"What in the world is that?" Cole asked.
"Neighborhood kid," Frank said quickly. "Leon, sit down."
Leon took one step forward instead. "I think I know why the motorcycle's broken."
Wilson barked a laugh. "Well, that settles it. We got ourselves a specialist."
Frank's ears went red. "He's eight years old. He's been sitting there watching, that's all. Leon, not now."
The boy's mouth went dry. He did not know how to explain the difference between a guess and something he had actually seen. He had never repaired a motorcycle. He had never even ridden one. All he knew was that the thing beneath the frame looked wrong, and he could not make himself pretend he had not noticed it.
Big Jim had not laughed. His broad face remained still as he studied the child. He looked at the worn shoes, the dirt under the fingernails, and the oversized shirt that might once have belonged to a teenager. Then he looked at Frank, whose anger was now mixed with a kind of embarrassment Jim understood too well. "Let him talk," he said.
"Jim, come on."
"I said let him talk."
Leon stared at the floor near Jim's boots. "Mr. Frank keeps looking at the stuff up high. The battery and the parts near the gas tank. But yesterday I saw something underneath, close to the thing you put down so the bike stands up."
"The kickstand?" Jim asked.
Leon nodded with obvious relief. "That. There's a black wire. It's stuck under something metal, and the outside is gone from part of it. It looks squashed."
Frank frowned. He had been through the ignition circuits until their paths occupied his dreams, but he had not looked at the particular mounting point Leon described from underneath. His first impulse was to insist he already knew every inch of the motorcycle. His second was to remember the boy holding a washer near the floor the previous day. It bothered him that he could picture the moment so clearly, yet had never wondered what else Leon might have seen.
"Show me," Jim said.
Leon looked up. Jim lowered himself as far as his bad hip allowed and rested a hand on the workbench. The movement was awkward, and Leon heard the man's knee crack through the denim of his jeans. When their eyes were level, Jim's scarred face seemed less like a threat and more like an old piece of road leather worn thin by weather. The boy pointed toward the underside of the bike.
"You have to get down low. I saw it when a washer rolled under there."
Jim glanced at Frank. "Make the bike safe."