Hannibal - Thomas Harris [63]
Rinaldo Pazzi's spirits climbed with the airplane, knowing in his heart that he would not grow old here, dependent on the whim of his police superiors, trying to last in order to get his pension.
He had been terribly afraid that Dr Lecter would disappear after killing.Gnocco. When Pazzi spotted Lecter's work lamp again in Santa Croce, he felt something like salvation; the doctor believed that he was safe.
The death of the Gypsy caused no ripple at all in the calm of the Questura and was believed drugrelated fortunately there were discarded syringes on the ground around him, a common sight in Florence, where syringes were available for free.
Going to see the money. Pazzi had insisted on it.
The visual Rinaldo Pazzi remembered sights completely: the first time he ever saw his penis erect, the first time he saw his own blood, the first woman he ever saw naked, the blur of the first fist coming to strike him. I remembered wandering casually into a side chapel of a Sienese church and looking into the face of St Catherine of Siena unexpectedly, her mummified head in its immaculate white wimple resting in a reliquary shaped like a church.
Seeing three million U.S. dollars had the same impact on him.
Three hundred banded blocks of hundreddollar bills in nonessential serial numbers.
In a severe little room, like a chapel, in the Geneva Credit Suisse, Mason Verger's lawyer showed Rinaldo Pazzi the money. It was wheeled in from the vault in four deep lock boxes with brass number plates. The Credit Suisse also provided a counting machine, a scale and a clerk to operate them. Pazzi dismissed the clerk. He put his hands on top of the money once.
Rinaldo Pazzi was a very competent investigator. He had spotted and arrested scam artists for twenty years. Standing in the presence of this money, listening to the arrangements, he detected no false note; if he gave them Hannibal Lecter, Mason would give him the money.
In a hot sweet rush Pazzi realized that these people were not fooling around- Mason Verger would actually pay him. And he had no illusions about Lecter's fate. He was selling the man into torture and death. To Pazzi's credit, he acknowledged to himself what he was doing.
Our freedom is worth more than the monster's life. Our happiness is more important than his suffering, he thought with the cold egoism of the damned. Whether the “our” was magisterial or stood for Rinaldo and his wife is a difficult question, and there may not be a single answer.
In this room, scrubbed and Swiss, neat as a wimple, Pazzi took the final vow. He turned from the money and nodded to the lawyer, Mr. Konie. From the first box, the lawyer counted out one hundred thousand dollars and handed it to Pazzi.
Mr. Konie spoke briefly into a telephone and handed the receiver to Pazzi. “This is a land line, encrypted,” he said.
The American voice Pazzi heard had a peculiar rhythm, words rushed into a single breath with a pause between, and the plosives were lost. The sound of it made Pazzi slightly dizzy, as though he were straining for breath along with the speaker.
Without preamble, the question: “Where is Dr Lecter?”
Pazzi, the money in one hand and the phone in the other, did not hesitate..“He is the one who studies the Palazzo Capponi in Florence. He is the . . . curator.”
“Would you please show your identification to Mr. Konie and hand him the telephone. He won't say your name into the telephone.”
Mr. Konie consulted a list from his pocket and said some prearranged code words to Mason, then he handed the phone back to Pazzi.
“You get the rest of the money when he is alive in our hands,” Mason