Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  “There are many refinements of this deal that could be worked out as you go along.

  “Do you know why I think this kind of play would catch on? Because men, simply by nature, like to show off. I can just see some minor league V.I.P. out to dinner with some very attractive young protagonist of the opposite sex, and he picks up the phone, brought to his table at Twenty-One, and he makes a five or ten thousand dollar bet over the phone.

  “Then he turns to his girl and says: ‘Well, I just won ten thousand in Vegas—let’s spend it!’

  “Look how that would impress the female! She would reason that he must be a pretty wealthy and a pretty trustworthy man to be able to persuade the Las Vegas gambling fraternity to extend credit and take his bet orally, by phone, all the way across the country.

  “Now, I urge you not to disclose anything—not to anyone—not even the slightest hint—of this ‘play by phone’ concept.”

  Rereading his memo, squinting at his own scrawl, Hughes wondered why this grand scheme had never gone anywhere. It seemed to make such perfect sense laid out so plainly in such meticulous detail. He made a mental note to get it back on track and meanwhile continued to rummage through his papers, grabbing another thick sheaf from the night table.

  He was getting tired, but he could not sleep. He usually stayed up until dawn. His body flagged, but his mind reeled on, a runaway engine that could not stop and therefore had to find something, anything to work on, work over, work to death. He seemed to believe that he worked best at the outer limits of his endurance, pushing himself often for days without sleep, as if his mind, by feeding on his emaciated body, consuming it, gained some special power.

  “I work around the clock, holidays mean very little to me, since I work just about all the time,” he explained.

  “I have absolutely nothing but my work. When things dont go well, it can be very empty indeed.

  “I do not indulge in sports, night clubs, or other recreational activities, and since, in fact, I do not do much of anything else at all, except my work, just what do you suggest I do, crawl off in a corner some place and die?”

  That was, of course, pretty much what he had done. And quite often, Hughes was not really working at all. He was simply caught in a catatonic daze, playing with his long hair, pulling it up over the top of his head, then letting it fall, or stacking and restacking his memos. When he was working, it was often furious but wasted motion. He would spin his wheels, digging himself deeper into a rut over some entirely trivial or totally imaginary matter. But he was always torturing himself, and at that he worked very hard.

  Sometimes he’d reach into his stacks of memos and torture himself with memories. Here was one. A close encounter with grave danger only narrowly escaped. God, it was horrifying even to recall it! Still, he picked up the memo and went back in time.

  It was the day Lyndon Johnson “abdicated,” and while Hughes had mentioned in passing something about picking a new president—“selecting one of the candidates and nursing him into the White House,” those were his words—he was instead fixated on a real crisis much closer to home.

  All his enemies were conspiring against him.

  “Please dont declare war upon me so early in the day,” Hughes had written in a plea to Robert Maheu. “I am well aware that this is not anything that is important to you, but merely something you were pressured into doing by certain groups here. I am speaking of the Easter Egg Hunt.”

  The Easter Egg Hunt. There were plans—no, a plot!—to hold it at his hideout, the Desert Inn.

  “I have been told, however, that although there are a number of people in Las Vegas who favor this event, there is a more powerful group who are dedicated to discrediting me and that this second group will stop at nothing.”

  Not only was this “second group” so diabolical as to plot the hunt, but it was also about to launch a “gossip campaign” against him.

  “The substance of this story (and it has already been fed to certain Hollywood columnists, who very fortunately are friends of mine from my motion picture days) the substance is that: I am ashamed for my sinful past (adventures with females, etc.) and I am having a backlash here, manafest in my extreme isolation from social contact, presumably for the purpose of putting temptation out of reach, and an intensive and very expensive campaign to reform the morals of Las Vegas. I am supposedly waiting to start a real all-out war against the normal customs of Las Vegas—such as: topless show girls, etc. etc., dirty jokes, dirty advertisements, etc.”

  But that was not the real danger. No, the real danger was the egg hunt.

  “Now, I am further informed, and this is what really has me worried, that this militant group plans to stage a really viscious all-out juvenile riot at our Easter party.

  “I am not eager to have a repetition, in the D.I., of what happened at Juvenile Hall when the ever-lovin little darlings tore the place apart. I am sure your reply to that will be that, with our better-trained security force, such a thing just could not happen. However, my information is to the effect that our opponents hope we do set this riot down, because they feel they can get more publicity if we do.”

  Of course. The billionaire’s guards could not club down the kiddies, not even if they really ran amok and rushed his penthouse retreat.

  “[Q]uietly explore alternate possibilities such as: Moving it to the Sunrise Hospital and making it a charity event. We could start the ball rolling by donating 25 or even $50,000. I just want to see it moved to a place where, if something goes wrong, it will be a black mark against Las Vegas—not a black mark against us.”

  His was no ordinary paranoia. It had sweep and grandeur, but he could also focus its full intensity on the smallest incident and bring all his terror to bear. And while his paranoia encompassed virtually everything, it really zeroed in on all forms of “contamination.” Unwashed and living in filth, he was forever cleaning the space around him.

  Nothing obsessed him more than the purity of fluids, and he had discovered something shocking about the Las Vegas water system, which he set out in another anguished memo:

  “This water system will comprise the only water system in the world where the outlet of the sewage disposal plant plus tons of raw, untreated sewage flows right into a small, stagnant pool of water, and then flows right back out again, through a screen to remove the turds, and then into our homes to be consumed by us as drinking water, washing water, and water to cook with.”

  Well, not exactly by “us.” Hughes himself drank only bottled water and insisted that it be used in cooking his meals. He had done so for twenty years. Indeed, he drank only one brand, Poland Spring water, only from quart bottles, and only if bottled in its original plant in Maine. As for washing, that was no big problem, since he rarely washed at all. Still, the local water pollution upset him deeply.

  “It is not so much the technical purity or impurity, it is the revolting, vomitous unattractiveness of the whole thing. It is sort of like serving an expensive New York Cut steak in one of our showrooms and having the waiter bring the steak in to a customer in a beautiful plate, but, instead of the usual parsley and half a slice of lemon and the usual trimmings to make the steak attractive—instead of this, there is a small pile of soft shit right next to the steak. Now, maybe technically the shit does not touch the steak, but how much do you think the patron is going to enjoy eating that steak?

  “I think he would lose his appetite very fast.”

  Hughes himself never had much of an appetite. He generally ate only once a day, at some odd predawn hour, and took forever to get down his meal, often requiring that a bowl of soup be reheated several times. Sometimes he did not eat at all for days, other times he subsisted for weeks on desserts alone. But he was very picky about the preparation of his food, especially about any possible “contamination.”

  Earlier he had dictated a three-page single-spaced memorandum titled “Special Preparation of Canned Fruit”:

  “The equipment used in connection wi
th this operation will consist of the following items: 1 unopened newspaper; 1 sterile can opener; 1 large sterile plate; 1 sterile fork; 1 sterile spoon; 2 sterile brushes; 2 bars of soap; sterile paper towels.”

  Hughes carefully outlined nine precise steps to be followed religiously: “Preparation of Table,” “Procuring of Fruit,” “Washing of Can,” “Drying of Can,” “Processing the Hands,” “Opening the Can,” “Removing Fruit,” “Fallout Rules While Around Can,” and “Conclusion of Operation.”

  Each step was intricately detailed. For “STEP #3 Washing of Can” he instructed: “The man in charge turns the valve in the bathtub on, using his bare hands to do so. He also adjusts the water temperature so that it is not too hot or too cold. He then takes one of the brushes, and, using one of the bars of soap, creates a good lather, and then scrubs the can from a point 2 inches below the top of the can. He should first soak and remove the label, and then brush the cylindrical part of the can over and over until all particles of dust, pieces of the label, and, in general, all source of contamination have been removed. Holding the can in the center at all times, he then processes the bottom of the can in the same manner, being very sure that the bristles of the brush have thoroughly cleaned all the small indentations on the perimeter. He then rinses the soap. Taking the second brush, and still holding the can in the center, he again creates a good lather and scrubs the top of the can, the perimeter along the top, and the cylindrical sides to a point 2 inches below the top. He should continue this scrubbing until he literally removes the tin protection from the can itself.”

  Before opening the now immaculate fruit can, the billionaire’s servitor, following Step #5, had to “process”: “This action will consist of washing and rinsing the hands four distinct and separate times, being extremely careful to observe the four phases in each washing. That is to say, the man first must brush every minute particle and surface of his hands and fingers. He then puts each finger tip into the palm of the opposite hand and cleans each finger by rotating and pressing the fingers against the palm. He then interlocks the fingers and slides them together. The last phase is grasping the palms together and wringing them.”

  The can and the man both now thoroughly scrubbed, it was time to remove the fruit, which required that “Fallout Rules” be observed: “While transferring the fruit from the can to the sterile plate, be very sure that no part of the body, including the hands, be directly over the can or the plate at any time. If possible, keep the head, upper part of the body, arms, etc. at least one foot away.”

  There was a postscript: “This operation must be carried out in every infinitessimal detail, and HRH would deeply appreciate it if the man follow each phase very slowly and thoughtfully, giving his full attention to the importance of the work at hand.”

  The fruit was now ready to be dished up to Hughes, who did not bathe or shower for months at a stretch, and dined on a bed whose sheets were changed just a few times a year, in a room that was never cleaned.

  Yet this memo was merely one in a long series, all part of an elaborate set of rituals the billionaire had dictated over the years, and which by now filled a thick and constantly updated looseleaf binder kept in the penthouse. Its purpose—to prevent the “backflow of germs.”

  The invisible threat required special vigilance. It had been a central preoccupation for more than a decade, and even before Hughes drifted into seclusion he would neither shake hands nor touch doorknobs. Now he demanded that everything his Mormons delivered to him be handled with Kleenex or Scott paper towels, “insulation” to protect him from “contamination.”

  The five Mormon nursemaids were his only human contact. Yet even they were not allowed to enter his room unbidden or to speak to him until he spoke first. There was no socializing, no idle chitchat. Hughes kept his door closed most of the time and rarely talked to them at all, instead communicating by memo even with these men in the next room. In part, it was because he was nearly deaf and refused to wear a hearing aid. To be heard, the Mormons would have to stand close and shout. Hughes didn’t want them that close, and both his body odor and breath were so rank that they didn’t want to get near him.

  Still, he needed to control their every movement. None had been allowed a day off since joining his retinue, and while they finally bargained for a twelve-day-on, four-day-off schedule in Las Vegas, Hughes often ignored the man on duty, preferring to call back an escaped Mormon to perform some absurd task, such as measuring the slippage of his pillow. At times they were all on “stand-by.”

  “The moment each man arrives at home from his duties at the hotel, call and give him the following message,” Hughes had dictated when he first established the standby rules. “ ‘HRH said he would be extremely and deeply grateful if you would be kind enough to remain at home without leaving for even one fraction of a second for any reason whatsoever, no matter how great the emergency might be.’ ”

  The Mormons were his little polygamous family, all the family Hughes had left now, and he needed to keep them around. He was cut off from everyone else. Even his wife.

  He would never see Jean Peters again. They spoke almost every day on the telephone and each time had the same conversation. Hughes kept trying to persuade Jean to move to Las Vegas, to live in one of the two mansions he had bought for her—one a $600,000 palatial estate in town, the other a five-hundred-acre ranch nearby—telling her that life would be perfect in Nevada, that she would love the clean air. And Jean kept agreeing to come, if Hughes would just leave his penthouse and move into their new home first.

  It was a standoff. Hughes could not leave his hideout, could not share his life. He wanted his wife close by, under his control, but he could no longer actually live with her. Instead, he secretly bought a “surveillance house” across the street from her home in Beverly Hills and kept his wife under watch while each night he tried to persuade her to come to Las Vegas.

  In his own way, he seemed to love her, and the nightly phone calls were important. Sometimes he fretted that she would not be in or refuse to talk when he called at some predawn hour.

  “Please call Mrs. and ask her if it will be convenient for me to call tonight and ask her what is the latest that would be convenient,” he scribbled to his Mormons one Christmas Eve.

  “Remind her this is my birthday.”

  And when he had his wife on the phone again, he would once more beg her to join him and assure her that he would soon emerge from his seclusion. “He said that he felt himself to be like someone on a track being pursued by the engines,” Jean later recalled. “It was almost his mania to get everything settled and then start to build his dream world.”

  But, in fact, there was no room in his “dream world” for Jean, no room for anyone else at all. Certainly no room for a rival. What Hughes dreamed of was a world in which only he existed, and often he wrote out entire scripts for his henchmen to follow in dealing with threats to his solipsist vision, such as the sudden arrival in Las Vegas of another multimillionaire.

  “Now, I think No. 1 on the list for this year is Mr. K-1,” wrote Hughes in 1967, hatching a plot to dispose of his new rival, Kirk Kerkorian, who had just announced plans to build the biggest hotel-casino in town.

  “I want your idea of how he would react if you were to see him and say something like this:

  “ ‘Kirk, I have just had a long talk with Howard.

  “ ‘I dont have to tell you that when he sold his interest in TWA, he picked up the largest check that any single individual ever carried out of Wall St. Since that time he has moved very slowly. He has made investments in Las Vegas, but nothing else.

  “ ‘Now, Kirk, what this is all leading up to is that I just see you two friends of mine embarking on a course that can only lead to a disastrous collision.

  “ ‘Howard wants to buy your land and persuade you not to build this hotel. I think his friendship (and he has very few friends) is yours for the asking, and I think it would be worth so much more to you that there would be
no comparison.

  “ ‘The way he figures it, if he had had even the most remote idea that you were planning to do this, he would have located somewhere else. I know for a fact that he made an all-out study to see if it would be possible to relocate now, but you see he just could not dispose of his property here without wrecking the economy of the entire state.’ ”

  It was Kerkorian who would have to get out. Howard Hughes had to be alone in his kingdom, his power unchallenged and absolute.

  But locked in his room with all his grand schemes, with all his great fears, with his absolute need for absolute power, Hughes needed a go-between, one trusted man who could take the visions he scrawled in his memos and make them a reality in the dangerous world outside.

  And the billionaire had found that man—his new remote-control instrument—Robert Aime Maheu.

  They would make the Big Movie together, Hughes producing, directing, and writing the screenplay, Maheu out on the stage playing Hughes to the world.

  “I spent the whole night writing the script. Every word—every move—every tear—every sigh. All the stage directions are carefully worked out. I could get $10,000 for a script as good as this at 20th Century Fox. So, I want to see what comes of it, but I am afraid I know what the last scene is right now, and I am afraid it is not you and me walking into the setting sun with the package under our arms.”

  Still, it was quite a spectacle the two of them were about to put on.

  *Paul Laxalt, then the obscure but very cooperative governor of Nevada, now a U.S. Senator who was Ronald Reagan’s campaign chairman and is perhaps the president’s closest friend.

  *Hughes’s refusal to appear in court ultimately had a $137 million price tag. The bankers had filed suit in June 1961 after a battle for dominance that began when they imposed a voting trust over his TWA stock in December 1960. As part of the lawsuit, they demanded that Hughes appear for a deposition. His refusal led a federal judge to find him in default in May 1963, and more than five years later damages were set at $137 million, which with interest escalated to $145 million.