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By Root 331 0

two standard sets of lock picks, and two pick guns, including an electric model. Another $500 in locks of various types, purchased at the same impersonal hardware stores where he had his keys cut, and Martin was ready to begin his training, which was surprisingly simple. He installed more than thirty standard door locks, dead bolts, and the like along a set of two-by-fours in his basement, and for more than three hours each day he studied, practiced, and perfected his craft. After years of training, Martin could now pick all but the most complicated tubular locks. And since most dead bolts operate with cylinder locks (the simplest and quickest to pick), Martin’s continued attempts with tubular locks were more of a hobby than a genuine professional interest. In fact, all of Martin’s lock-picking skills, honed through years of study and practice, were largely irrelevant thanks to the advent of the pick gun.

Developed to allow law enforcement officers who were unskilled in the art of lock-picking to open locks with speed and minimal instruction, the pick gun had become one of Martin’s most important occupational tools (he still considered his ten-sided die the most important). Rather than opening locks by the picking and raking techniques of a standard pick, a pick gun relies on the transfer of energy to compromise locks. A pick gun basically consists of one or more vibrating pick-shaped pieces of metal. These long pieces are inserted into the lock, just as one would insert a key. As the metal pieces vibrate, they push up the pins inside the lock. By turning the gun as the picks vibrate, the pins are caught at the shear line, allowing the lock to open. With very little practice, Martin was able to open more than half the locks he encountered in a matter of seconds, oftentimes faster than a homeowner would take to locate the correct key and use it to open the lock normally. After years of practice, it was rare for Martin to run into a lock that he could not pick in less than thirty seconds, and he had increased the effectiveness of his pick gun to more than 80 percent.

It also helped that homeowners often put so little thought into the locks used in their houses. While front doors were often equipped with complex tubular locks that resisted most of Martin’s efforts, the side, back, and garage doors of most houses (the doors that Martin preferred to use for entry anyway) were often safeguarded by simple dead bolts or cylinder locks built into the doorknob.

Martin’s lock-pick kit was at home this day, hidden in a space behind the paneling in his partially finished basement, covered by a Mondrian print in primary colors. Because of its incriminating nature, Martin carried his kit around as little as possible, limiting his visits to the eight clients whose locks still required picking on the same days as his visits to potential new clients. When traveling with the kit, Martin kept it stowed in the back of his wagon, hidden in a space beneath the spare tire. When in use, his picking tools were inside his backpack or within the inner pockets of the coat that he might be wearing, though all of the locks that still required picking could be opened quite easily with the pick gun with the exception of two, where old-fashioned lock picks were still needed.

For the next three visits of the day, however, no picking would be required.

Martin pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward Route 9 at three miles over the posted speed limit, the speed at which Martin always drove. Martin believed that driving the speed limit made a person look suspicious, so he hoped that his three-miles-over-the-limit policy made him look like an average Connecticut driver. About fifteen minutes south was the town of Kensington, the home of two more of Martin’s clients.

At the Gallos’, a pair of plump professional chefs who owned an upscale and successful breakfast-and-lunch café in Wethersfield, Martin acquired three boxes of long-grain rice, a bottle of pinot noir from their extensive wine collection, two rolls of toilet paper (in Martin’s estimation,