LeCedrick crossed his arms and grinned. 'Half the funny money on the street come from Waylon. She probably got it from the goddamned evidence room. She mighta even bought it from Waylon his own damn self.'

'Okay.' I stared at him some more.

LeCedrick Earle started to fidget. 'Now what you lookin' at? You don't believe me, jus' say so, callin' me a liar.' He got up and walked in a little circle.

I said, 'I'm going to write down everything you've said. I'm going to check it out. I'm going to pass it along to Jonathan Green. You sure you don't want a piece of the money?'

'Fuck the money. I just wanna get out of here.'

I nodded.

He jabbed a finger at me. 'I'm tellin' you and God and everyone else that bitch set me up. You check it out, you see. Bet she set up this Teddy Martin, too.'

I said, 'Something about what you're saying bothers me, LeCedrick. You want to help me with something?'

His eyes narrowed. Suspicious. 'What?'

'If she wanted to set you up, she didn't need to go to your house. All she had to do is bust you on the street and say she found the money under the front seat.'

'Damn bitch is crazy! Who know how a goddamn crazy bitch think?' He threw up both hands, then came back to the table and slapped the buzzer for the guards. 'Shit on this. I shoulda known you asshole muthuhfuckuhs wouldn't believe me. Fuck you and fuck her, too. I guess a brother just has to rot in here.'

The guard came and took LeCedrick Earle back to his cell.

CHAPTER 5

As I tooled north back to Los Angeles I tried to keep an open mind. Just because someone looks like a liar and acts like a liar doesn't mean that he is a liar. It doesn't even mean he's a liar when his story is full of holes. Even the truth has been known to have holes. Of course, when his story doesn't make sense it becomes a little more difficult to swallow. I could see Angela Rossi's side of it, but not LeCedrick Earle's. Rossi's report said that she followed Earle to his house because he only had the single hundred-dollar bill on his person and she knew that he could plead innocent to a knowledge of its being counterfeit; she reasoned that if he had more at home as he stated, he couldn't reasonably deny knowledge and the intent to defraud, and the arrest would stick. LeCedrick Earle said that she followed him to his home where she produced a hidden amount of counterfeit money and made the arrest. He opined that she might've done this so that there would be no witnesses, yet Mrs Louise Earle had been there and Rossi apparently consummated the arrest. Rossi's version made sense and LeCedrick Earle's didn't.

Still, people sometimes do strange things for strange reasons, and I decided to see what Mrs Louise Earle had to offer. I expected that she would support her son's claims, but in the doing perhaps she would add something to give them greater credence.

I opened Truly's envelope, shook out my notes, and looked up her address. It would be polite to pull off the freeway and call again to see if she was at home, but when people know you're coming they often find reasons to leave. I decided to risk it.

Forty-five minutes later I dropped off the Harbor Freeway onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, and five minutes after that I found my way to Olympic Park.

Olympic Park is a downscale residential area just north of USC and Exposition Park and the Natural History Museum, not far from downtown L.A. The Coliseum is nearby, along with the L.A. Sports Arena, and on game nights the surrounding residential streets are jammed belly to butt with parked cars and pushcarts and hawkers selling souvenirs and iced drinks.

Louise Earle lived in a stucco bungalow on Twenty-fifth Street, four blocks south of the freeway, within walking distance of USC. The houses and the yards are small and the drives are narrow, but the properties are neat and clean, and the Earle home was painted a happy yellow with about a million multicolored flowers blooming on her porch in about a million clay pots and wooden planters. Flowers hung from the eaves and filled the porch and two large wrought-iron baker's racks. There were so many flowers on the porch that you had to walk along a narrow path to make your way to the door. It probably took her two hours a day just to water the things.

A six-year-old Buick Skylark was parked in the drive and an air conditioner was humming in a side window. I parked at the curb opposite her house, then went up the drive past the Buick and through the jungle of flowers to her door. The Buick's engine was still ticking. Recent arrival. A little metal plaque under the doorbell said WELCOME. I rang the bell.

The door opened and a thin woman in her early sixties looked at me. She was wearing a simple print dress in a flowered pattern and comfortable canvas shoes and her gray hair had been pulled into a bun. Neat. I said, 'Mrs Earle?'

She smiled at me. 'Yes?'

I gave her my card. 'Mrs Earle, my name is Elvis Cole. I'm an investigator looking into your son's arrest. May I ask you a few questions?'

She frowned, but she might've been squinting at the sun. 'Are you from the police?'

'No, ma'am. I'm private.' I told her that I was working for an attorney named Jonathan Green, and though Green did not represent LeCedrick, the events of his arrest might have a bearing on another case.

She shifted in the door, uncomfortable and unsure about what I might want. 'LeCedrick is at Terminal Island.'

'I know. I understand that you witnessed his arrest, and I have some questions about that.' Something moved in the house behind her.

'Well, I guess it would be all right.' Reluctant. She glanced back into the house, then stepped aside and opened the door. 'Why don't you come in so we don't let all the cool air out.'

I stepped in and she closed the door.

A short, slight gentleman was standing in the living room. He had wavy marcelled hair and he was wearing a brown summer-weight suit that had probably been new twenty years ago. His hair was more gray than not, and his skin was the color of fine cocoa parchment. He was holding a small bouquet of zinnias. I made him for his late sixties, but I could've been off five years either way.

Louise Earle said, 'This is my friend, Walter Lawrence. He just dropped in, and now he'll have to be leaving. Won't you, Mr Lawrence?' She said it more to Mr Lawrence than to me, and he didn't seem to like it very much.

Mr Lawrence frowned, clearly disappointed. 'I suppose I could come back later.'

Louise Earle said, 'And I suppose you could just phone later and see whether or not a person is busy before you drop around, now couldn't you?'

Mr Lawrence ground about four inches of enamel off his teeth, but he managed a grim smile anyway. He wasn't liking this one bit. 'I suppose.'

She nodded approvingly, then took the flowers. 'Now you just let me get these lovely flowers in some water and we'll speak later.' She cradled the flowers and encouraged him toward the door.

Mr Lawrence stood very straight when he walked, trying to get as much height as he could. He mumbled something to her that I couldn't hear, frowned at me as he passed, and then Louise Earle shut the door. A couple of heartbeats later the Skylark backed out of the drive. I said, 'Ah, romance.'

Louisfe Earle laughed, and the laugh made her fifteen years younger. 'May I offer you coffee, Mr Cole, or something cool to drink?'

'Coffee would be fine, Mrs Earle. Thank you.'

She took the flowers back to her kitchen, calling over her shoulder. 'Please make yourself comfortable.'

I sat on a well-worn cloth couch with a handmade slipcover and needlepoint throw pillows. An overstuffed chair made an L with the couch and the couch and the chair were angled around an inexpensive coffee table, and all of it looked across the room at a cherry wood armoire. The armoire was open and its shelves were lined with tiny vases and knickknacks and family photographs, some of which were of LeCedrick. LeCedrick as a teenager. LeCedrick as a child. LeCedrick before choosing a life of crime. He seemed like a happy child with a bright smile. Her home was neat and cared for and smelled of the flowers.