Triple Crown (21 page)

‘Diego.’

I’d have been happier if the groom had been claimed instead of the horse.

No such luck.

Shortly thereafter, both Teetotal Tiger and Diego returned to the barn and George Raworth and Charlie Hern arrived with them. Keith and I went out to greet them and there was a party atmosphere
in the shedrow with everyone in good humour.

Even Diego grinned briefly at me as I congratulated him, but then he remembered and the smile instantly vanished as he took the horse off to be washed down.

‘I told you he’d win eventually,’ Keith said to George.

‘And about time too. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Crichton, he’d have gone to the glue factory years ago.’ We all laughed, even though it was hardly funny. ‘Now, how
are preparations progressing for Pimlico? We have five going down altogether. Fire Point, Classic Comic and Heartbeat in the Preakness, Ladybird in the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes on Friday, plus
Debenture in the Maryland Sprint Handicap. Although God knows why we’re taking him. He’s good enough for claimers but he’ll surely have no chance in that company. But his owner
has insisted, and he’s paying for the transport, so he goes. The truck for the horses is booked for Monday morning, nine o’clock.’

‘Are we using the Stakes Barns?’ Charlie asked.

‘Yes,’ George said. ‘I’ve reserved stalls for all five. Pimlico would like to have Fire Point in Stall Forty.’

‘We’ll need a minimum of three grooms for the Preakness itself, one for each runner,’ Charlie Hern said. ‘Keith with Fire Point, plus two others. They will be more than
enough to cover everything else while we’re down there.’

‘Hot-walker?’ George said.

‘The grooms can do most of that but we’ll take Maria as well,’ Charlie said. ‘She’s experienced enough by now to act as an extra groom if one of the horses plays
up. We’ll also have Victor. He’ll be getting there Tuesday morning to ride exercise. And Jerry will be riding Fire Point. We have plenty of manpower.’

‘Right,’ said George, turning to Keith. ‘That’s sorted then. We have a runner here at Belmont on Wednesday and another on Friday, so Charlie will stay here until
Preakness Day itself, overseeing things. He’ll come down to Pimlico early Saturday morning. Keith, tell Rafael to sleep in your room Friday and Saturday nights. He’ll be in charge when
Charlie’s gone. No track exercise Saturday. Back to normal Sunday. Got that?’

‘Yes, Mr Raworth,’ Keith said. ‘Any particular grooms you want to take?’

‘We’d better take Diego,’ Charlie said. ‘He does both Classic Comic and Heartbeat. Keith can also keep an eye on him.’

I was still standing in the shedrow nearby, and now I moved forward.

‘Paddy,’ said George Raworth, looking straight at me. ‘You look after Debenture, don’t you?’ I nodded. ‘Want a trip to the Preakness?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied enthusiastically. ‘I sure do.’

‘But Paddy has been with us only a few days,’ Charlie said with doubt in his voice. ‘The others won’t like it.’

Bugger the others, I thought. I wanted this gig.

‘I promise I won’t let you down, sir,’ I said quickly before George had a chance to reply. ‘Please, sir.’

He hesitated.

‘Paddy’s been very good,’ Keith said in a surprising vote of confidence. ‘He cheered on Teetotal Tiger with me just now.’

‘OK,’ George said. ‘Paddy, you’re in. We leave Monday morning.’

‘Great,’ I said out loud, almost forgetting to use my Cork accent.

Charlie wasn’t very happy. Perhaps he thought his authority had been undermined. But I didn’t care – I was going to the Preakness. I felt like a child on Christmas morning who
finds his stocking full of gifts.

Indeed, the level of my excitement rather surprised me.

I had been to most of the world’s major horseraces but, I realised, this was the first time the decision that I should go had been out of my hands, and not as a result of my position
within the BHA.

In spite of the ache that still persisted in my groin, I went to work at evening stables with a spring in my step only slightly dampened by the knowledge that Diego would be another of the
grooms going to Pimlico.

‘Why did Charlie say you needed to keep an eye on Diego?’ I asked Keith when I got him alone.

‘No idea,’ he replied. Something in his tone told me he was lying.

‘Will I have to share a room with him at Pimlico?’ I asked.

‘All three of us will have to share,’ Keith said. ‘We’ll have only two rooms down there and Maria will be in the other one.’

I could always share with her, I thought.

‘Rafael says no bedpost. He says he find you lying on ground, beat up. Who do this to you?’

Maria was standing in front of me as I ate my supper.

‘I didn’t see,’ I said, lying to her just as I had to Rafael.

‘Was it Diego?’ she demanded loudly.

‘I didn’t see who it was,’ I said again, looking down at my food.

What would be the point in telling her the truth? She would only have a fight with her cousin and that would hardly make my life any easier. In fact, it would surely make it worse.

‘Why you lie to me about bedpost?’

‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ I said. ‘I am fine now, so forget it.’ I waved a dismissive hand at her without looking up, hoping that Diego had spotted it from
where he was sitting with his three chums at the far end of the dining hall. I was uncomfortably aware that he had been watching the whole exchange.

Maria hesitated but then slowly turned and walked away. She had only been trying to help but I’d cold-shouldered her assistance. She was understandably angry at my sudden indifference
towards her. I didn’t much like myself for doing it, but there was no way I was going to rectify the situation, not with Cousin Diego and his three amigos looking on.

I let myself into the drug store using my lock picks. I’d already searched the office without turning up anything out of the ordinary.

Saturday evening stables had been brought forward from four o’clock to three, and everyone had worked extra fast so that we had finished everything by five, ready for the big race of the
day, the half-million-dollar Man o’War Stakes. All Raworth’s staff not actively involved had rushed off to the recreation hall to view the race on the large-screen TV.

All of them except me. I had volunteered to keep an eye on the barn, plus its residents, while Keith went with Diego and Maria over to the track with our two runners.

I checked my watch – 5.07 p.m.

George Raworth and Charlie Hern would, right now, be readying the two horses in the saddling boxes next to the Belmont paddock.

The race was due off at 5.28.

I had asked Keith to leave the office unlocked so I could watch the race on the television, and he had readily agreed. Being allowed to be in the office meant that searching it was so much
easier and far less stressful.

‘I reckon we have a good chance with both of ours,’ Keith had said before he left, hardly managing to control his excitement. ‘There’ll be a bonus for us all if we can
win this.’

My bonus would have been to turn up something that would justify a FACSA raid but there was nothing incriminating in either the desk or the filing cabinet, only regular papers concerning such
mundane matters as deliveries of feed or bedding, plus the personnel files for the stable staff, which included references and testimonials from previous employers.

I skimmed through them looking for anything from Adam Mitchell that might indicate a prior employment, but there was nothing.

I glanced at Maria’s file. She had been born Maria Isabella Quintero in San Juan City Hospital, Puerto Rico, some twenty-seven years ago, and this was her first job since coming to the
United States the previous January. There was nothing particularly remarkable in that. However, the file for her cousin, Diego Ríos, was much more revealing.

Diego was two years older than Maria, and also hailed from San Juan. He had been a groom at Raworth’s barn for a little over a year but he had been in trouble on two occasions in the past
four months, since Maria’s arrival. Both were for violence against other grooms, and the second had resulted in his arrest.

According to a letter in the file from Judge Davidson of the local district court, Diego Ríos was subject to something called an ‘adjournment in contemplation of dismissal’,
an ACD.

It was a bit like a suspended sentence except that Diego had not yet been convicted of anything.

But he had been charged with one count of assault and the ACD simply meant that his trial had been deferred for six months. The letter went on to say that, provided Diego did not commit another
offence of any kind in those six months, the case against him would be dismissed. However, if he did offend again in that time, Diego would go on trial for the assault and, if found guilty, would
be jailed for up to one year at Rikers Island, the notorious New York prison.

The letter was dated April 4th. Just one month ago. And it had been sent to George Raworth as the ACD had needed the consent of Diego’s employer to give him ‘the benefit of the
doubt’ and to continue with his employment.

So that was why they had to keep an eye on him.

They clearly didn’t give him that much benefit of the doubt, and for good reason. My sore groin was witness to the fact that he had not learned his lesson.

I glanced once more at my watch – 5.10. Eighteen minutes to the race.

The drug store was well ordered with packets of powders and bottles of pills in neat rows on the two upper shelves. Below that there was an open box of sterile needles along with small red-,
green- and purple-capped glass Vacutainer test tubes used for taking blood. There was also a supply of multi-sized hypodermic syringes in sealed plastic packs.

Several brown clenbuterol syrup bottles were lined up next to them, and also some packs of stanozolol, the anabolic steroid that the FACSA vets had tested for at Hayden Ryder’s barn at
Churchill Downs.

Was Raworth using them too close to a race, just as Ryder had been suspected of doing? Was that a good enough reason to raid the barn?

I had seen no sign of their illicit use, but I looked after only four of the twenty-eight horses. I was also confident that Fire Point hadn’t been on steroids as he’d been tested
both before and after the Kentucky Derby and found to be completely clear of any banned substance.

Standing upright on the left-hand side of the second shelf was the stable drug register, a ledger in which all drugs given to all the horses in the barn had to be recorded. At least that is what
the New York Racing Association demanded.

I flicked through the pages and looked at the entries for the past few days. The record showed the pre-race injections of Lasix given to Anchorage Bay on Thursday and Teetotal Tiger on Friday,
plus the ones given today to the two runners in the Man o’War Stakes. It also recorded the sedatives, hyaluronic acid and Adequan injected into Paddleboat by the vet on Thursday morning.
There was also a record of the clenbuterol being administered daily in Paddleboat’s feed.

I checked my watch again: 5.16. Twelve minutes to post-time.

Beneath the shelves of drugs were stacked several cardboard boxes and I briefly took a mental snapshot of their positions before looking in them. One had rolls of unused leg bandages, a second
had spare saddle pads and a third was full with plastic containers of disinfectant.

Underneath the boxes, in the corner of the store, there sat what appeared at first to be a rather stumpy beer keg – a heavy metal cylinder about eighteen inches tall and a little over a
foot in diameter, with two carrying handles welded to the top. I lifted out the cardboard boxes so I could see it more clearly.

The white cylinder had ‘CryoBank’ painted in blue letters on its side, and it certainly didn’t contain beer – far from it.

The lid was much smaller in width than the cylinder, similar in size and shape to the caps on those large bottles of water used in office drinking fountains, except that it was metal not
plastic. There was a slight ‘pop’ sound as I removed it, as if a little pressure had been released. I tried to look in but couldn’t see anything due to a white fog that swirled
about inside the container.

I’d seen something like this before, at the equine research hospital in Newmarket. This was a cryogenic flask used to store living cells at very low temperatures, immersed in liquid
nitrogen. But what was it doing here?

I remembered asking the laboratory staff at the hospital how often the liquid nitrogen had to be replaced due to it evaporating into the air. Every two or three weeks, they had said, depending
on how often the flask was opened and how much material was being stored.

So this flask, which clearly still had liquid nitrogen in it, must have been refilled fairly recently.

I glanced again at my watch: 5.20.

I had to get back to the office in time to watch the race. I needed to know what happened.

The flask had a metal rod clipped to the rim that went down into the tank beneath. I went to touch it but it had frost on the handle, so I folded one of the saddle pads from the box and used it
as an insulating glove to lift the rod. On the end was a metal cup containing three straws, similar to plastic drinking straws but rather smaller in both length and diameter. Each of the three
contained some deep-frozen material.

I would have loved to remove one of the straws for testing but, with only three there, I was worried it would be missed. But, if I couldn’t take the chance of taking a whole straw, how
about if I took just a bit of one? Or would it then stand out as being shorter than the other two?

I went back into the feed store. Hanging on a hook were a pair of scissors used to open the feed bags. I fetched them and cut about half an inch off the bottom of each of the straws, making sure
that the bits contained some of the frozen material. I carefully placed them into one of the red-capped Vacutainer test tubes, which I then slipped into my pocket.

5.23.

Time to go.

I returned the three straws to the metal cup, lowered it back into the liquid nitrogen and re-clipped it to the rim as before. Then I secured the lid, returned the saddle pad and restacked the
cardboard boxes. I spent a moment checking they were back exactly as I had found them.