“You can call me Tony,” he offered.
“OK,” I said. “Tony.”
“You look pretty different from your pictures. I honestly never would have recognized you,” he said. “But I guess that’s probably the point. So. I have to admit I was a little shocked to get a letter from you. Especially since it was post-marked in New York City. Your parents’ press team is saying that you and your brother are with them in South Africa and they aren’t releasing any other information. What’s going on here, Grace?”
“We ran away,” I said quietly. “My parents disowned my brother when they found out about Heather. But before I tell you everything that’s happened in the last two months, I need you to promise me two things.”
He folded his hands over his newspaper and was listening. I couldn’t tell if he thought I was just a dumb kid and was condescending to me, or if this unnerving patience he was exhibiting was the manner in which he usually dealt with interview sources.
“First, my next door neighbors’ little girl was hit by a cab a few days ago and the taxi company is only covering a fraction of her hospital bills. She suffered a brain contusion and brain damage and her family is not in any kind of position to pay for all of these bills out of the blue.”
“I can’t ask my employer to pay anyone’s hospital bills,” Tony said.
“That’s not what I’m asking, and I’m not a stupid teenager,” I retorted. After everything I had been through in the last few weeks, I didn’t want to be spoken to as if I was just some spoiled rich kid who had no idea how the world worked. “You’re a journalist. You know other journalists. Could you see if you could get the NY Post and the Daily News or even the Times to write a story about the cab company, and about a fundraiser I’m organizing to raise money for her hospital bills?”
I hadn’t really thought about organizing a fundraiser until the words were out of my mouth. But of course I could organize a fundraiser. This kind of thing was what I had been raised to do. I could ask where the Chans went to church and have a bake sale, or ask local businesses to donate simple items, like a gift certificate for a dinner for two, and sell raffle tickets. Local fundraisers had been my mother’s main purpose in life when I was a little girl, long before the compound had been built and she refocused her efforts on producing cable television shows and event-planning for my father.
Tony stirred his coffee, clearly not knowing what to do with me. This pint-sized, bossy, rainbow-haired girl was surely not the respectful, mild-mannered evangelist’s daughter he had been expecting to meet.
“I can’t promise anything, but I can certainly try my best. What’s the girl’s name?” he asked.
By disclosing Quian’s name I was putting the secret location of our own residence at risk, but I decided I was going to have no choice but to trust this guy. “It’s Quian Chan. She’s at NYU Downtown, but they may transfer her to midtown as soon as she’s stable enough. Her father is a graduate student at Pace.”
To my surprise, Tony jotted all of this information down in his own moleskin book.
“And secondly, I don’t want anything I tell you to be used against my parents,” I said. The tone of the article in Time had been somewhat even-handed, not especially pro or against my parents or their business activities, despite the incriminating treatment of Daddy’s picture on the cover. I had reason to believe that if he were to write about my parents’ story again, he would do so with a fair perspective.
Tony stared at me intently for a moment before sipping his coffee and replying. “I can’t commit to that. Anything I put into print is open to the public for interpretation. Your parents are in serious trouble. I can do my best to incorporate information you provide me with into my coverage fairly, but rest assured I’m going to fact-check anything you tell me, and if the prosecutors investigating your parents find something in my writing that they research further… that’s out of my control.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. This was an incredibly important meeting. I didn’t know it then, but I had my suspicions, that I was the only insider from The Church of the Spirit who was willing to talk to the press about the allegations against my parents.
Tony raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you want anything to eat?”
“I don’t have any money.”
The words blurted out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop them. How idiotic I must have sounded to him, the daughter of millionaires not having two spare dollars for a raspberry scone.
“This is an official interview. I can expense your breakfast. Why don’t you go place an order and I’ll e-mail my editor and tell him that I’m going to be in late.”
My rumbling stomach was doing me in. As I ordered breakfast from the girl behind the counter, I sincerely hoped I wasn’t selling my parents out for chocolate chip pancakes. When I turned to take my seat across from Tony again, I realized that he had said my parents were in serious trouble. He hadn’t made any mention of my brother.
“So what’s going on with my brother’s case?” I asked. “Is he supposed to appear in court in mid-January?”
Tony looked shocked, and actually was shocked, that neither I nor Aaron knew the current status of the court proceedings. I had to back up in our conversation by two months and tell him the whole story of how Aaron had called me at school, how we had arrived in New York, and how we didn’t exactly have a ton of money for newspapers and wireless internet service and magazines to keep up with current events.
“The court date on January 17 in Phoenix is a hearing,” Tony told me. “Your brother doesn’t have to be there, but it really would be in his best interest to show up. I could be wrong about this, I’m wrong all the time, actually, but there’s no real case against him. This is a smoke screen, it’s just a political tactic. It’s an election year and everyone likes to challenge Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, your brother is caught in the cross-fire.”
“He didn’t tell her to do it,” I blurted. “My brother is pro-life. He would never advise anyone to have an abortion. But he doesn’t want to speak to the press and call Heather a liar.”
“Well, hopefully he won’t have to,” Tony told me. “If you guys really aren’t in contact with your parents and your brother can’t arrange for his own travel to Arizona, at a minimum, he should write a private letter to the judge explaining his side of the story. But, I am quite confident that there are a lot of attorneys who would be willing to take on a high-profile case like his, pro-bono.”
I shrugged. It wasn’t a matter of paying an attorney that my brother would oppose, it was the entire principle of going to court, having to face Heather, and state that she was lying.
“When was the last time you spoke with your parents, Grace?”
“The day we left,” I said. “It was the day after I got back from Colombia, I called my mom. It must have been… October twenty-seventh? Eighth? I can’t remember exactly.”
Over the course of the entire morning, Tony explained with admirable patience the whole heap of trouble that my parents were in financially. The Church of the Spirit was structured as a corporation, under which numerous non-for-profit corporations had been set up for fundraising. This was no surprise to me; I was familiar with the names of them as Tony rattled off a few. There was Sarah’s House, the after-school and day care in downtown Phoenix for the children of single mothers. There was the Good Shepherd Foundation, which administered medical supplies to a variety of hospitals in South Africa. There was Aaron’s Fund, a not-for-profit that my father had set up after our trip to Vietnam to raise money for children who needed transplants.
“Have you ever heard of the Amazing Grace Foundation?” Tony asked me gently.
I shook my head.
“The Church of the Spirit has been allocating funds raised for other projects to that not-for-profit group, which, on the books, looks like it’s a shelter for abused women in India,” Tony said. “A lot of money has been put into that fund. Almost fifty percent of mon
ey that was raised last year during a Christmas fundraising drive to benefit Sarah’s House was instead put into an account for the Amazing Grace Foundation.”
I remembered with reluctance the year before, when my parents had hosted a huge black-tie dinner three days before our flight to Kitzbuhel for the purpose of raising funds to put a new roof on the building in downtown Phoenix where Sarah’s House was operating. It was so fancy that Aaron and I had not been permitted to attend.
“And what looks like all of the donations made from the sale of a cookbook…”
Tony ruffled through a file folder that he pulled out of his messenger bag. “A cookbook called Recipe for Hope, which was advertised in your parents’ magazine.”
I knew the book well; I had helped select the photo for the cover and had convinced Mama to go with a picture of a colorful salad instead of a chocolate melt-down cake. Mama and Anna had written it with recipe submissions from members of our church, submitted via our website, and 100% of all profits were supposed to have gone to a school for kids with special needs in Mexico City. I had been to that school. I knew it was real.
“So… all of those donations were reallocated… What’s the big deal? Maybe they were reallocated because Daddy raised more money than he expected and was able to buy the roof for the day care center.”
“Well, the problem is, Grace, money has been reallocated to that project for years. Now, there is an Amazing Grace Foundation,” Tony said. “I mean, the foundation exists on paper. Your parents are both on the board, as are a few other people of significance from your father’s cable network. But there is no shelter in India. There’s nothing at the address there. The Church of the Spirit owns the building located there, but it’s a truck stop. Literally, a warehouse where trucks park overnight.”
My hands were growing cold. I had already eaten all of my pancakes and was playing with the paper napkin I had draped over my empty plate.
“Then where’s the money going?” I asked.
Tony smiled at me. “That’s the question everyone wants to know.”
He pulled out his fancy mobile phone and began tapping into its keyboard.
I mulled this over in silence for a few minutes. My father had created a fraudulent business entity to hide money, and he’d named it after me. What was particularly gross about the whole thing to me was that if there had, in fact, been an organization in India named after me, established to help abused women, I would have been enormously proud of it. I would have wanted to visit it and volunteer there. I couldn’t believe that my own parents would knowingly mislead church members the way Tony was suggesting. That they would break the law, hide money, and who knows what other kind of crimes they had been committing.
“I find this all very hard to believe,” I admitted. “My parents are very conscientious people. I disagree with their reaction to my brother’s predicament, but I don’t think they’d steal.”
“I understand,” Tony said calmly. “It’s always a surprise to find out when people we love have done unpleasant things. But the Amazing Grace Foundation is one of three funds suspected to be fraudulent that prosecutors are investigating. Raising money for fraudulent purposes is highly illegal. Your father, right now, could be facing a life sentence in prison.”
He turned the mobile phone he was cradling in his hand to face me so that I could see the picture on it. It was a GPS photograph in street view of a dusty warehouse on a busy road in what looked like India, but I had never been to India, so I wasn’t sure.
“Doesn’t look like a shelter for women, does it?” Tony asked me.
I shivered. It wasn’t cold in the café, but the thought of Daddy, my Daddy, the dad who used to call me nightly and knew everything about all my closest friends and teachers and everything else I shared with him about school, was probably going to jail. It seemed unthinkable, impossible.
“What about Mama?” I asked meekly.
“There’s no proof that your mother knew anything about the fraud,” Tony said. “Yet. And what I mean is, there’s been nothing uncovered yet that suggests your mother ever reviewed finances related to the Church.”
I remained silent. I knew Mama reviewed finances related to television production for the cable network, but I didn’t say a word.
“So,” I finally said, “no one knows where Aaron and I are? And no one is looking?”
“The fact that you’re sitting here in front of me, in downtown Manhattan, is a complete revelation to me,” Tony said, kind of smiling. “How have the two of you been getting by? Do your parents have any idea where you are?”
I told him as much as I felt comfortable, leaving out a lot of details, like where Aaron had been waiting tables, and how I had just been fired. I told him we had thrown out our cell phones and hadn’t been checking e-mail. We were trying to start over, however absurd it may have sounded that we could do such a thing without any further contact with our parents.
Tony revealed that pretty much no one on the planet believed my parents were in South Africa. There was a record of them flying there in November, but it was entirely possible that they had chartered a private flight to another country or continent after briefly staying in South Africa.
“Do your parents have any friends in Argentina?” Tony asked.
I hesitated before responding. I was sure Tony could tell by the expression on my face that my parents definitely knew people in Argentina. The Church had a mission there. Both Aaron and I had visited when we were younger.
Something in my head clicked into place when he mentioned Argentina. The horse breeder from whom Daddy had bought True Heart was in Argentina; he was a member of Daddy’s church. True was a raised on a farm to be a polo horse, but was fast enough to be sold as a race horse. Luckily for him, my parents didn’t have a very long attention span, and by the time we had him flown to Phoenix and got him accustomed to life on the compound, they had already tired of the idea of hiring a jockey to train him. So he lived a life of leisure with Paul and our other horses. But my mother’s words in her Notes from Mama column returned to me: I am always here for you, patiently waiting, at the home of your true heart.
“I have to think about this. I have stuff to tell you, but I have to think it through in my head first,” I told Tony. “I have a dumb question. Does any of this fraud stuff have anything to do with the charges against James Santangello?”
Tony looked stumped for a second as to why I might be bringing up a seemingly completely unrelated finance case.
“Well, both are cases of fraud being investigated at the federal level. I haven’t been covering the Santangello case, but I can tell you that when an investor is working with clients across states, what would have been a local crime becomes a crime of federal interest. Why do you ask?” he asked. “Ponzi schemes are a very different method of fraud than what your parents are accused of. They involve taking investments from people and showing returns on investments that are completely fabricated.”
“Juliette Santangello is my roommate at Treadwell,” I admitted. “I think it’s a little weird that both of our dads are being investigated for fraud.”
“Totally weird,” Tony agreed, looking at me with a new appreciation. “But that is a story.”
Tony gave me his business card with his e-mail address on it. “I would love to meet with you again, Grace. I mean, obviously I’m going to be covering your story until there’s resolution in your parents’ financial investigation. But I think you and your brother have a very intriguing story of your own.”
I thanked him for breakfast and when I got up to leave I was slightly afraid that he, or guys in trench coats, would follow me home. “You’re going to contact the hospital, right? About my brother’s leg?”
“Already done,” Tony said. “Your brother really needs to have his leg examined. If you guys need anything, don’t hesitate to call me. My wife and I live over the water in Hoboken. It’s just twenty minutes away. I mean, I know all about not wanting to trust anyone over
the age of thirty, but I’m a trustworthy guy.”
“I trust you, I guess,” I said.
He laughed, studying me. “I admire you guys. I can’t imagine any of this has been easy for you. To strike out on your own because you disagree with your parents… at your age, that’s pretty… scary.”
Chapter 13
I wasted no time in getting the ball rolling on a fundraiser for Quian. Mr. Chan let me take some of their family photos to design flyers at the copy shop, and I went from church to church until the pastor of Holy Trinity agreed to sponsor the raffle. He said I could use the name of the church to get donations for the effort, and could store the prizes at the church’s administration office.
Then, for the next few days as I looked for jobs, I also went into local businesses asking for donations. I would go into a clothing store and ask for a job application, and then go into the fancy cheese store next door and ask if they could donate a gift basket for the raffle. At first, business owners waved me away; it was Christmas and no one wanted to be bothered with upsetting news about an injured little girl. And then, I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was the beautiful snowfall that blanketed the city in magical flakes on December 20, or the effect of the inescapable holiday music on store sound systems everywhere, but people started giving. Businesses started donating like crazy, and within two days, I had stockpiled tons of gift certificates for Italian restaurants, soap gift sets, emerald earrings, expensive high heels, massages, facials, manicures, and even theater tickets.
Anthony Michaels was turning out to be very true to his word. Maybe it was in an underhanded attempt to cozy up to me for more exclusive information as the case against my parents unfolded, but even if it was… if his generosity benefited Quian, it was worth it to me to accept. He had asked an associate at the NY Post to run a story about the raffle that Holy Trinity was hosting to raise money, and a website programmer who read the article volunteered to build an online raffle entry system so that people from all over the world could buy tickets. Over eight thousand tickets had been sold in under a week.
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