Sammie Martens was prodded out of her silence as we walked down the hall, heading back toward the parking lot. “Danny Mullen-that any relation to the speaker of the House?”
I gave her a broad smile. “His brother.”
28
The return drive from St. Albans was as animated as its counterpart had been glum. From being virtually mute, Sammie was almost back to her old self again, as stimulated as I was by the unexpected mention of Danny Mullen’s name.
“What a weird twist,” she said once we’d regained the interstate. “How do you think Danny connects to all this?”
“Maybe not at all,” I had to admit.
“You saying it’s a coincidence?” Her voice was incredulous. “Pinning Resnick’s death on Reynolds would’ve directly benefited Mark Mullen. Danny probably told his brother to use Walter for the job. I mean, look at the sequence: Mark Mullen’s coming off the peak of his game-running out of time to become governor. If he doesn’t move now, when Howell’s retiring on his own, he’ll not only lose his best shot at that job but probably the speakership, too, since his support’s eroding fast. Then all of a sudden, Reynolds pops up as heir apparent, complete with headline-grabbing bill. No wonder things escalated from a screwed-up break-in, to a rumor campaign, to finally pinning a murder rap on the guy. Mullen must’ve been desperate.”
“He didn’t seem desperate when I met him,” I said. “And he doesn’t look in bad shape now, just using old-fashioned politics. The Reynolds Bill is dead, his version of it is gaining more and more acceptance, and he’s rising in the polls. If anything, the rumor-mongering and the klutzy murder frame helped Reynolds early on. He started running out of gas after they’d been proven false.”
Sammie was so worked up she was almost bouncing in her seat. “That’s the way things turned out, maybe, but the Mullens didn’t know that at the time. You’re not just going to write off Danny’s involvement, are you?”
“No. But I’m not going to jump to the conclusion that the speaker of the House murdered some truck driver to get the drop on a political opponent. What Richie West told us is definitely interesting and needs chasing down, but you’ve got to admit, we’re going to have to work to make a case out of it.”
Sammie crash-dived into her previous mood, staring out the side window without uttering a word.
“You ever been to a racetrack before?” I asked, hoping to bring her back.
“No.”
“Thunder Road’s right on the way. We could make it a cultural experience.”
She turned and looked at me, smiling slightly. “You think Mullen’ll be there?”
“You heard the man-he never misses a race. Maybe he’d be up for a little chat.”
Thunder Road is located in the hills above Barre, covering one hundred and sixty acres. It represents a Vermont never seen in the tourist brochures and yet captures better than most the true essence of the state. It is an irony that Vermont is so well-known for skiing the locals can’t afford, maple sugar they have to sell, and photo-op cows that have all but disappeared. In fact, Vermont is a blue-collar state, only minimally agricultural, marked by marginal incomes, low education investment, small manufacturing, and heavy welfare rolls. Unemployment isn’t too bad, but the kinds of jobs those numbers represent are not the stuff of careers. When Vermonters are asked what they do for a living, more often than not they answer, “Everything.”
Thunder Road was made for them, and it is fitting that it sits above a hardscrabble, working-class, melting-pot town built around the extraction of granite from the surrounding mountains. Stock car racing really boomed in Vermont following World War Two, when energy, optimism, and access to cars were suddenly rampant. There were some eighteen tracks in the state back then, creating a gypsy-like aura of tough, hard-driving, independent, family-supported racers who wandered from event to event, putting up with brutal, primitive, often dangerous conditions, all for the thrill of a near-death experience, a resurgence of the camaraderie born in battle, and a few bucks in winnings. It quickly became a tradition passed from father to son-and lately, to daughter.
It also became a financial phenomenon the locals couldn’t exploit. Before long, the southern states had taken over the sport, using more money, better PR, and far better year-round weather to transform a madcap backfield pastime into a multimillion-dollar national passion.
Nowadays, there are just three racetracks in Vermont, two of them dirt. Thunder Road is the best of a small bunch.
It is also unassuming. Driving into one of the several grass parking lots, hunting for an open slot, I was struck once again by the small footprint the track made on its surroundings. The few buildings-housing ticket sellers, food concessions, announcers, and the like-were modest wooden structures built of plywood and two-by-fours. The track itself was paved, as were the access roads and the pit area, but they were all hemmed in by woods, fields, and grassy hills instead of any commercialized development. And the stands-a spread of concrete steps reminiscent of an ancient Greek amphitheater-were set into the flank of a steep grassy slope running the length of one side of the track. The total effect was more reminiscent of a semipermanent community picnic site than of a forty-year-old institution visited by up to five thousand spectators per night.
But that rural quaintness was visual only. To the ear, there was no mistaking what the enterprise was all about. Sam and I got there late, as the light was beginning to fade, and the races had been running for several hours. The air reverberated with the scream of high-test engines, the squeal of tires, and the rattle-and-pop of other cars waiting in line for the next event. The breeze over the parking lot was thick with the acrid smell of burnt rubber and exhaust. Sammie and I walked to the entrance gate and showed our shields to the ticket-taker.
“Is Danny Mullen around tonight?” I asked.
She smiled brightly, seemingly unfazed by our identities. “Yup. Never misses a night. You’ll have to find him yourselves, though. God knows where he’s at. Unless you want to use the PA.”
“No, no,” I quickly answered. “He’s not racing?”
“He pretty much gave that up. He’s got a team, though. You could ask them-they’re parked with the other late models, up against the hill.”
“Walter Freund around, too?” Sammie asked suddenly.
The woman looked at us blankly. “He a driver?”
Sam shook her head. “Never mind.”
As we followed the edge of the access road leading to the pit area, I asked her, “You think Walter’s here?”
“Not really. Just thought I’d ask. What did she mean by ‘late models’?”
“They race three classes of car here: street stocks, which are four-cylinder jobs mostly run by local teenagers. Intermediates, which they call ‘Flying Tigers,’ I guess from World War Two days-they’re a little pricier and have some high-end equipment on them-and the late models. They’re what you see on TV. They come from all over, travel the country in special enclosed trailers, do about forty races a year, and basically try to make a living at it. They start at around twenty-five thousand dollars and have full support teams. When I used to help my brother Leo try to commit suicide this way, it was all pretty crude-no brakes, no rules, no floorboards, and some chicken wire to stop you from flying into the woods. Nowadays they use computers to calculate the jacking bolts, suspension, fuel loads. It’s all geometry and physics, and they fool with it nonstop, all night long. Not the street stocks, though,” I added, as we passed several of them being worked on by their youthful tenders. “They’re pretty much reduced to playing with tire pressure.” I pointed ahead. “Those are the ones I was talking about.”