Hannibal Page 0,69
a bag. He turned to the projector, its fan still humming, dust swimming in its beam.
"I should have shown them this one, I can't imagine how I missed it."
Dr Lecter projected another drawing, a man naked hanging beneath the battlements of the palace. "This one will interest you, Commendator Pazzi, let me see if I can improve the focus."
Dr Lecter fiddled with the machine, and then he approached the image on the wall, his silhouette black on the cloth the same size as the hanged man.
"Can you make this out? It won't enlarge any more. Here's where the archbishop bit him. And beneath him is written his name."
Pazzi did not get close to Dr Lecter, but as he approached the wall he smelled a chemical, and thought for an instant it was something the restorers used..."Can you make out the characters? It says 'Pazzi' along with a rude poem. This is your ancestor, Francesco, hanging outside the Palazzo Vecchio, beneath these windows," Dr Lecter said. He held Pazzi's eyes across the beam of light between them.
"On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife."
Dr Lecter flipped the big drop cloth down over Pazzi, Pazzi flailing at the canvas, trying to uncover his head as his heart flailed in his chest, and Dr Lecter behind him fast, seizing him around the neck with terrible strength and clapping an ether-soaked sponge over the canvas covering Pazzi's face.
Rinaldo Pazzi strong and thrashing, feet and arms tangled in the canvas, feet tangled in the cloth, he was still able to get his hand on his pistol as they fell to the floor together, tried to point the Beretta behind him under the smothering canvas, pulled the trigger and shot himself through the thigh as he sank into spinning black...
The little.380 going off beneath the canvas did not make much more noise than the banging and grinding on the floors below. No one came up the staircase. Dr Lecter swung the great doors to the Salon of Lilies closed and bolted them...
A certain amount of nausea and gagging as Pazzi came back to consciousness, the taste of ether in his throat and a heaviness in his chest.
He found that he was still in the Salon of Lilies and discovered that he could not move. Rinaldo Pazzi was bound upright with the drop cloth canvas and rope, stiff as a grandfather clock, strapped to the tall hand truck the workers had used to move the podium. His mouth was taped. A pressure bandage stopped the bleeding of the gunshot wound in his thigh.
Watching him, leaning against the pulpit, Dr Lecter was reminded of himself, similarly bound when they moved him around the asylum on a hand truck.
"Can you hear me, Signore Pazzi? Take some deep breaths while you can, and clear your head."
Dr Lecter's hands were busy as he talked. He had rolled a big floor polisher into the room and he was working with its thick orange power cord, tying a hangman's noose in the plug end of the cord. The rubber-covered cord squeaked as he made the traditional thirteen wraps.
He completed the hangman's noose with a tug and put it down on the pulpit. The plug protruded from the coils at the noose end.
Pazzi's gun, his plastic handcuff strips, the contents of his pockets and briefcase were on top of the podium.
Dr Lecter poked among the papers. He slipped into his shirtfront the Carabinieri's file containing his permesso di soggiorno, his work permit, the photos and negatives of his new face.
And here was the musical score Dr Lecter loaned Signora Pazzi. He picked up the score now and tapped his teeth with it. His nostrils flared and he breathed in deeply, his face close to Pazzi's. "Laura, if I may call her Laura, must use a wonderful hand cream at night, Signore. Slick. Cold at first and then warm," he said. "The scent of orange blossoms. Laura, l'orange...Ummmm. I haven't had a bite all day. Actually, the liver and kidneys would be suitable for dinner right away-tonight-but the rest of the meat should hang a week in the current cool conditions. I did not see the forecast, did you? I gather that means `no.' "If you tell me what I need to know, Commendatore, it would be convenient for me to leave without my meal; Signora Pazzi will remain unscathed. I'll ask you the questions and then we'll see. You can trust me, you