Art of Racing in the Rain, The

by Garth Stein

  The men seemed confused by the question. They exchanged a glance.

  “It’s raining,” one of them said.

  “Rain isn’t dirty,” Skip said cheerfully. “Dirt is dirty.”

  The policemen looked at him strangely, as if they didn’t know if he was mocking them.

  “No, thanks,” one of them said as they walked to the lobby door and went inside.

  I nosed through the swinging door in the garage bay and into the file room. I wandered up behind the counter, which Mike was attending.

  “Afternoon, officers,” I heard Mike say. “A problem with your car?”

  “Are you Dennis Swift?” one of them asked.

  “I am not,” Mike replied.

  “Is he here?”

  Mike hesitated. I could smell his sudden tension.

  “He may have left for the day,” Mike said. “Let me check. Can I tell him who’s calling?”

  “We have a warrant for his arrest,” one of the policemen said.

  “I’ll see if he’s still in the back.”

  Mike turned and stumbled into me.

  “Enzo. Clear out, boy.”

  He looked up at the police nervously.

  “Shop dog,” he said. “Always in the way.”

  I followed him into the back, where Denny was at the computer, logging invoices for the people who wanted their cars by the end of the day.

  “Den,” Mike said. “There are a couple of cops out front with a warrant.”

  “For?” Denny asked, not even looking up from the screen, tap-tap-tapping away at his invoices.

  “You. For your arrest.”

  Denny stopped what he was doing.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “I didn’t get the details. But they’re uniform SPD and they don’t look like male strippers and today isn’t your birthday anyway, so I don’t think it’s a prank.”

  Denny stood up and started for the lobby.

  “I told them you might have left for the day,” Mike said, indicating the back door with his chin.

  “I appreciate the thought, Mike. But if they’ve got a warrant, they probably know where I live. Let me find out what this is all about.”

  Like a train, the three of us snaked through the file room and up to the counter.

  “I’m Denny Swift.”

  The police nodded.

  “Could you step out from behind the counter, sir?” one of them asked.

  “Is there a problem? Can you tell me what this is all about?”

  There were half a dozen people sitting in the lobby waiting for their invoices to be prepared; they all looked up from their reading material.

  “Please step out from behind the counter,” the policeman said.

  Denny hesitated for a moment, and then followed his instructions.

  “We have a warrant for your arrest,” one of the men said.

  “For what?” Denny asked. “Can I see it? There must be some mistake.”

  The cop handed Denny a sheaf of paper. Denny read it.

  “You’re joking,” he said.

  “No, sir,” the cop said, taking back the papers. “Please place your hands on the counter and spread your legs.”

  Denny’s boss, Craig, came out of the back.

  “Officers?” he said, approaching them. “I don’t believe this is necessary, and if it is, you can do it outside.”

  “Sir, hold!” the policeman said sternly, pointing a long finger at Craig.

  But Craig was right. The whole thing was designed to be prejudicial. It was the lobby of a place of business. People were there, waiting for their BMWs and Mercedes gull-wings and other fancy cars. The police didn’t have to do what they did in front of those people. They were customers. They trusted Denny, and now he was a criminal? What the police were doing wasn’t right. There must have been a better way. But they had guns and batons. They had pepper spray and Tasers. And the SPD has always been notoriously nervous.

  Denny followed their instructions and placed his hands on the counter and spread his legs; the cop patted him down thoroughly.

  “Please turn around and place your hands behind your back,” the cop said.

  “You don’t need handcuffs,” Craig said angrily. “He’s not running anywhere!”

  “Sir!” the cop barked. “Hold!”

  Denny turned around and placed his hands behind his back. The officer cuffed him.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” the cop said. “Anything you say can and will be held against you—”

  “How long is this going to take?” Denny asked. “I have to pick up my daughter.”

  “I suggest you make other arrangements,” the other police officer said.

  “I can pick her up, Denny,” Mike said.

  “You’re not on the list of approved pickup people.”

  “So who should I call?”

  “…an attorney will be appointed to you…”

  “Call Mark Fein,” Denny said, desperate. “He’s in the computer.”

  “Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”

  “Do you need me to bail you out?” Craig asked. “Whatever you need—”

  “I have no idea what I need,” Denny said. “Call Mark. Maybe he can pick up Zoë.”

  “Do you understand the rights as I have read them?”

  “I understand!” Denny snapped. “Yes. I understand!”

  “What are you being arrested for?” Mike asked.

  Denny looked to the officers, but they said nothing. They waited for Denny to answer the question. They were well trained in the sophisticated methods of breaking down a subject—make him voice his own crime.

  “Rape of a child in the third degree,” Denny said.

  “Felony rape,” one of the cops clarified.

  “But I didn’t rape anyone,” Denny said to the cop. “Who’s behind this? What child?”

  There was a long pause. The people in the lobby were rapt. Denny was standing before them all, his hands bound behind his back, they could all see how he was a prisoner now, he had no use of his hands now, he could not race a car now. All attention was on the police and their blue-gray shirts with the epaulets and their black guns, sticks, wands, and leather packets wrapped around their waists. It was true drama. Everyone wanted to know the answer to the question. What child?

  “The one you raped,” the cop replied simply.

  I despised him for what he was doing, but I had to admire his dramatic flair; without another word, the police took Denny away.

  33

  Much of what happened to Denny regarding the custody suit concerning Zoë as well as the criminal charges of rape of a child in the third degree was not witnessed by me. These events spanned close to three years of our lives, as one of the tactics of Maxwell and Trish was to drag out the process in order to deplete Denny of money and destroy his will, as well as to play off of his desire to see Zoë mature in a loving and supportive environment. I was denied access to much information. I was not invited to attend any of the legal proceedings, for instance. I was allowed to attend only a few of the meetings Denny had with his attorney, Mark Fein, specifically, those that occurred at Victrola Coffee (because Mark Fein had a fancy for the barista with the pierced eyebrow and the dark chocolate eyes). I did not accompany Denny to the police station after his arrest. I was not present for his booking, his arraignment, or his subsequent lie detector testing.

  Much of what I will tell you about the ordeal that followed Eve’s death is a reconstruction based on information compiled by me from secondhand knowledge, overheard conversations, and established legal practices as I have gleaned from various television shows, most especially the Law & Order series and its spin-offs, Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent, and the much maligned Trial by Jury. Further details regarding police methodology and terminology are based on two of the very best television shows in the history of the genre: The Rockford Files, starring James Garner, who also starred in the excell
ent racing film, Grand Prix; and of course, the greatest of all police dramas, Columbo, starring the fabulous and exceptionally clever Peter Falk in the title role. (My sixth favorite actor is Peter Falk.) And, finally, my knowledge of the courtroom is based solely on the work of the greatest of all courtroom dramatists, Sidney Lumet, whose many films, including The Verdict and 12 Angry Men, have influenced me tremendously, and, as a side note, I would say that his casting of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon was nothing short of inspired.

  My intent, here, is to tell our story in a dramatically truthful way. While the facts may be less than accurate, please understand that the emotion is true. The intent is true. And, dramatically speaking, intention is everything.

  34

  They took him to a small room with a large table and many chairs. The walls were perforated with windows that looked out to the surrounding office, which was filled with police detectives doing their police work at their desks, just like on Law & Order. Wooden blinds filtered the blue light that crept into the room, rippling the table and floor with long shadows.

  No one bothered him. A bad cop didn’t pull his ears or hit him with a telephone directory or smash his fingers in the door or smack his head against the chalkboard, as often happens on television. No. After being booked and fingerprinted and photographed, he was put in the room, alone, and left there, as if the police had forgotten him entirely. He sat by himself. He sat for hours with nothing. No coffee, no water, no restrooms, no radio. No distractions. His crime and his punishment and himself. Alone.

  Did he despair? Did he silently berate himself for allowing himself to be in that situation? Or did he finally realize what it is like to be me, to be a dog? Did he understand, as those interminable minutes ticked by, that being alone is not the same as being lonely? That being alone is a neutral state; it is like a blind fish at the bottom of the ocean: without eyes, and therefore without judgment. Is it possible? That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me. Is it true? Could Denny have possibly appreciated the subjective nature of loneliness, which is something that exists only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host?

  I like to think that he was alone for that time, but that he wasn’t lonely. I like to think that he thought about his condition, but he did not despair.

  And then Mark Fein burst into the East Precinct on Seattle’s Capitol Hill; he burst in and began shouting. That is Mark Fein’s blustery style. Bombastic. Boisterous. Bold. Bellicose. Mark Fein is a capital letter B. He is shaped like the letter, and he acts like the letter. Brash. Brazen. Bullish. Bellowing. He blew down the door, bull-rushed the desk, blasted the sergeant on duty, and bailed out Denny.

  “What the fuck is this all about, Dennis?” Mark demanded on the street corner.

  “It’s nothing,” Denny said, uninterested in the conversation.

  “The fuck it is! A fifteen-year-old? Dennis! The fuck it’s nothing!”

  “She’s lying.”

  “Is she? Did you have intercourse with this girl?”

  “No.”

  “Did you penetrate any of her orifices with your genitals or any other object?”

  Denny stared at Mark Fein and refused to answer.

  “This is part of a plan, do you see that?” Mark said, frustrated. “I couldn’t figure why they would file a bogus custody suit, but this changes everything.”

  Still, Denny said nothing.

  “A pedophile. A sex offender. A statutory rapist. A child molester. Do these terms fit anywhere in the concept of ‘the best interest of a child’?”

  Denny ground his teeth; his jaw muscles bulged.

  “My office, eight thirty tomorrow morning,” Mark said. “Don’t be late.”

  Denny burned.

  “Where’s Zoë?” he demanded.

  Mark Fein dug his heel into the pavement.

  “They got to her before I could,” he said. “The timing on this was not an accident.”

  “I’m going to get her,” Denny said.

  “Don’t!” Mark snapped. “Let them be. Now is not the time for heroics. When you’re stuck in quicksand, the worst thing you can do is struggle.”

  “So now I’m stuck in quicksand?” Denny asked.

  “Dennis, you are in the quickest of all possible sand right now.”

  Denny wheeled around and started off.

  “And don’t leave the state,” Mark called after him. “And, Jesus Christ, Dennis, don’t even look at another fifteen-year-old girl!”

  But Denny had already rounded the corner and was gone.

  35

  Hands are the windows to a man’s soul.

  Watch in-car videos of race drivers enough, and you’ll see the truth of this statement. The rigid, tense grip of one driver reflects his rigid, tense driving style. The nervous hand-shuffle of another driver proves how uncomfortable he is in the car. A driver’s hands should be relaxed, sensitive, aware. Much information is communicated through the steering wheel of a car; too tight or too nervous a grip will not allow the information to be communicated to the brain.

  They say that senses do not operate alone, but rather are combined together in a special part of the brain that creates a picture of the body as a whole: sensors in the skin tell the brain about pressure, pain, heat; sensors in the joints and tendons tell the brain about the body’s position in space; sensors in the ears track balance; and sensors in internal organs indicate one’s emotional state. To voluntarily restrict one channel of information is foolish for a racer; to allow information to flow unfettered is divine.

  Seeing Denny’s hands shake was as upsetting for me as it was for him. After Eve’s death, he glanced at his hands often, held them before his eyes as if they weren’t really his hands at all, held them up and watched them shake. He tried to do it so no one would see. “Nerves,” he would say to me whenever he caught me watching his manual examination. “Stress.” And then he would tuck them into his pants pockets and keep them there, out of sight.

  When Mike and Tony brought me home later that night, Denny was waiting on the dark porch with his hands in his pockets.

  “Not only do I not want to talk about it,” he said to them, “Mark told me not to. So.”

  They stood on the walk, looking up at him.

  “Can we come in?” Mike asked.

  “No,” Denny replied, and then, aware of his abruptness, attempted to explain. “I don’t feel like company right now.”

  They stared at him for a moment.

  “You don’t have to talk about what’s going on,” Mike said. “But it’s good to talk. You can’t keep everything inside. It’s not healthy.”

  “You’re probably right,” Denny said. “But it’s not how I operate. I just need to…assimilate…what’s going on, and then I’ll be able to talk. But not now.”

  Neither Mike nor Tony moved. It was like they were deciding if they would respect Denny’s request to be left alone, or if they would storm past him into the house and keep him company by force. They looked at each other, and I could smell their anxiety; I wished that Denny would understand the depth of their concern for him.

  “You’ll be all right?” Mike asked. “We don’t have to worry about the gas oven being left on and you lighting a cigarette or something?”

  “It’s electric,” Denny said. “And I don’t smoke.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Tony said to Mike.

  “You want us to keep Enzo or anything?” Mike asked.

  “No.”

  “Bring you some groceries?”

  Denny shook his head.

  “He’ll be all right,” Tony said again, and tugged at Mike’s arm.

  “My phone’s always on,” Mike said. “Twenty-four-hour crisis hotline. Need to talk, need anything, call me.”

  They retreated down the walk.

  “We fed Enzo!” Mike called from the alley.

  They left, and Denny and I went inside. He to
ok his hands from his pockets and held them up to look at them shaking.

  “Rapists don’t get custody of their little girls,” he said. “See how that works?”

  I followed him into the kitchen, for a moment concerned that he had lied to Mike and Tony and that perhaps we did have a gas oven after all. But he didn’t go to the oven, he went to the cupboard and took out a glass. Then he reached into where he kept the liquor and took out a bottle. He poured a drink.

  It was absurd. Depressed, stressed, hands shaking, and now he was going to get himself drunk? I couldn’t stand for it. I barked sharply at him.

  He looked down at me, drink in hand, and I up at him. If I’d had hands, I would have opened one of them and slapped him with it.

  “What’s the matter, Enzo, too much of a cliché for you?”

  I barked again. Too much of a pathetic cliché for me.

  “Don’t judge me,” he said. “That’s not your job. Your job is to support me, not judge me.”

  He drank the drink and then glared at me, and I did judge him. He was acting just as they wanted him to act. They were rattling him, and he was about to quit and then it would be over and I’d have to spend the rest of my life with a drunkard who had nothing to do but stare lifelessly out from his dead eyes at pictures flashing by on the TV screen. This wasn’t my Denny. This was a pathetic character from a hackneyed television drama. And I didn’t like him at all.

  I left the room thinking I would go to bed, but I didn’t want to sleep in the same room as this Denny impostor. This Denny facsimile. I went into Zoë’s bedroom, curled up on the floor next to her bed, and tried to sleep. Zoë was the only one I had left.

  Later—though I don’t know how much—he stood in the doorway.

  “The first time I took you for a drive in my car when you were a puppy, you puked all over the seat,” he said to me. “But I didn’t give up on you.”

  I lifted my head from the ground, not understanding his point.

  “I put the booze away,” he said. “I’m better than that.”

  He turned and walked away. I heard him shuffle around in the living room and then turn on the TV.