“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so — just.” He shook his head slowly. “You know … you know what it is that’s so stunning? They’re real. All those people we wrote about — they’re real, they exist. They walk around in clothes. They’re flesh and blood. They speak. All these months I’ve been thinking they were people we created, characters in a novel. But that was the real Chester Davis, that loudmouthed bastard you saw in the hallway. And that baldheaded guy with eyes like marbles was Frank McCulloch. I mean really Frank McCulloch. The Frank McCulloch, not our Frank McCulloch.”
It had hit me, too, but I had not been able to articulate it. “Yeah,” I said, “and one thing more. Try to swallow this one. That was Howard Hughes on the other end of the line.”
“Howard Hughes?” Dick said weakly. “The billionaire?”
Marty and Diane Ackerman were waiting for us in the restaurant. Marty listened to my tale, saying little. I looked at my watch. “I promised to call Graves,” I explained.
Beverly Loo answered on the second ring. “It’s all over,” she said, and her voice had a hollow ring. “Frank McCulloch wants to talk to you.”
McCulloch got on the line and said, without preamble: “I have to tell you, first of all, that to the best of my knowledge that was Hughes I spoke to. The voice is unmistakable, as I assume you know.”
I ducked that one. “Where was he?”
“Davis placed the call on his credit card. To Paradise Island, he claimed.”
“And what did Howard have to say?”
“Among other things, that he’d never met anyone named Clifford Irving in his whole life, that he’d never even heard of Clifford Irving until a few days ago, and that he’d never met your father. He also said that he had information that checks that were supposedly going to him were being cashed outside this country, and he was going to find out all the facts, and that he was going to prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “It couldn’t have been him.”
“It was him,” McCulloch repeated. “I asked him two trap questions, and he got them both right. It was him, and he says he never met you.”
“I’ll tell you if it was him, after I’ve heard the tape,” I said bravely.
“There was no tape. Hughes wouldn’t allow it. There’s a meeting tomorrow morning at ten o’clock at McGraw-Hill. We’ll all be there, and Leventhal says he’ll expect you to be there, too.”
“Sure,” I promised. “So long, Frank.”
“So long, Cliff,” he said quietly.
He hung up. Beverly Loo reported to me later that he turned to the small gang of McGraw-Hill and Time-Life people who were listening to his end of the conversation.
“He’s scared shitless,” he said to them. “And off the top of my head, I have to tell you — I think your man’s a phony.”
Chapter 15
Confusion to Our Allies
Marty Ackerman refused to let me go alone to McGraw-Hill the following morning. “You’re going to need help,” he said. “They’ll rake you over the coals if you’re on your own, but if you’ve got an attorney with you they’ll have to be careful.”
“You’re going to get awfully involved, Marty.”
He shrugged. “I’ll give you all the help I can.”
The meeting took place in one of the executive conference rooms. Clustered about the huge board room table were two members of the McGraw-Hill legal staff, Harold McGraw, Albert Leventhal, Time, Inc.’s lawyer, Ralph Graves, Frank McCulloch, Marty, and myself. McCulloch looked red-eyed and tired. He had been up half the night, he explained, reading the first third of the autobiography. He took command of the interrogation.
“I’ve got the best damn file on Howard Hughes that exists,” he said. “It’s in my cellar and I’ve been collecting it for the last twenty years.” He addressed himself to the McGraw-Hill contingent. “I’ll have to tell you this — most of what I read in the manuscript checks out against the facts. But those facts are available to anyone who would take a lot of time and trouble to research them.”
Everyone stirred uncomfortably. I said nothing.
“However,” McCulloch rasped, “there’s one thing that manuscript contains that Cliff couldn’t have gotten from any pile of newspaper clippings. That’s the authentic voice of Howard Hughes. I know that voice. I know the way the man speaks, his turns of phrase, his idioms, his quirks. It’s unique, it can’t be duplicated. If I were placed before a court of law, I’d have to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief that material could only have come directly to Cliff from Howard.”
Everyone seemed to relax. Then McCulloch focused on me. “I don’t want you to be insulted, but I have to ask you a few questions. I just want to get the story straight about your meetings.”
“Fire away,” I said.
He asked me questions and I talked for the better part of an hour, going over the now all-too-familiar tale of the Mexican meeting, the Puerto Rican meeting, the tape-recording sessions in Nassau, Beverly Hills, and Pompano Beach. Every time I described one of Howard’s foibles and kinks, or quoted some earthy bit of dialogue, McCulloch chuckled with appreciation. He was with me, I believed, and I had a lock on this hand of the poker game; but still I decided to uncover my hidden ace.
“He talked about you once, Frank. He once had a long conversation with you, I think it was back in 1957 or ‘58, when he wanted to call off an article that Fortune was supposed to run on him. He must have taped it, because he had a transcript of what he said. He talked about some Fortune writer named Murphy who wanted to bury an axe in his skull.” I snapped my fingers, as if the thought had only then occurred to me. “And I remember one of the last things he said to you in that phone call, because it struck me as so peculiar. He said, ‘Whatever happens, Frank, you and I will still be friends, right?’”
“Goddamit,” McCulloch said slowly. “That’s just about exactly what he said.” He turned to the men in the room, nodding his head. “Well, I’m satisfied that Cliff’s met him. I never told anyone else about that conversation. He had to get it from me or Howard, and I never spoke to Cliff in my life until last night.”
I sat back in my chair, astonished. I knew that the transcript of the conversation I had just quoted had been sent to the president of Time, Inc. in a confidential memo, and that memo had made its way through unknown means to Noah Dietrich. I also guessed that it had been yanked from the Time-Life files before Dave Maness had let me photograph them; and I knew that Maness, in the Elysee, had read my re-punctuated version of it and said to Ralph Graves: “It’s good.” But Graves, now in the conference room, said nothing. Could he have known that McCulloch was wrong?
“There’s just one thing,” I went on, looking McCulloch hard in the eye and trying to rake in the whole pile of chips at one time. “Are you positive it was Hughes you spoke to last night?”
“It was a bad connection,” Frank said stoutly, “but if I went before that same court of law, I’d have to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief it was Howard Hughes on the telephone.”
“You couldn’t have been fooled?”
“It’s within the realm of possibility,” he admitted.
I started to laugh. “Frank, if you got before that court of law and swore that you’d spoken to Hughes and he’d denied ever meeting me, and then you swore that you thought the manuscript was from Howard and that you were sure I’d met him — hell, they’d commit you to the loony bin.”
“No.” McCulloch spoke with renewed confidence. “Because it’s entirely consistent with the personality of Howard Hughes to do just that — to dictate his autobiography and then deny it.” For the first time he grinned at me, “Jesus, Cliff, you know the man. Am I right or wrong?”
There was nothing to do but shrug and admit that he had a point.
One final point was made that rocked me almost as much as Frank McCulloch’s statement that he had never told anyone else about his 19
58 conversation with Howard Hughes. The question arose as to what would be Chester Davis’s next move following yesterday’s telephoned denial by Hughes. Davis would announce it to the press, we decided. How would McGraw-Hill retaliate?
“We’ve got the ammunition,” Jehle said. “We’ve got Cliff’s contracts with Hughes, the letters to Cliff, the letter to Harold, the letter authorizing us to publish, Hughes’s comments all over the transcript, and the expert’s statement that the odds are a million to one against anyone else but Hughes having written that material. Not to mention the text of the book, which speaks for itself and could only have come from Hughes.” In the event of a court battle, however, McGraw-Hill was loath to make the bulk of the material available to public record and adamant against any disclosure of the manuscript itself, which was precisely what Davis and his law firm were clamoring for. “And of course,” Jehle added, “we’ve got the final proof in the form of the canceled check for $275,000.”
Jack Dowd, Time, Inc.’s lawyer, asked a question that surprised me, since I had assumed that he and everyone at the conference already knew the answer.
“Where did Hughes cash that check?”
“The Swiss Credit Bank in Zurich,” Jehle said.
“A numbered account?”
“No. We have a photostat of a check for $100,000 that he drew on the account when he was trying to pay us back. He has his name printed on the check.”
“And,” Albert Leventhal said to Dowd, “that $275,000 check — that’s McGraw-Hill’s check to Hughes — has a bank-documented signature. Documented, in fact, by two banks — the Swiss Credit Bank in Zurich and Chase Manhattan here in New York.”
Dowd and everyone else nodded, satisfied. I ducked my head and began shuffling papers back into my briefcase. I knew that Leventhal was wrong. I had seen a photostat of the back of the check. The Swiss Credit Bank had affixed their stamp under the forged signature of H. R. Hughes; it said: Pay to the order of any Bank, Banker or Trust Company: Prior endorsements guaranteed — which meant simply that they guaranteed the endorsement to be that of the holder of the account. Chase Manhattan’s stamp, placed on the back of the check after its receipt for clearance by the Swiss Credit Bank, read: Endorsements guaranteed. What that referred to, of course, was the fact that the Swiss Credit Bank had offered a prior endorsement; it was no guarantee or documentation of any kind on the part of Chase Manhattan, who had no way of knowing not only whether or not the signature was genuine, and no knowledge whatsoever that the account belonged to Howard Robard Hughes.
It was an easy mistake to make and Leventhal, who was anxious to wrap up the meeting, certainly had no intention of trying to mislead the Time-Life contingent. A publisher and editor could hardly be expected to have an expert’s knowledge of bankers’ jargon. On that note of welcome misinterpretation, accepted without question by everyone present, the meeting broke up. I hustled back to my office on the 29th floor and called Dick at the Commodore.
“Are we alive?”
“Alive and well,” I said. “Cancel your reservation to Brazil and get the hell over here. We’ve got work to do.”
That weekend I drove with Marty and Diane Ackerman to their house in Lakeville, Connecticut. The hullabaloo all week long had made it almost impossible to edit the manuscript at McGraw-Hill; and over the weekend, in Marty’s study, I accomplished more than I had been able to do in the five preceding days. Friday morning, just before I left the city, Ralph Graves called me. He was surprised I hadn’t been in touch with Frank McCulloch since Wednesday’s meeting. “Frank’s a little hurt,” he said. “I know he’d like to talk to you some more. Why don’t you call him?”
I smelled the setup immediately, but I called Frank from Connecticut on Saturday and made a Monday afternoon appointment with him at McGraw-Hill. Casually, he mentioned that he had “a few more” questions to ask.
On Monday morning I told Faustin Jehle of the impending conversation. “No good,” Jehle said, “unless I’m there. And I want it taped. McCulloch’s a Time reporter and it’s got to be off-the-record, all of it. I’m going to stipulate that the conversation is an attorney’s work-product, which means that everything that’s said is confidential. It belongs to McGraw-Hill, and only McGraw-Hill can quote from it.”
When McCulloch arrived that afternoon I explained that I had wanted a private conversation but the legal boys had found out and turned thumbs down. “You get mixed up with lawyers,” Frank said gloomily, “and that’s the end of you. Well, what the hell. We’ll talk anyway.”
Jehle started the tape recorder and Frank and I talked for more than an hour. Again we went over the story of my meetings with Hughes. I had enough instinct to dwell on certain details that I had failed to mention on the Wednesday board meeting, to omit others and to be suitably vague when the occasion called for it; the man with too perfect a memory, I reckoned, has got to be suspect.
“What does the old man look like now?” Frank asked.
“Old, what else? Thin, tired. One eye droops a bit. I think the left one.” That was out of the whole cloth, but since Frank hadn’t seen Hughes since 1957, it seemed a safe bet.
Frank nodded. “What about his face? You notice any disfigurement?”
I remembered that Dietrich had described a broken left cheekbone — the result of a plane crash — which had never been properly rectified by surgery. “The left side of his face,” I gambled, “is all banged up. As if the bone’s sunk in and …”
“And it looks frozen,” McCulloch jumped in excitedly. “Right? As if it was half-paralyzed.”
“Well,” I said, “you could say that, but …” I left it hanging.
“Anything else?”
“His hand,” I shrugged. “Hell, he had that when you knew him.”
“And his voice? What’s that like?”
In the Time-Life files that I had read in June, I had come across a memo from McCulloch which had said: “To confirm: his voice has a reedy, nasal quality.”
“Nasal,” I said. “Thin and tired.”
“But grating, too, like something’s stuck in the back of his throat.”
“Sometimes,” I said cautiously.
“And does he still have that habit of rubbing his nose when he talks?” Frank demonstrated the gesture.
“You know,” I said, “there are friends I’ve known for twenty years, and if you asked me about habits like that I wouldn’t be able to give you answers. I’ll tell you one habit he’s got, though. He calls everyone he’s ever known a sonofabitch and then he yells, ‘They stole me blind.’”
“Yeah,” Frank said, “he’s earthy. He’s really earthy. By God, you’ve met the man. There’s no doubt about it.”
On Wednesday, Dick left New York for Palma. The roundtable conversations were still taking place at McGraw-Hill, but the editing job was done and I decided that the less they saw of Dick the better. “Keep a low profile,” I said, “or they’re liable to wake up one day and wonder why you’re always around during the crises.”
That afternoon Faustin Jehle and Ralph Webb, McGraw-Hill’s treasurer, dropped by my office. In view of the troubles created by Hughes Tool and the Byoir Agency, it had been decided to remove the Xerox copy of the transcript from its safe-deposit box in the vaults of Chase Manhattan. It would be placed in McGraw-Hill’s safe, to be on call when needed. Since I was the joint signator to the escrow agreement, once I left for Spain it would be difficult on short notice to pry it loose from Chase Manhattan. Webb and I went downstairs together, presented our key to the guard on duty, and I handed over the transcript. The meeting gave me the opportunity to ask a question that had been worrying me all week. I was thinking of Edith’s next trip to Zurich.
“What are we doing about that last check, Ralph? I mean the one to Hughes for $325,000.”
“What should we do about it?” Webb asked, puzzled.
“Any inquiries to Zurich? Did it pass through that same account?” I knew I sounded anxious; but in view of the presen
t emergency, I reasoned, that would be understandable.
“We couldn’t get the time of day from a Swiss bank. Anyway,” Webb said, “I had word on it just this morning. It’s already cleared and deposited.”
“Good,” I said. “Maybe he’ll stop bitching us now.”
That same day, one of the McGraw-Hill editors threw this one at me. “You couldn’t back out now if you wanted to. If you recanted, denied you’d ever met Hughes, the whole world would know you’d been paid off by the Tool Company. I can tell you,” he added, laughing, “McGraw-Hill would crucify you. And we’d publish anyway.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“No, that’s not what worries us. I was only kidding.”
What worried them was the expectation, as Shelton Fisher put it, that “the bomb was going to be dropped any day.” The bomb was Chester Davis’s presumed revelation to the press that Hughes had spoken to McCulloch, denying Irving and the autobiography with one shot. Both Fisher and James Shepley, the President of Time, Inc., carried a press release in the pockets of their suit jackets, in battle readiness for the counterattack.
But nothing happened. We reached the judgment that Davis was waiting for McCulloch himself to make the announcement. In lieu of that, he obviously expected Life and McGraw-Hill to back off a step — in the least, to let him read the manuscript. “There’s something in that manuscript,” I said to anyone who would listen, “that scares the shit out of him. I don’t know what it is, though, and I don’t think he knows, either.” I propounded a theory that Davis feared Hughes, in his ramblings to me, had backed up Robert Maheu in his Nevada controversy with Davis. “Which isn’t true,” I said, “but the poor bastard has no way of knowing it.”
When it became obvious that the publishers were moving forward rather than backward, the Davis forces proposed a second telephone call. The first one had been off the record; this one, between McCulloch and Hughes, would be for the record.
The Hoax Page 31