[TWO]
The Mark Hopkins Hotel
It had been decided in Washington that Whittaker, Hammersmith, and Garvey would spend the night at Mare Island. Cynthia, to avoid the curiosity and comment that a civilian woman in the Mare Island Female Officers’ Quarters would cause, would stay in a San Francisco hotel.
“I know someone who can get you into the Mark Hopkins,” Jimmy Whittaker had said, innocently, when the issue of where she would stay in San Francisco came up in Captain Douglass’s office.
“What the hell, you might as well go first class.”
“Go ahead and do it, Jim,” Captain Douglass had answered for her.
“Hotel rooms are in damned short supply in San Francisco.”
When they arrived in San Francisco, by commercial air, they went first to the hotel. Cynthia’s reserved “room” turned out to be the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, four elegantly furnished rooms on an upper floor.
“It was all they had available,” Jimmy said innocently.
Cynthia knew that simply wasn’t true. What had happened was that Jimmy had told the hotel something like “I’d like something very nice for a ry good friend of mine,” and the hotel had come up with the Theodore Roosevelt Suite. The hotel had been very obliging to Jim Whittaker because Jimmy was a very rich man, and the hotel knew it.
Jimmy’s father and his two uncles had inherited the Whittaker Construci n Company from their father. There was more to it than the construction mpany, though God knew that was enough. The Whittaker fortune was based in railroads. They had built them before the Civil War, and grown ver rich during the war building and operating railroads for the Union Army.
After the Civil War, there had been more railroads. And harbors, and heav construction. Whenever they could, which was most often, they took part o their pay in stock of whatever they were building. The company had large r estate holdings in New York City and elsewhere. It was even possible, Cynthg thought, looking around the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, that Jimmy had an it terest in the hotel.
Jimmy’s father had been killed in World War I. And his third of Whittakfi Construction had gone to his only son. Both Jimmy’s uncle Jack and his uncj Chesty had died childless. Jack Whittaker’s third would pass to Jimmy on tfa death of his widow. Jimmy had already inherited the house on Q Street, Norn west, from Chesty, as well as some other property.
Chesty Whittaker, Jimmy’s uncle and Cynthia’s lover, had told her all abon the financial position of James M. B. Whittaker. Not subtly. Chesty had thougd she should marry Jimmy.
“You’ve got to think of the future, my darling,” Chesty had said.
“We can!
go on.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m a little long in the tooth. You’ll still be a young woman when I am long gone.”
“Goddamn you!” she had screamed.
“This is obscene. You’re not going t die, and I’m not going to marry Jimmy. Jimmy’s a kid.”
“There is only three years’ difference–” “Four,” she had snapped.
“Four years,” he’d said. They had looked at each other for a moment, be foil he went on, “Presumably, you meant it when you said you didn’t want my wi( to ever find out about us.”
“The way I put it was “I’d rather die than have her find out,”” Cynthia h said.
“Yes, of course I meant it.”
“The reality of our situation is that you are as poor as a church mouse, Chesty had said.
“And what do you think she would think if I made provisiOi for you in my will? In addition to her many other virtues, she is intelligent an perceptive.”
“Then don’t ‘make provision’ for me,” Cynthia had said.
“I love you,” he’d said.
“I could not not do that.”
“And the convenient way to do it is to marry me off to Jimmy? Damn yol Chesty.”
“Jimmy stopped off here on his way to Randolph Field,” Chesty Whittake had said.
“He said that it was his intention, when he graduated, to ask you t marry him, and what did I think of that?”
“What did you say?” she’d asked.