Free Ghostman by Roger Hobbs Page A

the loop and tossed it. Without the loop, it looked just like a regular key. If I kept my hand around the electronic part, it could pass for the key to anything. I went back to the car and took the rental agreement out of the glove box. I worked the staple out with my fingernail, slipped it in my pocket and put the papers back where I’d found them. I got out again and went straight to the manager’s office.
    If you’re going to convince someone to let you into a secure area, you have to look legit. If you’re trying to access a numbered account at a certain Swiss bank, for example, you’ve got to come in carrying a one-ounce rectangle of pure gold, because certain Swiss banks use gold bricks as part of the passkey to their numbered accounts. It doesn’t matter if the gold in your hand is just a piece of lead with spray paint and a holographic sticker on it, so long as it looks right. If I was going to convince someone to open that gate for me, I had to look like I had a key to one of the containers. He wouldn’t see me use it, or even really see I had it, but he had to think it was there. Sometimes a single detail is all the disguise you need.
    The kid at the counter was maybe eighteen years old with skin the color of pumpkin pie and a dirty uniform. He was sitting in an office chair behind the counter, watching television. He saw me but he didn’t get up.
    “The gate isn’t working,” I told him.
    The kid didn’t look at me. “You put the numbers in right?”
    “Yeah,” I said, putting a little anger into it.
    “Which gate are you using?”
    “The front one.”
    “Try it again. I just used that gate this morning.”
    “I’m telling you, I was just out there and the gate isn’t working.”
    The kid sighed and looked up at me. He didn’t recognize me in the slightest, of course, but I don’t think that ever crossed his mind. He just beckoned for me to follow him, like he was tired of having to do this every goddamn day. We walked out the door and went straight to the front gate, where I made a frustrated gesture with my key toward the punch box. Then, like he was dealing with an idiot child, the kid punched in the numbers one at a time, saying them aloud in case my brain was too simple to catch it all. The gate made a buzzing sound and unlocked. I gave him a shocked look, like maybe I thought he’d tricked me, then acted embarrassed. I focused on the emotion and felt my cheeks go red.
    “You remember your access key?” he said.
    I held up the car key, covering everything but the teeth.
    The kid nodded. “Write the code down next time, okay? Don’t forget.”
    When he was out of sight and I was through the gate, I put the key away and walked down the row of units until I found the container painted with a big sloppy 21 . Moreno’s container. The lucky twenty-one. The door was padlocked with a key-operated Medeco two-cylinder that was probably supplied by the facility. The doors were bound by a length of chain.
    No Ribbons. Considering the lock was still in place, he might never have shown up in the first place, or even intended to. For all I knew, Ribbons and Moreno had been planning to blow off Marcus’s rendezvous point from the start.
    I took out the staple and straightened it out with my fingers untilthere was a series of very small bumps at the tip. I took off my tie clip to use as a torsion wrench. I leaned in close so I could get a good look at the padlock. It was harder to pick in the heat, especially without the proper tools, but in a couple of minutes I got the job done. I raked the tumblers with the edge of the staple like a bump key and twisted the tie clip gently until the lever popped. I removed the bolt and tossed the padlock away, then pulled the chain so I could free the doors and pull down the lever that kept them together.
    There was something off about this container. From the look of the lock, nobody had been around for quite some time. At least a week. Whatever I’d find