Lock Artist

by Steve Hamilton

  “Then he let us go. Under two conditions, he said. Number one, well, thanks for all the wine and cigars and flowers. That was very thoughtful of you to deliver all of this stuff to the boat. And number two, here’s a phone number. ‘If you guys live long enough to learn how to do this right,’ he says, ‘then you’ll probably need a good boxman.’ We just have to remember to always pay him ten percent off the top. Which is how we got to meet the Ghost.”

  “Lucy told you about going to visit him,” Ramona said. “About her trying to learn from him?”

  I nodded.

  “Things have a way of working out,” Julian said. “We got you instead.”

  Yeah, things worked out, I thought. And here I am. Working with a guy who tried to set up the wrong target. The absolutely worst target in the world.

  No wonder he’s so careful now.

  ______

  About a month later, the next score finally came together. It was time to get back to work.

  The mark was a smooth, suit-with-no-socks kind of guy who lived up in Monterey, apparently in some ridiculous house perched right on the ocean. He’d been coming down to L.A. every week on some sort of Hollywood-related business. He liked expensive wine, and he really liked women who were beautiful in unique, quirky ways. Which is where Lucy came in. She was playing the bait, just like Gunnar had told me.

  So on a clear day in April, Julian got his car out of the garage and we drove all the way up the coast to Monterey. Six hours up the Pacific Coast Highway. We stayed overnight in a little hotel, and then the next day it was time to take down Mr. Moon Face. That was our pet name for him.

  Julian, Ramona, and Lucy went to his house for dinner that evening. Mr. Moon Face fancied himself quite the gourmet, so he made some kind of poached sea bass or some damned thing and they drained a couple bottles of wine Julian had brought up with him. While the man was distracted, Julian took out a little razor blade and sliced a thin line through the electric foil that ran around the perimeter of one of the man’s seaside windows. All of the windows were foiled like this, of course, but now when the man activated his security system, the one window would show a disconnection in the closed circuit. When he looked at the window and found nothing wrong, he’d have to call the security company to get it fixed. Of course, if he was on his way out for a night on the town and a possible shot at sleeping with the young Lucy, the little chink in his security armor would get put aside until the next day.

  When they finally left the house, it was time for Gunnar and me to do our thing. The house was close to the road and to some other ridiculous houses hanging on the cliff, so we only had one good way in. We took the car Gunnar had rented in town and parked down by the shore, at one of the observation points. We climbed down the rocks and made our way across the beachfront, finally climbing our way back up to the house. It was a longer climb than either of us had anticipated, and the weather was turning bad fast. The wind picked up. The waves below us were getting higher. It was dark and hard to see exactly where we were going.

  The Pacific Ocean, right below me as I struggled my way up those wet rocks. One false step, I thought. That’s all it would take. Not the way I wanted to die today. Then in that very next moment I lost my footing and I felt myself starting to fall. I could already feel the cold water against my skin. The waves turning me over and dragging me to the bottom. How quiet it must be down there, compared to this violent roar on the surface.

  Then Gunnar reached out a hand and grabbed me by the belt. He saved my mortal life right there. When I was back on the rocks, I shook it off and we kept climbing, until we finally got to the house.

  Gunnar located the window with the deactivated foil, put a wad of modeling clay on the glass, and then started cutting a hole, just large enough for us to climb through. We obviously weren’t going for a clean in-and-out this time. There’s no way you can cover your tracks when you cut a big hole in a window, after all. Julian was confident we wouldn’t need it this time. Not with Mr. Moon Face. So we made the forced entry, and within two minutes we were standing inside the house. There was no infrared motion detector to worry about this time, so we were clear. Julian, Ramona, and Lucy would be sure to keep Mr. Moon Face out for another couple of hours, at the very least.

  We walked in through the kitchen, past the remains of their fancy dinner. A half-dozen wine bottles sat empty on the table. We found the man’s office, where the safe stood tall and proud in the corner. No hidden wall safes for this guy.

  I eliminated the tryouts first, then got to work.

  Find the contact area, park the wheels, spin and count. Three wheels, check.

  Back to 0. Find the area again, feel for the short contact.

  3. 6. 9. 12. 15.

  I started getting nervous around 30. Were all three numbers high on the dial? Most people don’t do it this way.

  45, 48, 51.

  Damn. Damn.

  72, 75, 78.

  I was starting to sweat.

  93, 96, 99.

  Nothing.

  I stopped and shook out my hands.

  “What’s the problem?” Gunnar said.

  I shook my head. No problem, man. Everything’s cool.

  I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks outside. I could smell the salt in the air. I started again.

  This time, when I got to 15, I thought I was getting close to something, but the difference felt so faint to me. It was like tuning in a radio station from a thousand miles away.

  I shook out my hands again. I tried to clear my mind. I didn’t even bother asking myself what the problem was, because at that point I knew.

  I hadn’t been practicing enough. Simple as that. I hadn’t been spinning the dial enough on the safe in Julian’s house. I hadn’t been spinning on my portable lock. I just hadn’t been doing it. I had just assumed I could pick it back up again, any time I wanted.

  So I had to spend the next full hour finding my touch again, while Gunnar paced back and forth and tried very hard not to strangle me. I finally narrowed the numbers down, and even then I wasn’t totally sure about them. My face was dripping with sweat now.

  I’ll never take this for granted again, I promised myself. Just get this thing open and I promise I’ll practice every single day.

  I spun through the possible combinations. Every single damned one of them. None of them opened the safe. So I had to go back and redo my contacts, go through them again and find the number I had gotten wrong. When I finally did that … when I hoped I had done that … I had to go back and do the combinations again. We were going on two hours inside the house now.

  I cranked through each possible combination. The waves were getting louder. From somewhere in the room I could hear a clock ticking.

  Then … finally. Finally! I hit the right combination and turned the handle. Gunnar pushed by me and started shoving money into his bag. I got up and stretched out my back, walked around a little bit and saw the headlights through one of the front windows.

  Son of a bitch.

  I ran back and helped him finish putting the money in the bag. Then I slammed the door shut, and we went back to the hole in the window, keeping our heads down. We jumped through it like circus performers, rolling in the sand and gravel outside and scrambling down onto the rocks.

  When we were down on the beach, we ran back toward the rental car, the waves even higher now, our legs getting soaked. We climbed back up to the car. We stood there catching our breath for a minute. Then Gunnar grabbed me by my shirt. He got his face up close to mine, and I was waiting for him to yell at me for taking so fucking long to open the fucking safe. But he didn’t.

  “Lucy’s mine. Do you hear me? She’s the only person I’ve ever loved. Like in my whole life. You understand me?”

  I looked at him. Was he really telling me this now?

  “Do you understand me or not?”

  I nodded my head. Yes, I understand.

  He let go of me. He threw the money in the backseat and got
behind the wheel. I got in beside him and made two promises to myself.

  Stay away from Lucy.

  And practice.

  Nineteen

  Michigan

  July 1999

  *

  I knew it was too good to be true. I knew the catch was coming. For the moment, I didn’t care. I was outside, not digging but sitting in a chair, next to Amelia. With the official approval of her father.

  Somehow it felt different now. You’re another person when it’s late at night. Here it was … just us, our real daytime selves. Two seventeen-and-a-half-year-olds who went to different high schools and otherwise lived in different worlds. Only one of whom could speak.

  “You feel weird?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Would you rather be digging?”

  I didn’t think I had to answer that one.

  “So … how are we gonna do this? I mean, how are we going to communicate?”

  I was about to make the writing gesture, so maybe she could go find me a pad of paper, when she came right out of her chair and grabbed me. She kissed me for a long time, long enough for me to forget about pads of paper and everything else in the whole world.

  “You must know sign language,” she said, sitting back down. “Teach me some stuff. Hello is …”

  I waved my hand. It made me think of Griffin, asking me the same thing once upon a time.

  “Yeah, okay. Duh. How ’bout, ‘You look good.’”

  I pointed to her. You. Then I drew a circle around my face. Look. Then a simple thumbs-up. Good.

  “What if I wanted to tell you to kiss me again?”

  With each hand, I put my fingers and thumb together, like a gourmet ready to say “Magnifique!” I brought one hand to my lips, then put both hands together.

  “That’s ‘kiss’? Are you kidding me? That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever seen!”

  I shrugged it off. I wasn’t around when they made that up.

  “We need our own secret sign language for ‘Kiss me,’ ” she said. “How about this?”

  She grabbed me again and took me inside the house. Up to her bedroom. I looked around for her father on the way, figuring this might be one sure way to die. Maybe not the worst, but still. He had apparently run off somewhere, so for the moment we seemed to have the house to ourselves.

  We did some things next that we’d need a whole different set of sign language for. When we were done, we lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She kept running her fingers through my hair.

  “It’s nice to be around somebody who doesn’t talk all the time.”

  If that’s really true, I thought, then you came to the right place.

  “Are you going to draw something for me today?”

  To be honest, I didn’t feel like drawing just then. Or doing anything at all except exactly what I was doing. But we had to get up and get dressed eventually. She found a couple of big sketchbooks and a few pencils, and for the next hour or so we sat on her bed drawing. We were drawing each other in the act of drawing each other. Her with one strand of hair falling over her face, me with a serious expression on my face, bordering on sadness. On melancholy. I was surprised to see that in her drawing of me. It was my first truly happy day in a thousand days. How must I have looked before then?

  A couple more hours went by. It was four o’clock already. Amazing how much faster the time went by when I wasn’t killing myself outside and counting the minutes until I could go home. We heard her father’s car pulling into the driveway, so we went downstairs, back out to the chairs outside.

  Cut to a barbecue in the backyard, a few hours later, this day getting more unlikely with every passing minute. I was sitting on top of a picnic table, next to Amelia. I was holding a beer in my hand, three and a half years away from being able to drink it legally, but what the hell on a hot summer night. The beer had been given to me by Mr. Marsh himself, after I’d just spent two solid hours in the close company of his daughter in her bedroom. The only dark cloud being Amelia’s brother, Adam, who was home for the evening from East Lansing. He was wearing a ripped tank top, his arms bulging like they’d been stuffed with coconuts. His hair had been cut high and tight, with a faux Mohawk running down the middle. As soon as he saw me there in his backyard, he looked very much like he wanted to kill me.

  “You’re the little bitch who broke into our house?” he said.

  That’s when Mr. Marsh came to my rescue. He told him I was a stand-up guy and how he should leave me alone and forgive me and not kill me, et cetera. Ever since then, though, Adam hadn’t stopped glaring at me from the other side of the yard. He had five former Lakeland football players standing around next to him, with more on the way, apparently. Mr. Marsh was grilling hot dogs and hamburgers at a frantic pace to keep up with their appetites.

  Amelia took my right hand in her left, lacing our fingers together. Nobody else seemed to even notice this. She seemed barely aware of it herself, as she stared out at the night sky.

  “Nights like this,” she finally said, in a voice low enough so only I could hear. “You’d think we’re a nice, normal, happy family.”

  She turned to look at me.

  “Don’t believe it. Not for a second.”

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. I’d never thought of them as nice, normal, or happy. I wouldn’t even know what that looks like in the first place.

  “If I asked you to, would you take me away from here? As far as we could get?”

  I squeezed her hand.

  “You’re a criminal, after all. You can kidnap me, right?”

  I took another sip of beer, feeling that same little lightheaded feeling I had the night we broke into this very house. It was another night that felt like it was opening up right in front of me. Like anything could happen again, good or bad.

  The night got darker. The moon was shining. The smoke from the grill hung in the air. Mr. Marsh played the Beach Boys on his boom box. His favorite group, apparently. At least on a warm summer night. His partner Mr. Slade showed up just in time to get the last hamburger. I realized as soon as I saw him that I had seen him before. Then I remembered. He was the man who had come out to watch me dig for a few minutes, before going inside to meet with Mr. Marsh. Today he was once again dressed in a suit, with the tie knotted tight against his neck. His hair looked slightly wet, like he had just come from the gym.

  When Amelia went inside for a moment, Mr. Marsh cornered me and officially introduced the man.

  “Michael, meet Jerry Slade. My partner.”

  “I believe we’ve met,” he said, shaking my hand. “Good to see you again.”

  “I don’t think Jerry believes you can do what you can do,” Mr. Marsh said. “You still think you could show him?”

  Amelia came back outside and saved me.

  Mr. Marsh grabbed me and whispered in my ear. “We’ll show him later.”

  Then he slapped me on the back and went back to his grill.

  A couple of hours later, Adam and his friends rolled off to hit another party. It was just the four of us now.

  “Gotta get this boy home to bed,” Mr. Marsh said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. “We might just have him out digging again tomorrow.”

  “I thought he was done with that,” Amelia said.

  “I’m just kidding, honey. I’ll let you two kids say good night. Actually, can you stop in to my office on your way out, Michael? I wanted to ask you one more thing, you know, about our new work arrangement.”

  He turned off the music. Then he and Jerry went inside. It was quiet and dark now in the backyard. The big white tent seemed to glow in the moonlight.

  “What is he having you do now?” Amelia said, wrapping her arms around my waist. “And why is Mr. Slade here? That guy gives me the creeps.”

  I shook my head. Hell if I know what’s going on.

  “Just be careful, okay? Those two guys get together, God knows what they’ll come up with.”

  I wasn’t
sure how to take that, but I figured I’d find out soon enough.

  She kissed me good night. I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted to stay right there in the backyard with her for the rest of the night. But I knew the men were waiting for me.

  She went up to her room. I went to the office. They were both standing underneath the giant fish. As soon as I came in, Mr. Marsh took out a leather case and gave it to me.

  “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.