“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 ready 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.