‘I want to talk because I’m scared of the kind of violence those weapons represent. I’m afraid we’re on the edge of this being the new normal. I want to talk because these cabinet shop murders are ground zero right now and you’re a homicide inspector and I want to know what you think.’
Brooks pointed in the distance at the Golden Gate Bridge.
‘We can close a bridge as the President’s motorcade crosses, but we can’t clear every corridor, particularly in a smaller city like this one. The Presidential limo is a battering ram but there’s a nightmare scenario where the motorcade enters a street without many side escape routes. Let’s say a vehicle rigged with an IED like these detonates ahead and pieces of motorcycle cops and fragments of vehicles go flying. At that point we’re just trying to get the President out any way we can with as much speed as possible.
‘Of course, the other side has thought about side streets too. They have a secondary plan. They’ve designed for overkill. I’m talking about something planned like a military operation.’
‘But you vary your routes. You take precautions.’
‘There’s only so much you can do in a smaller city.’
‘Where are you going with this?’
‘Once we have coffee I’m going to take you on one of the routes that could get used when the President is out on this next trip. He’s going to give a speech about the subway system San Francisco has started work on. I read they’re going to work eight years, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. But you’re from here so how many years will it really take?’
‘Twelve.’
They picked up coffee and drove toward Union Square, Brooks at the wheel of a new government car.
‘Presidents are fatalists. They know the risks can be overwhelming, but it’s the tradeoff for an open society. The President is going to give a speech here in Union Square and then go down to Embarcadero and ride the light rail with the mayor and at least one senator.’
He pointed out tall buildings, alleys, bottlenecks the construction was going to cause, the places that worried him most. He doubled back and picked up Grant Street and started through Chinatown where the streets were narrow.
‘Bad street but many voters and it’ll make people feel good.’ He pointed at a car. ‘Say there is a bomb in that car but it doesn’t go off until the last car in the motorcade is through. It detonates simultaneously with one ahead of the motorcade.’
‘How many times are you going to blow us up out here today?’
‘As it goes off, we’re going to get him the hell away from here, right? What are we going to do? We turn down one of these steep narrow streets and now we’re really vulnerable.’
They followed it to the end, to where the President, the mayor, and the senator got on the light rail system built after the Embarcadero Freeway came down. Brooks pulled over and they watched the rail cars slowly go by and Raveneau knew in Brooks’ head the President was riding on it. He waited for what he guessed would come next.
But Brooks surprised him, pointing toward the Ferry Building and saying, ‘That’s where Krueger was shot, a little bit back from the near corner of the Ferry Building.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m going to tell you more about him. I’m going to tell you some things you don’t know that I’m now authorized to tell you.’
‘Why are you going to do that?’
‘Because your friend Coe at the FBI has convinced me that the problem is even worse than we thought.’
TWENTY-THREE
‘ First off, we don’t know who killed Alan Krueger, and when he was killed he was working with us, but not for us. I know you probably still don’t believe that, but it’s the truth.’
‘Why wouldn’t I believe that?’
‘I don’t know why, but you seem to want to believe the Secret Service hid information from Inspectors Goya and Govich. Look, Krueger left us in 1985. He’d been outside for four years. In those four years he worked for other agencies as well. He had a pipeline in Hong Kong. He spoke Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Korean. He had an ear for language and a talent for making connections.’
‘What’s a pipeline in what he was doing?’
‘Good sources for the flow of people, money, and information about counterfeiting, what’s out there in the way of bills for sale, he was in that, he was a buyer.’
‘Were you bullshitting me when you said the supernotes he was carrying are now the first known?’
Brooks tugged on the cuffs of his shirt, a habit he seemed to have, that and pursing his lips.
‘You are the worst cynic I’ve ever met.’
‘No, I know you guys would never lie to me.’
‘We worked with Inspectors Govich and Goya. We tried hard to find who killed Krueger, in part because he was one of us for a dozen years, but also because he was chasing rumors for us and believed he was on to something. He had heard rumors of printing presses sold to North Korea and another of presses set up in a warehouse in Hong Kong. He was working on that.’
‘Do you have names, people I can talk to?’
‘Time’s gone by on those, but there’s someone here in San Francisco you should talk to. He still won’t talk to us but he might talk to you. I’m going to give you his phone number.’
‘Why won’t he talk to you?’
‘I can tell you but he’ll do a better job of it.’
‘Did the Secret Service know about him in 1989?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they give Goya and Govich his name?’
‘No, and I’m passing it on, but I’m not taking responsibility for what happened before me. I was in college. I wasn’t working for the Secret Service. They don’t hire kids who are in school.’
It took Raveneau a moment to get it.
‘So you’ve talked to this individual recently about Krueger.’
‘I have.’
‘Was that because of the supernotes and the current investigation with the Cayman and Mexican banks?’
‘Yes. I met with him and as soon as I sat down with him I knew he was going to fuck with me. He was completely uncooperative.’
‘I’m ready for a name.’
‘Well, try this one. Marlin Thames, Marlin like the fish, and Thames like the river. Before that he was Howard Wright. He reinvented himself out here. He’s how Krueger got caught in a lie and outed. The lie involved his residence and where he was staying at night. Mr Thames also had a criminal record that included fraud. That weighed in. If Krueger had stayed on he would have been transferred to someplace very cold and faraway. Someplace where you drive fifty miles to get to the dentist. Krueger chose to resign. Here’s the phone number.’
‘Are you saying Thames and Krueger were a couple?’
‘That is what I’m saying.’
Raveneau called Thames from his car after Brooks dropped him off, and Thames was willing but wanted to meet somewhere neutral. He named a cafe on Market Street. Raveneau met him in the early afternoon, sat across from him and ate a sandwich as he listened to Thames’ story.
‘My hair was gold-colored in those days.’
‘You’ve still got some gold.’
‘I’m sixty-seven and 1989 was a long time ago. He was killed three years after we broke up and we were still friends, but both of us had moved on. I didn’t see him much.’
