Will Rudy End Up Homeless?

I’ve told this story before but it’s really apropos, so I’ll tell it now again.

Back in 1986 or so I flew down to D.C. for a meeting near Washington Cathedral. So I came out of National Airport, rented a car, drove across the Potomac, right turn on M Street, left on Wisconsin and stopped for a light on the corner of N Street, or maybe P Street, I don’t remember which.

What I do remember is that it was raining, and as I waited for the light to change an old guy wearing a raincoat and a hat shuffled by in front of my car, holding a quart of milk in one hand and the leash of a little dog in the other.

“Holy shit!” I said to myself, loud enough to be heard outside the car but thankfully, all the windows were closed. “That’s John Mitchell. That’s really him!”

And that’s exactly whom it was — the man who twelve years earlier had been the most powerful lawman in the entire United States, the guy who ran Nixon’s 1972 re-lection campaign, the guy who had been one of the most influential and important personality in a city loaded with influential and important personalities was now trudging past my car after going to the local deli to buy some milk and take some dog for a walk.

It turned out that Mitchell was walking back to the Georgetown residence of some little old lady who was giving him free room and…