"There was the guy, Dickie Kirk, he had worked for the CIA for fifty-three years, he was an analyst, at least that's what he said he did. He died last November, he was eighty-seven years old. The dude must have weighed three hundred pounds but he was a scratch golfer and a doubles tennis player until he was about eighty. His friends said he was the most nimble, agile person they had ever known. One of his cousins told me that he did a full split from a standing position at his daughter's wedding when he was in his late seventies -- can you see a three hundred pound man doing a split and gettin' up with no problem at seventy-eight, I can't.
Anyway, his wife found out that I was a writer and asked me if I would be interested in working with him on his memoirs. She and my mother had gone to the same hairdresser. Deedee, Dickie's wife's name was Deedee, had also gotten my mother removed from the Baltimore Junior League on a charge of immorality, but they eventually resolved their differences, you'd have to know my mother, she was a true character--she probably secretly reveled in the immorality charge, I don't know all the details.
So, I made an appointment to meet Dickie to see if we were a good fit, more to see if this guy was legit or some kind of nut -- Deedee had told me a bit of his story. I arrived at their house about ten minutes early, a pleasant suburban ranch with probably ten antennas of all sorts sticking out from the roof, which made the place look like, the roof at least, a nineteen seventies Brooklyn slum. Deedee came to the door and asked if I wanted some coffee, then turned, closed the door and returned in a few minutes with the coffee. She excused her behaviour by explaining that Dickie prized punctuality, which for him meant not early nor late.
Dickie was sitting in an enormous caricature of a Queen Anne wing chair. He was dressed in a baby blue leisure suit with beautifully polished black wing tipped brogues on his feet that must have been, they were probably fifteens or sixteens. He had a pretty tight crew cut but he let the hair grow over his ears about mid-way. He didn't look eighty-seven. If I hadn't known I would have thought he was in his late sixties. He asked if I had a tape recorder with me. When I said no he pulled an old cassette recorder out from under a blanket by his chair and turned it on.
He asked me if I had voted for Donald Trump. I said no and started to ask him why he wanted to write his memoirs, but before I could say anything he held up his hand, silencing me, gulping the end of his cold coffee, liberally applying carmex to his large fleshy lips--"He's right, he's an idiot but he's right, it is a swamp, no, it's swamplike, there are and have been many honest, sincere people come to Washington. I am going to tell you what I know. We have done things. Bad things. I used to think that it would be good if it all got out, then Trump showed up and I realized how truly dangerous what I know would be in the hands of a madman like Trump. He is attempting to bring us to our knees.
Is he a Russian agent, no, he is a double jointed clown, like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, he is Russian entertainment. I am going to tell you why we did what we did, much of it inexcusable, some of it evil, however it was done, for good or ill, by men and women that loved this country. Trump has crapped in the Lincoln bedroom, that is inexcusable..." From "The Washington Interviews" By Franklin Cincinnatus
(Article changed on January 24, 2019 at 17:52)
