Chapter 36: "That's all you want? A ride?"
NIGHT CAME and the last tourists were shooed out of the Palazzo Vecchio. Many,
feeling the loom of the medieval castle on their backs as they scattered
across the piazza, had to turn and look up a last time at the jack-o'-lantern
teeth of its parapets, high over them.
Floodlights came on, washing the sheer rough stone, sharpening the shadows
under the high battlements. As the swallows went to their nests, the first
bats appeared, disturbed in their hunting more by the high-frequency squeals
of the restorers' power tools than by the light.
Inside the palazzo the endless job of conservation and maintenance would go on
for another hour, except in the Salon of Lilies, where Dr Lecter conferred
with the foreman of the maintenance crew.
The foreman, accustomed to the penury and sour demands of the Belle Arti
Committee, found the doctor both courteous and extremely generous.
In minutes his workers were stowing their equipment, moving the great floor
polishers and compressors out of the way against the walls and rolling up
their lines and electrical cords. Quickly they set up the folding chairs for
the meeting of the Studiolo - only a dozen chairs were needed - and threw open
the windows to clear out the smell of their paint and polish and gilding
materials.
The doctor insisted on a proper lectern, and one as big as a pulpit was found
in the former office of Niccolo Machiavelli adjacent to the salon and brought
on a tall hand truck, along with the palazzo's overhead projector.
The small screen that came with the projector did not suit Dr Lecter and he
sent it away. Instead he tried showing his images life-sized against one of
the hanging canvas drop cloths protecting a refurbished wall. After he had
adjusted its fastenings and smoothed out the folds, he found the cloth would
serve him very well.
He marked his place in several of the weighty tomes piled on the lectern, and
then stood at the window with his back to the room as the members of the
Studiolo in their dusty dark suits arrived and seated themselves, the tacit
skepticism of the scholars evident as they rearranged their chairs from a
semicircle into more of a jury-box configuration.
Looking out the tall windows, Dr Lecter could see the Duomo and Giotto's
campanile, black against the west, but not Dante's beloved Baptistry below
them. The upturned floodlights prevented him from seeing down into the dark
piazza where the assassins awaited him.
As these, the most renowned medieval and Renaissance scholars in the world,
settled in their chairs, Dr Lecter composed in his mind his lecture to them.
It took him a little more than three minutes to organize the lecture. Its
subject was Dante's Inferno and Judas Iscariot.
Much in accord with the Studiolo's taste for the pre-Renaissance, Dr Lecter
began with the case of Pier della Vigna, Logothete of the Kingdom of Sicily,
whose avarice earned him a place in Dante's Hell. For the first half-hour the
doctor fascinated them with the real-life medieval intrigues behind della
Vigna's fall.
"Della Vigna was disgraced and blinded for his betrayal of the emperor's trust
through his avarice," Dr Lecter said, approaching his principal topic. "Dame's
pilgrim found him in the seventh level of the Inferno, reserved for suicides.
Like Judas Iscariot, he died by hanging.
"Judas and Pier della Vigna and Ahithophel, the ambitious counselor of
Absalom, are linked in Dante by the avarice he saw in them and by their
subsequent deaths by hanging.
"Avarice and hanging are linked in the ancient and the medieval mind: St
Jerome writes that Judas' very surname, Iscariot, means `money' or `price,'
while Father Origen says Iscariot is derived from the Hebrew `from
suffocation' and that his name means `Judas the Suffocated."
' Dr Lecter glanced up from his podium, looking over his spectacles at the
door.
"Ah, Commendator Pazzi, welcome. Since you are nearest to the door, would you
be kind enough to dim the lights? You will be interested in this,
Commendatore, as there are two Pazzis already in Dante's Inferno . . ."
The professors of the Studiolo cackled dryly. "There is Camicion de' Pazzi,
who murdered a kinsman, and he is expecting the arrival of a second Pazzi-but
it's not you-it's Carlino, who will be placed even farther down in Hell for
treachery and betrayal of the White Guelphs, the party of Dante himself."
A little bat flew in through one of the open windows and circled the room over
the heads of the professors for a few laps, a common event in Tuscany and
ignored by everyone.
Dr Lecter resumed his podium voice. "Avarice and hanging, then, linked since
antiquity, the image appearing again and again in art."
Dr Lecter pressed the switch in his palm and the projector came to life,
throwing an image on the drop cloth covering the wall. In quick succession
further images followed as he spoke: "Here is the earliest known depiction of
the Crucifixion, carved on an ivory box in Gaul about A.D. four hundred. It
includes the death by hanging of Judas, his face upturned to the branch that
suspends him. And here on a reliquary casket of Milan, fourth century, and an
ivory diptych of the ninth century, Judas hanging. He's still looking up."
The little bat flickered across the screen, hunting bugs.
"In this plate from the doors of the Benevento Cathedral, we see Judas hanging
with his bowels falling out as St Luke, the physician, described him in the
Acts of the Apostles. Here he hangs beset by Harpies, above him in the sky is
the face of Cain-in-the-Moon; and here he's depicted by your own Giotto, again
with pendant viscera.
"And finally, here, from a fifteenth-century edition of the Inferno, is Pier
delta Vigna's body hanging from a bleeding tree. I will not belabor the
obvious parallel with Judas Iscariot.
"But Dante needed no drawn illustration: It is the genius of Dante Alighieri
to make Pier delta Vigna, now in Hell, speak in strained hisses and coughing
sibilants as though he is hanging still. Listen to him as he tells of
dragging, with the other damned, his own dead body to hang upon a thorn tree:
"Surge in vermena a in pianta silvestra: VA rpie, pascendo poi de Ie sue
foglie, fanno doloye, a al dolor fenestra."
Dr Lector's normally white face flushes as he creates for the Studiolo the
gargling, choking words of the agonal Pier delta Vigna, and as he thumbs his
remote control, the images of delta Vigna and Judas with his bowels out
alternate on the large field of the hanging drop cloth.
"Come l'altre verrem per nostre spoglie, ma non pero ch'alcuna son rivesta,
the non a giusto aver cio ch'om si toglie.
"Qui le strascineremo, a per la mesta selva saranno i nostri eorpi appesi,
ciascuno al prun de l'ombra sua molests.
"So Dante recalls, in sound, the death of Judas in the death of Pier delta
Vigna for the same crimes of avarice and treachery.
"Ahithophel, Judas, your own Pier delta Vigna. Avarice, hanging, selfdestruction, with avarice counting as self-destruction as much as hanging. And
what does the anonymous Florentine suicide say in his torment at the end of
the canto?
"Io fez' gibetto a me de Ie mie case.
"And I - I made my own house be my gallows.
"On the next occasion you might like to discuss Dame's son Pietro. Incredibly,
he was the only one of the early writers on the thirteenth canto who links
Pier dells Vigna and Judas. I think, too, it would be interesting to take up
the matter of chewing in Dante. Count Ugolino chewing on the back of the
archbishop's head, Satan with his three faces chewing Judas, Brutus and
Cassius, all betrayers like Pier delta Vigna.
"Thank you for your kind attention."
The scholars applauded him enthusiastically, in their soft and dusty way, and
Dr Lector left the lights down as he said good-bye to them, each by name,
holding books in his arms so he would not have to shake their hands. Going out
of the soft light of the Salon of Lilies, they seemed to carry the spell of
the lecture with them.
Dr Lector and Rinaldo Pazzi, alone now in the great chamber, could hear
wrangling over the lecture break out among the scholars as they descended the
stairs.
"Would you say that I saved my job, Commendatore?"
"I'm not a scholar, Dr Fell, but anyone can see that you impressed them.
Doctor, if it's convenient for you, I'll walk home with you and collect your
predecessor's effects."
"They fill two suitcases, Commendatore, and you already have your briefcase.
Do you want to carry them?"
"I'll have a patrol car come for me at the Palazzo Capponi."
Pazzi would insist if necessary.
"Fine," Dr Lecter said. "I'll be a minute, putting things away."
Pazzi nodded and went to the tall windows with his cell phone, never taking
his eyes off Lecter.
Pazzi could see that the doctor was perfectly calm. From the floors below came
the sounds of power tools.
Pazzi dialed a number and when Carlo Deogracias answered, Pazzi said, "Laura,
amore, I'll be home very shortly."
Dr Lecter took his books off the podium and packed them in 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 know, though I expect you find trust difficult, knowing yourself.
"I saw at the theater that you had identified me, Commendatore. Did you wet
yourself when I bent over the Signora's hand? When the police didn't come, it
was clear that you had sold me. Was it Mason Verger you sold me to? Blink
twice for yes.
"Thank you, I thought so. I called the number on his ubiquitous poster once,
far from here, just for fun. Are his men waiting outside? Umm hmmm. And one of
them smells like tainted boar sausage? I see. Have you told anyone in the
Questura about me? Was that a single blink? I thought so. Now, I want you to
think a minute, and tell me your access code for the VICAP computer at
Quantico."
Dr Lecter opened his Harpy knife. "I'm going to take your tape off and you can
tell me."
Dr Lecter held up his knife. "Don't try to scream."
"Do you think you can keep from screaming?"
Pazzi was hoarse from the ether. "I swear to God I don't know the code. I
can't think of the whole thing. We can go to my car, I have papers-"
Dr Lecter wheeled Pazzi around to face the screen and flipped back and forth
between his images of Pier delta Vigna hanging, and Judas hanging with his
bowels out.
"Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out?"
"The code's in my notebook."
Dr Lecter held the book in front of Pazzi's face until he found the notation,
listed among telephone numbers.
"And you can log on remotely, as a guest?"
"Yes," Pazzi croaked.
"Thank you, Commendatore."
Dr Lecter tilted back the hand truck and rolled Pazzi to the great windows.
"Listen to me! I have money, man! You'll have to have money to run. Mason
Verger will never quit. He'll never quit. You can't go home for money, they're
watching your house."
Dr Lecter put two boards from the scaffolding as a ramp over the low
windowsill and rolled Pazzi on the hand truck out onto the balcony outside.
The breeze was cold on Pazzi's wet face. Talking quickly now, "You'll never
get away from this building alive. I have money. I have one hundred and sixty
million lire in cash, U.S. dollars one hundred thousand! Let me telephone my
wife. I'll tell her to get the money and put it in my car, and leave the car
right in front of the palazzo."
Dr Lecter retrieved his noose from the pulpit and carried it outside, trailing
the orange cord behind him. The other end was tight in a series of hitches
around the heavy floor polisher.
Pazzi was still talking. "She'll call me on the cell phone when she's outside,
and then she'll leave it for you. I have the police pass, she can drive right
across the piazza to the entrance. She'll do what I tell her. The car smokes,
man, you can look down and see it's running, the keys will be in it."
Dr Lecter tilted Pazzi forward against the balcony railing. The railing came
to his thighs.
Pazzi could look down at the piazza and make out through the floodlights the
spot where Savonarola was burned, where he had sworn to sell Dr Lecter to
Mason Verger. He looked up at the clouds scudding low, colored by the
floodlights, and hoped, so much, that God could see.
Down is the awful direction and he could not help staring there, toward death,
hoping against reason that the beams of the floodlights gave some substance to
the air, that they would somehow press on him, that he might snag on the light
beams.
The orange rubber cover of the wire noose cold around his neck, Dr Lecter
standing so close to him.
"Arrivederci, Commendatore."
Flash of the Harpy up Pazzi's front, another swipe severed his attachment to
the dolly and he was tilting, tipped over the railing trailing the orange
cord, ground coming up in a rush, mouth free to scream, and inside the salon,
the floor polisher rushed across the floor and slammed to a stop against the
railing, Pazzi jerked head-up, his neck broke and his bowels fell out.
Pazzi and his appendage swinging and spinning before the rough wall of the
floodlit palace, jerking in posthumous spasms but not choking, dead, his
shadow thrown huge on the wall by the floodlights, swinging with his bowels
swinging below him in a shorter, quicker arc, his manhood pointing out of his
rent trousers in a death erection.
Carlo charging out of a doorway, Matteo beside him, across the piazza toward
the entrance to the palazzo, knocking tourists aside, two of whom had video
cameras trained on the castle.
"It's a trick," someone said in English as he ran by.
"Matteo, cover the back door. If he comes out just kill him and cut him,"
Carlo said, fumbling with his cell phone as he ran. Into the palazzo now, up
the stairs to the first level, then the second.
The great doors of the salon stood ajar. Inside, Carlo swung his gun on the
projected figure on the wall, ran out onto the balcony, searched Machiavelli's
office in seconds.
With his cell phone he reached Piero and Tommaso, waiting with the van in
front of the museum. "Get to his house, cover it front and back. Just kill him
and cut him."
Carlo dialed again. "Matteo?"
Matteo's phone buzzed in his breast pocket as he stood, breathing hard, in
front of the locked rear exit of the palazzo. He had scanned the roof, and the
dark windows, tested the door, his hand under his coat, on the pistol in his
waistband.
He flipped open the phone. "Pronto!"
"What do you see."
"Door's locked."
"The roof?"
Matteo looked up again, but not in time to see the shutters open on the window
above him.
Carlo heard a rustle and a cry in his telephone, and Carlo was running, down
the stairs, falling on a landing, up again and running, past the guard before
the palace entrance, who now stood outside, past the statues flanking the
entrance, around the corner and pounding now toward the rear of the palace,
scattering a few couples. Dark back here now, running, the cell phone
squeaking like a small creature in his hand as he ran. A figure ran across the
street in front of him shrouded in white, ran blindly in the path of a
motorino, and the scooter knocked it down, the figure up again and crashing
into the front of a shop across the narrow street of the palace, ran into the
plate glass, turned and ran blindly, an apparition in white, screaming,
"Carlo! Carlo," great stains spreading on the ripped canvas covering him, and
Carlo caught his brother in his arms, cut the plastic handcuff strip around
his neck binding the canvas tight over his head, the canvas a mask of blood.
Uncovered Matteo and found him ripped badly, across the face, across the
abdomen, deeply enough across the chest for the wound to suck. Carlo left him
long enough to run to the corner and look both ways, then he came back to his
brother.
With sirens approaching, flashing lights filling the Piazza Signoria, Dr
Hannibal Lecter shot his cuffs and strolled up to a gelateria in the nearby
Piazza de Giudici. Motorcycles and motorinos were lined up at the curb.
He approached a young man in racing leathers starting a big Ducati.
"Young man, I am desperate," he said with a rueful smile. "If I am not at the
Piazza Bellosguardo in ten minutes, my wife will kill me," he said, showing
the young man a fifty-thousand-lire note. "This is what my life is worth to
me."
"That's all you want? A ride?" the young man said.
Dr Lecter showed him his open hands. "A ride."
The fast motorcycle split the lines of traffic on the Lungarno, Dr Lecter
hunched behind the young rider, a spare helmet that smelled like hairspray and
perfume on his head. The rider knew where he was going, peeling off the Via
de' Serragli toward the Piazza Tasso, and out the Via Villani, hitting the
tiny gap beside the Church of San Francesco di Paola that leads into the
winding road up to Bellosguardo, the fine residential district on the hill
overlooking Florence from the south. The big Ducati engine echoed off the
stone walls lining the road with a sound like ripping canvas, pleasing to Dr
Lecter as he leaned into the curves and coped with the smell of hairspray and
inexpensive perfume in his helmet. He had the young man drop him off at the
entrance to the Piazza Bellosguardo, not far from the home of Count Montauto,
where Nathaniel Hawthorne had lived. The rider tucked his wages in the breast
pocket of his leathers and the taillight of the motorcycle receded fast down
the winding road.
Dr Lecter, exhilarated by his ride, walked another forty meters to the black
Jaguar, retrieved the keys from behind the bumper and started the engine. He
had a slight fabric burn on the heel of his hand where his glove had ridden up
as he flung the canvas drop cloth over Matteo and leaped down on him from the
first-floor palazzo window. He put a dab of the Italian antibacterial unguent
Cicatrine on it and it felt better at once.
Dr Lecter searched among his music tapes as the engine warmed. He decided on
Scarlatti.
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