Dante's Poison by Lynne Raimondo Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œI take it the ME found something?” I said to Hallie while we were still sitting in her car.
    â€œYes. It was in the paper this morning. A drug used to treat mental patients—a second-generation something-or-other called Lucitrol.”
    â€œThe antipsychotic?”
    â€œYeah, that’s it. You know about it, I assume?”
    â€œSure.” 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?”
    â€œNot so far as it’s been reported.”
    â€œThat’s odd. Usually antipsychotics are reserved for serious mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. So they’re