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“I really don’t. But I’ve read an old FBI intelligence assessment that speculates about what might be there. Juan Lopez Valdez is a former asset of both the FBI and the CIA. He may even still do some work for the CIA. I don’t know. Officially, he’s attached to the Cuban secret police, but he’s a man for hire, with no loyalties other than to himself. There are people here who want to know why, besides the coin, he chose to contact Foster. And those files could provide the answer.”
“They do.”
“You’ve read them?”
“Enough to know this is not going on 60 Minutes. This gets its own one-hour, prime-time special report.”
“Cotton, listen to me. You’ve been doing this for all of one day. You’ve done a great job. I really appreciate the effort. But let me handle this from here on.”
“You’ve yet to say a word to me about you talking to Benjamin Foster.”
Silence reigned for a few moments.
“It wasn’t necessary for you to know that. But I had to judge the man for myself.”
“He set me up to take the fall with Jansen and Oliver. He wanted them to take the files. He was able to do that, thanks to you.”
More silence.
“You wanted me out here because you said you liked the fact that I didn’t play well with others and I improvised. It’s bad enough that you gave me half the story, which led me into a trap. So how about you let me do this my way now.”
“And you’re not going to tell me a thing?”
“Let me play this out. If it leads nowhere, I’ll bail and turn it all over to you.”
This was the beginning of a pattern that would mark our relationship for many years to come. Sure, it was flawed, but we came to accept that rarely did either of us tell the other everything. My working relationship with Stephanie Nelle ran smooth but never straight. It also delivered results because we both possessed an iron purpose, and we were good at what we did.
“What do you want me to do about Tom Oliver?” she asked. “My inclination is to arrest him.”
“Leave him be. Give ’em a long leash.”
“And if that leads straight to you?”
The prospect of that was not encouraging, but I knew the correct answer to her question. “I’ll handle it.”
She didn’t like the situation, but finally agreed to my conditions.
“One day,” she told me. “That’s all I’ll give you.”
“Fair enough.”
“Keep in touch.”
I ended the call.
I stood for a moment and listened to the noise emerging from the restaurant where I’d left Coleen. The tinkle of laughter, the clink of glasses, the dozens of meshed conversations. Streetlamps pushed weak yellow light down over the black asphalt. I debated whether to make the next call, but decided it was the right thing to do.
I dialed my house.
Pam answered.
“I wanted to let you know I’m still okay,” I said to her.
“You sound tired.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Where are you?”
Stephanie had instructed me that no one was to know my mission or my whereabouts. “You know I can’t say.”
“How convenient. Too bad you didn’t have that excuse before.”
I closed my eyes and bit my tongue. I’d become accustomed to her not-so-subtle reminders of my infidelity. “I assure you, I’m on the job and it hasn’t been fun.”
“And what you did before was fun?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I called to tell you I’m okay and that I love you.”
“Both are always nice to hear. When will you be home?”
Never did she return those three words. Not once since all that had happened had she uttered them to me. More of my punishment. “I don’t know. But I’ll try to keep in touch.”
“Are you lying to me, Cotton? Again?”
Looking back, it was foolish to think that I could ever make amends. When you’re barely thirty, cocksure of everything, you tend to think that all can be made right.
But it can’t.
“I’m not lying to you, Pam. I’m working. Something important and hush-hush. You’re going to have to understand.”
“I understand, Cotton. I understand perfectly.”
And a click signaled she was gone.
I hung up the phone.
That call had been a bad mistake.
* * *
I returned to the restaurant where Coleen had ordered a seafood feast. I laid the waterproof case on the booth’s bench and slid in beside it, opposite her. Sure, I was here with a woman, but this was anything but sexual.
“Check-in with your parents? Let them know you won’t make curfew?”
“I do have a boss. And she’s not happy with all this.”
She held up her cell phone. “I tried Nate. No signal. These things are worthless.”
I chuckled. “Exactly why I don’t own one.”
We dug into the shrimp, fish, and oysters. I had a few hundred dollars and the credit card Stephanie had provided, on a Justice Department–secured account she’d told me. I shouldn’t be hesitant to use it. No way anyone could track its use. Only her, she’d said. Which didn’t provide me with any great measure of comfort.
“I’ve been thinking about what we read,” Coleen said. “Those reports confirm the common knowledge of Ray’s whereabouts before the assassination. He did go to Alabama, then Mexico, ending up in L.A. in the fall of 1967.”
“Which may not be meaningful,” I said. “The King assassination has been investigated to death by everybody and their brother. Those documents could have been tailored to the facts, not the other way around.”
“There’s something you don’t know.”
Those were five words no lawyer ever wanted to hear. They always spelled disaster with a capital D.
“My father told me some things a few weeks ago. Things he’s never spoken of before. I suspect that my mother might have known bits and pieces, but she never said a word. That was her way. Sadly, she died years ago. I’d basically given up hope that my father would ever open up. But finally, just recently, he talked to me about Martin Luther King Jr.”
I munched on a piece of fish and waited for her to explain.
“He told me about COINTELPRO and the FBI surveillance of King and everyone around him.”
Which Foster had mentioned to me, too.
“He also told me that there were spies within the SCLC. Paid informants who ratted King out to the FBI.”
I was curious. “How did he know that?”
“It was his job to find them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I kept eating the fish while also digesting what she was telling me.
“I’ve read many books,” she said, “on Hoover, the FBI, and King. It’s something Nate and I have in common.”
“And the fact your father was there made it even more interesting.”
She smiled, as a proud daughter should. “It was a thrill to see his name in those books. He was even mentioned in declassified FBI reports. A lot of those are now public record. It’s amazing how much Hoover hated King. He called him the burrhead.” She shook her head. “The sad part is that King, in many ways, made it easy for Hoover. He had a weakness for women. My father told me all about it.”
I listened as she explained how King had possessed a string of mistresses across the country, in town after town. The FBI first learned about it from a DC party that happened at the Willard Hotel, in January 1964. Nineteen reels of tape revealed how King liked to use raunchy language, that he smoked, drank, and told off-color jokes. More tapes from other hotels revealed more of the same, including the affairs themselves.
“Hoover believed that King’s moral lapses could be used to discredit him,” she said. “Not only in the eyes of his hardcore, black supporters, but whites, too. He wanted to release transcripts of the tapes, but LBJ said no. And even the great J. Edgar Hoover
had to think twice before defying the president of the United States. But he did defy him. Instead of leaking the tapes, in December 1964 he had an anonymous package mailed to King’s home that contained some of the worst sexual recordings along with a typewritten note.”
That note would later come to light during all of the FBI abuse hearings. A shocking narrative that the FBI itself had to officially acknowledge had been sent.
King, look into your heart. You are a clergyman and you know it. You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader. But you are done. Your honorary degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce), and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat, you are done. The American public will know you for what you are, an evil, abnormal beast. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
The package was opened by Coretta King, who was not happy about the revelations. The incident definitely placed a strain on the marriage. And was there a suggestion of suicide? Or was the but one way simply to have King step down from any leadership in the civil rights movement?
Historians continue to debate that point.
“The ploy had the opposite effect,” she said. “Coretta King would not allow the FBI to intimidate her. Nor would she allow her husband to be silenced. No matter what he might have done to hurt her. My father was there. He told me what happened. Coretta displayed a remarkable patience. It’s incredible to think that the FBI would do what it did, but it illustrates how much Hoover hated King.”
I thought I would see if she knew what Foster had been unwilling to tell me. “Did your father ever mention a man named Jim Jansen?”
She shook her head. “That was the name on the memos we read.”
“He’s also the guy who tried to blow me up and shot at us when we left Fort Jefferson in that floatplane.”
I could see the revelation surprised her.
“My father never mentioned the name. He told me, though, that people in the SCLC were concerned about King’s infidelity. Its revelation would have hurt the movement. King tried to justify it by his travel schedule. The loneliness of being on the road. He told my father that he was away from home twenty-five days a month. Women were his form of anxiety reduction.”
