The Silence of the Lambs, Page 29

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Lippman might have.”

  “Did you ever see the Mr. Hide brand? Did Richards’ ever carry it, or one of the boutiques?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where Mrs. Lippman is? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “She died. She went to Florida to retire and she died down there, Fredrica said. I never did know her, me and Skip just picked up Fredrica over there sometimes when she had a bunch of clothes. You might could talk to her family or something. I’ll write it down for you.”

  This was extremely tedious, when what Starling wanted was news from Calumet City. Forty minutes was up. The Hostage Rescue Team ought to be on the ground. She shifted so she didn’t have to look at the clock, and pressed on.

  “Stacy, where did Fredrica buy clothes, where did she get those oversize Juno workout clothes, the sweats?”

  “She made just about everything. I expect she got the sweats at Richards’, you know, when everybody started wearing them real big, so they came down over tights like that? A lots of places carried them then. She got a discount at Richards’ because she sewed for them.”

  “Did she ever shop at an oversize store?”

  “We went in every place to look, you know how you do. We’d go in Personality Plus and she’d look for ideas, you know, flattering patterns for big sizes.”

  “Did anybody ever come up and bug you around an oversize store, or did Fredrica ever feel somebody had his eye on her?”

  Stacy looked at the ceiling for a second and shook her head.

  “Stacy, did transvestites ever come into Richards’, or men buying large dresses, did you ever run into that?”

  “No. Me and Skip saw some at a bar in Columbus one time.”

  “Was Fredrica with you?”

  “Not hardly. We’d gone, like, for the weekend.”

  “Would you write down the oversize places you went with Fredrica, do you think you could remember all of them?”

  “Just here, or here and Columbus?”

  “Here and Columbus. And Richards’ too, I want to talk to Mrs. Burdine.”

  “Okay. Is it a pretty good job, being a FBI agent?”

  “I think it is.”

  “You get to travel around and stuff? I mean places better than this.”

  “Sometimes you do.”

  “Got to look good every day, right?”

  “Well, yeah. You have to try to look businesslike.”

  “How do you get into that, being a FBI agent?”

  “You have to go to college first, Stacy.”

  “That’s tough to pay for.”

  “Yeah, it is. Sometimes there are grants and fellowships that help out, though. Would you like me to send you some stuff?”

  “Yeah. I was just thinking, Fredrica was so happy for me when I got this job. She really got her rocks off—she never had a real office job—she thought this was getting somewhere. This—cardboard files and Barry Manilow on the speakers all day—she thought it was hot shit. What did she know, big dummy.” Tears stood in Stacy Hubka’s eyes. She opened them wide and held her head back to keep from having to do her eyes over.

  “How about my list now?”

  “I better do it at my desk, I got my word processor and I need my phone book and stuff.” She went out with her head back, navigating by the ceiling.

  It was the telephone that was tantalizing Starling. The moment Stacy Hubka was out of the cubicle, Starling called Washington collect to get the news.

  CHAPTER 55

  At that moment, over the southern tip of Lake Michigan, a twenty-four-passenger business jet with civilian markings came off maximum cruise and began the long curve down to Calumet City, Illinois.

  The twelve men of the Hostage Rescue Team felt the lift in their stomachs. There were a few elaborately casual tension yawns up and down the aisle.

  Team commander Joel Randall, at the front of the passenger compartment, took off the headset and glanced over his notes before he got up to talk. He believed he had the best-trained SWAT team in the world, and he may have been right. Several of them had never been shot at, but as far as simulations and tests could tell, these were the best of the best.

  Randall had spent a lot of time in airplane aisles, and kept his balance easily in the bumpy descent.

  “Gentlemen, our ground transportation’s courtesy of DEA undercover. They’ve got a florist’s truck and a plumbing van. So Vernon, Eddie, into your long handles and your civvies. If we go in behind stun grenades, remember you’ve got no flash protection on your faces.”

  Vernon muttered to Eddie, “Make sure you cover up your cheeks.”

  “Did he say don’t moon? I thought he said don’t flash,” Eddie murmured back.

  Vernon and Eddie, who would make the initial approach to the door, had to wear thin ballistic armor beneath civilian clothes. The rest could go in hardshell armor, proof against rifle fire.

  “Bobby, make sure and put one of your handsets in each van for the driver, so we don’t get fucked up talking to those DEA guys,” Randall said.

  The Drug Enforcement Administration uses UHF radios in raids, while the FBI has VHF. There had been problems in the past.

  They were equipped for most eventualities, day or night: for walls they had basic rappelling equipment, to listen they had Wolf’s Ears and a VanSleek Farfoon, to see they had night-vision devices. The weapons with night scopes looked like band instruments in their bulging cases.

  This was to be a precise surgical operation and the weapons reflected it—there was nothing that fired from an open bolt.

  The team shrugged into their web gear as the flaps went down.

  Randall got news from Calumet on his headset. He covered the microphone and spoke to the team again. “Guys, they got it down to two addresses. We take the best one and Chicago SWAT’s on the other.”

  The field was Lansing Municipal, the closest to Calumet on the southeast side of Chicago. The plane was cleared straight in. The pilot brought it to a stop in a stink of brakes beside two vehicles idling at the end of the field farthest from the terminal.

  There were quick greetings beside the florist’s truck. The DEA commander handed Randall what looked like a tall flower arrangement. It was a twelve-pound door-buster sledgehammer, the head wrapped in colored foil like a flowerpot, foliage attached to the handle.

  “You might want to deliver this,” he said. “Welcome to Chicago.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Mr. Gumb went ahead with it in the late afternoon.

  With dangerous steady tears standing in his eyes, he’d watched his video again and again and again. On the small screen, Mom climbed the water-slide and whee down into the pool, whee down into the pool. Tears blurred Jame Gumb’s vision as though he were in the pool himself.

  On his middle a hot-water bottle gurgled, as the little dog’s stomach had gurgled when she lay on him.

  He couldn’t stand it any longer—what he had in the basement holding Precious prisoner, threatening her. Precious was in pain, he knew she was. He wasn’t sure he could kill it before it fatally injured Precious, but he had to try. Right now.

  He took off his clothes and put on the robe—he always finished a harvest naked and bloody as a newborn.

  From his vast medicine cabinet he took the salve he had used on Precious when the cat scratched her. He got out some little Band-Aids and Q-tips and the plastic “Elizabethan collar” the vet gave him to keep her from worrying a sore place with her teeth. He had tongue depressors in the basement to use for splints on her little broken leg, and a tube of Sting-Eez to take the hurt away if the stupid thing scratched her thrashing around before it died.

  A careful head shot, and he’d just sacrifice the hair. Precious was worth more to him than the hair. The hair was a sacrifice, an offering for her safety.

  Quietly down the stairs now, to the kitchen. Out of his slippers and down the dark basement stairs, staying close to the wall to keep the stairs from creaking.

&n
bsp; He didn’t turn on the light. At the bottom of the stairs, he took a right into the workroom, moving by touch in the familiar dark, feeling the floor change under his feet.

  His sleeve brushed the cage and he heard the soft angry chirp of a brood moth. Here was the cabinet. He found his infrared light and slipped the goggles on his head. Now the world glowed green. He stood for a moment in the comforting burble of the tanks, in the warm hiss of the steam pipes. Master of the dark, queen of the dark.

  Moths free in the air left green trails of fluorescence across his vision, faint breaths across his face as their downy wings brushed the darkness.

  He checked the Python. It was loaded with .38 Special lead wad-cutters. They would slam into the skull and expand for an instant kill. If it was standing when he shot, if he shot down into the top of the head, the bullet was less likely than a Magnum load to exit the lower jaw and tear the bosom.

  Quiet, quiet he crept, knees bent, painted toes gripping the old boards. Silent on the sand floor of the oubliette room. Quiet but not too slow. He didn’t want his scent to have time to reach the little dog in the bottom of the well.

  The top of the oubliette glowed green, the stones and mortar distinct, the grain of the wooden cover sharp in his vision. Hold the light and lean over. There they were. It was on its side like a giant shrimp. Perhaps asleep. Precious was curled up close against its body, surely sleeping, oh please not dead.

  The head was exposed. A neck shot was tempting—save the hair. Too risky.

  Mr. Gumb leaned over the hole, the stalk-eyes of his goggles peering down. The Python has a good, muzzle-heavy feel, wonderfully pointable it is. Have to hold it in the beam of infrared. He lined up the sights on the side of its head, just where the hair was damp against the temple.

  Noise or smell, he never knew—but Precious up and yipping, jumping straight up in the dark, Catherine Baker Martin doubling around the little dog and pulling the futon over them. Just lumps moving under the futon, he couldn’t tell what was dog and what was Catherine. Looking down in infrared, his depth perception was impaired. He couldn’t tell which lumps were Catherine.

  But he had seen Precious jump. He knew her leg was all right, and at once he knew something more: Catherine Baker Martin wouldn’t hurt the dog, any more than he would. Oh, sweet relief. Because of their shared feeling, he could shoot her in the God damned legs and when she clutched her legs, blow her fucking head off. No caution necessary.

  He turned on the lights, all the damned lights in the basement, and got the floodlight from the storeroom. He had control of himself, he was reasoning well—on his way through the workroom he remembered to run a little water in the sinks so nothing would clot in the traps.

  As he hurried past the stairs, ready to go, carrying the floodlight, the doorbell rang.

  The doorbell grating, rasping, he had to stop and think about what it was. He hadn’t heard it in years, hadn’t even known whether it worked. Mounted in the stairway so it could be heard upstairs and down, clanging now, a black metal tit covered with dust. As he looked at it, it rang again, kept ringing, dust flying off it. Someone was at the front, pushing the old button marked SUPERINTENDENT.

  They would go away.

  He rigged the floodlight.

  They didn’t go away.

  Down in the well, it said something he paid no attention to. The bell was clanging, grating, they were just leaning on the button.

  Better go upstairs and peek out the front. The long-barreled Python wouldn’t go in the pocket of his robe. He put it on the workroom counter.

  He was halfway up the stairs when the bell stopped ringing. He waited a few moments halfway up. Silence. He decided to look anyway. As he went through the kitchen a heavy knock on the back door made him jump. In the pantry near the back door was a pump shotgun. He knew it was loaded.

  With the door closed to the basement stairs, nobody could hear it yelling down there, even at the top of its voice, he was sure of that.

  Banging again. He opened the door a crack on the chain.

  “I tried the front but nobody came,” Clarice Starling said. “I’m looking for Mrs. Lippman’s family, could you help me?”

  “They don’t live here,” Mr. Gumb said, and closed the door. He had started for the stairs again when the banging resumed, louder this time.

  He opened the door on the chain.

  The young woman held an ID close to the crack. It said Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Excuse me, but I need to talk to you. I want to find the family of Mrs. Lippman. I know she lived here. I want you to help me, please.”

  “Mrs. Lippman’s been dead for ages. She didn’t have any relatives that I know of.”

  “What about a lawyer, or an accountant? Somebody who’d have her business records? Did you know Mrs. Lippman?”

  “Just briefly. What’s the problem?”

  “I’m investigating the death of Fredrica Bimmel. Who are you, please?”

  “Jack Gordon.”

  “Did you know Fredrica Bimmel when she worked for Mrs. Lippman?”

  “No. Was she a great, fat person? I may have seen her, I’m not sure. I didn’t mean to be rude—I was sleeping.… Mrs. Lippman had a lawyer, I may have his card somewhere, I’ll see if I can find it. Do you mind stepping in? I’m freezing and my cat will streak through here in a second. She’ll be outside like a shot before I can catch her.”

  He went to a rolltop desk in the far corner of the kitchen, raised the top and looked in a couple of pigeonholes. Starling stepped inside the door and took her notebook out of her purse.

  “That horrible business,” he said, rummaging the desk. “I shiver every time I think about it. Are they close to catching somebody, do you think?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working. Mr. Gordon, did you take over this place after Mrs. Lippman died?”

  “Yes.” Gumb bent over the desk, his back to Starling. He opened a drawer and poked around in it.

  “Were there any records left here? Business records?”

  “No, nothing at all. Does the FBI have any ideas? The police here don’t seem to know the first thing. Do they have a description, or fingerprints?”

  Out of the folds in the back of Mr. Gumb’s robe crawled a Death’s-head Moth. It stopped in the center of his back, about where his heart would be, and adjusted its wings.

  Starling dropped her notebook into the bag.

  Mister Gumb. Thank God my coat’s open. Talk out of here, go to a phone. No. He knows I’m FBI, I let him out of my sight he’ll kill her. Do her kidneys. They find him, they fall on him. His phone. Don’t see it. Not in here, ask for his phone. Get the connection, then throw down on him. Make him lie facedown, wait for the cops. That’s it, do it. He’s turning around.

  “Here’s the number,” he said. He had a business card.

  Take it? No.

  “Good, thank you. Mr. Gordon, do you have a telephone I could use?”

  As he put the card on the table, the moth flew. It came from behind him, past his head and lit between them, on a cabinet above the sink.

  He looked at it. When she didn’t look at it, when her eyes never left his face, he knew.

  Their eyes met and they knew each other.

  Mr. Gumb tilted his head a little to the side. He smiled. “I have a cordless phone in the pantry, I’ll get it for you.”

  No! Do it. She went for the gun, one smooth move she’d done four thousand times and it was right where it was supposed to be, good two-hand hold, her world the front sight and the center of his chest. “Freeze.”

  He pursed his lips.

  “Now. Slowly. Put up your hands.”

  Move him outside, keep the table between us. Walk him to the front. Facedown in the middle of the street and hold up the badge.

  “Mr. Gub— Mr. Gumb, you’re under arrest. I want you to walk slowly outside for me.”

  Instead, he walked out of the room. If he had reached for his pocket, reached behind him, if she’d seen a weapon, she cou
ld have fired. He just walked out of the room.

  She heard him down the basement stairs fast, she around the table and to the door at the top of the stairwell. He was gone, the stairwell brightly lit and empty. Trap. Be a sitting duck on the stairs.

  From the basement then a thin paper cut of a scream.

  She didn’t like the stairs, didn’t like the stairs, Clarice Starling in the quick where you give it or you don’t.

  Catherine Martin screamed again, he’s killing her and Starling went down them anyway, one hand on the bannister, gun arm out the gun just under her line of vision, floor below bounding over the gunsight, gun arm swinging with her head as she tried to cover the two facing doors open at the bottom of the staircase.

  Lights blazing in the basement, she couldn’t go through one door without turning her back on the other, do it quick then, to the left toward the scream. Into the sand-floored oubliette room, clearing the doorframe fast, eyes wider than they had ever been. Only place to hide was behind the well, she sliding sideways around the wall, both hands on the gun, arms out straight, a little pressure on the trigger, on around the well and nobody behind it.

  A small scream rising from the well like thin smoke. Yipping now, a dog. She approached the well, eyes on the door, got to the rim, looked over the edge. Saw the girl, looked up again, down again, said what she was trained to say, calm the hostage:

  “FBI, you’re safe.”

  “Safe SHIT, he’s got a gun. Getmeout. GETMEOUT.”

  “Catherine, you’ll be all right. Shut up. Do you know where he is?”

  “GETMEOUT, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT WHERE HE IS, GETMEOUT.”

  “I’ll get you out. Be quiet. Help me. Be quiet so I can hear. Try and shut that dog up.”

  Braced behind the well, covering the door, her heart pounded and her breath blew dust off the stone. She could not leave Catherine Martin to get help when she didn’t know where Gumb was. She moved up to the door and took cover behind the frame. She could see across the foot of the stairs and into part of the workroom beyond.