Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

I got in next to him.

“See what I mean?” he said, stretching out his legs. “This is what I’m talking about. Is this a hell of a lot more comfortable, or what?”

He drove me back to the restaurant. Thirty minutes in the car, sitting next to him. He started whistling a tune, like he was on his way back from a good day’s work painting a house. When we were at the terminal, he slipped the car into park and put a hand on the back of my neck.

“I know this might have seemed like a wasted trip to you,” he said. “Riding all the way out here like that. But you’ve been out there in L.A. for what, almost a year now? Living with that crazy bunch of kids? It’s good to keep in touch, you know?”

He reached back for the bag of money and pulled out a single stack.

“It’s good to remember who we both work for.”

I took the money. I did. I took it. Then I opened the door and got out. When I looked back, he had rolled down the window.

“Have a good trip back home,” he said, “and keep that pager right next to your pillow. I’ll be talking to you again soon.”

After he drove off, I sat there on my bike for a long time. I hadn’t even left the parking lot yet. I kept thinking about the blood. The way it ran like a dozen little rivers across the floor.

I will never be free of this, I thought. There is no way out.

And now I have to turn around and drive for three days straight, all the way across the country. To a houseful of thieves. To the only place where I will ever be welcome.

All those miles. And I am so tired.

Unless…

No. I can’t.

Yes. I have to. It may be my last chance. I may never be this close again.

I started the bike and pulled out onto the road. But instead of going west, I went north.

Two hours later, I was in Michigan.

Michigan

July, August 1999

I didn’t know where Amelia had gone. Where she was hiding until her father let her come back home again. And of course because I am not a normal person, she couldn’t just call me on the telephone. She couldn’t call me and talk to me and tell me she was okay and that we’d be back together soon. Not like any other two young lovers who might find themselves separated.

No. If I couldn’t see her in the flesh, she might as well have been taken to another planet.

No messages. No words. Just gone. And as impossible as this may seem, I knew that there was only one way for me to bring her back.

I had to learn how to open a safe.

I worked on the lock most of the night. I kept turning the dials, trying to feel whatever the hell it was I was supposed to be feeling. Then I rummaged around for my old combination locks, found the old lock I had cut open and sat there studying the damned thing for the next hour.

It was really so simple. You line up all three notches, the shackle opens. There’s no way I shouldn’t be able to do this.

I went back to the lock the Ghost had given me. I was so tired now, after everything that had happened that day. I kept seeing that giant fish half out the window.

Just feel it. Turn the dial and feel it.

I fell asleep. I woke up, with no idea what time it was. The lock was still in my hand. I spun the dial again and this time I thought I was feeling what I was supposed to be feeling. I pulled the shackle and the lock opened.

I could barely see straight. Maybe that was the key. Maybe every other signal in my head had to be so weak and fuzzy before the “lock” signal could break through and be heard. Whatever it was, I kept working at it until I felt like I could zero in that signal. Until I finally had to close my eyes again.

So big freaking deal. That nagging voice in the back of my head, sounding exactly like the voice of the Ghost. You can open a cheap little combination lock now. That voice stayed in my head until the next morning, when I headed back down to Detroit. The air was heavy with the threat of rain. Finally, the clouds opened up and I was soaked through in a matter of seconds. I got to West Side Recovery and rolled my bike to the door. I knocked and waited another full minute in the rain before the Ghost appeared and let me in.

“How did you do with the lock?” he said. “Try not to drip on everything.”

I took the lock from my pocket and held it up for him.

“It doesn’t look open to me.”

He stood and watched me work on it while the rain pounded away outside. Right, left, right. Boom. I pulled the shackle open and handed the whole thing to him.

“Don’t start acting like a smart-ass,” he said, snapping the lock shut. “I’ll throw you back out in the rain.”

He turned toward the back office. I followed him. About halfway, he picked up another combination lock off an old table and threw it directly over his head. I wasn’t expecting it, and as usual the light level was about one-quarter what it should have been. I was lucky to snag the lock out of the air just before it hit me in the face.

I was still working on it when we had passed through the office, down the narrow hallway, and out into the backyard. The rain rattled off the green plastic, so loud we might as well have been standing inside a giant snare drum.

“Okay, then,” he said. Then he stopped when he saw I didn’t have this second lock open yet. Even while walking in near darkness, trying not to trip over a thousand pieces of junk, I was supposed to have it open already? He folded his arms and watched me, maybe two minutes going by, but each of those minutes feeling like an hour. When I finally got it open, he grabbed the lock from me with such utter contempt I was sure I was headed for the front door again. Instead he just threw it on the workbench and told me to wait where I stood.

He pushed open a sliding door. A dozen rakes and hoes and other assorted garden tools came tumbling out at him. He swore and karate-chopped his way through them until he was standing inside a storage room. There was a single naked lightbulb in the center of the ceiling. When he pulled on the string, nothing happened.

More swearing. More junk being kicked aside or tripped over. Then the Ghost backing out of the room, pulling out something on a dolly and struggling with the weight of something covered in a dusty white sheet.

He rolled it back away from the door, telling me to get the hell out of the way before he gave himself a hernia. He stopped and let the thing settle on the floor. Then he tried to catch his breath.

I knew what it was, of course. Four feet high, maybe three feet wide, two and a half feet deep. The exact shape of a medium-sized safe. But why was this particular safe kept in the storage room, hidden under a sheet?

“This is the first thing you have to see,” he said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Get ready, because this is about as obscene as it gets.”

He pulled the sheet off, raising a cloud of dust. It was a safe, all right, but it had been torn apart in every way you could conceivably tear apart a safe. On one side, the outer shell had been stripped away, the middle layer of concrete apparently hammered at until the inner layer was finally exposed and somehow pried open.

I walked around the back of the safe and saw that a square-foot rectangle had been cut straight through. Then as I got to the next side I saw yet another rectangle, this one with blackened edges. Finally coming around to the front, I saw that a half-dozen holes had been drilled. On the top of the safe, there were three more holes.

“I’m going to go through this once,” the Ghost said. “So pay attention.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

“As you can see, this particular safe has been violated. The man who did this was experimenting with several methods of forced entry. On this side, you’ll see brute strength at work. Actually prying open the damned thing like it’s a big tin can. Then gouging out the concrete. It must have taken days to do that.”