Alexander Roy - The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World

Alex Roy from Gumball!? said Mark, client advisor at Jackie Cooper BMW in Oklahoma City. Me and the guys couldnt believe it when we Googled you. We knew something was up when we saw all the antennas and gear inside. Totally awesome, man. Definitely the coolest car weve ever had in here. All the customers who come by ask about it. What are you doing in Oklahoma?

Its a long story, but listen, Im just boarding a flight out right now. How quickly can you get that car on a truck back to New York? Money is no object. I need it back in time to ship to Europe for Gumball.

Id saywithin twenty-four hours. Let me make a couple of calls.

I sat back for the surreal two-hour and fifty-four-minute flight to L.A., during which I would survey the 1,342 miles Id hoped to cross by car in fourteen hours and eight minutes.

My phone rang. I caught the eye of the flight attendant three rows ahead, having just started her pretakeoff survey of bag placement, seat belt tautness, and

It was Mark from BMW. Mark, Ive got five seconds to takeoff, so whatever it costs, just do it.

Alex

The flight attendant approached. Mark, whatever it costs

Im sorry, said the attendant, but you must turn that off now.

Mark, just do it.

Sir! If you dont turn off that phone

Alex, the police are here

I will call security!

Hello? Alex, the police want to know where you are and

I dry heaved, dropping the phone in my lap.

Thank you, sir ! She walked away. My hands shook as I lifted the phone. Mark was gone. I turned off the ringer. My thumbs vibrated like tuning forks as I laboriously typed my attorney, Seth, a priority e-mail, ending with they must NOT get inside that car . I hit send just as the plane began taxiing. If my stomach hadnt been empty, Id have thrown up.

DECEMBER 1999

It was a gorgeous morning, heaps of snow having escaped the streets salting in the wake of the previous nights storm, their knee-high peaks not yet capped with soot from passing cars and trucks.

My cell phone rang as I descended the subway station steps at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street, mere seconds before I would have disappeared into the station and out of range for the next half hour.

Is this Alexander Roy?

There was only one reason for such a call.

This is Dr. Johnson at Beth Israel Hospital.

The world slowed.

As your fathers medical-care proxy, you must give permission for any time-critical procedure during a life-threatening orMr. Roy? Mr. Roy, can you hear me?

The bus rumbling mere feet away, the cacophony of voices echoing off the subway stations tiled walls just ahead, the deep hot rushing roar of air out of the station entrance as a train pulled inall were muted by the gravity of events to which I could only react, and never control.

Mr. Roy?

Ill be there in fifteen minutes.

Theres no time. We need your permission to perform an emergency tracheostomy immediately.

Or else?

Your father will die.

OCTOBER 1999

My father was very secretive about his past. While I was a child, the notion of my climbing up his leg to ask a questionto scale the seemingly indomitable mountain that was my fatherwas terrifying.

My father had always described himself as a lion, and so had everyone else. Hed lost everything during the Second World Warhis brother, his friends, his childhood homeand fled with his surviving family to New York City. He joined the U.S. Army at seventeen, landed at Normandy, was shot and wounded twice, and rode with the lead units into Buchenwald concentration camp. After the war he started life anew, founded the family business in 1954, met my mother in 1970, had two sons he sent to private school, bought a Cadillac, and earned (and saved) enough for us to live comfortably. Even his enemiesand these were restricted to business competitorsrespected him, trading insults over the phone every week for decades. He spoke fluent French and Spanish, and conversational German, Russian, and Polish. All agreed he was a gifted painter, photographer, and pianist. My brother and I knew better than to interrupt his weekday postwork relaxation time, during which he plucked at the precious custom-made flamenco guitar hed bought in Seville. He loved work, and intended to work until the day he died. Surrender was inconceivable.

I never believed it possible that he could be withered by cancer, his deep radio-commercial-grade voice cracking from multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, lying in a hospital bed 15 minutes from where wed lived for more than twenty years. Id always assumed hed live to see me married with children. That was his greatest wish.

My greatest wish was for him to reveal what hed really done between the war and his meeting my mother, a nearly twenty-five-year gap that had been left largely unexplained. My mothers curiosity went further, as the frequent business trips hed taken when they first met had continued through the late 1970s, ending abruptly in 1980.

Time was now running out.

Radioactive pellets had been placed in his neck to fight a cancerous tumor, and the resultant swelling made breathing painfully difficult. The doctors recommended, and my father consented to, a tracheostomywhereby a hole was cut in his neck and a breathing tube inserted down his throat. His body, already greatly weakened by months of treatment, reacted badly to the procedure, and I spent long nights beside his hospital bed watching him sleep under heavy sedation.

The swelling persisted for weeks after the pellets were removed, and in heavy-lidded moments of near wakefulness his feet danced slowly under the sheets, both hands raised like claws.

I wonder what hes dreaming about, said the wife of the patient in the neighboring bed.

Driving, I said.

Once the tube was finally removed, he began daily, mostly unconscious visits to a hyperbaric oxygen chamber intended to accelerate the closure and healing of his throat.

He wont be able to speak for some time, one doctor warned as he handed me a pad and paper, but you can try this.

My fathers eyes darted wildly during his first few days of wakefulness, his hands too shaky for anything but scrawling gashes through the paper. Clarity slowly returned to his gestures, and he resumed looking me in the eyes and nodding as I asked him yes/no questions about the business I knew he missed. He struggled to push words up through his ragged, constricted throat. I stared at his mouth and raced like an auctioneer through phrases I wanted to spare him the pain of attempting to utter.

He pointed at the pad and paper, wrote furiously, then turned the pad toward me.

Throat

Dry

Air

Fire

Ill get you more water, I said, bringing the straw to his mouth.

He swiped it aside angrily and wrote again.

Operation

The tracheostomy? He nodded. What about it?

Never

Again

Pain

You dont want to have a tracheostomy again?

Prefer

Die

Cmon, I said, false optimism tugging at the corners of my mouth. Thats so unlike you.

Suddenly and with vicious strength he grabbed my wrist, pulled my face to his, and whispered through quivering lips.

Youcannotallowit.

But I mouthed in disbelief.

He glowered at me, eyes wide with volcanic anger, and pushed the pad against my chest.