The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(61)

“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.”