ROMANCING MO RYAN (24 page)

You’re good, we love you, but get lost, in other words.
 
Since it sounded like a good idea to Nikki too, she rose quickly.
 
But Dinkle touched her hand and looked his bloodshot brown eyes into her bewildered ones.
 
“This is your Watergate, Nikki,” he said.
 
“This is your big story.
 
Every good reporter dreams of this kind of break.
 
You’re like a general without a war until you get that big story.
 
Who the hell ever heard of Woodward and Bernstein before Watergate?
 
Now it’s your turn to make your mark.
 
And I’m giving you the opportunity.
 
But just don’t blow it, young lady.”

Nikki looked at Dinkle and Phil, knowing that their minds were already made up, and she walked out.
 
She took the stairs, hurrying down as if somebody was chasing her, and then she stopped midway and leaned against the rail, her heart beating so erratically that her stomach churned.
 

She thought it was settled.
 
She thought she had finally found the answer to happiness, and it was love, and it was Mo.
 
But now, in one quiet morning, her comfort zone, her hopes and dreams, were all slipping fast.
 
And she couldn’t even tell Mo about it.
 
She would, of course, eventually, regardless of what Dinkle ordered, but first she had to check out this nonsense for herself.

They gave her two names: Tonya Wright and Marlene Wingate.

Tonya Wright agreed to meet Nikki at Polly’s, a popular café a block from the Gazette.
 
She was a tall, thin woman with short blonde hair and a pretty, cheerful face.
 
She wore a business suit and carried a briefcase and Gucci bag.
 
When she saw Nikki (Nikki had described herself to the woman), she hurried to the table and sat both her briefcase and bag on the floor.

“I don’t have much time,” she said in a soft voice.
 
“I’ve got a deposition in an hour.”

“You’re an attorney?”

She seemed surprised by the question.
 
“Yes.
 
Of course.”
 
And then she leaned back.
 
“I thought we were here about Judge Ryan.”

“We are.”

“They didn’t tell you that I clerked for him?”

“Yes,” she said.
 
“I just . . . I forgot.”

Tonya nodded and then smiled a great smile.
 
And as soon as she smiled that smile she reminded Nikki of Desiree.
 
Which meant, although she was small like Nikki, she was definitely Mo’s type.
 

“So,” she said, “how can I help you?”

“Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thank-you.
 
I told you I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

She was a to-the-point gal and that was cool with Nikki too.
 
Nikki wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams to hang out with her, either.
 
“Why?” she asked her.

Tonya started to ask why what, but didn’t bother.
 
They both knew what.
 
“Because it’s true,” she said.

“You clerked for Ryan four years ago?”

“Five years ago.”

“Five long years ago.
 
And now, all of a sudden, you just had to tell your story.
 
Please excuse me if I find that story hard to believe.”

“I don’t care how you find it.”

Nikki expected her to be defensive.
 
She wasn’t surprised.
 
“But why did it take you five years to come forward, that’s what I’m asking?”

“It didn’t take me five years.
 
It took me two minutes.
 
That was when I decided to speak out.
 
It was the day the governor announced Ryan’s nomination to the Supreme Court.”

“And of course you don’t feel he’s worthy to be on the Court?”

“I know he’s not worthy.”

“All because he wanted to date you five years ago?”

Tonya seemed more offended than defensive this time.
 
“He wanted more than that, Miss Tarver,” she said bluntly.

Nikki was trying like hell to minimize it, but Tonya wasn’t going along.
 
Nikki’s heartbeat quickened because she just wouldn’t go along.
 
“Really?”
 
she said.

“Yes, really,” Tonya snapped.

“What exactly did he want?”

“He wanted to have sex with me.
 
And trust me he was very descriptive.”

Nikki thought about all of the times when Mo wanted to have sex with her.
 
And he was always very descriptive with her, too.
 
She pulled a writing pad from her bag.
 
Not to take notes but to remind Tonya Wright of the seriousness of her allegations.
 
She wanted her to fully understand that everything she said would be put up for public scrutiny.
 

“So you told him no?” Nikki asked her.

“When I kept telling him no, it only made it worse.
 
He’d touch me inappropriately, or make some sly remarks about what I was wearing or how I spent my nights.
 
When that didn’t work, he got serious.
 
He threatened to fire me.
 
He said if I didn’t give him what he wanted I was out on my ass.
 
I wasn’t from Florida, Miss Tarver. I was from South Carolina.
 
From a very small town in South Carolina.
 
I couldn’t lose that internship.”

Nikki wrote notes on her pad, mainly so that she could think about this.
 
What’s the angle, she wondered.
 
A bullshit artist always had an angle.
 
“So you complied?” she asked her.
 
“You had sex with Mo Ryan?”

Tonya hesitated.
 
“Yes,” she admitted.
 
“I’m not proud of it, but I did.
 
I slept with him.
 
He begged me to do it one time; just one time, he said, and he would leave me alone.
 
So I did it.
 
My girlfriends thought I was crazy at the time.
 
‘That good looking man,’ they said, ‘who wouldn’t want to sleep with him?’
 
Well, I didn’t, Miss Tarver.
 
He was my boss.
 
He was the man I looked up to back then.
 
I was so positive about life then, and people, I was so hopeful.
 
He robbed me of all of that when he forced me to sleep with him.”

“Now just a minute here,” Nikki said.
 
“You didn’t say anything about being forced.
 
You said yourself that you complied with his wishes.”
 

“Under duress, I complied!
 
I had to work.
 
But he didn’t care about me.
 
He just wanted to leave an imprint on my life.
 
That’s what he called it.
 
He said he knew I was going places and he wanted to leave his imprint.
 
He wanted to be the man that broke me in.”

Nikki stared at Tonya.
 
“What did you say?”

“I said he wanted to be the man who broke me in. I was a virgin and he liked virgin meat.
 
And he wanted to be the man to grind that meat.”

Nikki’s heart began to pound.
 

Tonya went on.
 
“And that’s all he wanted too because after that, after he broke me in so to speak, he fired me.
 
He fired me!
 
That was my internship, Miss Tarver, which meant I failed it and had to start all over again.
 
Nobody wanted me by then.
 
I was damaged goods. In more ways than one.”
 

She looked at Nikki, her eyes now wide with distress.
 
“And I couldn’t tell why I was fired. Because I participated too.
 
It would be my word against the word of a respected judge.
 
I didn’t stand a chance against his word.
 
And you can call what happened to me whatever you want, Miss Tarver, but I call it theft.
 
And wrong.
 
And illegal.”

Illegal?
 
Mo
?
 
What was this woman talking about?
 
“You said you have girlfriends who knew about you and Ryan at the time of the relationship?”

“I wouldn’t call it a relationship, but yes.
 
There were a number of them.”

“What if we track’em down?”

“Please do.
 
Please
.
 
I’ll gladly give you their names.
 
Look, I have nothing to hide.
 
You think I’m enjoying this?
 
You think I want my name in a newspaper describing my sexual encounter with Mo Ryan?
 
How could anybody want that?
 
This will hurt my career, there’s no doubt about it.
 
But he’s got to be stopped, Miss Tarver.
 
A man who would do to a young girl what he did to me isn’t worthy to sit on the highest court in this state.
 
And if you don’t believe me, and y’all don’t wanna print it, that’s fine.
 
That’s on you.
 
But at least I told the truth.
 
It’s off my conscience.”

Nikki leaned back and looked at her near-empty notepad.
 
She didn’t expect this.
 
She thought she would see it.
 
She could always be counted on to see through the bull.
 
But she couldn’t see a damn thing.
 
Just a successful young woman deciding not to take it anymore; to open up old wounds; to put herself on the line for what she believed was the right thing to do. Nikki’s kind of woman.
 

But maybe it was too neat.
 
Maybe it was too real.
 
Mo said she always had a tendency to go for the obvious when the obvious was usually the wrong answer.
 
And maybe he was right.
 
But it was also right, Nikki knew, sadly, that some things were just too obvious to ignore.

Marlene Wingate, woman number two, was seated at a booth during the dinner hour in a restaurant in Baymeadows.
 
She was seated near the front of the restaurant, eating a burger, when Nikki arrived.
 
She was about Nikki’s height, a little plump around the middle, with a gorgeous face and long, silky blonde hair.
 
Unlike Tonya Wright, she was no high powered lawyer on her way to a deposition, but a waitress on break from her job at the Thunderbird Bar n’ Grill, an eatery a few blocks away.
 

Yet she relayed a hauntingly similar story of harassment by Mo and, ultimately, her acquiescence.
 

Nikki crossed her legs.
 
Tonya Wright had rendered her numb with confusion.
 
She could only hope that Marlene Wingate wouldn’t add to it.
 

“Were you sexually active when you agreed to sleep with the judge?” she asked her so dispassionately that it made Marlene smile.

“You mean was I then the way I am now?
 
No, ma’am.”
 
Marlene had a hyper-southern accent and had trailer park written all over her.
 
And Mo pursued
her
?
 
Something seemed wrong with this picture.

“You were different then, of course, but you weren’t exactly a virgin, right?”
 
Nikki needed to clear up one of the most disturbing things that Tonya Wright had said to her.
 
Tonya made it seem as if Mo targeted virgins.
 
Like Tonya was.
 
Like, Nikki had to admit it, she herself once was before Mo, as Tonya put it, put his imprint on her.

“I mean, I kissed boys before, junk like that,” Marlene said, again with a big grin on her face.
 
“But I ain’t never fooled around with no big man like no judge before.”

“Sex is sex, don’t you agree?”

“But I didn’t have sex with nobody before Judge Ryan.
 
That’s what I’m telling you. Me and boys might have necked in their cars and junk like that, but I was a virgin when Judge Ryan had me.”
 
Nikki’s heart pounded.
 

“Sure about that?” she asked Marlene with a suspicious lilt in her voice.

“Yes, I’m sure.
 
I’m positive.
 
What’s wrong with you anyway?” Marlene went on.
 
“You act like I did somethin’ wrong.
 
I’m just tellin’ you the truth.
 
I was innocent compared to him.”

“I see.
 
Everybody was innocent back then.”

“I don’t think I like your attitude.”

“You don’t?”

“No!
 
I can’t tell you what everybody else was back then.
 
I just know what I was.
 
And I was a nineteen year old kid who thought it was gonna be neat working for a judge.”

“You did your internship with Ryan?”