How I Got the Job as a Private Eye

Los Angeles, 1969

When my buddy, who had gone to work for a private detective agency, went on and on about how much fun it was, and how, if I got a job there, we could open our own shop down the line?

It didn’t take much to convince me. I was working at a metals-jobber, selling extrusion and bar and plate over the phone, or filling in for fork-lift drivers or dispatchers who missed work. Not  exciting. Not like being a Los Angeles private investigator! Just like Marlowe and Jim Rockford!

So I went into the agency and applied for the job.

The guy in charge of the agency turned me down.

I was married, with a baby, and the work was tricky. He didn’t think I should quit a good job and then maybe they’d have to fire me a week or two on because I didn’t have the knack for it.

Wait! If my buddy could do it, I could do it!

Sorry.

That was that, right?

Maybe not. 

I decided that I would show them I did have the knack to do it. I would, on my day off, go to the head of the agency’s house and set up a surveillance on him, follow him around, and then write a report and send it to him. 

That would show him, by gawd!

There were some problems. I knew the supervisor’s name, but there was no listing for him in the phone book. My buddy working there didn’t know — apparently over the years, the boss had been the target of people he’d investigated, so his phone and address were kept need-to-know.

Well, I decided, it was probably in his secretary’s Roledex, hey? I’d just go to the agency one night after hours, pick the lock, find the address, and I was in business, right? I had lock-picks, hey?

So I did. Got in -- no alarm fortunately -- found the information, in-and-out, presto!

Went to the guy’s house, and having followed my buddy’s advice to call the local police and tell them I was an op doing a surveillance, working for the agency, so as not to get rousted, parked down the block in my VW early on a Saturday morning.

Guy came out, fetched the paper. His kids played ball in the front yard. An hour or so, guy pulled his car out of the garage and took off. 

I lost him before he got out the neighborhood. 

He returned, watered his lawn, went back inside, and I left that afternoon.

Went home, wrote a report, using the operative-language my buddy gave me -- words like "subject" and "appeared to be" and his description and license plate and all --  and mailed it in.

A week went by. No response. What was going on? Could they not see I had the knack?

So, I went back to the office of a late evening, entered the premises as I had before, and went through the supervisor’s desk. Found my letter, with a note from the supervisor to the head of the camera-operatives. What do you think of this guy? 

The answer on the note was, Sounds great!

So, I wrote on the note, Sounds great to me, too! and left. 

Few days later, I got a letter from the supervisor: He pointed out some things:

First, his wife was the secretary to the local police chief, and when I called in to report I was setting up a surveillance, her boss called her into his office. Did you know one of your husband’s ops is running a surveillance in your neighborhood?

Huh. No.

So she called her husband, and thus he knew I was gonna be there before I *got* there.

How was I to know his wife worked for the local police? What kind of coincidence was that? Who would believe it?!

He thought my description was inaccurate as to his height and weight, and that he looked like Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Furthermore, I lost him three blocks from his house, and my skills were not impressive. However, my unmitigated gall, calling the local police and pretending I was one of his ops? To watch him? Well, I got credit for balls, and attitude, and that was more important than skill — I could learn skills.

Then he asked, How did you find me? I take pains to keep that on the downlow.

Well, I said, I picked the lock on the office door and got your address from your secretary’s Rolodex.

There was a long pause. Decades, Eons.

My heart sank.

Listen, we don’t do stuff like that, that’s TV and movie crap, we are legal and above board. You want to work here, you forget that kind of crap right now, understand?

Yessir.

He allowed that I should come in and start training in a couple weeks.

And then, when I hung up the phone? I realized that I had written something I thought funny on the note he had exchanged with another operative, and that he would know, if he read it, that I had broken into the office a second time, and I’d be screwed.

So, the only thing I could think of? Why, I needed to break into the office a third time and get that note!

Which I did. By then, I could open the door faster than if I had a key.

Did not mention this last part to my new boss, started working there a couple weeks later, and for the rest of the time I was in L.A. had a job that was waay more interesting than working the phones at the metals warehouse ...