Counterfeit Road (18 page)

‘And that wasn’t enough?’

‘Not for my uncle.’

‘Was that him in the jeep down the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t he drive all the way up?’

‘He was waiting for the OK from me.’

‘And you’re miked up? What is this, some sort of paramilitary game?’

‘It’s not a game. We deal with people growing dope on the property and stealing.’

‘Your uncle wanted you to handle it?’

That was right. That was a good guess. Raveneau saw his reaction.

‘Where did you get your accent?’

‘Kentucky.’

‘Your mother was Vietnamese?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I recognize your father in your face.’

‘Did you know my father?’

‘No, but he’s why I’m here.’

‘He was ashamed of us. He divorced my mother. How do you know about us?’

‘You have a half brother in San Francisco. He has a different mother and he has her name, but he’s got a lot of your look. His name is Ryan Candel. What’s your uncle’s name?’

‘Tom Casey.’

Raveneau pointed up the slope to the house. ‘And your dad, Jim Frank, lived up there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Follow me.’

They climbed back up the steep dirt track to the house then out past the north end and off the graded flat on to the grassy slope. There Raveneau saw three good-sized black-brown lava rocks stacked on each other, stacked so they would stay that way. He got it. He understood. He took in the dark roughness of the lava, the contrasting lush green of the steep slope, the soft wind off the water.

‘Is he buried here?’

‘Just his ashes.’

Raveneau stared out at the water for a long moment. Then he said, ‘I understand you holding me at gunpoint, but I don’t understand you putting those shots so close to me. It makes me wonder about you. I want you to know that.’

‘I already know it.’

THIRTY-FOUR

R
aveneau bumped back down the broken road in the rental with Matt Frank riding with him. Frank wanted to walk back the way he came but that wasn’t OK with Raveneau.

‘How did you know to go up to the house?’

‘Talk to my uncle about that. He doesn’t like people up at the house.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘After Dad died other people came and wanted to go through his things. It was a problem and my Uncle Casey dealt with it and even if it doesn’t matter any more he doesn’t like people up there.’

‘You didn’t come up the road, did you?’

Frank smiled but didn’t turn his head or say anything.

‘What’s funny about that?’

‘It says you were watching. You knew you were breaking in. There’s a trail from the main house. My dad and Uncle Casey used to call it the Drinking Trail because they would meet every night, either my uncle going up or my dad coming down. When we found your card in the door he said go up the trail with a gun. Like I said we didn’t know if we could trust the card.’

‘You thought someone just printed up a card.’

Now Frank turned but he didn’t say anything and then they were at the main house. Thomas Casey greeted him on the porch and Matt Frank disappeared as if his job was done. Casey shook his hand with an odd enthusiasm. At the same time he looked perplexed.

‘It’s been twenty-two years since AK was killed.’

‘Is that what you called him?’

‘Yes. His initials, Vietnam, and the gun. Jim Frank, Alan Krueger, and I met when we were in our early twenties and flying for the Navy. We were in Nam together. Do you have a new lead, Inspector?’

‘We do.’

‘I’d like to hear about it. Was it this new lead that caused you to trespass on my property and break into Jim’s house?’

‘The door was open and I walked in and took a look around.’

‘That’s a good story, open door, natural curiosity, and after all you traveled all this way and you left a card to show you were trying to find the property owner.’

‘And here you are.’

‘But I found you. You didn’t find me and the boy might have shot you.’

‘He doesn’t look like a boy. He must be in his thirties.’

‘He is.’

‘One of those shots passed pretty close to my head.’

‘I bet it did but if you’re working on AK’s murder you’re welcome here for now. I’ve got a problem with what you did and I’ll tell you straight up I may report the trespassing and breaking and entering. But I’ll also try to help you with your investigation.’ Casey smiled and added, ‘I just want to be clear. You look like you’re not that far from retirement anyway. Let’s go back to the lanai and talk.’

In the lanai he pointed at a table.

‘Let’s sit here. After having a couple of shots sent your way you must feel like a drink. What about a beer or do you want something harder? Do you like poke? The fish is always fresh here and the poke is a local staple. It’s ahi and we’ve got crackers to put it on. Let me go back and tell Lani, our cook and housekeeper.’

Lani turned out to be a middle-aged Hawaiian woman with a warm smile and an easy way with her employer. Raveneau guessed she lived here and had for a long time. He got the feeling Casey had money but doubted it came from the grass fed cattle business.

As Raveneau tipped the beer he took a longer look at him, angular face, gray-eyed, sharp gaze, blond-brown hair going silver.

‘Jim died in 2004 of complications from an old war wound. I can’t picture someone else living up there, so I’ve left the house empty. He was one of a kind from a different time where character and personality were more valued. Americans might be more educated now or more sophisticated or what passes for sophistication, but they don’t have the same moxie. Jim knew how to live without being afraid of living. Do you know what I’m saying?’

‘I do.’

‘If he had an idea he liked he’d act on it.’

Raveneau scooped some of the poke mix on to a cracker. He took another pull of the beer and moved the conversation back to Krueger.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘October 1989. His boyfriend was with him. Do you know about the boyfriend in San Francisco?’

‘I know of a boyfriend and I’ve talked to him, but he told me he and Alan broke up in 1986.’

‘If his name is Marlin Thames he’s lying to you. Marlin and Alan were here for ten days that October. They were going to stay longer but they argued so much I asked them to leave early, and I told the boyfriend never to come back. I didn’t like him or the way he treated AK. I don’t give a damn about sexual preference. Neither did Jim, but Thames was a rude sonofabitch. I was sorry AK lost his career over being gay. That was a shame and that visit was the last time I saw Alan.’

‘What was Alan Krueger doing for work when you last saw him?’

‘Good question but not one I can answer for you. I can tell you Jim and I spent a lot of years guessing. AK’s comings and goings were getting a little mysterious by then. I know he worked for more than one of our government agencies buying counterfeit US money in Asia. We actually tried to find out and the Secret Service told us they only use their own agents, but we knew that wasn’t true. We knew from Alan he was doing work for them in Asia as a contractor. He told us that much. He may have done contract work for the CIA as well. That’s the kind of thing he would have told Jim, not me. Everyone confessed to Jim.’

‘Where did Alan stay when he was in San Francisco?’

‘With Thames.’

‘Do you have any idea why Thames would lie to me?’

‘Maybe he’s your killer.’ Casey thought a moment on that and shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t him. It was something to do with the counterfeiters. Or that’s what I think.’

‘How did Jim Frank come to live here?’

‘Oh, you don’t want to talk about Thames any more. Well, Jim moved with bold strokes and that didn’t always work. We built the house for him here because he was bankrupt. He wasn’t good at holding on to money or at staying married. Both of those were weak spots. He was the way he was and I think his wives knew it when they married him. He didn’t raise either of his boys. Heck, I did enough to raise Matt that he calls me uncle.’

‘Did you teach him how to shoot?’

Casey chuckled.

‘He got that on his own. He scared you, didn’t he? I’m funding his business right now. I have no idea what happened to the other son. I don’t even remember his name.’

‘Ryan Candel. He’s how I found my way here. From photos his mom had.’

‘Had?’

‘Allyson died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. Allyson always made a room a happier place. How did she die?’

‘Someone ran a red light.’

‘What’s the boy like?’

‘He’s trying to figure out who he is and he’s got some issues, one of which is he carries a lot of anger toward his father.’

‘Not surprising. Now Matt’s mother was Vietnamese. She was married to a colonel for the South Vietnamese and running a bar and a brothel. The Cong killed her husband and she took up with Jim. He personally airlifted her out of Nam, got her pregnant, married her, divorced her, and left her in a relocation camp in Kentucky all in the same year. His attention span wasn’t always the longest. Charismatic man, though.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘The last I heard she was saving Mexicans. She went Baptist in Kentucky and after the boy was old enough signed up with a missionary group that preaches to poor Mexicans in rural areas. Even with the way people are getting shot and beheaded in Mexico I’d bet she’s still there. It would take more than a bullet to kill her anyway. Hell, if they beheaded her they’d still have to bury her head a half mile from her body or she’d figure out a way to get it back together. She was tough and had a very sharp tongue. Still does, I’m sure.

‘When she decided she was going missionary she contacted Jim and I said send the boy here. She had him on a plane the next day. I’m not making any of this up. Matt still has a little Kentucky twang but he can surf. He’s an islander.’

‘Are Jim Frank’s ashes really up under those rocks?’

‘Just ashes and I made sure they burned it all down to nothing, the teeth and every last bone fragment, so that no one could pull any DNA later.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, let’s just say many things were possible with Jim.’

Casey picked up his beer and smiled an odd strained smile. It changed the room.

‘There was a judge in San Francisco who lived in the penthouse of an apartment building on Russian Hill. His wife wouldn’t let him smoke on the penthouse decks because she didn’t like the dope smell drifting inside, so he smoked on the roof deck up with the equipment. He fell off one night. Did Jim know about it? It seemed like he did. Did he have a part in it? How could he but he seemed to know something had happened to the judge other than an accident.’

‘Judge Brighton.’

‘Is that one of your cold cases? They replaced that judge with an even more liberal judge, so it was all a goddamned waste of time if it was about politics, and God knows he had opinions and he was unusual in what he was willing to do. Jim wasn’t a killer but killing didn’t weigh on him. We’d take it to the Cong and fry the villagers along with them. None of that ever bothered him as far as I knew. It was just part of the war, yet he was a man with a strict personal code.’

‘How was his career as an airline pilot?’

‘Whenever they got a new model jet they put him in the seat. Retired him with honors, same as the Navy, but let me go get something and show you.’

He limped out of the room, his leg stiff from sitting, Raveneau guessed. He looked at photos on a wall, in one, Krueger, Casey, and Frank in uniform, Frank somehow standing out in the photo. Then one of Frank and his son here, Frank looking like his health was gone. When Casey returned Raveneau asked, ‘What other friends of Alan Krueger are still in the islands?’

‘There’s an officer up at Bradshaw Air Base named Shay.’

Casey slowly sat down. He slid the bowl with the poke aside and set a small painted metal box with a dragon painted on the lid on the table between them. Then, before sitting he pulled his pant leg up and showed Raveneau a long scar running from his knee.

‘This was from flak. It’s why I limp and don’t play polo any more.’ He smiled. ‘That last is a joke. You don’t need to make a note about looking up polo teams.’ He studied Raveneau. ‘You just missed Nam, right? But not by much.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well, Nam was a fucked-up situation if there ever was one, but at least we had a draft so we did it as a country as opposed to the bullshit now. Flying combat missions adrenalized Jim as much as anybody else, but at the same time he enjoyed it. If they hadn’t run out of war he probably would have stayed in the military. He was here in Hawaii recovering from wounds when they canceled the war. He celebrated with everyone else but I believe part of him was disappointed. Open the box.’

When Raveneau did he was looking at one, then a second Navy Cross There were stripes that looked like they’d been removed from a uniform.

‘Did you save the uniform?’

‘No, I had him dressed in it before he was cremated. But that’s not to say it was my idea. He got the uniform out, had it cleaned, and then left it hanging with the plastic on it in his closet. I was up there one night for a drink. Just about every night I’d walk up or he’d walk down. It was a regular thing if neither of us had guests. It was always best when it was just the two of us. Near the end it was mostly me going up there. We had a couple of drinks one night and he showed me the uniform hanging in the closet.

‘“Dress me in that,” he said, and then walked me out to where we spread his ashes. When we were standing there he said, “It’ll be before the end of the year.” It was two months later in October.

‘All the way down he never once complained, or not once that I heard. He died at a place in Waimea, not far from here. He took death as he took life, as a thing to do. He lost a kidney, his spleen, and some his intestines the second time he was hit in Nam. When he started to have trouble, it was the remaining kidney.

‘This photo here is us after a bombing run to Da Nang. The woman in the chair there next to Jim had known him for about thirty minutes.’

Jim Frank rested his arm on the back of the woman’s chair. The chairs were rattan. His smile lit his face and Raveneau saw both of his sons in him.