"How do I look?" he asked, spinning around.
"Like a six-and-a-half-foot faggot," said Tolan.
"You look just fine," The Baker said.
"Don't you ever wear man's disguises?" Tolan asked. "Whoever heard of a nun as big as a basketball player?"
"Part of my genius, sur," said The Lizzard. "By the time I walk into that place, I will be so shrunken over that if anyone ever asks, they will remember only a little old nun. The operative word there is 'little.' Such is my genius that I will be absolutely tiny in their memories. Miniscule. Minute."
Gregory looked out the window of the apartment at the Bay City Improvement Association. Its store windows were brightly illuminating the sidewalk in the nighttime darkness.
He told Lizzard, "Now you go over there on some kind of pretext. Tell them anything. Tell them you want to volunteer to help clean up the honky tonks on Barrack Street. But stay there. And when the crooked cops arrive with their gambling money, you come out and give us a sign."
"How do you know they're going to be there tonight?" Baker asked Gregory.
"You told me," Gregory said. "You said this was the night the payoffs were made. Don't you remember?"
"Oh, yeah," said Baker, who had made up the payoff schedule. "This is the squaring away night of the week. That's how the Mafia gambling empire always works. You want me to tell you about it?"
"Later," said Gregory.
"Never," said Tolan.
"All right," Gregory said. "And we'll be watching from up here. When you give us the sign, we'll be over."
After the gaunt man had left the dingy apartment, Tolan said, "I don't trust that faggot."
"You shouldn't call him that, Exterminator," said Gregory. "He's an actor. Dressing up is one of the tools of his trade."
"He likes it too much for it to be just a job," Tolan said. His hands itched to be on a gun, to have people's foreheads down his line of sight, to squeeze and watch them explode away in little fuzzy red chunks. Yeah. He was The Exterminator. Yeah. Legend? Who cared? This beat frying eggs in the diner, that was all he knew.
The three men stood watching from the window as The Lizzard came out of the alley between the tenement buildings, looked around and, when he saw the street was clear, walked across the street to the Improvement Association offices.
"Stoop, you jerk," said Baker.
The Lizzard was walking straight up, all six-feet-five of him. Baker wanted to yell out the window at him. That was what he wanted. But more than that, he wanted to be away from here. He had counted on Gregory being good for a big stake so he could go somewhere and try to gamble up some real money. But Gregory was a little tighter with his money than he had expected. Baker had already forgotten Hawaii and Las Vegas and he had settled down to trying to get to Atlantic City to make his big score. But now, flanked by a madman with a mission on one side and a homicidal maniac on the other, all Al Baker wanted was to get away. With his life.
Just before he reached the far curb, The Lizzard hunched over and then walked slowly to the door of the clubhouse.
Tolan hooted. "Now instead of looking like a six-and-a-half-foot nun," he said, "he looks like a six-and-a-half-foot nun who's all bent over. Where'd you get him?"
"He's doing just fine," Gregory said. His eyes were not on The Lizzard at all. They were on headlines he saw in his mind, huge headlines in huge unnamed papers.
THE ERASER RUBS OUT THE MOB
BAY CITY BLAST
KOKOMO KILL
WESTPORT WIPEOUT
NUNS OF NAVARONE
He thought a moment and scratched that last one. That was somebody else's title. If he ever found a mob-infested American city named Navarone, he would save it till last, until he thought of a good title. The Eraser striking fear into the hearts of the mob.
Inside the headquarters, two secretaries whose salaries were paid personally by Rocco Nobile were compiling a survey of the income and the health needs of the city's residents so Nobile could try to set up a health clinic for preventative medicine. The only other person in the place was Louie, the almost-janitor.
Louie was a borderline moron and had lived largely on handouts and make-work jobs that people gave him. People never expected him to succeed, but Louie knew how to push a broom and he liked the feeling of working and supporting himself, so he made up in energy and dedication what he lacked in technique and quick-wittedness.
As the big nun came through the door, Louie glanced at his watch and realized it was seven o'clock and the bulldog edition of the Daily News would be on the stands.
"Hello, Sister lady," he said as he brushed past her to go get a paper. It was the only newspaper Louie read and actually he didn't read all that much of it, just one tiny number on one corner of one page. It was the total mutuel handle from a New York racetrack and the last three digits constituted the winning number in the illegal numbers game. Louie played every day.
The two secretaries stood up when they saw the nun, but there was something odd about her and they exchanged glances with each other.
"Oooooh, hello, my dears," The Lizzard said in a high-pitched squeak. "Aren't you both lovely?"
"Thank you, Sister," said the brunette. "Can we help you?"
"It was just the opposite, heh, heh, just the opposite. I was hoping I could help you. You see, I'm at St. Joseph's and we wondered if, perhaps, there was some work we could do to help you in the vital task of rebuilding the city."
"Why don't you sit down, Sister?" the brunette said. She nodded to the blonde secretary that she would handle this. "It's a little late for you to be out, isn't it, Sister?"
"Actually, I received a dispensation from Father Cochran to be out alone on this terrible street."
"Father Cochran? I'm afraid I don't know him. And just where is St. Joseph's?"
Trapped, The Lizzard thought. He improvised.
"It's a new church, dear. We're just starting it. But, actually, I didn't come here to talk about myself. Rather, we would like to help in any small way we can."
The brunette secretary didn't know what to make of it. She reached into her desk for an application form. "You wouldn't mind filling this out, would you?"
"Of course not. The longer the better. Nobody here but you two lovelies?"
Louie came back into the Association office on the dead whoop, shouting and pointing at the paper. "I hit! I hit! I had 456 and I hit it in the box! Twenty-five dollars! I hit! I hit!"
"All right, Louie," said the brunette.
The Lizzard stood up quickly. He had heard all he needed to. This man was in here with the numbers play. And besides, it was tune for a drink.
"I'll just take this application with me," he said as he snatched the paper from the desk. "And I'll be back tomorrow night."
Without waiting for a reply, he walked out the front door. Behind him, the two girls looked at each other and suppressed laughter. Louie was drawing his finger across the winning number again to make sure that he had won.
Outside on the street The Lizzard rubbed his forehead three times in the pre-arranged signal.
"That's it," Tolan said joyously. "Let's go kill somebody."
He had a gun in each hand as he walked to the door. Gregory followed him, carrying a Gregory Sur-Shot.
The Baker lingered behind.
"Come on," Gregory said. "Timing is everything."
"Do I have to go?"
"Yes." Gregory looked at the sad expression on Baker's face. "A good job tonight and tomorrow is bonus day for everybody."
Baker brightened appreciably. "Okay, Let's do it."
"Take a gun," Gregory said, pointing toward a small arsenal of weapons on the dresser.
Baker sighed and took the smallest one he could find and stuck it into his jacket pocket. No way he was going to fire it. No way.
They had to run to catch up with Mark Tolan who was marching at doubletime across the street. The plan had been for all of them to talk to The Lizzard and get the lay of the land, but Tolan had had enough of talking. While Gregory and Baker walked toward Lizzard, Tolan marched toward the front door of the Bay City Improvement Association.