“Is that why you made the deal to trade for the coin?”
“I didn’t make that deal, Lieutenant Malone. Valdez contacted me and asked for a trade. I refused.”
“Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “Never met the man. But he knew me, or enough about me that I listened to what he had to say. I was shocked he even knew I had the coin. I didn’t realize that Coleen had listened in on my conversation. She went behind me and learned Valdez’s phone number. She then made contact and made the deal on her own.”
Things were beginning to make more sense.
“My daughter and I have discussed many things about my past of late. She’s thirty years old and curious. I’ve never talked much about the old days. But apparently I’ve said enough to drive her curiosity.” He paused. “She found my hiding place for the coin. More of that police officer in her coming out, I suppose.”
I could see he was troubled by her initiative.
“Those files were better off in Cuba,” he said. “Where they’ve been for the past thirty years.” He paused. “I honestly never thought I would be addressing this issue again.”
“The death of Martin Luther King Jr.?”
He tossed me a curious glance. “What else did Coleen tell you?”
“Precious little. We saw a name. Bishop’s Pawn. She told me that Valdez mentioned it might deal with the assassination.”
A look of concern filled Foster’s face. “You said the files were not read.”
“That’s all we saw. Those two words. Then we had to leave.”
“Did she say anything else about Valdez?”
I realized he’d brought me here to learn what he could, so I shook my head and turned the tables. “Did you know King?”
He nodded. “I traveled at his side for nearly five years. I was a young man, just out of the seminary, assigned to my first church in Dallas. Martin came to my home one evening and tried to recruit me for the movement. I told him no, that wasn’t for me. The next day I heard him preach. He spoke for an hour, chastising the black middle class for refusing to fight for its own race. His words were powerful. They hit home. I decided he was right. So I became a disciple and stayed by his side until Memphis.”
The extent of what this man had witnessed compelled me to ask, “What was he like?”
He smiled. “Fiery, with an ego. Like most of us, he craved recognition, adulation, respect. More than anything, he wanted people to listen to him. And they did.” Concern again filled the older man’s face. “Now you tell me, what precisely is your involvement here?”
“I was sent to retrieve that case from the wreck, thinking only the coin was inside. But then things took a 180-degree turn. I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here now.”
“Who sent you?”
I decided to be honest. “A woman named Stephanie Nelle, who works for the Justice Department.”
“I know Jim Jansen,” he muttered. “He’s a terrible man.”
Foster drifted away, his gaze out over the graves, as if he was seeking their guidance. I left him to his thoughts.
“People know little to nothing about what really happened in Memphis,” he finally said. “There were only a few of us there, at the Lorraine Motel, that evening. None of us saw the moment when the bullet hit. There’s no Zapruder film memorializing Martin’s murder. It lives only in the tattered memories of those of us who were there.”
“Which might explain why your daughter is so curious.”
“I’m sure it does. There are many books on the subject. Nearly all of them written by conspiratorialists, who know nothing of the truth. No Warren Report was ever prepared on Martin’s death. A congressional investigation came decades after the fact, and resolved nothing. They found no evidence of any conspiracy. Instead, they concluded that Martin was killed by a lone gunman. The killer caught. He confessed, pled guilty, and was sentenced to life. And that’s what he served, dying in prison just a couple of years ago. Case closed.”
I was intrigued, and asked the only thing I could.
“So what really happened?”
Chapter Sixteen
April 4, 1968, loomed cool and cloudy in Memphis. On the city’s industrial south side, the Lorraine Motel, a local fixture, sat quiet among former cotton lofts and old brick warehouses, five blocks south of Beale Street, not far from the Mississippi River.
On that day Room 306, which oddly was situated on the second floor, was occupied by Martin Luther King Jr. and his closest friend in the world, Ralph Abernathy. The Lorraine was their favorite Memphis hangout. It was black-owned and family-operated, hosting the likes of Count Basie, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and Louis Armstrong. A room came for $13 a night, but not for King. The owners never charged him. In fact, King and Abernathy had stayed in Room 306 so much that it had acquired the label of the King-Abernathy suite. But the room wasn’t all that much. Just a simple, wood-paneled rectangle with twin beds, a TV, some contemporary furniture, and a phone.
Memphis was turning into a national problem.
Two black, union garbage workers had died in a tragic on-the-job accident after being forced to work in bad weather. Those deaths triggered a citywide strike that quickly escalated into a race struggle, since all of the sanitation workers were black. King came to town on March 28 and spoke to 15,000 people at a union rally. He then led a march downtown that quickly turned violent, shocking him. It also called into question his leadership. He was deep into planning a massive Poor People’s March on Washington, DC, for the summer of 1969, and the media began to wonder about the wisdom of such a huge demonstration. To prove that he could lead a peaceful gathering, King had returned to Memphis.
April 4 was hectic.
A second march down Beale Street was being planned, but the city of Memphis had gone to court and obtained an injunction halting any further demonstrations for the next ten days. That was usually not a problem. King had ignored injunctions before, considering the state judges who issued them just part of the problem he’d come to combat.
But this one had come from a federal court.
A first.
Dodging it demanded far more finesse, since federal judges were among the few consistent allies the civil rights movement possessed.
All afternoon on the fourth King had seemed distracted, not as focused as in days past. Most attributed it to a head cold he’d contracted. But anxiety also hung in the air over what was happening in federal court, as the lawyers were trying to overturn the injunction. A little after 6:00 p.m. King and his entourage were scheduled to have dinner at a local minister’s home. A feast of roast beef, candied yams, pigs’ feet, neck bones, chitlins, and turnip greens. Soul food. All King’s favorites.
And that time was fast approaching.
At 5:00 p.m. one of King’s chief lieutenants, Andrew Young, arrived in Room 306 with good news. The federal judge had modified the injunction to allow for a limited demonstration on April 8, four days hence. There were conditions, but none oppressive, and the news immediately put King in a much better mood.
He retired to the bathroom to shave and ready himself for dinner.
At fifteen minutes before six o’clock, after dressing in a clean shirt and tie, he left the room and walked out onto the balcony.
I listened to Foster as he told me about the day Martin Luther King Jr. died. This was not some secondary account from a book, the words filtered years later by an author.
“I was there,” he said. “At the Lorraine, with Martin and the rest of the fellows. Abernathy, Young, Jesse Jackson. We were all so bright-eyed and idealistic.”
“What did you do for King?”
“I worked for the SCLC. We all did back then.”