Gregory looked at Nicholas Lizzard, who was just finishing his glass of Vodka, and casting eyes at the bottle. As he reached for it, Gregory got it first, and set it on the flagstone patio under his feet. He leaned over and snatched the Gregory Sur-Shot from Mark Tolan's hands. Tolan wheeled in his chair, his face red with hate, his cold eyes narrowed with rage. It was the face of a homicidal maniac, Gregory realized, and he decided that Mark Tolan would be the number one captain in his war against the Mafia.

"Now listen, you three," Gregory said. "You know what's wrong with you?"

"Yeah, we're poor," Baker said.

"No. Like me, you're bored," Gregory said. "You've got nothing to do in your life. You, Baker, you're busy fooling around with unions, and you, Mark, you're a short-order cook in a quickie restaurant, and you, Lizzard, you're an actor without parts."

"Man of many parts," Lizzard said, somewhat thickly. "Many parts."

Tolan laughed derisively.

"Hark," said Lizzard. "I do believe that Jack the Ripper chuckles."

The thin actor had his chin on his hands on the table. Tolan growled and lunged across the table with his own hands, reaching for Lizzard's throat. Lizzard recoiled. Tolan missed. He looked toward the gun in Gregory's lap.

"Stop it, you two. Stop it," Gregory said.

"Yeah," Baker said. "The Mafia's got more discipline than this. We act like this, we ain't got no chance. You wanna know how the Mafia woulda done this?"

"What do you know about the Mafia, you clown?" Tolan said. Gregory realized they were the first words Tolan had said since arriving, except for "Bang, bang" under his breath.

"Enough. Enough," Gregory said. "You see what I mean? You men, all of us, we're so bored, we don't have anything better to do than to pick on each other. Picky. Picky."

"Dicky doo,"' said Tolan.

Gregory ignored him. He pointed at each of the three men, in turn, with his Eberhard Faber Mongol 482 #1 yellow pencil.

"But that's all over now. We've got something to live for. We're going to live big lives. They're going to know we were here. We're going to live huge."

"Ah, life, its sweetness challenges me," said Lizzard, who had returned his head to his hands and was drifting off to sleep.

"How we gonna live?" Baker said. "I'm giving up a good job union organizing."

"Money's not your worry anymore," Gregory said. "We're an army and we're a well-financed army. And the enemy is the Mafia in Bay City. We're going after them, boys."

"Good," said Tolan. "Kill 'em all. Blow their eyes out. Shoot their brains all over the street. Gut shoot them so they die slow. Fill them up with compressed air and let them blow up. Skin them alive before we shoot them. Toss their guts in the street. Set fire to their intestines."

Lizzard retched. Baker covered his mouth with his hand so he wouldn't throw up on the table.

"Well, something like that," Gregory said. He pointed with his pencil at the table of organization. "This is it. Our army. We need a name."

"What for?" said Baker nervously. He did not want anyone to find out he was connected with these loonies.

"If we don't have a name, how will we get fan mail?" Tolan said.

"That ain't funny," said Baker.

"We need a name because we want them to know who's after them. We want them to fear the dark," Gregory said. "To know that each step could be their last. To know that each person they pass on the street might live only to see them die. We want them to be afraid as they have made others afraid. That's why..." He pointed with his pencil. "That's why we need a name." To emphasize the point, he grabbed the pencil in both hands and snapped it. He looked at the broken piece in his right hand, then looked around the table. Tolan was looking up toward the sky, pointing his index finger at birds, going "Bang, bang" under his breath. Lizzard seemed asleep. All Gregory could see was the thinning hair on the top of his pink head. Baker was looking around nervously as if expecting the backyard to be raided.

"That's it," Gregory said. He held up the rubber-tipped end of the pencil. "From here on in, I'm The Eraser." He waved the eraser over his head. "And you're... you're all ... The Rubout Squad."

"Who do I kill first?" asked Tolan.

"Can I have the Vodka back now?" asked Lizzard without raising his head.

"You was talking about us getting paid," Baker said. "How much and when?"

"We're going to get them all," said Gregory. "The goons and the gunsels and the ginzos. And most of all, that corrupting mayor, Rocco Nobile."

"The climate is very good here," Mayor Rocco Nobile said into the telephone.

"It's good here too," came back the gruff voice. "It was in the eighties yesterday and we ain't getting no rain at all."

Nobile looked away and sighed. "I mean the business climate," he said.

"Oh yeah. That. Okay. Well, we was talking about it yesterday and everybody kinda thinks it's a good idea, moving and all."

"Sure," Nobile said. "Centralize your operation. It's just good business."

"That's the word they used yesterday too. Centralize. They said it was like General Motors, they don't go building cars everyplace, except they stay in that grubby frigging Detroit."

"Right. And what's good for General Motors is good for you," Nobile said.

"Exactly. Count on us, Rocco."

"Okay. Take care." Nobile hung up the telephone in his apartment and sighed again. He had been on the telephone all morning to the West Coast suggesting to certain independent businessmen that their business operations might be more soundly run in Bay City. He described the beautiful location, just minutes away from the New York metropolitan area, the world's prime market for everything legal and illegal. He pointed out the city's natural harbor, which he was now having cleaned up to reopen the channels and allow ships to move in and out from foreign countries, more or less freely. There would be, he emphasized, no federal money involved in the harbor cleanup and therefore no federal personnel hovering around, watching things that didn't concern them.

He had held this discussion before with many other independent businessmen and all had told him they might be interested once he had proven he could get control of Bay City. Now he had it and he could deliver it to them.

On his way to his office, Rocco Nobile felt satisfied that within the next few weeks more of the vacant lofts along River Street would soon have new tenants, new and thriving businesses.

Nobile arrived at his office at 9:15 A.M. in the old dilapidated City Hall, where he had specifically rejected a suggestion that the building be repainted. The last thing he wanted was to give some kind of signal that might drift to the outside world that things were changing in Bay City. The city had, for years, been ignored by the world and the press and he would be happy to keep it that way. He only wished the harbor cleanup work could be done at night so no one would notice that it was underway.

At 11:30 a.m., he met with his five-member City Commission, three of whose members had voted to install him as mayor and whose other two members had abstained. They talked about the impending city budget, about which Mayor Nobile knew nothing and cared less and they talked about the prospect of payroll cuts and Nobile told them to do whatever they wanted. When the meeting was over, he asked the three councilmen who had voted him into office to stay for a few minutes and when the two abstentions had left the room, Nobile handed the councilmen fat envelopes filled with cash.

"More where that came from, fellas," he said.

"Good," said Walter Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde. "Keep it coming."