The Lock Artist

Mike feels an uncanny joy spending time with Amelia with the explicit approval of Mr. Marsh. He feels there must be a catch coming, but he relishes the opportunity to be his “real daytime sel[f]” (182) with her. Mike teaches Amelia a few phrases in sign language. They spend hours together drawing each other and making love. Later that afternoon, they are at a barbecue in the Marshes’ backyard. Amelia’s brother, Adam, is home from college. Amelia tells Mike, “You’d think we were a nice, normal, happy family. […] Don’t believe it. Not for a second” (184). She half-jokingly suggests that Mike “kidnap” 184 her. Mr. Slade, Mr. Marsh’s business partner, is present, and Amelia says he “gives [her] the creeps” (185).

Mr. Marsh asks Mike to come to his study to demonstrate his lock-picking skill for Mr. Slade, who apparently does not believe what Mr. Marsh has attested. Mr. Marsh gives Mike a set of professional lock-picking tools. Mike feels the urge to show off, so he picks open the newly installed serrated lock, which Mr. Marsh believed was “unpickable.” He then opens a combination padlock for them. Mr. Marsh asks Mr. Slade, “What do you think? […] Can he use him?” (186). They are evidently going to offer Mike’s skill to someone (the man in Detroit, it soon becomes clear) in order to extricate themselves from a difficult situation. “This could be our ticket out of hell,” Mr. Marsh says (187).

Back home, Uncle Lito expresses concern about what Mr. Marsh might be doing to Mike, saying, “he’s crazy” (187). Lito unexpectedly gifts his Yamaha motorcycle to Mike. Mike spends the rest of the morning riding it; it brings him joy and a sense of empowerment. Mike drives to Amelia’s house. He finds her distraught in her bedroom. She tells him the story of her mother’s suicide, which occurred five years prior. Her mother died of evidently self-inflicted asphyxiation in her car in the garage, and she left no suicide note. Amelia then tells Mike, “Some men came and took my father away” (191). Out her bedroom window they see a black sedan pull up; three strange men exit, along with Mr. Marsh. One of the men is wearing a fishing hat, and another is shorter with “sleepy eyes.” (The third man is not described here but will later be nicknamed “Tall Mustache.”)

After the men leave, Mr. Marsh gives Mike an address in Detroit and tells him he must go there to meet a man known as the Ghost—it is the only thing he can do to help Mr. Marsh and Amelia. Mike rides his motorcycle and arrives at a storefront that reads “West Side Recovery” (193). A wizened, bespectacled man in a sweater vest emerges. His extreme pallor explains his epithet—“the Ghost.” The Ghost leads Mike through a junk shop to a small clearing where eight different safes are arranged in a circle. Mike eventually signals that he does not know how to open a safe. The Ghost is frustrated and sends Mike away. Mike returns to Amelia’s house. She is furious with her father for manipulating Mike like this. “I was the prize, wasn’t I?” she says; “Whatever you’ve done for him, I’m your reward” (198). Mike leads her outside to his motorcycle, and they drive off into the night together: “Not for real. Not forever. But for one day…a few stolen hours” (198).

Without a hit planned, the gang members are “back in their holding patterns” (199). Mike gets a call on the green pager and heads to an address in Scottsdale, Arizona. No one shows up at the meeting place, so he returns to Los Angeles. Gunnar becomes Mike’s “personal trainer,” leading him in a daily strength-training regimen. Gunnar suggests to Mike that they could try to rob the man from Detroit on his gambling yacht again. Gunnar says he has a “contact on the boat” who could help them (201). Mike thinks this idea is “suicide.”

Later that month, Mike responds to another call on the green pager and reaches Banks, trying again to help him escape his criminal life. Banks tells Mike that his uncle Lito is worried about him. He insinuates that working for the man in Detroit will eventually get anyone killed. He tells Mike he is in California and gives him an address. Mike hangs up.

Months go by. Mike continues drawing comic strip pages for Amelia, describing the events of his life. He is still unsure how or when they will reach her. Lucy finds Mike’s drawings of members of the gang and admires them. She confides in Mike about her drug addiction and the pain of staying sober. She likens it to “two lions having sex […] It must feel good, but at the same time you might get yourself clawed to death” (203). Lucy seduces Mike and they have sex. Mike reflects, “It felt good and yet not good and it was all over too quickly” (204). When he gets up, one of his pagers is beeping. He wonders if it is “[a]nother call from [his] good friend at the FBI”—a first mention that Banks is affiliated with the FBI (204). But it is the red pager—the man in Detroit.

When Mike returns to the Marshes’ the next day, the black car is there again. Inside the living room are the three men who delivered Mr. Marsh the day before—Mike nicknames them “Fishing Hat,” “Tall Mustache,” and “Sleepy Eyes.” They usher Mike into Mr. Marsh’s office, where he sees “the man in Detroit” for the first time. The man is impressed with Mike’s silence and his steadfast unwillingness to give up his accomplices in the break-in. “You sound like the kind of man I could trust,” he says. He explains, “Mr. Marsh and his partner, Mr. Slade, both have certain obligations right now, and I’m afraid that neither one of them have been meeting those obligations” (207). Mr. Slade “seems to have disappeared completely,” and the man insinuates that he will be killed when he is eventually found (207). Mr. Marsh “doesn’t have anything else of value that he can use in place of actual cash,” the man explains, but in lieu of money he is offering Mike and Mike’s skills (207). The man obliquely threatens harm to Amelia if they cannot strike a deal. He sends Mike back to Detroit for a second chance with the Ghost.

On his way to Detroit, Mike fantasizes about escaping—thinking how in that moment he has the chance to change the rest of his life—but he goes ahead. The Ghost explains that the reason he needs to train a protégé is that he is losing his eyesight and he wants to go to Florida to help his daughter raise her children. Because Mike is still unable to open safes, he demonstrates his lock-picking skills for the Ghost, who breathes down his neck as he works, yelling at him to work faster. The Ghost gradually trains him to open safes, emphasizing that it is a matter of sensitivity of touch—a sensitivity that one either has or doesn’t have. That night, Mike returns to the Marshes’. Mr. Marsh’s study has been vandalized. Mr. Marsh is there, evidently heavily intoxicated. He tells Mike that Amelia is gone—he has “sent her away. Somewhere safe” (214). He is very frightened and tells Mike, “They will kill me” (215). He expresses that his and Amelia’s lives and safety are in Mike’s hands.

These two chapters are comparatively uneventful, serving more for character development than for plot advancement. Having joined the white pager crew, Mike observes the four others in their daily, non-criminal lives. Julian and Ramona seem to assimilate into normal society more easily than Lucy or Gunnar, and they live a peaceful daily life working in Julian’s high-end wine shop. Julian tells Mike the story of his acquaintance with the man from Detroit—the attempted robbery of the yacht that nearly got Julian and Ramona killed. This story lays the foundation for the climactic crime in Chapter 26, when the gang again attempts to rob the yacht belonging to the man from Detroit.

These chapters portray Gunnar’s growing discontent with Julian’s leadership of the gang and his impatience to set up another hit. He introduces the idea of robbing the yacht, but the others initially dismiss it as too dangerous. Mike’s flirtatious relationship with Lucy develops as well, culminating in their tryst at the end of Chapter 20. The tense love triangle between Mike, Lucy, and Gunnar comes into sharper focus as Gunnar threatens Mike, telling him to stay away from Lucy. Nothing ultimately comes of this threat, despite Mike’s failure to heed it, but it is an underlying tension throughout this section of the novel. These chapters also crucially introduce the character of Harrington Banks, the FBI agent who will eventually be Mike’s savior. He appears in both chapters attempting to reach Mike to offer him a lifeline, but Mike—who is always skeptical of offers of help—ignores him.