'N. Robert. Who are you?'

  I lit the cigarette, blew the smoke away and leaned over the desk to whisper. 'Dick Browning. Remember the card – "Beverly Hills" Browning? You'd have got a laugh out of that along with everyone else.'

  She straightened up and patted her hair. 'There were criminal charges, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sorry, but Mr Silkstein isn't seeing any out-of-work actors today.'

  I'd taken the precaution of bringing along a substantial cheque signed by Hughes and not yet cashed as well as a leasing arrangement also signed by him as principal of his film company. I put the documents on top of the open appointments book. 'I'm not an out-of-work actor, Miss Dupre, I'm an in-work actor and I work for Howard Hughes.'

  She gaped; I picked up the cheque and blew on it. Miss Dupre buzzed the boss.

  'Better be big, I'm busy.'

  'There's a Mr Browning here, Mr Silkstein, he . . .'

  'Kelly,' I hissed.

  'A Mr Kelly, he . . .'

  'Commander.'

  'Commander Kelly was a client of your father's, he . . .'

  'Handout?'

  'No. He works for Howard Hughes.'

  'Send him in.'

  I retrieved my papers and went through the door that had 'N. Robert Silkstein' on it in three inch high letters without knocking. In this room much had changed; the elaborate, heavy furniture had given way to sleeker stuff and the same was true of the inhabitants. N. Robert was as neat and whippy as H. Eliot had been slobby and gross. The old man must have crossbred with something racy, I thought as I walked over to the desk. The man standing behind it was on the short side but he made that seem like a virtue. His light grey suit was perfect, so was his shirt and tie, haircut and everything else in sight.

  'Commodore Kelly,' he said. 'Siddown.'

  The shock of the voice helped to drop me into a chair. I'd expected something very east coast, not lower East Side, New York. He came around the desk and shook my hand.

  'Whatsa matter? Oh yeah, the voice. My old man sent me to New York for my education. I speak better Eyetalian than I do . . .'

  He was going to say Yiddish but thought better of it. I put his age at about twenty-five, but it was the time of Irving Thalberg remember, and there was no reason to think that this kid might not be a solid chip off the old block. 'I knew your father,' I said. 'I worked with Fairbanks on . . .'

  'Robin Hood,' he said. 'Is that you? I remember now. The old man usta talk about the limey who got in Dutch with some bootlegger . . .'

  ' "Tidal Eddy",' I said. 'I hope he's not still around.'

  'Naw. He floated onta Santa Monica beach one morning and he wasn't swimming on accounta the bullet in his head. What can I do for you? Did the old man owe you dough? If so, forget it. I ruled the line a year ago.'

  'No, nothing like that. I want information and advice.' I told him about my arrangements with Hughes and asked for his estimation of the prospects for the picture and the likelihood of Hughes paying in full. He lit a big, black cigar as I spoke and he seemed to be enjoying my story more with each puff. I felt like throwing in a few jokes – I'd never known a speech of mine to go off so well. 'I'm not even sure that Hughes exists.'

  'Hughes is a sucker,' he said, 'and a rich sucker at that. You'll get your dough. But if you play your cards right you'll make twice as much as you're counting on now.'

  'How?'

  He leaned across the desk. His dark eyes glittered in his pale, thin face. 'With the right agent you can clean up – fees for stunts, danger money, expenses, insurance, lawsuits . . .'

  'Lawsuits?' I was alarmed; the last thing I wanted was an appearance in a court of law. I imagined the US had extradition arrangements with Canada. And what if a MacKnight saw my photo in a paper? Silkstein noted my reaction and probably read it accurately. He waved his cigar.

  'Threatened lawsuits. Leave it all to me.'

  'Your father took ten per cent.'

  'Some things don't change . . . Dick.'

  I wouldn't say it was a comfortable feeling, being a client of the Silkstein Agency again, but at least some of my fears had been put at rest. If N. Robert was the publicist his father had been, it might be possible for me to emerge from under my goggles and try my hand at acting again. Something about the life still appealed to me although it had turned so sour the first time. I drove back to Inglewood to find Blue and his current woman standing in front of the house. Blue was smoking which was unusual for him and looking very agitated.

  'What's going on?'

  Terri appeared at the door, her hair bristling with pencils. 'Hello, Dick,' she said. 'I need to bank that cheque today – better safe than sorry.'

  'I've endorsed it. Could someone please tell me what's happening. Are we being evicted?'

  'No, old sport,' Blue said. 'We're on. Sudden development. Scramble, like in the war.'

  'Shit. Why?'

  'God knows. Don't grizzle. You're going to get your wish.'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'Hughes is going to be there and he's going to fly one of the kites himself.'

  20

  The scene at Mines Field was a madhouse. There were planes lined up in ranks and others sitting around as if everybody had forgotten about them. Men were wandering around with schedules and take-off times and sketches of manoeuvres to be performed in the air. There was a lot of shouting, wind-checking, fuel pumping and wiping with oily rags. Blue left his girl in the car with a flask of gin and a lapful of magazines and marched across towards the centre of the action.

  'Hey, what're you doing?' I said.

  'Getting up front. Maybe I can be the first plane in the air.'

  'If Hughes is really here you'll be second at best,' I said. 'Mark my words.'

  'That'll do. Come on.'

  'Think I'll have a look at the kites.'

  I hung back and let Blue go. Truth to tell, I'd rather have been back in the car with the girl and the gin. I planned to do as little flying as possible. I'd seen some of those chalkboard sketches Roscoe Turner and the others laughed over and they made my blood run cold. I fancied myself piloting the plane with the camera, or one of the cameras – well back and hold 'er steady, that'd be the ticket.

  A cheer went up and a tall, dark man strode from the clutch of people towards a Morse scout plane parked a few hundred feet away. This was Hughes all right. He wore a flying jacket, white shirt with no tie, baggy cotton pants and white tennis shoes. He shambled a bit, looked shy and I thought that he'd have to put his knees under his chin to get those legs into the cockpit. I'd never flown a Morse and neither, I found out later, had Hughes. The plane had a rotary engine which might have made a difference to the handling. Hughes waved and there was another cheer as the Morse took off.

  Up into the blue Californian sky she soared and at about four hundred feet Hughes banked sharply left: the plane flipped and went into a flat spin. People were screaming and running around. Someone with presence of mind yelled for a fire truck and of course there wasn't one. I stared as the Morse crashed to earth. I started running before she hit and was one of the first on the spot. You'll hear that Hughes walked away brushing bits of the fabric from his hair but it wasn't like that at all. We had to lever struts and cut wires to get to him and he was out cold when we pulled him free. He was so tall it seemed to take an age to extract him. His face was covered with blood and I thought he was dead.

  There was no more flying that day. Everybody hung around glumly and the excited up-and-running atmosphere was gone like a puff of smoke. I did manage to get in a word with one of the assistant directors (there was a team of them) about flying one of the camera planes. He'd seen me do my bit at the crash site and he nodded and made a note. At the time I thought it was a waste of breath; with Hughes dead the movie would probably fold but you can never do too much protecting of your own ass, that's Browning's motto.

  Hughes didn't die, of course; he had a depressed fracture of the cheekbone and some other injuries but he was back on the set within a couple of weeks. If you haven't seen the movie – and why would you? it creaks like a barn door these days – it's basically the story of some World War I pilots getting their fighting lives and love lives entangled. James Hall played the pure-heart, with a cowardly brother played by Ben Lyon. Between these two came Jean Harlow, who was pure-heart's fiancée until she got into bed with Bad Ben for a reason I could never fathom. The movie was originally shot as a silent with some Swede27 in the Harlow role. She wouldn't do when they decided to change the thing into a talkie so they got a new script and a new girl. But that was all after we'd done our daredevil deeds in the sky.

  Harry Perry was the chief cameraman and he knew his business. What he didn't know about flying he learned, partly from Blue. When he knew enough to handle a plane I went up with him and, as I knew a bit about filming, we got along fine. I spent most of my time in the camera plane or flying an observation kite high above the action. I had to move quickly to avoid James Whale, who actually did a lot of the direction, because he wanted me to pilot the observation plane with him as passenger and he couldn't fly.

  Going up with Hughes, which I did several times, was a different matter. He could fly with the best of them (the Morse he crashed must have had a mechanical fault), so I wasn't worried on that score, but he was crazy. They say he grew his hair and fingernails and slept in his own shit later and I fully believe it. He was a nice-looking guy, even with the battered cheek, but he didn't seem to know it. He wore tennis shoes most of the time, even with a suit, and on him it looked all right. All the women seemed to think so and it wasn't just his money that attracted them. You had to listen very closely to catch what he said because he mumbled in a thick southern accent. Now, in those days you had yell to make yourself heard in a plane.

  'Muh muh muh, muh,' Hughes would say.

  'What, Mr Hughes?' I'd yell.

  'Muh, muh . . .'

  'What?'

  'Bank right, you son of a bitch!' he'd scream. 'I can't see a goddamn thing!'

  Sometimes he'd want to get close to the action – I mean screaming dogfights between the Fokkers and the Sopwith Pups, with planes buzzing around like a swarm of wasps – and I'd have to think quickly to forestall him.

  'Get in close, goddammit! Closer!'

  'Can't. We'll be in shot.'

  That held him back once or twice but he was a crazy bastard as I say, and he took it into his head to get me to make one of his close passes, no matter what the cost. I knew it was coming and I knew he'd fire me if he didn't get his own way, so I had one of the mechanics rig up a switch under the control panel of the Avro Avian we were using as an observation plane. By flipping the switch I could fake engine trouble and get the hell out of a tight spot. I told the mechanic the switch was part of a stunt.

  Operations had moved ten miles west of Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley where there was more space and even clearer sky. Aussie Air had moved to a house in Encino. It was a very comfortable house but small, which didn't matter so much as Blue seemed to have given up the girls. This puzzled me but he was working so hard, doing so much flying and maintenance work, that I thought he'd temporarily taken a break from the broads to aid his concentration. He was drinking much less too. Silkstein had done his job and secured us a favourable contract that screwed every possible penny out of Hughes' production company.

  All in all, it would have been a peaceful and profitable time if not for two irritants: one was my continual failure to make any time with Terri; I seemed to be losing even more ground there. Two was this bee in Hughes' bonnet to get me to fly wingtip-to-wingtip with some fighter spraying bullets.

  I tried to duck Hughes, to go up with the cameras or to bury myself up to my ass in the workings of a plane; sometimes, I pulled my goggles down, set my cap squarely on my head and pretended not to hear when Kelly was being paged. But eventually he caught me. Or rather, one of his assistants did – Mr Hughes didn't do much stomping around in the dust. This kid, dressed up like a polo player in jodhpurs and boots (God knows why, people did that sort of thing in Hollywood), sat down next to me in the canteen.

  'C'n I have your autograph?'

  I was off guard. I had a good slug of brandy in my coffee and was feeling pretty relaxed. 'Sure, kid.' I scrawled 'Dick Kelly – RAF' on the slip of paper he'd put down.

  The kid looked at it. 'Thank you, Mr Kelly. Mr Hughes wants you to be ready to fly with him in ten minutes. If you'd like to finish your coffee and come with me?'

  There was nothing to do but drink up and follow him. The Avro Avian was painted a bright red with white crosses on the wings which didn't do me any good for a start – blood and bandages, if you see what I mean. As I walked towards it I encountered Blue, who was all togged up and ready to fly. Blue had been a bit cool with me of late I fancied, probably because he thought I had all the cushy jobs. Well, he was off mark today.

  'Hello, Blue, old mate,' says I. 'What's on now?'

  'Dogfight and nose dive,' Blue grunts.

  He adjusted his helmet and moved away.

  That's bad, I thought. I'll bet this maniac wants me to follow the diver and pull out ten feet above the sod.

  Hughes was waiting by the plane, looking impatient.

  'Muh, muh, muh,' he says.

  'Sorry, Mr Hughes.' That was always the safest line to take with him.

  We went up; it was a lovely clear day. The Santa Monica hills were to the west and I could see the Pacific, twenty miles or so to the south-west. None of this meant anything to Hughes. He grunted directions – altitudes and speeds – and stared down at the other planes as they zoomed up and began to arrange themselves around the sky. Blue was flying a Spad and it became clear from the dummy runs that he was the one to do the dive. I shuddered as I watched them banking and wheeling around, just missing each other, and making a terrible racket. The wind was snatching bits of sound – screaming engines, buzzing and whistling – and throwing them around like leaves in a high wind.

  Eventually they got the patterns sorted out. Blue did the manoeuvre perfectly – roaring down to earth and pulling out at the last minute. Men on the ground were ready to prepare the fake explosion and there were at least three camera planes in close attendance.

  'Too crowded to get close, Mr Hughes,' I yelled.

  'They're doin' another dummy run, Mistuh Kelly. Ah want you to go down there all th' way.'

  'Christ!' I yelled. Why?'

  'Ah wah wah mum ah ah rah.'

  'What?'

  'Ah want to see if he gets th' expression on his face raht.'

  That's how mad he was. Is it any wonder he spent most of the last years of his life watching movies in Las Vegas? Well, I had an ace in the hole so I wasn't too worried. The planes got into formation; thumbs went up and engines howled. A Fokker chased the Spad across the sky and Blue did some fancy banks and dips. I stayed as close to the action as I could without getting involved in the actual aerobatics.

  'Hyah he goes,' Hughes yelled. 'Stay with th' son of a bitch!'

  To show willing, I banked sharply and got into position to join the dive. I even revved up and let the nose dip. Then I flipped the switch.

  Nothing happened.

  I was so startled I kept on with what I'd been doing, going into the dive with the engine whining and the air rushing past us. By the time I came to my senses I was plummeting towards earth at a speed that threatened to tear the wings off. I tried to pull out of the dive but the switch chose that moment to come into action and the engine coughed and died. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the surprise on Blue's face as my dive matched his. Hughes was shouting something which I couldn't understand – probably telling Blue to look more frightened. He should've seen me: I was working the stick and trembling all over and my bowels were loosening. The San Fernando Valley was rushing up to hit me in the face. I flipped the switch on and off; the engine came to life long enough to increase the speed of the dive and then cut out again. I was screaming, ready to babble my prayers. I thumbed the switch, felt my thumb dislocate and the engine caught. It all seemed to go into slow motion then; I had time to look across at Blue, see what he was doing and do the same. The Avro Avian shuddered, seemed to hang in the air, and then pulled out of the dive.

  Blue's face, as we sailed up in tandem, was like a clown's when he takes an unexpected fall. I wiped sweat from my face with my right hand and found I was holding up my dislocated thumb. Blue grinned, gave me a thumbs up in reply and peeled off to join the formation. I was flying by memory and if Hughes spoke to me again while we were up I didn't hear him. I got the plane down somehow and switched off. Sweat had drenched me from my hair to my socks. I had a desperate need to feel firm ground beneath my feet but I couldn't move and I needed alcohol and tobacco as I'd never needed them before. Hughes took off his harness, raised himself up in the seat and swivelled round. He was holding out a long, bony hand that was as steady as a statue. I wiped my hand on my pants and shook with him; he had a strong grip and I felt my thumb slip back into place with the pressure. Maybe that stopped me from shaking, I don't know, but he didn't seem to notice anything amiss.

  There was a muffled boom over to the east. Flames shot into the air and Blue's Spad zoomed through the smoke, climbing. Hughes nodded approvingly.

  'Mistuh Kelly,' he said. 'You an' yore buddy sure can fly. It's been a privilege, suh, to go up with you. Thank you.'

  'Thank you, Mr Hughes,' I said.

  21

  In 1928 it seemed like everyone in Hollywood was working for Hughes. And not just in Hollywood; some time that year we shifted operations again, this time up to San Francisco because the Oakland area had the sort of clouds Hughes wanted. He wanted clouds like the ones over France in the war years. God knows why he thought there was anything special about them. I'd been under those clouds in 1917: when they were low it rained, when they were high the bombers could see where to drop their loads and could give accurate instructions to the artillery. Clouds were bad news either way. But we flew back and forth between the San Fernando Valley and Oakland, filming, carrying equipment and personnel, and all the time Aussie Air was coining money.

 

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