The Prodigal Daughter Read online

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.

  Chapter

  Two

  Florentyna’s christening was something everyone present was to remember—except Florentyna, who slept through the entire proceedings. After the ceremony at the Holy Name Cathedral on North Wabash, the guests made their way to the Stevens Hotel, where Abel had taken a private room. He had invited over a hundred guests to celebrate the occasion. His closest friend, George Novak, a fellow Pole who had occupied the bunk above him on the ship coming over from Europe, was to be one Kum, while one of Zaphia’s cousins, Janina, was to be the other.

  The guests devoured a traditional ten-course dinner including pirogi and bigos while Abel sat at the head of the table accepting gifts on behalf of his daughter. There was a silver rattle, U.S. savings bonds, a copy of Huckleberry Finn and, finest of all, a beautiful antique emerald ring from Abel’s unnamed benefactor. He only hoped that the man gained as much pleasure in the giving as his daughter showed in the receiving. To mark the occasion, Abel presented his daughter with a large brown teddy bear with red eyes.

  “It looks like Franklin D. Roosevelt,” said George, holding the bear up for all to see. “This calls for a second christening—FDR.”

  Abel raised his glass. “Mr. President,” he toasted—a name the bear never relinquished.

  The party finally came to an end about 3 A.M., when Abel had to requisition a laundry cart from the hotel to transport all the gifts home. George waved to Abel as he headed off down Lake Shore Drive, pushing the cart before him.

  The happy father began whistling to himself as he recalled every moment of the wonderful evening. Only when Mr. President fell off the cart for a third time did Abel realize how crooked his path must have been down Lake Shore Drive. He picked up the bear and wedged it into the center of the gifts and was about to attempt a straighter path when a hand touched his shoulder. Abel jumped around, ready to defend with his life anyone who wanted to steal Florentyna’s first possessions. He stared up into the face of a young policeman.

  “Maybe you have a simple explanation as to why you’re pushing a Stevens Hotel laundry cart down Lake Shore Drive at three in the morning?”

  “Yes, officer,” replied Abel.

  “Well, let’s start with what’s in the packages.”

  “Other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, I can’t be certain.”

  The policeman immediately arrested Abel on suspicion of larceny. While the recipient of the gifts slept soundly under her red eiderdown quilt in the little nursery at the top of the house on Rigg Street, her father spent a sleepless night on an old horsehair mattress in a cell at the local jail. George appeared at the courthouse early in the morning to verify Abel’s story.

  The next day Abel purchased a maroon four-door Buick from Peter Sosnkowski, who ran a secondhand car lot in Logan Square.

  Abel began to resent having to leave Chicago and his beloved Florentyna even for a few days, fearing he might miss her first step, her first word or her first anything. From her birth, he had supervised her daily routine, never allowing Polish to be spoken in the house; he was determined there be no trace of a Polish accent that would make her feel ill at ease in society. Abel had intently waited for her first word, hoping it would be “Papa,” while Zaphia feared it might be some Polish word that would reveal that she had not been speaking English to her firstborn when they were alone.

  “My daughter is an American,” he explained to Zaphia, “and she must therefore speak English. Too many Poles continue to converse in their own language, thus ensuring that their children spend their entire lives in the northwest corner of Chicago being described as ‘Stupid Polacks’ and ridiculed by everyone else they come across.”

  “Except their own countrymen who still feel some loyalty to the Polish empire,” said Zaphia defensively.

  “The Polish empire? What century are you living in, Zaphia?”

  “The twentieth century,” she said, her voice rising.

  “Along with Dick Tracy and Famous Funnies, no doubt?”

  “Hardly the attitude of someone whose ultimate ambition is to return to Warsaw as the first Polish ambassador.”

  “I’ve told you never to mention that, Zaphia. Never.”

  Zaphia, whose English remained irredeemably shaky, didn’t reply but later grumbled to her cousins on the subject and continued to speak only Polish when Abel was out of the house. She was not impressed by the fact, so often trotted out by Abel, that General Motors’ turnover was greater than Poland’s budget.

  By 1935, Abel was convinced that America had turned the corner and that the Depression was a thing of the past, so he decided the time had come to build the new Chicago Baron on the site of the old Richmond Continental. He appointed an architect and began spending more time in the Windy City and less on the road, determined that the hotel would turn out to be the finest in the Midwest.

  The Chicago Baron was completed in May 1936 and opened by the Democratic mayor, Edward J. Kelly. Both Illinois senators were dancing attendance, only too aware of Abel’s burgeoning power.

  “Looks like a million dollars,” said Hamilton Lewis, the senior senator.

  “You wouldn’t be far wrong,” said Abel, as he admired the thickly carpeted public rooms, the high stucco ceilings and the decorations in pastel shades of green. The final touch had been the dark green embossed B that adorned everything from the towels in the bathrooms to the flag that fluttered on the top of the forty-two-story building.

  “This hotel already bears the hallmark of success,” said Hamilton Lewis, addressing the two thousand assembled guests, “because, my friends, it is the man and not the building who will always be known as the Chicago Baron.” Abel was delighted by the roar that went up and smiled to himself. His public relations advisor had supplied that line to the senator’s speech writer earlier in the week.

  Abel felt at ease among big businessmen and senior politicians. Zaphia, however, had not adapted to her husband’s change in fortunes and hovered uncertainly in the background, drinking a little too much champagne, and finally crept away before the dinner was served with the lame excuse about wanting to see that Florentyna was safely asleep. Abel accom