“And that,” I said, kidding on the square, “set the stage for you to buy all these casinos for him?”
A twitch of a self-satisfied smile. “Oh yes. The Desert Inn, of course. But also the Sands, the Castaways, the Frontier, the Silver Slipper... we still haven’t closed the Stardust deal, but we bought the Landmark and, in Reno, Harold’s Club. And of course, among other properties, we bought the CBS affiliate here, KLAS, because Mr. Hughes wanted to ensure that movies would air all night... and be titles of his choice.”
“Mostly,” I said, “movies he produced at RKO.”
“Is it true,” Nita asked, eyes narrowed, “that initially Hughes was just renting the Desert Inn penthouse, and before Christmas the management tried to kick him out to make room for the holiday high-rollers? And your boss said, ‘Buy the hotel’?”
Maheu’s smile was as big as it was friendly. “That one’s a legend. Really, Mr. Hughes had a half-billion windfall on his TWA deal and needed to avoid suffering a huge tax bite. That’s the only thing he fears more than germs, y’know — the taxman.”
Nita laughed, then got serious. “How did Las Vegas feel about your boss rolling into town and taking over?”
“The town welcomed him! Vegas needed redemption from its gangster roots — from the beginning, local and state government here was infiltrated by mobsters.” Maheu winked at me. “Of course, don’t tell anyone I had meetings with Moe Dalitz and Johnny Roselli today, Nate.”
Dalitz was the powerful mobster who my old buddy Eliot Ness ran out of Cleveland in the Thirties, and Roselli was Chicago’s conduit to Vegas, likely getting a piece for them (and himself) out of every deal Maheu cut for Hughes.
Maheu’s affable manner gave way to pride. “I’ve made Mr. Hughes the third-largest landowner in the state, right behind the federal government and the state power company.” He pretended this was for Nita, but I was the real audience. “If he wants someone fired, I do the firing. If he wants something negotiated, I do the bargaining. If he has to be somewhere, I appear in his place.”
Nita frowned. “He really is a recluse, then.”
“He is. I go out into the world for my boss. I deal with congressmen, governors, bankers, Presidents, and, sure, the occasional mobster. I travel in a private jet, throw parties for two hundred people without a thought about what kind of germs they might carry. I can walk into any major hotel in this nation and let a stranger carry my bags and step onto an elevator with other strangers and go up to my comfortable suite without immediately taking a bath. And yet I’ve never met the man.”
Nita’s eyes popped. “What?”
Too casually, he said, “I’ve never met Howard Hughes. Oh, I have a direct line from my office at my home, and speak to him ten, fifteen, thirty times a day. We exchange lengthy handwritten notes, constantly. He sees only his doctors, cook, waiter, and one of his lawyers. And yet, Nate, he wants to see you.”
“He does?”
Maheu nodded. “Mr. Hughes will see you tonight. In person. He’s a night owl, you know. An insomniac of the first order. I like to think he doesn’t meet with me because he doesn’t want me to see what he looks like, plain and simple — how his germophobe ways have reduced him to something that doesn’t go at all well with his still sharp mind and incisive business sense. Otherwise, it might hurt my feelings, Nate... that he wants to see you.”
The curtain rose and the full orchestra, seated off to the right, began to play “What Kind of Fool Am I?”
Around midnight, I dropped Nita off at Caesar’s Palace, suggesting she grab a nap while I was gone, if she wanted to go striptease-clubbing with me later.
She arched an eyebrow. “Like that’s a mission I’d send you off on alone.” She threw me a wink as she climbed out, no small feat in that form-fitting black evening dress.
The casino resort home of Howard Hughes just up the Strip combined cheapness with opulence, formed as it was out of cinder blocks but finished with sandstone. Guiding the Jag up the driveway, I passed under an old-fashioned ranch-style horizontal sign that said Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn in script against a cactus logo. After the excesses of Caesar’s, the DI (as locals called the place) seemed almost restrained. Almost.
Its 300 guest rooms were behind the main building in wings that surrounded a figure-eight swimming pool. I strolled through the lavish pink-and-green resort, its interiors redwood with flagstone flooring, past the ninety-foot-long Lady Luck bar that overlooked the casino, which was going full-throttle at the witching hour.
Maheu had said Hughes’ security chief Hal Harper would be waiting for me at the southeast corner of the building by the elevators in back and he was — the tall, broad-shouldered, paunchy ex-cop was pacing and smoking like an expectant father. He wore a rumpled brown suit over a tan sport shirt and apparently hadn’t been told that even Jack Webb wasn’t wearing fedoras anymore. Must have been how Harper managed a pale complexion in this sunny clime.
He saw me coming, produced something meant to be a smile that came off a grimace, dropped his cigarette into the standing ashtray by the elevators (no smoking around Mr. Hughes), and grunted, “Heller.”
“Good to see you, Hal,” I said, which it wasn’t.
Harper was a brutal thug who lost his job for beating up suspects years ago — as a rookie he’d specialized in Zoot Suiters back in the ’40s and moved up in later years to black offenders (frankly, just being black was enough to offend Harper). We’d intersected but never tangled, though that was a small miracle.
“Gotta pat you down,” he said.
“Fine. I’m heavy. You can take the gun if you give it back.”
He nodded, slipped the nine millimeter Browning from my shoulder holster and shoved it in his belt, bandolero-style. Gave me a full frisk and, at no extra charge, a whiff of his multiple packs a day habit.
Bored with his life in general and me in particular, Harper pressed the elevator button and the door opened almost immediately, as if not wanting to offend him. I followed him onto the empty car and watched as he inserted a key into what would have been the ninth floor button if it hadn’t been replaced with a keypad lock. He turned the key and we started up.
He said, “Mr. Hughes doesn’t allow in many visitors.”
“So I hear.”
“Just be prepared. He’s sick and you might be surprised by his, you know, condition. Don’t say nothing. Make like he’s normal.”
I was making like Harper was normal, wasn’t I?
I said, “Discretion is my middle name. Actually, that’s just an expression. My middle name is Samuel.”
He looked at me, squinting like he’d never encountered humor before. Or maybe a squint was all that deserved.
We stopped at the third floor. A young couple in casual clothes, laughing, started to get on and Harper held up a traffic-cop palm.
“Next car,” he said with unnecessary menace.
They just looked at him like he’d splashed water in their faces and he hit the DOOR CLOSE button and they were shut out. We started up again.
“Say, Hal. You wouldn’t happen to know a guy named Thane Cesar, would you? Thane Eugene Cesar? You might know him as Gene.”
He looked at me slow. We were between the fifth and sixth floors. He pushed the stop button — a cute little stop sign image that didn’t go with the abruptness of our halt.
Harper gazed at me dead-eyed. “Gene does some work for the Hughes organization, time to time. Why do you ask?”