By Donald Dewey Photos by William Baker A thin line separates self-confidence from arrogance. One such line was the softly stated decisiveness of Marty Pender as he contemplated the heat he was about to run recently at the Orange County speedway in Middletown. "I'm going to win it," he said. "I've gotten to this point — I'm just going to win it."
Police Officer Marty Pender, PBA Delegate from PSA 8, stands alongside his 2002 Chevy Monte Carlo at the Orange County Speedway.

This point involved a lot more than Pender's racing record or the fact that he had been assigned the post position for the heat. A Housing cop since 1985, Pender has moved from one PSA unit to another in his 17 years on the job — none of which has offered a walk in the park. On four different occasions his journey from Harlem to the Lower East Side to the South Bronx has brought him into shooting scenes. In one calendar year alone in the late 1980s, he chalked up 218 assists. Then there have been spells with the Drivers Training Unit and as a fleet management mechanic. Needless to say, he has heard all the cracks about how working patrol in New York City was the ideal preparation for stock car racing.

"The truth is," says the 45-year-old Somers resident, "cars were even indirectly responsible for getting me on the job. I was working as a mechanic, and one of the regular customers was a cop from the 44. One day he walks in and insists I take the exam. 'You're not going to get anywhere doing this,' he tells me. So I took the exam and got in."

While not averse to talking about his hairier gunplay scenes while on Housing patrol, Pender says that his single most bizarre moment came with a call from the Riis projects on the Lower East Side. "An old lady was worried about her friend who lived upstairs and hadn't been heard from for a few days. When I got there, the woman was scotch-taping another note on the door looking for her friend Gloria. I get a passkey and go in, and the old lady is clinging to my arm. The place is a pigsty — vermin all over the place. Then we get to the bedroom, the old woman still on my arm. Compared to the rest of the place, the bedroom is immaculate, except for this lump in the bed. I pull off the sheet, and there you've got roaches going at Gloria's eyes. I think to myself I got to get the old lady out of here, but she's still clinging and staring down at her friend. 'Your friend's dead,' I say to her. 'Well, at least she's not missing anymore,' she says to me."

Above: Marty Pender, Jr. consults with his dad. Below right, fellow cops' signatures decorate Pender's souped-up Chevy.

And there was a kicker. "It took them more than a week to voucher everything they found in the place. I think it came to more than $38,000."

There's no prize like that waiting across the finish line for the winners in Middletown. Two hundred fifty dollars is about the best a special sponsor-night prize might total. But this hasn't prevented a couple of thousand racing fans from showing up every Saturday evening between April and October at what has become the second most important dirt track in the East. (Only a mile-long speedway in Syracuse is more imposing than Middletown's 5/8 of a mile.) On this particular night, there is also the attraction of a demolition derby.

Pender is unfazed by the apparent blood lure of so much car racing. "I'm the one doing it, so I'm not the one to judge. A couple of weeks ago, I got a concussion when I ended up in a three-car bang-up. My wife could really do without me coming here every Saturday."

So why does he do it? "Why else?" he replies from some obvious practice. "It's the most fun you can have with your clothes on."

It doesn't bother Pender, either, that he has willy-nilly become Middletown's racing cop — or, as some in the pit refer to him, the Flying Fuzz. His support team also carries both strong family and cop connections. It includes his 15-year-old son Marty, Jr., an uncle Daryl Bunyea, and Police Officers Bill Daly (currently assigned to the Police Academy) and brother Tim Daly (Queens South Task Force).

Then there is the racing car itself — a 2002 Chevy Monte Carlo that is plastered with Pender's police associations. Besides the PBA logo (Pender has been a delegate since 1998), the chassis carries symbols for his present PSA 8 command and the signatures of several visiting cops. That leaves barely enough room for the rest of the 16 sponsors — contributions ranging from a few hundred to $6,000 a year coming from the likes of the Garon Fence company in Bedford Hills, Mainly Monograms (manufacturer of T-shirts and other paraphernalia), SMS Motor Sports and a saloon in Somers.

Although he had been around cars since he had been able to say the word, Pender didn't hit a dirt track on his own for the first time until 1996. "I started off dead last," he recalls, still savoring the moment, "and I got all the way up to ninth in a field of 23. That's when I knew I could do it."

The opportunity to test his more immediate self-confidence in the heat gets stalled by a series of track mishaps. First, drivers often complain to speedway officials about the condition of the field after several days of rain. "The curves are fine," cries one of Pender's pit neighbors to nobody in particular, "but the straight-aways are a mess. How did they manage that?"

A more serious delay comes in a preliminary race of modified stock cars — the garishly colored lightweights that look like old Citroens on the non-racing kind of speed. When four of the cars pile up in the backstretch, leaving two of them this close to the local junkyard, the drivers turn angrily on the track officials. When that doesn't get them anywhere, two of them go at one another, exchanging a couple of punches before being separated.

Nobody on Pender's team seems surprised by the outburst. What it mainly provokes are tales of other odd doings at the track on other Saturday evenings. The most memorable of these stories is of the driver who decided to bolt himself down into his seat, lost the whole bottom of his chassis on a turn, fell down into the track, and got killed by his own car. As Pender puts it, "You've got to have a sense of humor about it or maybe you'll be the one who ends up as the joke."

The announcement finally comes for lining up for the heat. Marty, Jr., and the other members of the team stake out the back stretch, where the modified cars had their smashup and where unpredictable mud grooves still pose a danger, especially at the 100+ m.p.h. most racers do on straight-aways. The last tip to Pender before he climbs into his blue-and-white Monte Carlo is that he should also keep an eye on a mud buildup near the post of the second curve.

On the first of the six laps making up the heat, Pender holds a lead of about three car lengths. Marty, Jr., and the others are encouraged, but hardly content. They don't like the way a Grand Prix moved from sixth all the way to third even as they were watching their piece of track.

The second time around is more reassuring. Pender's lead has grown to about six car lengths, and the Grand Prix appears to have shot its bolt, slipping back again to sixth. And in fact, that is as close as the race will get. By the time he reaches his final lap, Pender is a good 20 lengths ahead of the runner-up. What else can he say?

"I just knew it. Sometimes you just feel things are all in the right place at the right time. How many times does that happen — racing, doing the job, or anything else?"