Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

Starling could see that Crawford had chosen the van for its communications-- it had the new Voice Privacy system-- but the job would have been easier from his office. Here he had to juggle his notebooks on the tiny desk in marginal light, and they bounced each time the tires hit a tar strip. Starling's field experience was small, but she knew how unusual it was for a section chief to be booming along in a van on an errand like this. He could have briefed her over the radio telephone. She was glad he had not.

Starling had the feeling that the quiet and calm in this van, the time allowed for this mission to proceed in an orderly way, had been purchased at a high price. Listening to Crawford on the phone confirmed it.

He was speaking with the Director at home now. "No sir. Did they rollover for it?… How long? No sir. No. No wire. Tommy, that's my recommendation, I stand on it. I do not want her to wear a wire. Dr. Bloom says the same thing. He's fogged in at O'Hare. He'll come as soon as it clears. Right."

Then Crawford had a cryptic telephone conversation with the night nurse at his house. When he had finished, he looked out the one-way window of the van for perhaps a minute, his glasses held on his knee in the crook of his finger, his face looking naked as the oncoming lights crawled across it. Then he put the glasses on and turned back to Starling.

"We have Lecter for three days. If we don't get any results, Baltimore sweats him until the court pulls them off."

"Sweating him didn't work last time. Dr. Lecter doesn't sweat much."

"What did he give them after all that, a paper chicken?"

"A chicken, yes." The crumpled origami chicken was still in Starling's purse. She smoothed it out on the little desk and made it peck.

"I don't blame the Baltimore cops. He's their prisoner. If Catherine floats, they have to be able to tell Senator Martin they tried it all."

"How is Senator Martin?"

"Game but hurting. She's a smart, tough woman with a lot of sense, Starling. You'd probably like her."

"Will Johns Hopkins and Baltimore County homicide keep quiet about the bug in Klaus' throat? Can we keep it out of the papers?"

"For three days at least."

"That took some doing."

"We can't trust Frederick Chilton, or anybody else at the hospital," Crawford said. "If Chilton knows, the world knows. Chilton has to know you're there, but it's simply a favor you're doing Baltimore Homicide, trying to close the Klaus case-- it has nothing to do with Buffalo Bill."

"And I'm doing this late at night?"

"That's the only time I'd give you. I should tell you, the business about the bug in West Virginia will be in the morning papers. The Cincinnati coroner's office spilled it, so that's no secret anymore. It's an inside detail that Lecter can get from you, and it doesn't matter, really, as long as he doesn't know we found one in Klaus too."

"What have we got to trade him?"

"I'm working on it," Crawford said, and turned back to his telephones.

Abig bathroom, all white tile and skylights and sleek Italian fixtures standing against exposed old brick. An elaborate vanity flanked by tall plants and loaded with cosmetics, the mirror beaded by the steam the shower made. From the shower came humming in a key too, high for the unearthly voice. The song was Fats Walter's "Cash for Your Trash," from the musical Ain't Misbehavin'. Sometimes the voice broke into the words:

"Save up all your old newsPA-PERS,

Save and pile 'em like a high skySCRAPER

DAH DAHDAHDAH DAH DAH DAHDAH

DAH DAH…"

Whenever there were words, a small dog scratched at the bathroom door.

In the shower was Jame Gumb, white male, thirty-four, six feet one inch, 205 pounds, brown and blue, no distinguishing marks. He pronounces his first name like James without the s . Jame. He insists on it.

After his first rinse, Gumb applied Friction des Bains, rubbing it over his chest and buttocks with his hands and using a dishmop on the parts he did not like to touch. His legs and feet were a little stubbly, but he decided they would do.

Gumb toweled himself pink and applied a good skin emollient. His full-length mirror had a shower curtain on a bar in front of it.

Gumb used the dishmop to tuck his penis and testicles back between his legs. He whipped the shower curtain aside and stood before the mirror, hitting a hipshot pose despite the grinding it caused in his private parts.

"Do something for me, honey. Do something for me SOON." He used the upper range of his naturally deep voice, and he believed he was getting better at it. The hormones he'd taken-- Premarin for a while and then diethylstilbestrol, orally-- couldn't do anything for his voice, but they had thinned the hair a little across his slightly budding breasts. A lot of electrolysis had removed Gumb's beard and shaped his hairline into a widow's peak, but he did not look like a woman. He looked like a man inclined to fight with his nails as well as his fists and feet.

Whether his behavior was an earnest, inept attempt to swish or a hateful mocking would be hard to say on short acquaintance, and short acquaintances were the only kind he had.

"Whatcha gonna do for meeee?"

The dog scratched on the door at the sound of his voice. Gumb put on his robe and let the dog in. He picked up the little champagne-colored poodle and kissed her plump back.

"Ye-e-e-e-s. Are you famished, Precious? I am too."

He switched the little dog from one arm to the other to open the bedroom door. She squirmed to get down.

"Just a mo', sweetheart." With his free hand he picked up a Mini-14 carbine from the floor beside the bed and laid it across the pillows. " Now . Now, then. We'll have our supper in a minute." He put the little dog on the floor while he found his nightclothes. She trailed him eagerly downstairs to the kitchen.

Jame Gumb took three TV dinners from his microwave oven. There were two Hungry Man dinners for himself and one Lean Cuisine for the poodle.

The poodle greedily ate her entrée and the dessert, leaving the vegetable. Jame Gumb left only the bones on his two trays.

He let the little dog out the back door and, clutching his robe closed against the chill, he watched her squat in the narrow strip of light from the doorway.

"You haven't done Number Two-ooo. All right, I won't watch." But he took a sly peek between his fingers. "Oh, super , you little baggage, aren't you a perfect lady? Come on, let's go to bed."

Mr. Gumb liked to go to bed. He did it several times a night. He liked to get up too, and sit in one or another of his many rooms without turning on the light, or work for a little while in the night, when he was hot with something creative.

He started to turn out the kitchen light, but paused, his lips in a judicious spout as he considered the litter of supper. He gathered up the three TV trays and wiped off the table.

A switch at the head of the stairs turned on the lights in the basement. Jame Gumb started down, carrying the trays. The little dog cried in the kitchen and nosed open the door behind him.

"All right, Silly Billy." He scooped up the poodle and carried her down. She wriggled and nosed at the trays in his other hand. "No you don't, you've had enough." He put her down and she followed close beside him through the rambling, multilevel basement.

In a basement room directly beneath the kitchen was a well, long dry. Its stone rim, reinforced with modern well rings and cement, rose two feet above the sandy floor. The original wooden safety cover, too heavy for a child to lift, was still in place. There was a trap in the lid big enough to lower a bucket through. The trap was open and Jame Gumb scraped his trays and the dog's tray into it.