Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  ‘Not for another four weeks,’ Tony said. ‘You’re surely not thinking of working as a groom until then?’

  ‘For as long as it takes,’ I said.

  On Monday morning, after normal stables and exercise, Keith, Diego, Maria and I loaded the special horse-transport that would take us the 200 miles southwest to Pimlico.

  I was more used to British-style horseboxes than the huge eighteen-wheel articulated lorry with its massive cab that arrived for us at nine o’clock. It was similar to the one I had seen arrive at Churchill Downs to collect Hayden Ryder’s horses on the morning he’d been shot.

  Quite apart from the five horses, there was a mass of other stuff to go – feed, tack, buckets, blankets, bedding, pitchforks and brooms – not to mention our own personal effects.

  There had been a few murmurings from Raworth’s other grooms, but not because I had been chosen to go to Pimlico ahead of them, rather for the reason their individual workloads would increase here due to me being away.

  Charlie Hern told them to shut up and get on with it, or leave. ‘There are plenty of others wanting your jobs,’ he warned them. In my opinion, it wasn’t the best example of how to conduct relations with one’s labour force, but I didn’t say so. I just got on with the loading.

  Diego was a pain. Twice he purposely knocked things out of my hands as I was carrying them to the vehicle.

  ‘Estúpido gringo,’ he said each time. But he was the stupid one, I thought. I wouldn’t fancy a year on Rikers Island for any money.

  George Raworth drove a white Jeep Cherokee four-by-four right up inside the barn at the far end from the office, next to the drug store.

  Charlie Hern had been in there for a while busily filling boxes with pills, potions and other paraphernalia, and these were now put into the Jeep, along with the CryoBank flask.

  George and Charlie carried the heavy white metal cylinder out of the drug store together, each holding one of the handles, and then they lifted it into the vehicle, placing it upright behind the front passenger seat. They did it when they thought all the grooms were otherwise engaged and wouldn’t notice. But I’d been keeping a special eye out to see if they would take it.

  But I still had no idea why.

  Finally, when everything else was packed, the five horses were loaded into the trailer.

  I led Debenture out from Stall 2, patting him all the while on the neck to keep him calm. Horses generally don’t like any changes to their routine. It can make them nervous, and half a ton of skittish horseflesh can cause a lot of damage both to themselves and anyone close by. That’s partly why the five-year-old gelding went in first. He was the old man of the five, the other four being three-year-olds, and his presence on board should help settle the younger horses.

  Next, Ladybird, the filly, was loaded, going into a stall at the rear of the trailer behind a solid partition. It was not ideal to take colts and a filly on the same transport, as the very presence of the filly could make the colts become excited. Hence the use of a solid partition and the placing of the filly at the rear so that, as the vehicle moved, the airflow prevented the colts from smelling her. I knew of one transport operator in England who sometimes resorted to smearing Vicks VapoRub into the colts’ nostrils to overpower the smell of fillies travelling in the same horsebox.

  Fire Point was the last of the horses to be loaded.

  He appeared to be in perfect condition, the muscles in his neck standing out sharply and those in his flanks rippling gently under his short summer chestnut coat. Keith coaxed him up the ramp and into his travelling stall in the trailer. All the horses had thick bandages wrapped around their legs and rubber boots on their hooves to reduce the chance of injury caused by a bump or kick, but Fire Point went in without anything more than a shake of his narrow head, as if he already knew he was the star of the show.

  Keith and I rode in the back with the horses while Diego and Maria were up front in the cab with the driver. It was an arrangement with which I was very happy. I didn’t have to keep my eyes on Diego to prevent him niggling me, or worse, and I didn’t have to fight off Maria’s sexual advances. Not that I really wanted to, but the fallout from Diego wasn’t worth the reward.

  Our route went right through New York City and I was able to glimpse some of the iconic sights of Manhattan, including the Empire State Building, before it all disappeared from view as we descended into the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River, and on into New Jersey.

  Keith lay down on some bales of straw and went to sleep, while I counted the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, as in the Simon and Garfunkel song.

  Was I looking for America?

  No, I didn’t think so. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. True, I was enjoying the challenge of working undercover again, but my life seemed to be drifting by.

  During my time with the army in Afghanistan I’d felt there was a purpose, a goal, even if that goal now appeared somewhat blurred since the British forces had pulled out and everything had started to return to how it was before.

  Then, when I joined the BHA, I believed I had enlisted in a righteous crusade to weed out corruption and wrongdoing. I was the standard bearer – prepared to do almost anything in the fight for justice. But, over the years, the shine on my shield had dulled as I became increasingly snowed under with procedures and paperwork.

  Even my love life was in tatters.

  At twenty-three, and as the youngest captain in the Intelligence Corps, I had felt like a sexual god, an Adonis, with a string of gorgeous young women hanging on my every word and deed. Between operational tours overseas, I had fully satisfied my desires, running up a reputation as a bit of a Casanova.

  But, aged twenty-six, I had bucked the trend of my army colleagues by abandoning the exploits of the past, leaving the service and settling down with a steady girlfriend.

  I hadn’t regretted either at the time, happy to have some stability in my life while leaving behind the fear and danger of an intelligence officer in war-torn Afghanistan. Among other things, my role had been to determine if the locals in Helmand Province were on our side or not, without getting myself killed in the process.

  However, recently, I had begun to crave once more the ‘high’ generated when terror grips one’s stomach and adrenalin surges through the body.

  On the lover front, things had also gone somewhat pear-shaped. More than a year ago now, the steady girlfriend had left me for another man who had a ‘safer’ job, the irony being that my own work had been getting less dangerous.

  I’d had one serious romance since then, with Henrietta, but it hadn’t worked out.

  So here I was, thirty-three years old, single and rudderless.

  This American sojourn had been a distraction and I was delighted to be able to extend it. It meant I didn’t have to face the realities of my future for a while longer yet.

  The truck continued on its steady way southwestward on the interstate highways while I checked the horses.

  All of them seemed to be taking the journey in their stride. Fire Point in particular was unperturbed by the noise of the engine and the continuous swaying of the vehicle. But he’d been used to flying so this was a ‘walk in the park’.

  After a couple of hours, we pulled over into a rest area east of Philadelphia to give the driver a meal break, and us a chance to stretch our legs.

  ‘Leave the horses on board,’ Keith said. ‘It’s more than my life’s worth to have Fire Point loose on the highway. They’ll be fine until we get to Pimlico.’

  We went over to the rest-area café and Keith paid for the four of us to have a burger each with fries.

  ‘Mr Raworth said food only,’ he explained. ‘Buy your own soda if you want one. The driver has to have a half-hour break, so be back at the vehicle in good time. I’ll eat mine while keeping an eye on the horses.’

  He went out and walked back towards the truck while the three of us sat down at one of the Formica-topped tables.

  ‘Want a drink
?’ I said to Maria.

  She glanced at Diego. ‘Water,’ she said.

  I collected three cups of water from the cooler in the corner and put them on a table.

  I could tell that Diego didn’t like me doing him any favours. He moved away, without his cup of water, and sat at a different table, on his own.

  Maria sighed. ‘Diego very difficult today. He not stop telling me to be good girl all way from Belmont. I very tired of him.’

  ‘Join me down the back,’ I said.

  What was I saying? Was I mad?

  ‘Good,’ Maria said, and gave me one of her flashing smiles. ‘I do that.’

  In the end, it didn’t work out quite as we had planned.

  When Diego saw Maria climbing in with the horses, he immediately went in there with her.

  Fine, I thought, I’ll ride up front in the cab.

  Keith also went into the trailer to be near to Fire Point.

  I had spent much of the last two hours staring at Diego’s bag, stacked as it was in the trailer along with Maria’s, Keith’s and mine. I had even been through it while Keith had been asleep, without finding anything incriminating. At one point I had seriously thought of throwing it out of a window to pay him back for kicking me but I had managed to resist the temptation, not least because it may have caused an accident.

  Diego might not be so considerate with mine, so I picked up my canvas holdall from the trailer and took it with me to the driver’s cab, chucking it onto the spare seat.

  We set off again.

  ‘God, I’m glad to get rid of those other two,’ said the driver. ‘They’ve not stopped jabbering at each other in Spanish since we left Belmont Park. It has nearly driven me nuts.’

  I wished he wouldn’t mention nuts.

  Mine still ached dreadfully.

  22

  We stopped again briefly just outside Baltimore in order to team up with four motorcycles and two squad cars from the city police department, who traditionally escort the Kentucky Derby winner the last few miles to Pimlico Race Course for the Preakness.

  It was not so much about ensuring the horse’s safe arrival as getting the event shown on the local TV news channels.

  Marketing the race was the key.

  It was hoped that in excess of 130,000 spectators would cram into the racecourse on Saturday to watch the big race, and that that one day would bankroll the track for the rest of the year.

  With only twenty-eight racing days per year, compared to eighty or more at each of Churchill Downs and Belmont Park, Pimlico had become rather the poor relation of the Triple Crown venues. But it had a proud history, being the first of the three tracks to open in 1870.

  The first running of the Preakness Stakes predated the inaugural Kentucky Derby by two years, with the first Belmont Stakes held at Belmont Park being some thirty years after that.

  Several TV crews filmed our arrival and there was quite a crowd waiting, as the horse transport pulled up close to the Stakes Barn, which was situated behind the grandstand in a corner of the racecourse site. I did my best to keep out of camera shot, especially face-on. I had no wish to be recognised, not least by any of the FACSA team who might happen to see the transmission. After all, Baltimore was only some forty miles from the FACSA offices in Arlington.

  I had been cultivating my beard now for almost two weeks and the growth was reasonably substantial, but it was always the eyes that would give me away. Consequently, I pulled the grubby LA Dodgers baseball cap lower, so the peak cast a deep shadow over my eyes in the afternoon sunshine.

  The media lost interest as soon as Fire Point had walked the thirty yards from the trailer to Stall 40 in the Preakness Barn, the traditional Pimlico home of the Kentucky Derby winner.

  Above and to the right of the door was a plaque showing the sixteen previous winners of the Preakness who had been accommodated in that particular stall, including the great sire Northern Dancer and Triple Crown champions Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed.

  In truth, it was rather a basic space about twelve feet square with off-white walls and a dirt floor, no different from any of the other stalls in the barn. But traditions are traditions, even if some Derby-winning trainers have recently flouted the convention because they think that Stall 40 is too noisy.

  Fire Point didn’t seem to mind, circling a couple of times to investigate his new environment before sticking his head out through the doorway to watch what else was going on.

  Keith, Diego, Maria and I then unloaded all the kit plus the other four horses, putting them in their allocated stalls which were not all together, as the barn with Stall 40 was reserved only for those horses due to run in the Preakness itself.

  Debenture and Ladybird were in the next barn along and I was told by Keith that I would be looking after them both, a situation that suited me fine as I thought it would keep me away from Diego, at least while we were working.

  However, there would be no respite from him at night.

  The grooms’ accommodation was up an outside staircase above the horses. As Keith had said, we had two rooms allocated, a small single for Maria, and another only a fraction larger for Keith, Diego and me, the metal bedsteads so close together that they would be considered inappropriate in an episode of I Love Lucy.

  I bagged the bed in the corner furthest from the door and, fortunately, Keith took the middle one. The communal bathroom was three doors along the open-air balcony, and was shared with two other rooms, eight people in total.

  George Raworth arrived in the white Jeep Cherokee about an hour after us. He parked his vehicle in a space next to the barns and then proceeded to conduct a tour of inspection of his horses to check they had settled into their temporary homes. While he was busy with Fire Point, I took the opportunity to have a quick look through the windows of the Jeep. The white cryogenic flask was there, still standing upright behind the passenger seat. But what was it for?

  I went in search of George in the Preakness Barn.

  With only five days to go before the big event, security at the barn was already pretty tight with a uniformed guard posted at either end.

  ‘ID?’ one asked as he blocked my path.

  I showed him the groom’s pass hanging round my neck. He scrutinised the photo carefully before letting me through.

  Ten horses were expected to contest the big race, making it about an average-sized field for recent times. Final declarations would be on Wednesday afternoon, ahead of the draw for starting-gate positions, and all bar one of the ten were already in residence.

  Even so, only about half of the barn was actually in use, with many empty spaces. The Raworth three were housed in stalls together down one end with Fire Point in the middle.

  The fact that a single trainer had three horses in the field was unusual, but not unique. Nick Zito, Hall of Fame inductee who had worked his way up from hot-walker to become a racing legend, had three runners in the 2005 Preakness. They had finished fourth, sixth and tenth.

  Could George Raworth’s trio do any better?

  Life at Pimlico settled down into a routine, although I could hardly describe the Raworth team as cheerful.

  I had realised pretty quickly that the lot of a groom was not a particularly happy one.

  For me, the total lack of privacy was the worst aspect, with nowhere to call your own to relax in peace – share a bedroom, share a bathroom, communal feeding and, at Pimlico, not even a recreation hall with computers to act as a distraction.

  It was depressing.

  On top of that, Diego was acting like a petulant child and I was getting pretty fed up with it.

  First he emptied my holdall all over the floor of our bedroom before throwing the bag itself onto the roof. Then, at evening stables, he came round to the barn where I was working merely to tip a bucket of wet manure into a stall I had just finished cleaning. As a parting gesture, he then pulled the hay out of Debenture’s freshly filled haynet and threw it down into some muddy water.

  It wa
s as if he was trying to provoke me into some sort of reaction. Perhaps he thought I would hit him in the same way he had me, and then he could go whining to George Raworth to get me fired.

  But I wasn’t going to play that game.

  I would put up with his puerile tactics of disrupting my work and messing about with my kit. Instead I would wait my chance. Revenge for me would be a dish eaten cold, when he was least expecting it.

  Finding a secluded spot to call Tony was more difficult at Pimlico than at Belmont Park.

  While the other grooms went in search of takeout joints and liquor stores outside the main gate on Park Heights Avenue, I walked across the lawn in front of the Preakness Barn, through the bushes, and into one of the deserted car parks beyond.

  ‘How did you communicate with the journalist Jason Connor?’ I asked.

  ‘Initially he contacted NYRA, and they called in FACSA.’

  ‘Did you speak to Connor yourself?’

  ‘Not at that point. I became involved after the raid on the barn had found nothing but spotless stalls and no horses. Only when I suspected we had a mole in our midst.’

  ‘So you spoke to Connor then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’ I asked. ‘On the phone or in person?’

  There was a pause on the line as Tony tried to remember.

  ‘On the phone, I think,’ he said. ‘But only the once. After that we used email.’

  ‘Did you know he was going to see the groom at Laurel Park on the day he died?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Tony said. ‘He informed me by email the previous day.’

  ‘Using the FACSA office email system?’

  ‘No. My private email address. I thought it would be safer.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Are you implying that my private email has been compromised?’ Tony asked finally.

  ‘Yes. That’s if you’re right about Jason Connor’s death not being an accident.’

  ‘But how?’ Tony asked.

  ‘All email is compromised to some extent,’ I said. ‘They are checked by the security services for a start. They have automatic scanners that look for certain keywords such as “bomb” or “explosive” or “jihad”. I assume your private emails aren’t encrypted.’