The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein (19 page)

My call to Dolly was delayed because the demonstration in front of my shop had grown from three or four to perhaps a dozen people, and they were louder and more enthusiastic. The signs also had new messages, saying things like, “Schuze is Innocent,” “Stop Police Harassment,” and “Another Press Mess?”

The group seemed more like revelers than dissidents. They appeared to be college kids, and they were being led by a handsome young man with olive skin and dark hair hanging down in ringlets around his baby-faced head, and.... What the devil was Tristan doing in this demonstration?

After the television cameras stopped rolling, Tristan sent the revelers home and explained that Judge Aragon had dismissed all charges against me that morning, and that’s what sparked the initial demonstration.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “The signs were about immigration. Why picket me? I don’t have anything to do with immigration. I never even thought about it until Sunday night when I had dinner with my high school history teacher, Frank Aguirre, and he started talking about it.”

“One of your high school teachers is still alive?” he asked playfully.

“Amazing, right? And even more amazing is the reason I had dinner with him – his daughter and I had a date.”

“It’s a little late to be buttering up a teacher by dating his daughter. Immigration is a hot topic these days. What did your ancient historian have to say about it?”

“He didn’t say much about the current debate. He wrote a dissertation about how U.S. immigration policy between 1864 and 1893 affected the labor market of that era.”

“I can’t wait until the movie comes out.”

“You think they were picketing me because I had dinner with Aguirre? Maybe he’s involved in immigration politics.”

“No, they picketed you because Segundo Cantú was an immigrant.”

“But I didn’t even know that.”

“And the demonstrators probably didn’t know you didn’t know that.”

“How did you know it?”

“I asked them. When I heard about the demonstration, I came down to see if you needed help, but you were gone, so I pretended to be interested in joining the protest, and they explained that Cantú was an immigrant from Mexico, and that was why the charges were dropped. They said if you had killed someone born here, you’d still be in jail.”

“I didn’t kill anyone born anywhere.”

“I’m just telling you what they told me.”

I looked at that baby-faced kid. “So you came to help me out.”

He smiled and shrugged.

“Then when I wasn’t here, you organized a counter demonstration.”

“It was fun.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” I said.

“Aw, shucks.”

“Speaking of your help, wait right here for a minute,” I said and went out to the alley and came back with his garage opening wizard.

I handed it to him and said, “I don’t know if you can use this thing or any of the pieces in it, but I don’t want it around here.”

“You sure you won’t need it again?”

“Positive.”

“Did it come in handy?”

“More than you know.”

“More than I want to know?”

“Probably.”

“Got anything to eat?”

I made a big platter of nachos. Mine are nothing like the ones you get in fast food restaurants or even most Mexican restaurants. First, I use black beans instead of pintos. Second, I use
cotilla
cheese instead of cheddar. Third, I cover the beans and cheese with caramelized jalapeños instead of the vinegary pickled ones that come in jars. I omitted the jalapeños from most of the nachos so Tristan could eat them. He went through a twelve by fifteen broiling pan of nachos in just under four minutes.

When he finally looked up from his plate, he said, “You wearing a shoulder holster, Uncle Hubert?”

I followed his gaze to my jacket and saw the bulge. “No, that’s just a book I’m reading about the uncertainty principle. You know anything about that?”

“
Herr Gott würfelt nicht
,” he replied.

“Huh?”

“It’s a quote from Einstein. He never accepted the uncertainty principle. He believed the universe had to be predictable, so in response to the uncertainty hypothesis, he said ‘God doesn’t throw dice’.”

“What do you think?”

He turned up his palms and smiled. “I’m uncertain.”

I called Dolly as soon as Tristan left, and I could tell from her voice she was happy I called. I wondered if she could tell from mine that I was nervous.

I know it’s ridiculous, but I felt like I was sixteen again, calling Nancy Simons to ask her for a date. I’d just gotten my drivers license, and my father agreed to let me use the car so long as I was back by ten.

I asked Dolly about her dad, and we chatted about this and that for a while. When I finally worked my way around to the purpose of my call, I told her that since she had invited me for dinner, I wanted to return the favor and wondered if she might be free the next evening. 

I guess my wording was a subconscious attempt not to sound like I was asking her on a date because I didn’t want to feel like a high school kid. We were two mature people who had gone to the same high school. Her father had been my history teacher. She had cooked dinner for me. Now I was cooking dinner for her.

Right.

When she asked if she could bring flan, I told her I was already planning a special dessert.

“Can I bring wine?” she asked.

I must have hesitated, because she said, “You don’t drink, do you? I noticed you had only coffee on Sunday.”

“I’m just not fond of wine.”

“Well,” she joked, “If you’re angling for a book, forget about it. Dad loved the one you brought, but I wouldn’t have any idea what kind of book to buy for you.”

“Really,” I said, “you don’t need to bring anything.”

I spent most of the next day cleaning the house. I washed everything in the house that was made of fabric, waxed everything that was made of wood, and dusted everything else.

When all that was done, I made the special dessert, a
pastel de tres leches
. I’m not a cake kind of guy, but I love
pastel de tres leches
for
tres
reasons. First, one of the three milks is heavy cream. Second, the heavy cream is mixed with rum. Third, the cake is excellent with champagne.

After the cake was done, I left the oven on and baked my famous chicken mole casserole. I admit the concept was inspired by Miss Gladys, but there are no ready-made foods in my dish, the ingredients being chicken, home-made
mole
, poblano peppers, and heavy cream. The home-made
mole
involves roasting a variety of seeds, nuts, peppers, and spices, and then blending them in with Mexican chocolate. I seldom make it because it’s so labor intensive, but it’s also a lot better than the prepared versions available in jars.

Mole
is actually a healthy dish, but the casserole contains heavy cream. Between it and the
pastel
, I used an entire quart of heavy cream. I just hoped Dolly wasn’t on a low cholesterol diet.

After I rested from making the
mole
, I had just enough time to shower, shave, and dress. I turned the lights down, lit the candles, and tuned my satellite radio to a station that plays a lot of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. If I was planning to disguise the fact that the dinner was a date, I was failing miserably.

Dolly showed up fashionably late, about a quarter after seven, in a white summery-looking and loose-fitting cotton dress with flowers embroidered around the boat neck and the cuffs of the long sleeves. She smelled and looked fresh-scrubbed and had no makeup that I could discern other than faint eye-shadow and lip gloss.

She was pleasantly surprised to discover that I do drink, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she had never heard of Gruet. Introducing her to it was fun, and she became an instant convert. She suggested we sip it in the patio.

I thought that was a good idea until I opened the door and Geronimo leapt up at Dolly, causing her to spill her champagne.

She put the now-empty flute down and started rubbing the dog behind his ears.

“I can’t believe you still haven’t found his owner,” she said.

Oops.

“Well,” I said slowly, hoping that something would come to me so that I could finish the sentence.

“It’s O.K. I think I know what you’re trying to tell me. You’ve become attached to him and don’t want to give him up.”

“I tried to do the right thing. I even placed an ad in the paper for a whole week.”

“And you covered my neighborhood looking for his owner,” she reminded me. Except I didn’t, did I? I covered her neighborhood looking for the pots. The dog was just a cover story. I felt like a dog.

“I feel guilty,” I admitted.

“It’s O.K. Even though I wanted to adopt him, he was with you first, and you made a real effort to find his owner, so it’s only fair that you should be first in line to adopt him.”

She was taking it very well, and I was feeling even worse.

She suggested we have dinner in the patio, so I dragged the table outside. The candles made the patio look like an exotic resort. The
chamisa
that grows along the wall was fully bushed out with small yellow flowers. A light breeze pushed it against the rough adobe plaster creating a soft rhythmic brushing sound. Moonlight and candlelight played across the table, and Ella crooned from inside the house. It was about as perfect as it gets. Even Geronimo was surprisingly well-behaved, almost as if he understood that I was entertaining a lady friend.

When we finally finished the meal, the dessert, and two bottles of Gruet, she told me she had to get back because of her father. I put on my jacket and walked her to her car where we did what was called at Albuquerque High School in the eighties ‘making out’. She was a lot more enthusiastic about it that Nancy Simons had been, and better at it, too.

Instead of going straight back home, I detoured to the plaza, sat down on one of the benches, and stared up at the sky. It was a week or two past the summer solstice, so the sun had started north again and the nights would be getting a little shorter each day until December. But this night was spectacular with all five naked-eye planets visible, four of them low in the west and the big guy, Jupiter, visible to the east.

I love the night sky in New Mexico. I watched until I got a crick in my neck, then I walked home.

I was in a great mood as I left the plaza, strode up to my door, and started to insert the key in the lock.

I heard a vehicle approach from the east. Then I saw its reflection in the window to my left. It was a white van with black lettering on the side. It slowed. I turned. An arm extended from the window.  A flare of red flame exploded from the end of the arm.

I fell to the ground unconscious.

When I came to, I was disoriented. Odd, I thought to myself, the stars are in front of me instead of above me. Someone is hovering in the sky and speaking to me. I can see her lips moving, but I can’t hear anything except the ringing in my ears.

I tried to walk, but nothing happened. I tried to move my arms with the same result. I couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything. I’m paralyzed, I thought to myself. I wanted to tell the person hovering over me I was paralyzed, but I couldn’t speak. I wondered if I could move my eyebrows up in a succession of long and short movements and communicate with her by Morse code.

I couldn’t move, but I could see. I knew I must be alive. I could smell, too. It was an odor like burning flowers.

Then I was moving, headed up toward the night sky. Maybe I was dying, floating away. I was turning and bouncing slightly. The sky disappeared and was replaced by a metal ceiling. Another person was looking at me and she was also trying to speak to me, but I couldn’t hear her either.

Then I passed out again.

“You passed out twice?” asked Susannah. It was the next morning and she was standing next to my hospital bed frowning and picking at the breakfast they brought me before she came.

“I was shot! I’m lucky I only passed out instead of dying.”

“You were not shot. You were shot
at
.”

“I was not shot
at.
I was hit in the chest.”

“No, you were hit in the book. It’s a good thing the uncertainty principle is so complicated. If you’d been reading a Harlequin Romance, you’d be dead.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead reading a Harlequin Romance,” I quipped.

Evidently she missed the humor. “What is this?” she asked, holding part of my breakfast aloft.

“Breakfast meat,” I answered curtly. I thought she was taking my near assassination entirely too lightly.

“From what animal?”

“I have no idea.”

She sniffed at the patty. “You were wise not to eat this. It could be dangerous.”

“I’ll tell you what’s dangerous – being shot in the chest at close range.”

“You weren’t shot in the chest, Hubie.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, pulling up my hospital gown, “Take a look at this.”

“You’ve got a bruise.”

“A big bruise. The police told me this morning the slug they took from
The Book
was a .38 caliber.”

“What does the book look like now?”

I started to complain that she was showing more solicitude for an inanimate book than she was for me, but I didn’t want to be a whiner, so I took the thing out of the nightstand drawer.

“Whit Fletcher brought this by this morning. He thought I might want it as a souvenir.”

“Isn’t this evidence?” she said as she stuck her finger into the hole that started at the cover and stopped just at the start of chapter 37.

“I guess the bullet is the evidence. They took that out already.”

“It must have been one of those demonstrators who shot at you.”

“But the shot came from the United Plumbing van.”

“That’s exactly my point. That was the van watching you during your lame ‘stake-out’ at Cantú’s house, so it all ties together.”

“What ties together?”

“Cantú was an immigrant, and the demonstrators were demonstrating against you getting off scot free after killing an immigrant.”

“I didn’t kill an immigrant.”

She poked at the plate. “Is this round yellow thing supposed to be an egg?”