Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Read online

  Mrs. Masoir struck me as the sort of woman who preferred to be called Mrs. Masoir and who used words like “venerable.” When she had parked directly in front of my shop, I’d gone outside to warn her she couldn’t park there. She turned her face up to me, a round face with sparkling blue eyes and a small turned-up nose, and said, “Nonsense, I can park anywhere.”

  Then she pulled a handicapped-parking permit out of her purse and hung it on the rearview mirror of her Chrysler, twenty feet of russet steel with a white vinyl roof, vintage Sixties. Her vintage was considerably earlier.

  “The State gave me this permit because I use a cane.” She shook her head as if to indicate the State was run by ninnies. “I’m certainly not disabled, but I kept the permit because handicapped spaces are the only ones that accommodate my automobile. Do you think they make parking spaces smaller these days because of all those imported cars?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but you can’t park here even with a handicapped permit. This is a fire lane.”

  “Nonsense. The nearest handicapped space is two blocks away. I’d never make it that far if there were a fire.”

  While I parsed that logic, she lifted her cane off the passenger seat and held out her hand. I took it and helped her out of the car, and that’s how she came to be in my shop admiring my wares and questioning me. She had asked for a place to sit down, and I had retrieved a kitchen chair from my residence behind the shop. From that perch, she had been holding forth on the decline of Albuquerque in particular and Western Civilization in general.

  “Are you an archaeologist, young man?”

  It was a simple question. I studied archaeology but never received a degree in it. So how to answer?

  Honesty is always best, so I said, “I studied archaeology at the University of New Mexico, but they kicked me out before I graduated.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “Did you know my husband?”

  “He retired before I became a student. I knew of him.”

  “He didn’t retire. He was forced out.” She stated it matter-of-factly with no hint of anger or regret.

  “So was I.”

  “So you said and quite forthrightly. I suspect Walter would have enjoyed having you as a student.”

  “The pleasure would have been mine.”

  She looked behind the counter. “Is that a genuine Maria?”

  “It is.”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “About fifteen years.”

  “My husband needs to buy me an anniversary present. Perhaps he will come to see it.” She rose to her feet. “Help me with my shawl, Mr. Schuze.”

  33

  “Guess what I did all day?”

  It was several days after Susannah brought the pictures and measure­ments, and the pot-selling business remained as slow as continental drift.

  “You worked on our project,” Susannah answered.

  “How did you guess?”

  “That’s the way you are. Once you start on a project, you’re like a dog with a bone.”

  “An interesting metaphor, Suze. But dogs bury things. I dig them up.”

  Her head turned toward the door and her eyes lit up. “Hubie, I forgot to tell you. Kauffmann is here.”

  He strode between the tables with a championship gait—head up, arms relaxed, a smile affixed to his face. He was six feet tall but seemed taller, and he had shoulders as broad as the West Mesa.

  Susannah introduced us, and he gave me a firm grip and an even firmer smile.

  “Great to meet you, Hubie. My little Susannah thinks you’re super.”

  Hubie? My little Susannah? For all his perfection, there was something grating about this instant familiarity. Then I told myself not to be so quick to judge. Susannah likes him. Be a nice guy, I told myself.

  “She tells me the same about you,” I replied. “Join us for a drink?”

  “Sorry, mate. We’ve got reservations at Zia, and they hold a table for no one.”

  Mate? I told myself again to be nice. They said their goodbyes and left, which was just as well. Because even though I was telling myself to be nice, I don’t think I was listening. I didn’t like him calling me Hubie when we had just met. Then I felt guilty for being so churlish and asked myself whether I was jealous. And of course I was. I was jealous because my friend was with someone else, and I was alone at Dos Hermanas when I should have been enjoying her company.

  Rather than sit there feeling sad and small, I decided to work. Susannah is right. When I start a project, I become a dog with a bone. Or a cat with a ball of string. Or a guinea pig with a wheel. Or …

  There are many varieties of ancient Southwestern pottery, and almost everything we know about the people who made them is guesswork. Archaeologists find some pots with handles in one site and some pots without handles from the same era but at another site, and they assume they are dealing with two different groups. But for all we know, they could have been relatives who sat around the fire arguing about whether it was worthwhile to put handles on pots. Or they may have been enemies with different languages and cultures. We use the meager evidence we have to construct a theory, and then we adjust as new evidence becomes available.

  The pot I was working on had a curved handle on one side that ran from the lip to the broadest part of the body. The shape was like the pitcher you see on Kool-Aid ads. Instead of the smiley face, however, my pot was decorated with the geometric patterns of the Mogollon. Some people believe these patterns were chosen simply as decoration. After reading about Pythagoras, I have come to think these designs probably had significance for the potters. Pythagoras was assigning meaning to numbers fifteen hundred years earlier, so I think it’s a natural assumption that the Mogollon might have done something similar with shapes. Maybe the sides of a triangle represented earth, fire and wind. Or man, woman, and child. Who knows?

  The early potters didn’t have pottery wheels. They built their pots from sheets of clay. I did the same. I have a theory about their method, and I use it when making replicas, also known as fakes. I build the shape by weaving thin willow branches. I cover the shape with damp cottonwood leaves, tearing them to shape so that the irregularities of the willow frame are smoothed out. I then roll out sheets of clay and form them around the mold. The key to success is keeping the clay at the right level of moisture. Get it too wet and it slumps. Let it get too dry and the sheets won’t adhere to each other. Stretch the clay too far and you get a hole you can’t fix. Stretch it too little and you have thick walls that won’t contour properly. It’s a skill acquired through practice.

  When the pot is finished, I pack it with dry leaves and set them on fire, burning away the willow mould and giving the inside the black tint typical of Mogollon pottery.

  I worked hard on the pot because it had to fool someone who, although not an expert in pots, had a trained eye. The hardest part was incorporating the shard from Gran Quivira at just the right place. When the pot was completely finished, I did something I normally don’t do. I broke it. Just a small chip off the rim. I etched a line around the area I wanted to break off and held my breath as I tapped it with a mallet. The piece came away exactly as planned, exposing only the edge of the embedded V-shaped shard.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and examined the pot. Like Andy Warhol’s soup can, it was going to prove more valuable than the original.

  34

  The next morning dawned clear, crisp and still. I dressed in a pair of dark gray cotton trousers, a light blue oxford cloth shirt, grey brushed-leather walking shoes and a black Windbreaker. I placed the nasal spray bottle in the right front pocket of my jacket, a set of charcoals in the left front pocket, a large handkerchief in my back right pocket and a sketchpad in my right hand. I rolled up one cello­phane glove and placed it in the cuff of my trousers. Then I set off for the University.

  I arrived at the Museum thirt
y minutes after it opened and found the usual collection of staff gathered at the front—one ticket seller, two guards, and a fourth person whose duties were unknown to me. There were no patrons present. I purchased a ticket and stepped up to the metal detector where the guard asked me to empty everything in my pockets into a plastic bowl. I did so. I thought he examined everything more closely than usual, but maybe that was just mild paranoia. He asked for the sketchpad. He examined it and placed it on the table past the detector next to the plastic bowl. I passed through without setting off the buzzer and retrieved my belongings.

  The second guard followed me into the room where the target pot was located. I had prepared for this contingency. I walked around slowly examining each piece of art on the walls. I selected one that looked interesting, an acrylic of a tree which had bicycles hanging from it where fruit might have been. I think that qualifies as surrealism. I sat on the bench nearest my mark, opened my sketchpad, took out my charcoals and started a rendering of the picture. After a while, the guard approached close enough to see my work. I could feel him staring although I couldn’t see his face. I imagined him frowning.

  I would have been. My drawing was sophomoric. He eventually got bored and went to seek the companionship of his colleagues.

  I got up and went to another bench and started another drawing. A few moments later, the guard returned, noted my changed location and left again. I guess he didn’t want to see my second sketch. It was nothing but an oblong ring with some shading.

  My third move took me up to the ropes around the pot. I stood there to see if the guard would return. He did not. He probably figured I was making my way around the room sketching each piece, and he didn’t have any interest in watching me do so.

  I stepped quickly up to the pot and ran my hand around the inside. I found what I was looking for and removed it to my left front pocket. I removed my handkerchief and tented it over the opening of the pot. I retrieved the cellophane glove from my cuff and put it on my left hand. I took the spray bottle and held it inside the pot and began to pump, moving the bottle at every angle and height I could manage. It seemed to be taking an eternity, but probably took less time to do than to describe.

  I removed the spray bottle and put it back in my pocket. I left the handkerchief in place while the mist settled inside the pot. I rolled the glove off from the wrist down so that it came off inside out and stuck it in my back pocket. When I thought the mist was completely settled, I lifted the handkerchief and put it back in my other back pocket. Then, standing on my tippy-toes, I peered into the pot. The entire surface was coated.

  “Sir, what are you doing?”

  I turned to see the guard approaching.

  I lifted my sketchpad so he could see the ring I had drawn. “I’m trying to sketch this pot from a bird’s-eye view,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “You can’t go inside the ropes.”

  “But how can I see what the thing looks like on top?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to settle for the side view. Now please step back.”

  I did, and he replaced the rope and glared at me. I sat down on a bench and begin to sketch the pot.

  The guard hovered over me for a few minutes, and then said, “Do not approach any artwork closer than indicated by the ropes.”

  “Sure,” I said, “no problem.”

  He left but came back several times. I continued to sketch until I had what might pass for a completed rendering. I put the thing I had taken out of the pot into the spray bottle. I held the sketchpad under my arm, open so that the sketch of the pot was showing.

  As I approached the metal detector, I fished out the spray bottle and handed it to the guard. While he was looking at it perplexedly, I went through the detector. I held out my hand, he handed me the spray bottle, and I left.

  35

  The preparations were complete, the trap set. Now it just needed springing.

  But would it work? There had been no doubt in my mind, no hesitation in my step as I had peeled off the inventory tag and sprayed henna inside the pot in the Museum. Anxiety, yes. Even fear. But my faith in the plan went unquestioned.

  I felt the same way while fabricating the fake. It could fool anyone. I even imagined the original potter would think it was hers.

  But now that the time had come to take the final step, my mind was awash in doubt. The scheme that had seemed so perfect in its simplicity struck me now as childish, a plan for a prank, not a serious heist. Make a copy, embed an old shard in it, put the real inventory tag on it, and tell the museum director he had a fake and you had the genuine Mogollon.

  The plan wasn’t simple. It was naïve. It would never work.

  But like Columbus in the Sargasso Sea, I’d gone too far to turn back. I had to find land or fall off the edge of the world.

  So I picked up the phone and called the museum director.

  Brandon Doak had been a member of the art history faculty before, as rumor had it, they made him director of the Valle del Rio Museum to get him out of the classroom where he made a habit of groping coeds. He knows who I am, and he almost hung up on me before I could tell him I had one of his art works.

  “Which one?”

  “The Mogollon Pot.”

  “Assuming this is true, how did you get it out of the Museum?”

  “I didn’t. Someone came to my shop and offered to sell it to me. I recognized it immediately, so I bought it.”

  “And you expect me to believe this?”

  “What choice do you have? I have the pot.”

  “Assuming you do, why call me? You expect a ransom?”

  “No. I’m sure I could sell it for more than any ransom you could muster, and to be truthful, I gave that some thought. But I decided receiving and selling stolen merchandise wouldn’t do my business any good, so I’ve decided to return the pot to its rightful owner.”

  “So now you’ve reformed?”

  “I don’t have anything to reform from. The pots I sell are either bought by me from their owners or dug up by me. I don’t run a fencing operation. I’m ready to give you the pot.”

  “And you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart? You don’t expect anything for it?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t want a ransom. But there are two things I do want. First, I paid the seller a thousand dollars for the pot. I’d like to be reimbursed. Second, whoever stole the pot left a fake in its place. As soon as I bought the real one, I went to the Museum expecting to see an empty pedestal, but there was the pot. Only it isn’t the pot. It’s a fake, and a very good one.”

  “You would know.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. The second thing I want is the fake. I can sell it for a good price.”

  “I won’t be a party to you selling counterfeit pottery.”

  “You won’t be a party to it. We’re making a trade. You get the real pot. I get the copy. Quite a deal for you. I’ll even help you avoid future embarrassment. It’s obvious this was an inside job. Someone must have paid one of your employees to switch the pots during the night. If you say anything to your employees now, the guilty one will be put on guard, and you’ll never discover who did it. But I can help you trap whoever did this.”

  “This entire conversation is preposterous.”

  “Stop emoting and start thinking. I have a reputation. I could approach your employees obliquely and see who takes the bait. But that’s for later. The first thing you have to do is get the real pot in there without telling your employees that you knew it was missing.”

  “How do I know you have the real one?”

  “You come examine it tonight.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Listen to me, Doak. I’ve scheduled a news conference for tomorrow morning. I plan to put the stolen pot in front of the media for them to examine and photograph
. I’ll tell them I bought the pot knowing full well that it was stolen. I’ll say I hated to buy stolen property, but I was afraid if I didn’t, the seller would leave my shop and the pot would never be seen again. I imagine the story line will be something like Expelled student becomes university benefactor. After the story becomes public, I’m sure there will be calls for an investigation into how the Museum could allow such a valuable piece to be taken. It should be an interesting challenge for you.”

  “This is blackmail.”

  “Oh, come on, Doak. Get off your high horse and start thinking. I’m offering to return a piece of your collection and no one will ever know it was gone. Come by my shop at eight tonight and examine the pot. Otherwise, ‘film at 11:00.’”

  36

  I had two customers late that afternoon although neither made a purchase, perhaps because I was too distracted to make a sales pitch.

  Tristan showed up after the second customer departed empty-handed. I needed the camera moved temporarily so it would face my back door. I was expecting a visitor and wanted a record of his entrance.

  I thanked Tristan for coming and told him I wouldn’t have sought his help on such short notice except for the fact that I couldn’t do it myself.

  “Actually, you probably could,” he said. “It’s simple. You just bring the camera in here and plug it in.”

  “But wouldn’t I have to move the laser thing too?”

  “Not to get one shot. That’s way too much trouble.”

  “But how will it know when to take the picture?”

  “You’ll tell it.”

  He extracted a small box from his pocket. It wasn’t much larger than a package of dental floss. It had a normal pair of plug prongs on one side and a normal electric receptacle on the opposite side. I guess you could say it was an electric hermaphrodite. He plugged the prong side into a wall outlet with the receptacle side facing out into the room. The net result was that I lost the use of one receptacle flush with the wall and gained the use of a new one that stuck an inch into the room. I couldn’t see what good this plug extender did and said so.