Wittman insisted he based the petition drive on the hundreds of phone calls and emails that he had received to stop what he liked to refer to as a “giveaway” to Kettler. He never mentioned Stan Daniels.
After Monday night’s announcement by Hines that he was joining forces with his brother-in-law, Doug tried to get a quote from him and got nowhere, but he promised to continue trying.
I gave him Stan Daniels’ phone numbers. Daniels would help him reach Kettler.
The outline for his cover story was due by Thursday afternoon, and he needed to talk with Teddy and Mal about the artwork. The firm deadline for this copy was the following Monday morning. Doug agreed to not go fishing until after the final draft was turned in.
Mal and I tested the payroll database a few more times. The searches worked perfectly.
She said, “Do you think people will really want to look up the salaries?”
“Hell yeah,” I said. “Frost’s employees will check out each other’s pay. Girlfriends will want to learn how much their lovers make. And the public will see how Sheriff Frost rewards his henchmen.”
I had gotten the idea from the Boston Globe. They had set up an online database of the salaries of all government employees in the state of Massachusetts. So many people had logged on to the site that it had crashed. This project had taken us four weeks to pull together. I expected similar results tomorrow.
Thursday morning, I heard the rain when my alarm went off. As I was about to roll over and go back to sleep, Big Boy jumped on the bed with his leash. He liked running in the rain. There must have been something primordial about it, or maybe he just enjoyed hearing me curse as he pulled me through puddles.
As we headed back to the office, bundles of the Insider wrapped in plastic bags were stacked on the doorsteps of downtown businesses. I loved the anticipation of a new issue hitting the stands, especially when it had a blockbuster as the cover story.
Whenever I had a story published in The Daily Mississippian, Mari had teased me about being like a child on Christmas morning rushing to find what Santa left for me under the tree. She had to put up with hours of me obsessing over a story, listening to me bitch about my editor and faculty advisor, and fretting that I wasn’t good enough to do the story.
Damn, I missed her.
I dried Big Boy in the stairwell and stripped down to my boxers. My phone vibrated, and the display said, “Sheriff Frost.” I passed on answering it. When I got out of the shower, there was a text message from him: “BIG MISTAKE.”
With a cup of coffee and Big Boy next to me on the couch, I wrote my first blog post of the day pushing readers to the cover story.
CHA-CHING!
Who are the big winners in Sheriff Ron Frost’s administration? The Insider has the annual salary for every employee in the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office available online. You can search by name, job title, or salary range. Enjoy.
My phone vibrated. It was Rueben Crutcher, one of my investors. Crutcher owned the Pensacola State Bank. Well, actually his mother owned it and let him sit in an office off the lobby. I recruited Crutcher to invest in the Insider when I launched the newspaper because I had heard he wanted to get back at the society columnist at the Pensacola Herald for mocking his Mardi Gras court. Recruiting the banker was a decision I often regretted.
Crutcher liked to tell people he owned the paper, but he didn’t enjoy any political pushback from the editorial content. He would email me story ideas that I deleted without reading. When he suggested an editorial position, we took the opposite side. We battled continually over the paper’s coverage during our monthly board meetings. Then Hurricane Ivan hit. The bank and his family investments took major losses. He quit answering my cash calls to help keep the paper operating, and I quit calling board meetings.
We had reached a tenuous truce that would last as long as I didn’t need any money. If I faltered, he would demand a board meeting and call for my ass.
“Walker, Crutcher here,” he said, not understanding that cell phones identify the caller. “Just got off the phone with Sheriff Frost—what the hell are you doing over there?”
“Reporting.”
“He’s threatening to sue if you don’t pull the story and write some type of retraction about his brother,” Crutcher shouted.
“He won’t. I had our attorney review the article,” I lied. “Frost has nothing to sue us over.”
“You think this is all a joke,” he said. “It’s important to some of us to have the sheriff on our side.”
I remembered that Crutcher’s son had been arrested for driving while intoxicated during spring break. It was his second such arrest, and for the second time the charge was dropped for insufficient evidence. Frost reassigned the arresting deputy to court security.
“Rueben, my contract gives me complete control over the editorial content of the paper,” I said, trying not to sound smug. “Tell Sheriff Frost to call me.”
“He said he did, but you wouldn’t answer your phone.”
I said, “I must have been in the shower. I’ll take the next one.”
Crutcher said, “The Hines story already has created enough problems. If Frost piles on, we’re going to have to convene a board meeting.”
“Nothing to worry about, I’ve got it under control.”
“Sure you do,” he snarled. “I got a call from your bank yesterday. You bounced some checks this week.”
“Sales are picking up,” I replied. “Best of the Coast is next month. Only a momentary cash-flow snafu.”
“We’ll see,” said Crutcher as he hung up.
The rain got heavier. Thunder could be heard in the distance. Big Boy
