Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  I glimpsed the top of Keith’s head as he made a complete circuit of the barn beneath me, without once looking up.

  ‘All clear,’ I heard Keith say as he went back to the office.

  ‘Right,’ George said. ‘You get going too.’

  ‘OK, boss,’ Keith said. ‘How long do you want?’

  ‘Give us a good half an hour,’ George said. ‘Come back after your meal.’

  I heard the office door close and there was a pause, presumably for Keith to walk away.

  ‘Check, will you?’ I heard George ask.

  I heard the office door open, then it closed again.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Charlie said. ‘Now what’s this about?’

  ‘I’ve had a call on my home phone from someone demanding money,’ George said, hissing it hardly louder than a whisper. But I could still hear him clearly.

  ‘What for?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘He told me I had a horse fail a dope test at Pimlico and ten thousand dollars in cash would make it all go away.’

  ‘Which horse?’ Charlie said.

  ‘He didn’t say but it has to be that damn nag Debenture for cobalt. Nothing else has had anything. Why did we ever think it was a good idea? The damn animal is useless and we should have recognised that.’

  ‘It should have been clear of his system before that race,’ Charlie said. ‘I was told he’d pee it all out in only a day or two.’

  ‘Well he obviously didn’t.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Charlie said. ‘I looked up the Maryland sanctions for cobalt before I even suggested it. They’re pathetic – a slap on the wrist and a five-hundred-buck fine, nowhere near ten grand. Just ride it out.’

  ‘So what do we do about tomorrow?’ George said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Debenture is due to run in the last race. We’d better scratch him.’

  ‘No,’ Charlie said quickly. ‘That’s ideal. It’s been over a week since he ran at Pimlico. The cobalt will have surely gone from his system by now. Let’s insist they do another test on him. He’ll be clear. That would help our case.’

  ‘It is not really the damn cobalt I’m worried about, it’s the other stuff.’ George was sounding agitated.

  ‘Relax,’ Charlie said. ‘No one can possibly know about that.’

  How wrong he was.

  ‘But what if NYRA do a search?’

  ‘They won’t. The positive was not even on their watch and no one would do a search for a single positive for cobalt. Others have been done for far more than that, and they’ve laughed it off. It wasn’t as if we used much of the stuff anyway.’

  Well done, Charlie, I thought. Keep talking George out of moving the flask.

  ‘Look,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll get rid of what’s left of the cobalt, just in case. But relax. All will be fine.

  No it won’t, I reflected.

  My hungry stomach rumbled loudly.

  I held my breath. Had they heard? It had seemed very loud to me. I went on lying as still as I could, silently berating my noisy stomach, without actually telling it that it was now unlikely to get any supper as well.

  ‘What time was the call?’ Charlie asked beneath me, seemingly unruffled. Even if he had heard a noise, he would likely have thought it was one of the horses.

  ‘About four o’clock.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about.’

  ‘And?’ Charlie prompted. ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He told me to think hard and he’d call me again in the morning.’

  ‘And did he tell you how you were meant to pay him?’

  ‘He said to get the cash together and take it with me to the track tomorrow. He’d find me there.’

  ‘What, here at Belmont?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Yes. Here. During racing.’

  ‘I reckon it’s some smart-assed lab technician after a fast buck,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s probably acquired a bit of information and is trying to make some easy dough on the back of it. He almost certainly couldn’t make the Maryland charge go away, anyway. What are you going to do then? Complain that your ten-grand bribe to some mystery man didn’t work? You’d get laughed at. Ignore him.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ George said. ‘But do you think we should dispose of the other stuff, just in case?’

  ‘No. We might need it. There’s a piece in today’s Racing Form that says Amphibious has recovered from his fall in the Santa Anita Derby and will run in the Belmont Stakes. It seems his trainer has been mouthing off that Fire Point is not good enough to be a Triple Crown winner and he intends to make sure he isn’t. We’ve come this far, George, and I don’t intend to give it all up now.’

  ‘OK. But maybe we should move it.’

  ‘Where to?’ Charlie said. ‘Do you really want your wife and kids asking what’s in the funny tank in the garage? And I can’t keep it. Not with Sophie sniffing round everything. Like I told you before, it is safer locked away here.’

  George Raworth might have been the trainer, the big boss, while Charlie Hern was only his assistant but, in this venture, Charlie was definitely in charge. Everything about their conversation indicated so.

  ‘If he calls you again in the morning, which I doubt, you tell him to take a hike, we’re not paying.’

  ‘What if he’s not a lab technician but someone important? It might be worth ten grand to us not to have him create any trouble. After all, look at the prize we’re after.’

  I assumed he meant the five-million-dollar bonus to the trainer of a Triple Crown winner.

  ‘But who’s to say he won’t then come back for more,’ Charlie said.

  ‘We might need to take that chance.’

  ‘OK, string him along a bit,’ Charlie said. ‘But don’t pay him anything unless you talk to me first. Got it?’

  ‘Yes,’ George replied. ‘I’d better get back home in case he calls again. I don’t want the kids answering, especially as George Junior now sounds exactly like me on the telephone.’

  I heard the office door open and, presently, I could hear as the Jeep Cherokee was started and driven away.

  Annoyingly, Charlie Hern appeared to stay exactly where he was.

  Hence, so did I, hardly daring to breathe in case I was heard in the evening stillness of the barn. But I was well used to lying completely still. I’d had to do it in wet ditches before now, so a bed of soft straw was relative luxury.

  After an anxious five minutes or so, Charlie stood up, scraping the legs of the chair on the floor. I chanced a look down as he came out of the office and watched his bald pate as he went along the shedrow to the far end of the barn jangling his keys. Off to the drug store, I thought, to remove the rest of the cobalt.

  I gave him enough time to reach it, then I moved swiftly to the ladder and went down, leaving the barn quickly in the opposite direction from the track kitchen. The last thing I wanted to do was to meet Keith coming back from his supper.

  I looked at my watch. Twenty minutes to seven.

  I’d missed my fourth meal in a row and now I was really hungry.

  I took a roundabout route down towards the grandstand and then along to the main gate of the racecourse, crossing over the Hempstead Turnpike at the traffic lights to the Belmont Deli & Grill to spend some of my pitiful wages.

  Never had a cheese-and-ham sandwich tasted so good. I even splashed out on a cold beer to help it down. Fabulous.

  Next I called Tony.

  ‘The fish took the bait,’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ he replied.

  ‘Someone called George Raworth this afternoon demanding money to keep Debenture’s positive test for cobalt quiet.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘I am not. I overheard him not half an hour ago telling his assistant trainer. The man apparently demanded ten thousand dollars to make the test results disappear.’

  ‘But who could do that?’ Tony
asked. ‘Only someone in the Maryland Racing Commission could make that happen.’

  I thought back to what Charlie Hern had said earlier. ‘Perhaps it’s someone who couldn’t actually make the test results disappear but is simply using the information to turn a quick profit by selling a promise he can’t keep.’

  ‘Then it could be anyone,’ Tony said. ‘How about someone in the testing laboratories?’

  He was grasping at straws, even now not wanting to accept that one of his team had been so blatant in asking for such a bribe.

  ‘I doubt that,’ I said. ‘If it is anything like in England, samples are coded only with numbers so the lab staff don’t know the names of the horses that provide them. The only people who knew were you and me, the Maryland Commissioner and his PA, plus your mole. And you can guess who my money’s on.’

  Tony took a second or two to digest that fact.

  ‘What else did you hear?’ he asked.

  ‘That the man would collect the cash from Raworth tomorrow afternoon during racing here at Belmont. Who from the FACSA racing section is due to be in New York tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll check the roster right away. The weeks between the Preakness and the Belmont are fairly quiet, racing-wise, hence it’s a popular time for staff to take vacations, especially for those without kids who want to get away before the schools finish for the summer and all the prices are hiked.’

  ‘How about if you call all of them on their cell phones, even if they’re on vacation, and get your contact at Homeland Security to use his technology to find out where they are when they answer? You probably don’t even need to call them. Some new smart phones are trackable even when they’re off.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ He didn’t sound too hopeful. ‘He stuck his neck out for me when he tracked the Jeep from El Paso. I’m loath to ask him for something again in case he says no. It is our problem not theirs.’

  ‘I thought we were all on the same side,’ I said, slightly exasperated.

  ‘We are, but it is not always that easy. Each agency has to answer separately to congressional committees and many of their members have political agendas. If we’re too cosy with one another, they don’t like it. They then think we have too much of the power that they want for themselves.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ I said. ‘Surely it’s for the greater good.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m also not sure I want Homeland Security asking awkward questions, which they would surely do. Tracking Raworth’s Jeep was one thing, but helping us to monitor our own agents is quite another.’

  Ah, I thought. Here was the real reason. Tony didn’t want to have to admit to other government agencies that he had a bad apple in his organisation.

  ‘Then we will have to catch your mole on our own,’ I said.

  31

  ‘Paddy,’ Keith said. ‘Debenture runs in the last today.’

  It was five o’clock on Wednesday morning and he came into the stall when I was with the horse in question. ‘Mr Raworth confirmed to me last night that he’ll definitely run. Make sure he’s looking his best, the boss is quite keen that he should be claimed.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  It wasn’t a surprise. Not after what I’d heard between trainer and assistant the previous afternoon, but it did present a considerable difficulty. How was I going to keep an eye on George Raworth all afternoon if I also had to look after Debenture?

  Tony had decided that, whatever happened, this would be my last day as a groom.

  I had called him again before I went to bed to discover the whereabouts and roster of his agents, and he had given me the news.

  Whether we managed to catch the FACSA mole today or not, the local Nassau County Police would execute a search warrant at Raworth’s barn at seven o’clock on Wednesday evening, looking for the flask of frozen semen.

  Tony had actually wanted to move in first thing this morning but I had managed to talk him into giving me until after the afternoon’s racing. I had wanted longer but he was adamant that the raid had to be today.

  That was because he had learned that Amphibious, the colt from Santa Anita, would be arriving at New York by air from California early on Thursday and he wasn’t prepared to take the risk that he could purposely be infected with EVA.

  I couldn’t really blame him. It would be indefensible to allow another horse, a hugely valuable potential stallion, to have a future stud career ruined when we already knew the mechanics of how it was done, and by whom.

  Try explaining that to a congressional committee, or to the jury in the civil lawsuit.

  ‘I’m not feeling too good,’ I said to Keith.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘My stomach’s bad,’ I said, holding a hand to my abdomen and pulling a face. ‘It must be something I ate.’

  ‘Soldier on for the time being,’ Keith said, not displaying any sympathy whatsoever. ‘We’ll see if you’re better later.’

  So I soldiered on, mucking out my four horses and getting them ready for morning exercise.

  Twice I rushed off to the lavatory, both times when I knew Keith would see me, and did my absolute best to make myself appear sick.

  I remembered reading the book Day of the Jackal, where the assassin chews on cordite to make his skin go grey and clammy, in order to fake illness. I had no cordite to hand but, after finishing my morning duties at nine, I ran on the spot very fast for five minutes, out of sight in one of the stalls, in order to make my face flush red and to produce some sweat.

  Then I went to see Keith in the office.

  ‘I’m really not good,’ I said, again clutching my abdomen.

  ‘I can see that,’ he replied, standing up from his chair.

  ‘Feel my forehead,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got a fever.’

  From Keith’s reaction, you might think I’d asked him to put his hand into the open mouth of a starving lion. He shrank back against the far wall of the office, putting his arms up in front of his face.

  ‘But you might be infectious,’ he said nervously. ‘Stop by the track medical facility and get yourself checked out.’

  ‘What about Debenture?’ I said. ‘He runs later.’

  ‘I’ll tell Diego to deal with him.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll go see the medics right now.’

  I walked out of the office and went back to the bunkhouse. I needed a few things from my locker.

  By midday I was positioned close to the grandstand entrance nearest to the barns, waiting for George Raworth to arrive.

  I had used the time since leaving Keith to perform a transformation in my appearance.

  First I collected my disguise kit from my room.

  My plastic wash bag may have been cheap but it contained some seriously expensive hair dye, hidden in one of the two shampoo bottles. I also selected a disposable razor, a can of shaving cream, some cotton balls, a comb and my dark sunglasses, along with my one collared shirt and the only pair of trousers I had with me that were not made of denim.

  I stuffed the lot into a Walmart plastic grocery bag and walked down to the grandstand just as the turnstiles were opened for the early arrivals.

  With my groom’s ID pass firmly in my pocket, I paid the clubhouse entrance fee and made a beeline for the nearest disabled toilet, locking myself in.

  For most of the next half-hour I worked on my hair and beard.

  By the time I emerged, my fair locks had turned jet black and my wispy yellow beard had been converted into a matching black goatee. The cotton balls had been lodged tight between my teeth and gums to change the shape of my face and the faded T-shirt and scruffy jeans had gone into the waste bin, replaced by more respectable wear. I even tried, mostly in vain, to bring some semblance of shine back to my faux leather black loafers.

  To top it all, I added the dark glasses and looked at myself in the mirror.

  Not perfect, I thought. My sister would have still known me but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I hoped it wo
uld be enough.

  Now I stood near the entrance, apparently studying the day’s racing programme but actually keeping my eyes fixed on the turnstiles.

  The current structure was built half a century ago but, at almost a quarter of a mile long and nearly a hundred yards deep, it was still the world’s largest single grandstand for Thoroughbred racing with well over a million square feet of floor space, twelve bars, five restaurants, eighteen escalators, nine lifts, and enough capacity for up to a hundred thousand people. There was even a five-bed hospital tucked away in one corner.

  The place would be full to bursting in ten days’ time for the Triple Crown showdown in the Belmont Stakes but, on the Wednesday after Memorial Day, a crowd of only a few thousand souls was expected. Consequently, two-thirds of the stand was closed off completely and even the rest felt cavernous and empty.

  The first race of the afternoon was due off at twenty past one and, when the starting gates opened, I was still in the spacious grandstand lobby waiting for George Raworth.

  Not that I hadn’t seen a familiar face. I had.

  Frank Bannister, he who had looked after me when I’d first arrived at FACSA, came swanning through the turnstiles at half past twelve, using his metal special-agent badge to gain entry.

  Tony had told me the previous evening that Frank might be here.

  ‘He has been detailed to be in New York by Norman Gibson,’ Tony had told me, ‘to make arrangements for other members of the racing section who will be attending the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival next week. There may be others too. It is largely up to them where they go when not actually scheduled.’

  That hadn’t been particularly helpful.

  When I’d first seen Frank arrive, I had lifted the race programme up to my face and peeped over the top. He went from the turnstiles to an information desk where he spoke to a woman, who made a brief phone call. After a few seconds, a man appeared from the office behind the desk and shook Frank’s hand. The two of them then disappeared into the office.

  Nothing suspicious in that, I thought.

  I went on waiting for George Raworth to arrive.

  After about ten minutes, Frank emerged from the office and wandered off into the depths of the grandstand, in the opposite direction to where I was standing.