The Tattler had bought Clarice Starling's very home phone number from one of her informants and rang it until Starling left it off the hook, and used her FBI cell phone to talk to the office.

Starling did not have a great deal of pain in her ear and the swollen side of her face as long as she did not touch the bandage. At least she didn't throb. Two Tylenol held her. She didn't need the Percocet the doctor had prescribed. She dozed against the headboard of the bed, the Washington Post sliding off the spread onto the floor, gunpowder residue in her hands, dried tears stiff on her cheeks.

You fall in love with the Bureau, but the Bureau doesn't fall in love with you. -MAXIM IN FBI SEPARATION COUNSELING

THE FBI gymnasium in the J. Edgar Hoover Building was almost empty at this early hour. Two middle-aged men ran slow laps on the indoor track. The clank of a weight machine in a far corner and the shouts and impacts of a racquetball game echoed in the big room. The voices of the runners did not carry. Jack Crawford was running with FBI Director Tunberry at the director's request. They had gone two miles and were beginning to puff.

"Blaylock at ATF has to twist in the wind for Waco. It won't happen right now, but he's done and he knows it," the director said. "He might as well give the Reverend Moon notice he's vacating the premises."

The fact that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms rents office space in Washington from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon is a source of amusement to the FBI.

"And Farriday is out for Ruby Ridge," the director continued.

"I can't see that," Crawford said. He had served in New York with Farriday in the 1970s when the mob was picketing the FBI field office at Third Avenue and 69th Street. "Farriday's a good man. He didn't set the rules of engagement."

"I told him yesterday morning."

"He going quietly?" Crawford asked…"Let's just say he's keeping his benefits. Dangerous times, Jack."

Both men were running with their heads back. Their pace quickened a little. Out of the corner of his eye, Crawford saw the director sizing up his condition.

"You're what, Jack, fifty-six?"

"That's right."

"One more year to mandatory retirement. Lot of guys get out at forty-eight, fifty, while they can still get a job. You never wanted that. You wanted to keep busy after Bella died."

When Crawford didn't answer for half a lap, the director saw he had misspoken.

"I don't mean to be light about it, Jack. Doreen was saying the other day, how much-"

"There's still some stuff to do at Quantico. We want to streamline VICAP on the Web so any cop can use it, you saw it in the budget."

"Did you ever want to be director, Jack?"

"I never thought it was my kind of job."

"It's not, Jack. You're not a political guy. You could never have been director. You could never have been an Eisenhower, Jack, or an Omar Bradley." He motioned for Crawford to stop, and they stood wheezing beside the track. "You could have been a Patton, though, Jack. You can lead 'em through hell and make 'em love you. It's a gift that I don't have. I have to drive them."

Tunberry took a quick look around him, picked up his towel off a bench and draped it around his shoulders – like the vestment of a hanging judge. His eyes were bright.

Some people have to tap their anger to be tough, Crawford reflected as he watched Tunberry's mouth, "In the matter of the late Mrs. Drumgo with her MAC 10 and her meth lab, shot to death while holding her baby: Judiciary Oversight wants a meat sacrifice. Fresh, bleating meat. And so do the media. DEA has to throw them some meat. ATF has to throw them some meat. And we have to throw them some. But in our case, they, just might be satisfied with poultry. Krendler thinks we can give them Clarice Starling and they'll leave us alone. I agree with him. ATF and DEA take the rap for planning the raid. Starling pulled the trigger."

"On a cop killer who shot her first."

"It's the pictures, Jack. You don't get it, do you? The public didn't see Evelda Drumgo shoot John Brigham. They didn't see Evelda shoot at Starling first. You don't see it if you don't know what you're looking at Two hundred million people, a tenth of whom vote, saw Evelda Drumgo sitting in the road in a protective, posture over her baby, with her brains blown out. Don't say it, Jack – I know you thought for a while Starling would he your protegee. But she's got a smart mouth, Jack, and she got off to the wrong start with certain people-"

"Krendler is a pissant."."Listen to me and don't say anything until I finish. Starling's career was flat-lining anyway. She'll get an administrative discharge without prejudice, the paperwork won't look any worse than a time-and-attendance rap-she'll be able to get a job. Jack, you've done a great thing in the FBI, the Behavioral Science. A lot of people think if you'd pushed your own interests a little better you'd be a lot more than a section chief, that you deserve a lot more. I'll be the first one to say it. Jack, you're going to retire a deputy director. You have that from me."

"You mean if I stay out of this?"

"In the normal course of events, Jack. With peace all over the kingdom, that's what will happen. Jack, look at me."

"Yes, Director Tunberry?"

"I'm not asking you, I'm giving you a direct order. Stay out of this. Don't throw it away, Jack.

Sometimes you've just got to turn your face away. I've done it. Listen, I know it's hard, believe me I know how you feel."

"How I feel? I feel like I need a shower," Crawford said.

STARLING WAS an efficient housekeeper, but not meticulous one. Her side of the duplex was clean and she could find everything, but stuff tended to pile up- clean unsorted laundry, more magazines than places to put them. She was a world-class last-minute ironer and she didn't need to primp, so she got by.

When she wanted order, she went through the sham kitchen to Ardelia Mapp's side of the duplex. If Ardelia was there, she had the benefit of her counsel, which was always useful, though sometimes closer to the bone than she might wish. If Ardelia was not there, it was understood that Starling could sit in the absolute order of Mapp's dwelling to think, as long as she didn't leave anything. There she sat today. It is one of those residences that always contains its occupant whether she's there or not.

Starling sat looking at Mapp's grandmother's life insurance policy, hanging on the wall in a handmade frame, just as it had hung in the grandmother's far tenant house and in the Mapp's project apartment during Ardelia's childhood. Her grandmother had sold garden vegetables and flowers and saved the dimes to pay the premiums, and she had been able to borrow against the paid-up policy to help Ardelia over the last hump when she was working her way through college. There was a picture, too, of the tiny old woman, making no attempt to smile above her starched white collar, ancient knowledge shining in the black eyes beneath the rim of her straw boater.

Ardelia felt her background, found strength in it every day. Now Starling felt for hers, tried to gather herself. The Lutheran Home at Bozeman had fed and clothed her and given her a decent model of behavior, but for what she needed now, she must consult her blood.

What do you have when you come from a poor-white background? And from a place where Reconstruction didn't end until the 1950s. If you came from people often referred to on campuses as crackers and rednecks or, condescendingly, as blue- collar or poor-white Appalachians. If even the uncertain gentility of the South, who accord physical work no dignity at all, refer to your people as peckerwoods – in what tradition do you find an example? That we whaled the.piss out of them that first time at Bull Run? That Great-granddaddy did right at Vicksburg, that a corner of Shiloh is forever Yazoo City? There is much honor and more sense in having succeeded with what was left, making something with the damned forty acres and a muddy mule, but you have to be able to see that. No one will tell you.