Every time she called — every time the international operator said: “Señor Irving? The United States is calling. Please hold on” — I had a moment of dread, a feeling that this is it. Dick and I had played it out together so many times, our own laughter counterpointing the imagined histrionics. “Listen, Cliff, we’ve just had a telephone call from Chester Davis … Howard Hughes has written a letter to Harold McGraw and he claims … The Hughes Tool Company says …” But each time in the past when she had called and I had felt that pinprick of fear in my stomach, Beverly had dispelled it, asking how things were going, veering often to the corporate hope at McGraw-Hill that the book would metamorphose from an authorized biography to a full-fledged autobiography. So that each time, when I finally put down the receiver, the glow of renewed confidence had replaced the fear, and the theme song of Project Octavio echoed once again in my mind: “All right so far …”
