The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (Pot Thief Mysteries)

by J. Michael Orenduff

“I have no idea.” I thought for a moment. “Do you think it might have something to do with why Señora Gomez didn’t want you to be there when she and I talked?”

  A wide smile spread across her face. “I don’t think Señora Gomez knows I’m here. It was Ernesto who wanted me to stay out here.”

  “Why?”

  “So he could hit on me.”

  “You have got to be kidding. He’s only about fifteen.”

  “He says he’s eighteen. He asked me if I was married. When I told him I wasn’t, he asked me for a date.”

  “And where does one go on a date in La Reina?”

  “Right here. We’re having dinner and then we’ll do some dancing.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Lighten up, Hubert. He’s a nice kid. Innocent. He probably just wants to have his friends see him with a woman. Plus, there will be a chaperone.”

  “His great grandmother?”

  “No, you.”

  My mouth opened, but it evidently had nothing to say, so it closed.

  “And you won’t be alone,” she said. “He’s arranged for you to have a date as well.”

  “Oh, no. I appreciate you driving me up here, and I’ll go along with boosting Ernesto’s ego, but I am not going on a blind date in La Reina, and that is final.”

  While I was talking, Susannah was watching something behind me. I heard footsteps. A woman about Susannah’s age appeared at our table.

  “Hubert, I’d like you to meet Ernesto’s sister, Sirena.”

  Her name was well-deserved, a femme fatale who could lure sailors – or pot thieves – with her enchanting voice.

  “Hola, Huberto. Ernesto me dijo que habla español,” she said in a throaty voice. She sounded like an Hispanic Hepburn.

  “Un poco,” I said, stupidly. I probably speak Spanish better than she did, but her appearance flustered me. She was like a tamale, delicious but not good for you, a burgeoning young woman in a sheaf of a dress that couldn’t quite hold her assets. This is why men behave like idiots, I said to myself.

  The bar had begun to fill as the day ended and people gathered to unwind. We sat in the booth – Susannah and her precocious boy toy on one side, me and my fellow chaperone cum temptress on the other.

  A plate of carnitas appeared. Beers showed up on the table. The jukebox played. Susannah and Ernesto danced, he holding her like a life raft.

  What the hell. I took Sirena’s hand and we waltzed to the strains of Freddy Fender.

  Si te quiere de verdad

  Y te da felicidad

  Te deseo lo mas bueno por los dos

  Pero si te hace llorar

  A mi me puedes hablar

  Y estaré contigo cuando triste estas

  The last line in Spanish translates, I’ll be there when you are sad. The English is better, I’ll be there before the next teardrop falls.

  I guess they changed it to make it rhyme, but it lost something in the translation.

  She smelled of baby powder and hair spray. She came easily into my arms and put her head on my shoulder. I was not tempted in the least. It was a party. In the arc light of the moment, we were performers on a stage, nothing more.

  We returned to the table when No Seas Cruel started playing. I like Fender’s Spanish rendition of the old Elvis hit, but I don’t know how to dance to it.

  The place was now overflowing, in part because every teenager was there watching Ernesto and Susannah dance.

  Not a few of them and some of the older patrons as well were giving me strange looks. Not looks of hostility or even curiosity. More like admiration mixed with concern.

  Ernesto’s replacement as barkeep was named Baltazar. I thought of him as Baltazar de los ojos as he approached our booth.

  “Sirena,” he said, “Hugo is on his way.”

  Baltazar walked away. Sirena seemed frozen in place.

  “Sirena,” I said, “who is Hugo?”

  “Mi novio. But he don’t use ‘Hugo’. He use his nickname.”

  “Which is?”

  “El Bastardo.”

  Wonderful. I was the blind date for El Bastardo’s girlfriend.

  “Tell Susannah I’ll wait for her in the truck,” I said, abandoning my chaperonal duties.

  But it was too late. El Bastardo was charging into the bar, his biceps bulging from his muscle shirt and his eyes doing the same from his bulldog face.

  He reached the table just as I was swinging my leg out to make a getaway. My cast crashed against his shin, and he winced in pain, giving me time to scramble to my feet and stand on the bench seat of the booth, the only surface available at the moment. He leaned in and took a swing at me. I arched back to avoid the blow and lost my balance. My head hit the wall, my butt hit the bench and my legs shot out from me like battering rams.

  The cast delivered a second blow to Hugo, this time in a location considerably more painful than the shin. He dropped to his knees and moaned, but he was still blocking my way. I tried to clamber over the table to get past him on the other side of the booth. He recovered while I was doing so and his head came up to table height just in time to intercept the leg I was swinging across the table. There was a sickening crack as the cast caught him full force on the side of his head. He dropped to the floor unconscious.

  I scanned the room. It was like a photograph. No motion, no sound. Then they all rushed at me. The strange thought that streaked through my jumbled brain was that dying of thirst would have been better than what was about to happen.

  They closed in on me, their arms extended.

  And patted me on the back. And cheered. And dragged me to the bar and started pouring me shots of mescal.

  34

  I must have passed out. The first thing I saw the next morning was a poodle skirt.

  Above the skirt was a pink sweater. Above that was the face of a girl about eight years old.

  “He’s awake,” she yelled, sending needles through my brain. Three other girls the same age rushed in to see the strange man on the couch.

  The first girl, evidently the ringleader, pointed to my cast. “This is his weapon. He used it to beat up El Bastardo.”

  They took a step back. Then they giggled and ran out of the room. I lifted my head and the needles returned. So I scanned the room moving nothing but my eyes. But even my eye muscles hurt.

  The couch was upholstered in heavy brocade. The ceiling was pressed tin. I could see a lamp shade beyond my cast. It was yellowed and had beads hanging from it. There were scores of photographs on the wall. They seemed to comprise a family history.

  Or maybe a village history. Some were so old they might have been daguerreotypes, their subjects dressed in nineteenth century garb and standing next to wagons, mules and hand-guided plows.

  I heard footsteps but dared not move my head to see what was coming. A dark and diminutive ancient woman placed a chair next to the couch and introduced herself as La Viuda de Cheche Zaragosa Medrano, meaning the widow of Cheche Zaragosa Medrano. She explained that the crowd from El Erupto del Rey had brought me to her house because I had earlier expressed a desire to meet with the curandera.

  She handed me a cup of hot liquid I assumed to be coffee until I drank it and discovered it was an herbal tea. She assured me it would cure my hangover. I was skeptical. But thirty minutes later I was sitting at her kitchen table eating eggs and tortillas and drinking my third cup of the strange brew that tasted of epazote, estafiate and yerba buena.

  It was better than it sounds.

  I asked about Susannah.

  “She was with the others who brought you here. I did not allow her to stay because I fear she is a bruja.”

  The thought of Susannah being a witch made me laugh, but a hard glare from the deep-set eyes of La Viuda silenced me.

  We talked for two hours while the little girls continued to run about the house occasionally peeking around the doorway to get a glimpse of me as if I were the bearded lady or the two-headed calf.

  I a
sked her about Alvar Nuñez and got the same response everyone else had given.

  I asked her about wandering souls. She told me there were many. I asked if there had been a new one recently.

  “Yes, but I do not know who. When someone from his family comes to me, I will know it.”

  I thought about lining up all the people in and around La Reina and parading them by La Viuda. I dismissed the idea because the logistics seemed too complicated, and I couldn’t imagine them agreeing to it anyway. Not to mention that I wasn’t all that sure she could identify wandering souls.

  But if being a wandering soul is just the hangover of death, then she could probably do it. Mine was completely gone.

  My next to last question was about anyone who may have left La Reina in the last year or so. She said young people leave every year.

  “But most of them return to visit,” I noted, “I want to know if there are any who have left and not come back.”

  After thinking about it, she said there were only three: Hector Zaragosa Maldonado, Carlos Campos Castillo and Jesus Padilla Gomez.

  Or maybe their names were Hector Campos Gomez, Jesus Zaragosa Padilla, and Carlos Maldonado Castillo. It’s a good thing I wrote them down.

  My final question was whether she knew where Susannah had gone. She told me Señora Celerina Gomez Maestas had taken Susannah back to the bar where she could spend the night with her and Ernesto.

  34

  Traversing the fifty yards from La Viuda’s home to El Erupto del Rey took a full ten minutes because I had to hunt for a safe spot to brace the crutch tips with each step.

  One of Susannah’s interests in art history is the religious folk art found in New Mexico’s old adobe churches. I also like the work of the santeros, but it is the buildings themselves that intrigue me, especially the small unpretentious ones constructed by the local faithful. There are 362 catalogued old adobe churches in the state, most of which were built before the United States existed and many that are badly deteriorated. Thankfully, the Archbishop’s Commission for the Preservation of New Mexican Churches is working with Cornerstones Community Partnerships and other organizations to save these historical treasures. Two of my favorites are the Old San Ysidro Church in Corrales with the unusual metal pyramidal caps on its buttresses and the Saint Francis de Paula Church in Tularosa with its massive front wall in gleaming whitewash.

  I was not surprised that Susannah wanted to visit the local church before we left. Its thick adobe walls were coated with traditional clay plaster and supported by rounded buttresses. The front door was rough-hewn pine. It must have weighed two hundred pounds, but it swung open easily. A central aisle ran between gigantic log pillars that rose thirty feet to the ceiling. There were pews between the pillars and walls. There were no windows. A small light behind the chancel was the only source of illumination. Niches in the walls contained the Stations of the Cross. The altar was made of tin and brightly painted.

  I sat in one of the pews enjoying the cool still air as Susannah examined the work of the artisans in the niches.

  She returned to me and said, “I think I’ll make confession.”

  “Good idea. You need forgiveness for corrupting the youth of La Reina and practicing witchcraft.”

  “Practicing witchcraft?”

  “Yeah, that’s why La Viuda de Cheche Zaragosa Medrano wouldn’t let you stay in her house. She said you’re a bruja.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Maybe because of the way you beguiled poor innocent Ernesto.”

  She shrugged, stepped over to a confessional and closed the door behind her.

  From my seat in the near dark and behind one of the pillars, I watched the priest emerge from his office and enter his side of the booth. He wore the cappa nera of the Dominicans. They were not in there long, which I took as a good sign. I watched the priest intently when he returned to his office.

  I met Susannah outside.

  “Ready to go?” she asked.

  “Not quite. I’m also going to make a confession.”

  She looked understandably perplexed. “You’re not Catholic.”

  “That’s why you have to give me a few pointers.”

  I asked several questions, the last one being how the priest would know to come out from his office. I didn’t want to sit in the booth for hours waiting. I’m claustrophobic.

  “They just know, Hubie. They have holy powers. I’ll meet you at the truck in front of the bar.”

  The holy power in this case was a string attached to the door and running through a hole in the wall, probably to a bell in the office.

  When it came time to do so, I said “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been over thirty years since my last confession.”

  “We can talk of that shortly. What do you wish to confess?”

  “I was digging illegally for ancient artifacts and discovered a human body.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Where did this happen?”

  “In a cliff dwelling over the Rio Doloroso.”

  After another long silence, he said, “Please step out to the pews.”

  We walked over to them. He gestured for me to enter. I sat down a few feet from the end, leaving him a place which he took.

  He said, “I think it best that we continue this conversation outside the protection of the confessional. Do you object?”

  “No.”

  “Did you report the body to the police?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why not?”

  “I thought it was the remains of a prehistoric person, a mummy so to speak.”

  “But you have changed your opinion?”

  “Yes. A friend whose opinion I value believes the body is a contemporary person. She and I analyzed and debated it. I won’t bother you with the details. The upshot was that I decided to go back and examine the body to determine whether it was ancient or modern. But the body was no longer there. It had been moved.”

  The priest sat in thought, his thumbnail under his front teeth.

  “What do you deduce from the absence of the body?” he finally asked.

  “My friend believes the missing body proves it was a contemporary person. One who was murdered. The murderer knew I had discovered the body so he moved it to cover his crime.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think it remains possible that it was prehistoric.”

  “If that is so, there would be no motive for its removal.”

  “I’m afraid there could be. It would not be to conceal a murder. It would be for profit. Mummies are in great demand in the illegal antiquities trade.”

  He shook his head slowly and stared down at the floor. Perhaps he was in prayer.

  “What steps have you taken since discovering the body has been moved?”

  “I talked to my lawyer and my priest.”

  He smiled. “In that order?”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  He waved it off. “What did your lawyer advise?”

  “He said the purpose of the law requiring the reporting of a body is so the police can investigate. Since I no longer know where the body is, that purpose cannot be met. So I have no legal obligation to report the initial discovery.”

  “And your priest?”

  “He said I should ignore the letter of the law and do what I think is right.”

  “Always sound advice. May I ask his name?”

  “Father Groaz.”

  “A diocesan priest. I often think they are closer to the people than we religious priests.”

  “Shouldn’t all priests be religious?”

  He laughed. “Unfortunately, some are not, as the world has recently discovered. But I wasn’t using the term in that way. A ‘religious priest’ is one who belongs to an order and has taken the three vows – poverty, obedience and celibacy. Diocesan priests are bound only to celibacy, although they are in fact obedient and rarely wealthy.”

  “How did you know
Father Groaz is a diocesan priest?”

  “Because there is no saint named Groaz. When we enter the orders, we take a new name, and it must be the name of a saint.”

  “What name did you choose?”

  “Jerome.”

  “So,” I asked him, “shall I call you Father Jerome or Alvar Nuñez?”

  35

  It was now his turn to confess.

  “It started in that booth,” he said, waving a hand in the direction of the confessional. “A parishioner told me he had committed two sins. The first was participation in the dark rites of the Penitentes. You are aware of this sect?”

  I nodded. Like most people who grow up in New Mexico, I heard tales of the Penitentes but had little factual knowledge.

  “The second thing he confessed was witnessing a death at the cliff dwelling, a location they use to ensure they will not be discovered or interrupted. He sought forgiveness for his failure to report the death.”

  “He didn’t tell you who the victim was?”

  Alvar – Father Jerome, I still didn’t know what to call him – let out a long sigh as if he had been holding his breath. “No. I wish he had. I struggled with this information for several weeks, trying, as your Father Groaz advised you, to ignore the letter of the law and do what I think is right. But like you, I was hesitant and unsure.”

  “I know information received in confession is sacrosanct,” I said, “but couldn’t you have reported the fact of the death to the police without revealing who had told you?”

  He let out another sigh and shook his head. “I could have done that. But I had to consider the consequences. I didn’t want the police trying to extract confidential information from me or my parishioners. Being questioned aggressively by the police would hardly qualify me as a martyr. My larger concern was my parishioners.”

  He looked up at me. “The Penitentes were virtually in control of this parish when I arrived. The deacons and I have made great strides to reduce their influence. Their morada is gone. Their number is reduced. They have been driven underground. The last thing we need is the police questioning the parishioners. Everyone would suspect that I had tipped the police about the death. Even though I would have withheld the name, it would destroy their confidence in me and, more importantly, the Church. I also did not want the police trying to discover who made the confession, pitting neighbor against neighbor, child against parent. It would tear this community apart. And yet… it did not seem right simply to remain silent. The deceased person deserved better than an anonymous grave. His family deserves to know his fate. The people who participated in his death – I will not quite call it a murder – should be called to account for their actions.”