“You don’t know that for sure,” she said.
“I’m convinced I have this right. You’re letting your friendship with Sue color your analysis.”
And that was her second reason. Sue and Dare had been nearly inseparable since Dare’s husband died. They played tennis regularly, dined at Jackson’s or Pensacola Yacht Club at least twice a week, and took vacations together. Because of Dare, Sue had become my friend before I ever met Bo.
“That’s not fair, Walker,” Dare said. “You’re too stubborn to admit I’m right. You want the glory of breaking this story.”
I shook my head, “No . . .”
“It’s always the story. Well, this one will have no glory. You will be vilified, and I can’t, I won’t rescue you.”
Dare stood, grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse, and threw it on the table. “I won’t. You will hurt people that I care about.”
Even though Dare might have been right, I couldn’t back down. I had already gone through all the stages of grief—denial, anger, and finally acceptance. The man I thought I knew, the man that Pensacola loved, was a phony. Even worse, he was a crook.
I had no choice but to expose him.
So, I did. I reported the financial woes of the Arts Council. The next week the City of Pensacola and Escambia Board of County Commissioners, which each gave the nonprofit organization half a million dollars annually, called for an audit. They found nearly $200,000 was missing. The money had been stolen through a variety of schemes. Several checks had no supporting documentation. Some vendors appeared to have charged substantial markups for their goods and services. They claimed to have rebated part of the surcharge to the Arts Council, but the funds were deposited in a bank account that didn’t show on the nonprofit’s financial reports. Bank records showed a series of ATM withdrawals that gradually drained the mystery account.
Hines had signed the checks, the vendors’ contracts, and the bank documents setting up the off-the-books account. Adding to the confusion, the paid executive director of the Arts Council had vanished.
The state attorney’s office reviewed the audit and my article and indicted Bo Hines. He pled not guilty and refused to waive his right to a speedy trial, which placed the case on the June docket.
The public reacted as Dare predicted, not to defrock its favorite son but to attack me. The Pensacola Herald jumped immediately and ferociously to his defense and gave me, the accuser, a severe beating. They cast doubts over my reporting and alluded that the real culprit was the sloppy bookkeeping of the missing executive director. Hines was merely the victim of his soft heart that had kept him from firing the director. He wasn’t aware of how bad the money and bookkeeping issues were.
Readers began to distrust my facts. They wanted to believe anything that maintained Hines’ hero status. They reasoned that a guilty man wouldn’t want to go to trial so quickly. Bo knew he was innocent, they thought, and he didn’t want to waste any time in clearing his name. At the downtown restaurants and bars I frequented, longtime acquaintances turned their backs on me. But love, support, and comfort poured out for Hines.
Grudges fueled the public attacks on me. Hines’ arrest and pending trial put blood in the water—not Bo’s, but mine. And the sharks were swarming. They believed this could be the time to settle old scores with me, like the former assistant city manager who lost his job after we reported his golf junkets were financed by city vendors, the contractor who saw his string of no-bid contracts broken when we revealed the numerous cost overruns, and the county commissioner whose reelection and congressional aspirations evaporated after we disclosed how his hunting buddy’s son wound up with a county job and six-figure salary. And those were only a few of my enemies that had waited years for the right opportunity to pounce.
I became the target of Pensacola’s scorn. This would pass after the trial concluded, I hoped. Until then, I had little choice but to endure the disdain directed my way.
2
Dressed in my work clothes—starched white button-down, khaki slacks, and Chuck Taylors—I descended to the Pensacola Insider offices on the second floor. My work area was nestled between two windows in the southwest corner overlooking Palafox Street, Pensacola’s main downtown street.
The neighborhood of Palafox had a New Orleans French Quarter feel to it. City leaders with the help of the banks created a grant program during the seventies to encourage owners to build balconies with wrought iron railing above the retail shops, restaurants, bars, and offices on the avenue. Red brick sidewalks lined the street, and history permeated the area.
From my southern window I looked down on Blazzues, a jazz club located on the site that had been Andrew Jackson’s house when he was the first governor of the Florida Territory in 1821. One block further south Plaza Ferdinand marked where the Tennessee general was sworn in as the military governor. Winos toasted his bust daily.
A fire destroyed the Jackson residence in 1839 and robbed the city of a possible tourist attraction. Only a bronze plaque erected in 1935 by the Pensacola Historical Society near Blazzues’s outdoor seating marked the town’s one connection to the White House.
Jackson, the patron saint of grudges, fought thirteen duels, many over his wife Rachel’s honor. Biographers claimed he was wounded so frequently in the gunfights that he “rattled like a bag of marbles.” One bullet from an 1806 duel was lodged so close to his heart that it could never be removed, causing him pain for the rest of his life. It probably fed his ill temper, but he won the duel and killed the man who shot him. Roger told me that was very apropos of Pensacola to win the duel but carry the victim’s bullet for the rest of his life.
The bartenders at Blazzues often talked about the bar being haunted.
