Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

One pin set. Two pins set. Three. Four. Five.

I felt the whole cylinder give now. I pressed harder on the tension bar and the whole thing turned. Whatever doubts these men may have had about me, I had just passed the first test.

Manhattan pushed in past me, going right for the alarm station. This was the part they needed to have worked out already on their own. There were so many elements that could be compromised in an electronic alarm system. Bypassing the magnetic sensors on a door or window. Disabling the entire system itself or just disconnecting it from its dedicated phone line. Hell, even getting to the person who was sitting in the alarm company’s control room. As soon as you have a real live human in the loop, things get easier, especially if that real live human being is earning $6.50 an hour.

Somehow these guys knew the pass code already, which is the simplest way of all. They might have had a connection inside the house. Either a housekeeper or a service man. Or else they had just watched the owner closely enough, with enough magnification to see the buttons as he pressed them. However they did it, they had the number, and it took Manhattan all of five seconds to turn the whole system off.

He gave us the thumbs-up, and Brooklyn split off to keep watch or whatever else he was supposed to be doing. This was obviously routine for them. Something they felt totally comfortable with. Me? I was in my own little zone now. That warm little buzz, the way my heart rate would speed up until it was finally in sync with that constant bass drum inside my head. The fear I lived with every second of every day finally draining away from me. Everything peaceful and normal and in perfect tune, for just those few precious minutes.

Manhattan gave me a little wave to follow him. We walked through the house, as perfect a house as I had ever seen. It was decorated more for comfort than for show. A huge television with chairs you could disappear into. A fully stocked bar with glasses hanging from a rack, a mirror, bar stools, the works. We went up the stairs, down the hallway, and into the master bedroom. Manhattan seemed to know exactly where to go. We ended up in one of the two big walk-in closets, rows of expensive dark suits on one side, expensive casual clothes on the other side. Shoes arranged neatly on their slanted platform. Belts and ties hanging on some kind of electric contraption. Press the button and they would all start rotating into view.

Of course, we weren’t here for the belts and ties. Manhattan carefully slid some of the suits aside. I could see the faint rectangular outline in the back wall. Manhattan pushed on it and it popped open. Inside that door was the safe.

He stood aside for me. Once again, my turn.

This is where they really needed me. They could have gotten through that back door if they had really wanted to. It might have taken them a little longer, but these were smart, resourceful men, and they would have found a way. The safe? This was a different matter. It was one thing to find out the security code for the whole house, but the combination to the safe hidden in the master bedroom closet? No, that would live only inside the owner’s head. Maybe in the wife’s head. Maybe in one other person’s head, a trusted confidant or the family lawyer, in case of emergency. Beyond that… well, you could go ahead and find the owner, tape him to a chair and stick a gun in his mouth, but then you’d have a whole different kind of operation. If you wanted to do this clean, then you needed a boxman to get you into that safe. A bad boxman would probably end up cutting through the wall and dragging the safe right out. A better boxman would leave it in the wall and use a drill. A great boxman… well, that’s exactly what I was hoping to demonstrate.

The problem was-and I was glad Manhattan didn’t know this-up until that point in my young life, I had never once opened a wall safe. I mean, I knew it was the same idea. It’s just a regular safe built into a wall, right? But I had learned on freestanding safes, where I could really get my body up next to them and feel what I was doing. As the Ghost had said so many times, when he was teaching me how to do this… It’s like seducing a woman. Touching her in just the right way. Knowing what was going on inside of her. How do you do that if every part of the woman except her face is hidden behind a wall?

I shook out my hands and stepped up to the dial. I tried the handle first, made sure the damned thing was actually locked. It was.

I could see the Chicago brand plate, so I dialed the two “tryout” combinations, the preset combinations that the safes are shipped with. You’d be amazed how many people never change them.

No luck on either of those. This was a conscientious safe owner who set his own combination. So now it was time to go to work.

I pressed myself against the wall, putting my cheek against the safe’s front door. I was already assuming three wheels, but it was my first time, after all, so I wanted to make sure. I found the contact area, that area on the dial where the “nose” of the lever was coming into contact with the notch on the drive cam. Once I had that, I parked all the wheels on the opposite side of the dial, then spun back the opposite way, counting all of the pickups.

One. Two. Three. Then I was clear. Three wheels.

I spun back, parked all the wheels at 0. Then I went back to the contact area.

This was the hard part. This was the almost impossible, should-be-impossible part. Because of the fact that no wheel can be exactly, exactly round and no two wheels can be exactly, exactly the same size as each other, you’re going to have some imperfect contact when you pass over the open notches on each wheel. It’s just unavoidable, no matter how well the safe is built. So when you’re sitting over a notch and you go back to the contact area, it’s going to feel a little different. A little shorter as that nose dips down a little farther on the drive cam.

On a cheap safe? You can feel it like a pothole on a smooth road. On a good safe? A good, expensive safe like the man who owned this house would have built into his closet?

The difference would be so small. So tinier than tiny.

I parked at 3. Then at 6. Then at 9. Going by threes to start out with, testing each time. Waiting for that different feel to come to me. That slightest shortening in the contact area. Such a fine difference that no normal human being could ever perceive it. Absolutely never ever in a thousand years.

12. Yes. I was close.

Okay, keep going. 15, 18, 21.

I worked my way around the dial, spinning quickly when I could, slowing down when I needed to feel every millionth of an inch. I heard Manhattan shifting his weight around behind me. I put up one hand, and he was still again.

24. 27. Yes. There.

How do I know?

I just know. When it’s shorter, it’s shorter. I just feel it.

Or something beyond feeling it, really. That little piece of hard metal touches the notch a hair width’s sooner than the last time around, and I can feel it, hear it, see it in my mind.

When I had finished the dial, I had three rough numbers in my head. I went back and narrowed those down until they were exact, moving by ones this time instead of threes. When I was done with that, I had the three numbers in the combination, 13, 26, 72.

The last step is a little bit of grunt work. There’s no other way to do it but to grind right through them. So start with 13-26-72, then switch the first two, then the second and last, and so on, until you’ve worked your way through all six possibilities. Six being a lot better than a million, which is how many combinations you’d have to go through if you couldn’t find out those numbers.

Today’s combination ended up being 26-72-13. Total time to open the safe? About twenty-five minutes.