John D. MacDonald
Death Is a Lap Ahead
Chapter I
Whitey Edison turned in the seat and looked out the rear window of the sedan at the sleek yellow flanks of the racing car which followed with driverless docility. The tarp was roped snugly down over the cockpit, and it rolled on rubber that was useless on the track.
“She follows nice, Whitey,” Bob Oliver said. “I can hardly feel her.”
The speedometer needle hung at fifty. Whitey turned back and looked at the road ahead, then at the oddly heavy wrists of young Bob Oliver.
The kid had a sweet touch on a wheel.
Whitey Edison let his heavy body sag in the seat and half closed his eyes against the afternoon sun. He felt a dull and constant alarm, mingled with surprise that after so many years he should once again be heading for a track, an iron in tow. His wide red face under the thinning thatch of white hair showed a remaining hint of the recklessness which it had held in youth.
If it hadn’t been for the kid’s old man...
The puzzled young voice broke into his thoughts. “What’s eating on you, Whitey?”
“How do you mean, kid?”
“Well, you act like we were heading for a wake instead of for first prize money at the Acme meet.”
Whitey knew that it was the time to give Bob Oliver the full story. Not that it was a pretty story. But the kid should know. Whitey Edison. For a few years they had called him Madman Edison, and he had grinned at the name. With a little better luck he’d have placed first on the bricks on Memorial Day back there in 1933.
Steve Jantz and Whitey Edison. Always jockeying for position, carrying tight competition to all the tracks in the land, plants roaring down the stretches, good friends once the checkered flag flashed down.
O.K., boy, so you edged me in this one. Wait until next week at Miami. Remember how I cleaned you in California?
The same tracks and the same drinks and the same girls.
Steve Jantz had gotten it on a sunny Saturday afternoon on the south curve of a slick macadam track in Louisiana. One of the kids they had both lapped had broken an oil line. Steve’s deck had started to swing when his rubber hit the oil smear on the macadam. In horrified fascination Whitey had watched it swing, seemingly in slow motion. Steve’s Special had sent the white boards flying and it had continued on then, in a slow parabola, smashing with sickening force into the shoulder of rock beyond. With a lurid blast of orange flame, a roil of blue-black smoke, and the thinnest whisper of a scream, Steve Jantz had departed this world.
No more riding Steve’s tail on the turns, stealing his girls, sticking him with bills at the hotels. No more Steve.
When Steve got it, Whitey’s foot had lifted off the gas and he had drifted around to the pit, half falling out of the car, stopping to vomit in the dust and oil.
And he had never had it again. Time trials, sure. But not competition. He couldn’t pass a car. Always it seemed ready to sway, whip the deck around, smash the life from the driver...
He had begun to drink more steadily then. He drank the car away, got a pit monkey job, began to pick up motor lore, acquire cleverness in his blunt fingers. It was a race to see whether the liquor would get him before he became a first class mech. He became a top mech, and lasted about a year. Then, drunk on the job, he had forgotten to tighten down a couple of front end bolts. Len Cassidy, the driver, had spent six months flat on his back as a result. And no one would hire Whitey Edison. “That soak? Brother, you wanna die, go jump out a window. It costs less.”
So Whitey Edison had drifted down and down, working a week here, two weeks there in tank town garages, spending every cent on liquor and forgetfulness.
By the time he hit Brooksport, he was on bottom. Alcoholic ward. Stan Oliver, the kid’s old man, had once been a soak and had straightened out. He wanted to help others. And he had never told the kid that he had found Whitey Edison in a ward and had slowly brought him back to life.
The first day Whitey could hold a wrench he had gone to work in the old man’s garage. Stan Oliver had said, “Whitey, some men can’t paint pictures. Some men can’t build bridges. You and I — why, we can’t drink.”
And so the cure had lasted for four years. Bob Oliver had started to hang around the garage. The kid was crazy about auto racing. He found out that Whitey had been a driver. And a mech. In the fall they had started building the yellow wagon. The body had cost four hundred, battered and used. While Bob had hammered and sanded and rubbed and painted, Whitey had worked on the power plant, starting with a racing block, hand lapping the parts, setting in the overhead cams. Together they had designed and welded the frame.
But Bob had the idea that Whitey had just gotten a little old for the racing game. The kid didn’t know the story. Whitey knew that the kid should hear the story from him. If any of the old-timers were at the Acme Meet, they’d tell the kid quick enough.
But how do you tell a kid that you lost your nerve? How do you make him understand how it is to look at foul smoke rolling up and see in that smoke the strong brown hands, the quiet gray eyes, the good laugh of the guy you buddied around with for a couple of years?
Whitey tried to be firm with himself, but he found himself grinning at the kid and saying, “If I’m quiet, Bob, it’s because I’m worrying about winning.”
“With me driving the car? Don’t worry one little bit, Whitey.”
Whitey saw, in Bob, what he had been years before. Bob had something precious, something he should never lose.
“You’ll remember every trick I’ve taught you, kid?” Whitey said earnestly.
“And I’ll add a few of my own, Whitey.”
“Well, take it easy, kid. You can kill yourself if you want to, but don’t mess up the iron. It’s half mine.”
Bob laughed in quick delight. But Whitey was remembering the look in Stan Oliver’s eyes as he said, “I’m relying on you, Whitey. This stuff is in his blood. I’m hoping he’ll get over it. Just try to keep him...” Stan Oliver had fumbled for the right words, found none, turned abruptly on his heel and walked back toward the grease racks.
Whitey turned again and looked at the yellow hull, the flaring vents. It was a sweet little iron, hot, steady and stable. Guts to spare. They had learned that out on the quiet road where Whitey had found a curve of the proper width, the proper pitch.
With Bob watching, he had settled his bulk behind the wheel, taken the push from the sedan, roared down to the curve and hit it almost wide open, letting up just a hair on the gas, down to the floor again as he roared out of the curve.
At night they had pored over position diagrams, Whitey saying as he pushed the little oblongs of cardboard around. “O.K., Bob. This is you. You’re third. Ten laps to go. You and those two cars are about to lap this car here. He’s riding high on the curve. What do you do?”
“Cut low on the curve?”
“Hell no! They’d bounce you off the track. Stay on his tail, right in his slipstream almost all the way around. Say right to here. Then gun it down to the rail hard and fast with legal clearance and pass him in the stretch. But don’t forget to make sure you’re clear on the left when you cut down.”
“I got it now, Whitey.”
And Whitey had drilled him until he knew that the boy’s knowledge of strategy was etched into him so deeply that in a box he’d pick the right move every time.
In a way it was like racing again. Bob had, in some odd way, become an extension of himself. An extension not subject to his fears. Bob was lean and compact, with big strong wrists, good hands, 20–12 vision and enough courage for three men. When he looked at Whitey the devotion was so clear in his blue eyes that it made Whitey feel ashamed.