"You're a pisser, Bailey," I said, shaking my head. "My very own mad scientist. You're everybody's last hope. Do you have any idea what I've been going through?"
"I'm sorry, Frederickson," he said seriously. "I really am. Now that you mention it, I guess I should have called you to let you know where I was and how the work was going. But I told you I didn't know if I could do it until a few days ago, and then I got kind of focused in on the job. When I'm doing something like this, everything else in the world just kind of fades away, doesn't exist for me."
Well, I certainly couldn't complain about that, and so I didn't. The bell on the autoclave chimed, and the red light went off. Bailey donned a pair of heavy, insulated mittens over his surgical gloves, opened the door, and removed a black ceramic plate on which there was a small mound of grayish-blue powder. He set that plate down on the mixing table, then returned to the autoclave and put in the plate with the bubble-gum paste. He shut the door, set the timer, pressed a button, and the red light came on again.
"This is the key ingredient," he continued, pointing to the grayish-blue powder, "the substance I had to replicate in order to make the compound work. The other ingredients are off-the-shelf psychotropics and a tiny amount of binder. I finally broke the chemical code, and then figured out a way to actually make the stuff yesterday 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.