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Dirt Rich
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Dirt Rich
Clark Howard
For Judith,
who was worth waiting for
Contents
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part 2
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part 3
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Part
1
Texas Poor
1
The sounds of the people on the street outside the hotel window woke Georgia Powell from her sound, early morning sleep. She glanced at the young sailor next to her, smiled sympathetically at the memory of his awkward lovemaking, and eased out of bed without disturbing him. Crossing the room, she pulled back a cracked yellow shade an inch and looked at Rivington Street, two stories below, through a window almost opaque with city dirt. A herd of people was heading toward the nearby docks to welcome home “Black Jack” Pershing and his 82nd Infantry Division from crushing the Hun at Saint-Mihiel and the Argonne.
I’ve got to hurry, Georgia thought. I want Sam to see me the instant he steps off the boat!
As quietly as possible she began collecting her scattered clothes, while trying to remember if the bathroom was to the right or left down the hall. This hotel she and the young sailor had come to was little more than a flophouse, nothing like her room uptown at the new Commodore; but it had been handy and they had been eager. She just hoped to God she hadn’t caught anything from the bed linen.
Georgia had come down to this part of Manhattan the previous day to select a good vantage point from which to watch Sam’s ship arrive. She thought she would pick out a place a day in advance to make things easier for her in the expected crowd. She found several places along the wharf that looked suitable, but never did get around to deciding on one of them, because she and the sailor had gotten acquainted. Now, she was just going to have to fight the crowd like everyone else.
When she had all her belongings, Georgia cracked the door and peered up and down the hall. It was deserted, and she could see the open bathroom door to the right. Stark naked, clutching her belongings to her bosom, she stepped into the hallway, eased the door shut behind her, and raced for the bathroom. Another door opened as she scooted along. Georgia felt a jolt of panic, ran faster, and managed to get to safety without being seen.
Leaning back against the locked bathroom door, she blew a lock of hair out of her eyes and thought: This is it, kid. Today you change your ways.
An hour later, when she got to the docks, Georgia knew at once that she would never spot Sam in this crowd. At least a million people lined the wharves and piers and the streets that led to them, waiting for the troopship to arrive. Everyone was saying it was an even bigger crowd than the one that had overflowed Times Square on the day the armistice was signed.
Georgia was pressed between a fat woman holding a baby and several tough-looking boys wearing slouch caps. When she stood on tiptoe she could see the harbor and the Statue of Liberty, and just beyond that a huge ship being towed, incongruously, by a very small tugboat. The name of the ship was the HMS Majestic. It had once been a grand German passenger liner, the Bismarck, but belonged to the British now, the spoils of war. They had loaned it to the United States to bring Pershing and his troops home.
The night before, in the seedy hotel room, when she had told the young sailor she was from Kansas City, he had asked her what she was doing in New York. She told him she was there to meet the Majestic.
“Got a boyfriend on board?” he had inquired.
“Fiance,” Georgia had replied. It was a lie. Sam had not yet proposed marriage; she was merely assuming—praying, more like—that he would.
“Pretty soft, coming home on a liner like that,” the sailor had said. “Me, I was on a reg’lar ship, the Hopewell. Heavy cruiser. Went down off Gibraltar last March. I was in the water for six hours.”
Georgia had given him a dubious look. “You don’t look old enough to have been through anything like that,” she said skeptically.
The sailor shrugged. “How old do you have to be? I’ve been in the navy since I was sixteen. I’m twenty-one now.”
I’ll bet, Georgia thought. Eighteen maybe, nineteen at the most. He still had peach fuzz just under the front of his chin, and his pubic hair was soft as down.
But he was old enough for what Georgia needed.
Wanting to get away from the young toughs next to her, Georgia made her way to the edge of the crowd. The New York City Firemen’s Band, set up in a roped-off section dockside, struck up “After You’ve Gone” march-style, but to Georgia, who had only heard it played in Dixieland tempo, it sounded queer. She began to tap her foot nevertheless.
“Hey, why’d you duck out?” a voice asked. “I been looking for you for an hour.”
Georgia looked around. It was the sailor. She smiled. “You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t want to wake you. And you know I’m meeting someone.” She winked at him. “Anyway, I figured you got enough last night.”
“I couldn’t ever get enough of you,” he said, slipping a possessive arm around her waist. “I was in love with you before I fell asleep last night. Listen, how serious is it between you and the doughboy on the ship?”
“I told you,” Georgia said, “we’re engaged.”
Behind them, more people were pressing onto the wharves from the direction of Canal Street. If many more arrived, Georgia was afraid the ones in front would be pushed right into the Hudson. A mounted policeman succeeded in clearing a path for some dignitary’s car, causing the crowd to press even closer together. The sailor eased up against her, grinning.
“Enjoying yourself?” Georgia asked. He hunched up both shoulders innocently: it wasn’t his fault. As soon as the car passed, the crowd spread into the vehicle lane again. The sailor stayed where he was until Georgia put a stiff forefinger against his chest and pushed him back. He pushed out his lip in a pout.
A vendor with an ice cooler slung around his neck made his way along the fringe of the crowd, loudly hawking his wares.
“Why don’t you get us some Eskimo Pies?” Georgia said. Maybe it would cool him off.
“Okay.”
Georgia watched as he snaked his way out to the vendor. His buttocks rolled smoothly in the tight navy bell-bottoms. She made herself stop looking. You’re supposed to be changing your ways, she reminded herself.
When the sailor returned with the Eskimo Pies, the Majestic was passing Ellis Island and they could see hundreds of brown-uniformed men crowding every inch of the liner’s deck, perched upon different parts of her superstructure, all waving hands, caps, handkerchiefs, their voices contributing to a rolling roar that grew steadily louder. The Firemen’s Band broke into a lively rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” and the two crowds, on the shore and on the ship, supplied the Hurrahs! that punctuated the lyrics.
Georgia finished her Eskimo Pie and wiped her fingers on a dainty handkerchief. She and the sailor were very close again, and he was looking into her eyes with a hunger that was almost pitiful.
“It’ll take two hours for that ship to dock,” he said. “The room’s just ten minutes away. Come on. Please.”
Georgia reached down and felt him. He was about to burst out of his bell-bottoms. They did have time—Stop it, she scolded herself. You are changing your ways!
“All right, we’ll go back to the room,” she said, smiling sweetly. “But first run and get me another Eskimo Pie to eat on the way.”
“You bet!” he replied eagerly. At that moment, he would have done anything for her. He quickly made his way toward the vendor again.
When he returned, Georgia was gone.
It took Georgia two hours to get from the Battery back uptown to the Commodore Hotel, walking all the way. Traffic was at a standstill as Manhattan prepared for its biggest parade ever. Sometimes it was impossible even to walk, especially along the three avenues—Park, Madison, and Fifth—where the parade would be held. The crowds there, on both sides of each street, had evolved from a press into a crush; people were simply not moving. Georgia would have taken the subway but she was afraid of getting lost. As long as she could see street signs, she was all right. When she finally reached the Commodore, she couldn’t enter through the lobby, mobbed with people waiting for the parade. She had to go in through the delivery door.
In her room on the sixth floor, Georgia kicked off her shoes, took off her garters and stockings, and sat with her feet in a tub of cold water while she reread Sam’s letter for at least the twentieth time.
I don’t know exactly when I’ll be coming home; you’ll just have to watch the newspapers. Black Jack has promised no later than June, and he’s never been known to break a promise to his men. Besides, the President wants Sergeant York back to give him the Medal of Honor, and York already told the press he doesn’t want to come home before the rest of the men even if he is a hero.
If we miss each other at the dock—and it’s sure to be crowded—let’s meet at the new hotel that just opened in New York a few months ago—the Commodore, I think it’s called. Somebody said it has two thousand rooms, but I doubt that. We’ll meet in the lobby; whoever gets there first is to page the other every fifteen minutes.
I hope you don’t have too much trouble with your mother or brother about making the trip—
Georgia took a Pall Mall from a pack on the bathroom shelf and lighted it. She had not had any trouble at all with her mother or her brother about the trip, because she had not told them where she was going. They thought she was in Lorain, Ohio, visiting Tussy Fowler, whose family had moved there from Kansas City three years earlier. Georgia and Tussy had been best friends for years and had already exchanged one visit each since the Fowlers moved. Georgia had arranged the deception as soon as she knew for certain when Sam Sheridan was coming home, and Tussy, who thrived on deceit, had been only too happy to cooperate. As part of the deception, Tussy had sent Georgia an envelope containing two picture postcards from Lorain, and Georgia had addressed and postdated them, written appropriate messages on each, and returned them in an envelope to Tussy. The day after tomorrow, Tussy would mail them from Lorain to Georgia’s mother and brother. Receipt of the cards would be adequate assurance that Georgia was all right and enjoying herself, properly chaperoned by the Fowlers. Thrifty as her mother and brother were, Georgia knew they would never incur the expense of a long-distance telephone call just to check on her. So she was footloose in New York, for a whole week. All she needed to complete the adventure was Sam.
After drying her feet, Georgia went into the bedroom and took off her dress and slip. From around her neck she removed a string of eighty pearls and carefully wrapped them in a handkerchief. Everyone thought they were imitation pearls, but they were real. A well-to-do Kansas City businessman, married and older than her father, had given them to her at the end of a three-month affair. He was a regular customer at the Woolworth where she worked, and frequently stopped in to purchase candy or small gifts for his office staff. Georgia had waited on him many times, and he had eventually asked her out. Two other girls in the store occasionally wore similar strands of pearls. The three of them clearly wondered about each other, but had never talked about it. Georgia had taken her own pearls to a jeweler across town and paid two dollars to have them appraised. She was surprised and pleased to find that they were worth five hundred dollars, an enormous sum to a shopgirl who earned only fifteen dollars a week.
Pulling open the drapes in the hotel room, Georgia raised the window and looked down at Park Avenue to see if the parade had started yet. It had not. In the window of an office building directly across the way, she saw three men in business suits looking at her, one of them through field glasses. She stood there in her brassiere and step-ins as the glasses were passed from man to man. When each of them had taken his turn, she moved away from the open window, not bothering to draw the drapes or pull the shade.
Georgia picked up the telephone, waited for the hotel operator, and then said, “Will you page Lieutenant Sam Sheridan, please?”
The operator took her name and room number and promised to send a page boy around at once. Ten minutes later she called Georgia back and said there had been no response to the page.
A while later, Georgia heard the faint sound of a marching band. She leaned as far out the window as she could and saw, down the avenue, the approach of the victory parade. A blizzard of confetti was already filling the air. The three men across the way were still sharing the field glasses. Georgia got a pillow off the bed and made herself a comfortable seat on the windowsill. Lighting a fresh Pall Mall, she settled back to watch.
An honor guard led the parade: three soldiers carrying flags of the United States, the City of New York, and the 82nd Infantry Division. Next, also on foot, came drum and fife players rendering “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” followed by a band with a full-instrument rendition of the same tune. Then came several mounted policemen in front of a procession of open limousines. In the first one, riding with the governor of New York and the secretary of state, was General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing, known affectionately to civilian and soldier alike as “Black Jack.” At fifty-nine he stood tall, straight, and solemn-faced as he waved to the cheering throng. America had never seen Black Jack smile; not in the newspapers, not in those funny moving pictures they called “newsreels,” and not in person. With his piercing dark eyes, thick black mustache, and lantern jaw, he looked like an old gunfighter with a town to clean up. Only when his keen eyes lighted on a particularly pretty woman in the crowd did even a hint of amusement soften his clamped lips. Those young women who caught his passing glance knew instantly that Black Jack was not all steel and leather. But to everyone else he was the ultimate warrior.
Behind Pershing’s car, separated by a marching platoon of helmeted, rifle-bearing soldiers, came a second open limo carrying the mayor of New York City and Sergeant Alvin C. York, th
e Tennessee sharpshooter who had become the Great War’s most decorated hero. Tall and whip-thin, wearing the French Croix de Guerre around his neck, York smiled in genuine delight at the people who cheered him. He had never seen so many human beings in all his thirty-one years. He came from a settlement of only a few hundred, and the battlefields of France had seemed crowded to him; but this—this was unbelievable. He reckoned everybody in the country must have come to New York for the victory parade, because God knows, this many people couldn’t all live there. One thing York was determined to do before he headed for the White House for his Medal of Honor Was ride the train everybody told him ran under the ground. A sub-way, they called it. Getting the Medal of Honor from the President was going to be a great thrill, the Tennessean knew, but riding that sub-way, why, that would be something to tell his grandchildren about!
From her window above the street, Georgia could not help feeling goosebumps as America’s two most eminent heroes passed by. She wished she had thought to tear up some paper so she could have something to throw out the window; but it was too late now, so she just clapped her hands and yelled “Yeaaaaa!” along with everyone else. After the lead cars passed, several follow-up cars came along carrying some of Pershing’s wounded officers. There were four or five to each car, and Georgia could see that they were wearing head bandages, casts, arm slings, and other hospital dressings. A Red Cross nurse in starched white rode in each car, pinned in the midst of her male patients, being pressed against from all sides. Lucky you, Georgia thought. She briefly remembered the young sailor of several hours earlier, and how hot and firm he had felt in her hands. Glancing across at the office building, she saw that the men were now waving and cheering down at the parade; all except one, who still watched her through the field glasses. Teasingly trying to decide whether to spread her legs a bit, she happened to notice, in the parade below, a soldier with one arm in a sling get out of one of the slow-moving cars and move into the crowd in the front of the hotel. The people parted for him, smiling, touching his back, one woman stretching to kiss his cheek, as they let him through to the hotel entrance. He disappeared from Georgia’s view under the sidewalk canopy. Frowning, Georgia wondered if it could possibly be Sam. My God, had he been wounded?