The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein Page 6

  The United Plumbing van showed up about four-thirty while I was trying to read. It sat there for about five minutes, then turned and left. A skinny brown arm jutted out from the driver’s side. Nothing unusual about a brown arm in Albuquerque. Half the population is Hispanic with varying shades of brown skin. The other half of the population, be their ancestors from France, Scotland, or Lithuania, are just as brown because we all get baked by the sun year around.

  The driver had a long pony tail that stuck out under a baseball cap. I tried to get a look at his face, but couldn’t focus. Then I realized I still had the reading glasses on. By the time I took them off, he was gone.

  Maybe he realized he forgot a piece of pipe he needed. Or maybe he wasn’t really a plumber. Or maybe I was slightly paranoid.

  As I left, I made a resolution to come back one more time.

  11

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier just to knock on the door instead of wasting all that time on a stakeout?”

  “It wasn’t wasted,” I corrected her. “I used the time to read about Einstein and the uncertainty principle.”

  “I thought the uncertainty principle came from Heisenberg.”

  “It did. But Einstein rejected uncertainty.”

  “You could have done the same by just walking up and knocking on the door.”

  She’s relentless. “That’s what you would do,” I said. “You have that rancher mentality – saddle up and ride. I’m more the wary type. And anyway, the captain’s seats in the Bronco are big and comfortable and a great place to read.”

  “Then why did you only get to page five?”

  “That was the subject matter, not the environment. Martin insists I should read this book, but it’s taking me about an hour a page.” I shrugged. “Maybe once I get my head around the basic ideas, the rest of it will be easier.”

  “What are the basic ideas?”

  “Well, the uncertainty principle has to do with the behavior of subatomic particles, things like electrons and protons. Apparently those particles behave very differently from everyday objects like rocks and rutabagas.”

  “Rutabagas? The book said that?”

  “No, that was just my example.”

  “That’s a strange example, Hubie.”

  “O.K., forget the rutabagas. Just think of a rock. If you throw a rock, the path it takes is determined by the direction you throw it and how hard you throw it. If you’re good at throwing rocks, you can even make a sort of intuitive calculation and hit something you aim at.”

  “So?”

  “Well, subatomic particles evidently don’t work like that. If you throw one, you have no idea where it might go.”

  “I don’t think you can throw an electron, Hubert.”

  “I know that. What the book is trying to do, I think, is contrast the predictability of the path of a rock and the path of an electron. Or a tennis ball. That’s a better example. You’ve seen those machines they use to shoot tennis balls at you so you can practice?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, you can aim them, and I assume you can set the speed, so if you want to practice returning hard serves with your backhand, you crank up the speed and aim the thing to your right.”

  “Only because you’re left-handed, Hubie. Most people would aim it to their left.”

  “Whatever. The point is that once you have it aimed, it isn’t suddenly going to shoot a ball straight up in the air or into the net. Where the ball goes is predictable.”

  “And where an electron goes isn’t?”

  “Exactly. They have things called electron guns that shoot out a stream of electrons, but where each one goes is unpredictable. That’s why they call it the uncertainty principle.”

  “Other than teeny little subatomic people playing tennis with electrons, why should anyone care about this?”

  I shrugged. “Intellectual curiosity.”

  I could see she’d heard enough, and I’d already said everything I knew about it, so she told me about her date with Chris Churgelli. They had attended a poetry reading at the University. After it was over, they walked across Central to a coffee place on Harvard where they met some other people who had been at the reading.

  In case you’re wondering, there are also streets in that neighborhood named Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. I guess the founders of my alma mater wanted it to have some connection, however tenuous, with prestigious eastern schools.

  “So you drank coffee and talked about the poetry?”

  “That’s what Chris and the others did. I just sat there staring at him.”

  “Handsome, huh?”

  “Beyond belief. A face like Michelangelo’s David, skin the color of almond biscotti, hair with the luster of Tuscan leather, eyes the color of pinot grigio grapes—”

  “He has red eyes?”

  “Pinot grigio grapes are green, Hubert.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, he’s a pleasure to look at and a pleasure to listen to.”

  “He knows a lot about poetry?”

  “I have no idea. I didn’t understand a word he said.”

  “A really thick accent, huh?”

  “Not really. He has just enough of an accent to sound romantically European. And a great vocabulary. He knows a lot more words in English than I do.”

  “Then why couldn’t you understand him?”

  “Because he uses words in funny ways. Not in a wrong way, exactly. Just … oddly.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, he described one line of a poem as ‘Fragrant with intentionality’.”

  “Sounds like typical academic jargon to me.”

  “Here’s a better example. He didn’t like one of the poems because it was ‘Fulminating in a wide arc’.”

  “I see what you mean. But how is he in normal conversation when you’re not talking about poetry?”

  “About the same. He said we should eat at La Hacienda – we’re going there this Friday – and when I asked him why La Hacienda, he said he heard it was ‘A luminary for its fabrication of local repasts’.”

  I started laughing.

  “It’s not funny, Hubert. This is a seriously handsome guy, and he seems to be a nice person, too. He’s a gentleman, he looks at me when I talk to him, he never brags or does all the other stupid things men do, he seems very comfortable around people. But I don’t know if I can maintain a relationship with someone who speaks a different brand of English.”

  She sat there thinking for a minute and I took advantage of the lull in conversation to wolf down several chips loaded with salsa. Then she said, “You think I should say something to him?”

  I hate it when she asks for advice regarding her love life. I feel like I’ll be responsible if something goes wrong. Which it usually does.

  “How long has he been in the States?”

  “He entered in the spring semester, so I guess about six months.”

  “Maybe he was even worse when he first arrived. If he spends more time talking to you, maybe he’ll come to realize that his English is not colloquial, and he’ll improve.”

  “I like the part about him spending more time with me,” she said, as if I were advocating it.

  “So,” I suggested, “I wouldn’t try to correct his English at this point unless he asks for help. Of course if it doesn’t improve in time, then maybe—“

  “Oh, it’ll improve. I’m sure of it. Thanks, Hubie; I can always depend on you for good advice.”

  And I got that sinking feeling, so I changed the subject.

  “Miss Gladys has a beau.”

  She shook her head slightly. “I know. She brought the scoundrel to lunch at La Placita.”

  “So you think he’s a scoundrel, too.”

  “It’s obvious. First there’s his name – T. Morgan Fister. Never trust anyone who uses a middle name that way.”

  “I know lots of people who use their middle name, and most of them are perfectly normal and nice.”

  “Name o
ne.”

  “Well, one of my high school friends was named Bascomb Ronald Harvey. Bascomb had been his grandfather’s name. He was stuck with it on his birth certificate, but he always just went by Ronnie Harvey.”

  “Not the same. If he had called himself B. Ronald Harvey, he would have been a different person and not nice.”

  “Hmm.” I tried to think of people I knew or knew about who had that sort of name.

  “You may have a point,” I conceded, “because the first person I thought of with a name like that is J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “There’s also G. Gordon Liddy,” she said.

  “And E. Howard Hunt.”

  “And W. Clement Stone who financed those two burglars.”

  “Scary,” I said.

  “And J. Danforth Quayle,” she added.

  “That’s the best example. Notice how all of them are in politics?”

  “Writers do it too,” she said, “like F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Or W. Somerset Maugham.”

  “And don’t forget Swami Kriyananda,” she said.

  “I can’t forget him because I never heard of him in the first place. And how does he fit into this conversation?”

  “Because his birth name was J. Donald Walters and he’s a writer.”

  “On what?”

  “Yoga, I think.”

  “Politicians, writers, and swamis – all charlatans.”

  “F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t a charlatan, Hubie.”

  “You’re right. And his first name was Francis, so who came blame him for not wanting to use it.”

  “He could have just gone by Scott Fitzgerald,” she pointed out.

  I had no reply to that, so I asked her what her second reason was for thinking T. Morgan was a scoundrel.

  “He left me a tip that was way too large.”

  “That’s bad?”

  “Here’s how it works, Hubie. Ten percent is about normal in New Mexico. Sometimes you get only five percent but usually that’s because the person doesn’t know any better, not because they’re cheap. And some people follow the fifteen percent rule. When a woman leaves you a big tip – twenty percent or more – it’s usually because she can’t do the math or simply isn’t paying attention because money isn’t that important to her. But when a man leaves a big tip, he usually plans on hitting on you or he’s trying to impress whoever he’s with.”

  “How do you know the big tippers are wanting to hit on you?”

  “It’s not hard to figure out, especially when they leave a phone number on the check or a duplicate of their motel room key.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Sometimes they put the money in your hand and try to cop a feel at the same time.”

  “Geez, how do you stand it?”

  “It doesn’t happen that often. Usually you can spot them in advance, so when I pick up the check of a weirdo who’s been leering at me, I take the coffee refill carafe along, and if he gets too close, I accidentally on purpose spill hot coffee into his crotch.”

  Susannah is a woman with gumption.

  12

  My nephew Tristan lives in a student ghetto on Gold, just a few blocks from the University where he studies – of all things – computer science. It’s hard to imagine we came from the same gene pool.

  He doesn’t look like me either. I’m short and compact with straight brown hair trimmed short and combed close to the scalp. He’s tall and slightly pudgy with black hair that hangs down in loose ringlets. He also has olive skin and what the girls think of as bedroom eyes. He’s a genuine person, and girls like that even better.

  He’s not really my nephew. He’s the grandson of my Aunt Beatrice, but I call him my nephew and he calls me Uncle Hubert. He supports himself with periodic gifts from his Uncle Hubert and by doing odd jobs having to do with computers. One particular task he is often paid for is called de-bugging. It doesn’t involve insects, but that’s all I know about it.

  Given that I’m on the wrong side of forty-five and live alone in the back of my shop, Tristan is about as close to a son as I’m ever likely to have. I enjoy his company. I also turn to him for help when technology intrudes itself into my life, and it was for both those reasons that I dropped by his apartment. I waited until I thought he was awake – noon – and came with a gift of tacos filled with the last of Emilio’s barbacoa. No jalapeños in this case. Tristan doesn’t share my taste for comida pecosa.

  I also had my laptop with me because he had told me to bring it when I had called about the current matter. You may be surprised that I have a laptop.

  So am I. Tristan gave it to me because I had some security issues in the store and he hooked up a camera that takes a picture when anyone enters and sends the picture to the laptop where it is displayed by some black magic on the screen along with the time of day when the person entered. All of which is triggered by a laser beam across the door. Theoretically, I could use the laptop for all sorts of other techie stuff like swamping the internet, playing games and sending email, but I’m not interested in those things.

  Tristan was eating the tacos and drinking something called a Jolt Cola which he said used to advertise itself as having “all the sugar and twice the caffeine.” He would probably have preferred a beer but he told me he had class that afternoon.

  “You never take morning classes,” I noted.

  “Interferes with my circadian rhythm,” he said.

  “And all that caffeine doesn’t?”

  “Nah, it just gets me going.”

  “When I was a student here,” I began and could already see his eyes rolling back in their sockets, “most of the required courses were in the morning.”

  He smiled at me. “I think you may have mentioned that before. But now everything you need is offered in the afternoons.”

  “I guess the faculty finally gave in to the sleeping habits of students,” I lamented.

  “Actually,” he corrected, “it’s the faculty who drive the schedule. They refuse to teach early classes.”

  I was preparing a biting remark about the faculty when I remembered that I often eat breakfast at ten in the morning with my shop closed and dark.

  He finished the tacos and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, saw me see him, and said, “I’m doing laundry today.”

  “I suppose you need some quarters?”

  He allowed as how he did, and I gave him four hundred of them in the form of a single bill with Benjamin Franklin on it. I noticed that Ben’s picture is now off to one side, the bill has weird pastel colors added to the traditional green, and a metallic strip runs through it. The Federal Government – they made my profession illegal, tax me when I continue to do it, and now they have nothing better to do than tinker with our money.

  Tristan handed me the device I had come for. It looked like a middle-school science project, a perforated metal plate about six inches square with wires and little devices all stuck together. One wire dangled down the side and had a sort of plug looking thing, but not the sort that would go in a wall outlet.

  “You made this?”

  “Yep. Sorry it looks so messy, but you just need it for one use. I’m not going to market them.”

  “Could you?”

  “Not and stay out of jail. Let me show you how to use it. You plug this into one of the USBs on your laptop,” he said, indicating the wire hanging from the device. Then he handed me a small plastic device the shape and size of a piece of gum. “You put this in a different USB.” He showed me the USB slots in the back of the laptop. “Then you just aim this at the garage door and push this button. You’ll have to hold it down for a while depending on how long it takes to find the code. When you see the garage door start to open, you can let go of the button, but not before. Otherwise, you’d have to start over.”

  “I won’t need electricity to make this thing work?”

  “The battery in the laptop will supply the current. Make sure it’s charged up.”


  “So I’m using the computer just as a battery?”

  “No, the jump drive has a micro in it that will direct the device to run through all the possible codes in sequence.”

  I asked him what a jump drive was and he pointed to the gum-sized piece of plastic.

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  “Given when Casitas del Bosque was built, they probably have second generation openers. Those are coded by setting dip switches in the transmitter and the receiver to a matching combination. Depending on the number of switches, there can be up to 256 codes.”

  “So the most switches they have is eight.”

  “Uncle Hubert! How did you know that?”

  “I don’t know what a dip switch is, but I recognize 256 as the eighth power of two, so if the switches have two positions, off and on, and there are eight of them, then the number of combinations is two raised to the eighth power, and that’s 256.”

  He was staring at me in admiration. It felt good but was fleeting.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “It can run through a signal every second, so the worst case would be about four and a half minutes.”

  I should have left it there, but I had to ask. “Why are they called second generation?”

  He laughed. Not at me, but because he thought the history of garage door openers had a funny chapter. “The first garage door openers just sent an unencoded signal. That was fine when they were a novelty. But the FCC limits their frequency to between 300-400 megahertz, so after a lot of them were installed, it would sometimes happen that two people in the same neighborhood would buy units that turned out to be sending on the same frequency, and when you pressed your opener, your door went up but so did the guy’s down the block.”

  “What’s megahertz, a super car rental company?”

  He likes it when I make jokes about technical terms.

  After a polite laugh, he said, “So they put codes in them that you set with dip switches like I said. But anyone with a few diodes and resisters and a soldering iron can make a device like this, so after a few burglaries, they came up with the third generation openers that have more complicated coding.” His eyes lit up. “And now there’s a new model that works by reading your fingerprint. You just put the tip of your finger over the opener and up goes the door. I’d love to have one of those. Of course, I’d need to get a garage first.”