A debt of honor

2008-10-27T17:34:50.5391250-04:00

Crazy Charlie came into my life in Amsterdam one unfortunate day. He was born in Tirol but had left there after having been involved in making explosives for a separatist movement. I was walking over the square in front of the Royal Palace towards my legally squatted home, when he approached me for a guilder; we still had national money then. He was broke and needed a coin to call his former girlfriend as he just came from a stint in a Belgian prison. He had no where to go and hoped she would take him in. Before he went to Belgium, he was in Amsterdam, hence his girlfriend. It had never been a good relation and he was happy to get to live in our amazing building. He told me he had done time for falsifying certificates of authenticity for fake antiques. He made new copper pots look old with acid and burying them in the ground for a while. He then sold them with self made certificates of origin stamped and signed by the secretary of the BADA, the Belgian Antique Dealers Association, rubber stamps and all. Charlie knew more tricks than the book holds. I took him in, first for a few days in my own big front room on a couch, later he got his own place in the building; there were empty rooms enough.

When Charlie was settled he asked me to help him with what he called a moral issue; paying of a debt of honor.

He explained that when he was in Amsterdam some years ago, he was often approached by youngsters who asked for a little money. There were hippies who came to the magic city, curious kids and druggies from all over the world. Many used to sleep for free in the park or on the stairs of the National Monument. True enough, these guys who had over stayed their welcome roamed the streets, often begging me too for a hand out.

In those days the parking of cars in the city had become a major problem and the first parking meters had appeared on the streets. Charley had been a certified lock smith, although he was thrown out of the profession for duplicating keys of bank safes. He now figured a way to help the poor kids. He had secretly made keys for the newly appeared parking meters and gave them to all the kids who asked for money. He explained that their piggy banks where all over town and with the provided key they could serve them selves. For his trained locksmith eye, the first parking meters where simple enough and he easily made keys to gave away, just for his own satisfaction. He never showed me how he did it. He was proud of himself to have had that generous and helpful idea. It did not take long for the police to find him out. Some careless kid had been taken in who spilled the beans. He was arrested and led before a magistrate. This entire episode happened long before I knew him. He told me how the punishment for his giving out keys was difficult for the prosecutor and the judge to determine. One; the legality of the very parking meters was still in question. A discussion was going on over who had the right to tax the streets and two; Charlie had not damaged anything or stolen anything himself, three; the amount of money that had been taken by the key holding kids could not be determined. So the judge gave Tiroler Charlie a stern warning. The judge had said: “Charlie, this time you will get away with a warning. Be informed however that the next generation parking meters will be much better constructed now that you have pointed out that they are vulnerable. I bet you will not be able to open the new ones.” Charlie immediately answered the judge: “Your Honor, thank you for your leniency, I heard you loud and clear, and I accept your bet. My honor as a lock smith is at stake and I bet you that I can open them.”

He then asked me help him with his task to defend his honor. I was amused about his story and found it hard to refuse such challenge, and I agreed. We went out for an inspection of the newly placed modern parking meters. They looked impressive indeed. Mounted on a 2 inch steel pipe, embedded in a block of concrete, buried deep in the ground they where practically immovable. Investigating them at location with a tent built around was not impossible but impractical, so it was decided to get one in order to study it in the privacy of his workshop. To do this we developed an ingenious device, a movable tent, to discretely remove one. In Holland we have transport tricycles for big loads. The front is a wooden flatbed of almost a meter and a half square that rests on an axle with wheel on each side. The driver sits on a saddle on top of the back wheel and his feet turn the drive chain. His hands move the flatbed in the direction the contraption is going. We had found a tricycle like that in a carport of our squatted house. Covered by a layer of dust with flat tires it had stood there many years. We mounted sticks on the four corners and connected those with horizontal bars. About one meter high it was. We covered the frame with old carpets and tarpaulin overlapping flaps in front. It was now a box big enough to hold a man. With a handsaw we made a slit 3 inch wide, in front of the wooden flatbed, all the way till the axle. That was to get the parking meter inside the box. Charlie had obtained a huge pipe cutter and his chariot was now ready for action. We waited till night fall and with Charlie inside I pushed it all the way across the wide main road. The weather was bad; there was not a dog outside. The rain came in gusts and the wet autumn leaves were flying through the darkness. With here and there a street lamp the light was scant and I was feeling excited and alert. Through an alley, on across another street onto the canal streets where the parking meters were. After a little more pushing I found an empty parking spot under a tree at a dark corner. The rain and cold wind made it the perfect night for our adventure. The trees rustled and swung their low branches and splattered me with wet leaves. I pointed the tricycle straight at the parking meter. The pipe went through the flaps and the slit, the parking meter was now right inside the box with Charlie. I walked away while he did his cutting. In case of a night stroller, or a dog walker coming too close, I was to whistle a certain melody. At my third pass, when I asked, I heard the muffled “All Clear” signal from within. Then I pulled the tricycle away from there. Up the steep bridge to turn left and get home as fast as possible. Looking back I saw the short steel pipe sticking out of the street where once had been the parking meter. Nobody would miss it or even know that there had been a parking meter. The trip back home was cold and apart from the feeling of victory uneventful. Once back inside the building Charlie carried his loot wrapped in a cloth with him to his dwelling.

I did not see him for a few weeks but one day Charlie came up with a bunch of keys. “It is time to try out my work, come along,” said he, “you have to watch for me, part of the deal.” He explained that the meters had indeed not been easy to crack; each one needed three keys to get at the money. He showed me three bunches of different size keys. One key to open the top, the second to free the box which held the coins and the third key to open it. The box was attached on a strong thin chain. We went out, again on a dark stormy night. It was autumn and the weather was often bad. Charlie was dressed in his black raincoat with a multitude of inner pockets that held pliers, cutters, a breaking iron and the rest of the tools of his trade. On his head a rolled up baklava, on his hands thin gloves. I put my darkest winter coat and gloves and out we went. The eerie light from the few street lamps through the moving branches, the rain and the howling wind made it a perfect horror movie scene. After midnight we spotted the perfect parking meter, between two parked cars, just there where a street lamp was not working. While Charlie started trying and inserting one key after the other, I walked around again with that crazy melody in my head. Nobody disturbed us; it was no weather for any one to be outside. At one of my passes he came away triumphantly and I heard the sound of silver. He attacked the next one much more confidently, but still needed a lot of time. When he had found the three keys that worked as passkeys for one row of meters on one street, the next street needed other keys again. I saw sometimes a glimpse of his doings, a flash of the many keys in the windy night under a tree that moves and rustles and the wind is raving loose leaves in the autumn storm. At a spot that was a bit more exposed, to save time, he would just open the top, insert the breaking iron for the money box, get it out and cut the chain with his strong cutting pliers. He would put the box in one of his deep pockets and move on. How many he opened I don't recall, but later that night we drank on his success in a few bars. We always paid with coins, not to raise suspicion we could not stay long in one place. We bought cigarettes from coin operated machines, and we ate at an automatic food dispenser. A few days later he asked me to come again but I refused. My argument being that I helped him keep his bet with the judge, to defend his honor, but I was not going to be a burglar, no thank you very much. He accused me of cowardice, but who was the stupid one when a few weeks later he was behind bars, for a good while this time? He had made keys for other people again and of course they had been caught and of course they had sung. I did not see Charlie for a few months; however, he did come back. Last time I saw him he was tapping electricity from a high tension wire. He had taped beer bottles two feet apart as insulators on a long bamboo pole. A thick copper wire was wrapped around each bottle neck and he shoved the pole out of his window until the copper wire touched the electric tramway overhead lines. The other end went into a buzzing transformer the size of three cubic feet. His room was the first one to have light that night. The guy who collected the money from the twenty or so people living here, to pay the monthly electricity bill, had eloped with the money, so what were we to do?

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A debt of honor