Shell Game (Stand Alone 2) (23 page)

Carrie announced she was going to get some fresh air and went outside. When she was out of sight of the house, she used her cell phone to call a friend who had served with her in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Special Ops officer, Darren Noury had been wounded in an IED explosion and decided to put in his separation papers after spending six months in rehabilitation at Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany. Carrie knew Darren now worked in a software firm headquartered in Willow Grove, a community outside Philadelphia.

“This better be good,” Darren said. He sounded groggy, hung-over.

“Hello, Darren. You been partying?”

“Who the hell is this?”

“It’s the woman who saved your ass in Fallujah.”

“Carrie! Where the hell are you? Last I heard, you were wearing a chador and sneaking around Azerbaijan.”

“That was supposed to be top secret. Who told you that?”

“Once a spook, always a spook. But where are you?”

“Chestnut Hill at my mother’s house. I’m home on leave.”

“Damn, we gotta get together.”

“Sooner than you think. I have a problem, Darren. I need someone to cover my back.”

“Action? Are you talking about action? Hot damn. Just you and me?”

“I could use another man, too.”

“I know just the guy,” Darren said. “Mike Perico. He was a Force Recon Marine in the first Gulf War and then joined the Company for a few years. Very dependable guy. Selling drugs now.”

“What!”

Darren laughed. “No, no, he’s a pharmaceutical rep.”

“Big change from the agency,” she said. “You available tomorrow morning?”

“Sure.”

“Check with Mike and see if he can meet with us at 6:45. Use this number to call me back. If the time works, I’ll meet you at Maria’s Bakery on Bethlehem Pike in Chestnut Hill.”

“Do I need to bring any equipment?”

“Nothing too heavy.”

“Gotcha!”

Carrie walked around the block three times before Darren called her back.

“The time works,” Darren said.

“Thanks, Darren. See you.”

She ended the call and returned to the house.

“You okay, honey?” Katherine asked as Carrie walked in. Worry showed on her knitted brow and in her frightened eyes.

Carrie looked around. “Where is everybody?”

“Wendy’s in her room. The others went home.”

“I’m going to get some rest. It was a long night.”

“Carrie,” Katherine said, “I hope you’re not planning something stupid.”

“Mom, I need you to understand something. I’m not the person you knew before I joined the service. I’ve learned a special set of skills that are very effective against bad people. And I’ve put them to use on dozens of occasions. When I look at the photographs of me you’ve got scattered around your house, I don’t recognize that person anymore.”

“I see something in you that’s foreign to me, that scares me,” Katherine said. “But I know you’re the same good person inside.”

“I hope you’re right, Mom; I just can’t be sure. But that’s irrelevant. That woman who snuck in here last night could have murdered all of us. What you’re doing for Wendy is a good thing. But as long as she’s here, you’re in danger too. I know you won’t send her away, so we’ve got to figure out a way to eliminate the danger.”

“How?”

“First, I think you should check into a hotel for a few days. That assassin could have told any number of people where Wendy is now. And you and Wendy need to be very careful about who you talk to. Keep telephone calls limited to emergencies only. Talk to Paul Sanders or Wendy’s attorney, or our family members, but no one else. Second, I’m going to bring on a couple security people to watch over you, twenty-four hours.”

Carrie hugged Katherine. “And don’t worry; I won’t do anything stupid.” She then went to her room, closed the door, and used her cell phone to call Toothpick Jefferson’s number.

“Yeah,” a man answered.

“We need to meet.”

“Who the hell is this?”

“The person who took down your hired killer. She gave me your number.”

“What you talkin’ about?”

“Don’t go into jive mode on me, asshole. I know you sent the woman and I know why.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to meet, have a short conversation, and then I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours. Pretty simple, huh?”

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of setup?”

“You don’t. But you can’t afford to ignore me. That I guarantee you.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow at 8 a.m. Pastorius Park in Chestnut Hill.”

“Where the hell is Pastorius Park?”

“Figure it out. Look it up on the internet. And come alone.”

Paul left Katherine’s home and drove to his office to finish the Injunction Order he would need to file if nothing good happened at the bank for Winter Enterprises between now and next Friday.

Good to her word, Gail Moskowitz’s fax arrived just before noon. Paul read the lengthy document and realized why Gail was nervous about tying her name to the information. Compared to the typical FDIC asset sale, the deals Donald Matson gave Gerald Folsom were “special.” As Gail had said, there was nothing showing what Matson might have got out of giving Folsom sweet deals—if anything—but there sure as hell was plenty of reason to raise the ugly suspicion of extortion or bribery. At a minimum, the FDIC needed to investigate the relationship between the two men.

Paul called Kelly Loughridge’s office at the
Journal
and left an urgent message for her before going back to reading Gail Moskowitz’s fax. He’d gotten through it a second time when Kelly Loughridge called back.

“I’ve got some very interesting information from the FDIC.”

“How about a summary?” Kelly said.

“Donald Matson was giving Gerald Folsom extremely preferential treatment on asset sales. Over the past decade, Folsom made hundreds of millions of dollars or more from buying loan pools and banks at prices even below the normally ridiculous sale prices offered to other investors. I’ve got dates and prices of all the deals Folsom made with the agency. When you compare the prices he paid against the appraised value of the assets themselves, you have to come to the conclusion Folsom was someone’s best buddy.”

“What was Matson getting in return?” Kelly asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to leave that to you to discover. After all, you need to do a little work on this story.”

“Very funny, Paul. I’ll have you know my staff and I have been turning over every rock we can find.”

“I’ve got something else to tell you, but you can’t disclose it to anyone until I give you permission to do so. I’m giving it to you for background only. This is off the record, you understand?”

“You’ve got more conditions than a federal government contract. Yeah, I understand.”

“A hired killer tried to murder Gerald Folsom’s wife last night.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. What happened? Is she okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine. But there’s a reason why I can’t tell you anything more right now. I’ll explain later.”

“Paul, I know you’re hoping any story I publish will help your client, but that could be a pipe dream. I might not even be able to gather enough information to put together a story we can print.”

“Jesus, Kelly. Sweetheart deals are being made between a federal government agency and a private investor, the banking industry is paying for the huge losses the FDIC is taking as a result of these special deals through huge deposit insurance assessments, a top FDIC executive has been murdered, the private investor receiving these sweetheart deals is arrested and charged with assault and battery and the attempted murder of his wife, and a hired killer tries to take out the investor’s wife. What more do you need?”

“You’re one royal pain in the ass.”

“There’s a story you can write. A lawyer who’s a pain in the ass.”

“Cute, Paul. I’ll be talking to you.”

Kelly hung up. Paul sent an email to his assistant instructing her to finalize the Injunction Order and to have it ready as soon as possible Monday morning. He then called Katherine at home and offered to take Wendy, Carrie, and her out to dinner.

“Carrie thinks we should check into a hotel until this blows over,” Katherine said. “Even wants to hire security guards. I think she’s correct about going to a hotel. We’re going to the Marriott. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go out to eat, but we can eat in. Come by the hotel at 7.”

Katherine, followed by Wendy and Carrie, led the way through the packed Marriott Hotel lobby at 5 p.m. Each of them pulled a wheeled suitcase and carried a shoulder bag. They ignored an offer of assistance from a bellman, checked in at the front desk, and rode an elevator to their floor.

As soon as they unpacked in their suite, Carrie told them she needed to check on something.

Borrowing Katherine’s SUV, Carrie drove to Pastorius Park at Hartwell Lane and Abington Avenue in Chestnut Hill. The small park was situated in a residential area and had a slightly rolling landscape with scattered pockets of bushes and trees. The terrain drained toward a small pond in the center of the park.

After parking the SUV on the street, Carrie surveilled the area. The park hadn’t changed since her mother brought her here when she was a little girl. She would scoop up tadpoles with a kitchen ladle and take them home in a fish bowl. When the tadpoles grew into baby frogs, they brought them back to the park and released them. In winter, she ice skated on the pond.

There were a dozen dog-walkers roaming the park, a few joggers, and a lone man reading on a bench. She hoped the park would be less crowded at 8 a.m. tomorrow, Sunday morning.

Carrie walked until she found a spot where she could sit down with Jefferson—a weathered bench set in a slight depression against a backdrop of dogwood trees. Darren Nouri would cover the area behind the trees; she would station Mike Perico over by the pond, where he would have a clear one-hundred-yard line of sight to the bench. Although she’d told Toothpick Jefferson to come alone, there was zero chance, she guessed, that he would follow her instructions.

She returned to the car and drove back to the Marriott Hotel. As she entered the lobby, she spotted Paul Sanders waiting for an elevator. She caught up with him and he asked, “Out sight-seeing?”

“Sort of.”

They entered the elevator. When it began to ascend, Paul asked, “Do me a favor. When you find out who hired that woman to kill Wendy, call the police. Let them deal with it. Don’t do something stupid.”

Carrie smiled back at Paul innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Paul.”

They walked out of the elevator and down the hall to the suite without another word. In the suite, Katherine took everyone’s order and called room service. It took almost an hour for the food to arrive. They were finished eating by 8:45.

Wendy retired first; Carrie followed shortly thereafter. Paul and Katherine sat on the couch with their glasses of wine.

“How do you think this is all going to end?” Katherine asked.

Paul reached over and placed his hand on Katherine’s. He was surprised when she didn’t remove her hand after a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you everything would end happily ever after,” he said, “but I don’t have any idea. There is one thing I
can
tell you. I have a sense that events are tying together.”

“That’s good?” she said.

He raised his shoulders. “Who knows? The way the bank is treating Winter Enterprises isn’t illegal. Unethical, but not illegal.”

“The spirit of the law versus the letter of the law?”

“ ‘No man has ever yet been hanged for breaking the spirit of the law.’ Grover Cleveland.”

“What if it’s the federal government breaking the spirit of the law?” Katherine asked.

“Louis Brandeis wrote, ‘Crime is contagious. If the federal government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.’ I contend this goes with breaking the spirit of the law as well.”

“You spend a lot of time reading, don’t you?”

He looked at her and tried to keep the sadness he suddenly felt from his face. “It’s what you do when you’re waiting for a woman to pay attention to you.”

Katherine shivered as though she was chilled. She withdrew her hand from Paul’s and placed her wine glass on the coffee table in front of them. She moved closer to him and kissed his lips. “I think I should start paying more attention to you.”

“ ‘Thou art to me a delicious torment.’ ”

“Ralph Waldo Emerson,” she said. “Now shut up, Paul.”

SUNDAY

JULY 24, 2011

Edward had always been more than a big brother to Carrie; he’d been her best friend. Despite their seven year age difference, they had always had a connection beyond being siblings. Even though she’d followed him around as much as she could, Edward never resented her hanging around. Since his father died, he’d felt responsible for Carrie.