Driving Blind

“Looks like they’re changing the number.”

“Changing the number, hell, they’re wiping it out! No more One. Watch those guys with the plasti

c overlays in the alley, holding up the goddamn pieces, trying them for size.”

The typist rose and took off her glasses to see better.

“That looks like UGH. What does ‘Ugh’ mean?”

“Wait till they fit the first letter. See? Is that or is that not an H?”

“H added to UGH. Say, I bet I know the rest. Hughes! And down there on the ground, in small letters, the stencil? ‘Aircraft’?”

“Hughes Aircraft, dammit!”

“Since when are we making planes? I know the war’s on, but—”

“We’re not making any damn planes,” Jerry Would cried, turning from the window.

“We’re shooting air combat films, then?”

“No, and we’re not shooting no damn air films!”

“I don’t see …”

“Put your damn glasses back on and look. Think! Why would those SOBs be changing the number for a name, hey? What’s the big idea? We’re not making an aircraft carrier flick and we’re not in the business of tacking together P-38s and—Jesus, now look!”

A shadow hovered over the building and a shape loomed in the noon California sky.

His secretary shielded her eyes. “I’ll be damned,” she said.

“You ain’t the only one. You wanna tell me what that thing is?”

She squinted again. “A balloon?” she said. “A barrage balloon?”

“You can say that again, but don’t!”

She shut her mouth, eyed the gray monster in the sky, and sat back down. “How do you want this letter addressed?” she said.

Jerry Would turned on her with a killing aspect. “Who gives a damn about a stupid letter when the world is going to hell? Don’t you get the full aspect, the great significance? Why, I ask you, would MGM have to be protected by a barrage—hell, there goes another! That makes two barrage balloons!”

“No reason,” she said. “We’re not a prime munitions or aircraft target.” She typed a few letters and stopped abruptly with a laugh. “I’m slow, right? We are a prime bombing target?”

She rose again and came to the window as the stencils were hauled up and the painters started blow-gunning paint on the side of Stage One.

“Yep,” she said, softly, “there it is. AIRCRAFT COMPANY. HUGHES. When does he move in?”

“What, Howie the nut? Howard the fruitcake? Hughes the billionaire bastard?”

“That one, yeah.”

“He’s going nowhere, he still has his pants glued to an office just three miles away. Think! Add it up. MGM is here, right, two miles from the Pacific coast, two blocks away from where Laurel and Hardy ran their tin lizzie like an accordion between trolley cars in 1928! And three miles north of us and also two miles in from the ocean is—”

He let her fill in the blanks.

“Hughes Aircraft?”

He shut his eyes and laid his brow against the window to let it cool. “Give the lady a five-cent seegar.”