The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(84)

“That was unusual.”

“To say the least. But he asked to speak with me.”

I waited for more.

“Oliver took me to Hoover’s house, in the middle of the night. What a strange place. Every room was packed with antiques. So many you could barely walk. There were rugs on the floor and throw rugs on top of the rugs, which I’ve always thought really odd. Everywhere there were photos, paintings, cartoons, etchings, even busts, all of Hoover. The house was a shrine to himself. And there I was, standing in the middle of it.”

The lawyer in me had to ask, “What did he want?”

“My assessment of Eric S. Galt or, as he knew him, James Earl Ray. This was about three months before the assassination, maybe late January 1968. I told him that Ray could do the job and, if needed, also take the blame.”

It was weird discussing this, but my job was to gather information. “Did he say why he wanted King dead?”

“He rambled on about communism, how King was involved with the Soviets, and how Moscow was trying to topple the American government. I listened to him, but it was all a lie. Something he told himself to rationalize what he was doing. He killed King because he could. He hated change and considered civil rights dangerous. He particularly hated, as he called them, ‘uppity Negroes who do not know their place.’ ”

“Did he personally order the kill?”

Valdez nodded. “I made him. I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I wanted him to say the words. If not, then he could find another way.”

“Was Oliver there?”

“Not in the room. Outside. Hoover and I spoke alone, which is the only way he would have made that admission. I spent an hour listening to his speeches. He liked to talk. But in the end, I only wanted to hear the words.”

I waited.

“He told me to kill the burrhead.”

I closed my eyes and shuddered at the implications. If not for the files I’d read, and hearing Oliver and Jansen and Bruce Lael’s tape, I might not have believed this psychopath.

But I knew he was telling the truth.

“He told me to make it happen, then make sure Ray died so his corpse could take the blame.”

“You do realize that you’re no better than he was.”

“Unlike the dead director, I’ve never pretended to be anything other than what I am.”

“There was no need to kill Nate Perry.”

“It seemed the only way to get your attention. Let’s be honest with each other, you had no intention of voluntarily giving us anything. You want to keep it all to show to your superiors.”

“Why not shoot me, instead of Nate?”

“Oliver would not have been happy. He wanted those files. And I needed Oliver’s help to get out of the country.” He paused. “But things have changed, haven’t they? That’s no longer possible, and you still have my coin.”

“Where are Coleen and her father?”

“My man found Foster here, waiting for you. I now have them both.”

“I’m taking you down.”

He chuckled and shifted his arm from the top of the bench to my shoulders. “Amigo, if I don’t return exactly ten minutes from now, both father and daughter will have a bullet placed in their heads.”

I heard sirens in the distance.

The local police were converging on a double murder scene at Disney World. That meant plenty of backup to take this man down.

But not in the next ten minutes.

I considered the threat level from his words and determined it to be high. Killing Nate had proven to me that Valdez was prepared to do anything. The number of people left to corroborate the tape I still possessed was dwindling. Lael was gone. Oliver and Jansen dead. That left two. Foster and the man sitting beside me. The one who set the killing up, and the other who made it happen.

“Nine minutes,” he said.

I didn’t move.

The gun still nestled at my spine was somewhat reassuring.

“A few years ago,” he softly said, “there was a man in Havana I was ordered to eliminate. Castro loves to kill people, too. I was paid a worthy amount and told to make sure that nothing linked back to the Dirección General de Inteligencia. But they wanted it to happen in public, the death noticed. Something to send a message. So one day I followed the man to the street market. He wandered through the booths, talked to vendors, and bought some fruits and vegetables. When he finished shopping, he turned down a small alley that connected one of the busier merchant streets to the next. I was waiting in a doorway. He strolled by, bags in both hands, and I slit his throat. One swipe with a knife. Quick, deep, silent. He drowned in his own blood right there on the cobbles.”

I glanced to my right.

In his now open palm rested a knife, closed for the moment, that had been there the whole time.

“You see, I could have already killed you.”

His eyes were bitter with an almost unsensing animal gaze. He had the look of a thug, pure and simple. We sat at the far end of the covered porch, all of the other benches to our left, so no one could see the knife, that hand toward the outer railing.

“Seven minutes,” he said. “I was quite serious about that time, and my man will not disobey my order. He knows the price to be paid for that.”

I stood. “Let’s go.”