The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [3]
“Dr. Chilton, I have an appointment with you now. It was set at your convenience, when you could give me some time. Things could come up during the inter?view--- I may need to go over some of his responses with you.”
“I really, really doubt it. Oh, I need to make a tele?phone call before we go. I'll catch up with you in the outer office.”
“I'd like to leave my coat and umbrella here.”
“Out there,” Chilton said. “Give them to Alan in the outer office. He'll put them away.”
Alan wore the pajamalike garment issued to the inmates. He was wiping out ashtrays with the tail of his shirt.
He rolled his tongue around in his cheek as he took Starling's coat.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You're more than welcome. How often do you shit?” Alan asked.
“What did you say?”
“Does it come out loooonnng?”
“I'll hang these somewhere myself.”
“You don't have anything in the way--- you can bend over and watch it come out and see if it changes color when the air hits it, do you do that? Does it look like you have a big brown tail?” He wouldn't let go of the coat.
“Dr. Chilton wants you in his office, right now,” Starling said.
“No I don't,” Dr. Chilton said. “Put the coat in the closet, Alan, and don't get it out while we're gone. Do it. I had a fulltime office girl, but the cutbacks robbed me of her. Now the girl who let you in types three hours a day, and then I have Alan. Where are all the office girls, Miss Starling?” His spectacles flashed at her. “Are you armed?”
“No, I'm not armed.”
“May I see your purse and briefcase?”
“You saw my credentials.”
“And they say you're a student. Let me see your things, please.”
----------
Clarice Starling flinched as the first of the heavy steel gates clashed shut behind her and the bolt shot home. Chilton walked slightly ahead, down the green institu?tional corridor in an atmosphere of Lysol and distant slammings. Starling was angry at herself for letting Chilton put his hand in her purse and briefcase, and she stepped hard on the anger so that she could concentrate. It was all right. She felt her control solid beneath her, like a good gravel bottom in a fast current.
“Lecter's a considerable nuisance,” Chilton said over his shoulder. “It takes an orderly at least ten minutes a day to remove the staples from the publications he receives. We tried to eliminate or reduce his subscrip?tions, but he wrote a brief and the court overruled us. The volume of his personal mail used to be enormous. Thankfully, it's dwindled since he's been overshadowed by other creatures in the news. For a while it seemed that every little student doing a master's thesis in psychology wanted something from Lecter in it. The medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of his byline.”
“He did a good piece on surgical addiction in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, I thought,” Starling said.
“You did, did you? We tried to study Lecter. We thought, 'Here's an opportunity to make a landmark study'--- it's so rare to get one alive.”
“One what?”
"A pure sociopath, that's obviously what he is. But he's impenetrable, much too sophisticated for the stan?dard tests. And, my, does he hate us. He thinks I'm his nemesis. Crawford's very clever--- isn't he?--- using you on Lecter.
“How do you mean, Dr. Chilton?”
''A young woman to 'turn him on,' I believe you call it. I don't believe Lecter's seen a woman in several years--- he may have gotten a glimpse of one of the cleaning people. We generally keep women out of there. They're trouble in detention."
Well fuck off, Chilton. “I graduated from the University of Virginia with honors, Doctor. It's not a charm school.”
“Then you should be able to remember the rules: Do not reach through the bars, do not touch the bars. You pass him nothing but soft paper. No pens, no pencils. He has his own felttipped pens some of the time. The paper you pass him must be free of staples, paper clips, or pins. Items are only passed to him through the slid?ing food carrier. Items come back out through the slid?ing food carrier. No exceptions. Do not accept anything