Dante's Poison by Lynne Raimondo Read Free Book Online Page B

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.

    It was raining heavily the next morning so I took the bus, a mode of transportation that had become considerably less taxing since the Chicago Transit Authority invested in a GPS tracking system. Not everyone was a fan. The cash-strapped city fathers were always on the lookout for new ways to raise revenue—one of the more creative schemes being a sale leaseback of the Chicago Skyway, one of the main thoroughfares into the city, a few years back—and the grant of a twenty-five-year license to the system’s French supplier had left citizen watchdog groups howling in protest. I, on the other hand, greatly appreciated its new audio features, which had all but eliminated my need to ask embarrassing questions of strangers. Buses now came standard with loudspeakers that announced each stop, and I had only to press a button in my shelter to know which one was pulling up. The CTA had even splurged on a special locator tone for the button, in case I couldn’t be counted on to remember where it was hiding.
    When I got to my office building, Mike was once again absent from his station by the door. I