“It shows how tired Fabrizio was,” Darren said. “Because…”
“Because what?” Tomás asked. He had joined Team Forza in 2006 and didn’t know Fabrizio as well as the others.
“Nothing,” Darren shot back.
“You were never tired,” Luna said to Darren. “I would come back from the team truck and see you out walking in the dark, or on one of the stationary bikes, peddling gently, late into the night. Where did you get all that energy? You had hauled yourself over the hills all day long just like Fabrizio.”
“Yeah, but he worked harder. He was the team leader.”
“You were there for him, helping him over every climb.”
“That’s why I had to keep my legs in good shape,” Darren said with a smile and Tomás frowned. “Plus, we both had your support.”
“That’s what Michele used to say as well, and look what happened to him,” Luna muttered.
“Who’s Michele?” Cayetano asked.
“He was a rider on Team Forza with us,” Luna answered. “The police busted him for having EPO in his possession while doing the Tour of Spain. His veins were full of the stuff. If he didn’t get up in the night to pedal, blood would thicken in his heart and give him a heart attack. The team won the sprint stages of the Tour thanks to his risk-taking, but it was illegal as hell.” Luna paused for a moment. “Jesus, we harboured drug users. I’m as guilty as people say I am.”
“What was one mechanic going to do?” Tomás asked her. “Bring down the entire cycling omertà? They would have threatened you and your babies; they would have threatened Fabrizio. You didn’t have a choice, Luna.”
“We all have choices.”
“These guys on drugs have to pedal at night to keep their thickened blood moving?” Cayetano asked.
“Yeah, it’s a side-effect of the drugs,” Luna said as she looked up at him. “Why?”
“Then why were you,” he paused and pointed at Darren, “exhausted after a day of hill-climbing, but you could still pedal during the night?”
Luna and Tomás looked at Darren for his reaction. Their innocent expressions got an angry reply. “Are you accusing me of drug use?” Darren said with a scowl. “That’s out of line. I have never been caught with anything in my system, and I have done hundreds of drug tests.”
“I’m just asking an innocent question.” Cayetano folded his arms again and didn’t take his eyes off the Australian.
“People used to call you Dazza back then, Fabrizio’s nickname for you,” Luna commented while she looked at hands on her lap.
Darren smiled. “Some people still do.”
“I used to see Ferra, the team doctor, at night after racing, when he stopped by to say hello while we worked on the bikes. He would say, ‘Zelos and Dazza have done their duty again’.”
“I guess he meant our efforts on the bike every day,” Darren said. “I know you don’t like Álvaro. He’s a crooked doctor, there’s no question. We shouldn’t have worked with him.”
“I fired him, it was my first duty when I took over as manager,” Tomás said. “I remember Fabrizio being relieved. He was pleased that the systemic doping could stop.”
Cayetano looked down at Luna, who had gone quiet. She stared right at Darren, and he stared right back. “Preciosa?”
“Were you pedalling off excess energy late at night?” she asked Darren. “Did you have any energy to spare?”
“There’s no such thing as excess energy in high performance cycling,” Tomás chuckled.
“There is… there is if you’re a blood doper.”
Darren didn’t say anything; instead he fixed his gaze on Luna, who also refused to blink. “You visited Fabrizio every night when racing was on,” she continued. “You said so not five minutes ago. When Fabrizio was watching my children, our children, you were with him.”
“Fabrizio was my best friend and my team leader, of course I was with him. We were constantly busy,” Darren replied. “He needed help with Giacomo and Enzo; they were a handful when they were babies.”
“Why would he need your help? You should have been as sore as Fabrizio after a day on the bike. You both spent equal time on the physiotherapists’ table.”
“What’s your point, Lulu?”
Luna stood up but didn’t take her eyes off her best friend across the room. The men all looked at Luna, but she didn’t say anything.
“Luna?” Cayetano asked. “¿Estás bien?”
“No, I’m not all right,” she said in a quiet voice. She turned to Cayetano for a moment but then looked back at Darren and Tomás. “Zelos and Dazza have done their duty again,” she repeated. “When they found frozen blood belonging to Zelos, did they find any belonging to Dazza?”
“Of course not,” Darren replied. “Álvaro Ferra has nothing on me.”
“Are you a blood doper, Darren?” Luna said, her voice still gentle.
“No!” he cried and jumped out of his seat. “Shit, Lulu, how could you say that? I lived with you for years! We may as well have been married. You know me.”
“I married Fabrizio and didn’t see the reality of his cheating. Were you a blood doper with my husband? Were you sneaking into our hotel room with the doctor and getting blood pumped into you while I was outside in the team truck?”
“Lulu, come on,” Darren reasoned. “I know all of this has been hard on you, and me! No one found any amount of EPO, or cortisone, or blood-doping in my system, or in Fabrizio’s.”
“That doesn’t mean you weren’t shooting up behind my back.” Luna’s voice was calm and quiet, despite the fact she was accusing her best friend of a horrid crime.
Tomás stood up, and Cayetano watched the man. His face was full of confusion. Luna and Darren seemed trapped in a private moment in a not-so private setting, and Cayetano understood Tomás’ awkwardness.
“Were you helping out Fabrizio with my sons, or hooked up to a blood bag?” Luna asked. Her ice-blue eyes looked straight at her long-time confidant and expected an answer.
“Are you suggesting we were blood doping in front of the children?” Darren asked. “Lulu, you know how I feel about the kids…”
“I know how you feel about winning, too. I know how it works, just like Tomás does. A warmed bag of blood gets delivered, and can be attached to anything. A coat hanger on a picture on a hotel room wall would suffice. You could inject blood back into its owner for a super high red blood-cell count. Enough to push any man over France’s biggest climbs in the yellow jersey.”
“Lulu, I promise you, Fabrizio and I weren’t injecting each other with anything in front of the kids.”
“Were you doing it when they were asleep?”
Darren sighed. “Lulu…”
“Were you and my husband blood dopers under Álvaro Ferra’s instruction, like is claimed?”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you would accuse me!”
“Answer the God-damn question,” Cayetano raised his voice.
“You don’t get a say in this, you have no idea about what it was like back then!” Darren yelled at Cayetano.
“Then answer to me, because I know exactly how it was back then,” Tomás said. “I work hard to make sure cycling is a clean sport.”
“No, you have to answer to me, Darren,” Luna said. “We have been friends for our entire adult lives. You are the godfather to my sons. I shared my entire life with you. On my wedding day, you asked me not to marry Fabrizio, and marry you instead…”
“I didn’t know that!” Cayetano interrupted.
Luna raised her hand in his direction, and Cayetano heeded the request to be quiet.
“Lulu, I promise, we never exposed the kids to anything. Those boys are dream sleepers. An hour with their father and they nodded off in the hotel room cot. You knew they were safe.”
“Were their father and godfather watching them through the doorway, with blood bags attached to their arms? Don’t make me ask you again.”
Darren threw his ar
ms in the air as his eyes filled with tears. Cayetano glanced at Luna, to see she was about to cry. Her chin quivered, and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “Darren, did you and Fabrizio cheat your way to the top in the Tour de France?”
“Do you think I have been lying to you all this time? After everything? Who could lie like that?”
“I know other riders were doing it at the time, so it’s not a stretch to think you and Fabrizio did it, too. But if you were doing it while pretending to be babysitting my sons… how could I forgive you? Or Fabrizio, for that matter?”
Darren just shook his head, his arms limp at his sides.
“In front of my boys,” Luna managed to say as she started to cry. She opened her mouth again but couldn’t find any more words.
Cayetano didn’t have any words to add, no experience to offer, but plenty of rage. All he had was the image Luna described; late nights with men hooked up to bags of their own blood while the children slept nearby. This was the moment he had waited for; a chance to free his anger for Darren.
The tall, emotional cyclist saw Cayetano raise his powerful arm but didn’t have a chance to move. Cayetano punched him in the jaw with a potent left hook, and Darren fell back on the couch as Tomás scrambled to get out of the way of the chaos.
Cayetano raised his fist again as he stood over the bloody man, but paused. Darren held his arms up over his face in defeat; no response to the action. Cayetano glanced at Luna, who just stood there, tears rolling down her face in silence. She had suffered the most horrific pain, one that couldn’t be solved with violence, or anything else. Cayetano dropped his furious fist; there was no way to solve this crisis.
Poor Tomás stood there in confusion. “I don’t know what to say, Luna,” he muttered.
“I don’t think there is anything left to be said,” Cayetano replied when Luna didn’t speak. He stepped over to her, and she fell into his embrace. “I think you should go.”
Tomás nodded. While a polite and approachable man, he was not strong; he preferred a calm approach. “Luna,” he said, though he couldn’t see her face, buried against Cayetano’s chest. “Call me when you’re ready… for whatever you need.” He turned and disappeared in the direction of the front door.
“Get off my couch,” Cayetano said to Darren without even looking at him. “Get the fuck out of the apartment. Don’t ever come back.”
Darren hauled himself up and wiped blood from his lip. He shrugged a few times to readjust his clothes. “Lulu…”
“Don’t talk to her, and don’t even think of calling her again,” Cayetano’s deep voice boomed through the room. “Don’t make me throw you off the balcony, you pathetic weakling of a human being.”
Darren disappeared from the room and a moment later they heard the front door bang shut. The moment Darren had gone, Luna burst him a deep, heavy sobbing that Cayetano knew he couldn’t stop. She had suffered to the most unbelievable betrayal by the only two people she had trusted in the entire world. Luna continued to let out a desperate distressing cry as Cayetano held her tight. He couldn’t understand the pain this would cause, but he already knew it would have a far-reaching consequence.
20
Valencia, España ~ Mayo de 2010
Luna could take the easy option. She could sit in her pyjamas and cry about the misery of her current state. She could eat two dozen chocolate pastries and hide under the bedcovers, but no. Fuck the lot of them! That had been the motto for the week. Luna had given so much time to grieving for her husband, and now knew him to be a whole different man to the one she thought she married. There would be a thousand moments where his lies hurt, and they would be spread out over a long period of time. Nothing could solve that.
But Darren – he was still very much alive and planning to win the Tour de France with his head held high. How could a person be such a liar? Even if he was clean now, their trust had gone. In a moment, the friendship of a lifetime had been broken. One instance had ruined everything, and that was not worth sulking about, not for a moment.
On a pleasant April evening, Luna sat alone and watched the coverage of Cayetano’s fights in Seville. The ring was around three quarters full; impressive. While Valencia had been sold-out, it was because of a special occasion. It was half empty during the rest of season. Whether that was the crisis pinching wallets, or waning interest, it was hard to say. Watching bullfighting on television gave a real disconnect; the intensity and excitement didn’t exist on the screen. Luna sat emotionless as Cayetano was awarded an ear for his efforts on a sunny Sevillian evening. He didn’t seem his usual self out there; he didn’t raise a smile the entire time, which was out of character. He hadn’t wanted to leave Valencia, but Luna lied and said she would be fine. She couldn’t hold him back from the career he loved so much.
Luna sighed and glanced down at the newspaper on the coffee table. Another story about stealing babies. An American woman had come to Valencia, convinced she had been born to Spanish parents and stolen. She had the signature of the doctor who had been present at her birth, but Adán Lugo Gil had disappeared. The woman’s two older brothers suspected they had also been stolen. Now there was a nightmare scenario.
The phone rang, and Luna perked up a little. Company. “Buenas,” she answered with a smile, one eye still on the newspaper article.
“You sound happy,” Cayetano replied.
“I just saw you leave the bullring.”
“Yes, I haven’t even got changed yet. I smell like bull.”
“That’s a lovely story,” Luna smiled as she closed the paper. “How did it go out there?”
“Okay, I suppose. I couldn’t be bothered. Is that awful?”
“No, no one else will know.”
“Papá will notice. Paco is on my back every five seconds,” Cayetano complained.
“And you both have to go to Jerez for your fight there tomorrow.”
Cayetano groaned. “Tell me about it. What a screw up on the schedule with back-to-back fights. I wish I was home with you.”
“You have to go killing to make money,” she joked. “Never thought I would say that out loud.”
“I had one of those moments today,” Cayetano commented. Luna could hear Paco talking to someone in the background. Cayetano was wandering the private halls of the bullring. “I spoke to Papí José, and he had one of his crazy rants.”
“What about now?”
“About an anti-Franco protest being held tomorrow in Madrid. He said people should leave the past alone. Once he finished, I replied, ‘you can’t blame people for wanting to dig up their families.’ I never thought I would say those words!”
“Is that the historical memory association that helps dig up mass graves?”
“Yes, do you know much about them?”
“I looked into it when I was looking for my grandfather. I didn’t need help to locate my relative, but lots of people do. It’s sad to think Spain is littered with secret graves.”
“Let’s hope Papí never hears about the bodies we have at Escondrijo,” Cayetano said in a low voice.
“José might turn up, wielding an axe, trying to scare me out of Spain,” Luna scoffed. She paused for a moment; finding the families of the Escondrijo bodies would be an enormous distraction from her cyclist-doping catastrophe.
“La chispa, are you still there?”
“Sorry,” she said and shook her head. “Sorry, just thinking.”
“Are you all right? You’re not sitting in bed in tears, are you?”
“No, I’m okay.”
“I hate that I needed to leave you after all that with Darren.”
“You need to work.”
“What about you? Have you spoken to Tomás? Are you going back to work?”
“I haven’t worked up the courage to call Tomás yet. I’m not sure I could work with Darren. I’m not sure I could work for the team at all now. All my happy memories of being a Tour de France mechanic are broken. I have to do something, or my work permit t
o live in Spain will be invalid.”
“I better get on with marrying you, so you can be officially Spanish.”
“I’m looking forward to that, although my citizenship should be legal soon, thanks to my dead grandfather.”
“Glad to hear you still want to be married. You haven’t seemed keen so far.”
“I’m keen to marry you. And in the last few days, my thoughts on the wedding have changed. I will just let it all happen around me, and I will stop complaining about the whole charade.”
“That comment tells something is wrong with you, preciosa. The moment you’ve lost your fight, I get worried.”
“Don’t mind me; I’m just wallowing in self-pity.”
“How are Giacomo and Enzo today?”
“Fine. I put on a fake smile, and they believe the world is a shiny happy place. When are you going to Jerez for tomorrow’s fight?”
“Early in the morning, it’s ninety kilometres south of Seville. Should be pleasant and warm. Then the long trip back to Madrid on Saturday, six hours in the car with my father… and then I’ll come to Valencia to see you.”
“What if I came to Madrid instead?”
“Are you sure?”
“And get out of Valencia for a while, yes, please! I’ll take the train to Madrid tomorrow after school, and you can meet us at your place on Saturday. You won’t need to travel the extra distance to see us.”
“That would be fantastic! Can you occupy yourself in Madrid tomorrow night?”
“Sure, I’ll call your sister, and we can meet in central Madrid somewhere. The kids love a night out, even if it will be cold in Madrid.”
“The three months of hell will start soon, and the city will be melt in the heat. Enjoy the chill while you can.”
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 60