Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (34 page)

 

DIANE:
If you refuse, you don’t get the job?

 

I’m gonna hire a cashier, right. I want you to take a polygraph and you say no. I can say to you, “I don’t want to hire you.”

 

DIANE:
That’s stupid.

 

You don’t
have
to take the test.

 

DIANE:
But you don’t get the job.

 

Yeah. Why wouldn’t you want to take it?

 

DIANE:
Because I wouldn’t. I want people to accept me as I am. I don’t need a test to prove my honesty.

 

Who said so?

 

DIANE:
I said so.

 

It’s your word against the employer’s. He’s got more to lose than you. He’s gonna pay you X amount of dollars a week to do X amount of work. Maybe you’re a loser, maybe you’re a turkey.

 

DIANE:
That’s the chance he takes.

 

Why should he take a chance? You’re gonna be guaranteed a week’s salary. Shouldn’t you guarantee a week’s work?

 

DIANE:
I’d want to polygraph him.

 

(Looks heavenward.) Everybody looks at the employer like he’s the evil guy.

 

DIANE:
He is the evil guy.

 

He is not, he wants to make a buck, just as much as you do.

 

DIANE:
He wants to make a buck on you, not the same as you.

 

Of course. If he can’t make a buck on you, you’d be out of a job. If my company wasn’t makin’ money on me, you think I’d be workin’ there?

 

DIANE:
You always seem to think people are doin’ you a favor and they’re not. You’re really doin’ them a favor because they’re makin’ money on you.

 

Of course. This is a capitalist society, whether you like it or not. It’s not like goin’ on welfare, you gotta work. There’s nothin’ wrong with it.

 

DIANE:
Big business uses people. They use people as long as they can.

 

No news in that.

I been on this one case now about eight months. The problem is bad management, not theft. I started at the bottom and now I’m my own boss. Strange as it may seem, it’s hampered my investigation like a son of a gun, ‘cause I don’t have the time to get around. I gotta answer this guy’s question, take care of this and the other thing, I gotta know traffic. And I’ll go higher than that. The guy who’s on the case with me is today the merchandising manager of the company. He’s still an undercover agent, and they don’t know nothin’ about it. (Laughs.)

The case is never gonna be solved. It’s what we call preventive maintenance. Say an outbreak of thefts starts. Rather than call a UC man in after it started, they have a guy there all the time, who can report it constantly.

 

 

I hope so.

 

DIANE:
He’s got dental plans now with this one. You can get your teeth done and everything.

 

When they claim losses on their income tax, they have to show the Internal Revenue that they’re doing something to deter it. You can’t go over to IRS and say we were robbed a million dollars last year. They’d say, “What kind of security you got?” Security is a tremendous break to the company. You could start a company tomorrow and put a UC man in there and you could be in business ten years and he could still be there and you know everything that’s goin’ on.

 

DIANE:
They have another agent workin’ with him that is reporting on him. (Chuckles.)

 

Yeah. What happened is this: Say I’m an agent and you’re an employee. I’ll go over to you and I’ll say, “Hey, I seen a TV in there. I wonder what the chances are of gettin’ that out.” You as an employee would more or less go along or say, “You’re crazy.” But if you’re an agent too, you’re gonna feed me. You’re gonna say, “Yeah, how the hell could we get it out of here?” And that’s what happened. (Laughs.) As soon as I gave him the bait, this other guy says, “Right. What do you think we oughta do about it?” So I called up my office and I said, “This guy, Hal . . . ” They said, “Forget it, he’s one of our own men.”

 

DIANE:
They finally told him, “Don’t send us any more reports on him.”
³¹

 

So part of the work is provocative—you tempt . . .
?

 

You can’t do that, it’s against the law. I’m just providin’ conversation. Entrapment is if I put a wallet on the floor, with a ten-dollar bill on it—forget it! Talkin’ about it is just a line of conversation. It may lead anywhere.

You know what another problem is today? The upper echelon of the management hasn’t the faintest idea of what’s going on in the business. I report the likes and dislikes of the workers. A lot of ‘em I get along with and I tell ’em, “The guys are right and the system’s no good, it stinks, get rid of it.” When I was workin’ on another gig, it was 106 degrees in the goddamn place and they didn’t have a water fountain. “Are you kiddin’?” I said. “The board of health comes down here, they’ll close your joint up.” All this little trivia, put them all together and it’s no trivia any more. It’s a big thing.

 

 

No comment.

 

DIANE:
Oh, come on.

 

I better not talk about it.

With friends, I say I’m an investigator and don’t go into detail, ’cause you never know who you’re gonna meet. When I go on a job, I suspect everybody and everything. Until they prove by their actions they’re not doing anything, they’re suspect.

This job has done more for me as far as understanding people is concerned than ever before. Some say, “That guy’s a thief.” I say, “What kind of a thief is he?” There are thieves and there are thieves. Why does a person steal? If a guy steals a loaf of bread because his kid is hungry, you call this man a thief? There’s a thief who’s a junkie and there’s a thief who just for the hell of it wants to see what he can get away with. Funny. My job’s made me less suspicious of people. Constantly listening to conversations, you find that people aren’t that bad, really. Regardless of what you read in the papers, people are pretty good. Everybody’s the same, that’s my discovery. I’m more tolerant of people now, right, Di?

 

DIANE:
Yeah, you come a long way
.

 

What do you mean?

 

DIANE:
He tended to see everything in black and white, no shades. You used to put people in categories, like into boxes. I think you’ve come out of that. Especially when you have to work on surveillance where his partners were colored guys and Puerto Ricans. He loved ’em.

 

I’m one of the few white undercover guys in the agency. Most outfits prefer a guy that can speak two languages, particularly Spanish. Give you an idea, I was workin’ for a big company and it was manual labor like I’ve never seen in my life. I used to come home and I was dyin’. There’s a ramp where all the bosses used to walk on top, lookin’ down at you, and you had to throw those boxes . . .

 

DIANE:
Like a jail.

 

That’s exactly what it was. It was me and two other white guys. There was maybe six colored guys and everybody else was Spanish. I didn’t know what the hell they were talkin’ about and I was supposed to be investigatin’. I told my supervisor, “This is for a Spanish UC.” He says, “Stay with it.” I’m breakin’ my ass, I’m dyin’. I never got nothin’ out of there. I didn’t even hear any good dialogue. It was a complete waste.

Things you pick up regarding narcotics. I was in on a bust. In the course of my work I come across this girl, she’s pushin’ pot, hash, pills. She’s workin’ her way through college. I saw her make sales and everything else. I notified the police. They said: Okay, they’re gonna set up a meeting between me and two narcs. And the narcs bring their informer. They say, “Set up a buy.” They want me to introduce their informant to the girl. At the time of the buy, they’ll bust her. This is supposed to take place the following day.

In the interim, these guys take it upon themselves to give her a shakedown. They go into the store like gangbusters. She isn’t there. They question manager, everybody, “Where is she? Where is she?” All this bullshit’s goin’ on and I don’t know nothin’ about it. I’m still under the impression I’m gonna set up this buy. The next morning a friend of mine says, “Did you hear what happened to Jilly? Two detectives came yesterday and wanted to bust her.” I called my office, “Hey, Mike, what’s with these two guys? They tried to bust the broad and now I gotta set up a sale. Are you kiddin’ me?” He said, “Stay away from her.” She’s still around.

People are really stupid. When I was on surveillance during this hijacking case, we’re workin’ for a newspaper. The guys deliverin’ were sellin’ papers on the side. The newspaper was losin’ a fortune. These guys knew they were being tailed and they still continued the same shit. People like that you have no sympathy for, they’re stupid. They deserve everything they get. There were fifty-two indictments and twenty-five convictions.

I was with a cop, a retired cop, twenty years on the force. We’re sittin’ in a car, surveillance—this newspaper gig. It’s three o’clock in the morning. Just then a truck pulls up. He says, “You got a gun?” I say, “No, ain’t you got a gun, you’re a cop.” He says, “I turned mine in.” I say, “Shit, thanks.” He says, “There’s the truck we’re lookin’ for.” So he throws it into gear. We take off and we’re drivin’ and drivin’. The truck’s goin’ about sixty. We’re right behind. He jams on the brakes and we’re squeakin’. He says, “Let’s get ’em!” I says, “Larry, that’s a hot dog truck.” This is a professional, twenty years on the force. Plus my encounter with those two narcs, you can see I don’t have too much faith in professionals. They leave something to be desired.

What I’m doin’ now is just like a regular worker. The only thing is listening to conversation, watching certain movements of people. Without thinkin’, people reveal their innermost secrets and plots and everything. I was workin’ with a guy and he’s tellin’ me how they robbed televisions out of a Hilton hotel. They were puttin’ ’em in laundry bags with old clothes. Another guy was workin’ for a drugstore and he was robbin’ very expensive perfume—Chanel and all that. He’s got boric acid, the boxes—and pourin’ the boric acid out and puttin’ the perfume in. And he’s put ’em back on the shelf. He’d go back there at night and buy three or four tins of boric acid. (Laughs.) Forty dollars worth of perfume.

I’m constantly listenin’. We went to an affair, a dinner dance. In the bathroom I heard somethin’ said and I’m listenin’ and listenin’. The guy, he paid an X amount of dollars and the other guy hands him a little brown bag. And I wasn’t workin’, we were socializin’.

You’re gonna have a lot more security. I think the neighborhoods are gonna instill their own police force, ‘cause as far as cops are concerned, they’re complete failures. Eventually every block association is gonna hire their own police department. I belong to an association and I got two patrolmen on my block, I’m payin’ their salary and I have a voice in what they do and how they do it. More and more people will be under surveillance.

 

DIANE:
Innocent people will also be under surveillance, is that what you’re trying to get at?

 

Who the hell do you think is under surveillance? Criminals aren’t under surveillance. The thefts you get in department stores is usually under ten dollars. They’re not professional thieves. It’s the everyday goodhearted American citizen who owns his own home—these are the people that are causin’ the problem. You get a woman who’s a sales clerk or a cashier and takes a three dollar blouse and sticks it in her pocket, she’s not a criminal. She’s a mother. She figures she can get away with it, so she takes it. So my job doesn’t bother me, ’cause nothin’ ever happens to these people really.

To write a report up every day about somethin’ and to really tell ’em somethin’ is rough. I’m up to the 178th report where I’m workin’. What the hell can I tell these people that I haven’t told them already? So you gotta look for dialogue and make it sound interesting. You have to have a memory like an IBM machine. I usually use word association. I can remember what’s said and I quote it. If you’re quoting somebody you gotta be accurate, because you may be up on the stand.

The reason sex is in on this: say the manager’s got a young girl working for him and he’s goin’ out with her. He may let her get away with theft. As far as this guy goin’ out with the girl, the company doesn’t give a shit. They just want to know where their money’s goin’, that’s all.

Mike, the supervisor, reads all the reports. And he’s got about twenty agents workin’ for him. Mike was an agent for the FBI. Artie had his own business as a polygrapher. They’re very savvy people. All you got is young guys as undercover. You’re dealing mostly with young people. The bearded guys are our best agents. Who the hell would suspect ’em? Hair down, dress outrageously. A bunch of flunkies, they’ll tell ’em anything. (Laughs.)

There’s one thing I look forward to: to be licensed by the state and do it on my own at my own convenience. I would like to have a major concern call me up and say, “We have a problem. We’ll give you X amount of dollars.” And I’d say, “Call me next week, I’m busy this week. I’m goin’ to Miami for the weekend.” To be able to work on my own terms is what I’d like. Any private detective, he has one thing and only one thing —it’s his wits.

(To his wife) You want to be an agent, Di? I can get you in. (Laughs.)

 

DIANE:
I couldn’t do it. I can’t lie. When I lie it shows all over my face. I can’t even lie on the phone. When I’m callin’ up sick at work, I can’t even do it.
(
Laughs
.)
I make him.