The Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “Do you remember these?”

  I opened it and saw the same lock-picking tools I had used in our little exhibitions with the locksmith.

  “Can you show Mr. Slade what you can do with them now?”

  I looked back and forth between them. They were dead serious. This wasn’t just a bar bet.

  “Now, I know we’ve got those fancy unpickable locks on the doors now, but there’s gotta be something around here…”

  As he rummaged around in his desk, I stood there sorting through the picks and tension bars. Such a perfect set of tools. I couldn’t help it. I had to try them again. So I gave them a little wave and had them follow me out the back door. When all three of us were outside, I locked the door and closed it.

  “What are you doing?” Mr. Marsh said. “You can’t open this lock, remember?”

  I bent down, took out the tension bar and a diamond pick, and got to work. Using the same idea for these serrated pins… oversetting all of them, and then letting them fall back down just enough, one by one… with the good tools, it was a snap.

  Two minutes later, I turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  “Holy Christ,” Mr. Marsh said. “How the fuck did you do that?”

  “I’m impressed,” Mr. Slade said. “I mean, I know what you told me, but seeing it in person? God damn.”

  “What else can you open?” Mr. Marsh said. “Can you open any kind of lock?”

  He pushed in past me, into the kitchen. He started rummaging through a junk drawer. Then he pulled out an old padlock.

  “I don’t even know the combination to this thing anymore. Can you open it?”

  I took it from him. A cheap padlock off of one of his kids’ gym lockers, probably. Thrown into the junk drawer forever.

  “This I gotta see,” Mr. Slade said.

  He didn’t realize that this would be easier. A lot easier. But what the hell. I spun through the sticking points, found the obvious last number. Cleared it and started through the super sets, using the good old number families. I got lucky, because the first number was a three. So it didn’t take me more than a minute to snap it open.

  They both stood there with their jaws open, like I had just levitated or something. I mean, it really was no big deal to me.

  “Did I tell you or what?” Mr. Marsh said. “Is he or is he not amazing?”

  “He is amazing.”

  I gestured for something to write on, so I could give them the combination and they’d have this padlock back in service. They obviously had much bigger things in mind.

  “What do you think?” Mr. Marsh said. “Can he use him?”

  I didn’t know who they were talking about. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of it, but Jerry Slade was already smiling and nodding his head.

  “Damned straight. How could he not use him?”

  “This could be it,” Mr. Marsh said. “This could be our ticket out of hell.”

  It was just after midnight when I got back to Milford, but the liquor store was still open. Uncle Lito was behind the register, the phone to his ear. He slammed it down when I stuck my head in the door.

  “Where in blazes have you been all night?”

  I made a digging motion.

  “Since noon? You worked for what, twelve hours?”

  I gave him the thumbs-up and backed out the doorway. I heard him calling to me, but I kept walking. Back to the house. To my room. I sat down at my desk. I didn’t feel like sleeping. I didn’t feel like drawing. I just sat there and wondered what I’d gotten myself into.

  I took out the leather case from my back pocket. I opened it and sorted through the tools. At least I’ve got these now, I thought. I’ll take care of these like fine jewels.

  I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that once you’ve proven yourself useful to the wrong people, you’ll never be free again.

  The next day, my uncle was still pissed at me for leaving him hanging all night. Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his cereal. “That guy you work for,” he said, “you know he’s crazy. He could have killed you and buried you in his backyard for all I knew.”

  I made a fist and rubbed it in a circle against my heart. He’d never been great with the sign language, but he knew that one. I’m sorry.

  “You’re growing up. I know that. You’re at that age, you think you know everything.”

  I nodded at him, wondering who he was even talking about. Certainly not me.

  “I was seventeen myself once. I know that’s hard to imagine. Of course, I hadn’t dealt with half of what you’ve had to deal with.”

  I couldn’t help wondering where he was going with this.

  “You know, when I was seventeen, there was only one thing I wanted to do.”

  Oh, please. Don’t go there.

  “Okay, two things, but there’s one in particular I’m talking about here. Can you guess?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on out to the store with me. I was going to give this to you yesterday.”

  I followed him out of the house and around to the liquor store. He put a key in the back door and disappeared inside. When he came back out, he was pushing a motorcycle.

  “It’s a Yahama 850 Special,” he said. “It’s used, but it’s in great shape.”

  I stood there looking at it. The seat was black with a bronze trim. The chrome exhausts shone in the bright sunlight. If he had rolled out a spaceship, I wouldn’t have been any less surprised.

  “One of my regulars couldn’t cover his tab. He offered me this bike if I would call it all square.”

  That must have been one hell of a tab, I thought.

  “Come on, saddle up. Hold on, I got you a helmet here.”

  I took the handlebars from him while he went back inside. He came back out with a helmet and a black leather jacket.

  “You need this, too,” he said. “I hope it’s the right size.”

  I would have been speechless even if I could speak. I put the jacket on. Then he helped me put on the helmet. I sat on the bike and felt the whole thing bounce up and down under my weight.

  “New shocks, he told me. New brakes. Tires are okay, not great. We’ll get you some new ones soon.”

  I still couldn’t believe it was happening. I was actually supposed to ride this thing?

  “Take it nice and easy at first, eh? Go ahead, give it a try.”

  After he showed me how to start it, I tried putting it in gear and giving it a little gas. It just about took off from right underneath me. I tried again and made sure I was ready for it. After a couple of circles in the parking lot, I was on my way down the street. I took it slow at first, afraid I’d end up on the hood of somebody’s car. Then I started to get the hang of it. It was much easier to stay balanced than I would have imagined. And I had to say, the whole experience felt pretty damned good.

  I took the bike back, but my uncle was already stationed behind his cash register, ringing up his first customer of the day. He gave me a wave, told me to go back out and get to know the bike. He gave me a few bucks to fill up the tank. Then I was off.

  I spent the rest of the morning riding. You don’t realize just how much pickup one of those babies has. From an absolute dead stop, if you really crank it, it feels like you’re on a rocket. I headed west on the back roads, out into what was then still farmland. I found a new hatred for dirt roads that have been freshly oiled, nearly killing myself the first time I hit one. After that I stuck to pavement and didn’t have any other close calls. It was just me and the sound of the machine between my legs and the wind whipping against my helmet. I wanted to share this feeling with Amelia. To take her by the hand and sit her down on the back of the bike. I could already feel her hands wrapped around my waist.

  I made one more stop to buy a pair of sunglasses. And another helmet for Amelia. Now I had everything I needed in life. I got back on that bike and headed straight for her house.

  So I rode out to that big white castle of a house gleaming in t
he sun, feeling like I owned the whole world. Feeling like this could be the day that I start talking. I mean, why not? Maybe this is what it would take.

  Today, though, I was going to get something a little bit different.

  I saw Mr. Marsh’s car in the driveway, but when I knocked on the door, nobody answered. I knocked again. Nothing.

  I wandered around the house to the backyard and looked under the tent. The plants Mr. Marsh had dragged back there were all starting to wilt, so I went looking for a watering can and spent the next few minutes walking back and forth between the tent and the faucet.

  Then I knocked on the back door. When nobody answered, I pushed the door open and went inside. I walked through and peeked into Mr. Marsh’s office. Nobody there. I looked up the stairs and saw that Amelia’s door was closed. I went up and knocked.

  “Who is it?” she said from inside.

  I knocked again. What else could I do?

  “Come on in.”

  When I opened the door, I saw her sitting at her desk. Her back was to me. She didn’t say a word. I hesitated, finally came into the room and went over to where she was working. I wanted to touch her shoulders, but I didn’t.

  She was drawing something. Buildings, an alleyway. Lots of shadows. There was a long figure in the foreground, but it was hard for me to see exactly what she was doing with it. I stood there for a long time, watching her work.

  “If I don’t talk,” she said, “it’s going to be pretty quiet in here, huh?”

  She turned around, finally, and looked me in the eyes for the first time that day.

  “My mother killed herself. Did you know that?”

  I nodded. I remembered Mr. Marsh telling me that, on that very first day, before I had even seen Amelia.

  “Today’s the anniversary. Five years ago.”

  She still had the pencil in her hand. She twirled it in her fingers like a miniature baton.

  “Five years ago exactly, at one o’clock in the afternoon. Give or take a few minutes. I was in school when it happened.”

  She got up and went over to her dresser. She went through a stack of papers and drawings and pulled out a portfolio. I wasn’t about to tell her so, but this was the same portfolio I had looked through the night we had all broken into this house. It was the first time I had seen her drawings, the first time I had seen her face. I remembered there were some other drawings in there, too. Of an older woman. These were the same drawings I was about to see again.

  “This was her,” Amelia said, putting each drawing, one by one, onto the bed. Her mother sitting in a chair. Then outside, on a bench. “I was twelve years old then. She was in this institution they sent her to for a while. I got to go visit her.”

  I could see it now, in the drawings. The manicured lawn, the path running a straight line, in front of the bench. Everything in its place. These were some pretty damned excellent drawings if they were really done by a twelve-year-old.

  “I was so happy, because I knew she’d be coming home soon. Three months later…”

  She closed her eyes.

  “Three months later, she sealed up the garage and started the car. By the time I got home from school, she was dead. I wasn’t the one who found her. I mean, my brother found her. He came home first and she was. I mean, she was there in the car. In the garage. This was at our old house. Before we moved here. Anyway, there was no note. No nothing. Just… checkout time.”

  She started putting the drawings back into the folder. She didn’t look at me.

  “It wasn’t the first time she tried something like that. Did you know that women are twice as likely as men to try to commit suicide? But most of the time they don’t actually do it. Men are four times more likely to actually kill themselves.”

  She was talking a little too fast now. Like she didn’t want there to be any silence again.

  “I looked that up last night, because I wanted to try to understand what happened to you. I mean, I know the general story. I know they called you the Miracle Boy.”

  I saw one single tear on her face.

  “It’s been five years for me,” she said. “For you, it’s like what, nine years? In all that time, you never tried to…”

  She wiped the tear from her cheek, finally turned and faced me.

  “I mean, is this it? Are you seriously never going to talk to me? Ever?”

  I closed my eyes. Right there, at that moment, in Amelia’s bedroom… I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, and I told myself that this was what I had been waiting for. I had never had such a good reason to try before. All I had to do was just open up and let go of the silence. Just like those doctors had said, years ago. It was as true on this day as it had been then. There was no physical reason why I couldn’t speak. So all I had to do was…

  The seconds passed. A minute.

  “Some men came and took my father away,” she finally said. “About an hour ago. I don’t know where they were going. I don’t even know if they’re going to bring him back. Seriously… I mean, I thought it might be him when I heard you in the driveway.”

  I reached out to touch her. She turned away from me.

  “I am so freaked out right now, Michael. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Do you have any idea how much trouble my father is in these days? What if they-”

  She looked up.

  “God, is that him now?”

  She went to the window and looked down at the driveway. When I stepped behind her, I saw the long black car, then the three men all getting out at the same time. One from the driver’s door. Two men from the backseat. Then finally, a few seconds later, another man. Mr. Marsh. He blinked in the bright sunlight and straightened his shirt. His face was bright red.

  “Oh, fuck.” She turned and ran out of the room.

  I followed her. Down the steps. Through the front door. She passed right by her father and went for the driver of the car. She took a wild swing at him.

  “I’m calling the police, you fucking goons!”

  Mr. Marsh tried to grab her from behind while the driver fended off her blows with a big stupid grin on his face. He was wearing a fishing hat of all things, and Amelia finally managed to knock it off his head. The grin disappeared, and he raised his open right hand as if to give her a good slap. That’s when I caught up and threw myself right into the middle of it.

  One of the other men grabbed me by the collar. He was shorter than the other two men. He was ugly and his eyes looked half shut, and as he pulled my shirt tight around my neck, he put his face right up into mine.

  “Do you have a death wish, son?” he said. “Or are you just incredibly stupid?”

  “Let him go,” Mr. Marsh said.

  “I asked you a question,” he said to me.

  The third man was still on the other side of the car. He was tall, and he had a mustache that was too big for his face.

  “Let go of the kid,” he said, “so we can get the hell out of here.”

  The man with the sleepy eyes tightened his grip one more notch, enough to choke me. Then he pushed me away.

  The driver picked up his fishing hat, tipped it to us, and got in behind the wheel. The other two men got in back, and as the doors closed we could hear them already arguing. The car shot backward onto the street, then roared off. As it did, I got one more glance at the man in the backseat. Those sleepy eyes on the other side of that window, staring back at me.

  Not for the last time.

  The three of us kept standing there in the driveway. Amelia was crying now. Not wailing away, just softly crying in almost total silence. She wiped her face off. She went to her father and stood before him. He reached out to her, just as I had tried to do. She knocked his hand away.

  “You promised me,” she said. “You promised me you wouldn’t get into this kind of shit again.”

  Before he could even try to answer, she turned and went back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

  Mr. Marsh let out a long breath. He paced bac
k and forth on the driveway a few times. Slowly, like a much older man.

  “Look,” he finally said to me. “I know we started to talk about this the other day, but I need you to help me. Help us. Me and Amelia. Will you help us out? Please?”

  I rubbed my neck, where the fabric had left a raw crease in my skin.

  “I owe these people a lot of money, okay? I just… If you can just help me out here this one time…”

  He reached into his pocket and took out a small slip of paper.

  “I need you to go see somebody. Today. Nothing bad will happen, I promise. Just go see this man, okay? He’ll be expecting you. This is his address. It’s in Detroit.”

  I took the paper. I looked at the address.

  “You’ll know him when you see him,” he said. “They call him the Ghost.”

  He wasn’t more than forty miles away, this man who would change my life. I didn’t want to get on the expressway with my motorcycle yet, so I worked my way down the secondary streets to Grand River, then took that straight into the heart of the city. From block to block, I could see every social class. The landscaping thinning out, the buildings going from glass and steel to gray cinder blocks and iron bars.

  There were lots of stoplights. Lots of opportunities for me to change my mind. The lights kept turning green and I kept going forward. When I hit Detroit, I started to look at the street numbers. A couple more blocks and I knew I was close. I waited for a break in traffic, then swung the bike around to the other side of the street. The whole block reeked of desperation and wasted second chances. It was the west side of Detroit, just inside the border.

  I counted down the addresses. There was a dry cleaners, then a hair salon, then a store that appeared to sell both discount clothing and music and small appliances out of an impossibly small space. Then an empty storefront. It was hard to tell exactly where my target was, because not all the buildings had numbers above the door. I finally narrowed it down to a business called West Side Recovery. It was twice as wide as most of the other businesses, with windows that could have used a good cleaning a decade ago. There was a CLOSED sign hanging inside the glass door.

  I rechecked the address. I was sure this was it. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I knocked one more time, was about to turn and leave when the door finally opened. The man who stuck his head out was about sixty years old, maybe sixty-five. He was wearing a sweater vest, and he had reading glasses hanging from his neck. He had thin, white hair and a complexion so pale it looked like five minutes of direct sunlight would kill him. He blinked a few times as he gave me the once-over.