Chapter 57: The Man for the Job

Joe Suarez’s retirement apparently attracted more applicants than some of Vance Holdings’ executive positions.

Alexander discovered this when Human Resources sent him the latest count.

He stared at the number.

"Seriously?"

The HR manager smiled carefully.

"Apparently, being the personal driver of Alexander Vance is considered a desirable position."

"It’s driving."

Joe, seated several feet away, coughed.

Alexander looked at him.

"What?"

"Nothing, sir."

"You disagree?"

Joe folded his hands over his stomach.

"It’s driving, yes."

The pause was suspicious.

Alexander narrowed his eyes. "But?"

"The car is usually very cooperative, sir."

Alexander frowned.

The HR manager suddenly became very interested in her tablet.

Within days of circulating the vacancy internally and through selected recruitment channels, applications arrived through nearly every available method. One applicant even submitted his credentials in a leather folder embossed with his initials, which Alexander immediately found excessive for a man applying to spend most of his working day behind a steering wheel.

Unfortunately, choosing Joe’s replacement wasn’t nearly as simple as finding someone with a clean driving record.

Alexander already knew that. He simply hadn’t appreciated how many things Joe did automatically until someone asked him to define them.

"What exactly are you looking for?" HR asked.

Alexander opened his mouth.

Then stopped.

His first instinct was embarrassingly simple.

"Ask Joe."

Joe smiled.

Alexander pointed at him.

"Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were going to."

"Possibly."

So Alexander began making a list, only to discover that what he wanted wasn’t particularly easy to put into one.

Knowing the city was important, of course. A personal driver couldn’t depend entirely on GPS when roads closed without warning or traffic turned what should’ve been a twenty-minute trip into an hour-long ordeal.

"The GPS can do most of that," one younger HR employee remarked.

Joe looked at him.

"And when the road is closed?"

"The GPS reroutes."

"And when everyone else’s GPS reroutes them to the same road?"

The employee went quiet.

Joe nodded.

"Exactly."

Some mechanical familiarity would help too. Nobody expected Alexander’s driver to repair an engine on the side of the road, but he should know enough about the vehicle to recognize when something wasn’t right.

Beyond that, the job required a surprisingly particular temperament.

A CEO’s schedule rarely remained exactly as planned. Meetings ran late, flights were delayed, and an afternoon that looked empty in the morning could be completely rearranged by lunch. Whoever took Joe’s place needed enough patience to adapt without becoming irritated every time Alexander’s schedule changed.

Alexander looked at Joe.

"How have you never complained?"

"I complain."

"When?"

"At home."

Alexander stared.

Joe smiled.

"My wife knows everything wrong with traffic in this city."

"That’s reassuring."

"She stopped listening fifteen years ago."

Joe had been doing other things for so long that Alexander barely noticed them anymore.

He knew when conversation was welcome and when his passenger wanted silence. He remembered appointments without needing constant reminders, and whatever he happened to overhear from the driver’s seat stayed there.

More importantly, Joe never treated waiting as an inconvenience. If Alexander disappeared into a meeting for two hours, he occupied himself and was ready when his employer returned.

That kind of reliability was considerably harder to measure on a résumé.

Safety, however, was one area where Alexander refused to compromise.

The candidate needed excellent judgment behind the wheel. Being late for a meeting was never a reason to drive recklessly, and no phone call was important enough to answer while driving.

One of the shortlisted candidates discovered why during orientation.

"With this many safety rules, you’d think Sir Vance had already been in an accident."

Another man laughed.

Joe did not.

The change in his expression silenced both men before he even spoke.

"His brother died in one."

The first applicant’s smile disappeared.

"The delivery truck lost its brakes. Sir Alexander was driving the pickup."

Nobody said anything.

"He survived," Joe continued. "So if either of you thinks road safety is something worth joking about, there’s the door."

No one laughed again.

Alexander never heard about the exchange until much later.

Joe preferred it that way.

By the end of the initial screening, dozens of applicants had become twelve. Further interviews and routine medical examinations narrowed the group again, with the company looking only for reasonable assurance that each candidate could safely handle long hours behind the wheel.

The background checks focused just as heavily on employment history.

Nobody would be rejected for ordinary financial difficulties or problems at home. HR was looking for patterns that suggested poor judgment, unreliability, or dishonesty about something that could affect the job.

One candidate looked excellent on paper until HR contacted his former employers.

His driving record was clean, and nothing alarming appeared during the initial interview. His attendance history told a different story.

He’d repeatedly called in sick with little notice, and a former supervisor eventually revealed that several of those absences followed nights of heavy drinking. There were also enough late arrivals to establish that punctuality had been an ongoing problem rather than an occasional mistake.

That should have prompted further questions, not immediate rejection.

Then HR contacted another former employer.

The man had once been assigned to collect an executive from the airport after a delayed evening flight. The revised arrival time had been communicated well in advance, giving him plenty of time to adjust.

He still arrived late.

The executive had already collected his luggage and was waiting outside when his driver arrived.

Alexander closed the report.

"No."

The HR manager nodded.

"That was our recommendation."

Joe glanced at the file.

"He can drive."

"Apparently."

"But you can’t depend on him to be there."

Alexander pushed the folder aside.

"That makes the rest irrelevant."

He wasn’t looking for someone who merely knew how to operate a car.

If Alexander landed at an airport hours later than expected, he needed to know his driver would still be there. If an evening meeting ran over, he shouldn’t have to wonder whether the person waiting downstairs had decided he’d waited long enough.

Joe had spoiled him in that regard.

For years, Alexander had walked out of buildings without checking whether his driver was still outside.

Joe simply was.

Eventually, only three candidates remained.

Marco Reyes was thirty-four, with excellent route knowledge and reflexes good enough to make parallel parking look insultingly simple.

Daniel Cruz, forty-three, had twelve years of professional driving experience and was so punctual that he’d arrived thirty-five minutes early for his first interview.

Then there was Elias Navarro.

At fifty-two, Elias was a former fleet driver who’d also worked as a mechanic. His record was clean, his employment history remarkably steady, and more than one former supervisor had commented on his almost stubborn refusal to let anyone hurry him into a bad decision.

Joe studied the three files.

"Good problem."

Alexander looked over.

"What?"

"You’ve got three people worth hiring."

"I only need one."

Joe nodded.

"That’s the bad part."