The Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “I thought I told you to stay away from her.”

  I kept digging. I didn’t even look up.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  I stopped, cupping my hand to my ear like I was deaf. Then I picked up a shovelful of dirt and threw it into the wheelbarrow.

  “You goddamned son of a bitch.”

  He came at me then. I turned and pointed the shovel blade at his neck. That’s all I had to do.

  “I will get you, you stupid bastard. I promise you.”

  Then he left.

  I went back to work. Every few minutes I looked up at the back windows, hoping to see Amelia. I didn’t. When I went to the faucet to fill the water jug, I heard Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone.

  Just before four o’clock, I saw the back door open. My heart went into my throat for a second until I realized it was Mr. Marsh. He had a drink in one hand. With his other hand he grabbed one of the patio chairs and carried it out to the hole. He set it down a little too close to the edge, tried to take a seat, and almost dumped himself right into the dirt. He adjusted the chair, sat down again, and this time kept his bearings.

  He watched me dig for a while. He took long sips out of his glass until it was almost empty.

  “Why are you doing this?” he finally said.

  I looked up at him.

  “I got all sorts of guys working for me these days. Building things. Trying to make deals happen. You know what I’m saying? All sorts of guys all over the place. And you know what?”

  He rattled the ice cubes in his glass and then drained it.

  “I’ll tell you what. If every one of those guys worked like you do, I’d have absolutely no problems at all. I’d be fucking rich and I’d have no problems.”

  He took out one of the ice cubes and threw it at me. It went two feet over my head.

  “Look at you! You show up here every day. You do your job. Every minute you’re supposed to be working, you’re working. Every single minute. And the whole time you keep your fucking mouth shut. No complaining. No back-talk. No calling me up and telling me you can’t do one simple goddamned thing because this thing happened and that thing happened and this person said goddamned whatever. None of that bullshit at all. Not one little bit. Do you have any idea what I’m saying to you?”

  I stayed still. I wasn’t sure what the right response would be, or if he’d even notice it.

  “Who’da thunk it,” he said. “All these guys supposedly working for me and getting paid pretty goddamned well, and the one guy doing the best job is the juvenile delinquent who has to do it for free. Can you imagine?”

  No. I cannot imagine.

  “You want a drink?” he said. “A real drink? Come on, I’ll fix you something.”

  I put my hands up. No thanks. It’s almost four o’clock, and I’m dying to get to my car, to see what might have been left there.

  “You sure? I make a mean vodka martini.”

  I put my hands up again.

  He got out of the chair and stepped down into the hole. He came close enough for me to smell the alcohol on his breath.

  “I didn’t want you to actually dig me a pool. You realize that. I mean, what the hell do I need a pool for?”

  Once again, staying absolutely still seemed to be the only way to go.

  “You win, okay? No more digging. Put the shovel away. Put the wheelbarrow away. You’re done. You win. End of story.”

  End of story. Yet he was still standing there.

  “I’m sorry I did this to you. Will you accept my apology?”

  He seemed to really mean it. What else could I do? I nodded my head.

  “Can we be friends now?”

  Okay… not sure what to think now.

  “Tell me we can be friends.”

  What the hell. I nodded my head.

  “Shake on it?” He switched his glass to his left hand and put out his right.

  I shook it. It was cold and wet from the drink.

  “When you come back tomorrow, we’ll think up something else for you to do, okay? Something a lot more fun? More rewarding?”

  He’s really, really drunk, I thought. Or really, really crazy. By tomorrow, he may have forgotten all about this. Or else it’s going to be an interesting day all around.

  “It’s a little early,” he said, “but you go on home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Without another word, he stepped back, grabbed his chair, and dragged it back to the house. I stood there for a while, watching him. Waiting for the big zag after the zig. It never came. So I just threw the shovel in the wheelbarrow and went around the house to my car.

  It was empty. No envelope.

  I was running the scenarios through my head. Amelia coming to her senses. Or Zeke getting to her somehow. Or hell… maybe even Zeke figuring out our little game and taking the envelope out of the car himself.

  Before my stomach could turn completely over on that one, I heard something behind me. A door shutting? No, a window. I looked up and saw the brown envelope sailing through the air. The window already shut and the person behind it already gone.

  I retrieved the envelope from the front lawn, got in my car, and drove a hundred yards. The craziness with Mr. Marsh already forgotten, because this was something much, much bigger. I pulled over and opened the envelope. First page from me, second from her, third from me again…

  Page four.

  I knew she had had to deal with Zeke for the first hour, so she hadn’t had much time to work on it. But here it was. I was expecting that maybe she’d pick up from where I had left off, her standing there at the edge of the hole after I had finally uttered my first words, but the scene was different. The first panel showed the foursome sitting outside under the umbrella. Today? Is that what she was drawing? In the middle distance, there I was, hard at work, while Zeke and the other two artists watched me and laughed. You could only see the back of their heads, Amelia’s profile in the foreground. Her thought bubble… “You clowns can’t even see it. He’s got so much more talent than any of you. And he’s kind of beautiful, too.”

  Holy fuck, I thought to myself. Holy motherfucking fuck.

  Second panel. Amelia standing up. Zeke looking up at her with dumb surprise. The way she drew him in that panel alone, like he was the most pathetic and ridiculous human being who ever lived. It brought even more pure joy to my heart.

  Third panel. Inside the house. Amelia with her back to Zeke, saying, “Get out. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  Fourth panel. “Later…” in the upper left-hand corner. Amelia in her room, sitting on her bed. The thought bubble… “He was here. Right here in my bedroom. Two nights in a row.”

  I swallowed hard, kept reading.

  Fifth panel. Silhouette of Amelia on the bed, leaving lots of room underneath for a longer thought… “Definitely an uncool thing to do, sneaking into my room in the middle of the night. Absolutely way over the line un-fucking-cool, right. So last night, when he didn’t come here at all…”

  Sixth panel. Viewpoint from outside the window. Amelia on the inside looking out, saying it out loud… “Now that was just fucking cruel.”

  One page of paper. Wood pulp bleached and then pressed into a thin layer. Marked with the rubbed-off graphite from a single drawing pencil. That’s all it was. You understand this.

  I held that page of paper in my hands for five minutes maybe, while sitting in my uncle’s beat-up old car on the side of a road just outside of Milford, Michigan. On a hot afternoon turning into a hot evening. When I could finally breathe again, I put all of the pages back into the envelope. I reminded myself of the correct procedure for operating an automobile, put it in gear, and pressed the gas pedal. Steered it all the way home.

  I went inside and opened the envelope again, took the pages out, and put them on my desk. This lonely cigar-smoke-smelling room at the back of this old house. The miracle that these sheets of paper could even exist within that lonely room’s four walls.

  I
sat down with a clean page in front of me. If I had been capable of laughing out loud, I would have done it. What in goddamned hell could I possibly draw in response to this? Six panels of what exactly?

  I tried out a few different ideas. What might happen between us if I broke into her house again. If I slipped into her bedroom in the middle of the night. I wadded up every piece of paper and threw them onto the floor. Every single one.

  Eventually, I put my head down on my arms. I had to close my eyes for a minute. Just one minute. As I slipped into a dream, I could hear the water pouring into the room, running down the walls, coming through the window. Pooling on the floor and then rising. Slowly, inch by inch. Until I was submerged in it.

  Like every night. Like every dream.

  When I looked up again, it was after midnight.

  I shook myself awake. You’re blowing this, I thought. You’re totally letting this whole thing slip away.

  I knew I had to draw something. Anything. I had one hour left. Maybe an hour and a half. Then it would be time to go to her house.

  What are you really feeling right now? That’s what I have to ask myself. Just think about that one simple idea and start drawing.

  I took out a clean sheet of paper. In the bottom right corner, I drew myself, here at the desk, my head down, just like I had been a minute ago. A big dream bubble above me, taking up the rest of the page.

  Yes. This is it. Not six panels. Just one. A big risk, maybe. Probably totally insane. But here it is. One single page showing her exactly how I see her, late at night, in my underwater dreams.

  Sixteen

  Los Angeles

  January 2000

  The back door to the club was locked, so we had to go around to the front. The bouncer did a little double take when he saw the condition of my face, but he clearly remembered us. He opened the velvet rope and let us through.

  I found a bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I washed the dirt off my face. Then I tried to splash water on my hair and restore some kind of order again. When I had done all I could, I went back outside and found Lucy. As we worked our way across the dance floor, we could see Julian and Ramona sitting at that table high above us. Wesley was sitting there with them. Julian caught sight of us, and his cool might have slipped for half a second, but he recovered just as quickly.

  Lucy and I went up the spiral staircase, got past the balcony bouncer, and made our way to the table. Wesley got up like a gentleman and gave Lucy back her chair.

  “We were wondering where you ran off to,” he said.

  “I told you,” Julian said. “The man had to go attend to his business. To make sure everything is ready.”

  “What happened to you?” Wesley said. “You look like you got run over by something.”

  You don’t understand English, I told myself. Don’t even look like you’re following what he’s saying.

  “Oh, he did,” Lucy said, sliding her fingernails through her messed-up hair. “He got run over real good.”

  Then to prove her point, she reached over and raked those same fingernails across my cheek. It hurt like hell, but it got Wesley smiling and nodding his head in appreciation.

  “Okay, seriously,” Julian said. “I think it’s time to stop fucking around, don’t you?”

  It was all part of his act, as I’d realize later. Get right in the guy’s face. Act a little too anxious. Push the deal like you can’t wait one more minute to make it happen.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Wesley said. “Let’s do some business.”

  Julian turned to me and said something in Russian. Or if he was making it up, at least it sounded like Russian.

  I waited a beat. Then I gave him a nod.

  “So where do we do this?” Julian said.

  “Let me go make a trip to the cash machine,” Wesley said. “You guys just hang here for a while, eh?”

  “Works for me. Can you send another bottle over?”

  Wesley gave him a big smile. “Coming right up, my friend.”

  He took his leave and walked over to the upstairs bouncer. I kept watching him. As he turned, I could see a sudden flash of condescension on his face. We were all just kids, the look said. It was almost too easy to play us.

  That’s when the whole setup started to become clear to me. The whole seemingly insane yet totally brilliant idea behind what Julian and his gang were doing. You don’t wait for the target to put the money in the safe. You make the target put the money in the safe. You get close to him. You get to know him. You find out what he wants. You tell him he can have it. You tell him that you know somebody who knows somebody else who knows exactly how to get it. You tell him you’ll arrange the deal so that everybody comes out ahead. You do all of this in such a way as to make him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s smarter than you. That in the end, he’s the one who’s going to come out ahead.

  It doesn’t even matter what it is. In this case, it was Ecstasy. Not the cheap, dirty pills you can find in every club. The real thing. One hundred percent. Does that make you a drug dealer all of a sudden? Of course not! It could be rocks from the moon for all you care, because you’re not actually going to deliver anything at all.

  Of course, your man has every reason to be suspicious, because after all who the fuck are you to appear out of nowhere and to tell him that he can have exactly what he wants? So he knows going in… he knows that there’s a chance you’re totally full of shit. He wouldn’t be where he is today if he didn’t know this. But he plays along, because what the hell, maybe you can deliver. He’s got nothing to lose, he figures, because he’s a smart man and you’re a cheap, dumb punk, and he’ll make sure he sets it up the right way. So you let it happen. Everything he wants, you give him. You want to see a sample? Here it is. You want us to bring everything to a certain place at a certain time? whatever you say. We’ll be there.

  You let him call the shots. You let him gather up his money and hold on to it. Keep it right in his back pocket until you’ve proven that you can deliver everything you said you could. Tere’s no way he can lose here, because he isn’t even touching his money until he knows it’s a safe play.

  Absolutely no way to lose.

  Unless… Oh, hell, let’s just imagine here… Let’s just say that while he’s got all that money sitting in his back pocket, someone else comes along and takes it before the deal can even happen. Yeah, that might be the one slight complication that could get in the way.

  This is the way Julian set it up. It’s perfect. Your mark’s watching you fumble around trying to look cool and to set up the deal. While he’s doing that, somebody else sneaks around behind him and picks his pocket. Even if that “pocket” is an eight-hundred-pound iron box protected by two separate alarm systems.

  The ladies excused themselves for a moment. Julian came around the table and sat in the chair next to me. He leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “You’re a natural. You haven’t said one wrong word tonight.”

  He gave me a little punch in the shoulder, grabbed Lucy’s champagne flute, and raised it. He waited until I got mine and did the same.

  “A la Mano de Dios.”

  I understood it this time around. To the Hand of God. That’s what you call this kind of operation. When young con artists get together with young burglars and set up the perfect crime.

  “Here’s the important part,” he said, leaning in close again. “When he goes home to get the money, and he sees that it’s gone… his head is going to go through the fucking roof, right? When that happens, it’s our job to put our heads through the fucking roof even higher than his. We tell him he’s a no-good fucking con man, what kind of bullshit move is this, et cetera, et cetera. You get what I’m saying?”

  He paused and took another sip of champagne.

  “We play it all the way through. Right in his face, all the way out the door.”

  The ladies came back to the table. Ramona grabbed Ju
lian like she had no plans to let go that night. Lucy bent over and wrapped her arms around my neck. I was overwhelmed by her hair, by her scent, by the feel of her skin against my cheek.

  She was just playing her part, I knew. But still.

  “Have some more champagne,” she said to me. “It’ll numb the pain.”

  I wasn’t sure what pain she was talking about. The pain in my body from everything I’d done that night? The pain in my heart? Or something else entirely.

  Either way, I drank some more champagne. In this nightclub in this city on this night, with these lights flashing and this music pounding away on the dance floor below me… I couldn’t help wondering what would happen next. With these strange, beautiful people… it seemed like it could be anything.

  Wesley came back. His face was red and his ponytail was undone. Julian gave me a quick wink as he stood up. Then I watched the two of them go at it. Wesley waving his arms around, Julian sticking his finger right in Wesley’s face. The upstairs bouncer had to step between them, and all hell broke loose for the next minute until we were all stumbling down the back steps and out into the night air.

  Julian hailed a cab and we all squeezed into the backseat. Ramona gave the driver an address and we were off, rolling down Sunset Boulevard. Between the champagne and the company and the night itself, I was starting to feel disoriented.

  Then we were going east on an expressway. The lights whizzing by us.

  Then we were crawling slowly down a narrow street where people were dancing. They had to move to let us pass, one by one, inch by inch.

  Then we were out of the cab and going into another club. This one was called El Pulpo. It was crowded and it smelled like spicy food and everyone was speaking Spanish.

  Then I was dancing. Me. Actually dancing on a dance floor. I stopped dancing and drank a bottle of Mexican beer. Then I was dancing again.