Scrambled Hard-Boiled

The next year and a half weren’t quite as traumatic as my initiation to firearms. Ernie was good to his word. He took me “under his wing” so to speak, and started teaching me the ropes with regards to the private eye business. I wish I could tell you that I learned the black art of surveillance, how to bug phones, the in and outs of locating a missing person or how to subdue a man (or woman, for that matter) twice your size, but, in all honesty, I can’t.

  The bulk of our business came from divorce work, usually contracted through a lawyer representing the “aggrieved” party. The usual routine would be Ernie would get a call from a lawyer, asking him to drop into his or her office at a certain time. Ernie at first went alone and came back to brief me on what we (meaning I) were to do, who the client was, details needed to start the surveillance, etc. Eventually, he let me tag along to the lawyer’s office, where he would introduce me as his “associate” and I could meet the client and get the information first hand.

  Eventually, both Ernie and I noticed that the lawyers, and most importantly, the clients, seemed much more at ease with me than Ernie.

  I got to admit, I really looked the part of a detective. I was a strapping six feet two, 190 pounds, and my dirty-blond hair was close cropped. That, coupled with my no-nonsense dark suit attire and the way I could casually let the lawyer or the client catch a fleeting glimpse of my shiny pistol slung under my arm, really added up to an impressive package that almost sold itself to our customers. So, after a few months, I became the “public” face of Twillfigger Investigations, Inc.

  Ernie, much to his credit, realized that his grooming habits were not the best in the world, and knew that some people (hell, let’s be honest, most people) found him to be a repulsive worm. His back was also giving him more trouble, and he was content to sit in the office, give me directions and let me do the work.

  He called it the “Detective training by total immersion.”

  Yeah…right.

  I don’t want to make it sound like Ernie didn’t teach me much. Quite the contrary, he showed me the ropes about how to serve warrants (do it in public, less chance of trouble), how to search for deeds, birth certificates and other paperwork, and how to trail a mark (just hang back and don’t get caught). I also mastered the art of surveillance photography (always use fast black-and-white film, telephoto lenses for long distance, wide angle for close in work and never use cheap film or cameras).

  While my professional life as a private detective began to blossom, my personal life was in the pits. Disco was in the last years of its gaudy, extravagant life, and yours truly had about as much in common with the disco lifestyle as Ernie had with the Queen of England (I had two left feet and couldn’t carry a tune).

  I tried going to a few discos in hope of some quick, gratuitous sex, but with a few exceptions, I always managed to go home alone, and usually around ten o’clock. I eventually gave up going to these places, and began to confine my after-hours entertainment to a few local pubs and bars that had a jukebox for music, no dance floor, and only sports on the TV. As far as the women who haunted these places, they were invariably older than me and twice as dirty-minded.

  I’ll say this for these babes. Yeah, they were worn around the edges and their bodies sagged here and there, but they damn sure knew how to please a man, and they taught me things that I treasure to this day.

  While babes in their teens and twenties might be at their peak of physical perfection, it’s the old broads in their mid thirties to forties that know what they want and how to go about getting and giving it. I think it has something to do with having mastered the art of contraception and realizing that you ain’t getting any younger that was the key to these ladies' skills.

  Another benefit was, for some damn reason, they always insisted on going to a motel or their own place, so they never found out where I lived.

  What I do know is that more than a few of these broads turned me into a pile of blubbering jelly on numerous occasions and did shit to me that I knew was illegal or against nature. I’ll always be grateful to them for what they taught me and, every now and then, I regret having never told any of them my real name.

  So this was my life for a year and a half. Finally, Ernie felt that I was ready to pass my private license test, and after fudging the amount of experience I had to tell the state board, I passed the test in May of 1977. Ernie gave me a 300 dollar a month raise and decided to celebrate my success by leaving me in-charge while he took a two-week vacation in Vegas.

  What he and I didn’t know at that time was that within the next six months I was to become the most famous private eye in the Carolinas, and even more importantly, be lucky to be alive.

  The first step on this path began two days after Ernie left for vacation, when a Dr. Elmo D. Randall, MD walked into my office in a foul mood.