Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

It was empty.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sleepy Eyes turned around and went back out toward the front counter.

“What is it?” Tall Mustache said. He was still standing at the back door. He had no idea how unhappy he was about to become.

Me? I had a strange mix of feelings, standing there looking into that empty space. There’s nothing quite as empty as an empty safe, for one thing. It’s always given me an oddly elated hollow feeling in my chest, swinging that door open and seeing absolutely nothing. Like the emptiness of outer space.

So that feeling mixed with the triumph of knowing that yes, I really could open up a safe in this kind of environment, using only my ears and my fingers and my mind. I could really do this.

Mixed with oh shit, this safe is fucking empty and these three guys are about to go insane. It may not be my fault exactly, but I’ll still have to deal with it.

That’s as far as I got. Two or three seconds of that before it all fell apart. The next sound we all heard was the distinctive sound of four tires leaving four black marks on the pavement just outside the door. Followed by Tall Mustache swinging open the back door and running out into the night like he had been shot out of a cannon. The last part of that chain reaction was Sleepy Eyes climbing over the front counter, slamming his whole body into the front door, fumbling with the latch and getting it open remarkably quickly, and then falling out onto the sidewalk.

That left me, an empty safe, and a long shadow in the back doorway.

I made a break for the other door, thinking it would be a real good idea to follow in Sleepy Eyes’s footsteps.

“Stop right there or I’ll shoot you right in the fucking back.”

I stopped.

“Turn around.”

I turned. The man was in his sixties maybe. With a rough face. The kind of man who clearly hadn’t taken a lot of shit from anybody in the past and wasn’t about to start now. He was wearing a black leather jacket that might have been a little too young for him, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. The biggest problem was the very real gun in his right hand.

It was a semiautomatic. It looked like the gun my uncle had under his cash register. It was pointed right at my chest.

“Your friends are all gone.”

His voice was perfectly calm. He took a step closer to me, right into a thin beam of light that came into the room, filtered through the front window. I saw his face more clearly. He had a big nose. He had red cheeks. He was badly in need of a shave.

“I think you need new friends,” he said, taking another step closer. “Don’t you agree?”

No arguments there.

“You’re just a kid, eh? So how about this, I’ll make you a deal. You tell me who those other guys were and I won’t put a bullet in your head.”

I didn’t move. He came closer.

“Come on, kid. Don’t be dumb. You think any of those guys wouldn’t have given you up in two seconds? Just tell me who they are.”

That’s going to be a problem, I thought. I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you here.

The man shook his head and smiled. It looked like he was going to step away, but in the next instant he was right on top of me. He grabbed me by the front of the shirt with one hand. With the other he pressed the gun right into my neck. I smelled the cigar smoke on him. It took me right back to my bedroom in Uncle Lito’s house. A million miles away.

“It’s a little rude not to answer my question, don’t you think? Are you going to tell me or what?”

This is it, I thought. This is it right here.

“Who are they?”

The gun barrel pressed harder into my neck. He had it angled upward. The bullet would go right up through my brain.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Maybe you don’t know their names. Is that it? Huh?”

He’s going to kill me.

“Just tell me where you know them from. Can you do that? Who set you up with these guys?”

My last minute on earth. It’s right here.

“Say something , kid. Tell me something right now or I swear to God, I will pull this trigger.”

Worse things could happen.

“Three seconds. Talk or die.”

Worse things than having to live like this.

“Three.”

Maybe it’s the only way out.

“Two.”

Even if it means never seeing Amelia again.

“One.”

I wished I could have said good-bye to her, at least.

“Zero.”

A few seconds passed, the gun still pressed into my neck. I kept breathing. From outside, I could hear a car pulling into the lot. The headlights came through the open door and swung across the room.

The man lowered the gun. He wrapped one arm around my head and pulled it against his shoulder. For one second I thought he was going to break my neck.

But no. He was hugging me.

“Okay, kid,” he said. “Okay.”

Fishing Hat came in through the back door. Followed by Tall Mustache. Followed by Sleepy Eyes.

Followed by the Ghost.

“I told you guys,” the Ghost said. As pale as ever, and he seemed agitated and totally out of place here. “Did you think I was making a fucking joke? The kid doesn’t talk. And he wouldn’t rat you out, even if he could.”

“You were right,” the man with the gun said. He must have been the owner of this place. Doing somebody a favor by letting these guys use it for a theater, and getting into the act himself.

“I told you he’d be able to open the safe, too. Did I not?”

“Correct again.”

Looking back on it, the whole thing did seem a little too choreographed. But at least I had passed the test, right? Local kid makes good, proves himself to criminals.

They took me back to the restaurant in Greektown. The Ghost didn’t come inside with us. He stood in the parking lot and said good-bye to me again. For real this time.

“It’s official,” he said to me. “You own the franchise.”

He got in his car and drove off. The other men took me inside and got me a drink from a bottle I recognized from my uncle’s shelves. I choked down a swallowful.

“Sorry if we were riding you a little hard,” Fishing Hat said, grabbing me by the back of the neck. “We had to see how you handled it, you know? Make sure you could handle your business. See how big a pair you had if it all went to shit on you.”

Big enough, apparently. For what that was worth. The closing act was when I got taken over to a private table, separated from the rest of the restaurant by a folding partition. There were three couples sitting at the table, but there was no mistaking who was in charge of the evening. It was the man I’d met exactly one time before. The dark eyes, the thick eyebrows, the long cigarette hanging from his lips. That same aroma in the air, the smoke mixing with his cologne and whatever else, the combination vaguely foreign and powerful and different from anything I’d ever smelled before.

That smell, by itself, would have told me everything I needed to know. Like the Ghost said, this was the man you do not fuck with.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said to me. “I knew I had a good feeling about you.”

I didn’t move.

“A man who doesn’t talk. What a beautiful thing, eh?”

Everyone else at the table nodded at this. Two other men in suits. Three women in diamonds and dressed out to here.

“If you see Mr. Marsh, tell him I’m sorry to hear that his partner Mr. Slade is still missing. He should be more careful who he does business with.”

That brought some laughter from around the table. Then I was dismissed. Sleepy Eyes ushered me away and pressed a wad of bills into my right hand. When I got outside, I opened my fist and saw five crumpled hundred-dollar bills.