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 12
It is just past six in the morning, and I am sneaking quietly out of the bedroom and trying not to wake Laura. In my underwear I gingerly make my way into my study, and there put on the dark gray suit I laid out last night. Pulling a duffle from the closet, I stuff it with a few useful items. A packable parka. A set of binoculars. My new Pentax SLR and a few long lenses and some film. A birdwatcher’s guide, a set of Thompson’s street guides for Marin, Sonoma, Contra Costa, and Alameda Counties. A bunch of books off Moe Moskowitz including the latest Le Carré and Deighton novels, a book of crosswords, a notebook, and some Bic pens. In the kitchen, I make some coffee and fill a Stanley Thermos with it, grab a few candy bars from a cupboard, and then go stuff those in the bag, too. Then I get a hair-brained idea, and go back into the study and root around in the closet again. On a top shelf, there are some old hats, and I find the one I am looking for—a black peaked cap—and blow the dust off it and toss it into the bag as well.
The walk out to the car is unnerving, the bag’s strap wearing down on my shoulder with no small bite of pain, and the keys in my hand seem to jingle all the louder in the pre-dawn stillness. Outside it has stopped raining for the moment, and opening a door to the Volvo, I sling in the bag, then go get behind the wheel, start the car, and back out onto the street. There are no big plum-colored Lincolns waiting for me this time, nor any unmarked cop cars from Oakland, nor any other cars other than the ones belonging to my various neighbors. I pop the car into gear and head for the road down to the freeway, which even this early is already starting to back up with Bay Bridge traffic. I hold onto the steering wheel for dear life, KJAZ on the radio playing some smoky saxophone and piano number from about twenty years ago. The bottleneck thins after I get up on the double-deck above West Oakland and then sail down into downtown and past it, out, out, and out to the miles and miles of low brick and concrete warehouses and machine shops and other industrial jungles that stretch along the Alameda channel and the bayside until the Coliseum and the exit for Oakland Airport. On the wide boulevard between the freeway and the airport is a ghetto of motels both fanciful and cheap, a few auto dealers, several diners, and as I near the terminals, rental car lots. It is still early, some of the lots aren’t open yet, but from the road I am able to scope out their inventories, and find most of them wanting, the vehicles too new, too small, too dull.
Stopping at a Denny’s, I make use of the phone book to find some local, off-brand rental firms, something in the vein of a Rent-a-Wreck. Twenty minutes later and I am at a used car lot that is just opening for the day, an old gas station out along East 14th with an inventory that ran from old Nash Metropolitans to nearly-new Mustangs that probably had ended up on the lot after a bad interaction with a loan shark. The dealer is a short fat man in a windowpane jacket and white spats who, despite his colorful appearance, seems perfectly rational and sane. I explain what I am hoping to rent, and he holds up his hand as if to signal “say no more,” then disappears into the back of the old service bays and out a door. In less than a minute, a big gray car pulls up and around under the old canopy out front, a big, hard-top, fishtail Cadillac with presentable chrome. I go outside to look at it better, and the salesman gets out from behind the wheel and waves his arms at it. “Huh? Huhhhh? Huhhhhhhhhhhhh?” I figure out quickly this is his way of selling me on the vehicle, but it is unnecessary. The car is perfect. Giving him a thumbs-up, I sign off the paperwork, fork over some cash, and transfer my bag from the Volvo into the back seat of the car.
Back in the old gas station office, I leave my Volvo’s key with him, and tell him to expect it to be picked up sometime later in the day, then go out to the Cadillac and point it towards the freeway. The car is like a pass made by an 80-year-old ladies’ man: Somewhat inappropriate, outdated, and yet still so smooth that you have to admire it. Around the time I make the Richmond bridge, I dig out the peaked cap from the bag and place it on my head. Past San Quintin, then south past the marshes, over the rise, then right and down along the back leg of the Tiburon peninsula and into its namesake town, and then I am out on Belvedere Island, threading the gleaming iron monster through the narrow roads that had been excruciatingly jammed between the jacaranda and cypress and miniature Xanadus of another generation. I begin to wish I had brought along Gatsby to read. I know the Carpenters live at the very bottom of the island, out on Peninsula Point at the bottom of Belvedere. With only one way out, I set the Caddy down just past a T intersection of, the car pointing back towards Tiburon and tucked tight against the curb and the landscaping.
Turning the engine off, I reach behind the seat, rummage around, and dig out a dog-eared old copy of Kidnapped. I am racing across the moors with young Davie and his proscribed Highlander when I see in the rear view mirror the mint green flash of David Campbell Carpenter’s DeVille swinging through the intersection. He pays absolutely no mind to me or the car as he passes, floats up the street, and disappears around some manzanita bushes and carefully haphazard stone walls. Checking my watch, I see it is now nearly ten.
I finish Kidnapped, then pick up the John le Carré. Hardcover, the thing feels like a brick, nearly four hundred pages long. I weigh it, I sniff the new page smells, I crack it open and flourish the paper and consider the text in an aesthetic sort of way, then tuck it back into the bag behind the seat. Instead, I pull out David Balfour, Stevenson’s sequel to Kidnapped, and begin a journey through Scotland once more. About a third of the way through—young Balfour is all muddled up with Rob Roy’s granddaughter—my reading is interrupted by a smooth but snarly engine noise, and from behind the Caddy a glare of orange whips around, all swoops and scoops and Italian poise, and then it passes me and charges away on the bend of the street. I set the book on the floor on the passenger side, start the Caddy, and glide out after it. It passed so quickly I can’t be entirely sure of the driver, but something—perhaps instinct, perhaps a barely perceived glimpse—tells me that this is Iris’s car. The curves and tightness of the roads slows me down, but by the time we reach the yacht club the road widens and straightens and completely oblivious to posted speed limits or any sense of propriety, the orange sports car ahead of me buzzes Tiburon and then performs a barnstorm of the boulevard up to 101. I barely see her turn signals as she ducks right onto the highway, and I take a guess that she’s heading back to the east side of the bay, but this news is of little comfort, for the way she drives, there’s no telling if I will be able to keep her in my sights. It helps that the car is orange. My hands are sweating by the time we pass the race track, but the thickening traffic begins to help, and just past Berkeley she pulls off onto Ashby, and I am able to manage a better bead on her. We cross all the major boulevards: San Pablo, Sacramento, Grove, Adeline, Shattuck, Telegraph. At College she swings south, and by now I can see I made the right bet, can see the long golden hair under the Italian silk scarf, see even that she is wearing string-backed racing gloves. Past Alcatraz, past Claremont, then right up a gently sloping road. I ease off the gas, and let her make a right turn ahead of me before slowly rolling by and glancing to see that she had parked the car on this side road, up a steep slope. I slide the Caddy to a stop just past the intersection and crane my neck, hard. There’s motion, and then Iris steps up out of the car, shuts it behind her, and walks down the slope towards the street I am on.
I shut the Caddy down, making sure my foot isn’t on the brakes, then hunker down in the seat, my peaked cap off. If anyone is looking out their windows at me right now, they’re going to wonder about my motives, but I am more worried about Iris than about the nosy neighbors. Risking it, I reach up and snap the rear-view mirror so I can see the road behind me from my midget-like position, and am rewarded with a reversed image of Iris reaching the corner then turning, opening a metal gate right at the peak of the turn, and ascending a set of stairs behind it.
I get out of the car and walk calmly across the way towards the gate. The stairs are brick, piercing a white plastered wall and rising under a canopy of pines towards one of those oversized mock-Spanish houses that were popular in the days of Eddie Cantor and Mildred Pierce. Going back up the side street, I pass my eyes over Iris’s car—a rather aggressive Alfa Romeo coupe—and then consider the second gate next to a garage inset into the hill, wondering if I can jump the gate without anyone seeing and calling the police, and wondering too if there’s enough cover on the other side of the gate that I would be able to approach the house without being seen. How many people live there? How likely am I to run into witnesses? I decide against the idea, and walk back down the hill to the main entrance, and a stroke of luck, spotting a mail carrier doing his rounds up the main street. Hustling back to the car, I grab the peaked cap off the front seat then go back over to the main entrance and wait beside it, resting on the wall nonchalantly, the cap in my left hand held low and casual, sometimes raised slightly as I periodically glance at my watch in an undisguised gesture. The mailman hits the house next door, then comes around their gate and back to the street, and approaches.
“Got anything for six-thousand-and-one?” I ask, nodding behind me. The mailman stops, flicks through the stack of letters in his bag, and then hands me four envelopes and a few flyers. “Thanks.”
I glance at the address fields—a few “resident” addressees, and then a few with actual names: R. Woods, Mr. R. Woods, and finally the whole kit and kaboodle, Robards Woods. I take the bundle of mail, walk over to the gate, open it, open the mailbox, toss the mail inside, close it all back up, then resume my station against the wall. It is excruciating to wait there, knowing that any moment Iris could come walking down those steps and catch me there, but I have to maintain my air of calm, my pantomime, for the only way to lower the suspicions of the three old ladies who are no doubt watching me with concern from the neighboring houses is to sell how normal I am, to sell it with absolute steadiness. Criminals flee, innocent men stay right where they are, placid and proud. If I smoked, I would have brought out a cigarette, but as I didn’t, I recite a few old grammar school poems in my head and, between each, glance at my watch as if impatient. After ten minutes pass, I walk as confidently as possible over to the Caddy, open the trunk, find a rag, and proceed to wipe down the chrome on the front of the car with painstaking detail. Five minutes of this is enough, and I put the rag back, get back into the driver’s seat, and open up David Balfour and finish it. This done, I swap out Stevenson for a Len Deighton novel about convoluted KGB plots that, coincidentally, also happen in Scotland. I’m knee-deep in mysterious women and Soviet vice-admirals by the time I hear the distinctive engine noise of the Alfa. According to my watch, over an hour has passed. The Alfa is about halfway down the road back to College before I have the Caddy turned in a nearby driveway and pointed after her. I hang back a bit, and see her turn signal indicating a left. A few minutes of tentative shadowing and we are on the freeway again: Highway 24, the Warren, past Mills and onto 580, out through the Castro Valley. As we crest over the hills, I realize that a kind of personal autopilot has kicked in, and that her destination is one I have visited nearly every day for the past three years: She is headed for Rancho Santa Rita.
We pull off the freeway onto the old road, and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck as we cruise through the heart of the town and past Laura’s office. A few blocks away, Iris turns the Alfa into the oak-shaded parking lot of the old grange hall, and I pass her by, stopping the Cadillac in front of an appliance store and shutting it off. I walk briskly back towards the grange, which I now notice is surrounded by political signs. Most support Flournoy for governor, but there’s also several advocating a yes on the Rancho Santa Rita incorporation measure.
I adjust my tie and then walk into the old, almost musty building, its white stucco peeling, its doors chalky from old paint. Inside, there’s a small lobby with corkboard and flyers and thumb-tacked business cards, and beyond a set of double oak doors is the main hall, a spare but large space that might have been the inside of one of the Pentecostal churches favored by the few Mexican laborers who had stopped going to Catholic mass. Instead, there are folded tables set up like desks, with similar folded wood or metal chairs at them. Each has stacks and stacks of papers, notebooks, and phonebooks. Most have telephones, and indeed there is a veritable spider’s web of cables running from the tables to an open window at right towards the back, an impromptu solution to the sudden plethora of Bell receivers. Most have people sitting at them, going through notes, seemingly busy. At one I catch glimpse of familiar golden hair. Up front, just inside the door, is a main desk, and behind it sits a prim young man with a recent manicure and clothes a bit too formal and a bit too tight. “May I help you?” He asks.
“I was wondering, is this where the campaign for the incorporation vote is headquartered?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the campaign. My wife and I have the Savoy agency down the street…”
“Oh!” The boy adjusted his spectacles. “Yes, you are Missus Savoy’s husband. I knew I recognized you from somewhere. Well the campaign manager is out right now, and we’re rather busy setting up for a phone blitz tonight—”
“Phone blitz?”
“Yes, we’re going to start calling likely voters starting at four, to remind them of the measure, and to educate them on its merits.”
“Who are likely voters?”
“We go through the voting records from the last two elections in the county and see who has voted in both, and then we put them on our list of who to call.”
“I had no idea you could access such things.”
“How people voted is secret, but whether they have voted is public record. I could look up in our rolls and see if you voted in the last election, for example.”
“My wife and I do not reside in Alameda County.”
“Oh.”
“Is there someone around in charge? I’d like to learn more about the campaign.”
The boy puffs slightly behind the desk. “I am in charge, at least until mother gets here.”
“Mother?”
“Missus Forsythe.”
“Esther Forsythe?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t she the county clerk?”
“Her work here is strictly in her capacity as a private citizen. Her work and political life are entirely separate.”
“Did you read that from a card?”
The boy wriggles his nose in a peeved gesture. A chair scrapes somewhere on my left, and I hear a familiar voice: “Funny to run into you here, again!” I turn. Iris Woods-Carpenter is walking slowly through the tables towards me, holding forward a hand. “Mister… Chisholm, correct?”
“Yes.” I take her hand as she approaches. “My wife runs Savoy Real Estate, just up the block.”
“Oh, yes! Laura Savoy. Your wife is a lovely person, I had the pleasure of meeting her at a chamber function last week.”
“Really? I had no idea.”
“You must have dropped in to learn more about our campaign…?”
I nod. “I wanted to see how things were going. Unfortunately the campaign manager seems not to be in.”
Iris turned slightly to the boy, as if noticing him for the first time. “I’ll take care of this, Ruppie.” Turning to me, she gestured towards the back of the room, and then leads me through the tables and beyond, to the small raised stage area. At the back right corner is a door, and we open it and go back out into the glare of the late afternoon, walking back to the shade of one of the live oaks.
“Ruppie?” I ask.
“He’s eager. I hope he didn’t embarrass us too much. Cigarette?” At the end of her slender fingers is a silver case, open. I have a hand at it and shake my head. She snaps the case shut and slips it into a pocket of her coat, a camel hair that fell almost to her knees. “What do you want to know about the campaign? Perhaps I can help.”
“I didn’t know you were involved.”
“Oh, yes. It’s one of my causes.”
“Why this campaign, though?”
“It will be good for the Tri-Valley. It’s logical, it makes sense, it will bring new opportunities for growth, and good services to the people who live here.”
“That sounds like a brochure.”
“It is a brochure. I wrote it. And aren’t you for incorporation as well?”
“Laura says it will mean a lot more business for us. A lot more houses to sell, and resell.”
“She’s sensible.” Iris rolls a cigarette around in her left hand, back and forth between two fingers, but seems to have forgotten that it is a cigarette at all, never having lit it much less put it to her lips. She glances over at me. “We paid for a poll. From what I can gather, it seems likely to pass by eight percentage points.” Iris looks down and seems for the first time to notice the cigarette. Lighting it, she begins to casually smoke. “What about you? What are you working on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know David hired you for some job. You told me so yourself two nights ago.”
“Did I? I don’t think that I did.”
“Oh? Perhaps someone told me. Perhaps David.”
“I’m just working on some property research for him. Nothing special.”
“He has staff for that. Why does he need you?”
I shrug. “In all honesty, I don’t really know. All I know is he has given me some tasks, and he’s cutting checks for the cost.” What really kills me is what I cannot say, that it isn’t a lie, that I genuinely have no idea what is going on inside David Carpenter’s head.
“You have a brother, don’t you?” Iris pulls one long drag off the cigarette, and the remainder of its white cylinder turns to ashes. She drops the butt onto the ground and steps on, gently, squishing out the last of the flame.
“Yes. He was at the party the other night, at the Mark Hopkins.”
“Are you two close?”
“I suppose. Considering we are brothers.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s my little brother. He’s a pain in the ass. He usually gets into trouble, and usually thinks he is smarter than me.”
“Is he?”
I feel my eyebrows shoot up. “I don’t know if he’s smarter. I do sometimes think he is cleverer, though. It’s probably how he gets himself into trouble.”
“Well I envy you. I have never had a brother. Not really, anyway.” Iris wipes her hands on the front of her coat, down low along her thighs, as if they were sweaty. “I should probably get back inside, it’s almost dinner hour for the old ladies around here, and I’ll be needed on the phones for the rest of the decent hours of the night. But I’m afraid I never answered any questions about the campaign for you.”
“It’s alright. Ruppie—what sort of name is that, anyway?”
“His full name is Rupert. He hates it.”
“Well anyway, Ruppie filled me in some, and your information about the polls was helpful. I’ll tell Laura to begin expansion plans right away.”
“You joke,” Iris says, tossing it over her shoulder as she turns to walk back towards the grange hall’s back door, “but I really would, if I were in your place.”
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, October 14th, 2024. Previous chapters can be viewed here.
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Harbour Fordyce 