Finally, Mona turned the meeting over to Leo, to complete the presentation that Coop’s arrival had cut short the last time. “Since we’re graced with Superintendent Taggett’s presence tonight, we thought we should look at the whole picture before we vote on the proposal.”
Leo stood but didn’t move away from the table—he’d learned that he couldn’t hold the computer, push the PowerPoint buttons, and use the handheld mike all at the same time.
Someone dimmed the lights and Leo began flashing images onto the wall at the back of the stage.
He started with a history of the 1930s project that had reshaped the lakefront, when the shoreline was pushed about half a mile to the east. The 1934 World’s Fair had been held on the new landfill, South Lake Shore Drive was built on it. Leo had photos and maps, but he was nervous and clicked through them too quickly for us to admire. By the time he put up the slide showing the current plan, I was only half-listening.
Leo flipped through a series of maps and aerial photos—the current lakefront, projected new shoreline, proposed amenities.
The maps included lists. I could read the headers, but the contents were too small to make out, especially since the paint was peeling on the wall being used as a projection screen. Current park use, anticipated use with the new beach, estimated completion time, estimated costs.
Leo was flipping through the slides so fast that Taggett’s friend in the rumpled T-shirt said, “Slow down, son—this isn’t the Indy Five Hundred.”
The audience laughed, but the criticism flustered Leo. He dropped the laser pointer he’d been using. When he stooped to pick it up, he banged his head underneath the table. Some of Simon’s papers floated off the table; several landed in the audience, which caused renewed laughter, especially when Simon swore and demanded that the presentation stop until he recovered his papers.
Bernie jumped from her chair and gathered the pages to hand to Leo. When he took them, the top one caught his eye and he stared at it, puzzled. He bent over Simon, holding the document in front of the older man, but we couldn’t hear what either man said. Curtis and Mona came over to look at the document.
The mike picked up Leo’s voice saying it wasn’t in the presentation. Mona started an impatient reply, but Simon cut across her, saying it was a preliminary report. “We’ve only asked you to show what we know is in the formal plan.”
Taggett noticed the audience getting restive over the interruption. “Let’s take a breather.” He had the kind of booming baritone that silences a room. “Son, you’ve done a great job. I’m impressed and I’m sure everyone else is, too, but why don’t we let the audience get some questions in.”
A man near the front stood and demanded to know about environmental impact studies. Curtis slammed down his gavel, but Taggett said, with apparent good humor, “Good question. These are early days, and we all know we have a lot more work to do, including getting the feds on board with us.”
The community benefits people wanted guarantees about jobs for local residents; Taggett said he was in active conversations with Fourth and Fifth Ward aldermen. Someone talked about property being flipped along Lake Park north of Forty-seventh Street. The moneymen looked up from their devices at that. Taggett said he’d heard rumors but no one could show him hard data, and the men returned to their screens. I wondered if they might themselves be property flippers.
A lot of people demanded a budget: property taxes had quadrupled in the last decade and taxpayers were fed up.
“I’m glad you raised that point tonight,” Taggett said, “because we’ve been working with some of the top economists in the world on this proposal. They’ve looked at the potential for new markets in the city and realize, as many of us do, that the South Side is underserved in every way. The fact that these economists are connected to the University of Chicago has not biased them in favor of putting this project in their own backyard.”
He paused for laughter, which arrived on cue.
“Larry Nieland’s opinions carry just a little weight around the world, or at least the king of Sweden thinks so.”
A reference to Nieland’s Nobel Prize got another laugh, but also a respectful round of applause.
Taggett finished with another laugh line: “I’m not going to try to use the language of a University of Chicago–trained economist—they talk about elasticity and I think about my twelve-year-old’s basketball shorts falling around his ankles. But Larry can answer those questions and more besides. Why don’t you come up and field a few?”
Nieland moved to stand in front of the stage. He was the older of the moneymen, the one in the rumpled clothes. Mona rushed over to give him the handheld mike.
“I’ve been an adviser on a number of projects in places like Santiago and Montevideo where we’ve had great success putting together public-private partnerships. It doesn’t seem right to me, as a Chicagoan, that South America should have all the benefit of that kind of development. I’ve been glad to offer input to Superintendent Taggett on some of the possibilities for infusing private money into public works.”
“Does that mean a new beach will be a private place?” a woman in the middle of the room cried out. “Why are we paying taxes if you’re going to turn it over to some private company?”
Nieland said, “Private investors get the benefit of a development that makes the city a more attractive place to live and do business. That brings jobs.”
“But a development,” someone else called. “That sounds like buildings, not a beach.”
Nieland smiled, an easy grandfatherly smile that went with his shock of white curls. “Forgive my academic language. We’re helping Superintendent Taggett develop a plan, that’s all. Those of you who’ve read my work know I don’t believe that a government knows the best thing to do with its citizens’ money; that’s why we’re asking private investors to step forward.”
Taggett clapped enthusiastically. “Let’s get back to the things we all came here to discuss, namely a new beach to replace the slippery rocks. No matter how many danger signs your Park District puts up—and we are not a remote government, we’re out there every day trying to keep your parks safe and clean—people will keep swimming from the rocks. They slip and fall, break hips and heads. We’re here to fix that.”
Taggett nodded at Mona, who told Leo to put up the map of the proposed new beach.
“Who’s the guy with Nieland?” I asked Nashita. “He looks too well-dressed to be another academic.”
“I don’t know,” Nashita said. “But he looks as though he gets rich on private-public partnerships.”
10
Democracy in Action
I wasn’t getting anything from the meeting, except a crick in my neck from straining to see Leo and Bernie in the front of the room. I texted Bernie that I was heading home. When the lights went down, I threaded my way along the aisle to the exit.
Coop was entering just as I reached the door. The lights were still dimmed; he didn’t see me at first.
“Have you come to attack poor young Leo again?” I said. “Shouldn’t you pick on targets closer to your own weight class?”
“You?” he hissed. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping to see you. Wondering if Lydia was okay, wherever you’ve stashed her.”
He slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand. “I don’t know where she is. If you do, don’t play games with me.”
“You didn’t know she was at Provident?” I whispered.
“Yes, but the place is lousy with cops; I figured until they were ready to discharge her no one could get at her. When I got back there, she’d disappeared.”
“They told me a man had taken her from her gurney when they were waiting to transport her to Stroger for an MRI,” I said. “That wasn’t you?”
“It goddamn wasn’t me! Mona Borsa and her team of goons got the city to collect her and put her into a locked ward.”
He started toward the stage, but I grabbed his arm. “Use
your head, Coop: if that were the case, there’d be a trail showing who’d picked her up and where they’d gone.”
“Then this is worse! They sent someone to kidnap her.”
He tried to break away from me, but I tightened my grip. “Oh, please! Mona and Curtis can’t figure out how to run a community meeting. They couldn’t kidnap an eggplant from a shopping cart.”
Coop gave a reluctant smile. “But in that case—you don’t have her, they don’t have her—who took her?”
He’d calmed down enough that I dropped his arm. “I have no idea, but it’s way past time to involve the cops.”
“Don’t call the fucking cops. They won’t help—they’re in bed with your pal Mona.”
“Coop—what’s your last name?”
He curled his lip in a parody of a smile. “Maybe it’s Coop.”
“Cops want you for something you’re trying to keep private?”
“I try to stay private, which is easy to do if you don’t randomly distribute your personal information.”
“If you’re trying to stay private, then you should lower your public profile,” I said dryly. “What’s your connection to Lydia Zamir? Do you know the Palurdo family? Is that why you’re so protective of her?”
“Oh, mind your own damned business!”
The last sentence came out as a shout. Everyone in the room turned to look, including Bernie. When she saw me with Coop, she grinned wickedly and mimed the swing of a hockey stick, but Leo reacted in alarm. He called something to Bernie, apparently a plea for support. She climbed onto the stage. After a brief argument—I guessed she was urging Leo to show some spine and confront Coop—she shrugged and let him lead her through a rear exit.
Taggett, who’d watched the minidrama in amusement, said, “This is what happens when you spend too much time on your computer—real people frighten you.” People laughed again, and Taggett added, “That’s why we need to get our lakefront more usable—entice kids like young Leo there out into the fresh air.”
Coop eyed the stage, but when he looked at Taggett, he saw the cops, and dropped back. I left as Mona tried to resume the presentation. However, Leo had taken his computer with him. She tried to get Simon to show his map of the proposed beach project, but the audience was restive. Nieland and his buddy put their devices in their pockets and got to their feet.
When I left the building, I saw the dog Bear tied to a bike rack. He looked at me mournfully as I passed, as if he, too, wanted some peace and quiet.
“Not on this side of Jordan, dog,” I said. “We have to stay on our toes, take our lumps, which in this case means ignoring your boy’s wishes and going to the police.”
Lenora Pizzello, the sergeant I’d met when Bernie was picked up, was on duty when I got to the Wentworth station.
“Ms. Warshawski.” She came out of her cubbyhole to greet me when the desk sergeant sent me back. “Please tell me your niece isn’t tearing up the South Side again.”
I didn’t correct her about our relationship, just said, “I hope not. Although this is about the homeless woman at the center of Bernie’s fracas. I don’t know if you saw the news?”
“Oh, the woman under the viaduct. I hadn’t made the connection. There was some commotion this morning, right?” She called up the story on her phone. “Right, got it. Lydia Zamir. She was taken off by ambulance to Provident. Don’t tell me she died.”
“I can’t tell you anything. That’s why I’m here—she’s disappeared.” I gave her a thumbnail of what I’d learned at the hospital. “The guy with the dog—you said your patrols know him—I thought he’d taken her but I just saw him and he says he has no idea where she is.”
The sergeant made a phone call, apparently to the 911 response center, asking for any information from Provident.
“What in sweet Jesus’s name are they doing at that hospital?” Pizzello demanded into the phone. “Someone snatched in broad daylight from their transport waiting area and no one thought it was worth phoning in?”
Pizzello turned back to me. “Okay, I’m going to turn you over to one of my officers to make a statement—everything you know about the missing woman, and the guy with the dog.”
What I knew took about fifteen minutes to report, but getting it all down, repeating it for another officer, double-checking with Provident, questioning my involvement, all that took time. One of the officers was young and knew some of Zamir’s songs; he even played “The Swan” for the older cop.
Of course, they wanted to know why I cared—I must have a client; surely I didn’t randomly spend my time looking for people without collecting a paycheck?
I thought of Peter’s words. “Just trying to heal the world. Me and Wonder Woman. I’m also trying to make sure my goddaughter isn’t involved, or that someone doesn’t try to make her a fall gal.”
“She has an alibi for the time that the Zamir woman was grabbed?”
I silently cursed myself: using Bernie as a cover story for Murray had made her interesting to the cops, who like to go for the simplest answer first. “She’s coaching softball with seventeen ten- and eleven-year-olds in Humboldt Park,” I said. “Anyway, the hospital people say it was a man who carried Zamir from the gurney; no way would you think Bernie Fouchard was a man.”
I showed them a picture of Bernie and me at the start of her summer coaching stint. I have a good four inches on her. The cops agreed she didn’t look much like a man, certainly not one big enough to carry an adult woman, even an emaciated one, from a gurney and out of the hospital.
When they finally let me go, I drove by the viaduct one last time, but there wasn’t any trace of Lydia. It was close to ten now. Noisy teens were crowding the bridge that led across Lake Shore Drive, drunks were sitting on benches around the parking lot on the east side of the tracks. A few hearty joggers and cyclists threaded their way through the mix.
While I waited at the light to turn onto the Drive, I thought I saw Coop and Bear head up the track into the Wildlife Corridor. The light changed before I could get a good look and I drove on, too tired for more investigating.
Bernie called while I was still on the road, wanting to rehash the events of the night. Leo and she had gone out for a drink, but they’d quarreled over his refusal to confront Coop. Bernie was at her own apartment in Evanston, oscillating between annoyance with Leo and a desire to go beat up Coop on his behalf.
“Why not let things sort themselves out?” I said. “The law of unintended consequences will come into play if you go after Coop yourself. By the way, what was on that paper that you picked up, the one that got the SLICK officers so wound up?”
“Just more drawings of the lakefront. I didn’t study it. We fought over that, also. He was wanting to do something about the foyer, something about the drawing, and that mattered more to him than this Coop. Or even me.”
I commiserated with her but changed the subject to the girls in Humboldt Park she was working with for the second half of the season.
She gave me an enthusiastic rundown and signed off just as I reached my exit.
Murray was parked in front of my building. He unfolded himself from his Mercedes and sketched a wave.
“News?” He came up the walk to me, since I didn’t bother to wait for him.
“Are you going to be that kind of client, Murray? Bugging your detective for up-to-the-minute reports?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I’ve had seven messages from various members of the Global executive team in the last seven hours, which is seven more than I’ve had in my life. Thought I’d share the stress.”
I stopped with my key in the front-door lock. “Why do they care so much?”
He gave a sardonic laugh. “Twenty-four hours ago, Lydia’s ‘Savage’ was downloaded forty-three times. Today it topped fourteen thousand. Lydia’s agent is smelling gold through one nostril and blood through the other. All at once, Lydia’s a valuable property again, and visions of Bitcoins are dancing in her agent’s head. Spinning Earth is read
y to do a deal, but they need a warm body to hold the pen. Everyone thinks I’m hiding Lydia to help with a bidding war, or to get my share of the gate, or whatever.”
Spinning Earth was Global’s music and streaming subsidiary.
“Since when did you imagine that angst in the executive suite would goad me into action?” I said. “I’m not interested in their woes. I took this case as a favor to you, but if you’re going to hound-dog me, I will resign.”
“Sorry, Warshawski. I’m not a nervous person as a rule, but the relentlessness of the queries has made me break out in hives.”
“There’s calamine for that,” I said dryly.
Murray pressed his lips together to swallow an angry retort.
I relented. “I can’t tell you more than you know yourself: Lydia disappeared from Provident. She was never formally admitted, so there’s not a paper trail. She either walked off, wearing nothing but a hospital gown, or a man lifted her from the gurney and carried her away. I lean toward scenario two but I have no proof of anything. I’ll keep looking, but you can’t rag me—it doesn’t help.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s just that little matter of a paycheck. I like to eat.”
“You’re wedded to this entertainment behemoth,” I said soberly. “I know at our age new jobs aren’t that easy to find, but you’re a good—make that exceptional—investigative journalist. I hate you wasting your gifts on soft targets.”
He looked at me for a long moment. His expression seemed despairing, but it might have been a trick of the single bulb above the outer door.
11
Generation Gap
While Murray and I were talking, the dogs had started to bark. I got the outer door open as quickly as I could, but not before Donna Lutas emerged from her apartment, hands on hips, ready for battle.
Dead Land Page 7