Now You See Her (8 page)

“I’ll be fine.”

“You need an armed escort.” His eyes are stone-cold serious. At this moment, I do not want to know that there’s a loaded firearm
concealed somewhere on Stark’s body. “All right, we’ll both go, if we take my Beetle.”

Number 3529 Roland Street is a triple-decker off Blue Hill Avenue. I park at midblock, walk to 3529, and climb onto the porch
on this Sunday afternoon. Stark keeps an eye on me from the car, but Kia Fayzer is nowhere in evidence. I knock until my knuckles
hurt and then look sideways left and right. On either side are identical clapboard and shingle triple-deckers, which have
seen Boston’s generations come and go. Decades ago, Irish workingmen with huge families lived here, then immigrant Jews. Now
it’s a black neighborhood.

Each of the three floors of every house has been cut into several apartments. On this block, the porches sag and windowpanes
are cracked. Plastic sheeting is taped over some of the windows. If Henry Faiser once lived here, the route that took him
to Big Doc’s compound on Eldridge seems, in economic terms, strictly lateral.

I start to go next door when a car pulls up to let out a woman with two children about six and eight years old and a baby
in arms. “LaBron, get that bag. Anissa, come on back here. Carry that bag in. Where you think you’re going, girl? Get a move
on, I got to get to work. I’ll be late for work.” The car pulls away. Each child stares at a grocery bag set on the curb.

LaBron, the eight-year-old, pouts. The heels of his new sneakers flash bright red with every step, but he’s unhappy. “They
didn’t give us no Devil Dogs. We didn’t get no chips.”

“Hush your mouth. Get that bag.”

“Excuse me,” I say, “I’m looking for Kia Fayzer. Does she live here?”

“No Pepsi neither.”

The woman shifts the baby on her hip and looks me up and down. She looks weary but wired in grass-green capris and a cropped
pink sweater. The baby sucks her tiny fist, leaving an epaulet of drool on one shoulder, an insignia I well remember. “You
a caseworker?”

“I just want to talk to Kia.”

The little girl stares at the bags. “They too heavy. Make my arms hurt.” She wears white rubber rain boots, a long purple
gown, and a macaroni necklace. Her short black braids are topped with a rhinestone tiara held fast with sparkly butterfly
barrettes.

“Make like you’re hugging it.”

“Hug and kiss an ol’ bag? Yuck. Princess don’t kiss a bag. Princess Anissa kiss a frog tha’s a prince.”

“Frog kiss, yuck.” LaBron squats, begins hopping. He leapfrogs over the grocery bags back and forth.

“Stop that, LaBron. Grab the bag. Put your arms around it and lift up.”

I try to get her attention. “I just want to talk to Kia for a few min—”

The little girl’s bag rips as she tugs it. Canned goods spill out: beans, spaghetti, soup.

“Look now, what you did.” LaBron gloats at his sister’s mishap. Cans of food are rolling into the street. I grab one. It’s
sauerkraut. I catch a can of chili as a car swerves to miss it. LaBron puts a package of buns on his head. “Bet you can’t
do this, Nissa.”

“I don’t care.” She stacks two cans atop one another. “You don’t got no buns. I got ’em all.”

This is too much for Princess Anissa, who begins to cry. “Mama, make LaBron gimme the buns.”

“No buns for crybabies, nah nah.”

“LaBron, you torment your sister, you go to bed with no TV.” But he’s become a bear, maybe a tiger. Paws out, buns clenched
in his teeth, he’s on all fours nosing the one intact grocery bag.

I help gather the cans. The mother says, “We got it ourself. LaBron, get up and behave yourself. Pick this up.”

“Where’s the hot dogs? They didn’t give us no hot dogs, just buns. And powder milk.” His face is a map of fury. “I hate it
there. I wanna go to the real store.”

“Quit your fussin’. Get on upstairs.”

“Excuse me, about Kia Fayzer—”

“I don’t know nothing ’bout where she is.”

LaBron picks up the sauerkraut and makes a face. “How come we don’t go to the real store? Kia took us to the real store.”

“Kia lived here?”

“Hush your mouth, LaBron.”

“I wanna go see Kia. She fix me a hot dog at her house.”

“Boy, shut your mouth.”

“Where is her street?”

“Like a farm.” He moos and bellows, then makes horns and charges his sister. The mother glowers and slaps the air halfheartedly
as LaBron ducks. The baby starts to cry. I hustle to the Beetle and can’t wait to check the city street atlas.

T
here is no Farm Street in metro Boston. I pore over the atlas and stare at Mattapan. A farm street, what would it be? Old
MacDonald Avenue? I’ve tried to find Kia Fayzer online and in the phone book, but no luck no matter how I spell the name.

LaBron was a cow … No, a charging bull. This feels like charades. Or is it…Yes, here’s Angus Street, also in Mattapan.

It’s almost 3:00 p.m. Monday when I drive solo to have a look. I’m deliberately drab in navy slacks and a sweater. Biscuit
rides in the backseat. Stark wants to train her to hunt rabbits, but I’m on a different hunt. The dog is my magnet.

All five blocks of Angus are a mix of apartment houses, weedy vacant lots, duplexes, one corner store. A German shepherd lunges
at a chain-link fence and snarls as I pass with Biscuit on her leash. Kids just out of school, however, gather to pet her,
which is my plan. Setting books and backpacks down, they stroke her ears and scratch her belly as she obligingly rolls onto
her back.

“She a girl dog.”

“She lick me! Lick my fingers!”

“She sweet, she don’t bite.”

It’s during this petting-zoo moment that I ask about Kia Fayzer. At the name Kia, a boy in black jeans with white piping nods
and grins. Two teen girls in flowered jackets repeat the name as if Kia is a cousin. Bingo!

“Which house?” I ask. They suddenly look puzzled. “Which apartment is Kia’s?” The boy starts to laugh. The girls giggle. “Where
does she live? Which building is Kia’s?”

Three girls in plaid uniforms start to hum a tune. “Does she live in the brick one?” Now a dozen children laugh, elbowing
and egging each other on. “Kia,” I say again, and they grin as if I’m a Pied Piper of the funny bone. I don’t get it. They’re
singing about “my neck, my back.” They all know the words.

And it dawns on me: there’s a recording artist named Khia. She’s one-name-only, like Cher and Madonna. I say, “Fayzer,” and
the kids all shake their heads and go blank. The girls get a jump rope and start double Dutch. The German shepherd is frantic,
and Biscuit whines until I carry her in my arms three blocks up to the corner store, Fern Market.

The steel-grilled door stops me. Ads for Kools and Newports plaster the front glass so I can’t see inside. “Market” sounds
harmless, but what of Stark’s warning about an armed escort? What if I walk in on something—a drug deal, a gun buy? No Tsakis
brothers will greet me here. No Nicole Patrick will run interference. My lily-white hide is on the line all by itself.

Move it, Reggie. A man sits year after year in prison for a murder he possibly did not commit. Get going. So I step into the
small market, which smells of Fritos and chicken. The sound track is hip-hop, which is hideously familiar from my Jack’s teen
years when our whole house was hammered by Tupac Shakur and Puff Daddy. Decent music ended with the Bee Gees, Marty insisted,
one of the few points on which we agreed. Fern Market sells cigarettes, malt liquor, lottery tickets, and bobbleheads of Celtics
and Patriots team members. I buy a scratch card and ask a solemn clerk in a ribbed sweater about Kia Fayzer. “I just want
to talk to her for a few minutes.”

He shrugs. “Can’t help.”

“It’s about a family matter.”

“Be anything else?”

Biscuit whimpers, and I hold her close and leave. In front of the store, two young men in dark suits with rumpled white shirts
hang out. They eye me while pretending not to, and I eye them the same way. “I’m looking for Kia Fayzer.” Their eyes go blank,
and they turn away, which is my cue to exit their space. Instead, I linger. What have I got to lose? “I want to talk with
her for a few minutes. LaBron says she lives here.”

A minute passes. “Which LaBron that be?”

“From Roland Street. Here in Mattapan.”

“You lookin’ for LaBron?”

“No, for Kia Fayzer.” They sway, and I realize they’re either drunk or stoned. Their shirts puff out of their pants, and their
pockets gape. I spell “Fayzer” and say it again.

“Sure am dry,” says the taller one. “Dry as a desert.”

The shorter one rubs his throat. “Colt 45 wet me down good.” I remember the malt liquor from Jack’s teen drinking. The shorter
one gives Biscuit a little scratch. “What you want with Kia?”

“Just to talk a few minutes. It’s about family. Nothing official.”

“Maybe if somebody be good to us, take care of our thirst and maybe a couple lottery tickets. Maybe we hungry.”

So if I furnish the refreshments, maybe they’ll tell me where she lives. If they know. If this isn’t a petty con game. Am
I desperate enough to buy two Colt 45s, two lottery tickets, and take-out chicken?

Yes.

After a couple of minutes, I hand out the bribes while juggling Biscuit in one arm. “But this here bottle ain’t cold, lady.
This here feels warm as spit.” With my neck and face flushing hot, I go back inside to exchange the warm bottles for iced.

“Tha’s better.” The short one scrapes his scratch card with a fingernail, which a manicurist would admire. Both men clink
bottles and chugalug and peer into the bag of buffalo wings. Finally, the short one points to a sky-blue duplex midway in
the next block. “Try up there.”

By now, it feels like a Grail quest. The woman who answers the door won’t say her name. She’s medium height, mid-thirties,
her skin a golden bronze, hair in close-cropped black waves. She stands in ironed jeans and a ripped white T-shirt, her legs
planted wide apart as if the porch is a rolling deck. Big-frame dark glasses hide her eyes.

“I’m looking for Kia Fayzer. Are you Kia?”

“You a caseworker or a cop?”

“I’m Reggie Cutter. If you’re Kia, I’d like to ask about your brother Henry.”

She ignores the dog. Her eyes say don’t waste my time. Biscuit yips. She folds her arms across her chest.

“I’m here on my own. I’m not a law enforcement officer. Somebody thinks maybe Henry is innocent of the crime that sent him
to prison. Somebody wants to look into it. I agreed to help. Are you his sister?”

“So you not a cop?”

“Citizen” sounds righteous, but “psychic” is loony. Words do fail. “If you’re Kia, would you give me fifteen minutes?”

In a movement that is both sinuous and cynical, she rolls her hips and lets me into a room that’s crammed with clothes and
cosmetics. Her T-shirt, I see, is not simply ripped but torn cleverly. The dark glasses are unnerving.

She clears an armload of nylons and lingerie from a chair. I recognize a certain Victoria’s Secret black lace bra—the Very
Sexy Seamless Plunge—which also nestles among my own lingerie, with tags still on. Mine awaits debut on a romantic night,
an act of faith in my future.

“What’s on your mind?”

She sits on the edge of the mattress of a pullout sofa. I perch on the chair and speak to the lenses. “I understand Henry
lived at a house on Eldridge Street thirteen years ago, before the mur— before a young man, Peter Wald, was killed. The house
had a preacher named Big Doc. He was a Rastafarian. Was your brother a follower?”

“Was Henry a follower?” She snickers. “You could say he followed a boom box voice inside his head.”

“Was it Rasta music?”

“His own kind of music.”

“He was a musician or… did Henry hear voices?”

“He went his own way, did his own thing.”

Is this possible: a loner in a group house? An individualist in a cult? “I understand he had an arrest record.”

“Sure he did. Get arrested, that’s how you qualify, you hear what I’m saying.” The lenses flash.

Maybe I don’t really hear. We could easily talk past one another for the whole fifteen minutes. “What did Henry do for a living?”

“You do what you gotta do.”

“Jobs?”

“Henry was self-employed.” She falls silent. I remind her I’m trying to help. I ask for specifics. “Like when he was little,
he got old sandwiches from 7-Eleven and sold ’em at beauty parlors for double what they cost.”

“And when he got older?”

“He sold some clothes.”

“He clerked?”

“He went moppin’.”

“Cleaning floors?”

She laughs loud and hard. Biscuit cocks her head and barks once. I shush her and pat her head. Her cutest expressions are
going to waste. The woman is dogproof. She says, “Henry filled orders.”

“You mean he made deliveries?”

The angle of her jawline says she thinks I’m hopeless. “He delivered what you want. You want Fendi? You got it. Gucci, Manolo.
What you want.”

“Stolen? Shoplifted?”

“Takin’ care of business. Look, if you’re not in school, there’s the elements—the gangs and the streets. Henry didn’t waste
his time flippin’ burgers. When it comes to something hard-boil, he had his ways.”

“Was he recruited? Did Big Doc recruit him?”

“Like in the army?” She shakes her head no. “More like, when it’s cold outside, where’s he gonna stay?”

“With family?”

“We got split up a long while back. I don’t know where all Henry stayed. But when it comes down to it, if somebody’s got a
house, maybe that’s cool.”

“Shelters?”

“Shelters,” she says with a sneer. “You get robbed and hit on. Juvie, they treat you bad.”

“So you think maybe he pretended to be a Rastafarian to have a place to live? He pretended to go along?”

“Did what he had to do.”

“With no limits?”

“Henry didn’t shoot nobody.” Her voice sounds disembodied. “How about drugs?”

“How ’bout ’em?” She tilts her face, and my own reflects double on the lenses. I try not to fidget.

“Wasn’t he arrested and charged with narcotics violations?”