Full Measure: A Novel (30 page)

*   *   *

Patrick set out for the bunkhouse with the dogs panting alongside him. Ted was at his usual place in the big darkened space, at the picnic table, face thrust into the computer monitor. He didn’t turn when Patrick came in but he dropped a hand onto Jack’s thick Labrador head when the dog came up.

“You okay, Ted?”

Ted finally swiveled around and looked at Patrick. “My feet are killing me, and so are my back, my hands, and my knife holes. I checked them today and they weren’t leaking. But they’re still swelled up.”

“Well, you tried to help. You showed good courage and conviction, Ted.”

“You sound like Dad now except that you might mean it. He doesn’t ever mean it.”

“I meant what I said.”

Yellow Spike, heavier and a bully, barreled in between Jack and Ted, trying to hog the affection. Ted pet each dog’s head. Patrick went to the terrariums and watched the critters watch him. He remembered when they were boys how flustered Ted would get when some of his animals got away. It seemed to happen a lot, mostly to the snakes and scorpions. Only later did Caroline confess to carrying the cages outside when the boys were at school, and releasing the animals that scared her, shooing them into the groves with a broom. Ted had thrown a memorable tantrum at that. Now a small frog eyed Patrick then sprung to the opposite glass wall and stuck perfectly, still eyeing him.

“Have you been back to Pride Auto Repair?”

“No, sir, Pat. I told you I wouldn’t.”

“Have you posted any more online cartoons or insults to Evelyn Anders?”

“No! But I actually apologized to her a couple of days ago. Face to face.”

“Oh, no, Ted.”

“No worries. It went really good. We’re good. Everything’s good. Except … I need to ask you a question.”

Patrick saw the dark hard cast of Ted’s face, a haunted look that had visited him, off and on, ever since Patrick could remember.

Ted climbed off the bench and stood. Patrick came over and saw the game now paused on the monitor—a first-person shooter in what looked like Afghanistan. The shooter brandished an M240, as had Patrick in real life. “Uh, Pat, I saw you drive off with
Fatta the Lan’
. Now you’re back and she’s still gone. What happened to her? Did you take her out without me?”

“I sold her to pay off some debts.”

“Sold her?
Debts?”

“Just stupid stuff I did.”

“But you don’t do stupid things.”

“I manage my share.”

Ted looked at his brother.
“Fatta the Lan’?
We were going to sail out for the territory. We were going to fish and make money and get big tips from the clients. And go drinking back on the waterfront. And eat, too. Then work our way down to Mexico where the water’s always warm and there’s lots of fish, and the women are friendly and beautiful. And then back up the California coast until it got too cold.
Remember?”

Patrick considered his brother’s troubled face brushed by the monitor lights. Tears welled in Ted’s eyes but didn’t spill over. “I’ll get another boat, Ted. I’ve still got five hundred bucks left.”

“But, Pat … what’s five hundred going to get us?”

“I’ll need to make more. We’ll get something decent. And I still have to take the captain’s test and log more hours, and do the CPR course and fill out all the state forms and get the insurance. There’s tons of paperwork. And a Web site. It’s all time-consuming. And expensive, if you’re a little guy.”

Ted shrugged and looked back at the game for a moment. “All right. I’ll do something important without you, Pat. You’re not my keeper. Mostly I just feel bad for you losing your boat.”

“I’m going to get another boat, Ted. We’ll fish. You can help me guide now and then.”

“Not every time though, because sometimes you’ll have three anglers and the boat’ll be too full. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be a part-time first mate.”

“Yes, you will.”

Ted sighed. “Okay. That’s something to look forward to. Now, I’m going to go soak my feet in the bathtub. Those sandbags are the heaviest things on Earth. Maybe that’s because they’re filled with earth. I’ll find a way to get over you selling the boat, Pat.”

*   *   *

Patrick was early for his Domino’s shift but the evening was already busy. He helped Firooz and Simone answer the phone and take Internet orders and make pizza. Patrick checked his phone again—no call or text—and again felt the tug of his heart.

“Did you hear?” Simone asked. Patrick looked up from the bag of frozen Buffalo wings he was pouring onto the baking tray. “Police arrested the manager of the GasPro for setting the fire. I saw the arrest. I was getting gas and suddenly they were bringing him out of the store. He had his uniform on and he was handcuffed.”

“The Iranian?” said Patrick, thinking, the skinny? He’d been seeing the man at the GasPro station since before he’d enlisted. It seemed like every time Patrick filled up, the big man was working. He was a big solid guy who looked you in the eye.

“There were six men. I notice things when I’m afraid. These men wore armor and helmets. They carried machine guns. Their clothing had the big letters—HSI, ATF, and FBI. They brought him from the store and put him in a white van. So, when I came back here I turned on TV and listened to the radio and got on the Internet. There was nothing. Like it didn’t happen. Just like in Iran. I called the Fallbrook sheriffs but they would not say anything about an arrest. Then, one hour ago, the radio said that the arsonist had been arrested. Ibrahim, the gas station manager—they say he set the fire. Look!”

Channel 10 came on and there he was, Ibrahim Sadal, looking wild-eyed and angry. Six heavily armed federal agents swiftly moved him out of the mini-mart and into the van.

“From Baghdad,” said Firooz. “He was an oil engineer under Saddam then he escaped to America. This is what he claimed. It is a terrible thing that he set the fire.”

“But what if he did not?” asked Simone.

“Then this thing is terrible, too,” said Firooz.

“In Iran I saw arrests like this,” said Simone. “And I never saw the arrested person again. And there was never an explanation or news of it. Only rumors.”

“Only rumors.” Firooz nodded.

Patrick carried the two four-packs of pizzas to his truck and set the red insulated packs on the passenger seat. Firooz followed with two more and a rectangular carrier for side orders. Simone lugged the soft-sided cooler of drinks. She set them in the truck and slammed the door and Patrick flinched but he saw they did not notice. He attached the Domino’s sign and hopped in.

*   *   *

His tips on ninety-six dollars’ worth of food amounted to eight dollars and change. After the last delivery he argued with himself out loud, while unerringly tracing his path back downtown and straight for Iris’s street. When he was close he pulled over and removed the Domino’s sign from the roof of his truck. He drove past and saw lights on inside. The garage door was closed. Down the street he U-turned and drove by again, then gunned his truck back to work. In the Domino’s parking lot he finally caved in and called her but she didn’t pick up. He left a brief message: Welcome home, hope it went well, I missed you, you don’t have to keep any of that stuff if you don’t want. He punched off and headed back into the pizza place with Taibo’s words ringing in his mind: love is what you do.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Ted drove the taxi to Open Sights on his lunch hour Tuesday and shot up fifty rounds of .40-caliber wadcutters. Kerry was patient and encouraging even though Ted was erratic. He had trouble shooting with both eyes open, which Kerry told him was the foundation of sound marksmanship. Ted continued to yank rather than squeeze.

Blasting away from twenty feet at a zombie bin Laden target, Ted felt strong emotions, and they changed almost as quickly as he pulled the trigger—exuberance, anger, satisfaction, shame—in no logical order. A lot of the anger was at Patrick for selling
Fatta the Lan’
without telling him. It seemed like a sneaky thing to do. What was he going to do with the money, buy Iris Cash an engagement ring? If he added Patrick’s betrayal to those of Evelyn and Cade, what did he have left? He wished he’d brought an Evelyn Anders re-election poster to use as a target. Wouldn’t
that
bring all those government police, deputies, agents, special agents, marshals, jailers, and torturers running! Kerry ordered him not to quick draw with a loaded gun unless he wanted a big hole in his foot.

“They’re pretty big targets,” said Ted, looking down at them and wiping the sweat from his brow.

Driving home, gun and leftover ammo locked in the taxi trunk, Ted had a sudden premonition that another terrible thing was about to happen to him. But two minutes later, Cleo called from Friendly Village Taxi to say that his regular fare, Lucinda Smith, needed to be picked up at home in half an hour. She had asked for him
again!

Ted swung into the Rite Aid and bought their least expensive bottle of men’s aftershave and breath mints. Outside he touched just a dab of the weirdly blue-green liquid to his Adam’s apple before locking the cologne in the trunk beside the Glock. Crunching the breath mint, he studied himself closely in the rearview, then drove east on Highway 76 for Fallbrook.

Lucinda came down the stairs with her usual reusable grocery bag and air of gloom. She was wearing nicer clothes than she had worn before, and fashionable boots. She had a small embroidered Chinese satchel over one shoulder. He thought she looked lovely. She told him Major Market and Rosa’s restaurant after that. The fare clock registered one point six miles before Ted could no longer be quiet. “And how are you today?”

“Good. What’s that smell?”

“Probably ash from the fire. Are you going to the Cruzela Storm concert on Sunday?”

“No. It smells like someone shaved in here.”

“That’s better than ashes, isn’t it? I have two tickets to Cruzela. The show is to raise money for the lighted crosswalks Fallbrook doesn’t need. Would you like to go with me? I’ll pick you up, do all the driving.”

There was another long silence. “How do you know we don’t need them?”

“Just by using my own two eyes.”

Another long moment passed and in the rearview Ted saw her looking out the side window. She wore her sunglasses as always. He had never seen her eyes except that one time when she cleaned her glasses in the back of his cab. “No. I can’t go to the show. But thank you.”

“Why not?”

“I’m busy.”

“I thought you’d say no. Though I’d really like to know what you’re so busy doing, that you can’t see Cruzela Storm. She’s good. Do you have a job? Wait, that’s none of my business so I’m not going to ask. I take that back. I unsay it. I’ll be quiet now. I promise. It isn’t that hard if I concentrate. Like driving a car. More or less. Well, to be honest, it is hard, Lucinda. Do you ever think other people might have problems, too?”

“I don’t have the capacity to care about them. And I hate that in me. I wasn’t always this way.”

He dropped her off in front of the market and watched her walk in, then parked in the shade and turned on the news. The San Diego PBS station had a story about the arrest of Ibrahim Sadal in Fallbrook. Federal charges were being readied. According to Department of Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Max Knechtl, they had recovered from Sadal’s place of employment a timer, batteries, and accelerant “similar” to those recovered from the flashpoint of Fallbrook’s devastating Rice Canyon Fire. Also found were print copies of an Islamic jihadist publication called
Inspire,
two of which contained explicit instructions for building firebombs and urged “native jihadists” to deploy them in hot, dry, windy weather. Knechtl said that Sadal had been granted political asylum fifteen years ago, after fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime, and there were obvious concerns that he might be part of a larger sleeper cell operating in the United States. Ted thought of Sadal working away at the gas station, right in front of everybody, for years. It made him even angrier to realize that the government could make Ted take a nystagmus test in broad daylight in front of his friends and neighbors, and let the local gangsters jack him, but couldn’t secure the borders.

Lucinda came out with her bag lightly laden. She climbed into the backseat and Ted shut the door. This door-opening was a new courtesy she was allowing him. At Rosa’s she came out with two plastic bags, and again Ted got the door for her.

“Would you drive me around the town again like you did before? Along holy hill with all the churches?”

“I’ll drive you anywhere you want.”

Ted swung onto Mission, then looped around past Los Jilgueros nature preserve, turned left at Fallbrook High School, and followed Stagecoach. On holy hill he noted the new Baptist Church aphorism: “Trespassers Will Be Baptized” and found it amusing. He wondered why Lucinda Smith always wanted to take the long away around.

“Let’s go back and eat these lunches at Jilgueros,” she said.

“Really?”

“I like the native plants. Please turn around before I change my mind.”

The nature preserve sat between downtown and the high school. There were trails and two big ponds and all of it was planted with California natives. They parked in the lot and walked in past enormous sycamores and stout oaks. Rounding a curve the trees gave way to more open land—grasses and white sage and big stands of matilija poppies. Ted watched two red-shouldered hawks wheel and cry above them. From behind him a hummingbird shot over his shoulder so close that for a second it sounded like a car going past his ear. Then the sound drifted off. Ted lifted some promising fallen bark to see what was under it and uncovered a large potato bug. “They can give you a painful nip.”

“It looks shiny and waxed, like a car.”

“When you lift things to find creatures, you have to put the things back the same but different. So you don’t squash what’s under them.”

“I had two blue parakeets. A group of parakeets is called a chatter.”

“Bats don’t make good pets.”