The Driver (10 page)

What about the police?

Although I'd taken criminology and urban planning in college, and although I'd tried to apply these to studies of traffic congestion in scholarly journals such as
Transportation, Econometrica,
and the
American Economic Review,
no researcher had ever investigated their convergence with gross flouting of the law by large groups of high-speed cars.

Short of planning a bank heist on a mafioso's secret account, my task was the world's coolest, most gratuitous, and illegal homework assignment of all time.

I intuited two schools of Gumball Driving Theory.

Lone Wolves
drove alone, set their own pace, and ignored the primary route suggested by Gumball and taken by the majority of entrants.

Convoyers
drove in groups of similar cars and/or like-minded drivers, and followed the recommended route.

Lone Wolves,
if far enough ahead of other wolves or convoys—whether on the same or a parallel route—
might
avoid police who had not yet been alerted to Gumball's impending passage or the location of the next checkpoint.
Lone Wolves,
however, risked being caught alone to bear the full brunt of one or more potentially
very
unhappy police officers.

Convoyers,
like pack prey trying to avoid predators,
might
avoid police if the convoy was sufficiently numerous relative to pursuing police, especially if the convoyer's vehicle was less conspicuous than other convoyers'.
Convoyers,
however, risked capture by larger numbers of police cars alerted in advance to their passage by the very strategy behind which they hoped to pass unharmed—the convoy's size.

Team Polizei had to control its own destiny. Team Polizei would be a
Lone Wolf
. The key was getting out ahead, preferably on an alternate route as far away as possible from other Gumballers.

This was how—other than investigating San Francisco's exit routes—I spent my waking hours in the four days before the other Gumballers arrived. This was why, upon returning from BMW right before the Gumball Driver Briefing, I was possessed by a single thought: parking strategy.

Had I parked in the garage, the M5 would have been trapped among dozens of cars and hundreds of fans blocking any effort to move the car to a more advantageous position on the starting grid in front of the Fairmont.

Screw the garage.

I hit the M5's police lights (in European yellow/green rather than U.S. blue/red), turned onto Mason Street, and headed toward the hotel. The SFPD officers instantly gave my
Polizei M5
the thumbs-up and lifted the barricade. “Love the green lights!” one of the cops yelled as I rolled past at 5 mph.

The street was clear all the way to the start line. I might even be able to park
at
the start line. In my peripheral vision I glimpsed—with sudden optimism—a girl with long dark hair running toward my car.

“I'm sorry!” said the gorgeous cat-eyed Gumball staffer, “but you can't park here just yet. You must return to the garage.”

“Max told me to park here,” I lied. Then, suddenly remembering an honest, legitimate reason, said, “I'm carrying one of Gumball movie-camera guys.”

She looked at me skeptically, then at the
AutobahnPolizeiVerfolgungAchtungM5,
then ordered me to park among what someone higher up felt were lesser entrants—a burgundy Lotus Elise, a stock-grey Porsche 996 convertible, a heavily modified blue Subaru WRX, a silver Nothelle-modified Jaguar S-Type, and a gigantic bright blue Kenworth biodiesel-powered semi.

This could turn out to have serious consequences.

I'd parked at the north end of the block—Mason Street ran southbound—which meant the start line was at the other end, which meant, counting only the cars on the east side of the street, we'd leave in approximately tenth position.
If
Gumballers staged on the street's west side, we'd be twentieth.
If
the cars still in the garage formed a grid in the street's two open lanes, we'd be fortieth off the line.

Or worse.

 

I pushed through the revolving doors to find hundreds of fans gawking at the now two dozen Gumball cars lined up on
both
sides of the street, with still more lining up to pass through the police tape.

Like a cloud of moths descending upon a row of lanterns, the crowds surrounded the cars as each beeped one by one with alarms being deactivated. Before the drivers could open their doors, they were mobbed by camera-toting fans begging for
just
one shot, then another, and another, until they'd shot every permutation of Gumballers, rally girlfriends, Gumball cars, SFPD, smiling sons, bored wives, sighing daughters, slow-moving grandparents, and crying babies.

Whereas my first thought was annoyance at being unable to move the car, most of the Gumballers were overwhelmingly delighted at their new-found celebrity. They delayed what I considered critical last-minute preparations.

I suddenly realized I'd so far missed the point of this singularly fantastic spectacle—perhaps even of Gumball itself. Casting aside my notions of a secret race within Gumball, the Gumball
event
was clearly both different from and more than what I expected. The cars
were
amazing, and to have so many travel from the farthest garages and seaports and runways, now
here
in one place, at one time,
was
utterly surreal.

In the bright sun they shone—Lamborghinis the yellow of fresh sunflowers, Ferraris in apple red, a Prowler as purple as ripe plums, Mercedes and Bentleys black as night's water, Porsches silver as a ring gifted on one knee, a Lotus the burgundy of Loire grapes, and a sea of blues—one Morgan the impenetrable blue of the deepest Pacific, another the translucent blue of Caribbean shallows, my BMW the blue of Atlantic dawns.

Their owners glowed, too, cheeks flushed with pride and enthusiasm and bluster.

Children ran laughing as the SFPD took chase to prevent their climbing upon the lower-profile Lamborghinis and Ferraris—their raked hoods especially inviting to tiny sneaker-clad feet.

I was suddenly filled with those very children's wonder and excitement, and even at a distance I saw the same joy in so many Gumballers' faces—Collins, Rawlings, Eyhab, Morgan, and others I didn't yet know—beside their cars, mingling with fans.

The gravitational center of the Gumball universe, his shock of light brown hair waving in the late afternoon breeze, our strangely calm P. T. Barnum—Maximillion Cooper—moved slowly through the crowd, answered questions, shook hands with fans, and wished the drivers good luck.

A line of bellhops, hotel staff, and SFPD began politely pushing the crowd back from the driveway entrance.

Maher spotted me, waved his arms, and pointed aggressively toward the M5.

“There goes that crazy guy with the police car,” said one of the Englishmen as I walked away.

“Straight to jail,” said the other.

“Everything okay?” I said to Maher as we converged at the M5.

“Totally.” He beamed. “You?”

“Still waiting on my blow-up doll.”

“What,” he said, moving only his head slightly toward me like a curious bird, “are you talking about?”

“In-car conference,” I said to Maher as I got into the driver's seat.

“You may not think so,” Maher said after he closed the door, “but I've been hard at work while you've been shopping. I got a bunch more drivers' names and phone numbers—”

“Kenworthy?”

“No,” said Maher, “but I heard he's in a silver GT2!”

“A 911 GT2?”

“With stripes on the hood and a British flag on top!”

The GT2 was the ultimate road-legal race-prepped Porsche 911/996—an ultralightweight 911 turbo with a more powerful engine and roll cage, and stripped of four-wheel drive, air-conditioning, and soundproofing. Any 911 would be conspicuous, but a silver 911 much less so among dozens of red and yellow sports cars.

“I guess,” I said, “if you're gonna go all out…”

“Now
that
”—Maher shook his head—“is a great car.”

“Yeah,” I said as he handed me his drivers' list. “Wow…All right…well, any word on an eighteen-wheeler with two Porsches? The guy with the spotter chopper?”

“That was last year's rumor.”

“I
knew
it!” I said, and slapped the steering wheel with satisfaction.

 

My inflatable doll arrived. “Finally,” I said, shoving a wad of cash into my old friend Gloria's pocket.

“Talk about short notice!” She giggled as she handed me the bright pink box whose clear front displayed a red-lipped abomination of Edvard Munch's
The Scream.
I ripped it open and laid the pink latex form over the Polizei M5's windshield.

“Sorry,” I said, “but I lost my old one, and the one I bought got a hole in it, but not the way you think.”

“If you say so.”

“Now,
you
hold her down while I blow her up. And gimme your scarf. It might look weird when I blow—”

“You
sure
have a lot of respect for women.”

Fans gathered closer in gasps and hushed disbelief as I struggled not to laugh, my lips locked to the rubber inflation spout on the back of my Chasey Lain Inflatable Fantasy Playmate Love Sex Doll.

Chasey's legs splayed across the hood, then her arms—one under mine and the other over my head. As she filled up, I laid her gloriously pink sunlit form on the hood, plastic nipples turning under Gloria's scarf into small circus tents.

One father shielded his young daughter's eyes and carried her away.

“If you have the police outfits,” said Gloria, “why do you need cute little Chasey?”

“Chasey Lain”—my chest heaved—“dragged me through a late puberty.”

“That soooooooooo can't be true!!!”

“It's my insurance,” I whispered, “in case the cops have a sense of humor.”

Five embarrassing minutes later—during which I neither laughed nor doubted my wisdom—I placed a nurse's hat on Chasey and gingerly belted her into the Polizei M5's rear left seat. The crowd stood in silence. One man took his wife's hand and muttered under his breath.

“Perfect,” said Gloria. We hugged.

“This guy rocks!” said a teenage boy.

“This guy's such an asshole,” said one bystander.

“He might be the smartest one here,” said another man. The two men turned to see who'd disagreed. A red-cheeked SFPD officer stepped out of the crowd and with a huge smile his eyes slowly moved over the Polizei M5, then Chasey, then to me, then back to the naysayers. “If you were me,” said the officer, “would
you
arrest
this
guy?” He turned and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I've got bad news,” he said, my heart dropping. “I'm outta PBA cards,
and
we got a betting pool at the station.”

“On…?”

“If you get hit for impersonating a police officer.” I froze. “Roy, right? All us guys love this Pol-eeez-eye shit you're doing. Hilarious.”

“But…what,” I gasped, “are my odds?”

“I'm not gonna lie. Bottom-of-a-well bad. Highway patrol ain't like city cops. The good news is I've got fifty bucks says you make it.”

“Well…I guess…”

“You should smile more,” he said, “so they'll get the joke. I'll give you a coupla my cards with my number. Not as good as a PBA, but ya never know. Now get your chin up and do your thing.” He took my right hand in both of his, shook it vigorously, gave me the steely look of a man I'd go to war with, and walked away.

I started up the engine, a muted thrum drowning the noise beyond what would be my world for the next five days. Curious faces peered in through the windows, handprints large and small smearing visibility to both sides, muted voices in deep discussion over my next move. I powered up the dash-top-mounted Polizei gear—in full, public view—for the first time, setting off a medley of electronic beeps, alarms, and chimes.

A high school football player knocked on my half-open window. Although I could little afford distraction from my work, I remembered my childhood excitement when my father took me to see the jets streaking skyward at the Paris Air Show, or during New York's Fleet Week aboard the steel-gray monolith that was the flight deck of the U.S.S.
Carl Vinson
. I remembered that—until 24 hours earlier—I was merely a fan, and that I wouldn't even be a
real
Gumballer until the flag dropped in less than 2 hours.

“Yo, dude!” said the teen. “What
is
all that stuff?”

“Get in the passenger seat and I'll show you.”

“Can I bring my girl?”

“In the back,” I said, “but watch out for the sex doll.”

It took them a full minute to get through the jealous crowd surrounding the car, open both right side doors without bumping anyone, and get in.

“This,” I began, pointing to the small box suction-mounted to the windshield just left of my rearview mirror, “is a Valentine 1 radar/laser detector, the best one made. If you see a car here with anything else, it's amateur night.”

“Some of your buddies”—he shook his head—“were
just
asking where to buy a detector.”

“They're screwed,” I said. “Valentines are mail-order only. This,” I said, pointing to the small controls left of my steering wheel, “is for a Lidatek LE 20/20 laser jammer system, effective against 97 percent of police laser guns in the U.S.”

“Is that legal?”

“If I'm caught that's the least of my problems. Now
that
”—I pointed below the glove box—“is a Uniden BC520XL CB radio, for talking to trucks. Magnetic mount antenna goes on the roof.”