Drive Like Hell: A Novel

by Dallas Hudgens

  We left Nick and Whitlaw alone and walked out to the crowded gym. The locals were on their feet, whistles and catcalls echoing off the cinder-block walls. The smell of popcorn and sweat hung in the air. We stood in back against the wall and waited for Nick while a couple of bruisers flopped around the ring like tunas. Needless to say, we weren’t very interested in the turnbuckle mayhem.

  “That asshole Whitlaw ain’t gonna give them a fucking dime,” Dewey said. “He’s gonna smell a rat the minute they ask.”

  Cash agreed. “No offense, Luke, but your brother doesn’t have the best instincts for this kind of shit. That’s why he’s already been to jail twice.”

  There was no disputing the scouting report. I told them I didn’t know how the hell to get Nick out of there before he fucked things up. “Maybe we should just tie him up and throw him in the trunk of the car.”

  I’d always attributed Nick’s legal disasters to other people’s shortcomings: Bev, Chuck, his bumbling defense attorneys, the guy who’d turned state’s witness after Nick’s first marijuana bust. I’d never really considered that the one constant in every case, the very straw that stirred each bitter drink, had been Nick himself.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Cash said. “If you and Dewey can hold him down, I’ll hog-tie him. We’ll just put his ass in the trunk and drive. Trust me, it’s for his own good.”

  Dewey was on board as well. “We’re all gonna end up in jail if we follow him and that drunk wrestler. All that talk about going into business, starting a pro shop…Man, Nick’s just talking off his head. This shit’s gonna end bad.”

  They left the decision to me. But in the end, I just couldn’t sign the dotted line. Maybe I did know what was best for Nick, maybe I had the better instincts, a better sense of when to flee and when to cut bait on a doomed plan. But I couldn’t see that any of it had gotten me much of anywhere. At least Nick had the balls to keep throwing shit at the wall, hoping something would stick. And besides, tossing him in the trunk of the car would have been as raw a betrayal as turning him over to Muskgrave. It just wasn’t something a brother should do.

  “Let’s give him a chance,” I said. “Maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

  Their grim faces offered little reassurance, but neither of them said a word.

  “Of course, maybe we should have a signal,” I said. “If he gets us into anything that’s looking dicey, I’ll flash a sign and we’ll put him in the trunk.”

  Cash agreed. “Don’t even worry about a signal. Just say it. It won’t matter one way or the other, once we get started. And he damn sure isn’t gonna like it any better if we’ve got some kind of signal.”

  Nick finally joined us in the gymnasium. His expression made it obvious that things had not gone well with the boss.

  “Apparently, Whitlaw knows something’s coming down. I think he’s getting ready to hightail it out of here.”

  “Did he tell you that?” I asked.

  “No, I heard it from the Masked Stallion. He said Whitlaw’s planning to fly his plane to Cabo tomorrow. He’s taking a couple of his bodyguards with him but leaving everybody else here to cover their own asses. A lot of folks are planning to hit the road tonight.”

  “So, what about your money?” Dewey asked. “Is he gonna pay you?”

  Nick mimed jerking off. “He said we could talk about it tomorrow.”

  “All right, then,” Cash said. “That pretty much settles things. You gave it a shot, now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Nick drew in a deep breath and looked at the floor. “I can still get the money. In fact, I can get it tonight.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Whitlaw keeps a load at his condo over in Destin. He’s got a safe right behind his LeRoy Neiman. He digs into it every time he goes to the dog track.”

  Dewey rubbed his chin. “I didn’t come down here to pull off a damn heist.”

  “Are you talking about breaking and entering?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Nick said. “We’ll just walk in there and ask for our money.”

  “You just asked,” Cash said. “The man’s answer was mañana.”

  Nick smiled. “I know that. But I didn’t have you guys with me when I was asking. There’s something to be said for strength in numbers.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “and there’s also something to be said for drug dealers with bodyguards.”

  Nick snorted. “You watch too damn much television. Trust me, Whitlaw’s more amateur than you think. It doesn’t take a genius to go into this business.”

  Dewey and Cash eyed me, but I couldn’t bring myself to give the signal. Our debate was cut short by the PA system, which was blaring “I Love the Nightlife” through the gymnasium.

  The announcer cut in to introduce the next match. The Panhandle Midget Championship Belt was up for grabs, with Little Dick Hoover facing off against Bawlin’ Baby Briscoe.

  Nick shushed us and pointed to the ring. “This is Eddie’s match. You gotta see this.”

  “Eddie’s not a midget,” I said.

  Nick merely grinned. “Just wait, you’ll see.”

  Little Dick entered the ring first. He wasn’t a midget either, just a short guy with a fake handlebar mustache and a wardrobe consisting of black skivvies and knee-high boots. Nick informed me that Little Dick also wrestled in the regular-size matches under the name Smiling Richard Long.

  “He’s got a pair of boots with lifts in ’em,” Nick said. “He’s about five-four when he wears those.”

  I asked Nick where in hell someone might go to buy platform wrestling boots.

  “Oh, they’re custom-made in Tallahassee. He buys them from the same guy who makes Burt Reynolds’s lifts.”

  Baby Briscoe was shorter and plumper than Little Dick and swaddled in a diaper and blue bonnet. He entered the squared circle clutching a huge nippled milk bottle and a powder blue blanket, both of which were quickly snatched away by Little Dick. Baby Briscoe was brokenhearted over the matter. He burst into tears and started stomping his feet.

  The crowd was in full throat over the dispute, everyone on their feet, screaming and waving their fists over their heads. They felt that Baby Briscoe should put a serious ass-beating on Little Dick.

  Little Dick ripped the blanket in two right there in the middle of the ring. Baby was on the mat kicking and squalling.

  The crowd was giving Little Dick some serious grief. He finally held up his hands to quiet them down. He apologized to the referee and let his shoulders slump in a gesture of regret and pure shame. Then he whipped another goody out of his drawers: a baby rattle. He approached Baby Briscoe, holding out the rattle as a peace offering. The crowd urged Baby not to fall for the trick. A man screamed, “Don’t do it, Baby! He’s gonna lay your ass out!”

  Even amid the chorus of no’s, Baby started grinning, seemingly hypnotized by the rattler. He stuck his thumb in his mouth, reached out for the rattle, and—

  WHAM. Little Dick sucker-punched him in the gut, stomping his foot against the mat for added effect. That’s when the no’s turned to boos.

  Dewey shuddered at Little Dick’s antics. “Damn,” he said, “that is some cold shit.”

  Cash just shook his head and frowned. He looked like he was watching one of those 60 Minutes stories on child abuse.

  Little Dick turned Baby over his knee and spanked him open-hand style. Baby was squalling, and the crowd was chanting something I couldn’t quite make out.

  I asked Nick what they were yelling.

  “They’re calling for Mama,” Nick said.

  “Who’s Mama?”

  He pointed to the locker room door and smiled. As if on cue, a large male wrestler, wearing a sundress and gray wig, burst through the door with a folding chair in his hands. Even in the Easter-morning getup, there was no mistaking Eddie.

  The crowd chanted: “Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Ma-ma!” And Mama did not disappoint them. Eddie jumped into the ring and busted Little Dick’s head with the chair. The
n, with his pride and joy’s nemesis down for the count, he picked up Baby Briscoe and toted him over to the ring mike, whereupon he asked if Baby had anything to tell the fans. Baby leaned into the mike and grinned.

  “Baby go poopee.”

  Joyful bedlam took hold of the gym.

  “That was some sick shit,” Cash said. “It’s no wonder Eddie has to get drunk to do that.”

  “I’d get drunk, too,” Dewey said. “Who’d even think of something like that?”

  Nick told them to shut up. “It’s just show business, fellas.”

  38

  Nick and I were alone in the motel parking lot, loading his and Eddie’s belongings into the trunk of his Fury. Two suitcases, a set of golf clubs, a folding beach chair, and a pawnshop guitar. When you got right down to it, he and Eddie didn’t have a whole lot between them.

  There was also a photo album among the pile of stuff.

  “Hey, I didn’t know you brought any of your pictures with you.”

  Nick looked sort of embarrassed, so I resisted the urge to check out the photos. I handed over the album, and he tucked it into the trunk.

  And then I remembered. I hadn’t even told Nick about Lyndell. It hadn’t even dawned on me since we’d gotten there. And that made me feel all the worse for Lyndell, how easy it was to forget someone.

  It was a balmy evening, the breeze heavy with that salty beach smell. Cash, Dewey, and Eddie were still up in the room, checking to see if anything had been left behind. Nick leaned against the Fury and fired up a joint. He took a deep toke and passed it over. I held it for a moment, not sure of how to proceed.

  “What about your policy?” I asked.

  Nick made a quiet, satisfied groan deep in his throat and blew the smoke out into the night air.

  “Fuck the policy,” he said. “I know you smoke like a fiend.”

  I obliged his wishes and had a go at the joint. It had a sharp, ropy taste to it. If Nick was smoking the stuff, I knew it must be high-grade weed.

  “There’s something I meant to tell you when I got here.”

  Nick was about to take another toke, but he stopped and lowered the joint from his mouth. “Is Claudia okay?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “But it’s not about her, really. It’s about Lyndell. He died last winter in a car wreck.”

  Nick turned my way and cocked his head strangely, as if he needed to regard me from a different angle. All he said was “Fuck.” His voice was faint, pinched by the smoke.

  I felt like I should say something else, but only one thing came to mind. “He wasn’t driving. It was somebody else’s fault.”

  Nick wiped his hand across his mouth and blew out a deep breath. He looked like he might throw up. All the while, the joint burned away in his hand.

  “Well, why didn’t somebody tell us before now?”

  I shrugged. “Claudia knew about it. She found out not long after he died, but she didn’t say anything.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her.”

  Nick finally took notice of the joint. He flipped it out into the parking lot. Its tiny orange tip glowed beneath the rear bumper of a Cutlass.

  “I just saw him last year,” he said. And then he waved his hand through the air. “Ah, fuck, Luke. I went looking for him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He was pacing back and forth on the asphalt. “I mean, I didn’t bump into him accidentally. I made that shit up. I went looking for him. I called him up, invited myself over. Fuck, I guess I missed him.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me that?”

  Nick had his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think you’d understand. Claudia was giving me the cold shoulder. Hell, she’d hardly even talk to me. I just wanted to see him again, you know.”

  “Well, hell yeah, I know.”

  He asked for the details. I told him everything I knew. I told him about Claudia and Wade as well. He asked about me and Rachel. By the time I’d finished with all of the bad news, Nick had nearly polished off a pack of Winstons. He was leaning against the trunk of the car, smoking and shaking his head.

  “Damn,” he said, “it sure doesn’t take long for things to go to hell.”

  We both cast our gazes upward. The rest of the gang had just stepped out onto the motel balcony. They were about to shut the door and head downstairs.

  “Listen,” I told Nick, “why don’t we forget this money thing. Maybe you and Eddie should just head on out to California. I’ve got some cash I was saving for Illinois. I don’t need it anymore. It’s only about six hundred dollars, but it’ll help a little.”

  “Jesus, I can’t take your fucking money.”

  “But I don’t need it anymore. I’d rather you have it, so you can get out of here.”

  He studied my face, as if there was something different about me that he couldn’t quite identify. “You don’t think I’m gonna slip out of this one, do you?”

  As hard as I tried to fight the impulse, I couldn’t help looking away from him. “It’s not that I don’t—”

  “Tell me this,” he said. “And be honest. You thought a lot more of me before you moved in, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not that.”

  Nick sighed. “Then tell me,” he said, “what did you learn from living with me? Just tell me one useful thing.”

  The rest of the crew was milling around the motel snack machine, banging on the glass, trying to get a bag of Chuckles to drop. And I couldn’t think of one damn thing that I’d learned from Nick.

  “It’s all about tempo,” I finally said.

  Nick laughed a little. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s a good one.”

  And then he stopped laughing, looking me over again as if to confirm his worst fears. “It ain’t very useful, though.”

  “It has its place,” I said.

  Nick fired up another Winston, took a long puff, and stared at the street. We could hear the ocean waves crashing on the other side of the tall motels.

  “Bev was right,” he said, “and I couldn’t even see it.”

  “About what?”

  “Our lives,” he said. “She used to try to tell me that these were our salad days. And then I’d always tell her that I didn’t like salads.”

  The wind picked up and beat his hair down over his eyes. He stood there with his jaw set like he was trying to convince himself of something. “I was always kicking myself in the ass, wishing I’d done something different with my life. Gone to school, or something like that. I didn’t think any of that other shit mattered: you know, dealing and playing in a half-assed band, fighting with Bev every day.”

  “Well, maybe things are gonna get better when you get to California.”

  Nick looked up at me, his face a mask of regret. “The joke’s on me,” he said. “And you know why?”

  I waited for his answer.

  “It’s on me because all of that stuff really does matter. And I miss the shit out of it. I’ve missed it since the day I left Green Lake. It’s like I had a motorcycle wreck and lost my leg or something. I wake up every morning thinking it’s still there, and then it’s not.”

  He pushed himself away from the car and stared off across the parking lot. The chain on his belt swung sadly by his side. “I just want to go back home.”

  He was standing in the breeze now, and I could smell the cigarette smoke and the leather jacket. It was like walking into his house again after he’d left town.

  “Poor fuckin’ Lyndell,” he said.

  Dewey, Cash, and Eddie had finally captured the bag of Chuckles. They were walking across the parking lot, looting the bag of candy.

  Nick turned and faced me again, scratching his cheek as if he was trying to remember something.

  “I think you oughta call that girl,” he said. “Even if nothing changes, you oughta call her again.”

  “And say what?”


  Nick shrugged. “You’ll know what to say when the time comes.”

  I found myself wondering what Rachel might be doing that very moment. I could see her shuttling salads out of Yuri’s kitchen and then sitting alone in the Peugeot during her break, watching TV later on that sofa in the living room, Brute snoring away beside her. And I’d never felt so far away from where I really wanted to be in my entire life.

  39

  Whitlaw’s condo was perched way up on the nineteenth floor of a beachside high-rise. I double-parked the Chevelle in the turnaround out front, just behind Nick’s Fury, and then we all headed upstairs, armed with nothing more than foolishness and Nick’s shooting wedge, which he’d stuffed into the back of his jeans.

  As soon as we stepped off the elevator, we could hear the music coming from Whitlaw’s place. It was one of those Jimmy Buffett rum-and-sand songs.

  “All right,” Nick said, “y’all just stand behind us looking serious. Let me and Eddie do the talking.”

  Dewey glanced up and down the hallway uneasily. It appeared that he’d completely lost his already faint appetite for adventure. “You sure you don’t need somebody to wait in the car, maybe keep the engine running?”

  Nick reached out and massaged Dewey’s shoulders. “We’re gonna be out of here in ten minutes, bro. I already told you, this guy’s no criminal genius. He ain’t Cesar Romero.”

  “What if some shit starts up?” Cash asked. “You flash that pellet gun, and we’re all gonna get killed.”

  “Relax,” Nick said, “have some fucking faith. I’m not planning on using the shooting wedge. It’s only for persuasion purposes, if it comes to that. I can reason with Whitlaw. We’ve done a lot of business together.”

  Nick looked my way, as if to make sure I wasn’t going to voice any doubts. I wouldn’t have even known where to begin.

  The door to Whitlaw’s condo was open a crack, so we walked right in, Nick and Eddie leading the pack. The condo’s interior stood in sharp contrast to the building’s sober and dignified hallway. I suppose Whitlaw’s decorating style could best be described as early Hefner, with leather furniture, nude sculptures, and furry white rugs. We found Whitlaw parked on a white leather sofa with a gin and tonic in hand. He’d traded his red-white-and-blue warm-up suit for a solid white model and a matching pair of Gucci loafers, sans hosiery. He’d set off the whole ensemble with a gold medallion that resembled a sundial.