Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure

by Karen Goldner

“Wine always helps," she suggested, and uncorked a bottle of red. She was right, and after a glass each we decided that the best approach was to come up with a business transaction that Denman would find too attractive to resist. The logical ones were construction or real estate, but we were not inspired until I remembered the NPR piece from earlier in the day.

  "Africa!" The way I said it, the word nearly rhymed with "eureka." Teresa looked a little confused. "You know, how the Chinese are investing over there. It was on NPR when we were coming back. They were saying that Chinese companies are building big factories and making investments. In China they have company apartments for their workers. Wouldn't it make sense for somebody to build that kind of housing in Africa? Somebody that can build apartments and that has a lot of heavy equipment, for instance, like Denman Enterprises?" Now Teresa looked nearly as impressed as she had after I saved President Moreno.

  "I like that idea," she said. "Or should I say, j'aime cette idée." Now it was my turn to be confused.

  "See, I can speak enough French to pretend to be African," Teresa said. "Nothing personal, but I think I'm probably more convincing as an African businessperson than you are." We both laughed and began devising our plan.

  In order for this to work, we needed to look the part. The only business attire that Teresa had with her was what she had been wearing on the plane. My only suit, which probably didn't fit anymore anyway, was hanging in Janet's basement. And so, off to the store we went.

  Teresa insisted that we go to a nice department store downtown, and since she was buying, I didn't argue. It was one of those stores where a salesperson helped you find things and told you that you looked great. No wonder rich women feel good about themselves, I thought. Or, at least, no wonder they shop at stores like this.

  Teresa decided that she needed to practice her French. Her character, Therese Gauthier, was supposed to have been raised in Canada because we thought that would ease up a little bit on the need for perfect French. Her father was French Canadian—we picked Gauthier out of a list of common French Canadian names—and had lived in Cameroon, where he met Therese's mother. Cameroon was on a map we found of Chinese investments, plus it was small and random enough that we thought perhaps Denman would not have contacts there. It was a pretty thorough backstory.

  It turned out to be fun shopping with Teresa—or perhaps I should say Therese—and listening to her speak French while the saleswoman brought us clothes. In my case, I was especially pleased that she had to bring me one size down from what I normally wear. I had lost a few pounds in the past few months and had not been in New Orleans long enough to have put it back on.

  We had agreed that I would be Ann Johnson, Therese's personal assistant, which meant my wardrobe would be less expensive and I would not be expected to be involved in the negotiations. Since Teresa knew more about banking than I ever would, that made sense. Ann was my middle name, which I used because I thought it would be easier to deal with banks later if my identity were sort of real.

  I had been putting off calling Sarah Stapleton, so I did that on the way back from shopping. I felt like I owed her an explanation, which I gave her. She gave me some information, too, which would turn out to be very helpful.

  Mark was helpful, too, when I called him. He was also cautious, which I was getting used to. His concern was sweet. He didn’t tell me what to do or act like I was incompetent. He just wanted me to be careful, and I liked that he felt that way.

  To improve our cover, we decided to leave Surfside. I made reservations at a new condo building Teresa had found, and on Sunday we checked in as Therese Gauthier and Ann Johnson. I was nervous that the credit card would be a problem, since it was Teresa Traecy's, but I acted like it was the most natural thing in the world and the clerk didn't seem to care.

  This condo was closer to downtown, still on Miami Beach, but south of Surfside on Collins Avenue. It was nice, and not too different from our first place except that we had a gorgeous ocean view. I was getting uncomfortable with how much Teresa was spending, and I mentioned that.

  "It's fine," she said. "It's fun to finally splurge, and I look at it as an investment. When we get the twenty million, this will seem like chicken feed."

  28

  Monday morning we implemented Operation Petticoat. Of course, what we were doing had nothing in common with the Tony Curtis movie, but the phrase had stuck in my head and I could not think of another.

  I got online early and was happy to see that Mark had been busy Sunday night. Therese Gauthier now existed in social media and in a couple of business news references. Mark had connected Therese to several hundred people who each had over a thousand connections, with the theory being that none of these people would remember if they knew her or not. That part had been my suggestion. Therese Gauthier had been interviewed in an English-language newspaper based in West Africa discussing a couple of large construction projects. These were real projects, so if Denman did the web-search level of due diligence, she would seem legitimate.

  Getting in to see Denman, of course, would be a trick, particularly since he had to be the one to approach us. Sarah Stapleton had told me there was a group of guys who had lunch nearly every day at a private club in one of the glass office buildings downtown. She mentioned it when I asked her about her business; the club was an account she had been trying to get. I had asked her about her business for the same reason I had flirted with Charlie at the bar: people will tell you all sorts of things if you simply ask. I couldn't ask her about Mickey Denman directly, of course, and she didn't mention his name. Still, it was helpful to know where the who's who of Miami money ate lunch.

  Right at nine, I called Denman's office, telling his secretary that I was trying to schedule a delivery. Would Mr. Denman be available at noon to personally sign for the package? No, she said, he would not be available at noon, but she would be happy to sign for it.

  Bingo.

  Teresa spent an hour and a half practicing French business vocabulary while I ran to a quick print store. We showered, dressed in our new clothes, and headed downtown full of confidence and anticipation.

  We arrived at the club about twelve fifteen. We wanted to see where Mickey Denman was sitting, and try to get a place near him. We had debated long and hard about whether to arrive early, be seated before many people arrived and try to attract him toward us, or to take our chances on being able to sit near him. As it was, traffic answered that question for us. There had been an accident on the AIA bridge which backed us up for half an hour.

  The maître d' was a stereotype, with the combination of disdain and fawning that seems to come with the job. He was very sorry—or not—to tell us that the tables were all full, but that he believed—sniff sniff—he could find us seats in the bar.

  Teresa played with the guy in French while I scanned the room. I had memorized Denman's face from six different pictures sent by Mark. He was not here.

  I pretended to feel my phone buzz, put the phone to my ear, and said in my personal assistant voice, "Ms. Gauthier, the call from Yaoundé that we've been expecting has finally come." Yaoundé is the capital of Cameroon. I said it loudly enough that the other people at the maître d' stand would hear.

  "Merci, Ann," Teresa said as she took the phone. She pivoted on her executive heel and walked coldly away, leaving her personal assistant to thank the maître d' for his help and scamper after her boss.

  The elevator doors closed and we both giggled for a second at our flouncy exit. Then, facing the closed doors and watching the LED numbers drop, we both sobered up. This was not going to be so easy.

  29

  Monday afternoon we wracked our brains trying to think of another way to Denman. We were reluctant to bring in someone else who might be able to refer us, because that would have made things quite a bit more complicated. We did not want to approach Denman directly; that could raise his suspicions. He needed to think that he had found us.

  We drove the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Bis
cayne to find his home, but of course it was in a gated community, so we couldn't get close. We parked down the street from the entrance for a while, hoping a security guard would come on duty and thinking up an excuse for him to let us in. No one appeared, and we finally gave that up. There were some restaurants on Crandon Boulevard, in the middle of the island, but choosing one of them, or even trolling them all, seemed pretty random. We ended up driving to the south end of Key Biscayne to see a state park with a lighthouse. Of course, we were still in our business suits—I had begun thinking of the clothes as costumes—so we couldn't spend time comfortably on the beach. My arm was sore, and as we turned to head north to Miami we realized we would be hitting rush hour traffic in the city.

  Teresa suggested we stop at Virginia Key Beach Park, between Key Biscayne and the mainland. The park was nice, but being at a beach in an uncomfortable business suit is frustrating. Teresa parked so that we could look out at the ocean and we sat there talking for about an hour.

  Or, rather, I talked and Teresa listened. Maybe it was the seeming hopelessness of getting the money, or just plain being tired, but I told her things I had not told anyone in years. I told her about my dad leaving and then coming back for a couple of months when I was fourteen. I had saved up babysitting money to buy Heart's Dog and Butterfly album and listened to it constantly. One night my parents were arguing and I turned up my record player as loud as it would go to try covering the noise of their fight. My father stormed into my room, grabbed the stylus off the record so hard he broke the mechanical arm and scratched the album, and screamed that he couldn't take it anymore. He called me a couple of choice words, and left for good.

  When Mother was dying thirty years later I told her how sorry I was that I had pushed Dad out. She started to cry for my having felt that, and I had cried, too, but I never could get rid of the feeling that if it had not been for me, he might have stayed. Now I started to cry again, and Teresa reached across the console between the two seats and gave me an awkward hug. The situation was ridiculous, both the fact that I was crying about something that had never been true, and the fact that in order to hug me Teresa nearly dislocated a hip. I sniffled and smiled, and she relaxed back into the driver's seat. She kept her hand on my left shoulder for a comforting moment.

  I told her about my first husband, who, after the two affairs that I knew about, came home one day to tell me he was leaving me for what turned out to be his fourth girlfriend. She was prettier than I was, he said, and was finishing up college and was going to do something with her life. He left and I was single for a few years. After several unsuccessful attempts I stopped dating at all.

  Then I met Joe at a party. He was handsome and funny and was nice to me. Our marriage was good for the first few years, and we decided to have a baby. I had never really wanted to, but I loved Joe, or so I thought, and it was really important to him that we had a family. When I got pregnant my doctor said I was technically high risk because I was in my late thirties, but no one seemed to think that anything was likely to go wrong until I was about two and a half months along. One day at work I started bleeding and cramping like the worst period ever. It was so bad that they made me leave work and drive to the doctor's office, which was luckily only a couple of miles away. That was the end of my pregnancy, and my ability to get pregnant, and Joe blamed me so much for losing the baby that I started to blame myself. He never got over it. I'm not sure I did, either. Looking back, our relationship died the day the baby did. That was years before we finally ended things, but it was never the same. Teresa's hand was back on my shoulder as I finished the story, and we sat there for a few minutes in silence.

  I was ready for a drink. Clouds had rolled in and it was getting dark, so Teresa drove us back to the condo. On the way, we picked up two bottles of wine.

  One good thing about driving in heavy traffic, and it was still heavy enough as we drove through the city, is that road rage tends to displace other emotions. But when we settled into our new condo, with comfortable clothes and a glass of wine, the reality of our situation sunk in again.

  "I'm out of ideas and energy right now," I announced, and flipped on the cable. Teresa agreed. We sat on the couch watching an old sitcom and then another and then another after that, and made it through one of the bottles of wine before I fell asleep on the couch.

  30

  If you're going to drink until you pass out, I guess it's good to have an early night. I woke up in the middle of the night, starting to feel hung over, and drank three glasses of water on my way to bed, so when the sun came through the blinds in the morning, I didn't feel nearly as bad as I might have.

  I started the coffee and returned to the living room to stare at the early morning beachcombers picking up shells. In the quiet of dawn, with the sky over the ocean pink and orange, and the reassuring sound and scent of brewing coffee in the air, everything seemed less hopeless. For years I had let fear box up the stories I finally told Teresa last night. Not even Shelly knew all of them. Now that I had told someone, I wondered what I had ever been afraid of.

  The intensity of the sunrise was short-lived, and faded into pastels and then blue as I went back into the kitchen. Teresa wasn't far behind me, and we finished our first cups before speaking.

  "Shall we try the club again today?" I asked. The clock on the microwave said it was seven fifteen. We had all morning.

  "Sounds like a plan," Teresa said. "And it would not hurt me to study French some more. Maybe we can get cleaned up and then you could help me with vocabulary words?"

  "Oui," I replied. "It wouldn't hurt me to learn more than one word, either."

  I helped Teresa study and then we went back downtown. No Mickey Denman. This time we sat at the bar and sipped sweet tea and ate salads. We shared a piece of four layer chocolate cake mostly to have an excuse to sit longer, not that you really need an excuse to eat chocolate cake. After nearly two hours, we gave up and drove in silence to the condo.

  The feeling of hopelessness returned. I heard Joe's voice again, and my mother's. As I pulled into the parking lot—my arm was well enough that I was only taking a couple of aspirin—I reminded myself of New Tina.

  "We can do this," I said. "Eventually he is going to show up at that place. When he does, we'll be there. Or we'll figure out another plan. But we will do this, because I am not going to lose this opportunity."

  With our newfound motivation, you might think it strange that our first big decision was to go to the beach. But we had not been since arriving in Miami, and my arm had healed enough that it didn't look like I'd been in a knife fight. We reasoned that we could discuss things there as well as in the condo, and maybe by people-watching we would come up with a bolt of inspiration. Plus it was a beautiful afternoon. We rationalized that the beach would be a good venue for Teresa to speak some French and build our cover, but mostly we just wanted to enjoy the fact that we were in Miami. We found a vending machine and bought a couple of bottles of water, and Therese and Ann headed to the beach.

  Even though I was rubbing it in, I couldn't hold back from calling Shelly to let her know where I was. It was February, after all, and the white substance covering Minnesota was not sand. I didn't tell her any details of the Denman situation, of course, and simply told her "we're working on it" when she asked how things were going. In return, I got to hear stories of precocious grandchildren. I wanted to call Mark, but that felt uncomfortable with Teresa right there, so we just texted for a few minutes. Whoever from the government monitors text messages certainly got some spicy entertainment that afternoon.

  The people-watching was fun. There were pasty tourists who could stand to lose thirty, or a hundred, pounds, and there were men and women who looked like they were fashion models. There were families and couples and people by themselves. Everybody was after something: suntan, shells, the world's best sand castle, a pickup. Or twenty million dollars.

  31

  Wednesday did not begin well. I woke up later than usual, havi
ng counted on the morning light as an alarm clock. On Wednesday there was no morning light; eventually I awoke to a crack of thunder. I probably needed the extra sleep, but the rain was depressing.

  I made coffee and was halfway through my first cup, sitting on the easy chair watching morning news, when Teresa wandered out of her room.

  "Good morning, sleepyhead." I raised my cup toward her. She smiled and rubbed her hand over her soft curly hair.

  "No beach today." She smiled.

  "I guess it's back to work. We deserve some luck, don't you think?"

  "I do." We each drank two cups of coffee and got ready for some luck.

  I was glad to see that the regular maître d' was not at his stand when we walked up for the third day in a row. Instead, a slight young woman of uncertain ethnicity greeted us with none of the first maître d's attitude. She showed us to a table along the edge of the dining room, which was near enough to the kitchen door to be generally undesirable but worked well as an observation post. We sat facing out, able to watch people come and go in the dining room without turning our heads. The service was slow—I might have complained about it as inattentive if not for the fact that slow service suited our purposes.

  To buy time, we ordered ice tea first, then a cheese tray, and sipped and nibbled at a leisurely pace. As we finished the last of the fresh mozzarella I was not optimistic. It was after twelve thirty, and for the third day in a row, no Mickey Denman.

  Teresa—Therese—sighed and opened the menu. I glanced around the room one last time before deciding what sort of salad to pick at. That was when I saw him: medium height, silver hair, the tan that I had observed on so many Miami businessmen, wearing black pants and a white shirt, collar open, sleeves rolled halfway to his elbows. He was actually better-looking in person than the photos Mark had sent, but there was a mean leer in the way he glanced at the pretty maître d' that made me uncomfortable.