The two went out to the MG together, and Woody felt the same sort of lowering of the temperature he had experienced when he called Mary Jane to say that he couldn't take her out because he'd spent his money on Cindy Lou.
When he got back, Mary Jane had gone to the motel with Steve, but Worm was waiting for him.
"We'll have tae go oot and get the Black Tiger," he said. "I've had a word wi' Randy aboot it, and he wants it towed to my garage. We'll take a look at it and see if it can be towed behind the Dodge."
They drove back to Torrey Pines then and found the Black Tiger had been taken to a service shed in the back of the pit area. Worm jacked her up and crawled underneath to inspect the steering linkage. He was there ten minutes, and when he came out he had a piece of shiny metal shaped like a large marble in his hand.
"Steering knuckle," he said. "Sheered clean through."
Woody stared at it. He'd never known of a steering knuckle breaking before. It might happen on an old car, but hardly on a new one.
"How could that have happened?" he asked.
Worm shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Car may have been dropped in shipping and yon knuckle slightly fractured. But there's some cars, laddie, that are just not built tae drive. They're man-killers. And it comes tae me noo that this is one of them."
Woody recalled the time he'd seen the Black Tiger in Worm's garage under the electric lights. There had been something menacing about it then.
"Horseradish," he said. "A car's a car. They haven't any feelings of their own."