A Fare To Remember_ Just Whistle_Driven - Vicki Lewis Thompson [3]
“That’s a fact.” Mario decided that even if the redhead didn’t take to Zach, or vice versa, she could use some help with this job quest. “I know somebody who might have a connection at one of the publishing houses.” That was stretching things a bit, but odds were it was true. A glance in the rearview mirror told him the redhead was smiling again.
“Look at that,” she said. “I’m already networking.”
“This guy I know is an investment counselor. Name’s Zachary Evans, but he mostly goes by Zach. I’m pretty sure one of his clients works for a publishing house.” Put that way, it sounded kind of lame. Mario wondered if she’d question the value of talking to Zach.
Instead she seemed eager. “Great! Do you have his number?”
“Not on me, but I should be seeing him this morning. I can give him your name and have him call the Pearson.”
“That would be terrific. My name’s Hannah Robertson. I don’t have any business cards, but I could write it down for you.” She rummaged in her purse.
“That’s okay. I’ll remember.” As a cop, Mario had been famous for his recall. He still prided himself on that.
“All right, then. I’ll look forward to hearing from Zach Evans.”
They rode in silence for a while. Mario could have asked a bunch more questions, but he’d learned that too many questions could make a passenger suspicious of his motives. So he waited for her to make the next conversational move.
Finally she spoke again. “You know, it’s nice that you have pictures of your family taped on your dash. It makes the cab look homey and cheerful.”
“They’re not exactly my family.” So she’d been studying his pictures. Ordinarily Mario was happy to talk about his matchmaking hobby, but not when he was in the process of trying to hook people up. People got hinky if they thought he was doing that. “Just a bunch of good friends.”
“Well, that’s still nice. Everybody looks so happy in those pictures. You must have a lot of good-natured friends.”
“Life’s too short to have bad-natured ones.” Mario only matched up people who were pleasant. Maybe that was why he had such an astounding success ratio, ninety percent.
“Is Zach Evans in one of those pictures?”
“No, I don’t happen to have a picture of him yet.” But if everything works out the way I’m hoping, I will soon.
IRIS DIDN’T USUALLY GIVE Zach a hard sell, so he wondered why she was suddenly pushing the pastelitos and urging him to buy a second cup of espresso. He hoped she didn’t have money troubles. A woman as fiercely independent as Iris would die before admitting that she had problems in that area, but she might increase the sales pressure to generate better cash flow.
What the hell. He’d started going into the office an hour early, so it wasn’t like he’d be late to work if he hung around the coffee stand a little longer. There’d be another bus along later. And two espressos might be exactly what he needed today to nail his monthly quota and secure his move to that corner office Drake Medford had promised him.
An image of Ed, the guy currently in that corner office, flashed through his mind. Ed had been around for years and no longer seemed to care about his monthly quota. If you worked for Drake Medford, that was a bad thing. Zach told himself not to think about where Ed would end up. That wasn’t his responsibility.
So he drank his second espresso, munched on a flaky pastelito and listened to Iris’s favorite Celia Cruz CD while some guys in dreadlocks went strolling by. At times like this he wondered what the folks back in Auburn, Illinois, would make of it all. No one in his family had expressed any desire to visit, so he’d had to make trips home in order to see them.
Because that only happened about once a year, he’d constructed his own little support group in Manhattan, and Iris was definitely included. He would hate to think she’d fallen on hard times. Maybe he could smoke out some information on her financial picture and see if he could guide her in some