Passing Semis in the Rain: A Tina Johnson Adventure

by Karen Goldner

  Denman rose cordially as we entered and motioned us to the two chairs facing him—chairs that were identical to the lobby chairs. We sat.

  "Ms. Gauthier and, Miss, um…"

  "Johnson," I answered. "Ann Johnson. I am Ms. Gauthier's assistant." He nodded, glanced at my chest, and proceeded to ignore me.

  "Now, Ms. Gauthier, why don't you tell me about this project of yours?"

  Denman interrupted our discussion only one time, to buzz Tammy and have her tell his luncheon appointment that he would be a few minutes late. We walked out of his office at twelve fifteen with a handshake and what Teresa later called a "soft commitment subject to due diligence." He was intrigued by the idea of financing the construction of housing for Cameroonian workers at Chinese factories. Therese had described several potential projects, all based on successful completion of the first twenty million dollar compound outside the nation's capital of Yaoundé.

  We picked up fast food on the way back to the condo and waited. It was Thursday afternoon, and Therese's clock was ticking. According to our story, we needed to have financing firmed up by the next morning. The sky threatened rain, so we stayed inside and watched seventies crime dramas on television while occasionally getting up and pacing the living room.

  The phone rang at five o'clock. Tammy announced Mr. Denman.

  "Ms. Gauthier, this looks very interesting indeed," he said. "I'd like to see what I can do. The only trouble is my attorney is out of town until later tonight. I've been talking with one of his junior guys but, well, I'm sure you understand that I really want his advice. I know you're on a tight timetable, so why don't you plan to come in early tomorrow and we can get things wrapped up then." Therese was about to respond when Denman added, "You had mentioned you were working on other options. If I am going to proceed with the expense of getting this ready to close by tomorrow afternoon, I must insist that you agree that I have exclusive rights to finance the project. I do not want to be competing against these mysterious other people you reference."

  "I understand, Monsieur Denman," Therese conceded, grinning.

  "I had a feeling you would." I could hear the leer in his voice and I had to remember that we were going to get the last laugh.

  "The time difference is five hours, correct? Which means this needs to be completed by noon our time? We had better start at six," Denman said. "We have a lot to do."

  Early bedtime or not, I had trouble sleeping. Finally I texted Mark suggestively at two a.m. He did not respond, so I was left to my own devices until I was finally able to fall asleep.

  34

  We arrived at Denman's office before the building's coffee shop opened. The security guard was finishing up his overnight shift and waved us by since he had already put his log book away. Denman himself buzzed us in, explaining that Tammy had a family emergency and would not be in until nine.

  "I hope everything is okay," Ann said.

  Denman had to be reminded that he had just said "family emergency" and answered flatly, "Her husband is on chemo and she needs to drive him home from his appointment. But don't worry, I told her she had to be in by nine because we'll need her for the wire transfer."

  I felt badly that Tammy was having to rush her husband because of us, but I decided that Denman was not the kind of guy who accommodated his employee regardless of whether we were involved. Since her desk was vacant, I put my purse behind it.

  "Why don't you make some coffee." Denman pointed me to the small kitchenette. "I like mine black." He said that in a way that made my stomach tighten as he escorted Therese into the office and closed the door. But there was nothing to do but go to the kitchen and start the coffee.

  I didn't hear the office door open, apparently by someone with a key, because I was running water into the coffeepot. I was therefore startled to see Frank D'Angelo standing in the doorway of the kitchenette. It took a moment to remember I was Ann, and I held out my hand.

  "Hello. Ann Johnson. We met the day before yesterday, at lunch?" D'Angelo took three long strides into the room and stood uncomfortably close. I dropped my hand and backed into the counter; he took another step toward me. We were less than a foot apart.

  "Tina Ann Johnson," he corrected me. My stomach tightened again and rose into my throat.

  "I'm sorry?" I played dumb. "It's just Ann. I work for Therese Gauthier. She and Mr. Denman are in his office." Of course D'Angelo knew that, I realized as the words left my mouth. I was not sure exactly what was happening, but nothing about this was good.

  D'Angelo stared at me, his eyes hard. I thought about trying to dash around him, but it was a narrow room and there was no way I would get past.

  "You do look like her, you know," he finally said. Before I had a chance to play dumb again, he grabbed my arm—luckily, my uninjured one—and snarled, "Don't ask me 'like who?' You know damned well who I'm talking about."

  I had no response to that, and as it turned out, I didn't need one, because at that moment I heard the sound of something being knocked over in Denman's office and Teresa screaming. D'Angelo kept a firm hold of my arm and smiled. It was a sick, evil grin, and I have never seen an expression so frightening.

  "He's going to take her first, and then he's going to take you. And I might, too, if I feel like it." He looked at my breasts and touched my hip with his other hand. "Yeah, you might do just fine."

  The coffee pot was full by this point. I reached behind me, grabbed the pot off the burner and swung it into the side of his head. The force of it stunned him. I tried to fling open the pot and splash him with the hot contents, and was partially successful. He cursed, blinked, and staggered back enough that I could get around him and out the door. I ran to Denman's office and found it locked. Without even thinking, I kicked it, and the cheap lock gave easily.

  Teresa was backed against one side of the large desk, as if she had been forced down until my commotion made Denman look away for a second, giving her a chance to almost regain her footing. He was standing over her, and his pants were down around his knees. They both looked toward me. Teresa pushed herself into Denman. His pants tripped him up and he fell against the window sill. He looked angry for a moment, then he started to laugh. I realized he was looking beyond me. I turned around and saw D'Angelo in the doorway.

  D’Angelo’s hair, what little there was of it, was dripping wet, and his light blue golf shirt was stained with coffee. If I had not been angry and terrified, I might have agreed that he looked slightly ridiculous. Ridiculous or not, he was blocking the only exit that did not involve windows thirty-two stories above the street.

  "Jesus, Frank." Denman had pulled up his pants and apparently felt he had recovered his dignity. "I knew you liked coffee, but next time keep it in the cup." He was the only person who laughed at his joke.

  D'Angelo reached into his pocket and pulled out some plastic zip ties. I ran behind the desk, hoping to find something heavy on the bookshelves. What I really needed was Mark's gun, but it was in my purse in the front room. Denman's desk had been partly cleared, presumably during Teresa's struggle. I looked on the carpeted floor and saw the cassette recorder. It might be heavy enough to do some damage. I reached down.

  "Stand up, bitch," D'Angelo said to me. Now he was the one laughing. He threw some ties to Denman and maintained his position in front of the door. Teresa raised her hands to hit Denman as he regained his position over her, but he grabbed her wrists and twisted them until she squealed in pain. He stopped twisting, but didn’t let go.

  "Girls, this is going to happen whether we do it the hard way or the easy way. It was stupid for you to think that you could waltz in here and try to con us. Who do you think you're dealing with? Jesus Christ, Africa? Really? Chinese factories? Therese Fucking Gauthier? Did you really think we would fall for that shit? You put up some crap on the web and think we'll bite? You try to play us for fools, you suffer the consequences." D'Angelo looked at me, his eyes dripping contempt.

  "And you, you stupid little bitch. Christ
ine said you were an idiot, but I had no idea. I even told her that involving another person in her little identity theft scheme was risky, but turns out she was right. You just bumbled along and played right into her hand. Christ, you might as well have been her travel agent, posting everything on Facebook."

  I could feel my face redden and I waited for the tears while he insulted me. They did not come. Instead, New Tina stepped in.

  "I'm here, aren't I?" My voice surprised me in its strength. "And where is Christine? Oh, that's right. She's dead. And before she died she told me that you had the money. She told me about Kevin Andrews." This was a bit of exaggeration but I was on a roll. "She told me the account number, and that she had hidden the money from you, but what she didn't realize was that you had double-crossed her with the bank. And she told me about President Moreno. Maybe you've seen the news? I'm the waitress who saved him."

  A wave of concern passed over D'Angelo, but he quickly recovered with that evil smile. I noticed that one side of his face was slightly red. Denman was standing over Teresa, and he leered, too.

  "Yes, here you are," D'Angelo said. "Of course, no one knows that. And as you said, Christine is dead. I made sure of that. And Kevin Andrews? Perhaps you haven't heard about his most unfortunate accident. Crime in this city is simply terrible." Denman snickered.

  "You hired the hit man to kill Christine?" I hadn't expected this, and my voice showed it. D'Angelo laughed.

  "She had, shall we say, outlived her usefulness. And you, Miss Bumbler, you led him right to her. I owe you thanks for that, I will admit."

  "Enough of this," Denman dropped Teresa’s wrists and loosened his belt again. "I'm ready for a little jungle love, and then some white trash." He pushed her back onto the desk, her feet still on the floor.

  She grunted. At first I thought she was responding to Denman's threat, but she was actually giving herself a little extra force to push her foot into his knee. He stepped back, all his weight on his other leg, and she kicked again, this time higher, into his groin. He doubled over and crumpled to the floor, his good leg unable to balance. He curled into a fetal position and she kicked his lower back, trying to find his kidneys. Whatever her foot found hurt, because Denman groaned again.

  Denman may have been temporarily disabled, but D'Angelo was not. While I'd been looking at Teresa and Denman, D'Angelo had pulled a gun out of the back of his waistband and was pointing it at me.

  "Tell your little bitch friend to stop," he said. "We've had enough fun now."

  Teresa saw the gun and froze. Denman was still moaning on the carpet.

  I needed to get to the gun in my purse, but that meant maneuvering around D'Angelo. Teresa was clearly able to hold her own—or better—with Denman, but even if I could get out of the office, D'Angelo would still have a gun and she was further from the door than I was. I thought about D'Angelo's face.

  "Does that hurt, Frank?" I taunted him. "You have to be careful with hot coffee." The left side of his face had started to blister. The initial rush of adrenalin over, his burn had begun to hurt.

  "Shut up, bitch," he said.

  "I'm really tired of that word," I said as I moved behind the desk, toward where Denman lay. My plan was high risk, but short of jumping thirty-two stories to the street, we had no other option.

  I grabbed Teresa's left hand and pulled her off the desk toward me, both of us protected from D'Angelo's vision and, I hoped, bullets, by the heavy wooden drawers and their contents. I put up three fingers and mouthed "go toward Denman" to Teresa. She nodded.

  "Here's the letter opener." This time I stage whispered so that D'Angelo could hear it.

  There was no letter opener. Teresa stayed behind the desk. I hoped that since D'Angelo couldn't see her, and since he thought she might stab Denman, that he would approach to the outside of the office, toward Denman and away from the door. That would give me a two-step advantage to Tammy's desk and Mark's gun. Doing this meant I could not protect an important piece of the puzzle, which lay on the carpet, but I couldn't afford to worry about that.

  Having counted to three, Teresa moved loudly toward Denman, and D'Angelo took the bait. He ran four steps toward where Denman lay.

  I ran out the door and dove to my purse. I grabbed the .38 and heard D'Angelo.

  "You little bitch," he began. Then I heard a scream. It was too deep for Teresa—at least, I hoped so. I approached Denman's office door from the side, not wanting to be a target.

  When I peeked into the office I saw Teresa standing up and D'Angelo on the floor. I could not see his gun.

  I walked in, gun drawn, moving slowly toward the far side of the office, where the two men were struggling to get up.

  "Drop it," I shouted, assuming that D'Angelo still had his weapon.

  "I've got it, Tina," said Teresa. Her voice was triumphant but she did not take her eyes off the men. She was pointing the gun at them and they were backing up toward the wall. I trained the .38 on them, too.

  "Turns out it really hurts when somebody scrapes a third degree coffee burn," she said. She backed away from the men toward the telephone, hit the speaker button, and dialed 911.

  35

  Detective Perez did not respond to the 911 call. He didn't arrive until after several uniformed officers had replaced zip ties with real handcuffs and led Denman and D'Angelo away. I made one of the officers take a picture of the floor behind the desk, or, rather, of an object on the floor. I had two other officers acknowledge that they saw the object, and I wrote down all three of their names and badge numbers.

  One of the officers stayed with us until Detective Perez walked in about forty-five minutes later. The officer, a Latina who looked like she had not reached thirty, talked with us both, but especially Teresa, about the attempted rape. Until then I hadn't thought of the situation that way, and for me it had not been more than a humiliating threat, but the officer reminded us that Denman had attempted to rape Teresa.

  "But we stopped him," Teresa pointed out.

  The officer nodded. "You did. You were able to control the situation, which hopefully gives you a lot of comfort. Still, it's a traumatic experience and you should not be surprised if it affects you later. And we added attempted sexual assault to the list of charges against Denman." The officer looked at me apologetically. "The evidence against D'Angelo is much less clear, but we might be able to add it later."

  I understood, and in a way I didn't care. They were charging both men with aggravated assault, and I did not feel like a victim of attempted rape. I put my arm around Teresa and she patted my hand.

  "Those kicks were impressive," I said. I hoped that it would help her if she focused on how she had defended herself. It seemed to.

  The coffee pot had been bagged as evidence, and none of us, not Teresa, the officer, or me, knew how to make espresso. I found three bottles of sparkling water for us and we sat in the Denman Enterprises lobby. I wondered what Tammy was going to think when she got in. I looked at my phone and realized that it would be a while before that happened: it was not yet seven thirty.

  "You turn up in the oddest places," Detective Perez said to me after he asked the officer to bring us all some coffee from the shop downstairs.

  "What can I say? When I go on vacation, it's a real adventure." I smiled at Perez. "The other thing I like to do when I go on vacation is to get gifts for my friends." Apparently New Tina was a smart aleck. Perez looked at me. "Yours is in the other room. I hope you like it. I worked pretty hard to get it."

  Perez followed me into Denman's office. He was being a good sport, I had to give him credit. Teresa came, too. By now she knew what his gift was.

  I led him behind the wooden desk and pointed to the object on the floor. It was the cassette recorder. I had turned it on when I reached for it , having realized that its value as a weapon was in its ability to record, not as a projectile. After the officers had identified it as evidence, they had played it so I knew that it was an adequate, if not acoustically perfect, record
ing of the morning's events.

  Perez listened appreciatively.

  "Where's the letter opener?" he finally asked when the recording finished playing. I laughed and told him how we had gotten out.

  "Wait until Charlie hears this story," he said, shaking his head. "You are really amazing."

  It had felt nice when Mark had called me amazing. But to hear it from a police officer, describing not my sexuality but my accomplishments, that was really something special. Special enough that I nearly forgot about the fact that we were not going to get twenty million dollars that afternoon. Nearly, but not quite.

  "Now I understand what you were hiding from me," the detective said. "I knew that night at the hotel there was more to your story. You were after the money. And you were on the right trail. Our forensic accountant said that the twenty million was being laundered through Denman."

  We finished up with Detective Perez pretty quickly after that. Perez told me he was not going to ask whether I had a permit to carry the .38, because the entire situation was clearly self-defense. I told him I would check into getting a permit and in the meantime would keep the gun at the condo. He appreciated my saying that, and neither of us cared whether he believed it.

  Teresa and I hadn't eaten yet, and by the time we walked out of the building with Detective Perez, we were both getting hungry. He suggested a place a few blocks away that turned out to be a fancied-up diner. It was one of those places that serves pancakes as a side dish, like toast. Completely delicious.

  Not cheap, though, and I was back to worrying about money. There was no twenty million dollar pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and I started adding up how much Teresa had spent on her so-called investment. And although I still had a lot of Mark's thousand dollars, I had spent some of it and wanted to be able to pay him back. My own money was still frozen.