Pace arrived early to open the shop. Before seven used to be the only time he had to himself to tinker around anymore; by eight the shop would be full of people dropping their cars off on the way to work, and then one of the junior mechanics would drive them all to work and the shop would swing into gear.

This half hour or forty-five minutes with the shop to himself used to be the best time of the day. Pace had gotten into mechanics in the first place because he liked tinkering with things, but the demands of running a commercial shop meant that he had to account for all his time, which meant that a lot of the joy of simply wrenching on something had leaked away over the years. By the time the shop closed at night, he was exhausted and ready to go home, so hanging around and working on a project for the joy of it…. Well.

First thing in the morning was when he reclaimed the joy. Or had been.

It’s hard to complain about an employee who arrives before sunup, works solidly and steadily all day long, and leaves well after sundown, and only ever clocks eight hours. Hard, but if you pressed him, Pace could find a way to complain.

Fishy Jackson, nineteen years old, was a natural with all things mechanical. He couldn’t get enough of them, and they responded to him: he seemed to be able to diagnose a problem by simply standing nearby and feeling the vibrations in the air. Give him a problem, he’d solve it, quickly and with something approaching genius; cars often ran better after Fishy fixed a small problem than they’d run before they’d had the problem.

Pace had a hard time keeping up with Fishy. He wasn’t going to take work away from the other mechanics because this prodigy did fast work; that was just bad business in the long run — it seemed obvious that Fishy would move on, sooner or later; there were opportunities for a genius that Pace couldn’t compete with, and then the shop would go back to simply having its normal cadre of mechanics, and having all of them hold a grudge because Pace had favored the new kid… well.

So the kid was at loose ends in the shop a lot, and he worked on things. There was a working PA system, now, because Fishy though there ought to be one, for calling to the floor from the office. Pace had thought standing at the top of the stairs and raising his voice worked just fine, but a PA was fine too. There was a much-improved computer diagnostic station, now, and…

Well, there was a computer near every bay, that way mechanics could look up problems on the Internet. It wasn’t that Pace was opposed to new things, but he’d learned the trade by shoving everything into his brain, so it was hard for him to accept that… well, it wouldn’t have occurred to him, that’s all.

Fishy was hunched over a keyboard near his bay. There was something exciting sounding playing on the computer’s speakers.

For the six hundredth time, Pace decided to try and talk to the kid. Eventually he’d figure out how to interact with him in some other way than giving him work to do.

The sound coming out of the computer was a police scanner. Pace did a lot of work on police cars, so he knew a lot of the local police and he recognized voices.

“What’s going on?” he said it from a little ways back, so Fishy knew he was there. Fishy didn’t startle — ever — but it seemed polite anyhow.

“Bank robbery last night,” said Fishy. “That guy came in two days ago, looked weird? Sort of shifty? Robbed the First National, downtown. Almost got away, too; hid that car out in the shed behind Lefty’s, slept in it. Started moving first thing this morning, so I called the cops.”

“You called the…” Pace looked over Fishy’s shoulder. There was a map of Brownsville on the screen, zoomed in to a couple of blocks of downtown. Little icons of cars were arranged on the screen; it was easy to tell the police cars — blue — from the red of the perpetrator’s car. “Where’s this coming from? Where’s… how can you watch where all those…”

Fishy turned on his stool and gave him the look that had gotten him his nickname. Pace stared at the screen, listening to the drama unfold over the radio.