Flex (8 page)

R
eporters lurked in the lobby
, hoping to photograph Paul Tsabo. Give them the slightest confirmation he was on the hunt again, and they’d do what they’d done after he’d killed the illustromancer: turn him into a symbol of their own lust for killing.

Paul thanked God they hadn’t tracked down the motel Samaritan had put him up in. So the reporters milled around like they did at the hospital these days, low-level freelancers hoping to catch a scoop. If the story caught fire, they’d assign full-time reporters to follow Paul; that had happened for one dreadful week after he’d murdered the illustromancer, cameras thrust into his windows.

He slunk around to the back, feeling guilty. Kit was right: in the wake of Paul’s tear-gassing and arrest, people were starting to wonder what Paul was up to. Which was why Kit had ordered Paul to take a mandatory vacation, making Paul spend a few days out of sight to let the heat fade. Paul shouldn’t even be at Samaritan.

Yet when he got to his office, he found not a reporter, but Kit, poking around.

“Maybe I’m getting old,” Kit said, pushing a collection of statutes aside to peer behind Paul’s desk. “But… do you have a rat problem here?”

He knows
, Paul thought.
He’s sensing the magic.

“…No. I mean, maybe there’s a nest in there somewhere, but Mickey Mouse hasn’t bit me yet.”

Kit looked embarrassed, thrusting forth his usual box of donuts. His ritual Dunkin’s offering usually was half gift, half personality test, but this was a particularly flimsy excuse to get inside Paul’s office.

Paul’s fingers hesitated over a vanilla kreme donut, then plucked his usual cruller from the pile.

“You almost took a different flavor,” Kit said. “That means you’re reevaluating your priorities. I see that a lot after major life trauma – divorces, sudden losses…”

“It’s a
donut
, Kit.”

“You are what you eat.” He set the donuts down, looking grave. “I hear rustling, Paul. Something knocking papers off your desk. My secretary doesn’t hear it. I figure she’s got better ears than I do, but…”

“Kit.” Paul grinned wide, a friend indulging his old buddy’s craziness. He did not want Kit looking too closely, or he’d stumble upon Paul’s stockpile of top-secret SMASH case files. “I just turned down a vanilla kreme because I didn’t want powdered sugar all over my desk. You think I’d tolerate mouse turds?”

“Heh. No.” He frowned, as if to say,
Maybe
.

“If it bothers you, get the exterminator.”

“I don’t want to run the expense by Lou.”

“So get a dead rat and throw it under my chair,” Paul said. “Lou’s a cheap bastard, but filthy rats scurrying around Samaritan? Management doesn’t want the competition.”

Kit gave Paul an admiring grin. “Pretty cagey for a paper pusher.”

“That’s what paper-pushing is, Paul. Leveraging white-collars until they
have
to act for you.” Paul socked Kit gently on the shoulder, an artificial gesture all the more embarrassing when he realized he was emulating Lenny Pirrazzini. “Did you want to talk to me, or would you like a conference call with my rats?”

“That’s probably how you get all your paperwork done. Your rats fill it out for you. Like shoemaker’s elves.” A nervous laugh.

He’s kidding but not kidding
, Paul thought.
That image is taking root in his mind.

Then:
So what are you going to do about it when he finds out?

“I wouldn’t let an elf
touch
my paperwork.” Paul reached into his cabinets, taking deep satisfaction in the perfect alphabetization, and plucked out six thick Samaritan forms. “That’s
my
fun time. Hell, you ordered me to get out of the office, and what am I doing? Going to a nice lake, putting the pole in the water, then filling out reports for that ’mancy bust.”

“…there’s a hitch.”

“No way. That bust is
perfect
. I got proof positive those frogs were ’mancy. We can deny every claim.”

“Yeah. But the government’s requesting records on you. They claim you were inside the house. Were you?”

Paul froze.

“…Paul, Paul,” Kit said sympathetically. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

“I was taking pictures of the lab,” Paul lied. “You said we needed a solid case…”

“You needed
two hours
to take photos?”

Crap
. He’d forgotten about his little temporal exchange. For him, he’d waited five minutes for SMASH to arrive… but to the mundane world, he’d faxed in the report two hours before.

His only way out involved playing to Kit’s most loathsome assumptions… so he caressed the gun underneath his vest.

“…I was hiding. Hoping
she’d
show back up.”

Kit pulled Paul against him in a manly hug.

“…You fuckin’ idiot.” Kit sighed with relief. “I know you want revenge, Paul. But the government’s claiming Anathema sensed you there. They say you blew the case.”

“She wasn’t there when I got there!”

“…you think this Anathema is a she?” Kit asked suspiciously. “On what evidence?”

…shit
. Paul had gotten incautious. “…just a gut feeling. She’s crazy dedicated. You know what they say about terrorists – if you see a woman terrorist, shoot her first, because she’s more committed than her male buddies.”

Kit grunted, not quite satisfied. “Sounds crazy, but… you understand ’mancers. Or maybe you’re just crazy. The government thinks you are. They say the two ’mancer-induced traumas have made you psychologically unstable. They’re offering a free trip to the Refactor for counseling.”

The government billed the Refactor as a grand healing center, a spa to cleanse ’mancers and help mundanes.

“The only help I need is tracking this bastard down.”
Bastard
. Use male names.

Kit rolled his eyes. “Was there ever a cop who went to counseling voluntarily? All right, do your thing. But if you’d been a civilian, you’d be under the white lights now. As an employee, well… Initially, having an honored cop on the team seemed like a smart PR move. Now your presence gets people asking why we refuse ’mancy claims. The upper floors are discussing whether you’re bringing more heat than you’re worth.”

Paul shuddered. He couldn’t lose his insurance. “Okay.”

“The next time you get a wild hair to crawl into some ’mancer’s hobbit hole,
call
me. We’re navigating tricky waters. Reporters have been calling me all day. I should write you up just for showing your face here, my friend.”

“I’ll stay low. You know what
you
should do?”

“What?”

“…call the exterminator, you rat-hallucinating old bastard.” Paul grabbed the forms and strutted out, followed by Kit’s laughter.

“
D
addy will be back
in two days.”

Aliyah grunted a vague affirmation.

She moved the Nintendo DS’s joypad, her left hand comparatively nimble, her contorted right hand stabbing the buttons convulsively as she hopped Mario over another set of barriers. She barely looked up when anyone entered, retreating into this bright world of bricks.

But what were her alternatives? She was bedbound. Games were better than more TV, weren’t they? And… didn’t he owe her some fun times, anyway? After what he’d done to her?

She took comfort in his presence, complained when he left. Still, he prodded her into interacting; he wanted to have some good memories of her to take with him when he was off in a cabin, becoming a magical drug dealer. He needed to remember her voice to remind him that failure wasn’t an option.

“And
why
is Daddy going to be gone?”

“You’re hunting ’mancers.”

“No, no, not quite.” Paul wasn’t sure how to deal with Aliyah’s sudden obsession with hurting ’mancers. “Just an out-of-town claim, sweetie. I’ll probably never see a ’mancer.”

“You’ll kill them the next time you see one.”

Her offhanded certainty chilled him. “You like that game, don’t you?”

“It’s full of hiddens.”

“…hiddens?”

“Vallumtime showed me.” She waved the screen at him, not quite so Paul could see it; at six, Aliyah hadn’t quite mastered the concept that just because she could see it didn’t mean everyone could. “These pipes lead to a new level, but you have to squat in them. If you break this brick, then a vine goes up, and
that’s
a new level. That’s why Vallumtime fell in love with videogames. She wants the world filled with hidden doors.”

Paul frowned. He didn’t remember Valentine saying that the last and only time he’d been here with her. Yet somehow, Valentine’s words resonated with him.

“There should be something unpredictable around every corner, shouldn’t there?” Paul tried the thought on for size, adored it.

“I like it when you visit. Mommy makes me put the Nintendo away.”

It was petty, Paul knew, but he loved any indication that Aliyah’s affection for him was greater. Eventually, Aliyah would start playing them off each other; his little manipulator. Already, she’d figured out that as the sick girl, she could charm the nurses into bringing her fresh batteries because – in a phrase that Aliyah had memorized word-for-word, though Paul doubt she understood it – “the fine motor control these games requires is a form of physical therapy.”

“I like watching you explore,” Paul allowed. “So, what are you doing?”

“Mario wears costumes. Now he’s a ‘nukey.” Paul craned his neck to see a tiny Mario, bouncing around in a raccoon suit. “He flies, see?” Mario bopped a turtle with his tail; the turtle’s shell went flying. He bounced off, landing on a bright orange flower, taking on its color.

“
No!
” she yelled. “
Not the blossom!
”

“What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“He’s a stupid ’mancer now. See?” She jabbed the B button; Mario spat fireballs that bounced across the screen. Then she hopped Mario into a chasm. “So I have to kill him.”

P
aul ambled
down the rows of vans in the Avis parking lot; checking a pink sheet, he looked for its matching license plate. The roar of ascending airplanes rattled the cheap tin roofs that kept the rain off the cars; rain-slickered employees huddled inside shacks, looking miserable.

Paul squeezed his temples. The flux made his head feel like a balloon animal, with a small child squooshing him. The distraction vexed him, because he wasn’t sure the car he was looking for even existed.

Sure enough, there was the plate: ENF 106. A white Dodge Grand Caravan, as promised.

He piled the equipment into the back, sure the security guards would come running. But no; nobody cared he was stacking alchemical glassware into a van he’d never signed for. Paul started it up, pulling out to the big orange SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE – DO NOT BACK UP sign.

An old black man with a pleasant grin leaned out into the rain, hand extended.

Holding his breath, Paul handed over the pink slip that was proof he’d rented the car. Well, not him. The car was in someone else’s name. And he’d never actually gone to the front desk; as he’d envisioned all the steps involved in renting a car – the insurance signoffs, the gas contracts, the car inspection – the blank white paper he’d scribbled on had blushed pink, the vehicle ID numbers indenting the page to the meaty
chunk
of invisible dot matrix stamps.

He was about to rent a car he’d conjured from blank paper.

The attendant noted his concern. “Rough flight?”

“Family business.”

The attendant nodded. “They’ll get you every time.” He licked his fingers and thumbed through the paperwork. He took the green sheet that had appeared underneath the pink sheet sometime in between the time Paul had handed it to him and the time he’d thumbed through it, then handed the pink sheet back.

The attendant waved him through with a smile.

Paul was certain the van would dissipate as he turned onto the freeway, dumping him onto the asphalt. But no; the hard pleather of the steering wheel was underneath his hands, its wheels hummed on the freeway, the sleek USB ports were ready for use. Paul turned the Sirius radio on full blast, only to be greeted with a gentle Viennese waltz.

The genteel strings seemed inappropriate. He’d done magic.
Real
magic.

Paul flipped the station over to a classic rap station; “Gin and Juice” blared out. Imani had despised rap, preferred soft, formless R&B that was all whispers and “hey, girl”. And he’d always caved, because was music
that
important?

Now he knew the answer. Yes. Music. Music was everything.

He had his mind on his ’mancy and his ’mancy on his mind.

Paul’s luck held as he found a parking space in front of Valentine’s apartment on the East Side. Her apartment complex was run-down but colorful, painted in blood red with white trim. The people inside styled themselves bohemians… yet Paul knew from experience everyone inside dealt with 1930s plumbing.

She buzzed him up. He massaged his temples and pushed through the door, feeling the jittery nervousness of a man on his first date. It wasn’t quite a date – she was a kid, for Christ’s sake – but he still wanted to impress her.

She’s a killer
, he told himself.

He got to the top of the stairs to find Valentine’s door open, her room in chaos.

It was a studio apartment with practically no furniture; a dirty mattress had been heaved into the middle of the floor, an oasis among piles of junk. There were piles of dirty T-shirts and panties, old videogames, Styrofoam take-out boxes, DVD cases of hentai films, Master Chief action figures, old Amazon boxes, everything layered with a sprinkling of packing peanuts.

A cardboard box next to her bed served as a bedside table; it contained a small plastic Pac-Man lamp and a black plastic tub of something called ANAL LUBE.

There was a slightly less cluttered spot before her television, which Paul guessed was where her gaming chair had once sat. It now contained one very illegal bag of crushed hematite.

This is the lair of New York’s subtlest terrorist?

Valentine rooted through the piles, not bothering to look up as Paul came in. Today’s outfit was an embroidered black shirt with glittery red hearts, and V-shaped knee-high boots.