Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

It didn’t. The fucking thing didn’t turn.

“Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” the locksmith said. “Did I or did I not say that to you?”

“You did,” Mr. Marsh said. “But come on, it’s not like you just beat a world-class jewel thief or something.”

“Maybe not, but upholding the integrity of my craft-that’s a big deal in my book, any day of the week.”

“Whatever you say. Just take your tools so the kid can go dig his hole.”

I tried to wave him off so I could give the lock one more go, but he grabbed the tools out of my hand. “Just give it up,” he said. “This isn’t a toy. You can’t open it. It’s guaranteed punk-proof.”

I stood there looking at the door, at the shiny new lock plate. I didn’t want to move.

“Go on, get to work,” Mr. Marsh said to me. “Playtime is over.”

I kept replaying it in my mind as I finally walked away. Each movement in that lock seemed so clear. There was no way I could have overset any of the pins.

My head was pounding. I couldn’t breathe.

For the first time, I had tried to open a lock, and I had failed.

Los Angeles

January 2000

There was another staircase leading down to a back door of the club, apparently for use by VIPs only. Lucy opened the door, and we were back out in the parking lot. The night was cooler now, a light wind coming in off the ocean.

We got in the car. I sat up front next to her. She pulled out onto Vine Street.

“You’re doing okay,” she said. “Just keep it up. Stay cool.”

She drove back down Sunset Boulevard, then took a hard right and headed up into the hills. We retraced our route from earlier that day, up Laurel Canyon Boulevard. We took the same turn and stopped in the exact same spot. Now that it was dark, the whole city was lit up and spread out below us as far as the eye could see.

“Get out,” she said to me.

She waited for me to come around the car, to where she was standing.

“Take your clothes off.”

Excuse me?

“You don’t want to mess up the new outfit, do you?” She popped the trunk and took out a pair of jet black coveralls. Then she waited while I took off the suit jacket, the shirt, the pants.

“Shoes, too. I’ve got a couple pairs here you can try on.”

She took my clothes and put them in the backseat. I was standing there on the side of the road in nothing but my underwear. She looked me up and down before handing me the coveralls and a pair of black running shoes. When I was all dressed up in my new simple black, she took my sunglasses right off my face.

“Gunnar will have the phone,” she said. “He’ll call me when you guys are finished. If he can’t for some reason, take the phone from him and press the number nine. That’ll ring me and I’ll know to come get you. If I don’t hear anybody talking, I’ll know it’s an emergency, in which case I’ll find some way to come directly to the house. No matter what I have to do to get there. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“What button?”

I put up nine fingers.

“Good boy.” She grabbed me and kissed me hard on the mouth.

“I really do hate you,” she said, “but Wesley was right. You are beautiful.”

Then she turned me toward the darkness of the sage bushes and the long slope leading down to the house below.

“He’ll be waiting for you at the back door,” she said. “Now get your ass down there.”

Then she pushed me over the edge.

It didn’t take me long to get to the bottom. Funny how gravity can speed things along when you’re sliding down a fifty-degree slope. When I got to the bottom, I felt like I’d been whipped over and over with a length of barbed wire.

I caught my breath for a moment, looked both ways down the street, and then crossed over to the house. I went around to the back. There was a pool with a dozen underwater lights around the perimeter. The view over the railings would have been spectacular if I had been in any mood to appreciate it. There was so much more light coming from the house itself. So many windows open and no curtains. It was like looking into a giant aquarium. I went to the back door. Before I could knock, Gunnar opened the door and held it with only twelve inches or so for me to squeeze through.

“Move very slowly,” he whispered to me.

I slid in and saw that there was a wire running from the top of the door to the frame. It was a magnetic switch that would have activated the alarm if the contact had been broken. It looked like Gunnar had made a small notch in the wires leading to either side of the switch and then had run a jumper wire between them. With the circuit still complete, the alarm wouldn’t go off when he opened the door.

The second thing I noticed was that the house was hotter than hell.

“Listen very carefully,” he said. “Do you see that unit on the wall over there?”

I looked over at the far wall and saw the rectangle, about four inches by three inches. It had a small screen set into the top half. On the bottom half there was a small black circle.

“The secondary security in this house is passive infrared. Meaning that it picks up the heat in your body as you move across its field. I’ve cranked the heat up as far as it can go, which will help neutralize the difference between your body and the air temperature. But you still have to be very careful.”

He must have used the alarm delay to sneak out of his hiding place and adjust the thermostat, I thought. Then after that, it had just been a waiting game.

“The safe’s in the other room,” he said. “Follow me and don’t go any faster than I do.”

He took a slow step across the floor. I followed behind him. Without the superheated air, we wouldn’t have had a chance. There’s no way we could have moved slow enough, no matter how hard we tried. Even with the heat advantage, we both kept our eyes on that sensor. All it had to do was turn red one time and we’d have to think about pulling the plug on the whole operation.

“There’s another sensor in the next room,” he said. “So there’s no letup. You have to stay slow.”

We kept inching our way out of that room, around the corner where I could see into the main part of the house. I saw a huge fireplace, lots of modern art paintings on the wall that looked exactly like the work my old friend Griffin used to do. The big windows and the glowing swimming pool outside. I could even see the lights from the city, and for one second I couldn’t help but wonder which one of those lights was reaching up to us from that nightclub where Julian and Ramona were waiting.

We turned another corner finally. There was a big black desk with two space-age lamps suspended above it. Bookshelves. More paintings. Right there, on the wall, just a few feet from us, another infrared sensor.

And a safe.

It was, as Julian had promised, the exact same model he had shown me in his back room. Leaving nothing to chance, he had said. At the time I had wondered if he was taking his preparation to ridiculous lengths. Now I was happy that I’d gotten the chance to practice.

“Very slow now,” he said. We were passing just a few feet from the sensor. I kept waiting for that light to go on. I felt so hot now. How could this thing not sense that we were in the room? Gunnar put one foot in front of him, slowly shifted his weight. Put another foot forward, shifted again. It took us another five minutes just to make our way past it.

When we got to the safe, I sank down onto my knees. That finally gave me a moment to catch my breath and to wipe the sweat from my eyes. Funny how exhausting it is to move so damned slowly.