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 a new installment appears. 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. Please enjoy, and as always, comments are welcome!
—HF
Chapter 9
It is wet and dark and rainy. The pavement on California Street glistens, and I worry that my shoes won’t have enough traction to get to the Mark safely. Still, we make it, striding through the front doors a bit soggy but intact, the doorman not even blinking at us in our tuxedos. Inside, the lobby is all pastel and vaguely French and silly, and beyond are three doors leading into a winter garden room, and several tall men in suits standing guard. We approach one at the middle door, and Nick pulls a folded card from somewhere and hands it to him.
“You’re a bit late,” the man replies. He has the build and creases and odd square stance of a cop, moonlighting. “Music’s basically done.”
“Nobody arrives at these things on time.”
The moonlighter jerks his head back over his left shoulder. “Plenty of nobodies in there, then. Who’s he?” His finger points at me.
“My guest.”
Mr. Moonlighter looks us both up and down like a dog at a butcher shop window. “Really.”
“Hey,” replies Nick. “It’s 1974. It’s legal now.”
Mr. Moonlighter shrugs. He waves us through into the winter garden. Inside, at the back, there are tables set up with white linen and white-jacketed attendants behind them. A bar. I order a rum and coke. Nick orders something called a Harvey Wallbanger.
“Harvey who?” I ask.
“Galliano, vodka, lime.”
“Oooooo-kay then.”
To our right, through the rather small door, piano music drifts out, the notes bouncing up and down and somersaulting, surrounded by an audible hiss of restrained conversation.
“How did you get tickets to this thing, anyway?”
“Did I mention how I know a guy?”
We make for the door, and the piano music repeats a few phrases, slower, gentler, and the hiss of conversation comes down a notch, and then silence. Suddenly there is clapping, and a muffled announcement, and then the talking grows much louder, and we walk in. The room is filled by suits and flowing evening gowns, cocktail dresses filled with tanned bodies, sideburns wearing men, ties that too wide and lapels big enough to hang a man. The lighting is dim, and all the people stand around the edges of the room in little clusters. There are arms swept, gestures and handshakes, nods and frowns and quiet cocks of the head. A surprising amount of Brill cream, collars loosened but not too far. I don’t really recognize anybody, but there’s hundreds of people here. In the center of the room is a grand piano, a spotlight from somewhere trained on it, but as soon noticed as doused, while a tall, gray-haired man stands, wipes his brow with a handkerchief, then turns to greet a few others with a shoulder pat and a smile. To the right are three openings into another room, the light in there a bit warmer, the people in there uncounted. As I scan the room more, I don’t see Santini, but then I’m not sure he would be here anyway. I do see Carpenter, his gray suit almost too bright for the occasion, his face showing the same impolite consternation as the last time we had talked, as if his group of companions are delivering news that doesn’t meet with his personal, high standards.
“Look,” Nick says, nudging me in the side with an elbow. “There’s Joe Alioto.”
“Sure is.” I ignore the prompt, and notice instead a woman holding onto David Carpenter’s arm. She is a few inches shorter than him, not striking or even remarkable in any easily defined way, but somehow more alive than him. As the little group they stood in converses, David responds through scowls or words that looks spat out like bullets more than communiques. The woman’s face, however, betrays no inner emotions except perhaps calmness, a reticence to be forced into discussion, yet not a fear of it either, for from time to time she adds something in that causes David to pause, allow the others to react suitably, then charge back on his tear again, a car occasionally held up at a railroad crossing. For a moment, she glances my way, and I feel like she is looking directly at me. Then her eyes go back to the other guests, all of whom are hanging on some harangue David is on about.
“And there’s Dad.”
“What?” I turn to Nick, and he nods to the left a bit, and I follow his nod. There’s my father, his head just above another crowd, talking and gesticulating and people around him smiling and laughing and paying tribute. “I don’t see Mom. Is she here, too?”
I turn back around. I can’t find Nick. Damn him. I head right, skirting the wall, then duck through one of the doors into the other room. Several low couches are strewn about the perimeter of the slightly smaller room, most empty, though some of the guests are starting to flow in along with me to find a place to rest their feet and sip their drinks. The room is nearly golden, all painted wood paneling, while up above is a painted pantheon of figures, Indian folklore meets classics lessons, Pallas Athene meets Pocahontas, that sort of thing. I get lost in them for a moment, then hear someone beg my pardon to my left. I turn, and the woman who had been on David Carpenter’s arm stands before me, 5’9” in a gray-blue sheath and a gray-blue drape over her right shoulder. In her left hand is a flute of champagne.
“I see you are admiring Calafia.”
“Calafia?”
She raises an arm from under the drape and points up over our heads, to the mural in the space above the central door. “Calafia, queen of the Amazons, queen of the Island of California, namesake of our state. Do you know the story?”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
She holds her hand out towards me, and I take it. “I’m Iris Woods Carpenter. You are?”
“Kenneth Chisholm.”
“Have we met? The name seems familiar to me.”
“No, I don’t believe we have.”
“Well it is a pleasure. Would you like to know the story?”
“Sure. I mean, certainly.”
Iris turns to stand beside me, to my right, leaning almost conspiratorially close. “Queen Calafia was a pagan or a Moor—the stories mix the two up sometimes, but they were written by an Iberian Catholic propagandist, so there’s little wonder. Regardless she engages in single combat against the princely son of a Christian king, and is defeated, but not killed or wounded, as God watches out for her. In prison, she is visited by God in the guise of one of the king’s young sons, and converted to the true faith. She ultimately marries the real prince, then returns with her husband and her now baptized Amazons to lead her golden island for the rest of her days.”
“And she is who the state is named after?”
“Yes. There was a 16th century novel about her, I cannot recall the author’s name. Many conquistadors carried it, including those who came to California. Cabrillo, Portola.”
“So if she represents the state, who does the prince she fought stand in for? And who is the godly prince she marries?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the Southern Pacific, and Leland Stanford, Junior? I’m not sure what Maynard Dixon had in mind, but he was enough of a socialist that there’s probably a joke at the city’s expense buried somewhere in the brush-strokes.”
“You know a great deal about state history and about art.”
Iris lifts the champagne flute slightly. “Mills, and the things they think they should fill young girls’ heads with. Anyway,” she turns, “if you are not admiring the murals, then why are you in here?”
“I’m hiding.”
“From who?”
“My father. I don’t want to talk about building materials and industrial parks all night.”
“Well I can’t blame you for that. Unfortunately I can’t stay here and help you hide all night.” She holds out her hand again, and shakes mine. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mister Chisholm.”
Not even a second passes, and I see, through the doorway, that my father is looking directly at me from across the room. He raises a hand, beckons. I toss back the rest of my rum-and-coke, set it on a small table near the door, then walk through and make my way to his group on the far side of the piano.
“Kenneth!” My father held out his hand for me to shake, as if I were another of his sales calls. It is clearly formality season.
“Dad.”
“Boys, I want you to meet my son, Kenneth. Kenneth, this is Tony Fergusson, Bob Petersen, and Fletcher Gill. Tony is with Bechtell, Bob and Fletcher are with Prudential’s property division.”
Handshakes. Pleasures. How-do-you-dos. Good-to-meet-yous. So are you in the concrete business, too? You following your old man? And so on, and so forth, the usual, only I manage to keep it all low key, keep the job description vague enough that they think I am some sort of assessor. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my work, it’s just easier not to raise eyebrows. The conversation turns to Herb Caen stuff, and blends into a giant audible aggregate: APL terminals. Mayor Alioto calling Justin Hermann the Robert Moses of San Francisco, who Gerry Brown was supposed to be sleeping with now. You think he even likes women? Alioto? Brown! You think he took a limo, or did he take the cable car to this shindig, too? Brown? Alioto! Ford’s supposed to be out this way in a couple days. It doesn’t matter, Flournoy’s done. You think Gerry will win? After Watergate, any dem’ll win, he could be a pig farmer, or a peanut farmer, or Hell, a hippy. This has got to be the first time that the president of the Sierra Club and two vice presidents of the Espee were at the same party. Wasn’t Muir a Bohemian, and wasn’t Huntington, too? Muir wasn’t a Bohemian, but Huntington was. Younger Huntington, Henry E. Huntington. You heard they found a woman’s body in a garbage can in Hunter’s Point last night, riddled with bullet holes? Think it’s Tanya? Tanya? Hearst. Who’s Tanya Hearst? Patty Hearst. Hey, there’s Herb Caen, who let him in here?
My father pulled me aside. “How did it go with Crocker?”
“Fine, fine.”
“You still on that case? I see Santini’s partner is here. That why you’re here?”
“I really shouldn’t talk about it here.”
“Of course, of course. How are you fixed for money?”
“I’m fine, Dad. Really.”
“Alright, alright, I’m just checking. How’s Laura?”
I begin to answer him when the tall, gray-haired man walks back in to the center of the room and calls us all to attention, a voice nasally reedy and a bit flat, a soft plain Iowa voice telling us he’d be playing three more pieces and perhaps an encore, if we really want it. Some sporadic applause breaks out. The man sits and begins to pour out a lilting, elliptical set of notes on the piano, and every conversation in the room dies down. Past him, I see among a knot of guests the face of David Carpenter looking across at me, a deep scowl on his face. The pianist finishes his piece, there’s applause, and he moves right on to another whose melody seems vaguely familiar to me. As he plays, I glance across again and see that Carpenter is gone. The piano stops, more claps. “And now,” the gray-haired man says, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses, “a song particularly appropriate for tonight’s weather: Here’s That Rainy Day.” He lays into the keyboard, pensive, building, eventually gaining a galloping beat. I turn slightly and Carpenter is standing beside me, hissing in my ear, pulling at my sleeve. We walk back over to the side room, under the Dixon mural.
“What are you doing here?”
“Work.”
“Is Santini here? Because I didn’t see him. And if I didn’t see him, then why are you here?”
David Carpenter, at this point, is still pinching one of my sleeves. I snap it from his fingers, and feel the heat rising in my face. “I’m here with my father.”
“Your… what?”
I point over my shoulder. “Chisholm Construction. You ever heard of Irvine? You know, little place, speck on the map in Orange County with something like five million tilt-up concrete warehouses. Yeah, that Chisholm, that’s my dad.”
For once, satisfaction. David Carpenter’s stupid jaw hangs from his stupid face like a cow frozen in the middle of chewing cud. Before the lies get any thicker, I turn on one heel and head right back to my father, making sure we’re both quite visible from the other room. The gray-haired pianist finishes his piece, and we applaud. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, by request, one encore: All the Things You Are.” He sits back down, begins to play a few chords, and then from the room with the murals comes the sound of an answering saxophone. People turn their heads, and the music stops for a moment. There’s murmurs and applause, and a man with a rapidly receding hairline walks further in, carrying his saxophone, stands by the piano, bows to the clapping, then puts the sax up to his lips and begins to blow. The two instruments intertwine their melodies, the room seems to resonate to a syncopating beat, energized by the unexpected boost of the new player. Some in the audience are swaying, a few are dancing. I even see my old man snapping his fingers in tune with the piece, and I catch my own feet tapping silently, something that only reminds me of how badly scuffed my shoes are. The song-line arcs up, flying into a smooth, slow finish, and clapping erupts even before the saxophone falls silent.
I sneak out. In the lobby I find Nick sitting in one of the armchairs, smoking a cigarette, his white tie loosened around his collar.
“There you are. You missed the music.”
Nick chuckles and stands. “Not really. And anyway, there’s a party afterwards. A bunch of us are going down to the Keystone. You should come.”
I look at my watch, shake my head. “I’d better get home to Laura.”
“Give her my love.”
Outside, the rain has stopped for a while, and the air is bracing, making me wish I had brought a long coat. Looking down the length of California Street, down past the Fairmont and Chinatown and the Bank of America building and all the long, long way to the old SP headquarters, everything feels artificial, like celluloid, like the flickering screen of a 3-a.m. television showing a movie you missed the first thirty minutes of. Clanging to my left, and I sprint out into the street and grab the cold metal handrail of an inbound cable car, heading for BART and for home.
More each Saturday!
Enjoy this installment of Five-Eighty? Watch for future installments every Saturday morning during Fall, 2024. The next intallment will post on Saturday, September 30th, 2024. Previous chapters can be viewed here.
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Harbour Fordyce 