Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

“Let’s get to work,” McGee said, and she sent Holmes to the main filing room to get started opening up the cabinets. He came back a moment later wanting to know which ones.

“Anything new,” she said. “Within the last year. Starting with the factory.”

“How am I supposed to know which ones are new?”

“Look at the labels, the dates.”

Holmes led her down the hall and into the room and over to the cabinets and showed her row after row of tall metal cases from which the labels had all been removed.

For a moment McGee stood there with her hand over her mouth.

“Just start opening them,” she said.

His father had always said locks were like people. They had weaknesses, and if you could learn to exploit those weaknesses, you could control them. As with anything else, you got a feel for locks. You learned to dance with the pins, allowing them to lead. You used all your senses: you felt the stiffness of the springs, you heard the clicks and scrapes. Your nose would tell you how recently a lock had been greased. Your eyes focused inward, on the image of the inside of the lock that was inside your head. You learned to concentrate, remaining relaxed and flexible. From lock to lock you carried a physical memory of the proper tension for your muscles to apply, the correct pressure in your wrist, the torque, the resistance. And then there was the moment when everything clicked.

Holmes wondered what his father, who’d always been so upright, so law-abiding, would have thought had he known to what end his son applied these lessons. Growing up at his father’s side, going along on calls, Holmes had spent years watching him open trunks and safes and doors. The work had seemed like magic then, and it had always made him proud, the way his father’s customers stood there watching, too. But with the white customers, there was often something different, a nervousness that entered their gestures, a sucking of teeth, a clenching of hands. It was years before Holmes realized what it meant, that they watched not with fascination — as he did — but with fear, wary of a black man who could pick a lock as easily as untying a knot.

§

April had taken a job at the computer lab during her second semester at college. That was where she’d met Jane, who seemed to come every night, dressed in a T-shirt commemorating some special event: bake sales, softball championships, company picnics, blood drives, mayoral campaigns, state fairs, public radio fundraisers, pie-eating contests, sack races, badminton tournaments, charity car washes, graduating classes, band tours from before she was born, birthday milestones she hadn’t reached, Fourth of July celebrations, supermarket grand openings, go-cart rallies, philatelist conventions. She had dozens of T-shirts celebrating family reunions, each bearing a different family name, none of them her own. She was a full foot shorter than April, and she had dark, almost black hair with streaks of blue. Shy, though she didn’t look it. But after the first time, asking April for help with the computer became her nightly ritual.

Several weeks into the semester, April volunteered to fill the graveyard shift no one else wanted. Jane made the switch too, and soon she was coming to the lab even when she didn’t have any work to do. She needed to get away from her roommate, she said. She and April hung out together all night. In the morning, they ate breakfast together in the cafeteria. Afterward Jane was often so in dread of seeing her roommate that she went home with April, whose own roommate had moved in with her boyfriend. In the following weeks, Jane’s belongings — T-shirts, books, records — began to take up residence in April’s room.

Jane got the letter from the school during spring break. They’d both stuck around, looking forward to a quiet, empty campus. The letter came on official letterhead, watermarked and printed with a colored seal. Through watery eyes, Jane read it to April, a past-due bill for tuition. There was trouble at home, she explained, her parents splitting, money tight. If she didn’t pay up, she’d have to leave.

Two nights later April and Jane let themselves into the computer lab. They stole six computers, loading them into Jane’s roommate’s car, to which Jane had somehow gotten a key. The next day Jane drove them into the city.

It didn’t take long for the school to figure out April had been the only person on campus over the vacation with access to the lab. There were no signs of forced entry. Staring at her breasts as he spoke, the dean told April that if she returned the computers, he’d forget the whole thing. She’d be done at the lab, but he wouldn’t kick her out of school.

But Jane said it was too late, the computers were gone, and so was the money, and soon so was Jane.

The quiet of Ruth Freeman’s office helped to ease some of April’s queasiness, but it did nothing to erase the memory. April had never told anyone the real reason she’d been expelled. She didn’t need to be told what an idiot she’d been, didn’t need Inez making fun of her for being so gullible. She wondered why it was that she was forever getting herself involved in things like these, sacrificing herself for other peoples’ causes. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe, that she wasn’t committed. If anything, she believed too much, believed in everything, every voice so reasonable, so cogent and clear. Sometimes she just wondered who she’d be if only everyone would be quiet for a moment.

In a few hours, there would be news crews outside and police downstairs trying to break in. And would Inez forgive her?

Taking a deep breath, April pressed the power button on the computer. She waited a few seconds for the flash of lights, for the dong and the flicker on the screen, the spinning of the hard drive. She waited.

She pressed the button again, harder this time.

And waited.

Under the desk she found the power strip. There were plugs for the lamp, the printer, a radio, a cell phone charger. Nothing at all for the computer.

The news knocked the breath out of McGee.

Myles dropped the banner he’d been unrolling. “Can’t you do something?”

“It’s the cord,” April said. “There’s no cord.”

Then Holmes appeared, and April was relieved to have their attention shift to him.

“In one of the cabinets,” Holmes said, “I found rental contracts for the office equipment.”

“What good will that do us?” McGee said. “What’s in the others?”

“Empty,” Holmes said. “All of them. Empty.”

“I don’t understand,” McGee said.

Holmes flopped down in a chair. “They knew we were coming.”

“It’s okay,” McGee said. “It’s fine. We’ll be fine.”

Holmes fainted back, draping his arm over his eyes. “I said this was a stupid idea.”

Myles came over from the window. “We all agreed.”

By which he meant no one had said no. After all this time, April thought, still no one could tell McGee no.

Okay, fine. It would be all right. It really would. McGee had hoped for more. Details, secrets. But they could get by without it. She’d still have plenty to say when the news cameras arrived. She could break the story even with just what Darius had told her, HSI abandoning the city once and for all. What mattered was breaking the scoop before Ruth Freeman had a chance to spin it into silence. Myles would fly the banner. McGee would e-mail the press release. April would help make the calls. The point was the occupation. The point was the attention, asking questions, and asking them loudly, forcing the company to answer.

McGee said, “We can still do what we came here to do.” She picked up the phone and dialed the first number on the list. It wasn’t until she put the receiver to her ear that she realized the phone was dead.