Hannibal Rising (24 page)

“Do you know how that feels, the fizzy water?” Grutas said. “It feels like being born again. I’m all
new, in a new world with no room in it for you. I can’t believe you killed Milko by yourself.”

“Someone lent me a hand,” Hannibal said.

“Hold him over the tub and cut him when I tell you.”

The three men wrestled Hannibal to the floor and held his head and neck over the bathtub. Mueller had a switch knife. He put the edge to Hannibal’s throat.

“Look at me, Count Lecter, my prince, twist your head and look at me, get your throat stretched tight and you’ll bleed out fast. It won’t hurt so long.”

Through the steam room door, Hannibal could see the hand of the timer moving tick by tick.

“Answer this,” Grutas said. “Would you have fed me to the little girl if she were starving? Because you loved her?”

“Of course.”

Grutas smiled and tweaked Hannibal’s cheek. “There. There you have it. Love. I love myself that much. I would never apologize to you. You lost your sister in the war.” Grutas belched and laughed. “That burp is my commentary. Are you looking for sympathy? You’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Cut him, Mueller. This is the last thing you will ever hear, I’ll tell you what YOU did to live. You—”

The explosion shuddered the bathroom and the sink jumped off the wall, water spurting from the pipes, and the lights went out. Wrestling in the dark on the floor, Mueller, Gassmann, Dieter swarming
on him and tangled up with the woman. The knife got into Gassmann’s arm, him cursing and shrieking. Hannibal caught someone hard in the face with his elbow and was on his feet, a muzzle flash as a gun went off in the tiled room and splinters stung his face. Smoke, heavy smoke, curled out of the wall. A gun was sliding across the tiles, Dieter after it. Grutas picked up the gun, the woman jumping on him with her nails at his face and he shot her twice in the chest. Climbed to his feet, the gun coming up. Hannibal snapped the wet towel across Grutas’ eyes. Dieter on Hannibal’s back, Hannibal threw himself backward on top of him and felt the impact as the edge of the tub caught Dieter across the kidneys and Dieter let go. Mueller on him now before he could get up, trying to jam his big thumbs under Hannibal’s chin. Hannibal butted Mueller in the face, slid his hand between them, finding a gun in Mueller’s waistband, and pulled the trigger with the gun still in Mueller’s pants, the big German rolling off him with a howl, and Hannibal ran with the gun. He had to slow in the dark bedroom, then fast into the corridor filling with smoke. He picked up the maid’s pail in the corridor and carried it with him through the house, once hearing a gun go off behind him.

The gate guard was out of the blockhouse and halfway to the front door. “Get water!” Hannibal yelled to him. He handed the man the bucket as he rushed past. “I’ll get the hose!” Running hard down the driveway, cutting into the trees as soon as he
could. He heard shouts behind him. Up the hill to the orchard. Quick the ignition, feeling for the wire in the dark.

Compression release, twist a little gas, kick, kick. Kick, kick. Touch of choke. Kick. The BMW awakened with a growl and Hannibal exploded out of the brush, down an allée between the trees, knocking loose a muffler on a stump and then on the road, roaring off into the dark, the hanging pipe against the pavement leaving a trail of sparks.

The firemen stayed late into the night, hosing embers in the basement of Grutas’ house, shooting water into the spaces in the walls. Grutas stood at the edge of his garden, smoke and steam rising into the night sky behind him, and stared in the direction of Paris.

THE NURSING STUDENT had dark red hair and maroon eyes about the same color as Hannibal’s. When he stood back from the fountain in the medical school corridor so that she could drink first, she put her face close to him and sniffed. “When did you start smoking?”

“I’m trying to quit,” he said.

“Your eyebrows are singed!”

“Careless lighting up.”

“If you’re careless with fire you shouldn’t be cooking.” She licked her thumb and smoothed his eyebrow. “My roommate and I are making a daube this evening, there’s plenty if …”

“Thank you. Really. But I have an engagement.”

His note to Lady Murasaki asked if he might visit. He found a branch of wisteria to go with it, suitably withered in abject apology. Her note of invitation
was accompanied by two sprigs, watermelon crepe myrtle and a sprig of pine with a tiny cone. Pine is not sent lightly. Thrilling and boundless, the possibilities of pine.

Lady Murasaki’s
poissonnier
did not fail her. He had for her four perfect sea urchins in cold seawater from their native Brittany. Next door the butcher produced sweetbreads, already soaked in milk and pressed between two plates. She stopped by Fauchon for a pear tart and last she bought a string bag of oranges.

She paused before the florist, her arms full. No, Hannibal would certainly bring flowers.

Hannibal brought flowers. Tulips and Casablanca lilies and ferns in a tall arrangement sticking up from the pillion seat of his motorcycle. Two young women crossing the street told him the flowers looked like a rooster’s tail. He winked at them when the light changed and roared away with a light feeling in his chest.

He parked in the alley beside Lady Murasaki’s building and walked around the corner to the entrance with his flowers. He was waving to the concierge when Popil and two beefy policemen stepped out of a doorway and seized him. Popil took the flowers.

“Those aren’t for you,” Hannibal said.

“You’re under arrest,” Popil said. When Hannibal was handcuffed, Popil stuck the flowers under his arm.

In his office at the Quai des Orfèvres, Inspector Popil left Hannibal alone and let him wait for a half-hour in the atmosphere of the police station. He returned to his office to find the young man placing the last stem in a flower arrangement in a water carafe on Popil’s desk. “How do you like that?” Hannibal said.

Inspector Popil slugged him with a small rubber sap and he went down.

“How do you like that?” Popil said.

The larger of the two policemen crowded in behind Popil and stood over Hannibal. “Answer every question: I asked you how do you like that?”

“It’s more honest than your handshake. And at least the club is clean.”

Popil took from an envelope two dog tags on a loop of string. “Found in your room. These two were charged in absentia at Nuremberg. Question: Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to watch them hang? The hangman uses the English drop, but not enough to tear their heads off. He does not boil and stretch his rope. They yo-yo a lot. That should be to your taste.”

“Inspector, you will never know anything about my taste.”

“Justice doesn’t matter, it just has to be you killing them.”

“It has to be you too, doesn’t it, Inspector? You always watch them die. It’s to your taste. Do you think we could talk alone?” He took from his pocket a bloodstained note wrapped in cellophane. “You have mail from Louis Ferrat.”

Popil motioned for the policemen to leave the room.

“When I cut the clothes off Louis’ body I found this note to you.” He read aloud the part above the fold.
“Inspector Popil, why do you torment me with questions you will not answer yourself? I saw you in Lyons
. And he goes on.” Hannibal passed the note to Popil. “If you want to open it, it’s dry now. It doesn’t smell.”

The note crackled when Popil opened it, and dark flakes fell out of the fold. When he had finished he sat holding the note beside his temple.

“Did some of your family wave bye-bye to you from the choo-choo?” Hannibal said. “Were you directing traffic at the depot that day?”

Popil drew back his hand.

“You don’t want to do that,” Hannibal said softly. “If I knew anything, why should I tell you? It’s a reasonable question, Inspector. Maybe you’ll get them passage to Argentina.”

Popil closed his eyes and opened them again. “Pétain was always my hero. My father, my uncles fought under him in the First War. When he made the new government, he told us, ‘Just keep the
peace until we throw the Germans off. Vichy will save France.’ We were already policemen, it seemed like the same duty.”

“Did you help the Germans?”

Popil shrugged. “I kept the peace. Perhaps that helped them. Then I saw one of their trains. I deserted and found the Resistance. They wouldn’t trust me until I killed a Gestapo. The Germans shot eight villagers in reprisal. I felt like I had killed them myself. What kind of war is that? We fought in Normandy in the hedges, clicking these to identify each other.” He picked up a cricket clicker from his desk. “We helped the Allies coming in from the beachheads.” He clicked twice. “This meant I’m a friend, don’t shoot. I don’t care about Dortlich. Help me find them. How are you hunting Grutas?”

“Through relatives in Lithuania, my mother’s connections in the church.”

“I could hold you for the false papers, just on the con’s testimony. If I let you go, will you swear to tell me everything you find out? Will you swear to God?”

“To God? Yes, I swear to God. Do you have a Bible?” Popil had a copy of the Pensées in his bookcase. Hannibal took it out. “Or we could use your Pascal, Pascal.”

“Would you swear on Lady Murasaki’s life?”

A moment’s hesitation. “Yes, on Lady Murasaki’s life.” Hannibal picked up the clicker and clicked it twice.

Popil held out the dog tags and Hannibal took them back.

When Hannibal had left the office, Popil’s assistant came in. Popil signaled from the window. When Hannibal emerged from the building a plainclothes policeman followed him.

“He knows something. His eyebrows are singed. Check fires in the Ile de France for the last three days,” Popil said. “When he leads us to Grutas, I want to try him for the butcher when he was a child.”

“Why the butcher?”

“It’s a juvenile crime, Etienne, a crime of passion. I don’t want a conviction, I want him declared insane. In an asylum they can study him and try to find out what he is.”

“What do you think he is?”

“The little boy Hannibal died in 1945 out there in the snow trying to save his sister. His heart died with Mischa. What is he now? There’s not a word for it yet. For lack of a better word, we’ll call him a monster.”

AT LADY MURASAKI’S building in the Place des Vosges, the concierge’s booth was dark, the Dutch door with its frosted window closed. Hannibal let himself into the building with his key and ran up the stairs.

Inside her booth, seated in her chair the concierge had the mail spread before her on her desk, stacked tenant by tenant as though she were playing solitaire. The cable of a bicycle lock was buried nearly out of sight in the soft flesh of her neck and her tongue was hanging out.

Hannibal knocked on Lady Murasaki’s door. He could hear the telephone ringing inside. It sounded oddly shrill to him. The door swung open when he pushed his key into the lock. He ran through the apartment, looking, looking, flinching when he pushed open her bedroom door, but the room was
empty. The telephone was ringing, ringing. He picked up the receiver.

In the kitchen of the Café de L’Este, a cage of ortolans waited to be drowned in Armagnac and scalded in the big pot of boiling water on the stove. Grutas gripped Lady Murasaki’s neck and held her face close to the boiling pot. With his other hand he held the telephone receiver. Her hands were tied behind her. Mueller gripped her arms from behind.

When he heard Hannibal’s voice on the line, Grutas spoke into the phone. “To continue our conversation, do you want to see the Jap alive?” Grutas asked.

“Yes.”

“Listen to her and guess if she still has her cheeks.”

What was that sound behind Grutas’ voice? Boiling water? Hannibal did not know if the sound was real; he heard boiling water in his dreams
.

“Speak to your little fuckboy.”

Lady Murasaki said, “My dear, DON’T—” before she was snatched away from the telephone. She struggled in Mueller’s grip and they banged into the cage of ortolans. The birds screeched and twittered among themselves.

Grutas spoke to Hannibal. “‘My DEAR,’ you have killed two men for your sister and you have blown up my house. I offer you a life for a life. Bring everything,
the dog tags, Pot Watcher’s little inventory, every fucking thing. I feel like making her squeal.”

“Where—”

“Shut up. Kilometer thirty-six on the road to Trilbardou, there is a telephone kiosk. Be there at sunrise and you’ll get a call. If you are not there you get her cheeks in the mail. If I see Popil, or any policeman, you get her heart parcel post. Maybe you can use it in your studies, poke through the chambers, see if you can find your face. A life for a life?”

“A life for a life,” Hannibal said. The line went dead.

Dieter and Mueller brought Lady Murasaki to a van outside the café. Kolnas changed the license plate on Grutas’ car.

Grutas opened the trunk and got out a Dragunov sniper rifle. He gave it to Dieter. “Kolnas, bring a jar.” Grutas wanted Lady Murasaki to hear. He watched her face with a kind of hunger as he gave instructions.

“Take the car. Kill him at the telephone,” Grutas told Dieter. He handed him the jar. “Bring his balls to the boat below Nemours.”

Hannibal did not want to look out the window; Popil’s plainclothesman would be looking up. He went into the bedroom. He sat on the bed for a moment with his eyes closed. The background sounds rang on in Hannibal’s head.
Chirp chirp. The Baltic dialect of the ortolan
.

Lady Murasaki’s sheets were lavender-scented linen. He gripped them in his fists, held them to his face, then stripped them off the bed and soaked them quickly in the tub. He stretched a clothesline across the living room and hung a kimono from it, set an oscillating fan on the floor and turned it on, the fan turning slowly, moving the kimono and its shadow on the sheer curtains.

Standing before the samurai armor, he held up the tanto dagger and stared into the mask of Lord Date Masamune.

“If you can help her, help her now.”

He put the lanyard around his neck and slipped the dagger down the back of his collar.