You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Spending 5 hours tailing a work van.
My day starts at 7:45 am. I am in a WalMart Parking lot. It’s here I’ve been told that the carpet cleaners come to cash their pay checks.
The tipster tells me that the men clean carpets, and when done, flush their tanks, dirty, soapy, chemical filled water, down the drain.
The tipster has sent me still photos, but I need video.
At 8am, the yellow van arrives. Two men get out and go inside.
The truck is easy to spot, yellow as a school bus.
I wonder how I am going to follow this van without being seen. It’s a skill they teach to cops and FBI agents. I don’t have any functional surveillance skills. I am more of a mechanism, I am blunt and obtrusive. Stealth is hardly my calling card. Sure I’ve watched a few episodes of Starksy and Hutch, but I am not sure I was taking notes on the sweet science of the tail.
The men get in their bright yellow van and exit the parking lot.
I begin driving. At first quickly to get right behind them. Then I slow, deciding I shouldn’t get right behind them.
The van exits the parking lot onto a busy street. Suddenly it’s gone. Out of sight. I panic and race to the stop sign. I look to the right.
Like a flashing neon sign, it is steadily driving down the boulevard.
Cars and trucks are coming at me in waves. I cannot turn. The mark is getting away. I am antsy, my accelerator foot tapping the pedal. I need to go. The yellow van has disappeared over the crest of the hill.
As a parade of cars continues to come at me, I wonder If i am really this bad at tailing a suspect. I didn’t even get out of the parking lot and all ready the van I am surveilling is gone.
Suddenly a space opens. I jet into traffic and punch it. The Mariner’s 4 cylinder engine whines like a child who doesn’t want to go to school. I carefully dip in and out of traffic.
I crest the hill and scan the asphalt horizon.
There it is, like a setting sun on a still ocean, the bright yellow van. It is a stop light away.
I am doing 60 mph in a 35mph. I should be worrying about cops. Instead I’m worrying about getting caught at the light and this assignment being over before it starts.
The light turns yellow and I punch it.
Zoom. I’m through.
Now I’m racing up on the yellow van. I’ve been driving like a circus freak in a clown car. I don’t need to be spotted. I slow down and slide behind a work truck that is 2 vehicles behind the yellow carpet van.
And this is how it goes for the next five hours. I drive like a paranoid drug mule at a border crossing tailing a couple of simple Simons who probably don’t have a clue I’m behind them.
My car is white. It is pedestrian. It has no visible markings. The windows are mostly tinted. I could be the secret service or a TV repair guy to these mutton chops in the yellow van.
But I know who I am. I know what I’m doing. It is an art tailing a suspect. You can’t get too close. You can’t drift back too far.
The van gets on the interstate. This is easy like gravy on turkey dinner.
I can slip back a quarter mile behind a dozen cars and still maintain visual on the suspects.
The van is traveling south on I-65. I figure they’ll go one maybe two exits.
The van travels through 2 counties.
Where the hell are we going? I think to myself.
I want to quit suddenly. This seems like maximum effort for minimum results for a story that I have no idea is true or not.
For thirty minutes I follow behind that yellow van. Over hill. Under bridges. Around bends. I try and maintain a huge distance. I am sure that they have no clue I am on them. The interstate is easy.
The van exits.
Trouble.
I now have to get back into position to follow, but not so close that I am spotted.
The last thing I need are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dummer saying “Hey that little white Mariner is following us.”
The van exits the interstate and pulls to the bottom of the ramp. It stops. I have now also exited the interstate and I’m flying up behind the van. I need it to turn one way or the other. I am getting too close. What should i do? Why are they just sitting there at the bottom of the ramp? Have they spotted me? Are they lost? WTF?
I take my foot off the accelerator slowing my approach. The van sits at the stop sign.
There is no traffic. Why won’t they turn. I am in no man’s land. I can’t come to a complete stop on the ramp. That would be like banging my own thumb with a hammer.
I decide to act like any other motorist and approach the stop sign. Suddenly the van makes a right turn and zips into a Shell station.
“Did they make me?” I mutter to myself as I get to the stop sign.
I pause for a moment as the van sits in the Shell station, not at the convenience mart, not at a pump, just in the middle of the Shell station lot.
Are they looking back at me? Do they know that Andy Cordan is tailing them because he thinks they might be doing something environmentally unconscionable?
Since they turned right. I turn left.
I drive to a truck stop on the other side of the interstate and hang a U turn.
I double back and stop on the side of the road just short of the Shell station. I can see the yellow van which has yet to move.
It’s as if they are lost and checking directions I think to myself.
Car after car getting on the on ramp looks at me with a curious eye. Is this guy broken down? Is he an interstate rapist? Why is he parked so awkwardly on the side of the road?
Suddenly the yellow van pulls out of the Shell station and heads down a two lane country road.
I pull off the shoulder and begin following. This is a new dynamic. There are no traffic lights to worry about but there is only one lane in each direction. That means I need to stay way way back.
I slow to a pace that is almost uncomfortable allowing the van to move ahead. The road dips and turns and suddenly I am out of sight. I maintain my speed figuring that the road only goes one direction and this big bright billboard will be easy enough to spot.
I crest the hill and see the van a quarter mile ahead. There is another car behind it now.
I speed up to use this car as my cover.
I spend the next 30 minutes playing a singular game of cat and mouse with two Rumpelstiltskins who have no idea I’m tailing them.
They pull into a sub division and make a right and quick left.
I pull into the sub division and take a street parallel to the one they are on. I slow to a crawl peering through back yards trying to get a glimpse of anything big and yellow. Too many fences and trees.
I swoop around the corner and slow to the stop sign. I look to the right. The yellow van is 8 houses down on the right. It is backed into a driveway and the men are out getting their equipment.
I pull into a side street parking in front of home. I can see the van. I feel like I am far enough down the street that they will not notice me.
Residents come out of their homes and get their mail. Children play on scooters and neighbors drive by. I feel out of place, so conspicuous. I expect the local police to pull up on me at any moment and ask me what the hell I’m doing. I feel like a perp.
I’ve done nothing wrong but I feel like I’m the guy on the FBI most wanted poster and everyone has incentive to drop dime on me.
I shoot a little video of the van from a block away. Not much is going on.
An hour passes. I’m bored as hell. My ass hurts. I’m thirsty and I gotta pee. This surveillance stuff sucks.
Suddenly the van exits the driveway and begins driving again.
Boredom turns into crazy in the time it takes to put the Mariner into drive.
And so the crazy tail begins again. Red lights and stop signs and slower traffic. It is all a crazy crap shoot as I follow the van to who knows where.
I am hoping they are going to purge their tanks. My mind races as to what I will do when this happens. There are two of them and one of me. Will I find a place to pull over and secretly tape them? Will I drive up on them and jump out by myself with my camera blazing. Will they run? Will they kick my ass? Many thoughts as my adrenaline begins swirling.
But this moment will not come. The van drives and drives and drives. Suddenly we are in another city at another job. The van pulls in and the men begin working. I park down the street. It’s a repeat performance of the previous stop.
Another boring hour goes by. The men finish and I follow them to another shopping center. They get out and go into a fried chicken place. I pull around the building and find a spot behind an apartment complex on the hill. I have a great view of the van and I am hidden by the building and parked cars.
I am there for about twenty minutes when a woman knocks on my window.
“Can I help you,” she says.
“I’m just chilling out waiting for someone,” i say.
She eyes me suspiciously.
“Am I blocking you in?”
“No just making sure you are OK,” she responds.
“No I’m fine.”
“OK” she says walking away as stridently as she had approached.
This sucks I think to myself. Two jobs and no visible dumping. I have invested four hours on this story and so far all I have is a sore ass and cramping accelerator foot.
The van takes off again. This time it goes deep into the country. It is so back woods where we are that radio reception is intermittent. We are literly down in a hollow that winds like a donkey trail at the Grand Canyon.
I am giving the yellow van a lot of space because there are very few other cars here. At times I am driving for minutes at a time without any visual on the van.
Could they have pulled off? i wonder. Of course. I check each side road swinging my head left and rapidly right. No flash of yellow. I keep driving.
To make a very long story short. It’s in this little town that time forgot, where I sincerely doubt anyone has a carpet and I am almost certain they are going to purge their tanks, It is here that I lose the yellow van.
A vehicle that was a festering yellow blot on an otherwise grey canvas is suddenly gone. I lost it at a fork in the road that quickly forked in the road again.
I had to choose one of four directions down roads that quickly wind into nothingness.
I choose a road and speed up chasing my own shadow. I drive hard for about a minute and a half at speeds too high for this peregrine road. That’s when I hit the brakes.
Dust flies up around me. The world is quiet. The sun is filtering through the tall trees around me. There is nothingness. Just green. Not a speck of yellow to be seen for as far as the eye can see.
Damn!
I am angry but also somewhat relieved. I have been following this van for close to 5 hours and though I have nothing to show for it, I am worn out, psychologically and emotionally.
I have been playing a high stakes game of hide and seek with two guys who are probably ex cons and know what a “tail” looks like. Or maybe they are just stupid carpet cleaning guys and this is how they drive around cleaning carpets all day long. I will never know.
I am relieved to be able to drive normally again. I don’t have to gauge my distance or eye ball a car a quarter mile ahead anticipating what he’ll do next.
I get to the station and my boss sees me.
“What the hell have you been doing all day?”
I don’t know how to tell him that I spent so much of his time and money to accomplish so little.
Maximum effort. Minimum Result.
And that is crazy.™