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business.”
    I was making extra money from my incriminating pictures side business, but it wasn’t great money. Ultimately the people making use of workman’s comp are not affluent people to begin with. They can pay for photos of cheating husbands and wives, but they couldn’t pay well. “But what if,” proposed Morty, “you were instead documenting the indiscretions of rich socialites? They pay quite a fee for divorce lawyers, so what do you think they’d pay for divorce-worthy pictures?” Here in Austin, by and large the rich and well to do live in an area of town known as Westlake Hills. What Morty offered me was a connection to this culture. Whenever a Westlake wife suspected her husband of cheating or a husband suspected his trophy wife of straying during the daytime, Morty would get them in touch with me. I traded in my job sitting in cars with spy equipment on the less affluent side of town for a job sitting in cars on the more posh side of town, but the difference in wages were dramatic.
    So I went into business for myself, nominally partnered with Morty. How did I find myself partnered with a wealthy businessman? Anyone who knows Morty would know that even when feeling benevolent, he doesn’t give favors for free. His price is simple:  he sees all the evidence of affairs first. He’s quite a character, really. He wants to know everything going on in the lives of his neighbors, laughing behind their backs while smiling in their faces. I’m sure he also files it away for strategic use later.
    With my benefactor’s help, I started my own business, spying on the wealthy, waiting for them to screw up. This paid the bills, but it’s not what I wanted to be doing. My dream was to slowly change my business over to real detective work, just using the hotel detective work to get started. I’ve been lucky enough to do some other types of cases. I’ve done blackmail, protection/bodyguard, lost-and-found, runaways, and theft-retrieval. I’ve been beaten up a few times during the course of an investigation, and if that’s not the mark of a stereotypical private detective, I don’t know what is. But all those were few and far between. By and large, most of my work is vast portfolio of marital affairs that Morty sends my way.
    It was through Morty that I heard about the Vanders Situation from Intersperse Records. I admit I’m small time. If Katie Vanders was cheating on her boyfriend, girlfriend, whoever, I’d be the one to call. But tracking? I’ve dabbled in it, but I’m hardly top shelf. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands more qualified for that type of work than me. But Morty had the connections. Someone – I never found out who – at Intersperse owed Morty some favors. Morty had their ear as he talked up his favorite detective, his “whiz kid back in Austin”.
    Morty may have had confidence in me, but as I sat in that hotel room in Chicago, I had none in myself. I was pretty close to calling myself a fraud.  What was I doing competing with the professionals to find a lost rock star? I knew that I should be home taking pictures of a businessman playing doctor with his secretary. That I knew I could do.
    I flipped on the TV. The best thing on was the fifth Planet of the Apes movie, “Battle for the Planet of the Apes”, when their budget was small and their ideas were stretched. I let it play in the background as I went over the dossier. I kept returning to my notebook and the description of my dream. I still felt that there was something there. My GPS coordinates idea was fruitless, but the dream still might have something. I read over the conversation between the two men, looking for any sort of code. Somehow, it would be significant.
    As the Battle for the Planet of the Apes went on, I gained no new ideas and grew steadily drunker. The less I discovered, the more I drank. I am not an alcoholic nor even a heavy drinker. I am an infrequent drinker. I just am well aware of the value of