I kept a hand on the stones to steady myself, but even so, about a hundred yards shy of the platform, I tripped over an exposed root and fell heavily into a hole near the wall.
The landing jolted my tailbone. I moved my arms and legs cautiously; nothing seemed broken. I sat with my elbows on my knees, my head in my palms, glad to be out of the glare of the August sun.
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.