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 desk 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.
Two years had passed since then, and although the newly named Baron Group had failed to make a profit in 1933, it lost only $23,000, greatly helped by Chicago’s celebration of its centenary, when over a million tourists had visited the city to enjoy the World’s Fair.
Once Pacey had been convicted of arson, Abel had only to wait for the insurance money to be paid before he could set about rebuilding the hotel in Chicago. He had used the interim period to visit the other ten hotels in the group, sacking staff who showed the same pecuniary tendencies as Desmond Pacey and replacing them from the long lines of unemployed that stretched across America.
Zaphia began to resent Abel’s journeys from Charleston to Mobile, from Houston to Memphis, continually checking over his hotels in the South. But Abel realized that if he was to keep his side of the bargain with the anonymous backer, there would be little time to sit around at home, however much he adored his daughter. He had been given ten years to repay the bank loan; if he succeeded, a clause in the contract stipulated, he would be allowed to purchase all the stock in the company for a further three million dollars. Zaphia thanked God each night for what they already had and pleaded with him to slow down, but nothing was going to stop Abel from trying to fulfill the contract to the letter.
‘Your dinner’s ready,’ shouted Zaphia at the top of her voice.
Abel pretended he hadn’t heard and continued to stare down at his sleeping daughter.
‘Didn’t you hear me? Dinner is ready.’
‘What? No, dear. Sorry. Just coming.’ Abel reluctantly rose to join his wife for dinner. Florentyna’s rejected red eiderdown lay on the floor beside her cot. He picked up the fluffy quilt and placed it carefully on top of the blanket that covered his daughter. He never wanted her to feel the cold. She smiled in her sleep. Was she having her first dream? Abel wondered as he switched out the light.