Heller’s earphones!
The voice said, “Sorry, High-Flyer. My talk box got hit and number two took time.” It was Bang-Bang!
Heller said, “You okay?”
“Only a bruise, High-Flyer. Take her to a win!”
“Roger, dodger, over, under and out!” said Heller, and really fed throttle! The blurred track sped under him!
I swept the curtained expanse before me. Somewhere in that chill terrain, my other sniper lay dead. Probably with a knife, if I knew Italians. I could find nothing. Probably nobody else ever would either!
I had a bad few minutes. Maybe Bang-Bang was up there somewhere stalking me! I locked my van doors securely and laid out a Knife Section knife. But then I realized Bang-Bang was down at Pit One. He had had to go there to use their radio to reach Heller.
(Bleep) that Bang-Bang! (Bleep) him, (bleep) him, (bleep) him! Heller had a chance to win!
PART TWENTY-NINE
Chapter 8
The snow snowed and the roaring race went on!
Numb, not just with cold, I sat and watched. There were only two chances now: Heller would smash up on that skidding track or his carburetor would fail.
The snowing let up and started again numerous times. Round and round they went.
The TV Channel Six and Seven-Eighths had been running along as fast as the cars. “I’m sure it will thrill our national audience to know that the Whiz Kid, who had several times lost his lead, has now recovered it. Track conditions are appalling. Ah, here is Jeb Toshua. He is 101 years old. Jeb, do you ever recall a track this bad?”
“I think it was ’83 when I lost my cat. . . .”
“Thank you, Jeb. Car 7, Dagger Duggan, has just pulled into the pit. He is refueling. . . . No, he’s getting a drink of Peegrams Corn Whiskey. Look at that ecstasy on Dagger Duggan’s face as he empties the pint. We pause for a word from our sponsors, Peegrams Corn Whiskey! . . .”
The commercial’s boys’ quartet sang:
Corn Whiskey,
Corn Whiskey,
Corn Whiskey, I cry.
If I don’t get my Peegrams,
I surely will die.
The picture of the race came back on. “Dagger Duggan is now leaving his pit. That’s him, waving at the camera. Hey, he turned right out into the path of the Whiz Kid! The Whiz Kid braked and spun his car around him!
“Car 7—that’s Dagger Duggan, folks—is . . . No! He has just caromed off Car 8! There he goes through the rail! Duggan shoots up into the air. The car is turning over! It comes down on its roll bars! It has burst into flame! He’s trapped! He bursts into flames.
“We will now do a slow-motion replay of that shot.”
The replay flashed on.
A low, harsh voice came over. “Get that (bleeped) shot off the screen or you’ll lose our account!” Hastily, a string of letters flashed across the exploding Duggan:
SIMULATED DRAMATIZATION
Another car spun out and wound up in the snowbanks. Another came crawling into the pit with a busted fan belt and an engine that was overheating.
There were only eleven left in the race. It was creeping up toward 3:00 PM. Spraying snow to either side, jockeying through openings, Heller drove on to the screams of delight from the grandstand. I found it absolutely disgusting. I kept a close eye on my watch: in a very short time now, that carburetor was scheduled to fail and he would be done for.
But in the last half-hour, he had so clearly asserted a lead that some of the other drivers evidently began to think they had no chance at all if they did not take him out.
Instead of driving to make laps, some were driving now to get a ram at Heller as he went by.
Car 10, Basher Benson, driving a stripped International station wagon, lay in wait at the near end of the oval. He was going to, I could see, sweep along on the inside and ram Heller.
The Caddy braked into the turn and then sped up, skidding sideways in the flying snow.
Basher gave his car all it had and rushed parallel, aiming for Heller’s left front wheel.
Above the yowl of tortured engines, Basher’s voice, “Take this, you (bleepard)!”
The International touched before Heller could avoid.
A flash!
An electrical explosion!
Car 10 rebounded like it had been hit by lightning!
It spun away, went through the rail!
The driver sat there stunned.
The crowd yelled and roared with delight!
The TV did a replay. It was a lightning bolt! Car 10 had hit Heller’s left front wheel and an electrical flash at least five feet in diameter had flared!
The electrical surplus from the carburetor was being grounded in those wheels! And any other car that touched them bled off the grounding in a lightning bolt!
Basher Benson was getting shakily out of Car 10. He apparently had no idea of what had happened except that he didn’t want anything more to do with this race!
The radio sportscaster was trying to account for it and suddenly settled upon the explanation that it was the Whiz Kid’s magnetic personality.
Heller and the other cars roared on, the shrieking engines merged with the howls and cheers of the crowd.
The other drivers had no real idea of what had happened. There are always sparks to some extent when metal is hammered against metal in a crash.
The snow stopped and a murky sun came out.
Another driver, in an old Dodge, got the idea of sideswiping Heller on the far straightaway. He was driving close to the rail and, as Heller started to pass, the Dodge speeded up and dived at him.
FLASH!
It made a crack like a lightning bolt!
Heller had tapped him with a wheel!
The Dodge went spinning out of control! It rolled! It skidded fifty feet on its roll bars!
The crowd went crazy with ecstasy!
Yellow flag. A tow truck sped out to latch on to the Dodge and drag it away. The driver stood there until an ambulance came and then tried to climb into the tow truck. He seemed to be walking in circles.
The cars were speeded up again. There were now nine.
I was on the edge of my seat. I had half an eye on the viewers and the other half on the stopwatch. It was past three.
Was Heller going to win after all?
PART TWENTY-NINE
Chapter 9
The snow clouds parted more widely. The dirty-hued afternoon sun slanted down upon the chewed-up track. It seemed colder.
The battering roar of the straight-shoot-exhaust-piped Caddy racketed above that of the other cars as it speeded up to make the near turn. Heller had started to race in earnest. He was already twenty laps ahead of any other driver and he was starting to open the Caddy up!
The other eight, including Hammer Malone and Killer Brag, seemed to realize they were done unless they did something. Probably the chanting, “Whiz Kid, Whiz Kid, Whiz Kid!” that sporadically rose from the grandstand egged them on.
They were old bomber veterans. They had seen everything and done everything, but they were not going to just idle around and watch themselves be thrashed.
Strategies of demolition derbies included gang-up. Once they had disposed of Heller, they could fight the rest of it out amongst themselves. But Heller must GO!
I read all that in the way they concertedly began to idle down as they passed the grandstand. They did another circle, Heller threading his way through them as though they didn’t exist.
Heller was doing more than 150. He was sitting there doing an alert job of driving, predicting the movements of the other cars and predodging in ample time. The Caddy looked like a red streak. Its engine was a continuous scream of power.
The other eight cars were drawing up in a kind of an uneven circle with a huge gap in the center. Four favored the grandstand side of the straightaway, the other four favored its other side. They had stopped trying to lap. They were going into pure demolition derby formation.
The TV and radio
sportscasters were both jabbering in excitement that there was something up.
Heller knew there was something up. He suddenly slowed. He shifted down to lower drive, cutting out his top gear, probably to give himself enormous pickup in a sudden spurt.
The Caddy approached the waiting circle doing only about sixty.
He came to the outer edge of the hole.
A lunge as cars surged at him!
A yowl as the Caddy speeded up.
A grinding crash!
It was Hammer Malone hitting another car!
The Caddy was through the gap and away!
The other cars changed tactics. They turned around so they could back ram this time. It looked like a planned maneuver and, indeed, they were within shouting distance of one another.
The gap for Heller was wide open and inviting.
He was apparently just going to go through again.
The bombers began to back! They would hit him!
He suddenly stamped on his brakes and gave his steering gear a yank to the left!
He spun in a complete circle.
The bombers crashed into one another!
Heller wasn’t there!
He came out of his spin and gunned his engine and streaked by, almost scraping the grandstand barricade!
He had gone behind them! He had used a lane just vacated!
The crowd howled with joy!
The bombers pried themselves apart. More shouting. They got back into position.
Heller toured the oval.
But whatever he planned to do next never happened.
Coming out of the far turn of the oval, doing about seventy, his engine quit!
He had only about a hundred yards to go to reach the bombers.
Perhaps he thought he could coast through.
He had been high on the bank. There was lots of snow under his wheels. It was cutting his speed down dramatically.
There was nothing he could do about it.
He went straight into the open center with a dead engine. He was doing about twenty.
CRASH!
Eight cars backed into him!
They were stopped in a jammed mass.
The top of Heller’s hood was going cherry red!
The carburetor had fused!
With a quick yank he released his safety belt!
He shot his arm out through the window and got a hold.
He said, “Goodbye, you Cadillac Brougham Coup d’Elegance. It wasn’t your fault!”
Like the gymnast he was, he pulled himself through the window.
Jammed cars all around!
Cursing drivers!
Smoke began to shoot out of the Cadillac’s hood.
“Run!” Heller shouted in that high, Fleet voice.
He was up on a roof. He sprang to another roof!
He leaped to yet another roof.
He launched himself into the air, struck the snow with a roll, was up and running. He was heading for Pit One.
Hammer Malone and Killer Brag had extricated their cars.
As one, with a crash of gears, they launched their vehicles after Heller!
Two explosions in the tangled mass of the six cars. I knew it would be the oxygen and hydrogen tanks going up.
Flames shot into the air!
The other drivers were running away.
But the cars of Hammer Malone and Killer Brag bore down on Heller!
He turned to face them.
They converged!
He slapped his hands against their hoods, sprang upwards and with a roll, hit the roof of Hammer Malone’s car and was over it and behind.
With a grinding shriek of metal, the two sideswiping cars recoiled right and left, spinning in the ice.
Killer Brag’s gas tanks must have been ruptured. The sparks of the chains on ice did the rest.
A whoosh of green, orange and red flame enveloped both cars!
Brag was out, racing away.
Hammer Malone was on fire. He dived into a snowbank to put it out.
Heller was racing for Pit One.
PART TWENTY-NINE
Chapter 10
The pit crew was scrambling about.
Heller dived over a pit barricade.
Mike Mutazione was pounding at some sparks lying in Heller’s racing suit.
The grandstand was going crazy.
The radio announcer was yelling, “The Whiz Kid’s engine died, just like that. . . .”
The TV sportscaster was shouting, “Nine cars in flames . . .”
The loudspeakers blared, “The Whiz Kid apparently ran out of fuel. . . .”
Hammer Malone could be seen struggling out of the snowbank. He raced back toward his car. He beat out some flames in the upholstery. He leaped in!
The old wreck started! It had only been damaged by the explosion of Killer Brag’s!
No other car in the flaming pyre before the grandstand was moving.
Hammer Malone began to drive around the track!
There was a howl of rage from the crowd.
A new voice was in the grandstand loudspeakers. “That god (bleeped) Whiz Kid cost us our shirts!”
Nobody was paying any attention to Hammer Malone, faltering along at about twenty. He had won the demolition and he was now going for the endurance. Totally ignored.
The grandstand loudspeakers blared, “Get that god (bleeped) Whiz Kid!”
The losers spilled in a wave over the grandstand barricades and onto the track!
Howling and shrieking revenge, they tore toward Pit One.
Heller looked up, watching them come. He muttered, “Just like it said in Hakluyt’s Voiages. Very hard to make a safe landing amongst the natives of North America!”
Mike Mutazione’s crew was standing in a semicircle around the pit area.
The crowd was plowing down the track like a storm cloud gone crazy. The race was forgotten. All they wanted was blood.
Track security police tried to make a stand to check them. They were hurled aside!
The crowd came storming on. They were screaming, “Get the Whiz Kid!” “Cost me ten thousand!” “Kill him!” and other ferocious war cries.
Heller just sat there watching.
The foremost ring of the mob, mouths snarling, fists shaking, got within twenty feet of the Mutazione line.
“Now!” barked Mike.
Abruptly flame erupted from nozzles!
A dozen oxyacetylene hoses played a fan of fire over the heads of the mob!
There was an instant of incredulous gasps cut by the sizzle of flame.
Then a torrent of screams!
Howls of terror burst out!
The foremost ranks recoiled!
They knocked down people behind them like dominoes!
The crowd was racing away, leaving the fallen and trampled in the snow. And then these, too, found the energy to run.
The oxyacetylene torches popped out as their valves were shut off.
Hammer Malone’s old wreck staggered past the grandstand and wrecked cars and knocked along, working to complete his thousand laps.
But the race was over for the crowd. They were going home.
PART THIRTY
Chapter 1
I packed up and drove the van down off the hill, heading for the track and grandstand.
I had seen Heller get into the Peterbilt and knew there was no danger he would spot me.
The disgruntled and disgusted crowd was trailing away. I steered the van slowly through them. I was hoping I could find J. Walter Madison.
The security guards were no longer tending the gates. They did not care who went in or out now.
I went through a tunnel and emerged in the littered grandstand. There was a cluster of people around a box. I recognized one of the nearest ones. It was a reporter I had seen at Madison’s office, 42 Mess Street.
I went up to him. Although he had a sheepskin coat up around his ears and although I was wearing a hooded parka, we recognized each other. r />
I said, “Did Madison start that great riot?”
He said, “No. I did, on the spur of the moment. J. Warbler is in a weird state. Twenty minutes before the race he went into shock and passed out. We had to take him to the hospital tent. He only returned to the grandstand in time to see the end of it.”
I looked through the cluster of 42 Mess Street people and saw Madison sitting there on a folding chair. Cold as it was, he had an ice bag on his head! His face was gray and awful!
I went over to him. I said, incredulously, “Are you feeling that way because Heller lost?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. Win or lose, that wouldn’t have mattered. It would only have given us one day’s front page and then we would have had the work of doing something else.”
I didn’t understand it at all. “Well, if winning or losing didn’t matter, what are you feeling so bad about?”
He ineffectually adjusted the ice bag. Then he broke down. “Never trust a client! They always do you in!”
“Maybe you better tell me what you think is wrong,” I said, puzzled.
He began to cry. In a choked voice, he said, “He wasn’t supposed to race at all! Just before the race he was supposed to be kidnapped! We would have had two weeks at least of front page!”
He ground his fists into his knees. “It was all to be so perfect! After two weeks he would have turned up behind the Iron Curtain, a captive of the fuel-hungry Russians!”
He let out a frustrated wail. “It would have started World War III! He’d be IMMORTAL!”
After a period of writhing and pounding his knees, he said, “You just can’t ever depend on clients! OH, MY GOD! WHAT DO I DO NOW TO RECOVER THE FRONT PAGE??????”
I crept away.
PART THIRTY
Chapter 2
Sunday morning, the Bentley Bucks Deluxe Arms (to give it its full name) held me in tender and loving, if expensive, embrace. That was the only embrace I was getting these days.
But by ten my feeling of laziness began to give way to a vague disquiet. It occurred to me that it was altogether possible that Heller might recover from that debacle. In life, he was treacherously hyperactive. A type of disposition for which I have no sympathy.
I called down for a breakfast of strawberry shortcake—imported from the Argentine, the menu said—and, wrapped in a robe, was soon devouring it. My carbon-oxygen furnace needed restoking after the shocks and labors of the day before.