Motor Mouth

mind-boggling.
    The season was over until mid-February, and the race-shop complex was a ghost town.
    “Do you need anything at the shop?” Hooker asked.
    “Nothing that can’t wait,” I said. “I’m looking forward to getting home.”
    Hooker took 85 north and got off at the Huntersville exit. If Disneyland had been built by the Gap, it would look like my Huntersville neighborhood. It’s a contrived town with stores and restaurants at the ground level and apartments above. Surrounding the town are condo complexes. It’s actually a wonderful place to live, especially when you’re new to the area. The joke around the shops is that this is the place race-team members live when their wives throw them out of the house.
    Hooker pulled into the lot behind my building, and his phone rang. The conversation was short, and he didn’t look happy when he hung up.
    “That was Ray Huevo,” Hooker said. “Your purse got turned over to him, he found the gearshift knob in it, and as he puts it…something was missing.”
    “That answers a few questions.”
    “Yeah. Ray knew the chip was in the knob. And he wants the chip back. He said we could give it to him the easy way or the hard way.”
    “Did he elaborate on the hard way?”
    “No. But I think it might involve a lot of bleeding.”
    “Maybe we should give him the chip.”
    “That’s not going to prevent the bleeding. This has gone too far, and we know too much,” Hooker said. “Not only do we know about the chip, we know about Oscar.”
    “I don’t like the direction of this conversation.”
    “I think we’re in a lot of trouble. I think we need to find out exactly what functions the chip performs and then go to NASCAR and the police with it. Better a live shoe salesman than a dead race-car driver.”
    “We’ve withheld information on a homicide,” I told him.
    “We’ll deal.”
    “I know a guy at the university in Charlotte who might be able to help us. This guy is a total computer nut. He’d love the chance to check out a new toy. I haven’t seen him in a while, but he’s probably still at the same address. He was living with his parents, and I can’t imagine him ever leaving. He’s a great guy, but he’d starve to death if he didn’t have a keeper. I have his phone number upstairs.”
    “I’ll walk Beans and you make the phone call.”
    I live on the second floor of a three-story building. A florist is directly below me and Dan Cox is above. Cox is a motor-sports journalist who covers NASCAR. He’s a really nice guy. He’s my age. And he looks like Gumby. Sometimes late at night I hear odd tapping sounds overhead, and I imagine it’s Gumby’s horse Pokey running around.
    My apartment has two bedrooms and one and a half baths. My kitchen appliances are new, and the master bathroom has a marble countertop. The rooms are all freshly painted cream, and the carpet is stain free. My bedroom windows look down on a small patio and beyond that a parking lot. My living room windows look out at Main Street, USA.
    Topper’s is across the street. Decent food and ice-cold beer on tap. Its décor is a mix of hunt club and speed park. Big leather booths, a bunch of tall bar tables, and a nice long mahogany bar.
    When I sit at my desk, I look out the window at Topper’s. Most nights it’s packed, but this was the day before Thanksgiving and there wasn’t much going on. Teams were taking minivacations in the Florida Keys and visiting family.
     
    Steven Sikulski had been easy to lure to the computer lab. I knew his only two weaknesses. A new computer problem to solve and cheesecake. Sikulski was a big, loose-jointed guy who looked like he should be setting out fruit in a supermarket. His face was unlined at fifty and perpetually looked like Sikulski didn’t have a care in the world. And maybe he didn’t.
    I’d brought him the required offering of New York cheesecake, and now Hooker and I were pacing behind him, cracking our knuckles, waiting for Sikulski to solve the riddle of the chip.
    “The small chip is obviously damaged,” Sikulski said. “It’s a microprocessor with wireless ability, and I’m guessing that the damaged portion contained leads to control some sort of mechanical process. The circuitry isn’t complicated, but the miniaturization is impressive. That’s all I can tell you on a quick look. The second chip is much more interesting. It can send and receive wirelessly. The fact that it was encased in a shell is