T. Parker - Full Measure

“I like your campaign posters. Your picture is nice.”

“You should vote your... I’d like to have your heart, Ted.”

“Have my heart? You really would?”

“I meant your vote. I was going to say, you should vote your heart — but then I tried to say something else and it came out mixed up.”

“I do that all the time. The big important words in your thoughts, they come out, but some of the other ones don’t. So what you say isn’t complete. It isn’t what you tried to say.”

Evelyn smiled. Ted really did have a good heart in there. “No, things come out wrong all the time. I’d still love your vote, though.”

Ted looked at her with an unreadable expression. He half-stood, reached under his shirt. Before Evelyn fully registered what he was doing, Ted drew a plastic sandwich box and held it up toward her. “I brought this for you,” he said. Something thick and slow moved inside the opaque container. “It’s a tarantula.”

“Oh! Well, I’m really not a big tarantula fan, Ted. Incredible as that may seem.”

“This one is a female. The males are skinny and die. These females are plump and live a long, long time. She eats crickets you can buy at the pet store.”

“I’m... can you keep it for me? Or can I let it go in the nature preserve or somewhere?”

“Let her go?”

“Just asking.”

Ted reached out and set the container on Evelyn’s desk. She watched the thing feeling its away around. “When I was young I fell in love with you,” he said.

Evelyn felt her face change color but she wasn’t sure what color — discomfort pink or creeped-out white? “Oh?”

“When you babysat me. And after.”

“I remember that. And I remember the card you made me.”

“I wanted something back from you but instead I got nothing.”

“The card had a frog on it.”

“It was a Pacific tree frog. They’re all over Fallbrook but they only come out when it rains.”

“I hear them in the creek by my house. Is there something specific you came here to talk about?”

“The concert by Cruzela Storm. I want you to cancel it.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Ted.”

“It’s my honest opinion and I vote. You are not my mother or my nanny.”

“The concert is to help pay for two lighted crosswalks, Ted. George Hernandez lost his life right there on Mission for no reason. No reason at all! You should be asking to help, not to hinder.”

“To help you?”

“Help Fallbrook.”

“Are the lighted crosswalks big and meaningful?”

“Yes. They’re big and meaningful and affordable . If we have the concert, that is.”

Ted looked around as if considering. “I’d like to join your re-election staff.”

“But, Ted, you and I disagree on almost every issue. Besides, the campaign work is mostly done. It’s just a matter of taking down the posters after the vote.”

“Then I would like to show Cruzela Storm around Fallbrook after the show. A tour of our city, in my taxi. For free.”

Evelyn’s scalp cooled and tightened. “That’s sweet of you. But she’ll have lots of security.”

“They can come, too. My cab has room for four adult passengers. So — me, you, Cruzela, and two security guards. It’s clean and comfortable.”

“She’s a very private and in-demand person, Ted.”

“Will you at least ask her?”

“No. I won’t.”

“You are everything I don’t like about government and women,” said Ted. “All you say is no, no, no, and no. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Sometimes I am ashamed, when I can’t do enough. I’m trying here, Ted, with the crosswalks I’m trying to say yes to something good.” Evelyn’s phone chimed and she listened and rang off. “My nine o’clocks just got here.” She looked past Ted’s shoulder at Brian, standing out in the hallway, phone in hand. She could hear footsteps coming up the old wooden stairs, their echoes climbing the stairwell and spilling into the lobby. God bless the LaPointes!

“I also don’t like that you’ve lost all Mom and Dad’s money,” said Ted. “They’re losing everything, because of you.”

Evelyn stood. “I have not lost all their money. And I won’t discuss anything more with you.”

“No, you won’t. Because you’re government and a woman, and a thief and a liar.”

“Leave now.”

Ted grabbed the tarantula off the desk and looked at Evelyn as he worked the sandwich box back into the waistband of his pants. “I’ll do something big and important. I don’t need you.”

Ted clomped down the stairs, through the lobby and onto Main Street. His stab wounds hurt. His vision had constricted and he was short of breath. When he got to his truck, the dome-headed man he’d seen lurking around Fallbrook was sitting on a sidewalk bench in the late morning shadow of the buildings. As before, he wore a suit, this time olive. His complexion was pale and he had open, expressive eyes and a small neat mustache. He held up a badge holder then slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “Hello, Ted. I’m Homeland Security Department, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Max Knechtl.”

Ted stopped and looked down the long rifled tunnel at the end of which sat the agent. He didn’t think Anders would get him that riled up. My government, he thought, working for me. Now more of it. “I’m Theodore Archibald Norris. Citizen.”

“What’s that under your shirt?”

“A tarantula for the mayor. She didn’t like it.”

“That’s an unusual gift.”

“You must be the arson expert. Your boss was on the news but they didn’t show you.”

“Yes, I am that expert.”

“I didn’t set the fire.”

“Sit down and talk to me. Take a load off those feet and those stitches in your side.”

Ted reached under his shirt. Knechtl’s hand was already on a gun holstered within his suit coat, and his expression had gone blank. Utterly. His face was nothing but two eyes with sunlight coming into them. Ted could see dark blue steel twinkling behind the olive lapel. “The tarantula,” said Ted, slowing extending the sandwich box for Knechtl to see. “She’s a female.”

“Nice one. I’m relieved. Sit, Ted.” Knechtl smiled but left his hand inside his coat for a moment. Then he crossed his hands over his knees but he still had an empty look on his face. Ted took the opposite side of the bench and set the sandwich box next to him. “Tell me about the fire.”

“I just told you I didn’t set it.”

“I know you didn’t set it. But someone did. And I think you’re a smart man. You know every inch of this little town and the people in it. You know its streets. I see from your political cartooning that you’re a student of current affairs and a man of clear and strong beliefs. Talk to me about this town and the man who set this fire, Ted. Educate me.”

A sheriff’s patrol car went by, driven by the black deputy who’d given him the nystagmus test for all of Fallbrook to see. The deputy nodded behind his sunglasses and Ted nodded back, then noted that Knechtl nodded back also. Ted felt suffocated by government: the mayor — formerly his own babysitter with whom he had once been in serious love — spinning financial webs upstairs in her lair; domed Knechtl ambushing him on Main Street; and of course the cursed black sheriff’s deputy on scene, always on scene like a character in a repeating dream. Ted yearned to be in his cab, for motion and protection, to be watching the world through heavy glass. “I was driving the taxi when the fire broke out. You can check my Friendly Village Taxi time card.”

“Oh, I’ve done that. And your call-in log, too. You had five fares that morning.”