Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

I took out one of the tension bars. Not the smallest, not the biggest. I slid it into the bottom of the keyhole. I put one finger on the right side and pushed it ever so slightly. Then I took the hook pick and felt along the line of tumblers. I had already done this lock before, of course, so I knew exactly where to go. It was a very basic setup, six pins, one tight combination in the back but otherwise nothing too tricky. It had taken me all of three minutes with a screwdriver and a bent safety pin. With these perfect tools-hell, it wouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds.

“He seems to know what he’s doing,” Mr. Marsh said. “You don’t suppose…”

“No freaking way,” the locksmith said. He wasn’t smiling now. “I promise you.”

I popped the back pin, worked my way carefully past the fifth. With the good tension bar, it was so much easier to keep the last pin engaged. I felt that satisfying little click with each pin as I made my way to the front. I could feel that I had it halfway done. With the mushroom pins, I knew I had to go back and do them all one more time. There were just the tiniest slivers of metal standing in my way now. Six little notches on six little pins, and then the whole thing would turn free.

The two men were quiet now. I worked my way through the pins again, back to front. I was about to pop that last pin when something made me stop.

Think about this, I thought to myself. Do you really want to prove to these guys that you can break into this house whenever you feel like it? Into any house? Is that the kind of thing you want everybody to know?

“Is that it?” Mr. Marsh said. “Are you giving up already?”

“Playtime’s over,” the locksmith said. A sneer on his face. “Remember this the next time you feel like shooting off your mouth.”

Not the right thing to say to me, I thought. I looked the locksmith in the eye as I tapped up that last pin. I turned the knob, opened the door, and gave him back his tools.

Then I put my gloves on and went into the backyard to start digging.

I could hear Mr. Marsh and the locksmith having it out as I picked up the shovel and got to work. Within a few minutes, the locksmith was gone and it was just Mr. Marsh standing there watching me. He had a drink in his hand now. I filled my first wheelbarrow of the day, then rolled it to the woods to dump it. When I came back, he was gone.

It was a little hotter today. I went to fill up the water jug at the faucet. When the water stopped flowing, I could hear Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone again, just like he had done the day before. It may seem like an obvious point, but it was something I realized that day. Do not trust anyone, ever, if you hear them yelling into a telephone.

I spent the next two hours digging and rolling the wheelbarrow and wondering if I’d be able to make it through the day. I felt weaker than the day before. There was no way around that. I knew it was a simple matter of biology and physics. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore. It wasn’t even a question of pacing myself. I mean, you can only save so much energy when you’re digging a hole. Anything less than the basic minimum effort and you’re not even digging anymore.

Everything started to turn yellow again, my eyes too tired or too burned by the sun or God knows what. I kept the water jug full and kept drinking as much as I could.

You will collapse, I told myself. This will happen as surely as the sun rises in the east. You will collapse, and they will come and revive you. After a few days of recovery, you’ll go to that juvie farm Mr. Marsh was talking about. They won’t work you as hard there. Hell, they wouldn’t work you this hard anywhere. But it’ll be so much worse in so many ways. On top of everything else, you’ll never see Amelia again.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this.”

I turned around and saw her standing there. That same place on the edge of what would someday be her swimming pool. Today she was wearing cutoff denim shorts that went down to her knees. The same black tennis shoes. White shins and ankles in the bright sunlight. A black T-shirt with some sort of cartoon machine gun on it. It was way too hot to be wearing anything black today.

I stopped digging and wiped my face.

“You’ll never dig this whole thing. It would take you a year. Even if you did, so what? You think we’re ever going to use a pool back here?”

Extra motivation for me, I thought. Thank you so much. But God you are so beautiful.

“Adam’s away to college already. I’ll be gone after one more year. Who the hell’s going to use it?”

I stood there while she looked around and shook her head and then finally got to the point.

“So are you going to talk today, or what?”

I pushed the shovel into the dirt so that it could stand on its own.

“I’m calling your bluff. Okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”

I reached around to my back pocket and took out the pad of paper and pencil. I know you probably think this was a normal thing for me, having something to write on at all times. Seriously, though, I hardly ever did it then, and still don’t. I just don’t like writing impromptu notes to people in lieu of real conversation. I’m sorry, I cannot speak, so I’ll write down everything I need to say to you right here on this handy notepad that I carry with me for just such an occasion! & Thank you for your patience as I make you stand there with a slightly bemused look on your face while I carefully write down each word so you can then read it and pretend that we’re communicating like two normal human beings.

To hell with that.

But today was different. I had the pad in my pocket just in case I got into exactly this situation. I opened the pad and started writing.

I really cannot talk. I promise you. Really.

I handed her the piece of paper. She took two seconds to read it, then held her hand out for the pencil. Which didn’t make any sense, of course, because there was no reason for the writing to be anything other than a one-way process. I gave it to her anyway.

She held the paper down against her thigh and started writing on it.

“Amelia!”

A voice from the house, interrupting her writing as I watched the way her hair hung down as she bent over. Mr. Marsh, no doubt, on his way out to warn me off again.

But no. A younger voice. He was approaching from the house, someone our age, wearing an Oriental jacket, baggy pants. Ridiculously way too hot for this weather. Long hair tied together in the back, not just a ponytail, mind you, but with enough ties to make it look like a braid. Smug know-it-all face. A total good-for-nothing prick, I knew it from the first second I saw him. The next second bringing the sick realization, like a horse kicking me right in the stomach, that this was Amelia’s boyfriend.

“What are you doing back here?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying away from the criminal?” No genuine worry in his voice. More a double-edged insult, that I was a criminal but a criminal not worth taking seriously. I was already fighting the urge to hit him in the face with the shovel.

“I was just asking him a question,” Amelia said. “I thought you were at the gallery.”

“It was just boring today. Is anybody home?”

“I don’t know. I think my dad went out.”

“Is that right?”

“Don’t get any ideas. He could be back any second.”

“His car’s loud enough. We’ll hear him.”

“I told you, Zeke…”

The conversation stalled for a moment. This intimate back and forth I was forced to listen to, and on top of that now the utter ridiculousness of his name. Zeke!

“Come on,” he said. “Leave the miscreant to his digging.”