I think the point is that Jack would get that steely-eyed, harried look and attempt to induce Bobby to confess where he had planted the light bulbs full of anthrax (or the dvd remote control or that stunning pot of begonias that was on sale at Home depot) with a little hard-nosed American ingenuity and the assistance of an impromptu high-voltage incentivator attached with alligator clips to the suspect's nipples.
Alternately, Bobby would let Eames put on a pink cashmere cardigan under her JC Pennys business suit, and while Jack earnestly explained to Eames just how many former day-time soap opera stars end up in the highest eschelons of the Bush administration's crack anti-terror squad, Bobby would have him ruminating about how all those reinforced shoulder-pads remind him of his brow-beating, sexually intimidating trainer at the FBI academy (that b!tch Clarise Starling with her lilting Southern accent, fondness for rare steaks and unaccountable fear of blackbirds), the Christmas that his cat Mannus died in the cold but, inexplicably, was revived after being repeatedly shocked with a shorted electrical curling iron (his mother's blue eyes, her collagen-enhanced lips) and that person father! -back from the war with one steamer-trunk stuffed with Beat verse and the other stacked with Nazi gold. The endless lectures about how life was like driving a Sherman tank! How judgment was like knowing when a doppio expresso was perfect, and when it was just so-so! He lost weight. He couldn't play Red-rover-Red-rover with the other boys. His teddy-bear was never clean enough. His nurse, Eva, washed that damn bear twice a day, but he could still smell the dark-roast Italian coffee over the homely scent of Tide and fabric softener. Its eyes glinted gold like soft, heavy bricks, like his mother's pendant Star of David, like the Medal of Honor Clarisse was awarded after she shot the Southern novelist who had fatally confused Europhilia with narrative complexity. That's why he had to pull the mullah's finger-nails out! He was always so inept at personal grooming. All the gold bullion in the world -- every delicately frothed expresso with a twist of lemon peel -- all the pneumatically-enhanced soap opera actresses: none of them would ever make up for his disgraceful self-grooming habits! His father saw the best minds of his generation starving for a hit on the streets of Frisco, but could never abide untrimmed cuticles! Clarisse knew it! -- that's why she made him flog that Dante scholar with a rubber hose in the interrogation room while she watched from the other side of the silvered glass -- distant, impenetrable! Yes! He dismembered the body! But it was all because of that girl in fifth grade with the soft, clean hands, the full lips, the laughing/crying eyes and the sharply reinforced shoulder-pads!
