Chapter 24

DR HANNIBAL Lecter's fingerprint card is a curiosity and something of a cult object. The original is framed on the wall of the FBI's Identification Section. Following the FBI custom in printing people with more than five fingers, it has the thumb and four adjacent fingers on the front side of the card, and the sixth finger on the reverse.

Copies of the fingerprint card went around the earth when the doctor first escaped, and his thumbprint appears enlarged on Mason Verger's wanted poster with enough points marked on it for a minimally trained examiner to make a hit.

Simple fingerprinting is not a difficult skill and Pazzi could do a workmanlike job of lifting prints, and could make a coarse comparison to reassure himself. But Mason Verger required a fresh fingerprint, in situ and unlifted, for his experts to examine independently; Mason had been cheated before with old fingerprints lifted years ago at the scenes of Dr Letter's early crimes.

But how to get Dr Fells fingerprints without alerting him? Above all, he must not alarm the doctor. The man could disappear too well, and Pazzi would be left with nothing.

The doctor did not often leave the Palazzo Capponi, and it would be a month. before the next meeting of the Belle Arti. Too long to wait to plant a water glass at his place, at all the places, as the committee never furnished such amenities.

Once he had decided to sell Hannibal Lecter to Mason Verger, Pazzi had to work alone. He could not afford to bring the attention of the Questura to Dr Fell by getting a warrant to enter the Palazzo, and the building was too well defended with alarms for him to break in and take fingerprints.

Dr Fell's refuse can was much cleaner and newer than the others on the block. Pazzi bought a new can and in the dead of night switched lids with the Palazzo Capponi can. The galvanized surface was not ideal and, in an all-night effort, Pazzi came out with a pointillist's nightmare of prints that he could never decipher.

The next morning he appeared red-eyed at the Ponte Vecchio. In a jewelry shop on the old bridge he bought a wide, highly polished silver bracelet and the velvet-covered stand that held it for display. In the artisan sector south of the Arno, in the narrow streets across from the Pitti Palace, he had another jeweler grind the maker's name off the bracelet. The jeweler offered to apply an anti-tarnish coating to the silver, but Pazzi said no.

Dread Sollicciano, the Florentine jail on the road to Prato.

On the second floor of the women's division, Romula Cjesku, leaning over a deep laundry sink, soaped her breasts, washing and drying carefully before she put on a clean, loose cotton shirt. Another Gypsy, returning from the visiting room, spoke in the Romany language to Romula in passing. A tiny line appeared between Romula's eyes. Her handsome face kept its usual solemn set.

She was allowed off the tier at the customary 8: 30 A. M., but when she approached the visitor's room, a turnkey intercepted her and steered her aside to a private interview room on the prison's ground floor. Inside, instead of the usual nurse, Rinaldo Pazzi was holding her infant boy.

" Hello, Romula, " he said.

She went straight up to the tall policeman and there was no question that he would hand over the child at once. The baby wanted to nurse and began to nuzzle at her.

Pazzi pointed with his chin at a screen in the corner of the room. " There's a chair back there. We can talk while you feed him. "

" Talk about what, Dottore? "

Romula's Italian was passable, as was her French, English, Spanish, and Romany. She spoke without affect her best theatrics had not prevented this three-month term for picking pockets.

She went behind the screen. In a plastic bag concealed in the baby's swaddling clothes were forty cigarettes and sixty-five thousand lire, a little more than forty-one dollars, in ragged notes. She had a choice to make here. If the policeman had frisked the baby, he could charge her when she took out the contraband and have all her privileges revoked. She deliberated a moment, looking up at the ceiling while the baby suckled. Why would he bother? He had the advantage anyway. She took out the bag and concealed it in her underwear. His voice came over the screen.

" You are a nuisance in here, Romula. Nursing mothers in jail are a waste of. time. There are legitimately sick people in here for the nurses to take care of. Don't you hate to hand over your baby when the visiting time is up? "

What could he want? She knew who he was, all right – a chief, a Pezzo da novanta, bastard. 90 caliber.

Romula's business was reading the street for a living, and pick-pocketing was a subset of that. She was a weathered thirty-five and she had antennae like the great luna moth. This policeman-she studied him over the screen-look how neat, the wedding ring, the shined shoes, lived with his wife but had a good maid-his collar stays were put in after the collar was ironed. Wallet in the jacket pocket, keys in the right front trouser, money in the left front trouser folded flat probably with a rubber band around. His dick between. He was flat and masculine, a little cauliflower in the ear and a scar at the hairline from a blow. He wasn't going to ask her for sex – if that was the idea, he wouldn't have brought the baby. He was no prize, but she didn't think he would have to take sex from women in jail. Better not to look into his bitter black eyes while the baby was suckling. Why did he bring the baby? Because he wants her to see his power, suggest he could have it taken from her. What does he want? Information? She would tell him anything he wants to hear about fifteen Gypsies who never existed. All right, what can I get out of this? We'll see. Let's show him a bit of the brown.

She watched his face as she came out from behind the screen, a crescent of aureole showing beside the baby's face.

" It's hot back there, " she said. " Could you open a window? "

" I could do better than that, Romula. I could open the door, and you know it. "

Quiet in the room. Outside the noise of Sollicciano like a constant, dull headache.

" Tell me what you want. I would do something gladly, but not anything. "

Her instinct told her, correctly, he would respect her for the caveat.

" It's only la tua solita cosa, the usual thing you do, " Pazzi said, " but I want you to botch it. "

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