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:
BAD FORTUNE
Five members of a Chinese family were burned to death in Bay City yesterday when the family fortune cookie factory, located in a loft building near the city's decaying waterfront, was gutted by flames.
The Eraser read the item and saw instantly that the evil hand of the Mafia had also infiltrated the New York press. Why else would they cover up a story that should have read:
ERASER AND RUBOUT SQUAD DECLARE WAR ON MAFIA
Five members of an international heroin ring were gunned down yesterday in their secret drug factory in Bay City, New Jersey.
Near their bodies, police found a hundred million billion zillion dollars in uncut heroin. Also found in the building, as a warning to evil-doers, were the eraser ends of a half dozen pencils. This is the trademark of The Eraser and his Rubout Squad, who have vowed to wipe organized crime from the face of Bay City, as their first step toward cleansing America of this insidious evil.
Sam Gregory thought he would give them just one more chance, as he tossed the newspapers to the floor of his motel room.
He called the City Desk of The New York Times first.
"Hello, City Desk."
"This is The Eraser. My Rubout Squad and I killed those five people in Bay City yesterday. This is just the first skirmish in our war to the death against the Mafia."
Following the Times' normal policy for dealing with madmen on the telephone, the copy boy said, "Why don't you write us a letter about it?" before hanging up.
The Daily News was kinder. The man on the City Desk patiently explained that they had already done a story on the tragedy in Bay City.
"But you called it a fire," Gregory protested.
"The building burned down. Generally, that indicates a fire," the man said.
"Yeah, but we set it to destroy the heroin. After we got rid of those drug dealers who are poisoning America's bodies and minds."
"Hang on a moment." There was a two-minute wait and the man came back to the telephone. "By dirty drug dealers, you mean Suzie Wo Fat, 13, Tommy Wo Fat, 14, and Eddie Wo Fat, 11?"
"They were all part of it," Gregory said.
"Go fuck yourself."
Only the New York Post was interested, in keeping with the paper's long-term policy of being interested in everything a day late.
The city editor gave the assignment to a twenty-three-year-old reporter who had finished first in his class at college, majoring in cultural anthropology, aspects of abnormality in the white mind, social repression in America, and making revolutions work, and had convinced the publisher that all these were good substitutes for the ability to write a simple declarative English sentence.
Remo was in Rocco Nobile's office when the Post reporter's call came through.
"Mayor Nobile? This is Peter Plennary of the Post."
Nobile nodded to Remo and pressed a button which turned the telephone into a loudspeaker so Remo could listen in.
"Yes, this is Mayor Nobile."
"We received a telephone call from someone claiming to be responsible for the fire yesterday. The fortune-cookie fire?"
"I see. Did he say who he was?"
"He said he was The Eraser and that those Chinese were in the heroin trade and he was declaring war against the Mafia, and I want to know why you're protecting the Mafia, because I know all about you New Jersey politicians, working over here in New York."
"Isn't that awful?" Mayor Nobile said.
"What's awful? What do you mean?" the reporter asked suspiciously.
"It's awful how tragedies like this have a way of bringing out the bedbugs."
"He said he shot the members of that family."
"Well, that should prove to you that the poor man was deranged. That family died in the fire. There were no gunshot wounds."
"Oh, I see."
"And just for your information, the Wo Fat family had lived in Bay City for thirty years. They had operated that bakery all that time. They were never arrested for anything."
"Oh, I see," said the reporter.
"Anything else?" Nobile asked.
"No, I guess not," Peter Plennary said.
"I hope you're not going to run a story on this," Nobile said.
"Why not?"
"Because these things have a ripple effect. One lunatic gets some publicity out of a tragedy and it encourages him to really try to create a tragedy. Or imitators try to do the same. It would be awful if some poor demented person actually did start a fire to kill someone."