Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  Since first arriving at Belmont, I had taken to always wearing my LA Dodgers baseball cap, with the peak pulled down low. Here at Pimlico, there were too many press and TV cameras around to avoid completely, so it was better to be as incognito as possible at all times. So tomorrow, I decided, I would also wear my cheap dark sunglasses to cover my eyes. With luck, the sun would shine so I wouldn’t look too out of place.

  I finished with Ladybird as Victor Gomez returned on Debenture. With two days before his race, he had been given a far sterner workout and Maria walked him round the shedrow for a good twenty-five minutes to cool.

  While she did so, I went over to the Preakness Barn to fetch some more straw.

  George Raworth’s white Jeep Cherokee was again parked close by. The man himself was out at the track so, having swivelled round on my heel to check no one else was watching, I went to the far side of the vehicle and tried the door handle.

  It opened.

  The cryogenic flask was still there but it was now lying on its side behind the driver’s seat with the cap off. I tipped it up. It was completely empty both of liquid nitrogen and of the semen.

  I had a quick look around the rest of the Jeep. On the back seat sat an electric torch and a small cup, along with what looked like a miniature red rubber rugby ball. The ball was about three inches long, with a short blue plastic pipe extending from one end, and it had ‘Polaroid’ stamped into the rubber on one side.

  I knew exactly what it was. I’d once owned something very similar.

  It was an air duster, designed to blow a stream of air to remove dust from the lens or the inside of a camera. I squeezed the ball and was rewarded by the same hissing pump sound that I had heard the previous night.

  I was sorely tempted to put the air duster into my pocket but I could see George Raworth in the far distance, coming back towards me from the track with Victor Gomez, and it wouldn’t do to be caught with it.

  I left things as they were, closed the Jeep door as quietly as I could, and moved quickly away. Thankfully, George had been too busy talking to Victor to notice me.

  ‘ID?’ said the guard at the barn entrance.

  I showed him my groom’s pass and he let me through.

  The place was a hive of activity, with veterinary staff from the Maryland Racing Commission taking blood samples from each of the Preakness runners for pre-race drug testing.

  I stood and watched as one of them inserted a hypodermic needle into Fire Point’s neck just behind his head. The horse was well used to this procedure. He made no movement as the needle went into his jugular vein and blood was collected into two Vacutainer test tubes, identical to the one I’d passed through the chain-link fence to Jim Bradley at Belmont.

  I picked up the straw from the bedding stockpile but, instead of going straight back to my horses, I walked along the line of stalls until I came to the one where George Raworth had stopped during the night. I took a step forward and looked inside. It was empty.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked a deep angry voice behind me that made me jump.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied automatically, turning round.

  The voice belonged to a tall man with ebony skin who was standing in the shedrow, the whites of his prominent eyes standing out against a dark face as he stared at me accusingly.

  ‘I’m Paddy,’ I said with a broad smile, putting down the bale of straw and extending my right hand towards him. ‘I’m here with Raworth’s crew. My first time at Pimlico.’

  ‘Tyler,’ the man replied. ‘I’m with Bryson.’

  He slowly shook my offered hand and even grinned at me, exhibiting a fine collection of gold teeth. My overtly friendly approach had completely disarmed his anger.

  ‘I’m based at Belmont,’ I said. ‘Only here for the big race.’

  ‘Gulfstream,’ Tyler said, pointing a finger at his own chest. ‘In Miami. Too damn cold up here, for my liking.’ He shivered.

  Cold? He must be joking. But I could see from his thick woollen sweater that he wasn’t.

  ‘Who do you look after?’ I asked.

  ‘Crackshot,’ he replied with another flash of the gold teeth. ‘He’s out at exercise right now.’ He waved a hand towards the empty stall. ‘I’m doing his bed.’

  Crackshot.

  What had George Raworth been doing in the middle of the night outside the stall of the only other horse in the Preakness that most of the pundits gave any chance to other than Fire Point?

  My suspicious mind was working overtime.

  24

  I led Ladybird from the barn to the paddock about thirty minutes before the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and walked right past FACSA Special Agent Trudi Harding, the shooter of Hayden Ryder at Churchill Downs.

  She ignored me, not giving me a first glance let alone a second. She was standing with Frank Bannister on a raised platform near the track entrance and they were too preoccupied scanning the faces of the large Friday crowd to notice the groom passing by right under their noses.

  Uniquely in my experience, the paddock at Pimlico was indoors, and not at all what British racegoers would expect. Here, instead of being a parade ring where the horses would walk to be inspected, the paddock was an area where the horses stood to be saddled in numbered stalls that corresponded to their post-draw positions.

  I held Ladybird’s head as George Raworth and Keith made her ready.

  First they placed a thin chamois cloth onto the horse’s bare back to prevent slippage. That was followed by the saddle pad, weight cloth, numbered saddle cloth and finally the saddle, all of them held in place by a wide strap passed under the belly and secured tightly to buckles on either side of the saddle. Over the top of everything, for added safety, went a three-inch-wide webbing over-girth.

  Satisfied, George gave Ladybird a friendly smack on her rump as Keith and I led her up the ramp under the jockeys’ room, back into the daylight, and onto the track. George issued jockey Jerry Fernando with some last-minute instructions and a leg-up into the saddle before I handed the horse over to one of the outriders.

  Unlike in England, where a horse runs free to the start under the control of its jockey alone, those in the United States are led to the gate by an outrider on a ‘lead pony’, one pony to each runner.

  Whereas a ‘pony’ is properly defined as a member of an equine breed in which normal mature horses stand less than fifty-eight inches tall at the withers, the lead ponies at racetracks are often retired Thoroughbred racehorses, and therefore are not ponies at all.

  But no one seemed to care as the excitement built.

  I watched on the big screen as the horses, plus the ponies, circled behind the starting gate that was situated right in front of the grandstand.

  The crowd for the Preakness the following afternoon was expected to be three times bigger but, nevertheless, there was a loud cheer as the gates flew open and the nine runners in the feature race of the day surged forward.

  Victor Gomez had been right.

  Ladybird was good. Very good.

  She led from start to finish, holding off a late challenge to win by a neck.

  Understandably, George Raworth was delighted, coming out onto the track with me to lead the horse into the winner’s circle.

  I could see both Bob Wade and Steffi Dean standing by the rail. I pulled the peak of my cap lower and kept my eyes down but I think the special agents were more interested in each other than in anyone else.

  I had realised that being a groom was, in fact, a very good undercover persona. Grooms were invisible, even more so than waiters in restaurants. Anyone looking my way was staring into the eyes of the horse rather than into those of the man leading it.

  I knew of one trainer in England who could readily identify every horse in his hundred-strong yard just by looking at it, even in the rain, but he couldn’t tell his stable staff apart, one from another. Irrespective of their real names, he simply called all his lads ‘John’.

  While Ladybird’s owner, trainer and joc
key were receiving their trophies from the star of a TV soap opera, Maria and I walked the horse from the winner’s circle to the post-race testing barn.

  Here we waited with the horse for almost an hour, whistling and pouring water until Ladybird finally acquiesced and supplied the urine sample the testers required.

  Maria was not her usual ebullient self, not speaking to me once during the wait.

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ I said, but she didn’t understand the idiom. ‘Are you OK?’ I asked slowly instead.

  She nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Then why don’t you say something?’

  This time she shook her head. ‘No talk.’

  I thought she almost seemed frightened.

  ‘What has Diego said to you?’ I asked.

  ‘No talk,’ she repeated. ‘Diego, he say no talk.’

  ‘Or what?’ I asked.

  She definitely appeared frightened this time. She looked all around her with wide eyes and then whispered. ‘Diego say he cut me if I talk to you.’ She traced a fingernail down her cheek from a tearful right eye all the way to her chin.

  Diego was getting to be more than just a nuisance. He had clearly decided that it was easier to intimidate his cousin than me, and he was probably right. The sooner he was dragged off in chains to Rikers Island the better.

  George Raworth came into Ladybird’s stall when I was still brushing her down after washing away the sweat of her exertions.

  ‘Well done, my girl,’ George said, patting the horse on the neck in love and gratitude. ‘Great job, Paddy. Now for the Preakness tomorrow.’

  He even patted me on the back as well.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  ‘Hope doesn’t come into it,’ George said with a laugh. ‘I believe Fire Point is a sure thing.’

  He should know, I thought.

  ‘The professor thinks the semen is probably from an American Quarter Horse,’ Tony Andretti said when I called him at eight o’clock on Friday evening. ‘The DNA doesn’t match that of any known stallion held by the National Quarter Horse Registry but it closely resembles other Quarter Horse DNA records that are available, as if the source was possibly related.’

  ‘Quarter Horse semen?’ I said. ‘Why on earth would anyone want that around a Thoroughbred?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  A notion was stirring in my mind. Something I’d read was hovering somewhere just beneath my consciousness.

  Was it to do with Quarter Horses?

  Suddenly, like a switch being turned on, I remembered what it was.

  George Raworth had grown up on a ranch in Texas that bred Quarter Horses. It was still run by two of his cousins.

  Was that where the semen had come from?

  Other things also floated to the surface.

  ‘Tony?’ I said. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Sure am,’ he replied.

  ‘Could you ask your professor if he can do one more test for me?’

  ‘He says he can’t do any more than he’s already done. If the DNA of the semen doesn’t match anything that’s registered, then there’s no way of telling exactly which horse it came from.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m happy with that. The test is for something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘EVA,’ I said ‘Equine viral arteritis.’

  There was a long pause from the other end.

  ‘What are you implying?’ Tony said eventually.

  ‘Nothing,’ I lied. ‘I’d just like to know if the EVA virus exists in the semen sample. I read on the Internet that stallions that have been infected shed the EVA virus in their semen for the rest of their lives. Could you also ask your professor if freezing infected semen would kill the virus or does it preserve it in the same way it preserves the sperm?’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ Tony said. ‘But I can’t think why. The infected horses at Churchill Downs were all colts. Surely infected semen would only infect mares during mating.’

  I thought back to the sound of the air being expelled from the air duster, the sound that had come twice from the Preakness Barn on Wednesday night.

  ‘How about if you squirted it up a colt’s nostrils?’ I said.

  ‘But why would you?’ Tony said. ‘Semen up the nose wouldn’t do any good.’

  I laughed. ‘Not for reproduction, I’ll grant you, but EVA is primarily a respiratory disease. Ask your prof if inhaling EVA-infected semen would make a horse sick.’

  ‘I’ll call him straight away,’ Tony said.

  ‘Good. I’ll call you back in an hour.’

  We disconnected.

  If I was right, and it was a big if, then Crackshot should also come down with EVA in the days ahead. And if that occurred, George Raworth might have some difficult explaining to do.

  For the time being we had to sit tight and wait.

  ‘The professor will do the EVA test tomorrow,’ Tony said when I called him back. ‘He wanted to leave it until Monday but I convinced him otherwise. In fact, I asked him to go into the lab to do it tonight but he’s hosting a birthday dinner for his daughter.’

  ‘Tomorrow will do fine,’ I said. ‘Did you ask him the other things?’

  He laughed. ‘The professor says that he doesn’t know. It seems that no one has ever done any research that involves squirting EVA-infected semen up a horse’s nose. But he did say that some sexually transmitted diseases in humans could be caught if infected semen gets into the eyes, so he doesn’t see why not, especially as EVA is a respiratory illness. And he also says that, if the semen does contain EVA, freezing it would not kill the virus. It would still be active when thawed.’ He paused. ‘But are you seriously suggesting that the three colts that became ill with EVA at Churchill Downs had been purposefully infected by squirting semen up their noses?’

  Was I?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘George Raworth,’ I said. ‘And I think he’s done it again here at Pimlico to a horse called Crackshot.’

  ‘That’s quite an accusation,’ Tony said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure, but everything seems to fit, at least it will if the professor finds EVA virus tomorrow.’

  I now wished I had taken the air duster from the Jeep. I could have had it tested for traces of semen. But it would have been a huge risk. George Raworth might have seen me next to the vehicle, and what would I have said if he had discovered the air duster was missing, only for it to reappear from my pocket during a search.

  ‘So what do we do about it?’ Tony said. ‘Should we arrest Raworth?’

  ‘We can’t. You and I may believe it is true but, at the moment, it’s all speculation and circumstantial. Raworth would deny it, cover his tracks, and there would be nothing we could do. We need proof.’

  ‘Surely the semen sample is all the proof we need,’ Tony said.

  ‘But would it stand up as evidence in court? Raworth would deny that it had ever been his. Indeed, the sample might not even be admissible as evidence in a trial because I stole it in the first place. We need something more.’

  ‘And how are we going to get that?’ Tony asked.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ I replied.

  ‘That’s what you said about my emails.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m still working on that too.’

  ‘Can’t we stop Raworth running his horses in the Preakness? Surely it isn’t right that he can nobble the opposition and still be allowed to participate.’

  ‘I agree that it doesn’t seem fair,’ I said, ‘but if we make a move now, all we would be doing is forewarning Raworth and any remaining evidence would disappear faster than jelly beans at a children’s party.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Nothing for the moment,’ I said. ‘And we don’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Does your professor know where the semen came from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let’s ke
ep it that way,’ I said. ‘Ask him to keep everything confidential unless we tell him otherwise.’

  ‘OK. Is there anything else?’ Tony asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Find out what you can about the Raworth family ranch in Texas. In particular, are there any veterinary records of an EVA outbreak?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can manage.’ He didn’t sound too confident. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Continue with my job as a groom,’ I said. ‘We have three runners in the Preakness tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought you looked very professional with the winner of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes this afternoon. I was watching you through my binoculars.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘If anything you looked rather too adept and alert, compared to some of the other grooms.’

  ‘I’ll be more careful,’ I said, making a mental note. ‘I saw a number of your racing team here today. I walked right past Trudi Harding and she didn’t recognise me. She didn’t even look at me twice.’

  ‘I’ll have to have words with her,’ Tony said.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said with a laugh. ‘I don’t want her shooting me.’

  Tony didn’t think it funny and, I suppose, neither did I.

  25

  Preakness morning dawned bright and warm without a cloud in the sky, not that I had waited for the sunrise before starting my day’s work. I’d been hard at it for two hours by the time the fiery globe made its appearance in the east.

  I had risen earlier than usual to give Debenture his breakfast. His race, the Maryland Sprint Handicap, was due off at half past one in the afternoon and George Raworth had told me that he didn’t want the horse eating within eight hours of race time.

  I arrived at the barn at 3.30 a.m. to find Debenture standing upright in the corner of the stall with his eyes closed, gently snoring. I stood silently watching him, marvelling at the fact that such a large bulk could be fast asleep and yet not fall over, especially as he was actually using only three of his legs to stand on, the fourth being slightly bent up with only the toe of the hoof resting on the floor.