Strange but True: Tales from Author Tim Chapman

Tim Chapman gives us the dirt on what it was really like to work for the West Coast Detective Agency back in the 80s in this episode of Strange but True!

In this episode of Strange but True: Tales from Authors, I am pleased to welcome fellow Blackbird Writer, Tim Chapman. His story about working with the West Coast Detective Agency in the 1980s is delightful read . . . and while it might seem like a great piece of fiction . . . it’s all true!

Trouble Is My Beeswax by Tim Chapman

When I was a kid, my favorite books were detective novels, specifically private eye stories. I liked guys like Sam Spade, the Continental Op, and Phillip Marlow who lived in a gritty world where they had to bend the rules to protect the innocent and bring about their own brand of justice. So, in the early 1980s, when I saw an employment ad for the West Coast Detective Agency, I decided to find out what being a real detective was like. I was living in an apartment in North Hollywood, painting pictures to sell at art shows, taking martial arts lessons, and working odd jobs, but this was an opportunity to live out a childhood fantasy.

The guy who trained me (let’s call him Rusty) was a stocky cigarette-smoking ex-cop with sweat stains under his arms and a “unique” sense of humor. He decided that, before giving me an assignment, I needed to learn to shoot, so he sent me to a local range for a pistol course. Then he took me up into the hills east of Burbank for a shotgun lesson.

“Ever shoot one of these?” he asked.

I said that I hadn’t, and he responded with an enigmatic grin. I learned what that meant a few minutes later.

“So imagine those bottles are some dirtbag’s legs. You don’t want to kill him; you want to blow his legs out from under him, but you’ve got to compensate for the barrel kicking up, so aim at the ground in front of the bottles.”

I snugged the butt up against my shoulder, pumped a round into the chamber, and pulled the trigger. Suddenly I was lying on the ground, and Rusty was laughing so hard he had a coughing fit. Still chuckling, he said, “I’m sorry, kid. I couldn’t resist. That first shell was a magnum load. Get up and try again. I promise the others are just bird shot.”

Rusty offered me five assignments during the short time I worked for him. I’ve written before about the undercover shoplifting assignment that gave me fodder for my story, Handy Man, which appeared in the March/April 2018 issue of “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” but let me tell you about another of the assignments I accepted from Rusty.

In the hills north of the San Fernando valley, was a summer camp for underprivileged children. The camp’s mission was to introduce nature to kids who had only ever known the concrete of the city. The camp was nestled in woods filled with pine and birch trees and plenty of wildlife. Despite being isolated from LA’s urban sprawl, the camp’s existence was well known to a couple of nearby small towns. A few of the residents of these communities weren’t happy to have a camp with little black and brown children nearby, and the camp counselors reported daily harassment from a biker gang. Apparently, these thugs would roar into camp after dark shouting racial slurs and threats, throw empty beer bottles at the kids, and ride off laughing. The campers were frightened, and the counselors were unnerved, so the camp director hired our agency to guard them.

The following morning, Rusty drove me and another operative (we’ll call him Dan) up to the camp. We took the agency’s Subaru Brat, a weird little vehicle like a sawed-off pickup with a two-seater cab and a couple of plastic seats mounted in the open truck bed. The camp director filled us in about the biker raids and emphasized how frightened the counselors were, then he got in the cab with Rusty and took us on a tour of the camp with Dan and me sitting in back.

In addition to the cabins, there was a basketball court, a dining hall, an office building, a couple of arts and crafts tents, and a large fire pit. All of this was spread out in the wooded rolling hills and accessible by two dirt roads. It really was a beautiful setting, and riding in the open-air Brat, surrounded by butterflies, chirping birds, and the scent of pine, made it seem like a woodland idyl. I was taking it all in, but Dan sat hunched in his seat with his arms folded across his chest. I tried to talk to him, pointing out features of the camp, but all I could get out of him was an occasional sniff or shoulder shrug. He did not look happy.

On the way back to North Hollywood, Rusty explained that the plan was for us two operatives to meet back at the camp at seven o’clock and patrol the grounds ’til four a.m. with an hour for dinner. It would be okay if we could talk the camp cook into giving us a meal, but it wasn’t guaranteed, and he suggested we bring our own food. He also suggested we bring our agency-issued shotguns as it would make it easier to hit a moving target, “if need be.” When Rusty dropped us at the office, I told Dan I’d see him at seven, went home, locked the shotgun in my closet, took the head off a mop, and lay down for a nap. I’d only been training in the martial arts for about a year, but I had the unearned confidence of a dopey guy in his twenties and figured I could handle a few Hell’s Angels or Satan’s Slaves or whatever flavor of biker they had up there with a staff made from a mop handle. Besides, I didn’t want to kill anyone, and since the only time I’d fired a shotgun was when I got knocked on my butt, I didn’t want to risk it.

I hadn’t been asleep long when Rusty called. “Kid, you can turn this one down if you want,” he said. “Dan’s a city guy, afraid of running into bears or snakes or something. I’ll tell the director you’re not coming tonight, and I’ll call some guys tomorrow to find a replacement.”

I said I was fine going by myself. I was actually relieved. I hadn’t been looking forward to walking around in the dark knowing that nervous Dan was out there with his shotgun.

At seven that evening, I pulled up to the camp entrance in my little Toyota and got out to nail up the signs Rusty had given me—“No Trespassing. Property Guarded by West Coast Detective Agency.”

Out loud, I said, “Sure. That’ll scare off the bikers.”

I turned to get back in my car, and standing in the ditch on the side of the road was a teenage boy wearing a Dodgers cap and holding a small revolver.

“Don’t move,” he said. “And put up your hands.”

“You’re a camp counselor?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Come here and look at this sign.”

He read the sign, and I made him give me his gun. Then I drove us both down the entrance road to the dining hall where the counselors and camp director were having a meeting about the biker problem. I gave the director the gun, introduced myself, and assured everyone I’d be there all night, from seven to four, and they really had nothing to worry about. I should mention here that, in my twenties, I was five foot eight inches tall, one hundred and thirty-five pounds and had shoulder-length blondish hair. Standing there in t-shirt, jeans, and gym shoes, holding my mop handle, I probably didn’t inspire much confidence.

Everything went smoothly the first night. No bikers showed up, and I found out about the camp’s nightly ritual. About an hour before light’s out, all the campers and counselors gathered around the big fire pit to sing songs, tell stories, and roast marshmallows. I got in on this every night I was out there, and it was a delight sitting around the fire under a star-filled sky eating charred marshmallows and watching children squirm and giggle while the counselors told them about the witch in the woods and how she loved to eat little kids.

When the kids went off to brush their teeth, I’d drift off into the woods and start walking the pattern I’d set for myself during the day—around the back and up a hill where I had a good view of the entrance road. I’d stay up there until I thought the kids were mostly asleep, then start walking the paths that wrapped around the camp, my mop handle over my shoulder and a flashlight in my hand to keep from stumbling off the path into the woods. I made it a point to walk the two dirt roads that led to the camp several times each night since that seemed the most likely place to run into intruders. The dirt road that ran past the basketball court was also the best place to run across wildlife. In the early evening, the tree frogs would sing to me, followed by a chorus of crickets. I only saw deer occasionally, but there were plenty of jackrabbits and raccoons.

After the first night, the camp director let Rusty know he was pleased with my performance and that they’d prefer just to pay for one guard rather than two. I assured Rusty I was fine working alone, so for the five nights I was at the camp, I was able to commune with nature instead of having to keep up a conversation with another operative.

The second night was a full moon, so I didn’t need to use the flashlight as much. I was on the back road when I noticed something down on the basketball court. I stopped moving and watched as a short squat figure waddled out from under the far side basket. Despite the moonlight, I couldn’t make out much detail, but it appeared to be about three feet tall with its arms held tight against its sides and two horns on its head. Having just listened to campfire ghost stories, I thought FOREST GOBLIN?! I crept closer, trying not to make any noise, but of course, crunching leaves with every step. The creature started running toward me across the court. I snapped on my flashlight just as it unfurled its wings and took off over my head—a giant horned owl. Gorgeous.

That was the most enjoyable assignment I had as an agency operative, but it wasn’t really worthy of Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe. I asked Rusty when he was going to put me on a real case, tracking down a runaway kid, or stolen jewels, or a kidnap victim. He laughed. He said the next thing I needed to learn was tailing and staking out cheating husbands.

The husband worked in an electronics factory, and his wife was convinced that his paycheck didn’t match all the overtime hours he claimed to be working. The couple had two cars, and Rusty gave me the make, model, color, and plate number of both since he wasn’t sure which car the husband was taking to work. The husband always phoned his wife from the factory on the days he had to work late. The plan was for the wife to call Rusty when the husband was working late, and Rusty would call me. The same day the wife signed the contract, she got the call from her husband, then Rusty got the call from her, and I got the call from Rusty. I hurried over to the husband’s factory and cruised around the employee parking lot until I found the car. I pulled into an empty spot one aisle over with a clear view of the car and the exit and settled down to wait. There was a row of cars between me and the husband’s car, and I noticed something about one of the cars in that row. It was the same make, model, and color as the couple’s second car. I checked the plate number. It matched. I thought, “What the hell?” so I drove to a pay phone and called Rusty. He told me to go home. The wife had gone to confront her husband, telling him she had detectives following him, so he better behave. The agency dumped her as a client, and I decided that “who’s zooming who” was none of my beeswax. That was my last assignment as a West Coast op.

But “What about the biker gang?” you ask. “Did they return? Were they Hell’s Angels? Did you fight them off with your mop handle like Bruce Lee?” Well, they did return. They were high school kids on dirt bikes, probably about the same age as the camp counselors. They left when I threatened to tell their parents.

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Tim Chapman is a former forensic scientist for the Chicago Police Department and writing instructor at Malcolm X College. His fiction has been published in The Southeast Review, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Palooka, and the anthologies, “The Rich and the Dead” and “Tales of the Fantastic.” His short stories have been collected under the title “Kiddieland and other misfortunes.” He is the author of the Sean McKinney mystery series: “A Trace of Gold” and “The Blue Silence.” When he’s not writing he’s editing the journal Litbop: Art and Literature in the Groove, teaching martial arts or painting pretty pictures.

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His Website * Instagram * Facebook * Substack * Threads