“I thought, hmmmm, well. . . I can either slow down or stomp on it and squeeze in there, so I stomped on it and forced the oncoming car up over the curb and onto the grass in order to avoid me as I came hurtling back into my own lane, and just as I flashed past him I happened to look over and saw that it was a police car. Well, I thought, this is not the time to stop and apologize; I could see him in my rear view mirror, stopping and beginning to turn around. . . So instead of following Crouse, I took the first left I could, turned the lights off and drove like a bastard -- assuming the cop would probably chase Crouse and run him down and arrest him, but as it happened he didn't get either of us.”

“What a rotten thing to do.”

“Well, it was him or me, Ralph. . . as a matter of fact I worried about it when we didn't see Tim at the restaurant later on. But we were late because we did some high-speed driving exercises in the Southeast area of Washington -- flashing along those big empty streets going into corners at 80 miles an hour and doing 180s. . . it was a sort of thunder road driving trip, screwing it on with that big Cutlass.”

“Enormous car?”

“A real monster, extremely overpowered. . .”

“How big is it? The size of a bus?”

“No, normal size for a big car, but extremely powerful -- much more, say, than a Mustang or something like that. We did about an hour's worth of crazed driving on these deserted streets, and it was during this time that I mentioned that we should probably go out and have a word with Mr. Colson -- because during a conversation earlier in the evening, the consensus among the reporters at McGovern's party was that Colson was probably the only one of Nixon's first-rank henchmen who would probably not even be indicted.”

“Why's that?”

"He had managed to keep himself clean, somehow -- up to that point anyway. Now, he's been dragged into the ITT hassle again, so it looks like he might go down with all the others.

“But at that point, we thought, well, Colson really is the most evil of those bastards, and if he gets off there is really no justice in the world. So we thought we'd go out to his house -- luckily none of us knew where he lived -- and beat on his door, mumbling something like: 'God's mercy on me! My wife's been raped! My foot's been cut off!' Anything to lure him downstairs. . . and the minute he opened the door, seize him and drag him out to the car and tie him by the ankles and drag him down to the White House.”

“He could identify you. . .”