Dante's Poison Read online

  Bollocks was right.

  “Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Bjorn asked, blowing some more smoke my way.

  “That Jane was the sender? I wasn’t sure until a minute ago, but now I’m positive.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. Hallie must have shared her concerns with you. Jane’s been hiding something about Gallagher’s murder from day one. And whatever it is, we’re not going to get it out of her.” I told him about my visit to Jane’s penthouse the day before. Sometime between stumbling out of her spider’s lair and waking up this morning, I’d settled on the meaning of her last remarks. “So not only is she not going to tell us what she knows, but she’ll deny being at Gallagher’s townhouse that night.”

  “Do you think it means . . . ?” Bjorn said, trailing off unhappily.

  “That she’s guilty? At this point, it’s anybody’s guess.”

  He sighed loudly. “Because if she is, it puts me in a sticky wicket. I can’t very well run around trying to put my own client away.”

  “It’s still an open question whether she poisoned Gallagher. I don’t think you need to resign—yet.”

  “But if Jane is guilty, why the note? She must have known it would get our attention.”

  “Exactly. For whatever reason, she wanted to be sure we’d make the connection. After all, apart from the timing—which even I could concede was sheer coincidence—there’s nothing obvious linking the attack on Hallie and me to what happened at Jane’s hearing. There must be something we’re supposed to find out—without her majesty’s help.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We keep on looking for someone besides your esteemed client who had a reason to want Gallagher out of the way. Which brings me back to my original question. What have you found out so far?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. I assume Hallie told you about the nephew, Urquhart. He certainly had enough motive, but it’ll be hell proving he actually slipped the pill to Gallagher. That’s the trouble with poisonings—the killer can be miles away when the victim dies. I’ve got someone tailing him, but I’m not confident it will turn anything up.”

  “And that’s only half of it. If I understood what Hallie told me about accidental-death insurance, Urquhart doesn’t make much sense as our man.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Think about it. Urquhart stood to gain twice as much insurance if Gallagher’s death was a homicide. If that’s the case, why choose a poison that would make it look like his uncle died of natural causes?”

  “To divert suspicion from himself?”

  “OK, but then why didn’t he ask for an immediate autopsy? The ME said they’ll do one if the family requests it. If it hadn’t been for the exhumation, Gallagher’s body would still be moldering in its grave and no one would be the wiser.”

  “You’ve got me there,” Bjorn said thoughtfully.

  “And that’s another thing. We’ve got to find out what prompted the exhumation request.”

  “All right,” Bjorn said, scribbling this down on a pad. “Anything else?”

  “Gallagher’s movements that night. There are two hours unaccounted for between the time he left Gene and Georgetti’s and when he showed up at the Billy Goat. It can’t hurt to know where he went. His cardiologist is another thing to follow up on. With all the privacy regulations in place, it’s not easy for a casual bystander to find out if someone has a heart condition, but who besides Jane and the nephew knew? And while you’re doing all this running around, why not pay a social call on Gallagher’s fiancée, the cheerleader? If I had to guess, there’s a lot more to that story than meets the eye.”

  In the cab going back uptown, I realized my stomach was empty again, so I had the cabbie drop me off at a greasy spoon around the corner before trudging wearily back to my office, stopping first at Richard’s station before heading upstairs. Upon taking stock of my appearance, he respectfully inquired whether I’d been in a bar brawl.

  “More like a trip down the wrong blind alley.” I told him what had happened.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “I wish you’d asked me along.”

  “Me too,” I said, regretting once more that I’d brought Hallie with me. “Can you do me another favor?”

  “So long as it doesn’t involve eating what’s in that bag.”

  “I’m going to be tied up for a while trying to find out who did this to us. It would take a little of the weight off my mind to know someone was still looking for Mike. Will you do it?”

  “No problem, but only in return for something.”

  “And that would be?” I asked.

  “You promising to get some shut-eye. The circles under your eyes are as deep as the mayor’s campaign chest.”

  “I’ll try, but sleep isn’t at the forefront of my priorities right now.”

  Richard’s voice dropped to a whisper. “If you’re interested, I have something that might help in that department.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “But I’ve grown attached to my license. And my days are already surreal enough as it is.”

  Back at my desk I called to ascertain that Hallie was still in a stable condition before washing down another one of my pills and forcing myself through a grilled cheese sandwich that might have been two boards stuck together with glue. I e-mailed Tom Klutsky and set up an appointment with him after he got off work. I then went about arranging some days off. Sep had gotten wind of what happened and readily agreed that I should take it easy for a while. Josh said he’d cover my patients, and Yelena—still mysteriously effervescent—volunteered to screen my e-mails. Harvey’s receptionist accepted my excuse of a last-minute vacation. This housekeeping out of the way, I still had a few free hours before I was due to meet Klutsky, so I sat down at my computer to find out what else I could learn about Gallagher.

  Not surprisingly, Gallagher was well represented on the Internet. My first search turned up more than ten thousand hits. Someone with nothing else to occupy their time had supplied a biography on Wikipedia, so I started there, scrolling through the text with my earphones while I typed notes into my phone.

  Rory Sean Gallagher had been born in Peoria in 1956, the son of an insurance salesman and a homemaker. He attended the University of Missouri as an undergraduate and had gone on to obtain a master’s degree in journalism at Medill before joining the Sun-Times as a cub reporter in the early eighties. His rise there was as meteoric as they come, starting with a story that exposed massive corruption in (where else?) the state contracting authority that eventually led to federal convictions on bribery charges of nearly every high-ranking staffer in the governor’s office and eventually the chief executive himself.

  From there, Gallagher became a reliable chronicler of every social ill the Land of Lincoln could offer, gleefully uncovering the misdeeds of crooked judges, Outfit mobsters, AWOL patronage workers, and fabricated voters in his syndicated column “The Sinful City.” In 1990, he was one of the first journalists to break the story of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Chicago Archdiocese, and in 1994, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of gang violence in the Cabrini Green Housing Project.

  And so on, until about ten years ago, when the tidal wave of scandalous exposés abruptly ceased. From that point on, Gallagher appeared content to rest on his laurels, increasingly turning out stories that were little more than thinly disguised gossip. Like many a former enfant terrible, infatuated with his own image but no longer willing to do the hard work that garnered his success, Gallagher had grown complacent. Slowly but surely, his readership fell off. And just as surely, the lawsuits began rolling in. An heiress falsely accused of neglecting her aged, Alzheimer’s-afflicted father quietly settled with the Sun-Times for an undisclosed sum. A community organization successfully sued for retraction of a column claiming that its funding was being used to advise low-income clients on how to game the tax system. Meanwhile, Gallagher’s extravagant lifestyle had itself become f
odder for the gossip columnists, culminating in a racy piece in The Reader the year before captioned ALL THE SUN-TIMES’ MEN: THE SAD DEMISE OF RORY GALLAGHER.

  All this was well and good as a character reference, but it did nothing to broaden the field of suspects. It was true that over the course of a thirty-year career, Gallagher had made more enemies than the Rolling Stones had fans. But most of his stories were now as long in the tooth as the electric typewriter. It seemed unlikely that someone in the rogues gallery of Mafia thugs, crooked politicians, and pedophile priests would have waited so long to settle an old score, or that they would have latched onto a popular prescription drug as the means of getting even. And if the motive for the killing wasn’t an ancient grudge, who else besides Jane could have had it in for Gallagher?

  Tom Klutsky had suggested the Billy Goat for our rendezvous, which suited me fine. I’d always wanted to visit the home of the “goat curse,” which originated when the tavern’s owner, a Greek immigrant named Bill Sianis, attempted to bring his pet goat onto Wrigley Field during the ’45 World Series. The Cubs’ owner had refused the goat entry, causing Sianis to swear, “Cubs, they not gonna win anymore.” Sianis had proved to be a seer: the Cubs lost to Detroit and hadn’t won a series since. Apart from the tavern’s legendary associations, it seemed only fitting we should meet in the place where Gallagher had downed his last drop.

  Klutsky met me on Upper Michigan Avenue and led me down the stairs to the street’s lower level. Another set of stairs went down from the Goat’s entrance to a low-ceilinged room overhung with smoke and the mingled odors of cooking grease and cleaning solvents. We squeezed into padded polyester chairs across a none-too-steady table. A waiter came and took our order—cheeseburgers, naturally—and bellowed “no fries, cheeps” on cue when prompted by Klutsky.

  “How much do they pay them to do that?” I asked.

  “Probably more than you and I make in a year.”

  Klutsky listened patiently while I told him what had happened and what I’d gleaned from my research. “So what else can you tell me about Gallagher?” I asked after finishing up.

  Klutsky lowered his voice. “Well, this probably falls into the category of de mortuis nil nisi bonum . . .”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “The guy was a total fraud. You’ve probably run across the type. They start out in life with more talent than they deserve and eventually fall under the spell of their own myth. Which isn’t to say Gallagher wasn’t a damn good reporter at one time. Some of the articles he wrote in his twenties and thirties, like the one that won him the Pulitzer, were brilliant. But instead of spurring him on to new heights, it made him lazy. Not to mention careless.”

  “I read about the lawsuits.”

  “Yeah, and that ought to tell you something. It’s almost impossible for a reporter to get sued for libel under the First Amendment, but Gallagher managed to pull it off. Office rumor had it that Sam Welsh—that’s my managing editor—was dying to get rid of him, but Gallagher was one of the few reporters around who still had a contract.”

  “What kind of contract?”

  “Supposedly high-six figures with a multiyear guarantee, entered into some time back when Gallagher was still a big fish and could name his price. That’s a lot of dough to fork over to someone whose column is losing readership, especially when the paper is laying off other employees left and right. Didn’t sit well with some of the other investigative reporters, who were told to take a pay cut or leave. Gallagher was becoming a liability in other ways, too. The paper got hit with an EEOC complaint last year after he pawed some gal from accounting at the Christmas bash.”

  I was surprised. “They couldn’t even fire him for that?”

  “Under the terms of the contract, not until it was proven in court. These EEOC suits can take years to resolve. Meanwhile, the paper was on the hook to pay Gallagher’s legal fees, and the suit wasn’t doing it any favors in the internal harmony department, either. A bunch of female reporters presented Sam with a petition demanding that Gallagher be put on administrative leave, but apparently his contract didn’t allow for that, either. Last I heard, Sam offered him early retirement and a million-dollar severance package to get out of the old deal, but Gallagher just laughed in his face.”

  All of which would make him pretty unpopular in the executive suite. Klutsky had given me a lot of information to digest, but one thought stuck out. “The EEOC charge, was it made public?”

  “You can’t get the file from the Dirksen building, but the employer has to be notified. And the lady in accounting wasn’t shy about spreading the story around. Why?”

  “I was just wondering whether Jane had gotten wind of it. What I don’t get is why a woman like her was involved with Gallagher in the first place, especially if she’s as gorgeous as everyone says she is. It’s obvious Gallagher was always playing around. Why didn’t she dump him years ago?”

  “Beats me,” Klutsky said. “But if I had to guess, it was the usual story of outsized personalities feeding each other’s egos. And don’t forget, Rory was mighty amusing to be with. Always had some little nugget of dirt to share. It was part of his charm. Gallagher may have pissed off a lot of people, but his pals got on with him well enough.”

  Our burgers had arrived. Klutsky bit noisily into his, squirting juice onto my sleeve. “Eat something,” he urged.

  It smelled modestly appetizing, but my arteries had already taken enough of a beating for one day. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll just bring it home with me. Do you think you could get me in to see Welsh?”

  “I should be able to manage that. Why don’t you come around the paper tomorrow morning and I’ll get us an audience.”

  When I bid good-bye to Klutsky, I was restless and out of ideas, so I decided to take the roundabout way home, heading south on Lower Michigan until it met up with the River Walk. After a form of aversion therapy the previous spring, I tended to shy away from that particular stretch of path, but I thought a spell in the outdoors might take my mind off the case and help me get some shut-eye later on. I followed my nose to the water’s edge, locating the steel balustrade with a thwack of my cane and letting the handrail conduct me east to a wider section of the promenade where benches sat in the shifting gray tones of a group of trees.

  I sat down on one of the steel seats, leaned the cane against my shoulder, and opened the wrapper holding my uneaten meal, picking off little bits and tossing them onto the pavement. Before long, I was surrounded by dueling factions of sparrows and squirrels, noisily clamoring for their fair share. Amid all the cheeping and twittering a tour boat moved by, bringing the hubbub of animated conversation and the clink of cocktail glasses. The evening was almost perfectly still, and the sounds coming from the boat, amplified by the water, carried clearly to where I was sitting. “Look, isn’t that wonderful—he’s feeding the birds!” a woman remarked. “Ssshh, not so loud!” a male companion warned. “He might hear you.” I smiled ruefully and waved a hand in their direction, feeling like the subject of a cute animal video: “Blind Man Shares Supper with Wildlife.”

  The boat’s passage reminded me of the hour, which was close to sunset. I recalled with sadness how the evening sky once looked, and wished I could return to the days when it promised a night of untroubled rest. The memory provoked a sudden inspiration. I took out my phone and ran my finger over the screen until it spoke the name of the app I wanted, double-tapped to get it started, and pointed the camera west to where the sun still shone, a wavering bright patch in the distance. Available for free, the app came with two settings: simple colors (red, blue, green) and what I thought of as the Fruit Loops version, which I liked better because of its livelier descriptions. I moved the phone around to vary the camera’s focal point and listened to the colors it read out to me—Pink Carnation, Ripe Cantaloupe, Persimmon Red, Violet Dusk—until night fell and the streetlights flickered on.

  And then I went home and did what everyone had been urging me to do for da
ys: I crawled between the sheets and slept.

  The next morning I was feeling mildly human again, and even more so after I’d checked in with Hallie’s surgeon. She was making good progress; the intracranial swelling was going down. He cautioned me once more that she probably wouldn’t remember anything, and there was no way to predict how long her recovery would take, but so far the signs were encouraging. Her family was with her round-the-clock, another reason for me to keep my distance.

  With that news to ease my mind some, I went about rectifying my dietary lapses of the last forty-eight hours. My pantry was never a model of good housekeeping, but a strip search of my fridge revealed the basics of a hearty meal: two eggs, a slice of bacon, and half a loaf of bread. I put the bacon in the microwave between paper towels, and two slices of bread in the toaster. I set a frying pan on the burner and kicked the stove to get the ignition to flare—like everything else in the apartment, the appliance was prematurely decrepit—and scrambled the eggs in a measuring cup. When heat waves began rising from the pan, I dropped a pat of butter in and waited for the sound of its sizzle before adding the eggs, stirring them with a fork and periodically testing their consistency with a finger. With a little more finesse I’d be ready for Iron Chef.

  When the food was ready, I wolfed it down at the counter with a glass of orange juice and my pill for the morning before heading off to shower, shave, and dress. I put on khakis, a white shirt, and a blue blazer, and used my phone to select a matching tie. I combed my hair as best I could with the bandage still in place, took a swipe at my shoes with the kitchen sponge, and squared my Mets cap on my head. I then headed downstairs and over to the Sun-Times.