I drive a Q-ship, myself. Unless you know exactly what to look and listen for, Car seems to be a buttstock 1957 Chevy, a stark black-and-white two-door sedan without even a set of fancy wheel covers to jazz her up. Yet they put us right up front, behind the limos. Joe’s family insisted. I guess it was because I’d been there through those wild first hours after Joe and his fiancee, Linda Bell, had been killed, and that I’d been the cop who’d finally sorted it all out.
There were other reasons, too, I guess.
It started the same way it ended, with a line of sharp street iron rolling beneath a bright California sun. The reason had been far different, though, an open Rod Run organized by Joe’s car club, the Pasadena Royals, a Saturday opportunity for a bunch of L.A. basin rodneys to gather, socialize, and show off their wheels.
We’d rallied at Larry’s Drive-in on Foothills Boulevard and had moved out before noon, rolling east in a pipe-rapping convoy for El Cajon Pass. A cold drink and a cool-off stop had followed at the Summit Inn up on Route 66, and then we started the long climb up the rear slope of the San Gabriel range, following the winding concrete thread of the Angeles Crest Highway. With the passage of summer, the mountains were greening up once more, and the air had a touch of autumn’s bite to it. It was a good day for enjoying the road.
Our eventual target was a Forest Service picnic ground below Josephine Peak. A spot that provided both a good place for an open-air supper and an overview of the distant city and sunset. Parking spaces were found, blankets were spread under the pine trees, and wives and girlfriends unloaded baskets and coolers. Church keys popped, car radios dialed in to rock-’n’-roll, and the bench-racing began.
There was talk about new speed techniques and old races. Times from the last El Mirage speed meet were compared, and threats issued as to what records were going to fall on the next go-round. The National Hot Rod Association’s ban on nitromethane fuels for the 1957-58 drag season was hashed over... again. (The ice-cream rodders protested that Wally Parks really hadn’t sold his soul to the devil and the insurance companies while we greasy ol’ outlaws bitched that if you don’t intend to go as fast as you can, why the hell bother to race in the first place?) As usual, no agreement was reached.
I was running stag that day, so I marauded, making the rounds, shooting the breeze, and treating the various picnic spreads like a smorgasbord. On towards dessert time, I found myself thinking about Linda Bell’s vanilla fudge brownies.
Joe and Linda had picked a shady spot well back from the parking area and most of the crowd. Probably it wasn’t the quintessence of couth to go crashing the engaged couple’s private party, but the lure of those brownies was strong.
I didn’t have to worry. Joe and Linda were the sociable type and I readily received an invite to both a corner of their blanket and their brownie plate.
“So, when do we get to meet this new mystery girl of yours, Kevin?” Linda asked as I enjoyed the bounty.
“Lisette? Oh, pretty quick, I guess,” I replied. “She’s found an art school she likes and we’ve got her an apartment lined up. She’d be here now except for some legal business she had to wrap up back in Gary.”
“What’s this living doll of yours like, Kev?” Joe asked, propping himself up on one elbow.
I didn’t mind him asking. I like talking about Lisette. Since we’ve connected, she’s become a favorite topic of mine. “Well, let me put it this way, man. Once the princess is out here to stay, you’re going to be marrying the second prettiest girl in Los Angeles. No offense, Linda.”
“None taken.” Linda chuckled. Linda was one of those fiery red-gold redheads, her big blue eyes backed up by a scattering of freckles over her snub Irish nose.
Joe laughed, resting a hand on Linda’s knee. “That I gotta see to believe.” Blunt-featured, solid, and stocky, Joe always seemed a little amazed that a totally gone dish like Linda had fallen for him. The truth was, Joe was a pretty worthwhile character. Hard-working, good-natured, and as dependable as a Stovebolt 6, he was the kind of guy the smart ladies go for in the long run. And Linda was a very smart lady.
Joe was also a boss car man. A mainstay of the Royals, he’d built himself one perilously mean ’55 Corvette roadster. In drag racing he didn’t quite have the reflexes to be a real killer coming off the line, but get up there in the high end and brother, you had to beat him off with a club.
“I don’t know, Joe.” Linda giggled. “Kev sounds like he might be developing a pretty bad case over his princess. Maybe we should start planning a double wedding?”
I just grinned and shrugged. There are still a whole lot of “we’ll see’s” tied up with the lady Lisette. She’s a different breed of kitten. But one of these days we’ll see.
Just then, a pretty credible panther scream sounded behind us and a wiry figure hurtled out of the underbrush. Crashing down at the edge of the blanket, he deftly scored the last brownie right out from under my fingers.
If you hung around with Joe enough you got used to this kind of thing. “Hiya, runt,” I grunted. “Where were they carrying you? In the trunk?”
Joe’s sixteen-year-old younger brother, Danny, rolled onto his back and grinned at my hassling. Tow-headed and as skinny as his bro was stocky, he was clad in the classic uniform of the California hot rodder: jeans, engineer’s boots, and a T-shirt. “No way, man. I got my own wheels now.”
I quaked in horror. “Godfry Daniels! Tell me it isn’t true!”
“It is.” Joe nodded proudly. “As of the last meeting, Dan-O here is the newest official member of the Royals.”
“Jeez! You guys are letting anybody in these days! Whatcha runnin’, kid?”
“A ’thirty-seven Ford coupe.” Danny let the year and make roll off his tongue with as much pride as if he’d been saying “Bentley Continental” or “Mercedes 300.” “She’s still got the original flathead but she’s been lowered and I’ve got dual pipes and Smitties on her. Oh, and hey, Joe, I was over talking to Lenny Smith and he’ll make me a real deal on a dual Almquist manifold and a set of Strombergs...”
The smile on the kid’s face could have lit up half of the L.A. basin. At long damn last he was one of the big guys, an equal.
For just about forever, Danny had been Joe’s shadow at the dry lakes and the drag strips, a skinny, pain-in-the-butt kid, prone to playing pranks and hunting for attention. We’d all put up with him, though. I guess because we could read the wheels hunger in his eyes. That dream of the day when he’d have a hot car of his own. Hell, we’d all been there once.
“Listen, Danny,” Joe said firmly, “I already told you that the next ‘real deal’ you’re going to make is for a set of hydraulic brakes. I’ve done everything I can with those damn cablematics on your Ford and it’s not near enough. Once we get some decent binders bolted onto your heap, then we can start talking about speed parts.”
“Oh, jeez, Joe! Come on...”
I swapped headshakes with Linda as the fraternal wrangling raged. These were good people, real good people. When you make your living in law enforcement like I do, it’s important to hang around with folks like this. They remind you that there’s more to the world than the dark and dirty side of things. They also remind you about why you became a cop in the first place.
Evening drifted on, the last coke bottles and beer cans were emptied, and the sun settled into the distant Pacific with a contented sigh. A cool breeze rippled down from the crests of the San Gabes and people started packing their picnic stuff away. Engines started to kick over.