The Lock Artist

Two

Outside Philadelphia

September 1999

So there I was, on my way to my first real job. I’d been on the road for two days straight, ever since leaving home. That old motorcycle had broken down just as I crossed the Pennsylvania state line. I hated to leave it there on the side of the road, after all it had given me. The freedom. The feeling that I could jump on the thing and outrun anything at a moment’s notice. But what the hell else choice did I have?

I took the bags off the back and stuck my thumb out. You try hitchhiking when you can’t speak. Go ahead, try it sometime. The first three people who stopped for me just couldn’t deal with it. It didn’t matter how nice my face was or how used up I might have looked after all those lonely miles. You’d think I’d stop being surprised by how freaked out people get when they meet a man who is always silent.

So it took a while to get there. Two days since the call and a lot of trouble and hardship. Then I finally show up, tired and hungry and filthy. Talk about making a good first impression.

This was the Blue Crew. These were the guys the Ghost called steady and reliable. Not quite as top of the heap, but professional. Even if they were a little rough around the edges sometimes. Like most New York guys. That’s all I’d been told about them. I was about to find out the rest for myself.

They were holed up in a little one-story motor court just outside of Malvern, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t the worst place I’d ever seen, but I guess if you were stuck there for an extra day or two, it would start to get to you. Especially if you were trying to keep a low profile, ordering pizzas instead of going out, passing a bottle back and forth instead of seeing what the local bars had to offer. Whatever the reason, they weren’t all that happy when I finally showed up.

There were only two of them. I didn’t think I’d find such a small crew, but there they were, both staying in the same room. Which I’m sure didn’t help their mood any. The man who answered the door was the man who seemed to be the leader. He was bald and maybe twenty pounds overweight, but he looked strong enough to put me right through the window. He spoke with a pronounced New Yorker accent.

“Who are you?” He stared me down for five seconds, then it hit him. “Wait a minute, are you the guy we’ve been waiting for? Get in here!”

He pulled me inside and shut the door.

“You’re kidding me, right? This is a joke?”

The other man was sitting at the table, in the middle of a hand of gin rummy. “What’s with the kid?”

“This is the boxman we’ve been waiting for. Can’t you tell?”

“What is he, like twelve years old?”

“How old are you, kid?”

I put up ten fingers, then eight more. I wouldn’t turn eighteen for another four months, but I figured what the hell. Close enough.

“They said you don’t talk much. I guess they were telling the truth.”

“The fuck took you so long,” the man at the table said. His accent was a lot thicker than the first guy’s. So thick it sounded like he was standing on a Brooklyn street corner. I nicknamed him Brooklyn in my mind. I knew I’d never get real names.

I put my right thumb up, moving it slowly from side to side.

“You had to hitchhike? Are you kidding me?”

I put my hands up. No choice, guys.

“You look like shit,” the first man said. “Do you need to take a shower or something?”

That sounded like a great idea to me. So I took a shower and rummaged through my bag for some clean clothes. I felt almost human again when I was done. When I stepped back into the room, I could tell that they had been talking about me.

“Tonight’s our last chance,” Manhattan said. That was the nickname I’d already settled on for the leader. If they had brought three more guys with them, we could have covered all five boroughs. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“Our man comes back home tomorrow morning,” Brooklyn said. “If we don’t hit him now, this whole trip’s a fucking waste.”

I nodded. I understand, guys. What else do you want from me?

“You really don’t talk,” Manhattan said. “I mean, they weren’t pulling my chain. You really don’t say one freaking word.”

I shook my head.

“Can you open the man’s safe?”

I nodded.

“That’s all we need to know.”

Brooklyn didn’t look quite as convinced, but for now he didn’t have much choice. They had been waiting for their boxman. And their boxman was me.

About three hours later, after the sun had gone, I was sitting in the back of a panel van marked ELITE RENOVATIONS. Manhattan was driving. Brooklyn was riding shotgun, turning every few minutes or so to look at me. It was something I knew I’d have to get accustomed to. It was like the Ghost had said, these guys had already done all of the legwork, had scouted out their target, had watched their man’s every move, had planned the whole operation from beginning to end. Me, I was just the specialist, brought in at the last minute to do my part. It didn’t help that I looked like I hadn’t even started shaving yet, and that beyond that I was some kind of mutant freak who couldn’t even say one word out loud.

So yeah. I didn’t blame them for being a little skeptical.

From what I could see out the front windows, it looked like we were heading into some prime real estate. This must have been the Main Line I’d heard about. The old-money suburbs west of Philadelphia. We passed private schools with great stone archways guarding the entrances. We passed Villanova University, sitting high on a hill. I found myself wondering if they had a good art school. We passed a long sloping lawn with strings of lights and white furniture set out for some sort of party. All of it in a world I’d never get to see in any legal, legitimate way.

We kept going until we hit Bryn Mawr, past another college I didn’t catch the name of, until we finally took a right off of the main road. The houses started to get bigger and bigger, yet still there was nobody to stop us. No uniformed men with tin badges and clipboards to check our credentials. That was the thing about these old-money houses. They were built years before anyone ever dreamed of “gated communities.”

Manhattan pulled the van into the long driveway, drove it all the way back, past the loop that would have taken us to the front door, instead going around to the back of the house, where there was a large paved area and what looked to be a five-car garage. The two men put on their surgical gloves. I took the pair they gave me and put them in my pocket. I had never tried doing any of this with gloves on, and I wasn’t about to experiment now. Manhattan seemed to make a mental note of my bare hands but didn’t say anything about it.

We got out of the van and made our way across a large veranda to the back door. There was a thick line of pine trees surrounding the backyard. A motion sensor light snapped on as soon as we got close to the house, but nobody flinched. The light did nothing but welcome us, anyway. Right this way, sirs. Let me show you fine gentlemen exactly where you’re going.

The two men paused at the door, obviously waiting for me to perform the first of my specialties. I took the leather case out of my back pocket and got to work. I chose a tension bar and slipped that into the bottom of the keyhole. Then I took out a thin diamond pick and started in on the pins. Feeling my way through those pins, back to front, pushing each pin up just enough for it to catch against the shear line. I knew that on a house like this, the lock would have to have mushroom pins at the very least. Maybe even serrated pins. When I had all the false sets done, I worked my way through them again, bumping each pin up another tiny fraction of an inch, keeping the tension exactly right. Shutting out every other thing in my mind. The men standing around me. The simple fact of what I was doing here. The night itself. It was just me and those five little pieces of metal.

One pin set. Two pins set. Three. Four. Five.

I felt the whole cylinder give now. I pressed harder on the tension bar and the whole thing turned. Whatever doubts these men may have had about me, I had just passed the first test.

Manhattan pushed in past me, going right for the alarm station. This was the part they needed to have worked out already on their own. There were so many elements that could be compromised in an electronic alarm system. Bypassing the magnetic sensors on a door or window. Disabling the entire system itself or just disconnecting it from its dedicated phone line. Hell, even getting to the person who was sitting in the alarm company’s control room. As soon as you have a real live human in the loop, things get easier, especially if that real live human being is earning $6.50 an hour.

Somehow these guys knew the pass code already, which is the simplest way of all. They might have had a connection inside the house. Either a housekeeper or a service man. Or else they had just watched the owner closely enough, with enough magnification to see the buttons as he pressed them. However they did it, they had the number, and it took Manhattan all of five seconds to turn the whole system off.

He gave us the thumbs-up, and Brooklyn split off to keep watch or whatever else he was supposed to be doing. This was obviously routine for them. Something they felt totally comfortable with. Me? I was in my own little zone now. That warm little buzz, the way my heart rate would speed up until it was finally in sync with that constant bass drum inside my head. The fear I lived with every second of every day finally draining away from me. Everything peaceful and normal and in perfect tune, for just those few precious minutes.

Manhattan gave me a little wave to follow him. We walked through the house, as perfect a house as I had ever seen. It was decorated more for comfort than for show. A huge television with chairs you could disappear into. A fully stocked bar with glasses hanging from a rack, a mirror, bar stools, the works. We went up the stairs, down the hallway, and into the master bedroom. Manhattan seemed to know exactly where to go. We ended up in one of the two big walk-in closets, rows of expensive dark suits on one side, expensive casual clothes on the other side. Shoes arranged neatly on their slanted platform. Belts and ties hanging on some kind of electric contraption. Press the button and they would all start rotating into view.

Of course, we weren’t here for the belts and ties. Manhattan carefully slid some of the suits aside. I could see the faint rectangular outline in the back wall. Manhattan pushed on it and it popped open. Inside that door was the safe.

He stood aside for me. Once again, my turn.

This is where they really needed me. They could have gotten through that back door if they had really wanted to. It might have taken them a little longer, but these were smart, resourceful men, and they would have found a way. The safe? This was a different matter. It was one thing to find out the security code for the whole house, but the combination to the safe hidden in the master bedroom closet? No, that would live only inside the owner’s head. Maybe in the wife’s head. Maybe in one other person’s head, a trusted confidant or the family lawyer, in case of emergency. Beyond that… well, you could go ahead and find the owner, tape him to a chair and stick a gun in his mouth, but then you’d have a whole different kind of operation. If you wanted to do this clean, then you needed a boxman to get you into that safe. A bad boxman would probably end up cutting through the wall and dragging the safe right out. A better boxman would leave it in the wall and use a drill. A great boxman… well, that’s exactly what I was hoping to demonstrate.

The problem was-and I was glad Manhattan didn’t know this-up until that point in my young life, I had never once opened a wall safe. I mean, I knew it was the same idea. It’s just a regular safe built into a wall, right? But I had learned on freestanding safes, where I could really get my body up next to them and feel what I was doing. As the Ghost had said so many times, when he was teaching me how to do this… It’s like seducing a woman. Touching her in just the right way. Knowing what was going on inside of her. How do you do that if every part of the woman except her face is hidden behind a wall?

I shook out my hands and stepped up to the dial. I tried the handle first, made sure the damned thing was actually locked. It was.

I could see the Chicago brand plate, so I dialed the two “tryout” combinations, the preset combinations that the safes are shipped with. You’d be amazed how many people never change them.

No luck on either of those. This was a conscientious safe owner who set his own combination. So now it was time to go to work.

I pressed myself against the wall, putting my cheek against the safe’s front door. I was already assuming three wheels, but it was my first time, after all, so I wanted to make sure. I found the contact area, that area on the dial where the “nose” of the lever was coming into contact with the notch on the drive cam. Once I had that, I parked all the wheels on the opposite side of the dial, then spun back the opposite way, counting all of the pickups.

One. Two. Three. Then I was clear. Three wheels.

I spun back, parked all the wheels at 0. Then I went back to the contact area.

This was the hard part. This was the almost impossible, should-be-impossible part. Because of the fact that no wheel can be exactly, exactly round and no two wheels can be exactly, exactly the same size as each other, you’re going to have some imperfect contact when you pass over the open notches on each wheel. It’s just unavoidable, no matter how well the safe is built. So when you’re sitting over a notch and you go back to the contact area, it’s going to feel a little different. A little shorter as that nose dips down a little farther on the drive cam.

On a cheap safe? You can feel it like a pothole on a smooth road. On a good safe? A good, expensive safe like the man who owned this house would have built into his closet?

The difference would be so small. So tinier than tiny.

I parked at 3. Then at 6. Then at 9. Going by threes to start out with, testing each time. Waiting for that different feel to come to me. That slightest shortening in the contact area. Such a fine difference that no normal human being could ever perceive it. Absolutely never ever in a thousand years.

12. Yes. I was close.

Okay, keep going. 15, 18, 21.

I worked my way around the dial, spinning quickly when I could, slowing down when I needed to feel every millionth of an inch. I heard Manhattan shifting his weight around behind me. I put up one hand, and he was still again.

24. 27. Yes. There.

How do I know?

I just know. When it’s shorter, it’s shorter. I just feel it.

Or something beyond feeling it, really. That little piece of hard metal touches the notch a hair width’s sooner than the last time around, and I can feel it, hear it, see it in my mind.

When I had finished the dial, I had three rough numbers in my head. I went back and narrowed those down until they were exact, moving by ones this time instead of threes. When I was done with that, I had the three numbers in the combination, 13, 26, 72.

The last step is a little bit of grunt work. There’s no other way to do it but to grind right through them. So start with 13-26-72, then switch the first two, then the second and last, and so on, until you’ve worked your way through all six possibilities. Six being a lot better than a million, which is how many combinations you’d have to go through if you couldn’t find out those numbers.

Today’s combination ended up being 26-72-13. Total time to open the safe? About twenty-five minutes.

I turned the handle and pulled the door open. I made sure I was watching Manhattan’s face as I did that.

“Fuck me,” he said. “You can just fuck me with a stick right now.”

I stepped aside and let him do what he needed to do. I had no idea what he was hoping to find in there. Jewels? Hard cash? I saw him pull out about a dozen envelopes, those brown paper envelopes that are just a little bit bigger than business size.

“We got ’em. We’re ready to roll.”

I closed up the safe and spun the dial. Manhattan was right behind me with a white rag, wiping everything down. Then he swung the outer door shut and slid the suits back in place.

He turned the light off. We retraced our steps down the stairs. Brooklyn was in the living room, looking out the front window.

“Don’t tell me,” he said.

“Right here,” Manhattan said, holding up the envelopes.

“Are you shitting me?” He looked over at me with an odd little smile. “Is our boy here like a genius or something?”

“Or something. Let’s roll.”

Manhattan keyed in the security code to rearm the alarm system. Then he closed the back door behind us and wiped off the knob.

This is why they called me. This is why they waited around for a kid they’d never met before to ride halfway across the country. Because with me on the job, they leave absolutely no trace behind them. The owner of this house would come back the next day, open the door, and find everything exactly as he had left it. He would go upstairs, take some clothes out of his closet, turn the light back off. Only when it was time to go into that safe would he dial his combination and open that door and see…

Nothing.

Even then, he wouldn’t comprehend what had happened. Not right away. He’d fumble around for a while, thinking that he must be mistaken. That he must be losing his mind. He’d accuse his wife next. You’re the only person in the world who knows the combination! Or else he’d call the family lawyer, put him on the spot. We were gone for a week, eh? You decided to make a little visit to our house?

Finally, it would dawn on him. Somebody else had been here. By that time, Manhattan and Brooklyn would be safely back home, and I’d be…

I’d be wherever it was that I went next.

I never did find out what was in those envelopes. I didn’t care, not in the least. I knew going in that it was a flat fee job. When we were back at the motor court, Manhattan gave me the cash and told me it had been a real pleasure seeing me work.

I had some more money now, at least. Enough to eat for a while, to think about finding a place to stay. But how long would that money last?

He peeled off the magnetic ELITE RENOVATIONS sign from each side of the van and put those in the back. He took a screwdriver and undid the Pennsylvania license plates and replaced them with New York plates. He was about to get behind the wheel when I stopped him.

“What is it, kid?”

I took out an imaginary wallet from my back pocket, made like I was opening it.

“What, you lost your wallet? Go buy a new one. You’re flush now.”

I shook my head, pretended to take a card out of that same imaginary wallet.

“You lost your ID? Just go back to where you came from. They’ll give you a new one.”

I shook my head again. I pointed to that invisible card in my hand.

“You need…”

Finally, the lightbulb went off.

“You need a new ID. As in, a whole new fucking identity.”

I nodded my head.

“Oh, shit. That’s a whole different deal right there.”

I leaned in close, put one hand on his shoulder. Come on, friend. You gotta help me out here.

“Look,” he said. “We know who you work for. I mean, we’re gonna send him his cut, right? That’s how this deal works. We’re not gonna stiff him, believe me. So if you got a problem like that, why don’t you go back home and get it straightened out there?”

How could I explain this to him? Even if I could speak? This strange sort of limbo I was in now. I was a dog who couldn’t go home, who didn’t have a place on his master’s floor. Or even in his backyard. I had to stay on the run, scrounging for scraps in the garbage cans.

Until he finally called me. When the master stuck his head out the door and called my name, you better believe I had to go running back to him.

“Look, I know a guy,” he said. “I mean, if you’re really in a jam.”

He took out his own wallet, pulled out a business card and then a pen. He turned the card over and started writing on it.

“You call this guy and he’ll-”

He stopped writing and looked up at me.

“Oh yeah. That might be tough. I guess you should probably just go see him in person, eh?”

I took out the money he had just given me and started peeling off bills.

“Wait, wait. Stop.”

He turned around and looked at Brooklyn. They exchanged a couple of shrugs.

“I’d ask you to promise not to tell my boss,” he said, “but somehow I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem.”

I got in the back of their van. That’s how I ended up in New York.