Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Page 17

  I handed her the paper I had taken from under Berdal’s lamp.

  She examined it for a minute. “It’s a work order from Pajarito Machine Shop for a valve job on a 1997 Dodge pickup, and it has Berdal’s name as the customer.”

  “Look at the ‘date promised’ entry.”

  “May 27th. That’s Tuesday.”

  “Three days from now. Hugo didn’t drive to the Hyatt because his truck was in the shop.”

  Susannah smiled. “And Tuesday we’re going to claim it.”

  48

  “What’s a valve job, Hubie?”

  Susannah and I were returning to Los Alamos. “I don’t know. It sounds like some kind of heart operation.”

  “You think they’ll give us the truck?”

  “I don’t know why not. We have the repair slip.”

  “But you don’t look like Berdal. I saw his picture in the apartment.”

  “As I said, we have the repair slip. Even better, we have money. I suspect they’d give the truck to Martin Seepu if he produced the cash, and he looks even less like Berdal than I do. What I’m really hoping is that I won’t have to pay anything.”

  “What if the pot’s not in the truck?”

  “Then I may be out the cost of a valve job.”

  “This is getting expensive for you, isn’t it?”

  “It is. I have at least a hundred dollars invested in the fake pot. I have a hundred and ninety-three dollar deposit on an apartment I’ll never rent. I have—”

  “Twenty three of that is mine.”

  “As I was saying, I have a hundred and seventy in the deposit. I had a thousand, retail value, in the pot firstNAtions destroyed. I owe a legal fee to Layton that will cost me another pot. I tell you, Suze, it’s really true what they say—Crime doesn’t pay.”

  “But you also have the pot from the museum that’s worth twenty-five thousand.”

  “Only if I have a buyer, which evidently I don’t. I can’t advertise it for sale with the fake sitting in the Museum. Everyone would think the one I made is real because it’s in the Valle del Rio Museum and the one I have is fake because even though it’s not in the Museum, it used to be but no one knows that, and I can’t prove it without incriminating myself. Did I say that right?”

  “I have no idea. If we get the Bandelier pot, then you’ll have two pots worth what?”

  “At least fifty thousand in theory. Maybe more because I will have cornered the market in Mogollon water jugs. But again, they’re not worth anything unless you can sell them.”

  “There it is on the right.”

  Pajarito Machine Shop was a metal building with sloping walls and a sign depicting a brightly colored bird, maybe a scarlet tanager, clutching a tool of some sort in its wing.

  The Dodge pickup was parked out front. I was glad to see a metal toolbox attached to the front of the bed, the sort with dual tops hinged at the center so that they look like gull wings when they’re open. If the pot was in there, I might not have to pay the repair bill.

  I showed the repair ticket to the person who greeted me, and he handed me a bill for $731.82.

  “Can I start it up to see how it runs?”

  “Suit yourself,” he said and handed me the keys.

  I started it up, and it seemed to run fine. Of course I didn’t know what the valves did, so I wasn’t the best person to judge whether the repair had been successful. I sat in the cab for a long while pretending to listen to the engine while occupying my fingers surreptitiously under the dash. Susannah stared at me with an impatient look.

  I turned it off the engine and got out. “Sounds good,” I told the attendant. “I don’t have enough money, so I’ll have to go to the bank.”

  He held out his hand for the keys. I passed them back to him, and he walked back into the shop without comment.

  I told Susannah we needed to stay the day, and I took her to lunch and explained the program.

  After lunch we went to an Ace Hardware and bought two dozen key blanks and a set of metal files. We drove to a city park and sat at a bench under a ponderosa. I took out several plugs of clay into which I had pressed keys while sitting in Berdal’s truck.

  “How do you know which one is fits the toolbox?”

  “I don’t. I assume it’s this small one, but I’m going to make copies of them all just in case.”

  “I hope this works better than your last clay trick.”

  Keys have two features that define their shape. Slots run lengthwise down their sides. Because we had the imprints of both sides, it was simple to select blanks with the right slots. The second feature is the jagged edge. Hence the files. Well, I couldn’t very well hand the clay impressions to a clerk and ask him to copy them, could I?

  Using the clay impressions, I filed the metal key blanks to match the originals. The blanks were made of soft metal, so the files ground them into shape easily. I used a rough file for the initial grinding and a finer one to achieve a shape identical to the clay imprint. I held the newly minted keys up to the clay imprints and their little peaks and valleys matched perfectly.

  We drove to the Pajarito Machine Shop after sunset and sat in the parking lot for perhaps ten minutes. When no one arrived to challenge our right to be there, I got out and tried the keys. The first one slid in perfectly. I turned it and the padlock sprung open.

  “Clay conquers all,” I whispered to Susannah.

  “One out of two,” she replied.

  The toolbox held an assortment of wrenches, which were clearly not Native American relics. There were also two large boxes. I put them both in the Bronco, re-locked the toolbox on Berdal’s pickup and drove out of the lot.

  I had gone several blocks when I realized I was holding my breath. I let the air out of my lungs and started to inhale again.

  “Why did you take both boxes?”

  “Don’t tell me I’m a burglar again, Suze. I took both boxes because the more time we spent in that parking lot, the greater the risk that someone would notice.”

  “And you didn’t want to keep tickling the tail of the dragon.”

  “Nicely put.”

  “And since both boxes are big enough to hold the missing pot, you figured take them both and find out which one has it when we are somewhere safer.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “Albuquerque.”

  “Oh, come on. Now that we got away, no one can possibly know we were there. Let’s look now.” She sounded like a little girl at Christmas. How could I refuse?

  I turned onto the next dirt trail and drove into the woods. Susannah and I each carried a box to the front of the Bronco and opened it in the glow of the headlights. Hers contained the stolen pot packed in wadded up old newspapers.

  Opening mine seemed anticlimactic until a withered arm flopped out of it. It looked dead and deformed but shiny at the same time. I tried to turn the box into the headlights for a better view and caught a glimpse of a head with hair that seemed pasted to the scalp. An entire human torso was somehow crammed into that box. I thought I was going to be sick. Susannah had backed away and her labored breathing sounded like distant rolling thunder.

  I grew faint and dropped the box. The entire body fell out and then straightened into its full length.

  Susannah’s scream would have curdled magma, not to mention blood. Mine started out just as loud and then dissolved into laughter. For what we had laid out before was not a desiccated corpse. It was a partially deflated blow-up sweetie.

  “Geez, Hubie, that scared the shit out of me. What kind of a creep was Berdal? You think he was using that condom on this blow-up?”

  “Maybe. She doesn’t appear to be pregnant.”

  “Not funny. Get rid of that thing, will you.”

  “I think I need to dispose of it where no one
will find it, and it won’t come back on us as a piece of evidence.”

  I shoved it back in the box and threw the box in the back of the Bronco.

  49

  In most places, summer starts on June 21st. At Dos Hermanas Tortillería, it begins when the western catalpa blooms because that’s when they move some of the tables to the veranda. That glorious event arrived in late May, and we were breathing in the sweet pea scent and celebrating our success in Los Alamos.

  When Angie brought our second round, I tasted it to be certain it was as good as the first. It was not.

  Susannah saw me turn up my nose. “What’s wrong?”

  “Taste your margarita.”

  “Ugh. Tastes artificial.”

  “Like a mix.”

  I got Angie’s attention. “These margaritas aren’t up to your usual lofty standards.”

  She bit her lip. “Just a minute,” she said and walked away.

  She returned after an animated discussion inside that we heard outside.

  “Sorry about that. We used the last of our triple sec on your first drink. I didn’t know it, but the bartender used simple syrup and the lime flavoring we use when we make punch for catering. Can I bring you something else? On the house.”

  “Give us a minute,” said Susannah. She turned to me after Angie left. “We’ve been in a rut. It’s time to add a little variety to our cocktail hour.”

  “I don’t think of it as a rut. I think of it as a tradition.”

  “A tradition is something people who’ve been dead a hundred years did when they were alive, like eating sweet tamales with raisins on Christmas Eve. We’ve only been drinking here for a couple of years.”

  “Well, traditions have to start somewhere. Maybe a hundred years after we’re dead, our descendants will be calling this the Hubert and Susannah cocktail hour.”

  She shook her head. “I like Kauffmann, but he’s made no mention of marriage, and I can’t even remember the last time you had a date, unless you count Kaylee. The way things are going, neither one of us is going to have any descendants.”

  “I may be past the age for fathering children anyway.”

  “Don’t be silly. Lots of men older than you father children.”

  “Yeah, but I really don’t want some teacher saying to me, ‘Oh, Mr. Schuze, it’s so nice to meet Timmy’s grandfather.’”

  “Forget that and tell me what you would drink if margaritas were outlawed?”

  “Illegal margaritas?”

  “This is not a riddle. Choose a different drink.”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “How about a brandy sour?”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Brandy, lemon juice, powdered sugar and an egg.”

  “An egg? Raw?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try another one.”

  “How about a sidecar?”

  “I’ve heard of that one. What’s in it?”

  “Also brandy, triple sec … oops.”

  “Let’s move away from brandy.”

  “You like Scotch?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. Gin?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me neither. Rum.”

  “I think so. I haven’t tasted rum for years.”

  She signaled to the recondite Angie and ordered two mojitos.

  “Dare I ask?”

  “Just wait and see.”

  Our drinks arrived in highball glasses. A lime wedge fluttered in an effervescent liquid with lots of ice and a few mint leaves. I took a sip. Then I took another.

  “This is pretty good,” I announced.

  “Change can be good.”

  “What’s in this libation other than rum and mint?”

  “Sugar, club soda and the spirit of Ernest Hemingway.”

  “Ah. That explains my sudden compulsion to go to Havana. But what do we eat with it? I don’t think chips and salsa are a good match.”

  “In Cuba, they eat chicharrones and fried green bananas.”

  “Hmm. What’s the backup plan?”

  “Peanuts?”

  “Works for me.”

  Angie brought us a bowl of peanuts that had red skins and a second round of mojitos. Actually, the peanuts did have red skin but they didn’t have a second round of mojitos. Susannah and I had those.

  While I’d been drinking, she’d been thinking.

  “Hubie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember you told me about explaining to Whit Fletcher that you didn’t really dial 911 to report a body in room 1118?”

  “Yes,” I said and fluttered my eyebrows like Groucho Marx, “and I didn’t call 1118 to report a body in 911 either.”

  “Before you told Whit about the room number, he thought you had dialed the emergency number, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So if the police thought you had called 911, what’s the first thing they would do?”

  “I guess they would check with 911 to review the tapes and see what I said.”

  “Right. But if they checked and there was no call from the Hyatt that night, Whit would have known that you didn’t call 911.”

  I realized something didn’t make sense, but I didn’t see what until she said, “Don’t you see? Someone must have called 911 from the Hyatt. If not, Whit wouldn’t have thought you did. In fact, the police wouldn’t have known about the murder until the next morning when the maid went in to clean. But he told you they were down there that night checking the cars in the parking garage and on the streets. So if you didn’t call the real 911, who did?”

  I suppose we all have moments when we feel like imbeciles. I remember pushing a hundred-pound bed to get it closer to a ten-pound floor lamp so I could see to read. I remember wanting to leave the Bronco running for warmth while I popped into a convenience store and also wanting to lock it so no one would drive away since it was already running. I won’t take that story any further.

  After I remembered dialing 911 (the room, not the emergency number), I was so happy to have discovered Whit’s secret clue that I let my brain slip into neutral.

  “I completely overlooked that. I feel like an idiot. So who made that call?”

  “It had to be someone who knew Berdal had been shot.”

  “Right.”

  “So,” she concluded, “it had to be Berdal, the person who shot him or someone who saw it happen.”

  “Whit told me Berdal was shot through the heart. I doubt he lived long enough to make a phone call. And the murderer wouldn’t report his own crime, so there had to be a witness.”

  50

  The 911 issue cantered through my mind as I walked home. I strode past my door and down to the end of the block where I turned around and passed my door in the other direction. I made laps while I thought.

  Berdal didn’t make the call. Unless the murderer was using a bizarre means of confession, he or she didn’t make the call. So who was the witness?

  I couldn’t see any way to answer that, so I tried a different question: Whose room was it?

  I already knew it wasn’t Guvelly’s room. And it wasn’t Berdal’s room. But so what? I was also certain it wasn’t the room of Jacques Chirac or Tony Blair. The list of people who’s room it was not contains about six billion names and is, in terms of crime solving, utterly useless. What I wanted to know was how it might come to pass that a murder took place in a hotel room where neither the murderer nor the victim was registered.

  Guvelly told me he was in room 1118. Why would he do that? A scary thought slid out of the shadows and into my brain. What if he lied about it to lure me there where the murderer was waiting to ambush me? When Berdal showed up, the murderer assumed it was me and shot him.

  As soon as the thought took shape
, I saw how ridiculous it was. First, Guvelly didn’t know I would drop by room 1118 that night. Second, even after a margarita and two mojitos, I could see no reason for Guvelly to want me killed.

  I unlocked my front door, took two steps in the dark and fell on my face. Guvelly was in my shop for the fourth time. The first two times he had come to discuss my alleged crime. The third time, I had caught him in a digital snapshot breaking in. This time I had no idea why he was there. It seemed pointless for him to search the place again.

  What I did know was that he wouldn’t be making a fifth visit. He was what I had tripped over. He was lying very still and holding his breath. Either that, or he was dead.

  I wouldn’t have been more scared if Jack Nicholson had chopped through the door with an axe and said, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!”

  I sprinted out the front door and around the building to the alley. I didn’t have the presence of mind to go through my workshop and living quarters. I was shaking so violently I probably wouldn’t have been able to insert the keys into the keyholes anyway.

  I was in full panic when I reached the Bronco. I somehow got it started and raced to the University without getting a ticket or running down any pedestrians.

  I parked in a handicapped space. Nothing else was available and I figured having a dead man in your shop is a substantial handicap. I started working my way down the halls of the Fine Arts Building looking in every classroom.

  I was breathing hard from the fear and the exertion. It occurred to me that if any of the students in the classrooms I peered into had ever had a phone call from a “breather,” they might think he had tracked them down in person.

  About to pass a darkened room, I stopped. Of course the room would be dark. Susannah was in an art history lecture.

  I stepped quickly inside and shut the door. The professor saw the door open, but she wouldn’t have got a good look at me before I closed the door. She probably thought I was a tardy student. One with asthma.

  Unfortunately, the darkness that kept me from being recognized as an intruder also kept me from seeing Susannah.

  I took a seat in the back and started scanning the room. Even after my eyes adjusted to the dark, I couldn’t tell one person from another. I glanced up at the slides, weird abstracts with big swatches of color apparently applied at random. I hadn’t seen any of them before. Then the professor flashed a slide of a painting I knew. Or some might call it a non-painting. It was White on White by Kazimir Malevich, a large canvas painted completely white.