The Black Jersey

by Jorge Zepeda Patterson

  “I’ll do it, you hear me?” Radek insisted, then looked at me defiantly, as if I’d also disrespected him. I nodded without a word, thinking anything I said could make him angrier or, worse, lead him to fulfill his promise. I recalled the initial list of suspects from just a few days ago, led by the Pole. Now, I’d conclusively ruled him out. I couldn’t believe he was a criminal after all he’d done for me. Still, he was a weird guy, someone you didn’t want to have as an enemy. I decided his warning to Matosas could be useful; the Italian would think twice before making another shitty move.

  “Don’t kill him,” I said after a pause. “Just make sure he’s not wearing the yellow jersey in Paris.” I went for a festive tone, as if the whole conversation was nothing more than a joke. I hadn’t finished my sentence when I realized my mistake. Radek pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, like a Templar receiving a holy assignment. I won’t uncover the killer, but I’m going to end up creating one, I thought with a shiver.

  The next five hours were no less stressful. Giraud turned me into the pizza-delivery boy, carrying food and water from one end to the other along the peloton’s route. It wasn’t just a couple of times either, as Steve had promised. When my teammates realized what was happening, they stopped asking for drinks, bars, and gels and tried to limit themselves to what they could grab from the staff in the refreshment areas. Giraud decided to hydrate them in spite of that. I went up and down the ladder again and again, a miserable Sherpa carrying electrolytes on his back.

  At least that day, none of the other teams tried anything out of the ordinary. Riders broke out from the bottom of the rankings, knowing it was their last chance to get on TV: Only the best climbers and the leaders in the standings would stay together through the four remaining stages on the Alps. Fortunately for me, the rest of the squads took it easy, turning that last lap before our day off into a Casual Friday. They made just enough of an effort to catch up with the runaways, so we all arrived in Gap together.

  I crossed the finish line at the tail end of the peloton, although with the same official time as my rivals, Steve included. Unfortunately, I was much more exhausted than the rest of them. I cursed Giraud, and for a moment, while showering on the bus, I considered the possibility of persuading Radek to include my DS in his death threats. When I put on my pants I thought of something that improved my mood: I’d never go through this again. No matter how much he hated me, Giraud couldn’t do without my strengths as a climber on the remaining stages.

  The Tour was now over except for the mountains. We wouldn’t be back on the road for another forty hours. Only two rivals separated me from the leader’s jersey, and I knew that, in the terrible peaks ahead of us, I had the advantage. I imagined myself in Paris wearing yellow, the color of the Colombian national team. I would be the very first Colombian champion, and the first French champion after thirty-five years of drought. Fiona would love me forever and Lombard would fulfill his dream. Then a sudden shadow ripped through the rainbows: Steve. And then a much blacker and more foreboding stain appeared: the killer breathing heavily against the back of my neck.

  During my massage session, I decided that tonight, I would at all costs avoid doing anything related to “Sergeant Moreau.” Hannibal, the rider wearing number 22, the cyclist about to pull off a historic surprise at the Tour de France, was much more interesting and important. That meant avoiding Steve, who would likely want to share Protex’s report; Favre, who was always optimistic about his ability to get information out of me; and Fiona and Ray, my partners in intrigue. I asked the loyal Axel to make my excuses to the rest of the team and bring me something to eat up to my room. Ending the day at eight o’clock at night was the best way to recover from the extreme weariness I was suffering anyway. And if I just locked myself in my room for four more days, except to race, I would deprive the murderer of any opportunity that could keep me from entering Paris with my arms up in the air.

  That night I didn’t need to invoke the rankings in order to sleep—nothing had changed during the rest day. But I did anyway.

  GENERAL CLASSIFICATION: STAGE 16

  RANK

  RIDER

  TIME

  NOTES

  1

  ALESSIO MATOSAS (ITALY/LAVEZZA)

  64:47:16

  We’ll see you on the mountain, you SOB.

  2

  MILENKO PANIUK (CZECH/RABONET)

  0:22

  He’s not the killer, but he’s part of the plot.

  3 MARC MOREAU (FRANCE/FONAR) +5:12 I survived an explosion and Giraud—what next?

  4 STEVE PANATA (USA/FONAR) +6:30 He won’t just sit there, but what will he do?

  5

  PABLO MEDEL (SPAIN/BALEARES)

  7:05

  He won’t either, and he might get desperate.

  6

  ÓSCAR CUADRADO (COLOMBIA/MOVISTAR)

  11:55

  7

  LUIS DURÁN (SPAIN/IMAGINE)

  12:24

  8

  SERGEI TALANCÓN (ROMANIA/ROCCA)

  13:48

  9

  ANSELMO CONTI (ITALY/LAVEZZA)

  16:37

  10

  ROL CHARPENELLE (FRANCE/TOURGAZ)

  16:57

  Rest

  You don’t survive twenty-one Tour stages without some sort of system. Each one of us develops our own ways to stay alive until that third week. It’s not terribly different from the office worker who establishes a small ritual—making a cup of coffee, checking in with a co-worker—every day before officially sitting down at his desk for eight hours. My strategy consists of dividing the race into two different tournaments; I have other quirks, of course, like obsessively tallying my room numbers, the temperature, and the numbers on the backs of my colleagues, but this is the most important one.

  I prepare myself emotionally for two races. The first one is two weeks long and the goal is simply to finish in the best possible position without sacrificing our team goals, whatever they might be.

  The last five days are a different race, very different. Up until this moment the Tour has been hard; it always is, but it’s also been something of a circus. But after Stage 16, most of the peloton falls back in the mountains, and those riders out of the race for all intents and purposes, having lost so much time. From this moment on, it’s a war at breakneck speed between the two or three teams aspiring to the podium in Paris. It’s the final battle of a long siege, and it is fought with knives between our teeth.

  A day off separates these two races and I turn that day into a refuge from cycling however I can. I sleep late; I shower in the morning, which never happens during the race; I eat banned foods and watch movies—I even go to a movie theater if the town population and the circumstances allow it. I do whatever I can to feel like I’m on vacation, far away from the competition. The harm all this might do to my body is minimal compared to the benefits to my spirit.

  Last year Fiona went with me to a double feature in Pau, and we stuffed ourselves with popcorn and Coke. But last year, I hadn’t aspired to the yellow jersey and there was no criminal plot determined to knock me off my bike. I decided to enjoy my day off without my girlfriend. Her presence would be distracting because she would remind me of the demons stalking me. I’d lock myself in my room to eat junk food, kindly delivered by Axel, watch
a Netflix series, and go up two levels on a game I’d downloaded on my PlayStation.

  Under normal circumstances I would’ve had to negotiate this absence with Giraud, but it was clear he now considered me a lost cause. Whatever the results of the race, one of the two of us would leave Fonar at the end of the Tour; in the best but most improbable of all cases, he’d be handcuffed and I’d be wearing the yellow jersey.

  Steve and Fiona were well aware of my rest day ritual, so they didn’t put up any objections. Steve preferred to pedal a few kilometers to loosen his muscles, as the trainers suggested, but although he made fun of my pretend vacations, he respected them. For her part, Fiona—how could I not love her?—understood why, this time, I wanted to stay apart. Mid-morning she sent me a text, direct as always: “I’ll keep Ray away, you keep away from shrimp and other seafood. I’ll see you tomorrow, champ.” I’d once gotten food poisoning two months before the end of the season, and I still looked on crayfish with a resentment worthy of Radek.

  In contrast, it was much harder to keep Favre away. I decided to ignore a text he’d sent me at the break of dawn. But my silence made him anxious and he bombarded me with messages with the intensity of a lover. I answered laconically, telling him I was fine and that I’d be resting all day. That only made him up his efforts. I imagine mistrust is second nature to any detective; apparently, he was convinced that by refusing to see him, I was obscuring a dark secret.

  If our texts had audio, you could say we ended up screaming at each other. “Come get me with an order of arrest or let me rest,” I said in one of my last messages. A little later, he took back the upper hand: “I’m sorry to have bothered you, I wanted to bring you up to date about Ferrara’s probable arrest.”

  The information startled me, causing me to screw up the level I’d reached in the videogame. What I’d just read would change everything. The Italian mechanic’s arrest would free me to concentrate on the yellow jersey. Once more: rainbows and fanfare. Then I reread Favre’s text. Probable arrest offered no guarantee. If the police had anything of substance against Ferrara, he would have already been arrested, or at least interrogated.

  I decided the commissioner simply wanted to have the last word in our digital battle. “Good luck, you can tell me tomorrow,” I typed and turned off the phone.

  I tried to go back to the game, but I’d already been defeated by a multitude of satanic trolls, so I turned to sudoku and, later, to Game of Thrones. The commissioner had managed to ruin my special day. My eyes were on the screen but my mind kept imposing Ferrara’s face on Tyrion Lannister’s as he plotted new ways to screw me over.

  I decided if I had to think about the Italians it was best to go over ways of beating them out on the course. There were only five of us left with any chance of winning the race. And I didn’t need Fiona to know that, out on the mountain, I was in better shape than the other four, assuming we were on an even playing field. The problem was, each one of them had a team at his service, and I’d be alone. That meant I couldn’t attack on any of the first three days on the Alps, because if I did, even Fonar would come at me. I’d have to wait until Stage 20 to betray Steve, if at all.

  I got out of bed and stood up, as if I were trying to shake off a few imaginary crumbs. To betray Steve was a phrase that caused a short circuit in my neural system. I looked for another word, something other than betray, but none seemed to better define what I’d have to do to my friend.

  A mirror above a small table reflected an unusually disheveled image back to me. I had my father’s face and my mother’s mane. Thinking about Beatriz brought me right back to Steve: He was the only family I had. In the past few years, he’d even been a more caring son than I had. No, I wouldn’t betray him. A yellow jersey wasn’t worth becoming a piece of shit.

  My resolution made me feel like a better person. Fiona and Lombard would have to understand. Or not. Something tugged on my sternum. Maybe I could find an alternate solution. A compromise—to accompany Steve to the podium. And if he failed for any reason, I’d be there to rescue the yellow jersey. That was it: If my teammate wasn’t up to being champion on the last day, I’d step in for him. But only if he faltered, and if he did, it wouldn’t be because of me.

  My resolution would not make Fiona happy. She wouldn’t be content with second place, not if Steve was in first. I asked myself again if her hatred toward him was stronger than her love for me. I’d know next Sunday.

  I fell asleep going over the times our rivals had on us. I didn’t think about the killer again. From my hotel room cocoon, I had no way of knowing that during this time he’d attacked again.

  Stage 17

  Digne-les-Bains—Pra Loup, 161 km.

  Fiona got me out of bed in the worst way possible: She was dressed and accompanied by Ray. I knew something really serious was going on when I opened my door to furious knocking and found them both in the hallway, not caring if they were seen by the sleeping cop posted there.

  “Conti and Leandro were poisoned this morning. They took Conti to the hospital; he’s in serious condition,” said Fiona as she burst into my room. I’d seen her that agitated only a few times and her hair seemed particularly shocked. It was understandable. If I’d been told NASA had just reported the world was flat, it wouldn’t have surprised me as much. Conti and Leandro were Matosas’s domestiques, and, I’d assumed, his henchmen. How could they also be his victims?

  “That’s impossible,” I said. “They’re the—”

  “The criminals? Apparently not,” said Ray decisively. “We have to start from zero.”

  “Unless somebody’s trying to get rid of their accomplices,” interjected Fiona.

  “What happened, exactly?” I asked, remembering the first lesson from my forensics classes: first the facts, then the interpretation.

  “Your friend the commissioner will know better,” she said, without hostility. “They drugged them, although I’m not clear on how or when. Somebody didn’t want them to run this lap, but they overdid it with Conti. One of the Lavezza mechanics said that when they took him out on the stretcher the paramedics were trying to resuscitate him.”

  Conti’s baby features no longer struck me as those of a psychopath but rather those of a young man who deserved to be in his mother’s or his girlfriend’s arms. I felt sorry for him and even sorrier for my theory that had now gone up in smoke. The Italians had seemed like the perfect villains, and now it turned out they were anything but.

  “Do you know if the killer stole anything?” Ray asked Fiona.

  Fiona shook her head. “They just got them out of the room less than a half hour ago. The police are still there.”

  “Why do you ask?” I said.

  “I don’t know, it reminds me of something,” he said, turning to me now. “Could you find out how they were poisoned and if there’s anything missing in the room?”

  I could, I thought, although it would require a torturous session with Favre. And I wouldn’t be able to do it until the finish line. I doubted the commissioner would see me before the start of the race, given the way I’d treated him the day before. But maybe Steve’s Protex detectives knew something and would share it with me.

  Whoever had hit the Italians had chosen a good moment because that night, there had been three other teams at the same hotel as Lavezza. The hotel was a big building in Le Lauzet, just twenty minutes from Gap. With so many guests coming and going, it would be impossible for the police to single out one suspicious person from the lobby security video as they’d been able to do for the attack on the Brits ten days ago.

  “If it’s not the Italians, then who?” asked Fiona.

  “Giraud,” I suggested, although it was becoming more and more evident that a lot of things in this case didn’t make sense; they only fit like forced puzzle pieces.

  “Now there’s just Paniuk and Medel left,” said Ray sadly. “I would’ve neve
r imagined this from them; they’re both good people. But there’s no other possibility. Without his domestiques, Matosas is lost in the Alps. The yellow jersey will go to the Czech or the Spaniard.”

  “Or the Frenchman,” said Fiona, not looking at me.

  “Or the Frenchman. That means the killer will attack again and probably twice: He’ll attack one of those two and, yes, Moreau,” said Ray, also avoiding looking at me. The French-Colombian, I was about to say, then decided it didn’t matter. Paniuk or Medel were both on my original list, but I’d never given them careful thought, obsessed as I was with Matosas, Conti, Ferrara, and their Sicilian connections. I had nothing against the Czech, but I preferred that the Spaniard be innocent. Although Medel had fewer wins than Paniuk, some of his escapades on the great summits were legendary, full of heroism and sacrifice, recognized by pain professionals everywhere.

  “Medel’s never won a big race,” said Fiona, busting in like a devil’s advocate against my inner defense of the climber from Seville, “and he’s close to retirement.”

  “Paniuk has always been a little strange,” countered Ray. “He’s never wanted to learn French or English and communicates with the rest of the peloton with about twenty words. His Bulgarian trainer is a little nefarious too, don’t you think?”

  Paniuk was a nice guy, quiet. It’s true, I couldn’t remember having exchanged more than a few words with him in all these years. But he read the race like few others could and, generally speaking, his intuition was right on. He was always on the correct side when it came to a chase or a breakaway. A proper and reliable professional in every sense.