Just like that, all my carefully collected Badass Points fluttered away like gold rings from a wounded hedgehog. And I'd been lucky; usually that situation would have ended with someone calling the police. Blatant surveillance -- a PI parked Hollywood-style out in front of someone's house -- can actually land your ass in jail. The law considers that stalking, not detective work.
The pressure was on to not fuck up my next case, which (of course) guaranteed that I did. I wound up tailing a car through rush hour traffic when she started taking unnecessary detours. I thought I was going to get lucky and she was going to some other guy's house, but her detours brought her straight into the parking lot of a police station, where she immediately screamed to a group of officers. They pulled my Hollywood ass over and explained how fucking stupid I was. One of the cops told me a story about how his daughter plays hide and seek by covering her eyes. She thinks that if she can't see you, then you can't see her. At that point, that little 3-year-old girl was better at hiding than me.
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I had a slight edge in muay thai.