"I called earlier," Fletcher said. "Your parts department told me to come in. I just need a turbo actuator." Dale didn't care. He looked at the $20 bill in Fletcher's hand and almost laughed.
"Kid, the oil change on these cars costs more than your rent. Whatever you think you're here for, you're not." Victoria walked over, heels clicking on marble, arms crossed. She stopped three feet away, close enough to talk, far enough to make it clear he wasn't worth getting any closer.
"This is a $2 million showroom," she said. "Not a junkyard, not a charity, and certainly not a place for whatever you are." "I'm a mechanic," Fletcher said quietly. "I just need one part. I can pay."
Victoria tilted her head, a thin smile spread across her face. A mechanic. She said it the way someone says a joke they don't find funny.
"Sweetheart, the men who work on these cars have engineering degrees from MIT. They trained in Modena, Italy. And you, what, you watched a YouTube video?" Two customers in Italian suits looked over from the lounge. A woman with a pearl necklace shook her head, not at Victoria, at Fletcher.
"Walk him out," Victoria told Dale, "and check the security cameras from the moment he walked in. I want to make sure nothing is missing."
She said it loud enough for every person in the showroom to hear. The accusation hung in the air like smoke. Fletcher's chest burned, his jaw tightened. Every instinct told him to say something, to defend himself, to tell this woman that his grandfather rebuilt a 1969 Camaro SS from a pile of rust using nothing but hand tools and library books, and that he taught Fletcher everything he knew before cancer took him.
But his grandfather had also taught him this: "Don't waste your words on people who have already decided not to hear them." Dale grabbed Fletcher's arm, not gently. "Let's go, kid. Don't make this harder."
Fletcher turned toward the door. One step, two steps, and that's when he heard it. Behind the service bay doors, raised voices, metal clanging, the sharp crack of a tool hitting a workbench.
The service bay was visible through a glass partition. Victoria liked clients to see the technicians working, part of the theater of luxury. Right now, the theater was falling apart.
A Pagani Huayra BC sat on the center lift. Ice blue, carbon fiber body, hand-built in Modena, one of only 40 in the world. Its twin turbo V12 hybrid powertrain was one of the most complex systems ever put into a road car. The hood was open. Diagnostic cables snaked from the engine bay to three different screens.
Every screen was flashing red. Chad Brennan, the head technician, slammed his tablet on the workbench hard enough to crack the screen protector. "Three weeks," he said. "Three goddamn weeks."
Todd Mercer, the junior technician, pulled off his gloves and threw them on the floor. "The Modena guys gave up, Chad. They literally flew two engineers across the Atlantic, and they couldn't find it. What are we supposed to do?"
"I don't know. But Eleanor Ashford is coming back in 24 hours, and if this car isn't running, Victoria is going to burn this place down and us with it."
Chad ran his hands through his hair. He looked wrecked. Dark circles under his eyes. Three weeks of 18-hour days staring at fault codes that made no sense.
"The ECU throws six different errors every time we boot it," he said. "The hybrid relay won't sync. The Modena engineers said the whole powertrain needs to come out and go back to Italy. $200,000 minimum. And that's if we're lucky."