ROMANCING MO RYAN (10 page)

Mo was apparently a regular because the waitress escorted them to a booth near the back without asking their preference, and when it was time to place their drink orders she didn’t even ask Mo what he would be having.
 

“Sherry for me, thank-you,” Nikki said.
 
The waitress took her order, but then glanced at the Judge before walking away.
 

Mo leaned back on his seat and seemed mesmerized by the singer.
 
So Nikki relaxed too, and grooved to the beat herself.
 
She knew she had to discuss the Sheppard case with him at some point.
 
Phil was expecting a story from her as soon as she could interview Mo and churn one out.
 
But for the first time in a long time, Nikki was content to just enjoy herself.
 
It had been a very traumatic couple of months for her.
 
First, she was fired for speaking the truth, and then she couldn’t get any other job.
 
Not in journalism because she was fired from her previous job, and not even at Mickey D’s because, they declared, she was over-qualified.
 

She was near a breaking point.
 
If it wasn’t for Lance flying all the way to Cleveland himself and bringing her back with him, and then all but begging Phil Lopez to give her a shot, she didn’t know what she would have done.
 
And now, to feel unburdened, to feel almost carefree, was a remarkable turnaround for Nikki.

The waitress finally returned with their drinks, sherry for Nikki, scotch and soda for the judge, and then she took their dinner orders.
 
But once again the waitress glanced at Mo in one of those
we’ve got a secret
looks as she walked away.
 
She was in her late thirties and was easily a hot mama, one of those blonde, blue-eyed, nearing middle age females who knew the only way out for them would be through a successful man.
 
Nikki watched Mo as the attractive waitress walked away.
 
He took one of those sly peeps at her ass, like he knew what the secret was too, but Nikki didn’t sweat it.
  
She might have been “practically a virgin” for twenty-five years, but it was a safe bet that Mo Ryan hadn’t been one, practically or otherwise, for forty-one.

It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing
, EttaMae began singing, but then she started adding all of those
do-wops
over and over and she was beginning to bore the shit out of Nikki.
 
This really wasn’t her kind of music at all.
 
But Mo was strumming his fingers and all into it.
 
This was his deal, this was what turned him on.
 
Nikki almost felt like a third wheel.
 
But she didn’t mind.
 
At least he wasn’t flattering her.
 
At least he wasn’t telling her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world and he would like nothing better than to get her in his bed.
 
That might be his ultimate intention, but at least he wasn’t orchestrating it.

So she relaxed and tried to get into the groove too.
 
She couldn’t do it, she just couldn’t get off on the do-wops and the
Fly Me To The Moon
song that EttaMae sung next.
 
But she was enjoying how Mo was enjoying himself, so all was not lost.

It wasn’t until EttaMae finally took her singing ass a break, however, was Nikki able to get a little of his attention.
 
She proposed a toast to the beautiful but cool weather they were having in Jacksonville, and he smiled and picked up his glass too.
 
“Here, here,” he said.

“So,” she said, “this is where you hang out?”

He smiled slightly, as if the idea of him
hanging out
amused him.
 
“Yes,” he said.
 
“This is it.”

“I like this place,” she said, looking around.
 
And it was a nice place, cozy, the walls lined with great jazz artists, some she recognized, most she didn’t.
 
“I’m not too crazy about the music, but it’s a nice place,” she added.

Mo stared at Nikki.
 
“You don’t like jazz?”

“I don’t hate it.
 
It’s just not my thing.”

“Have you ever tried to make it your thing?”

He seemed upset that she didn’t like his kind of music, which offended her because last she looked it was still a free country, but she wasn’t willing, not yet anyway, to ruffle his feathers.
 
She always seemed to say the wrong thing that ruffled men’s feathers.
 
For some reason she wanted to get it right this time.
 
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “no, I never really gave it a chance.”

Her honesty pleased him.
 
“You should,” he said.
 
“You’ll be surprised.”

Lance told her to always be complimentary.
 
“Don’t overdo it,” he had warned, “but don’t be your regular, honest-to-a-fault self, either.”

“Maybe you can help me to appreciate it,” she said to Mo.
 
“Maybe you can lend me one of your jazz CDs.”
 

Mo stared at Nikki without responding.

“Well,” she asked, smiling, attempting to play the game for the first time in her life.
 
But somehow she felt Mo was worth it.
 
“Do you think you can lend me one of your jazz CDs?”

“Don’t, Nikki,” he said with a frown on his face.

Nikki had no clue what he meant.
 
“Don’t what?” she asked him.

“Don’t try to play that sweet little seductress bullshit with me because that’s not who you are.
 
And that’s not who I want you to be.”

Nikki’s heart plunged.
 
Was she that obvious?
 
She was a pro when it came to journalism, to doing her job, but she almost felt retarded when it came to men and sex and love and relationships.
 
She thought she had learned a lesson by watching her mother and sisters go through the pain and heartbreak of all of those love gone wrong sagas, and she thought she had learned the lesson well.
 
But now that she was with Mo, a man who broke every image she had in her mind of the man-as-dog stereotype, she began to wonder if maybe she had learned the wrong lesson.

“I didn’t mean to come across that way,” she said, that sincere look on her face.
 
“Well, actually I did mean to, but I thought I could get away with it.”

Mo smiled, shook his head, and then laughed.
 
“You are really something special, you know that, Nikki?” he said.

Nikki smiled too.
 
Then, since she had him in a good mood, she got down to business.
 
“What about the Sheppard case?” she asked Mo.
 
She decided to stop groping around in darken rooms she knew nothing about, and get back into a place she knew quite well. A safe place for her.

“What about it?” he answered her question with a question of his own.

“Sheppard’s innocent.
 
He didn’t kill that mother and her daughter.”

“I don’t know that, and neither do you.”

Nikki stared at him.
 
No he didn’t say that, she thought.
 
“How can you say that?” she asked.
 
“The hair and fiber evidence, at least what the defense team has been able to salvage, all points to innocence.”

Mo leaned back in his booth, his eyes trained on Nikki’s.
 
“Maybe,” he said.

“Maybe?
 
What are you talking about?
 
The evidence has exonerated him.
 
It’s cut and dry!”

“It’s not so cut and dry to me, nor the prosecutor who tried the case.
 
From what I understand, the prosecutor has already made clear that if Shepard’s conviction is overturned, his office will retry the case.”

Nikki shook her head.
 
“But Shepard is obviously innocent.
 
The hair and fiber evidence proves it.
 
What more do y’all want?”

Mo sighed.
 
“Did you attend the trial?” he asked her.

Nikki paused.
 
She knew what was coming next.
 
“You know I didn’t,” she said.

“Did you read the court’s transcripts?”

“Not all of them, no.”

He looked at her.
 
“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

But she wouldn’t back down.
 
She might have been relationship-challenged, but she was as feisty as a charging bull when it came to right and wrong.
 
“From what I’ve read of those transcripts, the case itself was purely circumstantial,” she pointed out.
 
“If there’s any evidence to show that somebody else was at the crime scene, as there now is, it would shoot to hell the prosecution’s theory and would have to point to innocence for Wade Sheppard.
 
Everybody knows that.”

“Everybody who didn’t attend the trial knows that,” Mo pointed out.
 
“Everybody who never read the court’s transcripts knows that.
 
But Max Gerard, the prosecutor, was there.
 
And so was I.
 
So before you completely conclude that we’re both incompetent bastards, read the full transcript.
 
And then talk to me about how cut and dry that case is to you.”

 
Nikki leaned back.
 
Mo not only didn’t flatter her, but he didn’t hesitate to tell her about her behind.
 
She wasn’t sure if she could handle this impatient, arrogant side of him, although she suspected this was the way he kept it honest.

“I take it then,” she said instead, keeping her cool, “that you agree with the prosecutor’s decision to retry the case?”

“I could have gotten that case wrong, and it definitely needs to be revisited.
 
But if you’re asking me where I stand right now, then yes, I think the case will need to be retried, if it comes to that.”

Nikki frowned.
 
“No blanket exoneration?”

“No.
 
Not at this point.”

Nikki couldn’t believe it.
 
“But what about Shepard?”

“What about the two people who were murdered by Sheppard?”

“But what if Shepard’s innocent, Mo?”

“What if he’s not?”

Nikki sighed.
 
Mo shook his head.
 
“You don’t see your problem, do you, Nikki?
 
You decide that an injustice has been perpetrated and then you take the cause and run with it.
 
But you never take it to that next level.
 
You never go beyond the initial problem.
 
That has always disappointed me about your work.
 
‘What about Shepard,’ you’ll say, and then you exhaust all the wrongs that have been done to Shepard.
 
But you never even consider the two people who died.
 
‘What if Shepard’s innocent,’ you’ll ask, but you never consider that he’s not.
 
You’ll too smart a woman to be that narrowly focused.
 
That has always disappointed me about you.”
 
He lifted his glass of scotch when he said this.
 
And then he took a sip.

Nikki stared at him.
 
“You talk as if you know my work,” she said.

He hesitated, staring at his glass of scotch, a somberness overtaking him.
 
“I kept up with it, yes,” he said.

This threw Nikki.
 
“Since when?”

“Since we parted company in Cleveland,” he said and looked up at her.
 
She was floored.

“Cleveland?
 
But that was two years ago.”

“I read everything you wrote for the Dealer-Dispatch, at least for a few months after our encounter.
 
But then that little matter called life got in the way after that, and I didn’t keep up, but I got a pretty good idea about your journalistic style when I was keeping up.”

“And my journalistic style, as you call it, disappointed you?”

He paused.
 
“Yes,” he admitted.