The Prodigal Daughter (Kane & Abel 2)

Prologue

“President of the United States,” she replied.

“I can think of more rewarding ways of bankrupting myself,” said her father as he removed the half-moon spectacles from the end of his nose and peered at his daughter over the top of his newspaper.

“Don’t be frivolous, Papa. President Roosevelt proved to us that there can be no greater calling than public service.”

“The only thing Roosevelt proved…,” began her father. Then he stopped and pretended to return to his paper, realizing that his daughter would consider the remark flippant.

The girl continued as if only too aware of what was going through her father’s mind. “I realize it would be pointless for me to pursue such an ambition without your support. My sex will be enough of a liability without adding the disadvantage of a Polish background.”

The newspaper barrier between father and daughter was abruptly removed. “Don’t ever speak disloyally of the Poles,” he said. “History has proved us to be an honorable race who never go back on our word. My father was a baron—”

“Yes, I know. So was my grandfather, but he’s not around now to help me become President.”

“More’s the pity,” he said, sighing, “as he would undoubtedly have made a great leader of our people.”

“Then why shouldn’t his granddaughter?”

“No reason at all,” he said as he stared into the steel gray eyes of his only child.

“Well then Papa, will you help me? I can’t hope to succeed without your financial backing.”

Her father hesitated before replying, placing the glasses back on his nose and slowly folding his copy of the Chicago Tribune.

“I’ll make a deal with you, my dear—after all, that’s what politics is about. If the result of the New Hampshire primary turns out to be satisfactory, I’ll back you to the hilt. If not, you must drop the whole idea.”

“What’s your definition of satisfactory?” came back the immediate reply.

Again the man hesitated, weighing his words. “If you win the primary or capture over thirty percent of the vote, I’ll go all the way to the convention floor with you, even if it means I end up destitute.”

The girl relaxed for the first time during the conversation. “Thank you, Papa. I couldn’t have asked for more.”

“No, you certainly couldn’t,” he replied. “Now, can I get back to figuring out just how the Cubs could possibly have lost the seventh game of the series to the Tigers?”

“They were undoubtedly the weaker team, as the nine-three score indicates.”

“Young lady, you may imagine you know a thing or two about politics, but I can assure you you know absolutely nothing about baseball,” the man said as his wife entered the room. He turned his heavy frame toward her. “Our daughter wants to run for President of the United States. What do you think about that?”

The girl looked up at her, eagerly waiting for a reply.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said the mother. “I think it’s well past her bedtime and I blame you for keeping her up so late.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right, Zaphia.” He sighed. “Off you go to bed, little one.”

She came to her father’s side, kissed him on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you, Papa.”

The man’s eyes followed his eleven-year-old daughter as she left the room, and he noticed that the fingers of her right hand were clenched, making a small, tight fist, something she always did when she was angry or determined. He suspected she was both on this occasion, but he realized that it would be pointless to try to explain to his wife that their only child was no ordinary mortal. He had long ago abandoned any attempt to involve his wife in his own ambitions and was at least thankful that she was incapable of dampening their daughter’s.

He returned to the Chicago Cubs and their loss of the series and had to admit that his daughter’s judgment might even be right on that subject.

Florentyna Rosnovski never referred to the conversation again for twenty-two years, but when she did, she assumed that her fath

er would keep his end of the bargain. After all, the Polish are an honorable race who never go back on their word.

The Past

1934–1968

Chapter

One

It had not been an easy birth, but then for Abel and Zaphia Rosnovski nothing had ever been easy, and in their own ways they had both become philosophical about that. Abel had wanted a son, an heir who would one day be chairman of the Baron Group. By the time the boy would be ready to take over, Abel was confident, his own name would stand alongside those of Ritz and Statler, and by then the Barons would be the largest hotel group in the world. Abel had paced up and down the colorless corridor of St. Luke’s General Hospital waiting for the first cry, his slight limp becoming more pronounced as each hour passed. Occasionally he twisted the silver band that encircled his wrist and stared at the name so neatly engraved on it. Abel had never doubted, even for a moment, that his first-born would be a boy. He turned and retraced his steps once again, to see Dr. Dodek heading toward him.

“Congratulations, Mr. Rosnovski,” he called.

“Thank you,” said Abel eagerly.

“You have a beautiful girl,” the doctor said as he reached him.

“Thank you,” repeated Abel quietly, trying not to show his disappointment. He then followed the obstetrician into a little room at the other end of the corridor. Through an observation window, Abel was faced with a row of wrinkled faces. The doctor pointed to the father’s firstborn. Unlike the others, her little fingers were curled into a tight fist. Abel had read somewhere that a child was not expected to do that for at least three weeks. He smiled, proudly.

Mother and daughter remained at St. Luke’s for another six days and Abel visited them every morning, leaving his hotel only when the last breakfast had been served, and every afternoon after the last lunch guest had left the dining room. Telegrams, flowers and the recent fashion of greeting cards surrounded Zaphia’s iron-framed bed, reassuring evidence that other people too rejoiced in the birth. On the seventh day mother and unnamed child—Abel had considered six boys’ names before the birth—returned home.

On the anniversary of the second week of their daughter’s birth they named her Florentyna, after Abel’s sister. Once the infant had been installed in the newly decorated nursery at the top of the house, Abel would spend hours simply staring down at his daughter, watching her sleep and wake, knowing that he must work even harder than he had in the past to ensure the child’s future. He was determined that Florentyna would be given a better start in life than he had had. Not for her the dirt and deprivation of his childhood or the humiliation of arriving on the Eastern Seaboard of America as an immigrant with little more than a few valueless Russian rubles sewn into the jacket of an only suit.

He would ensure that Florentyna was given the formal education he had lacked, not that he had a lot to complain about. Franklin D. Roosevelt lived in the White House, and Abel’s little group of hotels looked as if they were going to survive the Depression. America had been good to this immigrant.

Whenever he sat alone with his daughter in the little upstairs nursery he would reflect on his past and dream of her future.

When he had first arrived in the United States, he had found a job in a little butcher’s shop on the lower East Side of New York, where he worked for two long years before filling a vacancy at the Plaza Hotel as a junior waiter. From Abel’s first day, Sammy, the old maitre d’, had treated him as though he were the lowest form of life. After four years, a slave trader would have been impressed by the work and unheard-of overtime that the lowest form of life did in order to reach the exalted position as Sammy’s assistant headwaiter in the Oak Room. During those early years Abel spent five afternoons a week poring over books at Columbia University and, after dinner had been cleared away, read on late into the night.

His rivals wondered when he slept.

Abel was not sure how his newly acquired sheepskin could advance him while he still only waited on tables in the Oak Room. The question was answered for him by a well-fed Texan named Davis Leroy, who had watched Abel serving guests solicitously for a week. Mr. Leroy, the owner of eleven hotels, then offered Abel the position of assistant manager at his flagship, the Richmond Continental in Chicago, with the sole responsibility of running the restaurants.

Abel was brought back to the present when Florentyna turned over and started to thump the side of her crib. He extended a finger, which his daughter grabbed like a lifeline thrown from a sinking ship. She started to bite the finger with what she imagined were teeth….

When Abel first arrived in Chicago he found the Richmond Continental badly run down. It didn’t take him long to discover why. The manager, Desmond Pacey, was milking the books and as far as Abel could tell probably had been for the past thirty years. The new assistant manager spent his first six months gathering together the proof he needed to nail Pacey and then presented his employer with a dossier containing all the facts. When Davis Leroy realized what had been going on behind his back he immediately sacked Pacey, replacing him with his new protégé. This spurred Abel on to work even harder, and he became so convinced that he could turn the fortunes of the Richmond Group around that when Leroy’s aging sister put her 25 percent of the company’s stock up for sale, Abel cashed everything he owned to purchase it. Davis Leroy was touched by his young manager’s personal commitment to the company and proved it by appointing him managing director of the group.

From that moment they became partners, a professional bond that developed into a close friendship. Abel would have been the first to appreciate how hard it was for a Texan to acknowledge a Pole as an equal. For the first time since he had settled in America, he felt secure—until he found out that the Texans were every bit as proud a clan as the Poles.

Abel still couldn’t accept what had happened. If only Davis had confided in him, told him the truth about the extent of the group’s financial trouble—who wasn’t having problems during the Depression?—between them they could have sorted something out. At the age of sixty-two Davis Leroy had been informed by his bank that the value of his hotels no longer covered his loan of two million dollars and that he would have to put up further security before the bank would agree to pay the next month’s expenses. In response to the bank’s ultimatum, Davis Leroy had had a quiet dinner with his daughter and retired to the Presidential Suite on the seventeenth floor with two bottles of bourbon. Then he had opened the window and jumped. Abel would never forget standing on the corner of Michigan Avenue at four in the morning having to identify a body he could recognize only by the jacket his mentor had worn the previous night. The lieutenant investigating the death had remarked that it had been the seventh suicide in Chicago that day. It didn’t help. How could the policeman possibly know how much Davis Leroy had done for him, or how much more Abel Rosnovski had intended to do in return for that friendship in the future? In a hastily composed will Davis had bequeathed the remaining 75 percent of the Richmond Group stock to his managing director, writing to Abel that although the stock was worthless, 100 percent ownership of the group might give him a better chance to negotiate new terms with the bank.

Florentyna’s eyes opened and she started to howl. Abel picked her up lovingly, immediately regretting the decision as he felt the damp, clammy bottom. He changed her diaper quickly, drying the child carefully, before making a triangle of the cloth, not allowing the big pins anywhere near her body: any midwife would have nodded her approval at his deftness. Florentyna closed her eyes and nodded back to sleep on her father’s shoulder. “Ungrateful brat,” he murmured fondly as he kissed her on the cheek.

After Davis Leroy’s funeral Abel had visited Kane and Cabot, the Richmond Group’s bankers in Boston, and pleaded with one of the directors not to put the eleven hotels up for sale on the open market. He tried to convince the bank that if only they would back him, he could—given time—turn the balance sheet from red into black. The smooth, cold man behind the expensive partner’s d

esk had proved intractable. “I have responsibilities to my own clients to consider,” he had used as an excuse. Abel would never forget the humiliation of having to call a man of his own age “sir” and still leave empty-handed. The man must have had the soul of a cash register not to realize how many people were affected by his decision. Abel promised himself, for the hundredth time, that one day he would get even with Mr. William “Ivy League” Kane.

Abel had traveled back to Chicago thinking that nothing else could go wrong in his life, only to find the Richmond Continental burned to the ground and the police accusing him of arson. Arson it proved to be, but at the hands of Desmond Pacey bent on revenge. When arrested, he readily admitted the crime; his only interest was the downfall of Abel. Pacey would have succeeded if the insurance company had not come to Abel’s rescue. Until that moment, Abel had wondered if he would not have been better off in the Russian prisoner-of-war camp he had escaped from before fleeing to America. But then his luck turned when an anonymous backer, who, Abel concluded, must be David Maxton of the Stevens Hotel, purchased the Richmond Group and offered Abel his old position as managing director and a chance to prove he could run the company at a profit.

Abel recalled how he had been reunited with Zaphia, the self-assured girl he had first met on board the ship that had brought them to America. How immature she had made him feel then, but not when they remet and he discovered she was a waitress at the Stevens.