Chapter 32
James
When I reach the station in Queens, Sadie still hasn’t responded, and my neck prickles as I take the same streets we took when we came out to pick up her stuff.
My steps speed up as I approach Jamaica Houses, and I jog across the grass to her mom’s building.
The door is propped open, and two guys are standing in the stairwell.
Their eyes snap toward me as I move past them and up the stairs.
How did Sadie survive here for so long without getting harassed?
When I reach the fifth floor, I thud on the battered door and stand and listen, half an ear on the guy’s low murmurs drifting up the stairs, half on the door.
The green paint is scratched, bare wood showing through around the keyhole and the baseboard.
I try and still my breathing to pick up any noises in the apartment.
Nothing. I thump the door again. Then I hear it, the shuffle of a step, then silence. I bang on the door again.
“Open up!” I say, as loudly as I dare.
The voices downstairs go suddenly quiet. Fuck.
“I ain’t got your money yet, Char.” Jake’s high-pitched voice says from behind the door. “I’ll have it tomorrow.”
What? Who the hell is Char?
“Open up, Jake. It’s James, Sadie’s boss.”
The chain rattles, and the door is flung back. Jake’s standing there in a vest and sweatpants, grinning at me.
“Just the person I wanted to see!” he crows.
What? Why is he treating me like a long-lost friend?
“Is Sadie here?” I say.
“No, no. She don’t live here no more.”
What? I know that. Perhaps he isn’t aware she’s been living with me. And if he doesn’t, then that’s a good thing.
“Is her mom here?”
He scowls at me. “She’s out,” he says somewhat mutinously. Then his face clears. “But you and I need to have a chat.”
“We do?”
“Yeah, y’see … Sadie needs her pay early. We got some debts.” He waves his arm around. “As a family, you understand?”
Some debts? Oh, Christ. Sadie said she gave all her money to her mom. Did she lie on her resume because there’s financial trouble at home? Did her pay end up with this leech? He’s probably been sponging off Sadie and her mom for years. My neck heats.
Des told me he’d given Sadie an advance on her paycheck to cover a deposit on an apartment, which presumably she didn’t need because she moved in with me. Did she give it to her mom? This asshole?
But all I say is, “Okay.”
“You see,” he says conversationally, leaning against the doorjamb. “Actually, why are we standing here talking? Come in, come in. I can explain proper then.”
Perhaps I should go in and check that they’re both not here. He could have them locked in a bedroom for all I know. I want to snort at myself. I’ve watched too many crime dramas.
“I just came by on the off chance Sadie was here,” I say as I follow him into the kitchen.
An hour-long train ride on an off chance. Yeah, that’s likely, James. But he has no idea how far I’ve come, or how worried I was, how anxious I still am.
“No problem, no problem,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “You wanna drink?”
“I’m okay, thanks. Can I use your bathroom?”
He waves his hand down the corridor. “Sure.”
But as I pass the bedrooms, the doors are open and they’re both empty. Sadie really isn’t here. Christ, I was convinced she would be. Where the fuck is she?
When I return to the kitchen, he says, “Sadie didn’t want to ask for her paycheck up front.”
“Oh! Okay.” She’s obviously kept the fact that Des paid her that money quiet from Jake.
“Can you do it? Pay her upfront?” he adds.
God, what do I say here? The best option is to stall. “I don’t see why not. Let me check tomorrow.”
What the hell are these debts? Has Sadie been worried about this all this time? I should have asked more questions, probed a little harder about Jake and his issues, but I wanted to give her the space she gave me. Goddammit.
He rubs his hands together. “Good. That’s good.”
There’s no point in me hanging around here now. “Have you seen Sadie today?”
He shakes his head.
“No worries. I’ve got to get back, Jake. If you see Sadie, can you tell her I was looking for her?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t see her much nowadays.” He frowns. “She moved out, y’know?”
Okay … He seems pretty confused. If he wasn’t such an asshole, I’d have some sympathy. “Yes.”
“Don’t forget that money now, will ya?” he says as I head toward the door.
“I won’t.”
After I escape, I stand on the landing, chewing my lip and listening for voices downstairs.
Everything’s quiet, and I turn my phone over in my hand.
I’m not aware of anyone in Sadie’s life except her mom and Jake.
I head down the stairs. Perhaps mulling this over with someone else would help.
I glance at my watch: 5:30 p.m. I stop on the next floor down and press Des’s number.
“Hey, James, it’s 6:30 a.m., so this better be important,” Des says.
“I’ve lost Sadie.”
“What do you mean, you’ve lost Sadie?”
“She went out of the office at lunchtime and didn’t come back.
I’ve texted and called, and she hasn’t responded.
I thought her asshole stepdad might have done something, so I headed out to her mom’s apartment in Queens.
He was there, and Sadie wasn’t. I’ve just left him.
” I scuff down another flight of stairs.
“Wait. What? She has an asshole stepdad?”
Damn. I can’t spill all Sadie’s secrets to Des. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone about Jake. “Long story.”
He huffs. “Well, you’d better fill me in at some point. I’m presuming she’s not at home?”
Home? I’ve just been … Oh, he means … I come to an abrupt halt on the next landing down and close my eyes.
God, I really am an idiot. Why wouldn’t she just be in the place she lives, James?
I raced out here thinking Jake had accosted her, or she’d bolted to her mom’s.
In reality, she’s probably just curled up on the couch, engrossed in a book, and has forgotten to check her messages.
Yeah, not likely. She’s more likely panicking and packing up her stuff.
I sigh into my phone. “I haven’t checked there yet. Damn. I should have done that first.”
I fill him in on the call I got from Jane and what she said as I carry on down the stairs.
When I reach the bottom, there’s no sign of the guys who were hanging around.
Des hums in my ear. “Well, if Jane ambushed her, that’s a crapshoot.
God knows what she said to her. I understand why you’re worried, James. ”
“She would never just disappear from work; she’s not like that.”
“Yeah, she’s Miss Reliable. You remember the meeting we had when I suggested she move into the apartment?”
“Yes.”
“She was living in a hostel in Jersey City. You could try there.”
She lived in a hostel? “Have you got the details?”
He hums. “No, actually. Damn, I wonder how we could …”
As he’s talking, I push through the door to the outside, and someone bumps into me.
I’m just about to apologize when something catches me from behind.
What the …? I tip forward, and my hands shoot out, my phone flying out of my hand.
Something wrenches right across my back as I hit the ground, landing on my side, face bouncing off the concrete.
I lose my glasses as a searing pain runs from my cheek through my head.
I manage to roll, expecting somebody to land on top of me, but all I see are two blurry figures running away. Laughter drifts back over the grass.
What the hell?
I groan.
My glasses. Where are my glasses?
My face throbs. I pat the path around me, making wider and wider circles until my hand latches onto a plastic arm several feet away.
When I put them on, one lens is cracked and the right arm is bent at an odd angle.
I try to bend it back against my head as I look across the grassy area between the buildings, but there’s no sign of the guys who jumped me.
Christ. I touch my face gingerly, and it stings.
It’s the other cheek this time. As I glance around, I realize my backpack has disappeared.
Fucking fuck.
My fucking laptop.
Good luck to them. The security on that thing is rock solid. But they don’t usually bother with what’s on machines when they steal things these days; they wipe the hard disk and resell it. Someone will probably give them no more than fifty bucks for it.
Jesus. Where’s my phone?
With a sinking heart, I stagger to my feet and start searching, but even after I scan a big area, there’s no sign of that either. Shit.
I was in the middle of a call with Des!
Did he hear what happened? Oh, fuck. He’ll be losing his shit.
I put my hands on my hips and take a deep breath, then peer down at myself and dust off the grit and dirt.
I need to let him know I’m okay somehow.
I walk around, sweeping across the thin grass between the buildings, keeping one eye out to make sure that no one’s coming back, but I still can’t find my phone.
Should I report this to the local NYPD precinct?
Can I remember what those guys in the stairwell looked like?
Maybe. But what will I gain? It’s going to take hours to make a statement, and I can’t believe they’ll find my laptop or my phone.
As I start down the path, my right hip throbs and pain radiates all the way down one arm where I landed on it before my face hit the concrete.
As I make my way out of the projects and down the street, there’s hardly anyone around, and those who are don’t even look at me.
I think about Jane calling me when she fell off her bike, and snort to myself.
At least I don’t think anything’s broken aside from my glasses, and it’s way more important that I find Sadie right now.
I can’t believe she lived here for most of her life with guys like that hanging around.
Jesus. And fuck, I need to get back to the apartment.