Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Abel returned from a trip to Istanbul in October 1952 immediately upon hearing the news of David Maxton’s fatal heart attack. He attended the funeral in Chicago with George and Florentyna and later told Mrs. Maxton that she could be a guest at any Baron in the world whenever she so pleased for the rest of her life. She did not understand why Abel had made such a generous gesture.

  When Abel returned to New York the next day, he was delighted to find on the desk of his forty-second-floor office a report from Henry Osborne indicating that the heat was now off. In Henry’s opinion, the new Eisenhower Administration was unlikely to pursue an inquiry into the Interstate Airways fiasco, especially since the stock had held steady for nearly a year. There therefore had been no further incidents to renew interest in the scandal. Eisenhower’s Vice President, Richard M. Nixon, seemed more involved in chasing the spectral communists whom Joe McCarthy had missed.

  Abel spent the next two years concentrating on building his hotels in Europe. Florentyna opened the Paris Baron in 1953 and the London Baron at the end of 1954. Barons were also in various stages of development in Brussels, Rome, Amsterdam, Geneva, Edinburgh, Cannes and Stockholm in a ten-year expansion program.

  Abel had become so overworked that he had little time to consider William Kane’s continued prosperity. He had not made any further attempt to buy stock in Lester’s bank or its subsidiary companies, although he had held on to those he already owned in the hope that opportunity would be forthcoming to deal a blow against William Kane from which he would not recover so easily. The next time, Abel promised himself, he’d make sure he didn’t unwittingly break the law.

  During Abel’s increasingly frequent absences abroad, George ran the Baron Group. Abel hoped that Florentyna would join them on the board as soon as she left Radcliffe in June of 1955. He had already decided that she should take over responsibility for all the shops in the hotels and consolidate their buying, as they were fast becoming an empire in themselves.

  Florentyna was very excited by the prospect but was insistent that she wanted some outside expertise before joining her father’s group. She did not think that her natural gifts for design, color coordination, and organization were any substitute for experience. Abel suggested that she train in Switzerland under M. Maurice at the famed Ecole Hotelière in Lausanne. Florentyna balked at the idea, explaining that she wanted to work for two years in a New York store before she would decide on whether or not to take over the shops. She was determined to be worth employing, “ … and not just as my father’s daughter,” she informed him. Abel thoroughly approved.

  “A New York store, that’s easily enough done,” he said, “I’ll ring up Walter Hoving at Tiffany’s and you can start at the top.”

  “No,” said Florentyna, revealing that she’d inherited her father’s streak of stubbornness. “What’s the equivalent of a junior waiter at the Plaza Hotel?”

  “A salesgirl at a department store,” said Abel, laughing.

  “Then that’s exactly what I’m going to be,” she said.

  Abel stopped laughing. “Are you serious? With a degree from Radcliffe and all the traveling you’ve done, you want to be an anonymous salesgirl?”

  “Being an anonymous waiter at the Plaza didn’t do you any harm when you were building up one of the most successful hotel groups in the world,” replied Florentyna.

  Abel knew when he was beaten. He had only to look into the steel gray eyes of his beautiful daughter to realize she had made up her mind and that no amount of persuasion, gentle or otherwise, was going to change it.

  After Florentyna had graduated from Radcliffe, she spent a month in Europe with her father, checking progress on the latest Baron hotels. She officially opened the Brussels Baron, where she made a conquest of the handsome young French-speaking managing director whom Abel accused of smelling of garlic. She had to give him up three days later when it reached the kissing stage, but she never admitted to her father that garlic had been the reason.

  When Florentyna returned to New York with her father, she immediately applied for the vacant position (the words used in the classified advertisement) of “junior sales assistant” at Bloomingdale’s. When she filled in the application form, she gave her name as Jessie Kovats, well aware that no one would leave her in peace if they thought she was the daughter of the Chicago Baron.

  Despite protests from her father, she also left her suite in the New York Baron and started looking for her own place to live. Once again Abel gave in and presented Florentyna with a small but elegant cooperative apartment on Fifty-seventh Street near the East River as a twenty-second birthday present.

  Florentyna already knew her way around New York and enjoyed a full social life, but she had long before resolved not to let her friends know that she was going to work at Bloomingdale’s. She feared they would all want to visit her and her cover would be blown in days, making it impossible to be treated like any other trainee.

  When her friends did inquire, she merely told them that she was helping to run some shops in her father’s hotels. None of them gave her reply a second thought.

  Jessie Kovats—it took her some time to get used to the name—started in cosmetics. After six months, she was ready to run her own cosmetics shop. The girls in Bloomingdale’s worked in pairs, which Florentyna immediately turned to her advantage by choosing to work with the laziest girl in the department. This arrangement suited both girls as Florentyna’s choice was a gorgeous, unenlightened blonde named Maisie who had only two interests in life: the clock when it pointed to six and men. The former happened once a day, the latter all the time.

  The two girls soon became comrades without exactly being friends. Florentyna learned a lot from her partner about how to avoid work without being spotted by the floor manager, and also how to get picked up by a man.

  The cosmetic counter’s profits were well up after the girls’ first six months together even though Maisie had spent most of her time trying out the products rather than selling them. She could take two hours just to repaint her fingernails. Florentyna, in contrast, had found that she had a natural gift for selling—and that she thoroughly enjoyed it. This combination worked well for her, and after only a few weeks her manager considered her as knowing as some employees who had been around for years.

  The partnership with Maisie suited Florentyna ideally, and when they moved her to Better Dresses, Maisie went along by mutual agreement and passed much of her time trying on dresses while Florentyna sold them. Maisie would have been able to attract men—in tow with their wives or sweethearts—no matter what the quality of the merchandise simply by looking at them. Once they were ensnared, Florentyna could move in and sell them something. It seemed hardly possible that the combination could work in Better Dresses, but Florentyna nearly always coaxed Maisie’s victims into a purchase. Few escaped with untapped wallets.

  The profits for the first six months in the department were up by 30 percent and the floor supervisor decided that the two girls obviously worked well together. Florentyna said nothing to contradict that impression. While other assistants in the shop were always complaining about how little work their partners did, Florentyna continually praised Maisie as the ideal workmate, who had taught her so much about how a big store operated. She didn’t mention the useful advice that Maisie also imparted on how to deal with overamorous men.

  The greatest compliment an assistant can receive at Bloomingdale’s is to be put on one of the counters facing a Lexington Avenue entrance, one of the first persons to be seen by customers coming in through the main doors. To be moved to one of these counters was considered as a small promotion and it was rare for a girl to be invited to sell there until she had been with the store at least five years. Maisie had been with Bloomingdale’s since she was seventeen, a full five years, while Florentyna had only just completed her first. But because their sales record together had been so impressive, the manager decided to try the two girls out on the g