by Luke Davies
– December 1956, Hughes Tool Company loans $250,000 to Donald Nixon, Vice-President Richard Nixon’s brother.
– January 1957, Hughes marries Jean Peters, an actress, but doesn’t move in with her.
– May 1957, Hughes fires Noah Dietrich after a thirty-two-year partnership.
– Late 1950s, ex-FBI man Bob Maheu comes into the Hughes organization as Hughes’ public face of action. Though they never meet in person, Maheu will be Hughes’ right-hand man for more than a decade.
– December 1960, loses control of TWA; moves in briefly with Jean Peters.
– 1961, TWA files antitrust complaint against Hughes.
– 1963, Hughes loses TWA judgment.
– 1966, sells his TWA stock for $546 million.
– November 1966, arrives in Las Vegas, and holes up for four years on the top two floors of the Desert Inn.
– November 1970, flees Las Vegas for the Bahamas, beginning the exodus of tax dodging that will last until the end.
– December 1970, Hughes fires Bob Maheu.
– June 1971, Hughes and Jean Peters officially divorced.
– December 1972, flees earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua.
– June 10, 1973, flies for the first time in more than fifteen years, in London.
– August 9, 1973, Hughes breaks hip; never walks again.
– Howard Hughes dies, April 5, 1976.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While this is a work of fiction, I have nonetheless used the actual events of Hughes’ life as a framework. There are many, many books about Hughes; I have mined information from, and am grateful to, biographies by Donald L Barlett & James B Steele (Empire: the Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes), Peter Harry Brown & Pat H Broeske (Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness), Michael Drosnin (Citizen Hughes), Albert Benjamin Gerber (Bashful Billionaire: the Story of Howard Hughes), Richard Hack (Hughes: the Private Diaries, Memos and Letters; The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire), Charles Higham (Howard Hughes: the Secret Life), and James Phelan (Howard Hughes: the Hidden Years). The memo extracts in this book are largely verbatim transcripts of actual Hughes memos, as quoted in the various biographies.
To the staff of the Waverley Library in Bondi Junction, and John Royle in particular. And to Janice Howie at the State Library of NSW.
Meredith Blum, Delia Falconer, Cal Foote, Jane Gleeson-White and Sarah Nicholson kindly gave feedback on earlier drafts.
To my editor Alice Truax, for her insight and persistence.
To my publisher Annette Barlow, for so patiently steering this book to its final form.
