Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

He opened his hand, like a magician showing his audience that it was empty.

“That, my young fucking hotshot, is where the art comes in. Are you ready for this?”

I nodded my head. One time, very slowly.

He looked at me for a long time without saying anything.

“You have to be sure about this,” he finally said. “So do I.”

I didn’t move. I waited for him to decide whatever it was he had to decide.

“Okay, then. Pay attention. This is how a real artist opens a safe.”

Now, there’s a certain code I’m probably going against here. The Ghost passed this information down to me, and made it clear that I should keep it to myself. That I should keep it between fellow artists. Maybe one day, if I found the right person, I’d be able to pass it on, but only to that one person. Somebody I’d choose very carefully. Somebody who could handle such a burden. Look what it had done to me, after all. What price this unforgivable skill.

Really, though… it’s not like I can just tell you how to do this. I mean, I think I’ve already given you the basic idea. You’ve seen me do it, right? Eliminate the presets first, on the off-chance that the owner was too lazy to change it.

After that, it gets tricky. As you turn the dial, you have to picture that notch on the drive cam. You have to feel where the lever is touching one side of the notch, then, with a little more turn, where it’s hitting the other side. That’s your “contact area.”

Unless you already know how many wheels are in the lock, you spin the dial a few times and park all of the wheels, somewhere far from the contact area. Dial back and count how many times the drive pins pick up another wheel. That’s how many wheels you have. That’s how many numbers are in the combination.

That much I could probably show you how to do in a few minutes. What happens next is the part that I can describe to you, but I’ll never be able to actually show you how to do it. You either can or you can’t. For most people, on most safes, you just can’t.

This is the part where you park all the wheels at 0 this time, then you go back to the contact area. You “measure” how big that area is. It’s going to be a little bit different every time you go there. And if any one of the wheels happens to have a notch around that number, the range will be slightly shorter. According to the Ghost, most safecrackers actually write down the number ranges on a little graph, but if you have a good enough memory, you can remember the ranges. Go back and park at 3, measure again. Then at 6, and so on. It takes a while. Most dials go to 100.

When you’ve worked your way through, those numbers with the shorter contact areas are approximately the numbers in your ultimate combination. You have to go back and narrow those down. If it’s a 33, you measure at 32 and 34, et cetera. Until you’ve got your final numbers.

The last part is a little bit more grunt work, because while you know your numbers now, you don’t know the order. If you’ve got three numbers, you’ve got 6 possible combinations to try. If you’ve got four numbers, you’ve got 24 combinations to try. Five numbers, 120. Six numbers, 720. Which is a hell of a lot of combinations, but not so bad if you’re fast on the dial. And remember that you only go as far as you have to, until you find the right combination. If you’re lucky, it’ll come early.

As mad as the Ghost had gotten when he saw me try to grind through the numbers on a little combination lock, the ironic thing is that on a big safe, once you’ve gotten those numbers, you have no choice but to work your way through them one combination at a time.

That’s the basic idea. Problem is, the better the safe, the quieter the dial is going to be. Feeling your way through those contact points… that takes a special kind of touch, the kind of touch that the Ghost was talking about, caressing the safe like it’s a woman, feeling the slightest tiny movement deep inside her. This was the kind of touch I just didn’t have yet. No matter how much I hushed those singing voices in my head, no matter how close I got to the safe itself, with my cheek resting against the cool metal, my right hand on the dial… I turned it and felt only the general idea of that lever hitting the contact points. He ran through the whole procedure seven or eight times for me, let me try it on my own. He even gave me the numbers so I’d know exactly where to find them. I went to the 17. I felt the first touch. The emptiness in between. The second touch. Yes, I’ve got it. It’s right there. Go to 25 now. It should feel different now. Feel the first point, the second. Is it different? Can you feel it?

No. I couldn’t feel it. Not that first day.

He gave me more homework, a safe lock to take home. An actual dial and wheel set. It was no bigger than my fist, and it didn’t weigh more than two or three pounds. I could take it anywhere and practice the general method anytime I wanted. It wasn’t the same as doing it on a real safe, but it was something to get started with.

That’s what I did. All that day. All that night. Every waking moment. As long as Amelia was still away, what the hell else was I going to do, anyway?

I still wasn’t feeling it. Not even close.

When I went back the next day, there was an actual customer in the store. I’d come to learn that the Ghost had intentionally made the place as uninviting as possible. He kept it dark, he kept most of the worst junk up front, and when somebody actually came inside, he was as charming to them as he was to me most of the time. If they actually wanted to buy something, he’d make up a ridiculous price and not budge from it by one penny. Obviously, selling junk to people off the street was not the real reason for this particular junk store’s existence. That was as much as I knew then.

So when this day’s customer was shooed away, the Ghost took me back to the safes and ran through the procedure again. Not that he had to. I certainly knew how it was supposed to work by then. I just couldn’t do it yet.

“Did you practice on the lock I gave you?”

I nodded.

“Did you open that yet?”

I shook my head.

“Sit. Practice.”

I did. For the next four hours, I did nothing but turn the dials. I moved from safe to safe, hoping to find one that would feel a little easier. I dialed and listened and tried to feel those contact points. By four o’clock I was sweating and my head hurt. The Ghost came in and didn’t even have to ask me how I’d done. He sent me home and told me to practice with the lock set some more. And to come back the next day a little earlier.

I came back the next day. More of the same. Spinning. Working myself beyond exhaustion, so I could bring Amelia back home.

Then the next day. More spinning. Going home with the practice lock and spinning some more.

The next day, I had to take a break and keep an appointment with my probation officer. He looked a little tired and overworked, and I had no idea what he might say when he sat me down in his office.

“I talked to Mr. Marsh this morning,” he said.

This could be interesting, I thought.

“He says you’re still doing a fine job. Around the house. At the health club now? He’s got you working at the health club? He’s really got you doing everything, eh?”

I nodded. Yeah, everything.

“How’s that pond coming, anyway?”

I gave him a little shrug. Not bad.

“I’m anxious to see it when it’s done.”

Yeah, me, too.

“You know, we should talk about what happens when you’re done with your hours over there. You’ll still have about ten months left on your probation, which means I’ll be talking to the faculty at your high school. You know that perfect attendance is part of your compliance, right?”