She entered the Golden Glaze III doughnut shop on 10th and State in Lockport.
The few folks inside the old-time shop sipping coffee glanced over at the young woman, a stranger. She had to ask how to get to the second floor.
”That`s easy, honey,” one woman said. ”Just take the stairs outside this building.”
She walked outside to the doorway where the second flight loomed. Every step she took creaked loudly and amplified through the musty hall until she reached the landing. Several wooden doors with smoky glass windows announced professionals such as an optometrist and a lawyer.
The young woman, however, came to see another professional, a private detective, one of a number of sleuths who make it their business to seek out, for a price, the dirty laundry of southwest suburban residents.
This particular detective is a woman who packs a beeper on the waistband of her denim shorts, right next to her detective`s badge.
”Georgantas? Cynthia Georgantas?”
The detective nodded and waved in her guest.
Georgantas took a quick swig from a can of Slimfast, finished up a phone call and snubbed out a cigarette.
She rose from her paper-laden desk and gave the lowdown on herself:
Divorced. Raised four daughters. Had a lot of different jobs growing up but was drawn to detective work. She always wanted to be in The Business, to follow in the footsteps of her father, Robert Georgantas, a 30-year veteran of the Illinois State Police, now retired.
After nine years as a detective, the 40-ish alumna of the Pinkerton Agency in January 1991 opened her own agency, Georgantas and Associates Inc., which now boasts three full-time and two part-time investigators.
Georgantas belongs to 12 national, state and local organizations, everything from the National Police Chiefs Association to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the Joliet Chamber of Commerce. She also lists a slew of certificates and training in areas ranging from interrogation to CPR.
”I`ve always been very independent,” Georgantas said. ”I like to do things 100 percent professional.”
According to Chris Morrison of the Springfield office of the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation, to become a licensed private investigator, one must have experience in law enforcement or with a licensed detective agency for three years. Then he or she must pass a 100-question test and pay $500 for a license upon passing the test, Morrison said. The license is valid for three years.
For those seeking experience with a licensed a private investigation firm or security guard company, the department issues a PERC (permanent employee registration card). The cost is $10 for a card good for three years and allows the applicant to work as an investigator under another investigator`s license. A first-year investigator with a PERC card can earn $9 to $15 an hour, and an experienced investigator can charge flat fees ranging from $350 into the thousands.
Georgantas detailed the danger that commands such fees, recalling a time she was training a new investigator on a covert operation. She was hired by an official of a Chicago company who suspected that merchandise was being stolen and the theft was an inside operation that continued daily at the plant.
The stakeout had begun late at night. Things were rather dull until some trucks appeared, unloading company merchandise near the back of the company`s property. Later, other trucks started backing in, loading it up and taking it away.
That`s when Georgantas told the novice investigator to stay in the car while she took a closer look at the license plate numbers on the trucks. A security guard noticed her, however, and she took cover. Her partner got nervous and took off with the car. When she scooted back to the main road, he returned and picked her up.
She wrote a report on what she and her partner observed and turned it into the company president.
Georgantas often relies on an alias, goes undercover and sets up surveillance crews. Other cases need a lighter hand, including locating someone who is missing.
”We get a lot of cases where someone wants to find someone else,” she said. ”There was one that dated back to 1907. We found him. He may have been dead already, but we found him.
”And there are a lot of parents who want to know who their kids hang out with, and those who want to find their old girlfriends or boyfriends from high school. Others want to locate their real parents, their missing brothers or sisters. I could go on.”
She takes another drag on her cigarette, vows to stop smoking and waxes poetic on her job.
”Everyone`s got something to hide, it seems. And in this business, you see the bad and you see the good.”
But it`s the bad ones who keep private detectives in business. And it`s the bad ones who can almost kill you. Just ask Karon Hunt. Hunt wanted to impress her husband, Richard. Instead, she nearly got her head blown off by a porno actress.
Karon and Richard Hunt own Hunt and Hunt Detectives and Recovery Service in Calumet City. She faced the excitement of her first potential case when a man in a three-piece suit walked into their office asking for a report on his girlfriend`s activities. He thought she was cheating on him.
”He was an older man and he wanted me to follow his girlfriend. And I thought, `Oh, this is going to be an easy one,` ” said Karon Hunt, 44. ”But what I didn`t know at the time was this girlfriend had mob connections and did porno films in the back of her house.”
During the stakeout, the woman discovered Hunt sitting in the car.
”I turned to the window, and the next thing I knew, there`s a gun in my face, and she wants to know what I`m doing there.”
The first rule of the detective business? Think fast.
”Well, I don`t carry a gun. I`m deathly afraid of guns. So I had to think fast. I just told her, `Lady, I am so lost, and you looked like you knew where you were going.` ”
Karon said her stereotypical ”daffy blond act” served her well. The woman lowered the gun and allowed her to drive away.
That was just after Hunt earned her detective`s license in 1983. Her husband, who also works as a Cook County sheriff`s policeman, had been licensed since 1978. Richard Hunt, 40, began a security and detective business with a partner, but they dissolved their partnership and he took the detective business and his partner took the security busness. That`s when Karon, who initially helped with office work and bookkeeping, decided to take the licensing test to become a full-fledged detective.
Their new partnership was a boon in many ways, especially for jokes. Hunt and Hunt was usually compared to ”Hart to Hart,” the popular television series featuring a married couple who worked together to solve crimes. But that`s not the comparison Karon makes.
”I think we`re a lot like `Moonlighting.` I`m the one who yells and screams and acts like a maniac. And he`s calm and collected,” Karon said in her natural machine-gun delivery.
Richard agreed. ”If she doesn`t like you, she`ll come right out and say you`re an ugly SOB, and I`ll be the one to say, `Oh, why did you say that, dear?` ”
Working as a couple has distinct advantages, though.
”I remember when we were hired by a local village to watch some of their officers who were suspected of some dirty work,” Karon said. ”Richard and I staked out the station and had some other off-duty cops from other towns help us.
”Well, one of the men we were watching had spotted us and came toward our car. We acted like any other couple and started necking. When he came up and asked us what we were doing there, I just said that the kids were driving us crazy, and we had to go out and solve our differences.”
Karon admits that after raising five children during their 15 years of marriage, she wouldn`t have it any other way, except maybe fewer grinding hours, or perhaps less of the feast-or-famine caseload.
Besides domestic situations, their cases have included worker`s compensation claims, personal injury, asset searches and repossession. About 90 percent are referrals from local attorneys. When necessary, they hire off- duty police officers interested in free-lance investigative work.
”I`m nosy by nature, so this is the perfect job for me. I used to be a bill collector and skip tracer (finding people who have disappeared without paying their bills), which all leads naturally to detective work,” Karon explained.
When she and her husband go home at night, they leave their work at the office.
”When we are at home, we`re at home,” said Karon. ”And if we start talking about anything (that`s happening) at work, we`ll say, `Now, that`s enough of that.` We spend a lot of time together, and we`re so used to being together. I think I`d be very lonely if I wasn`t with him. And that surprises a lot of people.
”They wonder how we`ve managed to stay together. I`m very outgoing and very obnoxious, while he`s really laid back. Sometimes I can really get going, and it`s a wonder someone doesn`t tell my husband to just shoot me in the left leg.”
Being a woman has been an advantage in this male-dominated field.
”They won`t always suspect someone like me, or if we tail someone as a couple,” said Karon. ”That`s kind of different, and it makes us unique. I`ve even taken one of my children to follow someone, because no one will ever suspect anything when you see a mother and child nearby.
”Anyway, a lot of people just think of me as some dizzy blond who`s lost. And that works just fine.”
Another thing that works is an unmarked office, she said.
”This is the type of industry where someone can literally run their business out of the back seat of their car,” she said. ”A lot of detectives just may do that.
”They don`t want you to come to their office. They`ll always meet you somewhere-say, to have coffee-just so no one knows you`re trying to hire a detective. You really don`t need an office, but we have one. You`d never really know it. I own a travel agency and that`s the sign that`s outside the door. We have separate offices in the back for Hunt and Hunt.”
There`s also another reason why you might not go to their office.
”This place looks like Ray Rayner`s been here (alluding to the host of the children`s show who ran his show by the notes pinned on his coveralls). My desk is covered with Post-it notes. It`s a mess,” Hunt said.
And it`s personal messes, domestic cases, that help keep Gregg Jarrette in business. In July 1989, Jarrette started Intelliquest, a detective agency in Beecher that covers a variety of cases throughout Chicago`s southwest suburbs. He handles dozens of cases each year regarding worker`s compensation claims, skip tracing and others. But the domestics, involving divorce and other personal matters, keep him going.
Intelliquest has five full-time detectives on staff who help Jarrette, a former sergeant with the Will County Sheriff`s Department. After 15 years on the force, he yearned to go into business for himself.
”I like being my own boss, choosing my own hours and choosing my own work,” Jarrette said. Domestic cases offer a steady stream of business, he said, and the results are more immediate than many other cases, including murder cases.
”I don`t like handling murder cases because by the time someone comes to me, the case is pretty cold,” Jarrette explained. ”The police have already picked through everything, and things have gotten pretty cold by then. And people are tired of being spoken to about it. Besides, I don`t really get any personal satisfaction from murder cases, or even adoption cases (searches for biological parents or children).”
He noted that the average Joe on the street who comes to him for help is usually pretty nervous about hiring a private detective.
”The average person who calls is first usually checking on price and how long it takes for any kind of results,” Jarrette said. ”Many of them are at their wit`s end and have done everything they could do, especially with marital cases. They may have gone to counseling and done everything else, but it hasn`t worked. They`re just worried about their future and about their welfare.”
Lawrence Mayer of Lawrence Investigations said domestics are the largest part of the work he handles with partner Sandra Martin, 52, and their team of 15 investigators. He estimates that half of the cases the staff handles are domestics.
Take his recent Oak Lawn case, a love triangle that ended with his client getting her own style of sweet revenge.
”We had a woman come in who suspected her boyfriend was playing around. She wanted us to follow him and, sure enough, he was,” Mayer said. The man met a blond half his age at a nearby motel. That`s when the client wanted a look for herself.
”She wanted to be notified when we found him. So we called her, and she came right over. But we wanted to search her first, you know, to make sure she didn`t have any weapons on her. After that, we just let her loose.
”She knocked on the door, and he answered. She said happy birthday, slugged him and walked out.”
In Joliet, Mayer handled a similar case, one that ended on a sadder note. A woman was being wined and dined by her boyfriend, but she still had reservations about the relationship. The woman hired Mayer and his team to look into the boyfriend`s background.
”We found out the guy had another girlfriend, and they were working together to take this woman`s life savings. They already took about $55,000,” Mayer said.
His client took her own legal action, he said, but was able to recover only about half of the money.
Besides the domestics, Mayer handles missing persons, background checks and child custody cases. After 34 years as a detective, Mayer has seen it all, from men cheating with women to women cheating with other women.
”I tell every client that all we can do is what is humanly possible,”
Mayer said. ”We can`t guarantee results because we can`t predict human nature.”
