The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(58)

“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.

“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.”