"There," he said happily. "Let them know The Eraser and the Rubout Squad were here. And The Exterminator."
Then he followed the other three men down the steps. They ran across the street and fled in their rented car.
The mayor's regular driver was still in the hospital having tests made to determine the extent of nerve injury suffered in his right arm, so Remo was driving the limousine. Chiun and Rocco Nobile were in the back seat. Remo had given Chiun strict orders, which he had couched as a humble request from the Emperor to the all-knowing, all-noble personage of the Master of Sinanju that Chiun not tell Rocco Nobile anything about CURE or Harold W. Smith or secret organizations. Without knowing it, Rocco Nobile had been working for CURE for almost five years and if he had gone that long in the dark, it was probably best to keep him there. Remo knew that Smith wanted to be sure that, in case Rocco Nobile's cover was ever blown, the man would be in no position to drop anything dangerous about CURE.
Remo had explained all this to Chiun. Chiun had agreed that he would not utter a word to Rocco Nobile.
Now as Remo drove, he heard Chiun in the back seat say to Nobile:
"I know something you don't know."
"Chiun," Remo said.
The car radio crackled on.
"Fire in progress at 612 River Street."
"Let's go over there," Nobile said.
"You like fires?" Remo said, glad to change the subject from what Chiun knew that Rocco Nobile didn't.
"Not really," Nobile said, "but I guess the mayor ought to be around for one."
They parked in the street behind a fire engine. Flames were spitting from the second floor window of the old loft building. Firemen were standing on the street pouring water into the building. Another crew was on top of a cherry picker, fifty feet in the air, pumping water down onto the roof of the low building, and also spraying adjoining buildings to try to stop the fire from spreading to the other old wood structures.
Remo and Chiun followed Nobile up to a fire officer wearing a white helmet with a gold medallion on the front.
"Anybody in there, Chief?" Nobile asked.
"We don't know. We can't get in yet."
Chiun looked at Remo and Remo nodded. The two men drifted away from the mayor and the chief who stood staring up at the building. Licks of flame began to spit through the roof. The two men moved around the crews of firemen and then darted toward the ground level doorway.
"Hey, you can't..." one firemen shouted. But Remo and Chiun were already inside. He turned to the man next to him.
"Two guys went in that building."
"Whaaaa?"
"Two guys went in. You didn't see them?"
"No. I didn't see nothing. You sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure," the fireman said. He thought for a moment of what he had seen. A skinny white man with a black T-shirt and black trousers. A tiny old Oriental wearing a gold brocade kimono.
A gold brocade kimono? At 9 a.m.? In Bay City?
He shook his head. Not likely.
"I think maybe the smoke's gotten to me. I'm getting some oxygen," he said and walked back toward the emergency wagon where oxygen demand tanks with masks were propped up against the rear tire.
Remo and Chiun slid through flame up the sway-backed wooden steps toward the second floor.
"In there," Chiun said, pointing toward Wo Fat's factory. "It started there."
As Remo opened the door, a whoosh of hot air and flames flared out at their faces. After the first surge had subsided, they moved inside and Chiun closed the door behind them to seal off the draft. The entire second floor was ablaze. Flames burned up off the wooden floor. The old wooden walls were on fire and tongues of flame poured through the doorway of the kitchen area in the back.
Remo ran toward the kitchen, but as he passed the counter, he saw Wo Fat's body, so far untouched by flames. On its chest, he saw the broken half of a pencil and picked it up.
Inside the kitchen door, they found the partially burned bodies of Wo Fat's wife and three children. The two men saw where the slugs had bitten into their bodies. Flames chewed around them like some giant insidious dragon tongue.
Remo saw several charred pieces of wood lying near the bodies. He picked them up and stuck them in his shirt pocket.
"We should get these bodies out of here," he hissed at Chiun.
The old man shook his head.
"No. Let them be victims of the fire."
Remo thought for a split second and realized Chiun was right. Five members of a family killed in a fire was a tragedy, but five people shot to death might just blow everything CURE and Smith and Nobile were trying to do in Bay City.
The fire was crackling in the ceiling over their heads and Chiun looked up. Through the wood panels, he could see a sliver of blue sky.
"We best go," he said. He pointed to the roof.
As Remo looked up, the first of the beams burned through and a large panel of roof ripped loose with a wrenching tear and came down at them, pouring plaster and wood and tons of water at them. The two men darted back as the massive pile hit near their feet, shuddering the fire-weakened floor and causing it to creak ominously and tilt.
"Whole building's going, Chiun," Remo said. "Let's go."
They ran back past Wo Fat's body, through the flames that surrounded the door and down the wooden stairs. This time they left the upstairs door open behind them and the flames whooshed out into the hallway as if the door to a huge coal-burning furnace had suddenly been opened in a gas-filled room.
They paused at the bottom of the steps and then slipped out into a mix of firemen milling around the entrance. The fireman who thought he had seen two men enter the building was just coming off the oxygen mask. He looked up. Behind the cluster of firefighters, he saw the two men again. The thin white one. The old Oriental with the golden kimono. He gulped and went back for more oxygen.
In the back seat of the limousine, Remo showed Rocco Nobile the pieces of wood he had picked up in the building.
"Five bodies," he said. "We left them there."
Nobile looked at him as if to question why, then nodded. He understood.
He fingered the pieces of wood. They were tops of pencils.
"The Eraser," Nobile said.
Remo nodded.
"That was a fortune cookie factory run by a Chinese family," Nobile said. "Why would this Eraser hit there?"
"I don't know. Maybe he thought they were somebody else. You got any cops in this town?
"Of course."
"Real cops?"
"I don't know. I think so. Why?"
"You can read the name on one of these pencil tops. Why don't you send some cops around quietly and find out if anybody bought a box of them in any stores around here?"
"I'll get them on it right away," Nobile said.
Remo drove the mayor and Chiun back to City Hall. The mail was already on Nobile's desk. On top of it was an unstamped envelope with a bulge in it. When Nobile saw it, his stomach sank.
He pointed at it to Remo, who opened the letter.
The broken top of a pencil fell onto the desk. The note was hand printed.
THOSE HEROIN PUSHERS WERE JUST THE FIRST. WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, NOBILE.
THE ERASER.
"I don't understand," Nobile said. "They just made fortune cookies. What heroin?"
Remo was in the doorway talking to the secretary.
"Where'd this letter come from?"
"Somebody gave it to Denise."
Remo talked to Denise, who was happy to talk to Remo. And Denise had a good eye. The envelope was dropped off by a man in drag. "A big tall skinny thing, but he was wearing a wig and woman's clothes. But it was a man."
"Thanks, honey," Remo said. "I owe you."
"When do I collect?" Denise said.
Chapter eleven
The New York Times didn't carry it. The New York Post didn't carry it. Some of the Jersey papers gave it a couple of paragraphs, and of all the New York newspapers, only the Daily News carried it. Their item read: