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When Maheu heard of the firing, he refused to give in. Six hours later, Davis and Gay were in Las Vegas. They took over the 18th-floor penthouse of the Sands Hotel and sent auditors elbowing into the counting rooms of Hughes casinos to check the evening's take. They publicly announced Maheu's firing. Maheu got a court order preventing the Toolco group from taking control of the hotels, casinos and other properties. Maheu argued that their power of attorney had been forged, that only Hughes could fire him. He contended that Hughes had fallen ill in September and "thereafter his medical condition became progressively worse."
Maheu also maintained that if the Toolco people took over, Hughes' casino licenses might be endangered, since none of the outsiders had been approved by the state gaming-control board. Finally, Maheu got Undersheriff Lloyd Bell to raid Hughes' quarters at the Desert Inn on suspicion of "foul play." The undersheriff found an empty apartment. Maheu's allies openly speculated that Hughes was incapacitated−or dead. There was even one story that Hughes had been lowered on a stretcher the nine stories from his apartment to the ground to start the trip to Paradise Island.
Total Surrender. Somehow, Davis and Gay had to convince the Nevada authorities and the public that Hughes was alive and well on Paradise Island, and that they were indeed acting on his orders. Their solution: a 1:30 a.m. phone call from Hughes to District Attorney George Franklin and Governor Paul Laxalt, a friend and tennis partner of Maheu's. Hughes, as Laxalt later told it, joked that reports of his death were "exaggerated." He said that he was vacationing and planned to return to Las Vegas. He assured Laxalt that he wanted Maheu fired. "There is no doubt it was Hughes," said Laxalt, who has never met the man but had previously spoken to him on the phone. "He made too many personal references to things we had talked about before." As he hung up, Laxalt said: "Well, Las Vegas isn't Mr. Maheu's town any more."
Davis, a portly and emotional man, gloated in triumph. He suggested that his friends find a bookmaker and "ask him what the odds are on Maheu hanging on." At one point he glared at the ceiling, and shouted at any electronic bugs that might have been planted by Maheu's men: "If you're up there, you son of a bitch, you're going to jail."
In private meetings, Maheu sought to salvage what he could. Davis demanded total surrender: Maheu's banishment from the Hughes empire, from his houses, from Las Vegas and from Nevada. Maheu demanded concessions: protection against any future suits charging mismanagement, a fat severance check, and assurance that Toolco would take over the commitments that he had assumed over the years in Hughes' name. Nevada businessmen were worried about who would pay off the many Hughes obligations−Maheu, Toolco or Howard Hughes. They were not alone in their concern; employees chose up sides and wondered who would pay them. State, county and city officials audibly fretted about licensing and other legal problems and possible losses of revenue. In fact, until the whole affair was settled, a substantial part of southern Nevada's economy faced financial chaos.