Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

afternoon. I've been cooking up the stuff ever since. When you mix all the ingredients in the proper ratios, and then measure it out, you get the brownish powder you see in the proper dosages there at the end of the table. I'm going to show you how to do that. By three or four this afternoon we should have enough dosages of the medication to supply a dozen people for maybe a month. Now that I've figured out how to do it, I can always make more if it's needed. If I'm not in jail, I can probably cook it up in my apartment. You don't need an autoclave; an ordinary kitchen stove will do nicely.'

'What about gel capsules to put the dosages in?'

'I'm having three gross delivered at ten.'

'Bailey, when was the last time you slept, and for how long?'

'I really don't remember,' he replied curtly. 'Now, pay attention as I go down the line. When I weigh out each ingredient, you make a note of that weight. Scoop it out with one of the spatulas you'll find in each bin, drop it into one of these little plastic cups, move on to the next ingredient. When you get down to the end of the line you'll have a dose, which you place in a separate pile on the butcher's paper. We'll load them into the gel capsules when they get here. Oh, and add three drops of ether to each dose; it speeds the binding process. Then go back to the other end of the table and start again.' He paused, and I could see a glint of amusement in his black-ringed, bloodshot eyes. 'It's just like making cookies, Frederickson.'

A man's voice behind me said, 'The test kitchen's closed, boys.'

I wheeled around as I grabbed under my parka at my left armpit- and, just like in the taxicab, there was nothing there but my left armpit. My Beretta and shoulder holster were still home in my safe. The village idiot in me had struck once again. Lulled into complacency by the relative inactivity of the past week and a half, distracted by the disaster that was looming closer and closer, and spurred by excitement, I had once again popped out of the brownstone unarmed. Not that it would have made much difference if I'd had a bazooka strapped to my back; the two men who'd come in through the open delivery door and were aiming automatic pistols in our direction clearly had the drop on us, due to the fact that I'd been too absorbed in Bailey's wondrous accomplishment to give a second thought to the many people who might not think that what Bailey had done was so nifty. If my lapse hadn't been so criminally stupid, it would be laughable; while I had been breathlessly chugging along through the early morning streets, the two men who had undoubtedly been sitting in their car across the street from the brownstone had simply put their car into first gear and lazily tooled along behind me at a crawl, undoubtedly most curious as to where I was going in such a hurry at that hour of the morning. They'd walked right in behind me, skulked about while Bailey and I had chatted, and now, voila. At the least, I should have made sure the door was locked behind me. Bailey Kramer wasn't supposed to think of such things; I was. While it was true that, even if I had locked the door, the men would have had us trapped inside, I might have grown a few IQ points by ten o'clock, when the gel capsules were to be delivered, and taken a few precautionary steps. Now it was too late. Now a lot of people could die because of my stupidity. I was within two bullets of snatching defeat from victory, and I found it all very depressing. The fact that the two gunmen were not bothering to cover their faces was not a good sign. Bailey and I stripped off our goggles and pulled down our masks, and I heaved a deep sigh.

They made an odd-looking couple, indeed, like Before and After figures in a diet commercial. They were both about six feet, but one had an enormous belly and must have been over three hundred pounds, while the other was so thin he looked like he might disappear if he turned sideways. After appeared to have what looked like a permanent sneer on his face, while Before's expression could be charitably described as blank. The Glocks they carried were identical twins.

Without a word, Before turned slightly, pressed the trigger of his Glock, and began spraying bullets through the array of bubbling retorts, plastic tubing, and Bunsen burners on two of the three stone-topped tables. Bailey and I both ducked and covered our faces as glass, plastic, and chemicals flew through the air. By the time the fat man had emptied his clip and stopped to reload, there was nothing left on the tables but ruined machines, glass and plastic shards, and one forlorn Bunsen burner that was still bravely burning away as if in memory of its lost companions, having somehow survived the fusillade. I slowly backed away along the length of the mixing table until I came up against a wooden storage rack filled with chemicals in various types of containers. Bailey backed away in the opposite direction as Before approached the table and looked down at the piles of drugs in their plastic bins and the tiny mounds of the pale brown compound Bailey had so carefully prepared. The skinny gunman took up a position to my right, keeping his Glock trained on me while he leaned on one of the glass-strewn worktables and lit a cigar that looked almost as thick as he was from the surviving Bunsen burner.

'Sorry, gentlemen,' I said, struggling against the crippling despair I was feeling, 'if you're here for the free urine and bad-breath tests, that offer has expired.'

'Watch your mouth, Frederickson,' After said, puffing on his cigar.

'Who sent you? Lorminix or the CIA? Or are they splitting costs on this one?'

'Where are the others, Frederickson?'

'What others? Other whats?'

It seemed After the talker and Before the shooter were used to working together; without any word of warning or any discernible signal from his partner, the blank-faced fat man half turned and casually pumped a bullet into Bailey's left thigh. Bailey cried out and clutched at his wounded leg as he collapsed into the narrow space between the end of the worktable and the wall. I started toward him, stopped, and retreated to the storage rack when Before swung his gun around and pointed it at my chest.

I said, 'Let me put a tourniquet on his leg.'

After waved away the suggestion along with the cloud of blue-gray cigar smoke that hung around his head. 'You needn't worry about him bleeding to death, pal. If I don't get the right answer this time, you can watch while my associate over there starts shooting your friend to death, one little pop at a time. I imagine the next bullet will go into the other leg, probably in the kneecap.'

'Take it easy. Dr. Stephens and two of her patients are back in my house, but you can't get to them. The place is well guarded.'

'We didn't see any guards.'

'They're inside. There are two of them, and they'll eat you and your guns for breakfast. I'm telling you this because I wouldn't want to see either of you get hurt. I don't know where the rest of the patients are; they're still out somewhere walking around the streets.'

'No problem,' After said, grinning around his cigar. 'We'll just pick them up tonight.'

My dismay and disappointment must have shown on my face, for the emaciated man's cigar-punctuated grin grew even wider. 'We nabbed one of the loonies,' he continued, 'and she told us all about the little Christmas Eve reunion. Touching. Now, what were you and the shrink planning to do with the two you've got?'

I glanced back and forth between After, who, apparently satisfied that the situation was under control, had laid his Glock down on the table and was leaning on the marble, enjoying his cigar while he bantered with me, and Before, who still had his gun aimed at my chest. The expression on the fat man's face had gone all the way from blank to bored, and I had the distinct impression that he was waiting for the good part, the killing, to begin.

'Dr. Stephens and I were going to drop them off with the cops before we went to Rockefeller Center to pick up the others and bring them to the cops,' I said, watching as the fat man casually brushed his forearm across the butcher's paper at the end of the table, sweeping onto the floor all the dosages Bailey had spent so much time and effort preparing. Then he proceeded to walk the length of the table, giving the same treatment to the plastic bins and their contents; the crashing of the plastic trays on the tile floor was like a fusillade of cannon shots aimed at my heart. Some of the powdered drugs remained suspended in the air, drifting like motes of dust. I pulled my mask up over my nose and mouth, at the same time turning my head slightly to get a glimpse of what was on the storage rack behind me. 'The police were going to escort all of us to the hospital. Now, when

I don't show up, Dr. Stephens is going to call the cops and have them come to the house.'

'That's pure bullshit,' After said, dragging a toe through the fine residue of powder that had fallen at his feet. 'If you were planning on going to the cops, you'd have done it before. And you wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of cooking up this shit. I think my associate is going to have to put a slug in your friend's other leg.'

As Before brushed powder off the front of his shirt and started to point his gun at Bailey, I cringed and half turned toward the storage rack, at the same time groaning in exaggerated horror as I pointed toward the fat man's powder-coated hands. 'Jesus Christ, big guy, if you're going to shoot anybody, you'd better do it fast, while you've still got feeling left in your trigger finger. Didn't anybody tell you not to touch or breathe in any of that stuff you've got all over you? The next time you try to take a shit, it's going to be your balls that fall into the toilet.'