Counterfeit Road dbr-2

by Kirk Russell

  But despite the blue sky, soft warmth of the breeze off the ocean and the gentleness of the land, adrenaline kicked in. She felt several hard heartbeats. At home they might have come with backup, even if it was just to ask a patrol unit to park in the street. Raveneau was in touch with an agent in the FBI satellite office in Kona here on the Big Island, but he just wanted to know there was help available if they needed it. He probably hadn’t told the Kona office much. His phone rang as she got back in the car.

  He looked down at the screen and said, ‘That’s him. I’m going to answer.’

  ‘Inspector, Tom Casey here. I’ve got some information for you on the Hawaiian artist I told you about. She’s still on the island.’

  ‘That’s great, and thanks for making the call.’

  ‘Oh, I’m enjoying our chats.’

  ‘That’s good to hear, because we’d like to have one with you this morning. My partner and I are here on the island.’ Raveneau glanced over at her, hesitating a moment before saying, ‘We’re driving up to your house right now. We were hoping to catch you at home.’

  ‘Unannounced.’

  ‘Maybe unannounced, but I’m not much of a believer in coincidence.’

  ‘I’m not either. I’ll see you in a few minutes.’

  Raveneau put it to her this way, ‘Casey wants to know everything about what we’re thinking. He’s not afraid of us. I think he sees us as civil servants with guns working for a government he doesn’t particularly respect. That he’s wealthy seems to make him think he knows more than people like you and me. He likes to talk political philosophy while he fishes for information, and in small ways he’ll constantly try to control the conversation. You may feel like you’re talking to two different people at the same moment. He’s bright but troubled and unstable.’

  ‘If he’s unstable what are we doing here without backup?’

  ‘We’ll be OK.’

  But Raveneau asked her to stand to the side and be ready to react. He climbed the steps ahead of her and the door opened just as he reached the porch. Casey thrust out his hand as if greeting an old friend. He smiled down at her and said, ‘Elizabeth, nice to meet you finally.’

  And la Rosa didn’t know why she felt so nervous. It wasn’t Raveneau’s prepping and it wasn’t like her. Her first take was that for a man in his early sixties Thomas Casey looked unusually vigorous and strong. On the porch his gaze was direct and friendly. But then he put on a puzzled expression as he turned back to Raveneau.

  ‘I’ll be frank. I’m surprised they let you travel. I thought you’d be disciplined. I sent a letter about the burglary, a very detailed letter and a video of my nephew’s account.’

  ‘My lieutenant said something came in from Hawaii. I figured you had sent me a box of macadamia nuts.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you’re back and you’re smug. Well, that explains a lot of things. Come in, both of you. You’ve flown a long way with whatever theory you’ve got. Let’s hear it.’

  They followed him down a long hallway with a light-colored bamboo floor, Casey walking with a slight limp, his shoe clicking with each step. The limp she hadn’t noticed when he greeted them. He must have hid it. He took them to the lanai Raveneau had told her about and moved three wicker chairs over to a low white-painted iron table.

  ‘Sit.’ He pointed a finger at Raveneau. ‘I know you like beer, but what about you, Elizabeth. What are you drinking?’

  ‘I just had coffee but thank you.’

  ‘What kind of beer, Commander?’

  ‘Whatever you’ve got.’

  ‘You don’t care as long as it has alcohol, right? I once knew that feeling.’

  He popped the caps off two Coronas and put the bottles down on the table.

  ‘Now just cut to it,’ he said, ‘I don’t need the roundabout bullshit or have time for it today. You’re here because you think you’re on to something.’

  ‘Before anything else why don’t you give us the name and phone number of the Hawaiian artist,’ la Rosa said. She said this quietly. She didn’t feel Raveneau’s earlier attitude was smug and she read Casey’s attitude as bullying. She knew now was the best time to get the phone number from him and she wasn’t surprised he resisted.

  ‘I wrote it down on a piece of paper and I don’t know what I did with it. It’s somewhere in here.’

  La Rosa stood. ‘I’ll help you look for it.’

  For a long moment Casey didn’t answer. He stared at her then got to his feet and went over to the bar, stood behind it looking down, and la Rosa caught Raveneau’s alertness. She registered what it was about and unzipped the small purse she carried her gun in.

  ‘Here it is,’ Casey said, and then brought it to her. As she thanked him she pulled her phone from her purse and Casey said, ‘Don’t call her yet.’

  La Rosa smiled at him as the phone rang, saying, ‘We don’t have much time. We need to set up a meeting with her.’

  A woman answered and la Rosa introduced herself and asked if she was speaking to Aolani Ito. She was and la Rosa’s first impression was that Ito was unafraid and curious. She asked Ito how long it would take to get there and then agreed on a time.

  ‘So you’re going to do lunch,’ Casey said, as she hung up. ‘Well, it’s a long drive. You’ll have to hurry. You’ll have to cut short whatever you planned here. I think you’re getting ahead of yourselves. I think you’re making guesses you can’t support. You don’t really see what’s evolving, do you?’

  Raveneau was soft spoken, holding the beer bottle but not drinking from it, gesturing slowly with his free hand.

  ‘What’s evolving, Tom? What are we missing?’

  ‘Let’s get to why you’re here first. What have you got?’

  ‘We’re here about the Glock you’re missing.’

  ‘The Glock the boy protected himself with when you were breaking into Jim’s house is a new model and the boy owns it. It’s registered to him but you know that by now. I don’t have any Glocks registered to me, but you’ve learned that too by now. Are you asking about the Glock 17 I’ve kept in that glass case over there and that’s gone missing very recently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that what he did, he sent it to you?’

  ‘We have the gun. We’ve tested it. It’s why we’re here.’

  Casey didn’t seem surprised. He must have gotten there on his own already, or maybe it was part of a plan she didn’t understand yet.

  ‘Jim Frank bought that gun in Austria when they first came out. He asked me to hold it for him and it has sat in that cabinet there on and off for decades. Sometimes he’d take it back to the house with him or loan it to somebody. The boy will tell you the same thing. The boy learned to shoot with it. It’s why he loves Glocks. I’m sure he can remember Jim carrying it back up the trail or loaning it out. Sometime later it would reappear in that case. That was the way it worked. Jim wanted access to it, but he didn’t want it in his house.’

  ‘How many years has it been in your possession?’ Raveneau asked.

  ‘Since Jim brought it back.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘It was-’

  La Rosa saw the moment it happened. She watched the change and thought a heart attack was possible. The color drained from Casey’s face faster than she had ever seen.

  ‘Don’t tell me AK was shot with it. Don’t tell me that.’

  ‘He was. We have a ballistics match. Your gun was the murder weapon.’

  ‘The gun went out there and killed AK?’

  ‘What do you mean it went out there?’

  ‘Jim loaned it out.’

  ‘Why would he loan a gun to people?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘Since we can’t interview a dead man I think you had better tell us.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I had something to do with AK’s murder? Of course that’s what you’re suggesting.’

  ‘Who had the gun whe
n he was killed?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Then it comes back to you, Tom.’

  ‘No, no, it doesn’t come back to me. It was never my gun. I would have killed myself before killing Alan.’

  La Rosa had a hard time not believing he was sincere.

  ‘You can see where we’re at,’ Raveneau said. ‘It’s the murder weapon. You need to convince us.’

  ‘The gun went out on its own. Someone had a drink with Jim and then it got borrowed. It was only used to do good. But Jim loaned it out so much it got to be a running joke. If someone complained too much about a boss or a wife he’d get the gun and tell them either go take care of it or quit complaining. He didn’t like complaining. Other people borrowed it to learn to shoot and that’s what I mean when I say used for good. Like the boy learning to shoot so he’ll be ready when the time comes.’

  ‘When what time comes?’

  ‘Change is always coming, Ben. One event can trigger a historical convulsion. The Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were shot in their car on a side street in Sarajevo early on a summer afternoon on the twenty-eighth of June in 1914 by a young man with a Browning. 32 exactly the same as the one in the case behind you.’

  He pointed. He wanted Raveneau to turn to look and she looked but Raveneau didn’t. Raveneau took a drink of beer.

  ‘You have to understand, anything he had Jim would loan out. It wasn’t about guns and as I said earlier he didn’t like to be around guns. I have to remember. I have to think back. I just can’t get my head around what you’re saying, that he was killed with the Glock. Are you sure about the ballistics test?’

  ‘We are and we may be taking you back with us.’

  Casey reacted immediately to that. The look of pain left his eyes. A bright hardness replaced it.

  ‘Oh, I can guarantee that you won’t be doing that.’

  ‘Then you need to convince us.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking about right now. I’m considering a way to irrevocably convince you.’

  La Rosa felt a prickle along her spine and as Raveneau continued to meet Casey’s gaze, she asked, ‘Are you in some way threatening us, Mr Casey?’

  Casey turned to her.

  ‘The idea of you speculating I murdered Alan or assisted in any manner is repulsive. It fills me with disgust for the type of bureaucracy that produces your type. I couldn’t possibly explain that to you because you wouldn’t understand, but no, I’m not threatening you. I’m considering what to do. I’m debating what action to take. Do you understand that?’

  Raveneau stepped back in. ‘We don’t have your breadth, Tom, and we’re forced to work with facts, so our range is more limited. According to you, the gun other than being loaned out occasionally has been here in a glass case since the day Jim Frank returned from Austria with it. You can help us by giving us the names of those it was loaned out to, starting with who had it in January 1989.’

  ‘We both know the boy sent you the gun. He’s angry at me.’ Casey waved at the other guns on display in the room. ‘Keeping it in the glass case was about salt and corrosion. It was an original Glock, one of the first. I’m trying to remember at what date Jim gave me the gun to hold for him. There were times when his temper got the better of him and he didn’t want it in his house. But he wanted it where he could come get it if he needed it. So we picked that case there, and frankly I can’t remember if that was before or after January 11, 1989. I think now it was after. It may have been the spring of that year. Let’s just say it was.’

  ‘That’s different than what you said a few minutes ago.’

  ‘There’s also another thing to consider. This house is never locked. We had an intruder a few years ago, a dope grower that the boy shot and killed, but even with that I haven’t started locking the doors. I’ll never lock the doors here.’

  He nodded at Raveneau.

  ‘Your first instinct was right, Ben. Shooting that grower gave him a taste of a thing he craved. The power of life is what I would call it. Killing affirms one’s power. The boy craved that feeling. I could read it in his eyes years before we had the problem with the dope grower. I have no doubt you were right in sensing he was close to shooting you. I heard the conversation through the mike. You did the right thing to try to get away.’

  He shook his head and looked down at the table.

  ‘I can’t get my head around this, but Jim may have been working with AK on an investigation, helping with the contract work Krueger was doing. He sometimes played a part as AK sold or bought counterfeit bills. He backed him up. He delivered money or carried it when he flew. The Secret Service may or may not have known that. They probably knew all about that. You should tell them the gun is a match, confront them with it. Demand to know what they know.’

  ‘We’ll be back this afternoon looking for names.’

  Casey leaned forward. He looked at Raveneau and then her.

  ‘A month ago I sat here holding the gun to my head. I had a very large decision to make and it was necessary to consider all alternatives. My prints should be all over the gun from that night, but they aren’t because my housekeeper cleans and oils the weapons in this house. That keeps the salt from corroding them.’

  He pointed at the screening keeping insects out of the lanai that was otherwise open to the air.

  ‘Most don’t realize they choose the mark they make on history. The first time I burned a village that wasn’t on the target list I didn’t feel a thing for any of the gooks. If they weren’t helping the Cong, they would be soon. It was that simple and that’s what I told the captain. He didn’t mind either. He used me for certain missions after that. He knew before I did. You can see it in a man’s eyes before he knows inside.

  ‘Now, there is something I’m remembering now. Four or five months before he was killed, Alan decided Jim was pocketing some of the bills he was ferrying. He got very angry about it. Words got exchanged and Jim didn’t like to be threatened. I can tell you that.’

  La Rosa re-entered the conversation.

  ‘Why did you consider killing yourself?’

  ‘A man should only exist as long as he has the will and the stomach to do what needs to be done. Waiting has sapped me. I’m like a hunter succumbing to cold.’

  ‘What is it you’re waiting for?’

  ‘For the right moment and now it’s arriving. Most of us pass without making a difference. I’ll use the example of Inspector Benjamin Tomlinson Raveneau. His career isn’t over but it’s winding down. He’s had a good solve record on the San Francisco Homicide Detail and for many years was the best among his peers. But has he made any real difference? I have to say no. He’ll retire. He’ll get a pension. He’ll do some private work perhaps and he may even go on living in that apartment up on the roof. That’s a little isolated and his girlfriend, I’m told, is more nervous about it, particularly at night, but who wouldn’t be?

  ‘Maybe they’ll marry and settle in closer to her new bar if it catches on, but it’s a difficult city to compete in and chances are her bar will just limp along. The inspector will see a fine goodbye party with the police force, but will the police force or the city be any different for his having been there? I don’t think so and though they’ll use him sporadically after he retires, his utility will decline. His purpose in life will vanish and with it his reason for being. That night I went to that threshold. You have to act to make a difference.’

  La Rosa wasn’t going to let this pass, but Raveneau caught her eye. Raveneau didn’t care if Casey had hired private investigators to look into his life. His look said let that part be, so she asked, ‘Have you ever killed anyone other than in war?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you to leave now. We’re both out of time. I need to think about my plans and you need to drive to make it to your lunch.’

  ‘We can call and tell her we’re running late. We’d like to know more about you.’

  He turned to Raveneau.

  ‘A thing can be justified
if you have a higher object and you achieve it, but focus has to stay on the goal, the result. I know you understand that. You flew over here because you have the murder weapon and the sense you’re closing in. But even if it’s true that’s the gun used to kill Alan, and I suppose it’s likely true, you still don’t know what you can do with it, do you? Or are you just hoping things will evolve? I’ve passed the point where I can wait for that evolution.’

  ‘Tell us about the argument between Jim Frank and Alan Krueger,’ Raveneau said.

  ‘Jim was able to walk on and off a flight without any risk of his luggage being checked. He sometimes smuggled money or weapons for AK. He may have stolen counterfeit bills he was carrying from here to the mainland. He was very short of money. He had a fairly large land deal go bad here and lost everything. Ask his ex-wives how much alimony they ever saw. Alan accused him, they argued, and that was the last I saw of Alan, but, of course, I’m not saying Jim had anything to do with killing him.’

  He smiled at la Rosa.

  ‘When you get back I’ll tell you what it feels like to napalm a village and watch some of them try to run while their skin is melting. The kids didn’t get far, but some of those women would get twenty or thirty yards, like a torch moving in the twilight. When I put a gun to my head I think about them, but I don’t feel guilty. I just think about them as part of a balance sheet, an expense. The meaning of our lives is capital we spend and you cannot make a mark on history without inflicting some pain on some people.’

  ‘What are you focused on now?’ Raveneau asked.

  ‘That’s already in motion.’

  ‘Are you going to tell us about that?’ la Rosa asked. ‘We’d really like to know.’

  ‘I’m sure you would.’

  FIFTY-THREE

  ‘ What was that about?’ la Rosa asked. ‘Was he threatening us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Has he talked this way before?’

  ‘Not quite like this, but he can move quickly from threatening to get me fired to asking what I want to drink.’