That’s what she found out for me and my investigation. For herself, she found out that he was single and that his olive skin and white teeth were even more attractive in candlelight. She had arranged for their meeting to be a dinner at Geronimo’s in Santa Fe because even though he still had his apartment in Albuquerque, he was staying at the Residence Inn in Santa Fe, courtesy of the taxpayers, while he worked for a government agency.
“Who paid?” I asked, mindful of the cost of an evening at Geronimo’s.
“I put it on my expense account,” she said and handed me a copy of her receipt.
“Whit didn’t say anything about an expense account.”
“Well, you better let him know we need one. I’m not driving all the way to Santa Fe on my own nickel, and I’m not driving back on an empty stomach. Besides, if you’re trying to get information out of someone, why not ply them with good food and drink? And while I was in Santa Fe, I brought you some of that chile chocolate you like. They sell it at Collected Works.”
“A bookstore sells chocolate?”
“Bookstores will sell anything these days. They have to because e-books are cutting into their sales. You can put the chocolate on the expense account, too.”
“Hmm. The dinner at Geronimo’s was strictly business?”
“It might as well have been. I flirted with him like crazy, but he seemed immune to my feminine wiles.”
“He’s from India, Suze. I don’t think they date over there. Everything is arranged by the families.”
“Yeah? Maybe I could get my father to call his father.”
42
Layton Kent, Esquire is the most prominent attorney in Albuquerque, and his wife, Mariella, is reputed to be a descendent of Don Francisco Fernandez de la Cueva Enriquez, Duque de Alburquerque. In other words, she is said to be the issue of the man after whom our fair city is named. I have never heard her say it. She would not do so even were it true because she has too much class for that, but I care less about her ancestors and more about the fact that she is a knowledgeable collector of traditional Native American pots, and I am her personal dealer.
After verifying that I had a lunch meeting with Layton, the maitre‘d led me to the table and gave me a napkin and wine list. I ordered a bottle of Gruet Blanc De Noir. The supercilious sommelier raised his eyebrows and looked to Layton who nodded slightly.
Layton is six inches taller than my 5’ 6” and you don’t have to be a math whiz to figure that puts him at an even six feet. Calculating his weight is more of a challenge. I place it at around two ninety, but he is surprisingly nimble, has only one chin, and looks rather regal, perhaps like Henry VII without the beard. Also, Mariela is his first and only wife.
“I have allowed you to select the champagne,” he said to me, “because I am intrigued by the matter you hinted at over the phone. And also because you are paying, and even I lack the chutzpah to order my usual at your expense.”
His usual is Dom Perignon. I have tasted it on occasion at his expense. It is marginally better than Gruet, but certainly not worth six times the expense even if it does deserve to be called champagne because it comes from Champagne and has that terroir thing.
The sommelier returned and - although I had ordered and was paying for the bubbly - said, “Shall I pour, Mr. Kent?”
“Yes, Phillip, please.”
Layton sipped and indicated his satisfaction with a nod. After the sommelier departed, Layton took another rather larger sip and looked at me. “Most satisfactory.”
The waiter arrived and announced that the chef was suggesting elk medallions with juniper sauce and I almost choked on my Gruet. Layton accepted the chef’s suggestion for both us. I was not consulted.
After the waiter departed, Layton leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers on the mound of his belly, narrowed his eyes, and asked me to tell him about the pot and how I had come to possess it.
I told him the whole story, leaving nothing out since he is my attorney and anything I tell him is privileged information.
When I finished, he closed his eyes, either to digest what I had said or to take a nap. I couldn’t tell which. I studied his suit. He has them hand tailored, perhaps because he likes fine clothes or perhaps because he doesn’t like the styles at the big men’s shops which are the only places he could buy something off the rack. The one he was wearing that day was of taupe gabardine cut so expertly that it actually made his girth an asset. There was a dark brown handkerchief in the pocket that matched the background color of a tie with rows of small yellow stylized sand cranes. It was knotted over a silk shirt with rolled collar.
I, by contrast, was wearing a cotton shirt from a place on San Mateo, the name of which I can’t remember because I buy a shirt only once every five or six years. What I can remember is I paid $12.50 for it. It looked good with the tie my Aunt Beatrice had given me so long ago that its width had actually come back into style.
Layton opened his eyes when the food came, and we both ate in silence except for comments about the food. The elk was better than the one prepared by Maria because it had no doubt never been frozen and was the choice cut, the center of the loin. Maria had been able to offer no side dishes whereas the plate at Layton’s club had a purée of gin-marinated green chile and potato and a few leaves of lamb’s lettuce allegedly picked wild in the Jemez Mountains. It was an excellent meal, but the juniper sauce was thin, over-salted, and no comparison to Maria’s.
Dessert was a piñon-scented flan and coffee. Only when that had been consumed did Layton react to what I had told him.
“I will make discreet inquiries to discover if the University knows anything about the pot. I suspect, having dealt with them on numerous occasions, that they do not.”
I nodded.
“There is a matter of ethics involved here, Hubert, and I have already thought it through. It is possible that Cyril Duran owns the pot by virtue of being the heir of his great-grandfather. Of course that assumes that the great-grandfather wanted Cyril to have it.”
I told him about Martin’s theory that I was now the custodian of the pot. A blank stare was all the reply he made. Then I said, “Cyril said his great-grandfather wants the pot back.”
His eyes rolled up ever so slightly. “The testimony of spirits is inadmissible. We must also be prepared to fend off any suggestion that the great-grandfather sold or gave the pot to Lawrence.”
“Lawrence’s letter says the Mexican ‘brought’ the pot.”
“Excellent. That is sufficiently vague for our purposes. When I come into possession of the pot, I am obligated to inform the University, but I need not say how that came about. I will explain to the president that the Taos Pueblo would like the pot repatriated, a request no college president would dare deny these days, and I will point out that the University has no claim to ownership other than the fact that the artifact resided on their property for an extended period. He will no doubt assent to my request. In return for my assistance in this matter, you will give to Mariela one of the pots you receive from Cyril. Because she has no old Taos pottery, this will be excellent addition to her collection.”
I nodded and smiled. Her collection has been the backbone of my business for many years. But my happiness was tempered by the fact that I had lost along the path to this deal a very valuable pot that had been stolen at the Ranch and one of the three Dulcineas I was to receive from Cyril Duran. But two Dulcineas constitute a small fortune, and I had hopes of recovering the lost Anasazi.
43
When I got home, I switched from shank’s mule to a Bronco and drove up into the suburban wasteland of northeast Albuquerque to an upscale condo development near the foot of the Sandias.
Teodoro Vasquez was waiting for me and showed me proudly around his place. The kitchen, living room, and dining nook were on the ground floor, and an open staircase led upstairs to a front and rear bedroom. The front one with its dramatic view of the lights of Albuquerque had been converted into what Vasquez called hi
s “command center.” A large desk looked westward across the city, and on its surface was a multi-line telephone with an array of buttons, a fax machine, both a desktop and a laptop computer, and the usual assortment of paperclips, pens, pencils, and other office consumables.
The walls were covered with photographs of Vasquez mugging for the camera with the rich and famous. I recognized the last three Governors, our two senators who had been in office as long as I can remember, our representatives whose names I couldn’t recall, and a number of others who wore the satisfied expression of people who know they are somebody.
I am nobody, but Teodoro gave me the grand tour nonetheless, and he went through all the pictures, each of which had a funny story behind it, a story that cast a favorable light on Teodoro despite how earnestly he downplayed his part in the tale.
He pointed me to what he called his “client chair” and then swiveled around his yacht of a desk chair and settled into it. He pushed it back and said he had talked with the Head of the State Police after my call and had received permission to share with me everything he knew about the events of the previous weekend at the Lawrence Ranch.
I didn’t know why he felt it necessary to consult with the State Police, but I just nodded when he told me he had done so.
“I told Larry,” he said (Larry was the Head of the State Police), “that I had urged everyone to call the authorities right from the beginning.”
“Indeed you did,” I agreed, “and you remained steadfast on that issue.”
“I’m glad you remember. Also, I thought we shouldn’t move any of the bodies.”
“Yes, I distinctly remember you saying that.”
“So what can I do you for,” he said, probably out of habit because he wasn’t the sort to pass up a corny phrase.
“Are you a donor to the University?”
The question seemed to take him aback. A smile even larger than normal formed on his face and he jerked his head to the left and brought it back again quickly in a movement that was neither a nod nor a shake.
“Well,” he said, and pushed even further back into his chair. Then he gave a little leg whip to push the chair forward again and leaned forward on his elbows to assume a straightforward look.
And after all that buying of time, the best he could come up with was, “It depends on what you mean by a donation.”
“I guess what I mean is did you ever write them a check?”
“A check. Well, no, I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever allow them to charge a monetary donation to a credit card?”
“Hmm. Not that I recall.”
“Maybe you signed over stocks or bonds to them?”
“No, I never play the markets – too risky.”
I wondered what other sort of donation there was. Did he take them some old furniture as if they were the Salvation Army?
I just looked at him with a noncommittal expression and waited.
“What I’ve done on occasion,” he finally said, “is to advance their interests in the Legislature. Behind the scenes of course.”
“You’re not their official lobbyist?”
“No, the University is not on my client list. Everyone on my list gets the best representation money can buy, and you can’t do that and take on everybody,” he said, making it sound as if the University had sought his assistance and he had turned them down.
“So I suppose they knew you had done that, and that’s why they invited you to the Ranch?”
He seemed to be thinking it over carefully, wondering what he could say that couldn’t be checked or contradicted.
“Actually,” he admitted, “the University isn’t aware of what I did for them to help them get a larger appropriation. Just between you and me, if my paying clients knew I was assisting the University pro bono, they might not understand.”
“Of course. How did your invitation come about?”
“It was a telephone call.”
“From?”
“I actually don’t remember the name. I’m sure you can appreciate that I get hundreds of invitation in my line of work.”
“Of course you do,” I said and thanked him for his time and the tour of his condo.
44
I worked for an accounting firm for a couple of years after I got my BBA from UNM, and I hated every minute of it. The working part, not the getting the BBA part. Actually, I didn’t like that much either. It wasn’t the accounting. I liked getting all the numbers lined up. It was the schedule. Be there at a certain time, leave at a certain time, finish the project by a certain day, eat lunch at the lunch hour. I’m just not cut out for that.
One of my SAPs (Schuze’ Anthropological Premises) is that we humans evolved over millions of years as beings who didn’t need a schedule. Indeed, a schedule would have been what anthropologists call survival-negative. We hunted when the game was near and gathered when the berries were ripe. Early humans had no words for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They did have a word for starvation, and they fended that off by eating when the chance arose.
We slept when we were tired, drank when we were thirsty, and the men had sex with the women whenever the alpha male was away and the women were willing or didn’t run fast enough. Our courtship rituals have improved, but most of the other trappings of modern society are detrimental to good physical and mental health. The alarm clock, shift work, and the rolodex have put more men in the grave than all the wars in history.
One reason why shopkeeping suits me so well is that I can set my own hours. I hadn’t opened at all on Thursday, and now most of Friday had lapsed with the closed sign staring out at the world. It was not yet three when I left Vasquez, and I should have opened the shop because there might have been a customer waiting for me, but in keeping with my anthropological theory, I didn’t open because I didn’t feel like opening. Of course being true to my theory was made somewhat easier by the knowledge that a substantial sum of money would be coming from the pots I would get from Duran, minus the one I would give to Mariella.
The phone rang and I almost didn’t answer it, but I was glad I did. It was Susannah telling me she couldn’t meet me at five because she had a date with Patel, and I was happy for her and wished her a pleasant evening. I guess her flirting paid off after all.
Then, since I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I opened the shop and found there was indeed someone waiting for me, but it wasn’t a customer.
45
She smiled up at me, and at my height how many people can I say that about?
With her pursed lips and turned up nose, she looked a little like a pig. I know that sounds terrible, but I didn’t think of it that way. She wasn’t like a muddy pig in a barnyard. She was like a cute little pig in a cartoon, like Porky’s girlfriend, Petunia.
Except her name was Maria, and she wasn’t pink. She was the color of honey when the sun shines through it, and her hair was shiny black and coarse and just long enough to lay down, like a lady Marine who just finished boot camp and whose hair is starting to grow back after being shaved off. And that was good because it showed her cute little ears and her perfectly shaped neck.
She had a large bag slung over her shoulder.
“Daanzho,” I said and stood there staring at her.
“You know Apache?”
“You just heard half my vocabulary.”
I guess I was still staring at her.
“Are you happy to see me?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Then why don’t you invite me in?”
She looked around the shop in awe. “Wow! This is the best collection of pots I’ve ever seen. Where did you get them?”
“Oh, here and there.” I didn’t know how she might feel about the Archaeological Resources Protections Act.
“You don’t have any baskets.”
You often see jicama in grocery stores these days because of our growing Hispanic population. ‘Jicarilla’ is from the same root with the diminutive ending. Thus,
it means something like ‘little gourd’ or ‘little tuber’. The Spanish gave that name to a band of Apaches whose baskets had the shape of gourds. The Jicarillas have some great potters now, but their history is in baskets.
“No, I deal only in pots.”
“Don’t you like baskets?”
“Sure, but, see, I’m a potter myself. I make pots. But I don’t know anything about baskets.”
“Maybe you could start making baskets, too.”
“Maybe,” I said, although after all the years I had spent becoming an expert on Indian pottery, I thought the suggestion was akin to ‘Gee, Mister Ma, maybe you could start playing the saxophone along with the cello’.
I took her back to my workshop and showed her where I make pots, and she asked about the clays, the glazes, the wheel, and other things in the shop. She seemed genuinely interested, not just making small talk.
She told me she had business in Albuquerque and decided at the spur of the moment to drop by, and I said I was glad she had and did she want something to eat. She said ever since she became a caterer, she didn’t enjoy restaurants. I offered to cook for her, and she liked that idea.
I had a whole chicken in the fridge (a hen, not a rooster), and I used my kitchen shears to cut out the backbone. I put a long piece of aluminum foil in a roasting pan, flattened the chicken out on the foil, covered it with some tomatilla salsa I’d made a few days earlier, folded the rest of the foil over the chicken, placed two bricks on the foil to hold the chicken flat and placed it in the oven. Then I cut up some potatoes and mixed them in a large bowl with a little corn oil, chopped rosemary, ground cumin, and a pinch of kosher salt.
I washed my hands and grabbed two glasses from the fridge. I was reaching for a chilled bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir when she pulled a bottle of Gruet rosé from her bag. “This is a little gift for you,” she said and gave me a too-brief kiss. I suspected her visit was not spur-of-the-moment.
The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence Page 15
