I Caught Flies for Howard Hughes

It was during the time that Howard Hughes was cooped up in bungalow four of the Beverly Hills Hotel that I became proficient at catching flies. During that period, I was one of six people in the Hughes organization who saw Hughes and the one who served as his sole companion in that dark bungalow, staying with him as he ran and reran movies. He would sit, nude except for a hotel napkin on his lap, in the sweltering heat (he refused to allow the air conditioners to be turned on), stacking Kleenex boxes atop one another, watching the films. I sat in a chair several feet behind him, his projectionist ... and flycatcher.

Catching flies for Howard Hughes by the approved method meant that you could use only your hands. No fly swatters, newspapers or magazines, sticky paper or spray cans were allowed. You had to cover your hand with Kleenex so that the hand would not come into direct contact with the enemy, and you had to move slowly. Any sudden movement would raise a cloud of dust in the incredibly littered room. Patience was the key: Hughes had patience, the fly had patience, and so you had to have patience.

Whenever a fly managed to get past the guard outside the bungalow door--his job was to keep the pests out whenever the door was opened--I would stalk it ever so carefully, keeping the hand palm up, with the Kleenex draped over it. If the fly was in a relatively dust-free location, I would swipe at it just before it could take off. Hughes always insisted that he personally see the fallen enemy, so it was necessary to stand in front of his chair, extend my arm to a position eight inches from his nose, unfold the Kleenex and let him inspect the kill. On rare occasions, he would say, "That's a nice fly, Ron," or "You were real quick on that one." I would say nothing, because Hughes did not wish me to speak in his presence.

It was the oddest time of my life.

•

In March of 1957, I was living in a suburb of Los Angeles, out of work, and Dick Homer, a friend of mine who was holding two jobs, said he could get me some work with the firm for which he moonlighted. A couple of days later, a man called and identified himself as Bennie Carlisle. He said that Dick had given him my name and wondered if I would be interested in meeting with him in 30 minutes. Surprised by the abruptness, I said yes, and he told me to meet him at the phone booth in the Standard gas station at the intersection of Balboa Avenue and Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys. He told me he'd be driving a green Chevy; but after I had gotten to the station and waited a half hour, a man pulled up in a blue Chevy. I went up to him; it was Carlisle, and after we had chatted for a while, he gave me a short-form job application, which I filled out in his car. He asked if I knew where Clover-field Airport was: It was the field in Santa Monica I had always thought belonged to Douglas Aircraft, which was located next door. He told me to be there, at the southeast corner of the field, at midnight that night and report to a guy in a Chevy parked near a Convair 440. Apparently, I had been hired, though I didn't know by whom or what I was supposed to do. Whatever it was, I was to do it from midnight to eight A.M.

When I got to the airport, I found a filthy Convair sitting in a corner of the field, an equally filthy Chevy parked near it and no one in the car. There was a note saying that someone named Parker had had to leave at 11:45 to tend to his sick wife. Since I had gotten to the field at 11, I was anxious to meet this Parker and compare watches with him. I didn't meet anyone for four days, by which time my wife and I were barely speaking: She thought it would be sensible if I knew something about whom I was working for, what I was supposed to do and how much I was getting paid. She was right, but my pal Dick was out of town and he was the only person I could ask.

Finally, on the fifth night, I got to the field and there was a guy, huddled in the Chevy, reading a book by the light of a flashlight. He told me his name was Pat, that he was a student at Loyola University and a substitute for the elusive Parker, and, more importantly, that we worked for Hughes Productions. We were supposed to be guarding the Convair and we were earning two dollars an hour, with time and a half after 40 hours. Since Parker and the guard who occasionally showed up to relieve me were so casual, I began taking an air mattress in my station wagon, along with an alarm clock and a sleeping bag to ward off the Pacific night chill. I'd grab seven hours' sleep and keep looking for work during the day. My only connection with the Hughes empire was picking up my checks at Operations.

Operations was a block-long, two-story art-deco building located at 7000 Romaine Street in Hollywood. It served as offices for the Hughes staff. Operations' number-one reason for existence is supposed to be to serve Howard Hughes, but it seemed to me that what it did was to screw up Hughes's life and take care of itself. Inside the main office was a battery of male secretaries, all Mormons who had gone to Brigham Young University. Whenever the phone rang, they transcribed everything--every word--that was said, no matter who was calling. That log was kept at Hughes's instructions, so that he could call Operations any time and get his messages, which would be read to him in entirety: time of call, staff member who took it, name of caller and the conversation, including vocal inflections, pauses, stammers or any other mannerism that might indicate the state of mind of the caller. The state of mind of the person answering was always the same: The secretaries were unfailingly polite, spoke with the same Utah twang, and when they got mad, the closest they came to profanity was to utter an exasperated "For heck's sakes. ..."

Hughes was on his way to becoming a recluse by 1957, and my finances were on their way back to normal when I was ordered to work double shifts at the airport. But I quickly became as lazy as the rest of the guard operation, and so I was at home, asleep, one night when I got a frantic call from Operations, wanting to know why I wasn't at the airport. A very important person--the most important of them all, in fact--was supposed to be there, and I was given instructions on how to act around Howard Hughes: Don't look at him; don't talk to him; don't touch him. That was all I had time to hear before I ran for my post. When I got there, a group of airplane mechanics was moving a Douglas DC-6 cargo plane from its hangar to a position near the Convair. Supervising the move was a tall, thin guy dressed in a sports coat, a white shirt open at the neck and brown slacks. It was Howard Hughes.

Because Hughes had devised a cockamamie system for towing the plane, the move took until dawn, which brought a crowd of early-morning pilots to see why six men were doing a two-man job. I ran over to the edge of the crowd and did what I could to keep the people away from Hughes and the planes. Suddenly, a voice from the rear called out, "Who's that old gent?"

As I tried to think of an answer, another voice yelled, "Isn't that Howard Hughes?"

I was still fumbling when a third man boomed, "Hell, yes, that's old Howard! I've seen him fly in and out of here for ten years." That seemed to satisfy the men and they turned to go to the parking lot.

I turned around and damn near fell over the hood of a blue Chevy, which contained Hughes and his driver. During the mob scene, he had retreated, and I figured I had nothing more to lose. My eyes would not be diverted. By God, I was going to take a good look, since I figured it would be my last. Much to my surprise, I found Hughes looking directly at me and, more importantly, his angular face was in the beginning stages of a grin; then he gave me a full smile. Apparently he'd noticed my efforts in his behalf.

A couple of months later, I was informed by phone that I had been selected to join the "drivers' pool" of 12 or so fulltime men. The room we worked out of was in a small building at 941 North Orange, right next to the Romaine Street building.

Working at the airport had allowed me total freedom of self-expression: If I showed up for work wearing nothing more than a jockstrap and some suntan oil, there would be no one to tell me I had overstepped the line. But at the center of the Hughes organization, those lines were carefully drawn. There was a list of do's and don'ts that we were expected to follow. The do's were standard stuff: Dress neatly in a conservative suit; keep your hair neatly trimmed; keep your nails short and clean; be attentive to instructions; and, last but not least, be available. (As it turned out, being available for Hughes meant that I would be paid for many 168-hour work weeks.)

The don'ts were much more restrictive and included: Don't smoke; don't drink; don't eat garlic, onions or Roquefort salad dressing; don't talk to anyone concerning your duties; don't question any assignment; and never, never ask why (I later learned that it was morally permissible to ask why, but the question would never be answered). Those rules were not posted anywhere. Orders were seldom, if ever, written down; the Operations staff liked to repeat instructions over and again until you could repeat them: It was the Mormon equivalent of the catechism.

The duties of the drivers were varied. In the course of a week, I might complete the following missions for Operations: Pick up newspapers and magazines; pick up restaurant food or special ice cream for a member of the Operations staff; mail letters; pick up Hughes's head secretary at home, drive her to her office at Operations and drive her home again at the end of the day; pick up Mrs. Huhges's maid in Pacific Palisades and drive her to the Beverly Hills Hotel, to Mrs. Hughes's bungalow, and then home again.

On occasion, Operations would call, asking for a specific driver to perform a task. (Bluntly put, the staff of Operations recognized that the drivers they were hiring straight out of Fleabite, Utah, hadn't the savvy to perform any but the simplest chores, so the few of us who had demonstrated some street smarts were often called for by name.)

We would drive out of our parking lot, go around the block and wind up under a window at the northwest corner of the Operations building. After honking the horn and waiting, we would see a face appear at the window. Much of the time, "important" instructions of the great Hughes empire would be shouted down to the driver by the staff member upstairs. Some of the time, the staff people upstairs took advantage of modern technology: They lowered messages using a fishline with a note attached by a clothespin. A typical urgent communiqué might be: "Take this note to the address shown on the front. When you arrive there, go immediately to apartment number 104. Knock on the door. When the door is opened, say nothing, but give this note to the party who has opened the door. Wait there. You will be given a package. Do not open the package but bring it directly back to Operations and signal in the normal manner so that we can retrieve this package." The retrieval system was that same fishing line, and there were any number of windy days when the men across the street who worked for a concrete manufacturer had to believe we were nuts, with our little messages blowing in the wind.

Much of the drivers' time was taken up with the starlets who were under contract to Hughes Productions. Signed up by Hughes's talent scout, Walter Kane, the young women would spend days at drama lessons, dance lessons and voice lessons. This schooling was given at the private residences of the instructors, in houses scattered throughout Hollywood, Beverly Hills and West L.A. A driver would be assigned to a particular starlet for a day, taking her from lesson to lesson. Since each lesson lasted two hours, it made for a leisurely day for the drivers, with lots of goof-off time: The drivers would meet for coffee in the morning and--for a few of us--clandestine drinks in the late afternoon. (I also used the early-afternoon hours to sharpen my skills at pool, snooker and billiards.)

There was one standing rule of the road for drivers who had a Hughes starlet in the car. If we saw a bump in the road, we were supposed to slow down to a maximum speed of two miles an hour and c-r-a-w-l over the obstruction so as not to jiggle the starlet's breasts. I learned that Hughes was one of the world's consummate tit men, and he was convinced that women's breats would sag dangerously unless treated gently and supported at all times. (Perhaps the no-bra world we live in these days is one of the reasons Hughes stays in hiding.)

Evening was the start of the real fun. At least twice a week, the drivers on starlet duty would be required to take a starlet to dinner, at either Perino's or the Lanai Restaurant of the Beverly Hills Hotel--both top-rank eateries. We were usually paired with a new starlet each time, the idea being to discourage familiarity. What really discourage any familiarity was the fact that we would escort them in the company of their agents and, quite often, their parents. Under no circumstances could we escort an unchaperoned starlet.

Every starlet I escorted looked like every other starlet under contract to Hughes Productions. Whether she had been first-place winner in the Miss Universe Contest or Miss Personality in the L.A. County Citrus Show, she was invariably dark-haired, heavy-bosomes and flat-hipped, around 5'3", bearing a certain resemblance to Jean Peters, a former star and then Hughes's wife.

The dinners (and movies, stage plays or concerts afterward) were reasonably enjoyable, even if the starlets were interested only in looking for famous faces who might advance their careers. But the real fun came from the fact that the restaurant would invariably contain other Hughes drivers, having dinner with their collection of starlets, agents and parents. We were ordered not to acknowledge the presence of our friends, but we would try to break one another up by passing notes or making faces. It was silly stuff, but it may have served as escape from the disquieting fact that the starlet you had taken to dinner two nights earlier would literally look right through you when she was being escorted by another driver.

The best part of the dinner was the knowledge that lurking in the parking lot, not eating, were the private detectives. One was assigned to each driver-starlet car, to make certain there was no hanky-panky. About half the time, that detective would be followed by another detective, presumably to prevent any coordinated driver-detective sexual conquest. (It was never clear what the agent and the parents were supposed to be doing during this fantasy seduction.) In any even, part of the pleasure of my $20 steak dinners was the knowledge that the streets around the parking lot at Perino's would be littered with gumshoes trying to look inconspicuous in one of L.A.'s posher neighborhoods.

None of the starlets we escorted ever become stars, even with all the coaching and the hotsy-totsy food. The only ones who ever achieved anything big in Hollywood had to break their contracts, get new agents and start all over again. Hughes seemed to want them on the payroll as if they were a soil bank. He paid them generously, but Hughes Production wasn't producing any movies during that period.

•

Several months went by and I was called by Kay Glenn, the head of Operations, who told me that I had been promoted to head of the drivers' room. It was an honor for a non-Mormon to get that job; but before I could settle in, I was ordered by one of the men at Operations to report to the Goldwyn studios in Hollywood that same night. From the tremor in his voice, I could tell that it was an assignment that had to do with Hughes himself.

On arriving at Goldwyn, I found Bill Brimley, a friend from the drivers' room and one of the men who could be counted on to think for himself. Brimley told me that we were supposed to guard Hughes, who would be screening some films at the studio in one of the private theaters. Brimely didn't know how long the assignment was supposed to last and neither of us was sure what a bodyguard for Hughes was supposed to do. Brimley had an inch on my 5'8" and 2 pounds on my 180, but neither of us would-be assassin's heart. Was I supposed to hold an intruder's arms while Brimley hit him?

Not knowing what to do, we called Operations and got as orders the old Don't-look-at-him rountine, with a couple of additions: Do not speak to Mr. Hughes unless he commands you to do so; do not allow anyone to walk up the stairway at either end of the building; do not go into the projection booth or allow anyone in there except the projectionist.

Naturally, the first thing I did was to attempt to keep a man out of the building--he was Carl, the projectionist. Hughes and his wife had entered by going past Brimley's station, so my first knowledge that they were there cam when I heard the film being run. Suddenly, it became very quiet in the screening room. Then there was a loud "Bang!" that sounded like a pistol being fired. Terrified, I thought that someone had gotten in and shot Hughes. As I ran toward the room, the door exploded open. (continued on page 176)Howard Hughes (continued from page 168) Howard Hughes walked toward me as I stood there, frozen, staring at him. I realized that that was against orders, so I retreated out the door and onto a catwalk that circled the second floor of the building. Hughes's footsteps in the hallway came closer and closer, until it seemed that he was going to walk out onto the catwalk. There wasn't much room for me to retreat. "Bang!" I turned to see the door to the women's room closing. I heard the unmistakable sound of a tall man urinating into a bippy, and for some strange reason, I felt relieved. Hughes hadn't been shot, I knew where he was and I knew that he was going to come out of there. I took up a position about three feet from the door and turned my back. A few moments later, I heard the door open, some footsteps close by and then silence. The skin on the back of my neck began to crawl.

"Good evening, Ron." It was a man's voice, pleasant, with just a trace of a Texas twang. "You can turn around. Hell, I'm not that ugly." He chuckled. I turned around to face one of the world's greatest mysteries. There really was a Howard Hughes, even close up.

I looked up at a thin, angular face that was neatly framed by a Vandyke beard. He had thin gray hair that was combed straight back in a style that had gone out of fashion; there were traces of the original brown in his hair. He was over 6'3" and appeared to weigh no more than 155 pounds. He was dressed in a loose-fitting sports coat, a white shirt that was open at the neck, tan gabardine slacks that not only were out of style but seemed to have been tailored for a much heavier man and a pair of brown wing-tip brogans. There were no laces in his shoes and, judging from the decrepit condition of those shoes, it looked as if the laces had died a natural death. It seemed to be the same outfit Hughes had been wearing at the airport when I had first seen him.

I didn't know how he knew my name. Perhaps he'd asked about me after the airport incident (which would explain my advancement in the organization). I don't remember if I said hello back. As we stood there, leaning on the railing in the soft California night, we exchanged mostly small talk, very small. Hughes volunteered that it had been a nice day and I replied, "Yes, but it was warm."

"The clouds are building," he said, "so it looks as if we'll have some more rain." He didn't ask me how I was feeling or anything about my personal life (married? children?) or anything else two strangers might discuss to pass the time. Nor did he want to talk about my job, which might be expected when the two strangers are employer and employee. Abruptly, he went into a discourse, in great detail, about the workings of a large tank used for storing natural gas that dominated the skyline next to the studio. He talked about the tank for almost 45 minutes before he returned to the studio. A short time later, around midnight, the screening ended. As Hughes walked down the stairway to his car, I waited for a "Good night, Ron." It never came.

The screenings continued, as many as five times a week, for four months. We could never anticipate the next performance. Sometimes Hughes would come alone, and when he did, we knew we were in for an extended session. He usually screened for at least 12 hours and, on many occasions, for 48 to 72 hours. During those marathons, Brimley and I would sneak into the projection room not only to get warmth from the Early Times that Carl would smuggle in but also to get an idea of Hughes's viewing habits. His tastes ran from the then-current Academy Award contenders to epics such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Some of the films were shown in their entirety. Others would be stopped after 5, 10, 40 or 80 minutes by a signal from Hughes. To this day, I cannot figure out why he stopped some pictures when he did: On many occasions, he would watch a movie for two hours and stop it five minutes from the end. The most frustrating moments for us were when he stopped mysteries just before the killer was unmasked.

You really had to be an avid moviegoer to sit in a damn screening room for two, three or four days at a time, and you certainly had to have a cast-iron ass. I don't think anybody knows why Hughes chose to devote as much of his time as he did to those screenings. I did notice that the more outside business pressure we would hear about through the grapevine as coming down on Hughes, the more he turned to the movies. I suspect that he did his best mental work watching movies, because he's not the kind of guy to sit at a desk and make a list.

Other times, though, he was at Goldwyn only because his wife (we called her The Major, while we called another woman in whom Hughes was interested The Party) wanted to go out. Private screenings were among the few things he would easily let her do and that they could do together. To me, from the times I saw her, Jean Peters was the girl-next-door type. While she would sometimes come to the screening room in furs and finery (every inch the knockout she was in Captain from Castile), other nights she'd arrive in Levis and tennis sneakers. The Major was always polite, never forgetting to say "Hi, Ron," or "Good evening; how are you?" Given Hughes's unpredictable behavior, her sensitivity was most appreciated. She seemed to enjoy Hughes's company, yet there were occasions when she'd raise her voice, exclaiming, "I don't want to watch that again." Unfortunately, it was like waving a red flag: Hughes would get so agitated that she would always lose.

During one of the extended sessions, we had been at Goldwyn for two and a half days. Brimley, Carl and I were whipped; it looked as though Hughes were going to stay forever. Luckily, Carl had brought enough Early Times so that it appeared we might be able to outlast Hughes. The three of us were in a state that the W.C.T.U., as well as Operations, would certainly have described as drunk; but we were still functioning. I was sitting at the north end of the corridor, leaning back in my chair with my feet propped on the opposite side of the doorway. It was my superguard position. Someone would have to brush my legs aside or step over them to gain access to the hallway.

I was dozing when I suddenly heard running footsteps. Jolted awake, I turned to see Howard Hughes running toward me. His knee action was good, considering that his spindly legs were too long for the rest of him; his arm and hand movements were worthy of Roger Bannister. He was really making tracks. There didn't seem to be anyone chasing him, and as I leaped out of my chair and moved out of the doorway, I wondered what in hell he was doing. When he got ten feet from the doorway, he gave me the answer: He planted both heels and slid--boy, did he slide. My end of the hall had much less traffic than the other, so the floor wax hadn't been worn down. Hughes was gaining speed when he hit the doorway and the slight elevation of the doorframe caused him to go airborne. He literally flew into the pipe railing of the staircase. I thought he was going to break his fucking neck. He slowly unwrapped himself from the railing and looked at me with a sheepish grin. Without a word, he turned and started back down the hall at top speed, finishing with another virtuoso slide.

He made about ten sliding round trips that night and many more at subsequent screenings. I decided that the reason he did it was to wake himself up and get the circulation going in his legs, after days of sitting in the same chair. But after that display of athletic prowess, I made a resolution about my guarding of Hughes: If someone did come after him to do him harm, I'd simply yell, "Run, Mr. Hughes! Run!" Hell, I figured he could outrun 99 percent of his would-be attackers; the remaining one percent he could simply slide around.

We left Goldwyn for good just after "our" screening room was used to show rushes to the cast of Porgy and Bess. I never heard Hughes express any bigotry or racism, but the fact that an all-black cast had been in the studio we used (continued on page 214) Howard Hughes (continued from page 176) affected him or someone in Operations to the extent that Hughes never went back into that room. I was sent back to the drivers' room. It was a hell of a let-down to contemplate doing little errands for Operations after having been around Hughes. When we were with him, our word was golden: If we called Operations and ordered some ice-cream sundaes, no one there dared ask if they were for Hughes.

Then Glenn called and ordered me to report to Nosseck's Projection Theater on Sunset Boulevard, in the heart of the Sunset Strip. One thing that he said was most unusual: I was to treat everything I saw or heard in the strictest confidence; my entire mission was secret; even my wife was to be kept in the dark.

At first glance, it seemed that Nosseck's was to be just like Goldwyn. There were guards, Carl, Hughes and The Major, and the endless screenings. The accommodations were certainly not as nice, for while the room at Goldwyn had a patina of shabby elegance that you could associate with the golden years of Hollywood, the basement interior of Nosseck's--used by most of the major figures in the business at one time or another--greatly resembled a bat cave with projection equipment.

After two movies had been run, however, everyone left except for Hughes and the three bodyguards--Norm Love, Lloyd Hurley and me. Hughes called us into the screening room itself and motioned for us to stand at ease in front of him. "Fellows," he said, "I'm pleased that you all are here. I asked for each of you personally and I know you're the only people I can trust with this kind of assignment." Our collective chest swelled about six inches.

"We will be here for quite a spell," Hughes continued. "I'll leave it up to you to work out your schedule so that there is at least one alert, well-rested person here at all times." With a three-man detail, this sounded like a license to steal. "Absolutely no one is to know that you are here," he concluded. Then he dismissed Love and me, asking Hurley to remain in the room. I made a beeline for the projection booth so I could see, if not hear, what was going on.

Hurley was evidently instructed to sit in a straight-backed chair that was a few feet behind Hughes's chair. For the next two hours, Hurley just sat there with a slightly puzzled look on his face while Hughes indulged himself in one of his favorite pastimes, which I had first noticed at Goldwyn--stacking and unstacking Kleenex boxes. In the months to come, I would watch many scenes like this one, as Hughes stacked, restacked and rearranged six Kleenex boxes into every geometric permutation possible. My best guess is that he was using the boxes as symbols of management positions in his holdings and was trying to visualize the effects of corporate shufflings.

Finally, Hughes asked Hurley to leave, which Hurley did without apparently receiving any further instructions. Love went in--and the same puzzling scene was repeated for another two hours. Then it was my turn.

I remained in the chair for a couple of minutes, then carefully slid off the seat and walked to the rear of the screening room. I stood there, arms folded behind my back, looking intently at the ceiling. Hughes's high-pitched voice interrupted my reverie. "Ron, what are you doing there? I told you to sit in the chair and wait until I told you to move."

I figured that this was it, so, trying to make my voice confident, I said, "I'm looking for flies."

After a pause, Hughes asked, "Have you seen any?"

Gathering my nerve, I said, "No, but it sure beats sitting in that damned chair."

I expected a barrage, but, to my amazement, Hughes began to chuckle; soon he was laughing easily. When he stopped, he said, "You've caught on. You can go outside now."

I had already figured that Hughes liked to assert himself in ways that can only be called mind fucking, and I had determined not to play, at least not under his rules. He wanted to test people, to manipulate them, to see how far he could push them. People around that kind of money allow themselves to be pushed a hell of a long way. My attitude from the beginning was independent. Perhaps a two-buck-an-hour job was the big time to some Mormon kid from Utah, and for it he'd stand in a corner if Hughes said to, but my thought was, The hell with it; I'm in it for the laughs, and when I stop laughing, I stop playing.

The next day proved the worth of my position. Hughes called the three of us into the studio and said, "I want you to rearrange your schedules so that Ron is here at all times. Norm, you and Lloyd split your schedules so that one of you is here when the other is gone." I did some fast calculating and, factoring in overtime, figured my weekly pay had just zoomed to $464. That would make up for the fact that Hughes had had delivered his favorite white-leather chair and ottoman, which he had proved adept at sleeping in while at Goldwyn. The anteroom at Nosseck's held nothing as comfortable for Kistler, but what the hell, $464 was $464, and this hand just couldn't be folded.

We didn't know how long we were going to be there. At first, I thought that it couldn't last beyond a week or so, based on the initial delivery of groceries for Hughes. It consisted of a quart of milk, several bottles of Poland water, two Hershey bars with almonds and a small bag of pecans. Five days later, the same bill of fare was delivered. This had to be a temporary assignment, I thought. After all, who could live on a diet of milk, water, chocolate and nuts? Well, Howard Hughes could. He managed on it for the full three months we were there, eating nothing else.

We got by, courtesy of the coffee shop at a hotel up the street, as well as through Care packages delivered by Brimley or Dick Homer. I don't know how Hughes reacted to the smell of steaming burgers being attacked in the anteroom outside the studio; for that matter, I wonder if he noticed.

Food was one thing. Hygiene was another. There were no shower or bath facilities at Nosseck's, which is not unreasonable, since the owner probably didn't foresee his studio's being used as a flophouse by a multimillionaire. Hughes solved this problem by taking "sponge baths." These consisted of his throwing cold water onto his head and letting it drip down over as much of his body as gravity and the absorbency of his skin would permit. For obvious reasons, this technique served to wet only the upper third of his body; the watermark was at about his armpits.

The result was that Hughes had achieved a level of body odor that was probably unacceptable even by the standards of a gymnasium. The residue from his baths had built up on his shirt (the same white shirt he'd had on at our first meeting, which was eight months earlier) until there were the outlines of many high-water marks.

Finally, Hughes noticed his slovenliness. He called me in one day and said, "Ron, my shirt and trousers are in dire need of a cleaning. Do you think you could clean them up for me?"

I took a long, careful look and said emphatically, "No."

Hughes wouldn't give up. "Don't you think you could get a can of cleaning fluid and take the biggest stains out?"

I wanted no part of that detail. "There is no way in this world," I said, "that those clothes can be cleaned. They are so old and dirty that they would fall apart the minute cleaning solvent hit them."

Hughes looked pained. He sat for several minutes in silence. But he was not the kind of person who would give up easily. "Ron," he implored, "this is my favorite outfit."

No shit. I'd never seen him wear anything else. But I wasn't backing down. "There is no way to clean those clothes, period. You're just going to have to throw them away and get something new to wear."

At that, he rose and began to unbutton his shirt. He shrugged his shoulders and the shirt fell to the floor. Then he un-buckled his belt, unzipped his pants and let them slide to his ankles. His white-on-white body, unencumbered by any underwear, was a sight to behold. He hadn't had a shave or a haircut for God knows how many months. His beard now hung six inches down on his chest. His hair was almost to his shoulders. He stepped out of his pants, bent down and picked them up, along with the shirt, and handed the bundle to me. I swear that there were tears in his eyes.

I took the clothes into the lobby and deposited them in a large waste can. End of an era. The next day, a driver delivered what looked to be a shirt box from a laundry. A few minutes after that, Hughes had his first clean shirt of the year. Even though it was four or five sizes too large, and even though there still were no trousers and he wore the same old unlaced brown wing tips, it was an improvement. Relatively speaking, Howard Hughes was ready for the Easter parade.

•

One day I received my first indication that I might be something more to Hughes than a quasi bodyguard. He called me into the studio and asked me to take dictation. I didn't think twice about it, even though I wasn't trained in any legitimate system of shorthand. The letter he dictated had to do with the affairs of Trans World Airlines and was being sent to one of the people who were trying to take over Hughes's holdings in the airline. From the text of this and other communiqués, I could tell that there was a major problem with the airline, which apparently didn't have the cash to pay for the first 707s that were coming off Boeing's assembly line. It was going to be necessary for TWA to borrow a huge sum of money, because the airline had been a steady money loser.

One of the institutions with which Hughes was negotiating was The First National Bank of Boston. Hughes had me call someone there and read him a list of instructions on how to negotiate with Howard Hughes. "After you hang up from this call," I recited to the bank officer, "we ask you to have your telephone line checked to make sure that there is no sort of listening device on it; make no mention of this call to anyone unless absolutely necessary, and only then after swearing him to secrecy; keep the number of people who know of these negotiations to a minimum; lock up all note pads used in these negotiations every night."

I learned that the amount of the loan I was talking about was $268,000,000. It made me feel odd. I'd had a terrible time opening an account with Sears.

•

Hughes had one peculiarity that gave me my greatest laugh at Nosseck's. He would sit in the studio, his shoes off, talking on the phone to The Major or The Party, bouncing around on his chair in a state of some kind of excitement. But he had a further trick. He could fold his long, bony toes, one over the other, starting with the little toe and working in. He was doing that one day when Homer came by to deliver some food to me and I shushed him, took him into the projection booth and pointed toward Hughes's seated ballet and toework. Homer got so hysterical, laughed so loud, that Hughes, who was hard of hearing, started twisting around in his chair to try to see who was making that horrible noise.

But as our stay wore on, I began to get really concerned about Hughes's mental state, as well as his weakened physical condition. He seemed to have extended periods of truly bizarre behavior, which were occurring more and more frequently. Physically, he resembled a live skeleton. His cheekbones protruded grotesquely from the sunken face; the black circles under his eyes seemed to be those of a mad artist. His calves looked like wrists; his thighs were the size of decent forearms. His buttocks had lost so much flesh that there were several rolls of loose skin, so that Love, Hurley and I started calling him Saddlebags.

I called Glenn at Operations and said, "Kay, I'm afraid Hughes is going to die."

There was a long silence. Finally, Glenn was able to mumble, "Ron, what makes you think that?" I told him in detail about the diet, the weight loss, the lack of bathing facilities, the sleeping conditions--the whole sorry story. Glenn told me to stand by the phone for an important call. Shortly afterward, a doctor called and I went through the story again and answered a lot of questions about skin color, respiration, speech coherence, firmness of step, mental alertness, and the like. The doctor offered no conclusions; there was nothing to be done. He couldn't pick up his phone, call Hughes and tell him he was sick. That decision would be made by Hughes and no other.

But two days later, as if he'd read my mind, Hughes demonstrated one of the greatest mental feats I have ever witnessed. With me still worried that he'd gone around the bend, he called me into the studio and reminded me of the complex letter he had dictated regarding TWA some months before. Since it was in the form of a memorandum--highly technical and very long--he had had me keep my copy of it. Well, this man I thought on the edge of the abyss sat me down and redictated that memo to me, fact for fact, word for word, comma for comma. When he finished, he asked me if he'd gotten it right. I told him he had, he smiled and that was that. I think Hughes thought he had to show me that he was OK: Evidently, he had noticed my concern.

Apparently, some of Hughes's relative unhealthiness was a ruse that he was using against The Major and The Party. When he talked with them on the phone, I would hear him say, "The night nurse Ruth is with me now and she's ready to give me a bath" or "Nurse Hannah is about to give me an enema." It became clear to me that the reason behind the whole lost summer--the isolation, the weight loss, the hospital talk, his avoiding calling Operations--was to convince the people dear to him that he was in a hospital, rather than at Nosseck's. He successfully cut himself off from The Major and The Party and avoided any personal confrontations on the TWA crisis, all by portraying himself as gravely ill. The unanswered question is Why?

Despite his charade, he was terrified of potential germs or any kind of disease. I had had enough. I wanted to go home. So one day, when I was certain he was looking at me, I allowed my knees to sag ever so slightly, brushed my forehead with my hand and tried to look like someone who had narrowly avoided a fainting spell. Hughes asked, "Ron, are you feeling well?"

I had to admit, "No, sir, not well at all."

He seemed to press himself back into his chair. "Are you coming down with a cold?"

Hardly. "No," I said, "I just seem to have picked up a headache I can't shake."

That was all it took. "You've had a long spell here, Ron. I think you had better go home for a few days. You go on home, get a good rest and take care of yourself. Stay there until you hear from me." I never had to go back to Nosseck's, because Hughes left a few days after I did (I never found out why). Waiting at home to hear from him meant five weeks' paid vacation with my wife.

•

I got a call ordering me to report to Hughes's bungalow, number four, at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I was to spend the last year of my active employment with Hughes Productions there. When I reported for work, I immediately spotted a familiar face on the bungalow steps. It was a Hughes employee who was referred to by Hughes as a "third man." There were three third men who rotated hours so that one of them was always available. Their duties were to guard the bungalow's door, as well as to guard two other unoccupied hotel bungalows. (Hughes had apparently filled those bungalows full of wadded-up Kleenex and simply moved out of them.) They would deliver newspapers and magazines, coordinate meal service and let people in and out of Hughes's bungalow. That last duty was not at all simple.

Before the door could be opened, the third man had to take a folded newspaper and shoo away any insects from the doorframe. Then he would open the door barely wide enough for a body to squeeze through and, within seconds, slam the door shut before any kamikaze fly or mosquito could make it inside to dive-bomb Hughes.

When I arrived the first time, I squeezed into the room just in time to escape being squashed like a, well, like a bug. Inside, I immediately stopped in my tracks. It was gloomily dark, especially in contrast to the sunshine outside. "Just stand right there and don't move, Ron. And remember not to talk." It was Hughes's voice. After my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I looked around and was thankful I'd stopped when I had. The room looked like a Salvation Army thrift shop, jammed with chairs, couches, end tables, lamps, bookcases, Hughes's favorite leather chair and ottoman, a large movie screen, two portable projectors on top of one of the coffee tables, two large speakers and approximately 20 full-size film cans spread out in rows on the floor. The cans were laid out in such a way as to make narrow paths to various sections of the room.

Hughes was sitting in the middle of this, in his favorite chair, wearing nothing but a pink Beverly Hills Hotel napkin, which he held in his crotch. After Nosseck's, I wondered what had inflamed his sense of modesty. Neither his beard nor his hair had been cut since I had last seen him. The beard fell to his chest. He was not nearly so gaunt as he had been at Nosseck's, and I was also pleased to note that his exposed skin, and there was lots of it, had a healthy pinkish tinge that gave evidence of recently having been bathed and well rubbed with a towel.

"Ron," he said, "that is your chair over in the corner. Go sit in it and don't move around. You will find a book of instructions on how to run these projectors. Read it and make damned sure that you know how to operate them. It shouldn't take you long, considering the amount of time that you have spent in the projection booth with Carl when you weren't supposed to be there." (How did he know?) As I walked to my chair, he added, "Remember! You are not to talk in this room. If you want to communicate with me, you can write a note on one of the pads that you will find on the table. But I cannot imagine anything that would be important enough to require you to write me a note." Since I had been told to read the instruction booklet, and since it was dark in the room, I turned on a lamp that was by my chair. You'd have thought I had run over and sneezed in his face. Hughes whipped around and growled at me, "Turn that damned light off. If I want you to turn the damned light on, I'll damned well tell you to turn the damned light on. Now turn the damned light off."

Looking around the room again in the darkness, I remembered a line from Edgar Guest: "It takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home." In this $175-per-day hotel bungalow, Hughes had done his best for the heap part of that phrase. Stacks of unread magazines and newspapers were piled around the room, some of them at least seven feet high. Hughes had obviously been willing to devote a lot of time to making certain that the various stacks were perfectly balanced. I was to learn that he had delivered to him by the third man every edition of every local daily paper in evenly aligned groups of three, so that Hughes could pull out the supposedly sanitary middle paper. After all that, he never did read it. I could see that there were many issues of Playboy in the piles, sometimes two or three copies of the same issue. (Later I would see him occasionally studying a Playboy centerfold. He never touched another magazine.)

In the small open spaces between stacks (or furniture), he had started a monumental pile of used Kleenex, left over from cleaning his nose, eyes, ears, fingernails, toenails, the telephone, his chair, his ottoman and anything else he could reach. Evidently, he would dispose of the tissues by wadding them into balls and throwing them over his shoulder onto the floor. Unfortunately, I could see that his aim was in the general direction of my chair. I began immediately to develop an overwhelming fear of being crushed under a mountain of dirty Kleenex piled in this multimillionaire's Beverly Hills bungalow.

After a few hours of staring at the mess and squinting at the instruction booklet, I was given permission to return to the hotel room that had been reserved for me. I got up and started to leave the room, only to be stopped by Hughes's excited voice: "Wait until I call the third man to let you out!" I stood by the door as he phoned. "Stan, would you please come over and let Ron out of the room?" He turned back to me. "When the third man gets here, he will notify you by kicking on the door." I nodded. "You will then kick the door to signal to him that you are prepared to go out quickly as he opens the door." After the ritual kicks, I made a frantic squeeze through the opening and damn near lost my manhood on the knob.

I fought off boredom during those long months in the bungalow by learning the tricks of an ace flycatcher, But I wasn't always the one to track the dread insect. On Easter Sunday, 1959, John Holmes, Hughes's personal driver, took his turn. Hughes pretended not to notice holidays, claiming that they were just like any other day. On every important holiday--the ones normal people like to spend with their families--Hughes would contrive to have all his closest aides with him. But Hughes had told Holmes as early as Thanksgiving the year before that he would have Easter Sunday off so that he could spend it with his family.

On Easter morning, I was on duty and wasn't too surprised to see Hughes pick up the phone, call Holmes and launch into his favorite con: "Johnny, I know I promised you that you could have this Sunday with your family, but I have to interrupt your day. This won't take long, but I have to have you come down. There's a fly in my room." I don't know who was more pissed off with that excuse, Holmes or me. After all, I was a pretty damn good fly killer.

Holmes came into the bungalow a couple of flyless hours later. He was a good actor, so he wasn't showing the displeasure he must have been feeling. He stood in front of Hughes, who said in his most apologetic tone of voice, "I'm sorry, John, but there's a fly somewhere in here and I just have to turn to you to catch it." The humidity in the room went up 15 percent because I was steaming in the corner: You can get me to do a lot of bullshit things, but don't ever tell me I'm not doing them well.

Holmes began his search, looking everywhere he could walk. He worked slowly, very slowly. After 45 minutes of brilliant acting, he made his way alongside Hughes's chair, out of Hughes's range of vision but well within mine. Holmes tapped his forehead and smiled, then reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a Kleenex, He opened it up, and there was the corpse of a big, beautiful fly. The cheating son of a bitch had brought one from home.

He put the fly back in his pocket and worked his way to a far corner of the room, where Hughes could watch him only by looking over his shoulder. Then Holmes made a production out of spotting a fly. He put a piece of Kleenex on his hand. He was ready for the kill. He made a pass and then made the substitution of one ball of Kleenex for the other. He went over to Hughes. "Did you get him, John?" Holmes nodded. "Well, let's have a look." Holmes unfolded the Kleenex very carefully and put the dead body right in front of Hughes's face. Hughes really studied that dead fly and finally said, "Johnny, that's a nice fly." Holmes nodded, smiling. Then Hughes looked up at Holmes and said thoughtfully, "Next time, John, let's get a legal kill." We were all of us close enough to one another to understand the joke, and we all broke out in hysterical laughter that lasted for over five minutes. When the laughter had subsided, Hughes said, "John, go on and spend the rest of the day with your family, and happy Easter to you."

•

Hughes was certainly eating better at the hotel than he had at Nosseck's, but he was still a very unconventional man. He might eat at eight P.M. Tuesday and not again until ten P.M. Thursday. He would notify the serving crew hours, or even days, in advance of his mealtime. In theory, this was to give them time to wash themselves down, so that they (and the kitchen) would be hygienic enough for Hughes. In reality, it gave them enough time to get to the hotel from their homes. (The waiters were Hughes employees who also doubled as chefs.)

The quantity of food that Hughes was able to consume was staggering. A large salad, two or three broiled steaks, one or two quarts of milk, several quarts of ice cream and as many as six single-layer cakes at one meal. It would take him two or three hours to finish a meal like that, and I guess it's no wonder that one of them would hold him for days. One time, he called the third man and said, "Let's eat steak today." He called back later and said. "I've changed my mind. I'm not going to eat now." It had been two and a half days between his first call and the second one.

This sort of thing wore the waiters to a frazzle. If he ordered steak, they would cook it until it was almost done, because they knew that there would be a wait outside the bungalow with the steak sitting there, cooking slowly over a Sterno can. Of course, if the wait outside was too long, they would have to go back to the kitchen and start a fresh piece of beef. The record for steaks cooked outside Hughes's room but not delivered was, I believe, ten.

Another time, it looked as if the waiters were, after innumerable delays, going to get in with their food. They were on the porch with a tray of beef Stroganoff and a can of Sterno underneath it. Suddenly, one of the waiters looked up at the Spanish-style tile roof. It was evidently a favorite haunt of some sparrows. He reached up with his bare hand and scraped some birdshit off the tile. He flung it into the Stroganoff and then stirred it in. The door was opened and the cart wheeled in. Hughes immediately ate the meal without noticing a thing. He didn't say that it was better than usual, but he sure didn't say that it was any worse.

When I wanted to eat, I had to pick up my hotel-room phone, call Operations in Hollywood, place my order and then wait while they relayed it to room service, some 50 yards away. Operations would often try to assert their authority over me by "forgetting" to place my order, so I would have to call again and again. There was a list of foods I was not to eat around Hughes, including pork products, any meat cooked with gravy, garlic, onions or any other "breath destroyer," spaghetti or any other Italian dish (my very Italian wife regarded this as another black mark against Hughes) or any dish that might be considered exotic. Because the gourmet standards used in measuring what was or wasn't exotic were those of that center of high-class cuisine--Utah--I found that I was safe only with a New York-cut broiled steak. Steak and eggs for breakfast. Steak sandwich for lunch. Steak for dinner. A typical day's food bill for me--you know what room-service prices are these days, and at the Beverly Hills Hotel, they were like that then--would run close to $100. The standard Hughes tip was always 50 percent of the bill. Eventually, I got hold of the right people in the kitchen (my food was prepared by hotel employees) and we devised a code, so that if I ordered Wheatena and whole-wheat toast with eggs, I'd get ham and eggs. Cheating like that really was cheating, because even if Hughes's taboo list was inexplicable to me. Hughes himself didn't eat any of the foods he didn't want me to eat.

Hughes's sleeping was as unconventional as his eating. He might go to bed and sleep for 18 hours or he might wake up after two hours and cat-nap the day away. There was no such thing as bedtime. Sleep might be convenient at ten A.M., four P.M. or four A.M. He never wore any kind of watch, so he would occasionally call the third man and ask the time. The third man had to remember to add A.M. or P.M.

We passed the time he wasn't eating or sleeping watching films. Cowboy movies were his favorites, but anything having to do with airplanes was on his must-see list. The prints were borrowed from the studios (Hughes had been part of the industry when he owned RKO, and he could still be considered in show business through the weird functioning of Hughes Productions). Of course, the studios wanted the films back within a reasonable period of time, especially in the case of a new release for which they had only a limited number of prints. Many times I would get frantic calls from Operations wanting to know about the status of a film Hughes had watched half of but had put on hold. When the problem was really acute, I'd smuggle the film out, which always led to interesting confrontations with Hughes: He'd want to know what had happened to that film and I'd tell him that he'd seen it all and had OK'd its return.

Between reels. Hughes would make phone calls to The Major and The Party. Because of his hearing problem, he wore a hearing aid, so he would take his amplifier and hold it over the earpiece at a right angle to his head. That made me privy to every word said on both sides of the conversation. Listening to all the little intimacies, spats and gossip made me very uncomfortable, but Hughes was oblivious of this; he'd say the most personal things in my presence.

The other fellows working for Hughes at the hotel loved to play practical jokes that had as their basis the fact that he was hard of hearing. There was a large air purifier in one window of the bungalow. The guys would whisper jokes through the air cleaner that I could hear but Hughes couldn't. If he was looking at me, I'd have to keep a straight face.

One time, I was sitting in my chair when I smelled smoke, cigarette smoke, and I was dying for a cigarette. They were blowing smoke through that damned purifier (which, like the air conditioner, wasn't turned on). Hughes started sniffing the air. "Ron, I smell smoke," he said. "Are you smoking?" I shook my head no. "Well, I smell smoke," Hughes said, "and I'm not smoking. And you're not smoking. But I do smell smoke. Do you smell smoke?" I nodded my head. "Isn't that strange? That's the first time I've ever smelled smoke here." This went on for about 20 minutes, his wonderings about the smoke, while the more he talked about it, the faster the guys outside were lighting up cigarettes. They were howling with laughter, knowing that Hughes couldn't hear them, and I had to sit there, wearing a Buster Keaton stone face. If Hughes knew about those gags--and I often think that he did--he pretended not to, preferring to let us have our fun, blow off our steam.

But he was grating on my nerves. He was spending hours combing his beard, using the small end of a barber's comb with such gusto that I expected either the comb or the beard to break out in flames. It was just another of his absent-minded, nervous habits (like polishing the wire that led from the phone to the wall), but it was getting to me. So were the growing piles of Kleenex.

Worse, Hughes had begun to take a lot of naps, which would last anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours. He would stretch out in that leather chair, plop his feet on the ottoman and sleep. My chair was armless, unpadded and very uncomfortable. I couldn't sleep. Hell, it was hard to slouch in that chair. I wrote him a note: "I would like to go to my room when you take a nap."

This displeased Hughes and he was quick to say so. "Ron, I don't think that you are being fair to me. I never sleep for very long and you can nap at the same time. You know that I don't like to have the door opened and closed any more than is necessary, and for that reason, I don't want you to leave."

I could see that this was going to be a good fight, but I was ready for it. I wrote: "Your chair is one hell of a lot more comfortable than mine. I would like to go to my room so that I can smoke, go to the bathroom and call my wife. I can be back here within five minutes after you call me."

A growing look of repulsion spread over his face as he read my note and contemplated my actions. "We'll talk about it some other time. Get back in your chair. I'm going to turn out the light and we're going to take a nap." If that was supposed to end it, it didn't. He turned out the light and began to nap. I went over to the door and waited, hoping somehow to get out.

After a few minutes. Hughes turned on a light and said, in a soft, gentle voice. "Ron. please sit down. I want to talk to you." I took my seat. "I know that you're uncomfortable, that the hours are long and irregular, that you haven't been home with your family for a long time and that I make you nervous, but I just want you to know how much I appreciate having you here. You do such good work, and always with such a good-natured attitude, that it really helps my spirits to have you in the room with me. There isn't anyone in the whole world that I would rather have in this room with me than you, Ron."

It was his Sunday Punch. He knew it was bullshit, I knew it was bullshit, but there we were, he laying it out and I taking it in. He was so maudlin that I had begun to smile. Evidently, he saw that he'd overdone his spiel, for he started to grin back at me. "Ron, I wouldn't insult you with money." (Damned right he wouldn't. I was still earning that two bucks an hour, even though it did come to $464 a week.) "I can only promise you that you will have a job with me for the rest of your life. I know that I've been too tough on you and I apologize. You can go to your room. I'll send for you when I need you." It was a victory, but a short-lived one.

I had, over the past weeks, begun to realize that I had a real problem. I had been having an itching sensation in my rectal area that was getting worse and worse. I had tried all the patent medicines with no relief and I knew that I would have to see a doctor. In desperation. I wrote Hughes a note to let him know about my condition: "I'm afraid I must see a doctor. I have a problem with my rectum."

Hughes felt that you go to a doctor to contract a disease, not to cure one. "Do you have hemorrhoids, Ron? Piles? A rash?" I shook my head no each time. He said that he would make arrangements for me to visit a specialist.

Two weeks later, I was still waiting--and itching. It was getting worse. I was in continuous discomfort. I tried another note: "My ass is killing me and I still want to go see a doctor."

We glowered at each other. Finally, he said. "I've been making arrangements and should have word for you by tomorrow."

The next day, I brought the note with me: "When in the hell do I get to see a doctor?" I was furious and he knew it. He called Operations and told them to make an appointment with one of the leading plumbing specialists in Beverly Hills. I was scheduled for the next day. I felt better almost instantly.

The doctor called my problem a "million-dollar rectum." It seems that the anal area is very sensitive and when the body is plagued with severe nervous anxiety, it is not uncommon for there to be a minor breakdown in that area. The doctor told me that this condition was fairly common among some of his wealthier patients. The prescription was simple and welcome. I was to go home and stay there for three to four weeks. The next day, when Hughes read my note about the diagnosis, his solution was a direct one: "We'll get a new doctor." The following day. I was sent to another specialist. He diagnosed the problem as a minor skin rash.

I was far from cured. In fact, I was in worse shape than ever. There was no such thing as sleep for me, and Hughes was really putting it to me: long, long sessions with little free time. He was getting meaner than hell. There were no more laughs in it for me. To top it off, I had gotten a call from my wife (her angel-of-mercy visits to my hotel room were the bright spots in our lives): I was going to have to choose between Hughes and her.

The last time I went to the bungalow, it was a particularly hot, smoggy September day. The Santa And winds had blown much of the L.A. filth into Beverly Hills, and Hughes didn't have the air conditioner or the air purifier on. I had barely gotten seated when he said, "Ron, just sit there quietly while I take a short nap."

I jumped up and ran to the front of his chair. I wasn't about to be bothered with note writing. I shouted, "It's too goddamned hot in here!"

He grimaced and instructed me to take a piece of Kleenex and turn the air conditioner on to its lowest setting--one click below Low Cool, which should be labeled Noise. Then he gave me a very dirty look and said. "Sit in your chair. We are going to take a nap." He had turned out the lights and had taken his hearing aid out of his ear. so it was going to be tough to communicate with him. He had closed his eyes and was presumably asleep. I picked up a large Turkish towel and stood alongside his chair.

To catch his attention, I started madly fanning his skinny, old nude body with the towel. His eyes snapped open. I lost control and started screaming at him: "Goddamned crazy old bastard! It's so goddamned hot in here you could fry an egg on the floor and still you won't turn on the air conditioner! I'm sick and you make the doctor tell me a bunch of lies! You told me that I wouldn't have to stay in this damned room when you took a nap! My wife is leaving me and taking the kids! You've got me half-crazy now! You run around nude in this stinking shithole and I'm leaving before I get as nuts as you are! Fuck You, Howard Hughes! I quit!"

Hughes's eyebrows were arched, his eyes bulging. I walked over to the door and grabbed the private, privileged doorknob with my bare hand. I flung the door open as far as it would go. The third man was in his own room. There was no one around to brush at the flies. I looked back to see Hughes sitting, nude, in that damned old white-leather chair. He was shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight, something that he hadn't seen in months. He was reaching for the telephone, probably to call the third man.

Streams of people were walking along the sidewalk outside the bungalow, going to or coming from the Polo Lounge or the pool. Most of them peered into bungalow four, trying to see who that poor skinny old mole was, the one with the beard and the long hair and the pink napkin stuffed in his crotch.

I haven't seen Howard Hughes since.