The Pot Thief Who Studied Edward Abbey

by Orenduff, J. Michael;

  But the gallery is a public space. What would be the point of finding a match for prints taken from its walls or floor?

  On the other hand, what would be the point of refusing to be fingerprinted and ending up in the police station?

  “You’re right, Whit. I haven’t done anything wrong, so why not give you my prints? And I appreciate that you came here instead of taking me to the police station. I don’t exactly have fond memories of that place.”

  “Now you’re making sense,” he said, and reached into his pocket for a fingerprint kit.

  Up to this point, I had steadfastly refused to worry about the investigation, much less get involved in it. I wanted to keep it that way. But if I were going to be fingerprinted, it seemed like a good idea to have some sense of what was going on. “Before we do this, I want to ask you a question. I know there’s a security camera in the gallery. Can you tell me what it showed the day of her death?”

  “Mostly a lot of nothing. She’s in the video twice. Once just standing there with the gay kid. The second time is when they take the plaster off and she falls over dead. You’re on the video too. It shows you fainting like a girl.”

  “But if the video shows her—”

  He held the fingerprint kit aloft for me to see. “I ain’t got all day. You want to know about the security camera, talk to Shorter.”

  I stuck out my hands.

  27

  The first thing Sharice said when she got home was, “The condo is sparkling, but it looks like all the dirt you scrubbed off ended up on your fingers.”

  “That’s not dirt. It’s ink. Whit Fletcher came by about an hour ago and fingerprinted me.”

  “Why?”

  “The police want to see if my prints match some they found.”

  She frowned. “Found where?”

  “He wouldn’t say. But he did say it has to do with their investigation of Ximena’s death.”

  “Why would they think the prints are yours?”

  “Someone connected to the case suggested the prints might be mine.”

  “That’s weird. And scary.”

  “Yeah. And I don’t have any answers. Which makes sense, because I don’t know what the questions are.”

  “The first question,” she said, “is what does ‘connected to the case’ mean?”

  “Someone in the art department? Someone at the event where the plaster was removed?”

  “Did you know any of the people at the event other than art department people?”

  “No.”

  “Then it has to be someone from the department, probably Aleesha.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She filed a groundless compliant against you, Hubie. Anyone who would do that might also try to sic the police on you.”

  “She came back to class and agreed to help in the scholarship plan.”

  “Is she still pursuing the EEO complaint?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sharice went to the refrigerator and returned with a bottle of Gruet and two coupes. I used to prefer flutes, but the coupes are fun because their wide, shallow shape allows the bubbles to tickle your nose. I needed tickling.

  After she filled the coupes she said, “How can Aleesha think you’re prejudiced against her? After all”—she flashed her Klieg-light smile—“you are living with moi.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  “Tell her.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You don’t want your students to know you’re living in sin?” she said, and giggled. Then she said, “Seriously, why not tell her?”

  I sat my coupe down on the glass coffee table. “When I first met Charles Webbe, he was undercover. I thought his name was M’Lanta Scruggs, pot scrubber at Schnitzel.”

  “M’Lanta? Why do black Americans give their kids such weird names?”

  “It wasn’t his real name.”

  “I know that. But he must have chosen it because he knows that some black parents pick weird names.”

  “I’m sure he knows that. He knows everything. But he chose it because he thought it was funny. Anyway, he was explaining the menu to me. When I asked him how he knew so much about Austrian dishes, he said, ‘You think ’cause I’m black, I don’t know nothing?’”

  “How did you respond?”

  “I pointed out that my question had nothing to do with color. I’m white and know nothing about Austrian food. Then he asked if I knew any black people. I said I dated a black woman named Sharice.”

  “We weren’t dating then.”

  “I know. But we did have lunch together.”

  “Yeah. I was hoping it was a date, but you seemed to think it was just lunch. What’s so funny?”

  “I was hoping it was a date, but you seemed to think it was just lunch.”

  “Drat. Look at all the time together we missed because of tiptoeing. I should have suggested a second date.”

  “Anyway, I felt like I had used you. Sort of like your manicurist and your hairdressers. Putting the fact that you’re black above the fact that you’re a person because it was to my advantage to do so.”

  She scooted closer to me. “You are the most colorblind person I know. I’d be honored for you to get Aleesha off your case by telling her about me.”

  I just nodded. I had no intention of doing that.

  “Where did they find the prints they’re trying to match with yours?”

  “Whit wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Maybe we can figure it out. Could they be on the dried plaster they took off Ximena?”

  “I never touched the plaster.”

  “Something in the gallery? The door, a tabletop?”

  “I may have touched the door, and probably the floor and wall while I was sitting down. But just having prints in the gallery only proves I was there, and they already know that.”

  “I’ve got it. Something connected with the plaster. The bucket it was carried in. A spatula or whatever was used to put the plaster on. Do the faculty share brushes and other stuff used in making art? Maybe your prints are on a tool.”

  Finally, a ray of reason. “You might be right. I passed out buckets from the departmental supply room to the students when we went to gather clay from the river. Maybe one of those buckets found its way to Prather, who carried plaster in it to the gallery.”

  “Having your prints in the gallery or the studio where you have the class wouldn’t be significant. Did you ever interact with Ximena somewhere else?”

  “Yes. The men’s room, remember?”

  “Why was she in the men’s room?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s next to the studio. More convenient than searching for the women’s room?”

  “Which is far away?”

  “I have no idea. Never been there. Never plan to use it.”

  “That’s my Hubie. You didn’t touch her or maybe her backpack or something?”

  “I didn’t touch anything. Any prints I left were elbow prints, because that’s what I used to push the door open.”

  “That is so you. Did you put disposable plastic covers over your shoes before you walked on the bathroom floor?”

  “They make those? Where can I buy them?”

  28

  I walked to Spirits in Clay Thursday afternoon, my first visit in two weeks. Sharice had instructed me to release Glad from the shops at four and meet her and the rest of the gang at Dos Hermanas at five.

  Glad doesn’t seem to mind going to and fro between Spirits in Clay and F˚ahrenheit F˚ashions, his catchily named shop that offers desert apparel—cargo shorts, wide-brimmed hats, sunglasses, hiking boots, sunscreen, et cetera. Also T-shirts with cartoon saguaro cacti, the bubbles above them displaying their thoughts. “Humans are needleless,” for example, and “Uh-oh. Here
comes a thirsty guy with a machete.”

  “Good afternoon, Hubie,” he said. “I hope I did the right thing providing your current address to Agent Webbe. Seeing him reminded me of the trouble I caused you during that unfortunate episode at the missile range.”

  “The misfortune was of my own doing. I knew digging for pots inside White Sands Missile Range was risky.”

  “Is he still tying up the loose ends of that case?”

  “It wasn’t his case, actually. He was involved only tangentially. What he wanted to talk about was the death of one of my students.”

  “I read about that in the newspaper. What an odd event.” He shook his head. “Covering a girl in plaster. Art seems to have become quite daft.”

  “Have you heard of Joel-Peter Witkin?”

  “No. Is he famous?”

  “He is. And he lives here in Albuquerque. He takes photographs of dead people.”

  “Head shots for the obituary pages in the newspaper?”

  “Hardly. The corpses he photographs are naked and often dismembered.”

  “Crikey Moses! Is that legal here?”

  “No. He works mostly in Mexico. Susannah told me he said in an interview, ‘In death I find a power of reality that no sculptor or painter could re-create, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.’”

  “What a load of rubbish. Has this Witkin chap never seen Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings? Da Vinci could create more power with a pencil than anyone could with a camera.”

  “I suspect you’re right. I’ve never seen any of Witkin’s work and have no plans to do so.”

  I changed the subject and asked how sales had been the last two weeks.

  “Same as usual,” he said.

  “That bad, huh?”

  He gave me the list of sales and showed me a pot he had conditionally accepted on consignment subject to my approval. It was a Zia bird jar with mocha slip and looked to be from the 1930s.

  “How much does he want for it?”

  “How do you know the seller is a he?”

  “Because in twenty years of buying pots, almost all the sellers have been men. My speculation is most women are sensible enough to hang on to valuables and sentimental enough to want to.”

  “Indeed. It was a gent, and he wants a thousand for the pot.”

  “Call him and tell him we’ll buy it.”

  I brought up a tented card from the drawer below the counter and penciled in the pueblo name, the estimated date and the price.

  “I guess I did well,” Glad said when he saw me pencil in four thousand five hundred dollars.

  He seems to be developing a good eye for pots.

  “Sharice told me I’m to relieve you at four,” I told him, “and then meet with you and the others at Dos Hermanas, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Nor shall I.” He smiled and looked at his watch. “See you in an hour.”

  I settled in behind the counter with The Monkey Wrench Gang and learned how to start a Caterpillar D8 bulldozer. The diesel engine is so big that there is a small gasoline one called a pony engine that is used to start the diesel one. All you have to do is place the transmission in neutral, pull the master clutch in, set the main throttle to a bit above idle, set the hand brake, pull out the choke, use the hand primer pump to prime the diesel, move the compression release lever into the release position, put the hand crank on the pony engine, turn the crank over a couple of times to get a little oil up and prime the carburetor, make sure the pony is set to the compression stroke, switch the ignition on and firmly pull the crank handle. After the pony starts, let it warm up. After it’s warm, throttle it up to a roar, engage the pinion gear lever and pull on the pony motor clutch till the big engine is turning over. Once the diesel is running, shut off the pony.

  Now you understand why I didn’t mind taking breaks to clean the condo while I was reading The Monkey Wrench Gang.

  Martin arrived shortly before five with a wide-mouthed clay bowl in his hand. “Susannah told me to meet you here,” he said.

  “Did she say why?”

  “Yes.”

  If it had been someone other than Martin, I would have asked what the why was. But when Martin stops talking, there’s nothing else he’s going to say.

  “That doesn’t look like one of your uncle’s pieces.”

  “Right.”

  Tristan arrived a few minutes later and said he too was following Susannah’s instructions and also had no idea why we were to meet at the shop and then go to Dos Hermanas.

  I nodded toward Martin. “He knows, but he’s not saying.”

  “That doesn’t look like one of his uncle’s pots.”

  “Yeah. We already established that.”

  I locked both shops and we headed to the cantina, where we found Sharice wrapped in a Celia Kritharioti sheath dress with a swirl pattern of white and a darker shade that matched her skin so that she appeared to be wrapped in white ribbon.

  I know two things about Kritharioti. First, she’s Greek. Second, if other Greek products sold for as much as her dresses, they wouldn’t be needing a bail-out from the European Union.

  Susannah was wearing fancy Levi’s and a white western shirt with turquoise and black swaths in what looked like random locations but were no doubt carefully planned.

  When I said her blouse looked like it came from a designer, she smiled and said, “It is from a designer. Patricia Michaels from the Taos pueblo. Her work is known as Native American haute couture.”

  Martin shook his head. “I suppose my handmade buffalo-hide boots don’t qualify as Native American haute couture.”

  Susannah looked at his feet. “Since when is Tony Lama Native American?”

  She is not easily fooled.

  We bantered about clothes and style while waiting for whatever was supposed to happen.

  Gladys arrived, radiant in a white cotton dress with white embroidery on the neckline and sleeves. Glad was in a gray suit with a white shirt and blue bow tie.

  Tristan and I glanced at each other.

  Martin was expressionless.

  Angie brought an ice bucket with a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir, which she handed to me.

  “I believe you are skilled at opening these.”

  While I was holding the cork and twisting the bottle (one never twists the cork), Glad said, “I have an announcement. Miss Gladys has consented to become Mrs. Gladys Farthing.”

  His announcement caused me to flub the uncorking. A loud pop was followed by the crack of the cork hitting the ceiling then a loud ding as it caromed off a ceiling light and a boing as it bounced off a tabletop. It sounded like the beginning notes of a John Cage work with one of his crazy titles like “Composition for Tin Can and Two Dimes.”

  After a couple of additional bounces and caroms, the cork came to rest in what Susannah later explained to me was a mixture of vodka and apple schnapps called an Appletini.

  I told the Appletini drinker the cork lent more style to his drink than the slice of apple in it. He told me the thing cost five dollars and held out his hand.

  When I finally regained my composure, I proposed a toast. “To Gladwyn. You’re a better man than I. Miss Gladys turned me down when I proposed to her.”

  “He was just jesting,” she said.

  “I would never toy with your affections,” I replied.

  “‘Toy with your affections’ sounds so old-fashioned,” she said, “something I might say.”

  “She must have known I would come along,” said Glad.

  “Have you set a date?” I asked.

  “No. But the place will be the gazebo in the plaza and the officiant will, of course, be Father Groas.”

  “It’s odd,” I said, “that you, Glad, are from England and are Catholic, and Miss Gladys is from Texas and is an Anglican.”

/>   “Not odd at all. You were our colony at one point so our state religion is part of the legacy. I, on the other hand, am a devout follower of Sir Thomas More, who remained loyal to the pope despite Henry VIII’s break from the Vatican.”

  “As I recall, More lost his head over that.”

  “Literally, yes. But figuratively, no. He was a true stalwart.”

  In fact, More was sentenced, “to be hanged till he should be half dead; that then he should be cut down alive, his privy parts cut off, his belly ripped, his bowels burnt, his four quarters set up over four gates of the City and his head upon London Bridge.”

  The nuptial announcement didn’t seem a good time to mention having one’s privy parts cut off, so I refrained from sharing what I remembered about More’s penalty for remaining faithful to the pope. And thankfully, it never happened. King Henry commuted More’s sentence to a simple beheading.

  Miss Gladys said, “I may be an Episcopalian, but I live in Old Town and just adore Father Groas.”

  Susannah, who is also Catholic, asked if Miss Gladys was going to convert.

  “I will be married there and attend Mass with Gladwyn. But I will not convert.”

  “Does Father Groas have any qualms about officiating?”

  Gladys’s eyes sparkled as she spoke. “He does not. I promised him that if Gladwyn and I have children, we will raise then as Catholics.”

  This brought a round of laughter as Glad and Gladys are both around sixty years old.

  Tristan proposed a toast. “To the patter of little feet.”

  Martin set the clay bowl on the table and startled me by pouring Champagne into it.

  “My people call this a wedding bowl. It is traditionally made by the future husband’s parents five days before the wedding ceremony. The husband and all his relatives go to the bride’s house. Dos Hermanas is a second home to all of us, so I brought the wedding bowl here. First, the future husband drinks from one side of the bowl. Then the future wife drinks from the other. Then they drink simultaneously. If they can do that without spilling anything, they will have a long and happy marriage because they know how to cooperate.”