The Driver

by Alexander Roy

  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.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Two Minutes to Midnight

  What about the police?

  Although I’d taken criminology and urban planning in college, and although I’d tried to apply these to studies of traffic congestion in scholarly journals such as Transportation, Econometrica, and the American Economic Review, no researcher had ever investigated their convergence with gross flouting of the law by large groups of high-speed cars.

  Short of planning a bank heist on a mafioso’s secret account, my task was the world’s coolest, most gratuitous, and illegal homework assignment of all time.

  I intuited two schools of Gumball Driving Theory.

  Lone Wolves drove alone, set their own pace, and ignored the primary route suggested by Gumball and taken by the majority of entrants.

  Convoyers drove in groups of similar cars and/or like-minded drivers, and followed the recommended route.

  Lone Wolves, if far enough ahead of other wolves or convoys—whether on the same or a parallel route—might avoid police who had not yet been alerted to Gumball’s impending passage or the location of the next checkpoint. Lone Wolves, however, risked being caught alone to bear the full brunt of one or more potentially very unhappy police officers.

  Convoyers, like pack prey trying to avoid predators, might avoid police if the convoy was sufficiently numerous relative to pursuing police, especially if the convoyer’s vehicle was less conspicuous than other convoyers’. Convoyers, however, risked capture by larger numbers of police cars alerted in advance to their passage by the very strategy behind which they hoped to pass unharmed—the convoy’s size.

  Team Polizei had to control its own destiny. Team Polizei would be a Lone Wolf. The key was getting out ahead, preferably on an alternate route as far away as possible from other Gumballers.

  This was how—other than investigating San Francisco’s exit routes—I spent my waking hours in the four days before the other Gumballers arrived. This was why, upon returning from BMW right before the Gumball Driver Briefing, I was possessed by a single thought: parking strategy.

  Had I parked in the garage, the M5 would have been trapped among dozens of cars and hundreds of fans blocking any effort to move the car to a more advantageous position on the starting grid in front of the Fairmont.

  Screw the garage.

  I hit the M5’s police lights (in European yellow/green rather than U.S. blue/red), turned onto Mason Street, and headed toward the hotel. The SFPD officers instantly gave my Polizei M5 the thumbs-up and lifted the barricade. “Love the green lights!” one of the cops yelled as I rolled past at 5 mph.

  The street was clear all the way to the start line. I might even be able to park at the start line. In my peripheral vision I glimpsed—with sudden optimism—a girl with long dark hair running toward my car.

  “I’m sorry!” said the gorgeous cat-eyed Gumball staffer, “but you can’t park here just yet. You must return to the garage.”

  “Max told me to park here,” I lied. Then, suddenly remembering an honest, legitimate reason, said, “I’m carrying one of Gumball movie-camera guys.”

  She looked at me skeptically, then at the AutobahnPolizeiVerfolgungAchtungM5, then ordered me to park among what someone higher up felt were lesser entrants—a burgundy Lotus Elise, a stock-grey Porsche 996 convertible, a heavily modified blue Subaru WRX, a silver Nothelle-modified Jaguar S-Type, and a gigantic bright blue Kenworth biodiesel-powered semi.

  This could turn out to have serious consequences.

  I’d parked at the north end of the block—Mason Street ran southbound—which meant the start line was at the other end, which meant, counting only the cars on the east side of the street, we’d leave in approximately tenth position. If Gumballers staged on the street’s west side, we’d be twentieth. If the cars still in the garage formed a grid in the street’s two open lanes, we’d be fortieth off the line.

  Or worse.

  I pushed through the revolving doors to find hundreds of fans gawking at the now two dozen Gumball cars lined up on both sides of the street, with still more lining up to pass through the police tape.

  Like a cloud of moths descending upon a row of lanterns, the crowds surrounded the cars as each beeped one by one with alarms being deactivated. Before the drivers could open their doors, they were mobbed by camera-toting fans begging for just one shot, then another, and another, until they’d shot every permutation of Gumballers, rally girlfriends, Gumball cars, SFPD, smiling sons, bored wives, sighing daughters, slow-moving grandparents, and crying babies.

  Whereas my first thought was annoyance at being unable to move the car, most of the Gumballers were overwhelmingly delighted at their new-found celebrity. They delayed what I considered critical last-minute preparations.

  I suddenly realized I’d so far missed the point of this singularly fantastic spectacle—perhaps even of
Gumball itself. Casting aside my notions of a secret race within Gumball, the Gumball event was clearly both different from and more than what I expected. The cars were amazing, and to have so many travel from the farthest garages and seaports and runways, now here in one place, at one time, was utterly surreal.

  In the bright sun they shone—Lamborghinis the yellow of fresh sunflowers, Ferraris in apple red, a Prowler as purple as ripe plums, Mercedes and Bentleys black as night’s water, Porsches silver as a ring gifted on one knee, a Lotus the burgundy of Loire grapes, and a sea of blues—one Morgan the impenetrable blue of the deepest Pacific, another the translucent blue of Caribbean shallows, my BMW the blue of Atlantic dawns.

  Their owners glowed, too, cheeks flushed with pride and enthusiasm and bluster.

  Children ran laughing as the SFPD took chase to prevent their climbing upon the lower-profile Lamborghinis and Ferraris—their raked hoods especially inviting to tiny sneaker-clad feet.

  I was suddenly filled with those very children’s wonder and excitement, and even at a distance I saw the same joy in so many Gumballers’ faces—Collins, Rawlings, Eyhab, Morgan, and others I didn’t yet know—beside their cars, mingling with fans.

  The gravitational center of the Gumball universe, his shock of light brown hair waving in the late afternoon breeze, our strangely calm P. T. Barnum—Maximillion Cooper—moved slowly through the crowd, answered questions, shook hands with fans, and wished the drivers good luck.

  A line of bellhops, hotel staff, and SFPD began politely pushing the crowd back from the driveway entrance.

  Maher spotted me, waved his arms, and pointed aggressively toward the M5.

  “There goes that crazy guy with the police car,” said one of the Englishmen as I walked away.

  “Straight to jail,” said the other.

  “Everything okay?” I said to Maher as we converged at the M5.

  “Totally.” He beamed. “You?”