Liars And Thieves

CHAPTER ONE When Dorsey O'Shea walked into the lock shop that morning in October, I was in the back room trying to figure out how to pick the new high-security Cooper locks. I saw her through the one-way glass that separated the workshop from the retail space. My partner, Willie the Wire, was waiting on a customer. I don't think Willie recognized her at first-it had been two years since Dorsey and I were a number, she had changed her hair, and as I recall he had only met her on one or two occasions-but he remembered her as soon as she said his name and asked for me. Willie was noncommittal-he knew I was in the back room. "How long has it been, Dorsey?" "I really need to see Carmellini," she said forcefully. "You're the third hot woman this week who has told me that." "I want his telephone number, Willie." "Does he still have your phone number?" That was when I stepped through the shop door and she saw me. She was tall, with great bones, and skin like cream. "Hey, Dorsey." "Tommy, I need to talk to you." "Come on back." She came around the counter and preceded me through the doorway to the shop. I confess, I watched. Even when she wasn't trying, her hips and bottom moved in very interesting ways. But all that was past, I told myself with a sigh. She had ditched me, and truth be told, I didn't want her back. Too much maintenance. In the shop she looked around curiously at the tools, locks, and junk strewn everywhere. Willie wasn't a neat workman, and I confess, I'm also kinda messy. She fingered some of the locks, then focused her attention on me. "I remembered that you were a part owner in this place, so I thought Willie might know where to find you." li0 "Inducing him to tell you would have been the trick." Obviously Dorsey had not considered the possibility that Willie might refuse to tell her whatever she asked. Few men ever had. She was young, beautiful, and rich, the modern trifecta for females. She came by her dough the old-fashioned way-she inherited it. Her parents died in a car wreck shortly after she was born. Her grandparents who raised her passed away while she was partying at college, trying to decide if growing up would be worth the effort. Now she lived in a monstrous old brick mansion on five hundred acres, all that remained of a colonial plantation, on the northern bank of the Potomac thirty miles upriver from Washington. It was a nice little getaway if you were worth a couple hundred million, and she was. When I met her she was whiling away her time doing the backstroke through Washington's social circles. She once thought I was pretty good arm candy on the party circuit and a pleasant bed warmer on long winter nights, but after a while she changed her mind. Women are like that . . . fickle. I had the Cooper lock mounted on a board, which was held in a vise. I adjusted the torsion wrench and went back to work with the pick. The Cooper was brand-new to the market, a top-of-the-line exterior door lock that contractors were ordering installed in new custom homes. They were telling the owners that it was burglarproof, unpickable. I didn't think there was a lock on the planet that couldn't be opened without a key, but then, I had never before tried the Cooper. I would see one sooner or later on a door I wanted to go through, so why not learn now? I had already cut a Cooper in half-ruining several saw blades-so I knew what made it tick. I had had two pins aligned when Dorsey came in, and of course lost them when I released the tension on the wrench and walked around front to speak to her. She eyed me now as I manipulated the tools. "What are you doing?" "Learning how to open this lock." "Why don't you use a key?" "That would be cheating. Our public would be disappointed. What can I do for you today, anyway?" She looked around again in a distracted manner, tCoonts, Stephen is the author of 'Liars And Thieves', published 2004 under ISBN 9780312283629 and ISBN 0312283628.