Red Dragon - Страница 27

Marketing experts discovered it was better to have the big cover line in color on the front and play the story in the middle pages, where it was difficult to hold the paper open and manage a purse and grocery cart at the same time.

The standard story featured an optimistic five paragraphs in ten-point type, then a drop to eight point, then to six point before mentioning that the "miracle drug" was unavailable or that animal research was just beginning.

Freddy earned his money turning them out, and the stories sold a lot of Tattlers.

In addition to increased readership, there were many spinoff sales of miracle medallions and healing cloths. Manufacturers of these paid a premium to get their ads located close to the weekly cancer story.

Many readers wrote to the paper for more information. Some additional revenue was realized by selling their names to a radio "evangelist," a screaming sociopath who wrote to them for money, using envelopes stamped "Someone You Love Will Die Unless…”

Freddy Lounds was good for the Tattler, and the Tattler was good to him. Now, after eleven years with the paper, he earned $72,000 a year. He covered pretty much what he pleased and spent the money trying to have a good time. He lived as well as he knew how to live.

The way things were developing, he believed he could raise the ante on his paperback deal, and there was movie interest. He had heard that Hollywood was a fine place for obnoxious fellows with money.

Freddy felt good. He shot down the ramp to the underground garage in his building and wheeled into his parking place with a spirited squeal of rubber. There on the wall was his name in letters a foot high, marking his private spot. Mr. Frederick Lounds.

Wendy was here already – her Datsun was parked next to his space. Good. He wished he could take her to Washington with him. That would make those flatfeet’s eyes pop. He whistled in the elevator on his way upstairs.

# # #

Wendy was packing for him. She had lived out of suitcases and she did a good job.

Neat in her jeans and plaid shirt, her brown hair gathered in a chipmunk tail on her neck, she might have been a farm girl except for her pallor and her shape. Wendy's figure was almost a caricature of puberty.

She looked at Lounds with eyes that had not registered surprise in years. She saw that he was trembling.

"You're working too hard, Roscoe." She liked to call him Roscoe, and it pleased him for some reason. "What are you taking, the six-o'clock shuttle?" She brought him a drink and moved her sequined jump suit and wig case off the bed so he could lie down. "I can take you to the airport. I'm not going to the club 'til six."

" Wendy City " was her own topless bar, and she didn't have to dance anymore. Lounds had cosigned the note.

"You sounded like Morocco Mole when you called me," she said.

"Who?"

"You know, on television Saturday morning, he's real mysterious and he helps Secret Squirrel. We watched it when you had the flu… You really pulled one off today, didn't you? You're really pleased with yourself."

"Damn straight. I took a chance today, baby, and it paid off. I've got a chance at something sweet."

"You've got time for a nap before you go. You're running yourself in the ground."

Lounds lit a cigarette. He already had one burning in the ashtray.

"You know what?" she said. "I bet if you drink your drink and get it off, you could go to sleep."

Lounds's face, like a fist pressed against her neck, relaxed at last, became mobile as suddenly as a fist becomes a hand. His trembling stopped. He told her all about it, whispering into the buck jut of her augmented breasts; she tracing eights on the back of his neck with a finger.

"That is some kind of smart, Roscoe," she said. "You go to sleep now. I'll get you up for the plane. It'll be all right, all of it. And then we'll have a high old time."

They whispered about the places they would go. He went to sleep.

CHAPTER 17

Dr. Alan Bloom and Jack Crawford sat on folding chairs, the only furniture left in Crawford’s office.

“The cupboard is bare, Doctor.”

Dr. Bloom studied Crawford’s simian face and wondered what was coming. Behind Crawford’s grousing and his Alka-Seltzers the doctor saw an intelligence as cold as an X-ray table.

“Where did Will go?”

“He’ll walk around and cool off,” Crawford said. “He hates Lounds.”

“Did you think you might lose Will after Lecter published his home address? That he might go back to his family?”

“For a minute, I did. It shook him.”

“Understandably,” Dr. Bloom said.

“Then I realized – he can’t go home, and neither can Molly and Willy, never, until the Tooth Fairy is out of the way.”

“You’ve met Molly?”

“Yeah. She’s great, I like her. She’d be glad to see me in hell with my back broken, of course. I’m having to duck her right now.”

“She thinks you use Will?”

Crawford looked at Dr Bloom sharply. “I’ve got some things I have to talk to him about. We’ll need to check with you. When do you have to be at Quantico?”

“Not until Tuesday morning. I put it off.” Dr. Bloom was a guest lecturer at the behavioral-science section of the FBI Academy.

“Graham likes you. He doesn’t think you run any mind games on him,” Crawford said. Bloom’s remark about using Graham stuck in his craw.

“I don’t. I wouldn’t try,” Dr. Bloom said. “I’m as honest with him as I’d be with a patient.”

“Exactly.”

“No, I want to be his friend, and I am. Jack, I owe it to my field of study to observe. Remember, though, when you asked me to give you a study on him, I refused.”

“That was Petersen, upstairs, wanted the study.”

“You were the one who asked for it. No matter, if I ever did anything on Graham, if there were ever anything that might be of therapeutic benefit to others, I’d abstract it in a form that would be totally unrecognizable. If I ever do anything in a scholarly way, it’ll only be published posthumously.”

“After you or after Graham?”

Dr. Bloom didn’t answer.

“One thing I’ve noticed – I’m curious about this: you’re never alone in a room with Graham, are you? You’re smooth about it, but you’re never one-on-one with him. Why’s that? Do you think he’s psychic, is that it?”

“No. He’s an eideteker – he has a remarkable visual memory – but I don’t think he’s psychic. He wouldn’t let Duke test him – that doesn’t mean anything, though. He hates to be prodded and poked. So do I.”

“But-“

“Will wants to think of this as purely an intellectual exercise, and in the narrow definition of forensics, that’s what it is. He’s good at that, but there are other people just as good, I imagine.”

“Not many,” Crawford said.

“What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.”

“Why aren’t you ever alone with him?”

“Because I have some professional curiosity about him and he’d pick that up in a hurry. He’s fast.”

“If he caught you peeking, he’d snatch down the shades.”

“An unpleasant analogy, but accurate, yes. You’ve had sufficient revenge now, Jack. We can get to the point. Let’s make it short. I don’t feel very well.”

“A psychosomatic manifestation, probably,” Crawford said. “Actually it’s my gall bladder. What do you want?”

“I have a medium where I can speak to the Tooth Fairy.”

“The Tattler,” Dr. Bloom said.

“Right. Do you think there’s any way to push him in a self-destructive way by what we say to him?”

“Push him toward suicide?”

“Suicide would suit me fine.”

“I doubt it. In certain kinds of mental illness that might be possible. Here, I doubt it. If he were self-destructive, he wouldn’t be so careful. He wouldn’t protect himself so well. If he were a classic paranoid schizophrenic, you might be able to influence him to blow up and become visible. You might even get him to hurt himself. I wouldn’t help you though.” Suicide was Bloom’s mortal enemy.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” Crawford said. “Could we enrage him?”

“Why do you want to know? To what purpose?”

“Let me ask you this: could we enrage him and focus his attention?”

“He’s already fixed on Graham as his adversary, and you know it. Don’t fool around. You’ve decided to stick Graham’s neck out, haven’t you?”

“I think I have to do it. It’s that or he gets his feet sticky on the twenty-fifth. Help me.”

“I’m not sure you know what you’re asking.”

“Advice – that’s what I’m asking.”

“I don’t mean from me,” Dr. Bloom said. “What you’re asking from Graham. I don’t want you to misinterpret this, and normally I wouldn’t say it, but you ought to know: what do you think one of Will’s strongest drives is?”

Crawford shook his head. “It’s fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.” “Because he got hurt?”

“No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.”

Crawford stared at his blunt hands folded on his stomach. He reddened. It was embarrassing to talk about it. “Sure. It’s what you don’t ever mention on the big boys’ side of the playground, right? Don’t worry about telling me he’s afraid. I won’t think he’s not a ‘stand-up guy.’ I’m not a total asshole, Doctor.”