Before She Disappeared

CHAPTER 19

It is a bright, sunny morning as I head down the final few blocks to the Samdis’ apartment. Even with daylight on my side, I find myself hunching my shoulders and gazing around nervously. If Mattapan is a mix of good and bad neighborhoods, this isn’t one of the good ones.

Rusted chain-link fences buckle and gape, revealing modest yards long on neglect—abandoned piles of battered kids’ toys, drifts of dead shrubs, borders of shattered beer bottles and used condoms. Each triple-decker seems determined to appear even more broken down than its neighbor. I honestly can’t tell who’s winning.

This isn’t the place to be after dark. I’m not even sure it’s somewhere I should be now, as I feel eyes starting to fall upon me, and more and more human-sized silhouettes appear at the windows to monitor my progress. I am definitely an outsider here.

Deep breath. In through my mouth. Exhaling through my nose. Not the first time I’ve been through this. Stay calm, relaxed, focus. I’m not a threat. I have no issues. Just a couple of questions for the family.

On my right, the front door opens and three African American males come strolling out, crossing their arms over their muscled chests and pinning me with their best thousand-yard stare. Followed by similar movement from the house across the street. Then up ahead to the right. Then left.

Am I this unwanted here?

I arrive at the Samdis’ building, which is neither the best nor worst on the block. The narrow triple-decker has shed huge flakes of dark green paint, while the stacked front deck sags dangerously forward. A giant piece of plywood patches a hole along the right side. Two more are nailed on the roof.

I don’t have to open the front gate. It’s already collapsed, the front corner gouged deep into the earth. I shimmy around it, kicking a deflated soccer ball that plows into a pile of empty booze bottles. I startle from the noise, snag my jacket on the rusty chain link, and tear a hole.

“Shit!” I curse, then belatedly catch myself. Relaxed and focused. The family I need to speak with are looking for reasons not to like me, excuses not to help. My job is not to give them one.

I pick my way up the front steps. One of the boards is so rotted, I skip over it completely, landing harder than I would like on the one above. I feel it shake upon impact, and clamber up the remaining stairs in a burst of adrenaline.

The second I hit the landing, the front door opens. A young Black male stands before me in a white tank top, and sagging dark jeans. He wears his hair in a million braids, curving back from his face before falling like a curtain to his shoulders. He has a giant diamond stud in one ear, and enough ink sleeving his forearms and twining around his neck to serve as a second shirt. Even looking straight at him, it’s impossible to see behind the confusion of tattoos, jewelry, and hair extensions. Urban camouflage.

“We don’t want you here,” he states. His eyes are dark and flat.

“I’m looking for Mrs. Samdi,” I say.

“We don’t want you here.”

“It’s regarding her daughter, Livia.”

“Get the fuck off my property.”

“Do you own the whole house?” I ask him curiously. “What a great accomplishment. And at such a young age, too.”

A single slow blink. “No white bitches wanted here.”

“Okay, but I’m a cheap white bitch. Surely that counts for something? My specialty is locating missing persons, free of charge. I’m already in the area looking for Angelique Badeau. Maybe you know her?”

“Fuck off.”

“Are you Livia’s brother? Uncle? Random acquaintance? I understand from the police the family believes Livia ran away. I respectfully disagree. I think her vanishing act has something to do with Angelique’s disappearance and I’d like to help both of them.”

“You hard of hearing, lady? Go. The fuck. Away.” Two steps forward now. His tough words aren’t getting the job done, so he’s throwing his body behind them. He’s five ten and a solid one eighty of sculpted muscle. I have exactly . . . nothing . . . on him.

“I’m here for Mrs. Samdi,” I repeat, more quickly now. “If she wants me to go, I’ll go. But not before I see her. Look, I’m not here to jam you up or judge your family. I don’t work for the police, the press, anyone. I’m here solely for the missing and I need just a few minutes of your mother’s time. Five. Five minutes. Who knows, by the end, maybe both she and I can do some good.”

The boy—who has to be Livia’s older brother—opens his mouth again. His hands are fisted, his throat corded. I’m already leaning back, wishing I’d left about two seconds earlier, when a tired, ragged voice comes from inside the house.

“Let her in, Johnson.”

My greeter scowls, loosens his fists.

“Johnson?” I mouth at him, one brow arched.

“J.J.,” he snaps back.

J.J. lets me pass by, nodding across the street at the many loitering, heavily muscled youths still keeping watch. His friends? His gang? It doesn’t really matter. O’Shaughnessy had pegged Livia’s brother as a drug dealer. Which makes it in my own best interest to keep my head down and eyes on the floor as he leads me down the hall to the rear of the building.

We emerge into an open area, hazy with cigarette smoke. To my right is a kitchen, with almost every available surface covered with discarded food containers and supersized bottles of booze. Something big, brown, and shiny skitters across the floor. Then two more somethings.

I swallow slowly. Going from Guerline’s bright-colored, homey apartment to this makes it hard to believe Livia and Angelique had much in common. And yet . . .

I turn my attention to the card table positioned against the wall on the left. A gaunt African American woman sits there, her face wreathed in smoke from her burning cigarette. She wears a faded blue floral housedress and the heavily aged features of a lifetime drinker.

I pull out the folding chair across from her, and have a seat. “Roseline Samdi?”

The woman takes a long drag, then taps the ash off the end of her cigarette in the remnants of a beer can. “You’re the woman? The one looking for Badeau?”

Roseline’s first few words sound typically Boston. But when she delivers Badeau, her island heritage gives her away. The name comes out both hard and soft, an echo of palm trees and drifting clouds.

“Did you immigrate as a child, or more recently?” I ask. I’m trying hard not to wrinkle my nose against the stench of spoiled food, unwashed clothes, and human sweat. If I lived here, I’d smoke all day, too, just to cover the smell.

“When I was little. I came with my mamè, thirty years ago.”

It takes me a moment to figure out that Roseline isn’t that much older than me. But to look at her . . .

On impulse, I reach over and clasp her hand. She’s too startled to pull away.

“Nine years sober. Nine years, seven months. I still miss it all the time. It sucks, doesn’t it? To want something so badly, when you know you shouldn’t.”

She doesn’t speak right away. Her skin is jaundiced. Her expression bleak. But in her eyes, I think I see a flash of gratitude.

“I made it a whole year once. Can’t say it was my best year, spending every damn day hurtin’ and wantin’. But afterwards.” She takes another drag of her cigarette, nods slowly. “Afterwards, I was sorry I let it go.”

“We’ve all been there.”

“So that’s it, then? You’re an addict, I’m an addict. I might as well tell you everything?”

The bitterness in her words is sharp enough for me to release her hand and sit back. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation or a friendly one. Might as well get it done.

“Did Livia know Angelique Badeau?”

“No.” It’s a hard sound. Like she’s exhaling very quickly, getting the word as far away from her as possible.

“Did Livia ever mention Angelique from the summer camp at the rec center?”

“No.”

“Why fashion camp?”

Roseline pauses, blinks. Her cigarette is almost burned down. She bangs out a fresh one from the pack beside her, using the old to light the new, without even the slightest pause in between.

“Why not?” she asks at last.

“She didn’t talk to you about it? Say how much she wanted to go, loved going, was so happy she went? I mean, you paid for it, right? Surely you wanted a reason.”

Roseline pauses. Inhale. Exhale. Tap. She didn’t pay for it. I can see that from her expression. Livia must’ve qualified through some program for low-income families. Meaning her mother never thought to ask a question about her enrollment?

In the end, Roseline offers a single, fatalistic shrug. In other words, Livia did go to fashion camp, and her own mother never bothered to find out why. I notice Roseline’s cigarette is now shaking slightly in her hand. She’s not as impervious as she wants to appear.

“Did Livia have a friend who was taking it?” I press. “Or maybe an obsession with Project Runway? Aspirations to design for a living?”

Inhale, exhale, tap. Finally. “Livia liked to make things.”

“Make things . . . So fashion camp was the closest she could come to . . . making something?” Which is interesting, because I’d already assumed Angelique hadn’t been into fashion either. For her, it appeared to be about the opportunity to do art. Maybe for Livia, it had been design?

“Who are Livia’s closest friends?” I ask.

“She doesn’t have none.” But the assertion is halfhearted. As in, her own mother once again doesn’t know the answer.

I wait, in case she clarifies. In the silence, she takes a drag of her cigarette, so deep that for an instant her face appears skeletal. “We’re not the friendly type,” she says at last, exhaling slowly.

“Did Livia like school?”

“She went.”

“What was her favorite subject?”

“I dunno.” Inhale, exhale, tap. “She’d bring home these little projects she’d made. Like this fake pumpkin. Tiny, carved from orange plastic. Even the eyes were cut out. It was cute enough. Worthless, though. What the hell am I supposed to do with such a thing?”

I have no idea what kind of class at school leads to minuscule plastic jack-o’-lanterns. “Do you still have it?”

Roseline glances at the floor. There is more movement beneath the expansive layer of trash. I can’t look anymore.

“Maybe you could show me on Livia’s computer? It must have a record of her schoolwork.”

Roseline bangs her cigarette against the remnants of the beer can, shakes her head. “You see a computer? Girl had to use whatever they had at school.”

“So she liked school? Her other classmates—”

“She went. Every morning. Got up, got out. That’s all I care.”

But I can hear it in Roseline’s voice. That’s not all she cared. That’s not all she was worrying about.

“Sounds lonely,” I prod now. “Going to school each day without any friends.”

“The girl stayed out of trouble.”

“She’s shy?”

“She’s clever. Always where you don’t expect her. Seeing things she shouldn’t see. Hearing stuff she shouldn’t hear. Even when she was young. But then, you’d turn around, and she’d be gone again. Learned from her brother not to be in one place too long. Gonna be sneaky?” Roseline stares at me. “Better also be fast. Livia had skills.”

Meaning Angelique’s new acquaintance from fashion camp was habitually subversive? Or maybe, by virtue of snooping where she wasn’t wanted, in some kind of serious trouble?

“In the weeks leading up to Livia’s disappearance, did anything seem different?”

“Was what it was.”

The answer I expected. “Your son, Johnson? Is he more or less interested in his sister?”

“Johnson wouldn’t hurt his sister!” The answer is reflexive, and not entirely devoid of dread.

“Why not?”

“Family’s family. ’Sides.” Roseline’s first moment of levity. “Drama’s not good for business.”

I get her point. Except according to O’Shaughnessy, Johnson is pretty low level. Meaning he probably reports to higher-level gangsters who probably report to highest-level drug lords. Would they consider a fifteen-year-old girl off limits? Especially one who had a tendency to be where she shouldn’t?

“Where did Livia go to school?”

Roseline rattles off a name that is definitely not Angelique’s school. “Is that . . . ?”

“A trade school. Nothing wrong with that. Kids need a life skill. Or . . .”

They’d fall back on the family business of dope dealing.

“Did she have a favorite teacher?”

Inhale, exhale, tap. Shrug.

“Favorite subject?”

“She liked making the pumpkin.”

A commotion now. Noise from the front of the house. Roseline sits up suddenly, stubs out her cigarette. The first time she’s stopped smoking since I entered the room.

“Time’s up.”

“Wait—”

“You gotta go. Door’s behind you. You know the saying, don’t let it hit you on the ass on your way out.”

Apparently, I’m not allowed out the way I came in but must flee through the rear door. I want to argue, but suddenly Roseline is standing, her nicotine-stained fingertip an angry punctuation as she jabs it toward me.

“Out!” Her tone is suddenly commanding.

I hesitate. “Come with me. I’ll take you to a meeting. We’ll go together. I’ll hold your hand, you hold mine.”

“Go!”

“One step. Remember that year? Even now you miss it. Come with me. I’ll help you.”

“Now.”

“Mrs. Samdi—”

Her left hand snakes out, grabs my shoulder, and clenches it with a strength that is surprising. “You’re not safe.”

I don’t have words. The spit dries up in my mouth, while her clawlike fingers skewer me in place.

“Livia was not safe.”

“Mrs. Samdi, are you saying you’re grateful she’s gone? Is that why you never reported her having gone missing to the police? You hope she has run away. You think she’s safer that way?”

“This is no place for girls.”

“I can handle Johnson—”

“It’s not my son you should fear.”

The noise turns into a riot of pounding feet and streaming expletives. Heading straight at us.

I want to ask more questions. I want to understand. But Roseline is already shoving me toward the back door.

“If you find my Livia,” Mrs. Samdi hisses, wrenching open the door.

“Wait—”

“Do not bring her home to this.”

Then Roseline Samdi shoves me straight out. I stagger down the steps, arms pinwheeling for balance. I’ve just come to a stop, when I hear male voices, shouting behind me.

“Mom!”

“Stop her!”

“What the fuck, J.J.!”

I don’t spare a moment to look back. I bolt away from the house. I run fast, then faster, not even glancing behind me when I hear the rat-a-tat of footsteps chasing me. Though just for a second, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a shockingly tall, skinny Black man wearing a red tracksuit and loads of gold chains. Retro man, I recognize. The guy from Angelique’s school who’s dressed like a time capsule from 2002.

There’s a look on his face. A warning.

I add a fresh burst of speed just as a gunshot splits the air. Followed by another.

I dodge left, hunching my shoulders to make myself as small a target as possible as I pound down the sidewalk, gasping through my tears. Another left, another right. Keep on trucking. Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back.

Paul, I think wildly. Then the giant hole in my chest gapes open, and I run through that, too. Faster, faster, faster.

Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back.

I run so fast my tears dry before they can stain my cheeks. I race so hard I’m not even in this city, but somewhere far away where the trees are sinister shadows and the moon is snatching at my hair and I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the sheer terror.

Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back.

Next thing I know, I’m plowing into the Dunkin’ Donuts, where my new friends are staring at me.

“Call the police, call the police, call the police!” I scream at Charadee.

Which she does, except I don’t remember the rest; I’m crying too hard, my mind a wreck of then and now, what was and what is. What will never be again.

Eventually Lotham bursts through the door. He takes one look at my devastated face and pulls me into his arms.

“Paul,” I sob hysterically against his chest.

He lets me collapse against him, and holds me as I weep.