فصل پنجاه و چهارم

54

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.

Hannibal twisted and knotted the wet sheets like a jail suicide, and when he had finished the sheets hung from a terrace railing to within fifteen feet of the alley pavement.

He took his time going down. When he let go of the sheet the last drop through the air seemed to take a long time, the bottoms of his feet stinging as he hit and rolled.

He pushed the motorcycle down the alley behind the building and out into the back street, dropped the clutch and swung aboard as the engine fired. He needed enough of a lead to retrieve Milko’s gun.