Hannibal - Thomas Harris [30]
“Hello,” he said, his tongue thick with thrush. From five feet Starling could smell his breath. Beneath her jacket, her hand moved from the pistol to the Mace.
“Hello,” Starling said. “Would you please stand over there against the bars?”
The man did not move. “Are you Jesa?” he asked.
“No,” Starling said. “I'm not Jesus.”
The voice. Starling remembered the voice.
“Are you Jesa!” His face was working.
That voice. Come on, think. “Hello, Sammie,” she said. “How are you? I was just thinking about you.”
What about Sammie? The information, served up fast, was not exactly in order. Put his mother's head in the collection plate while the congregation was singing “Give of Your Best to the Master.”
Said it was the nicest thing he had. Highway Baptist Church somewhere. Angry, Dr Lecter said, because Jesus is so late.
“Are you Jesa?” he said, plaintive this time. He reached in his pocket and came out with a cigarette butt, a good one more than two inches long. He put it on his shard of plate and held it out in offering.
“Sammie, I'm sorry, I'm not. I'm-”
Sammie suddenly livid, furious that she is not Jesus, his voice booming in the wet corridor:
I WAN TO G0 WI JESA I WAN TO GO WIV CRIEZ!
He raised the plate shard, its sharp edge like a hoe, and took a step toward Starling, both his feet in the water now and his face contorted, his free hand clutching the air between them.
She felt the cabinets hard at her back.
“YOU CAN GO WITH JESUS.. IF YOU ACT REAL NICE,” Starling recited, clear and loud as though she called to him in a far place.
“Uh huh,” Sammie said calmly and stopped.
Starling fished in her purse, found her candy bar. “Sammie, I have a Snickers..Do you like Snickers?”
He said nothing.
She put the Snickers on a manila folder and held it out to him as he had held out the plate.
He took the first bite before he removed the wrapper, spit out the paper and bit again, eating half the candy bar.
“Sammie, has anybody else been down here?”
He ignored her question, put the remainder of the candy bar on his plate and disappeared behind a pile of mattresses in his old cell.
“What the hell is this?”
A woman's voice. “Thank you, Sammie.”
“Who are you?” Starling called.
“None of your damn business.”
“Do you live here with Sammie.”
“Of course not. I'm here on a date. Do you think you could leave us alone?”
“Yes. Answer my question. How long have you been here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Has anybody else been here?”
“Some bums Sammie run out.”
“Sammie protects you?”
“Mess with me and find out. I can walk good. I get stuff to eat, he's got a safe place to eat it. Lot of people have deals like that.”
“Is either one of you in a program someplace? Do you want to be? I can help you there.”
“He done all that. You go out in the world and do all that shit and come back to what you know. What are you looking for? What do you want?”
“Some files.”
“If it ain't here, somebody stole it, how smart do you have to be to figure that out?”
“Sammie?”
Starling said. “Sammie?”
Sammie did not answer. “He's asleep,” his friend said.
“If I leave some money out here, will you buy some food?”
Starling said..“No, I'll buy liquor. You can find food. You can't find liquor. Don't let the doorknob catch you in the butt on the way out.”
“I'll put the money on the desk,” Starling said. She felt like running, remembered leaving Dr Lecter, remembered holding on to herself as she walked toward what was then the calm island of Barney's orderly station.
In the light of the stairwell, Starling took a twentydollar bill out of her wallet. She put the money on Barney's scarred, abandoned desk, and weighted it with an empty wine bottle. She unfolded a plastic shopping bag and put in it the Lecter file jacket containing Miggs's records and the empty Miggs jacket.
“Goodbye.” “Bye, Sammie,” she called to the man who had circled in the world and come back to the hell he knew. She wanted to tell him she hoped Jesus would come soon, but it