The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone 13)

“We need to get out of here,” she said.

She didn’t have to tell me twice.

I slammed the lid shut and snapped the latches in place. With the case in hand, we rushed around to the front yard. The house was set back from the highway, among trees at the water’s edge. A detached garage stood off to the side. Coleen ran toward a window in the garage’s side wall and gazed inside.

“There’s a pickup truck.”

“Do it.”

She smashed the window, opened the sash, and climbed inside. A moment later the garage door rose and I saw an old Chevy. I ran to the driver’s door and opened it, sliding the case across the front bench seat. Coleen climbed in on the passenger side. I knew what had to be done, so I reached beneath the steering column and found the ignition wires. This truck was plenty old enough that it could be hot-wired. I’d learned, as a kid, working on my grandfather’s onion farm, how to get a truck going out in the middle of nowhere. I located the three wires, tore them from their connectors, and found the two that triggered the starter.

The engine coughed to life.

I twisted them together, slammed the door closed, and settled in behind the wheel. Perhaps somebody had noticed our arrival and sent a welcoming committee, none of whom I wanted to meet. I backed the truck from the garage and we sped away. The house and the trees blocked our exit from the lake side, but the chopper was still a long way off. The sirens seemed closer but we managed to find the highway and head north without spotting anyone. I decided to slow my speed so as not to attract attention, as it was unclear from which direction the sirens were approaching.

But we passed no police cars.

I kept driving north.

* * *

I stopped the truck in a Dairy Queen parking lot, nestled safe among other vehicles.

“Coleen,” I said to her. “I’m not your enemy.”

“You saving my hide at Fort Jefferson doesn’t make you my friend, either.”

“But it ought to buy me something.”

She smiled.

For the first time.

“You said you’re a lawyer. Have you been one long?” she asked.

“About six years. I’ve only been a Justice Department agent, though, since yesterday.”

“Why do you think this guy Jansen wanted you dead?”

“I don’t know. But I intend to find out.”

Then a thought occurred to me. “They’ll know we used the phone in that house. Your call can be traced.”

“I didn’t make one,” she said.

“I heard you.”

“All show, just for you. I planned to take you down outside, then leave with the files. I was just about to do that with a smack to the back of your head when we heard the sirens.”

I stared back out the windshield. “Once again, what is Bishop’s Pawn?”

I’d sensed back at the house that the words were not unfamiliar to her.

“It was a classified FBI operation that ran from mid-1967 to the spring of 1968.”

“How do you know that?”

“My father told me. It was part of COINTELPRO.”

That acronym rang a bell.

Reading was my passion. I devoured books and, thanks to my eidetic memory, I never forgot a word. J. Edgar Hoover had always been a fascination. Lauded as a saint and savior in life, since his death in 1972 we’d come to learn that he was neither. His legal abuses had become legendary, COINTELPRO perhaps the pinnacle of FBI corruption.

The Counter Intelligence Program started in the 1950s to combat a supposed communist threat within the United States. But it morphed into something far more ugly, eventually infiltrating a variety of political groups. The Socialist Workers Party, KKK, Nation of Islam, and Black Panthers all were targeted. But so were more benign groups like the Puerto Rican independence movement, feminist organizations, and anything that advocated left-of-center positions, especially antiwar protesters. Its goal? To expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize any threat. To accomplish that it routinely relied on burglaries, opening people’s mail, forged documents, having people fired from their jobs, planting fake news articles, even encouraging violence between rivals. It wasn’t until 1971 that it was finally exposed, thanks to a group of citizens who burglarized an FBI field office in Pennsylvania, stealing every file and sending them to journalists. That led to a congressional investigation—the famed Church Committee, named for its chairman, Senator Frank Church—which officially identified all of the abuses.

Another siren could be heard, approaching from the south. A moment later a Martin County Sheriff’s car raced by on the highway, lights flashing.

“I really do have family here, on the lake,” she told me.

“We’re not going to be able to get far in this truck,” I pointed out. “If they’re looking for us, which we don’t know for sure, it won’t take them long to find the owners of that house and learn what kind of vehicle they kept in the garage.”

“Good thing we don’t have to go far.”

I fired the engine back up.

“Do you have any idea what kind of operation was part of Bishop’s Pawn?”

She stared across the truck’s bench seat, and for the first time I saw pain in her eyes.

“I think it might involve the death of Martin Luther King Jr.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

We drove farther north on U.S. 441 around Lake Okeechobee.

Her comment was troubling. I tried to learn more but all she’d offer was that Valdez had mentioned to her during their calls that Bishop’s Pawn also concerned the King assassination.

“I was hoping to learn more today when I met with him,” she told me.

Which explained all the questions about Valdez back on Loggerhead.

We rode for a while in silence. Finally, she directed me off the highway, down a dirt lane to another house set among a necklace of live oaks, cypresses, and palms. This one was rambling, wood-sided, and ranch-style, fronting the shore. A dark-colored Toyota coupe was parked off to the side. I had a million questions and I desperately wanted to read the files in the waterproof case, but I opted for patience, deciding that ears open and mouth shut might bring me answers faster.

I figured we were about five miles away from where I had landed the plane. Too close for me, but I doubted anyone would be looking here. Why would they? Unless they could connect whoever owned this house to Coleen. What I needed was a phone. Pam owned a cell phone, but I hadn’t moved in that direction. Not yet, anyway. People being able to find me wherever I might be wasn’t appealing. When I left the base I didn’t particularly want to be found. But this new gig with Justice seemed tailor-made for more instant communication. Trouble was, the phone Pam owned only worked here and there. Lots of dead zones in and around Jacksonville.

And the things weren’t cheap.

The front door to the house opened and an older black man emerged. He was dressed in a neat, single-breasted suit that accentuated his thin frame. His face was handsome and fleshed out, dark hair fading to gray at the edges. But his eyes, a firm coal black, radiated unquestioned authority.

“Who is he?” I asked.

She did not look pleased.

“My father.”

* * *

I learned that the weekend house belonged to Coleen’s in-laws. Her husband was a lawyer who worked with an Orlando firm. I was a little surprised about the marriage, as she wore no wedding ring. Her father—the Reverend Benjamin Foster—seemed reserved, as he’d said only a handful of words since we arrived. She was

clearly annoyed by his presence.

“I told you to leave this alone,” Foster said to her.

“You have no right to ask that,” Coleen shot back, her voice rising.

“I have every right.” His tone was not much above a whisper. “This is not your concern. I told you that, more than once.”

“It is my concern. I want to know what happened.”

“I told you what happened.”

She glared at him. “No. You told me what you wanted me to know.”

“You went to meet Valdez?” her father asked.

She looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

“Tell me everything that happened,” he asked, ignoring her question.

She shook her head.

He faced me. “Will you tell me?”

Why not.

I introduced myself and explained my Justice Department connection. The older man listened to my story without saying a word. I could see that Coleen did not appreciate my frankness. When I finished, he said to her, “You will stay here. I have to speak with this gentleman in private.”

Coleen started to argue, but he raised a hand. “You don’t want to try my patience any more than you already have.”

She nodded, seemingly surrendering to his parental will.

The older man pointed at the waterproof case.

“Bring that with us.”

* * *

We left the house in Foster’s Toyota with him driving. The case with the files rested in the trunk. We headed south down the highway to Port Mayaca, where U.S. 441 intersected with State Road 76. Foster turned onto 76, paralleling one of several human-made canals that drained into the lake, and drove a few miles east to a cemetery. He turned off the highway, through an open gate, and parked the car. The land was spacious and tranquil. Tall palms and bushy trees dotted the well-kept grass. No funeral was in progress and no one was around.

We stepped from the car.

A leafy scent filled the warm moist air.