Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  The Pro could have remained in that vault all night without getting a full inventory. Only three items really caught his attention. A seven-millimeter solid silver pistol with a card that read, “Captured from Hermann Goering.” A pair of German SS binoculars in a black leather case. And a huge cut-glass bowl bearing the inscription To Howard Hughes from Hubert Horatio Humphrey, with the vice-president’s seal etched below. He left that behind, taking only the pistol and the binoculars.

  It seemed pointless to attack the seventeen remaining vaults.

  The Pro instead moved down the hallway, forcing a couple of doors along the way just to make it look more like a routine prowl, left his partner to check out the antiques collection, and as if drawn by some supernatural force returned to the little room where he had discovered Hughes’s old clothes, wasting valuable time staring again at that haunted closet.

  Finally, he started up to the second floor, where the secret Hughes papers lay waiting, where the mystery man had been sent hours earlier, suddenly quite worried again about this half-forgotten stranger and what plans of his own he might have for the break-in, or for the Pro.

  But halfway upstairs on the landing he once more encountered that oddly placed wall safe and had to bust in. He quickly punched out the combination lock, opened the steel door, and discovered a whole hidden room, ten feet wide, fifteen feet long, but only four and a half feet high. He crawled in.

  The room was filled with green-and-brown boxes, Campbell’s soup cartons, perhaps two hundred of them stacked wall to wall, all of them stuffed with old canceled checks. Personal checks signed by Hughes and made out to various restaurants and nightclubs—the Brown Derby, the Stork Club, and El Morocco—corporate checks from RKO and TWA, thousands upon thousands of checks from the 1920s through the 1950s, all neatly piled in the soup cartons.

  They were clearly of no value, but the Pro was entranced. He spent fifteen minutes hunched over in that crawlspace, poring through the checks like some addled bookkeeper until his back ached so badly he had to leave.

  Up on the second floor, the mystery man and the Jiggler still stood guard shoulder to shoulder. “We’ll clear a hundred grand easy,” the Pro told them as he went back to work.

  For forty-five minutes he and his partner struggled with the Romaine paymaster’s safe, unsuccessfully trying to punch, peel, or pry it open. Finally, they had to lug the acetylene tanks upstairs and burn their way in, turning the small office into a smoke-filled blast furnace, but pocketing another $10,000 in cash as well as Hughes’s personal credit cards, his old pilot’s license, and an expired passport. In a secretary’s office that adjoined the room, they pried open a file cabinet and found a few hundred dollars more.

  The Pro and his partner were sopping wet now from the heat of the torch work, from the sheer physical labor, and from the tension; and they were right down to the wire for time. It was almost four A.M. now—the deadline they had set for their getaway—and they knew that the cleaning crew arrived before dawn. His partner wanted to bust some more safes, but the Pro wanted only to get the secret papers and get out.

  They headed for the big conference room, where Mr. Inside now joined them. Gesturing toward the documents spread out on the mahogany table, he said, “Let’s take these.” It was the first time anyone had said anything about the papers. It seemed almost an afterthought.

  “I’ll hold on to them,” the inside man continued, still entirely offhand, “and if anything goes wrong, use them for blackmail, keep them for insurance to buy our way out.”

  “Okey-doke,” said the Pro, as he gathered up the billionaire’s personal papers from the table and swept them into a big cardboard box he had found in the Jane Russell room downstairs.

  “There are more in those cabinets,” said Mr. Inside, pointing to four locked five-drawer file cabinets standing side by side against the rear wall, next to a row of windows that looked out on the Romaine parking lot.

  The Pro busted the locks easily with a screwdriver and opened drawer after drawer stuffed with thousands more white typewritten documents and yellow handwritten memos, grabbing armful after armful of confidential folders and dropping them all into cardboard Transfile cases until the cabinets were bare. The Pro, his partner, and Mr. Inside carted them all downstairs to a first-floor warehouse space that backed onto a rear loading dock, and on the last trip down took along the Jiggler and the mystery man.

  It was well past four in the morning now, well past their deadline, as they all gathered around a Ping-Pong table in the large open warehouse area. The Pro emptied his blue gym bag onto the table, dumped out the cash, and made the big count. It all came to just under $80,000.

  “Not exactly a million, but a damn good night’s work,” said the Pro, and divided the loot into five equal stacks. Everybody took one, the Pro taking his last. About $500 remained in loose bills. He pushed it toward the others, and while they hesitated, the mystery man quickly reached out and pocketed it all.

  Unzipping his fly, the Pro took a leak. His partner and the Jiggler also urinated on the floor. And having looted and defiled the sacred Hughes sanctuary, they loaded the billionaire’s secret papers into a stolen Ford van and vanished into the night.

  Holed up alone at his hideout, the Pro had no idea what forces he and his cohorts had unleashed. He had no idea that they had hit Romaine just days after the SEC and Maheu subpoenas, that Watergate investigators were also after the files, that the president, the CIA, and the Mafia were all now suspect, and he also had no idea who was really behind the break-in.

  But he did know who had the stolen secrets. He did.

  It had been a tense ride away from Romaine. With his partner at the wheel, the Pro sat up front holding a gun on his lap, keeping a constant eye on the mystery man, who was sitting in the back next to the Jiggler, his hand in a brown paper bag gripping a pistol that lay on top of his share of the loot. Behind them all, in the rear of the van, lay Transfiles and cartons filled with the stolen documents.

  The stranger was supposed to get the papers, take them on behalf of Mr. Inside, who had gone his own way after the heist. That was all understood. But who was this mystery man, and what else did he have in mind?

  All night the Pro had been waiting for the stranger to make his move. Now, at close quarters in the getaway van, it felt like High Noon. They were all on edge from the heist, the adrenaline really pumping now as they made their escape, watching for the cops, waiting to hear the wail of the sirens, see the flashing red lights; but mainly they were watching each other, wondering who would start shooting first.

  And all the while the Pro’s mind was racing. Why had he been brought in on this job? There was nothing of value in the vaults, and they hardly needed a professional to bust into some filing cabinets. Did they want a vault torched just to divert the police? Divert them from what? Why was there no alarm, why were keys for the entire building just lying in a desk drawer, why had everything been made so damn easy?

  And, above all, why had the secret papers been so conveniently assembled and left right out in the open? Had Hughes plotted to “steal” his own files, only to have them actually stolen? Because whatever was up, the Pro had already decided to turn the tables on whoever was behind the heist.

  It was a notion that had begun to take hold from the moment he first saw the papers, that had grown along with his suspicions about his cohorts, that had become a fixation as he became increasingly obsessed with Hughes, and that had finally seized him in the last moments of the break-in when Mr. Inside suddenly announced that he would keep the papers. At that instant, the Pro knew that the secrets, not the money, had been the true object of the break-in all along and decided to hold on to the papers himself.

  Now, in the van, there was no one but the mystery man to stop him. The Pro looked back again at his adversary. The stranger shifted nervously, his hand still inside the bag, still gripping the pistol. The Pro knew he could take this guy, whoever he was. And whoever was behind him, whoever had masterm
inded this job, wasn’t in the van.

  They were headed north into the valley, going to Encino, but the Pro was not about to drive into a trap, go to some unknown place where anyone—cops or robbers—might be waiting. Instead, they stopped at a street corner and the Pro suggested that the stranger get out.

  “What about the papers?” asked the mystery man. He was clearly scared shitless. The Pro, still holding his gun on his lap, said that he would personally deliver them to Mr. Inside. They stared at each other for a moment. The stranger took a quick look at the other two men, the Jiggler and the Pro’s partner. Outnumbered three-to-one, he didn’t argue.

  It wasn’t until the Pro was alone in the van, alone with the papers, driving home as the sun came up, that it really hit him. He actually had all of Howard Hughes’s secrets. He locked himself inside his garage and stayed up all that day and all through the next night listening for radio reports of the burglary and reading through thousands of private Hughes papers, getting totally drawn into the power of that strange secret world.

  The following morning he left to meet with Mr. Inside, as they had arranged, at a Los Angeles coffee shop. On the way, he picked up a copy of the Times. The heist was front-page news: “GANG FLEES WITH $60,000 AFTER 4-HOUR RAID ON HUGHES OFFICE.” There was no mention of stolen papers.

  But as he sat in his car reading the newspaper, the Pro discovered that this was not the first Hughes break-in, that there had been a string of recent burglaries at Hughes’s offices around the country, that just days before he was brought in on this caper the office in Encino had been hit and a voice scrambler stolen. Encino. The same place he had dumped the mystery man.

  Were the break-ins connected? Who was behind it all? What were they really after? And who, the Pro wondered, was going to come after him?

  He was relieved to find Mr. Inside waiting alone at the coffee shop. “Are the papers safe?” the inside man immediately asked. “I want them back.” He was tense, but the Pro had put him at ease simply by showing up, and now he readily agreed to turn over the hot documents.

  “Of course,” said the Pro. “No problem.” He made detailed arrangements for the transfer—time, date, place—and immediately cut off all further contact.

  He bought three steamer trunks at three different shopping centers, filled them with the Hughes papers, padlocked each, and put them all into storage at three different warehouses under three different assumed names. All except for one manila folder of handwritten memos, which he stashed away in a hidden panel in the basement of his hideout.

  He had no set plan. Just a thought. Hughes would pay well to get back his papers. The Pro decided to ransom them for one million dollars.

  But it wasn’t really money he was after anymore. He wanted the million, all right, but what he really wanted was the chance to go one-on-one with Howard Hughes. In his fantasy, the Pro now saw himself, a man from the streets, sitting at the same table with the richest man in America, sitting there as an equal, knowing that he had the hidden billionaire’s most prized possession, all his secrets, all in his own handwriting, knowing that in this one game not Hughes but the Pro would be holding all the cards.

  It became his obsession. He wanted above all to play pair poker with Howard Hughes.

  Ten days after the break-in, a man calling himself Chester Brooks phoned Romaine. He asked to speak to Kay Glenn, Nadine Henley, or Chester Davis. Attorney Davis was contacted but said he didn’t know a Mr. Brooks.

  Two days later, Chester Brooks called back. This time he added, “It is about the burglary and it is urgent.” And he offered convincing proof. He invited the Hughes executives to take a look at the white envelope on the green trash can under the tree in the park across from their other office in Encino.

  Nadine Henley looked out her window and spotted the envelope. Fearing a booby trap, she called the police bomb squad, which retrieved the package. It was definitely explosive.

  Inside was a memo in Hughes’s handwriting on a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper. Addressed to Robert Maheu, the June 6, 1969, memo read:

  Bob—

  I would be ecstatic at the prospect of purchasing Parvin in the same manner as Air West. Do you think this really could be accomplished? I just assumed that the cries of monopoly would rule it out.

  If this really could be accomplished, I think it would be a ten strike and might change all of my plans.

  Please reply. Most urgent,

  Howard

  The document not only established Chester Brooks’s credentials—thus providing the first lead to the missing papers—but also raised some troubling questions. Hughes and two of his top aides were at that very moment under criminal investigation in the Air West case. And here the billionaire was suggesting that Parvin-Dohrmann, which owned several Las Vegas casinos, be acquired “in the same manner as Air West.”

  Moreover, Parvin was then a known Mob front controlled by Sidney Korshak, a Beverly Hills attorney identified by the Justice Department as one of the country’s most powerful organized-crime leaders. Hughes had dealt with him before, and Korshak’s name was to surface again in the Romaine break-in saga.

  But, for the moment, it was the mysterious Chester Brooks who held center stage. He had instructed the Hughes executives to signal their interest by placing a classified ad in the Los Angeles Times with the message “APEX-OK“ and a telephone number written backward. It was done. Three days later he called again and spoke to Nadine Henley in a conversation recorded by the police.

  First Brooks had a message for Hughes: “It may please him to know that this is not part of any conspiracy through the Maheu people, and we wish this man no personal harm of any, any kind.”

  Next he tried to put some heat on Henley: “There was quite a bit more money that was said to be taken than actually was. You might bring that to his attention. It seems that maybe he’s got some people in his own company who dabbled somewhat.”

  And then Brooks got down to business: “The total price we’re interested in procuring is one million dollars. We want it in two separate drops. The first one of which will be $500,000 for half of the documents. The second one will follow in a three-day period.”

  He concluded the ransom demand with a warning: “If there is at any time any breach of trust, the negotiations will stop at once.

  “We’ll call you tomorrow and you can either give us a yes or a no,” added Brooks.

  Henley stalled for time. “This is not money I could just pull out of my hat,” she said, noting that Hughes himself would have to be contacted. “It takes me a little time to get in touch with the man, sometimes, you know.”

  “Well, that’s your responsibility,” replied Brooks. “We won’t call but one more time.”

  As arranged, Brooks called back the next day for Henley’s answer. The police were waiting. A helicopter and a fleet of squad cars were poised on alert, all set to close in as soon as the call could be traced. They got the first three digits in just a few seconds, started to focus the dragnet on North Hollywood … and never got any closer than that.

  Nadine Henley was not there to receive the call. “All righty,” said Chester Brooks, and hung up. He never called again.

  The Pro was left sitting with his million-dollar haul. He decided to wait Hughes out. Wait until he was ready to sit down at the table and ante up for the big game. Wait until Hughes came after him. He waited for days, he waited for weeks, he waited for months, all the while hearing his TV blare news of Hughes, Maheu, Nixon, Rebozo, Watergate, wondering which if any of them had ordered the break-in, watching all these forces swirl about the hidden billionaire while he sat there with all of the man’s secrets.

  And while the Pro waited, unknown to him, the biggest secret of all began to leak out.

  When the final ransom call came, Nadine Henley and the entire Hughes high command were aboard a mystery ship in Long Beach harbor, at the world’s most exclusive bon-voyage party.

  And while they waited in vain for Chester Brooks
to call back, the mystery ship—the Hughes Glomar Explorer—set sail on a top-secret mission to a point in the Pacific 750 miles northwest of Hawaii.

  The Glomar was known to the world as a futuristic deep-sea mining vessel that Hughes had built to scoop up the oceans’ vast untapped mineral wealth. Kay Glenn knew better. The mining venture was simply a cover. And the three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar ship actually belonged not to Hughes but to the CIA.

  Only a handful of people knew that, and on July 1 Glenn discovered something none of them knew.

  A document outlining the Glomar’s true mission was missing. It was apparently now in the hands of the unknown burglars who had looted Romaine a month earlier. The security breach could not have come at a more sensitive time. The Glomar had just arrived at its destination and was about to reach a giant claw three miles underwater to recover a sunken Russian submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  Glenn’s boss, Bill Gay, called CIA Director William Colby to give him the news. Colby called FBI Director Clarence Kelley. Kelley called William Sullivan, head of the Bureau’s Los Angeles office. And Sullivan went directly to LAPD headquarters to confer with Los Angeles Police Chief Ed Davis.

  When Sullivan emerged from his secret meeting with Chief Davis, he went downstairs to brief the detectives handling the Romaine investigation. He told them that “national security” was involved. He did not mention the Glomar or the Russian sub. But he did instruct the cops not to look at the stolen Hughes papers if they recovered them.

  “We were supposed to close our eyes, seal the documents in a pouch, and deliver them unread to the FBI,” said one detective who was at the meeting. “That’s actually what they told us. I don’t know how we were expected to find the stuff with our eyes closed.”

  Romaine was no longer a local police case. While lower-level officers were left to stumble about blindly, CIA general counsel John Warner met secretly with Chief Davis and Los Angeles District Attorney Joseph Busch.