The Private Eye Business

The Golden Era of Private Detectives on Television extended throughout and well beyond my Baby Boom, prime time TV watching years.

There were the lone wolf private eyes like Peter Gunn and the guy on Tightrope. There were the detective agencies, with their suave PI's - Robert Conrad as Tom Lopaka on Hawaiian Eye, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. - is that a great name or what? -  as Stu Bailey on Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip, which also featured hipster parking lot attendant Edd "Kookie" Byrnes, who even inspired a song. ("Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb.") There was also a somewhat lesser detective agency show, Surfside Six that was set on a houseboat in Miami Beach and starred Troy Donahue. (Quick memory test for fellow boomers: run the theme songs of these three Warner Brother shows through your head. Then see if you can get them out of it.)

I don't remember one investigation any of these detectives ever got involved in, but I watched these shows all the time to see all those handsome detectives - I had a big crush on Tom Lopaka - hang around their swank offices making small talk with the "office girls", who all seemed to be chirpy blonds with names like Cricket.

Even the World's Number One kiddie show of the 1950's had a private detective, Howdy Doody's John J. Fadoozle - the World's Number One - boing, boing, boing [private eye eye seemingly popping through magnifying glass] - Private Eye. (John J. is pictured here with the World's Number One Weird Puppet Animal, Flub-a-Dub.)

Well after my prime TV watching years - which pretty much started to wind down when I was in high school and started holing up in my room listening to Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, and Simon and Garfunkel on the stereo  - private detective shows were a staple of network television: Mannix, Rockford, Magnum PI, Columbo.

I actually don't know if there are any private eyes on TV any more. (Thanks to the CSI and Law & Order franchises, there are plenty of non-private detectives out there, mostly carrying badges for big city police departments.)

In any case, I was interested to see an article in last week's Boston Globe on one profession that seems to be thriving in this economy: private detective.

Desperation is their life's blood. Like pawn shops, bankruptcy attorneys, and repo men, the sleuthing business seems to be recession-proof.

That's because when the economy's down, crime is up. Phil White, who's executive director of the PI's trade association in Massachusetts - an organization that claims 450 agencies as members - says that business is looking good for his guys because:

"People who can't make a living still need things, so the next alternative is to try to get away with stealing. We get called to do either criminal defense work or a company will call us to investigate internal theft by employees. We work both sides of the street."

John DiNatale, whose detective agency was profiled in the article, pointed out that, in a bad economy, there tend to be more insurance claims, as well, which translates into good business.

"Word leaks out that there are layoffs coming, and people have unwitnessed accidents," says John DiNatale. "It's, 'I slipped on the floor and gotta go out on workmen's comp.'"

Although there were plenty of times when word leaked out about impending layoffs, I don't recall any slipping on the floor or unwitnessed accident episodes during my career in high tech. When I worked at Wang, however, one guy suffered a fatal heart attack on the eve of a big layoff. I didn't know the guy, but I knew who he was, since his cube was next to that of someone in my group. (And, yes, his name had been on the layoff list. A pink slip is infinitely preferable to a white sheet drawn over your head, but the stress really got to this poor bastard.)

One part of the PI business is down, however: domestic surveillance. DiNatale attributes that to "not enough extra cash to keep a honey on the side."

If cheating spouse work is down, what's up?

Bogus disability claims, which for white collar workers tend to be around claims of psychological, rather than physical, impairment.

Other areas that are au courant are fraud investigations around subprime mortgage defaults, and a new line of business: investigating hedge fund managers being sued by investors over losses. PIs also work both sides of the James R. Sokolov did-anyone-ever-look-at-you-cross-eyed, you-may-be-able-to-sue aisle, checking out bogus claims for insurance companies, and helping those hoping to reinforce their claims.

Subprime loans, hedge funds, oh-my-aching-back claims.

While I can't remember exactly what sorts of cases TV's private detectives got involved in, something tells me that, whether it was Tom Lopaka or John J. Fadoozle, the cases were just a bit more riveting.