Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

“So here’s the basic situation,” he said, lowering his voice. “We’ve got this buddy of ours…”

He’s actually doing this right here, I thought. He’s laying out the whole plan in a diner.

“He works at this bar uptown. They’ve got this fancy room upstairs for parties and big events and stuff. So couple weeks ago, they got this Christmas party going on. Bunch of Jewish guys from the diamond district. Wait a minute, did I just say a bunch of Jewish guys were having a Christmas party?”

Heckle and Jeckle spit up their milkshakes over that one. That’s exactly when I should have got up and walked out.

“A holiday party, I mean! A Hanukkah party, whatever. Anyway, they’re having this party, and this one guy, he gets totally lit up, right? I mean, he’s just falling down drunk. And my buddy, he’s helping the other guys carry him down to the street, so they can call a cab for this guy. They get him down to the coat check room, and they sit him down there, you know, so they can find his coat and everything. My buddy goes off to find it, and when he’s gone, this drunk guy gets talking to his friends. Nobody else is around, right? They’re just having this private conversation. And this drunk guy, he’s saying about how he’s got all of these diamonds stashed away at his house in Connecticut. Like a million dollars’ worth, all in a safe. And this guy’s friends are like, watch what you’re saying, man. You can’t go around talking like that or the wrong person will hear you. You know? And the drunk guy’s going, oh, you guys have been in business with me for years, I’d trust you with my life. That whole thing. Only the whole time they’re having this conversation, my buddy’s right around the corner there in the coat check room, and he can hear every single fucking word they’re saying!”

The waitress came back with the food just then, so Bigmouth hushed up until she walked away. Then he finished his story while we were eating. Bottom line, his friend looked up the man’s name on the invitation list, then found out where his house was in Connecticut. It was just over the state border, in Greenwich. When the friend called the man’s place of business, they told him that the man was down in Florida until after the new year.

So lo and behold, these guys were going to break into the house and steal that million-dollar stash of diamonds. With my help, of course. Then Heckle and Jeckle would finally get to do their part in this whole deal, by turning those diamonds into cold hard cash. They both had connections in the jewelry business, I was assured, and they’d be able to move them even if they had laser-inscribed identification numbers.

Now, I had already gotten my bad feeling about these guys the first second I saw them, and everything that happened next just made me feel even more uneasy. I remembered what the Ghost had said about this kind of situation, how I should just get up and walk away if my gut told me to.

But hell. I needed to make some more money eventually, right? They were talking about a big score, and they seemed to have everything covered.

So I got in the car with them. Okay? I got in the car.

Bigmouth was driving. Heckle and Jeckle were in the back. I had shotgun for once in my life. “The seat of honor,” Bigmouth said as he opened the door for me, making a big deal out of it. “For the man of the hour.”

It was New Year’s Eve. Did I mention that yet? We were riding up to this man’s house on New Year’s Eve.

“My buddy lives in New Rochelle,” Bigmouth said. “We’ll pick him up on the way. It’ll be just the five of us. That sounds about right, eh?”

He looked over at me. He was driving fast on I-95, heading straight to Connecticut. Like a lot of New Yorkers, I figured, he didn’t drive more than once a month, and it showed.

“So this is what you do, eh? You’re a safecracker? I mean, that is so fantastic. How’d you ever get started doing that?”

I shrugged. I didn’t figure he’d know any sign language.

“Hot damn, you really don’t say one fucking word. Ever! That is so fucking cool, isn’t it, guys?”

Heckle and Jeckle both agreed that it was fucking cool.

“You’re like a silent assassin. Except you assassinate safes instead of people, right?”

The Ghost was right, I thought. You walk away. No matter how big the score seems to be, if it doesn’t feel right, you turn around right then and there and you walk away.

“Besides, what’s this guy doing with all those diamonds in his house, anyway? Am I crazy here? Isn’t he just asking somebody to come take them?”

But how do I do that now? I can’t tell him to stop the car, tell him to leave me here by the side of the road.

“I mean, just the sheer stupidity of this guy, right? Actually talking about it in public? Are you kidding me? We need to do this just on general principle, wouldn’t you say?”

More nodding in the backseat. I looked out my window as we whizzed by every car in the right lane.

It didn’t take us more than a half hour to hit New Rochelle. We rolled up to a little house not far from the Long Island Sound. Bigmouth’s buddy came out and squeezed into the back with Heckle and Jeckle. He reminded me of half the football players back at Milford High School. Big in a white middle-class kind of way, strong as an ox, but probably just as slow on his feet.

“This is the kid,” Bigmouth said to him. “Shake his hand.”

The Ox put his right hand over the back of the seat and squeezed mine. “Fucking kid is right. Are you sure you can do this?”

“He don’t talk,” Bigmouth said. “He just opens safes. That’s all he does.”

We got back on the expressway. Through Mamaroneck and Harrison, past a dozen golf courses all closed up for the winter. To the Connecticut state line.

“So here’s the deal,” the Ox said. “The safe is right in the guy’s office. On the first floor. There’s a window there that’s already open and waiting for us.”

“Vinnie did a little advance work on this,” Bigmouth said, actually dropping his friend’s name. “What he did was, he went to the guy’s house and tried a couple of the windows, until he found one that was open, right? He opens it and then he runs away. And he waits. Does the alarm go off? Do the cops come? He waits and he waits. Nobody comes. So he goes back, throws like what, a big rock through the open window?”

“A branch,” the Ox said.

“A branch, okay. He throws a big branch in there, in case they’ve got one of those motion sensor things, right? He runs away again, he hides. He watches for somebody to come. Nobody comes. So he goes back again ! He climbs right in the window, right? Walks around, I don’t know, does jumping jacks. Climbs back out, runs away, and hides. Nobody comes.”

“So then I finally know the alarm system isn’t on,” the Ox said. “So I go in and look around the place. First painting I see on the wall, right there in the office… Bam! I lift it up and there’s the safe.”

“It’s right there waiting for us,” Bigmouth said. “We go and we get it. Happy New Year.”

“I think I get a little bigger share, too,” the Ox said. “I mean, all the advance work I did? Putting my neck on the line, crawling into the house? Not to mention the fact that this guy was my lead to begin with.”

I tuned them out at that point. They wrangled over the shares while I ran down all the things that could go wrong. It actually sounded pretty simple. As long as everything the Ox was saying was true, we should be able to get in there, take the diamonds from the safe, and be back on the road in half an hour. Forty-five minutes tops. The only problem might be getting my share of the haul, but I figured what the hell. If I’m out, I know I get nothing. I was already getting nothing today. If I’m in, at least I’ve got a chance at seeing some big money.