The Lock Artist (43 page)

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Until I finally hear the footsteps. Into the room. Then out. Then into the room again. My father’s voice.

“Michael?”

Then farther away. Then closer.

Then right next to the safe.

“Michael? Are you in there?”

I must be quiet.

“Michael? Seriously, did you go inside there? You know you shouldn’t be in there.”

Quiet, quiet. Not a sound.

I feel the safe being tipped over a few inches.

“Michael! Come on! You didn’t really go in there, did you? You’re gonna die in there! There’s no air!”

I feel the warmth spreading in my pants again.

“Michael, open the door, okay? You’ve got to open it.”

I can hear the dial being spun now.

“I don’t remember the combination! You have to open it!”

More spinning. Such a simple idea. If those three numbers come into his head, he will spin those numbers and the door will open.

“What was it? Fuck! It was two years ago! How am I supposed to remember?”

A hand slamming down on the top of the safe. I stop myself from crying out. Nothing. Not a sound.

“Listen to me. You have to open this thing right now. Just reach up and turn that handle. You have to do this, right now!”

Be quiet. Be quiet.

“Come on, Michael. Turn that handle.”

There is no handle.

“I promise you, it won’t hurt. Okay, buddy? I swear to God. It won’t hurt. Just come out and we’ll do this together, okay? You and me.”

Be quiet.

“Come on, Mike. I can’t do this by myself. You have to come with me, okay?”

There is no handle. Be quiet. There is no handle.

“It’ll be so quick. You won’t even feel it. I swear to you. I cross my heart and hope to die. I want us both to be together when we do this. Okay?”

I keep my nose against the edge of the door, but I’m getting dizzy.

I hear my father crying. Then I hear him go away. At last. At last he’s gone.

The relief and the panic all at once. He’s gone but now I’m going to be in here forever.

Then the footsteps again. A crinkling noise, all around me. The light getting dim.

“We’ll go out together,” he says. “I’m right here with you. I wish I could see you one more time. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. We’ll go out together.”

The air getting thinner and thinner. My mind starting to shut down. A pinhole of light, at the bottom of the safe. Whatever he has wrapped around it, he isn’t covering the whole thing. He’s trying to cut off my air but . . .

Everything’s black for a while. I think. I’m out and then I come back. I can hear his breathing.

“Are you still there, Michael? Are you still with me?”

That’s when I feel the whole world tilting. I hear the steady squeak of the wheels underneath me. The rumbling across that wooden floor. Down the steps. Whump whump whump. A fresh blast of air through that crack along the safe’s door. Waking me up. We are outside now. We are on the sidewalk. Hitting every crack. Bump bump bump. Onto the smooth road. A car passing by us, honking its horn. Then the motion of the safe almost stopping. I can hear my father laboring outside now, fighting for every inch. We must be on rough ground. The dirt and weeds and gravel beside the road. Where are we going? We can’t be going toward the river. We can’t be.

A few more feet. Then we stop.

“You and me, Michael. You hear me in there? You and me. Forever.”

Then the fall. The impact, slamming me against one side of the safe. The sudden darkness.

Then the water, seeping in through the crack. It’s cold. It fills up the safe, one inch at a time. It’s squeezing out the rest of my air.

The seconds ticking away. I feel the water covering my face.

I can’t breathe. I am cold and I am dying.

I can’t breathe.

I close my eyes and wait.

I finished the last panel. Amelia was right behind me, darkening the lines and making everything stand out as if we had burned it into the wall. For the second time that night, the tears were running down her face.

We stood back and looked over what we had done. The panels started in
the room where the safe had been. They wrapped around three walls and out into the hallway. They continued into the living room and finished on the wall opposite the front door, right where the couch had been. The last panel was the biggest of all. A complete underwater panorama, with the trash collected there on the bottom of the river. An old tire. A cinder block. A bottle. A piece of lumber with the nails still in it. The stringy weeds pushing up through the debris and swaying with the current.

In the middle of everything, tilted slightly with one corner submerged in the sand, the great iron box. Sunken. Abandoned. Never to be brought back to the surface again.

That was it. That was the very last panel.

“Why does it stop here?” she said. “They got you out. They saved you.”

I understood what she meant. In the reality she was thinking about . . . yes, they got me out. It was a cheap safe, after all. That’s why the door didn’t quite seal shut, and why I was able to keep breathing, at least until I was in the water. That’s why the men who pulled the safe from the river were able to open it. With a big crowbar? With the Jaws of Life? I didn’t know. I wasn’t awake to see that part. It didn’t really matter. In my own mind, the safe was and always would be at the bottom of the river. With me locked inside forever. That was the only real part for me. As real as anything had ever been real.

“You’re not in that box anymore,” she said, wiping her cheeks. “You’re free now. You can leave the box here.”

I looked at her.

“Now that you’ve done this. Can’t you leave it all right here in this house?”

If only it were that easy.

She kissed me, in that room where the worst parts of that day had begun. She kissed me and she held me tight. We both sat down on the floor and stayed there for a long time. Just the two of us in that house.

When I opened my eyes again . . . it was so late. Past the middle of the night. We had been here in this house so long. We collected our things. We went outside and got on my bike. Then I took her back to Ann Arbor.

As we left, I knew that if anyone else ever dared to come inside this house, they would see this story. They would know exactly what had happened here.

______

When we were stopped in front of her dormitory, she got off the bike and stood there next to me for a long time, not saying anything. She reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. It was strung through the ring I had given her, a year ago.

“I still have this,” she said. “I wear this every day.”

I wanted to say something so badly. I wanted to open my mouth and talk to her.

“When you left . . . I tried not to care about you anymore. I really did.”

She kissed me.

“I know we can’t be together right now. So just . . .”

She stopped. She looked up at the stars.

“I can’t do it. I can’t just let you ride away again.”

I reached back into my bag for a pad of paper. I took out a pen and wrote two sentences for her. The two most important sentences I’d ever written for anyone.

I will find a way to come back. I promise.

She took the paper from me. She read it. Then she folded it up and put it in her pocket. Whether she believed it or not . . . well, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she didn’t. But I did. I knew I’d find a way back. Or die trying.

“You know where to find me now.”

She turned to go inside. As I rode away, I hoped to God that it would always be true.

It was another long trip, all the way back to Los Angeles.

I started out slow, but halfway there, the decision came to me. As crazy as it sounded . . . as desperate and hopeless . . . I knew it might be my last chance to be free.

I’m going to do this, I told myself. No matter what, I’m going to try.

For the last thousand miles, I was flying.

I passed the fresh scrape in the bridge embankment, edged with cherry red paint, as I rode out to her house that morning. She was there when I arrived. A duffel bag over her shoulder. Moving back into her own house after her little “vacation” with relatives up north. When she saw me, she dropped the duffel bag, came over to me as I was getting off my bike, and held me tight for a few long minutes straight. She kissed me and told me how much she had missed me and otherwise made me feel absolutely numb with such sudden happiness.

It was my first lesson in how everything in your life can change if you just do one small, specific thing perfectly well.

I helped her bring her stuff inside. Another small measure of pure joy for me when I saw all of Zeke’s love notes in her garbage pail, along with the dried-out roses. She wanted me to take her out on the bike, right then and there, but it was getting close to noon. My first taste of the conflict I’d have to live with every day for the rest of August. Mr. Marsh covered for me today, at least, telling Amelia that I had to go to work at his health club, and that he was sure I’d be able to see her again later. When she was distracted by something, he gave me a little wink and a thumbs-up.

In the end, that’s how it had to work. I still had my court-ordered obligations to Mr. Marsh, after all. Beyond that, I still knew that working with the Ghost was the one thing that was keeping everybody safe and happy. Even though Amelia didn’t know it yet, I was busy keeping the wolves from her door.

I wasn’t naive about what I was doing. I really wasn’t. I mean, when I let myself think about it, I knew I wasn’t learning all this stuff so I could open up my own little locksmith shop on Main Street. I knew these men would
want me to actually open a safe for real at some point. I mean, open a safe that belonged to someone else. I figured I could live with that. Open one safe, let them do what they had to do. Then walk away.

I thought it could be that simple. I really did.

By the end of that week, I could do all eight safes in one sitting. Rolling that chair from one to the next. It took all afternoon, and by the time I opened the last safe my back would be wet and my head would be pounding, but I could do it. The next day, the Ghost would have all of the combinations reset and I’d do the whole thing again.

By the end of the next week, I could do them all without killing myself, in about half the time. I still had the portable lock set at home, too. I’d go see Amelia in the evenings, of course, but then I’d spin every night when I got home, just to keep my touch.

One day, another of the pagers went off. I could tell it was a different pager, just from the sound. The Ghost left the room to make a phone call, but this time when he came back he wasn’t shaking like a little kid called down to the principal’s office.

“Buncha fucking amateurs,” he said. Saying it to himself and not really to me. “Aren’t there any real pros around anymore? Guys who know what the fuck they’re doing?”

I listened to him say stuff like that, but I still didn’t really know what he was talking about. Who these people were on the other end of these pagers. I just kept doing my thing. Getting better and faster. I’d go down to Detroit every day, spend my time with the Ghost, then go have dinner with Amelia. Sit in her room, draw, go out on the bike. Come back. End up in her bed sometimes. More and more often, actually, as it occurred to me that nobody was stopping us. Her father would leave the house for hours at a time. Even when he was there, he’d make a big point of staying in his office, like there was no way he’d ever come upstairs and bother us. It’s kind of sick looking back at it now, just how much liberty he must have felt he owed me. Even in his own house.

Then, finally . . . the day came. It was the middle of August. I went down to West Side Recovery, and from the moment I walked in the place, I could tell that something was up. The Ghost sat me down and rolled up his chair in front of me. Then he started talking.

“First rule,” he said. “You work with people you trust. Nobody else. Ever. You got me?”

I sat there looking at him. Why was I getting this today?

“I need you to let me know that you’re hearing what I’m saying,” he said. “I don’t think that’s fucking too much to ask, is it? So give me some kind of indication here. Are you with me on the trust issue or not?”

I nodded.

“Okay. Thank you.”

He took a moment to settle himself down. Then he continued.

“I know you don’t know shit about anybody yet. So you’re gonna have to use your gut. You get a call, you hook up with somebody, you ask yourself one simple question. You ask yourself, do I trust this person with my life?
With my life?
Because that’s really what you’re doing. You look them in the eye and you ask yourself that, and your gut will tell you. If there’s anything wrong . . . I mean
anything
, you walk away. You turn right around, and you walk. You got me?”