by Steve Berry
“I used to come here when I was troubled,” Foster said. “But I haven’t been in a long time.”
“Does that mean you haven’t been troubled?”
“Quite the contrary. Of late, that seems all I’ve been.”
He’d brought me here for a reason, so I decided to allow him the luxury of coming to the point when he was ready.
“Do you know about the 1928 hurricane?” he asked me.
“I’m not from Florida. I’m a Georgia boy. Born and bred.”
“The storm came on September 16, a Category 4 with 140-mile-per-hour winds. It hit the lake and destroyed a levee, which flooded all of the surrounding low-lying communities with twenty feet of water. Can you imagine? Twenty feet underwater. This place was totally segregated in those days. The east shore was for whites, the south and west, nearer the Everglades, for blacks. Most of the dead were black, migrant farmworkers who lived in those low-lying western communities. Over three thousand died.” He paused for a moment. “That was a horrible thing. But what happened after was much worse.”
I wondered how that could be.
“It was warm weather, so the bodies began to decompose in the swamps. The whites forced the black survivors to recover those bodies. The ones who worked were fed, the others either starved or were shot. Coffins were scarce, so only the bodies of white victims were allowed to be buried in the cemeteries. The black victims were piled on the side of the roads, doused with fuel, and burned. The local white authorities bulldozed 674 black victims into a mass grave in West Palm Beach. That grave was never marked. The site was later sold and used as a garbage dump, a slaughterhouse, and a sewage treatment plant. Only recently has it been repurchased and the sacred ground protected. I helped make that happen.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Here, in this cemetery, is another mass grave of those black migrant workers.”
He led me across the cemetery to a stone marker.
IN MEMORIAM
TO THE 1600 PIONEERS IN THIS MASS BURIAL
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE 1928 HURRICANE
SO THAT THE GLADES MIGHT BE AS WE KNOW IT TODAY
“Here they rest, a testament to another time. But I wonder, Lieutenant Malone, have things changed all that much?”
“Of course they have,” I said.
“Do you believe that?”
“Your in-laws live on the east shore now.”
“And how do you know they’re not white?”
“If that’s the case, then things really have changed.”
He grinned. “Perhaps you’re right. A travesty such as what happened in 1928 would not happen today. At least not in the same way. Society has learned to be—less obvious—with its prejudice.”
I didn’t want to touch that one, and he went silent for a few moments.
“I appreciate you helping my daughter escape from Fort Jefferson,” he said to me. “She is too impetuous for her own good.”
I found the Double Eagle in my pocket and handed it to him. “She said this is yours.”
“Please, you keep it.”
“It belongs to you.”
He shook his head. “It belongs to the devil.”
That was a weird observation, but I respected his wishes and repocketed the coin.
At least I’d offered.
“Did my daughter read any of the files in that case?”
I shook my head. “We never had the chance.”
“That’s good. I want them destroyed.”
“Is that why you made the deal to trade for the coin?”
“I didn’t make that deal, Lieutenant Malone. Valdez contacted me and asked for a trade. I refused.”
“Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “Never met the man. But he knew me, or enough about me that I listened to what he had to say. I was shocked he even knew I had the coin. I didn’t realize that Coleen had listened in on my conversation. She went behind me and learned Valdez’s phone number. She then made contact and made the deal on her own.”
Things were beginning to make more sense.
“My daughter and I have discussed many things about my past of late. She’s thirty years old and curious. I’ve never talked much about the old days. But apparently I’ve said enough to drive her curiosity.” He paused. “She found my hiding place for the coin. More of that police officer in her coming out, I suppose.”
I could see he was troubled by her initiative.
“Those files were better off in Cuba,” he said. “Where they’ve been for the past thirty years.” He paused. “I honestly never thought I would be addressing this issue again.”
“The death of Martin Luther King Jr.?”
He tossed me a curious glance. “What else did Coleen tell you?”
“Precious little. We saw a name. Bishop’s Pawn. She told me that Valdez mentioned it might deal with the assassination.”
A look of concern filled Foster’s face. “You said the files were not read.”
“That’s all we saw. Those two words. Then we had to leave.”
“Did she say anything else about Valdez?”
I realized he’d brought me here to learn what he could, so I shook my head and turned the tables. “Did you know King?”
He nodded. “I traveled at his side for nearly five years. I was a young man, just out of the seminary, assigned to my first church in Dallas. Martin came to my home one evening and tried to recruit me for the movement. I told him no, that wasn’t for me. The next day I heard him preach. He spoke for an hour, chastising the black middle class for refusing to fight for its own race. His words were powerful. They hit home. I decided he was right. So I became a disciple and stayed by his side until Memphis.”
The extent of what this man had witnessed compelled me to ask, “What was he like?”
He smiled. “Fiery, with an ego. Like most of us, he craved recognition, adulation, respect. More than anything, he wanted people to listen to him. And they did.” Concern again filled the older man’s face. “Now you tell me, what precisely is your involvement here?”
“I was sent to retrieve that case from the wreck, thinking only the coin was inside. But then things took a 180-degree turn. I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here now.”
“Who sent you?”
I decided to be honest. “A woman named Stephanie Nelle, who works for the Justice Department.”
“I know Jim Jansen,” he muttered. “He’s a terrible man.”
Foster drifted away, his gaze out over the graves, as if he was seeking their guidance. I left him to his thoughts.
“People know little to nothing about what really happened in Memphis,” he finally said. “There were only a few of us there, at the Lorraine Motel, that evening. None of us saw the moment when the bullet hit. There’s no Zapruder film memorializing Martin’s murder. It lives only in the tattered memories of those of us who were there.”
“Which might explain why your daughter is so curious.”
“I’m sure it does. There are many books on the subject. Nearly all of them written by conspiratorialists, who know nothing of the truth. No Warren Report was ever prepared on Martin’s death. A congressional investigation came decades after the fact, and resolved nothing. They found no evidence of any conspiracy. Instead, they concluded that Martin was killed by a lone gunman. The killer caught. He confessed, pled guilty, and was sentenced to life. And that’s what he served, dying in prison just a couple of years ago. Case closed.”
I was intrigued, and asked the only thing I could.
“So what really happened?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
April 4, 1968, loomed cool and cloudy in Memphis. On the city’s industrial south side, the Lorraine Motel, a local fixture, sat quiet among former cotton lofts and old brick warehouses, five blocks south of Beale Street, not far from the Mississippi River.
On that day Room 306, which oddly was situated on the second floor, was occupied by Martin Luther King Jr.
and his closest friend in the world, Ralph Abernathy. The Lorraine was their favorite Memphis hangout. It was black-owned and family-operated, hosting the likes of Count Basie, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Louis Armstrong. A room came for $13 a night, but not for King. The owners never charged him. In fact, King and Abernathy had stayed in Room 306 so much that it had acquired the label of the King-Abernathy suite. But the room wasn’t all that much. Just a simple, wood-paneled rectangle with twin beds, a TV, some contemporary furniture, and a phone.
Memphis was turning into a national problem.
Two black, union garbage workers had died in a tragic on-the-job accident after being forced to work in bad weather. Those deaths triggered a citywide strike that quickly escalated into a race struggle, since all of the sanitation workers were black. King came to town on March 28 and spoke to 15,000 people at a union rally. He then led a march downtown that quickly turned violent, shocking him. It also called into question his leadership. He was deep into planning a massive Poor People’s March on Washington, DC, for the summer of 1969, and the media began to wonder about the wisdom of such a huge demonstration. To prove that he could lead a peaceful gathering, King had returned to Memphis.
April 4 was hectic.
A second march down Beale Street was being planned, but the city of Memphis had gone to court and obtained an injunction halting any further demonstrations for the next ten days. That was usually not a problem. King had ignored injunctions before, considering the state judges who issued them just part of the problem he’d come to combat.
But this one had come from a federal court.
A first.
Dodging it demanded far more finesse, since federal judges were among the few consistent allies the civil rights movement possessed.
All afternoon on the fourth King had seemed distracted, not as focused as in days past. Most attributed it to a head cold he’d contracted. But anxiety also hung in the air over what was happening in federal court, as the lawyers were trying to overturn the injunction. A little after 6:00 P.M. King and his entourage were scheduled to have dinner at a local minister’s home. A feast of roast beef, candied yams, pigs’ feet, neck bones, chitlins, and turnip greens. Soul food. All King’s favorites.
And that time was fast approaching.
At 5:00 P.M. one of King’s chief lieutenants, Andrew Young, arrived in Room 306 with good news. The federal judge had modified the injunction to allow for a limited demonstration on April 8, four days hence. There were conditions, but none oppressive, and the news immediately put King in a much better mood.
He retired to the bathroom to shave and ready himself for dinner.
At fifteen minutes before six o’clock, after dressing in a clean shirt and tie, he left the room and walked out onto the balcony.
I listened to Foster as he told me about the day Martin Luther King Jr. died. This was not some secondary account from a book, the words filtered years later by an author.
“I was there,” he said. “At the Lorraine, with Martin and the rest of the fellows. Abernathy, Young, Jesse Jackson. We were all so bright-eyed and idealistic.”
“What did you do for King?”
“I worked for the SCLC. We all did back then.”
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference grew out of the 1957 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. An alliance of black ministers and leaders designed to provide the civil rights movement a spiritual basis for change. King was its president.
“Martin used me like a traveling secretary. I kept things in order.” Foster stared out across the cemetery. “He was not the most organized of people. He needed a lot of managing.”
“You admired him, didn’t you?”
He didn’t immediately answer me.
“I can still see him on that balcony, at the Lorraine.”
King leaned against the railing and enjoyed the cool Tennessee evening. The Memphis police had offered him a full security detail, but he’d refused.
I’d feel like a bird in a cage, was his standard reply.
His safety had always been in jeopardy. In 1958 a black woman stabbed him in the chest, nearly killing him. In 1962 a white power fanatic struck him in the head. In ’66, during a march in Chicago, a rock hit his head. He’d faced tear gas, police dogs, cattle prods, water cannons, his house had been firebombed, and he’d been burned in effigy too many times to count. But never had he employed bodyguards. In fact, no one close to him carried any weapon. His children were not even allowed to play with toy guns. Violence attached to anger was totally alien to him, and to him nonviolence was much more than a catchphrase.
King stepped back into Room 306 and found his black silk suit jacket. “Are you comin’, Ralph?”
“In a second.”
Abernathy stood in the bathroom getting ready for dinner.
“I’ll wait outside for you.”
King stepped back onto the balcony with his jacket on, once again leaning on the railing. There he stood for a few minutes as a crowd began to gather below. Solomon Jones, his driver for the night, cranked up the Cadillac to warm it up.
Jesse Jackson appeared below.
He and King had not seen eye-to-eye much of late, the two strongly disagreeing on the direction of the civil rights movement. A classic clash of young and old. Brash against patience. But tonight King was conciliatory, glad Jackson would be joining them for dinner. The younger man wore an olive turtleneck sweater and leather coat, in stark contrast with the dark suits and ties of the older men. One of those present began to chastise Jackson on his clothes, but Jackson had the perfect retort.
“All you need for dinner is an appetite.”
Which King liked, agreeing and laughing at the observation.
The banter continued, King standing on the second-floor balcony, his rich voice booming downward, the others looking up. He was like a preacher holding court with his flock. Everyone seemed relaxed, a stark contrast with the day’s legal tension.
Six P.M. arrived.
The people below began to head for the Cadillac. King stayed on his perch, waiting for Abernathy to come out of their room. There was more chatter about the evening, then Solomon Jones told King that he might need a topcoat, as the evening was turning chilly.
“You really know how to take good care of me,” King said, still leaning on the railing.
He found a pack of cigarettes and fished one out.
Then he turned for the door to Room 306.
“I was standing below,” Foster said. “With Jesse and Andy Young. We all heard it. It didn’t really sound like a gunshot, more like a firecracker or a car backfiring in the distance. None of us thought much of it, until we looked up.”
The bullet entered the right side of King’s face, leaving through the jaw and puncturing his fleshy neck.
The impact staggered him backward.
Blood spewed onto the balcony.
He grabbed for his throat with one hand and tried to grasp the railing with the other. But his efforts failed and his legs buckled, dropping him spine-first to the concrete, his legs out at odd angles, his shoes caught in the railing. Blood continued to pour from his body with each heartbeat, soaking his head and shoulders in a sea of red.
The cigarette remained clenched in his hand, now crushed.
His arms settled out to either side.
“We were all hiding behind the cars in the parking lot,” Foster muttered. “Then Ralph ran out on the balcony. That’s when I headed up. Martin was lying there, with his arms out, like he’d been crucified. That was my first thought when I rushed up.” His voice cracked. “That they crucified him.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, Lieutenant Malone, I have to trust someone, and you, whether I like it or not, are all that I have to choose from.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I found the comment both strange and troubling. Why would this man trust me at all? We were perfect strangers. And I was from the government. T
hen it hit me. I should have realized before. But come on, this was my first full day on the job.
“You’ve spoken to Stephanie Nelle,” I said.
“She came to see me yesterday. Apparently, she’d learned about Valdez’s contact with me. She knew about Coleen’s deal, the coin, and the files. That’s how I knew what Coleen had done. She also told me about you. I had no choice then but to become involved.”
All troubling to me since none of this had been passed on by my new temporary employer. Instead, I got an ex-FBI agent trying to kill me.
“I’m here for Coleen,” Foster said. “But also because I want those files destroyed. No offense to you, Lieutenant Malone, but I was hoping you might fail and all of this would remain at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. Mind telling me what Stephanie explained?” I paused. “Especially since you’re trusting me and all.”
He caught my sarcasm.
“She seems to have a problem with the FBI. Which I can understand. I remember when it was the most corrupt organization in the United States. During Hoover’s time it routinely spied on all of us, violated our privacy, even engaged in active character assassination of Martin. It did everything we despise as Americans.”
I was not ignorant of that history. “That was another time and place.”
“Which doesn’t excuse it. Especially since I was a victim of their abuses.”
“All of that ended with the Church Committee. The legacy of J. Edgar Hoover is in the toilet.”
“He should have died in prison.”
“What does that have to do with here and now?”
“Remnants of that corruption remain, which you and Stephanie Nelle now find yourselves in the middle of.”
News to me. “Does that involve the death of Martin Luther King Jr.?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
I was working at a huge disadvantage. Not only thanks to Stephanie’s silence, but because I knew precious little about the King assassination, other than what I’d read in books, newspapers, and magazines. Foster was right. Conspiratorialists abounded on what may or may not have happened, which was no different than the tragic murders of both Kennedys. Anytime a public figure was suddenly gunned down, the word conspiracy immediately became attached. Congress had not helped matters, either. Twice it investigated the King assassination, concluding that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger all by himself. But true to form, it also hinted at a possible broader conspiracy—without offering a shred of proof.