The Howard Hughes Affair

CHAPTER EIGHT

I could think of a few dozen things I didn’t like about the situation, not the least of which was the fact that the two dark-suited gentlemen who were my hosts began to speak to each other in German as they led me into an isolated house on an isolated hill. The skeleton man’s gun was out now, and my chance for a run was down to nothing. The gun was a big bulky Luger that could make a big bulky hole in a man, woman, child or tree.

The house itself was badly lit even with the lights turned on. Some of the furniture was covered with sheets, as if the owners were on a vacation. I was led to a wooden chair in the living room and told to sit down. I did. The skeleton man hovered over me with his gun while the short man with the neck muscles and a decided wheeze tied my hands behind me. He was good at it.

There appeared to be some Germanic debate between the two about how to handle me. I was pulling for the wheezer in spite of what he had done to my wrists. I had the distinct feeling that the smiling corpse did not like me, though I couldn’t remember having met him before. I was sure I would have remembered.

Skeleton won the debate and the wheezer walked to a radio on a table and turned it on loud. He found Mr.District Attorney just as Harrington was telling Miss Miller that he was worried about the D.A. Skeleton didn’t seem to like Mr.District Attorney. He told the wheezer something in German. The wheezer found some music and turned it up loud.

“Mr. Peters,” said the skeleton, turning to me, “we have some questions for you to answer. If you answer them, we have no trouble and we take you back home with a minimum of pain.”

He was a clever one. I had to hand him that. He wasn’t telling me I would get off scot free if I talked. He figured I wouldn’t buy that. His hope was that I’d settle for a little abuse in exchange for freedom and not think about the likelihood of the abuse being eternal.

“There are some things I can tell you,” I said. “And some things I can’t. I’ve got a client.” I also figured that if I told them everything that I would no longer be needed. I wasn’t even sure of what “everything” was.

“We’ll start with what you can tell us, then,” said the skeleton man to the music of Guy Lombardo. Skeleton man was putting on a pair of gloves. “Before we begin, however, I’d like to know if you have any problems, illnesses we have to be careful of. We don’t want you to pass out before you give us what we need. You understand?”

We exchanged professional grins and I said I understood. I played Br’er Rabbit and told him I had ulcers. I had no ulcers. I also had no desire to be hit in the stomach, but considering the state of my head, I tried to steer him to my midsection. As useless as my head had been, it might still have a function in the future if I ever got there.

Skeleton hit me hard in the stomach to the accompaniment of Guy Lombardo playing “Happy Days are Here Again.” My satisfaction at having tricked the skeleton was tempered by the pain in my stomach and the taste of nausea in my mouth.

“I thought you wanted me awake,” I gasped.

“But I hit you so gently, Mr. Peters. Now, tell us why you killed Frye, the man in your office last night. We’ll start with that.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said. “He tried to kill me and someone killed him after he knocked me out. That’s the truth.”

“Suppose you go over everything that happened,” he said, nodding to the man at the radio to run the volume down so he could hear me. “You must believe that we did not want Mr. Frye to kill you. He was, how do you say it, overzealous. We simply wanted to frighten you a bit. Please believe me.”

“I believe you,” I gasped, swallowing. Then I told him what happened the night before, leaving out the visit by Trudi Gurstwald and leaving out Hughes. When I got to the point about Frye’s message in blood and said he had written “unkind,” Fritz-the-skeleton looked puzzled, but Hans at the radio had an inspiration and started to babble something. Skeleton told him to be quiet.

“That was very good, Mr. Peters,” said Skeleton. “Now suppose you tell us how much you have found out in your quest to discover who supposedly stole some of Mr. Howard Hughes’ military plans. Yes, we know about that.”

“I can’t tell you any more,” I said, looking straight up at him. There was a little more I could tell him. I could have told him about the holes in Major Barton’s chest, assuming he hadn’t put them there. I could have told him about Bugsy Siegel. I didn’t think it meant much, but I decided not to tell him in the hope that stalling would keep me alive long enough to work something out.

Skeleton put his gloved hands together and shook his head sadly. “Mr. Peters,” he said. “We can easily cut your insides out so the birds can carry them home to their young. Would you like that?”

“You have a way with words,” I said, and he hit me again in the stomach. It was bad. If I had a bleeding ulcer, it would have been worse. Which gave me an idea. I bit the inside of my cheek hard. It hurt like hell, battling the ache in my stomach for the pain championship. I tasted blood, leaned forward and spit a red mass at Skeleton’s feet. He danced back quickly.

“Ulcer, bleeding,” I gasped and pretended to pass out.

I rolled my eyes back instantly and held them, looking somewhere into the top of my skull. Skeleton lifted my head by the hair and forced my right eye open. Since I was looking into my skull, I couldn’t see him, but my blank eye seemed to convince him I was out and bleeding internally from a ruptured ulcer.

The boys had a discussion in German, and I waited while they decided whether to kill me or keep me for a while. I was betting on their keeping me, since I hadn’t told them anything much yet. I was counting on them expecting a terrified man With internal injuries who would gladly talk to keep from further pain. The blood from my cut cheek dribbled down my partly open mouth. I was giving them the best show I could.

The radio went off, and I felt myself being dragged across the floor, one man on each arm. It didn’t do my wrists any good, but at least they weren’t dragging me by the feet and bumping my head.

A door opened and I felt myself thrown into a room. My chest hit something hard and I bounced into what I decided was a bed. My hands were tied tight behind me and hurting.

Hans and Fritz said something more in German and closed and locked a door. I opened my eyes to darkness and listened. They talked more and then I heard footsteps going out the front door and the faint slam of a car door.

From the other room, I heard the radio come on again, and whoever was left in there caught the end of District Attorney. My guess was that the listener was the wheezer and that Skeleton had gone somewhere to get or give instructions or buy himself some carryout ribs. Since wheezer seemed to have no knowledge of English, I wondered what the attraction of Mr. District Attorney might be.

One thing was in my favor: they were sure I was unconscious and badly hurt. I knew I was awake and hurt, but not as badly as I was half the months of a given year. It took about five minutes to work my way off the bed without making too much noise. The radio helped cover me while the rusty springs did their best to give me away. I crawled under the bed with my face in the dusty carpet. I swallowed some blood to keep from sneezing and felt around for a sharp spring. I found one and as quietly as I could, ripped the cloth away to give it more room. Then I slowly worked the ropes against the sharp point of the spring. I went strand by strand on one spot, hoping I’d get through before Hans decided to take a look at me. I figured he’d at least listen through to the end of the show, which was just about what it took me to get the rope frayed enough so I could give it a tug and come free.

I had trouble getting my hands back in front of me and convincing the blood to recirculate. I was numb from the shoulders down, and it took about three minutes before there was any feeling in my arms and hands. I crawled out from under the bed and tested my legs just as Jay Joyston was saying, “And it shall be my duty as district attorney, not only to prosecute to the limit of the law all persons accused of crimes perpetrated within this country, but to defend with equal vigor the rights and privileges of all its citizens.”

I got behind the door just as the radio was clicked off. Heavy footsteps came toward me. I felt for a weapon and found a lamp on a table near the bed. The door came open and Hans the short wheezer stepped in. He flipped a wall switch and the light came bright in my hand. I gave it a pull, sending the room back into darkness and lunged, hitting him in the face with the base of the lamp. He staggered back into the living room and I came out, dropping the lamp. He was sitting on the floor, stunned, holding his bloody nose and groping for something under his jacket. I ran across the room and kicked at his stomach. His hands came up and he let out a loud “oooph,” which suited me just fine. When he turned to avoid any other attack, his head hit the side of an end table and he was out.

I touched my torn cheek and rubbed my sore belly while I did some wheezing myself. I could have waited for the Skeleton to come back and try to surprise him, or I could have called the cops; but the only charge I could use was assault, and I didn’t think I could make that stick. I also didn’t think I could get the Skeleton to talk, and I wasn’t sure of what I could get out of the wheezer when he got up.

I decided to get the hell out of there. I went toward the front door and heard a car pulling up, so I turned and went through the house and found the back door. I opened it just as I heard the front door open and Skeleton’s voice hiss something in German. The hiss did more to scare me than a good shout. I ran for the dark and the trees and turned when I got behind a bush about fifty yards away.

In the back door against the light, I could see the Skeleton standing with his pistol and staring into the night. “I underestimated you,” he said, “but I won’t the next time.”

“Who’s writing your dialogue?” I said unable to resist. “Monogram?”

He fired a shot in the general direction of my voice, but it didn’t come within ten yards. At least I didn’t think it did.

I scrambled down the hill in the general direction of where I thought the road might be. I could hear Fritz the skeleton breaking bushes behind me. It was dark enough to hide, but the evening’s exercise had taken a lot out of me. I also knew from my experience at the Y how persistent a tracker Fritz could be. He didn’t seem to know the area very well, which gave me a good start, but I soon saw that he had an advantage, a flashlight. He may have picked it up back in the kitchen or had it in his coat pocket. Wherever it came from, it sent out a firm beam I could see back over my shoulder.

He seemed to gain a little ground on me, and with the beam extending his distance about thirty yards I didn’t want it and a bullet to hit me. I went behind a tree, trying to keep from panting. The tree broke the beam, which fell on both sides of me and then moved away. I could hear the skeleton’s footsteps on the other side of the tree. A bug about the size of a quarter decided to nest in my mouth. I spit him out reflexively.

“I hear you, Peters,” said Fritz. “And be assured I will find you.”

It was confident talk for a man I could now hear walking in the wrong direction, away from me. I didn’t give a damn about the road anymore. I moved as quietly and as fast as I could in the opposite direction of his footsteps.

It was about twenty-five minutes later that I finally stumbled on the main road and found a gas station with a wash room. I cleaned myself up, after paying the kid attendant five bucks and telling him I had an accident. I don’t know what the kid believed.

The gas station clock said it was 10:30. My watch said it was 4:15. I called Shelly Minck at home, told him where I was and asked him to come and get me. It took some arguing with his wife, but he finally agreed.

I gave the kid another five and told him I’d wait in his toilet till my doctor came for me. I described Shelly and told the kid to tell no one else I was there. He agreed, and I sat there waiting.

Shelly arrived in about 45 minutes, during which time I had stopped the bleeding in my mouth and had come up with no great ideas other than to be careful, have another talk with Gurstwald and talk to the only one present at the Hughes house that night who I had not seen-the butler, Martin Schell. I also had an appointment with Hughes at midnight and would have to hurry if I wanted to come even close to making it.

I let Shelly talk and complain all the way back to L.A. and my parked car on Hope Street near the Y. He talked of ships and shoes and ceiling wax, or at least he talked of cavities and made a bad sex joke about a dentist who seduced one of his patients and got sued for filling the wrong cavity.

He wondered why I didn’t laugh. I told him I had a lot on my mind and a sore in my mouth.

“You pay Jeremy to get the office cleaned up?” I asked as he let me off at my car.

“He wasn’t around today,” Shelly said and then added, “How about writing Dr. Sheldon S. Minck, Specialist, on the new door?”

“Sounds great,” I said. “It’ll bring in a classier set of clients from the hall.”

He pushed his glasses back and nodded in agreement. I thanked him and he pulled off.

I got in my Buick fast and drove for a block without thinking about where I was going. Hans and Fritz had followed me to the Y. They may have known where my car was. They could have been waiting for me to come back to it. The Skeleton of Calabasas knew where my office was and wouldn’t have any trouble finding where I lived. He could pick his own time and place, and next time he wouldn’t give me a chance to get away.

I drove home, parking my car almost two blocks away on a side street in the hope of getting in through the back door. I almost made it. If Mrs. Plaut hadn’t turned on the kitchen light when I hit the alley, I wouldn’t have seen the Skeleton standing in what had been shadows a fraction of a second earlier. He backed away from the window into new darkness, and I went back down the alley, sure that he hadn’t seen me.

I drove to Culver City as fast as I could and rang Anne’s door bell. She answered, and I hurried up the stairs and down the hall. She was about to close the door when she saw my bloody shirt, tired eyes and puffed face.

“Why here?” she said. “Why here?”

“There wasn’t anyplace else,” I lied. I could have gone to Shelly’s or any of a dozen former clients.

Anne was in a robe, and I had obviously gotten her out of bed.

“Come in and make it fast,” she said.

I went in.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a clean man’s shirt around, would you?” I asked, heading for the bathroom. I noticed that the bookmark in The Keys of the Kingdom was in about the same place as it had been the last time I was there. “You know, maybe Ralph dropped one or something.”

I recleaned my face and took off my shirt. She met me in the bathroom with a clean white shirt. I had been joking, and the joke had turned on me.

“Thanks,” I said.

She shrugged and I put on the shirt. It was all right in the chest and sleeves but the neck was too large, which didn’t matter since I left it open.

“Does this have something to do with the job for Mr. Hughes?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And you got me the job.”

“Don’t try to make me feel guilty, Toby,” she said quietly. “If it wasn’t this job, it would be another one.”

“You’re right,” I said. “What time do you have?”

She told me it was a half hour past midnight. As I moved past her, my arm brushed against her breasts. She backed away as if I had bitten her.

I finished buttoning my shirt and went for the phone. I dialed the police and put on my Italian accent.

“Hey,” I said sleepily, “They’sa guy in backa the house behind me standing ina the yard with a greata big gun. Yeh. Right now. I got up getta myself a glass milk and I see him there and I say so to Rosa my wife. I wake her up an I say I’m gonna calla cops. So, I’m call.” I gave the cop the address, told him my name was Henry Armetta, and hung up.

“Thanks Anne,” I said.

“I don’t care if you have a bullet in your head next time,” she said evenly. “If you come here again, you don’t get in.”

“Right,” I said seriously. “I understand.”

I went out in the hall with the sound of the door closing behind me and wondered what I would pull the next time I wanted to see her. It was getting harder all the time.

By the time I got to the address Hughes had told me to meet him at, it was well after one in the morning.I recognized the place as an old movie studio that went back to the early silents. Since then it had been rented out for independents. It was a big barn of a building with a couple of small offices. I went into the outer glass-enclosed office and could see beyond it that the lights were on in the building. A blackboard inside the office had “Caddo Corp” written in chalk. Behind the desk sat one of the two FBI look-a-likes from my first visit with Hughes. The other one stood next to the desk.

“You’re late,” said the one behind the desk as he rose.

“I was detained,” I said.

“Mr. Hughes said to tell you that your services were no longer needed,” said the other guy. “You will be paid for two weeks work with a bonus. Mr. Hughes insists that people be prompt to appointments.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said, pointing at the last one who had spoken. “I’m getting fired from this case because I’m an hour late?”

“It’s not quite like that,” said one of the two without emotion.

“Is Hughes in there?” I asked evenly.

“Yes,” Number One said, “but he doesn’t wish to see you.”

“He’ll see me,” I said. “Since I took this job for Mr. Hughes, I’ve been beaten, brained, tortured and shot at. I’ve had two corpses dumped on me and my life might not be worth a used Hughes drill bit. Now I’m late this morning because of this case and I’m going to see Howard Hughes or make a lot of noise.”

Number One came around the desk and reached for my arm. His plan was to push it behind my back and shove me out or further. He was prepared for me to struggle, but I didn’t. I wasn’t after a fight. I was after his gun. I let him take my left hand and reached for the gun under his jacket with my right. It came out easily. Number One dropped my arm and backed away. I levelled the gun at him.

“I’ll see if I can find Mr. Hughes,” he said, making a move to the door. Number Two slowly showed his empty hands.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t we have him come here?”

I turned the gun to the ceiling and fired a couple of shots. The gun jerked in my hand and made a hell of a noise in the small room, sending my eardrums quivering.

In less than ten seconds, Howard Hughes burst through the door leading into the studio. His mustache was gone, and he was wearing a fedora tilted back on his head. He had no jacket and looked even younger than before. A group of people stood behind him including a guy in a cowboy suit. Hughes looked at my gun without a sign of concern and waved away the people behind him. He closed the door and faced me, saying nothing.

“I’ll say it slow and I’ll say it once,” I said. “I’ve got a lot to tell you, but the most important thing is that I’m late tonight because two guys who I think had something to do with taking those plans kidnapped me and beat the hell out of me. I should be dead now or collecting pats on the back for getting here at all instead of having this bunch of shit about being fired for being late.”

Hughes put up his hand calmingly.

“O.K.,” he said. “You’re right. You’re back on the job. I’m sorry.”

I believed him and put the gun on the desk.

The two guardians of the gate moved forward toward me, but Hughes stopped them.

“I said I was sorry,” he said. “I mean it. My word means something.”

The two backed off, and I told them to take better care of their weapons in the future. I had not made two friends.

Hughes motioned to me, and we walked into the studio and through a crowd of people, one of them a young man in a cowboy suit. They parted, and Hughes went toward a set with me at his side.

“I’ll get the details from you in a few minutes. We’re shooting some scenes for a Billy the Kid movie,” he explained. “But that damn Mayer is trying to beat us with a Billy the Kid of his own with Robert Taylor. I’ll need a new title for mine.”

“How about ‘The Outlaw?’” I suggested.

“Sounds too much like a gangster picture, “Hughes said.” I already did a gangster picture, Scarface. I don’t want people to get confused. I’ll think of something. We’ll talk after this scene.”

Hughes moved away from me into the lights, where he looked as uncomfortable as a man could look. The kid with the cowboy suit came over to Hughes, who talked to him softly. Then a girl joined them. She was dark and pretty and had an enormous rising chest.

I turned to ask someone who she was and what was going on, but I was being shunned like an M.G.M. spy, probably because of the shooting incident and the weary madness in my face.

After a few minutes of talk, Hughes moved out of the lights and left the girl and the kid on the set, which looked like an old stable. He called softly for the camera to roll, and someone shouted “Quiet.” Hughes motioned for action, and the guy with the sticks appeared and clapped them, announcing it was “Take ten on scene five.”

The kid took a step toward the camera with the heaving bosom of the dark girl behind him. His guns were drawn and he said to the camera, “Waal Doc, you borrowed from me; now I borrowed your gal.”

And Hughes called “Cut.”

“Good job Jane, Jack,” Hughes said. “That’s enough for tonight.” Then he had a brief conference with a young man with a clipboard and moved to me.

“It’s quieter to shoot at night,” he explained, leading me off into the studio away from the crew and cast as they broke up for the night or morning.

I didn’t care one way or the other, but I didn’t say anything. The studio looked big enough to house the late, great Dirigible Hindenburg. We sat down on a couple of coils of rope and I told him my tale in detail. He listened carefully, asking me to repeat once in a while, and I remembered to keep my voice up so he could hear.

“Looks like I was right, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Looks like something’s wrong,” I said.

“What do you want to do next?” Hughes asked.

“How about setting up another dinner party for Saturday night? Same guests plus me, minus, of course, Major Barton. I’ll try to pull something together by then, and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone turns you down.”

“And if they turn me down?” he said.

“I think I know someone who can persuade them to change their minds,” I said. “Oh, another thing. I need photographs of everyone in your house that night, guests, servants, everyone.”

“I’ll get them,” said Hughes. “Keep me informed and take care of yourself.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “Sorry about the scene in the office.”

“You were right,” he said and turned away to talk to a man with a clipboard, who was waiting patiently about twenty-five yards away.

I lifted my weary body from the coil of rope, walked across the studio and through the office without looking at the two guards, and stepped into the predawn darkness.

The radio kept me company on the way home and told me that the Pacific Parleys were expected to collapse and that frenzied troops were still fleeing the Reds near Rostov. It sounded like a tongue twister and I tried repeating “Fleeing the Reds near Rostov” ten times fast. Just as I pulled up a few blocks from my house, the radio told me that a 23-year-old girl named Velma Atwood, a carhop, had shot herself because her boyfriend had been drafted.

It was the end to a perfect day. I counted on the cops having checked out my complaint and the Skeleton calling it a night. To be safe, I took the.38 from my glove compartment and dropped it in my pocket. Then I opened the trunk. My groceries were all over the place, but nothing, including the bottle of milk, was broken. I stuffed them back in the brown bag and went home. Nobody was waiting for me this time when I let myself into Mrs. Plaut’s and made it up the stairs to my room. There was no one in my room. To play it somewhat safe, I didn’t turn on the light, and put the groceries away and undressed in the dark. For over a month, I had been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor to cut down on my back pain. The problem was that when I fell asleep I automatically turned on my side or stomach, which was no good for my back at all. That night I pulled the mattress into a corner, placed my.38 within reach and lay with my head propped on a pillow so I could see the door.

Sleep had almost taken me when I thought I heard something at the door. I tried to shake myself awake, but it felt like I was making my way through five layers of cotton candy.

The door popped open and a long thin shadow speared its way into the room followed by a definitely Germanic, “Mr. Peters?”

I almost shot my first man. The gun came up, and I tried to level it, expecting him to shoot me first and grateful that he had been dumb enough to frame himself in a lighted doorway while I was in the dark.

The cotton candy feeling gave me just enough hesitation, so as it turned out, I didn’t shoot Gunther Wherthman. Even if I had taken a shot at him I would have aimed a foot over his less than four feet in height. But considering the fact that I am not a particularly good shot and hadn’t fired a gun in years, I might have missed what I was aiming at and hit Gunther in a vital part. It was a sobering thought.

So, “What’s up Gunther?” I said soberly, “besides you and me.”

“I am sorry to have startled you, Toby,” he said as precisely as usual, “but I thought I heard you in here and was sure you would like to know about the events that took place a short time ago.”

“Cops came,” I said, sitting up. My back felt all right, but my stomach hurt like the Huns at Rostov. “Chased a guy away and came in here asking questions?”

“Precisely,” said Gunther. “There was a shot fired. The police asked if we knew an Italian neighbor named Armetta. I’m afraid Mrs. Plaut provided them with no solace or information.”

“Come in, Gunther,” I said. “And leave the door open. I don’t want to turn on the lights.”

Gunther came in. I could see now that he was properly dressed in a robe with a sash and slippers. In contrast, I was wearing a pair of undershorts and a torn YMCA shirt with a hole in the navel.

“Does the man in the yard relate to your spy inquiry?” asked Gunther.

“Right,” I said. “Have a seat, Gunther.”

He climbed up on a wooden chair near the table, and I got up to heat some water for tea. Gunther preferred tea to coffee and I didn’t want coffee to keep me awake.

I told Gunther about my most recent exploits and the fact that I seemed to be running into a hell of a lot of Germans in Los Angeles. He explained that there was a colony of German refugees from Hitler in Los Angeles and that it was growing all the time.

“Most of them arrive in New York,” he explained, “and move as far away from Europe as they can. Hence, Los Angeles.”

“Well, I have some hard evidence that what they ran from might have followed them clear across the forty-eight states.”

We drank our tea and I got hungry, so I fumbled in the dark and opened the can of pork and beans I had bought that day. Gunther politely accepted a cup of pork and beans and I ate the rest out of the pot, trying to avoid my torn cheek.

“If it will be of any help,” he said, wiping his mouth with my last paper napkin, “I will make some inquiries among my clients for whom I am translating, on the chance that they will recognize the cadaverous man and the man with the wheeze whom you encountered.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said.

Gunther thanked me for the snack and said goodnight. I cleaned the dishes and settled back in bed.

In a few minutes, I was asleep. If I dreamed, I don’t remember it.