The FBI flew Raveneau home late that night and the next morning he nursed a coffee in his early morning meeting with Lieutenant Becker. Becker held up an invoice from the film expert, Kelso. He shook it and the paper rattled.
‘I don’t get this invoice. You went outside. You hired Kelso. I thought the combination of our video unit and the crime lab had this case covered. Why did we need to go to an outside consultant, especially one I thought we all agreed not to use any more? Why him and what about the FBI? I thought they looked at the videotape.’
‘They’ve looked at photos and some old Kodachrome slides. They’ll take a look at the videotape when they can but they’re backed up with other film analysis.’
‘How can Kelso charge this much?’
Kelso probably put in twice as many hours, Raveneau thought. But Kelso would negotiate. Kelso was film-obsessed. He didn’t care about anything else. He wore the same oversized T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and faded Giants baseball cap, rain or shine. He was overweight with a Santa Claus beard and a personal hygiene regimen that guaranteed him a private seat on a crowded bus. But he was a trove of information.
‘What did he do that we couldn’t do here?’
‘He validated that the videotape wasn’t a fake and that it was a copy made at the time. Without any information from me he came back with dates of 1987 to 1990 for when it was made and a lot more.’
‘Get his number down and I don’t want to see him in here yelling about getting paid faster. In fact, I don’t want to see him at all.’
Now Becker shifted to Raveneau’s most recent request and Raveneau had a hard time reading him. Becker had quit the police department abruptly after the murder of his brother last year, but enough people, Raveneau included, wanted him back and he was reinstated after a leave of absence. He was different now though, more introspective, quieter.
‘I can’t recommend sending you back to Hawaii without more compelling reasons. Write up your request but don’t submit it. I told the captain what you told me, so he knows there’s a complaint coming. If it arrives as this Candel says it will it won’t sit on my desk more than a day before it goes to the captain. That’s the deal he and I have, and I’m not forwarding any other requests for travel until that’s resolved.’
‘Consider la Rosa going on her own.’
‘You’ve been working the case so I don’t like that idea, and you don’t like it either so don’t waste our time here.’
They left it there and Raveneau’s cell rang as he left Becker’s office.
‘Inspector Raveneau, it’s Barb Haney. I’m sorry to bother you, but I think you might want to know this. My ex-husband, Larry Benhaime, is in San Francisco at the Four Seasons. He’s flying out later this morning and he doesn’t know I’m calling you. He’s in room 417. I just talked to him. He’s planning to stay in his room until a car takes him to the airport. You should catch him before he leaves.’
‘What should I ask him?’
When Raveneau interviewed her in Truckee he knew she had something to tell him, and now maybe it was going to come out. The fluttery hesitancy with which Barbara Haney moved from topic to topic and room to room in the big house in the Martis Valley he read first as nervousness, later as something else.
Raveneau was at the Four Seasons within an hour. He asked the desk to call Benhaime and now watched him step out of the elevator. They shook hands and Benhaime looked more curious than surprised.
‘Inspector, can we talk over breakfast? I’m starving and I can’t come to your police station. I’d miss my flight. What do you say we get some breakfast here and talk?’
Benhaime ordered eggs and toast and coffee, Raveneau coffee. As soon as the waiter walked off with the order Benhaime started talking.
‘First thing is we lied to your inspectors, not something we normally did but this was at the request of your government. Barbara and I worked for the RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the branch that preceded CAP, the Counterfeit Analysis Program. We weren’t newly-weds, but we were soon to be married so as a cover it worked. We had the honeymoon in reverse. For Barbara, that was the last undercover op. She had wanted out for awhile and when we married she quit.’
‘Are you still with the Mounties?’
‘Hmm, should have done this straightaway this morning.’
He showed a badge. He showed ID.
‘Different group now, I’m with the Revenue Service, mostly in Asia, mostly in Hong Kong. Copy the numbers if you like. We were to meet Mr Krueger in front of the Ferry Building and we got there well ahead of time. We had him in sight. We were going to buy some counterfeit bills. He was approaching and then was intercepted by another man and headed off with him. We wondered later if the other man impersonated me.
‘We watched a bit and then followed, but far enough back so no one would pick up on us. It’s why we found his body. At that point, the best decision was to walk away, but Barbara wouldn’t have it. So we phoned it in and all the mess that followed came from that decision.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the inspectors?’
‘Your Secret Service asked us not to. They didn’t want to compromise their operation and given that we had already done all we could to help the police it seemed to make sense. But we weren’t as good on our feet as we thought and the one inspector in particular suspected we knew more. Don’t ask me how he knew, but he did. When he flew to Calgary looking to re-interview us we checked with your people first.’
‘The Secret Service?’
‘Yes, they were conducting their own investigation into the killing and on hold with their operation until they learned more. They didn’t come out and say don’t talk with the homicide inspector, but they did strongly imply they wanted us to wait. So we stonewalled him and he all but told us we were lying. He was close to correct but didn’t seem to have facts to back it up.’
‘Inspector Govich?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who in the local Secret Service office knew about this?’
‘A fellow by the name of John Pagen.’
‘What were you going to get out of the meeting with Krueger?’
‘A batch of counterfeit one hundred dollar US bills. People Krueger was working with were doing test runs, exchanging hundred dollar bills for Canadian in Vancouver.’
‘Test runs?’
‘Yes, checking out the bills and the response they got, or more to the point, eh, the response they didn’t get. The bills passed easily. They were a remarkable step up. We were working with your Secret Service on this one and looking for the city of origin, looking for where these bills were bubbling out of. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. First ones showed up in Hong Kong, then the Philippines, and the Yanks said North Korea and pinned it on them, but we were never sure that was true of all the supernotes. Other makes, we thought.’
‘What do you think now? Where was the city of origin?’
‘I won’t say, but I will say we thought the work was too sophisticated for the North Koreans, yet the only people who could have helped them would have been Yanks.’
‘The North Koreans have built nuclear weapons and missiles. Why would money be hard?’
‘Look at the quality of their money, but there were other reasons. You asked and what I think is someone sold the right printing equipment and taught them how to use it. In other words I think your Secret Service was set-up by another agency in your government who wanted the Koreans for cover. Korean diplomats went out across the world with the counterfeit bills and muddied things up. That allowed those who thought up the scheme to start printing their own money. That money didn’t come from any Congressional appropriation. It didn’t have any oversight. It was money they could do anything they wanted with.’
Benhaime’s eggs arrived and he took time to pepper them before continuing.
‘Krueger wasn’t direct with your service any more. He was what gets called now non operational cover. He was in-between, feeding information home while making deals with the counterfeiters to get bills out and tested. Dangerous work. They were the very first of a run of extraordinary notes. Krueger was selling for them bills at a strong discount and taking some money and paying the counterfeiter, but we thought he was pocketing some too. He was dealing with criminal elements in Vancouver. We thought he got hit because they figured out he was stepping on the price and ripping them off. Are you with me?’
‘What were you going to pay for the counterfeit bills?’
‘We were hagglers. Thirty-five cents on the dollar, forty if we had to.’
Raveneau returned to his earlier question. It was a true test since the Secret Service wasn’t contacted at the time.
‘How many bills were you going to buy in the meeting with Krueger that afternoon?’
‘When he called he said he had sixty-one, but was going to keep a bill, so sixty. Sixty bills for twenty-two hundred dollars, but we had planned to knock him down to a straight two thousand when we showed him our cash.’
Raveneau nodded. He didn’t reveal it was exactly the right amount. But unless the Secret Service told Benhaime, how would he know? Goya and Govich said they never talked about the money with the Canadians, and Raveneau knew Benhaime’s credentials were going to check out.
‘Now Barbara wants it all to go away,’ Benhaime said, ‘and I’m with her. Enough time has passed. She was quite upset when you came back with more questions after all these years. Didn’t expect that.’
‘There’s a reason.’
‘Figured as much.’ He picked up his toast. ‘It’s why we’re having breakfast.’
‘How much of a look did you get of the man Krueger walked off with?’
‘Not much. He was at quite a distance.’
‘Have you got a laptop in that briefcase that will play a CD?’
‘It will, yes.’
Raveneau pulled the CD from his pocket.
‘Change chairs with me so your back is to the wall and no one else will see it.’
‘Can I take my eggs?’
‘Sure, but it’s not very long.’
‘I don’t want them to get cold.’
It took a minute to change chairs and for Benhaime’s laptop to boot up, and to reassure the waiter who came rushing over that nothing was wrong with their seating.
‘Just some porn to watch,’ Benhaime said, and showed the waiter the CD. He slid it in and the waiter lingered. Benhaime waited for him to leave then started it.
‘Tell me when you recognize Krueger.’
‘Ah, we’re there again. Was this filmed by your Secret Service?’
‘I don’t know who filmed it. Did they know you were meeting Krueger?’
‘They knew we were in San Francisco. They knew we were trying to set up a meeting with Krueger, but Barb and I didn’t tell them we had one arranged.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘There he is. Yes, that’s him.’
‘Who’s with him?’
‘I think it’s the man who intercepted him, can’t be positive but I think it is.’ Benhaime leaned over the computer. ‘You’ve got the whole thing.’ He watched the rest in silence and when he looked up he looked shocked. ‘He was actually quite likeable, even double-dealing. My God, this is hard to watch.’
Raveneau reached over to Benhaime’s keyboard. He froze the frame.
‘Look at the face of the shooter. Is that who intercepted Krueger?’
‘I don’t know.’
When Raveneau turned they were eye to eye and not that far apart.
‘OK, you don’t know, so let me ask you about something you do know. Why did you strip his wallet?’