Flex (17 page)

“
W
ho made this
?” Gunza held the Flex above the applicant’s tongue like a priest dispensing the sacrament. The boy glanced over at Paul chained in the corner, legless.

The kid was hard-muscled, lean, looked good in a fight – but the presence of Gunza’s three former guards, alive and hanging from meat hooks, made him visibly nervous.

“You did, Gunza.”

“Who grants this to you?”

“You do.”

“Who tells you when to use the ’mancy?”

“You do, Gunza.”

“God damn right. What happens when you fuck with my ’mancy?”

The kid’s eyes flickered towards his old friends. “Terrible things, Gunza.” Paul counted the days, realized Gunza had hired the kids on the meat hooks three days ago. Gunza was churning through employees faster and faster.

“God damn right.” Gunza lifted the crystal away from the kid’s mouth. The kid stretched his neck after the Flex for a moment, extending his tongue like he was trying to catch a snowflake. Disappointed but obedient, he stepped back into line with the other applicants.

Gunza went for the tray of throwing knives.

“Now, I ain’t never thrown knives,” Gunza murmured, popping the crystal into his mouth. He’d taken to chewing Flex even when he didn’t need ’mancy; Paul was beginning to think he just liked the taste. “Seen a circus guy do it once.”

He flung a knife towards one of the meat hook boys. It cut off most of an ear, more by chance than skill. The kid screamed into the rag stuffed in his mouth.

“Guess I’m no circus guy,” he said.

The other two writhed, moaning apologies.

“Oh, you want luck now?” Gunza slapped them. “You motherfuckers flipped the
lottery
yesterday. All three at once. From the same fuckin’ store. Didn’t I
tell
them not to use the Flex until I said?”

Gunza addressed that last sentence to Paul, as always. Paul didn’t know why Gunza even bothered to talk to him, aside from the fact that Paul had become the sole constant in Gunza’s life; he’d spent the last ten days dragging Paul from safe house to safe house, trying to build an empire based on this new drug.

“…you did,” Paul said softly, wearily. “You absolutely did.”

“So, you dumb fucks blew a triple triple! Think SMASH wouldn’t come sniffing after that? When this terrorist bitch has everyone on edge? Place was
swarming
with Five-0. So, we’re in a different borough, and you’re on meat hooks.”

Gunza threw the knives. The results weren’t pretty.

But they were educational.

L
ater
, after Gunza made the new recruits clean up the mess of the old recruits, he offered Paul a beer.

“Let me send a postcard,” Paul begged.

Gunza swigged the beer, belched in contentment; all of Gunza’s beers hit the spot these days. “The SMASH team would dust for… something. Can’t chance it.”

Paul swallowed back fury. Gunza was a dim prospect, all instinct and no education. If he’d just put the flux in the Flex, like Valentine had said, Gunza would have Fluxed out by now. Instead, Gunza had been moving them from place to place, escaping SMASH traps by engineered luck. He made long, shouting calls to his brothers, telling them he had the Flex, it was time
they
listened to
him
.

He wanted to apologize to Valentine. Was she alive? He kept rubbing the gash in his arm, where the buzzsects had eaten a furrow through his flesh; it bled nonstop, a constant runny-nose ooze, never healing.

Had Valentine recovered from that? Could she?

That thought led to panic. Best to concentrate on Aliyah. Aliyah, he knew, was safe.

“They’re Unimancers,” Paul said. “They’re terrifying when someone points them at a target – but they don’t hunt well. All they’d find on the postcard would be my fingerprints. But my daughter would know I’m alive.”

“Gotta let go of that life, Paul.” Gunza stroked the Rubbermaid tub of Flex for the ten thousandth time; he kept it parked in his lap, never letting it or Paul out of his sight.

“You can’t let go of family.”

Gunza gave him an unsettling, clear-eyed stare. “You better hope I do, Paul.” He returned to watching television.

Paul leaned back against the radiator, his wrist chafing from the handcuff. The endless string of reality shows Gunza watched bored him stiff.

He thought about Aliyah. Was she okay? With so much of her skin gone, she was prone to infection. Maybe she was dying.

Maybe she was crying for Daddy.

The thought stung so much, he couldn’t stare at it straight on, so instead he imagined Aliyah’s hospital paperwork – her vital readings, the nurses’ charts, the claims submitted to Samaritan–

Gunza pressed a gun to Paul’s throat. “Your ’mancy’s slow, Mister ’Mancer.”

“I didn’t–”

“You were changing something. I felt it.” Gunza cocked the trigger. Paul trembled. “Valentine’s ’mancy is quick. That girl can could do some damage. Wouldn’t dare hold a gun to her. But you? You could fuck me up in the long run… but your write-o-mancy, or whatever the fuck it is, won’t deflect this bullet. And I will fire, if you don’t fucking stop.”

“I’m not trying,” Paul croaked, his mouth dry. He wasn’t. His daydreams caused ripples in reality.

Gunza nodded as if he’d made his point, then withdrew to watching a rerun of
The Osbournes
.

Paul wanted to dare Gunza to shoot. But Aliyah. He might see Aliyah again.

When Gunza slept, Paul tried to do some ’mancy. But he didn’t know the address of this place – and without that vital anchor, it was like trying to find Valentine without her name. Gunza ensured he never had paper or pen; sometimes, he shot at Paul’s good foot to break his concentration. He also made sure to keep Paul’s head bagged whenever they moved, which was often.

They’d stayed at Gunza’s first safe house for two days, with Gunza recruiting new members from his friends, promising as much Flex as they could handle. Sure enough, word had gotten out, and a rival gang made their play. Because Gunza had chosen a small house out in the suburbs – he hadn’t even covered the windows or installed bulletproof doors – the battle had been loud and sloppy, won only thanks to wild surges of Flex-inspired luck.

Gunza had gotten into a screaming fight with his brothers after that. Their connections were shit, he told them. Stupid stockbroker wannabes who’d pay, what, two-fifty kay? This shit could make them billions.

Gunza moved to a hotel the next time, trying to play it mysterious, inviting high-wheeling strangers into the room to sell them on the merits of Flex. Except Gunza didn’t really know anyone; Paul found out later he’d been taking out ads on Craigslist. He’d gotten a string of sad-sack investors who weren’t quite sure why they were there, and they’d had to flee after Gunza had roughed up an elderly man who’d shown up with an insulting $500 – his life’s savings – to invest. That man had called 1-800-SMASHEM.

Yet Gunza insisted, loudly and constantly, that he wouldn’t settle for his old connections. He’d show his family what
he
could do.

Two days later, his hired guns had turned on him. After that, Gunza had stopped giving it out so freely.

They moved elsewhere. Then he moved again when someone told his brothers where he was staying.

All had been quiet for a few days, until the Lotto winners had forced another move. Now they were in a tenement, surrounded by eager kids – everyone but Gunza had been killed in the factory fight, but the promise of Flex ensured Gunza had no lack of applicants.

Paul felt weary. Gunza was bad enough, and he ached to hold Aliyah, but the maddening bit was how he had to restrain himself from correcting Gunza’s mistakes. Had Gunza reinforced this safe house for a fight? No. Had he devised protocols to track who was coming and going? No. Did Gunza have a bolt-hole when things went wrong? No. Based on the previous four moves, Gunza would snort Flex and drive around until he got lucky.

This could have been a magnificent operation. But Gunza had no people skills. Paul wasn’t the greatest at glad-handing – Imani or Kit had always handled upper management for him – but Gunza treated his first wave of cohorts like buddies, dispensing Flex without a care in the world. Now he’d taken to surly withdrawal, making them beg and jump for the Flex – sometimes literally – and only for a mission.

It offended Paul. If he was going to be held hostage by a criminal, it should be a mastermind. Gunza was a small thinker with a bloated ego – good enough when spoon-fed tasks but falling apart under his own agenda. Paul bit back suggestions, wanting to needle Gunza into fine-tuning his organization, knowing Gunza would punish anyone who showed him up.

Shouts from outside. Paul looked up.

“I told you,
I got this
!” Gunza said petulantly. “You fuckers are
not welcome
! And who the fuck is this?”

“That’s Uncle.” Paul recognized the voice from Gunza’s many shouted conversations: his brother Hanna.

Gunza’s stunned silence told Paul that Uncle didn’t show up for casual get-togethers. He spoke in a strangled whisper:

“…why the fuck is
he
here?”

“He doesn’t make trips to America,” Hanna said. “It’s dangerous for him, crossing the border. Show some respect.”

“I didn’t ask him here.”

“We did.”

“And I
told
you, I’m gonna make him so much money that–”

“Show me.”

The voice was gravelly. Uncle’s voice had a weight that leaned on you, like dirt pressing down on a fresh grave.

Gunza quieted. “A’ight,” he muttered. “Just a look.”

The door opened, the light so bright that Paul squinted. Uncle took up the whole doorframe, a blunt physique that might have been carved from granite. Uncle stepped with the delicacy of encroaching old age but had the sure footing of a killer.

“That him?”

Paul quailed from Uncle’s attention. He slid backward, as if he could fold into the radiator.

“Yeah,” Gunza said. Behind him, his brother – a larger, beefier boy – peered in anxiously, terrified of making Uncle unhappy.

Uncle’s knotted eyebrows raised when he saw the tub. “That’s it?”

“Yeah.” Gunza thrust his chin out, daring Uncle to say anything bad.

Uncle grabbed a piece. He turned glittering Flex back and forth between thin fingers. It was the largest piece in the tub, the size of a ping-pong ball. Uncle eyed it suspiciously, then moved to take a bite.

Gunza grabbed Uncle’s wrist.

“You ask first,” Gunza said.

You could hear his brother’s squeak of terror.

Uncle’s craggy face expressed the disdain of a man who’d discovered a cockroach under his tongue. He lowered the Flex back to the pile rather than ask permission.

He shifted his gaze to Paul, his attention as visible as a lighthouse beam. He took in Paul’s stump, the blood-stained handcuffs, Paul’s oozing broach-wound. He sized up Paul with the attitude of a man trying to determine how to best stuff a puppy into a USPS shipping container.

“He goes back,” Uncle intoned. “New York’s no place to brew Flex – not with this other ’mancer on the loose. I’ll get a U-Haul. We’ll transport him to the Mexican border. I know a plane that can take him from there.”

Had Paul said he’d rather be in the hands of a mastermind? He was wrong. Through Uncle’s gray eyes, Paul saw himself viewed as not a man but a resource. He’d be enslaved, treated like cattle, stuck in a country that ran not on paperwork but on bribes and guns.

“He’s mine.”

Gunza interposed himself between Uncle and Paul, almost bumping chests. It was ludicrous. He was two thirds Uncle’s size.

“You’ll be rewarded,” Uncle said. “You’ve done well to bring him to us.”

“I didn’t bring him to you.”

“
You have done well to bring him to us
.” With those words, he offered a chance to rewrite history – to overlook all of Gunza’s rebellion, offering him a place not on the throne but certainly within the throne’s sight.

Gunza stepped back toward the tub of Flex on the table, fishing through it until he found the exact piece Uncle had dropped. He took one bite, crunching it with sapphire teeth, a wasteful chomp that sprayed thousands of dollars of Flex across the tile.

“
Mine
,” Gunza said.

Uncle’s fist shot out, exploding in a spray of hot metal. Shrapnel bounced off the cabinets.

“
My eye!
” Gunza’s brother yelled, clawing at his face. “
My fuckin’ eye!
” Uncle, never hesitating, punched Gunza with his good hand; Paul heard the crack of bone shattering as Uncle’s arm collapsed, his forearm crumpling.

The chunk of metal dropped to the floor. Paul realized what it was now: a gun that had misfired so badly, the rounds had severed Uncle’s fingers from his palm.

What transfixed Paul was Gunza’s beatific expression of sorrow. He’d been floating on ’mancy for long enough, he’d lost the concept of being hurt. He stepped away as Uncle tried to kick him – literally
stepped
, with the calmness of a man walking around a fence – and poked Uncle in the throat with his fingers.

Uncle fell to the ground. It was unmanning, seeing that mixture of adulation and fear on that old hit man’s face.

Gunza fumbled his own gun out. He wasn’t half as efficient as Uncle’s gunslinger draw.

“I – I have heard of the Flex,” Uncle gurgled. “Seen it twice. But never – never like this–”

“Never will again,” Gunza said, bored.

He shot Uncle. Then his brother.

He stood over his brother’s body as his guards came running in; Paul could not see Gunza’s expression. But Gunza’s shoulders heaved, not quite crying, trying to jam too many emotions underneath before his men saw him waver.

Then he jerked his head back as if to stare at the ceiling, sniffing and squeezing his eyes shut. He thrust his hands elbow-deep into the tub, clenched the Flex in his fists as if he was prepared to fight the entire world. He began to snort a fresh batch – then stopped, palm halfway to his mouth.

One final moment of clarity
, Paul realized.
If Gunza can walk away from this, here’s where he does it
.