The Prodigal Daughter (2 page)

From that moment
they became partners, a professional bond that developed into a close
friendship. Abel would have been the first to appreciate how hard it was for a
Texan to acknowledge a Pole as an equal. For the first time since he had
settled in America, he felt secure-until he found out that the Texans were
every bit as proud a clan as the Poles.

Abel still
couldn’t accept what had happened. If only Davis had confided in him, told him
the truth about the extent of the group’s financial trouble-who wasn’t having
problems during the Depression
?-
between them they
could have sorted something out. At the age of’ sixty-two Davis Leroy had been
informed by his bank that the value of his hotels no longer covered his loan of
two million dollars and that he would have to put up further security before
the bank would agree to pay the next month’s expenses. In response to the
bank’s ultimatum, Davis Leroy had had a quiet dinner with his daughter and
retired to the Presidential Suite on the seventeenth floor with two bottles of
bourbon. Then he had opened the window and jumped. Abel would never forget
standing on the corner of Michigan Avenue at four in the morning having to
identify a body he could recognize only by the jacket his mentor had worn the
previous night. The lieutenant investigating the death had remarked that it had
been the seventh suicide in Chicago that day. It didn’t help. How could the
policeman possibly know how much Davis Leroy had done for him, or how much more
Abel Rosnovski had intended to do in return for that friendship in the future?
In a hastily composed will Davis had bequeathed the remaining 75 percent of the
Richmond Group stock to his managing director, writing to Abel that although
the stock was worthless, 100 percent ownership of the group might give him a
better chance to negotiate new terms with the bank.

Florentyna’s
eyes opened and she started to howl. Abel picked her up lovingly, immediately
regretting the decision as he felt the darnp, clammy bottom. He changed her
diaper quickly, drying the child carefully, before making a triangle of the
cloth, not allowing the big pins anywhere near her body: any midwife would have
nodded her approval at his deftness.

Florentyna
closed her eyes and nodded back to sleep on her father’s shoulder. “Ungrateful
brat,” he murmured fondly as he kissed her on the cheek.

After Davis
Leroy’s funeral Abel had visited Kane and Cabot, the Richmond Group’s bankers
in Boston, and pleaded with one of the directors not to put the eleven hotels
up for sale on the open market. He tried to convince the bank that if only they
would back him, he could – given time – turn the balance sheet from red into black.
The smooth, cold man behind the expensive partner’s desk had proved
intractable. “I have responsibilities to my own clients to consider,” he had
used as an excuse. Abel would never forget the humiliation of having to call a
man of his own age “sir” and still leave empty-handed. The man must have had
the soul of a cash register not to realize how many people were affected by his
decision. Abel promised himself, for the hundredth time, that one day he would
get even with Mr. William “Ivy League” Kane.

Abel had
traveled back to Chicago thinking that nothing else could go wrong in his life,
only to find the Richmond Continental burned to the ground and the police
accusing him of arson. Arson it proved to be, but at the hands of Desmond Pacey
bent on revenge. When arrested, he readily admitted the crime; his only
interest was the downfall of AM. Pacey would have succeeded if the insurance
company had not come to Abel’s rescue. Until that moment, Abel had wondered if
he would not have been better off in the Russian prisoner-of-war La he had
escaped from before fleeing to America. But then ck turned when an anonymous
backer, who, Abel concluded, must be David Maxton of the Stevens Hotel,
purchased the Richmond Group and offered Abel his old position as managing
director and a chance to prove he could run the company at a profit.

Abel recalled
how he had been reunited with Zaphia, the self-assured girl he had first met on
board the ship that had brought them to America. How immature she had made him
feel then, but not when they remet and he discovered she was a waitress at the
Stevens.

Two years had
passed since then, and although the newly named Baron Group had failed to make
a profit in 1933, it lost only $23,000, greatly helped by Chicago’s celebration
of its centenary, when over a million tourists had visited the city to enjoy
the World’s Fair.

Once Pacey had
been convicted of arson, Abel had only to wait for the insurance money to be
paid before he could set about rebuilding the hotel in Chicago. He had used the
interim period to visit the other ten hotels in the group, sacking staff who
showed the same pecuniary tendencies as Desmond Pacey and replacing them from
the long, lines of unemployed that stretched across America.

Zaphia began to
resent Abel’s journeys from Charleston to Mobile, from Houston to Memphis,
continually checking over his hotels in the South.

But Abel
realized that if he was to keep his side of the bargain with the anonymous
backer, there would be little time to sit around at home, however much he
adored his daughter. He had been given ten years to repay the bank loan; if he
succeeded, a clause in the contract stipulated, he would be allowed to purchase
all the stock in the company for a further three million dollars. Zaphia
thanked God each night for what they already had and pleaded with him to slow
down, but nothing was going to stop Abel from trying to fulfill the contract to
the letter.

“Your dinner’s
ready,” shouted Zaphia at the top of her voice.

Abel pretended
he hadn’t heard and continued to stare down at his sleeping daughter.

“Didn’t you hear
me? Dinner is ready.”

“What? No, dear.
Sorry.
Just coming.”
Abel reluctantly rose to join his
wife for dinner. Florentyna’s rejected red eiderdown lay on the floor beside
her cot. He picked up the fluffy quilt and placed it carefully on top of the
blanket that covered his daughter. He never wanted her to feel the cold. She
smiled in her sleep. Was she having her first dream? Abel wondered as he
switched out the light.

F
LORENTYNA’S
CHRISTENING was something everyone present was to remember-except Florentyna,
who slept through the entire proceedings. After the ceremony at the Holy Name
Cathedral on North Wabash, the guests made their way to the Stevens Hotel,
where Abel had taken a private room. He had invited over a hundred guests to
celebrate the occasion. His closest friend, George Novak, a fellow Pole who had
occupied the bunk al~ove him on the ship coming over from Europe, was to be one
Kum, while one of Zaphia’s cousins, Janina, was to be the other.

The guests
devoured a traditional ten-course dinner including pirogi and bigos while Abel
sat at the head of the table accepting gifts on behalf of his daughter. There
was a silver rattle, US savings bonds, a copy of Huckleberry Finn and, finest of
all, a beautiful antique emerald fing from Abel’s unnamed benefactor. He only
hoped that the man gained as much pleasure in the giving as his daughter showed
in the receiving. To mark the occasion, Abel presented his daughter with a
large brown teddy bear with red eyes.

“It looks like
Franklin D. Roosevelt,” said George, holding the bear up for all to see. “This
calls for a second christening FDR. “

Abel raised his
glass. “Mr. President,” he toasted-a name the bear never relinquished.

‘Me party
finally came to an end about 3 A.M., when Abel had to requisition a laundry
cart from the hotel to transport all the gifts home. George waved to Abel as he
headed off down Lake Shore, Drive, pushing the cart before him.

The happy father
began whistling to himself as he recalled every moment of the wonderful
evening. Only when Mr. President fell off the cart for a third time did Abel
realize how crooked his path must have been down Lake Shore Drive. He picked up
the bear and wedged it into the center of the gifts and was about to attempt a
straighter path when a hand touched his shoulder. Abel jumped around, ready to
defend with his life anyone who wanted to steal Florentyna’s first possessions.
He stared up into the face of a young policeman.

“Maybe you have
a simple explanation as to why you’re pushing a Stevens Hotel laundry cart down
Lake Shore Drive at three in the morning?”

“Yes, officer,”
replied Abel.

“Well, let’s
start with what’s in the packages.”

“Other than
Franklin D. Roosevelt, I can’t be certain.”

The policeman
immediately arrested Abel on suspicion of larceny. While the recipient of the
gifts slept soundly under her red eiderdown quilt in the little nursery at the
top of the house on Rigg Street, her father spent a sleepless night on an old
horsehair mattress in a cell at the local jail.

George appeared
at the courthouse early in the morning to verify Abel’s story. . The next day
Abel purchased a maroon four-door Buick from Peter Sosnkowski, who ran a
secondhand car lot in Logan Square.

Abel began to
resent having to leave Chicago and his beloved Florentyna even for a few days,
fearing he might miss her first step, her first word or her first anything.
From her birth, he had supervised her daily routine, never allowing Polish to
be spoken in the house; he was determined there be no trace of a Polish accent
that would make her feel ill at ease in society. Abel had intently waited for
her first word, hoping it would be “Papa,” while Zaphia feared it might be some
Polish word that would reveal that she had not been speaking English to her
firstborn when they were alone.

“My daughter is
an American,” he explained to Zaphia, “and she must therefore speak English.
Too many Poles continue to converse in their own language, thus ensuring that
their children spend their entire lives in the northwest comer of Chicago being
described as ‘Stupid Polacks’ and ridiculed by everyone else they come across.”

“Except
their own
countrymen who still feel some loyalty to the
Polish empire,” said Zaphia defensively.

“The
Polish empire?
What century are you living in, Zaphia?”

“The twentieth
century,” she said, her voice rising.

“Along
with Dick Tracy.
and
Famous Funnies, no doubt?”

“Hardly
the attitude of someone whose ultimate ambition is to return to Warsaw as the
first Polish ambassador.”

“I’ve told you
never to mention that, Zaphia.
Never.”

Zaphia,
whose
English remained irredeemably shaky, didn’t reply but
later grumbled to her cousins on the subject and continued to speak only Polish
when Abel was out of the house. She was not impressed by the fact, so often
trotted out by Abel, that General Motors’ turnover was greater than Poland’s
budget.

By 1935, Abel
was convinced that America had turned the comer and that the Depression was a
thing of the past, so he decided
thc
time had come to
build the new Chicago Baron on the site of the old Richmond Continental. He
appointed an architect and began spending more time in the Windy City and less
on the.
road
, determined that the hotel would turn out
to be the finest in the Midwest.

The Chicago
Baron was completed in May 1936 and opened by the Democratic mayor, Edward J.
Kelly. Both Illinois senators were dancing attendance, only too aware of Abel’s
burgeoning power.

“Looks like a
million dollars,” said Hamilton Lewis, the senior senator.

“You wouldn’t be
far wrong,” said Abel, as he admired the thickly carpeted public rooms, the
high stucco ceilings and the decorations in pastel shades of green. Ile final
touch had been the dark green embossed B that adorned everything from the
towels in the bathrooms to the flag that fluttered on the top of the
forty-two-story building.

“This hotel
already bears the hallmark of success,” said Harnilton Lewis, addressing the
two thousand assembled guests, “because, my friends, it is the man and not the
building who will always be known as the Chicago Baron,” Abel was delighted by
the roar that went up and smiled to himself.

His public
relations advisor had supplied that line to the senator’s speech writer earlier
in the week.

Abel felt at ease
among big businessmen and senior politicians. Zaphia, however, had not adapted
to her husband’s change in fortunes and hovered uncertainly in the background,
drinking a little too much champagne, and finally crept away before the dinner
was served with the lame excuse about wanting to see that Florentyna was safely
asleep. Abel accompanied his flushed wife toward the revolving door in silent
irritation. Zaphia neither cared for nor understood success on Abel’s scale and
preferred to ignore his new world. She was only too aware.

“When I had the
reception for my wedding and again for Florentyna’s christening at the Stevens,
the bill was covered by my backer.”

“That’s hardly
conclusive.”

“Agreed, but I’m
certain it’s Maxton, because he once offered me
thc
chance
to run the Stevens. I told him I was more interested in finding a backer for
the Richmond Group, and within a week his bank in Chicago came up with the
money from someone who could not reveal their identity because it would clash
with their day-to-day business interests.”