Triple Crown

by Felix Francis

  ‘Including Fire Point?’ I asked.

  ‘Especially Fire Point. He’s gone to another trainer at Belmont Park. Someone called Sidney Austin.’

  I nodded. I’d heard of him.

  I wondered about Raworth’s staff. He had three barns across the country but it was those at Belmont I was concerned about, in particular Keith, Victor, Rafael, Maria and Chuck, the yard boy. They would have lost not only their jobs, but their homes and keep as well.

  I could only hope that, like the horses, they would soon be taken on by other trainers. I feared most for old Chuck and his trusty broom. I had been told by Keith that Raworth had acquired Chuck along with the barn when he’d first arrived at Belmont, but maybe his time would now be up.

  There was nothing I could do for them but that didn’t stop me worrying.

  Maybe Bert Squab would give them a meal or two for free.

  But probably not.

  We landed at Andrews just before five, as the sky was lightening in the east. Harriet was there to drive us back to their place. Tony sat up front while I was in the back.

  ‘What about Bob Wade?’ I asked. ‘How’s his foot?’

  ‘He lost it,’ Tony said.

  Was I sorry? No, not really.

  At least I’d left him alive, which is more than he would have done for me.

  ‘Is he under arrest?’ I asked.

  There was a pause from the front seat.

  ‘He’s not, is he?’ I said.

  ‘Not at this time,’ Tony said in his official ‘Deputy Director’ tone.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked, but I already knew the answer.

  It was much more convenient for FACSA if everyone believed that both Steffi Dean and Diego Ríos had been murdered by the Irish groom, Patrick Sean Murphy. Public confidence would not be compromised, as would certainly be the case if it became known that one of the Agency’s own had been responsible. A high-profile trial, and all the media attention it would generate, would not be very welcome.

  ‘We may not have secured a conviction,’ Tony said.

  ‘Surely there’s enough evidence.’

  ‘The ballistics are inconclusive and it would largely be your word against Bob’s. Could we take the chance? It is sometimes pretty difficult to get a jury to convict even when the evidence is overwhelming.’

  Ask O.J. Simpson’s prosecutor, I thought.

  ‘So what happens to Bob now?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s been retired from the service,’ Tony replied. ‘Supposedly because he’s medically unfit, but he knows the true reason. He has effectively been dismissed, losing his benefits and his pension.’

  By benefits he meant government-funded medical insurance for life.

  ‘Did you question him about warning people of upcoming raids?’

  ‘We certainly did.’

  ‘And how about Jason Connor? Couldn’t you at least arrest him for that?’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘We decided that such an arrest would not be in the best interests of the Agency.’

  ‘Who is we?’ I asked.

  ‘The Director and I.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Other than the collection of cash from George Raworth at Belmont Park on the day Steffi Dean was killed, we had no real evidence of racketeering and absolutely nothing concerning the death of Jason Connor. So we cut a deal.’

  ‘What deal?’

  ‘That Bob would leave the agency and face no criminal charges but, in return, he would tell us everything that had been going on.’

  Tony paused and I waited patiently for him to continue.

  ‘Over the years Bob had set up quite an operation with nearly a hundred trainers and breeders. Anyone that he came into contact with during his normal agency work.’ Tony laughed. ‘He effectively sold them insurance. They paid him monthly premiums on the understanding that he would warn them if there was a planned FACSA raid, or even if any out-of-competition drug testing was due to take place at their stables.’

  ‘How much was this monthly premium?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a lot. It depended on the trainer, but it was always less than a hundred dollars, sometimes only fifty. Not enough for anyone to worry about.’

  But even fifty dollars a month was six hundred a year. Times that by a hundred trainers and the sum would soon add up.

  ‘Was Hayden Ryder one of the trainers who paid?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tony said.

  So that was why Ryder had been angry enough to go for Bob with a pitchfork. It had been his bad luck that Trudi Harding had seen it and shot him.

  ‘What did Bob say about Jason Connor?’ I asked.

  ‘He refused to speak about him. He knew he was on firm ground as the Maryland Medical Examiner had already declared that Connor’s death was an accident.’

  ‘But you still don’t believe it?’

  ‘No,’ Tony said. ‘There was something rather cocky about Bob Dean’s demeanour when I was questioning him about it, as if he knew we knew but there was nothing we could do about it.’

  And there wasn’t.

  ‘Where did the money go?’ I asked. ‘That sort of cash doesn’t appear anywhere on Bob’s bank statements.’

  I knew because I’d checked.

  ‘His elderly mother has dementia,’ Tony said, ‘and Bob has power of attorney over her affairs. It all went directly into her bank account.’

  ‘But then where?’

  ‘The mother is in a nursing home. The money paid for her care. Bob claims that was why he set the scheme up in the first place but he was making more than was required. He withdrew the balance in cash.’

  ‘So why were he and Steffi trying to get ten grand out of George Raworth?’

  ‘Raworth was not one of his regular clients and Bob claims it was Steffi’s idea to get some quick extra. It seems she wasn’t happy that most of the other money went to the mother.’

  I bet she wasn’t. Steffi had been the greedy one. It had been their undoing.

  ‘Did Bob give you the names of all the trainers and breeders who were paying him?’

  ‘That was part of the deal.’

  ‘What are you going to do to them?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s not much we can do. It’s hardly illegal to help pay for an old lady’s nursing care. According to Bob, that’s what they were told – a contribution, he called it.’

  ‘You could always send in the drug testers unannounced.’

  Tony laughed. ‘We already have plans to do just that.’

  I looked out of the car window as we sped westward along the DC Beltway towards Fairfax. Washington was waking up and the roads were already busy.

  ‘I heard Bob and Steffi talking when I was hiding from them,’ I said. ‘Steffi was expecting Bob to leave his wife and marry her. I was amazed when he shot her.’

  ‘We interviewed Mrs Wade yesterday. She told us that those plans had been put on hold. Bob had promised her to give their marriage another chance, for the sake of their daughters. Not that it will survive now. She was apoplectic with rage when we told her that Bob had spent two nights in a New York hotel with Steffi Dean earlier in the week. He’d told his wife he was on an official agency assignment, when he’d actually taken three days of his annual vacation.’

  ‘Did she know about his other little sideline?’

  ‘She said not. She thought the nursing home was paid for by Medicare. She is absolutely furious with Bob about that too.’

  So Bob Wade had lost his job, his benefits, his pension, his marriage and his right foot, but not his liberty.

  Was it enough?

  It seemed it would have to be.

  I flew back overnight to London on a British Airways super-jumbo.

  ‘Mr Hinkley, you’ve been upgraded to first class,’ said the man behind the check-in desk.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and wondered if Tony had anything to do with it. I expected so. For someone who could arrange a Green Card in twenty-four hours and spirit an inma
te out of Rikers Island, fixing an upgrade would have been child’s play.

  I relaxed into my first-class seat with a glass of chilled champagne and thought about my future.

  Would I stay with the BHA?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Paul Maldini had been keen to have me back – stay for as long as you need, provided you come back eventually.

  I’d been away for over five weeks – five weeks of excitement and danger. Would I be able to settle back into my old routine?

  I put off the decision by taking a week’s leave, spending much of it with my sister. The renewed chemo had made Faye feel ill again and her skin looked pale and almost transparent when I first went to see her. But her spirits were high.

  ‘It is good news,’ she said, forcing a wan smile. ‘My doctor thinks we caught it just in time.’

  Good, I thought. But both of us knew it would be back, and that we wouldn’t always manage to catch it just in time.

  The following week I went back to work at BHA headquarters in High Holborn.

  ‘Had a good holiday?’ asked one of the admin staff.

  ‘Great, thanks,’ I said.

  I went along the corridor to my office and sat down at my desk.

  There were hundreds of unopened emails in my inbox. I sighed and set to work replying to some of the most urgent.

  At noon, the phone rang.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, answering.

  ‘Hi, Jeff,’ said a familiar voice. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Great, Tony, thanks.’

  ‘Did you see the Belmont on Saturday?’

  ‘Sure did,’ I replied. ‘It was on late here.’

  I had watched the race live on television. Fire Point, now trained by Sidney Austin and ridden by Jimmy Robertson, had won the Belmont Stakes by five lengths from Amphibious, going away.

  ‘Makes you think, eh?’ Tony said.

  ‘It sure does.’

  The irony was not lost on either of us that maybe, just maybe, Fire Point had been good enough all along to win the Triple Crown without the need for George Raworth and Charlie Hern to nobble the opposition. Perhaps they would then have deserved the kudos and won the five-million-dollar trainer bonus fair and square. As it was, they were facing financial ruin due to the expected lawsuits from the owners of the five EVA-infected horses, plus a long stretch on Rikers Island for fraud and animal cruelty.

  ‘Any other news?’ I asked.

  ‘Angie Wade has officially filed for divorce.’

  She who would take Bob for everything she could.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. One other thing. I thought you might be interested in the following piece that appeared in today’s New York Times.’

  He read it out to me:

  Irishman Patrick Sean Murphy, aged 33, indicted and awaiting trial for the first-degree murders of fellow Belmont Park groom Diego Manuel Ríos and Federal Special Agent Stephanie Dean, was found hanged in his cell at Sing Sing Prison, Sunday morning, in a suspected suicide. Murphy was pronounced dead at the scene. Police sources confirm that no one else is being sought in connection with the murders.

  But you should never believe anything you read in the newspapers.

  ‘So Patrick Sean Murphy is officially no more,’ I said. ‘Is the case now closed?’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ Tony replied. ‘How are you settling back into life as Jefferson Roosevelt Hinkley?’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  Also by Felix Francis

  GAMBLE

  BLOODLINE

  REFUSAL

  DAMAGE

  FRONT RUNNER

  Books by Dick Francis and Felix Francis

  DEAD HEAT

  SILKS

  EVEN MONEY

  CROSSFIRE

  Books by Dick Francis

  THE SPORT OF QUEENS

  (Autobiography)

  DEAD CERT

  NERVE

  FOR KICKS

  ODDS AGAINST

  FLYING FINISH

  BLOOD SPORT

  FORFEIT

  ENQUIRY

  RAT RACE

  BONECRACK

  SMOKESCREEN

  SLAY-RIDE

  KNOCK DOWN

  HIGH STAKES

  IN THE FRAME

  RISK

  TRAIL RUN

  WHIP HAND

  REFLEX

  TWICE SHY

  BANKER

  THE DANGER

  PROOF

  BREAK IN

  LESTER: The Official

  Biography

  BOLT

  HOT MONEY

  THE EDGE

  STRAIGHT

  LONGSHOT

  COMEBACK

  DRIVING FORCE

  DECIDER

  WILD HORSES

  COME TO GRIEF

  TO THE HILT

  10-LB PENALTY

  FIELD OF 13

  SECOND WIND

  SHATTERED

  UNDER ORDERS

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Felix Francis, 2016

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Felix Francis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5547-5

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-5548-2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-5550-5

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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