by Steve Berry
“What about my father?” Coleen asked. “Tell me what you know about him.”
Veddern pointed at the coin I still held. “I was actually hoping you could tell me.”
She didn’t reply.
I slipped the coin back into my pocket. “Tell us what you know.”
He shrugged. “Are you asking if he was a spy for us? The FBI had informants all over the SCLC, the Progressive Labor Movement, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. That’s how a lot of inside information made its way to Hoover’s desk. I can say that I’ve never seen any report that mentions your father as being part of that. In fact, nothing on Bishop’s Pawn, outside of Valdez’s blackmail, has ever surfaced.” He pointed at the backpack. “Until now. I was involved with both congressional investigations into the King assassination. I’m the bureau’s recognized expert on that event, so I would know.”
“Provided you’re telling us the truth,” she said.
My gaze swept the plaza and the border streets. People moved everywhere, as did cars, trollies, and horse-drawn carriages, the clip-clop of their hooves on the pavement as monotonous as a clock ticking. Veddern was definitely not here alone, so I was trying to assess any threats while Coleen held his attention. Veddern was trying hard to be the guy on the white horse, but I wasn’t ready, just yet, to play the trust game. Particularly given the two men who loitered toward the far end of the plaza, near Government House. Definitely not tourists.
I decided to do a little diverging myself.
What I’d read last night was fairly specific on the lead-up to the assassination, but not so much on what happened afterward. So I asked the bureau’s recognized expert, “Did the FBI help Ray escape Memphis?”
“Why do you ask such a thing?”
I reiterated what some of the memos had stated, adding, “Ray fired the shot, then fled the rooming house. He was supposed to get in his car and leave town. He was carrying the rifle, rolled inside a bedspread, out on the street and saw a couple of Memphis police cars. For once in his life he panicked and ditched the bundle in an entryway. What he didn’t know was that someone was inside that store, so the rifle was found quickly and that same somebody saw Ray drive off in a white Mustang. It should have been an easy matter to catch him before he made it far. What’s the old saying? You can’t outrun the radio?”
“I know what you’re getting at. It’s part of the official assassination file.”
We listened as he explained that less than ten minutes after the shooting, the Memphis police put out an alert for the Mustang, driven by a well-dressed white male. Twenty-five minutes after the shooting, reports placed the Mustang heading north out of the city. Then, thirty-five minutes after the shooting, a car chase began to be heard across local CB radio. A 1966 Pontiac was apparently in hot pursuit of a fast-fleeing Mustang. The voice broadcasting the report said the Mustang was being driven by the man who shot King. The Memphis police tried to establish two-way communication with the Pontiac, but the voice on the other end would not reply. The chase seemed to be happening on the east side of Memphis, the shooter apparently making a run for the Tennessee hill country. The Memphis police dispatched cruisers. Roadblocks were erected. The highway patrol alerted.
And then things turned even stranger.
The Pontiac’s driver reported over the radio that the Mustang was shooting at him and that his windshield had been hit. The police asked if the driver could see the Mustang’s license plate and, for the first time, the man replied saying that he feared for his life getting that close.
Then the transmissions ended.
Nothing more was heard from the Pontiac.
“Reports from the official assassination file quote interviews with people who listened to the exchange on CB radio. They all said the voice was incredibly calm for someone in a high-speed car chase with shots being fired at him. And it was odd that he wouldn’t identify himself. The guy was willing to risk going after the Mustang, but not willing to tell the police who he was. Then there was the S-meter. One person listening noticed on his own CB radio that the signal strength never diminished, even though the transmission came from a moving vehicle. The signal stayed constant. That meant it was coming from a stationary source.”
“But no one paid attention to those details,” I said. “They were all caught up in the moment and thought they had the killer.”
“That’s right.”
I began to connect the dots with what I’d read. “COINTELPRO may have been a lot of things, but those guys weren’t stupid. On the one hand they engineered the killing. On the other, they sat back and allowed the rest of the FBI to organize the largest manhunt in history to find Ray.”
“Which was easy for them to do,” Veddern said. “Within the bureau only Oliver, Jansen, Lael, and Hoover knew about Bishop’s Pawn, and probably only Oliver and Hoover knew it all. There have been countless investigations into King’s death. Lots of innuendo. Speculation. Guesses. But nothing has ever pointed to the FBI. They did know how to keep a secret back then. Hoover publicly proclaimed that the FBI would stop at nothing to find King’s killer. That was the reputation he’d forged for his bureau. It’s what the public expected from him. Ray should have made it to Rhodesia, out of reach, long before the FBI ever closed in. My God, he was on the run for two months. But when you pick an idiot for a job, you have to expect idiocy, and that’s what they got.”
“But why plead guilty?” I asked. “Why didn’t Ray just rat them out?”
“Nobody knows. He had a great defense for trial. No discernible motive. No fingerprints of his in the rooming house. No prints found in the car he was driving. No ballistics report that established the rifle was the murder weapon. Even worse, an FBI accuracy test on the rifle showed it consistently fired both left and below the intended target. Ray was not a marksman, and knew little to nothing about guns. The only eyewitness to place him at the scene was blind drunk at the time, and never made a positive ID until years later. It was a defense lawyer’s dream.”
Veddern pointed another finger my way.
“Once the FBI publicly identified Ray as the killer, which was about two weeks after the assassination, Hoover made sure the bureau focused on Ray, and Ray alone. I’ve read every directive issued at that time. The field offices were ordered to stay on Ray. No conspiracy was ever investigated.”
I knew something this man didn’t. “Right before his trial, word was sent to him that once George Wallace was elected president, he’d be pardoned. Ray was a strong Wallace supporter and believed them. That’s why he agreed to plead guilty.”
I could see that was news to him.
“That actually makes sense,” Veddern said.
“Three days later,” I continued, “his narcissistic personality took over and he recanted. He realized that he was the man of the hour. Everyone wanted to hear what he had to say. So he talked. And talked. And talked. So much that no one, other than conspiratorialists out to make a name for themselves, ever listened to him. He became the perfect smoke screen.”
“Yes he did,” Veddern said. “In the decades since, the mafia, racists, segregationists, the Klan, communists, labor unions, the military, leftists, the government, and the Memphis police have all been implicated in theories to kill Martin Luther King Jr. I’m wagering, though, that those files you have from Valdez are an entirely different matter.”
His tone had grown more serious, and I assumed the attempt at reasoning was ending. His words were driving toward a point.
He pointed at Coleen.
“I want them. Now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I really, really didn’t like this guy.
But I knew to keep cool.
“This can’t escalate beyond what it already has,” Veddern said. “We thought it was containable when the boat sank. But Stephanie Nelle managed to find herself someone who resurrected the problem.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said.<
br />
“Don’t. But you can redeem yourself. Hand over those files and the coin and walk away. Mission done.”
“Without those, there’s no proof of anything,” Coleen noted.
“Exactly my point. Did you hear me? This. Has. To. End.”
“I don’t work for you,” I said.
“A fact I fully realize. Look, I understand. Tom Oliver has been a problem for a long time. He’s old school, rising up in the ranks from a field agent to deputy director. Along the way he oversaw a lot of our departments. COINTELPRO was just one of many. He has a lot of friends in the bureau that owe him lots of favors. He thinks of the FBI like in the old days, when Hoover was there, when they could do whatever they wanted. And though retired he still has friends in high places, friends the attorney general wants to expunge. We want those people gone, too. But we prefer to clean our own house.”
“Just like the fox cleans the henhouse?” I asked.
“We’re not all bad,” Veddern said. “Most of us do our job the right way.”
“And yet you’ve known about Bishop’s Pawn and never said a word.”
“I know little to nothing about it, and I have no proof of anything.”
I pointed at the backpack. “You do now.”
“Those files, and Juan Lopez Valdez, should have stayed in Cuba.”
“We’ve both read them,” I pointed out again.
He shrugged. “So what? You’ll be just two more crazies expounding wild theories with nothing to back them up.”
“I want to know more about those FBI spies,” Coleen said.
She kept coming back to that subject. Like a bird dog on a scent.
“I told you all I know,” Veddern said. “And I’m not being evasive. Just honest. The documentation on all of that no longer exists.”
Which I could see made Coleen even more anxious to find her father.
“You’re going to have—”
Veddern’s body suddenly lurched.
Odd.
Then he shuddered.
I stared at the man and saw first puzzlement, then pain, and finally fear fill his eyes. A small hole appeared at his right shoulder, from which dark rivulets began to seep.
He grabbed for the wound, then dropped to the grass.
I lunged for Coleen and we both hit the ground, scrambling for the pavilion’s protection, huddling close to a thick stone pillar. Hard to say for sure, but the shooter could be atop one of the taller buildings across the street, on the other side of the pavilion. The bullet had definitely come from that direction.
Another round skipped off one of the stone pillars and thudded into the grass.
Yes, the shooter was behind us, testing our shield.
No sound was associated with the firing, which meant the rifle was sound-suppressed. People had begun to notice Veddern and the blood. A scream and shouts of oh my God echoed. The afternoon crowd began to scatter, like ants from the mound. That confusion could work in our favor. As would the trees.
“Let’s go.”
We sprang to our feet and joined the chaos, bolting from the plaza to the street, which was only a few feet away, weaving our way through the congealed traffic, using the cars for protection. A round ricocheted off the sidewalk just a few feet way. As I suspected, the trees in the plaza were now blocking the shooter’s aim. But most likely, here and there, we would be visible through the canopy.
We rushed past the shops.
People were beginning to notice what was happening across the street and the panic spread. None of them realized they were also in the line of fire.
And that bothered me.
We needed to disappear.
Past the traffic I saw the two suspect men from earlier in the plaza hustle across the street on an intercept course. They had no idea there was a separate shooter. For all they knew we’d taken Veddern down.
“You see them,” I asked.
“I’ll take one. You the other.”
I liked the way she thought.
The two men angled their approach so they would find the sidewalk about twenty feet ahead of us. I’m not sure what they expected, but what they got was a tackle from Coleen and a fist to the jaw from me. My guy fell back against a parked car at the curb. The people around us reacted to the fight and began to flee. I didn’t give my guy time to react, planting my curled, hard knuckles into his face, then reaching beneath his jacket for a shouldered weapon. I removed the gun as he slumped to the pavement. Coleen was on her feet, having driven her man to the concrete hard enough to knock him out.
She, too, had a gun in her hand.
We both stuffed the weapons at our spines, beneath our shirts, and kept moving, turning right, heading down an even busier path. I knew where we were. St. George Street. A pedestrian-only way lined with olden buildings that housed an eclectic array of galleries, shops, and cafés, running right through the center of downtown to the old city gate. Being the middle of a summer afternoon, there were a lot of people in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops—which helped hide us, but they also made it much more difficult to determine any new threats. I heard sirens and realized the local authorities were about to arrive on the scene. My eyes scanned back and forth, studying faces.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked Coleen.
“Not really.”
That was encouraging.
Behind us the two guys we’d taken down on the sidewalk were nowhere to be seen. We kept hustling forward, excusing ourselves, delving deeper into the pedestrian-only quarter. I knew that this part of the old town was a warren of narrow lanes and even narrower alleys. Some car traffic was allowed, but not much. Ahead of us, through the crowd, I saw a tall, angular, gaunt man with a beard standing in the center of the street.
Juan Lopez Valdez.
We stopped.
Then I felt something hard touch my spine. I stole a glance over my shoulder and saw the two men from Palm Beach who’d try to steal the files. One behind me, the other Coleen, both with guns to our backs. I noticed that Coleen recognized them, too.
Both of our weapons were discreetly taken away.
Valdez beckoned with a friendly wave and we all four walked forward.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as we came close.
Strange question.
He pointed to a restaurant over his shoulder and said, “Shall we?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We entered the Columbia—which ironically featured Cuban cuisine. Pam and I had eaten there a couple of times.
“With what just happened,” Valdez said, “you both need to be off the street.”
“Your doing?” I asked.
He nodded. “A favor to Oliver. He’s not in the best of moods, particularly considering you managed to escape this morning. He decided a message needed to be sent. I was here. So he asked me to send it. But we do have a common interest.” He pointed at me and Coleen. “You two. Thankfully, Oliver learned of Agent Veddern’s presence, so we drove up.”
“Veddern was here to take Bruce Lael.”
Valdez nodded. “I know, and I would have shot them both if that had happened. But luckily, you two appeared, providing new opportunities.”
“Oliver’s got problems with his own people,” I said.
“Far overdue, if you ask me.”
We approached a hostess station and Valdez asked for a table for three. It was midafternoon, past lunchtime, but the place remained reasonably busy. The two guys behind us continued to stand close, keeping their weapons concealed within their shirttails. Making a move would endanger not only us but everyone around us, so I decided to sit tight. Looking back, I’ve always been amazed at my patience that day, especially considering my lack of experience and the threat level.
We were shown to a table on the second floor. Valdez instructed his two men to wait below and keep an eye on the exits. The restaurant’s interior cast a measured Spanish feel with colorful tiles in bright yellows and blues, a faux garden of a place where f
erns and potted palms accentuated the sense of being outdoors. The main dining room resembled an enclosed two-story patio-courtyard, complete with a working fountain at the center. A skylight high overhead added light and ambience. Our table was near the railing on the second floor overlooking the fountain.
“I must say,” Valdez noted, “I’ve never eaten here. But I have visited the Columbia in Tampa. Their version of Cuban cuisine is reasonably good.”
“What do you want?” Coleen asked.
“Such hostility,” he said. “You should be grateful. Outside is about to be crowded with police. A downed FBI agent is going to attract attention.”
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“I certainly hope so. That’s what Oliver wanted. It seems he and Veddern are not the best of friends.”
“Is Oliver always so reckless?” I asked.
“More desperate at the moment. He has a lot to keep contained. He thought it could be done in Stuart, but you both managed to get away. Was the confrontation at the dock your people trying to stop you?”
“More my people not keeping their end of a bargain.”
He chuckled. “That I can appreciate, amigo.”
Obviously, Stephanie Nelle had not seen Valdez.
“Murder is a serious crime,” Coleen stated.
“I agree. Which is why Oliver wanted me to deal with things. I would have handled it differently, but at the moment I have to please Oliver. We have a mutual problem.” He pointed at us. “You two. I’m hoping we can come to an understanding and end all this.”
A server approached and left menus, promising to be right back.
“I was electronically listening to your conversation in the plaza,” Valdez said. “You’ve both read the files and you, Lieutenant Malone, have my coin, so let’s have a meal and I’ll answer all questions for Senora Perry that Veddern avoided. The ones about your father. I don’t suffer from the same lack of knowledge that Veddern possessed. I was there in 1968. Then you will give me my coin and we can be done.”
The server returned.
“If you don’t mind,” Valdez said. “I’ll order for the table.”
