(Johnny Russelli then stands up and mentions the other appointment he has to keep, so I thank him for his time and see him out.)
Hughes diary entry, December 25, 1944
Sometimes you would rather stick needles your eyes than live one more day with the mindless bastards you have to put up with. I can’t believe the arrogant mediocrities who govern this state are acquiescing to these gangsters and giving their blessing to a scheme that will turn this place into a national joke of vice and corruption and the un-American principle you don’t have to work for what you get. Mark my words. This is the beginning of the end for this country.
Gambling, in and of itself, doesn’t seem so bad— on the surface. Most people will not think past this surface because most people don’t think twice about anything because they are too busy with what they’re putting in their mouths or what’s going on between their legs. Because of this gambling will take hold and in fifty years it will be as much a part of the national landscape and as widely accepted as baseball. Then we will be in a hell of a shape.
This Bugsy Siegel, you know he’s around because you start smelling the hair oil two minutes before he comes into view. I cannot believe after all these years of planning and hoping to turn Nevada into a thriving place with an aviation industry producing good jobs, a state that would be home to a great city, a port to the heavens, it is instead going to be a Sodom and Gomorrah full of germ-ridden whores and games of chance. I just never thought something like this could happen. It seems so out of the realm of possibility, the stupidity on such a grand scale, I never considered it a contingency I needed to prepare for.
All my work the last several months has been a cruel joke played by fate. Well, fine, but the real estate I have bought in Nevada will never be sold in my lifetime. The only way I would sell was if Siegel bent over and kissed my ass at Carnegie Hall on a Saturday night … . [At this point in the diary entry, Hughes devotes roughly three-quarters of a page to a freehand technical drawing. I suspected it might have something to do with airplanes, so I had an aviation engineer examine it and he said it was a rough outline of a type of hydraulic steering system for large airplanes that wasn’t invented until the 1960s, twenty years after Hughes apparently envisioned it. The text that follows is the rest of the entry for December 25, 1944, which begins again directly below the drawing— ed.]
I offered to bring their goddamn families to Las Vegas for Christmas. I planned a large party with a wonderfully decorated tree and toys for their children but Russelli said his wife insisted on having Christmas at home. So I get back to my room and see a note on the floor and at first think it is part of some birthday surprise they have planned but then open it and find out different so I call the desk and rent a car and it was an hour before the goddamn thing arrived and when it did it was a station wagon. I called the desk and complained but they said it was Christmas and it was hard to get the right car.
I drove through the desert in a silence so complete I might as well have been dead. Outside Beverly Hills I ran out of gas. I started walking. I walked until I reached Cary’s [Cary Grant’s— ed.] bungalow at dawn. I had hoped he’d say happy birthday Howard when he saw me but he just opened the door and stumbled back to bed. I got a glass of water and stood there drinking it and looking at his tree. It was tall and very full and green and covered with gold and silver statuettes of elves and reindeer and religious figures and stained glass hangings and balls made of frosted glass. Plenty of gifts.
I lifted off a stained glass hanging of Mary holding the infant Jesus and put it in my pocket. I have never understood this Jesus business but Christmas is Christmas so I opened one of the smaller presents addressed to Cary: a silver pocket comb in a leather case. I went to the bathroom and washed my face and used the comb, then put it back in its case and put it in my pocket.
I left the bungalow and walked for a long time. The stained glass ornament was too big for my pocket and jabbed my thigh. I tried to situate it better but could not so I carried it in my hand until I came to a church. It was very early, maybe eight or nine, and everything was dead because of Christmas but already music and shouting were coming from inside the church. I put the ornament on the top step where someone interested in Jesus could find it. I was several steps down the sidewalk when someone shouted Hey, is this yours? Did you drop this? No I said. He held up the ornament and looked at it. He was smoking a cigarette. Sure is pretty he said. Well it’s yours now I said. Why don’t you come in and join us? he said. We are going to have breakfast after the service. Eggs, coffee, hash browns, hotcakes, the whole works. We even got bacon off the black market. You hungry?
Inside children were running everywhere like frightened ants. Two guitar players played while the minister shouted and wept. People shouted, waved their arms, and hugged. I sat down at the end of a pew. The man sat down with me. What’s your name? he asked. Howard Hughes I said and then he asked where I lived. I told him I had just come from Nevada. Home for Christmas? he asked. No I said. What do you do in Nevada? he asked. I told him I had hoped to start an airline and other aviation projects but that it was not working out. He looked at me funny. He said friend have you met Jesus? I said no. He said Jesus can release any demon that might be bothering you. Well I said. He put his hand on my shoulder, closed his eyes and started praying out loud. After a short time other men noticed and started walking toward me. The man stopped praying and told me to close my eyes. I did. I felt another hand on my shoulder. Soon hands were on my head, back, neck. They all prayed out loud. I opened my eyes. The men all had their eyes closed. They were smiling. I counted nine of them. I started getting uncomfortable. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted and ducked my head but each hand just pressed harder and I heard an urgency come into their voices. I tried to stand up but the hands pushed me down. The man opened his eyes. Do not fight he said. His expression was sincere. Thanks I said but it would be better for you fellows to get on with your service so we can get finished and eat. This is the service he said. I tried to stand up again and this time all the hands pushed me back so that I was laying on the pew. Relax the man said. Nothing good will happen if you fight.
I decided to lay there a minute because I was exhausted by the long drive and all the walking so I closed my eyes and I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew they were all gone and I was lying there by myself. I sat up. I heard voices from below. The room was gray, just some light coming through the windows. At the front of the church was a painting of Jesus with a huge bloody red heart encircled by thorns. I kept staring at that. Soon the man appeared in the doorway behind the podium. Hello I said. I fell asleep. Yes he said. We tried to wake you but could not. We have saved you two plates of food downstairs he said. Come down and eat. Thanks I said but I probably should be going. No, come and eat he said, and you are welcome to come home with me and spend the day with my family. We are going to have another big meal this evening. I know how it is to be on the road he said. I hitched out here from Oklahoma years ago. What do you do? I asked him. Dig graves he said. That is necessary work I said. Yes he said. Say, tell me something I said. How do you believe in all this business? Jesus and all this? I do not know exactly he said. I did not used to. I saw my father kill himself with a shotgun when we lost our farm. I was walking to the barn and I saw him in the passthrough put it to his mouth and pull the trigger. My brother and sister both died of the typhoid not long after. Then my mother lost her head. That is when I started west. I would curse God every morning when I woke up. If I saw a Bible I would spit on it. I hope the Lord forgives all that. So how did things change for you? I said. I am interested. I would like to know. They just did he said. One day I was going to get a bottle and walked in here instead. I got prayed over. Something happened. I cannot explain it. Look, why don’t you come down and eat with us?
No, I am going. But before I do, do you know who I am? Do you know who Howard Hughes the aviator is? I am him. Yes I know he said. I did not recognize you at first, but I
put it together soon enough.
Did you tell the rest? I asked. No he said. What would be the point?
I was pretty damn hungry so I did go down and eat the food they saved. It was very good country-type food. They were opening presents and playing games.
What a terrible Christmas.
Ashley Roth, field agent for the FBI, 1942-1949, reconstructed from Tom Lourdes’s story notes
Most defense manufacturers of a certain size were watched, standard procedure during the war. Hughes wasn’t heavily into the war effort, but Hoover didn’t like him and he wanted him watched anyway. It was my job to do that in Reno.
Hughes had this large, coffin-shaped box that he took with him everywhere— other agents in other cities reported it, too. Weeks passed and none of our agents got a chance to examine it. Some believed the box might contain uranium, that Hughes was getting involved in the atomic area, and one agent thought he might have murdered one of his girlfriends and the box held her corpse, and that idea was taken seriously, too. Hughes was known to be a jealous man.
Hughes traveled with two mechanics and without fail they all traveled together. Then one day Hughes left Reno in his airplane, but he took with him only one of the mechanics and he didn’t take the box with him. I reported this, and received word back I should try to examine the box, since it would be easier to do with just one of Hughes’s party there. So that afternoon I waited until I saw the mechanic who’d been left behind, the little one, leave his room and go down the street. I went first to Hughes’s room, but the box wasn’t there. Everything was normal enough, except there were at least a hundred bars of soap in the bathroom. He had a lot of books, mostly technical manuals about airplanes, soil management, and the design of golf courses. I also found notebooks filled with typical diary stuff and a lot of sketches of airplanes and some drawings of golf holes with degree-of-slope numbers penciled in.
I checked the mechanics’ room next— the box wasn’t there, and then I went to the third room. I used the skeleton key and opened the door and in the light that fell into the room I saw the box I was looking for, but on the bed beside it a heavy naked woman was lying back and at her feet was the little mechanic, wearing a shirt but no pants, right in the middle of climbing up on her. His head jerked around and he looked at me, his eyes huge and terrified in the dark like a possum’s. The woman started screaming in Spanish and then the mechanic reached into his shirt pocket and threw something at me and right before it hit me in the forehead I saw teeth. Before I could react he was on me. He kicked me in the groin, yanked me into the room and slammed the door. Then it was completely dark. I couldn’t see anything. I was in a good bit of pain, too, from where he’d kicked me. The woman was still screaming. He yelled, “Silencio!” in this countrified voice and she stopped. Then there was only the sound of his heavy breathing and the woman sniffling.
“I knew I shouldn’ta let her talk me into this,” he said. “Now I’m gonna get my ass shot off in Jay-pan.”
I could tell he was standing right over me.
“She did. She talked me into it,” he said. “She can talk enough English to do that. She said the maids was goin’ on about why they couldn’t come in this room. She thought it’d be excitin’ to come in here and have our fun.” He moaned. “Oh God, please don’t tell him.”
I reached underneath my jacket and took my revolver out. I undid the safety, which made a loud click.
“Did you hear that?” I said. “Do you know what it is?”
“Yessir.”
“Turn on the lamp.”
“Can I put on my trousers first?”
“Yes.” I sat up with my back against the door. The light came on. The woman had pulled the bedspread up over herself, and he was standing next to the lamp. He looked to be near tears.
“Please don’t tell him,” he said. “Mr. Hughes could end my draft deferment… he … he could have me a ball-turret gunner in three days if that’s what he wanted— my size, that’s what they’re gonna make me and those sons-of-bitches don’t live as long as flies.”
“What’s in that box?” I asked him.
“I’d as lief tell you as not, but I don’t know.”
I raised my revolver to let him know I meant business. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know. I swear it.”
I stood up. I had to crouch a little from where he had kicked me. I decided to use his belief I worked for Hughes to my advantage. “All right, I won’t tell him I found you in here with this woman,” I said, “if you open that box and let me look in it.”
He looked at me a long moment. Then the next thing I knew the light was off and something hit me with great force. My revolver flew out of my hand and then he hit me again and knocked me into a wall. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him bouncing around the room and crashing into things. The woman started screaming again. I got on my hands and knees and groped for my revolver. He hit me several times. Finally I groped until I found the doorknob and got out of there.
In my report I said I’d never gotten an opportunity to examine the box. A week later I staged a burglary of my apartment and called the police to cover the loss of my revolver.
Until Hughes came back, the little mechanic didn’t leave that room. He was in there for three days. There was no food delivered, nothing. The door never opened.
Alton Reece interview with Ashley Roth at his duplex in the Hill Valley retirement community in Reno, Nevada
I’m an hour and twenty-five minutes late for my meeting with Ashley Roth; that morning as I load the box into the cargo area of my station wagon I rip a foot-long gash in its wrapping paper and it takes twenty minutes to repair; then, as I’m pulling out of the motel parking lot, my muffler comes loose and starts dragging the ground. I drive down a four-lane for a half mile, throwing sparks, until I see a strip mall with a hardware store. I have to wait fifteen minutes for the store to open so I can buy wire, and then I spend another half hour under the car bracing up the loose muffler.
When I finally arrive at Ashley Roth’s residence, he is apparently watching out a window because before I am halfway up his sidewalk he comes outside and stands on his front stoop, holding a baseball bat diagonally across his chest with two hands the way a soldier holds a rifle. Where am I going with that box? he asks. I lower the hand truck and apologize for being late, explain what happened, and then I assure him everything is fine, there’s nothing dangerous about the box. Put it back in your wagon he says. You’re not bringing it inside.
I reload the box into the wagon, then follow Mr. Roth into his duplex, which is bright and airy, with tall ceilings and lots of windows. He sits on the couch and leans the baseball bat against the armrest. He nods for me to take a chair across from him. As I take my recorder out of my case and set it up on the coffee table, Mr. Roth watches me with a wary, unfriendly expression. He’s a short, wiry man with a gray buzz cut and a square jaw and he wears loose gray slacks cinched with a thin black belt, and a white shirt open at the collar. A bulky black eyeglass case bulges in his shirt pocket. As soon as I turn on the tape recorder — before I can say anything — Ashley Roth starts speaking.
(Since my initials and Ashley Roth’s are the same, to avoid confusion I will go by ME in this interview.)
AR: (Leaningforward.) Let’s get something straight right now. I’m talking to you for one reason, and one reason only: I’m going to make sure you don’t lie about my part in this story. I’ve talked to Tom Lourdes and he said you had the notes from when he interviewed me years ago and that you were likely to construct any kind of fantasy from them. So understand, you’re going to use every word I say today, and if you don’t I’ll sue your ass from here to San Diego. Here. (He pulls a document of some sort out from under a magazine on the coffee table.) You’re going to sign this, or we don’t talk. That’s all right, go ahead and look it over. It says you have to use all my interview. My lawyer drew it up. Everything’s in order. (He points a finger at me.) I’m not one of these o
ld women you’ve been going around bullying. Tom told me about that, too. But you’re not going to pull any tricks here. No sir.
ME: (I quickly read the document and it seems harmless enough, so I sign it, push it back across the coffee table, and smile.) Mr. Roth, this kind of confrontation really isn’t necessary.
AR: Don’t like it, do you? Well, by God, you haven’t heard anything yet. First off, I don’t like the fact that you got one of those goddamn NEA grants. That’s my tax money, by God, and now they’re giving it to people for any kind of damn silliness, like pissing in a Mason jar. We fought World War Two on a six-percent income tax and now these whining sons-of-bitches can’t get by on any less than twenty. This country … (He waves his hand in front of his face, once, as if knocking away a bee.) You know, I know some people don’t like the Mexicans but I’m glad they’re coming up here like a plague of locusts. They’re not afraid to work. But by God, pretty soon it’ll be more than Mexicans. We’re going to be kissing Chinese ass before we know it. (He stops speaking, but keeps me fixed with an angry stare for a moment. Then he sits back, looks down, and brushes at something on the knee of his trouser leg.)
I Was Howard Hughes Page 13