Businesslike Work, Not Cops and Robbers : Office Lights Brighten Up Private Eyes’ Shady World

In the city where Sam Spade tracked down his partner’s beautiful killer lives another kind of detective, one trying to wipe the tarnish from the image of the private eye.

People should know, says detective Samuel Webster, that modern sleuths are “guys in three-piece suits and their briefcases and their dictating machines.”

“There’s been a tremendous change as far as the upgrading of the quality of the individual who is in the investigation industry, as far as his educational background, his training and his ethics,” Webster said. “Many of them would not in any way, shape or form fit the old Sam Spade-Mike Hammer stereotype.”

Webster, 49, looks more like the corporate personnel director he once was than the hard-core private eye of fiction and film. He has a degree in psychology, once worked as a sheriff’s deputy in his native Ohio and sits on the boards of several civic groups.

He recently was elected the first black president of the World Assn. of Detectives, a group with about 700 members in 40 countries. A former president of a California detectives’ organization, he long has been concerned about the image of the private investigator.

He also worries about increasing obstacles that investigators face: restrictions on government information, competition from moonlighting cops and a lack of cooperation from state and local law enforcement agencies.

He says those things interfere with the job, “your ability to know where to go to get certain information and assistance and being able to lend that knowledge to a particular problem.”

In his carefully chosen words, the work sounds more like research than adventure, like digging through documents rather than skulking through dark alleys.

Let’s have it, Sam. Tell us about cold coffee during long nights of surveillance, gunshots and gumshoes, winsome women and sinister villains.

Well, there was the time he delivered a subpoena to former U.S. Atty. Gen. John Mitchell, and he did work on the fringes of court cases involving auto maker John DeLorean and radical Angela Davis, but he won’t discuss details.

No, no, we want gun battles. Blood-and-guts stuff.

“I’ve come very close to being injured, but I’ve never been shot or cut,” he said. “I have been shot at, but I’m not so sure they were actually trying to hit me. They may have been trying to frighten me more. At least I’m willing to believe that now. I’m not so sure I was willing to believe that when it was happening.

“I had been doing surveillance in a rural area and I was in a field with my glasses on a house. Evidently, I was downwind to the dogs. Having not been a hunter in my earlier years, I didn’t realize that could possibly create a situation that could cause my demise. As I was attempting to get away, there were two shots fired over my head.”

OK, now tell us about the fistfights.

“The best defense is to be able to continue to keep the individual talking. I find that it’s important that you do not become confrontational, but do your best to calm the individual . . . and try to increase the distance between you.”

Swell. Can we at least see your gat, your sap, maybe some brass knuckles?

“One of the reasons I choose not to carry a weapon is that if I cannot use that weapon in a situation where it becomes absolutely volatile, the weapon may be used on me. I usually would rather take my chances at being able to talk my way out of it or to get out of there.”

Sam, please, just one story. Dashiell Hammett is spinning in his grave.

“I don’t get out that much at night any longer, but when I did, I had a dog that was attack-trained and I always drove a station wagon with the dog in it. That dog was my savior on several occasions.

“Once I was caught in Hunter’s Point, out in the projects. I was up there trying to effect a service (of a restraining order) on an individual and he pointed a gun at me. As I was backing away from the guy, the dog sensed my urgency and need and came out. The dog came up to my side and the guy looked at it and said, ‘Don’t come back here anymore.’ Of course, I was in total agreement with that.”

War stories just aren’t his style. He’s more interested in the problems facing his industry, such as the usual perceptions about tough guys and shady dealings and about encouraging minority members to enter the field.

He has worked in San Francisco since 1973, beginning as a waterfront investigator for famed detective Harold Lipset. He opened his own agency two years later, working as a uniformed security guard and a janitor for the first few years while the company got on its feet.

Now he has nine full-time investigators working for him and contracts with a wide range of corporations and other clients. But he says the work itself, no matter how modest he is about it, is as important as the financial success.

“The creativity of being able to develop information which will help your client is the real satisfaction,” he said.

Whatever you say, Sam. Here’s looking at you.