Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Read online

  I started college as a math student, but all I knew about Pythagoras was what everyone else knows—he discovered the theorem that has been the curse of a hundred generations of eighth graders. The Pythagorean Theorem tells us that the square of the two short sides of a right triangle is always equal to the square of the hypotenuse, a piece of information most people forget the morning after their geometry class ends.

  What I didn’t know is that Pythagoras was also a world traveler, philosopher, mystic and poet. The frontispiece of the volume had this poem attributed to him:

  Speak not nor act before thou hast reflected, and be just.

  Remember we are ordained to die,

  That riches and honors easily acquired are easy thus to lose.

  As to the evils which Destiny involves,

  Judge them what they are, endure them all and strive,

  As much as thou art able, to deflect them with good.

  I thought Pythagoras expressed some noble ideals, and had it been New Year’s Eve, I might have adopted a resolution to follow them, especially since “riches easily acquired” could describe digging up pots.

  I had thought poetry without rhyme was a recent aberration, but I guess it’s been around for over two thousand years. Or maybe it rhymes in Greek. With or without rhymes, I suspect his poetry would appeal to more people than his theorem, and it has the added advantage that so far as I was able to determine, none of his poems include the word “hypotenuse,” which would be almost as difficult to rhyme as “plinth.”

  I became so absorbed in Pythagoras that I didn’t see the young lady until the bong signaled her entrance. She had a wide face with good cheekbones and a slightly misaligned nose. She was about five foot three inches tall with a full figure and more hip than is considered desirable these days but would have made Renoir jump for his canvas and brushes.

  Her jeans were dirty and her hair disheveled. She stopped a few paces inside the door and gave me the sort of smile that indicated she was seeking approval to enter. The smile was on full lips. The smear of lipstick matched the heavy makeup.

  “Come in,” I said, trying to reassure her. She smiled again and glanced around the shop.

  “How much do these pots cost?”

  “All different prices. Do you see one you like?”

  She scanned the room. Then she approached a shelf.

  “That one’s pretty,” she said, pointing to a San Ildefonso olla done by Martina Vigil around 1900.

  “That’s one of my favorites,” I said

  She picked it up and my heart stopped beating. I walked to her casually so as not to provoke any sudden movement and gently took the pot from her hands. I didn’t want to scold her, so I held it up and pointed out a few of its design features.

  Then I put it back on the shelf and told her it was fifty thousand dollars.

  “Wow! I guess I’ll have to buy two of them,” she said.

  Standing close to her, I could tell she was younger than I had thought, college-age maybe, except she didn’t look like a college student. I recognized the aroma of the cheap perfume samplers from a gift shop down the street and, underneath that, another faint scent that hinted at the need for a shower. Part of her full bottom lip was swollen.

  “I’m Kaylee,” she said.

  “Hi, Kaylee. I’m Mr. Schuze.”

  “Wow, what a cute name. Do you have a first name?”

  “Hubert,” I answered.

  She smiled again. “Do you, like, have anything to drink?”

  “I have water and coffee—but it’s not very good.”

  “What about something stronger.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You mean alcohol?”

  “Sure. You have any vodka?”

  “No, I don’t. Are you old enough to drink?”

  She put her hands on her hips and pushed them out to one side. “I’m old enough to know better, too.”

  “Well, you could have fooled me.” I hesitated for a moment and then said, “Listen, I have some work to do in the storeroom, and I need to close up the store while I do it. So thanks for coming in to see the pots, but I—”

  “I could watch it for you,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I could watch the store while you worked in the storeroom.”

  “Um, it’s nice of you to offer, but I’m particular about my pots. Well, you already know how expensive they are, right? So I don’t like to keep the store open when I can’t be here to personally keep an eye on them.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay me. I could be like a temporary salesgirl that you didn’t have to pay.”

  I shook my head. “No, sorry.”

  She stared at me for a moment. “You want me to leave now?”

  “I do. I really need to close up now.”

  “Okay, that’s cool. Thanks for letting me look at the pots, Hubert.”

  She was almost to the door when I said, “Kaylee,” and she turned around. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” she said and then just stood there. After a few seconds she pulled the door open and left. The wind had kicked up, and I watched her walk toward the plaza with her hair fluttering behind.

  I rotated the sign to Closed and was about to lock the door when Guvelly turned the corner and spotted me. If only Kaylee hadn’t lingered at the door, I could have made a clean getaway.

  He asked if I had thought about what he said to me yesterday. His lips were still rigid, and I noticed they were mismatched, the bottom one being wider. Without his upper lip being stretched, his mouth would have no corners.

  I said, “I think you summed up the situation when you said I couldn’t sell such a recognizable pot. So why would I steal it?”

  “Maybe you just wanted to add it to your collection.”

  “You’re welcome to look around. I won’t even insist on a warrant.”

  He glanced around the shop as if he might take me up on the offer. Then he said, “I don’t expect you to have it here. But if you do have it and are willing to return it, something might be worked out.”

  I was curious where he was going with this. “What sort of something?”

  “You might claim you didn’t steal the pot, just bought it from someone. I might be able to limit the charge to misdemeanor receiving stolen property. Since you have no formal record, it might be possible to get you out of this with no jail time.”

  I shook my head. “This is not Monopoly where you can land in jail by the roll of the dice. I don’t need a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”

  “You might change your mind once we arrest you.”

  “That’s a bluff and not a good one. You can’t arrest me without evidence, and you don’t have any because I didn’t steal the pot.”

  He took half a step forward and stared at me. I tried to hold his gaze without looking defiant. He was six inches taller than me. His head was huge, his face flat. His round eyes protruded so far from their sockets that I thought a hearty slap on his back might pop them out.

  With no change in expression, he added, “There could be a finder’s fee.”

  “If I find the pot, you’ll be the first person I call.”

  He left without saying goodbye. I noticed his hair was perfectly still as he stepped into the wind.

  8

  Miss Gladys Claiborne brought me lunch late that afternoon.

  I told her I’d eaten an entire sack of breakfast burritos, but she was undeterred. “It’s just a little ol’ leftover casserole,” she said as she smoothed an embroidered placemat onto my counter and fussily arranged a matching napkin on top of it. As she lowered the plate, I peered down at the concoction.

  “What might this be called?”

  “Back home we always called it Emma’s Tuna because everybody learned the recipe from Emma Higginbotham. It was one of Mr. Clai
borne’s favorites.”

  Mr. Claiborne was her tubercular husband who died twenty years ago leaving her with a fortune made in the cotton futures business. She was called Miss Gladys even when she was married to him. The gift shop that bears her name is two doors to the west of me. She sells tea cozies, antimacassars and those horrid naked Indian girl statues made by the Frankoma Company near Tulsa.

  “I can’t remember a time when we sat down to Sunday dinner that my four-quart silver chafing dish wasn’t full of Emma’s Tuna. Except of course when Father Rice came for dinner, and then Mr. Claiborne always insisted on a standing rib roast.”

  “Father Rice? Are you Catholic, Miss Gladys?”

  There was a quick intake of breath. “Why, heavens no. My people have been Episcopalians ever since Henry divorced Catherine.”

  I didn’t tumble to who she was talking about. “Was Henry one of your ancestors?”

  She giggled. “I do love your sense of humor. I’m speaking of Henry VIII, and I’m afraid we don’t have a drop of royal blood. But if it hadn’t been for King Henry, there wouldn’t be any Episcopalians. Or Whiskeypalians as they called them in East Texas. The Baptists and the Methodists thought we were terrible sinners. Why, even some of the Presbyterians were teetotalers. I know this isn’t a ladylike thing to say, but when we moved out here among all these Catholics, it was the first time I had ever been able to set foot in a liquor store without feeling guilty.”

  I looked down at the casserole and told her she shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble.

  “It was no trouble at all. You start with canned tuna. I always use solid albacore. Then you combine it with noodles, chopped green onions, a can of cream of mushroom soup and a package of grated cheddar and bake it in the oven.” Her pale blue eyes sparkled as she added, “Since we moved out here, I sometimes put a can of green chili in it.”

  I took a forkful of it. It wasn’t bad. But with every bite I kept thinking of all that mercury lodging in my brain.

  “You don’t have to wait around here, Miss Gladys. I’ll bring your stuff back to you just as soon as I finish.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want you to eat all alone.”

  “But shouldn’t you be in your shop?”

  “I just put up that little sign with the clock face on it saying when I’ll be back. But I swear business is so slow, I don’t even know why I bother.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “It does my heart good to see you eat. I just hate cooking for nobody but myself. You know what you need? A wife.”

  “I’d be honored to marry you.”

  She pushed her hand through the air at me. “You are a handsome devil, but I’m old enough to be your mother. By the way, who was that attractive young lady who was in your shop earlier?”

  “I think she’s a runaway.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I could be wrong.”

  “There seem to be so many sad young people these days. When Sarah and Zachary were children, all their little friends seemed so happy. If there was a sad child in all of East Texas, I didn’t know about it. Of course families were closer then …”

  I finished the casserole and offered to wash the dishes and return them to her. She wouldn’t hear of it, so I walked her back to her shop.

  I felt bloated as I returned. I seldom eat lunch. I believe in starting the day with a hardy breakfast, meaning loaded with carbohydrates, animal fats and red or green chili. I may eat an avocado or a mango during the day, but I usually don’t have another meal until after the cocktail hour and often have both in the same chair.

  Susannah had a date with Mr. West Coast, but I walked over to Dos Hermanas Tortillería at five anyway. As the name implies, it started out as a tortilla factory. In New Mexico, that means they sell mainly tamales and posole. And you probably thought they sold tortillas. Well, they sell a few, but the ones in the grocery stores are cheap and good, so most people no longer buy tortillas at a factory.

  Tamales, on the other hand, are a pain in la cola to cook, so people buy them at their local tortilla factory. The ones at Dos Hermanas are to die for, and considering how much lard goes into the masa, that may be literally true. The masa in a Dos Hermanas tamale is like a Mexican Rolaids—it will absorb up to forty-seven times its weight in stomach acid. Or Drano for that matter.

  Posole is another matter. Even people in New Hampshire know what a tamale is. But posole has not caught on outside of New Mexico, perhaps for good cause. It’s a stew made with hominy, chili, oregano and tripe. Now tripe, contrary to what the sound of the word conjures up in your mind, is almost fat free, so it’s healthier than lard. But I usually chose the tamales anyway. Better to die happy than thin.

  9

  Kids always think their mothers are beautiful. When maturity and experience disabuse us of that notion, we still think they look terrific. Maybe not like the movie stars we saw at age five, but with a character of face just as intriguing.

  It’s the same with hometowns. I thought Albuquerque was the most beautiful city in the world. Then I saw pictures of Venice and Kyoto and realized that my hometown was not a classic beauty. But I love its character and wouldn’t trade its high desert and mountains for canals or cherry blossoms.

  I love the thin dry air at a mile above sea level. I can stand on the banks of the Rio Grande and look up at the Sandias, rising another mile above the city, reaching over ten thousand feet into space. White capped in the winter, verdant in the spring with dark pines and light aspens, yellow and gold in the crisp autumn, the mountains shelter Albuquerque from the east, from its geography and from its history.

  Albuquerque is not about pilgrims and turkeys. It’s about Spaniards and chilies.

  I played as a child in the trackless expanse of the West Mesa across the Rio Grande, hunting imaginary bad guys through the sage, creosote, mesquite and chamisa around the dunes and the cottonwoods and willows along the arroyos.

  Then Intel built a chip factory across the river and my wilderness playground became a synthetic quilt of faux adobe suburbs. The Chamber of Commerce says it provides jobs, but most of them were filled by people who transferred here. So we got more people, more traffic, more bad architecture and more chips. Nothing against Intel, but I liked the West Mesa better when the chips out there were produced by cows.

  Albuquerque owes its existence to geography. Tijeras Canyon is the northernmost snow-free pass through the Rockies and the road that snaked through it for centuries eventually became Route 66 and then Interstate 40. The old road is now the main east/west thoroughfare and is called Central Avenue, a name that makes up in accuracy what it lacks in imagination. Central runs from the mouth of the canyon west past the University, through downtown, past the south edge of Old Town, across the Rio Grande and onto the West Mesa.

  I left Dos Hermanas, turned east on Central and headed to the Hyatt.

  Downtown has been reinvented again, but they still don’t have it quite right. It was Friday night and the action was heating up, teenagers and college students strolling the street and packing the bars and cafés. Albuquerque’s latest campaign to revitalize downtown has focused on the Route 66 theme. No one downtown looked old enough to remember the highway or the show, but they were hell-bent, as the theme song said, “to get your kicks on route sixty-six.”

  As in every other American city, suburbs and shopping centers put an end to downtown as a place to shop. Our city fathers decided downtown could be revitalized with an arts focus. There are sculpture pieces on the sidewalks and markers explaining the original architecture of buildings, many of which no longer exist or have been irretrievably altered for the worst. Thankfully, the KiMo Theater was saved, and the ornate façade with its weird Egyptian/Southwestern motif still causes students of architecture to pause and scratch their heads. It is now a center for performing arts.

  The revitalization plan seems to be
working to some extent. Downtown used to be deserted after five. Now it can be quite lively. But most of the evening denizens were not there for the art unless bars and discos are considered art venues.

  I thought about Guvelly and Wilkes being in the same hotel and the possibility that Wilkes was an undercover federal agent. Maybe his attempt to lure me into stealing the pot from the Valle del Rio Museum was a ploy. My attorney with the lawyerly name of Layton Kent would no doubt counsel me that an unsolicited invitation to commit a crime would be entrapment, and the evidence would not be admissible in court. Then again, I would be the one incarcerated until Layton got around to coming to the jail to habeas my corpus.

  On the surface, Guvelly seemed menacing, but a lot of that might be his appearance. I couldn’t decide whether his gruffness stemmed from being a cop or simply from a lack of social skills. If he was smart enough to pass the civil service exam, he must have known I didn’t steal the pot. I’ve heard that cops sometimes put the word on the street by rousting known criminals and letting the grapevine do its work. But so far as I was aware, there was no network of pot thieves. I was also curious about his second visit and his apparent desire to negotiate. Since I was going to the Hyatt anyway, I decided to pay him a surprise visit.

  I veered off Central onto Tijeras, which runs at a slight angle to the otherwise orderly grid of downtown and leads directly to the Hyatt, the tallest hotel in New Mexico. Which is akin to being the world’s tallest midget. The lobby resembled the modern version of a Middle Eastern bazaar, a jumble of scents, colors, noises and bedlam. The scent of coffee from Starbucks mixed with the popcorn smell from the bar. Music from a pianist in the lobby added melody to a percussion trio entertaining a group on the mezzanine. Light glinted off the brass and marble, not to mention the sequins in the gowns of heavyset ladies attending some sort of gala.