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other hand, I could appreciate Purity’s body and wanton ways. I’m sure this sounds bad of me, to speculate on what it would be like to actually meet Purity Grant, and whether she would appreciate my charms. Still, I must be brutally honest: While men have many noble qualities, they are first and foremost about charming women, even speculatively, even women far too famous and exquisite for them.
    And by charm I do mean charm, to make a woman admire you. You do not get them naked unless you charm them first. Alas, this detail escapes many men.
    Under the circumstances, there was a remote chance that I might actually meet Purity, so my speculation was not entirely pathetic. I make a good first impression. I am tall, tanned, practiced, and reasonably wealthy, not a disheveled janitor freshly emerged from a boiler room. Might God grant me this little diversion as a reward for pursuing my holy mission? I looked forward to finding out just how far on my side God might be.
    I departed the jet with my smart new matching black luggage on wheels, following the herd toward Customs. Mexican officials scanned my luggage and let me pass; U.S. Customs singled me out for an inspection.
    The plump little Customs woman pawed through my bag. She managed not to smirk when she felt up my freezer bag of condoms. Then she fished out the gilded box containing the finger of Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra. She held it out to me.
    “Please reveal the contents.”
    I flashed an obliging smile, the back of my neck suddenly cool with sweat. “Of course.”
    The box lid creaked open, and the agent wrinkled her nose, the hairs on her lip bristling. “What is that?”
    I could only guess, but my instinct was that if I told the truth, they would confiscate the mummified finger as contraband. Permits were probably required to transport human body parts. After all, I’m sure Paco would not have put a human head in his luggage and expected to pass unmolested, so why a finger, even if it was six or seven hundred years old?
    “This is a cigar.”
    Her eyes met mine, looking for sincerity. “That’s a cigar?”
    I nodded slowly and blinked slowly, a gesture of integrity. “Yes, a cigar.”
    “Cuban?”
    “Not at all. It is not even a smoking cigar.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Cigars are tobacco products.”
    “Yes, of course, except this is a very old cigar, a collector’s item, not for smoking. One would sooner smoke a cigar picked off the street than this one. It is hardly really a cigar at all if it cannot be smoked. Here, smell.”
    “Puh!” Her eyes crossed, and then focused on me unhappily for having made her smell something so repugnant. I feared the finger would be confiscated.
    “It is the cigar of Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra, a conquistador from six hundred years ago.”
    “What is the declared value?”
    “Value? I have no appraisal. It is really a family heirloom and nothing more. Besides, how much could such a smelly little cigar be worth? Who would buy such a thing? It smells more like a rotting finger than a cigar, yes?”
    She had a moment of indecision, but I saw part of her face relax before she waved a hand at the door to the terminal. “You can go.”
    It is a beautiful thing when a bureaucrat who could make your life miserable realizes you are not worth her time.
    New York. It had been a long time. You would think I would head for East Brooklyn, my old stomping ground, where I grew up. That was the last place on earth I would have gone. Brooklyn was securely part of my past, and I intended to keep it that way. No, I was going to stay in Manhattan, that shining citadel of commerce and glitz. I will tell you that although I visited Manhattan a few times when I lived in New York, I felt like a tourist when I did. Yes, even in my own city, I felt like a tourist. Manhattan was a completely different place than East Brooklyn, sophisticated and fast. I always had the feeling that I had to pretend like I knew what I was doing