Every time Malcolm left the house, she agonized that he would not return. On January 28 he flew to Los Angeles to meet with attorney Gladys Towles Root and the two secretaries involved in the paternity suit against Elijah Muhammad. His cousin Hakim Jamal and his friend Edmund Bradley arrived at the gate about an hour before his plane was scheduled to land. While they waited for TWA Flight 9, Jamal noticed a heavyset black man with a familiar face. At first, Jamal was certain that he had seen the man at the Nation’s meetings, but when the stranger bought a pack of cigarettes he began doubting whether he was truly a Muslim. Later, after Malcolm checked into the Statler Hilton Hotel, Jamal saw the man from the airport again. Walking through the lobby, Malcolm noticed Minister John Shabazz, Captain Edward, and a half dozen other men from Mosque No. 27. Spotting Malcolm, no one from the Fruit moved. “They absolutely froze,” Jamal recalled. When they hesitated, Malcolm and his hosts slipped out of the hotel and drove away.14
How could the Fruit have known when Malcolm would be in Los Angeles and where he was staying? “An official must be in town—someone from Chicago,” Malcolm surmised. “There were a lot them [in the lobby]. . . . I wonder if it could be Raymond [Sharrieff] or John Ali?” When he mentioned John’s name, Jamal immediately realized that he was “the brother at the airport—the cat who was buying the cigarettes.”15
Malcolm was right; John Ali was in town. But there was no way, he thought, that Ali and the Black Muslims had the resources to track him from New York to Los Angeles. He knew their operations too well. Besides his wife, cousin, two aides, the two secretaries, and their attorney, no one knew about his flight to Los Angeles. Only the FBI could have known that he would be in California—and they did. About two weeks earlier, an informant had notified special agents that Malcolm planned to visit Los Angeles. Somehow that information fell into the hands of John Ali.16
It was Malcolm’s belief that John Ali had turned FBI informant. Nor was he the only one. Journalist Louis Lomax also suspected that Ali was working for the FBI. In 1963, when he published When the Word Is Given, a study of the rise of the Nation of Islam, Lomax referred to Ali as “a former FBI agent.” According to FBI documents, Lomax’s book threatened the anonymity of a highly placed informant inside the Nation. In a series of memos, FBI officials considered telling Lomax about Ali’s “true status,” though it’s unclear if the Bureau ever approached Lomax about Ali. Nonetheless, Malcolm was convinced that the Muslims had a chain of informants working with the FBI and that the Bureau’s agents gave the Black Muslims his itinerary.17
After his meeting with Gladys Root and the two secretaries, Malcolm returned to the Statler Hilton. Surrounded by the Fruit’s soldiers, he darted through the lobby, their angry stares piercing his body like daggers. He safely made it to his suite, but he hardly slept. His phone rang constantly throughout the night. One caller in particular rattled him. “You are dead,” an unfamiliar voice whispered. “You are a dead nigger.”18
Malcolm dreaded leaving the hotel in the morning, knowing that the Fruit was camped outside. Holed up in his room, he waited for sunrise like a prisoner on death row. Around nine thirty a.m. Edmund Bradley arrived to take him to the airport. Driving down the Hollywood Freeway, two cars chased them. Accelerating to seventy miles per hour, Bradley zigzagged through traffic, shaking one of the pursuing vehicles. When the other car inched closer, Malcolm reached into the backseat and pulled out an old walking cane. Aiming it like a rifle, he pointed the cane out the window, scaring the other driver enough to hit the brakes, allowing Bradley to race away.19
Eventually, after the Los Angeles police intercepted two more Muslim men at the airport, Malcolm boarded TWA Flight 26 for Chicago. For three days, the Chicago police guarded him. Somehow, he orchestrated a surreptitious meeting with Wallace Muhammad. Malcolm told Elijah’s son that he had also met with the Illinois attorney general’s office, offering his testimony in a case involving a Black Muslim prisoner who was suing the state for denying him the right to practice Islam behind bars. In exchange for protection, Malcolm had said that he would testify that the Nation of Islam was not a legitimate religious group and therefore Black Muslim ministers should not receive access to state prisons. More importantly, if he testified, he could cost the Nation its tax-exempt status and, potentially, millions of dollars.20
On Saturday, January 30, Malcolm taped a television interview with Chicago Sun-Times columnist and popular television personality Irv Kupcinet. Noticing that he had arrived under heavy police detail and with personal bodyguards, Kupcinet asked if his life was in danger. “They are trying to kill me,” Malcolm said. “Who?” the writer asked. “You know who,” he answered vaguely.21