The Lock Artist (50 page)

That’s when I saw that the bookcase door was slightly open. The door to the secret back room. I ended the call and put the phone down on the table. I closed my eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then got up and went over to the bookcase.

As I pulled it open, I saw Gunnar kneeling by the safe. Another man was standing over him.

It was Sleepy Eyes.

When he saw me, he drew out his gun and aimed it at my chest. Not that he had to worry. I was too surprised in that moment to do anything. He came over to me and pulled me into the room.

“It’s about time,” he said to me. “Your friend here’s having a little problem with the safe.”

“Michael and Lucy are always changing this combination,” Gunnar said. Which was true. She’d reset it and I would open it. Keeping up with my touch. “So he’s the one who can open it.”

He was acting way too calm, I thought. He’s not being forced to do this.

“Just open the safe.” Gunnar’s voice was totally flat, devoid of any feeling. “Don’t make this any harder.”

“You didn’t even know,” Sleepy Eyes said, that sick little smile on his face. That smile I hated so much. “A Judas in your midst and you had no fucking idea.”

That’s when it all started to make sense to me. Gunnar did have a contact on the boat. Sleepy Eyes. Everything else was an illusion. They set this whole thing up together.

Why didn’t I see it coming? They were so much alike, now that I thought of it. They even sounded alike, the way they complained about always having to do the grunt work. Resenting everyone else around them. Gunnar just did a little better job of hiding it.

“I’m not going to say I’m sorry,” Gunnar said to me. “Not to you, anyway. I believe I did tell you to stay away from Lucy, right? Did I not say that?”

“Where is she, anyway?” Sleepy Eyes said. “That’s the little redhead, right?”

“Look, you got everything you wanted,” Gunnar said. “You’ve got four million dollars coming. You even got rid of your boss.”

So they did pull off that part of the plan. The man from Detroit is dead. For Sleepy Eyes, this whole day is a dream come true.

“I asked you a question,” Sleepy Eyes said. “Where’s the redhead?”

“She’s gone. Don’t worry about her.”

She can’t be involved in this, I thought. Gunnar, I can almost believe. But Lucy? No way. He must have just kept her in the dark, and then sent her away when it was done. She’s probably waiting for him right now. Somewhere out there. With no idea of what happened here.

Sleepy Eyes kept staring him down. Then he turned his attention back to me.

“How about you?” he said. “You got any surprises for me?”

I wish I did. A gun in my pocket, say.

“So just open the safe, okay?”

Gunnar stood up so I could take his place. I didn’t move.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” Sleepy Eyes said. “Please open the fucking safe.”

Nothing, I thought. You get nothing.

Sleepy Eyes raised his gun to me. For the first time, I really looked at it. The barrel was so much longer with the suppressor screwed onto the end. It was the first time I had ever seen one.

“Pretty please.”

Then he turned and shot Gunnar between the eyes.

It was a hollow sound, not at all like a real gunshot. It took me a moment to realize that it had even happened. Gunnar kept standing there for a long moment, a look of surprise on his face. Part of his forehead suddenly gone and a splatter of red on the wall behind him. Then he went down.

“Open the safe,” Sleepy Eyes said. “Right now.”

I kept standing there in front of him. Going all the way back in my mind, to that robber in the liquor store, remembering the way he held that gun. More scared of it than we were.

How different it was now. All these years later, another man and another gun, but this man wasn’t scared at all. He would shoot me as calmly as a man turning on a television.

“I’m going to put a bullet in your left leg,” he said. “Then your right leg. I’ll keep going until you have the safe open. Do you understand?”

I still didn’t move.

“I’ve done it before. My record is twelve shots. With a reload. It was a man who wouldn’t type in a password on a computer, but same idea. Would you like me to try for thirteen today?”

He pointed the barrel at my left leg. That got me moving finally. I went down on one knee and started spinning the dial.

“I always kinda liked you,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

Four spins to the left. Three to the right. As soon as I turn this handle, I thought, he’s going to kill me. I think that’s pretty much guaranteed.

Two spins to the left.

I was one more spin away from dying. Hell, if he knew about safes, he could have killed me right then and just made the final spin himself until it stopped.

I spun a few more times to the left. Time to start over.

“Stop with the stalling, okay? Just open it.”

I cleared the numbers, spun again, four to the left, three to the right, two to the left. I looked up at him.

He gave me that little smile.

I spun the dial to the right. Now all I had to do was turn the handle.

The voice came from the open bookcase door. “Drop the gun.”

Sleepy Eyes looked up.

“Drop it. Right now.”

Harrington Banks stepped slowly into the room, his gun still aimed squarely at Sleepy Eyes’s chest. I could see three more men behind him, with enough firepower to cut him in half.

Sleepy Eyes gave me one last little smile before he dropped his gun.

It was the cell phone that had brought them there. I know this now, about how when a cell phone is left on you can track the signal to its approximate location. It brought them to the right block, at least. All they had to do was work their way through the houses until they got to this one. If it had been one more house, I probably would have been dead already.

A few minutes later, Sleepy Eyes was taken away in handcuffs. Banks took me out to the table and sat me down. He asked me if I wanted something to drink. I shook my head.

I wouldn’t get to see Amelia again. That was the only thing I was thinking about. I wouldn’t get to keep my promise.

“You’re a hard man to catch up to,” Banks said to me, “but I’m glad you called.”

When we all stood up, one of his partners started to cuff me.

“Don’t even bother,” Banks said. “No need to embarrass ourselves.”

So I come back to where I began. I’ve been right here in this cage for almost ten years now. Ten years. Do you remember what I said about how this all works, back when I was arrested that first time? You get on the wrong side of the law, it turns into three or four people all getting together to decide what to do with you. Nothing more.

In my case, I had a few things going for me. I was the Miracle Boy, first of all. The product of a broken home. Traumatized. Psychologically damaged. Beyond that, well, I was doing things that weren’t completely voluntary, if you looked at it the right way. I mean, if you squinted real hard and held your head a little sideways . . . I was a teenager practically brainwashed into being a safecracker, right? I did not fully understand the full ramifications of what I was doing.

You get the picture. That’s how my lawyer played it. That same lawyer who got me the probation after that first break-in.

But my strongest card of all was what I could tell them about the jobs I did and who I did them for. Or even the jobs where I was just along for the ride. Especially that assemblyman in Ohio. They were particularly interested in that one. The orders came from Sleepy Eyes’s boss, of course, the same man who was my boss. The same man who owned us all, and who was now very much dead. But Sleepy Eyes himself? He was a much bigger fish than I was. He was as big as that fish hanging on Mr. Marsh’s wall.

Funny how it works out, huh? Because of Gunnar’s double-cross, Sleepy Eyes ended up living. And in the end he was worth a lot more to me alive than dead.

Add it all up and I was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of at least ten years and no more than twenty-five. I was eighteen years old when I was
arrested. Nineteen by the time I was finally sentenced. I ended up right here, and you should have seen these people for that whole first month, treating me like I was the amazing Houdini, able to escape from any prison in the world. Like I’d actually be able to break my way through my cell door, then the block door, then the wing door, and probably seven other doors before I got to the outside world. It was almost laughable.

But like I said, ten to twenty-five. Leaning toward ten, I’d like to think. And ten’s just about up. So now I’m in the zone, right? Any day now, I could get the news.

Any day now.

I’ve had a lot of time to think, of course. What else am I going to do? I play everything back and I see the places where I could have gone down another road. How that would have made everything turn out differently.

In the end, I regret most of it. But I don’t regret anything that happened with Amelia. I’d do it all again if it meant being with her.

I got my first letter from her about four years in. Yes. I say letter, but it wasn’t a letter at all. It was a page of comic book panels. Just like old times.

The first panel was Amelia wearing a wedding dress. I practically died right there, seeing her in that dress. Knowing that she was moving on with her life. Getting married to somebody else. I couldn’t stand it. I mean, why would she even send this to me?

That’s the kind of thing that was going on in my head, before I even got to the second panel. She’s looking at herself in the mirror, everybody fussing around her dress and not noticing how unhappy she is. There’s a thought bubble over her head. “Why can’t I forget him?”

She’s leaving the room in the next panel. Everyone running around behind her, yelling at her, asking her what the hell she’s doing.

She’s in her car. She’s driving somewhere.

She stops the car on Victoria Street. Yes, right by the old house. Where we spent that night drawing on the walls. This time, instead of going to the house she goes right down to the river. She’s slipping her big wedding dress over her head now. Leaving it there on the riverbank. Taking off the rest of her clothes. Yes. She draws the scene from behind, as she stands naked on the edge of the river.

Then she does it. She dives right in.

She’s in the River Rouge now. The dirty water so thick she can barely see
through it. She’s swimming down, all the way to the bottom. As she does this, her legs disappear. Or rather, they come together and form a single tail.

That’s right. That’s what she drew.

She’s a much stronger swimmer now, with the tail. She can go anywhere in the river she wants. She can stay down there forever. But she’s looking for something specific. She’s looking for the safe.

Finally, she finds it. She starts spinning the dials. Another thought bubble over her head. “Good thing he gave me the combination.”

Crazy, I know. But I know exactly what she meant by that. I gave her the combination. Her and only her.

She dials the last number. She turns the handle and opens the door.

And there I am.

I’m an adult. Midtwenties, looking a little tired, but very much still alive. There are bars across the safe door. I am sitting in my miniature prison cell, inside the safe.

“What took you so long?” I say. Saying the words to her, out loud. Even though we’re underwater.

That was it. The last panel.

That’s how it began between us. Again.

We’ve kept this up for the past five and a half years. This is how we stay in touch with each other. It’s like we both live in this imaginary world where we can be together, every single day. It’s still not easy to be in here, believe me. But with Amelia waiting for me, I think I’ll make it.

I still haven’t said a real word yet. I’m sure as hell not going to try as long as I’m in this place. But when I get out . . .

The first time I see her again . . .

I don’t even know what the first word will be. But it’ll be there, waiting to come out.

After all these years, I’ll say something.

I know I will.