“Not much: he hangs out at a bar called Cocodrilo on Ninety-first Street, but I don’t know where he lives. He rides with a cousin whose first name is Diego.” I described Freddy’s sullen, pretty-boy looks.
The officer relayed this information, listened some more to Conrad, then asked if I knew why Pacheco had broken in.
I shrugged elaborately. “He’s a punk—the pastor at Mount Ararat calls him a chavo banda who does petty crime for a fee. In fact, the pastor may know where he lives.”
I wasn’t going to go through all the stuff about the frog, the fire at Fly the Flag, and Freddy’s demand for a recording, not through an interpreter. Finally, Conrad and the officer finished, and the officer turned me back over to his commander.
“So take me through it, Ms. W. This chavo of yours, how do you know he set the fire?”
“He confessed it. In my hearing, while I had him cornered here—before Sandra Czernin acted like a horse’s patootie and got between him and me. Whereupon he seized her and held her as a hostage. But I don’t know what he wanted in her house. Bron Czernin made a device that Freddy used in setting the fire—Freddy had drawn a picture of it for him, and the picture was here in the house. He looked at the picture, but that wasn’t what he wanted—it’s still here.” True, it was in my pocket, but Conrad didn’t need to know that.
“While I was getting the kid out of the house, Freddy tore the house apart. I don’t think he found what he was looking for. He drives around with his cousin in a Dodge pickup. The first letters on the plate are ‘VBC’—I didn’t catch the rest of it. That is my whole story. Can I go home now?”
“Yeah, and try to stay there. Even if we don’t respond as fast as citizens want, we do get there—”
“In time to collect the corpses,” I cut in nastily. “Which is what you’d have found if I hadn’t been here. I coach a basketball team down here. April Czernin is one of my players, as is Josie Dorrado, who is still missing, despite the incredible energy your team is putting into looking for her, so I have to be down here whether you like it or not.”
“All right!” he shouted. “Now you know my secret. I don’t have enough money and enough bodies to do everything that has to happen to keep South Chicago safe. Send a note to the mayor, tell the super, but get off my back.”
So his turf battle with me came partly out of pride: he didn’t want me to know he couldn’t look after the community. “Oh, Conrad, the mess down here is so big that seven cops with seven mops couldn’t get it clear. I’m really, truly not trying to undercut you, but to give you some support.”
“God save me from that, Ms. W.,” he said, trying to recover his temper. “Go on home, go to bed—oh, hang on. I knew there was something else. That car, that Miata you found under the Skyway on Ewing, it was gone when we got there Tuesday afternoon. We called the Bysens, or their lawyers: the car belongs to Billy, they didn’t want ugly cops pawing through it. They took it to a body shop, where it had been thoroughly dismantled and cleaned by yesterday morning. Thought you’d like to know. Try to stay out of trouble, Ms. W.”
I was thankful to hang up while he was feeling more charitable and left the Czernin house while the going was possible. The officers searching the street and alley held me up while they checked to make sure I wasn’t a fleeing suspect, but I finally was able to take off. When I was out of their range, I pulled over to the curb.
I reclined my seat until I could almost lie flat. I turned the CD of David Schrader and Bach back on and tried to think. I could go to Pastor Andrés to try to find out where Freddy lived, but I wasn’t much interested in the chavo anymore. The police would track him down fast enough, and I didn’t think he had anything helpful to tell me now. It was the recording I wanted to know about.