Need for Speed (7 page)

When Tobey asked his gasser just how much the paint cost, Benny replied, “Only a gazillion dollars.”

But the results were worth it. Once put together and painted, the Mustang looked so sleek and so aerodynamic, it seemed to be traveling 100 mph even as it was standing still.

They brought in a Chassis Dyno and programmed the FMU computer with software to maximize horsepower and torque. The program recommended ways they could get additional horsepower. They made these adjustments and were floored when the computer told them they were now in the area of 900 horsepower—which had been their holy grail since the beginning.

They finally celebrated that night. Before this, they had banned all beer, all booze, and all of any other kind of recreational distractions that might interfere with the project. But this milestone called for at least a case of beer—they were very close to finishing this awesome car, something started by the Godfather of it all. And they had done it in secret, off the radar, with no interference from Dino (who never once contacted them during the building process), with no break-ins, no fistfights, no tantrums.

Then, as one of the final elements, they weighed the car. The Dyno program had mandated it had to be less than 3,800 pounds, not including the weight of the driver, to get to that hallowed 230 mph. But when they put it on the scale, they discovered it weighed 71 pounds over that magical 3,800 number.

This was a real problem. They had been economical weight-wise when deciding what to put in their super machine. Now it was so tight, that anything they took off would have an undue effect on something else. With that came the danger that the whole thing would snowball into negative territory.

It all came down to numbers: If they wanted the 900 horsepower, to reach the mythical speed of 230 mph, they needed to lose 71 pounds.

But where?

It was Little Pete who unwittingly came up with the solution. He had been climbing around in the back seat of the car, trying to find something they could jettison to make it lighter, when he happened to say, “This backseat is so small, even I'd have a hard time getting laid in it.”

It hit them all at once. Why did a car like this even need a backseat? It wasn't like it was going to be used for double dates.

It took them another twenty-four hours to take out the backseat, along with all its braces and the heavy floorboard it had been sitting on. But once they filled in the empty space with yet more carbon fiber sheets, they weighed the car, and it came in at 3,794 pounds.

The Dyno computer program loved the result. They ran the program three times and each time it indicated that if everything stayed the same, they would have their 230 mph once the car made it out onto the road.

When they opened the doors to the garage that morning, it was barely 5:00 a.m.

Still, they rustled up some more beer and bought breakfast sandwiches from McDonald's to really celebrate. But when they sat down in the squeaky office chairs for their congratulatory breakfast, each one of them leaned back just to clear his head and wound up falling asleep.

The sandwiches grew cold and the beer got warm, but it didn't matter.

The weeks of work, the long nights, looking up from the welding machine to see the sun rising. Trash cans full of empty energy drink cans and power bar wrappers.

Their work was done.

And finally, they could rest.

Part Three

Five

MANHATTAN WAS GLOWING
brighter than the fantastic city of Oz.

Lights, buildings, people, cars, movement everywhere. The center of the universe—all less than an hour's drive from Mount Kisco.

While it might have seemed a million miles away for some residents of that small upstate town, at least a handful of them had made the trip down here tonight.

On the corner of West 51st Street and 6th Avenue, its entrance practically hidden between two empty storefronts, there was an art gallery that was so exclusive, so upper end, it didn't even have a name. It was meant to be a magical place, designed to instill wonder and awe, and when all the bells and whistles were in gear, for the most part, it worked. The high walls, the subtle lighting, the muted tones, the barely perceptible pulsing soundtrack. On special nights, a very fine mist would be released from the ceiling and would very gently rain down onto the gallery. It gave everything a golden sheen without getting anything wet, the droplets like little pieces of jewelry falling from the sky, or at least from the rafters.

This was one of those special nights.

The no-name space was filled to capacity. Several hundred of New York City's rich and powerful were rubbing elbows and drinking Brut Gold champagne. An invitation to this happening had been extremely hard to get—other events in the city this night paled in comparison.

At the stroke of midnight, those attending had their attention steered to a fantastic 3-D holographic program projected in the center of the room. Through spinning, moving drawings of mechanical designs and schematics, they were presented with the inner workings of the “last Shelby Mustang” come to life. The engine, the chassis, the interior, the wheels. Each component had not just been designed, the ghostly, disembodied narration claimed, but had been hand-sculpted in a way to fit together, altogether perfectly. And many of them were parts that were built only to exist within this fantastic machine alone, never to be made again.

Those gathered were appropriately enthralled, but there was more. When the narration concluded, the holograph began spinning faster, and suddenly it was like something ethereal was being born right before their eyes. This birth was represented by the image of a galloping stallion slowly transforming itself into the Mustang-inspired supercar.

The crowd applauded lustily, but still, the best was yet to come. At the same moment the horse morphed into the 3-D car, a curtain lifted, a fanfare came from nowhere and suddenly before their eyes was the magical car itself. The last Shelby Mustang. The Ford Supercar GT, displayed like a work of art, surrounded by plush velvet ropes.

Paparazzi camera flashes lit up the crowded room—the strobes of bright light bounced off the descending mist, now transforming them into millions of tiny emeralds, floating down, silently cascading onto the Mustang below.

It was like a psychedelic experience, without the drugs.

As intended, the crowd was beside itself with wonder.

* * *

In one corner of the room, though, looking very out of place and by no means caught up in the wonderfulness of it all, were Joe Peck and Finn. Both were dressed up, sort of. Peck was wearing an overly large jacket, a too-tight dress shirt, and even a tie, though its knot was done all wrong.

Finn looked no better. He'd borrowed a suit from a cousin, who obviously hadn't bought a suit since the mid-eighties. He and Joe had spent an hour before the show opened figuring out how to remove its massive shoulder pads without tearing any of the outer material.

They were extremely uncomfortable. Manhattan was like another world to them. It was a big, noisy, expensive place that they never had any reason to go to, grand as it seemed to be. As soon as they'd stepped off the Metro-North train in Penn Station earlier that day, both of them would have given anything to be somewhere else.

Tobey and Little Pete weren't faring much better. They were standing next to the velvet ropes surrounding the supercar, also dressed in ill-fitting suits, a sea of beautiful people swirling around them. To them, the guests were like a different kind of species altogether, graceful and flowing, but plastic—and no matter what Tobey and Pete did, no matter how they stood or how they talked, they just couldn't blend in. They were sticking out like sore thumbs.

Tobey in particular felt out of place and lost. While he was proud of what they had done with the Super Mustang, this was not his turf. This was where Anita lived, and that alone filled him with negative, brooding thoughts. Eight million people called New York City home, but it was knowing that just one of them was here, within the city limits, and maybe even close by, that was enough to dishearten him.

He was so low that even at the very moment his supercar was being introduced, he caught himself thinking that he'd never felt so alone.

But then he met Julia.

When Tobey first spotted her walking across the room toward him, it was suddenly like she was the only person in the room who was in color—everyone else had turne
d to black-and-white. She was beautiful. Blonde. Well-dressed. And she moved with such confidence and grace; that in itself was a thing of beauty.

She reached the spot where they were standing, gave them both a visual going-over, and then asked, “So, this car—how fast does it go?” Her accent was British and very sexy.

“Fast,” Tobey replied, just barely croaking out the word.

“
Very
fast,” Little Pete added.

But the beauty was skeptical. It showed on her face, and especially on her lips.

“Aren't all Mustangs fast?” she asked.

“This car was built by Ford,” Pete said, recalling words from the gallery's press release. “And reimagined by Carroll Shelby, the greatest performance car builder in American history.”

“But, Pete,” Tobey interrupted with a smirk, “that means nothing to her. Can't you tell? She's not from around here. And I doubt that she has any idea who Mr. Shelby is.”

Pete thought a moment, but then concluded boastfully, “Well, we finished it. Our shop was the one that made a supercar out of it.”

“Why is it so fast, though?” Julia shot back at him.

Pete smiled and went off script.

“Nine hundred horsepower, baby,” he said. “Pure stroke and power.”

Tobey had to laugh at Little Pete's exuberance—his little brother.

But still she was not impressed.

“Is that a lot?” she asked. “Nine hundred horsepower, I mean?”

Little Pete couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Are you kidding?” he asked her.

Tobey intervened again. “Relax, Pete,” he said.

He turned to the pretty blonde.

“Miss, this isn't a car you can buy at the mall,” he said. “Trust me when I say it's one of a kind.”

Still she seemed confused.

“Can I see the engine?” she asked innocently.

Little Pete popped the hood with pleasure. Tobey raised it so she could see beneath.

“Huh . . .” she said, studying the engine closely, “5.8-liter. Aluminum block. Supercharger. Racing headers. Nice, actually . . .”

Little Pete just stared at her. He was speechless. Tobey, though, was smiling.

“Gotta admit,” he said to her, “I wasn't expecting that.”

She moved just a bit closer to him.

“From a woman, you mean?” she asked. “Or is it because I'm British? Mr. Shelby's first Cobra was built using a car called an AC Ace Bristol—manufactured in England. But . . . you knew that, right?”

Tobey fell speechless. There was nothing he could say to her at that moment that would have made any sense.

“Life can be full of surprises,” she told him with a wink.

Little Pete piped up again. “I find life to be full of people who think they're smart just because they have a British accent.”

She turned toward him. “Is that right?” she asked.

“You ever watch Piers Morgan?” he asked back.

She giggled, just a little, then turned back to Tobey.

“Is this how you guys do it?” she asked. “Is that your act? You're kind of tough and quiet and he cracks the jokes?”

Again, Tobey was at a loss for words. It didn't help that he just couldn't stop staring at her.

But then a dark shadow appeared over them. The lights in the hall seemed to go dim. The cascading emerald mist lost its glow.

Suddenly Dino Brewster was there, injecting himself into the conversation.

“Hi, Julia,” he said.

Tobey's heart plunged to his new shoes. Why in the world would these two know each other?

“Three million is way too much for this car, Dino,” Julia told him directly.

“But that's what it costs,” Dino replied. “Let's see what Ingram thinks.”

“
I
am what Ingram thinks,” she insisted. “And Ingram thinks it's worth two million at the most.”

Dino shook his head. “Sorry, three million is the number.”

“But three is absurd,” she said. “And everyone here knows it. They loved the presentation—but why do you think nobody's bid on it yet?”

Dino didn't miss a beat. “There's still plenty of time for that. Plus, it's the best car I've driven since Indy—”

But then Pete interrupted again. He saw a wrong and had to right it. That's just the way he was.

“You've never driven this car,” he told Dino dismissively. “Tobey has had the keys the whole time.”

Julia smirked. “You want me to plug my ears and turn around while you guys get on the same page?”

Little Pete laughed at her joke. But Dino was staring daggers at him.

Still she continued her assault. “What's the top speed?” she asked Dino directly.

“One eighty,” Dino replied—but Tobey answered at the same exact moment, except he said, “two thirty . . .”

She looked authentically surprised. “
Two hundred and thirty
miles per hour?”

Dino tried to explain. “He's talking about a theoretical top speed,” he said, rather desperately.

She pointed to Tobey. “I know that he doesn't really talk much,” she said. “But let's see if Mr. Strong and Silent can be less silent.”

“She'll go two thirty,” Tobey said simply.

“But the top NASCAR speed ever was two twenty-eight,” she told him.

“This car is faster,” Tobey replied calmly.

Finally she stopped talking for a moment. A wide smile lit up her face.

“Okay,” she said, “eight o'clock tomorrow up in your neck of the woods at Shepperton. You get anything close to two thirty out of this car, Ingram will buy it on the spot.”

Suddenly, Dino was excited again. “For three million?”

Julia giggled again. “Give or take a million,” she said. “Mostly take.”

With that, she walked away.

All three of them watched her go. But Dino was fuming.

“Two thirty,” he growled at Tobey once she was out of earshot. “Are you crazy? What if I can't get the car up to that speed?”

“You can't,” Tobey told him simply. “But I can. So I'll drive.”

Dino could barely control his anger. While their collaboration to create the Super Shelby had been a success, mostly because Dino hadn't interfered with the building process, ever since the project had been completed, he'd been the same old Dino. Asshole, douche bag, tool.

As proof of this, in a low, threatening voice, he said to Tobey, “Don't even think about driving that car . . . and I mean,
ever
.”