Warren Murphy - Bay City Blast

"I'm Remo."

Rocco Nobile put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. He reached behind him to a large walnut AM-FM radio and turned it to a rock station. He turned the volume up loud. "Lock the door," he told Remo. Remo locked the door and Nobile motioned them forward to his desk, and rose to come around to talk to them.

"The radio's in case anybody's got this office bugged. It messes them up. Glad to meet you, Remo."

"I am Chiun."

"And you, Chiun."

"You've been expecting us," Remo said.

"Right. I was told you'd be coming. You know what's going down here?"

Remo was surprised to hear the voice of Wardell Pinkerton the Third come out of the face and body of Rocco Nobile. The mayor looked like the head-waiter in a Greek restaurant but the voice that came out was Ivy League and soft.

"Yeah, we know," Remo said. "We were told to keep you alive."

"By whom?" asked Nobile.

"By Emperor..." Chiun began.

Remo interrupted him. "It's probably best, Mayor, if you don't know that"

Nobile nodded. "All right. What do you think?"

"I think we've got to stay as close to you as the smell of garlic," Remo said.

"I might have trouble with my other bodyguards," Nobile said.

"Was that one outside the door?" Chiun asked.

Nobile nodded.

"You will have no trouble with him," Chiun said. "He is very worried about his arm."

"Where's the other one?" Remo asked.

"He stays at the apartment to make sure nobody plants anything."

"He can keep doing that for a while," Remo said. "Just give us a cover story. Nobody has to know who we are."

"All right. I'll make you..." Nobile hesitated as he thought. "You can be from the West Coast, checking out the place before your bosses move any operations here. And Mr. Chiun can be a Chinese connection for cocaine."

"Good," said Remo.

"Not good," said Chiun. "That will never do."

"Why not?' Remo asked.

"I am not Chinese. I am Korean. Do I look Chinese? Would such a story fool anyone? Do I look Chinese?" He looked toward Mayor Nobile for an answer.

"Say no," Remo advised.

"No," said Nobile. "All right. We'll make you a Korean connection for cocaine."

"North Korean," said Chiun.

"North Korean," amended Nobile.

"Good," said Chiun. "Now that we have the important business out of the way, all that is left are mere details."

From their car across the street, The Eraser and the Rubout Squad looked at the old loft building on River Street. The Lizzard had left his men's clothing in the trunk of the car yesterday and he could not remember where he had parked the car, so he was still wearing the flowered dress, the gray wig and his makeup from the previous day. His whiskered stubble had grown an extra day longer. He had powdered it to make it lighter.

"This is it?" asked Gregory.

"Absolutely," said Al Baker. He had no idea what the place was. He had conned Gregory out of two hundred dollars the night before to do a little more infiltration work, but when he had gotten to the loft building, it was closed for the night. So when he got back to the motel, he had no choice but to tell Gregory that absolutely and positively, the building housed a major drug operation. Maybe it did. Who knew? Who else would move into Bay City except somebody doing something illegal?

"A big narcotics factory, right?" Gregory said again.

"No doubt about it," Baker said. "That's what my sources in the family tell me."

"All right. This is what we do. Lizzard, you go upstairs and case the joint. Find out what they're doing and who's up there. Then come down and tell us and we'll move. We want to be sure it's not a trap."

"Who'd set a trap for us?" Tolan said. "Nobody knows we're even alive, Gregory."

"You can't be too sure, Exterminator," said Gregory. "And please call me Eraser."

Fearful of an ambush, terrified of being killed, Nicholas Lizzard walked across the street and through the ground floor door of the factory building. He looked back toward the car for encouragement and Sam Gregory waved him on.

Upstairs, Lizzard found a small hall sign that read: WO FAT FORTUNE COOKIE COMPANY.

While he waited in the hallway, looking around and listening, inside the second floor factory, Mr. and Mrs. Wo Fat and their three children were busy preparing the ingredients for the day's batch of fortune cookies. They were still congratulating themselves on their good fortune. When their factory had been gutted by fire the previous week, none of their heavy bakery machinery had been damaged and they were able to move right into this new loft a block away. They had lost only three days of work in both the fire and the move.

Lizzard pushed open the door and stepped inside. Mr. and Mrs. Wo Fat looked at him and he remembered to hunch over to hide his six-foot-five frame and, smiling winsomely, he walked to a counter just inside the door.

Wo Fat, an oily looking man with white powder on his pudgy hands, came to the counter.

"Yes, Ma'am, I help you?"

"I want to buy some fortune cookies."

"Yes, Ma'am. How many?"

"There are four of us," said The Lizzard.

He looked around. The place looked normal enough but Orientals were devious. Who knew what they were up to? Mrs. Wo Fat walked through a back door into the kitchen area in the back of the loft. Through the open door, on a big butcher block table, The Lizzard saw a large mound of white powder. Heroin. He knew it. Baker had been right. The Lizzard was pretty sure that heroin was white. It was always white on television.

"I get for you," Wo Fat said.

The Oriental walked into the kitchen and chuckled to his wife as she helped their three children measure out the mound of white flour on the table into small stainless steel mixing bowls.

In Chinese, he said, "Strange person. Want four fortune cookies."

"Be careful," his wife said. "That look like woman but is man. Hands too big and bony for woman."

Wo Fat nodded and took four freshly-baked fortune cookies from a tray next to the large ovens. He put them in a small brown bag and went back to the counter. But the old woman was not there. She had gone.

Wo Fat shrugged, opened the bag and bit into one of the cookies himself. He smiled, as he always did when eating his own wares. The cookies were good. Thirty years in the business and his were the best. He knew it and was proud of it.

He leaned with his back on the counter and through the open door to the spotless kitchen watched his wife and their children at work. His was the smile of the talented craftsman.

In the hallway, The Lizzard pointed to the door.

"That's it."

"Everybody ready?" Gregory asked. He looked around. Mark Tolan had a gun in each hand. In his right hand, he held the Gregory Sur-Shot. In his left, he clutched a .357 Magnum. Al Baker held a .32caliber revolver delicately by the butt end as if he were afraid it was going to give him a shock. The Lizzard had no gun. Gregory handed him a .45 automatic. The Lizzard didn't want it. He pushed it away. Gregory slapped it into his open hand.

Gregory himself held another Sur-Shot.

"All right," he hissed. "Ready... get set..."

Before he got to go, Mark Tolan had kicked his way through the unlocked door into the fortune cookie factory. Wo Fat turned at the noise and caught a fragmenting bullet in the middle of his forehead. He slumped behind the counter, his hand dragging the bag of fortune cookies onto the floor.

Through the door to the kitchen, Tolan saw the mound of white powder and realized that was the cutting room where the heroin was mixed with powdered sugar into a smaller, weaker dosage for sale on the streets.

He raced toward the door. Behind him, Gregory, Baker and Lizzard came into the loft. When Lizzard saw Wo Fat's body with his head blown away, he vomited on the floor. Baker put his gun in his pocket, determined not to use it under any circumstances, except to shoot Tolan. They followed Gregory back toward the kitchen where Tolan had entered.