Following is Part 6 of “rolling thunder.” Thanks for being patient.

As we may have mentioned ad nauseum, this story is subject to copyright by the author. Not that we think you want your name on it, but someone may stoop that low. You never know. Anyway, please don’t use it other than as a pleasant distraction from all those other things you should be doing. And have a nice day. Also, if you do read this and don’t mind admitting that you enjoyed it, even a little, please leave a comment and let us know and we’ll dream some more up soon. We’ve attached a free “third” chapter since we’ve been a little slow churning out some new material for you. Do enjoy.

ROLLING THUNDER (cont’d)

Chapter 10

Thursday’s stage got underway from Santa Barbara with a send off by the state’s Governator, Arnold Schwartzenegger. For once the roles were reversed, with the riders standing around gawking at the spectators, and the spectators clearly most interested in each other. Shamus couldn’t believe how many stars, starlettes, and other-pretty-people came out to see and be seen; sadly, their interest in cycling seemed shallow.

Shamus noted a good number of the glitteratae. Tom Cruise was there but fortunately behaved himself. Rosy O’Donnell was there with her little dog, her girl friend, and an asian baby swaddled in blankets and being swooned over by the California Couple. Al Pacino was talking animatedly with Clint Eastwood, each holding a tall Starbucks to-go cup and looking old without their makeup. Sheryl Crow was there without Lance; she’d brought a small dog on a leash instead. Dogs seemed to be a popular accessory, he noted. Sylvester Stallone was there, all five foot six of him; Shamus withheld comment because the man still looked tough. Footballer cum actor Howie Long was there with John Travolta, and they actually came over and chatted with the riders; the dimunitive racers looked dainty next to the mammoth ex-NFL player. Travolta got them all laughing. Further back, Oprah held court and when Shamus saw her he realized she’d sucked over all the autograph-seekers. Tuxedoed staff passed through the crowd with silver trays with fluted glasses floating atop. Mimosas bubbled and the monied crowd got their daily eye-opener. In Santa Barbara, catering and champagne were the equivalent of a snack stand. When the race finally got underway, Shamus wasn’t certain but thought the only ones who noticed were the participants. Onward to Hollywood they went, from one carnival atmosphere to another, Shamus expected.

Not surprisingly, their arrival four hours later brought them into the beginning of the swell of traffic that tried vainly to evacuate the town each day before the other ten million people got the idea. It never worked, but people never stopped trying.

When the barricades went up, traffic got ever so slightly worse and more confused. When the inhabitants of the stranded cars figured out that their escape route was being denied for the benefit of people on bicycles, it was a wonder someone wasn’t shot. Fortunately, the reputation of the LA police preceded itself and everybody knew that even Dirty Harry couldn’t draw a magnum faster than these men in blue. People kept their firearms politely tucked away as they sat fuming in their cars, wondering if life in So Cal was really worthwhile, after all.

The finish of the race involved four laps of two and a half miles each to bring the stage total up to a clean one hundred. In the end it came down to a sprint win and Robbie Hunter of Barloworld team took the honors and shortly thereafter received his due cheek-kisses and a yellow shirt for the effort, along with a check for five thousand dollars. Shamus came in with the main pack and lost no time to anybody, so he remained in first place in the overall standings, or General Classification, as it was referred to. He received similar prizes when his turn came to climb the steps up onto the stage.

Shamus was happy the stage ended uneventfully. He was happier at the thought of another evening with Eve. This time there would be very little additional business to discuss, so maybe it would be even more enjoyable. He reached her cell as soon as he got back to the hotel and they made plans for dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s. He wasn’t into fancy food, but they hoped the people-watching would be good there. When they arrived, they had to wait, notwithstanding their reservation. Clearly, someone higher in the pecking order had poached their table. By the time they were seated, they’d managed to identify a half dozen mostly b-actors throughout the dining room.

After dinner they took an expensive cab ride back to the Santa Monica Hilton. Unintentionally and unknowingly, Eve had booked a room at the same hotel the team was staying in. Shamus thought to himself he couldn’t have been more pleased. When they got to the elevators and she suggested he come back to her room for a while, he realized he’d been wrong.

At seven thirty in the morning, the alarm on his watch went off and Shamus realized he hadn’t made it back to his room, in violation of team rules. He wasn’t worried about getting in trouble for it unless on the odd chance that the Doping Controls people had stopped by for a random check, in which case he’d be in deep trouble, but his cell phone had been on and had not rang, so there was little reason to worry.

Eve fussed about when she’d heard his alarm, but hadn’t woken. He looked at her sleeping with her head on his arm, which had long since gone numb as a stump, and thought he’d never been happier in his life. He kissed her as she slept, pried his arm out, dressed in last night’s clothes, and left for his own room to get ready for breakfast with the team. Eve slept through his exit; it had been a late night.

Friday’s stage involved a thirty mile jaunt from Santa Monica, a beachfront suburb of Los Angeles lying under the shadow of LAX airport, down to the self-proclaimed surf capital of the world, Huntington Beach. Once they got there, they were slated for a circuit race through downtown with eight loops of eight miles each. The roads were pancake flat and the winds were from off-shore, driving perfect waves six feet high in sets of three and sending the smell of salt spray wafting over the town, making everything smell alive and cleaner and somehow better than it really was, which Shamus surmised was the opiate at the root of why people flocked to the oceans they way they did.

As the peloton approached along PCH from the northwest, they got glimpses of the beach, which was largely unoccupied this time of year except out in the surf where rubber-suited people sat astride their foam and fiberglass planks awaiting the perfect ride home, while silently hoping not to be confused for a juicy seal, the type large sharks liked to feed on. Shamus felt intensely jealous seeing them sitting out there.

As fast as that thought entered his mind, it was pushed out again by memories of last night. Contradicting common perceptions, sex before racing didn’t put any damper on his capabilities on the bike, and he actually had to be told by teammates to soft-pedal because he risked sliding up off the front of the peleton if he kept at it.

Over and over they rolled through town at thirty miles per hour, being as careful as possible around turns to avoid colliding with each other or the barriers, and breakaways took their shots but were quickly brought back in. The day before the Individual Time Trial that would give every rider a fresh chance to improve their standing, nobody was keen to let anyone else steal some time.

CT made a valiant effort to get its speedsters into position for the sprint finish, but second place was the best they could do. This time it was the Italian, Ramoli, who managed the near-win, losing to the South African Robbie Hunter, who bagged his second sprint win in the same number of days. Nevertheless, second place was a worthwhile finish and the team accomplished its goal of keeping Shamus atop the overall standings.

Eve wasn’t booked in the same hotel as the team on Friday night, but somehow the two had little problem in finding her hotel after their evening out, and Shamus was left to another early morning exit and a cab ride back to his own. Rather than risking a sunrise entrance though, or worse – oversleeping – he left her room at midnight, feeling on top of the world. When he got to the Sheraton, which sat a mere block from the Huntington Beach Pier, he paid the ten dollar fare with a twenty, and told the driver to keep the change. It had been that kind of night.

Entering the hotel he made a beeline for the elevator, keeping his head down in hopes of not being recognized. There was a great chance that members of his team’s management group and staff, or those from other teams, would see his entry and invariably he’d catch some heat for being out like this on a race night. When he stepped into the elevator he got no immediate relief from this risk, because it was a glass tube facing into the lobby, so as it rose he had a full view of everybody milling about, and they him. He kept his back to the glass and glanced out only briefly. Exiting the elevator bubble at the third floor, he was only slightly better off as the hotel had an open core design, so that the hallways also faced over the lobby, which rose up ten floors to a glass ceiling. As he walked around the hallway virtually to the opposite side of the foyer where his room was located, he observed what little was going on down below. He finally came to his room, which sat adjacent the entry to the hotel albeit three stories up, and was about to enter but before he did he noticed a person coming in through the revolving doors wearing an all too familiar motorcyclist outfit; black, of course.

Shamus watched the person walk across the lobby, removing his full-face helmet as he did. On the person’s back was a courier bag one might see on a bike messenger, although this one was leather and looked expensive. With the helmet removed, Shamus had a clear view of the person, and it was unmistakably someone other than Eddie Pagnoli. Shamus watched the man approach the front desk, speak a few words to the receptionist, then remove his satchel and the small box it contained. He handed it to the receptionist, and then turned to leave. Shamus had a full frontal view as the man moved toward the revolving doors, and he studied the face closely. The man was younger than Pagnoli, and clean-shaven where Pagnoli had sported the same moustache he’d had since puberty, or maybe earlier. Shamus didn’t find the man’s face at all familiar, but closed his eyes and committed it to memory, then opened them again and watched him leave the hotel.

Shamus looked around and saw that his room, being on the far end of the building from the elevators, was therefore quite close to a fire exit. He went for the door and literally ran down the three flights of stairs until he got to the landing, opened the door, and emerged in the lobby only steps from the revolving doors. He walked casually toward them but before exiting the building he looked for the motorcyclist and found the man standing just outside, where his motorcycle had been parked in the entry. Shamus watched for a moment as the man put the helmet over his head, and threw his leg over the big bike. As he did so, Shamus took a spin through the revolving door and emerged outside just as the man kicked the bike into first gear and revved the engine. Shamus quickly saw what he came for, and went back inside.

In his room, Shamus picked up the phone and rang the front desk.

“Hello, this is Shamus McDonough in room three oh seven and I’ve been expecting a package to be delivered to me tonight, can you check for me?”

“Yes, sir,” said the voice Shamus knew belonged to the lady who had just received the mystery package moments ago. There hadn’t been anyone else working the desk.

“I have nothing for you, I’m sorry, said the young lady’s voice after a few moments.”

“I’m certain it was being delivered, are you sure it’s not somewhere – it’s a large brown envelope.”

“We did have a delivery like that, but it is for room three twenty.”

“Could there be a mistake, perhaps. Would you check the name on it for me?”

“Of course, it’s right here,” she said. “The name on it is Clerc, and that’s the only one, I’m afraid.”

“Okay, thank you for checking, and please ring me if it turns up.”

“No problem, and good night Mister McDonough.”

Shamus sat on the edge of his bed. Two new puzzle pieces tonight, he thought. Teammate Marcel Clerc was receiving mystery packages from the men on black motorcycles, was one. The other was that this particular deliveryman hadn’t been Eddie Pagnoli. He concentrated his mind on the face and the picture came to him clearly. He wondered if it would turn out to be another colleague of Daniela’s, and thought that must be the case. With the motorcycle’s license number, Shamus knew it would be easy work for Eve to figure out who that face belonged to. He opened his Mac and typed a brief email to Eve.

Saturday had been long anticipated as the deciding day of the ToC, and still stood to be such. The stage was different from most of the others, in that it was short and hilly, and each rider would be on the course by himself, racing against the clock. This format was called the individual time trial or ITT, and was referred to as the Race of Truth because one had no opportunity to take advantage of the strength of others on their team, or the weaknesses of competitors. One’s body rode against one’s mind.

Riders would launch in reverse order of their overall standing – Shamus was in first place overall, so he would go last. Each rider would start a minute behind the previous one. If a rider managed to catch the rider in front of them, they were not allowed to draft. Doing so incidentally risked a time penalty, doing so blatantly risked disqualification. There were no restrictions on the amount of time a rider could gain or lose in this format. Even among the top ten finishers, a difference of two minutes was not unusual. Because multi-day stage races were almost always decided by less than two minutes’ difference between the winner and the first loser, an ITT toward the end of the event was usually the deciding factor as to whether a leader would hold their place, or someone else would take it. Riders less suited to the particular course chosen for the ITT would finish as much as several minutes behind the winner, plummeting in the rankings due to one slow hour’s ride. Others would find the course to their liking, produce a surprisingly strong ride, and jump so many positions in the standings – say, from twentieth overall before the stage to a top five position after – as to change their financial prospects in coming years.

The Tour of California had designed a thirty mile outing for the ITT, running from Surf City down to, well, another surf city, called Laguna Beach. The noticeable difference between the two towns was that while Huntington Beach produced mainly surfboards and surfers, Laguna beach was home to artists and cafes, so that’s where the money lived.

The course was a quick shot down the coast to Newport Beach, setting for the TV show The OC which highlighted life traumas faced by the people with few challenges beyond how to blow their inheritances, then they would turn to the northwest toward the University of California at Irvine, then south through El Toro into the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, which meant the part of Orange County that was still holding out for more money before turning itself into tract homes, then a fast downhill shot on El Toro Road into Laguna Beach.

Chances of getting a large time advantage weren’t great due to the flat parts at the front of the course and the downhill portion at the end. However, in the middle there was a series of sufficiently sharp hills that sprinters would suffer but mountain specialists wouldn’t find enough climbing to give them the edge. It would be a day for time trial specialists.

Shamus had gotten up early and rode in the team car so he and teammates George Crowley, the Trinidadian climber, and Marcel Clerc, the French time trial specialist could scout the course from start to finish. Sports Director Philip Olivier drove the car and called out observations about how they should ride each portion of the course. More than half the squad hadn’t bothered coming along for this preamble, because they wouldn’t be competitive in this format of race and/or their individual standings were so low that there was little pressure to preserve or improve one’s position.

Once back at the start village, Shamus watched on closed circuit TV as the riders on the course gave their best efforts and the overall best time settled in at just under one hour and ten minutes. Shamus reckoned that when the final twenty riders got their chance on the course, though, the time to beat would fall by at least five minutes. Shamus wondered what was going through Marcel’s mind. This stage was just the type he favored, and ordinarily nobody on the team could touch him at it.

However, what Shamus had witnessed last night suggested Clerc’s confidence wasn’t at all intact.

Shamus worried that his teammate’s insecurities could result in difficulties with Doping Controls; he wasn’t sure what was in the envelope delivered to Clerc last night, but there were few things one could use that would make a difference to one’s performance in that short a time and not be traceable in a drug test.

It was a devil’s bargain: accept the physical or perhaps psychological boost of performance enhancing drugs, in exchange for a certain visit to Doping Controls if you finish well.

The rider had to bank on the rumored weaknesses and inconsistencies in lab testing procedures, or the possibility of outright manipulation of the results to mask the crime. Perhaps Clerc felt that a Frenchman had a better chance getting through unscathed since the WADA lab was located in France. It wouldn’t be entirely wrong-headed to hold such beliefs, since most non-French held strong feelings that their results were far more likely to face a false positive or even be manipulated by the lab workers to generate a positive result, than if they were fellow countrymen.

Clerc was clearly expected to contest for a top five finish on the day, coming in within seconds of repeat world time trial champion Fabian Cancellaria from Austria, and repeat U.S. time trial champion Dave Zabriskie. Both of these champion time trialists rode for powerhouse team CSC.

For Shamus and his team, CSC appeared to be their greatest risk. Although Shamus sat in the number one position over the general classification, his lead was only about a minute better than the overall field. There were a couple of relative unknowns who were much closer to Shamus’s time, but they were expected to lose bucketfuls of time in the Race of Truth. Odds makers wouldn’t take a bet on any of them remaining in a top ten position in the overall standings once today’s results were tallied. CSC, on the other hand, had the unusual situation of three men with less than two minutes’ disadvantage to Shamus’s leading time.

Carlos Sastre, CSC’s team captain and a good all-around rider with especially strong legs for the mountains, was with a clump of half a dozen riders only a minute and five seconds back from the overall lead. Sastre wasn’t a great time trialist, historically, but capable of surprisingly strong results on a good day.

Next was a young virtuoso rider named Andy Schleck, a barely twenty-something Belgian whose older brother Frank also rode for CSC. Andy had surprised the world in his first year on the Pro Tour by besting all but one rider in the Giro d’Italia, perhaps the second most celebrated race in the world behind the Tour de France. Andy’s particular assets weren’t even fully understood yet. What he seemed to do was get on the back wheel of the fastest racers on each stage, and stay there. Where others had their inevitable bad day over the course of three weeks of punishing riding, he didn’t seem to. He was lean as a rail and climbed hills like Jeep. Was he a factor in time trials? Only time would tell.

Finally, CSC had Cancellaria almost two minutes back, and he always produced great time trial results unless he managed to fall of the bike – which he did rarely. Cancellaria’s dominance of this type of event allowed him to publicly boast at the start of a race that he would demonstrate how a great time trialist rides, and then proceed to out-ride the entire field by a convincing margin. Zabriskie, CSC’s other time trial specialist, was also a favorite to win the day, but sat almost ten minutes back in total elapsed time so he presented no threat to Shamus’s overall lead.

Shamus figured that if he could ride strong enough to stay ahead of the CSC riders, he would keep his overall lead. He and Philip discussed that they probably needed to measure Shamus’s split times against the fastest CSC rider, provided that another team’s rider didn’t manage to surpass CSC’s best performance. Since each of the CSC riders would be out on the course at the same time Shamus got underway, Philip would relay this information to Shamus via radio, and Shamus would have to adjust his pace accordingly.

Finally it was his turn. The rest of the field was completed, or out on the course in front of him. Shamus had spent an hour on his bike with the rear tire secured in a stationary trainer, which was basically a triangular frame with a clamp to hold the bike frame and a metal wheel that would spin against his bike tire when he pedaled. It allowed the riders to warm up the legs before they got out on the course. Usually, riders plugged into their IPods to get in the right mindset and block out distractions from fans and others who might otherwise hope for a conversation. His legs felt ready, though his mind was fatigued from consecutive late nights he wouldn’t have missed even if it eventually cost him the race.

While he spun on the trainer he consumed a can of Coke and a packet of energy gel with a double shot of caffeine. He counted on those extra three hundred calories and large dollop of caffeine to get his head where it needed to be for the next hour.

Sitting on his bike atop the starting platform, he heard, three, two, one, and then a buzzer sounded and the starter waved his hand to point Shamus up the course. Shamus pushed hard but steady on the pedals and the aide who had held his seat post to keep him upright on the bike let go. The clock started rolling in hundredths of seconds. Once he reached the bottom of the short ramp, Shamus stood on the pedals to boost his acceleration. Within a hundred yards he was approaching thirty miles per hour and settling back onto his seat.

Without slowing his pedaling, he clicked the gears onto smaller and smaller rear rings, enabling him to turn the wheel over more times with each turn of the pedals, and he settled his elbows onto the pads on his aero bars, which were bolted onto the bike’s handlebars and jutted straight forward to provide a way for the rider to steer the bike while virtually laying flat atop it. He focused on ensuring his position was as aerodynamically smooth as possible, and precisely matched a profile optimized through long hours in the a low speed wind tunnel. Then he shifted his attention to the wattage meter mounted on the handlebars, which told him how much power he was expending, as well as his heart rate and the cadence or speed his feet were turning the pedals over. He focused on wattage, because he knew precisely how much effort his legs could put out over different lengths of time.

Shamus was churning out over three hundred watts, or about half a horsepower. He knew he could sustain that level or more over the entire course. For significant periods, he could push the wattage as much as fifty percent higher, and he planned to do so once the hills began. For now, the focus was on getting his body into the tempo of the ride and keeping his speed consistent. He felt his heart rate increasing, and the bike’s computer told him he was already up to almost a hundred and sixty beats per minute. He’d see a hundred and ninety or more during certain sections ahead.

The first time check came at UCI, telling how well he’d done over the first third of the ride across ten miles of flat road. The best split time of all of the riders ahead of him had been achieved by Dave Zabriskie, who reached the turn at UCI ten seconds faster than Cancellaria had. Shamus wasn’t aware, and Philip didn’t bother distracting him with it, but teammate Clerc had hit the same point nine seconds faster than Zabriskie; but no matter how fast Clerc rode in today’s stage, he wouldn’t be able to make up the deficit he had in the overall race.

Philip radioed to Shamus his split time for the checkpoint at UCI. Shamus had covered the opening ten miles in nineteen minutes and three seconds, averaging over thirty miles per hour. Shamus’s time showed a thirty second deficit to Cancellaria at the first checkpoint. Shamus quickly knew that if he achieved similar results over the next two sections, he’d finish a minute and a half slower than the CSC man but still end up more than half a minute better in the overall results. However, starting after Cancellaria were the other two CSC riders.

“Shamus, Sastre rode a very good ride today! He is better than you at the first split by twenty-six seconds. That leaves only thirty-nine seconds advantage for you. Sastre made the best time in the race on the second part, so you need to go fast!”

Shamus tried to remain calm on that news, but felt anxious that Sastre had covered the flat section only three seconds slower than Cancellaria, and almost a half minute faster than Shamus had.

“Go Shamus, catch the motorbike!” Philip shouted into the radio. Every rider on the course had a motorcycle escort riding ahead of him, mostly to take video for the closed circuit TV. Coaches liked to get their riders to focus on catching the motorbike. The motorbike would always adjust its speed to keep a safe distance to the racer, so there wasn’t any real risk of the two getting close to each other.

“Hills are beginning – first one is the longest – one and a half miles – steep part is in the middle,” Philip relayed in clipped statements suitable for the radio.

“Go Shamus, catch the motorbike!” Philip repeated.

Shamus pushed the pedals over at more than one hundred revolutions per minute. He reserved nothing. When the stage was over, he would be unable to go any further. He knew that the race ended, for all purposes, at the twenty-mile mark where the course turned west and enjoyed a long downhill run to the beach. Little time advantage could be picked up, or recovered, on a section every rider could cover at high speed. Shamus knew that he’d lost half his advantage to the Spaniard Sastre on a section he hadn’t anticipated Sastre would do so remarkably well on. The second portion, with the hills, was even better suited to his CSC opponent, so Shamus knew there was a very good chance he would lose the overall lead today, and then CSC would work as a team to ensure that Shamus had no opportunity to make up any time on the final stage into San Diego. Shamus felt suddenly that his chances were slipping away, and although a podium finish was always respected, fading from the top position to second place, or maybe even third, would be a huge setback for himself and the team.

Shamus looked up the twisting road, and it seemed endless. He was approaching a section that rose at a twelve percent grade and climbed over three hundred feet – as tall as a thirty story office building – before easing back to a mere eight percent grade to the top of the El Toro hills. He felt a fleeting moment of despair and helplessness, and guilt bubbled up from the realization that his late night escapades may have made the difference today. He looked at the power meter and it showed four hundred and twenty watts. That was good, but he often sustained over four hundred and sixty in training rides. He pulled the water bottle from the cage attached to the frame of his bike, opened the valve with his mouth, and squeezed the contents out in a stream through the openings in his helmet and down his back. When it was empty, he pitched it to the side of the road.

With that done, he got mad at himself, stood on the pedals and accelerated after the motorbike.

After a few rotations of the pedals his momentum increased and Shamus shifted to the next higher gear. He pushed harder on the pedals to get back above a hundred revolutions per minute. His wattage meter read five hundred and five and his heartrate was one seventy five and climbing. He didn’t look at either. Philip was yelling something in his ear over the radio. He reached up and pulled the bug out of his ear. The rest of the race would be only about what he could do, not what he should do or needed to do.

He envisioned pushing power through his legs, and they moved as he did. He separated out how they felt from what they must do. He said go faster, they did. As he crested the top of the first hill he clicked through the gears to keep the workload high, and his speed increased. On the short downhill stretch before the next climb he tucked back onto his aero bars and focused on breathing deeply and allowing his body to recover the oxygen it had burned in the climb. Within seconds, he’d descended to the base of the next climb and began the next jog upward. He knew there were ten of these mini-ups and downs between him and the turn onto highway one thirteen. Ten opportunities to gain or lose time on the way up, and recover briefly on the way down. Shamus kept pushing the energy through his legs, and as he rode they actually felt more solid. Maybe he hadn’t warmed up long enough before the race, he thought.

Finally he got over the last roller and saw the turn to the long downhill stretch.

Shamus knew that if he had kept listenting to Philip, he’d have an idea how aggressively he would need to descend this stage. That meant cutting corners tightly, taking more risks of falling or sliding off the course. As it was, he had no idea what, if anything, remained of the advantage he’d started the day with.

Shamus decided the only thing to do was to go all out.

As he turned west on one thirteen with less than ten miles remaining and all downhill, he was up on the pedals again. The road ahead was long and serpentine, tracing a ravine carved between the wrinkles of adjacent hills etched by eons of rains streaming to the ocean. He stayed upright on the pedals until he’d churned through each of the gears, which occurred quickly since gravity aided his acceleration. His face was red, mouth was wide open and tongue jutting out, lapping for air. He grabbed his second water bottle and drank what he wanted, then showered himself with the rest, finally tossing the bottle aside.

Snaking down the valley Shamus felt the thrill of speed. His concentration was acute and any thoughts of whether he’d won or lost the tour lead slipped from his mind. Tracing around bends, his tires groaned and hissed and occasionally skipped over pebbles in the road. Like an experienced skier, his attention was on the path ahead while his body intuitively made the necessary adjustments to keep him upright.

He moved his elbows off the aero bars and gripped the drops in his hands to better control his steering as he carved the corners. Where the road dropped off fastest he slid forward off the seat and lowered his body closer to the top bar of the bike’s frame, minimizing his aerodynamic profile in a dangerous way that decreased his chances of recovering if he got the least bit out of control. His legs ground out a slower cadence but the chain ran from a large fifty three-tooth ring attached to his pedals back to a tiny 11-tooth gear attached to the rear wheel. Each turn of the pedals spun the tires almost five full revolutions. The wind howled at over forty-five miles per hour, but his skinsuit was designed to enable him to slip through it with the least possible friction.

In the car following only twenty meters behind him, Shamus knew Philip was watching his ride helplessly, fully aware the rider had gone off radio. Shamus had no idea whether Philip was particularly happy or sad at the moment, corresponding to whether Shamus had done enough to keep his overall lead of the race, but from the time he turned toward the beach he knew the answer lay only minutes away.

As Shamus approached the finish line the road flattened and when he felt unable to keep pushing the large gear he stood and pumped with everything he had. It went by like a flash, five hundred meters, then two hundred and fifty, then one hundred, and then he was across the finish line. Fans lining the route were shouting and waving as he slid past and the clock came to a stop. As soon as he did, he grabbed the brakes and slowed the bike until the team’s sougnieur, Claude Charmaigne, stepped into his path and put a hand on the handlebars and another on the back of the rider, and eased him toward the small area reserved for riders to recover and eventually to be accessible to the press.

Shamus’s exhaustion kept him from lifting his head, even to find out how he’d done.

Claude was toweling Shamus’s head and face and quickly produced a bottle of Gatorade from which Shamus to long pulls, stopping only to breathe when he had to. Ignoring for the moment the crush of reporters around him and their tape machines, microphones, and cameras, finally he asked Claude, “so how’d I do?”

Claude smiled and said, “you give us all a heart attack is how you did! In the first part you lost twenty six seconds to Sastre, and in the hills Sastre gains another forty five seconds, giving him the overall lead by six seconds. In the final part you gained on Sastre sixteen seconds!” He shouted at Shamus.

Disbelieving, Shamus turned to the scoreboard and the results were as Claude explained. Sastre had ridden a phenomenal time trial and gotten fourth place on the day. Cancellaria had taken first place, but not the two minutes it would have taken to put him in the overall lead. Another rider had come in third but wasn’t a factor in the overall standings. Shamus wouldn’t get a place on the podium for today’s stage, but retained the overall leader’s position.

The following day they faced a long Sunday ride from Laguna Beach down to San Diego, on a relatively flattish course of one hundred and twenty seven miles largely paralleling the coastline but making occasional diversions into the hills to give the athletes a chance for some attacks before rolling into town.

Exhaustion descended on him Saturday night and Shamus decided recuperation was appropriate, so he declined to ask Eve out for another dinner. He figured they would have a chance after Sunday’s stage, and Eve confirmed that she’d changed her travel plans to Monday, just for that purpose.

As they’d ridden toward San Diego the following day, Carlos Sastre had personally ridden up to Shamus and congratulated on his win. Press speculation to the contrary, he wasn’t planning to attack the CT rider, knowing that despite the seemingly minuscule gap it would be futile to try. For this day, the focus of the entire CT team would be on watching riders who were even remotely risky for challenging the overall lead and disallowing any breakaway they tried to participate in. CT would sit at the front all day, keeping a brisk pace that dissuaded breakaways in the first place. Then they would lift the pace progressively as the race neared the end, such that riders in the main group would be going full out just to stay within the peleton – and unable to sprint past it to capture any time. On the long and relatively unchallenging course they faced, keeping the competition in check would be a hard day’s work, but manageable.

Shamus got the same kudos and congratulations from riders of various teams, and when he rolled across the finish line in San Diego with his team mates bunched around him, the scoreboard showed Shamus the tour winner by ten and a half seconds.

That night, Trusseau treated the team to a night on the town with dinner and drink and much story telling. The mood was elated and Shamus was the day’s hero. Shamus brought Eve along as his date, and she melted effortlessly into the festivities.

Some of the worried faces on the team from days before now seemed to have shaken off their concerns. The furtive glances and grave faces seemed gone for the time being. That was, Shamus noticed, with the exception of one rider who seemed unable to enjoy any of the merriment.

Shamus knew that Marcel Clerc had other things on his mind.

Chapter 11

“So how did you begin racing in the first place?” Eve asked.

They’d returned from California and, to Shamus’s good fortune, their brief and intense relationship hadn’t been merely a fling. Since then, they’d jet-hopped around Europe for get-togethers wherever he or she might be for a few days, often for weekends in Gerona in his apartment, or up in Paris in hers. Shamus was now a Pro Tour champion and his prospects were fabulous. On top of that, he actually had a private life and it was going amazingly well.

“A kid named Rudy got me started in it, really.”

“An Irish boy?”

“No, he was Austrian. My dad got posted to Austria when I was ten, so mum and I packed off to a little town near Salzburg. We stayed five years. I was sent off to the local school but I didn’t speak a word of German, so I was by myself a lot. I rode my bike back and forth each day just so I’d have something to do in my free time.”

“One day, this boy from class pulls up in front of our cottage on his bike. I recognized him, of course, and he just pointed at his bike and then me and said, kommst du.

“It was pretty clear what he meant, so I grabbed my bike and off we went. Rudy knew every road and trail, so we rode for hours every afternoon. I still didn’t speak too many words, but he never seemed to speak any, so we just rode.

“Now Rudy, if you saw him, was positively abnormal. He was ten but already as tall as a thirteen year old, and not skinny, either. He certainly wasn’t fat, but stout like a wooden beam. I mean, who has abs when they’re ten? I’ll tell you he did. And his arms were big and strong, too.

“Most of all, though, he could ride.

“Everywhere we went was either up hill, or down and then up again. When we got to the forest where roads and trails were a bit flatter, he was happy to roll along at any pace I wanted. But when we started up the hills, he went full speed every time, all the way to the top.

“When he got there, he’d wait for me, which was grand because otherwise I had no idea how to find my way back home.

“One Saturday morning he shows up, and off we go toward town on our bikes. When we got there, there were banners hanging up and a festival about to start, including a bike race. So Rudy leads me over to a table and tells me to put my name on the papers, so I put mine right under his and we go off toward the start line. That’s when I figured out they were having a kids race also, and now we entered in it.

“I felt like I was in over my head immediately. Cycling is serious stuff there and kids start when they’re two or three and are racing by the time they’re eight or nine. So there’s about sixty of us and they’ve got these really nice bikes and many of them are wearing little pro kits from their favorite teams — and they’re speaking German, so they all sound mean. Some of these kids were big, and the ages ranged from maybe eight to thirteen.

“Rudy just walks up to the front of the pack, with me following very close behind, picks his spot, and waits for the horn to blow. He doesn’t say anything, and nobody says anything to him.

“When the horn blew, we rolled out in a big pack and some of the kids went hell’s bells right from the first moment. Rudy didn’t seem to care. We just rode a good pace near the front of the pack.

“The course went through town then up a steep hill to a castle, turned around, and brought us all back to the start. Once we got to the start of the mile long climb to the entrance to Schlosshafen Castle, Rudy stepped on the it and I just stuck to his rear wheel. Soon we were free of the pack and passing a lot of the kids who’d raced ahead earlier. By the time we got to the top, Rudy was the first boy to the turn and I was second. From there we hammered downhill, but there wasn’t much risk of being caught.

“We came into town having raced something like three miles in total and when we got to the last hundred yards, Rudy stopped pedaling and sat up. I did too because I wasn’t going to pass him when he’d done all the work, but then he waved his arm forward and said, kommst du, and so I pedaled across the line slightly before he did and got my first win. Rudy took home the second place trophy that day.”

“So why did he let you win? A gift to his friend, non?” Eve asked.

“In part, perhaps, but I think it was more about Rudy than it was about me. See, he was a big, tough boy and he spooked even older kids. So nobody wanted to take on Rudy at anything. I think he was happy to give me a gift, but it was much more about showing everybody that the only way to beat Rudy, was if Rudy let you. He had already shown that he was the most powerful, now he was showing them that he could win whenever he wanted.”

“You think it worked?”

“What I know is my victory lasted for fifteen seconds while I stood on the vegetable boxes they’d stacked up to make a ‘podium’ for our trophy ceremony. Rudy’s performance, on the other hand, was legend among the kids. I think he knew it would be.”

“And what became of your friend Rudy? It sounds like he could have become a successful racer, non?”

“Actually, no. His problem was that he didn’t stop growing. His mother was almost two meters tall and his father was taller. They were certainly hearty people. Rudy took his strength initially into football – the European kind – and was a semi-pro goalie when he decided to go off to the States and attend college. I saw his name once in a while because he walked on as a defensive lineman at the University of New Mexico. He’d shown up at their practice one day and said he wanted to play. He was so big, they let him have a go. Apparently, what they saw, they liked. By the time Rudy quit growing he went six foot six and two hundred and seventy five pounds without any fat on him. I’d wager he never bothered with hormones to get there, either. After college he played for the Cincinnati Bengals. I don’t think he played four seasons before the body was an absolute shambles. I think he sells cars these days.”

“That’s quite a nice story, until the end,” Eve said, “but it sounds like he was a good friend for you.”

“He was there when I won my first prize money race. At the time he probably still could have beaten me at it. I was fifteen and it was just before my mum and dad and I packed off to Ireland again. I liked the way it felt to outrun everybody else, or almost everybody, so I became a race rat. I was gone as much as possible, so there weren’t any problems around home, either. I’d pop in for a meal and some sleep, then be gone in the morning and stay out for days. Mum and dad could be found at the pub, so even when I came home I had the place to myself.“

“It makes me sad that you did not have so much of a relationship with your parents. That must have been hard, non?”

“A lot of kids were worse off, with horrible parents they couldn’t get away from. I always thought I was lucky that way. How about you, what was it like for you growing up?”

“I will tell you as much as you care to know, but for now the day is getting late and we have many things to do, so please get ready. For now, I say that I grew up in a pleasant area outside of Paree and my mother and father were quite wonderful parents. Sadly, the only thing I did not have from these years is such an interesting story as yours. Life was quite easy for me and my sisters, but the story is quite boring maybe.”

“Is that why you became an investigator then, looking for excitement?”

“If that were the case, I made a beeg mistake! She said, and laughed. Most of the time it is with so many reports and papers but not so many bad guys to capture. Zees takes forever! Before I joined Interpol, I was with the French Gendarmes, but not with the peestol, you know. I was a computer expert, and in University I studied accounting also. So they put me with the ‘white collar’ crimes to catch the businessman who is cheating and so forth. It is a good job, but not always so exciting to look at the balance sheets and bank transactions and computer records, non? But with this we go after bad guys all over the world.”

“Speaking of bad guys, have your colleagues figured out who the man on the motorbike?”

“Ah, yes. We traced the license number, and as before, it is registered to a man who is former racer. The name of this man is Ivan Stevich, a Ukranian citizen. We are checking whether we can find a relationship of this man to Daniela Antonacci or to Monsieur Pagnoli. This will take time, of course. However, we know this man did not ride on the team of Pagnoli, and it does not appear they participated in the same races. Ivan Stevich raced only three years for the Ukranian national team from 2000 through 2003. Then he was let go because the race results were not so good. I have a picture for you to look at,” she said, and left the bedroom of her small apartment, returning moments later with a black and white.

“Although the photocopy was of low quality, the face on it very well resembled the man from the hotel. Is this the man?” Eve asked.

“Yes, I’m sure it is,” Shamus said.

“But you could not see what was in the package he delivered?”

“No, but I know where you can get a sample.”

“Where would that be?”

“From the blood of Marcel Clerc. I presume you got the results of his blood analysis after the race, did they show anything?”

“Oui. He definitely had the elevated haemoglobin levels. The level was over sixty, which naturally is a violation of the WADA limit of fifty. However, there was no trace of EPO that could be found. We are sending the sample to the FBI lab for further analysis, but we suspect he may have taken the masking agent to flush these substances from his body before the race.”

“He might as well have not have bothered,” Shamus responded, “since all it got him was twenty fourth place on the day. He rides better than that without drugs. He looked especially pissed off after that race, like someone who knew there was a fix in on a horse race, only to find out someone forgot to tell the horse. I presume you’ll keep his results quiet for the time being?”

“Oui. It would make big damage for the investigation if we make charges against him now. We must keep everything normal while we review the bank records, telephone records, and so forth. We will investigate Mousieur Stevich and look carefully at his records also. It is only a matter of time before we find connections between these people and their money. The big question is whether there is someone at the top of this scheme.”

“I suppose that’s a good question, isn’t it?” Shamus noted, “whether this is truly organized crime, or simply well-organized crimes. So besides investigating all the people we stumble across who might have something to do with getting the athletes their vitamins, have you got an idea about how to put the puzzle pieces together?”

“Agent Steineger has the idea that we must get closer to people who provide the connections.”

“Such as?”

“For example, the team managers and medical personnel. They must know what is going on with the athletes, and they see people coming and going, oui?”

“That feels right to me. Would he know who’s doping on the team? I think so. When Trusseau was worried about rumors one of us got caught by Doping Controls he sent me straight to Doc. Doc didn’t ask me straight out what I was taking, but I don’t think he believes I’m winning races clean. Seeing Doc and Trusseau with the Amgen reps doesn’t make them exactly guilty of a crime, but it makes a good starting place to look for one. How would you do it, though?”

“There are different possibilities. If we can find some problem with either of these men, then we can use that. Like if they owe taxes to the government, or have legal problems in the court. We are looking for these things. Otherwise, maybe they will trust you with some information if you ask the right questions.”

“That’s possible, but I think the entire team’s nervous already and my asking questions won’t make anyone more comfortable.”

“That is a problem,” Eve concurred.

“What about you?” Shamus asked.

“I do not know these people, Shamus. Why would they tell me anything?”

“They know we’re together, so it’s not like you’re a stranger off the street.”

“Yes, but…”

“Some men like to shoot off their mouths around pretty young ladies, and I’m speaking from experience here.”

Eve smiled at Shamus’s statement. It was flattering, and it was sweet, and it might be a possibility. But how? She would think about it further. Perhaps there would be a way.

Chapter 12

Shamus and the team were busy packing themselves up for the start of Classics season, a series of single- and multi-day races that had gone on for so many years they were held out as being special compared to all others. Most of these races took place in late February through April, at which time fairer weather across the Continent and made feasible the routes of the major tour races. Some of these Spring classics included Milan-San Remo and the Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy, France’s Paris-Nice, Paris-Tours and Paris-Roubaix, and a number of Benelux area races with obscure names such as Oomloop Het Volk, Ghent-Wevelgem, Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, the Fleche Wallone, and Kurne-Bruxelles-Kurne.

The Italian races were best known for stunning Alpine scenery and, for the riders, tremendous amounts of impossibly steep climbing. The Giro d’Italia occasionally incorporated riding up sections of Alpine ski slopes as a special challenge for the riders. The French rides were long, fast events, except when adverse weather made them long, slow events. The Benelux races where characterized for an inherent evil and meanness with which these race venues had been selected and allowed to progressively degenerate since many decades earlier. What they lacked in mountains, they made up with intensely steep climbs repeating over and over on the worst imaginable rock, brick, and mud-strewn paths for distances of up to two hundred and forty kilometers or more. Men came back from these events with shattered bones and bikes, filthy from the mud, and hypothermic. Winning there was hard, dirty business.

Many riders liked certain of these races for the simple fact that the torture ended after a single day. Others favored the multi-day races as an early chance to gauge the fitness of their competitors after a long winter and before the start of the tours. Whatever a rider’s preference might be, a good finish in any of these races was almost universally coveted because they were the next best thing to a major tour win, at least in the eyes of European cycling fans, and a great chance to get their name alongside some of the sport’s most famous ones, such as Lemond, Indurain, Fignon, Merckx, Museeuw, Poulidor, Anquetil, Cipollini, Botero, Petacchi, Jalabert, Vinokourov, and Boonen.

Each race had its own special features or character, but what was almost certain was unpredictable weather — aside from it being predictably awful. Snow, rain, mud, wind, sleet, or ice; some treacherous and uncomfortable combination would be present in each event, and cycling clothes provided little comfort or protection against the elements. Suffer they did, one and all.

Notwithstanding, Shamus looked forward to his debut at Paris-Nice, and appeared to have as good a chance as anyone else. Paris-Nice was a weeklong stage race that served as the inaugural pro cycling event of the year, which made sense because most of the other Classics took place farther north, where the weather was even harsher, and ran south to the lovely beaches of Nice where people would come to sun themselves several months later when the temperatures climbed to more hospitable levels.

Eve was staying in Shamus’s apartment for the weekend, and the team’s bus would roll out on Wednesday morning toward the north of Paris, Eve planned to stay in the apartment until the following Sunday morning and then fly back to Paris.

When the team finally rolled out on the big bus, Eve waved them goodbye then returned to the apartment where she could see others she recognized, mostly backoffice staff and support personnel, continuing to pack their own cars. They still had time before they were required to be on site. The riders, on the other hand, typically went up in advance to get settled in their hotel and for training rides that served the additional purpose of scouting the course.

Eve watched the Doc coming and going from his apartment, the front door of which was visible from the patio where she stood. He didn’t seem in any particular hurry, but rather was loading his Volvo station wagon in a very purposeful manner. She suspected this was critical in his trade – knowing where anything was in an instant, if necessary.

As she watched him, he saw her and waved up. She returned the wave. She racked her brain for how she might get to know whatever he knew that might help her investigation. She wasn’t a field-trained agent. She was a case manager. Doing something spontaneous was a big risk, since she had little experience or applicable training to rely upon. She could get in trouble. Worse, she could screw up a case they’d poured a ton of time and resources into, and were again making meaningful progress on.

She watched Doc load another box of goods in the back of the Volvo and turn back toward his apartment. As he did, she made up her mind, and with Eve there was never a turning back once that had taken place.

She walked half way down the fifteen steps that led from Shamus’s apartment to the parking lot, and then purposefully tripped herself, leaving in question exactly what would happen as she tumbled down the remaining steps. What was entirely certain, was that she’d chosen a painful means of making the acquaintance of the doctor; she only hoped it wouldn’t prove to be in vain, or worse, result in permanent damage.

As she reached her arms forward to arrest her fall, the potential implications to the case of her actions slipped from her mind. She heard a popping sound before the rest of her body even hit the stairs, screamed as she felt her arm fail and flex in an unnatural way, and then things went mercifully dark.

She awoke in a hospital emergency ward.

Doctor Gabelli sat in a chair at the end of her bed. A tube containing clear fluids ran down from a plastic bag hanging above her and fed her liquids via a needle that ran under a cotton pad taped to her arm.

“What happened?” She asked weakly. “Dr. Gabelli, why am I here?”

“Not to worry, young lady. You tripped on the stairs of your apartment. I heard you scream and when I got there, you were out cold. I brought you here directly.”

“Oh thank you, Doctor. That was very kind of you. I’m such a klutz sometimes — how bad is it this time?”

“Well, not as bad as it will feel, I’m sure, but I certainly wouldn’t make it a habit, he said in a friendly manner. You broke the left arm and the doctors here will put that in plaster before we leave. The rest are just contusions, and there are plenty of those you will soon notice. For now, they have given you some medicine for the pain, so it should not be so bad. When they are done wrapping your arm, I will take you back to the apartment and make sure you get up the stairs safely, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t be silly, Doctor Gabelli, I am quite in your debt for all you have done for me already. I’m sure Shamus will not believe what I have done, but I know he will be grateful for the help you have given me. You are very kind.”

“Not at all, please. You must understand that I spend all my time patching up the boys’ wounds. It is nice to have such a lovely patient once in a while,” he responded charmingly. Eve wondered if the nature of his patter, while pleasant, wasn’t entirely innocent.

After her arm had been encased and she’d been unplugged from the IV, they brought a wheelchair and ferried her to the hospital entrance, where Gabelli’s Volvo waited. She rose from the chair with his assistance and with a nurse on her other side steering and supporting her as if she were a fragile porcelain doll. As she lowered herself into the front passenger seat, a number of her bruises introduced themselves to her through the fog of the codeine. The days ahead would be a painful. She hoped it wouldn’t prove to have been a futile stunt. She would know soon enough. If the good doctor headed toward Paris that afternoon, the bruises and breaks would be reminders of a useless and ignoble effort.

Gabelli was a perfect gentleman back at the apartment, helping her up the stairs and preparing a comfortable arrangement for her on the couch, then pulling over a small coffee table and assembling on it a number of items she might want later: A bottle of water, some Tylenol, a magazine, and a pillow and blanket from the bed. Soon she was nestled into her little cuccoon, and she felt like a little girl again, stricken with a virus and sentenced to days of recuperation and TV. It was a familiar feeling and an unintended joy she could take from the otherwise unpleasant effects of her stunt. Dodging serious damage was another one, she told herself.

Dr. Gabelli pulled up a chair; apparently he wasn’t going to exit all too immediately.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” He asked her.

“Is it wrong to have a glass of red wine with the pain medicine?”

“Senora, it is never fair to ask an Italiano whether red wine can be wrong, he said with a warm smile. Maybe too warm, Eve worried. I will pour you a glass and you can trust that the doctor approved the dosage, eh?”

“That would be very nice, thank you.”

“Eh, Senora Blancon, he started to say as he cut the protective foil off of the top of a bottle of wine selected from the small countertop rack in the kitchen.”

“Call me Eve, sil vous plait,” she interrupted.

“Eve, I think you need some sleep with your injuries, so I will leave you with the glass of wine and, if it is okay, you will allow me to bring some food to you this evening. Your body will need the energy but I do not think you will want to spend time on your feet today.”

“That’s very kind of you to offer, Doctor Gabelli, but I will be fine. I know you need to be driving to Paris to be with the team.”

“First, my name is Angelo, or you may call me Doc, as the boys do. ‘Doctor’ is for the men in white coats. Second, there is no hurry for me to leave tonight; tomorrow or even Friday will be fine for me. The race does not start until the weekend. And I do not take ‘no’ for an answer. Any person I pick up off he steps becomes my patient and I think also that Shamus would prefer knowing that you receive some attention for a day or two before being left alone, no?”

“I suppose you’re right. Thank you again for being so kind to me, she said taking a sip from the wine glass he gave her. I do feel tired suddenly, so I think I will nap for a while.”

“That is a very good idea. Now here is my card with the number for my handy. Ring me if you need anything, otherwise I will bring some pasta for dinner and be back at six.”

“Thank you again,” she said, closing her eyes and laying her head back against the pillow. She really did feel like hell, she thought.

When Gabelli left, she opened her eyes and quickly scanned the room for her purse. It was on the table, near the front door. Slowly and carefully, but with much agony anyway, she worked herself up off the couch and took baby steps across the room. She snatched her purse and returned to the couch, then with even greater discomfort worked herself back into the same position she’d been in. She reached into her purse with her right hand, the one not esconced in plaster, and pulled out her own handy. She flipped it open and held down the number three button on her speed dial. Number one was voicemail, number two was mom, and number three was Steineger. Shamus had recently made number four. She’d ring that next. Business before pleasure, she told herself.

“Allo, Steineger hier,” the agent answered on the first ring. It was a German thing, Eve thought.

“Eve here,” Michael.

“Eve, how are you?”

‘Well, actually, there has been a little accident and I just got back from the hospital, but please don’t worry – it’s nothing serious.”

“Oh, my, what happened to you?” he asked with sincerity, although in a cool Germanic way, as opposed to how a French colleague would have responded, which would have probably entailed tears at a minimum, Eve thought.

“I broke my arm falling down the stairs to Shamus’s apartment in Girona.”

“Oh my gosh,” he muttered.

“Fortunately, Doctor Gabelli was out and heard me fall. He took me to the hospital and brought me home just now.”

“Well I’m so sorry to hear this. What can we do for you?”

“Actually, that’s what I called about. I was hoping you could find a colleague here who could bring me a bit of medicine very quickly. I need seven milligrams of sodium thiopental.”

“Sure, we can get you some medicine, but did they not provide you with a script at the hospital?”

“Of course, and the good doctor provided me with some codeine that makes it hard to keep my eyes open at the moment.”

“So the sodium thiopental, what is that for, if I may ask?”

“That’s for Doctor Gabelli. And he’ll be back at six, so you’ll need to work quickly.”

“Oh dear, I see this more clearly now,” Steineger sighed. He thought he understood her situation much more fully now, so much so that he knew it was time to ask no further questions.

“It will be done. And I will call you at eight to check on you. If anything is the matter, please say that I have the wrong number, and hang up. If you do this, or if you don’t answer, an agent will be there within moments. Please be careful, Eve.“ Steineger clicked off. He had calls to make.

Eve phoned Shamus next, but got his voicemail. He’d still be on the bus, and there was a good chance he was in a dead zone. She knew he’d check and get back to her soon.

Eve once again rose from the couch, arranged the small dining table including candles, flowers and wine glasses, and set out a couple of bottles and a corkscrew. Next, she went to the bedroom and laid out a change of clothes to something both comfortable and pleasant to look at, then she took a shower which turned out to be a fiasco with her various bandages, cast, and parts of her body that did not want to be up and about, let alone trying to stand steady in the four footer tub with absolute nothing to grab onto to help keep her balance. Somehow she survived and afterward felt both refreshed and exhausted. She did a similarly comical job of wiggling into the clothing she’d laid out, glad there wasn’t anybody to watch the process, then finally returned to her beloved couch and settled in for a nap.

Someone knocked at the door.

Eve silently swore a red-streak to herself, then got up again and answered. The man at the door showed identification in Spanish that she knew to mean that he was with law enforcement somehow. She didn’t care how. He had a plain paper bag, as if he’d arrived with his lunch.

“Senora Blancon?”

“Si,” she said in response.

“Por favor,” he said, holding the bag out for her to take.

“Muchas gracias,” she said in return, taking the bag.

“De nada.” He turned and left, just like that.

She took the bag to the dining table she’d earlier arranged for dinner, opened it and removed the small glass bottle. She read the label; it contained exactly what she’d asked for. She poured the contents of the bottle into one of the wine glasses. It was mere drops of fluid. She filled the glass half way up with wine from the bottle the doctor had opened before he’d left. This done, she placed the other glass, the one the doctor had given her, on the table. She noted it contained less wine than she’d put into the glass with the medicine. It was crucial that she tell them apart, she reminded herself. God forbid she drank the wrong one on top of the codeine coursing through her veins.

Sodium thiopental, sold by Abbott Labs under the brand name Sodium Pentothal, was a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate. In the body it worked as a depressant. It’s practical uses were as general anaesthetic or, for a drug addict, as a downer.

One of the other uses of thiopental related to its effect of weakening one’s resolve. Some people became more compliant or more easily persuaded under its influence, since barbiturates have various properties, including anesthetic, sedative, and hypnotic. Hence its reputation as a truth serum.

Thiopental decreased higher cortical brain functioning, the textbooks said. Because lying is more complex than telling the truth, suppression of the higher functions of the brain facilitated uncovering ‘the truth.’ However, in court, confessions made under the influence of thiopental were almost universally inadmissable, because brain function was diminished and it wasn’t absolutely certain that people under its influence were actually telling the truth, or that they weren’t capable of overcoming its effects and telling lies anyway. Notwithstanding, Eve knew from her investigator training that the drug tended to make subjects chatty and cooperative, and therefore could be a practical tool in loosening the lips.

Injected intraveneously, Thiopental was an ultra-short acting general anesthesia, causing unconsciousness within less than a minute. In less than ten minutes, it diffused throughout the body and consciousness returned. Thiopental was preferrably administered intravenously, as it could otherwise irritate the body, Eve had learned. However, she didn’t think the doctor would permit this, and couldn’t think of a plausible way to cause it to happen.

Wine, a young woman, and strong drugs; Eve hoped the doctors inhabitions would melt in due course. With any luck, the good doctor would chalk up any side effects – usually resembling a strong hangover lasting a day or two – to too much wine and perhaps a bit of food gone rancid.

Eve finally got to the couch and was near exhaustion. She laid down and closed her eyes, thankful for the chance for an hour of sleep before Gabelli would return.

On the edge of sleep and falling quickly, the cell phone rang. It was Shamus, she knew.

She let it ring over to voicemail, and slept.