I couldn’t help laughing as my cheeks colored.
"I take it that was Mark?" she asked. Apparently I had said his name once or twice during the last part of the call.
"Yeah. I was giving him an, um, update." I was still red, but the whole situation was funny enough that I wasn’t too embarrassed.
"Yes, I heard," Teresa said, her voice pretending to be prim but her smile huge. "While you were, shall we say, taking care of business, I went downstairs and found us a pound of coffee and a paper. You are Page One, my dear." She handed me the Miami Herald. "Assassination Thwarted by Waitress," blasted the headline across the front page.
"This should make people treat servers with a little more respect," I said as I read the article. Neither Charlie nor Detective Perez were quoted, just the Miami Police Department's spokeswoman. She refused to identify me, which I appreciated. She said that the investigation was continuing, which I did not.
Teresa sat at the dining room table, looking at her laptop. "You even made CNN," she announced proudly. "And you're trending on Twitter. #heroserver."
"Hero?" I said. "That's pretty nice. I hope that Detective Perez sees that."
"All the social media are calling you a hero. That’s what CNN said." Teresa scrolled down the screen. I stood behind her as she pulled up the CNN video. We watched it, and then Teresa said, "Hey, I'll bet you're on Univision!" She went to the Spanish language news website and sure enough, the story was extensively covered there, too. She translated a little of what they were saying.
I freshened both our coffees and went back to the couch, skimming the front section of the Herald. I was halfway through when my phone rang. It was a 305 area code and turned out to be Detective Perez.
He said I needed to come to the police headquarters for an official statement. His tone made it clear that this visit needed to occur immediately, although he added "if that is convenient" in the same way somebody in an office asks "can I help you?" when they have no intention of being helpful.
"No worries, Detective," I said. "I can't get my bandage wet for another few hours, so the beach was going to have to wait anyway."
25
As I got dressed, my arm began hurting again. Teresa gave me another Tylenol with codeine, which meant that she would come along as my driver. Codeine or no codeine, I wouldn’t have wanted to see Detective Perez without her. Plus, it gave us more time to talk through the money problem.
It was a forty-five minute drive to police headquarters, because we took the scenic route. Rather than cutting over right away into Miami, we stayed on Collins Avenue to get a view of the water. It was a beautiful drive, but congested late on a Saturday morning.
The Miami Police Department was in a building that looked exactly like I thought it would: concrete, glass, and some reddish brick to give it a little color, with palm trees. Teresa planned to drop me off in front, but the parking gods were smiling on us. As we drove up a car was pulling out of one of the few on-street spaces. We agreed that seemed like a good sign.
And it was. Detective Perez simply wanted my statement. There were no accusatory questions, no pointed stares, no disapproving tones. I wrote down what happened, read it over twice to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and signed it. My right arm throbbed from overuse, but otherwise it was painless.
Teresa had been waiting in the lobby and looked a little surprised when I walked out.
"Done so soon?"
"Easy peasy. Maybe we can hit the beach?" I wasn’t sure about my arm, but it seemed like a tragedy to be in Miami and not go to the ocean.
On the drive back to the condo, Teresa downplayed the beach. I understood what she was trying to do, but I felt like I was being punished, having already spent several days in Miami without enjoying the water. I flipped on NPR and listened to a story about Chinese investment in Africa. I had almost decided that Teresa's lecture was more interesting than the news when the reporter started talking about President Moreno, the summit, and the heroic waitress who saved him.
Teresa patted me on my shoulder—the left shoulder—in congratulations. I felt pretty big time.
They didn’t report any more than I already knew, other than to say that the summit had wrapped up its business this morning and cancelled the planned social events. I hoped that President Moreno was safely on his way home.
When we returned to the condo I learned this was not the case.
Our first clue was the fact that the parking lot looked like a black SUV convention. We had to park quite a ways back from the building. As we hiked toward the main entrance, I saw a bunch of men and a couple of women dressed in black suits more appropriate for a meeting of bankers than a vacation condo on Miami Beach. One of the men started talking into his wrist. He walked quickly toward us and was joined by three others. By then it did not surprise me when I recognized a couple of them from the previous night.
Still, it was more than a little weird to be surrounded by the Secret Service.
"Miss Johnson?" asked one of them. He was African-American, tall, thin, with a neat goatee.
"Yes," I answered. "What's going on?" I knew that was an unnecessary question. If they wanted me to know they would tell me anyway, and if they didn't want me to know there would be no answer.
"There's someone who wants to see you." That could have sounded threatening, but it didn't.
"Can you say who?" I thought I would play along with Mr. Goatee. He pushed something in his ear and then looked at me.
"Yes, ma'am. President Moreno would like to see you. He should be here shortly. Shall we go up to your condo?"
Luckily we had not stayed in the condo long enough for it to be a big mess. Since there were two bedrooms with doors, our small messes of clothes and toiletries were easily hidden. Of course, we were not allowed to close the bedroom doors before the rooms and our bags were thoroughly inspected by the people in suits. Every cupboard in the place was opened and evaluated. Teresa was quizzed about some perfume she had in the bathroom: where did you buy it, how long ago, show us it is perfume by putting some on. Two of the security people—and by now there were nine of them—fussed at the windows. They were concerned that several windows faced other buildings so they shut all the blinds. One of them spoke into her wrist and motioned to another to position himself in front of the window at one end of the living room. She stood on the other side, near the kitchen door.
Mr. Goatee asked if we wanted to sit down, so we did, on the couch. I thought that President Moreno should get the overstuffed chair.
About five minutes after we arrived, there was a knock on the door. It occurred to me that the last time someone knocked on that door we were held at gunpoint. This time we had a lot of guns on our side, and I was hopeful it would stay that way.
One of the guards opened the door and President Moreno stepped in.
He was wearing tan chinos and a navy blue blazer over a light blue shirt. He looked like a thousand other management types at a weekend meeting, dressed for success but feeling casual.
He extended both hands to me and smiled, his brown eyes sparkling.
"Mi heroína! Señorita Johnson!"
I took his hands and smiled back. "President Moreno, it is very nice to see you again."
Teresa shook his hand. I wasn't sure what to do next, so I fell back on my polite Midwestern upbringing.
"Can I get you something to drink? We have water and…" I looked at Teresa who gave me a quick gulp and a shrug because there was nothing in the refrigerator.
"…I could make coffee if you prefer. Sorry we don't have anything else."
"You've been too busy to go to the market," President Moreno smiled. "And I am grateful for that. Water would be fine." I started toward the kitchen but Mr. Goatee asked one of his detail to bring three waters. Teresa, the President, and I sat down, us on the couch and him in the chair. The suits all took a few steps back, giving us some personal space if not privacy. We got our water, and I wondered what it must be like to be con
stantly surrounded.
"I appreciate your seeing me," the President was saying. It was very smooth how he made it sound like we had a choice, but I appreciated him trying. Besides, it was exciting to have a world leader sitting in your living room.
"I wanted to personally thank you for saving me. There are not adequate words to express my appreciation, and that of my family. You are a very brave lady."
I blushed. "Thank you, sir." I had no idea what else to say, so I shut up. As Mother always said, better to be quiet and have people think you're stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
"And who is this young lady?" It was funny how President Moreno spoke. He could have seemed condescending, but managed to sound gracious and somewhat grandfatherly, although I didn’t think he was more than a few years older than me.
"Teresa Traecy," she said. "I'm a friend of Tina's."
"You have quite a brave friend."
Teresa reached over and squeezed my hand. "Yes, I do."
We all smiled at each other somewhat blankly until I realized that a big opportunity was sitting in front of me, one that I could not let pass. I had to get the President talking.
"The last time somebody walked through that door, it was Susan and the guys who attacked you. They handcuffed us, and if it hadn't been for them getting a call that they were needed back at the hotel for the reception, it's hard to say what would have happened. I wonder if she was involved with the cartel?"
Mr. Goatee heard enough to look nervous at my question, but President Moreno just smiled.
"We are still trying to find out exactly what happened," he said. I waited a moment, the way I would on the phones when a customer seemed ready to talk himself into being upsold. "There are a lot of moving pieces," he said. I nodded knowingly, but he fell silent for a moment.
"Like National Bank and Trust," I offered.
President Moreno's warm eyes looked startled, then returned to being grandfatherly. "Like National Bank and Trust," he agreed.
It was harder to get information out of a sober world leader than a drunk and horny security guy, that was for sure. I returned to pulling teeth.
"And Kevin Andrews' death. That was very unfortunate." I was afraid that I would go too far and he would leave, but he just sipped his water.
"You seem to know a lot about current events," he finally said. I wasn't sure whether he was displeased or amused.
"I try to pay attention to what's happening around me."
"And for that I am most grateful." He finished the water and set the glass on the coffee table as he rose.
Teresa and I both scrambled up. I was disappointed, but I should have known better than to expect that I could get information out of the President of Peru.
He shook Teresa's hand, and then stepped toward me to give me a hug. He was thoughtful about not touching my sore arm with his loose embrace. Because we were standing with daylight between us, as my grandmother would have said, he caught me off guard when he pulled my face toward his. He kissed me on the cheek and when he did, he said slowly and clearly, "Follow the money. Mickey Denman is the key."
Then he smiled, turned, and joined the parade of black suits walking out of the condo.
26
Teresa could hardly believe our luck when I told her. She instantly began searching the Internet for Mickey Denman. Our investigation was fruitless. We found two Mickey Denmans, but one had been dead for ten years, and the other one appeared to be about twenty years old, based on his social media profiles.
"So is this guy a ghost, or did I hear President Moreno wrong?"
"Sometimes people, especially really rich people, go to a lot of effort to stay out of the spotlight," Teresa said. "I don't know how to get into that information, if it even still exists."
This seemed like a good time to check in with Mark. He picked up on the third ring, and I had to spend a few minutes filling him in. He was genuinely impressed about our visitor. I let him praise me some more and then got down to business.
"We are trying to find out about this Mickey Denman," I said. "And he has disappeared off the Internet. Do you know how to find him? We want to know everything there is to know."
"That I can help you with," Mark answered, and I think he was glad to be able to say yes this time. "There are a few little tricks I can pull, and a couple of private databases I've used before that I'll check."
I had put Mark on speaker and both Teresa and I raised our eyebrows to each other when he said that.
"Are you a detective?" I asked, only partly joking.
He laughed. "No, but every so often you need to track someone down. A friend of a friend showed me how to get into some of this stuff, and every so often it comes in very handy."
"A cyber-sleuth." Teresa smiled.
"If you say so," he replied. "Let me work on this and I'll call you back in an hour."
It ended up being about an hour and a half. Teresa and I had gone out for lunch and an umbrella drink, beachside, which was the closest I had gotten to the ocean since arriving in Miami. My arm was still sore and although it broke my heart, I decided it was not smart to get it wet. So I enjoyed a salad, a rum and fruit concoction, and the sun. We were just deciding whether to split a dessert when my phone rang.
It was a quick conversation, since Mark said it would be better to simply email me the information he had found, which he did.
In short, Mickey Denman was an industrial baron. His company, now called Denman Enterprises, had begun as a small residential contractor in the eighties and had grown into one of the largest construction and engineering firms in the southeast. The thing was, nobody knew it, because Denman Enterprises was a holding company with only a small office in downtown Miami and one employee. All of the businesses that generated revenue—and there were dozens—had different names, different locations, and sometimes other owners who acted as fronts, presumably to qualify for government programs. There was a homebuilder, a commercial contractor, a road construction company with a woman listed as co-owner, two engineering firms, a company that rented heavy construction equipment, and several LLC's which were created to develop subdivisions and commercial real estate. He was in the oil pipeline business. He had developed and managed a number of low-income apartment buildings, which Teresa said was a good way to generate tax credits. There were some other companies, too, that Mark had not been able to figure out. It was a long list.
Denman had been raised in a small town outside Kansas City and earned his civil engineering degree from the Missouri School of Mines in Rolla. During the sixties, when the rest of the Baby Boomers were fighting in Vietnam, protesting the war, or smoking weed and screwing, Denman had moved to Miami and worked in construction, first for others and later starting his own business in the early nineteen eighties. Teresa commented that he must have been able to raise his own capital privately to get started, because that was in the middle of a credit crunch when interest rates were sky high and banks weren't lending.
It seemed strange to me that his original company, Denman Construction, simply disappeared in 1996. In its place was Denman Enterprises, which owned the ever growing array of businesses that weren’t named Denman. Teresa said there were any number of reasons why someone would do that, but offhand it wasn’t obvious why it had happened in this case.
Denman was now in his early sixties and married to his third wife. He had two adult sons from his first marriage. Mark was thorough, and gave us information about them as well. Each of the sons was active in one or more of the businesses, and between them had given their father five grandchildren. One lived in Atlanta and one in Houston.
Denman himself lived in Key Biscayne. Mark had included a map and pictures in his report. Denman also had a hunting lodge in Wyoming and was co-owner of a condo in Washington, DC.
"Mark is certainly thorough," Teresa said. "I hope that he never wants to hunt me down."
"Or me," I laughed. "I wonder whether he looked me up after the other night?"
The thought was a little creepy, so I let it pass and scrolled through the other documents and links Mark had sent.
"This is all very interesting, but I don't get his involvement with National Bank and Trust," I said just as I came upon the answer. "WOW."
Teresa was in the kitchen getting a glass of water. She stepped back into the dining room, where I was working, and looked over my shoulder at the laptop.
"See?" I pointed to the screen. "Denman is on several corporate boards. Here's a list of the Board of Directors of—"
"National Bank and Trust!" Teresa finished.
"Follow the money, President Moreno had said." I felt like I was in All the President's Men as I clicked the next link.
Teresa noted that his three other board seats were with huge publicly traded companies. "He must be a major investor or have some other reason to be on the board of a bank as small as National Bank and Trust," she said. It was strange to think of a bank as a small business, but I understood her point.
The very last link on the list was to a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency about—who else?—National Bank and Trust. It was from early 2009 and was some sort of recommendation to approve an investment of nine hundred million dollars to be made by Denman and a company owned by Denman's sons, Brothers Equity, LLC.
"He's the one," Teresa said. "And now that we know it, we just need to figure out how to get our twenty million dollars from him."
27
One of my former bosses had once told me that I was a straight-ahead person. By that he meant that I was too direct. "In sales you sometimes have to meander around a little bit," he had said. I had learned a few meandering tricks for work, but it still was not my nature.
"I have no career in fraud. I'm not devious enough to come up with clever schemes," I said to Teresa as she returned to the condo after having made a beverage and snack run. She unloaded two bottles of wine, some cheese and crackers, and a bottle of cranberry juice.
Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure Page 13