Hannibal - Thomas Harris [147]
Cordell palmed a vial of Pavulon and held it close enough to Dr Lector's open eye, but not close enough to get bitten.
The firelight played on the side of Cordell's avid face, his eyes were hot and happy. “You've got lots of money, Dr Lector. Everybody says so. I know how this stuff works - I put money around in places too. Take it out, move it, fuss with it. I can move mine on the phone and I bet you can too.”
Cordell took a cell phone from his pocket. “We'll call your banker, you say him a code, he'll confirm to me and I'll fix you right up.”
He held up the spinal syringe. “Squirt, squirt. Talk to me.”
Dr Lector mumbled, his head down. “Suitcase” and “locker” were all Cordell could hear.
“Come on, Doctor, and then you can just sleep. Come on.”
“Unmarked hundreds,” Dr Lector said, and his voice trailed away.
Cordell leaned closer and Dr Lector struck to the length of his neck, caught Cordell's eyebrow in his small sharp teeth and ripped a sizeable piece of it out as Cordell leaped backward. Dr Lector spit the eyebrow like a grape skin into Cordell's face.
Cordell mopped the wound and put a tape butterfly on it that gave him a quizzical expression.
He packed up his syringe. “All that relief, wasted,” he said. “You'll look at it differently before daylight. You know I have stimulants to take you quite the other way. And I'll make you wait.”
He took the poker from the fire.
“I'm going to hook you up now,” Cordell said. “Whenever you resist me I'll burn you. This is what it feels like.”
He touched the glowing end of the poker to Dr Lector's chest and crisped his nipple through his shirt. He had to smother the widening circle of fire on the doctor's shirtfront.
Dr Lector did not make a sound.
Carlo backed the forklift into the tack room. With Piero and Carlo lifting together, Tommaso ever ready with the tranquilizer rifle, they moved Dr Lector to the fork and shackled his single tree to the front of the machine. He was seated on the fork, his arms bound to the single tree, with his legs extended, each leg fastened to one tine of the fork..Cordell inserted an IV needle with a butterfly into the back of each of Dr Lector's hands. He had to stand on a bale of hay to hang the plasma bottles on the machine on each side of him. Cordell stood back and admired his work. Odd to see the doctor splayed there with an IV in each hand, like a parody of something Cordell couldn't quite remember. Cordell rigged slipknot tourniquets just above each knee with cords that could be pulled behind the fence to keep the doctor from bleeding to death. They could not be tightened now. Mason would be furious if Lecter's feet were numb.
Time to get Mason downstairs and put him in the van. The vehicle, parked behind the barn, was cold. The Sards had left their lunch in it. Cordell cursed and threw their cooler out on the ground. He'd have to vacuum the fucking thing at the house. He'd have to air it out too. The fucking Sards had been smoking in here too, after he forbade it. They'd replaced the cigarette lighter and left the power cord of the car beacon monitor still swinging from the dash.
Hannibal
Chapter 86
STARLING SWITCHED off the Mustang's interior light and pulled the trunk release before she opened the door.
If Dr Lecter was here, if she could get him, maybe she could put him cuffed hand and foot in the trunk and get as far as the county jail. She had four sets of cuffs and enough line to hogtie him and keep him from kicking. Better not to think about how strong he was.
There was some frost on the gravel when she put her feet out. The old car groaned as her weight came off the springs.
“Got to complain don't you, you old son of a bitch,” she said to the car beneath her breath. Suddenly she remembered talking to Hannah, the horse she rode away into the night from the slaughter of the lambs. She did not close the car door all the way. The keys went into a tight trouser pocket so they would not tinkle.
The night was clear under a quarter moon