“I am positive I can sell this to Laxalt.
“Please call the Governor and simply tell him that I wanted to be sure he understands that I do want him to become one of the very top executives of my company.”
Maheu was soon sending Hughes regular progress reports on the secret job negotiations:
“I had a very fine meeting with the Governor. I truly believe that I can convince him to join your organization permanently as a top executive in charge of all your Nevada operations or anywhere else you may choose to assign him.”
“Governor Laxalt has started to ask me precisely what his assignment will be in your organization,” Maheu reported a few weeks later, as Hughes stalled on the details.
The talks dragged on for years, and the governor continued dickering for a job almost the entire time he remained in office. As late as June 1970, Maheu noted: “Laxalt is very anxious to discuss his future employment with us and I really believe we owe him the courtesy of sitting down with him at a very early date.”
Rather than accept the job Hughes kept dangling just out of reach, however, Maheu speculated that the governor would instead rejoin his family law firm, which received at least $180,000 from the billionaire while Laxalt was in office.
“My guess is that he will hit us for a retainer with the understanding that we have priority on all of his time but allow him to build a law practice at the same time,” Maheu reported after another meeting with the governor.
Ultimately Laxalt would send Hughes a handwritten letter suggesting his availability as a private attorney, but noting that the long-discussed job would be such a blatant conflict of interest that he dare not go directly on the billionaire’s payroll.
“Dear Howard,” wrote the governor as he prepared to leave the statehouse, “… I fear that a direct contract relationship with you might be misinterpreted. I would dislike, as would you, to have anyone think that the cooperation of our administration with you during the past four years was on a ‘quid pro quo’ basis….
“I’ve decided to open a law office in Carson City…. If you should ever have need of any assistance from me, I’ll be happy to provide it.”
Almost immediately upon leaving office, Laxalt did in fact start collecting legal fees from Hughes that would total at least $72,000.
But all that was far in the future as Hughes plotted early in 1968 to expand his domain. With the governor no longer a problem, Hughes began to present himself as a benefactor to the other citizens of Nevada. He would build the world’s largest hotel in Las Vegas, a spectacular one-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar resort, “a complete city within itself.” He would create the world’s greatest airport in the Nevada desert, make it the new “gateway to the West,” and build a high-speed railway to whisk passengers from the Jet Air Terminal to downtown Las Vegas. He would endow a new medical school for the University of Nevada, promising “$200,000 to $300,000 per year for 20 years.” He would bring new industry to the state, indeed he would move the Hughes Tool Company and the Hughes Aircraft Company and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to Nevada, make it the headquarters of his entire empire.
In fact, the only thing Hughes would actually ever build in Nevada was Maheu’s new mansion, and indeed he would do his best to block all new hotels, all new industry, all “competition.” But as each day brought some fresh report of Hughes’s intended good works, nobody seemed ready to refuse him a couple of more mere gambling casinos.
With Laxalt firmly behind his plans to acquire the Stardust and Silver Slipper, with all opposition to his Monopoly game melting before his munificence, Hughes began to worry that a horde of freeloaders would also be licensed.
“I am informed that, since word has gotten out that our applications will be approved, everybody and his little dog is filing for a gaming license because they all reason that if the Commission passes ours they cannot very well refuse somebody else. So what I want is a report on those applications which are nearest to being considered favorably, in order that we may take whatever preventive measures may be indicated.
“Bob, competition is moving in on all sides on a rampant basis,” he added. “Every time somebody starts the preparation for the opening of a new casino I suffer very substantially.”
It was agony. Hughes could no longer enjoy the prospect of expanding his empire. He could only dread the “excessive competition, or the threat of future excessive competition, or competition of a type which I consider harmful.” He demanded that Maheu “cast an evil spell” on all rivals to his power.
Maheu was not optimistic. “Unfortunately, Howard, our problem is one of changing the philosophy which permeates the entire area, and that is going to take some time. It is generally known that for the last six months, there has not been one room available in Las Vegas on any weekend, and, as a result, many people don’t even attempt to come to the city.”
Hughes was unmoved. It was that kind of thinking that led to disaster, and he could prove it.
“I just cannot go along with your philosophy and that of the community, which seems to be: lend a helping hand to everybody who wants to build a new hotel or casino, the more the merrier!
“Please remember, Bob, that it was this philosophy, that there is no bottom to the barrell—it was this philosophy that led to the 1929 stock market crash and seven of the worst years this country ever faced.
“It was this same philosophy that led to the construction of a miniature golf course on every corner in Los Angeles, and the horrible, tragic crash of this industry—taking with it all the little people involved.”
First the Great Depression. Then miniature golf. Next the ruin of Las Vegas.
“You say you can’t get a room. Well, Bob, that is just the way it ought to be. Do you think for one minute that ‘21’ and El Morrocco in New York would be such a success if they were not jam-packed to the roof so that it is impossible to dance or even to breathe in there?
“People only want to go where it is impossible to get reservations—they only want to go where it is crowded and where everybody else is trying to go. Please believe me, I know from bitter experience.
“The first time it is not, as you say ‘impossible to get a room’ in Las Vegas, then you better start worrying, because serious trouble is ahead—and not very far ahead.”
In fact, Hughes already saw serious trouble all around him. These threatened new hotels and casinos were not merely dangerous competition, they were something far worse—contamination! Soon he would be surrounded by impure water, swarms of mosquitoes, carnival freaks, and filthy animals.
“Bob, there are almost ten new hotels announced. The one that troubles me the very most is the new Holiday Inn right smack in front of the Sands. To make it much worse, they are planning to make it a Showboat sitting in a huge lake of water. A Showboat with a pond of stagnant infested water.
“If they are considering using water from Lake Mead, the effluent in the water would smell to high heaven. Jesus! when I think of that lake of sewage disposal on the front lawn of the Sands. Ugh! It may even smell up our Sands Golf Course. Whatever the source of the water, there would be the additional problem of mosquitos. They would not be able to have water running in and out, so it would become stagnant and an ideal place to breed mosquitos.
“If this crumby hotel cannot be stopped, I would just as soon sell at a loss the Sands.”