Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

It was high time I got out of here and went back to England.

  29

  Tuesday morning dawned with a dark and menacing sky. The humidity was up in the 90 per cents and the temperature wasn’t far off the same in degrees.

  ‘We have storm,’ Rafael said as we walked to the barn from the bunkhouse.

  I was sure he was right. One could almost feel the electricity in the air.

  ‘No horse exercise early,’ Rafael said. ‘They go later.’

  He was almost right about that too.

  ‘It’s dark here today,’ Keith said, referring, not to the weather, but to the fact that there was no racing at Belmont Park on Tuesdays. ‘So the horses can go out later. The track is closed anyway until at least nine, when this storm is forecast to be through.’

  The chance of anyone being struck by lightning was always slight but why take the risk? That was obviously the opinion of the Belmont track authorities; or, more likely, they didn’t want to get sued.

  Some years ago, a 22-year-old Australian jockey had been hit when out riding morning exercise on a racecourse near Perth. He’d died instantly, along with the gelding he’d been on. The fact that the horse had been wearing metal shoes hadn’t helped.

  There was a dazzling flash of lightning followed almost instantaneously by a deafening clap of thunder, and the heavens opened, huge drops of rain initially making dents in the dirt outside before everything was overwhelmed by the huge volume of water falling from above.

  For the next three hours, the Raworth grooms, plus Maria, walked the horses in turn round and round the shedrow in order to give them at least some exercise. We did our best to keep the animals calm but the repeated flashes of electricity and accompanying crashes of thunder put them all on edge, and us too.

  By eight o’clock we were hanging around outside the office waiting for the elements to improve. Rafael went up the ladder to the bedding store and tossed down half a dozen bales of straw for us all to sit on.

  Diego sat facing me, watching my every move.

  He had made no comment about his attempted attack. Indeed, he made no comment to me about anything, not that communication of any sort was easy due to the incessant hammering of the torrential downpour on the barn’s metal roof.

  The previous evening, I had remained in the grandstand for almost three hours, until the very last possible moment before it was closed up for the night. I had taken the opportunity to have a good nose around all the hidden nooks and crannies, especially in the four separate kitchens, where I had conducted a fruitless search for some leftover food.

  Still hungry, I had eventually made my way back to the bunkhouse using a roundabout route to avoid Diego and his henchmen.

  He was a distraction I could have well done without.

  The weather forecasters had been rather optimistic. Nine o’clock came and went with the electrical fireworks still in full swing above us.

  Keith came out of the office at ten.

  ‘All track work is cancelled for the day,’ he shouted over the din of the thunderclaps and the endless rain. ‘Even if this blows over soon, the track will be too wet.’

  No one moved. None of us fancied going out into the biblical-style deluge, even for a late breakfast at the track kitchen.

  My non-smart phone rang, its piercing shrill ringtone cutting right through the other noise.

  Everyone’s eyes swivelled my way. Everyone, that is, except Diego, who hadn’t taken his eyes off me for the past hour anyway.

  I took the phone out of my pocket and looked for a number on the screen. There was none, just the single word ‘withheld’.

  No one knew this number, I thought. No one other than Tony and I’d given him the strictest of instructions never to call me.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, answering.

  ‘Jeff, it’s me,’ Tony said. ‘I have to speak to you.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said loudly, ‘you must have the wrong number.’

  I hung up and put the phone back in my pocket. Perhaps I should have had it switched to silent but then the alarm wouldn’t sound to wake me in the mornings.

  It had to have been really important for Tony to have called but there was no way I could speak to him with all the others listening. And I wasn’t going to get up and go somewhere else to make a call back. That would have been too obvious.

  Instead, we all went on sitting on the bales in the shedrow, waiting for the rain to pass.

  But I sat there fearful that the atmospheric high jinks above my head wasn’t going to be the only storm I had to deal with today.

  It was not until well after midday that I was able to get any privacy. The rain had pretty much stopped by then and, when all the others went to lunch, I walked round the barn to the bunkhouse to call Tony.

  I went right through the building to make sure everyone else was out, then I shut my bedroom door and placed the back of the wooden chair under the doorknob so I couldn’t be disturbed. Even so I kept my voice to a minimum.

  ‘We have a problem,’ Tony said.

  Houston? I thought, with a smile.

  But our problem was, in fact, nothing to laugh about.

  ‘Someone called the Maryland Racing Commissioner’s office at eight o’clock this morning saying he was from FACSA, wanting to know the name of the horse that had failed the post-race cobalt test at Pimlico.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘The commissioner hadn’t yet arrived at his office, so the man spoke to his PA.’

  ‘What was he told?’ I asked with trepidation.

  There was a slight pause as if Tony was preparing me for bad news. My heart dropped.

  ‘He was told it was Debenture,’ he said miserably.

  ‘How could such a thing happen?’ I said angrily, hissing the words down the line. ‘Surely they should have checked who was asking. It could have been a journalist for all they knew.’

  ‘Apparently the man used my name and he was very persuasive, telling the PA that he had spoken to the commissioner last week, who had told him the name of the horse but had since mislaid the piece of paper on which he’d written it down. The PA knew the information was highly confidential. She had even been instructed by the commissioner not to tell anyone else in their own organisation, not even his deputy. It was partly because of the confidentiality that she assumed it had to be me calling as no one else knew anything about it.’

  ‘What time did you call Norman Gibson to tell him about the test result?’

  There was another pause. More bad news?

  ‘I didn’t call him,’ Tony said. ‘I sent him an email.’

  My heart sank again.

  ‘From your private account or from the FACSA one?’

  ‘The FACSA account, obviously,’ he said, somewhat affronted. ‘All FACSA emails are encrypted. They’re meant to be totally secure between sender and recipient. The mole shouldn’t be able to read them.’

  Not unless he had access to your work computer and your password, I thought wryly. Or if the mole was Norman Gibson himself.

  ‘When did you send it?’

  ‘Late yesterday afternoon,’ he said, ‘after we spoke.’

  ‘So how did you find out that someone had called the commissioner?’

  ‘When he arrived for work at nine this morning, he called me only to make sure I had been given the right name. I knew nothing about it, of course.’

  It had been a huge risk for the mole, but it had narrowed our search.

  ‘At least we now know that our mole is a man,’ I said. ‘That reduces the field somewhat.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Tony asked.

  ‘How quickly could you arrange a search of Raworth’s barn if you had to?’

  ‘It would probably take us at FACSA at least twenty-four hours to put everything in place but, if it was really urgent, I could call in the FBI or, better still, the local Nassau County Police Department. They could be on site almost immediately. Getting a warrant would
mean finding a judge but they usually have one of those on standby. I might even make some calls now and get a warrant issued in case we need it.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Do that. But, for now, we do nothing. We sit tight, while I watch and listen. If things start to happen, I’ll call you straight away.’

  ‘Just like in England,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That day back in England,’ Tony said, ‘when we set that trap by the road. You didn’t call in the police until well after I would have done. As I remember saying then, you have nerves of steel.’

  ‘Do you want to find your mole or not?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll make those calls.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But don’t send any emails.’

  Tony didn’t laugh.

  I made it to the track kitchen for lunch just as the clock in the dining hall moved on to two minutes past two.

  Bert Squab was already closing up.

  I hadn’t eaten anything since my lunch the previous day, having missed supper due to Diego and his chums, and then breakfast because of the rain.

  My stomach was beginning to think my throat had been cut.

  ‘I’m shut,’ Bert announced, spreading his considerable bulk as wide as possible and folding him arms in front of him, so that they rested on his protruding belly. ‘You’re too late.’

  I could see several steaming dishes of food behind him.

  ‘Come on, Bert,’ I said imploringly, holding out one of the plastic meal tokens. ‘Give me a break. It’s only two minutes past.’

  ‘Two o’clock is the cut-off time for the groom meal scheme,’ Bert said adamantly as the clock clicked over to three minutes past. ‘You can still buy some lunch if you want it – for cash.’

  He smiled at me.

  Bastard, I thought.

  Capitalism was alive and well, and living at Belmont Park.

  For many people, and Bert was clearly among them, making a bit of extra money on the side was more important than making friends, even if the first actively hindered the second.

  I’d done my utmost to be sociable towards him in the past but, far from being a friend, Bert Squab was now my sworn enemy.

  Could I last until supper with no food?

  I’d have to. I was damned if I was going to give anything extra to this obstinate oaf for food that was already there and paid for. And I knew for sure that any cash I handed over would go straight into his own pocket.

  ‘I’ll have to have words with my guv’nor,’ I said, turning away and walking towards the exit.

  I hadn’t really said it as a threat, but I had quite expected Bert to soften and apologise, and then call me back to eat, but he didn’t.

  It was only food, I told myself. Some people in the world regularly go without food for days on end. I could surely manage it for another four hours.

  I went back to Raworth’s barn and hung around there, keeping my eyes and ears open for any unusual activity.

  The storm of the morning had completely cleared away and the sun was now shining brightly in a near cloudless sky. I sat down on an upturned bucket at the end of the barn and watched as the puddles outside slowly evaporated away and the thick mud turned back into dry earth.

  What should I do?

  Tony had said that I had nerves of steel but it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

  What was the worst thing that could happen?

  Even if Raworth were to get away scot-free for infecting his rivals and the FACSA mole remained undiscovered, it wouldn’t be the end of the world as I knew it.

  Sending in the Nassau County Police with a search warrant might secure the first objective but would, pretty much, rule out the second, at least for now, and that’s the one I wanted the more of the two.

  So much more.

  That was the reason I had been living like this for these three long weeks, busting my arse by day, sleeping in a lookalike prison cell with a flatulent Mexican by night, and sharing a bathroom, not only with the other eight human occupants of the building but also, it seemed, with half the cockroach population of North America.

  I surprised myself by how badly I wanted to catch this mole.

  In fact, I decided that I’d stop at nothing to get him.

  I stood up and walked a little distance from the barn to call Tony.

  ‘Send an email to your predecessor friend telling him that you may have a lead on one of Adam Mitchell’s former grooms who, you understand, knows how Mitchell was tipped off about the raid last October and is prepared to talk about it. Make a joke of the fact that you have found out partly by accident because it appears that the groom in question now looks after a horse that tested positive for cobalt at Pimlico on Preakness Day. But don’t tell him the name of the horse is Debenture. We don’t want to make it too obvious.’

  ‘Don’t you look after Debenture?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘It could be dangerous.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I can’t see any other way of getting our mole to show himself, and certainly not by this coming Friday. He may not buy it, of course. It is rather like waving a scarlet cape at a bull. Maybe he will charge, or maybe he won’t. But surely it is worth a try.’

  And as the matador, would I get gored by his horns, or could I deliver la estocada, the final coup de grâce?

  ‘I thought male moles were called boars, not bulls,’ Tony said.

  I ignored him.

  30

  I stayed close to Raworth’s barn right through until evening stables, waiting and watching, but nothing happened.

  The horses spent the time in their stalls, alternately snoozing in the afternoon heat or munching from their haynets.

  I wondered what dried grass tasted of, and how hungry a man would have to be to try it. I had certainly seen news items on the television where starving people had tried to sustain themselves by eating boiled leaves.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t yet at that stage, although a dull ache of hunger had settled into the pit of my stomach and I was really looking forward to my supper.

  At about three-thirty I stood up and stretched my legs, walking round the shedrow to stay in the shade. I could hear canned laughter from the office where Keith was again watching a comedy show on the TV.

  I didn’t really want to have to chat to him so I avoided going past the open office door and retraced my steps down to the other end of the barn.

  I tried the feed-store door.

  It was locked. Of course it was locked.

  The feed store was always kept locked except when Charlie Hern or Keith were actually issuing the horse nuts from the feed bins.

  And the drug store within would also surely be locked, quite likely with frozen EVA-contaminated semen in the cryogenic flask hidden away in its bottom corner.

  How I could have done with my lock picks to check.

  Evening stables started at four o’clock under the close eye of Charlie Hern. With the departure from the barn of Paddleboat, I had been allocated another of the equine residents, a four-year-old gelding called Highlighter who was housed in Stall 15, close to the office and well away from my other three and, somewhat inconveniently, sandwiched between two horses cared for by Diego.

  I had done my best all day to avoid him, but now I found myself right on his doorstep, even sharing a water tap at that end of the barn.

  I left Highlighter right to the end in the hope that Diego would have given up waiting and gone to supper.

  No such luck.

  He came into Stall 15 after I had done the mucking out and just as I had finished brushing Highlighter’s coat to a nice shine. But he wasn’t intent, this time, on physical violence. Maybe that was because I was bigger than him, and he wasn’t accompanied by his back-up team. So, instead, he simply threw a full bucket of muddy water all over Highlighter’s back.

  So juvenile, I thought.

  Charlie Hern was already on his tour of inspection around the other side of the barn
, and he certainly wouldn’t have been pleased to find one of the horses caked in mud. I didn’t have long enough to take Highlighter outside to the wash point, so I did my best to scrape the mud off his coat and out of his mane, brushing each vigorously with a stiff dandy brush. But, in spite of my efforts, the horse was still not looking very good by the time Charlie arrived.

  ‘Come on, Paddy,’ Charlie said, clearly irritated. ‘Get a move on. You know better than to present a horse to me in this state.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Hern,’ I said meekly. ‘I’ll make sure he’s right before I go.’

  ‘Damn right you will,’ Charlie responded.

  He felt down over the animal’s legs and tut-tutted under his breath, but not so quietly that I wouldn’t hear. Then he moved on to the next stall as I went back to my brushing.

  ‘Damn you, Diego, damn you,’ I repeated over and over in time with my brush strokes as I repaired his damage.

  Consequently, I was the last in line as Charlie issued the correct quantity of concentrated feed for each horse.

  ‘Have you cleaned up Highlighter?’ he asked as he poured the feed into bowl 15.

  ‘Almost, sir,’ I said. ‘I just need to finish him off.’

  ‘Be sure you do,’ Charlie said sternly. ‘And check he eats up his supper.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, taking the bowl of feed and making my way back towards Stall 15.

  I could do with eating up my supper as well.

  I was still brushing out Highlighter’s mane and tail when I heard George Raworth arrive. He came into the barn shouting loudly for Charlie Hern, who was still down in the feed store.

  They went into the office.

  ‘Keith,’ I heard George say, ‘go and make sure all the staff have gone to supper and then go yourself, will you? I need to talk to Charlie alone.’ I could hear him clearly through the wooden partitions between the office and the stall I was in.

  ‘OK, boss,’ Keith replied. ‘I think they’ve left already.’

  ‘Have a look anyway,’ George said.

  I slipped out of the stall but, instead of leaving, I quickly climbed the ladder up to the bedding store and hid myself, lying down silently between the straw bales stacked above the office with my ear to the floor.