Red Dragon

  The interview and pictures were set to appear in the Tattler published the next day, Monday, August 11. As soon as he had the material, Lounds left for Chicago. He said he wanted to supervise the layout himself. He made arrangements to meet Crawford on Tuesday afternoon five blocks from the trap.

  Starting Tuesday, when the Tattler became generally available, two traps would be baited for the monster.

  Graham would go each evening to his “temporary residence” shown in the Tattler picture.

  A coded personal notice in the same issue invited the Tooth Fairy to a mail drop in Annapolis watched around the clock. If he were suspicious of the mail drop, he might think the effort to catch him was concentrated there. Then Graham would be a more appealing target, the FBI reasoned.

  Florida authorities provided a stillwatch at Sugarloaf Key.

  There was an air of dissatisfaction among the hunters—two major stakeouts took manpower that could be used elsewhere, and Graham’s presence at the trap each night would limit his movement to the Washington area.

  Though Crawford’s judgment told him this was the best move, the whole procedure was too passive for his taste. He felt they were playing games with themselves in the dark of the moon with less than two weeks to go before it rose full again.

  Sunday and Monday passed in curiously jerky time. The minutes dragged and the hours flew.

  Spurgen, chief SWAT instructor at Quantico, circled the apartment block on Monday afternoon. Graham rode beside him. Crawford was in the backseat.

  “The pedestrian traffic falls off around seven-fifteen. Everybody’s settled in for dinner,” Spurgen said. With his wiry, compact body and his baseball cap tipped back on his head, he looked like an infielder. “Give us a toot on the clear band tomorrow night when you cross the B&O railroad tracks. You ought to try to make it about eight-thirty, eight-forty or so.”

  He pulled into the apartment parking lot. “This setup ain’t heaven, but it could be worse. You’ll park here tomorrow night. We’ll change the space you use every night after that, but it’ll always be on this side. It’s seventy-five yards to the apartment entrance. Let’s walk it.”

  Spurgen, short and bandy-legged, went ahead of Graham and Crawford.

  He’s looking for places where he could get the bad hop, Graham thought.

  “The walk is probably where it’ll happen, if it happens,” the SWAT leader said. “See, from here the direct line from your car to the entrance, the natural route, is across the center of the lot. It’s as far as you can get from the line of cars that are here all day. He’ll have to come across open asphalt to get close. How well do you hear?”

  “Pretty well,” Graham said. “Damn well on this parking lot.”

  Spurgen looked for something in Graham’s face, found nothing he could recognize.

  He stopped in the middle of the lot. “We’re reducing the wattage on these streetlights a little to make it tougher on a rifleman.”

  “Tougher on your people too,” Crawford said.

  “Two of ours have Startron night scopes,” Spurgen said. “I’ve got some clear spray I’ll ask you to use on your suit jackets, Will. By the way, I don’t care how hot it is, you will wear body armor each and every time. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Kevlar—what, Jack?—Second Chance?”

  “Second Chance,” Crawford said.

  “It’s pretty likely he’ll come up to you, probably from behind, or he may figure on meeting you and then turning around to shoot when he’s passed you,” Spurgen said. “Seven times he’s gone for the head shot, right? He’s seen that work. He’ll do it with you too if you give him the time. Don’t give him the time. After I show you a couple of things in the lobby and the flop, let’s go to the range. Can you do that?”

  “He can do that,” Crawford said.

  Spurgen was high priest on the range. He made Graham wear earplugs under the earmuffs and flashed targets at him from every angle. He was relieved to see that Graham did not carry the regulation .38, but he worried about the flash from the ported barrel. They worked for two hours. The man insisted on checking the cylinder crane and cylinder latch screws on Graham’s .44 when he had finished firing.

  Graham showered and changed clothes to get the smell of gunsmoke off him before he drove to the bay for his last free night with Molly and Willy.

  He took his wife and stepson to the grocery store after dinner and made a considerable to-do over selecting melons. He made sure they bought plenty of groceries—the old Tattler was still on the racks beside the checkout stands and he hoped Molly would not see the new issue coming in the morning. He didn’t want to tell her what was happening.

  When she asked him what he wanted for dinner in the coming week, he had to say he’d be away, that he was going back to Birmingham. It was the first real lie he had ever told her and telling it made him feel as greasy as old currency.

  He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical checkups for him and Willy, her controlled fear of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.

  Pachelbel’s Canon filled the sun-drowned room where they learned each other and there was the exhilaration too big to hold and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey’s shadow: This is too good to live for long.

  Molly switched her bag often from shoulder to shoulder in the grocery aisles, as though the gun in it weighed much more than its nineteen ounces.

  Graham would have been offended had he heard the ugly thing he mumbled to the melons: “I have to put that bastard in a rubber sack, that’s all. I have to do that.”

  Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop.

  Molly smelled a rat. She and Graham did not speak after the lights were out. Molly dreamed of heavy crazy footsteps coming in a house of changing rooms.

  19

  There is a newsstand in Lambert St. Louis International Airport which carries many of the major daily newspapers from all over the United States. The New York, Washington, Chicago, and Los Angeles papers come in by air freight and you can buy them on the same day they are published.

  Like many newsstands, this one is owned by a chain and, along with the standard magazines and papers, the operator is required to take a certain amount of trash.

  When the Chicago Tribune was delivered to the stand at ten o’clock on Monday night, a bundle of Tattlers thumped to the floor beside it. The bundle was still warm in the center.

  The newsstand operator squatted in front of his shelves arranging the Tribunes. He had enough else to do. The day guys never did their share of straightening.

  A pair of black zippered boots came into the corner of his vision. A browser. No, the boots were pointed at him. Somebody wanted some damn thing. The newsie wanted to finish arranging his Tribunes but the insistent attention made the back of his head prickle.

  His trade was transient. He didn’t have to be nice. “What is it?” he said to the knees.

  “A Tattler.”

  “You’ll have to wait until I bust the bundle.”

  The boots did not go away. They were too close.

  “I said you’ll have to wait until I bust the bundle. Understand? See I’m working here?”

  A hand and a flash of bright steel and the twine on the bundle beside him parted with a pop. A Susan B. Anthony dollar rang on the floor in front of him. A clean copy of the Tattler, jerked from the center of the bundle, spilled the top ones to the floor.

  The newsstand operator got to his feet. His cheeks were flushed. The man was leaving with the paper under his arm.

  “Hey. Hey, you.”

  The man turned to face him. “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. I told you—”

  “You told me what?” He was co
ming back. He stood too close. “You told me what?”

  Usually a rude merchant can fluster his customers. There was something awful in this one’s calm.

  The newsie looked at the floor. “You got a quarter coming back.”

  Dolarhyde turned his back and walked out. The newsstand operator’s cheeks burned for half an hour. Yeah, that guy was in here last week too. He comes in here again, I’ll tell him where to fuckin’ get off. I got somethin’ under the counter for wiseasses.

  Dolarhyde did not look at the Tattler in the airport. Last Thursday’s message from Lecter had left him with mixed feelings. Dr. Lecter had been right, of course, in saying that he was beautiful and it was thrilling to read. He was beautiful. He felt some contempt for the doctor’s fear of the policeman. Lecter did not understand much better than the public.

  Still, he was on fire to know if Lecter had sent him another message. He would wait until he got home to look. Dolarhyde was proud of his self-control.

  He mused about the newsstand operator as he drove.

  There was a time when he would have apologized for disturbing the man and never come back to the newsstand. For years he had taken shit unlimited from people. Not anymore. The man could have insulted Francis Dolarhyde: He could not face the Dragon. It was all part of Becoming.

  At midnight, the light above his desk still burned. The message from the Tattler was decoded and wadded on the floor. Pieces of the Tattler were scattered where Dolarhyde had clipped it for his journal. The great journal stood open beneath the painting of the Dragon, glue still drying where the new clippings were fastened. Beneath them, freshly attached, was a small plastic bag, empty as yet.

  The legend beside the bag said: “With These He Offended Me.”

  But Dolarhyde had left his desk.

  He was sitting on the basement stairs in the cool must of earth and mildew. The beam from his electric lantern moved over draped furniture, the dusty backs of the great mirrors that once hung in the house and now leaned against the walls, the trunk containing his case of dynamite.

  The beam stopped on a tall draped shape, one of several in the far corner of the cellar. Cobwebs touched his face as he went to it. Dust made him sneeze when he pulled off the cloth cover.

  He blinked back the tears and shone his light on the old oak wheelchair he had uncovered. It was high-backed, heavy, and strong, one of three in the basement. The county had provided them to Grandmother in the 1940s when she ran her nursing home here.

  The wheels squeaked as he rolled the chair across the floor. Despite its weight, he carried it easily up the stairs. In the kitchen he oiled the wheels. The small front wheels still squeaked, but the back ones had good bearings and spun freely at a flip of his finger.

  The searing anger in him was eased by the wheels’ soothing hum. As he spun them, Dolarhyde hummed too.

  20

  When Freddy Lounds left the Tattler office at noon on Tuesday he was tired and high. He had put together the Tattler story on the plane to Chicago and laid it out in the composing room in thirty minutes flat.

  The rest of the time he had worked steadily on his paperback, brushing off all callers. He was a good organizer and now he had fifty thousand words of solid background.

  When the Tooth Fairy was caught, he’d do a whammo lead and an account of the capture. The background material would fit in neatly. He had arranged to have three of the Tattler’s better reporters ready to go on short notice. Within hours of the capture they could be digging for details wherever the Tooth Fairy lived.

  His agent talked very big numbers. Discussing the project with the agent ahead of time was, strictly speaking, a violation of his agreement with Crawford. All contracts and memos would be postdated after the capture to cover that up.

  Crawford held a big stick—he had Lounds’s threat on tape. Interstate transmission of a threatening message was an indictable offense outside any protection Lounds enjoyed under the First Amendment. Lounds also knew that Crawford, with one phone call, could give him a permanent problem with the Internal Revenue Service.

  There were polyps of honesty in Lounds; he had few illusions about the nature of his work. But he had developed a near-religious fervor about this project.

  He was possessed with a vision of a better life on the other side of the money. Buried under all the dirt he had ever done, his old hopes still faced east. Now they stirred and strained to rise.

  Satisfied that his cameras and recording equipment were ready, he drove home to sleep for three hours before the flight to Washington, where he would meet Crawford near the trap.

  A damned nuisance in the underground garage. The black van, parked in the space next to his, was over the line. It crowded into the space clearly marked “Mr. Frederick Lounds.”

  Lounds opened his door hard, banging the side of the van and leaving a dent and a mark. That would teach the inconsiderate bastard.

  Lounds was locking his car when the van door opened behind him. He was turning, had half-turned when the flat sap thocked over his ear. He got his hands up, but his knees were going and there was tremendous pressure around his neck and the air was shut off. When his heaving chest could fill again it sucked chloroform.

  Dolarhyde parked the van behind his house, climbed out and stretched. He had fought a crosswind all the way from Chicago and his arms were tired. He studied the night sky. The Perseid meteor shower was due soon, and he must not miss it.

  Revelation: And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them down to the earth . . .

  His doing in another time. He must see it and remember.

  Dolarhyde unlocked the back door and made his routine search of the house. When he came outside again he wore a stocking mask.

  He opened the van and attached a ramp. Then he rolled out Freddy Lounds. Lounds wore nothing but his shorts and a gag and blindfold. Though he was only semiconscious, he did not slump. He sat up very straight, his head against the high back of the old oak wheelchair. From the back of his head to the soles of his feet he was bonded to the chair with epoxy glue.

  Dolarhyde rolled him into the house and parked him in a corner of the parlor with his back to the room, as though he had misbehaved.

  “Are you too cool? Would you like a blanket?”

  Dolarhyde peeled off the sanitary napkins covering Lounds’s eyes and mouth. Lounds didn’t answer. The odor of chloroform hung on him.

  “I’ll get you a blanket.” Dolarhyde took an afghan from the sofa and tucked it around Lounds up to the chin, then pressed an ammonia bottle under his nose.

  Lounds’s eyes opened wide on a blurred joining of walls. He coughed and started talking.

  “Accident? Am I hurt bad?”

  The voice behind him: “No, Mr. Lounds. You’ll be just fine.”

  “My back hurts. My skin. Did I get burned? I hope to God I’m not burned.”

  “Burned? Burned. No. You just rest here. I’ll be with you in a little while.”

  “Let me lie down. Listen, I want you to call my office. My God, I’m in a Striker frame. My back’s broken—tell me the truth!”

  Footsteps going away.

  “What am I doing here?” The question shrill at the end.

  The answer came from far behind him. “Atoning, Mr. Lounds.”

  Lounds heard footsteps mounting stairs. He heard a shower running. His head was clearer now. He remembered leaving the office and driving, but he couldn’t remember after that. The side of his head throbbed and the smell of chloroform made him gag. Held rigidly erect, he was afraid he would vomit and drown. He opened his mouth wide and breathed deep. He could hear his heart.

  Lounds hoped he was asleep. He tried to raise his arm from the armrest, increasing the pull deliberately until the pain in his palm and arm was enough to wake him from any dream. He was not asleep. His mind gathered speed.

  By straining he could turn his eyes enough to see his arm for seconds at a time. He saw how he was fastened. This was no device to
protect broken backs. This was no hospital. Someone had him.

  Lounds thought he heard footsteps on the floor above, but they might have been his heartbeats.

  He tried to think. Strained to think. Keep cool and think, he whispered. Cool and think.

  The stairs creaked as Dolarhyde came down.

  Lounds felt the weight of him in every step. A presence behind him now.

  Lounds spoke several words before he could adjust the volume of his voice.

  “I haven’t seen your face. I couldn’t identify you. I don’t know what you look like. The Tattler, I work for The National Tattler, would pay a reward . . . a big reward for me. Half a million, a million maybe. A million dollars.”

  Silence behind him. Then a squeak of couch springs. He was sitting down, then.

  “What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”

  Put the pain and fear away and think. Now. For all time. To have some time. To have years. He hasn’t decided to kill me. He hasn’t let me see his face.

  “What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”

  “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

  “Do you know Who I Am, Mr. Lounds?”

  “No. I don’t want to know, believe me.”

  “According to you, I’m a vicious, perverted sexual failure. An animal, you said. Probably turned loose from an asylum by a do-good judge.” Ordinarily, Dolarhyde would have avoided the sibilant /s/ in “sexual.” In the presence of this audience, very far from laughter, he was freed. “You know now, don’t you?”

  Don’t lie. Think fast. “Yes.”

  “Why do you write lies, Mr. Lounds? Why do you say I’m crazy? Answer now.”

  “When a person . . . when a person does things that most people can’t understand, they call him . . .”

  “Crazy.”

  “They called, like . . . the Wright brothers. All through history—”

  “History. Do you understand what I’m doing, Mr. Lounds?”

  Understand. There it was. A chance. Swing hard. “No, but I think I’ve got an opportunity to understand, and then all my readers could understand too.”