"Hard-boiled in the Hub: Latter-day Sam Spade wins top private investigator prize"
Jay Groob prides himself on preparation. A change of clothes in the trunk. A full tank of gas in the car. A knowledge of a neighborhood's roads.
A good private investigator hates to be made, and Groob, a Brookline-based P.I. recently named investigator of the year by the Council of International Investigators, is concerned about a reporter's spur-of-the-moment suggestion to stake out a workers compensation case on the North Shore. Could be because he's wearing a gray business suit, not a warm-up outfit, and driving his BMW 528I, not an anonymous rental.
"To do surveillance efficiently you have to dress the part," Groob said as he left a meeting in the North End with several criminal-defense attorneys. "The problem is, we're not dressed for Revere, where we're going to be sitting. . . . In Weston, maybe a tie would be appropriate."
An eye for the right clothes and the wrong reactions. The ability to charm town clerks and death-row criminals. The doggedness of a border collie and the discretion of a diplomat. These are some of the qualities that have made Groob and his firm, American Investigative Services, the go-to gumshoes for local defense attorneys, insurance companies and businesses.
"We're after-the-fact investigators trying to provide as much information possible to defense counsel," said Groob, who recently added a New York office as well. "They don't want any surprises."
"I loved `The Rockford Files' but you don't see us breaking down doors, getting in fistfights," he said. "It's all exaggerated. . . . That's not the role of a professional investigator. We're more analytical, more businesslike than what we are portrayed in the movies."
He recently spent a week in Providence for a hedge-fund client, waiting to relay the verdict of the suit by Rhode Island against the lead-paint industry.
"Millions of dollars are at stake," Groob said. "It's a matter of seconds. I had to beat the Bloomberg (news service) guy."
The son of a bankruptcy attorney, Groob majored in criminal justice at Northeastern University and had a notion to be a lawyer himself. After a sub-par showing on the LSATs, he chose a career just as demanding and far more interesting.
No junior associate at a law firm ever found himself hiding in the rafters of a supermarket, watching through a hole in the drop ceiling as a store manager fenced stolen meat. Or had a bird's-eye view of a torrid love affair between two married night clerks while investigating another internal-theft case.
"I had to bite my lip to stop cracking up," Groob related. Needless to say, when presented with the evidence of their infidelity, the cheaters made restitution.
For the past decade, AIS has operated out of a nondescript storefront. Groob likes the anonymity; the sign for the previous tenant, a florist, still hangs outside. It's in line with his low- key approach.
"I don't have an aggressive demeanor," Groob said, shrugging. "I'm not 6 foot 6, or ex-military. I'm just a normal guy trying to do a job, trying to right wrong."
Defense attorney Elizabeth A. Lunt of Zalkind Rodriguez Lunt & Duncan LLP, said of Groob: "He has a genius for getting people to talk. I've never seen anything like it."
Another local defense attorney, Paul V. Kelly of Kelly, Libby & Hoopes, concurred. "He has a knack of taking the most difficult people, sitting down with them and having a discussion."
On this November morning Groob huddles with Lunt and another of the firm's attorneys, David Duncan, to discuss an alleged sexual- assault case. Then he checks with another local defense attorney about a court-appointed case involving charges of kidnapping and home invasion.
Groob needs to speak with a witness, a Brazilian immigrant who doesn't speak English, and tries to contact his Portuguese-speaking operative, Nilson Melo, to go over to the Watertown Mall. With witnesses, Groob prefers face time to the phone.
"Most of what I do is cold calls," he said. "You call people on the phone, they just hang up on you. You need to be there in person."
No answer. There's time to do that Revere stop-by. He parks in a lot facing the subject's house, flips down the sun visors and trains a palm-size digital camcorder at the exterior.
In his business, technology has been a godsend. He started out with a pager and 35-mm cameras with foot-long telephoto lenses. Now he has a Nextel, pinhole "nanny cameras," laptop computers.
"Technology is good, but it can't teach you people skills," he said. "You still have to pound the pavement. Nowadays, younger investigators don't know what it's like to just go out. Before there were databases, that's what you had to do."
Sometimes you get creative, too. At a Harvard commencement, Groob once served papers on a Central American politician, who thought the P.I. was handing him an honorary degree. Groob put an operative with a pilot's license in a Cessna to tail an allegedly disabled Cape man to his job. He also spent 72 hours straight on a domestic surveillance, waiting for a subject and his paramour to leave the house.
"It was brutal," allowed Groob, starting the car to leave the Revere stakeout.
But what about food, the call of nature?
"That's the art of surveillance," he said cryptically. "It's not a science, it's an art."