Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  Abel had had quite a struggle on his arrival in New York. He had occupied a room that contained only two beds, which he was obliged to share with George and two of his cousins. As a result, Abel slept only when one of the beds was free. George’s uncle had been unable to offer Abel a job, and after a few anxious weeks during which most of his savings had to be spent on staying alive while he searched from Brooklyn to Queens, he finally found work in a butcher’s shop. It paid nine dollars for a six-and-a-half-day week and allowed him to sleep above the premises. The shop was in the heart of an almost self-sufficient little Polish community on the Lower East Side, and Abel rapidly became impatient with the insularity of his fellow countrymen, many of whom made no effort even to learn to speak English.

  Abel still saw George and his constant succession of girlfriends regularly on weekends, but he spent most of his free evenings during the week at night school improving his ability to read and write English. He was not ashamed of his slow progress, for he had had little opportunity to write English at all since the age of eight, but within two years he had made himself fluent in his new tongue, showing only the slightest trace of an accent. He now felt ready to move out of the butcher’s shop—but to what, and how? Then while dressing a leg of lamb one morning he overheard one of the shop’s biggest customers, the catering manager of the Plaza Hotel, grumbling to the butcher that he had had to fire a junior waiter for petty theft. “How can I find a replacement at such short notice,” the manager complained. The butcher had no solution to offer. Abel did. He put on his only suit, walked forty-seven blocks uptown and five across and got the job.

  Once he had settled in at the Plaza, he enrolled in a night course in advanced English at Columbia University. He worked steadily every night, dictionary open in one hand, pen scratching away in the other. During the mornings, between serving breakfast and setting up for lunch, he would copy out the editorials from The New York Times, looking up in his secondhand Webster’s any word he was uncertain of.

  For the next three years, Abel worked his way through the ranks of the Plaza until he was promoted and became a waiter in the Oak Room, making about twenty-five dollars a week with tips. In his own world, he lacked for nothing.

  Abel’s instructor was so impressed by his diligent progress that he advised Abel to enroll in a further night course, which was to be his first step toward a Bachelor of Arts degree. He switched his spare-time reading from linguistics to economics and started copying out the editorials in The Wall Street Journal instead of those in The Times. His new world totally absorbed him and, with the exception of George, he lost touch with his Polish friends of the early days.

  When Abel served at table in the Plaza he would always study the famous among the guests carefully—the Bakers, Loebs, Whitneys, Morgans and Phelps—and try to work out why the rich were different. He read H. L. Mencken, The American Mercury, Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser in an endless quest for knowledge. He studied The New York Times while the other waiters flipped through the Mirror, and he read The Wall Street Journal in his hour’s break while they dozed. He was not sure where his newly acquired knowledge would lead him, but he never doubted the Baron’s maxim that there was no true substitute for a good education.

  One Thursday in August 1926—he remembered the occasion well because it was the day that Rudolph Valentino died and many of the ladies shopping on Fifth Avenue wore black—Abel was serving as usual at one of the corner tables. The corner tables were always reserved for top businessmen who wished to lunch in privacy without worrying about prying ears. He enjoyed serving at this particular table, for this was the era of expanding business and he often picked up some inside information from the tidbits of conversation. After the meal was over, if the host had been from a bank or large holding company, Abel would check the stock prices of the companies of the luncheon guests, and if the tone of the conversation had been optimistic and a small and a large company had been involved, he would invest one hundred dollars in the small company, in the hope that it would be a line for a takeover or expansion with the help of the larger company. If the host had ordered cigars at the end of the meal, Abel would increase his investment to two hundred dollars. Seven times out of ten, the value of the stock he had selected in this way doubled within six months, the period Abel would allow himself to hold onto the stock. Using this system, he lost money only three times during the four years he worked at the Plaza.

  What made waiting on the corner table unusual on this particular day was that the guests had ordered cigars even before the meal had started. Later they were joined by more guests, who ordered more cigars. Abel looked up the name of the host in the maître d’s reservation book. Woolworth. Abel had seen the name in the financial columns quite recently, but he could not immediately place it. The other guest was Charles Lester, a regular patron of the Plaza, one Abel knew to be a distinguished New York banker. He listened to as much of the conversation as he could while serving the meal. The guests showed absolutely no interest in the attentive waiter. Abel could not discover any specific details of importance, but he gathered that some sort of deal had been closed that morning and would be announced to an unsuspecting public later in the day. Then he remembered. He had seen the name in The Wall Street Journal. Woolworth was the man whose father had started the first five-and-ten-cents store; now the son was trying to raise money to expand. While the guests were enjoying their dessert course—most of them had chosen the strawberry cheese cake (Abel’s recommendation) —he took the opportunity to leave the dining room for a few moments to call his broker on Wall Street.

  “What is Woolworth trading at?” he asked.

  There was a pause from the other end of the line. “Two and one-eighth. Quite a lot of movement lately; don’t know why, though” came the reply.

  “Buy up to the limit of my account until you hear an announcement from the company later today.”

  “What will the announcement say?” asked the puzzled broker.

  “I am not at liberty to reveal that,” replied Abel.

  The broker was suitably impressed: Abel’s record in the past had led him not to inquire too closely into the source of his client’s information. Abel hurried back to the Oak Room in time to serve the guests’ coffee. They lingered over it for some time and Abel returned to the table only as they were preparing to leave. The man who picked up the check thanked Abel for his attentive service and, turning so that his friends could hear him, said, “Do you want a tip, young man?”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Abel.

  “Buy Woolworth stock.”

  The guests all laughed. Abel laughed as well, took the $5 the man held out and thanked him. He took a further $2,412 profit on Woolworth stock during the next six weeks.

  When Abel was granted full citizenship in the United States, a few days after his twenty-first birthday, he decided the occasion ought to be celebrated. He invited George and Monika, George’s latest love, and a girl called Clara, an exlove of George’s, to the movies to see John Barrymore in Don Juan and then on to Bigo’s for dinner. George was still an apprentice in his uncle’s bakery at eight dollars a week, and although Abel still looked upon him as his closest friend, he was aware of the growing difference between the penniless George and himself, who now had over eight thousand dollars in the bank and was now in his last year at Columbia University studying for his B.A. in economics. Abel knew exactly where he was going, whereas George had stopped telling everyone he would be the mayor of New York.

  The four of them had a memorable evening, mainly because Abel knew exactly what to expect from a good restaurant. His three guests all had a great deal too much to eat, and when the check was presented, George was aghast to see that it came to more than he earned in a month. Abel paid the bill without a second glance. If you have to pay a check, make it look as if the amount is of no consequence. If it is, don’t go to the restaurant again, but whatever you do, don’t comment or look surprised—something else the ri