Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich [45]
“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 fascinating. It would indicate that it doesn’t attach to a wiring system. That it can perform its function entirely wirelessly. Perhaps this is a relay of some sort. The primary brain in a complicated routing system. The circuitry is much more sophisticated than the circuitry in the damaged chip. Again, it’s microminiaturized. And here’s the good part…it carries its own power source. It’s riding on a veneer that seems to function as a battery. It’s not my area of expertise, but I suspect the battery is the most exciting part of this little sweetheart. If I had more time, I could work my way through the circuitry and tell you more.”
“Unfortunately, we haven’t got more time. Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Because I know the location of the chips, and because I know their suspected use, I can give you a hypothetical situation. A driver could adjust the mechanical function of a car, such as engine speed, with a remote. For that matter, anyone at the track could signal the circuit board. It’s like one of those remote-control cars for kids, only this chip controls a real car. The puzzle is that there are two chips. It would seem to me the small chip could do the job.”
“Anyone at the track could control this gizmo?” Hooker asked. “It wouldn’t have to be the driver?”
“I’m speaking hypothetically,” Sikulski said. “The remote would be a simple on/off switch. There’s no reason why someone in the stands couldn’t operate it.”
“Would there be an advantage to a team member operating it? A spotter, for instance.”
“I imagine a spotter would have a better sense of when to turn it on and when to turn it off.