Follow that Minnow

I woke up hot.

This was a distressingly normal state of affairs – from waking to walking. Phoenix temperatures tended to rise past the 100-degree mark in May, long before the official entry into summer. You could say the heat wave was nearly year-round.

Night sweats often had me reaching for the half-unfrozen water bottle on my nightstand. What was odd was that my infallible nose for trouble was working on overdrive, and my usual solution-finding process was getting very unreliable.

Most nights, I’d wake up after an improbable owl hoot or a suspicious tingly sensation running up my legs (could be a mosquito, or a really unwelcome man staring up at my window). See, I don’t live in a great area of town. In these parts, single status tends to be seen as a problem in search of a solution. Believe me, there are no shortages of helpful souls willing to provide solutions, and they’re full of … genuine goodwill, just like a Goldman Sachs lawyer or a subprime mortgage banker in a down economy. I’ve known both, and wished not to renew the acquaintance. People call me Sandy Lee.

When the occasion presents itself, I pretend a Southern drawl, but most of my work is done looking fresh-faced and innocent while scheming. You could say I’m a private eye, though I don’t hold a license. I’m more of a private snoop with an eye for trouble and a tongue to match. The tongue gets me in trouble, and then works double-time to get me out of it. It’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone and the threat of police action, though real criminals are harder to intimidate.

The real ones look like your average insurance salesman. Masters of PR and the art of disguising true intent, they’re kind to old grandmas on the street, while quietly passing on words that send men to a holy or hellish hereafter. No, I stick to what I’m good at – catching small fry. Minnows, or maybe bluegill.

Minnows (aptly named ‘Phoxinus Phoxinus’) are both easier and harder to handle than the big fish. They’re less cautious, more impulsive, and more prone to emotional decisions. This make them both more and less predictable. Somehow, I’ve been spared having to look down the barrel of a gun, but I’m sure this will happen if I keep after my current profession. I take care that no one knows my real name.

This current target is really asking for a third session in the clink. Jose is a real small-timer – petty theft, attempted mugging with a plastic knife, possible domestic abuse. I really don’t want to set him off into looneysville by following him around, but he’s got all the classic signs of being a stalker. The jealousy flaring up when a girl he hardly knows throws a backyard barbeque, and he’s not invited. The strange texts showing he watches her every move, anything from “hey yr sister better outfits than u” to “why u home so late at nite”. (Mama didn’t teach Jose to spell.)

My client Laura is distracted with lots of life stuff. Needs my help to put Mr. Cuervo back on the shelf. “I’ll do it,” I say, “for 50 greenbacks plus expenses.” (Sometimes I read Raymond Chandler novels.) We shake hands, the old-fashioned way. Faster than signing contracts and less paperwork.

So now my job is to get a good background check for information and leverage – always make the target think you have a divine tap of intel into their lives. Make them unsure, and off-balance. Less likely to plot your demise. Nobody likes the feeling that someone is watching their every move, which is why some people hate the idea of God.

I tell myself that there are some forces (like gravity) that you can’t control and do better accepting than fighting. I try not to think too much about the details about what I can’t see. Putting food on the table is a more daily concern than whether or not the Great Eye in the Sky is out to get me.

Not much I can do if that’s the case, anyway.

After a few trailing sessions from a few seedy shops, I have a report for my client, as soon as she answers her cell phone. Jose seems the uncommitted type, so my client’s instincts were on the money. He’s not bad-looking, but curly hair and a cute smile don’t cure a trip to a hospital bed. I’ve seen too many reports of women who thought Mr. Right was put behind bars because of bad circumstances or an unsympathetic judge. They learned the hard way that prison tattoos are incompatible with the heart of an angel. It’s all fun and games to play around with dark forces, maybe try to tame them, until they bite you. For some snake bites, there’s no antivenom.

I decide on the easiest way to get the drop on Jose, beyond his tomcat tendencies. At 8 p.m., I get out my black pantsuit and thin-soled shoes, drive near his place, and make the welcome discovery that Jose has a green thumb. Scented bushes flank the front, screening the unshuttered windows from the road, but it’s easy to find out his game plan: hosting a one-man party with a reluctant guest.

Laura looks stiff and uncooperative on the couch, and he’s waving a glass of adult beverages and making small talk. Probably about what show she’ll want to see tonight. (My guess is that YouTube would censor what he has in mind – “Jose Revealed”, “Big Bad Bratwurst Daddy”, etc.)

Burner phone to the rescue. I call her, and in a fake Spanish accent, I feign sorpresa that a young female friend has gone to visit a young man on parole and hasn’t returned a casa? Por qué? Then I pretend to hear a gun going off, fire a shot from an airsoft pistol into the ground, and wait for developments.

Jose comes out in his shorts, all hair and muscle and no brains. It’s really tempting to let off a few rounds into his corpuscular calves, but that would make him lumber back into his cave and possibly use his claws on my client. Instead, I toss a rock at a nearby cat to provide distraction.

Cats are ornery beasts. This one screeches out a distress call that makes you want to climb walls. Now Jose comes out with the goods – a pistol. I hope he doesn’t have a license, and flatten myself as close to the rosemary bushes as possible, praying to whatever Deity that the cops will come soon.

It’s that kind of neighborhood, or perhaps they’ve made visits to this establishment before. They come, but they’re cautious types. I wait until they ring the doorbell and Jose lets them in (grumbling) to make my getaway. I hope the curtains twitching in the opposite house are from air conditioning, rather than curiosity.

My shoelace decides to unravel long enough to get caught on twigs. At one point, I think I hear someone walking near the door to investigate the rustling sounds – birds aren’t that loud – but the complaining cat shoots out from another bush. I lay low for a few minutes, then separate the impromptu mating of my shoelace with a thorny branch.

As I creep down the street toward my car, I see the officers open and enter their patrol car. By the time my heart slows down, they’ve finished punching in their report. Eventually, the strategic stalling runs out of juice and it’s time to go. They peel out of Jose’s driveway and I exhale.

As I inhale, the full weight of my amateur hour maneuvers settle around my shoulders, like an emotional capa. I’ve left my client to fend for herself in my self-preservation haze.

See, people ask me to do things for them because nobody taught them how to swim the river of information flowing into the sea of centralization. They don’t know how to bait hooks for tilapia (for catfish catching), or ignore the old boots on the sandbar. They wallow in pools of indecision, but get mad when people try to pull them to safety.

One of these days, I should let them stay soggy for a while.

As an investigator, my style is more of a loose cannon on a self-directed training program than polished CSI tech. I hate the intrusion of the IRS, so instead of taking bona fide wire transfers, I take payments in gift cards and old coins – or greenbacks if rent is near. I don’t want my name registered anywhere, so my niche is black-market and under the table. There’s a reason why cash-based businesses survive every recession.

So why would people ask for more information, and from me?

One, I take risks to get them useful information, the kind that you can’t get when a bureaucracy is breathing self-righteous fire about protecting the guilty. I use my eyes, I nab files, and I don’t pretend that everyone is a misunderstood angel.

Two, somebody has to help the humans with a talent for getting themselves into trouble. Crying for help is fine, unless they prefer to live in the dark because the light hurts too much. Those fools can crawl back under their rocks until the shadows get too big to ignore. I can usually give a person one free pass or benefit of the doubt, but once a pattern is established, the internal DNA has been identified.

Three, show me a person’s shoes, and I’ll tell you how they spent their day and what they think about. The walk is more informative than the talk.

Creeping from one unlighted carport to another, I’m thinking about shoes and the severe lack of bushes in this neighborhood (other than at Jose’s house). Fortunately, it’s too hot for people to be sweating outside in plastic chairs, and kids on bikes are mercifully absent. It doesn’t look like Jose is going to let Laura go, so I risk a peek into the living room. Maybe she’s taken a long bathroom break?

I weigh the pros and cons of B&E (breaking and entering) for a moment – there’s a handy rock and I did remember hospital gloves. Or maybe I’ll skip evasive action and try the back door. Nope, the Damsel in Distress act will have to do.

With plastic gloves stored in my pocket, mud smeared on my face, and an anxious look, I decide reluctantly that my jeans look too good. My pocketknife does a good job of ripping a hole across one knee, and I draw the knife lightly across the skin for a line of blood. No gushing, just enough to make it look like a legit distress call. There’s plenty of Neosporin at home for germ-killing properties.

Hair disheveled, wild look in the eye, I pound on the back door near the alleyway – and hold my breath. Jose yanks it open, thinking about getting aggressive with the cops if they’re back. He almost purrs at the sight of a poor, distressed, fluttering bird. I almost choke at the combined fumes of stale pizza and unwashed male pouring out the open door.

I start babbling about a car wreck (to explain lack of transportation), and quickly glance around the house as he rustles in the freezer for ice cubes. I think about slamming the freezer door in his face and finding Laura, but I don’t know the layout. The fridge/freezer unit also has a small chance of not toppling over onto him, and I don’t want a body on my hands. Too much paperwork and hassle.

To prevent temptation, I focus on the story. Pitiful catch in the voice, pleading haunted eyes, ‘I got in an accident and someone’s after me, was drinking a little so no need to call the cops’…Once the fish is hooked good and proper, I humbly ask for the bathroom. Just to get cleaned up. A little tear, a little vibrato – does the trick beautifully. He shows me in, all surface gentleman, then goes to answer the Android that I’m ringing with my burner cell. I keep it close to my ear and breathe heavy, but I only have seconds before he knows it’s a trick. You can always count on the dumb criminal wising up before you’re ready.

As I thought, Laura’s been tied up in the guest bedroom. I wave at her to shush, then slit the bonds with the handy pocket knife. I point to the window, then slide back into the bathroom and splash water around. Jose is still grumbling in the kitchen, and now my issue is to figure out how crazy to get. Do I hit him with a saucepan? Do I want the neighbors involved? The trembling curtains might be too interested. Scare tactics might work better.

After flushing the toilet for effect, I calmly walk into the kitchen and drop into my alter ego. He’s working his way up to a leer and thinking nasty thoughts about the guest bedroom, so I tell him that kidnapping is against the law. (I’m assuming he doesn’t know the difference between kidnapping and criminal restraint.) I pull out an old badge I found at a thrift store, because Jose doesn’t read titles, and proceed to explain that he failed the first round of police visits. His mental wheels are turning shakily, so I slide into the chair closest to the knife block, and tell him there are things to discuss.

He's unhappy that I know about his record. (Actually, he just verified my online research.) I tell him that I was sent as follow-up by the cops who just visited (eye flicker) to check up on the girl he was ‘entertaining’, and found she was held against her will. I make up some bogus minimum sentence lengths to scare the pants off him, and when he feebly responds, “She wanted to be tied up,” I give the table a slam and stand up. “Either you let her go right now or we’re taking a ride to the precinct.” I make suggestive motions with my hand near my pocket. Grudgingly, he agrees; as he passes, I trip him. Not an elegant solution, as I nearly overbalance, but his head hits the floor just long enough to knock him out. I can see he’s breathing.

I race down the hallway and see that Laura has forced her way out of the window, with the screen lying on the crispy brown lawn. I take a few incriminating photos – Jose hasn’t tidied up the thongs, bongs, and assorted paraphernalia in the guest bedroom – and scramble out the window myself.

Jose might be dumb enough to call in the incident, but I’m banking on my lookalike gift (brown hair, brown eyes, 5’ 5”) and his reluctance to see cops more than once a day. Besides, the story is so unlikely. Lady fakes a car accident, then says she’s undercover and….lets loose your hostage?

What I really worry about are Jose’s relatives. That can determine the thin line between life and comfort in old age. Comfort is often about who you know, more than what you know.

For now, it’s enough to know that my air conditioner is working. Somebody Upstairs must be giving my work a stamp of approval.