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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