o’clock. That left me with a whole day of snooping. I started out by driving past Morelli’s mother’s house, his cousin’s house, and various other relatives’ houses. I circled the parking lot to his apartment, noting that the Nova was still where I’d left it. I cruised up and down Stark Street and Polk. I didn’t see the van or anything else that might indicate Morelli’s presence.
I drove by the front of Carmen’s building, and then I went around back. The service road cutting the block was narrow and badly maintained, pocked with holes. There was no tenant parking back here. The single rear door opened onto the service road. Across the way, asphalt-shingled row houses also butted up to the road.
I parked as close to the apartment building as possible, leaving barely enough room for a car to squeeze by me. I got out and looked up, trying to place Carmen’s second-floor apartment, surprised to see two boarded and fire blackened windows. The windows belonged to the Santiago apartment.
The street-level back door was propped open, and the acrid odor of smoke and charred wood hung in the air. I heard the sweep of a broom and realized someone was working in the narrow corridor that led to the front foyer.
A trickle of sooty water tumbled over the sill, and a darkskinned, mustached man looked out at me. He cut his eyes to my car, and jerked his head in the direction of the road. “No parking here.”
I gave him my card. “I’m looking for Joe Morelli. He’s in violation of his bond agreement.”
“Last I saw him he was flat on his back, out cold.”
“Did you see him get hit?”
“No. I didn’t get there until after the police. My apartment’s in the cellar. Sound doesn’t carry good.”
I looked up at the damaged windows. “What happened?”
“Fire in the Santiago apartment. Happened on Friday. I guess if you wanted to be picky you’d say it happened Saturday. Was about two in the morning. Thank God no one was home. Mrs. Santiago was at her daughter’s. She was babysitting. Usually the kids come here, but on Friday she went to their place.”
“Anybody know how it started?”
“Could have started a million ways. Not everything’s up to code in a building like this. Not that this building’s so bad compared to some others, but it’s not new, you know what I mean?”
I shaded my eyes and took one last look and wondered how hard it’d be to lob a firebomb through Mrs. Santiago’s bedroom window. Probably not hard, I decided. And, at two in the morning, in an apartment this size, a fire started in a bedroom would be a bitch. If Santiago had been home, she’d have been toast. There were no balconies and no fire escapes. All of these apartments had only one way out—through the front door. Although it didn’t seem as though Carmen and the missing witness had left through the front door.
I turned and stared into the dark windows of the row houses across the way and decided it wouldn’t hurt to question the residents. I got back into the Cherokee and drove around the block, finding a parking place one street over. I rapped on doors and asked questions and showed pictures. The responses were all similar. No, they didn’t recognize Morelli’s picture, and no, they hadn’t seen anything unusual from their back windows on the night of the murder or the fire.
I tried the row house directly across from Carmen’s apartment and found myself face to face with a stooped old man wielding a baseball bat. He was beady-eyed and hooked-nosed and had ears that probably kept him indoors when the wind was blowing.
“Batting practice?” I asked.
“Can’t be too careful,” he said.
I identified myself and asked if he’d seen Morelli.
“Nope. Never seen him. And I got better things to do than to look out my damn windows. Couldn’t‘ve seen anything anyway on the night of the murder. It was dark. How the hell was I supposed to see anything?”
“There are streetlights back there,” I said. “It looks to me like it would be pretty well lit.”
“The lights were out that night. I told this to the cops that come around. The damn lights are always out. Kids shoot them out. I know they were out because I looked to see what all the noise was about. I could hardly hear my TV what with all the noise from the cop cars and the trucks.
“The first time I looked out it was because of the motor running on one of them refrigerator trucks… like from a food store. Damn thing was parked right behind my house. I tell you the neighborhood’s going to hell. People got no consideration. They park trucks and delivery cars here in the alley all the time while they do personal visits. Shouldn’t be allowed.”
I nodded in vague affirmation, thinking it was a good thing I owned a gun because if I ever got this crotchety I’d want to kill myself.
He took my nod as encouragement and kept going. “Then the next truck to come along was a police wagon about the same size as the refrigerator truck, and they left their motor running too. These guys must have gas to burn.”
“So then you didn’t really see anything suspicious?”
“Was too damn dark, I’m telling you. King Kong could have been climbing up that wall and nobody would’ve seen.”
I thanked him for his help and walked back to the Jeep. It was close to noon, and the air was crackling hot. I drove to my Cousin Roonie’s bar, snagged an ice-cold six-pack, and headed for Stark Street.
Lula and Jackie were hawking wares on the corner, just like always. They were sweating and swaying in the heat, yelling out intimate pet names and graphic suggestions to potential customers. I parked close by, set the six- pack on the hood, and popped one open.
Lula eyed the beer. “You tryin‘ to lure us away from our corner, girl?”
I grinned. I sort of liked them. “Thought you might be thirsty.”
“Sheeit. Thirsty ain’t the half of it.” Lula sauntered over, took a beer, and chugged some. “Don’t know why I’m
