THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602240119
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
A PI's life is no bed of roses. Just ask Nucks Nolan.
He's been at it for more than 40 years. That's 40 years of keyhole peeping, politician watching, deadbeat dad stalking and motel room bugging. Forty years of sitting in cars staking out two-bit hoods and philanderers on cold winter nights, subsisting on stale coffee and cigarettes.
In that time, Nucks has seen and heard it all, but sifting through the sewer of life can occasionally produce some surprises.
For instance, one of Nucks' most famous investigations involved getting the goods on a famous legislator - a family man and a presidential hopeful. He was caught in a hotel room with a local beauty queen when Nucks crashed the love nest, but the guy swore later to news reporters that he was only getting a back rub.
Being a private eye isn't exactly a country club occupation, Nucks concedes, but it brings in rent money and a buck or two for a brew and knockwurst at his favorite Oceanfront bar. And, it brings a certain sense of satisfaction.
Now Nucks is in the middle of a case that won't quit. He calls it the ``disappearing dough caper'' because $12 million in taxpayers' money - and maybe more - had gone bye-bye. It seems the school board failed to keep an eye on the former superintendent, who tossed public money around like it was confetti.
The case came to Nucks on a rain-swept November afternoon, when a distraught dame burst into his seedy walkup Oceanfront office and tearfully pleaded for help.
She said she was on the school board when the money disappeared faster than a handout at a hobo convention and she and fellow board members were about to get pinned with a rap of misfeasance or at least terminal stupidity.
The heat was on. A ticked-off city council had to bail out the board with a huge outlay of cash and the local DA had to empanel a special grand jury to snoop around in school finances. The Limburger was about to hit the fan.
What the dame wanted was protection, a Teflon coat so thick nothing would stick, not even Super Glue. Nucks assured her he would do all he could, but the more he poked around in the case, the worse it smelled.
Accounts were shifted around under the noses of board members without their approval. Money was blown on extravagant school construction projects and building rentals, and millions in school renovations had to be redone.
Loyal old-timers, including school janitors and maids, were jerked around and forced out of their jobs while squads of high-dollar administrators were brought in to push paper and dream up programs that never got student math and reading scores off the ground.
And before the grand jury could conclude its investigation, the school board rehired the same finance guru they had suspended five months earlier for failing to blow the whistle on the growing budget fiasco.
Nucks could only shrug. It looked like the distraught dame would have to take the fall after all. She was part of the problem, and there's only so much even a PI like Nucks Nolan can do to protect a client when citizens get real sore about being played for suckers. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
Nucks Nolan
by CNB