Triple Crown (13 page)

The same tactic allowed us not only to gain entry to the public enclosures but also to jump the sizable line, and to get in for free. It seemed that the simple words ‘security
check’, together with the badge, was an automatic ‘Open Sesame’ to every cave of treasures.

‘He’s with me,’ Frank said, when one of the staff asked for my non-existent ticket. I could get used to this, I thought but, to be fair, I too had an ‘access all
areas’ pass for every racecourse in Britain.

Even though it was still well before nine o’clock, Churchill Downs was beginning to fill up. The entrance gates had opened at eight and many had been queuing for several hours before that
for general admission tickets. Indeed, even twenty-four hours ahead, there was already a line for Derby Day with some hardy folk staking their place early so they could be first through the gates
the following morning.

General admission ticket holders did not get a seat and were not able to get much of a view of the track itself, but that didn’t seem to dampen their spirits. They were there to see, and
to be seen with, the rich and famous.

‘General admission tickets also give access to the infield through the tunnel,’ Frank said. ‘About seventy thousand will cram into there tomorrow and hardly any of them will
even get to see a horse, let alone the race. Most come only to drink and get laid. It’s like a big frat party. The bars open at eight in the morning and everyone’s drunk by
lunchtime.’

‘It must be hell if it rains,’ I said.

‘It is hell anyway,’ Frank said, laughing. ‘When it rains the women wrestle in the mud. When it’s dry, they just wrestle. It’s a complete nightmare.’

It was far removed from my mental image of Kentucky Derby Day, with gentlemen in seersucker suits and ladies in haute couture and fine hats, all of them sipping traditional Derby mint
juleps.

‘Come on,’ said Frank. ‘Let’s go check out the upper echelons.’

The metal special agent badge again worked wonders as we rose in a special VIP elevator directly to the top floor of the clubhouse, to Millionaires Row and the even-more-exclusive ‘The
Mansion at Churchill Downs’, where the admission charge was so high that, if you queried the $700 tab for a single bottle of bubbly, you plainly couldn’t afford it.

We wandered round on the deep-pile carpet between the lush leather seating of the dining area, and then out onto the spectacular terrace doing our ‘security check’. The view was
indeed as stunning as the price.

Frank and I completed a full sweep of the clubhouse and the grandstand without finding anything out of place.

‘Do you and the others have a specific job to do here?’ I asked as we went through the private suites on the fifth level.

‘Not really,’ he said. ‘They like us to provide a presence and react if necessary. But we won’t get into these sections tomorrow. The Vice President is coming and his
security is the job of the Secret Service. They’ll have the place sealed up as tight as a tick.’

‘It must be confusing having so many law-enforcement agencies all working at the same place. Is there an accepted hierarchy?’

‘Not officially, but the Secret Service act like they’re the top dogs.’

‘And are they?’

‘I suppose so. They’re here to protect the Vice President, and what they say goes. They won’t be interested in the racing, only in the people.’

‘While you’ll be busy watching the horses?’

‘I keep an eye out for everything. But the racing integrity work is the responsibility of the state racing commission. They’ll contact us only if they think anything suspicious is
going on.’

‘Have they done that before?’

‘A few times. Betting matters, mostly. Especially when someone is trying to avoid paying the tax on their winnings.’

‘Are racetrack winnings taxed?’ I asked with surprise.

‘Sure are,’ Frank said. ‘All gambling winnings are considered to be taxable earnings. Even if you win a car or a trip on
Wheel of Fortune
, you have to pay income tax on
its market value.’

‘So how do people try to avoid it?’

‘Multiple identical bets,’ he said. ‘Any payout over five thousand bucks is subject to hefty withholding tax by the track. So big bets are rare. Much more sensible to have
several smaller identical bets on separate tickets. Then, if they win, you collect from lots of different windows, keeping each one below five grand, and don’t tell the IRS
anything.’

‘Clever,’ I agreed.

‘Yeah, maybe it is, but it’s also dishonest. And we’re getting wise to that tactic. The IRS is busy installing cameras at the track payouts windows to record faces.’

‘Spoilsports.’

He laughed. ‘Whose side are you on?’

‘Not the taxman’s,’ I said, ‘that’s for sure.’

‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘Anyway, some big gamblers now get their friends and family to collect for them so that no one individual collects more than five grand. But then
those people are required to declare it on their own 1040s, or Uncle Sam might come knocking. There’s nothing as certain as death and taxes.’

‘It still seems unfair to tax a slice of good luck.’

‘Lotto and casino winnings are taxed too. You know those people who put a dollar in the big slot machines in Vegas, pull the handle, spin the reels and win a million? You see it sometimes
on the TV.’

I nodded.

‘The IRS takes a quarter straight off the top, there and then. And there’s more to pay the following April fifteenth.’

I shook my head in disbelief.

‘What happens in England?’

‘There is no tax on racetrack winnings. Whatever it says on the ticket, that’s what you get. It’s the same for all gambling. All payouts are free of any form of tax.’

‘Even the lottery?’

‘Absolutely. Every sort of winnings.’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll move to England.’

On Friday evening, with Frank Bannister still acting as my chaperone and mentor, I went to the Fillies and Lilies party at the Kentucky Derby Museum before moving on to one of
the other Derby-eve events in downtown Louisville.

The only problem was that we couldn’t have anything to drink.

‘Not while on duty,’ Frank explained. ‘Not with this baby on my belt.’ He tapped the Glock 22C under his jacket. Although unarmed myself, I felt obliged also to be
teetotal for the evening.

There were several other FACSA special agents at both events.

‘Are y’all havin’ a good time?’ Larry Spiegal asked in his deep Southern drawl at the Fillies and Lilies event.

‘Sure are,’ Frank said. ‘But there are more menfolk here in hats than I’ve seen outside a rodeo.’

I looked around and it was true. Most of the men were sitting at tables either in small narrow-brimmed straw trilbies or large ten-gallon cowboy hats. I thought it bizarre to wear hats indoors
but my new colleagues thought nothing of it.

‘A true cowboy always wears his hat,’ Frank said, ‘except when greeting a lady.’

Clearly, they didn’t consider that the scantily dressed young fillies at this party were ladies.

‘But we’re inside,’ I said.

‘Inside and out,’ Frank said, ‘makes no difference.’

‘He’ll wear it even when taking a shit,’ Larry added unnecessarily.

‘Especially then,’ Frank confirmed. ‘Keeps it off the floor.’

Yet another reason why I concluded that Americans were a rum lot.

I finally turned out my bedside light at almost two in the morning. Not that I’d been partying the whole time.

Frank and I had returned to our quarters about eleven but I had spent the next three hours continuing my examination of the bank statements of FACSA’s racing section.

In the first pass, I had discovered not a single suspicious deposit into any of the accounts. But I hadn’t really expected to. Someone who had been clever enough so far to avoid detection
would not have been so stupid as to make large payments into their own personal bank account.

They might, of course, have a second bank account, which they hadn’t declared. But that wasn’t as easy as it sounds. Every US bank is required to disclose the names of all account
holders to the tax authorities, together with their dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

Maybe the mole was using an offshore account.

However, that option was also fraught with danger. Under the new Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, the US Treasury forced a deal with over a hundred other countries compelling their banks to
report the names of all US citizens holding accounts with them directly to the IRS. Even the traditional offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Isle of Man and the Channel
Islands had all signed up.

Basically, hiding illicit money in a bank anywhere is now extremely difficult, and is getting more so every year as governments bring in new anti-money-laundering measures.

So what is the alternative?

Cash.

We all use cash at some time – for burgers at McDonald’s, taxi fares, milk at a convenience store, even a wager on the horses. Sure, these days, we could probably pay with plastic if
we had to, but no one blinks an eye at our using cash.

How about if we also paid cash to fill the car with fuel? Or for the weekly groceries? Even buying an expensive Christmas present for the wife or kids?

Still no one would question our cash in hand.

Indeed, under US law, it was not necessary to report any cash transaction under ten thousand dollars.

So I started to search through the bank statements again, looking for an account that had absolutely no cash withdrawals, no ATM records, and where other transaction activity was sparse, perhaps
indicating that utility and other bills were also being settled with cash.

The columns of figures finally drove me to sleep.

But it felt like I had been dead to the world for only a short while when I was woken by a furious slamming of doors and the sound of feet running along the corridor.

Bleary-eyed, I stuck my head out.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked Steffi Dean as she appeared from her room fully dressed in her FACSA uniform, including bulletproof vest and holstered Glock 22C.

‘We’ve been scrambled,’ she said. ‘There’s trouble at the track.’

I dressed in record time and made it onto the last of the black Suburbans to leave, one driven by Cliff Connell and also containing Special Agents Trudi Harding and Justin
Pickering.

‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked.

‘We’re not sure,’ said Cliff over his shoulder. ‘Norman got an urgent call from the State Racing Commission saying they needed our help.’

We raced past a large lit-up sign on a pole that showed it was 6.15 a.m. and 52 degrees. I must have slept longer than I realised. The sky was even becoming light in the east.

The backside was a hive of activity when we arrived, with sheriff’s deputies, Louisville Police and the FACSA agents all pacing around the barns not really knowing what they were looking
for.

I came upon Norman standing next to one of the Suburbans.

‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

‘Three Derby horses are sick,’ he said.

‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘With all this fuss, I thought someone else must have died.’

‘They’re three of the most favoured runners. The trainers are claiming they’ve been got at.’

‘Is that what you think?’ I asked.

‘I’ll wait for the test results,’ Norman said. ‘The veterinarians are taking samples. There’s a rumour it might be EI.’

EI, or equine influenza, was a much-feared disease in the racing world, and for good reason. Highly infectious through the air, and with an incubation period of only a day or two, it could
spread through a horse population like a bushfire in a drought. Its appearance at a major centre like Churchill Downs, where the training barns were packed so tightly together, could easily shut
down racing here for weeks.

In August 2007, four stallions arrived in Australia from Japan, where there had recently been an outbreak of EI. As was normal practice, the stallions were transferred to a quarantine centre
near Sydney Airport.

On the twenty-fourth of August, tests confirmed that several horses at the quarantine centre were infected with the H3N8 subtype of the equine influenza virus.

Even though the affected animals were supposed to be isolated from the general horse population, new cases of the same subtype were simultaneously reported at a nearby equestrian centre.
Although never proven, the official report assumed that the virus had been transferred accidentally on the tools of a farrier who had attended to horses at both sites.

The following day some eighty horses were found to be sick and, by the end of August, just one week after the first instances, 2,000 horses were unwell with the disease. Movement of horses
throughout Australia was banned without a permit and many equestrian events were cancelled, including the Sydney spring racing festival. At the peak of the outbreak, more than 47,000 horses across
New South Wales and Queensland were infected and horse-industry operations did not return to normal for almost a year.

To lessen the likelihood of such epidemics, all racehorses in the United States and Europe have to be vaccinated and then given regular six-monthly boosters but, as in humans, the influenza
virus can mutate, rendering the vaccine useless.

The outbreak of a new variant, even this close to the race, would put the Derby itself in jeopardy. No wonder the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission was running round in panic mode.

All morning exercise on the track was cancelled and the media circus, which had arrived to cover it, instead spent their time speculating as to what might happen next. Multiple TV crews busily
set up at various locations between the barns, much to the alarm and dismay of everyone else, who worried that they might help spread the plague yet further.

An impromptu press conference was called for eight o’clock and everyone crammed into the tented press centre situated next to the track to listen.

The nervous-looking racing commissioner sat alone at a table with a microphone set up in front of him. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘let me start by assuring you that the
Kentucky Derby will go ahead later this afternoon as planned.’