The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [130]
Starling cut out the picture of Hannah and put it in her wallet. It was the only thing she saved.
She was healing.
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 60
Ardelia Mapp was a great tutor--- she could spot a test question in a lecture farther than a leopard can see a limp--- but she was not much of a runner. She told Starling it was because she was so weighted with facts.
She had fallen behind Starling on the jogging trail and caught up at the old DC-6 the FBI uses for hijack simulations. It was Sunday morning. They had been on the books for two days, and the pale sun felt good.
“So what did Pilcher say on the phone?” Mapp said, leaning against the landing gear.
“He and his sister have this place on the Chesa?peake.”
“Yeah, and?”
“His sister's there with her kids and dogs and maybe her husband.”
“So?”
“They're in one end of the house--- it's a big old dump on the water they inherited from his grand?mother.”
“Cut to the chase.”
“Pilch has the other end of the house. Next weekend, he wants us to go. Lots of rooms, he says. 'As many rooms as anybody might need,' I believe is the way he put it. His sister would call and invite me, he said.”
“No kidding. I didn't know people did that any?more.”
“He did this nice scenario--- no hassles, bundle up and walk on the beach, come in and there's a fire going, dogs jump all over you with their big sandy paws.”
“Idyllic, ummhumm, big sandy paws, go on.”
“It's kind of much, considering we've never had a date, even. He claims it's best to sleep with two or three big dogs when it gets really cold. He says they've got, enough dogs for everybody to have a couple.”
“Pilcher's setting you up for the old dogsuit trick, you snapped to that didn't you?”
“He claims to be a good cook. His sister say he is.”
“Oh, she called already.”
“Yep.”
“How'd she sound?”
“Okay. Sounded like she was in the other end of the house.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said, 'Yes, thank you very much,' is what I said.”
“Good,” Mapp said. “That's very good. Eat some crabs. Grab Pilcher, and smooch him on his face, go wild.”
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 61
Down the deep carpet in the corridor of the Mar?cus Hotel, a roomservice waiter trundled a cart.
At the door of suite 91, he stopped and rapped softly on the door with his gloved knuckle. He cocked his head and rapped again to be heard above the music from within--- Bach, Two- and ThreePart Inventions, Glenn Gould at the piano.
“Come.”
The gentleman with the bandage across his nose was in a dressing gown, writing at the desk.
“Put it by the windows. May I see the wine?”
The waiter brought it. The gentleman held it under the light of his desk lamp, touched the neck to his cheek.
“Open it, but leave it off the ice,” he said, and wrote a generous tip across the bottom of the bill. “I won't taste it now.”
He did not want the waiter handing him wine to taste--- he found the smell of the man's watchband ob?jectionable.
Dr. Lecter was in an excellent humor. His week had gone well. His appearance was coming right along, and as soon as a few small discolorations cleared, he could take off his bandages and pose for passport photos.
The actual work he was doing himself--- minor injec?tions of silicone in his nose. The silicone gel was not a prescription item, but the hypodermics and the Novo?caine were. He got around this difficulty by pinching a prescription off the counter of a busy pharmacy near the hospital. He blanked out the chicken scratches of the legitimate physician with typist's correction fluid and photocopied the blank prescription form. The first prescription he wrote was a copy of the one he stole, and he returned it to the pharmacy, so nothing was missing.
The palooka effect in his fine features was not pleas?ing, and he knew the silicone would move araund if he wasn't careful, but the job would do until he got to Rio.
When his hobbies began to absorb Him--- long before his first arrest--- Dr. Letter had made provi?sions for a time when he might be a fugitive. In the wall of a vacation cottage on the banks of the