“I saw her once, when they brought in her husband, Dijon. He was dead, he bled out on them before they ever got him in the ambulance. He was leaking clear IV when he got to us. She wouldn’t let him go and tried to fight the nurses. I had to … you know … Handsome woman, strong too. They didn’t bring her in after—”
“No, she was pronounced dead at the scene.”
“I would think so.”
“Barney, after you turned over Dr. Lecter to the Tennessee people—”
“They weren’t civil to him.”
“After you—”
“And they’re all dead now.”
“Yes. His keepers managed to stay alive for three days. You lasted eight years keeping Dr. Lecter.”
“It was six years—he was there before I came.”
“How’d you do it, Barney? If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you manage to last with him? It wasn’t just being civil.”
Barney looked at his reflection in his spoon, first convex and then concave, and thought a moment. “Dr. Lecter had perfect manners, not stiff, but easy and elegant. I was working on some correspondence courses and he shared his mind with me. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill me any second if he got the chance—one quality in a person doesn’t rule out any other quality. They can exist side by side, good and terrible. Socrates said it a lot better. In maximum lockdown you can’t afford to forget that, ever. If you keep it in mind, you’re all right. Dr. Lecter may have been sorry he showed me Socrates.” To Barney, lacking the disadvantage of formal schooling, Socrates was a fresh experience, with the quality of an encounter.
“Security was separate from conversation, a whole other thing,” he said. “Security was never personal, even when I had to shut off his mail or put him in restraints.”
“Did you talk with Dr. Lecter a lot?”
“Sometimes he went months without saying anything, and sometimes we’d talk, late at night when the crying died down. In fact—I was taking these courses by mail and I knew diddly—and he showed me a whole world, literally, of stuff—Suetonius, Gibbon, all that.” Barney picked up his cup. He had a streak of orange Betadine on a fresh scratch across the back of his hand.
“Did you ever think when he escaped that he might come after you?”
Barney shook his huge head. “He told me once that, whenever it was ‘feasible,’ he preferred to eat the rude. ‘Free-range rude,’ he called them.” Barney laughed, a rare sight. He has little baby teeth and his amusement seems a touch maniacal, like a baby’s glee when he blows his pabulum in a goo-goo uncle’s face.
Starling wondered if he had stayed underground with the loonies too long.
“What about you, did you ever feel … creepy after he got away? Did you think he might come after you?” Barney asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“He said he wouldn’t.”
This answer seemed oddly satisfactory to them both.
The eggs arrived. Barney and Starling were hungry and they ate steadily for a few minutes. Then …
“Barney, when Dr. Lecter was transferred to Memphis, I asked you for his drawings out of his cell and you brought them to me. What happened to the rest of the stuff—books, papers? The hospital doesn’t even have his medical records.”
“There was this big upheaval.” Barney paused, tapping the salt shaker against his palm. “There was a big upheaval, you know at the hospital. I got laid off, a lot of people got laid off, and stuff just got scattered. There’s no telling—”
“Excuse me?” Starling said, “I couldn’t hear what you said for the racket in here. I found out last night that Dr. Lecter’s annotated and signed copy of Alexandre Dumas’ Dictionary of Cuisine came up at a private auction in New York two years ago. It went to a private collector for sixteen thousand dollars. The seller’s affidavit of ownership was signed ‘Cary Phlox.’ You know ‘Cary Phlox,’ Barney? I hope you do because he did the handwriting on your employment application at the hospital where you’re working but he signed it ‘Barney.’ Made out your tax return too. Sorry I missed what you were saying before. Want to start over? What did you get for the book, Barney?”
“Around ten,” Barney said, looking straight at her.
Starling nodded. “The receipt says ten-five. What did you get for that interview with the Tattler after Dr. Lecter escaped?”
“Fifteen G’s.”
“Cool. Good for you. You made up all that bull you told those people.”