The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) (3 page)

“Did Noah get there yet, Rod?” he shouted, as if unsure of the power of the phone to carry his voice. “Right, well in addition to the seventh, check the rear flaps again. I know you did.” Hughes hung up and crossed his arms. I gave him about three more minutes while I tried to gain sympathy from the guy who looked like the FBI, but he wasn’t having any.

Finally, I said, “Mr. Hughes.”

Hughes didn’t answer, and I got up. This time I was a little louder.

“Mr. Hughes.”

Nothing.

The third time, I gave it something close to a shout. Hughes looked up.

He turned his eyes on me and slowly focused into the room.

“You’re…”

“Peters, Toby Peters. I eat avocado and bacon sandwiches, wait around in blue offices for hours, take long rides in the rain, and occasionally do a confidential investivation.”

Hughes looked at me with serious interest for the first time.

“You’re five-foot nine, 44 years old. Your brother is an LAPD police lieutenant in the Wilshire District. You have an office in the Farraday Building, exactly $323 in the bank and a bad back which must be causing you some pain now because it flares up in humid weather.”

“What kind of gun do I have?”

He paused for a second, chewed on his mustache with his lower teeth, cocked his head as if he hadn’t heard. Apparently he was a little hard of hearing and didn ‘t feel like admitting it, so I asked the question louder.

“You own a .38 automatic, but you’ve never fired it at anyone and you don’t like to carry it. You have a good record with a reputation for knowing how to keep secrets. That’s important to me.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You also have a reputation for doing foolish things.”

He did something that looked as if it might someday develop into a smile. Then his head twitched slightly in the direction of the door. It was enough of a message to send his well-dressed muscle man back out into the rain, closing the door behind him.

Hughes, his arms still folded across his chest and his rear against the desk, turned his eyes upward, looking at the ceiling and listening to the rain hit the roof.

“This country is going to be at war in a few weeks,” he said.

It seemed both reasonable and inevitable to me, and I had nothing to add. In a few minutes, he went on.

“Hughes Aircraft has designed some important equipment to help us win that war. We have finished plans for the D-2 bomber, the fastest, most accurate bomber plane in the world. We have also completed designs for a long-range, high-speed, giant wooden transport for carrying troops to Europe over the Atlantic or Pacific to bypass the threat of submarines.”

“Sounds great,” I said, waiting for him to tell me if I was going to pilot the bomber or the transport.

“I have reason to believe the Japanese have either stolen my plans or have tried to steal them.” He turned his eyes on me. They didn’t blink. I looked back at him, wondering what the hell my reaction was supposed to be. I nodded slowly, sadly, knowingly. It was a good choice. He went on.

“In 1934, we built the H-l, the Hughes One, a prototype for the world’s fastest landplane. It had a radial engine with two banks of cylinders and a 1,000-horsepower Pratt and Whitney twin Wasp engine.”

I raised my eyebrows in further appreciation though I didn’t know a Pratt and Whitney from a gumball machine. Hughes was looking straight at me and talking.

“We built that to run fast, even specified flathead screws countersunk and rivets installed flush with the metal to minimize wind resistance. We set a world speed record in that plane in 1935 in Santa Anna. Now the Japanese have a fighter plane they’re using in China, based on the H-l, and the United States is a good five years behind them.”

“Mr. Hughes,” I said, getting up and trying not to reach for my aching back, “I don’t know a damn thing about airplanes.”

“But you know a lot about thieves,” he said.

“I’ve caught them, lost them, played poker with them and been laid up by them. They come in all sizes and ages: old ladies in grocery stores who drop cans of soup in their knitting bags; fourteen-year-olds who break pawnshop windows to grab watches they can’t sell; guys with guns and no brains and guys with enough brains to be making ten times as much in something straight. I even know guys who own big companies who might qualify, and I don’t mean you. I want a hot bath and you want the cops or the FBI, not me.”

Hughes moved away from the desk toward me. A bead of water dripped down his forehead, and he looked tired as he stepped forward.

“The FBI doesn’t believe me, and the police who have jurisdiction can’t handle it.”

“Right,” I said, looking at him after a step toward the door. “What could I do? Play spy? Break codes?”

“You could listen,” he said, showing a distinct spark of irritation. He tried to cover it like an exposed sore, and the look in his eyes was embarrassment.

“I don’t get together with people very much,” he said carefully. “But last Monday I had a small dinner for some people who I thought might be of value when the war came. My plan was to organize a kind of lobby to support the projects I think are vital if we are to win that war. We’re already gearing up to munitions work and…” he trailed off, making it clear there were things I didn’t have to know. I agreed with him. There was a lot I didn’t have to know. My specialty was guarding bodies and hotel lobbies, finding runaway wives, husbands, parents and kids, lovers and deadbeats—not spies.

“Hear me out, Peters,” he said with a tone of anger, as my face showed my decision. He was about to say something else when the telephone rang. We looked into each others’ eyes while he talked loudly on the phone, “Right, yes, I’ll be right there. No, I’ll do it.” He hung up and gritted his teeth.

“Peters, I want you to quietly investigate the list of people I am going to give you. They were dinner guests last week at the house I’m using in Mirador down near Laguna. I also have the names of the three servants who were there. I’m sure someone on the night of that dinner went into the study and looked at my plans for the bomber and the transport. My papers were moved. I want you to find out who looked at those papers and if they actually got to copy them.”

I shook my head sadly. He looked at his watch.

“Look,” I said, “You can get a whole agency to work on this. Besides, I don’t think I can come up with anything based on what you’ve got. You’ve got maybes and you want miracles.”

Hughes moved toward the door and past me.

“You were recommended by one of our employees. You check out. No one can buy you off and no one can make you talk. I’ll give you $48 a day plus expenses. Walter Dean at the Romaine Office will be your contact and give you anything you need. Now, it’s either yes or no. I’ve got to get back on the field.”

If he was waiting for me to ask how he came up with a figure like $48, he was going to be disappointed, but he was also a man who knew the price of another man.

“No guarantees and $100 in advance,” I said.

“Ninety-six dollars in advance, two days,” he said.

I laughed and he considered the matter ended because he pulled a neatly folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me.

On the sheet were typed the names, phone numbers, home and business addresses of nine people, along with the reasons for their being invited to the Hughes dinner.

I started to say something, but Hughes shook his head no.

“You don’t like me, do you, Peters?” he said with his hand on the doorknob.

“—I like your money,” I said.

“My father died when I was a kid,” Hughes said. “He was a tough man, but a man everybody liked. My father knew how to laugh. He was a terrifically loved man. I am not. I don’t have the ability to win people the way he did. I have no interest in studying people. I should be more interested in people, but I can’t. I am interested in science, in nature, the earth. I can work with that. That’s why I need people like you, people who are used to working with emotions and lies. If you have to reach me, reach me through Dean.” He turned and left.

The man called Noah came in almost passing Hughes at the door. Without a word, Noah took out a thick wallet, handed me $96 in various bills and made out a receipt for me to sign.

“We’ll want an itemized bill,” he said.

“That’s what I always give,” I said.

“We know,” he said. “I think he respects you, Peters.”

I shrugged.

“I’m grateful,” I said, counting the money and putting it into my own nearly empty wallet.

“He doesn’t want gratitude,” Noah said, moving to the window to watch Hughes take off into the rain. “I don’t know what the hell he wants. Do you know how many times he’s had that plane up today in this rain? Thirty-five times. He’s convinced there’s something wrong with it that no one else can find. He’s been up for three straight days and nights working on it and he’ll be up and in the air till he’s satisfied.”

“A perfectionist,” I sighed, starting to shiver from being wet.

“No,” sighed Noah. “It’s more like a disease. It itches at him, drives him mad like a song you can’t remember or a name on the tip of your tongue.”

“You’re a philosopher, like Irving Berlin,” I said, moving to the door.

“No,” he said, “a wet, glorified bookkeeper.”

On the way out, I nodded to bodyguards one and two and dashed through the rain to my Buick. Hughes had taken off over me and was disappearing into a bank of dark clouds.

In the Buick, I let out my first groan of the last hour and rubbed the spot far back above my kidney where the pain was worst. Experience told me if I didn’t get out of these wet clothes and stand up or lie flat on the floor within the next half hour, I might not be able to walk for days, but I couldn’t resist a quick look at the list Hughes had given me. I wiped the pain from my brow and pulled the sheet out. The neat list included Basil Rathbone, actor; Anton Gurstwald, chairman of Farbentek of America; his wife, Trudi Gurstwald; Ernest Barton, Major, Army Air Corps.; Norma Forney, writer; Benjamin Siegel, businessman; Toshiro Homoto, houseboy –chauffeur; Martin Schell, cook; William Nuss, butler. All telephone-listed, all addressed, all ready to be investigated, though I didn’t expect to come up with anything except an improved bank account.

CHAPTER THREE

I
drove back to Hollywood, my rooming house and a shower. The hot water smacked me low on the back for about fifteen minutes while I blew air out of my almost flat nostrils to prove I could still do it. Then I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and got my back on the faded carpet in my room to stare at the ceiling and wait for the pain to pass.

It was so peaceful I almost fell asleep. After ten minutes, Gunther Wherthman, who had the room next to mine and who had convinced Mrs. Plaut to take me in in spite of my profession, dropped by to keep me company. His visit was formal, as always, and he was too polite to comment on my prone position. So I explained. Our eyes were in reasonable contact, and I didn’t have to raise my voice. Gunther is a midget. We had met when I blundered into the solution to a murder he was accused of. We had been something like friends ever since, ever since being less than a year. Gunther was Swiss, but was usually taken for German, which caused him some difficulty since Germans were not particularly popular in the States in 1941. Since he was a small possible-German, he was especially vulnerable.

Gunther always wore a neat suit and spent most of his time in his room translating books and articles from German, French, Italian, Spanish and Polish into English. Sometimes it paid reasonably well. Usually it was about as lucrative as being a private detective. Gunther didn’t like to talk. I loved talking. We got along great. If someone had burst in on us, we would have looked something like a tableau from a wax museum, me as the corpse on the floor, he as the tiny killer pondering his crime. As it was, Mrs. Plaut did stick her head in, looking for something or someone. Our positions either did not register with her or seventy years of living in Hollywood had prepared her for anything.

“I’ve got a client,” I told Gunther.

“As have I,” he said.

We were quiet for another ten minutes.

“I’m supposed to find some spies,” I said.

“Is there not a government branch that dedicates itself to such matters?” he asked reasonably.

“Yeah,” I said, adjusting a pillow under my knees, “but they don’t think there’s any spying going on.”

“Is there?”

“I’m getting $48 a day plus expenses,” I said in answer.

He nodded, understanding, and I sat up. My back was feeling better and through the window I could see that the rain had taken a break to load up for another attack.

“Back to work,” I sighed. Gunther nodded, climbed down from the chair and went back to his room. I had three friends: Gunther, who said little; Shelly Minck, the dentist I shared an office with and who never made any sense; and Jeremy Butler, my office landlord, former wrestler and part-time poet. Jeremy was so big and ugly, he never had to say anything he didn’t want to say. I had never tried to get the group together. I was afraid we’d be taken for a remake of
The Unholy Three
.