The Driver (17 page)

FRIDAY, MAY
14, 2004
NEW YORK CITY

“Alex, Rawlings is definitely coming.”

It was Handsome Dave, aka David Green, now cofounder of the Bullrun, a six-day rally from L.A. to Miami. I
wanted
to enter, but the cost, logistics, and stress of doing two rallies in one summer had seemed impossible until—

“
Rawlings,
Alex—”

“Tell him
I'm
coming.
Tell
him.”

 

“Kinsley, are you sure you won't lose your job for this?”

She didn't answer.

Her employer, the Ritz-Carlton Marina Del Ray, offered a near-perfect solution. Guests who booked a suite received a complimentary courtesy car during their stay, specifically a Mercedes E, S, or SL500. All were five-liter, V8-engined, which would be perfect, and although the $90,000 SL was but a two-seater, I
could
make the sacrifice. Suites' daily rates began at $550,
far
below the cost of actually renting an E, S or SL500 for the same period.

My perusal of the hotel's courtesy-car contract made it clear neither the Ritz-Carlton Corporation nor Mercedes-Benz had ever dealt with the likes of Team Polizei, or the document would have included mileage restrictions,
and
it would have specified
to which
Ritz-Carlton the car had to be returned.

Marina Del Ray was half an hour from the Bullrun start line, in Hollywood. The Ritz-Carlton in Miami Beach, was 3,000 miles away. Bellhop jackets wouldn't be a problem.

 

“The Ritz Merc is a terrible idea,” said Vegas “Matchmaker to the Stars” Mike. Mike had a heart condition, and although we'd only convoyed together briefly on the 2003 Gumball, as soon as I heard he'd checked into a Miami hospital the day after the finish, I got his number from Maximillion.

“I don't forget things like that, Alex. Things like that make it clear who your friends are. I tell you what, why don't you fly here, pick out one of my cars, and take that on Bullrun.”

“
Here
where?”

“Vegas,” said Vegas Mike. “Trust me, I've got something you'll like.”

“Mike—”

“Call me Jesse.”

SATURDAY, JUNE
5, 2004
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA MANN'S CHINESE THEATRE BULLRUN START LINE

“Herr Roy!” said my
Neue Master Co-Piloten
Nicholas Frankl, Three-Time Gumball veteran and 2002 Gumball Spirit Trophy Winner, Three-Time Hungarian Olympic Team Bobsledder, automotive journalist, semiprofessional race-car driver, man-about-L.A., and son of Andrew Frankl. Frankl senior was founder of
Car
magazine and, according to Brock Yates's memoir
Cannonball!
, veteran of the last Cannonball Run in 1979. Nicholas and I briefly met on the 2003 Gumball, again at the 2003 Gumball L.A. movie premiere, and again at the end of the 2004 Gumball in Cannes.

Nicholas's skills and pedigree made him
precisely
the type of recruit I'd pick were I The Driver. Frankl or his father might
already
know him, which is why Nicholas
didn't
Gumball the way I did—he considered it a vacation.

This
chapter of my quest would have two prongs—beat Rawlings, and earn Frankl's respect. I needed to succeed at only one and my phone would ring. I was sure of it. It might even be Frankl himself, or his father. Twenty-five years had passed since the last Cannonball, and it would make perfect sense if a secret successor race stayed in the family.

“Herr Roy! Come now for a first-stage strategy discussion now,
bitte
!”

Frankl's staccato speech was normally delivered in a confidence-inspiring English accent, but wouldn't for the next six days.

“Herr Frankl, you would like zee first leg?”

“
Ja,
I vill use zee geography learned from lifing heeeer,
Herr Kapitaaaan
!”

Frankl and I settled into Vegas Mike's/Jesse's brand-new, $150,000, obsidian-black, Renntech-modified, twin-turbocharged, 612-horsepower, 197-mph-capable Mercedes-Benz
StuttgartAutobahnVerfolgungGeschutzActhungPolizei
CL600. The dashboard was a mass of black plastic centipedes intertwined, Velcroed, cable-tied, and taped down to the black and gray leather. Mike had insisted I leave
everything,
including stickers, in and on the car when I returned it.

Any damage was my responsibility.

“Herr Roy! I still can't believe you haf installed all of zee equipment from zee M5 in our new Interzeptor!”

“It vas most difficult, Herr Master Co-piloten, but it is a big battle coming, no?” I didn't know how much longer I could keep talking like this.

“Ja!”
Frankl laughed, drying the tears running down his face. “Herr
Rowwwwlings
does not look very confident!”

“Nein!”
I burst into laughter. “Rowwwwlings is
nicht macht
happy
mit
Team Polizei!” We'd brought a box of tissues for just this eventuality, one-quarter of them already damp and crumpled in both sides' door pockets.

“Frankl,” I said, trying to calm down, “can we speak English for just one minute?” He nodded, his chest heaving. “Frankl…Krispy Kreme's sponsoring Bullrun…and donuts are the international gift of Polizei friendship—”

“Roy, don't say another word.”

With one of the rear seats designated for Ollie, our TV cameraman, and the other for Helga the Au Pair Love Sexy Inflatable Sex Doll, there wasn't much room for the seven boxes of Krispy Kremes we needed in case of a police traffic stop.

“I think der Krispy Kremes vill be fine in her lapppp, Herr Kapitaaan!”

I adjusted my uniform in the CL600's window—a white summer Polizei shirt with rank chevrons, Team 144 badge, and nameplate, useless but cool-looking blue-tinted bubble goggles dangling from my neck, black police pants with blue highway-patrol stripes, NYPD-issue black leather motorcycle boots and duty belt, and a Motorola belt radio with coiled-wire handset clipped to my left shoulder.

 

“Frankl,” I said, “it's time to talk nav.”

Rawlings was parked at the very front of the hundred-odd Bullrun grid, arrayed three lanes abreast on Hollywood Boulevard, thick crowds of fans packing the sidewalks to both sides. The Polizei CL was two cars behind him. Paris Hilton sat on the bed of my enemy's Avalanche, posing for photographers until Handsome Dave handed her the Bullrun start flag.

“Systems check?” said Frankl.

“
Eine
moment,” I said, restarting both Garmin 2760 GPSs, the Uniden BC520XL CB, V1, Escort ZR3 laser jammers, the as-yet-untested Uniden BC796D scanner, and both backup cell phones. “
Alles gut,
Herr Frankl.”

Paris dropped the flag.

PAHRUMP RACEWAY
BULLRUN LUNCH CHECKPOINT
PAHRUMP, NEVADA
58
MILES TO LAS VEGAS CHECKPOINT

“
Herr Roy! Herr Rowwlings
did not look pleased mit our
First Place Position!
”

“No,” I said as Rawlings drove away, “he didn't.”

“You see, Roy? Rawlings is totally beatable. Now can we eat and celebrate our
vikktoreee?
By the way, your driving is not as bad as I thought…perhaps with some practice you might be mediocre!”

“
Danke schön,
Herr Frankl.”

“
Now
that we've beaten your little nemesis in a proper race, can we put on some fucking music in the car?”

“Only if it's clear to him we're
not
racing that day, or we'll never hear the scanner.”

“
You
figure it out and let me know the rules of your funny little competition. Just remember that you can win whenever you feel like it,
if
you're focused,
if
you're prepared,
if
you don't make mistakes, my
Kapi-taaaaan
! “Maybe if you're nice I'll take you out on the track sometime.”

“Just not in Mike's car.”

“The CL's not appropriate.
That's
what all those Ferrari lawn mowers and washing machines are built for,
Herr Roy
!”

Frankl stepped into the lunch tent while I watched Rawlings's Avalanche disappear in a dusty haze. The Vegas overnight checkpoint was 40 minutes away. After our treacherous, police-infested, 270-mile desert run from Los Angeles, if he wanted to take his route card, skip lunch, immediately turn around, and race to claim the day's second, less meaningful checkpoint, he could have it. He knew what it meant. He knew the difference. He and I had never discussed rules.

We didn't have to.

U.S. ROUTE
93
SOUTHBOUND
40
MILES SOUTH OF THE HOOVER DAM

“Herr Kapitan, I respect your desire to impress me with your driving skill, but driving a hundred sixty miles per hour is not the way to do it.”

“No?”

“Anyone can drive
this
car
this
fast in a straight line on a perfectly flat desert road. You could drive 200 and I would still think you're terrible. Of course, this is only possible for a long duration because of your expert programming of the scanner, and for that I
do
commend you.”

“Thank you.”

165

“Roy, seriously, we could catch up with Rawlings easily if we maintained a steady one-thirty.”

 

“So, Roy, you're telling me that based on what we've heard, you're
quite
certain that there are no more police cars between us and Kingman. It's a notoriously bad place to speed, you know.”

“Trust me. Why don't you call the guys behind us and tell them it's clear up to where we are?”

“
Dummkopf! You
forgot I did that five minutes ago? They're not far behind us, and almost got caught by a cop
you
didn't pick up on the scanner!”

“Frankl, I
promise
you the scanner works. Here, I'll reset it.”

I let off the gas, leaned forward to double-check the scanner settings, disabled and reenabled the Arizona police-frequency channel bank—

158

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

—and shot past a police car hiding behind a bush in the median.

“Good job, Roy. Now you better hope he's more interested in the bright red Ferrari behind us than our Polizei Interzeptor.”

 

Distant, tiny police lights flashed in the rearview mirror. “We're toast, Frankl, I'm sorry.”

“
You're
toast, moron, for relying on this scanner more than your eyes.”

“Frankl, the next exit is too far for us to make a run for it. Do you think I should be respectful and just pull over and wait?”

“That's
two
mistakes, Roy, because if you even wanted the option to make a run for it, you shouldn't have slowed from 160 to 90. Do you think he possibly could have caught up with us? And if this fancy scanner worked as well as
you
said, you could have run for it and known if there were any more cops ahead!”

I shook my head. “Too late now, here he comes.”

“He's pulling us over, but it looks like we have more lights than he does!”

I pointed at the green/green dash-top flasher unit. “Pull
that
one down, now!” I slowed and stopped onto the right shoulder.

“Roy, be polite, it usually works, and don't laugh.”

“I won't laugh if you won't. Leave the scanner on until he gets out…I wanna hear what he says about us. And pull out the car documents.”

“You mean the ones I put in the air-conditioned center armrest along with these nice chocolate bars and Red Bull? Better drink it now, honey, so you'll have energy to fight off your new boyfriend in jail tonight.”

The scanner lit up.

AZ DPS MOB B:
“Thirty-three southbound…got a black Mercedes, see the word
Bullrun—
”

“He's running our plates,” said Frankl.

AZ DPS MOB B:
“Boy, Union, Lincoln, Robert, Nora—”

“So,” said Ollie, who rarely spoke, “tell our viewers what the tactic is now.”

Frankl turned to the camera. “The tactic is
Herr Roy vill be punished for this crimes!
”

The officer got out of his car. “Frankl, here's my emergency bail money. You
will
get me out, right?”

“Yes, Captain, even
I
would miss the likes of you.”

 

“Hey, Officer?” I said from the backseat of the Arizona Department of Public Safety cruiser in which I sat uncomfortably cuffed, hands behind my back. “Do you think I'll spend the night in jail? I've never spent the night before.”

“Maybe,” he said, smiling at me in the rearview mirror, “but you won't be lonely…we just pulled over your buddies in that red Ferrari and a BMW back there.”

Macari and McCloud. I was moving up in the world.

THURSDAY, JUNE
10, 2004
U.S. ROUTE
19
SOUTHBOUND VICINITY OF PERRY, FLORIDA
185
MILES TO TAMPA CHECKPOINT
BULLRUN +
5

“Don't play stupid, Roy, you're only curious because you want to know more about Cannonball, and you think that because you're getting a little superficial fame for being good at rallying, you know anything about what it's like to Cannonball. Let me tell you, all this fun we're having racing around in police uniforms, driving for 6 or 7 hours then having a nice dinner and going to a party…Gumball, Bullrun, these are
nothing
like the original Cannonball. Rallies are supposed to be
fun,
that's why people pay all this money. How many of these guys can you see driving cross-country nonstop for 35, 40 hours? They'd be crying after hour 10! Crying! Think about it, here we are, driving around with stickers all over our car calling attention to ourselves even when we're getting gas. We get to sleep every night for at least a couple of hours while the police look on the Internet and plan how to stop us the next day, and we play these little games with the scanner and CB.