Gazarra had agreed to meet me at the pistol range behind Sunny's Gun Shop when he got off work at four 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.