The Driver (39 page)

Two hundred seventy miles from the Santa Monica Pier.

CHEVRON FOOD MART
BARSTOW, CALIFORNIA
34°53'14.86”
N
, 117°01'20.85”
W
131
MILES TO SANTA MONICA PIER
1205
A.M. (PST) (APPROX)

By the time we coasted in, fuel wasn't our biggest problem. Maher was spent. What he earned in Arizona we lost to fatigue, and fatigue-compounding, single-lane construction zones. J.F. texted the Needles–Barstow figures:
Miles since update 155, Time Elapsed 1:47, AvgSpd 87.

The pump clicked. It was too late for the important numbers. I closed my door, Cory hers, Maher his. We no longer slammed them.

“Alex,” he said as I pulled out. “I've done everything I can. It's in your hands. We need to break it by one hour or none of it matters. I don't even know if we can. It's up to you. You need to drive like you've never driven.”

I had to win this battle, tonight. I had volunteers I could never again ask to risk so much, nor would they for so futile a cause.

It was I who had chosen to fight, selected the field, and marked the target. No one else was here. No one was waiting for me. No one was coming.

I was at war with myself, and always had been. I, the weaker, would never win until I defeated, consumed, and became the stronger, and I had delayed the end through rationalization.
I will try again tomorrow
. But now I knew. I didn't want to come back.

There was only one way to avoid the compulsive regret of
what if
.

Distance, time, traffic, fatigue—nothing was in my favor except a gift I had received over and over, yet had never opened until Maher handed it to me at the Chevron.

I was responsible. For myself, and those who'd come with me.

I already had everything in the world money couldn't buy, except the dignity of having earned it.

I was at the wheel, but no longer knew who was driving. I wasn't the man who had left New York some twenty-nine and a half hours earlier. He was a stranger, and so was his mirror on the pier.

I had 131 miles to cover, and just under 90 minutes to beat 31:07.

I merged onto Interstate 15 and headed south.

 

“Maher! How far to the I-10/I-15 interchange??”

“Two miles! Maybe three! Didn't you hear that radar warning?”

“Yes!”

“Then why didn't you slow down?”

“False alarm! Just trust me!”

“Alex!” Cory yelled. “How long to the interchange? I've gotta call Josh in the chase car!” Josh Wexler was a film producer and college buddy of Cory's and was driving our third and final chase car.

“One minute?!” I yelled back. “Dave! Eyes open for a black Porsche Cayenne!”

“It better be a Turbo,” he said with a grin. Cory yelled incomprehensibly into her phone. I spotted the interchange 45 seconds later. I nearly suggested standing by for heroics, but was too busy threshold-braking from 118 to 90, bearing right toward the I-10 ramp, apexing through the ninety-degree right at 80 mph, and accelerating at maximum power west on I-10.

“Dude!” Maher spun around in his seat. “Was
that
the chase car? If it's a Turbo,
that
was it!”

“Wait!” Cory screamed. “Wait!”

“Cory! We can't wait! It's a Turbo! Josh'll catch up!”

It was 1:02
A.M
. PST—
51.9 Miles to Destination
. I had 31 minutes.

I couldn't focus on mileage or projections. I was driving 116 mph through traffic, and the figures probably weren't reliable anyway. I didn't care. It didn't matter. I was driving as fast as I thought I could, until—

“The HOV lane!” Cory shouted. “Go left! Left!”

“Gas warning light!” I called out. “Maher! Did you—”

“Yes, I tightened the gas cap! Don't worry, it's just a BMW thing. Alex, this shitcan up ahead is breaking the law. One guy solo in the HOV lane? That's so selfish.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Pass him.”

“Maher, those are double-yellow HOV lane-divider stripes.”

“Now I
know
I'm hallucinating,” he said, grasping his door handle for the first time.

I passed him. At 117.

I
-10/
I
-5
INTERCHANGE
18.5
MILES FROM SANTA MONICA PIER
1:17
A.M. (PST) (APPROX)

“I can't believe there're no cops out here.”

“There never are,” said Cory, “that's why everyone's going a hundred.”

“Look at it this way,” said Maher, “you're only 10 to 20 over the flow of traffic.”

I gritted my teeth. “As Nine always says, ‘I'm a law and order guy.' My feeling is, for every mile we drive without being stopped, a cop is saving someone who
really
needs help.”

“Do me a favor, tough guy, stop talking and focus on driving. You're making me nervous.”

“About the time?”

“About your driving!”

“Are you really nervous, Maher?”

“Just keep going! You're making me proud!”

“Alex! Wait!”

“Wait?” Maher and I said in unison.

“That chase car! Behind us! You just drove right past him!”

“Was I supposed to stop?”

“Dude, I think your front right headlight just went out!”

“Should I stop for that, too? How we doing on time?”

“I don't know, but I'm sure it's not good! Just keep going!”

A bright pair of blue-tinted headlights approached in the mirror. Cory needed the videographer in the chase car to shoot our arrival. Josh was a
very
good driver. His Cayenne Turbo was very fast, perhaps faster in a straight line than the M5. But I possessed one thing he did not, which I might never use again, at least not this way.

I had a purpose. I had a destination. And I couldn't be late.

INTERSTATE
10
WESTBOUND

9
MILES FROM SANTA MONICA PIER
1:24
A.M. (PST)

This was wrong. I was breaking every protocol in the book of Polizei. I was also breaking the law. We had to get there as quickly as possible. It was the only way to ensure the safety of the other drivers on the I-10. We were going to make it, perhaps by as little as one minute. Maybe. Unless SWAT teams were already en route, no one could stop us. Except for the red Ferrari 360 Modena up ahead going 80 mph, his date's long blond hair flying up from the open roof on the passenger side, of course. I could tell he was precisely the type of cowardly, Modena-leasing, valet-parking, Hollywood playboy/film guy/mattress tester who would take personal offense at being passed by a dirty, dented, blue BMW at 119 mph, and who, staking that night's manhood on his car's superiority to mine, might illegally cut into the HOV lane to stop us. The safety of my passengers—and
his
date—depended on maximum geographic separation between us, which is why I accelerated to 125 in order to both pass and minimize the duration of our proximity. Somewhere behind us, I was pretty sure I heard a howl, and I was sure it hadn't been manufactured in Italy.

INTERSTATE
10
WESTBOUND
PASSING UNDER FREEWAY
405
4
MILES FROM SANTA MONICA PIER

“Can't take my eyes off the road! Maher! What time is it?”

“Just drive!”

“Do you know where to turn?” shouted Cory.

“Fourth Street?! Here? Got it!”

I downshifted to fifth, then fourth, dropping from 109 to 67 mph just in time to bear right and follow the ramp to the traffic light at Colorado. I was ready to run this and the next three. Santa Monica Police Headquarters was a block away. Then the light turned green. It was one block to Colorado. Red light. A police car passed perpendicular, eastbound. Green light. I turned left. Red light. Green light.

One block from the pier.

Red light.

Green light.

I was almost finished.

We crossed Ocean Avenue and drove down the pier's concrete entrance ramp.

At the bottom of the ramp lay the pier itself, a wood structure that creaked as our front tires, then our rear, rolled over its wide planks. The finish line lay 50 feet and one left turn away, in the parking lot. The PolizeiAir crew would be there, Lelaine, Cory's parents, friends, and family, and all the official witnesses—David Johnson, Charles Graeber, Gary Jarlson, and all the others I couldn't remember because I'd been busy driving cross-country for slightly less than a day and a third.

My journey was coming to an end. First I had to punch our time card, then smile for our legitimacy pictures, then move the car off the pier before any SWAT teams showed up, then hide it at one of three nearby hotels where Cory had booked rooms under various names, then arrange the car's undercover shipping back to NYC, then rent a car, drive to Nevada, and fly home. I made a mental note to get the front right headlight fixed, since that was a ticketable offense in New York State, and I could tell from our headlight pattern that it had gone out once again. I wondered what the penalty was in California.

I didn't know the time—I'd lost track—but I knew we'd covered 2,800 miles
very
quickly, maybe even quickly enough. I knew our friends awaited us less than 60 seconds away,
just
around the corner of
that
building, and I knew, even in my hallucinatory, exhausted, criminally guilty-yet-already-remorseful elation and virtual blindness, that the white car oncoming was a late-model Ford Crown Victoria, that it was a Santa Monica police K-9 unit with a low-profile light bar, and that at our current closing speeds we would meet in approximately 10 seconds. I prayed he might tell me the time, and had a good, but not necessarily expensive, watch. Casios were very reliable.

Police officers waited their whole careers for traffic stops like this.

He saw us.

And kept going. I caught a surreal glimpse of his friendly, preoccupied face, hoped his commander never found out, then made the final left turn into the parking lot.

Maher pulled out the time card. We lowered our windows as Lelaine ran toward us, time clock in hand. I'd seen it before, an epochal lifetime ago. I stopped the car. The time clock
thunked
once, then twice more in quick succession.

The target was 31:07. Or better. Or else.

That meant 1:33
A.M
. (PST), or 4:33
A.M
., according to the time clock, still—for validation purposes—on EST.

Maher got out before I could ask. Cory took the card from him. I joined them in the light of Robin's camera. Wexler's Cayenne roared in and stopped behind the M5. He, Graeber, The Weis, Nine, the Captain, Johnson, and Jarlson gathered around us. Cory peered at the time card. I leaned closer. She flipped it over, then flipped it again. Maher had punched it three times, at least 10 seconds apart.

Cory frowned, then looked up, right at me. And smiled.

I took the card.
OCT 7
P.M
. 9:26

I turned it over for L.A.

 

OCT 9
A.M
. 4:31

OCT 9
A.M
. 4:31

OCT 9
A.M
. 4:30

 

Four-thirty
A.M
. Eastern meant 1:30
A.M
. Pacific.

I knew we made it, but I was too shocked, elated, confused, tired, and stupefied to speak the four precious numbers.

“I can't believe it,” said Maher. “So close, man.”

“Me neither,” said Cory.

We'd done it—31:04—by three minutes.

“Alex?” said Robin, pointing a camcorder at me. “Your thoughts?”

I grinned. “I'm never driving again.”

MARCH
2000

“I could have been a painter,” said my father, “or a musician.”

“I know,” I said, hoping to bring our conversation back to the prior day's topic.

“Or a photographer,” he continued, “I'll never understand why you were so lazy about the piano. Why you never picked up photography. When you were a boy. You had no interest. Too many distractions.”

“That was a long time ago.”

He didn't seem to have heard me. “Did you know I could have been a painter?”

“Why weren't you?”

He looked at me sternly. He'd heard. “Because I had to make a life for you and your brother. A life better than mine. Here in America. So you would never go through what I did. Jack, my poor brother. And Jojo. I wanted you to have everything. You should be grateful.”

I pulled the vibrating phone from my pocket.

“It's okay,” he said, “go. I need to sleep. I'm tired.”

“It's not important.”

“I don't want to live anymore.”

“What?!?”
This
was not my father. “What are you talking about?”

“I don't want to go through this any longer. I can't give you any more.”

“But that's not true! I don't know anything…I need you! What am I going to do?”

“Enough. You know enough. Go, Alexander, just go.”

I couldn't leave.

“Please go,” he said, “and let me sleep.”

“Wait…are you sure? I'll come back tomorrow. If you feel better we can talk then.”

He closed his eyes. “Yes…yes.”

I reluctantly stood up, leaned over, and kissed his forehead. “I'll see you tomorrow?”

He opened his eyes and nodded.

MONDAY, OCTOBER
9, 2006
CRESCENT BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL
LATE EVENING

I stirred awake and stared at the ceiling, as I had so many times before.

He
had
given me everything, yet until he died all I thought he ever wanted was to see himself reincarnated. Until we spoke of Sascha, and driving, and I set off on an odyssey whose end brought no clarity to its origin. He never told me any more about secret races or Cannonball or The Driver. What I learned, or thought I'd learned, disappeared in the haze of what I genuinely heard, or inferred, or wanted to believe—and what was true.

I
had
been lazy. I feared I could never live up to him. I long knew I hadn't earned what I was given. I wanted to believe he'd been wronged. I wanted to believe there was something he didn't—and couldn't—attain. I wanted to believe in the need to avenge him. I wanted what he couldn't have. I never wanted to be him, yet had to follow in his steps in order to transcend him.

And now, for the first time, I had woken up my own man.

I
had
found The Driver. Over and over. He was my father, then Rawlings, then every other enemy I'd found, or invented, or fought, until I'd set out against the very person to whom my father had told that strange tale under heavy sedation.

I could be The Driver. Lift the phone. Organize a race.

If I chose to be. If I willed it.

I'd always had everything anyone could ever want, yet I'd been ungrateful. Now that I was done, all I could remember was a white cross dancing against the afternoon sky, from which The Weis and Nine and the Captain watched over me, and my ever-supportive mother, and Skylar, and Maggie…all fearfully watched me leave. All waiting for me to come home.

 

I got home the same day the M5 arrived at AI. Matt called. There were cracks in both axles and the rear suspension. He said we were lucky to be alive.

Over the next few weeks I saw The Weis and Nine a handful of times, the Captain only once. We barely spoke of the run. Their story seemed hard to believe, as they said of the saga on the ground. The Weis said if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he'd have been sure I'd made the whole thing up.

Maher had no such outlet. Other than his girlfriend, he knew no one he could talk to about it but me, and so he dropped by with increasing frequency, bringing a welcome respite from preliminary research on my hilariously premature memoir. We agreed 30 hours was possible, but disagreed on the motivation required.

He was ready to go if and when someone broke our record. I was not.

We agreed it had been the best and worst experience of our lives. When the time came, I would humbly tell Digonis and Stander. Cory would tell Docherty and Diem.

We had no idea how they'd respond.

In researching this book, I contacted virtually every Gumball and Bullrun driver I thought qualified to compete in a cross-country run as we'd attempted. Almost all said yes. None were interested in money—or even thought 32:07 could be broken—except for Rawlings and Collins. Interestingly, three of the very best equivocated. Frankl thought it reckless, but I knew he'd go if asked. Spencer was interested, but not compelled; nor was Kenworthy.

Oliver Morley, whom I reached by satellite phone on what I believed to be his private island in the Caribbean, had quite an earful for me. He forgave remarks I'd made in Polizei guise, and said all he ever objected to was allowing fans to believe I was a better driver than I was. He suggested I forget racing cross-country and accept his offer of driving lessons the next time I was in England. I accepted. He made one more remark, one of the two greatest compliments ever paid to me. He said that on the 2005 Gumball, he and Spencer had coordinated with friends to monitor the ALK website. They'd tracked me as closely as I had them. The Battle of Rome had been far closer than I'd ever known. Only after Spencer told him of my unexpectedly fierce pursuit did Morley consider me more than a prankster. “Perhaps you're not such a bad driver, after all,” he said over the hazy connection. “Spencer couldn't believe you kept that M5 on his Turbo. Impressive, I'll grant you that. You're very brave, Roy. Given your deficiencies as a driver, maybe the bravest driver I ever met.”

Maher paid me the other on the Santa Monica Pier. Our twenty-strong group had gathered to recap our final moments over champagne. Josh was flabbergasted at my speed across the I-10. A rough calculation suggested an average of 99 mph over 58 miles, what may be the highest ever recorded (literally, on video). I asked Cory if and when she would destroy the tapes. She laughed.

“Alex,” said Maher, “you
do
realize how close it was.”

“I know. There were so many times it could have gone wrong. Dave, I'm considering never driving again, or becoming a driving instructor. For old people. Nothing fast.”

“Seriously, Alex, what you did at the end…I didn't know you could do that.”

“Neither did I. I thought you were lying, when you said we might not make it.”

“We
had
to break 31:07. I
had
to push you, and you did it. Legitimately.”

“
We
did it.”

“Alex, I might have done the end cleaner, but I couldn't have done it faster.”

“My God, Maher, when this gets out, I hope some copycat doesn't go out and kill someone.”

“Just don't tell anyone exactly how.”

“I won't, but you know, Dave, what
you
did…you
are
crazy.”

“It takes two.”

 

By November I was hermetically locked in the house once again, attempting to distill what could have filled three books into but one. However safe my desk overlooking Astor Place, an absurd sense of mortality drove me to write what I feared might be my first and last statement on the lessons learned. I spent weeks without venturing outside. I could see the headline—
Illegal Race Driver Killed by Taxi.
I had to complete the definitive history, for the full story seemed far greater than my own. If anything befell me, my unborn children might yet pursue archaeology, or music, and wouldn't take foolish risks to fill holes in their hearts, or egos.

Once the book was done, I owed Nicholas, Rob, Dennis, Jerry, Spencer, Malmstrom, and Oliver an apology and thanks. I owed each more than they were likely to understand.

As for Rawlings, we had a lot more to talk about. He'd earned it.

To Maggie—with whom I hadn't spoken in six months, who thought she hadn't mattered, whom I couldn't face until I was finished,
if
she would see me at all—I would hand the first galley. I hoped she would understand the
why
. I hoped she would forgive me.

Anything was possible. Once the book was done.

APRIL
2007
NEW YORK CITY

“Waaaassssuuuupppp, Mr. Pol-eez-eye?”

“Richard,” I said, “you don't know how good it is to hear your voice. I hear Bullrun's Montreal to Miami, you going?”

“Right on, brother. You Gumballin' again? London to Istanbul? Sheee-it!”

“My last one, just for fun. There's no one left to fight!”

“There's some tough new guys Bullrunning, but I hear ya. Done with that book yet?”

“Two weeks. I think you'll like it. I say some pretty nice things about you.”

“I know you're lyin', Alex, but I'll give y'all the benefit of the doubt.”

“You're a sweet man,
Herr Rowww-lings
, no matter what they say.”

Richard took a deep breath. “I've been thinkin' about you, me and Dennis, mano-a-mano, cross country.”

This was inevtiable. He had the will.
But would he go alone?

“Dennis just put an extra tank in the 550. That thing'll do 700 miles without a refuel, and I just got this Cannonball book by that Yates guy, and he's talking about the record being 32:51. So I'm wondering, where'd you get 32:07? When we gonna see this movie?”

“Funny you should ask. Around the same time as my book. October, or right after.”

“Hmm, sure is a long time. So whaddya think? A real race cross-country. Me and Dennis are busy this summer with Bullrun, so what about, say, October or November?”

“That's
exactly
what I was thinking.”

“Alex, I'm real curious, though, 32:07…man, you seen proof?”

“Richard, that's a long story.”