by Leigh Jones
“Here I have a beautiful story, all the details tied up in a nice bow for you—I even have pictures—and you still manage to find a way to be insulting. You need to work on your relationships skills.”
“Yeah, yeah. So I’ve been told. What have you got?”
Johnson smiled over the edge of his coffee cup at her, and Kate thought, not for the first time, how charming he could be when he tried.
“We got word of a prostitution operation at the Sand Crab motel, on the seawall.”
“Shocking...” Kate rolled her eyes. Everyone referred to the crumbling hotel as “The Crabs,” based on its reputation as a public health hazard. The neon sign out front didn’t advertise rates by the hour, but several people had assured Kate the women in miniskirts, high heels, and dangly earrings knew what to ask for at the front desk. Rumor had it the manager was making a killing.
“We set up undercover agents to watch the place several nights ago. Last night, we sent one in to … make a purchase.”
Kate smiled at Johnson’s delicacy.
“What was he buying, detective?” she asked, opening her eyes wide and gazing at him with a look of mock innocence.
Johnson pressed his lips together and stared hard at her for several seconds before continuing.
“He was wearing a wire, so when the mama came in to collect the money, the rest of the team moved in to make the arrests. Three girls in neighboring rooms were … occupied. Two others appeared to be between customers. The mamasan put up quite a fight.”
“Had she been picked up before?”
“Yeah, several years ago, but she’s kept a low profile since then. She’s a legal resident but she’s from the Philippines, and she doesn’t speak very good English. We’re waiting on her lawyer and a translator. I doubt we’ll get much out of her. But, and this is off the record, she did say something interesting when they finally got her subdued and cuffed. She claims there’s a new operation in town we should be looking for. She said they ‘make her look like small fish,’” Johnson said, imitating the woman’s broken accent.
“A new pimp in town? That’s not exactly big news.”
“Maybe not. But digging out that operation will keep us all occupied.”
Kate understood what he wasn’t saying. Since he had no leads on the murder cases, he might as well do something productive to help clean up the city.
“Well, that’s about it,” Johnson continued. “But I’m sure you have questions.”
Kate spent the next half hour teasing details from Johnson’s “just the facts” account and getting the names, ages and hometowns of the Johns. The girls were mostly local, or from Houston, although several of them had never been arrested before. The vacant stares and haggard faces in their mugshots suggested longstanding drug addiction. Kate shuddered at their desolation.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lewis put the story at the top of the front page, a prominent placement Johnson couldn’t complain about. Kate’s trio of budget battle stories ran Saturday and Sunday. Paired with the publisher’s editorial extolling the virtues of fiscal responsibility, it made quite a splash. Mayor Hanes even called to thank Kate for her excellent reporting.
The politician’s gleeful praise turned her stomach. But as Lewis reminded her, all she had done was follow the numbers. She didn’t set out to make the mayor’s case. But the numbers had. Using some basic calculations, Kate determined the city’s tax base could not keep up with the current level of spending. Even if the growth rate of the previous decade held steady—and every economic indicator said it wouldn’t—the city had to cut expenses or it would be in serious financial trouble.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The following week, Kate braced herself for the mayor’s inevitable gloating at the start of the city council meeting. Any time politicians earned support from the local newspaper, they bragged about it. On the other hand, negative stories or editorials elicited sharp public rebukes. Kate had squirmed through her share of those.
The council chamber was filled to overflowing once again. City workers scowled and exchanged angry whispers. Neighborhood and business leaders laughed delicately and traded confident smiles. Most people thought the budget vote was a foregone conclusion. Kate started looking at her watch at 6:05 p.m. The mayor ran a pretty tight ship, and it wasn’t like him to start a meeting late.
Five minutes later, the door to the conference room opened and the entire council filed out, led by Mayor Hanes. Kate leaned forward over her laptop keyboard and scrutinized each face carefully. The mayor’s mouth was set in a hard line, his eyebrows knit tightly together. Several council members looked nervously out at the audience. Two others wore confused frowns. Only Terrence White and Julia Escoveda, who opposed the budget cuts, looked pleased. They flashed exultant smiles to their watching supporters. Kate’s heart started to pound, adrenaline shooting through her veins. Something had changed drastically.
The tension that filled the room just a few minutes before exploded into palpable anxiety. Kate clearly wasn’t the only one who had a suspicion something unexpected was about to happen. Although the mayor whacked his gavel on the desk with the same authority as usual, it was completely unnecessary. The room had already gone silent. As they stood for the pledge, Kate frantically tried to figure out what was coming.
After the audience members had taken their seats again, Mayor Hanes pulled his microphone toward him.
“I’d like to say a few words before we get started tonight,” he said, pausing to swallow and take a deep breath before continuing. Kate had never seen him look so uncomfortable.
“As you all know, I campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility. As the Gazette so aptly noted in last Sunday’s story, the city cannot continue to spend at the same rate and stay solvent. During the campaign, I suggested breaking the hold of the police union was the only way to cut our expenses. It’s a position I’ve maintained for the last six months.”
Almost from a distance, Kate could hear her keyboard clicking at a frantic pace. She was getting every word, but her mind was racing to figure out what Hanes might say next.
“But this last week, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the kind of place I want this island to be, the kind of city I want to pass on to my children,” Hanes continued, his voice breaking just slightly. “While I still believe Galveston is a safe place to live, work, and play, the events of this past month have shown us we cannot take our security for granted. As Capt. Petronello so aptly reminded us during our last meeting, this city has made major strides in the last 20 years. I don’t want to see all that progress undone just to balance the budget.”
Kate glanced over her shoulder. The mayor’s supporters had started to shoot each other alarmed glances. Several of them shook their heads and shrugged frantically in response to unspoken questions.
“I know this is a surprise to everyone in the room,” Hanes said. “It’s not something I’ve discussed with anyone until just before tonight’s meeting when I informed my fellow council members of what I planned to say. Despite everything I’ve said previously on the subject, I can no longer in good conscience continue to take an adversarial stance against the men and women we rely on for our protection. I still believe we need to rein in our spending, but I will not do it on the backs of our hard-working employees.”
The city workers let out an exultant cheer that ended in a standing ovation. Kate could see police officers in the back of the room trading fist bumps. An angry rumble started to roll over the mayor’s supporters. When Hanes didn’t gavel the crowd to order, Daniel Price, president of the Silk Stocking District association, stood and pointed a long finger in his direction.
“You liar!” he shouted. “We elected you to get this city’s house in order. You had us all fooled. You will regret this!”
“All right now, that’s enough,” Hanes said, pounding the gavel on the desk repeatedly until the crowd started to quiet. “We can agree to disagree, Mr. Price, but there’s no need for threats.”
“That was no threat!” Price said angrily. When several of the officers at the edge of the room started to move his way, he waved his hand at them dismissively and stalked toward the door at the back of the room. “This whole thing stinks. You haven’t heard the last of us.”
The rest of the mayor’s now former supporters followed him. Kate slid her notebook out of her laptop bag and slipped out the side entrance.
In the parking lot, a knot of two dozen very angry people had gathered. As Kate jogged over to them, Price wheeled to face her.
“What just happened in there?” he exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air in an exaggerated gesture of disbelief. “Did you have any idea he was going to do that?”
“None,” Kate said. “I’m just as surprised as you are.”
As if to acknowledge her statement, almost everyone in the group started talking at once.
“He’s a traitor!”
“I bet he planned this all along.”
“Who does he think he is, making promises and then breaking them?”
Scribbling fast in her notebook, Kate tried to keep up.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Price said. “Something fishy’s going on here.”
“What do you think it is?” Kate asked, questioning as much for herself as for the quote. “It’s not like he’s in a tight re-election campaign and needs votes. He won’t even run again for another 18 months. The police union didn’t give him any election money, so he doesn’t owe anyone any favors.”
“I don’t know,” Price said. “Maybe they’ve got something on him. I wouldn’t put it past the union to resort to blackmail.”
Several others in the group nodded. Kate heard a few say, “That could be it.”
As she headed back inside for the rest of the meeting, Kate wondered whether Price could be right. She doubted anyone in the police department was extorting money from the mayor. But political blackmail was not so far-fetched. Hanes wasn’t exactly discreet, especially when he partied with Joe Henry Miles. Someone in uniform could know a secret neither man wanted revealed. But what could Hanes have done that was so terrible he would risk his entire political career and his family’s legacy to keep it a secret?
Mayor reverses course
Hanes now says he supports pay raise for police, city workers
By Kate Bennett
In a shocking about-face during Thursday’s city council meeting, Mayor Matthew Hanes announced he has changed his mind about opposing pay raises for police and city workers.
Hanes said he still believed budget cuts were necessary but he didn’t want the city’s staff to bear the brunt of the financial pain.
“I still believe we need to reign in our spending, but I will not do it on the backs of our hard-working employees,” he said.
No one in the room seemed to expect the change, not even the people it benefits most. After Hanes finished speaking, city workers let out a loud cheer, and police officers began giving each other high fives.
But not everyone was happy about the mayor’s new position, which marks a complete departure from his campaign promises.
“This is a complete betrayal of everything he promised to do,” said Daniel Price, president of the Silk Stocking District Homeowners Association. “I don’t know whether he planned to do this all along or whether he really had a change of heart, like he claims. Either way, it just stinks.”
Price and his allies gathered outside city hall after leaving the meeting in protest. Several of the mayor’s former supporters had already started talking about starting a petition to force a recall election.
But Price said he would take a wait and see approach: “The mayor’s not stupid, and maybe he knows something I don’t. He says he still plans to cut expenditures, so let’s see if he can do it. I just don’t know where he can make enough cuts to make a difference.”
After the meeting, Hanes again pledged to rein in the city’s spending, but he admitted he didn’t yet have a list of specific line items in the budget that could be cut.
“I’m not sure how we’ll do it, but we will do it,” said Hanes, who for once looked uneasy and uncertain. “We just depend too much on our staff to risk losing them.”
Personnel costs make up slightly more than 60 percent of the city’s budget. Reducing the budget by cutting payroll would spread the pain out, making the reductions widespread but not as deep. If the mayor must cut from the other 40 percent of the budget, he will have to dig much deeper than previously planned.
When asked how that would affect city services, Hanes looked troubled.
“I don’t honestly know at this point,” he said. “All I can tell you is that I’ll do everything I can to make this as painless as possible.”
Chapter 10
Kate filed her story just after 10 p.m. but she didn’t fall asleep for another three hours. She lay in the dark, stared up at the ceiling and searched every memory of the last six months for any sign Hanes had planned to do this all along. She thought back to campaign fundraisers and stump speeches, press releases and private interviews. He had always seemed completely sincere in his plan to stand his ground against the police union. Politicians could not be trusted to be truthful, but their behavior was usually predictable. How had she missed this? Uncertainty left her with an alarming sense of free fall and failure. It was her job to get wind things like this before they happened.
Her cell phone rang at 6:45 a.m., jolting her out of a deep sleep. She managed to answer it on the third ring without looking at the number on the screen.
“What the hell happened last night?” Mattingly screeched. “How did you not see this coming?”
Kate cringed. The managing editor must not have watched the meeting on television and therefore had no idea about the mayor’s change of heart until he opened up the paper that morning while eating his probiotic-filled yogurt and sipping his camomile tea. She realized belatedly she should have called to give him a heads up.
“I have no idea,” she said lamely.
“Well, you’d better figure out what happened, and fast,” Mattingly spat. “I do not like surprises. And I pay you to know what’s going to happen in that council chamber. I’d better see you in the newsroom by the time I get there. I want you on the phone, talking to everyone in this city to find out who knew about this and what game Hanes is playing.”
Mattingly didn’t wait for a reply before hanging up. Kate cradled her head in her hands and groaned. But she didn’t have long for a pity party if she wanted to get to the office before Mattingly did. Stumbling to the bathroom, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She didn’t have time for a shower, so she twisted her hair up into a loose knot and wrapped a colorful scarf around her head. It took her another 10 minutes to tug on a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. She slipped her feet into her favorite flip-flops as she grabbed her computer bag and headed out the door.
On her way to the parking garage down the block, she stopped at her favorite coffee shop and ordered an Americano with three shots of espresso.
When Mattingly stalked into the newsroom at 8:05 a.m., Kate was already on her second phone call. She spent the rest of the morning repeating the same questions: Were you surprised? Did you have any idea the mayor planned to do this? What do you think’s behind it? She talked to a dozen of her best city hall sources before lunch, and none of them had any solid clues to offer. She got a lot of speculation and a few conspiracy theories, but nothing solid. She thought about calling Johnson, but he wasn’t part of the mayor’s inner circle. If the mayor’s plan was common knowledge enough for Johnson to know, Kate would have heard about it too.
When Hunter Lewis stopped by her desk a little later to check on her progress, she still had no answers.
“If Hanes really did make this decision at the last minute, there’s no way you could have known,” he said, tapping his fingers on her desk as he looked at the notes filling her computer screen.
“No one
will admit to knowing anything, not even on deep background,” Kate said, her voice slightly muffled with exhaustion and despair. “They all seem genuinely surprised.”
“What do they think’s behind it?”
“Most people said they had no idea. A few suggested it was a brilliant political move to persuade the police union to play along. Three people told me they thought the police are blackmailing Hanes with something he doesn’t want made public.”
Lewis nodded thoughtfully.
“But no one has any idea what that could be, nothing definite anyway,” Kate continued. “And the police union president seemed as surprised as everyone else. If someone is blackmailing the mayor, I don’t think it’s him.”
By the time she dragged herself into Mattingly’s office to admit defeat at about 2 p.m., his anger had subsided. Kate knew she had Lewis to thank for deflecting some of the wrath. He had spent about half an hour behind closed doors with the managing editor earlier that morning. Kate couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could tell by Mattingly’s raised voice and Lewis’ moderated responses that the news editor was trying to soothe the worst of the unreasonable accusations.
Mattingly leaned back in his big leather chair and looked at Kate through narrowed eyes. His scrunched together, bushy eyebrows looked like they were pointing at her.
“The publisher called me earlier and wanted to know why we didn’t get wind of this before last night,” Mattingly said. “I had to tell him I didn’t know, which didn’t exactly help make my case for the strength of the newsroom. You just gave the advertising manager an excuse to claim the budget cuts should be made in our department, not his.”
“That’s not fair!” Kate exploded, anger flushing her face. “I haven’t found one person who knew about this ahead of time. If even the mayor’s most trusted friends didn’t know, how am I supposed to?”
Mattingly fixed Kate with another long stare. She wondered whether he was thinking about firing her on the spot and saving the advertising manager the trouble of making his case.