Triple Crown (11 page)

‘It’s a damn shame,’ Elvis had said. ‘I should have been sunning myself on the beach in Tampa, not hanging around up here.’ He climbed up into his cab.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning for this lot.’

I doubted it.

I wasn’t certain what would happen now to the twenty-four horses still standing in the barn, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be going to Jasper, Tennessee.

It would be up to their owners to find them new trainers, either here at Churchill Downs or at another track.

Elvis was backing up his truck. I went over and banged on the driver’s door. He lowered the window.

‘What time yesterday did your trip to Tampa get postponed?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, uninterested. ‘Must have been in the morning. My boss told me when I got back to the depot around one.’

He turned his eighteen-wheeler around in a space I’d have had trouble turning a dinghy trailer. Then he drove off, followed by his mate.

I was still standing by the blue bus when Tony came over to me, with Norman Gibson in tow.

‘On the bus,’ Tony ordered.

The three of us climbed aboard.

Norman started to complain to Tony that he hadn’t been told the true purpose of my visit but Tony cut him off.

‘Tell Norman what you told me.’

‘Hayden Ryder’s horses were due to be removed from here today and taken to Tennessee.’

‘How do you know?’ Norman said.

I told him about Elvis and his Chattanooga Horse Transport van.

‘Is he still here?’ Norman looked out of the bus windows.

‘No. He’s gone. He’d run out of time to drive all the way home today. He told me he’d be back in the morning.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me this while he was here?’ Norman was not best pleased.

‘I couldn’t get through the police line to find you,’ I replied in my defence. ‘But I do have the company’s phone number.’

I handed over a piece of paper. I’d copied it off the side of the truck.

Tony was more interested in the significance of Elvis being there in the first place.

‘It means that Hayden Ryder must have been aware of the raid by one o’clock yesterday at the latest.’

Norman nodded. ‘The stable dispensary has also been packed up in boxes ready to be shipped out.’

‘So who told Ryder?’ Tony said.

It was the all-important question.

Sadly, we could no longer ask the man himself for the answer.

There was a debriefing for the FACSA raid team at four o’clock that afternoon, back at the mess hall of the National Guard facility.

Most of them had spent some of the preceding eight hours being individually interviewed by detectives from the Louisville Police Department’s fatal-shooting investigation team.

‘It is perfectly routine,’ Tony told me on the phone when I called him well away from the others. ‘There’s a standard procedure for all officer-involved shootings. Such
events bring intense media scrutiny and we have to guard against any damage to the agency’s reputation. Hence the local police conduct a detailed enquiry and interview everyone
involved.’

‘I wasn’t interviewed,’ I said.

‘The fatal-shooting investigation team is only concerned with events up to the moment the shots were fired. You were not a witness to the actual shooting so I didn’t give them your
name. I thought it was best to keep you out of it.’

‘I agree,’ I said. ‘Thanks. So what happens next?’

‘The evidence may have to be presented to a grand jury to confirm the killing was justified, although that’s most unlikely in this case.’

‘So you think the killing was justified?’ I asked.

‘Without a doubt,’ Tony said. ‘Ryder attacked a law-enforcement officer with a deadly weapon. That in itself is enough reason for him to be shot.’

‘But surely not ten times.’

‘It can often take more than one shot to bring down a suspect. Our agents are trained to fire multiple rounds in case some of them miss.’

‘I was told your agents are all hotshots,’ I said. ‘Surely they don’t miss.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Tony said. ‘They may be OK on the range but operational situations are very different. A Miami police survey showed that of thirteen hundred bullets
fired at suspects, more than eleven hundred missed. And NYPD found barely a quarter fired from under six feet hit their target, with less than a fifth at ten feet.’

‘How many hit Hayden Ryder?’

‘I don’t know yet. The autopsy will tell us. The important thing is that at least one did, and that one was enough to disable him.’

It had done more than that, I thought.

I had spent the day trying to erase from my mind the grisly image of Ryder’s head completely torn apart by an expanding bullet.

I’d seen more than my fair share of killings during my time with the army in Afghanistan but nothing really prepares you for the sudden finality of violent death, the instant wiping out of
an active, vivid and cognisant existence, to be replaced by . . . nothing. Nothing more than a useless rotting corpse.

‘What will you do now?’ Tony asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay on here for the Derby. I wouldn’t want to miss that, but I feel I’m approaching the problem from the wrong
end.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘These guys are smart – they don’t get to be federal special agents if they’re not. I can’t hang around forever on the off-chance that our friend will make a
mistake. He won’t. And I’ll have wasted my time, and yours. I feel we have to tackle things from the opposite direction.’

‘Explain.’

‘I work best undercover but I’m not using those skills here. Everyone at the agency knows who I am and that severely limits my scope.’

I took a deep breath. In for a penny . . .

‘I need to get a job on a track backside, maybe as a groom or something, with one of the trainers. FACSA then has to plan a raid on that trainer for some reason and hope our friend somehow
tips him off.’

‘Would the trainer be made aware of your existence?’ Tony asked.

‘Best not, at least to start with. I know from experience that being undercover is fraught with danger. It is ten times worse when somebody is aware of the truth. Body language can be a
real giveaway.’

‘But how would you know if the trainer had been forewarned about a raid?’ Tony asked.

‘Hayden Ryder couldn’t have packed up the whole of his stable dispensary and arranged to ship out his horses without the help of his staff. Racehorses have to have grooms
accompanying them – they would hardly walk onto a truck on their own. Ryder’s whole team had to be involved in the preparations even if they didn’t know the reasons
why.’

‘But
how
will you get a job? Do you have any experience working with horses?’

‘Loads,’ I said. In truth, I’d only had a little. But I was confident around racehorses and that was half the battle.

‘And you’re hardly the right size,’ Tony said.

I was five feet ten inches in my socks, but I was lean and fit. Maybe I was a bit tall and perhaps a tad too heavy to ride young Thoroughbreds, but not to work as a groom.

One thing I had discovered while I’d been waiting at Churchill Downs all day was that, unlike in the UK, the grooms did not ride the horses. That was the preserve of the exercise riders,
up-and-coming riders or retired jockeys who would often move from barn to barn, exploiting their skills for more than one trainer.

The grooms were simply there to, well, groom the horses, to muck out their stalls, and to fetch and carry their feed and water. On race days they might get to lead one of their charges over to
the saddling boxes and the mounting yard but, in truth, the life of a backside groom was far from glamorous.

Tony wasn’t finished. ‘Most grooms are Latino or African-Americans. An Englishman would surely stick out like a sore thumb.’

He was right.

‘How about an Irishman?’ I said.

I had always been good at speaking with an Irish accent. While at school, I had entertained my classmates by mimicking our headmaster, who had come from County Cork.

‘I can easily pass as an Irishmen,’ I said. ‘I’ve done it before, and I know you have Irish grooms over here. I’ve heard their banter.’

‘Will you try to work at Churchill Downs?’ Tony asked.

‘That might be a bit of a risk. Almost all of the Churchill Downs backside staff came over to Ryder’s barn to have a look at the action at one time or another today and many of them
asked me what was going on.’

‘Where then?’

‘How about at Pimlico?’ I said. ‘Isn’t the Preakness run there in two weeks?’

‘It sure is,’ said Tony. ‘But Pimlico isn’t used any more as a regular training centre. Their barns are only open for seven weeks during their spring meet. Better to try
Belmont in New York. That’s where the third leg of the Crown is run. There are plenty of full-time trainers at Belmont.’

‘Isn’t Belmont where the
Sports Illustrated
journalist thought someone was blood doping?’

‘Yes,’ Tony said. ‘Jason Connor.’

‘Right, then I’ll try there. Can you get me a list of Belmont-based trainers, especially those you may have doubts about?’

‘Sure,’ Tony said. ‘No problem. Anything else?’

‘Yes. You told me in London about a raid on a trainer who employed suspected illegal immigrants as grooms. Where was that?’

‘Aqueduct Racetrack. Also in New York, near JFK. Back in February.’

‘Is the use of illegal-immigrant grooms widespread at all tracks?’

‘Cash gambling tends to make racing a cash-rich business. Wherever cash is used to pay staff there will always be illegals working.’

‘Could you therefore send an official letter to all the trainers at Belmont advising them of the severe consequences of employing illegal immigrants?’

‘What for?’

‘If you can fix me a legal work visa, it might help provide a vacancy for me to fill.’

Tony laughed. ‘The letter would be better coming from ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s part of the Department of Homeland Security. They’re responsible for
tracking down illegal immigrants. I know the Deputy Director, we’ve been to conferences together. I’ll get him to write the letter.’

‘Best not to tell him why.’

‘I’ll say it’s a follow-up from FACSA’s raid earlier in the year. I’ll recommend he sends the letter to all registered racehorse trainers across the country
threatening them with jail for employing illegals.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘But it could happen in extreme cases.’

‘Would your man be prepared to cover the cost of sending a letter to all trainers?’

‘Sure he will,’ Tony said. ‘It’s peanuts compared to what else they spend. Their budget is over five billion a year. I’ll get it sorted straight away – have
it done this week.’

‘How about the work visa?’ I said. ‘Preferably in a false name.’

‘What name?’

Think of a common Irish name. ‘How about Patrick Sean Murphy?’

‘Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,’ Tony said. ‘I’ll have a quiet word with someone I know in the State Department.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘And how are the bank statements coming along?’

‘They should be with me this evening. How shall I get them to you?’

‘Can we trust Norman?’ I asked. But it was a rhetorical question. He already knew the true purpose of me being there. If we couldn’t trust him my cover was totally blown
anyway, and my future prospects were likely to be severely limited.

‘We have to,’ Tony said.

‘Then give the statements to him to pass on to me.’

‘He’ll want to know what they are.’

‘Then tell him. But best not to say that his bank statements are there too. He might not like that. In fact, you’d better remove his in case he checks, but scan them yourself first
for any suspicious deposits.’

‘You don’t really trust him, do you? Not even now.’

‘I trust no one,’ I said.

‘Not even me?’ Tony asked. ‘Not even my mother,’ I said.

And she’d been dead for twenty-five years.

Back in the National Guard mess hall, Trudi Harding was being hailed as a hero.

She was applauded and cheered by the other agents when she finally arrived back after a lengthy interview with the Louisville police.

Bob Wade embraced her warmly, which didn’t particularly endear him to Steffi Dean, who looked on stony-faced.

Everyone was in good spirits, as if the whole raid hadn’t been blighted by the shooting dead of Hayden Ryder.

Some of them even thought it was a bonus.

‘Saves all the expense of a trial,’ Cliff Connell said openly with a huge grin.

The debriefing turned rapidly into a self-congratulatory celebration.

There was even a short emotional address by Norman Gibson, who thanked his staff for ‘a job well done’.

None of them seemed to entertain the notion that death had been rather an extreme penalty for Ryder’s alleged wrongdoing, even if he had been shot for attacking Bob Wade rather than giving
his horses prohibited drugs.

I personally found all the backslapping and high fives a bit tasteless, what with Hayden Ryder’s body still cooling in the county coroner’s morgue.

Hence I left them to it.

Instead I went up to my room and watched as a local Louisville TV newsreader echoed the same sentiments, blatantly accusing the dead trainer of serial drug abuse and the wilful maltreatment of
his horses.

I knew that freedom of speech and honest opinion were enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution but, even so, the claims seemed somewhat outrageous.

I had a political journalist acquaintance who once told me that there was nothing better than finding out that some detested fat cat had died. ‘You can’t libel the dead,’ he
would say, while gleefully filling his column with some lurid tales of wrongdoing that may have been mildly suspected of the deceased, but were far beyond any actual proof.

‘Do you have no compassion?’ I’d said. ‘Surely it’s disrespectful to speak ill of the recent dead?’

‘Maybe,’ he’d replied with a smile, ‘but it sells papers.’

No wonder some people tell you never to believe what you read in the newspapers.