Summer nodded.
I said, “Does that make everybody happy?”
It did. They left the office for lunch and to celebrate Summer’s new role.
Looking over the Best of the Coast report, I agreed they had enough potential customers to reach and maybe even exceed the goal. We only needed to hold out until those dollars began flowing.
Meanwhile, we got by. The Thursday and Friday deposits covered our checks and payroll after I made a second round picking up payments from advertisers. I coasted on the blog, posting occasionally about upcoming meetings and rewriting press releases. Wittman’s petition drive still wasn’t gaining much traction. It was time to sit back and hope the state attorney’s office stayed the course and won the case against Hines.
Sue’s funeral was set for Monday. The staff agreed with me that we wouldn’t write anything on her death or her husband’s pending trial until after the services. It was a Southern tradition that no one spoke ill of the dead until after the funeral. News tips would start to flow late Monday afternoon. I guaranteed it.
I talked with Summer Friday morning. Dressed in jeans and a Van Halen concert T-shirt, she had come to work early to finish entering the sheriff’s office’s payroll data into a spreadsheet for the database and begin her Best of the Coast assignments.
“What do you hear about The Green Olive?” I asked her.
“Not much. The place has gotten creepy. Some of my girlfriends still go because the drinks are so cheap.”
I asked, “What do you mean by creepy?”
“The owner is too touchy-feely,” she said. “Wants to hug or tries to kiss you on the cheek. He offers to buy shots, but nothing’s really free in this world.”
Smart girl, I thought. “Any pot or drugs being sold?”
“I didn’t get that vibe, but who knows what happens late at night?” said Summer as she headed back to her desk. “The Green Olive isn’t the kind of bar any girl wants to be at closing time.”
At night I worked on the Frost cover story while Big Boy slept under the desk and jazz drifted over from Blazzues.
Ron Frost was a product of the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, where he started work in 1965. We had never been able to prove he had actually graduated from Pensacola High School or that he had even got a GED. He was hired because his father and three uncles worked there.
From the beginning, Frost displayed folksy charm. He didn’t hesitate to do favors for the wealthy. Sons and daughters of the powerful didn’t have to worry about DUI arrests.
In 1973 he almost lost his badge for changing an arrest report regarding a bar fight on Pensacola Beach. The naval aviators complained that their names were the only ones on the report, while a cab whisked away the instigators, sons of a beach hotel owner. The commander of the Naval Air Station complained that while his men sat in jail, their attackers went free. An unamused county grand jury indicted the arresting officer, Frost. The state attorney ended up freeing the aviators and dropped all charges. Frost never went to trial. The incident simply disappeared from memory. Only my mentor Roger Fairley seemed to remember this, and he had delighted in giving me every juicy detail.
With each new sheriff, Frost ingratiated himself with his boss. Each of the sheriffs needed someone like Frost under them. The first sheriff Frost worked for, Bud Long, was removed from office after a grand jury indictment for two counts of gambling. The grand jury had reviewed an extensive list of allegations of misconduct, neglect of duty, and incompetence and settled on the gambling.
Sitting on his back deck that overlooked Pensacola Bay, Fairley had told me the stories of Long’s political career over drinks. Sheriff Long had also once been investigated for drunken, lewd behavior before minors. During a trip to Birmingham with the county school safety patrol, he invited the teenage girls, some younger than fifteen, to his hotel room and served them alcohol while only wearing a bathrobe. The incident report said he wanted to teach them how to “French kiss.”
The advisor for the safety patrol program was Deputy Ron Frost, who testified on Sheriff Long’s behalf and was promoted to sergeant after the state attorney refused to prosecute.
Later while awaiting trial on the gambling charges, Long was fatally wounded by his chief deputy, who mistook him for a burglar when the deputy pulled up into his driveway and saw the former sheriff climbing out his bedroom window. The rumor was Sheriff Long had been having an affair with the chief deputy’s young wife.
Dan Sota succeeded Sheriff Long. He was investigated for letting family and friends fuel their vehicles at the county pumps. The man in charge of the fuel pumps was Sergeant Ron Frost.
Sheriff Sota had tough opposition when he ran for a second term. Escambia County Solicitor “Big Jim” Reilly, who had garnered attention for fighting illegal gambling, challenged Sota in the Democratic primary. One month before the election, a plot to kill Reilly was uncovered. Five men, three from Pensacola and two from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, were involved.
Fairley told me that the murder plot was never tied directly to Sota, but many felt the sheriff and the Dixie Mafia were behind it. Sota narrowly won the election, but was removed from office after Reilly’s cousin in the Pensacola Police Department arrested him for DUI.
Sergeant Frost, who had run Sota’s reelection campaign, was promoted to lieutenant before the DUI arrest. During the nineties, Frost rose to the rank of captain, serving as the public information officer for the next two sheriffs, which helped to build his name recognition. He handled the VIP parking at concerts and events at the Pensacola Bay Center, garnering more favor with Pensacola’s power brokers.
Along the way, he changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. When he
