"Didn't a sleazo magazine offer him fifty thousand dollars for some recipes? I seem to remember that," Starling said.

Crawford nodded. "I'm pretty sure the National Tattler has bought somebody inside the hospital and they may know you're coming after I make the appointment."

Crawford leaned forward until he faced her at a distance of two feet. She watched his half-glasses blur the bags under his eyes. He had gargled recently with Listerine.

"Now. I want your full attention, Starling. Are you listening to me?"

"Yes sir."

"Be very careful with Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton, the head of the mental hospital, will go over the physical procedure you use to deal with him. Don't deviate from it. Do not deviate from it one iota for any reason. If Lecter talks to you at all, he'll just be trying to find out about you. It's the kind of curiosity that makes a snake look in a bird's nest. We both know you have to back-and-forth a little in interviews, but you tell him no specifics about yourself. You don't want any of your personal facts in his head. You know what he did to Will Graham."

"I read about it when it happened."

"He gutted Will with a linoleum knife when Will caught up with him. It's a wonder Will didn't die. Remember the Red Dragon? Lecter turned Francis Dolarhyde onto Will and his family. Will's face looks like damn Picasso drew him, thanks to Lecter. He tore a nurse up in the asylum. Do your job, just don't ever forget what he is."

"And what's that? Do you know?"

"I know he's a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure. Maybe you'll find out; I didn't pick you out of a hat, Starling. You asked me a couple of interesting questions when I was at UVA. The Director will see your own report over your signature-- if it's clear and tight and organized. I decide that. And I will have it by 0900 Sunday. Okay, Starling, carry on in the prescribed manner."

Crawford smiled at her, but his eyes were dead.

CHAPTER 2

Dr. Frederick Chilton, fifty-eight, administrator of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, has a long, wide desk upon which there are no hard or sharp objects. Some of the staff call it "the moat." Other staff members don't know what the word moat means. Dr. Chilton remained seated behind his desk when Clarice Starling came into his office.

"We've had a lot of detectives here, but I can't remember one so attractive," Chilton 'said without getting up.

Starling knew without thinking about it that the shine on his extended hand was lanolin from patting his hair. She let go before he did.

"It is Miss Sterling, isn't it?"

"It's Starling, Doctor, with an a. Thank you for your time."

"So the FBI is going to the girls like everything else, ha, ha." He added the tobacco smile he uses to separate his sentences.

"The Bureau's improving, Dr. Chilton. It certainly is."

"Will you be in Baltimore for several days? You know, you can have just as good a time here as you can in Washington or New York, if you know the town."

She looked away to spare herself his smile and knew at once that he had registered her distaste. "I'm sure it's a great town, but my instructions are to see Dr. Lecter and report back this afternoon."

"Is there someplace I could call you in Washington for a follow-up, later on?"

"Of course. It's kind of you to think of it. Special Agent Jack Crawford's in charge of this project, and you can always reach me through him."

"I see," Chilton said. His cheeks, mottled with pink, clashed with the improbable red-brown of his coif. ''Give me your identification, please." He let her remain standing through his leisurely examination of her ID card. Then he handed it back and rose. "This won't take much time. Come along."

"I understood you'd brief me, Dr. Chilton," Starling said.

"I can do that while we walk." He came around his desk, looking at his watch. "I have a lunch in half an hour."

Dammit, she should have read him better, quicker. He might not be a total jerk. He might know something useful. It wouldn't have hurt her to simper once, even if she wasn't at it.

"Dr. Chilton, I have an appointment with you now. It was set at your convenience, when you could give me some time. Things could come up during the interview-- I may need to go over some of his responses with you."

"I really, really doubt it. Oh, I need to make a telephone call before we go. I'll catch up with you in the outer office."

"I'd like to leave my coat and umbrella here."

"Out there," Chilton said. "Give them to Alan in the outer office. He'll put them away."

Alan wore the pajamalike garment issued to the inmates. He was wiping out ashtrays with the tail of his shirt.

He rolled his tongue around in his cheek as he took Starling's coat.

"Thank you," she said.

"You're more than welcome. How often do you shit?" Alan asked.

"What did you say?"

"Does it come out lo-o-o-o-nnng?"

"I'll hang these somewhere myself."

"You don't have anything in the way-- you can bend over and watch it come out and see if it changes color when the air hits it, do you do that? Does it look like you have a big brown tail?" He wouldn't let go of the coat.

"Dr. Chilton wants you in his office, right now," Starling said.

"No I don't," Dr. Chilton said. "Put the coat in the closet, Alan, and don't get it out while we're gone. Do it. I had a full-time office girl, but the cutbacks robbed me of her. Now the girl who let you in types three hours a day, and then I have Alan. Where are all the office girls, Miss Starling?" His spectacles flashed at her. "Are you armed?"

"No, I'm not armed."

"May I see your purse and briefcase?"

"You saw my credentials."

"And they say you're a student. Let me see your things, please."

Clarice Starling flinched as the first of the heavy steel gates clashed shut behind her and the bolt shot home. Chilton walked slightly ahead, down the green institutional corridor in an atmosphere of Lysol and distant slammings. Starling was angry at herself for letting Chilton put his hand in her purse and briefcase, and she stepped hard on the anger so that she could concentrate. It was all right. She felt her control solid beneath her, like a good gravel bottom in a fast current.

"Lecter's a considerable nuisance," Chilton said over his shoulder. "It takes an orderly at least ten minutes a day to remove the staples from the publications he receives. We tried to eliminate or reduce his subscriptions, but he wrote a brief and the court overruled us. The volume of his personal mail used to be enormous. Thankfully, it's dwindled since he's been overshadowed by other creatures in the news. For a while it seemed that every little student doing a master's thesis in psychology wanted something from Lecter in it. The medical journals still publish him, but it's just for the freak value of his byline."

"He did a good piece on surgical addiction in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, I thought," Starling said.

"You did, did you? We tried to study Lecter. We thought, 'Here's an opportunity to make a landmark study'-- it's so rare to get one alive."

"One what?"

"A pure sociopath, that's obviously what he is. But he's impenetrable, much too sophisticated for the standard tests. And, my, does he hate us. He thinks I'm his nemesis. Crawford's very clever-- isn't he?-- using you on Lecter.

"How do you mean, Dr. Chilton?"

''A young woman to 'turn him on,' I believe you call it. I don't believe Lecter's seen a woman in several years-- he may have gotten a glimpse of one of the cleaning people. We generally keep women out of there. They're trouble in detention."