"Yes. I don't know. Maybe."

"Thank you, Clarice." Dr. Lecter seemed oddly at peace.

"Tell me his name, Dr. Lecter, " Starling said.

"Dr. Chilton," Lecter said, "I believe you know each other."

For an instant, Starling didn't realize Chilton was behind her. Then he took her elbow.

She took it back, Officer Pembry and his big partner were with Chilton.

"In the elevator," Chilton said. His face was mottled red.

"Did you know Dr. Chilton has no medical degree?" Dr. Lecter said. "Please bear that in mind later on."

"Let's go," Chilton said.

"You're not in charge here, Dr. Chilton," Starling said.

Officer Pembry came around Chilton. "No, ma'am, but I am. He called my boss and your boss both. I'm sorry, but I've got orders to see you out. Come on with me, now."

"Good-bye, Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?"

"Yes."

Pembry was taking her arm. It was go or fight him.

"Yes," she said. "I'll tell you."

"Do you promise?"

"Yes."

"Then why not finish the arch? Take your case file with you, Clarice, I won't need it anymore." He held it at arm's length. through the bars, his forefinger along the spine. She reached across the barrier and took it. For an instant the tip of her forefinger touched Dr. Lecter's. The touch crackled in his eyes.

"Thank you, Clarice."

"Thank you, Dr. Lecter."

And that is how he remained in Starling's mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side.

She went over a speed bump at the airport fast enough to bang her head on the roof of the car, and had to run for the airplane Krendler had ordered her to catch.

CHAPTER 36

Officers Pembry and Boyle were experienced men brought especially from Brushy Mountain State Prison to be Dr. Lecter's warders. They were calm and careful and did not feel they needed their job explained to them by Dr. Chilton.

They had arrived in Memphis ahead of Lecter and examined the cell minutely. When Dr. Lecter was brought to the old courthouse, they examined him as well. He was subjected to an internal body search by a male nurse while, he was still in restraints. His clothing was searched thoroughly and a metal detector run over the seams.

Boyle and Pembry came to an understanding with him, speaking in low, civil tones close to his ears as he was examined.

"Dr. Lecter, we can get along just fine. We'll treat you just as good as you treat us. Act like a gentleman and you get the Eskimo Pie. But we're not pussyfooting around with you, buddy. Try to bite, and we'll leave you smooth-mouthed. Looks like you got something good going here. You don't want to fuck it up, do you?"

Dr. Lecter crinkled his eyes at them in a friendly fashion. If he had been inclined to reply he would have been prevented by the wooden peg between his molars as the nurse shined a flashlight in his mouth and ran a gloved finger into his cheeks.

The metal detector beeped at his cheeks.

"What's that?" the nurse asked.

"Fillings," Pembry said. "Pull his lip back there. You've put some miles on them back ones, haven't you, Doc?"

"Strikes me he's pretty much of a broke-dick," Boyle confided to Pembry after they had Dr. Lecter secure in his cell. "He won't be no trouble if he don't flip out."

The cell, while secure and strong, lacked a rolling food carrier. At lunchtime, in the unpleasant atmosphere that followed Starling's visit, Dr. Chilton inconvenienced everyone, making Boyle and Pembry go through the long process of securing the compliant Dr. Lecter in the straitjacket and leg restraints as he stood with his back to the bars, Chilton poised with the Mace, before they opened the door to carry in his tray.

Chilton refused to use Boyle's and Pembry's names, though they wore nameplates, and addressed them indiscriminately as "you, there."

For their part, after the warders heard Chilton was not a real M.D., Boyle observed to Pembry that he was just "some kind of a God damned schoolteacher."

Pembry tried once to explain to Chilton that Starling's visit had been approved not by them but by the desk downstairs, and saw that in Chilton's anger it didn't matter.

Dr. Chilton was absent at supper and, with Dr. Lecter's bemused cooperation, Boyle and Pembry used their own method to take in his tray. It worked very well.

"Dr. Lecter, you not gonna be needing your dinner jacket tonight," Peinbry said. "I'll ask you to sit on the floor and scoot backwards till you can just stick your hands out through the bars, arms extended backward. There you go. Scoot up a little and straighten 'em out more behind you, elbows straight." Pembry handcuffed Dr. Lecter tightly outside the bars, with a bar between his arms, and a low crossbar above them. "That hurts just a little bit, don't it? I know it does and they won't be on there but a minute, save us both a lot of trouble."

Dr. Lecter could not rise, even to a squat, and with his legs straight in front of him on the floor, he couldn't kick.

Only when Dr. Lecter was pinioned did Pembry return to the desk for the key to the cell door. Pembry slid his riot baton in the ring at his waist, put a canister of Mace in his pocket, and returned to the cell. He opened the door while Boyle took in the tray. When the door was secured, Pembry took the key back to the desk before he took the cuffs off Dr. Lecter. At no time was he near the bars with the key while the doctor was free in the cell.

"Now that was pretty easy, wasn't it?" Pembry said.

"It was very convenient, thank you, Officer," Dr. Lecter said. "You know, I'm just trying to get by."

"We all are, brother," Pembry said.

Dr. Lecter toyed with his food while he wrote and drew and doodled on his pad with a felt-tipped pen. He flipped over the cassette in the tape player chained to the table leg and punched the play button. Glenn Gould playing Bach's Goldberg Variations on the piano. The music, beautiful beyond plight and time, filled the bright cage and the room where the warders sat.

For Dr. Lecter, sitting still at the table, time slowed and spread as it does in action. For him the notes of music moved apart without losing tempo. Even Back's silver pounces were discrete notes glittering off the steel around him. Dr. Lecter rose, his expression abstracted, and watched his paper napkin slide off his thighs to the floor. The napkin was in the air a long time, brushed the table leg, flared, sideslipped, stalled and turned over before it came to rest on the steel floor. He made no effort to pick it up, but took a stroll across his cell, went behind the paper screen and sat on the lid of his toilet, his only private place. Listening to the music, he leaned sideways on the sink, his chin in his hand, his strange maroon eyes half-closed. The Goldberg Variations interested him structurally. Here it came again, the bass progression from the saraband repeated, repeated. He nodded along, his tongue moving over the edges of his teeth. All the way around on top, all the way around on the bottom. It was a long and interesting trip for his tongue, like a good walk in the Alps.

He did his gums now, sliding his tongue high in the crevice between his cheek and gum and moving it slowly around as some men do when ruminating. His gums were cooler than his tongue. It was cool up in the crevice. When his tongue got to the little metal tube, it stopped.

Over the music he heard the elevator clank and whir as it started up. Many notes of music later, the elevator door opened and a voice he did not know said, "I'm s'posed to get the tray."

Dr. Lecter heard the smaller one coming, Pernbry. He could see through the crack between the panels in his screen. Pembry was at the bars.