Here we go! "John Sampson said and clapped his hands together.
"Bad boys, bad boys, where you gonna hide?"
At six a.m. on Wednesday morning, Sampson and I climbed out of my old Porsche in the staff parking lot of the Hazelwood Veterans Hospital on North Capitol Street in DC. The large, sprawling hospital was situated a way south of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, just north of the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home.
Home of the Mastermind? I wondered. Could it be? According to Brian Macdougall it could and he had a lot riding on it.
John and I were dressed in sports shirts, baggy khaki trousers, high-topped sneakers. We were going to work for a day or two at the hospital. So far, the FBI hadn't been able to identify the Mastermind among the patients or staff members.
The grounds of Hazelwood were surrounded by high field stone walls covered with ivy. The landscaping was sparse: A few deciduous and evergreen shrubs and trees, artificial berms that were evocative of wartime bunkers.
"That's the main hospital," I said and pointed to a nearby building that was painted pale yellow, and rose six stories above us. There were a half-dozen smaller, bunkerlike buildings on the grounds.
"I've been here before," Sampson said. His eyes narrowed. "Knew a couple of guys from Vietnam who wound up at Hazelwood. They didn't heap high praise on the institution. Place always makes me think of Titicut Follies. You remember that scene where a patient is refusing to eat? So they force a hose up his nose?"
I looked at Sampson and shook my head. "You really don't like Hazelwood."
"Don't like the system of dispensing medical care to veterans. Don't like what happens to men and women who get hurt in foreign wars.
The people who work here are mostly all right, though. They probably don't even use nose hoses anymore." "We might need to," I told him, 'if we find our guy." "We find the Mastermind, sugar, we'll definitely use nose hoses."