Sue Grafton - L is for Lawless

"Yeeees," I said cautiously. "Is that what you called to ask, or was there something else?"

"No, no, not at all. I just wondered," he said. "I got something I want to show you. We came across it last night."

"What kind of 'it'?"

"Just come over and take a look. It's something Bucky discovered when he was cleaning out Pappy's place. I wouldn't let anyone touch nothing 'til you saw for yourself. You might have to eat crow." He sounded nearly gleeful.

"Give me five minutes."

I rinsed my dish and my spoon, put the cereal and the milk away, and ran a damp sponge across the kitchen counter. One of the joys of living alone is the only mess you clean up is the one you just made. I tucked my keys in my jacket pocket, pulled the door shut, and took off. In the time since I'd run, the neighborhood was coming alive. I spotted Lewis halfway down the block, taking his morning constitutional. Moza Lowenstein was sweeping off her front porch, and a fellow with a parrot on his shoulder was out walking his dog.

This was one of those perfect November days with cool air, high sun, and the lingering smell of wood fires from the night before. Along our block, the palm trees and evergreens provide constants in a landscape that seems to shift subtly with the passing seasons. Even in California we experience a rendition of autumn, a sporadic mix of colors provided by the ginkgo, the sweet gum, the red oak, and white birch. An occasional maple tree might punctuate the foothills with an exclamation point of vibrant red, but the brightest hues are supplied by the blaze of forest fires that sweep through annually. This year the arsonists had struck four times across the state, leaving thousands of acres an ashen gray, as eerie and as barren as the moon.

When I got to Bucky's, I circled the main house and walked up the drive. The crudely patched concrete parking pad was littered with assorted cardboard boxes, and I assumed that progress was being made with Johnny's personal effects. I headed up the wooden stairs to the apartment above. The door was standing open, and I could hear the murmur of voices. I stepped through the doorway and paused in the entrance. Without the maze of bulky boxes, the space looked smaller and dingier. The furniture remained, but the rooms seemed almost imperceptibly diminished.

Bucky and Chester were standing near the closet, which had been emptied of the remaining clothes. Both men were wearing versions of the same short-sleeved nylon Hawaiian shirt: Bucky's in neon green, Chester's in hot blue. Nearby, Babe was folding and packing the garments into an old steamer trunk. Coat hangers were piled up to the right of her as each piece of clothing was removed.

She was wearing her usual flip-flops, along with shorts and a tank top. I had to admire the comfort with which she occupied her overblown body. I'd have been cold in that outfit, but it didn't seem to bother her.

Chester smiled when he saw me. "Hey, there you are. We were just talking about you. Come over here and take a look at this. See what you think." Mr. Friendly, I thought.

Bucky stepped back, showing me a panel he'd swung away from the back wall of the closet. A small residential safe had been tucked into the space, encased in what appeared to be a block of poured concrete. The safe door was approximately sixteen inches wide and fourteen inches tall. The panel itself appeared to be carefully constructed, a flush-mounted plywood partition with inset hinges. The magnetic latch looked to be spring-loaded and probably released at a touch.

"Impressive. How'd you find that?" I asked.

Bucky smiled sheepishly, clearly pleased with himself. "We'd emptied the closet and I was sweeping it out when I bumped my broom handle up against the back wall. Sounded funny to me, so I got a flashlight and started looking at it real close, you know, knocking across the wall. Seemed like there was something goofy about this one section, so I give it a push and this panel popped open."

I hunkered down in front of the opening, peering into the cavity that had been hidden in the "found" space between the joists. The front face of the safe was imposing, but that might have been deceptive. Most home safes are not built to withstand a professional burglar with the proper tools and sufficient time to force his way in. The safe I was looking at was more likely a fire safe, in which what appears to be a solid steel wall is only a thin metal outer shell filled with insulating material. The function of such a safe is protection from a home fire of fairly short duration. Insulation in an old safe might be something as basic as natural cement. A more modern safe might rely on vermiculite mica or diatomaceous earth, particles of which can often be traced back from a burglary suspect's tools and clothing to the specific safe manufacturer.

On closer inspection, I could see the safe wasn't actually embedded in concrete. The concrete formed a sort of housing into which the safe had been shoved.

"We got a locksmith on his way," Chester said. "I couldn't stand the wait, so I called an emergency number and told 'em to send somebody out. We could have all the answers right behind this dial." He was probably picturing maps and ciphers, a small wireless radio, a Luger, and transmission schedules written in invisible ink.

"Have you looked for the combination? It's possible he wrote it down and tucked it someplace close. Most people don't trust their memories, and if he'd needed to get into it, he wouldn't want to waste time searching."

"We thought of that, but we looked every place we could think of. What about you? You searched pretty good yourself. You come across anything might be the combination to that?"

I shrugged. "I never came across any numbers, unless he was using his birthdate or Social Security."

"Can they do that?" Bucky asked. "Make up a combination to suit any set of numbers you give?"

I shrugged. "As far as I know. I'm not an expert, but I always assumed you could do that."

"What do you think, should we pull that thing out?" Chester asked.

"Couldn't hurt. The locksmith will probably have to do it anyway once he gets here," I said.

I rose to my feet and stepped out of the closet, allowing Bucky and Chester sufficient room to maneuver the safe from its resting place. It took a fair amount of huffing and puffing before they managed to set it down on the floor in the middle of the room. Once they'd eased the safe out of its concrete housing, we could take a better look. The three of us inspected the exterior surfaces as if this were some mysterious object that had appeared from outer space. The safe was maybe sixteen inches deep, with a two-tone beige-and-gray finish and rubber mounting feet. It didn't look old. The dial was calibrated with numbers from one to a hundred, which meant you could generate close to a million combinations. There wasn't any point in trying to guess the right one.

Babe had abandoned her packing and was watching the whole procedure. "Maybe it's open," she said to no one in particular.

We turned in unison and looked at her.

"Well, it could be," she said.

"It's worth a try," I said. I reached down and pulled the handle without success. I turned the dial a few numbers in one direction and then the other, still pulling the handle, thinking the dial might have been left close to the last digit in the combination. No such luck.

"What do we do now?" Bucky asked.

"I guess we wait," I said.

Within the hour, the safe technician arrived with a big red metal toolbox. He introduced himself as Bergan Jones from Santa Teresa Locksmiths, shaking hands first with Chester, then with Bucky and me. Babe had gone back to folding clothes, but she nodded at him shyly when he was introduced to her. Jones was tall and bony looking, sandy haired, stoop shouldered, with a high shiny forehead, sandy brows, and big glasses with tortoise-shell frames. I placed him in his middle fifties, but I could have been off five years in either direction.