The Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “Whaddya say, Mike? You think we need to do some laundry today?”

  “Time to go to work, Mike. Another day, another dollar. You feel like hanging around in the back while I clean things up a bit?”

  “Getting low on supplies here, Mike. I think we need a trip to the store. Whaddya say we pick up a couple of honeys while we’re out, eh? Bring ’em back here? Have a party?”

  This habit of his, this jabbering on and on all the time… it’s the kind of thing I’d run into a lot, wherever I went. People who naturally like to talk, it takes them a minute to get used to me, but once they do they just turn it on and never turn it off. God forbid there be one moment of silence.

  The quiet people, on the other hand… I usually make them uncomfortable as hell, because they know they can’t compete with me. I’ll out-quiet anybody, in any venue for any stakes. I’m the undisputed champion of keeping my mouth shut and just sitting there like a piece of furniture.

  Okay, so I had to feel sorry for myself for a little while there. Put the pen down and lie on my bunk. Stare at the ceiling. That always helps. Try it sometime if you don’t believe me. Next time you find yourself in a cage for a few years. Anyway, back to the story. I won’t drag you through all the doctor visits I sat through. All the speech therapists, the counselors, the psychologists… Looking back on it, I must have been the ultimate wet dream for these people. To every one of them, I was the sad, silent, totally lost kid with the messy hair and the big brown eyes. The Miracle Boy who hadn’t said one word since that fateful day he cheated death. With the right treatment, the right coaching, the right amount of understanding and encouragement… that doctor or speech therapist or counselor or psychologist would find the magic key to unlock my wounded psyche, and I’d end up bawling in their arms while they stroked my hair and told me that everything was finally going to be all right.

  That’s what they all wanted from me. Each and every one. Believe me, they weren’t going to get it.

  Whenever we’d leave a new doctor’s office, Uncle Lito would have a new diagnosis to recite to himself on the way home. “Selective mutism.” “Psychogenic aphonia.” “Traumatically induced laryngeal paralysis.” Really, in the end, they all amounted to exactly the same thing. For whatever reason, I had simply decided to stop talking.

  When people find out I grew up behind a liquor store, the first thing they ask me is how many times the place got robbed. Every time, guaranteed. The first question I get. The answer? Exactly once.

  It was that first year after I moved in with him. One of the first warm nights of that summer. The parking lot was empty, aside from Uncle Lito’s ancient two-tone Grand Marquis with the big dent in the back bumper. This man, he came in and took one quick lap around the store, making sure the place was really as empty as it looked. He stopped dead when he saw me standing in the doorway to the back room.

  Now technically, I wasn’t supposed to be on the premises at all. I was nine years old then, and this was a liquor store. But Uncle Lito didn’t have a lot of options, at least not in the evenings. Most of the time I’d sit in my little spot in the back room. My “office,” as Uncle Lito called it, with walls made from empty boxes stacked five feet high, and a reading lamp. I’d sit back there and read every night, mostly comic books that I’d get from a store down the street, until it was time to go home to bed.

  So even though I wasn’t supposed to be there at all, let alone every night, who was going to bust us? Everybody in town knew my story. Everybody knew Uncle Lito was doing the best job he could with me, with no real help from anyone else. So people left us alone.

  The man stood there for a long time, looking down at me. He had freckles and light red hair.

  “You need any help back there, friend?” Uncle Lito’s voice from the front of the store.

  The man didn’t say anything. He gave me a little nod of his head and walked away from me. That’s the exact moment I knew he had a gun.

  You’re going to have to go with me on this one. Nine years old, and somehow I knew this. You’re thinking I’m just looking back at it a certain way, and because I was about to find out what happened next, somehow in my mind I’m filling in this detail. That in my memory I’m adding this part. But I swear to God. You can freeze time right there and I already knew exactly what was about to happen. He was going to go back up and he was going to take the gun out with his right hand and he was going to point the gun at Uncle Lito’s head and tell him to empty out the cash register. Just like in one of my comic books.

  As soon as the man turned away from me, I closed the door. There was a phone in the back room. I picked up the receiver and dialed 911. It rang twice, and a woman’s voice answered. “Hello. Do you have an emergency?”

  An emergency. Maybe that’s what it would take. When it was time for me to speak, when I really needed to… the words would come.

  “Hello. Can you hear me? Do you need help?”

  I held the phone tight in my hand. There were no words coming out. It wasn’t going to happen. I knew that. I knew that without any doubt at all, and in that same moment I knew something else. The sick feeling I had been living with… the living, breathing fear I had been feeling, every second of every day… it was all gone. Every bit of it. At least temporarily. For those next few minutes, when I did what I did next. It was the first time I didn’t feel scared about anything since that day in June.

  The operator was still talking, her voice fading to a faraway squeak as I dropped the receiver and it hung swinging by its cord. Turns out that was enough to get the police there, by the way. You call 911 like that and leave the line open, they have to come check it out. But on this night, it wouldn’t be soon enough to stop the robbery.

  I opened the door and walked out into the store. Down the long aisle of bottles. I could hear the man talking in a quick, high voice.

  “That’s right, man. All the money. Right now, man.”

  Then Uncle Lito’s voice, an octave lower. “Just take it easy, friend. Okay? Nobody has to do anything stupid here.”

  “What’s that kid doing back there? Where’d he go?”

  “Don’t you worry about him. He’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Why don’t you call him up here? I’m getting nervous. You don’t want that.”

  “He can’t even hear me if I tried. He’s deaf and dumb, okay? Just leave him out of this.”

  That’s when I turned the corner and saw them. I can still remember every detail in that scene. Uncle Lito, paper bag in one hand, bills from the open register in the other. The wall of sample bottles behind him. The coffee can on the counter, my picture taped to the rim, above it the sign asking for money to help out the Miracle Boy.

  Then the man. The robber. The criminal. The way he stood there with the gun gripped tight in his right hand. A revolver shining in the fluorescent light.

  He was scared. I could see that as clearly as I could see his face. This gun in his hand, it was supposed to take the fear away, to make him the master of this whole situation. But it was doing exactly the opposite. It was making him so scared he could barely think straight. This was an instant lesson for me, even at nine years old. It was something I’d remember forever.

  The robber looked at me for the first two seconds, swung the gun my way in the third.

  “Michael!” he said. “Get the hell out of here!”

  “I thought you said he was deaf,” the robber said. He came over to me and grabbed my shirt. Then I felt the barrel of the gun pressing against the top of my head.

  “What are you doing?” my uncle said. “I told you I’ll do anything you say.”

  I could feel the robber’s hands shaking. Uncle Lito’s face had gone white, his own hands outstretched like he was trying to reach me. To pull me away. I didn’t know which one of them was more terrified at that point. But, like I said, I wasn’t scared myself. Not one little bit. It’s the one advantage you have maybe, being scared all the time. When it’s time to really b
e scared, when all of a sudden you’re finally supposed to be scared… it just doesn’t happen.

  My uncle fumbled with the money, trying to stuff it all into the paper bag. “Take the money,” he said. “For God’s sake, just take it and get out of here.”

  The robber pushed me away, grabbing the bag with his left hand while he kept the gun aimed with his right, swinging it back and forth between us. Me, my uncle, me again. Then he backed away, toward the door, passing right by me. I didn’t move. When he was two feet away, he took one quick look down at me.

  I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t try to take the money away from him, or try to take the gun. I didn’t stick my finger in the muzzle and smile at him. I just stood there and looked at him like he was a fish in an aquarium.

  “Fucking weirdo kid.” He pushed the door open with his left elbow, nearly dropping the bag of money. He recovered and ran to his car and drove away, spinning his wheels as he hit Main Street.

  Uncle Lito scrambled out from behind the register and went to the door. By the time he got there, the car was out of sight.

  He turned back to me. There was so much adrenaline pumping through his body by now, he was practically vibrating.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” he said. “What in goddamned hell…”

  He sat down, right there on the floor, breathing hard. He stayed there until the police showed up. He kept looking at me, but he didn’t say anything else. So many questions in his mind, I’m sure, but why bother asking them when he knew he’d get no answers?

  I sat down next to him, to keep him company. I felt a tentative hand on my back. We sat there and waited, sharing the silence.

  Four

  New York City

  Late 1999

  It seemed like the last place on earth to me, this little Chinese restaurant on the ground floor of an eight-story building on 128th Street. The family who ran the place had a lease for the first floor only, and the top floors were supposedly locked up tight and scheduled for renovation by the owner at some undetermined point in the future. So naturally, those boards that were blocking the stairwell got taken down and a number of people ended up living upstairs. Extended members of the family first, the cousins and second cousins who came over to America to work ninety hours a week in the restaurant. Then the occasional outsider who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, and who could pay the family a certain amount of money every month. In cash, of course.

  I was passed along to the family, after the man who sold me my new identity passed me along to this other guy he knew, who in turn passed me along to somebody else. My room ended up being on the third floor. That was about as high as you wanted to go. Any higher and the heat from the first-floor kitchen wouldn’t quite get to you. Plus nobody had an extension cord that was long enough to reach to the fourth floor. So it was dark and freezing cold, and on top of that the rats had already claimed those floors as their own.

  I hadn’t thought to change my appearance yet. That would come later. But I figured being officially on the run from the State of Michigan, a violator of my terms of probation, and having done my first real money job… No turning back now, right? Hence the New York driver’s license with the made-up name of William Michael Smith and the made-up age of twenty-one. I didn’t use it to get into bars, though. Believe me. I stayed inside as much as I could, because I was convinced that every police officer I saw was actively looking for me. Even in the middle of the night, when I’d hear a siren down on the street… I’d be convinced that they had finally found me.

  It was getting colder every week. I stayed inside and I drew and I practiced on my portable safe lock. I ate the food from the restaurant that the Chinese family gave me. I paid them two hundred dollars a month cash to stay in the upstairs room they didn’t own, and to use the bathroom and shower in the back of the kitchen. I had one lamp that I had plugged into the extension cord. I had paper and art supplies. I still had my motorcycle bags with all of my clothes in them. I had my safe lock and my lock picks.

  I had the pagers.

  There were five of them, all in a beat-up shoebox. One pager with white tape on it, one with yellow, one with green, one with blue. Then the last with red tape. The Ghost had told me, if any of the first four pagers go off, you call the number on the little screen, you listen to what they say. They’ll know that you can’t speak in return. If they don’t seem to understand that, it’s a good sign that the wrong person is on the phone and that you should hang up. Assuming they’re on the level, you listen to what they say, and then you go to meet them at the location they indicate. If everything still feels right, you go do the job with them. You handle your business the right way and everybody wins. They’ll take care of you because they know if they don’t, you won’t be picking up that pager the next time they call.

  They’ll also take care of sending the ten percent “usage fee” to the man in Detroit. Because they want to keep living.

  That’s for the first four pagers. The last pager, the one with the red tape… that’s the man himself. The man in Detroit. You call the number right away. You do what the man says. You show up exactly where and when the man says to show up.

  “This is the one man you do not fuck with.” The Ghost’s exact words. “You fuck with this man, you might as well go ahead and kill yourself. Save everybody the trouble.”

  I knew the Ghost had been telling the truth. I had seen enough myself to know that this was the one piece of advice I should never forget. But what was I supposed to do while I was waiting for the next job? How long would I have to stay here, hiding out in this abandoned room above the Chinese restaurant on 128th Street, before somebody paged me and I got to make some money again?

  Would I starve first? Would I freeze to death?

  The Ghost never covered that part.

  ____________________

  By the time Christmas rolled around, I was finally leaving the building once in a while. I’d go to a park a few blocks to the south and sit on one of the benches. I finally had to buy some new clothes. I wasn’t broke yet, mind you. I had been well paid for the job in Pennsylvania. Still, I could do the math and see where it was all headed.

  To make matters a little worse, one of the men who worked in the restaurant told me I needed to help him if I wanted him to keep giving me food. He gave me a big stack of menus and told me to go to all of the buildings in the neighborhood, to get inside somehow, and to put one menu under each door. I knew that some of the buildings had a doorman at the entrance, and that at the other buildings you had to have somebody who lived there buzz you in. So I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to deliver the menus. I mean, I could have found the back doors on most of these buildings and picked the lock, but was that really worth it?

  “You have nice fine face,” the man said. His English wasn’t quite up to speed yet. “People let you in.”

  So I took my nice fine face and my stack of menus and I went to the buildings, one by one. I figured instead of hiding it, I’d come right out and let everybody know exactly what I was doing. Show them the menus, make like I was slipping one under a door. I’d throw in a little sign language once in a while, too. That seemed to help. I got into more buildings than not.

  One day, when I was working my way down a long hallway, a door opened just as I was about to slide a menu under it. Before I could even stand up, I felt two hands on my shoulders. I was pushed backward against the far wall, so hard I lost my breath.

  I looked up and saw the man’s face. It took me all the way back to that man who held up my uncle’s liquor store when I was nine years old. It was that same animal fear in his eyes. A horrible smell of unwashed clothes, urine, maybe that fear itself, it all washed over me. I kicked at his knees and he fell back away from me. Then he ran down the hallway. He slammed open the door and disappeared down the stairs.

  I got up, rubbing my shoulders. When I looked through the open doorway, I saw the wreckage inside. The man had trashed the place, looking for
anything of value. So he could buy more drugs. Or whatever it was he needed in his life so bad. I could see the refrigerator still open, even the food inside ransacked and ruined now. I closed the door to the apartment and left.

  When I got back down to the street, I wrote the apartment number on the back of a menu and gave it to the doorman. Then I went back to the restaurant.

  I went up to my room. I counted what was left of my money. I’m living on borrowed time here, I thought. How long until you turn into that man breaking into apartments?

  It got colder and colder. The snow came down that night. White at first, but dirty by morning.

  I woke up to hear one of the pagers beeping.

  I met the men in a diner in the Bronx. A simple cab ride over the Hudson River. It was the yellow pager they had called me on. Now, I knew what the Ghost had said about the yellow pager. This was the general number that just about any knucklehead could use to reach me. Therefore proceed with extreme caution. But I was feeling especially motivated, shall we say. So on that cold afternoon I went into the diner and stood there for a few minutes until I got waved over to a booth in the back, right next to the kitchen doors. There were three men sitting there. One of them stood up, grabbed my right hand, and pulled me close to him for a halfway hug.

  “You must be the kid,” he said to me. He was wearing a bright green New York Jets jacket and a gold chain. He had a close-cropped Caesar haircut that he probably spent too much time on. He had one of those razor-thin lines of stubble that ran perfectly along each side of his jaw, meeting in a little soul patch on his chin. You know, a white boy trying to look anything but white.