Need for Speed (10 page)

When his last day finally came, Tobey didn't even read the prison release papers. He simply signed on the dotted line and pushed them back under the metal mesh window to the prison employee.

He looked different. Older, rougher—tougher. But he felt different, too. No more wasting time. No more whining about the bum deal he'd gotten.

He had important things to do.

He picked up the bag holding his meager belongings and waited for the last barred door to open.

Then he walked out into the sunlight and tasted freedom for the first time in two years.

* * *

Just outside the release gate, an old Ford pickup truck was waiting. Benny was behind the wheel.

He leapt out of the cab as soon as Tobey walked out. He gave Tobey a quick pound-hug, then they both jumped into the truck.

“Where's Joe?” Tobey asked Benny simply.

“Already on the road with the Beast,” Benny reported. “If your plan is going to work, he's going to need that head start.”

“What about Finn?” Tobey asked.

Benny shook his head. “We still haven't convinced him,” he replied. “He went down another path. But we're still trying.”

Benny turned the ignition key and started the old truck.

“But has the car come through?” Benny asked his friend. “That's the most important thing.”

Tobey checked his watch. “We'll know in an hour.”

“Okay,” Benny said. “But we're cutting it a little close, don't you think?”

Tobey just shrugged and looked out the window, his thoughts already a million miles away.

“Hey, Tobey,” Benny said, bringing him back to reality.

Tobey turned to his friend.

“Good to see you out, man,” Benny told him.

Tobey just nodded, and almost smiled.

It was good to be out.

Eleven

TOBEY AND BENNY
reached their destination about an hour later.

It was an abandoned building located at 6565 Main Street, Mount Kisco.

Many of its windows had been broken and its doors busted in. Junk cars sat deteriorating in the parking lot; litter and trash were everywhere. The sign that once proudly read, “Marshall Motors Est. 1974” was hanging half off and had turned to rust.

The old garage. The place where he'd grown up. The place that had so many memories. It was gut-wrenching for Tobey to see it like this.

And it got worse. Wrapped around the garage's front door was a stream of yellow tape festooned with orange stickers from the sheriff's department announcing the property had been put in foreclosure. For Tobey, this was just adding insult to injury.

He and Benny climbed out of the Ford pickup. They examined the thick chain that was keeping the garage's front door shut. The door's glass itself was dirty and smeared, the numerals “6565” barely readable anymore.

It was a sad moment for both of them.

“I heard they're turning it into a Jack in the Box,” Benny told him. “Just what Mount Kisco needs. More junk food.”

Tobey tried to stay emotionless, but it was hard to do.

“I'm just glad my old man isn't alive to see this,” he said. “It would have broken his heart.”

Tobey took a long look around, checking for cops. Certain the coast was clear, he kicked a small hole in the glass door. Wrapping his fist in his jacket, he kept punching the hole until it was big enough for them to squeeze through.

He was the first to step inside. He had to take it in slowly. This place—once jumping with business, the sound of tools working, paint being sprayed, always with either loud rap music playing over the bedlam or Monarch's voice booming—now it was quiet and dark and a mess. This place that had been so special to him—first, working with his father, learning the trade, and then their utter triumph in building the Mustang—now . . . it was a place of vandalism. Thieves had broken in and stolen all the tools. The paint room was riddled with graffiti. Even the car lifts were gone. The inside looked even worse than the outside.

The photos that had been hanging on the wall had all fallen, their glass frames cracked or shattered completely. Some of the pictures had turned yellow and wrinkled. Others were gone altogether.

This was a snapshot of failure. Tobey had promised his father that he would keep the garage open, no matter what. Now it was like something found in a ghost town—a thing of the past.

So what about the future?
Tobey thought, giving the place another long, sad look. Would it be better?
Could
it be better?

He'd psyched himself up so much in prison, dreaming yet another dream, that he had been sky high. But looking at the dilapidated garage and how it had turned out, he suddenly wondered if he'd just been fooling himself all along. Would his grand plan be possible to pull off?

His answer came a second later.

There was a sudden, loud noise outside. The roar of a huge engine, the screeching of big tires—sounds that had not been heard anywhere near the Marshall Motors building in a long time.

A car had pulled into the parking lot. Silver ghost finish. Big wheels. Extremely sleek and sexy. A wave of smoke from its exhaust reached Tobey's nostrils, and he recognized it right away.

Only a little more than two years had gone by—but it might as well have been a lifetime.

It was the Mustang. The Shelby-designed supercar that they'd built here and sold to Ingram what seemed like a century ago.

It was like seeing an old friend; one you never thought you'd see ever again.

Then the Mustang's door opened, and an extremely attractive female stepped out. She was dressed in a way that would have made a supermodel jealous. Short, tight dress. High heels. Dramatic hair. Of all that had already happened to Tobey that day, this stunned him the most. He knew her, but he hadn't really thought about her, not until this moment. In fact, he'd almost forgotten just how beautiful she was.

It was not Anita, though.

It was Julia.

Suddenly it wasn't so dark and dreary around the Marshall Motors building.

But while he'd been expecting the car, he definitely hadn't been expecting her.

They met just outside the broken door. She smelled as good as she looked—but Tobey had to stay cool.

“Thanks for the delivery,” he told her. “And thank Ingram for me. We won't let him down.”

Then Tobey called over his shoulder to Benny, “What do you think? First American car to win the De Leon?”

Benny laughed. “Well, that's your big plan, isn't it? That's why Ingram loaned you his car.”

Tobey held out his hand, expecting Julia to pass him the keys. But she didn't.

“You don't even have an invite to the De Leon,” she said to him sternly, her British accent at full throttle. “It is by very special invitation only, you know.”

“I'll get an invite,” Tobey told her confidently. “Believe me, Monarch is going to want this car in the race.”

“But no one knows where the race is going to be,” Julia said. “At least until you get the invite. So exactly where would you be racing off to?”

Tobey looked back over at Benny, who smirked.

“Should I tell her?” Benny asked him.

“Be my guest,” Tobey replied.

“On the down low,” Benny said to Julia in a sort of conspiratorial whisper, “we've been doing some spying over the past couple months, and we know the De Leon will be in California this year. We just don't know where. But we know one of the drivers, and—”

“Benny!” Tobey half-yelled at him. “Loose lips . . .”

Benny got the hint. He shut up in mid-sentence.

Julia just shook her head at the two of them. She was trying not to laugh.

“I admire your sense of adventure,” she said. “I have a little brother who is afflicted with the same thing.”

“And your point is?” Tobey asked her.

“California's a big state,” she replied. “And you might remember my affinity for numbers? I'm a math gal.”

“And what's your math saying?” Tobey asked her.

She smiled again. “The drivers' meeting is always the night before the race,” she said. “So you have less than forty-five hours to get from New York to somewhere in California . . .”

“That's right,” Tobey said. “So?”

Again, all she could do was shake her head at him.

“Let me see if I've got this right,” she said. “Not only will you be violating your parole by leaving the state of New York, you're planning on driving for two days straight?”

Tobey nodded simply. “And your problem with that is?”

“Just that we better get going,” she replied, surprising him. “It's actually forty-five hours and counting.”

Tobey held his hands up.

“Whoa,” he said. “You're not going anywhere. That's not part of the plan.”

She didn't back down for an instant.

“You need a right-seater,” she told him. “And, more important, Ingram is not leaving this car in the hands of an ex-con.”

But Tobey was having none of it.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head. “It's out of the question. First of all, I don't need you, and second, it's on me to fix this car if I damage it.”

“And it's on me to keep you honest,” she shot right back at him. “Now, there's forty-four hours and fifty-nine minutes left. So, let's go.”

With that, Julia got back into the car and slammed the door shut. Tobey was flustered. He looked at Benny pleadingly. But Benny didn't know what to do.

“Maybe we can shake her at a fuel stop?” Tobey half whispered to his friend.

“Okay, no worries, boss,” Benny replied under his breath. “I'll help you dump her. But she's right—we're already behind. So let's deal with it on the fly. I mean, at least she seems smart.”

Tobey was still shaking his head, though. “I know she's smart,” he said. “And also fucking gorgeous. But I just don't think I can't take it. All the . . . the . . .” Tobey used his hand to imitate a puppet chattering on endlessly.

Benny imitated the hand-puppet idea, saying, “You want me to dump her, boss? Yes, please. Then follow me, I will take you on the ride from hell. She will be begging to get out of that car. Word to the moms. Word to the moms.”

Benny smacked Tobey on the back and walked away. Tobey thought over the insult for a moment.

Then he climbed into the driver's side of the Mustang. He felt a ripple of electricity shoot through him. This car; this beautiful car. He never really thought he'd ever see it again, never mind be back behind the wheel. But here he was. Sometimes prayers are answered.

He looked at Julia—she was smiling broadly back at him. He couldn't help it—he smiled, too, briefly.

Then he started the Mustang's massive engine, revving it twice, and off they went.

Part Five

Twelve

THE SUPER MUSTANG
crossed the George Washington Bridge less than twenty minutes later.

What was usually a forty-five-minute drive down from Mount Kisco to Manhattan had been done in half that time by the awesome Shelby GT.

Tobey was settled in behind the wheel, still buzzing with the twin excitements of driving this car again and being out of the clink. The Mustang had not lost any of its power or its balls. He was casually blowing by any slower traffic he encountered, which was actually all of it. Or, if anything posed any kind of impediment to him, he simply cut around it.

This was literally life in the fast lane. He'd averaged 120 mph since leaving Mount Kisco, and hit 130 as soon as they crossed the border into New Jersey.

He'd had little conversation with Julia so far, mostly because she'd been too busy holding on for dear life. But once they'd reached the New Jersey Turnpike, Tobey finally turned to her and said, “Okay, so you've never been a right-seater before.”

She gave him a quick, icy glare.

“Don't worry,” she replied over the roar of the Mustang's mighty engine. “I'll learn. And if you see something I'm doing wrong, please just point it out.”

Tobey laughed. “Well, for one thing, you're wearing high heels,” he said.

She just shook her head.

“We call them ‘heels' these days,” she said. “And I have a change of shoes in my overnight bag.”

“Then I suggest you do something about that,” Tobey said.

Julia reached into her overnight bag, retrieved some more sensible shoes, and changed them with the heels.

“There,” she said. “Anything else ‘right-seaters' are meant to do?”

Tobey replied tartly, “How about ‘be quiet'?”

Julia continued glaring at him. “Like a mouse, you mean?”

“Yeah, like a dead mouse,” Tobey said.

She began to say something, but stopped. He stared straight ahead, knowing that one might have cut a little too deep.

A chilly silence enveloped the car, and it stayed that way for a long time.

* * *

High above the New Jersey Turnpike, a Cessna Skyhawk was cruising at 130 mph, closely following the same direction of the highway as it headed south.

Benny was at the plane's controls.

He clicked his microphone on.

“Beauty,” he said. “This is Maverick. I've just found you. And you've got a situation a mile ahead.”

“Roger that,” Tobey replied via the Mustang's two-way radio. “Copy a situation one mile ahead.”

He pushed up to another gear and exploded down the highway. He was soon traveling at 140 mph.

“We've got bad traffic up ahead,” he said to Julia, finally breaking the silence. “We've got to reroute.”

She was mystified. “But I don't see any traffic,” she said, sitting up in her seat and trying to see the road up ahead.

“We don't,” Tobey said, pointing skyward. “But Benny does. He can see everything—he's our spy in the sky. And I've got to listen to him. Hold on . . .”

The two-way radio crackled again. “Stop and go traffic ahead,” Benny reported. “I'm looking for an exit for you.”

Julia was puzzled.

“You're going to hit traffic on this trip,” she said matter-of-factly. “
Every
city has traffic. Won't that be a big problem?”

“Under the best conditions, we need to average just over 80 miles an hour to get to Cali in time,” Tobey told her. “But for every hour we lose, we'll need to go 160 miles an hour to make it up. So yes, there will be traffic. It's just up to us to avoid it as much as possible.”

Benny's voice came back on the radio.

“Give me a dollar on the next exit,” he told Tobey.

“What's a dollar?” Julia asked.

Tobey smiled. “You'll see,” he said.

He quickly upshifted, and a moment later, the Mustang was screaming down the breakdown lane, heading toward an off-ramp. At just the right moment, Tobey hit the brakes, drifted to the right, and took the exit going 100 mph—aka “a dollar.”

Julia's education on the monetary term came with a price. With one hand holding tightly to the dash, the other tightly to the door, she turned a little green at the sudden, violent deceleration and then
acceleration
.

The Mustang rocketed up the off-ramp.

Benny's voice came back again. “Okay, go hard right for lane three in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

This sounded like Greek to Julia, too, but she was quickly realizing that Tobey and Benny were using a precise shorthand language to converse with each other.

Each lane of the highway was numbered one through four. All Benny had to do was say one of those numbers and Tobey would know immediately what lane would be freest of traffic or delay. What fascinated Julia the most, though, was how this language showed the tight bond between the two friends. Traveling in excess of 100 mph Tobey would switch lanes totally on blind faith.

It was crazy, but admirable, too.

At the end of the off-ramp, Tobey burned through the intersection and turned right onto a three-lane, one-way street.

Benny's voice crackled over the radio again: “We need to get you clean,” he told Tobey. “Hard left U in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Tobey steered the Mustang violently to the left, executing a perfect 180-degree turn. He suddenly rocketed into a car wash.

Benny kept talking. “Soft right through the full service bay and then go hard right.”

The Mustang roared out of the car wash and turned right. Suddenly they were going straight into the oncoming traffic.

Benny yelled, “Go, three . . . now!”

With a flick of his wrist, Tobey zipped the Mustang into the slow lane of the oncoming traffic. They were heading toward a merging intersection. Those cars coming in the opposite direction that saw the Mustang speeding toward them immediately stopped or got out of the way. For his part, Tobey weaved around them with remarkable skill.

Julia was trying desperately to maintain a poker face throughout all this harrowing maneuvering. But it was hard to do. Everything was going by so fast.

Suddenly the rear of a stopped SUV was looming large in the Mustang's windshield.

“You do see the SUV you're about to plow into, right?” she asked Tobey as calmly as possible.

Instantly, Tobey jerked the Mustang into an oncoming lane, just missing the back of the SUV.

“You mean that SUV?” he asked her with a smirk. “The white one?”

That crisis passed—but another immediately took its place. A large commuter bus was heading right at them.

“Maintain speed,” Benny calmly advised from above, even though that speed was 100 mph on a very crowded street.

The bus flashed its lights madly as the driver went into a sudden full-blown panic. The Mustang was heading right at it, now topping 105 mph.

“And the bus?” Julia asked Tobey urgently. “You see
that
, don't you?”

“What's that?” he replied.

“The
bus
 . . .” she repeated urgently, her voice rising in tone.

“The
what
?” Tobey asked again.

Julia finally lost it.

“The bus!” she yelled. “The bus!
The bus!
”

She braced for impact—but Tobey maintained his cool. The front of the bus filled the windshield. The driver blew his horn again. Julia screamed loudly, almost drowning out everything else.

Then, from above, came Benny's voice: “Go, two,
now
!”

Tobey swerved right, missing a head-on collision with the oncoming bus by inches. And suddenly that crisis had passed as well.

Julia took a deep breath and tried hard to regain her composure. Tobey glanced over at her.

“You mean that bus, bus, bus?” he asked her.

But Julia refused to take the bait. She put her poker face back on and just stared straight ahead.

Then, from Benny again: “Hard left in three . . .”

Tobey downshifted, resulting in a violent deceleration. At the same moment, Julia's cell phone began ringing. But it was somewhere behind the front seat. She undid her seat belt, turned around, knelt on the seat, and began searching for it.

It was ringing urgently, yet she couldn't find it.

“Shit—where is it?” she cursed.

From Benny: “. . . two . . . one . . . now!”

The Mustang went across three lanes of traffic in less than three seconds, blowing through a red light for good measure.

“Give me a dollar for a quarter,” Benny then requested from on high.

Leaving the traffic behind, the Mustang went back to accelerating. It was soon tearing down a one-lane rural road.

But Julia was still upset.

“You and Benny have this cheeky language,” she said, still facing backward and kneeling on the seat. “You think it's adorable, do you? Well, it's not! If I'm going to help you, I need to know what you're saying!”

She launched into a near-perfect imitation of their strong, upstate New York, thoroughly American accents.

“Gimme a dollar!” she said. “Roger that! Soft right! Three, two, one! You need to speak
English
, Tobey.”

But at that moment, still traveling at 110 mph, the Mustang hit a huge speed bump. The supercar went airborne, all four tires leaving the ground. Julia went airborne as well, ass over teakettle, landing in a heap on the front-seat floor.

Tobey couldn't resist. He called up to Benny and asked, “Are you having fun up there yet?”

“Roy Rogers,” was Benny's reply. “Hard left in ten . . .”

Just as Julia was crawling back into her seat, Tobey downshifted and slid through the upcoming intersection. Amid a gaggle of traffic, he also managed to turn a hard left.

Benny radioed down: “On-ramp in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

Tobey hit the ramp, topping 112 mph.

The radio crackled again. “Okay, Beauty,” Benny said finally. “You're all clear from here.”

Julia's eyes were firing daggers at Tobey by this point. But he stayed quiet, as if nothing unusual had happened.

“I understand that driving fast is going to be necessary,” she half-yelled at him. “But driving like some mental patient just to scare me out of the car is not going to work.”

“Are you sure about that?” Tobey asked her.

“Well, if that's what you thought,” she said to him angrily, “then, whatever you think of me, I'm sure it's wrong.”

Tobey just stared straight ahead. “Then educate me,” he finally told her.

And so she did.

“So you think,” she began, “that just because I make a living buying cars designed to triple the speed limit, and drive a Maserati—and oh, by the way, I am an awesome driver—that you can condescend to me? If you think that, then I guarantee you, this will be the longest forty-four hours and eleven minutes of your life.”

Tobey almost laughed at her. He'd spent many months in solitary confinement. He knew well what a “long” forty-four hours could feel like.

But then he thought about it a moment, and finally said, “One request? You talk less.”

“I know,” she replied. “Like a dead mouse?”

She put on a high, mouse-like voice and continued, “
Squeak, squeak—here I am. I'm a mouse—I'm dying. I'm dead. I'm a dead mouse and I'm not talking now
. Right? Like that?”

Tobey couldn't help it. He smiled a bit.

She is
very
cute,
he thought.

Now that the atmosphere inside the Mustang was eased a bit, Tobey laid on the gas and headed for the western horizon, still traveling in excess of a dollar.