He stared at me blank-faced for a minute. 'I guess . . .' He took his wallet from his back pocket and looked inside. 'Here it is. It's the only twenty I got. It must be it.'
I rooted around in my shoulder bag and found some money. I counted out two tens. 'I'll trade you.'
'Is that it?' he asked.
I gave him a sly smile. 'For now.'
'You know, I wouldn't mind just watching.'
I patted him on the top of his head. 'Hold that thought.'
'We didn't find out much,' Lula said when I got into the car.
'We know she was in Trenton yesterday.'
'Not many places three women can stay in Trenton,' Lula said. 'Not like down the shore where there's lots of motels and lots of houses to rent. Hell, the only hotels we got charge by the hour.'
That was true. It was the state capital, and it didn't actually have a hotel. This might leave people to think no one wanted to stay in Trenton, but I was sure this was a wrong assumption. Trenton is cool. Trenton has everything . . . except a hotel.
Of course, just because Nowicki was doing business with Bernie didn't mean she had to be in Trenton proper.
We took one last spin past Eddie Kuntz's house, the Nowicki house and Margie's house. All were dark and deserted.
Lula dropped me off in front of Morelli's house and shook her head. 'That Morelli got one fine ass, but I don't know if I'd want to live with a cop.'
My sentiments exactly.
The windows were open to bring air into the house, and Morelli's television carried out to the street. He was watching a ball game. I felt the truck hood. Warm. He'd just gotten home. His front door was open like the windows, but the screen door was locked.
'Hey!' I yelled. 'Anybody home?'
Morelli padded out barefoot. 'That was fast.'
'Didn't seem all that fast to me.'
He relocked the screen and went back to the television.
I don't mind going out to the ballpark. You could sit in the sun and drink beer and eat hot dogs, and the whole thing was an event. Baseball on television put me into a coma. I dug into my pocket, found the twenty and passed it over to Morelli. 'I stopped for a soda in north Trenton and got this in change. I thought it'd be fun to check its authenticity.'
Morelli looked up from the game. 'Let me get this straight. You bought a soda, and you got a twenty in change. What'd you give her, a fifty?'
'Okay, so I don't want to tell you where I got it right now.'
Morelli examined the bill. 'Goddamn,' he said. He turned it over and held it to the light. Then he patted the couch cushion next to him. 'We need to talk.'
I sat down with reservation. 'It's phony, isn't it?'
'Yep.'
'I had a hunch. Is it easy to tell?'
'Only if you know what to look for. There's a small line in the upper right corner where the plate is scratched. They tell me the paper isn't exactly right, either, but I can't see it. I only know by the scratch mark.'
'Was the guy you tried to bust from north Trenton?'
'No. And I was pretty sure he was working alone. Counterfeiting like this is usually a mom-and-pop deal. Very small.' He draped his arm over the back of the couch and stroked the nape of my neck with a single finger. 'Now, about the twenty . . .'
13
IT WAS HOPELESS. Morelli was going to worm this out of me.
'The twenty came from Francine Nowicki, Maxine's mother,' I said. 'She passed it to a dope dealer yesterday.'
I told him the rest of the story, and when I was done he had a strange expression on his face.
'How do you walk into these things? It's . . . spooky.'
'Maybe I have the eye.'
As soon as I said it I regretted it. The eye was like the monster under the bed. Not something to tempt out of hiding.
'I really thought it was a one-man operation,' Morelli said. 'The guy we were watching fit the profile. We watched him for five months. And we never pegged anyone as being an accomplice.'
'It would explain a lot about Maxine.'
'Yeah, but I still don't get it. During that five-month period this guy never made physical contact with Kuntz or
