Last Chance for Glory (7 page)

Blake had worked with these men when he’d first come into Manhattan Executive as a computer technician. Some, he knew, like Vinnie Cappolino, were as crazy as the criminals they hunted.

“Martin? You can go in now.” Cynthia’s smile was dazzling, as always. “It’s nice to have you back.”

“Is that a prophecy, Cyn? Or do you know something I don’t?”

Rumor had it that Cynthia Barret and Joanna Bardo were on-again, off-again lovers. Blake knew both well enough to be sure it wasn’t true. They
were
good friends, though. Good enough for a notoriously cheap Joanna to pay Cynthia a living wage, roughly twice the going rate for New York receptionists. What Joanna got in return was doglike devotion.

“You better go in, Marty.” The smile had disappeared, replaced by a slight widening of already large eyes, a quick downturn at the corners of the mouth.

I’m in trouble, Blake thought, as he made his way down the hall. I’m in trouble, and I don’t know why.

But he did know that Joanna liked to think of her business as a family, had actually made the comparison on several occasions. She, of course, was the mother, and she loved all her children, even the roughest, even Vinnie Cappolino who was still employed by Manhattan Executive, despite having destroyed Joanna’s two-thousand-dollar couch.

Blake, on the other hand, thought of Manhattan Executive as a medieval court with Joanna Bardo seated firmly on the throne. The despot, not the matriarch, arbitrary, capricious, occasionally ruthless.

“Marty, it’s good to see you again.”

The smile seemed genuine enough, but then, everything about Joanna Bardo seemed genuine, from the gathered drapes framing the windows, to the Chippendale chairs in front of her desk, to her double-breasted Karl Lagerfeld business suit, to the pearl choker encircling her throat. Everything
seemed
genuine, but Blake knew that half the “antiques” were actually stressed reproductions. That Joanna’s suit, shoes, and jewelry came from a garment-center loan shark whose corporate offices were regularly swept for bugs and taps by Manhattan Executive technicians.

“It’s nice to be home.” If Joanna wanted to be rid of him, Blake was determined to make it as hard as possible.

“Sit down, Marty. Have a cup of coffee.”

As if by magic, Cynthia Barret, bearing Manhattan Exec’s top-of-the-line coffee service, appeared in the doorway.

“That’s bad,” Blake said, as soon as they were alone. He pointed to the tray, then sat down.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m not a CEO. Because I’m not even a senior vice president. Because you didn’t offer me a mug and let me fill it myself.”

Blake watched Joanna compose her features. She hadn’t changed much. The same slightly protruding Mediterranean eyes, with their dark, arching brows, dominated a straight nose, cupid’s-bow mouth, and small, sharp chin. Set in a narrow frame, her doe-eyed, vulnerable face appeared soft and weak. Which was a big joke to Blake, who knew that carefully maintained expression masked a sharp, straight-for-the-jugular intelligence. He’d seen Joanna in defense of her realm, her queendom, her subjects. Seen times when she showed all the vulnerability of a cornered wolverine.

“When you haven’t been somewhere for more than a year, you become a special visitor.”

Blake shrugged, stalled for time. Wondering if she’d been hurt by his neglect. If he was dealing with nothing worse than a bruised ego.

“The thing of it is, Joanna, I came within a yard of going to jail for ten years, within an inch of losing my license forever. So, I decided to do a Caesar’s wife bit. You know—above suspicion.” He gave her the crooked smile, but she didn’t buy it. Her expression remained neutral, remote.

“And that’s why you decided to drive a … a taxicab?”

“I had to eat.”

“With your background, you could have found something in the computer field. Even if it was just data processing. You could have found something.” She shook her head decisively. “Hell, Marty, you could have worked here. With our computers. I needed you.”

“You’re accusing me of disloyalty?” It was like being told the sky was green. “In case you’ve forgotten, Joanna, I was the one who kept your ass out of jail.”

“I know that, Marty, but …”

“Then act like it.”

“… but it’s not that simple.”

“The Attorney General thought it was
that
simple. He was ready to cut me loose altogether.” Blake was near to losing it. He sat back in the chair, crossed his legs, took a deep breath. “I know you would have given me some kind of a job, if I’d asked for it, but they play a lot of funny games back in that computer room. You bill your clients for those games, remember? As for me, with the AG looking over my shoulder, I figured it was best to stay away. Give the powers-that-be a chance to forget Marty Blake.”

“But, a
taxicab?”
Her fingers went to the pearls around her throat, caressed them for a moment. “You could have done better.”

“Did it offend you?” Maybe she was pissed because he hadn’t maintained the corporate image demanded of Manhattan Executive investigators. Maybe she was just running from the fact that her father had spent all forty years of his working life in the Fulton Fish Market.

“You could have done better,” she repeated.

“Hey, we’re in the middle of a recession. I paid the rent and bought the groceries while I killed time. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was doing; I drove a cab every summer all through college. Let me tell you something, Joanna. In fact, let me tell you two somethings: first, I can’t punch a clock any more. It’s too depressing. Second, I can’t have a boss hanging on my shoulder. I have to be out in the field. Driving kept me on the street, which, under the circumstances, was the best I could do. You understand?”

Suddenly, Blake realized that she’d won. Without his knowing quite how, she’d put him on the defensive when logic demanded the reverse. Once again, as he had many times before, he found himself envying her premeditation. Blake liked to think of himself as an analytical type, but compared to Joanna Bardo, he was more like an ape trying to be human.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Because if your plan included stepping back into your old shoes, it’s not going to be that simple.”

She lifted the cup, brought it to her lips, a gesture at once utterly precise and utterly feminine. Her eyes gave nothing away, not a single thing. Blake, fumbling for his own cup, remembered that Joanna had once been a role model for a twenty-one-year-old computer technician just out of City College.

Maybe, he thought, that’s why this game we’re playing is so bitter.

“Keep goin’, Joanna. I don’t have anything to say. Yet.”

“When the accusations against you became public, we lost fifty-five percent of our corporate clientele.” She flashed a bitter smile. “I suppose you could say they asserted their own Caesar’s-wife defense. ‘So sorry, Joanna, but we can’t afford to have our glorious corporate image associated with your degraded criminal enterprise.’”

“Or words to that effect?”

“Well, we survived, Marty. Without laying off personnel.”

“Got the boys in the back office to work overtime, did you?” As far as Blake could see, there was no other way Manhattan Executive
could
have survived. The only thing bail bondsmen have to protect is money and money doesn’t worry about its corporate image.

“It was a group effort. Everybody pulled.” She looked down at the polished surface of her desk, shook her head. “We had to send Paul Rosenbaum to Pittsburgh after a rapist. It would have been funny, if we weren’t so desperate.”

Paul Rosenbaum was Manhattan Exec’s forensic accountant. When enterprising executives cooked the books, he was the chef who unraveled the recipe. Blake tried to imagine him slinking through the mean streets of Pittsburgh, pushing his way into crowded biker bars, confronting wired speed freaks with tattooed eyelids.

“Things are better, now.” Joanna raised her eyes to meet Blake’s. “Partly because you didn’t go to trial and partly because people forget. But that doesn’t mean we’re not treading water. It doesn’t mean I can put you back in a front office.”

The bottom line. Blake couldn’t repress a bitter frown. Joanna’s corporate clients had betrayed her and now she was going to betray him.

“So, where do you want to put me, Joanna. In the computer room? Or, maybe in the back with the bounty hunters?”

“The skip tracers,” she automatically corrected. At one time, it’d been a standing joke between them. “Understand something, Marty. Your call last week caught me off guard. After a year without a word, I’d just assumed that you’d made other arrangements, maybe gone into business on your own.”

“Cut the crap, Joanna. You’ve never been ‘off guard’ in your life.”

She rose, crossed to the window behind her desk, pulled the curtain aside. The view of Midtown from her eighth-floor Greene Street loft was spectacular. Blake had often wondered why she’d chosen to cover the windows with curtains and the curtains with drapes.

“True or not, it doesn’t change the facts. I
can’t
put you in a front office.”

Blake wanted to get up and smack her. He wanted to show her what would have happened if he’d given in to the AG. If he’d sent Joanna Bardo to prison. He, himself, had spent the worst forty-eight hours of his life in the holding pens at Central Booking. Discovering that his kind of tough didn’t amount to shit in a world where men kill other men for a pair of sneakers. Kill them in their sleep.

“You wanna talk about severance pay? As long as you’re firing me.”

“It doesn’t have to come to that.” She let the curtain drop, turned to face him. “We might be able to work something out.”

Perfect, Blake thought. In the court of a ruling monarch, nothing is ever straightforward. Rituals must be observed, psyches maneuvered. He felt like bowing.

“Something?”

“Take a walk with me.”

Blake (following, naturally) noted the rise and fall of Joanna’s buttocks with some satisfaction. For all her aristocratic pretensions, she had a peasant’s fleshy ass, wide hips, and heavy, rippling thighs.

She led him out of the office and down a short hallway to a door. A door, as Blake well knew, that led to the infamous back offices.

“Look here, Joanna, in case I haven’t made it clear, I have no desire to become a bounty hunter.”

“Skip tracer.”

“Whatever you want to call it. It’s too dangerous, too crazy.” The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach announced (to him, at least) the fact that he
would
take it. That he had no real choice in the matter. If Joanna wouldn’t accept him, neither would any of the four or five other firms working the elite end of the business. What it boiled down to was the sleaze or another line of work.

“Actually, that’s not what I had in mind.”

Joanna pushed the door open to reveal a large, very dusty, very empty room. A year ago, it would have been crowded with Joanna’s cowboys.

Blake stepped inside, looked around. The smaller offices were empty as well. “I guess it’s been longer than I thought.”

“I incorporated their function under the name Woodside Investigations and moved the operation out to Queens. Manhattan Executive does their computer work, and bills them for it. That’s the only connection.”

“It must have been pretty expensive. Didn’t you say you were in trouble financially?”

“Vinnie Cappolino and Walter Francis put up most of the money. They own one hundred percent of the stock.”

“Sounds like the partnership from hell. Walter’s less reliable than Vinnie. How long before one of them self-destructs? Six months? A year?

“By that time, I won’t need them.”

Blake took a step back, thinking that it should have been obvious. “Why didn’t you just close the operation down? Why the charade?”

“Vinnie, Walter, and all the rest of them have been with me for a long time.” She hesitated, reached into her jacket pocket for the cigarettes she’d given up years before. Her hand came out empty, and she looked at it for a moment before turning back to Marty Blake. “Over the last few months, we’ve begun to do some political consulting. Nothing big; not yet, but the potential is enormous. I don’t have to tell you that politicians and political parties are even more image-conscious than our corporate clientele. ‘Discreet’ is the word they like to use.

“I get the point, Joanna, but, still, why the charade?”

“Because they deserve a chance. Vinnie and Walter. They deserve a chance to make their own mistakes. I owe that to them, and I always pay my debts.”

Blake nodded wisely. She was finally getting down to it.

“No markers, Joanna?”

“Debts cloud the future, Marty. Especially if you can’t control when, where, and how they’re to be repaid.”

Blake turned and walked back to Joanna’s office, leaving her to trail behind. When they were inside, when he was comfortably seated, he got to the point.

“Repay me, Joanna,” he said calmly.

“I don’t know that I can ever properly …”

“Cut the crap. You’re not the queen of fucking England. Just tell me what you have in mind.”

She flinched at the obscenity, took a second to gather herself.

“I want you to open your own firm.”

“Like good old Vinnie and good old Walter?”

“You’re different, Marty. You’re stable, educated.” She leaned forward, all business. “Let me give you a scenario, then tell me what you’d do. A client calls, a very important client who holds the key to a very important account. He tells you that his sister’s husband took off with the kids. ‘Nasty divorce; bad situation; Sis can’t stop crying; Mom can’t live without her grandchildren.’ He wants—no,
expects
—you to find the children. What do you do?”

Blake shrugged. You couldn’t refuse and you couldn’t accept. The matrimonial end of the business was held in even lower repute than bounty hunting.

“Scenario number two.” Joanna paused to refill their cups. Without asking, she added a lump of sugar and a small dollop of cream to Blake’s, then passed it over. “Councilman Smith calls. His brother, Joe, has been arrested for armed robbery. Joe’s lawyer wants to hire a private detective to scare up witnesses, establish an alibi. All very discreet, of course, because Councilman Smith runs on a law-and-order platform. He can’t be seen to favor common criminals, related or not. In fact, he’s already released a statement declaring his faith in the system.”