Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [11]
“What about the papers?” asked the mystery man. He was clearly scared shitless. The Pro, still holding his gun on his lap, said that he would personally deliver them to Mr. Inside. They stared at each other for a moment. The stranger took a quick look at the other two men, the Jiggler and the Pro’s partner. Outnumbered three-to-one, he didn’t argue.
It wasn’t until the Pro was alone in the van, alone with the papers, driving home as the sun came up, that it really hit him. He actually had all of Howard Hughes’s secrets. He locked himself inside his garage and stayed up all that day and all through the next night listening for radio reports of the burglary and reading through thousands of private Hughes papers, getting totally drawn into the power of that strange secret world.
The following morning he left to meet with Mr. Inside, as they had arranged, at a Los Angeles coffee shop. On the way, he picked up a copy of the Times. The heist was front-page news: “GANG FLEES WITH $60,000 AFTER 4-HOUR RAID ON HUGHES OFFICE.” There was no mention of stolen papers.
But as he sat in his car reading the newspaper, the Pro discovered that this was not the first Hughes break-in, that there had been a string of recent burglaries at Hughes’s offices around the country, that just days before he was brought in on this caper the office in Encino had been hit and a voice scrambler stolen. Encino. The same place he had dumped the mystery man.
Were the break-ins connected? Who was behind it all? What were they really after? And who, the Pro wondered, was going to come after him?
He was relieved to find Mr. Inside waiting alone at the coffee shop. “Are the papers safe?” the inside man immediately asked. “I want them back.” He was tense, but the Pro had put him at ease simply by showing up, and now he readily agreed to turn over the hot documents.
“Of course,” said the Pro. “No problem.” He made detailed arrangements for the transfer—time, date, place—and immediately cut off all further contact.
He bought three steamer trunks at three different shopping centers, filled them with the Hughes papers, padlocked each, and put them all into storage at three different warehouses under three different assumed names. All except for one manila folder of handwritten memos, which he stashed away in a hidden panel in the basement of his hideout.
He had no set plan. Just a thought. Hughes would pay well to get back his papers. The Pro decided to ransom them for one million dollars.
But it wasn’t really money he was after anymore. He wanted the million, all right, but what he really wanted was the chance to go one-on-one with Howard Hughes. In his fantasy, the Pro now saw himself, a man from the streets, sitting at the same table with the richest man in America, sitting there as an equal, knowing that he had the hidden billionaire’s most prized possession, all his secrets, all in his own handwriting, knowing that in this one game not Hughes but the Pro would be holding all the cards.
It became his obsession. He wanted above all to play pair poker with Howard Hughes.
Ten days after the break-in, a man calling himself Chester Brooks phoned Romaine. He asked to speak to Kay Glenn, Nadine Henley, or Chester Davis. Attorney Davis was contacted but said he didn’t know a Mr. Brooks.
Two days later, Chester Brooks called back. This time he added, “It is about the burglary and it is urgent.” And he offered convincing proof. He invited the Hughes executives to take a look at the white envelope on the green trash can under the tree in the park across from their other office in Encino.
Nadine Henley looked out her window and spotted the envelope. Fearing a booby trap, she called the police bomb squad, which retrieved the package. It was definitely explosive.
Inside was a memo in Hughes’s handwriting on a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper. Addressed to Robert Maheu, the June 6, 1969, memo read:
Bob—
I would be ecstatic at the prospect