Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  But most of all, Hughes was worried about his image.

  “At the present time when I am having a little trouble making both ends meet,” he wrote, “I am sure there is a large army of people waiting in expectant, hushed silence for the first indication of a slide backward in my financial resources.

  “There is only one thing worse than being broke, and that is to have everybody know that you are broke.

  “In most cases, and at normal times, I am quite content to be referred to merely as an industrialist without a price tag,” continued Hughes, upset by a local newspaper story that had referred to him as a “millionaire,” a story based on a press release issued by his own p.r. firm.

  “However, at present, in my highly critical situation, I think it is a bad time for us to put out publicity referring to me as a mere millionaire. There are several hundred millionaires on the horizon now, and since I have been referred to as a Billionaire ever since we became established in Las Vegas, I am fearful that some enemy of mine will pick up this small deviation and make a story about it—you know, something like: ‘Well, well, has he finally gotten to the bottom of his bankroll? Etc., etc.’

  “I think that kind of a report with attendant jokes could be very bad right now.”

  Playing on those fears, Holliday now sent Hughes a bleak accounting of financial conditions in his crumbling empire. It was no laughing matter. He had $111 million cash on hand, of which $75 million had to be kept as a bond on the TWA judgment, with another $16.5 million pledged as collateral on a bank loan. That left only $19.5 million for operating funds, in a year that would require at least $30 million.

  Holliday followed the cold figures with a slashing attack on Maheu: “You will note that no provision is made for a dividend to you, and you will certainly require at least $2 million by year-end,” he wrote Hughes. “However, provision is made for payment to Maheu of his $10,000 per week basic compensation, but without provision for his expenses that will surely be considerable. In other words, no provision is made for the purchase or use of a right-hand or left-hand ass-wiping machine that he may require.

  “The long and short of our position,” added Holliday, “is that we are in trouble, and very serious trouble.”

  Hughes needed no persuading. He had long been convinced that Maheu was profligate, worse yet that he spent Hughes’s money without Hughes’s permission.

  “I have given up all hope of controlling unauthorized expenditures at this end of the line,” Hughes morosely informed Holliday. “Since Bob is not inclined toward economy measures, I want you to take the steps necessary to prevent expenses I have not approved.”

  Holliday needed no further encouragement. He quickly sent another financial report to the penthouse, this time zeroing in on the Nevada books. They were dripping red ink. Maheu’s operations had never turned a profit. They lost nearly $700,000 in 1967, more than $3 million in 1968, almost $8.5 million in 1969, and halfway through 1970 close to $7 million, with projected losses for the full year headed for a whopping $14 million.

  “The Nevada operations,” noted Holliday with a businessman’s icy scorn, “are not profit-oriented or cost-conscious.”

  Hughes, encouraged in his suspicions by the whispering Mormons, drew a darker conclusion. He became increasingly convinced that Maheu was, in fact, stealing him blind.

  He never confronted Maheu directly with the accusation, but their pen-pal relationship was now becoming more of a poison-pen relationship, and as the bitterness reached a dangerous breaking point the whispering Mormons made their big move. They cut Maheu’s communication lines to the penthouse.

  First the Mormons convinced Hughes that Maheu should, like all other executives, transmit his messages exclusively through them.

  “Bob,” wrote the billionaire to his estranged henchman, “I’ve decided not to ask you to write me any more messages in longhand and sealed envelopes. I know this is time consuming for you, and my men think I dont trust them. So, in the future, except in rare instances, I prefer you dictate your reply to my messages via telephone to whichever of my men happens to be on duty.

  “I shall continue to send you most of my messages in writing, simply because it is much quicker and more accurate.”

  It was not long, however, before the Mormons also persuaded Hughes that Maheu could not be trusted to receive, much less keep, the billionaire’s own handwritten memos. Without warning, Hughes suddenly dispatched one of his attendants to retrieve from Maheu all the old correspondence.

  Maheu, who was still unaware of the larger forces moving against him, instantly recognized the dangers of losing direct contact with Hughes and lashed out bitterly in a futile effort to restore his unique access.

  “If, for some reasons known only to you, I cannot be trusted as the depository of these reference documents, then I categorically tell you that as far as I am concerned, you and your entire program in Nevada can go to hell,” he angrily told Hughes, risking a complete break in his desperation to regain lost ground.

  “Howard, I am so hurt and so mad that you may never be able to make amends. I beg of you to release me of my obligations, because I have a belly-full of the chicken-shit operation within which I am living and from which I would like to get released.

  “Howard, whether you realize it or not, you cut and cut deep. I want out.

  “Will you please do me a great favor. Will you kindly relieve me of my obligations and appoint someone else to be your top man in this area.”

  It was the kind of bluff that had worked before. Maheu was certain that Hughes could not get along without him. But this time around Hughes would not be bullied.

  “If you want to be relieved of your present assignment, then, regretfully, I will not object,” he coolly replied.

  “If, on the other hand, it is your intention to march out of here taking the entire upper echelon of executives along with you in a grand-scale industrial executive strike, then you will have to face up to this sweeping gesture of disloyalty and treachery in your own conscience, but without my slightest consent thereto.

  “If you intend to convert this into a power-play of some kind, aimed not at a considerate plan of separation designed to impose the minimum hardship upon me, but instead aimed at a carefully devised strategy calculated to pose a threat over my head sufficient to extract an apology and humble pleading for reconciliation, if this is your objective, please be frank. You, yourself, have said that we should not play games.

  “Something has struck me phony about this requested abrogation from the beginning.”

  Maheu stood his ground. He saw the fear behind Hughes’s rage and did his best to encourage it.

  “You must have a very low estimate of my capability if you interpret anything that I have been saying as a power play on my part,” he replied with some swagger. “I don’t need any more power than I now have, but if I had the least desire to make such a play, I can assure you that it would take place much more suddenly, and in so many areas, that it would be unbelieveable.

  “I could not find it within myself to indulge in such activity,” he continued, easing off now that he had made clear his threat, “and strange as it may seem to you, I have no fear of my ability to earn a living, with or without Howard Hughes.

  “I have no devious intentions, there are no hidden gimmicks, and I have told you repeatedly that no one could ever cause me to hurt you in any way whatsoever, and I would go out of my way to clobber anyone who might try to cause you any damage.

  “Now, Howard,” concluded Maheu, once more positioning himself as the billionaire’s faithful if short-tempered protector, “please tell me wherein I am being unfair and also what in the hell you expect from me.”

  Hughes, either mollified by Maheu’s loyalty even in extremis, or frightened by his implied threat, moved to heal the breach. He was still not ready for the painful, and quite possibly dangerous, final break.

  “If I can be sure that you and I have reached the end of our unfortunate peri
od of doubts and suspicions each about the other, then I have a couple of projects that are so staggering in their enormity and huge in over all expanse that they will absolutely leave you breathless,” wrote Hughes, dangling visions of new glory before his regent even as he secretly plotted to replace him with his rivals.

  “I dont have to tell you, Bob, that I am a person who is capable of manifesting extreme suspicion if encouraged,” he added, perhaps intentionally hinting at the coup now in progress, perhaps once more doubting his Mormons’ whispers.

  “How many times have I asked you to check out various telephone lines in the past to ascertain if they were secure?

  “So, to summarize, Bob, I have trusted you with the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my very innermost activities,” he went on, obviously more than a bit concerned about splitting with a man who knew so much.

  “When I first sent down to pick up these files, I simply had not the faintest idea—truthfully—that it would displease you even the least bit.

  “So, all I need to know, just one word of assurance that these unhappy and unfortunate days are behind us,” concluded a relieved Hughes, wanting to believe the best. “I am just as willing to assume the blame for the misunderstanding. I dont seek or even want to share that. I only want to know the episode is behind us.”

  And so it was. But the really wrenching episodes were yet to come.

  The Hughes-Maheu marriage was definitely on the rocks. Its special intimacy had been maintained by direct correspondence, and now that was over.

  Maheu’s only direct link to Hughes now was the telephone. But while Hughes could call Maheu, Maheu could not call Hughes. He could only call the Mormons, who more and more often told him that Hughes was busy, asleep, eating, not well, or simply unavailable. And the calls from Hughes, in times past all too frequent, first dwindled sharply, then stopped.

  Unable to reach Hughes, his calls not returned, his memos not answered, unwilling to sit by his silent telephone like a jilted lover, tired of dialing the penthouse at all hours of the day and night in a futile effort to break through, an angry and frustrated Maheu finally theatened to leave Las Vegas on an extended vacation.

  It was the beginning of a final bitter exchange, letters of lost love they dictated to each other through the Mormons.

  “I plan to leave immediately for Europe and join my wife, who is already there, for an indefinite period,” Maheu told Hughes, after weeks without word from his boss.

  “Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I will assume I have your full blessing. I literally hate myself for not having left yesterday with my wife. For over ten years I have promised her a trip to Europe, but have never been able to fulfill my commitment because of my sincere desire to help you with one problem after another.

  “Howard, if I cannot get answers from you in matters as important as TWA, Air West, LAA, I really don’t know why I should continue worrying about these things alone.

  “After all, in the last analysis, the only person who stands to get hurt is yourself and ultimately, however devastating the results may be, they will have very little to do with me personally or my future life. If I do not get answers from you I am stymied.

  “I have no reason to believe that I will hear from you for the next two or three months,” concluded the cast-aside pen pal. “It appears, therefore, that this might be the propitious time for me to take a much needed vacation, and perhaps this will enable me to stop having these sleepless nights.

  “In sincere friendship, Bob.”

  Maheu’s threat to go AWOL finally broke Hughes’s silence. In his first memo to Maheu in weeks, the recluse—trapped in his penthouse, unable to make good his own escape, about to lose his own wife (who had finally filed for divorce), beset by financial crises, and in failing health—lashed out bitterly at his deserting lieutenant.

  “I don’t think the rebuke and hostility expressed in your last message is one damn bit justified,” replied Hughes through his aides.

  “I have been very ill lately. I have had a personal problem of the enth magnitude involving my wife. And I simply have not been able to keep abreast of the inflow of all these communications. This is not the fault of my staff, it might be my fault, but really it is nobody’s fault but just a fault of the system. I am trying to carry the load of 25 normal men.

  “The matters to which you refer are still in the pipeline to me,” continued the wretched recluse. “If you think this entitles you to go into a fit of rage and sail off to Europe then it certainly is, in my opinion, a peculiar way of demonstrating this loyal, everlasting friendship we have been talking about.

  “You may have a lot of political friends and a lot of people who profess to be your friends, but I don’t think you have so damn many left who are really, truly reliable friends of yours that you can afford to throw away the one who may be the most reliable and most important of all, namely me.

  “If you think you can dispense with me as a friend, go ahead and sail on off to Europe and enjoy yourself,” added Hughes, hurling a bitter bon voyage at the man he planned to dump overboard. “Please regard it as the end of what I have considered to be a true and loyal and personal friendship.”

  It was not so much losing Maheu as the thought of losing control over him that drove Hughes crazy. For years he had been unable to let Maheu free for a day, for a night, for even a few hours, could hardly bear to let him sleep, and now, even as he withdrew behind his Mormons and plotted to escape his alter ego, Hughes could not contemplate letting Maheu escape his control.

  But Maheu was not really ready to ship out.

  “I am sure that you know that in the last analysis I could not find it within myself to leave for Europe or to be unavailable to you at a time like this for one damn moment,” he assured Hughes. “Let us say, therefore, that if the message to which you refer has done nothing more but to reopen communications it perhaps was not in vain.

  “I can assure you that if I were not concerned and if I did not care about your well being, I sure as hell would not have spent as many sleepless nights as I have during the last several weeks. Your staff can testify as to the number of telephone calls they have received from me at 3 and 5 AM when I was wide awake because of my deep concern.

  “Howard, I do not particularly appreciate your statement relative to my friends and contacts,” Maheu continued, heatedly defending his fidelity to his jealous partner. “You better believe that I have them, but it has been many years now since I have thought of them only as they relate to you. I am deeply hurt that you have not recognized this yourself and that I have to be the one to tell you.

  “In sincere friendship, Bob.”

  Hughes was not mollified. That threatened trip to Europe—he couldn’t let go of it.

  “In view of the numerous expressions of loyalty and undying friendship, that the remainder of your business career will be with me and that if we did come to a parting of the ways, I would not have to worry about another Dietrich, or another Ramo or Wooldridge,” the billionaire replied through his Mormons, “it is very difficult for me to reconcile these expressions with the fact that whenever we have some little misunderstanding—the next thing I receive is a threat to take an extended vacation.

  “When displeased, your reaction is to desert the ship and let it go to hell. You tell me that my affairs are in a dangerous condition, which I don’t seem to realize—instead of telling me how to correct them. I get nothing but a goodbye note on your way to Europe.”

  And so it came down to that. The “Dear John” letter. With all of his dark suspicions that Maheu was seizing power, stealing his money, plotting a coup, it was instead the pain of rejection, the terrible fear that Maheu would leave him before he could leave Maheu, that at the end gripped Hughes.

  “Howard, I am sure that you have a life-size picture of my trouncing off to Europe at a time like this,” Maheu quickly responded, desperately trying to reassure his boss. “I would like for you to give me one exa
mple of when I have left you in a moment of need.

  “I also think it would be difficult for you to say that I have never been prepared to take, personally, all the calculated risks in order to accomplish what it is that you wanted. Hell Howard, if some of the things which I did in order to extricate us from the ABC matter, or to accomplish what we wanted done in the AEC situation, ever surfaced I could never go to Europe because I would be spending the rest of my life in jail.”

  But it was too late. There was no reply. Once more, just silence from the penthouse.

  Hughes was, in fact, ill. Not quite so ill as he claimed to Maheu and not silent because of his sickness, but he did have a mild case of pneumonia and a slight touch of anemia, enough to add an eerie wheeze and an extra pallor to his already extreme condition, enough to prevent his planned escape.

  He was in no shape to travel. He needed a quick cure. He called in his local physician but would not allow the doctor to perform any examination, to run any tests, even to touch him. Several months earlier, experiencing an irregular heartbeat, Hughes had reluctantly submitted to an EKG and the doctor got some electrode paste on his beard. Hughes was so shocked by the contamination that he snapped right back into his regular rhythm.

  This time, he was taking no chances. Besides, he had already diagnosed his problem and decided on the remedy. What the billionaire wanted was blood—more of that same pure Mormon blood he had received two years earlier.

  The transfusions were completely unnecessary. His blood count was close to normal. But Hughes was insistent. “It made me feel so much better last time,” he told his doctor. “I want some more.”

  And sure enough, that last shot of pure Mormon blood did the trick. Right after the transfusion, Hughes finally made good his escape. For the first time in four years, he left his blacked-out bedroom—and moved into a second, identical bedroom in the same suite.