City of Grudges

by Rick Outzen

  I said, “I wish Roger was still here. He would know.”

  We toasted her glasses to his memory. Dare said, “I miss him, too.”

  “Why does every fight around here always go back to high school?” I said, not expecting an answer. “In the Mississippi Delta, you trade punches, somebody pulls you off each other, and everyone goes for a drink. The dispute is settled.”

  “Not here,” Dare said. “You have two problems: Frost and Jace. Sheriff Frost isn’t going to let up, and he will impact your sales. A dead deputy is never well received by the community, and people will want an explanation.”

  “Or a scapegoat,” I said.

  She nodded. “Bo and Jace together can be formidable. Jace is shrewd enough to play up Amos Frost’s suicide. You can expect him to come out swinging this week.”

  Dare always had the ability to push through the emotions and coldly assess the situation.

  She asked, “What are you going to do with Sue’s note?”

  I said, “I’m going to publish it on the blog first thing in the morning.”

  “Is that smart? Why bring Sue’s death into this mess? You’ve already been called a sleazy journalist. Won’t the post feed into that?”

  “The note is relevant,” I said. “It’s how we put the attention back where it needs to be. My spidey sense is saying there’s more to all this than Bo Hines stealing a couple hundred thousand dollars. I’ve got to find out what before Frost, Hines, Wittman, and the bank take me down.”

  Dare asked, “You are talking with Gravy, aren’t you? You can expect threats of lawsuits if you carry out this strategy.”

  “Yes, Dare. I’ll be fine.” I wish I felt as self-assured as my words sounded.

  After we washed the dishes, I kissed Dare on the cheek and asked her to see if she could find out any more about the falling out between Hines and Wittman. Then Big Boy and I headed back to the loft.

  As I got the dog settled and started to work on my draft on the blog post regarding the suicide note, I received a text from Alphonse Tyndall.

  “Need to talk. Can you meet me today instead of tomorrow? Hopjacks at 3?”

  An hour later when I walked into Hopjacks I spotted Tyndall in the corner of the bar nearest the front windows.

  “What’s up, Sheriff Razor?” I asked as I motioned to the waitress to bring me a Bud Light and sat down.

  He smiled and said, “Thanks for seeing me on a Sunday afternoon, Mr. Publisher.”

  “I needed the break from writing,” I said. “I don’t like sitting with my back to the window. I’m trusting that you’ll watch behind me.”

  “No problem, Walker.” He paused as the beers were delivered. “I don’t like how Sheriff Frost is going after you in the media.”

  I ordered some fries and made another mental note to eat healthier, just not on Sunday afternoons. Rain began to fall. The smokers at the tables on the sidewalk grabbed their beers and pizzas and scampered inside.

  “I’ve dealt with this crap before,” I replied, hoping the words sounded more confident than I felt. The bandages around my ribs itched, but I fought off the urge to scratch them.

  “You have nothing to do with Amos Frost’s death.”

  I said, “But it helps the sheriff to take the focus off him and his administration.”

  Tyndall put down his Guinness. “No, you’re not listening. Your newspaper had nothing to do with his brother’s suicide.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He said, “What do you know about Amos Frost?”

  “Good lawman. Popular with the street cops. Sort of the opposite of his older brother. Deacon in his church. Little League coach.” I took a swig of my beer and continued, “But his personal life may have been screwed up. Two ex-wives and working on a third. Possibly struggled with a ‘young stripper habit.’ That’s all I have.”

  Tyndall nodded in approval. “Not bad. You do have pretty good sources, but there may be more. I suspect he was being blackmailed.”

  I didn’t see that one coming. “Blackmailed? Fooling around with strippers isn’t a crime.”

  Motioning for me to keep my voice down he said, “I didn’t say he committed a crime. However, his face did pop up in one of the videos of the porn ring we talked about the other day.”

  If I could whistle, I would have. Instead, I signaled the waitress for another round of beers.

  Tyndall explained that the film company had found a new revenue stream—letting members participate in its videos. For two hundred dollars, men and women could have sex with the “actors.”

  “You pay a membership fee. Once or twice a month you get a text to go to some place in the two-county area. Usually, they give you a mask. But Frost was too drunk or too high and didn’t wear his.”

  Mentioning the three hundred pound Amos Frost having sex made me cringe.

  Tyndall continued, “All the time we’ve worked on this investigation, we received little cooperation from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. They didn’t block us, just didn’t seem interested. And they didn’t lend us any resources that might have sped up the investigation.”

  I asked, “Was Lieutenant Amos Frost the problem?”

  He nodded. “When I confronted him last week about it, he first denied knowing anything, but when I offered to show him the video, he confessed.”

  “Where does the blackmail come in?” I asked.

  “The producer—”

  I interjected, “Cecil.”

  Tyndall gave me a half smile. “Cecil Rantz had asked Amos Frost to notify him if any law enforcement began to investigate his operation. He promised Frost that he would never release the video and would give him the only copy when his crew left town.”

  “Did Frost tell Rantz about your investigation?”

  “No, he was too good a cop to do that, but he made sure the sheriff’s office didn’t provide us resources. Lieutenant Frost admitted to me that he was trying to get the filmmakers to finish up here and move to some other location.”

  I said, “So you think he saw the roof caving in on him. That he was about to be exposed.”

  “Not sure. Maybe. We were supposed to meet Friday morning at Waffle House in the north end of the county. If he helped us and shared everything he knew, I would have tried to keep his name out of it. But there weren’t any guarantees.”

  The summer rainstorm stopped, and the smokers migrated back outside where a waitress was wiping down the tables and chairs on the sidewalk.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

  “The film scheme is part of a much bigger deal, an international deal,” he said. “This week, we are going to round up all the ringleaders. We still don’t know who is financing the operation. Amos Frost’s suicide has pushed my bosses to pull the trigger and shut it down. Somebody will cut a deal.” He took a big swig of his beer and smiled. “I thought you might be able to use what I gave you to get Sheriff Frost off your back.”

  We ordered one last round. The Insider traded ads with Hopjacks for free pizza, fries, and beer, so I used our trade to pick up the tab. Tyndall handled the tip.

  As we finished our beers, I made the decision to share Bree’s dilemma.

  “Razor, you may want to check into Monte Tatum. My sources say he has been keeping company with Rantz, maybe invested in his operation.”

  “Tatum? The Green Olive owner?”

  I nodded.

  He said, “Monte Tatum. That makes some sense, but he doesn’t have the kind of money it takes to run the operation we’re closing down.”

  I said, “I can’t tell you my source, so don’t ask. He has invested at least twenty grand in Rantz’s company. You need warrants for his offices in the SunTrust building, the club, and his house. I hear he may have videos at all three places.”

  “How reliable is your source?” he asked, looking me in the eye.

  I stared back. “Very.”

  “Well, let me talk it over with my team,” he said
as he shook my hand and got up to leave. “Don’t write anything until the sweep, and I’ll keep you in the loop.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  23

  Monday morning I decided to take Big Boy on a long walk. My ribs weren’t aching, and the rain had cooled the morning temperature down to the high sixties.

  We hiked to Roger Fairley’s grave in St. John’s Cemetery. The Masons had established Pensacola’s second cemetery in 1876. I often teased Roger that his ancestors had helped to fund the purchase of the twenty-six acres only so the Fairleys could have the prime burial plot on the northern slope near a magnolia tree.

  Pensacola was predominately a Roman Catholic town prior to the Civil War. As more Protestants began to migrate to the coastal town, tensions mounted between the Spaniards and their descendants and the new arrivals. The Masons, a secret society that the Catholic Church prohibited its faithful from joining, had gained a foothold in Pensacola when the British controlled the settlement in the late 1700s. Fearing the Catholics might refuse to let any more Protestants be buried in St. Michael’s Cemetery, the Masons created their own cemetery.

  From the cemetery’s inception in 1876, the Masons were surprisingly more progressive than their Catholic counterparts and opened the cemetery to people of all religions and races, although the groups were separated and the areas for white people had much larger plots.

  Roger was on the board of the St. John’s Cemetery Foundation, as each generation of his family had been. He loved to brag about the cemetery’s historical significance.

  “St. John’s contains the largest and most diverse number of gravestones and monuments in Northwest Florida,” he would say over martinis, trying to persuade me to write a newspaper article on the cemetery. “It’s where the leaders of Pensacola are buried.”

  He regaled me with the names of the more illustrious cemetery occupants. Dick Pace, born 1896, built Pensacola’s first paper mill, Florida Pulp and Paper Company, which later merged with St. Regis Paper Company. He enticed Monsanto and Escambia Bay Chemical to locate plants in the area. I often reminded Roger that the corporations were three of the biggest polluters in Northwest Florida. Pace also founded the Pensacola Country Club, Pensacola Yacht Club, and the Fiesta of Five Flags celebration—three of my least favorite Pensacola society fixtures.

  Another historical figure buried there was O. J. Semmes, born in 1876, who was superintendent of the city’s streetcar system, later founded the Semmes Coal and Ice Company, and chaired the Escambia County School Board for thirty-six years from 1921–1957. The board named an elementary school in his honor.

  “And he ran one of the most segregated school systems in the country, one that wasn’t integrated until a federal judge ordered it after Semmes’ death,” I would chime in.

  Roger would get the point and drop the subject.

  Big Boy and I walked into the cemetery through its G Street entrance, a gatehouse constructed in 1908. On one side of the structure was a chapel that hadn’t been used in decades. The other side had storage for lawn equipment.

  A fish fountain near the gate had some rainwater in it. Big Boy lapped up a little before we trekked over to the bench by Roger’s grave.

  “Hi, Roger,” I said. Big Boy laid down near the stone marker. Clearly he still pined for his former master.

  The doctors had allowed the dog to stay in the hospital room with Roger up until he passed. Big Boy attended the graveside service with me. His first week at the loft he had run away a half dozen times. I would find him either on the deck at Roger’s house or at St. John’s Cemetery.

  “We miss you, buddy,” I said. “The wagons are circled around me, and all the guns are aimed in my direction. You always said I had a ‘justice gene’ that made me pick fights against impossible odds and that it would be my ruin one day. That day keeps getting closer.”

  Big Boy raised his head. Some squirrels were playing on a gate about twenty yards away. He ran over to bother them, bored with my monologue.

  I sat and tried to make sense of the thoughts running through my head. I still needed more information. The pieces didn’t quite fit together, but I was pretty sure they should.

  As we walked back to the loft, my post on the suicide note went live. I resisted the urge to immediately check the readers’ responses. I powered on my computer only after I showered and fed Big Boy.

  The blog already had thirty-five comments on the post about the suicide note—none flattering. It was worse on the Herald website where they had posted a brief blurb about the note. Most hoped Hines would sue me. Some asserted the note was a fake. A few claimed Kettler put me up to it to discredit Wittman. The internet trolls ripped to shreds anyone defending me.

  Assistant State Attorney Clark Spencer called. “My boss wants to know who gave you the suicide note.”

  “Someone fat,” I said.

  “Holmes, this is serious. The cops didn’t find any note at the scene. Then you publish one a week after Bo Hines attacks you in the newspaper and after Sheriff Frost goes after your journalism ethics. You have to admit it looks bad.”

  “I know, I know, but even if I knew who gave it to me, I couldn’t tell you without their permission. I will have Gravy drop it off with the handwriting analysis we had done on it. Just check it out, Spencer.”

  Spencer said, “Get us the note immediately. We will do our own analysis, but I can tell you unless you can come up with more on how you got the note, you can expect a subpoena, maybe even a search warrant.”

  “Do whatever you have to do.”

  Gravy didn’t pick up his cell phone when I called. I tried his office and was told that he was in court, but he would return my call when he got out.

  We held the Insider staff meeting. The excitement of last Thursday had evaporated. The talk they heard over the weekend hadn’t been positive.

  “I’m dreading the phone today,” said Roxie. “Sheriff Frost has gotten people riled against us. The last phone call businesses want to receive is one from us asking for money.”

  “This will die down,” I said. “There are some things in the works that will undermine Frost’s venom. Our readers trust us to find the truth.”

  Roxie stared back but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t convinced her, but she was willing to wait a day or so.

  I added, “It’s probably a good idea to take a break from sales calls the next few days. But I promise people’s attitudes towards us are going to change.”

  Jeremy said, “Tell us about the suicide note. Why did you hide it from us?”

  I told them how I had obtained the note. “Before I did anything with it or got you all excited about it, I wanted to verify the handwriting. I didn’t get verification until Sunday morning.”

  Mal said, “What does ‘no more lies’ mean? How does it change anything?”

  “That’s where good investigative journalism comes in. We have to find Pandora Childs. We need more information about the pasts of both Hines and Wittman.”

  I looked directly at Doug. “You need to nail your Save Our Pensacola story to set up my follow-up that will run next week and tie it all together.”

  He said, “I’ll have my final draft to Roxie by noon.”

  Mal snickered and mumbled, “Sure you will. Last staff meeting you said it would be finished by 10:00 a.m. that day.”

  “Doug, make it happen,” I said. “I need you to do some legwork for the follow-up story. Also, there may be a big police bust this week. You need to be ready to pounce on it.”

  Jeremy quipped, “We aren’t the ones being busted, are we?”

  I laughed and so did everyone else. Then we headed back to our desks to take on the world.

  Gravy called. “What kind of shit storm have you started?” he asked. “The state attorney’s office has called three times demanding the suicide note and handwriting analysis. I assume you told them I had them.”

  “Guilty,” I said. “Deliver the information to them, but drag your feet. Maybe
have a carrier make it her last drop of the day.”

  Gravy said, “Walker, I don’t need the state attorney on my ass. You already have Frost watching me closely. Don’t bring me into your shit.”

  “You’re already in my shit,” I replied, keeping my voice calm. “I’m the client. Just do as I ask, please.”

  “A pro bono client,” he said. “What will I say if Spencer calls again?”

  “Tell him I have the documents and you’re waiting on them.”

  Gravy said, “I need better clients.” Then he hung up.

  My cell phone vibrated. A reporter from a Mobile television station wanted to know if I would be going to the press conference that afternoon and if I’d be available for comments afterward.

  “What press conference? Why would I want to comment?”

  The reporter said, “Bowman Hines and Jake Wittman are holding a press conference today at 4:00 p.m. on the courthouse steps. They tell us their attorneys will attend, and they will expose you for the tabloid hack writer that you are.”

  I told Doug to finish his story on time so that he could cover the press conference. I played briefly with the idea of sitting it out but knew I wouldn’t.

  My cell phone vibrated again.

  “I’ve never known a man so determined to get his butt kicked,” Dare said when I answered. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or teasing. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Dare, stay with me on this,” I replied. “You’ve got to trust me. We will find the truth.”

  “I’m in your corner, regardless of how difficult you make it at times,” she said. “I know you had to publish the note. What’s the feedback so far?”

  I walked out to the stairwell so the staff couldn’t hear how bad it was.

  “Spencer demands to know how I got the note. Jace and Bo have called a press conference this afternoon to blast me. I’m sure his attorneys are fired up to come after me. My checking account has $104 in it. And my dog smells like the bathroom of a truck stop.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Take them all down. What other choice do I have?” I added, feeling my cockiness didn’t ring true.