“Let’s Ride!” shouts Phantom Racer. He leaps through the Barracuda’s driver side window. The sun-sticky seat leather squelches against his invisibility bodysuit; he grips the steering wheel in his red driving gloves, yanks the shift, stomps the gas.
Headless, his shotgun seat lover/sidekick, claps her hands, turns up the Bee Gees, and cheers. “Go, baby, go.”
Wriggled free of his bindings, the corrupt pawnshop owner rushes outside, watches the Barracuda roar from the parking lot. The pawnshop owner scrolls through his contacts, lamenting when you memorized people’s numbers. He finds “Yakuza.” It goes straight to voicemail. He says, “The ice has all melted.”
Phantom Racer punches the roof of the Barracuda and whoops. He leans over, kisses Headless’s plastic stump neck, says they’ll sell the diamonds and drive to Vegas.
Headless, a Saks Fifth Avenue mannequin, laughs and says she’s always wanted to see Paris (Paris). But first, he must make an honest girl of her.
The Yakuza is mad.
As Phantom Racer Tokyo drifts into In N Out burger—he’s dearly missed them; they don’t have those out East, where he’s spent months doing stunts for Scorsese—and his white Zorro mask discombobulates, one eyehole misaligned with the eye. He spins out, drives through the drive-thru in reverse, forgets to order Headless’s fries animal style.
Headless pouts. Turns off the Bee Gees. Turns on droning AM radio.
Black motorcycles appear—just specks in the rearview.
At the sound of Orson Welles broadcasting “The Hitchhiker,” Phantom Racer grows solemn. He crosses himself. He splashes the radio dead with a flask of Irish whiskey, blessed by his driver’s ed teacher at St. Michael’s, Father Ballinger, who readers will know as the first Phantom Racer. He admonishes Headless, says it’s bad juju: such late night-radio, under the hot Texas sun.
Headless shouts to look out!
To the left, to the right, black motorcycles zoom, their riders’ nunchucks knock dents in the Barracuda, smash off a side mirror, bash in headlights.
Now, Phantom Racer loses control of the Barracuda. It goes topsy turvy off the highway, rolls like a tumbleweed through the desert sand, knocking cacti like bowling pins. The trunk pops, trailing loose diamonds—glittering breadcrumbs, angels’ tears.
Headless is thrown from the car like a crash test dummy, leaving one hand in Phantom Racer’s lap, her fingernails lacquered red by blood drops from his broken nose.
The black motorcycles circle, scoop up diamonds with butterfly nets.
The Phantom Racer crawls from the Barracuda, rushes to Headless, falls on her, attempts mouth to mouth, does chest compressions to the beat of “YMCA.”
The black motorcycles tear off into the sunset, save for one young Yakuza who grew up watching Phantom Racer’s cartoon. His mom would tape it for him on Saturday mornings so he could sleep in. “Phantom Racer,” he says (in subtitles),“may I take you and your lady love to the Dog Doctor?” Meaning the infamous mafia veterinarian.
Phantom Racer wipes his gritty eyes—to read the subtitles—and shouts, “Let’s ride!”