“Who is he?” asked Abel. “What does he want?”
“I don’t know,” said Sammy, not bothering to look up. “I’m not in touch with the life history of the customers the way you are. Give them a good meal, make sure you get yourself a big tip and hope they come again. You may feel it’s a simple philosophy, but it’s sure good enough for me. Maybe they forgot to teach you the basics at Columbia. Now get your butt over there, Abel, and if it’s a tip be certain you bring the money straight back to me.”
Abel smiled at Sammy’s bald head and went over to 17. There were two people seated at the table—a man in a colorful checked jacket, of which Abel did not approve, and an attractive young woman with a mop of blond, curly hair, which momentarily distracted Abel, who uncharitably assumed she was the checked jacket’s New York girlfriend. Abel put on his “sorry smile,” betting himself a silver dollar that the man was going to make a big fuss about the swinging doors and try to get his table changed to impress the stunning blonde. No one liked being near the smell of the kitchen and the continual banging of waiters through the doors. But it was impossible to avoid using the table when the hotel was packed with residents and many New Yorkers who used the restaurant as their regular eating place and looked upon visitors as nothing more than intruders. Why did Sammy always leave the tricky customers for him to deal with? Abel approached the checked jacket cautiously.
“You asked to speak to me, sir?”
“Sure did,” said a southern accent. “My name is Davis Leroy and this is my daughter, Melanie.”
Abel’s eyes left Mr. Leroy momentarily and encountered a pair of eyes as green as any he had ever seen.
“I have been watching you, Abel, for the last five days,” Mr. Leroy was saying in his southern drawl.
If pressed, Abel would have had to admit that he had not taken a great deal of notice of Mr. Leroy until the last five minutes.
“I have been very impressed by what I have seen, Abel, because you got class, real class, and I am always on the looking-out for that. Ellsworth Statler was a fool not to pick you up.”
Abel began to take a closer look at Mr. Leroy. His purple cheeks and double chin left Abel in no doubt that he had not been told of Prohibition, and the empty plates in front of him accounted for his basketball belly, but neither the name nor the face meant anything to him. At a normal lunchtime, Abel was familiar with the background of anyone sitting at 37 of the 39 tables in the Edwardian Room. That day Mr. Leroy’s table was one of the unknown two.
The southerner was still talking. “Now, I’m not one of those multimillionaires who have to sit at your corner tables when they stay at the Plaza.”
Abel was impressed. The average customer wasn’t supposed to appreciate the relative merits of the various tables.
“But I’m not doing so badly for myself. In fact, my best hotel may well grow to be as impressive as this one someday, Abel.”
“I am sure it will be, sir,” said Abel, playing for time.
Leroy, Leroy, Leroy. The name didn’t mean a thing.
“Lemme git to the point, son. The number one hotel in my group needs a new assistant manager in charge of the restaurants. If you’re interested, join me in my room when you get off duty.”
He handed Abel a large embossed card.
“Thank you, sir,” said Abel, looking at it: “Davis Leroy. The Richmond Group of Hotels, Dallas.” Underneath was inscribed the motto: “One day a hotel in every state.” The name still meant nothing to Abel.
“I look forward to seeing you,” said the friendly checkcoated Texan.
“Thank you, sir,” said Abel. He smiled at Melanie, whose eyes were as coolly green as before, and returned to Sammy, still head down, counting his takings.
“Ever heard of the Richmond Group of Hotels, Sammy?”
“Yes, sure, my brother was a junior waiter in one once. Must be about eight or nine of them, all over the South, run by a mad Texan, but I can’t remember the guy’s name. Why you asking?” said Sammy, looking up suspiciously.
“No particular reason,” said Abel.
“There’s always a reason with you. What did table seventeen want?” said Sammy.
“Grumbling about the noise from the kitchen. Can’t say I blame him.”
“What does he expect me to do, put him out on the veranda? Who does the guy think he is, John D. Rockefeller?”
Abel left Sammy to his counting and grumbling and cleared his own tables as quickly as possible. Then he went to his room and started to check out the Richmond Group. A few calls and he’d learned enough to satisfy his curiosity. The group turned out to be a private company, with eleven hotels in all, the most impressive one a 342-room deluxe establishment, in Chicago, the Richmond Continental. Abel decided he had nothing to lose by paying a call on Mr. Leroy and Melanie. He checked Mr. Leroy’s room number—85—one of the better smaller rooms. He arrived a little before four o’clock and was disappointed to discover that Melanie was not there.
“Glad you could drop by, Abel. Take a seat.”
It was the first time Abel had sat down as a guest in the more than four years he had worked at the Plaza.
“What are you paid?” said Mr. Leroy.
The suddenness of the question took Abel by surprise.
“I take in around twenty-five dollars a week with tips.”
“I’ll start you at thirty-five a week.”
“Which hotel are you referring to?” asked Abel.
“If I’m a judge of character, Abel, you got off table duty about three-thirty and took the next thirty minutes finding out which hotel, am I right?”
Abel was beginning to like the man. “The Richmond Continental in Chicago?” he ventured.
Davis Leroy laughed. “I was right—and right about you.”
Abel’s mind was working fast. “How many people are over the assistant manager?”
“Only the manager and me. The manager is slow, gentle, and near retirement and as I have ten other hotels to worry about, I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble. Although I must confess Chicago is my favorite, my first hotel in the North, and with Melanie at school there, I find I spend more time in the Windy City than I ought to. Don’t ever make the mistake New Yorkers do of underestimating Chicago. They think Chicago is only a postage stamp on a very large envelope, and they are the envelope.”
Abel smiled.
“The hotel is a little run-down at the moment,” Mr. Leroy continued, “as the last assistant manager walked out on me suddenly, so I need a good man to take his place and realize its full potential. Now listen, Abel, I’ve watched you carefully for the last five days and I know you’re that man. Do you think you would be interested in coming to Chicago?”
“Forty dollars and ten percent of any increased profits and I’ll take the job.”
“What?” said Davis Leroy, flabbergasted. “None of my managers are paid on a profit basis. The others would raise hell if they ever found out.”
“I’m not going to tell them if you don’t,” said Abel.
“Now I know I chose the right man, even if he bargains a damn sight better than a Yankee with six daughters.” He slapped the side of his chair. “I agree to your terms, Abel.”
“Will you be requiring references, Mr. Leroy?”
“References? I know your background and history since you left Europe right through to getting a degree in economics at Columbia. What do you think I’ve been doing the last few days? I wouldn’t put someone who needed references in as number two in my best hotel. When can you start?”
“A month from today.”
“Good. I look forward to seeing you then, Abel.”
Abel rose from the hotel chair; he felt even happier standing. He shook hands with Mr. Davis Leroy, the man from table 17—the one that was strictly for unknowns.
Leaving New York City and the Plaza Hotel, his first real home since the castle near Slonim, turned out to be more of a wrench than Abel had anticipated. Good-byes to George,
Monika and his few Columbia friends were unexpectedly hard. Sammy and the other waiters threw a farewell party for him.
“We haven’t heard the last of you, Abel Rosnovski,” Sammy said, and they all agreed.
The Richmond Continental in Chicago was well placed on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of one of the fastestgrowing cities in America. This pleased Abel, who was familiar with Ellsworth Statler’s maxim that just three things about a hotel really mattered: position, position and position. Abel soon discovered that position was about the only good thing the Richmond had. Davis Leroy had understated the case when he said that the hotel was a little run-down. Desmond Pacey, the manager, wasn’t slow and quiet as Davis Leroy had suggested; he was plain lazy and didn’t endear himself to Abel when he put his new assistant in a tiny room in the staff annex across the street and not in the main hotel. A quick check on the Richmond’s books revealed that the daily occupancy rate was running at less than 40 percent and that the restaurant was never more than half full, not least of all because the food was appalling. The staff spoke three or four languages among them, none of which seemed to be English, and they were certainly not showing any signs of welcome to the stupid Polack from New York. It was not hard to see why the last assistant manager had left in such a hurry. If the Richmond was Davis Leroy’s favorite hotel, Abel feared for the other ten in the group even though his new employer seemed to have a bottomless pot of gold at the end of his Texas rainbow.
The best news that Abel learned during his first days in Chicago was that Melanie Leroy was an only child.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
William and Matthew started their freshman year at Harvard in the fall of 1924. Despite his grandmothers’ disapproval, William accepted the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship and at a cost of $290, treated himself to “Daisy,” the latest Model T Ford and the first real love of William’s life. He painted Daisy bright yellow, which halved her value and doubled the number of his girlfriends. Calvin Coolidge won a landslide election to return to the White House and the volume on the New York Stock Exchange reached a fiveyear record of 2,336,160 shares.
Both young men (“We can no longer refer to them as children,” pronounced Grandmother Cabot) had been looking forward to college. After an energetic summer of tennis and golf, they were ready to get down to more serious pursuits. William started work on the day he arrived in their new room on the “Gold Coast,” a considerable improvement on their small room at St. Paul’s, while Matthew went in search of the university rowing club. Matthew was elected to captain the freshmen crew, and William left his books every Sunday afternoon to watch his friend from the banks of the Charles River. He covertly enjoyed Matthew’s success but was outwardly scathing.
“Life is not about eight big men pulling unwieldy pieces of misshapen wood through choppy water while one smaller man shouts at them,” declared William haughtily.
“Tell Yale that,” said Matthew.
William, meanwhile, quickly demonstrated to his mathematics professors that he was what Matthew was—a mile ahead of the field. William also became chairman of the freshman Debating Society and talked his great-uncle, President Lowell, into the first university insurance plan, whereby students graduating from Harvard would take out a life policy for $1,000 each, naming the university as the beneficiary. William estimated that the cost to each participant would be less than a dollar per week and that if 40 percent of the alumni joined the scheme, Harvard would have a guaranteed income of about $3 million a year from 1950 onward. The President was impressed and gave the scheme his full support and a year later he invited William to join the board of the University Fund Raising Committee. William accepted with pride, not realizing that the appointment was for life. President Lowell informed Grandmother Kane that he had captured one of the best financial brains of his generation free of charge. Grandmother Kane testily told her cousin that “everything had its purpose and that would teach William to read the fine print.”
Almost as soon as the sophomore year began, it became time to choose (or to be chosen for) one of the Finals Clubs that dominated the social landscape of the well-to-do at Harvard. William was “punched” for the Porcellian, the oldest, richest, most exclusive and least ostentatious of such clubs. In the clubhouse on Massachusetts Avenue, which was incongruously situated over a cheap Hayes-Bickford cafeteria, he would sit in a comfortable armchair, considering the four-color-map problem, discussing the repercussions of the Loeb-Leopold trial and idly watching the street below through the conveniently angled mirror while listening to the large, newfangled radio.
When the Christmas vacation came, William was persuaded to ski with Matthew in Vermont and spent a week panting uphill in the footsteps of his fitter friend.
“Tell me, Matthew, what is the point of spending one hour climbing up a hill only to come back down the same hill in a few seconds at considerable risk to life and limb?”
Matthew grunted. “Sure gives me a bigger kick than graph theory, William. Why don’t you admit you’re not very good either at the going up or the coming down?”
They both did enough work in their sophomore year to get by, although their interpretations of “getting by” were wildly different. For the first two months of the summer vacation, they worked as junior management assistants in Charles Lester’s bank in New York, Matthew’s father having long since given up the battle of trying to keep William away. When the dog days of August arrived, they spent most of their time dashing about the New England countryside in “Daisy,” sailing on the Charles River with as many different girls as possible and attending any house party to which they could get themselves invited. In no time they were among the accredited personalities of the university, known to the cognoscenti as the Scholar and the Sweat. It was perfectly understood in Boston society that the girl who married William Kane or Matthew Lester would have no fears for her future, but as fast as hopeful mothers appeared with their fresh-faced daughters, Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot unceremoniously dispatched them.
On April 18, 1927, William celebrated his twenty-first birthday by attending the final meeting of the trustees of his estate. Alan Lloyd and Tony Simmons had prepared all the documents for signature.
“Well, William dear,” said Milly Preston as if a great responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders, “I’m sure you’ll be able to do every bit as well as we did.”
“I hope so, Mrs. Preston, but if ever I need to lose half a million overnight, I’ll know just who to call.”
Milly Preston went bright red but made no attempt to respond.
The trust now stood at over $32 million and William had definite plans for nurturing that money, but he had also set himself the task of making a million dollars in his own right before he left Harvard. It was not a large sum compared with the amount in his trust, but his inherited wealth meant far less to him than the balance in his account at Lester’s.
That summer, the grandmothers, fearing a fresh outbreak of predatory girls, dispatched William and Matthew on the grand tour of Europe, which turned out to be a great success for both of them. Matthew, surmounting all language barriers, found a beautiful girl in every major European capital—love, he assured William, was an international commodity. William secured introductions to a director of most of the major European banks—money, he assured Matthew, was also an international commodity. From London to Berlin to Rome, the two young men left a trail of broken hearts and suitably impressed bankers. When they returned to Harvard in September, they were both ready to hit the books for their final year.
In the bitter winter of 1927, Grandmother Kane died, aged eighty-five, and William wept for the first time since his mother’s death.
“Come on,” said Matthew after bearing with William’s depression for several days. “She had a good life and waited a long time to find out whether God was a Cabot or a Lowell.”
William missed the shrewd words he had so little appreciated in his grandmother’s lifetime and he had ar
ranged a funeral she would have been proud to attend. Although the great lady had arrived at the cemetery in a black Packard hearse (“One of those outrageous contraptions—over my dead body,” but—as it turned out—under it), her only criticism of William’s orchestration of her departure would have concerned this unsound mode of transport. Her death drove William to work with even more purpose during that final year at Harvard. He dedicated himself to winning the university’s top mathematics prize in her memory. Grandmother Cabot died some six months after Grandmother Kane—probably, said William, because there was no one left for her to talk to.
In February 1928, William received a visit from the captain of the Debating Team. There was to be a full-dress debate the following month on the motion “Socialism or Capitalism for America’s Future” and William was, naturally, asked to represent capitalism.
“And what if I told you I was only willing to speak on behalf of the downtrodden masses?” William inquired of the surprised captain, slightly nettled by the thought that his intellectual views were simply assumed by outsiders because he had inherited a famous name and a prosperous bank.
“Well, I must say, William, we did imagine your own preference would be for, er—”
“It is. I accept your invitation. I take it that I am at liberty to select my partner?”
“naturally”
“Good. Then I choose Matthew Lester. May I know who our opponents will be?”
“You will not be informed until the day before, when the posters go up in the Yard.”
For the next month Matthew and William turned their breakfast critiques of the newspapers of the Left and Right, and their nightly discussions about the Meaning of Life, into strategy sessions for what the campus was beginning to call “The Great Debate.” William decided that Matthew should lead off.
Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Page 22
