Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

He swung again, but I was already inside his reach. I nailed him in the chin with an uppercut and then in the stomach and then the best one of all-on the side of his stupid fucking wealthy ponytailed head.

I stood there waiting for him to get up. He didn’t. I turned around and went into the liquor store. Uncle Lito was standing by the front door, looking out through the glass. His face was bright red.

“Who the hell was that?” he said. “And since when did you start hitting people?”

I went into the back room. The same back room where I had spent so many hours as a kid. Where I had first taken apart a lock and figured out how it worked. I sat in my old chair and took out the safe lock the Ghost had given me. My heart was racing. I could hear a siren in the distance.

Chaos. Noise. The voices screaming in my head.

I turned the dial to the right. I felt what was going on inside. I heard it. In some far corner of my mind I could see it. I turned the dial back to the left. Then to the right.

The sirens were getting louder.

I need this. I need this.

The heartache, the misery, the loneliness, the pain, the eight-year-old boy still living inside me, the only one who can do this.

I could feel it. I could feel the slightest touch of metal on metal in that lock now.

So what? Fuck this, I thought. This doesn’t matter. I need the real thing.

I need the real thing because I know what’s waiting for me there.

So I went right back outside and got on the bike. A police car was on the scene now. Another police car was pulling up to join the first. I pulled out onto the street and gunned it. Going too fast, weaving in and out of traffic, somehow managing to keep it together and not crack myself up on the way down Grand River. These same miles I’d been riding every single day. I knew it would be different this time.

I knew it.

I got to the store. I parked on the street. Let someone steal the motorcycle, I thought. I don’t care. The Ghost appeared at the door, on his way out it looked like. Done for the day, but then he saw me. This man who had never once seemed to take the slightest interest in how I was doing, he stopped me and asked me what the hell was wrong with me. Why I looked like I was out of my fucking head. I pushed past him and went through the store, throwing things out of my way in the darkness.

I went to the safes. I sat in the chair and pulled it up to the safe named Erato. The Ghost’s favorite. I leaned my head against the cold face and felt my heart pounding in my chest.

Quiet now. Everybody quiet. I have to listen.

Quiet quiet quiet.

That’s when I heard it. The sound, like someone breathing. Steady but shallow.

Spin a few times. Park at 0. Go to the contact area.

The sound was coming from inside the safe.

Park at 3. Go to the contact area.

There was somebody inside the safe. Suffocating.

Park at 6. Go to the contact area.

If I didn’t open it in time…

Park at 9. Go to the contact area.

Then he would die.

Park at 12.

He would run out of air.

Go to the…

He would die inside the safe and stay there forever.

… contact area. It feels different now. It feels shorter.

I parked at 15. The contact area back to normal.

18. Normal.

21. Normal.

24. Boom. There it is again.

I got 6. I got 24.

You have to hurry. You have to get him out of there right now.

27. 30. I kept going. Parking at each three spot. Testing. Feeling. I worked my way through, got my three rough numbers. I went back and narrowed down each one until I had 5, 25, 71.

I cleared the dial and started cranking. The Ghost appeared behind me.

“Easy,” he said. “You don’t have to go so fast. Just get it right.”

I kept working through the combinations, faster and faster.

“Relax, will you? You can work on the speed later.”

I’m ignoring you, I thought. You are not even here. It’s just me and this big metal box.

The air is gone. He can’t survive this.

The sweat was running down my back now. I dialed left three times to 71, right two times to 25, then left until the dial was finally sitting at 5. As soon as I grabbed the handle, I could already feel it.

It might be too late. He might already be dead in there.

Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. That’s how much time had passed since that day.

Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. I pulled the handle and the door swung open.

The next day, Amelia came home.

Michigan

September 2000

It felt strange to be back in the state of Michigan. I never thought I’d be able to come back here, and with every passing mile I kept wondering if I had made a huge mistake. Still, I kept going. This sudden unexpected chance to see Amelia one more time, even for just a moment… it was more than I could resist.

I rode through Milford first. It didn’t look much different. Until I got to the bend in the road and I got my first big surprise. The Flame was gone. In its place was a generic-looking family restaurant now, the kind of place you’d go after church on Sunday. More importantly, the liquor store was gone, too. Replaced by a wine store, of all things. Not quite as upscale as Julian’s, but still. On another day, it would have made me laugh.

I didn’t know if Uncle Lito would still be in the same house. I mean, if the liquor store was gone… he could be anywhere now.

I made the turn into the little alley that ran along the wall of the building, back to the house. I didn’t see the old two-toned Grand Marquis there. I parked the bike and walked up to the front of the house. I peeked through the window. I saw the same table there, the same wooden chairs. The same threadbare couch.

I took out the tools and did a quick job on the front door. One of the first locks I had practiced on, way back when. Today it didn’t take me more than a minute.

When I was inside, I was greeted by that same familiar smell of cigar smoke and loneliness. I walked in through the house, through the front room and kitchen, back to my old bedroom. There were piles of laundry on the bed. Otherwise it was exactly the same. It felt so strange to be back here.

After all of the things I had been through… the calendar said only a year had passed, but to me it was a lifetime.

I came back out to the front room. I paged through all of the newspapers on the table. The racing forms. I had remembered my uncle saying on more than one occasion, when he was done with the liquor store he’d spend every day at the racetrack. That’s probably where he was today.

But I could see it wasn’t as simple as that. It wasn’t just a man retiring to do what he always wanted to do. There were plenty of bills on the table. Collection notices and threatening letters. There were three new bottles of prescription medicine, too. Medicine I knew he wasn’t taking when I was still living here.

Then something else caught my eye. I went over to the kitchen counter. There, next to the pile of dirty dishes, was a cell phone.

That was a surprise in itself, but then it also made me wonder why he didn’t have it with him. I mean, why get a cell phone if you’re just going to leave it at home?

I turned it on and saw that it was fully charged. I checked the call history. It was empty. Not one single call coming in or going out.

I checked the address book. There was one entry.

BANKS.

I turned the phone off and put it in my pocket. One of two things happened here, I thought. Banks gave this phone to my uncle so he could call him if I ever came home. So he could have me taken into custody for my own good. I could see him selling my uncle on that one.