The Howard Hughes Affair

“Certainly,” I said, “whatever you say. Wass you … oh shit.”

“Paperen, cameren,” he said again, impatiently looking out of the window to see if anyone was watching. Not being familiar with L.A. and the neighborhood, he didn’t know that he probably could have had a horizontal guillotine around my neck, and the chance of anyone paying attention would have been nonexistent, unless a tourist from Delaware happened to have lost his way.

“Pictures, pictures,” he said, the sweat dripping from his furrowed brow, and loosening the tape on his nose he blurted out “Paperen, cameren.”

We were making progress, though we were a long way from Wendell Wilke’s One World. Wheezer thought I had some papers, plans, or photographs, probably the stolen Hughes plans, though why he should think I had them was a new mystery.

“Schell,” he said.

I thought he was saying the German word for fast, so I pointed to the thick traffic ahead.

“Nicht Schnell” he bellowed, hitting me on the lump already on my head and almost knocking me out. “Schell. Martin Schell.”

The car veered while I tried to make one image out of the vibrating three or four I was seeing. I managed to get them down to a double image. The truck driver I had almost hit leaped out of his cab, tilted his cap back and started for me. Wheezer pointed his Luger at the driver, who promptly returned to his truck and toilets or whatever was in it.

“Take it easy, Hans,” I said slowly, hoping to either calm him or get through to him. I did neither. He hit me again. I was more ready for it this time and held the car steadier, but the blood trickling down my neck brought nausea.

“Look,” I said, getting angry and desperate, “if you keep gaspolotzing me en kopf, you’ll get dreck. Farshteh?”

His face was a confused mask of sweat. He peeled the moist tape from his sweating nose, revealing a cut that must have hit bone and was barely clotting. It should have had a few stitches.

My guess was that Wheezer knew Martin Schell was gone. He thought I had strangled Wolfgang Schell, and he probably figured I had gotten to Martin too, who had been out gunning for me. Apparently Martin had the plans, and Wheezer thought I had done him in and taken them. At least that was the best I could do. His face told me reasoning with him was impossible. I either gave him some plans or he blew my head off. I had the feeling that even if I gave him the plans I didn’t have, he would blow my head off. He had already paved the way by chipping a hole in my scalp.

“Yah, will Ich do,” I said in resignation, heading for a parking lot. It was an old empty lot where an enterprising owner had put up a small shack to collect a few parking dollars till he could find a sucker who would put up a liquor store and make his fortune. Right now it was just a ten-cent-an-hour lot for about fifty cars, and it was half full. The attendant was a Negro about twenty-five. He wore a clean blue shirt with “Larry” stitched on it in white.

“Twenty-cent minimum,” he said, leaning down with his hand out.

Wheezer showed him the gun, and the young man straightened up and said softly, “I ain’t about to die over twenty cents. You want to park that bad, go on.”

“Humor him,” I told the young man.

“Hey,” said the young man, “I just work here. I’m not about to die here. Consider him humored.”

“Shah,” Wheezer said, looking around desperately. I decided the sweat wasn’t just from fear. He had a fever. His wounds had probably become infected, and he needed medical treatment.

“Paperen, paperen,” he shouted at me.

“Paperen him, mister,” Larry the attendant suggested, “or he’s liable to paper both of us.”

A Plymouth pulled in behind us and hit his horn for us to hurry up and park. This didn’t help Wheezer’s control of the situation, so he prodded my open wound.

“O.K.,” I said, reaching into my jacket carefully to pull out the package of photographs of the people at Hughes’party. “Here.”

I handed the packet over my shoulder and watched Wheezer in the rear view mirror. The Plymouth was laying on the horn. Wheezer needed both hands to check the packet. When he tilted the gun hand up to hold the envelope, I slid down in the seat and threw my right elbow at his face. I made contact with his already infected nose and he pulled the trigger as he screamed. The bullet went out the open window and cracked the glass on the little shack a few feet from attendant Larry, who hit the dirt. The Plymouth backed out of the lot fast, and I rolled out of the driver’s seat door.

Wheezer came out of the car moaning and holding his bleeding nose with one hand while he tried to level the gun at me. I got to my knees and hit him in the stomach with everything I had. A small crowd gathered across the street and watched us, but a wild shot from Wheezer hit the building above them and sent them running. I went around my Buick with Wheezer in pursuit, got to the street and just missed a bread truck making a turn from Fifth Street. Wheezer was right behind me and not quite as agile. The bread truck hit him and came to a halt at the curb.

I couldn’t tell if Wheezer was dead or breathing. He wasn’t moving. I staggered back to Larry, who was on his feet now in a not-so-clean blue shirt. Behind us the bread truck driver had run to kneel over Wheezer. Traffic was stopping. I pulled my wallet out and peeled off a five, gave it to Larry, who pulled his eyes from the prone body of the man who had almost killed him.

“Describe me,” I said, seeing two of him.

“What?” he said, thinking he had another looney on his hands. Then he understood.

“You’re about sixty with white hair,” he said. I gave him a ten. “And you’re Chinese.”

“Right,” I said, giving him another five. “And my car?”

“A new blue Caddy,” he said.

“You got it,” I said and got back in my Buick.

“You better take care of that head,” he said, leaning toward me.

“Too late,” I said. I could hear a police siren coming up fast. A good size crowd had gathered around Wheezer. I pulled around a row of parked cars and into an alley, traveling in the opposite direction of the lot and the sound of the siren. If Wheezer were alive, I doubted if the police would get anything sensible from him for a long time.

I saw four alley exits in front of me and had to stop till they became one. Then I drove slowly and very carefully to County Hospital.

My Emergency Room credentials were perfect, a bleeding head.

“Take a seat,” three fat nurses said. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Any more than that and I’ll need a transfusion,” I said. They smiled and I told them it was no joke. They walked away, merging into a single body.

It was a slow Thursday afternoon, and the crowd was down to two: me and a woman holding her stomach and moaning. The woman was about fifty and wearing a white uniform. She was either a nurse, which didn’t seem likely, or a Good Humor Man in disguise. I found a washroom and took some paper towels, which I pressed to my throbbing head. When I got back to the waiting room the Good Humor Woman was gone, and the three nurses were there.

“It’ll be a few minutes,” one said.

“You know I see three of you,” I said.

“A few minutes,” they insisted.

“That’s all right,” I said, groaning. “If you see Doctor Parry, you might tell him his uncle is in the Emergency Room waiting.”

A few minutes later the hospital loudspeaker lady called for Doctor Parry to go to the Emergency Room, and three minutes later twin Doctor Parrys were in front of me.

They were both in their late twenties with thin yellow hair and glasses. They looked tired.

“Well, Mister Peters,” Parry said wearily, “what’s going on this time?”

“My head this time,” I said, pointing at my head.

“I’m not your personal physician, Mister Peters,” he said.