The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy (The Pot Thier)

by J. Michael Orenduff

  “But why frame you?”

  “Well, that part was just bad luck. Blass knew who I was and he knew the story about Gerstner expelling me. Blass also has a facile mind. When he saw me leave the party, it must have occurred to him that he might be able to frame me, so he fired a shot outside the window just in case. If he didn’t go ahead and kill Gerstner later, what had he lost? A little gunpowder, maybe a small ball of lead. Obviously, he was already thinking about killing Gerstner, and this gave him a way to make it safer to do so. I also talked to Whit about that shot. Guess what he told me?”

  “What?”

  “Those dueling pistols use old fashioned black powder, and they’re much louder than a modern pistol.”

  “So that’s why it was so loud.”

  I nodded. “Now here’s where Blass got really lucky. Of course he couldn’t have known where I was going when I stepped outside. Maybe he thought I went out for a smoke. That’s what I told Horace Arthur when I came back in, and that’s also what I told Whit Fletcher. But it didn’t matter for Blass’ purpose. People saw me leave, so they would know I wasn’t there. All that mattered was that I was somewhere else. But the somewhere else happened to be Gerstner’s apartment, which is naturally where Blass dumped the body.”

  You could almost see the little light bulb hovering over Susannah’s head. “Because when they found the body, it had to be somewhere you could have gone during the short time you were away from the party.”

  “Exactly. If Blass had dumped the body up in Tijeras canyon, my being at the party would have given me an alibi instead of incriminating me.”

  “So he had to put Gerstner’s body in the building, and the best place was Gerstner’s own apartment. And the lucky part for Blass is that was exactly where you’d been.”

  “And the lucky part for me was that no one saw me break in. If they had, I think the police would have been so certain it was me, they wouldn’t have released me, and I never could have found out who really did it.”

  “Do you think anyone heard the second shot, Hubie? The one that actually killed Gerstner? Or did Blass challenge Gerstner to a duel somewhere out in the desert?”

  We both laughed at that and took another drink.

  “I’m sure the shot we heard was from one of the dueling pistols, but the murder weapon was not one of those pistols. You know I don’t know anything about guns, but I imagine a dueling pistol wouldn’t be a murderer’s choice of weapon. They only fire one shot and even that’s not very reliable. No, he used a modern dependable weapon, a Kel-Tec .380 to be exact.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Whit told me. They found it in his car. And typical of Blass, it was the chrome-plated model. The ballistic test matched perfectly with the slug they took out of Gerstner’s head.”

  “But what about the blood on the dueling pistol?”

  There was no reason I could think of not to tell her. “I put it there.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. On my last trip to Rio Grande Lofts, I broke in to Blass’ loft and got one of the dueling pistols. Then I went upstairs and broke in to Gerstner’s loft. I rubbed some damp toilet paper against the couch then against the muzzle of the gun. Then I took the gun and put it back. For good measure, I hid that copy of a Ma pot I made in Blass’ second bedroom closet.”

  “You framed him!”

  “I did. He framed me, then I framed him. The big difference, of course, is that he actually did it.” Then I thought about it. “Maybe I didn’t frame him. Can you frame someone who’s already guilty?”

  “I still can’t believe he is guilty. I know you proved it, and now I know they even found the gun he used. But why did he do it, Hubie?”

  “Well, this is just guesswork. The Ma were missing eighteen pots. If we assume Gerstner started out with all eighteen, then fifteen had already been sold since I recovered only three. I told you there were only two deposit slips with Blass’ name on them. So the way I see it, Blass sold fifteen pots but had only paid Gerstner for two of them so far. So Blass owed Gerstner for thirteen pots. I know several collectors who would pay fifty thousand each for those pots. Thirteen pots times fifty thou is $650,000. People have killed for a lot less.”

  She shook her head in dismay. “He doesn’t seem like such a bad person.”

  “I agree. I told you how much I liked him after the party. I think he just got in so far over his head that he couldn’t see any other way out. Maybe Gerstner grew tired of waiting and threatened to go to the police if Blass didn’t pay up.”

  “But wouldn’t Blass have gotten some of the money for being the fence?”

  “Of course. Who knows what their arrangement was. Blass’ share could have been ten percent. Or say it was even a fifty-fifty deal. That’s still $325,000 he owed Gerstner, and it could have been a lot more. Knowing how he lived, he may already have spent it.”

  “So the Rusyn connection had nothing to do with it?”

  “No, that turned out to be a dead end. But it did explain why Gerstner had that piece of paper with the first three letters of my name on it.”

  She gave me a quizzical look.

  “Actually, your paper on Nesterov’s painting of the Tsarevich Dimitri was what did it.”

  “Huh?”

  “The letters on Gerstner’s piece of paper were Cyrillic. What looks like an ‘H’ is actually an ‘N’. Or at least that’s the sound it makes. The ‘U’ thing makes that ‘Ts’ sound.”

  “Or that ‘Cz’ sound,” she added with a crooked smile.

  “Right. And the ‘B’ actually makes the ‘V’ sound. So what looked like HUB is actually the Cyrillic equivalent of NTV.”

  “Which is what, national television?”

  “No, but they are initials.” I handed her the paper on which Father Groaz had this: национален цeнтъp възражданєтоо.

  She stared at a minute then said, “Natzeonalen tsenter vuzrazhdaneto?”

  “Wow, your pronunciation sounds exactly like the way Father Groaz said it. I’m impressed you can read Cyrillic.”

  “I can’t really read it. I only know the actual meanings of maybe twenty words, but doing the research on Nesterov had me seeing so much Cyrillic that I decided to memorize the sounds the letters make.”

  “Geez, Suze, that sounds like something I would do.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought as I was doing it. You’re a bad influence on me. Anyway, there are only 30 letters and most of them appear in Nesterov’s three names and the titles of his paintings, so by the time I’d finished the paper, I already knew most of the sounds. I’m guessing the first two words are ‘national center’?”

  “Right, and the last one means ‘rebirth’ or ‘renaissance’.”

  “So what is it, an arts group of some sort?”

  “Hardly. It’s a band of fervent Rusyn nationalists. Evidently, they chose the term ‘renaissance’ because they admired a movement in neighboring Bulgaria that used that phrase. The Bulgarians were under Ottoman rule for five hundred years, and sometime in the eighteenth century they began to assert their national identity which eventually led to their liberation.”

  I could see she wasn’t interested in Bulgarian history, so I didn’t add the rest of the story Father Groaz had told me.

  She stared back down at the paper and said, “Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if they used the same alphabet as everyone else?”

  “Probably. And it would reinforce your theory about country names that start with vowels.”

  “Right, because the U thing turns out not to be a vowel.”

  “So I guess that’s not the first letter of Ukraine.”

  “I told you that already, Hubert. The first letter of Ukraine is a ‘T’ – The Ukraine.”

  I chuckled and decided not to contest the point. “One of the things I found in Gerstner’s filing cabinet was a copy of a letter he sent to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. It wasn’t written in Cyrillic, but the wording was so ind
irect, it may as well have been. I think what it amounted to was an offer to sell them information about Rusyn activities. I don’t know if they ever responded.”

  “So he really was a mole?”

  “More of a rat I’d say. But he did have a connection with that famous Rusyn, Andy Warhol.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. His being murdered brought him his fifteen minutes of fame.”

  She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair.

  We sat there for a while listening to the background noise of customers ordering tamales and the bartender mixing drinks.

  Susannah said, “You remember that Maltese falcon, Hubie? It looked like a big ugly tchotchke your grandmother might have had in her bookcase. But when they scraped the paint off it, it was encrusted with jewels. Are the pots like that?”

  “Indeed they are. Except they have gold in them rather than jewels.”

  “You didn’t put gold in the copy you made, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “What will happen to that copy?”

  “Right now it’s evidence, but I doubt it will ever see the inside of a courtroom. Blass will probably plea-bargain.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he knows he can’t win at trial, and he has something to bargain with – the Ma pots. He can tell the police who he sold them to, and most of them will probably be recovered. That’s an important thing for the Ma, and I think the DA will know that. And Whit told me he also guesses Blass will bargain.”

  “So what will happen to him?”

  “Fletcher or Blass?”

  “Both.”

  “Blass will probably get a ten year sentence and serve about half of it.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much for killing someone.”

  “Yeah. But the justice system is strange, Suze. Did you know that in the penalty phase of a murder trial, they can have witnesses testify about the victim, what a nice person he was, how much he could have done for society if he hadn’t been killed, and things like that.”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone would say things like that about Gerstner.”

  “That’s why the sentence may not be so long.”

  “That’s awful, Hubie. It’s like saying it’s worse to kill a good person than a bad person.”

  “It doesn’t seem right, does it? But that’s the way it works. And so far as I know, Gerstner has no family, so no one will protest the light sentence. And then they have to give Blass a break for cooperating, so that’s why I’m guessing ten years, but I could be completely wrong. Maybe they’ll hang him.”

  She shuddered. “Don’t even say that. What about Fletcher?”

  “He gets to keep the Ma copy I made.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “Depends on whether the eventual buyer knows it’s a copy. I would probably ask five thousand for it in my replica shop.”

  “Maybe you should ask more, Hubie. It would be your only piece of merchandise.”

  “Good point. I need to start making copies again.” Making the Ma copy had been fun, and I was looking forward to doing an entire series. “If the buyer thinks it’s genuine, my Ma copy could bring as much as fifty thousand.”

  “Why should that crooked cop get all that money?”

  “I know it’s galling, but he did help me clear myself.”

  “What about you? Will you get anything out of it?”

  “Well, I avoid going to jail for murder, and who can put a price tag on that? I’m going to return the two recovered originals to the Ma, but I’m keeping the genuine Ma copy, and that’s also fifty thousand.”

  “Not enough for a kidney transplant, probably.”

  “No, but maybe she won’t need it. And if she does, she’s eligible for some funding for indigent patients, and the fifty should cover what the government doesn’t, so I’ll keep it in reserve and see what happens.”

  “So you came out O.K.?”

  “It looks like it. And with all the publicity, maybe business will pick up. I’m ready to start turning out fakes again.”

  “Replicas, Hubie.”

  “Right. You know what one of the worst parts of the whole thing was?”

  “What?”

  “It was being five six and one forty and going in to that sporting goods store and buying all those weights. The whole staff looked at me like I was some kind of nut who thought lifting weights would turn me into Arnold what’s-his-name.”

  “Schwarzenegger.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “This is all so amazing.”

  “I’m just glad it’s over. You know how you always kid me about being a burglar? Well, I guess I sort of was one there for a while, but I am definitely not cut out for it. I was terrified going in to Blass’ place with him asleep in it.”

  She had a sheepish look on her face. “He wasn’t there, Hubie.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Where was he?”

  She looked down at her empty margarita glass.

  “Oh.”

  I ordered another round for both of us, and after Angie brought them and went back to the bar, I said, “I’m sorry, Suze. Here I’ve been discussing Blass the murderer and not even thinking about how you must feel. I am like Spock sometimes, I know that. And I feel even worse because if I hadn’t suggested that paragraph for your computer dating thing, he wouldn’t have answered it, and you never would have dated him.”

  She looked up with tears in her eyes, but she brushed them away and gave me a really big smile.

  “Hey, it’s just another addition to the losers list: the married guy, the third grade vocabulary guy, the Pine-Sol aftershave guy, and now the murderer guy.”

  “I must say you’re taking it very well.”

  “I had concerns about him all along, but I swept them under the carpet. He was handsome and exciting, so why look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  “That’s what the Trojans said.”

  “He was too slick. I’m a rancher girl, Hubie. I don’t need glitz. I just want someone honest and fun and, well, if he’s good-looking, that would be all right. Is that too much to ask?”

  I shook my head.

  She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse. “Let me read you this message I got from the dating site this afternoon. The guy’s name is Bob. That’s a nice solid name, don’t you think? Here’s what he wrote. He said…”

  You really can’t keep a good woman down.

  60

  I had to skip Dos Hermanas the next day because I was having cocktails with the Masoirs.

  Channel 17 must have felt guilty about how their Roving Reporter had sensationalized the story because their follow-up played up the angle that I was trying to help San Roque recover their pots.

  Mrs. Masoir placed brie and water crackers on the coffee table and Professor Masoir mixed a pitcher of gin martinis. I don’t like brie and I really don’t like gin, but I like both the Masoirs, so I nibbled and sipped with them.

  The professor asked me what would happen to the pots.

  “I have three of them, two from the original set and one from the copy set.”

  “My God,” he said. “I know you’re an expert on pots, but how can you tell the originals from the copies? You’d never even seen a Ma pot before.”

  I place my martini on the coffee table, happy to talk for a while without sipping. “Well, I owe it all to you for taking me to San Roque. If you hadn’t got me in there, I never would have heard about melting stone.”

  “So you figured out what it is?”

  “Yes. It’s gold.”

  “Gold! They mixed gold dust with their clay?”

  “No. They placed large discs of pure gold in the bottom of the pots. They only did that for their ceremonial pots, of course. The idea was to demonstrate their devotion to a certain goddess. I noticed how thick the pot bases were the first time I saw one, but I figured maybe it had something to do with the
way they fired their pots.”

  “Fascinating. How did you discover the thickness was from a disk of gold? Did Martin’s uncle tell you?”

  “Yes,” I said, which was true. But I had figured it out before Martin’s uncle told me. I didn’t tell Professor Masoir I’d figured it out because I had done so while watching the inventory tag melt in the fire, and I didn’t want to explain why I was burning an inventory tag.

  “If the gold is sealed inside, how can you know it’s there?”

  “I had them x-rayed.”

  “Using modern magic to examine ancient magic,” he said and shook his head. “So what happens to the two with gold in them?”

  “I’d like you to take them back to San Roque.”

  “Isn’t that nice, Walter? I told you he’s such a nice young man.”

  “Yes, Mildred, you did and he is. He’s also very generous. How much is that gold worth?”

  “Looking at the x-rays, I’d estimate each pot contains a hundred cubic centimeters. I don’t know the price of gold.”

  “I don’t know the exact figure, but it’s around $1000 an ounce. That would be,” he did a quick mental calculation, “in the neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars.”