Saturday morning a knock on my door woke me up. Two men were there and they pushed their way into the room and put tape over my mouth and then beat hell out of me, only they didn’t touch my face, it was gut and kidney punches and blackjack work on my legs. Then they sat me up on the bed and stood in front of me, Frick and Frack in black suits. They were the same size. Big and square. Put a nickel in their ear a Coca-Cola would pop out their ass. One of them yanked the tape off my mouth, which left me about enough moustache to pass for fourteen.
“Mr. Hughes has to do better,” he said. “He has to learn to leave the women alone and be faithful to his wife, or this will happen again. This will happen every time Mr. Hughes is unfaithful.”
“What?” I said.
“That’s what I’m supposed to tell you,” he said. Then the other one pulled five one-hundred-dollar bills from his inside jacket pocket and threw them on the bed. “You get this for taking the beating,” the talker said, “but I’m supposed to tell you this is the last time you’ll get paid for taking one. Mr. Hughes has to start learning from his mistakes.”
“This is nuts,” I said.
The talker just shrugged. They left.
I probably would’ve quit but those were tough times. I wasn’t finding work as an actor, mostly because I looked exactly like Hughes, and straight jobs were scarce, too, with so many veterans back looking for work. If I’d had a pot to piss in I would’ve taken that five hundred and run. But I wanted to build up a better stake. I wanted enough to start a little grocery in my hometown in Wyoming.
Hughes memo to Brucks Randall, dated June 29, 1941
1. Go to Las Vegas.
2. Read Jeremiah and Isaiah.
3. I have phoned Bugsy Siegel and arranged a meeting with him at the construction site where his casino is being built. Wear the gray suit, shoulder holster, pistol, and navy overcoat. A person like me will not be checked for weapons; that’s just in movies. Shine my shoes. I will go with two of the Mormons, who will report back to me my actions during the meeting so I can be certain I have carried out my wishes.
4. After walking in I say:
“I’m not going to let you ruin this country, Siegel.”
He will probably be sitting behind a big desk with gunmen spaced out around the room— he doesn’t have the guts to face me alone, man to man. Sweep my finger around the room and say, “Afraid to talk to me without your girlfriends?”
5. The two Mormons will be terrified. Notice their terror, but stand fast.
6. Siegel will scowl at me silently. I say, “I’m tired of wasting my time. Let me speak to the pants of this outfit. Where is she?”
7. He’ll say, “What do you want?”
8. I say:
“You will sell me this property we’re standing on right now, Siegel, and get the hell out of Nevada, or you’re going to wish your mother was picking apples the day she decided to open her legs for the three or four sons of bitches who could be your father. I’m not going to let you turn this country into a bunch of lazy bastards who think they can turn five dollars into ten by watching a roulette wheel spin and drinking watered-down liquor at the same time. It’s just not going to happen. We didn’t just fight a war so you can turn this country into something like France.”
“France?” he might say.
“France,” I’ll say. “Think about it and you might understand. If too much of your brain isn’t currently occupied with the strain of keeping your hands out of your pants.”
9. Before I am finished he will probably be motioning for the gunmen to move in. I jerk the pistol out and lean over the desk and hold it a foot from his forehead. “Everyone stop where they stand,” I say. The room freezes. “Everyone get in the corner of the room to the left of this desk,” I say. They do. I tell the Mormons to take their guns.
10. Siegel says, “Hughes, you’re a dead man.”
11. I say, “Probably.”
12. I take an extra gun from the trembling hand of one of the Mormons. I say, “One last chance, Siegel. Will you sell out to me?”
13. He says, “Kiss my ass, Hughes. Kill me, somebody else’ll be here tomorrow.”
14. I say, “Let’s hope his name isn’t Bugsy.”
15. I save America.
16. I have guilt. But I think of the children who will eat because money has not been lost gambling, the wives who will not be beaten, the non-gamblers whose lives will not be less than they could have been because the empty values fostered by gambling will not permeate the country. I will probably never feel completely good about what I have done, but I did what I thought was best for the country and if I’m wrong I’ll find out someday. I’ll bear the consequences of my actions if I have to. But at least I acted with the courage I couldn’t muster before.
17. I should say my lines exactly as they are written. I should not ad lib. Every actor thinks he is a director and vice-versa. I should not fall into that trap.
Brucks Randall, reconstructed from Tom Lourdes’s story notes
In Vegas the guy who took the instructions off the phone walked into my room and sat down on the edge of the bed. I was lying there smoking. He was a Mormon but he got one of my cigarettes and lit it. He said, “We’ve got to do something.”
“What is it?” I said. He handed me the instructions and I read them.
“Of course, we can’t do what he wants,” he said, “but we’ve got to show up for the meeting. If we at least show up, we might keep our jobs.”
“Your problem, not mine,” I said. “I’m not doing it. I’m quitting.”
“All you’ve got to do is wish Siegel luck,” he said. “I’ll give you an extra fifty.”
I told him no.
“Seventy-five,” he said.
“It sounds like Siegel and Hughes are having a piss fight,” I said, “and I’m not getting in the middle of it.”
“I’ll give you an extra hundred,” he said. “Look, nothing’ll happen. Siegel doesn’t want trouble, and doing something to Howard Hughes in the middle of the day on a construction site would be trouble.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. He was right, so I said I’d do it for an extra hundred.
The meeting was nothing. Siegel was going over blueprints with an architect when we walked in, and he hardly paid us any attention. A couple of muscle guys were standing around. I kept my hat pulled down low over my eyes and wished Siegel luck with his casino, said things looked like they were coming along. He looked at me kind of funny, kind of suspicious, then broke out in a smile and said, sure, no hard feelings. I said right, no hard feelings, and left.
That night I woke up and Frick and Frack were sitting in chairs pulled up to my bed, watching me. I about jumped out of my skin. I curled up into a ball and waited for the first punch. The one who hadn’t spoken at all during the first visit got up and turned on the bathroom light, then sat down again and started slapping a blackjack against his thigh, thwap, thwap. The one who had done all the talking was wearing half-glasses down on his nose and had papers in his lap. They were dressed the same, in dark suits and white shirts open at the collar. The talker switched on a penlight and pointed it at his papers.
“Mr. Hughes is a coward,” he read. “He is ashamed of himself. Why didn’t he do what he planned today? He let himself and his country down. How does he explain this to himself?” He pointed the penlight in my eyes.
“You want me to answer?” I said.
“I’m just doing what it says,” he said.
“Fellows, I’m just like you,” I said. “I’m the hired help. I’m getting paid to impersonate Howard Hughes. He wanted me to kill Bugsy Siegel today. Jesus, I couldn’t do that.”
He pointed the penlight back down at the paper. “Mr. Hughes always has an excuse,” he read. Then he nodded to the quiet one, who stopped drumming the blackjack and pulled out a .38 and pointed it at me. The talker handed the penlight to him and he pointed it at the paper for him, then the talker pulled out a .38, too, and held it ou
t to me butt end first and read, “Take this, if you’re man enough.”
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“Go on, take it,” he read. “Mr. Hughes knows he wants to put himself out of his misery. For a failure like Mr. Hughes, there’s no other choice.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” I said.
The talker looked up. “Watch your mouth,” he said. “I’m just reading this shit.”
“I’ll give you everything I’ve got if you’ll just let me leave. ’ve got almost two thousand. I’ll tell you how to get your hands on it if you’ll just let me go.”
“Two thousand don’t even come close,” he said. Then he looked at the paper and read, “Take the pistol, you gutless bastard, and finish the job Ava Gardner started.”
“I’m not doing it,” I said.
He nodded at the quiet one, who pulled back the hammer on the .38.
“How would you rather die,” the talker said, “at your own hand or at the hands of your enemies, those who would destroy you and sap your … “ and he stopped. He stared at the paper. Then he held it up to me and pointed. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Vitality,” I said.
“And sap your vitality,” he said. “At least have that victory. Do not give the bastards that satisfaction. Mr. Hughes has failed in every area of his life and it would be best if he just killed himself so his wealth could get out of his hands and do some good in the world.”
“I’m not doing it,” I said.
He set the pistol in his lap, shuffled the papers and pulled out a new one. “Good,” he read. “Mr. Hughes has made the correct choice. He will live and … “ he stopped and held up the paper again.
“Wreak vengeance.”
“And wreak vengeance on his enemies,” he said. “Mr.
Hughes cannot be destroyed by the petty … “ and he held up the paper.
“Functionaries.”
“Functionaries who are trying to destroy all he has built.”
Then the quiet one pulled out a stack of bills, laid them on the bed, and without another word the two of them stood up and moved their chairs back under the card table and left, closing the door very quietly behind them. I turned on the lamp and counted the money. It was fifty hundreds. Five grand.
Hughes memo to Brucks Randall, dated July 11, 1941
1. I have a suite of rooms reserved at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Get a haircut, but have the barber come to my room. I should not be seen in public yet.
2. I have called Ava and arranged to meet her at 10 p.m. in the Aqua Room. I want to be 45 minutes to 90 minutes late, calling her two or three times to make excuses but also to reassure. If she has to wait she will start drinking— and that is exactly what I want.
3. I dress well.
4. I unscrew the bulb from the rooflight in the car.
5. I whisk into the now-crowded Aqua Room, acknowledge all hellos with a nod, then whisk Ava out to the car. If she wants to argue about my lateness and make a scene I guide her firmly by the arm, a smile fixed on my face for the benefit of onlookers.
6. She never leaves the car unless it is to go to the bathroom, in which case I stop at a filling station. If she wants more booze, I have a half-pint in the glove box.
7. I take her to the cross. If I forget where it is, I have directions in the glove box.
8. I park near the cross. However, we don’t get out and stand under the cross and I don’t propose marriage or read from the book of vows. I sit in the car with Ava and say:
a) “No matter how I pursue you in the future, no matter what I say to you or do to win you after this night, I will never be the kind of man who makes a good husband and you should always remember that. Protect yourself.”
b) “Despite all the other women I have been with, you are the one true love of my life.”
c) “I love your spirit, intelligence, and beauty.”
d) “My best self would never do anything to hurt you. But for whatever reason, my best self comes and goes more than I would like.”
e) “I pray there is an afterlife so my best self can have a small chance of being with you forever. That is the one hope that keeps me trying to be a better man than I’ve been so far.”
f) “The last thing I want to say, Ava, is that I can stomach any of the other men you have been seeing, but if you are ever with Mickey Rooney again I will kill myself.”
9. She will be moved. If she tries to kiss or make other advances I say, “I am not worth half of what you have to offer.”
10. If this makes her even more ardent, as any kind of reticence often does, I should quickly start the car and drive away.
11. Under no circumstances should I kiss her or touch her. I want an innocence in this encounter that has not been in any encounter for many years and will probably never be in one again after this night. This night will be a ray of light shining in a dark sea of meaningless squalor and heaving flesh.
12. I repeat: I do not touch her. If I kiss her or touch any part of her body, even if my hand just lightly brushes the hair on her forearm, I will be severely beaten, a beating worse than any I have had so far. If I go so far as to have relations with her in the car, I will be medically castrated at a secret location. I might even be killed, depending on what kind of mood I am in.
Brucks Randall, reconstructed from Tom Lourdes’s story notes
I was nervous as hell about Ava Gardner. We met at this nightclub— thank God it was dark and she’d had a few drinks, because I wasn’t sure I could fool her. I said I wanted to leave and she got up without a word and walked out with me and got in the car. She asked where we were going.
“This place where there’s a cross,” I told her. “It’s got a good view. I want you to see it.” One of the Mormons had told me about the “Hughes” cross. It was on a hill in Hollywood and if Hughes couldn’t get a woman to sleep with him, he’d take her up there and stand with her in front of the cross and read from a book of vows and tell her they were now married in the eyes of God so it was okay to go to bed.
“I know all about your cross,” she said, “and I don’t know why we’d need it at this point. But we’ll go there if it makes you happy.” Then she opened the glove box and reached for the bottle of whiskey like she knew it was there.
I didn’t say anything until we got to the cross— I was too nervous— and she didn’t either, she just looked out her window and drank. At the cross I parked on the shoulder and started saying all this stuff Hughes wanted said. As I was talking, she took her shoes off and put her feet up on the dash, then pulled her dress down into her lap and unhooked her garters and started rolling a stocking off.
She said, “It sounds like a scriptwriter wrote this for you.”
“No, this is from the heart.”
“Have you got a cold?” she said. “You sound like you’ve got a cold.”
“I could be catching one.”
“Well, I don’t want it.”
“I don’t think it’s contagious,” I said.
Twenty minutes later I had her naked. I knew Hughes was probably having us watched, but I didn’t care. It was Ava Gardner.
I figured I could disappear that night before Frick and Frack got to me.
So we kept going. But right when I was ready to start in, a light shined into the car. She started cursing. I raised up and then my door swung open and there was the talker from Frick and Frack, dressed like a policeman.
“Get out,” he said.
I didn’t move so he reached in and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out.
The quiet one was on the other side of the car and had his flashlight pointed at Ava. No one spoke for maybe twenty seconds while she got her dress on and I got my pants up from around my ankles. The talker wouldn’t let me back in the car for my shirt and shoes.
Ava said, “Do you know who we are?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the talker said.
“Are these the people from the government?” she said. “Are they the on
es looking for you?”
“No,” I said.
“Let me see your badge,” she said.
He produced what looked like a real L.A. Sheriff’s Department badge and handed it to her.
“We’re sorry we had to bother you when we did,” he said, “but we have information that parties intent on hurting Mr. Hughes are close by.”
“Who?” she said.
“I can’t say,” he said.
“Ridiculous,” she said and handed the badge back. “What’s really going on?”
“I’m not Howard Hughes,” I blurted out, “I just look like him. He hired me to impersonate him. He ordered me to bring you up here. These two work for him.”
She didn’t say anything. She just shook her head.
“My name is Brucks Randall,” I said, “and I’m sorry about what just happened with us but if you leave right now I’m dead. Hughes said he’d kill me if we did anything.”
“Is this one of your loyalty tests, Howard?” she said. “Are you trying to see if I’ll act like some foolish girl in a movie and stay by your side?”
“No. I’m telling you the truth. I’m not Hughes.”
“Brucks,” she said. “That’s a cowboy name. It’s too outlandish for even you.”
“I tell you, I’m not him.”
“Oh stop it, for godssake,” she said. “Get in. Let’s get out of here.”
“He has to stay with us for his own safety, ma’am,” the talker said, and I felt the cold tip of a pistol push into the small of my back.
“Stop this charade,” she said. “It’s getting on my nerves.”
“He’s got a pistol on me right now,” I said.
“Oh God. You stop it, too,” she said, “or I will leave.”
“You need to leave right now, ma’am,” the talker said.
“Please,” I said, “as long as you stay I’m okay. I don’t believe Hughes would hurt you.”
I Was Howard Hughes Page 16