GLOBAL GUMSHOE

Internationally renowned private investigator and spy for hire Frank Monte knows the dark secrets of the rich and powerful. by Jacob Kalish

In the early '70s an Australian businessman retained novice private detective Frank Monte to murder a rival New York banker. Monte had no intention of executing the Manhattan financier, but he accepted 8,000 Aussie dollars in the hopes of coming up with an alternate method of intimidation. Instead, fate crashed in and a car accident killed the banker's wife. The client believed Monte was responsible for the woman's death and let it be known that the private investigator would do whatever it took to get the job done. "This actually helped build my mystique," Monte says. "In this game, a ruthless reputation isn't bad for business".

Frank Monte sports an expensive dark suit as he strides into the bar of a glitzy Manhattan hotel off Central Park. He checks his solid-gold Patek Philippe watch and orders a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. He's been interviewed before but has grown wary of press. I can feel him sizing me up-reading me like a Mickey Spillane paperback.

In his 30-plus-year career, the Australian private eye, now in his mid-fifties, has gotten down and dirty for some of the world's richest and most powerful men-in some of the most remote locales on the planet. Monte retrieved the skull of a long-lost Rockefeller heir in the cannibal-ridden jungles of Papua New Guinea. He spied for Aristotle Onassis, and he raised a private army for the Sheik of Dubai.

He claims to hold the world record for collecting evidence in the most divorce cases (over 27,000), and has reportedly been shot at 17 times and had his nose broken seven times. He has offices in Sydney, New York and Beverly Hills, and his website (montespy.com) lists Ted Danson, Gregory Peck, Louis Vuitton and Marlon Brando among his celebrity clients, along with billion-dollar companies like Amoco and Coca-Cola.

Multinational corporations and celebrities also use Monte's services for protection. Recently, Frank's firm shielded former Jane's Addiction frontman and eccentric Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell. "He was off his face on crack and had all these problems and he called us. My son James spent nearly a month with him as a bodyguard. He and this other guy were after each other, and the other guy hired hit men. So we talked to them." Case closed.

All this glitzy espionage has provided this freelance James Bond with a player's lifestyle. "I like women, good clothes, fine cigars and comfortable things," Monte says "A Ferrari, a Rolls-Royce."

SPY SCHOOL

Frank Monte spent his childhood in Alexandria, Egypt speaking Italian, French, Greek, Arabic and English-giving him the ability to spy in five languages before his family moved to Australia. Growing up, Monte dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but that plan hit a snag when he couldn't afford to finish law school. "So I became a cop to become a prosecutor to become a barrister, only it didn't work that way. I got beaten up very badly a few times,' Monte seethes, his disdain for beat work evident in his tone. He soon moved into investigative police work, where his take-no-prisoners, detail-oriented approach excelled. He quickly gained the confidence to head out on his own as a P.I.

In 1973, a couple years after the banker's-wife incident, Monte was hired by Greek shipping and oil magnate (and Jackie Kennedy husband) Aristotle Onassis, whom he called "real interesting". Officially, he was a bodyguard, but, according to Monte, Onassis already had bodyguards. "I was debugging," entering into his competitors or people that were doing business with him." In his four months on the job, he also was the first time I tasted real power-raw power-and sexual energy. He sent me out to find women... And if Onassis didn't like what they were wearing, he'd pull out some dresses and say, 'Keep it."

GUNS FOR HIRE

Hot off the Onassis job, Monte landed a gig raising a private army for the Sheik of Dubai, on of the riches men in the world at the time. "I was only supposed to be doing background checks on mercenaries," explains Monte. But he was soon recruiting an army of 400 seasoned, trained killers-100 to guard the Sheik, 100 to protect his oil fields, 100 to patrol offshore and 100 to fight Yemeni insurgents. Other sheiks were not pleased.

"I was the target," Monte says as casually as another guy might discuss his days flipping burgers. "If anyone had to be shot to show the Sheik that you can't do this in the United Arab Emirates, it was going to be me. So I lost a lot of weight." The troops Monte recruited fought and destroyed insurgent cadres in the UAE and Yemen. "I was personally engaged in many firefights and saw quite a few men die."

Monte got out alive and in 1979 jumped in the crocodile infested wilds of Papua New Guinea. Eighteen years earlier, then-23-year-old Michael Rockefeller, the son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, went to on an anthropological expedition to the remote region of Irian Jaya. Michael, studying the culture of the cannibalistic Asmat tree people, mysteriously disappeared. Nearly two decades later, the Rockefeller family hired Monte to find out what had happened to him.

With the cooperation of the Indonesian government, Monte and team of investigators trudged through and searched the treacherous area. After a few weeks, Monte emerged triumphant with three skulls, one of which was said to be Rockefeller's. Monte believes that Rockefeller was killed not long after he went missing, after running afoul of the flesh eating natives. The intuitive investigator was paid handsomely for his grisly discovery.

NOWHERE TO HIDE

While Monte made his bones, and his name, spying for-and-on-the wealthy and powerful, most of his everyday business is investigating regular guys. And he can find out virtually anything he wants. Most detective agencies rely exclusively on expensive private databases, skilled computer hackers and high-tech gizmos like remote-control mini-cameras and video transmitters. But for the Monte Investigation Group, that's only a starting point. He prefers the more precise yet glamour-free method of collecting information through personal surveillance.

"You can find out so much by following a guy around for a day that isn't going to appear on any record," says Monte. "If he goes to the ATM, you can most likely pick up his receipts... If he books into a hotel, you book in too, so you can stand outside a guy's room, use a concrete microphone and listen to what's he's going on about."

And then there are the "honey trappers" - gorgeous female spies, often clad in skintight, low-cut outfits - the kid of tasty babes any man would give anything for, including important information. "We never ask a girl to take a guy to bed," Monte says defensively. But she will go up to his room, and in the inevitable attempt to impress her, he'll jibber-jabber endlessly-right into her hidden recording device. If they leave the premises together, someone in a nearby car will be armed with a camera.

Although it's always helpful to a disgruntled wife during divorce proceedings, some private eyes consider honey-trapping unethical. But Monte does things his way, and there's certainly no arguing with his results. Or at least there wasn't-until a court case accused Monte of far worse transgressions than honey-trapping and left him with his credibility shaken.

MONTE ON TRIAL

"No way in the world we're finished with Versace," says Monte, with fire in his eyes and considerably less Scotch in his glass. He's referring to the extremely wealthy family of Gianni Versace, the flamboyant, world-famous designer brutally murdered in Miami in 1997. Versace's siblings, Santo and Donatella, won a major defamation lawsuit against Monte in March 2002 after Monte boldly claimed in his memoir, The Spying Game, that he worked for Gianni in the year and a half before his horrific death.

According to Australian Justice Brian Tamberlin, Monte further implied in his book that Versace's siblings were "criminally involved with the Mafia and in the laundering of millions of 'dirty' dollars for Calabrian organized crime, that the company was being blackmailed, and that Santo and Donatella were reasonably suspected of murdering Gianni." Tamberlin's verdict found Monte defamed the Versace's. The judge ordered Monte to pay damages and issued an injunction against future printing of the book. Monte is now appealing the verdict and the injunction.

The case, and the humiliating verdict, were widely reported in the Australian press, leaving the self-proclaimed "world's most famous private eye" buried under a flood of bad ink. Unapologetic, Monte sees himself as the real victim. He says Donatella Versace "wanted to get" him. Monte, his voice rising, sees the ruling as justice at a price. "They spent four million, I spent 25,000." Folks who used to flock to Frank Monte are now flying away - "I usually have 200 people at my New Year's Eve party. This year I had 30."

HE'LL BE BACK

From the certainty in Frank Monte's voice, it's clear that he believes they'll all be back. The Versace ruling "hurt," he says, but he's been hurt before-he's not hiding, and he's not fading away. "I've been fucked over quite a lot," the middle-aged sleuth says, with more sadness than fury in his voice. Still, Monte's sure he'll beat the Versace's in appear, and he claims to be working on a big case - "huge," he says - the details of which he can't reveal. He's also writing a new book and penning a screenplay based on his life's adventures. The man who's made such an astonishingly successful living lurking in the shadows eagerly seeks the spotlight. "I want to be the greatest private eye in history," says Monte, "I've just got to solve a few more cases." Frank Monte finishes his Scotch, surveys the crowd and checks his gold watch. There's no time to waste.