Just the Facts, Ma'am

Writers, artists and other creative types tend to go through lots of jobs, to do work others would never consider doing, and to take jobs that for a variety of reasons we’re not suited for.  We tend to be interested and even have a knack for many diverse career fields, but we’re just not equipped long term for most of them. 

Wanna hear about my first job as a cashier in a grocery store?  Or when I was a glamorous gumshoe?  Okay, we’ll go with gumshoe. 

I experienced the rush of anger and outrage when someone steals something from you before I took my first PI job.  It was when a thief had taken a small but brand-new grill from my patio.  I discovered the theft in the night and without one sane thought ran into the parking lot of my apartment complex and started flailing.  “Come out, come out, wherever you are, you @#$$ thief” or something like that. 

I wanted to catch the bad guy.

I’d tasted the urge for justice and so when a friend with a friend who owned a PI agency offered work, I jumped at the chance.

I found out quick enough that the private investigation business is made up of mostly watching cheating spouses or injured insurance claimants doing things they’re not supposed to be able to do.

All of that involves chasing, I mean, tailing.

Tailing is a real art.  It requires the right amount of restrained aggressiveness.  Can’t get too close or they’ll “make” you (that’s detective lingo) and you can’t hang back too far or you’ll lose them. 

One of my favorite cases was a surveillance in a rough part of town on a sultry summer day.  It was an insurance case and my partner and I had already followed our “suspect” to Kmart and filmed her lifting several bags of potting soil, despite an injured back.  The rest of the day we parked on a shade less street cleaning out our pores in between air conditioner breaks and eating chicken nuggets.

We’d been watching a tall thin gray-haired older black gentleman walking back and forth from his house to his car when he approached us.  He was carrying an assortment of multi-colored layers of cloth over his arm.   I rolled down the window figuring he was about to ask us what the heck we were doing or worse.

“Oh, I know what you’re doing.  I got no problem with you sitting here.”  Then, he gave us each a Jesus scarf.  Yep.  Long silky scarves with gold press on letters, “I- L-o- v-e  J-e-s-u-s”.  Seems he was a local pastor and seamstress and felt obliged to share a little kindness.

We probably missed some incriminating weed pulling while we were chatting. 

Another case involved a wife two timing her rich foreign doctor husband.  My instructions didn’t say if I should tail her or not, per se, if she left the house.  But once I saw the red taillights pulling out of the garage, it didn’t matter.

Heart pumping and hands sweating as I death gripped the steering wheel, I followed her more than twenty miles down a four-lane highway.  We weaved and bobbed many times as she tried to lose me amidst the light nighttime traffic.  I managed to push the “on” button on my video camera, take the lens cap off and point it forward instead of at me halfway through the chase.   I lost her down a one-way side street.  

I don’t know if that’s what Angie Dickinson aka Pepper would have done.  But I was spent and headed home.

My mean ol’ boss called the next morning and started giving me the what-for for not staying on the scene.  Never mind I’d busted the gal!  It was definitely her staying over at an unnamed but suspected lover’s abode far longer than it took to play a game of dominoes.  The boss started ranting about what’s admissible in court or some other detail, sprinkling some colorful expletives along the way.  Plus he was being totally ungrateful for the bonus video I’d taken!

Well, he could take his so-called “badge” he’d e-mailed me that I’d had to cut out and color in with a magic marker and stick it up his, well, you know.  All private investigators have a stench of sleaziness about them, at least the ones I’ve met. And this guy was no exception from the start all the way to the end of my illustrious career under his employ.

A lot of sweating aka pore cleansing, a verifiable excuse to eat fast foods and write them off my taxes, and an occasional unexpected goodie like a Jesus scarf.  With all that, who could resist the lure of chasing bad guys for money?

Unfortunately though there are also rules and laws and restrictions and all that sitting in a parked car for hours upon hours waiting to spy illegal lifting or illicit smooching.   

I still chase an occasional bad guy or girl down with my computer.  And my tailing expertise is used on special occasions.  I can’t say anymore or else I’d have to find you out there in Internet land and swear you to secrecy.  Or worse.

©2005