Every time he comes into the public library, Marv is mumbling to himself, engaged in an angry conversation with the assholes who live inside his head. Six feet tall, hard faced, his vibe is intimidating, but when he speaks to library staff, Marv’s hissed swearing ceases; unfailingly, he is respectful. Mostly, he’s there to use the computers, and once he’s settled inside the massive downtown building, Marv stays, sometimes spending more than half a day in the climate-controlled, well-lit shelter that is the main library in Duluth, Minnesota. At closing time, he’ll bid workers “Good night!” before he and His Mumbles head outside to unlock whatever bike he’s riding that week.
When Marv leaves the building, he’s accompanied by a library technician, someone who will unfasten and remove the eight-pound chain and small u-lock that protect his bike from theft during his long hours of poking around the internet. Marv doesn’t own a lock. Likely, he doesn’t own the bike. But it’s his for as long as he’s got it, and checking out a library lock assures he’ll have a means of getting to whatever passes as “home” at day’s end.
This business of checking out locks hasn’t been straightforward for the library. When the program initially started, not only were patrons trusted with keys and the freedom to unlock their bikes without oversight – a system that saw many locks “adopted into permanent foster care” — but the locks were cheap and easily overcome with a quick chop from a bolt cutter. Exhaling an institutional sigh, the library put staff in charge of handling the keys and bought a stash of large u-shaped locks, which were harder for thieves to beat. However, the u-locks presented a new problem: occasionally, patrons would leave the library once their bikes were secured and fail to return before closing time; when an uncollected bike sat outside the library overnight, opportunists with pry bars would break the lock and pedal into the harbor mists. Exhaling again, this time with the exasperation of a compassionate organization that finds its job is to outwit professional outwitters, the library purchased three heavy chains with mini u-locks (their small size making them harder to lever open), a solution that requires would-be thieves to show up with an angle grinder and the confidence to create a shower of sparks in public.
Just when the problem of the locks seemed settled, Marv rolled up on a blue, three-wheeled adult tricycle.
Marv had never ridden a tricycle before.
In all likelihood, Marv’s tricycle gain was someone else’s tricycle loss.
When Marv entered the library that day, fully tuned into his mumble channel, it was library technician Taylor who went out to the trike and handled the lock, snaking the thick chain through the frame and wheels, making sure Marv’s new ride would be there for him when he finally left the library at closing time.
At 8 p.m., though, when Marv logged out of his computer and exited the library, the trike was gone, as was the $80 lock. Bereft of wheels, unencumbered by emotions of ownership, Marv shrugged and shambled off on two feet rather than three wheels, destination unknown, his next bike a discovery yet to be made.
For library staff, the loss of the lock hit harder, as it was a significant part of their inventory. Now they were down to only three of this type, and in the summer months even three “good” locks hadn’t felt like enough, yet the budget didn’t necessarily allow for a replacement. Once again exhaling, cinderblocks compressing under the pressure of vanishing resources, the library wondered: How had the seemingly impenetrable chain lock been busted? And why had the thieves then taken it with them when they freed the trike?
As the staff member interacting with Marv and the lock that day, Taylor was the primary source of clues.
First, she’d gone out with Marv and locked up his three-wheeled whip. A few hours later, while Taylor was working behind the circulation desk, and Marv was in the computer lab whisper-hissing epithets at Chris-Chan YouTube videos, a small group of people entered the library and announced to Taylor, “Hey, yeah, we need to get our trike that’s locked out there.”
Squinting with suspicion, Taylor shook her head. She’d locked the trike for Marv, and none of these folks was Marv. The motley crew continued to push: “Actually, it’s our friend Kaia’s trike. And we, uh, we need to get it for her.”
As Taylor explained the library policy of freeing the bike only for the patron who checked out the lock, they interrupted, explaining, “Nah, that guy stole Kaia’s trike. It’s hers, and she got arrested, so she’s busy and we need to get it for her. You gotta unlock it for us.”
Taylor stuck to the rules. The trike could only be unlocked for Marv.
Grumbling, swirling, out of persuasive strategies, the vigilantes left the building. If that library person wouldn’t help them, they’d do what decades of living in a country without social supports had ingrained as habit: they’d help themselves.
The day after Marv’s trike went missing, Taylor reported the loss of a lock during a routine staff meeting. Most puzzling was the cleanliness of the theft; previously, when a locked bike had been stolen, a physical residue of metal shavings told the story of grind and grab, but this time: nada. The sidewalk was clean, the bike rack intact, the lock and trike ghosts.
If there’s one thing that gets library workers Dewey in their decimals, it’s solving a mystery. Whether it’s who wrote the Junie B. Jones series, if there’s a historic photo of the fire station on E. Third Street, if there’s an article on Bell’s theorem that can help an 18-year-old understand entanglement, or what year Great-Great-Grandpa Wilbur passed, the staff at the library will bloodhound their way to an answer quicker than James Patterson’s team can engineer a new release.
In the Case of the Missing Bike Lock, the ad hoc detective was an employee with an afternoon of desk work and a desire to review footage from the two security cameras angled toward the bike rack. Considering the information Taylor had provided in the staff meeting, he started the playback around the 1 p.m. mark on the day in question; within moments, he spotted Kaia’s Bike Saviors entering the library to ask for a key to release the trike. Because he was watching the playback at 16x speed, the discouraged crew Charlie Chaplined their way out of the library almost immediately and clipped over to the bike rack.
The library detective slowed the speed. Kaia’s pals circled the trike. Contemplated. Mulled.
Then one guy bent down and removed the trike’s seat. Sadly, CCTV footage didn’t capture audio, but odds are the words “Hope you like the feeling of a pole up your ass, Marv” were uttered.
With the seat successfully extracted, the group dispersed, leaving in their wake an unrideable adult tricycle still safely locked to the rack.
Scratching his head, the library detective increased the speed of the playback. Okay, so then what happened?
As the video footage flickered, hours passed in seconds. At one point, the guy who stole the seat scampered into frame, assessed the bike from every angle, then scampered off.
Intrepid, the library detective skimmed through eventless hours. But, hey, wait. What was that going on around the 7 p.m. mark? He slowed his fast forwarding.
Yup, there was the guy who stole the seat, back once again, but this time there were three others with him. The whole crew had returned. One of them had ridden up on a bike pulling a flat trailer; another was holding a canvas handyman’s tool bag. The third guy’s role appeared to be Providing Support while Shirtless.
Oblivious to the kerfuffle his trike had caused, Marv, still inside the library, inhabiting a separate dimension known as Marv Time, clicked the mouse and launched a deepfake video of a Korean newscaster.
At his desk, peering into grainy footage, the library detective wondered, “What are they doing? How are they going to free the trike from the rack? There’s a thick chain snaking through a tiny triangle in the trike’s frame, firmly locking the vehicle to the big metal circle of the bike rack, so what’s the plan? Are they trying to remove the wheels? Maybe?”
The detective was stymied. His view of their actions was blocked by the circle of bodies clustered around the trike. But wait: what the…?
Suddenly, the handyman guy reached into the bag of tools, took out a pair of work gloves, and put them on. Then the biker with the trailer rummaged around his box of junk and pulled out a tool.
“Are they getting ready to cut the lock somehow?” the library detective wondered. His view of the proceedings still largely obscured, he saw a tire get removed – no, maybe the two back tires? Or was that an axle? But why? Removing those parts wouldn’t contribute to releasing a lock that was threaded through the body of a bike.
Suddenly, the vibe of the caper changed, and the gang of thieves shifted postures. The library detective moved his face even closer to the screen, peering into the recent past.
One of the thieves stood up from where he’d been crouched and grabbed the hoop of the bike rack — a structure that, above ground, appears to be a circle but which, in reality, ends at the sidewalk, where a metal plate with three bolts fastens it to the concrete. Leaning back, he threw his weight into pulling the metal circle open.
No luck. It was the rack, not the man, that was made of steel. The crew crouched and fiddled some more, and then two guys stood up and combined their power into defeating the circle. It moved. One side of the rack lifted from the concrete.
Whoa, the library detective thought. This collective was cunning. Thwarted by existing systems, they worked together to overcome – in this case, detaching the anchor bolts and using brute force to wrench open a seemingly closed circle; during a blip of opportunity, they acted, sliding the lock through the gap they’d created.
Yup, there it was: the answer to the puzzle. The savvy crew never removed the lock from the bike at all; rather, they opened and elevated the rack, slid the chain out, and liberated both trike and eight-pound chain. Quickly, while the others stored their tools, the guy who’d stolen the seat plopped it into place and then wrapped the lock around the bike’s frame, tucking some bits into the basket between the back tires. Without fuss or goodbye, Seat Securer jumped aboard the trike and pedaled in one direction while the other three scattered into the hidden corners of Duluth’s downtown.
It had taken no time at all. They’d done it in daylight, confidently, a rough squad activating their superpower of public invisibility – figures and actions only perceived by cameras meant to capture “bad guys.”
In the wake of their smooth heist, no physical evidence remained; even the bolts in the rack’s anchor had been flawlessly re-tightened.
Outside now – because he needed to see it in person — the library detective squatted next to the rack, running his fingers over the metal plate, marveling at the expertise he’d observed at grainy hyperspeed. Even though he rued the loss of one-third of the library’s inventory of this type of lock, he couldn’t help but feel a kind of respect. Yes, what had started as a simple idea intended to meet patron needs had evolved into something infinitely complex, thanks to the thrust and parry of bikes as currency in a subculture where cash is a rarity. And yes, a crime had been committed.
But. Also.
Perhaps what had happened with the trike was uncommon justice. Policies, laws, and conventional morality had pushed this crew to the fringes; there, unsullied by civilities, they lived in clarity.
Sometimes the most “right” thing an unheard person can do is step into view on a shadowy sidewalk, reach for a tool according to plan, and restore a little balance to an off-kilter world.
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