Elementary, My Dear Rockford

Book ‘Em, Danno

Call ‘em private eyes. Or private detectives. Private investigators or private dicks. Sleuths or gumshoes.

You know them by name – if not always by first name:

Rockford and Mannix and Magnum and even Sherlock (there’s a first name).

There may be more fictional private eyes than there are real ones.

But there are real ones. The latest issue of The New Yorker profiles Tyler Maroney, a real life Manhattan gumshoe who has written a book about his trade, “The Modern Detective.”

I was once a private eye, even if only for a day. I wrote about in the Kingsport Times News Weekender magazine in 1975.

Here is that story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

 

You meet the high brows and the hipsters

The phony playboys and the tipsters

The most exciting people pass you by

Including a private eye.

 

I grew up wondering who Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. was and hoping that someday, I, too, could be like Stu Bailey, the flip, invincible private eye, played by Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

I never missed a private eye show back then – Meet McGraw, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Peter Gunn, The Thin Man, Hawaiian Eye, Sherlock Holmes, Surfside Six, and of course, 77 Sunset Strip.

While other kids wanted to be cowboys or firemen or soldiers, I wanted to be a private eye.

Last week, I became one. For one day, I traveled around with an area private investigator. I was Mannix for a day...

The events in this story are true. Names, places, and time sequences have been altered "to protect the innocent" and for legal reasons. But the story is a true, depiction of one day in the life of a real Kingsport private investigator,

 

Buzzzzzzzz. That alarm clock reads 6 a.m.

Banacek may be able to sleep 'til noon, but real private investigators don't have that luxury. This morning I am to meet private detective Jay Hunter at his office at 7 a.m. and go to a construction site to take photos of a truck that was in an accident almost  two years ago.

I arrive at the second story walk-up office over a newsstand early. Jay walks in at 7:02 and apologizes for being late. Coffee, he asks? It's a little early for the receptionist so he fixes it himself.

His desk itself is rather utilitarian - mahogany veneer somewhere between real-estate-salesman practicality and bank-vice-president luxury.

Jay himself looks more like a corporate executive than a private eye. His razor-trimmed hair is beginning to gray around the ears; the pin-striped suit is tailored to his trim figure; and the ankle-high boots are freshly-polished, Marine Corps shiney.

"Today. will be a fairly typical day," he says. "About half the cases we handle are domestics — divorces and child custody cases. Tonight we're going on a surveillance in Blountville. Another fourth of our work involves accident reconstruction, which is what we'll be doing this morning. And the rest of our work load varies from insurance investigation to hog rustling.

"This afternoon we're going to try and pinpoint an ole boy so the sheriff's department can serve a subpoena on him. So we better get going before they get that truck out in the field and we have to run all over town to find it.”

Hunter's car, a blue Gremlin-X with blackwall tires and an inconspicious magnetic two-way radio whip antenna on the front fender, has bucket seats, four speed floor transmission, and a business band two-way radio under the dash. We head out to the construction site.

"I sure wish you could have been with me a couple of weeks ago. My associate Dave Kemper and I holed up in a hog pen for four days and nights waiting out some hog rustlers. They never showed. And we like to froze to death. It got down to 20 degrees at night and my sleeping bag wouldn't zip up.

Original 1975 drawings by Phil Jones. 

"One night we thought we heard something, so Dave and I jumped into our shoes and started to creep outside. I was in the lead and I tried to pick my foot up and it just wouldn't budge. So I looked down and Dave was standing on my shoelaces. We got outside and there was nothing. Except a bunch of hogs. Big hogs. And they charged us. I sidestepped one but this other one kept coming at me. I pulled out my .357 pistol and I was ready to waste him right there, but he swerved and saved his life."

We got to the construction site, got out and easily located the truck. It was the only one there.

"Get in the cab and press down the brake pedal when I tell you," he says to me. I get in. He is clicking away with his Minolta SRT-101 camera, taking several back views of the truck. At the signal, I depress the brake pedal. More photos.

"O.K. Let's go."

"Now we have to meet Fred Melton, an attorney, and go out to the accident site to take photos.

"This case involves a guy who says the truck's brake lights didn't work and so we have to try to show that they did. I took photos back there without the brake pedal depressed and with it pushed in. Now when it comes to trial, I'll have to appear in court and testify to the authenticity of these photos."

 

Mannix approaches the fabulously wealthy Mrs. June Graham.

Mannix: "My secretary told me you wanted to see me. She said it was urgent."

Mrs. Graham: "Yes, Mr. Mannix. Can we talk inside where it's a little more private."

 

Fred Melton was waiting in his car for us, so we switched cars and rode out to Headley Auto-Truck Leasing. When we arrived there, we were taken to a small conference room where we met with the driver, a short man in his mid-60's with Brylcreem hair and missing teeth.

"What happened, Mr. Cambridge?" the attorney asks.

"I’se hauling some dirt to a landfill and slowing down for a stop sign when this car run into back of the truck. I never even saw him. I don't know where he come from."

"You know he claims he ran into you because your brake light didn't work."

"Yeah, that's what I hear."

"And you're sure they were working?"

"Positive. I check out a truck 'fore I ever drive it."

Jay interrupts: "How far ahead of the stop sign did you start braking?"

"Hit was a good hundred foot. I been drivin' 47 year and this was the first accident I ever had. I done retired since it happened. Got tared of drivin' ever day. Cars gettin' worst ever year," he says to me,

The attorney interrupts: "Let's go out to the accident site and take some photos."

As we drive, the retired driver talks about his accident: "Hit wuz a ol' hippy boy drivin' that car. Said in his case that ever since the wreck he had to take dope. I bet he was takin' dope when he was drivin'."

After another photo session we let the driver and the attorney off and Jay tells me about his courtroom duties.

"I'll have to go to court to verify all the distances in the photos. This will be an easy stint in the witness stand. Sometimes it can get hairy. Especially in divorce cases, when the lawyers try to impugn your testimony. I had a client one tine told me he understood the lawyer and I were good friends before the case and he sure was sorry all this had happened. Hell, I know the courtroom battle is just a game. The lawyer is just trying to get the best deal he can for his client. We go out afterwards and have a drink.”

 

Betty, as she hangs up the telephone: "He's coming. There for a minute I was afraid he wouldn't swallow the bait."

Barnaby Jones: "The bait’s easy, now it's getting him to swallow the hook."

 

We arrive back at the office and while Jay returns his phone calls, I talk to his secretary, a youngish brunette who is reading a book titled The Killers.

"It's a detective novel. Before I got this job, I never even looked at detective books. But now I read a lot of them. 'Cause some of the stuff we do is in the books. I watch some of the detective shows on. TV – how can you keep from it? But I never really think of myself as Peggy on Mannix or that girl on Barnaby Jones. Maybe I will now that you've mentioned it to me.

"I haven't done enough agent work I guess to think of myself that way. Mostly I just answer the phone and type up interviews and bills. I did go out with Dave last week. We pretended we were married and I went in this house to see if a girl was in there. I asked to use the phone and looked around, but she wasn't there. I was sorta glad, 'cause it would scare me to death to have to testify in court."

Jay finishes his calls and we're off to track down a man with some civil warrants outstanding on him.

"We know where he works," Jay tells me as we drive to the parking lot of the Runyan Plant. "We've followed him before but he's always managed to skip into Scott County before the sheriff's men can get there to serve the warrants. They were after him for six months before the prosecution called us in.

"All we had was a description of the man - nothing else. We tracked him down here at the plant through his father, but so far we haven't been able to pinpoint his movements enough so the sheriff can serve the warrants.

"We followed him last night but he escaped across the county line. We know his car now, so we're going to use it as a decoy. We'll park out front to force him out the back. Unit 7 is out back to follow him when he comes out.”

 

Mannix and Tony Elliot are trapped in a safe. Elliot wants to wait out the weekend until help can arrive on Monday. But Mannix argues they must try to get out, that the crooks have probably turned off the ventilation system to the safe and they will rum out of air before Monday:

Mannix: "We’ve seen their faces, Tony. You don’t really think they're gonna leave us behind to identify them do you?

 

2:34 p.m. We've been waiting in unit 4, a police-car-looking Dodge for thirty minutes and nothing yet. Two men come out.

"He should be coming out soon. That man there in the hard hat was the last one out yesterday. He stayed till 2:50."

On the two-way radio; "Here he comes, 4. Are you with me?"

Jay answers back: "We're with you. Is it the subject?"

7: "He's wearing the same thing he wore yesterday

4: "Yes. Is it the subject?"

7: "It's the guy we were watching at the drive-in in Johnson City last night."

4: "So is it the subject?"

7: "It's the guy we were watching."

Jay turns to me, exasperated: "It's the subject. Seven doesn't understand what I'm asking."

 

Betty: "Barnaby, what does that mean?"

Barnaby Jones: "Like the spinster on her wedding night -- sometimes we know more than we think we know."

 

The chase is on. My adrenalin is flowing. Photo-ing accident sites is one thing. But a chase is another.

The radio will now play an important part. "Where is he, 7?" "Heading down Webster to East Center." "We're heading up Holmes. We'll be behind you."

As we pass an intersection, Hunter points down the other street.

"There's 7 down there. We're travelling parallel with them now. It looks like he's heading the same way he did last night.”

"Four to base."

"Go, 4."

"Coach, it looks like he's doin' it again. How's about calling the sheriff and letting him know."

"I'm way ahead of you, 4. There should be a deputy waiting at the corner of Center and Lynn Garden Drive."

"This is 7. I'm in front of him and we're approaching Center and Lynn Garden."

As we get closer to the subject from the rear, Jay points out the deputy on the side of the road. "Looks like we finally got him. This buzzard is slippery."

The light catches us. As we wait, the deputy streaks out. Only he heads down Center, instead of Lynn Garden where the subject went.

"Four to base. That deputy just went the wrong way. Better call 'em quick."

"I'm callin', I'm callin'." We speed up and pass the subject.

"He knows this car, so maybe us being in front of him will slow him down."

“Base to four. Evidently that wasn't the deputy on this case,"

"This is five. I'm out on Stone Drive. I've been following the deputy. He's ahead of me and I'm almost to Lynn Garden so he should be there soon."

Three cars plus the deputy. This is turning into a full scale chase.

"He's turning off, seven, five. Base tell the sheriff to turn off on Watson Road.

"That's the trouble with this damn system," Jay says to me. "I have to call base and then he telephones the sheriff. It would be a whole lot better if we could be on the same frequency as the police. Every time your message has to be transferred, they can get it wrong. So we have to go through all this relaying to get through. I wish to hell..." he says and his voice trails off. · "We've got to get him soon or he'll be in Scott County and the warrants won't be any good."

"Base to four. You may have to block the road to keep him from getting away."

Block the road, I think. This is a little too Mannix for me.

"Damn l wish I was in the other car," Jay says. "It has steel belted radials and I could get way ahead of him and do a power slide and block the road. Make it look like an accident."

Power slide, I think. Don't cars in power slides  often turn over? Flip?

"Four to five. Where's the deputy?"

"I don't know four, he was ahead of me. But I can see you now and he's nowhere around."

“Damn," Jay says to me.

Power slide, I think. Please, no.

"Well, we're gonna have to do something," Jay says as he turns off the ignition and angles the car across the road.

I've seen enough Mannix episodes to know not to turn around and see what the subject is going to do. Jay gets out of the car, a bit nervously it seems to me. He pulls the hood latch, opens the hood and starts tinkering around randomly, pecking at the air filter, tapping the battery and nervously stealing glances through his sunglasses back at the subject, who is evidently stopped behind us. After about three minutes, Jay gets back in the car, cranks it up and moves on slowly.

"That's Scott County up top of the hill," he says. "Where is that deputy? Damn. Well here goes nothing."

And at that he turns off the engine, coasts to a stop at the bottom of the Scott County hill and angles the car across the road.

"We can't hold him long or he's gonna come up here and ask what the hell is going on. And I don't know what to tell him. Where is the deputy?"

Jay watches in the mirror.

On the radio comes five, who is just behind the subject.

"Here he comes, Jay. He's gonna try and come around you."

Jay and I both turn nervously to the left as the Camaro runs up the red clay bank and pulls around us. As he passes, he gives us a smirking sort of smile.

"Dammit, we had him," says Jay, "We had him. But hell, we could have held him the whole afternoon and the deputy never would have come."

"Break it up," Jay tells the other cars over the radio. We head back home. And the whole way back, we never pass the deputy.

"He never would have come," Jay says. “We'd still be out there."

 

Mannix traps suspect Ray Bennett in the halfway house. Bennett climbs up to the roof. Mannix follows. As Bennett makes a dash for the exit, Mannix fires a shot. "Hold it, Bennett," Mannix says.

Bennett freezes. Mannix pushes him over to the roof’s edge and holds his head out over the edge.

Mannix: "We're going down from here two different ways unless you tell me where that kid is."

 

By now it is almost six o'clock. "Well I guess we better head to Blountville for that surveillance now. We're supposed to be there at seven."

As we drive Jay fills me in on the details.

"We'll be watching to see if this wife goes out to meet her boyfriend. She tells her husband she's going to visit her sister who doesn't have a phone but he thinks she goes to her boyfriend’s in Johnson City. We've staked it out three nights before and she hasn't moved yet. But he called today and he thinks tonight might be the night. So we'll try it and see."

It's starting to get dark as we approach Blountville. We stop at a Minute-Market for supper.

Jay backs the car into the parking space. “It's a habit I got into. This way I can get out in a hurry.

"In this job, I get to eat supper at home about twice a week. So I'm used to eating a junk food supper."

I get a bag of popcorn, a Krackel bar and a Pepsi; Jay has a bag of barbecued corn chips, two Baby Ruths, and a sarsaparilla drink. We drive to a deserted church parking lot overlooking the subject's driveway, park and cut off the motor.

"It'll get cold without the motor on, but otherwise she's liable to spot us by the exhaust."

We sit in the car, eating our junk suppers and watching the driveway by the dim light of a new moon.

 

Banacek and Erica (played by Jessica Walter) exit from his mansion. Outside they enter his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce. "Take us to Mario’s,” Banacek says to the driver. Cut to interior Mario's restaurant, a Cambridge bistro decorated like the dining room of a luxury ocean liner. They are seated at a corner table and are just about finished with their meal.

Erica: "This lobster is divine."

Banacek: "It always is here. "

 

You know, Jays says, "it's easy to let your mind wander when you're out on a surveillance like this where you have to sit in the car for hours and watch a driveway. But you have to concentrate on what you're doing because if you don't, she might come out during that one instance when your mind is elsewhere and then you've missed her."

7:01 p.m. Unit five arrives. "Unit five to four." "Go, five."

"We're down here at the minute-market. Where are you, Jay?" · "We're up here in the church parking lot. We can see the driveway from here. You stay there, that's the only road out, and I'll let you know when she moves."

“10-4. I'm gonna be out of the car a minute."

"10-4." Jay says to me: "He's probably going inside to get something to eat. He usually has his girl friend with him at night on these surveillances. Otherwise she might not ever see him.

"My wife seldom sees me. I work five or six nights a week on stake-outs like this. And I'll come in at ten or eleven o'clock. But she'll still have me some supper fixed.

"Jeannie is really very understanding. When I first got into this business, she hated it. She wanted me out of it. But now she sees how happy I am being a private investigator and she's even learned to like my job.

"She used to worry about me, but I think she's gotten over that. I've really never had any trouble so there's no sense in her worrying. You see, we have a company policy: When faced with a confrontation, run like hell. Now Dave's been shot at. Twice in six years. Once was last winter on that hog rustling thing. They shot through the back of the car and the bullet lodged in the panel right next to his head. Didn't miss him two inches."

 

Mannix is rifling through Big John Cordell's desk. Suddenly he sees a note on the pad with Ray Bennett’s name and phone number on it. He picks up the phone and begins dialing. After two dials, Cordell's thugs enter the office.

Thug: "One more and you're dead."

 

7:10 a.m. The radio crackles. "This is the worst sandwich I ever had." "Don't eat it." "Don't eat it, hell. After what I paid for it?"

Jay turns to talk to me: "You have to have a sense of humor in this business. Otherwise you'd go crazy. Like when Dave and I were up in that hog pen. Boring as hell. And a little frightening, too, out there in the cold and the dark. But we used to get so tickled at each other, we'd almost laugh out loud. Nothing anyone else would find funny -- just the kind of stuff that gets funny after you've been with one person for four days straight.

"But a sense of humor is essential in this business. Because you see so much of the misfortunes of life, the undersides of child custody cases where the couple is more concerned about themselves than they are the child. And divorces. If you don't learn to laugh at it, it'll get to you. And once you lose your objectivity, you're no good as an investigator anymore.”

 

Mannix prepares to open the safe by breaking out a glass panel.

Tony: "Joe....that door cost me $8,000.”

Joe Mannix: "Tough."

 

"I used to take my work home with me. Some nights I couldn't sleep for worrying about it. But not anymore. I still think about it. I think if it isn't a little bit on your mind you lose your edge and you're no longer effective. But you can't let it get you down.

"Still sometimes my wife and I will be out on Sunday driving around and I'll see a car I've been looking for all week and I'll take out after it. But I wouldn't do that if it were a big to-do we were going to and I thought I could find the car again on a work day".

7:46 p.m. A car pulls out of a driveway. Jay perks up. All the while he has been talking, his eyes haven't moved from the line of the road.

“Thought I had her there for a minute, but that's the next driveway down.

"We had a child custody case a few weeks ago, you would have liked to write about. This woman was working in a massage parlor. So we wired a couple of agents up and sent them in there and taped everything that went on. It was pretty funny. One of the boys chickened out at the last minute and didn't want to do it. So we had to take him back to the office and give him a drink. Finally after he got a little high, he went in there. They threw him and the other boy out and gave them their money back after they found out what they were doing.

"I didn't go in there because I didn't want to. I'm a married man. Besides my wife would have killed me."

8:01 p.m. A police car pulls up next to us and shines his light in.

"Oh, it's only that old Hunter outfit," the cop says, "I had a call from some people on the street, worried about somebody watching their house. Thought it might be burglars or rapists."

The deputy drove on.

"Yeah, that happens all the time. Usually we know the policeman and there's no problem. But sometimes it's a rookie and he has to act big and we have to get out of the car and show identification and everything. But usually it's no problem."

 

Police Lt. Taylor is cleaning out the school locker of the murdered student. Barnaby Jones reaches in, picks up a paper from the bottom of the locker, and puts it in his pocket.

Lt. Taylor: "Barnaby, you can take that. It’s evidence.”

Barnaby Jones: "Why don't you just let me treat it as a souvenir."

 

"She's movin' - we've hit the jackpot tonight," Jay says.

"Four to five." "Go, four,"

“She's heading your way, Steve. She's in the red Mercedes, license number 58-..."

"We're rollin', Jay. She just passed us."

"You lead her, Steve. We'll follow along behind."

Jay, to me: “Look's like we got a winner. She's heading toward Johnson City."

"Five, she's heading for Johnson City. Just follow: this road and when you get to an intersection with a lot of construction, just kcep going straight."

Jay and I head down past a school, make a right at a blinking red light, and then travel slowly down a residential street.

"That greenhouse over there on the right - that's her boyfriend's." As he says this, Jay is leaning across the seat, trying to get a better view. We turn right at the street that runs past the side of the house. There is a woman walking on the side of the road. "That's her, that's the woman we've been following."

Then coolly, on the radio; . .

"We've found her, five, She's gone into her boyfriend’s house. Five take up a position in the rear of the house so you can watch and see if she comes out. We'll find her car."

We do and unit five takes our spot in front. watching the car. We slip into a tiny, dark spot next to the school. Jay pulls out the binoculars and watches the back door.

Suddenly the radio interrupts:

"She's coining out, Jay. And I think she spotted me. She looked for an awful long time. She's getting in the car now. I'm getting off the tail for a few minutes."

Jay revs the engine up quickly. "Which way is she going, five?" "She's going back toward town." "Yes, but which way?" "Left." "Left facing which way?" "Left from the house." “But facing which way."

By this time we are next, to unit five and he signals us manually which way to go. We head to the road she'll have to use to get back to Blountville and wait there. A cop pulls up next to us and shines his light in but moves on without asking any questions.

Then she comes up from the rear. She stops at the stop sign and turns left, back into Johnson City. Quickly, we head after her. But she makes a U-turn in a service station and we're forced to go way past her before we can turn.

"You think she spotted us?" Jay asks me. Hoping against hope, I say no.

We head back to the spot where she turned left. Way up ahead we spot the Mercedes tail lights. She's heading home. · "Break it up, five. She's heading home."

"10-4."

We follow her all the way back to her driveway. Jay turns off the headlights and we watch her go back inside from the top of the hill.

"She's gonna go in there and give her ol' man hell for having her followed," he says.

We head for home.

 

The police led by Lt Art Malcolm come into Big John Cordell's office. Mannix is holding a gun on Cordell and his bodyguard.

Malcolm: "All right. Mannix, looks like you're got everything under control."

 

"How did you enjoy your day as a detective?" Jay asks. “It's not like TV is it? I watch every one of those detective shows, when I get a chance. Every one of them. And you know, given the choice between realism and drama, they pick drama every time.''

 

Mannix to Mrs. John Graham: "Steve Dorset. Steve Dorset. Yeah, I remember him. He used to write for one of those scandal sheets you'd pick up at the supermarket."

 

My day as a detective has changed my life. I can't pass the Runyun Factory without wondering if the guy we chased is still working there and if they've ever served the warrants on him. And every time I pass a red Mercedes, I turn my head and check the license plate.

It's not Mannix or Banacek or Cannon. But I could spend the rest of my life without someone shooting at me and be perfectly happy.