Grant was now doubly hooked, his eyes fixed on hers so she could detect how his pupils dilated when she guessed correctly.
“It was very difficult … a long illness … the doctors did not prevail.” Helena knew the odds were in favor of illness over accidental death. That was an easy one—the more hits she could rack up, the more she could explore other areas and risk guessing wrong.
She tightened her grip on his hand. “There is a child!”
Helena could have guessed wrongly, even though the odds were that a rich man who was married had created heirs. If so, she would have seen a dulling in his eyes and could reverse herself: No, not a child, but someone you care for very much, and sometimes see as a child. Perhaps not a young person but an old person. What were the chances that someone like Grant had no children or any elderly relatives?
Grant’s eyes tightened: There is a child.
“You are very concerned about this child. It is a boy!” He blinked, and Helena covered her eyes. “No! The child is willful like a boy. A girl, blond, very pretty. She is troubled.”
Show me a rich girl that is not willful, and a father who does not think his daughter is pretty.
Based on Grant’s age, she knew the girl had to be at least a teenager, a tender age of unfortunate choices and equally unfortunate consequences. Blond? Grant’s hair still had a hint of light brown in it, so it was just a matter of guessing that his daughter had light brown hair also. By extension, Helena guessed that a rich man’s daughter would likely have her brown hair dyed blond, or streaked so that blond was not far off the mark.
“Damn!” Grant was amazed.
“You have argued. Bitterly.” What parent does not argue with his teenager? “You worry about this child, about what will become of her. She is of great worry to you. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else.”
Grant suppressed a wince, remembering his impotence episode with Dixie.
Helena figured she had banked enough hits with Grant to go out on a limb, so she held up his ring hand in the glow of the crystal ball. “There is much danger here. The ring!”
Grant and Dixie were wide-eyed in the green glow of the orb.
“This ring has spirits, ancient spirits from your family.” Oops. “From a very old and religious family, from far away. You are not religious, but bear the ring for a different purpose. It was given to you under important circumstances, and you wear it as a badge … you feel it brings you good fortune … but this ring does not belong to you, and the spirits in the ring will bring you misfortune. The ring has helped you this far only to make you fail at the worst possible moment. You will soon be making important decisions, choices that will be influenced by the ring, by its history. There is much danger.”
“Holy cow!” Dixie gasped.
“This woman!” Helena’s eyes were ablaze, a trembling finger crooked at Dixie. “She is part of this danger, but also the solution. You must keep her close. But not too close. Do not tell her all or you will lose all.” Of course, what had she said other than the girlfriend might or might not have something to do with whatever it was that might or might not happen? Theater, palmist style.
Helena smiled gently, pleased with herself. Was she a smokin’ hot palmist or what? These two were about ready to keel over. She’d earned her fee. Best not to risk a repeat visit from these customers. With a gasp and a low moan, Helena slumped and fell from her chair to the soft carpet.
Dixie lurched to Helena’s side. “My goodness! Robbie, call 911!”
Helena awoke suddenly. “No! No! I will be all right. It is you who must beware! The vibrations, they were very strong … the child … the ring … I cannot see any more tonight. You must go! That will be sixty dollars, please.”
Robert and Dixie paid and left.
In the cab, Dixie was beside herself.
“Robbie, where did you get that ring?”
“I told you, it is a family ring. I don’t know its history.”
“Like Helena said, I do not think you’re telling me everything.” Of course, this was true. What man actually tells a woman all? “You have to get rid of it!”
Grant laughed, unconvincingly. “She was very good, that palmist woman—but Dixie, darling, that was acting. You do not really think…”
“She knew about Purity, about what a thorn she is in your side. How did she know about that?”
“Dix, she could have guessed, I do not know, but it’s an act. A good one … but that’s how they stay in business. Believe me, you’re getting too worked up about this.”
Grant did not manage to bed Dixie that night; she was too upset by Helena. He went home and drank Scotch from a decanter, and then slept … but not well.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
NO, I DID NOT BRING Nancy back to my hotel.
She brought me back to her apartment. To be brutally honest, the evening was not all that I had hoped. Believe it or not, once I was naked, all she wanted to do was pose me. Yes, like a statue, and while I stood there naked she danced to flute music. This unsatisfactory perversion was new to me. Perhaps worse, even when I did kiss her, she did so with her teeth closed. Have you ever heard of anything so infuriating? Nancy was one of these overly coy women you hear about that frustrate men to the brink of insanity. She kept calling me her muse. I am not even sure what “muse” means. Anyway, I came up with the idea of her posing naked with me so I could have a better shot at moving things along toward the bed. No success. I finally succumbed to the nebbiolo, dove into her bed, and slept. The new day found Nancy still dancing to flute music in the living room. I think she may have been on drugs of some sort, but I cannot say for sure. Her muse managed to slip out unnoticed.
Which was why I was late the next morning in my holy mission. I had to go back to my hotel first and put on a fresh suit and, of course, pick up the humidor with the finger inside.
I entered the glass tower of Grant Industries on Sixth Avenue at 11:30 A.M. I left at 11:40 A.M. The large guard told me nobody is even allowed beyond the lobby without an appointment. So he lent me his phone, and I called up to the offices and was told that Mr. Grant was in meetings all day. When they asked my business, I told them I was La Paz gentry, and that I came at the behest of the Catholic Diocese of Guadalupe, on business of a personal nature. She said that I should call back later and they would see if they could schedule me.
My first attempt had not gone as well as I hoped it might.
On the street, I turned the corner and went into an inexpensive restaurant called the Red Flame. At 11:45 in the morning you would think such a place would be empty. You would be mistaken. I had to go all the way around the side to what looked like an open booth at the end next to the wall, but there was a placard there that read: RESERVED. Exasperated by my sexual misadventure, by my failed attempt to meet Grant, and now by finding reserved seating in a diner—of all things—I straddled a stool at the counter and ordered a coffee and grilled cheese.
I resolved to shake off my encounter with Nancy—I could not stumble over such things in my holy march toward reuniting the ring with the finger of my ancestor. How could I have known that Nancy would be so relentlessly coy?
So I would call Grant Industries that afternoon and see. Perhaps Grant would see me, thinking I was there for a charity of some sort. I was an idiot to think that he would handle charitable institutions himself, but I did not know at that time about the rich and their chummy charities. Nor had I any reason to believe that Grant knew the ring came from La Paz, much less that it belonged to my ancestor, much less that it came from a desecrated relic and holy shrine.
The grilled cheese was excellent. You know, they do not make good grilled cheese in La Paz, or anywhere that I have been in Baja Sur. A quesadilla is not the same thing.
I heard someone sit at the reserved table behind me. This I had to see: What kind of man reserves a table at the Red Flame Diner? Some rich, entitled bastard, no doubt.
Sure enough, he looked the part: steel gray
hair, wide jaw, three-piece suit.
I turned back to my grilled cheese and took a bite.
The crunch of the toasted bread became the strum of harps in my head. I looked again. Yes, it was Robert Tyson Grant at the table behind me, inspecting the menu nervously. I stood.
“Señor?”
He glanced up at me, then back to his menu. “I’ll have the Caesar salad, hold the anchovies. And an iced tea.”
“Señor Grant, I am not your waiter. My name is Martinez. I have been sent from Mexico.”
You could have stuck an anchovy in his ear and he would not have looked more surprised. He gulped and said, “You’re here.”
“Yes, as you can see. I left a message with your secretary that I was here. I do not know if she gave you the message, but—”
“Gentlemen?” A rather pretty blonde stood over us waiting for our order. An actress, I thought.
Grant just stared at her, unable to speak, so I spoke for him. “He will have the Caesar salad plate, no anchovies, and an iced tea. My food is on the counter, there, I was waiting for my friend here and did not know this was his table. Just the same, I will have another grilled cheese, rye and American this time, and another coffee.”
The waitress left us, and Grant was staring at me like I would surely burst into flame. Helena’s insights into his curse from the previous night had made him jumpy.
“Is something wrong, señor?” My focus shifted to his right fist and the buttery gold ring bearing the cross of Caravaca.
“You called my secretary?” His eyes blinked rapidly. “But we were to meet here.”
“Yes, so we have, which is good fortune as we have a very important matter to discuss.”
“Look,” he began in a whisper. “I’m not used to this sort … this sort of thing. My reputation … this is very delicate. In fact, call this number; ask for Dixie, she’ll arrange everything.”
With that he jumped to his feet.
“Señor, please, stay and enjoy your salad.”
“Not at this time, thank you.” He strode from the table and out the front of the restaurant.
I said to myself, “That went well.”
Except that the rich guy stuck me with the tab for his Caesar salad and iced tea. Even so, the second grilled cheese was actually better than the first.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
DIXIE WAS RIGHT. PACO WAS not punctual. In fact, even as I sat in the Red Flame enjoying my second grilled cheese, the Headhunter was still in Texas. He was lucky to have even been that close to New York.
The border crossing had gone wrong when the pickup truck stalled in the desert. Border patrols spotted their flashlights as Paco, the driver, and four other men tried to coax the truck back to life. They were rounded up and put into a school bus with fifty other illegals. Paco had tossed his bag of guns into the scrub, but when he was patted down the gringos missed the hatchet in the small of his back. That is how the Honduran farmers he grew up with carried their hatchets home, tucked into the back of their pants, blade nestled between their shoulder blades, where scar tissue and calluses formed to protect them from the edges.
At a transfer point near the border, Paco ducked back under the bus and scuttled behind a portapotty. As his countrymen were being herded by flashlights into a set of new buses, Paco skipped off across the dark desert, headed for a parking lot. He had to climb a fence to get there, but he found haven in the bed of a pickup truck next to some roofing supplies under a bed cover.
He awoke hours later when the owner of the truck drove out of the parking lot. Paco had no idea where he would end up, but when the truck stopped, it was at a convenience store. The driver was inside buying coffee when Paco crept from under the cover. The amber glow of a Texas dawn warmed him as he headed east along the highway.
After an hour’s walk, the sun high, he heard a truck pulling onto the shoulder behind him. He expected the border patrol, but saw it was a van packed with migrant workers. The driver motioned to him. Paco knew he could not walk to New York. He needed to get to Houston, soon, to catch that bus. Since he’d ditched his bag with the guns in the desert before the border patrol grabbed him, he had no weapons and did not know what he would do to kill his target.
So Paco shambled over to the car window, where the driver’s round scarred face shone darkly like a hammered brass plate. They spoke in Spanish, naturally, so you will want to use subtitles.
“Work?” the driver said.
“I am headed to Houston.”
“My crew is a man short.”
“I need transport to Houston. I have work in New York.”
The mention of New York seemed to impress Plate Face. “That is a long way. You have money?”
“Can you get me to Houston?”
“You come across last night?”
“I need a ride.”
“I know friends who can help. If you have money.”
“How far can you take me?”
“Not to Houston, but in that direction. And like I said…”
“Is there room in there?”
“There’s always room for another countryman.”
The passengers slid open the side door and helped Paco squeeze inside.
Lurching forward, the van rattled back onto the highway, heading east.
Paco was back on his way to New York.
Slowly.
CHAPTER
NINE
THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES WERE still fresh on my mind when I exited the subway at Lexington and East Seventy-seventh Street and walked east. I had made the call to this woman Dixie and had arranged an appointment immediately. God was still on my side. Better to get this business with the ring completed as soon as possible.
The meeting location was near an esplanade, a raised pedestrian boulevard perched over the FDR Drive and the East River. The access to this esplanade was five long crosstown blocks east of the subway, at an East Eighty-first Street cul-de-sac. It was a nice day so I did not mind the exercise, but it was warm so my jacket was thumbed over my shoulder. When I reached the esplanade, a panoramic view of the East River lay before me. Fat power yachts and tour boats plowed the turgid green river, and glassy green apartment buildings across the channel on Roosevelt Island twinkled in the afternoon sun. I laid a course north along the esplanade through a steady stream of Rollerbladers and dog walkers. Benches faced the water to my right and were strewn with sunbathers.
Sturdy stone apartment buildings on my left soon parted to reveal a leafy park. As instructed, I exited into this park and curled down toward where the path encircled a statue. It was the statue of Peter Pan, a bad one. It didn’t look anything like Robin Williams.
I spotted her immediately, and she me.
With a thin waist and compact behind, she was in black slacks and a white wraparound halter that cradled her implants to wonderful effect. Her raven hair curled at her temples like little devil horns.
By the way her blue eyes inspected mine, I knew she was not displeased by my appearance. A little surprised, in fact.
I raised an eyebrow and took her hand. “I am Morty.”
“No you’re not.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “You’re cute.”
I cocked the other eyebrow, favoring her with a knowing smile. That was my way of disguising the displeasure of being called cute.
“Perhaps this is so,” was my reply, “but I can also be dangerous.”
I am so charming sometimes I can hardly stand it.
She shifted her weight to the other hip and curled her hand around my bicep. “I would hope so.” We began to walk slowly around the bad Robin Williams statue. “So you first. I have to be careful.”
“Very well. May I call you Dixie?”
“Mmm.”
“Well, Dixie, I have come from La Paz, Mexico, on a quest. Of course, I had no idea I would have the pleasure of expediting this quest with someone as fascinating as yourself.”
If Ant
onio Banderas is not available for this movie, I implore you to see if Benjamin Bratt or Jimmy Smits is still around. I suppose by now Erik Estrada is up on blocks in Pasadena.
She smiled to herself. “Go on.”
“This quest of mine is to make things right, to correct an intolerable situation that has gone on for far too long. I am not here to assign blame, let me be clear. That is not my place. Only God can judge men.”
“I see you are being careful, too. Let’s do be clear, though. How much do you want?”
“It is not money Father Gomez seeks.”
She knit her brow. “Gomez?”
“Father Gomez. He is the one who sent me, from the orphanage Nuestra Señora de Cortez. I know Robert Tyson Grant is a very generous and charitable man, but it is not charity I seek.”
“Ah, OK. So what will it take to make things right with Father Gomez?”
“Do you not even want to know the details of my quest?”
“Less I know the better. So we’re talking about a donation? Is there a size donation you had in mind?”
I took from my side pocket the box containing the finger and creaked it open. “This is the finger of a conquistador. Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra. It is very old, a religious relic, and it is very powerful. Yet it has been desecrated.”
Dixie wrinkled her adorable little nose, and her eyes betrayed concern, but she held her tongue. I continued.
“Somehow this finger has become separated from the gold Hapsburg ring bearing the cross of Caravaca. That ring is now on Robert Tyson Grant’s finger instead of this one. I seek to return the ring to the desiccated finger of my ancestor, Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra.”
Dixie released my arm and turned to me. “You mean to say all you want to complete your quest is that ring? The one Bobbie wears?”
“God willing. That is why I am here.”
“You’re here to right a wrong, to correct a situation that has gone on far too long?”
“You are as perceptive as you are beautiful.”
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