Hannibal - Thomas Harris [27]
Starling would have been glad of some company, even his, but he would slow her down. “No, go on. Where's your office?”
“Down the block there where the driver's license bureau was before.”
“If I'm not back in an hour-”
He looked at his watch. “I'm supposed to be off in a half hour.”
That's just about E goddamned nuff. “What you're going to do for me, sir, is wait for your keys in your office. If I'm not back in an hour, call this number here on the card and show them where I went. If you aren't there when I come outif you have closed up and gone home, I will personally go to see your supervisor in the morning to report you. In additionin addition you will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service and your situation reviewed by the Bureau of Immigration and . . . and Naturalization. Do you understand? I'd appreciate a reply, sir.”
“I would have waited for you, of course. You don't have to say these things.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” Starling said.
The caretaker put his big hands on the railing to pull himself up to sidewalk level and Starling heard his uneven gait trail off to silence. She pushed open the door and went in to a landing on the fire stairs. High, barred windows in the stairwell admitted the gray light. She debated whether to lock the door behind her and settled on tying the chain in a knot inside the door so she could open it if she lost the key.
On Starling's previous trips to the asylum, to interview Dr Hannibal Lecter, she came through the front entrance and now it took her a moment to orient herself.
She climbed the fire stairs to the main floor. The frosted windows further cut the failing daylight and the room was in semidarkness. With her heavy.flashlight, Starling found a switch and turned on the overhead light, three bulbs still burning in a broken fixture. The raw ends of the telephone wires lay on top of the receptionist's desk.
Vandals with spray cans of paint had been in the building. An eightfoot phallus and testicles decorated the reception room wall, along with the inscription FARON MAMA JERK ME OF.
The door to the director's office was open. Starling stood in the doorway. It was here she came on her first FBI assignment, when she was still a trainee, still believed everything, still thought that if you could do the job, if you could cut it, you would be accepted, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or whether or not you were a good old boy. Of all this, there remained to her one article of faith. She believed that she could cut it.
Here Hospital Director Chilton had offered his greasy hand, and come on to her. Here he had traded secrets and eavesdropped and, believing he was as smart as Hannibal Lecter, had made the decisions that allowed Lecter to escape with so much bloodshed.
Chilton's desk remained in the office, but there was no chair, it being small enough to steal. The drawers were empty except for a crushed AlkaSeltzer. Two filing cabinets remained in the office. They had simple locks and former technical agent Starling had them open in less than a minute. A desiccated sandwich in a paper bag and some office forms for the methadone clinic were in a bottom drawer, along with breath freshener and a tube of hair tonic, a comb and some condoms.
Starling thought about the dungeonlike basement level of the asylum where Dr Lecter had lived for eight years. She didn't want to go down there. She could use her cell phone and ask for a city police unit to go down there with her. She could ask the Baltimore field office to send another FBI agent with her. It was late on the gray afternoon and there was no way, even now, she could avoid the rushhour traffic in Washington. If she waited, it would be worse.
She leaned on Chilton's desk in spite of the dust and tried to decide. Did she really think there might be files in the