He continued, “The judge will delay the trial for a week to allow Hines to deal with his wife’s death, which actually helps me. Hines’ request for a speedy trial had cut short our trial preparation, but the judge’s postponement has also given his attorneys time to negotiate with my boss. I will push to go to trial, but Hines may have the clout to pull off an immunity deal.”
“Dammit, Clark. The press is vilifying me. The trial is how to prove what we reported is the truth.”
“Yelling at me, Walker, does no good. Grow up. Your bad press isn’t my problem.”
“Screw you,” I said, then walked back into the rain to my office. I had to find Childs. She had last been seen when investigators confiscated her computer and all the checkbooks. The twenty-six-year-old Emory University graduate had only been the executive director for fifteen months. She had no roots in the community and few friends.
Childs had let me interview her for the Hines article, but I hadn’t connected the dots at the time. Later when my questions began to turn aggressive and pointed, “no comment” was her only reply. Attractive in a bookworm sort of way, she dressed well, liked apple martinis and an occasional joint. She had no visible tattoos, although I suspected she had either a rose or butterfly somewhere on her body.
Back at my office, I wrote “Pandora Childs” on a yellow Post-it Note and stuck it on my computer screen.
At the staff meeting, we went around the conference table. Mal proudly reported all the editorial was in, even Doug’s. Roxie had a few questions about my cover story before she could finish copyediting it.
“Sheriff Frost and his deputies aren’t going to be happy,” she said. “But the readers will love it.”
Teddy showed us sketches of his cover ideas. We chose a caricature of Frost sitting on top of a pile of money. We might as well go all the way.
“When can we have an A&E story on the cover?” asked Jeremy.
Mal said, “When you write one worth a shit.”
Jeremy stuck out his tongue but didn’t take the bait. Doug begged for another week on his cover story on the park petition. Mal voted against it, and I agreed with her. We needed to move on it before the petition drive gained any momentum.
When we adjourned, Summer pulled me back into the conference room.
“Today’s deposit was anemic,” she whispered. “We don’t have the money to pay the second installment on the loan that you promised to bring to the bank.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’ll have the money in a week or so to get caught up.”
“We have to pay the print bill tomorrow or they won’t put us on the press.”
“Did we have enough money to cover all the paychecks we cut on Friday?” I asked.
“Only because Mal, Teddy, and I agreed to hold ours until today,” she said.
Dammit. I said, “Thank you, Summer. We need to hold out a little longer. This will pass.”
I hoped.
Summer handed me a handful of phone messages and a press release that had been faxed to us. Who the hell still used fax machines?
The press release read:
Open Meeting – Save Our Pensacola Tonight
6:00 p.m. New World Landing
We can stop the $100M maritime park.
Refreshments served.
Jace Wittman wasn’t wasting any time. He buried his sister in the morning and was holding a public meeting hours later. He obviously wanted to capitalize on the attention Sue’s death had received.
“Open” meant open, so I set out to crash Wittman’s little naysayer meeting. My mood was foul enough already. Why not walk straight into a den of snakes?
Besides, who could resist the allure of free refreshments?
10
On the way to the meeting I thought about what Roger once told me, “Pensacola—old Pensacola—loves nothing more than stopping progress, especially when a wealthy Yankee is proposing it.”
The maritime park had begun as a public-private development to revitalize downtown Pensacola after Hurricane Ivan. Wealthy real estate developer A. J. Kettler, who had built several high-end condominium projects along the Gulf Coast and also owned the city’s minor league baseball team, the Pensacola Pilots, was looking to build a new stadium. And the University of West Florida had benefactors willing to build a maritime museum.
The city would issue bonds to provide $40 million to remediate the former industrial site on Pensacola Bay and build the stadium. Kettler would build a $16 million office building. The university would construct a $20 million maritime museum. The rest of the forty acres would be open for commercial, retail, and residential development.
It was a brilliant plan, with an excellent mix of public and private use. The build-out of the project would put over $300 million on the tax rolls and create about 1,000 jobs. Florida Trend hailed the maritime park concept as one of the brightest developments on the horizon.
The city council members loved the plan—with the exception of Jace Wittman. Wittman had taken a strong position against it for the single reason that his high school nemesis, Stan Daniels, was A. J. Kettler’s attorney. His grudge against Daniels trumped any argument about the benefits that might be derived from the proposed development.
Despite fifteen months of public hearings and city council debates on all aspects of the project, Wittman claimed the public had been left out of the decision. His first referendum to stop it for this reason had failed. But now that the building was about to begin, he had a new petition drive focused on rescinding the construction contract.
Wittman had a group of loyal followers that I had labeled “naysayers” during the 2006 referendum. They were suspicious of any changes proposed for their city, especially if it involved spending tax dollars, and they loved Jace Wittman. The naysayers saw him as their champion, the one who believed all their wild conspiracies and promised them the keys to power. He was their Moses, a voice in
