The Hoax

by Clifford Irving

  McCulloch telephoned to me. “I set two conditions. One, that you be there. And two, that it be taped this time. Otherwise I won’t go through with it unless I’m ordered to.”

  “Good, Frank. We can’t let them shove us around any more.”

  On December 17th McGraw-Hill and Life decided to shore up their defenses even further, and I was informed that they were engaging the services of Osborn, Osborn and Osborn, reputedly the finest handwriting analysts in the country, whose principal business was the examination of questioned documents. They were the blue-chip company in the field. Russell Osborn immediately flew to Nevada to secure documents submitted by the Hughes Tool Company — purportedly in the handwriting of Howard Hughes — with which to compare the letters and signatures in McGraw-Hill’s possession.

  After the earlier report, I had no worries. Whatever the reputation of the Osborns, I had developed a blind belief that the letters could pass any kind of inspection. A week later the Osborns confirmed: the letters had been written by Howard Hughes. “The evidence,” said Paul Osborn, “that all of the writing submitted was done by one individual is, in our opinion, irresistible, unanswerable, and overwhelming.” This was later re-stated in a sworn affidavit submitted by the Osborns in the Rosemont suit, whose purpose was to halt publication of the Autobiography. The Osborns’ affidavit went on: “The genuine handwriting of Howard R. Hughes is unusual not only in the distinctiveness of its developed forms and habits, but also in the great number of genuine variations thereof, all of which are a product of the great speed, freedom, and carelessness of his writing and all of which constitute his basic writing identity. This combination of speed in execution and distinctiveness and unusual variation in developed forms and habits, which are revealed in the specimen writings, determine the parameters of the monumental task which would face anyone attempting to imitate the genuine writing of Howard R. Hughes. Any attempt to imitate accurately the distinctive forms and habits of the writer of the specimen signatures and continuous writing, including the unusual number of genuine variations thereof, would be, for all practical purposes, in our opinion practically impossible. To put it another way, in our experience and in our opinion, it would be beyond human ability to do so.”

  The report and the affidavit went on, in fascinating detail, to discuss “hook-backs to the left in the letter r … variations in w’s … distinctive p’s and P’s …” until I was dizzy with the minutiae of proof that Howard was Howard was Howard was Howard. Much later, I showed the report to Dick.

  “Beyond human ability,” I murmured. I was quietly impressed, then jubilant. “Do you think I missed my profession?”

  “Well, if we get caught now,” Dick said, “you can always write yourself weekend passes out of Alcatraz.”

  “They’ve closed Alcatraz.”

  “For you they’ll reopen it.”

  “Thanks.” And my jubilance lost its fine edge.

  Marty Ackerman had been to see Chester Davis, subjecting himself to two hours of ranting and raving. He had told Davis that the book upheld his position against Robert Maheu, the challenger for the Nevada empire, and therefore Davis had nothing to fear. “But the man literally foams at the mouth,” Marty reported. “He talks, he never listens.”

  I hammered away at my theme. “He’s never met Hughes in his life, by his own sworn admission. The man at the other end of the line has got to be an impostor.”

  Marty, if he had ever had any doubts, now professed total belief. Reading the transcript of the tapes the previous weekend in Connecticut, he had said to me: “If the man you met wasn’t Howard Hughes, it had to be John Paul Getty. I’m telling you, this guy’s a pistol! There aren’t six men in the United States who have that kind of business acumen. You don’t know much about business — you don’t realize how brilliant he is. I’ve got five million bucks and I know my way around, but this guy’s in another league. Brilliant,” Marty murmured. “I fly a plane, too,” he added, “and I can tell you, when your man talks about flying he knows what he’s talking about. It was Hughes you met, no question about it.”

  I thanked him silently for his praise of my business knowledge, which was that of a man who had barely passed an elementary freshman course in economics at Cornell more than twenty years before. Most of the business discussions in the Autobiography were culled from Fortune articles and juiced up with a combination of imagination (what would I have done if I had been Howard?) and doubletalk. I marveled once more at the nature of gullibility. And yet Marty Ackerman was no starry-eyed publisher. He had his five million dollars, a Park Avenue town house, a 23-room country cottage, and a collection of French Impressionist paintings. He had owned a conglomerate, a private jet, a bank, and — briefly — Curtis Publishing and the ill-fated Saturday Evening Post. He was a warm-hearted man, hardnosed in business but generous, loyal, and hospitable to his friends. He had befriended me from the moment I told him I was working with Howard Hughes on the billionaire’s autobiography; he had come to my aid, with no strings attached, the moment the Hughes Tool Company had declared war.

  How could I say to him: “Listen, Marty, that great business brain in the transcripts is me and you know goddam well I don’t know a debenture from a convertible bond. If I’m so brilliant, how come I’m not running General Motors or IBM?” I couldn’t say it. It would not only make Marty an accessory after the fact; but worse, a fool. I was too grateful for his loyalty to do that.

  “So you think Davis is trying the big con?” he asked me.

  “You mean setting up an impostor in Nassau? I don’t know. Maybe he really believes it’s Hughes he’s talking to. Anything is possible.”

  “My God,” Marty murmured. “One thing you have to give the man credit for — he’s got balls! But he’s so stupid — how does he think he’ll get away with it?”

  “’Vilify! Vilify!’” I quoted, digging into my reserve of aphorisms: this one from some French revolutionary. “’Some of it will stick.’”

  It was my last day in New York, December 22nd. I was flying out from Kennedy that evening at seven o’clock on the Iberia Jet to Madrid, and then home to Ibiza for Christmas, carrying a load of 39 oil paintings and gouaches left over from Edith’s exhibition in a Madison Avenue gallery two years ago. Things had gone well, we had weathered the worst storm of all in the Hughes-McCulloch telephone call, and I was feeling ebullient, bold. Leave on a note of confidence, I decided.

  That morning, in my office on the 29th floor at McGraw-Hill, I ripped out a letter to Shelton Fisher, the President of McGraw-Hill, Inc. I had a slight feeling of uneasiness that once I was no longer on the scene, the troops might weaken under pressure. They would never raise the white flag of surrender, but if even one flank took a pounding they would be on the telephone to me in Ibiza asking me to come back and buck up the defenses. I wanted more than anything to go home and stay home with Edith and the kids. But: toujours l’audace. I wrote, in part:

  Dear Shelton:

  Apropos of our roundtable conversation last night in your office, I feel I should go on record to you with my feelings.

  I strongly believe that under no circumstances should the proposed telephone conversation between Frank McCulloch and Chester Davis’s “Mr. Hughes” be allowed to take place. In my opinion there is absolutely nothing to be gained by it from Life’s, McGraw-Hill’s, or my point of view. Since Mr. Davis is organizing the proposed telephone call and he calls the autobiography a fraud, we pretty much know in advance what the man on the other end of the line is going to say, and it cannot be of any benefit to any of us. It puts us in the submissive, reactive role, and it means we are playing the game by the rules set down by the opposition. In my opinion, Mr. Davis is a street-fighter. He’s swinging blindly, throwing random punches in the hope that he’ll connect with something, anything, and there’s no reason for us to obligingly stick out our chins. If we play any games it should be by our rules or mutually agreed rules.

  In addition, I would also propose that M
r. Davis and I sit down together and take a lie-detector test where each of us prepares ten written questions which are asked alternately to each other. My only condition is that the questions must be answered and that if one of us responds with “no comment” or “I can’t or won’t answer that,” the ball game’s over. The only possible negative result that I can foresee resulting from such a confrontation would be that Davis would get a lot of information he does not at the moment possess; but I believe it’s worth the risk. In fact, he probably would not agree to the whole proposal, which would certainly be a public-relations plus for our team.

  My most important point in this letter is my first one: that the proposed McCulloch-“Hughes” conversation is detrimental to our interests and should not take place; and I would be grateful if you would make my position known to everyone concerned, including Mr. Heiskell of Time, Inc. Davis is really the one who’s panicking. Let’s not follow suit.

  Best regards,

  Cliff

  At 10:30 A.M. I gave the letter to Shelton’s secretary on the 32nd floor. The proposed challenge to Davis, to take a joint lie-detector test, was pure bluff. I had already mentioned the idea to Marty, who had explained that Davis would have to decline the terms since they would breach his theoretical attorney-client privilege with Howard Hughes. One sharp question —” Is Mr. Hughes willing and able to leave Nassau and come to New York?” — and Davis would be forced to invoke the privilege with, “No comment.” I went back to the 29th floor, feeling cocky, and began to clean up the litter of manuscript and notes.

  An hour later Ralph Graves called. “We’re arranging the polygraph over here at one o’clock,” he said.

  “What’s a polygraph?” I asked.

  “A lie-detector test. Fisher called Andy Heiskell and told him your idea. Davis would never agree to it, though. But I think it’s great that you volunteered, and we’ve got a man coming here with the equipment at one o’clock. Can you make it?”

  “I think that I’d better talk to Shelton Fisher first,” I said. “This is all a little sudden.”

  I called Ackerman. “Marty, they’re arranging a lie-detector test for me at one o’clock, over at Time-Life. They think I volunteered for it.”

  “Great idea, kid,” he said. “That’ll really firm up their confidence.”

  “I’ve still got a lot of work to do. I have to catch a plane. I’m not ready. I don’t know anything about lie-detector tests.”

  “What’s there to know? Just tell the truth and you don’t have to worry.”

  I called Fisher. “Shelton, what’s going on? Graves and Heiskell want me over there at one o’clock for a lie-detector test.”

  “Goddamit,” Fisher said, “those people at Life are going too far. What the hell are they horning in for? You’re our author and this is our book. If anyone’s going to give you a polygraph it’s going to be us! I’ll call Heiskell.”

  He hung up. I sat staring blankly at the wall for a few minutes and then called Graves. “Ralph, I just spoke to Shelton Fisher. He doesn’t want me to go over to Life to take a lie-detector test.”

  “I know,” Graves said. “I’ve got Heiskell on the other wire. Our man’s coming over to McGraw-Hill at one-thirty. Good man — one of the best. We’ll do it there.”

  I called Marty. “I know,” he said. “Jehle just called me to tell me about it. I’m coming right over. I’ll help them prepare the questions. Don’t be nervous.”

  “Why should I be nervous?” I hung up and looked at my thumb, wondering why it hurt. I had bitten the skin around the nail down to raw pink flesh during the past five minutes. I sucked the blood as the elevator rose to the 32nd floor. Shelton Fisher and Harold McGraw were waiting for me. Shelton smiled warmly and threw an arm around my shoulder. “How do you feel, kid?”

  “A little confused,” I admitted. “I have a plane to catch. I have to be at the airport early to ship my wife’s paintings.” I found myself making a long speech about Edith’s paintings, and how important it was that I be at the airport in time to get them out of Iberia cargo and into the plane. “If they’re not on board with me, it means a divorce.”

  “What time does the plane leave?”

  “Seven o’clock.”

  “Plenty of time,” Harold McGraw said.

  “I still have to pack,” I said. “I haven’t packed yet. I haven’t packed my clothes. My clothes are back at Marty Ackerman’s. I have to pack before I go to the airport.” They looked at me oddly and I had the feeling I was trying too hard to make my point. “Rush hour traffic …” I finished.

  “It’ll be over in no time,” Fisher said, looking at his watch. “Let’s go have lunch. I’ve reserved a private dining room.”

  Marty and Faustin Jehle had joined us by the time we had reached the second-floor dining room in the McGraw-Hill Building. The mood was jovial, almost festive. Marty rambled on about his meeting with Chester Davis. “I’ll tell you,” he said for the ninth time, “that guy’s got balls.” Shelton blew off steam every now and then about “those goddam interfering bastards over at Time-Life.” Jehle meandered through a discourse on the libel problems involved in Hughes claiming that a well-known actress had stolen his favorite golf ball and had asked him to sodomize her, to which Howard had replied: “I’d just as soon stick my pecker in a wet loaf of bread.” Harold McGraw sat silently, deep in his grave but always benign thoughts, his face reflecting his emotions like one of the heads carved into the rock at Mt. Rushmore.

  I had ordered a double Jack Daniels on the rocks and was sipping it slowly. A waitress placed a menu in front of me. I sneaked a look at my watch; it was one o’clock.

  I had no appetite at all. “I’ll have the shrimp cocktail to start,” I said. “Sirloin steak, medium rare. Baked potato, leaf spinach. Strawberry shortcake and coffee later.”

  “Any salad, sir?”

  “Oh, yes, salad. With Roquefort dressing. After the shrimp cocktail and before the steak.”

  “Hey, boy,” Fisher said jovially. “Ackerman must be starving you over at his place.”

  “Spanish habit,” I explained. “The big meal is always in the middle of the day, before the polygraph.”

  Everyone roared with laughter, and even Harold McGraw smiled. I set to work on the shrimp cocktail and then the salad, chewing every leaf of lettuce thoroughly. Halfway through the steak and baked potato I was already feeling slightly nauseous, and I stopped stuffing myself long enough to launch into a long discourse about the art market in New York, and Edith’s show two years ago at Selected Artists Galleries, the problems of being a painter, wife, and mother. “And if I don’t have those paintings with me when I get off the plane in Ibiza,” I drew a finger meaningfully across my throat, hurting my chewed thumb.

  I was in the middle of the strawberry shortcake when Shelton looked at his watch and said, “Christ! It’s a quarter past two. Those people are waiting for us upstairs. This has been a hell of a long lunch,” he said, puzzled.

  On the way up in the elevator to the 32nd floor, everyone smiled at me. Good man, was the message. You won’t let us down. This will show them. Yes indeed, I thought, it may do just that. I smiled back, a little palely.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, “there’s something I have to tell you before I submit myself to this polygraph and you all look like fools and I am proved a liar. I have never met Howard Hughes in my life. I am the author of the Autobiography and Richard Suskind, my researcher, is the co-author. Your money, at this moment, is invested in the name of Hanne Rosenkranz in a numbered account of the Swiss Bank Corporation in Zurich. The portfolio consists principally of IBM, Xerox, Texas Gulf Sulphur, Transamerica, Dome Mines, and Upjohn. We hold no McGraw-Hill stock, for obvious reasons.”

  “Did you say something?” Fisher asked me.

  I had been muttering to myself through clenched lips. “Yes, I said I’ve got to be at the airport by five o’clock. How long does a polygraph usually last?”

  “I’ve never taken one,” Fishe
r admitted. “I’ll find out.”

  Frank McCulloch and Bill Lambert of Time, Inc. were waiting in the anteroom to Harold’s office. With them was a short, dark-haired man of about thirty, looking very eager and carrying a large suitcase. He was immediately ushered into the conference room by Shelton and Harold and Bill Lambert. McCulloch drew me to one side. His expression was grim. “Whose goddam idea was this?” he demanded angrily.

  “Well, that’s a long story. Frank.”

  “Let me tell you,” he rasped, “I don’t like it. What the hell, don’t they think Frank McCulloch is a good enough lie detector?”

  I suddenly saw his point. He wasn’t angry at me. He was hurt. I felt sorry for him and quickly summarized how it had all come to pass. “It was really my fault,” I apologized. “Nobody doubts your word, Frank. They know you told the truth. I just sort of maneuvered myself into it. I volunteered.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then. I was afraid they didn’t trust me for some goddam reason.” He had calmed down. “I guess I’m just getting paranoid.”

  “It happens to everybody,” I explained, “if they hang around Howard Hughes.”

  McCulloch was drawn into the other room to talk to the short, dark-haired man I had noticed when I first came into the room. He was Rudy Caputo, a polygraph expert from the Burns Agency. I talked casually with Marty Ackerman and Faustin Jehle while Caputo received his briefing. Then I was ushered into the room.

  We were left alone. Caputo sat behind a small mound of papers.

  “This is very simple,” he said, “and there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I hope so, because I’ve got a plane to catch. Did they tell you that?”

  He nodded, and then began asking questions. They ranged from the correct spelling of my name to details of my meetings with Howard Hughes. He was precise and pleasant, although at times a little confused. At one point he filled out a standard form of release, which I was to sign, indicating that I was taking the test voluntarily. In the blank space for my name he had printed: Clifford Michael Holmes. When I pointed out the mistake he flushed a little and prepared a second form, this time correctly.