Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  No one noticed two old men, standing at the back of the gathering, their heads also bowed, looking as if they were not attached to the main party. They had arrived a few minutes late and left quickly at the end of the service. Florentyna recognized the limp as the shorter old man hurried away. She told Richard. They didn’t mention the respectful mourner to Kate Kane.

  A few days later, the taller of the two old men went to see Florentyna in her shop on Fifth Avenue. He had heard she was returning to San Francisco and needed to seek her help before she left. She listened carefully to what he had to say and agreed to his request with joy.

  Richard and Florentyna Kane arrived at the Baron Hotel the next afternoon. George Novak was there to meet and escort them to the forty-second floor. After ten years, Florentyna hardly recognized her father, now propped up in bed, halfmoon glasses on the end of his nose, still no pillows, but smiling defiantly. They talked of happier days and both laughed a little and cried a lot.

  “You must forgive us, Richard,” said Abel, “the Polish are a sentimental race.”

  “I know. My children are half Polish,” said Richard.

  Later that evening they dined together—magnificent roast veal, appropriate for the return of the prodigal daughter, said Abel.

  He talked of the future and how he saw the progress of his group.

  “We ought to have a Florentyna’s in every hotel,” he said.

  She laughed and agreed.

  He told Richard of his sadness concerning his father, revealing in detail the mistakes he had made for so many years and how it had never crossed his mind even for a moment that William Kane could have been his benefactor, and how he would have liked one chance to thank him personally.

  “He would have understood,” said Richard.

  “We met, you know, the day he died,” said Abel.

  Florentyna and Richard stared at him in surprise.

  “Oh yes,” said Abel. “We passed each other on Fifth Avenue—he had come to watch the opening of your shop. He raised his hat to me. It was enough, quite enough.”

  Abel had only one request of Florentyna. That she and Richard would accompany him on his journey to Warsaw in nine months’ time for the opening of the latest Baron.

  “Can you imagine,” he said, again excited, his fingers tapping the side table. “The Warsaw Baron. Now there is a hotel that could only be opened by the president of the Baron Group.”

  During the following months the Kanes visited Abel regularly and Florentyna grew very close to her father again. Abel came to admire Richard and the common sense that tempered all his daughter’s ambitions. He adored his grandson. And little Annabel was—what was that awful modern expression?—she was something else. Abel had rarely been happier in his life and began elaborate plans for his triumphant return to Poland to open the Warsaw Baron.

  The president of the Baron Group opened the Warsaw Baron six months later than had been originally scheduled. Building contracts run late in Warsaw just as they do in every other part of the world.

  In her first speech, as president of the Group, she told her guests that her pride in the magnificent hotel was mingled with a feeling of sadness that her late father could not have been present to open the Warsaw Baron himself.

  In his will, Abel had left everything to Florentyna, with the single exception of a small bequest. The inventory described the gift as a heavy engraved silver bracelet, rare, but of unknown value, bearing the legend “Baron Abel Rosnovski.”

  The beneficiary was his grandson, William Abel Kane.

  TO ED AND PRISCILLA

  BOOK ONE

  GENESIS

  1

  SUSAN PLONKED THE ice cream firmly on Michael Cartwright’s head. It was the first occasion the two of them had met, or that was what Michael’s best man claimed when Susan and Michael were married twenty-one years later.

  Both of them were three years old at the time, and when Michael burst into tears, Susan’s mother rushed over to find out what the problem was. All Susan was willing to say on the subject, and she repeated it several times, was, “Well, he asked for it, didn’t he?” Susan ended up with a spanking. Not the ideal start for any romance.

  The next recorded meeting, according to the best man, was when they both arrived at their elementary school. Susan declared with a knowing air that Michael was a cry-baby, and what’s more, a sneak. Michael told the other boys that he would share his graham crackers with anyone who was willing to pull Susan Illingworth’s pigtails. Few boys tried a second time.

  At the end of their first year, Susan and Michael were jointly awarded the class prize. Their teacher considered it the best course of action if she hoped to prevent another ice-cream incident. Susan told her friends that Michael’s mother did his homework for him, to which Michael responded that at least it was in his own handwriting.

  The rivalry continued unabated through junior and senior high until they departed for different universities, Michael to Connecticut State and Susan to Georgetown. For the next four years, they both worked hard at avoiding each other. In fact the next occasion their paths crossed was, ironically, at Susan’s home, when her parents threw a surprise graduation party for their daughter. The biggest surprise was not that Michael accepted the invitation, but that he turned up.

  Susan didn’t recognize her old rival immediately, partly because he had grown four inches and was, for the first time, taller than her. It wasn’t until she offered him a glass of wine and Michael remarked, “At least this time you didn’t pour it all over me,” that she realized who the tall handsome man was.

  “God, I behaved dreadfully, didn’t I,” said Susan, wanting him to deny it.

  “Yes, you did,” he said, “but then I expect I deserved it.”

  “You did,” she said, biting her tongue.

  They chatted like old friends, and Susan was surprised at how disappointed she felt when a classmate from Georgetown joined them and started flirting with Michael. They didn’t speak to each other again that evening.

  Michael phoned the following day and invited her to see Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Adam’s Rib. Susan had already seen the movie, but still heard herself accepting, and couldn’t believe how long she spent trying on different dresses before he arrived for that first date.

  Susan enjoyed the film, even though it was her second time, and wondered if Michael would put an arm around her shoulder when Spencer Tracey kissed Katharine Hepburn. He didn’t. But when they left the movie house, he took her hand as they crossed the road, and didn’t let it go until they reached the coffee shop. That was when they had their first row, well, disagreement. Michael admitted that he was going to vote for Thomas Dewey in November, while Susan made it clear that she wanted the incumbent Democrat, Harry Truman, to remain in the White House. The waiter placed the ice cream in front of Susan. She stared down at it.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Michael said.

  Susan wasn’t surprised when he called the following day, although she had been sitting by the phone for over an hour pretending to be reading.

  Michael admitted to his mother over breakfast that morning it had been love at first sight.

  “But you’ve known Susan for years,” remarked his mother.

  “No, I haven’t, Mom,” he replied, “I met her for the first time yesterday.”

  Both sets of parents were delighted, but not surprised, when they became engaged a year later, after all, they’d hardly spent a day apart since Susan’s graduation party. Both had landed jobs within days of leaving college, Michael as a trainee with the Hartford Life Insurance Co. and Susan as a history teacher at Jefferson High, so they decided to get married during the summer vacation.

  What they hadn’t planned was that Susan would become pregnant while they were on their honeymoon. Michael couldn’t hide his delight at the thought of being a father, and when Dr. Greenwood told them in the sixth month that it was going to be twins he was doubly delighted.

  “