P.I work is a hustle.
Make sure you know which side of the bustle you're on.
Make sure you know which side of the bustle you're on.
Brand Protection Services by Gabriel Land
The way I got into
PI work was through brand protection services. The more I learned about the
industry, the more languages and skills I picked up, the less of that I did. I
couldn't move on fast enough, because frankly I didn't give a damn about
enforcing IP laws.
Along the way I
shut down all kinds of operations. Knockoff everything, be it hand-made or 3D
printed. I shut down hackers distributing schematics for pharmaceuticals on the
dark web. I shut down warehouses full of Rolex watches that a Swiss algorithm
would have struggled to discern from the real deal.
What I parlayed
brand protection experience into was skip tracing ─
I wanted to redeem myself by helping missing people get found. Most of us go
through a phase when we think we can change the world for the better. Along the
way we tend to learn that making a profit is rarely synonymous with making a
difference. Usually, they're polar opposites.
The old lady that
came to my office off Thanon Surawong had eyes red from crying. She had lost
her granddaughter into the labyrinth of Indochina. The granddaughter had a drug
problem when she left home. A habit that could have only gotten worse when she
flew over, to a place where exotic bazaars made products more accessible than
delivery by drone.
I took the job on
a per-diem, asking for a reward only if I found the missing individual, dead or
alive. The granddaughter's embassy and our embassy, were not helping. They
could only contact their Thai counterparts and report that the woman had last
crossed the border from Laos back into Siam a month before, and also that she
had by then overstayed her thirty-day visa-free entry.
I set a sifter
program to task looking for a trail on the web. Within a day, it pinged back that
she had hailed a ride with a sharing app right there in Bangkok only a week
before, using her social media profile to log in. Knowing that, I hoofed out
for leg work, canvassing Silom Road and the clubs on Soi Eleven off of
Sukhumvit. The old lady said her granddaughter's
preferred poison was hyperice. Silom was ground zero for a tourist seeking
that, on account of the nightlife and the subculture.
With a printed
picture of the woman in hand, I canvassed, asking all the peddlers of glass
pipes and vaporizers if they recognized her face. None did, so I migrated to
the clubs once they opened up, clubs where anything could be had under cover of
darkness, for a price. How anyone remembered her face amid the strobes and
shadows and toxic atmosphere is beyond me. But one peddler did. He said she was
there a week before, offering to trade anything for a gram.
He said he took
her to his friend's apartment after the club closed and they partied there
until the morning. He left before she did and he gave up the address to me for
only a small bribe. Fueled by another breadcrumb, I left the club and headed
over to Thong Lor, where the high rise was located. It was a short trip by tuk-tuk,
one of the few still piloted by a real human being, or at least a heck of a
copy.
At the high rise,
I charmed the hostess in the lobby with a wink and a smile. My fluent Thai
helped, along with a bashful explanation that I forgot everything, my passport,
my phone, everything, up in my friend's condo on the fourteenth floor the night
before. She broke protocol to help me. I exploited her desire to make the world
a better place, one person at a time.
Once upstairs, I
knocked on the door before kicking it down. Inside, I found the granddaughter
and what must have been the dealer's friend jacked in by wire, a faster web
connection by leaps and bounds than any 5G or WI-FI network could offer. In
their other arms were IV tubes that dripped gradual streams of research
chemicals into their veins. Nothing, besides maybe a locomotive, hits the CNS
harder than a combination of virtual reality and psychopharmacology.
I pulled the lines
out of her, against my better judgment. Circumstances would have called for a
slow taper, but I didn't have time for circumstances seeing as how by then my
visage was caught on CCTV kicking in a door that didn't belong to me. She was
moaning in stupor as I carried her out. In the hall, I aimed my pistol at the
hostess but the threat made no difference. She'd already triggered the silent
alarm.
The pistol came in
handy outside, where a police drone hovered above, daring me to try and escape.
As soon as I aimed up, it emitted soundwaves that would have burst my eardrums
had my bullet flown any slower. The components shattered and cascaded down onto
me as I scurried out onto Thong Lor again as fast as I could go with an extra
fifty limp kilos slung across my shoulders.
Without any other
options, I hopped another tuk-tuk to my embassy, lost in the traffic under
cover of the vehicle's canopy, drones scanning above without success. The
embassy guards took in the granddaughter but rejected me, so I got arrested by
Thai police right there in front of the institution that was supposed to have
my back.
After a week in jail on
rice and pork broth, I was released on some sort of bail. The grandmother was
there to thank me and when I asked her where her granddaughter was she said her
organs had been recycled. She said I had done a good job, and offered me a
brand protection contract. The grandmother worked for a corporation that made
top notch clones, a company that was prepared to invest generous resources into
finding and eliminating knockoffs.
