There are lots of cuckoo jobs in this country. I've never come across as many mad people as I have in this country. And they want you to do the stupidest, crazy things. You have to think, "Do I want this client or is it too stupid? Am I morally wrong taking this case because she'll just go and give the money to somebody else?"

Are a lot of your clients women?

About 75 percent of my clients are females. We got a bunch of matrimonials now: husband following wife, wife following husband, man following mistress. It works like this: out of 100 jobs, 20 jobs being corporate, give you 80 percent of your money. And 80 jobs, being the bread-and-butter crap you have to do to keep your men busy, give you 20 percent of the money.

Give me an example.

I'm just looking at a job sheet in front of me. This imbecile is a wealthy woman living on the West Side of Manhattan. She's been on the Internet with this guy that she's fallen in love with. I can't believe this is true. Some of these idiots are complete imbeciles. She wants me to check out this guy. So when I found out he was married and living happily in Louisiana, she got angry at me and wanted her money back. She said, "What good does it do me?" But we did all the work. And she's still haggling about that.

People want to kill the messenger with the bad news.

If the client doesn't like what you do for them, no matter what, they're pissed with you. You can't get their husband, or they can't get the guy who stole their money. They are the consumer, and they want their rights. [Their attitude becomes] "Why should I pay you?" It gets very personal.

I'm getting the impression this job is not as glamorous as people imagine it to be.

It's as glamorous as you make it. I'll give you a glamorous job. A few years ago a banker came to see me and said, "We've got three partners in this huge bank. My partner is traveling from Sydney, to Tokyo, to Hawaii, to Los Angeles, to New York, to London, Rome, Paris, Hong Kong, and then home. We want him watched, followed. We want to know everybody he talks to and what he talks about." I asked how long he was going to do this. They said a month. He was either stealing or about to take off on his own.

How did you do that job?

I got two of my teams completely separate. Everybody had walkie-talkies. We leapfrogged it. Bill and his team was with me doing the job now. As we go from Tokyo to Honolulu with cars rented, and the guy's room is already bugged. In Honolulu, we got three or four guys listening - two asleep, two on the job. If you try to do it on your own, this guy might get up at midnight and make a phone call. And he could speak a few languages. We needed an interpreter.

You must have come up with a tremendous amount of data.

Yes, we did. It was a lot of work. That was one of the best jobs we ever did. But where was the glamour? The glamour was in about 10 guys operating. There was always somebody on, somebody off, and I was just running the whole thing. He was staying in the best places and so were we.

Did you catch him?

Oh, yeah. He was stealing and setting up another bank. They were able to catch him, which not only stopped him, but annoyed all the people he was doing business with, who were partly their clients anyway.

You are known for hiring beautiful women as operatives. Is that to catch cheating husbands?

Well, no. The reason we train women is because we want them to go into facilities and get jobs. Instead of breaking and entering, we get some beautiful dame to walk in and work somewhere. And the moment she walks in, if she's trained properly and can actually do the job, she'll talk her way into the place. We get Mary Lou in there and give her a bonus of a couple of thousand dollars. She's in there for two days. She reads the information we want to know. She goes home and that's it.

When did you come up with this idea?

I can send you an article written in 1970 about me using female spies. I just decided: why work so hard doing all the surveillance when we can just get a beautiful girl to knock on the door? As the guy opens the door, she's bending over in short shorts. He's already forgotten who he is. Then she stands up, and he's all quivering, and she says, "Hi, what's your name?" [At that time] we were doing a lot of worker's comp.

Where the guy is suppose to be disabled?

Exactly. She's just put down a huge crate of beer. She's a delivery person. We're in a van watching. She then says, "I can't lift this anymore." So he bends over. He's got a bad back and limp, see? He bends over and picks it up, and she says, "Can you help me with my car? There's another crate of bottles out there for you." And he figures it's the wrong delivery, but doesn't care. (continued on page 168)