surged toward the platform. I again shut off the music before anyone found the speaker.
As soon as most of the bobbing police flashes converged on the platform, I turned on a speaker I’d placed in a tree on the east edge of the corridor, next to Lake Shore Drive. Cousins had recorded the accompaniment to “Dido’s Lament” in a tinny sound, close to the resonance of the toy piano. Cops and crowd began circling in bewilderment, looking for the speakers, but also searching for Lydia herself.
I glanced at Taggett, who was focused on his device. His bodyguard had joined the cops in searching the park, but the driver got one of the cops who’d remained in the parking lot to open the iron gates partway. He and Taggett crossed Forty-seventh Street to join me on the overpass.
For a heart-thudding moment, I thought they had used some kind of fancy sonar to pick up the signals from my handheld, but Taggett ignored me, moving to the far end of the footbridge, which led down to the lake. I followed, to see what had drawn him.
Night had turned the water into a vast swath of black that merged with the sky. If not for the running lights of late-night boaters, I’d have thought I was looking at the end of the world. As my eyes adjusted to the darker view, away from the lights in the parking lot, I saw a shape outlined in the foreground: a two-masted boat, sails down, no running lights. Above the sound of cars roaring below me, I could just hear a motor on the water: a launch bringing the yacht’s passengers onto shore.
Luana and her friend had come up behind me. Luana didn’t seem to know me, but I put a hand briefly on her arm. She flinched and drew away from the importuning smelly woman, but I kept a hand on her long enough to say, “A little bird should take some pictures of whoever is getting out of that launch. If it’s a woman with silver blond hair, see if you can get her to touch something that will hold a fingerprint.”
Luana gasped, started to cry out my name, but recovered quickly. “Got it. Now go beg somewhere else. Or take a bath. You smell like the lion house at the zoo.”
Taggett’s driver was busy with a lapel phone. Suddenly the overpass was swarming with cops. We were pinned against the iron fence in the middle of the overpass. The cops shoved us together so tightly it was hard to breathe. People were screaming, elbowing for space.
I could just make out Luana through the press of bodies. She had her press pass on a lanyard and was arguing with a cop as the yacht’s entourage arrived, surrounded by another of police in riot helmets.
Luana was holding up her cell phone, light shining into the middle of the group, onto the face of a handsome woman in her sixties, hair pulled back from her face. Somehow, Luana talked her way into the center of the group, had her arm around Filomena, was getting Filomena to hold the phone while they took a selfie.
Nieland was behind Filomena, chatting with Guillermo. Taggett hovered next to them, anxious to be close to the power trio. The entourage moved slowly past us, oblivious to the crowd behind the wall of police. When they finally left the overpass, the police herded us to the ground, chivvied us to the viaduct, and ordered us to disperse.
They barred entrance to the train, telling people to take buses or taxis.
Many of the group got out their phones, texting or ordering Lyft and Uber. I slipped around the cordon, moving away from the park, walking on the shoulder to Lake Shore Drive until I was north of the parking lot.
I drifted into the underbrush, moving slowly, keeping my head down, watching for snakes and raccoons and drunks. The action was all at the south end of the park, where cops were escorting their VIPs up to the train platform. I climbed up the embankment and risked my flash to locate Lydia’s hole.
I shone my own flash into the hole, disturbing the voles who were setting up housekeeping there.
“Sorry, guys,” I murmured. “I just need the piano and then the place is all yours.”
I pulled the piano out of hiding and up onto the boulder that hid the hole’s opening. I’d hung another speaker in a nearby tree and I turned that on, let “Precious