Hannibal - Thomas Harris [20]
There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named - the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt. Starling saw it in Margot Verger's face. All Starling said was “Thank you.”
To Starling's surprise, the first room in the wing was a large and well- equipped playroom. Two AfricanAmerican children played among oversized stuffed animals, one riding a Big Wheel and the other pushing a truck along the floor. A variety of tricycles and wagons were parked in the corners and in the center was a large jungle gym with the floor heavily padded beneath it.
In a corner of the playroom, a tall man in a nurse's uniform sat on a love seat reading Vogue. A number of video cameras were mounted on the walls, some high, others at eye level. One camera high in the corner tracked Starling and Margot Verger, its lens rotating to focus.
Starling was past the point where the sight of a brown child pierced her, but she was keenly aware of these children. Their cheerful industry with the toys was pleasant to see as she and Margot Verger passed through the room.
“Mason likes to watch the kids,” Margot Verger said. “It scares them to see him, all but the littlest ones, so he does it this way. They ride ponies after. They're daycare kids out of child welfare in Baltimore.”
Mason Verger's chamber is approached only through his bathroom, a facility worthy of a spa that takes up the entire width of the wing. It is institutionallooking, all steel and chrome and industrial carpet, with wide- doored showers, stainlesssteel tubs with lifting devices over them, coiled orange hoses, steam rooms and vast glass cabinets of unguents from the Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The air in the bathroom was still steam- from recent use and the scents of balsam and wintergreen hung in the air.
Starling could see light under the door to Mason Verger's chamber. It went out as his sister touched the doorknob.
A seating area in the corner of Mason Verger's chamber was severely lit from above. A passable print of William Blake's “The Ancient of Days” hung above the couchGod measuring with his calipers. The picture was draped with black to commemorate the recent passing of the Verger patriarch. The rest of the room was dark.
From the darkness came the sound of a machine working rhythmically, sighing at each stroke.
“Good afternoon, Agent Starling.”
A resonant voice mechanically amplified, the fricative f lost out of afternoon.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Verger,” Starling said into the darkness, the overhead light hot on the top of her head. Afternoon was someplace else. Afternoon did.not enter here.
“Have a seat.”
Going to have to do this. Now is good. Now is called .for.
“Mr. Verger, the discussion we'll have is in the nature of a deposition and I'll need to taperecord it. Is that all right with you?”
“Sure.”
The voice came between the sighs of the machine, the sibilant s lost from the word. "Margot, I think you can leave us now.
Without a look at Starling, Margot Verger left in a whistle of riding pants.
“Mr. Verger, I'd like to attach this microphone to your - clothing or your pillow if you're comfortable with that, or I'll call a nurse to do it if you prefer.”
“By all means,” he said, minus the b and the m. He waited for power from the next mechanical exhalation. “You can do it yourself, Agent Starling. I'm right over here.”
There were no light switches Starling could find at once. She thought she might see better with the glare out of her eyes and she went into the darkness, one hand before her, toward the smell of wintergreen and balsam.
She was closer to the bed than she thought when he turned on the light.
Starling's face did not change. Her hand holding the clipon microphone jerked backward, perhaps an inch.
Her first thought was separate from the feelings in her chest and stomach; it was the observation that his speech anomalies resulted from his total lack of lips. Her second thought was the recognition that he was not blind. His single blue eye was looking at her through a sort of monocle with a tube attached