The Hoax

by Clifford Irving

  The pace was a killing one — ten to fourteen hours a day of relentless typing — and early one morning, toward the end, when I was shaving, I suddenly noticed two streaks of blood on my cheek and jaw. I looked at my hand. I could see it trembling. Then I felt a sharp, solid pain in my chest, as if someone had given me a karate jab above the heart. Dizzied, I sat down on the closed toilet seat and called weakly: “Dick …”

  He was passing by, en route to the kitchen and his beloved supply of chicken livers. Poking his head through the open bathroom door, he saw my condition. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I tried to stay calm. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Jesus. What should I do?”

  “I don’t know. If I faint, call a doctor.”

  “I know that,” he said worriedly. “I meant what should I do about the manuscript?”

  It was an instant cure for whatever ailed me, and a mighty surge of blood poured through my body to my brain. I reached out and held the razor menacingly over his nose. “You sonofabitch,” I yelled. “I could be dead in ten minutes and all you want to know is what you should do with the fucking manuscript. If I go,” I swore, “I’ll take you with me.”

  “Go lie down,” he said gently, but backing off a bit. “You need sleep. You haven’t had a decent eight hours’ sack time in a week. Take the morning off.”

  I stumbled off to bed and slept until noon, and when I woke I felt fine again.

  At last there came a night — a Thursday night about nine o’clock — when the typewriters stopped their clattering, when we stood looking at one another with dazed, bleary eyes, when we said. “Jesus!” and “My God!” and “We did it!” and “I never thought …”

  Then we sat in the living room and slowly and painstakingly tore the original transcript into little bits and pieces, stuffing them into brown paper bags for the cleaning woman to remove. By the time we had finished — nearly two o’clock in the morning — my hands felt as though I had been on the rockpile all day. We should have burned the pages, but euphoria had us in its velvet grasp, had borne us up, up, up, beyond worry about exposure, beyond all trifling, mundane concerns.

  Only one thing still troubled me: what to do with the Remington Noiseless.

  I started thinking about it seriously on the evening before we left for Nassau. The idea developed bit by bit as I shaved and showered, threw my clothes into my suitcase, packed my copy of the transcripts into empty boxes of typewriter paper. I could hear Dick in his shower, cheerfully singing an aria from La Traviata. When he joined me in the living room, I said: “I’ve got it all worked out.”

  “What’s that?”

  “How to get rid of the Remington. We’ve got enough time tomorrow to rent a motor boat. We’ll pick up a cardboard carton and put the typewriter in it. Then we go a couple of miles out into the Gulf Stream and dump the typewriter in fifteen or twenty fathoms of water. But,” I added cleverly, “we bring the empty carton back with us. That way no one will know we’ve gotten rid of anything. If anyone should see us, they’ll think that we were carrying sandwiches or beer or something like that. We’ll …” I stopped. Dick was shaking his head and grinning.

  “007,” he said, “it’s off to the funny farm for you. You’ve been working too hard.” He held up his hand to forestall my comment. “Those Smersh boys are tough, I know, but … Schmuck, what the hell are you talking about? Tomorrow morning we’ll be in Miami Airport. When it’s time to leave for Nassau, one of us just puts the typewriter on the floor next to a chair or one of the departure desks — anywhere, it doesn’t really matter a damn — and walk away from it. Eventually it will either be turned into the lost-and-found — they’ll hold it for thirty days and then auction it off — or some lucky housewife will pick it up and take it home. In any case, that’s the end of it. Schmuck!”

  I coughed, felt myself blush. “Yeah, well, maybe I do need a few days off. But that’s why we’re going to the Bahamas.”

  Except for one detail, the plan went perfectly. We walked away from the Remington with still a full thirty minutes to wait before our flight left for Nassau. From time to time, as we strolled around the hall, buying cigarettes, changing a couple of thousand Swiss francs at the bank, I would glance over my shoulder in the direction of the machine in its anonymous black case. Each time I expected to see it no longer there; each time it had not moved. Finally I said, “I think I’ll take a last look at it, see if we’ve forgotten something.” I walked over to the machine and, on impulse, opened the case. Pasted inside the cover was a strip of yellow plastic tape with the name and address of the typewriter repair shop on upper Broadway, only a couple of blocks from my parents’ apartment on West End Avenue, where Dick had had the machine serviced the previous June. I peeled it off and carried it over to him. “007 your ass,” I said. “I ought to paste this across your nose.”

  There was something lacking in our game plan, some angle we had overlooked. It nagged at me like an aching molar throughout the flight to Nassau and during the long taxi ride from the airport to Paradise Island. I was hardly aware of the passing scene — the tropical foliage, the peeling, slatternly houses, the shady aisles of casuarina trees. My brain was a whirl of figures, of probabilities and possibilities; I flitted from Beverly Loo’s mind to Harold McGraw’s to Ralph Graves’s, trying to foresee their response to Howard’s new demands.

  Dick clutched the briefcase which contained one copy of the transcript — the most valuable one, for it had been hand-corrected by Howard to add to its authenticity. “Five years from now,” Dick had said jubilantly, “we can sell it to the University of Texas for $100,000.”

  I lowered my voice so the driver couldn’t hear, and told him what was troubling me. “Forget it for now,” he said. “We’ve been working our balls off all summer. Relax and let the well fill up again. You’ll find an answer.”

  It was sound advice but I couldn’t follow it. At odd intervals throughout the day the problem bobbed to the surface of my mind, and, like a kid jabbing a bruise to see if it still hurt, I poked and prodded at it.

  As soon as we had checked into our rooms at the Beach Inn, I changed into my trunks and went out to lie on the sand. That evening, dressed in our most respectable clothing, we took a cab to the Britannia Beach Hotel. We had agreed to gamble with $250 apiece. When that was gone, we said solemnly, we’d pack it up.

  Except for a few addicts at the slot machines and a handful of people at one of the roulette wheels, the pit was empty. No serious gamblers would appear until well after dinner. We had a couple of bourbon sours at the bar, reserved a table in one of the three dining rooms, then wandered down the corridor to the lobby of the hotel.

  “So this is where he lives,” Dick said, looking speculatively upward.

  “The sanctum sanctorum. Shall I try to get him on the phone?”

  “Call him and say, ‘Howie, baby, how ya been? This is your autobiographer, Irving, everybody’s favorite amanuensis.’” He grinned broadly. “Jesus! It’s too much! Half the time I feel I’m acting in a movie and the other half I’m dreaming.”

  We had a leisurely dinner, then strolled down the short flight steps into the pit. There were two crap tables working, both sparsely occupied. I found a spot at the end of the nearest one and handed the croupier a hundred-dollar bill.

  An hour later I was down to twenty dollars. Dick, who had been at the roulette wheel, moved in next to me, looking gloomy. My twenty lasted a few minutes longer, then we both stepped away from the table. “Well,” Dick said, “do we call it a night?”

  “Listen, I’ve got a little extra cash in my wallet. Sort of tucked away. It’s up to you. If you say no, we’ll head back to the hotel. Otherwise …”

  “I’ve got a thousand Swiss francs and about fifty English pounds,” Dick said. We smiled shamefacedly at each other, changed the pounds at the cashier’s cage, went back to the crap table, and bought another small stack of chips. The dice came to Dick. He dropped ten dollars on
the pass line and crapped out. “Your turn,” he muttered.

  “I never make money shooting,” I said, “only betting against the dice.”

  My first point was a six. Dick took the odds on the hard way, and three rolls later two threes came up. I let the ten ride, and Dick added ten more to it. “Go, man,” he whispered. “They’re getting hot.”

  I picked up the dice, rattled them a couple of times, and let fly. “Seven — a winner,” the croupier called.

  My next point was a ten. I rolled and rolled, neither making my point nor busting. A middle-aged man standing next to Dick put a small stack of twenty-five dollar chips on number ten. I picked up the dice. A five-dollar chip sailed past the corner of my eye and I heard Dick’s voice say: “Ten the hard way.” I threw the dice. Two fives. Dick looked at me with shining eyes, the collar of his shirt dark with sweat. “They’re talking to me!” he said excitedly.

  The middle-aged man evidently had confidence in me also. He called “Press” to the croupier — letting his winnings ride on the pass line and the numbers.

  “Bet on eleven,” Dick’s voice whispered in my ear. It was too late. The dice had already left my hand.

  “Eleven — a winner,” called the croupier.

  “Goddamit, listen to me!” Dick said. “I told you that they’re talking to me.”

  Seven passes later, we walked away from the table with both hands full of twenty-five-dollar chips, a total of $2,100, giving us a net profit of about $1,600. The middle-aged man who had bet with me, calling “Press” after each win, had won ten times that much. He filled both pockets of his jacket with chips, said, “Thank you, young man, that was good shooting.” and strolled casually away, with not a hair out of place.

  We drank two double cognacs apiece at the bar, then took a cab back to the Beach Inn. As we were crossing the bridge to Paradise Island, the answer came to me.

  “Press.” I said. “That it. We’re going to press.”

  Dick came into my room and watched while I dashed off, on Beach Inn stationery, two notes in Howard’s cursive script. One of them gave McGraw-Hill permission to publish the book as an autobiography. The other was addressed to me. It read:

  9-11-71

  Clifford Irving —

  In the event that no agreement is reached between you and McGraw-Hill by 9-21-71 concerning the publication of my autobiography, I authorize you to offer my autobiography for sale to another publisher on the terms to which you and I have agreed in our Letter of Agreement, and also to show them the manuscript in your possession. This authorization expires 9-30-71 at which time both copies of this manuscript are to be returned to me.

  Yours truly.

  Howard Hughes

  “What’s the point of that?” Dick said.

  “Watch. You’ll see.” I dug around in my leather briefcase and found the H. R. Hughes checkbook. After three attempts I was satisfied with the check I had made out to McGraw-Hill for $100,000.

  “I get it,” Dick said, admiringly. “If they refuse to up the ante, you’re going to offer them the check.” His voice took on a note of alarm. “But suppose they accept it? What’s left in the account? About two hundred bucks?”

  “I’ll show them the check, not give it to them. Howard’s note gives me nine days to find another publisher. In those nine days we can funnel a hundred grand back into the account — some of the loot you’ve got stashed away, some of mine, some from Edith’s Merrill Lynch account — and then give them the check. That takes us off the hook, and we’ve still got a manuscript we can sell or turn into a novel. But that’s only if they’re dumb enough to turn down the book.”

  “Not a chance,” Dick said. “No one could be that dumb.”

  Chapter 11

  The French Quarter

  We checked into the Elysee Hotel on a Sunday evening. Beverly had reserved a suite for me — the Geisha Room — but one look at its oriental trappings convinced me it was inappropriate for the occasion. Something more austere was called for, so I changed to a suite on a lower floor. This one, though called the French Quarter, was decorated in a businesslike manner. In addition, it contained a king-sized bed, which I felt was necessary; I had a premonition of restless nights where I might need rolling room. Dick took an adjoining room with a connecting door that could only be locked from my side.

  “Don’t come through there to find out how things are going,” I cautioned him. “And don’t eavesdrop. Someone’s liable to think it’s a closet and you’d look pretty silly with Ralph Graves’s jacket hanging from your ear.”

  But on the second morning, Tuesday, that was almost precisely what happened. Dave Maness of Life opened the connecting door, looking for a place to put his coat. Dick was downstairs having breakfast, but his big yellow suitcase stood open against the opposite wall. I hauled Maness away from the door and muttered something about asking the management to lock it. “This is a hell of a security setup,” Maness said, annoyed. “Whoever’s next door could come in here and steal the transcripts.”

  Beverly had called me on Sunday night, hoping that we could have dinner and a drink and that she could have a quick look at the precious transcript. “I’m exhausted,” I told her. “Come for breakfast tomorrow morning, before the gang gets here.”

  She arrived at 8:30 A.M., by which time I had set out the two copies of the transcript, each one packed tightly into two boxes I had obtained from the stationery store in Pompano Beach. I filled her in on recent events for the next hour, until Ralph Graves and Dave Maness arrived. The last time I had seen them, in June, they had been friendly to the point of unctuousness. This time they shook hands briefly, threw their coats down and asked to see the transcript. Their greetings were so cool that they gave me a sudden feeling of dread. I didn’t understand it until three nights later, when Beverly told me: “Your last call from Florida did it. I finally had to tell Ralph and Dave that Hughes had raised his price. I knew they’d think it was a holdup. I was afraid they’d back out.”

  “A holdup?” I asked. “You mean on Hughes’s part.”

  “No. A holdup by you. And I was right. Dave Maness read your letters and said, ‘Something’s funny. I don’t like the smell of it.’”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He thought it might all be a hoax,” Beverly explained.

  “A hoax? He said that?”

  “He said it and he believed it. Don’t forget, he hadn’t read a word of the transcript. We only had your say-so that it was 950 pages. You said it was great material, but no one was ready to trust your judgment. Dave thought you were really pulling a fast one.”

  “That’s frightening,” I said, and I meant it. “Jesus Christ! And you didn’t even tell me.”

  “I tried — what do you think I was hinting at when you called from Florida? You wanted me to tell Ralph and Dave and I kept saying no. But you insisted. They got furious. They said, ‘He may be your author but he’s not ours, and it looks fishy. I can tell you, we’re going to take a very careful look at that transcript.’”

  Maness sat behind the big desk in the living room, while Graves shared the adjacent love seat with a box of transcript. He and Maness took one copy. Beverly parceled out the other to Robert Stewart and Albert Leventhal, both of whom arrived shortly after ten o’clock. I ordered two pots of coffee, smoked one Gauloise after another, and tried to read a Travis McGee novel. After less than an hour I gave up and began leaning over Beverly Loo’s shoulder. Before the readings began I made some mumbled introduction, to the effect that the beginning parts were on the dull side. “Hughes was a little stiff at first. You’ll see what I mean. He wasn’t used to this kind of interrogation. During those first sessions …”

  “We’ll read it,” Graves said curtly.

  I knew it was good stuff. We had checked it out thoroughly for errors, we had read and re-read it in Ibiza and Pompano Beach. But suddenly I was able to think of a dozen things that no intelligent and knowledgeable reader could swallow: Hughes wanderin
g around anonymously in Ethiopia, and going south by plane and canoe to meet Doctor Schweitzer? Hughes and Hemingway? Hughes flying reconnaissance missions out of England in 1944? Moreover, no one as yet had challenged my inability to produce even a single cassette of the actual taped interviews. I had told the publishers that Howard refused to part with them, but I had given no reason other than his paranoia. In Pompano Beach, I said, when I was transcribing, the bungalow had been under 24-hour-a-day observation by trusted (but anonymous) Hughes aides.

  “There’s some interesting material in the appendix,” I said, trying to break their concentration and stifle my own growing panic. But the best I got was a brief nod from Leventhal.

  I smoked, I poured coffee, I hopped in and out of Travis McGee’s unlikely adventures, I peered frequently over Beverly’s shoulder.

  “You’re nervous,” she said.

  “Tired, tired,” I explained. “I think I’ll go inside and lie down.”

  That didn’t work, either. After ten minutes I was back at her shoulder. “Let me show you something,” I said. I leafed through the second box of transcript and pulled out pages 894–905, the anecdotes about Bob Gross being caught shoplifting a package of Oreo cookies from a California supermarket and Howard’s being dunned for cookies while he was shooting Scarface. “Read this,” I said jovially, “if you want a chuckle.”

  Beverly read it, broke into laughter, and passed it to Leventhal and Stewart. They read and they laughed, too. “Take a look at this, Ralph,” Leventhal said, shoving it at Graves.