Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  It took Abel twelve months to build the new Baron with a large helping hand from Alderman Henry Osborne, who hurried through the permits required from City Hall in the shortest possible time. The building was opened in 1936 by the mayor of the city, Edward J. Kelly, who, after the death of Anton Cermak, had become the leader of the Democratic machine. In memory of Davis Leroy, the hotel had no seventeenth floor—a tradition Abel continued in every new Baron he built.

  Both Illinois senators were also in attendance to address the two thousand assembled guests. The Chicago Baron was superb both in design and construction. Abel had eventually spent well over a million dollars on the hotel and it looked as though every penny had been put to good use. The public rooms were large and sumptuous, with high stucco ceilings and decorations in pastel shades of green, pleasant and relaxing; the carpets were thick. The dark green embossed B was discreet but ubiquitous, adorning everything from the flag that fluttered on the top of the forty-two-story building to the neat lapel of the most junior bellhop.

  “This hotel already bears the hallmark of success,” said J. Hamilton Lewis, the senior senator from Illinois, “because, my friends, it is the man, not the building, who will always be known as ‘The Chicago Baron.’”

  Abel beamed with undisguised pleasure as the two thousand guests roared their approval.

  His reply of acknowledgment was well turned and confidently delivered and it earned him a standing ovation. He was beginning to feel very much at home among bigbusiness men and senior politicians. Zaphia hovered uncertainly in the background during the lavish celebration: the occasion was a little too much for her. She neither understood nor cared for success on Abel’s scale; and even though she could now afford the most expensive clothes, she still looked unfashionable and out of place and she was only too aware that this annoyed Abel. She stood by while Abel chatted with Henry Osborne.

  “This must be the high point of your life,” Henry was saying, slapping Abel on the back.

  “High point—I’ve just turned thirty,” said Abel. A camera flashed as he placed an arm around Henry’s shoulder. Abel beamed, realizing for the first time how pleasant it was to be treated as a public figure. “I’m going to put Baron hotels right across the globe,” he said, just loud enough for the eavesdropping reporter to hear. “I intend to be to America what César Ritz was to Europe. Stick with me, Henry, and you’ll enjoy the ride.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  At breakfast the next morning, Kate pointed to a small item on page 17 of the Globe, reporting the opening of the Chicago Baron.

  William smiled as he read the article. Kane and Cabot had been foolish not to listen when he had advised them to support the Richmond Group. It pleased him that his own judgment on Rosnovski had turned out to be right even though the bank had missed out on the deal. His smile broadened as he read the nickname “The Chicago Baron.” Then, suddenly, he felt sick. He examined the accompanying photograph more closely, but there was no mistake, and the caption confirmed his first impression: “Abel Rosnovski, the chairman of the Baron Group, talking with Mieczyslaw Szymczak, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, and Alderman Henry Osborne.”

  William dropped the paper onto the breakfast table and thought for a moment. As soon as he arrived at his office, he called Thomas Cohen at Cohen, Cohen and Yablons.

  “It’s been a long time, Mr. Kane” were Thomas Cohen’s first words. “I was very sorry to learn of the death of your friend, Matthew Lester. How are your wife and your son—Richard—isn’t that his name?”

  William always admired Thomas Cohen’s instant recall of names and relationships.

  “Yes, it is. They’re both well, thank you, Mr. Cohen.”

  “What can I do for you this time, Mr. Kane?” Thomas Cohen also remembered that William could only manage about one sentence of small talk.

  “I want to employ, through you, the services of a reliable investigator. I do not wish my name to be associated with this inquiry, but I need an update on Henry Osborne. Everything he’s done since he left Boston, and in particular whether there is any connection between him and Abel Rosnovski of the Baron Group.”

  There was a pause before the lawyer said, “Yes.”

  “Can you report to me in one week?”

  “Two please, Mr. Kane, two,” said Mr. Cohen.

  “Full report on my desk at the bank in two weeks, Mr. Cohen?”

  “Two weeks, Mr. Kane.”

  Thomas Cohen was as reliable as ever and a full report was on William’s desk on the fifteenth morning. William read the dossier with care. There appeared to be no formal business connections between Abel Rosnovski and Henry Osborne. Rosnovski, it seemed, found Osborne useful as a political contact but nothing more. Osborne himself had bounced from job to job since leaving Boston, ending up in the main office of the Great Western Casualty Insurance Company. In all probability, that was how Osborne had come in contact with Abel Rosnovski, as the old Chicago Richmond had always been insured by Great Western. When the hotel burned down, the insurance company had originally refused to pay the claim. A certain Desmond Pacey, the manager, had been sent to prison for ten years, after pleading guilty to arson, and there was some suspicion that Abel Rosnovski might himself have been involved. Nothing was proved and the insurance company settled later for threequarters of a million dollars. Osborne, the report went on, was now an alderman and full-time politician at City Hall, and it was common knowledge that he hoped to become a congressman for Chicago. He had not long ago married a Miss Marie Axton, the daughter of a wealthy drug manufacturer, and as yet they had no children.

  William went over the report again to be sure that he had not missed anything however inconsequential. Although there did not seem to be a great deal to connect the two men, he couldn’t help feeling that the association between Abel Rosnovski and Henry Osborne, both of whom hated him, for totally disparate reasons, was potentially dangerous to him. He mailed a check to Thomas Cohen and requested that he update the file every quarter, but as the months passed, and the quarterly reports revealed nothing new, he began to stop worrying, thinking perhaps he had overreacted to the photograph in the Boston Globe.

  Kate presented her husband with a daughter in the spring of 1937; they christened her Virginia. William started changing diapers again, and such was his fascination for “the little lady” that Kate had to rescue the child each night for fear she would never get any sleep. Richard, now two and a half, didn’t care too much for the new arrival to begin with, but time and a set of wooden soldiers combined to allay his jealousy.

  By the end of the year William’s department at Kane and Cabot had made a handsome profit for the bank. He had emerged from the lethargy that had overcome him on Matthew’s death and was fast regaining his reputation as a shrewd investor in the stock market, not least when Sell’em Short Smith admitted he had only perfected a technique developed by William Kane of Boston. Even Tony Simmons’s direction had become less irksome. Nevertheless, William was secretly worried by the prospect that he could not become chairman of Kane and Cabot until Simmons retired in seventeen years’ time, and he began to consider looking around for employment in another bank.

  William and Kate had taken to visiting Charles Lester in New York about once a month on weekends. The great man had grown very old over the three years since Matthew’s death, and rumors in financial circles were that he had lost all interest in his work and was rarely seen at the bank. William was beginning to wonder how much longer the old man would live, and then a few weeks later he died. The Kanes traveled down to the funeral in New York. Everyone seemed to be there including the Vice President of the United States, John Nance Garner. After the funeral William and Kate took the train back to Boston, numbly conscious that they had lost their last real link with the Lester family.

  It was some six months later that William received a communication from Sullivan and Cromwell, the distinguished New York lawyers, asking him if he would be kind enough to attend the