Desolation Flats

by Andrew Hunt

  “Is Heinrich a Nazi?” I asked.

  “Heinrich is a racer,” said Insley. “Everything else comes second, including ideology. If he lives in the Third Reich, he’s a Nazi. If he lives in Soviet Russia, he’d be a Communist. If he lived here, in America, he’d be a Democrat or a Republican. Likely the former, as they seem to be more popular at the moment.”

  “Are you saying he’s an opportunist?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked at Myron. “I don’t have any more questions. Do you?”

  Myron shook his head no.

  “May I leave, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you for coming out here today.”

  DeVoy escorted Peter and Julian down the stairs and to the exit, where a car waited for them curbside. The clock on the wall said almost four. By this time in the afternoon, most policemen—plainclothes detectives and uniformed officers alike—were starting to wind down their shifts, calling it a day. Productivity dipped sharply after four. End-of-the-day phone calls were made, loose ends wrapped up, and black-and-white sedans returned to the lot.

  As my shift drew to a close, I thought of Roscoe. Why did he pull such a foolish stunt as escaping? Where did he go? Was he in danger? I pondered these matters, and the next time I looked up at the clock, it was half past four.

  I left early. Nothing more to do here today, and I knew it. On my way home, I stopped by Roscoe’s place to feed his cats. The three of them appeared healthy and happy. I refreshed their food and water. They thanked me with leg brushes and head butts, and then I went out to the enclosed back porch to change the litter boxes.

  My curiosity got the best of me. I tromped upstairs to Roscoe’s room. On the nightstand, I examined a framed photograph of Roscoe posing with his pretty brunette daughter, Rose, in happier days, all smiles. An amusement park north of Salt Lake City served as the backdrop. I returned to the photograph to where I found it, next to a leather-bound scrapbook. I picked it up and thumbed through it.

  It contained everything in Roscoe’s possession having to do with his daughter, from her birth certificate to high school report cards and many items in between. Because she had dropped out of high school in her senior year, there was no diploma bearing her name. I knew this bothered Roscoe. I came to one photograph of her looking particularly angelic, in a white dress with lace and pearls sewn into it. Tiny gold lettering in the corner read

  A.J. MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHY, MURRAY, UTAH, MAY 1936. I closed the scrapbook and set it down.

  I left the house the way I found it. I climbed into my car, started it up, and headed for home.

  Thirteen

  Monday night at casa de Oveson passed uneventfully. Clara went to bed early due to headaches. I made dinner—my specialty, fried egg sandwiches on toasted bread, with hash browns and cottage cheese—and I found my two youngest children especially animated at the dinner table. Afterward, Sarah Jane did the dishes while her younger siblings and I gathered around the radio and listened to Amos ’N Andy. Then Fibber McGee and Molly came on. By the time the nine o’clock music variety shows started, Emily had fallen asleep and Hi was subdued. I tucked them both into bed around ten o’clock, and Sarah Jane went to her room.

  I heard the faint clacking of the typewriter and noticed the thin strip of light below her door. She came by her insomnia honestly, I’ll say that much. With the house quiet, I lumbered into the living room, switched on a lamp beside my favorite armchair, sat down, and pulled Clive Underhill’s manuscript out of its envelope pouch. I began reading his memoirs at half past ten. I went straight through, nonstop, taking only a few breaks to use the bathroom or refill my glass of water. The prose flowed beautifully, no two ways about it. The man knew how to put a noun up against a verb. I began to wonder if Insley had a hand in ghostwriting this manuscript.

  Clive told of growing up in a mansion on a sprawling estate in Weybridge, Surrey. Born in 1904, son of a well-to-do businessman, Lloyd Underhill, who’d served in Parliament for years, owned several prominent daily newspapers, and instilled in his children a competitive spirit, despite embracing Fabian Socialism and being close friends with George Bernard Shaw. The responsibility of raising Clive and his five siblings—four sisters and one brother—fell upon the shoulders of an au pair from India named Girijabai.

  “I lived a youth that others only dream of,” wrote Clive. “I grew up in a home filled with the finest literature and art, surrounded outside by verdant gardens. I attended symphony concerts in London and Paris. I traveled to all parts of the globe and took in sights I shall never forget. I walked through the streets of Berlin and Moscow, Cairo and Istanbul, Calcutta and Singapore, Rio de Janeiro and New York. I have shaken hands with world leaders. I have dined with the leading literary lights of our age. Famous figures from the worlds of cinema and music have invited me to their soirées. Yet these experiences have not corrupted my soul, nor blinded me to the realities of the world in which I live. I am a man of my own making. I have charted my own course in life. I have chosen a destiny that is uniquely mine. While I undeniably was born into affluence, I got to where I am by a combination of hard work, creativity, and ingenuity. In short, I may be rich, but I am self-made, which is a source of pride for me.”

  Clive went on to describe the years he spent attending boarding school, where he’d go months without seeing his parents. At a young age, he developed a fascination with automobile racing. He routinely visited Brooklands, a motor raceway near his home, and dreamt of one day being behind the wheel of the fast cars he so loved. It was at Brooklands that he befriended a racer named Count Louis Zborowski, who allowed the teenage car enthusiast to drive around in one of his many Chitty Bang Bang 1 racing cars.

  Zborowski took Clive under his wing and spent years teaching the boy everything he knew. Clive would spend entire summers at Brooklands, and when the fall arrived, he’d return to school to resume his studies. He and Zborowski regularly wrote letters back and forth, and Clive regarded the man as a father figure. While he was at Oxford, Clive learned that Zborowski had gotten killed after losing control of his auto and crashing into a tree at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza on October 19, 1924. The news devastated the young man.

  Clive’s stern father made his contempt for racing readily known to anybody that would listen. This seemed to drive his son deeper and deeper into the sport. By the end of the 1920s, Clive became increasingly interested in breaking land speed records. He admitted in his memoirs that something about taking a fast car beyond the limits of endurance, to high speeds previously unknown to man, excited him greatly. In pursuing this goal, he crashed cars on many occasions, and by his own estimation, at one time or another, he’d broken every bone in his body except his neck. By the early 1930s, he was a force to be reckoned with, already competing with the best racing motorists in the United Kingdom.

  “Certain men were born to be competitive motorists, I being one of them,” he wrote. “I must be clear, however, that it is not the desire to win that drives me. You have not known the fullest exhilaration that life has to offer until you have been behind the wheel of a machine capable of moving at speeds measured in hundreds of miles per hour. The flat earth coming toward you, streaking past underneath at high velocity, and unfurling behind you, provides a thrill that words cannot capture. Whether or not I am the world’s fastest driver is of little importance. What I relish is the journey, that spirited race across the land, not victory itself.”

  The hour was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it, and I began to skim. I slowed, however, when I reached the chapter on Clive’s travels through Nazi Germany. I noticed in the letter from his editor that Clive had followed the publisher’s advice by downplaying his admiration for the German dictator Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He agreed to cut out entire paragraphs praising the Nazis for restoring order and pride in Germany, and celebrating their willingness to serve as a bulwark against Bolshevism.

  In fact, this newly revised version of the memoir did not men
tion the words “Nazi” or “National Socialism” or name any high-level Nazi figures by name. He simply referred to “German officials” and “German motorists” and “German engineers.” No question about it: I was getting the watered-down version of Clive Underhill, stripped of all controversy, to make him more palatable to the book-buying public.

  I did detect genuine warmth in the passages where he mentioned Rudy Heinrich and his wife, Gerda Strauss. Despite being a competitor with Heinrich, Clive seemed fond of the German racer, and the two grew to be close friends. The two of them had met at Oxford in 1924, where Heinrich went for a semester as an exchange student. The following year, Clive took part in an exchange program to a German university, where he met Gerda Strauss. They formed a close friendship, and he eventually introduced her to Rudy Heinrich, with whom she fell in love and later married.

  I also paid especially close attention to the parts of the book where Clive discussed the members of his entourage. First up was Peter Insley, whom Clive met during his freshman year at Oxford. “Fierce, idealistic, intellectual, and intensely engaged, Peter embraced the very egalitarian principles that his wealthy industrialist father had rejected. Peter and I would argue all night and into the dawn, debating everything from alms for the poor to the nature of the 1917 Russian revolution. We did not agree on a single thing in those days, but we each of us harbored the strongest possible mutual respect for the other. Good thing we did not require ideological litmus tests for our friendship, for we formed an enduring friendship that has thrived up until and including the present.”

  Next came a brief history of his ties with manager Albert Shaw. The two met at a party following Clive’s first-place finish at the 1931 Belgian Grand Prix. Clive asked Shaw to become his manager, and Shaw agreed. Up until then, Shaw had been a big-shot movie producer for the London-based Ideal Film Company. “We hit it off right away,” Clive wrote. “There was something about his demeanor that immediately struck me as trustworthy. Our friendship and our professional relationship took hold immediately, and I have never once looked back.”

  Eleven pages later, Clive turned his attention to Julian Pangborn. “His bony physique, sunken eyes, nigh nonexistent chin, and crooked teeth made him not much to behold, but I could tell this intense street urchin brought with him a breathtaking knowledge of cars and how to make them drive faster. He was a master mechanic. When I first encountered him, he had been dabbling in fascist ideas and running around with some of Oswald Mosley’s British Union street thugs, but his commitment to that ideology proved fickle at best. Much stronger was his commitment to automobiles, and I knew after five minutes of talking to this young man that I had to have him on my team. I am proud to say that I pulled him out of the fascist Blackshirts and persuaded him to don the mechanic’s blue coveralls.”

  The manuscript contained numerous references to Clive’s brother Nigel. The memoir depicted the brothers as quite close, and I detected no signs of hostility or resentment on Clive’s part toward his sibling. Only genuine fondness came through. “Nigel and I were close, as close as any brothers I’ve ever known, and I made sure to include him in all of my motoring activities,” Clive wrote. “He was a devoted brother, with a keen mind and a heart full of fraternal love for me. I always appreciated his presence at the many raceways where I’ve driven over the years. If I am a success as a motorist, it is largely because of him. Thus, I shall say it now: Thank you Nigel, now and forever, for all you have done for me.”

  That syrupy prose did not match up with the arrogant and overzealous young man I met on Saturday at the Salt Flats and then later at the Coconut Grove. Clive seemed to be describing another man entirely.

  I noticed that the final chapter of the book, spotlighting his attempts to shatter previous land speed records by reaching four hundred miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats, was only partially written. A note from the editor asked him to complete the rest of the chapter for inclusion in the book no later than October 1, 1938. I was interested, however, in his impressions of Utah from his first trip out here in 1935.

  “What immediately strikes the visitor from England about this sparkling, treeless, arid desert wasteland known as the Bonneville Salt Flats is its desolation,” he wrote. “It is uninhabitable. No human being could possibly survive alone out here for more than a few days. Covered with salt, this desert has been damned to be barren forever. I have heard tales of the pioneers of yore crossing this land, but they did so in pursuit of greener and more prosperous climes to the west. Fascinating, is it not, that something as heart-stoppingly dramatic as land speed racing should occur in a spot so dismal as this? I find it an ironic trick of the racing gods that out of stark landscapes these incredible feats grow.”

  My wristwatch told me it was closing in on 5:00 A.M. Having read or skimmed the entire manuscript, I felt completely exhausted. I placed the red rubber bands that held the pages together, then slipped the thick stack in the envelope and set it on the table next to me. A few minutes later, I’d fallen asleep.

  Fourteen

  “Art.”

  I sat upright, heart about to burst out of my chest, and caught my breath.

  Roscoe stood before me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  What time was it? I rubbed cinders and murky film out of my eyes. Watch check: A few minutes past 6:00 A.M. I got a better look at Roscoe. He appeared disheveled and in need of a shave. He wore the same clothes he had on when I saw him in jail. He sat on the edge of the davenport, elbows on knees, and stared at me for a long moment.

  And the one thing I absolutely could not miss was the revolver in his hand, aimed at me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “How are my cats?”

  “They’re peachy. About the gun…”

  He looked down at it, and gave it a little shake, as if to remind himself he was holding it. “Oh yeah, that.”

  “You’re not planning on shooting me, are you?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that? You’re my best friend.”

  “Good to know. It’s peculiar idiosyncrasy of mine that I don’t like guns aimed at me, even when they’re in the hands of friends.”

  “The gun is purely for show, so no one thinks you helped me under your own steam.”

  “I see. Shouldn’t you be in jail?”

  “If I’d been the one that killed Nigel, then yeah.”

  “But you didn’t do it?”

  “Nope. Sure as hell didn’t.”

  “You look terrible.”

  “Gee thanks.” He squinted at the package on the table adjacent to my chair. “What’s that?”

  “A little light reading. Listen, the kids will be up soon.”

  “I know.”

  “Is there something you want?”

  “Yeah, I need your help.”

  “If I help you, I’m aiding and abetting a known fugitive.”

  He held up the gun, so it was level with his head. “Not if you’re being coerced into it.”

  “But you’re not going to shoot me.”

  “They don’t know that,” he said, lowering the gun again.

  “That thing loaded?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It doesn’t look good, you escaping. It makes you seem guilty.”

  “It’d look a lot worse for me to rot in jail for a crime I didn’t commit.”

  “You put me in a tough spot. If I turn you in, I’m a fink. If I don’t, I’m breaking the law. I could lose my job and do time.”

  “No one will know I was here. And if anyone should find out, you can tell ’em I ordered you at gunpoint.”

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself.”

  “I was a cop. I know how these shitbirds think.”

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t call the police right now.”

  “Our history.”

  He knew what to say. He had me. For my part, I was certain the man sitting across from me did not murder Nigel Underhill. No doubt he had it in him to
take another man’s life, and by his own admission, he had blood on his hands from his years as a strikebreaker. But that was behind us, and we were in the here and now, sitting face-to-face in my living room, in August of 1938, contemplating where to go from here. I was not about to turn him away in his moment of need.

  “Besides, Art Oveson isn’t a rat.”

  “That’s good of you to say,” I replied, smirking.

  “I mean it.”

  “OK, let’s talk specifics. What do you need?”

  “Got any money?”

  “How much?”

  “Hundred. I’ll pay you back every nickel of it.”

  “You gonna tell me what it’s for?”

  “Expenses. Gas. Change of clothes. A man’s gotta eat.”

  “What about that money Nigel Underhill supposedly gave you at the Hotel Utah for your services rendered? Can’t you use that?”

  “It’s at home,” he said. “I’m not going back for it.”

  “Fair enough. OK. I will loan you the money.”

  “Thank you. I hate to sound like an ingrate, but when…?”

  “Now.”

  He arched his eyebrows. “No kidding?”

  “We’ve got a rainy-day fund. It’s in a secret place, where nobody will find it.”

  “You and Clara are disciplined,” he said. “I would’ve blown it on booze and whores long ago.”

  “My boozing and whoring days are behind me,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “I’ll need a car, too,” he said. “Could I borrow your Olds?”

  “It’s Clara’s Olds, not mine.”

  “Think she’d mind?”

  “I’d have to ask her.”

  “Is there any way we can leave her out of this?”

  “She’ll see it’s missing. She won’t be happy. What do you need it for?”

  “Transportation.”

  “Obviously. To where?”

  “Around.”

  “Now is not the time to hold back,” I said. “I need to know.”

  “Somewhere where I can lay low until this blows over. How’s that?”