Hampton Sides - Hellhound on His Trail - The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. And the International Hunt for His Assassin

Kyles feigned hurt and displeasure: "Who can't cook soul food?"

Abernathy chimed in: "All right now, Billy. If she's serving up feel-ay meen-yuns or something, then you're gonna flunk."

King was in the bathroom slapping Aramis aftershave lotion on his face--masking the harsh sulfur smell with fine notes of sandalwood, leather, and clove.

Kyles said, "Man, we're gonna be late. You just get ready, Doc, and don't worry about what we gonna have."

Moderately chastened, King got into gear. He put on a dress shirt and tried to fasten the collar button, but it was too tight--he'd gained weight since he last wore it, or perhaps the shirt had shrunk at the cleaners.

One thing was certain, Kyles said in riposte as he walked out the door, they'd be having more food than King's waistline needed. Doc , he said, you getting fat .

"That I am," King agreed, and, his vanity pricked, he cut a glance at Kyles, who fidgeted out on the balcony. Then King changed the subject: "Do I have another shirt here?" He pulled a freshly laundered button-down from his belongings, a white Arrow permanent-press dress shirt, and quickly put it on--finding that the collar buttoned more easily.

"Now," he said, his eyes scanning the room. "Where's my tie? Somebody's moved it." He was looking for his favorite one, a crisp, slender brown silk tie with gold and blue diagonal stripes. King at times enjoyed the role of absentminded professor--dependent on Abernathy to mother him and manage the minutiae of his life--and now he played the part to the hilt. It was the kind of whimsical repartee they'd enacted in a thousand hotel rooms over the past decade, a banal conversational style informed by the real possibility that FBI moles might be listening in. "Hmmm," King said, "someone's definitely moved it."

"Martin," Abernathy scolded, "why don't you just look down at that chair?"

The tie was there, of course, right where he'd left it. King, an adept and fastidious tie tier, quickly threaded the knot and cinched it up to his fleshy neck. He fixed a silver tiepin in place and studied himself in the mirror. About five minutes before six o'clock, he stuffed in his shirttails and ambled out the door to see what was going on with the rest of the party at the Lorraine.

PATROLMAN WILLIE RICHMOND, watching through his binoculars, 343saw King emerge from his room onto the balcony. The firehouse was full of commotion, and Richmond found it hard to concentrate. A special "tactical" unit of the Memphis Police Department--TAC Unit 10--had pulled in to the station's parking lot and come inside for refreshments. The unit was composed of three squad cars, with four men to a car. The twelve officers were hanging out in the lounge, drinking coffee, and joking among themselves. Some of the firemen joined in on the fun.

One of the firemen, a thirty-nine-year-old white lieutenant named George Loenneke, 344passed through the locker room and saw Richmond standing with his binoculars. "There's Dr. King right there," Richmond said. "I presume he's going to supper."

Loenneke walked over to Richmond. "Let me see," he said. "I haven't seen Dr. King since he was in town to do the Meredith march." Richmond handed over the binoculars, and Loenneke got a glimpse through the peephole. "That's him alright. He hasn't changed a bit."

WHAT ERIC GALT did inside 5B between five o'clock and a little before six is not precisely known. Perhaps he read the Memphis Commercial Appeal --he had brought up the paper's first section from the car. Perhaps he listened to the news on his Channel Master pocket radio or mashed a bead of Brylcreem onto his fingertips and worked the unguent through his freshly cut hair. Perhaps he contemplated wrapping his fingertips with the Band-Aids that were among the toiletries in the outer compartment of his zippered blue leatherette bag; it was an old trick to avoid leaving fingerprints, a precaution he customarily liked to take before committing a crime.

But he had no time to fool around with Band-Aids. Suddenly, at about 5:55 p.m., a familiar figure floated across his binocular glass. To Galt's astonishment, Martin Luther King had emerged from his room and was standing on the balcony, right in front of 306, next to a metal service dolly. Standing in his shirtsleeves and a tie, he looked down into the Lorraine parking lot. Above him, a light fixture dangled loosely from the ceiling.

It must have given Galt a start: at last, the man he'd been chasing since he left L.A. was in his sights, suspended in the jittery, fuzzy-edged world of coated optics. He was a perfect target, fully exposed, almost as though he were speaking at a dais.

At 7x magnification, the details would have been startlingly vivid. Galt would have been able to see everything--the pencil mustache on King's face, the laces on his black wing-tip shoes, the gold watch on his left wrist, the crisp diagonal stripes on his silk necktie.

Galt had to make a lightning-fast decision. He might never get a chance like this again. He ran to the communal bathroom to check the view. Charlie Stephens, the sickly drunk across the hall in 6B, could hear the new roomer's footsteps 345as he clomped down the corridor's linoleum floor. The rooming house walls were paper-thin, and Stephens, whose bed backed up to the bathroom wall, listened as "Willard" fumbled around in there. Then Stephens heard him emerge from the bathroom and clomp right back to his room.

The view from the bathroom must have convinced Galt that it was now or never. Back in 5B, Galt frantically pulled together his blue zippered bag, the binoculars, and the boxed rifle still wrapped in its green bedspread. (In his haste, he left behind the two binocular-case straps he'd tossed on the floor earlier.) He scooped up his belongings and dashed down the hall toward the bathroom. Once inside, he slammed and locked the door.

It was about 6:00.

23 AT THE RIVER I STAND

KING LOOKED OUT over the drained swimming pool and inhaled the fresh air. The night was partly cloudy and cool--fifty-five degrees--and a crescent moon climbed in the sky. A slight wind blew off the Mississippi River, only a few blocks to the west but slightly hidden behind the natural rise of the bluff. All around the Lorraine stood the old cotton lofts and classing rooms, the drab brick warehouses of South Main's industrial grid. Off to the north, the Memphis skyscrapers rose over the city--the Gothic Sterick Building, the spectral white Lincoln American Tower, the Union Planters Bank with its revolving restaurant, forty stories up. The downtown lights were just beginning to glitter. On the roof of the Peabody Hotel, the resident mallards were happily ensconced in their mansion for the evening.

As King took in the Memphis night, he leaned against the railing for several long minutes. He was completely vulnerable, but King had refused a Memphis police detail as he nearly always did--"I'd feel like a bird in a cage," 346he said. He did not believe in bodyguards, certainly not armed ones. No one in his entourage was allowed to carry a gun or nightstick or any other weapon. The very concept of arming oneself was odious to him--it violated his Gandhian principles. He wouldn't even let his children carry toy guns. 347In an almost mystical sense, he believed nonviolence was a more potent force for self-protection than any weapon. He understood the threats that were about but refused to let them alter the way he lived. So no one was on the balcony to shield his movements, to shepherd him along, to survey the sight lines and vantage points and anticipate the worst.