Dante's Poison (20 page)

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 fodder for the gossip columnists, culminating in a racy piece in
The Reader
the year before captioned A
LL THE
S
UN
-T
IMES
' M
EN
: T
HE
S
AD
D
EMISE OF
R
ORY
G
ALLAGHER
.

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.”