The Rubout Squad had been given their first assignments by The Eraser.
Nicholas Lizzard had been told to rent two secret apartments in Bay City. He asked Sam Gregory to give him rent money in advance. Two months rent money. For two apartments.
"A thousand dollars," he said.
"That means that you're renting $250 apartments," Gregory said. "I don't think there are $250 apartments in Bay City."
"Ah, yes. Beauty must bow always before the invincible onrush of logic. Eight hundred dollars," said Lizzard who had made his mind up beforehand that he would agree to any reasonable compromise. He had figured that four hundred dollars should cover everything and anything over that was gravy. Or Vodka as the case might be.
"Here's six hundred," said Gregory, taking the money from a small leather money purse he carried in his back pocket.
"A mean and small-spirited man," mumbled Lizzard. He left the motel in Jersey City and rode into Bay City using one of the Rubout Squad's rented cars. He parked halfway down the block from Rocco Nobile's Improvement Association headquarters. He
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planned to get one apartment there and one apartment near the high-rise where Nobile lived.
But first a drink.
When he left the car, he took a small leather suitcase from the back seat. In the first bar he saw, he ordered, paid for and drank a Vodka. It was early in the morning and the bar was empty. He carried his suitcase into the bathroom and locked the door behind him with a hook and eye.
He opened the suitcase over the small iron-stained, scum-crusted sink. Time to go to work. But first a drink. He sipped a little Vodka from a metal flask inside the suitcase, then, almost reluctantly, capped it and put it away. Inside the suitcase was a cheap plastic makeup kit of cosmetics. Lizzard made up his eyes with false eyelashes, mascara and the dark-blue eye shadow favored by old women and prostitutes. He looked at himself. This was the part he liked best, redoing his eyes. He put on liquid makeup, to cover the blotchy broken blood vessels in his nose, then light pink lipstick and red rouge. Atop his thinning hair, he put a gray curly wig, and stepped back from the mirror. He nodded with satisfaction at his image which he thought made him look like somebody's grandmother. Quickly, he removed his sports shirt and trousers and shoes and socks and donned pantihose, nurse-type women's shoes, and a flowered dress with a sewn-in Polyurethane bosom.
He stood in front of the mirror again, checking himself as he stuffed his male clothing into the suitcase. He was satisfied. One of his best jobs yet. That certainly called for a drink as a reward. He took a long slug out of the Vodka flask, then re-
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placed it under his clothing and snapped the suitcase shut. Done. No one would ever know that one of America's greatest male actors hid underneath that woman's clothing and behind that painted woman's face.
He unlocked the bathroom door and peeked out. The bartender was at the end of the bar, washing glasses, his back to Lizzard, who walked quickly out the front door without looking back. He locked his suitcase in the trunk of his car.
Almost directly across the street from the Bay City Improvement Association, he found a tenement building with a for rent sign. Before ringing the super's bell, he slouched over, changing himself from a six-foot-five man to a six-foot-four woman. He rejected the idea of using a limp. It wouldn't be necessary. His disguise was already perfect. To talk to the superintendent, he used his woman's voice, a high squeaky rattle, punctuated by chuckles.
"Got a lot of apartments," the superintendent said.
"The highest one," Lizzard said. "Me and my boys, we like to be up high."
The front windows of the apartment looked down at the Nobile headquarters.
"How much, sonny?" Lizzard said.
"A hundred a month, includes heat and hot water. What's your name, Mrs.?"
"Mrs. Walker," Lizzard said. "I'll take it." He looked at the superintendent and wondered if he should come on to the burly man. He would swear the superintendent was already infatuated with Mrs. Walker from the way he was staring at "her."
"Two months in advance," the super said.
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"Good," said Lizzard. He paid with two hundred in bills that had come from Sam Gregory's roll.
"Me and my boys, we'll be moving in slow over the next couple of days. We gotta wait for our furniture to come."
"Oh? Where's it coming from?"
"Chicago," Lizzard said. "But you know how movers are." He batted his false eyelashes at the superintendent who seemed very anxious to give Mrs. Walker the keys and to leave. Probably realizing that his passion was boiling almost out of control, Lizzard thought. The super went back to his first-floor apartment, where his wife asked him who had looked at the apartment.
"Some old transvestite," the super said. "Wearing women's clothes but he forgot to shave. He looks like hell."
"Pay in advance?"
"Two months."
"Good. Maybe we can attract a colony of trans-
vestites."
Upstairs, Lizzard looked around the apartment and was satisfied with it. He decided that such a good start on the day's work entitled him to a drink or two before he went to rent the second apartment. A real drink, not some kind of hurried sip from a flask.
He was in such a hurry to get to a bar that he forgot to keep slouched over. After four Vodkas, he forgot to use his woman's voice.
No one seemed to mind.
Al Baker had been directed by Sam Gregory to use all his mob contacts to find out just who was
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moving into Bay City, where they were moving and what they were up to.
The only problem with that assignment was that Al Baker had no mob contacts. He had run numbers in Brooklyn for five years back in the mid-Fifties, and then given it up when his brother got arrested. Since then, he had worked in a laundry, as a used car salesman, a liquor-truck driver and a dram and sewer cleaner.
He was carrying five hundred dollars of Sam Gregory's money in his pocket.
"Mafia informants don't come cheap," Baker had said. Gregory had nodded and paid.
When he had been running numbers, Baker had dreamed of working his way up through the ranks until he was the head of America's underworld. Along the way and before taking his first step up, he realized that those who reached the top didn't necessarily have to be smart. But it certainly helped if they were lucky and bullet-proof. Since he had never been lucky and he was afraid of bullets, he had lost his zeal for living the mob life. But he had never lost the fascination that came from thinking about it and talking about it, which was how he had come to Sam Gregory's attention.
Baker parked his car near River Street and wondered what to do next. "Use all your mob contacts," Gregory had said. All Al Baker knew about illegal was how to run numbers, which gave him an idea when he saw a newsstand on the corner.
Baker knew how to make people talk. To make the newsie talk, he first had to convince him that he wasn't an undercover police agent. The simplest way to do that was to badmouth politicians at every
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level, for cops, even undercover cops, never spoke ill of politicians who might control their destiny. The stories of what they said just might get back and they might wind up walking traffic posts in the meadows in winter.
Five minutes after going to the newsstand, Al Baker had placed a bet on a number—a small bet because he was counting on keeping most of the money Gregory had given him. He found out from the newsie that there had been a shake-up in the numbers business, that City Hall was more deeply involved now and was taking a bigger piece for protection. To stay in business, the numbers bank had had to cut the amount paid on a winning hit from 600-to-l down to 550-to-l and the people who bet on numbers were growling.
"Can't be much of a business anyway?" Baker said.
"Nickel and dime stuff. Every newsstand. Every candy store. Every saloon. This town so rotten, what else to do but play numbers," the newsie said. "Hope you hit it big and go to
Florida 'cause this town's crap."
Baker rolled up his newspaper and began to walk away. It would do no good to spend too much time at the newsstand. Sooner or later the newsie would start asking him questions and if the cop on the numbers run saw him and didn't recognize him, he might start asking questions too. Baker waved back at the newsie.
"You're not going to Florida, are you?"
"Not that lucky," the newsstand owner said.
"Me neither. I'll be back tomorrow for my winnings."
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As he walked away, Baker was framing the report to Gregory in his mind. "A massive infiltration of the illegal gambling industry by Rocco Nobile and his power-mad henchmen."
He walked along River Street for a while and jotted down the addresses of loft buildings which had obviously had work done on them recently or which had gotten new tenants.
In his small notebook, next to the addresses, he put a crime. He had no idea, what crimes, if any, were being perpetrated in those loft buildings so he made them up.
When he was done with his walk, his notebook read:
#358. Loansharking.
#516. Counterfeit operation. ;
#612. Heroin drug factory. '
#764. Hq. of national auto theft ring.
He put his notebook back in his pocket. Tha: was one side of the street. The next day, he would come back and do the other side, but first Sam Gregory would have to give him another five hundred dollars to buy off more Mafia informants.
Driving out of town, he stopped at the Bay City Bank to open a savings account. He was going to start it with $498, but he changed his mind at the last minute and only deposited $493. Thé other five dollars was for admission, just in case he passed a theater where The Godfather was playing.
Mark Tolan had also spent the day in Bay City but he was not interested in renting apartments or in who was running the numbers operation. His job
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was to try to clock schedules so that when The Eraser and the Rubout Squad were ready to launch their war against the Mafia, they would know what targets were vulnerable and when.
Gregory had tried to talk Tolan out of taking weapons on the mission.
"If you get picked up, it's the end of you," he had warned.
"I feel naked without a weapon," Tolan had said. "And who knows? One of those bastards may lip off to me. I want to be able to pay him back."
"We don't want random violence," Gregory said. "This is a military operation. I'm your leader. Remember the chain of command." He held up the piece of cardboard with the boxes drawn on it.
Tolan's dark eyes had blazed. "Screw the chain of command. When you're out there, alone on the streets with the beasts, you have to take care of yourself. I'm not going unarmed."
"Well, only take one gun then."
"No. I'm taking what I need. Three. The .32 caliber automatic for my jacket, the Gregory Sur-Shot for my hip and a Derringer taped to my left leg. You want me to be defenseless?"
Gregory sighed. Mark Tolan might yet prove to be difficult.
Tolan spent much of his day walking around the streets of Bay City, bumping against people as he walked, hoping against hope that one would turn and badmouth him. He crossed the street three times to try to bump into men wearing pinstripe suits, but nobody seemed to want to shoot it out in the street.
He knew that Lizzard was supposed to rent apart-
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ments to be used as sniper posts against Rocco Nobile but sniping was no fun. Tolan liked his killings up close and personal, as they had been in Nam when he had wasted everybody left behind in that VC village. He liked to see the horror on the faces. He liked to see the pain when the bullet hit home. He liked to see the movements that turned slowly to still death.
When Rocco Nobile's time came, it wouldn't be from sniping. It would be from a bullet between the eyes, fired from no more than a few steps away. By Mark Tolan.
He felt good walking along, feeling the gun on his hip and in his pocket bumping against his body. He went into the lobby of the Bay City Arms and asked about renting an apartment. He was told that all the apartments had been rented.
He was not much good at small talk so he asked the doorman, "Mayor live here?"
"Yes."
"When's he go to work?"
"Who wants to know?"
Tolan really had to draw a tight rein on himself so he didn't shoot the doorman. When he came back from Rocco Nobile, he'd pay that debt too.
He walked into City Hall and found the mayor's office on the second floor. The City Commission was meeting when he arrived and he could hear their amplified voices out in the hallway. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to jump into the room, guns blazing, and level the whole commission. That would be fun, he thought. But the real fun would come from getting the boss.
The mayor's receptionist was a pretty young bru-
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nette named Denise. He asked her how to go about getting an appointment with the mayor. He was told to write a letter or he could leave a telephone number and she would get back to him. Of course, she'd have to know what the meeting concerned.
"Mayor here every day?" he asked.
"Every day."
"I'll spell everything out in my letter." Before leaving he glanced to his left. Through a leaded glass window, he could see another secretary at a desk. Sitting in a chair, leaning against the wall, was a man reading a paper. The man looked like a bodyguard.
Tolan thought how easy it would be. One shot in the head on this young twit, Denise. Push through the door. Two more bullets to take care of the other secretary and the bodyguard. He would not even have to break stride. He could be in the mayor's office before the mayor would have a chance to react. He could put a bullet in the ginzo's brain before anybody could do anything.
He reached under his jacket to feel the cold butt of the gun on his right hip. Then he withdrew his hand, slowly, reluctantly. He didn't want it to be a surprise shot. He wanted Nobile to know he was in danger, that there was a killer after him, and when the time came, he wanted to see Nobile squirm a little bit before he finished him off. It was the fright on their faces that he really liked.
As he left City Hall, he hoped to himself that Rocco Nobile had friends. Gregory had said that they were going to live huge, but all he wanted to do was to kill huge.
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T
It was going to be fun and it was going to be easy. And anybody who got in his way was going to be hurt. Terminally.
Yeah, he thought. Yeah.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
The ping pong ball whizzed off Chiun's fingertips. It headed straight across the room toward Remo's left hand. At the last split second, the ball veered upward and sharply to the right, toward Remo's head. Before it touched flesh, Remo drove his right hand forward. The hard fingertips slammed into the center of the ball. The little plastic sphere broke in two halves, which rapped off the panelled wall of the motel room with an almost simultaneous tap-tap sound. The rug near the wall was littered with half ping pong balls.
"I don't like this assignment, Little Father," Remo said.
"Why not?" Chiun asked. He was reaching toward a box of ping pong balls on the table behind him.
"Because we're bodyguards again. I don't like being a bodyguard. That's not what you trained me for."
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"I like you as a bodyguard better than I like you as a detective," Chiun said. "For that, you are totally untrained." He flashed another ping pong ball at Remo from behind his back. The ball arced toward the younger man in a high lazy loop, then at the last moment, seemed to increase in speed. Remo got his left hand up to block the ball from hitting his face, but his stroke was not perfect, and instead of the fingertips splitting the ball in two, they merely dented it and drove it hard off the wood-panelled wall.
"Don't carp about my being a detective," Remo said.
"I never carp," Chiun said. "You should not mind being calle
d a bodyguard. To be a bodyguard in time of trouble means that we will practice our assassin's art. And, if it is not a time of trouble, who cares what we are called because we are paid for resting?"
"Maybe you're right," Remo said.
Chiun put his hands at his sides, signaling that the exercise had entered a rest period. Remo relaxed.
"You must remember," Chiun said, "that Emperor Smith is crazy just as all emperors are crazy. They never know what we do. But he always pays on time. You buy what you wish. The gold gets to the village of Sinanju on time." He paused. "Did I ever tell you why that is important?"
"Yes, Chiun," Remo said wearily. "No more than five hundred times though. Poor village, throw babies into bay to drown when there's not enough to eat, masters work as assassins for emperors, get
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money, feed village, no more drowning kids. I got it. See, I know it well."
"It does not always work thusly," Chiun said. "Once, with the Master Shang-tu . . ."
"Never heard of him," Remo said. He had heard of the Eng and Chiun and Wo-Ti and a half dozen other Masters-down through history, including the greatest of them all, the great Master Wang, but Chiun's lecturing had, up till now, never mentioned Shang-tu.
"He was not memorable," Chiun said. "He produced no new art and he produced no new business. He was content merely to service accounts that Masters before him had created. One of these accounts was a Siamese king, for whom Shang-tu had performed a great service. Yet, Shang-tu did not do the most important thing an assassin must do."
"What's that?" asked Remo.
"He did not secure the payment. He accepted instead the king's promise that the payment would be sent to Sinanju, but when Shang-tu returned, the payment had not come, and after many months, it still had not come and the villagers were starving and it was time to send the children home again into the bay, because there was no food for them to eat."
Remo watched Chiun. Under the guise of talking to Remo and explaining this story, the old Korean's hand was slipping quietly behind him, toward the box of ping pong balls.
"What happened?" asked Remo, watching without appearing to watch.
Chiun's hand dropped back to his side, away from the box.
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