Felix Francis - Triple Crown

‘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.

‘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.’