The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(28)

If I had that thing I’d drive the wheels off of it.

I dont doubt that for a minute.

How fast do those Formula cars go?

The Formula Ones will break two hundred miles an hour. Not many places to do it in. The Mulsanne Straight at Sarthe. I dont know what the Formula Twos will do. None of them have speedometers in them of course. After a few laps the only thing you know for sure is that you’re not going fast enough.

What was the biggest problem you ran into?

Money. Of course. If you’re just talking about the car itself there are always two kinds of failures. The kind that you couldnt fix and the kind that you didnt know needed fixing. If something just packs up in the middle of the race all you can do is shrug. But if you never get the suspension right and it’s costing you a couple of seconds a lap…Well. We never did get the car sorted. You’re finally reduced to jacking with the tire pressure. The stagger. You tell yourself that you can drive anything but it’s no way to go racing.

You never drove dragsters?

No. You?

No. Those things scare the shit out of me.

Frank called me one morning and he said Let me swing by there and pick you up. I want to show you something. So we went over to see this rail job that these two brothers had built and we walked out behind the house and they threw back this tarp. Like they were unveiling a work of art. They’d gotten hold of a pair of 391 Chrysler Hemi engines and they’d yoked them together with this huge Spicer U-joint. Then they mounted a pair of 671 GMC superchargers on top of the engines. They’d never had this thing dyno’d but the numbers had to be huge. Frank said the first time they fired it up birds fell dead out of the trees two blocks away. It didnt even have a transmission. Just this big Eaton two-speed truck axle. And all of this is sitting in a chassis they’d welded up out of angle iron and plumbing pipe. Just an unbelievable thing to see. Frank and I stood there looking at it and I said What do you think? And he said what do I think? And I said Yes. And he said I’ll tell you what I think. I wouldnt get out of the electric chair to get in it.

They pulled into the parkinglot and walked over to the cafe to get coffee and wait for Russell. It was still dark out. A few gulls wheeled above the docklights. The cafe was pretty lively. Red got a paper and slid into the booth and looked out at the gray waterfront. This thing is supposed to be a real clunker. I dont know what they think it’s a hazard to but I’ll bet that guy would love to leave it where it’s at.

I’ll bet he would too. How long do you think we’ll be down here?

Couple of days. Mostly it will depend on how long it takes to pump it out. You going to eat?

I dont think so. Just coffee.

Yeah. Where the hell’s the waitress?

When they walked back out on the dock there were streaks of light on the far side of the river. Red flipped his cigarette into the water. You want to get the truck?

Let me have the keys.

We can stack our gear here and get it sorted. Russell ought to be here by now.

That should be him.

Russell had brought printouts of deck plans and elevations of some ancient tugs. These things tend to be one of a kind, he said. So I dont know how useful these will be. This little jewel was built at Bath Iron Works in 1938.

Red leaned and spat. I know those suckers are heavy, he said.

They are that. Taylor’s leased a two hundred ton steamdriven crane mounted on a barge. I cant wait to see them fire that thing up. All right. Let’s just take these with us.

He rolled the prints and slid them back into the tube and twisted on the cap. You all ready?

Let’s do her.

Let’s do her.



* * *



—

They motored out past the pilings, dark with pitch and trailing a green scurf in the claycolored water. The wake of the boat breaking up somewhere back in that dark forest of poles where things lived. They turned downriver, keeping to the western levees, the gray mist of the water breaking over the bow of the launch. You couldnt hear above the noise of the engine and they rode in silence, pointing out alligators where they slid into the river. By the time they reached the dive site they were pretty cold and they climbed out onto the deck of the barge and stomped and waved their arms and when the sun came up they stood with their faces to it like worshippers.

About three feet of the mast of the tug was sticking up out of the river at a slight angle. The Coast Guard had marked off the site with buoys. The crane barge was just upriver from the tug and it was huge and shaggy-looking. There was a light on in the deckhouse but there didnt seem to be anybody around.

Red nodded at it. What do you think that thing runs a day?

I dont know. But I’ll bet it’s paid for.

They sat on the deck while Russell went over the dive with them. Western laid back and stretched himself out on the deck and closed his eyes.

You gettin this, Bobby?

You have my undivided attention.

What’s the answer to Gary’s question?

The bollard pull on this thing is probably not over thirty tons. But that was in 1938 and it’s got to be less now. There’s no way you can pull this thing up by the H-bitts. You’d just pull them out of the deck. Better to run the aft cable first. The rudder may be too close to the hull to get the cable through and if it is we’ll have to take a drill down there and make a hole to run it through. We need about two inches for the cable.