Roxie said the Best of the Coast sales were ahead of last year. She praised Summer’s help and said they would start billing for the ads next week. Doug gave a report on his Save Our Pensacola article. I didn’t tell them about the suicide note since I hadn’t verified its authenticity.
This was one of those rare meetings when everything clicked. Summer came into the conference room to announce that we had so many hits on our website that the server had crashed. I bought pizza for the staff to celebrate.
During the afternoon, the Frost payroll story went viral. The Pensacola Herald and the local radio and television stations ran stories on the salaries. One or two of the radio reports even mentioned the Insider.
At six, I got a text from Gravy to join him at Hopjacks, a pizza joint a block north of the office. Hopjacks Pizza Kitchen and Taproom attracted a young crowd. Each member of the waitstaff was apparently required to have at least two tattoos or piercings to be hired.
The place was packed. A concert at the music hall next door would open its door in about an hour. At first, I didn’t see Gravy, but I noticed Bree at the bar with a few of her girlfriends. They were laughing and talking with the bartender. She didn’t look in my direction, which was fine. I didn’t have anything to report yet.
Finally I spied Gravy waving from a booth in a dark corner of the bar where he sat with two tanned, blonde thirtysomethings.
“Ladies, this is Pensacola’s Thomas More,” Gravy shouted over the din of the crowd. Empty beer glasses covered the table. It must have been three-for-one happy hour or else Gravy had started early. “He does none harm, says none harm, thinks none harm, but wishes everybody good.”
The paraphrasing of the famous quote from the movie A Man for All Season flew—no, it zoomed—over the girls’ heads. They both said in unison, “Hi, Thomas,” and smiled. I didn’t care enough to correct them. Neither did Gravy.
“These are the Ashleys,” he said as the waitress handed me my beer. “They’re both teachers on vacation.”
“She’s Ashley with a y, and I’m with double e’s,” said the girl sitting on Gravy’s right. She obviously expected a reaction as she leaned across the table to show her freckled cleavage flowing out of her tank top. I never took my eyes off her forehead.
“Ladies, nice to meet you,” I told Ashley and Ashlee. “Would you mind if I take Father Graves away from you for a few minutes? We need to talk about an incident that happened on his last campout with the altar boys.”
Gravy’s lips formed a thin smile. He wanted to kill me. I took a long sip of my beer as the girls found excuses to leave the table and Hopjacks as quickly as possible.
“Holmes, you are an ass,” Gravy said. He was mad but understood we needed to talk. He was wearing black jeans and a pink polo shirt—not a good choice for someone trying to convince two Montgomery, Alabama, elementary school teachers that he wasn’t the Roman Catholic Church’s next lawsuit.
“I thought you asked me here to toast today’s cover story,” I said.
Gravy touched his mug to my Bud Light bottle. “Cheers. Did you ever talk with Sheriff Frost today? He kept calling me and bitching about you. He thinks you’re treating him unfairly and that you could find similar salary structures within the city and county governments. He threatened to put you out of business.”
“Frost will have to get in line,” I said. “What was your reply to him?”
“I finally told him that nobody could do anything with you.”
I laughed. “The web server crashed. Papers flew off the rack. The other media started asking big, bad Sheriff Frost questions. Hell, we even picked up a couple of new advertisers. Life is good.”
Gravy’s expression showed he had doubts about how I would survive another round with the sheriff. He said, “Please keep me out of this one. I’ve got several clients in the county jail and don’t need them to have any problems.”
“Problems?”
He said, “I’m trying to get them placed in pretrial diversion and avoid trials. Sheriff Frost could block it with one word to the judges.”
“You worry, too much,” I said. “Frost wouldn’t take out his frustrations with me on you. He likes you.”
Gravy drained his beer. “You messed with his family when you wrote about his brother . . .”
“But his brother works at the sheriff’s office and holds a high-ranking position. It’s fair—”
“You don’t get it,” Gravy interrupted. “You made it personal, and—”
“I didn’t. This is—”
“Stop, Walker,” said Gravy holding up his hand. “It’s not your intentions that matter. It’s how Sheriff Frost has taken the article. I need to lay low with the sheriff’s office for my other clients’ sakes and for you to switch to some other coverage to get Frost off my ass. Do a pet issue or something.”
He waved to the waitress to bring us another round. I passed on the pizza since one was enough for the day.
Gravy said, “The rest of the town may love reading about Frost’s payroll, but you understand how this works. Just as soon as you think you’re winning, Pensacola kicks your legs right out from under you.”
“I’m enjoying this while I can. We needed a break from the Hines and Wittman bullshit, and I’ve been trying to do the Frost story for over a month. We’ll move away from the sheriff’s office for a few weeks until his troops screw up something again.”
Gravy ordered some hummus and pita chips, figuring I would need something in my stomach. I made a mental note to eat healthier—not any time soon, but one day . . . maybe.
“Speaking of Hines, my guy in Mobile said he would send me the handwriting analysis by Sunday,” he said as he noticed another blonde walk into the bar.
