
Excerpts:
...the Post columnist was in his usual spot at Langan’s, an Irish joint on West Forty-seventh Street… a regular hangout for people who work at the Post, which is situated in a skyscraper across the street.
“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Dunleavy whispered, shaking his gray pompadour from side to side. When he first saw the story, at 6 A.M., he was standing on the doorstep of his house, out in Lido Beach, Long Island, and he thought it was a gag: somebody at the News, perhaps his old friend Martin Dunn, the editor, had mocked up a fake copy of the paper and sent it to him as a joke. “I said to myself, ‘I bet I’m in here somewhere, on page 5, falling-down drunk,’ ” Dunleavy said. But, as he read on, he realized that it was for real.

...Although Dunleavy didn’t know Stern very well—the gossip columnist preferred movie premières and fancy restaurants to Irish taverns—he had always admired Stern’s English-style suits. “I asked him where he got his suits, and he told me he got them at outlets in Vermont,” Dunleavy recalled. “Looking back, perhaps I should have thought twice about somebody on a Post reporter’s salary wearing such expensive clothes,” he went on. “He was always very polite, very pleasant. I swear: he never showed any signs of chicanery to me. The only thing I can say is that he went fucking nuts. He must have had some sort of mental breakdown.”

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