Hannibal (Hannibal Lecter 3)

The Vergers avoided these potential embarrassments and many others by giving money to politicians—their single setback being passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

Today the Vergers slaughter 86,000 cattle a day, and approximately 36,000 pigs, a number that varies slightly with the season.

The new-mown lawns of Muskrat Farm, the riot of its lilacs in the wind, smell nothing at all like the stockyard. The only animals are ponies for the visiting children and amusing flocks of geese grazing on the lawns, their behinds wagging, heads low to the grass. There are no dogs. The house and barn and grounds are near the center of six square miles of national forest, and will remain there in perpetuity under a special exemption granted by the Department of the Interior.

Like many enclaves of the very rich, Muskrat Farm is not easy to find the first time you go. Clarice Starling went one exit too far on the expressway. Coming back along the service road, she first encountered the trade entrance, a big gate secured with chain and padlock in the high fence enclosing the forest. Beyond the gate, a fire road disappeared into the overarching trees. There was no call box. Two miles farther along she found the gatehouse, set back a hundred yards along a handsome drive. The uniformed guard had her name on his clipboard.

An additional two miles of manicured roadway brought her to the farm.

Starling stopped her rumbling Mustang to let a flock of geese cross the drive. She could see a file of children on fat Shetlands leaving a handsome barn a quarter-mile from the house. The main building before her was a Stanford White–designed mansion handsomely set among low hills. The place looked solid and fecund, the province of pleasant dreams. It tugged at Starling.

The Vergers had had sense enough to leave the house as it was, with the exception of a single addition, which Starling could not yet see, a modern wing that sticks out from the eastern elevation like an extra limb attached in a grotesque medical experiment.

Starling parked beneath the central portico. When the eng

ine was off she could hear her own breathing. In the mirror she saw someone coming on a horse. Now hooves clopped on the pavement beside the car as Starling got out.

A broad-shouldered person with short blond hair swung down from the saddle, handed the reins to a valet without looking at him. “Walk him back,” the rider said in a deep scratchy voice. “I’m Margot Verger.” At close inspection she was a woman, holding out her hand, arm extended straight from the shoulder. Clearly Margot Verger was a bodybuilder. Beneath her corded neck, her massive shoulders and arms stretched the mesh of her tennis shirt. Her eyes had a dry glitter and looked irritated, as though she suffered from a shortage of tears. She wore twill riding breeches and boots with no spurs.

“What’s that you’re driving?” she said. “An old Mustang?”

“It’s an ’88.”

“Five-liter? It sort of hunkers down over its wheels.”

“Yes. It’s a Roush Mustang.”

“You like it?”

“A lot.”

“What’ll it do?”

“I don’t know. Enough, I think.”

“Scared of it?”

“Respectful of it. I’d say I use it respectfully,” Starling said.

“Do you know about it, or did you just buy it?”

“I knew enough about it to buy it at a dope auction when I saw what it was. I learned more later.”

“You think it would beat my Porsche?”

“Depends on which Porsche. Ms. Verger, I need to speak with your brother.”

“They’ll have him cleaned up in about five minutes. We can start up there.” The twill riding breeches whistled on Margot Verger’s big thighs as she climbed the stairs. Her cornsilk hair had receded enough to make Starling wonder if she took steroids and had to tape her clitoris down.

To Starling, who spent most of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage, the house felt like a museum, with its vast spaces and painted beams above her, and walls hung with portraits of important-looking dead people. Chinese cloisonné stood on the landings and long Moroccan runners lined the halls.

There is an abrupt shear in style at the new wing of the Verger mansion. The modern functional structure is reached through frosted glass double doors, incongruous in the vaulted hall.

Margot Verger paused outside the doors. She looked at Starling with her glittery, irritated gaze.

“Some people have trouble talking with Mason,” she said. “If it bothers you, or you can’t take it, I can fill you in later on whatever you forget to ask him.”

There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt. Starling saw it in Margot Verger’s face. All Starling said was “Thank you.”