“Is this for the mikes, Ukie, or do you just like an audience or what?” Ukie's eyebrows raised in question. “All the commentary. I mean, it's very interesting but what's the point?"
“Point? Oh, I get it. This is going to be a thing where you challenge me on everything I say so that I have to say everything two different ways and in the dual narrative so to speak you hope to compromise me, catch me in falsehoods, trip me up in the fallacies and dialectic pitfalls of the Socratic dialogue, the snares laid by Platonic logic, the mental mine fields of Hegelian conceptualization, the technique of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, speaking of which—"
“Whoa. Please. Ukie. Give it a rest a minute.” Jack's brain was beginning to feel like it had been lying in the sun too long. His mouth had that dry, cottony feeling. “Are you laying groundwork for an insanity plea, because it's wasted on me, Ukie. Can we just talk in the normal way? Please?” Eichord staring at the enigmatic grin, speaking very softly. Calmly.
“I don't think so, Special Investigator Eichord of Modern Criminology Magazine and late of Chicago Sunrise, The American, and the New York Daily News. I think I prefer good-cop/bad-cop. One to threaten and berate. One to coax, cajole, flatter. One to pontificate and command. One to offer blandishments and hope of official friendship. Have I just about got that one down right? An investigative laugh track. Speaking of laugh tracks, did you know that in—"
“Hold it. HEY! Ukie"—the dark eyes leveled on him—"tell me this. Why would a nice-looking fellow like yourself have to get his rocks off by wagging his wienie at little girls from his car? I mean, that's something a slime-ball degenerate might have to do. But why would a good-lookin’ chap like you have to lower himself to that level of behavior? I'd really like to know."
“Bullshit. That is pure BULLSHIT. I know that's in my file and it is absolute garbage. I don't have to whip my dingus out to get a broad to look at me. Ask little innocent Miss Donna, doubtless waiting in the wings. Ask that cunt. I only wish I'd reached the pulverizing stage with that nubile ex-flight-attendant, ex-semi-pro, ex-cocktail-hostess, and I mean with the emphasis on COCK, dig, the emPHASis on the foist si-LAB-bull but ... Look, hey! Let me tell you about that dumb twat.
“I walked by her in a shopping center and the chick is undressing me with her eyes and I smile over at her and she wolf-whistles like some hard-hat hard-on and so I rub my stuff and I go, ‘Li'l girl, wanna go for a ride?’ And five minutes later she's in my car and I've got my hand in between those hot legs. Little innocent Miss Donna.
“I called her ‘hothead’ because of her ability to go down on Sly here, as I told Dr. Roberts when he interviewed me about it, she was really ORAL, Roberts, and I liked to read awful gothic romances peddled by fag agents to her aloud while she sucked me off, and then I'd twist Miss Donna's hothead hair into a handle like so, and force her hot wet mouth back and forth on me. And I indoctrinated her into the pleasure-pain of boiling water.
“Get Miss Innocence to tell you how she liked to suck me with her mouth on fire from boiling water and how she'd cry with pleasure when I shot my hot load of spermaroony between those cum-soaked whore lips of hers. That fucking round-heeled tramp. I don't give a fat rat's cootie what it says in that lying pile of palomino poop, if I want a broad I TAKE ‘EM. Period."
“What about all the killings?” Eichord asked. “Why would a sharp guy like Ukie Hackabee bother with it? What's the point?"
“Ah, ah,” shaking his finger at Eichord.
“Huh?"
Ukie laughed as he tilted his head a little and said, “Now, now. Naughty boy. Mustn't ask about such things until you've read me my rights. Under the United States Supreme Court ruling in U.S. vs. Miranda, a U.S. citizen has the right to remain silent during any Carmen Miranda movie in which there is a bananarama scene. If you cannot afford a hat with fruit on it one will be purchased for you. Anything you say can and will be used in Joe E. Brown's comedy act."
“The guy talking to me now, this smart gentleman named Hackabee. This guy's no killer. Come on, man. Tell all."
“Very effective. That's a good number the way you lower your voice in that conspiratorial hush. Almost a whisper. I like that. Very nice. Oh, yes. Jack, I'm afraid you're destined to play the good cop forever."
“You said it, old boy. You're afraid."
“Do which?"
“What are you so scared of? It's not like you could pay the death penalty more than once, is it?"
“Exactly my sentiments. So what do I have to gain by helping you with your little puzzle. Look, Jack—if I may be informal? Intimate with you, so to speak. Try to think of this as a theoretical whodunit. These are the clues, Mr. Serial Murder Expert. Read my lips. CLUUUUUUUU ZZZZ. You should be able to really sink your teeth into this thing. Try and think of everything I say as a clue. Where do you keep your clues? I keep mine in the clues’ closet at home. But say we had two sets of clues. Parallel hieroglyphs: one demotic, one noncolloquial not unlike the Rosetta Stone or the menu at Uncle Nick Zorba's Grecian Spoon. Now picture the thing nonisoscelean: the hypotenuse of each triangular shape tangential in such a manner that the sum of each is equidistant within the peripheral closed curve of an ellipse that encloses them, bend the outer curve like so"—he tried to gesture earnestly—"and you have a figure-eight infinity symbol which, when studied with the other clues, will divulge a secret more diabolical than the rumored Satanic preachment in the Stones’ album covers—"
“Ukie—"
“—the alleged subliminal symbolism within Procter and Gamble's corporate logo, the double entendre of the Beatles’ music from the Helter Skelter period, and at the perigee of our bent orbs, when the theme song from that television milestone, touchstone, and kidney stone Mister Ed is played backward ‘someone sung the song for Satan’ and ‘the source is Satan’ can clearly be heard, much the same way ‘Paul is dead’ supposedly follows in the end grooves of Strawberry Fields, or ‘fuck your girl all kinds of ways’ was rumored to allegedly grace the lyrical beauty of Louie, Lou-eye, or—"
“Ukie, we sure are wasting valuable time here,” Jack said with a smile. “How come you didn't mess with those pretty girls you took down? Weren't they your type?"
“I'd have thought you'd been more interested in how I zapped that whole family of citrus-pickers. Three of them. That was a real challenge. Don't you want to know how I put ole Hay-zoos away?"
Eichord widened his eyes but said nothing. Not wanting to interrupt the first piece of information that had any reality attached to it.
“Don't you want to know about that one?"
“Sure I do."
“No. You say you want to know but soon as I'd start explaining it, running it down for you, pulling your coat to it, you'd tune out on me. And that's a shame because I can see that raw intellect oozing out of every pore. No lie, you're the only cop I've met since this like, you know, came to a head who has even a prayer of understanding what they've got hold of."
“I'd like to try to understand."
“You sure?"
“As long as it doesn't have anything to do with TV laugh tracks I'll listen.” Ukie giggled. “Give it my best shot, anyway."