\-rn rne Lamr ljon't Stumble In on This BunchByLILYKOPPEL
A big man in a black fedora andtrench coat over a plum-coloredshirt and a matching tie, swungopen the double wooden doors ona Thursday evening this monthinto a hidden back room withdark paneled walls surroundingred leather booths. Inside, agroup of about 20 mosfly middle-aged men sat around a table run-ning the length of the room.
Above them hung imitationRenaissance paintings in giltframes. The regulars around thetable looked like poker playersfrom a Dick Tfacy comic, or char-acters out of the board gameClue.
And so began the monthlymeeting of the Society of Profes-sional Investigators at Forlini's, avenerable Italian restaurant be-hind the Manhattan CriminalCourts Building on Baxter Streetin Chinatown. The restaurant,considered the Sardi's of law en-forcement, is where judges andmobsters sit side by side, digginginto plates of pasta. A plaque onthe wall designates the society'sofficial meeting place around thecorner from the booth whereRobert M. Morgenthau, the Man-hattan district attorney, and a pa-tron for 35 years, eats twice aweek.
ni's that night was Albert Belch-er, a retired New York Police De-partment detective who works asa private investigator and is thesociety's sergeant-at-arms anddoorkeeper, in case order needsto be restored. His services areoften called upon as ajoke whenthe conversation gets boisterous.The presence of Mr. Zeldin, nowthe society's chairman, was tele-graphed by the distinct aroma ofthe cigar he smoked on his way tothe restaurant.
A former bodyguard for Whit-ney Houston, David P. Roberts,was also on hand. A dapper Eng-lishman with a silver pencil-thinmustache, in a pinstriped suit, heis the president of British Ameri-can Consultants, an investigationand surveillance company basedin New Jersey.
Efrat Cohen, 25, who came toAmerica with her parents fromIsrael when she was 12 and whois new to the surveillance busi-ness, sat beside Mr. Roberts, Sheinvestigates local white collarcrime, mostly involving insur-ance fraud, for his company."One day, I just thought, wouldn'tit be wonderful to be a private in-vestigator?" Ms. Cohen said, whowore a crimson top and ,pointy-toed heels.
Across the table was RainerMelucci, whose expertise in elec-tronic eavesdropping protectionand antibugging services tookhim into the home of Tom Cruise
in Los Angeles and the offices ofthe Church'of Scientology. Hesaid he was practically investigated by the church, which con-ducted several rounds of inter-views with him while decidingwhether to employ him. The mostmemorable part of that processwas a private screening of "TheFirm" in Mr. Cruise's home thea-ter.
Ronald Mark Semaria, a foren-sic accountant who specializes inemployee and executive embez-zlement and identity theft, satnext to him. Cases he has workedinvolved check forgery, the pur-chase of gold bars by people as-sociated with the Taliban and AlQaeda, and divorces involvinghidden assets.
Over red wine and antipasto,the talk covered topics from in-side jokes about stakeouts ofcheating spouses, which some ofthe younger members are senton, to national security.
He is now lobbying in Wash-ington to protect private investi-gators' access Social Securitynumbers, the primary identifierin tracking people, especiallythose with common names orfalse identities.
Those who have spoken beforethe society have included RobertF. Kennedy and John Cye Cheas-ty, a revered former memberwhose undercover work helpedestablish the I,t/aterfront Com-
In addition to active and re-tired law enforcement agents, thesociety, which was established in1956 and meets once a month, in-cludes lawyers who work in aninvestigative capacity and sev-eral genealogists, who help trackdown missing witnesses, lostheirs, delinquent debtors andpeople who jump bail.
"It looks like Skull and Bones,"Bruce Sackman said, referring tothe secret society at Yale. A re-tired federal agent who has put adoctor and a nurse who were se-rial killers behind bars, he is nowthe senior investigator at MountSinai Medical Center dealingwith fraud and employees whosteal patients' identities. Observ-ing the room, Mr. Sackman, in apink silk tie, added, "It's like a1970s mafia movie."
Until a few years ago, the soci-ety, which has 150 members, hadbeen largely stagnant. But a for-mer president, David Zeldin, ledwhat members call its "phoenixrising," recruiting younger mem-bers and reaching out to thosewho had fallen away. The group'sWeb site (www.spionline.org)plays the theme from "PeterGunn."
At the end of the table at Forli-
mission, which investigates crim-inal activity on the docks of NewYork Harbor.
At this meeting, the speakerwas C. Gabrielle Salfati, directorof the Offender Profiling andCrime Scene Analysis ResearchUnit at John Jay College of Crimi-nal Justice, who also trains policeofficers. Her area of expertisekeeps audiences tuned in to tele-vision shows like "Law & Order"and "C.S.L"
"There are an awful lot ofmyths that we get inside peoples'minds," Dr. Salfati said. "I'm go-ing to use murder as my exam-ple." She went on to describe. acase of the rape and murder oftwo young girls in a small town'inEngland and how profiling, had itbeen used at that time, couldhave helped solve it. She said aprofile could have narrowed thepool of suspects by using scientif-ic research that would h4vepointed to characteristics to lookfor. Instead, DNA samples fromevery male member of the cor,p-munity were tested. Of thecrimes, Dr. Salfati said, "i:,llspare you the details since wqlregoing to have dinner."
She sought to dispel a popuiarstereotype of the serial killer whowas "obsessed with his motherand wears red stockings" just'dsthe waiter, with red readihgglasses perched on the end of hisnose, took orders for veal parmi-giana and chicken marsala
JOSH HANER,/'THE NEW YORK TIMES
Members of the Society of Professional Investigators meet monthly at Forlini's, in Chinatown.
