Nobody ever got that. Not one person.
Looking back, I’m probably being too hard on everybody. They were trying to help me, I know, and it’s not like I was giving them anything to go on. Problem was, I don’t think they could have helped me. At all. And hell, I think I just made everybody uncomfortable, you know? Like they couldn’t forgive me for what had happened to me, and how that made them feel when they thought about it. So they tried to help me so that they could feel better.
Yes, that’s it right there. All those years. That’s what I was thinking. They were all so freaked out about what had happened to me, they were just trying to make themselves feel better about it. I think that’s why they gave up on me in the end. After five years at the Higgins Institute, because I wasn’t “responding” well enough. Maybe it was a mistake to have you come here in the first place, they said. Maybe you should have been around speaking kids all along. So that maybe… someday…
That’s what they said. Just before they kicked me out and made me go to Milford High School.
Imagine that summer for me. Just counting down the days to September. I mean, I had already been the odd man out at the institute. How much more of a freak would I be walking down the halls of a public high school?
There was only one thing that could distract me that summer. You see, there was this metal door in the back room. It opened out to the parking lot. When the delivery trucks came, that’s the door they’d use to wheel in the boxes. The door was usually locked, but when the trucks came, Uncle Lito would have to start fiddling with the dead bolt to get it to open. There was a real trick to it. You’d have to give the bolt a quarter turn in the wrong direction, then pull hard on the knob while you eased the bolt back the way it was supposed to go. Only then would the damned thing decide to cooperate. And forget about opening it with a key from the outside. One day, he got sick of it and bought a whole new lock. I watched him take out the old lock and throw the two separate pieces in the garbage can. When he put the new lock in, it turned beautifully on the first try.
“Just feel that,” he said. “It’s like butter.”
But it was the old lock I was interested in. I took it out of the garbage can and joined the two pieces together again. I could see immediately how it was designed to work. Such a simple idea. When the cylinder turns, the cam goes with it and the bolt is retracted. Turn the cylinder the other way and the bolt is extended again. Eventually, I’d take the cylinder apart and see the five little pins inside. All you had to do was line up those pins just right so the thing could turn freely. At least that’s the way I got it to move after cleaning out the dirt and gunk and spraying a little oil in there. Uncle Lito could have put that lock right back in the door and it would have worked just fine again. But he’d already bought the new lock, so there was nothing else to do with the old one except to keep playing around with it, to watch how the key went inside and how it pushed up each pin exactly the right amount and no farther. Then, finally, the really interesting part. The absolutely most fascinating and satisfying part of all, how I could put a little bit of tension on that cylinder with something as simple as a paper clip, and then with a thin piece of metal I had taken from the edge of a ruler, say, how I could push up each pin, one by one, letting the tension keep them in place as I moved on to the next, until finally all five pins were lined up perfectly. How the lock, without the use of a key, would then slide smoothly and magically open.
I sometimes wonder how my life would have gone if not for that one old lock on that one back door. If it hadn’t gotten stuck so much, or if Uncle Lito had been too lazy to replace it… Would I have ever found that moment? Those metal pieces, which are so hard and unforgiving, so carefully designed not to move… Yet somehow with just the right touch it all lines up and God, that one second when it opens. That smooth, sudden, metallic release. The sound of it turning, and the way it feels in your hands. The way it feels when something is locked up so tight in a metal box, with no way to get out.
When you finally open it…
When you finally learn how to unlock that lock…
Can you even imagine how that feels?
Six
Connecticut
New Year’s Day 2000
I didn’t have to go back to that diner that day. I know that. But I did. I honestly don’t think it was the ignorance of youth or anything like that. Hell, maybe it was nothing more than simple curiosity. I mean, they got the diamonds from the guy’s house, right? What could the big problem be? Were they having trouble converting them into cash? Maybe, but if that was the problem, why call me? Just to let me know that I wouldn’t get my share for a while? Or that my share would be a lot smaller? Either way, that would mean that I was getting a share at least, and they weren’t planning on stiffing me.
Damn, I thought, could it be that these guys think that they have to pay me? Or else? I mean, if they found me in the first place, that meant they probably had to know about the man in Detroit, right? I wasn’t just one kid on one pager. Maybe they figured there must be plenty of other people on other pagers, some of whom could set their feet in concrete and drop them into the Hudson River on a moment’s notice. That’s right, I thought. You don’t mess with the Kid. Let ’em all think that.
Either way, there I was, in another cab, riding over the river on a clear, cold New Year’s morning. I had given the driver the same address in the Bronx, written down on a piece of paper. He talked about the “Y2K” thing the whole way there, how nothing was supposed to be working that day, the first day of the year 2000, and yet how everything seemed to be humming along just fine. I sat in the backseat and nodded. When we finally got to the diner, I paid the man and got out. I went inside. My four new friends were sitting together, at a bigger table this time because now we were a party of five. I went over and slid in next to Heckle and Jeckle. Bigmouth and the Ox were on the other side. All four of them looked like hell.
The same waitress came over. She seemed to recognize me. I pointed at the Western omelet. The boys seemed to be done eating, but I didn’t care. If they were gonna drag me out here again, I was going to get breakfast out of it.
“So here’s the problem,” Bigmouth finally said. He was wearing the same green New York Jets jacket.
“Not here,” the Ox said.
“I’m just giving him the general idea.”
“What, you want everybody in the restaurant to know what we did yesterday? Just save it, all right?”
They had no problem talking about it yesterday, I thought. Then again, the Ox wasn’t here yesterday. He was obviously the one man in this outfit with any sense at all.
When my breakfast came, there was a tense silence hanging over the table. I have lifetime immunity to tense silences, but this one seemed to be taking years off of Bigmouth’s life. He sat there rocking back and forth on his hands, looking out the front window. The Ox just sat there looking at him sideways. Heckle and Jeckle both looked like they were about to throw up.
When I was done, Bigmouth slapped some money down and hustled us all out of there. He got behind the wheel of his car. The Ox rode shotgun this time. Heckle and Jeckle waited to see if I was going to get in the backseat.
“Come on, we’ll go somewhere safe and talk about it,” Bigmouth said to me. “It’s a solvable problem. Really. You want your share, right?”
I slid into the backseat. Heckle and Jeckle got in on opposite sides so I’d be stuck in the middle. It was a little thing, but it was already making me feel sorry I had come.