“Mr. Hughes said to tell you that your services were no longer needed,” said the other guy. “You will be paid for two weeks work with a bonus. Mr. Hughes insists that people be prompt to appointments.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, pointing at the last one who had spoken. “I’m getting fired from this case because I’m an hour late?”
“It’s not quite like that,” said one of the two without emotion.
“Is Hughes in there?” I asked evenly.
“Yes,” Number One said, “but he doesn’t wish to see you.”
“He’ll see me,” I said. “Since I took this job for Mr. Hughes, I’ve been beaten, brained, tortured and shot at. I’ve had two corpses dumped on me and my life might not be worth a used Hughes drill bit. Now I’m late this morning because of this case and I’m going to see Howard Hughes or make a lot of noise.”
Number One came around the desk and reached for my arm. His plan was to push it behind my back and shove me out or further. He was prepared for me to struggle, but I didn’t. I wasn’t after a fight. I was after his gun. I let him take my left hand and reached for the gun under his jacket with my right. It came out easily. Number One dropped my arm and backed away. I levelled the gun at him.
“I’ll see if I can find Mr. Hughes,” he said, making a move to the door. Number Two slowly showed his empty hands.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t we have him come here?”
I turned the gun to the ceiling and fired a couple of shots. The gun jerked in my hand and made a hell of a noise in the small room, sending my eardrums quivering.
In less than ten seconds, Howard Hughes burst through the door leading into the studio. His mustache was gone, and he was wearing a fedora tilted back on his head. He had no jacket and looked even younger than before. A group of people stood behind him including a guy in a cowboy suit. Hughes looked at my gun without a sign of concern and waved away the people behind him. He closed the door and faced me, saying nothing.
“I’ll say it slow and I’ll say it once,” I said. “I’ve got a lot to tell you, but the most important thing is that I’m late tonight because two guys who I think had something to do with taking those plans kidnapped me and beat the hell out of me. I should be dead now or collecting pats on the back for getting here at all instead of having this bunch of shit about being fired for being late.”
Hughes put up his hand calmingly.
“O.K.,” he said. “You’re right. You’re back on the job. I’m sorry.”
I believed him and put the gun on the desk.
The two guardians of the gate moved forward toward me, but Hughes stopped them.
“I said I was sorry,” he said. “I mean it. My word means something.”
The two backed off, and I told them to take better care of their weapons in the future. I had not made two friends.
Hughes motioned to me, and we walked into the studio and through a crowd of people, one of them a young man in a cowboy suit. They parted, and Hughes went toward a set with me at his side.
“I’ll get the details from you in a few minutes. We’re shooting some scenes for a Billy the Kid movie,” he explained. “But that damn Mayer is trying to beat us with a Billy the Kid of his own with Robert Taylor. I’ll need a new title for mine.”
“How about ‘The Outlaw?’” I suggested.
“Sounds too much like a gangster picture, “Hughes said.” I already did a gangster picture,
Hughes moved away from me into the lights, where he looked as uncomfortable as a man could look. The kid with the cowboy suit came over to Hughes, who talked to him softly. Then a girl joined them. She was dark and pretty and had an enormous rising chest.
I turned to ask someone who she was and what was going on, but I was being shunned like an M.G.M. spy, probably because of the shooting incident and the weary madness in my face.
After a few minutes of talk, Hughes moved out of the lights and left the girl and the kid on the set, which looked like an old stable. He called softly for the camera to roll, and someone shouted “Quiet.” Hughes motioned for action, and the guy with the sticks appeared and clapped them, announcing it was “Take ten on scene five.”
The kid took a step toward the camera with the heaving bosom of the dark girl behind him. His guns were drawn and he said to the camera, “Waal Doc, you borrowed from me; now I borrowed your gal.”
And Hughes called “Cut.”
“Good job Jane, Jack,” Hughes said. “That’s enough for tonight.” Then he had a brief conference with a young man with a clipboard and moved to me.
“It’s quieter to shoot at night,” he explained, leading me off into the studio away from the crew and cast as they broke up for the night or morning.
I didn’t care one way or the other, but I didn’t say anything. The studio looked big enough to house the late, great Dirigible Hindenburg. We sat down on a couple of coils of rope and I told him my tale in detail. He listened carefully, asking me to repeat once in a while, and I remembered to keep my voice up so he could hear.
“Looks like I was right, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Looks like something’s wrong,” I said.
“What do you want to do next?” Hughes asked.
“How about setting up another dinner party for Saturday night? Same guests plus me, minus, of course, Major Barton. I’ll try to pull something together by then, and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone turns you down.”
“And if they turn me down?” he said.
“I think I know someone who can persuade them to change their minds,” I said. “Oh, another thing. I need photographs of everyone in your house that night, guests, servants, everyone.”
“I’ll get them,” said Hughes. “Keep me informed and take care of yourself.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “Sorry about the scene in the office.”
“You were right,” he said and turned away to talk to a man with a clipboard, who was waiting patiently about twenty-five yards away.
I lifted my weary body from the coil of rope, walked across the studio and through the office without looking at the two guards, and stepped into the predawn darkness.
The radio kept me company on the way home and told me that the Pacific Parleys were expected to collapse and that frenzied troops were still fleeing the Reds near Rostov. It sounded like a tongue twister and I tried repeating “Fleeing the Reds near Rostov” ten times fast. Just as I pulled up a few blocks from my house, the radio told me that a 23-year-old girl named Velma Atwood, a carhop, had shot herself because her boyfriend had been drafted.
It was the end to a perfect day. I counted on the cops having checked out my complaint and the Skeleton calling it a night. To be safe, I took the.38 from my glove compartment and dropped it in my pocket. Then I opened the trunk. My groceries were all over the place, but nothing, including the bottle of milk, was broken. I stuffed them back in the brown bag and went home. Nobody was waiting for me this time when I let myself into Mrs. Plaut’s and made it up the stairs to my room. There was no one in my room. To play it somewhat safe, I didn’t turn on the light, and put the groceries away and undressed in the dark. For over a month, I had been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor to cut down on my back pain. The problem was that when I fell asleep I automatically turned on my side or stomach, which was no good for my back at all. That night I pulled the mattress into a corner, placed my.38 within reach and lay with my head propped on a pillow so I could see the door.
Sleep had almost taken me when I thought I heard something at the door. I tried to shake myself awake, but it felt like I was making my way through five layers of cotton candy.
The door popped open and a long thin shadow speared its way into the room followed by a definitely Germanic, “Mr. Peters?”
I almost shot my first man. The gun came up, and I tried to level it, expecting him to shoot me first and grateful that he had been dumb enough to frame himself in a lighted doorway while I was in the dark.
The cotton candy feeling gave me just enough hesitation, so as it turned out, I didn’t shoot Gunther Wherthman. Even if I had taken a shot at him I would have aimed a foot over his less than four feet in height. But considering the fact that I am not a particularly good shot and hadn’t fired a gun in years, I might have missed what I was aiming at and hit Gunther in a vital part. It was a sobering thought.
