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“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.
