“No. You came back to him because you were so impressed that he could predict Buffalo Bill would start scalping. I’m on the record dismissing him and so is Alan Bloom. But I’m letting you fool with it. You have an offer for some privileges—stuff that only somebody as powerful as Senator Martin could get for him. He has to believe he should hurry because the offer ends if Catherine dies. The Senator totally loses interest in him if that happens. And if he fails, it’s because he’s not smart and knowledgeable enough to do what he said he could do—it’s not because he’s holding out to spite us.”
“Will the Senator lose interest?”
“Better you should be able to say under oath that you never knew the answer to that question.”
“I see.” So Senator Martin hadn’t been told. That took some nerve. Clearly, Crawford was afraid of interference, afraid the Senator might make the mistake of appealing to Dr. Lecter.
“Do you see?”
“Yes. How can he be specific enough to steer us to Buffalo Bill without showing he’s got special knowledge? How can he do that with just theory and insight?”
“I don’t know, Starling. He’s had a long time to think about it. He’s waited through six victims.”
The scrambler phone in the van buzzed and blinked with the first of a series of calls Crawford had placed with the FBI switchboard.
Over the next twenty minutes he talked to officers he knew in the Dutch State Police and Royal Marechausee, an Overstelojtnant in the Swedish Technical Police who had studied at Quantico, a personal acquaintance who was assistant to the Rigspolitichef of the Danish governmental police, and he surprised Starling by breaking into French with the night command desk of the Belgian Police Criminelle. Always he stressed the need for speed in identifying Klaus and his associates. Each jurisdiction would already have the request on its Interpol telex but, with the old-boy network buzzing, the request wouldn’t hang from the machine for hours.
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 roll over 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.
CHAPTER 20
A big 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 Waller’s “Cash for Your Trash,” from the musical Ain’t Misbehavin’. Sometimes the voice broke into the words: