“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.
“I used to come here when I was troubled,” Foster said. “But I haven’t been in a long time.”
“Does that mean you haven’t been troubled?”
“Quite the contrary. Of late, that seems all I’ve been.”
He’d brought me here for a reason, so I decided to allow him the luxury of coming to the point when he was ready.
“Do you know about the 1928 hurricane?” he asked me.
“I’m not from Florida. I’m a Georgia boy. Born and bred.”
“The storm came on September 16, a Category 4 with 140-mile-per-hour winds. It hit the lake and destroyed a levee, which flooded all of the surrounding low-lying communities with twenty feet of water. Can you imagine? Twenty feet underwater. This place was totally segregated in those days. The east shore was for whites, the south and west, nearer the Everglades, for blacks. Most of the dead were black, migrant farmworkers who lived in those low-lying western communities. Over three thousand died.” He paused for a moment. “That was a horrible thing. But what happened after was much worse.”
I wondered how that could be.
“It was warm weather, so the bodies began to decompose in the swamps. The whites forced the black survivors to recover those bodies. The ones who worked were fed, the others either starved or were shot. Coffins were scarce, so only the bodies of white victims were allowed to be buried in the cemeteries. The black victims were piled on the side of the roads, doused with fuel, and burned. The local white authorities bulldozed 674 black victims into a mass grave in West Palm Beach. That grave was never marked. The site was later sold and used as a garbage dump, a slaughterhouse, and a sewage treatment plant. Only recently has it been repurchased and the sacred ground protected. I helped make that happen.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Here, in this cemetery, is another mass grave of those black migrant workers.”
He led me across the cemetery to a stone marker.
IN MEMORIAM
TO THE 1600 PIONEERS IN THIS MASS BURIAL
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE 1928 HURRICANE
SO THAT THE GLADES MIGHT BE AS WE KNOW IT TODAY
“Here they rest, a testament to another time. But I wonder, Lieutenant Malone, have things changed all that much?”
“Of course they have,” I said.
“Do you believe that?”
“Your in-laws live on the east shore now.”
“And how do you know they’re not white?”
“If that’s the case, then things really have changed.”
He grinned. “Perhaps you’re right. A travesty such as what happened in 1928 would not happen today. At least not in the same way. Society has learned to be—less obvious—with its prejudice.”
I didn’t want to touch that one, and he went silent for a few moments.
“I appreciate you helping my daughter escape from Fort Jefferson,” he said to me. “She is too impetuous for her own good.”
I found the Double Eagle in my pocket and handed it to him. “She said this is yours.”
“Please, you keep it.”
“It belongs to you.”
He shook his head. “It belongs to the devil.”
That was a weird observation, but I respected his wishes and repocketed the coin.
At least I’d offered.
“Did my daughter read any of the files in that case?”
I shook my head. “We never had the chance.”
“That’s good. I want them destroyed.”