City of Grudges

by Rick Outzen

  The building had been around since the mid-1800s. Before we moved in, it was a punk club where Green Day, The Wallflowers, and numerous less memorable bands played on their way to Atlanta, New Orleans, Orlando, or Austin. Before that, it had been a jazz club that hosted Al Hirt and Fats Domino. And before that, my barber Eddie told me that it was a “high-class” strip club, which meant the strippers had all their teeth. Before that, nobody remembered. The office was haunted, if only by residual punk angst.

  Most visitors loved the feel of the office. Governors, state lawmakers, and anyone seeking national, state, or local office dropped in at one time or another. The staff worked on six-foot long plastic folding tables. Papers were spread everywhere. Framed covers of old issues covered the walls. The space looked how the office of an underdog alt-weekly should. It was cool.

  My head was killing me, and the caffeine wasn’t helping. Summer Kay, our receptionist, walked over to my desk. She had handled the phones while we held our staff meeting.

  “Hi, Boss.” Tall and skinny with long brown hair with a touch of red on the tips, Summer had a fondness for tight jeans and eighties rock band T-shirts. Today, it was Culture Club.

  She handed me my phone messages and told me that the day’s deposit was $3,485. The first two messages were to call the state attorney’s office—not likely. Another message was from Bree asking that I have a beer with her at Intermission at 6:00 p.m.

  When I asked Summer about Bree’s call, she elaborated, “She said she had a possible news story. She also wanted to know how you were you feeling.”

  Dropping her voice to a whisper, Summer said with a concerned look on her face, “She told me about Jace Wittman. Are you okay?”

  “I could use some ibuprofen, but other than that I’m fine.”

  Outside my window, I watched the Palafox Street secretaries and administrative assistants stroll out to early lunches. Their dresses weren’t quite as crisp as they had been earlier, but the view was inspiring.

  Big Boy strolled over, ignoring Summer, and begged to go outside. Usually Summer took care of the dog’s needs, which weren’t many, during office hours. I guess he wasn’t a Boy George fan.

  5

  Big Boy and I sat on a bench in Plaza de Luna at the foot of Palafox Street. I tossed the dog a crust of Frank’s Pizzeria pizza as I finished the last of my Diet Coke. A refreshing breeze drifted off Pensacola Bay. Laughter and shrieks of delight came from children playing in the fountain in the center of the park. Their mothers gossiped on a nearby bench as they watched their kids play and the charter boats head out to the Gulf of Mexico. I fought the temptation to take the rest of the afternoon off.

  “Holmes, the sheriff wants to see you.”

  I looked away from the water and saw Captain Peck Krager leaning against the hood of his car that he had parked in a loading zone. Peter “Peck” Krager, the stereotypical Sheriff Frost henchman, stood five foot six and weighed about two hundred and ten pounds. The buttons on his shirt screamed for relief, and his white T-shirt peeked through the gaps.

  Krager was that former third-string offensive lineman in high school that never got to play, never lettered, but bragged about his championship football team. His grades weren’t good enough for college, and the Navy rejected him because they knew he was a sociopath. “Peck” was short for speck.

  The deputy kept his hand on his Taser while he talked to me. His belt looked like Batman’s utility belt, but not the Christian Bale Batman, more like the Adam West version, filled with gadgets: handcuffs, pistol, two cell phones, nightstick, flashlight, and Taser stun gun.

  Krager had been a mall security guard before Ron Frost won his first term. After he had worked hard on the campaign putting up signs and handing out flyers, Frost rewarded him with a shiny badge, uniform, a pistol with real bullets, and his very own patrol car.

  The diminutive deputy had a toothpick in his mouth that he rolled back and forth.

  “Hi, Peck. Couldn’t you wait until the dog finished his meal?”

  Undeterred, Peck growled, “Sheriff Frost wants to talk with you. Get in the car.”

  I stood, as did Big Boy. Peck took a half step toward us. His right hand never left his Taser. He stood as straight and tall as possible and tried to block our path on the sidewalk. He must have been wearing lifts because his head almost reached my chin.

  I gave Krager the “Walker Holmes” stare and Big Boy stiffened and uttered a low growl. The deputy backed off a little.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “Have other commitments. Tell Frost I will meet him at the Garden Street Deli at three thirty for coffee. You can tag along.”

  Then I added, “And tell the sheriff to bring the records we requested three weeks ago.”

  I walked past Krager and headed up Palafox Street towards my office knowing the deputy wanted badly to use his stun gun on me. I heard the car door slam, and Krager sped past me with his siren blaring. I made a mental note not to drink outside of the city limits for the next few weeks. The Pensacola Police Department and Escambia County Sheriff’s Office never crossed jurisdictions. The police rarely harassed me. On the other hand, there were times I felt Sheriff Frost had promised bonuses to his deputies if they could find a reason to arrest me.

  My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but what the hell? Things had already gotten all screwed up. Maybe I had won the lottery . . . that’s if I could win without buying a ticket.

  A bank teller said, “Mr. Holmes, this is C & P Bank.”

  I felt a knot form in my stomach. She continued, “You are a month behind on your loan payments. We need $3,500 before next Monday.”

  “Thank you for the reminder,” I replied. “I can drop off a check for $1,500 this afternoon and should have the balance of the payment due paid by next week.”

  “What reason should I give my superiors for the late payment?” she asked.

  Because my staff needs to eat, I thought to myself, but said, “We had a lull in collections, but everything is picking up with Best of the Coast coming up soon.”

  The call ended without major hostilities, but there went my deposit. Money passed through the paper’s checking account like beer flowing from a tap directly into a urinal without me even serving as temporary storage.

  Roxie had been right about the Hines article’s impact on our cash flow. Within days of the article’s publication, two condo projects tied to Hines, his bank, and his law firm canceled their long-term advertising contracts with the paper, costing us about six grand a month. What hurt even more was that they all paid on time, a rarity in Pensacola.

  The truth was, the newspaper had never been on solid financial footing. I convinced a couple of businessman to invest in it in 2002. At the time the daily newspaper dominated the local media, and I saw an opportunity to cut into their market share. Rueben Crutcher and Jackson Chipley agreed to put up $200,000 each, and we published our first edition.

  We had no contingencies to deal with Hurricane Ivan. In the days after the storm nearly wiped Pensacola off the map, Crutcher and Chipley told me that they weren’t interested in any more cash calls, which forced me to use my credit cards to keep the newspaper afloat.

  The challenge of making the monthly payments on the credit cards and our startup loan ate up a substantial part of our cash flow. I struggled to keep the paper alive from week to week, but that was my secret. If my advertisers and the politicians knew of my possible collapse, they would do everything they could to push me off the precipice.

  The day was hot. Lawyers, secretaries, and government workers crowded the sidewalk, heading back to their offices after having lunch. A few runners passed me. Show-offs, I thought.

  My cell vibrated again as I walked up Palafox. Summer said, “The printer called. They won’t print this week’s issue unless we hand deliver a check before two o’clock this afternoon.”

  Summer was calling on her cell phone from the conference room so the rest of the staff wouldn’t overhear the conve
rsation. For someone so young, she had strong motherly instincts and looked out for the paper and me.

  Shit.

  “Cut the check and go ahead, write another for fifteen hundred dollars for C & P Bank,” I told her.

  “But that’s leaves us with little cash in the account for payroll on Friday. We will need to have two more good deposits. I’m not sure that will happen.”

  “Summer, you bring the printer his check, but do it right at 1:55 p.m. They probably won’t deposit it until tomorrow. I will handle the loan payment after three. We should gain at least two days before the checks hit our bank account. Print out a collections report, and I will try to make a few calls to our customers.”

  “Your call list keeps getting longer and longer,” said Summer. “You know, you are making me an old woman fast.”

  I said, “What’s old to you? Thirty-one?”

  Summer laughed nervously. Before she hung up, I asked her to call Bree and tell her that I would meet her that evening.

  As I approached the corner of Intendencia and Palafox streets where our offices stood, I saw the lunch crowd still packed Frank’s Pizzeria, which leased the ground floor. The entrance to our office was in an alley that opened on Intendencia Street, an unremarkable gray metal door with a small red “IN” sticker on it. We prided ourselves on being hard to find. Fewer nuts walked in that way.

  Upstairs the staff had begun work on next week’s issue. Teddy and Mal, who had been with the paper the longest, five years, had an old rug under their work areas that clearly marked their territory. It had a real homey feel, and it always felt good entering their workspace.

  As a practical joke, the couple had placed duct tape on the floor around Jeremy’s workspace to mock his constant haranguing for privacy. Empty Starbucks cups and Diet Coke cans were tossed all over his area.

  Jeremy was on the phone finishing his music interview for the next week’s issue. He was telling the musician about his days working for VH1, MTV, MSNBC, and Entertainment Tonight. We had no proof that he actually had, but Jeremy enjoyed the storytelling so much that no one questioned him about it. No one cared anyway.

  Big Boy strolled to Mal’s desk, stretched out on the rug under it, and shut his eyes. He was taking his afternoon nap.

  “Mal, the cover story is a go,” I said, amazed at how quickly Big Boy could doze off. “I’m getting the records from Frost his afternoon.”

  She looked at Teddy and asked, “Do you think that will give us enough time to load the information into the database and test it before next Thursday?”

  Teddy removed his headphones. You might have thought he listened to heavy metal while he worked, but he didn’t. He liked jazz and played it soft enough that he could still follow the conversations around him when he wanted to hear them. He always perked up when Mal spoke.

  “As long as we get the information in a digital format, preferably a spreadsheet, Kyle said it wouldn’t take him long to upload the data,” he replied.

  “Well, that is how I requested the payroll data be given to us, but Frost might screw with us,” I acknowledged.

  “What’s the backup plan if he hands you a bunch of printed reports?” Mal queried.

  “We split up typing the data into a spreadsheet for Kyle.”

  No one was happy about that option.

  Roxie signaled for me to join her in the conference room. I shut the door behind me and sat next to her at the table.

  “Walker, I’m really worried,” she said. “This possible suicide is freaking out some of our most reliable advertisers. AmSouth Bank and Hankin’s Toyota have asked us to hold off on their upcoming ads. They haven’t cancelled, but they didn’t give me dates when they wanted to restart their advertising.”

  Their contracts had penalties for early termination but none for suspending ads. They could stay out of the paper indefinitely.

  “Do you think it would help if I made an appointment to see them?” I asked.

  Roxie shook her head. “We’ve been telling them to trust us; the trial will reveal the truth. Now the advertisers don’t want to be collateral damage in the escalations of this fight between Bo Hines and you.”

  “This isn’t some personal vendetta. The guy’s a crook.”

  “You can tell yourself that, and I want to believe you. I really do, but the general public and our advertisers are losing faith. Walker, we’re hemorrhaging cancellations and I can’t stop the bleeding.”

  I reached out and touched her forearm. “Roxie, we handled this before when we reported on deputies misusing Tasers on nearly every traffic stop when they first got the stun guns. Their union called our advertisers and bullied our distributors. When the grand jury issued its report and Frost was forced to rewrite his policy manual, the advertisers came back.”

  “This is different,” she protested. “Sue Hines was popular. Her death is working against us. I’m having trouble making appointments for sales calls to replace the advertisers we’re losing.”

  I got up and walked to the window. Two blue jays were attacking a squirrel trying to cross Jefferson Street. He dodged them as they repeatedly swooped down and cut off his path to either side of the street. The squirrel made a dash for a power pole and was hit by a car. The driver didn’t stop.

  I said, “Be patient. The sales will come back.”

  “No, Walker, this is not the same as before. A woman took her life because of your reporting.”

  “Her death is not my fault,” I maintained.

  “Keep telling yourself that while you destroy this paper,” said Roxie. “The Insider is more than Walker Holmes. We all depend on this paper for our livelihoods.”

  She began to tear up. “Dammit, if my commissions dry up, I won’t be able to pay for my wedding. Brad is already getting cold feet.”

  Brad, her fiancé, made pottery that had yet to attract much artistic praise or commercial success. Roxie had met him at Peg Leg Pete’s on Pensacola Beach. She was a waitress, Brad a bartender. The two opposites were attracted to each other and began dating. She helped him sell his pottery at arts and crafts festivals along the coast. Brad was funny and entertaining. It also didn’t hurt that he had movie-star good looks and her parents loved him.

  I had seen Roxie’s potential in sales and enticed her to join the paper after the beach’s summer season ended and her tips fell off. Roxie was ambitious, liked fine things, and loved the challenge of making the sale.

  She kept her five-seven frame slim by doing Pilates four times a week. As her sales commissions at the Insider rose, she swapped her TJ Maxx wardrobe for Of Mercer, ordering their dresses, suits and blazers online. She kept her hair blond and her nails and toenails manicured and painted.

  The only thing that took away from her polished, professional look was a starfish tattoo on her right ankle, which she refused to discuss no matter how many times Mal and I asked her about it. Brad didn’t know the story behind it either.

  Roxie put her head in her hands. I placed my hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

  “There will be a trial, justice will prevail, and this fickle town will thank us for exposing a criminal.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “The facts are on our side.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  So do I, I thought.

  When I got to my desk, I dealt with phone messages, and then I logged on to my computer and checked my email. Looking out the window, I saw it had gotten too hot for people to be moving. Only a few cars were driving on the streets. I had thirty minutes before I met with Sheriff Frost.

  My mail was unremarkable—a few hate messages and a dozen or so press releases. Hate email usually started with “Holmes, you liberal puke,” and then told me how this person or that organization had bought me. They often challenged my manhood, intelligence, religious faith, or patriotism. I counted on four or five such messages after every issue. On slow days, I responded to them. Today was not a slow day.

  I went upstairs, p
ut on a fresh shirt, and headed out the office door with my notepad and cell phone. I told Summer to call me in thirty minutes. “If I don’t answer, send Ted to the Garden Street Deli.”

  Summer nodded. I wasn’t afraid of Frost, but our relationship had never been good.

  Over the past six years, Frost had invited me several times to tour his offices and the county jail. I had refused each time. The last thing I needed was to be “accidentally” locked in a room with a serial killer. About once a month I would get a call from a mutual acquaintance who offered to serve as an intermediary and help Frost and me “patch things up.”

  The standard line was, “Please stop mocking the sheriff. He’s doing the best he can under the conditions.” I never quite knew what they meant by “under the conditions,” but somehow Frost always made himself out as the victim.

  My standard response was: “I have no personal issues with the sheriff. I don’t like pregnant women being tasered in Walmart parking lots, but that’s just how I am.”

  Summer handed me the check for the loan payment. “Please don’t forget to drop this off.”

  She would make someone a good wife, if he liked Culture Club.

  I began my four-block walk to the Garden Street Deli. This would be fun, I thought.

  6

  When I entered the Garden Street Deli, Sheriff Ron Frost was sitting at a table for four in the middle of the room, sipping black coffee and staring straight ahead. It was thirty minutes before closing, and the restaurant had no other customers.

  Turned over chairs were set on top of all the other tables. A black teenager mopped the checkerboard floors. He wore black slacks and a Bob Marley T-shirt. I immediately smiled and thought of the Marley anthem, “I Shot the Sheriff.” The teen looked up and winked. He got the joke without me even saying a word.

  Frost was oblivious to his surroundings. He was cadaverously thin and hunched over like a vulture as he sipped his coffee. He wore his signature brown suit with a cream-colored shirt and string tie. His Stetson matched the color of the shirt and had been place in one of the chairs at the table. He had a small badge on the lapel of his jacket.