“Good night, Inspector.”
In the tank room, Milko’s spadelike farmer’s hand slips back into the tank, the lid closes down tight, and to a shriveled face before him he mouths his valediction: Fuck the farm.
Night in the anatomy laboratory, Hannibal working alone. He was nearly finished with his sketch, working beside the body. On the counter was a fat rubber glove filled with fluid and tied at the wrist. The glove was suspended over a beaker of powder. A timer ticked beside it.
Hannibal covered the sketch pad with a clear overlay. He draped the cadaver and rolled it into the lecture theater. From the anatomy museum he brought Milko’s boots and put them beside Milko’s clothing on a gurney near the incinerator, with the contents of his pockets, a jackknife, keys and a wallet. The wallet contained money and the rim of a condom Milko rolled on to deceive women in semi-darkness. Hannibal removed the money. He opened the incinerator. Milko’s head stood in the flames. He looked like the Stuka pilot burning. Hannibal threw in his boots and one of them kicked the head over backward out of sight.
51
A WAR SURPLUS five-ton truck with new canvas was parked across the street from the anatomy lab, blocking half of the sidewalk. Surprisingly there was no ticket yet on the windshield. Hannibal tried Milko’s keys on the driver’s door. It opened. An envelope of papers was over the sun visor on the driver’s side. He looked through them quickly.
A ramp in the bed of the truck let him load his motorcycle at the curb. He drove the truck to Porte de Montempoivre near the Bois de Vincennes and put it in a truck park near the railroad. He locked the plates in the cab beneath the seat.
Hannibal Lecter sat on his motorcycle in a hillside orchard, breakfasting on some excellent African figs he had found in
the Rue de Buci market, along with a bite of Westphalian ham. He could see the road below the hill and, a quarter mile further along, the entrance to Vladis Grutas’ home.
Bees were loud in the orchard and several buzzed around his figs until he covered them with his handkerchief. García Lorca, now enjoying a revival in Paris, said the heart was an orchard. Hannibal was thinking about the figure and thinking, as young men do, about the shapes of peaches and pears, when a carpenter’s truck passed below him and pulled up to Grutas’ gate.
Hannibal raised his father’s field glasses.
The house of Vladis Grutas is a Bauhaus mansion built in 1938 on farmland with a view of the Essonne River. It was neglected in the war and, lacking eaves, suffered dark water stains down its white walls. The whole façade and one of the sides had been repainted blinding white and scaffolding was going up on the walls yet unpainted. It had served the Germans as a staff headquarters during the occupation and the Germans had added protection.
The glass and concrete cube of the house was protected by high chain link and barbed wire around the perimeter. The entrance was guarded by a concrete gatehouse that looked like a pillbox. A slit window across the front of the gatehouse was softened by a window box of flowers. Through the window a machine gun could traverse the road, its barrel brushing the blossoms aside.
Two men came out of the gatehouse, one blond and the other dark-haired and covered with tattoos. They used a mirror on a long handle to search beneath the truck. The carpenters had to climb down and show their national identity cards. There was some waving of hands and shrugging. The guards passed the truck inside.
Hannibal rode his motorcycle into a copse of trees and parked it in the brush. He grounded out the motorcycle’s ignition with a bit of hidden wire behind the points and put a note on the saddle saying he had gone for parts. He walked a half-hour to the high road and hitchhiked back to Paris.
The loading dock of the Gabrielle Instrument Co. is on the Rue de Paradis between a seller of lighting fixtures and a crystal repair shop. In the last task of their workday the warehousemen loaded a Bösendorfer baby grand piano into Milko’s truck, along with a piano stool crated separately. Hannibal signed the invoice Zigmas Milko, saying the name silently as he wrote.
The instrument company’s own trucks were coming in at the end of the day. Hannibal watched as a woman driver got out of one of them. She was not bad looking in her coveralls, with a lot of French flounce. She went inside the building and came out minutes later in slacks and a blouse, carrying the coveralls folded under her arm. She put them in the saddlebag of a small motorbike. She felt Hannibal’s eyes on her, and turned her gamine face to him. She took out a cigarette and he lit it.
“Merci, Monsieur … Zippo.” The woman was very street French, animated, with a lot of eye movement, and she exaggerated the gestures of smoking.
The busybodies sweeping the loading dock strained to hear what they were saying, but could only hear her laugh. She looked into Hannibal’s face as they talked and little by little the coquetry stopped. She seemed fascinated with him, almost mesmerized. They walked together down the street toward a bar.
Mueller had the gatehouse duty with a German named Gassmann, who had recently finished a tour in the Foreign Legion. Mueller was trying to sell him a tattoo when Milko’s truck approached up the drive.
“Call the clap doctor, Milko’s back from Paris,” Mueller said.
Gassmann had the better eyes. “That’s not Milko.”
They went outside.
“Where is Milko?” Mueller asked the woman at the wheel.
“How would I know? He paid me to bring you this piano. He said he would be along in a couple of days. Get my moto out of the back with your big muscles.”
“Who paid you?”
“Monsieur Zippo.”
“You mean Milko.”
“Right, Milko.”
A caterer’s truck stopped behind the five-ton and waited, the caterer fuming, drumming his fingers on the wheel.