I Was Howard Hughes
Page 12
“Don’t count on it, buddy,” I said. “It’s like a fever with them once they decide to do it.”
Then he changed the subject completely. He asked me if I’d ever been to Nevada. I told him I hadn’t.
“Well, big things are getting ready to happen there,” he said.
“Is some kind of development going on?” I asked.
“Not right now,” he said, “but I’ve been thinking about Nevada a lot and I want to talk to you about it. I think two fellows like you and me could go out there and accomplish some things.” Then he talked about starting an airline and basing it in Nevada. He wanted me to go in with him. At first it would be local, but he saw the business eventually growing into an international enterprise.
“Do you know how much it costs to start an airline?” I said. “And what about customers? Where would you take them in Nevada? From one patch of cactus to another?”
That’s when he told me his scheme of building golf courses as tourist attractions. Before he finished I was laughing.
“Let’s say all this would work out,” I said. “How’re you going to pay for it all?”
“Investors,” he said.
“Who would invest in such a scheme?” I asked.
“For your information, I’ve already got a fellow who’s interested,” he said. “A very wealthy person.”
“Who?” I said.
“I can’t say,” he said. “He wants to remain anonymous right now.”
I said, “Have you talked to Janice about all this?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, maybe you better,” I said.
“I’m certain she’ll support me in whatever I do,” he said.
I didn’t say anything else. I let it drop because I could tell he was getting steamed.
In Cleveland, we got the passengers and their baggage unloaded and got the plane squared away and then went into the American office to do our paperwork. Some regional managers were visiting that day and that was slowing things down, and a couple of other crews were in line ahead of us, and as we stood there Charles picked up a movie magazine one of the secretaries had on her desk and thumbed through it. Suddenly he said, “I’ll be damned.”
“What is it?” I said.
“Ginger Rogers is free again,” he said.
That seemed an odd thing to say, but I didn’t ask him about it. Finally we reached the counter and both of us handed across our paperwork to the fellow there, and he went back to a filing cabinet to get some forms he had to complete. The visiting managers were standing in a group near the back of the room, talking and laughing. Charles tapped me on the arm and pointed to one of them and said, “That’s Roger Eckheart, the guy who runs the northeast. He’s an idiot.”
“How do you know him?” I asked.
“He was at the New York premiere of Hell’s Angels” he said.
“You were at that?” I said.
“I was between flying jobs and worked security at it,” he said. “You seen the movie?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’d you think?” he asked.
“It was all right,” I said, “but I know a pilot in Indiana who had a pilot friend who worked on it, and he said that Hughes fellow didn’t hesitate to ask pilots to take crazy risks. He said Hughes treated pilots like so much meat.”
“I heard he took the same risks himself,” he said. “He had a bad crash doing a stunt. Almost killed him.”
“Well then, he got some of his own medicine,” I said. “Three pilots died making that movie.”
“Why’re you so down on Howard Hughes?” he said.
“Because he’s a spoiled rich boy,” I said. “He’s got more money than sense. Didn’t that movie cost two or three million dollars?”
“Four,” he said.
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “He was spending Daddy’s money, so he didn’t care. You wait and see. He’ll go bankrupt. Then he’ll know what it’s like to be out here making a living.”
His expression turned blank. I asked if something was wrong. He shook his head, then wanted to know what I’d think if a fellow like Hughes were to give away all his money.
“That’s a good one,” I said.
“Just say he did,” he said. “What would you think?”
“I’d think he was a fool,” I said.
He nodded. Then the fellow came back with our forms and we signed off. I started away from the counter but Charles didn’t move. He took off his uniform hat and said loudly, “Hey, Eckheart.”
Everyone in the group of managers stopped talking and looked at him. A short well-dressed man said, “Yes, what is it?”
“I’m going to put your shitty airline out of business,” Charles said.
All talking in the room stopped and everyone looked at Charles. Eckheart took a couple of steps toward the counter, his eyes narrowed. “Hughes?” he said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What in God’s name?” Eckheart asked.
Charles didn’t say anything. He just turned and walked out.
I found him in a hangar, sitting on a workbench and staring at the floor. I felt awful about the things I’d said. I said, “Hey there. Charles,” and his head jerked up. “Call me Howard,” he said.
“Right, okay,” I said.
“So Hell’s Angels … so I’m a butcher, am I? That’s the general consensus among pilots?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I’m going to break every damn aviation record there is,” he said. “Let’s see what you say then. And I’m going to build an airline that makes American look like the third-rate outfit it is.”
Even though he was sharp with me, I told him I had enjoyed flying with him and that I thought he was an excellent pilot. When he had calmed down a little I asked him why he was so angry at Eckheart.
“At the premiere party in New York I found him kissing Jean Harlow in the cloakroom,” he said.
That was the last time I saw him. He didn’t make the return flight with me to Fort Worth that afternoon and the next day in Cleveland they took publicity photos of him handling baggage and sitting in a cockpit looking out the side window. The whole thing became a newspaper story for a day or two.
Hughes diary entry, December 21, 1933
If things were different it would have been wonderful with Janice but things are not different and you cannot cry about what is not and never will be. I have learned you cannot fulfill a great purpose like the building of Nevada and make ice cream on the front porch every night too.
Why isn’t Ginger returning my calls?
Alton Reece interview with Lisa Trundle at the airport Ramada Inn in Dallas, Texas
Lisa Trundle arrives at my motel room wearing a gauzy white summer dress and a wide-brimmed floppy straw hat that has a colorful scarf as a hatband. She smells faintly of patchouli. We sit at the card table and she begins by saying she’d like our conversation to be used in the book, and used word for word, too — she doesn’t want her mother to get better treatment than she does. I acquiesce because that’s about all I can do, but inwardly I roil at what these self-serving demands for complete transcriptions are doing to my book. I pour two glasses of wine.
AR: (Forcing a smile.) So, did you bring the ring?
LT: (She sips her wine.) It’s in my bag.
AR: My lawyer faxed me a copy of the release he drew up. (I point to it on the table.) We can get it notarized down at the concierge desk.
LT: What’s your hurry?
AR: No hurry.
LT: (Smiling, flirty.) You know, if I let you take this ring, I want something in return. (She makes a production of looking around the room; her eyes finally fix on Hughes’s fedora, lying on the bed.) I want you to put this hat on. I love neat old hats like this. Where’d you get this? (She leans forward in her chair and picks up the hat, examines it a moment, then reaches across the table and puts it on my head. She sits back and sizes me up.) You look cute. (Then she reaches in her
bag, pulls out a postcard-size manila envelope that has a bulge in the center, opens it and pours the ring out into her hand. She holds it out and I reach for it, but she pulls it back.)
AR: Well?
LT: (Coyly.) Not yet.
AR: (I lean forward in the chair and sit with my elbows on my knees, staring at the coach-and-horse pattern that decorates the bedspread, hundreds of little brown coaches and horses in perfect rows. I take off the hat and toss it on the bed.) Look, this isn’t your problem, but this book … I can’t stick just anything in it, okay? We need to get this business of ours done.
LT: (Again coyly.) So does your wife ever travel with you? (I don’t answer. I stare blankly across the room.)
LT: Well?
AR: You read the article in People, didn’t you?
LT: (Holding up the ring in front of her face, toying with it, watching the light glint off it.) You know, I think what you’re doing, following in Hughes’s footsteps, going where he went, meeting the people who knew him, I think it makes perfect sense. Faulkner lived his whole life in Yoknapatawpha, so to speak. (She stops looking at the ring and looks at me. She smiles.) Proust, he actually stayed in bed, didn’t he?
(I nod.)
LT: (She reaches for the recorder.) Where’s the button?
AR: Here.
The Box
On May 16, 1943, Howard Hughes awoke at four in the morning, Ava Gardner still asleep beside him, and drove from their hotel in Reno to Lake Mead. His modification of the Sikorsky amphibian airplane for military use was one of the few wartime projects he’d had approved, and he was testing the plane that morning for government inspectors. Hughes had made 4,588 landings in the Sikorsky on Lake Mead during six months of testing; however, on this day, he didn’t know his ground crew had forgotten to load tail ballast, the weight of which would keep the nose of the plane from tipping over into the water on touchdown. Hughes had four passengers, two inspectors and two of his own mechanics. At his best, Hughes probably could’ve controlled the plane even without the ballast, but that day he wasn’t at his best, and one man drowned in the crash and another died from the injuries he received. Hughes himself refused medical treatment. Instead, his clothes soaked in his and his passengers’ blood, he insisted he be taken to a local department store to buy new ones, then insisted on flying to California that very minute so he could inform his mechanic’s wife in person that her husband was dead. Witnesses in the airplane, piloted by Hughes, said he kept whispering over and over, “My fault.”
As soon as the Sikorsky was recovered and restored, Hughes took off in it on a rambling eighteen-month trip. For seven months he traveled in a triangle among Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Reno, and then he went to Louisiana, Florida, and finally New York City, and everywhere he went he took with him a six-foot-long box that was shaped like an old six-sided wood coffin. This box was constructed of the thick cardboard used for concrete forms and was always covered in brown wrapping paper tied with string. Those who traveled with Hughes said it weighed at least 150 pounds, though they didn’t know what was in it, and Hughes adamantly refused to tell them.
Hughes memo dated July 7, 1944, and titled (“Care And Handling Of The Box”
1. The box is never to be opened.
2. Keep in our emergency kit at all times a roll of Number 7 brown butcher paper, plenty of Number 12 string, and a canister of glue.
3. If a small tear develops in the paper you are to cut a patch that adequately covers the tear and secure it with glue. Under no circumstances unwrap the box. If the box is soaked in a rain shower, inform me immediately. If I am not available, leave the box alone until I return.
4. If a porter or taxi driver asks what is in the box reply that that information is confidential and classified, a part of the war effort.
5. Defend the box with your life.
6. When situating the box on the bed in its room, remove the pillows from the bed, then position the box in the exact equicenter of the bed using a T square.
7. Next, take the telephone off the hook. Draw the curtains together and tape them where they meet so that no light, not even the tiniest shaft, falls into the room and possibly on the box from that aperture. Tape the bottom and the left and right borders of the curtains to the window trim. This should leave light coming into the room only at the top. At this point in the procedure, the room has grown very dark. Switch on the lamp farthest from the box so that the least light possible falls on it. Using finish nails, tack up the large blackout curtain over the whole window to create a double barrier to light. Turn off the lamp. If you see absolutely any light, the smallest amount you can imagine, use tape to patch the leak. When the room is in total darkness when the lamp is off as if you are a blind man, the job is done.
8. Leave the room and lock it. Yank the knob three times to make sure the door is locked.
9. Check the box on this schedule: 6 a.m., 12 Noon, 6 p.m., Midnight. Make any needed repairs to the curtains.
10. The room where the box is kept is not to have maid service. First, when checking in, inform the front desk that room number —, wherever we are keeping the box, is not to have maid service. Second, hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob of the room. Third, discover the usual working patterns of the maids, and when they approach the room, you are to be standing there, smiling, saying, “Thanks, but we don’t need maid service. My wife can take care of it.” Accept towels and linens if she offers them, but if she acts as if she is going to enter the room despite your wishes, manhandle her away from the door.
11. I will conduct periodic surprise inspections of the room to make sure my instructions are being carried out in a professional manner.
Alton Reece interview with Johnny Russelli, mechanic at Hughes Aircraft, 1939— 1956, at the Days Inn on the outskirts of Palm Springs, California
Johnny Russelli lives in a retirement community in Palm Desert, a short drive from Palm Springs, and although I offer to come to his home to interview him, he says he needs to come into Palm Springs anyway to take care of some business, so we can just meet at my motel. On the morning we’ve agreed to, he knocks on my room door at exactly 11 A.M. I answer and we shake hands. He’s a tall, burly man who, despite his age, still gives an impression of strength. He wears neatly pressed khaki pants, a blue button-up shirt, and works an unlit, sweet-smelling cigar in the corner of his mouth. He enters the room, then stops and stares at the box on the bed.
JR: This isn’t the one Boss had, is it?
(I nod.)
JR: Yeah? So what’s going on?
AR: Nothing.
JR: (He approaches the box and lays a hand on it.) Has it still got the same stuff in it?
(A short silence.)
AR: I was under the impression Hughes was the only one who knew what was in it.
JR: Yeah, that was true for a long time, but one day I was moving this thing by myself and it broke open because the cardboard had gotten wet. It was full of douche bags. Dozens of them, all shapes, colors, and sizes, and comic books, too, a couple hundred of them, mostly Red Ryder’s. (He grins and shakes his head.) I managed to get everything back together before Boss found out.
AR: Well, okay. Let’s sit down. (We both sit at the card table.) First thing, Mr. Russelli, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk to me. Now, I know you worked closely with Hughes a number of times, and the first one I wanted to ask you about was a day you and Myron Tompkins did some work on a Mercedes as a practical joke. Do you remember that?
JR: (Staring at the box.) Yeah.
AR: Anything to say about that?
JR: (He shrugs.) Not really.
AR: (Short pause.) Okay. Well then, I know you and Tompkins accompanied him for much of the trip where he carried the box. What was that like?
JR: (Still staring at the box, distracted.) Different.
AR: Can you elaborate?
JR: (He doesn’t answer. Instead, he leans forward in his chair, reaches over and taps the box.) This couldn’t be
the same box. It looks too new. The one we had was real beat up, even back then. (He sits back in his chair and looks at me.) Mr. Reece, I hate to be the one to tell you, but someone’s misled you. We handled that box too much for it to have lasted this long. Every day at three in the afternoon, we had to have a taxi loaded with all the luggage, including the box. If Boss decided to leave, we checked out and drove to the plane. If he decided to stay, we unloaded, unpacked, and then set up the box again according to these instructions we had, which from the way you got this room rigged, I can see you know about.
AR: Didn’t Hughes make Tompkins get false teeth during this trip?
JR: Uh, yeah, he did.
AR: Did Hughes say why he wanted him to get them?
JR: Not that I can remember.
AR: All right. Do you remember a time when you went to Las Vegas with Hughes and left Tompkins in Reno with the box?
JR: (He nods.) He wanted me to go with him to meet some people on business.
AR: Was Tompkins upset about being left behind?
JR: (An amused smile.) No, he didn’t mind staying. He had a different maid he was seeing at all the hotels where we stayed.
AR: What happened at the meeting?
JR: Well, Bugsy Siegel was there, and the governor of the state, too. Boss was talking about building golf courses and aircraft plants and Siegel was laying out plans for casinos. Siegel said the state didn’t have enough room for both their plans. He was threatening Boss in a very polite way, and Boss just stood up and walked out.
AR: HOW did Hughes react to this disappointment?
JR: He acted pretty beat.
AR: Didn’t you and Tompkins abandon him not long after this?
JR: (His brow furrowed.) It was Christmas, for chrissakes, and he wouldn’t give us time off. My wife was raising hell and so was Tompkins’s. We hadn’t been home for five months. So sure, we left, and sure, I felt bad about it. Christmas Eve was Boss’s birthday. But I left a note under his door, telling him we’d be back the day after Christmas.
AR: I’m sorry, I really meant no offense, Mr. Russelli, it’s just that I’ve grown very interested lately in that part of the human psyche that makes us abandon, almost by instinct, those who’re suffering great misfortune. Ever notice how as soon as things start going wrong for you, people start avoiding you, yet, at the same time, they’re almost sexually excited by your suffering? That’s the blood lust in us, and when you get right down to it, most human behavior can be explained by blood lust. The psychologists, the sociologists, the philosophers, the theologians, they’ve all got their little theories, but down deep, we all know there’s only one thing that’s true: this life is a straight cash business. What do people really care about, no matter what they say? Do churchgoers sell their SUVs and drive Escorts so they can feed starving people? Do liberals who profess to be so worried about the good of humankind give up their cell phones and ski trips? See? You can sing all the hymns you want, but blood lust isn’t ever going away. We just refine it. We kill with words now instead of swords. We make phone calls and ruin careers. We get divorce lawyers. We’ve got a legally sanctioned band of thugs called the IRS who seize assets without a trial. We convict innocent men in the court of Hard Copy and People magazine and the mincing, gutless, self-righteous prosecutors of this kind of bloodless assassination all cover themselves by saying, “We just want the truth,” when everyone knows that’s a lie, they really just want the same things everyone else wants— money, fame, sex, Mommy and Daddy’s approval, or, no, most likely, they’re just trying to cover up their own sins by raving about someone else’s. Do you see what I’m saying, Mr. Russelli? We no longer have the courage to strike our enemies with the strength of our arms. We use our tongues, like women. Don’t you agree?