A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker Page A

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 clip-on holster pressed against the roll of fat that pressed over his belt. Another .357. Costigan issue. I unclipped the gun, holster and all, from his belt and stuck it in my hip pocket. Hawk came into the guardhouse. He was smiling.
    “Man had a world-class belt,” he said. I glanced down: Hawk was wearing it. It was buckled up tight and too long for him. The end stuck out from the buckle like an anteater’s tongue. The .44 was stuck in the belt in front. The blackjack strap still hung from his back pocket but now it was in the right-hand pocket.
    “Put your hands back on the desk,” I said to the guard, “and back away and spread your feet apart.”
    I patted him down, and came up only with a pocket knife. A good one, a buck knife with a two-and-a-half-inch blade. I gave the knife to Hawk and he cut off the loose end of the belt. He closed it, handed it back, and I put it in my pocket.
    “Neatness is important,” I said.
    Hawk reached over and took hold of the back of the guard’s shirt collar and pulled him upright and put his face close to the guard’s.
    “Let’s talk about the security here,” he said. “Aside from how it sucks.”
    “I’m not talking about shit,” the guard said. He had a haircut with no sideburns, and a lot of skin showing above the ears.
    I hit him with my right forearm, bringing it up along his jaw. He would have fallen but Hawk held him up.
    “Tell me about security,” I said.
    He started to shake his head and I hit him again with my forearm. He almost went limp and I could see the muscles bunch