In Search of the Sleuth

This I had to try.

I called the garbage company for Pankau's rural stretch of Montgomery County and learned residents are requested to put their trash out by 7 a.m. Deron, the photographer, and I set out at 5 a.m. on the appointed day to bag Pankau's trash.

We exited I-45 and twisted through tidy subdivisions until the landscape became wilder. Piney woods crowded the winding road. The previous night I had ascertained that sunrise would be at 6:19, but already around 5:50 the first gray of morning was taking hold. We turned onto Pankau's road, focusing on the few mailboxes that were there. Without warning, we were in front of Pankau's place. It was a spacious ranch-style home with a big porch and lots of windows -- perfect for keeping a watchful eye on the two garbage cans sitting beside the road.

I decided we should just grab the trash, since it was there, and not monkey around with any drivers. Besides, on that country street there was no place we could position ourselves without attracting notice.

I was wearing a bandanna on my head, thick work gloves and an outfit that I thought might pass for a garbage collector's. I had decided that if Pankau spotted me, I would affect a cavalier attitude and laughingly tell him that he was the one who had given me the idea in the first place. I even convinced myself that he might appreciate my pluck.

But I wasn't feeling particularly plucky or cavalier. The guy had guns, I knew that. And Pankau wasn't my only worry. I couldn't help but wonder what it said about me that I was about to go through someone's trash. Was this the beginning of my stalker-paparazzi career?

By now it was light. Deron and I were speaking in low, tragic tones. He turned the car around to make another pass of the Pankau property.

I wanted more time to think, maybe drive by one more time to determine our precise drop-off and pickup points. Deron thought it would be too suspicious.

He was right. I was stalling.

We parked beside some trees about 100 yards up from Pankau's house. I stuffed a trash bag into the pocket of my cargo pants, and suddenly, like a kamikaze, I was hurtling forward into the naked space in front of the house. Dogs that I could not see were barking berserkly somewhere nearby. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the black windows of Pankau's well-fenestrated abode. I was sure I was being watched.

I got to the cans.

The trash looked loose and unwieldy in the first one, so I lifted the lid of its twin. A couple of plump white bags rested on top. I plucked them out, one in each hand, and made haste for the car. A container of some sort leaped from the bag in my left hand, landing on the street with a clatter. I prayed that the whole bag wasn't about to burst open. Deron snapped some last shots as I approached, each flash subtle as lightning, then got into his car. I slipped the bags into the trunk and we were off, giggling like a couple of playground delinquents.

Sure, I felt dirty, but not nearly to the extent that I would when we got back to Houston and I began picking through those two bags. Garbage stinks. It's nasty and its message is clear: Get me the fuck out of here! I tried to tease meaning out of the Pop-Tarts box, root beer cans and Betty Crocker Super Moist cake mix packages. I discovered that Pepperidge Farm Goldfish have "30 percent less sodium," but than what?

A copy of an investors magazine lay amid rotting food scraps and assorted junk mail, its lessons about today's volatile market now banished to oblivion. A Michelob Light bottle. An envelope from the National Association of Legal Investigators. A piece of moldy bread. I felt disgusting before I started this ungodly exercise, but now I was getting sick. Did I feel this way because of the maggots wiggling on the can of Spaghetti O's? Or was it my conscience?

Pankau called me when I got back to the office to invite me to lunch. He seemed his chipper old self. Only now, for some reason, he was calling me Jonathan. He must know. Or did he? I could not allow myself to even entertain the thought.

I kept my professional game face on throughout our meal at Irma's. Between bites of salmon and sautéed vegetables, I rattled off questions. Pankau responded with good humor. He had become the model of accessibility -- to the extent that an international man of mystery can, anyhow.

"We all see ourselves through rose-tinted glasses, and our personal admissions are more often of our ambitions, not our actual accomplishments." -- Check It Out!

To understand Edmund J. Pankau, one needs to understand Edmund J. Pankau, his father, as well as the original Edmund J. Pankau, his grandfather. The clan immigrated from Germany to the United States in the 1920s. The elder Pankau set himself up in the restaurant business, becoming a chef at Luchow's, the famous German eatery on East 14th Street in New York, and ultimately opening his own seafood restaurant.