Checkered Flag Cheater (14 page)

Harlan looked puzzled.

“Such as Late Models or sprint cars,” Laura said.

There was stunned silence in the trailer.

“Sprints?” Trace breathed. He got goose bumps on his forearms.

“Yes. I prefer them over Late Models, actually,” Laura said. “Sprint cars offer a fan base that has more money to spend—plus they have those pretty wings on top with all that advertising space.”

For once, Harlan and Jimmy were speechless.

“Unless you think you couldn't handle a sprint car,” Laura said to Team Blu.

“You just watch us!” Harlan said.

Trace glanced at Tasha, then looked up at Laura. “This is for sure?”

Laura shrugged. “Nothing in business is for sure, but it's highly likely. We have a winning team and a winning product. The nature of business is to keep expanding—to get to the top.”

“The top for me would be a Blu NASCAR ride,” Harlan said. He was joking, as always.

“If we keeping winning and growing, in a couple of years that's not impossible,” Laura said.

Jimmy rocked back in his chair as if hit by a Taser. His mouth hung open—and Harlan, too, was speechless.

Laura turned to Trace and smiled. “Any questions, Mr. Driver?”

Trace swallowed. “No. Not really. Just one for Tasha, but we can do that later.”

Tasha gave him a quizzical look.

“Must be about his homework,” Harlan said.

“You don't look all that happy,” Laura said, tilting her head to look at Trace.

Trace was silent.

“That's his normal look,” Harlan said. “Ice Man. That's what we should call him.”

“I guess if you're a driver, that's a good thing,” Laura said. She turned to the group. “We'll meet up later for dinner and celebrate this properly, all right?”

“Yahoo!” Jimmy crowed again.

After the meeting ended, Tasha hung around the trailer. Finally Harlan and Jimmy stepped outside.

“What?” Tasha asked. She kept her voice down.

Trace took a deep breath. “We're cheating,” he said.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Tasha asked.

“Our motor. Our team. We're winning because we're cheating.”

“How do you know this?” she whispered.

“I can't prove it, but I'm nearly a hundred percent sure we are.”

“How?” Tasha asked.

“It's a motor thing. It's complicated,” Trace said.

Tasha swore briefly. She looked around the trailer. “I always wondered why we hired those Southern boys. There were plenty of car builders in the Midwest.”

Trace was silent. Then he said, “So what do we do?”

Tasha gave him a long look. “Nothing right now.”

Harlan poked his head back into the trailer. “Driver needed. Your fans are here!”

Trace stepped outside to clapping. A group of people—including Trace's father and his girlfriend, Linda—had clustered by the door. His father had a scuffed red cheek, a black-crusty nostril, plus some drops of blood on his 18x T-shirt.

“What happened to you?” Trace asked.

“There were these idiots in front of us,” Linda said
quickly. She had high hair and a tight sweater. “They kept ragging on you and Team Blu. They were really drunk and—”

“And I asked them to lay off,” Don Bonham said. “I said, ‘Hey, that's my kid out there.' ”

“It sort of went downhill from there,” Linda said, and giggled.

“Don't tell me you got into a fight!” Trace said.

“Not really a fight fight,” Linda began, and leaned closer to Trace—she was unsteady on her feet—which was when Harlan stepped up.

“Thanks, honey, for sticking up for Team Blu,” he said, taking Linda by the elbow and steering her to the side, “but Trace has some people to see right now.”

“Great race, Son,” Don said, and gave Trace a clumsy hug.

Trace glanced at a cluster of parents waiting with their kids, boys and girls, who held Trace Bonham T-shirts. To the side was Sara Bishop; she was talking with Tasha. “Thanks,” he said. “I gotta go.”

Trace worked the crowd, pausing to watch his father and Linda walk away—then headed over to Sara and Tasha.

“You remember Sara?” Tasha asked.

“Sure,” Trace said. “We've been in touch.”

Sara blushed and looked away.

“Oh, God. Don't tell me,” Tasha said.

Neither Sara nor Trace said anything.

“Anyway, I guess we're all friends here,” Tasha said. “So I might as well tell you something. Sara was the runner-up for the Team Blu ride.”

“I was?” Sara asked. She blinked rapidly.

“For sure,” Tasha said. “You had that cute girl-in-a-man's-world thing going. The freckles, the mouth, the short hair. We liked you a lot.”

“Thanks,” Sara said flatly. “But all I got was this generic rejection letter.”

“That's the corporate way—sorry,” Tasha replied. “But you definitely were our second choice.”

Sara looked sideways at the big, shiny Team Blu hauler. When she looked back to Trace, he knew something had changed—she was suddenly a step farther away from him. Receding. Then out of reach.

“Jason Nelson was our third choice,” Tasha continued. “He has a lot to offer, too. It was a tough call for us, choosing among the three of you.”

There was silence. “I should go,” Sara said.

“Wait,” Trace called, but Sara was already heading off.

“What are you trying to do?” Trace said to Tasha. In the harsh light of the parking lot, she looked like a stranger.

“Do?” Tasha said. “I'm only sharing information that I thought you'd like to know. We're all adults here, right?”

Trace was silent.

“And about that cheating thing,” Tasha said, stepping closer. Her voice was low and flat. “I've thought about the
whole thing, and it didn't take me long to decide. If I were you, I'd let it go. Business is based on facts. We race, we go through the tech inspections, we pass those inspections. Those are the facts.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing,” she said, cutting him off. “Right now, the only one who says we're cheating is you.”

Trace looked toward the track.

Tasha moved even closer. “Here's my deal,” she said, lowering her voice further. “I've worked my ass off to get into advertising, and this Team Blu gig on my résumé is like having aces in a poker game. Same thing for you as a driver, I would think.”

Trace met her gaze; her dark eyes were no longer sexy, but flat and cold.

“So until someone proves we're cheating, we're not cheating. And if you want to make a fuss about it, we've got other drivers who would be happy to take your ride.”

9

Saturday night took Team Blu to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Rivers Speedway, one of Trace's favorites. It was a tight, very high-banked quarter-mile track—and the site of the Team Blu tryouts last summer. Back then he had arrived with his father in their Chevy Tahoe and a dusty duffel bag full of racing gear. Now he rumbled down pit row in the cab of the big blue rig, past the World of Outlaws trailers.

“Look out, boys, here we come!” Harlan hollered at the national teams.

“We're not there yet,” Trace said, but Harlan and Jimmy weren't listening. Their enthusiasm was hard to ignore; it made him forget about last night. Tonight, the
World of Outlaws sprint cars would put fifteen thousand fans in the stands. Trace had been coming to Rivers Speedway since he was a kid. To be here tonight—in the pits with a Super Stock—was to run with the big dogs.

Harlan eased the Blu hauler past the green Shaker State tractor-trailer of Rizer Racing family fame; on the other side of pit row was last year's points winner, Lonny Marzones, and beside him the black No. 12x of Jack Roverstein. The big rigs were lined up in even rows like checkers on a board. Their generators hummed like a choir stuck on one crazy note. Smoky had to park his motor home on the far side, though it was still within sight of the track. He kept his satellite dish folded down. Just after Team Blu found its slot, parked, and opened the big rear door, Cal Hopkins walked up.

“Whoa!” Trace murmured under his breath. Cal Hopkins was as famous as dirt track drivers got; he was the one who had spotted Trace at Headwaters Speedway, and also the one who had run last summer's Super Stock tryouts for Team Blu.

“Hey there, Trace,” he said. Trim, wide-shouldered, and with silvery cropped hair, Hopkins looked like an old-school fighter pilot.

“Hi, Mr. Hopkins,” Trace said.

Cal smiled. “Call me Cal. We're both racers now.”

“Thanks,” Trace said as they shook hands—though he still couldn't bring himself to call him Cal.

“Heard you been tearing it up out there,” Cal said.

“Sort of,” Trace said.

“Not sort of—for sure,” Harlan said as he came forward to shake hands.

Jimmy hung back by the car; he was not good around famous people.

“I thought you'd do well,” Cal said as he looked over the Blu Super Stock.

As they talked, Lonny Marzones walked by. “Cal!” he called, and the two men came together for a quick handshake and a man-hug. Marzones, also in his racing suit, was a stocky, round-faced guy with an easy smile.

“You know this kid?” Cal asked Lonny.

“Can't say as I do,” Marzones said as he turned to Trace.

“Trace Bonham,” Cal said. “He's an up-and-comer, a kid to keep your eyes on.”

Trace and Marzones shook hands. “Nice rig for a Super Stock,” Marzones said as he looked at the Blu hauler.

“Thanks,” Trace said. Standing with Cal Hopkins and Lonny Marzones left him a quart low on words.

“Looks like you nailed a major sponsor. You guys should move up to sprints,” Marzones said to Trace with a wink.

“We might be doin' that soon,” Harlan said from inside the trailer. Jimmy, pretending to be busy, peeked over the side of the Super Stock.

“If there's time tonight, you should take a couple of laps in my backup car,” Marzones said.

“Are you serious?” Trace blurted.

“Where else you going to learn?” Marzones said. “I'll mention it to my crew chief and the pit honcho. There's usually a break in the action at some point. A speedway should always have a car on the track, even if it's going around ten miles an hour.”

“Ten?” Trace said.

Marzones gave Trace a friendly slap on the shoulder. “That's the spirit, son. If it's doable, I'll send somebody down later to get you,” he said.

Cal and Marzones walked on, talking about the old days. When the two drivers were out of sight, Jimmy popped up from behind the blue Super Stock.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

“Yeah,” Harlan said gruffly, as if nothing big had happened. “It's just racing.”

Team Blu readied the Super Stock for time trials. No one from the Marzones team came by (Trace kept glancing down pit row), and eventually it was time to take the track.

After rolling up over the berm and down onto the black, tacky dirt of Rivers Speedway, Trace scrubbed the tires left and right—but there was little time to get relaxed: after one lap, the on-track flagman circled his finger, and Trace powered up for his time trial.

Maybe it was his Super Stock tryout here last summer, maybe it was the Blu car itself, maybe it was the lift from being among the top-dog racers—or maybe it was his time
with Sara Thursday night. Whatever it was, the cockpit felt like an easy chair. Trace was loose and relaxed. There was no clear line between his body, the racing seat, the clutch, the accelerator, the gauges, and the tires. He pitched it hard through the corners, then ripped down the straightaways as if he owned the dirt. His laps were 16.45 and 16.39.

“All right,” he shouted, punching the tin roof with a gloved fist. He came hot—too hot—into the pits. A steward gave him a universal palms-down wave, and Trace braked to a throaty idle down pit row. Back at the trailer, Harlan pretended to yawn as Trace rolled up to a stop.

Jimmy, slumped over, pretended to be dozing in his lawn chair.

“Real funny!” Trace said.

Harlan lunged forward to catch Trace's helmet, and Jimmy doubled up in a fit of laughter.

“Way to go out there,” Harlan said, giving Trace a fist bump. “All you, kid!”

The comment brought Trace back to ground level. He looked across to Smoky's Gulf Stream. The little satellite dish was still down. “Yes,” Trace said. “All me.”

The time trials dragged on through the four classes: Super Stocks, Midwest Modifieds, Late Models, and finally sprints. But Rivers Speedway ran a tight ship, with one car accelerating onto the track as the previous one left. Trace and the Blu crew gathered at the fence to watch the sprint cars. The heavy concussions from their exhaust headers echoed inside Trace's ears even though he wore
foam plugs. Watching the sprints at ground level made clear how powerful—and twitchy—they were. Too much throttle too quickly and it was instant spinout. But sprint cars were built to take the corners; drivers threw the cars into controlled, tire-spinning power drift, and torque and g-forces lifted the skinnier inside front tires until they only skimmed the dirt. On some cars, the left front tires dangled off the ground through the entire turn; on others, the smaller front tires dipped and tapped the dirt like eagles scooping fish from the surface of a lake.