The Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “What exactly can you do?” the Ghost said. “Should we start with that?”

  I held imaginary lock picks in my hands and worked them together. That seemed to impress him about as much as me making balloon animals, but nevertheless he took me over to a workbench set up against the outside wall of the building. We had to work our way through a miniature city of paint cans, but when we got there I saw that he had some kind of lock-picking laboratory set up. There was a clear Lucite cylinder attached to the workbench with screws, and set into the cylinder was a key lock. He pulled the lock right out and slid off the top of the plug, exposing the pins. He put on his glasses and examined them, then pulled out one pin. There was a little chest of drawers sitting nearby. He opened up one of the drawers and replaced the pin with another, being careful to load the spring on top of it. He worked his way down the line, setting up his own custom configuration of pins. Hard or easy, or whatever. I had no idea. When he was done, he slid the top of the plug back on and replaced the plug in the clear cylinder. He started rummaging around on the workbench, looking for a set of picks, I was guessing. I took the leather case out of my back pocket and showed it to him.

  “You always carry those around?”

  I nodded.

  “If the police ever stopped you, you wouldn’t want them to have any doubts, huh? Make their life real easy?”

  He didn’t wait for me to field that one. Instead, he just gestured to the lock and took a step backward.

  “Whenever you’re ready, hotshot.”

  I took out a tension bar and diamond pick and got to work. It felt good to finally do something I knew how to do. I set the tension and felt for the first pin. As I did, I could sense him standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder. I could practically feel his breath.

  “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

  I kept going. Second pin, third pin, fourth pin, fifth pin, sixth pin. The lock sprung open, without me even having to go over them again. Apparently, these were straight block pins.

  “Okay, then. You can do an easy one. Hooray for you. Let’s make them a little harder.”

  I stepped aside as he slid the top off the plug and swapped out all of the pins. I could see the little notches on the new pins he was putting in. He struggled with the springs this time, bending down to his work until his face was just a few inches away.

  “If I could just see one goddamned thing…” he said under his breath. When he was done, he took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, and then stepped back. I took his place in front of the lock and went to work.

  This time, he held up his left arm and looked at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he said, “and counting. You’d better hurry.”

  I set the tension and felt for the pins.

  “Twenty seconds.”

  Ignore him, I told myself. Shut him right out of your head.

  “Thirty. We’re getting impatient here.”

  Set the pin, feel it catch. Just enough. Move on.

  “Forty seconds! You need to hurry!”

  All the way down the line. Keep that tension just right. Not too much. Don’t let him throw you. Don’t tense up. Just like that…

  “Fifty seconds! Are you kidding me?”

  Work my way down again, feel for that pin, feel for that little give, ever so slight.

  “One minute! This whole building will be crawling with cops soon!”

  I felt a line of sweat dripping down my back. An angry insect was buzzing away, somewhere in the weeds behind us.

  “They’re beating down the door! You idiot!”

  Another pin. Hold the tension. Not too hard.

  “Bam! Hear that? Bam!”

  I closed my eyes. I held myself completely still. I let up on the tension bar, one millionth of a millionth of an inch.

  “We’re totally fucked now! They’re all over the place!”

  Three more pins. Two more.

  “It’s too late! Run, you fool! Run!”

  One more. I felt it give. The whole thing turning. I pulled the tools out, and it took everything I had not to smack the Ghost right in his pale stupid fucking face.

  “That took a while,” he said, eyeing me coolly like he hadn’t spent the last minute and a half screaming at me. “I’ve never seen somebody hold a pick quite the way you do, either. I don’t know who the hell taught you to do it like that.”

  He was back to rummaging around on the workbench. He started a small avalanche of washers and nuts and bolts.

  “Of course, lock pickers are a dime a dozen these days. You can find them anywhere.”

  When he finally found what he was looking for, he picked it up and tossed it to me. It was a combination padlock, but not a cheap one.

  “Simple three-cam lock, right? What do you do with it?”

  I pulled the shackle out and started turning the dial, feeling for the sticking points. The usual routine, finding the last number and then using the number families to narrow down the possible combinations.

  The Ghost watched me as I did this. Last number 25, so start with 1, super-set the second numbers and start cranking them out.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I looked up at him. What do you think I’m doing?

  “You’re not seriously going to cheat the numbers, are you? You think you can get away with that on a good lock? They don’t use those patterns like they do on cheap pieces of shit, for one thing. For another thing… I mean, God damn, how much of an amateur are you, anyway? Don’t you have any sense of touch at all?”

  He didn’t wait for me to respond to that. Not that I had any answer. He grabbed the lock from my hand and started to spin the dial.

  “You have to feel it, okay? There’s no other way to do this. I mean, shit, if you can’t do that on a fucking padlock…”

  He took one quick glance at the dial. Then he put the lock near his left ear for a moment and kept turning. He closed his eyes.

  “Either you can feel it or you can’t. Okay? It’s that simple.”

  He opened his eyes and started spinning the dial in the opposite direction.

  “I can do this in my sleep, hotshot. I mean, literally. I can do this while I’m driving a car. While I’m talking on the phone. While I’m having sex.”

  He turned the dial a little more, stopped, changed direction one more time.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? I can do this while I’m not even thinking about it one little bit.”

  He pulled the shackle out and tossed the now open lock back to me.

  “Sit down here and work on it. When you can open it like a real boxman, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to lunch.”

  Boxman. That was the first time I heard the term. It rang in my ears as he left me there alone in that green-shaded back lot, in the middle of those great iron safes.

  A real boxman.

  The sun was going down when I finally left that place. I had the lock in my pocket. My first piece of homework was to keep spinning the dials until I could feel the cams lining up the right way. Until I could open the damned thing purely by touch, without cheating.

  I should have gone straight home to practice, but instead I rode back to the Marshes’ house. Every window was dark when I pulled into the driveway, but I could hear music coming from somewhere inside. I opened the front door and peeked inside. The stereo was blasting “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys. Mr. Marsh’s favorite band, I remembered. It was loud enough for a party, but the lights were all off, and I didn’t see anybody.

  I went into the living room. The big aquarium cast an eerie glow. Then I saw a thin line of light under the door to Mr. Marsh’s office. I went upstairs first. I opened Amelia’s door and flipped on the light. She still wasn’t there.

  I turned her light off and left. I went downstairs. There were a few seconds of silence as the song ended. Then another Beach Boys song came on. “You Still Believe in Me.” I went to the office door and pushed it open. The music got louder.


  The first thing I noticed was that the giant stuffed fish was gone. The second thing I noticed was that it wasn’t so much gone as just taken down from the wall and rammed through the window. The back half was still inside, the front half outside.

  The third thing I noticed was the desk chair, facing away from me. I saw an arm hanging down one side. I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for some sign of life.

  Then the chair turned. Mr. Marsh was slumped down with a drink in his other hand. He looked up at me without the slightest hint of surprise.

  “Good to see you,” he said. “Make yourself a drink.”

  I saw a legal pad on his desk. I grabbed it, along with a pen, and started writing. Where is Amelia?

  When I gave it to him, he held the pad out in front of him and then started tromboning it back and forth to make it come into focus.

  “She’s gone.”

  I took the pad back one more time. Where did she go?

  That one seemed to deflate him. He closed his eyes for a while. So long I thought he might have drifted off on me. Then he cleared his throat.

  “I sent her away. Somewhere safe. I think she wanted to call you, but… well, it’s kind of hard to do that, you know?”

  He drained the rest of his drink and then put his glass down on the desk. He did it carefully, like it was something that took every ounce of his strength and skill. I couldn’t help but remember the very first time I saw him sitting in that chair. The overtanned man in his tank top and shorts, with the perfect teeth, the flashy wristwatch, the fifty-dollar haircut. Lots of attitude and big words then, but today he was so scared he could barely keep his hands from shaking.

  “If I talk to her, I’ll send her your, you know… I mean, I’ll put in a good word for you. I’ll tell her you’re helping me. And that she’ll be able to come home soon.”

  I walked over to the great tail fin of the fish. The way it was stuck there in the shattered window, it looked like it was trying to escape this place. A completely understandable feeling.

  “Besides, you need to focus right now,” Mr. Marsh said. “I need your absolute best effort here. Are you with me?”

  I didn’t even look at him. I turned away and walked to the door.

  “They will kill me.”

  I stopped.

  “I need you to believe that, Michael. They will kill me for sure. Or if they think I’m more useful to them alive… they may hurt Adam. End his football career.”

  His voice was flat, devoid of all emotion.

  “Or Amelia…”

  No. Don’t even say it.

  “I don’t even want to think about what they might do to her.”

  This is not happening, I thought. This is worse than a bad dream.

  “It’s a terrible thing to put on you,” he said, “but I don’t have a choice.”

  He didn’t say anything else to me.

  He didn’t have to.

  Twenty-two

  Ohio

  September 2000

  The Ghost had made it clear to me. I knew the rule. When the red pager goes off, you call the number as quickly as a human being can pick up a phone and call a number.

  “That was fast,” the voice said. A rough voice that I knew I’d heard before. “Good boy. Now write this down because I’m only gonna say it once. We need you to get yourself to Cleveland. We’ll be down there on Friday morning, bright and early, like around eight o’clock. So you’ve got what, two and a half days from now to get there. Here’s the address…”

  I wrote down the number and the street name.

  “It’s a bar. Restaurant, whatever. Just go on inside and hang out until we get there. Oh, and one more little detail. Things are kinda hot right now, so do not fly there. You got that? Do not get on a fucking airplane. Are we crystal clear?”

  He actually seemed to be waiting for me to say something.

  “Can you press a goddamned button or something to let me know you’re there? Once for yes, twice for no, how’s that?”

  I pressed one of the buttons. One time.

  “There you go. We figured out how to communicate. So I’ll see you in Ohio. Getting there won’t be any more fun for me than you, believe me. So don’t bitch at me about it.”

  He hung up. I looked at the address on the pad. I tore it off, put it in my pocket, and started writing on the next page.

  I need to go. Back in a few days.

  I put the pad on the table. As soon as somebody came back here looking for me, I knew they’d find it.

  I did a quick packing job. Then I hit the road.

  ____________________

  Ohio was over two thousand miles away. A hell of a trip, but I didn’t figure I had much choice. I hit Las Vegas by the time the sun was going down. I was just past St. George, Utah, when I stopped for the night. I checked into a little motel, paid cash for a room, and fell asleep on the bed with my clothes still on.

  The sun was hot on my face when I finally woke up. Galaxies of dust floating in that one ray of light that shone through the gap in the curtains. I got up, grabbed some breakfast, and hit the road again.

  I made it through Utah that day, then through Colorado. I could feel my hands going numb. The road was dead straight by the time I hit Nebraska. I kept the bike between the lines and just rode and rode. This is a test, I thought. It’s impossible to do this, but they want me to do it anyway.

  I stopped at another motel outside of Grand Island. It was hard to walk when I got off the bike that night. I paid for the room, took a shower, and tried to sleep. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t close my eyes. I sat up, turned on the light, and started drawing. I had all of my stuff with me, of course. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere without it. So I drew myself sitting there in the bed, in that little motel room so close to the road I could feel the walls shake every time a truck went by. Another chapter in my ongoing story for Amelia. Michael on his way to Ohio to do God knows what.

  In the morning, as I was packing up again, I heard the blue pager go off. The guys from New York? Did they somehow know I was already halfway there? Thinking maybe I could swing by and do a second job on the same trip?

  I picked up the phone right there in the motel room and dialed the number. It didn’t even finish the first ring before the man on the other end picked up and started talking.

  “Michael, you have to listen to me.”

  It was Banks. First yellow, then green. Now he had the blue pager number.

  “Time is running out, my friend. You need to face reality. We’re almost past the point where I’m going to be able to help you.”

  I looked out the window. I had a sudden feeling that I was being watched, at that very moment, right here in the middle of Nebraska. That the door would come busting down and a dozen men would jump into the room and yell at me to lie down on the floor with my hands behind my head.

  “This might be your last chance. Are you listening to me?”

  But no, he wouldn’t call me first. If he knew where I was, he’d just come get me. He wouldn’t bother with the phone call.

  “Michael. Don’t hang up. Okay? Just stay with me here. I want to help you.”

  They can trace this. I’m sitting here in a motel room and they can trace this call.

  I hung up the phone and got out of there.

  I hit some heavy traffic around Chicago. Then I lost another hour in the time zone change. It was after midnight when I finally got to Cleveland. I stayed at my third motel in a row, this one by the airport. I stared at the ceiling for a long time, wondering what the next day would bring.

  When the morning came, I got myself together and rode over to the address I’d been given. It wasn’t eight o’clock yet, but I could see the long black sedan in the parking lot. The same car I’d seen before, back in Michigan.

  I parked the bike next to it and was about to go inside. That’s when Sleepy Eyes came out the door.

  “Welcome to the mistake by the fucking lake,” he said. “What
took you so long?”

  I pointed at my watch.

  “Yeah, yeah. Save it. Let’s go.”

  He went back inside and got the other two men.

  “The kid is here,” the first man said, looking me up and down. “In the flesh.” He wasn’t actually wearing a fishing hat today, but he’d always be Fishing Hat to me.

  “How was the trip?” the second man said. Tall Mustache. It had been a year since I had last seen these guys. They didn’t look any different at all. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  Sleepy Eyes opened up one of the back doors for me. As he did that, the other two men got in front. Sleepy Eyes shook his head and muttered darkly to himself. I could see that the wonderful team chemistry in this crew hadn’t changed, either.

  The morning sun was in our eyes as we drove down the expressway. So we were going east. Through Cuyahoga Heights, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights. A lot of Heights out here in the suburbs of Cleveland. It was a warm pale blue morning in the Midwest, like the days I knew when I lived in Michigan. I didn’t want to be here. Not like this.

  “So let me ask you something,” Sleepy Eyes said, tapping my arm.

  I turned to look at him.

  “Do you know how far we had to drive down here, from Detroit?”

  “Oh God,” Tall Mustache said. “Here we go.”

  “I know you just rode across the whole fucking country, but hell, you were on a bike. That’s different.”

  “Just knock it off,” Tall Mustache said.

  “So here’s my question,” Sleepy Eyes said, ignoring the other man. “How come it’s always me who has to sit in the fucking backseat? Can you answer that for me, please?”

  “You can’t drive,” Tall Mustache said, “because you lost your license, remember? And it wouldn’t make any fucking sense for you to sit here in the front, because you’re like a foot shorter than me.”

  “A foot is twelve inches. I am not twelve inches shorter than you.”