Howard Lives

They were perhaps the first honest words that Clifford Irving had uttered publicly about the substance of the case. After months of embroidered tabulations--tales of secret tapings in Mexico, an "autobiography" poured forth at mysterious rendezvous in hotel rooms and parked cars--Irving stood in U.S. District Court in Manhattan's Foley Square last week and confessed in a subdued voice: "I conspired to convince the McGraw-Hill Book Company that I was in communication with Howard Hughes, and in fact I was not."

With that, Irving and his wife Edith pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy. Then they walked a few blocks to the Criminal Courts Building, where they joined their collaborator, Researcher-Writer Richard Suskind. In State Supreme Court all three pleaded guilty to New York's charges of grand larceny and conspiracy in the $750,000 hoax. The Irvings and Suskind were released again on bond to await sentencing on June 16. Even the guilty pleas may not be the end of the tangled story; the federal grand jury in Manhattan continued last week to issue subpoenas in the case.

With sentencing still almost three months away, Irving will have time to arrange settlement of his own complicated finances. He is virtually certain to try to sell a new book, this time recounting how he put together the false autobiography, and use part of the proceeds to pay back the money he extracted from McGraw-Hill. One rumor had it that a New York agency called Creative Management Associates, which represents Irving, has bought the rights to the planned book for $380,000--and is supposedly asking $1,000,000 for the film rights. Of Irving's $380,000, $200,000 would purportedly go to McGraw-Hill, which would also receive the cash still being held in Swiss bank accounts; $40,000 would go to pay his lawyers' fees, and $40,000 to Swiss authorities as a fine to keep Mrs. Irving from going to jail in Switzerland. That would leave the Irvings with a profit of $100,000 for their inventive labors.

Poltergeist. The day after the Irvings pleaded guilty, Howard Hughes, the sometimes eerie presence in the case, was rattling around again like a restless poltergeist. He had spent 19 days ensconced in the Hotel Inter-Continental in Managua, Nicaragua, where he may have discussed a link between his Hughes Air West and the country's national airline, and possibly tried to unload two of his mothballed four-engine Convair 880 jets. In another elusively Hughesian airlift he was spirited out of Managua and moved to yet another bank of upper-story suites, this time on the 19th and 20th floors of the opulent Bayshore Inn in Vancouver, B.C.

Unlike his earlier moves from Las Vegas to Nassau and from Nassau to Managua, this trip was not entirely secret. For the first time in over a decade, several people from the outside world actually met him. At the Managua airport just before he left, Hughes talked for more than an hour with Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza and U.S. Ambassador Turner B. Shelton.

By Shelton's account, he and Somoza climbed aboard Hughes' Gulfstream jet at about 10:40 p.m. "Hughes is quite tall and thin," Shelton said later. "He appeared in good health, was very affable. He shook hands twice, very vigorously. He looks like the old pictures of him, but a little older. His hair was cut normally. He is certainly an interesting man. He was very pleasant and gracious for my help in setting up the meeting. He thanked Somoza for his hospitality. He said he was off on a business trip."

When Hughes arrived in Vancouver, according to Canadian Customs Officer John Jackson, he was wearing pajamas, robe and slippers. Unaccountably, Jackson said that Hughes was wearing only a thin mustache and not the Vandyke beard that Shelton said he had when he left Nicaragua. "He looked weary and tired," with a thin, lined face and graying hair slicked back, Jackson said. An aide told customs authorities that Hughes would probably not stay in Canada more than three months, the maximum allowed for visitors without visas. Hughes was spared one routine question directed at arrivals in Canada: no one asked him if he had enough money to ensure that he would not become a public charge while in the country.

What would Hughes do in Canada? He was not there on business, an aide insisted. "He'll spend the days sitting and watching movies." Coincidentally or not, however, officials of Dominion Aircraft, a firm that has been noisily seeking financing for a short-takeoff-and-landing plane, have booked rooms two floors below Hughes' at the Bayshore Inn.

The security arrangements surrounding Hughes are as rigid as ever, but there are hints that he might take one minute step toward interrupting his troglodytic existence. In Los Angeles, a spokesman said that Hughes might soon release a new photograph of himself, the first to reach the public since the early 1950s.

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