Our first ad campaign drew blood: “A good newspaper for a town that deserves one.” It didn’t win us any fans at the daily newspaper.
At the time the Herald had come up with a promotion that let Pensacola’s elite purchase decorative pelican statues. The Pelicans in Paradise was a public art project based on the CowParade project, which the Herald’s publisher witnessed during a trip to Portland, Oregon. He was inspired by the bovine statues scattered throughout Portland and saw an opportunity to make money.
Each fiberglass pelican was nearly five feet tall and weighed about seventy pounds. They were decorated by various artists, selected by the statues’ sponsors, and placed at various outdoor locations around downtown Pensacola.
A total of forty-one pelicans were commissioned for the project. The first wave of twenty statues included a pelican decorated with bright flames and a spiked collar and anklets called “Flambo,” “The Godfeather” (a mafioso pelican in a pinstriped suit), and “Pelvis the Elvis Bird” and “Peli-Queen Elizabeak,” which were based on Elvis Presley and Queen Elizabeth I respectively. The paper got the city to pay to put them on display around downtown.
The Insider countered with cheap, plastic pink flamingoes that we planted next to the Herald’s pelicans. Our flock included “Flam-stripper,” a flamingo in a thong that was ready to entertain SEC head football coaches, law enforcement officers, and whoever had a wad of twenties or a visa card; “Ramboingo,” an attack Flamingo that could whip birds a hundred times its size, even ones made of fiberglass bolted to the ground and painted all pretty; and “Mini Bucks,” the flamingo that represented all the call center jobs the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce brought to the area by offering wages lower than most third world countries.
At a music festival, we stole one of their banners, cut it up into little pieces, and sent the Herald editor a ransom note. Unamused, she threatened to arrest me for petty theft.
We also regularly posted clips of the television station’s miscues—and there were dozens. When a prostitution sweep in the seedy part of Escambia County snagged the station manager, we published his mug shot.
No, our competition relished going after the Pensacola Insider and particularly me.
I spent my Sunday trying to find out more about Sue’s last days. Dare hadn’t returned my call. Maybe the medical examiner’s report had satisfied her concerns about her friend’s death, but I wanted to find out more about Sue’s state of mind as the trial was set to begin.
If she wasn’t having seizures, why take the pills? The Sue Hines I knew hated taking them. She wouldn’t self-medicate to sleep. Sue would have run three miles or read Faulkner instead.
Unfortunately, I hit roadblocks everywhere I turned. Sue’s friends and neighbors either wouldn’t talk to me or hinted that I was only trying to cover my ass and deflect any blame for her death. Harden had disappeared and didn’t return calls or answer text messages.
So I decided to get my mind off Sue and follow up on helping Bree with her situation. I had a source who always seemed to know what was happening in Pensacola’s underbelly. I drove to Benny’s Backseat, the last remaining strip club on the west side of Pensacola. At four o’clock on a Sunday, the club didn’t have many customers, but Benny Walsh would be there. He auditioned new talent on Sunday afternoons after he attended Mass at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and took his mother and aunt to brunch.
“Holmes, what the fuck are you doing here?” Benny yelled as my eyes adjusted to the dark room. Benny sat on a stool in the far corner where he could watch the bar and the stage. He wore a powder blue polo shirt. Every finger had a ring, and his gold tooth shone when he smiled. The stage lights reflected off his bald head.
As I walked towards him, he whispered something to a stocky waitress with a Daffy Duck tattoo on her left buttock. By the time I sat down, a Bud Light appeared on the table. Benny didn’t shake hands. He bumped fists.
“What’s got you slumming, my friend?” he asked.
On the stage, a very skinny girl with a blonde curly wig twirled on a gold pole to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie.” She held onto the pole for dear life. The sailors at the foot of the stage placed bets on whether or not she would fall again.
“What do you hear about The Green Olive and Monte Tatum?” I asked. It was always best to go straight to the point with Benny.
“That piece of crap,” growled Benny. “He ran up a seven-grand tab here and tried to walk out without paying. The girls had the boys hold him down until he signed the credit card receipt.”
He added, “Then the bastard tried to get the credit card company to void the transaction. Thankfully, we had him on video pretending to be a big shot and buying rounds of drinks for the girls at his table.”
“Anything on him creating sex tapes of women he sleeps with?”
“One dancer did go home with him once,” said Benny. “She said the SOB had a mirror above his bed, a stack of porno magazines in his bathroom, and drawers full of sex toys but didn’t mention a video camera.”
We drank and talked about his business and the challenge of finding dependable dancers. Millennials weren’t the best recruits. They didn’t work well with the older dancers, always demanded the prime hours, and never wanted to wait their turn.
“And they’re covered with weird tattoos,” he said as he waved at Daffy Duck to bring us another round. “Not butterflies and roses. They’ve got the names of their
