The Driver (9 page)

Only someone with a limited budget—
or Frankl's experience
—drove an EVO.

“What color?” I said.

“Yellow.” Maher shook his head.

A veteran? In a yellow car?
“Are you sure?” I said.

“I saw it in the garage.”

“Frankl better pray the cops are color-blind.”

Maybe Frankl wasn't so smart after all. But wait—Frankl was English. He didn't care. Anything short of arrest would have no effect on his license. Frankl was now Polizei Enemy number three.

The Koenigsegg duo walked past.

“I heard that one of the Koenigsegg guys,” I whispered, “said to someone he was gonna kick ass, and
that
someone said, ‘Even those crazy guys in the police car?' and you know what the Koenigsegg guy said?”

“Just tell me.”

“He said, ‘Oh, that piece of shit?'”

Maher nodded. “Let's just see how far that Koenigsegg makes it.”

There
. You see that fortyish redhead in the black leather jacket? That's Alison Cornea. Big Microsoft exec. Rumor is she just got divorced, bought a brand-new M5, and signed up for Gumball. “Gray M5, license plate
M-TROUBLE
. But we still have to find the
big
drivers. Keep a look out for Kenworthy. I want to know what he's in. And Kim Schmitz.”

“I heard Schmitz isn't coming,” said Maher. “I heard he was in jail.”

“I think a lot of these guys are gonna be in jail before the week's up.” We had $3,500 ready for fines, court fees, lawyer fees, bail, bribery, and as-yet-unknown miscellaneous emergency Gumball expenses. “But not us, Maher, not us.”

 

“Did you hear about the after-party?” said a French-accented girl behind me.

Maher nodded and silently mouthed
Let's go
.

This was going to be a long night.

THURSDAY, APRIL
17, 2003
GUMBALL START DAY

“Good morning, Mr. Roy! This is your eight
A.M
. wake-up call.”

BEEP BEEP BEEP went the alarm I'd set—just in case.

“I hate you, Roy,” Maher groaned, then turned and pulled the pillow over his head.

In the middle of the night, half asleep, I overheard him on the phone describing how good the party had been. On his behalf I reset the alarm for 11
A.M
.—enough time for him to complete our research.

Quietly I slipped on—for the first time since purchase—my dark blue Polizei pants with the yellow highway patrol stripes, then a white Polizei officer's shirt with “144” and “GB3K” collar dogs, then a dark blue wool Polizei sweater with German flags on each sleeve. If I was ever going to be beaten up, shot, or arrested, today was the day.

It was time for the M5's final refuel before that night's Gumball flag drop. I presumed
everyone
would sneak out for one last refuel, if only to avoid traffic jams at what few gas stations lay between the Fairmont and any one of the city's exit points I'd scouted.

The slow, lazy, or hungover might spend the first hour of Gumball—one of the world's last true adventures—waiting at a gas station.

I stopped before a mirror halfway down the hall to the elevator. I stared at my cleanly shaven head, light pink blotches and streaks where I'd pressed the razor and pulled in long impatient strokes. I wondered why I alone, bleary-eyed and starving, up at 8
A.M
. while the others slept off a historic night of festivities, was rushing out to mitigate a theoretical.

Because I was not one of those people
. I
might
lose my license or insurance. I
might
lose my car. I
might
be jailed, crippled or killed, or kill someone else. I
might
never do this again.
I
wasn't going to waste time sitting at a gas station.

I sprinted to the elevator, ignored the hotel guests whose eyes pleaded with me to hold the door open for them, stabbed the “Close Door” and “Level G” buttons, ran through the cold, silent garage to my
AutobahnPolizeiInterzsceptor M5,
sped out into the street, and ran the first red light before catching myself.

 

The speed limit was 35. I cruised at 34.

Suddenly, just as I pulled into the gas station—

DING-DING-DING

—the M5's driver information display lit up below the speedometer:
radiator coolant low
.

I cursed loudly. The attendant inside stared at the uniformed bald man slamming both hands against the steering wheel of the blue police car. He quickly ran toward me, his helpful expression turning to bewilderment once he saw the car's foreign markings.

“Everything okay?” asked the attendant.

“Look under the car!”

“You got a coolant leak! You need—”

“How far is the nearest BMW dealer?”

“Four miles? I'll get you the address!”

Then, with deadly seriousness nearly smothering the utter madness of the idea—an idea that only hours later would become completely logical—my eyes fell upon the police siren and lighting controls. I could
easily
get to BMW in half the time, if only I didn't have to limp there to preserve what little coolant remained before the engine seized completely.

For the first time since 9/11, I prayed, and once again I prayed a desperate secular man's extemporaneous prayer:
Please God or Gods, bless this fake Polizei Interceptor and grant me safe passage clear of police cars on patrol, police on horseback, visiting German dignitaries and tourists, Orthodox Jews over seventy, the police chief's wife walking her dog, off-duty cops going to work, traffic police at intersections
—

Sweat poured down my neck as I pulled into BMW San Francisco—20 glacial minutes later.

“Do you have an appointment?” said the girl at the BMW customer service entrance.

I slowly removed my sunglasses. I glared directly into her eyes.

She froze, looked at my badge, then at the stack of gear on my dash, then at the
AutobahnPolizeiVerfolgungInterzsceptor M5
.

The traffic barrier began to rise.

 

“Sabotage?!” I yelled at the mechanic.

The other mechanics' heads snapped toward me like weather vanes struck from an unexpected direction.

Sabotage
obviously wasn't in the BMW factory service manual.

“It
is
weird,” said the mechanic.

I grasped my head in both hands. The mechanics and now several managers murmured and gestured toward me—an angry bald man who wore a foreign dark blue police uniform and motorcycle boots, who on his gun belt carried handcuffs and a squawking radio, who wore a silver badge on his chest and foreign flags on both sleeves. A man whose BMW M5 said
AUTOBAHNPOLIZEISTUTTGARTACHTUNG
!
on both sides. A man who spoke perfect English.

“How,” I said in a low voice, “could this happen?”

“Well, your radiator has two caps, one fill and one drain. You rolled in here with no radiator fluid 'cause the drain cap was missing.” He paused. “You in this Gumball race?” I nodded. “Well then,” he said, “that would be a
prit-eeeee
strange coincidence.”

That sealed it. Sabotage. Six hours remained until the 2003 Gumball Flag Drop.

Then, in the most sheepish tone ever used by anyone committing the crime of police impersonation, I said, “Can you help me? I'll do—”

“When does this Gumball thing start?”

“Tonight.”

“Okay…I'll give the cap free, but if you've got some time I got an idea.” This sounded bad. He nodded at the car. “You remove the 155 mph speed limiter yet?”

My calculations suggested I wouldn't need to go that fast—or faster—if Gumball was a serious endurance competition. The M5's fuel economy above 100 mph dropped faster than rock groupies' jeans. Gumball's 500-plus mile stages required an endurance racer's fuel strategy—the fewest possible gas stops, each limited to the 3 minutes and 15 seconds necessary for the M5's top-off. Theoretically, 1,000 miles at 90 mph would take less time than at 120 mph, once one subtracted time for extra fuel stops. Or so I hoped.

“No,” I said.

“I'll sell you the Dinan Stage 1 engine chip cheap. Removes the limiter. You should get it, just in case.”

“Okay. Just in case.”

Just in case I tossed my meticulously researched drive plan. I'd just surrendered to mankind's worst, most primitive instinct—subjugating reason and creativity to brute force.

“Just curious,” he said, “was this really a German police car?”

 

I wanted to believe it was an accident. I didn't want to believe any of the Gumballers I'd met—most of whom I liked—would actually sabotage my car. The last thing I wanted to believe was that any of those I'd identified as serious
racers
would do such a thing.

Sabotage.

A little piece of my heart had just been chipped away.

 

The entire BMW San Francisco staff clapped as I rolled out two hours later in my fully washed, waxed, detailed, fluid-flushed, stickered, striped, police-light and siren-equipped and operational
AutobahnPolizeiVerfolgungInterzsceptorM5
, now theoretically capable of speeds over 175 mph.

I wondered if I'd find out. I wondered if I'd
have
to find out.

I'd let Maher take that leg.

GUMBALL
3000
DRIVER BRIEFING
FAIRMONT HOTEL CONFERENCE HALL

I still didn't have a shred of proof. I knew only the official line. The Gumball 3000 wasn't a race. It was a rally.

I'd called their London office numerous times, and read every page on their website. What little information existed about long-distance, point-to-point endurance racing—all of it, every print article, every online post—mentioned the Gumball 3000. I'd studied the MTV
Jackass
episode about the 2001 London–St. Petersburg Gumball, and although Johnny Knoxville's crew clearly
weren't
racing, they repeatedly referred to “winning” and “the race,” as did numerous other drivers. Knoxville even said, “If you know the Cannonball Run…it's kind of like that.”

Online fan forums referred to “winners”—Kim “Kimble” Schmitz and Rob “Lonman” Kenworthy—but the Gumball Website only mentioned trophies for “Spirit,” “Style,” and other seemingly arbitrary categories.

And yet
—

The 2002 Gumball ran from New York to Los Angeles—a virtual duplicate of the original Cannonball Run route. The Gumball 3000 had clearly inherited both the spirit and mythology of the original Cannonball Run, which was why, despite the official denials, I'd come.

I watched the Gumballers boisterously file into the Fairmont's Louis XIV–style ballroom, their voices echoing off the high ornate ceiling. I counted at least two hundred people—drivers, copilots, serious girlfriends, rally girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, wives, Gumball crew, videographers, reporters, and fans who'd snuck in but whose fresh-faced awe gave them away. Almost all wore sneakers, jeans, and a mix of polo shirts and red Gumball T-shirts. Some donned Gumball's black-and-reflective-silver baseball caps. Some sported Gumball's bright yellow driver bracelets, and most wore Gumball photo ID card driver necklaces, a good number now messy-haired women wearing ill-fitting Gumball Ts, and last night's skirts—and pumps.

There seemed three possibilities: (1) Gumball surreptitiously ran an illegal race under the guise of a rally, (2) Gumball tacitly allowed entrants to race one another, or (3) Gumball
was
—despite rumor, myth, and gossip—merely a rally, albeit the most infamous of such perfectly legal, organized, public road events.

If The Driver wasn't here, surely he'd have sent someone. Surely.

I was certain about Rawlings, Collins, and the as-yet-unseen Lonman. There had to be more.

 

An Englishman behind me tapped on my shoulder. “You,” he said, “the bloke in the police car?”

“That's me.”

“Now 'ere's a man”—he turned to his friends—“who's really fookin' crazy!”

“Thanks,” I said quietly, suddenly feeling sheepish.

“Pay attention,” Maher said to me. “Max is coming out.”

I snapped forward to get my first good look at the infamous Maximillion Cooper, Gumball 3000's founder, about whom I knew little beyond rumors he'd raced cars and been a fashion designer. I'd spotted him at the prior night's party, but penetrating his entourage of Gumball staff girls had seemed impossible.

Max entered from a side door and stepped up onto the podium as even
this
crowd fell silent. It was as if Burt Reynolds and David Niven had been kidnapped, then in the next room forced into the DNA-merging teleporter from the sci-fi movie
The Fly,
then their lone offspring handed a potion granting eternal youth, a vertically striped red, white, and blue leather racing jacket, and a pair of light-blue-tinted sunglasses he was forbidden
ever
to remove.

Max took a microphone from a square-jawed young Gregory Peck. “Who's
that
guy?” I said to Maher.

“Handsome Dave. Gumball's Number Two. Don't talk to any girls within twenty feet of him. It's hopeless.”

“Welcome,” said Max, “to this year's Gumball 3000!”

The room erupted in clapping and cheers of joyful release. My heart quickened as I joined in, whistling and clapping until my palms turned red. The start was now less than four hours away.

“Thank you.” The noise subsided. “Thank you very much. I've already heard you've all had your own little Gumballs again getting here…”

Max paused before even louder cheers and laughter, hollers suggesting those who
really
had Gumballed here. I quickly turned to identify them.

“Pay attention,” Maher prodded me.

The noise subsided as Max raised the microphone to his mouth once again.

“Cars and people come from pretty much the whole of the world. Obviously we cater to everyone. It doesn't matter who comes in first. So the trophy we give out in Miami at the end is pretty much the Spirit of the Gumball determined throughout the week. It's always a kind of a natural given who that goes to because they've done it in the craziest way. That's the kind of thing we're into, more than who comes in first. Every morning each car will receive a route card indicating the next checkpoint. So that's it. The only rule is to get to the checkpoints safely. So have a safe drive and I hope to see all of you in Miami.”