The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe Read online

  I asked Rhonda, the owner, if she had a copy of The Gospel According to Coco Chanel. She knew exactly where it was. When she handed it to me, I saw that Karen Karbo had subtitled the book Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman. Obviously, Karen doesn’t know Sharice.

  The coffee was stout enough to stand up to the freshly baked green chile scone.

  The Rio Bravo art gallery is just a few feet from Black Cat, situated in front of a small triangular median created by the intersection of Broadway and Riverside. The median is like a mini park with trees, benches and three parking spaces, one of which held the Bronco.

  I walked behind the gallery and watched the greenish-brown water of the Rio Grande, its current swift owing to releases from Elephant Butte Dam three or four miles to the north. Despite its name and its crucial role in a state that is mostly desert, the majestic river receives little attention and even less fanfare.

  I took a look in the gallery to see if they had an O’Keeffe. They didn’t. But a showing of works by an artist named Susan A. Christie caught my eye because she titled them The Pentimento Series: Ink & Gouache on Japanese Paper.

  54

  You made a round-trip to the south end of the missile range and still made it back in time for margaritas?”

  “A man needs priorities. Having margaritas with you trumped sleeping late. So I left at seven and got back five minutes ago.”

  “Ten hours behind the wheel. You must have hated it.”

  “Eight hours. I spent an hour at the missile range and an hour at Black Cat.”

  “I love that place. Did you stop by the gallery?”

  I told her I did and handed her a catalog of the show by Susan A. Christie. “You know anything about her?”

  “Sure. She’s well known in New Mexico. There are lots of similarities between her and O’Keeffe. Both were raised in the Midwest. Both visited New Mexico, where their painting became more experimental and full of vibrant colors. And both ended up moving here. Christie is also influenced by Chinese art. She studied with Cheng-Khee Chee—”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Ha-ha. She was also one of the first Westerners to attend the Zhejiang Academy of Art.”

  “What does gouache mean?”

  “It’s gwash, not gwáchee. It’s like watercolor but opaque.”

  “You told me pentimento is when you can see part of an older painting under a new one. How can she accomplish that using opaque paint?”

  “You can mix gouache in different levels of opacity. But judging from the pictures in this catalogue, I’d say she’s just using pentimento as an inspiration. Technically, you can’t paint one. But you didn’t drive all the way down there to look at paintings and drink coffee. What did you do at the missile range?”

  I told her what and why.

  “I didn’t take a photo,” she protested. “They told us when we registered at the site not to take any.”

  “I know that. But I didn’t want to say my security system had surreptitiously snapped his picture.”

  “You think he’ll come back?”

  55

  He did, but his greeting didn’t bode well. “I could arrest you for trespassing in a high-security zone. And looting a protected site.”

  “You’d have a hard time explaining why you waited so long. And regarding the looted site, you’d have an even harder time explaining why you were the one who sold the looted pot.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  I placed his snapshot on the counter.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  I pointed to the front of the shop. “Everyone who comes through that door is photographed.”

  “So I was shopping.”

  “Then why does the next picture show you putting the pot on this counter? My customers don’t bring pots. They leave with them.”

  It was another lie, of course. For a good cause. But still a lie. I sounded so convincing that I feared I was getting good at it.

  He was thinking now instead of talking, no doubt reassessing the blustery approach he had planned. “Why’d you want me to come back?”

  “Because my counterman shorted you, and I want to make it right. In return for which I want a favor.”

  “You videoing this meeting?”

  “No. And if I did, I’d be putting us both in jail. You want to hear the deal?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did my counterman give you for the pot?”

  “A thousand dollars.”

  Just the amount I had guessed. Thousand has a sort of gravitas that five hundred lacks. Or nine hundred for that matter. For a guy earning a private’s wages, a thousand is a big score. Glad was crafty.

  “The pot was worth six thousand. I’ll give you the five he shorted you.”

  Another lie. And I went all the way up to five because I didn’t want to lose him for a few measly thousand when there was ten times that much at stake.

  “What’s the favor?”

  “Get me in the range.”

  “No way.”

  “You know all I want is another pot. I’m not a spy. I’m not interested in sensitive areas or equipment.”

  “Security is way too tight. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to.”

  So he had switched from no way in the sense of there is no way I will do it to no way in the sense of there is no way I can do it. I had him.

  “Just listen to the plan. WSMR 311 meets the eastern boundary of the range less than half a mile from US 54.”

  “That junction is closely monitored,” he noted.

  “Doesn’t matter. You ever work that area?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Call me the next time you’ll be there at night. If you’re alone, hike south. If you’re not alone, tell the other guys you want to take a smoke, answer the call of nature or whatever. You’ll see an arroyo half a mile away. It’s about eight feet deep. Put a red bandana on the ground where the FP2100-X perimeter intrusion cable runs. Put a rock on the bandana so it doesn’t blow away.”

  “If you’re not involved in espionage, how do you know about the FP2100-X?”

  “I read about it in the Alamogordo Daily News.”

  “Oh. Then what?”

  “Make sure none of your buddies go down there for at least twenty minutes.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yep. After twenty minutes, I’ll be well away from the perimeter on my way to where I hope another pot is buried.”

  “When do I get the money?”

  “Come to my place two days after you leave that bandana.”

  “How do I know you’ll pay?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  He thought about it for a few seconds. Then he said, “Gimme your number.”

  56

  It was only three days until he called, but it felt longer.

  Fletcher had come by to say they hadn’t been able to locate Glad. So he wasn’t in jail as I had speculated. He was simply on the lam.

  Then Fletcher said they also hadn’t found Jack Haggard.

  “How about Amelia Earhart?” I asked.

  He was not amused.

  Thelma came by twice. She said she was working on the trust thing.

  The Edwardses also came by twice. Dotty brought cookies the second time.

  I called the guy who cut the deal with Glad for the Anasazi with the crooked bottom and the small crack. He tried to hang up quickly, but I cut to the chase while he was saying he couldn’t talk to me at that moment.

  “I know you paid cash to my counterman to get a discount. Bring me five thousand, and I won’t report your scam to the police.”

  He made a lewd suggestion and hung up.

  Shoot. I was hoping to use his five thou to pay Private Wills in case I couldn’t clo
se the deal with the Edwardses fast enough to pay him within two days of getting the new pot.

  Or in case there wasn’t another one where I found the first one. But since the site had never been explored save for my one brief visit, I was hopeful there would be.

  Before I left, I stopped by La Placita, where Susannah was working the lunch shift.

  “You here for lunch?”

  “Just a La Placita Burger to go.”

  It has green chile.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “The missile range.”

  “So Wills called?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be on the east side of the range south of Carrizozo. He’ll mark the spot where I’ll cross the FP2100-X gizmo. I’ll go to the site, hopefully find something and be out of the range before sunup.”

  “Happy hunting.”

  When you drive along US 54 south of Carrizozo, you see more antelopes than cars. And that’s during the day. After dark, you could pitch a tent on it and get a full night’s sleep.

  I chose to drive off the road and spend the time in the cozy confines of the Bronco, using my new night-vision binoculars to watch the arroyo I had described to Wills.

  He arrived shortly after eight and placed the bandana. I don’t know if it was red. Everything seen through the night-vision binoculars was green.

  I drove as close to the boundary as I could get.

  The multipurpose folding ladder is only six feet long when folded, so it fit easily in the Bronco. The ladder’s four sections can be set at a variety of angles. Line them all up and you have a twenty-four-foot straight ladder to lean against a wall. Fold it in the middle and you have a twelve-foot stepladder. The configuration I used was the two end pieces at ninety degrees and the two middle pieces level between them, forming a bridge six feet tall and twelve feet across.

  I stood the bridge up on one of its legs and hooked the Bronco’s winch cable to the leg sticking up in the air. I had practiced it on a deserted side road on the way down, so I was able to let it down gently.

  Was I detected? Did the very slight vibration of the ladder as I stepped on it trigger something? Did they have a supersensitive seismograph in addition to the FP2100-X? Was it a trap? Were Wills and his buddies watching, ready to apprehend me?

  I had no answers, so I set off at a trot and continued along the arroyo for twenty minutes. At which point I was almost two miles away from the perimeter.

  I stopped to get my breath, then started walking.

  The moon was in the same ecliptic longitude as the sun and therefore invisible. As an amateur astronomer, that’s the way I think of it. You probably call it a new moon.

  At any rate, the only light was from the stars, but I somehow found my way.

  I did stop and use the night-vision binoculars from time to time just to scan the horizon for structures, none of which were anywhere near my path.

  I reached the cliff dwelling around eleven. Although the hidden path to the dwelling climb was not terribly steep, it was narrow. I decided not to risk it in the dark.

  I unrolled my sleeping bag under a piñon pine. The tree seemed to be pointing me toward the cliff dwelling. I thought about another tree I had gazed into on a cold and snowy night at the D. H. Lawrence Ranch. It stood sentinel in front of Lawrence’s cabin. I had walked to the cabin for the same reason I had walked to the base of this mountain. There was a pot that needed rescuing.

  Or stealing, if you want to be cynical.

  O’Keeffe painted the tree at the ranch and titled it The Lawrence Tree. Her directions for hanging the picture say to stand the tree on its head. Which is more or less what she did to the art world.

  O’Keeffe wrote that she would lie under the tree and stare into the branches. The tree in her painting doesn’t look much like the one I saw. For one thing, she made the trunk pink. Artistic license?

  Or maybe she actually saw it that way. When she taught at West Texas State Normal College in Canyon—now known as West Texas A&M—she painted landscapes of Palo Duro Canyon. Palo Duro means “hard stick” in Spanish.

  After showing one to a local resident, he said, “That doesn’t look like the canyon.”

  “I painted it the way I felt,” she replied.

  “You must have had a stomachache,” he said.

  As Susannah frequently notes, “Everyone is a critic.”

  I awoke before five. There was faint light behind the mountains. My change of plan had put me in a time bind. I wouldn’t be going back to the Bronco under cover of darkness. But I figured if I got there early enough, I could have the ladder folded up and be on the road while most people were showering or having breakfast. And it wasn’t as if anyone would be walking around where I’d parked. It wasn’t a road and it wasn’t visible from the highway.

  When there was just enough light to see the trail, I started up.

  The place was exactly as I had left it except the remortared wall had dried and looked as though it had been there forever. I had repaired the partially hidden space immediately after digging up the pot.

  What else was back there? A line from Poe’s “Tamerlane” came to mind—“more than crime may dare to dream.”

  And that’s what I found. Another intact pot, enough pieces of a second one to glue together in a way collectors like, a variety of other shards and a beautiful mole fetish. Moles were revered for their sense of direction in the dark.

  As I rolled the pot and shards up in my sleeping bag to protect them, I thought about Faye Po’s story of the stranger seeking the graves of his ancestors. No one ever would come here seeking their ancestors. These people are gone forever.

  I felt good about coming back.

  The mole fetish would be valuable in my shop. But I left it in the cave that bore its name. It had been more valuable there. Guiding my footsteps under a moonless sky.

  57

  You may recall my concern that the guys in the black helicopter might think my claim to be digging up pots was just a cover for espionage, since it was the third time I’d gained unauthorized entry.

  If you’ve been counting, you know what happened next.

  I had descended from the cliff and slipped between two large boulders. On the other side of those stones was the east slope of the Oscura Mountains, my route back to the ladder and the Bronco. All I had to do was keep walking.

  Then I heard the roar and saw the rotating blades.

  My rapid retreat back through the boulders was obscured by the sand kicked up by the copter’s landing. I was back in the cliff dwelling when they started searching for me, protected only by the cleverly hidden path built by the Tompiro, some tall grama grass and a little carved mole.

  The two soldiers in camo gear split up after they cleared the passage between the boulders. I relaxed a bit when the one who came my way sprinted past my perch. But he had returned and was scanning the terrain with his binoculars.

  I turned on my fancy binoculars and aimed them at him. In the movies, this makes people blind. Tristan had told me that can’t happen. What he had not told me was why. The answer is that the damn things shut down automatically if they get too much light.

  Now you understand why I don’t rely on technology. From the automated camera on the shop entrance to the night-vision binoculars, they always fail you when you need them the most.

  So I just stared at him with my twenty/twenties. I need glasses only for small print. Good thing the camo guy wasn’t a book.

  Then he did something remarkable. He put down his binoculars. He took off his helmet. He tilted his head back. He was a hundred feet below me but clearly visible.

  Pfc. Harland Wills.

  I scrambled down.

  His pack was off when I reached him.

  “You find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  He held the pack o
pen. “Quick, stuff it in here.”

  I stuffed my bedroll into his pack.

  He handcuffed me.

  Just to make sure all the bases had been touched, I repeated the details of the cover story I’d given Major Owens.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” Wills said as we passed through the boulders. “Trust me.”

  I had asked him to trust me. He had. So I decided I would trust him.

  It helped that I had no other option.

  58

  The “Tompiro caper,” as Susannah called it, had been one long string of unpredictable and inexplicable events.

  It started well enough. Unearthing the pot during the Trinity Site Open House went just as we planned.

  Then things began to spiral out of control. I had to bury the pot because Wills was with Susannah. It had been unearthed when I went back to get it. Carl Wilkes was murdered. My fake showed up in Faye Po’s niche. Then in the Edwardses’ house. Except it was the second fake. Or maybe it was the first one. If you’re clear on this, I congratulate you. I can’t keep it straight, and I’m the one it happened to.

  Then the pot I sold to Faye Po ended up in Mariella Kent’s collection. And the pot I buried at White Sands ended up with Faye Po. And my new friend Gladwyn Farthing turned out to be a thief and maybe a murderer.

  So with all of that as background, I shouldn’t have been surprised when they took me into an interrogation room at MP headquarters, and Glad was standing there next to Maj. Marvin Owens.

  But I was surprised. Wills tightened his hand on my elbow as a reminder to stay silent. I glared at Gladwyn. He smiled at me.

  “Good to see you, Hubie. You had us all worried, disappearing like that.”

  Wills pushed me down into a chair. The major and Gladwyn sat down opposite me. Wills remained standing behind me with his hand above my elbow, as if he would grab me if I tried to bolt. The other MP also remained standing.

  I found an oddly shaped coffee stain on the table and studied it.

  The major explained that I was in serious trouble.