Hard-boiled private eyes navigating the city’s seamy underside are well established in the public’s imagination, from Raymond Chandler’s 1930s gumshoe Philip Marlowe to Jack Nicholson’s snooping Jake Gittes in the 1974 film "Chinatown."

Indeed, the popular image endures. When Richard Riordan was mayor of Los Angeles, a private investigator worked out of a backroom of his famous old downtown steak-and-eggs restaurant, the Original Pantry Cafe. Riordan and the investigator, Phillip Burruel, have never publicly commented on their relationship.

Unlike some others in the private eye business, authorities allege that Pellicano had inside help. He is charged with paying former LAPD Sgt. Mark Arneson and veteran Beverly Hills Police Officer Craig Stevens to search for information in the National Crime Information Center, a secured FBI database. The NCIC contains information ranging from criminal histories to records of stolen vehicles.

Putting such police information into the hands of private parties "shows how vulnerable we all are," said Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson. A former federal prosecutor, Levenson said the Pellicano case raises "the question of, do we have a bad egg here or another systemic problem at the LAPD? It does indicate that police computer systems can be easily abused."

Pavelic, who retired from the LAPD in 1992, said he often entered law enforcement databases on behalf of private investigators when he was on the force. "That happens day in and day out," he said. "I don’t believe there’s a cop on the beat who has not accessed a police computer for some type of personal reason."

But not all private eyes operate that way.

"Most of your private investigators are very legitimate operators running small mom-and-pop businesses," serving clients such as insurance firms and plaintiffs’ lawyers, said Townsend, who opened his business after serving as an investigator in the Marine Corps. He said his main clients are plaintiffs’ lawyers and a nonprofit group seeking to prevent boat injuries.

At the top of the industry’s food chain are multinational companies, such as Kroll Associates, serving mainly corporate clients. The firm has grown from a single office in New York in 1985 to a global practice with 63 offices and 3,000 professional staff members, including lawyers, accountants and journalists.

Henry Kupperman, a lawyer, heads Kroll’s Los Angeles office. The company’s business, he said, includes working for corporations investigating internal fraud and embezzlement or checking the financial condition of a potential acquisition.

"When you have prosecutions and investigations like the one involving Pellicano, it helps our business," he said. "We pride ourselves on being legal and ethical."

At the bottom rung of the sleuthing trade are fly-by-night operations on the Internet that for a fee offer to dig up copies of phone bills and Social Security numbers. Federal officials say such companies routinely engage in deceptive practices to obtain information, such as pretending to be an account-holder when requesting a copy of a phone bill, or paying an employee of a store to pass on customer information.

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