Kate listened for hours to William’s problems, occasionally offering an understanding comment or a sympathetic reply or chastising him for being overdramatic. Matthew, acting as William’s eyes and ears, reported that the voting would fall, as far as was ascertainable, 50-50, split between those who considered William too young to hold such a responsible post as the chairmanship and those who still held Tony Simmons to blame for the extent of the bank’s losses in 1929. It seemed that most of the nonexecutive members of the board, who had not worked directly with William, would be more influenced by the age difference between the two contenders than by any other single factor. Again and again Matthew heard: “William’s time will come.” Once, tentatively, he played the role of Satan the tempter to William: “With your holdings in the bank, William, you could remove the entire board, replace them with men of your own choosing and get yourself elected chairman.”
William was only too aware of this route to the top, but he had already dismissed such tactics without needing seriously to consider them; he wished to become chairman solely on his merits. That was, after all, the way his father had achieved the position and it was nothing less than Kate would expect of him.
On January 2, 1934, Alan Lloyd circulated to every member the notice of a board meeting that would be held on his sixty-fifth birthday, its sole purpose being to elect his successor. As the day for the crucial vote drew nearer, Matthew found himself carrying the investment department almost single-handedly, and Kate found herself feeding them both while they went over the latest state of his campaign again and again. Matthew did not complain once about the extra workload that was placed on him while William spent hours planning his bid to capture the chair. William, conscious that Matthew had nothing to gain by his success, as he would one day take over his father’s bank in New York—a far bigger proposition than Kane and Cabot—hoped a time might come when he could offer Matthew the same unselfish support.
It was to come sooner than he imagined.
When Alan Lloyd’s sixty-fifth birthday was celebrated, all seventeen members of the board were present. The meeting was opened by the chairman, who made a farewell speech of only fourteen minutes, which William thought would never come to an end. Tony Simmons was nervously tapping the yellow legal pad in front of him with his pen, occasionally looking up at William. Neither was listening to Alan’s speech. At last Alan sat down, to loud applause, or as loud as is appropriate for sixteen Boston bankers. When the clapping had died away, Alan Lloyd rose for the last time as chairman of Kane and Cabot.
“And now, gentlemen, we must elect my successor. The board is presented with two outstanding candidates, the director of our overseas division, Mr. Anthony Simmons, and the director of the American investment department, Mr. William Kane. They are both well known to you, gentlemen, and I have no intention of speaking in detail on their respective merits. Instead I have asked each candidate to address the board on how he would see the future of Kane and Cabot were he to be elected chairman.”
William rose first, as had been agreed between the two contestants the night before on the toss of a coin, and addressed the board for twenty minutes, explaining in detail that it would be his intention to move into fields where the bank had not previously ventured. In particular he wanted to broaden the bank’s base and to get out of a depressed New England, moving close to the center of banking, which he believed was now in New York. He even mentioned the possibility of opening a holding company that might specialize in commercial banking (the heads of some of the older board members shook in disbelief). He wanted the bank to consider more expansion, to challenge the new generation of financiers now leading America and to see Kane and Cabot enter the second half of the twentieth century as one of the largest financial institutions in the United States. When he sat down he was satisfied by the murmurs of approbation; his speech had, on the whole, been well received by the board.
When Tony Simmons rose, he took a far more conservative line: the bank should consolidate its position for the next few years, moving only into carefully selected areas and sticking to the traditional modes of banking that had given Kane and Cabot the reputation it currently enjoyed. He had learned his lesson during the crash and his main concern, he added—to laughter—was to be certain that Kane and Cabot did enter the second half of the twentieth century at all. Tony spoke prudently and with an authority that William was aware he was too young to match. When Tony sat down, William had no way of knowing in whose favor the board might swing, though he still believed that the majority would be more inclined to opt for expansion rather than standing still.
Alan Lloyd informed the other directors that neither he nor the two contestants intended to vote. The fourteen voting members received their little ballots, which they duly filled in and passed back to Alan, who, acting as teller, began to count slowly. William found he could not look up from his doodle-covered pad, which also bore the imprint of his sweating hand. When Alan had completed the task of counting, a hush came over the room.
He announced six votes for Kane, six votes for Simmons, with two abstentions. Whispered conversation broke out among the board members, and Alan called for order. William took a deep and audible breath in the silence that followed.
Alan Lloyd paused and then said, “I feel that the appropriate course of action given the circumstances is to have a second vote. If any member who abstained on the first ballot finds himself able to support a candidate on this occasion, that might give one of the contestants an overall majority.”
The little slips were passed out again. William could not bear even to watch the process this time. While members wrote their choices, he listened to the steel-nibbed pens scratching across the voting papers. Once again the ballots were returned to Alan Lloyd. Once again he opened them slowly one by one, and this time he called out the names as he read them.
“‘William Kane.’
“‘Anthony Simmons,’ ‘Anthony Simmons,’ ‘Anthony Simmons.’”
Three votes to one for Tony Simmons.
“‘William Kane,’ ‘William Kane.’
“‘Anthony Simmons.’
“‘William Kane,’ ‘William Kane,’ ‘William Kane.’”
Six votes to four in favor of William.
“‘Anthony Simmons,’ ‘Anthony Simmons.’
“‘William Kane.’
“‘Seven votes to six in favor of William.”
It seemed to William, holding his breath, to take Alan Lloyd a lifetime to open the final voting slip.
“‘Anthony Simmons,’” he declared. “The vote is seven all, gentlemen.”
William knew that Alan Lloyd would now be obliged to cast the deciding vote, and although he had never told anyone whom he supported for the chair, William had always assumed that if the vote came to a deadlock, Alan would back him against Tony Simmons.
“As the voting has twice resulted in a dead heat and since I assume that no member of the board is likely to change his mind, I must cast my vote for the candidate whom I feel should succeed me as chairman of Kane and Cabot. I know none of you will envy my position, but I have no alternative except to stand by my own judgment and back the man I feel should be the next chairman of the bank. That man is Tony Simmons.”
William could not believe the words he heard, and Tony Simmons looked almost as shocked. He rose from his seat opposite William to a round of applause, changed places with Alan Lloyd at the head of the table and addressed Kane and Cabot for the first time as the bank’s new chairman. He thanked the board for its support and praised William for never having used his strong financial and familial position to try to influence the vote. He invited William to be vice chairman of the board and suggested that Matthew Lester should replace Alan Lloyd as a director; both suggestions received unanimous support.
William sat staring at the portrait of his father, acutely conscious of having failed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Abel stubbed out the Corona for a second time and s
wore that he would not light another cigar until he had cleared the $2 million that he needed for complete control of the Richmond Group. This was no time for big cigars, with the Dow Jones index at its lowest point in history and long soup lines forming in every major city in America. He gazed at the ceiling and considered his priorities. First, he needed to salvage the best of the staff from the Chicago Richmond.
He climbed off the bed, put on his jacket and walked over to the hotel annex, where most of those who had not found employment since the fire were still living. Abel reemployed everyone whom he trusted, giving all those who were willing to leave Chicago work in one of the remaining ten hotels. He made his position very clear that in a period of record unemployment their jobs were secure only as long as the hotels started to show a profit. He realized all the other hotels in the group were being run as dishonestly as the old Chicago Richmond had been; he wanted that changed—and changed quickly. He put his three assistant managers in Chicago in charge of one hotel each, the Dallas Richmond, the Cincinnati Richmond and the St. Louis Richmond. He appointed new assistant managers for the remaining seven hotels—in Houston, Mobile, Charleston, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans and Louisville. The original Leroy hotels had all been situated in the South and Midwest. The Chicago Richmond was the only one Davis Leroy himself had been responsible for building. It took Abel another three weeks to get the old Chicago staff settled into their new hotels.
Abel decided to set up his own headquarters in the Chicago Richmond annex and to open a small restaurant on the ground floor. It made sense to be near his backer and his banker rather than settling in one of the hotels in the South. Moreover, Zaphia was in Chicago, and Abel felt with certainty that given a little time she would drop the pimply youth and fall in love with him. She was the only woman he had ever known with whom he felt self-assured. When Abel was about to leave for New York to recruit more specialized staff, he exacted a promise from her that she would no longer see the pimply boyfriend.
The night before Abel’s departure he and Zaphia slept together for the first time. She was soft, plump, giggly and delicious.
Abel’s attentive care and gentle expertise took Zaphia by surprise.
“How many girls have there been since the Black Arrow?” she teased him.
“None that I really cared about,” he replied.
“Enough of them to forget me,” she added.
“I never forgot you,” he said untruthfully, leaning over to kiss her, convinced it was the only way to stop the conversation.
When Abel arrived in New York, the first thing he did was to look up George, whom he found out of work and living in a garret on East Third Street. Abel had forgotten what the houses in this neighborhood could be like when shared by twenty families. The smell of stale food in every room, toilets that didn’t flush and beds that were slept in by three different people every twenty-four hours. The bakery, it seemed, had been closed down, and George’s uncle had had to find employment at a large mill on the outskirts of New York. The mill could not take on George as well. George leaped at the chance to join Abel and the Richmond Group—in any capacity.
Abel recruited three new employees: a pastry chef, a comptroller and a headwaiter before he and George traveled back to Chicago to set up base in the Richmond annex. Abel was pleased with the outcome of his trip. Most hotels on the East Coast had cut their staff to a bare minimum, which had made it easy to pick up experienced people, one of them from the Plaza itself.
In early March, Abel and George set out for a tour of the remaining hotels in the group. Abel asked Zaphia to join them on the trip, even offering her the chance to work in any of the hotels she chose, but she would not budge from Chicago, the only place in America familiar to her. As a compromise she went to live in Abel’s rooms at the Richmond annex while he was away. George, who had acquired middle-class morals along with his American citizenship, and who had had a Catholic upbringing as well, urged the advantages of matrimony on Abel, who, lonely in impersonal hotel rooms, was a ready listener.
It came as no surprise to Abel to find that the other hotels were still being incompetently, and in most cases dishonestly, run, but high national unemployment encouraged most of the staff to welcome his arrival as the savior of the group’s fortunes. Abel did not find it necessary to fire staff in the grand manner he adopted when he had first arrived in Chicago. Most of those who knew of his reputation and feared his methods had already departed. Some heads had to fall and they inevitably were attached to the necks of those people who had worked with the Richmond Group for a considerable time and who could not or would not change their unorthodox ways merely because Davis Leroy was dead. In several cases, Abel found that moving personnel from one hotel to another engendered a new attitude. By the end of his first year as president the Richmond Group was operating with only half the staff it had employed in the past and showed a net loss of only a little over $100,000. The voluntary turnover among the staff was very low; Abel’s confidence in the future of the group was infectious.
Abel set himself the target of breaking even in 1932. He felt that the only way he could achieve such a rapid profitability was to let every manager in the group take the responsibility for his own hotel with a share in the profits, much in the way that Davis Leroy had treated him when he had first come to the Chicago Richmond.
Abel moved from hotel to hotel, never letting up, and never staying in one particular place for more than three weeks at a time. He did not allow anyone, other than the faithful George, his surrogate eyes and ears in Chicago, to know at which hotel he might arrive next. For months he broke this exhausting routine only to visit Zaphia or Curtis Fenton.
After a full assessment of the group’s financial position, Abel had to make some more unpleasant decisions. The most drastic was to close temporarily the two hotels, in Mobile and Charleston, that were losing so much money that he felt they would become a hopeless drain on the rest of the group’s finances. The staff at the other hotels watched the ax fall and worked even harder. Every time he arrived back at his little office in the Richmond annex in Chicago there was a clutch of memos demanding immediate attention—burst pipes in washrooms, cockroaches in kitchens, flashes of temperament in dining rooms and the inevitable dissatisfied customer who was threatening a lawsuit.
Henry Osborne reentered Abel’s life with a welcome offer of a settlement of $750,000 from Great Western Casualty, which had found no evidence to implicate Abel with Desmond Pacey in the fire at the Chicago Richmond. Lieutenant O’Malley’s evidence had proved very telling on this point and Abel realized he owed him more than a milk shake.
Abel had been happy to settle with Great Western at what he considered a fair price. Osborne, however, had suggested to him that he hold out for a larger amount and give him a percentage of the difference. Abel, whose shortcomings had never included peculation, regarded him somewhat warily afterward: if Osborne could so readily be disloyal to his own company, there was little doubt that he would have no qualms about ditching Abel when it suited him.
In the spring of 1932 Abel was somewhat surprised to receive a friendly letter from Melanie Leroy, more cordial in tone than she had ever been in person. He was flattered, even excited, and called her to make a date for dinner at the Stevens, a decision he regretted the moment they entered the dining room, for there, looking unsophisticated, tired and vulnerable, was Zaphia. Melanie, in contrast, looked ravishing in a long mint-green dress that revealed quite clearly what her body would be like if the mint were removed. Her eyes, perhaps, taking courage from the dress, seemed greener and more captivating than ever.
“It’s wonderful to see you looking so well, Abel,” she remarked as she took her seat in the center of the dining room, “and of course everybody knows how well you’re doing with the Richmond Group.”
“The Baron Group,” said Abel.
She flushed slightly. “I didn’t realize you had changed the name.”
“Yes, I changed it last year,” lied A
bel. He had in fact decided at that very moment that every hotel in the group would be known as a Baron hotel. He wondered why he had never thought of it before.
“An appropriate name,” said Melanie, smiling.
Abel was aware that Zaphia was staring at them from the other side of the room, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“You’re not working?” asked Abel, scribbling the words “Baron Group” on the back of his menu.
“No, not at the moment, but things are looking up a little. A woman with a liberal arts degree in this city has to sit around and wait for every man to be employed before she can hope to find a job.”
“If you ever want to work for the Baron Group,” said Abel, emphasizing the name slightly, “you only have to let me know.”
“No, no,” said Melanie. “I’m just fine.”
She quickly changed the subject to music and the theater. Talking to her was an unaccustomed and pleasant challenge for Abel; she still teased him, but with intelligence, making him feel more confident in her company than he had ever been in the past. The dinner went on until well after eleven, and when everyone had left the dining room, including Zaphia, ominously red-eyed, he drove Melanie home to her apartment and this time she invited him in for a drink. He sat on the end of the sofa while she poured him a prohibited whiskey and put a record on the phonograph.
“I can’t stay long,” Abel said. “Busy day tomorrow.”
“That’s what I’m supposed to say, Abel. Don’t rush away. This evening has been such fun—just like old times.”
She sat down beside him, her dress rising above her knees. Not quite like old times, he thought. Incredible legs. He made no attempt to resist when she edged toward him. In moments he found he was kissing her—or was she kissing him? His hands wandered onto those legs and then to her breasts and this time she seemed to respond willingly. It was she who eventually led him by the hand to her bedroom, folded back the coverlet neatly, turned around and asked him to unzip her. Abel obliged in nervous disbelief and switched out the light before he undressed. After that it was easy for him to put Joyce’s careful tutelage into practice. Melanie certainly was not lacking in experience herself; Abel had never enjoyed more the act of making love and fell into a deep, contented sleep.
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