The evil of money.....

I troll the internet for domestic clients and other non-regular sources of revenue.  I need to eat just like the next private dick.  The down side is you want the money so you end up working some strange cases that you can hardly wait to shower off of you.

My instincts get better every day.  In 20 seconds I can suss out whether I like a client or will have a hard time.  Two opposites.  The first was a family law case for a woman going through a divorce who could not get her former partner to move out of her house!  They had twin 3-year-olds.  She ran a successful business; he loafed all day and hung out in chat rooms.  I followed him to see what he was doing after he dropped the kids off at daycare.  Not a whole helluva lot.  He drove this minivan, talked on a cellphone and tailgated trucks at 55 mph because he could not multitask driving and phoning. 

Surveillance on this stooge was going well until the client became insistent that she wanted shots of the minivan's interior to show he had the child seats in all facacta .  Bad things happen when you try to shoot video or photos out of the safey of your own car, essentially a duck blind on wheels.  So while trying to get covert shots of his van in the daycare parking lot I got busted!  He was inside but some MILF saw me and the camera.  I got out like a scalded wolverine.  The client paid the invoice but I never should have tried taking photos outside my car; plus, I knew better and could have tracked him easily for another few days before I got wise.  Good client, bad result.

Next client: Control freak who wanted me to catch his estranged wife pulling nooners while at work.  I should have know he was tightly wound when he presented me detailed sketches of her work parking lot, home parking lot, etc.  I never make promises and I lost this woman in the afternoon for about 35 minutes.  I told him this right when it happened.  So a week goes by and he tells me that I must have lost her longer than that because she had supposedly had a doctor's appointment and humped someone.  Wow, and I thought I had a busy work day.  That guy was a prick.  Gee, why would she want to leave him?????

I put in the time for him but did lose her.  I need to get in my contract a clause where client pays all my traffic tickets and increases in insurance premiums.

9:24 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Why don’t people learn (surveillance)

Clients are cheap.  I have done this work since 1994. I know what it takes to win.  Yet, some clients still expect one PI to do a surveillance, successfully, at rush-hour in San Francisco at about 5 pm.  They are so cheap they don't want to pay the extra $50 per-hour for a second car and PI.

Case in point: Surveillance last month on a Friday afternoon that began in Pacheco and failed in San Francisco.  Husband-wife strife.  I got on hubby with the other gal at about 5:30 p.m. as he gunned it onto southbound 680.  I had to get on his ass on the on-ramp because the alternative was losing him.

I figured that he had his love-bomb in the car and would not notice me.  (I did not take into account that the client had tried previously to follow them.) If you know San Francisco traffic you know that westbound Caldecott on a Friday afternoon is more congested than a February head cold.  I drove in front of them through the tunnel and picked them up on the other side in Berkeley.

Christ.  If that Bourne-bit wasn't good enough I somehow tracked them through the Bay Bridge toll plaza where lanes were thicker than Oprah after a failed diet.  I pulled ahead of them in mad traffic on the bridge but had to get on their ass at the Montgomery exit.  Several blocks later he made a left on Embracadero, spotted me and beat me through a light. I spent the better part of the evening looking all over for them.  If the client had spend $300 more for a second PI we would have nailed him.

10:55 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

sweet vengeance?

You would think that as an Oakland private dick of many years I would know better.  But it happens to the best of us.  I came back with the dog from Redwood Park driving down Shepherd Canyon in early March.  I braked for the stop sign at Shepherd Canyon to let traffic clear coming from the right.  Wump! I felt and heard the telltale sound of my rear-end getting tagged, from a car....

So I get out and see a portly  50-something white dude with short dark hair behind the wheel of a prius.  Next to him is his 9-year-old daughter, who is holding a book or map in her lap.  I growl at dad to pull over when we get to a wider spot in the road, since we are holding up traffic.  But no sooner do I pull over than weasel takes off up Snake Road.  I U-turn as quickly as I can, throwing the dog all over the place as I chase after him at about 60 mph.  Could not find the bastard and all I got were the first 4 digits on the place.

My rear bumper had about $2k in repairs and I was out the $500 deductible.  I made a police report and ever since that day scanned license plates on all blue Priuses.  (It's an occupational tic that I am a chronic license plate scanner; it comes from losing people on surveillance and panicking that I won't find them.)

So nearly 5 months go by and I see my partial plate!  The guy was driving in the same general area.  I had dog in the back of the car, and I again had to whip Daisy side-to-side to make a U-turn to chase him.  I lost him briefly but caught up to him in Montclair village.  This time I got the full plate.

I did not want to confront him or follow him.  I want to show up on his door step and ask if he remembers me.  I also want to take photos of the front of his car and question his daughter about what she remembers.  I will have his plates run, get his name and start the collection process.  I might even paper his neighborhood about his hit-and-run tendencies.  He's probably a teacher or guidance counselor.

11:30 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

www.novometro.com

Oakland reads www.novometro.com   

10:54 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Helping Families, for a price

I wish I could say that altruism motivates me on my job.  It does to a degree, but money gets my attention and juices flowing.  The day after Fourth of July I left Oakland about 12:30 p.m. while the temperature was in the low '80s.  I had agreed to deliver a letter for a client in Texas to her brother in the Palmdale, CA area, in the high desert in northeast Los Angeles County. She had hired me about 1.5 years ago to locate him, which I did, but he never responded to her.  Her parents were in failing health and in their mid 80's.

So out of Oakland on Highway 580 heading for Interstate 5.  By Pleasanton, about 25 miles away, the temp was in the mid '90s.  In Patterson it had hit about 100 degrees and it just kept climbing.

I started getting weird and antsy when it went to about 109 in Fresno where I had to stop and get gas.  I have played golf in 107-degrees and that was pretty brutal.  I kept thinking what if the car dies on me and I'm standing near the road reduced to a puddle.  Near Bakersfield the temperature hit 115 as I was about to climb the Grapevine, a stretch of I-5 that climbs to 4,500 feet before dumping you in LA.  I turned off the air conditioning for about three minutes in the steepest part of the climb.

After checking into the hotel I almost said screw it, why don't I just enjoy happy hour or have those beers in my cooler out near the swimming pool.  I wanted to get it over with so back into the heat I went at about 7:00 p.m.  I learned from my source that my target no longer had utilties at the old address.  I knocked on the door at his old place, basically a shack on the edge of a towing yard.  One of his roommates told me they had a dispute and he had moved out.  He had his cell phone number which I jotted down as I heard him trying to dial the number.  My subject answered and agreed to meet me at the Post Office, but after waiting for another 40 minutes he did not show.

So I called the cell number I was smart enough to take down.  He was waiting near the Post Office in Pear Blossom, not Littlerock.  D'oh!. Drover another 15 minutes, gave him the letter from his sister and watched him ball like a little girl. I told the client what happened and they got in touch with each other.

Back to the hotel for my Coors Lights.  I billed the client for my total time on the case, including my sleeping time.  Hey, on short notice I got the job done and risked bleaching my bones in the desert.

5:15 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

More good surveillance fun!

You get older and you don't feel so cool in bars or clubs anymore.  I am comfortable reading the newspaper or watching ESPN with a cocktail in hand.  So in the name of money I fought off my armchair comfort zone to go do surveillance at a reggae show, mon.  Client has a greencard marriage to a philandering wife.  He explained to me that if she proved he was unfaithful, he could get deported.  He knew she was sleazing around.  People in their early 20s should not be married.

He told me that she would likely bolt with a lover at some point in the night.  She is blond with some good curves.  The problem on the night in question was a lot of blondes with nice curves and similar hairstyles.  I called him from the show and he gave me some more description; I spotted her because she had a distinctive purse and spoke a foreign language. 

She thought she was so discrete.  But on a couple songs I spotted her loving up on a short guy in a fedora.  It was not "friend-love dance" but I-want-in-your-pants-dance. Intermission.

Small talk in front of the club.  Target and lover separate but like a salmon looking to spawn they unite and head for dark cover up the street.  I have to run back to my car and pursue them.  Because if I follow on foot and try to get camera on them they will likely hear me.  I film them from my car, about 60 yards away.  My camera has night shot but the video is a tad too dark for my liking.  Still, you can see hands all over the place South of The Border if you know what I mean. 

I still love this job.  Now back to my Top 10 on ESPN

11:39 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Long live Kincaid the labrador

The word beautiful gets tossed around a lot.  It applied to a dear, departed dog, Kincaid, a strapping black lab who had cancer and dies at age 11.

Mercifully, his illness was pretty quick.  I saw him the week before he died out on a trail where I take our 1-year-old lab.  He was sick, but he managed to shuffle up to me for a hug.  I saw him the day before he died.  He managed to climb the stairs and say hello.  He was in torment, not comfortable sitting or standing.

In his prime, Kincaid was a 100-pound beast with a head like a cinderblock and a tail as thick as a tree branch. I played tug with his rope, holding the rope in my dominant hand with the other end in his mouth.  He could sink his big rump down low and pull me off my feet.  Sometimes he would readjust his grip and accidentally gouge my fingers with his big teeth.

I met Kincaid through a former girlfriend, Joy, who got Kincaid from Guide Dogs for The Blind.  Not all Guide Dogs make the cut.  The school dropped him allegedly for "front elbow displacia."  I bet if I could see his file it would include copious notes on fondness for food and stubborness.

I used to walk him in Albany, California, where he lived for many years.  A bagel factory was on the route.  Kincaid staked out the bagel dumpster for scraps and then learned about the door to the factory.  He soon learned to camp out until workers fed him product.  On walks near a fruit stand Kincaid would hop up on his hind legs to steal a peach without breaking stride. I spoiled him giving some pieces of snacks from cafes, and I'm glad I did.

He didn't have a mean bone in his body.  A jealous bone maybe but nothing mean.  I once saw him bodycheck a young lab to dislodge the pup of a tennis ball.

I took him to some rugby practices and games.  He always knew where I was on the field despite all the confusing smells.  Even as he got older he would still spin around and act excited when I came to see him.  He once ratted me out on a housesitting trip when I left one time without spending the night.  I had left at about midnight and retured at 8.  But his mother told me that neighbors complained he was howling.

I still remember house sitting for him in Albany.  He did not have an automatic feeder.  The first time I sat for him he woke me up at 4:30 a.m. wanting breakfast.  I soon learned it was impossible to ignore him because he started poking me under the armpits with his big nose.  It was easier to feed him than ignore him.  After breakfast, he would hop back in bed with me, cross his paws while on his stomach, and calmly watch birds out the window.

He was beautiful.  On the weekend he died, my dog was learning to swim,  Kincaid was nice to Daisy and ignored her as most older dogs do. He was the ring tender at his parents wedding.  I still think of a puppy photo I saw of him; his little girl owner was struggling to hold him and a littermate in one arm while his belly was bulging from under her foream.  Me and your family miss you lots.  Kincaid brought people together and gave us lots of good memories and times.

10:48 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

I miss rugby

I have been hitting people since I was 8 years old and I'm now closing on 42.  Rugby filled the void post 18-years-old where you can't smack people legally. Up until rugby, I had played football as a youth, wrestled in high school and played some lacrosse in college.  Rugby blew them all away in terms of competition and camaraderie.

After 6 trips to the emergency room in 17 seasons of rugby, I quit playing competitive matches this season.  It hurts, way beyond the discomfort of a broken rib, collarbone, wrist in two places, stitched heads, ripped muscles, deformed shoulders, strains, sprains and kinks.  My last play in a real game saw me take one for the team as an opponent tagged me under the armpit just as I heard 'mate Bailey screaming for ball coming up outside of me.  I am self employed and if  can't physically get around I have no income.

I have seen some of the greatest unsung athletes play rugby.  Every year a new crop comes in to kick out the old dogs.  This year was a 21-year-old Irish kid from Stockton named "Thomo." He was about 190-195 pounds playing wing for Baracus.  He did not have the slick step or the passing but he trucked fools.  The most dangerous size in sport is typically 180 to 200 pounds where mass and speed merge.  Big folks usually just don't have the physics to get low and pound people. 

I worked hard at the game.  In my last few years of rugby I had a much better understanding of the game:  get the ball to your playmakers and play to your strengths.  I could usually make the first man miss me but yet could not pull away from anyone over a distance of more than about 15-20 yards.  Perhaps it was from the wrestling background but I could always get off the ground just about quicker than anyone.  Rugby is not about pure speed but about reaction and instincts.

Rugby was humble.  I never saw much shit-talking in a match, and if there was any it got policed and remedied on the pitch.  Guys who know the game know the code.  Shut the fuck up and play hard.  The best players lead by example, not talk.

I had three great coaches:  Barry Thompson of the Olde Gaels; Eric Whittaker of the Gaels and John Somers of Baracus.  Barry gave everyone a chance to start.  He knew that fitness won ball games. In the pre-game stretches Barry walked the circle talking to each player about what he needed to do for the team.  Whitaker, a former Eagle, preached upbeat rugby and that we all make mistakes.  He made the game fun and made you want to go to training.  John Somers taught you how to play as a team, especially in the rucks and mauls. He taught us that it was okay, no, preferred, to talk during the game.

Every game I played I had the butterflies. I loved the focus and concentration.  Becase I played in the outer backs I had to make one on one tackles, or at least try to make them, and field big kicks in the air.  When the ball was in the air time stood still, nothing else but a seeming eternity following that ball in to my hands.

Other than my pass on my last play ever, my favorite play was in a B-side match against a bunch of cocksuckers from Mission rugby.  I was playing the wing and there coach was trashtalking me.  My boy 'Show somehow got the ball out to me on the wing and I dusted them down the sidelines.  Another fond memory was my first 7s tournament in Tampa in August.  This just in: It was fucking hot.  A guy on my team Chuckie got caught on the tryline and I was the closest to him from about 15-20 meters away.  I sprinted to him while Chuckie heaved a bounce pass towards me.  I caught it on the hop and went in for the try.

Rugby has no equal socially.  It has everything.  Dopers, druggers, Christians, Buddhists, a great set of people.

I miss rugby.

12:17 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Still the surveillance king!

I have done surveillance on and off since 1995, most of them successful.  I still get my jollies catching people.  Just to hype myself, police do surveillance with teams of people, GPS and helicopters, multiple cars, etc. Most of my clients can't spring for multiple private dicks so they just use one, me.  I have to occasionally run red lights and do some other high risk stuff, yet I only have one traffic ticket for these tricks.

So a client called from the east coast telling me that his wife was staying at a Fisherman's Wharf hotel.  I grilled him about restraining orders trying to ferret out whether he was a creep or a wife beater.  He copped to getting into a beef with his neighbor over a fence dispute.  He needed her tailed asap.  He overnighted to me an $800 retainer and a 3-year-old photo of his wife, who wore shades in the picture.  All I really had was that she was tall for woman, about 5'9" with medium length brown hair.

I sat in my car in a loading zone for two hours glaring at people getting in and out of taxis and coming and going from the hotel.  Finally, I saw what might have been her.  She was with a balding beefy guy, not her husband.  Surprise, surprise.  I tailed them to a restaurant and then to Walgreen's.  She bought bottled water; I bet he bought rubbers.  They were pretty good in public limiting the touching but they could not keep up there guard.  In the rain, I followed them back to the hotel, parked and dashed inside to jump into the elevator with them.

Alas, I do not have a body-warn camera, been meaning to for several years.  I got off on the 5th floor with them and watched them hold hands and stroll into her room.  I mailed the client the video the next day.  She has some explaining to do.

I love the thrill of the chase.  Maybe it's how hunters feel.  I do well on surveillance when I pump myself up and vow not to lose my subject.

5:35 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Me Process Server!

I had to serve lots of legal process this week.  All in a rush, because attorneys sometimes put cases and work off thinking things will settle.  Alas, they don't always settle that quickly so rush depositions have to happen. 

I don't do "gutter serves."  One PI, who has since lost his license, used to make three trips to his target address and when he could not find them he would chuck the papers into the street and claim valid service because the subject did not take the papers.  That stunt will catch up to you.  Call it PI Karma.

My only on the job wrestling match occurred over the serving of process. Some Nigerian guy did not grasp why I was trying to serve papers on his wife.  This was in South San Francisco or some such Peninsula shithole where cab drivers and other marginal types, like private dicks, might dwell.  The guy grabbed me and fearing he was going to stab me I gave him the mother of bear hugs, straight out of high school wrestling practice.  He unclenched and I ran.

No one wants to get served.  I play it off like I'm a flunkie who does not know my butt from my elbow.  "Me process server.  Me so sorry I bring bad tidings.  Your are served.  What?  I don't know why.  So sorry. Thank you for your time.  Yassir."  On many of the serves I'm getting $90 an hour.  I'm pretty damn good at delivering bad news, just know when to get the hell out of Dodge, Hayward, South San Francisco and other shitholes.

10:43 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment