Becky was barely out of the door when Lucy asked, "Now what?"


"I'm more than a little surprised by her attitude. The first thing that comes to mind is that she is going to demand that he explain it all. He will come up with some lame excuses and she will believe them. Why, because she wants to believe it. Then he is going to try to decide how to respond. It could get nasty quickly."

"Yeah I know. We need to talk to him before he does something stupid. You know like going to the cops."

"Oh I doubt that he will do that. If he rolls on us, we roll on him. The cops have the resources to chase down all the leads. They could piece it all together eventually."

"So what will he do?"

"He will most likely try to make absolutely sure that we don't roll him up. The surest way is to kill us all."

"Dear God, you are kidding."

"No I'm not kidding. He pays every month to hide his secret. He is most likely going to do something to keep it hidden."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well just like him we have options."

"Like what?"

"Well Lucy love, we can kill him first." I smiled since I knew she would never agree to that. Even if she did, I doubted that I would. No, it wasn't my good nature, it was the fact that murder is very hard to get away with. That was the only thing that would stop me.

"Options mean there is something else we can do."

"Well this is my favorite. If we just tell him that we don't want to screw around with the cops, he won't buy it."

"Yeah like you had to blackmail Sheila to make her believe all was well."

"Just like that. We explain to him how fast Al Floyd will roll on him, when the payments stop. Then we explain that they will stop, if the DEA hits him with a RICO indictment."

"Nice, but we don't want to do that because?"

"If he loses everything, he will likely roll over on us to the cops. If he wasn't so slimy, just the fact that it's a Mexican standoff would hold him. He most likely thinks everyone wants something, so we need to convince him that we can be bought off."

"So what do we want?" Lucy asked.

"We want him to never see Becky again."

"So you think he will agree to that?"

"We can give it a try," I suggested.