"So what are you thinking?" Lucy asked.

"I'm thinking we need to find out why Ed banned Al."

"I agree, but how?"

"First let's try to nail down that their was a connection. Let's assume for a minute that there is a connection. Either Ed paid to have Mattie killed, or he was Al's meth distributor. Either way Al had valuable juice but didn't use it, why?"

"He was afraid Ed would kill him?" Lucy asked.

"I don't think so. Once he rolled over on him, Ed couldn't have touched him without cops all over his ass."

"Then he was paying Al off," she suggested.

"That's only a little more likely. Money doesn't have a lot of use to a man doing time."

"Then what?"

"I don't know what. So let's try to find out."

"Again how?"

"Bank records."

"Surely the police checked them?" Lucy asked.

"They checked them looking for a payment for a murder. That was a couple of months before Al got busted. See if you can get his records since the arrest. They could wash the income from the drug business through the club, but if he was paying off Al, there has to be a record somewhere."

"I saw his Social Security number in the list of information he supplied to you."

"Will that be enough to get his bank statements?"

"No but it will be enough to get me to someone who can get them." I didn't ask her to explain. I really didn't want to know who could get Ed's records so easily.

She left my place so that she could get to her super computer. Well it was a super computer compared to my little netbook. Lucy was gone about an hour.

"Well I'm not sure what it means but here is what I found." She spent the next ten minutes explaining that in addition to the club's fixed overhead Ed made a payment every month to a Maxine Floyd. He pays her $600 a month and the note on the check says wages."

"Now there is a coincidence." I admitted.

"Not only that Maxine is Al's wife and the mother of his Son Al JR."

"So Ed is paying Al's child support?"

"And he writes a check for $100 to the canteen fund at the state prison where Al is doing his time."

"So ed is paying under ten grand a year to stay out of prison. Sounds like a cheap insurance payment to me."

"So is he paying to avoid the drug charge or the murder charge?"

"Does it matter?" I asked. "We were supposed to find out if there was any hankie pantie and there is, so we are finished."

"Don't you want to know why Ed is paying?"

"Not at all," I replied.