Mark swivelled the startled watchman around, put a hammerlock on him, bum-rushed him off the sidewalk and through bordering flower beds, and slammed him against the side of the house so hard that the nearby windows rattled.
Scooping up the flashlight, Joshua directed it on the action, and Joe saw that they had been challenged by an overweight, uniformed security guard of about fifty-five. Mark pressed him to his knees and kept a hand on the back of his head to force his face down and away from them, so he couldn’t describe them later.
“He’s not armed,” Mark informed Joshua.
“Bastards,” the watchman said bitterly.
“Ankle holster?” Joshua wondered.
“Not that either.”
The watchman said, “Stupid owners are pacifists or some damn thing. Won’t have a gun on the place, even for me. So now here I am.”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Mark said, pulling him backwards from the house and forcing him to sit on the ground with his back against the trunk of a melaleuca.
“You don’t scare me,” the watchman said, but he sounded scared.
“Dogs?” Mark demanded.
“Everywhere,” the guard said. “Dobermans.”
“He’s lying,” Mark said confidently.
Even Joe could hear the bluff in the watchman’s voice. Joshua gave the flashlight to Joe and said, “Keep it pointed at the ground.” Then he produced handcuffs from a fanny pack.
Mark directed the guard to reach in back of himself and clasp his hands behind the tree. The trunk was only about ten inches in diameter, so the guard didn’t have to contort himself, and Joshua snapped the cuffs on his wrists.
“The cops are on the way,” the watchman gloated.
“No doubt riding Dobermans,” Mark said.
“Bastard,” said the watchman.
From his fanny pack, Mark withdrew a tightly rolled Ace bandage. “Bite on this,” he told the guard.
“Bite on this,” the guard said, indulging in one last bleat of hopeless bravado, and then he did as he was told.
Three times, Joshua wound electrician’s tape around the guard’s head and across his mouth, fixing the Ace bandage firmly in place.
From the watchman’s belt, Mark unclipped what appeared to be a remote control. “This open the driveway gate?”
Through his gag, the watchman snarled something obscene, which issued as a meaningless mumble.
“Probably the gate.”
To the guard, Joshua said, “Just relax. Don’t chafe your wrists. We’re not robbing the place. We’re really not. We’re only passing through.”
Mark said, “When we’ve been gone half an hour, we’ll call the cops so they can come and release you.”
“Better get a dog,” Joshua advised.
Taking the watchman’s flashlight, Mark led them toward the front of the house.
The confrontation had occurred and been successfully resolved, with aplomb and with as little injury to the watchman as possible, in slightly more than one minute. Whoever these guys were, Joe was glad that they were on his side.
The estate occupied at least three acres. The huge house was set two hundred feet back from the front property wall at the street.
In the eye of the wide, looping driveway was a four-tier marble fountain: four broad scalloped bowls, each supported by three leaping dolphins, bowls and dolphins diminishing in scale as they ascended. The bowls were full of water, but the pump was silent, and there were no spouts or cascades.
“We’ll wait here,” Mark said, leading them to the dolphins.
The dolphins and bowls rose out of a pool with a two-foot-high wall finished with a broad cap of limestone. Rose sat on the edge
—and then so did Joe and Mark.
Taking the remote control they had gotten from the watchman, Joshua walked along the driveway toward the entrance gate, talking on the cellular phone as he went.
Dogs of warm Santa Ana wind chased cat-quick leaves and curls of papery melaleuca bark along the blacktop.
“How do you even know about me?” Rose asked Mark.
“When any enterprise is launched with a one-billion-dollar trust fund, like ours,” Mark said, “it sure doesn’t take long to get up to speed. Besides, computers and data technology are what we’re about.”
“What enterprise?” Joe asked.
The answer was the same mystifying response that Joshua had given on the beach, “In finna face.”