Double

While I worked on the beer, I decided I might as well see what the convention had to offer, so I opened up the information packet the guy at the registration table had given me. Lots of great events, all right. All guaranteed to insure a fun-filled, informative “weekend in the sun,” as the Society’s flyer had put it.

Tonight, for example, after the usual welcome speeches, I could go to a pair of stimulating panel discussions: “Questional Ethics and Practices of Private Detectives” and “The Investigator and Group Dynamics: A Sociological Overview.” I could also attend the first of several product demonstrations, put on by an L.A. supplier of handguns and other self-defense weapons. Tomorrow morning I could attend a film dramatization called A Day in the Life of a Typical Investigator. Or a seminar on “Interpersonal Relationships with Law Enforcement Officers and Government Officials.” Or two more provocative panel discussions: “Modern Techniques of Hotel Security” and “Electronic Eavesdropping: Morality Versus Legal Admissibility.”

Then on Sunday, if I was still thirsty for more knowledge, I had my choice of two films on various investigative techniques, some demonstrations involving computers and electronic surveillance products, and/or a fifth and final panel, sure to be the most stirring of all, entitled, “Seidenbaum’s Method of Directive Interrogation: A Creative Debate.” And then — the high point of the convention — the Society’s annual awards dinner Sunday evening, at which no less than two politicians and six interpersonally relating law enforcement officers, government officials, and private investigators would speak, no doubt in great depth and detail, and handsome little ebony plaques would be presented to those members of the Society who had “distinguished themselves in the field of investigative service” during the previous calendar year. I looked for my name among the nominees, but it wasn’t there. The only one I recognized was a guy from Boston; I knew him and his methods, and as far as I was concerned he was a wisecracking, borderline psychotic who operated under a moral code that was anything but and who ought to have been tossed in jail a long time ago. But then what did I know, really, an ordinary slob like me?

But that wasn’t all. Oh no. The Society and the Casa del Rey weren’t about to let the rest of the evening go to waste. There would be a postprandial cocktail party in the Marimba Room, featuring free champagne, and after that there would be dancing “until the wee hours” to the Latin melodies of Pedro Martinez and his world-famous Mexican Bandit Band.

I closed the information packet. I drank the rest of my beer. I thought: God, what if my heart can’t stand the excitement of it all? What if I keel over right in the middle of one of the Latin melodies of Pedro Martinez and his world-famous Mexican Bandit Band?

I ordered another beer. And I was trying not to cry into it when a familiar voice said behind me, “Hiding in dark bars already?” I glanced up into the back-bar mirror, and it was McCone sailing by on her way out; she waved when she saw me looking at her. By the time I thought of something clever and unfatherly to say to her, she was gone and I was alone again.

McCone, I thought, if you keep disappearing all weekend, who the hell am I going to talk to?

Well, I had one other prospect, anyway — one guy I had never met but with whom I had corresponded and spoken to on the telephone and who shared a couple of common interests. He wasn’t a private investigator; he didn’t have anything to do with the convention, even though he would probably come and hang around for most of it. His name was Charley Valdene and he was a painting contractor who lived in Pacific Beach, up the coast a way. I had traded pulps with him off and on over the past several years; he collected mystery and detective titles, as I did, but more selectively — only those that contained stories about private detectives. He also collected anything else written or drawn or aired that involved the exploits of P.I.s. He’d cheerfully admitted that he had a private-eye fixation. Always dreamed of being one, didn’t have the brains or the courage for the job — his self-analysis — and so he’d devoted himself to the species vicariously.