Black Iris: Chapter Fourteen
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’d rather eat dog food than suffer through one of the Phantom’s articles, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I need to take a deep dive into his psyche, and that means reading the stories on that list he gave me.
I begin with an article that isn’t circled, but the headline is too ridiculous to resist. It’s a post from Sunday, June 13th called “How the Slutty Newsgirl Became a Serious Journalist: The Cindy Dolans Story.” As expected, it’s nothing more than a harsh, misogynistic personal attack. From the context, it appears to be motivated by something that happened between the two of them at the Kibble Museum of Fine Art Gala. I’m guessing he was creepy and unprofessional, and she shut him down. In the article, he attempts to shame her for how she used to dress while working as a field correspondent, and then he belittles her unsuccessful #MeToo effort.
The Phantom has always tried to frame his chauvinism as defiance of PC thuggery and cancel culture, but judging from the comments left by his own readers, it appears he went too far this time. I follow a link posted by one of his especially pissed-off fans to a response Cindy published in the Daily Squawk. Her piece is sharp and sarcastic and seems to be what kicked off their bitter Twitter feud. It’s clear now why she got the better of him.
A few days after the smoke cleared from this, he wrote a review of the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit. Though it didn’t mention Dolans by name, it was clearly a veiled retaliation for her article. His criticisms of O’Keeffe were almost word for word the criticisms he leveled on Dolans; in fact, there was barely any mention of the paintings he was supposed to be reviewing other than to perpetuate the myth of the “flowers/vaginas” metaphor in a derogatory manner. Once again, his former fans let him have it in the comments section, and he seemed to have gotten the message after that. None of the other headlines on the list make any reference to his nemesis or any other woman in a negative way, and he disappeared from social media altogether around that time. He tried to tell me the journalist might somehow be connected to the plot to kill him, but, if anything, he was the one with a motive towards her.
By July 8th, he had moved on from Cindy Dolans to the wacky world of politics. That’s when he published “Our Robot Mayor.” The seed of this conspiracy began with Mayor Richard Bottom missing two days of work with what the city claimed was a severe case of food poisoning. As the mayor hadn’t called in sick once during his entire 15 years in office, the Phantom wasn’t buying their story. For a sane person, that wouldn’t be enough to suspect someone of being a robot, but when Bottom returned to his office, there was something different about him that couldn’t be dismissed as lingering symptoms of illness. His charisma was gone, he moved more slowly, his smile wasn’t as big, and he was six inches shorter. During a press conference, he didn’t blink once the entire time.
On July 9th, the Phantom briefly interrupted his coverage of politics to report on the aliens getting drunk in the park. The story is surprisingly dull, almost as if he wrote it as filler because the robot mayor didn’t do anything interesting that day.
The next three headlines circled are all about organized crime. The first story, “Mobster Warehouse Raided,” was actually something I’d heard about because it made the mainstream news. On Friday, July 16th, following an anonymous tip, the police raided a warehouse belonging to Meatballs Makarov where they found 40 tons of an Aaruvian drug called Seshen. There are no federal or state laws prohibiting the substance, but the city of Kibble just so happened to pass a local ban the day before the raid. The contraband was confiscated, though no criminal charges were filed. Even the major networks found this to be a strange coincidence.
The Phantom also references an older story he did about the mayor being caught with a prostitute, which Bottom got in front of by offering a weak apology and suggesting it might be time to consider legalizing prostitution. Many thought he was just being controversial to spite the media, especially since he never followed through with any actual policy changes or legislation. Still, whenever asked about it, he stuck to his guns. Then six weeks ago, he suddenly did an about-face on the issue, calling for an immediate crackdown on sex workers as a part of his broader war on organized crime. This could explain Peppermint’s twitchiness at the Eight Deadly Sins the other day. Meanwhile, the Phantom cites it as further evidence that the mayor isn’t the mayor anymore. Meatballs had been Bottom’s most loyal supporter since his very first term, contributing thousands of dollars to his campaign, only to become public enemy number one overnight.
If the Phantom thinks the mafia has a beef with him, it’s most likely because of this post. While the article is more critical of the mayor, Meatballs would have been pissed at the Phantom just for openly referring to him as a crime boss. Makarov has never actually been convicted of anything, and while the mobster angle helps him market his more adult businesses such as the bars and strip clubs, this reputation makes it difficult for him in some of his more wholesome endeavors, such as his gig with the Kibble Museum. Could the article have made Meatballs mad enough to run the Phantom over with his car? According to local legend, Makarov once threw a man off a moving rollercoaster because the guy teased him about being afraid of heights. To be fair, I’ve never witnessed his temper myself, and my father has nothing but good things to say about the man. Of course, Dad’s previous boss turned out to be a mass murderer, so the bar is pretty low.
The raid story continues in the article posted the following day: “Mobster Chemist Linked to Helios Industries.” This one is interesting because I happen to know this mobster chemist personally. Joe Healy was a lab assistant working at Helios while also manufacturing recreational drugs in his garage during his free time. He hired me when he thought his wife might be cheating on him. I ended up fucking her myself, then she got murdered, and it was this whole big thing. Meatballs was tangentially involved, and after I solved the case, he offered Joe a job doing pretty much the same thing he was doing in his garage, only in a warehouse. The Phantom’s article mentions that the police found stolen Helios lab equipment in the raid and traced it back to Joe. Helios downplayed the connection, stating that Joe left the company years ago.
“City Steals From the Mob” chronicles another detail of the warehouse story I wasn’t aware of. The next business day after the raid, the city officially seized the property, which is more than a little suspicious given the location of the warehouse. As part of the mayor’s new River Development Initiative, the city has started incentivizing big corporations to relocate to Kibble’s waterfront district by offering cheap land and tax breaks. Late last fall, Helios staked its claim to a section of the docks formerly known as Tire Fire Wharf. Just this month, they completed construction of a brand-new campus with a state-of-the-art medical research center they expect to rival the Mayo Clinic. Meanwhile the aerospace and defense company Warner Aeronautics has been bidding for the remaining property in the area. Makarov’s land happens to be right in the middle of all that.
According to the article posted on Tuesday, July 20th, “Blood Sport: Tech vs. Big Pharma,” the battle between local mega-corporations isn’t just about land. They’re fighting over talent as well, although it’s more or less one-sided. Helios managed to poach three of Warner’s top engineers in a single week and was in talks with several more at the time this was published. The Phantom’s source on this is none other than Warner’s own loudmouth CEO Don Pinkerton, who got completely shit-faced in a local bar and launched into a racist rant about Helios CEO Peter Marble. Apparently, Pinkerton can’t stand Canadians, and Marble’s great grandfather was born in Calgary, Alberta. The real question, of course, is why the hell would a pharmaceutical company need aeronautical engineers? The Phantom speculates Marble was just hiring them to spite Pinkerton. It sounds far-fetched to me, but rich assholes have done far worse things to fuck with each other.
The last circled article on the list is called “Crown Victorias and Men in Black.” I’m actually mentioned by name in this one, as the Phantom thinks I’m the reason the spooks are in Kibble. Well, not me, exactly — Bastet. The events of last summer piqued the federal government’s interest, and they’ve been lurking about ever since, which means maybe those sunglass-wearing weirdos I saw in Eight Deadly Sins wasn’t there for the titties.