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 15
It’s early in the morning, and I arrive on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, parking on the street right out front of the old Savoy offices. I check to make sure none of the lights are on upstairs, that there’s no sign of Paul being around. Up in the office, I go in and sit at Paul’s desk, the valise in front of me. The leather is halfway between the color of wine and of chocolate, shiny, with no imperfections, and a smell is so fresh that it must have been in a window at I. Magnin not long ago. It’s a simple case, soft-sided, something to carry documents from the car to the office and back again, its brass locks more perfunctory than security.
With some trepidation, I break out my lock pick kit and, after a few minutes of fiddling, I open it. Inside there are a few folders and a small bound book, and I pull these out. The first few are gibberish about a divorce case that don’t involve anyone related to the Woods-Carpenters. The same is true of the second folder. The third contains a legal pad with some cryptic notes, a and sheet with a set of names, dates, and locations. Today’s date—or that is, yesterday’s, considering the hour—lists “Sea Ranch.” Underneath, the names “Woods Carpenter” and “Hoffman” are penned in.
The bound volume proves more useful. Beyond the blank vinyl cover, a title page reads:
Paseo Plaza
A Deluxe Shopping Experience
Construction and Five-Year Operations Prospectus
New Woods Ventures, Inc.
The table of contents is relatively dull, with entries like “contract estimates,” “regulatory framework,” and “corporate governance.” Flipping through, the whole document has about as much personality as a sleeping Spiro Agnew, with typed tables and business lingo galore. At the back, though, is a section titled “proposed development,” and here, several gate-folded pages undo themselves to reveal drawings, diagrams, and illustrations. Several are clearly architectural plans and elevations, all for some sprawling complex of boxy buildings. One, a site plan, catches my eye, as I notice a label for Phoebe Road, though I can’t make heads or tails of where along this road the place is.
The illustrations are more useful. Each looks to be pen with washes of ink, and they fill out the details. There are views of the buildings, from a great distance, as on a hill or in a plane, the complex surrounded by trees and lawn. There’s a low view back at the complex across a rolling landscape of sand traps, turf, and pines, with jaunty little figures playing golf in the middle distance. Another shows an entrance much like a castle gate, but blockier, with a large script sign reading “Paseo Plaza” and, below in serif type, “FASHION SQUARE.” Small, impressionistic figures carrying many bags emerged from the entrance, while couples and single women walked toward the doors in angular, dance-like poses. The entire foreground is comprised of stylized cars, parked in an endless parking lot. A double gate-fold, in color, shows an interior view, a broad and impossibly deep corridor with two mezzanine levels, all lit by a glass ceiling above. The ground floor and each mezzanine are faced by row upon row of glass-front stores, each with colorful displays inside.
I look at the clock. It reads five in the morning. I go out to the lobby space and lay on one of the couches and allow myself to drift to sleep for a bit. At eight, I wake up, splash some water on my face in the restroom, then go back into Paul’s office. I put the two divorce files back into the valise, then put it in the back storage room alongside the floor soap and the mop. The third folder and the bound proposal I put under my left arm, then I close everything up and leave.
It takes me twenty minutes to get up to Berkeley. Up by the campus, I find a print shop and, for a fair chunk of change, manage to get a complete Xerox copy of the proposal. I stuff the Xeroxes and the original under the passenger side seat of the Volvo and then head for the Richmond Bridge. Once more past San Quentin, through San Rafael, and out the Tiburon peninsula to Belvedere. This time, in the Volvo, and this time I make no attempt to hide as I park at the bottom of the former island. I walk up to the little gate, Japan by way of Cape Cod, find a buzzer and press it.
“Who is it?” The voice comes from a small metal box near the buzzer. The voice sounds like Iris Woods-Carpenter but strained through Jello.
“This is Ken Chisholm. I’m here on business.”
A few heartbeats pass. “One moment.”
A couple minutes later, and the latch makes a rattling sound from the other side of the big, solid oak gate door. It swings open, and Iris Woods-Carpenter is standing there, holding the door with one hand. Her hair is up, purely for utility, wrapped under an old scarf tied around her head, and she wears a baggy sweater of mohair the color of the Adriatic. As she looks at me, it only just dawns that I have no plan, none at all.
“Is Mr. Carpenter in?”
“No, I’m afraid he’s not.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I’m afraid he’s gone for the weekend. A business trip.”
“Would there be a calendar inside, or a note, or something that might say where he has gone, or how to reach him in an emergency?”
“Is this an emergency?” Her hand still has not left the edge of the big oak door.
I blink. “I don’t know, that’s up to Mister Carpenter to decide, but it is a time sensitive matter.”
A few more heartbeats. Iris steps backwards one step, the heavy gate opening wider with her move. “Come in. Let me see if I can find something.”
I step past her. The garden inside is pitch pine and eucalyptus, and the smell of it, already potent from the street, turns to an overpowering perfume. The ground is fallen, dun-colored needles, with an occasional rhododendron, now dormant. The property slopes downwards towards the house which, from this distance, is mostly a series of roof planes and no more. A stone path drops to the house, and halfway down is a stone Japanese lantern stands higher than the height of a man, looking like some ossified trunk of a tree.
Behind me, I hear the groaning of wood and the metallic sounds of the latch. Iris then passes me, and proceeds down the path. I follow. The house, as we near, begins to come into focus, a modernist thing, the exterior all board-and-batten redwood or giant panels of plate glass. The bay beyond sparkles right through the glass parts. There is no clear front door. Instead, Iris slides one of the glass panels sideways, and we step through. The room beyond is oblong, glass on the two long sides, one facing the hill and the other the bay. A handful of angular, uncomfortable looking furniture dots the room, and a flagstone fireplace anchors one end. “Please,” Iris says. “Sit. Can I get you some tea? Or coffee, if you prefer?”
I politely decline, but she insists, and Iris disappears around the side of the fireplace. In a moment she returns with a tray bearing a bright turquoise teapot and two hand-fired beige clay cups without handles. She walks over to the jagged looking white couch and sits, putting the tray on the burl-wood low table before her. I sit at the head of the low table on a matching white armchair, find it less uncomfortable than it looks, and extend my right hand. Iris pours from the pot into one of the cups and hands it to me.
“I was just about to pour some, so the water was already up.” I take short smell of it. “It is a custom blend tea with rose hips, bergamot, and vanilla.” It smells like a ladies’ cosmetic counter in a Macy’s, but I lie and tell her it is good. “Now, let me see if I can find anything about David’s plans in his study. He usually leaves a note or something. I’ll be right back.”
Iris sets her tea back down on the tray, gets up, and leaves the room. I take a sip of mine, make a face at the empty room, and set it back down. After a few minutes, I stand up and survey the room. At the far end is a long formal dining table, a rectilinear surface that is so polished it glows. On it at one end are several boxes, papers, and books. Curious, I walk over, and find that there is a single, hefty old book, bare without a cover, set atop several sheets of newspaper. Nearby is an old, empty binding, leather, its gilt lettering nearly flaking off. There are scissors, knives, glues, along with scraps of canvas-like fabrics and tapes and threads and needles and any number of other supplies. It looks like a surgery bay crossed with a grade-school art room.
“You want to know what it is.” The words, Iris’s, come from behind me. They are not a question. I half turn and find her standing at the entrance by the fireplace. I nod, and she walks over until she stands behind me, behind one of the tall-backed dining chairs. “It is a copy of Figueroa’s Manifesto to the Mexican Republic, the first book printed in California.”
“What happened to it?”
“The book was printed in 1855, the first English edition. After the earthquake and fire in the city in 1906, this volume was found near the wreckage of the Merchant’s Exchange Building, on Sansome. The binding of thick leather had almost burned all the way through, but the actual core of the book survived.”
“So this binding doesn’t belong to the book?”
“It was cut from a rather common volume of no worth. I am preparing it to fit the Figueroa volume. A binding transplant. Book restoration is a hobby of mine.”
“Why not use a new binding?”
“Old books should have old bindings.”
“You own it?”
“I purchased it at an estate auction several years ago.”
I nod, but run out of things to observe about the book. I consider asking what the glue is made of, and whether they still use horse for it, but then remember that Iris rides, and I flush.
“Look,” Iris says. “I looked through David’s desk, but—” From behind the fireplace divider comes a shrill ringing noise. “I’ll be right back.”
Iris disappears behind the stone wall of the fireplace once more, and I hear her answer the phone:
“Yes… yes?
“Alright….
“When?
“Have you reported it?
“What else is gone?
“I see
“Yes, I rather agree.”
At this, Iris’s voice grows quieter. I move closer to the center of the room, so as to be nearer, but I catch only a few words. A mention of her husband. Something about care, and concern. Uncertainty. No, a no. She will… something… herself. Thanks. A promise to be in touch.
I pace quickly across the floor. I sit down in the chair again, I reach out for the tea, and take a sip. Iris returns.
“I’m so sorry. Business.”
“Your husband?”
“No… but I think he may call this evening. What is it you’d like me to tell him? Do you have a report or something you can leave?”
“No, no I do not.”
Iris crosses the room and sits down on the couch again. She reaches out and picks up her tea, takes a sip slowly, then puts it in her lap between her hands.
“May I ask, how did you get into this line of work?”
“Through a friend, John Yorba, a lawyer. Years ago, he hired me as a researcher on a case he was working on, and I never looked back.”
“I think I know that name. Don’t the Yorbas own a small portion of Fresno County?”
“That’s his grandparents.”
“How did you get to know the Yorbas?”
I set my tea down. “I met John in college.”
“In law school?”
I shift in my chair. “Yes.”
“So you were also in law school. But you’ve never taken the bar?”
“No.”
“What is working as a private investigator like, anyway? Is it anything like those movies we watched as a kid, The Big Sleep, and all that?”
“I didn’t see The Big Sleep. I wanted to, but I was only eight.”
“Well.” Iris leans forward and sets down her cup, then stands. “If I hear from David, I will tell him you stopped by, and have him call you at your office.”
“Sure. Swell.” I stand and shake her hand. At the gate, Iris shuts the door behind me with no more comment, not even a goodbye. It’s small, but it feels like an insult.
At the Volvo, I nervously reach under the seat to touch the envelope of Xeroxes and the bound prospectus, just to be certain they are there. I straighten up again, and in the mirror, I see the larger driveway gate to the house open. I stiffen. A set of headlights appears, set into a car the color of a mandarin. Iris’s Alfa Romeo. It passes me, and Iris, behind the wheel, doesn’t even turn her head, doesn’t even notice me.
I start the Volvo, count to ten, then pull out after her. I make a gamble, driving slowly, just under the limit, figuring that she was headed to the freeway and all I had to do was get in sight of her in time to see which way she headed. It is a smart bet. I get to the last bend before the straight stretch to the freeway just in time to see Iris turn right, onto 101 north. The drive is a familiar one now, 101 to 17, 17 past San Quentin and over the Richmond Bridge and down onto 80, 80 to 580, 580 through the MacArthur Maze and then off into the surface streets of Oakland. We swing about the north shore of the stinking lake, through the old apartment district, and it becomes clear that there can be only one destination. I ease off. Lights turn, the Alfa turns left, then curves around the bottom of the Kaiser building. I ease off more, letting her gain, hoping to stay out of her mirrors, and then pass the building and go around and park a block beyond, on Franklin.
I suddenly feel stupid. What am I to do? Go into the building, and see what floor she gets off at? And there’s only one possible answer anyway, the Carpenter-Santini offices. There’s nothing to actually do. But what is she doing there, in the offices? David Carpenter is gone for the weekend, on the theory that Iris and Richard Santini are lovers and would make use of his absence for an assignation.
I look at my watch. It’s well past three, and I want to go home and have a proper meal for once, but leaving feels wrong. I realize that where I am parked it is madness, that even if I stay, I’ll never know when or if Iris leaves. She has been inside for at least twenty minutes, so I figure she can’t still be in her car. I take a risk again, start the Volvo up, and turn right on 21st and again on Harrison, circling the block. I turn in to the drive for the garage, then begin circling it slowly, looking for the Alfa. I find it on level three, the top level, and pass it back down to level two. On a Sunday, the garage is only half full, but I find a slot between two other cars and tucked on the inside of the garage, where any car passing me will be in clear view, but my car will only be a momentary glimpse before disappearing behind the clip of a Corvan.
I shut off the car, then begin rooting around for something to occupy my time. I consider the prospectus again, but I can’t mine anything more from it, and besides, I don’t want to fall asleep. Behind my seat I find the stack of novels from my stakeout in the Caddy, and begin pulling them forward into the passenger side. I’ve already done with Kidnapped and I don’t feel much like getting back to David Balfour. The Deighton novel is all garbled hard-boiled talk and stuff about admirals and submarines. The leCarré novel proves equally unpromising, more a study of smoldering bureaucracy and Henry James density than of adventure, but my attempt to chew through it helps me while away the time. As minutes turn to hours, I start to worry. The light will begin to fail soon, and the only way I will be able to read is by the dome light, and that will be too risky.
I have left the window cracked, so as to hear the garage as well as watch it, and now I am glad for it. An engine starts somewhere else in the garage, an angry engine revved by an angry foot. It must be the Alfa. There is the sound of tires on smooth concrete, and the engine grows faster, and in a flash the orange Italian coupe passes at a speed far beyond what anyone ought to do inside a parking garage. Only through a miracle am I able to follow Iris. We return to the freeway, but she turns right onto 580, and I settle in, letting her gain a gap as large as a half mile with plenty of cars between us. It’s easy work, knowing she must be headed to Rancho Santa Rita. In a little over twenty-five minutes my hunch is proved right, as she dives down onto the Phoebe Drive exit, then swings around the town and up into the hills. I skip the ramp and let her go, figuring that there would be nothing more to learn by following her. She was certainly headed for the house she had, the old Woods ranch that was once known as Hayhurst.
At the next exit I pull off and tuck into a gas station, an old Richfield, and use the payphone there to call Laura’s office. I propose a dinner out at a cheap diner in Albany, on San Pablo, at seven, and when she accepts I hang up and point the Volvo back onto 580. Early, I head over for a drink at one of the dive bars north of Solano, then at seven wander over for dinner at the small café attached to the bowling alley, a greasy spoon meal straight out of our courtship. At eight we head back to our respective cars, with my hands smelling like onion rings and pickles, and drive up the hill to the house. Our street is dark, quiet, the leaves on the trees still stubbornly verdant in the half gloom, and some confused daffodils sprouting up far too early on the neighbors’ lawn. I pull into the drive first, and Laura parks the Mercedes out on the street.
“I’m surprised you can drive on such a full stomach,” Laura tosses over at me, as she gets out of the Mercedes.
“It’s not my fault they had cake today.”
“Bleh.” Laura makes a retching sound as she saunters over towards me. “You can keep your cake. I’d rather have pie any day.”
“I like frosting.”
“I know.”
The reproach is playful, but also meaningful, and I feel suddenly fat. I’m about to make a retort when I look up at the door to the house, and notice it is not shut. I hold out my left hand, gesturing to Iris behind me. I feel many things rush over me: the sorrow of not owning a gun, the urge to kick the door in and shout at the top of my lungs, the wish that I could call the police without stepping inside. There’s nothing for it, though, so I go to the door and push it in slowly, gently, then reach out with my right hand, find the switch, and flip on the light.
Inside, there’s nothing wrong. Other than some damage to the door frame near the lock return, I can see only the same house I see every day. Then I round the screen, and notice the pillows on the couch are all on the floor, their covers removed and tossed aside. The dining table is fine, the silly old Edwardian sideboard is fine, unmolested, the pictures on top of it still all where they should be, even the ones in expensive Sterling frames.
The kitchen is another matter. The floor is covered in cereal and dried pasta and empty boxes and tins. The cupboard doors are all either half open or fully open, and every canister has had its lid unscrewed and left off. The fridge, when opened, has been rearranged hastily, but also nothing seems missing.
“I’ll go check the bedroom,” Laura says behind me.
I turn. “No!” I say, and step towards her. “No. Let me.” I leave her in the kitchen and go to our bedroom, where I find all the drawers in the dresser ajar, and every luggage bag unzipped or unlatched. But, also, nothing actually missing, not even a single thing disturbed in Laura’s jewelry box, and not a single watch taken from my collection. In my study, the big file drawers of the desk are open, as is the closet, but nothing else has been touched.
“Ken!”
I run, I don’t know why, I don’t know what I fear. Laura stands in the kitchen, behind the island, and in her hands is a piece of paper. I slow, I approach, I reach out for it. It reads:
GIVE IT BACK OR ELSE.
“What does it mean?”
I go out to the Volvo and pull the prospectus and the Xeroxes from under the seat. Back in the kitchen, I put them on the island in front of Laura, in a spot where the corn flakes have been cleared. She looks at them, then at me, then back at them again.
“What have you done?”
“It’s part of a case.”
“Is this the case that man came in to talk to you about last week? The one you shooed away?”
“Yes. His name is David Carpenter. Of Carpenter-Santini, the construction firm.”
“I know who he is. He also wanted you to follow his wife. And you don’t do divorce work.”
“I know. I know. But I took the job. And I don’t think it’s actually about divorce at all. Or, I mean, I don’t think there’s an affair going on or anything, I think this is something bigger. Way bigger.”
Laura thumbs through the prospectus and frowns a little. “This is a proposal for a mall… in Rancho Santa Rita.”
“Yes.”
Laura picks the bound volume up and, still reading it, walks through the passage into the dining area. She chooses a chair on the window side and sits down, putting it open on the table. I put on the overhead light unasked, then sit opposite of her. Slowly, she flips through the volume in silence. A few times, she asks for things—paper, a pen, a calculator. Methodically she goes through it, and uncertain how long she will be, I get up and go out to the kitchen, find a mop and a bucket, and start to clean up the mess. Time passes, and every once-in-a-while I stick my head through the door to check in on Laura, but every time she is engrossed in the prospectus.
I am in the living room, putting the cushions of the couch back into their covers, when I hear Laura speak for the first time in over an hour. “This is fantastic!” she says. I drop a pillow and walk over to the dining room table.
“What is?”
“This mall. It will be a huge boom for the Rancho. It will raise property values throughout the community, bring in jobs, growth, tax revenue to keep the city afloat, if the incorporation measure passes Tuesday. No wonder Iris Woods is volunteering on the campaign.”
“Iris Woods?”
“Iris Woods Carpenter, yes. You notice the company that produced this is called ‘New Woods Ventures,’ I bet that’s Carpenter and his wife.”
I shake my head. “Not David Carpenter. I don’t think he knows.”
“Where did you get this?”
I describe, in very circumscribed details, how I saw Iris meet with a man and a woman at Sea Ranch, and how I managed to snag the book from the man’s car, without letting her know the extent of the operation or the key party the man’s car was parked at.
“Who was the woman?”
I mention the name from the lawyer’s legal pad, Hoffman.
“Wow. A Bank of America board member. So, she’s still looking for financing then,” Laura says.
“I couldn’t make heads or tails of anything except the drawings.”
“Yes, they are impressive. The mall will be huge, almost a million square feet, with several major department stores. This ‘fashion square’ development is like the ones that Bullock’s have in Southern California. But look at the numbers!”
Laura shoves the book over at me, showing a table spread across two pages. It’s some kind of balance sheet but it doesn’t look like anything remarkable to me. I shrug.
“This!” She taps her finger on a series of projections.
“I need a translator.”
“Look, a mall is huge. It requires a vast amount of maintenance, electricity, water, security. Now this column here—” she taps the book again, “shows what the mall might gross over its first five years, assuming that Rancho Santa Rita is incorporated, and the mall uses city water and city police. But this column—” she again taps the book, “shows what the mall would make if there is no incorporation.”
I slide the book closer a little. “It’s far lower.”
“Yes.”
“And so is the revenue number up above—that’s what this gross sale number means, right?”
“Right!”
“But why would sales be worse without incorporation?”
“No incorporation means lower population near the mall. It would have to rely on traffic from Walnut Creek or driving over the hill from Oakland and San Leandro and Hayward. Or even traffic from valley towns like Stockton and Tracy. That’s a different kind of shopper, more of a discount shopper, but mostly that’s just less people. But if the Rancho is incorporated….”
“It means houses. Lots and lots of houses.”
“And lots of shoppers. Lots and lots of shoppers.”
“So, without incorporation, the mall still pencils out….”
“Barely. And it won’t be nearly as lucrative an investment, so a lot less attractive to investors. Six figures a year less.” Laura sits back in her chair. “So whoever broke in here and left that note, this is what they were looking for?”
“I think so.”
“Who was it? And how did they know you had the prospectus, anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“If Iris Woods Carpenter knew you had stolen the prospectus, wouldn’t she just call the police? Or send a lawyer after you? Breaking in and spilling all our cereal onto the floor doesn’t seem like her.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” I say, but do not tell her about Lenny French or the connections I was sure he had with Richard Santini and, maybe through Santini, with Iris. “All the same I’d better hide these someplace safe, just in case.”
“If this is what they were looking for, they’ve already been here and not found it. It’s as safe here as anywhere.” Her words are wise, but they don’t stop me from sticking the bound volume in the freezer, and putting the Xerox copies between the mattresses on my side of the bed.
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 21st, 2024. Previous chapters can be viewed here.
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Harbour Fordyce 