The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(30)

I knew what he meant. “Where did the coin come from?”

“I stole it a long time ago.”

“That’s all he ever says,” Coleen said. “From what I’ve read it may be the last 1933 Double Eagle outside a museum. And my father stole it, then hid it in a drawer. Bullshit.”

Nate faced his father-in-law. “Why are you the only one allowed to know the truth?”

They all waited for more.

But Foster seemed off in another place.

“I was there,” he finally said. “None of you saw what I saw. Felt what I felt. When I rushed up those stairs to the balcony, it was like the world had come to an end.”

The hole in King’s right jaw was the size of a fist. Blood poured out in rapid spurts soaking both King’s clothes and the balcony’s concrete. He was still alive, but his breathing seemed labored. He tried to speak, but no words would form.

“It’s all right,” Abernathy told King. “Don’t worry. This is Ralph. Can you hear me? Are you in pain?”

No reply.

King’s skin had turned ashen and seemed clammy and cold. He stared off into the sky, seeing nothing, but perhaps everything. Andy Young and Jesse Jackson had finally rushed up the stairs, too. A Memphis policeman appeared with a towel, which he wrapped around the wound to try to check the bleeding.

Young pressed for a pulse and shook his head. “Ralph, it’s all over.”

“Don’t say that,” Abernathy screamed.

Someone brought out one of the hotel bedspreads and covered King. Not as a corpse, but still as a living being. Chaos exploded below. People appeared from their rooms, most crying, praying, and cursing. There were wails, pleas, and accusations. Firemen and helmeted police arrived with weapons drawn.

“Where did the shot come from?” one of the cops yelled up.

Those standing watch over their leader—Young, Abernathy, and the others—all pointed toward the northwest, across the street, past a bushy knoll, at a two-story, brick rooming house. A photographer below captured the moment as their index fingers extended outward.

A siren could finally be heard and an ambulance arrived.

By 6:15 King made it to the hospital.

Fourteen minutes had elapsed since the shooting. He was taken straight into an operating room, his clothing quickly cut away.

The massive wound was no longer bleeding.

“Me and Ralph,” Foster said, “watched as they tried to save him. But the whole side of his face was gone. They kept telling us to leave, but Ralph made it clear that we were staying. By now he didn’t trust anybody, especially white people.”

A thoracic surgeon, heart surgeon, pulmonary specialist, renal specialist, and several general surgeons came.

But the neurosurgeon made the call.

The bullet had damaged the jugular vein and windpipe, severing the spinal cord, then shattering into pieces when it ricocheted off the vertebrae, finally embedding in the left shoulder blade. A lot of important nerves had been irrevocably severed.

“He’s alive, but barely. It would be a blessing if he did go. The spine is cut and there is awful brain damage. He could only survive in a vegetative state. He’s permanently paralyzed from the neck down.”

A respirator kept forcing air into the lungs.

Monitors showed a weak heartbeat.

The doctors decided to try a cardiac massage and a shot of adrenaline. But neither had any effect. Finally, the monitors showed no heart function.

Abernathy walked to the table and cradled his old friend in his arms.

They’d been together a long time.

King’s inhales grew farther apart.

Then stopped.

At 7:05 p.m., sixty-four minutes after being shot, Martin Luther King Jr. died.

“We just stood there,” Foster said. “Ralph kept holding him. I bowed my head and prayed. But our dear friend, our leader, was gone.”

Foster seemed to be drifting, wandering, roaming through memories only he understood.

But I had a job to do.

“Do you know what Bishop’s Pawn means?” I asked.

He nodded. “The FBI bugged our cars, hotel rooms, telephones, even our homes. We knew they were listening, watching, making files. They never called us by our real names. They had code names for all of us. Andy, Ralph, Jesse, me. We learned about them much later, when those FBI reports became public. Martin’s code name was Bishop.”

“And Pawn?” Nate asked.

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

I might have been young and inexperienced as a field agent, but I knew a liar when I saw one.

He was good. I’d give him that.

But he was still a liar.





Chapter Nineteen


I allowed Foster the luxury of his lie.

At least for the moment.

“Lieutenant Malone,” Foster said. “I want to speak with my daughter and son-in-law in private. After that, I’ll speak with you again. I’m hungry. How about you go and get us all some food.”

A shower would also be welcome. Unfortunately, I had no change of clothes and still wore the saltwater-soaked shorts and Jaguars T-shirt that I’d donned this morning. My clothes and toiletries were back in my car on the dock at Key West. So why not? It didn’t really matter if these people vanished. I had the coin and the files. Mission accomplished.