“No. And he’s not even Black. His name is Ted Rawls, and after he’d spent ten years as a cop, it would have been impossible not to come out of that with the obvious nickname. So some people still call him Lou and he seems to like it.”

Bosch nodded.

“You should know, though,” Ballard said, leaning forward and lowering her voice so it just barely made it over the privacy wall. “Rawls wasn’t my pick.”

Bosch rolled his chair in closer to his desk to hear better and complete the confidentiality huddle.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“We have more applications than we have seats in the pod,” Ballard said. “The chief gave me the go-ahead to pick who I want and that’s what I’ve done, but Lou Rawls was a Pearlman pick.”

“The councilman.”

“He’s very proprietary about this, he and his chief of staff. It’s about his sister but it’s also about politics. He’s got higher aspirations than city council, and the success of this unit can help. So he put Rawls in and I had to take him.”

“I’ve never heard of him and I think I would have with a name like that. He’s not LAPD, right?”

“No, he’s retired Santa Monica, but that was fifteen years ago, so he doesn’t bring a lot to the table. A lot of hand-holding required, and the thing of it is, he’s a direct pipeline to Pearlman and Hastings.”

“Hastings?”

“Nelson Hastings, Pearlman’s chief of staff. The three of them are like best buds or something. Rawls quit Santa Monica PD after ten years to go into business. So to him this is just a side gig.”

“What’s the business? Is he a PI?”

“No, it’s a business business. He owns a bunch of those mail-drop places. Like UPS, FedEx, box-and-packaging stores. Apparently he’s got them all over the city and does pretty well. He drives a fancy car and has a house in Santa Monica in the college streets. And my guess is he’s one of Pearlman’s main campaign supporters.”

Bosch nodded. He got the picture. A quid pro quo. Ballard leaned back and sat down after realizing that their whispering had been noticed by Laffont and Aghzafi. She could still see Bosch’s eyes over the partition. She continued in a regular tone.

“You’ll meet Paul and Colleen tomorrow,” she said. “They’re solid. Masser is a retired deputy D.A. who worked in Major Crimes, so he’s helpful on the search warrants and legal questions and strategies. It’s good to have him in-house instead of needing to call the D.A.’s Office every time we have a question.”

“I think I remember him,” Bosch said. “And Hatteras?”

“No law enforcement experience. She’s our in-house genealogist and what they call a ‘citizen sleuth.’”

“An amateur. For real?”