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 . . ."
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 Maxine."
"Did you actually see him passing the money?"
"No. That was part of the problem. Everything we had on him was circumstantial and coincidence."
"Then why did you move?"
"It was the Feds' call. There were events that led us to believe he was printing."
"But he wasn't."
"No. Not money, anyway." Morelli looked at the twenty again. "It's very possible there are just a bunch of these twenties floating around, and Nowicki's mother inadvertently passed one on."
There was a knock on the door, and Morelli went to get it.
It was Sally.
"He's bananas!" Sally said. "He tried to kill me! The poor dumb sonnovabitch tried to fucking kill me."
Sally looked like an overgrown, demented, testosterone-gone-berserk schoolgirl. Plaid pleated skirt, crisp white blouse, grungy sweat socks and beatup Reeboks. No makeup, no wig, two-day beard, hairy chest peeking out the top of the blouse.
"Who's trying to kill you?" I asked. I assumed it was his roomie, but with the way Sally was dressed it could be most anyone.
"Sugar. He's freaked out. Stormed out of the club after the gig on Sunday night and didn't come home until about an hour ago. Walked in the door with a gallon of gasoline and a Bic lighter and said he was going to torch the place, claiming he was in love with me. Can you believe it?"
"Go figure."
"He was ranting on about how everything was fine until you showed up, and then I stopped paying attention to him."
"Doesn't he know you're not gay?"
"He said if you hadn't interfered I would have developed an attraction for him." Sally ran his hand through his Wild Man of Borneo hair. "My luck, someone goes fucking gonzo over me, and it's a guy."
"Could have something to do with the way you dress."
Sally looked down at his skirt. "I was trying this on when he barged in. I'm thinking of changing my image to wholesome."
Morelli and I both bit into our lower lips.
"So what happened?" Morelli asked. "Did he set fire to the apartment?"
"No. I wrestled the gas can out of his hands and threw it out the window. He tried to set fire to the rug with his Bic, but the rug wouldn't burn. All he did was make big black melt spots and stink the place up. Synthetic fibers, you know. Finally he gave