School for Sherlock Holmes Wanna-Bes Is Hardly Elementary

No trench coats, no magnifying glasses, no Sherlockian meerschaums.

And nothing close to Magnum’s red Ferrari or a blond bombshell secretary. Maybe those come later, once they get their “degrees.”

But for now these would-be private eyes, crouched over their books in a ratty old one-story building in Van Nuys, have to get through PI school.

Welcome to the Nick Harris Detectives Academy, which bills itself as the nation’s oldest--and best--place to learn how to become a private investigator.

A gumshoe. A private dick. You know, one minute you’re hobnobbing with society’s elite, the next you’re duking it out with some guy named Spike in a deserted freighter on the foggy waterfront. Rescuing rich dames in distress like modern-day Lancelots. (All the students in this session are men, though lots of women take the classes too.)

And always nailing your man, or at least ensuring rough justice.

Maybe it was that way once. Maybe for a few, it still is.

But for the vast majority of today’s private investigators, the teacher tells this class, theirs will be a high-tech profession, governed by many laws and rules. Mostly, they will gather information, with maybe an occasional surveillance job or covert operation.

And they will spend a lot of time killing time. Not an entirely glamorous way of life, teacher Marc Laikin reminds them more than once.

But these five men are hoping that their $4,000 to $7,000 in tuition and fees and graduation from the intensive, 11-week course will help them escape the bounds of a workaday 9-to-5 existence. They hope they’re earning entry to a world altogether different and exciting.

“I didn’t want to be sitting in an office all day,” says a 40-year-old Palmdale resident, who needed retraining after being disabled in his old job. “They wanted me to grind eyeglass lenses,” he sneers. “And I said, ‘That’s not Mike Christ. I don’t do that.’ ”

Christ and four other men listen attentively as Laikin paces the room, hands behind his back, a Richard Gere look-alike with wire-rim glasses and a ponytail.

“Every simple little thing can be added up to make a complicated whole. Therefore,” Laikin says, pausing for effect, “every complicated whole can be broken down into simple little things.”

The students nod and scribble in their notebooks.

Take a dead body, for instance, says Laikin, the academy’s primary instructor. If it shows no signs of rigor mortis, the victim has either just recently passed on or is more than four days dead. Just one piece of the puzzle, he says.

More nods. More scribbles.

From there it’s on to criminal procedure, including what the police will share with private eyes and what they will arrest them for--interfering at crime scenes and bribing government officials for information are at the top of the list.

Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is needed in a criminal investigation, Laikin reminds them. But in a civil case--such as proving that a client’s husband lacked a firm commitment to monogamy--a mere preponderance of evidence is needed.

Soon, however, the students’ exuberance over being on the brink of detectiveship ebbs. Their thoughts appear to wander. One doodles. One slurps coffee. One whispers that it’s time for a break.

Another scans the room, sizing up trappings of the trade affixed to the walls: clear plastic evidence bags, common fingerprint patterns, polygraph test sheets.

While on break, the men’s attention spans leap upward. The reason: A blond bombshell, not unlike those in detective movies, has come for a visit.

But this is no secretarial ornament. Michelle Kallik is a recent alumna who has found work as a real-life private eye, making pretty good money.

A former hairdresser from Woodland Hills, Kallik says she has done some undercover work and a surveillance job posing as a reporter (a trick for which real reporters would cheerfully ask Spike and his henchmen to have a word with her). After three years as an apprentice under the supervision of a licensed investigator or company, she will be eligible for her investigator’s license from the state.

Her example revives the students’ interest.

Richard says he wants to do undercover work. “Surveillance,” he says, “seems too boring.”

A tall, burly man named Jack is looking forward to working casino security, tracking deadbeat gamblers. “It’s not like the old days where you go and break their legs,” he explains helpfully. “Now you do a skip trace, then take them to court.”

Already, they have begun learning to use the tools of the trade: binoculars, a Thomas Bros. map guide, flashlight and mini-tape player. A training film shows them how to blend into the scenery on surveillance missions.

Laikin dives into tips on undercover work: when they can use fake identities, that they should never tamper with mail and that, above all else, they need to know the laws so they can do all the surreptitious things they are entitled to do.

“Is it illegal, for example, for a private eye to surveil someone?” Laikin asks. “Let’s say Josh leaves here and we all follow him around all day and the rest of the night. Is that illegal?”

“No!” comes the cheerful chorus. Unless, of course, Laikin reminds them, it is malicious stalking, for which see page 219 of their Penal Code handbook.

On that note, the reporter leaves, before the class decides to use him for the upcoming practice session in surveillance.

Let’s see. Around the corner . . . walk a block . . . look back . . . suddenly duck into the car and outta there.

Clean getaway. Hey Spike, you need a henchman?