THERE is a witchy beauty about Muskrat Farm, the Verger family's mansion near
the Susquehanna River in northern Maryland. The Verger meatpacking dynasty
bought it in the 1930s when they moved east from Chicago, to be closer to
Washington, and they could well afford it. Business and political acumen has
enabled the Vergers to batten on U.S. Army meat contracts since the Civil War.
The "embalmed beef" scandal in the Spanish-American War hardly touched the
Vergers. When Upton Sinclair and the muckrakers investigated dangerous
packing-plant conditions in Chicago, they found that several Verger employees
had been rendered into h lard inadvertently, canned and sold as Durham's Pure
Leaf Lard, a favorite of bakers. The blame did no stick to the Vergers. The
matter cost them not a single government contract.
The Vergers avoided these potential embarrassments and many others by giving
money to politicians - their single setback being passage of the Meat
Inspection Act of 1906.
Today the Vergers slaughter 86,000 cattle a day, and approximately 36,000
pigs, a number that varies slightly with the season.
The new-mown lawns of Muskrat Farm, the riot of its lilacs in the wind, smell
nothing at all like the stockyard. The only animals are ponies for the
visiting children and amusing flocks of geese grazing on the lawns, their
behinds wagging, heads low to the grass. There are no dogs. The house and barn
and grounds are near the center of six square miles of national forest, and
will remain there in perpetuity under a special exemption granted by the
Department of the Interior.
Like many enclaves of the very rich, Muskrat Farm is not easy to find the
first time you go. Clarice Starling went one exit too far on the expressway.
Coming back along the service road, she first encountered the trade entrance,
a big gate secured with chain and padlock in the high fence enclosing the
forest. Beyond the gate, a fire road disappeared into the overarching trees.
There was no call box. Two miles farther along she found the gatehouse, set
back a hundred yards along a handsome drive. The uniformed guard had her name
on his clipboard.
An additional two miles of manicured roadway brought her to the farm.
Starling stopped her rumbling Mustang to let a flock of geese cross the drive.
She could see a file of children on fat Shetlands leaving a handsome barn a
quarter-mile from the house. The main building before her was a Stanford
White-designed mansion handsomely set among low hills. The place looked solid
and fecund, the province of pleasant dreams. It tugged at Starling.
The Vergers had had sense enough to leave the house as it was, with the
exception of a single addition, which Starling could not yet see, a modern
wing that sticks out from the eastern elevation like an extra limb attached in
a grotesque medical experiment.
Starling parked beneath the central portico. When the engine was off she could
hear her own breathing. In the mirror she saw someone coming on a horse. Now
hooves clopped on the pavement beside the car as Starling got out.
A broad-shouldered person with short blond hair swung down from the saddle,
handed the reins to a valet without looking at him. "Walk him back," the rider
said in a deep scratchy voice.
"I'm Margot Verger."
At close inspection she was a woman, holding out her hand, arm extended
straight from the shoulder Clearly Margot Verger was a bodybuilder. Beneath
her corded neck, her massive shoulders and arms stretched the mesh of her
tennis shirt. Her eyes had a dry glitter and looked irritated, as though she
suffered from a shortage of tears. She wore twill riding breeches boots with
no spurs.
"What's that you're driving?" she said. "An old Mustang?"
"It's an '88."
"Five-liter? It sort of hunkers down over its wheels."
"Yes. It's a Roush Mustang."
"You like it?"
"A lot."
"What'll it do?"
"I don't know. Enough, I think."
"Scared of it?"
"Respectful of it. I'd say I use it respectfully," Starling said.
"Do you know about it, or did you just buy it?"
"I knew enough about it to buy it at a dope auction when I saw what it was. I
learned more later."
"You think it would beat my Porsche?"
"Depends on which Porsche. Ms Verger, I need to speak with your brother."
"They'll have him cleaned up in about five minutes. We can start up there."
The twill riding breeches whistled on Margot Verger's big thighs as she
climbed the stairs. Her cornsilk hair had receded enough to make Starling
wonder if she took steroids and had to tape her clitoris down.
To Starling, who spent most of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage, the
house felt like a museum, with its vast spaces and painted beams above her,
and walls hung with portraits of important - looking dead people. Chinese
cloisonné stood on the landings and long Moroccan runners lined the halls.
There is an abrupt shear in style at the new wing of the Verger mansion. The
modern functional structure is reached through frosted glass double doors,
incongruous in the vaulted hall.
Margot Verger paused outside the doors. She looked at Starling with her
glittery, irritated gaze.
"Some people have trouble talking with Mason," she said. "If it bothers you,
or you can't take it, I can fill you in later on whatever you forget to ask
him."
There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named - the happy
anticipation of being able to feel contempt. Starling saw it in Margot
Verger's face. All Starling said was "Thank you."
To Starling's surprise, the first room in the wing was a large and wellequipped playroom. Two African-American children played among oversized
stuffed animals, one riding a Big Wheel and the other pushing a truck along
the floor. A variety of tricycles and wagons were parked in the corners and in
the center was a large jungle gym with the floor heavily padded beneath it.
In a corner of the playroom, a tall man in a nurse's uniform sat on a love
seat reading Vogue. A number of video cameras were mounted on the walls, some
high, others at eye level. One camera high in the corner tracked Starling and
Margot Verger, its lens rotating to focus.
Starling was past the point where the sight of a brown child pierced her, but
she was keenly aware of these children. Their cheerful industry with the toys
was pleasant to see as she and Margot Verger passed through the room.
"Mason likes to watch the kids," Margot Verger said. "It scares them to see
him, all but the littlest ones, so he does it this way. They ride ponies
after. They're day-care kids out of child welfare in Baltimore."
Mason Verger's chamber is approached only through his bathroom, a facility
worthy of a spa that takes up the entire width of the wing. It is
institutional-looking, all steel and chrome and industrial carpet, with widedoored showers, stainless-steel tubs with lifting devices over them, coiled
orange hoses, steam rooms and vast glass cabinets of unguents from the
Farmacia of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The air in the bathroom was still
steam- from recent use and the scents of balsam and wintergreen hung in the
air.
Starling could see light under the door to Mason Verger's chamber. It went out
as his sister touched the doorknob.
A seating area in the corner of Mason Verger's chamber was severely lit from
above. A passable print of William Blake's "The Ancient of Days" hung above
the couch-God measuring with his calipers. The picture was draped with black
to commemorate the recent passing of the Verger patriarch. The rest of the
room was dark.
From the darkness came the sound of a machine working rhythmically, sighing at
each stroke.
"Good afternoon, Agent Starling."
A resonant voice mechanically amplified, the fricative f lost out of
afternoon.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Verger," Starling said into the darkness, the overhead
light hot on the top of her head. Afternoon was someplace else. Afternoon did
not enter here.
"Have a seat."
Going to have to do this. Now is good. Now is called .for.
"Mr. Verger, the discussion we'll have is in the nature of a deposition and
I'll need to tape-record it. Is that all right with you?"
"Sure."
The voice came between the sighs of the machine, the sibilant s lost from the
word. "Margot, I think you can leave us now.
Without a look at Starling, Margot Verger left in a whistle of riding pants.
"Mr. Verger, I'd like to attach this microphone to your - clothing or your
pillow if you're comfortable with that, or I'll call a nurse to do it if you
prefer."
"By all means," he said, minus the b and the m. He waited for power from the
next mechanical exhalation. "You can do it yourself, Agent Starling. I'm right
over here."
There were no light switches Starling could find at once. She thought she
might see better with the glare out of her eyes and she went into the
darkness, one hand before her, toward the smell of wintergreen and balsam.
She was closer to the bed than she thought when he turned on the light.
Starling's face did not change. Her hand holding the clip-on microphone jerked
backward, perhaps an inch.
Her first thought was separate from the feelings in her chest and stomach; it
was the observation that his speech anomalies resulted from his total lack of
lips. Her second thought was the recognition that he was not blind. His single
blue eye was looking at her through a sort of monocle with a tube attached
that kept the eye damp, as it lacked a lid. For the rest, surgeons years ago
had done what they could with expanded skin grafts over bone.
Mason Verger, noseless and lipless, with no soft tissue on his face, was all
teeth, like a creature of the deep, deep ocean. Inured as we are to masks, the
shock, in seeing him is delayed. Shock comes with the recognition that this is
a human face with a mind behind it. It churns you with its movement, the
articulation of the jaw, the turning of the eye to see you. To see your normal
face.
Mason Verger's hair is handsome and, oddly, the hardest thing to look at.
Black flecked with gray, it is plaited in a ponytail long enough to reach the
floor if it is brought back over his pillow. Today his plaited hair is in a
big coil on his chest above the turtle-shell respirator. Human hair beneath
the blue-john ruin, the plaits shining like lapping scales.
Under the sheet, Mason Verger's long-paralyzed body tapered away to nothing on
the elevated hospital bed.
Before his face was the control that looked like panpipes or a harmonica in
clear plastic. He curled his tongue tube - like around a pipe end and puffed
with the next stroke of his respirator. His bed responded with a hum, turned
him slightly to face Starling and increased the elevation of his head.
"I thank God for what happened," Verger said. "It was my salvation. Have you
accepted Jesus, Miss Starling? Do you have faith?"
"I was raised in a close religious atmosphere, Mr. Verger. I have whatever
that leaves you with," Starling said. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm just going
to clip this to the pillowcase. It won't be in the way here, will it?"
Her voice sounded too brisk and nursey to suit her.
Her hand beside his head, seeing their two fleshes together, did not aid
Starling, nor did his pulse in the vessels grafted over the bones of his face
to feed it blood; their regular dilation was like worms swallowing.
Gratefully, she paid out cord and backed to the table and her tape recorder
and separate microphone.
"This is Special Agent Clarice M. Starling, FBI number 5143690, deposing Mason
R. Verger, Social Security number 475989823, at his home on the date stamped
above, sworn and attested. Mr. Verger understands that he has been granted
immunity from prosecution by the U.S. Attorney for District Thirty-six, and by
local authorities in a combined memorandum attached, sworn and attested.
"Now, Mr. Verger-"
"I want to tell you about camp," he interrupted with his next exhalation. "It
was a wonderful childhood experience that I've come back to, in essence."
"We can get to that, Mr. Verger, but I thought we'd-"
"Oh, we can get to it now, Miss Starling. You see, it all comes to bear. It
was how I met Jesus, and I'll never tell you anything more important than
that."
He paused for the machine to sigh. "It was a Christian camp my father paid
for. He paid for the whole thing, all one hundred twenty-five campers on Lake
Michigan. Some of them were unfortunates and they would do anything for a
candy bar. Maybe I took advantage of it, maybe I was rough with them if they
wouldn't take the chocolate and do what I wanted - I'm not holding anything
back, because it's all okay now."
"Mr. Verger, let's look at some material with the same-"
He was not listening to her; he was only waiting for the machine to give him
breath. "I have immunity, Miss Starling, and it's all okay now. I've got a
grant of immunity from Jesus, I've got immunity from the U.S. Attorney, I've
got immunity from the DA in Owings Mills, Hallelujah. I'm free, Miss Starling,
and it's all okay now. I'm right with Him and it's all okay now. He's the
Risen Jesus, and at camp we called him The Riz. Nobody beats The Riz. We made
it contemporary, you know, The Riz. I served him in Africa, Hallelujah, I
served him in Chicago, praise His name, and I serve Him now and He will raise
me up from this bed and He will smite mine enemies and drive them before me
and I will hear the lamentations of their women, and it's all okay now."
He choked on saliva and stopped, the vessels on the front of his head dark and
pulsing.
Starling rose to get a nurse, but his voice stopped her before she reached the
door.
"I'm fine, it's all okay now."
Maybe a direct question would be better than trying to lead him. "Mr. Verger,
had you ever seen Dr Lecter before the court assigned you to him for therapy?
Did you know him socially?"
"No,"
"You were both on the board of the Baltimore Philharmonic."
"No, my seat was just because we contribute. I sent my lawyer when there was a
vote."
"You never gave a statement in the course of Dr Lecter's trial."
She was learning to time her questions so he would have breath to answer.
"They said they had enough to convict him six times, nine times. And he beat
it all on an insanity plea."
"The court found him insane. Dr Lecter did not plead."
"Do you find that distinction important?" Mason asked.
With the question, she first felt his mind, prehensile and deep-sleeved,
different from the vocabulary he used with her.
The big eel, now accustomed to the light, rose from the rocks in his aquarium
and began the tireless circle, a rippling ribbon of brown beautifully
patterned with irregular cream spots.
Starling was ever aware of it, moving in the corner of her vision.
"It's a Muraena Kidako," Mason said. "There's an even bigger one in captivity
in Tokyo. This one is second biggest.
"Its common name is the Brutal Moray, would you like to see why?"
"No," Starling said, and turned a page in her notes. "So in the course of your
court-ordered therapy, Mr. Verger, you invited Dr Lecter to your home."
"I'm not ashamed anymore. I'll tell you about anything. It's all okay now. I
got a walk on those trumped-up molestation counts if I did five hundred hours
of community service, worked at the dog pound and got therapy from Dr Lecter.
I thought if I got the doctor involved in something, he'd have to cut me some
slack on the therapy and wouldn't violate my parole if I didn't show up all
the time, or if I was a little stoned at my appointments."
"This was when you had the house in Owings Mills."
"Yes. I had told Dr Lecter everything, about Africa and Idi and all, and I
said I'd show him some of my stuff."
"You'd show him . . . ?"
"Paraphernalia. Toys. In the corner there, that's the little portable
guillotine I used for Idi Amin. You can throw it in the back of a jeep, go
anywhere, the most remote village. Set up in fifteen minutes. Takes the
condemned about ten minutes to cock it with a windlass, little longer if it's
a woman or a kid. I'm not ashamed of any of that, because I'm cleansed."
"Dr Lecter came to your house."
"Yes. I answered the door in some leather, you know. Watched for some
reaction, didn't see any. I was concerned he'd be afraid of me, but he didn't
seem to be. Afraid of me hat's funny now. I invited him upstairs. I showed
him, I had adopted some dogs from the shelter, two dogs that were friends, and
I had them in a cage together with plenty of fresh water, but no food. I was
curious about what would eventually happen.
"I showed him my noose setup, you know, autoerotic asphyxia, you sort of hang
yourself but not really, feels good while you - you follow?"
"I follow."
"Well, he didn't seem to follow. He asked me how it worked and I said, you're
an odd psychiatrist not to know that, and he said, and I'll never forget his
smile, he said, `Show me.' I thought, I've got you now!"
"And you showed him."
"I am not ashamed of that. We grow by our mistakes. I'm cleansed."
"Please go on, Mr. Verger."
"So I pulled down the noose in front of my big mirror and put it on and had
the release in my hand, and I was beating off with the other hand watching for
his reaction, but I couldn't tell anything. Usually I can read people. He was
sitting in a chair over in the corner of the room. His legs were crossed and
he had his fingers locked over his knee. Then he stood up and reached in his
jacket pocket, all elegant, like James Mason reaching for his lighter, and he
said, `Would you like an amyl popper?' I thought, Wow! He gives me one now and
he's got to give them to me forever to keep his license. Prescription city.
Well, if you read the report, you know it was a lot more than amyl nitrite."
"Angel Dust and some other methamphetamines and some acid," Starling said.
"I mean whoa! He went over to the mirror I looked at myself in, and kicked the
bottom of it and took out a shard. I was flying. He came over and gave me the
piece of glass and looked me in the eyes and suggested I might like to peel
off my face with it. He let the dogs out. I fed them my face. It took a long
time to get it all off, they say. I don't remember. Dr Lecter broke my neck
with the noose. They got my nose back when they pumped the dogs' stomachs at
the animal shelter, but the graft didn't take."
Starling took longer than she needed to in rearranging the papers on the
table.
"Mr. Verger, your family posted the reward after Dr Lecter escaped from
custody in Memphis."
"Yes, a million dollars. One million. We advertised worldwide."
"And you also offered to pay for any kind of relevant information, not just
the usual apprehension and conviction. You were supposed to share that
information with us. Have you always done that?"
"Not exactly, but there was never anything good to share."
"How do you know that? Did you follow up on some leads yourself?"
"Just far enough to know they were worthless. And why shouldn't we - you
people never told us anything. We had a tip from Crete that was nothing and
one from Uruguay that we could never confirm. I want you to understand, this
is not a revenge thing, Miss Starling. I have forgiven Dr Lecter just as Our
Savior forgave the Roman soldiers."
"Mr. Verger, you indicated to my office that you might have something now."
"Look in the drawer of the end table."
Starling took the white cotton gloves out of her purse and put them on. In the
drawer was a large manila envelope. It was stiff and heavy. She pulled out an
X-ray and held it to the bright overhead light. The X-ray was of a left hand
that appeared to be injured. She counted the fingers. Four plus the thumb.
"Look at the metacarpals, do you know what I'm talking about?"
"Yes."
"Count the knuckles."
Five knuckles. "Counting the thumb, this person had six fingers on his left
hand. Like Dr Lecter."
"Like Dr Lecter."
The corner where the X-ray's case number and origin should be was clipped off.
"Where did it come from, Mr. Verger?"
"Rio de Janeiro. To find out more, I have to pay. A lot. Can you tell me if
it's Dr Lecter? I need to know if I should pay."
"I'll try, Mr. Verger. We'll do our best. Do you have the package the X ray
came in?"
"Margot has it in a plastic bag, she'll give it to you. If you don't mind,
Miss Starling, I'm rather tired and I need some attention."
"You'll hear from my office, Mr. Verger."
Starling had not been out of the room long when Mason Verger tooted the
endmost pipe and said, "Cordell?"
The male nurse from the playroom came in and read to him from a folder marked
DEPARTMENT OF CHILD WELFARE, CITY OF BALTIMORE.
"Franklin, is it? Send Franklin in," Mason said, and turned out his light.
The little boy stood alone under the bright overhead light of the seating
area, squinting into the gasping darkness.
Came the resonant voice, "Are you Franklin?"
"Franklin," the little boy said.
"Where do you stay, Franklin?"
"With Mama and Shirley and Stringbean."
"Does Stringbean stay there all the time?"
"He in and out."
"Did you say `He in and out'?"
"Yeah."
" `Mama' is not your real mama, is she, Franklin?"
"She my foster."
"She's not the first foster you've had, is she?"
"Nome."
"Do you like it at your house, Franklin?"
He brightened. "We got Kitty Cat. Mama make patty-cake in the stove."
"How long have you been there, at Mama's house?"
"I don't know."
"Have you had a birthday there?"
"One time I did. Shirley make Kool-Aid."
"Do you like Kool-Aid?"
"Strawberry."
"Do you love Mama and Shirley?"
"I love, um hum, and Kitty Cat."
"Do you want to live there? Do you feel safe when you go to bed?"
"Um hum. I sleep in the room with Shirley. Shirley, she a big girl."
"Franklin, you can't live there anymore with Mama and Shirley and the Kitty
Cat. You have to go away."
"Who say?"
"The government say. Mama has lost her job and her approval as a foster home.
The police found a marijuana cigarette in your house. You can't see Mama
anymore after this week. You can't see Shirley anymore or Kitty Cat after this
week."
"No," Franklin said.
"Or maybe they just don't want you anymore, Franklin. Is there something wrong
with you? Do you have a sore on you or something nasty? Do you think your skin
is too dark for them to love you?"
Franklin pulled up his shirt and looked at his small brown stomach. He shook
his head. He was crying.
"Do you know what will happen to Kitty Cat? What is Kitty Cat's name?"
"She call Kitty Cat, that her name."
"Do you know what will happen to Kitty Cat? The policemen will take Kitty Cat
to the pound and a doctor there will give her a shot. Did you get a shot at
day care? Did the nurse give you a shot? With a shiny needle? They'll give
Kitty Cat a shot. She'll be so scared when she sees the needle. They'll stick
it in and Kitty Cat will hurt and die."
Franklin caught the tail of his shirt and held it up beside his face. He put
his thumb in his mouth, something he had not done for a year after Mama asked
him not to.
"Come here," said the voice from the dark. "Come here and I'll tell you how
you can keep Kitty Cat from getting a shot. Do you want Kitty Cat to have the
shot, Franklin? No? Then come here, Franklin."
Franklin, eyes streaming, sucking his thumb, walked slowly forward into the
dark. When he was within six feet of the bed, Mason blew into his harmonica
and the lights came on.
From innate courage, or his wish to help Kitty Cat, or his wretched knowledge
that he had no place to run to anymore, Franklin did not flinch. He did not
run. He held his ground and looked at Mason's face.
Mason's brow would have furrowed if he had a brow, at this disappointing
result.
"You can save Kitty Cat from getting the shot if you give Kitty Cat some rat
poison yourself," Mason said. The plosive p was lost, but Franklin understood.
Franklin took his thumb out of his mouth.
"You a mean old doo-doo," Franklin said. "An you ugly too."
He turned around and walked out of the chamber, through the hall of coiled
hoses, back to the playroom.
Mason watched him on video.
The nurse looked at the boy, watched him closely while pretending to read his
Vogue.
Franklin did not care about the toys anymore. He went over and sat under the
giraffe, facing the wall. It was all he could do not to suck his thumb.
Cordell watched him carefully for tears. When he saw the child's shoulders
shaking, the nurse went to him and wiped the tears away gently with sterile
swatches. He put the wet swatches in Mason's martini glass, chilling in the
playroom's refrigerator beside the orange juice and the Cokes.