Howard Hughes found a vein and mainlined codeine. Pete watched on the sly-Hughes left his bedroom door ajar.

The dope hit home. Big Howard went slack-faced.

Room service carts clattered outside. Hughes wiped off his spike and ffipped channels. The “Howdy Doody” show replaced the news-standard Beverly Hills Hotel business.

Pete walked out to the patio-pool view, a good bird-dog spot. Crappy weather today: no starlet types in bikinis.

He checked his watch, antsy.

He had a divorce gig at noon-the husband drank lunch alone and dug young cooze. Get quality flashbulbs: blurry photos looked like spiders fucking. On Hughes’ timecard: find out who’s hawking subpoenas for the TWA antitrust divestment case and bribe them into reporting that Big Howard blasted off for Mars.

Crafty Howard put it this way: “I’m not going to fight this divestment, Pete. I’m simply going to stay incommunicado indefinitely and force the price up until I have to sell. I’m tired of TWA anyway, and I’m not going to sell until I can realize at least five hundred million dollars.”

He’d said it pouty: Lord Fauntleroy, aging junkie.

Ava Gardner cruised by the pool. Pete waved; Ava flipped him the bird. They went back: he got her an abortion in exchange for a weekend with Hughes. Renaissance Man Pete: pimp, dope procurer, licensed PI goon.

Hughes and him went waaay back.

June ‘52. L.A. County Deputy Sheriff Pete Bondurant-night watch commander at the San Dimas Substation. That one shitty night: a nigger rape-o at large, the drunk tank packed with howling juiceheads.

This wino gave him grief. “I know you, tough guy. You kill innocent women and your own-”

He beat the man to death barefisted.

The Sheriff’s hushed it up. An eyeball witness squealed to the Feds. The L.A. agent-in-charge tagged Joe Wino “Joe Civil Rights Victim.”