Convincing Jamey

by Pappano, Marilyn

  “You look good, Karen,” he said, holding her at arm’s length so he could study her. “Still as pretty as ever.”

  “It’s nice of you to say so...though I know your tastes run to tall and blond.” What a coincidence. Lately, so did hers. “How’s Valery?”

  “Beautiful. Busy with the shop and the kids.”

  Valery Bennett owned a shop in the Quarter that specialized in antique clothing, handbags and jewelry. If a woman had the money, the figure and the style to carry off the elegant dresses, she could look like a million bucks. Valery did. Karen only wished she did.

  “I’d say that’s Aunt Sirena’s seafood gumbo in that dish,” she said, taking a deep breath.

  “Show me to the kitchen and we’ll eat.”

  She waited until they were seated at the spacious builtin breakfast table, plates of steaming gumbo and rice in front of them, before she spoke again. “Why don’t we take care of business first and get it out of the way?”

  “What business?”

  “Didn’t you come to tell me that I should leave here? That this is a dangerous place? That I don’t belong here?”

  His answering tone was mild. “I imagine Jolie and Smith have already given you more warnings than you needed. You’re a smart woman. You know this is a dangerous place, or you never would have come here.”

  She studied him for a long time, wondering if he was playing some sort of game, trying to somehow manipulate her into doing what he wanted. He seemed sincere, though, and not the least bit manipulative. “You don’t disapprove?”

  “Giving you credit for intelligence doesn’t constitute approval,” he pointed out drily. “I don’t think you belong here. I think the sooner you get out, the better.”

  “You think I can’t help.”

  He took his time answering, obviously choosing his words carefully. “You’ve taken on a big job, Karen. It would probably take an entire department of social workers, counselors and cops to clean up this place. If it were just you up against the problems of poverty, poor education, abusive relationships, teen pregnancy and despair, I’d put my money on you any day. But it’s not that simple. It’s you against some of the meanest, dirtiest, toughest sons of bitches in the city. It’s you against Ryan Morgan and Jimmy Falcone. You’re no match for them, Karen.”

  “Alone, no. You’re right. But you and me—rather, your department and me... Everyone keeps telling me what a contemptible person Ryan Morgan is, how dirty he is, what a conscienceless crook he is.”

  “He is,” Michael agreed. “He’s a young Falcone.”

  “Then why isn’t he in jail? Why haven’t you guys made a case against him?”

  “To make a case, we need evidence. We need a witness. But no one testifies against the Morgans or their people. People who witness their crimes or are the victims are afraid to speak up. They’re afraid to cooperate with us.”

  “So if you can’t lock him up, make him leave. Make it so hard for him and his gang to do business here that they have no choice but to go elsewhere. Make a show of force. Whenever they’re trying to do something illegal, be there watching. Send a car in here for an occasional patrol. I’ve been here a week and a half, Michael, and I have yet to see a single police car.”

  “Make a request,” he suggested, then immediately dampened any hope that might have sprung up. “But don’t be surprised if you’re told that we’re too shorthanded, that we’re already spread thin. We used to make regular patrols down here until one officer got shot and another half dozen were shot at but unharmed. They got bricks through their windows, threats, hostility.”

  “So you backed off?” she asked, her voice rising in dismay. “You should have come in here and kicked butt. You should have found the people who fired the shots and threw the bricks and hauled them off to jail. Instead, you backed off and let them win. You told them it was all right to assault police officers. You sent them a hell of a message.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Can I point out that I had nothing to do with this? I didn’t make the decisions. I agree with you. If it had been up to me, I would have made it impossible for them to turn around without finding a half-dozen cops watching. But it wasn’t up to me, and we are shorthanded. Money’s tight, and, frankly, there’s some logic to spending it where it might do some good instead of down here.”

  “So the good people who live in the neighborhood and the kids who are at risk, who will be deciding soon whether to become productive, contributing citizens or to follow in Morgan’s footsteps, aren’t as important as people in other less dangerous, less hopeless neighborhoods.”

  His only response was a rueful shrug.

  “Is anybody interested in Ryan Morgan?”

  “We are. The FBI is. Does anyone have enough to make a case against him?” He shook his head. “I don’t work organized crime, but I’ll talk to someone who does. I’ll see if anyone’s interested in a little harassment—within the limits of the law, of course.”

  Of course...which was part of the problem. Ryan Morgan didn’t work within the limits of the law. He had no restrictions, no regulations, no laws dictating what he could do or how he could do it, while the authorities trying to stop him were restricted. The courts bent over backwards to ensure that none of his rights were violated, but who protected the rights of his victims?

  “So...does that take care of business?”

  She offered Michael a wan smile. “I guess so. Thanks for not trying to talk me into giving up.”

  “I’ve known you a long time. I’ve never seen you give up, not even when Evan...”

  Died. Even after all these years, it was still hard for him to say. “I wanted to,” she admitted. “I had no interest in a life that didn’t include him.”

  “He would be proud of what you’re doing.”

  The solemnly spoken comment sent a slow warmth through her. She had spent so much time trying to convince herself and everyone else she could do this that she hadn’t given much thought to whether Evan would have needed convincing. She thought Michael was probably right. Evan wouldn’t have liked the neighborhood, and he wouldn’t have wanted her living there alone, but he would have seen the need, and he would have understood her need to try to fill it. He would have believed in her, supported and encouraged her.

  Of course, he also would have been right at her side every moment he wasn’t working. He would have protected her. He would have warned away the punks and watched out for her.

  As Jamey had done. As he was still doing.

  She and Michael finished their lunch with lighter talk about families and futures. He showed her the latest pictures of his daughters, sweet little girls with the delicate beauty of angels and the gleam of the devil in their dark eyes. As she handed the pictures back, she felt a twinge of sorrow around her heart. When she had married Evan and moved clear across the state from her home, his college roommates and best friends had become her family. It hadn’t been just her and Evan, but them plus Michael, Remy and Smith. She had thought it would always be that way, with additions, of course. Their friends would get married, and instead of five, they would become eight. And the babies... They would all have babies, three or four or even more, and they would take weekend outings to the zoo, the park and the lake. They would celebrate birthdays and holidays together. They would be family and best friends until the end of time.

  But Evan had died, and she had moved away, and there would never be any babies for her. Her dream was coming true: the guys had remained best friends, their wives and kids were best friends, too, and they celebrated everything together. They had become the family she’d wanted...but she wasn’t a part of it.

  After transferring the leftovers to her own dish, she washed Michael’s pan, then walked out with him. “Thanks for lunch. It was good seeing you.”

  “If you need anything, give me a call.” From his hip pocket, he removed a business card with the department number—as if she could have forgotten it—and his pager number printed on it, his
home number written. “You do have a phone, don’t you?”

  “Of course I have a phone.” She’d taken care of phone service before she’d gone to the closing. She recited the number—it was easy to remember—then gave him another hug. “Give my love to Valery and the kids. Bring them over sometime.”

  The look he gave her said he knew she didn’t expect an acceptance on the invitation. Bring his pretty little girls to Serenity? Not even when hell froze over. She could’t blame him. If she had children of her own, she probably wouldn’t be here, either, certainly not living here. “Take care, Karen. Remember, if anything at all comes up, call me.”

  “I will.” Standing at the top of the steps, she watched him leave, then, as if she had no willpower at all, her gaze shifted to O’Shea’s. The doors were open—it seemed the only time they ever closed was those eight hours from 2:00 to 10:00 a.m. when Jamey slept—but there was no sign of him.

  Impulsively she returned to the kitchen, took the leftover gumbo from the refrigerator and clipped Jethro’s leash to his collar. After she locked up, they made the trip across the street and through the first set of doors. Jamey was in his usual place behind the bar, a toothpick in his mouth, watching TV with little interest. He looked sleepy, lazy...and sexy as hell.

  “You can’t bring that mutt in here,” he remarked as she bent to loop Jethro’s leash around the post supporting one ragged bar stool.

  “He’s not a mutt. He’s my guard dog,” she reminded him as she climbed onto the next stool. She set the bowl in front of him. “Here. Lunch.”

  He unfolded the foil and sniffed. “You make this?”

  “I could have—I have the recipe—but Michael made it.”

  He raised one brow. “Michael?”

  “Michael Bennett. Evan’s partner.”

  “Yeah. I thought he looked like a cop.”

  Under other circumstances, Karen thought, a woman might feel ftattered that a man had noticed her company—her very handsome, very appealing male company. She might think it meant he was a little interested—not in an it’s-a-slow-afternoon-and-I-have-nothing-better-to-do sort of way, but in an also-handsome-also-appealing-man-to-woman way. But under these circumstances, it was exactly a slow-afternoon sort of way, with a self-appointedguardian-of-Serenity watchfulness tossed in.

  But it was okay. She wasn’t disappointed. She wasn’t interested in Jamey that way, and she didn’t want him to think of her that way, either.

  Right. And instead of an afternoon shower, today the skies would open up and rain pennies from heaven all over Serenity.

  He fished a scallop from the gumbo and ate it in one bite. “I don’t suppose he talked any sense into you.”

  “I’m so full of good sense that there’s no room for any more.”

  His mouth wanted to curve into a grin, she could see, but he refused. “You’re full of something, all right.” He disappeared into the back, then returned with a spoon. After a couple of bites, he asked, “You can cook like this?”

  “We-ell... We were taught by the same person, and we started with the same recipes, but Michael is one of those people who thinks that cooking is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a few hours of your day. The idea of making a roux or shopping for the freshest seafood or chopping a ton of vegetables doesn’t faze him at all. I don’t mind cooking, but I want shortcuts. Thirty minutes is more than enough time to spend preparing a meal. Do you cook?”

  He shook his head. “I’m great with a can opener and sandwiches. As far as real cooking, I make excellent bacon, and my sunny-side up eggs aren’t bad. I’ll fix them for you some morning.”

  An invitation to breakfast. That could hold some promise... if they didn’t live across the street from each other. If it didn’t go without saying that he would be rising from his bed and she would probably be long risen from her own.

  She gave an exasperated shake of her head. What was wrong with her? She had no time for fantasies, no time for any relationship more demanding than those eventually connected to the women’s center. Even if she was interested in a relationship, Jamey O’Shea wasn’t her type. She couldn’t have found a man who had less in common with Evan if she had tried.

  But Evan was dead, and the last thing she wanted to do was try to replace him. It wouldn’t be fair to herself, to the man or to Evan. If she ever did get involved again, it had to be with a man who attracted her for who and what he was, not for being someone who reminded her of Evan.

  Jamey didn’t remind her of anyone but Jamey.

  “I went by the park last night. I’m not sure you’re keeping ahead of them.”

  She focused her attention on the physical man in front of her and away from the image of him in her mind. “I’m holding my own.” Every morning she went to the park before the sun got high and the heat unbearable. She picked up trash and sprayed over graffiti. If she had time, she scraped away rust and flaking paint from a few bars on the iron-lace fence across the front and gave them a quick coat of fresh paint. Every night the kids gathered there, dumped more garbage, broke more bottles and painted more graffiti. Last night one of them had sprayed an entire can of neon orange paint across the fence.

  “How long can you keep this up?”

  “Longer than they can.”

  He shook his head. “They’re younger and have more energy.”

  “I’m older and more stubborn.” She shrugged. “It’s a game to them. I clean it up, and they trash it. Eventually, someone will get tired and quit playing. They’re betting that it’ll be me, but they’re wrong.”

  “Not a single young kid has walked through that gate in months—maybe years. All this work you’ve done, and no one has come except the kids you want to get rid of.”

  “I don’t want to get rid of them. Lord knows, there’s no other place on the street to gather. I just want them to treat the park with some respect. There’s no reason why they can’t use it at night and leave it in reasonably decent shape for the little kids during the day.”

  “No reason except they don’t want to.” He finished the gumbo, then drew a wooden stool close to the bar and sat down. In the space of a moment he went from his usual skeptical self to something Karen thought very few people, if any, had ever seen in him: uncertainty. Insecurity. “Have you seen Reid down there again?” He asked it casually, as if it were a perfectly normal question, as if an even vaguely friendly—well, at least not hostile—mention of Reid weren’t a rarity.

  “No. I think he might be avoiding the place because I’ve been there every morning.” She hesitated, then asked, “Have you seen him this week?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you worry when that happens?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  She would bet it cost him tremendously to answer that question honestly. She would also bet his feelings for his son were far more complex than he let on. They must have the most complicated father-son relationship east of the Mississippi. She hoped, for both their sakes, that someday they would be able to make it work. They each had a lot to lose if they didn’t. Reid, with the direction he was going, could lose his life.

  “For whatever it’s worth, I haven’t seen the Morgans or Vinnie Marino around, either,” she remarked. “Maybe they took off for a few days.”

  “Maybe they’re hiding out,” Jamey said with his customary sarcasm. “Laying low.”

  “Or maybe they’re having a little fun, like young men do. Maybe they went to the beach.” Even as she spoke, she acknowledged the incongruity of the suggestion. The beach and that gang of four... More likely they had gone to burglarize the homes of people who had gone to the beach. Reaching across the bar, she laid her hand on his arm, patting reassuringly. “He’s all right. He’ll show up in a day or two, and you’ll wonder why in the world you ever worried.”

  Regretting the touch almost immediately, she tried to withdraw without looking too hasty, too clumsy. Her face suddenly felt warm—which was only fair, because her fingers were tingling and her t
hroat had gone tight. “I—I’d better get back to work.” She picked up her bowl from the bar, laid his spoon on the polished wood and started out. She was halfway to the door when he finally spoke. He sounded as if his throat was a little tight, too.

  “Hey, Karen?”

  Expecting an awkward thanks, she turned and looked back. He pointed over the bar and to the floor, where Jethro sat watching her with a pitiful look of abandonment. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  With a sudden laugh, she hurried back and retrieved the puppy. “I’m sorry, sweet pea,” she said, cuddling him in her arms. “I didn’t mean to forget you.”

  “And you think you can take care of Serenity,” Jamey said, shaking his head in a chiding manner. This time she made it all the way to the door before he spoke again. “Hey... thanks.”

  “For the lunch,” she clarified.

  “Yeah. For that, too.”

  The alarm went off at seven o’clock Friday, an annoying harsh beep that made ignoring it impossible. Jamey shut it off, then rolled over, intending to go back to sleep for at least two more hours, when abruptly he remembered why he’d set it in the first place. It was early in the morning, Karen’s hours of choice for working in the park. Although she’d been perfectly safe without his presence for four days, he saw no reason she should push her luck. Besides, it was Friday. Weekends usually signaled more than the usual activity on Serenity, and this—a payday weekend for those with jobs—would be even more so.

  He dressed, shaved, brushed his teeth and combed his hair. It was getting kind of shaggy, he noticed in the mirror’s reflection. Usually he let it go until it started getting in his eyes, and then he made a trip to a barber just outside the touristy part of the Quarter. Maybe he wouldn’t wait so long this time. It didn’t hurt to look a little neater than the kids on the street.