ROMANCING MO RYAN (16 page)

And when she finally made it downstairs and Miss Myra actually tried to engage her in a conversation, as if they could all just be friends, she excused herself and kept on going.
 
Mo said she was officially his woman now, and he said it was settled.
 
But she had to make sure that what she meant as settled was exactly what he meant, too, because the last thing she was going to be was one of many.
 
Official or not.

“And where were you yesterday afternoon, anyway?” Phil asked.
 
“You know to check in every couple hours, in case something breaks.
 
Nothing broke yesterday, but it could have.
 
It’s not my job to be running you down.
 
You’re supposed to stay in touch with me.”

“Phil, what news?
 
What’s happened?”

He sighed.
 
“I thought you knew.
 
I thought that’s why you disappeared yesterday, that you had gotten the heads up.”

“What heads up?”
 
Nikki was anxious now.
 

“You were breaking my heart there for a minute, kid.”

“Phil,” Nikki said calmly, “are you going to tell me what you’re talking about?
 
What’s happened?”

“Civil rights have been set back fifty years, that’s what’s happened!”

Nikki gave Phil one of her
say what
looks.
 
“Phil, please stop speaking Puerto Rican.
 
What’s happened?”

He sighed again.
 
Then he sat down.
 
“The governor of our great state of Florida has just announced, in a press release, his intentions to nominate your Judge Greatness, better known as Judge Zero, to become the next justice of the Florida State Supreme Court.
 
And the governor didn’t make this earth-shattering announcement in a news conference, but in a press release only because he knew the fire storm this announcement would create.
 
So, yes, Nikki, our Mo Ryan will be brought up for nomination to sit on the state’s highest court.”

His words were clear, but somehow Nikki couldn’t understand him.
 
Mo, a Supreme Court justice?
 
And suddenly she didn’t know what to say.
 
“Really?” she said.

“Fifty years of struggle about to be tanked and what does our slash and burn queen says?
 
She says really?”

“Are you sure?”

“I am positive, Nikki Tarver.
 
It’s a done deal.
 
Your boy is about to become state royalty and not just screw you, but all of us.”

Nikki looked at Phil.
 
How could he say such a thing?
 
How could he know such a thing?
 
“Go to hell,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he immediately said.
 
“I was out of line.
 
But this is some development, Nick.
 
The conservatives already have a 4-3 majority on the state court, with the chief justice always voting with the conservatives.
 
But at least the liberals could occasionally cajole Justice Preston, the one moderate conservative, to see their side of the issue and swing a winning margin every now and then.
 
But with Ryan there?
 
With Judge Maximum replacing the most liberal voice on the court?
 
Forget about it.
 
It’ll be a 5-2 majority for the tea-baggers.
 
5-2, Nick!
 
That means our side would have to win over two votes every single vote.
 
That’s impossible the way that court is constructed now.
 
And you know yourself that Ryan ain’t gonna be no swing vote!
 
We’re doomed.
 
Pure and simple.
 
We’re doomed.”

Nikki sat down too.
 
And as quickly as Phil said it, she understood it.
 
What on earth was she thinking?
 
Mo had already told her how he stood.
 
He’d already told her that no-one who broke the law, regardless of the circumstances, could expect any compassion from him.
 
He’d already sided with the prosecution even in the wake of new evidence that could overturn the Sheppard conviction.
 
His sentencing record was atrocious in the extreme, and even something as universally accepted as racial profiling was dismissed repeatedly by him.
 

Philosophically Mo believed in everything Nikki disdained.
 
And if she took emotion out of it, she could easily see where Phil was exactly right.
 
Mo was their philosophical enemy.
 
The man she spent the night with, the man she allowed to make passionate love to her, was also the one human being she would least like to succeed because if he did, if that nomination cleared, he would set back the cause of civil rights by leaps and bounds in this state.
 
Phil wasn’t exaggerating.
 
They were in trouble.

“What can we do?” she asked her boss.

“You can get over to that courthouse and get his reaction to the governor’s announcement.
 
It’s a Saturday but it’s my understanding he’s in some meeting over there now.
 
Also get some opposing views.
 
Hell, get a lot of opposing views.
 
And then slash and burn his ass!
 
The written word is the only weapon we’ve got now, Nick.
 
And we’ve got to get the word out that this is a terrible blow to every human being who believes in justice for all.
 
We’ve got to create so much negative fire underneath this announcement that even Ryan’s conservative buddies might run for cover.
 
We’ve got to work the mess out of this, Nikki.
 
And we’ve got a little over six months to get it done.”

“Six months?”

“That’s about how long it’ll take from now until the actual confirmation hearings.
 
And we’ve got to take every day of that time to eviscerate Ryan, you hear me, Nikki?
 
We cannot allow another conservative voice to end up on our state Supreme Court.
 
We can’t allow it.
 
We’ll try to be objective about it, giving both sides of the story, we are a newspaper after all, but that’ll always be our bottom line.
 
No to Ryan’s nomination.
 
We can say no.
 
That’s what we can do.”

Nikki stood up, although her heart was sinking.
 
But Mo told her to never let their relationship, such as it was at this point, interfere with her responsibilities as a journalist.
 
And she fully intended, she thought as she hurried from Phil’s office, to take him at his word.
  

She arrived at the courthouse just as Mo was leaving the building from a back exit.
 
But every reporter in the state, it seemed, was already lying in wait back there, too.
 
He hurried down the steps and moved with an athlete’s stride toward the parking lot, forcing reporters to chase him with cameras flashing and with microphones and note pads shoved in his face.
 
But he had no comment to every question hurled.
 
So Nikki decided to enter the fray.
 

“Are you an enemy of civil rights, Judge Ryan?” she yelled above her colleagues.
 

Mo actually stopped walking and turned toward her, his baby blue eyes filled with what Nikki saw as something bordering on shock.
 
But what was shocking about it?
 
If he wasn’t her lover, she would have asked him a far more extreme question than that one.

But he didn’t respond to her question either.
 
He walked on to his Mercedes, got in, and drove away.
 
Some reporters were disappointed and felt he could have at least given a statement.
 
Others were rejuvenated like paparazzi and jumped in their cars in an effort to tail him home, or wherever he was headed.
 
But Nikki?
 
She wasn’t disappointed or rejuvenated or anything of the kind.
 
She, in truth, didn’t know what she was.

She hung around the courthouse getting comments from his colleagues and ended up writing a story that would have made her own mama cry.
 
It was a scathing rebuke of Mo’s appointment.
 
Every opposing voice was heard.
 
Mo’s supporters, just barely.
 
Phil loved the story and said that it would be Sunday’s lead:
Governor to Nominate Mo Ryan to Supreme Court.
 
Many Outraged
.
 
It was, of course, the outraged many that received almost all of the ink, but Phil couldn’t care less about his newspaper’s liberal bias.
 
With Nikki as his executioner, he was on a mission.

She went home later that evening, slipped on a pair of shorts and a halter top, and cleaned out her kitchen cabinets from top to bottom.
 
She moved everything out, from pots and pans to plates and cups.
 
She felt on edge, unable to rest, unable to stay busy enough.
 
She hadn’t phoned Mo and Mo hadn’t phoned her.
 
She hadn’t heard a word from him.
 

Until her doorbell rang.

She dried her hands on a towel and walked cautiously toward the front door.
 
She glanced out of her living room’s bay window and saw Mo’s Mercedes in front of her building.
 
She just stood there momentarily.
 
Her emotions were all over the place. When he left her this morning, it seemed as if everything was on the upswing and their relationship was going to be a solid one.
 
But within that hour, Myra showed up, and then the news of his appointment, and then the look he gave her just for asking an honest question.
 
And now their solid relationship seemed doomed too.

She slowly opened her front door.
 
Without saying any words, she moved aside and allowed him passage in.

He moved past her smelling like a combination of cologne and tobacco and walked further into her livingroom.
 
It was his first time in her home, but he moved as if he knew his way around.
 
He moved over to the sofa, and sat down.
 
Then he looked at her.
 

She closed the door, walked over to the flanking chair, and sat down, too.
 

“I thought you didn’t play games,” he said to her pointblank.

Nikki was astounded.
 
“I don’t play games.”

“Then what the hell kind of game were you playing at today, Nikki?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Asking me a question like that.
 
Why would you ask me a question like that?”

“A question like what?”

“‘Judge Ryan, are you an enemy of civil rights?’
 
That’s what!” He said this angrily.
 
Nikki was stunned by his rage.

And it was only then did she realize who was actually sitting in her livingroom.
 
Monty Ryan.
 
The next justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
 
The next right wing ideologue poised to roll back every program beneficial to the poor and disenfranchised.
 
And he might just be a bed-hopping, womanizing, right wing ideologue at that?
 
Hell, yeah, she asked the question.

“I asked that question, Judge,” she said, trying her best not to show her own anger, “because many people feel that way.”

“Bullshit!” he yelled.
 
“Nobody feels that way but you and that ultra-liberal crowd at The Gazette.
 
Because anybody who knows my record, my full record not some cliff notes you read on your way to an interview with me, would know that I have never trampled on anybody’s civil rights.
 
Never!”

He was so angry that he was shaking.
 
She knew her question was tough, but what did he expect it to be?
 
Every reporter at that courthouse was asking him similar questions.