The track has golf carts, the teams have golf carts, the sponsors have golf carts, and the drivers have golf carts. Some times the golf carts are generic little white jobs and sometimes the golf carts are souped up and custom painted. Hooker’s golf cart matched his motor coach and traveled to each race with the coach. At the start of the season, when I was involved with Hooker, I had had the use of his golf cart. After the salesclerk incident, I didn’t feel comfortable using the cart and gave Hooker back his keys. Looking at it in retrospect, I probably should have kept the keys. Just because you’re no longer sleeping with a guy doesn’t mean you can’t use his golf cart, right?
We took the tunnel under the track and came out into the infield. The deep rumble of stock cars had been replaced with the wup wup wup of helicopters passing overhead, transporting people back to Miami. On race day, helicopters start arriving early in the morning, a new bird touching down every few minutes, dumping celebrities, captains of industry, NASCAR family members, and sometimes sponsors into the infield, repeating the drill throughout the day and reversing the operation late into the night.
“Where are you going now?” Gobbles asked me. “Are you going to Hooker’s hauler?”
“No. I want to watch the sixty-nine go through in spection.”
“You think there’s something fishy about the sixty-nine?”
“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I surely do,” Gobbles said. “And this isn’t the only race where I thought that. And now that I seen them two guys talkin’ to Ray Huevo, I’m getting real bad vibes. I can’t tell you more than that on account of like I said before, I’m in a tight spot. Problem is, they inspected that sixty-nine car before and never found anything.”
The drill was that Spanky would do a burnout for the fans and then drive the 69 into Victory Lane for pictures. When the photo op was over, NASCAR would commandeer the car for inspection and testing, along with the other top five cars and a couple more chosen at random. By the time the 69 got to the garage, NASCAR would already have rolled it through the scales and measured its height and weight. Once it was in the garage, fuel would be drawn, ignition boxes taken out and cut apart, the engine heads removed, gears checked, cylinders measured, and shocks examined.
When you watch a car get stripped down and tested, it’s hard to believe anyone would try to cheat. And even harder to believe they’d get away with it. And yet almost everyone tries at one time or another.
If you’ve got an experienced crew, the entire exercise takes about ninety minutes. The carcass of the car after it’s been picked clean is then loaded into the hauler, along with the backup car, and brought back to the shop in North Carolina where it’ll get rebuilt for another race.
Gobbles stayed glued to my side while I stood at a distance and watched the 69 get taken apart.
“I never watched this whole inspection thing,” Gobbles said. “The team’s always in a hurry to leave. I never got a chance to do this.”
I looked back at the line of haulers. The YumYum car hauler was ready to go, motor running. I didn’t see any of Gobbles’s team.
“You’re looking like a man without a country,” I said to him.
“Yeah, I should have met up with everybody at the van a while ago, but I got business to do. Not that I really want to do it. Anyways, I was hoping to take care of it here, only it don’t seem to be happening. I guess I need to take off.” Gobbles gave me a hug. “I appreciate your being a friend and all.”
“Be careful.”
“I’m trying,” Gobbles said, walking off toward media parking.
Fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious nothing illegal was going to turn up on the 69, I headed for the drivers’ lot.
I found Hooker’s motor coach, opened the door, and yelled to Hooker, “Are you decent?”
“Guess that’s a matter of opinion,” Hooker said.
Hooker was showered and dressed in jeans and a ratty T-shirt and was watching cartoons with Beans, his newly adopted Saint Bernard. Beans gave an excited woof when he saw me, launched himself off the couch, and caught me midchest with his two massive front paws. I went flat on my back with Beans on top, giving me lots of slurpy Saint Bernard kisses.
Hooker pulled Beans off and looked down at me. “Wish I’d had the guts to do that.”
“Don’t start. I’m not in a good mood.”
Hooker yanked me to my feet, I went straight to the refrigerator, and I got a Bud. I put it to my forehead and then I took a long pull. Every driver’s fridge is filled with Bud because first thing in the morning, the Bud beer fairy arrives and leaves a fresh delivery on the motor-coach doorstep. I stayed in an economy hotel six miles away with the rest of the crew and the Bud beer fairy didn’t go there.
“So,” Hooker said. “What’s up?”
“As far as I could see, they didn’t find anything illegal on the sixty-nine car.”
“And?”
“I don’t believe it. You can drive rings around Spanky, and you had a great car, and he got time on you in every corner.”
“Which would mean?”
“Traction control.”
In street cars, traction control is done by a computer that detects slip and then directs power to the appropriate wheel. In a race car, traction control really means speed control. A race-car driver learns to sense his wheels slipping and then gets off the gas to control engine power, which in turn slows the wheels and controls the slip. Computer-based electronic traction control duplicates this throttle management but much more efficiently and effectively. NASCAR thinks it takes some of the fun out of racing and has ruled it illegal. Still, if you want to take the risk, an average driver can pick up to a fifth of a second per lap using electronic traction control. And that could be enough to win a race.
Beans was sprawled in the middle of the floor, his head next to Hooker’s sneakered foot. Beans was white with a black face mask, floppy black ears, and a brown patch on his back that was shaped like a saddle. At 140 pounds, he sort of looked like a small hairy cow. He was a sweetie pie, but he wasn’t going to win any dog-show prizes. Maybe for drooling. He was a really good drooler. He opened a droopy Saint Bernard eye and gave me one of those looks, like what?
Hooker was giving me the exact same look. “Traction control is easy to spot,” he said. “You need a power source, wires, a switch.”
“I could put traction control on your car and no one would find it.”
Now I had Hooker’s attention. Hooker would use illegal technology on his car in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it. And the possibility of being able to efficiently power down to gain more control in a turn was driver mind candy.
“Then why don’t I have it on my car?” Hooker asked.
“For starters, I don’t like you enough to risk it.”
“Darlin’, that’s cold.”
“Plus, there are too many people around the cars when they’re being built. It’s the sort of thing that would need a closed shop. And a closed shop would attract attention. And then there’s the power source…”
Hooker raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve never actually put this on a car, but I think I could use a lithium watch battery as a power source and run the wires inside the frame. Maybe put the battery-powered computer chip in the roll bar. NASCAR wouldn’t tamper with the roll bar. Even better would be to use wireless technology and place the chip directly on the engine. It could be made to look like a flaw in the housing and would be so small it wouldn’t be noticed.”
“How small?”
“Smaller than a contact lens. And if this was the case, you wouldn’t need a closed shop. You’d just need a cooperative engine builder.”
“What about the off/on switch?”
“Pocket-size remote control that could be hidden in a fire suit.”
Hooker drained his beer can, crushed it, and pitched it into the sink. “Barney girl, you’re damn sneaky. I respect that in a mechanic.”
“Have you heard a
nything about Shrin?”
“Yeah, he’s okay. He got rattled around pretty good, and it knocked the wind out of him. I guess he was disoriented when they first got to him, but he’s back to his normal stupid self now.”
I could hear the car haulers rumbling out of the adjoining lot. They were loaded and on their way back to the garages in North Carolina. Forty-three haulers. Each hauler containing more than a million dollars’ worth of cars and equipment. Two race cars ride end to end in the top half of the hauler. The bottom half contains a lounge, a bathroom, a kitchenette of sorts, a small office area with a computer, closets for the crew’s uniforms, plus all the spare parts and tools needed to keep the cars racing. Large rolling toolboxes were secured in the aisle and filled most of the space from the rear door to the side door.
Only the hauler drivers rode in the haulers. Crew members and race-car drivers traveled in private planes. Stiller owned an Embraer that it used to fly team members. Hooker and Beans flew in Hooker’s Citation Excel. And I usually bummed a ride with Hooker. Most drivers were helicoptered from the track to the airport, but Beans didn’t like helicopters, so we were forced to drive. Fine by me. I didn’t like helicopters either.
We snapped a leash on Beans and took him out for a walk. Most of the motor coaches were still in place but were empty, abandoned by their owners. Tomorrow morning the motor-coach drivers would come onboard and maneuver the coaches out of the infield and onto the open road. Beans wandered out of the drivers’ lot and into the garage area. Only one hauler was still parked across from its garage. The 69. The hauler driver and a couple of guys from the 69 team were huddled around the cab.
“Got a problem?” Hooker asked.
“Fuel pump. We’re waiting on a part.”
We went back to the motor coach, made some sandwiches, and zapped on the television. No point sitting in traffic. In another half hour it would thin out, and we could pack off for the airport.
My phone rang, and I wasn’t surprised when I saw the readout. Gobbles. Probably missed the team plane and wanted a ride home.
“I need help,” Gobbles said.
He was whispering, and he was hard to hear, but the desperation in his voice was clear.
“Sure,” I said. “Do you need a ride?”
“No. And I can’t talk. I’m afraid someone will hear me. I’m trapped in the sixty-nine hauler. I crawled in here to hide, but now I’m sealed up and can’t get out. I can’t even get the floor hatch open. You have to help me.”
“You’re not serious.”
“You’re going to have to sneak me out somehow. You can’t let the drivers know I’m here. I’m already in enough trouble. And Ray Huevo is involved in this, so you have to be real careful.”
“Involved in what?”
“I can’t tell you, but it’s serious shit. Oh fuck! They’re pulling out. Sweet Jesus, I’m gonna die. I’m on the second deck with the cars, and the truck’s moving. You and Hooker are the only ones I can ask for help. I trust you. You have to get me out of here.”
“Okay, don’t panic. We’ll come up with something.”
I disconnected and looked over at Hooker.
“Gobbles is trapped on the second deck of the sixty-nine hauler and wants us to rescue him.”
“Darlin’, you’ve had too much beer.”
“I’m serious! He’s involved in something bad. It has to do with Ray Huevo and two guys who look like goons-in-suits. He said he crawled into the truck to hide and got locked in.”
“And he didn’t bang on the side of the truck and yell because…”
“He’s scared.”
We both turned at the sound of the hauler slowly rumbling down the road past the motor coach.
“We have to get him out,” I said to Hooker. “I don’t know what this is about, but he really sounded panicked. And he said something weird on the roof. He said Clay was intentionally run down.”
“Sounds to me like Gobbles has been watching too many Sopranos reruns.”
“I had the same thought, but it doesn’t matter because the problem at hand is that he’s trapped in Spanky’s hauler.”
“Never let it be said I walked away from a friend in need,” Hooker said. He shoved off the couch, crossed to the little built-in desk on the other side of the room, and took a gun out of the desk drawer.
“I’m a rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ Texan,” he said. “And I’m going to rescue my good buddy Gobbles.”
“Oh boy.”
“Not to worry. I know what I’m doing.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“If you’re referring to that incident with the condom, it wasn’t my fault. It was too small, and it was a slippery little devil. And anyway, it was defective. It had a big hole in it.”
“You did that with your thumb.”
Hooker grinned at me. “I was in a hurry.”
“I remember.”
“Anyway, I knew what I was doing most of the time.”
“I remember that, too. How are we going to manage this?”
“I guess the easiest way is to follow the truck and wait for the drivers to take a rest break. We only need five minutes to plug in the remote and open the back enough for Gobbles to get out.”
“It’s too bad we don’t have ski masks or something. Just in case.”
“I haven’t got any ski masks, but we can put my Calvin briefs over our heads and cut eyeholes in the ass.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll look forward to that.”
I changed into a T-shirt, we shut off the coach lights, loaded Beans into the back of Hooker’s rental SUV, and took off after the number 69 Lube-A-Lot car hauler.
TWO
Traffic wasn’t gridlock, but it wasn’t good either. The track glowed bright white behind us and in front of us was a line of red brake lights stretching clear to Miami. The hauler was out of sight, up the road, but it was in traffic, too. There were two drivers, and they’d most likely drive through the night. With any luck, they’d stop to eat and stretch their legs, and we could accomplish our rescue.
The traffic began to open up as cars peeled off onto side roads. Hard to tell exactly what was in front of us, but there appeared to be a couple trucks ahead, their roof running lights visible above the stream of SUVs and sedans.
An hour later, we’d made enough progress at working our way up to the trucks to see that one of them was the 69 hauler. We were a bunch of cars back, but we had it in sight.
I called Gobbles on his cell.
“We’re a couple cars behind you,” I told him. “We’re going to get you out when they stop to take a break. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m cramped, but I’m okay.”
I disconnected.
“Do you know the hauler driver?” I asked Hooker.
He shook his head. “Only superficially. The Huevo people keep to themselves. Not a real friendly group.”
We were about ten miles north of Miami when the hauler took an exit. My heart did a little tap dance in my chest, and I momentarily stopped breathing. The smart, sane part of my brain had been hoping I’d get a call from Gobbles saying he’d found an unlocked escape hatch in the roof, and he didn’t need our help. The stupid, crazy part of my brain was flirting with the fantasy that I was about to have a James Bond experience and perform a kick-ass rescue. And the chickenshit part of my brain was running down black roads of terror.
The truck stopped at the end of the off-ramp and turned left. A half mile down the road, it pulled into the lot for a large truck-stop-type diner and drove to the truck and bus parking at the rear. Three other haulers were already parked there. Hooker circled the lot and waited at idle toward the front. The two hauler drivers came from behind the building and went into the diner.
The back lot where the trucks were parked was lit by a single overhead halogen. The 69 hauler had running lights on and the engine at idle. Standard procedure. It was a natural assumption that no one would be insane enough to try to steal a
hauler. No point in shutting down the systems. Hooker cut his lights, eased up to the 69, and parked. All haulers have exterior cargo bays that are used for storing cartons of soda, automotive equipment, barbecue grills, and whatever else. The cargo bay closest to the left-rear door usually contains the remote used to operate the back-panel hydraulics. I ran to the hauler and attempted to open the rear-bay door. Locked. Hooker tried the bay on the other side. Also locked. We tried the side door. Locked.
“Find something to jimmie the bay door,” I told Hooker. “We’re going to have to break him out.”
Hooker searched the rental for a tire iron or screwdriver, and I searched the truck cab for a key. We both came up empty.
I glanced at my watch. We’d gone through fifteen minutes. “We can’t get the door open without the remote,” I said to Hooker. “And he’s going to be in there for a long time if we miss this opportunity. I’m at a loss. Do you have any ideas?”
Hooker sucked in some air and blew it out. “Yeah. We could steal the hauler.”
“Get serious.”
“I am serious. It’s all I can come up with. We drive the hauler down the road, park it behind a Wal-Mart or something, buy a can opener, get Gobbles out, and take off. Some of the trucks are equipped with a GPS tracker. If Huevo has a tracker on this hauler, they can find it immediately. If not, we can go to a pay phone and tell them where the hauler is located.”
“This hauler has a tracker. I saw the antenna when I was crawling around, looking for a way to break in. So we wouldn’t really be stealing. It would be more like borrowing.”
“Whatever.”
I gnawed on my lower lip. The very thought of “borrowing” the hauler gave me stomach cramps.
“We’re running out of time,” Hooker said. “What’s it going to be? Are we doing this?”
I punched Gobbles’s number into my cell. “Are you still okay?”
“It’s really stuffy in here. Are you going to get me out soon? I’m not feeling good.”
“We can’t get the door open. We’re going to drive you down the road and get some tools. Hang in there.”