Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

Bair shied away. “I’m a scientist. I developed a formula for extracting a vital nutrient from the soybean. I’ll make millions out of it.”

Bair glanced around nervously, as if the director might have been eavesdropping. The Master Brain-Picker was what they all called him behind his back. It was by draining the brains of the gifted in exchange for a picayune grant and the use of the Center’s incomparable lab facilities that the director had enriched the Center and lined his own pockets, or so it was rumored. Bair considered himself the director’s equal in cunning. When he left the Center, he would take his formula with him. What could the director do about it?

“What kind of stuff you on, pal?” teased Big Mike with a nudge and wink at Alfreda.

Bair saw the hopelessness of trying to impress these idiots. Indeed, who would believe him in his present circumstances? That fool of a director was mad. To inflict upon a person of Bair’s intellectual eminence such a degrading experience. The man didn’t deserve to profit from Bair’s genius.

Gruffly spurning the offer of a drink, Bair flung himself off the stool and headed for the door. Some impulse caused him to glance back as he was about to escape. A pair of dark, mocking eyes gazed at him from the pool table in the corner of the bar. Bair hastily looked away, pretending he hadn’t recognized Deuce.

There had been a change in the weather. It had turned warmer, although the sky was thick with clouds, costive and grey, and sad as a grieving face. Bair couldn’t stomach the prospect of another night at the Hope of the World Mission and wandered aimlessly in the direction of the river. Where the streetlights ended, he paused indecisively and was about to turn back when a figure loomed out of the shadows.

“You lost, fella?”

Bair narrowed his eyes, recognized Deuce. “You’ve been following me!”

“You looked like a lost dog back there, man. What’s wrong? You lookin’ for a place to crash? You don’t like the beds at the Mission? Or is it the company?”

“How do you know where I’ve been sleeping?”

“Where else would you go?”

“I won’t go back there,” said Bair. “I’d rather sleep in the rough.”

“No need, man. All you had to do was gimme a ring. Come on.”

“Where?”

“I know a place. You’ll love it.”

Meekly, Bair accompanied the young man back toward the town through a twist of streets and alleys to a rundown building in an area of factories and warehouses. Deuce motioned him up the steps and through a door into a dimly lighted hallway stinking of dampness and decay. Wallpaper hung in streamers from the mildewed walls. Bair followed his guide up several flights of stairs, arriving finally at a door which opened only with a vigorous kick from Deuce’s steel-toed boots.

Bair cried out, “We’re on the roof!”

“Yeah. Up above the world so high.”

Bair recoiled at the touch of something cold and sharp against his neck. Deuce’s other hand tightened around Bair’s arm. He tried to wrench free as Deuce frog-marched him toward the roofs edge.

“Why are you doing this?” cried Bair. “What do you want from me?”

“Ain’t what I want, man. I’m just a hired hand.”

“Let me go! I’m not what you think I am.” Bair, in a panic, remembered that serial killer in-some big city — was it New York? — who preyed on derelicts. “My name is Harvey Osgood Bair. I’m a scientist. You can’t do this to me. Important people know where I am. They—”

“Wrong, baby. They’ll never find you. They’ll look for you in Chicago when you don’t come back.”

“Chicago?” What madness was this?

“That’s where the Big Man will tell them he sent you. Nobody’ll think of looking for you here.”

“But this is crazy! Why?”

“Don’t ask me, man. I guess you had something they wanted.”

“The formula?”

By now they were at the edge of the roof, the knife still pressed against Bair’s neck. A cold wind chilled the sweat on his face. As he looked down, a merciful wave of giddiness swept over him. It was hardly necessary for the young man to push him over the edge.

Fed Up by Marie E. Truitt

Detectiverse

Wifey toiled from nine to four,
Dashed on home to toil some more;
Cooking... cleaning... what a drag!
Soon she’ll be a full-blown hag.
Hubby had his own career...
Watching TV... drinking beer.
Patience worn to tissue thin,
Wifey vows to do him in.
Tired of being a good tomato,
Wifey mashed her couch potato!

Demon Lover by Suzanne Jones