Foster switched off the machine for the last time.
He and I both were visibly wrestling with emotion.
“In the last year of his life Martin experienced a difficult erosion of faith. That halo of abundant confidence, which early success generates in the young and rash, had disappeared. He was approaching forty years old and viewed life with a frantic urgency. I heard Coretta talking to Ralph Abernathy, about a month before Memphis. Even she noticed a change, she said it was like fate was closing in on him.”
Hard to hide much from your wife.
Which I should know.
“He told me that people tended to memorialize the dead, and he was right. His death gave an extra meaning to all the others who’d died before him for the cause. None of them were ever forgotten.”
What I should do next was no longer clear. I’d come here intending to tell him that everything would have to be revealed. Coleen was gone. No reason existed to keep this secret, except perhaps to keep Foster from jail. But with this new revelation everything had changed. This wasn’t a murder. It had been an elaborate suicide, staged to look like a murder.
“King seemed to have thought it all through,” I said.
“That was his gift. He had a vision. He’d been the producer, director, and costar in many civil rights performances. Marches, demonstrations, rallies, freedom rides, protests, sit-ins, speeches, eulogies. He organized them with expert precision. Nothing happened by chance. His last production, his greatest production, was his own death.”
Foster reached beneath his jacket and brought out a .38 revolver, which he laid on the table.
I pointed at the weapon. “Is that for you or me?”
“Maybe me. I don’t know yet.”
He hadn’t asked me any of the details about what occurred with Jansen, Oliver, and Valdez. I doubted he knew much of what had happened with me and Coleen until we made it to St. Augustine and she surrendered herself.
“Coleen willingly went with Valdez to protect you,” I said. “She wanted you to be safe. Now you plan to shoot yourself?”
He shrugged. “I’m tired of living with other people’s deaths on my conscience. I’m tired of staying silent. I’m just plain tired all the way around.”
No question. This guy had turned the practice of playing both sides against the middle into an art form. And I suddenly realized that the roles had reversed. I was him, to him being King. One would die, the other would keep the secret.
Or would I?
He rewound the tape until one spool was empty, then removed the reel.
“Take this.”
He handed the tape over to me.
“You have everything else, you’ll need this, too. It’s your decision on what to do. I pass the duty on to you. Now get out of here, Lieutenant, and let me die in peace.”
Present Day
Epilogue
I stand inside the King family home and stare across the dim hallway at Benjamin Foster. I’ve finished talking about what happened eighteen years ago. I point to the gun at his waist. “Why didn’t you pull the trigger back then?”
“Why haven’t you told the world what you knew?”
“When I didn’t hear about your death, I drove back to Orlando. I was told you resigned as pastor and left town. Where did you go?”
“California, Arizona, Mexico. You haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you tell?”
“I decided to honor King’s wish and keep silent, until fifty years had passed.”
Foster motions to the side table. “I see the cassette and the tape reels. What’s on the flash drive?”
“The photos from Valdez’s files started to turn. Photography in the ’60s wasn’t what it is today. Before they completely disappeared, I transferred everything to digital. They’re on that flash drive.”
“It’s not the same.”
I shrug. “It’s all we’ve got. The originals faded away.”
“Like my life. I still miss Coleen every day.”
I, too, often think of her and Nate. Both died for the cause. Two more casualties in a social revolution that started in April 1865 and continues to this day.
“I eventually came back home to Florida,” Foster says. “My church was quite understanding. They hired me back. I’ve stayed with them ever since.”
“My life also changed. When you vanished, Stephanie Nelle wanted me to find you. But I told her to let it go. I convinced her that the files were probably back in Cuba and you couldn’t add a thing. I don’t know if she really believed me, but she let it go.”
He says nothing.
The King house remains cemetery-quiet, the night outside equally tranquil. Tomorrow, the entire Martin Luther King Jr. Center will be alive with activity. Former presidents Barack Obama and Danny Daniels are coming to speak from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Many visitors are expected at the epicenter of King’s memory. But now, in the wee hours of the morning, it is just me and Foster.
“Stephanie came to see me again about a month after I moved her off your trail,” I say. “All hell broke loose inside the FBI thanks to Oliver and Jansen’s antics. They cleaned house there and in the Justice Department. No more Hoover cronies anywhere. Finally, the stain was removed. They then started a new unit within Justice to deal with sensitive problems like that. It eventually became much more, expanding its reach around the world. I was its first recruit. The Magellan Billet.”
“I learned about that from a friend in government. That’s how I found you in Copenhagen.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have found you. Today is an important day.”
I glance at my watch.
12:30 a.m.
April 4 has begun.
“Martin promoted hope and curiosity,” Foster says. “History has proven that his memory is secure. So many people grieved when he died. His death became their death.”
“You were right with what you told Jansen. There were riots coast to coast.”
“For a time it seemed Martin’s death was the death of hope, progress, and justice. But as he told me would happen, we moved past that. We settled back down and resumed the fight, leaving the streets and entering politics. Black mayors were elected in New Jersey and Indiana. Andy Young became the first black man from Georgia, since Reconstruction, to serve in Congress. Many more election victories followed. Eventually, a black man became president. Martin would have loved all that.”
I ask what I really want to know. “What do you think? Is it time to tell the world?”
“I’ve thought about that these past few years. The movement opened doors. That’s true. Doors that had once not even existed. But that has mainly been for the black elite and middle class. The Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Fair Housing Acts created a whole list of new freedoms that they were able to take advantage of.”
“And the poor?”
“Exactly. The poor. The inner city. The disadvantaged. Little has changed for them. More to the point, they seemed to have become demonized. It’s easy to beat up on poor people, and it comes from both sides of the political aisle. Look what Clinton did in the 1990s. He caved to the Republican Congress and signed welfare reform, which did nothing but create even more poor people. The poor no longer have a champion. So they wallow in poverty, with few jobs, even fewer opportunities. It’s not hard to see why they decide to kill one another. Black-on-black violence seems epidemic. For me, there’s no doubt that Martin’s dream remains unfulfilled.”