He loaded his camera and attached a flashbulb strip. He greased the connecting doorjamb. He framed angles for some face shots.

Ten minutes crawled by. Pete listened for next-door sounds. There, Gail’s signal-”Damn, where’s my key?” a beat too loud.

Pete pressed up to the wall. He heard Lonely Walt pitch some boo-hoo: my wife and kids don’t know a man has certain needs. Gail said, Why’d you have seven kids then? Walt said, It keeps my wife at home, where a woman belongs.

Their voices faded out bed-bound. Shoes went thunk. Gail kicked a high-heeled pump at the wall-her three-minutes-to-blastoff signal.

Pete laughed-thirty-dollar-a-night rooms with goddamn wafer-thin walls.

Zippers snagged. Bedsprings creaked. Seconds tick-tick-ticked. Walter P. Kinnard started groaning-Pete clocked him saddled in at 2:44.

He waited for 3:00 even. He eeeeased the door open-that doorjamb grease lubed out every little scriiich.

There: Gail and Walter P. Kinnard fucking.

In the missionary style, with their heads close together- courtroom adultery evidence. Walt was loving it. Gail was feigning ecstasy and picking at a hangnail.

Pete got closeup close and let fly.

One, two, three-flashbulb blips Tommy-gun fast. The whole goddamn room went glare bright

Kinnard shrieked and pulled out dishrag limp. Gail tumbled off the bed and ran for the bathroom.

Sexy buck-naked Walt 5’9”, 210, pudgy.

Pete dropped his camera and picked him up by the neck. Pete laid his pitch out nice and slow.

“Your wife wants a divorce. She wants eight hundred a month, the house, the ‘56 Buick and orthodontic treatments for your son Timmy. You give her everything she wants, or I’ll find you and kill you.”

Kinnard popped spit bubbles. Pete admired his color: half shock-blue, half cardiac-red.

Steam whooshed out the bathroom door-Gail’s standard postfuck shower always went down quick.

Pete dropped Walt on the floor. His arm fluttered from the lift two hundred pounds plus, not bad.

Kinnard grabbed his clothes and stumbled out the door. Pete saw him tripping down the hallway, trying to get his trousers on right

Gail walked out of a steam cloud. Her “I can’t take much more of this” was no big surprise.

o o o

Walter P. Kinnard settled non-litigiously. Pete’s shutout string jumped to Wives 23, Husbands 0. Mrs. Kinnard paid off: five grand up front, with 25% of her alimony promised in perpetuity.

Next: three days on Howard Hughes’ time clock.

The TWA suit was spooking Big Howard. Pete stepped up his diversions.

He paid hookers to spiel to the papers: Hughes was holed up in numerous fuck pads. He bombarded process servers with phone tips: Hughes was in Bangkok, Maracaibo, Seoul. He set up a second Hughes double at the Biltmore: an old stag-movie vet, beaucoup hung. Pops was priapic for real-he sent Barbara Payton over to service him. Booze-addled Babs thought the old geek really was Hughes. She dished far and wide: Little Howard grew six inches.

J. Edgar Hoover could stall the suit easy. Hughes refused to ask him for help.

“Not yet, Pete. I need to cement my friendship with Mr. Hoover first I see my ownership of Hush-Hush as the key, but I need you to find me a new scandal man first. You know how much Mr. Hoover loves to accrue titillating information…”

Pete put the word out on the grapevine:

New Hush-Hush dirt digger needed. Interested bottomfeeders-call Pete B.

Pete stuck by the watchdog house phone. Geeks called. Pete said, Give me a hot dirt tidbit to prove your credibility.

The geeks complied. Dig the sampling:

Pat Nixon just hatched Nat “King” Cole’s baby. Lawrence Welk ran male prosties. A hot duo: Patti Page and Francis the Talking Mule.

Eisenhower had certified spook blood. Rin Tin Tin got Lassie pregnant. Jesus Christ ran a coon whorehouse in Watts.

It got worse. Pete logged in nineteen applicants-all fucking strange-o’s.

The phone rang-Strange-O #20 loomed. Pete heard crackle on the line-the call was probably long distance.

“Who’s this?”

“Pete? It’s Jimmy.”

“Jimmy, how are you?”

“Right now I’m cold. It’s cold in Chicago. I’m calling from a pal’s house, and the heater’s on the blink. Are you sure your phone’s not tapped?”

“I’m sure. Freddy Turentine runs tap checks on all of Mr. Hughes’ phones once a month.”

“I can talk then?”

“You can talk.”

Hoffa cut loose. Pete held the phone at arm’s length and heard him juuuust fine.

“The McClellan Committee’s on me like flies on shit. That little weasel cocksucker Bobby Kennedy’s got half the country convinced the Teamsters are worse than the goddamn Commies, and he’s fucking hounding me and my people with subpoenas, and he’s got investigators crawling all over my union like-”

“Jimmy-”

“-fleas on a dog. First he chases Dave Beck out, and now he wants me. Bobby Kennedy is a fucking avalanche of dogshit. I’m building this resort in Florida called Sun Valley, and Bobby’s trying to trace the three million that bankrolled it. He figures I took it from the Central States Pension Fund-”

“Jimmy-”

“-and he thinks he can use me to get his pussy-hound brother elected President He thinks James Riddle Hoffa’s a fucking political steppingstone. He thinks I’m gonna bend over and take it in the keester like some goddamn homosexual queer. He thinks-”

“Jimmy-”

“-I’m some pansy like him and his brother. He thinks I’m gonna roll over like Dave Beck. As if all this ain’t enough, I own this cabstand in Miami. I’ve got these hothead Cuban refugees working there, and all they do is debate fucking Castro versus fucking Batista like like like…”

Hoffa gasped out hoarse. Pete said, “What do you want?”

Jimmy caught some breath. “I’ve got a job for you in Miami.”

“How much?”

“Ten thousand.”

Pete said, “I’ll take it.”

o o o

He booked a midnight flight. He used a fake passenger name and charged a first-class seat to Hughes Aircraft. The plane landed at 8:00 am., on time.

Miami was balmy working on hot.

Pete cabbed over to a Teamster-owned U-Drive and picked up a new Caddy Eldo. Jimmy pulled strings: no deposit or ID was required.

A note was taped under the dashboard.

“Go by cabstand: Flagler at N.W. 46th. Talk to Fulo Machado.” Directions followed: causeways to surface streets marked on a little map.

Pete drove over. The scenery evaporated quick.

Big houses got smaller and smaller. White squares went to white trash, jigs and spics. Flagler was wall-to-wall low-rent storefronts.

The cabstand was tiger-striped stucco. The cabs in the lot had tiger-stripe paint jobs. Dig those tiger-shirted spics on the curb- snarfing doughnuts and T-Bird wine.

A sign above the door read: Tiger Kab. Se Habla Espanol.

Pete parked directly in front. Tiger men scoped him out and jabbered. He stretched to six-five-plus and let his shirttail hike. The spics saw his piece and jabbered on overdrive.

He walked in to the dispatch hut. Nice wallpaper: tiger photos taped floor to ceiling. National Geographic stock-Pete almost howled.

The dispatcher waved him over. Dig his face: scarred by tic-tac-toe knife cuts.

Pete pulled a chair up. Butt-Ugly said, “I’m Fulo Machado. Batista’s secret police did this to me, so take your free introductory look now and forget about it, all right?”

“You speak English pretty well.”

“I used to work at the Nacional Hotel in Havana. An American croupier guy taught me. It turned out he was a maricуn trying to corrupt me.”