Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras Page 5

  I felt vaguely safe in the anonymity of the crowd as I crossed through a lobby full of people with nametags on their lapels, entered one of the four elevators and punched 11. No one on floors two through ten wanted to go up, so I enjoyed a nonstop ride. I stepped out of the elevator into silence.

  I don’t know why, but I felt as though I were trespassing. Maybe it was the camera above the bank of elevators. The security I had felt in the crowded lobby evaporated as I stood unprotected and alone in an empty vestibule.

  I studied the sign explaining the numbering system, turned right then left and soon arrived at 1118. I looked for more cameras, even while thinking too late now, but I didn’t see any along the corridor.

  I stood in front of the door for several minutes thinking. I could forget the whole thing and just walk away. Forget Wilkes, too. Play it safe. Go home without knocking on either door. Forget about the Museum. Forget about the Mogollon pot. Forget about the $25,000.

  Hmm.

  I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again, this time loudly. Same result. I put my ear to the door and heard only the low hum one hears in large buildings. I returned to the elevators and punched the Down button.

  A bank of phones hung on the wall in the lobby around the corner from the elevators. I lifted the receiver of the first one and dialed the three digits of Wilkes’ room number. As I pressed the third button, I noticed a slot for depositing coins. It wasn’t a house phone. It was a pay phone. I pressed the lever to break the connection and stood with the phone to my ear while I thought.

  Did I want the front desk to buzz Wilkes? No. Better not to have anyone know I did any kind of business with Wilkes.

  I returned to the elevators and ascended to the ninth floor.

  10

  I stood at Wilkes’ door as I had stood at Guvelly’s, indecisive like the character in The Lady or the Tiger. Which would Wilkes turn out to be?

  A little voice advised me to go home. I didn’t belong here. I told the little voice I needed the money. He replied that I didn’t need it enough to go for jail for it.

  I turned to leave.

  Then I remembered what I think about money-grubbing museums and soulless professional anthropologists. I remembered my spiritual bond with ancient potters. Would they want their work in a glass cage? In a building that may as well be a crypt for the traffic it hosts?

  The rationalization worked. I knocked on the door. Wilkes must have been standing right behind it because it flew open as my fingers were still straightening out of the fist I knocked with.

  I jumped and Wilkes laughed. I felt foolish for an instant and then reassured. There was something about his easy manner and sly smile that made him seem harmless.

  Yet I knew his project was fraught with danger. I tried to remain guarded without revealing it.

  Except for the fact that he was in it, Wilkes’ room appeared vacant. The door opened to a vestibule from which I glanced into the bathroom. It revealed no toothbrush, no towel on the floor, no sign that anyone had used the room since the last visit of the chambermaid. There was no sign of luggage. The bed was perfectly made. There was no glass of water on the nightstand, no book on the table between the two chairs. Maybe he was obsessively neat. Or maybe he was in a hotel room to trick me into thinking he was from out of town.

  I broke the ice by asking, “Do you want to check to see if I’m wearing a wire?”

  He was in twill pants with a sharp crease, a grey flannel shirt, and squarish work shoes. His beard looked freshly trimmed. The deep lines at the corners of his eyes eased gently upward as he answered my question. “Why would you be?”

  I returned his half smile. “If you ask a law-abiding citizen to steal something, he might report it to the police who then might enlist that citizen to meet with you and get the offer on tape.”

  “Could happen,” he admitted, “but I don’t think so in this case.”

  “Why not?”

  He pointed me to one of the winged chairs and I sat. He took the other one. “First, you’re not a law-abiding citizen. No offense intended.”

  “None taken. But I’m generally law-abiding.”

  “I don’t doubt that you are—generally. But I’m fairly certain your respect for the law doesn’t extend to federal regulations regarding archaeological resources.”

  The chair was comfortable and the room pleasantly warm. “I like to think of it as civil disobedience,” I told him, only half tongue-in-cheek.

  “Civil disobedience?”

  I shrugged. “Okay, I know it sounds self-serving, but I think breaking laws that are absurd is healthy.”

  “I agree. It’s just that I associate civil disobedience with Gandhi or Martin Luther King, not with grave robbing.”

  I assumed a hurt look. “Grave robbing is a harsh term.” I was tempted to tell him I’m too squeamish to even consider it. But I didn’t because he was trying to hire me to steal a pot, and who wants a squeamish thief?

  “But it’s what you do,” he asserted.

  “It’s what Howard Carter did. I collect pots, not mummies.”

  “There must be some pristine pots in Indian graves. They buried pots full of food with their dead so they’d have food on their journey to the other world.”

  “Some did. Some didn’t. But it doesn’t matter. I buy most of my stock from Indian potters. I can’t afford to offend my suppliers.”

  “And let me guess—some of them are your best friends.”

  I didn’t know whether to be offended. I couldn’t tell whether he disliked Indians and was insulting me by assuming I felt the same way or whether he was making a joke at the expense of fools who say things like that.

  Evidently he sensed I was wondering about the remark, so he said, “I know Martin Seepu.”

  Martin is a close friend. “How do you happen to know Martin?”

  “I’ve tried a couple of times to get him to sell me one of his uncle’s pots, but he won’t do it. He says he only deals with you.”

  “He tell you I was a pot digger?”

  “No, someone else told me that. What Martin told me was that you’re a genius when it comes to Pueblo pottery. You can name the pueblo and the potter at a glance and copy their work to perfection.”

  “I never copy their work. I just copy ancient pots.”

  “Another case of not wanting to offend your suppliers?”

  “Yeah, and the old stuff is more valuable anyway.”

  He laughed. “I used to turn up bones and pots by the ton. It’s nice to say you don’t dig in graves, but the whole planet is one big graveyard, Schuze.”

  He told me he had served in the Corps of Engineers. He was forced into early retirement, but he didn’t say why. I ventured the opinion that involuntary retirement is better than being kicked out of school, but he didn’t think so. Under his quiet and unassuming manner, there bubbled some anger.

  “I oversaw drag line and bucket operations on projects all over the West,” he said. “Every third scoop had an artifact in it. No one else cared, so why should I?”

  His tone was not quite bitter—more resigned. After he was forced out, he began a second career in antiquities. I got the sense that he was like me, cashing in on the riches of the earth. The main difference was that I did my own digging whereas he benefited from Uncle Sam’s heavy equipment.

  I assumed his remark about the entire planet being a graveyard was hyperbole, but I told him that we were headed in that direction. Wasting space on graves is one of my pet peeves, like storing artifacts in museum basements. He asked why I was against graveyards, and I pointed out the practical issue that no one other than me seems to worry about; namely, that the number of people needing burial grows exponentially while the amount of land remains constant, so we’re going to run out of space.

  He cocked his head. “Cemeteries don’t take tha
t much space, do they?”

  “Think about it. There are over six billion people alive today. Say a burial plot is ten feet by five. That’s fifty square feet. Multiply that by six billion and you get three hundred billion square feet.” I did a quick mental calculation. “That’s over twelve thousand square miles. So to bury the current population will require more room than the entire of state New Jersey.”

  “And good riddance,” he laughed. “But I see your point. Still, there are a lot of New Jersey–sized places around the world.”

  “Not so many as you might think. The earth is mostly water. Then you have to discount steep terrain, swamps and the frozen areas to the north and south. You also have to subtract areas already under some other use, land we grow food on, live on, build factories on, etc. If the current population growth trend continues, it will be a close call to see which we run out of first, food to feed the masses or burial space for them when they starve.”

  “You have a weird mind.”

  I shrugged in admission. “Things make more sense to me when I put numbers on them. I used to be an accountant.” I finally got around to the concern I was harboring. “A federal agent came to my shop yesterday.”

  “Was his name Guvelly?”

  I was surprised and relieved at how easily he asked the question.

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw him in the lobby today. Our paths have crossed before.”

  “The card Guvelly gave me said he worked in the Santa Fe office. Why would someone whose office is just an hour away stay at a hotel here?”

  Wilkes shrugged. “Just another example of the Federal Government’s fraud, waste and abuse program?”

  I laughed. Wilkes asked if I wanted a drink. I said I did and he called room service for a couple of beers. The two chairs were next to a large window on a south-facing wall. It had started to drizzle and the streetlights nine stories below had coronas.

  While we were waiting, Wilkes returned to the topic of Guvelly. “I think he’s investigating a theft from Bandelier. Someone stole a pot like the one we talked about.”

  “He thinks I stole it,” I said.

  “Did you?”

  “No,” I replied quickly. “Did you?”

  He laughed. “No, but I understand why you might think so. It would be quite a coincidence if my asking you to get the pot from the Valle del Rio Museum and the disappearance of the one at Bandelier just happened to occur in the same time frame.”

  I nodded. The beers came. After Wilkes signed the tab, the room service guy left and Wilkes said, “As you probably guessed, I want the UNM pot for a client. When I heard about the theft at Bandelier, my first thought was my client had enlisted someone else to get that pot for him. I asked him about it, and he denied any involvement.”

  I said nothing. My first impulse was to believe him. But the coincidence was worrying.

  After a brief silence, Wilkes asked, “Do you think you might come into possession of the pot we talked about?”

  I didn’t answer his question directly. Instead, I told him I visited the Museum.

  “And?” he asked.

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  Sort of, I thought to myself.

  11

  It was late when I left the Hyatt. The rain had stopped, and the evening air was brisk. As I approached my shop, I saw something or someone wedged against the bottom of the door.

  I stayed across the street in case it was a rabid dog or a mugger lying in wait. It was late, dark, cold and wet, and I guess my imagination got the best of me. As I drew near, I saw it was a person curled up asleep.

  Except she wasn’t asleep. She stood up and said, “Hi, Hubert.”

  “Kaylee, what are you doing here?”

  “Can we go inside? It’s freezing out here.”

  I unlocked the door and led her back to the kitchen where I started a pot of coffee. I sat her down in a chair and stood next to the kitchen counter.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Where did you used to live?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  I pulled out a chair and sat in it facing her. “You must have waited for me because you wanted me to help you. And since you stayed out in the rain and cold by my door for hours, you must think you don’t have any other options. Okay, I’m willing to help. But you have to cooperate.”

  A lot of dirt or grime had stuck to her thick makeup. When she wiped her sleeve across her face, it left a smear. Under the smear was a welt. She didn’t say anything.

  “Where did you used to live?”

  “I didn’t know you lived here,” she said, ignoring my question and looking around my living quarters. “I was waiting for you to come in the morning and open your store.”

  “Kaylee, if you don’t answer my questions, I can’t help you.”

  “I’m not going to tell you where I lived.”

  “Then you’ll have to leave,” I said and stood up.

  “Are you going to throw me out?”

  “If I have to.”

  She gave my five six height and hundred forty weight a derisive look. “You’re not very big.”

  “I’ll call the police.”

  “I’m not going back there. You can’t make me go back.”

  “I’m not trying to make you go anywhere. I just need to find out what your situation is.”

  She pouted for a moment and then put her head down. When she looked up again, she had a forced leering smile. “My situation is that I’m a woman. And you’re a man. And we’re all alone late at night in your house. Does that give you any ideas, Hubert?”

  “Yes, it gives me the idea to call the police.” I picked up the phone.

  She started crying. “Please don’t call them.”

  I kept dialing, but slowly.

  “I’m from Texas,” she said.

  “Where in Texas?”

  “Wildorado.”

  I put down the phone. “Where is that?”

  “This side of Amarillo. It’s famous for the feedlot smells.”

  “You left to get away from the smell?”

  “Sure,” she said unconvincingly.

  “How long have you been in Albuquerque?”

  “Three days.”

  “You ran away from home?”

  “I’m not a teenager. I just decided to move to Albuquerque.”

  I sighed. “When people move, Kaylee, they usually have furniture or at least suitcases.”

  She looked at me hopefully. “I can get that stuff. If you hire me as a salesgirl, I could buy furniture and stuff.”

  “I don’t need a salesgirl.”

  “Do you need a girlfriend?”

  “No, I don’t need a girlfriend either.”

  “You already have one? I don’t care. I wouldn’t say anything to her.”

  “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. You’re the one who needs help. Right now you need a place to stay, so you can sleep here tonight. In the morning, we’ll figure out what to do next.” I thought about my five-hundred-thread-count Egyptian long-staple cotton sheets. I have to admit I’m a bit fastidious. “You also need a shower.”

  “I don’t have any clean clothes to put on.”

  “You didn’t even bring … Never mind.” I went to my chifferobe and took out a shirt and a pair of sweat pants. “Take these into the bathroom. Take off your clothes and throw them out here on the floor and then take a shower and put these on.” I handed her the shirt and pants.

  She followed my instructions. I guess I should have added that when she
threw her dirty clothes out, she should stand behind the door while doing so.

  “Jesus,” I said, and looked away.

  “Thanks, Hubie.”

  “Close the door and take a shower.”

  I put her clothes in the washer after I removed a worn billfold, some change and a half-eaten Snickers. I looked through her wallet. She was right about not being a teenager. Her driver’s license showed her to be twenty-one. There was a picture of a young guy about her age, a ten, two ones and a horoscope card for Leos.

  I put her wallet, belt, shoes and other meager belongings on the counter and started making huevos rancheros. I normally drink champagne with late night breakfasts, but the coffee was brewed, and I didn’t think popping a cork was a good idea.

  At least she knew how to shower. She looked clean and refreshed when she emerged, and she lit into the food like a dog. Without the heavy makeup and lipstick, the puffy lip and welt on her cheek were more noticeable. I decided not to ask.

  I showed her to my bed and told her to get some sleep. She looked around the place. “Where are you going to sleep?”

  “I have a hammock in the patio.”

  She giggled. “It’s freezing out there. You could sleep with me.” Started to unbutton the shirt I had given her.

  “Keep the shirt on. If you try any more monkey business, I’m calling the cops.”

  I got my thermal underwear and knit hat from my chest of drawers and went to the bathroom where I put them on under my clothes. Then I got my sleeping bag and went out to the patio.

  I’m an amateur astronomer, and I often sleep outside because I enjoy gazing up at the stars, although I normally choose warmer nights. Tonight I wasn’t thinking about the heavens. I was wondering whether allowing Kaylee to stay was a good idea. The doors from my living quarters to the workshop and from there into the shop were deadbolted as they always are at night, so there was no danger she would break a pot. And what damage could she do in my living quarters? Rip my sheets? Steal my forks?