The Silence of the Lambs

  Then he sat on the sofa with a clipboard and worked out a provocative personal ad to run in the major papers:

  Junoesque creamy passion flower, 21, model, seeks man who appreciates quality AND quantity. Hand and cosmetic model, you’ve seen me in the magazine ads, now I’d like to see you. Send pix first letter.

  Crawford considered for a moment, scratched out “Junoesque,” and substituted “full-figured.”

  His head dipped and he dozed. The green screen of the computer terminal made tiny squares in the lenses of his glasses. Movement on the screen now, the lines crawling upward, moving on Crawford’s lenses. In his sleep he shook his head as though the image tickled him.

  The message was:

  MEMPHIS POX RECOVERED 2 ITEMS IN SEARCH OF LECTER’S CELL.

  (1) IMPROVISED HANDCUFF KEY MADE FROM BALLPOINT TUBE. INCISIONS BY ABRASION, BALTIMORE REQUESTED TO CHECK HOSPITAL CELL FOR TRACES OF MANUFACTURE, AUTH COPLEY, SAC MEMPHIS.

  (2) SHEET OF NOTEPAPER LEFT FLOATING IN TOILET BY FUGITIVE. ORIGINAL EN ROUTE TO WX DOCUMENT SECTION/LAB. GRAPHIC OF WRITING FOLLOWS. GRAPHIC SPLIT TO LANGLEY, ATTN: BENSON—CRYPTOGRAPHY.

  When the graphic appeared, rising like something peeping over the bottom edge of the screen, it was this:

  The soft double beep of the computer terminal did not wake Crawford, but three minutes later the telephone did. It was Jerry Burroughs at the National Crime Information Center hotline.

  “See your screen, Jack?”

  “Just a second,” Crawford said. “Yeah, okay.”

  “The lab’s got it already, Jack. The drawing Lecter left in the john. The numbers between the letters in Chilton’s name, it’s biochemistry—C33H36N4O6—it’s the formula for a pigment in human bile called bilirubin. Lab advises it’s a chief coloring agent in shit.”

  “Balls.”

  “You were right about Lecter, Jack. He was just jerking them around. Too bad for Senator Martin. Lab says bilirubin’s just about exactly the color of Chilton’s hair. Asylum humor, they call it. Did you see Chilton on the six o’clock news?”

  “No.”

  “Marilyn Sutter saw it upstairs. Chilton was blowing off about “The Search for Billy Rubin.” Then he went to dinner with a television reporter. That’s where he was when Lecter took a walk. What a pluperfect asshole.”

  “Lecter told Starling to ‘bear in mind’ that Chilton didn’t have a medical degree,” Crawford said.

  “Yeah I saw it in the summary. I think Chilton tried to fuck Starling’s what I think, and she sawed him off at the knees. He may be dumb but he ain’t blind. How is the kid?”

  “Okay, I think. Worn down.”

  “Think Lecter was jerking her off too?”

  “Maybe. We’ll stay with it, though. I don’t know what the clinics are doing, I keep thinking I should’ve gone after the records in court. I hate to have to depend on them. Midmorning, if we haven’t heard anything, we’ll go the court route.”

  “Say, Jack … you got some people outside that know what Lecter looks like, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t you know he’s laughing somewhere.”

  “Maybe not for long,” Crawford said.

  CHAPTER 43

  Dr. Hannibal Lecter stood at the registration desk of the elegant Marcus Hotel in St. Louis. He wore a brown hat and a raincoat buttoned to the neck. A neat surgical bandage covered his nose and cheeks.

  He signed the register “Lloyd Wyman,” a signature he had practiced in Wyman’s car.

  “How will you be paying, Mr. Wyman?” the clerk said.

  “American Express.” Dr. Lecter handed the man Lloyd Wyman’s credit card.

  Soft piano music came from the lounge. At the bar Dr. Lecter could see two people with bandages across their noses. A middle-aged couple crossed to the elevators, humming a Cole Porter tune. The woman wore a gauze patch over her eye.

  The clerk finished making the credit card impression. “You do know, Mr. Wyman, you’re entitled to use the hospital garage.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Dr. Lecter said. He had already parked Wyman’s car in the garage, with Wyman in the trunk.

  The bellman who carried Wyman’s bags to the small suite got one of Wyman’s five-dollar bills in compensation.

  Dr. Lecter ordered a drink and a sandwich and relaxed with a long shower.

  The suite seemed enormous to Dr. Lecter after his long confinement. He enjoyed going to and fro in his suite and walking up and down in it.

  From his windows he could see across the street the Myron and Sadie Fleischer Pavilion of St. Louis City Hospital, housing one of the world’s foremost centers for craniofacial surgery.

  Dr. Lecter’s visage was too well known for him to be able to take advantage of the plastic surgeons here, but it was one place in the world where he could walk around with a bandage on his face without exciting interest.

  He had stayed here once before, years ago, when he was doing psychiatric research in the superb Robert J. Brockman Memorial Library.

  Heady to have a window, several windows. He stood at his windows in the dark, watching the car lights move across the MacArthur Bridge and savoring his drink. He was pleasantly fatigued by the five-hour drive from Memphis.

  The only real rush of the evening had been in the underground garage at Memphis International Airport. Cleaning up with cotton pads and alcohol and distilled water in the back of the parked ambulance was not at all convenient. Once he was in the attendant’s whites, it was just a matter of catching a single traveler in a deserted aisle of long-term parking in the great garage. The man obligingly leaned into the trunk of his car for his sample case, and never saw Dr. Lecter come up behind him.

  Dr. Lecter wondered if the police believed he was fool enough to fly from the airport.

  The only problem on the drive to St. Louis was finding the lights, the dimmers, and the wipers in the foreign car, as Dr. Lecter was unfamiliar with stalk controls beside the steering wheel.

  Tomorrow he would shop for things he needed, hair bleach, barbering supplies, a sunlamp, and there were other, prescription, items that he would obtain to make some immediate changes in his appearance. When it was convenient, he would move on.

  There was no reason to hurry.

  CHAPTER 44

  Ardelia Mapp was in her usual position, propped up in bed with a book. She was listening to all-news radio. She turned it off when Clarice Starling trudged in. Looking into Starling’s drawn face, blessedly she didn’t ask anything except, “Want some tea?”

  When she was studying, Mapp drank a beverage she brewed of mixed loose leaves her grandmother sent her, which she called “Smart People’s Tea.”

  Of the two brightest people Starling knew, one was also the steadiest person she knew and the other was the most frightening. Starling hoped that gave her some balance in her acquaintance.

  “You were lucky to miss today,” Mapp said. “That damn Kim Won ran us right into the ground. I’m not lying. I believe they must have more gravity in Korea than we do. Then they come over here and get light, see, get jobs teaching PE because it’s not any work for them.… John Brigham came by.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight, a little while ago. Wanted to know if you were back yet. He had his hair slicked down. Shifted around like a freshman in the lobby. We had a little talk. He said if you’re behind and we need to jam instead of shoot during the range period the next couple of days, he’ll open up the range this weekend and let us make it up. I said I’d let him know. He’s a nice man.”

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “Did you know he wants you to shoot against the DEA and Customs in the interservice match?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not the Women’s. The Open. Next question: Do you know the Fourth Amendment stuff for Friday?”

  “A lot of it I do.”

  “Okay, what’s Chimel versus California?”

  “Searches in secondary schools.”

  “What about school searche
s?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s the ‘immediate reach’ concept. Who was Schneckloth?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Schneckloth versus Bustamonte.”

  “Is it the reasonable expectation of privacy?”

  “Boo to you. Expectation of privacy is the Katz principle. Schneckloth is consent to search. I can see we’ve got to jam on the books, my girl. I’ve got the notes.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “No. But tomorrow you’ll wake up with your mind fertile and ignorant, and then we’ll begin to plant the harvest for Friday. Starling, Brigham said—he’s not supposed to tell, so I promised—he said you’ll beat the hearing. He thinks that signifying son of a bitch Krendler won’t remember you two days from now. Your grades are good, we’ll knock this stuff out easy.” Mapp studied Starling’s tired face. “You did the best anybody could for that poor soul, Starling. You stuck your neck out for her and you got your butt kicked for her and you moved things along. You deserve a chance yourself. Why don’t you go ahead and crash? I’m fixing to shut this down myself.”

  “Ardelia. Thanks.”

  And after the lights were out.

  “Starling?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who do you think’s prettiest, Brigham or Hot Bobby Lowrance?”

  “That’s a hard one.”

  “Brigham’s got a tattoo on his shoulder, I could see it through his shirt. What does it say?”

  “I wouldn’t have any idea.”

  “Will you let me know soon as you find out?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I told you about Hot Bobby’s python briefs.”

  “You just saw ’em through the window when he was lifting weights.”

  “Did Gracie tell you that? That girl’s mouth is gonna—”

  Starling was asleep.

  CHAPTER 45

  Shortly before 3:00 A.M., Crawford, dozing beside his wife, came awake. There was a catch in Bella’s breathing and she had stirred on her bed. He sat up and took her hand.

  “Bella?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. Her eyes were open for the first time in days. Crawford put his face close before hers, but he didn’t think she could see him.

  “Bella, I love you, kid,” he said in case she could hear.

  Fear brushed the walls of his chest, circling inside him like a bat in a house. Then he got hold of it.

  He wanted to get something for her, anything, but he did not want her to feel him let go of her hand.

  He put his ear to her chest. He heard a soft beat, a flutter, and then her heart stopped. There was nothing to hear, there was only a curious cool rushing. He didn’t know if the sound was in her chest or only in his ears.

  “God bless you and keep you with Him … and with your folks,” Crawford said, words he wanted to be true.

  He gathered her to him on the bed, sitting against the headboard, held her to his chest while her brain died. His chin pushed back the scarf from the remnants of her hair. He did not cry. He had done all that.

  Crawford changed her into her favorite, her best bed gown and sat for a while beside the high bed, holding her hand against his cheek. It was a square, clever hand, marked with a lifetime of gardening, marked by IV needles now.

  When she came in from the garden, her hands smelled like thyme.

  (Think about it like egg white on your fingers,” the girls at school had counseled Bella about sex. She and Crawford had joked about it in bed, years ago, years later, last year. Don’t think about that, think about the good stuff, the pure stuff. That was the pure stuff. She wore a round hat and white gloves and going up in the elevator the first time he whistled a dramatic arrangement of “Begin the Beguine.” In the room she teased him that he had the cluttered pockets of a boy.)

  Crawford tried going into the next room—he still could turn when he wanted to and see her through the open door, composed in the warm light of the bedside lamp. He was waiting for her body to become a ceremonial object apart from him, separate from the person he had held upon the bed and separate from the life’s companion he held now in his mind. So he could call them to come for her.

  His empty hands hanging palms forward at his sides, he stood at the window looking to the empty east. He did not look for dawn; east was only the way the window faced.

  CHAPTER 46

  “Ready, Precious?”

  Jame Gumb was propped against the headboard of his bed and very comfortable, the little dog curled up warm on his tummy.

  Mr. Gumb had just washed his hair and he had a towel wrapped around his head. He rummaged in the sheets, found the remote control for his VCR, and pushed the play button.

  He had composed his program from two pieces of videotape copied onto one cassette. He watched it every day when he was making vital preparations, and he always watched it just before he harvested a hide.

  The first tape was from scratchy film of Movietone News, a black-and-white newsreel from 1948. It was the quarter-finals of the Miss Sacramento contest, a preliminary event on the long road to the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City.

  This was the swimsuit competition, and all the girls carried flowers as they came in a file to the stairs and mounted to the stage.

  Mr. Gumb’s poodle had been through this many times and she squinted her eyes when she heard the music, knowing she’d be squeezed.

  The beauty contestants looked very World War II. They wore Rose Marie Reid swimsuits, and some of the faces were lovely. Their legs were nicely shaped too, some of them, but they lacked muscle tone and seemed to lap a little at the knee.

  Gumb squeezed the poodle.

  “Precious, here she comes, hereshecomes hereshecomes!”

  And here she came, approaching the stairs in her white swimsuit, with a radiant smile for the young man who assisted at the stairs, then quick on her high heels away, the camera following the backs of her thighs: Mom. There was Mom.

  Mr. Gumb didn’t have to touch his remote control, he’d done it all when he dubbed this copy. In reverse, here she came backward, backward down the stairs, took back her smile from the young man, backed up the aisle, now forward again, and back and forward, forward and back.

  When she smiled at the young man, Gumb smiled too.

  There was one more shot of her in a group, but it always blurred in freeze-frame. Better just to run it at speed and get the glimpse. Mom was with the other girls, congratulating the winners.

  The next item he’d taped off cable television in a motel in Chicago—he’d had to rush out and buy a VCR and stay an extra night to get it. This was the loop film they run on seedy cable channels late at night as background for the sex ads that crawl up the screen in print. The loops are made of junk film, fairly innocuous naughty movies from the forties and fifties, and there was nudist camp volleyball and the less explicit parts of thirties sex movies where the male actors wore false noses and still had their socks on. The sound was any music at all. Right now it was “The Look of Love,” totally out of sync with the sprightly action.

  There was nothing Mr. Gumb could do about the ads crawling up the screen. He just had to put up with them.

  Here it is, an outdoor pool—in California, judging from the foliage. Good pool furniture, everything very fifties. Naked swimming, some graceful girls. A few of them might have appeared in a couple of B-pictures. Sprightly and bouncing, they climbed out of the pool and ran, much faster than the music, to the ladder of a water slide, climbed up—down they came, Wheeee! Breasts lifting as they plunged down the slide, laughing, legs out straight, Splash!

  Here came Mom. Here she came, climbing out of the pool behind the girl with the curly hair. Her face was partly covered by a crawl ad from Sinderella, a sex boutique, but here you saw her going away, and there she went up the ladder all shiny and wet, wonderfully buxom and supple, with a small cesarean scar and down the slide Wheeee! So beautiful, and even if he couldn’t see her face, Mr. Gumb
knew in his heart it was Mom, filmed after the last time in his life that he ever got to really see her. Except in his mind, of course.

  The scene switched to a filmed ad for a marital aid and abruptly ended.

  The poodle squinted her eyes two seconds before Mr. Gumb hugged her tight.

  “Oh, Precious. Come here to Mommy. Mommy’s gonna be so beautiful.”

  Much to do, much to do, much to do to get ready for tomorrow.

  He could never hear it from the kitchen even at the top of its voice, thank goodness, but he could hear it on the stairs as he went down to the basement. He had hoped it would be quiet and asleep. The poodle, riding beneath his arm, growled back at the sounds from the pit.

  “You’ve been raised better than that,” he said into the fur on the back of her head.

  The oubliette room is through a door to the left at the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t spare it a glance, nor did he listen to the words from the pit—as far as he was concerned, they bore not the slightest resemblance to English.

  Mr. Gumb turned right into the workroom, put the poodle down and turned on the lights. A few moths fluttered and lit harmlessly on the wire mesh covering the ceiling lights.

  Mr. Gumb was meticulous in the workroom. He always mixed his fresh solutions in stainless steel, never in aluminum.

  He had learned to do everything well ahead of time. As he worked he admonished himself:

  You have to be orderly, you have to be precise, you have to be expeditious, because the problems are formidable.

  The human skin is heavy—sixteen to eighteen percent of body weight—and slippery. An entire hide is hard to handle and easy to drop when it’s still wet. Time is important too; skin begins to shrink immediately after it has been harvested, most notably from young adults, whose skin is tightest to begin with.