Big Boy and I would have the office to ourselves for a couple of hours before the staff arrived. It was our quiet time. The dog jumped up on the couch next to my desk. His gray snout gave away his age, although he was so boisterous many mistook him for a puppy. He never barked but moved among the work areas and watched over the office. Whenever a visitor arrived, Big Boy perked up and joined the guest on the couch, hoping for some petting. If the guest ignored him, he would reach out a paw and tap him on the leg or arm and flash his adorable brown eyes. Big Boy was the star of the office, and he knew it.
Up until last Thanksgiving, Big Boy had been Roger Fairley’s dog. Fairley was an outstanding citizen who built a nice fortune opening temporary employment and day labor agencies along the Gulf Coast. He once owned the Pensacola Conquistadors of the defunct Continental Basketball Association. The voters had elected Roger to several terms on the Pensacola City Council and Escambia Board of County Commissioners. He taught me how Pensacola politics worked and where the bodies were buried.
We enjoyed each other’s company. He explained to me the mysteries and intricacies of Pensacola politics. When he died, he bequeathed Big Boy to me. He also had owned the three-story building that housed our offices and me. His widow told me that Roger left instructions that she could sell the building only to me—that is if I ever pulled together enough money to buy it. Until then, we didn’t pay rent as long as we ran ads for the Pensacola Symphony and Pensacola Opera.
When I sat down at my desk, constructed from an old door on top of two sawhorses, I cranked up Cowboy Mouth’s Voodoo Shoppe on the computer, took a sip of my coffee, and began surfing the web. I perused the top Florida papers: Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida Times Union, Orlando Sentinel, and Tallahassee Democrat. Like some evil troll under the bridge of my life, my blog had to be fed.
A web journal that I created about the same time as the maritime park initiative, the blog was my mistress, demanding constant attention. I fed it news, viewpoints, and political buzz constantly. And the public loved it, making it one of the most popular political blogs in the state.
On the blog, I honed my writing skills, pushed ideas, battled the naysayers, and made my paper relevant daily. It required—no, it demanded—perpetual attention. Readers wanted more and more. And I gave it to them.
After scanning the state newspapers, I looked online at the Pensacola Herald, our town’s Barnett Press-owned daily newspaper. Barnett USA ran the largest newspaper chain in North America with more than two hundred newspapers in the United States and Canada. It specialized in medium-sized markets like Pensacola that could only support one daily paper. Without competition, the paper set the ad rates and drained the community dry. Very little real news was reported, especially if the article would impact ad sales.
A cash cow for Barnett Press, the Herald gobbled up all the ad dollars and continually developed new websites and faux publications to saturate the market and satisfy their corporation’s insatiable hunger for more profits.
I hated them. In our paper’s early years, I read the daily newspapers obsessively to see if they reported one of our stories before our weekly issue came out, but they seemed to have adopted a policy of ignoring anything we published or else going in the complete opposite direction. They loved defending Bo Hines and not too subtly attacking my journalism. Their ad reps used it to poach our customer list, and we were seeing our ad revenue slip.
An alt-weekly in a small market had no chance to beat a Barnett daily. They had all the money, resources, and staff. If they made the decision to go after the Pensacola Insider, Barnett would crush us. Until then, we danced on the razor’s edge. Taunting and weaving through the decades-old grudges as we pushed the ancient, self-important city ahead.
Ultimately, we would fail. I had no exit strategy with a big payoff. The only uncertainty was when the executioner’s ax would fall. Would it be today? Next Week? Or in five years?
I woke up every day knowing this. No amount of jogging, drinking, or writing could change that fact or erase it from my thoughts when I sat at my desk drinking coffee and watching downtown Pensacola wake up.
Morbid? No, realistic.
Pensacola’s current narrative had me as the bastard who tried to ruin their hero, Bowman Hines. An unprofessional tabloid journalist, or worse a blogger, set on building his reputation by destroying the man who had selflessly helped Pensacola all his life. Bo Hines was one of their own; I was not.
At eight o’clock, I donned my blue blazer and walked two blocks to the M. C. Blanchard Judicial Building and sat outside Courtroom B waiting for the prosecutors to arrive. Television crews were already there. The Herald had a photographer and two reporters ready to cover every nuance of the trial.
As we waited, all their phones suddenly began to vibrate at the same time. A sheriff’s deputy approached us. Mrs. Bowman Hines had been found dead at her residence. The judge had postponed the start of the trial.
A few of the reporters looked to me for a comment. I brushed them off and found a corner of the judicial center to call Bo. Though dreading the conversation, I had to call. He didn’t answer. Thank God.
“Bo, I am so sorry to hear about Sue,” was all I thought
