Being A Private Investigator
A reader wrote in with an interesting question: Why did I become a private investigator?
It’s pretty simple.
At the Orange County (CA) Register, my partner and I were investigating various shenanigans by an oil magnate who was trying to buy his way into a Las Vegas casino. We started running into a number of characters from the Chicago Outfit, a mafia family, who were interested in the oil magnate’s interaction regarding the casino in question. (I’m being deliberately careful in how I phrase that.) At one point we set up with a camera on the top floor of the parking garage at the Orange County airport as passengers got off a private jet. It was as if the real people behind the characters of the movie Casino were streaming into the nearby private lounge to meet with the magnate’s people. Watch the movie and you’ll see what I mean.
Anyway, about becoming a private investigator. The problem with being an investigative reporter is that you have editors, and in this case our editors killed the story. But to get to the point: There’s not really that much difference between being a private investigator and an investigative reporter: on the one hand you investigate and write it up and turn it in to a client; on the other hand you turn it in to an editor. (I want to note here that there is very little difference between clients and editors: some are great, many are morons.)
I made the switch because I thought being a private investigator would be exciting and dangerous. (I’d read all the Marlowe books, of course.) And, indeed, it had its moments. I remember sitting on a surveillance at night in Compton, surrounded by gangbangers who didn’t know I was there, my pistol nervously in my lap.
But I soon discovered that in order to keep your business viable you had to make money. (Ha ha, yeah, I know.) I did a few cases that involved surveillance of lovers or would-be lovers. But mostly I made money by working for insurance companies. This involved surveillance and/or interviewing people who claimed injuries and were thus receiving checks. Amazing how many times I filmed people who claimed they couldn’t do a damn thing but there they were swimming, playing golf or basketball, and it was all caught on my camera shooting through a brief gap in my sunshield.
About surveillance. On TV or in the movies you see often a PI sitting in the car with a clear view of the target through the windshield, the target just up the street. And, of course, the target doesn’t notice a thing. That’s not reality. The reality is you’re completely buttoned-up in your car with a sunshield covering every window. It’s broiling or freezing and you can’t run the heater or a/c. You also can’t really eat because the surveillance will last for hours and you have no way to… well, you know.
You take small sips of water. You have to pee after six hours.
And that’s why you have an empty bottle.