Chapter 5: The Dial Housing

Vin didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he said, "I didn't know you worked on it."

"Nobody knew. I was the kid who carried the bucket."

"You set the wheel pack."

"Dad let me. He stood right there and watched every wheel." Mickey touched the dial.

"He said a man should be able to say he built one thing that'll outlive him."

Vin looked at the door.

"Can you open it?"

"Not without the combination. Not without drilling, and the last guy drilled wrong." Mickey tapped the putty. "First I need to see what he broke."

So Mickey came back that night, and the next, and the next.

The restaurant closed at eleven.

He went down the fourteen stairs at eleven-thirty with his dad's roll of tools under his arm.

Vin came down every night too.

He couldn't help it. The mile is a mile.

He brought a folding chair down instead, and a thermos of Nonna's broth, and sat with his coat over his knees.

The first night he just watched.

The second night he started handing Mickey things.

"Quarter-inch," Mickey said, holding out his hand, and Vin put the wrong driver in it.

"That's a Phillips."

"It has a quarter on it."

"It's a number two Phillips. The quarter is the shank."

By the third night Vin knew them.

"Quarter-inch flat," Mickey said, and it was in his palm before he finished.

He took off the dial ring that night, one screw at a time.

The drill had come close.

A sixteenth of an inch closer and it would've kissed the wheel pack and ruined it forever.

It hit the relocker pin instead, and the pin dropped and jammed the bolts.

"So it's dead," Vin said.

"It's asleep. There's a difference."

Mickey sat back on his heels on the cold concrete.

It was one in the morning on the fourth night.

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