Never mind the coldness of his liquid gas, maybe it was time to turn up the heat on Mr George S. Raworth.
‘What you doing?’ said an accusing voice behind me.
I nearly jumped out of my skin.
‘Nothing,’ I said, turning round to find Rafael standing there. But it was pretty obvious what I’d been doing, even to Rafael.
‘You pick lock,’ he said.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement and I could hardly deny it.
I had sneaked into the barn after George and Charlie had both driven away in the Jeep. Keith was in the office busily watching a film on the TV and I’d thought that all the grooms were either in the recreation hall or already in their beds.
I’d been wrong.
Rafael found me crouching down next to the feed-store lock listening for the pins to be moved into the correct position by my rake pick. He had arrived just as the door opened, his footsteps making absolutely no sound on the loose dirt floor of the shedrow.
He looked from me to the open door and then back to me again.
‘You bad man, Paddy,’ Rafael said. ‘I go tell Mr Keith. You get fired.’
He turned and started to walk away.
‘Rafael,’ I said clearly to his back. ‘If you tell Mr Keith, then I’ll also tell him that you are drunk most nights. Then we will both get fired.’
He stopped and slowly turned round to face me.
‘Why you do this?’ he said, pointing at the open feed-store door.
Think, I said to myself. Think – and fast.
‘I was only practising picking the lock,’ I said. ‘It’s my hobby.’ I pulled the door shut so it locked again. ‘Here, you have a try.’ I held out the two metal lock picks.
He hesitated.
‘You,’ he said, pointing at me.
So I opened the lock again, showing him exactly how I did it.
He was amazed when the cylinder turned once more and the feed-store door opened.
‘You thief?’ he asked seriously.
‘No. Of course not,’ I said, laughing. ‘I just like opening locks.’
I pulled the door shut again and grinned at him. He smiled back but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
‘Come on,’ I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and forcing him away. ‘It’s high time we were in bed.’
I steered him out of the barn and towards the bunkhouse.
Damn it, I thought. I’d have to have another go tomorrow.
‘Paddy,’ Keith said, ‘Paddleboat is running in the second race this afternoon, off at one-fifty. Make him look nice. The boss wants him claimed.’
It was half past four on Sunday morning and I had again reluctantly dragged myself from my bed in the darkness. How I longed for a Sunday-morning lie-in – even to only six o’clock would be bliss.
‘That’s a bit sudden, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Late decision,’ Keith replied. ‘He was always entered but we had expected him to be scratched. But Mr Raworth has decided that he should run after all.’
Interesting, I thought.
Today was eight days after the Preakness. I had travelled down to Pimlico on the horse-transport truck a week last Monday – thirteen days ago.
To my sure knowledge, at that time, Paddleboat had still been getting a large dose of clenbuterol in his daily feed and had been expected to continue doing so for the rest of that week, although, to be fair, he had not been given any since my return to Belmont Park a week ago.
But that meant there had been a maximum of thirteen days since his last dose and possibly as few as seven.
The New York Racing Association rules stated that no horse could run within fourteen days of receiving clenbuterol.
Was this another mistake?
A combination of the drug and some hard work on the training track had certainly made a noticeable difference to Paddleboat. He had bulked up considerably since I’d first arrived at Belmont.
Not that it necessarily made the horse any faster. George Raworth clearly didn’t think so, not if he still wanted him claimed and out of the barn.
I did my four, mucking out the stalls and preparing Paddleboat for some light morning exercise, just a gentle pipe-opener before that afternoon’s race.
After the horse returned from the track, I washed him down and made up his bed, then I set to work making him look as beautiful as possible. If I could help in getting the old boy claimed then he might have a happier existence with a new trainer, without the continual threat of a one-way trip to the knacker’s yard hanging over him, deferred only by the application of large doses of clenbuterol and other drugs.
I polished Paddleboat’s coat, plaited his mane and combed out his tail. Then I picked out his feet, blackened his hooves, and finally brushed a checkerboard pattern onto each side of his rump using a template.
He looked like a million dollars, even if the claiming fee for the race was only twelve and a half thousand.
If Paddleboat didn’t get claimed today, he probably never would.
Rafael came to see me as I was finishing off and he was clearly impressed by my handiwork.
‘You done really good job, Paddy,’ he said.
But he hadn’t come to compliment me on my grooming.
‘No more play with locks,’ he said sternly.
‘OK, Rafael,’ I said equally seriously. ‘I promise. No more playing with locks.’
‘You give me lock picks, now,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘and then I say nothing to boss.’
I thought that Rafael was getting rather above his station, but he had been put in charge of the barn when Charlie Hern was at the Preakness, and he clearly believed he had authority over me.
I had no choice.
I put my hand into my pocket and handed over the two small pieces of metal. Rafael took them, nodded, and then turned and walked away.
Damn it and double damn it.
What the hell did I do now? New lock-picks were hardly things you could buy at the local convenience store.
28
Paddleboat finished fifth of the eight runners, which was an improvement by one position over his previous run.
And he was claimed.
I removed his race bridle and handed him over to a groom from his new barn. I had surprisingly grown quite attached to the horses in my care and, when I went back to the now empty Stall 1, it was with a heavy heart. But, I supposed, it was for the best. At least the horse hadn’t been injured or killed.
Pull yourself together, I told myself; it was only a horse, and a not very good horse at that.
I walked down the shedrow to the office to find Keith leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the desk watching a rerun of Friends on the TV.
‘Paddleboat was fifth,’ I said. ‘And he was claimed.’
He took his feet off the desk and sat forward, clapping his hands together. ‘Wow! Who by?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘I just handed him over to his new groom.’
‘That’s great news.’
‘Why is it?’ I asked. ‘Surely there is one less set of training fees coming in?’
Keith shook his head. ‘Paddleboat was owned by Mr Raworth. He claimed him in January at Aqueduct on behalf of an owner who then never paid up. We’ve been trying to get rid of him ever since. I wonder which mug claimed him.’
I turned to leave but Keith called me back.
‘Hold the fort a minute will you, Paddy, while I go to the john? Saves me locking up.’
‘Sure,’ I replied.
He dashed off out the door and down the shedrow to the WCs in the centre of the barn.
The stable drug register was lying closed on the desk.
I opened it and skimmed through the recent entries, in particular looking for the drugs given to Paddleboat and Debenture.
According to the records, Paddleboat had stopped receiving clenbuterol in his feed on the Thursday before I had left for Pimlico, seventeen days ago.
I knew that to be untrue, but how could I prove it?
And, from what I could see, there was no record of Debenture ever having being given any cobalt salts. But then there wouldn’t be, would there? Cobalt was a banned substance.
Keith returned to the office but I had already closed the register and made sure it was back exactly as I’d found it.
‘Thanks, Paddy,’ Keith said, settling down again in front of the TV.
‘No problem.’
I went off in search of a quiet corner to call Tony on the non-smart phones.
‘I think it is time to start setting our trap,’ I said.
‘How?’
‘Who do you communicate with on your private email?’
Tony clearly thought it was an odd question.
‘Friends and family, you know, and other private stuff.’
‘Do you ever send emails to anyone involved with FACSA using your private account?’
There was a pause while he thought.
‘I’m in touch with my predecessor as Deputy Director. I worked under him for thirteen years and we’re still friends. I occasionally email him about FACSA matters, especially if I need some advice.’
‘He’ll do very nicely,’ I said. ‘I assume you trust him?’
‘Without hesitation.’
‘Will he keep things confidential from everyone, including the others at FACSA?’
‘I am sure he will if I ask him to.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Call him, but not from your office or your home phones, and certainly not with your own cell. Use the one you’re speaking on now. Explain that you believe your emails have been compromised and you are trying to set a trap for whoever has done it. Give him as much detail as you think is necessary but make it clear to him that he should never call you, or send you anything unless you have called him first.’
‘Do you really think my phones are bugged?’
‘Probably not,’ I said, ‘but it is better to assume they are than to get caught out later. After you’ve spoken to him, send him an email saying that you are now convinced there is someone in the FACSA setup who is leaking confidential information to potential racing targets. That should get our mole’s attention.’
‘Is that enough?’ Tony asked.
‘To start with, yes. It will put our mole on alert but not to the extent that he, or she, thinks we know who it is.’
‘Which we don’t,’ Tony pointed out.
‘I’m well aware of that,’ I said, slightly irritated. ‘But, in time, we might try to make him, or her, believe that we do, in order to flush them out into the open.’
‘Do you want my friend to reply to the email? I would, if I were him.’
‘Yes, tell him to send a reply asking why you believe there’s a problem. But don’t answer until tomorrow.’
‘Why not?’ Tony said.
‘Because I’m still working on what and how much we should divulge. If we do too much too quickly, our mole will smell a rat.’
‘Can moles smell rats?’ Tony asked with a laugh.
I laughed too. It eased the tension.
‘There’s something else I would like you to do,’ I said. ‘Tell Norman Gibson officially that the Maryland Racing Commissioner has informed you in confidence that a horse failed a dope test for excess cobalt at Pimlico on Preakness Day. Say that the information is not being made public yet because you have decided that FACSA should conduct a review into the misuse of cobalt in American racing and you do not want to send everyone into hiding. When that gets around your office there will be even more for our mole to think about. He’ll be desperate to find out which horse failed the test.’
‘So I don’t say which horse?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d be worried about our mole immediately alerting George Raworth. He might then remove the liquid nitrogen flask and we would end up with nothing.’
‘Have you found out whether there’s any semen in it?’ Tony asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I’m unlikely now to get a chance.’
I explained to him that I had lost my lock picks, without actually giving him the details of how. That would have been too embarrassing.
‘I could easily get a search warrant,’ Tony said. ‘We can’t risk that Raworth will infect any more horses with EVA.’
He was right. Of course, he was right.
‘But if we move too soon then we might lose the chance of catching your mole, and that’s the reason why I’m here in the first place. Today is Sunday. The Belmont Stakes horses won’t be gathering here until the end of this week at the earliest. If I don’t have the mole by the coming Friday, then you can get your warrant.’
I could tell that Tony didn’t like having to wait, but he liked having a mole in his organisation even less.
My only problem was working out how I was going to find the FACSA mole in just five days.
On Monday afternoon I had Tony write another email to his friend listing the reasons why he was certain that FACSA had a mole.
I asked him to explain how some trainers had been clearly pre-warned about upcoming raids, and also how he had brought forward the raid on Hayden Ryder’s barn at Churchill Downs by three days, only to discover that the trainer had arranged for the horses to be moved out on that very morning due to a tip-off.
‘Also tell him all about the journalist Jason Connor, including his trip to Laurel and how he died on the way home,’ I said. ‘Say that you don’t believe the medical examiner’s report and you are convinced the mole in the organisation is somehow responsible for Connor’s death.’
To be honest, by doing this, I thought we were moving things along a bit too fast, but my timescale was limited.
‘I need the mole to know that we are chasing his tail.’
‘But surely it would be better if he didn’t,’ Tony replied. ‘Then we could catch him unawares.’
‘Yes, ideally,’ I said, ‘but how would we? We need him to come out into the open and, this way, he knows we know, but he doesn’t know that we know he knows we know.’
‘Eh? What was that? Can you run it past me again?’
‘By reading your emails, the mole will know that we are aware we have a mole in the first place. But, I’m hopeful that he, or she, doesn’t also know that we are aware that your private emails have been compromised, so that he is unaware that we are giving him the information that we know about him on purpose.’
‘What if he does know?’
‘Then we will probably never discover who it is. That’s why we need to be very careful about what you should write to your friend. We absolutely must not let on to the mole that we know he’s reading it. Otherwise we’ll never catch him out.’
Life in Raworth’s barn went on as normal during Monday’s evening stables, except that Diego had decided that his self-imposed truce of the last few days should come to an end.
I couldn’t understand why. He had clearly so scared Maria that she hadn’t said a word to me in over a week and she had even ignored the other young grooms, choosing to eat her meals either alone or with Diego and avoiding the recreation hall altogether by returning to her room immediately after.
But that didn’t seem to deter Diego in his vendetta.
Twice he tried to knock feed out of my hands in the shedrow and, when I went to sidestep him, he kicked out at me, causing me to stumble into the dirt.
‘What’s your problem?’ I shouted at him from my knees, but he didn’t reply. He only stared down at me with his cold black eyes.
Things only got worse when I went for my supper. I had hung back in the hope that he would go to eat with the others, and I would come along later and avoid him.
But my plan didn’t quite work out that way.
Diego was waiting for me outside the track kitchen, together with his three Puerto Rican lieutenants, and he had a knife in his right hand. I could see it glinting in the late-afternoon sunshine.
I’d been stabbed before, badly, and it had so near
ly been the end of me. On that occasion there had been two of them, and now there were four. But these didn’t have the element of surprise that the others had had.
This time I saw my would-be attackers early so I turned and ran for my life, shouting as I did so.
‘Help! Help!’ I screamed at the top of my voice, dispensing for once with the Irish accent.
I could hear their footsteps chasing me as I sprinted down the roadway but people were coming out of the barns to see why someone was disturbing their horses.
The footsteps behind fell away to silence and I chanced a glimpse over my shoulder. My pursuers had disappeared. Too many witnesses, no doubt.
I eased my pace slightly but I didn’t stop. I decided I would forgo my supper tonight and, in future, I would make certain that I was surrounded by Raworth’s other grooms at all times.
I kept going right down to Belmont Park’s huge grandstand, to where the last few of the Memorial Day holiday race crowd were still making their way back to their cars or to the train station.
Safety in numbers was my goal and I milled around among those waiting outside the clubhouse entrance for the valet-parking boys to bring their vehicles to them, all the while keeping my eyes open for a quartet of unwelcome Hispanics.
So intent was I at watching the roadway that I walked straight into the diminutive jockey Jimmy Robinson, almost knocking him over and causing him to drop the bag he’d been carrying.
‘Can’t you watch where you’re going?’ he said angrily, bending down to pick it up.
I’d last seen him five weeks ago in the lay-by north of Oxford, when he’d been mistakenly arrested for drug dealing, but had actually only been buying diuretics and laxatives.
Nigel Green in London had warned me he was coming to ride in New York. I should have been more careful.
I quickly turned so he wouldn’t see into my eyes. I had grown a beard since he had last seen me and I was also wearing my ever-present LA Dodgers baseball cap. Perhaps he wouldn’t recognise me.
‘Some people,’ I heard him say loudly behind me as I walked briskly away. ‘Not even an apology.’
I ignored him and kept going, against the human traffic, through the doors and into the grandstand.
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