“It’s his second day,” Coleen pointed out.
Lael looked me over with a grin. “So we got ourselves a genuine rookie.”
I did not like the label.
“Tell me, rookie, why would I say anything to you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’ve got a conscience? Unlike Tom Oliver and his group of Merry Men.”
“Now, on that we see eye-to-eye. Oliver was a Hoover man, through and through. His whole career was geared to making that creepy bastard happy. We had six thousand FBI agents back then, every one of us expected to cater to Hoover’s whims, obey his rules, and satisfy his every need.”
“That include you?” I asked.
“If you wanted a long career, that was part of the job description.”
“You worked for Oliver?”
“Oh, yeah. In COINTELPRO. I was one of the bagmen.”
Which meant he handled break-ins, most of which were done without search warrants. Congress later determined that the FBI routinely engaged in thousands of illegal burglaries as a way not only to obtain information, but also to plant listening devices.
“Our motto was Do unto others as they are doing unto you. And believe me, we did. I was assigned to the Bishop himself.”
I recalled the code name Foster had mentioned for Martin Luther King Jr. “Did you break into King’s house?”
He nodded. “I planted microphones everywhere. In the SCLC offices, King’s home, his office, and too many hotel rooms to count. I was good at it.”
It was one thing to read about all of those constitutional abuses. But here was a living, breathing participant.
“Did you testify before the Church Committee?”
Lael shook his head. “A bunch of pansies. I may have hated Oliver and Hoover, but I was still FBI through and through. I actually believed what we were taught. To lead a careful and disciplined life. Easy on the alcohol, no drugs ever, and keep your pants zipped as much as possible. Stupid me just thought we ought to obey the law, too.”
“Yet you didn’t,” Coleen said, finally joining the conversation.
“No, little lady, we didn’t. But we were the exception. The vast, vast majority of FBI agents did their job, and did it right.”
“So what is it you and Foster think about all the time?” I asked, bringing him back to what I’d heard in the cemetery.
“You’re the preacher’s daughter?” Lael asked Coleen.
“How do you know my father?”
“We met about ten years ago, and we’ve stayed in touch.”
“Are you looking for forgiveness?” I asked.
He tossed me a measured glare. But his answer surprised me.
“Something like that.”
“Did you get it?”
“That’s none of your business.” He faced Coleen. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“No,” she blurted out before I could lie.
“I didn’t think so.”
All of this posturing was grating on my nerves.
“COINTELPRO targeted King. That’s old news,” I said. “There are books filled with unclassified FBI field reports on what you did. Okay, he had mistresses, he liked to smoke and drink. He told dirty jokes. Who gives a crap? I want to know what’s really going on here.”
“And if I don’t say, what then?”
I could tell he was challenging me, trying to determine if I was more than a paper tiger. So I decided to roar. “The next person who comes to see you will have a subpoena to appear before a grand jury. The questions then will be asked under oath. Sure, you can take the Fifth and refuse to say anything, but what do you think is going to happen then?”
I caught the nervous snicker in his breath. My threat had rubbed a sore, which brought a change in mood.
For the worse.
“My answers won’t be the Fifth Amendment,” he said. “They’ll be more direct. Two words that should sum it all up and will let you know exactly what I think of your grand jury. This stuff has lain dead for thirty years, and dead is where it should stay.”
“Along with King?” I asked.
He took in my rebuke in silence.
Finally he said, “Who are you to judge?”
“I’m the guy with the badge, asking the questions.”
If that had any effect, Lael didn’t show it.
“Does either of you have any idea what it was like back then?”
Neither of us answered him.
“I was there, in June ’64,” Lael said. “I was sent to St. Augustine when all the trouble exploded.” He pointed at Coleen. “That’s where I first saw your daddy.”
“And what did you do to stop all of the violence against good, decent people like my father?” she asked.
“Not a thing. Wasn’t my problem. I was there to watch King, and watch I did. I saw the acid being poured in the pool.”
That I knew about.
King was arrested in St. Augustine for trespassing at the Monson Motor Lodge. His response came in the form of a “swim-in,” where a group of protesters, black and white, jumped into the motel’s “white-only” pool. The manager tried to break the protest by pouring muriatic acid into the water, hoping the swimmers would leave. And though the chemical was really no threat—one of the swimmers proved that by drinking some of the water—the image of that white manager pouring acid into a pool full of blacks and whites appeared in newspapers around the world.
Shocking people.
“What did you do when that happened?” I said, mocking him. “Like a good little COINTELPRO agent, you snapped pictures, took notes, and filed reports.”
“We were like Star Trek,” he said, “and the prime directive. There to observe, but never to interfere or alter the course of events.”
I shook my head. “You were the damn FBI, and yet you sat back and allowed white supremacists to do whatever they wanted. And that’s because J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King Jr.”
“That’s pretty much it, in a nutshell,” he said. “Different time and place.”
My eyes noticed a notepad on the enameled kitchen table. Lying in plain sight. A name written upon it in black ink. Cecelia Heath. Along with what appeared to be a phone number. Odd that a careful man like Bruce Lael would leave that out for us to see. He noticed my interest, but made no effort to collect the pad. Instead he gave a gentle nod.
Toward it.
“Did you know Foster searched inside the SCLC for FBI informants?” I asked, not acknowledging the gesture.
He seemed surprised by the question. “Foster tell you that?”
“He told me,” Coleen said.
Lael nodded. “Sure, I knew. I bugged his house and taped him many times. We watched a lot of people back then, particularly antiwar protestors, which included King and Foster. We spied on them all.”
I needed to steer this man back to what we came for. “Did you know that Juan Lopez Valdez recruited King’s killer?”
“And the FBI assisted,” Coleen added.
“Really? Sounds like something from the National Enquirer.”
“That’s not an answer,” I said.
He tossed me a glare. “It’s news to me. But everything back then was compartmentalized. We were told only what we needed to know to do our job. Jansen and Oliver would not have included me in that loop. I knew a little more than most because I handled the wiretaps. But not all of them. There were other people, besides me, who manned the recorders.”
He still had not admitted a thing. “So if you don’t know anything, why are you so troubled?”
“Like I said, I knew the reverend from the wiretaps. I reconnected with him years ago to talk about those. We each filled in some of the blanks for the other. Call it curiosity.”
“Valdez was working for the FBI,” Coleen said. “Surely you taped him at some point.”
Lael nodded. “A few times. That’s one slimy bastard.”
“Did Valdez arrange for James Earl Ray to be in Memphis?” I
asked again.
He stood there, arms crossed on his chest like an umpire under attack. But I caught a look of unfeigned indecision on his chopped countenance. Like he was wrestling with a dilemma. Sizing us up. Making a decision. His eyes drifted again down to the pad on the table, then back up.
“I told your daddy yesterday to leave this alone,” he said. “You two should take the same advice.”
“Why didn’t you just tell him no when he contacted you?” I asked. “Why lead Oliver to him?”
“You’re going to have ask him that.”
“We’re asking you.”
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” Lael spit out. “I was an FBI agent before you were even born. You apparently have little to no experience, barging in here, thinking I’m going to break down and confess all my sins. Or that the threat of some subpoena will scare me.” He pointed a finger. “What you need to be asking yourself is why did they pick you for this? With all the trained agents available, why go to a rookie?”