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By Brad Cook What if Sam Spade carried a PowerBook? If he did, and you stripped away the gritty exterior of Dashiell Hammett’s famous private investigator, you might find Alex Kline. Working in the same city as his fictional counterpart and sporting the web site address www.sfgumshoe.com, Kline has been a solo PI since 1998, using his skills on a variety of cases for corporate and private clients. Sam He’s Not While he’s obviously a fan of Hammett’s work, though, he has no interest in a Spade-like life. “Rough and gritty?” he asks. “Nah. Sounds like a depressive loser with a drinking problem who doesn’t know how to relate to people. “Hard-nosed and skeptical about human affairs? That’s more like it, but preferably with a sense of humor and a generous spirit to those who will meet you at least halfway.” And don’t peg him as someone bent on bringing down the bad guys, like Spade. “I suppose that what I do as a private investigator has very little to do with tracking down evildoers,” he says. “It has a lot more to do with simply unearthing the objective facts of any given situation and trying to polish up those facts and take the rough edges off.” The Stake-Out In one of his favorite examples of his ability to polish the facts, a company destroyed all evidence that a tanker of jet fuel had been contaminated by diesel fuel. Enter Kline, who managed to find the only person who would tell the truth about what the company did. “I spoke to his sister,” he recalls, “and she obviously didn’t want to cooperate, so I staked out the house until he showed up a few days later. My client was just about to pull the plug and this van rolls up and I see the guy get out and I say ‘Hi Roger.’ It was him, and he told us exactly what we thought he would.” The Scandal Kline’s dogged determination serves him well even when he’s not tracking people down. In another case, he represented a company in California which felt it was being blocked from a public works contract for political reasons. “In that one,” he explains, “it was a matter of digging through records, because one politician on the board that had to approve the contract was holding out, and we suspected that she was in the pocket of a competing bidder. |
“I memorized the names of the officers and directors of the
competing bidder, and with that memory of 28 or 30 names I scanned
through the donation filings. Sure enough, they had donated to her
campaign during that time.” A 21st Century PI When he’s not out interviewing people or digging through boxes, he’s home using the Internet to research cases from his home office. His setup includes a Power Mac G4 Cube, a 15-inch Apple Cinema Display and a PowerBook. He connects the computers via AirPort. “I have a fairly large house in San Francisco and I can go anywhere wirelessly,” he says. “I can surf the net, read email and send it, print to my laser printer, and I can do it all from my bed upstairs if I want to. I’m very happy with all that stuff.” He recently added a Sony DV camera to his resources, an acquisition which he says will come in very handy. “Sometimes I get little things like ‘Just drop by this place and tell me what you see,’” he explains. “So now I have the capability to, within hours on the same day, shoot digital video and send stills or, if the person can receive it, short video clips via the Internet or email. And that’s a very nice capability.” Kline’s editing suite of choice? “iMovie works great,” he enthuses. “It was absolutely seamless. I plugged the camera in via FireWire and that was it. Everything was simple and worked great.” On the Brink Kline actually came close once to leaving the platform which he’s supported ever since he purchased a Macintosh Plus several years ago. “Years ago, some of the key investigative databases you could only access through a direct dial-up,” he says, “and they would typically send you some Windows-based software. I went to the trouble of buying Windows emulation software, but it was very slow and cumbersome, and that fact alone almost drove me into the arms of Windows. “But just as I was about to pull the plug, those databases became browser accessible and it didn’t matter what computer you were using.” Keep the Horses in the Barn Kline’s unique style (he used to roller skate to his old office, whistling Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” as he passed the surveillance cameras of the German embassy, before he decided to work from home) has gotten him plenty of press, but he’s also received a lot of attention because his brother is the actor Kevin Kline. “There are situations where I want to be anonymous,” he acknowledges with a laugh. “Not that I’m doing anything sneaky, it’s just that you don’t want to attract attention. The relationship to the famous brother is one more thing to make me memorable to people whom I may not want to know who I am. “That sounds very cloak and dagger, and the fact is, I don’t do much undercover work, but, on the other hand, once that horse is out of the barn, if you become too well known, you can’t do it yourself anymore.” DIY And doing it himself is exactly the way he likes it. “It takes a certain ingenuity to figure out how to find certain types of recondite information,” he explains, “or to get people to talk to you about things they would rather not have to discuss. Challenges like these, and the autonomy of having my own business, are what I enjoy about the work.” He quickly adds: “And not having to use Windows computers, of course.” |
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