The Lock Artist (39 page)

Unless you already know how many wheels are in the lock, you spin the dial a few times and park all of the wheels, somewhere far from the contact area. Dial back and count how many times the drive pins pick up another wheel. That’s how many wheels you have. That’s how many numbers are in the combination.

That much I could probably show you how to do in a few minutes. What
happens next is the part that I can describe to you, but I’ll never be able to actually show you how to do it. You either can or you can’t. For most people, on most safes, you just can’t.

This is the part where you park all the wheels at 0 this time, then you go back to the contact area. You “measure” how big that area is. It’s going to be a little bit different every time you go there. And if any one of the wheels happens to have a notch around that number, the range will be slightly shorter. According to the Ghost, most safecrackers actually write down the number ranges on a little graph, but if you have a good enough memory, you can remember the ranges. Go back and park at 3, measure again. Then at 6, and so on. It takes a while. Most dials go to 100.

When you’ve worked your way through, those numbers with the shorter contact areas are approximately the numbers in your ultimate combination. You have to go back and narrow those down. If it’s a 33, you measure at 32 and 34, et cetera. Until you’ve got your final numbers.

The last part is a little bit more grunt work, because while you know your numbers now, you don’t know the order. If you’ve got three numbers, you’ve got 6 possible combinations to try. If you’ve got four numbers, you’ve got 24 combinations to try. Five numbers, 120. Six numbers, 720. Which is a hell of a lot of combinations, but not so bad if you’re fast on the dial. And remember that you only go as far as you have to, until you find the right combination. If you’re lucky, it’ll come early.

As mad as the Ghost had gotten when he saw me try to grind through the numbers on a little combination lock, the ironic thing is that on a big safe, once you’ve gotten those numbers, you have no choice but to work your way through them one combination at a time.

That’s the basic idea. Problem is, the better the safe, the quieter the dial is going to be. Feeling your way through those contact points . . . that takes a special kind of touch, the kind of touch that the Ghost was talking about, caressing the safe like it’s a woman, feeling the slightest tiny movement deep inside her. This was the kind of touch I just didn’t have yet. No matter how much I hushed those singing voices in my head, no matter how close I got to the safe itself, with my cheek resting against the cool metal, my right hand on the dial . . . I turned it and felt only the general idea of that lever hitting the contact points. He ran through the whole procedure seven or eight times for me, let me try it on my own. He even gave me the numbers so I’d know exactly where to find them. I went to the 17. I felt the first
touch. The emptiness in between. The second touch. Yes, I’ve got it. It’s right there. Go to 25 now. It should feel different now. Feel the first point, the second. Is it different? Can you feel it?

No. I couldn’t feel it. Not that first day.

He gave me more homework, a safe lock to take home. An actual dial and wheel set. It was no bigger than my fist, and it didn’t weigh more than two or three pounds. I could take it anywhere and practice the general method anytime I wanted. It wasn’t the same as doing it on a real safe, but it was something to get started with.

That’s what I did. All that day. All that night. Every waking moment. As long as Amelia was still away, what the hell else was I going to do, anyway?

I still wasn’t feeling it. Not even close.

When I went back the next day, there was an actual customer in the store. I’d come to learn that the Ghost had intentionally made the place as uninviting as possible. He kept it dark, he kept most of the worst junk up front, and when somebody actually came inside, he was as charming to them as he was to me most of the time. If they actually wanted to buy something, he’d make up a ridiculous price and not budge from it by one penny. Obviously, selling junk to people off the street was not the real reason for this particular junk store’s existence. That was as much as I knew then.

So when this day’s customer was shooed away, the Ghost took me back to the safes and ran through the procedure again. Not that he had to. I certainly knew how it was supposed to work by then. I just couldn’t do it yet.

“Did you practice on the lock I gave you?”

I nodded.

“Did you open that yet?”

I shook my head.

“Sit. Practice.”

I did. For the next four hours, I did nothing but turn the dials. I moved from safe to safe, hoping to find one that would feel a little easier. I dialed and listened and tried to feel those contact points. By four o’clock I was sweating and my head hurt. The Ghost came in and didn’t even have to ask me how I’d done. He sent me home and told me to practice with the lock set some more. And to come back the next day a little earlier.

I came back the next day. More of the same. Spinning. Working myself beyond exhaustion, so I could bring Amelia back home.

Then the next day. More spinning. Going home with the practice lock and spinning some more.

The next day, I had to take a break and keep an appointment with my probation officer. He looked a little tired and overworked, and I had no idea what he might say when he sat me down in his office.

“I talked to Mr. Marsh this morning,” he said.

This could be interesting, I thought.

“He says you’re still doing a fine job. Around the house. At the health club now? He’s got you working at the health club? He’s really got you doing everything, eh?”

I nodded. Yeah, everything.

“How’s that pond coming, anyway?”

I gave him a little shrug. Not bad.

“I’m anxious to see it when it’s done.”

Yeah, me, too.

“You know, we should talk about what happens when you’re done with your hours over there. You’ll still have about ten months left on your probation, which means I’ll be talking to the faculty at your high school. You know that perfect attendance is part of your compliance, right?”

I nodded. Yeah, sure.

“All righty then. I guess we’re good for today, eh?”

Couldn’t be better, I thought. I shook his hand and left the probation office. Got on my bike and drove down to Detroit for another day of safecracking school.

I kept working at it. I spent so many hours in the back of that store, it started to feel like home to me. One day, the Ghost left me alone for a few hours. He said he had to go run some errands, and that if anybody came into the store, I should just stay in the back until they gave up and left.

A couple of hours passed, just me and the safes. Until I looked up and saw a man standing there, watching me. He was tall. He had dark hair that looked slicked back against his head, like he had spent a fair amount of time that morning getting it just right. He was wearing a blue suit, with a white shirt and a wide red tie.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. Even though I was sure I had shown no sign of being scared.

“I’m looking for the owner. Is he around?”

I shook my head.

“What’cha got here, anyway? A bunch of safes?”

I took my hand off the dial. I sat up straight in my chair.

“These are some beauties.”

He ran his hand down one of the smooth metal sides.

“You sell these? You should have them out front.”

I looked around. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Something about this man, the way he had walked all the way back here. Through the darkness, down the hallway . . . it wasn’t the kind of thing most people would do.

“My name’s Harrington Banks,” he said. “Most people call me Harry.”

He stuck out his right hand. I hesitated for one beat and then shook it.

“You don’t mind me being back here, do you? I figured it was part of the store.”

I kept looking up at him. He was already tall enough without me being way down here in my rolling chair.

“You’re not in charge here, right?”

I shook my head.

“Of course not. You’re way too young.”

He slapped his hand on top of the safe I was sitting next to.

“Well,” he said. “Maybe I should let you get back to, uh . . .”

There was a whole world in the space between the words, as he looked from one safe to the next.

“Back to work here, huh?”

He backed away one step.

“I’ll stop by again. Maybe I’ll catch the owner next time. Your name was . . .”

I didn’t move.

He raised his right hand, as if to grab my name from the air. “I’ll get that next time, too. Right? Until then . . .”

He stood there nodding to himself for a while. Then finally turned to leave.

“See you later. Have a good day.”

Then he left. I would have let the Ghost know about the visit, but I swear, I completely forgot about it because of the other strange thing that happened that same afternoon. The Ghost was still gone, and I was back in my chair, feeling especially frustrated because I still wasn’t getting anywhere. That’s when I heard the beeping noise.

I sat up and looked around. It was just loud enough to hear, a constant string of beeps. I tried to ignore it and go back to the safe, but the sound kept distracting me. I got up and looked around the backyard, heard it getting a little louder when I went down the hallway, louder yet when I got into the back room. There were only about seven thousand items in the room, so I had to narrow it down gradually, until I came to a shoebox on the desk. When I opened it, the beeping doubled in volume.

Now, you have to remember, this was 1999. Not every single damned person in the world had a cell phone yet. Some people still had pagers. I don’t think I’d ever actually held one, until I picked up that pager from the shoebox. It was still beeping away like crazy. There was a little screen on top, with ten bright little red numbers. A phone number, I assumed.

Before I could even think about what to do with it, the pager stopped beeping. I put it back in the box with the others. There were five in total. All of them black, but each with a piece of tape on it, in different colors. Red, white, yellow, blue, green.

The Ghost finally came back about an hour later. I picked up the box and showed him the pager that had gone off. It was the one with the red tape on it. He grabbed it from me and read the number. I didn’t think it would have been possible for him to get any paler than he already was, but it happened. He ran over to the phone and called the number, waving me away when he saw me watching him. I went back to the safes.

When he came back out a few minutes later, the Ghost looked like he had seen a ghost. “I’ve got company coming over,” he said. “So you’d better get the hell out of here.”

I got on the bike and started for home. It felt strange to be out of there in the middle of the day. I drove by Amelia’s house. Just because. The grass looked so long now you could have made hay out of it. Which I’m sure the Lake Sherwood neighbors were real thrilled about.

There was another car in the driveway today. A red BMW. It looked vaguely familiar to me. I could see somebody sitting in the driver’s seat. I sat there and watched for a while, waiting for something to happen. Finally, the driver got out of the car. It was Zeke. Good old Zeke.

He was holding something as he walked to the door. A red rose? Yes. A single red rose. He went to the door and left it on the mat. He reached into his back pocket and took out a piece of paper and put it down next to the rose. A heartfelt letter, no doubt. Maybe an overwrought love poem.

He didn’t knock on the door. Meaning he must have known that Amelia was gone. Hell, maybe he made this same trip every day now. Maybe this was a ritual for him.

As he came back to the car, he saw me sitting on my motorcycle. I flipped my visor down and took off. I didn’t bother to see if he was following me.

Then when I was close to home—when I was about to make that last turn onto Main Street—that’s when I saw the flash of red in my rearview mirrors. I turned around and saw the BMW convertible, closing fast.

It was him.

I made the turn and took off down Main Street. If you know anything about motorcycles, you know that even a midsized bike will out-accelerate anything on four wheels. I left him far behind me, pulled off and waited a while, then looped back into town.

After so many empty days . . . with no sight of Amelia. No luck with the safes. So much time frustrated and alone, with nothing to show for it except this. I avoided getting run over by Amelia’s ex-boyfriend. That’s it.

I didn’t think he’d be waiting for me. I mean, really. But as I took the turn off Commerce Road, there was his car, parked at the gas station. He came out in a blur and surprised me. I gunned it down Main Street again, but it’s not like it was an open road or anything. One little bobble and I would have ended up on somebody’s hood or plastered all over the sidewalk.

He was right behind me as both vehicles came to the railroad bridge. I slowed down just enough to avoid the embankment. Zeke slowed down just enough to avoid death, but not enough to avoid the sickening sound of the entire left side of his car being scraped away on the concrete. Sparks flew and the car came wobbling out of the turn, air hissing out of his left front tire.