“The shop foreman thinks Chester’s a Realtor trying to get a jump on the ads. He’s selling him the proof sheets under the table, one by one as they come off. We’re getting everything, all the classifieds, just to blow some smoke. All right, say we find out how Lecter was to answer and we can duplicate the method. Then we can fake a message to the Tooth Fairy—but what do we say? How do we use it?”
“The obvious thing is to try to get him to come to a mail drop,” Graham said. “Bait him with something he’d like to see. ‘Important evidence’ that Lecter knows about from talking to me. Some mistake he made that we’re waiting for him to repeat.”
“He’d be an idiot to go for it.”
“I know. Want to hear what the best bait would be?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Lecter would be the best bait,” Graham said.
“Set up how?”
“It would be hell to do, I know that. We’d take Lecter into federal custody—Chilton would never sit still for this at Chesapeake—and we stash him in maximum security at a VA psychiatric hospital. We fake an escape.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“We send the Tooth Fairy a message in next week’s Tattler, after the big ‘escape.’ It would be Lecter asking him for a rendezvous.”
“Why in God’s name would anybody want to meet Lecter? I mean, even the Tooth Fairy?”
“To kill him, Jack.” Graham got up. There was no window to look out of as he talked. He stood in front of the “Ten Most Wanted,” Crawford’s only wall decoration. “See, the Tooth Fairy could absorb him that way, engulf him, become more than he is.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I’m not sure. Who’s sure? What he said in the note was ‘I have some things I’d love to show you. Someday, perhaps, if circumstances permit.’ Maybe it was a serious invitation. I don’t think he was just being polite.”
“Wonder what he’s got to show? The victims were intact. Nothing missing but a little skin and hair, and that was probably . . . How did Bloom put it?”
“Ingested,” Graham said. “God knows what he’s got. Tremont, remember Tremont’s costumes in Spokane? While he was strapped to a stretcher he was pointing with his chin, still trying to show them to the Spokane PD. I’m not sure Lecter would draw the Tooth Fairy, Jack. I say it’s the best shot.”
“We’d have a goddamned stampede if people thought Lecter was out. Papers all over us screaming. Best shot, maybe, but we’ll save it for last.”
“He probably wouldn’t come near a mail drop, but he might be curious enough to look at a mail drop to see if Lecter had sold him. If he could do it from a distance. We could pick a drop that could be watched from only a few places a long way off and stake out the observation points.” It sounded weak to Graham even as he said it.
“Secret Service has a setup they’ve never used. They’d let us have it. But if we don’t put an ad in today, we’ll have to wait until Monday before the next issue comes out. Presses roll at five our time. That gives Chicago another hour and fifteen minutes to come up with Lecter’s ad, if there is one.”
“What about Lecter’s ad order, the letter he’d have sent the Tattler ordering the ad—could we get to that quicker?”
“Chicago put out some general feelers to the shop foreman,” Crawford said. “The mail stays in the classified advertising manager’s office. They sell the names and return addresses to mailing lists—outfits that sell products for lonely people, love charms, rooster pills, squack dealers, ‘meet beautiful Asian girls,’ personality courses, that sort of stuff.
“We might appeal to the ad manager’s citizenship and all and get a look, request him to be quiet, but I don’t want to chance it and risk the Tattler slobbering all over us. It would take a warrant to go in there and Bogart the mail. I’m thinking about it.”
“If Chicago turns up nothing, we could put an ad in anyway. If we’re wrong about the Tattler, we wouldn’t lose anything,” Graham said.
“And if we’re right that the Tattler is the medium and we make up a reply based on what we have in this note and screw it up—if it doesn’t look right to him—we’re down the tubes. I didn’t ask you about Birmingham. Anything?”
“Birmingham’s shut down and over with. The Jacobi house has been painted and redecorated and it’s
on the market. Their stuff is in storage waiting for probate. I went through the crates. The people I talked to didn’t know the Jacobis very well. The one thing they always mentioned was how affectionate the Jacobis were to each other. Always patting. Nothing left of them now but five pallet loads of stuff in a warehouse. I wish I had—”
“Quit wishing, you’re on it now.”
“What about the mark on the tree?”
“‘You hit it on the head’? Means nothing to me,” Crawford said. “The Red Dragon either. Beverly knows Mah-Jongg. She’s sharp, and she can’t see it. We know from his hair he’s not Chinese.”
“He cut the limb with a bolt cutter. I don’t see—”