A sketch of Claude Hall, 
circa 1976, by Chuck Blore

"MURDER at the Busted Bird Cafe"
by Claude Hall

Chapter 9

I had an immense amount of luck; she did not have the dog with her.  Not that the Scandia permits dogs, you understand.  Not even for Marlon Brando or Robert Redford.  There is an old story about Rita Hayworth, but no one believes it.  This is the Scandia, you know.

Tonight, Jo was wearing a tight red dress that she probably bought at a garage sale.  I'm addicted to radio, she's addicted to garage sales.  I was dragged along on one of these expeditions, for that's what they really are, one Sunday afternoon.  I swore then and there that if I survived the afternoon I would never do it again.  A woman descending on a garage sale is not a pretty sight.

She had evidently spotted me as soon as she entered Then she saw Tricia.  After that, she adjusted to an attack mode and advanced.  I don't think she was intent on destruction--at least not at first--as much as reconnoitering the scene.  But the second she spoke, I knew without question that total destruction was entirely within her capabilities.  If she'd had the dog, no doubt I would have been dead in an instant.

I stood, almost knocking over my half-empty glass of milk.

"Tricia, I would like you to meet Jo, otherwise known as Roaring Starr.  Jo, this is Tricia whatever her name is.  She's doing field research."

"So, I see," said Jo.

Tricia did not rise.  She merely turned her head slightly as if willing to notice that Jo did, after all, exist, and looked up.

"Tell me, are you in show business, too?" Tricia asked Jo.

"Tricia really is doing research," I explained quickly.  "On the killings at the Busted Bird the other night.  She's head of the Society for Critical Studies, whatever that is."

"The Scandia is certainly a great place for critical studies," Jo said.

At that point, a long-haired creep and a half stepped up and placed a hand on Jo's shoulder.  He wore a tee-shirt that said "Deadhead Deluxe - 1969" and an expression that said he was pleased to be with us, but not very much.

"My producer, Johnnie Lee," Jo said.  She introduced him to me and him to Tricia and Tricia to him and me to him with a lot of hemming and very little hawing.

I'm the one who hawed a lot.  I tried to pin down the name Lee and couldn't.  You get to know the names of a lot of record artists and the names of a lot of records.  Producers?  Not so much.  Maybe a guy like Jerry Wexler, yes.  And once upon a time Bob Crewe was hotter than the proverbial $400 pistol.  Off hand, I could probably name about 20 record producers.  None of them were named Johnnie Lee.

"Great place, Scandia, for recording a hit record," I said.

"We were hungry," said Jo.

"Would you like to join us?" asked Tricia.  "I was just thinking about ordering."

"Thank you," said Jo and literally plopped into a chair as if concerned the offer might suddenly be withdrawn.  "The scampi is fabulous here."

Tricia immediately picked up the menu beside her plate and handed it to a waiter who appeared as if merely waiting for her to call.  "Scampi," she said.  "And another martini."

"Me, too," said Jo.

"That's a stunning outfit," Tricia said to her.
"Sears?"

"Garage sale," said Jo.

Tricia thought she was kidding.

"Produced any hits lately?" I asked Lee.  I'm sure my voice carried a slight tone of sarcasm.

"A couple," Lee said.  He pointed at something on the menu and, when the waiter nodded, folded the menu and handed it to him.

"Anybody I would know?" I asked.  Again, sarcasm. "Probably not," he said.  "Unless you know Dylan."

"Whups!" I said.

"Lay off," Jo warned me.  "You're in over your head on this one."

"I can swim real well," I replied.  I had no intention of laying off.

"Besides Dylan," said Jo, "Johnnie also produced the last album by Sherbert."

"Double whups," I said.

Tricia asked the waiter to "bring a chair for Mr. Lee."

Lee sat down with a great deal less enthusiasm than Jo.  He ordered a Perrier.  Jo quickly changed her order of a martini to Perrier.  She was obviously trying to stay in the good graces of Lee.  That's my gal: flexible.

"Max says you were at the Busted Bird," he said.  The sentence was tossed out with a disdainful, uncaring tone, but I sensed that he really was interested.

"Yes," I said.  "What record did you do with
Sherbert?"

"Still in the can," he said.  "I did it for one of Wesley Bird's friends.  Yes, I know it's tough to do business with someone like that.  But I got pretty good money up front."

The man knew the business.  Master tapes never actually went into a can.  That term had dribbled down from the movie business.  Master tapes of a record, now mostly digital in nature, were sometimes stored in a box, but never a can.  But everyone said can as if it were a movie.

"Pity," I said.

He tossed his head.  His black hair didn't move much.

"The label seems to think we'll still do pretty well with sales.  The pity is that Sherbert won't be around to enjoy it.  He was looking forward to getting a hit.  Said he was tired of playing clubs like the Busted Bird."

"Does a hit record mean that you don't have to perform live anymore?" asked Tricia.

"No," I said.  "But if the hit is large enough, you move up into the concert bracket.  The take is quite a bit larger and could go into the millions."

"I see." 

"Eric Clapton once pulled $30 million out of a U.S. tour," said Jo.

"God!"

Lee nodded his head.  "The record industry is big business.  When you're hot."

"Right now, Johnnie is hot," Jo said.

"I've been hot and I've been cold," Lee said quickly, as if attempting to explain it all away.  "I'd much rather remain sort of lukewarm.  But that isn't the way the industry works.  Freddie Mann, a record producer, had a great line.  He said you call tell when you've got a hit record because Columbia Records answers your phone calls.  He had a million-selling record on the label at the time called 'It Never Rains in Southern California'."
"Certainly, you enjoy being a success," said Tricia.

"Not really.  Sometimes, I wish I could just take the money and run," answered Lee.  "I heard that a record man named Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records, did that several years ago.  Went to Hawaii.  Never came back.  That's the man I envy.  For sure, the record industry isn't what it useta t'was."

For some reason, I began to like Johnnie Lee.  I can't explain why.  Maybe he had the same basic approach to the industry that I had...or thought I had.

"And it probably never was," I pointed out.  "A lot of the old names are gone.  Some maybe didn't want to go. Joe Smith, Mo Ostin.   Some are still trying to get back."

"Probably that would happen to me if I left," said Lee.  "This damned business gets in your blood.  It's like an itch you can't scratch except it's the old noggin that itches."

"Yeah!" I said.  "That's it exactly."

I decided that if I waited much longer, my steak would be as cold as last year's ARB, so I started eating.

The waiter brought a bowl of carrots and radishes because it was taking so long for the scampi.  I had a couple of carrots and one radish.  I hate radishes, but Jo insists they're good for you.  She knows stuff like that.  Why is it things that are good for you generally taste like radishes and things that are bad for you taste like apple pie?  Must be a hit song there somewhere.

"I'm here strictly for the excitement," said Jo.  "The fun."

"That's the addiction, Jo," said Lee.  "Fun.  You get used to it.  Can't live without it."

"Perhaps someone should find a cure," said Tricia. 

"Someone did...the other night at the Busted Bird," said Lee.  His voice was soft, thoughtful.  He looked at me.  "Did you know Surcouf?"

"No.  We may have met once or twice," I said.  "I probably saw him perform once or twice."

Lee nodded.  "Way it goes.  Few of us in this business have any real friends; everything's usually on a business level.  Surface stuff.  When someone tells me that so and so is their best friend, I figure they probably just met yesterday."

"Sad, but true," I said.  "I know an awful lot of people, but I don't know any of them very well."  I suddenly realized that this applied to C.W. Meaux and wondered what the porno rap was really all about. Maybe I didn't want to know.  Maybe I really didn't want to know Meaux either.

"For the life of me, though," Lee said, "I can't figure why anyone would want to kill a guy like Surcouf.  Maybe he'd never given money to the poor...hell, probably never even donated blood to the Red Cross...but on the other hand I doubt if he would have stepped on a lady bug.  Just can't see killing him."

The waiter finally brought their food.

"The police don't believe the killers were after him," I said.

"Really?" asked Tricia.  Her voice carried a tone that said she was very interested.

"The idea seems a little ridiculous, but the police believe the killers may have been trying to kill a very brilliant and quite outstanding disc jockey about town.  Me."

Lee let out a long, low whistle.

Several of the people at the other tables in Scandia looked in our direction.  Once they noticed that none of us was Robert Redford or Jamie Lee Curtis, they looked away.

Jo grew angry.  Her hair tossed.

"How come you didn't tell me?" she demanded.

"I only found out today myself," I said.

"How come you didn't tell me?" Tricia said.

"Hell, I don't even know you," I said. "You know me,
but I don't know you.  I don't tell anything to people who only have first names.  Matter of fact, I don't even like to talk to them."

Jo scooted her chair closer to the table.  Lee moved his further back.

Tricia took a deep breath, as if stalling while she made a decision.  She glanced around the table.  Jo stared at her the hardest.

"Rizzo," she said.  "Tricia Rizzo."

"Good," I said.  "Pleased to meet you.  Finally. Everybody, meet Rizzo."

"How do you produce a hit record?" Tricia quickly asked Lee, as if eager to escape the topic of herself.

"With a lot of luck," he said.  He had ordered a hamburger.  He took a bite, then continued.  "Many artists write their own songs today and some even produce their own records.  Often, I do as much guiding a session as producing the record itself because some of the studio musicians--like Hal Blaine--are phenomenally talented and they come up with riffs and bits and pieces.  The idea is to get the very best commercial product possible.  And sometimes the concept of art is the last thing on your mind.  The record label wants sales.  Madonna is not an artist, in my opinion; she's a commercial machine. Does that make sense?"

"Are there any books about the industry?"

"Several.  Fan and pro.  None of them are much good. The books will tell you that Mae Axton was a songwriter, that Governor Jimmie Davis wrote 'You Are My Sunshine', stuff like that.  You can't really know the business unless you're in it.  And even then, I'm not so sure."

Lee didn't waste any time on his hamburger.  He finished it and stood up.

"As Jerry Reed once sung, when you're hot, you're hot.  I'm afraid that I've got to head for work."

He told Jo that he would hop a taxi.

"Work?  On a Sunday night?" asked Tricia.

"I've got a studio over in Hollywood booked Sunday nights for the next six months.  Producing a group on MCA Records."

"I would love to see a recording session," said
Tricia.  "I could give you a lift."

She looked at me.  I nodded that it was okay with me.

Lee nodded at me.  "I would like to shoot the bull with you sometime."

"Same here," I said.

"I listen to K-Oldies.  Can't beat some of those records, though I still try.  The Drifters, The Crew Cuts, Ike and Tina Turner."

"Good records," I said.

"Play me a Sam Cooke, will you?"

"I won't be on the air again until Saturday."

"I know.  Listen to your show all the time."

"Thank you," I said.

"Mostly research," Lee said, "but you do a good job."

"Call me at the station," I said.  "Coffee does coffee."

"Cute," he said with a laugh.  "But dull."

"Got me," I said.  "But so's my show."

He tried to pull out some money.

"We'll take care of the tab," said Jo.

"Not so," said Tricia.  She handed the waiter a credit
card.  "Big expense account."

Interestingly enough, she signed the credit card slip with a pencil that she took from her purse.  You don't see that many pencils anymore.  I tried to catch the name she signed, but it was a mere scribble.

A few minutes later, they were gone.  I have no idea whether Tricia Rizzo was one of those flighty types who'd leave you standing or had seen that Jo and I were a "thing" and decided to get out of the direct line of fire.  But this was not the first time I'd been left standing in the rain by a girl.  And Jo was definitely getting set to rain all over me.  I had to do something fast.

"Do you have your phone with you?"

"Yes," Jo said.  She handed me the phone.

I took out Sawyer's card.

All of this was show business, you understand.  I had been caught hands down, to use an old cliché, with another woman.  The fact that it was more or less an innocuous situation doesn't make much difference where women are concerned.  The call to Sawyer, of course, was a cover-up.

I punched in his cellular number.  It rang three times.

"Sawyer," I said.  "Buddy Coffee.  I did as you asked.  I may have some information for you tomorrow about
the Society for Critical Studies."  I paused.  Then: "Sure.  I'll call you tomorrow."

I hung up.

Jo tossed her hair twice.

She took the phone and placed it in her purse.  Then stood up and started for the entrance.

"Walk home," she said over her shoulder.

"What?"

She stopped and turned around, hands on hip, eyes burning.

"The phone call was faked, Buddy.  I could hear it still ringing on the other end.  You really are a horse's ass.  Big time!"

(To be continued)

e-mail  claude@claudehallonline.com

Commentary
by Claude Hall

July 7, 2003

Years and years ago while with Billboard magazine, I realized that business lunches seldom accomplished as much as I needed to accomplish, so I stopped accepting invitations unless it was for a really useful purpose or a good friend. Same with parties. There were too many parties in Los Angeles anyway. But in our neighborhood--the Bel Air area of Los Angeles--I would sometimes go to social things. At a party up the street one evening at the home of movie guru Dore Schary's daughter and son-in-law, I ran into a person who had been a college professor at Northwestern until Howard Hughes tapped him on the shoulder, he said, and said, "You're now working for me." Hughes, according to this ex-professor, was in constant touch with one of four computer banks around the world. I believe it was this same person who told me the Spruce Goose tale. Either he was the engineer on that flight or he knew the person who was.

Later, a good friend, still an employee of Hughes Aircraft or one of it myriad octopusic arms and generations, and his wife invited my wife Barbara and me out to dinner because he had a friend he wanted to entertain. It was a guy who'd been sent to Brussels by Howard Hughes and he thought Hughes had forgotten about him; his children had grown up speaking French instead of English. These days, I tend toward silence; in those days I enjoyed shooting the bull, as we used to say in Texas, and people seemed to enjoy talking with me. These men had fascinating tales. But this tale is about this good friend.

And somewhen one evening circa 1980, courtesy of Joey Reynolds, then head of the Aries II record label for Wayne Newton, Barbara and I sat down on the floor of Wayne's "dressing room" in Las Vegas, actually a huge apartment with a living room that featured a bar along one side, and interviewed Walter Kane.

That entire afternoon/evening was right out of "Terry and the Pirates." Joey, then and now, is a good friend. He was married at the time to Caroline; I don't remember if this was before his two daughters were born or just about that time. Anyway, he persuaded me to review a Wayne Newton show in Vegas. I, of course, still had this vision of a chunky-faced kid singing "Danke Shane." But, what-the-hell. Joey told me and Barbara to meet in at a private airport in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles and this we did. The waiting lounge was small, plain, empty. But not soon after we got there, a guy wearing kaiki trousers and a plaid shirt walked in and said hello to Joey and Joey introduced us. Jay Stream. Stream was manager of Wayne Newton at the time and in partnership with him on an Arabian stallion for which they'd just shelled out $10 million. He also owned a restaurant in San Luis Obispo where he lived and the Honda car dealership there. He told me he'd become rich in "lumber and banking." Most of my life, I've managed to avoid people who have become rich in lumber and banking because most of the time they didn't really make their money in lumber and banking. But I had a hunch that maybe this guy had. He was in his 50s, I think, neither overweight nor underweight, seemed to be quite capable, obviously thought he was in charge and I suppose he was because he told Joey to come with us and Joey hadn't planned to do so, but he went out and got in the plane with us. Didn't even have a toothbrush with him, but I think by this time Joey was used to buying essentials on the run, so to speak. When I became a college professor, Joey gave me a couple of dozen ties; half had been bought in some ritzy casino shop.

I asked this lumberman where his pilot was and he said he was the pilot. Stream had shuttled B-25s into the South Pacific during World War II and never stopped flying. It was a Cessna Citation, incidentally. You know how much those things cost? He said I could ride co-pilot and he didn't have to mention it twice. After he cleared, he sent that jet down the runway and, zoom, we were gone out of the San Fernando Valley and still going up. Before we even got over the mountains, he had the plane on autopilot and was talking on the phone. Business. Then a few minutes later, he took over the controls again and landed the plane at McCarren in Las Vegas. His car was brought out to the plane for him. A moment later, we're pulling up before a building still under construction. I've often wondered in the years since which casino it turned out to be and where it was because Las Vegas has changed so much. I couldn't remember. But Joey says, "it was the Shanandoah across from the MGM
Grand. No showroom as to not compete with the Howard Hughes hotels. Subsequently, Wayne bought the Aladdin with the help of some banks and the governor the day he and Johnny Carson decided they didn't like each other."

Just FYI, Wayne Newton was earning $10 million a year performing in the casino-hotels owned by Howard Hughes. He earned this figure for years! Not bad for about six months of singing each year.

The Shanandoah, however, was not to be, for Jay Stream and Wayne Newton never were able to obtain a gambling permit and they sold the building and someone else opened it; it has long been torn down and something fancier and newer constructed in its place. Any and all partnerships probably faded away.

The lumberman told Joey to drive us to see Wayne and he would meet us later. But the truth is that I never met him again because we took a commercial flight back to Los Angeles the next day.

We drove to the Desert Inn and Joey led us up to Wayne Newton's dressing room and introduced us. This was a suave, slender, handsome riverboat gambler (yes, even the thin mustache) in front of me; not the chunky kid from my old photos. It was a little bit crazy up in that suite. Everyone talking and nobody listening, so far as I could tell. An older man, plump to the extent that he probably didn't do much walking, was sitting on a barstool at the end and Wayne introduced him as Grandfather. I don't recalled if Wayne told us or Joey told us, but this was the almost legendary Walter Kane, at that time director of entertainment for Summa Corp., and he lived in the casino hotel. Evidently, that was his barstool, too. No one else was allowed to sit there. The bartender was a huge guy from Houston they called, as I remember, Bear. He was chauffeur, handyman, bodyguard, whatever for Wayne.

Someone came and talked to Wayne as I was trying to get some information. He told the guy to quickly get "the painting" and a few moments later a fairly large oil canvas in an ornate wooden frame was hung on the wall, replacing the painting that had been there. Then Wayne told me that I would have to excuse him for a few minutes, but that I was to interrupt him a few minutes later and insist that my time was valuable or something like that. There were quite a few people in the room, but soon a fairly beautiful woman, well dressed, was brought in and, of course, it was the same woman in the painting. She seemed to be fawning over Wayne. But, as bid, I interrupted after a while. The woman eventually disappeared. But I didn't have that much time to gather information because Wayne had to rehearse. So he said.

This did not hurt my feelings because Barbara and I were soon talking with Walter Kane. He sat in an easy chair. We sat on the floor at his feet, a Sony CRS 150 stereo cassette deck between us. If you listen to the cassette, you'll hear background noises, but that was one of the best cassette decks I ever had and I wish I still had one exactly like it to this day. Built-in mikes; you could plug it into your sound
system.

Kane called himself a go-fer. But Howard Hughes used to stay at his apartment in Los Angeles when he was in town. Once, he told Kane to buy RKO Studios and the tale is that when he saw it for the first time, he ordered someone to paint it. That wasn't true. Kane drove him over to see it and he said, fine, and Kane asked if he wanted to go inside and Hughes said no and then they drove away. Kane, too, did not see Howard Hughes those last years, but he didn't believe all of that nonsense about the long fingernails, etc. "Howard Hughes wasn't that kind of man."

Just FYI, Wayne Newton did a hellofashow that evening. Worked like hell. Great show. Great entertainer. So far as I'm concerned, there was only one entertainer who was better in Vegas during those days and that was Sammy Davis Jr. Regardless, you got your money's worth with either man. I was very impressed and, in case you're wondering, I've caught quite a few acts during my day. Also, Wayne's act was never the same; Wayne could whisper a number to his orchestra leader and, viola, change songs from song to song. I recall when it used to be a major event for someone like Tony Bennett to change a song in his act. After a while back in the Big Apple, I knew almost precisely when he was going to whip off his tie, at what song he would shuck his coat, etc. Didn't matter; Tony was good. But I never placed him in the same rank as Sammy Davis Jr. Nor Wayne Newton.

So, now we flashback to my friend who worked for Hughes Aircraft and lived in the San Fernando Valley. I've seen old pictures, of course, of Howard Hughes and I've occasionally thought about this friend and tried to paint the years onto a photo to see the results and, well, I still don't know. But when this friend retired from Hughes, he was given the company Chevrolet that he drove. That's interesting. One time, he mentioned to me that he'd just been in Washington and "as I was driving around with the Secretary of State, we saw this rock concert off in the distance." And another time at a party he seemed to be rather close to a U.S. congressman; Tuney as I recall. Another time, he told me about an experiment in Tokyo with a laser. Another time, he mentioned visiting five countries on business in five days. Little stuff, right? My friend was married about the same time as Howard Hughes and, yes, there is a son. Hughes supposedly didn't have any offspring. But you probably wouldn't want that known if you were really Howard Hughes.

Remember when Howard Hughes supposedly took over the entire ninth floor of the Britannia Hotel in the Bahamas? I've been there. The Britannia is/was not exactly the kind of place in which you'd hide out, even if you supposedly stayed in your room. Again, I have a strong feeling that our man Howard was not the type to sit in his room and watch television. Nope. The better possibility was that our good friend Howard probably rented that floor in the hotel way off down yonder as a ruse.

The hiding part of Howard's life evidently began, at least to some extent, about the time of the Spruce Goose. It was originally a joint project between Howard Hughes and Henry Kaiser and designated the HK-1. When Kaiser dropped out, it was just the H-4 Hughes Flying Boat, a cargo-type flying boat designed to transport a lot of men and materials over long distances. It was originally conceived by Henry Kaiser, famous for liberty ships, but the aircraft was designed and constructed by Howard Hughes and his staff. Because metal was needed for guns and tanks, Hughes made the plane mostly of birch, but Spruce Goose sounds better than Birch Bastard, which is what it became in the end.

On November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes and a two-man crew fired up the eight propeller R-4360s engines for taxi tests. Those tests went well, that is the engines all worked and the boat moved through the water. Then Hughes turned to his engineer and said, "Aw, the hell with it!" and thrilled thousands of on-lookers with an unannounced flight. With Howard Hughes at the controls, the 181-foot Flying Boat lifted 70 feet off the water and flew a mile in less than a minute at a top speed of 80 miles per hour before making a perfect landing. It is now looked upon as a great moment in flight history. But, pissed off at all of the senators who'd accused him of some kind of boondoggle, Hughes stored the Spruce Goose in a hanger where it gathered dust for dozens of years until some buffs fetched it to McMinnville, Oregon, a few years ago. So, the longest trip the plane ever made was 1,055 miles and it took 138 days from Long Beach, California. On a barge.

But for one reason or another, Hughes became more of a shadow than a real human. I personally think it was because of his marriage. Yes, he'd had a lot of girlfriends and these ranged from Kate Hepburn to Terry Moore. But once he married, the odd thing is that this woman also virtually disappeared and
although Hughes became increasingly mythical, she did not; no one wrote much about her. No photos. No nothing. Hughes, on the other hand and strictly in my opinion, actually became two people--the real person and the myth.

I have conjectured that if you really wanted to hide out, you'd live in the San Fernando Valley and work for your own company so you could keep track of everything. Drive a Chevrolet. Call all of the shots you wanted or needed to call via memo through someone. Go to work every day. Everyone would know you, but they'd never know you were Howard because you'd have a different name. And if you had a pretty good title, you'd be able to do just about everything you wanted to do and without a lot of hassle. 

Anyway, I thought this idea, real or imagined, was pretty cute, so I'm now writing a novel called "Howard Hughes Is Alive and Well and Living in the San Fernando Valley." Just passed 50,000 words. It'll probably top out at about 100,000 or so.

Claude Hall

e-mail  claude@claudehallonline.com