Vincent goes to his boss, George Markham, and asks if he can be switched over to the skip tracer side. George has no problem with him doing so, but advises Vincent that he has a lot to learn.
Vincent and Valerie become friends. She teaches Vincent all she can about locating the skips—introducing him to the tools of the trade, like telephone books, cross-reference directories, maps, and the like.
She schools him on the art of “gagging” people—in other words, getting people to talk. If the job is to find people who do not want to be found, she says, you have to find the one person who can tell you where they are. Then give that person a reason to tell you what you want to know. And to do that, you must get people to believe that you are someone other than who you are.
“You can and should pretend you are someone else,” she tells him. “It should feel close to acting,” she says. Valerie is a born actress, Vincent thinks. He watches her use her natural gifts to her advantage, befriending women she wishes to gag with her winning, confident personality, and flirting with the men.
Vincent soaks in everything with great interest. He quickly becomes one of the better skip tracers. He seeks out contacts within the police force, the telephone company, credit bureaus, and even the DMV. His contacts are all drawn from the Neighborhood: at the credit card company, Mary Donovan, an Irish girl; Todd Billings, also Irish, his contact at AT&T; and Bill Faraday, a cop he went to school with. Bill’s mother worked at the beauty salon with Vincent’s mom.
Soon Vincent becomes a legend on the floor, using his connections to find the skips that the others cannot. But it’s more than that. He simply has an innate ability to do so, mostly because of his skill in talking to people over the telephone. Like a gifted actor, he learns how to mimic different dialects and speech patterns. In doing so, he gets anyone to tell him what he wants to know.
But, after a few months, he becomes bored again. Once Vincent attains a proficient level of skill, the challenge dies. There has to be more to life, he thinks. So, he freelances for other collection agencies. He makes more money that way, but those jobs also become unsatisfying.
One day, while looking in the Yellow Pages, he comes upon a section devoted to private investigators. He cuts out all of the ads in the classifieds for investigative agencies and puts them in a file for himself. These agencies claim to be able to locate missing persons. It strikes him that is what he’s doing now, but with higher stakes.
He studies the largest ad in the bunch, for Winslow, Carruthers & Associates. The fact that the firm claims to have been created by two ex-FBI agents unnerves him, but he decides to interview anyway. Even if he fails, he’ll still learn something new, he figures.
He makes an appointment with one of the partners. A week later, at the interview, Vincent boldly insists that he’s great at locating missing people. His bravado engenders a very amused look from Charles Winslow, the agency owner. Winslow calls in his partner, Carruthers, to listen to Vincent’s presentation. Their skepticism angers Vincent.
“Look,” Vincent says, finally, “just give me the hardest case you’ve got. I’ll work on a contingency basis. But, if I find that person, then I would like to be employed and get a chance to work on all your missing person cases.”
Vincent’s sincerity intrigues them. After they confer, they tell Vincent that he’s in. He will not be an employee, but hired as a private contractor.
On his first day, Winslow presents him with a runaway teenager case. If Vincent finds the young lady, they’ll pay him a standard fee, plus any expenses he incurs. And they may consider giving him more work.
“So, if I understand you,” Vincent says, “this is your toughest case.”
“Well, it’s a tough one,” Charles Winslow responds. “We just got it.”
Winslow hands Vincent a high school photograph of the young lady.
“Her name is Debra Morton, and she’s from La Grange. Her parents hired us but you are prohibited from speaking to them directly.”
Vincent thinks that won’t be a problem. If the parents hired the agency, how much help could they possibly be? He spends the next several days gagging her friends and high school classmates and running down leads, some which turn out to be dead ends. Exactly one week from the day he’s hired, though, he finds Debra walking down a street, not far from the home of one of her friends.
The agency partners are impressed by how quickly Vincent has worked, but he is once again instructed not to contact the girl’s parents. As ex-FBI agents, they present a more professional presence, so they will divulge Debra’s location themselves. Vincent resents this and wants to be in on the disclosure, but he relents. In any event, Vincent has succeeded, and Debra is returned home safely.
In return for his service, he’s paid a flat fee of $500. Though Vincent thinks this number is low, he doesn’t mind, believing that this is his entrance into the private investigator field.
However, he’s wrong. He soon learns that to get a license, he must work for a detective agency for three years, take a test, and pay a fee. He also learns that the agency he works for must assess the number of hours he’s worked and vouch for him. Depending on others to get what he wants does not sit well with Vincent. His already healthy ego has grown ever larger, and his confidence soars. His desire to get into this business becomes his sole obsession.