Private investigator

Fear factor: 0. I laugh in the face of danger.

Cool factor: 10. If private eyes weren’t cool, there wouldn’t be so many TV shows about them.

Coulda been worse: I could’ve spent eight hours in a car. Midnight till dawn. In January. In a blizzard. With a full bladder. Or worse.

It was dark. Really dark. The kind of dark you only see when it’s not light. Somewhere off in the black-velvet night, a shot rang out and a woman screamed.

Either that or a car backfired and a cat yowled. I get ‘em confused.

My name is Yarborough. Chuck Yarborough. I’m a gumshoe. A shamus. A sherlock. A private eye. Magnum with a beard and not just that woolly bear on his upper lip. Sam Spade without the Maltese Falcon.

For today’s story, I am a private investigator for Demopoulos & Associates, the firm run by Pete D. and his wife, Bonnie.

Here’s how it went down: The other day, I’m sitting in my office, minding my own beeswax, checking out the racing form for Thistledown and reminiscing about the days when newsroom desk drawers came with Scotch bottles, typewriters clattered a staccato symphony and stale smoke hung in the air like yesterday’s sauerkraut. And then, this dame walks in like she runs the place.

“You need to get off your can and do something,” she says. I don’t like being pushed around, see, but I got no problem moving, provided this broad pays my going rate, plus expenses. You got the dough, cookie, and I’ll be your chocolate-chip sprinkles.

Turns out, she does have the bread: She’s the one who signs my time slip.

So I break off the love affair between my duff and this soft, cushy chair, slam shut the Internet link to “Catcher in the Rye Whiskey” and have Central hook me up with Pete D.

That call brought me to a dark street in the middle of nowhere- well, Lakewood - but passing that along would pretty much kill the mood. I found Pete, his car already running, satellite radio tuned in, and we headed off for our first assignment.

The life of a private eye isn’t all that glorious. Oh, sure, there are the molls and dolls, the booze and clues, the late nights and streetlights. But mainly, it’s . . . boring!

In this particular case, we drove to a suburb in a neighboring county - Pete averages 3,000 miles a month in his car - and set up shop down the street from some kid’s house. Why? It ain’t like Junior was running numbers for the mob. The boyo was just going to school. Only problem is, it wasn’t the right school. He apparently was attending classes in a district where his custodial parent didn’t live.

That means money, for the district where the kid doesn’t belong and from the district where he does. So, for a couple of years now, this suburban district has been trying to prove this boy doesn’t live inside its boundaries. Came close one time, which is why Pete and I were sitting in the dark car, drinking black coffee and wondering which of the neighbors is going to be the first to send his kid out to ask us why in the blazes we’re parked in front his house.

That happens a lot, Pete said, and it’s as irritating as a hair shirt. Why would you send your kid out to question a stranger who’s been parked on your street for hours on end, whom you’ve seen videotaping people? It would be better to call the police.

That’s because each time Pete or Bonnie or their free-lance PI, John Rochford (yeah, I thought of it, too: “The Rochford Files”), surveil a place for a kid who’s attending the wrong school - or a guy who’s suing over a neck injury yet still manages to take three Jazzercize classes a week - they contact the local coppers.

Sometimes, that surveillance lasts for hours, comes up empty (as on this stakeout), but you can’t leave. Pete said he’s listened to hundreds of books on tape. He reads the papers - this one and some of the lesser ones, like the New York Times or USA Today - from cover to cover. He takes care of paperwork. He makes a few calls on his cell. On pre-dawn stakeouts like ours, there’s coffee . . . but that comes with a price. (Let’s just say Gatorade bottles do their own multitasking.)

Pete, Bonnie and John are what’s called Certified Fraud Examiners. Some private eyes focus on domestic cases, like cheating spouses. Those are rare among the 200 or so cases Demopoulos & Associates handles every year.

One reason is that, at $50 to $75 an hour, surveillance is an expensive proposition. Jilted spouses have a tendency to dislike paying the piper. They’re also dangerous. Ask any cop his least favorite call, and he’ll tell you domestic disputes, because you never know how they’ll turn out.

It’s far safer - and more lucrative - to hang out and try to catch Billy Badback cashing a workers’ comp check to pay for a round of golf or motocross lessons. There’s just something inherently right in nabbing some mug whose only goal is to cheat.

Bogey would be proud. So would the dame who sent me out here. Not that I care - just as long as the check cashes, because I’ve got a date with a bottle and that racing form.

Plain Dealer reporter Chuck Yarborough is moonlighting at a variety of unusual, scary and dirty jobs. Got something you’d like him to do? Contact him at 216-999-4534 or write Chuck Yarborough, The Plain Dealer, 1801 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114.