Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #146

Story 'Demon Night'

The main plot is caught up in the "Inferno" storyline in this issue but, meanwhile, Ben Urich and Frank Farrow meet again, this time in the morning at the Starlight Room in Midtown Manhattan. Even the "crusty old police-beat reporter" Urich is stunned by the carnage. There are so many dead bodies that Ben thinks it "looks like Beirut". Frank tells him that the bodies are so cut up that some are hard to identify but "near as we can figure, we've got twenty of your local mob lieutenants here". If there was any doubt of a connection between this and the murder at the Zoo, Frank directs Ben to a table that has three slashed bodies still sitting at it. On the tablecloth, written in blood is the message "Kingpin- Wolves Kill".

At that moment, a balding, bespectacled man in a respectable business suit enters the room. Ben and Frank recognize him as The Arranger, the top assistant of the Kingpin. Frank tells the Arranger that someone is "gunning" for his boss and it would make things easier if he was simply told whom but the Arranger denies that the Kingpin is anything but a "respectable businessman". He claims to be on the scene only because his boss owns the restaurant. "I'm only here to protect his fiscal investments", he says, but Frank tells him to "can it!" Frank demands some answers and threatens to "haul both you and the Kingpin downtown so fast the fatboy's chins won't stop jigglin' for a month" if he doesn't get what he wants. Ben, meanwhile, takes advantage of the situation and sneaks off to a pay phone to call the Daily Bugle. Joy Mercado answers the phone and she gets so intrigued by Ben's homicide information that she offers to do some research in exchange for a split byline.

At the Bugle, Gloria Grant, J. Jonah Jameson's personal secretary, stops to briefly chat with Joy Mercado and then takes the elevator down to the lobby on her way to lunch. She is preoccupied with a plan to buy a teddy bear for her niece at F.A.O. Schwartz and doesn't look where she is going. Right off the elevator, she bumps into a good-looking man with bushy eyebrows and thick black hair (that no longer has gray streaks in it), and drops her purse. Glory is so taken by his looks that she can barely speak. The man graciously picks up her handbag for her, takes her by the wrist and offers to treat her to lunch. Glory is so smitten that she cannot refuse. She can't even take her eyes off of him. "Who are you?" she asks in wonderment. "I am Eduardo Lobo" the man answers, "and I have a feeling we will be very close friends."