The Lockpicker

by Leonard Chang

  “Please. Let me call an ambulance.”

  “The thing is, how do I know you’re not going to call the police or worse, call this guy Eugene and warn him, like you said?”

  “I promise—”

  “See, I don’t believe you. You fuck me over, you blackmail me, you lie, you try to shoot me. I mean, I just don’t trust your motherfucking ass.”

  “Please.”

  “And now that you said it, I can’t stop thinking that maybe you will call this guy. Maybe you’ll try to shake him down too. You know? You say, I know some guy coming after you. Give me money and I’ll tell you more. Something like that. No fucking morals, you.”

  “…I won’t…”

  “What about guarantees? You’re big on those. What are my guarantees?”

  “I promise—”

  “Oh, bullshit. You want to know my guarantee? This is my guarantee.” Bobby leaned forward, pushed the gun into Underhill’s chest. Underhill tried to twist away, but Bobby pressed harder. He stared into Underhill’s eyes. He said, “If you see my brother, tell him he’s a son of a bitch.”

  Underhill raised his arms, about to say something, but Bobby pulled the trigger. He felt the bullet jolt Underhill, who stiffened, and blinked rapidly. “You b-b-bastard…” Underhill said, his voice cracking. Bobby kept his eyes locked on Underhill’s, looking for the moment when Underhill died. Blood bubbled up from the bullet wound as he tried to breathe. He raised his head, then fell back, still trying to gulp air. Then he stopped. Bobby leaned forward, staring. Underhill blinked. He moved his lips and tried to speak. His mouth hung open. He became still, but Bobby saw something in his eyes. A gleam. But then slowly, the gaze faded away.

  Bobby was disappointed that this was all he saw. He had expected more. What? A clue, a glimpse into death. He stood up, looked around. He’d clean off his prints, take all the cash, and make this seem like a late night robbery. He was getting good at this. He popped two more bennies and got to work.

  73

  The afternoon before the Lomax job, as Jake tried to relax in front of the TV but kept thinking about the timing—disabling Lomax’s sedan, then returning to Rachel—Jake’s brother appeared at the apartment with empty boxes. Eugene began taking apart his stereo, tinkering in the back, behind the shelf system, and distracting Jake, who turned off the TV.

  Eugene looked up from behind the shelves. “You can leave it on.”

  Jake saw the sweat beading on his brother’s forehead. “I’ll help you.”

  “Can you pull this speaker out slowly?”

  Jake did, and thought the speaker looked like the small safe at Dormer’s.

  Eugene looked up. “And I have your money.”

  “My what?” Jake said.

  “Your check. To pay you back.”

  “Already?”

  “I liquidated my IRA. It was less than I thought, but enough.”

  Jake said, “No hurry.” An image of Rachel flashed through his mind. He was sleeping with his brother’s wife, and felt a strange disconnect. Nothing was real. He dreamed his nights with Rachel. His days were filled with planning and practice. Jake stared at his brother as he bent down and unconnected the wiring in the back of the stereo. Eugene scratched his head, then looked up. “I can write you a check whenever you want.”

  “You look better,” Jake said.

  “I’m not drunk on the floor. I hope I look better.”

  “Are you looking for work?”

  Eugene stiffened. “Did Rachel tell you to ask me that?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not. Not yet. I just can’t bring myself to.”

  Jake kept quiet and pulled the second speaker out of the cubby. Dust floated down onto his hands. Eugene sneezed.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Eugene said, wiping his nose. “I’d just end up a grunt somewhere else. Why rush into it? You know what happens to grunts? They get shot. They get left behind. They get fed to the enemy.” He shook his head. “I need to take a break. I need to plan. I need to start over.”

  Jake nodded. He understood planning.

  “I mean, what’s the goddamn point of taking a job you hate and that you’ll end up getting fired from anyway?” Eugene stopped. “Shit. I sound like Dad.”

  “You are not Dad.”

  Eugene smiled. “That bothered you, didn’t it? The story I told you about his work.”

  “Being called ‘Chinky.’”

  “I don’t think he even knew it was an insult.”

  “He must’ve known.”

  Eugene shrugged. “Maybe.” He pulled out more wires and said, “Did I ever tell you that he wrote me after I got married?”

  “Wrote you? How’d he know where you lived?”

  “No idea. Kept tabs on me, maybe.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Eugene rolled his eyes. “He was hurt that he wasn’t invited to the wedding. He said everything he did was for us.”

  A flush filled Jake’s cheeks. He didn’t know what to say. “You’re joking.”

  “No. He even signed it ‘Jesus loves you’,” Eugene laughed. “I thought I was misreading it. I thought, Does that really say ‘Jesus’? It was bizarre.”

  “I think you once mentioned that he got religion.”

  “Did I?” Eugene said. “Yes. He’s getting close to kicking off, so he makes friends with the Big Guy.”

  Jake frowned. “I hope it’s not that easy.”

  “What?”

  “Making friends with the Big Guy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if it is, then the Big Guy is a chump.”

  Eugene laughed. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as such a skeptic.”

  Jake lifted out the tuner and laid it carefully on the ground. Eugene emerged from behind the shelves. He crumpled up newspapers, lining the cardboard boxes. Jake watched in silence. He knew that his father could never have found his address since Jake was so careful, but he wondered if his father had tried. He doubted it.

  “Did you say anything about me?” Jake said.

  “To Dad? No.”

  “Good,” Jake said, “Let’s keep it that way.” The thought of their father still out there made him uneasy.

  By the time Jake turned nine, a year after his mother left, and he accepted that she wouldn’t be returning, the vague, hopeful thoughts of her being on a short trip, a break from their father and from the family, such that once she returned she’d be refreshed and ready for more—once he understood the finality of her departure, he began to turn mean. He viewed his goody-goody brother with contempt, though Jake tolerated him because Eugene dealt with their father; he viewed his classmates in school as victims, losers, and worse of all, as weaklings.

  He stole lunches. Of course his father never made him a bag lunch, and Eugene could buy lunches at his junior high school cafeteria, but Jake was still in elementary school, and was supposed to bring a lunch. He would start his day at school by slipping into the coat closet where everyone kept their bag lunches, and stole a sandwich from one, a drink from another, a dessert from a third, and sometimes an extra dessert from a fourth. He had an old wrinkled and smoothened brown paper bag he reused, and filled it with other kids’ goodies.

  Some of them had really good lunches: roast beef, smoked turkey, even meatloaf. He didn’t have time to choose carefully—he usually just shoved his hand into a random bag and groped for a sandwich—so sometimes he got stuck with peanut butter and runny jelly. He’d laugh to himself when he heard someone say, “I can’t believe my mom forgot my drink again!”

  He thought, Sucker.

  Eventually it caught up with him. Enough complaints made his teacher, Mrs. Weintraub, wary, and one day towards the end of the year he was in the closet, his hand in someone’s bag, and he felt someone grab his neck. “Got you!” Mrs. Weintraub said.

  His father had to leave work early for a conference with Mrs. Weintraub and the principal, then had to return for a second shift at the boat shop. But when
he came home that night he dumped his bag onto the floor, and immediately rolled up his dirty sleeves. He said, You make me look bad, like I have bad morals.

  Eugene tried to calm their father down. It’s just a lunch, Eugene said. He won’t do it again.

  But Jake thought, Yes I will.

  You dirty beggar stealer, his father said. You think I like them talking like I stupid?

  Dad, Eugene said. Dad, come on. He’s sorry.

  But Jake thought, No I’m not.

  You sneaky beggar. Shang nom. Michin nom.

  Jake looked at his father curiously. He recognized the curses.

  Shang nom.

  Speak English, Jake said.

  This stopped them. His father backed up in surprise. Eugene’s mouth opened. His father said, What?

  Speak English to me if you’re going to use curses, Jake said. He was nine years old, but he knew how to piss off his father.

  What! His father said, his expression darkening.

  Eugene hung his head.

  Jake yelled, Speak English! Speak English!

  Now, as Jake watched his brother packing his stereo, he pointed to the faint scar on his cheek and said, “Do you remember the time I was caught stealing lunches from school?”

  Eugene stopped crumpling newspapers. He remained quiet for a minute, staring at his inky hands, then nodded slowly. He looked up at Jake and said, “Yes. I remember that.”

  74

  And so it began. Jake drove past Lomax’s building and circled the block, checking for differences, inconsistencies. Lomax’s sedan was parked in the same spot, the building and neighborhood quiet. Jake pulled over across the street and waited with the engine running.

  It was two in the morning. The stream of cars moving along a busier street two blocks down was thinning, and Jake checked the area for cops. He had to be careful with burglary tools in the trunk. His neck pulsed, his breathing slowed. His night vision was sparkling. He saw auras around streetlights.

  He turned off the engine and listened. There was a crispness to the evening air that carried noises farther—he heard the pulsing rhythm of a distant nightclub. Although he had prepped for this many times, he wanted to be sure nothing had changed. What was different? There was a car missing in the parking lot, four slots away from Lomax’s sedan. The lot was usually full by this time. He couldn’t wait much longer, though. Rachel was watching the store, checking the activity in the area.

  He climbed out of the car. He had a thin hunting knife in his sleeve, and walked towards the lot. Looking up at the building windows, he saw only darkness. He approached the automatic gate and quickly scaled it, flipping himself over it and landing on the ground quietly. He hurried to the wall, where he would be shadowed from the security lights, and ducked down in front of Lomax’s sedan.

  Voices across the street. Jake waited. He heard two men talking loudly as they passed his parked car and moved slowly down the block. He worried about Rachel. If he took too long she might think something happened, and he knew she was already nervous. When they had separated earlier, he had seen the paleness in her cheeks, her flickering eyes. She had said “Good luck” in a tight, unfamiliar voice.

  He peered over the hood and saw the men turning a corner. Crawling to the side of Lomax’s car, he pulled out the knife and pressed the tip slowly into the tread of the front tire, which smelled like dog shit. After an initial resistance, the blade eased in. A soft hissing surrounded him. Jake pressed harder and twisted the blade. More air. He heard the car’s suspension groan as the front end angled to the ground. Pebbles dug into his leg. He watched the rim ease to the pavement.

  The front gate clicked, and Jake sat up quickly. A car approached, and he knew it was the missing one. The gate began scraping open, the automatic motor huffing. Although Jake was hidden between Lomax’s car and a pick-up truck, he couldn’t risk being seen, so he rolled underneath the truck and shimmied his way towards the front axle, drawing his legs close to him. His elbow rested in a thin slath of motor oil.

  Headlights flashed across the lot as the incoming car turned and drove past Jake. The brakes squealed as the car pulled into the empty space. The driver shut off the engine. The front gate closed, shuddering as it locked into place. A door slam. A sigh. Jake knew the person would be walking by the truck to get to the front entrance, and he remained still.

  The person’s shoes clicked on the pavement and passed the truck, the pace unbroken. Once Jake heard the front door close and lock, he rolled back out towards Lomax’s car and began working on the rear tire. This one he sawed back and forth, the air hissing out. The left side of the car now leaned into the ground. This was enough. Lomax could replace one tire with a spare, but with two down he’d need to call a tow.

  Jake crouched and listened. When it seemed quiet enough, he stood up and approached the gate. He again climbed over it and jumped to the sidewalk. He walked across the street, brushing himself off, not looking back. Once in his car, he glanced at Lomax’s sedan, and saw it tilting towards the truck, as if it were whispering a secret. Jake drove away. Showtime.

  75

  Bobby took a cab to Jake’s brother’s apartment building. He used Underhill’s money and gave the cabbie a five-dollar tip, something he wouldn’t do if he weren’t so pleased with his progress. He stepped onto the sidewalk and checked the address in Underhill’s notes. Apartment 12G. His bennies were fading, a dullness setting in, clouding his vision. He popped two more and walked around the building, searching for an easy entrance. Since it was late, he wasn’t sure if there’d be enough foot traffic in front.

  A panhandler in a red sweatshirt was rocking back and forth near the building’s ventilation grill, his hands shoved deep into his sweatshirt pockets, his hood pulled tightly over his head. Bobby asked, “Is there a back entrance to this building?”

  The man looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “They are guarded over by benevolent wraiths,” he said.

  Bobby stepped back. “Huh?”

  The man grinned and turned back to the ventilation grill. Bobby took a step forward and said, “Hey, is there another way into the building?”

  The man nodded. “Look for the cars.”

  “Cars? A garage?”

  The man said, “But the wraiths are crafty.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Here, buy some booze.” Bobby flicked him a few dollars. The bills sprinkled to the ground. The man stared at them. Bobby walked away, but stopped when he realized that the guy wasn’t going to pick up the bills. “Hey, you don’t want them?” he said.

  The man continued staring at the bills, which were fluttering in the breeze.

  Bobby said, “Fuck that. I’m not wasting it.” He walked back to the man and picked up the bills. “Asshole.”

  The man pointed his finger at him and laughed.

  Bobby called him a nutcase and left. He found the underground garage entrance and checked the metal gate that rolled to the left on small wheels. A keypad on a concrete stand was stationed to the left of the entrance driveway. Bobby tried to squeeze underneath the gate, the space for the wheels about six inches high, but he didn’t fit. He didn’t want to wait out here for a car, so he returned to the front entrance and started pressing the the intercoms buttons. When someone answered he would say, “Sorry to bother you but I locked myself out accidentally. Could you buzz me in?”

  The first five responses were of annoyed, sleepy residents telling him no. The sixth one said, “Christ, it’s two in the morning!”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know I left my keys upstairs—”

  But the door was already buzzing, and Bobby leapt to it, yanking it open. He stepped into the warm lobby, stamped his feet and rubbed his hands. The new set of bennies were revving him up, and his thoughts flew quickly by, too fast to stop. The polished marble floor reflected the bright lights from above, and he squinted down at the shiny gloss, happiness filling him. Everything looked so clean here, and coming from his shitty hotel, he knelt down and touched the floor. Smo
oth.

  He entered the elevator and whistled quietly, watching the numbers light up. At the twelfth floor he stepped out into the hallway and approached apartment G. He checked the gun in his waistband, and took deep breaths. Jake could be here. He could be sleeping. He could be hugging the fucking jewels right now.

  Bobby’s hands shook. He knocked on the door and covered the peephole with his fingers. He knocked again. Through the door, someone said, “Who is it?”

  “I’mafriendofJake’sandIwonderifhe’shere?” he said, his words tumbling out. Whoa. He worked his jaw up and down. Everything moving too fast.

  “What? Who is it?”

  “I’m a friend of Jake’s. Is he here?” Bobby said slowly, over pronouncing his words.

  The locks clicked, and the door opened. A thick-faced man who Bobby recognized from the picture peered out. Bobby stepped back. “You Eugene?”

  The man looked surprised. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “Jake mentioned you. Is he here?”

  “You know it’s two-thirty in the morning,” Eugene said.

  Bobby nodded. “Sorry, man. It’s an emergency.”

  “Well, he’s not here right now. He went out earlier and hasn’t come back.”

  “Oh, so he is staying here?”

  Eugene nodded. “Not for long, but yes.”

  “Maybe I can wait for him?”

  “Look, it’s late. I’ve been packing all night. Why don’t you come by tomorrow?”

  Bobby studied the brother. He looked soft, flabby. Too many doughnuts. Some yuppie shit. Bobby pushed the door open and shoved his way past the brother. He said, “No, I think I’ll wait for him.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Bobby pulled out his gun. “Close the door, doughboy. We’re gonna wait for Jake.”

  76

  After puncturing Lomax’s tires, Jake drove to Cow Hollow and parked his Honda in a driveway, diagonally across the street from Franklin & Sons. He saw Rachel approaching. She was wearing black clothing; her face and hands glowed in the semi-darkness. He moved to the passenger seat, and waited until she climbed in and closed the door. “How’s it look?” he asked.