"I think you're right," Gregory said.

"Let's shoot it out with him," Tolan said.

"Later," said Gregory. "We'll get him on our terms."

The four men went through a back window and down the fire escape. Their rented car had been parked in a vacant lot behind the old tenement building.

When Remo kicked in the apartment door, they were gone. He looked out the back window and saw only the taillights of the car pulling around a building and into the street.

"Damn," he said. "Damn."

Back at the Association headquarters, Chiun handed Remo three broken pencils.

"I thought you would want these," he said.

It was on the TV — eleven o'clock news.

The three major New York channels carried brief pieces on the killings. They described how Mayor Rocco Nobile, making his usual nightly visit to the club, had come on the scene only seconds after the shootings.

"It was two young juveniles," the stations quoted Nobile as saying. "I ran after them, but they were too fast for me and they got away." He described them as Hispanic youths, perhaps five-foot-six or -seven, wearing yellow nylon windbreakers. He pledged an all-out police effort to apprehend the perpetrators.

There was no mention of the erasers dropped at the scene and nothing to tie in the shootings with the fire near the waterfront the day before.

Sam Gregory and his three cohorts watched the news together. Gregory reacted in cold and fury.

"What do you have to do to get on the TV news?" he wondered aloud.

"Kill the mayor," said Tolan. But his mind wasn't on killing the mayor. It was on the nutcase with the ping pong balls. His hands still hurt where he had hit the sidewalk in front of the nutcase's room, and Tolan owed him one. If the man was associated with Mayor Nobile, so much the better. Maybe he was a Mafia bodyguard. He had dark hair and eyes. He might be Italian. Yeah, Mafia. He was sure of it. Yeah. Tolan looked around the room at Baker, still sweating and nervous. At Lizzard, who had changed out of his nun's habit. At Gregory, who kept drumming his fingers on the table top.

"Maybe I should call the TV channels," Gregory said.

"Naah. They won't believe you anyway," said Baker.

"And besides, they might trace the call and find us," Lizzard said.

"Let them," Tolan said. "Nothing nicer than shooting a left-wing pinko newspaper reporter."

They sat in the room and watched reruns of "The Honeymooners," "The Odd Couple" and "Twilight Zone." Lizzard drank Vodka. Gregory finally fell asleep and Tolan grabbed the other two and motioned for them to follow him into the bathroom.

"Here's our chance to do something for The Eraser," Tolan said.

"Yeah?" asked Baker suspiciously. He did not like being in the bathroom with The Exterminator.

"If we do it, can we get another bottle of Vodka from room service?" asked The Lizzard.

"Sure," said Tolan with a big fake smile. "And you'll get paid an extra bonus tomorrow, Baker."

"What is it?" Baker asked.

"Those two guys we saw tonight at the club. The skinny one and the old Chink. They're next door."

"Next door, here?" Baker asked. Already, he didn't like it.

"Right," Tolan said. "And if we get them, then Rocco Nobile will be a piece of cake."

"Good. You go get 'em," Baker said.

"I need your help," said Tolan.

"Two of them, we ought to get two bottles of Vodka from room service," said The Lizzard.

"I'll get you three," said Tolan. "I'll go get them myself so you don't have to wait for no waiter."

The Lizzard had no problem with that. And when Baker was told by Tolan that he'd get Gregory not only to double but triple Baker's pay and then it was off to Las Vegas for a life of baccarat and broads, Baker agreed. Particularly, since it was so simple and safe.

The door to the skinny guy's room was probably unlocked. All they had to do was to sneak into the other room after the men were asleep. Flick on the light switch inside the door and flee. The two men, the skinny one and the old Chink, would come rushing after them. And Mark Tolan would be in the parking lot, waiting. He would level them both. That would get rid of Rocco Nobile's bodyguards and also make sure that the work of The Eraser and the Rubout Squad made the newspapers.

"That's all we got to do?" asked Baker. "Open the door, reach in and turn on the light and then run like hell?"

"Right," said Tolan. "I'll handle the rest."

"Triple pay?" asked Baker.

"I guarantee it. If Gregory won't give it to you, you can have mine."

Baker rubbed his hands. "Let's go," he said.

"Could we get one bottle of Vodka first?" asked Lizzard.

"No," said Tolan.

The Exterminator was in position. He was crouched between two cars, directly opposite from Remo and Chiun's room. His Gregory Sur-Shot was in his hand. Baker and Lizzard waited outside the window, making sure no one was awake inside the room.

Yeah, it would be easy, Tolan thought. Lights on, they run and he nails the two frigging ping pong players as they came out. Ping pong players deserved to die, yeah, almost as much as Mafia thugs and evil-doers. All he had to do was make sure that The Lizzard and The Baker got out of the way first, and he wasn't all too worried about that. After all, accidents happened. They had signed on for, yeah, a dirty dangerous business when they signed on to go to war against the Mafia.

He watched as the two men skulked along the concrete strip of sidewalk outside the door of the ping pong players' room. Tolan wondered who they were. They were driving Rocco Nobile around so they weren't just ping pong players. But ping pong was big in China and China was starting to deal with the United States and the old guy was a Chink so that was it, yeah, they were Mafia businessmen putting together a big new drug deal with China and, yeah, he would be the guy to kill them before the deal could get off the ground. The thought of doing a public service made Tolan smile a little, the way he used to smile in Nam when he was doing another public service by shooting anything that was yellow and moved.

Baker and Lizzard were outside the door now. It took the two of them to have the courage of one man, Tolan knew. He saw Baker reach for the doorknob. He saw the door open slightly. He saw Lizzard's long skinny arm snake through the crack and reach inside for the light switch.

Then he saw Lizzard catapult into the room, banging the door wide open with his body as he went. Baker dropped the doorknob as if it were hot. He tried to turn, to run, to flee but suddenly he was yanked into the room also, as if he had been a paper clip on the end of a rubber band, stretched tight, then suddenly released.

The door slammed closed.

And The Exterminator knew something was wrong. Yeah. He ran back to his room and shook Sam Gregory awake.

"What is it?" Gregory said.

"They got them. The Lizzard and Baker. We've got to get out of here."

"Who? What?"

"I'll tell you about it when we drive," said Tolan. "Let's go."

"Dammit, Chiun, did you have to do that?" Remo pointed at the two bodies in the corner.

"No, I did not have to do that. I am sure that they were just sneaking into our room in the middle of the night to ask us to donate to the Blue Cross."

"Red Cross," Remo said.

"So I did not have to do that. I could have waited for several hours until the brass band arrived and you finally woke up to do something about these two."

"I was awake," Remo said. "I heard them. I was going to let them get in so we could find out who they were."

"Who they were is very simple. The big thing with no meat on his bones was the thing who dressed up as a woman."