The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

TWO

The tall man with the pencil-thin moustache had a chauffeur, but the chauffeur didn’t get to do much because the tall man liked to drive.

He liked to drive fast. That was what he was doing at the moment. Oh, he was doing a couple of other things as well — namely smoking a cigarette and feeling sorry for himself. The things he did for Howard Hughes. Man oh man. Like they said in the whitebread calypso songs, how low can you go…

He was going there. Arriving any minute, you got that one right.

The man’s name was Jack Morton, but he didn’t hear it very often. Shortly after arriving in Vegas with the aged Mr. Hughes and his posse of Latter-day Saints, the hotel staff at the Desert Inn had taken to calling him Jack the Mormon. A mob guy who’d been a glorified gofer in Hughes’ purchase of the Desert Inn had taken one look at the cigarette dangling from Jack’s lips and shortened the tag to Jack Mormon. Jack took to the name the way it was intended, as a kind of half-assed compliment. The mob guys thought that he was okay. He knew how to make them smile — just by lighting up a cig, or chugging a tumbler of bourbon, or sipping black coffee, or whispering a four-letter word.

Make anyone smile, make them feel like they’ve got you all figured out, and they’ll give you just what you want without any trouble at all. That was Jack Mormon’s big secret. It was also his gift. He could size people up, the same way he’d sized up Howard Hughes. No one knew Hughes better than Jack. After all, he had worked for Hughes since the billionaire’s Hollywood days. He’d started as a stand-in, a guy who could pass for the famed recluse in a pinch, but he’d come a long way since the days when he was nothing more than a wet-nosed dreamer looking for a leg up in the world.

Come a long way, hell. That was the understatement of 1970. These days, Jack held the reins of Howard Hughes’ empire. He kept things running smoothly, and there were plenty of people who liked it that way, several of whom worked in a big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. To those people, Jack Mormon was Howard Hughes.

But that was important to Jack. As a kid growing up in a flyspeck Utah town, he’d often stared at the two steel rails that cut through the desert and didn’t stop until they hit the Pacific, wondering why no one ever used those rails to escape said flyspeck. He’d always wanted to be somebody, and that was why he’d jumped a freight at seventeen. And now here he was, a lifetime away from those rails, and he was somebody, even if he was somebody else.

That in itself was something, and he wanted to hold on to it. Sometimes that meant attending to the smallest details. Like tonight. Tonight there was a small problem with Mr. Hughes’ dinner.

The chef had been detained.

Jack Mormon sucked cool menthol refreshment into his lungs, then simultaneously exhaled smoke and a dark chuckle. Dinner, you got that one right. Detained, oh yeah, that was putting a cherry on top of it. Because the chef, in this case, was a surgeon who’d had his license pulled in two states. And dinner, if you glanced at the menu, happened to be an aged lady with a blood disorder who was currently residing in a nursing home.

Yeah. Picture, if you will. That was the kind of night this was shaping up to be. Most of the boys were busy closing a deal with the CIA up at Nellis Air Force Base. Strictly dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, but no Hughes employee ever stepped onto a government installation without his own private security contingent. So when the call came in from the surgeon — hey, let’s not gild the lily, let’s call him a glorified body snatcher — Jack knew immediately that he had to handle it, even if it meant leaving the fossil who signed the checks under the not-so-watchful eye of a two hundred and forty-five pound hypochondriac who spent nearly every waking minute massaging his right elbow. Which was just like leaving Hughes alone, as far as Jack Mormon was concerned.

But this situation was every bit as delicate as the CIA deal at Nellis. It was mined with seriously explosive possibilities, and Jack was the only guy who could handle it. He certainly couldn’t hand the mess over to the nine-to-five lawyers — good breeding would go nowhere with a street cop, no matter how quaint an accent might spill from the messenger’s lips. Not likely to work in the still of this frigid night, monsieur.

So Jack Mormon was doing what he always did — thinking on his feet. Well, he was actually thinking on his butt while he was busy driving the car, but that was the kind of completely technical description that would captivate an anal-retentive like Howard Hughes. Jack was thinking, and that was the important thing. Thinking for a thing that waited on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn, hungry for its dinner, a thing that provided a pipeline to one of the most powerful portfolios know to man.

God, sometimes Jack couldn’t stand having that thing in his head.

He skipped a red light, nearly clipping a slow pickup. He slammed on the brakes and parked behind a police cruiser, intentionally penning it in behind a beige sedan. No flatfoot was going to cut things short on Jack Mormon.

Jack opened the door and stepped — as it were — once more unto the windblown breech of the November night. He sized up the situation. The disgraced surgeon — the glorified body snatcher— sat in the rear of the police cruiser. The idiot actually waved at him.

Two cops stood under a neon sign twenty feet away. ELM MANOR CONVALESCENT HOME. In Vegas, even grandpa’s last stop was lit up like a show on the Strip. The cops were busy with a crowd of senior citizens, every one of them clucking, pointing fingers.

Jack Mormon eased a Howard Hughes signature fedora onto his head and slipped into a bomber jacket. He ground his cigarette under his heel.

He smoothed his pencil-thin moustache.

He became another man.

The flies buzzed the gauntlet of aircraft models, darting and dipping in perfect formation like the Red Baron’s famed flying circus. Walter expected the insects to riddle the models with gunfire at any moment, even though he knew the idea was whacked out.

Each maneuver was performed under the watchful eyes of Howard Hughes, as if he were a master of insect tactics. The old buzzard stood in the doorway, looking like a mummy without bandages, a tower of bone with jutting ribs like twin xylophones. Add to that spindly arms scarred over with cardboard flesh, no muscle tone at all, and those horrible fingernails. And don’t forget his eyes, bipping and bopping in huge hollow sockets.

Those eyes locked on Walter’s, and the flies rushed his way.

Walter ducked low, gasping as the insect squadron brushed past him.

“Could you get me a television set, Walter?” Hughes asked.

Walter closed his eyes, but that was no escape — he saw Uncle Jack, and Uncle Jack didn’t look happy. Howard Hughes wasn’t allowed to watch television. Uncle Jack said that it disturbed his routine. And the routine was what kept the machine running, even Walter knew that.

The flies made another pass, but Walter didn’t open his eyes. “Did you hear me, Walter?”

“Yes,” Walter whispered. “I mean… no.”

“SPEAK UP, DAMN YOU!”

Walter remembered that Hughes was nearly deaf. “THERE ARE NO TELEVISION SETS ON THE NINTH FLOOR, MR. HUGHES!”

“But you could get me one if you really wanted to, couldn’t you?”

“NO… WELL, YES. BUT UNCLE JACK… UH, MISTER MORTON SAYS THAT — ”

Hughes’ screech cut Walter’s protest. “Who pays for your services, Walter?”

‘YOU DO, MR. HUGHES.”

“And don’t you think I should get what I pay for?”

“WHY… I GUESS SO… BUT UNCLE JACK WOULDN’T LIKE IT IF I GOT YOU A TELEVISION SET, MR. HUGHES.”

A rattling cackle. “Are you a poetry enthusiast, Walter?”

Walter shook his head.

“My mother used to tell me this one: I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die. Isn’t that funny, Walters”

“I don’t think — ” Walter wanted to say more, but he couldn’t, because five sharp fingernails had closed on his jaw, holding it open.

All two hundred and forty-five pounds of Walter Sands trembled with fear. But he refused to open his eyes, no matter what. He wouldn’t do that. Not for anything. Not for a paper airplane worth a million dollars.

Something rattled over Walter’s teeth, something that tasted rusty.

A sharp jab. A tiny bit of pain. Walter tasted his own blood welling on his tongue. Next came a tickling sensation. Then a whining buzz filledhis mouth… tiny legs capered over his teeth, across his tongue, to the place where the blood flowed freely.

The sharp fingernails went away.

“Close your mouth, Walter.”

Obediently, Walter’s jaw snapped closed. The trapped fly raced the length of his tongue. Tiny wings fanned his gums as the insect launched itself, crashed against his wisdom teeth and scampered across his tongue once again, all the while buzzing frantically.

Again, Hughes cackled. “This isn’t much fun, is it, Walter?”

Walter agreed with a pathetic groan.

“Then there’s only one thing to be done.” Hughes’ brittle fingernails tickled Walter’s belly. Walter giggled in spite of himself, his exhalation blasting the trapped fly against the prison walls of his teeth.

“Swallow, dear boy.” Hughes laughed. “Just swallow, and everything will be all right.”

Walter took the elevator to the eighth floor, where he rammed through the first door he came to as if it were a defensive back who had said something cruel about his sister.

No one was home. That didn’t surprise Walter. Paradise waited seven floors below — hundreds of slot machines, poker and blackjack tables, and women with magnificently large breasts who dispensed free liquor.

Walter unplugged the television set and held it under one arm. Funny, his elbow hardly hurt at all anymore. He returned to the elevator and, using the passkey that allowed him access to the ninth floor, made his way back to Howard Hughes’ suite.

He plugged in the television. Turned it on. Extended the rabbit ears. Switched to the Hughes-owned Las Vegas station — KLAS-TV, channel 8 — which was showing a Stewart Granger movie.

Hughes reddened. He screeched, “Walter, that is not what I want to see!”

Walter didn’t know what to do. Apparently, Hughes did. The old man snatched a fly from mid-air and went to work on it with his fingernails, twisting it this way and that, turning the wings, creasing and uncreasing them until the fly seemed several times larger than a fly could possibly be. The wings, previously transparent, were now black and thick. Hughes unfolded them as urgently as Walter unfolded his paper airplane checks, but the thing Hughes held in his hands couldn’t be cashed in any bank.

The bat sprang from his bony grasp and fluttered weakly about the room.

Very suddenly, the creature picked up speed and crashed through the window.

Rooted like a Sequoia before the broken window, Walter watched the bat slice through the neon night.

Flying too fast for the fastest of hands.

The November winds blew hard off the desert, but they didn’t slow the thing that came from the ninth floor of the Desert Inn. It wasted no time arriving at the studios of KLAS-TV.

For several minutes, the thing flitted around the big glass doors in front of the television station. Then the doors flashed open, disgorging a tired executive. Beneath the hiss of the wind came the sound of crisp paper wrinkling. A hundred tiny folds were made as the double doors rushed to meet their casings.

The gap narrowed to an inch.

Plenty of room for a fly.

A lobby. Then corridors. A staircase, going down. A technician, snoozing.

His mouth open.

The technician awoke with a start, coughing. Jesus, he felt like he’d swallowed a moth or something.

He glanced at the monitor. Stewart Granger, quite literally, was foiling a half-dozen villains. The technician sprang from his chair, completely awake now, his gut churning uncomfortably. The fear in his belly sparked a sudden realization in his brain. He was showing the wrong damn movie! If the station manager was watching, this would be his last night on the job!

God, how could he be so careless? He was supposed to be running a Dracula picture tonight! He was sure of it!

That old RKO deal, the Howard Hughes remake from ’57.

Dracula in New Orleans. The picture with Robert Mitchum as the count… the picture with all those goddamn bats in it.

Jesus! Running the wrong picture! How could he be so stupid?

He hustled to the film library, his stomach a tightening knot.

Maybe he had swallowed a goddamned moth.

If so, that goddamned moth had saved his job.

He was in the lobby of the nursing home with the cops and the fossils, busily signing autographs while he talked. “So you see, officers, it’s all a simple mistake. Dr. Hackett was supposed to pick up a charity client in room 101 at the Elm Haven Convalescent Home. He copied the address from a phone book… but he copied the wrong address. That’s why he came here, to the Elm Manor Convalescent Home.” The speaker turned and patted the head of a shrunken lady in a wheelchair. “Dr. Hackett wasn’t trying to kidnap Mrs. Lang. She was simply the occupant of room 101. But at Elm Manor; not Elm Haven.”

The taller of the two cops shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Hughes.”

The man with the pencil-thin moustache smiled, spotting a small reception room off the lobby. If this story held it would be a world-class miracle. Still, there was no turning back now. “Well, you boys probably know best,” he said. “But let’s talk about this. In private, huh?”

The three men abandoned the geriatric autograph hounds. The man with the pencil-thin moustache followed the cops into the reception room and closed the door. He removed his fedora. Quite literally, he would come to them hat in hand.

“You boys know that I don’t like a lot of publicity.”

The cops nodded.

“This is just a simple mistake.”

Again, twin nods.

“But if you insist on questioning my employee, who is on a mission of mercy that I have financed, I’m going to have to go over your heads. Not that I want to cause you fellows any trouble. It’s not that. There’s nothing at all personal about this. I just want to make that clear.”

The cops exchanged glances, and then the tall one spoke. “I guess your word is good enough for us, Mr. Hughes.”

“That’s fine.” The older man donned his hat and started toward the door.

“Just one thing,” the tall cop said.

“What’s that?”

The cop blushed. “Uh… If it’s not too much trouble, that is. I mean, I know your hand is probably worn out after signing for all those folks out in the lobby… but could we get your autograph, too?”

Jack Mormon obliged both officers, signing his employer’s name to two slips of paper which he folded into airplanes and sent gliding their way.

The cops chased the planes like a couple of school kids. Mormon returned to the lobby. The pencil-thin moustache, the bomber jacket and the old fedora — the outfit had done the trick for him once again. He was the Howard Hughes that everyone wanted to meet, because no one really wanted to believe the stories about the nutty old recluse that ran in the papers. Not when the same guy had flown around the world, and conquered Hollywood, and bought half of Vegas.

A solicitous smile was glued to Mormon’s face. The crowd stared in awe as he crossed the lobby.

If they only knew the truth. But there was certainly no time for that. Mormon had to get out of here and grab another sick granny for Hughes’ dinner. How he would accomplish that at this hour would be real interesting. But not impossible. Not when you had a sneaky devil like Howard Hughes locked up in your head, not when —

Familiar music swelled behind him, all haunting cello, moody bass clarinet, and funereal timpani. Without the slightest hesitation, Jack pivoted and made a beeline toward the source of the music.

One of the nurses had a little TV on the reception desk, and he grabbed the thing and spun it around.

It was tuned to channel 8, the station Hughes owned.

Credits flashed, the letters as white as stripped bone. Dracula in New Orleans. Robert Mitchum… Jane Russell… Linda Darnell… Jack Buetel… Randolph Scott… Vincent Price… and Hoagy Carmichael as Renfield.

The nurse grinned. “I think it’s your very best picture, Mr. Hughes.”