As I approached Nixon’s house, I saw something that gave me pause. Two young kids, maybe four and six, were playing on the front lawn while a rather harried-looking woman watched from the front porch. Nothing in the information we’d put together on him had said he had children. A wife, yes, but not kids.
Why the hell would a man with a family be working for Payton and Graves? I knew one possible answer. He needed money. Kids were expensive, or so I’ve been told. Mostly by my father who made that patently clear when one of us asked for something that wasn’t necessary, like the latest toy or shoes like the other kids had. It wasn’t that we were poor, but he had a strict ethic about how we should live. If I heard “Waste not, want not,” once, I heard it a thousand times.
I kept on walking, s
