Shell Game (Stand Alone 2) (38 page)

Jefferson’s two men entered the suite, while Folsom and Jefferson waited a few steps inside the entry, Jefferson in front of Folsom.

“If this is another screw-up, Jerry, I’m going to have your ass,” Jefferson said.

Folsom ignored Jefferson. He was getting a bad feeling. Jefferson’s two men returned to the sitting area. The smaller of the two said, “Clothes are still in the closet; stuff is in the bathroom.”

“Same with the other rooms,” the big guy said.

Folsom was beginning to fear for his life. Jefferson was a stone-cold killer, and now he was mad. He took a step backwards, toward the hall, preparing to bolt. But Jefferson must have heard him move, because the fat man turned. Folsom met Jefferson’s gaze and was ready to shoot the gangster when Jefferson’s eyes bulged and his mouth gaped open. At that same instant, something slammed into Folsom’s back, propelling him against Jefferson. His momentum carried him into the room, knocking Jefferson to the floor. Folsom fell on top of him and then rolled off the gangster and looked back through the open door at the lighted hallway. There was no one there.

“Get him!” Jefferson shouted.

“Get who, Boss?” one of his men asked.

“In the hall, you dummy.”

But before either of the men reached the entry, an arm briefly showed on the side of the doorway and something was tossed into the room. Two seconds passed and then a tremendous explosion ripped through the space, with bright light illuminating the room for a brief time. Then all was darkness, smoke, and pain.

Folsom knew he was screaming, but he couldn’t hear anything. He gained his feet with effort and staggered to the light switch by the door. He flipped the switch on and looked down at the other men in the room. They were in obvious agony, holding their hands over their ears; screaming tormentedly. Folsom knew he looked the same. He’d dropped his pistol somewhere, but didn’t bother to try to find it. Hands over his ears, he staggered into the hallway.

He knew he needed to get out of there. The explosion must have roused everyone on this floor and on at least the floors immediately above and below the tenth. He stopped dead in his tracks when Carrie Winter stepped forward from the right side of the hall, the pistol in her hand pointed at Folsom. A movement to the left drew his attention away for a moment.

Carrie Winter shouted something, but all he could make out was, “Brother Edward.”

A man, also with a pistol, ran into the suite and collected the dropped weapons.

The woman shouted again, but Folsom couldn’t hear her. When he hesitated, she hit him on the forehead with the butt of her pistol and, with her other hand, shoved him backwards. He fell onto the floor before scrambling to a sitting position against a chair.

Jefferson and his men were no longer screaming, but they groaned as though pain permeated every cell of their bodies.

Carrie dug her cell phone out of a back pocket of her jeans and dialed Darren Noury’s number.

“Yo,” Darren answered.

“Everybody okay?”

“I have Mrs. Folsom in my car. The man and your mom are with Mike in his truck. How’s things there?”

“Good. Please take Wendy, Paul, and my mom to her house. Wait for us there. I’m going to call the police. I don’t want them anywhere near here when the police arrive.”

“Will do,” Darren said, and hung up.

Carrie noticed hotel guests were beginning to peek out of their rooms. A couple people were standing in the hall.

“Get back in your rooms and lock your doors,” she shouted. “Everything’s okay.” To the woman peeking out at her from her cracked-open door, she calmly said, “Call the police, please.”

“Are you nuts?” the woman yelled as she moved back into her room. “I already did that.”

Carrie moved to go back into the room when a rent-a-cop came into view in the hallway. He had a pistol extended in front of him.

“Drop your weapon,” he shouted at her, his voice quavering.

“Put that damned thing away before you shoot yourself,” she calmly said. “The action’s all over. The best thing you can do is go down to the lobby and wait for the police. Show them up here.”

To Carrie’s surprise, the rent-a-cop didn’t argue with her. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and ran back the way he had come.

Carrie entered the room, leaving the door open behind her. She and Edward watched the four men and waited for the police. Sirens could be heard in the distance.

“Carrie, why don’t you do something smart?” Folsom shouted, his hearing obviously still impaired.

“Shut up, Folsom!” Edward barked.

“I’ve got $2 million in bearer bonds down the hall you can have if you let me go. The cops are going to be here any minute now. Why blow a chance of a lifetime?”

“And what about your friends here?” Carrie asked.

“Fuck them. The cops will be thrilled to finally take down Jefferson.”

“You asshole,” Jefferson yelled.

“Will you guys shut up?” Edward yelled. “You’re making my head hurt.”

“Think about it, Carrie. Think what you could do with $2 million.”

“Stand up!” Carrie ordered Folsom.

Folsom stood and smiled, as though he’d found an ally.

“Let’s go,” she told him. “What room?”

“1027.”

“Carrie, what are you doing?” Edward said.

“It’ll be all right,” she told her brother.

Folsom took a step toward the door when a gunshot sounded in the room. He spun around like a top and dropped to the floor on his back. Blood oozed from his right eye.

Edward fired his pistol at Jefferson, hitting the gangster in the chest. Jefferson collapsed on his side and started laughing as Edward wrenched the small pistol from Jefferson’s hand.

“You sonofabitch!” Edward growled.

“Shoulda checked me for an ankle rig,” Jefferson said. Then the man laughed again and twice gasped for breath. He convulsed and was dead in ten seconds.

Carrie moved to Folsom and felt his pulse. Nothing.

“Crap,” she groaned.

Edward moved next to her, all the while watching the other two men. “What were you going to do with Folsom?” he asked, his voice full of accusation.

She gave him an anguished look. “Do you really believe I would have taken his money for myself?”

“I’m sorry, Carrie,” Edward said, chastised. “Of course not.”

“I was going to take Folsom’s cash and then bring him back here. The money was for Wendy. After what’s happened with the bank, there may be nothing left for her. There’s no way I would ever do a deal with that bastard”

The sirens were now so loud it was obvious the police had arrived outside the hotel.

“Why don’t you follow up on your first instinct?” Edward told Carrie in a low voice so Jefferson’s men didn’t hear him, assuming they were getting their hearing back.

“What do you mean?” Carrie asked in a whisper.

“Get his room key out of his pocket and go find the bonds.”

“Great idea, Eddie. But let’s change roles. You go get the cash and get out of here.”

“No way, Sis.”

“Don’t play hero with me. You’ve finally got the bank off your back and Betsy’s just given you a son. You don’t need this hanging over the company or your family.” She knelt down and rummaged through Folsom’s pockets until she found his room card key. She handed it to Edward and said, “Remember, it’s Room 1027. Give the money to Wendy, assuming you get out of here before the police come up. Go! You wait any longer and the police will impound the cash and Wendy may not get any.”

Edward nodded as though he saw the sense in Carrie’s suggestion. But he asked, “What if these guys tell the police I was here?”

Carrie chuckled. “These two aren’t going to say a word. They’re professional hoodlums and probably learned a long time ago that nothing good comes from talking to the authorities. And if they do say something, I’ll claim they’re lying.”

Edward walked to the door, but Carrie stopped him. “Give me that gun. And take that satchel out of the linen storage room, take it to Folsom’s room, and leave it there.”

“What’s in it?”

“Don’t ask.”

SATURDAY

JULY 30, 2011

Having gone through an Army course in Duress Interrogation, Carrie found the interrogation conducted by the Philadelphia Police detectives mild by comparison. By pretending to be upset over the events of the night, the police treated her with kid gloves. The only part of the interview process that was getting to her was having to answer the same questions over and over and over again. She was now on the fourth iteration of the story; all she wanted to do was get to her mother’s home and make sure everyone there was okay.

“Tell us what happened, again from the top,” Detective Anthony Castiglia said.

Carrie wagged her head as though from frustration. “How many times do I have to go over this with you, Detective? It’s 3 in the morning.”

“Come on, Ms. Winter. You had two dead men in your hotel room. Don’t you think that requires us to be diligent?” Castiglia said.

“Oh, all right. As I said before, my mother, Wendy Folsom, and I decided to stay at the Marriott Hotel as a precaution. After the beating Mrs. Folsom’s husband had given her, we felt that moving out of the house made sense. We’d been in the Marriott since last Saturday.”

“But you were checking out?” Castiglia asked.

“Yes. I was going to drive Mrs. Folsom down to Cape May this morning and drop her off at our home down there. I was going to come back to my mother’s place after dropping off Mrs. Folsom. Now that her husband is dead, I guess there’s no need to take her to the shore.”

“You mentioned Gerald Folsom beating his wife. Do you have some reason to believe he was planning more violence against his wife?”

Carrie wasn’t about to disclose what she knew about an assassin breaking into her mother’s place. “Not really,” she said. “I mean, I think the man was capable of hiring someone to harm his wife.”

“So, you were still there in the room when Folsom and the other men broke in?”

“I was about to pack up our things and leave. My brother drove Mrs. Folsom, Paul Sanders, our family attorney, and my mother to her house. And, to be accurate, the men didn’t break in. My brother must have left the door ajar when he left.”

“And then what happened?”

“I heard this enormous explosion and saw a flash of light. Thank God I was in the bedroom. I looked into the living room and there were four men rolling around on the floor, screaming. I saw a pistol on the floor next to the man closest to me, so I grabbed it and ran to the front door of the suite to get away. But I tripped on the man nearest to the door, Gerald Folsom. He got to his feet and came after me, and was about to grab me when I heard a gunshot and,” she feigned a shudder here, “blood spurted out of his eye. I think one of the other men tried to shoot me and hit him instead. I pointed the pistol I had picked up off the floor at the man who shot Folsom and fired at him.

“I ran into the hall and saw people gathering. I screamed at them to get back into their rooms; one woman said she had called the police. A hotel security guard appeared in the hall and I told him to go downstairs and show the police to my room.”

“How do you explain the explosion and the flash of light?” Castiglia asked.

“As you know, Detective, I’m in the Army. I’ve heard and seen flash bang grenades go off before. I can only assume Folsom or one of the other men brought one along to disable us.”

“But they disabled themselves, Ms. Winter.”

“Is that a question?” Carrie asked.

Castiglia smiled. “Just wondering if you have an opinion as to what happened.”

“Let’s say it was a flash bang grenade that went off. Maybe whoever was holding it didn’t toss it into the room early enough. Maybe it was old ordnance and was defective. Whatever happened, Detective Castiglia, was to my benefit and not theirs.”

“Pretty good shot you made. Do you know anything about the man you killed?”

“Nothing,” she lied. “But he was so large, it was pretty hard to miss him.”

“You ever been to Pastorius Park?”

Carrie shot the detective a surprised look. “Dozens of times when I was a kid. Why?”

“Recently?”

“I haven’t been a kid for years, Detective. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, we had multiple reports of an incident in the park last Sunday. Witnesses reported seeing a tall young woman with short blonde hair assault a very fat black man. Could have been the same guy you shot tonight.”

“And?” Carrie said.

“Sounds like it could have been you, Ms. Winter.”

“Lots of tall blondes with short hair running around Philadelphia, Detective.”

Castiglia nodded. “We also received reports of a Corvette running down another man there. Doesn’t your brother drive a Corvette?”

“Lots of Corvettes in Philly, too.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” He paused for about ten seconds and then said, “I suppose I should be thanking you for shooting Eli “Toothpick” Jefferson. The guy has been an organized crime fixture around the city for decades.”