Cici McNair - Detectives Dont Wear Seat Belts: True Adventures of a Female P.I.

Copyright 2009 by Clarissa McNair

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: September 2009

ISBN: 978-1-59995-266-6

This book is dedicated to all the men Ive spent the night with in a parked car, to every partner on a stakeout, to all the private investigators who let me watch them, who taught me

with boundless gratitude to Kevin F. Dougherty and Anthony G. Spiesman.

I also dedicate this book to my mother,

Clarissa Walton McNair, and to my patron saint,

Giacomo Casanova. Their blithe spirits inspire me to be

curious and optimistic, resourceful, relentless, and brave.

T hank you to Vinny Parco for having the imagination to hire me when no one else would give me a chance. Ill never forget that. You changed my life.

Thank you to Glenn Hales for being my ally and for all I learned from you.

Thank you to Mary Ellen Young, who is always in my heart. Beautiful, strong, and true. My moral compass from the age of eleven and a last surviving witness to the craziness on the Old Canton Road.

Thank you to Dorothea Halliday, who is a production editor without equal. Her big, beautiful, brilliant brain and her love of the English language delighted me. She truly understands nuance.

For common sense, for shelter, for professional expertise and for cheering me on: Arthur G. Altschul, David M. Anderson, Pete Beveridge, Lawrence Block, James C. Esposito, Elizabeth Gainsborough, Frank Gray, Heather Hanley, Caro Heller, Vivienne Heston-Demirel, Charley Hill, Charles Intriago, Herbert Irvine, Perri Klass, Julie Lombard, Diana Marley-Clarke, Renwick Matthews, Judith Natalucci, Hayko Oltaci, Sesto Quercetti, Stanley Rosenfeld, Avery Russell, Robert Spiel, Litsa Tsitsera, Arish Turle, Baroness von Goetze-Claren, Baroness von Karger, Sian Willson, Larry Wolff, and Herv Zany.

W hen my agent said my manuscript was being sold as a memoir, I thought it was wildly pretentious to label my capers that lovely French word. Almost as lovely as surveillance.

Detectives Dont Wear Seat Belts is exactly as I saw and heard the events, as true a surveillance as I can present. I did change most of the names and some of the identifying details, but there is no conscious embellishment. How could anyone possibly embellish Vinny or Mickey or my mother?

Im named after my mother. Im the fifth Clarissa in her family; the first Clarissa was born before the Civil War, a Quaker in Pennsylvania. In my detective life and on my business cards, I am Cici McNair, P.I., so this book is written by that persona.

I hope you will be inspired by my adventures and driven to do what makes you feel most alive. Sail into the eye of the storm.

As Ben Kingsley said in Sexy Beast, Its not the money, is it? Its the charge, the buzz, the bolt. The sheer fuck-off of it all.

Thats it. Thats exactly what it is. Detectives dont wear seat belts.

Clarissa McNair aka Cici McNair, P.I.

April Fools Day, 1994.

Relax! Lemme do the work. Go limp. Errol grasped my thumb, pressed it in the ink, and then rolled it on the paper. Hard. Relax, he commanded again.

Barbie Doll was on the phone saying, No, no, no. Mr. Parco is unavailable, as Vinny was telling us that he wanted to play hide the salami with the new client who had the missing husband.

Youre done, announced Errol with cheeseburger on his breath. The prints would be sent to Albany and registered.

I wiped my hands on paper towels, which just smeared the black ink over a wider range of skin. Smudges like bruises covered both forearms. Here, yelled Rodriguez as the sponge he tossed hit me in the face. I wet it for you!

Errol guffawed and Rodriguez grinned. What a dirty mind! I just spit on it.

Get tough, I told myself. I threw the sponge back and left for the ladies room.

I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink as I scrubbed my hands with gray suds. It was official. Id been hired as a private detective.

Later that first day, I was told it was because Vinny liked me and because Nick, his partner, was out with the flu and couldnt object. I laughed when I heard this, and Vinny chortled, Bodda-bing, bodda-boom! and did a series of bumps and grinds in his brown double-breasted suit. He was built like a fireplug; his shaved head gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the windowless office.

I had just sat down at my desk, was still drying my hands, hadnt even opened my new notebook, when Vinny bounded over to me. Hey, got this guy arriving from Milwaukee into LaGuardia at ten-thirty, checking into a hotel on Park Avenue. His wife wants pikchuhs of the broad hes screwing. Get em gettin outta the cab. Get over there, get the photos, get back.

Okay. I nodded and pulled on my jacket. Photos. Hotel. Adultery. Like in the movies.

A swanky hotel means a doorman. Watch yourself, said Vinny. He looked at his watch and then at me. Heres the address. Get outta here. Hurry.

Okay, I said as I grabbed the paper and then the camera Errol held out like the baton at a relay race. How will I do this? I shrieked silently. If theres a doorman, I cant stand on the sidewalk and just wait for the taxi to pull up. Park Avenue. Maybe Ill have to lie on my stomach in the daffodils on the island in front of the hotel.

Guys six foot four. Got bright red hair. Cant miss him, shouted Vinny from the doorway as I started down the hall.

I turned around to wave at him, to let him know Id heard. Errol and Rodriguez had both popped their heads out the door. Three heads in a vertical row, like cartoon characters, all watching me. Vinnys shiny bald head was on the bottom since he was shortest. The send-off. The kiss-off. Maybe my new career would be over before lunch. Later Id hear that they took bets on whether Id come back.

I jammed the camera into my pocketbook as the elevator doors opened. Rats flashed through my mind as I descended. Id heard there were rats on those Park Avenue islands. There had to be another way to get the pictures. I can do this, I said aloud as I stepped into the lobby. Out on the sidewalk in the sun I started toward Third Avenue, reminded myself to stand up straight, and whispered, Ive been fingerprinted and Im a private detective and I can do this.

T he idea to be a detective had occurred to me about a month before, on a snowy February afternoon, as I thumbed through the Manhattan phone book. Some people turn to the Bible for inspiration, but for me its the Yellow Pages. Id never met a detective, but suddenly I wanted to be one. It seemed obvious that all I had ever accomplished or endured had led to this.

I was divorced and broke and camping out in a borrowed apartment with an open suitcase under a dining room table. I look back and wonder why this wasnt cause for despair, but at the time, I saw it as just part of the ride, another chapter, the ending of something or the beginning of something else. I was back in New York after a long time in Europe via a stint in Beverly Hills. After college I traveled all over the world, living in cheap hotels or ones with five stars, cottages, consulates, cabins, flats, penthouses, houseboats, villas, chalets, chteaux, or palaces, depending upon my ever changing circumstances. Id been a cat sitter, a mail getter, a plant tender, someone who drove a boy to his piano lessons from Switzerland to France on Thursdays, a houseguest, a writer in residence, a lover, a fiance. Just nothing on paperno leases, no licenses. Married to a Canadian for a few minutes, which was quite long enough.