When he got to me he said, “Okay, pal, last chance. Either you get on your feet and haul ass out of here, or I’ll put a knot on your head while you sit.”
I unfolded my hands and pointed the .25 straight up at him as he bent over me. “How dee doo, Br’er Bear,” I said.
The guard’s eyes widened and the rest of his expression went blank. He remained half bent over.
I said, “Put the sap back in your pocket, and straighten up and I’ll get up and you and I will walk to the side of the road, just like I’m doing it because you told me to.” I thumbed the hammer back on the automatic. “Anything goes wrong I’ll shoot you in the head.”
The guard did what I told him to. I kept the gun near my body and the guard between me and the gate in case someone came down and saw us. At the edge of the road I said, “Step ahead of me into the woods.” Five feet into the woods Hawk was leaning against a tree. When we reached him he hit the guard across the back of the head with the jack handle. The guard grunted once and fell forward. He lay still except for his right leg, which twitched slightly.
“Br’er tire iron,” Hawk said.
CHAPTER 12
HAWK AND I WALKED THROUGH THE OPEN GATE and closed it behind us. The radio was playing something I’d never heard by a group I didn’t recognize. In the guard shack was a desk, a swivel chair, a phone, what appeared to be a remote electronic opener for the gate.
I opened the top drawer of the desk.
“Nice to find some ammo,” I said. “Too many pieces, too few bullets.”
There was no ammo in the desk. I put the guard’s gun in and closed the drawer.
Hawk had left the tire iron in the woods. The loop of the guard’s blackjack hung from his left hip pocket.. The .44 stuck out of his right-hand side pocket.
The sun was down and it was getting dark as we walked up Jerry Costigan’s curving drive with his immaculate green lawn spreading silently out on either side. At the next curve there was a stand of evergreens, and past them, though still a hundred yards away, was the house. It was brightly lit with concealed spotlights.
If the folks who built Disneyland had been asked to design a home for a reclusive and unsavory billionaire, they would have built Jerry Costigan’s house. Hawk and I stood in the carefully tended stand of trees and stared. The trees we stood in were obviously planned serendipity. Here and there across the infinite lawn were other groves. The house itself looked, more than anything else, like an English country house. Family descended from the Normans. There was an enormous terrace skirting the tall square fieldstone house with a mansard roof. At each corner there were small round towers with tall narrow windows in them. Good for pouring hot oil on Vikings. The drive curved around out of sight behind the house.
“Be dark in another ten, fifteen minutes,” Hawk said.
I nodded. We stood quietly in the serendipitous trees. Lights were on in the house and the windows glowed with a slightly yellower warm than the white gleam that the spotlights created. Two men walked easily around on the apron terrace, pausing to talk then moving on, making a slow circle of the house. Even a hundred yards away I could smell the cigarette smoke on the soft evening air. At the two visible corners of the house television cameras were mounted under the eaves. They moved slowly in an arc, panning left and right.
“Cameras,” Hawk said.
“I see them.”
“Security like this,” Hawk said, “they going to find the gate guard pretty quick.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m surprised they don’t have both surveillance systems tied together.”
“If they had they be shooting at us now,” Hawk said.
“Dumb,” I said. “Dumb to put together this kind of security and allow it to be breached by taking out one man.”
“Good to know they dumb,” Hawk said.
A black Ford Bronco with a whip antenna on the rear and a 4 X 4 lettered in white on the side appeared from behind the house and drove down toward the gate. Two men sat in the front.
“They’re getting smarter,” I said.
I looked at the house. Nothing had changed. I looked back at the Bronco, its taillights red in the new darkness.
“Time to move,” Hawk said.
“Let’s get the truck,” I said.
We left the trees and ran back down the curving drive after the Bronco. Hawk had taken the .44 from his pocket and held it in his left hand as he ran. Our feet, in running shoes, made very little sound on the driveway. Ahead the Bronco was parked by the guard shack, its motor idling, its doors ajar, its interior lights on. In the headlights, one man was examining the gate. The guardhouse radio made no sound.
“Take him,” I said to Hawk. “I’ll take the guardhouse.”
The man in the guardhouse stood with his back to the door looking down at the log sheet on the desk. He had his hands flat-palmed on the desk and his weight was forward on them. He heard me behind him barely in time to stiffen and not in time to straighten up. I pressed the muzzle of the .25 into his neck under his earlobe and just behind his jaw hinge.
“Not a sound,” I said.
He stayed as he was. This guard was tall and fleshy. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and a handgun in a
