Which brings me back to my bag lady persona. Dumpster diving is legal. Once the trash is on the curb, it’s public property. The Supremes ruled on it, and I mean Scalia and company, not the group Diana Ross fronted. People like me make a good living, finding out stuff from the trash. The problem is getting to it. The super will stop an average Jane from digging through the garbage, but if he sees a bag lady, he’ll likely turn the other way. No harm in recycling, right?
So on this hot Thursday morning in August, I parked my car a block away, shuffled up the drive to Elisa’s building and jumped into the dumpster that squatted behind it. My short stature made it easy for me to hide in there, as I searched for something with her name on it. These people were upper class, everything was nicely bagged and I didn’t think I’d have to worry about getting crap on my car seat when I was done.
It took about twenty minutes to find the bag, full of paper that was run through a shredder. I couldn’t be sure until I put it all back together, but there was a piece with an “El” still intact. Maybe it was “Elisa.” It was all I found that even remotely fit, so I tossed it over the side and heaved myself out, straight into the path of a hulk in a black suit.
“Watcha doin’ there, lady?” Tony Baloney’s bodyguard, Jimmy the Arm, asked as he grabbed me and pinned me to the side of the dumpster. Jimmy’s sleeve-defying biceps compensate for his tiny mental gifts.
I realized that Jimmy didn’t recognize me, despite having seen me on numerous occasions, both social and professional. My bag lady persona was my best defense. “Nothin.’ I ain’t doin’ nothin.’ Just lookin,’” I responded.
“For what?”
“Stuff ta sell. Clothes. Shoes. Books. Cans. These rich folks toss out good stuff.” I pulled a face. “But not much today, one bag. Just my luck.”
“Well, leave it and get goin’ and don’t come back to this building. Unnerstan?” He gave a little shove for good measure, not enough to hurt. His mama must have raised him well. Of course, he’d toss a rival into a cement mixer with no qualms. But I’m not averse to using whatever advantages come my way. I earned all the white on my head, and if it gets me out of a jam, it’s just one of the perks of being slightly older.
I sloped off down the driveway, looking behind me as if scared that Jimmy was following. Actually, I was checking that the bag was still lying next to the dumpster. Sure enough, Jimmy ignored it and entered the building by the super’s door. Guess Jimmy’s mama never taught him to pick up trash. I scuttled back, grabbed the bag, and sprinted down the street to the lot where I left my car, to drive back to the office.
I share office space on Prospect Avenue, on Milwaukee’s east side, with the firm of Neh Accountants. The “s” on the end is misleading. It’s a one-person company run by Susan Neh, a third-generation Japanese-American. Susan and I met when we both worked for Jake Waterman. She conducted his financial investigations and I did his legwork—computer searches, tails, background checks. It didn’t take Susan long to earn her CPA and go out on her own. I joined her when I got my P.I. license and needed a place to hang my shingle. Most of Susan’s clientele are of Japanese descent, but lately, she’s working with a few Hmong and Vietnamese. She kids me about my super-expressive Italians and Sicilians, and I jab her about her inscrutable Asians. I was glad to find that Susan was out on a client call today. It saved me from explaining my less than glamorous appearance.
It took me six hours of tedious, neck-straining, eyeball-screaming work to piece the shredded paper from the bag back together. Luckily, Elisa didn’t have a cross-cut shredder, just the kind that produces long strips of paper. I can reassemble cross-cut, too, given enough time and motivation. The only way to be absolutely sure that no one can read your letters is to burn them and pulverize the ashes, or soak the paper in a pail of water mixed with a half-cup of bleach to destroy the ink. Then you can toss the blank paper with no worries.
Like most people, Elisa simply put a plastic bag into the can and shredded it into the bag. When she lifted it out and discarded it, the remains were in distinct layers, making it easier to separate and reassemble. It helped that the paper had different colors and textures. It’s like working a jigsaw puzzle, without the picture on the box for a guide.
Six hours later, I had a pretty fair understanding of the woman—vain (online article about Botox, with list of local practitioners), fertile (Ortho-Provera drug interaction statement from a mail-order prescription company), savvy (year-old Vanguard mutual fund statement showing a 70K balance), cautious (no intact papers with her name in the dumpster, she apparently shredded everything).
I wasn’t any closer, though, to discovering if Tony was indeed making it with the beauteous Ms. Morano, and my back was screaming from hours of bending over the office work table. My skin itched, even though I’d changed out of my clean dirty clothes, and it was already six o’clock. I made copies of the pieced-together papers, tossed them in my briefcase, and headed for home in my Black Cherry Miata convertible. There aren’t enough top-down days in southeast Wisconsin, but this was one and I felt good, tooling down Lincoln
