The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras

by J. Michael Orenduff

  She looked into my eyes. “I’m just a high school drop-out from Texas who was in a bad situation. One day it got worse, and I ran away. I didn’t plan it; I just walked out the door and started hitching west. I’ve never planned anything in my life. I didn’t plan to drop out of school. I just got tired of failing, so I quit going. I didn’t plan to work as a waitress; I just saw a sign and went in. I didn’t plan to get involved with who I got involved with; he just walked in the diner one day and I left with him after work.”

  She lowered her head and started crying.

  “I’m sorry to make you dredge up sad memories,” I said.

  She looked up at me and she was smiling. “I’m not sad, Hubert, I’m happy. These are tears of joy. For the first time in my life, I have a plan. I want to marry Arturo, work my way up to waitress, and make enough money so that we can get a place on our own. Maybe someday I’ll be so rich, I can buy one of your pots.”

  “Do you love Arturo?”

  “I don’t know what love is, Hubert. He’s a very nice person, and I like to be with him. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I guess so. Can you go out and ask Arturo to come in and watch the place while he’s here.”

  “Remember the first time I came here? I offered to watch the shop, but you didn’t trust me.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. She got up, and I stood up out of habit, and she thrust herself against me and gave me a big wet kiss. Then she stepped back with a big smile and said, “Just wanted you to get a hint of what you passed up,” and she went to get Arturo. I think it was that sense of humor Tristan mentioned.

  Arturo was shorter than me, about Kaylee’s height, and slight of build. He had smooth light brown skin, big damp eyes, and a long horsey face and nose. Underneath the big smile was a look of apprehension. He shook my hand limply and I sat down, but he remained standing.

  “Mr. Schuze,” he began, and I smiled because he pronounced it “choose” which struck me as charmingly unsophisticated. “I am here today,” he continued quite formally, “to ask for the hand of Kaylee.”

  I realized he had been holding his breath, and now that he had got out the line he memorized, he let out a long sigh.

  “Do you love her?”

  “More than anything in the world. She is the most beautiful girl I ever see, and she is the first girl who is ever nice to me.”

  I stood up and offered my hand again. “Congratulations,” I said. He ran out to the front and they were gone.

  59

  Old Town has twenty-four businesses classified as galleries. I’m one of those twenty-four.

  Nine gift or souvenir shops also compete for the tourist dollar along with fourteen jewelers, an equal number of ‘specialty shops’ and thirteen eating establishments from coffee shops to upscale restaurants.

  What binds us together in Old Town is architecture, low adobe buildings with odd angles and organic shapes, hidden patios, brick paths, small gardens, wooden balconies, and wrought iron benches. And three hundred years of history.

  The center of it all is the gazebo, half bandstand, half Danish wedding cake, a quirky construction on an adobe base with a hexagonal roof. Or maybe it’s octagonal; the wooden posts seem misaligned with the roof they support, so not even Pythagoras could count the angles.

  The finials are Victorian gingerbread and the eclectic theme is topped off by a cupula that would be right at home on top of a lighthouse.

  Something is usually happening under the gazebo, be it a band concert or a political debate.

  On this day, it was a wedding.

  Arturo and Kaylee stood in front of a justice of the peace who made short work of pronouncing them man and wife.

  Father Groaz was there along with Whit Fletcher, Tristan and his neighbor Emily, but the largest contingent was the staff from La Placita. The pot scrubbers and busboys were dressed in clean white guayaberas, and they had taken up a collection to pay for a mariachi band called Los Lobos Solitarios who led a procession to the restaurant playing Las Mañanitas.

  I listened to the slow melodic thumping of the guitaron, heard the plaintive voices of the singers and the staff who joined in, and smelled the scent of roasting chiles and frying tortillas wafting from the kitchen. I silently thanked the fates for having me be born in Albuquerque.

  The wedding buffet started with a series of toasts each followed by a shot of tequila. The toasts were almost all in Spanish, so I had to translate for Susannah, which was a good thing because otherwise I might have been having tequila shots.

  The buffet spread was simple: guacamole, flautas, salsa, chalupas, carnitas, chile con queso, and a mountain of chips, both blue corn and yellow. And of course there were biscochitos for dessert. There was also, sitting incongruously amid the traditional dishes, a steaming chafing dish full of Summer Squash Pie courtesy of Nuestra Senora de Los Casseroles. Miss Gladys Claiborne explained to me, although I had not asked, that the ingredients were frozen sliced yellow squash, sautéed yellow onions, Kraft parmesan cheese from the green cylindrical cardboard container, crumbled Ritz crackers, three strips of bacon crumbled up, and the fat left over from frying the bacon. Much to my amazement, the kitchen crew all had seconds. It must have been the bacon grease.

  Miss Gladys Claiborne held up the dish for me to examine. “Would you just look at this. Those Mexican boys picked this dish so clean I won’t even have to wash it!” She was a contented woman.

  When finally the happy couple was set to depart on their overnight honeymoon, the pot scrubbers and busboys paraded by the couple, each accepting a peck on the cheek from Kaylee and stuffing as many ones and fives into Arturo’s coat pocket as they each could afford.

  “Don’t you want to kiss the bride?” asked Susannah.

  “I already have,” I replied.

  As the party began to break up, Fletcher and I discussed the logistics of a meeting for the next night in my shop, and I gave him the list of people we needed there. He also returned my hinges to and told me there were no fingerprints on them.

  I walked home and installed the hinges back on my cabinets. Then I read the last article in the Pythagoras anthology. The other ones had been about Pythagoras’ life and philosophy. The last one was about his mathematics. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to follow it; it had been a long time since I studied math.

  You may recall from your high school math that the Pythagorean Theorem says that the square of the long side of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides. It doesn’t really matter if you remember that. The important thing about Pythagoras’ discovery is not the formula itself—it’s the fact that there is a formula.

  Pythagoras was the first human to see that there are universal patterns. It is those patterns, those unfailing regularities, that allow us to do everything from calculating the interest on a savings account to sending rockets to the moon.

  We may wear different clothes, worship different deities, speak different tongues, and eat different foods, but we are held on earth by the force of gravity which is the same from Albuquerque to Albania.

  Pythagoras was the first person to discover those regularities behind the immense variety of everyday experience. As I followed the logic of his proof of the theorem that eventually came to bear his name, I became so absorbed in the reasoning that I forgot all about murders and police.

  I am awe-inspired by Pythagoras’ insight. You may find it confusing or even boring. Some people are awe-inspired by majestic mountains, some by poetry, and others by abstruse mathematics. But whatever the source, we all need a little awe in our lives.

  60

  “You all set for the big night tomorrow, Hubie?”

  “I am.”

  “Nervous?”

  “A little. But I took my mind off it by reading another article about

  Pythagoras.”

  “Geez, Hubie, how much of that can you stand? You seem like a normal person in most other respects.”

&
nbsp; “Thanks, I think. Actually, I’m all through with Pythagoras for now.”

  “So what will you read next?”

  “There’s a book called Longitude that I’ve been wanting to read.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s about how an English clockmaker solved the problem of how a sailors in the middle of the ocean can figure out what longitude they’re on.”

  “Wow, that sounds really exciting, Hubert,” she said sarcastically. “And why would you care; you never travel anyway.”

  “I travel everywhere, Susannah. ‘There is no frigate like a book’.”

  “That’s a poem, right?”

  I recited it for her:

  There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry. This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll; How frugal is the chariotThat bears a human soul!

  “It doesn’t scan very well does it,” she observed.

  “Maybe it was the way I read it.”

  “Maybe. But it still seems strange to worry about longitude when you’ll never be on a real frigate.”

  “Or a courser, whatever that is. But look at it this way. I couldn’t go to the stars even if I did travel, but I still care about where they are.”

  “Come on, Hubie, read something normal for a change. I can lend you one of my burglar books.”

  “I keep telling you, Suze, I’m not a burglar.”

  “They’re not how-to books, Hubie. They’re fun murder mysteries where the crime is solved by a burglar.”

  “I know that, Suze. You’ve told me about them before; I‘ve just never read one.”

  “Why don’t you try one; I have them all.”

  “Which one do you recommend?”

  “How about The Burglar in the Closet.”

  “Is that some sort of suggestion about my sexuality?”

  “Huh? Oh, I get it. Well, how about The Burglar Who Read Spinoza? You told me you read Spinoza.”

  “Does it really involve Spinoza?”

  “Well, it’s a murder mystery, Hubie, not a philosophy book, but Spinoza does play a part in it. It’s a great read.”

  “O.K., I’ll try it.”

  “Good. Because if you just read all that serious stuff, you’ll become dull, and drinking with you won’t be any fun.”

  “O.K., I promise to read it.”

  “Maybe if you read more mysteries, you would have figured out these pot murders earlier.”

  “I doubt it. I read Pythagoras and still couldn’t figure out what the murderer’s angle was.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Well, you did figure them out; that’s the important thing. Oh, I almost forgot. I looked up the name Berdal on the internet like you asked me to. I found out what sort of name it is, but I had guessed that even before I looked it up.”

  “How?”

  “Because of the sweatshirt he had on in that picture of him we saw in his apartment.”

  “I remember that sweatshirt, Suze; it said ‘Badgers’. Are you telling me Berdal is the name of a mammal?”

  “No, silly, the Badgers are a football team. They wear the colors that the shirt had—red and white.” Then she told me what sort of name Berdal is.

  “How do you know stuff like football mascots?” I asked her.

  “Hubie,” she said, “doesn’t it strike you as interesting that you know nothing about football and I know nothing about cooking?”

  “So much for gender stereotyping,” I replied.

  “Then you won’t mind,” she said, “if I buy you a drink,” and she waved for Angie.

  61

  The crowd in my shop the next evening included Susannah, Carl Wilkes, Tristan, Layton Kent, and one of his paralegals, all of whom had volunteered to be there. They were seated in a row of chairs facing my counter.

  A second row included the two thugs from firstNAtions, whose names, I had since discovered, were Masho Crow, the big guy, and Dillan Smith, the bowling ball. Sven Nordquist was also present, sitting off to one side, his cerulean eyes staring ahead but aimed at nothing. Crow, Smith, and Nordquist were not volunteers but had been persuaded to come by Whit Fletcher, an imposing figure who can be pretty persuasive when he wants to be.

  Of course having a gun and a badge helps.

  Whit Fletcher and three uniformed policemen stood behind the chairs near the front door.

  Finally, there was Reggie West. I had asked him to bring some of his ice cream parlor chairs so we would have enough seating, and he was in one of them now, angled off the first row.

  Cold dry air had spilled down from the Sandias to replace what the sun had heated earlier in the day, but I felt uncomfortably warm.

  It was nerves. I don’t like speaking in public, especially to large groups. My goal tonight made it worse. I hoped to unmask a murderer. Maybe two.

  To lighten the tension in the room and help me relax, I started with that hackneyed phrase, “You’re probably wondering why I called you all together.”

  Only Tristan and Susannah laughed. Instead of being more relaxed, I was more nervous.

  I plowed ahead and started laying it all out: “A few weeks ago, a man walked into my shop and asked me if there was any way for him to acquire the Mogollon pot on display at the Valle del Rio Museum at the University of New Mexico. His name is Carl Wilkes, and he is the gentleman with the beard seated to my left. Mr. Wilkes’ inquiry may strike you as strange, but in my line of business, it isn’t that unusual. Evidently, someone decided to help him acquire the pot and it was subsequently taken from the Museum. As you may have read in the press, the pot has now been returned thanks to Mr. Layton Kent who is seated next to Mr. Wilkes.”

  I paused to take a breath and to compliment myself for not ‘going up on my lines’ as they say in the theater.

  “Mr. Wilkes’ visit became more intriguing when a second man came to my shop the very next day, a federal agent named of Guvelly. He was investigating the theft of a pot just like the one Wilkes had asked about. The second pot had been stolen from the headquarters building in Bandelier National Park. The fact that Guvelly inquired about the Bandelier pot the day after Wilkes asked about a similar pot at the University started me thinking. Those two pots are the only known examples of a Mogollon water jug. It could not be coincidence that one was stolen and someone wanted to acquire the other.”

  I had set the scene. That was easy because I was just relating facts. Now I had to explain what I thought about the facts. I wanted to lead them along my path of reasoning so they would agree with me when I sprung the name of the murderer.

  “I had to start from the premise that one person wanted both pots. I could think of only three options. The first possibility is a rich collector who wants the pots badly enough to pay a high price, break the law, and own them even if it means never being able to display them publicly or be acknowledged as their owner. There are, of course, such people. Because I sell ancient pots, I’ve dealt with many reclusive collectors. They have a high aversion to risk. And who can blame them? If you had a display room in your house full of ill-gotten pots, you would be very cautious about who knew about it. So if I were such a collector and wanted to add the two Mogollon pots to my collection, the one thing I would not do is hire a different person to get each pot; that only doubles my risk. I ascertained that Mr. Wilkes had no participation in the theft at Bandelier, so that seemed to rule out a collector since no collector would approach getting the two pots in that way.”

  I didn’t say so, but of course the only evidence I had at first that Wilkes didn’t participate in the Bandelier theft was his own say so which, given his shady status, might not have been too convincing in a court. But once I found out that Berdal stole the pot, that eliminated Wilkes for sure. I could-n’t see Wilkes and Berdal as a team.

  I continued, “I have since found out from Mr. Wilkes who it was who commissioned him to get the pot from UNM, and I was correct
in concluding it was not a collector. That brings us to the second possibility, someone wanting to steal the pots just for money. But an ancient pot is not like jewelry or silverware that can easily be fenced. The only market for these pots would be the collectors we just ruled out. If those sorts of collectors are cautious about who they hire to acquire specimens for them—and believe me they are—then imagine how much more cautious they would be if a stranger shows up wanting to sell them a pot. There is no telling what sort of trail the stranger may have left, and it seems unlikely in the extreme that any collector with the interest and money to want such rare and valuable pots would deal with an unknown thief.”

  “What would motivate a theft other than money?” asked Fletcher.

  I gave a one-word answer, “Politics.”

  Tristan and Susannah looked at each other with a ‘Here he goes again’ expression. Fletcher furrowed his brow. Layton Kent turned to look at Sven Nordquist who continued to stare at something no one else could see. Masho Crow and Dillon Smith looked at each other and smiled.

  Reggie West said, “Politics?”

  “Yes,” I repeated, “politics. Specifically, the politics of groups struggling to overcome the marginalization of Native Americans. Most of you probably remember the American Indian Movement, more commonly known as AIM. Their method was to call attention to the plight of Native Americans by outrageous actions designed to maximize press coverage. They painted Plymouth Rock red, they seized Alcatraz Island, and they sat in at Wounded Knee.”

  “You going to blame the Bandelier theft and the murders on AIM?” asked Fletcher sarcastically.

  “No, but representatives from two other Native American organizations are here tonight. The first one is called firstNAtions, and its representatives are Masho Crow and Dillan Smith, the two gentlemen seated to my right. They came to this shop demanding that I relinquish the Bandelier pot. Had they been involved in the theft at Bandelier, they obviously would have known that I didn’t have the pot, so I ruled them out.”

  “What had been merely a theft became a more serious crime when a person by the name of Hugo Berdal was murdered in a guest room at the Hyatt. I had gone to the Hyatt to see Mr. Wilkes and just happened to be there at the time of the murder. The police at first thought I might be involved in some way, but thanks to their investigative skill, they were quickly able to determine my innocence.”