“Hope this isn’t another Team Polizei long cut. Schtaven reports…icons moving apart, equidistant from finish line. Do your thing, Aliray, and we can win this.”
“I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve never been called dumb. There’s gonna be cops all over, so only hit the lights and sirens when I tell you!”
Two miles. Twenty blocks. Roman jaywalkers, twice as ambitious as New York’s, were half as hard to spot at 60. Our inter-waypoint average, 135 20 minutes earlier, fell to 97, then 81, then 24. One mile. Roman red lights, half as well hooded from the sun as New York’s, were twice as easy to run without guilt—especially when following similarly minded taxis.
TURN RIGHT.
“Via Giovanni Giolitti!” Nine yelled. “North, yes! Turn here! Half a mile from the finish!” I quarter-turned, spotted three police cars one block north, then continued west on Via Alfredo Cappellini. “Make your next right! Spencer’s…our icons are too close to tell! Next right!”
“Okay, Magellan!” The next perpendicular street, Via Filippo Turati, went one way. South. One block west on Capellini would deliver us to Via Principe Amedeo, which ran north to the finish line, but at the intersection at which we were now stopped, a bright red-and-white sign indicated Capellini’s directional reversal.
“Nine, we could run straight down this one block with the lights and sirens.”
“It’s illegal.”
“So?” We and Rome survived, we turned right onto Amadeo, northbound, then—
“Nine! Is every one-way street in Rome only two blocks long??!?!”
“We’re still a half mile away…Spencer’s approaching the finish!”
“Wait! Look! Is this…a hospital zone? Yesss!!! Air horn! I gotta have more air horn!” I turned right, right, left, and nearly ran into a small white van blocking Via Enrico Cialdini’s single lane. Nine gave them a blast of air horn. “Nine! Stop…is that…is that an ambulance?”
“Aliray, no country uses trucks that shitty.” The first of three frail old women stumbled out its side door, a paramedic emerging from the building to hand them walkers. “Oh no, oh man—”
“A wheelchair van.” I sighed. “A wheelchair van. I can’t believe you air-horned a wheelchair van.”
“Er…maybe we should back up?”
“Nine, this is a one-way street.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“What if another wheelchair van comes up behind us?”
“Grazie!” Nine called out, and waved at them as the van pulled away. “Molto grazie! Molto grazie! Termini Train Station ahead! Turn left! Eight blocks to finish line!”
“Cops on the right! Where’s Spencer? Should I make a run for it?”
ONE QUARTER MILE BEAR LEFT AT ROUNDABOUT.
“Alex…he’s five blocks from the finish! Rome cops don’t care—” Our tires chirped before he could finish, the cop at the Alfa’s wheel waving us on and yelling “Pronto! Pronto!” as we slipped through yet another crowd of jaywalkers.
FIVE HUNDRED FEET BEAR LEFT AT ROUNDABOUT.
“He’s one block away!” Nine called out. I barreled into the Piazza Della Republica traffic circle, bore left—against counterclockwise traffic—to pass a bus, and spotted the Hotel Boscolo finish line 150 feet beyond the cars approaching us head-on four abreast. Nine ignored the phone ringing with what could only be bad news. I turned 160 degrees right, into the legal traffic flow, and grabbed the PA microphone to unleash what little Italian I’d studied for just such an occasion. “PRONTO! PRONTO! ATTENZIONE! AVANZA! AVANZA!”
I sped to the outside lane, cut left perpendicular to another bus that would have killed us both had it screeched to a halt 12 inches farther, accelerated between two cars merging from the right, then turned right into the finish line parking lot, nearly killing a gorgeous miniskirted tourist who, in the belief we actually were the Barcelona Guardia Civil, ran in front of our car yelling “Guardia Civil?”
“I think we’re second,” said Nine, looking around for the blue Porsche. I spotted Ross and Emma waving from the deck of the café overlooking the finish line, but I couldn’t make out their expressions. A Gumball staffer ran up to Nine’s window, and in breathless unison we asked the dreaded question.
“What number are we?”
He looked curious as to why we were asking. “You’re…number one.”
We cheered and hugged, nearly tearing our seats off their rails. I was glad Spencer didn’t see us, for when he arrived I owed him humble thanks. Without him I’d never have seen. I’d never have known. After I wiped my head with a towel brought by one of the hotel staffers watching in amusement, I requested two bottles of champagne and parked at the end of the hotel driveway, perfectly positioned to leave first the next morning. We joined Ross and Emma on the deck. Nine and I each drank three large bottles of water, then, at 3:45 P.M., with no blue Porsche in sight precisely 15 minutes after our arrival, our reeking clothes forced us to request the bill.
“Per favore,” I asked the concierge on the way upstairs, “please ask the valet to leave space next to the Guardia Civil BMW for a blue Porsche. He’s a legend, and this bottle is for him.”
“Who shall I say it is from?”
“He’ll know.”
HOTEL BOSCOLO—TAZIO BRASSERIE DECK
OVERLOOKING GUMBALL FINISH LINE
1630 HOURS (APPROX)
“Vous êtes fous!” said our new and unexpectedly welcoming friend Greg Tunon, who switched to English upon seeing Nine’s confusion. “Jon! How you and Alex Roy drive today is crazy. I know about this, I know about crazy.”
The down-to-earth, forty-going-on-fifteen Monegasque entrepreneur with messy graying hair and a furtive grin—one-half of the black Mercedes CLK team Ross warned of—had invited us to his table to watch the cars arrive. Based on the beehives I’d kicked up along the A1 and A24, we prepared for a lengthy predinner dinner.
Little did we know the honor we were being paid, greater even than Ross’s convoy invitation. Greg and his tall, goateed co-driver, Remy “Kalbas” Gelas, were the most secretive of Gumball legends, having achieved the highest-ever recorded speed by a team not arrested for the feat (224 mph), in Morocco, in Greg’s $1 million yellow Ferrari Enzo, subsequently disabled by a defective brake caliper that exploded through the top of the front fender. Greg, well known among manufacturers of such cars, had the car recovered by plane at Ferrari’s expense, after which the brake system was redesigned, as per his suggestions, in the world’s most expensive vehicular recall. Allegedly. Kalbas was Greg’s Nine, and they were accompanied by a Peugeot support van driven by Anna, Greg’s olive-skinned, sky-blue-eyed Russian girlfriend of such beauty she resembled Kira Morgan seen through a prism, and Chris, his “sister” of equivalent beauty yet diametrically opposed Nordic appearance.
Greg stretched his arm around Anna’s long neck and raised his glass. “We drink to the crazy Polizei. Amazing what you did today, Alex. Kalbas also like the big pass you make in Bosnia, very aggressive. We watch all your moves since London, last year also. Tomorrow we make the big push to Monaco, because the Gumball is finished next to my house. Maybe you drive with us, but I do not think the M5 is fast enough.”
“Come, Alex,” said Kalbas, “I show you what we bring inside the car.” Greg’s Mercedes was not the $70,000, special-order, 362-horsepower CLK55 AMG I’d suspected, but a CLK-DTM—one of one hundred ever made, a $300,000, 582-horsepower, street-legal race car—the interior fitted with several items even I didn’t recognize. “Alex, look how nice, these gyrostabilizer binoculars. They attach to the windshield like so, then I spot police at several kilometers. We are going 260 kilometers per hour, and I can see police, cool, we pass at 90! For next time we consider putting night vision also…”
The DTM was parked in third position, beside Spencer’s Porsche. Kalbas saw my eyes dart inside the 911’s interior and scan its bare dash. “Spencer”—he nodded—“he is good, no? Yesterday he race us very hard from Bari to Taormina, almost 500
kilometers! We come in first, but we beat him by five minutes only. Amazing how you beat him, really, Alex Roy, in this BMW. Greg and I could not believe it.”
“It was very close.”
“Ten or 15 minutes, still! You push your car to the limit, no?”
“The M5 definitely had more,” said Nine.
“Maybe a little,” I said.
“Aliray, don’t get me wrong, you were incredible, but I think you coulda gotten five percent more out of the old girl.”
“Even so,” said Kalbas, “Spencer did not look so happy when he arrived.”
“Do you know him?”
“This Spencer? Not so much, only the face, but he is a good driver. We respect him, he respects us. We don’t need to know more, yes? Now we know you and Jon, you are okay with us. When we get to Monaco, Greg and I take you out with the girls. You will enjoy this time.”
Nine elbowed me on the way back to the table, giving me a sly smile as we sat down—the smile of we’ve made it. Ant and Pete arrived soon thereafter, then Grimaldi and Hagen, Muss and Seamus, and a gray Aston lent—by the factory, allegedly—to The Drivers of the burgundy DB9 I’d predicted wouldn’t make it to Prague. While my back was turned, the black SLR—the third and final car Ross had warned of—parked directly in front of the M5. A Mercedes mechanic knelt beside the $500,000-plus car, cables dangling from the dashboard to a laptop propped against his knee. The owner, a tall, redheaded Englishman, stood beside the open engine bay yelling into his phone.
“Guess I owe you Taco Bell,” said Nine. “Who’s the SLR guy?”
“He’s the prick who got us all kicked off the Paul Ricard track last year…the last checkpoint before Cannes. We’re all doing laps, he shows up in his Bentley, breaks the rule about not passing the pace car, and security-boots everyone.”
“Mais oui,” said Kalbas, “this is Oliver Morley. Someone say he races in the Ferrari Challenge Series, and is quite good.” Kalbas shook his fist. “He drives hard, he is a professional.”
“Not that day,” I said. “He pissed off a lot of people.” I waited until Morley finished his call, then walked over and introduced myself with a forced smile. He looked me up and down with contempt before turning back to his car. I hesitated, shocked at this unexpectedly vicious welcome. “Hey, Oliver…I’d really like to go refuel. I don’t suppose you might consider…moving your car when you’re done? With your repairs?”
“Riiiiight”—he snickered over his shoulder—“so you can leave early again?”
Up until that moment I’d only ever had opponents. The instant Rawlings dismounted his Avalanche, we were friends. Kenworthy and I had laughed over beers. Torquenstein and I had shaken hands. Ant and Pete, my technical peers, had always been gentlemen, as had other veterans. Even Spencer and his codriver had waved. Oliver Morley was no mere opponent. Morley, whose experience was of an order of magnitude greater than mine, his SLR 20 percent faster and ten times costlier than my M5, had just uttered the single most offensive accusation possible between veterans. He could easily have verified I hadn’t left early. He knew he could probably beat me in a head-to-head duel, and yet he was denying me the checkpoint refuel I might desperately need to keep up, if not win. Team Polizei, the longtime underdog, had acquired a fearsome new enemy at precisely the wrong time.
I returned to the table to discuss stage rankings with Nine. Two checkpoints remained for the final day. Gumball driver psychology guaranteed that whoever took Florence would immediately leave for the Monaco finish. We had taken Vienna and Rome. Greg and Kalbas had taken Taormina. Rumors suggested Spencer had taken Prague. Michele and Ivan had taken KRKA Park in Croatia. Muss and Seamus had taken the Hungaroring and Budapest. To win, we needed to take one or both final checkpoints, or pray none of those in contention took either. Nine looked at my notes and shook his head.
“Nine, bad news first.”
“Well, the good news is, if it rains, the SLR is screwed—”
“If it makes it out of Rome.”
“Let’s hope it does, Aliray, otherwise we’re screwed tomorrow morning.”
“On the flip side, that CLK-DTM’s a death trap if it’s wet out.”
“While you were pissing off Oliver, Kalbas was telling me”—Nine’s eyes widened in admiration—“about he and Greg doing Paris-Dakar a coupla times, and the Baja 1000, and about a hundred other races.”
Dakar. Baja. These made Gumball look like go-karts at the amusement park.
“Aliray, rain may slow them down, but it won’t stop them, and it won’t stop Spencer.”
“All right”—I paused—“but it will slow down the GT3000 guys, their GT2’s rear-wheel drive just like Kenworthy’s. Spencer can’t improve his navigation overnight, and I know the south of France better than anyone except Greg. He and Kalbas probably know every cop from Ventimiglia to Monaco, so our only hope’s that Morley doesn’t get in the way of our taking Florence.”
Greg and Kalbas would take Monaco. It was inevitable, and they deserved it, just as Muss had deserved Budapest. We’d earned second no matter how we placed that day. We might even have earned first overall, but more importantly, we’d gained the trust and respect of the legends who wanted nothing but an exchange of phone numbers and a spare seat if they broke down. Ross had already suggested we team up if Nine didn’t return in 2006. Grimaldi invited me to Miami, Muss and Seamus demanded I see the real Budapest, and Schtaven, Frankl, and The Weis called upon our arrival in Monaco, their inability to congratulate me without a prerehearsed, counterbalancing insult almost as predictable as our having spotted Morley on the Autostrada shoulder several hours earlier, yelling into his phone, standing beside his black Mercedes-MacLaren SLR with its orange-striped hood open, its black paint gleaming in the sun somewhere between Florence and Monaco. There was no way to be sure exactly where, because although I took it easy on the final 250 miles, we were going too fast to stop, and as Nine pointed out, his phone did seem to be working. Besides, Nine and I had after-party plans with Greg and Kalbas, and it was rude to be late.
It was the Golden Age.
Little did we know it was the tail end.
Part V The Driver
CHAPTER 25
The Sherpa from Dallas
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2005
NEW YORK CITY
I was lost. The call I’d awaited after Gumball never came, and the victory I so craved—Rawlings’s defeat on that summer’s Bullrun—had proven Pyrrhic. He broke down and fell behind, I grew complacent, and meticulous newcomer Marek Harrison slipped past me to take first place. And everyone at the finish party knew it.
There was nothing to do but wait. If Cory didn’t have the answers, there probably was no Driver, and never had been.
“Don’t get all shy on me!” he said in his signature Southern cackle. “I know where y’all live, so get your ass ready! I’ll be there in fifteen!” He was never late.
“Aw yeaaaahhhhh!” Rawlings hollered before I fully opened the door. “Alex Roy! Mr. Polizei himself! Wassup!!??”
“Wow…I…what a surprise!” We both grinned, he at my most un-Polizei sweatpants and T-shirt, I at how—if I hadn’t known better—the man before me appeared on his way to a country-western S&M party in the West Village. Frenemies far from past fields of battle, we hugged in the foyer.
“Aw”—he turned to someone just out of sight in the hall—“isn’t Alex just a sweetheart when he ain’t Mr. Polizei?” The man stepped forward and offered his hand. I recalled meeting him briefly at the Bullrun Lingerie Party in Vegas.
“Rory,” he said, introducing himself, “how you doing?”
“Damn!” Rawlings said as he surveyed my Japanese-style loft’s living room, “I sure hope you got some cold beers somewhere in this place!”
“Saving them up just for you.”
“Nice sword collection!” He placed a hand on my chrome-plated antique .30-caliber machine gun. “But this! You’re an interesting guy, Alex. You might need to bring this along next
time, if you wanna stop me from kicking your ass after what happened this year!”
“I don’t think I’ll need it…you know I play fair.”
He turned to me and raised his bottle. “Cheers to that, Roy, but you will need it when you see what I got planned for ya!”
“So,” I said, “what’s the special occasion?”
“Weeeelllll,” said Rawlings, “Rory here’s with Spike TV, and they’ve been talking with Andy and Dave about doin’ something with Bullrun for ’06, then we all got talkin’ about me doin’ my own show, then I started thinkin’ about this 32:07 movie you’re doin’ with Cory.”
“How’s that going?” Rory asked, then took a conspicuously long swig of his beer.
“It’s going, but Cory’s in charge, I’m just an investor.”
“C’mon,” said Rawlings, “is it true? Somebody did New York to L.A. in 32:07?”
“Sure is,” I said. Rory shook his head in disbelief.
“And”—Rawlings thrust his bottle toward me—“you’ve got proof?”
“Hells, yeah.”
“And you’ve seen it with your own eyes?! Pictures? Video?”
“Not the finished movie, but a lot of footage, and The Driver interviews.”
“Riiiiiiiiight.” He and Rory glanced at each other.
“So what’s up, guys?”
“Here’s the deal, Mr. Pol-eez-eye…I’ll bet you twenty-five grand I can beat you cross-country, mano a mano. Straight up, no bullshit. Just you and me.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Tell you what. I’ll betcha fifty grand I’ll beat you and do it in 25 hours.”
“Richard,” I said for the first time, “you can’t be serious.”
“Fuck yeah, I’m serious.”
“I’ll ignore the fifty grand, since 25 hours is totally impossible—”
“If you know I can’t do it, then take the bet! You scared, Mr. Police-man?”
“It’s not you I’m scared of. I might consider doing it, on one condition, because there’s only one way to get away with it.”
The Driver Page 23
