By G.D. Maxwell
I noticed the necktie before I noticed whose neck it was
tied around. It was hard to miss. In Whistler, where ties are less common even
than leashed dogs, it stood out. Stood out? Hell, it screamed out. On a
background of Pacific Ocean blue silk, a very fetching - circa 1930s - Hoochie
Coochie girl in grass skirt, coconut shell top, fetching smile and come-hither
eyes, danced barefoot on a small, palm treed dot of an island.
"That tie has just about everything a guy could
possibly want in a necktie," I found myself saying. "Nice silk, good
knot, beautiful colour and a design that verily screams, 'Hey, if I have to
wear something as stupid as a tie, I'm gonna make the most out of it!'
A tie with its own sense of irony.
Beaut."
"You are blessed with impeccable taste, my brother.
Buy me a beer?"
I couldn't remember J.J. - Whistler's first and foremost
private eye - ever speaking so many words as prelude to saying 'buy me a beer'
before. I couldn't remember J.J. ever wearing a tie before. And I certainly
couldn't remember me striking up a conversation voluntarily with him before;
usually our encounters were more of the ambush variety, with me being the
ambushee.
"There must be an occasion, since I can't imagine
anyone wearing Little Egypt for no good reason at all.
Whatzup?"
"Goin' down to the States..."
"And you thought you'd wear your invitation to be
strip searched?"
"Say what you will, you Philistine, but this tie is
a classic."
"Hell, J.J., that suit is a classic. It must be
older than most of the people in this town. You look like you just stepped out
of the Kennedy administration... except for the tie, of course, which looks
like it just stepped out of a bordello in Samoa."
"You have a keen eye. The suit is from the Kennedy
administration, Brooks Brothers, 1962, but the tie is from a little shop that
used to be just outside the compound at Pearl. Hand-painted."
"None of which answers the question. Why the costume
and why ya headed stateside?"
"I'm goin' to D.C. I want to shake Mark Felt's hand
before he dies. When a guy's 91 and you want to shake his hand, you shouldn't
wait around too long."
"And you probably shouldn't be dressed like that.
You might give 'im a heart attack. But if you get the chance, give 'im a shake
for me too. Did you ever meet him when you were a spook?"
"There was a surprisingly wide gulf between the FBI
and the CIA after that closet queen Hoover died. But, and I know you'll find
this hard to believe, I did spend some time looking for Deep Throat just before
I chucked the whole cloak and dagger thing."
"Bull shit, J.J."
"I kid you not."
"Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't believe
you or anything, but being a domestic security thing, wouldn't that gig have
fallen, ironically, to the FBI to investigate?"
"It woulda and it did. But Nixon was such a paranoid
weasel, and let's face it, he knew where things were headed since the whole
sordid affair was plotted in his office, he had everyone in official Washington
looking for, I believe his description was, that rat-bastard traitor."
"So you were looking for Deep Throat. Is that what
you're telling me, J.J.?"
"Not very hard. I already knew my days with the
company were numbered. Hell, I thought the guy was a hero. Even if I'd 'a ever
gotten wind of who he was, I'd 'a probably tried to cover his ass. The man
performed a public service. He helped the hounds find the trail right to that
evil gnome. He helped get the swine out of office and relegate his henchmen to
country club prisons and lecture circuits. They oughta carve his face into
Rushmore."
"I thought Pat Buchanan said they ought to arrest
the traitor."
"Buchanan's a Nazi. Screw him and screw all the
other Nazis who long for the days of robots just following orders, glossing
over illegalities and findin' ways to subvert the Constitution to foster their
own agendas."
"That would take in a fairly significant proportion
of official Washington these days, I'm afraid."
"Yeah, it just might. And where the hell is a Mark
Felt now? Where's the new Woodward and Bernstein? Where's the outrage over the
way the unholy trinity is dismantling the Constitution, waging war on a lie and
generally reducing the greatest country in the world to pariah of the world. At
least Nixon had the decency to cover up his illegal acts. He knew the public
would be outraged if it found out their president had tried to rig an election
and then put the machinery in motion to whitewash the whole thing. He knew
they'd run his sorry, paranoid ass out of office. These jokers steal elections
with impunity, transfer the country's wealth to their cronies, scoop people up
off the streets without due process, flaunt the test ban treaty and run what
are now being called gulags around the world. Where's the outrage?"
"It's hard to be outraged when your scared shitless
by a boogie man you can't even identify if he boards the bus and takes the seat
right next to you, dude."
"Yeah, maybe it was easier 30 years ago to know who
the boogie man was.
Maybe we were
more scared of losing our sense of who we were, the greatness we believe was
within our reach. Maybe that was another victim of Watergate."
"You lost me there, J.J."
"Watergate revelations spawned a sense of distrust,
a cynical sense of distrust in politics, politicians, government and authority.
I mean how cynical was it for the leader of the country who, in public at
least, turned time and time again to his trusted advisor, Henry the K, to solve
the toughest problems, mine peace with honour in Vietnam, wrestle warring world
leaders to the negotiating table, how cynical was it for that self-righteous
imbecile to turn around and call him "Jew-boy" when he wasn't in the
room?
The whole fallout of Watergate was a turn inward, a turn
away from any concept of the greater good, of public service. It spawned the
generation of greed.
It nurtured
the indifference that allowed Reagan to ransack the national treasury, CEOs to
loot pension funds and bankrupt good companies, and send a generation of people
on a wild goose chase seeking satisfaction and enlightenment in big box stores
and patriotic shopping sprees."
"I'm not sure there weren't a few intervening acts
along the way, J.J."
"You can see things your way; I'll stick with my
version of history."
"Fine by me but if you're really traveling to
Washington to congratulate Deep Throat, I'd lose the tie. That suit don't need
to be pimped."