till eleven. I could just put a sign on the door and lock up. How long will this take?”
“Not that long.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
He went behind the counter, took out a pad for writing down alteration instructions, and wrote “BACK BY 10:45” on it. Using a piece of hemming tape from a tool basket, he attached the sign to the front glass. He then reached down and locked the door.
“Follow me,” he said.
They went around a curtain in the fitting area and into a space that was half storage and half break room. There was a table with two chairs, and Kramer offered one to Ballard. She pulled it out and sat down. Kramer did the same.
“Now, what murder?” he asked.
“We’ll get to that,” Ballard said. “First, tell me, when was the last time you spoke to Jake Pearlman?”
“Oh my god, is Jake dead?”
His surprise seemed genuine to Ballard. She had wanted to know if he had been tipped to the investigation by Pearlman or anyone else on his team.
“No, he’s not dead,” she said. “Can you remember the last time you talked to him?”
“Uh, well, it’s been a while,” Kramer said. “I called him when he won the election. So that would’ve been four years ago?”
“He got elected six years ago.”
“Wow, time flies. Well, whenever it was, I called and congratulated him. I remember I told him he would be going to a lot of black-tie events now and I offered him a discount here. But that was it. He never took me up on it.”
“What about Nelson Hastings? Did you talk to him lately?”
“Hastings? Forget it. I have no reason to talk to him. I can’t remember the last time.”
“But you know him?”
“More like knew. We all went to school together. Hollywood High—and I do mean high.”
He laughed at his own inside joke. But it was a nervous laugh. Ballard read his tone when he spoke about Hastings as bordering on enmity.
“Did you have a problem with Hastings?” she asked.
“More like he had a problem with me. He wanted Jake to himself and eventually pushed me out. I’m just not that competitive. So now he’s running the Jake show, and I’m here.”
Ballard nodded.
“So, let’s go back to 2005,” she said. “You ran his campaign back then, correct?”
“I did, yeah,” Kramer said. “But I’m not sure I would call it a campaign. That sounds so big and planned—all the things that ours was not.”
“It was a small operation?”
“When Jake ran for president of the senior class at Hollywood High, we probably had a better machine. I mean, the ’05 campaign was held together by spit and Scotch Tape. We didn’t know what we were doing, and it failed as it deserved to fail. Jake stayed in politics, retooled, and then came back and won that seat. I was long gone by then. So tell me who died and what it has to do with me. I’m getting worried here.”
“Laura Wilson died. Was murdered. Does that name sound familiar to you?”
“Laura Wilson—I don’t think so. Let me think for a minute.”
“Sure.”
Kramer seemed to ponder the name, but he didn’t take the minute he’d asked for.
“Are you saying she had something to do with the campaign?” he asked.
“I’m trying to find that out,” Ballard said. “Did you know all the volunteers?”
“Back then, I did, yes. I recruited them. But there were not very many and I don’t remember any Laura Wilson.”
“Let me show you something.”
She opened the file on the table and proffered the 8 x 10 headshot of Laura Wilson. Kramer leaned in to look at it without touching it.
“No, don’t recognize her,” Kramer said.
“Is it possible she could have been a volunteer?” Ballard pressed.
“A Black girl, I would remember. We could’ve used one but we didn’t have any.”
“You’re sure.”
Kramer pointed emphatically at the photo.
“She was not part of the campaign,” he said. “I recruited all the volunteers. She wasn’t one of them.”
“Okay,” Ballard said. “Take a look at this photo.”
She slid an 8 x 10 copy of the photo of Laura’s junk drawer across the table to Kramer.
“You see the campaign button there?” she asked.
“Yep, right there,” Kramer said. “It’s a beauty.”
“Did you have those made?”
“Of course. They were the deluxe—with the freedom ribbons attached. I remember we debated the extra spend but Jake liked the ribbons. Made the button stand out.”
“Who got them?”
“Well, we had them at the office for walk-ins. And we also went door-to-door in the district. We didn’t give everybody a button, but we did give them to people who expressed support for Jake.”
“How many did you have made, do you remember?”
“I think it was a thousand, but we didn’t give them all out. I remember after it was all over, I had a couple bags left and just dumped them. In fact, I think the last time I talked to Nelson was when he called me up and asked for the buttons because Jake was going to make another run at it. I told him I dumped them years ago and he just hung up on me. Great guy, that Nelly.”
“Back in ’05, do you remember if the campaign sent people door-to-door in the Franklin Village area? More specifically, Tamarind Avenue—that neighborhood?”
“If it was in the district, I am sure we did. We went out every night. The whole staff and all the volunteers we could get. We’d meet at that deli on Sunset…I can’t remember the name. It was like a hundred years old, but they closed for good during the pandemic.”
“Greenblatt’s.”
“Right, Greenblatt’s—what a loss. I loved that place. They had a room upstairs and we would all meet there at six every night. We’d order sandwiches and a beer, expensing it to the campaign, and then we’d divvy up the neighborhoods so there wouldn’t be any overlap. We’d hand out buttons and pledge cards and then we’d split up to go knock on doors. Grassroots, man. But the truth was, I didn’t know shit about running a campaign. It was fun, though.”
“Who got Tamarind Avenue?”
“Oh, man, I can’t remember that. All I can tell you is we tried to hit every neighborhood at least twice. But I have no records, and that was way too long ago for me to remember who went where or what street. Are you trying to say someone from the campaign killed this woman?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m really just running down a loose end. This photo is from her apartment. She was murdered there the Saturday before the election, and that button was in her junk drawer. That tells me someone from the campaign probably knocked on her door at some point leading up to the election. It may not mean anything at all, but we have to ask questions and follow leads wherever they go.”
“Got it. I wish I was more help.”
Ballard put the photos back in the file and closed it.
“I take it you’ve talked to Jake and Hastings already,” Kramer said.
“Yes, we have,” Ballard said. “I saw them both yesterday. You really don’t like Hastings, do you?”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Yes. But at one time you all were good friends?”
“We were, yeah. We were tight as a fist, we used to say. But Nelson got between me and Jake and pushed us apart. It started during that campaign, and then after we lost, I got blamed. Not by Jake but by Nelson, and that always rubbed me wrong, because he was only the driver. He didn’t write positions, didn’t strategize media buys. He did nothing except drive, and then he dumps it all on me, that I was the reason we lost.”
Ballard froze. She tried not to show what was going on behind her eyes, but she was sure that when she had spoken to Hastings about the 2005 campaign and the button in Laura Wilson’s drawer, he had said the election was before his time on Pearlman’s staff.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Nelson Hastings was Pearlman’s driver during the 2005 campaign? He was around back then?”
“Yeah, he was there,” Kramer said. “He had just gotten back from Afghanistan and was out of the army and Jake said he needed a driver. We didn’t pay him anything. He was a volunteer.”
“Did he do any of the knocking on doors?”
“We all did that. Even Jake. It was required.”
Adrenaline was beginning to course through Ballard’s blood. She had caught a discrepancy, possibly even an outright lie, in the net she had thrown. She felt the investigation suddenly had a solid new direction.
“Before I leave, I just want to ask you something,” she said. “Back in high school, did you know Jake’s sister?”
“Sure,” Kramer said. “We all did. Sarah. That was horrible, just horrible.”
“You were around the family when she was murdered?”
“Yeah, I was over there. Jake was my friend. But what could you say, you know? It was just a nightmare.”
“Who else among his friends was there for him?”
“Well, there was me. And Nelly. Another guy, named Rawls, who became a cop was part of our group.”
“Rawls, was he part of that tight fist you mentioned?”
“He was. And so, yeah, we tried to do what we could, but we didn’t know how to help. We were just kids.”
“I understand that. Did the police back then talk to you all?”
“I think so. They talked to me, that’s for sure. I had gone out on one date with Sarah, but it was a long time before. But they still gave me the third degree. Are these cases somehow connected? Sarah and the girl who had the button?”
“We don’t know. It’s probably just a grim coincidence. I was curious about it. It’s still a big thing for Jake.”
“And always will be, I’m sure. Sarah was great. She was smart and beautiful and had a lot going for her. I never understood why someone would want to take all of that away.”
Ballard nodded.
“Well, it’s almost time for your appointment,” she said. “I think I’ll let you get ready for that. I appreciate your time, Mr. Kramer. Could you do one thing for me?”
“Sure,” Kramer said. “What do you need?”
“I need you to keep this conversation between us. Is that a problem?”
“Not at all, Detective.”
Ballard gave Kramer her cell number and told him to call if he thought of anything else she should know. She was almost hyperventilating by the time she got back to her car. She started the engine and cranked up the air conditioning. She composed herself and then reached over to the passenger seat to get her case list. She studied it for a moment, trying to modulate her breathing. She focused on one entry on the paper.
Hastings—send photo of LW
She realized that she had never done that. And that raised a big question.
She checked the dashboard clock, did the math, and realized that Harry Bosch was in the air and it would still be a few hours until she would be able to talk to him. She knew she had much to do before then.
She dropped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb.