“Half an arch won’t stand. Speaking of arches, will they still let you pound a beat, Clarice? Did they take your badge?”
“No.”
“What’s that under your jacket, a watchman’s clock just like Dad’s?”
“No, that’s a speedloader.”
“So you go around armed?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should let your jacket out. Do you sew at all?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make that costume?”
“No. Dr. Lecter, you find out everything. You couldn’t have talked intimately with this ‘Billy Rubin’ and come out knowing so little about him.”
“You think not?”
“If you met him, you know everything. But today you happened to remember just one detail. He’d had elephant ivory anthrax. You should have seen them jump when Atlanta said it’s a disease of knifemakers. They ate it up, just like you knew they would. You should have gotten a suite at the Peabody for that. Dr. Lecter, if you met him you know about him. I think maybe you didn?
?t meet him and Raspail told you about him. Secondhand stuff wouldn’t sell as well to Senator Martin, would it?”
Starling took a quick look over her shoulder. One of the officers was showing the other something in Guns & Ammo magazine. “You had more to tell me in Baltimore, Dr. Lecter. I believe that stuff was valid. Tell me the rest.”
“I’ve read the cases, Clarice, have you? Everything you need to know to find him is right there, if you’re paying attention. Even Inspector Emeritus Crawford should have figured it out. Incidentally, did you read Crawford’s stupefying speech last year to the National Police Academy? Spouting Marcus Aurelius on duty and honor and fortitude—we’ll see what kind of a Stoic Crawford is when Bella bites the big one. He copies his philosophy out of Bartlett’s Familiar, I think. If he understood Marcus Aurelius, he might solve his case.”
“Tell me how.”
“When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can’t read, Clarice. The Emperor counsels simplicity. First principles. Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its causal nature?”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“What does he do, the man you want?”
“He kills—”
“Ah—” he said sharply, averting his face for a moment from her wrongheadedness. “That’s incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing?”
“Anger, social resentment, sexual frus—”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”
“No. We just—”
“No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don’t your eyes move over things?”
“All right, then tell me how—”
“It’s your turn to tell me, Clarice. You don’t have any beach vacations at the Hoof and Mouth Disease Station to offer me anymore. It’s strictly quid pro quo from here on out. I have to be careful doing business with you. Tell me, Clarice.”
“Tell you what?”