I could have used help, but I was unwilling to put the life of anyone I knew at risk. Mr. Contreras was furious that I’d turned him down. Hadn’t he saved my life back when I was fighting off the Sturlese cement company? And down at Dead Stick Pond, and—
“And you’re the best. That’s why I’m not going to let you risk your life jumping in and out of trees on the South Side.”
Early the next morning, when the sky was turning from black to gray, I slipped out of my building, so quietly that the dogs didn’t hear me. I left Angela’s Subaru in a parking garage a mile north of my apartment. On my way south, I stopped at my office to stick my smartphone in the big safe there.
I rode the L to Thirty-fifth Street and walked the mile to the lakefront. I had a burner phone for emergencies, a driver’s license, and a hundred dollars in small bills in the heel of my left shoe, a handful of singles in my jeans pocket.
I was carrying my big backpack, packed with speakers, a remote, a groundsheet, some snacks, a toothbrush, but no clothes. I’d had a shower right before meeting with Cousins yesterday morning, but moving around in the heat with a heavily laden backpack was rapidly giving me and my clothes a sour smell.
By the time I reached the north end of the Burnham corridor, the sun had streaked the morning sky a wild orange-pink. Early commuters were backed up at the entrance to Lake Shore Drive. They were all focused on their own issues; no one paid me any attention. I skidded down the hill into the park, my pack banging against my kidneys.
I left a speaker under a wicker sculpture near the north end of the Wildlife Corridor and a second one under the stairs at the south end of the Forty-seventh Street train platform. Hiking several miles through the scrubby plants in the heat was exhausting, but before I joined my sister and brother homeless on the park benches, I rode the L back to the Loop to use a pay phone.
Luana Giorgini and I had worked out a simple code: hanging up after two calls meant no action. Hanging up after three meant she should put some text that we’d worked on into the Star’s online edition.
After that, I drifted into a coffee bar. To their credit, the young staff behind the counter took my order for two cortados. They gave me a plastic cup filled with ice water, only let me pay for one drink, and threw in a croissant. Customer reaction ranged from determined obliviousness through mimed disgust. One woman with a baby in an outsize stroller told me I shouldn’t be allowed in a facility with children in it.
“God bless you, miss,” I said. “And God’s blessing on your little one. May she grow up to have a compassionate heart.”
I took my drinks outside. When I finished them, I rode back to the South Side, to the rocky place at Forty-seventh Street where I’d swum earlier in the summer. Late on a weekday morning, it was deserted, and I took a chance on my belongings to strip and rinse off in the water. Even though I had to put my stinking clothes back on, I felt better.
After that, I waited out the hours until sundown. You don’t know how dependent you are on your device until you’ve gotten rid of it. I rested under the shade of an old oak but finally wandered to the ultimate refuge of the homeless, the public library, where I looked up the Herald-Star’s online paper.
Luana’s little squib made the home page.
A little bird tells us that singer-songwriter Lydia Zamir may be back in Chicago. The musician, who’d been living homeless on Forty-seventh Street, vanished in the middle of a dramatic chase along the Metra tracks almost a month ago and hasn’t been seen since. A little bird heard the musician cheeping the last few nights and dropped a note in our ear. Is this the start of one of music’s great comebacks?
Perfect. I blew Luana a kiss across the airwaves.
At six, the library closed. At ten, I crossed the bicycle bridge over the drive at Thirty-fifth Street and used my remote to switch on the speaker under the nearby wicker sculpture. I let it go through my playlist three times, but no one seemed interested, so I turned it off and walked south. I stayed out of the park, keeping to the Lake Shore Drive shoulder. Even so, I felt exposed, open to attack. I imagined the hand with the gavel smashing in Leo Prinz’s head. I felt the heat of a Creedmoor 6.5 just before it went into my chest.
The summertime crowd using the pedestrian bridge at Forty-seventh Street was lighter than it had been earlier in the season. Still, there were enough people out that I had to find a darkened space in the park to pull my remote from my backpack. I turned on the speaker under the train platform, and Lydia’s voice singing “Savage” floated into the night.
“That’s Lydia!” a voice cried out from the overpass.
“Zamir? Is she back?” “Where is she?” “She sounds good, like nothing ever happened to her.” “She must have gotten treatment.”
People started clambering around the station stairs and in the parking lot, looking for her. I moved the playlist up to the song I’d recorded.
Your precious love means more to me,
Than DNA could ever be
For when I wanted DNA
I was so lonely and blue
But cariña Tía Filomena
You took me by surprise
Oh, when I first realized
That Hector found your DNA
When Hector brought it home,
Oh, darling auntie, you told the courts
Your DNA won’t grow
But I just want to tell those courts they don’t know
For your hands touched some paper
And your DNA came through
Your DNA grew wider
Deeper than any sea
Your DNA brings Hector,
Yes, to you, and brings him back to me.
I saw Luana Giorgini, hand in hand with another woman, in the middle of a group scrambling up the stairs to the platform. I switched off the speaker before anyone pinpointed it.
After that, the crowd murmur became louder. New music. Lydia must be well, she hadn’t written anything new since Continental Requiem.
“Lydia, we love you.” “Come out and speak to us.” “When can we get the new album?” “What’s the story about the DNA?” “Who’s your aunt?”
I walked the mile down to the university campus and spread my groundsheet near the chapel walls. I didn’t know if it was really safer to lie out there than along the lake, but at least the turf was smooth and thick and I managed a kind of sleep.
62
A Little Bird Cheeps
Larry Nieland’s administrative assistant was absolutely not letting me talk to him.
“That’s okay,” I assured her. “Give him a message, please: Lydia Zamir may be back in town. People say she gave a brief performance last night that included a new song, all about her darling aunt Filomena’s DNA. That would be Mr. Nieland’s pal Filomena Quintana, from Minas y Puentes, wouldn’t it?”
The assistant demanded that I identify myself.
“No, ma’am. I’m a principal negotiator for Zamir. I only identify myself to the other principals involved.”
I hung up on her request for my phone number. I was once again using a pay phone in the Loop, but I didn’t want to linger at the spot. I bypassed the coffee bar near the phone for one where I had to pay for both shots. They also didn’t hand free food to smelly people. However, when you’re undercover, or avoiding death, you cannot create a routine.
I was stiff and punch-drunk after a day and a night outside. A university security officer had pushed me to my feet a little after five. I wasn’t exactly asleep at the time, but I wasn’t awake, either. The cop wasn’t mean, just matter-of-fact: private property, get going.
None of the campus buildings had been open that early, but I brushed my teeth at a drinking fountain in the park. Hygiene keeps you sane.
Even though I was only going as far as Forty-seventh, a scant mile, I boarded the Metra train at Fifty-seventh Street. I was already tired. I wasn’t going to deplete myself further with long walks. The conductor again told me to stay in the vestibule. I didn’t argue—I couldn’t af
ford to raise my profile. I did wonder, though, if I were really homeless, would I acquiesce so quietly? I had paid full fare, after all.
At Forty-seventh, I went into the Wildlife Corridor to place more speakers. Joggers don’t use this overgrown park, but early birders were out. I kept a wary eye on them but managed to get speakers where I wanted them. I finally rode to the Loop for my phone call and my coffee. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep: it just makes being awake more bearable.
At a convenience store I picked up some cheese sandwiches and three bottles of water to get me through the day. It costs a lot of money to eat when you don’t have access to a kitchen. I was getting a crash course in the humiliations and burdens of the homeless.
Since I was already downtown, I went to the main library, where Luana’s little bird once again made the home page.
A little bird heard Lydia Zamir sing last night. She’s come back fresh from her time away with a new variation on her fusion formula. Last night she dug deep into the history of soul and gave us a new impression of the Impressions’s “For Your Precious Love.” Who is Lydia’s dear aunt Filomena? What is it about her DNA that makes Lydia nostalgic for her beloved Hector, gunned down in a savage massacre four years ago? And will she be back tonight?
As the sun was setting I climbed up onto the footbridge over Lake Shore Drive at Forty-seventh Street and studied the park. A crowd of Lydia worshippers had gathered in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor, holding candles and playing cuts from Continental Requiem. Every now and then, they set up a chant for Lydia to appear and sing to them. She was withholding herself tonight; no sound came from the trees or the platform.
A dozen or so people were on the overpass with me, but none of them wanted to stand too close. That meant that I could choose the best vantage for seeing into the Wilderness Corridor.
A couple of squad cars were in the parking lot next to the viaduct where Lydia used to live, but the cops seemed easy; they were laughing with some of the group, keeping an eye on the perimeter, but apparently not anticipating trouble. Luana was there, with her same friend from the previous night. They seemed engrossed in each other, but they were staying on the edge of the crowd, where they could see if anything newsworthy happened.
Around nine-thirty, as the disappointed Lydia fans were starting to drift away, blue strobes flashed in the southbound lanes—a cop car at high speed, a black SUV behind it, another squad car flashing blue to bring up the rear. They turned off at Forty-seventh and drove into the parking lot.
The officers from the two squads already there instantly stiffened and started looking sternly at the remnant of the crowd, pushing people out of the way, bringing a sawhorse over from near the fence to block the entrance to the lot.
The SUV parked between its two escorts. A couple of heavy-set men got out, one from the driver’s seat, one from the rear passenger side. While the driver faced the back of the car, his hand on a gun, the other heavy opened the front passenger door. Superintendent Taggett emerged.
Taggett tried glad-handing some of the crowd, but this wasn’t his base; no one knew who he was. He shrugged with seeming good humor and gave directions to the cops already in the lot.
They switched on their flashlights and started to work their way into the park itself. I could see their lights bobbing as they covered the wilderness from side to side and then headed up the embankment to the tracks.
Everyone still on the overpass was focused on the action below. I took out my remote and switched on a speaker at the south end of the train platform. The remaining spectators let out a cheer. They chanted “Lydia! Lydia” as they surged toward the platform. I again shut off the music before anyone found the speaker.
As soon as most of the bobbing police flashes converged on the platform, I turned on a speaker I’d placed in a tree on the east edge of the corridor, next to Lake Shore Drive. Cousins had recorded the accompaniment to “Dido’s Lament” in a tinny sound, close to the resonance of the toy piano. Cops and crowd began circling in bewilderment, looking for the speakers, but also searching for Lydia herself.
I glanced at Taggett, who was focused on his device. His bodyguard had joined the cops in searching the park, but the driver got one of the cops who’d remained in the parking lot to open the iron gates partway. He and Taggett crossed Forty-seventh Street to join me on the overpass.
For a heart-thudding moment, I thought they had used some kind of fancy sonar to pick up the signals from my handheld, but Taggett ignored me, moving to the far end of the footbridge, which led down to the lake. I followed, to see what had drawn him.
Night had turned the water into a vast swath of black that merged with the sky. If not for the running lights of late-night boaters, I’d have thought I was looking at the end of the world. As my eyes adjusted to the darker view, away from the lights in the parking lot, I saw a shape outlined in the foreground: a two-masted boat, sails down, no running lights. Above the sound of cars roaring below me, I could just hear a motor on the water: a launch bringing the yacht’s passengers onto shore.
Luana and her friend had come up behind me. Luana didn’t seem to know me, but I put a hand briefly on her arm. She flinched and drew away from the importuning smelly woman, but I kept a hand on her long enough to say, “A little bird should take some pictures of whoever is getting out of that launch. If it’s a woman with silver blond hair, see if you can get her to touch something that will hold a fingerprint.”
Luana gasped, started to cry out my name, but recovered quickly. “Got it. Now go beg somewhere else. Or take a bath. You smell like the lion house at the zoo.”
Taggett’s driver was busy with a lapel phone. Suddenly the overpass was swarming with cops. We were pinned against the iron fence in the middle of the overpass. The cops shoved us together so tightly it was hard to breathe. People were screaming, elbowing for space.
I could just make out Luana through the press of bodies. She had her press pass on a lanyard and was arguing with a cop as the yacht’s entourage arrived, surrounded by another of police in riot helmets.
Luana was holding up her cell phone, light shining into the middle of the group, onto the face of a handsome woman in her sixties, hair pulled back from her face. Somehow, Luana talked her way into the center of the group, had her arm around Filomena, was getting Filomena to hold the phone while they took a selfie.
Nieland was behind Filomena, chatting with Guillermo. Taggett hovered next to them, anxious to be close to the power trio. The entourage moved slowly past us, oblivious to the crowd behind the wall of police. When they finally left the overpass, the police herded us to the ground, chivvied us to the viaduct, and ordered us to disperse.
They barred entrance to the train, telling people to take buses or taxis.
Many of the group got out their phones, texting or ordering Lyft and Uber. I slipped around the cordon, moving away from the park, walking on the shoulder to Lake Shore Drive until I was north of the parking lot.
I drifted into the underbrush, moving slowly, keeping my head down, watching for snakes and raccoons and drunks. The action was all at the south end of the park, where cops were escorting their VIPs up to the train platform. I climbed up the embankment and risked my flash to locate Lydia’s hole.
I shone my own flash into the hole, disturbing the voles who were setting up housekeeping there.
“Sorry, guys,” I murmured. “I just need the piano and then the place is all yours.”
I pulled the piano out of hiding and up onto the boulder that hid the hole’s opening. I’d hung another speaker in a nearby tree and I turned that on, let “Precious DNA” play into the night until the swarm of power flashlights began to draw near. My heart was pounding, my fingers were shaking, but I switched the speaker from my playlist to a connection with the piano and began to pick out the melody to “Savage” on the keyboard, singing my own version of her song.
“Filomena, queen and chief,
Are you a savage?
Yes, a sa
vage
Did your nephew threaten you?
What did he really plan to do?
Take from you your mine and gold
It’s covered with the miners’ blood
But you’re a savage,
Yes, a savage!
Hector’s death was just one more
After thousands you stopped keeping score
The mine and gold you need to keep
Because you’re savage.”
The flashlights shone in my eyes. I held up a hand as a shield, trying to see past the glare. Larry Nieland was there, in white shorts and a rumpled white shirt, while Guillermo Quintana was in something dark. Filomena was between them.
“Lydia? You’re alive and singing your lies, still?” she screamed. “You are the savages, you and Hector. What silly game are you playing? I never touched Hector’s papers, but if I had, no court will believe your lies. You think you can come down from the north and waltz into our lives? You think that running a mine is something that uneducated savages like Tilo can do? You are an idiot. Hector was an idiot. He thought he could prove he was of my blood, and that he could turn that mine over to Tilo’s friends and their lazy, useless offspring. You earn the right to property, you don’t grab property.”
“Cariña tía,” I said, “is that what happened in Tocopilla? Hector wanted to share ownership with people who actually work for a living? And that freaked you out so much you had your husband organize his murder? We know Guillermo went into the Saline County Morgue and made off with the bullets from Hector’s body. We know Guillermo rode his horse onto a cliff in Horsethief Canyon two weeks ago to try to shoot me.”
I saw light glint on metal and flung the piano at them, but I slipped and fell backward and disappeared into darkness.
63
Lavender Fields Forever
I was in a field of lavender, listening to my mother sing Grieg’s “Swan.” Did this mean I was dead? If I opened my eyes would I see my mother’s face?
Dead Land Page 38