The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02] Read online

  His voice trailed off and his head angled down. Then he looked up at me. “At any rate, I tried not to look back when I left. Then this summer a very old friend of mine from the San Roque Pueblo came to see me.”

  “San Roque!”

  “Yes. Many of the rumors about them are either false or exaggerated. I lived among them for a year during a sabbatical. At any rate, my friend, Otaku Ma’sin, was very old – older than me if you can believe that – and he wanted to unburden himself. He told me he had heard about the University returning artifacts to the Indians. He believed the University had a collection of very old Ma pots. They call themselves the Ma people. ‘San Roque’ is obviously the name the Spaniards gave them. The pots have never been returned.”

  “Why did he think telling you would unburden him?”

  “Because there was a tribal elder whose position would have made him the designated recipient on behalf of the Ma, and when the pots were never placed in their kiva where they belonged, Otaku at first believed the elder had kept them for himself.”

  “And he changed his mind?”

  “Yes. He and the elder were alone one evening in a field of corn, and Otaku saw a yellow glow around the elder. This is a sign of purity. So Otaku figured the pots never got to the Pueblo. He was hoping I might right the wrong. He was also hoping his delay in reporting the absence of the pots would not become what the Ma call a scar on his soul.”

  “Did you ever see anyone glowing yellow during the year you lived there?”

  “Of course not. But I don’t question Otaku’s judgment of the elder any more than I question my wife’s judgment of you. The fact that he saw purity in the elder I accept. If it manifested itself as a yellow glow, then put it down to cultural conditioning. Or the reflected rays of the setting sun off the corn. At any rate, I believe the pots never found their way to San Roque.”

  “And I take it you have a theory about what happened to them.”

  “I do. And you are correct to call it a theory. I would not like you to give it any more credence than the word implies. I believe Ognan Gerstner stole them.”

  And that is why, three days later, I found myself downtown staring at Rio Grande Lofts.

  5

  What did I see? An eleven-story building with few means of ingress.

  Since it was originally built for offices, it had no balconies you could climb. The front door on the east side of the building opened to a lobby attended twenty-four hours a day by doormen. Two security cameras were visible through the plate glass, one pointed at the front door and one at the two elevators.

  A service entrance on the west side of the building was secured by a lock that could be opened only from inside. I determined that by walking up to the door and noticing there were no knobs or keyholes in it.

  On the south side of the building, a ramp led down to a basement parking garage. The opening at the bottom of the ramp was somewhat larger than the average garage door, maybe ten feet wide and eight feet tall, and was protected by a gate that came within an inch or two of the concrete on the bottom, top, and two sides. A snake might slip between the gate and the surrounding concrete while the gate was closed, but a jackrabbit couldn’t.

  The gate was constructed of vertical iron bars six inches apart. I determined that by walking up to the gate and measuring. A small jackrabbit might fit through. I could not see any security cameras. A metal column near the left wall held a keypad. Residents entered by punching in a code and waiting for the gate to slide open.

  Twenty feet to the left of the garage entrance was a garage exit. It had the same sort of gate, except there was no keypad. The exit gate opened automatically when a car approached it from inside the garage.

  I assumed there was a door on the roof, so I decided to start my analysis at the top of the building.

  But first I walked down the street to a drugstore and purchased a magazine. I can’t remember the last time I bought a magazine, and I was surprised by how expensive they’ve become. It wasn’t that long ago when a national magazine like Time or Life was available for a dollar. Some of the ones on the rack were as high as eight-fifty! Since I had no plans to read the magazine, I selected the one with the lowest price. It was called Chrome Hogs and sold for $2.95.

  I took the magazine back to a bus stop bench across from the garage entrance where I pretended to read it while examining the building and thinking about how I might gain entrance.

  At least that’s what I started to do. But when I removed the plastic wrapper and opened the magazine, I discovered it was full of exotic motorcycles adorned by even more exotic women in various states of undress. I don’t know what pornography is, but – like Justice Potter Stewart – I know it when I see it.

  And this was not it. There is nothing prurient about a woman leaning over a Harley and wearing a tank top that reveals tattoos on her breasts of little spigots that say “chocolate” on the left and “vanilla” on the right. But it did divert my attention momentarily before I returned to the issue at hand.

  Namely, how could I get in? Through the roof entrance? There was no exterior staircase or fire escape. Of course I could reach the roof via the interior staircase, but I would already have to be inside to do that, wouldn’t I? Renting a helicopter didn’t merit much consideration. No tall buildings loomed next to Rio Grande Lofts, so I couldn’t leap across from one roof to the other or secure a rope between them or anything of that sort. Even if those things had been possible, I wouldn’t have attempted them. I’m severely acrophobic.

  I was checking the roof entrance off the list of possibilities when a woman with a large shopping bag and a small child sat down next to me on the bench. I could see why she preferred riding a bus to walking. She had the physique of the Michelin tire man, but she lacked his pleasant smile. She gasped for breath and yelled for Kyle to, “sit still and stop tormenting me.”

  She didn’t look or sound like the sort of mother little Kyle obeyed, and little Kyle didn’t look like he ever sat still, but to my amazement, he suddenly did just that. He sat still and became quiet. He stared in my direction. I followed his line of vision and discovered why. He had zeroed in on Les Grand Tetons.

  Then the Michelin woman saw what he was looking at. She jerked little Kyle off the bench, slung her shopping bag against me, and huffed away.

  I’m five feet, six inches tall and weigh one hundred and forty pounds. Her shopping bag had approximately the same dimensions, and it almost knocked me off the bench.

  The magazine fell to the sidewalk and opened to another page with a picture of a motorcycle with huge saddlebags and a zaftig woman astride the seat with equally large appendages. I decided I had seen all I needed to see of Rio Grande Lofts. And of Chrome Hogs. I threw the magazine in the trash and continued my analysis on the walk home.

  I could drive through the garage entrance if I had a code. I could walk through without a code by following a car, but the driver would surely spot me and call security. I couldn’t linger until the car was out of sight in the garage and then run in. I had been on the bench long enough to see some cars come and go, and the gates on both the entrance and exit operated swiftly and efficiently.

  If I ran in through the exit gate when someone drove out, they could still call security, but at least they wouldn’t be in the basement with me. But there was a serious flaw with that option. The idea of running down a narrow concrete canyon while an average American motorist – probably with cell phone to ear – drove up that same ramp had me imagining being crushed between car and concrete.

  There might be a way to force open the service entrance from the outside, but the only methods that came to mind (a jackhammer, a cutting torch, dynamite) all failed to meet the condition of a surreptitious entry.

  The easiest way in was the only one I handn ’t considered – through the front door. I had walked only a block or two, so I turned back to try it. I took up a casual but determined pace, assumed an expression of confidence, and strode through the fr
ont door. I got two steps in before a burly doorman in a maroon blazer with a nametag that read ‘Rawlings’ stepped in front of me.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Warner Oland.”

  “We have no resident by that name, sir.”

  “Are you certain? Maybe he just moved in. Could I see the list of residents?”

  “No, sir. Our residents value their privacy. And I assure you we have no Mr. Oland here.”

  “I’m sure there’s some mistake,” I persisted. “I even have his phone number. Can I use your lobby phone to call him? Maybe he’ll come down and vouch for me.”

  “Sir,” he said politely but firmly, “no one enters this building unless a resident is here to receive him. We have no Mr. Oland. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  He had the sort of voice you expect to hear saying, “Step away from the building and keep your hands in plain sight.” Probably a former cop.

  So I started home again. If the other doormen were like Rawlings, getting past the front door was unlikely.

  6

  When I reached my shop, Emilio Sanchez was outside my door. He removed his hat as I approached.

  “Buenos dias, Señor Uberto.”

  “Buenos dias, amigo,” I replied, and we shared an abrazo.

  I asked the question I often ask – “¿Ingles o español?”

  “English, of course, my friend. Your Spanish, it is too good for me,” he said with a wide smile.

  “You just like to show off your English. It gets better every time I hear you.”

  “A man is never too old to learn.”

  “That is true. How is Señora Sanchez?”

  “Consuela continues to have the problems of her kidneys, but she sees the doctor and prays to the Virgin.”

  “And she remains strong?”

  “Yes, gracias a Diós. Of course, I do the cleaning, but she still like to cook.”

  “Emilio, Consuela is the best cook in New Mexico. She fed me for eighteen years and you for even longer, and neither one of us grew fat. How do you explain it?”

  “It is a miracle, Uberto.”

  “I believe it is. And I believe you may have brought some of her food, because a delicious smell is wafting from that bag.”

  “¿Que quiere decir ‘wafting’, Uberto?”

  “It means to be carried on the wind, like the scent of flowers or the smell of food.”

  “It is a good word, wafting. I will use it when I return to Consuela. ‘Querida Consuela,’ I will call to her, ‘your perfume was wafting from the house when I arrive on the bus’.”

  “She is a fortunate lady.”

  “It is I who am fortunate, my friend. But even so, the doctor, he is very expensive. Every day we give thanks to God for your parents who buy for us the insurance.”

  “You have a bill for me.”

  “I am sorry to trouble you—”

  “It is no trouble. Since my parents died, I administer their estate, so you must let me handle all the papers from the doctors.”

  “So you have told me many times, and yet I feel it is much work for you.”

  “Doing what my parents wanted is never work.”

  “You are a good—”

  “Emilio!”

  “Yes, Uberto?”

  “Are you going to show me what’s in the bag or are you going to make me starve?”

  He beamed and opened the bag. Then he unbent tin foil to reveal a mound of roasted cabrito.

  “My favorite. Muchisimas gracias.”

  Consuela Saenz (she didn’t become Consuela Sanchez until I was in college) was our housekeeper and cook, but to me she was like a second mother. She joined our household shortly after I did. My parents said she spoke little English. She spoke Spanish to me, so I grew up bilingual. After I started school, I helped her with her English.

  She knew nothing of American food. Oh blessed ignorance! We ate cabrito, carne adobo, chiles rellenos, fideos, flautas, posole, tapatias, pollo en mole, and sopa de lima. Until I started school, I assumed these were normal fare. The school cafeteria disabused me of that notion. After the first week, I started carrying a sack lunch.

  We would have talked longer but Emilio was anxious to return home to Consuela. I offered to drive him, but as usual he wouldn’t hear of it, so I walked him to the bus stop and waited with him until the bus arrived.

  7

  The closest bus stop is on Central (aka Route 66) unless you want to get on the silly trolley the city runs through Old Town. In the first place, it’s not a trolley because it doesn’t run on rails. It’s a bus with a trolley-looking body on it. In the second place, it doesn’t go where Albuquerqueans want to go. It’s really just for tourists.

  We did have real trolleys once. They were powered by electricity and ran on rails from 1904 to 1927. Well, they didn’t run continuously for 23 years, but they did operate on some sort of schedule during those years. Then they were replaced by buses. The same thing happened in New Orleans. Most of their streetcars were replaced by buses, one of which is called ‘Desire’. Fortunately, there was still a streetcar on Desire Street when Tennessee Williams was writing.

  As I walked back from Central, the scent of burning leaves was in the dry, crisp air, and there was a spring in my step and a song in my heart. The tune was Cow Cow Boogie being sung by Ella Fitzgerald, and I was humming along. The source of this joie de vivre was not only the beautiful New Mexico fall, but also the delicious cabrito awaiting me.

  Then I turned the corner and saw Miss Gladys Claiborne with a covered dish between her hands and a large canvas picnic bag hanging from her right forearm. In addition to running the eponymous Miss Gladys’ Gift Shop two doors west of the shop I own and one door west of the shop I rent, she has a second career trying to fatten me up and marry me off. I told her Emilio had left me a bag of roasted goat.

  “Then it’s a good thing I brought this King Ranch Chicken,” she proclaimed. “Why, just the thought of eating a goat would be enough to put a man off his feed. That Mr. Sanchez seems like such a nice person, but I do declare those Mexicans will eat just about anything. Why, they even put tripe in their stew, and those chile peppers are so hot it’s a wonder they don’t all have ulcers.”

  I’ve found it’s better not to argue with Miss Gladys, a name she evidently was known by even during the years of her marriage to the late Mr. Claiborne.

  “What is King Ranch Chicken?”

  She drew herself up to her full 5’2”. “Are you going to stand there and tell me you’ve never had King Ranch Chicken?”

  “Uh—”

  “You need to open that door, Mr. Schuze. I swear this dish is about to get the better of me.”

  I opened the door, took the dish from her, and placed it on my counter. The picnic bag I recognized from her stock. Fashioned from sturdy canvas with blue check gingham trim, it featured an embroidered picture of the Old Town gazebo on its side. She extracted a placemat, napkin, and three pieces of cutlery wrapped in a strip of the same fabric tied in a bow. Then she pulled out a big yellow dinner plate, a matching salad plate, a large glass tumbler, and a thermos. It was like watching clowns come out of a Volkswagen.

  I was admiring the beautiful glaze on the plate when she produced yet another instrument from the bag – a large silver serving spoon – and covered the plate with the casserole. I began to think the name “King Ranch” must derive from the size of the servings. I admit it smelled good, so I took a tentative taste while she told me about it.

  “You melt a stick of butter in your frying pan and cook up a couple of diced bell peppers and a couple of diced onions – Vidalia are the best. Then you put in a package of chicken tenders, and when they’ve begun to brown, you pour it all in an ovenproof casserole and add two cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup, two cans of condensed cream of chicken soup, and two cans of Ro-tel tomatoes with green chiles. Use the mild – you don’t want it to burn like Mexican food. Then you tear up a do
zen tortillas into bite-sized pieces, stir it all together with three packages of shredded cheddar cheese, and throw it in the oven. Just take it out anytime after it starts bubbling and before the cheese starts to look like leather,” she said and laughed. She went on to emphasize that you must use Ro-tel brand tomatoes and green chiles. Anything else and it wouldn’t be King Ranch.

  “Why, it’s easier than falling off a log,” she averred.

  Of course it is, I thought to myself. You don’t have to measure since all the ingredients come portioned out in standard quantities such as cans, packages, etc. I did wonder what part of the chicken is its tender. I admit the dish tasted good, although I couldn’t stop thinking of all the salt in those canned soups. Fortunately, the thermos held sweetened tea. I drank three glasses to offset the salt.

  As I approached the last of the food on my plate, I became increasingly wary of the empty salad plate. I was pretty sure there would be no salad. Miss Gladys doesn’t hold with the strange notion of the French that salad can be served after the entrée. I suspected dessert, and I didn’t think I was up to it. Then she reached in the bag (I looked around to see if perhaps there were two bags and I hadn’t noticed one of them) and came up with a plastic storage container packed with peach cobbler. Everyone in Old Town calls Miss Gladys Nuestra Senora de los Casseroles. We say it fondly, but not to her face. If Campbell’s ever goes out of business, Miss Gladys’s cookbook will be rendered useless. But the woman can make cobblers to die for, which was what I feared I might do after I ate the thing.