I knelt again, dropping onto one knee so Toby remained shielded behind my torso. Five inches beneath the hand-formed aluminum fender, right where the floor-mounted halogen puck threw four hundred watts of yellow heat into the wheel well, the gray polyester resin was beginning to blister.
The paste hadn't been mixed with the proper proportion of liquid hardener. Whoever had slapped the patch into place in the freight tunnel had rushed the ratio, trying to get the car wiped down before the doors opened for the preview patrons at five. Under the intense, focused heat of the quartz lamp, the uncured filler was sweating small, amber-colored droplets of unpolymerized promoter. The sharp, cloying reek of volatile styrene was thickening in the stagnant air beneath the nose cone, so strong it made the back of my throat burn.
"Officer Cole," I said, not looking up. "Step over here. Put your face eighteen inches off the floor."
The second guard, a younger man with broad shoulders and an ironed uniform, shifted his weight and put his hand on his tactical belt. "Sir, back away from the display line."
"Shut up, Miller," Cole said quietly.
The older guard took two slow, measured steps toward the perimeter rope. He stopped just behind my right shoulder, his tall frame blocking the glare of the chandelier overhead. He didn't touch the rope, but he leaned forward, his nostrils flaring as the chemical odor hit him.
"That's not lacquer overspray," Cole said, his voice flat.
"It's boatyard filler," I told him, pointing to the weeping seam where the gray crumb still clung to Toby’s sketch paper. "Seventy-grade polyester paste. You use it to patch fiberglass skiffs when you hit a submerged piling. It has zero tensile strength. The minute this chassis was lowered off the rollback ramp, the aluminum structural tube cracked right through the lower suspension mount. Vance had his freight hands smear this slop into the gap, spray it with a rattle-can of silver pearl, and roll the car over the carpet before the carrier driver could log the drop."
"He's manufacturing a story to cover his kid," Vance hissed into the receiver, though he wasn't talking to Marty anymore. He had switched lines. He had punched the four-digit speed dial for the mezzanine boardroom—the private lounge where the underwriting trustees and the car’s legal custodians were finishing their pre-gala toast.
"Director Vance," a crisp, elderly voice echoed faintly from the phone's ear-piece. "We are coming down the grand stair now. Is the presentation stage secure?"
Vance cleared his throat, smoothing the lapels of his midnight-blue suit jacket with his free hand, though his fingers still twitched with a nervous tremor. "Mr. Vandegrift, sir. We have a small administrative complication near the front riser. An independent service worker brought an unattended minor into the cordoned ring. The boy gouged the lower rocker panel, and the father is becoming aggressive with venue security. I have two officers containing him now, but he's refusing to vacate the floor."
"Call the precinct," the voice on the phone replied without hesitation. "Have them removed through the freight vestibule. We do not permit domestic disputes on the preview carpet."
"Understood, Mr. Vandegrift," Vance said smoothly, offering a tight, triumphant smirk in my direction as he lowered the phone. "We'll have the area cleared before your party reaches the perimeter."
He tapped the screen to disconnect, then pointed his brass stylus straight at my chest. "You heard him, Mercer. You have sixty seconds to take that boy, hand over that sketchbook, and walk out through bay nine. If you don't, I will personally sign the criminal trespass affidavit, and Cole will take you down right here on the terrazzo."
The young guard, Miller, unclipped a pair of heavy hinged steel cuffs from his duty belt. "Let's go, mister. Don't make this hard on the kid."
This was the pivot.
If I picked Toby up, ducked under the ropes, and hurried out the service door into the cold autumn drizzle of the canal district, Vance would have thirty minutes to wheel the Apollo back into the shadows of the freight dock. Marty would overwrite the four o'clock ramp camera. The wet polyester would bake hard under the industrial blowers, a detailer would buff the seam smooth, and tomorrow morning a sixty-thousand-dollar insurance claim would land on my small business account, accompanied by a police warrant for property destruction signed by the concourse board. My shop certification would be revoked by noon. My commercial insurance would cancel my coverage before the week ended.
And Toby would grow up believing that when an authority figure lies to protect his own skin, the only thing a working man can do is bow his head, swallow his tongue, and take the fall.
"No," I said.
I didn't raise my voice. I didn't reach for Miller. I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out my brass mechanical gauge and my laminated state inspector’s badge—the heavy, blue-embossed credential issued by the Department of Transportation's Commercial Freight Division—and clipped it to the collar of my work jacket.
"Officer Cole," I said, looking the older guard dead in the eye. "You check the intake registry on your belt terminal right now. Search the transport safety manifest for chassis prototype AV-zero-four."
Cole frowned. He hesitated for two seconds, glancing at Vance’s reddening face, then pulled the ruggedized mobile tablet from his side holster. His thumb worked the keypad, searching the venue’s automated freight clearance portal.