LEWISTON – From Detroit to Little Rock to Kalamazoo, Alexander Pitarys spent 30 years quietly crossing the Midwest as a one-man detective agency.

His only client: restaurant tycoon Howard Johnson.

In a secretive deal that side-stepped big business bureaucracy, Johnson personally named Pitarys a “manager-at-large,” gave him unlimited expenses and an ID card that made waitresses and managers in several states shudder.

“They hated to see me,” said Pitarys, who made it his businesses to check for dirt in the kitchens and ledgers of every restaurant he entered. “There are very, very few honest people.”

Sitting at his kitchen table, the 93-year-old widower spread out a pile of snapshots and yellowing forms on Howard Johnson’s letterhead, including his timecards and evaluations that he would send to his boss.

“He was a tough old guy,” Pitarys said.

But in 1950, so was Pitarys.

The Nashua-born Greek-American spent the 1940s as the owner of three popular Lewiston eateries: the Androscoggin Diner, Alex’s Cafe and the Hayes Diner. He was attending a conference for restaurateurs when he met Johnson, who had become a business pioneer by selling franchises for his popular Massachusetts restaurants.

The two men talked. Johnson soon told Pitarys to sell his restaurants and come to work for him. He did.

“The money was good,” Pitarys said.

In 1950, when Ford’s fanciest car cost $2,200 and a gallon of gas cost 20 cents, Johnson paid him $800 a week. The days were long and stressful.

Each night, he wrote detailed reports about his visits. They went to Johnson.

The days were worse.

He’d map out each visit to a restaurant several days in advance. He’d call the managers and tell them he planned to stop by, but he was vague about when.

When he pulled in, he’d pin a badge to his coat and walk in, just as any customer would.

“Mr. Johnson always wanted me to go in the front,” Pitarys said. He’d hear the whispers immediately. He’d take a seat, order a burger and a dish of ice cream.

“They were always polite,” Pitarys said. “They had to be.”

The workers and managers were scared. Pitarys would swipe his fingertips along the moldings and furniture in the dining room to look for dust. He’d examine the seams between the floor and walls for dirt.

At his table, he’d taste the food to make sure it held to the Howard Johnson’s standard.

“Johnson cared about cleanliness and quality,” he said. “That’s why he succeeded.”

The restaurant thrived for decades.

At its peak in the 1960s, Howard Johnson’s were a fixture in nearly every city in America and a regular along highway rest stops. In Maine, there were 21. Of those, six were located along the Maine Turnpike. One was in Auburn, where Rolandeau’s Restaurant now operates.

Howard Johnson’s orange roof, open-all-hours policy and 28 flavors of ice cream were reliable and consistent at a time before drive-through windows, microwaves and McNuggets.

Pitarys made sure of it.

He found restaurants where managers replaced HoJo’s high quality ice cream with lesser brands. (The real stuff had 18 percent butter fat, said Pitarys.) He found HoJo hams and hamburger being sold out of the back of stores.

And there were even worse problems. He once chased an Illinois manager who disappeared with the weekend receipts.

“I found him in a motel with another woman,” Pitarys said, his voice still carrying a whiff of bitterness.

“You got used to the job,” he said. He read to relax. “The money helped.”

So did his wife, Mary. They were together for 65 years.

“Wasn’t she beautiful?” Pitarys said, gently turning the pages of their wedding album. The images showed a stunning woman in a white dress with a long train. She designed their home in Lewiston. And she often traveled with him.

Some of the work was a pleasure, too.

Through his close relationship with Johnson, Pitarys met and cooked with Chef Jacques Pepin, a colleague of Julia Child. He also got to know Nelson Rockefeller, who served as New York’s governor and President Gerald Ford’s vice president. “He was a good man,” Pitarys said. “A playboy, but a good man.”

Pitarys left Howard Johnson’s in 1980, several years after the founder’s death. The company couldn’t survive without Johnson, he said. The restaurant franchise and hotels were sold in 1980. The name is currently held by hotel giant Wyndham Worldwide.

Only three of the restaurants – including one in Bangor – remain.

Pitarys misses Mary, who died three years ago, but he doesn’t miss the life on the road, he said.

He has friends. He cooks lots of Greek food, and he cleans. His kitchen is as spotless as the best Howard Johnson’s in its heyday.

“Pretty good for a guy,” he said.