Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

He himself never stepped over into the dark side of his operation. He had minions for that. They were well paid for their loyalty. But more important they were mostly married or had children. There was the unspoken whip: that if they broke the watertight seal and Buryak got damp, very bad things would happen. (Only once had he transgressed, murdering a contractor who’d come across a stash of unaccounted millions in his country house and tried to extort him. He’d successfully turned the man’s death into an accident, but the effort that took, and the anxiety it caused, told him he would never take matters into his own hands again.)

This was why he’d been mortified and infuriated to have been arrested — and tried, no less — for the death of a punk like Leon Murphy. Killing someone for trying to sell protection at one of Buryak’s warehouses? No point. He would’ve sent a lieutenant to sit down with Murphy in a bar and explain about the dangers of identity theft. “Such a problem, such a hassle... People lose everything. They even end up on the street, Leon.”

Why waste ammunition?

His phone — an encrypted satellite — hummed.

It was his head of research department. “Willem.”

“Sir. Are you free?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I need to talk to you about the Chemist. Our reception team picked up some information you need to know about. The tap in the courthouse prosecution room.”

“All right.”

“They didn’t get as much as they’d hoped. He doesn’t talk much. At least the audio quality’s good. He said that if you were acquitted, he would find some evidence to quote ‘nail you’ for something.”

“The Chemist said that?”

“That’s right.”

“I see. Anything specific?”

“No.”

“That was it. He left the room. After that, we powered down the bugs. They sweep occasionally and we couldn’t afford for them to be found.”

“Thank you, Willem.”

“You need anything more, sir, let me know.”

They disconnected.

He rose and walked into the huge Mediterranean-style kitchen, the cats following like dolphins beside a cruise ship. His wife was not home to make him tea, so he boiled water and made a fresh pot himself. He took it and a porcelain cup back to his office.

So. The Chemist would continue to be a problem. This wasn’t a surprise to Viktor Buryak. He’d seen in the man’s eyes humiliation and the pain of defeat when the clever lawyer, Coughlin, cut him to pieces on the stand. And the man couldn’t get him for Murphy’s death again; double jeopardy guaranteed that. So he would come after him some other way.

Would he go so far as to plant evidence against him, set him up for another crime, even another homicide he didn’t commit?

This didn’t seem far-fetched.

He now took a sip of the delightfully hot tea and sent an encrypted message to Aaron Douglass. If anyone could make a problem like Lincoln Rhyme, aka the Chemist, go away, he was the man to do it.

Intent.

That’s the main thing — the “key,” you might say — that defines the crime of possessing lock-picking tools. In New York, the law is clear:

Possession of burglar’s tools. A person is guilty of possession of burglar’s tools when he possesses any tool, instrument or other article adapted, designed or commonly used for committing or facilitating offenses involving forcible entry into premises, or offenses involving larceny by a physical taking, or offenses involving theft of services... under circumstances evincing an intent to use... the same in the commission of an offense of such character.

Nearly all states have laws like New York’s. You can buy whatever you need to pick locks, provided you do not plan to use them in furtherance of a crime. It’s the prosecutor’s job to prove that and it’s a task that can be difficult.

If for some reason an officer of the law were to have stopped me as I was walking down the street toward Carrie Noelle’s apartment and poked through my backpack, noting the tools, I would simply hand him the business card that reads Day & Night Locksmith Services , which is a complete fake, by the way. He might be suspicious and call the number. An answering service would pick up, taking the sting out of the suspicion. And he’d be thinking: Hard to prove intent, so the DA won’t be interested.

He’d let me go. He might be curious about — and troubled by — my locking-blade brass knife but, then again, I follow the law and keep it concealed, a must in New York. And its length of inches is permissible in the city (it’s also a length that’s not a problem for me, as I know full well what kind of damage that much razor-sharp metal can do).

You don’t need a Los Zetas serrated hunting knife to get blood to spray.

On the other hand, if, at the moment, a cop were to find me as I am now, in stocking cap and clear latex gloves, with those selfsame tools, and a page from the Daily Herald , he would deduce intent to forcibly enter into premises to commit a felony.

Which is why I’m crouching once again in the abandoned, unstable Bechtel Building, across from Carrie Noelle’s apartment and not making a move until the street is deserted, until there is no one to note my presence.

I scan the surroundings. Present are some cars, some late-night revelers, a homeless man pushing a cart.

I grow impatient until finally, an opportunity. I’m across the street and, in a matter of seconds, through the service door. Some locks don’t even deserve the name.

Soon I’ve climbed to Carrie’s floor and am waiting in the fire stairwell, listening carefully.

I hear some clicks, some thuds. I’ll wait for silence.

I unzip my backpack and open my tool case. I feel the brass knife in my pocket.

I’m breathing slowly. Concentrating, all too aware of the greatest challenge I — and all trespassing lockpickers — face: time.

Historians can’t say for certain when and where the first lock was made, but they can say when the earliest lock was discovered. It was in the palace of Dur-Sharrukin, now called Khorsabad in Iraq — the site destroyed by ISIL a few years back. The lock dates to about 4000 B.C. It secured a massive door, which probably weighed hundreds of pounds.

The key was equally imposing and had to be carried on a guard’s shoulder. It wasn’t particularly sophisticated. In fact, it was so easy to duplicate by thieves and intruders that the royals took to installing multiple keyways in the door — only one of which worked. The purpose of this was to keep the intruder on the premises trying keyway after keyway for so long that the guards would find and then gut him after the briefest of trials, or no trial at all.

This is the reason most burglars are caught: because they can’t breach their target before being spotted or heard. If you hear a clink-tink in your hallway and you rise from your TV-viewing spot to peek out and see nothing — because the picker is already inside your neighbor’s apartment — you put it down to a cat, a rat, a settling building.

If you see someone in a ski mask and gloves, irritated because he can’t defeat the lock, well, the results are obvious.

Speed...

Hence my agonizing practice with the SecurPoint 85.

Time is one enemy of the lockpicker; noise is another.

I have no idea what the wooden locks of ancient eras sounded like (wood was phased out in Roman days), but metal on metal undeniably makes noise, when inserting, when turning, when unseating.

Clink-tink...