Closer Than You'll Ever Know

My wife Sepia was always good for me...In more ways than one...Besides the mind blowing late night and early morning sex we'd just had...She was also able to put some perspective to this seemingly bottomless pit of a case...I had a missing investment banker who had fleeced several people to from anywhere from 15-20 million dollars....Two dead gangsters , one dead partner and not a clue as to who pulled the trigger, who had tried to kill me or the whereabouts of the money or the investment banker...Nothing.

Just the night before I'd found myself saying-
"None at all...This case is hopeless." I said. "I got nothin." I said.


"Relax baby...the answer might be closer than you'll ever know..Relax and attack it with fresh eyes tomorrow." she'd said. 

"The key to this case may be closer than you'll ever know." said my wife Sepia.... She said it again this morning as we had a delicious breakfast of  Scrambled Eggs, Hash Browns, Bacon and Toast, with Orange Juice and two tumblers of hot steaming coffee...at an outside cafe in town...She was waiting for her partner, Bonita Foxworth to show up....

Bonita was late , but she joined us eventually.....

"I see you're driving your car today eh?" I laughed...

"Yeah..Sepia and I have an important client to show a house to." she said.

"Yeah?" I said...

"Yes...and you should get with Robert sometime today...He says that he may have something for you." she said.

"Okay..." I said....I pulled out a few bills and gave Sepia what started out to be a peck on the lips , but turned into a long sensuous kiss...

Bonita cleared her throat...

"Uhhhh if you two go on like that much longer I'm going to have to rent you a room." she laughed.

"Oh and why were you late and why is your hair kind of tossled?" asked Sepia with a devilish smile...

Bonita smiled guiltily......."Okay...Carry on!"

We all laughed.

II-

At Robert Foxworth's office, his partner, Attorney Chance Howard, who might one day have a promising career doing what I do, investigating was very excited....

"Kev...for the past few days...Cole and me have been doing work ups on all of the people fleeced by Alden Jones...and guess what we found out?" he said...

''What?" I asked.

"They all had a link to the late Tony Dusable.." he said.

"WHAT???" I asked.

"That's right...Doctors, Lawyers, Politicians, Gangsters, Rappers....All of them were talked into this by Macaroni Tony.....See like bossman here, He had something on them...They either gambled in his high stakes card game, represented him or his associates in court, cared for him or his associates in medical matters or was his peers ...He was setting up an investment group.....He was the one who put all of these people on." said Cole.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"The Past two days we have talked to all of these people...They all thought that this was a way to make their money grow...They are sick to death that they got ripped off.." said Chance...

Then it hit me.... I had to laugh....

"What's so funny Kevin?" asked Robert...

"It was all right there from the start...The Ponzi scheme....I'm sure Macaroni Toni was getting a kickback from everybody he put on to Jones and Pryor....He must have known all along what it was about...and then Jones got greedy... When his money was starting to look funny..He hired me....To get information so he could not only blackmail him, but have justification to kill him if all else failed.." I said.

"A guy like that doesn't need justification to kill someone he thinks is ripping him off." said Robert.

"True, but Tony's mind was funny like that....He re-imbursed his gangster friends....but my speculation is that all of those other poor saps were just going to have to take a bath." I said.

"So why is he and Dominique and Pryor dead?" asked Robert.

"Why? Because somebody else is involved...Either somebody told Jones to cut out all of the middle men....or there is an independent operator involved with their own agenda. Any of you guys consider that?" I asked.

"I did " said Robert Foxworth....Cole, Chance and I gave him the serious side eye.

"It's all there." I said, still laughing...."Great job guys.." I laughed as I left.

There was definitely someone else involved in this....Just had to find out who.

III-

Here's what I did know...

Members of Alden  Jones family who I interviewed and several of his associates mentioned in court documents I saw, (thanks to my contact in records), that he had a young woman who handled a lot of his affairs...a Valarie Price. They gave me her address..She was no longer with the company and a quick background check showed that she had no criminal background....but they all seemed to agree that she more than anyone else knew the ins and outs of his business dealings to a point.  So why was she still alive? Why was she not in custody?

 A manager at the bank Alden Jones  and  Lacy Pryor directed, which has been purchased by another bank and reopened this week under a different name, said he couldn't comment, citing the ongoing investigation. Alden Jones left his home in Northeast Philly sixteen days before, telling his wife he was headed to the Virgin Islands for business, This was more than likely a lie!

 Two days later, Jones's wife said she'd received letters saying he was going to Key West, Florida to board a ferry headed to Fort Meyers and planned to jump off somewhere along the way to end his life. I doubt if that happened.

A check of his credit card records show he purchased dive weights and a ferry ticket. The ferry ticket was scanned at the boarding point, but that's where the trail runs cold. I called the Coast Guard.

 The Coast Guard searched for him, and investigators talked to the ferry crew and rental car agencies in the Fort Meyers area, to no avail. Nothing.. I shared this information with FBI Special Agent in charge, Frank Cotton.

I found and  interviewed  this associate of  Alden Jones named Valerie Price, who told me that she first met Lacy Pryor when she was fresh out of college and that they had worked together at an investment firm.....Years later ,after a brief affair with the then married Lacy Pryor,..She met Alden Jones... and they hired her to work at a new company they were starting.

Alden Jones became director of  Your Bank and Trust Inc.., in December 2010, when a company he and Pryor controlled bought a controlling portion of the bank's stock, according to a complaint filed late last month in federal court in New York. Jones then opened brokerage accounts through a securities clearing and custodial firm in New York  and Philadelphia and told bank managers he would invest in U.S. Treasury securities. Instead of investing the bank's money, Valerie Price said that Jones and Pryor wired the funds into accounts they controlled at other financial institutions and provided bank managers with fraudulent documents.

She said she believed that Jones and Pryor embezzled $17 million in bank funds. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint in federal court here in Philadelphia saying he defrauded investors. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.   seized Your Bank & Trust Inc.  Valarie said that since  2009, Jones and Pryor had raised roughly $40 million from about 115 investors, mostly in Philly and a few in South Jersey, through the sale of membership interests in their investment firm.

They routinely sent investors messages saying the firm, for which they made the investment decisions, consistently had positive returns, the SEC lawsuit says. Jones and Pryor provided monthly account statements to investors that were falsified to hide the fact that millions of dollars were missing. This was around the time they caught the attention of a savy gangster known as Macaroni Tony Dusable..
Valarie said that she'd never met him.

"I just did what they told me Mr. Kevin...I didn't ask any questions and didn't try to find out too much...When I couldn't stomach anymore...I quit the company and went to work for another firm...I've been gone six months now...But I still have my access card and I still know a lot of people who are still there." she said.

I believed her. Valarie said that she personally moved about $300,000 of a few clients money to Your Bank & Trust inc. after Lacy Pryor told her it would be a good investment. She met the also married Alden Jones once for drinks. She said that he tried to make a play for her, but was rebuffed.

 "He should have won an Oscar for his performance that day, He was as cool as a cucumber." she said. "He has left a path of financial carnage.I'm sorry I was a part of that...but I didn't gain from it."She said.

"Because you wouldn't sleep with him right?" I said.

''Right...He always told me that he'd buy me a car ,set me up in a condo..Anything ,if I'd just give him some...I refused.."she said.

"Neither of them knew that you knew as much as you know, did they?" I asked.

"I guess not..and after I left..I didn't keep in contact with them."she said.

The very attractive woman said that  said she discovered something was wrong late last month when she wanted to withdraw some money she had  invested with them from the firm to invest in another business.

She tried multiple times to contact the firm to withdraw her money. When she texted her financial adviser, he responded that he had had no idea what was going on at the company and said he thought Alden Jones was still alive despite rumors of his possible suicide.

I asked her if the FBI or SEC had been to see her...She told me no and that she and her girlfriends had just gotten back from a wedding in the Bahamas..She had no idea that Mr. Jones had vanished and that people had been killed.  I believed her...She appeared to be just an honest pawn who did what her bosses at the firm told her to do.

"Mr. Kevin...I think Alden is still alive...He wasn't the type to feel guilty about nothin involvin money and he certainly was too in love with himself to take his life." said Valarie Price.

"I think he's alive too baby and I think I know where he is." I said.

"You do?" she said.

"Yeah..Just hang loose...I may need to talk to you again." I said.

IV-

I got a call from Lt. Sissy Van Buren....She asked that I meet her at the M.E.'s office...

When I got there, She and the coroner were standing near the table where a short stocky man with slicked back hair lie...He had several bullet wounds in his torso...

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about this would you?" asked Sissy.

"Who me? Noooooo...I've been busy trying to track down leads on all the folks Alden Jones ripped off.." I said.

"Well..we found this guy in his car early this morning on a side street in West Philly....We pulled several slugs from a .38 smokeless and a .45 from him...We also found a rifle with a silencer in his car ,which was pretty bloody..We did a ballistics check...This is the gun that killed "Macaroni" Tony Dusable, Dominique Guinn and Lacy Pryor..." she said...giving me the side eye....

"It's obvious that there might have been someone else with him, driving....His body was found on the passenger side...but whoever the driver was, wiped the car down of any fingerprints.." she said.

"Wow you did good work Sissy..." I said.  She gave me the side eye...

"We found his blood outside of Pryor's place and a latent finger print...Do you know who he is?"she asked.

"Nope...Never seen him before in my life." I said...telling the truth...

"He's William Bangles....." she said.

"Billy Bangs????" I said in awe...

"That's right!....One of the highest price hitmen in the game...suspect in , if you believe the legend...100 killings."she said.

I had heard of him...Everyone in Philadelphia had....It was said that if someone called him in, you were as good as dead before the ink dried on the contract!  Clerow and I had took out a major  hitter and weren't even aware.

''Who took him out?" I asked innocently.

"I don't know....I don't really care either...I'm just glad he's off the street...I thought you might be able to help me with this one. My detectives found enough guns and other things in his apartment to link him to several unsolved and open murder cases...I expect to be making multiple arrests tomorrow of several major underworld figures, so whoever killed him did the city of Philadelphia a big big favor." she said.

I shrugged my shoulders...

"Good for you Sissy. This also clears three recent open murder cases you had.....I was refferring to (Macaroni Tony, Dominique and Lacy Pryor .)Maybe, just maybe...it might help me with my case." I said and smiled...

I was pretty sure that it did.

(To Be Continued...)