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More discreet if I handle him, since the money is coming from the foundation anyway.”
    Grant winced. “I hate this.”
    Dixie put a hand on his chest. “Honey lamb, you’re pooped. You’ve been trying for eight years. Enough is enough. Who would blame you? For all the cruisers they’ve wrecked chasing her around and all the grief, the Suffolk County police would probably be happy to take care of it for you for the right donation to their Toys for Tots campaign.”
    “Well, how long do I wait for him to show up, Dix? We made a ten grand down payment.”
    “Give it another week. If he doesn’t show, we’ll worry about it then.”
    “So I have to go to the coffee shop every day for lunch to see if he shows up?”
    “Aw.” She drifted closer and gave a stroke to the front of his pants. “Only one more week of coffee shop, and I promise to be very bad. Remember the belt?”
    Grant felt a sudden loss of blood pressure and couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t lose his balance. “OK, one more week of coffee shop. Can we leave?”
    Dixie licked her lips, slowly. “Darling, they haven’t done the refugee presentation yet. Have a … cock tail.”
    She turned and moved back toward the other guests.
    Robert followed with short careful steps.
    I think we need somebody very sexy for this role of Dixie. No Oscar winners.

CHAPTER
    FIVE
    THE SCREEN IS FILLED WITH the picture of my jet landing at JFK, a puff of smoke from the wheels of the plane as they touch the ground.
    After my meeting with Father Gomez, it was a small matter to find Robert Tyson Grant. The Web has many exposés about the sixty-five-year-old billionaire that detail his accomplishments, charitable works, and lifestyle.
    Such tycoon exposés are much the same. They start by trying to impress you with a man’s wealth. Grant was worth a lot, billions. They list all the companies the tycoon owns—in this case only one, Grab-A-Lot. Then they play back some history, about the humble beginnings or the inherited fortune or family business. Robert Tyson Grant was raised by an aunt in Ohio, where as a teen he got a job in warehousing. In his twenties he started his own warehousing business, and then began an export business after that, importing from the Far East just as China began a major manufacturing boom. He flooded the U.S. market with inexpensive goods, started his own chain of stores, and the economic expansion in the States took care of the rest. He took enormous investment risks, and nothing went wrong.
    Unlike Paco’s and Purity’s parents, Fate had been a loving parent to Robert Tyson Grant.
    Then the exposés discuss how this person is controversial, how some people feel he is doing harm in some way. Enemies of Robert Tyson Grant were those who felt he paid his workers poorly and bled the American market of manufacturing jobs by importing so heavily from China. On the other hand, the profiles explain, Grant gave a lot of money to cancer research because his wife died from this terrible affliction. He also gave to orphans and hospitals for children. So in the end, the article leaves it up to the reader to decide if the filthy rich person we have been reading about is a good guy or a bad guy.
    Ah, but Robert Tyson Grant’s exposés were different from those of other titans of industry in one important way.
    Purity Grant.
    As the topic of countless tabloid features for her many exploits—both with and without drugs and alcohol, both with and without the police, both with and without the various unworthy men—the exposés could not help but focus on her relationship with her father, and his inability to control his spoiled brat daughter.
    On the flight to New York, I read a number of these magazine articles that I had printed out to while away the hours among the clouds. I also had some on Purity herself.
    I have not fathered a child, so I could not fully appreciate the dismay Robert Tyson Grant felt over the misadventures of his stepdaughter. On the