The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe Page 16

  “Why?” asked Martin.

  “Because I had to think before I said anything. I didn’t want to just come right out and say she bought a fake. She might feel terrible if she knew that.”

  “And even worse if she finds out that you, her trusted friend and pot dealer, made the thing,” said Susannah.

  “What worries me the most is her dealing with Jack Haggard. The guy is a gun-toting criminal.”

  “Just because he stole it from you, it doesn’t mean he sold it to her,” said Martin. “There could be a middleman.”

  “Maybe. But what happened to the original? Did Haggard or some middleman somehow convince her to trade the original for the fake?”

  “Maybe she still has the original but in another room,” Tristan suggested.

  Susannah said, “Maybe she sold the original because she needed money and bought the fake because it was cheaper. Like those rich women in financial need who sell their diamonds and replace them with cubic zirconias.”

  “She doesn’t seem to have money problems,” I said. “The house is worth at least a million, and she has a gardener, a maid and Diego.”

  “Her Juan Hamilton?” asked Susannah.

  “Maybe.”

  I asked for advice. They glanced at one another. Martin was the first to speak. “Tell the police she has unknowingly received stolen property. Let them handle it.”

  “Sounds like good advice,” said Tristan.

  “She’ll know it was me who involved the police.”

  “She’ll also realize you did so for her own good,” he replied.

  “Maybe it would be better if you tell her it’s a fake and suggest that she call the police,” said Sharice. “Calling them in without her knowledge doesn’t seem fair to Ms. Po.”

  “Glad,” I said, “you haven’t said a word. What do you think?”

  He scrunched his face as if it were an effort to figure out what advice to give. “It might help if I knew something about the lady in question.”

  “Think dowager queen. She lives in a genteel world of paintings on silk and servants pouring tea from hand-cast brass teapots.”

  “Who else could pour it?” said Susannah. “Ms. Po couldn’t lift one of those clunkers.”

  “Probably true. She also has difficulty walking because her feet were bound as a child.”

  “So she’s a recluse living happily in the past. I’d suggest, then, that the less you do the better so as not to disturb her tranquility. You have to give her a report on the pot, of course, and you don’t want to lie to her. But how much of the truth does she really want? Perhaps you could tell her something true but innocuous, like the new pot and the old one were made by two different potters. If she seems satisfied with that, leave it be.”

  “But what about the fact that Haggard swindled her?”

  “As Martin said, it could have been a middleman.”

  “It probably was. Haggard must have fenced the pot to someone. I can’t picture him knowing about Ms. Po, much less dealing with her.”

  “But you can’t let Haggard get away with robbing you,” Susannah said.

  “Whit will get him.”

  “Maybe not. The fake isn’t worth much, and Whit follows the money.”

  “True. But he also likes to get felons off the street.”

  We kicked it around a bit longer and came to the conclusion I expected—we had no idea what the best course of action was.

  We ordered a second round and changed the subject.

  42

  I called Whit the next morning and told him about what I saw at Faye Po’s house.

  “You want me to go see her?”

  “What I want is for Haggard to be in prison. Have you found him yet?”

  “I woulda let you know if we had.”

  “You tried that phone number?”

  “’Course we did. It’s a throwaway cell.”

  “Don’t people have to show an ID to get a phone?”

  “Yeah. And people are supposed to leave old pots in the ground. Wave some cash at the right person and you can get a prepaid phone on the spot.”

  “What about the handwriting?”

  “We got nothing to compare it to. But we do have a fingerprint.”

  “How did you get his fingerprint without getting him?”

  “It was on that card you gave me.”

  “I didn’t think paper would hold a fingerprint.”

  “That’s television crap. Anything will take a print if your hands are oily or dirty enough. But slick surfaces are better, so that shiny card had two perfect prints.”

  “How do you know they aren’t mine?”

  “’Cause they were from different hands. When we ran them, one was from Haggard. The other one was probably yours. It didn’t match anything ’cause you don’t have a record. Yet.”

  “Your department fingerprinted me when I was falsely arrested.”

  “And we purged those like the law requires when we let you go.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  “You got a problem with it, Hubert, call the ACLU. Maybe you can keep them out of our way long enough so that we’ll be able to find Haggard.”

  “He either sold the pot to Ms. Po or sold it to a middleman who sold it to her. I hope you can track him down without involving her.”

  “Me too. She gives me the willies.”

  “Come on, Whit. You scared of a feeble old lady?”

  “There something eerie about her, Hubert. I had to go there once when a maid had sticky fingers and again when there was a break-in. Sitting in front of her was like being at a séance. I could feel them honorable ancestors swooping around us.”

  So the ex-football player, ex-army MP and current APD cop was afraid of an elderly Chinese lady. I guess we all have our demons.

  We agreed to leave Faye Po alone if possible, and that meant I had to take Glad’s advice and tell her something innocuous about her new pot.

  I didn’t look forward to that. I don’t think she has any spirits from the great beyond swirling around, but she does have a way of seeing through me. I wasn’t sure I could pull off the say-as-little-as-possible feat if she started asking questions.

  43

  I walked and fed Geronimo, asked Glad to mind the shop and left in the Bronco. It was past the first of the month, so I didn’t feel guilty about the request.

  The Sanchezes were having a Cinco de Mayo celebration and asked me to bring my new girlfriend.

  “This is exciting,” Sharice said as we headed south. “The only time I get out of downtown is when I take the bus to the airport to fly to Montreal.”

  You already know she lives downtown. What I haven’t mentioned is that Dr. Batres’s office is also downtown. Which is a good thing, because Sharice doesn’t own a car.

  Neither do I, come to think of it. I own a 1985 Ford Bronco, a cross between a car, a truck and—for the last few years—an escapee from a junkyard, the latest dent being inflicted when Susannah’s equally junky car rammed me from behind. She says it’s the first time in history that the driver of the front vehicle was responsible for a rear-end collision.

  Tristan is always after me to get a better vehicle, preferably a hybrid, whatever that is.

  I don’t want a new vehicle. I don’t even want the one I have. I’d like to live like Sharice, everything I need within walking distance. But it’s hard to dig up old pots under the downtown pavement, so I keep the Bronco.

  It was a typical New Mexico spring day, cool dry air and infinite blue sky. The roadside was speckled with Indian Blanket, Spanish Needles and Mexican Fireplant. Even the wildflowers were celebrating our heritage.

  “Tell me about the Sanchezes.”

  “Emilio came here under the Bracero Program.”

  “There was something call
ed the Embrace Program?”

  “Why do you think bracero means embrace?”

  “Because the French word is embrasser.”

  “Well, you’re close. The Spanish for embrace is abrazo, from brazos, the word for arms. A bracero is someone who works with his arms, thus a laborer. Emilio came here to pick cotton.”

  She gave me the smile she reserves for ethnic humor. “Because the black folks refused to pick it?”

  I laughed. “He went to Hatch, New Mexico. There were no black folks.”

  “And he eventually got a green card like me?”

  “No, he became a citizen by marrying Consuela.”

  Then I did it again. I indirectly asked her to marry me. And just like the first time, not a single neural pathway in my brain participated in the asking.

  “Would you like me to make you a citizen?”

  She laughed and said, “Just like The Proposal, where the character played by Sandra Bullock is about to be deported back to Canada and forces her assistant to marry her so she can stay in her high-powered job in New York.”

  Once again, she either didn’t think I was serious or was pretending not to think so.

  “That story didn’t work for me,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the reason she was marrying a guy she didn’t particularly like, much less love, was because she wanted to keep her high-powered job in the US.”

  “People in positions of power will often do anything to hang on to them.”

  “I know. But she wasn’t a hedge-fund manager or the CEO of a software company. She was a book editor, for God’s sake. Who would want to do that?”

  “So Emilio married Consuela. After he stopped picking cotton, I suppose. What about her?”

  “She never picked cotton.”

  She gave me a playful jab.

  “Consuela was my nanny, although I thought of her as sort of a second mom or older sister. We left my parents’ house the same year, she to get married, me to go to college.”

  “But you went to UNM.”

  “Yeah, and it’s only a couple of blocks from the house I grew up in. But my parents thought living in a dorm would give me the college experience.”

  “In other words, they wanted you out of the house.”

  “Probably. It was weird. Most of the kids in my dorm were from Taos, Santa Fe, Socorro or other places within easy driving distance. They went home on weekends. It was creepy being in an empty dorm when classes weren’t in session, so I also went home for the weekends. It was a five-minute walk.”

  She laughed. “I could walk to the University of Montreal. But most of the time I rode the subway because it was too cold to walk.”

  Emilio was waiting for us when we turned off US 85.

  Actually, US 85 no longer exists. At least according to the federal government. They erased it from the records after Interstate 25 was completed. No, that’s not exactly right either. They’re still working on I-25, as everybody who has to drive on the northern stretch of it in Albuquerque knows.

  US 85 was called the Pan-American Highway, running (at least in theory) from the tip of South America to the top of Canada. It entered the United States at El Paso, ran through Albuquerque and exited into Canada at Fortuna, North Dakota.

  As a young kid, I thought my hometown was the center of the country because we had the intersection of the Pan-American Highway and Route 66, the two most important roads in America. Now both defunct.

  Emilio stood proud and erect—despite the fact that he was next to NM 47 instead of the Pan-American Highway—and he bowed from the waist when I introduced Sharice.

  “Encantado de conocerle. I apologize, Miss Clarke, for I do not speak English so well.”

  “No apology is necessary. I do not speak Spanish at all.”

  “Perhaps Uberto will teach you. His Spanish is perfect.”

  “I learned from your wife, amigo.”

  “Yes. Please come and meet her,” he said to Sharice, and offered his hand. “The path, it is not so level.”

  She took his hand and I followed them to the house. Consuela was waiting on the front porch. The fact that she had never before greeted me there should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. I was totally surprised when, after meeting and talking briefly with Sharice, Consuela threw open the door and the sardined crowd shouted, “¡Feliz cumpleaños!”

  It was the perfect setup. Because I was born on the fifth of May, it was easy for them to feign that Cinco de Mayo was the excuse for the party. And meeting my new girlfriend gave the surprise party additional cover.

  Despite what many Americans think, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexican Independence Day. In fact, it is more widely celebrated out here in the Southwest than it is in Mexico, perhaps because many immigrants came from the state of Puebla, where a band of 4,000 Mexicans defeated the invading French Army, which had twice as many men and superior weapons.

  Emilio and Consuela wanted to throw a surprise birthday party for me and a traditional celebration of the defeat of the French in 1862.

  Well, perhaps not totally traditional. Yes, we had tamales and Mexican music. But after a goodly number of Mexican beers had been consumed, Emilio passed out small Mexican flags to about a third of the attendees and small French flags to the other two-thirds. Manny Chapa took off his apron and left his station at the parilla to serve as Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín, who led the victorious Mexicans. No one knew who led the French, so Sharice was designated as their leader on the grounds that she was the only person present who spoke French. She made me her aide-de-camp.

  A line was drawn in the sand. I know that’s from the Alamo, a battle the Mexican Army lost, but having a line in the sand trumped historical accuracy.

  Sharice took the initiative, charging across the line and rallying her troops with shouts of Allons-y, Attaque au Fer and Vive la France!

  The Mexican defenders initially fell back, but their counterattack won the day. We then gathered ’round for the surrender ceremony where Sharice solemnly handed her tricolore to Manny.

  Her curtsy brought a roar of laughter.

  44

  What does morena mean? I heard it several times.”

  We were headed back on NM 47 and had just passed the intersection with NM 500, Rio Bravo Road. The Sunport was off to the right.

  “It means dark.”

  “Is it derogatory?”

  “Lupita Fuentes’s mother called her daughter mi morenita con ojos claros—my little dark one with light eyes. Many people of Mexican descent are mestizos, so there’s a lot of variation in skin tone. Describing someone often includes saying whether their skin is light or dark, but it’s not derogatory. Today morenos sometimes means black people. Usually it’s just a description. But if it’s said in a certain tone, it could be racist.”

  “Well, I don’t understand Spanish, but I can judge tone, and none of the voices sounded derogatory.”

  “On the contrary,” I said. “I heard Manny’s teenage son say to one of the Gomez twins, ‘Mira a esa morena linda.’”

  “Which means?”

  “Look at that beautiful black girl.”

  “So was Lupita one of your girlfriends?” she asked teasingly.

  “Yes. She had beautiful dark skin and green eyes.” I looked over at her. “I guess I went for that type even then.”

  “I don’t remember you mentioning her when we told each other about our sexual histories.”

  “I was eleven.”

  After I left Sharice at her condo, I went to the shop to relieve Glad of his duties. I settled behind the counter with How Georgia Became O’Keeffe by Karen Karbo, who was listed on the cover as the author of another book called The Gospel According to Coco Chanel. I decided to buy a copy for Sharice.

  I considered the contrast between O’Keeffe and Sharice. O
’Keeffe wore no makeup and went about in flat shoes and plain shifts she sewed herself. Sharice uses lipstick and eye shadow and wears high heels and designer dresses. But those are externalities. They both have an inner strength and drive. Sharice is as dedicated to her patients as O’Keeffe was to her art.

  Stieglitz’s philandering sent O’Keeffe into a severe depression in 1933, but she soldiered on. Sharice’s depression was caused by cancer, but she also forged ahead. In the long run, neither a bad man nor a bad disease could overcome a strong woman.

  Karbo said about Stieglitz, “It’s doubtful he ever had a conversation; Stieglitz was a relentless, spittle lipped monologist, commanding every room he ever entered … Every thought that entered his head needed to be verbalized. Here was a man who wrote at least fifty thousand letters, and hand copied each one before mailing it, for his records.”

  And I thought I was anal.

  He showed O’Keeffe’s early works without her permission. He took down her paintings of skyscrapers because he said men wouldn’t want a woman to paint buildings. Better she stick to flowers. Oink and double oink.

  I’ve come around to Susannah’s view. Stieglitz didn’t make O’Keeffe famous—he just rode her coattails.

  I was so engrossed in Karbo’s book and ranting about Stieglitz that I didn’t look up when I first heard the bong of the door opening. When I finally did, Dotty and Donald were standing at the counter.

  “Oh, Mr. Cloose, I could just hug you.” She squealed and turned to her husband, “Couldn’t I, Donald?”

  “You could, dear.”

  “We just knew after our little tête-à-tête with you that everything would work out despite the tragic death of our mutual good friend Carl.”

  “It’s good to see you again,” I said, because it was my turn to say something and I had no clue what they were talking about.

  “We didn’t know it would happen so quickly. But we should have known, shouldn’t we have, Donald?”

  “Indeed we should have, dear.”

  “You did say ‘when the time and circumstances were appropriate,’ and sooner is always appropriate, isn’t it?”