Spy of the Century

When you meet new people, the invariable addition into the first round of questions is “What do you do?” I've always hated that question because I always hated being defined by “what I did.” Just because you meet some guy at a party who says he’s a chef, do you automatically assume he’s a good chef? No, chances are much higher that he sucks, otherwise why would be at the same crappy party you got invited to, right? If some gal says she’s a “Municipal Engineer,” in such a manner that is sounds capitalized, do you dare ask what exactly that means, or just continue to stare blankly at her chest and hope she walks away.

All this time I’ve had to say stuff like “I work in a café” or “I’m in data-entry” and received the appropriate scowls of derision from the chefs, Engineers and professional dog-walkers in the room as they eat the dip that I made and talk amongst themselves about how good it is.

For those of you that don’t know, I am currently employed as an adjuster. For those of you who don’t know what an adjuster is, FreshPair.com defines it as “Fine metal or plastic hardware found on garment straps that slide up and down to allow strap adjustments.” Fortunately, the Oregon Board of Insurance, a much more reliable source of information, defines an adjuster as “A person who may act either on behalf of the insurance company or the insured in settling a claim. Employee adjusters work for an insurer; independent adjusters represent the insurance company on a fee basis; and public adjusters represent the insured on a fee basis.”

For clarification, I’m an independent adjuster.

Now when I meet people at parties, I get to sit at the adult table and say, “I’m an adjuster!” The people in the room all look at me because no one asked me anything. They then invariably ask, “What’s an adjuster?” In short order, it became easier to title myself with the better-known, but smaller portion, of my job duties: Investigator.



As an adjuster, I investigate insurance claims of all kinds, from car accidents to leaky pipes, to make sure all parties are fairly treated and appropriately compensated. These duties sometimes extend into the field of workers compensation insurance, in which the insurance company might feel that a claim is fraudulent, in which they might hire us to perform surveillance on a subject to determine if they really are missing a leg, or something like that.

The first time I went on a surveillance assignment, I sat in the back of a tinted minivan with a camcorder for four hours before I concluded that the guy wasn’t home.

I had my second assignment today.

Dan, the senior investigator, and I arrived at the subject’s house at 7 a.m. I parked across the street from his house and Dan parked a block away, prepared to tail him in the event he drove off. I set up my camera, pinned some blankets to one side of the interior of the van (to make it even harder to see into the van through the already heavily tinted windows) and waited for him to come out and start doing cartwheels or chopping firewood or something.

I had received some cursory training from my boss before I went out on this assignment. My boss, a 16-year veteran of this business, showed me the tricks of keeping light out of the van, keeping a blanket handy to hide under in case anyone got really suspicious, to notify the Police of where I was in case anyone called them, that kind of stuff. The basic lesson is: Most people don’t give a shit. Unless you give someone a reason to be suspicious, they won’t give a strange vehicle in their neighborhood a second glance.

It was 7:15 a.m., and I see a woman walking by on the sidewalk across the street (not our subject) obviously on a morning stroll (and believe me, she needed it). She stopped in front of the van. “Oh shit,” I said and ducked under the blanket. I looked up a minute later, and she was gone. Ten minutes later, two more women, pretending to exercise while they drank coffee and smoked, also stopped and examined the van very intently. I was beginning to think this was unusual, not just because I had never seen this before (on the one time I’d been out before) but because this was not supposed to be happening. No one was supposed to care.

I double-checked everything, the lights were off, the blankets were covering adequately, I was behind the seat, and I was downright difficult to see. Everything seemed in order. It was 7:35 a.m.

Then they converged.



I knew I was in trouble when I saw a guy pop up next to the van and cup his hands around his eyes to see through the tinting, and then another guy popped up on the other side. I hadn’t seen them coming so they must have sneaked up on the van. I hear someone say, “It’s too dark.” Oh shit, I thought, and dived under the blanket. That’s when I saw a flashlight beam. “A camera’s rolling, but there’s no one in there.” I heard someone say in an angry and distinctly Deliverance tone. Oh fuck, I thought, this was not supposed to happen, I did everything right! What the fuck am I going to do?!

Then a kid, not more than seventeen, jumps on the hood and peers directly into the van through the crystal clear and untinted windshield. “Thar’s somebawdy in thar!” he shouted, pounding on the windshield.

Shit. Think. Shit. Think. Shit. Think.

Taps and knocks were coming on the windows, taunts like “Come on out, pussy!” and “what the fuck do you think you’re doing in front of my house?!” were being spoken only feet from where I was laying. It was then that I realized how stupid I looked. Here I was, a full grown man hiding under a blanket in the back of a mini-van while being taunted by a posse as they circled my vehicle like a scene out of West Side Story.

I sat up, and grabbed my phone to call Dan. I had dialed the first few numbers when I felt a bump that shook the van. The kid had backed his Honda in front of my van and actually touched it, to prevent me from driving away. I got Dan on the line and apprised him of the situation, he said he’d drive over and we’d caravan out. It was then that I noticed that I was surrounded by no less than eight people, including some fat fucker with no shirt, an even fatter bitch with crazy bloodshot eyes and a skinny white freak with a baseball bat. The taunts continued.



Dan arrived and I slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The kid sat on the hood of the van and Jabba the Shirtless demanded that I roll down the window and answer his questions. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asks. “Sir, we’re performing an investigation into possible criminal activity.” I said. “I’m calling the police,” he says and opens his tiny flip phone, which was dwarfed by his giant sausage-fingers (I could actually smell him at this point). By the time Dan got there, the crowd has swelled to no less than twelve people. The fat bitch with the crazy eyes and the mullet starts screaming at me, “What are you fucking casing my house? You gonna fucking rob me?!”

I bit my lip. Believe me lady, you don’t have anything I could possibly want.

“Ma’am, I assure you were not doing anything of the kind. We’re investigators, feel free to call the police, they are well aware of our presence.” Dan chimed in, looking a little freaked out by all this. “Would you mind getting off the hood of the car, please?” I politely asked the kid. “Why don’t you make me?” he responded in a perfect I-used-to-say-that-a-lot-in-eight-grade-and-everyone-was-really-scared sort of way. He followed it with a menacing by-the-way-I-never-finished-eighth-grade type of stare.

I put the van in drive with a dramatic clunk.

Jabba the Shirtless told the kid to get off the van, and I backed up to get around the douche bag’s Honda. Dan made his way to his car, and I idled out of the space as the crowd dispersed to let me pass. “You stay out of our fucking neighborhood, you motherfuckers!!” the crazy-eyed mullet bitch screamed as loud as her meth-soaked lungs would allow, throwing up a middle finger for good measure. As we drove away, I saw other similar gestures come from equally educated and well-mannered folk, as they began to crawl back to the rocks under which they lived.

About three blocks away, I pulled up next to Dan and rolled down my window. “Has anything like that ever happened to you before?” I asked. “Not in four years.” He said.

When we got back to the office, my boss called the insurance company that hired us. “Yeah, that happened to the last gal we sent out,” said the examiner. “Not so many people showed up, but she got some choice words thrown at her. I should have mentioned that the whole neighborhood is pretty paranoid.”

The best part is though, that since the whole neighborhood is so fucking paranoid, they all think they were begin surveilled, not just our subject. We got permission to take it up a notch and get a third investigator on the job. We’re taking this fucker down.

How’s that for a story to tell at a cocktail party?