“I think that kind of a report with attendant jokes could be very bad right now.”
Playing on those fears, Holliday now sent Hughes a bleak accounting of financial conditions in his crumbling empire. It was no laughing matter. He had $111 million cash on hand, of which $75 million had to be kept as a bond on the TWA judgment, with another $16.5 million pledged as collateral on a bank loan. That left only $19.5 million for operating funds, in a year that would require at least $30 million.
Holliday followed the cold figures with a slashing attack on Maheu: “You will note that no provision is made for a dividend to you, and you will certainly require at least $2 million by year-end,” he wrote Hughes. “However, provision is made for payment to Maheu of his $10,000 per week basic compensation, but without provision for his expenses that will surely be considerable. In other words, no provision is made for the purchase or use of a right-hand or left-hand ass-wiping machine that he may require.
“The long and short of our position,” added Holliday, “is that we are in trouble, and very serious trouble.”
Hughes needed no persuading. He had long been convinced that Maheu was profligate, worse yet that he spent Hughes’s money without Hughes’s permission.
“I have given up all hope of controlling unauthorized expenditures at this end of the line,” Hughes morosely informed Holliday. “Since Bob is not inclined toward economy measures, I want you to take the steps necessary to prevent expenses I have not approved.”
Holliday needed no further encouragement. He quickly sent another financial report to the penthouse, this time zeroing in on the Nevada books. They were dripping red ink. Maheu’s operations had never turned a profit. They lost nearly $700,000 in 1967, more than $3 million in 1968, almost $8.5 million in 1969, and halfway through 1970 close to $7 million, with projected losses for the full year headed for a whopping $14 million.
“The Nevada operations,” noted Holliday with a businessman’s icy scorn, “are not profit-oriented or cost-conscious.”
Hughes, encouraged in his suspicions by the whispering Mormons, drew a darker conclusion. He became increasingly convinced that Maheu was, in fact, stealing him blind.
He never confronted Maheu directly with the accusation, but their pen-pal relationship was now becoming more of a poison-pen relationship, and as the bitterness reached a dangerous breaking point the whispering Mormons made their big move. They cut Maheu’s communication lines to the penthouse.
First the Mormons convinced Hughes that Maheu should, like all other executives, transmit his messages exclusively through them.
“Bob,” wrote the billionaire to his estranged henchman, “I’ve decided not to ask you to write me any more messages in longhand and sealed envelopes. I know this is time consuming for you, and my men think I dont trust them. So, in the future, except in rare instances, I prefer you dictate your reply to my messages via telephone to whichever of my men happens to be on duty.
“I shall continue to send you most of my messages in writing, simply because it is much quicker and more accurate.”
It was not long, however, before the Mormons also persuaded Hughes that Maheu could not be trusted to receive, much less keep, the billionaire’s own handwritten memos. Without warning, Hughes suddenly dispatched one of his attendants to retrieve from Maheu all the old correspondence.
Maheu, who was still unaware of the larger forces moving against him, instantly recognized the dangers of losing direct contact with Hughes and lashed out bitterly in a futile effort to restore his unique access.
“If, for some reasons known only to you, I cannot be trusted as the depository of these reference documents, then I categorically tell you that as far as I am concerned, you and your entire program in Nevada can go to hell,” he angrily told Hughes, risking a complete break in his desperation to regain lost ground.
“Howard, I am so hurt and so mad that you may never be able to make amends. I beg of you to release me of my obligations, because I have a belly-full of the chicken-shit operation within which I am living and from which I would like to get released.
“Howard, whether you realize it or not, you cut and cut deep. I want out.
“Will you please do me a great favor. Will you kindly relieve me of my obligations and appoint someone else to be your top man in this area.”
It was the kind of bluff that had worked before. Maheu was certain that Hughes could not get along without him. But this time around Hughes would not be bullied.
“If you want to be relieved of your present assignment, then, regretfully, I will not object,” he coolly replied.
“If, on the other hand, it is your intention to march out of here taking the entire upper echelon of executives along with you in a grand-scale industrial executive strike, then you will have to face up to this sweeping gesture of disloyalty and treachery in your own conscience, but without my slightest consent thereto.
“If you intend to convert this into a power-play of some kind, aimed not at a considerate plan of separation designed to impose the minimum hardship upon me, but instead aimed at a carefully devised strategy calculated to pose a threat over my head sufficient to extract an apology and humble pleading for reconciliation, if this is your objective, please be frank. You, yourself, have said that we should not play games.
“Something has struck me phony about this requested abrogation from the beginning.”
Maheu stood his ground. He saw the fear behind Hughes’s rage and did his best to encourage it.
“You must have a very low estimate of my capability if you interpret anything that I have been saying as a power play on my part,” he replied with some swagger. “I don’t need any more power than I now have, but if I had the least desire to make such a play, I can assure you that it would take place much more suddenly, and in so many areas, that it would be unbelieveable.
“I could not find it within myself to indulge in such activity,” he continued, easing off now that he had made clear his threat, “and strange as it may seem to you, I have no fear of my ability to earn a living, with or without Howard Hughes.
“I have no devious intentions, there are no hidden gimmicks, and I have told you repeatedly that no one could ever cause me to hurt you in any way whatsoever, and I would go out of my way to clobber anyone who might try to cause you any damage.
“Now, Howard,” concluded Maheu, once more positioning himself as the billionaire’s faithful if short-tempered protector, “please tell me wherein I am being unfair and also what in the hell you expect from me.”
Hughes, either mollified by Maheu’s loyalty even in extremis, or frightened by his implied threat, moved to heal the breach. He was still not ready for the painful, and quite possibly dangerous, final break.
“If I can be sure that you and I have reached the end of our unfortunate period of doubts and suspicions each about the other, then I have a couple of projects that are so staggering in their enormity and huge in over all expanse that they will absolutely leave you breathless,” wrote Hughes, dangling visions of new glory before his regent even as he secretly plotted to replace him with his rivals.
“I dont have to tell you, Bob, that I am a person who is capable of manifesting extreme suspicion if encouraged,” he added, perhaps intentionally hinting at the coup now in progress, perhaps once more doubting his Mormons’ whispers.
“How many times have I asked you to check out various telephone lines in the past to ascertain if they were secure?
“So, to summarize, Bob, I have trusted you with the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my very innermost activities,” he went on, obviously more than a bit concerned about splitting with a man who knew so much.