Five-Eighty is a novel about a private detective working in the suburbs of the Bay Area of California in the early 1970s. Each Saturday morning, from now until election week, a new installment will appear. As the events of this novel take place during the election season of 1974, the story will be released during this, the election season of 2024. May it prove an entertaining distraction from the news of the day.
A note about sharing. While this novel is released to the public free of charge, I reserve all rights to publication. You may send links to friends, post excerpts on social media, or share it in any reasonable way, but please do not repost whole chapters, nor print and distribute paper copies. Please also, whenever possible, share a link back to the content.
Please enjoy, and as always, comments are welcome!
—HF
Chapter 1
It is dark. I can’t see very much. I’m not sure if anyone is watching me or not, and there really isn’t any way I can be sure. Knowing that doesn’t help me any. My mind is racing with all the possibilities: A security guard in a car, prowling the perimeters of the half-finished subdivision; another guard with dogs, walking the lots; a cop going by, slow on the road, noticing the bolt cutters in my hand and watching, waiting for me to take them up against the cyclone fence and snip, waiting so he can pop me. I am not a thief, I tell myself silently. I am not a thief. But try telling that to a sheriff’s deputy out in the darkness, at ten p.m., on a Sunday, with bolt cutters in your hands, and an old gym bag over your shoulder.
There was nothing for it, though. Snip, snip, and a lot more snips, then I push the fencing apart, tuck my arms low, and duck through, feeling the sharp exposed edges of the wire pull at my work jacket and my arms and my face, witch’s fingernails. The ground on other side is uneven, graded but not smooth or landscaped, pocked here and there with low weeds. A dozen or so yards and I’m on the pavement of the unfinished road. I turn right, walking down the curving tarmac surface, just an undercoat not yet topped with the final layer. It sticks to my boots a bit, like old flypaper. To my left, to the northeast, I can sense more than see a great shadowy hulk against the sky. It had to be Mount Diablo, the lights of the Pittsburgh steel mills on the other side throwing it into a vague relief, though I couldn’t see the beacon that should be on top.
Knock it off, Ken. This isn’t Space Mountain. Pay attention to the situation, not the scenery.
Up ahead on the road I can see the little cluster of the materials yard, the small storage shacks, the portable office dark and locked up. I approach the shacks. They are padlocked, but the jaws of the bolt cutters fit around the hasps nicely. A firm squeeze, and I break through the set on the first shack. From one pocket I pull out a flashlight, slip through the now open doors, and turn it on. Inside there are shelves stacked with supplies: Boxes and boxes of nails and screws, rolled flashing, pre-cut headers for doors and windows, but no tools at all. I backtrack and cut open the lock on the second shack. Bingo. Tools, mostly hand tools, but also rotary power saws, and, over on a work bench at the back, what I was looking for.
I walk to the bench. On top sit five silver guns, like oversized hair driers but sprouting a mean looking mechanical ferrule where the heat should come out. From the front of the guns, running down at an angle to the bottom of the handle and past, a big black gizmo that looks like nothing if not a straight clip from a Thompson submachine gun. Each metal casing carries a cast maker’s mark reading DUO-FAST.
I reach into my breast pocket and pull out a small slip of paper, unfold it, and let it catch the light. On it I have written four sets of numbers. I turn over each gun slowly, and find four with engraved numbers on the handles matching the numbers on my list.
I take the empty gym bag down from over my shoulder, and set it on the floor. I stick the bolt cutters into it, and atop them put the four matching guns, then zip it closed. The flashlight I douse, stowing it in my coat pocket, then I pick up the now quite heavy bag and lug it towards the door and exit the shack.
The walk back to the fence takes three or four minutes. Once I reach the fence, I reach through the hole I cut and set the bag down outside of it, then follow it through. The road is quiet. I walk the narrow shoulder a few dozen yards. Ahead, around a small curve, I see my boxy Volvo wagon, its buttercream yellow paint seeming to glow even in the darkness. I sling the old gym bag into the back, get in, start her up, and pull away, another job done.
More each Saturday!
Enjoy this installment of Five-Eighty? Watch for future installments every Saturday morning during Fall, 2024.
Harbour Fordyce 