The Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “Fucking A, why didn’t you say something?” Bigmouth got out his wallet, made everybody else in the car do the same. He collected together about three hundred dollars and gave it to me. That didn’t seem like quite enough to him, so he parked the car and he made everyone march right down to the bank on the corner.

  “Whatever your fucking limit is,” he said. “You hear me? Your absolute max. It’s the least we can do for the kid.”

  Between the four of them, they were able to withdraw another thousand dollars.

  “That’s just an advance, kid. Wait till we unload those diamonds! I’ll be beeping you to pick up your share! I promise! As soon as we have the money, I’ll beep you!”

  A few more hugs and handshakes and carrying on. Then they piled back into the car and took off down the street.

  When they were out of sight, I crossed the street and went into the restaurant. I paid the family the two hundred dollars I owed them for the month. Then I went upstairs and celebrated New Year’s Eve in my empty room. I couldn’t help but think about my uncle. I wondered what he was doing, back in Michigan. Probably having a busy night, selling champagne.

  I thought about Amelia. Of course.

  Then I got out my paper and my pencils and I started drawing. I put my whole day on the page, panel by panel, playing the whole thing back for her. Showing her what I had been through. It was the thing I did almost every day, just for my own sanity, and for the small amount of hope it gave me. That maybe someday these pages would find their way to her. That she’d read them and that she’d understand why I had to leave her.

  As I finished the last panel, I looked back over the whole thing and it seemed totally comical. The more I thought of it, the more I realized that I’d probably never hear from them again. I mean, they had no reason to contact me with my share of the money, right?

  No more amateurs, I told myself. Never, ever again. Even though you did make thirteen hundred bucks today.

  I went back to Amelia as I turned off my light, got in my sleeping bag on that cold dusty floor, and closed my eyes. I would have given anything to have her right there with me. For just one hour. I would have given my life for it.

  Happy New Year to me.

  The yellow pager woke me up the next morning. I went downstairs and used the pay phone. I dialed the number. It was the same number I had used the day before.

  “Hey, kid,” Bigmouth said. “Hope I didn’t wake you. Is everything okay?”

  I waited for him to realize he wouldn’t get an answer.

  “Sorry, I’m kinda hungover. Not thinking straight. Anyway, can you come back to the diner? Soon as you can? We’ve got a little problem.”

  Five

  Michigan

  1991 to 1996

  After the robbery, Uncle Lito went out and bought himself a gun. It was a handgun, but it was a lot different from the gun the robber had used. The robber’s revolver, with the shiny bright metal… It looked like a classic six-shooter, the kind you’d see in a Western movie. Uncle Lito’s gun was a semiautomatic. No spinning cylinder. No bright metal. It was dull and black, and somehow it looked twice as deadly.

  He hid it behind the register, thinking I’d never see it. That lasted about five minutes. He didn’t talk about the gun. He didn’t talk about anything having to do with the robbery at all. But I could tell he was thinking about it. For the next few weeks, whenever he was quiet, I could tell he was replaying the whole thing in his head. Not just the robbery itself, but the strange way I had reacted to it.

  I have to feel a little bad for him now, looking back on it. It’s not like he had anybody else to talk to about me. There was a woman from the state who’d come by and see how I was doing, but she only did that once a month or so, and after the first year, she stopped coming altogether. Even if she had kept up her visits, what the hell was she going to do with me? By all appearances, I was doing okay. Not great, but okay. I was eating, even if half the time it was at the Flame. I was sleeping. And yes, I was finally back at school.

  It was this place called the Higgins Institute. It was mostly deaf kids who went to this place. Deaf kids with money, I mean. Besides them, there were a few kids with what they called “communicative disorders,” some kind of defect that prevented them from hearing or talking or both. I was put in that category. I had a “disorder.”

  I was nine years old, remember. I hadn’t been to school in a year and a half. Let me tell you, being the new kid in school is bad enough. Try doing it in a school where hardly anybody can talk to you, even if they want to. And you can’t talk back.

  That turned out to be the first problem they tried to fix. I needed to learn some way to communicate, some way that would be better than carrying around a pad of paper and a pen for the rest of my life. Which is why I started learning American Sign Language.

  It didn’t come easy for me. I didn’t have to use it, for one thing. I never went home and kept on using it. I never practiced it at all unless I was at school. Meanwhile, all of the deaf kids were totally immersed in it. It was their whole culture. It was their own special, private code. So I wasn’t just the “different” kid. I was the foreign invader who barely knew the language.

  On top of everything else, there were still plenty of psychologists and counselors poking at me. That never let up. Every day for at least forty-five minutes or so, I’d be sitting in somebody’s office. Some adult with jeans and a sweater. Let’s just kick back, Michael. Let’s just hang out here and get to know each other, eh? If you feel like talking to me… and by talking I mean you can write something for me, or draw me a picture. Whatever you want, Mike.

  What I wanted was for them to leave me the hell alone. Because they were all making one big mistake. This business about me being too young to “process” the trauma, that I’d have to bury it in my little mind’s backyard until somebody came along to help me dig it up-I mean, I still get upset to this day just thinking about it. The condescension there. The stunning, absolute ignorance.

  I was eight years old when it happened. Not two years old. Not three years old. I was eight, and like any other kid my age, I knew exactly what was happening to me. Every single second, every single moment. I knew what was happening, and when it was all over, I could go back and replay it in my mind. Every single second, every single moment. The next day, I could still do that. A week later, I could do that. A year later. Five years later. Ten years later. I could still go back to that day in June for the simple reason that I had never left it.

  It wasn’t repressed. I didn’t have to go digging to find it. It was always there. My constant companion. My right-hand man. Every waking hour, and more than a few of the sleeping hours… I was and am and always will be right back there in that day in June.

  Nobody ever got that. Not one person.

  Looking back, I’m probably being too hard on everybody. They were trying to help me, I know, and it’s not like I was giving them anything to go on. Problem was, I don’t think they could have helped me. At all. And hell, I think I just made everybody uncomfortable, you know? Like they couldn’t forgive me for what had happened to me, and how that made them feel when they thought about it. So they tried to help me so that they could feel better.

  Yes, that’s it right there. All those years. That’s what I was thinking. They were all so freaked out about what had happened to me, they were just trying to make themselves feel better about it. I think that’s why they gave up on me in the end. After five years at the Higgins Institute, because I wasn’t “responding” well enough. Maybe it was a mistake to have you come here in the first place, they said. Maybe you should have been around speaking kids all along. So that maybe… someday…

  That’s what they said. Just before they kicked me out and made me go to Milford High School.

  Imagine that summer for me. Just counting down the days to September. I mean, I had already been the odd man out at the institute. How much more of a freak would I be walking down the halls of a public hig
h school?

  There was only one thing that could distract me that summer. You see, there was this metal door in the back room. It opened out to the parking lot. When the delivery trucks came, that’s the door they’d use to wheel in the boxes. The door was usually locked, but when the trucks came, Uncle Lito would have to start fiddling with the dead bolt to get it to open. There was a real trick to it. You’d have to give the bolt a quarter turn in the wrong direction, then pull hard on the knob while you eased the bolt back the way it was supposed to go. Only then would the damned thing decide to cooperate. And forget about opening it with a key from the outside. One day, he got sick of it and bought a whole new lock. I watched him take out the old lock and throw the two separate pieces in the garbage can. When he put the new lock in, it turned beautifully on the first try.

  “Just feel that,” he said. “It’s like butter.”

  But it was the old lock I was interested in. I took it out of the garbage can and joined the two pieces together again. I could see immediately how it was designed to work. Such a simple idea. When the cylinder turns, the cam goes with it and the bolt is retracted. Turn the cylinder the other way and the bolt is extended again. Eventually, I’d take the cylinder apart and see the five little pins inside. All you had to do was line up those pins just right so the thing could turn freely. At least that’s the way I got it to move after cleaning out the dirt and gunk and spraying a little oil in there. Uncle Lito could have put that lock right back in the door and it would have worked just fine again. But he’d already bought the new lock, so there was nothing else to do with the old one except to keep playing around with it, to watch how the key went inside and how it pushed up each pin exactly the right amount and no farther. Then, finally, the really interesting part. The absolutely most fascinating and satisfying part of all, how I could put a little bit of tension on that cylinder with something as simple as a paper clip, and then with a thin piece of metal I had taken from the edge of a ruler, say, how I could push up each pin, one by one, letting the tension keep them in place as I moved on to the next, until finally all five pins were lined up perfectly. How the lock, without the use of a key, would then slide smoothly and magically open.

  I sometimes wonder how my life would have gone if not for that one old lock on that one back door. If it hadn’t gotten stuck so much, or if Uncle Lito had been too lazy to replace it… Would I have ever found that moment? Those metal pieces, which are so hard and unforgiving, so carefully designed not to move… Yet somehow with just the right touch it all lines up and God, that one second when it opens. That smooth, sudden, metallic release. The sound of it turning, and the way it feels in your hands. The way it feels when something is locked up so tight in a metal box, with no way to get out.

  When you finally open it…

  When you finally learn how to unlock that lock…

  Can you even imagine how that feels?

  Six

  Connecticut

  New Year’s Day 2000

  I didn’t have to go back to that diner that day. I know that. But I did. I honestly don’t think it was the ignorance of youth or anything like that. Hell, maybe it was nothing more than simple curiosity. I mean, they got the diamonds from the guy’s house, right? What could the big problem be? Were they having trouble converting them into cash? Maybe, but if that was the problem, why call me? Just to let me know that I wouldn’t get my share for a while? Or that my share would be a lot smaller? Either way, that would mean that I was getting a share at least, and they weren’t planning on stiffing me.

  Damn, I thought, could it be that these guys think that they have to pay me? Or else? I mean, if they found me in the first place, that meant they probably had to know about the man in Detroit, right? I wasn’t just one kid on one pager. Maybe they figured there must be plenty of other people on other pagers, some of whom could set their feet in concrete and drop them into the Hudson River on a moment’s notice. That’s right, I thought. You don’t mess with the Kid. Let ’em all think that.

  Either way, there I was, in another cab, riding over the river on a clear, cold New Year’s morning. I had given the driver the same address in the Bronx, written down on a piece of paper. He talked about the “Y2K” thing the whole way there, how nothing was supposed to be working that day, the first day of the year 2000, and yet how everything seemed to be humming along just fine. I sat in the backseat and nodded. When we finally got to the diner, I paid the man and got out. I went inside. My four new friends were sitting together, at a bigger table this time because now we were a party of five. I went over and slid in next to Heckle and Jeckle. Bigmouth and the Ox were on the other side. All four of them looked like hell.

  The same waitress came over. She seemed to recognize me. I pointed at the Western omelet. The boys seemed to be done eating, but I didn’t care. If they were gonna drag me out here again, I was going to get breakfast out of it.

  “So here’s the problem,” Bigmouth finally said. He was wearing the same green New York Jets jacket.

  “Not here,” the Ox said.

  “I’m just giving him the general idea.”

  “What, you want everybody in the restaurant to know what we did yesterday? Just save it, all right?”

  They had no problem talking about it yesterday, I thought. Then again, the Ox wasn’t here yesterday. He was obviously the one man in this outfit with any sense at all.

  When my breakfast came, there was a tense silence hanging over the table. I have lifetime immunity to tense silences, but this one seemed to be taking years off of Bigmouth’s life. He sat there rocking back and forth on his hands, looking out the front window. The Ox just sat there looking at him sideways. Heckle and Jeckle both looked like they were about to throw up.

  When I was done, Bigmouth slapped some money down and hustled us all out of there. He got behind the wheel of his car. The Ox rode shotgun this time. Heckle and Jeckle waited to see if I was going to get in the backseat.

  “Come on, we’ll go somewhere safe and talk about it,” Bigmouth said to me. “It’s a solvable problem. Really. You want your share, right?”

  I slid into the backseat. Heckle and Jeckle got in on opposite sides so I’d be stuck in the middle. It was a little thing, but it was already making me feel sorry I had come.

  Bigmouth put the car in gear and took off down the street. A few minutes later, we were on I-95. Heading east, toward Connecticut. I tapped on the back of his seat and raised both hands. What the hell, guys?

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said. “Those rocks we stole are totally fake. They’re not even good cubic zirconium. They’re just junk. It took my experts here about three seconds to find that out, once they sobered up.”

  Neither of them said anything. The one on my right shook his head slowly.

  “It didn’t make any sense,” the Ox said. “This guy buys and sells real diamonds all the time. Why would he put a bunch of fake rocks in his safe?”

  “So what we’re wondering is-” Bigmouth said.

  “What I’m wondering,” the Ox cut him off, “like I told these numb-nuts today, is whether there’s another safe in the house. One that’s a lot harder to find, with the real diamonds in it. You see what I’m getting at?”

  I had to think about that one for a few seconds. Then it all came together. The Ox was right. That safe was in such an obvious spot. The first place you’d look, way too easy to find. Then the fact that the safe was open, which of course these guys didn’t even know. Turn the handle and there it is… a perfect, beautiful little black velvet bag with-

  God damn, how could I have not seen right through that? It was the perfect last line of defense. So perfect you could almost be forgiven for being so sloppy with everything else. Here they are, boys! A million dollars in diamonds! All yours! Don’t bump your heads on the way out!

  “So we were figuring,” Bigmouth said, “if you don’t mind another little trip…”

  “Our man can’t be back home yet,” the Ox said.
“I mean, he’s away for the holidays, right? Who comes back home on New Year’s Day?”

  I could hear the Ghost’s voice in my head. Walk away, hot shot. Just turn around and walk away.

  Not that I could really do that at the moment, hurtling down the expressway.

  But you can’t hit the same place twice, can you? Isn’t that just asking for trouble?

  Or maybe this doesn’t even count. We really didn’t hit it at all yet, right?

  That’s the line of bullshit I had running back and forth in my head, all the way back to that house in Connecticut. Some things you’ve got to learn the hard way.

  We parked around by the back of the property, on the same playground. The house looked just as deserted today. I mean, the Ox was probably right about that. If the owner was gone yesterday, he’d probably be gone today, too.

  Nobody stayed with the car this time. “We gotta find that second safe,” Bigmouth said. “We need all the eyes we’ve got.”

  Another mistake, of course. This was no time to get sloppy. But I wasn’t going to start a fight over it. So all five of us went down along the tree line to the house. The same window was unlocked. The Ox pushed it open, and Bigmouth climbed inside. I went in next. I was assuming that somebody would stay outside to keep watch, at least. I mean, you can’t be that dumb, right? I guess I should have known better by then, but at that point I just wanted to find that second safe so we could get the real payoff and then get the hell out of there.

  I knew I wouldn’t find it in the office. I went to the front of the house, then up the stairs. It was one of those houses with the sweeping staircase and the twelve-foot chandelier hanging over the foyer, but I didn’t have time to admire it. I went straight down the long hallway, looking into each room. Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom, bathroom. Everything museum quality and looking like nobody had ever lived there. Finally, I got to what had to be the master suite. I went right to the walk-in closet, pushed the clothes aside, and looked carefully at each wall. I didn’t find anything.