The Bastard is Dead Read online

  Edited by Chelsea Cambeis

  Proofread by Lana King

  THE BASTARD IS DEAD

  Copyright © 2020 D’Arcy Kavanagh

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by BHC Press

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2019938909

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-029-5 (Hardcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-030-1 (Softcover)

  ISBN: 978-1-64397-031-8 (Ebook)

  For information, write:

  BHC Press

  885 Penniman #5505

  Plymouth, MI 48170

  Visit the publisher:

  www.bhcpress.com

  For Lynda

  …who helped me plot murder

  while we cycled across Europe

  THE FRENCH RIVIERA, KNOWN in French as the Côte d’Azur, extends along the Mediterranean coastline in the southeast corner of the country. It does not have an official border but is generally considered to extend in the east from the Italian border, through Monaco, on to Nice and as far west as Toulon, although some folks point to Marseille as the end. Along the route are internationally famous communities such as Cannes, home to arguably the most celebrated film festival in the world, and Saint-Tropez, made famous by legendary film star Brigitte Bardot.

  The area has been inhabited since prehistoric times; primitive tools have been discovered in the area that date back one million years. As for its political history, the coastline has been ruled by Romans, Visigoths, Normans, the kingdom of Provence, the House of Grimaldi, the House of Savoy and, today, the French.

  Thanks to its mild climate and beautiful seascape and landscape, the Riviera has been popular with artists for centuries, as well as tourists from around the world, who come to be mesmerized by the area.

  The story that follows, however, isn’t so much about beautiful scenery as it is about death—and other matters.

  THE PELOTON OF 180 riders took a sharp right turn at fifty-five kilometers per hour and then lined up for the final push to the finish line by the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Thirty thousand people lining the barricades of the 500-meter-long straightaway saw only a blur of color as the cyclists bumped and elbowed for space. The danger was palpable to the onlookers, most of them shrieking encouragement.

  Behind the riders came a cavalcade of team cars. In the second vehicle—an apple-red Volkswagen Jetta used by the Global Projects team and piled high with six bikes—Directeur Sportif Pierre McManus yelled “Allez, allez, allez! Go, go, go!” into his radio speaker, although he knew his lead riders were too focused to pay much attention. But he was on an adrenaline rush, and so he yelled louder and louder.

  As soon as the riders zipped by the turnoff for the team cars, two yellow-clad Tour de France officials hopped into the road and madly waved the vehicles off to the right and into the parking lot set aside for them.

  “Allez, allez, Raoul!” McManus screamed at his top sprinter as he turned right, coming within ten meters of one wide-eyed official.

  That’s when his heart stopped.

  A DOZEN KILOMETERS AWAY, in the old part of Villeneuve-Loubet, Paul Burke poured a little water into his pastis while keeping an eye on the small, ancient television that Claude Brière had hooked up for the customers at his Café de Neptune. Burke sipped the licorice drink to ensure he had the right blend of water and alcohol, but quickly forgot about it as the cyclists, many of them standing on their pedals and feverishly maneuvering their bikes, sprinted the last two hundred meters to the finish line. He felt someone standing beside him but didn’t take his eyes off the screen until the British favorite cleared the line first, a wheel ahead of the runner-up from Germany.

  “I’m surprised you aren’t there at the finish,” came Claude’s husky voice.

  Burke looked up at the owner—a beefy man in his fifties who had grown up in this village and, as far as Burke knew, had always worked at the café, which had once been owned by his uncle.

  Burke brushed the comment aside with a classic Gallic wave. “Not worth my time,” he said in his fluent, Québec-accented French. He shrugged. “I have better things to do.”

  Claude, who was always cheerful, grinned. “Yes, I can see your Sunday is bursting with activity.”

  Despite himself, Burke laughed. He liked Claude. In fact, he liked almost everyone in the hillside community for their good spirits and jovial pessimism, which had taken a few months to get used to. These people were to be respected and appreciated. He felt differently about the residents of the neighboring developments. They were a well-heeled, self-absorbed bunch who cared little for the social niceties of a small community. As for the tourists who were coming in droves to the expansive resorts being developed at an extraordinary pace, Burke did his best to avoid them. Too demanding, too elitist and too loud. The area was changing.

  “Just killing time,” Burke said.

  “But surely you must feel some association or kinship with those cyclists,” Claude persisted.

  Burke and Madame Marois—the quiet, eightyish, pinch-faced woman from just around the corner—were the only customers. Burke had learned it was at such times that conversation was appropriate. It was even expected.

  “My career is long over,” Burke said, his mind suddenly filled with memories from a score of races, most of them not involving the Tour de France.

  “Just, what, three years?” Claude asked. “That’s not so long ago. Then you did television commentary, too. And you were good. You know strategy as well as anyone.”

  Burke smiled as they went through a conversation they’d revisited a dozen times since he had moved to the village. “I was crap, and everyone knows it. That’s why I got fired so quickly.”

  “A bad decision by the television people,” Claude said with a sympathetic smile.

  “Ah, you’re just being kind again, Claude. You know I was terrible. Everyone knows it. And it didn’t help when I reported that last race pissed. Not a good decision by me.”

  During Burke’s final telecast, he blurted out a string of curses on the air just as the riders had finished the race. Not only had Burke been fired immediately after, but his outburst had become a YouTube sensation and had led to a legislated change so there would be a minor delay in French coverage of sporting events to ensure no commentator ever unleashed profanities on the air with such enthusiasm again.

  “Well, as you Americans say, shit happens,” Claude said.

  Burke smiled at their inside joke. Claude was fully aware that Burke was a Canadian expat who had grown up in Montréal, but he liked to tease Burke on occasion by lumping him in with American tourists.

  “That’s exactly what we Canadians say,” Burke said. “Since you’ve got so much advice and so few customers, why don’t you sit down and join me? Madame Marois over there doesn’t look like she’ll need your services for some time.”

  Claude glanced at the old woman, who was swathed in a black shawl despite it being thirty-five degrees Celsius—a temperature that sucked the energy out of most people. As usual, the woman was statue-like, her eyes boring holes into the wall of an old stone house on the other side of the ti
ny courtyard. Beside her stretched her curly-haired Jack Russell, Plato, a ball of white fluff with caramel-colored ears and one sandy spot on his back. The dog moved as much as his mistress. Claude shook his head, then looked back at Burke.

  “You’re only in your late 30s, Paul, and you look fit, so maybe you could return to racing,” he said.

  Claude graciously ignored that Burke was starting to show a little more stomach and maybe drank a few too many pastises than average.

  Burke sighed. “Get a pastis, Claude, and I’ll tell you once again why I don’t race anymore.”

  He watched the café owner go, catching the crooked finger Madame Marois extended to him, which meant she wanted another glass of rosé.

  Burke thought about the rest of his day. Maybe he’d stay and have a salade Niçoise, which he had always craved during his decade of pro racing but had avoided due to the salty anchovies. And a bottle of a Bordeaux red would work. Pastis afterward, too. The French might frown on such a sequence of beverages, but screw them. They were a little too rigid about food and drink for his liking.

  He turned his attention back to the television, where the stage winner was holding up the day’s trophy—a piece of abstract sculpture that resembled a dog humping a leg. The crowd was cheering wildly.

  He wished he’d experienced such a moment just once. His only win had been in an unnoticed, three-day event, when he had taken the last day’s stage after all the favorites in front of him had crashed. The stage trophy had been a small teddy bear that looked like it had already been used.

  Claude returned, nodding at the stage winner on TV as he sat down with his own pastis and another for Burke. “He’s a prick, I think,” Claude said. “I think all sprinters are like strikers in football, totally caught up in their own deeds without a care about others. They pretend they’re good teammates, but they’re just shits. I would very much enjoy telling them the facts of life, but no one takes me up on my offer.”

  Burke smiled. Yes, the salade Niçoise would work if it came with more of Claude’s good company. Life wasn’t always so depressing, he thought. Then after his meal, when he’d likely be feeling a little drunk, he’d go to the highest part of the village, near the old castle, and see how much of the Mediterranean he could see. It would be quiet up there, except for the diminished roar of distant vehicles on the highway, and the air would be perfumed.

  And maybe he’d sleep well. He was tired of nightmares. Too many goddamn nightmares.

  THE NIGHTMARE WOKE HIM just after 5 a.m.

  He had dreamt he needed to catch an airplane but had been inexplicably held up at customs by some jerk of an official, and, when finally cleared, he had seen the plane beginning to taxi. Bursting through the airport doors, he’d sprinted as hard as possible toward the departing plane, and just when it seemed he would reach out and climb aboard, it pulled away, leaving him to a terrible, unknown fate.

  Then he woke up, not to the songbirds outside his second-story apartment bedroom, but to anxiety.

  Again.

  Sitting up in his bed with the sheet wet from sweat, Burke wondered if someone could please tell him what the hell was wrong. He had experienced such dreams for the last two or three years and hadn’t a clue what was causing them. He just knew that sleep rarely brought pleasure or relief.

  He also realized he had a thumping headache and a queasy stomach. He’d felt fine or close to it after the bottle of Bordeaux. Maybe it had been the four pastises afterward. Even Claude had suggested that maybe he was going a little too deep into the booze, but he had blown off the friendly suggestions to stop. He grimaced. Taking advice wasn’t one of his strong points.

  He stood and looked out the open window to see the start of a sunrise against a cloudless sky. It would be another beautiful, hot July day.

  Burke had little to do.

  His next blog for three Côte d’Azur newspapers and their websites wasn’t due for another three days. He also had a column for the same publications but had another week to finish it. Maybe he’d base the blog on what Claude had discussed—the self-absorbed sprinters and strikers in sport who thought they were God’s gift. Or maybe he’d do a piece about racing in abnormally hot weather. Or he could write about how crappy it felt to wake up with a hangover after you thought you’d solved the problems of the world the night before.

  He stuck his head through the open window and let the slight breeze caress him. He loved early mornings in this part of France; they were so sunny and languid, and the birds were always chattering away at sunrise. He loved the smells and sounds of the world awakening. He closed his eyes, which seemed to accentuate his hangover, and took a couple of deep breaths. His problem, he knew, was that he had too many late nights.

  He stepped back, a little wobbly, went to the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. That helped.

  Burke then went into his tiny kitchen and started up the coffee. During his racing days, he had been a three-coffees-a-day man for the caffeine boost. Now he was putting down five cups of espresso a day because he found himself bored too often and without a lot to do. When in doubt, drink an espresso. Then later, drink pastis.

  He promised himself that within six months, he’d have everything straightened out. Maybe he’d go back to Montréal for a visit, although there really wasn’t anyone left he wanted to spend much time with. He chuckled at the thought of a few days with his older brother and his brother’s family. If he showed up, they’d start finding excuses to disappear. Too much brotherly competition—and borderline hatred—over the years. To make matters worse, his brother’s kids, both boys, were shitheads, and they weren’t even teenagers yet. As for his sister-in-law, she was a chronic complainer. The family dog, Alvin, was the only one he liked.

  He could go to Vancouver to see that young woman he’d hooked up with the previous autumn in Antibes. She was a doctoral student doing research on something involving plankton, and they had bumped into each other at the Picasso museum with her coming out and him just hanging around outside slurping down a gelato. She’d thought he was an art fan, and he’d gone along with it because she had great legs and enormous blue eyes that sucked him in. After a few days of mindless passion, she’d discovered he knew as much about art as he did about nuclear physics, and so she harrumphed and blew him off as some “stupid cyclist who doesn’t understand the real world.” He smiled. Picasso and plankton were the real world? Still, she’d been a lot of fun once they managed to get to a bed. Maybe he could make her forget his intellectual weaknesses and rekindle her passion.

  Once the coffee was ready, Burke turned on the kitchen TV—it helped to cook if there was something to watch—and switched the channel to the news. He really wasn’t any kind of journalist and was only doing Tour de France blogs and columns as a way to help pay the bills, but he did like to know what was going on in the world.

  Of course, the lead item was the TDF, and the screen showed the wild finish of the previous day’s race. The announcer discussed how the stage had played out and then, finishing the story, added a bit about the tragedy of longtime directeur sportif, Pierre McManus, dying just as the race was ending.

  “Jesus Christ!” Burke said.

  Officials had reported a heart attack was the cause of McManus’s death.

  “Damn!” Burke said.

  McManus was dead? How does a nasty bastard who’s got the constitution of a bear just pop off? Burke wondered. A heart attack? It didn’t seem possible. McManus didn’t have a heart. Burke had always figured his former directeur sportif would be right there at the end of the world with the cockroaches and crows.

  “Shit,” Burke said with less passion.

  He surprised himself by feeling a little sad. He had only worked for McManus for two years, which was about two years too many thanks to McManus’s driving ambition, psychological gamesmanship and endless criticism. But somehow, he had developed a minor appreciation for McManus’s sense of cycling strategy. The bugger had produced some great champion
s over the years, and even Burke had to admit he’d learned a few tricks that had served him well. Of course, he could never forget the time he’d overheard McManus telling a team masseur to spend as little time on him as possible because “Burke can barely make the pedals go round. He’s a useless turd who doesn’t even deserve to be stepped on.”

  As soon as his contract, which had been signed under another boss, had ended, Burke found himself unemployed. The turd had been canned.

  Burke watched the entire news hour and then took his third cup of espresso into the tiny spare bedroom that served as his office and a parking place for his Cannondale racing bike, which was starting to gather dust. There, he turned on his computer and started reading everything he could about McManus. Most of the stories were about McManus’s talents and predated yesterday’s events, but a couple mentioned how he had died at the wheel of a team car, which had stopped only when it crashed into another team’s bus. It almost seemed a comical ending.

  Burke shook his head. Yes, McManus had been highly strung, a total alpha dog who was always snapping at riders, team staff, the media and even sponsors. But he was a beast of a man who had somehow found time to exercise each day and whose eating habits were scrupulously proper, yet he’d been only forty-nine at the time of his death.

  McManus dead? It barely seemed possible.

  Just before eight, Burke went to the local newsagent’s and picked up a stack of newspapers from the affable owner, Jean. He grabbed another coffee with water and sat at one of the two tables outside the newsagent’s place. Then he started searching for anything about McManus.

  There wasn’t much new—just the same info about the heart attack and the team’s statement that said riders and other staff were shocked by his demise and distraught over his death, but would continue in his name so as to bring him glory. Burke smiled at that. Unless McManus had changed beyond belief, he’d bet most of the riders and others on the team were probably shaking hands and toasting the unexpected passing of their directeur sportif.