I finally turned to Murray’s story, which filled two inside pages. Besides the front page pictures of Lydia playing, the paper ran her graduation photo from the New England Conservatory, her appearance at fifteen with the Kansas City Youth Orchestra, and one of Murray sitting with Lydia’s mother in the Zamir home in Eudora, Kansas; a pitcher and two glasses sat on the table in front of them.
“We never wanted Lydia to go to Boston to school,” Debbie Zamir told me. We were talking in the living room of the comfortable frame home she and her husband have lived in for the last forty years.
“We always thought her piano teachers here in Kansas encouraged her to have a swelled head about the size of her talent, but she wouldn’t listen to anything her father or I said; she had to go out east to study. She could have gotten a nice job here in Kansas, being a school music teacher, or even a choir director. But she was so sure she was going to be like Judy Garland in that movie and become famous. And then she met that Communist writer and that was the end of everything. She turned into a hippie, playing a guitar at rallies for immigrants. She never held down a real job. And then he was killed.”
Lydia did return to her parents’ home in the wake of the shooting. Mass murders always leave a residue of trauma for those unfortunate enough to be involved; the Zamirs knew their daughter couldn’t be expected to recover overnight, but they were disappointed that she seemed to make no effort to return to normalcy.
I sat with the paper open in my hands. The death of a beloved brings a torrent of grief that comes close to drowning us, but to have that death be from murder, and a murder one witnessed—what can possibly look like normal after that? I finally went back to the story, to Lydia’s mother telling Murray,
“We hoped being back here, maybe she’d find a job that could keep her steady, but she—it was terrible. We couldn’t get her to accept counseling, she was up at all hours, playing the piano, playing the guitar, singing horrible songs about blood and death. When she finally left, I hate to say it about my own child, but it was a relief.”
Murray had also spoken to Lydia’s instructors at the New England Conservatory, who said she arrived with good technique, although a spotty musical education.
One of her instructors, a Professor Szydanski, said, “We are used to helping kids overcome gaps in their training, but the one thing we can’t do is figure out in advance who has a special spark, even with all the video auditions kids have to submit these days.
“Piano—all music—is like any art, or maybe it’s like a sport. You have a group of kids who all look brilliant when they’re fifteen, and then some mysterious alchemy happens over the next few years. A handful find something deeper in themselves that turns them into world-class performers. The rest are good, and we’re proud of them, but that mysterious inner piece is missing.”
Szydanski said he couldn’t possibly comment on why Lydia was living on the streets, if it was Lydia—when he looked at Murray’s photos, he didn’t recognize her. “She looks eighty, not forty.”
The story ended with Lydia’s dorm roommate from New England, who “loved, loved, loved” Lydia’s protest songs. She’d seemed so ordinary at the conservatory. “It sucked that she wasn’t making progress with her auditions for chamber groups or postgrad fellowships, especially since I was getting a ton of callbacks. She tried to be a good friend and not let it show, but it’s hard—and then I started hearing her songs on just about every streaming service. ‘Savage’ was brilliant—so fun! It’s a shame she’s not doing any new stuff.”
When I’d read it through a couple of times, I called Murray. “It’s an interesting story, but there seem to be missing pieces,” I said. “Although great shot of you drinking—what, margaritas?—with Lydia’s mother.”
“Iced tea,” Murray said sourly. “Kansas isn’t dry these days, but you’d be surprised how many of its inhabitants are. What’s missing? I’ll bite.”
“Hector Palurdo, Zamir’s lover—he grew up in Chicago, and his mother still lives here. What did she have to say?”
“Don’t try to play ‘gotcha’ with me, Warshawski. Of course I tried to find her, but she wouldn’t talk to me, text me, respond to emails.”
“And the woman under the viaduct? Did she confirm or deny?”
“Ah, yes. That was an interesting exercise. The first time I went down there, she started pounding her damned piano and screeching.”
“Did Coop and Bear show up?” I asked.
“That’s the guy with the dog? Oh, yeah, chip on his shoulder the size of the Sears Tower. But then, I took a few days to grow out my beard, slept in my oldest clothes, came back as a street person myself.”
He paused, as if waiting for applause.
“Ingenious,” I said politely. “Did it make her trust you? I didn’t see any quotes in the story.”
“Yeah, well, the best I can say, besides getting a rash, is it fooled the guy Coop. He comes around once or twice a day, bringing food or whatever, so he looked me over, told me if I hurt Zamir he’d cut me to pieces and feed me to the dog. The dog looked bored, but maybe the guy has fed him so many human parts over the years he can’t stand the taste anymore.”
I had to laugh. “But the woman herself? Did you being homeless make her talk to you?”
“Nope. If I mentioned Palurdo or his family, she began shrieking her head off. If I asked her about her music she’d plunk it out on that idiotic excuse for a piano. I told her I’d met her mother and she turned her back on me.”
“Do you think she can speak at all?” I asked.
“You want to try?” he jeered.
“Not at the moment. At the moment I’d like to know where she is, and that she’s safe.”
“What?” Murray was jolted.
“You didn’t monitor the feed?” I asked. “Camera crews arrived early this morning; Zamir fled up the stairs and along the tracks to escape them. Someone apparently called an ambulance, but there’s no word on where they took her.”
For a moment all I heard was Murray breathing heavily on the other end of the phone, the clicking of his keyboard, then a smothered “Oh, shit!” and he hung up.
He rang me back a few hours later, as I was crossing the Loop on my way to a meeting with the one client who I jump through hoops to please. “She’s vanished,” he said abruptly.
“Your sommelier?” My mind was on the client I’d just left, who was worried about a container of Ligurian wine that had evaporated.
“Damn it, Warshawski, this is serious.”
“Murray!” I gathered my wits. “You mean Lydia Zamir?”
“No, Michelle Obama,” he snarled. “Of course I mean Zamir. Ambulance crew took her away, supposedly to Provident, only the hospital doesn’t have any record of her. She might have been logged as a Jane Doe, but she took a hike before they did more than recommend sending her to the big house for an MRI.”
Provident was part of Cook County’s health care system. I clicked on a map app; they were the closest facility to the Forty-seventh Street station, but didn’t have an imaging unit.