'You the kid?' Grip asked.
Caleb stood a little straighter. 'My name is Caleb. This is my shop.'
'Your uncle's shop,' one of the prospects corrected, then looked down when Grip raised a hand.
'Your shop now,' Grip said. 'Fine. My name's Henderson. Some people call me Grip.'
'I know who you are.'
Grip's mouth moved as if he might smile, but no smile arrived. 'Then you know I didn't come here for conversation.' He tapped the red tank with one thick finger. 'This thing's trying to put me in the ground, and every man who's looked at it has told me the same story. They say it's fixed. Then it tries to kill me again.'
Caleb asked him to describe exactly what happened rather than guessing from the visible repairs. Grip explained that the motorcycle ran beautifully around town and at ordinary cruising speeds. But when he opened it up on a straight stretch of highway, at roughly seventy-five miles per hour, the engine began to break up violently and a shudder came through the chassis. Twice he had barely managed to get the bike slowed down before losing control.
'First time, I figured bad gas,' Grip said. 'Second time, I figured somebody was incompetent. Now I'm running out of polite explanations.' He looked down at the engine as though it had betrayed a personal promise. 'Donovan rebuilt the carburetion in Bakersfield. Wyatt in Fresno went through the electrical system. They both swore it was right. It wasn't.'
Caleb nodded and asked whether the symptom appeared at the same engine speed in different gears. Grip blinked, surprised by the question, and admitted that he had been paying more attention to staying upright than studying the tachometer. Caleb asked whether the machine had behaved differently since its recent repaint, whether the vibration appeared before the engine cut out, and whether anything about the handling had changed at lower speeds. Grip answered each question more carefully than the last.
'Your uncle taught you those questions?' he asked.
'He taught me not to choose the answer before I have the facts.'
For the first time, Grip gave a short grunt that sounded almost approving. Then he looked at the wall clock, and the mood in the bay changed. 'Tomorrow morning there's a Nevada run. Three hundred brothers planned along the route. My charter leads out tonight, and this is the bike I lead on.'
'You ought not ride it again until somebody finds the cause,' Caleb said before he could stop himself.
Grip stepped closer. He smelled of hot leather, gasoline, and stale tobacco. 'I know that, kid. That's why I'm here.'
Caleb felt Lena's warning come back to him with unpleasant precision. A customer had arrived without an appointment, carrying a problem nobody else had solved, and wanted a promise Caleb could not responsibly make. He glanced at the old dynamometer along the far wall, at the shelves of parts he no longer had credit to replace, and at the bank notice inside his office. His desire to say yes was almost physical.