Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

“I’m losing my eyesight,” he said. “That’s the first problem.”

He held up his right hand, palm facing the ground.

“My hands are starting to shake, too. Which is not good.”

From where I was standing, I didn’t see any shaking. His hand looked rock steady.

“My daughter’s husband ran out on her, too. Left her with a couple of kids. She’s in Florida, you understand, and even though I hate every fucking square inch of that whole state…”

He went behind one of the safes and produced a rolling office chair. There was plywood here on the ground, in the circle created by the safes. He spun the chair a half revolution and sat down on it backward.

“What I’m saying here is… I mean, that’s it. That’s all you need to know about me. Anything else is none of your fucking business. You understand?”

I nodded once.

“Do you want to try again with the safes today, or do you really not know anything at all about opening them?”

There were eight safes, perfectly arranged. One on each point of an imaginary compass, or maybe even on the real compass for all I knew. With another safe positioned exactly halfway between each point. In a building with so much junk in it, here was the one and only place where everything else was pushed aside. A perfect circle carved out of the chaos.

“What exactly can you do?” the Ghost said. “Should we start with that?”

I held imaginary lock picks in my hands and worked them together. That seemed to impress him about as much as me making balloon animals, but nevertheless he took me over to a workbench set up against the outside wall of the building. We had to work our way through a miniature city of paint cans, but when we got there I saw that he had some kind of lock-picking laboratory set up. There was a clear Lucite cylinder attached to the workbench with screws, and set into the cylinder was a key lock. He pulled the lock right out and slid off the top of the plug, exposing the pins. He put on his glasses and examined them, then pulled out one pin. There was a little chest of drawers sitting nearby. He opened up one of the drawers and replaced the pin with another, being careful to load the spring on top of it. He worked his way down the line, setting up his own custom configuration of pins. Hard or easy, or whatever. I had no idea. When he was done, he slid the top of the plug back on and replaced the plug in the clear cylinder. He started rummaging around on the workbench, looking for a set of picks, I was guessing. I took the leather case out of my back pocket and showed it to him.

“You always carry those around?”

I nodded.

“If the police ever stopped you, you wouldn’t want them to have any doubts, huh? Make their life real easy?”

He didn’t wait for me to field that one. Instead, he just gestured to the lock and took a step backward.

“Whenever you’re ready, hotshot.”

I took out a tension bar and diamond pick and got to work. It felt good to finally do something I knew how to do. I set the tension and felt for the first pin. As I did, I could sense him standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder. I could practically feel his breath.

“I’m not bothering you, am I?”

I kept going. Second pin, third pin, fourth pin, fifth pin, sixth pin. The lock sprung open, without me even having to go over them again. Apparently, these were straight block pins.

“Okay, then. You can do an easy one. Hooray for you. Let’s make them a little harder.”

I stepped aside as he slid the top off the plug and swapped out all of the pins. I could see the little notches on the new pins he was putting in. He struggled with the springs this time, bending down to his work until his face was just a few inches away.

“If I could just see one goddamned thing…” he said under his breath. When he was done, he took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes, and then stepped back. I took his place in front of the lock and went to work.

This time, he held up his left arm and looked at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he said, “and counting. You’d better hurry.”

I set the tension and felt for the pins.

“Twenty seconds.”

Ignore him, I told myself. Shut him right out of your head.

“Thirty. We’re getting impatient here.”

Set the pin, feel it catch. Just enough. Move on.

“Forty seconds! You need to hurry!”

All the way down the line. Keep that tension just right. Not too much. Don’t let him throw you. Don’t tense up. Just like that…

“Fifty seconds! Are you kidding me?”

Work my way down again, feel for that pin, feel for that little give, ever so slight.

“One minute! This whole building will be crawling with cops soon!”

I felt a line of sweat dripping down my back. An angry insect was buzzing away, somewhere in the weeds behind us.

“They’re beating down the door! You idiot!”

Another pin. Hold the tension. Not too hard.

“ Bam! Hear that? Bam! ”

I closed my eyes. I held myself completely still. I let up on the tension bar, one millionth of a millionth of an inch.

“We’re totally fucked now! They’re all over the place!”

Three more pins. Two more.

“It’s too late! Run, you fool! Run!”

One more. I felt it give. The whole thing turning. I pulled the tools out, and it took everything I had not to smack the Ghost right in his pale stupid fucking face.

“That took a while,” he said, eyeing me coolly like he hadn’t spent the last minute and a half screaming at me. “I’ve never seen somebody hold a pick quite the way you do, either. I don’t know who the hell taught you to do it like that.”

He was back to rummaging around on the workbench. He started a small avalanche of washers and nuts and bolts.

“Of course, lock pickers are a dime a dozen these days. You can find them anywhere.”

When he finally found what he was looking for, he picked it up and tossed it to me. It was a combination padlock, but not a cheap one.

“Simple three-cam lock, right? What do you do with it?”

I pulled the shackle out and started turning the dial, feeling for the sticking points. The usual routine, finding the last number and then using the number families to narrow down the possible combinations.

The Ghost watched me as I did this. Last number 25, so start with 1, super-set the second numbers and start cranking them out.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I looked up at him. What do you think I’m doing?

“You’re not seriously going to cheat the numbers, are you? You think you can get away with that on a good lock? They don’t use those patterns like they do on cheap pieces of shit, for one thing. For another thing… I mean, God damn, how much of an amateur are you, anyway? Don’t you have any sense of touch at all?”

He didn’t wait for me to respond to that. Not that I had any answer. He grabbed the lock from my hand and started to spin the dial.

“You have to feel it, okay? There’s no other way to do this. I mean, shit, if you can’t do that on a fucking padlock…”

He took one quick glance at the dial. Then he put the lock near his left ear for a moment and kept turning. He closed his eyes.

“Either you can feel it or you can’t. Okay? It’s that simple.”

He opened his eyes and started spinning the dial in the opposite direction.

“I can do this in my sleep, hotshot. I mean, literally. I can do this while I’m driving a car. While I’m talking on the phone. While I’m having sex.”

He turned the dial a little more, stopped, changed direction one more time.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? I can do this while I’m not even thinking about it one little bit.”