DETECTIVES DON'T WEAR SEAT BELTS

THE CLUB

When I became a private detective, after weeks of trying to get someone to hire me, I felt that I'd finally been allowed to join a secret club. It was a secret club OF secrets and suddenly I was in the door, in the thick of it, hearing about aliases and  tails and background checks. That first year, I was mentally tap dancing with delight pretty much all the time. Physically, I was often so tired that I actually could not sleep. I'd lie awake with my whole body aching, band aids on the newest weeping blisters, cramps in my feet, wondering if exhaustion could be terminal.

I don't think I've ever been so happy.

There's a story behind every secret so this profession is loaded with stories. There were the stories told to me by the men in the front seat of Moby Dick sitting on Canal Street all day. There were the stories in a report that had to be faxed to the client by noon and there were the stories told by the clients themselves. Tales packed with tension, duplicity, uncertainty, lies and confusion. People make mistakes, use bad judgment and one moment can change a life forever. I was suddenly immersed in convoluted events, meeting people I'd never meet otherwise. It was heady, exciting, and material for novels forever.

I've always thought of myself as a writer. I still write letters to friends and, like someone from another century, actually buy stamps and put them on envelopes. I take notes of phone conversations and I write down hilarious remarks and malapropisms in a special notebook. The journalist in me was often evident when discussing possibilities or the motives of a suspect. For two years, I was the only woman in a room crowded with chain smoking ex-cops wearing cowboy boots and guns. I relished their interpretations, craved their street smarts. But they listened to me, too.

I started out with one mantra: just don't let me screw this up. I would whisper it under my breath as I walked through crowds on the way to a location wearing a hidden video, rehearsing my new name, my new history. Oh, please, just don't let me screw this up. I vividly remember, those first times, being amazed that I'd actually come away with the information, with the faces on video, with the numbers in my head. I don't know if there is a patron saint for private detectives. Maybe the ghost of Sherlock Holmes watches over me when I'm undercover, feeling lost, muttering my mantra. He probably does because I still have that euphoric sense that it is my great good luck to have been allowed to join his secret club.