The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (6 page)

I arrived home around four, bloated with beer and
barbacoa
.

My plan for a late afternoon
siesta
was foiled by the arrival of Miss Gladys Claiborne on my doorstep. Gladys, whose name has been prefixed throughout her life by ‘Miss’ even during the forty years of her marriage, owns and operates the eponymous Miss Gladys’ Gift Shop two doors down from me.

She is well-known in Old Town for her hand-sewn line of tea cozies, placemats, aprons, handkerchiefs, and dish towels, most bearing the image of either San Felipe de Neri Catholic Church or the colorful Gazebo in the center of the Plaza.

She is also well-known for her casseroles, each of which is an intriguing and often startling mixture of things that are themselves ready-to-eat foods such as canned tuna, Campbell’s soup, and crushed crackers. Other lighter versions rely on Jell-O, miniature marshmallows, canned fruit, and cream cheese.

Since the death of her husband, she has no one to feed these concoctions to, and I seem to have drawn the short straw. You already know how my tastes run in food, so you will understand my desire to tactfully avoid her cooking.

Especially when I’ve just eaten several pounds of pork and drunk a quart or two of beer.

But to my surprise and relief, she came not to feed but to introduce.

His name was T. Morgan Fister, a distinguished looking clean-shaven gentleman with silver hair, light blue eyes, and a strong chin.

Mr. Fister wore brown linen slacks over a pair of woven leather loafers. His maize cotton shirt had a spread collar, monogrammed on the left with the letters TFM. I thought the monogramist had made a mistake until I realized that the middle letter was slightly larger, indicating, I suppose, Mr. Fister’s family name having pride of place in the little pantheon of letters on his collar. Monogrammed clothes are an affectation. I disliked Fister immediately.

Over the expensive shirt, he wore a herringbone jacket with a leather patch, not on the elbow, but on the right shoulder where the stock of a shotgun would be braced while the man in the jacket blasted doves out of the air for sport. I suppose those are called hunting jackets.

He had an easy smile and a firm grip, and he seemed genuinely happy to meet me. He said nothing about himself, being a true gentleman, but made me instead the center of attention, asking me questions as if I were the most interesting chap he had met since his last bird-killing sortie with Prince Charles. No, he wasn’t English. He just seemed like the sort who would hunt with Charles. I’ll say this for Fister, at least his ears were of normal proportion.

When I redirected my gaze from T. Morgan to Miss Gladys, she was looking up at her new friend, enthralled. Oh my God, I thought – she’s in love.

“You’ll never guess where Morgan is from,” she said after introducing him, and she gave me a look that indicated I should try nonetheless.

He also fell silent, obviously not wanting to spoil her fun. They both looked at me in anticipation.

“Winchester,” I said, a wild guess that stemmed from my thinking about the guns. And damned if I didn’t get it right! There’s evidently a town in Virginia by that name.

“Heavens to Betsy,” declared Miss Gladys, “However did you know that?”

T. Morgan tried to maintain his calm demeanor as a look of apprehension spread across his face.

“Have we met?” he asked cautiously.

“Of course,” I said, “just a few seconds ago.”

He gave a brief nervous laugh. “But have we met
before
? You do look familiar.”

I try never to be a bad person, but mischief is in my nature, and now that he was off balance, I intended to press my advantage and see where it led.

“What brings you from Winchester to Albuquerque?” I asked, not answering his question.

“I have an interest in Native American artifacts.”

“And he’s also here to tend to his aging mother,” Gladys volunteered.

I turned to him. “Where in Albuquerque does she live?”

“Oh,” he said, “she’s back in Virginia. I’ll bring her out as soon as I’ve located suitable quarters for her. By train, of course. She dislikes air travel.”

“Goodness,” said Gladys, “I was under the impression she was already here.”

“No doubt my fault,” he said without hesitation. “I’m so anxious to see her here that I speak as if it’s a
fait accompli
.”

Gladys giggled. It was disgusting. Then she said, “Morgan’s speech is just peppered with those cute French phrases. I do think it sounds so high class, don’t you agree, Hubert?”

“Using French is quite
de rigueur
these days,” I said.

“Yes,” he said uncertainly.

“One might almost say it’s
derrière
,” I added.

“Precisely,” said Morgan.

“I must tell you, Morgan, that Mr. Schuze is the most talked about man in Old Town,” said Gladys. “He keeps the most irregular hours at his shop, and he has been arrested several times, all of which turned out to be mistakes by the police.”

At this news, Fister broke into a contented smile that seemed to say he had met a fellow traveler, a scoundrel like himself, someone who would keep his secret safe for fear of having his own misdeeds uncovered.

But whereas I only appear to be a scoundrel, I was convinced that T. Morgan Fister was the real thing.

“So,” he said with a note of triumph in his voice, “What is the mysterious business you engage in when your shop is closed and no one knows your whereabouts?”

I looked at them both in turn with a grave expression. “Do not breathe a word of this. What I do in my other life is undercover investigations for the police.”

I watched all the blood drain from Fister’s face.

Stuffed shirts from Benjamin Franklin to William James have preached the importance of habit and routine to the well-led life. Early to bed, early to rise. Plan ahead. Show up on time. Make lists. Keep a calendar. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.

Steven Covey has written eight books on habits. Not how to get
rid
of them, how to
cultivate
them. And those books are best sellers. It’s a sad commentary on America’s literacy that a book urging you to adopt the habits of ‘successful’ people – meaning those who wear dark suits and red ties, lack a sense of humor, invent things like hedge funds, and send their kids to Harvard – is a best seller.

Habits are hogwash. A million years of evolution prepared us to be flexible, to live life in the order it comes. No anthropologist has ever found evidence that cavemen had ulcers. They ate when they were hungry, slept when they were tired. They probably didn’t think about it much, but they knew a truth we’ve forgotten. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Routine dulls the intellect and crushes creativity. Some things, of course, require planning. But most of them – invasions, political campaigns, cruises, football matches – are better left undone in the first place.

All of which is to say that it was out of character for me to be awake and on the road at 5:30 on a Monday morning. I drove to Titanium Trail, went around to the back of Unit 183, and peered into the garage. I figured there was little chance of anyone spotting me at that hour of the morning. I don’t know why we refer to such hours as ‘barbaric’. Civilized men are much more likely to be awake at five in the morning than are barbarians.

The Cadillac was in the garage. I drove around to the front and parked on the shoulder about fifty yards from unit 183. I adjusted my rear-view mirror so I could see the front door just in case anyone came out that way, but what I was really watching for was the Cadillac.

I was on a stakeout.

O.K., I admit I had done a little planning. I had a thermos of coffee and a book about Einstein that Martin had urged me to read. When I donned my reading glasses, the print was crisp and clear. The same could not be said of the subject matter.

The coffee and the book fought each other, the book trying to put me to sleep and the coffee trying to keep me awake. After a while, the book seemed to be winning. I stopped reading. I stared into the mirror. Nothing happened. After another while, I looked into the passenger-side mirror and saw a van parked on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t remember seeing it when I had first turned onto Titanium Trail. I hadn’t noticed it arrive. Perhaps it came up while I was staring into my rear view mirror. But there it was, a white van with ‘United Plumbing’ in big black letters.

I stayed until around ten. A quick scan of the van as I drove by on my way home revealed the driver and passenger seats to be unoccupied. There may have been someone in the back of the van – there were no windows back there – but I assumed it more likely held pipes, fittings, and tools.

I was back the next day at eleven in the morning, figuring that if I showed up at a variety of times, I might catch someone leaving or coming back. The United Plumbing van was where it had been the day before. I drove around to the back, found the Cadillac in the garage, drove around in front, put the glasses on, read page five of the book on Einstein. When that hour was up, I ate three tacos filled with caramelized jalapeños and some of the barbecued pork Emilio had sent home with me on Saturday. I drank a Tecate I’d brought along in a small cooler filled with ice. I wanted more, but I didn’t want a DUI on my record. I knew one beer wouldn’t put me over the limit.

Even though it was only one beer, it eventually worked its way through my bloodstream and kidneys and then into my bladder. I made it until just after two before going home.

I was back at midnight, driving slowly down the service road with my lights off. I stopped, peeked into the garage, saw the Cadillac by the light of the moon. I was beginning to think I understood why the phone was no longer in service.

The next day, Wednesday, I showed up at three in the afternoon and stayed until after six. The Caddy was in the garage. I wanted to go in and try to start it up. I suspected it was inoperable, just being stored there.

The United Plumbing van showed up about four-thirty while I was trying to read. It sat there for about five minutes, then turned and left. A skinny brown arm jutted out from the driver’s side. Nothing unusual about a brown arm in Albuquerque. Half the population is Hispanic with varying shades of brown skin. The other half of the population, be their ancestors from France, Scotland, or Lithuania, are just as brown because we all get baked by the sun year around.

The driver had a long pony tail that stuck out under a baseball cap. I tried to get a look at his face, but couldn’t focus. Then I realized I still had the reading glasses on. By the time I took them off, he was gone.

Maybe he realized he forgot a piece of pipe he needed. Or maybe he wasn’t really a plumber. Or maybe I was slightly paranoid.

As I left, I made a resolution to come back one more time.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier just to knock on the door instead of wasting all that time on a stakeout?”

“It wasn’t wasted,” I corrected her. “I used the time to read about Einstein and the uncertainty principle.”

“I thought the uncertainty principle came from Heisenberg.”

“It did. But Einstein rejected uncertainty.”

“You could have done the same by just walking up and knocking on 
the door.”

She’s relentless. “That’s what you would do,” I said. “You have that rancher mentality – saddle up and ride. I’m more the wary type. And anyway, the captain’s seats in the Bronco are big and comfortable and a great place to read.”

“Then why did you only get to page five?”

“That was the subject matter, not the environment. Martin insists I should read this book, but it’s taking me about an hour a page.” I shrugged. “Maybe once I get my head around the basic ideas, the rest of it will be easier.”

“What are the basic ideas?”

“Well, the uncertainty principle has to do with the behavior of subatomic particles, things like electrons and protons. Apparently those particles behave very differently from everyday objects like rocks and rutabagas.”

“Rutabagas? The book said that?”

“No, that was just my example.”

“That’s a strange example, Hubie.”

“O.K., forget the rutabagas. Just think of a rock. If you throw a rock, the path it takes is determined by the direction you throw it and how hard you throw it. If you’re good at throwing rocks, you can even make a sort of intuitive calculation and hit something you aim at.”

“So?”

“Well, subatomic particles evidently don’t work like that. If you throw one, you have no idea where it might go.”

“I don’t think you can throw an electron, Hubert.”

“I know that. What the book is trying to do, I think, is contrast the predictability of the path of a rock and the path of an electron. Or a tennis ball. That’s a better example. You’ve seen those machines they use to shoot tennis balls at you so you can practice?”

She nodded.

“Well, you can aim them, and I assume you can set the speed, so if you want to practice returning hard serves with your backhand, you crank up the speed and aim the thing to your right.”

“Only because you’re left-handed, Hubie. Most people would aim it to their left.”

“Whatever. The point is that once you have it aimed, it isn’t suddenly going to shoot a ball straight up in the air or into the net. Where the ball goes is predictable.”

“And where an electron goes isn’t?”

“Exactly. They have things called electron guns that shoot out a stream of electrons, but where each one goes is unpredictable. That’s why they call it the uncertainty principle.”

“Other than teeny little subatomic people playing tennis with electrons, why should anyone care about this?”

I shrugged. “Intellectual curiosity.”

I could see she’d heard enough, and I’d already said everything I knew about it, so she told me about her date with Chris Churgelli. They had attended a poetry reading at the University. After it was over, they walked across Central to a coffee place on Harvard where they met some other people who had been at the reading.

In case you’re wondering, there are also streets in that neighborhood named Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. I guess the founders of my
alma mater
wanted it to have some connection, however tenuous, with prestigious eastern schools.

“So you drank coffee and talked about the poetry?”

“That’s what Chris and the others did. I just sat there staring at him.”

“Handsome, huh?”

“Beyond belief. A face like Michelangelo’s
David
, skin the color of almond biscotti, hair with the luster of Tuscan leather, eyes the color of pinot grigio grapes—”

“He has red eyes?”

“Pinot grigio grapes are green, Hubert.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, he’s a pleasure to look at and a pleasure to listen to.”

“He knows a lot about poetry?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t understand a word he said.”

“A really thick accent, huh?”

“Not really. He has just enough of an accent to sound romantically European. And a great vocabulary. He knows a lot more words in English than I do.”

“Then why couldn’t you understand him?”

“Because he uses words in funny ways. Not in a wrong way, exactly. 
Just … oddly.”

“Like?”

“Well, he described one line of a poem as ‘Fragrant with intentionality’.”

“Sounds like typical academic jargon to me.”

“Here’s a better example. He didn’t like one of the poems because it was ‘Fulminating in a wide arc’.”

“I see what you mean. But how is he in normal conversation when you’re not talking about poetry?”

“About the same. He said we should eat at
La Hacienda
– we’re going there this Friday – and when I asked him why
La Hacienda
, he said he heard it was ‘A luminary for its fabrication of local repasts’.”

I started laughing.

“It’s not funny, Hubert. This is a seriously handsome guy, and he seems to be a nice person, too. He’s a gentleman, he looks at me when I talk to him, he never brags or does all the other stupid things men do, he seems very comfortable around people. But I don’t know if I can maintain a relationship with someone who speaks a different brand of English.”

She sat there thinking for a minute and I took advantage of the lull in conversation to wolf down several chips loaded with salsa. Then she said, “You think I should say something to him?”

I hate it when she asks for advice regarding her love life. I feel like I’ll be responsible if something goes wrong. Which it usually does.

“How long has he been in the States?”

“He entered in the spring semester, so I guess about six months.”

“Maybe he was even worse when he first arrived. If he spends more time talking to you, maybe he’ll come to realize that his English is not colloquial, and he’ll improve.”

“I like the part about him spending more time with me,” she said, as if I were advocating it.

“So,” I suggested, “I wouldn’t try to correct his English at this point unless he asks for help. Of course if it doesn’t improve in time, then maybe—“

“Oh, it’ll improve. I’m sure of it. Thanks, Hubie; I can always depend on you for good advice.”

And I got that sinking feeling, so I changed the subject.

“Miss Gladys has a beau.”

She shook her head slightly. “I know. She brought the scoundrel to lunch at
La Placita
.”

“So you think he’s a scoundrel, too.”

“It’s obvious. First there’s his name – T. Morgan Fister. Never trust anyone who uses a middle name that way.”

“I know lots of people who use their middle name, and most of them are perfectly normal and nice.”

“Name one.”

“Well, one of my high school friends was named Bascomb Ronald Harvey. Bascomb had been his grandfather’s name. He was stuck with it on his birth certificate, but he always just went by Ronnie Harvey.”

“Not the same. If he had called himself B. Ronald Harvey, he would have been a different person and not nice.”

“Hmm.” I tried to think of people I knew or knew about who had that sort of name.

“You may have a point,” I conceded, “because the first person I thought of with a name like that is J. Edgar Hoover.”

“There’s also G. Gordon Liddy,” she said.

“And E. Howard Hunt.”

“And W. Clement Stone who financed those two burglars.”

“Scary,” I said.

“And J. Danforth Quayle,” she added.

“That’s the best example. Notice how all of them are in politics?”

“Writers do it too,” she said, “like F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

“Or W. Somerset Maugham.”

“And don’t forget Swami Kriyananda,” she said.

“I can’t forget him because I never heard of him in the first place. And how does he fit into this conversation?”

“Because his birth name was J. Donald Walters and he’s a writer.”

“On what?”

“Yoga, I think.”

“Politicians, writers, and swamis – all charlatans.”

“F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn’t a charlatan, Hubie.”

“You’re right. And his first name was Francis, so who came blame him for not wanting to use it.”

“He could have just gone by Scott Fitzgerald,” she pointed out.

I had no reply to that, so I asked her what her second reason was for thinking T. Morgan was a scoundrel.

“He left me a tip that was way too large.”

“That’s bad?”

“Here’s how it works, Hubie. Ten percent is about normal in New Mexico. Sometimes you get only five percent but usually that’s because the person doesn’t know any better, not because they’re cheap. And some people follow the fifteen percent rule. When a woman leaves you a big tip – twenty percent or more – it’s usually because she can’t do the math or simply isn’t paying attention because money isn’t that important to her. But when a man leaves a big tip, he usually plans on hitting on you or he’s trying to impress whoever he’s with.”

“How do you know the big tippers are wanting to hit on you?”

“It’s not hard to figure out, especially when they leave a phone number on the check or a duplicate of their motel room key.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Sometimes they put the money in your hand and try to cop a feel at the same time.”

“Geez, how do you stand it?”

“It doesn’t happen that often. Usually you can spot them in advance, so when I pick up the check of a weirdo who’s been leering at me, I take the coffee refill carafe along, and if he gets too close, I accidentally on purpose spill hot coffee into his crotch.”

Susannah is a woman with gumption.