Slob

Eichord in the spotlight

"What?"

W H A T ?

The word explodes into the stillness of the room, shocking him awake like a pitcher of ice water thrown on the naked body of a sleeping human. He is jarred awake physically but remains deep inside the clinging and impenetrable covers of one of those unbearably realistic-to-the-last-detail nightmares that some people seem to visit in lieu of confessionals.

Jack Eichord was an ardent and longtime fan of the movie genre known as film noir; dated, dark, night time guided tours of forties and fifties urban underworlds. He loved the old black-and-white late-show procedurals, full of seedy PIs in search of elusive Maltese falcons. One of the early ones was a thing with Victor Mature and Betty Grable called I Wake Up Screaming and he thought the title to himself as he woke up screaming the word what.

W H A T ?

He is screaming the world WHAT? at the top of his brain's lungs, just as the room explodes in noise and he penetrates the curtain of the bad dream enough to snatch the ringing telephone off the cradle and whisper through a sleep-parched mouth the hoarse, cracked greeting:

"Wha'?"

"Jack? Are you awake?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"Is this Jack?"

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Edie?"

"Were you still asleep? It's after ten. I'm sorry. You got in late, I shouldn't have called. I'm sorry."

"'S okay."

"Jack! Congratulations!"

"Huh?" What, he thinks, I wonder what time it is? He is totally befuddled.

"It's all over the television and newspapers this morning. You're a celebrity. Except the one paper got your name as John Eichord instead of Jack, but on TV they didn't have your name on the one channel; they referred to you as 'the famous expert on serial murders' or something like that and— "

"What?"

"Huh? Pardon?"

"Edie, can you hear me all right?"

"Yes, honey. You sound like you've got a cold or something. Have you got a bad connection? Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I think so. Listen, what are you talking about? What's in the papers and on TV? What are you saying?"

"You, my darling. You're a big cop star now." She laughed happily. "Oh, Jack, was he the one,"—her voice took on a cold edge—"you know, responsible for Ed? Or is it too soon to know that yet?"

"Edie, I just don't have the faintest notion of what you're talking about. Start from the beginning."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. What is it?"

"You solved the Lonely Hearts killings."

"I'm not believing this. What in the hell are you talking about?"

"Well . . . didn't you?" She is confused now. "They said the man you arrested last night was the one who did all those . . . crimes. The Lonely Hearts murders. What are you telling me? Are you saying you don't know what any of this is about?"

"Edie, listen, this is very important. Who, exactly now, who says I solved the murders?"

"Channel Four, the American, ABC-TV had it on their—uh—"

"No. I mean who—what official—name the names. What . . . Where did the TV and newspaper reporters get the story? Was it from Lieutenant Arlen or who?"

"The police commissioner, I don't know. It's all in the papers, Jack. Didn't you arrest someone last night in the killings?"

"Yes. A suspect. But he didn't do the other murders. This was an isolated homicide. Who said it was the Lonely Hearts? Did the commissioner actually say it? Can you find it there in a paper and read it to me?"

"Hold on." He could hear the phone make a noise. "'The announcement of the arrest was made by Chicago Deputy Chief Samuel F. X. O'Herin, who attributued the quick capture of the killer to the fine police work of the Chicago police force and to the outstanding direction of Special Investigator John Eichord, a consultant from the national Major Crimes Task Force. Deputy Chief O'Herin announced the arrest at a special news conference during which— ' "

"Oh, those dumb bastards."

"What is it, Jack?"

"Those stupid sonsofbitches. What in God's name do they think they're doing? They're not going to be able to put this over on the public. The next time he kills they'll know it was all so much bullshit." But even as he said it he knew that wasn't necessarily true. No one had clout like law enforcement. And in certain localities—like Cook County, Illinois, Tarrant County, Texas, isolated pockets of California, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri—the clout was unreal. There was one notorious area of New Jersey where a badge was an absolute license to kill, and the truth was . . . Hell, the truth was he was beginning to wonder if he knew what the truth was. He finally got the squad room on his second attempt to dial, so sleep-befuddled he was.

He'd almost gone all the way down into it last night, standing there in that smoky cop bar with those fucking flake homicide dicks and those worn-out groupie retreads, laughing loud, plastic laughs at cruel cop wit, almost falling off the edge of his glass down into that sweet, bitter, stinging, intoxicating piss-colored liquid world he loved so much. Almost let it take him. No special reason. Just the power of the moment. A juicer never needs an excuse,- you just go with the flow. It had been close. He'd pushed his tolerance right to the wall. Very stupid.

His hand was shaking a little as he waited for Arlen.

"We tried to phone you,- you were either asleep or out," they said to him.

"I was right here, Lou," he told the lieutenant.

"You sleep sound. A clear conscience."

"What's the story?"

"Yeah. Well, it's out of my hands, as you can imagine. This is right from the chief's office. It's a whole big number and you're it. They've talked themselves into going that route with it, going public with you, and they're going to make our boy downstairs for Kasikoff, right or wrong."

"That's the craziest fuckin—"

"No," he went on bitterly, "don't even bother. I've already told everybody who'd listen including that asshole I work for that this is a wrongo play. My opinion or your opinion is of zero consequence here. You are going to have it laid in your lap and that's it. You're to take a meeting with the brass at eleven this morning. Which means you have some forty minutes to get the cobwebs out of your brain, the sleep out of your eyes, and have your heroic ass down here for the pleasure of the big boys. I'll see you after your briefing—'kay?"

"Yeah. I'll see you. And I don't fucking like any bit of this."

He was there in half an hour, scraped face and yesterday's suit, clean shirt, prepared to wait in the outer office for the requisite four-and-a-half-to-six minutes, but getting the red-carpet treatment and being ushered right in to The Presence.

"Jack Eichord, is it," the older man effused, bathing the room in peppermint-flavored mouthwash, good cologne, and the memory of old cop sweat that lingered in the carpeting and draperies from a thousand such meetings. "Congratulations on solving our big whodunit!"

"Thank you, sir, but I don't believe it's solved yet."

"Sit down here, Jack. How about some coffee?" He buzzed and a male secretary came in with a tray even as Eichord said no thanks.

"Two sugars, is it." It wasn't a question. "Jack, of course it isn't solved yet. Of course not. But that's what we know. And that's for our official ears and eyes only. The public. They're going to get a slightly different view of the Kasikoff case." A younger man came in without knocking or being announced. Jack had seen him before. The division PR man.

"Rolly, you know our famous Jack Eichord, don't you." Again, it wasn't a question. "Rolly Margulies is our liaison man with media. Our public information officer and all-around fixer," he said the last with a cold chuckle.

"Absolutely."

"Gladaseeya."

"Rolly, Jack is naturally concerned about the problem of our misrepresenting him as having solved the Kasikoff killings."

"Jack, if I may, I know what you must be saying to yourself this morning, but believe me, we've all thought this one out and it's the best route to go. We need you to go along with us on this one hundred percent. It's the only way. We have to put up a solid front to the media people. We're in bad trouble with this one. The fact that Charles Maitland was slaughtered right outside his own penthouse and we didn't, quote, do anything about it has got us up to our balls in the hot wax. There's people can use the Lonely Hearts thing to make the PC and the whole force"—he gestured to take in Deputy Chief O'Herin who glowered across the desk at them—" look bad. Tar us all with the same brush. Inept, all the usual criticism, totally unwarranted, but the public is scared to death right now and they're buying it. This is a way to take the heat off the whole department."

"I can understand that much. The problem is, when this guy murders again, when he takes another heart, you're back in the soup. In the hot wax, rather. And now you're going to look like not just inept cops, you—we're going to come off as lying, inept cops. I don't see this buys us anything but lots of trouble. There's no way— "

"Let me cut through," O'Herin said. "We've got a handle on it, Jack. When the perp hits again, who's to say that it isn't a string of copycat killings?" The deputy chief's rosy cheeks shone with scrubbed, talcumed innocence. Smooth as a baby's ass, Eichord thought.

"It's a trifle thin, to me."

"Well, we're asking you to live with it." Eichord shrugged a response. "This is right from the PC himself. So let's play it this way and take it as it goes from there."

"What we need you to do, Jack," Rolly said, "is to be our mouthpiece on the thing. You're technically not one of us and it will be much more credible coming from you. You need to tell the press how we narrowed down this lead, and that lead, good solid police work, blah-blah-blah, and finally homed in on our suspect. You can sell it easily. You were in on the arrest of Mr. Triarnicht last night, and enough reporters know that so it will be plausible that you were directing the apprehension of the perpetrator. You know he did the boy, so that part will play easily too."

"Have you forgotten that when the lab reports come back they're not going to match that hunting knife to the other Kasikoff killings?"

"Well. That's a shame about those lab findings. It seems something happened over there. They're so busy, you know. Buried in work alla time. I hear the lab work got—misplaced for the time being. So I wouldn't worry too much about any confusing findings interfering with the position you'll be taking."

"I don't think it'll fly. That's my opinion." He gestured minimally with his hands tightly in front of him.

"Fine, Jack," O'Herin said, "and we respect that opinion very highly. But with respect to the public facade you'll go along with us on this, right?"

"Sure." He seethed.

"We're going to want you to do an interview. There's a talk show that is watched by all the media people called 'Chicago Sunrise,' you may have seen it. Little gal named Christa Summers does it over on Channel Thirty-one. They have a local celeb of some kind, a political figure, athlete, whatever—and usually at least one guest journalist to ask questions. Nicely moderated show—no hatchet jobs or any of that—very uptown, upscale kinda' thing. We want you to go on the show and let her interview you about the killings."

"You've got to be kidding me."

"That or you sit and give interview after interview to every big paper and radio and TV reporter in the Chicago land area. Or hold a big ball buster of a press conference where you'll have to field all kinds of cheap shots from the hardballers. Nail yourself to a cross. You don't want to do that. This is the best way, by far. Nice safe interview. You do it one time and cover all the bases. Then it's all old news and nobody's on our case anymore."

"Until the next time he kills somebody and rips the heart out."

"We face that problem at that time. Okay?"

"You're calling the shots."

"Good man. Now let's go over a few points about how you solved the Sylvia Kasikoff case. . . ."

The interview, which would be played back on videotape the following morning around eight A.M., was recorded in a large studio over at the television station that night at seven. Eichord rode to the interview with Rolly Margulies. He resisted being made up by the makeup lady and went to the greenroom to be briefed a final time on some of the questions that Christa Summers would be asking him. He was the focus of twelve eyes as he sat listening to the woman read off a clipboard taking him through some of the Q&As. There was a floor-director type, a station executive of some sort to whom he was never introduced, Christa herself, Rolly, a "gofer" who waited in attendance, and the woman who took him through the basic questions until he had somehow satisfied the twelve eyes that there were going to be no unpleasant surprises.

The greenroom was actually beige. The main studio where he was taken for the taping was blue. It resembled a huge, bright blue warehouse, the floor a litter of cables, cameras, cigarette butts, and the other garbage that a tide of humanity had washed up to the riser on which the show "Chicago Sunrise" took place. As soon as he stepped up on to the riser, a large wooden platform containing the set for the show, a bank of piercingly hot spotlights blinded him, instantly drenching Eichord in fear sweat.

But the big surprise would not hit him for several minutes. The big and most definitely unpleasant surprise for Jack was in the person of one "Uncle George," the character who would act as his Grand Inquisitor before the grueling interview session was over. Uncle George was one of the strange, aberrant, bizarro improbabilities that somehow managed to surface on isolated major-market television stations across America. He was the backlash, perhaps, to all the cutesy, wimpy anchorpersons with their blow-dried hair and capped teeth and soulless on-cam personalities. Uncle George Kcscztska was a tough, ugly, sadistic, kick-ass old curmudgeon who had become one of Chicago's favorite television stars quite by semi-accident.

It all began when Channel 31 ran one of its Editorial Echo features about how far too much abuse was heaped on the IRS. It was written and voiced by the station manager, one Harlow Boggs, who actually hated the internal-revenue folk like most everyone else did, but who had designed the editorial to evoke a strong viewer response. He hadn't envisioned one George Kcscztska, pronounced Kicks-zitsca, who would come slinking out of the woodwork just quivering at the chance to get some free TV time under the FCC fairness doctrine.

Kcscztska did a pretape interview that met the standards-and-practices requirements, but then when it was time to tape his Editorial Echo something happened. A question, as always, of chemistry. Something lit up inside the old misanthrope. And when that red light blinked over the camera and he took his hand cue from the floor man, this television novice just knocked everybody out with his total poise, burning intensity, and searing intelligence.

He called his guest editorial rebuttal "An Open Letter from Uncle George to Uncle Sam," and by the end of sixty seconds airtime he had made both the United States government and Channel 31 look like the imbecilic institutions they truly were. And a certain segment of the viewers just went ape over it. The switchboard was flooded with calls, many of them wanting more of Uncle George. And so a TV star was born in the Windy City.

Back in the greenroom nobody had bothered to Warn Eichord that this old, ugly geezer who called himself Uncle George Kick-Ass-ka or whatever was about to do a "Bed-Sty Ninety Percenter" on Jack. A Bed-Sty Ninety-Percent stomping being the old-time gang vernacular for a little boot party where the stompee is left alive, but just barely. Uncle George was going to do such a J.O.B. on Jack he'd be a drenched, trembling sack of protoplasm by the end of the taping session. All they told him was that he was the guest reporter or interviewer who would come in with a few "follow-up questions and remarks" when Christa had finished with the main interview segment.

Eichord was a bit wet-palmed and dry-mouthed, but not too shaky. Then a tall, thin woman wearing jeans and high heels, with one of the truly sensational rears in all of Christendom, came and smiled at Jack and made a move with a long, Dragon Lady fingernail, indicating that he should follow her and she said:

"It's time," with that little tilt of the head and funny smile and odd tone of voice that people always use when they lead the little kid in to have the impacted molar cut out. That same tone when the secretary at the IRS tells you the auditor is ready for you. The little look you recall from childhood when the principal finishes talking to your folks and it's your turn. The little quasi-friendly tilting tone that never fails to engender a rapid palpitation or at least a stab of apprehension.

He expected to be a little warm under the lights but it was actually rather cool in the studio. As he shivered reflexively he felt himself suddenly bathed in fear sweat, stage fright, and an unexpected, massive, drenching paranoia from left field. And as he tried to pull his socks up, adjust his tie, and blot his forehead a monitor beside him came to life with a shot of him wiping perspiration and he could hear the loud bark of audio on the cameraman's earphone as a recorded announcement introduced:

"'Chicago Sunrise'! Starring Christa Summers—with her special guest, noted serial-murder expert Jack A-cord, who will talk about solving the Lonely Hearts Murders! And our guest interviewer for Hotseat Spotlight, the inimitable Uncle George! And now . . . for Lakefront Furniture City, he-e-e-e-e-r-r-r-r-r-r-r's Christa!"

Real original, thought Eichord as the red light on Christa's camera winked on and she was already asking him something and his mind kicked in just in time to catch, "Ay-cord or I-cord, so which is correct?" She was smiling with teeth that looked like they'd been carved from a single piece of white plastic.

"It's Eichord but—" "The German diphthong, I should have known." She had a sort of semi-breathless style, and she was quite attractive and show bizzy. And the combination gave her most mundane pronouncements an aura of discovery, and Eichord wished he could come back with some brilliant rejoinder but unfortunately he hadn't the vaguest notion of what a German diphthong was. And the only thing that came to mind was a dildo with a French tickler on it and he was sure that wasn't what she wanted to hear so he only smiled idiotically and perspired profusely as she continued talking.

Fortunately she didn't ask him any other questions, rounding up her introduction by saying, "More on the end of a horror story, the solving of the Lonely Hearts Murders with the modern—day Sherlock Holmes who brought the killer to justice, as 'Chicago Sunrise' continues—right after this!"

And suddenly the floor director made a cutting motion across his throat, which even Eichord could understand, and also relate to at this point. And people were running everywhere. The cameras were moving around in the sea of cables, twisted like a menacing nest of huge, black snakes that surrounded the riser where they sat, and several people attacked them, doing last-minute things to Christa Summers, two of them talking with her at the same time, which she seemed to find quite normal, and a woman blotted Eichord's perspiring head and someone did something to him, touched him with something he felt but couldn't identify, and he heard someone ask him if he would like a wet cloth and he almost laughed out loud at the insanity of the question. What in the hell would I want with a wet cloth? he thought, but he managed to shake his head and smile and he was just working up the nerve to ask if he could have a glass of water when the furniture commercial stopped and Christa calmly turned to him and said:

"I'm not going to bite, you know." And she gave a sexy, soft little mew of a laugh.

"Oh," he replied wittily, not having any idea what she meant. It was like the wet cloth. Why would he think she was going to bite him? Did these people around here speak only gibberish?

"You seem nervous," she was explaining to him, as you'd explain calculus to a third-grader. "So just relax or you'll make me nervous, and if I get nervous, and we're both nervous, I'll have to get the director down here out of the booth and he'll have to finish the show. And we don't want that do we, Don?"

And she giggled as Don said, "Speak for yourself," on the intercom, and everybody broke up.

And she was pretty good. Within a couple of minutes she'd calmed him down and the worst of the stage fright had begun to recede into the wings or wherever TV jitters go. Eichord was beginning to respond to her questions in actual sentences, and before long he was feeling somewhat at ease in front of the lights and the cameras.

He tried at first to really tell her about the phenomenon of serial murders but she already knew all the answers to the questions she was asking or at least she knew what she wanted to hear. That was the impression she gave Eichord asking things like:

"There's really no profile of a serial murderer, is there?" very confidently, and when he answered:

"Actually there are profiles. In fact one of the courses the agents teach at Quantico is called Logical Profiles of Serial Murderers and—"

"But what I'm saying, is that—" and leading him down another path altogether, in a way that an uncharitable person might think was designed to make herself look as infallible as possible.

She was very good. Slick. Facile. Quick with the teeth and sparkling cokey eyes and little hair toss. And she was no dummy. But she didn't seem to want to learn anything in the interview, which was fine with Jack. As soon as he figured out what she wanted he started giving nice, long-winded, winding answers to keep her on the safe stuff. And when she got on to dangerous ground he'd try to get her off of it entirely, leading the questioning away from the Sylvia Kasikoff thing as much as he could without appearing evasive.

She was experienced enough to catch what he was doing immediately but as long as it played she went with the flow of it. He was making her look as if she'd done her homework, even though she didn't like the way he kept steering her off the specific case-solving stuff and going into lengthy explanations when they were talking generalities. She knew how to get numbers and she kept him firmly on the killings. He had done a good job, he thought, of fielding the questions, bringing the conversational ball back to safer turf where he could talk about the serial specter in general. And then Uncle George took his turn at bat and the whole thing fell apart at the seams.

George sat down and didn't speak or even look at him. He looked at the floor until the standby cue came and then those eyes opened wide and he looked directly into the upper center of the camera lens as it blinked red and began speaking very fast looking into the camera eye but speaking to Jack Eichord, and in the first long, prolix, recondite question he used the phrase meromorphic function and Jack's eyes clouded over and he replied:

"I'm sorry but I don't know what you mean."

"What?" Uncle George demanded.

"I'm not familiar with the phrase mar-uh-morphic function, so how can I answer a question if I don't understand it?"

"Well, let me explain it to you then," George said sternly, becoming quite agitated. "The dictionary defines meromorphic function as a function of a complex variable that is regular in a region except for a finite number of points at which it has a limitless infinity as its terminus, from the Greek prefix meros, and am I going too fast for you and do you understand all the words like function and complex and variable and regular and region and finite and number and points and limitless and infinity and terminus and prefix, or should I go back and define them, which would take up most of my time and we wouldn't have to see you squirm trying to explain how the modus operandi of last night's murder was significantly different than that of the previous mutilation murders in the Chicagoland area, would we?"

And his face was bright red and Eichord thought he looked like a Type-A heart attack/hypertensive/apoplectic candidate for early hardening of the arteries who was about to have a stroke right here, folks, live and in color, and he said, "I'm sorry but I've forgotten the question," definitely getting off on the wrong foot.

So this was the brass's idea of a nice, upscale interview, upbeat, no hatchet jobs or anything—eh? And how did this old fart know the MO was different? From that moment on it was all downhill for Jack, who was no great shakes as a liar anyway.

After four or five minutes of this relentless diatribe they gave Uncle George the wrap-up sign and he looked at Eichord for the first time and said, "You've got nobody fooled, and frankly I find the police's playacting, public posture, premise, position, and presentation mendacious, specious, meretricious, and highly odious. And if you find that an impenetrable logograph, Special Agent Eichord, I'm saying it's a lying, stinking mess." Eichord thought of several witty come backs but luckily managed to refrain from trying any of them and in a second or two the light blinked out and it was mercifully over.

Five minutes of this in private would be bad enough. But for Jack Eichord, hoisted as it were on his Smith and Wesson and left to twist slowly, slowly in the Windy, there in the white-hot glare of television, there in the hog butcher of the world, city of big shoulders, it was five hours of hell.

And when Uncle George had finished with him the whole deal was fairly precarious in re who would believe what. Clearly George Kick-ass-ka's fans, if no one else, would think this had been a ruse on the part of the authorities to placate a nervous (and naive) public. And one would have to conclude Jack had done little or nothing to convince a skeptical viewer. But one such viewer sat watching Eichord's performance in a quiet and deadly rage.

He was watching a twenty-three-inch RCA inside a small home out in Oak Park in which three members of the Volker family sat beside him. Ted Volker, and his wife Betty, and their nine-year-old son Sean, all sat on a sofa beside Daniel Bunkowski, who had pulled his chair next to them.

They all sat there quietly watching the bright screen there in the darkened room, the noises from the television set's speaker being the only audible sounds. Ted and Betty and Sean watched the show with unseeing eyes. And as Daniel listened to the pontificating about the serial murders and all the lies, he stared at the cop's image with his hard, little pig eyes and decided he would send some proof that the Lonely Hearts killer was still at large. He liked that phrase—at large.

He turned to the dead Volkers and beamed radiantly, and with a groan of effort lifted his great bulk from the armchair and went to work.