The Quiet Game (59 page)

“Not to kill Robert Kennedy?”

“No, no. Forget that crap. He wanted to put Richard Nixon in office. And he was willing to do whatever was required to accomplish that. Hoover and Nixon went way back, to the 1960 election when Nixon lost to JFK. Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, had treated Hoover like shit when he was attorney general. So, in May 1968 Nixon is making sober speeches about law and order to middle America, while Bobby Kennedy runs from ghetto to college campus preaching about racial equality, poverty in Mississippi, the evils of the Vietnam War, and reaching out to the Soviet Union.”

“I still don’t see the relevance to Del Payton.”

Stone looks exasperated by my slowness. “The relevance is to Leo Marston. And more important, to his father. Leo’s father was a major Mississippi power broker, a former state attorney general, just like Leo turned out to be. He was close friends with Big Jim Eastland, a well-known segregationist, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and J. Edgar Hoover’s number one cheerleader on Capitol Hill.”

At last the picture is coming clear.

“The sixty-eight presidential election was the second closest in history,
Cage, after Nixon and JFK in 1960. In sixty-eight Nixon won by less than one percent of the vote. That’s how close it was in November. Back in May, when Del Payton was murdered, anything was possible. Mississippi was a Democratic state, but it voted strangely in presidential elections. In 1960 her electors didn’t vote for JFK or Nixon, but some guy named Byrd. In sixty-four they voted for Goldwater. In 1968 they were leaning toward—”

“Wallace,” I finish. “George Wallace.”

Stone nods. “The racist firecracker from Alabama. Wallace was running as an Independent. Leo and his father were Democrats, but they thought Bobby Kennedy was a communist. Wallace was too racist for them, and more important, they didn’t think he could win. So, they cast their lot with Nixon. Old man Marston was doing all he could to sway the movers and shakers in Mississippi to forget Wallace and vote Republican.”

“Jesus.”

“You see it now? Into this mess rides Special Agent Dwight Stone, telling J. Edgar Hoover that the son of one of Nixon’s biggest supporters is responsible for a race murder in Mississippi. Did that make the director happy? No, sir. Do you think Hoover wanted to tell his buddy Senator Eastland that the son of an old crony was going to jail for killing a nigger who got out of line? No, sir. And the thought of what Bobby Kennedy would do with that information was enough to give Hoover a heart attack. So . . . what do you think Hoover said to Leo at that meeting in Jackson?”

“I have no idea.”

“Sonny boy, you fucked up. You had the right idea, but you got caught. It’s just a good thing you got caught by my people, or life would be getting very uncomfortable right now. In fact, it still could. Then Hoover talked to Leo’s papa. It’s a lot like
The Godfather
. Nothing formal, but everything understood. Fealty. Absolute loyalty.” Stone modulates his voice into a scratchy Marlon Brando impersonation: “
‘Someday, I may ask you to perform a difficult service, but until that day, accept this favor as a gift.’
From that day forward, Hoover owned the Marston family. All their influence, everything.”

“Hoover buried your evidence?”

“All of it. Leo went back to his job and his future. The Payton investigation was allowed to die. Only Ray Presley paid a price.”

“Presley?”

“He’d shot at us on the highway, remember? Hoover wouldn’t let that pass. It was part of the price he demanded from Marston. Presley had to go down for something. Didn’t matter what.”

“Marston gave him up?”

“Didn’t even hesitate. Presley had a dozen sidelines for making money.
His police job was just a fulcrum for the rest of it. He fenced stuff, collected protection money—”

“And sold dope.”

“Right. Amphetamines mostly, for truckers. Interstate transportation of federally regulated narcotics. Marston gave us everything we needed to nail him, and we fed it to the state police. They busted him on possession with intent to distribute. I showed up at the arrest, just so Presley would know it was payback.”

“Did he find out it was Marston who gave him up?”

“Not as far as I know. That’s the irony. Marston was right to trust Presley, but Presley was a fool to trust Marston. Presley’s like a dog that way.”

“A pit bull maybe.”

Stone goes through his little phone ritual again.

“You waiting for a call?”

“No.” He picks up his pistol, stands, and walks back to the front window.

“They still out there?”

“Still there.”

“So, the national security seal was completely bogus?”

Stone chuckles dryly. “Completely. Think about the Payton case. The Bureau had been tasked with destroying violent opposition to civil rights in the South. Instead, Hoover purposefully protected a race murderer for his own political ends. Normally, he would have added the Payton evidence to his personal files. The infamous blackmail files. But Payton’s file was too big for that. We had agents in Natchez generating reams of useless crap. The national security seal was an impenetrable shield.”

“Do you think the audiotape of Marston and Presley is still with the main file?”

“I doubt it. That was the critical evidence. It was probably taken to Hoover’s home when he died, with the other blackmail material. Shelves of books have been written about what might have happened to that stuff. You’ll never find that tape.”

“So, Marston’s motive was just—”

“Money,” Stone finishes. “Greed. Bastards like him only care about one thing: grabbing everything within their reach. They think every dollar they get takes them one step closer to immortality, and every person they step on puts them one step above everyone else. I don’t think other people really exist for people like Marston. They’re just a means to an end.”

Including his daughter,
I think with a shiver. “When you had the bugs in his mansion,” I say hesitantly, “did you ever pick up anything . . . unsavory?”

“Murder is pretty unsavory.”

“I’m talking about sexual stuff.”

“We heard him banging his wife’s best friend one day.”

“I’m talking about abuse. Child abuse.”

He turns away from the window and looks at me. “No. I had a daughter myself. If I’d heard anything like that, I would have gone in there and thrashed him within an inch of his life.” The corner of Stone’s mouth twitches. “The mikes were only in for a couple of weeks, though. And I can’t remember if Henry covered the little girl’s room.”

I force myself to push Livy from my mind. “I need you to tell this story to a jury.”

“It’ll never happen, son.”

“I think it will. I know about your daughter.”

In the midst of turning back to the window, he whips his whole head toward me, his eyes burning with anger.

I hold up both hands. “I’m just telling you I know she’s what’s been keeping you from helping me.”

“Then you know it’s pointless to ask me to testify.”

“Is it? I talked to her today, and she thinks different.”

Stone takes a step toward me. “You talked to my daughter today?”

“Yes. Caitlin Masters found her for me.”

“You idiot. If you’ve put her life in danger—”

“She’s all right! She’s fine. And she agrees with me. Portman started playing carrot and stick with her days ago. I didn’t even have to tell her you could bring him down. She knew.”

“You had no right to put her in jeopardy, Cage.”

“I want justice. That’s all.”

“You want revenge.”

“You’re right. But I used to want it for myself. Now I want it for someone else. Marston has done things he should die for, Stone. Take my word for that.”

The old agent fingers the pistol in his hand. “My daughter told me two days ago that I should testify. She thinks getting this thing off my chest would save my damned soul or something.” His face hardens. “She’s got no right to sacrifice her career for my guilty conscience. She doesn’t know how things really work.”

“She knows.”

“It’s not her choice, damn it!” His eyes flick around the interior of the cabin. “God, I wish I had a bottle.” He paces over to the fireplace and pokes the logs, sending a storm of sparks up the chimney. “You don’t want me as a witness, Cage.”

“Why not?”

“I’m damaged goods.”

“Because of your drinking?”

“Drinking isn’t one problem. It’s a whole constellation.”

“Why were you fired five years after the Payton murder? It wasn’t for drinking.”

He stirs the fire some more. “No. Though I was drinking like a fish at the time. When Hoover cut the deal with Marston, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know why. I’d seen him do it enough times before. But usually it was cases that were dirty all the way around. This murder had a real victim. An
innocent
victim. And the Korea angle really weighed on me. I started drinking to forget about it. Things were turning to shit in the Bureau. Hoover was using us to harass antiwar protesters, all kinds of unconstitutional stuff. Then we got Nixon. Parts of the Bureau started to function like the goddamn KGB. It made me sick. The booze made it tolerable. For a while, anyway. It also made me impossible to live with. I drove my wife and baby away. I screwed up a dozen different ways. Then I topped them all. You’ll get a kick out of this, because it involves your friend Marston.”

“What?”

“In 1972 I was in Washington, doing some shit work Nixon had requested from Hoover. Something too boring for Liddy and his plumbers. I was walking through the lobby of the Watergate office complex, and there, bigger than life, stood Leo Marston. He was in town lobbying John Stennis for something or other. I was soused when I saw him, and I snapped. The Payton thing had been eating at me for four years. When Marston saw me, that smug bastard tried to make out like we were buddies from way back, in on the big joke. The dead nigger. I straightened him out quick. And everybody in the Watergate lobby heard me. Marston lost it. He took a swing at me, and I pulled my gun.”

I almost laugh, remembering the way I snapped and went after Marston yesterday.

“Henry Bookbinder had been outside parking the car,” Stone recalls. “He ran in and backed me down. Nobody died, but Marston screamed blue murder to Hoover. One of Hoover’s last acts before he died in seventy-two was firing me. I guess that’s a distinction of sorts.”

“Where was Portman then?”

Stone goes still, the poker hovering above the crackling logs. “Climbing the Bureau ladder. I didn’t tell you everything before. When Hoover took over the Payton case, I started making copies of my case notes. I also copied the audiotape that incriminated Marston.”

The hair on my forearms is standing up. “Do you still have that copy?”

He shakes his head. “Portman saw what I was doing. He started spying on
me, reporting to Hoover as the case progressed. I can just imagine his reports. May be
ideologically unsound
, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, everything was stolen out of my apartment two days before I was fired. That was Portman, I guarantee it. On Hoover’s orders.”

My heart sinks.

“You don’t want me as a witness. They’d make me look pathetic on cross. Too many sins of my own.”

“What’s Portman so afraid of now? From the story you told, his involvement was peripheral.”

“The Bureau’s been under siege for ten years, in the public-relations sense. Its big Achilles’ heel is racism. The FBI has been sued by black agents, Hispanics, women, all claiming systematic discrimination. And these groups have
won
. Portman was appointed to correct these problems, to polish the image, and he was appointed by a Democratic president. If it was to come out that his ‘heroic civil rights work’ in Mississippi consisted of helping to cover up a race murder, he’d be out on his ass in an hour. The President would have no choice.”

“So, let’s make it known. Do the Bureau and the country a favor.”

Stone sets the poker in its rack and sits on the hearth, his face weary. “I wish I could. Every trial decision Portman ever made as a federal judge would come into question, every decision as a U.S. attorney. He’d never work in the public sector again. And once the media got its nose into his past, God knows what they’d find. A guy like Portman doesn’t cross the line once or twice. It’s a management style with him.”

“Why didn’t the media discover anything during his confirmation hearings?”

“The Bureau is a closed culture. It outlives presidential administrations, judges, even Supreme Court justices. If the leadership of that culture wants to keep Portman’s secrets so he can be appointed FBI director, that’s the way it’ll be.”

Stone takes out his phone and checks the line again. “I’d like to help you, Cage. But they’ve held my daughter over me for a long time. Since she was a kid.”

“What?”

“Oh, yeah. After he fired me, Hoover sent me a message. Portman delivered it. If I tried to air any dirty Bureau laundry, my kid wouldn’t live to watch me on
Meet the Press
.”

“That’s pretty hard to believe.”