PART 8:

I want you to know that there are people at this conference who have heard about your claim through industry channels and who have formed opinions about it that are not generous. I know, Ethan said. They’re going to be in that room tomorrow. I know that, too. Webb looked at him directly. I’m telling you this not to discourage you.

I’m telling you because I think you deserve to walk in there knowing what the temperature is. Ethan put his fork down. Marcus, can I ask you something? Sure. The third appraiser who came to my property, the one I never got a name for. Who was he? Something moved across Web’s face. Very brief. A consultant we use for specific technical evaluations.

Does he have a name? Of course he has a name. Who does he work for when he’s not consulting for Sinclair Automotive? Webb looked at his plate. He’s an independent consultant. For who? The precise man was quiet for a moment. That was in its silence its own kind of answer. “I should get back,” he said.

He stood, picked up his barely touched plate. “Good luck tomorrow, Ethan.” He walked away. Ethan watched him go, and then looked back at his laptop screen, and then sat there for a while, thinking about the kind of independent consultant who might have both access to an appraisal report and the resources and motivation to act on what was in it.

The chicken on his own plate went cold while he thought about it. He called Frank Dryer from the stairwell between the lobby and the conference floor where it was quiet enough to hear. Frank, the program you worked adjacent to, the performance division, early ‘7s, who were the corporate stakeholders on the manufacturer side, who had the most to lose if the details of the program became public record? A pause.

That’s a specific question. I know. Why are you asking it now? because someone sent a consultant to my property when Sinclair’s team came out. Someone who isn’t independently independent, I think. And then someone broke into my shop, and I want to know if those two things point in the same direction. Frank was quiet for longer than usual.

Ethan could hear him breathing. There’s a man, Frank said finally. Raymond Hollis. He’s been in the industry a long time. Acquisition and estate consulting officially. unofficially. He’s been the instrument of several transactions that had significant legal complexity, put it that way.

He worked adjacent to the program in the early 70s on the corporate side. He would have known about the units. He would have known about Callaway. Is he at this conference? Another pause. He’s always at this conference. Ethan leaned against the stairwell wall. Around him, the sound of the conference murmured through the doors like distant water.

Okay, he said. Thanks, Frank. Ethan, be careful. I’m always careful. I know you think that, Frank said, which was not quite agreement, and hung up. He found Raymond Hollis that afternoon without much difficulty because Raymond Hollis was the kind of man who positioned himself in the places where he’d be found near the high value exhibition vehicles adjacent to the conversations that mattered, always at an angle that suggested he was part of whatever was happening without technically being responsible for it. He was 70 or

thereabouts, heavy in the face with the careful grooming of a man who understood that appearance was a form of argument. Ethan watched him from 20 ft away for several minutes. He did not approach him. He wasn’t ready for that conversation yet, and he understood that readiness mattered, that timing mattered, that there was a right moment for certain things, and forcing the moment produced worse outcomes.

What he was looking for, and what he found was confirmation. Raymond Hollis shook hands with Marcus Webb near the east entrance of the exhibition floor at 2:15 in the afternoon. The kind of handshake that lasted slightly too long and involved a hand on the shoulder that was performed for familiarity but communicated something else. Hollis said something.

Webb nodded. They separated. Ethan filed it away. He spent the rest of the afternoon at a technical session on factory documentation standards for the muscle car era. And he paid attention because even now, even with everything else in his head, the information was relevant to what he was doing. and he was not going to waste an opportunity to learn something useful.

The session moderator was a historian named Dr. Patricia Ash who taught automotive history at a university in Ohio and who spoke about factory records with the passion of someone who considered the subject genuinely important rather than merely academically interesting. At the end of the session, as the room was clearing, Ethan approached her. Dr.

Ash, he said, my name is Ethan Walker. I’m presenting tomorrow and I’d like your honest opinion of something. She looked at him. She was small, sharpeyed, somewhere in her 50s. About what? About whether a surviving factory prototype from the early ‘7s performance division program would constitute a significant historical discovery, or whether the industry would find a way to explain it away. She studied him for a moment.

“Are you asking theoretically?” “Not entirely.” Then you’d better buy me a coffee, she said, because that’s not a short answer. They sat in the conference coffee area for 90 minutes. He showed her the critical documents on his laptop, the factory letter from the university archive, the production log pages, the VIN analysis.

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