Date: Sun, 22 May 1994 21:45:00 -0400 RIDING THE QEW by Neil Belsky "Knight" Stonetree called to Nick as he entered the squad room. "Yeah, Captain." "I got something different for you tonight." The captain walked over to Knight and handed a file folder to him. "You get to fill that gas guzzler of your up on the city's tab and take a leisurely ride to Niagara Falls." "The falls, what's up Captain." Nick flipped through the file trying to imagine the two hour trip to the falls with nothing but Schanke and the radio for company. "Well, tonight you have a very pleasant duty. You are going to pick up a four year old boy and deliver him back to his mother." "I'm what???" "Don't worry, you're not going alone. I'm sending Norma Ailes with you. She's got her ECE as well as being a police officer and she needs to get away from that damn computer once and a while." "What about Schanke?" Nick was grasping at straws, "He's a father, he knows about little kids." "Yes, Don Schanke is a father and a husband and being he is off-duty he's getting a chance to practice those two skills tonight. Nick, sometimes I worry about you not having a family. You lose persceptive on people who do." "Well, it's been a long time." Nick flipped through the folder but his mind was wandering back, a long, long way back. "Hi Nick." Norma came into the squad room wearing a blue print dress and carrying a tote bag along with her purse. "Ready for your mission of mercy." "I guess so," Nick smiled at Norma, "I just used to dead bodies rather than live ones." "Nick there were less than one hundred homicides in the city last year." "We also investigate any suspicious deaths and those add up." "Tonight we go retrieve one Javed Bhagshanjani. He's four and he'll be upset and he won't want to talk about your total cases solved ratio. Let's get to it." She turned and marched out of the station. Stonetree smiled at Nick, "Hope this let's you know how the other half lives." "I'll get you for this." Nick laughed as he followed Norma out the door." After a fill up at the police garage and being handed a booster seat for the child Nick and Norma drove south to pick up the Gardner Expressway and headed west to the Queen Elizabeth Way. "Do know we're only one letter away from being the Charles." Norma stated brightly. "Wha" Nick was dodging transports while getting his bearings on in the maze of highways, clover leafs and turnoff that confronted the traveler as they neared Pearson Airport. "I said we're only one letter from being the Charles', you know, Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man movies." "Oh, I'm not a big movie person." Nick could feel Norma's eyes on him and he cast a smile her way. "I came from a reading family. No T.V." he groaned inwardly at that understatement. "Oh, my mom and I used to watch old movies all the time. I come from this little town called Dresden." "I've heard of that place, full of hockey players and ketchup factories." "Right! We got television from Detroit and London and Windsor. I swear I didn't know I was Canadian until I went to kindergarten. My mom watched games shows from Detroit during the day and I figured I was from there." "Your family came up on the underground railroad?" "The black half, the white half was pure Irish. What's your family background Nick." "French." he replied without thinking twice. "And you Parlez-vous?" "Certainment, mon amie." "You can stop right there. I hated French in school and took absolutely no interest in retaining it." "That's sad. I speak a few languages, French, Mandarin, English of course." "I guess it just never meant a lot to me. I've never been anyplace where English wasn't the principle language." She stared out the windshield as the lights of Oakville came into sight. "but I am not going to let you get me off topic. The office busybodies have made me promise to get as much data on you as possible, Mr. Enigma." Nick gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, somehow he was going to have to make a life story up off the cuff, while trying not to trip up anywhere from the history Larry Merlin had created for him. "My dad was a minor bureaucrat and my mother was a homemak er." He conjured up the mental picture of his father dressed in a long, brown tunic his steel grey hair brushing his shoulders. He seemed so tall sometimes it was as if his blue eyes were the only thing on his head not covered with hair. Pulling up a vision of his mother was more difficult, she had died when he was seven and the interven ing centuries made her memory almost a Madonna-like vision in pale drapery. "Next question." Norma's voice cut through his revere like a scalpel. "Do you have any siblings?" Etienne, Gervaise, Clothilde and the baby who died with his mother on the birthing table....... "I'm an only child." "That's sad, I'm from a big family myself." "My turn. Why are you a police officer with a certificate in early childhood education?" Nick hoped to put some distance between himself and the questions Norma was asking and the memories they were letting in. "I have two brothers and three sisters and I'm the only one without a family....so far." She nudged Nick with a sly smile that brought laughter to his lips. "I went to school on Toronto and after I saw the low priced jobs in ECE I figured to get a second certificate in any thing. Believe it or not Captain Stonetree was speaking at Sheridan College on opportunities for minorities in the police force. I attended the lecture and asked if an ECE was any use and got this huge description on juvenile crime and children caught in the system. So I applied to the academy, got in, passed and was immediately in the thick of things in the juvenile division. It's hard to work with kids in trouble all the time so I transferred to desk duty. I still get little jobs like this once and awhile. My turn again. Who was the Canadian, your mom or your dad and do you have dual citizenship." "My mom was Canadian and she made sure I'd have dual in case I ever wanted to come up to Canada. I came up because I needed a change." "A broken heart?" "Well, kind of." Yes, it did break his heart to leave all his students when the McCarthy-ites attacked. Better though to let the image of a dumped Nick circulate in the depart ment. Now he had to figure out where his mother came from and how it was to get up here. "My mom was from Toronto." an easy place to get information on, "but she was from a small family and there's only me here now." "Why come here?" "I knew the town." for years and years and years he thought. The pair rode in silence for a time. The highway was a continual changing pattern of towns and field with the vast expanse of Lake Ontario breaking through to silver the landscape to the right. Past the city of Hamilton the car entered the beginnings of the tourist trap areas that lead up to Niagara Falls. "Norma," Nick glanced at his passenger. "do the people in the squadroom really ask that many questions about me?" "Nick, you're cute, tall, blond and live in a fantastic loft. Yet we've only heard about the loft, only Don and Nat ever get invited there. You don't go to parties, hell you don't even join us for munchies and beer after work. Some of us are trying to figure out if we all smell bad." "I guess I'm kind of shy." "Better that than snobby. We won't bite Nick, and if it's the sunlight we do go out after dark and I'll personally buy you a parasol for the daytime." "Okay, point taken." It was easier being a university pro fessor, eccentricities were expected there. "Well, now that that's cleared up, next question. Were you ever married and are there any little Knights out and about?" "No to both of them." "Who's Janette then?" oh oh..."Just an old friend, sometimes I feel like I've known her forever."......or close to it......... "We're getting close to the Falls now," Nick could hear the rumble in the background over the sounds of the traffic. "It's early," Norma checked her watch, "only 9:30, you're lucky we didn't get stopped for speeding. Let's grab a coffee before we pick up the little one. They state troop ers won't be at customs and immigration before 10:00." "Why are we picking up the kid instead of Children's Aid." "Children's Aid didn't have anyone available tonight and this was a parental kidnapping. The errant daddy has com mitted a crime in Buffalo and will be tried there before facing kidnap charges in Toronto. The boy's mother is laid up with a broken leg and the only other relative in the country is a cousin who is taking care of Mrs Bhagshanjani." "Okay coffee and donuts at Tim Horton's first. If you prom ise no more questions." "Then I better get the last one in now. Are you gay or something." "No. Definitely not." "Good, we're planning a birthday party for Natalie in a week or so and we want you to jump out of a cake." "This is a joke, right?" Norma laughed "Yes, it's a joke, the cake part at least, but there is birthday 31 for Natalie coming up and we really want it to be a surprise. We know she goes to your loft and would like to set it up there. You're such a party pooper most of the time the last thing she'll expect is us being there." "I guess so, just let me have time to clean up the place" .....and empty the fridge...."it should clear up some of the mysteries about me." "I think it would. There a 'Tim Horton's' coming up so let's get that coffee and get ready drive back with the boy." "I have a way of calming children." Nick said with a smile as he pulled into the parking lot of the donut shop. "Order what you want and a small black coffee for me, I'll treat." "Thanks Nick," Norma smiled back, "this hasn't been such a bad drive and I think we can clear the air in the office about you now." "I definitely hope so." He said as he stopped the car. Lee Brown-Belsky