The Hoax

by Clifford Irving

  “What’s the matter with you?” Annie said crossly. “I’ve told you three times to put the tank across your knees when you’re sitting on the bottom. You’re not listening to me, Clifford. This is a very important part of the course. Suppose that happened in fifty feet of water, in the ocean? You could drown.”

  I felt half-drowned already, but I apologized. “I’ve got a lot on my mind today. Don’t you read the newspapers?”

  An hour later she was in my room, sitting cross-legged on the couch, poking through the various news clips after having slipped her contact lenses into place. I came out of the bathroom, showered, scrubbed, dechlorinated, and wearing freshly pressed khakis.

  “Gee,” she said, “how did you ever get involved with a man like that? Is he really so rich? Is he a nut or something?”

  “I can take you to dinner tonight and give you a crash course in Howard Hughes. And if you’re a spy for Intertel I’ll make sure you self-destruct within five seconds. In the meantime I have to call New York. So be a good girl and go dive for a pearl somewhere. I’ll pick you up at eight o’clock.”

  What remained of the afternoon I spent on the telephone, talking alternately to Albert Leventhal, Beverly Loo, Robert Stewart, Ralph Graves, and then to Leventhal again. Confusion was clearly the order of the day, in New York as well as Florida. “We’re not upset,” Beverly kept repeating. “We’re not upset, but Albert is panicking. He put his name on the press release and his phone’s rung nearly a hundred times so far today. He’s never had so many telephone calls in his life. He’s very nervous.”

  Albert got on the wire: “I’m not upset. I think we should call a press conference. Every newspaper and TV station wants a statement from you. Even the BBC’s ready to run a crew over from London. I think you should fly up here this evening and we’ll schedule it for tomorrow.”

  Robert Stewart then clarified the situation. “Everyone’s in a panic except me. I think it’s the best publicity we could ever get. I’m sure Hughes is just chuckling away, having fun. Everyone’s in a panic except me.”

  “That’s because your telephone’s not ringing,” I said. “What the hell is going on? Robert, they want me to come up for a press conference, but I’ve got work to do and I’m on tap for Octavio, for a final meeting.”

  “There are some newspaper people who don’t even believe that you exist,” Robert explained.

  Graves was next, and he was calm. “I think this press conference is a terrible mistake. For every question you can answer, there’ll be a dozen you’ll have to duck. And if you tell the full story of your meetings with Hughes we won’t have any article to print.”

  “Ralph, I couldn’t agree with you more. They’ll go away more frustrated than enlightened and they’ll rap me over the knuckles. But I just promised McGraw-Hill I’d fly up tonight. Will you call them, please, and make a joint decision? And then one of you please call me back and tell me what it is.”

  “There’s just one thing. I think we could short-circuit a lot of unnecessary controversy if you ask Octavio to issue a statement contradicting the denials of the Tool Company and the Byoir Agency. Or at least get him to tell them to shut up.”

  I promised to do my best. George Gordon Holmes was supposed to contact me that evening, and I would explain the urgency of the situation.

  An hour later Beverly called. “Ralph told us he spoke to you, and we’ve talked it over. He’s probably right. They have more experience in the public relations area than we have. We’ll hold off on the press conference for a while.”

  “Marvelous. What does Albert say to that?”

  “He can hardly speak. He’s losing his voice answering the telephone.”

  “Listen, Bev, I’ve got to hang up. I’ve got a date.”

  “With Octavio?”

  “No, with a blonde.”

  “I don’t believe you. Everyone up here is in a panic, and your name’s splashed over every newspaper in the country, and every reporter in the world is out hunting for you — and what’s more, you’re supposed to be working! You wouldn’t dare go out with a blonde tonight!”

  “Would you believe a brunette?”

  “No, they’re not your type. But I’m glad you were only joking.”

  That evening at dinner with Anne Baxter I started to worry in earnest. The denial had come too quickly and with far too much vigor. Arriving in New York, there would be questions followed by more questions and to some of them I might not have such ready answers as in the past. The press conference would almost certainly take place and the reporters, as Ralph Graves had intimated, would hardly be the gentlefolk I had dealt with so far. They had no vested interest in either trusting or believing me. Annie prattled on about scuba diving, blue holes, staghorn coral, and the places she dreamed of seeing, like the Great Barrier Reef and Buck Island off the coast of St. Croix in the Virgins. We ate at a restaurant called The Cattleman and I chewed my way halfheartedly through a pound of rare sirloin and from time to time tried to match her exuberance, but my mind wasn’t there. The check was winging its way to Zurich. It would take two weeks to clear, and during those two weeks anything could happen. They could stop the check. They could hire detectives to be at the bank when Edith walked in to cash it. They could give me a very rough time if Hughes refused to silence the Byoir Agency. The concept of they began to take on gigantic, threatening proportions. They were everywhere. They would be out to get me. I felt increasingly uneasy, a budding convert to paranoia. Howard, now I understand!

  Every time we had been in trouble we had managed somehow to turn it to our advantage. Our luck had held, and when it was going good, as in Pompano Beach and Paradise Island, we had pressed it. All right so far! That was our motto — tongue in cheek to an extent, because in the tale the pavement is looming up to make jelly of the plummeting man; and we had no intention of ending up that way. But we were near that pavement now, and we needed to spread a net …

  Annie and I went back to her apartment, had a drink, and then I said, “Look, I’m no good for company tonight. I’ve got to get back to the Newport and work. Can you meet me at the pool tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock?”

  I was at the desk of the Newport by midnight and I cabled Edith: PROBLEMS TOOLCO HAS DENIED AUTHENTICITY OF BOOK STOP CALL ME IMMEDIATELY LOVE CLIFF. I went upstairs to bed, and lay in the dark listening to the waves thrash against the unseen shore and the beat of the calypso band by the swimming pool. At two o’clock in the morning the idea came to me. With the time difference it was eight o’clock in the morning in Spain. I put through a call to Dick.

  “We’ve got troubles,” I said. “Do you have any idea what’s happening?”

  “The Tribune hasn’t arrived from Paris. Where are you? What’s going on?” I gave him all I knew, which wasn’t much. “Then it’s not so bad,” Dick said. “Just hang in there and get the hell out of New York as fast as you can.”

  “But it could get worse. We don’t know what they’ve got in store for us.” I explained that I had cabled Edith to call me. “I want her to go to the studio and get that copy of the Octavio letter, the original one to Chester and Bill. I haven’t got any handwriting samples with me. I think I’ve got to write another letter. He’s got to kick the Tool Company in the ass.”

  “No,” Dick said, alarmed. “Let it lie. Don’t do anything rash. Do you want me to fly over there and meet you? You sound like you’re panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking. But McGraw-Hill is. Goddamit, you don’t understand — this thing’s page one news over here! It’s on every TV newscast. I’m going up to New York and my head’s going to be on the chopping block.”

  “I’ll come,” Dick decided. “You need help.”

  He was right. I needed help, I needed someone to talk to, and he was the only man in the world I could turn to because he was the only man who knew the truth. “Let me wait for Edith’s call. Then I’ll get back to you.”

  Again, the day was spent on the telephone. With all the publi
city so far, and undoubtedly more to come, I was worried about staying at the Elysee. I carried too many papers with me, legitimate and otherwise, that might be of interest to Intertel and McGraw-Hill alike. I called Marty Ackerman in New York and explained the problem. “Stay with us,” he volunteered. “The house is burglarproof.”

  Edith called next, and I instructed her to go to the studio, find the key to the file cabinet under the Zapotec mask and dig out the “Dear Chester and Bill” letter. “Never mind why, but I need it. Dick will pick it up on Saturday.” Then I got back to Dick in Palma with instructions. “Bring the letter. We’ll have a P & P session in New York and decide what to do. I’ll be at Marty Ackerman’s and I’ll book you into the Commodore Hotel.”

  “Don’t say anything to Ackerman,” he warned me.

  “For Christ’s sake, no. Just call me from the airport when you get in on Sunday evening.”

  McGraw-Hill was next on my list. I had lain awake in bed half the night preparing the scenario. “Hughes is sick,” I told Beverly. “How sick, I don’t know, but I do know that something funny’s going on. I spoke to George Gordon Holmes a few minutes ago and he’s in a flap. He’s the original unflappable man, but he’s flapping and I can only guess the reason why. I told him I had to see the old man — that’s what Holmes always calls him — and he said he’d try to arrange it, but he couldn’t guarantee it. He’s going to call me back.”

  Beverly dropped her voice. “Is he … dying?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you back.”

  Anne Baxter arrived at three o’clock and flopped on to the living room couch. “The season hasn’t even started and I’m exhausted.”

  “So am I. How would you like to get away for the weekend?”

  “Where to?”

  “It’s serious business, Annie. Can I trust you?”

  “You can trust me,” she said eagerly.

  “I’ve got to meet Howard Hughes somewhere. I don’t know where yet. One of his men is going to tell me. Probably in the Bahamas.”

  “He isn’t going for the diving. It’ll be wherever he says. You go have a cup of coffee, or go home. I’ll call you when I know.”

  It was Lincoln’s Birthday weekend all over again. I called Eastern and National and BWIA and Pan Am and Caribair. Nassau was fully booked. Flights to Puerto Rico were wait-listed. I could get to Jamaica and there were rooms at the Hilton but it would cost me an additional $150 in air fare.

  Eastern called back. “Mr. Irving, we have two cancellations on the Friday flight to St. Croix.”

  “I’ll take them. What about a hotel?”

  “It won’t be difficult. For you and your wife?”

  “The other party is named Mr. Baxter. Two singles or two doubles, I don’t care.”

  I called Annie at her apartment. “It’s all set. I heard from the man. It’s St. Croix. Do you still want to go?”

  “St. Croix? That’s fantastic? That’s where Buck Island is! That’s the best diving in the Caribbean! Will we have time to dive or will you be with Hughes all the time?”

  “Annie, this is an open line. Don’t even mention the name. The code word is Octavio. To answer your question, yes, we’ll have time to dive. Bring all the gear and meet me here tomorrow at five o’clock.”

  I called Beverly Loo at McGraw-Hill. “I heard from Holmes. He’s still flapping. I don’t know what the hell is really going on, but he said he thinks he can arrange a meeting. I told him whatever happened I had to be in New York on Sunday night and he said not to worry. He wouldn’t guarantee I’d see Octavio but he’d do his best and he’d definitely contact me. I’m supposed to catch a flight tomorrow afternoon and then sit in some hotel and wait. Bev, I don’t want this to leak, or the press will be there in full force. You know what that means. Octavio won’t show.”

  “You can trust me,” she said.

  “St. Croix.”

  “St. Croix! That’s out in the Virgin Islands, isn’t it? Why out there?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he likes scuba diving. Maybe that’s where he really lives,” I said, finding a sudden inspiration. “He’s sick, so if he were moving for medical reasons he certainly wouldn’t go to an out-of-the-way island. Maybe that’s where his private doctors are. Maybe, Bev, that’s home.”

  “And you’ve got to sit around in a hotel room and wait for him to call?”

  I laughed. “I’ll take that blonde along for company.”

  Beverly said tartly, “At least you’ve still got your sense of humor. Octavio would love that. Just make sure that you’re here on Monday morning. You’re the star of this show now and you can’t stay in hiding.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised. “I won’t let you down.”

  After I hung up I worked until midnight, when the last part of the manuscript was done. I stacked the papers, tore up the last bit of transcript, dumped it in the wastebasket, and then went downstairs to the bar for a drink. I felt weak and I was tired to the bone. It was a weariness that struck me without warning and the second cognac had no power to dispel it. I was in Miami Beach, in the bar of the Newport Beach Motel, and I didn’t know why. I was alone at a bar surrounded by voices that couldn’t reach me. On Monday morning I would be in New York, and there was no emotion I could feel except a dull dread; what a soldier must feel when he goes into battle outnumbered and poorly armed, but knowing he has no choice, he has to go, has to fight, duck, hide, fight again, and find rest wherever and whenever he can.

  I had a last cognac and I knew that what I wanted more than anything, right then, was to be at home: to be back in Ibiza with Edith and my kids and my funky, funny, cluttered house; to be at the core of my life and not dangling on the periphery. I paid the bar bill and wandered through the lobby with its sparkling colors and announcements of current attractions in the discotheque. The core was back there on Ibiza with Edith. Hers was all the love that any sane man could need or want in one life. The rest was a game. I had to play. But when the din was too loud or I was too tired to go on, I wanted to go home.

  I couldn’t go home, and I had to be in New York on Monday morning. And in the meantime I would fly to St. Croix with long-limbed blonde Annie, who was easy to be with and with whom I might bury a ghost. And I would pretend to wait for a man who wasn’t there.

  Chapter 14

  Confusion to Our Enemies

  The weather was flawless; all storms were internal. Three or four times a day Annie stopped at the front desk of the King Christian Hotel in Christiansted, on the waterfront, to ask for messages: “Are you positive no one’s telephoned to Mr. Irving?” Each time the clerk or the manager would shake his head wearily.

  “I can’t understand it,” Annie said to me.

  “Neither can I.”

  “Let’s go diving. We’ll get down to fifty feet and an old gray-haired man will come creeping out from behind a clump of brain coral. Then you’ll meet Howard Hughes.”

  We did that, but the only gray-haired man we met was the genial diving instructor who whipped us out in his speedboat to the reef off Buck Island. We floated lazily for two hours among the tropical fish and the coral and then returned to the King Christian. Annie checked at the front desk. No one had called.

  “You don’t seem worried,” she said, puzzled.

  “I am, I am. But there’s nothing I can do. I just have to wait.”

  By Sunday afternoon, to my feigned amazement, neither Howard nor George Gordon Holmes had telephoned or contacted me. I had no choice but to board Pan Am’s afternoon flight to New York. Annie had decided to stay on in St. Croix an extra day. The relationship was over as quickly and casually as it had begun.

  “Will I see you again?”

  “Inshallah,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If I ever come back to Florida. Take care, Annie. You’re a good girl.”

  She looked a little miffed, then realized that I meant it, and she smiled as I got into the taxi for the airport.

  Marty Acker
man had one of the most elegant homes in New York, a private white-fronted house on Park Avenue near 38th Street. Its seven stories were paneled in teak, the walls covered with Picassos and Dufys and old Saturday Evening Post covers, its sanctity guarded by closed-circuit television and one of the most elaborate burglarproof systems in the city — to the point where if you opened the wrong window at the wrong time the alarm sounded in both the protection agency and the local police precinct house. Marty installed me in a suite on the fifth floor and said: “Make yourself at home,” and went out to dinner with his wife, Diane.

  Dick called at ten o’clock Sunday evening, a few hours after my arrival. He was already unpacked in his room at the Commodore. “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Beat. But I’ve seen the papers. I think I’d better come over.”

  After I had showed him through the house we settled down in the study on the fifth floor. I brought him up to date and said, “I think Howard’s got to write another letter to Harold McGraw.”

  Dick shook his head violently. “I knew you were going to go off the goddam deep end here in New York. That’s why I came over.” He argued with me for the next hour, and in the end I had to admit that his points were more sane than mine. The decision of the handwriting expert had clinched McGraw-Hill’s belief that they were dealing with the real man. To take any further risks made no sense. The check was already in Zurich and probably by now on its way to Chase Manhattan for clearance. Moreover, we had had one extraordinary break — perfectly in keeping with the other absurdities that marked the history of the whole affair, but no less extraordinary. Noah Dietrich, from whom we expected the most trouble and suspicion, had told The Los Angeles Times that in his opinion the material was genuine. “I heard,” he said, “there was a writer, Irving, who had been invited by Hughes to the Bahamas.” He went on, according to other reports, to reveal that I had met Howard in the Britannia Beach Hotel and interviewed him with a glass partition between us.