Dante's Poison (21 page)

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 days: 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
.

At one time, you couldn't miss the paper's headquarters, which occupied a commanding site on the banks of the Chicago River. When it was built in the 1950s, the gigantic glass box with the paper's name festooned in ten-foot-high letters on the roof was the very epitome of modern “Chicago” style. But as the decades wore on, the building began to seem like so many other featureless relics of the Cold War, so that not even the preservationists protested when a certain real estate mogul knocked it down to make way for a hotel-residential tower topped by a $32 million penthouse. The newspaper now resided less grandly in an annex of the massive Merchandise Mart next door.

Klutsky came to fetch me at the entrance on Kinzie, and we went up to Welsh's office in a glass-partitioned corner of the newsroom that did little to mute the cacophony of telephones ringing in the background.

“Fucking printers' union,” Walsh bellowed as we came in. “I've got creditors salivating to get their hands on the paper's assets and legal bills piled higher than the Hancock Building, and all they can think about is how they're going to get their next COLA. Not to mention all the fine folks who think their newspaper should be delivered to their doorstep every morning for free. What I need is a time machine so I can go back and strangle Steve Jobs and all the other assholes who invented the Internet.”

I pictured Ed Asner dressed in today's business-casual attire. He had the gravel-pit voice to go with it.

“Did I tell you that our ad revenues are down another five percent? It'll serve 'em all right when the only news they can get is from some two-bit blogger reporting on UFO sightings in New Mexico.”

“Wait,” Klutsky said archly. “Didn't we run a story just like that the other day?”

“Wiseacre. You know I didn't have a choice. It came over the wire from AP, and there would have been hell to pay if the
Tribune
picked it up and we didn't. Nation's a trillion dollars in debt, the politicos are in total gridlock, and the Corn Belt hasn't seen a drop of rain since last July, and what do they want to read about? Space aliens and celebrity fetuses. Christ, am I ready for retirement. So what have we got here?”

Welsh got up out of his chair, and Klutsky introduced us.

“I remember you,” Welsh said immediately, shaking my hand. “From that feature Tom wrote. Aren't you the doctor who went back to seeing his patients literally the day after he went blind? I gotta tell you how much I admire that. If it was me the lights went out on, I wouldn't have left the house for a year.”

“Yeah, well, don't believe everything you read in the papers,” I said, sending a disgruntled look in Tom's direction.

“So, how do you manage it? It must be hell getting around. And not following sports events. I go crazy missing a single period of the Blackhawks.”

Apparently someone else who had never heard of radio. “It's given me more time to catch up on my knitting,” I said, smiling and taking the chair he pushed toward me.

“See, that's what I mean,” Welsh said to Klutsky. “On top of everything, a helluva sense of humor.”

“Laughter is what keeps me going,” I agreed.

“So how can I help you?” Welsh returned to the seat behind his desk and squeaked heavily down, while Klutsky took the one to my left.

“I was hoping you might answer some questions about Rory Gallagher.”

“OK. But what's your interest? Unless he was your patient. In which case, I'd sure like to get your story.”

“Sorry, I didn't know anything about the man until two weeks ago.” I described my involvement in the case, the attack on Hallie and me, and the note left at my office. I slid the copy over his desk. Welsh picked it up and read.

“This is great,” he said happily. “Just great. I'll have it on the front page tomorrow.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “First, there's something you can do for me.”

“I'm all ears,” Welsh said. Then: “Sorry, I should have phrased that differently.”

“I'll try not to let it depress me. How much looking into Gallagher's death has your paper done?”

“Pretty much none,” Welsh conceded. “I mean, once the police arrested Barrett, there wasn't much to follow up on. The story was already out of the can. All we had to do was report it and shed some crocodile tears over the loss of our dear, departed colleague. Why? You think there's a question about whether she did it?”

“Could be. For starters, the motive the police pinned on her is a little thin.”

“Not as far as I'm concerned. In my business you see it all the time. Middle-aged woman attached to a guy with a wandering eye discovers he's getting it on with a younger broad. She can't stand being replaced, so she does him in. Hell, it's just like the Scarsdale Diet doctor and that woman—what was her name? Plenty of dough, high-profile career, but all it took was being passed over by a seventy-year-old for her to go off the deep end. Like they say, ‘hell hath no fury.' And I'm not even going to bring up change of life.”

Klutsky, by my side, chuckled. “Good choice, Sam. Your wife might get wind of it.”

Welsh said, “Here's one for you: how does a man know when his wife is in a bad mood?” He paused before delivering the punch line. “If she's in menopause, whenever she's awake.”

Klutsky and Welsh laughed uproariously.

“OK, fellas, that's hilarious,” I said. “But just for the sake of argument, let's say it wasn't Barrett. How many other people might have welcomed seeing Gallagher dead?”

“How high can you count?” Welsh replied. “Klutsky here must have told you his fan club didn't extend very far around here. But hating a bastard is a far cry from killing him. And I doubt you'll find many among the folks he put away who aren't still in prison or whiling away their remaining hours in a nursing home.”