"Did Fredrica ever work at the store, taking measurements? Did she meet customers or the wholesale people?"

"Sometimes, not much. I didn't work every day."

"Did Mrs. Burdine work every day, would she know?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Did Fredrica ever mention sewing for a company called Mr. Hide in Chicago or Calumet City, maybe lining leather goods?"

"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 waterslide 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.