When I got back to the office, Doug Yoste was huddled at his desk. Fittingly the rest of the staff had ostracized him. His excuse for missing the morning meeting was that his power had gone out, shutting off his alarm clock. No one bought it. His sunburned face and neck gave away that he had been fishing again.
After fifteen minutes of my third, and maybe final, “Come to Jesus” meeting with him about responsibility, deadlines, and teamwork, Doug filled me in on his research for the petition story. He had been busy calling all the principal players.
According to Doug, most of the Save Our Pensacola wackos were completely caught off guard when Wittman announced another petition drive. They saw the park project as a done deal, but right around when the police arrested Hines, Wittman fired up the PAC again.
“I got a hold of a Mrs. Ellis and her husband last night,” Doug said, reading from his notepad. “They say they are members of the executive committee of Save Our Pensacola. Mrs. Ellis hates you and tried to get me to understand how evil you really are.”
Yoste didn’t defend me, only asked questions. Mrs. Ellis was the lady with the orange hair who had run the meeting at New World Landing.
“Professor Ellis called you the ‘Spawn of Satan’ before he gave me a twenty-minute lecture on how the economic analysis for the park project was flawed,” Doug said. “Neither of them ever met Bo Hines before Monday night, but they were happy to have him and his money.”
The prior petition attempts had been underfunded. Wittman depended on free publicity from the daily newspaper, local talk radio shows, and anybody who believed in conspiracy theories, UFOs, and the Illuminati. He had never matched the money Kettler threw out for advertising and mailers to counter the naysayers. Hines’ money would be the great equalizer this time.
Wittman told Doug, “We must remember that the residents and taxpayers of the City of Pensacola own the proposed development site. I can’t sit idly and watch the city council hand over our valuable waterfront property to some millionaire for his hobby baseball team.”
Wittman insisted he based the petition drive on the hundreds of phone calls and emails that he had received to stop what he liked to refer to as a “giveaway” to Kettler. He never mentioned Stan Daniels.
After Monday night’s announcement by Hines that he was joining forces with his brother-in-law, Doug tried to get a quote from him and got nowhere, but he promised to continue trying.
I gave him Stan Daniels’ phone numbers. Daniels would help him reach Kettler.
The outline for his cover story was due by Thursday afternoon, and he needed to talk with Teddy and Mal about the artwork. The firm deadline for this copy was the following Monday morning. Doug agreed to not go fishing until after the final draft was turned in.
Mal and I tested the payroll database a few more times. The searches worked perfectly.
She said, “Do you think people will really want to look up the salaries?”
“Hell yeah,” I said. “Frost’s employees will check out each other’s pay. Girlfriends will want to learn how much their lovers make. And the public will see how Sheriff Frost rewards his henchmen.”
I had gotten the idea from the Boston Globe. They had set up an online database of the salaries of all government employees in the state of Massachusetts. So many people had logged on to the site that it had crashed. This project had taken us four weeks to pull together. I expected similar results tomorrow.
Thursday morning, I heard the rain when my alarm went off. As I was about to roll over and go back to sleep, Big Boy jumped on the bed with his leash. He liked running in the rain. There must have been something primordial about it, or maybe he just enjoyed hearing me curse as he pulled me through puddles.
As we headed back to the office, bundles of the Insider wrapped in plastic bags were stacked on the doorsteps of downtown businesses. I loved the anticipation of a new issue hitting the stands, especially when it had a blockbuster as the cover story.
Whenever I had a story published in The Daily Mississippian, Mari had teased me about being like a child on Christmas morning rushing to find what Santa left for me under the tree. She had to put up with hours of me obsessing over a story, listening to me bitch about my editor and faculty advisor, and fretting that I wasn’t good enough to do the story.
Damn, I missed her.
I dried Big Boy in the stairwell and stripped down to my boxers. My phone vibrated, and the display said, “Sheriff Frost.” I passed on answering it. When I got out of the shower, there was a text message from him: “BIG MISTAKE.”
With a cup of coffee and Big Boy next to me on the couch, I wrote my first blog post of the day pushing readers to the cover story.
CHA-CHING!
Who are the big winners in Sheriff Ron Frost’s administration? The Insider has the annual salary for every employee in the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office available online. You can search by name, job title, or salary range. Enjoy.
My phone vibrated. It was Rueben Crutcher, one of my investors. Crutcher owned the Pensacola State Bank. Well, actually his mother owned it and let him sit in an office off the lobby. I recruited Crutcher to invest in the Insider when I launched the newspaper because I had heard he wanted to get back at the society columnist at the Pensacola Herald for mocking his Mardi Gras court. Recruiting the banker was a decision I often regretted.
Crutcher liked to tell people he owned the paper, but he didn’t enjoy any political pushback from the editorial content. He would email me story ideas that I deleted without reading. When he suggested an editorial position, we took the opposite side. We battled continually over the paper’s coverage during our monthly board meetings. Then Hurricane Ivan hit. The bank and his family investments took major losses. He quit answering my cash calls to help keep the paper operating, and I quit calling board meetings.
We had reached a tenuous truce that would last as long as I didn’t need any money. If I faltered, he would demand a board meeting and call for my ass.
“Walker, Crutcher here,” he said, not understanding that cell phones identify the caller. “Just got off the phone with Sheriff Frost—what the hell are you doing over there?”
“Reporting.”
“He’s threatening to sue if you don’t pull the story and write some type of retraction about his brother,” Crutcher shouted.
“He won’t. I had our attorney review the article,” I lied. “Frost has nothing to sue us over.”
“You think this is all a joke,” he said. “It’s important to some of us to have the sheriff on our side.”
I remembered that Crutcher’s son had been arrested for driving while intoxicated during spring break. It was his second such arrest, and for the second time the charge was dropped for insufficient evidence. Frost reassigned the arresting deputy to court security.
“Rueben, my contract gives me complete control over the editorial content of the paper,” I said, trying not to sound smug. “Tell Sheriff Frost to call me.”
“He said he did, but you wouldn’t answer your phone.”
I said, “I must have been in the shower. I’ll take the next one.”
Crutcher said, “The Hines story already has created enough problems. If Frost piles on, we’re going to have to convene a board meeting.”
“Nothing to worry about, I’ve got it under control.”
“Sure you do,” he snarled. “I got a call from your bank yesterday. You bounced some checks this week.”
“Sales are picking up,” I replied. “Best of the Coast is next month. Only a momentary cash-flow snafu.”
“We’ll see,” said Crutcher as he hung up.
The rain got heavier. Thunder could be heard in the distance. Big Boy slept while the staff wandered in for our meeting.
Roxie said the Best of the Coast sales were ahead of last year. She praised Summer’s help and said they would start billing for the ads next week. Doug gave a report on his Save Our Pensacola article. I didn’t tell them about the suicide note since I hadn’t verified its authenticity.
This was one of those rare meetings when everything clicked. Summer came into the conference room to announce that we had so many hits on our website that the server had crashed. I bought pizza for the staff to celebrate.
During the afternoon, the Frost payroll story went viral. The Pensacola Herald and the local radio and television stations ran stories on the salaries. One or two of the radio reports even mentioned the Insider.
At six, I got a text from Gravy to join him at Hopjacks, a pizza joint a block north of the office. Hopjacks Pizza Kitchen and Taproom attracted a young crowd. Each member of the waitstaff was apparently required to have at least two tattoos or piercings to be hired.
The place was packed. A concert at the music hall next door would open its door in about an hour. At first, I didn’t see Gravy, but I noticed Bree at the bar with a few of her girlfriends. They were laughing and talking with the bartender. She didn’t look in my direction, which was fine. I didn’t have anything to report yet.
Finally I spied Gravy waving from a booth in a dark corner of the bar where he sat with two tanned, blonde thirtysomethings.
“Ladies, this is Pensacola’s Thomas More,” Gravy shouted over the din of the crowd. Empty beer glasses covered the table. It must have been three-for-one happy hour or else Gravy had started early. “He does none harm, says none harm, thinks none harm, but wishes everybody good.”
The paraphrasing of the famous quote from the movie A Man for All Season flew—no, it zoomed—over the girls’ heads. They both said in unison, “Hi, Thomas,” and smiled. I didn’t care enough to correct them. Neither did Gravy.
“These are the Ashleys,” he said as the waitress handed me my beer. “They’re both teachers on vacation.”
“She’s Ashley with a y, and I’m with double e’s,” said the girl sitting on Gravy’s right. She obviously expected a reaction as she leaned across the table to show her freckled cleavage flowing out of her tank top. I never took my eyes off her forehead.
“Ladies, nice to meet you,” I told Ashley and Ashlee. “Would you mind if I take Father Graves away from you for a few minutes? We need to talk about an incident that happened on his last campout with the altar boys.”
Gravy’s lips formed a thin smile. He wanted to kill me. I took a long sip of my beer as the girls found excuses to leave the table and Hopjacks as quickly as possible.
“Holmes, you are an ass,” Gravy said. He was mad but understood we needed to talk. He was wearing black jeans and a pink polo shirt—not a good choice for someone trying to convince two Montgomery, Alabama, elementary school teachers that he wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church’s next lawsuit.
“I thought you asked me here to toast today’s cover story,” I said.
Gravy touched his mug to my Bud Light bottle. “Cheers. Did you ever talk with Sheriff Frost today? He kept calling me and bitching about you. He thinks you’re treating him unfairly and that you could find similar salary structures within the city and county governments. He threatened to put you out of business.”
“Frost will have to get in line,” I said. “What was your reply to him?”
“I finally told him that nobody could do anything with you.”
I laughed. “The web server crashed. Papers flew off the rack. The other media started asking big, bad Sheriff Frost questions. Hell, we even picked up a couple of new advertisers. Life is good.”
Gravy’s expression showed he had doubts about how I would survive another round with the sheriff. He said, “Please keep me out of this one. I’ve got several clients in the county jail and don’t need them to have any problems.”
“Problems?”
He said, “I’m trying to get them placed in pretrial diversion and avoid trials. Sheriff Frost could block it with one word to the judges.”
“You worry, too much,” I said. “Frost wouldn’t take out his frustrations with me on you. He likes you.”
Gravy drained his beer. “You messed with his family when you wrote about his brother . . .”
“But his brother works at the sheriff’s office and holds a high-ranking position. It’s fair—”
“You don’t get it,” Gravy interrupted. “You made it personal, and—”
“I didn’t. This is—”
“Stop, Walker,” said Gravy holding up his hand. “It’s not your intentions that matter. It’s how Sheriff Frost has taken the article. I need to lay low with the sheriff’s office for my other clients’ sakes and for you to switch to some other coverage to get Frost off my ass. Do a pet issue or something.”
He waved to the waitress to bring us another round. I passed on the pizza since one was enough for the day.
Gravy said, “The rest of the town may love reading about Frost’s payroll, but you understand how this works. Just as soon as you think you’re winning, Pensacola kicks your legs right out from under you.”
“I’m enjoying this while I can. We needed a break from the Hines and Wittman bullshit, and I’ve been trying to do the Frost story for over a month. We’ll move away from the sheriff’s office for a few weeks until his troops screw up something again.”
Gravy ordered some hummus and pita chips, figuring I would need something in my stomach. I made a mental note to eat healthier—not any time soon, but one day . . . maybe.
“Speaking of Hines, my guy in Mobile said he would send me the handwriting analysis by Sunday,” he said as he noticed another blonde walk into the bar. I wasn’t going to have his attention much longer. Gravy asked, “If it checks out, what’s your next move?”
“I will open the blog with it on Monday.”
“Shouldn’t you give it to the state attorney first? Spencer won’t be happy, and his boss will forget you two coached ball once upon a time. You could score some points with them by showing you’re cooperating.”
“I don’t want the state attorney’s office to drag out its analysis of the writing,” I said. “We need to shoot a hole in Hines’ story lines that the charges are bogus and there might not even be a trial. Plus, I want public pressure on Spencer and Newton to prosecute.”
Gravy said, “I really wish you would reconsider this strategy.”
“No,” I said, “we will break it and see how the cockroaches scramble.”
Gravy finished his beer and ordered two Irish car bombs, a concoction of a Guinness stout, Baileys Irish Cream, and Jameson Irish whiskey. “You might be able to survive combat with the sheriff or state attorney, but not both at the same time.”
“Harmony and peace are overrated,” I declared.
He laughed, “Well, hell. Let’s toast your victory while it lasts.”
We downed the drinks and ordered two more Irish Car Bombs. I finished off the rest of my Bud Light. Gravy gave me time to let it all soak in. He finally asked, “Did you see Bree at the bar?”
“Yes, I didn’t speak to her,” I said. “Have you had any luck with Tatum?”
“His former bookkeeper has filed a sexual harassment complaint with the EEOC and a breach of contract lawsuit against him,” Gravy said. “The harassment complaint probably won’t go anywhere, but the lawsuit has legs. Tatum will probably settle before it goes to court.”
“Will she meet with me?” I asked. “It can be off the record, at least initially. If she has any useful information, I can ask her later for quotes.”
Gravy said, “Her attorney thinks she might talk with you, but it most definitely needs to be for background purposes. Nothing gets published without his permission.”
“Okay, when and where?”
“I should have an answer in the morning,” he replied.
The bar began to clear out as the concert hall opened its doors. Bar tabs were paid, tables cleared. Bree and her friends gathered their purses and headed to the concert hall. She saw us and waved. A few guys hung around the bar and the foosball table near the bathrooms.
Gravy said, “I can go with you to the state attorney when you’re ready to deliver the note.”
“I don’t know. Let me think about it,” I told him as I got up and went to unload the Irish car bombs and beers.
The bathrooms at Hopjacks were far from luxurious—a urinal, a sink, and a stall with a broken door.
The door to the restroom opened as I finished and headed to the sink. In men’s restrooms the cardinal rule is to never look up, especially in small ones. I stepped toward the sink, and a large man, one of the foosball players, blocked my path.
“Excuse me,” I said as I looked up. I moved my head just in time to dodge a punch, but he bull-rushed me back into the stall.
The quarters were too tight, and I couldn’t fight worth a damn. I protected my face with my arms but left my midsection open, of which he took full advantage. Fortunately, my assailant was also hampered by the small space and couldn’t step into his punches.
My attacker was built like an NFL defensive lineman. I couldn’t push him back. If I fell, he would kick the crap out of me. One punch knocked the breath out of me. I doubled over for the second time since Sue’s death. When I went to protect my stomach, two quick jabs hit the side of my head above my left ear. Another glanced my nose, not connecting fully but hard enough to start it bleeding. A left punch hit me in the mouth. He rammed me deeper into the stall.
Instead of falling to the floor, I rose quickly, pushing off the commode and somehow the back of my head connected with his jaw. The behemoth stumbled back dazed. I pushed him into the urinal. Water splashed on the floor and soaked his clothes. He slipped as he tried to get up. I broke for the door where I surprised his buddy, who I guess was the lookout.
The guy was short, more fat than muscle, and shocked to see me. He grabbed for me and grasped the collar of my button-down. I shoved him hard against the hallway wall. The shirt ripped as I pulled away and headed for Gravy and help.
The waitstaff surrounded me as soon as they saw me. My shirt was torn open, and I was bleeding from my mouth, nose, and ears. As I fell to the floor, I saw my attackers running out the back door—then I passed out.
I spent most of the evening at the emergency room at Sacred Heart Hospital. The doctor gave me five stitches above my ear and wrapped my chest to secure my bruised ribs. My lower lip and nose were swollen, but the nurse said ice packs would lower the swelling by morning. I had no black eyes, cuts, or bruises to my face. No one would need to know about the attack. I talked the ER into not reporting the incident.
I remembered one thing about my attacker. He wore a Hines Paving Company work shirt.