Boyhood Fantasy for Sale : Snoopers, Tappers, Zingers, and Wanna-Be Spies Who Love Them

Toy plastic pistols poking out of their trench coats, teen-age friends Michael Varga and Sean Srivistava loved to pose as secret agents, interrogating the usual suspects along Hollywood Boulevard.

Their charade blew up one Saturday night, however, when a real undercover cop found little humor in their disguise.

“I doubt James Bond ever had to call his dad from the police station for a ride home,” Varga said, still red-faced over the 1989 incident.

But the chastened pair, each now 20, didn’t completely abandon the spy trade. Borrowing $20,000 from the Caltech Federal Credit Union, the two La Canada High School graduates have resurfaced as the owners of Spy Co., which opened this summer in Old Pasadena’s Cellophane building.

Proving savvier marketers than spies, Varga and Srivistava have stocked their shop with an alphabet soup of surveillance and personal protection devices. They offer everything from ballpoint transmitters and video cameras disguised as smoke detectors to bulletproof vests.

“The No. 1 question we get,” says Varga, “is, ‘Who buys this stuff?’ And our answer is ‘Everybody.’ ”

For example, joggers buy Punch, a cayenne pepper spray for $16.95 that inflames the eyes and swells the lungs of would-be assailants. Business owners buy counterfeit-currency detectors for $79.95 to intercept bogus bills. The elderly favor a radar-controlled, simulated barking dog for $200 that deters intruders.

“People always see these gadgets on TV or read about them in novels,” Varga said, “but they never get to see them in real life. Here, they get to see what James Bond is made of, the little hidden microphones in the olives.

“Well, we don’t have the olives,” he conceded, “but we have the transmitting pens and calculators.”

Because they are new to the spy game, Varga and Srivistava are still working out the bugs in their sales presentations. For instance, a jeweler sustained minor injuries recently after demanding proof of the effectiveness of an $899 briefcase designed to shock a thief.

“I gave his girlfriend the remote control to push and I gave him the brief case to hold,” Varga recalled. “When she pushed the control, he was thrown to ground and had these burn marks across his hand.”

“To make a long story short, he bought two.”

Testimonials from clients are few, however, owing to the clandestine nature of the business, Srivistava said.

“There aren’t a lot of people who come back and tell us what happened because it’s spy equipment after all,” he said. “I mean I haven’t had anyone come in and say, ‘Wow, I caught my wife cheating last night, and I couldn’t have done it without that eavesdropping equipment you sold me.’ That’s not going to happen.”

Many of the spy devices seem more suited for Maxwell Smart than James Bond. Customers inspecting the contents of a safe disguised as can of carpet deodorizer have accidentally treated the store’s carpets twice. Children, thinking they’re inside Radio Shack or Toys R Us, like to tinker with the thumb cuffs and invisible-ink sets. Macho types who play survivalist and paint-ball games in the desert favor the smoke grenades for $9.95.

Spy Co. Manager Conrad Starr, a 20-year-old alumnus of Pasadena Polytechnic, has fun with many of the shop’s customers. Pointing out the secret pocket built into a bra, he says, “It’s not going to work for everybody.” And, revealing the tiny microfiche container inside a U.S. silver dollar that sells for $19.95, he adds, “Of course, if you just want to buy really expensive money, we’ll sell it to you.”

But Starr and Varga, who attend Pasadena City College, and Srivistava, now at USC majoring in international business, acknowledge a deadly serious side to the espionage business.

“Everybody is looking out for No. 1, and that is certainly part of the philosophy of this store,” Starr said.

Of a stun gun called “the paralyzer” because of the 200,000 volts it packs, he said: “It’s not going to kill anybody or give them brain damage, but it will allow a person to take care of threats without having to worry about the moral implications of knocking somebody off.”

Unlike the Taser, which shoots darts and carries enough electrical charge to cause injury, stun guns are designed to emit a low-amperage current that momentarily interrupts muscle control but will not affect heart or brain electrical activity.

In California, where the stun gun has been determined by state testing to be non-lethal, the only restrictions on its sale are that the buyer must be 16 years old and have no felony convictions.

The Spy Co. also sells books, including “The Outlaw’s Bible” and “The Anarchist’s Cookbook,” which offer a variety of recipes for creating mayhem and chaos.

Although everything sold at the Spy Co. is legal and intended for defensive use, the owners say, some buyers may have illicit designs for their purchases.

In addition to bulletproof vests, the Spy Co. markets bulletproof cars whose extras include flip-down gun portholes, a hidden tear-gas compartment and an oil-slick emission system. Varga and Srivistava said they have already sold two fully loaded models to the Mexican government for $75,000 each. The altered cars are banned in the United States.

“The police told us that any time we sold any bulletproof item, we should try to get some I.D. or a license plate number,” Varga said. “That’s the only thing they’re really concerned about.”

The shadowy world of spies, and now a retail store catering to their needs, don’t alarm Cmdr. Donn Burwell of the Pasadena Police Department.

“(The Spy. Co.) is representative of the technological age we live in,” he said. “We don’t see it as a policing problem, but we will take counter measures if we encounter illegal devices in the course of our investigations.”

Varga and Srivistava also do their own policing. “If somebody looks shady, we won’t sell to them at all,” Varga said. “We just tell them that this stuff is only reserved for police or private investigators, or you have to have a special license.”

Varga and Srivistava contract with about 100 worldwide vendors, often getting ideas for their inventory from attending trade shows for private investigators. Supplier Joe Giovanni, owner of SS Delta, a stun gun manufacturer in Hollywood, praises his business dealings with the Spy Co.

“Michael and Sean pay on time and have slowly upped their orders,” Giovanni said. “They’ve tapped into a retail market that serves people with personal protection needs.”

Customers, however, will have the final word on the Spy Co.’s success. After the movies on a recent Friday night, Justin Woodhull, 9, led his mother, JoAnn, to his favorite shop, pointing out the night vision glasses, telephone scramblers and voice distortion devices.

“This place is cool,” said Justin, who had bought a $12.95 safe disguised as a Pepsi can in an earlier visit.

Mom added, “I hope I don’t need any of this stuff yet, but the world is getting more complicated, isn’t it?”