Rawlings stomped toward me with a broad grin sharp enough to hack bark off a tree. He stopped halfway between the crowded bar and a neighboring table, his cowboy boots clattered as he performed a five-second jig of greeting, then he froze, slapped his hands together, and began the world’s loudest one-man game of patty-cake. Once sure of the room’s attention, he doffed his enormous cowboy hat and dropped it on the much smaller head of a woman, who—in an attempt to ignore people she obviously preferred not to see at the vaunted Soho House—had foolishly turned her back on a man toward whom one should never turn one’s back. She spun to face him, then, upon seeing the theatrically angry cowboy face he reserved for the weak-minded, she recoiled as if a snake might bolt out of his mouth if she dared speak without permission. He retrieved his hat, curtsied, then strutted toward me and offered his hand.
If he only knew how much respect I had for him. If he only knew how closely I paid attention. If he only knew the terrible guilt I felt lying to him. He saved me in 2003, fought me in 2004, fell behind me in 2005, yet I would always place him on a pedestal. He and I were trapped, two men with no one else to fight. There was no one else. Dennis Collins was his The Weis—men with a surfeit of skill, yet nothing to prove.
I stood up and reached out to shake his hand, but his arm suddenly darted forward and with a loud slap his palm fell beside my (luckily) empty plate.
“Howdja like that??!?!?” He nodded toward where he’d just placed a large skull-and-crossboned Gasmonkey Garage sticker on the Soho House’s white plastic retro-mod table.
“Nice, Richard. Let me guess. Not removable.”
“Not unless your buddies here’ve got a blowtorch! I want you to meet my new copilot!” A bushy-blond-haired, short, generously gold-necklaced, nose-, ear-, and pinkie-ringed, and very white Texan dressed like circa-1992 Axl Rose stepped forward holding up his driver’s license. “Meet Michael Jackson! It’s true! That’s his name!” Rawlings howled as he and Jackson dropped into seats across from mine, “Now ain’t that somethin’?”
“Where’re the Collins brothers?”
“Riiiiiiiggght here!” Dennis called out from across the lounge, his brother Michael—perhaps the best rally navigator alive other than myself—in tow. “Nice to see ya!”
The quartet, now lined up in one row, began slapping their hands on the table, first in a flurry of overlapping stickers, then in impromptu drumming that would have cost me my membership had yet another long-lost voice not pierced the din.
“I have never” said Frankl, his reedy tone reserved only for the most contemptible, “seen a larger assortment of criminals, charlatans, and sycophants, not one of whom is qualified to drive. I didn’t see your strollers parked downstairs. Are you actually here for the Bullrun? I didn’t know the Soho House offered toilet-training classes!”
“Goddammit!” said Rawlings. “Alex, can we get the check?! This is the kinda place that charges just for sitting right?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m seating him on the far end, where every girl’s spoken for. It’ll drive him nuts. He likes you, by the way…okay, I’m lying. He respects you.”
“Whatever, man, gotta say it sure is a shame you’re not doing Bullrun this time. New York to L.A. should be real scenic!”
I shrugged. “Politics, money, car trouble…it’s a long list. Besides, six days cross-country? C’mon. No rally should do New York–L.A. It’s an insult to our Cannonball forefathers!”
“What about that 32:07 movie? Is it ever coming out?”
“Soon…very soon. A year, maybe. You know these low-budget indie movies. How about this idea? I’ll bet you one dollar I can beat you from New York to Miami.”
Dennis burst out laughing. Rawlings backhanded him in the stomach.
“How about this one, Mr. Polizei? Me and Dennis…29:15.”
“What?” I said, then they, too, froze, the three of us rapidly exchanging glances, the crowd around us dissolving into hazy shapes buzzing against a wall before a broken reel projector. I paused for several epochal seconds before saying, “Twenty-nine fifteen?”
“Yup,” said Collins, “29:15.”
“Twenty-nine fifteen what?”
“Cross-country!” said Rawlings.
“You know it!” Dennis giggled and raised his glass.
“Told you I could do it, Alex.”
“But what did he say next?”
“Just kidding!”
“Alex,” said Cory, seated at her desk 3,000 miles away, “are you in the Soho House bathroom right now?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t wait to tell you.”
“Just keep your voice down in case one of them walks in, just in case it’s true. Did he really say ‘just kidding’?”
“Yeah, but it could’ve meant anything.”
“Alex, maybe he just wanted to intimidate you, or they don’t want you to know they went…for the same reasons we don’t. Or maybe he still wants to, and is trying to bait you into telling him what he needs to know, so he can try.”
“I think…I think we ignore them and—”
“Stay on plan. Now go back there and act normal.”
I smiled through the rest of dinner, then wished Rawlings, Jackson, the Collinses, and Frankl the best of luck on a safe Bullrun. They headed across the street to the Gansevoort Hotel for Bullrun’s official prestart party. I went home and began building a new driveplan from scratch.
Driveplan .5C (Merciless Assault Reprisal-79).
Seventy-nine days; 1,890 hours. It might not be enough time. Unless I had help. Even if I had help.
But once again the Patron Saint of Nonviolent and Unprofitable Crimes shone his disco ball upon me, because he called me back within 10 minutes.
CHAPTER 33
The Driver
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2006
HOLLAND TUNNEL WESTBOUND
NEW JERSEY SPEED-TRAP MAPPING
VERIFICATION DRIVE NO.5
2141 HOURS (EST)
27 DAYS, 23 HOURS, 55 MINUTES TO DEPARTURE
“I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” said twenty-one-year-old engineering student Jean-Francis (aka J.F.) Musial, who in the three months since I’d NDA’d him had proven himself a better friend than people I’d known as long as he’d been alive. A Gumball fan who’d taken my picture at the New York Auto Show in 2005, J.F. had subsequently offered to update the Gumball144.com blog during Gumball 2006, but I quickly recognized how much more he had to offer. I taught him everything I knew about Gumball, 3446, and the Oklahoma incident, and he took over nearly half the necessary research for the upcoming October 7 run, dissected and corrected the old driveplans, and became an indispensable weapon in our impending and final assault.
We were now on our fifth New York–to–Pennsylvania border recon and ambush-point verification drive, a leg for which J.F. had mapped out every potential speed trap, which I had then programmed into the Garmins—now numbering four, each with its own dedicated roof-mounted antennas—precisely as instructed. If I had a J.F. in every state, 29 hours might be possible.
He would drive his black Polizei ECM–modified Audi A4—the first of three UnderkoverPolizeiRekonVideoKinoEskort chase cars for the run—out of the CCC 15 minutes ahead of us, cameraman beside him, and send back data on traffic and police locations until we caught up and passed. He would then log all communications, track our progress on the master map, send us real-time NOAA weather and traffic reports, coordinate with PolizeiAir, and inform all parents, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and next of kin of our status.
“With the time you’ve put in,” I said from the M5’s passenger seat, “you deserve a say. Cory and I respect your opinion.”
“But…I’m just a fan who’s helping out, I can’t help you pick a copilot.”
“Don’t underestimate what you’ve learned. Before my father died, I asked him how I was going to go on. He said someday I’d wake up and wouldn’t be able to remember what life was like when he was alive.”
&nb
sp; “But you remember him, right? You always talk about him.”
“I remember everything that happened before, and everything about him, but I can’t remember…what it felt like to know I could call him. Now all I know is that I can’t. It’s the same with what I’m doing now. I can’t remember who I was before this started. Before Gumball 2003. Before Rome. Before Rawlings made me the bet, then after Oklahoma. Someday you’ll wake up and nothing will be the same. I think everyone feels it, but not everybody follows it to the end. I used to be the laziest person in the world. My dad even told me. Look at me now.”
We drove in silence for the next few minutes.
“J.F., you know I’d take you…if I could.”
“Me? Are you insane? I don’t have enough experience.”
“Not yet. But you have enough to drive the first chase car out of New York. I guarantee you half of The Drivers from Gumball would say no if I asked, which I can’t. No one knows anyone until they’ve seen what they do against the Wall.”
J.F. was silent.
“So, let’s go down the list of potentials. Start obvious, then go crazy.”
“Jon Goodrich.”
“No. Worried charges will screw his business. He travels a lot. The good news is he’s flying in the spotter plane.”
“All right…what about Michael Ross?”
“Amazing guy, my number one pick, but he’s concerned over work/travel issues if we’re caught. Homeland Security watch list. Also, he was arrested in California on the ’03 Gumball. Red flag if we’re caught on the last leg. If we go down because of it, he’ll never forgive himself. Can’t say how well he’ll spot American undercovers. On the flip side, he loves adventure. If I ask, he’ll go.”
“Remy? Or Kalbas?”
“J.F., those guys are so good and so cool, they’d either laugh at the suggestion, or they’ve already done it and didn’t feel the need to tell anyone.”
“Nicholas Frankl?”
“One of the best. Perfect, and he’s hilarious. But very close with a lot of people I don’t want finding out. We may have to keep it secret for months, maybe years. Next.”
“Jodie Kidd? She drives for the Maserati factory team.”
“I like her, but I don’t think she’ll spend 30 hours in a car with a guy like me.”
“Dennis Collins?”
“In my top three, but too close to Rawlings.”
“Rawlings?” J.F. chuckled.
“Don’t laugh. I actually thought about asking him.”
“Alex, man, you two together…the earth would explode, you’d break 29 hours, man…it’d be—”
“Nuts, but there’s no way we could keep a Roy/Rawlings team-up quiet. And if we’re caught or something bad happens, we’ll blame each other until we’re dead. They’d have to put us in separate cells.”
“Joe Macari?”
“Respect him, but don’t know him well enough.”
“Alison Cornea?”
“Same.”
“Peter Malmstrom.”
“Love that guy, but he doesn’t know the undercover cars.”
“Spencer?”
“Don’t know him that well, and he’s English. Heard he was a good guy.”
“Ant or Pete?”
“Huge respect for those guys, but we’re not close, and they’re English.”
“Charles Morgan?”
“It would make history, but he has kids, and the same issues as other foreigners.”
“Oliver Morley?”
“We’d shatter it, but he’d smack my face the first time I said ‘ramp check.’”
“The Dust to Glory Baja 1000 winner?”
“Kevin Ward. We’d also shatter it, but no way to bring him and keep it quiet. Married with kids, and he and Bret Haller are organizing the Unlimited Class for the Carrera Panamericana.”
“You doing that one?”
“Fight battles you can win, tough guy. People get killed on that. I’m not ready.”
“We’re running out of people.”
“We already did. No one thinks it can be broken except Rawlings and Collins, and they don’t know what we know.”
“Alex, man, are you sure it can be?”
“If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t go. All that matters is that we try.”
“You really won’t try again if you don’t make it?”
“After Oklahoma I said I’d go as many times as it took, but that’s not very realistic. Look at what it took to do that one, and I still blew it.”
“I know, man, this is like a full military operation. It really is crazy.”
“Like going to Mars, only privately funded. It’ll be nearly impossible to set this up, this way…the plane, the people…ever again. At least for me.”
“But don’t you want to break it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s the journey. Maybe that’s the lesson in all this.”
“C’mon, how will you live with yourself if you give up?”
“J.F., I lied to you. Of course I want to break it, but I have to prepare myself for failure, or I’ll literally lose it if we get a flat. The journey excuse is the only way. It’s the mature way. Now you know why the copilot choice is so important. It’s the biggest unknown in the largest gamble I’ll ever take. It’ll determine whether I live with regret for the rest my life.”
“Did you ever consider Cory?”
“Ahhhh, well…if balls were skill, she could drive the whole thing alone. But she needs more high-speed training, and she wants to shoot a movie more than she wants to drive—that is, until the movie’s done. She’ll do her own run one of these days. It’s inevitable.”
“Torquenstein?”
“Technically he’s as good as us, but I don’t know him well enough…hang on, the CoPilot Garmin Primary says…approaching first speed trap…Ambush Waypoint, two miles, log says three potentials. Exit-ramp median right, right shoulder on overpass, left shoulder negative.”
“Alex, I’m telling you from experience, tag this one yellow. I live around here.”
“Only forty or fifty more to go. If the Jersey yellow count ends up forty and red is only ten, we’ll cross the whole state in—”
“Under an hour, in traffic, on a Saturday night. That’ll be something to see.”
“Which you will, if you can keep that Audi A4 moving without hitting us. Next Ambush Waypoint in four miles…Exit 33, three potentials, first is center median, no barrier, before overpass, second is center median, after overpass, behind support pillar, third is right merge after overpass, behind trees.”
“Correct…but, Alex, there is one person you never talk about.”
“Don’t say it. I’ve been thinking about him the whole time, but it’s complicated.”
“Sorry. I’ll drop it.”
“Let’s have some fun, college boy. Instead of reading these off the Garmin, how about I test your memory for the next few miles?”
It was a shame he wasn’t coming, because he remembered every single one.
Ross had been right.
I needed to. Everyone else merely wanted to.
Except one.
We hadn’t exchanged more than a few words in three years. We were very different people, in different circles, but if my perception of him was correct, he’d commit without hesitation. He was the perfect choice in every way but one—he wouldn’t follow orders if he thought he knew better. I was the same way.
He was a better driver. I was better at everything else.
For six years I’d put down my cards one by one, my bets and wins ever-increasing, but now total commitment was required. If I won, what I considered his weakness might become a strength that—interlocked with mine—drove us to the summit.
I would entrust him with far more than my life—if he could answer the most difficult question in the world.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2006
POLIZEI 3207 (MERCILESS ASSAULT REPRISAL) HQ
26 DAYS, 7 HOURS, 14 MINUTES TO
DEPARTURE
I finished watching the raw 3446 footage. In real time. Again.
I had to accept who I was. I was a full-time Endurance-Rally Driver—one of the best in a small, peculiar, somewhat invisible subset of motor sport—but that didn’t make me a world-class race-car driver. In my sphere, I could beat better drivers through discipline, minor art, and heavy science. In theirs I ranked dead center.
But mine was an Outside Context Mission, straddling both worlds.
My heart pled to have Nine beside me, but now I needed him in the plane.
“Alex Roy,” he said with faux nonchalance, “calling me at work, after all these years. Must be important.”
“Don’t take it personally. This is the call you want. We need to talk. What are you doing the next five weekends?”
“Wrong time of year for Gumball. La Carrera?”
“No.”
“What should I pack?”
“Nothing. No room.”
“Why five?”
“Rain dates.”
He didn’t answer. He’d seen the 32:07 trailer. He knew me.
“I have one question,” I said, having been through this with him once before, “but I need the answer in person.”
“What’s the question?”
“Why?”
“Okay, Alex…but you go first this time.”
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2006
CLASSIC CAR CLUB—NEW YORK
2124 HOURS (EST)
My phone vibrated. “Message from The Weis,” I said, “on behalf of the Captain, Nine and Robin.”
Ur going to smash it we love aliray.
I held the screen up for him to see, and in his eyes caught my first-ever glimpse of youth—possibly even fear—then it was gone, and the fearsome driver in which all had so much faith squinted and said, “Let’s do this.”
The Driver Page 31
