Somebody's Eskimo

One thing I try hard not to do is letting the bad guys get the drop on me. So I’m a little embarrassed to explain how I ended up in that alley at night with three gang-bangers waving switchblades at me. Sure, I knew I could get my gun out before I got cut, but I didn’t think these guys were smart enough to back off even at gunpoint. That would leave me in the ugly position of having to shoot some teenager. I was wishing for another option, but right then none was coming to mind.

“Y’all get away from him!”

That voice booming from the other end of the alley drew everyone’s attention. I knew the tall black man marching toward us instantly. Matt Lincoln was a neighbor I had history with. The thugs recognized the baseball bat he was waving. Backing him up was Monte, the middle school kid I’ve been mentoring.

“I done called the cops already,” Lincoln said. “And I’m about to beat your asses until they get here. You don’t want none of this.” He raised the bat and all the young punks turned to face him. That gave me the chance to back off a couple of paces and draw my automatic.

“You fellows are badly overmatched here,” I told them calmly. “This ends badly unless you drop the blades and move out now.”

That was enough. I heard three slivers of metal clatter on the street, followed by three pairs of feet racing down the alley. Lincoln raised the bat higher, as if threatening the boys from behind. As puzzled as I was relieved, I holstered my weapon.

“I ain’t complaining, Matt, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Monte here saw you was heading into some trouble,” Lincoln said, leading us back toward the street. “He come looking for help.”

I slapped a hand on his shoulder. “There are no words to cover thank you, but I’ll admit I’m a little surprised that you’d stick your neck out for me. I mean, the day we met, I shot you.”

“Yup,” he said and sort of chuckled. “But that was cause I broke into your house. Hell I could have had a gun for all you knew, but you only hit my leg a bit. I had my boy with me and you didn’t hurt him none. And then, when you saw I was hurt, you gave me money to go to the hospital.” We were walking slowly together through the neighborhood and stopped at the door of a little coffee shot I’d never noticed before. “What you didn’t know is, I’m an alcoholic. I was down to stealing for booze.”

We walked inside and I moved quickly to the counter to order hot drinks for the three of us. I know I looked uncomfortable having that admission so casually dropped, but Monte, bless his heart, rushed right in. “Mr. Lincoln, you’re a drunk?”

“Not any more,” Lincoln said, looking right at me. “Hannibal, your act of kindness snatched me back to real life. I been sober since that night. You was my Eskimo.”

“A Eskimo?” Monte asked as we slid into a booth. “What does that mean?”

“You don’t know the Eskimo story?” Lincoln asked. The gray at his temple made him look wise, and he had that look on his face like the story was pushing to come out, so I smiled and lied that I didn’t know either. Lincoln sipped his coffee, then leaned forward on both elbows on the table.

“Well, it’s an old story that people who is in recovery like to tell. It starts with a guy sitting in a bar knocking back the drinks. After a while the bartender says, ‘Maybe you should take it easy, buddy.’

The guy says, "What's the use? The Lord has abandoned me."

“What makes you say that?” the bartender asks.

Well, the guy throws back another drink and says, “Just a couple of days ago I was on a business trip to Alaska. There was engine trouble and my flight went down just inside the Arctic Circle. I was the lone survivor,” he says. “I managed to crawl up on a ice floe. There I was, with no food or shelter. What could I do? Well, I prayed for God to help me. I thought maybe I had been saved for a purpose, and swore that if God would just help me get home, I'd change my ways and never drink again. But I learned my lesson. There's no point to life. God didn't come save me life, so there’s no point."

So after a minute, the bartender says, "Wait a minute. If God didn't save you, how the hell did you end up in my bar?"

The guy’s drunk by then and kind of slurring, and he says, “Pure coincidence. It just so happened that some poor Eskimo got lost out there and pulled up in a dog sled next to my ice floe. He offered me a lift, wrapped me in a blanket and gave me a piece of blubber to eat. Then he brought me to the nearest town, which was a hundred miles away."

Lincoln stopped to drink more coffee and allowed a few seconds for the lesson to sink in. Monte leaned back and whistled. I guess he got it. When Lincoln looked at me again he spoke softly. “You could have killed me that night, and you had the right, but you gave me one more chance. You was my Eskimo.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But tonight you were mine, and that’s for sure.” I looked at Monte, but I could see that his lecture meter was on full.

“Don’t worry, H, I get it. And I’ll be watching for my chance. It will be cool to get to be somebody’s Eskimo sometime.”

WHO WE ARE - WHAT I DO

It occurred to me that since my girl Cindy got me into this blogging thing I’ve never taken any time to talk about what I do. A lot of people have a very romantic picture of private investigators so I figured I’d set the record straight a little bit.

First of all, books and TV would give you the idea that there are millions of us out there, in every city on every street. The fact is, there are only about 45,000 private detectives in the country. That might still sound like a lot, but you got to realize that only about a quarter of us are self-employed. About the same number work for some detective agency. Then you subtract out the 15 percent who are store detectives - the rest of us don’t count those guys anyhow. That leave about a third of the big number who are working for state or local government, law firms, employment services companies, insurance agencies, and banks and the like. None of them wants to help you with your problems.

So why only an average of less than 500 per state? Well, the hours suck. The work is dangerous. And people who are really qualified usually have better sense and stay in law enforcement, or insurance, or the military, or they get a job in government or doing intelligence work.

Most P.I.s come from those professions and the guys I respect are highly qualified. Not all of them have their B.S. degree in police science like I got, but some have lots more than my six years of police experience and the three years I spent in the Protective Service as a U.S. Marshal. But some have no qualifications at all so if you’re in the market, be careful.

Most states, like The District, require private detectives to get a license. The requirements are all different, though, and in Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Dakota there’s no license required at all.

Some people say, why do we need private investigators? Isn’t that what we pay the police for? Well, there’s stuff we do that the cops can’t, and most of it’s legal. The biggest thing for me, is the surveillance. Sure, I can check a guy’s employment or income with a phone call, but to know what he’s really up to, nothing replaces laying eyes on a guy for hours or days at a time. Cops can’t afford the resources for that kind of thing. They can’t informally interview friends, neighbors and coworkers. Lawyers and businesses hire me to do that kind of stuff as much as individuals do. And the cops can’t just work one case until it’s done, like they do on TV. I can, and generally do.

As you know, I also do personal protection work, stop harassment, get the goods on people at the wrong end of law suits and child custody cases, and handle missing person cases if someone being missing puts somebody else in jeopardy. Any kind of trouble people get into, I can try to get them out of, except maybe computer fraud or identity theft, in which case I’ll refer you to another expert I know. I’m also not interested in premarital screening or verifying infidelity, but for some of my fellow private investigators, that’s their bread and butter.

My kind tends to specialize. There’s guys, and gals I better say, who focus on intellectual property theft. There’s legal investigators, corporate investigators, financial investigators, store and hotel detectives. And then there’s me. I’m the only professional troubleshooter that I know of, and I’m kind of glad of that. As far as private eyes, now you’ve got an idea of who we really are. And for me, I hope you got an idea of what I do.