Proceeding on to the local bank, where he stops to make a deposit, he passes under another camera that scans the parking lot, and another camera hangs over the entranceway. Inside the bank, as he stands in front of the teller and makes his deposit, he is photographed once more by a camera posted in the ceiling.
Later, while visiting a grocery store, one of the few stores that Gerald has known from previous years and where the manager is a friend, he asks his friend, while pointing up to a camera: “What do you do with those tapes that are changed every day?” The manager says, “They’re for our security, as you know, but the police, the FBI and the IRS also make use of them, and we never know why. All we know is that almost everything we do is on record.”
Gerald gets back in his car, and while returning home he thinks about all the changes that he and the Voyeur have lived through since opening the Manor House Motel more than thirty years ago. Now the private lives of public figures are exposed in the media almost every day, and even the head of the CIA, General David Petraeus, can’t keep his secret sex life out of the headlines. The media is now in the Peeping Tom business, but the biggest Peeping Tom of all is the U.S. Government, which keeps an eye on our daily lives through its use of security cameras, the internet, our credit cards, our bank records, our cell phones, I-phones, GPS info, our airline passenger tickets, the wire taps, and whatever else.
Perhaps you may be thinking, why is this of interest to Gerald Foos?
Because it is possible that someday the FBI will show up and say, “Gerald Foos, we have evidence that you’ve been watching people from your observation platform. What are you, some kind of pervert?”
And then Gerald Foos will respond: “And what about you, Big Brother? For years you’ve been watching me everywhere I go.”
THIRTY-ONE
DURING THE early spring of 2013, I received a phone call in New York from Gerald Foos saying that he was finally ready to go public with his story. Eighteen years had passed since he had disposed of his motels, and, while he could not be sure of the legal outcome, he believed that the statute of limitations would now protect him from invasion-of-privacy lawsuits that might be filed by former guests of the Manor House and Riviera motels.
He also was approaching the age of eighty, he reminded me, and if he did not share his journal material with readers now, he might not be around long enough to do so in the future. So he suggested that I fly out to see him soon.
Within a month, after I had cleared my calendar for a four-day visit, I met Gerald Foos for breakfast in the bar lobby of the Embassy Suites hotel near the Denver International Airport.
As he spotted me at one of the tables and called out to me by name, I recognized him mainly by his voice—a loud and familiar voice that I had become accustomed to hearing during our decades of communicating by phone. Otherwise, there was little similarity between this elderly man I saw coming toward me and the Gerald Foos I had last seen in 1980.
In those days he had been a vigorous and compactly built individual in his midforties who stood about six feet, weighed 200 pounds, was clean-shaven, and had a full head of dark hair. Now, as he slowly approached with his right hand extended, he carried a cane and was a balding, gray-haired senior citizen with a mustache and goatee. Tightly buttoned over his massive chest was a wide-shouldered gray tweed jacket and, under it, an orange-colored sports shirt, black trousers, and loafers.
His hazel eyes were covered with tinted glasses that, as he later explained, were prescribed for his nearsightedness. He acknowledged as well that his height had shrunk to five nine and his weight had risen to 240 pounds.
“But I feel fine,” he said after we had shaken hands and sat down and began scanning the menu. Then he looked up and, lifting his cane in my direction, said, “I see that you’re as dapper as ever,” and, with a smile, added, “Is that silk necktie you’re wearing the same one that slipped down through the slats that night when you joined me up in the attic?” I assured him that it was a different necktie, but our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of his wife, Anita, who apologized for being late because of her difficulty in finding a parking space.