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.
"You know where Barrack Street is?" Nobile asked Remo.
"Yeah," said Remo. He spun the car around the corner, making a right-hand turn toward Bay City. The car strained upward on its two inside wheels. Just as it reached the point where it was sure to tip, Remo tromped on the gas pedal, and the sudden forward surge overcame the centrifugal force and brought all four wheels back to the pavement.
"You always drive like this?" Nobile said.
"Yes," said Chiun. "With callous disregard for the lives of people who are worth something, namely me."
"You ain't seen nothing yet," Remo said.
Mark Tolan knew the face of evil when he saw it, no matter how it was painted or disguised. His had looked into evil before, and it could not hide itself from him or from his judgment. The little brunette looked up when he came through the door. She smiled, the same kind of smile she smiled every Sunday at 11 a.m. when she sang in the choir of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church where she was the second alto and was hoping that she would be the first alto next year. She was still smiling when the first Gregory Sur-Shot string of fragmentation slugs ripped into her head.
The blonde secretary was not a choir singer. She was nineteen years old and by the brunette's standards already a fallen woman because she had once let her fiance touch her there and they weren't planning to be married until next year, when he got out of college where he was studying archaeology. She went next, a string of slugs almost severing her neck. She fell onto the table gushing red. Tolan thought, yeah, my favorite color, blondes wearing red.
Louie was sitting at a table in the back of the room and he looked up slowly when he heard the shots and saw the two girls hit and the big goon standing in the doorway. He was enraged because the two girls had been nicer to him than anyone else had ever been and he jumped to his feet and raced at Tolan.
"Bad man, I'm gonna get you," he cried out.
Tolan let him get close, fifteen feet, ten feet. Louie was waving his fists over his head, his puffy face distorted with rage and anger. At eight feet, Tolan squeezed the trigger.
The gun jammed. He squeezed again. It did not fire. Then Louie was on him, his hard little fists flailing at Tolan's face and Tolan didn't like it. For a moment, he thought of running way but then he remembered the other gun in his left hand, the .357 Magnum, and he put it to Louie's right temple and squeezed the trigger. This one fired and Louie dropped to the freshly linoleumed floor.
Tolan ran to the back of the office hoping there were more people there. But there weren't. He turned and ran back toward the street. He grabbed a handful of pencils from his pocket, and with one wrench broke off their eraser ends and dropped them onto the floor. On the street, he met The Eraser, The Baker and the Lizzard.
"All done," said Tolan. "Let's go."
The four men ran back up the steps of the tenement building where they kept an apartment, just as Remo's car turned the corner. He pulled up in front of the Bay City Improvement Association, as Gregory and his three accomplices began to look out the window. Remo was scanning the windows on the other side of the street.