Red Dragon (Hannibal Lecter 1)

Who was Mr. Pilgrim? Not Lecter—Crawford had made sure of that. Was Mr. Pilgrim the Tooth Fairy? Maybe so, Crawford thought.

The desks and telephones from Crawford’s office had been moved overnight to a larger room across the hall.

Graham stood in the open doorway of a soundproof booth. Behind him in the booth was Crawford’s telephone. Sarah had cleaned it with Windex. With the voiceprint spectrograph, tape recorders, and stress evaluator taking up most of her desk and another table beside it, and Beverly Katz sitting in her chair, Sarah needed something to do.

The big clock on the wall showed ten minutes before noon.

Dr. Alan Bloom and Crawford stood with Graham. They had adopted a sidelines stance, hands in their pockets.

A technician seated across from Beverly Katz drummed his fingers on the desk until a frown from Crawford stopped him.

Crawford’s desk was cluttered with two new telephones, an open line to the Bell System’s electronic switching center (ESS) and a hot line to the FBI communications room.

“How much time do you need for a trace?” Dr. Bloom asked.

“With the new switching it’s a lot quicker than most people think,” Crawford said. “Maybe a minute if it comes through all-electronic switching. More if it’s from someplace where they have to swarm the frame.”

Crawford raised his voice to the room. “If he calls at all, it’ll be short, so let’s play him perfect. Want to go over the drill, Will?”

“Sure. When we get to the point where I talk, I want to ask you a couple of things, Doctor.”

Bloom had arrived after the others. He was scheduled to speak to the behavioral-science section at Quantico later in the day. Bloom could smell cordite on Graham’s clothes.

“Okay,” Graham said. “The phone rings. The circuit’s completed immediately and the trace starts at ESS, but the tone generator continues the ringing noise so he doesn’t know we’ve picked up. That gives us about twenty seconds on him.” He pointed to the technician. “Tone generator to ‘off’ at the end of the fourth ring, got it?”

The technician nodded. “End of the fourth ring.”

“Now, Beverly picks up the phone. Her voice is different from the one he heard yesterday. No recognition in the voice. Beverly sounds bored. He asks for me. Bev says, ‘I’ll have to page him, may I put you on hold?’ Ready with that, Bev?” Graham thought it would be better not to rehearse the lines. They might sound flat by rote.

“All right, the line is open to us, dead to him. I think he’ll hold longer than he’ll talk.”

“Sure you don’t want to give him the hold music?” the technician asked.

“Hell no,” Crawford said.

“We give him about twenty seconds of hold, then Beverly comes back on and tells him, ‘Mr. Graham’s coming to the phone, I’ll connect you now.’ I pick up.” Graham turned to Dr. Bloom. “How would you play him, Doctor?”

“He’ll expect you to be skeptical about it really being him. I’d give him some polite skepticism. I’d make a strong distinction between the nuisance of fake callers and the significance, the importance, of a call from the real person. The fakes are easy to recognize because they lack the capacity to understand what has happened, that sort of thing.

“Make him tell something to prove who he is.” Dr. Bloom looked at the floor and kneaded the back of his neck.

“You don’t know what he wants. Maybe he wants understanding, maybe he’s fixed on you as the adversary and wants to gloat—we’ll see. Try to pick up his mood and give him what he’s after, a little at a time. I’d be very leery of appealing to him to come to us for help, unless you sense he’s asking for that.

“If he’s paranoid you’ll pick it up fast. In that case I’d play into his suspicion or grievance. Let him air it. If he gets rolling on that, he may forget how long he’s talked. That’s all I know to tell you.” Bloom put his hand on Graham’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “Listen, this is not a pep talk or any bullshit; you can take him over the jumps. Never mind advice, do what seems right to you.”

Waiting. Half an hour of silence was enough.

“Call or no call, we’ve got to decide where to go from here,” Crawford said. “Want to try the mail drop?”

“I can’t see anything better,” Graham said.

“That would give us two baits, a stakeout at your house in the Keys and the drop.”

The telephone was ringing.

Tone generator on. At ESS the trace began. Four rings. The technician hit the switch and Beverly picked up. Sarah was listening.

“Special Agent Crawford’s office.”