Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “You’re not in charge here, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Of course not. You’re way too young.”

  He slapped his hand on top of the safe I was sitting next to.

  “Well,” he said. “Maybe I should let you get back to, uh …”

  There was a whole world in the space between the words, as he looked from one safe to the next.

  “Back to work here, huh?”

  He backed away one step.

  “I’ll stop by again. Maybe I’ll catch the owner next time. Your name was …”

  I didn’t move.

  He raised his right hand, as if to grab my name from the air. “I’ll get that next time, too. Right? Until then …”

  He stood there nodding to himself for a while. Then finally turned to leave.

  “See you later. Have a good day.”

  Then he left. I would have let the Ghost know about the visit, but I swear, I completely forgot about it because of the other strange thing that happened that same afternoon. The Ghost was still gone, and I was back in my chair, feeling especially frustrated because I still wasn’t getting anywhere. That’s when I heard the beeping noise.

  I sat up and looked around. It was just loud enough to hear, a constant string of beeps. I tried to ignore it and go back to the safe, but the sound kept distracting me. I got up and looked around the backyard, heard it getting a little louder when I went down the hallway, louder yet when I got into the back room. There were only about seven thousand items in the room, so I had to narrow it down gradually, until I came to a shoebox on the desk. When I opened it, the beeping doubled in volume.

  Now, you have to remember, this was 1999. Not every single damned person in the world had a cell phone yet. Some people still had pagers. I don’t think I’d ever actually held one, until I picked up that pager from the shoebox. It was still beeping away like crazy. There was a little screen on top, with ten bright little red numbers. A phone number, I assumed.

  Before I could even think about what to do with it, the pager stopped beeping. I put it back in the box with the others. There were five in total. All of them black, but each with a piece of tape on it, in different colors. Red, white, yellow, blue, green.

  The Ghost finally came back about an hour later. I picked up the box and showed him the pager that had gone off. It was the one with the red tape on it. He grabbed it from me and read the number. I didn’t think it would have been possible for him to get any paler than he already was, but it happened. He ran over to the phone and called the number, waving me away when he saw me watching him. I went back to the safes.

  When he came back out a few minutes later, the Ghost looked like he had seen a ghost. “I’ve got company coming over,” he said. “So you’d better get the hell out of here.”

  I got on the bike and started for home. It felt strange to be out of there in the middle of the day. I drove by Amelia’s house. Just because. The grass looked so long now you could have made hay out of it. Which I’m sure the Lake Sherwood neighbors were real thrilled about.

  There was another car in the driveway today. A red BMW. It looked vaguely familiar to me. I could see somebody sitting in the driver’s seat. I sat there and watched for a while, waiting for something to happen. Finally, the driver got out of the car. It was Zeke. Good old Zeke.

  He was holding something as he walked to the door. A red rose? Yes. A single red rose. He went to the door and left it on the mat. He reached into his back pocket and took out a piece of paper and put it down next to the rose. A heartfelt letter, no doubt. Maybe an overwrought love poem.

  He didn’t knock on the door. Meaning he must have known that Amelia was gone. Hell, maybe he made this same trip every day now. Maybe this was a ritual for him.

  As he came back to the car, he saw me sitting on my motorcycle. I flipped my visor down and took off. I didn’t bother to see if he was following me.

  Then when I was close to home—when I was about to make that last turn onto Main Street—that’s when I saw the flash of red in my rearview mirrors. I turned around and saw the BMW convertible, closing fast.

  It was him.

  I made the turn and took off down Main Street. If you know anything about motorcycles, you know that even a midsized bike will out-accelerate anything on four wheels. I left him far behind me, pulled off and waited a while, then looped back into town.

  After so many empty days … with no sight of Amelia. No luck with the safes. So much time frustrated and alone, with nothing to show for it except this. I avoided getting run over by Amelia’s ex-boyfriend. That’s it.

  I didn’t think he’d be waiting for me. I mean, really. But as I took the turn off Commerce Road, there was his car, parked at the gas station. He came out in a blur and surprised me. I gunned it down Main Street again, but it’s not like it was an open road or anything. One little bobble and I would have ended up on somebody’s hood or plastered all over the sidewalk.

  He was right behind me as both vehicles came to the railroad bridge. I slowed down just enough to avoid the embankment. Zeke slowed down just enough to avoid death, but not enough to avoid the sickening sound of the entire left side of his car being scraped away on the concrete. Sparks flew and the car came wobbling out of the turn, air hissing out of his left front tire.

  I paused for one brief moment, watching the car finally stop a few yards away from the liquor store. I pulled the bike into the parking lot and sat there, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

  The driver’s side door opened. Zeke came out, looking unsteady on his feet. There was a thin line of blood running down the left side of his face. When he saw me sitting there on the bike, he found his legs and he came at me like a bullet. I hopped off the bike, threw off my helmet, and met him somewhere in the middle, ducking under his wild swing and then waiting for him to try a few more. He finally clipped me over the eye, but that was good, it was beautiful, because I wanted him to hit me. After everything that had happened, I wanted to bleed a little bit and to mix my blood with his.

  He swung again, but I was already inside his reach. I nailed him in the chin with an uppercut and then in the stomach and then the best one of all—on the side of his stupid fucking wealthy ponytailed head.

  I stood there waiting for him to get up. He didn’t. I turned around and went into the liquor store. Uncle Lito was standing by the front door, looking out through the glass. His face was bright red.

  “Who the hell was that?” he said. “And since when did you start hitting people?”

  I went into the back room. The same back room where I had spent so many hours as a kid. Where I had first taken apart a lock and figured out how it worked. I sat in my old chair and took out the safe lock the Ghost had given me. My heart was racing. I could hear a siren in the distance.

  Chaos. Noise. The voices screaming in my head.

  I turned the dial to the right. I felt what was going on inside. I heard it. In some far corner of my mind I could see it. I turned the dial back to the left. Then to the right.

  The sirens were getting louder.

  I need this. I need this.

  The heartache, the misery, the loneliness, the pain, the eight-year-old boy still living inside me, the only one who can do this.

  I could feel it. I could feel the slightest touch of metal on metal in that lock now.

  So what? Fuck this, I thought. This doesn’t matter. I need the real thing.

  I need the real thing because I know what’s waiting for me there.

  So I went right back outside and got on the bike. A police car was on the scene now. Another police car was pulling up to join the first. I pulled out onto the street and gunned it. Going too fast, weaving in and out of traffic, somehow managing to keep it together and not crack myself up on the way down Grand River. These same miles I’d been riding every single day. I knew it would be different this time.

  I knew it.

  I got to the store. I parked on the street. L
et someone steal the motorcycle, I thought. I don’t care. The Ghost appeared at the door, on his way out it looked like. Done for the day, but then he saw me. This man who had never once seemed to take the slightest interest in how I was doing, he stopped me and asked me what the hell was wrong with me. Why I looked like I was out of my fucking head. I pushed past him and went through the store, throwing things out of my way in the darkness.

  I went to the safes. I sat in the chair and pulled it up to the safe named Erato. The Ghost’s favorite. I leaned my head against the cold face and felt my heart pounding in my chest.

  Quiet now. Everybody quiet. I have to listen.

  Quiet quiet quiet.

  That’s when I heard it. The sound, like someone breathing. Steady but shallow.

  Spin a few times. Park at 0. Go to the contact area.

  The sound was coming from inside the safe.

  Park at 3. Go to the contact area.

  There was somebody inside the safe. Suffocating.

  Park at 6. Go to the contact area.

  If I didn’t open it in time …

  Park at 9. Go to the contact area.

  Then he would die.

  Park at 12.

  He would run out of air.

  Go to the …

  He would die inside the safe and stay there forever.

  … contact area. It feels different now. It feels shorter.

  I parked at 15. The contact area back to normal.

  18. Normal.

  21. Normal.

  24. Boom. There it is again.

  I got 6. I got 24.

  You have to hurry. You have to get him out of there right now.

  27. 30. I kept going. Parking at each three spot. Testing. Feeling. I worked my way through, got my three rough numbers. I went back and narrowed down each one until I had 5, 25, 71.

  I cleared the dial and started cranking. The Ghost appeared behind me.

  “Easy,” he said. “You don’t have to go so fast. Just get it right.”

  I kept working through the combinations, faster and faster.

  “Relax, will you? You can work on the speed later.”

  I’m ignoring you, I thought. You are not even here. It’s just me and this big metal box.

  The air is gone. He can’t survive this.

  The sweat was running down my back now. I dialed left three times to 71, right two times to 25, then left until the dial was finally sitting at 5. As soon as I grabbed the handle, I could already feel it.

  It might be too late. He might already be dead in there.

  Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. That’s how much time had passed since that day.

  Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. I pulled the handle and the door swung open.

  The next day, Amelia came home.

  Twenty-four

  Michigan

  September 2000

  *

  It felt strange to be back in the state of Michigan. I never thought I’d be able to come back here, and with every passing mile I kept wondering if I had made a huge mistake. Still, I kept going. This sudden unexpected chance to see Amelia one more time, even for just a moment … it was more than I could resist.

  I rode through Milford first. It didn’t look much different. Until I got to the bend in the road and I got my first big surprise. The Flame was gone. In its place was a generic-looking family restaurant now, the kind of place you’d go after church on Sunday. More importantly, the liquor store was gone, too. Replaced by a wine store, of all things. Not quite as upscale as Julian’s, but still. On another day, it would have made me laugh.

  I didn’t know if Uncle Lito would still be in the same house. I mean, if the liquor store was gone … he could be anywhere now.

  I made the turn into the little alley that ran along the wall of the building, back to the house. I didn’t see the old two-toned Grand Marquis there. I parked the bike and walked up to the front of the house. I peeked through the window. I saw the same table there, the same wooden chairs. The same threadbare couch.

  I took out the tools and did a quick job on the front door. One of the first locks I had practiced on, way back when. Today it didn’t take me more than a minute.

  When I was inside, I was greeted by that same familiar smell of cigar smoke and loneliness. I walked in through the house, through the front room and kitchen, back to my old bedroom. There were piles of laundry on the bed. Otherwise it was exactly the same. It felt so strange to be back here.

  After all of the things I had been through … the calendar said only a year had passed, but to me it was a lifetime.

  I came back out to the front room. I paged through all of the newspapers on the table. The racing forms. I had remembered my uncle saying on more than one occasion, when he was done with the liquor store he’d spend every day at the racetrack. That’s probably where he was today.

  But I could see it wasn’t as simple as that. It wasn’t just a man retiring to do what he always wanted to do. There were plenty of bills on the table. Collection notices and threatening letters. There were three new bottles of prescription medicine, too. Medicine I knew he wasn’t taking when I was still living here.

  Then something else caught my eye. I went over to the kitchen counter. There, next to the pile of dirty dishes, was a cell phone.

  That was a surprise in itself, but then it also made me wonder why he didn’t have it with him. I mean, why get a cell phone if you’re just going to leave it at home?

  I turned it on and saw that it was fully charged. I checked the call history. It was empty. Not one single call coming in or going out.

  I checked the address book. There was one entry.

  BANKS.

  I turned the phone off and put it in my pocket. One of two things happened here, I thought. Banks gave this phone to my uncle so he could call him if I ever came home. So he could have me taken into custody for my own good. I could see him selling my uncle on that one.

  Or else he gave it to my uncle so that my uncle could give it to me. So I could call Banks myself. Either way, it made me feel suddenly very vulnerable. I went to the front window and looked outside. Banks could be out there right now, I thought. Watching me.

  I went out to my bike, scanning in every direction. Looking for someone walking by on the street. Or a man sitting behind the wheel of a car, maybe reading a newspaper. The way he had done it before, back when he was watching West Side Recovery.

  I dug out the bundle of money Sleepy Eyes had given me that very morning. I went back inside and put it on the kitchen counter, where the cell phone had been. Remembering that old coffee can that had sat next to that register in the liquor store for all those years. HELP OUT THE MIRCLE BOY. With the yellowed newspaper clipping next to it.

  Here you go, Uncle Lito. Just don’t lose it at the track.

  ______

  As I got to the stoplight at the end of town, a police cruiser pulled up next to me. I could feel myself being examined. I didn’t look back at them. When the light turned green I took off, waiting for the siren to come on, already planning where I’d go if I needed to make a break for it. But it didn’t happen.

  I rode east. Those same four miles I knew so well. The most important four miles of my life. There were more new houses being built, in a spot that had once been an empty field. Each one bigger than the next, stacked almost on top of each other, using up every inch of land. It was still the same road, though, and I knew exactly where I was going. I could have done it blindfolded.

  When I got to her subdivision, I saw a dozen cars parked in the driveway and spilling out onto the street. A party of some sort was going on. Maybe for Amelia? Was I going to walk right into the middle of it? Talk about a surprise party.

  I parked my bike on the street, took off my helmet, and went to the front door. I rang the doorbell twice, but nobody came to the door. So I went around back.

  There was a pool there now. An honest-to-God in-ground swimming pool in the very spot where
I had started digging. There was a white fence around the whole thing. Tables and chairs everywhere. Green tablecloths and flowers. Forty or fifty people all stood around with plastic glasses of white wine. I didn’t recognize anyone.

  They started to notice me, one by one. I just stood there. Finally, the back door opened and Mr. Marsh came out, a bottle of wine in each hand. He looked good, I’ll say that much. He was obviously back to his suntanned, king-of-the-world self. He stopped when he realized that everyone was staring at something. He followed the invisible arrow until he finally spotted me. He processed this information for the next two seconds, doing a heroic job of not dropping his wine bottles.

  “Michael,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  He handed off the wine bottles and came over to me, turning me by the shoulder and half pushing me back around to the front of the house.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said, “but I thought … I mean … how are you?”

  Such sincerity, I thought. It brings a tear to my eye.

  “We’re having a little party here, as you can see. I finally opened up that second health club. Now I’m working on the third.”

  We finally stopped walking when we were in the driveway. Away from the party. Away from anyone who could hear us.

  “Listen,” he said, “I know I owe you a lot. I mean, I don’t know if saying thank you is enough. But thank you. Okay? You gave me the chance to get out from under those guys. I got totally paid up and everything’s good now. They’re not going to bother me anymore. Or anybody in my family.”

  That might be true, I thought, but for reasons you’d never guess.

  “You remember Jerry Slade, right? My old partner? He kinda disappeared off the face of the earth. I never did see him again. Just goes to show you. You gotta stick around and face the music, you know what I mean? Just stay positive until things start to go your way.”

  You are so full of shit, I thought. If you weren’t Amelia’s father …

  “But I don’t know if you’re supposed to be here, you know? I mean, I don’t know if that’s a good thing, is all I’m saying. But it is great to see you. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll tell Amelia, I promise.”