Michael Connelly - The Safe Man - A Ghost Story

Brian could tell that Robinette didn’t like that service thing thrown back at him.

“All right,” he said curtly. “I’ll go up and get you a check.”

“Thank you.”

Just before Robinette left the study, Brian spoke up again.

“What do you want me to do with the door? It’s heavy. I could take it and get rid of it, if you want.”

“No, no,” Robinette answered quickly. “I want you to carry it out to the curb and prop it up so it can be seen.”

Brian was confused.

“Sure, but why?”

“Three words: In Cold Blood. Trash pickup doesn’t come until Thursday. That means it will be out there a couple days, and maybe the word will get out that there is no longer a safe in here.”

Brian nodded though he didn’t really follow the logic.

“What’s that old song say? Paranoia will destroy ya. ”

Robinette turned fully around to confront him.

“Look, I don’t expect you to understand me or my life. Do you have children?”

“Got one on the way. I’m not trying to—”

“I don’t care what you are trying or not trying to say. Just do your job and don’t worry about my paranoia. My paranoia got me this place and this life. I think in some ways it’s like drilling through steel plates for a living, but I like it better. It’s not as noisy. Now if you don’t mind, I will go up and get you a check while you take that damn thing out to the curb. Okay?”

“You got it.”

At dinner Brian told Laura all about his encounter with the arrogant writer and she told him that Robinette hadn’t had a book out in at least three years. She suggested that maybe that had something to do with his paranoia and arrogance.

“I was reading in one of the baby books about how when babies get constipated, they can be really miserable,” she said. “Maybe Robinette is creatively constipated.”

Brian laughed but said some people are just mean, plain and simple. He thought about the girl he had briefly met in the house. Growing up in that place with that father, how would she turn out? How would she make it through? He wondered where the mother was.

When he got up to clear the plates, Brian first touched his wife’s swollen belly. They were less than a month away. He was excited and scared. Scared about the money mostly.

“Hey, Robinette’s daughter’s name is Lucy,” he called from the sink.

“Does that change your mind about it?”

“Not if it’s a girl. I still like it. And that house? It was the Blankenship place.”

“Really? What was it like inside? I’ve seen it from the outside.”

“It was big. In the kitchen I saw two of everything, even dishwashers. I guess Arthur Blankenship’s old man was the guy who put the safe in. When he built that place with money from the plant.”

After dinner Brian spent time in the workshop in the garage and posted a report on the Le Seuil safe on the Box Man website. On the chat list, he posted a note asking if anyone else out there had ever encountered such a safe and then signed off to go to bed.

Brian dreamed of darkness with swirling motion. Movements like wisps of smoke that then, for just a moment, came together to form a face he did not recognize as man or woman, adult or child. Then it was gone and he woke up.

“What is it?” his wife whispered.

“A dream. Just a bad dream.”

“What was it about?”

Laura always asked about dreams. She thought they were important.

“I don’t know. It was more like a feeling. A bad feeling.”

He got up and walked the house, checking every lock. This was his routine but it wasn’t comforting. He had the best locks money could buy but he knew how to pick and break every one of them. He knew there were other people with the same skills. He could never feel totally secure.

He sat in the kitchen in the dark and drank a beer. He wondered if he was paranoid like Robinette. He wondered if he would become like the writer once his own child was born. He started humming the Kinks song. “Paranoia will destroy ya…”

He took the beer into the nursery and looked around in the dark. The room was completely outfitted and ready, save for the things that Laura wanted to be gender specific. They’d had a disagreement. Laura wanted to know early on whether a boy or girl was coming. Brian wanted to be surprised. So she knew and he didn’t. She had done a good job of keeping the secret.

Brian’s secret was that he wanted a girl. He didn’t want to find out beforehand because he feared if he learned he was the father of a boy, he would lose his edge of excitement, that he might actually become depressed before the baby was even born. The reason he wanted a girl was that he considered his own life and thought that it was too easy for boys to get messed up, to go down the wrong path. With girls there seemed to be more two-way streets. They could turn around and come back if they wanted to. With boys it was all one-way streets. No turning back.

Brian picked up a complete-change-of-hardware job the next day. The house was an old Victorian in the Heights. Eight doors, including the garage. All Medeco locks and Baldwin brass. It was a six-hour job. That and the markup on the materials made it a good day. He came home relaxed, a big check in his wallet. He and Laura went out to eat at the Bonefish Grill. They figured that once the baby came, they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Might as well do it while they could.

But that night wasn’t perfect. The dream came back. He saw the face form in the darkness again. A face made of cigarette smoke. In the dream it smelled like his burning drill. He awoke and sat on the side of the bed. He felt Laura’s hand caress his back. Being pregnant had made her a light sleeper.

“Was it the same dream?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember any more of it?”

“Not really. It’s just this bad feeling. It’s dread. It’s like I let something loose in the world. Like it was all my fault.”

“What was? What did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think it’s about the baby?”

Brian laughed.

“No, it’s not that.”

He checked the house again. Making sure it was secure even though he did not feel secure. When he went back to the bedroom he started getting dressed.

“What are you doing?” Laura asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I don’t know. I’m going to take a drive.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just want to take a drive, put the windows down.”

“Be careful.”

“I will be.”

The phone didn’t ring the next day. No jobs came in. Brian called a foundry in Michigan and ordered drill bits to replace those he’d broken on the Robinette job. He then spent the rest of the morning in the garage workshop, trying to research the Le Seuil safe. He wrote a letter to his father about it. He went on the computer and Googled the name Le Seuil but only came up with a book publisher in France using the name. He checked the Box Man website, but no one had responded to his earlier post other than to say they had never encountered a safe of that brand.

When it was lunchtime he opened the side door to go into the house. Two men were standing there. They wore suits and dour expressions. It had been twenty years since he’d had to deal with cops, but he still knew the type.

“Officers, what can I do for you?”

“Actually, I’m Detective Stephens with the police department, and this is Agent Rowan with the FBI. Are you Brian Holloway?”

“Yes. Is it Laura? The baby? What happened?”

“Who is Laura?” Stephens asked.

“My wife. She’s at work. She—”

“This is not about her. Can we come in?”