Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

Maggie brought Terry for moral support. Lizzie was accompanied by Joe Morton, whose primary interest in the negotiation was literary: It was easier to write about tough guys like Hughes if you observed them in action. Cal arrived with a mind full of questions. Hughes knew the Corps of Engineers’ study as well as he did. The county would seek to buy the land from whomever owned it. If a fair price could not be agreed upon, the power of eminent domain would be invoked. What made Hughes think the Mulls would sell him the land so he could flip it at a higher price? What did he have up his sleeve?

Cal had something up his sleeve as well, something he’d not yet vetted with anyone, including his cousins, the landowners.

Hughes’s private office was more fitting for an aircraft man than a movie or oil man, though it served all his business interests one way or another. From the top floor of the administration building, broad picture windows looked out over the nation’s longest privately owned runway toward Ballona Creek and the marshes, with the Mull oil derricks in the distance. Beyond that, invisible from the office, was the Pacific Ocean. The stables where Maggie and Lizzie had learned to ride were barely visible. Models of Hughes’s planes and photos of him with planes and trophies ringed the room. Maggie was disappointed he’d never hung a photo of the Catalina race, which had changed her life. A giant blow-up of the Spruce Goose hung on a side wall. The Goose, amphibious, would never use the runway.

Hughes led them not to the chairs by his desk but into a semi-circle by the windows overlooking the runway. It was an odd seating arrangement, the chairs set close to each other, with Hughes’s chair, higher than the others and facing them, in the center. It looked like a setting for a group therapy session, but in fact was an arrangement for a man hard of hearing. Behind them, facing Hughes, sat chief factotum Melvin Cobb, taking notes.

Coffee and rolls were offered. Hughes was in business clothes—gray slacks, a brown sports jacket, and blue silk tie with red polka dots. He didn’t own a lot of clothes, and Maggie recognized the jacket, recognized the button she’d once sewn on it. She found the clothes oddly baggy, noticing that he had grown thinner. She’d heard the rumors. “Howard would fuck a tree if he could get it in bed,” Joan Crawford had said in words that made the rounds. But you don’t get syphilis from a tree. Degradation was setting in, physical, mental, she didn’t know. She looked on him with affection, everything a man should be, right down to his weaknesses. It wasn’t nice seeing a man like that disintegrate. Rumors were that he was making a mess of RKO, driving Robert Mitchum during the shooting of His Kind of Woman to break up a set.

“There it is,” he said, commandingly, waving his arm across the windows, an amiable smile on his face. The guests had seated themselves, but still he stood. “That’s where the marina goes—right after Eddie’s wells come out.”

“We know that, Howard,” said Cal, after a moment, breaking the mood of edgy camaraderie. “What we don’t know is why you want the land.”

Hughes sat down at the center of the semi-circle. Maggie, Terry, and Cal were on one side, Lizzie and Joe on the other. Lizzie brought out a pad and pen, not risking the tape recorder. She’d been to Hughes Aircraft once before, for a story on the Spruce Goose shortly before its one and only flight. Since then, Hughes kept it locked up.

Either he hadn’t heard Cal or chose to ignore him. No sign of a hearing aid. “You’re looking at an oil man who is going to bring down derricks and plug up wells.” Again he smiled. “You don’t find that every day.”

“Don’t forget the stables,” said Maggie.

He was staring at Lizzie. “You’re not writing about this for the Times, are you? You’re invited here as a principal, not as a reporter.”

“I am not writing about this for the Times, Howard.”

“It’s a habit with her,” said Maggie. “Some people fidget, Lizzie writes.”

“I have your word?”

“You have my word.”

He looked over them to Cobb, making sure he got that down.

“Good. Well, as we all know, Los Angeles County, with backing from the federal government, wants to build a marina out there, maybe ten thousand yachts, bigger than anything south of San Francisco. You own the property and the government wants to buy it. How does Howard Hughes fit in, you ask?” He turned to look around, eyebrows arched high over expressive blue eyes. “Hi Joe,” he said with a smile, and winked at Maggie. “Easy: With me involved you make more money. Simple as that. You get richer. Up to you. End of pitch.”

Maggie felt a tingle. Hughes had always dazzled her. For a while she’d wondered if they would marry, but she knew better. Arnaud was dashing and handsome, but Arnaud had no surprises. Howard, dashing and handsome, was shrouded in a mystery no one had ever broken: wealth, genius, passion, courage, deafness, charm, humor, obsessiveness, paranoia, his contradictions made him unique. Irresistible.

She’d gone to work for him soon after he’d broken up with Kate Hepburn. He’d grown a scraggily mustache to hide the scars from too many crashes, but she’d rather liked it. Their first dates were not in Los Angeles but in Washington where she was based, thanks to Mrs. Roosevelt, to help set up the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, the World War II WASPs. Hughes was often in Washington to meet with the War Department and testify to Congress on the constant cost overruns and delays on his planes. He needed a place to stay, so he stayed with her. The affair lasted on and off for two years. When she returned to Hughes Aircraft after the war it