It wasn’t until I’d sat for some minutes that I realized I was hearing human noises underneath the relentless bird trills: short gasps for air, not quite suppressed. I looked up and saw I’d landed in a rudimentary cave created by the fallen rocks. Against the back, chittering in fear, was Lydia Zamir.
17
Cave-In
Zamir was holding her arms tightly behind her back, straining the tendons in her neck. Her hair was so grimed that it looked as though someone had glued clumps of steel shavings to her scalp.
She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, both so big on her that she appeared to be a stick figure, a caricature of a woman. I supposed this was the outfit the Provident staff had put underneath her gurney. If she’d been able to change out of a hospital gown and make it out of the building without being stopped, she had periods of extraordinary self-possession.
I shifted inside the makeshift shelter, moving my legs so that she had a clear path to the exit. I leaned against the side of the little cave, feeling dirt cling to my sweaty clothes and damp hair.
“You’re an impressive woman, Lydia Zamir,” I said. “You’re strong, you’re resourceful, even in the middle of the pain you’re feeling you managed to get away from Provident Hospital undetected.”
I waited a few minutes. The fear in her face seemed to ease. She brought her arms from behind her back, keeping her eyes fixed on me in case I made any unexpected moves. In case she’d hidden something behind her back, I kept my own eyelids lowered: I didn’t want her to think I was spying.
“My name is V.I. Warshawski—you can call me ‘Vic.’” My voice came out hoarse from thirst. “I was down here last week to watch a group of girls play soccer, and on my way home, I heard you playing your piano. The young woman who was with me recognized your music. She and her friends are athletes, and your music inspires them to do their best work.”
She flinched and made a brushing gesture, as if trying to sweep away talk of her music, but she didn’t speak.
“Your friend Coop is very worried about you. He is looking for you, but I won’t tell him I’ve found you unless you want me to.”
She seemed to be trying to say something, perhaps Coop’s name, but I couldn’t be sure. It may have been so long since she had last spoken that she couldn’t produce any words.
“I’ve talked about you to a lot of people in the past few days. Hermione Smithson is eager to sign you to a new recording contract—apparently the news story made hundreds of thousands of people—”
She waved her hands again in agitation and produced a squeaking sound.
“Don’t worry: I won’t tell Ms. Smithson that I found you. Or your old piano professor at the conservatory. What about your mother? That must have been painful, when Mr. Palurdo was murdered, to have your mother talk about him in such a cold way.”
The mention of her mother brought on another bout of hand flapping. When I described my conversation with Elisa Palurdo, Zamir turned her head aside, but she still made sure I knew she didn’t want me to tell Hector’s mother that I’d found her.
“How about Coop?” I said. “I don’t know how to find him. Do you want me to tell him where you are? If so, you’ll have to tell me how to find him.”
She started rocking herself, eyes half-closed, muttering under her breath. After a time, when I began to think she’d gone completely away, she choked out something, words, maybe, but I couldn’t make them out.
I pulled my phone out of my daypack and handed it to her, but she whimpered.
“You don’t want a phone?” I asked.
She pointed at my eyes and then my phone.
“You think I can use my phone to spy on you?” I said patiently. “I wouldn’t, but it’s a reasonable worry. Can you tell me how to reach Coop? No? Then I will go buy some food and water for you. I promise I will tell no one I have seen you.”
I held out both hands, palms open. “Can you trust me that far?”
The gesture alarmed her so much that she thrust her own hands behind her back again. I brought my hands back to my lap.
“I’m going now.” I swung my legs around so they were sticking outside the enclosure. I scooted out, then turned around to repeat my message. “And should I tell Coop you’re here, if I see him?”
After some kind of interior conversation, she gave a half nod.
I pushed myself upright, using the limestone rocks as support. I was desperate for water. I couldn’t fathom how Zamir had survived for two days up here without anything to drink.
As I stumbled along the gravel between the tracks and the crumbling wall, I saw amid the garbage a number of partly full water bottles. Zamir had to be a skilled forager to survive on the streets; presumably she knew to look for these.
At Forty-seventh Street, I hoisted myself onto the platform. A young woman was waiting for a train, buds in her ears. She didn’t seem to notice me, a dirt-crusted stranger behaving strangely. That’s how crooks and people on the margin survive: those on the middle of the page aren’t paying attention.
I made my way down the stairs to the street. A strip mall around the corner from the station entrance included a 7-Eleven. I bought the kind of packaged food that wouldn’t rot in the heat, along with several quarts of water and the basics for hygiene—soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, tampons just in case.
Before going back to Lydia, I sat in the shade outside the store, slowly drinking a can of ginger ale, along with a pint of water. When I felt about halfway to human again, I went to an electronics outlet and bought a burner phone with six hundred minutes.
A train screeched to a halt as I reached the platform again. The woman with the earbuds climbed on, three people exited. None of them was watching me, but I still waited for them to leave before I slid down from the platform and moved back up the gravel track to Lydia’s hideout.
There were a couple of high-rises in the area, and anyone at an upper window could see past the tree foliage to what I was doing, but I doubted they could make out the hideout: I hadn’t seen it before falling into it.
Lydia was sitting at her hole’s entrance, below the shadow of the rocks, as if to keep me from venturing too close. I handed her the bag of groceries and toiletries and showed her the phone.
“You have to eat, you have to stay hydrated. I’ve programmed my number into this phone: you call me if you need me. When you’re ready for medical help, I know a doctor who will respect your privacy and care for you without charge.”
She crossed her arms in front of her face. Despite their sickening thinness, the movement was queenly, a vestige of her concert-playing days, arms lifting like a swan’s wings to float over a keyboard. The gesture evoked all the losses she’d endured, her lover, her voice, her music. My stomach twisted in a mirrored pain and I turned my own head away.
In the park below I caught sight of the yellow crime scene tape marking the spot where Leo had died. If Lydia had come out to forage after sundown, she’d have had a perfect view of Leo’s murder.
I squatted back in front of her. “You know there was a killing last night just below you? I know it must have brought back horrific memories, but I still hope you can tell me if you saw the person who committed the murder.”
The swan’s wings turned back to bony arms. She began beating her own head, giving a high-pitched scream. I tried to take her hands, but she struck out at me. I backed away and sat on a log about five feet from the hole.
The evening rush had started; trains were thundering past every five minutes or so. I think they must have covered the noise of her screams. At any rate, she was far enough from the platform that commuters getting off a train probably hadn’t heard her.
I could just make out her shape at the edge of her hideout. She was watching me, waiting, I suppose, for me to leave.
“Lydia, I’m not trying to distress you, but if you saw the murder, please tell me. I wouldn’t talk about it, except that your own life could be at risk. If someone thinks you saw them, they could try to
find you, to hurt you. I can help find the murderer; I can make you safer than you are now.”
She gave a caw of laughter, so raucous that I first thought crows had moved into the trees above us.
When the sound died down, I said, “If you change your mind, if you want me, or want Dr. Herschel, I programmed both our numbers into your phone.”
My words sounded meaningless even to me. A teaspoon of water in the desert? If it was a droplet I’d be surprised.
18
Staying Afloat
Witnessing Lydia’s pain had drained my last reservoir of energy. I thought of her agent’s blithe statement, that the right meds and the right rehab would bring Lydia back in a hurry. I couldn’t imagine a return to anything like normalcy, let alone creativity, after listening to that raw caw of a laugh.
When I’d slip-stepped down the embankment to the Wildlife Corridor, I stopped at the murder site. The wall and trees blocked Lydia’s hiding place. Unless she’d been foraging near the wall, she’d probably been invisible. I tried to take what comfort I could from that, but I hated leaving her there alone, prey to all the creatures of the night.
On my way out, I passed a man on a bench, talking loudly to a listener only he could hear. He’d been living rough, judging by the condition of his boots and the puffiness around his eyes. If he had killed Leo, it would have been the work of a momentary rage. If he, or any person in similar straits, had killed Leo, he wouldn’t have been looking around for witnesses. I hoped.
The police still had the parking lot barricaded. It was easy to skirt the iron fencing and get to the street—hard to know what they were protecting by closing off the lot.
One of the men in the squad car called out to me, but I kept moving. Instead of plodding north to my car, I crossed the overpass to Lake Michigan, stripped to my skivvies, sank into the water. I floated and paddled and watched the gulls. They may be garbage collectors and predators, but they are graceful in flight—like Lydia’s arms, floating above an invisible keyboard. Above the gulls I saw the lines of planes heading into O’Hare, themselves like a stream of giant birds. They appeared from the eastern horizon in a seemingly unending line. Inside the windows passengers craning at landmarks wouldn’t notice me, a tiny speck in the water below.
A two-masted sailboat floated at anchor in the near distance. Maybe it was Larry Nieland’s yacht. It was called the Abundance, I’d read on his website—named by the robber baron who’d originally owned it, still fitting for a twenty-first-century man running a firm called Capital Unleashed.
Why had Leo gone early to the park, instead of meeting Bernie for dinner as they’d planned? And why hadn’t he let Bernie know? Had his phone been stolen before he could text her?
I shut my eyes and let the waves carry me about. The water here was so clear and clean, I hated to think of a big sand beach with its concomitant soiled diapers, used condoms, broken liquor bottles—all the things that make Chicago’s lakefront unpleasant in the summer. Maybe I’d join Coop in attacking anyone who wanted to put landfill here.
Yes, Coop. The rage that bubbled up in him like lava. If he’d seen Leo would he have gotten into a furious fight?
Leo wasn’t part of SLICK—he was a summer hire. Did Coop understand that? He had seemed to hold Leo responsible for SLICK’s actions. And SLICK itself had no power, no decision-making authority. They couldn’t control Park District decisions, even if they wanted to; raging against Mona and her cronies was useless.
All these thoughts of anger—my own, Coop’s, hypothetical homeless people—destroyed my peaceful mood. I turned over and did the crawl back to shore.
When I emerged, a family had arrived, a baby in a stroller, six older children, five adults, including a grandmother. They’d brought in a giant cooler attached to luggage wheels. While my skin and bra dried, I watched the family dynamics, all of them being loving with one another, even when disagreements arose. They were speaking Polish, the language of my Warshawski grandparents, but I’d never learned more than “hello” and “thank you.”
I had spent a lot of time in my thirties debating whether to have a child. It hadn’t seemed right, with the kind of life I lead, the work I do, my unsettled love life, but every now and then, when I see a family like this, I feel a twinge of melancholy. Tonight, I longed for the warmth of a family to return home to.
The grandmother saw me watching and offered me an ear of grilled corn, which I gratefully ate. I finally pulled on my filthy clothes and walked north, sticking this time to the easy paved path on the lake side of the Drive. I had started up the iron steps to the rusted overpass at Forty-first Street when I saw Coop and Bear approaching from farther north.
The dog greeted me happily, snuffling around my jeans legs to smell the leaf mold. Perhaps Bear smelled Lydia Zamir as well. Coop was less enthusiastic. I interrupted his surly greeting to tell him I’d found Lydia.
“Who have you told?” he demanded.
“As opposed to ‘where is she, how is she doing?’ Does that mean you already know where she is?”
He was taken aback. “No. No, I don’t. Where is she? Is she all right?”
“She is not well, but you know that. She’s worse because she depleted herself running from Provident Hospital. She’s worse because of Leo Prinz’s murder: even if she didn’t witness the actual killing, she must have noticed all the cop activity. She showed extraordinary fortitude in getting away from Provident unseen, but that has taxed her health to its limit.”
He started his litany about her current situation being my fault, but I cut him short. “Even if that’s true, it’s irrelevant. She needs help this minute. You are the one person she responds to, but you seem more interested in feeling outraged than in helping her get the care she needs.”
“You know jackshit about her or me,” he shouted, tendons on his neck sticking out.
“What is your connection to her? You’re not a brother. Were you a lover before she met Hector Palurdo?”
“I was never Zamir’s lover,” he said through stiff lips.
“Did you know her in Kansas, before she met Palurdo?”
“Even if I did, it’s irrelevant.” He mimicked me savagely. “Tell me where she is.”
“Where were you last night when Leo Prinz was murdered?” I asked instead.
“You think I killed him?” He gasped.
“Did you?” I asked. “I saw you go for him twice at those SLICK meetings. Anger Mismanagement could be the name on your personnel file.”
“Have you been digging into my life?” he said so ferociously that his dog moved against his legs, either protecting him or slowing him down, hard to tell. “How—”
“I don’t know your last name, or where you live. Mona Borsa from SLICK mentioned you get fired from jobs for not controlling your temper, but she didn’t know your surname, or at least she wouldn’t tell me.”
“People think they can be anonymous in a big city, but everyone always has their nose stuck in your business,” he grumbled. “Anyway, I didn’t kill Leo Prinz. I shouldn’t have jumped him in the SLICK meetings; Prinz was just a mouthpiece for the people with money. That’s who needs to be whacked, not some poor clueless kid.”
“Who are the money people?”
“They’re always the same. The ones who think they own land and sea, even though they’ve done nothing to create the land or care for it.”
“The money people in this particular case,” I said impatiently. “Should the guy Taggett deferred to at the SLICK meeting—Larry Nieland, the economist—should he be whacked?”
Coop looked at me strangely, then said, “If I had my way, all economists would be whacked. Now tell me how to find Lydia.”
My shoulders sagged and I leaned against the rusty stairwell railing. “I’m telling you because I don’t see other options. I hope it’s not a mistake.”
I described how to find her hideout. “If you really care about her, get her to a place where she can receive proper medical attention.
I left a phone for her with my number programmed into it, along with the number for the best doctor in Chicago, or really, anywhere. Charlotte Herschel is a Holocaust survivor; she’s worked with victims of torture. She can help Lydia and she would protect her privacy.”
I took one of my own business cards from my day pack and wrote Lotty’s details on the back.
“It would be a big help if you gave me your own name and phone number. That way I wouldn’t have to rely on blind luck to see you when your friend needs you. I brought her food and water, but she must have a bed and a bath and real nourishment if she’s going to survive.”
“You don’t need my phone number, or any name for me except ‘Coop.’ I’ll look after Lydia.”
All my old street fighting anger rose in me, but what good would it serve to break his nose—even if I had the energy to do it right now? I hoisted myself up the rusty steps of the old iron street crossing and made my way to my car.
At home, I washed my hair and put my filthy clothes into the laundry. The trip down four flights of stairs to the basement washing machines and back felt like the final ascent on Everest, so weary were my muscles.
I lay on my living room floor to straighten my spine and undo the kinks in my neck. I phoned Bernie while I lay there, to make sure she was managing to keep her own fragmented spirits together. To my relief, Arlette had flown in from Quebec to care for her daughter.
“Victoire, how much danger is there for Bernadine?” Arlette demanded. “They will arrest her?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I have to think that one of the homeless people who sleep in the park killed Leo. Maybe to rob him, maybe because they thought he was infringing on their space. The police are dogging Bernie because of the previous altercation she was involved in.”
Arlette said she had spoken with my criminal defense lawyer, Freeman Carter, who’d agreed to represent Bernie if she were arrested. “All of this is a shock, naturellement. Mr. Carter, he has suggested a counselor, a psychiatrist, but for someone like Bernadine, the best cure is movement. She will go back to her coaching job tomorrow and run around in the hot sun with her little athletes. That will restore her spirit.”
Dead Land Page 12
