The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy [02]

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “Why do you come to his parties?”

  “Good-looking women and free booze.”

  “Ah.”

  Susannah rescued me from Wiezga, and we said goodnight to Blass and headed to the door which was being guarded again by Bertha Zell. “Call me and we’ll have lunch,” she said to me, and then she formed a phone by sticking out her thumb and pinkie and curling up her other three fingers. She waggled the hand by her ear and broke into giggles.

  “I’ll come along, too,” volunteered Arthur.

  I was telling Susannah in the elevator that despite the weird guests and falling off a table, I enjoyed the party.

  “You should get out more often.”

  She was right. I usually decline invitations because I think I won’t enjoy the people I’ll have to mingle with, but when I do go out, I usually end up enjoying it. Even being around Arthur wasn’t all that bad, something to laugh about later.

  Then the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, and guess who got in?

  To paraphrase Bogart, “Of all the elevators in all the buildings, she had to walk in to mine.” But it wasn’t as big a coincidence as meeting an old girlfriend in Casablanca, was it? After all, she lived in the building. And on that floor.

  “Hubert!” said Stella. Then she looked at Susannah. “And who are you?”

  “I’m Susannah,” she said and extended her hand.

  “And I bet you came from Alabama with a banjo on your knee. I’m Stella, but of course you already know that.”

  Susannah’s big eyes were suddenly smaller, and as she opened her mouth to say something, I had the sinking feeling an ugly scene was about to ensue, but Stella continued talking.

  “That’s a lovely gown, Susannah.”

  “Thank you,” Susie replied coldly.

  “You’re not the wife, are you?”

  “The wife?”

  “I guess not,” said Stella, “you’re too young.”

  The elevator door opened on the first floor. “This is where we get off,” I said and pushed Susannah towards the lobby.

  “I’m going to the basement to get my car. I have to go to work,” said Stella. As the door closed, she smiled and said, “Call me, Hubert.”

  35

  “What the hell was that wife crack about, Hubert?”

  “She thinks I’m married.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because I told her I was.”

  “Why did you do that? Because if it was to keep her from coming on to you, it sure as hell didn’t work.”

  “Geez, Suze, are you angry about something?”

  She let out a long breath and stared out the window of the Bronco.

  “Sorry, Hubie. I don’t like her and I was taking it out on you.”

  “That’s O.K., Suze. I felt the same way when I first met her. Come to think of it, it was in that same elevator. She was asking me a bunch of impertinent questions about my wrinkled clothes and unshaven face, and I thought ‘what a pushy broad’. I know you’re not supposed to say ‘broad,’ but that’s the phrase that came to mind, and I—”

  “Well, she is a pushy broad. And why the hell does she think everyone knows her? And where does she work that she goes in at three in the afternoon one day and eleven o’clock at night the next?”

  “Maybe she’s a famous surgeon on her way to the hospital.”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Just because she’s good at anatomy doesn’t mean she learned it in med school, Hubert. And surgeons don’t wear those clothes and that make-up.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, forget about her. Tell me what happened upstairs.”

  I did and she asked me where I thought the pot had gone.

  “I assume it’s now with the others. Maybe he’s been selling them off one at a time and that was the last one.”

  “You know, Hubie, in one of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries, a burglar arrives just as another one is leaving. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe another burglar got there before you. Was anything else missing other than the pot?”

  “Who is Mrs. Pollifax?”

  “She’s a grandmother in New Jersey who works part time for the CIA.”

  “Well, that’s certainly plausible.”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic, Hubie. It could happen. The CIA does some weird things.”

  “You’ve got a point there, Suze, but I don’t think two burglars hitting the same apartment in a high security building on the same night is very likely. On the other hand, given the rogue’s gallery at the party, maybe someone else seized the opportunity to pop upstairs and take the pot. Did anyone else leave and come back?”

  “I don’t think so. I was by the door the whole time and…oh, you’re joking, right?”

  “Right. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The pot is just as gone whether Gerstner or someone else took it.” I pulled up in front of her apartment. “It’s frustrating, Suze. I proved Masoir’s suspicion was right by finding one of the Ma pots in Gerstner’s apartment, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t know which frustrates me most, the fact that he got away with it, or the fact that I lost the chance for a lot of money.”

  “You don’t think you can find the pots somewhere else?”

  “I don’t know where to look.”

  “How about that cabin in the mountains that you don’t know if Gerstner has?” she said and we both laughed.

  Then I thought about it. “You might have the right idea, Suze. Remember how I told you the apartment seemed like a temporary rental with so few things in it?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, maybe he’s in the process of moving. Maybe he still has all the pots at his new location.”

  “How would you find out where that is?”

  “Call information?”

  36

  But the next morning I slept late, and by the time I finally got up, it was too late to call information because I had to call my lawyer first.

  I walked groggily into the shop in response to a banging on my door and saw one of Albuquerque’s finest, Detective Whit Fletcher, waiting to be admitted. Well, maybe “finest” is stretching it a bit. I started to walk over to the door then remembered the whiz-bang lock Tristan had installed, so I picked up the remote and aimed it at the door.

  But I didn’t push the button at first. I wished the remote could activate a sign telling him to go away. But of course you can’t tell the police to go away, so I pushed the button, and a buzzing noise came from the door.

  Whit just stood there. He did not look bemused. I motioned him to come in, and he turned the knob and did so.

  “You mistake me for a television, Hubert?”

  “Huh?” Then I looked down at the remote in my hand. “Oh. That’s how I open the door now.”

  “Ain’t technology great? I’m surprised to find you here, Hubert.”

  “I live here, Whit. Where else would I be?”

  “Making a getaway. But maybe you didn’t realize we already placed you at the murder scene.”

  My pulse sped up slightly. “What murder scene?”

  “That fancy building downtown with the doormen in those uniforms, they look like South American generals. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was, but I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “What was you doin’ there?”

  “I was at a party.”

  “What hours were you at this party, Hubert?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’d say from a little after seven until around eleven.”

  “Anyone see you there?”

  “Yes, dozens of people,” I answered in a tone of satisfaction.

  “Is that so? I’d guess they’d be the same ones saw you slip out of the party and come back fifteen minutes later.”

  Oops. Now I felt a little perspiration to go with the elevated heart rate. I tried to stay calm. “Well, I certainly didn’t go out to murder anybody.”

  “What did you go out to do,
Hubert?”

  “I went out for a cigarette.”

  “That’s odd, ain’t it. Me knowing you all these years and never knowin’ you smoked.”

  “Well, it’s not the sort of thing you advertise. I’m not very proud of it, Whit, but sometimes I get an urge I can’t resist.”

  “And you didn’t want to smoke in your guest’s apartment, so you went somewhere else.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “Where?”

  “That’s right, Hubert, where?”

  I didn’t want to say out in the hall because for all I knew other guests or other residents on the tenth floor had been coming and going while I was upstairs and they might tell the police I wasn’t in the hall. I wasn’t worried about a murder charge, but I was worried about a breaking and entering charge. See, I had the idea that you should be more concerned about a crime you actually committed than about one you didn’t. Naïve of me, wasn’t it?

  “I was in the stairwell.”

  Fletcher brushed his hair away from his eyes with a meaty hand. “Did you know the police have the authority to enforce the fire code, Hubert? Most people don’t know that. They think only the fire department can do that.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And did you know the fire code requires doors to a stairwell in a residential building to operate only from the side where the residences are?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” Now I was developing a queasy stomach to go with my other symptoms.

  “Yep, it’s true. And I’d say that building is in violation of the code, because we know you came back to the party, and I don’t know how you could do that if the doors wouldn’t open from the stairwell where you was having a smoke.”

  “Oh, that’s easy to explain. I held the door slightly ajar so I could get back in.”

  I felt good I had enough wits about me to handle that question. I wish I’d had enough to remember something else about the stairwell.

  “I guess that would work, holdin’ the door, but you didn’t need to, Hubert. You coulda let go and still got back in because the lock was jammed up with a piece of clay.”

  He pulled one of them out of his pocket and placed it on my counter. I stared at it and thought of Stella. Then I quickly got my mind back on the matter at hand and wondered if unfired clay would take a fingerprint.

  “You ever see anything like that before, Hubert?”

  “You know I make pots, Whit. I’ve seen all sorts of clay in all sorts of shapes.”

  “Would this particular piece of clay be yours.”

  “I don’t know. Clay is clay,” I said and thought to myself that sometimes a pipe is just a pipe, whatever the hell that means. I thought it had to do with either Magritte or Freud, then realized I was doing it, trying to escape reality by letting my mind free-associate instead of concentrating on being interrogated.

  Focus, I told myself. It didn’t matter that they found the clay. They couldn’t place me at the scene of a murder, so I was safe so long as they didn’t bring up the breaking and entering thing. Then it hit me – that was the noise. It was a gunshot. Someone had been murdered while I was in Gerstner’s apartment. Oh great, I thought, my alibi for not being at the murder site was that I was somewhere else committing a felony.

  But you already know my thinking was wrong, don’t you? Rational all right, but wrong. You’ve figured out what came next, right? Sure you have. If Fletcher had accepted my explanation, I wouldn’t be relating the rest of this conversation, would I?

  “I think you knew a fella name of Gerstner, didn’t you, Hubert? Seems to me he was the one kicked you out of the University. I guess some people might call that motive.”

  “Gerstner was murdered?”

  He looked inside a little notebook. “That’s what it says here. Gerstner. Ognan Gerstner. What the hell kinda name is Ognan?”

  “It’s Slavic.”

  I didn’t tell him I had looked it up after Susannah asked about it. I already knew it was Slavic, but I wondered if it meant anything. Just the sort of thing Susannah would say illustrates my desire to accumulate useless knowledge. So I looked up Ognan and found out it means ‘fire’.

  “Well, I don’t know where Gerstner was murdered, but I can prove I wasn’t there.”

  He brushed his hair back again and stared at me. “If you don’t know where it was, how can you prove you weren’t there?”

  “Tell me this. Was he shot?”

  “In the head at close range.”

  “I thought so. I can prove I wasn’t there because I heard the shot. I didn’t know it was a shot at the time, but it must have been. And when I heard the shot, I was not with Gerstner.”

  “Who was you with?”

  “No one.”

  “It’ll be kinda hard to prove you was someplace if you were there alone, Hubert.”

  “I know, but I think I might be able to do it.” I was thinking I might have to admit to the breaking and entering in order to escape a murder charge. I hadn’t stolen anything, and I have no criminal record, so maybe I could get off with no jail time. Hey, I was breaking in for a good cause. I wanted to return the pots to the Ma. My lawyer could play up that angle. I might even come out of it looking good, and who knows what it could do for sales. I was beginning to think I was home free.

  “O.K., Hubert, Gerstner was murdered in his apartment. Now where is this other place you claim to have been?”

  Shoot.

  That’s when I asked if I could call my lawyer.

  “Might be a good idea, Hubert. You can call him from downtown.”

  37

  I refused to be questioned until my lawyer arrived, so I spent the time thinking about my plight.

  I kept telling myself I had nothing to worry about. I hadn’t killed Gerstner. If he had been killed in his apartment, it must have been after I left. The noise I heard wasn’t a gunshot after all. He had come home after I left, and someone else had come to his apartment and killed him. After they got the time sequence all straightened out, the police would realize I hadn’t done it, and that would be the end of the matter.

  Then I realized there was another explanation. Gerstner had two apartments. That’s why 1101 seemed so empty. He was in the process of moving as I had surmised. When Fletcher said Gerstner was killed in his apartment, he meant the other apartment. But Fletcher also said Rio Grande Lofts was the murder scene. O.K., no problem. Gerstner was moving to a different unit in the same building. All of a sudden I felt great. It was either a confusion about time or a confusion about place, and when the confusion was cleared up, the whole mess would be over.

  Layton Kent, Esquire, finally showed up, and when I complained about how long I’d been in custody, he said only an hour had passed since my call, and I couldn’t dispute him since I wasn’t wearing a watch.

  Layton was, a massive gold one tucked in a watch pocket with a chain attached to a button of his vest.

  “You must be the only man in Christendom who still wears a vest.”

  “And you, my dear boy, are my only client who is sometimes arrested for murder.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been arrested. They didn’t read me my rights.”

  “Don’t try to practice law, Hubert. It makes you appear pompous.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “I’m an attorney. It’s permitted.”

  “Can you get me out?”

  “I already have. I swung by Judge Aragon’s house to have him sign a little writ one of my paralegals drew up. We’ll stop by your place for a coat and tie – you do own a coat and tie, do you not? – and then to the club for lunch.”

  “I don’t want lunch. I want to go home.”

  “Nonsense. I need to ask a few questions in order to defend you properly should the gendarmes be so foolish as to retain you as a suspect, and being away from my table at the lunch hour is inconsistent with my reputation.”

  I was getting a headache. I don’t know why they call
them ‘splitting’. Mine felt like my head was being crushed together, not split apart. I followed Layton out to the curb where one of his paralegals was waiting in Layton’s Rolls. The Rolls is one of his many ostentations, but I must admit it felt good to slide onto the supple leather of the back seat.

  Layton is probably right about reputation, but his reputation as a great lawyer is not what commands his princely fee. He is widely considered to be the most influential man in Albuquerque. He knows everyone who is anyone, and quite a few people like me who are no one. They all owe him favors.

  Mariella Kent is the Grande Dame of Albuquerque society. She sits on every board of any significance, and no fundraiser of any size is attempted without her appointment to the steering committee. She is reputed to be a descendant of the Duke who gave our fair city its unusual name. This seems unlikely since the Duke never set foot in the New World, but I suppose it is possible a member of his family may have done so.