"I told Buddy Sipper at the wrecking yard he could have it for fifty if he'd come get it. I expect he's parted it out."

"Could you tell me what his telephone number is, Mr. Bardwell?"

"What do you want with Sipper? If anybody gets something out of it, it ought to be me."

"I understand that, sir. I just do what they tell me till five o'clock, and they said find the car. Have you got that number, please?"

"I can't find my phone book. It's been gone a good while now. You know how it is with these grandbabies. Central ought to give it to you, it's Sipper Salvage."

"Much oblige, Mr. Bardwell."

The salvage yard confirmed that the automobile had Been stripped and pressed into a cube to be recycled. The foreman read Starling the vehicle serial number from his records.

Shit House Mouse, thought Starling, not entirely out of the accent. Dead end. Some Valentine.

Starling rested her head against the cold coin box in the telephone booth. Ardelia Mapp, her books on her hip, pecked on the door of the booth and handed in an Orange Crush.

"Much oblige, Ardelia. I got to make one more call. If I can get done with that in time, I'll catch up with you in the cafeteria, okay?"

"I was so in hopes you'd overcome that ghastly dialect," Mapp said. "Books are available to help you. I never use the colorful patois of my housing project anymore. You come talking that mushmouth, people say you eat up with the dumb-ass, girl." Mapp closed the phone booth door.

Starling felt she had to try for more information from Lecter. If she already had the appointment, maybe Crawford would let her return to the asylum. She dialed Dr. Chilton's number, but she never got past his secretary.

"Dr. Chilton is with the coroner and the assistant district attorney," the woman said. "He's already spoken to your supervisor and he has nothing to say to you. Good-bye."

CHAPTER 7

"Your friend Miggs is dead," Crawford said. "Did you tell me everything, Starling?" Crawford's tired face was as sensitive to signals as the dished ruff of an owl, and as free of mercy.

"How?" She felt numb and she had to handle it.

"Swallowed his tongue sometime before daylight. Letter suggested it to him, Chilton thinks. The overnight orderly -heard Lecter talking softly to Miggs. Lecter knew a lot about Miggs. He talked to him for a little while, but the overnight couldn't hear what Lecter said. Miggs was crying for a while, and then he stopped. Did you tell me everything, Starling?"

"Yes sir. Between the report and my memo, there's everything, almost verbatim."

"Chilton called up to complain about you…" Crawford waited, and seemed pleased when she wouldn't ask. "I told him I found your behavior satisfactory. Chilton's trying to forestall a civil rights investigation."

"Will there be one?"

"Sure, if Miggs' family wants it. Civil Rights Division will do probably eight thousand this year. They'll be glad to add Miggs to the list." Crawford studied her. "You okay?"

"I don't know how to feel about it."

"You don't have to feel any particular way about it. Lecter did it to amuse himself. He knows they can't really touch him for it, so why not? Chilton takes his books and his toilet seat for a while is all, and he doesn't get any Jell-O." Crawford laced his fingers over his stomach and compared his thumbs. "Lecter asked you about me, didn't he?"

"He asked if you were busy. I said yes."

"That's all? You didn't leave out anything personal because I wouldn't want to see it?"

"No. He said you were a Stoic, but I put that in."

"Yes, you did. Nothing else?"

"No, I didn't leave anything out. You don't think I traded some kind of gossip, and that's why he talked to me."

"No."

"I don't know anything personal about you, and if I did I wouldn't discuss it. If you've got a problem believing that, let's get it straight now."

"I'm satisfied. Next item. "

"You thought something, or--"

"Proceed to the next item, Starling."

"Lecter s hint about Raspail's car is a dead end. It was mashed into a cube four months ago in Number Nine Ditch, Arkansas, and sold for recycling. Maybe if I go back in and talk to him, he'll tell me more."

"You've exhausted the lead?"

"Yes."

"Why do you think the car Raspail drove was his only car?"

"It was the only one registered, he was single, I assumed--"

"Aha, hold it." Crawford's forefinger pointed to some principle invisible in the air between them. "You assumed. You assumed, Starling. Look here." Crawford wrote assume on a legal pad. Several of Starling's instnictors had picked this up from Crawford and used it, but Starling didn't reveal that she'd seen it before.

Crawford began to underline: "If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass out of u and me both." He leaned back, pleased: "Raspail collected cars, did you know that?"

"No, does the estate still have them?"

"I don't know. Do you think you could manage to find out?"

"Yes, I can."

"Where would you start?"

"His executor."

"A lawyer in Baltimore, a Chinese, I seem to remember," Crawford said.

"Everett Yow," Starling said: "He's in the Baltimore phone book."

"Have you given any thought to the question of a warrant to search Raspail's car?"

Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the know-it-all caterpillar in Lewis Carroll.

Starling didn't dare give it back, much. "Since Raspail is deceased and riot suspected of anything, if we have permission of his executor to search the car, then it is a valid search, and the fruit admissible evidence in other matters at law," she recited.

"Precisely," Crawford said. "Tell you what: I'll advise the Baltimore field office you'll be up there. Saturday, Starling, on your own time. Go feel the fruit, if there is any."

Crawford made a small, successful effort not to look after her as she left. From his wastebasket he lifted in the fork of his fingers a wad of heavy mauve notegaper. He spread it on his desk. It was about his wife and it said, in an engaging hand:

O wrangling schools, that search what fire

Shall burn this world, had none the wit

Unto this knowledge to aspire

That this her fever might be it?

I'm so sorry about Bella, Jack.

Hannibal Lecter

CHAPTER 8

Everett Yow drove a black Buick with a De Paul University sticker on the back window. His weight gave the Buick a slight list to the left as Clarice Starling followed him out of Baltimore in the rain. It was almost dark; Starling's day as an investigator was nearly gone and she didn't have another day to replace it. She dealt with her impatience, tapping the wheel in time with the wipers as the traffic crawled down Route 301.

Yow was intelligent, fat, and had a breathing problem. Starling guessed his age at sixty. So far he was accommodating. The lost day was not his fault; returning in the late afternoon from a week-long business trip to Chicago, the Baltimore lawyer had come directly from the airport to his office to meet Starling.

Raspail's classic Packard had been stored since long before his death, Yow explained. It was unlicensed and never driven. Yow had seen it once, covered and in storage, to confirm its existence for the estate inventory he made shortly after his client's murder. If Investigator Starling would agree to "frankly disclose at once" anything she found that might be damaging to his late client's interests, he would show her the automobile, he said. A warrant and the attendant stir would not be necessary.