Who is Raphael Garza? Pt. 05

"So, you're saying that it wasn't necessary for you to fuck up our lives to protect your little business venture. Wait, you just said that you told George? "Who the hell is George?"

"I didn't say, George, did I? It wouldn't surprise me if I did. With everything I've been through these last few months, I often get names mixed up. Sometimes I am surprised that I remember my name.

"This probably won't mean much to you, but I did try to talk them out of doing that but, Monty freaked out when Kathy audited the bank in January. He was determined to do something about Kathy. I've got nothing else unless you have more questions." Marge said. "I hope this helps you."

"Not sure anything you told me will make any difference now. I guess we're done here."

"I am sorry for the hurt we caused you and Kathy."

"Nice of you to feel that way after all the damage you and your friends caused. Where was your concern before?"

Conversation with Special Agent Van Horn

Marge stood up from the table and waved to the guard standing outside the door behind her. The door opened, and the guard waited for Marge to exit the conference room. As Marge was leaving, she looked back at me and smiled. When the door closed behind her, Van Horn entered and sat next to me.

Van Horn set a file folder down on the table, and we both watched silently as the guard escorted Marge out of the area. When the security door closed behind them, Van Horn turned toward me and said, "So, how was it?"

"I don't know. I think I'm more confused now than I was before. It's going to take me a while to get my head around some of the things she told me that are contrary to what I believed," I said. "And Marge seemed to be implying that she was only marginally involved in setting Kathy up. I thought that it was her idea."

"Could you summarize what Mrs. Robinson told you? I would like to compare what she told you with the notes from our interviews with her."

I spent the next twenty minutes telling Van Horn everything I could remember of what Marge said while he consulted the notes in the file folder he brought with him. When I finished, I asked Van Horn if I could believe anything Marge had told me.

Van Horn closed the file folder on the desk, then turned to me and smiled. "Mrs. Robinson was telling you the truth based on everything we have been able to verify. It does appear that she was downplaying her role in all this, maybe just to make herself look better in your eyes. She was involved in the scheme Montgomery, and Farrell were running with the La Morte cartel. Her involvement dates back to when La Morte first contacted Montgomery to discuss the possibility of using the bank to launder their drug money."

"While she was talking, I think I heard Marge say George when she meant to say, Carlos, did she ever mention anyone named George to you?"

"We haven't come across anyone named George in our investigation."

"Why would a Mexican drug cartel come to a small bank in a small town in Pennsylvania to launder their money?" I asked. "This makes no sense to me. And why did Carlos change the plans at the last minute and stream the videos to me?"

Van Horn flipped open the cover of the file folder a couple of times, then placed both of his hands on the folder and look at me. "First of all, you need to understand that I have no obligation to discuss any of this with you, and I probably shouldn't. I am only willing to talk to you because I feel that you deserve closure on this. There is a lot of this that I cannot discuss with you because parts of the investigation are ongoing. I will tell you what I can, but I will not answer any questions not related to what I am about to tell you. Do you understand?"

I said, "Yes," but I was thinking that Van Horn wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. I think he was fishing for something, but I had no idea what it might be.

Van Horn opened his file folder and consulted his notes before he started talking. "On July 7th of this year, my office received a FedEx package sent from a shipping store in Brodricksburg. The box contained a video recorded on July 4th, showing Percy Montgomery and Stephen Farrell, meeting with three members of the La Morte drug cartel in the Brodricksburg Athletic Park. One of the cartel members has been identified as a man known only as Carlos. He was identified in the video by Marge Robinson. When the FBI raided the FBB on Friday, July 10th Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Farrell were not at the bank, and we were informed that no one at the bank had seen them since the bank closed on Friday, July 3rd.

"Warrants were issued for Montgomery and Farrell, as well as Carlos and the two unidentified La Morte men that traveled with Carlos. On July 12th, the FBI received an anonymous tip that Carlos and his associates would attempt to cross the border into Mexico on July 12th. A team consisting of Agents of the FBI and the DEA intercepted a Cadillac Escalade with three men inside in an attempted to arrest them. The La Morte men opened fire on the agents, and all three were killed in the return fire."

"So, Carlos was killed."

"No. We were able to verify that two of the dead men had been with Carlos in the video, the third man is, so far, unidentified," Van Horn said, then continued his narrative. "On July 21st, the naked bodies of Percy Montgomery and Stephen Farrell were found in the Delaware River under the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. Both men had been shot twice in the back of the head by a small-caliber pistol. The coroner said that the two men had been tortured before they were killed. After two weeks in the river, the coroner couldn't be any more exact than to put the time of death sometime between July 4th and July 6th. We believe the two men were taken from Mr. Montgomery's home and dragged down to the river bank where they were tortured, shot and their bodies dumped into the river."

The hair on the back of my neck bristled at the possibility that killer or killers, may have entered Monty's house shortly after I left and killed Monty and Farrell.

Van Horn looked over at me and said, "Are you all right?"

I needed to stall for a moment. "The thought of how cold-blooded the murders were kind of creeped me out for a second," I said. "Why do you think someone killed them?"

"All we know so far is that Montgomery and Farrell met with Carlos and his associates on July 4th and exchanged a package containing $240,000 in bearer bonds for a duffle bag full of money. Montgomery and Farrell were killed within 48 hours of the meeting, and we never found the duffle bag or the money at the bank or Montgomery's house. We believe that the killer was after the money."

"Marge told me that Monty and Farrell always met with Carlos behind the bank to make the exchange. Then Montgomery would put the money in the vault, so why did they go to a public park to make the exchange on the 4th?"

"The bank was closed for the holiday, so Montgomery would have to turn the alarm off, which would leave a record of them going into the bank on a holiday weekend, and they didn't want that."

"Did your agents find the bearer bonds with the three men they stopped at the border?"

"No. We think Carlos kept the bonds for himself. Our theory is that Carlos sent his men back to Mexico without him and then killed the bankers and took the money. Later, the FBI tip line received an anonymous call telling us that the three cartel men we were looking for were going to cross the border. The caller told us when and where they would be crossing. It would seem

that Carlos hoped that we would believe that he was killed in the shoot out at the border, and he wanted to get rid of anyone who could identify him."

"So, now there are five people dead, and Carlos is still on the loose?" I said.

"That's correct up to a point."

"Have you talked to that actor weasel that played Raphael Garza yet? Marge told me that Carlos hired him. Maybe he knows where to find Carlos."

"I am getting to that," Van Horn said. "On July 23rd, we started trying to find an address for anyone named Frank Lewis or Franklin Hawthorne in Philadelphia, or anywhere nearby, but could not find his address. We went to Hawthorne's agent, Aaron Berkowitz's, office but he wasn't there, and the building super told us that he hadn't seen Berkowitz since early July. We went through Berkowitz's files, looking for Hawthorne's address and found that Berkowitz had an appointment to meet with Hawthorn on July 3rd.

"The apartment at the address Berkowitz had written in his appointment book was leased to Frank Lewis. No one answered the door at that apartment. This time, we had to get a search warrant before the landlord would open the apartment. When we entered the apartment, we found what appeared to be the scene of a double homicide. In the living room, we found two small puddles of congealed blood on the floor about two feet apart. There were two sets of what appeared to be drag marks on the floor leading from the blood puddles in the living room to the hallway."

"Is Frank Lewis dead?" I asked.

Van Horn didn't answer immediately "With no bodies and little evidence, I called in our forensics people, and they went through the whole apartment with a fine-tooth comb and found nothing more than we had already seen. They took samples of the blood for DNA analysis along with a hairbrush and toothbrush from the bathroom. They also collected four sets of fingerprints around the apartment.

"The forensics team developed a hypothesis for what they believe happened in the apartment. The team came up with the scenario that two men were on their knees side by side and were each shot in the back of the head with a small-caliber weapon. Even fired at close range, the bullet would not have exited through the front of the head. Death would be nearly instantaneous. That's why there was only a small amount of blood where the two bodies had fallen.

"It took two weeks to get the results of the DNA analysis. One of the blood samples was a DNA match to a body the Delaware State Police pulled out of the Delaware River on July 15th. ID on the body belonged to Aaron Berkowitz. The second DNA sample matched the DNA from the hairbrush and the toothbrush. So it appears that Frank Lewis, aka Franklin Hawthorn, was the other victim.

"We ran both DNA samples through CODIS and the four sets of fingerprints through IAFIS. There were no hits in CODIS for either DNA sample, but we got a hit in IAFIS on one set of fingerprints. The fingerprints matched a man wanted for a double homicide nine years ago in Phoenix, Arizona. The man's name was Alex Gomez. The Phoenix police told us that Gomez managed to skip town and disappear before they could arrest him."

"You think Alex Gomez is the killer?" I said.

"We think that could be the case, "Van Horn said. "We've concluded that Carlos is Alex Gomez. The Phoenix police sent us a surveillance photo of Gomez, and we showed it to Mrs. Robinson. The picture was from nine years ago, but Mrs. Robinson was sure it was Carlos.

"We suspect that Carlos learned about your visit to Frank Lewis and decided it was time to close up shop and get out of town. So he grabbed the money and got rid of anyone that could identify him," Van Horn said.

"All except Marge Robinson," I said. "She was involved up to her neck, and plead guilty to the charges, so why didn't she come to this meeting wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs? My guess she is being placed in witness protection. So, she gets to start a new life while I am stuck with the mess she and her cohorts made of mine."

Van Horn continued as if he didn't hear me. "We believe that Carlos left the country, and we doubt he will be returning to the US. I have already told you more than I should have, but I thought you might rest easier knowing that most everyone involved in what happened to you and your wife are gone."

Van Horn picked up his file folder, indicated that our meeting was over and it was time to leave. I guess I couldn't expect him to verify my suspicion about where Marge was going.

On the drive home from Philadelphia, I couldn't stop thinking about my meetings with Marge Robinson and Agent Van Horn. Nothing was as it seemed. According to Marge, Frank Lewis lied to me about who hired him to seduce Kathy. It was the two names Lewis gave me that eventually led me to Montgomery and Farrell. Now, I had found out from Marge that it was Carlos that hired Lewis. Why would Lewis lie to me about that? Why did the Weasel point his finger in the direction of at Monty and Farrell? Lewis also told me that Farrell told him what to do and when to do it, but Marge said there was no specific time frame. According to Marge, the timing of Kathy's seduction depended on when they could arrange for me to be out of town, which happened to be the week of June 1st. Lewis also told me that Farrell provided the condo where they made the video. Was everything Lewis told me a lie, or just selected parts? Marge told me that she had never met the actor who played Raphael, and neither had Monty nor Farrell. So, how was Lewis able to describe both of them to me?

Lewis also told me that he didn't know that the video of him fucking Kathy was streamed to me online. Was that another lie? Whose decision was it to stream the video to me instead of using it to blackmail Kathy? I was bothered by this. I just couldn't let it go.

It seemed to me that the plot to compromise Kathy was poorly planned. I was no detective, but in less than a month, I was able to find Raphael, the Weasel, Garza, track down Monty and Farrell, catch them on video exchanging money for bearer bonds. Then I stole their money and brought down their whole operation by sending the video to the FBI and DEA.

It all fell apart because the Weasel told Kathy that he was a VP at Four Seasons, a place where he worked only as a part-time bellman.

My biggest concern was if Carlos was the killer, he must have been after the money, and when he didn't find the money in the trunk of Monty's car, he tortured the two of them to find out where they hid it. The fact that Monty and Farrell were naked when Carlos shot them makes me think that Carlos walked in on them while they were having sex and probably not long after I left Monty's house with the money. How close did I come to running into Carlos that night? If Carlos caught me taking the money out of Monty's car, would I have been a third body under the Ben Franklin Bridge? Van Horn thought that Carlos grabbed the cash and left the country, but since Carlos didn't have the money, I worried that Carlos never left and was still looking for the money.

When I got home, there was a voice mail from Kathy waiting for me.

"Walt, can we please get together and talk. We can't go on like this forever. I'll meet you anywhere you want, but please meet me. I love you."

"What the hell, I may as well get this over with," I said out loud, then picked up the phone and called Kathy.

"Thanks for calling me back," Kathy said when she answered the phone. "How have you been?"

"I am doing the best I can, how about you?"

"I am not doing well. I miss you."

I didn't respond to that.

"I was wondering if we could get together to talk. Maybe go out to dinner," Kathy said.

"I guess it's time. How about lunch tomorrow instead of dinner?"

"Whatever you want."

"Why don't you meet me at the TGI Fridays on Route 1 in North Brunswick tomorrow? Around noon."

"I'll be there, and thanks for agreeing to meet me. I love you."

"We will talk tomorrow," I said and ended the call. I felt guilty being so cold, but I was stewing over the conversations I had with Marge and Van Horn earlier in the day, and I wasn't in a good place. I agreed to meet her because I knew it was time for Kathy and me to resolve our situation one way or another.

Lunch With Kathy

I got to Friday's before Kathy, and asked for a table in a quiet area. Kathy came in as I was being seated. She had lost some weight but still looked good. The smile on her face was a sad one. I hugged her before we sat down.

"Thanks for coming," Kathy said. "I was afraid that you might say no when I asked you to meet me."

Just then, the waitress was at the table to take our drink orders. I suggested that we wait until we get our meal, then talk about whatever it was that Kathy had on her mind. I asked Kathy how things were going at work. "Does anyone at Princeton Accounting Associates know the truth about what happened?" I said.

"They don't know the details, only that the FBI arrested Marge because of her association with what happened at FBB. Nobody there knows how I was involved in the mess. My boss wonders why I didn't reschedule the audit instead of having Marge do it, and why the FBI questioned me before they arrested Marge and came back again to talk to me a couple of weeks later."

"Why didn't you reschedule?"

"It was supposed to be an unannounced audit. I didn't think I needed to reschedule because FBB didn't know I was coming. I would just have gone there a week later. Marge did the audit on her own without consulting with me. I'm worried that this might have damaged my career with the company."

"They have to know that none of what happened at FBB was your fault. That was all on Marge."

"Telling Agent Van Horn the details of what happened was bad enough; there is no way I am going to repeat all that to my boss. Telling my boss this whole sordid affair would be the only way to make him understand that I was a victim of the people Marge was working with, and I had nothing to do with what happened at FBB.

When our meals arrived, I waited for Kathy to say what was on her mind, but I could see she was nervous and wasn't ready to start. "You may find this interesting," I said. "I talked to Marge Robinson yesterday."

Kathy had a fork full of salad halfway to her mouth, then froze. "You talked to Marge? Why?"

I explained how Van Horn had called and told me that Marge wanted to talk to me and that I went to the Federal Detention Center to meet with her. "I learned some interesting things from her," I said. "When you talked to her, did Marge explain why they set you up?"

"She told me that they wanted to blackmail me into giving Marge her territory back. What did she tell you?"

I gave Kathy a short version of what I had learned from Marge, but I left out the details I got from Agent Van Horn.

"I don't understand," Kathy said when I finished. "If the plan was to blackmail me, why did they send those videos to you? It doesn't make sense."

"Marge couldn't explain that either. It seems Carlos decided to do that on his own. Marge said she didn't know he had changed the plan until after her arrest. We may never get the truth unless the FBI finds Carlos," I said. I had my doubts that he would ever be apprehended, as it didn't appear that the FBI was actively looking for him.

"Walt, the reason I wanted to talk to you is ah... I want to come home," Kathy said.

I didn't respond; I just waited to see what else she would say.

"I'll sleep in the guest room if you want me to, but I can't stand us being so far apart. How are we ever going to resolve anything if we don't talk to each other?"

Again I didn't respond.

"Walt, it's my house, too. I have a right to be there. I know you are angry with me and that you may even hate me right now, but I am determined to try and fix things, and I can't do that while I'm living with my mother."

"When do you plan to come home?" I said.

"I'll come home Friday evening. That will give you the rest of the week to come up with a good reason why I shouldn't come home."

"I won't do that," I said. "I guess you're right; we do need to see where we go from here."

On my drive back home, I wondered how Kathy and I living together would work. Would we argue all the time or just ignore each other? I hoped that we could find a workable solution for both of us.