Louis, at which point he transferred to a Yellow Cab. He told the cabbie, a black man with an amiable face and shrewd, brown eyes, that he was headed for Menlow Park Hospital. The driver glanced at him in the mirror again. Patient or visitor? the black man was obviously thinking. Then he smiled. He'd clearly decided that Puckett was a visitor. On the way out to the hospital the news came on and there was a story about Richard M. Nixon planning another European trip. And so, naturally enough, Puckett started thinking about his days as Nixon's bodyguard. After college, and after Nam, Puckett found himself without a job but with an uncle who'd been a Secret Service man ever since Washington wore wooden teeth. "Hell, you might like it," his uncle kept saying, so Puckett—who was broke—said why not and flew into DC and took all the tests and kissed all the asses, and what do you know? A year later he was assigned to guarding presidential candidate Richard Nixon. He actually sort of liked the guy; which might be just a way of saying that he actually felt sorry for him because Nixon tried hard to be a regular guy, but his attempts were pathetic.
