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railroad Starling.
Mason wanted some press coverage for Dr Lecter to see. But Krendler must make the coverage seem an unhappy accident. Fortunately an occasion was coming that would serve him well: the very birthday of the FBI.
Krendler maintained a tame conscience with which to shrive himself.
It consoled him now: If Starling lost her job, at worst some goddamned dyke den where Starling lived would have to do without the big TV dish for sports. At worst he was giving a loose cannon a way to roll over the side and threaten nobody anymore.
A "loose cannon" over the side would "stop rocking the boat," he thought, pleased and comforted as though two naval metaphors made a logical equation. That the rocking boat moves the cannon bothered him not at all. Krendler had the most active fantasy life his imagination would permit. Now, for his pleasure, he pictured
Starling as old, tripping over those tits, those trim legs turned blue-veined and lumpy, trudging up and down the stairs carrying laundry, turning her face away from the stains on the sheets, working for her board at a bed-and- breakfast owned by a couple of goddamned hairy old dykes.
He imagined the next thing he would say to her, coming on the heels of his triumph with "cornpone country pussy.".Armed with Dr Doemling's insights, he wanted to stand close to her after she was disarmed and say without moving his mouth, "You're old to still be fucking your daddy, even for Southern white trash." He repeated the line in his mind, and considered putting it in his notebook.
Krendler had the tool and the time and the venom he needed to smash Starling's career, and as he set about it, he was vastly aided by chance and the Italian mail.
Chapter 68
THE BATTLE Creek Cemetery outside Hubbard, Texas, is a small scar on the lion- colored hide of central Texas in December. The wind is whistling there at this moment, and it will always whistle there. You cannot wait it out.
The new section of the cemetery has flat markers so it's easy to mow the grass. Today a silver heart balloon dances there over the grave of a birthday girl. In the older part of the cemetery they mow along the paths every time and get between the tombstones with a mower as often as they can. Bits of ribbon, the stalks of dried flowers, are mixed in the soil. At the very back of the cemetery is a compost heap where the old flowers go. Between the dancing heart balloon and the compost heap, a backhoe is idling, a young black man at the controls, another on the ground, cupping a match against the wind as he lights a cigarette...
"Mr. Closter, I wanted you to be here when we did this so you could see what we're up against. I'm sure you will discourage the loved ones from any viewing," said Mr. Greenlea, director of the Hubbard Funeral Home. "That casket - and I want to compliment you again on your taste - that casket will make a proud presentation, and that's as far as they need to see. I'm happy to give you the professional discount on it. My own father, who is dead at the present time, rests in one just like it."
He nodded to the backhoe operator and the machine's claw took a bite out of the weedy, sunken grave.
"You're positive about the stone, Mr. Closter?"
"Yes," Dr Lecter said. "The children are having one stone made for both the mother and the father."
They stood without talking, the wind snapping their trouser cuffs, until the backhoe stopped about two feet down.
"We'd better go with shovels from here," Mr. Greenlea said. The two workers dropped into the hole and started moving dirt with an easy, practiced swing.
"Careful," Mr. Greenlea said. "That wasn't much of a coffin to start with. Nothing like what he's getting now."
The cheap pressboard coffin had indeed collapsed on its occupant. Greenlea had his diggers clear the dirt around it and slide a canvas under the bottom of the box, which was still intact. The coffin was raised in this canvas sling and swung into the back of a truck.
On a trestle table in the Hubbard Funeral Home garage, the pieces of the sunken lid were lifted away to reveal a sizeable skeleton.
Dr Lecter examined it quickly. A bullet had notched the short rib over the liver and there was a depressed fracture and bullet hole high on the