Late Shift Locksmith Prowls Manhattan

The young man stands helpless and shivering on Park Avenue, deserted on a late Sunday afternoon. His jacket has been stolen, along with his wallet and keys. He still has his car, but he can’t get in.

Help arrives in a battered Honda Accord that pulls up to the corner. Out ambles Les Koerner, a bespectacled man in a crumpled shirt and jeans.

“Hi, I’m the locksmith,” he announces.

“Great!” says the man. “Now get me out of this mess.”

Koerner, 48, surveys the job quickly. In order to make new car keys, he would first have to take the steering wheel apart, then go back home to find the right blanks. The job could take a few hours.

“$400,” he declares. “$100 now, the rest when I’m done.”

The man frowns, but knows he has no choice.

“Let’s get going,” he says.

It is just the kind of job Koerner--a.k.a. the Night Owl Locksmith--has made a career of.

For 13 years now, Koerner says, he has been the only full-time night and weekend emergency locksmith in Manhattan--the man people are most likely to encounter when they lock themselves out of home, business or vehicle at 2 a.m.

“I’ve patched out a little niche for myself,” says Koerner. “Its not for everybody, but it works for me.”

This is not a job for anyone who is afraid to roam the city’s depths at ungodly hours. And it surely doesn’t do much for one’s social life, with the beeper going off at all hours. But it can be lucrative.

“The minimum I’ll charge for a job is $75,” Koerner says. That’s just for picking a simple lock, a job that can take as little as a few seconds and would cost about $40 on a weekday. It goes up from there. Making a key for a Mercedes can cost up to $700.

Born in Manhattan, Koerner attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he dabbled in radio and TV broadcasting before dropping out after two years. Then came a stint in the Army; he served as a classified documents courier in France. Then came a stab at the import-export business.

That didn’t work out, so Koerner became a cab driver. He reached the pinnacle of that career in August, 1974, when a New York Times reporter wrote about a night in the life of a cab driver: Les Koerner. Everybody was thrilled, “except my mother,” Koerner says. “Her response was: ‘So now the whole world has to know my son drives a cab!’ ”

Koerner became a locksmith’s apprentice at $135 a week, and soon after he discovered the lucrative night shift. So he went off on his own, and the Night Owl Locksmith was born.

The day’s first client has locked his keys inside his Jeep Wrangler on East 19th Street. It takes Koerner about 10 seconds to pick the lock. “Piece of cake!” he says. A quick $85.

The next job is at the Kinney parking garage under the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. As he drives up, a parking attendant eyes the Accord and asks skeptically: “Are you checking in, sir?”

Dorothy Maxemow, a nurse from Clark, N.J., is standing by her gray Buick. Again, the keys are locked inside. Koerner uses a steel wire tool. It takes about five minutes. “Try to remember to leave your window open a crack,” he advises Maxemow. “It’ll make it easier next time.” She pays him $75 in cash.

The next job is the young man on Park Avenue. He says he has a hangover and can’t remember exactly what happened the previous night. But without his keys he can’t get into his Pontiac.

Koerner calls the police first, to make sure the car is registered to the man. Then he opens the car and takes apart the steering wheel. The man gives him the $100 deposit.

Koerner goes home, but can’t find the right blanks. So he returns to tell the man he can’t finish the job tonight. The man, crushed at the news, accepts his deposit back.

The beeper goes off again; it’s a customer near Penn Station, trying to override a faulty automatic locking device on his car. Koerner arrives, and there are smiles of recognition. He did the same job for the same man a few months earlier!

“Who says there are 8 million people in this city?” jokes the customer, Barry Bassin, 48.