Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (47 page)

Clean shaven, Galt returned to the terminal for his suitcase and hailed a taxi. His worries about the border proved unwarranted--his cab crossed under the Detroit River through the fumy Windsor Tunnel without so much as a glance from the authorities. (It was a point of local interest that the Detroit-Windsor crossing was the only major border crossing where one had to go
south
to pass from the United States into Canada.) The cabbie drove to the Windsor train station. For a one-way fare of $8.20, Galt took the noon train on Canadian National Railways. The four-hour trip was an easy one, making a northeastern stitch across the farm country of Ontario, roughly paralleling Lake Erie, passing through the city of London. At around four o'clock the train pulled in to his destination, Canada's largest city--Toronto.

Galt stowed his suitcase at Union Station and set off on foot in search of a cheap place to stay. As usual, his radar was keen--according to his memoirs, he made his way to a rooming place at 102 Ossington Avenue, in a polyglot neighborhood, sometimes called Little Italy, on the west side of downtown Toronto. Owned by a middle-aged Polish couple, the old redbrick walk-up apartment was not far from the Trinity-Bellwoods Park, and only a few blocks from a mental hospital. Across the street from the apartment was a sparring gym where, two years earlier, Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, had trained for his winning bout against the Toronto boxing legend George Chuvalo.

Mrs. Feliksa Szpakowski, a bosomy middle-aged woman with a broad face and horn-rimmed glasses who wore her gray hair in a bun, opened the aluminum storm door and greeted Galt at the front steps. In broken English, she told him she could let him a room on the second floor for eight Canadian dollars a week.

Mrs. Szpakowski showed him up to the room,
⁵⁴⁷
which was, by Galt's standards, clean and well-appointed. The floors were tiled in new linoleum, the walls were painted a cheery canary yellow, the curtains and matching bedspread done in a bright red floral pattern. The only art on the wall was a picture of Christ and a framed needlepoint that said, "Home Sweet Home." In the alcove of the bay window was a big console television, its rabbit-ears antenna waiting to take in the news of the world.

Galt liked the room and paid Mrs. Szpakowski a week's rent. She didn't ask for a name at first, and he didn't volunteer one. But she
did
ask him, in her thick Slavic accent, what he did for a living.

"Real estate," Galt told her. He said he worked for Mann and Martel, a local firm.

That was good enough for Mrs. Szpakowski, though it seemed a little odd to her that such a well-dressed real estate agent--he was wearing his usual suit--would be interested in a room in this ethnic working-class part of town.

IN ATLANTA THAT same day, the King home was a hive of round-the-clock planning. Trying to decide how best to eulogize the fallen monarch of black America was testy, high-concept business. Titanic egos had flown in to offer Coretta their creative vision. The services must be flawlessly choreographed, letter-perfect. Some of King's friends wanted a massive rally to be held in Atlanta's largest football stadium; others preferred a small dignified ceremony for a select few; still others envisioned a
movable
funeral--a march to honor the man who'd accomplished so much by putting one foot in front of the other. Emotions ran high. During one of the planning sessions, Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte
⁵⁴⁸
fell into an argument so bitter that the two West Indian friends wouldn't speak to each other for several years.

This funereal strategizing was going on in a house jam-packed with mourners and well-wishers. Probably the most noteworthy of the callers at 234 Sunset that afternoon was Senator Georgia Davis, who had driven to Atlanta with A. D. King's lover, Lucretia Ward, in Ward's baby blue convertible Cadillac. "I didn't want to face Coretta,"
⁵⁴⁹
Davis said, but AD thought a ritual of meeting and forgiveness was necessary for everyone's healing. They walked dolorously through the house until they found Coretta. Davis took her hand and simply said, "I'm sorry."

Coretta silently nodded, casting a beatific expression that was impossible to read. Davis knew she shouldn't be there--it was an excruciatingly awkward moment. "Sorry for what?"
⁵⁵⁰
Davis later wrote, analyzing her own apology. "I was sorry she had lost her husband; I was sorry the world had lost a savior; and, on some level, I think I was apologizing for my relationship with her husband." She regretted hurting Coretta, but, she said, "I have never regretted being there with him. I would come whenever he called, and go wherever he wanted."

GALT LEFT HIS room to retrieve his suitcase from Union Station. When he returned about an hour later, he switched on the big television in his room. The rest of the weekend, he didn't leave his room
⁵⁵¹
except to buy newspapers and pastries at a local bakery. He'd close his door and stay there night and day. The television was always on.

Little had changed in the news since Galt had left Detroit that morning. Though many American cities still lay smoldering, the worst of the rioting was over. To Galt's relief, the weekend seemed to bring no fresh developments in the manhunt. Ramsey Clark appeared on
Meet the Press
on Sunday morning, and while he said he was confident that the killer would be found, the attorney general offered no details that indicated the FBI had a suspect. Clark didn't say so, but the case was losing some of the momentum it had enjoyed in its opening hours.

Galt, for now, was safe. That morning, Palm Sunday, was quiet across the United States, a time of sorrow and reflection after three days of convulsions. The America that Galt had left behind now seemed to be grinding to a halt for a prolonged period of mourning. The papers announced that the Academy Awards, scheduled for that night, would be postponed until after King's funeral--as would the National Hockey League play-off game in St. Louis and the season openers of at least seven Major League Baseball teams, from Cincinnati to Los Angeles.

The only person who seemed to be observing any sense of normalcy was the man ultimately in charge of the investigation--J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI director, it was reported, was spending the weekend as he often did. He was in Baltimore,
⁵⁵²
at the horse races.

Much of the news that Palm Sunday came out of Memphis, where a nearly spontaneous racially mixed crowd of some ten thousand people gathered in Crump Stadium for a kind of town hall meeting. This soul-searching event, called Memphis Cares, was put on by a prominent local businessman named John T. Fisher. It went on for hours, and was, by turns, beautiful and haunting and cathartic. The Reverend Jim Lawson, the man who had invited King to Memphis in the first place, took the stage and assumed the angry tone of a biblical prophet: "This man, in the full prime
⁵⁵³
of his life, is dead, shot down, executed in cold blood. We have witnessed a crucifixion in the city of Memphis. Is it a sign from God? If it
is
a sign, it is an awful one: that God's judgment is upon our land. That the time is now upon us when not one stone will be left upon another, but that this city and this nation which we love dearly will become nothing more than a roost for vultures and a smoldering heap of debris."

The television kept blaring from Galt's room; Mrs. Szpakowski thought it was odd how much time her new tenant spent in there, apparently watching TV and reading the papers. She spoke with him once during the weekend, as he was returning with newspapers bundled under his arm. "I noticed how worried
⁵⁵⁴
he looked," she recalled. "I thought maybe he was worried about his family. I really thought he might be from the mental hospital down the street."

35
THEN EASTER COMES

CORETTA SCOTT KING wore a bittersweet smile
⁵⁵⁵
behind her widow's veil as she marched along Main Street in downtown Memphis. It was a gray, gloomy Monday, the morning after Palm Sunday, and raindrops spat at the crowd of some twenty thousand marchers following behind her. Dressed in a funereal black gown and holding hands with her now-fatherless children, Coretta held her head high as she kept up a solemn, steady pace. She gazed straight ahead, with faraway eyes that were full of sadness but spilled no tears. Keeping just in front of the Kings, step for step, was Director Holloman, who anxiously scanned the parapets and side streets for snipers.

Coretta's daughter Yolanda marched in a pink dress, while the two boys, Martin III and Dexter, wore natty sport coats and ties (the youngest, Bernice, was back home in Atlanta). The children looked all about them, distracted and awestruck, at the crying people and the soldiers and the overflying helicopters and the signs that said, HONOR KING--END RACISM and DR. KING: NOT IN VAIN and I AM A MAN. It was such a strange experience for them to be a part of, such a beautiful grim pageant--not a funeral procession, exactly, and certainly not a celebratory or cathartic New Orleans-style dirge, but its own kind of hauntingly purposeful piece of political theater. "The people were kind,"
⁵⁵⁶
Dexter King wrote years later, "yet Memphis seemed like a forbidding place, a different evil kingdom where my father was killed."

Coretta King hadn't really planned on coming back to Memphis to join Abernathy's great silent march. She had a funeral to organize in Atlanta, she had a family to look after, and she had her own world of grief. But Memphis needed her there, she realized; the movement needed her, the garbage workers needed her. So that morning, Harry Belafonte had arranged a plane for her to return to the city of her husband's murder. She arrived with the children, and her motorcade sped downtown, escorted by good-ol'-boy policemen astride fat Harley-Davidsons in swirls of flashing lights, and she saw for the first time the world of shadows that Memphis had become. She joined the march at Main and Beale--the literal and figurative intersection of white and black Memphis. It was the very spot where King had been when the rioting erupted during the March 28 demonstration, the violence that had swept King toward the dark eddy that overwhelmed him.

This time around there was no violence whatsoever. The march was silent, just as Abernathy had promised it would be: only the sound of soles scuffing on pavement. Bayard Rustin had carefully choreographed every inch of the march--and had done so with his usual good taste and raptor's eye for detail. He was thrilled and relieved by the outcome. "We gave Dr. King what he came here for,"
⁵⁵⁷
he said. "We gave Dr. King his last wish: A truly non-violent march."

It had come about through meticulous planning. The Reverend James Lawson had personally trained the hundreds of marshals of the march--many of them members of the Invaders, who only a few days earlier had been calling for burning the city down. Lawson had had flyers printed up that were handed out to the marchers: it was to be a solemn and chaste affair, a requiem. There was to be no talking, no chanting, no singing, no smoking, no chewing of gum. "Each of you is on trial today,"
⁵⁵⁸
Lawson said. "People from all over the world will be watching. Carry yourself with dignity."