It was well past four in the morning now, well past their deadline, as they all gathered around a Ping-Pong table in the large open warehouse area. The Pro emptied his blue gym bag onto the table, dumped out the cash, and made the big count. It all came to just under $80,000.
“Not exactly a million, but a damn good night’s work,” said the Pro, and divided the loot into five equal stacks. Everybody took one, the Pro taking his last. About $500 remained in loose bills. He pushed it toward the others, and while they hesitated, the mystery man quickly reached out and pocketed it all.
Unzipping his fly, the Pro took a leak. His partner and the Jiggler also urinated on the floor. And having looted and defiled the sacred Hughes sanctuary, they loaded the billionaire’s secret papers into a stolen Ford van and vanished into the night.
Holed up alone at his hideout, the Pro had no idea what forces he and his cohorts had unleashed. He had no idea that they had hit Romaine just days after the SEC and Maheu subpoenas, that Watergate investigators were also after the files, that the president, the CIA, and the Mafia were all now suspect, and he also had no idea who was really behind the break-in.
But he did know who had the stolen secrets. He did.
It had been a tense ride away from Romaine. With his partner at the wheel, the Pro sat up front holding a gun on his lap, keeping a constant eye on the mystery man, who was sitting in the back next to the Jiggler, his hand in a brown paper bag gripping a pistol that lay on top of his share of the loot. Behind them all, in the rear of the van, lay Transfiles and cartons filled with the stolen documents.
The stranger was supposed to get the papers, take them on behalf of Mr. Inside, who had gone his own way after the heist. That was all understood. But who was this mystery man, and what else did he have in mind?
All night the Pro had been waiting for the stranger to make his move. Now, at close quarters in the getaway van, it felt like High Noon. They were all on edge from the heist, the adrenaline really pumping now as they made their escape, watching for the cops, waiting to hear the wail of the sirens, see the flashing red lights; but mainly they were watching each other, wondering who would start shooting first.
And all the while the Pro’s mind was racing. Why had he been brought in on this job? There was nothing of value in the vaults, and they hardly needed a professional to bust into some filing cabinets. Did they want a vault torched just to divert the police? Divert them from what? Why was there no alarm, why were keys for the entire building just lying in a desk drawer, why had everything been made so damn easy?
And, above all, why had the secret papers been so conveniently assembled and left right out in the open? Had Hughes plotted to “steal” his own files, only to have them actually stolen? Because whatever was up, the Pro had already decided to turn the tables on whoever was behind the heist.
It was a notion that had begun to take hold from the moment he first saw the papers, that had grown along with his suspicions about his cohorts, that had become a fixation as he became increasingly obsessed with Hughes, and that had finally seized him in the last moments of the break-in when Mr. Inside suddenly announced that he would keep the papers. At that instant, the Pro knew that the secrets, not the money, had been the true object of the break-in all along and decided to hold on to the papers himself.
Now, in the van, there was no one but the mystery man to stop him. The Pro looked back again at his adversary. The stranger shifted nervously, his hand still inside the bag, still gripping the pistol. The Pro knew he could take this guy, whoever he was. And whoever was behind him, whoever had masterminded this job, wasn’t in the van.
They were headed north into the valley, going to Encino, but the Pro was not about to drive into a trap, go to some unknown place where anyone—cops or robbers—might be waiting. Instead, they stopped at a street corner and the Pro suggested that the stranger get out.
“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.