“Might be far,” Hawk said.
“We got time to be careful,” I said.
Hawk nodded. He got out and opened the trunk and took out the jack handle. I stuck the .25 in my hip pocket. We began to walk up the road. The butt of the big .44 stuck out of Hawk’s side pocket. The weight of the guns tended to tug at our pants. They’d removed our belts at Mill River PD.
“Next stop,” I said softly to Hawk across the narrow road, “we gotta get belts.”
“Rescuing maidens suck if your trousers fall down,” Hawk said.
“Didn’t Sir Gawain say that?”
Hawk raised his hand and we froze. There was no one in sight but around the next bend of the road we could hear a radio playing: Fats Domino singing “Blueberry Hill.”
“A golden oldie,” Hawk murmured.
We stepped into the woods and slipped through the woods toward the sound of the music.
The music came from a gatehouse, on the left side of an ornate wrought-iron gate from which extended on either side a ten-foot fieldstone wall with razor wire swirled along the top. Beyond the gate the road curved up through some dandylooking green lawn and out of sight again. Hawk squatted on his heels beside me. We listened to a disc jockey make a cash call to someone in Menlo Park. Through the open door of the gatehouse I could see the head of a man leaning back with his hands clasped as if he was in a swivel chair with his feet up.
“Name the amount and it’s yours,” the disc jockey said, his voice electric with excitement.
“I only see one,” I said to Hawk.
Hawk said, “Hard to be sure, though.”
“Ohhh, I’m sorry,” the disc jockey said, his voice trembling at the lip of despair. “But keep on listening, will ya. You never know, we may call you back.”
“Even if there’s only one, he’s inside and we’re outside. We try to bust in he’ll trip an alarm.” The radio played Lennie Welsh singing “Since I Fell for You.”
Hawk and I stayed still and watched. No one came in. No one went out. The head in the door of the guardhouse moved out of sight. Some insects made a small hum in the alder and scrub cedar around us. On the radio there was a commercial for a restaurant with a famous salad bar. Then Elvis Presley sang “Love Me Tender.”
“How come everybody like him,” Hawk said.
“He was white,” I said.
The guard appeared at the door of the gatehouse. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat, and a white shirt and chinos and cowboy boots. He had a handgun in a holster on his right hip. He looked at his watch, surveyed the road and went back inside the guardhouse.
“We need to get him out,” Hawk said. “But we don’t want to do it with a big ruckus ‘cause we only want him.”
“The tar baby,” I said.
“You speaking to me,” Hawk said.
“You ever read Uncle Remus?” I said.
“You gotta be shitting,” Hawk said.
“Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby,” I said. “ `Tar baby sit and don’t say nuffin.‘ ”
Hawk was quiet, watching the guardhouse. “I’m going to go out and sit in the road and wait for him to come out and see what the hell I’m doing.”
I took the .25 out of my pocket and palmed it.
Then I moved back through the woods to the road out of sight of the gate. I walked slowly up the road directly toward the gate, and when I was about ten feet from it I sat down in the road and folded my hands in my lap with the gun out of sight and stared at the gate.
The guard came out of the guardhouse and looked at me through the gate.
“What the hell are you doing,” he said.
He was a stocky man with a drooping mustache and a thick neck. When I didn’t answer he looked at me carefully. I didn’t move. I kept my eyes focused on the gate at about belt level.
“You hear me?” he said. “What are you doing out there?”
Tar baby sit and don’t say nuffin.
“Listen, Jack, this is private property. You’re on a private road. You understand? You’re trespassing. You keep sitting there and you’re subject to arrest.”
Nuffin. The guard took his hat off, and ran his hand over his nearly bald head. He put the hat back on and tilted it forward over his forehead. He pursed his lips and put one hand on his gunbelt and the other hand on the gate and looked at me.
“Espanol?” he said. Behind him the radio aired a commercial for a law firm that specialized in accident claims. “Vamoose,” the guard said.
I was sitting with my legs folded like Indians sit in the movies, and I was developing a cramp. I didn’t move. From the guard shack the radio played. It was the Big Bopper. “Chantilly lace, and a pretty face…” The guard took a big breath. “Shit,” he said, and opened the gate. As he walked toward me he took a leather sap from his righthand hip pocket.
