Meaner Things

by David Anderson

  I leaned forward. “Jeff says there’s no point, as the building’s virtually empty. No members of the public can be admitted, the tenants have almost all gone home, and the vault is locked. He says the guards have a room up on the third floor, a kitchen with a coffee machine and a locker for their ordinary clothes; that sort of place. The night guards hang out there.”

  I paused and let that sink in. Charlie seemed to be in deep thought. “With no-one watching them, the video cameras are as good as blind,” he finally said.

  “That’s right,” I agreed. “The cameras are recording all night, but the monitors aren’t being watched and the tapes aren’t reviewed afterwards either, not unless there’s some reason to.”

  “Such as a break-in,” Charlie said.

  “Such as a break-in. But all we have to do is force a simple lock on the security room door and take the tapes with us when we leave. Voila! No more video evidence!”

  “What about the older tapes? Like the ones of you pirouetting around in the hallways?” Charlie persisted, determined to rain on my parade.

  “No problem,” I replied, “We can take those too. They keep them in a big cabinet along the back wall. With any luck, they’ll be marked with the month and day.”

  “How the hell did you get all that out of Jeff?” Charlie asked.

  “Impressed, eh? I knew you would be. It was amazing. Jeff D. would hardly shut up once I got him going. I almost skipped home afterwards, I can tell you.”

  “Good work,” Charlie admitted.

  I grinned. “Just the gift of the gab, really. Nothing to it.” I reached into my briefcase and pulled out some notes. “I’ve also figured out how we’re going to get inside the building.”

  “Through the garage, right?”

  “Right, it beats the front door, that’s for sure. It would take a small tank to get in that way and all we’d do would be set off an alarm and have the police on our tails in five minutes flat.”

  I consulted the notes on my lap and pulled out a diagram. “But the garage entrance is perfectly possible. Here’s what we do: we – that is you, Charlie – construct a homemade remote to trigger the garage door from the outside. Can you do that?”

  “Sure, it’s easy. Well, relatively. Garage doors like that, the older ones anyway, operate on one of one thousand and twenty-four radio frequencies. It’s programmed into the circuitry on a series of twelve switches. All I need to do is take an electronic scanner and run through all the possible frequencies until I find the right one.”

  “How long would that take?” I asked.

  “At most, about thirty minutes. Once I know the frequency I can put a remote control together, using an RF transmitter and circuit boards. Then we’ll be able to open the garage anytime we want.”

  “What about video cameras?” Emma said.

  “There’s one over the garage door,” I replied. “But that’s the beauty of what I was saying earlier – there’s no-one watching them, and we can take the tapes before we go.”

  “We’ll be like ghosts in the night,” Charlie said.

  “Evaporating like mist in the morning,” I replied, catching the poetic mood.

  *

  I approached the garage entrance at my usual snail’s pace, giving it a good look as I passed. Andy was inside, but I didn’t try to catch his eye. I was on foot today and it would have looked strange if I’d tried to engage him in conversation.

  I went over what Charlie and Emma and I had discussed last night. My plan for entrance to the building depended upon learning the frequency of the garage door opener. Which, in turn, meant one of us – and it would probably have to be Charlie – loitering around on this street, after dark, for up to thirty minutes while fiddling about with a suspicious-looking device. Even then, he’d have to trigger the door a few times to make sure that he’d nailed the frequency down precisely. I had driven out of the building at night, after hours, and knew the racket the big metal garage door made as it clattered up slowly and then clattered all the way down again equally slowly.

  But we had no other option as far as I could see. We had to be certain that the mechanism, like the rest of the equipment in the building, was an old one. A newer model would have a rolling frequency transmitter which automatically changed the code after every use. That would be considerably harder for Charlie to crack. He wasn’t sure that he could do it.

  I looked around me and decided that it could have been a lot worse. The street was quiet and in the middle of the night it would be virtually dead. The garage exit was far enough away from the main building for the opening and closing of the metal door not to be heard by the night-time security guards. With decent luck, Charlie should be able to do his business here uninterrupted.

  On the night of the heist we’d enter via the garage and get into the building itself through the alternative door, the one that opened with an ordinary key rather than a swipe card. That would get us into the building as far as the elevators, which in turn would get us down to the vault level. So far, so good.

  This was provided there weren’t any alarms or motion detectors I had overlooked, and the night guards stayed in the kitchen room while we were entering and exiting. For all I knew, they might be fond of roller-skating up and down the corridors or skateboarding down the back stairs. More seriously, it would be normal for guards to have some sort of nightly ritual of patrolling the building, even if it was just to stretch their legs.

  Then there was the possibility of bumping into some very late-working tenant, or of a guard being called at some ungodly hour to open the garage gate for a tenant who had just flown in from another time zone.

  In some ways, it was all a game of chance in which the best I could do was increase the odds considerably in our favour.

  Ironically, the safest place in the building for us would be the vault level itself. With the vault’s time lock engaged, there could be no reason at all for a tenant or even a guard to go down to the vault floor at night. The guards all knew that opening the vault at any time other than between seven a.m. and seven p.m. would send an automatic alert to the security company, which in turn would alert the police. Under the assumption that a guard was being forced to open the vault, the cops would come charging in, guns raised.

  That was a scenario I didn’t want to dwell on. On the other hand, it did mean that there would be zero traffic on the vault level from seven p.m. every Friday to seven a.m. the following Monday. That left us a lovely sixty hours window. Now I just had to figure out how to get into the vault, then into the safe deposit boxes.

  So far I had no clue how to do it without getting caught.

  *

  “I need to speak to Boylan right away,” I insisted. I stood outside the vault door, where my cell phone would work, and repeated the demand for the third time.

  “Mr. Boylan is in a meeting.” A woman’s voice, cultured, assured. Probably his personal secretary.

  “Then you must get him out and tell him to come down to the vault immediately,” I said.

  “Impossible, sir.”

  I explained my situation to her and she finally agreed to inform Boylan. I clicked the phone shut and allowed myself the ghost of a smile.

  Ten minutes later Boylan arrived. He rushed up to me, his face flushed and agitated. I was about to make things considerably worse for him.

  “What seems to be the matter?” he demanded, even though I’d already explained it on the phone.

  I held up the stub of metal. “My key broke in the lock,” I said, “And I must get into my safe deposit box before closing time today.” It was Friday and already four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “That’s impossible,” he replied, “Our keys don’t break.”

  Well, they do when Charlie files the end of the stem down and I twist it really hard against the lock, I felt like saying.

  “I think I twisted it too hard,” I said, “It was rather stiff.” This made no sense, of course, but it would do.

  �
�Show me.”

  I buzzed back into the vault again and showed Boylan my safe deposit box. A sharp sliver of broken key was sticking out of the keyhole. He looked from it to my hand and back again, as if deciding I must be some kind of Hulk in disguise.

  “I’ll have it fixed first thing on Monday morning,” he said.

  “Sorry, that’s not good enough,” I replied sternly. “I have some items in my box that I simply must have access to today.” I added for effect, “My business depends on it.”

  “That’s impossible; I can’t get our locksmith that quickly.”

  Our locksmith. Good, that’s what Charlie had reckoned. Every vault has its own locksmith, he’d said.

  “I repeat: you must release my property from your box before closing time today.” I hoped the legal-sounding terms would conjure up an image of a nasty lawsuit in Boylan’s mind. I hardened my voice even more. “If you do not comply, my business losses will be substantial and I will be forced to hold you liable.”

  His hand went up to his hair in an involuntary motion as he thought about what to do. His lips compressed and I knew I’d won.

  “I’ll call our locksmith and tell him it’s an emergency situation,” he said.

  *

  The locksmith must not have been busy at all as he arrived thirty minutes later, expensive-looking toolbox in hand. He looked lean and fit for his age, which must have been around early sixties. He greeted Boylan with a curt nod.

  “This is Peter Davenport,” Boylan explained to me, “He handles all our locks for us.”

  I shook his free hand and explained the situation to him. As soon as I mentioned the broken key he frowned and I sensed I was skating on thin ice.

  “These keys simply didn’t break, Mr. Robie,” he said.

  I looked him straight in the eye. “This one did.”

  His cheeks flushed and I thought he was going to challenge me head on. He obviously smelled a rat. Then he seemed to consciously relax.

  “OK, well I’m here now and it shouldn’t take too long to fix. As there are contents already in the box you’ll have to be with me as I open it.”

  “Of course,” I replied. This was exactly what I wanted.

  We buzzed back inside and I chose a position past my box and further into the vault where I could get a good look at exactly what he was doing.

  “Will it be difficult?” I said.

  “Not at all. I installed all these boxes years ago. I could take them apart and put them back together again blindfolded.”

  “They’ve lasted well,” I said.

  “Well enough,” he replied. “Though I’ve upgraded some of them, of course.”

  “Really? How does that work?”

  He gave me a look, as if deciding how much to say. “It’s like this. The boxes are perfectly secure, you need have no worries about that. But naturally there have been a few design improvements over the years since I put these ones in.”

  “Design improvements? What like?”

  “It’s a bit technical.”

  I really wanted this information and thought about pressing him harder, then decided against it. I daren’t be too nosey or he might simply clam up.

  He opened the fancy toolbox and took out a small, powerful-looking drill. “I sometimes have to do this when tenants forget their combination,” he said.

  “Doesn’t that ruin it?” I replied, feigning alarm.

  He plugged the drill into the wall. “Only way to open a box other than use the lock is to drill through the door,” he replied. “Yeah, it ruins it, but I’ll put in a nice shiny new one.”

  “Does it take long?” I looked at my watch as if in a hurry.

  “Not long,” he replied, grinning for the first time, “Just a couple of hours.”

  *

  He was exaggerating, but not by much. About ninety minutes later he was done and the door of my box came off. I stepped forward and removed a small cloth bag with heavy, roundish contents that jiggled about a bit. They were child’s miniature marbles, but Davenport would assume they were diamonds. I placed the bag very carefully into my briefcase.

  “Thanks,” I said, putting plenty of affable relief into my voice. “You’ve just saved my business. It was vital I get those today.”

  “I’ll put a new one on now,” he replied. He took a new door out of his toolbox, pulled off its clear plastic wrapping and handed it to me.

  “Take a look,” he said. “Remember what I was saying about upgrading? See the inner faceplate here?” He pointed at the inside of the door. “It covers the brass deadbolt and the guts of the lock. The one on your old door was thin grey plastic. This new one is hardened steel. Makes the lock mechanism so much sturdier overall.”

  “Nice,” I replied, peering at it closely. “Installed many of these, have you?”

  “I do the tenants’ boxes as opportunity arises. The ones over there are all old style.” He nodded towards the Zheng side.

  “Too time-consuming, I guess?”

  He shrugged. “They say it would be too disruptive. Expensive too, of course.” He turned to my gaping box and began to attach the new door. I glanced at my watch. It was coming up to six thirty.

  It didn’t take him long to complete the job and by six forty-five he was done.

  “Just one more thing to do,” he said. He removed the inner faceplate with a screwdriver and loosened something behind the dials.

  “Choose your new three-character combination now, please.”

  “Sure,” I replied, and picked what I’d used before, namely E-M-A.

  He tightened the mechanism and replaced the faceplate.

  “This one should last a lifetime,” he said, handing me a new key.

  I picked up the old door from the floor. “Mind if I keep this as a souvenir?”

  “It’s wrecked after all that drilling, but go ahead,” he replied. “It’s no use to me.” He began packing up his tools.

  “Thank you very, very much indeed, Mr. Davenport. You’ve been an absolute Godsend.” This time I didn’t have to inject any false sincerity.

  17.

  BREAKTHROUGH

  “Come inside,” Charlie said. He’d called me as soon as I’d left the Zheng Building for the day and insisted I come over. I’d wanted to know why, but he wouldn’t tell me.

  He led me down his back hall to a door I’d walked past but never been through.

  “I’ve something in my bedroom I’d like you to see,” he said, and opened the door.

  I walked inside and immediately wished that humans had the ability to close up their nostrils and switch off their sense of smell. I scanned around for a window to open and saw one at the other end of the room, its sill chock-full of little coloured bottles and what looked like a collection of ornamental owls. To get there I’d have to tread my way across a floor strewn with shoes, soiled underwear, Styrofoam cups, scraps of paper, rolls of tape, and various other detritus.

  “What am I supposed to be seeing?” I asked.

  Charlie pushed past me and went over to the far wall, and pointed to something high above his equally chaotic desk. There, in the corner where the walls met the ceiling, was a small white electronic box, its green eye winking benignly.

  “Recognise it?”

  I nodded. “A motion detector. It’s the same make as the one in the vault, isn’t it?”

  He grinned. “That’s right. I’ve been testing ways to get past it.”

  “That must be why you’ve been so baggy-eyed lately. Lack of sleep due to failure to get into your bedroom.”

  Charlie ignored my feeble quip and sat in his desk chair, wheeling around in it from side to side like a kid. “Guess what?” he said, giving the chair another spin.

  “What?”

  “I’ve beaten it. It took a while but I figured it out. Simple really.”

  “OK. Tell me how.”

  “Better still, I’ll show you.” He reached up and turned something on. The motion detector started to peep and its
green eye turned ruby red.

  “Quick, we have fifteen seconds to get out of here,” he said, pushing me out the door and closing it behind us. “Let me explain,” he began. “The motion detector they use in the vault, same as the one in here, is actually two devices not one.”

  “It’s got both infrared and radar, right? I’ve read up on it.”

  Charlie nodded. “Good work, but you’re not a geek, Mike, and never will be. It takes an expert like me to figure out this stuff.” I could almost see his little chest puffing out with pride.

  “Here’s how it works,” he continued. “This will be a bit technical for you, but try to keep up.”

  I tried to look like the eager student. Maybe he’d get to the point quicker that way.

  He actually began counting out points on his fingers. “Firstly, there’s the passive infrared technology, which is called PIR in the trade. It gets triggered by sudden changes in the amount of infrared heat in the vault. Because temperatures can alter frequently in a confined space, such as when lights are turned on and off, it’s calibrated to detect changes in the range emitted by the human body.”

  “So it ignores minor heat changes?”

  “That’s right. Which means it’s theoretically possible to trick these devices by moving extremely slowly into and out of the vault.”

  “I know; I watched the MythBusters video on YouTube. Not much use for our purposes though, is it?”

  “None at all. And, secondly, there’s the other part of it, the Doppler radar. It actually emits microwaves and maps the room based on the pattern that reflects off the walls, door, safe deposit boxes, and so forth. When someone moves through the room, and disrupts that pattern, the alarm goes off.”

  “Sounds pretty daunting. In fact, it sounds foolproof.”

  “It did to me too, until I figured out the fatal flaw.”

  “Which is?”

  He leaned forward and raised an index finger. “Both parts have to register an intruder simultaneously.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s like this: these devices are great, but they give a lot of false alarms. Can you imagine false alarms in the vault during the night? They’d have the police round and have to open up the vault, file reports, probably pay a fine too.”