by Steve Berry
Valdez pointed to the green backpack, which Coleen cradled in her lap. “Those photographs are all I have left.”
“How’d you get your hands on that stuff?”
“Jansen was always sloppy. He trusted me far more than he ever should have. He and I were quite friendly back then.”
“Which you took full advantage of,” I asked.
“It’s my nature. I can’t help it. Jansen should have known that.” He pointed again at the backpack. “Of course, I don’t like being cheated.”
“You’ve gone a long way to make sure a bargain is a bargain,” I said. “You must really need money.”
“I am in short supply at the moment. I was thrilled to learn, when I called Reverend Foster, that he still had his coin.”
“How did Castro like the one you gave him?”
“He was quite pleased.”
“Lucky for you the FBI had one available.”
“That was one of those fortuitous things. Jansen was my handler and mentioned how they’d surreptitiously found two of the rarest coins in the world during one of their infamous break-ins. Since they were obtained illegally, Oliver opted to keep them. Returning them to the Treasury would have only raised questions. When I was asked to perform my services for Bishop’s Pawn, I named my price. One of the coins.”
“I don’t give a damn about any of that,” Coleen blurted out. “Just give him the coin. We have the files. And let him tell me about my father.”
“You and your father both said the coin was mine now,” I reminded her.
“Give him the damn coin.”
“You can’t be that naive?” I asked.
She seemed puzzled.
Then it hit her.
Oliver and Valdez had teamed in Palm Beach to kill us both out on the water. Sure, Valdez wanted his coin, but Oliver wanted the files. No matter what Valdez had just said, his job was to retrieve both.
“I’ll give him the files,” she made clear.
That I did not want to hear.
“When you called me,” Valdez said to Coleen, “I was direct. I mentioned the words Bishop’s Pawn and I told you a little about the FBI. I even advised you to stay away from them. Which, as it has turned out, was good advice. We made a deal. I honored my part.” He faced me. “I told you when we first met, Lieutenant Malone, that I may be the only person in this world you can actually trust. I meant that.”
“Yet I double-crossed you anyway.”
The server returned with water and bread for the table. I decided, what the hell, and enjoyed a few bites. I figured it was going to take a few minutes for the food to come, so why not learn what I could. The time would also give me a chance to decide how to handle Coleen’s shifting allegiances. I sat straight and strong in my chair, and tried to project an image of all business and gumption.
“I’ve had few opportunities to ever discuss this,” Valdez said. “I’m sure Senora Perry is anxious to know the truth.”
“I am.”
I wasn’t, given what her father wanted, so I asked, “Tell us about James Earl Ray.”
“Quite a personality. He so wanted to be important.”
“He got his wish.”
Valdez nodded. “That he did. He thought himself such a big man. Through the years, I’ve read several of the books Ray published while in prison. Quite the writer. I must say, though, the picture they paint is nothing like the man I knew. He wanted the world to think he was an innocent patsy, used by others.” He shook his head. “Ray was a sadistic racist, through and through. He hated blacks, especially ones who thought themselves important. He really hated King. He also had little regard for women. He wanted to be a pornographer. I gave him money to buy a lot of expensive cameras. When he was in Mexico he took many racy pictures of women. They were terrible. Disgusting. Overt. Obvious. Nothing about them sexy or provocative. That was Ray. Overt and obvious. It was easy to get him to do what I wanted.”
“Why was it necessary to kill King?” Coleen asked.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. Jansen passed the order on to me to have Ray do it. I assumed that came straight from Oliver and Hoover. No low-level field agent would have ever made that call. I simply did what they wanted.”
“You were the mysterious Raoul,” I said. “The one Ray ultimately blamed everything on?”
“It was the name I used with him.”
“So why didn’t Ray rat you out when he was arrested?”
“He did, once he realized they’d lied to him about everything. But by then no one cared. He was just a murderer trying to get out of prison, saying whatever he could in order to make that happen. Blaming whoever he could.”
“Was he that stupid?” I asked.
Valdez chuckled. “That and more. He was the perfect person to pull the trigger. He was capable of doing it. He wanted to do it. He relished doing it. And he loved the attention he received afterward. Ray was a career criminal. Prison was home to him. To live the rest of his life behind bars, while still being important? That was more than he could ever have hoped for as a free man. The amazing thing is that so many people listened to him in the years after.”
Coleen remained anxious. The files lying in her lap were important, but not nearly as important to her as her father.
She’d give them away in a heartbeat.
I was going to have to do something.
And fast.
So I discreetly assessed the local geography. Six tables surrounded us down our side of the second floor. Half were occupied. Below, the ground-floor dining room was crowded, nearly all of the tables busy. Servers moved about in all directions. A soft murmur of conversation filled the air. In the bottom left corner, on the ground floor, I spotted the kitchen entrance where trays of food came and went through a swinging door.
Okay. I had the lay of the land.
Only one question remained.
What to do next.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The whole thing seemed unreal.
I was sitting at a table in a restaurant with the man who arranged for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. Not a seed of doubt existed within me that Valdez was the real thing. A downed assistant director in the Plaza de la Constitución and a dead former FBI agent in Melbourne further proved that point.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why do you want this whole thing exposed to the world? It’s been thirty years. You surely realized that could happen when you traded those files for the coin.”
The leathery face broke out in a wiry grin. “Maybe it’s time the world knew the truth. Why not?”
“It implicates you in a conspiracy to commit murder.”
He shrugged. “Where? My name is never mentioned anywhere. Jansen always referred to me in his reports as the point of contact operative. Even if somehow I am implicated, I’ll be back in Cuba, far away from your justice system. I imagine Castro will be pleased to learn that the American government is not opposed to assassinations. My value to him will only increase. Hypocrisy has always been an American affliction. Have you ever heard of Operation Northwoods?”
I shook my head.
“It happened in 1962, after the Bay of Pigs. It called for the CIA to secretly sponsor acts of terror against the United States, then blame it on Cuba as justification for a war with Castro. The military loved the idea. So did the CIA. They were talking about bombings and hijackings. Many of your citizens would have died. President Kennedy rejected the idea, which was a smart move. I had already alerted Castro to what they were planning.”
“I can see why the CIA wasn’t happy with you.”
“It just proves that the United States does not own the moral high ground. It also shows that your government was paranoid and desperate, capable of anything. Even the murder of a civil rights leader.”
“It wasn’t our government. It was a few fanatics who misused their positions of power.”
I watched Valdez shift in his chair. Coleen, too. This was like trying to keep frogs on a whe
elbarrow. There wasn’t much I could do about Coleen, but I could tempt Valdez. I removed the plastic sleeve from my pocket and laid it on the table.
“It’s worth what?” I asked, pointing. “Eight million? Ten million?”
“At least,” Valdez said. “There are buyers out there willing to pay for the privilege of owning the last one known to exist outside a museum.”
“But you didn’t figure on Oliver still being in the picture, did you?” I asked.
“Stupid me assumed that time had rendered it all forgotten. Only a handful knew that Bishop’s Pawn even existed in the first place. I was told the FBI’s files on it were destroyed after Hoover’s death.”
“Which only upped the value of your stash of documents,” I pointed out.
Valdez nodded. “A fortunate occurrence.”
Unfortunate for him was our government’s newfound ability to listen in on international calls.
“Thank goodness Oliver is still negotiable,” I said.
Valdez chuckled. “More like out of options. I seem to be all he has to work with on matters like this.”
“Give him the coin, Malone,” Coleen said. “I don’t want to change the world. I don’t want to rewrite history. I just want to know what my father did to earn a 1933 Double Eagle.”
I caught sight of our server approaching from the far side of the second floor, toting an oval tray loaded with our lunch. She swung around and stopped to my right, flicking open a wooden stand upon which she gently balanced the tray. She was just about to start doling out the entrées when I pivoted off my chair, securing the coin within my clenched left fist, sweeping my right hand under the tray. I brought it up and over, depositing an assortment of hot Cuban food right onto Valdez.
He reeled back from my assault.
Coleen just sat there.
I slipped the coin into my pocket and grabbed the table with both hands, upending and sending it Valdez’s way, too, which shoved him and his chair down to the floor.
The server stood in shock.
“This guy has a gun,” I yelled. “Everyone run.”
I then stuck my head out over the second-floor railing and screamed, “There’s a guy up here with a gun. Get of here. Now. Hurry. Go.”
People both on the second floor and below contemplated my warning for a millisecond, then began to spring from their chairs and rush toward the exits. I was hoping the confusion would be enough to allow us to avoid the two men with guns below.
“We have to leave,” I said to Coleen.
“I’m staying.”
“We have to go. I’ll get you answers, but not here.”
Valdez was beginning to rouse from his predicament.
“You’re not getting this coin from me,” I made clear to her.
And she seemed to realize that would place her in dire jeopardy if she stayed.
She rose from the chair and we headed for the stairs.
Other patrons from the upper floor came with us, no one dawdling, everyone wanting nothing more than to flee the building.
At ground level it was chaos.
People rushed for the outside.
The two men with guns were nowhere to be seen.
I avoided the three main exits and turned right toward the kitchen door I’d noticed from above. The ground-floor dining room was nearly vacant. I glanced up to see Valdez still struggling to raise the heavy table off himself, the server helping. We passed through the swinging door and into the kitchen, where the panic had not quite taken hold. I decided to toss a little gasoline on the fire.
“There’s a guy out there with a gun,” I yelled.
The cooks and a few of the servers did not have to be told twice. They all headed for a door at the far side that, I hoped, led to daylight.
And it did.
We came out to the back of the building and a small parking lot. More of the old town’s narrow streets bordered the open space along with rows of clapboard houses. If we hurried we could disappear before Valdez, or his two men, realized where we’d gone.
We both saw the trolley at the same time.
One of those long, open-aired vehicles, orange and green and fashioned like a choo-choo train, it was intended for visitors who wanted to be driven around to the city sights. Its tail end had just passed the restaurant parking lot, heading away, down the street. We rushed ahead and leaped onto the last car, taking a seat. The driver fifty feet away was droning on about the historic sights we were passing. I glanced back and saw Valdez, standing in the street, his clothes stained by the food shower.
“Senora Perry,” he called out. “I never was able to say that your father sends his regards. I’ll be seeing him shortly.”
Valdez raised one of his fingers, as if to add some accusing emphasis to a seemingly casual remark. Coleen heard the words and I saw the concern in her eyes. We both got it. Valdez had Benjamin Foster. Which changed everything. I knew what she wanted us to do.
Go back.
“We can’t,” I said, motioning to the backpack. “If Oliver gets those files, they’ll never see the light of day.”
I’ve always been amazed how easily I made that decision considering what was at stake. In the years that followed I would make a zillion similar tough calls, some that even cost people their lives. Each one would be agonizing, but none would ever measure up to that first one.
“I get that,” she said. “I got it back in the restaurant. You go. Find out what you can. Keep the files and the coin. I’ll take my chances that these files are more important than I am. Oliver will surely want to deal.” She handed over the backpack and fished Nate’s cell phone from her pocket. “Hold on to this. You may need it.”
Then she hopped off the moving tram to the street.
I turned back to see her waiting on Valdez, who was marching toward her.
The trolley turned a corner.
Should I jump off, too? Go back and help her? No. The mission came first. All I could hope was that she was right and Valdez and Oliver would do nothing until they could obtain the files and the coin.
The tram kept moving, picking up speed.
I left it a few minutes later at a crowded intersection, slipping off to the sidewalk while the driver waited for the red light to change. I was back near the main plaza and I could see a litany of emergency vehicles, their lights flashing in the bright sun, still busy at the scene where Veddern had been shot.
I needed some privacy to assess my options.
I noticed a large Spanish Revival–style building not far away, identified as the Lightner Museum. Originally one of Henry Flagler’s flagship hotels, it once contained the world’s largest indoor pool. Now it was a massive antiquities museum housing an eclectic collection of 19th-century art and décor. Some people called it Florida’s Smithsonian.
I recalled what else was inside.
So I hustled around the building to its west side and followed the walkway to a side entrance. Through a dim, cool corridor I stepped into what was once the hotel’s indoor pool. Now it housed the Café Alcazar, which Pam and I had visited. White-clothed tables dotted the gray, weathered cement. Three stories of railed balconies rose above from where guests had once leaped down into the cold water. Now those floors were part of the museum. Only a few of the tables were occupied. A pianist played, the soft, tinny music echoing through the cavernous space. What made the spot appealing was that it was entirely inside, with no windows. I needed a few minutes in relative safety to catch my breath.
And to think.
Coleen had told me to keep going. That meant finding the person named on Bruce Lael’s pad.
I sat at one of the tables.
A server approached and, to buy time, I ordered a glass of iced tea.
I couldn’t call Stephanie Nelle. She probably wasn’t all that happy with me at the moment. This had escalated into something way beyond anything I’d ever imagined. My thoughts traced back over the last day and a half, which seemed like a lifetime. A man had just bee
n shot. Another man had been blown up. Now Coleen and her father were in jeopardy.
Everything seemed to depend on me.
I sat for a few minutes and tried to connect the dots, but my thoughts spun uselessly. Much later in my career I would learn to embrace the constant fear, unceasing tension, and unrelenting insecurity. That unsettling combination of nerves, alertness, and weariness. At this moment, though, I was only just becoming acquainted with their presence. What I knew for sure, even then, was that I could not afford any rebellion inside myself.
Nothing that might trap me in a dilemma.
Had these men conspired to kill Martin Luther King Jr.? Were the conspiratorialists right? Did the wrongdoing stretch all the way up to the director of the FBI? A new sense of vibrancy, mixed with unease and dread, swept through me.
I had to keep going forward.
But I needed transportation.
I could call Pam. Our house was less than an hour away. But I wondered what she’d think if she knew I’d been traveling across the state with a woman. Would she think me as weak as I’d once been? Would she take out her fears on me with caustic and damning comments? More hateful words? I was beginning to believe that relationships never lasted. Pam and I had been together ever since I joined the Navy. Neither one of us had dated many others. We chose each other. I’d resolved never to repeat my mistake. I’d learned something during my dalliance into adultery. I hadn’t liked anything about it, which probably explained how I was caught. I’d realized the mistake almost immediately, knowing that I loved my wife. So I’d ended things fast, but not before Pam learned what had happened. The old cliché was true. The spouse always knew.
No.
Pam was not an option here.
The server returned with my tea.
I sipped the cold liquid and tried to calm down. A wince of shame swept through me. I should have gone with Coleen. Maybe I should just turn this all over to Stephanie Nelle. Her resources far exceeded mine. But this was my operation. My chance to show that I could make things happen. I recall vividly how, on that day, my driving ambition seemed cloudy in its outlines, but precise in its parts. Was I being selfish? Probably. But what rookie wasn’t a little bit self-centered?
