Black Iris
Chapter One
CHAPTER ONE
All alcohol tastes like hand sanitizer to me. The smell of it burns my nose and makes my whiskers twitch. For that reason, I’ve always stuck to catnip and other edibles when I wanted to feel good. But sometimes you don’t want to feel good. Sometimes you want to wallow in misery, and for that, nothing beats booze. And when you want to get drunk without drinking, you get creative.
I had heard stories of women soaking tampons in alcohol and shoving them up to their pussies. Supposedly, the alcohol absorbs more quickly this way, and you get hammered faster. If it was true at all, I figured it would work just as well in the stink as it did in the pink. I gave it a try.
The problem is, tampons are designed to go in dry, and when I soaked them first, they became too mushy to insert. After more experimentation, I found three-quarter-inch balsa wood rods to be the perfect balance between sturdy and absorbent while also being the right shape and diameter. I used to sand one end down to be rounded and smooth like a dildo, but now I don’t bother.
***
I’m sleeping off a mid-day bender when my dog starts howling.
“Lincoln, what the fuck?” I throw a crumpled-up piece of newsprint at him.
My apartment/office is sticky with fermentation and summer humidity. Empty bottles of alcohol and bowls of milk that have been left out for weeks lie buried under chewed-up plastic bags and smeared charcoal drawings. Wooden rods, some virgin, some stained and warped from use, are scattered about the ground like the aftermath of the Big Bad Wolf’s siege on the Three Little Pigs’ house of sticks. Piles of rice-sized turds fill the nooks and crannies of the room — gifts left by mice that no longer fear me.
Last night, I left the window open during a thunderstorm, and now my couch is a giant sponge. Because of this, I’ve been on the floor all day. Normally, I like the floor, but the faux bearskin rug is crusty with dried fluids, some of them bodily, some of them a complete mystery.
Lincoln leaps over me onto the couch, splashing water onto my face. I join him at the window, but I already know who he’s barking at. There’s only one person that gets him this riled-up.
“Snowball!” A frog-like man in a trenchcoat and fedora calls up to me from the sidewalk below. “Let me up. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
The Kibble Phantom, gossip blogger turned conspiracy nut, is the bane of my existence. His relentless smear campaign turned the whole town against me, nearly destroyed my business, and got me into dangerous situations that cost me several lives. Last year, we made a temporary truce when I offered to give him a press pass to the Kibble Museum of Fine Arts Gala if he agreed to stay the hell out of my business until I closed the case I was working on. By then, he was already starting to shift his focus from celebrities to politicians. I haven’t checked out his site since the last time he wrote about me, but according to my friend Mandi, he’s really gone off the deep end. Even if that weren’t the case, he’s annoying as fuck, and I’m in no mood.
“Go away! You’re upsetting my dog, and I’m hungover.” My head throbs to the rhythm of Lincoln’s barking.
“I’ve got something that’ll calm him down. Just let me up.”
Like me, the Phantom is the son of an Egyptian god from Aaru, and like me, he has otherworldly abilities. He can’t exactly turn himself invisible, but he can generate a localized energy field that causes people to see past him, tune out his voice, and ignore his swampy aroma as though he’s not even there. The problem is, dogs seem to be immune to his powers, and they go off like car alarms whenever he’s nearby.
“I don’t want you giving my dog drugs.”
“It’s not drugs. Just trust me.” He looks over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t a matter of life or death.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not as important as my nap. Leave me the fuck alone.”
“Come on, it’ll only take a few minutes.”
The window of the apartment next door screeches open. “Hey, Snowball, shut your fucking dog up, will ya? I’m tryin’ to watch TV.”
“Sorry, Drederick. I think he sees the mailman or something. He’ll stop soon.”
“He better.” Drederick slams his window shut.
Down below, the Phantom wipes rain from his bulging eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well let me in.”
I fold my ears back against my head. The truth is Lincoln won’t stop soon. He can do this all day. “Ok, fine. I’ll give you five minutes.”
Lincoln is calm while the Phantom enters the building, but as soon as I open my door, the dog goes back to howling. From the hallway, the Phantom tosses a raw hunk of meat into my apartment, and Lincoln dives after it. The barking stops.
“That’s your secret? You feed him?”
The Phantom wipes his hands on his jacket. “Well, it does have to be a high-quality steak. Trust me, if I could get away with using dog biscuits, I would.”
“So, you just keep a raw, unwrapped steak in your pocket?”
“Can I please come in now? A steak buys me 30 seconds of distraction per ounce. That’s a 36-ounce porterhouse, so we have about 18 minutes to talk.”
“I’m sure I’ll throw you out before that.”
He stomps his boots on my welcome mat and shakes the water off his hat.
“Take those off, actually.”
“Really?”
“This isn’t just my office, it’s my home.”
He looks past me into the room. “It looks like it’s already wet back there. And… is that broken glass?”
“Just take them off. And there’s a coat rack behind the door.”
He complies. “Does the city know you run a detective agency out of your residence?”
“Does the city know you’re an asshole?”
My landlord Art and I have an arrangement. As long as I perform certain extermination duties for all his tenants free of charge, he’ll let me know when a building inspector is coming by so I can take the “Cat’s Eye Detective Agency” sign off my door. The sign has been down for weeks now, partly because I’ve been unable to fulfill my end of our agreement and partly because I haven’t felt like working.
I brush mouse shit off my chair and take a seat behind my desk.
The Phantom walks over to the window and looks up and down the street before closing the blinds.
“Sit down so we can get this over with.”
He picks up a mangled piece of newsprint from the chair opposite me. “Is this a flower?”
“Yes. Sit.”
He gazes around the room with a furrowed brow. “Why are there so many drawings of flowers?”
“I just like drawing flowers, ok? Who gives a shit?”
“And what’s with all the sticks?”
“I’m building model airplanes. Did you come here to talk about my hobbies, or is there something else?”
“Right.” He wipes charcoal on his pants and plops down onto the chair. “So, someone is trying to kill me, and I want to hire you to help me figure out who.”
“I don’t doubt that someone wants to kill you, but I don’t see why I should care.”
“Seriously, I must’ve stumbled onto something big, and now somebody wants to keep me quiet.”
I exaggerate a yawn. “Would that be the Illuminati or the New World Order? Or is it the Freemasons?”
He laughs. “Those are all the same thing. But yeah, maybe. Or possibly the CIA. Or the mob. Or an evil corporation. Or the lamestream media.”
“You think the mainstream media might be trying to kill you?”
“Yeah. They’ve always been jealous of my popularity, but it’s more than that. It’s about who controls the narrative, who gets to decide what the truth is. That reporter Cindy Dolans really has it out for me.”
Cindy Dolans was a field correspondent for Channel 14 News until she tried to bring sexual harassment charges against the network president. When the allegations were dismissed out of hand, she left to join a newly-formed online news outlet called the Daily Squawk. The site’s readership has grown quickly thanks in part to their hard-hitting, tell-it-like-it-is style of reporting, which the city of Kibble has found refreshing. Meanwhile, the Phantom’s blog, The Kibble Examiner has taken a nosedive in recent months.
“Come on. I know you guys had a little Twitter war, but she won that. Why would she need to kill you?”
“Ok, maybe not her personally; that was just an example. Anyway, you’re totally missing the point. I’ve kicked a lot of hornets’ nests. Ruffled a lot of feathers. Here, hold on.” He digs a damp, folded-up piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a list of my most recent articles going back through early June. I’ve circled the ones I think are most relevant.”
“‘Aliens Get Drunk in Local Park?’”
He scratches his chin. “Is that one circled?”
“Yep.”
“Hm. Well, I must’ve had a reason. But look at some of the other ones.”
“‘Our Robot Mayor.’”
“Ok, don’t just look at the titles. Open your laptop so I can show you the actual articles.”
“Battery’s dead. Mice chewed through my charger cable. I’ve been meaning to get a new one.”
“You’re a fucking cat. Why are there mice in your apartment?”
“Why are there mice anywhere?”
He rubs his temples. “This is serious, Snowball.”
“I’m sure it is.” I look over at Lincoln, lying in front of a shiny bone, eyes half-closed in contentment. “Lincoln’s finished the steak. I guess our time’s up.”
The Phantom checks his watch. “It’s only been two minutes. Now that he’s full, he’s going to sit there and rest for a while. Trust me, we’ve got time.”
“If you say so.”
“Listen, do you think I would come to you if I wasn’t desperate? These guys, broke into my apartment and chased me around with a knife. I got away, but when I came back later, my place was trashed, and my laptop and phone were gone.”
“If someone really tried to kill you then you should go to the police.”
“Ha, the police. Good one.”
“How could these guys even see you?”
He sighs. “I don’t know. I’m not sure they actually could see me. At least not completely. It seemed like they needed to be touching me to know where I was.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Two. They were wearing black clothes and ski masks.”
“How do you think they found you?”
“They set a trap. Last Saturday, I received an email to my personal account from the address [email protected]. There was no message, just the subject ‘You’re on the right track.’”
“And you responded?”
“Wouldn’t you have? Curiosity killed the cat or whatever?”
“I’m pretty sure I would’ve just thought it was spam.”
“Anyway, so I wrote back ‘And which track might that be?’ They responded less than a minute later with a message that said ‘Meet me on the sixth floor of the West Side Parking garage at midnight tonight. Come alone.’”
“And let me guess — you did.”
He nods. “Only they never showed. Or at least I didn’t think they did. I waited for almost two hours and didn’t see anyone, so I went home. But now, I realize they must’ve actually been there, and the whole set-up was just so they could see what I looked like and then follow me home.”
“But how? I know they’d be able to see if you let them, but once you realized they weren’t going to show, wouldn’t you have gone back into stealth mode?”
“I think they implanted a tracking chip in me.”
“Say what, now?”
“While I was waiting for them to show up, they must’ve already been there, watching me from the shadows. Once they had a clear shot, they shot me with something too small to feel. I’ve been checking myself for tiny abrasions, and so far, I haven’t found anything, though I did set off a metal detector at City Hall.”
I lay my head on the desk.
“No, listen. There was that Bulgarian journalist Georgi Markov who was killed with a poisoned pellet fired from an umbrella by the Bulgarian Secret Service. The thing was 1.70 mm in diameter and the guy barely felt it. That was back in 1978. With today’s technology, who knows how small they can make projectiles? We already know the government is working on killer drones the size of mosquitos.”
“Which government? The Bulgarians?”
“No, not the Bulgarians. I’m talking about our own government. The same government that killed JFK and faked the moon landing and took down the World Trade Center. The same government that murders children in schools so they can have an excuse to take away our Second Amendment rights.”
I’m afraid to ask him what shape he thinks the Earth is. “Ok, I think I’ve heard enough. Thank you for feeding my dog, but I really have to get back to… literally anything else.”
He holds up his hand. “Wait. You’re right, it’s probably not the federal government. But there’s definitely something up with the mayor. I’ve been watching him for weeks now and — ”
“He’s a robot. You said. Hey, is he the kind that can turn into a car? I’ve heard some robots can do that.”
“The local mob is really pissed at me, too. And Big Pharma. And the tech companies. And — ”
“And Bigfoot, right? Hey, maybe they’re all working together.”
“Maybe they are! And a lot of these groups are fighting against each other, too. You got the big corporations poaching talent from one another and engaging in corporate espionage while at the same time competing for political favors. Meanwhile, there’s all this tension between City Hall and the mob because the mayor’s suddenly cracking down on drug trafficking and prostitution. That’s exactly the kind of thing that can get a politician assassinated and replaced with a robot. It happened to Robert Kennedy, didn’t it?”
“Uh, I’m no historian, but I don’t think RFK was replaced with a robot. I’m pretty sure everyone knew he was dead and that was that.”
“That’s just because they didn’t have the technology back then.”
“Jesus, you never stop, do you?”
He takes a breath. “Look, all I’m asking you to do is read the articles on that list. And keep an open mind.”
“And then what? What exactly do you want me to do?”
“Well, I was hoping to hire you to follow up on some leads.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself?”
“Because I’ve got no resources. My computer and phone are gone. And all my hardcopy files. They even took my bulletin board with all the pictures pinned to it and the Post-it notes and the pieces of string connecting everything. I can’t go back home, so I’m living on the street. And the scariest thing of all is my powers might not even work on them, which means I can’t really hide, and they’re still probably tracking me. I risked my life just coming here.”
“Which means you also risked my life. Not that I believe any of this bullshit.”
He leans back in the chair. “Lives. You still have more than one, don’t you? See, it’s much less dangerous for you than it is for me. And I’d be willing to give you twice your usual retainer upfront, so even if this does turn out to be bullshit, you still get paid.”
My eyes narrow into slits. “I thought you said you didn’t have any resources.”
He smiles sheepishly. “I may have robbed an armored car the other day. My powers might not work on the guys that are after me, but they still work on everyone else.”
I shake my head.
“What? Banks have insurance. It’s a victimless crime. And I only took a couple of grand, so I doubt they’ll even notice.”
“Right. Well, even if I wanted to help you — which I don’t — I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be paid in stolen money. Whatever’s going on, I’m staying the fuck out of it.”
“Come on, Snowball. The fate of the world may be at stake here.”
“Bullshit. I let you in here against my better judgment and listened to you ramble on like a mental patient, but now it’s time for you to leave me the fuck alone.”
“Maybe if you read the — ”
“I said fuck off!”
“I see. Well, I guess that’s it, then.” He reaches between his feet and picks up a stained wooden dowel. When the stench hits him, he makes a lemon face. “That doesn’t smell like modeling glue.”
“Maybe you should taste it.”
“I think I’ll pass, thanks.” He gets up but leaves his list on my desk. A mouse scurries past him as he walks towards the door. He pauses. “If you happen to change your mind — ”
“You have no phone or laptop. I have no way of reaching you.”
“I’ll be popping into libraries occasionally to check my email.”
“Whatever. I’m not going to change my mind.”
“Right. Well. See you around, I guess.”
“Not if Lincoln smells you first.”
Lincoln sustains a low growl while the Phantom puts on his coat and boots. The growling stops once our unwanted guest is gone.