Chapter 10

I'd like to tell you I made him pay.

There was a version of that night where I called a lawyer at two in the morning and turned Apex Moto into a lawsuit with a case number, and it's a good version, and I've thought about it more than once since.

Here's what I actually did.

I asked for three things.

The first was the plate. Not a new one - the original. It was in a drawer in the service office, in a ziplock bag with a parts tag on it, and Ruben Ortiz went and got it while the room watched. Hand-stamped. One of one. Four decades of fingerprints in the metal. Vivian brought me a screwdriver. I put it back on myself, in front of everyone, and it took about ninety seconds and my hands didn't shake until afterward.

The second thing was the license. Not free - that was the mistake the first time. I asked for four percent, paid quarterly, with the back years calculated at the same rate. And I asked for that back money to go somewhere specific: into a training fund for the people who actually build the bikes. Machinists. Welders. Paint guys. The ones whose names never end up on a website.

Warren Cross signed it on the hood of a Range Rover in the service bay at twelve-forty in the morning. His hand wasn't steady either.

The third thing was smaller.

"Put it on the floor," I said.

"I'm sorry?"

"The Sparrow. Not behind the glass. Not up on a platform. Put it on the floor of the showroom where people walk, and let anybody who asks sit on it for thirty seconds. That's the whole point of a motorcycle."

Warren Cross looked at me like I'd asked him to set the building on fire.

"Deal," Vivian said.

"Vivian-"

"Deal," she said again, and that was that.

Desmond Pike wasn't part of the negotiation. He was already gone. By Tuesday the board had his deposit records. By the following month the Travis County district attorney had them too. Last I heard he was selling something with a warranty. I hope he's good at it.

I don't think about him much.

Here's what I think about.

At one-forty in the morning the VIPs were gone and the champagne was warm, and Vivian Cross stood in the open service door with her coat over her arm, watching an old man sit on a motorcycle he built when he was twenty-eight.

"You know," she said, "the company history says you died in 2004."

"I heard."

"Do you want me to fix it?"

"Leave it," I said. "I like it."

Then I pulled the clutch and pressed the starter, and the Ward cycle caught on the second turn - forty years old and it still caught on the second turn - and I rode the Sparrow out through the front doors of Apex Moto and onto Congress Avenue.

Behind me, standing in the open door with her coat over her arm, one very smart young woman watched a dead man ride his own motorcycle home.