Dante's Poison (11 page)

I knew better than to expect anything so soon, but it was hard to temper a sense of excitement as I bided my time in Boris's car. On top of that, I was experiencing my usual pre-court jitters, similar to being a Christian anticipating a pride of hungry lions before opening ceremonies at the Colosseum. Hallie said that preparing for trial was like rolling every anxious moment in your life into one. I could tell her a thing or two about anxious moments, but I understood what she meant. Even old court hands told me they always experienced a case of the butterflies before an important hearing—or did if they were any good. It was only when a lawyer was too stupid or lazy to care that he could walk through a courthouse door and not feel like he was wearing a neon “Hit Me” sign on his forehead.

In the town car, my phone played the opening bars of
Rikki Don't Lose That Number
, and I scrambled to answer it. It was Hallie, informing me that we'd be up in an hour's time. She sounded as pumped up as I was. “I'm going to try to get a few minutes with Jane in the lockup, so I may not be in the courtroom when you get there,” she said. “Just sit someplace where I can find you.”

Like I had a prayer of vanishing into the crowd.

“Time to get moving,” I told Boris.

The Cook County Circuit Courthouse, known to Chicagoans as “Twenty-Sixth and Cal,” processes some 28,000 criminal cases annually. Given the sea of humanity that passes through its portals each day, it couldn't be more unhappily located. Tucked away in a remote corner of the Southwest Side, miles away from anything resembling a business district or even a fast-food outlet, it has been the butt of jokes ever since it opened on April Fool's Day in 1929. Local lore has it that the site of the courthouse was dictated by Anton Cermak, the father of the Chicago Machine, who wanted it on his turf as a cottage industry for his ward organization. Whatever the reason, it had never done anything to boost the surrounding real estate, and jurors unfortunate enough to be summoned to its blighted precincts were advised by the Sheriff's office to bring plenty of quarters for the vending machines if they didn't want to go hungry all day. Visitors to the courthouse often remarked on the imposing reliefs carved aside its seventh-story windows, symbolizing law, liberty, justice, truth, might, love, and wisdom. The only thing not represented was the American Way.

Boris dropped me off in front, and I scraped across a concrete walk to a short flight of shallow steps, divided into six sections by iron railings. I took one of the sections in the center and then angled toward the hydraulic
whoosh
of the heavy brass doors another ten yards off. Once inside, I prepared myself for a long wait: the line to get past the metal detector usually resembled the entrance to a Wal-Mart just before opening hour on Black Friday. Amazingly, it took only fifteen minutes to get to the head of the queue. Equally astounding, when my cane set off the alarm (as it always did) the guards did not insist on a full-body pat down. “Doesn't look like a Ruger,” one of them said in apparent seriousness as they nudged me roughly ahead.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor. Normally, bond hearings took place in one of the airless lower-floor rooms called the “fishbowl” because of the bulletproof glass partitions separating visitors from the proceedings. But because the prosecution intended to put on evidence, the clerk had assigned us to the judge who would eventually try the case: one Eugene Cudahay, known in legal circles by such nicknames as “Cuddles,” “Cudgel,” and “Conundrum.” According to Hallie, none of the names did justice to his reputation as a meticulous jurist with no bias in favor of either the prosecution or the defense, which was probably the reason he had one of the highest case backlogs in the county. This was good news for Jane but probably meant we had a long afternoon ahead of us.

I asked a passerby for help locating the correct courtroom and stepped through the door. I tried to pick out Hallie's voice above the din inside—Jane's hearing had evidently aroused the customary fascination with celebrities accused of a major crime—but apparently she was still in the lockup. This presented me with a dilemma: should I remain hovering by the entrance or inch my way up the center aisle in search of a seat? I was saved from thinking too hard about it by a friendly voice calling my name. “Angelotti, get over here—by the jury box.”

It was Tom Klutsky, the
Sun-Times
reporter who covered legal affairs. I headed over in his direction, narrowly avoiding several outstretched limbs along the way. Klutsky exited the box and met me halfway. He shook my hand and offered me a beefy elbow before guiding me up the steps and past multiple other body parts to a place in the front row, where members of the fourth estate often sat when there was no jury present.

Klutsky had befriended me the previous spring, partly out of kindness but also to sell me on giving him a story. For a reporter, he wasn't a bad sort, and I'd eventually agreed to be the subject of one of his features in exchange for a hefty donation to a low-vision foundation and his solemn promise not to overdramatize the situation. Klutsky had managed to keep half of the bargain. In his telling, I was practically the Lou Gehrig of blindness, bravely coping with a turn of fortune that would have felled many a less-noble soul. At least he didn't quote me as saying I was the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

“So to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” Klutsky asked in his nasally Chicago accent when we were settled in.

I filled him in on the particulars.

“That's a hoot,” he said when I was finished. “You'll have fun with the ASA. He looks like he just got out of nursery school. I watched him try a case up in Lake County last month. You remember the one where the guy cut up his wife and used her to angle for bass in Fox Lake? He might have gotten away with it if he hadn't forgotten to get a fishing license.”

I did remember. The story had appeared under Klutsky's byline and the headline W
ADSWORTH
M
AN ON THE
H
OOK FOR
M
URDERING
W
IFE
. “What's his name?” I asked.

“The prosecutor? Adam Frost. Though he doesn't live up to it. He looked like he was going to lose his lunch while he was publishing photos of the remains to the jury. The husband had a cooler full of them, all neatly separated into gallon freezer bags. Frost's uncle is the head of the Waukegan Democratic Organization, which is probably the only reason he got the job. The kid has all the killer instincts of an earthworm. He won't give you any trouble.”

I hoped not.

“You know the lady we're here for?” Klutsky asked, switching topics.

“Never met or seen her.”

“Too bad. Beautiful woman. Think Katharine Hepburn with the same DAR pedigree. Brooks here can give you the scoop.” Brooks, it turned out, was the columnist for the
Tribune
who'd been drinking with Rory Gallagher on the night he died and had done a freelance article about Jane for the
Chicago Bar Journal
not long ago.

“Do you want the Cliff Notes or the full-blown?” Brooks asked when we'd been introduced.

“Cliff Notes to begin,” I said.

“Oldest daughter of three. Father was classics professor at the University of Chicago. Mother a curator at the Oriental Institute. Family home in Kenwood. Valedictorian of her high-school class at the Lab School.
Summa cum laude
from Princeton.
Harvard Law Review
. Artist, too. Does some kind of glass sculpture.”

“Nice résumé,” I said. “Does she have a personality to go with it?”

Brooks leaned in and lowered his voice confidingly. “Well, that's the thing. Though you couldn't tell it from the interview—I mean, the woman could charm the pants off the Reverend Billy Graham—she has a reputation as a real ice princess. Only comes alive in front of a jury. And lots of enemies at the State's Attorney's. Matter of fact, I couldn't find any of her old colleagues who liked her. Too much on her high horse and not shy about ripping into associates when they screwed up. I had to go easy on her in the article—some of the stories I heard painted her as a real Medusa—but the general feeling was you didn't ever want to cross her.”

I was surprised. “That's not what I heard. I was under the impression she was some kind of latter-day Joan of Arc.”

“Who, as you'll recall, also got burned at the stake,” Brooks said.

“Is that what you think this murder charge is about?” I asked him. “A witch hunt?”

“All I know is, nobody shed any tears when she upped and quit the office a few years back,” Brooks answered. “And they were all as tight-mouthed as clams about the reason.”

I was about to ask Klutsky and Brooks more questions when Hallie showed up, bringing a tall, fragrant individual whom she introduced to all around as Bjorn Dixon. He gave me his hand, and I observed he was the pinky ring type, in addition to the flowery cologne type.

“Cheers,” Bjorn drawled, sounding like Melissa Singh's long-lost cousin. “Glad we're finally having this meet-up.”

“Balliol or All Souls?” I couldn't stop myself from asking.

“Neither,” he laughed. “But it goes over well with the ladies. Here's my card,” he said, reaching out and slipping one into the breast pocket of my jacket. He paused to finger the material like I was a store mannequin. “Nice suit.”

“Thanks,” I said, brushing his hand off. “I'll be sure to tell my Savile Row man that you liked it.”

I turned my attention to Hallie. “Where do you want me?”

“At counsel table. And we'd better get over there now. Bjorn, I'm afraid you'll have to stay here, unless you can find room in the spectator section.”

“No worries,” Bjorn said. “I've always preferred dress circle to stalls.”

“Where did you pick him up?” I hissed in Hallie's ear while she walked me over. “He sounds like a cross between Prince Charles and Simon Cowell.”

“I like it. And why do you care? Unless you're planning on dating him, too?”

I was about to say something foolish when the clerk bellowed, “All rise! The Circuit Court of Cook County, the Honorable Eugene Cudahay presiding, is now in session.”

Hallie and I hastened to take up our positions at counsel table. The judge ascended the dais, and Jane was brought in from the lockup behind the bench.

I'm not a believer in premonitions, at least in the mystical sense. Too often they seem like
post hoc
explanations for unfortunate events, a way to avoid the terrifying proposition that we really
are
alone in a cruel and random universe. But I do believe the subconscious “sees” more than our waking minds, and that somewhere in the primitive regions of the brain a switch gets turned on when we feel danger coming. If so, a siren had begun to wail in my head the moment Jane entered the room. Before I'd even heard her voice or pressed her flesh—in other words before I had a clue to go on besides the matinee-idol descriptions I'd been given—I knew this woman was trouble.

She crossed the room with a deputy sheriff and sat down to Hallie's left. I had the distinct impression her eyes were on me the whole time. Though I could have been entirely wrong, she seemed fixated on me—and not in a promising way.

After the case name and number were called and the state had presented its verified petition in support of a no-bail order, Judge Cudahay admonished counsel to keep the hearing short and to the point. “This is a bond hearing, not a reading from the Megillah.” Everyone in the room dutifully laughed. “The only issue before me is whether bail should be denied or set, and if so, in what amount. In other words, I expect to be home in time for an early dinner.”

“Certainly, Your Honor,” ASA Frost piped up. “We'll be as succinct as possible.”

“Get to it then,” Cudahay advised him.

Everything I'd heard about Frost was right: he was greener than the grass over a septic tank.

He led off by calling a “life and death” witness, Andrew Urquhart, Gallagher's nephew and only living relative. I'd learned from Hallie, who loved to talk trial strategy, that the prosecution always called “life and death” witnesses in murder trials to establish the self-evident fact of the victim's demise. Hearing from a close relative—preferably one who will break down, sob, and have to be carried out of the courtroom after being reminded of their loved one's tragic end—puts a face on the victim and helps get the jury invested in the proceedings. There was no jury today, but Frost no doubt wanted to lead with a splash.

It turned out to be more like a trickle.

Urquhart was sworn and stated his name for the record. He affirmed that he was the only child of Gallagher's sole sibling, a sister who had died with her husband in 1972 on United Flight 553, notorious for having crashed into a row of bungalows while attempting to land at Midway Airport. Urquhart was five at the time, and being without close relatives on his father's side, had been taken in by Gallagher's aging parents. At that point, Gallagher was already in college, but he treated the younger boy like the little brother he'd never had. When Gallagher's parents also passed in the eighties, the journalist paid for Urquhart's schooling and footed the start-up costs for the chain of electronics stores he now owned, scattered around the southwest suburbs. “He was like a second father to me,” Urquhart said, with a catch in his throat that sounded as genuine as paste jewelry.