The Renegades

18

Hood got to the Pomona Raceway early, bought a pit pass and walked down among the dragsters and the drivers and the crews. It was Saturday and more rain was on the way. The air smelled of burnt racing fuel from the early elimination runs. Hood liked the smell, the unmistakable scent of power and speed and internal combustion.

The event was sponsored by DRAW-the Drag Racing Association of Women-and its purpose was to raise money to help people hurt in drag races at a track.

The pit was congested with brilliantly painted dragsters and funny cars. The hoods were propped up so people could appreciate the lavishly chromed engines. The drivers and mechanics were dressed in the same bright colors as their cars. They answered questions and let themselves be photographed. During lulls Hood heard them talking with quiet specificity about what needed to be done to their cars before the racing began.

Ariel Reed stood with a group of fans, autographing photos and programs. She was wearing red leathers with gold trim and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her car stood behind her, a sleek red AA alcohol dragster with a mountainous engine. A teenaged boy stared at her while she signed a photo, then he croaked his thanks and stood there smiling at her. She looked up at Hood and winked, then went back to signing.

He joined the little crowd around her and listened as she related dragster facts: top fuel diggers can put out more than 6,000 horse, hit 330 miles per hour and cover a quarter mile in less than five seconds. She said that a vehicle going 200 miles per hour as it crosses the starting line will lose to a top fuel dragster starting from a dead stop at the same time. She said that the noise outputs have been measured at 3.9 on the Richter scale and the G force exerted on the driver is enough to detach her retina.

Someone asked about fuel efficiency and Ariel said she got more than five hundred feet per gallon out of this puppy.

Someone asked if she was afraid when she raced and she said don’t be silly, she was too scared to be afraid.

A few minutes later the fans had drifted away to the next car.

“I love my molecule. It’s on my desk at work. I can split atoms anytime I want!”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Thanks for coming.

“I like the drags.”

“You’re a fan?”

“Since I was a kid. Dad would drive us down from Bakersfield.”

“I learned here. Raced for the first time when I was eighteen. Ran twelve seconds in a borrowed Dodge. How’s our friend Shay Eichrodt?”

She looked at Hood with her level, opinionless gaze. He thought it would have been unsettling from across a poker table.

“Better,” he said. “The doctor was surprised.”

“So we may be trying him for murder after all.”

“You might be.”

She shrugged. “Stick around after the race and I’ll buy you a beer.”

Hood got a good seat, up top in the bleachers with a touch of sunshine on his back. The northern sky had darkened more and the Pomona foothills were green. The first two drivers rode their cars to the start line, gunned their engines into ear-shocking roars of rpm and took their burnouts to heat the tires and make them sticky. Then the racers lined up for the real thing. The Christmas tree lit up yellow and red. The sound of gunning nitro engines was thunderous. The cars growled like beasts that knew they were about to be unleashed for just a few seconds. Then the bottom lights went green and the world roared with torque and fury. The dragsters shot forward. Hood watched the bodies shudder and the tires dig for traction in the blast of speed. One second they were coming at him, then they were racing away. He saw how close the drivers were to losing control but how skillfully they maintained it. Then the roar lessened and the parachutes blew into shape behind the cars and the finish line light gave victory to the winner. The crowd clapped and cheered but the totaled response of thirty thousand spectators was little more than a gesture compared to the spectacle of sound and motion that Hood had just witnessed.

Hood thought of his family, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder on these same bleachers, soft drinks in their hands and plugs in their ears while the top fuel eliminators and funny cars rocketed past. He was five. They would stay with an uncle in Pasadena and make the drive to Pomona for the races. Hood loved then what he loved now: the smell of the fuel and the sound of the engines and the impossible velocity shaped by human skill into a straight line. And he had always liked the way you could get a pit pass and meet the drivers and the crew and see the cars up close.

Ariel was matched up against Walt Bledsoe in the fifth race. Bledsoe’s AA methane rail was black and cobalt blue-a stallion with major attitude. According to Hood’s program, Bledsoe was tenth in the states in the NHRA Sportsman Top Alcohol Dragster Class. Ariel was forty-first. When her red-and-gold rail came onto the launching pad burping fire and smoke Hood was impressed and proud. He looked down at her in the cockpit, harnessed in, her helmet soon to be pushed back against the seat in an explosion of power. The two rivals did their burnouts, jockeying and bellowing at each other. Then they rumbled up to the starting line and the lights on the Christmas tree illuminated downward.

Flames belched from the chrome pipes and the dragsters were off. Both drivers were a little eager on the throttle and Hood saw the faint rise of their front ends, then the corrections-a shimmy as weight moved downward-followed by a surge of speed and a howling sprint to the finish line. The parachutes deployed and filled and the finish light gave the win to Bledsoe: 215 mph in 6.64 seconds.

Hood stood and clapped as Ariel guided her car off the track. She won her next race and lost her last. By then it was dark and the starless sky above was heavy with the gathering storm.

Hood found her in the pit, helping get the car onto its trailer behind a big silver pickup truck. Her crew of three ignored him. When the dragster was fastened down Ariel shook hands with each one; then the crew climbed into the truck and eased it out of the pit and toward the exit. She watched the truck and trailer amble slowly into the darkness.

“Didn’t exactly set any records,” she said.

“You’ve got a steady foot, young lady.”

She leaned into the bed of a shiny black El Camino and brought two beers from a cooler.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

The pit was almost empty of fans now but Ariel stopped and talked with a few other drivers. They congratulated each other with easy fraternity.

Then Hood and Ariel walked down the track, beers in hand, she in one lane and he in the other. The lights were still on above the bleachers and the safety railing shone softly.

“My mom and grandmother raced,” she said. “And my daddy and granddad-that’d be Bill and Frank. Frank died eight years ago but Dad’s still going strong.”

“My dad’s got Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s just a fact.”

Ariel sipped her beer, then reached out the bottle and tapped it against the finish light stanchion.

“It’s a family thing. Generation after generation, speeding down the track. But I’ll let you in on a little secret-I don’t care if I win or not. I don’t do it for history. I do it because it thrills me.”

“To thrills,” said Hood. They touched bottles.

Some time passed and Hood sensed that Ariel was brooding in her silence.

“You think thrills are a sign of immaturity,” she said. “Because you were a soldier. Because you enforce the law on the street. Because your partner got shot to death right in front of you.”

“Nothing about you is immature, Ms. Reed.”

“I said you think thrills are overrated.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

“Then tell me.”

“I like it that you put bad guys in jail. I like it that you drag race. I like your smile.”

She pulled the band off her ponytail and shook out her hair. “I’m wound tight as a golf ball, Charlie.”

“I know.”

“Doesn’t that make you want to walk away?”

“It makes me wonder what makes you tick.”

“You found out what made Allison Murrieta tick. An armed robber.”

“Thrills,” Hood said. “Gain. Fame. Vengeance. History. It was complicated.”

“There must be something in the thrill seeker that attracts you.”

“She loved fast cars, like you do.”

“It’s not really my business, but you and her were about all the DA’s office talked about for most of that week.”

They walked into the grandstands and up the rows of empty seats. When they got to the top it started to rain and Hood could hear the patter on the sunscreen over their heads. The drops came faster and heavier and the racetrack looked like it was coming to a boil. They sat and looked out at the track and watched the rain slant down through the lights.

“Bakersfield. You like the music, Deputy?”

“I wish they’d make more of it. I got just about all of it they ever recorded. They put out a Bill Woods Live at the Blackboard in ’03. Red Simpson, Don Rich. Great CD.”

“I wish I could play an instrument. I’ve got no discernable talent for anything. Except maybe for splitting atoms, as you pointed out.”

“It was kind of a compliment. I took it as one.”

“Wish I had another beer,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Long walk back to the cooler in this rain.”

“Let’s watch it for a minute.”

“While you tell me about Shay Eichrodt.”

He told her what he’d seen and heard. Ariel listened without interrupting, her expression dark.

“You really think Laws and Draper cuffed him and beat him?” she asked.

“Possibly.”

“I very highly doubt it.”

“I can go one uglier.”

“They killed Vasquez and Lopes and took their money, which explains Terry Laws’s sudden fortune.”

“That and a whole lot more,” he said.

Hood looked out at the rain.

“All you have is the very questionable word of a brain-damaged felon who can face a death sentence if he’s convicted,” said Ariel.

“In some simple-ass way, that’s why I think he’s telling the truth.”

“If a jury doesn’t, the state can execute him.”

“Yes, it can,” said Hood. “But what’s he supposed to do? Shut up and stay in a mental hospital the rest of his life?”

The rain roared against the shade roof above them. Hood watched the water pour off the racetrack lights, little waterfalls bent south by the wind of the storm.

“What’s all that mean to a Blood gangsta machine-gunning Terry Laws one night?” asked Ariel.

“I don’t know what it means.”

“What have the homicide guys come up with?”

“Londell Dwayne. He looks right. He’d threatened Terry. We talked to him but his alibi fell apart pretty quick. Next thing, Londell maced two detectives and blew into the wind.”

They sat for a long while without saying a word. The rain got heavier, then it slowed. Hood held her hand as they went down the wet steps and across the track to the pit.

They got into her El Camino and she gave Hood a ride to the parking lot.

“Nice Camaro,” she said. “Glasspacks and fat soft tires. Maybe you’re not immune to thrills after all.”

“I’m really not.”

She pushed the car into park and took Hood’s face in both her hands and kissed him and he kissed her back.

“Nice,” she said. “Very nice. Thank you. That’s a dumb thing to say.”

“Thank you. There.”

Hood got out of the El Camino and shut the door. Ariel gunned the engine and looked at him for a long moment, then smiled. Suddenly the El Camino burned away and slid into a big screaming one-eighty on the wet asphalt, back tires throwing up rooster tails of water, which brought her right back to where she’d started. Her window came down.

“Call me later.”