I sat back on my heels. The shop seemed suddenly very quiet.
A mistake can be careless, ugly, or dangerous. This was carefully hidden. Somebody had taken time to make the work appear ordinary. Somebody had put an unfamiliar object inside the structure of a machine and left it where a rider would never know it was there until the engine went dead under him.
I thought of Grip's left hand, those fingers that would never straighten. I thought of the way he had said he didn't trust the motorcycle but could not bear to give it up. Then I looked again at the red frame and understood that the question had become much bigger than whether I could earn enough money to pay my electricity bill.
Someone might have tried to kill him.
For a full minute I did nothing but breathe. It wasn't the stillness of courage. It was the stillness of realizing I had crossed from an ordinary repair into a problem whose consequences I could not measure. I had expected bad wiring, a cracked insulator, or a loose component that only failed once the motorcycle warmed. I had not expected a manufactured insert hidden behind an alteration that appeared designed to interfere with the engine's ignition when the machine was under load.
I photographed everything before moving another piece. I photographed the frame from a distance, then the concealed area, then the disturbed paint and the markings I could see beside the wire run. I wrote down where the motorcycle stood, which parts I'd already removed, and the result of the dyno test. Hector had taught me that memory was excellent at protecting your pride and terrible at preserving small details, especially when you were frightened.
I wanted to call Grip. I could imagine the conversation: "Somebody interfered with your bike on purpose." I could imagine the silence that followed and the questions he would ask about who, when, and why. I had answers to none of them, only a serious suspicion supported by something I could show him.
There was another problem. Once I told him, there would be no taking the words back. If my interpretation was wrong, I might accuse an innocent mechanic of attempted murder. If it was right, I might put someone in danger by causing people with old grievances to move faster than the facts allowed. I was nineteen, and I knew enough to understand that knowledge could make a person responsible for things he had never intended to touch.
I dialed the number of Frank Duran instead. Frank was a retired frame specialist who had worked alongside Hector during complicated restorations. He lived on the west side of Bakersfield, and since my uncle's funeral he had checked on me twice without making it obvious that he was checking. I sent him the photographs and explained that I needed an independent opinion about whether the area had been altered and what it would take to inspect the repair safely.