Joyce Blake’s pastor agreed to set up a meeting for me to interview her, and our paper told her son’s story. We also posted the patrol car’s video on the blog. After the backlash, Frost eventually had to fire the deputy, which didn’t make him happy. Our reporting won a victory for the Blake family and cleared Andre’s name. It added to the list of grievances Frost had concerning me.
I asked, “What brings you to 600 South? Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence that you’re having a drink here.”
Tyndall smiled. “My aunt told me how you never backed down in your reporting on Andre. You always would walk right into the middle of the fight. I’ve been following the Sue Hines story, saw the announcement of the Save Our Pensacola meeting, and took a chance you might be there. I lingered in the back of the meeting room and followed you into this bar.”
So much for my powers of observation.
“Alphonse is a pretty big name to carry around,” I said. “Do you have a nickname?”
Most white people in Pensacola didn’t know that many of the black men they knew had two names—the ones they gave their white coworkers, and the ones their friends called them.
Alphonse smiled. “Razor because I never could grow a beard. I’m pleased to finally meet you, Mr. Holmes. My aunt speaks highly of you.”
“Call me Walker or Holmes,” I said. “Please skip the mister.”
“Using ‘mister’ is part of my military background,” he explained. “I spent six years in the Air Force as a judge advocate officer.”
I asked, “Are you with a local law firm, Razor?”
He shook his head. “I’m on the Florida attorney general’s Child Predator CyberCrime Unit.”
According to the Federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Florida ranked fourth in the nation in volume of child pornography. The CyberCrime Unit protected children from computer-facilitated sexual exploitation.
The Florida attorney general set up five regional offices to work cooperatively with local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to provide resources and expertise. Pensacola had one of the regional offices. The identity of the staff at those offices was confidential information, but we knew they were active. Last month, the task force, in conjunction with local, state, and federal law enforcement officials, arrested twenty-six individuals across the Panhandle for targeting children.
“You’ve been busy,” I said. “The work must wear on you.”
Razor said, “Getting the sick bastards off the streets makes it worth the effort. Unfortunately, new ones pop up every day.”
So we drank. Our second drink was to “Operation Yellowtail,” the name of the bust operation last month. The third was in memory of Sue Eaton Hines. The fourth was for the maritime park because Razor loved baseball. And the last was for short black dresses.
Razor and I exchanged business cards and agreed to drink again soon.
As I got ready to head back to the loft and Big Boy, the bartender handed me an envelope. “A woman told me to hand this to you before you left,” he said.
“What did she look like?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know . . . fat.”
I opened the white envelope when I got back to the loft. A single, off-white piece of stationery fell out.
It was Sue Eaton Hines’ suicide note.
11
Jace Wittman had always thought of himself as special. Like his brother-in-law, Bo Hines, Wittman was a miracle. He was the fifth child in a brood of six, which in and of itself didn’t make him special, except for the fact that his mother had had three miscarriages before his birth.
His mother always called Jace her gift from Saint Theresa. Every miscarriage took its toll on Mary Alice Wittman, but the Roman Catholic Wittmans didn’t believe in birth control. Jace Francis Xavier Wittman’s birth proved God still loved his mother, and even though she would eventually have another child after him, a girl, Jace would always be the special one.
His older brothers teased him and often ganged up on him, but nothing ever dimmed his belief in his predestination to greatness.
“No matter how many times we hit him,” his older brother Frank would tell friends, “Jace would never back down from an argument.”
Jace was never wrong, and his mother made sure the Wittman siblings understood it. No one could ever tell her that Jace wasn’t perfect. When he was caught with matches and gasoline setting a neighbor’s shed on fire, Mary Alice blamed his friends for egging Jace on.
On the baseball diamond, Jace was the best baseball player. He had gloves for batting, fielding, and running the bases, a trio of bats to use, and real cleats. Jace pitched and played shortstop when not on the mound. The biggest kid on the field, he led the league in home runs—that was until Stan Daniels’ family moved from Gulf Breeze to Cordova Park when the governor appointed his father to a county judgeship.
Stan played with a hand-me-down glove from his older brother. He wore Keds, not baseball cleats, and used whatever bat the coaches handed him. But he could hit homers from the right and left sides of the plate, and his fastball was unhittable.
Roger, whose nephew played on Stan’s team, remarked, “It was something watching the Daniels kid come up to bat. He was thin and wiry, with lanky, rust-colored hair that fell straight over blue eyes. Everything seemed effortless for the boy.”
Jace hated him, and so did his mother. When Stan was the altar boy at St. Paul’s, she wouldn’t take communion.
Both Stan and Jace made the Little League’s all-star team. At the team party at the Wittman house, Jace beat all his teammates on his brand-new ping-pong table playing, of course, with his own special paddle.
Then Stan took off one of his flip-flops. Using it as a paddle, he beat Jace in three straight games. Mary Alice had her
