Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [56]
He had not come to Las Vegas with a master plan. He had come only because he didn’t know where else to go and because he had been there before and liked it. He liked the all-night ambiance, he liked the showgirls, he liked the whole tone and feel of the place. In the early 1950s, before he went into seclusion, he used to fly in regularly for a night or a few days or a few weeks, catch the shows, perhaps pick up a showgirl, dispatching one of his lackeys to arrange the assignation, always ordering him to first get a signed release. He rarely gambled, just occasionally dropped a nickel in a slot machine, but he cruised the casinos and was a familiar figure at ringside in the showrooms, and he kept coming back.
Others now speculated as to why Hughes had come back again. All were certain he had some great “mission”—to reform the loose morals of Las Vegas, to clean out the Mob, to join up with the Mob. In fact, Hughes had no plans at all when he arrived, except to find a safe place to hide. And, in a real sense, that was still all he was after.
At first, it was safe enough to hide in his blacked-out bedroom, behind a closed door, behind his phalanx of Mormons, behind a locked partition in the hallway, behind an armed security guard on an otherwise vacant and sealed-off penthouse floor. Then he had to own the entire hotel. To protect himself. Having bought the Desert Inn, he had to buy all the surrounding hotels on the Strip. Again, for self-protection. Now he had to buy the rest of Las Vegas. For the same reason.
Desperate to control his own little world, Hughes bought increasingly greater control of the world outside, expanding his domain in concentric circles, only to discover that the more he owned, the more he needed to protect, so that each new acquisition generated the need for further acquisitions to protect those that came before.
Atop his desert command post, Hughes loomed over the Las Vegas Strip, snatching up its gaudy hotels and gambling casinos like some demonic demigod playing an outsized Monopoly game. Had he looked out his window, he could have seen it all: miles of improbable flash set down by mobsters in the middle of nowhere, with eighty-foot signs blinking STARDUST and SANDS and CAESAR’S PALACE, a fabulous façade for the bare bones of capitalism, pure money with no product, as skeletal as Hughes himself, the garish front as much a mirage as his own public image.
It was a cheap, loud, vulgar place, and Hughes never set eyes on it during his entire stay. His windows had been blacked out the day he arrived, and not once did he peel back the masking tape, pull up the blinds, and look outside. Never in four years.
Hughes had his own vision, and he didn’t want it sullied.
“I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well dressed man in a dinner jacket, and a beautifully jewelled and furred female getting out of an expensive car,” he wrote, conjuring up a more acceptable image. “I think that is what the public expects here—to rub shoulders with V.I.P.’s and Stars, etc.—possibly dressed in sport clothes, but if so, at least good sport clothes. I dont think we should permit this place to degrade into a freak, or amusement-park category, like Coney Island.
“Dont misunderstand me about the clothes,” he quickly added. “I am not suggesting that our entire staff go out and blow themselves to a new wardrobe at the hotel’s expense. (That is intended to be a joke.) I am not thinking of what our employees wear, and I am certainly not thinking of spending any unnecessary money. So lets make do with the present uniforms.
“I was thinking more of the impression given in the advertisements, etc.,” he continued, trying to get back to his vision, but suddenly sidetracked by another disturbing thought.
“One thing is certain—if you permit Jai-Lia to come in here you will never get them out, and it is a dangerous crowd filled with communists from Cuba.
“Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that you well know (from my resistance to the Monorail, for example) that I see