At my old home, I saw the boarded-over window that had been broken to throw in the smoke bomb. The prisms across the top were splintered, too. I concentrated instead on the decorative-glass fanlight over the front door, which was still intact.

I rang the bell. After a few minutes, when I wondered if she’d gone out, Señora Andarra opened it the length of its stubby chain. “Esta ventana,” I stumbled in my bad Spanish, pointing at the fan. “Mi madre amó esta ventana también.”

The fact that my mother also loved that window didn’t make Señora Andarra smile, but it did keep her from slamming the door in my face. Using painful pidgin Spanish interlaced with English and Italian, I tried to explain that I was a detective, that I had photographs. Could she look at them, let me know if any of the people in them had been at her house when the bomb came through the window?

The whole time I spoke, she stared at me through the crack in the door, her dark eyes frowning in her nut-colored face. When I finally stumbled to an end of my story, she took the folder from me. As I’d feared, she singled Petra out with no trouble.

“¿Su hija?” she asked.

I was tired of everyone thinking Petra was my daughter, so I dutifully explained she was my cousin. “Mi prima. ¿Y los hombres?”

I thought she lingered on the shot of Alito with Strangwell, but I couldn’t be sure. She finally shook her head, and said she didn’t know any of them, hadn’t seen any of them. I walked back to the station and waited for the northbound train to whisk me back to civilization, or whatever it was.

34 - THE BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM

34

THE BOYS IN THE BACK ROOM

ON THE TRAIN NORTH, I CALLED CONRAD RAWLINGS AT the Fourth District. Of course, I should have gone to see him before visiting Señora Andarra, but I didn’t feel I had spare time for getting police permission to talk to people in my cousin’s orbit.

Conrad was predictably annoyed, but he’d seen the news about Petra; he was more interested in finding out why she’d been at a crime scene in his bailiwick than yainching at me for not calling him first.

“Is there anyone else you can place at the crime scene that you might care to mention? Not that we cops can compel testimony. The laws keep us from getting answers to questions that might help solve crimes. But if you’re in the mood …”

I ignored the savagery in his tone. “I showed Ms. Andarra a shot of Larry Alito with Les Strangwell, but they didn’t look familiar to her.”

“Spell the names.”

I could hear him tapping at his computer.