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 cari?a 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