Dante's Poison (6 page)

Hallie stopped and handed her handbag to me, whispering urgently. “See if there's something in here to write with.” She turned her attention back to the caller. “Wait another minute while I get this down.”

I fumbled open the clasp and began groping through the tissues, change, candy wrappers, and other unfathomable contents of a woman's purse until I fell upon what felt like a lipstick container. I held it out to her. “Will this do? I can't find a pen.”

She yanked it from me and started writing squeakily on the driver's side window.

“Where do they have you now? Uh-huh. I'll be there first thing in the morning.” She listened a few minutes more. “I know it will be hard, but try to get some sleep. We'll get this straightened out. I promise. And you know the rules. Don't talk to
anyone
.”

When she rang off a few seconds later, she seemed dazed. “That's odd” was all she said.

“What is?”

“I can't believe we were talking about her only a few minutes ago.”

I gave her a quizzical look.

“That was Jane. You remember, my former boss.”

“Was she in some kind of accident?” I asked.

“No,” Hallie said, sounding even more perplexed. “She's been picked up by the police. For murdering Rory Gallagher.”

Gallagher's death was heating up to be one of the bigger news stories that month. A flamboyant, fifty-six-year-old reporter for the
Chicago Sun-Times
known for his hard drinking and headline-grabbing exposés of local government, he was almost as big a Windy City celebrity as Oprah. In Chicago, developing leads about back-room maneuvering and sleazy political deals isn't especially difficult to do—they don't call it “the Machine” for nothing—but Gallagher had racked up a series of journalistic coups that would have been the envy of Bernstein and Woodward had they set their sights on smaller fry and made enough enemies to fill the VIP section of Soldier Field on a warm Sunday in November. So when he suddenly keeled over and dropped dead while seated at his favorite table in the Billy Goat, his press buddies were quick to look past an apparent heart attack and hint at a more sinister explanation.

According to the barkeep, who knew the regulars like the creases of his palms, Gallagher was sober but clearly not himself when he arrived at the Goat a little before 10:00 p.m. on a Friday in late August, ordering a double and careening over to join a group of cronies gathered in the famous “Wise Guys” corner. The atmosphere at the table was already grim—
Tribune
officials were hinting at yet another Chapter 11, and both the White Sox and the Cubs were trailing their divisions—but Gallagher's arrival cast an even bigger pall over the festivities. Usually the life of the party, Gallagher said nothing while he downed several drinks in succession, seemingly sunk in a vicious train of thought. Several of the table's occupants noted his pasty complexion and the strange appearance of his eyes, which darted from side to side as though he was unable to focus. One of his colleagues, a rival columnist at the
Tribune
named Orlando Brooks, was on the verge of saying, “Rory, you OK man?” when Gallagher abruptly rose, made a frantic clawing motion at his chest, and crashed to the floor, upsetting the table and half a dozen glasses of spirits as he went down. An hour later, he was pronounced dead on arrival at Chicago Kaiser.

Given his age and lifestyle, the cause of Gallagher's death was initially presumed to be a heart attack. The verdict probably would have stood there, except for the doubts of his reporter pals who, confronted with the brutal outcome of their own unhealthy habits, or else simply reverting to type, had almost immediately floated rumors of foul play, certainly a much better story than F
IFTY
-S
OMETHING
J
OURNALIST
F
ALLS
V
ICTIM TO
H
IS
O
WN
V
ICES
. Their suspicions were vindicated when, only a few days after the funeral, an attorney for the state had shown up at the Daley Center with a sealed petition seeking exhumation of the body. The last I'd heard was that the corpse had been dug up and was awaiting analysis by the medical examiner.

“I take it the ME found something?” I said to Hallie while we were still sitting in her car.

“Yes. It was in the paper this morning. A drug used to treat mental patients—a second-generation something-or-other called Lucitrol.”

“The antipsychotic?”

“Yeah, that's it. You know about it, I assume?”

“Sure.” Lucitrol was another of Atria Laboratories' biggest sellers. “They're called second-generation or ‘atypical' antipsychotics because they were developed to counteract some of the side effects of older medications like Haldol and Thorazine. The atypicals are controversial—no one knows yet if they're really more effective or whether they'll result in equally serious side effects over time. Was Gallagher under the care of a shrink, do you know?”

“Not so far as it's been reported.”

“That's odd. Usually antipsychotics are reserved for serious mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. So they're saying she slipped him one?”

“That's what I'm guessing. Jane wouldn't let them question her—she knows the routine—so she couldn't tell me anything more than the bare-bones charge—first-degree murder in the death of Rory Gallagher. But how can that kind of drug be used to kill somebody?”

“Depends on the person. The kind of medication we're talking about is strongly counter-indicated for patients with, or at risk of, heart disease. Do you know what kind of shape Gallagher was in? The papers said he was a heavy drinker.”

“And a pack-a-day man. He was still clinging, if barely, to his good looks, but I doubt he was competing in any marathons.”

“First thing I'd do is subpoena his medical records, then. A fifty-year-old smoker with a drinking habit is a prime candidate for cardiac arrest.”

“I will, but it won't help. Legally, if you feed an otherwise-innocuous substance to someone with a special propensity—a peanut allergy, say—it's the same as putting arsenic in their soup.”

“I take it you'd have to know about the risk beforehand.”

“That's right. If you didn't know it existed, there couldn't be
mens rea
. It would just be an accident.”

“And the likelihood of him accidentally ingesting a prescription antipsychotic isn't high. But I still don't understand why the police have zeroed in on your friend.”

“That's easy. The two of them have been an item for years.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Don't look at me like that. Just because a woman sleeps with a man doesn't give her a reason to kill him.”

“A lot of people, women included, would disagree with you.”

Hallie laughed. “OK, I get your point. But Jane's not like that. You'll see when you meet her.”

“I'm going to meet her?”

“As soon as I can get her out of Cook County. I'm going to need your help.”

“I'm not sure that's such a good idea,” I said, thinking of the confession I'd just been on the verge of making.

“Please? You know all about these medications. What they're used for, what the warnings say. I'm going to need someone to educate me about them in a hurry. I don't think it will put much of a dent in your schedule. And I'm going to need at least one guy on the case who isn't panting after Jane's good looks.”

“There are other ways of knowing when a woman is beautiful,” I said resentfully.

“I know that. But I think I've guessed what you were trying to tell me a little while ago.”

“You
have
?” I gulped.

“Uh-huh,” Hallie said. “And it explains everything. Though I don't know why you didn't say something about it before. These days, it's nothing to be ashamed of.” She sounded, I thought irritably, almost relieved. “But don't worry. If that's how you want it, your secret's safe with me. I'm just glad we can stay friends.”

It was better that way, I told myself. At least for the time being.

After Hallie roared off, I entered my building and took the elevator up. The condominium stood just north of the Chicago River and was touted as a “luxury property” when I bought my unit. But it was the kind of cheap showpiece thrown up when times were good and developers were drowning in bank loans. Those times had changed. To the east, where yet another hotel complex had been planned, there was now a weed-infested lot. The building's slipshod construction was revealing itself too, in walls that sprouted cracks where they'd been too hastily taped and floors that rattled underfoot like an O'Hare jetport.

At nineteen I slipped my cane under my arm and walked the ten steps down the hall to my two-bedroom, unlocking the door and tossing my keys into a soup bowl on the stand just inside the door. The bowl had acquired a chipped rim in the dishwasher, and I'd been on the verge of putting it in the trash when I remembered the household organization tip I'd run across on a blind chat site. It was now the repository for all things that found their way into my pockets during the day: a fast-growing collection of change, spent cane tips, rubber bands, paper clips, charge receipts, and other junk I was too lazy to sort through when I got home. My cane joined my shoes in a heap of larger items on the floor.

I padded over to the liquor cabinet and poured myself a bourbon, mentally surveying the room. It wasn't a total man-cave—my housekeeper, Marta, attacked dust and dirt like a Navy Seal—but it wouldn't have made the pages of
Martha Stewart
either: plain white walls hung with a few fading Tour de France posters, a poly tweed sofa I'd picked up at the floor sale when Marshall Field's was being bought out by Macy's, laminate shelves sagging under the weight of the cheap thrillers I'd tried to numb myself with after the divorce. I hadn't always been this indifferent to my surroundings. Before my marriage I'd lived in a stylish prewar with custom built-ins to store all the serious reading that now sat in unopened boxes in my storage locker. It was only after my hurried exodus from the East that I discovered my inner frat boy. Now, imagining it with fresh eyes made me cringe, and I vowed to do something about it before too long.

I showered and changed into pajama bottoms and an old bathrobe, poured myself another drink, and went out on the terrace—the apartment's only decent feature—to think. A full moon hung like a dim flashlight over the Lake, and there was a bite to the air that hinted at the coming of fall. I settled into a lawn chair and put my bare feet up on the railing in spite of the chill. Urban night sounds floated up from the streets below. Glass shattering against a curb, the
bap bap bap
of a police siren on the far side of the Chicago River, a woman laughing tipsily at a companion's comment. I sipped at my drink and shivered in the breeze and counted up all the reasons I should have begged off Hallie's new case.

It wasn't that I didn't want to work with her. But the closer we got, the more unfair it seemed to let her labor under a delusion. Though I hadn't grown up in a large brood like Hallie's, I knew the code only too well. Family was everything. Nothing—not even the God you prayed to on Sundays—was as sacred as protecting your loved ones. Somewhere along the way I'd lost sight of that cultural imperative, and now, in another of the ironies that seemed to rule my life, it threatened to keep Hallie and me permanently apart.