Page 128
Story: Hannibal (Hannibal Lecter 3)
The chair groaned under Barney’s weight. “If the chair legs break don’t shoot me, I can’t help it,” he said.
“Do you know anything about Clarice Starling?”
“No.”
Mapp picked up the small-caliber gun. “I’m not fucking around with you, Barney. The second I think you’re lying, Nursey, I’m gonna darken your stool, do you believe me?”
“Yes.” Barney knew it was true.
“I’m going to ask you again. Do you know anything that would help me find Clarice Starling? The post office says you had your mail forwarded to Mason Verger’s place for a month. What the fuck, Barney?”
“I worked up there. I was taking care of Mason Verger, and he asked me all about Lecter. I didn’t like it up there and I quit. Mason was pretty much of a bastard.”
“Starling’s gone away.”
“I know.”
“Maybe Lecter took her, maybe the pigs got her. If he took her what would he do with her?”
“I’m being honest with you—I don’t know. I’d help Starling if I could. Why wouldn’t I? I kind of liked her and she was getting me expunged. Look in her reports or notes or—”
“I have. I want you to understand something, Barney. This is a one-time-only offer. If you know anything you better tell me now. If I ever find out, no matter how long from now, that you held out something that might have helped, I will come back here and this gun will be the last thing you ever see. I will kill your big ugly ass. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know anything?”
“No.” The longest silence he could ever remember.
“Just sit still there until I’m gone.”
_______
It took Barney an hour and a half to go to sleep. He lay in his bed looking at the ceiling, his brow, broad as a dolphin’s, now sweaty, now dry Barney thought about callers to come. Just before he turned out his light, he went into his bathroom and took from his DOP kit a stainless-steel shaving mirror, Marine Corps issue.
He padded into the kitchen, opened an electrical switch box in the wall and taped the mirror inside the switch box door.
It was all he could do. He twitched in his sleep like a dog.
After his next shift, he brought a rape kit home from the hospital.
CHAPTER
97
THERE WAS only so much Dr. Lecter could do to the German’s house while retaining the furnishings. Flowers and screens helped. Color was interesting to see against the massive furniture and high darkness; it was an ancient, compelling contrast, like a butterfly lit on an armored fist.
His absentee landlord apparently had a fixation on Leda and the Swan. The interspecies coupling was represented in no less than four bronzes of varying quality, the best a reproduction of Donatello, and eight paintings. One painting delighted Dr. Lecter, an Anne Shingleton with its genius anatomical articulation and some real heat in the fucking. The others he draped. The landlord’s ghastly collection of hunting bronzes was draped as well.
Early in the morning the doctor laid his table carefully for three, studying it from different angles with the tip of his finger beside his nose, changed candlesticks twice and went from his damask place mats to a gathered tablecloth to reduce to more manageable size the oval dining table.
The dark and forbidding sideboard looked less like an aircraft carrier when high service pieces and bright copper warmers stood on it. In fact, Dr. Lecter pulled out several of the drawers and put flowers in them, in a kind of hanging gardens effect.
He could see that he had too many flowers in the room, and must add more to make it come back right again. Too many was too many, but way too many was just right. He settled on two flower arrangements for the table: a low mound of peonies in a silver dish, white as SNO BALLS, and a large, high arrangement of massed Bells of Ireland, Dutch iris, orchids and parrot tulips that screened away much of the table’s expanse and created an intimate space.
A small ice storm of crystal stood before the service plates, but the flat silver was in a warmer to be laid at the last moment.
The first course would be prepared at table, and accordingly he organized his alcohol burners, with his copper fait-tout and sauté pan, his condiments and his autopsy saw.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128 (Reading here)
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137