I squatted back in front of her. “You know there was a killing last night just below you? I know it must have brought back horrific memories, but I still hope you can tell me if you saw the person who committed the murder.”
The swan’s wings turned back to bony arms. She began beating her own head, giving a high-pitched scream. I tried to take her hands, but she struck out at me. I backed away and sat on a log about five feet from the hole.
The evening rush had started; trains were thundering past every five minutes or so. I think they must have covered the noise of her screams. At any rate, she was far enough from the platform that commuters getting off a train probably hadn’t heard her.
I could just make out her shape at the edge of her hideout. She was watching me, waiting, I suppose, for me to leave.
“Lydia, I’m not trying to distress you, but if you saw the murder, please tell me. I wouldn’t talk about it, except that your own life could be at risk. If someone thinks you saw them, they could try to find you, to hurt you. I can help find the murderer; I can make you safer than you are now.”
She gave a caw of laughter, so raucous that I first thought crows had moved into the trees above us.
When the sound died down, I said, “If you change your mind, if you want me, or want Dr. Herschel, I programmed both our numbers into your phone.”
My words sounded meaningless even to me. A teaspoon of water in the desert? If it was a droplet I’d be surprised.
18
Staying Afloat
Witnessing Lydia’s pain had drained my last reservoir of energy. I thought of her agent’s blithe statement, that the right meds and the right rehab would bring Lydia back in a hurry. I couldn’t imagine a return to anything like normalcy, let alone creativity, after listening to that raw caw of a laugh.
When I’d slip-stepped down the embankment to the Wildlife Corridor, I stopped at the murder site. The wall and trees blocked Lydia’s hiding place. Unless she’d been foraging near the wall, she’d probably been invisible. I tried to take what comfort I could from that, but I hated leaving her there alone, prey to all the creatures of the night.
On my way out, I passed a man on a bench, talking loudly to a listener only he could hear. He’d been living rough, judging by the condition of his boots and the puffiness around his eyes. If he had killed Leo, it would have been the work of a momentary rage. If he, or any person in similar straits, had killed Leo, he wouldn’t have been looking around for witnesses. I hoped.
The police still had the parking lot barricaded. It was easy to skirt the iron fencing and get to the street—hard to know what they were protecting by closing off the lot.
One of the men in the squad car called out to me, but I kept moving. Instead of plodding north to my car, I crossed the overpass to Lake Michigan, stripped to my skivvies, sank into the water. I floated and paddled and watched the gulls. They may be garbage collectors and predators, but they are graceful in flight—like Lydia’s arms, floating above an invisible keyboard. Above the gulls I saw the lines of planes heading into O’Hare, themselves like a stream of giant birds. They appeared from the eastern horizon in a seemingly unending line. Inside the windows passengers craning at landmarks wouldn’t notice me, a tiny speck in the water below.
A two-masted sailboat floated at anchor in the near distance. Maybe it was Larry Nieland’s yacht. It was called the Abundance, I’d read on his website—named by the robber baron who’d originally owned it, still fitting for a twenty-first-century man running a firm called Capital Unleashed.
Why had Leo gone early to the park, instead of meeting Bernie for dinner as they’d planned? And why hadn’t he let Bernie know? Had his phone been stolen before he could text her?
I shut my eyes and let the waves carry me about. The water here was so clear and clean, I hated to think of a big sand beach with its concomitant soiled diapers, used condoms, broken liquor bottles—all the things that make Chicago’s lakefront unpleasant in the summer. Maybe I’d join Coop in attacking anyone who wanted to put landfill here.
Yes, Coop. The rage that bubbled up in him like lava. If he’d seen Leo would he have gotten into a furious fight?
Leo wasn’t part of SLICK—he was a summer hire. Did Coop understand that? He had seemed to hold Leo responsible for SLICK’s actions. And SLICK itself had no power, no decision-making authority. They couldn’t control Park District decisions, even if they wanted to; raging against Mona and her cronies was useless.
All these thoughts of anger—my own, Coop’s, hypothetical homeless people—destroyed my peaceful mood. I turned over and did the crawl back to shore.
When I emerged, a family had arrived, a baby in a stroller, six older children, five adults, including a grandmother. They’d brought in a giant cooler attached to luggage wheels. While my skin and bra dried, I watched the family dynamics, all of them being loving with one another, even when disagreements arose. They were speaking Polish, the language of my Warshawski grandparents, but I’d never learned more than “hello” and “thank you.”
I had spent a lot of time in my thirties debating whether to have a child. It hadn’t seemed right, with the kind of life I lead, the work I do, my unsettled love life, but every now and then, when I see a family like this, I feel a twinge of melancholy. Tonight, I longed for the warmth of a family to return home to.
The grandmother saw me watching and offered me an ear of grilled corn, which I gratefully ate. I finally pulled on my filthy clothes and walked north, sticking this time to the easy paved path on the lake side of the Drive. I had started up the iron steps to the rusted overpass at Forty-first Street when I saw Coop and Bear approaching from farther north.
The dog greeted me happily, snuffling around my jeans legs to smell the leaf mold. Perhaps Bear smelled Lydia Zamir as well. Coop was less enthusiastic. I interrupted his surly greeting to tell him I’d found Lydia.
“Who have you told?” he demanded.
“As opposed to ‘where is she, how is she doing?’ Does that mean you already know where she is?”
He was taken aback. “No. No, I don’t. Where is she? Is she all right?”
“She is not well, but you know that. She’s worse because she depleted herself running from Provident Hospital. She’s worse because of Leo Prinz’s murder: even if she didn’t witness the actual killing, she must have noticed all the cop activity. She showed extraordinary fortitude in getting away from Provident unseen, but that has taxed her health to its limit.”
He started his litany about her current situation being my fault, but I cut him short. “Even if that’s true, it’s irrelevant. She needs help this minute. You are the one person she responds to, but you seem more interested in feeling outraged than in helping her get the care she needs.”
“You know jackshit about her or me,” he shouted, tendons on his neck sticking out.
“What is your connection to her? You’re not a brother. Were you a lover before she met Hector Palurdo?”
“I was never Zamir’s lover,” he said through stiff lips.
“Did you know her in Kansas, before she met Palurdo?”
“Even if I did, it’s irrelevant.” He mimicked me savagely. “Tell me where she is.”