The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Read online

  “Chris is the name of a foreign student? Where’s he from, Canada?”

  “Italy. His real name is Christoforo Churgelli, but everyone just calls him Chris. Seems like a nice guy, sort of odd, but in a nice way. How did we get on this topic?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She puzzled for a moment. “Oh, right, Cantú not making himself up to be better looking. I still don’t see how you can be certain it’s Cantú’s collection. Maybe he sold the whole thing to the guy you saw, copies and all.”

  “Could be. That would really gall me because that would mean that weasel sold my copies as originals. He may have made ten times more on my copies than I got for making them.”

  “And when you sell a pot that you got for free by digging it up, how much more do you make than the person who made the pot in the first place?”

  “That’s different,” I said, perhaps defensively.

  “How?”

  “The potters who made the pots I sell are dead. I couldn’t give them a commission on the sale even if I wanted to.”

  “Well, Hubie,” she said after draining the last of her margarita, “I know you think the collection belongs to Cantú, but there’s only one way you can be certain about that.”

  6

  Which is why I was riding blindfolded again the next afternoon, this time in the passenger seat of Susannah’s purple 1995 Ford Crown Victoria.

  It didn’t start out purple. The factory color was blue, but too many years under the New Mexico sun oxidized the paint in some peculiar way that made it turn purple. The roof never was blue. It was white vinyl that dried up and flaked off over the course of several years during which the car looked as if it had a bad case of dandruff. But it’s all gone now, and the roof is just tinny-looking metal with streaks where the glue used to be that once held the vinyl in place.

  The Crown Vic came with every electronic gadget available – air, cassette player, power windows, cruise control, power seats, even a power trunk release. None of those things still function. I doubt she misses the cruise control, nobody has any cassettes to play these days, and how difficult is it to open the trunk with a key? But not having air conditioning in Albuquerque is bad. Having inoperable windows is even worse. So when the little motors that operate the windows burned out, Susannah took the inside door panels off and manually lowered the windows. Of course there isn’t a crank, so there’s no way to raise them again.

  No problem. It rarely rains here and no one is going to steal the car.

  I’m still amazed that she knew how to take those panels off. There were no visible screws or latches or anything. She didn’t do quite so well getting them back on because they sort of flop around when you open the door, and if it’s a windy day – which it frequently is in Albuquerque – then you have to hold the panel when you open the door or it’ll fly away.

  I like riding in Susannah’s car even though my feet don’t touch the floor if I sit all the way back in the seat. You could park a Corolla in there.

  Segundo Cantú was listed at 183 Titanium Trail, a street in a subdivision of condos called Casitas del Bosque. The other street in the development was named Platinum Place. In the real Albuquerque – as opposed to its faux southwestern-style suburbs – there are original streets named Lead, Copper, and Silver. All those things are mined in New Mexico. So far as I know, there is no platinum ore in the State. I don’t even know if titanium comes from ore, but I don’t think we have any.

  Susannah mapped out the route to 183 Titanium Trail and insisted I wear a blindfold while she drove there. I protested at first on the grounds that I could just close my eyes and imagine that I was recreating my first trip, but I eventually gave in to her argument that we needed to recreate the conditions of the first trip as faithfully as possible. I also gave in because she thought it would be “peachy” to have a blindfolded passenger.

  She told me to take some time to put myself in the right frame of mind, to imagine that I was taking the same trip. When I said I had done that, she set off. We rode in silence as agreed, and I paid attention to how long we went straight, how often we turned and the direction. Since we had nothing else to go on, we decided she would drive at the speed limit. The ride seemed to match the way it had felt the first time except for the fact that the Crown Vic has loose steering and feels like a boat in high swells when you round a corner.

  When she came to a stop and cut the engine, I took off the blindfold.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well, I have to admit you were right. Having the blindfold on helped me compare it to the original trip.”

  “And did it seem the same?”

  “I have no idea. The blindfold kept making me think of piñatas.”

  She took a swipe at me, but the front seat is so big that I just leaned towards the window and she missed.

  “It did seem like the same ride,” I said after I stopped laughing at her.

  “Does the house look the same?”

  I fell for it. I actually looked at the house as if I might recognize it. I gave her a look to acknowledge that she got me back for the piñata remark, then I looked at the place in earnest.

  The “casitas” were in clusters of six, each one identical from the outside except for the wrought iron numbers on the plank doors. The clusters were low-slung with buttresses at both sides and differentiated by the color of the stucco – light brown, dusty rose, grey, dark brown, and an awful mustard. Unit 183 was in one of the light brown clusters. Despite the development’s name being Casitas del Bosque, there were very few trees around the casitas unless you count a few straggly junipers. There was an irrigation canal at the end of Titanium where it intersected with Platinum. I wondered what sort of alloy those two would create.

  On the narrow strip of dirt between the curb and the canal grew a stand of cottonwoods, willows, and catalpas. Maybe they were the bosque.

  “I need to see inside,” I observed rather redundantly.

  “Go knock on the door and see if anyone’s home.”

  “Are you crazy? What if Cantú answers the door?”

  “Tell him you came to see his pot collection.”

  “What if he doesn’t want me to see it?”

  She sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Hubie. All you’re trying to do is get a peek inside. As soon as he opens the door, you’ll know if it’s where you did the appraisal.”

  “I already know it’s where I did the appraisal.”

  “Come on. You can’t be absolutely certain.”

  She was right. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to get my twenty-five hundred back, but it was pay for appraising the collection, and until I was positive who owned the collection, I didn’t know how to go about reclaiming it.

  “Let’s drive around back,” she said and started the engine. We were headed due north. I’d like to claim I knew that because of my Y chromosome, but the truth is I knew we were headed north because the Sandia Mountains were on our right. At the end of Titanium Trail, we turned east toward the mountains onto a service drive. After about a hundred feet, the service drive made a second right angle turn to the right so that we were now headed south and were directly behind the units.

  I remembered the window with the cream-colored shade and told Susannah about it as she swung into the service drive. There were one-car garage doors at the back of each unit, and next to each garage was a small patio. She drove slowly along as we looked at each window.

  Spotting the cream-colored shade would have strengthened my conviction that this was where the pots were. We spotted it alright. There was one in every window.

  “I can’t believe everyone in the neighborhood bought the same shades,” I said.

  “They didn’t. Those are probably the ones that came with the places.”

  “And no one decided they wanted a different color or maybe Venetian blinds?”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t look like the sort of neighborhood where people hire interior decorators.”
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br />   There was something forlorn about the place. No window boxes, no brightly painted doors, no landscaping. It looked like a place people lived while looking for something more permanent. I think they call them ‘starter homes’.

  One of the garage doors opened a few units behind us and a car backed out and headed in our direction. Since the rear service drive was wide enough only for one car, Susannah drove around in front to let the car exit.

  Then she said, “Let’s look in the garage.”

  She paid no attention to my protest as she noted Cantú’s unit aloud. “Fifth one from the north end,” she said as she drove back around. She stopped directly behind number 183, got out of the car and peered through the small windows in the garage door as I scrunched down in the seat trying to make myself invisible.

  “There’s a Cadillac convertible in there,” she said.

  “That seems a bit fancy for this neighborhood.”

  “The thing actually has fins.”

  “Sounds like something Cantú would drive. He’s got this boney frame and—”

  “Yeah, you told me that. So you think this is the house where you did the appraisal?”

  “Of course. It’s Cantú’s address, it seems the right distance from Old Town, and the house is about the right size. It was roughly twenty-five feet from the entry where I took off the blindfold to the window with the shade pulled down, and these casitas are about that deep. On top of all that, I did notice how far my blindfolded walk was from the car to the front door, and this front sidewalk is the right distance. Everything fits.”

  “So now what?”

  “He’s probably here since there’s a car in the garage. Maybe I should keep checking back until I find the garage empty and then see if I can get in somehow.”

  “Break in like you did at Berdal’s apartment?” she asked mischievously.

  “I didn’t break in. You kicked in the door.”

  “You were trying to break in, but you weren’t very good at it. Meanwhile, I was standing out there freezing my butt off, so I finally just kicked the door in because we’d still be standing there if I hadn’t.”

  And the banter continued in this mode as we drove back to Old Town. At one point I put the blindfold back on surreptitiously, and when Susannah noticed she almost ran off the road laughing. It was almost five, and I was looking forward to discussing how to reclaim my missing appraisal fee with Susannah at Dos Hermanas. Then I remembered she’d told me she had a date that night with Chris the foreign student. Since it was Friday, that meant I wouldn’t see her again until Monday at five, at which time she would probably tell me her date had been a disaster. She’s unlucky in love, but it never gets her down. Still, I worry about her. I resisted the temptation to warn her about Italian men, partly because it was not my place to do so, but mainly because I don’t know anything about Italian men.

  What I did know was that 183 Titanium Trail had to be the house I had done the appraisal in. The location seemed right. The size seemed right. The back window was in the right place. The door was the right distance from the curb. I was positive it was Cantú’s house. I was positive it was Cantú’s collection.

  But I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that some small detail was wrong.

  7

  Martin Seepu was standing in front of my shop with a pot in his hand when Susannah dropped me off.

  I said, “I hope your uncle’s not in dire need of money, because I can’t afford to buy that pot right now.”

  “That’s what these tourists have been telling me all afternoon.”

  “They don’t even know your uncle.”

  “I meant the ‘can’t afford to buy that pot’ part.” He shook his head in mock disgust. “There was a time in this country when white people had money.”

  Martin Seepu’s uncle is a gifted potter who occasionally sends Martin to me with a pot he wants to sell. His works are traditional for his pueblo which is why I buy them. I don’t like contemporary adaptations and experiments. New Mexico’s potters are free to use iridescent glazes and decorate their pots with embedded casino chips if they want to, but I don’t have to buy and sell the stuff.

  Another reason I buy Martin’s uncle’s works is they always sell within a few months. Some people know quality when they see it. The only reason his pots don’t bring even more is he isn’t famous. He could be if he promoted himself or allowed an agent to do so. A book about him or a TV special would quadruple what he can get for a pot, but he doesn’t want that. Martin respects that. So do I, but I grimace when someone walks off with one his pots for three or four thousand even after I mark it up.

  “So you’ve been taking advantage of my absence to hawk your wares on my doorstep,” I said.

  “You can see how well that worked. I did get one offer. A fat five-year-old offered to trade his ice cream cone for my pot.”

  “Probably figured he could snooker an Indian.”

  “I have to admit I was tempted. An ice cream would have tasted good on a hot day like this. But he’d already licked it.”

  “I don’t have any ice cream, but I do have some cold beer.”

  “You got Tecate?”

  “You gonna turn me down if I don’t have the right brand?”

  “A man’s got to have standards.”

  We went through the store to my living area in the back. While Martin pulled a couple of Tecates from the fridge along with a bowl of salsa, I looked up Cantú’s number and dialed it. A recorded voice told me the number was no longer in service, as if it had been discharged from the military.

  I dumped chips into a bowl, and we took everything out to my patio, a ten by fifteen space on the east side of my building surrounded by an eight foot adobe wall. The building shades the patio in the afternoon, so the air was already twenty degrees cooler than the noon high of ninety-seven. The twin cottonwoods swayed ever so slightly, their leaves alternating between lime green and silver.

  I tutored Martin in math when he was a kid and I was an undergraduate. I think the aim of the program that oversaw placing university students in the pueblos was for us to function something like the Big Brothers program. Martin already had a big brother and a big sister as well. He also had two parents who provided him all the guidance he needed and more than he wanted. So I taught him math just to feel like I was doing something useful. He evidently harbors no grudge about that because he comes to visit me frequently. He’s always civil, but sometimes you have to work to see it.

  I told Martin about Segundo Cantú. He listened attentively with that blank expression he wears. After I finished, he took another sip of his beer. He likes it straight from the can. I always pour mine into a glass.

  After a few minutes, he said, “People who collect old pots are strange.”

  “Including me?”

  “Especially you. Of course you got some reason to do it – this trading post.”

  I chuckled at him calling my shop a trading post, but I guess it is in a way.

  “My people believe the four elements are earth, air, fire, and water.”

  “Just like the ancient Greeks,” I noted.

  “We made a little progress since them. We divide each of those into four subcategories.” The leaves rustled and he tilted his head skyward.

  “And those subcategories are?”

  “The four kinds of earth are sand, clay, rock, and another word that I guess would translate as soil. It’s what you can grow things in.” He ate a chip – no salsa – and sipped some beer.

  “I just know there’s a reason you’re telling me this.”

  “There are also four types of clay,” he continued. “My uncle taught me. White clay, changing clay, shrinking clay, and hot-fire clay. Even though you’re a yellow-haired devil, you probably know this stuff.”

  “Correction. I’m a brown-haired devil.”

  “Yellow-haired has a better ring to it.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “The white clay is kaolin, no doubt about that o
ne. The ‘changing clay’ is probably what we call fire clay because its plasticity can change like crazy. Shrinking clay would be ball clay because that shrinks a lot during firing, and-hot fire clay is probably plain old earthenware clay because it does require a high temperature to fire properly, although so does kaolin. Why are we talking about this?”

  “I’m making a point about pot collectors.”

  “I think I missed it.”

  “That’s because I haven’t made it yet.”

  “Ah,” I said and drank some Tecate.

  “Pot collectors don’t know anything about clay. They don’t know about firing. They don’t know the true meanings of the designs. Why do they want the pots?”

  “Because as Shelly said, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’.”

  “That was Keats,” he corrected.

  “I was just testing you.”

  “I don’t think they collect pots because they’re beautiful. I think they collect them because they’re rare.”

  “Actually, I agree. The rarer your collection the better. Look at the most desired collectibles of all time – the 1943 copper penny, the 1918 stamp with the plane upside-down – the thing they have in common is not their beauty or historical significance or anything like that. It’s just that they are rare.”

  “One of those ‘inverted jenny’ stamps sold for over half a million a couple of years ago,” he noted.

  “So you’re saying that pot collectors are weird because they buy pots just because there aren’t many of them to be bought.”

  “I guess the same could be said of all collectors.”

  It was right after he made that statement that the dog fell out of the sky.

  8

  The next morning I drove down the South Valley along old Highway 85, avoiding the Interstate. Friday had been a scorcher, ninety-eight degrees, but I’d slept with a light blanket. The dry air cools quickly when the sun goes down, and you feel the effects of being a mile above sea level.