The Black Jersey

by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

  Fiona usually just nodded in a distracted fashion to Stevlana’s jabs. Occasionally, when Stevlana’s poking became particularly sharp, Fiona would look at her with the same curiosity she might have had toward an extraterrestrial. In the end, Stevlana’s efforts to draw attention to herself were understandable: The three of us lived for cycling. And though Steve and Fiona could barely tolerate each other for some reason I could never fully understand, that could be set aside in the heat of after-dinner conversations when we would get tangled up in long and impassioned arguments over the advantages of a certain kind of pedal or the best way to climb the hill of the much-feared Tourmalet.

  Of course it was superficially easy to understand why Steve and Stevlana were together: She was a lingerie model and he was one of the jet set’s most famous bachelors. But I also sensed they both felt a certain pressure from the press, from their sponsors, and, more than anything, from the public, which expected that each would have a partner as glittering as they themselves were.

  Steve’s relief as soon as we left his room confirmed my suspicion that his desire for Stevlana was based more on appearances than reality. It was the first day of the Tour, and out on the streets of Utrecht, the cycling world was boiling over with excitement and impatience. We spent the morning holed up in my room, speculating about the design of the course and the real possibility that Steve would be wearing the winner’s yellow jersey when we got to Paris three weeks later. At noon, when we finally confirmed Stevlana had returned to Amsterdam, we ventured out for lunch with the rest of the team, then dressed and got on the enormous team bus, our home away from home for the Tour, where we were made to listen to more endless admonishments from Giraud.

  By then, all we wanted was for the damn race to start. It takes so many months of preparation, of revising the routes, of spartan diets devoid of flavor. The tension can be eased only when the cyclist gets on the road and lets himself enter the trance the whirlwind of the race induces.

  This year like all the others, my task was, essentially, not to win. I was there to help Steve win. I’m loyal, that’s for sure. For twenty-one days, I had to protect him from his rivals, from the crosswinds, from hunger and thirst, from accidents, and, above all, from that tall mountain where his enemies could tear him to pieces. I am what allows Steve to reach the last kilometer of the summit with as little effort as possible, even if it means I break down and place among the last racers. In the past few years, we’d become the best partners on the circuit, even though he’s the only one who ever stepped up to the winner’s podium.

  The first day of the Tour began with what’s called the Prologue, an individual time trial in which Steve didn’t need anybody’s help. He’s the world champion. But in the following days, all our predictions went to hell. We quickly realized this Tour would be different from the previous ones although, at that point, we couldn’t have even begun to guess why.

  The first week is supposedly just a warm-up and a showcase for the teams and contenders. There are long stretches on flat roads in Belgium and in the north of France in which the whole peloton arrives at the finish line together, just behind the sprinters who fight over the last few meters. The real battle takes place during the second and third weeks, on terrible uphill climbs in the Pyrenees and the Alps in which only the finest athletes prevail.

  But this year the action started during the very first stage. On day one of competition there were a couple of smaller accidents, and then a tragedy that kicked several important contenders off the initial peloton of 198 racers. Still, no one was alarmed. We were used to fate having the last word on the road: an unlucky puncture, a teammate who loses his balance and takes you down with him, a fan who gets in the way, a cold that overtakes months of preparation. We understood that every so often there would be an annus horribilis, a cursed year, for the Tour de France. By the time we finished the first four stages of the Tour, we would start to suspect this could be the worst of all.

  There seemed to be an unusual tension in the air from the get-go. The Englishman Peter Stark, the Colombian Óscar Cuadrado, and my teammate Steve Panata were the three great contenders for the crown in Paris. For the past few years, they’d been taking turns winning the main races, and thanks to their heated rivalry, a greater-than-usual excitement had been awakened among the fans, who now feverishly followed the goings-on among the three racers striving to make their marks on cycling history. Stark, Cuadrado, and Panata had decided to make this year’s Tour the setting in which it would be decided once and for all who was the best cyclist of their generation. The organizers were expecting a record TV audience and had acted accordingly, designing a bedeviling course, even for the first week.

  The asphalt on day three was hell itself. Racing over cobblestones at 50 kilometers per hour will literally break your balls. Every jolt stabs your legs and sends shocks up your arms. These aren’t Parisian paving stones, worn smooth over time by thousands of cars passing over them, but real pieces of jagged rock on narrow rural roads that hardly anyone ever uses. Few were as terrible as what we had suffered between Seraing and Cambrai, just before we left Belgium. The relentless rain that fell throughout the day turned the course into a minefield.

  The only way to avoid being dragged down into a fall was to stay at the tip of the peloton. Making sure it became Steve’s spot was my task. The problem is there are two hundred other cyclists trying to do the same thing, which can transform those tight paths into a real bottleneck. Trying to put another racer in the front under those conditions can cause tumultuous falls and the corresponding shattered clavicles, broken arms, and concussions.

  Steve’s, Cuadrado’s, and Stark’s teams all came out of the massacre intact because, without a word spoken between us, we had cooperated. Twenty-seven of us—nine racers per team—let our leaders go for the front and then blocked the way in so that the rest of the racers couldn’t bother them. We weren’t competing against one another in these initial stages; we just wanted to survive. But I couldn’t let down my guard with the riders behind me. Over and over, I blocked the path to defend our position, using my elbows and teeth and, God help me, letting whoever fell be crushed by an avalanche of bikes and flying arms and legs.

  By the end of the sixth day, fifty-two cyclists had dropped out, the most ever at this point in the competition. Even so, most of us continued to blame fate for the bad luck that had befallen us. One day later, we’d discover that the stars, or whatever it is that determines our fortunes in racing, couldn’t explain all the tragedies we were enduring here. Unless you count murder as one of the tools chosen by fate.

  Stage 7

  Livarot—Fougères, 190.5 km.

  “My son hooked up with his first bike when he was four,” boasted Murat, the Fonar team’s—our team’s—muscular sprinter.

  “What a perv,” Steve said, joking, though no one else paid the comment any mind; it certainly wasn’t new. Our teammate’s sense of humor wasn’t the best at breaking the ice or, really, for breaking much of anything except mouths and noggins.

  We were having dinner at a hotel on the outskirts of Rennes, exhausted after the Tour’s seventh stage. The day had once more been frustrating, rainy, and plagued by accidents. There wasn’t a lot of energy for socializing. It also wasn’t a particularly healthy idea to laugh at Murat. His back and thighs were as disproportionate as his temperamental outbursts.

  But Steve was like that, unaware of the risks, completely oblivious to the feelings of others. I was the only one who knew his aptitude for hurting others was completely involuntary. Deep down, he had no malice; I might even say that, in his way, he was a generous guy. There are countless teammates whose careers or contracts were extended thanks to a spontaneous compliment on Steve’s million-plus Twitter account or in any of his innumerable media interviews.

  I’ve ended up believing that his inability to understand other people’s fears and insecurities is because he�
�s convinced everyone else is having as good a time as he is. A very convenient denial that allowed him to continue his privileged life with minimal guilt.

  Still, the silence that fell on the table, pierced only by the sound of Murat’s fork falling to his plate, let him know he’d inadvertently broken one of those unspoken rules he’d never bothered to assimilate. As he’d done so many other times when he sensed trouble, he looked for my eyes with the hope of finding a smile that would let everyone know his comment was innocent and that he wasn’t making fun of Murat’s kid. And like so many other times in the past, I went above and beyond for Steve.

  “Yeah, that boy will go far. During our last training ride, he followed us for a stretch and almost caught up, remember? There’s finally some hope of having a handsome Murat in the circuit.” And now a few of the guys at the table laughed easily. Murat was nicknamed the Beast, which referred both to the mighty Catalonian’s uneven face, sculpted by fists, and the ferocity of his rushes at the finish line. Murat was proud of his nom de guerre, and cracked a small smile.

  Ten minutes later, meals devoured, the team dispersed to their rooms. Steve’s bad joke aside, the racers were already feeling downcast. We had covered barely a third of the 3,350 kilometers we’d confront on this edition of the Tour, but in the first seven days the peloton had already suffered more accidents and scandals than we’d had in all twenty-one days of the previous year’s Tour.

  To everyone’s surprise, because he had a reputation for being clean and upholding the honor of cycling, the Spaniard Carlos Santamaría had been accused of doping that morning. It had a huge impact because Santamaría, who led the Astana team, had been in third place overall.

  But Steve was doing okay. His chances of winning the Tour had actually improved in the past few days. He told me to come hang for a while and share one of those ridiculous energy drinks named after him, but I was exhausted and told him so, heading toward the elevator. I noticed his frustration. Post-race, we almost always got together to review our day and discuss the challenges we’d face next. When we didn’t hang out afterward, it was because Steve had something better to do: At the beginning of his career, women, and in the past few years, meetings with his agent, Benny, always accompanied by some new sponsor. But I’d decided today it was my turn to have something better to do, even if it was to just drop in bed.

  He and I were the only ones on the team who had single rooms, thanks to a clause in his contract that generously extended to me. He followed me with his gaze for a few seconds when I turned to cross the lobby and then, as he did with everything that didn’t jibe with what he wanted, he erased me from his mind. He probably didn’t even notice I never made it to the elevators.

  “Marc Moreau, could I have a few minutes of your time?”

  The interruption sent my pulse racing in a way no steep hill or hours of pedaling on the road could do. And there was a reason: Nobody called me by my name. An elegant man now touched my arm as if he were gently trying to make sure I didn’t get away. He didn’t look like a reporter who’d snuck into the hotel. In fact, he looked exactly like the personification of a cyclist’s worst nightmares. His impeccable suit and neatly trimmed mustache were those of someone who worked for an institution, and given the present circumstances, that institution could only be the much-feared WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency.

  Although I was convinced my body was free of banned substances, I knew the urine tests we’d taken on previous days could register illegal substances absorbed involuntarily, or that we could be victims of lab errors. This wouldn’t be the first time somebody got kicked out of the competition because of a contaminated sample. I thought about Carlos Santamaría and I imagined my name in the headlines the next day.

  “Excuse me?” I responded, defensive, and pulled my arm, trying to get distance from him.

  “Could we talk in the lounge, Sergeant Moreau? I won’t take up too much of your time.”

  During my short time in the army I’d never been promoted beyond corporal, but I wasn’t about to contradict him. There was a room just off the main lobby lit by a faint artificial fireplace, even though it was 82 degrees outside. The hotels along the route aren’t exactly bursting with luxury and comfort, never mind good taste.

  I followed him to a secluded corner, feeling like I was walking into a trap. His reference to my military past aroused my curiosity but did nothing to ease my fears.

  “Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Commissioner Favre.” As he spoke, he quickly showed me an ID, his gestures those of someone who had done this a thousand times before. “Needless to say,” he continued, leaning his head toward me, “I am an admirer of your athletic achievements.”

  His flattering words and, even more so, his manner, which was a tad unctuous, helped my curiosity surpass my fear. He didn’t seem about to accuse me of doping, although he might still be interested in interrogating me about banned substances in circulation on the Tour. In fact, what he said next made me think that was his purpose.

  “We need your cooperation, sergeant. Please, take a seat, make yourself comfortable.”

  I sat down on the tiny couch and felt as comfortable as if I were in a dentist chair. The commissioner seemed intent on inflating my military rank. I thought if there was a problem, it might be better to be a sergeant instead of a corporal, so I accepted the promotion and went on the offensive. “I can’t help you with this issue. I keep myself away from everything and from anyone who has anything to do with that shit.”

  “We’re not worried about that, but rather something much more dangerous.” He paused and brought his face closer to mine and practically whispered, “There’s a killer among you.” Then he sat up and took note of my reaction.

  I’m sure I disappointed him because I had none. The phrase was so absurd, my brain could find no way to process it. At least not immediately. In the light of the fake fireplace, I perceived the sheen of the wax on his fine mustache, sculpted atop thick wet lips. I thought it was the kind of thing some women might find seductive and others might find repulsive.

  Disappointed by my silence, he began to explain as if he were reading a military report. “One: Hugo Lampar, the Australian and the best climber on the Rocca team, was beaten up two weeks ago as he rode alone on a practice course. There were no witnesses. He had multiple fractures and has no possibility of rejoining the Tour. Without his climber, Sergei Talancón’s chances are few, if not null. He’ll be unprotected and have to get used to someone else setting the tempo, which will disorient him.

  “Two: Three days before the beginning of the competition, Michael Hankel was assaulted at dusk just a few steps from his hotel. Although he insists he didn’t resist and offered his wallet immediately, one of the thugs became angry over how little cash he was carrying, knocked him down with a single punch, and then stomped his ankle. It’s useless for the foreseeable future. He wasn’t considered a major contender, but his unexpected third place at Il Giro in Italy at only twenty-four had made many people in the press think that if there was going to be a surprise on the Tour this year, it would come from the German.

  “Three: The Englishman Phil Cunninham ran the first stage far slower than expected, because he was pumped up on antihistamines. He was the only one who could challenge Steve Panata in the time trial. Cunninham finished three minutes too late, which meant he ceased being a threat for the rest of the Tour. The doctors can’t explain how he got sick. He ate the same things as the rest of the team and he has no allergies.

  “Four: Just a few days ago, on the fifth stage, two fans stepped in front of the Movistar team, pretending they only wanted to wave at the camera on the motorcycle that runs in front of the squad. Óscar Cuadrado’s teammates barely got a chance to react. It was a massive collision. Four of the racers had to drop out of the competition and the Colombian lost half his team with most of the Tour still to come. The ‘fans’ that knocked him down
were discovered to be some hooligans from Marseille with no known prior interest in cycling. They’re also hospitalized. We did get one revealing piece of information about them: One of them had recently deposited eight thousand euros in his bank account.”

  The commissioner paused again to see if I had grasped what he was telling me. None of those mishaps were new to me, although I hadn’t known the details until now. The Movistar incident was the most disturbing. With only half his team, Cuadrado had practically zero chance of winning, and that changed the odds for the Tour. If what the commissioner said was true, someone had altered the history of cycling.

  And yet, I couldn’t buy into the idea of an attack against the tournament and, much less, that someone was physically assaulting the contenders. Every year the Tour lost a certain number of cyclists along its terrible journey, often in tragic circumstances.

  “A mugging with mysterious circumstances and several accidents doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy. In the ten years I’ve been racing on the Tour, I’ve seen plenty of stuff like this. Doesn’t it seem like a bit much to talk about a killer?”

  “Well, I haven’t finished.” He licked his lips and took a long pause, almost enjoying the moment. “Two hours ago we found Saul Fleming floating in the bathtub in his room, his wrists slit. Whoever tried to make it look like suicide did a really sloppy job. That’s why we decided to talk to you.”

  This time, the commissioner got the reaction he’d been looking for. My face must have reflected my shock as I imagined Saul drowning in his own blood. We’d never been close friends, but we’d had a profound respect for each other. Fleming was Peter Stark’s primary domestique, his wingman in the same way I was Steve’s. We’d gone through innumerable battles, wheel-to-wheel, defending our respective champions. Without talking about it, during the stretch up in the mountains, we’d developed our own competition within the overall race: Who would go further in protecting his leader? Knowing that the Englishman would never again challenge me on a slope made me shiver. Something had changed forever.