Comparative Private Eyeology.

One day, I shall become a private investigator, a detective, but given that detectives are solitary creatures by and large, I worry and wonder about institutional knowledge. Who shall I consult with over coffee when I’m mulling over something? It’s not like I could wander into a Silicon Valley Accelerator Lab and be the lone, smoking gumshoe in the shared office plan, could I? The one talking about the metrics of a snitch? The one with the bottom of his shoes up on the ping pong table, saying quietly in the middle of a serve, “I remember it like it was yesterday?” And how many times would I be able to wander up to a hot dog stand or a doorman and ask for a tip before I end up being one of many people making a doorman rich and pushing into action a small underground empire led and fronted by said doorman?  

So I started to study every detective I could. I took notes. I began in Portland, Oregon, almost by accident, as it all happened/‘kicked off’ when I overheard someone announce in a perfect vibrato di spettacolo della colazione that -- in their previous professional life -- before they’d started in as a detective -- they had been a magician.  

“How on earth does someone go from magician to private eye?” I asked, turning around and taking the rest of the bar with its Christmas lights, the hanging toys, and the concert posters in. The faded white factory-side lettering that was visible on the wall across the street threatened to vibrate back to life.

The magician-detective took had a bald head, a clean face, and a small gold earring ticked into the lobe of his left ear. He raised his glass, took a sip of his drink, and put the glass down.

“Well, it’s all about perception, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, but … no? It isn’t?”

“Well, let’s agree to disagree.”

“What’s the last case you cracked?”

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about that.”

“Maybe I’ll have to hire a detective to find out.”

“Hah, hah.”

We departed into Chinatown and continued to walk and talk beneath mist-covered theater signs lighting themselves up above drag queen head, and, eventually, came to an agreement: he would be shadowed for a week. Come by tomorrow. I left. I went to the bus stop and got on.  L’autobus de nuit rattled along, as if it were transporting a thousand cages on its upper deck. The canaries had left, too, seemingly vacated the premises for sky pastures unknown. The resulting caricature the compensatory light inside the bus made of and cast upon the collected visages did nothing to keep the exterior night away.  

Before the detective bug struck me, I was in Portland because I was teaching a test to high schoolers for the summer, with a room and a salary to go along with the job, too. When they weren’t learning how to write an essay, when they were running around fields with bounce and purpose, I was making my way through the town its faded factory wall wipes, its miniature towers of neon nuzzling up to the evening rain the way a cat or a dog wraps itself up around your foot, and -- in the winter -- I would pull my car over to the side of the road to hand bears mugs of cocoa.

“Are you a sociologist or a cop in training? This isn’t about the arts -- and I shouldn’t be the one telling you this either, which you know.” (I didn’t have the heart to tell him about Norman Mailer running around New York City in 1969 telling those who composed the left during that time that ‘a good cop was a work of art.’)

I spent my time with him trying to imagine the inverse of him, which wasn’t necessarily fair to who he was, but how could I not try and think of a cop who didn’t have old DVD’s of shows from his past life stacked next to a box of ripped open pens in the supply closet; someone who didn’t once go into the bathroom at the McDonald’s on West Burnside, turn off the lights, and then refuse to come out; indeed, how could I not try and think of someone who didn’t blanche white when a young know-it-all asked if his biggest trick was making crime … disappear and then pop their collar as if they were about to join John Travolta and the boys from what’s my year again?

"Did you learn anything?" He asked when I announced that I was heading off one afternoon. We were standing outside a building that looked like a knock-off of Barber Block. We were about to do a door-to-door and ask after a missing person.

"I'll let you know."