The engine turned over, struggled, died.
Raymond closed his eyes for three seconds. Then he opened them.
"It's the intake manifold gasket," he said. "There's a microfracture, hairline. You wouldn't see it visually, but you can hear it in the idle cycle. The air-fuel mixture is bleeding off just enough to prevent ignition under load. Your diagnostics have been reading it as a fuel system fault because that's the downstream effect, but the fracture is upstream."
The garage was very quiet.
"Which means," Raymond continued, standing up and reaching carefully into the engine bay, "if you replace the gasket here..."
He worked for 19 minutes. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.
At the end of 19 minutes, Raymond stepped back, wiped his hands on his trousers, and nodded at Patterson.
Patterson started the car. The Ferrari purred.
Richard Caldwell heard it from his office on the 14th floor. He was on a call with his attorney when the sound reached him through the ventilation system: low, smooth, unmistakable.
He stopped mid-sentence.
"Richard?" his attorney said.
"I'll call you back."