The Trailer

As I’ve said before, I drew from my experience working at LAX while writing Shadow Investigation. The description in the book of the task force office at the LAX may seem like an exaggeration, but it really isn’t. It was a ramshackle trailer sitting a few feet from World Way, the oval-shaped multi-lane street adjacent to the terminal buildings where passengers started and ended their journeys. My memory of the interior of the office: a messy accumulation of military green metal desks, chairs, and unattractive steel filing cabinets, which were often used more for privacy than storage. Agent-occupied desks all had the standard-issue government planner calendars while unassigned desks were repositories for random junk, supplies, and abandoned Styrofoam coffee cups. The threadbare indoor/outdoor carpet was a color I liked to call ‘old and tired.’ Artwork consisted of a clock hanging on the wall and not much else. The noise level was typically loud, especially in the late afternoon when the day shift gave way to the night shift. This subject to be continued in my next post.