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What else did Dr. Lecter have a taste for, that Starling knew a lot about?

He likes me, she thought.

How quickly he had responded to her plight. Even considering the delay from using a remailing service to write to her. Too bad the postage meter lead fizzled—the meter was in such a public place any thief could use it.

How quickly did the National Tattler get to Italy? That’s one place he saw Starling’s trouble, a copy was found in the Palazzo Capponi. Did the scandal sheet have a Web site? Also, if he had a computer in Italy, he might have read a summary of the gunfight on the FBI’s public Web site. What might be learned from Dr. Lecter’s computer?

No computer was listed among the personal effects at Palazzo Capponi.

Still, she had seen something. She got out the photos of the library at the Palazzo Capponi. Here was a picture of the beautiful desk where he wrote to her. Here on the desk was a computer. A Phillips laptop. In subsequent pictures it was gone.

With her dictionary, Starling painfully composed a fax to the Questura in Florence:

Fra le cose personali del dottor Lecter, c’è un computer portatile?

And so, with small steps, Clarice Starling began to pursue Dr. Lecter down the corridors of his taste, with more confidence in her footing than was entirely justified.

CHAPTER

43

MASON VERGER’S assistant Cordell, with an example posted in a frame on his desk, recognized the distinctive handwriting at once. The stationery was from the Excelsior Hotel in Florence, Italy.

Like an increasing number of wealthy people in the era of the Unabomber, Mason had his own mail fluoroscope, similar to the one at the U.S. Post Office.

Cordell pulled on some gloves and checked the letter. The fluoroscope showed no wires or batteries. In accordance with Mason’s strict instructions, he copied the letter and the envelope on the copying machine, handling it with tweezers, and changed gloves before picking up the copy and delivering it to Mason.

In Dr. Lecter’s familiar copperplate:

Dear Mason,

Thank you for posting such a huge bounty on me. I wish you would increase it. As an early-warning system, the bounty is better than radar. It inclines authorities everywhere to forsake their duty and scramble after me privately, with the results you see.

Actually, I’m writing to refresh your memory on the subject of your former nose. In your inspirational antidrug interview the other day in the Ladies’ Home Journal you claim that you fed your nose, along with the rest of your face, to the pooches, Skippy and Spot, all waggy at your feet. Not so: You ate it yourself, for refreshment. From the crunchy sound when you chewed it up, I would say it had a consistency similar to that of a chicken gizzard— “Tastes just like chicken!” was your comment at the time. I was reminded of the sound in a bistro when a French person tucks into a gésier salad.

You don’t remember that, Mason?

Speaking of chicken, you told me in therapy that, while you were subverting the underprivileged children at your summer camp, you learned that chocolate irritates your urethra. You don’t remember that either, do you?

Don’t you think it likely you told me all sorts of things you don’t remember now?

There is an inescapable parallel between you and Jezebel, Mason. Keen Bible student that you are, you will recall the dogs ate Jezebel’s face, along with the rest of her, after the eunuchs threw her out the window.

Your people might have assassinated me in the street. But you wanted me alive, didn’t you? From the aroma of your henchmen, it’s obvious how you planned to entertain me. Mason, Mason. Since you want to see me so badly, let me give you some words of comfort, and you know I never lie.

Before you die you will see my face.

Sincerely,

Hannibal Lecter, MD

P.S. I worry, though, that you won’t live that long, Mason. You must avoid the new strains of pneumonia. You’re very susceptible, prone as you are (and will remain). I would recommend vaccination immediately, along with immunization shots for hepatitis A and B. Don’t want to lose you prematurely.

Mason seemed somewhat out of breath when he finished reading. He waited, waited and in his own good time said something to Cordell, which Cordell could not hear.

Cordell leaned close and was rewarded with a spray of spit when Mason spoke again:

“Get me Paul Krendler on the phone. And get me the Pigmaster.”