Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  “I’m not the assistant manager any longer, Mr. Pacey. I’m the manager, so get out before I throw you out.”

  “You fucking Polack,” said the ex-manager, realizing he had played his last card and lost. “You had better keep your eyes wide open, Polack, because I’m going to cut you down to size.”

  He left. By lunch he had been joined on the street by the headwaiter, head chef, senior housekeeper, chief desk clerk, head porter and 17 other members of the Richmond staff who Abel felt were past redemption. In the afternoon, he called a meeting of the remainder of the employees, explained to them in detail why he had done what he had done and assured them that their jobs were not in any danger.

  “But if I can find one,” said Abel, “I repeat, one dollar misplaced, the person involved will be fired without references there and then. Am I understood?”

  No one spoke.

  Several other members of the staff left the Richmond during the next few weeks when they realized that Abel did not intend to continue Desmond Pacey’s system on his own behalf. They were quickly replaced.

  By the end of March, Abel had invited four employees from the Plaza to join him at the Richmond. They had three things in common: they were young, ambitious and honest. Within six months, only 37 of the original staff of 110 were still employed at the Richmond. At the end of the first year, Abel cracked a large bottle of champagne with Davis Leroy to celebrate the year’s figures for the Chicago Richmond. They had shown a profit of $3,468. Small, but the first profit the hotel had shown in the thirty years of its existence. Abel was projecting a profit of more than $25,000 in 1929.

  Davis Leroy was mightily impressed. He visited Chicago once a month and began to rely heavily on Abel’s judgment. He even came around to admitting that what had been true of the Chicago Richmond might well be true of the other hotels in the group. Abel wanted to see the Chicago hotel running smoothly as an honest, profitable enterprise before he considered tackling the others. Leroy agreed—then talked of a partnership for Abel if he could do for the rest of the group what he had done for Chicago.

  They started going to baseball games and the races together whenever Davis was in Chicago. On one occasion, when Davis had lost $700 without coming close in any of the six races, he threw up his arms in disgust and said, “Why do I bother with horses, Abel? You’re the best bet I’ve ever made.”

  Melanie Leroy always dined with her father on his visits. Cool, pretty, with a slim figure and long legs that attracted many a stare from the hotel guests, she treated Abel with a slight degree of hauteur that gave him no encouragement for the aspirations he had begun to formulate for her, nor did she invite him to substitute “Melanie” for “Miss Leroy” until she discovered he was the holder of an economics degree from Columbia and knew more about discounted cash flow than she did herself. After that, she had softened a little and from time to time came to dine with Abel alone in the hotel and seek assistance with the work she was doing for her Liberal Arts degree at the University of Chicago. Emboldened, he occasionally escorted her to concerts and the theater and began to feel a proprietorial jealousy whenever she brought other men to dine at the hotel, though she never came with the same escort twice.

  So greatly had the cuisine improved under Abel’s iron fist that people who had lived in Chicago for thirty years and scarcely realized the hotel existed were making dinner reservations every Saturday evening. Abel had the whole hotel redecorated—for the first time in twenty years—and dressed the staff in smart new green-and-gold uniforms. One guest, who had stayed at the Richmond for one week every year over a decade actually retreated out of the front door on arrival, thinking he had walked into the wrong establishment. When Al Capone booked a dinner party for sixteen in a private room to celebrate his thirtieth birthday, Abel knew he had arrived.

  Abel’s personal wealth grew during this period while the stock market flourished. He had left the Plaza with $8,000 eighteen months before; his brokerage account now stood at more than $30,000. He was confident that the market would continue to rise, and so he always reinvested his profits. His personal requirements were still fairly modest. He had acquired two new suits and his first pair of brown shoes. His rooms and food were provided by the hotel and he had few out-of-pocket expenses. There seemed to be nothing but a bright future for him. The Continental Trust had handled the Richmond account for more than thirty years, so Abel had transferred his own account to that bank when he first came to Chicago. Every day he would go to the bank and deposit the hotel’s previous day’s receipts. He was taken by surprise one Friday morning by a message that the manager was asking to see him. He knew his personal account was never overdrawn, so he presumed the meeting must have something to do with the Richmond. The bank could hardly be about to complain that the hotel’s account was solvent for the first time in thirty years. A junior clerk guided Abel through a tangle of corridors until he reached a handsome wooden door. A gentle knock and he was ushered in to meet the manager.

  “My name is Curtis Fenton,” said the man behind the desk, offering Abel his hand before motioning him into a green leather button chair. He was a neat, rotund man who wore half-moon spectacles and an impeccable white collar and black tie to go with his three-piece banker’s suit.

  “Thank you,” said Abel nervously. The circumstances brought back to him memories he associated only with the fear of being uncertain of what was going to happen next.

  “I would have invited you to lunch, Mr. Rosnovski …”

  Abel’s heartbeat steadied a little. He was only too aware that bank managers do not dispense free meals when they have unpleasant messages to deliver.

  “ … but something has arisen that requires immediate action and so I hope you won’t mind if I discuss the problem with you without delay. I’ll come straight to the point, Mr. Rosnovski. One of my most respected customers, an elderly lady, Miss Amy Leroy”—the name made Abel sit up instantly—“is in possession of twenty-five percent of the Richmond Group stock. She has offered this holding to her brother, Mr. Davis Leroy, several times in the past, but he has shown absolutely no interest in purchasing Miss Amy’s shares. I can understand Mr. Leroy’s reasoning. He already owns seventy-five percent of the company and I daresay he feels he has no need to worry about the other twenty-five percent, which, incidentally, was a legacy from their late father. However, Miss Amy Leroy is still keen on disposing of her stock, as it has never paid a dividend.”

  Abel was not surprised to hear this.

  “Mr. Leroy has indicated that he has no objection to her selling the stock and she feels that at her age she would rather have a little cash to spend now than wait in the hope that the group may one day prove profitable. With that in mind, Mr. Rosnovski, I thought I would apprise you of the situation in case you might know of someone with an interest in the hotel trade and, therefore, interested in the purchase of my client’s shares.”

  “How much is Miss Leroy hoping to realize from her stock?” asked Abel.

  “Oh, I feel she’d be happy to let them go for as little as sixty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Sixty-five thousand dollars is rather high for a stock that has never paid a dividend,” said Abel. “And has no hope of doing so for some years to come,” he added.

  “Ah,” said Curtis Fenton, “but you must remember that the value of the eleven hotels should also be taken into consideration.”

  “But control of the company would still remain in the hands of Mr. Leroy, which makes Miss Leroy’s twenty-five percent holding nothing but pieces of paper.”

  “Come, come, Mr. Rosnovski, twenty-five percent of eleven hotels would be a very valuable holding for only sixty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Not while Davis Leroy has overall control. Offer Miss Leroy forty thousand dollars, Mr. Fenton, and I may be able to find you someone who is interested.”

  “You don’t think that person might go a little higher, do you?” Mr. Fenton’s eyebrows raised on the word higher.

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