by Steve Berry
“It’s his second day,” Coleen pointed out.
Lael looked me over with a grin. “So we got ourselves a genuine rookie.”
I did not like the label.
“Tell me, rookie, why would I say anything to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve got a conscience? Unlike Tom Oliver and his group of Merry Men.”
“Now, on that we see eye-to-eye. Oliver was a Hoover man, through and through. His whole career was geared to making that creepy bastard happy. We had six thousand FBI agents back then, every one of us expected to cater to Hoover’s whims, obey his rules, and satisfy his every need.”
“That include you?” I asked.
“If you wanted a long career, that was part of the job description.”
“You worked for Oliver?”
“Oh, yeah. In COINTELPRO. I was one of the bagmen.”
Which meant he handled break-ins, most of which were done without search warrants. Congress later determined that the FBI routinely engaged in thousands of illegal burglaries as a way not only to obtain information, but also to plant listening devices.
“Our motto was Do unto others as they are doing unto you. And believe me, we did. I was assigned to the Bishop himself.”
I recalled the code name Foster had mentioned for Martin Luther King Jr. “Did you break into King’s house?”
He nodded. “I planted microphones everywhere. In the SCLC offices, King’s home, his office, and too many hotel rooms to count. I was good at it.”
It was one thing to read about all of those constitutional abuses. But here was a living, breathing participant.
“Did you testify before the Church Committee?”
Lael shook his head. “A bunch of pansies. I may have hated Oliver and Hoover, but I was still FBI through and through. I actually believed what we were taught. To lead a careful and disciplined life. Easy on the alcohol, no drugs ever, and keep your pants zipped as much as possible. Stupid me just thought we ought to obey the law, too.”
“Yet you didn’t,” Coleen said, finally joining the conversation.
“No, little lady, we didn’t. But we were the exception. The vast, vast majority of FBI agents did their job, and did it right.”
“So what is it you and Foster think about all the time?” I asked, bringing him back to what I’d heard in the cemetery.
“You’re the preacher’s daughter?” Lael asked Coleen.
“How do you know my father?”
“We met about ten years ago, and we’ve stayed in touch.”
“Are you looking for forgiveness?” I asked.
He tossed me a measured glare. But his answer surprised me.
“Something like that.”
“Did you get it?”
“That’s none of your business.” He faced Coleen. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“No,” she blurted out before I could lie.
“I didn’t think so.”
All of this posturing was grating on my nerves.
“COINTELPRO targeted King. That’s old news,” I said. “There are books filled with unclassified FBI field reports on what you did. Okay, he had mistresses, he liked to smoke and drink. He told dirty jokes. Who gives a crap? I want to know what’s really going on here.”
“And if I don’t say, what then?”
I could tell he was challenging me, trying to determine if I was more than a paper tiger. So I decided to roar. “The next person who comes to see you will have a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. The questions then will be asked under oath. Sure, you can take the Fifth and refuse to say anything, but what do you think is going to happen then?”
I caught the nervous snicker in his breath. My threat had rubbed a sore, which brought a change in mood.
For the worse.
“My answers won’t be the Fifth Amendment,” he said. “They’ll be more direct. Two words that should sum it all up and will let you know exactly what I think of your grand jury. This stuff has lain dead for thirty years, and dead is where it should stay.”
“Along with King?” I asked.
He took in my rebuke in silence.
Finally he said, “Who are you to judge?”
“I’m the guy with the badge, asking the questions.”
If that had any effect, Lael didn’t show it.
“Does either of you have any idea what it was like back then?”
Neither of us answered him.
“I was there, in June ’64,” Lael said. “I was sent to St. Augustine when all the trouble exploded.” He pointed at Coleen. “That’s where I first saw your daddy.”
“And what did you do to stop all of the violence against good, decent people like my father?” she asked.
“Not a thing. Wasn’t my problem. I was there to watch King, and watch I did. I saw the acid being poured in the pool.”
That I knew about.
King was arrested in St. Augustine for trespassing at the Monson Motor Lodge. His response came in the form of a “swim-in,” where a group of protesters, black and white, jumped into the motel’s “white-only” pool. The manager tried to break the protest by pouring muriatic acid into the water, hoping the swimmers would leave. And though the chemical was really no threat—one of the swimmers proved that by drinking some of the water—the image of that white manager pouring acid into a pool full of blacks and whites appeared in newspapers around the world.
Shocking people.
“What did you do when that happened?” I said, mocking him. “Like a good little COINTELPRO agent, you snapped pictures, took notes, and filed reports.”
“We were like Star Trek,” he said, “and the prime directive. There to observe, but never to interfere or alter the course of events.”
I shook my head. “You were the damn FBI, and yet you sat back and allowed white supremacists to do whatever they wanted. And that’s because J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King Jr.”
“That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell,” he said. “Different time and place.”
My eyes noticed a notepad on the enameled kitchen table. Lying in plain sight. A name written upon it in black ink. Cecelia Heath. Along with what appeared to be a phone number. Odd that a careful man like Bruce Lael would leave that out for us to see. He noticed my interest, but made no effort to collect the pad. Instead he gave a gentle nod.
Toward it.
“Did you know Foster searched inside the SCLC for FBI informants?” I asked, not acknowledging the gesture.
He seemed surprised by the question. “Foster tell you that?”
“He told me,” Coleen said.
Lael nodded. “Sure, I knew. I bugged his house and taped him many times. We watched a lot of people back then, particularly antiwar protestors, which included King and Foster. We spied on them all.”
I needed to steer this man back to what we came for. “Did you know that Juan Lopez Valdez recruited King’s killer?”
“And the FBI assisted,” Coleen added.
“Really? Sounds like something from the National Enquirer.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
He tossed me a glare. “It’s news to me. But everything back then was compartmentalized. We were told only what we needed to know to do our job. Jansen and Oliver would not have included me in that loop. I knew a little more than most because I handled the wiretaps. But not all of them. There were other people, besides me, who manned the recorders.”
He still had not admitted a thing. “So if you don’t know anything, why are you so troubled?”
“Like I said, I knew the reverend from the wiretaps. I reconnected with him years ago to talk about those. We each filled in some of the blanks for the other. Call it curiosity.”
“Valdez was working for the FBI,” Coleen said. “Surely you taped him at some point.”
Lael nodded. “A few times. That’s one slimy bastard.”
“Did Valdez arrange for James Earl Ray to be in Memphis?” I
asked again.
He stood there, arms crossed on his chest like an umpire under attack. But I caught a look of unfeigned indecision on his chopped countenance. Like he was wrestling with a dilemma. Sizing us up. Making a decision. His eyes drifted again down to the pad on the table, then back up.
“I told your daddy yesterday to leave this alone,” he said. “You two should take the same advice.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him no when he contacted you?” I asked. “Why lead Oliver to him?”
“You’re going to have ask him that.”
“We’re asking you.”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” Lael spit out. “I was an FBI agent before you were even born. You apparently have little to no experience, barging in here, thinking I’m going to break down and confess all my sins. Or that the threat of some subpoena will scare me.” He pointed a finger. “What you need to be asking yourself is why did they pick you for this? With all the trained agents available, why go to a rookie?”
I wasn’t going to allow this guy to rattle me. “It doesn’t matter why. I’m here.”
He chuckled. “So you’re doing as you were told? Following your orders. Not asking questions. Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah. That would be me.”
I decided to ask something that had been nagging my brain. “You said you taped a lot of people. Yet you made a point, ten years ago, to connect with Reverend Foster. Why him?”
He shook his head. “Not going there. I never crossed Oliver back then and I haven’t in the years since.” But his eyes again contradicted his words, as did another nod toward the pad. Then he pointed at the door. “Get out.”
Neither of us moved.
He reached beneath his shirttail and pulled out a Glock.
“You can walk. Or I’ll drag your bodies out after I shoot you. It’s legal to kill home intruders in this state.”
“That subpoena will be coming,” I said.
“I can hardly wait. I’ll have my two words ready.”
I motioned and we left through the front door, Lael right behind us, still holding the gun, only now his grip was concealed by the wrinkled folds of his T-shirt.
I carried the waterproof case.
“Get on down the street,” he said. “Disappear. And don’t come back.”
No sense arguing any further, so we walked away. I had the name and telephone number from the pad etched in my mind.
“One more thing, rookie,” Lael called out.
I stopped and turned.
“Tell whoever it is that sent you that I didn’t take that case away from you. Though I should have. That ought to count for something.”
I got the message. Just like inside with the name on the pad. He was doing what he could. Maybe he wasn’t the total asshole I thought him to be.
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Now get on. I’m going fishin’.”
We walked away.
“Were you serious about the subpoena?” Coleen asked.
“That won’t be my call. But it sounded good. You saw the name and phone number on the pad? He wanted us to see that, without him saying it.”
Was he just being cautious?
Or was something else at play?
The street remained tranquil, the houses understandably quiet for a Thursday workday morning. I glanced back and saw Lael still watching us, standing at the curb, beside his Taurus at the driver’s door, one hand on the gun beneath his shirttail. We were fifty yards away, the end of the block another fifty yards ahead, where we would turn and leave the neighborhood.
We kept walking.
Then an explosion rocked the morning.
I whirled around.
Streaks of flame burst upward from the Taurus, blue and yellow and red fusing into one violent tint. Glass shattered into fragments, then a second explosion rocked the car side-to-side.
We instinctively reeled down, shielding our faces.
Flames seared though the car’s interior.
Black smoke billowed from the hulk.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I watched the Taurus consume itself. We were far enough down the street that the concussion effects of the explosion never reached us.
“My God,” Coleen muttered.
Lael was nowhere to be seen outside the car.
A few neighbors had drifted out of their front doors, investigating the commotion. I figured we had another five minutes before all hell broke loose. That bomb had obviously been planted between the time Lael returned from Lake Okeechobee yesterday and now, just waiting for him to crank the engine. Our being here could never have been anticipated.
I heard the distant braying sound of emergency vehicles.
They came faster than I thought.
“Let’s get off the street,” I said.
We hurried into a stand of trees between two houses. I laid the case down and we stood out of sight and watched as a sheriff’s car raced by.
I wondered about such a public display with Lael’s murder. A lot of attention would be drawn.
But maybe that was the idea.
More sheriff’s cars rushed past from the direction we were going.
“We need to go,” I said. “We’ll head farther down this street, away from traffic, and find another way out of this neighborhood.”
We started walking again.
It wouldn’t be long before the whole area was cordoned off as a crime scene. I could see that Coleen was shaken. Hell, I was, too. That was another first for me. It seemed my week for them.
More emergency vehicles headed toward the scene. I imagined they’d have a local law enforcement convention here before the day was through. Not too many car bombs went off in Melbourne, Florida. Everybody would want to be part of the action. It wasn’t that cops wished for bad things, it was just that something out of the ordinary was exciting. Like TV weather people, who seemed genuinely upset when a hurricane veered out to open ocean, never making land.
We were now a few streets over from the burning car, heading out of the neighborhood.
A car wheeled around the corner behind us.
I turned.
A white Yukon sped our way. Not a police vehicle. Perhaps one of the residences leaving. The SUV slowed as it approached, then stopped. The driver’s-side window disappeared down.
“You need to get in,” a man said.
My instinct was to drop the case and reach for the gun beneath my shirt. But something about the guy telegraphed that he was no threat.
He displayed a badge. “I’m with the FBI. You need to get in the car.”
“Why?” Coleen asked.
“Because we’re on the same side. We know about Stephanie Nelle and her investigation. We also know about Juan Lopez Vadez and Tom Oliver. You’re out here, bare ass to the wind. I’d say you need a friend.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I motioned for us to climb inside.
“Are you nuts?” Coleen asked. “This guy could be working for Oliver.”
I walked around and opened the passenger-side door. “Yep. That’s right.” I laid the case down on the asphalt and found my gun, which I tossed across the hood to her.
She caught it and understood.
Then she climbed into the rear seat.
* * *
We drove away from Melbourne, west toward I-95 from where we’d come earlier. But instead of heading south, we went north, for Jacksonville and home. I sat in the front seat because I wanted to be able to look this guy in the eye. Coleen was in the back with the gun, keeping watch and listening. I’d already passed the case over to her, and it rested on the seat behind me. I was hoping that my trusting her with both the gun and the case would count for something in her eyes.
“We learned of Valdez’s contact with Reverend Foster, then your contact, Ms. Perry, with Valdez.”
“How is Valdez able to prance around Florida like he’s a tourist on vacation?” I asked.
“That’s thanks to a few problems that remain both within and outside of the FBI. People Ms. Nelle is focused on.”
Whether any of that was true remained to be seen. All I knew was that we were headed away from Melbourne and Palm Beach and Coleen had a gun to this guy’s back if he tried anything stupid.
I asked a few more questions but received no replies. Our driver told us all would be explained shortly by someone who wanted to speak to us. I was beginning to learn that being a field operative meant making choices. Lots of them, in fact. One thing led to another, then to another, or at least that was the way it was supposed to happen. An agent’s job was to make the right choice and keep moving forward. By the time I left the profession, over a decade later, several agents I came to know died from making bad choices. Luckily for me, my mistakes were never fatal.
But they were nonetheless painful.
Like the one I was about to make.
* * *
We exited I-95 after a two-and-a-half-hour ride and made our way east into downtown St. Augustine. Whoever wanted to speak to us was apparently there. I knew the hype associated with what was supposedly the oldest European settlement in America. The town was already over two hundred when George Washington became president. The Spanish first settled here, on a narrow strip of land nestled close to the Matanzas River. Another stretch of thin, low-lying island to the east provided beaches as well as shelter to a superb natural harbor that drew not only the Spanish but eventually the French, the English, and pirates.
Its main roads ran north and south, the cross streets at defined right angles east and west, everything on a perfect grid. Many still retained their narrow width, first placed there as a means of internal defense. Most were named for either people or things from the past. Streets like St. George, Treasury, Cathedral, and Francis. Overhanging balconies and high stone walls were common, all of the stunted buildings made of wood, tabby, or coquina. Henry Flagler put the place on the modern map when he built a railroad down the East Coast to Florida. Along the way he constructed magnificent hotels that started the annual craze of the rich coming south for the winter. St. Augustine boasted three of his resorts, all of which were still standing, but only one remained a hotel.