Scarlet Thunder Read online

  He chose to interview Sandy in one of the motor homes. The backdrop was a simple black sheet. Sandy wore jeans and a light blue polo shirt. Uncle Mike wanted her to look pretty, but not too feminine, and together they had decided the light blue would do the trick.

  I intended to keep my camera running the whole time.

  Sandy sat on a cane-backed chair with Ken Takarura beside her. He wasn’t in the best shape. We hid the sick whiteness of his face with good lighting and lots of stage makeup. I had a bottle of fizzy water for him to drink off-camera between his questions.

  I didn’t feel so great either. But I knew the deadline was too important to miss, and if Uncle Mike could force himself to work, so could I.

  Not that this was something I would call work.

  I was having fun.

  Ken began the interview by paying Sandy some compliments. He wanted her to be relaxed so that he could catch her off guard with a tough question. Hopefully, she would be surprised and it would show on camera. Later, we would cut out the first part, so that at the beginning, viewers saw only the question and her answer.

  “Yes,” Ken was saying in his deep voice. “At those speeds, the slightest mistake will put you out of the race. You need total concentration on the track, don’t you?”

  “More than total,” Sandy answered. She smiled. I was watching the television monitor hooked up to the camera. With her blond hair and soft features, she was interesting to watch. Especially with what she did for a living. “Ken, you can’t let your lap times be more than a tenth of a second off your pace. Think of it. A typical race is four hundred laps. If you lose a tenth of a second every third or fourth lap, that’s...”

  She bit her front lip as she paused to do her math. I was doing it at the same time. Say every fourth lap equals one hundred laps. Then one hundred times a tenth of a second would be...

  “Ten seconds,” she said. “That may not sound like much, but in ten seconds at the speeds we travel, that might put you back by a half lap by the end of the race. I can’t tell you how many races are lost by the length of a car.”

  She smiled into the camera again. “And Ken, it’s not just the time you have to worry about. You need to keep your concentration focused, because if you daydream for a heartbeat, or blink at the wrong time, you can hit the wall or another car. It’s not like driving through town to pick up groceries.”

  Ken nodded. I knew he was about to spring the question that Uncle Mike had planned. And this was probably the best time.

  “That brings me to something else,” Ken said. “Aren’t you afraid of dying?”

  The question hung there. How many people, after all, like to talk about their own death?

  “Funny you should ask,” she said. The camera caught every twitch of every muscle on her face. We had expected to surprise her, but her face looked calm. “I think about dying every time I get behind the wheel.”

  “Do other drivers?” Ken asked.

  “I can’t speak for other drivers,” she said.

  Great answer, I thought. She was a pro at interviews.

  “But for yourself...” Ken was a pro too.

  “For myself,” she answered, “I’m ready to die. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to. At least not before I have to.”

  Another smile. “There’s this saying: ‘Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.’ In other words, be sure you’re ready for the price you’ll have to pay if you get caught.”

  “Interesting...,” Ken said.

  “When I get into a racecar,” she continued, “I would be foolish if I wasn’t ready to pay the price for making a mistake. And, in this sport, a mistake can kill you. It doesn’t happen too often, because the cars and tracks are set up to reduce that risk, but it does happen.”

  “So tell me,” Ken said, “what makes you so ready to accept death?”

  She smiled again. This was going to be a great interview segment. Tough questions and unafraid answers.

  “The long view.”

  “The long view?” Ken asked. She had him hooked. And if she had him hooked, people watching the documentary would be hooked too.

  “Sure,” she said. “Do you believe in God?”

  She had caught Ken off guard. And he was supposed to be the interviewer.

  “Do you believe in God?” she repeated. “Surveys show that up to seventy percent of people believe in God.”

  “Well...,” he said.

  “What I find amazing,” she said, showing us the tough Sandy Peterson who stood up for what she believed in, “is what people will discuss on television in front of millions of people—weird things, private things, stupid things. All stuff that should embarrass them. But it doesn’t. Then ask someone about God like I did just now...”

  Ken squirmed. Uncle Mike, though, was too good a director to stop the camera now. He’d cut out the stuff that made Ken look bad and use bits and pieces of what Sandy was saying. I’d vote for keeping most of what she said. She was right, after all, about television. I’d seen some of those talk shows.

  “Anyway,” Sandy said, “if you don’t believe in God, death is pretty scary. Because then that’s all there is. But if you believe that He is waiting, it is a lot easier to feel confident about getting into a racecar...”

  She stopped for a moment, thinking about her audience. “And this isn’t just about racecar drivers. Think about all the car accidents that happen away from the racetrack. Anybody anywhere who gets behind a steering wheel, especially teenagers, because they don’t have as much driving experience, should think about what I’m saying...”

  Ken coughed quietly. I quickly handed him a drink off-camera, then stepped back.

  The liquid helped him recover his voice quickly. He was about to ask another question when George Lot burst into the motor home.

  “Sandy,” he said. The big crew chief held a folded newspaper in his right hand. He waved it at her.

  “George,” she said, without getting up. “We’re in the middle of something.”

  “I know,” he said, “but you’re going to want to see this. Tim Becker just called me about it. He said he’s starting to feel better and would come to the track later. But he’s crazy mad. He asked me to show this to you. He wants to scrap the whole film shoot. The rest of the crew just want to quit.”

  “What?!?” Sandy stood up. She took the newspaper from her crew chief.

  “Driver Blames Crew,” she read from the headline. “Loose rear wheel leads to crash during practice run.”

  George nodded. “When you read the rest, you’ll see that an inside source is quoted. And that inside source is named as someone from a television film crew.”

  He looked at Uncle Mike and glared. I was happy that George did not have a big wrench in his hand.

  Sandy quickly scanned the rest of the article.

  I remembered what Tim Becker had said during the barbecue: “Remember, Trenton, even though you’ve got that on film, Sandy won’t let you air it on television. Can you imagine what the press would do with it? Can you imagine the headline? Crew Fails To Check Car. That wouldn’t be good for the team. Or the sponsor. And we need to keep the sponsor happy.”

  When she finished reading, Sandy Peterson looked straight at Uncle Mike.

  “What I’d like to say,” she told him, “is that you’re finished. That this whole film thing is over. That you should get out, now.”

  She took a deep breath. “But I long ago promised myself to fight my temper. So I’ll say this instead...”

  We waited as she chose her words. Her blue eyes flashed.

  “This interview is over. I want time to cool down. And I’ll give you some time to clear yourself. But if you can’t prove to me that I shouldn’t blame you for this, I’ll have to ask you to pack up.”

  chapter sixteen

  Alone in Uncle Mike’s motor home, I sat facing the television and playback unit. I had expected to spend part of the morning reviewing the film from my handheld camera. But I
was too depressed. I set it aside without bothering to look at any of it.

  I had worked hours and hours, wandering around and filming by myself because I had believed this would be my first chance to get credit on a big project. Instead, it looked like all of those hours of film were going to be a wasted effort.

  It didn’t even help when I reminded myself how much worse it was for Uncle Mike. Through the window, I watched him pace around outside with his cell phone. He was too upset to sit still as he called Hollywood. I knew he was trying to sell his script. He couldn’t figure out how to prove who had spoken with the press. He fully expected Sandy to call off the shoot. Without Sandy’s agreement to film, there was no way he could make his deadline. Uncle Mike needed to sell his script for as much money as he could, even though he would lose ownership control of one of the hottest projects in Hollywood.

  I had merely lost all those hours of filming. Uncle Mike had lost more than a million dollars. And all because of a series of dumb things that had happened since the beginning of the shoot. Or even before the shoot, if I counted how much time we lost because of Junior Louis and the mice.

  I stared at the blank television screen.

  I was thinking too much. I didn’t want to think. And the best way to not work your brain is to watch television.

  So I grabbed the remote from beside me and clicked it on. I began to flick through channels. Uncle Mike had rented a motor home with a satellite dish. There were a lot of channels.

  I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

  Great, I told myself, now even television wasn’t letting me escape. Bugs Bunny reminded me of the cartoon where the elephant was scared of a mouse. And that, of course, reminded me of Junior Louis all over again. I even remembered telling the trainer about the cartoon and mice and—

  Stop! I thought. What else did the trainer say that morning?

  I closed my eyes and frowned, thinking as hard as I could. I pictured myself standing beside the elephant. I imagined how it smelled. I listened hard to my voice in my memory. And then I remembered exactly how the conversation had gone.

  What about mice? Does Junior Louis get excited about mice? You know, like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon?

  Those had been my questions. The trainer had laughed.

  I’ve seen that cartoon too, he’d said. It’s funny, you’re the second person to ask me that today.

  I repeated that phrase in my mind: It’s funny, you’re the second person to ask me that today. I snapped off the television and stared at the blank screen again. I thought hard. What if that first person had asked for a reason? Like to find out if mice really would bother Junior Louis. Like to find out if it would be worthwhile to put mice in the cooler.

  I needed to find a telephone and call the trainer. He would be easy to reach—I knew he worked with the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. But Uncle Mike was using his cell phone. And I’d forgotten to charge mine. It was dead.

  I needed to find a pay phone. Except the nearest pay phone I could remember was in the stands. Across the track. I thought hard about whether there was a closer one.

  Then it hit me. Tim Becker had a phone in his public relations trailer. He would probably let me use it.

  I got up in a hurry. I was on a mission.

  chapter seventeen

  In the late morning sunshine, I began to walk between the trailers and cars and other motor homes toward Tim Becker’s trailer. It didn’t take me long to get there.

  The screen door to the trailer was closed, but the inner door was open. I heard classical music playing inside.

  I knocked.

  “Come in,” Tim said.

  I opened the door.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. I could tell he was still mad about the newspaper article. But, ever the public relations man, Tim was polite. He sat behind a desk. Neat stacks of paper covered one side of it, a newspaper the other. A fax machine sat in one corner. A computer sat on a desk in another corner, hooked up to a printer. On the walls all around him were huge color photos of Sandy Peterson and the racecar team. On a shelf was a radio, playing the music.

  “I really need to make a phone call,” I said, “and the nearest pay phone is across the track. May I borrow your phone? I can charge the call to my uncle’s calling card.”

  “I guess so,” Tim Becker said.

  “Thank you,” I said. It hit me that maybe I had imagined a little too much. If I was wrong, I was about to make a dumb phone call. “Um, would it be okay if it was a private call?”

  “Sure, why not?” he said. He pushed his chair back and grabbed the newspaper from his desk.

  “Just shout when you’re finished,” he said, letting the screen door bang shut behind him.

  I picked up the telephone. I called directory assistance. I got the number for the San Diego Zoo. Uncle Mike had given me his calling card number because I often needed to make calls for him. I used that number, and less than a minute later I was talking to the trainer.

  I told him what I was looking for. He told me it was one of the cameramen who had asked about mice, first thing in the morning. I thanked him.

  I hung up the phone.

  I walked outside. Tim Becker was sitting on the bottom step of the trailer, reading his newspaper.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He looked up from the sports pages.

  “You’re welcome,” he answered. He folded the newspaper.

  He stepped aside to make room for me. I hopped down the stairs and headed back toward Uncle Mike’s motor home. My mind was definitely not on where I was going.

  One of the cameramen had asked about mice and elephants. Early in the morning. Like early enough to fill the cooler with mice. But why?

  Almost at Uncle Mike’s motor home, I saw the door to the neighboring motor home open. The one where Brian Nelson and Al Simonsen were staying, two of the cameramen who had worked the San Diego shoot.

  Normally, I would have kept walking and shouted hello to whoever was coming out. But not after talking to the elephant trainer.

  I ducked behind the side of another trailer and watched as Brian Nelson left his trailer. He was in a hurry.

  Was this truly strange, I wondered, or was I working too hard? Was I imagining there was a bad guy in this?

  I kept watching as he got farther away from me. A couple of times he looked around, like he was worried about being followed.

  Here’s one of the funny things about people. When someone drops his voice to a whisper, it’s a sure sign that he doesn’t want to be heard. And, of course, that’s the thing that makes people curious enough to try to listen when before they wouldn’t have cared.

  I had the same response as soon as I thought Brian didn’t want to be followed. Especially after talking to the elephant trainer. It made me want to follow him.

  Which I did.

  The infield wasn’t crowded with people, but there were enough around that I could hang back as Brian picked and pushed his way among them.

  He didn’t notice me.

  His journey was a short one. It took him straight to Tim Becker’s trailer, where I had just borrowed the phone.

  More strange. From the beginning of this shoot, I’d never seen Brian talking with Tim, not even at the barbecue. They weren’t friends. So why would Brian be going there now, when he was supposed to be helping Uncle Mike? And why did Brian look so nervous? What was going on?

  I moved to the edge of another motor home, keeping out of sight. I was still half the length of a football field away, with maybe half a dozen other trailers lining the pavement between us. It was close enough, though, to clearly see Tim Becker’s face when he answered the knock on his door.

  Tim looked angry.

  He looked around, then pulled Brian Nelson inside. Quickly. Like he didn’t want anyone to see them together.

  Enough weird things had happened that I decided I wasn’t imagining things. Brian was someplace I hadn’t expected him
to be. And he’d looked guilty getting there. Tim didn’t want him there. Yet Tim had quickly pulled Brian into the trailer anyway.

  I made a decision. At the back of Tim’s trailer, next to his desk, was a window. While I was on the phone, I had noticed it was open.

  I told myself that if they talked loud enough for me to overhear, it wasn’t really like spying. And that if they didn’t have anything to hide, they wouldn’t be mad that I had listened.

  So I moved quietly around the side of the trailer and stood beneath the window.

  chapter eighteen

  “To me, it’s simple,” I heard Brian Nelson say. “I did my job. The shoot is over. All the film in the can is trashed. I want to get paid.”

  Film? Trashed? What did he mean, trashed?

  “And I told you,” Tim Becker said. “Not until Hiser misses the deadline completely. Once I am guaranteed he can’t produce the show, you will get paid.”

  “No chance he’s going to make it now,” Brian said. “I just told you. Whatever filming was done is useless. I want my money so I can quit and get out of here before they can blame me.”

  “Tomorrow,” Tim said. “But don’t come here to get it. Call me. Last thing I want is for someone to see us together.”

  “Not tomorrow,” Brian Nelson said. “This afternoon. And I want an extra five thousand dollars.”

  “You’re nuts. You’re already getting ten thousand.”

  “Look,” Brian said. “I’m not stupid. I watched you all through that barbecue. You brought us our fruit salads. It wasn’t until I heard what the doctor said that I realized what you had done. You could have at least warned me.”

  “And if you were the only one not sick,” Tim said, “it would have looked strange.”

  “Fair enough,” Brian said. “But it’s worth an extra five grand. Or maybe you’d like me to go back to the same reporter you sent me to with the other story.”