The Enigma's Anomaly

And At Last I See the Light

The cops take señor balaclava away and tell us to come down to the station as well, but we usher them off by saying that we'll be there soon. I just really need to talk to Gerard.

"Alright so who is Banks?"

Gerard looks uncomfortable and nervous, and starts twiddling with his hair.

"He's, um, the corporate businessmen who I interned for before I got my first comic published."

"And?"

"I, um, sort of walked in on him having an affair once," Gerard says.

"That guy?" I say, not even hiding how scandalized I am. I remember when he told me about him though.

"That's um... that's not all," Gerard says, and he scrunches his nose like he's guilty of something.

"What else?"

"I sort of discovered that he was embezzling money. There may have been some extortion involved. And fraudulence. The thing was that no one ever testified against him! No one ever called him out on it, so I figured no one would notice if I based a character off of him. I honestly didn't think it would ever come back to bite me!"

"Wait, so you're telling me, that you interned for a guy who was extorting and embezzling money, as well as cheating on his wife?" Gerard nods, so I continue, "And you used that information to base a character off of him in your comic book?"

"Pretty much," Gerard says.

"Is there any more to this story?"

"Uh, kind of."

I groan, "Oh great, spill it Way."

"Frank... I did something really bad. Like really really bad. Really really really really-"

"I got it. What did you do?" I ask him anxiously.

"Well I, uh, I needed a startup. For the comic. Money, you know?"

"Gerard! Did you blackmail him?" I ask.

"I may have sort of done that, yes," Gerard says.

"Gerard!"

He panics and covers his face, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just, I needed the money, and I had all this dirt on him, I just didn't know what to do!"

"So that's it right? That's where this story ends?"

"Yeah, I think that's about it. I mean, no one knew what he was doing! No one knew, so if people found out... but he's rich. Majorly rich, it wasn't that big of a deal and he never spoke to me again after I left!"

"Okay, so if that's all that happened, why does he want you dead?"

"I told you that I based the villain off my boss?" Gerard says, "Well it's not exactly vague. It's sort of in your face. Not only does the character look like him, but he acts like him. How do you think the world would react if they found out that that villain is a real person? It could destroy his reputation. He's not exactly a private guy, he's in the news a lot, he's this huge businessman! It would destroy his relationship, and his job and everything else."

"Wait hold on. Relationship, career, and he'd go to jail? Gerard, he's been trying to destroy everything you were threatening to take away from him!" I say and finally it all fits. "He was going to kill you so you'd stop writing about him, but when it became clear that that wasn't going to work he decided to make you understand what you were doing! Show you what it's like on the receiving end. He's a sadist alright, and he was trying to give you what you were menacing over his head, only ten times worse. You were going to ruin his relationship with his wife, so he tried to have me killed. You were going to ruin his career so he was trying to get your dream job with this comic abolished. You were going to send him to jail for fraud, so he was going to do that to someone you loved."