The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone 13)

Valdez pointed to the green backpack, which Coleen cradled in her lap. “Those photographs are all I have left.”

“How’d you get your hands on that stuff?”

“Jansen was always sloppy. He trusted me far more than he ever should have. He and I were quite friendly back then.”

“Which you took full advantage of,” I asked.

“It’s my nature. I can’t help it. Jansen should have known that.” He pointed again at the backpack. “Of course, I don’t like being cheated.”

“You’ve gone a long way to make sure a bargain is a bargain,” I said. “You must really need money.”

“I am in short supply at the moment. I was thrilled to learn, when I called Reverend Foster, that he still had his coin.”

“How did Castro like the one you gave him?”

“He was quite pleased.”

“Lucky for you the FBI had one available.”

“That was one of those fortuitous things. Jansen was my handler and mentioned how they’d surreptitiously found two of the rarest coins in the world during one of their infamous break-ins. Since they were obtained illegally, Oliver opted to keep them. Returning them to the Treasury would have only raised questions. When I was asked to perform my services for Bishop’s Pawn, I named my price. One of the coins.”

“I don’t give a damn about any of that,” Coleen blurted out. “Just give him the coin. We have the files. And let him tell me about my father.”

“You and your father both said the coin was mine now,” I reminded her.

“Give him the damn coin.”

“You can’t be that naive?” I asked.

She seemed puzzled.

Then it hit her.

Oliver and Valdez had teamed in Palm Beach to kill us both out on the water. Sure, Valdez wanted his coin, but Oliver wanted the files. No matter what Valdez had just said, his job was to retrieve both.

“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.”

“I can see why the CIA wasn’t happy with you.”

“It just proves that the United States does not own the moral high ground. It also shows that your government was paranoid and desperate, capable of anything. Even the murder of a civil rights leader.”

“It wasn’t our government. It was a few fanatics who misused their positions of power.”

I watched Valdez shift in his chair. Coleen, too. This was like trying to keep frogs on a whe

elbarrow. There wasn’t much I could do about Coleen, but I could tempt Valdez. I removed the plastic sleeve from my pocket and laid it on the table.

“It’s worth what?” I asked, pointing. “Eight million? Ten million?”

“At least,” Valdez said. “There are buyers out there willing to pay for the privilege of owning the last one known to exist outside a museum.”

“But you didn’t figure on Oliver still being in the picture, did you?” I asked.

“Stupid me assumed that time had rendered it all forgotten. Only a handful knew that Bishop’s Pawn even existed in the first place. I was told the FBI’s files on it were destroyed after Hoover’s death.”

“Which only upped the value of your stash of documents,” I pointed out.

Valdez nodded. “A fortunate occurrence.”