No, no, I really am.....

Most of the time, an undercover wants the criminal side to believe he really is someone other than that pesky occupational hazard known to them as law enforcement. However, there are also those times when the undercover needs to come forward and reveal his true identity, even if circumstances are not necessarily under the best conditions. This is one of those incidents. Surveillance had gone wrong and the undercover ended up playing the Lone Ranger. Or it could be a John Wayne part. Nah, in my mind, I like the image of Bruce Willis in the movie Last Man Standing, not to be confused with Tim the Toolman in a current TV sitcom by the same name. Although......

It was supposed to be a simple deal. Just me, my senior partner and a future defendant were in the bad guy's house. Several surveillance vehicles were parked up and down the street for backup. Negotiations for the contraband goods had finally been completed. Problem was, the bad guy was either one of those paranoid type people or he was being extra cagey. The goods were not at his residence, instead we had to drive over to another house. He made a quick phone call to tell them we were coming.

"I'm ready to go," says I.

"I'll wait here," says my partner.

This last statement allowed both the bad guy and me to feel a certain amount of relief. The criminal was satisfied because now he only had to keep an eye on one person instead of two during the transfer of goods. As for my feeling relief, my partner and I had zero means of communication with our surveillance teams outside to tell them the deal was moving to another location. By staying at the house, my partner could run outside, after the bad guy and I left, and flag down one of the surveillance cars. Looked like a great plan at the time.

I drove the undercover government car with the soon to be defendant seated on the passenger side. We backed out of his driveway, made a left at the first corner, drove one long block, made another left and immediately pulled into a driveway on the right hand side of the street. With my tail lights still glowing red, I glanced in the rear view mirror and soon saw the parade of surveillance vehicles going past.

"Good," I says to myself, "I'm covered."

I turned off the ignition.

My new friend, let's call him Bad Guy #1, goes into the house we're parked in front of and quickly returns with a large cardboard box. Seated inside the car, he opens the box and shows me the goods. I'm satisfied.

"I'll get the money out of the trunk," says I.

At the rear of the government car, I raise the trunk lid and the light comes on. This is now the bust signal, because we aren't going to let this much money walk. I stand there, confident, with the trunk light illuminating my smiling face as I wait for the cavalry to descend upon the scene and deliver me from the hostiles.

After a while, I'm still standing there. My smile is starting to droop. Where the hell is the cavalry?

Two things now occur.

One, I realize that the surveillance cars missed my last turn into the driveway. They have obviously continued down the street, probably splitting up and commencing to search for their lost undercover. Uh-oh.

And secondly, I look over the top of the government car toward the house. There's a man watching me through the kitchen window. Uh-oh again.

Show time.

Removing a thick envelope of flash money from the trunk, I wave the envelope over the top of the car for the inside man to see. Then I paste a smile back on my face as if everything is peachy keen. There's nothing for it now. I get back into the driver's seat, obvious envelope in hand.

"We've got a small problem," says I.

"What's that?" inquires my soon to be enlightened friend from the passenger side.

"Well," says I, "I'm a federal agent and you're under arrest."

"I don't believe you," says the criminal.

"Well, here's my credentials," says I, having extracted them from my pocket and displaying them in my most professional law enforcement manner like actors do on television.

"I still don't believe you," says the bad guy.

It then occurs to me that maybe the man has slipped into an extreme case of denial. All he needs is a slight nudge back towards reality.

"Well, here's my gun," says I, flipping the safety off on my nickel-plated Colt .45 semi-automatic.
"Okay, okay," he blubbers, evidently making a sudden return to the real world, "but I gotta tell you that the guy watching us from inside the house has a shotgun."

"In that case," I explain in a slow voice just in case I had been speaking too rapidly for him the other times, "you had best get down on the floorboards as small as you can get." Which as a new convert to belief, he quickly did.

Then, in my best Broderick Crawford style from the old TV series of Highway Patrol, I crouched down in the V between my car and the open driver's door with my gun aimed over the hood and at the house.

"Federal agents," I holler, "come out with your hands up." I do all that in a command voice like I know what I'm doing.

To my surprise, Bad Guy #2, the one with the shotgun, appears behind the screen door in the front doorway. He stands there with a clear case of indecision.

Afraid that he too may be a sufferer of Denial Disease, I wave my gun and reiterate my demands at the top of my lungs.

Amazingly, the cure works. He leans his shotgun against the inside door frame and comes out on the porch.

I order him into the front yard.

He goes there.

In order to keep his mind occupied so he doesn't do anything stupid, I tell him to start doing pushups.

He complies.

Wow, this is working great.

Now, Bad Guy #3 from somewhere inside the house picks up the shotgun and stands in the doorway.

Crap. This is starting to look like circus clowns getting out of a car.

I glance back at Bad Guy #2. He's still doing pushups. Must be the adrenaline, but then maybe he's never met a crazy guy with a gun. However, as I look over his back at the sliding glass patio door of the house next door, there's Mom, Dad and two little kids with their noses pressed against the glass to observe goings on in their quiet little neighborhood. Supper grows cold on the table behind them.

Bad Guy #3 is reluctant to come out of the house. I don't know, maybe he's allergic to pushups.

Fortunately, the cavalry now arrives with screeching vehicles and massive firepower.

#3 hasn't seen a show like this before. He quickly decides that maybe pushups aren't so bad after all.

As surveillance subsequently explains, yep, they missed my turn into the driveway. They were only alerted to my possible location when one of them monitoring the local police radio band heard mention of an escalating disturbance involving firearms at a certain residence.

Botton Line: Sometimes it's tough when the undercover operative has to reverse course and come in from the cold, but the criminals don't believe who he really is. Like I said in an earlier blog, it's a strange world we operate in.

In the Shadows

C'mon in. Pull up a Bacardi and Coke, throw in a slice of lime, make yourself comfortable and let's talk. Some of you already know me and that's fine. Some of you may have heard a little about me amd that's fine too. And, some of you may be asking yourself, "Who the heck is this guy?" And, that's really okay. I don't mind at all.

See, I spent twenty-five years in the shadows using several different aliases on the street, trying to avoid publicity. In my prior business, if you became known then you'd best be working in a very large population area, else move on to other territory. There's nothing like walking into a house or a bar undercover and suddenly realizing there's somebody in the place who knows you and what you do. Yeah, it's happened, ...more times than I would have liked.

Oh sure, I had a gun tucked inside my belt and concealed back underneath my shirt, but I only carried one. The other side often had their own weapons, and there was usually more than one of those guys at our little get-togethers. Yes, I did have a surveillance team as close as they could get and still stay out of sight, but most of the time they were several minutes away when seconds might count. And no, I didn't like to wear a wire transmitting our conversation to the outside just in case the opposition decided to shake me down. Guns they didn't mind. After all, they had their own and half expected you to do the same, but wires tended to bother them. Plus, some of the more sophisticated organizations had electronic equipment to detect transmitting frequencies that weren't theirs.

Let's just say they were a very untrusting lot, so when I pretended to be someone else, I had to have my story straight. There were times in the old Kansas City days when I taped a piece of paper on the wall by the phone. The left hand column listed the aliases I was using and the right hand column had the names of potential defendants who'd be calling for that particular name. business was good. No doubt there're a few psychiatrists out there who have written dissertations on multiple personalities and therefore have strong opinions on the subject. As for me, to this day I'll still answer to a lot of different names if I think someone is talking to me. It's a different life, but you get used to it.

Don't get the wrong idea, the job wasn't all excitement. Our Rule of Thumb said it was ninety percent boredom: doing paperwork, or waiting for the snitch to call, or the potential defendant to show up at a pre-arranged meeting site. Seems a lot of them boys couldn't tell time very well even if some did wear a Rolex. Only about ten percent of the job was adrenaline: stepping into the criminal world with a made up story as to who you were this time, or kicking doors with an arrest warrant when the case was done and the object of your intentions might have made up his mind he wasn't going back behind the walls for another stint, or taking the wheel in a high speed surveillance breaking red lights and hoping nothing went wrong.

Anonymity was my friend back then. In any case, I think you can see why it's kinda difficult for me sometimes to step out into the bright lights where most authors go when they're seeking publicity in order to advance their writing career.

Turns out, even my first three short stories got published in an undercover fashion. In those days, the federal agency I worked for didn't allow its Special Agents to have any outside employment. Somehow, they even construed this policy to to prohibit the writing and publishing of short stories. However, since the agency also taught us how to construct an alias with appropriate documents, and how to work undercover, I merely put their training to use. The byline on those first three stories was a nickname I used on the street, the payment checks came to a Post Office box in the name of an undercover alias, and the checks... well, let's just say it was easier in those days to cash them under a name that wasn't yours. Obviously, the agency had an excellent training program because none of this came to their attention.

Now I'm retired, so I write short mystery fiction for fun and profit. Roughly a third of my stories have been sold to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine where I have four different series going. Where do I get my story characters? Most of them walk right in off the street from the old days and sit down for a little chat from the past. Them people haven't aged a bit, they're frozen in time. Plots and story lines? These guys are all scam artists and they want their stories told, even if it is the fictionalized version. Call it a form of immortality through the printed word.

Okay, here's my first installment on this blog, so if you got any questions or topics you'd like brought up, just shoot 'em in. Who knows, they could end up in one of our future talks.

Well, it's getting late, my glass is empty and I got to go. Be looking for you in a couple of weeks. Seems I signed up for this gig on the Fortnight Plan. Guess you could say that way I can still keep one foot in the shadows where I find life more comfortable. See ya around.