The Howard Hughes Affair

CHAPTER THREE

I drove back to Hollywood, my rooming house and a shower. The hot water smacked me low on the back for about fifteen minutes while I blew air out of my almost flat nostrils to prove I could still do it. Then I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and got my back on the faded carpet in my room to stare at the ceiling and wait for the pain to pass.

It was so peaceful I almost fell asleep. After ten minutes, Gunther Wherthman, who had the room next to mine and who had convinced Mrs. Plaut to take me in in spite of my profession, dropped by to keep me company. His visit was formal, as always, and he was too polite to comment on my prone position. So I explained. Our eyes were in reasonable contact, and I didn’t have to raise my voice. Gunther is a midget. We had met when I blundered into the solution to a murder he was accused of. We had been something like friends ever since, ever since being less than a year. Gunther was Swiss, but was usually taken for German, which caused him some difficulty since Germans were not particularly popular in the States in 1941. Since he was a small possible-German, he was especially vulnerable.

Gunther always wore a neat suit and spent most of his time in his room translating books and articles from German, French, Italian, Spanish and Polish into English. Sometimes it paid reasonably well. Usually it was about as lucrative as being a private detective. Gunther didn’t like to talk. I loved talking. We got along great. If someone had burst in on us, we would have looked something like a tableau from a wax museum, me as the corpse on the floor, he as the tiny killer pondering his crime. As it was, Mrs. Plaut did stick her head in, looking for something or someone. Our positions either did not register with her or seventy years of living in Hollywood had prepared her for anything.

“I’ve got a client,” I told Gunther.

“As have I,” he said.

We were quiet for another ten minutes.

“I’m supposed to find some spies,” I said.

“Is there not a government branch that dedicates itself to such matters?” he asked reasonably.

“Yeah,” I said, adjusting a pillow under my knees, “but they don’t think there’s any spying going on.”

“Is there?”

“I’m getting $48 a day plus expenses,” I said in answer.

He nodded, understanding, and I sat up. My back was feeling better and through the window I could see that the rain had taken a break to load up for another attack.

“Back to work,” I sighed. Gunther nodded, climbed down from the chair and went back to his room. I had three friends: Gunther, who said little; Shelly Minck, the dentist I shared an office with and who never made any sense; and Jeremy Butler, my office landlord, former wrestler and part-time poet. Jeremy was so big and ugly, he never had to say anything he didn’t want to say. I had never tried to get the group together. I was afraid we’d be taken for a remake of The Unholy Three.

Putting on my second suit, a too-heavy blue gabardine, plus a robin’s-egg-blue tie with just a touch of real egg still on it, I ventured out again into the late afternoon. The thunder rumbled a threat, and the little girls were back outside jumping rope and practicing to be witches under the protection of Mrs. Plaut’s porch.

The toothless kid was turning the rope this time, and a new girl was jumping. One of her dark pigtails flopped on her shoulder; the other was held tightly in her mouth. Toothless chanted merrily:

Last night and the night before

Twenty-four robbers came to my door,

And this is what they said:

“Buster, Buster, hands on head;

Buster, Buster, go to bed;

Buster, Buster, if you don’t,

I’m afraid they’ll find you dead.”

My faith in the future generation restored, I ambled to the Buick, patted the list of names and numbers in my pocket, and headed for Culver City and a freshly built, elongated two-story white antiseptic building with cheap but pleasant-smelling carpets. Anne Peters, nee Anne Mitzenmacher, lived there. Well, she used it as an address. It didn’t look lived in. If I put my clothes down in a place for twenty minutes, it looked lived in. If Anne spent five years in a single room, it would never look lived in. I found a parking place next to a dripping frond that bounced with joy at the moisture on its fat-ass leaves. I straightened my tie, pushed the bell and listened for the soft bong far away. It was after five and if she was coming home, she would be there. If not, I was on my way to the office, if a twenty-minute detour can be considered on the way.

The buzzer sounded, and I leaped for the inner door, I hurried up the stairs and to the hall. She was waiting and, as usual, not at all happy to see me. At least she didn’t slam the door in my face. One time when she did that I had stumbled around the hall pretending to be drunk and singing “Annie, Annie was the miller’s daughter, far she wandered from the singing water.” She didn’t like attention called to her, and she didn’t like to be called Annie. She had opened the door that time, but the victory had been a hollow one. She had refused to talk to me when she let me in and actually called the police after giving me ten minutes.

I waited through five years of marriage for Anne to get fat like her mother. She didn’t. Anne had remained full, dark and beautiful. Her hair was long and when she opened the door this time she wore a happy white dress with puffy shoulders and a not-too-happy look on her face.

“Business visit,” I said, holding up both of my palms as I moved forward. She backed away to let me into her apartment. Her arms were folded, which was not a hopeful sign.

I stepped past her into the apartment. She hadn’t changed a thing in the living room since I had last seen it. It was furnished with a modern brown chair and sofa, a light-brown carpet and tasteful brown wallpaper. On the wall was a painting of two factory workers shaking hands. Anne had always been a realist.

“Annie, don’t you ever feel like throwing your bra on the floor and just leaving it there for a week or two?” I said in greeting.

“Never,” she said closing the door behind me. “Business.”

“You’re looking great,” I said, sitting on the uncomfortable-looking chair. “What happened to the executive you were going to marry?”

“I never said I was going to marry Ralph, you assumed that. Toby, I’m not going to let you goad me into battle. I’ve had a tough day at work and I want to be left alone.”

On the sofa was a copy of The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin with a golden bookmark about one-third of the way in.

“I saw Hughes today,” I tried, my eyes watching her for that glint of interest. I caught it before she could cover up, and she knew it. She sighed and sat down.

“Toby, that doesn’t buy your way into my life again.” She sat stiffly, but her body quivered, and I smiled politely. She talked fast, “Ralph mentioned that Mr. Hughes had a problem and I mentioned your name.”

“Annie…” I leaned forward.

“I mentioned your name,” she said, putting Cronin on her lap for protection, “because they wanted someone who was discreet and reasonable. Fortunately, they didn’t ay anything about intelligence.”

“You can’t hurt me that way, Annie,” I grinned.

“I know it,” she said. “I threw you a job because God knows you can always use one. We have nothing to talk about.”

“We have hundreds of battles, thousands of hamburgers, and years of apologies to talk about,” I said.

She put the book down, walked to the door and opened it.

“Don’t you want to hear what Hughes wants?” I said.

“I want to hear,” she said softly, “but I don’t want to pay the price for it. Your price is always too high, Toby. You can make a person live a century in fifteen minutes.”

“And you used to love it,” I tried.

She shook her head.

“I never loved it. I accepted it. We’ve been all through it, Toby. I’m almost 40 years old. I have no family, no kids. I’ve got a career and some hope. You don’t cheer me up when you come around. You just remind me of everything I’ve missed.”

“You sent me a perfumed letter,” I said, getting up and moving toward her.

“I pay my gas bill with perfumed letters,” she said. “I buy it by the box. Come on, Toby, I’ve had a bad day. My feet hurt and I have to look in the mirror soon.”

“You’re beautiful, Annie.”

She shook her head and smiled sadly.

“I’m holding on, Toby,” she said. “I heard someone in the office describe me as a handsome woman today. That depressed me almost as much as this visit is. Please take your needs someplace else. I’m not an emotional gas station that can keep pumping it out.”

It had gone all wrong, and I was depressed and feeling sorry for her and myself.

“I tried,” I sighed and went toward the door.

“Yes,” she said softly, “but did you ever stop to think about what it was you tried and why?”

I stepped toward her, and she held her hand out looking like Kay Francis. It would have been a great lobby poster.

“I’ll see you,” I said.

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

On the way back to the car, I decided to visit my nephews some time soon. Christmas was on the way. I’d get the boys the Foto-Electric Football game I saw advertised at Robinson’s for $4.95. I’d get my sister-in-law Ruth a jacket from Bullock’s. I’d get Phil a bottle of Serutan with a clipping of the ad that said “I’m 46 but I look and feel younger.” I’d cheer everybody up. I’d be dear old Uncle Toby. Like hell I would. That wasn’t the way to put Anne’s words out of my mind.

Even Burns and Allen on the car radio didn’t help. Three tacos and a large Pepsi didn’t help. I was getting desperate enough to get to work. I pulled out the sheet from Hughes. The closest person on the list was Basil Rathbone. He lived at 10728 Bellagio Road in Bel Air, which wasn’t too far. I spent a nickel and got Rathbone’s wife on the phone. After I told her Howard Hughes had given me the number, she told me her husband was at NBC rehearsing a radio show. I thanked her, considered myself lucky that I wasn’t too far from NBC and got back in the turtle and head down Sunset.

NBC looked clean, neat and sterile enough to have been decorated by my former wife. Even the girl at the reception desk looked too clean to be real.

“Clarise,” I said, leaning over confidentially to read her name tag, “my name is Peters. Mr. Rathbone is expecting me.”

Clarise examined a skewered spindle of papers in front of her, searching for a note, a hint, a hope, an affirmation. I stood impatiently looking at my watch. My watch told me it was 2:10 in the afternoon or 2:10 in the morning. Neither was within seven hours of the truth. I wound the watch but it didn’t help. Time stood still but Clarise didn’t.

“For Mr. Rathbone?” she said.

I looked at the grey-haired guard behind her in exasperation.

“Look, young lady,” I sighed. “I have about one hour between planes. Mr. Rathbone wanted to see me about production of the play. I did not want to see him. Our backers in New York don’t think his name will mean that much to us, and we have an adaptation of The Keys of the Kingdom as a major possibility. Why don’t you just tell Mr. Rathbone that I came by, you did your job and kept me from him, and he can contact me some time about the play. Just tell him it was Mr. Peters from the Schubert’s in New York.”

I turned to leave. I could have sat down and done some message sending. I could have waited outside for Rathbone to make an appearance. But I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to con my way into NBC. Professional pride.

“I’ll give Mr. Rathbone your message,” she said.

I turned to give her a withering stare and a closer examination. She was thin, vacantly pretty with frizzy auburn hair and in some other orbit. I tried another ploy.

“Where is the regular girl on this desk?”

Now how a man from Schubert’s in New York would know she wasn’t a regular would have been a reasonable question, but I had gauged Clarise’s vacant look properly.

“She’s on a dinner break. I’m just taking over for half an hour.”

I pointed my finger at her and talked through my teeth. Maybe I could reduce her to tears and get back at Annie through womankind in the pathetic form of Clarise.

“What’s your last name, Clarise?” I said.

“Clarise Peary. I usually work the telephones on…”

I wrote Clarise Peary’s name in my expense book right under the nickel I had spent on the call to Rathbone’s house. Clarise squirmed inside her dark blue NBC jacket. I had discovered back in my cop days that people didn’t like having their names written down.

“Well,” she hesitated, “if Mr. Rathbone is expecting you…”

“He is not expecting me,” I said, leaning forward, not very proud of myself for intimidating a part-time clerk, “he is anxious to see me while I am not in the least anxious to see him. My time,” I said, noticing again from my watch that time had stopped at two-ten, “is valuable.”

“Paddy will take you to the studio,” she sighed, looking anxiously at a couple who had come through the main door and were heading for her desk. She clearly feared having to handle two questions at the same time.

“Thank you,” I said officiously. She smiled, showing a crack in her face powder. The guard with the grey hair nodded and started down the hall toward a door. I followed him. He opened the door and I stepped through.

“You know,” he said with a faint Scottish accent, “that talk wouldn’t have fooled the regular girl for a second. Schubert’s, hell.” He chuckled.

“Then why aren’t you tossing me out?” I said, hurrying to keep up with him as we went past glassed-in rooms of equipment and jacketless men with earphones.

“My name’s Whannel,” he said. “Worked at Warner’s till last year. Got fired for drinking on a job-a job you got me sent on.”

“I remember,” I said. “Flynn. You and another security guy named Ellis were supposed to watch Errol Flynn. He got you drunk.”

“And we got canned,” he said, pointing to a thick wooden door. Above the door was a sign reading “On the Air.” The sign was lighted.

“Then why didn’t you turn me back at the desk out there?”

“Getting fired from Warner’s was the best thing ever happened to Jack and me. NBC has better pay and hours, and I don’t have to walk all over that damn lot. Be quiet when you go in there. They’re not on the air, just rehearsing. Take it easy.”

“You too,” I said, and he left me. I walked into the studio as quietly as I could. It was a bigger room than I expected, with a stage and a small darkened space for about 30 chairs. I took a seat in one of the chairs. A handful of people were listening to the rehearsal.

On the stage was a slightly raised platform with a microphone and two men standing at it with scripts in their hands. To their left was an organ, but no one was there. To their right was a small flight of four steps leading to a contraption that looked like a glassless window. On the platform behind the steps was a wheel mounted on a table with a handle in the center of the wheel so it would be turned. Another contraption on wheels next to it held small wooden doors, one on each side, and next to the steps was a wooden box filled with sand. A man was standing in the box, with a script in his hand.

Behind the two men at the microphone was a glass partition with three men seated behind it all wearing earphones.

“Take it from the top of four, Nigel,” came a voice. “One more time and then all the way through.”

A portly man with a grey mustache wearing a dark suit and vest nodded. I recognized him from dozens of movies as Nigel Bruce. At his side stood Basil Rathbone in a tweed jacket and sweater. Rathbone looked out into the audience and directly at me, as if he knew me, and then turned back to the script.

Bruce let his face become perplexed so he could fall into character and said something like, “Rain had always depressed him when he wasn’t working on a case,” and the man in the box shuffled his feet, ran up the four stairs and opened one of the doors.

Rathbone said something like “Aha, we have a visitor,” and the show went on with Rathbone as Holmes discovering a mad old killer named Amberly, who has gassed his wife and her doctor to death in a sealed room. Up to the last minute, I suspected Professor Moriarty, even though he had nothing to do with the episode.

After the announcer stepped forward and reminded the dozen people in the audience that “A little cold may be the start of a serious illness,” I vowed to take his advice and buy some Bromo Quinine Cold Tablets. The show came to an end, and the director’s voice came across tinny and cracked, saying, “That’s good enough for day. Thanks Basil, Nigel.”

Rathbone smiled and waved toward the glass partition, and Bruce nodded. A guy in the audience ran up on the platform to help the sound-effects man wheel away his props, and a woman with a script in her hand started to talk to Bruce. Looking less thin than he did in the movies, Rathbone walked directly toward me with his hand outstretched. I would have guessed he was a few years older than I was. His grip was firm and up close he gave the impression of being both agile and solid.

“You must be the man who so urgently has to see me,” Rathbone said as precisely as he spoke on the radio, though a bit faster. “Let me guess what it’s all about. You are a representative of Howard Hughes, conducting some kind of investigation about our dinner last week. Your investigation concerns something violent or potentially dangerous. It does not involve any danger to my person, but it does involve something to do with national security, or at least Mr. Hughes thinks it does.”

Rathbone took out a silver cigarette case, offered me one, which I refused, lit his own and looked at me with some amusement.

“Pretty good,” I said, as Nigel Bruce and the woman moved past us saying good night to Rathbone, “Holmes couldn’t have done it better.”

Rathbone laughed and ushered me out into the hall.

“Holmes,” he said, “had a little trick which I have learned. He withheld obvious information and disclosed things in an order designed to surprise his audience. My wife called me and told me someone had called and mentioned Hughes and that she had told him I was rehearsing. The only contact I have had with Hughes in the last three years was at his home last week. He talked about the war and seemed particularly agitated. When I saw you sitting in the audience, clearly a man who has known violence in his life as evidenced by your visage, I began to put things together. You are not a policeman or you would have so announced yourself. You did not rush over here. Hence, my life was in no danger. So I took a few chances and sounded a bit like Holmes. I amuse myself at it occasionally. Would you care for a cup of coffee or tea?” I said yes, and he guided me into a lounge with leather chairs where a couple in their early 30’s were whispering in the corner. The woman was hiding tears and the man pretending he had not seen us.

Rathbone and I went to a table, and he disappeared for a few minutes to return with two cups, one with tea, and one with coffee.

“You drink coffee normally,” he said, “but today you are quite willing to drink tea.”

“How did you know?” I said, drinking the tea while he took the coffee.

“Elementary My Dear.…”

“Peters, Toby Peters.”

“Peters,” said Rathbone. “You paid particular attention when Mr. Knox read our commercial for cold tablets, leading me to think that you had a cold or feared one. Then as we walked here it was quite evident that you held yourself a bit erect as if you had a tender back, possibly a cold in your lower back. If I may add, the condition of your clothes indicates that you are not particularly wealthy. Therefore, you need the money Hughes is paying you and probably have a fear of growing ill and not being able to collect it or do your job. Like most Americans, you equate tea with healing and believe it has some kind of medicinal effect. Therefore…”

“Thanks for the tea,” I said. “Let’s talk about the Hughes party.”

“Gladly,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Hughes is an odd creature and rather commanded me to show up at his party, which almost decided me not to go, but he called personally and said it had something to do with the war effort. I’ve been working particularly hard to get Americans to support the British effort. I know what the Germans can do. I was in the last war you know, and I have a rather vicious scar on my leg where the barbed wire caught to prove it. I also have the memory of my brother John, who died in that war, and my mother, who never recovered from the shock of John’s death and died soon after. Be patient with me Mr. Peters, I have a fondness for detail, but you’ll see it all has a point in the end.”

I started to protest, and glanced at the couple arguing in the corner. Rathbone continued with his voice lowered.

“I watched Von Richtoffen and Goering destroy one of our planes in a field in France one afternoon. I saw… well, never mind. I’ve had premonitions from time to time. Had one just before John died, and I have had one for the past week. My feeling is a particularly ominious one. Do you believe in premonitions, Mr. Peters?”

I drank my tea, accepted a refill from Rathbone and shrugged.

“I believe in what I feel and what happens,” I said. “I believe in right now, not yesterday. Yesterday’s memories are filled with regrets and tomorrow doesn’t look too good. Right now I’ve got a hot cup of tea in my hand. I’m doing a job I know, and I like it just fine. Premonitions are fine with me, Mr. Rathbone.”

“Basil, please,” he said with a smile.

“Basil. I have all I can do to handle facts and follow up ideas one at a time until they lead me somewhere or nowhere. What I do doesn’t take a lot of brains, as my ex-wife reminded me tonight, and it doesn’t take premonitions or deductions, just a lot of talk, some hard knocks and time.”

Rathbone scratched the back of his neck and went for another cigarette. He smoked Dominos.

“Well, Mr. Peters…”

“Toby,” I said, evening up the first-name game.

“Toby. I seem to have caught you on a difficult day. Would you prefer to continue our discussion tomorrow? I have rather a light schedule this week, though next week I start shooting another film.”

I laughed, but it was a short laugh.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll get professional again. Hughes thinks someone tried to steal plans for a couple of his planes at that dinner party. Did you see or hear anything that would support that belief? Any strange behavior by the guests? Any strange guests?”

“My turn to laugh, Toby,” Rathbone laughed. “They were as unlikely a group to gather as Moriarty’s band. Hughes had some idea of starting a coalition of patriots to support his plans for military tooling up. He has a rather boyish charm about him when he wants to, and who knows when I might be working in a movie for him? The Grustwalds were particularly nervous, though. They were tense and while appearing most effusive about Hughes’ ideas, I would say they were the least interested. Their minds were elsewhere. I’m certain Hughes sensed this as well. The Army major was obviously drunk most of the night, despite his attempts to hide it. He functioned as a yes-man that evening for Hughes who, I would guess, found the man a mistake. Let’s see. Most of the talking was done by Norma Forney, a rather caustic woman who writes for Twentieth, I believe. She was the most aggressive person at the gathering and also the least secure. She was witty, defensive and made me most uneasy-almost as uneasy as her escort, Mr. Siegel, whom she introduced as a businessman. I think I’ve seen him before but I can’t put my finger on where. He seemed delighted to be there and worked hard at controlling a life-long lower-class New York accent. Our dress was as varied as our backgrounds. I wore tweeds quite similar to these, Hughes a suit too big for him and Siegel and Gurstwald tuxedoes. Hughes had neglected to tell us what to wear. I saw little of the servants other than a Japanese butler who seemed so conspicuously disinterested in all of us that I decided he was either feeble minded or very interested. Since something happened soon after dinner, presumably the problem which brings you here, Hughes never made his appeal to us. He was obviously distraught, had lost interest in his original idea, and sent us packing. That is about all I can say.”

“It’s a start,” I said. “Anything else?”

“We, the guests that is, had pheasant and champagne. Hughes ate a salad and ice cream. He also sat further away from us than we were to each other, leading me to believe that Mr. Hughes has some aversion to people and tolerates them rather than likes them. I rather had the impression that he thought we were unclean and that he didn’t want a great deal of contact with us, which leads me to conclude that he is a precise man. I’d be inclined to take note if a man like that told me something was wrong.”

I got up, said thanks and Rathbone walked me down the hall toward the lobby.

“Toby,” he said quietly as we shook hands in front of Clarise and Whannel, “I’m not sure I could be of any help to you, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let me come along with you on some of your investigation. Several reasons. If there is a security issue, I’m interested. I tried to enlist in the British army last year, but they turned me down, too old. Imagine that. I can outduel a twenty-year old. It would also give me some insight, as the resident Holmes, into how a real detective functions.”

“Sure,” I said, loud enough for Clarise to regain her confidence. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

Rathbone left me and walked back down the hall. I nodded to Whannel and touched the tip of my hat to Clarise. I hadn’t shaken the depression Anne and my back had hit me with. Instead of heading home, I caught the late show at the Hawaiian. Citizen Kane didn’t make me feel any better about myself so I stopped for a hot dog at a Pig ’n Whistle and went home to bed.