The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras (20 page)

He pushed his chair back from the table and laced his fingers together on the mound of his belly. “The annual action for the Duque de Alburquerque Foundation draws near, Hubert, and because this is the fiftieth anniversary of the organization, Mariella has decided to donate the Anasazi pot she purchased from you several years ago.”

“That’s very generous of her; that pot must be worth at least fifty thousand by now.”

“I’m sure it will fetch more than that at an auction for a good cause. And my lovely bride will no doubt get more pleasure from the donation than she ever could from fifty thousand dollars.”

I nodded.

“The problem, Hubert, is that there will now be a considerable lacuna in her collection. If you could see your way to clear to give her a suitable pot, I can waive my fee.”

“Do you have one in mind?”

“A fee or a pot?”

“A pot.”

“My fees are outrageous, but not excessively so. I don’t expect anything so rare or valuable as the Anasazi she is parting with. I leave it to your judgment. And hers. If she is satisfied, I am satisfied.”

“Will you also waive the cost of the latte?”

He just smiled. I took that as a yes and left without paying.

I walked back to Old Town—it’s only a couple of miles—and was honked at by several drivers angered by the effrontery of my walking on the edge of the pavement, despite the fact there were no sidewalks along that stretch of road. Being a pedestrian in a western city is challenging.

Indeed, pedestrians are rare almost everywhere in this country. People go to gymnasiums and indoor malls to walk for exercise, but they won’t walk to the grocery store or the doctor’s office. Walking is a delightful means of transportation that allows you to see what’s around you. I saw lizards, a baby gopher, Indian paintbrushes about to bloom, and the tips of new tumbleweeds just starting to sprout. Also, pull tabs, broken glass, and scraps of fast food that looked perfectly preserved, probably because they were.

I guess as an anthropologist I should be happy about our pervasive use of preservatives; it will give future generations of diggers more things to analyze when they try to figure us out. Good luck to them.

You can think while you walk and smell the flowers along the way. Provided, of course, that you aren’t overcome by exhaust fumes.

I am a simple man with simple thoughts and, for the most part, simple tastes. I am certainly no philosopher. I don’t know the answers to the questions that Susannah takes as philosophical—How did the universe begin? What happens to us when we die? And since I know I can’t figure out the answers, I almost never think about the questions.

My reflections are more, excuse the term, pedestrian. I think people today live life at too quick a pace. All the drivers who passed me on my way back from Kent’s club were speeding, and at least half of them had phones in their ears. Why are they in such a rush? Why do they have to talk while they drive? Because it gets more done. Because they can make more sales, finish more reports, increase their contacts. Then they can make more money and buy bigger, more powerful cars and fancier cell phones so that speeding and talking both become even easier.

Martin Seepu lives nine miles from Albuquerque, and although he owns an old pickup, he often walks to town when he’s not on a tight schedule. He doesn’t have what Tristan calls a landline much less a cell phone; you can reach him via the pueblo office if you need him. His house has electricity, but he doesn’t use it for much besides lighting to read by and power for his radio. The list of electric conveniences he doesn’t have is lengthy: no microwave, television, blender, clothes dryer, crock-pot, computer, dishwasher, or vacuum cleaner.

Martin lives a fuller life than most Americans who run their SUV’s around town with a cell phone to their ear. Here is what Martin has that they lack: time to reflect, a knowledge of the small plants and animals that share the earth with him, awareness of the smell of the air and how it varies every day, cardiovascular wellness, a strong back, a slow pulse, and fitless sleep. Martin’s life is richer not in spite of lacking possessions but precisely because he lacks them. An ancient philosopher once said that knowledge is to be preferred over all possessions because things can be taken from you, but what is in your mind is yours forever.

Of course, they didn’t know about Alzheimer’s in those days, but I think you’ll agree that the point remains valid.

I entered my adobe through the back door and passed the next hour at my desk with a old-fashioned telephone placing calls to the West Coast, the Midwest, and several other places. I’m not totally adverse to technology when it makes life better. I had a cordless phone for a while because I could have it at hand in the shop for business purposes and then carry it back to my living quarters when the shop was closed. But being required to punch numbers after placing a call became so common that I gave up and went back to the old desk phone where you can at least see the number pad while keeping the receiver to your ear.

You know how it goes. You call the 800 number of the credit card company, and you get a cheerful recorded voice saying, “Thank you for calling MegaBank. Your call is important to us. [Here, you think to yourself, if I’m so important, why am I being made to listen to a machine.] Please listen to the following menu and make your selection. If you are calling to check your balance, press 1. If you want to know the date and amount of you most recent payment, press 2. If you have a question about a charge on your monthly statement, press 3.” You press a number and the voice says, “In order to serve you more accurately, please enter your account number.” At this point, you have to take the phone away from your ear because on a cordless phone, the keypad is on the same piece of plastic as the earpiece. While you are fumbling for the card and starting to key in the sixteen numbers of your account, you exceed the allotted time for the task, and the voice says, “If you need more time, press 1. If you want to hear the main menu again, press 2…” But you don’t hear that because the earpiece is in your left hand in front of your face while your right hand is punching numbers. Blissfully unaware that it is too late to enter your account number, the first number you punched sent you to a sub-menu for people wanting a new account, and when you finally put the device back to your ear you hear the voice saying, “Do you wish to have a Visa or a MasterCard? Press 1 for Visa and 2 for MasterCard.”

At which point I hung up and bought a regular phone. Susannah says no one likes automated phone systems, but that I’m the only person she knows who can’t work them because I’m so slow at punching in numbers. I say it’s just my training as an accountant; I’m very deliberate when entering numbers. She says thousands of accountants use automated phone systems every day with no problems. The woman is relentless.

I finally opened for business, of which there was none, so I sat at the counter looking at my wares, trying to identify a suitable pot for Mariella. It was more difficult than I had suspected. Some were too expensive; others probably too cheap. Still others were too similar to pots she already owned while others were not her taste. I thought to myself that giving something away was more difficult than you would guess.

An idea was forming in my brain, and I left it alone to crystallize while I prepared a lunch of a grilled chicken paillard smothered in a sauce of roasted ancho chiles, garlic, and cilantro. It was almost as delicious as the cold Cabaña that washed it down. When I discovered after lunch that my idea needed more incubation, I closed the shop, retreated to my patio, and took a nap in my hammock.

43

Miss Flossie Martin, the Latin teacher at Albuquerque High School taught us that Caesar said, “Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.” We used to joke that she had heard him say it.

He could have said the same thing about New Mexico. The plains east of the mountains are culturally and geographically akin to Texas. The rest of the state has an Hispanic culture and a western landscape.

The third part is Los Alamos. I don’t know where it fits.

Los Alamos sprang into existence overnight when Robert Oppenheimer chose it as the research site for the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer was familiar with the site because he had gone to summer camp in the area as a youngster. The camp must have been a disappointment to him since he later turned the place into our first nuclear dump.

Los Alamos is about as New Mexican as clam chowder. It’s mostly Anglo, mostly rich, and mostly well educated. Over eighty percent of the adults are college educated and about a third have graduate degrees, mostly science or engineering. It’s the only place I know of where you can still buy pocket protectors.

People in Los Alamos who don’t work at the National Labs either serve the people who do or work at nearby Bandelier National Park. Hugo Berdal was in that second group, and he had occupied a studio apartment at Mesa View Apartments.

The manager had skin like a camel and shiny yellow hair greased into an Elvis-style pompadour. He was enveloped in a haze of tobacco smoke and wheezed when he talked. His apartment was clean and neat, but the furniture had evidently been purchased with the goal in mind of having no two pieces in the same style. He was a friendly fellow who laughed at the end of each sentence, and he took a key from a set of hooks and said he would be glad to show me the vacancy.

“The guy who had the apartment before passed away, so it’s still full of his stuff. Hope you’re not superstitious,” he said and gave a hearty laugh that led to a coughing spasm. Then he lit another cigarette.

I propped open the front door to get some air. Despite the name of the apartment complex, there was no view of a mesa. Then I went to the back door and opened it. I couldn’t see a mesa from that side either, although I did spend a little more time at that door doing something the manager didn’t notice.

It was a thoroughly depressing place.

As a prospective tenant, I figured I had the right to check out the closet space. There were only a few clothes, including two uniforms. I wanted to look in the chest of drawers, but that seemed a little pushy. On one side of the room a recliner listed slightly to starboard, and on the other was an unmade bed and a side table with burn marks and a few girlie magazines.

Two expired license plates were mounted on the wall. Next to them was a picture of a young man leaning against a pickup truck and wearing an uncertain smile and a red sweatshirt with “Badgers” in large white letters. He looked vaguely familiar.

I stared at the photo for a few minutes, but he didn’t become any more familiar. He didn’t look any less uncertain either. From the description Whit Fletcher had given me, I was pretty certain I was looking at Hugo Berdal about ten or fifteen years ago. I wanted to ask him what he had done with the pot, but he wouldn’t have told me. It didn’t matter; I thought I knew where it was.

44

“You went without me, Hubie?”

“I didn’t want you to miss your pay from the lunch shift; you’re buying the drinks tonight.”

“It’s my turn?”

“It is. On top of that, I only need you for the second trip.”

Susannah’s eyes grew larger, quite a feat when you consider how large they are to begin with. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to be my lookout.”

“You’re going to break into Berdal’s apartment again?”

“It won’t be ‘again’; I keep telling you I’m not a burglar.”

“Yeah, and you’re not a renter either. You may not be a burglar, Hubie, but you do manage to get into places you aren’t supposed to be in.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I admitted, “but I don’t need to break in because I can just open the back door and walk in.”

“How can you do that?”

“When I was there earlier I shoved a hunk of clay into the cavity in the rear door jam where the bolt goes in. If my guess is right, the bolt is probably sticking into the hole no more than an eighth of an inch, and even a non-burglar like me should be able to pry it back.”

“Why didn’t you put in enough clay to stop the bolt altogether? That way you wouldn’t have to pry anything.”

“Because I didn’t want to leave the door flapping in the wind. The manager could spot that even through his cloud of cigarette smoke.”

“So why are we going back?”

“I think I figured out where the pot is from something I saw when I was there today, but I need more information.”

I told her what I had seen, what it led me to surmise, and what I wanted her to do.

“This is even more exciting than the museum caper because we’ll actually be working together.”

“Caper?”

“Don’t spoil this for me, Hubie. Where’s the fun of being criminals if we can’t talk like they do in those gangsters movies on late night television?”

“O.K. Just remember if anyone comes along while I’m trying to find the pot, you have to pretend to be my moll.”

Angie came by to see if we needed a refill, and of course we did.

“I’ve never even been to Los Alamos, Hubie.”

“That’s not surprising. It’s not on the way to anywhere, and there’s not any reason to go there… except there might be for you; the place has a lot more men than women.”

“I’m not in the market right now.”

“You probably wouldn’t like them anyway. Tristan says—let me see if I can remember this—Los Alamos is full of guys who, when the waiter says to them ‘I’ll be your server,’ think it’s funny to reply ‘I’ll be your client’.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me either. Tristan said it’s a joke; I thought you might understand it.”

“Is that some kind of an insult because I’m a waitress, Hubert?”

“No. It’s just that Tristan said it has something to do with computers. You’re younger than I am and you grew up with computers.”

“I grew up on a ranch near Willard. There wasn’t a computer in the county so far as I know. What do all these geeks do?”

“They work at Los Alamos National Labs.”

“Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s classified. They used to make atomic bombs, but I don’t think they do that anymore.”

“Geez, that’s scary, Hubie. We aren’t going to glow in the dark when we get back, are we?”

“I’ve never heard of any problems in the town itself, but there are some off limits sites that are pretty dangerous. Back when they were building the first atomic bomb, no one knew exactly how much enriched uranium it would take to make a bomb, so they ran a lot of experiments to determine critical mass.”

“Critical mass? That sounds like when the priest uses the homily to complain about sinners in the Church.”

“It’s a term from physics. I don’t understand the details, but apparently if you get enough radioactive material in one spot, the atoms start splitting apart and a chain reaction begins, and that’s what we call an atomic explosion. So making an atomic bomb was just a matter of having two pieces of radioactive material that were below critical mass and then jamming them together somehow. So they ran these experiments called ‘tickling the tail of the dragon.’ They would pile up a stack of uranium ingots and then they would slowly slide another piece close to it to see if it started to go critical.” I eased my margarita carefully towards hers to illustrate.