We were approaching a long line of large, enclosed, low-slung trailers, their gaping mouths looking like whales poised to swallow the cars crouching before them. Under an assortment of colorful flags advertising STP, Chevrolet, NAPA, and others, groups of men and women in overalls scurried around the cars. Several of them had radios clipped to their belts, with wires running to headsets slung around their necks.
Sammie nodded toward one of them as he jogged by. “What’s with the radios?” A sense of intense purpose was palpable all around us. Everyone was serious and focused, with minimal laughing or joking. To our right, barred from sight by the embankment holding the curve, the racetrack emitted an undulating high-pitched howling.
“Each of the drivers is connected to a spotter. As the cars go around the track, the spotters tell the drivers who’s ahead, whether they’re clear to cut back into line, and other things the driver can’t really tell. They’re moving at eighty-five miles an hour sometimes-twelve seconds every lap. Takes concentration. Here’s Mullen’s car.”
We stopped before a dark blue car bedecked with advertisements, its flimsy hood open to reveal a huge engine unlike anything available in a normal car. The steering wheel had been removed to allow easier access for the driver.
This time, I didn’t show my shield to the young woman coming out of the trailer with a tool in her hand. “Danny around?” I asked.
“Yeah. Up in the stands somewhere.”
We walked along the rows of cars to a chain-link fence enclosing the concrete stands mounted into the hillside. A white-haired deputy sheriff stood by the open gate.
“Hey, Rob,” I greeted him as we drew near. “How you been?”
His craggy face split into a wide smile. “Joe, by God. Haven’t seen you in years. How you been? How’s Leo?”
“He’s fine. Still cutting meat over in Thetford, living with our mom.” I introduced him to Sammie and asked if he’d seen Danny Mullen. He directed us to the upper reaches of the stands.
We climbed the paved path bordering the stands, shading our eyes against the floodlights above the crowd. The higher we got, the more the track dropped away below us, until we could see the entire layout, strung with bare bulbs, circled again and again by a mad pack of jostling race cars filling the air with their screaming. The two curves of the track were nicknamed the Launching Pad and the Widow Maker, and as each car approached either one or the other, I remembered various accidents I’d seen here over the years-miraculously none of them fatal.
I closed my eyes for a split second and let the sounds alone hold sway, recalling how the street stocks squealed more than the late models, since their wheels were configured like those of a regular car. Late models are designed only for tracks like this, and have their right front wheels canted in at an angle to put more rubber on the road during a tight left turn. At eighty miles an hour, the pressure on that one wheel can reach two tons. The point of the exercise, of course, is better contact, which means late models don’t squeal as much as their smaller, lighter, more home-built counterparts.
From the sound alone, therefore, I knew I was hearing the same kind of car Leo had worked on in the family barn for hours on end, dreaming of the day he’d qualify for the big leagues.
“What’re you doing?” Sammie’s voice in my ear cut through the cheering, the nonstop loudspeaker chatter, and the deafening sound of the engines.
“Sorry-reminiscing.” I looked once more at the vehicles below, noticing how each driver seemed isolated and alone in his or her cockpit, as if maneuvering a spaceship through an asteroid shower.
I resumed climbing alongside a crowd remarkable only for its normalcy-all blue jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps, with a smattering of older folks, the men sporting suspenders stretched over comfortable guts.
We didn’t have any luck finding Mullen. The current race came to an end, a “Victory Lane” banner was quickly rigged on the track facing the crowd, and the announcer grabbed a mike and proclaimed the teenage winner, who was so enthused he leapt onto his car and jumped up and down on the roof. The whole ceremony was over in minutes flat, the banner was removed, and before we’d reached the bottom again, the pace car, sporting a flashing yellow light bar and a boldly painted “Cody Chevrolet” sign, was already positioning to lead the next field of cars, this time late models.
As we cut away from the stands and passed before the crowded concession booth, heading back toward the gate, I saw Rob gesture to us from his post. I waved back as he yelled, “He just went by. I told him you were looking for him.”
But in that instant, I was no longer thinking about Danny Mullen. Attracted by Rob’s yelling over the line of cars behind him, a man straightened from laboring over a late model’s engine and looked up in our direction.
It was Walter Freund, dressed as one of Mullen’s pit crew.
Sammie saw him, too, and immediately began running.
Freund’s reaction was fast and lethal. He sprinted toward us, reached Rob in five steps, and chopped him on the side of the neck, felling him like an ox. He then pulled the old man’s revolver from its holster.
“Gun,” I yelled at Sammie ahead of me.
Sam swerved as Walter aimed and fired a round, her feet slipping on the inclined walkway and causing her to slide like a home-base runner into several men coming out of the rest room. I crouched quickly, steadied my elbow on my knee, and drew a bead on Walter. Too many people were standing behind him for me to risk a shot.
“Police. Drop the gun,” I yelled.
Instead, he shot carelessly at me and then broke for the car parked next to the one he’d been working on, temporarily losing himself in the crowd.
I jogged up to Sammie, who was already fighting off several helping hands. “He’s gone for a car.”
We bolted for the gate, where Rob still lay prostrate, surrounded by a confused crowd of gawking people. The gunshots had blended without notice into the sound of crackling exhausts, so many who’d actually seen Walter fire still didn’t understand what had happened.
I paused long enough to check Rob’s pulse. His other hand reached up and swatted me away. “Get the bastard,” he said, “I’m fine.”
There was a small explosion of sound from where Walter had disappeared, and a yellow late model suddenly leapt backward into the service road paralleling the pits, scattering people like chickens under attack. I saw Walter’s grim face through the plastic windshield as he wrenched the steering wheel around to straighten the car out.
He had but one way to go. Due to the line of cars behind him and the crowd clogging the service road, the only outlet was the entrance to the track. Spewing twin clouds of acrid blue smoke, his car burst toward that direction, almost hitting Sammie and me as it sped past.
Incongruously, we both gave chase on foot, guns out, topping the small embankment enclosing the track just as Walter skidded onto its surface, cutting off the pace car and causing the entire pack behind it to scatter, brakes and tires squealing. To the sound of several collisions, I reached the pace car’s passenger door, pulled it open, and yelled at the astonished driver, “Police. We have to stop that man.”
Sammie piled into the back seat as I slid into the front, and the driver-a young man with a sudden broad smile on his face-took off much as Walter had moments before.
Again, our quarry’s options were limited. He couldn’t make the loop and head back out the entrance chute, since a tangle of race cars was now blocking his way. The grandstands, a tall fence, and a hill cut off other potential exits, so, about halfway down the length of the track, he did the only thing left to him-he cut violently to the right, vaulted over the lip of the track, and took off across the grass toward the parking lots, two rooster tails of dirt marking his progress.
Laughing by now, our driver followed suit. I could hear Sammie behind me being thrown around like a rag doll.