He ignored her question, put the remainder of the candy bar on his plate and disappeared behind a pile of mattresses in his old cell.
“What the hell is this?” A woman’s voice. “Thank you, Sammie.”
“Who are you?” Starling
called.
“None of your damn business.”
“Do you live here with Sammie?”
“Of course not. I’m here on a date. Do you think you could leave us alone?”
“Yes. Answer my question. How long have you been here?”
“Two weeks.”
“Has anybody else been here.”
“Some bums Sammie run out.”
“Sammie protects you?”
“Mess with me and find out. I can walk good. I get stuff to eat, he’s got a safe place to eat it. Lot of people have deals like that.”
“Is either one of you in a program someplace? Do you want to be? I can help you there.”
“He done all that. You go out in the world and do all that shit and come back to what you know. What are you looking for? What do you want?”
“Some files.”
“If it ain’t here, somebody stole it, how smart do you have to be to figure that out?”
“Sammie?” Starling said. “Sammie?”
Sammie did not answer. “He’s asleep,” his friend said.
“If I leave some money out here, will you buy some food?” Starling said.
“No, I’ll buy liquor. You can find food. You can’t find liquor. Don’t let the doorknob catch you in the butt on the way out.”
“I’ll put the money on the desk,” Starling said. She felt like running, remembered leaving Dr. Lecter, remembered holding on to herself as she walked toward what was then the calm island of Barney’s orderly station.
In the light of the stairwell, Starling took a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet. She put the money on Barney’s scarred, abandoned desk, and weighted it with an empty wine bottle. She unfolded a plastic shopping bag and put in it the Lecter file jacket containing Miggs’s records and the empty Miggs jacket.
“Good-bye. ‘Bye, Sammie,” she called to the man who had circled in the world and come back to the hell he knew. She wanted to tell him she hoped Jesus would come soon, but it sounded too silly to say.
Starling climbed back into the light, to continue her circle in the world.
CHAPTER
12
IF THERE are depots on the way to Hell, they must resemble the ambulance entrance to Maryland-Misericordia General Hospital. Over the sirens’ dying wail, wails of the dying, clatter of the dripping gurneys, cries and screams, the columns of manhole steam, dyed red by a great neon EMERGENCY sign, rise like Moses’ own pillar of fire in the darkness and change to cloud in the day
Barney came out of the steam, shrugging his powerful shoulders into his jacket, his cropped round head bent forward as he covered the broken pavement in long strides east toward the morning.
He was twenty-five minutes late getting off work— the police had brought in a stoned pimp with a gunshot wound who liked to fight women, and the head nurse had asked him to stay. They always asked Barney to stay when they took in a violent patient.