“You opened it,” Ray groused as he took a small envelope
from Elaine. “See it says ‘Private and Confidential’ and you went and opened
it.”
From his usual chair in front of Ray’s desk, Fraser
offered, “I’m sure it’s just departmental policy.”
Elaine gave Fraser a look of affection, which was totally
lost on him, and then said to Ray, “Great deduction, Detective. Yeah, I opened
it. And so did a dozen other people before me. Have a look and you’ll see why.”
Ray first flipped the envelope over to the look at the
return address on the back, but it was not familiar. Then he read the address
on the hand-written envelope aloud for Fraser to hear:
Officer Del Vecchio and Officer Fraser
c/o Chicago Police Department
Chicago IL
“Headquarters sent this to all fourteen Del Vecchios in
the Department. Thank God they tried
you before sending it to all the Officer Frasers. You’re lucky it got to you at
all,” said Elaine.
As Ray was pulling a card out of the envelope, Elaine
further informed him. “It’s a party invitation. The party was last Tuesday
night. Your friends need some serious
life skills training.”
Ray read the card and then handed it to Fraser, while
saying to Elaine. “You don’t know the half of it.” To Fraser he said, “I swear,
Fraser, some people can be so clueless. It’s from Louise and Vinnie
Webber. Look at this: they’re inviting
us to Joey’s first birthday party. They must have moved, that’s not the same
address as before.”
“I haven’t seen them in the neighbourhood for months.”
Fraser said. “I guess that explains why. Are you familiar with that part of
town? What kind of neighbourhood are they living in now?” Fraser gestured to
the envelope.
“Don’t know. Well, we missed the party. What do you want
to do? Maybe we should call or something?”
“I would hate for the Webbers to think we just stood them
up. Let’s go visit them and take some gift along for Joey.”
“Hey, it’s the week after Christmas. I don’t want to go
near a store if I don’t have to. You take your life in your hands. Why don’t
you whittle them something?”
“It might be a better idea to get them a gift certificate
from Sears Roebuck, Ray.”
Ray was astonished. “What? Don’t you want to carve them
something out of a moose bone?”
But Fraser seemed thoughtful. “The Webbers were in
financial straits when we last saw them Ray.
There might be something they want for Joey and can’t afford.”
“Gift certificate it is, then.” Ray dug into his pocket
and pulled out some bills. “Here, take this and add something of your own.
You’re used to fighting wild animals – you go to the department store when
they’ve got all that after-Christmas mobs.”
Fraser observed that wild animals didn’t usually go to
department stores, other than that one time a bear had wandered into the
Hudson’s Bay Store in Tuktoyuktuk. Even
then it had been an elderly beast, only wild in the sense that it was not
domesticated but otherwise quite harmless.
Ray, in response, asked Fraser if he thought Vinnie Webber
looked like Marlon Brando when that actor was young. Fraser said he supposed
so, but what did that have to do with bears?
“Nothing,” Ray grinned. “But if you can say random things,
so can I.”
Alone in his apartment that night, Fraser lay on his bed
and thought back over the two eventful days that he and Ray had spent mixed up
in the lives of Louise, Vinnie and Joey Webber. With a slight smile to himself
he reviewed in his mind some of the lighter moments: the admiring waitresses
wiping his sleeve for him, his enjoyment of his own uncustomary goofiness
making the puffin-face for the child, the quest for the customers of goat’s
milk.
Then he reflected on his friendship with Ray, the way the
American teased him but, when the going was tense, Ray’s absolute faith in
him. Ray had gone out to locate more
goat’s milk and, after the grumbling they both knew to be essentially
meaningless, he’d asked, quietly, “You know what you’re gonna say?”
Fraser remembered shaking his head at that.
“You’ll think of something,” had been Ray’s answer and
Fraser had indeed thought of something. How well Ray knew him. How well Ray supported him, griping and
poking fun but always trusting him.
Then Fraser replayed for himself the events at the
airport. In his mind’s eye he formed the face of a couple of players in the
drama that he hadn’t paid much attention to the time: the middle-aged couple
waiting by their private plane, with a lawyer standing to one side and, just
behind them, a lackey carrying a briefcase full of cash. It had seemed tawdry
to him - legal but somehow just short of being ethical – this buying of a
child.
His mental camera focused closer on the prospective
parents’ faces. There had been too much going on that day for him to pay them
much attention but now, in reflection, he had time to see their excitement,
their anticipation, their joy. No,
there hadn’t been time to note them very well during the fighting that ensued
but Fraser found himself imagining their dismay at losing the child they had
expected to be theirs.
Here were a couple of important players in the drama but
they hadn’t many lines. Fraser wondered if they had undergone many medical
procedures to try to have a child of their own. How much stress and disappointment had they undergone before
being driven to the extremity of buying a child?
Thoughts of these people, whose names he would most likely
never know, troubled him enough that he got out of bed and drifted towards his
kitchen. Making a pot of tea would be
as good a displacement activity as any, having the dual advantage of being an
outlet for the restlessness these thoughts had caused and, on a more practical
level, also providing tea. As he stood
waiting for the water to boil, Diefenbaker came in and looked quizzically at
him in the odd strident light of the glowing advertisements outside their
window.
“I was thinking about those people who didn’t get Joey,”
Fraser explained to his wolf-friend. “I guess Ms. Morisot just sold them
another baby. I hope so.” Then Fraser frowned to himself and rubbed an eyebrow
with his thumb. “Except I shouldn’t hope that, should I? Selling human beings
is wrong.”
Dief’s eyes reflected the unnatural glint around him but
didn’t convey any opinion. He was simply listening as best he could with his
limited hearing and such lip-reading he could do in the dim surroundings.
“The thing is,” Fraser explained to the wolf, and to
himself, “twenty years ago these people would have waited no more than a few
years for their turn at getting a baby from some unmarried teenage girl. These
days . . .” He broke off to attend to the whistling tea-kettle.
He continued thinking as he dropped a metal tea-ball into
a metal pot. Society was changing and young mothers were keeping their
children, raising them alone and the general society around them was all the prouder
for expanding the definition of a family
Fraser continued his reflections as he poured hot water
into the pot. Louise loved her husband,
that much was certain. Her strident “You’ve got a lot to make up for!” had been
her declaration that she would forgive him.
And Vinnie, in going back on his agreement, must have known he would be
killed for it. Love for Louise and the child was a powerful enough force to
make him change his mind and sacrifice himself.
He poured a cup of tea and took a tiny sip of it. Love. Joey would have been loved and well
cared for if he had gone to these other people. Were Morisot and her minions
who canvassed the Webber neighbourhood the monsters Ray considered them?
“Any compensation the parents may or may not receive is
fully allowable under Illinois law.”
Well that was of no consequence.
Fraser judged things according to the sense of right and wrong he had
been raised with. The fact that the law of the land usually supported his
judgment made it possible for him to hold the profession he did, but he had no
compunction in going over, around or through the law to obtain what he thought
of as justice.
‘We captured the criminals, we re-united the Webbers, so
justice was served, I suppose,” Fraser told Diefenbaker. But the look of joy he had seen on the faces
of that couple and the look of disappointment he imagined but didn’t see both
haunted him as he sat sipping at his tea.
Millie was still the receptionist at Morisot and
Associates. She didn’t recognize
Fraser, but Ms. Morisot did. Morisot’s greeting to the Mountie was not
friendly, but he did have an appointment and as such had a legitimate claim to
at least a few minutes of her time.
Morisot didn’t mince words once they were in her office
and out of everyone’s view and hearing. “If I’d known who you were I wouldn’t
have agreed to give you an appointment, Constable. What could you possibly want that I’d be inclined to give you?”
She didn’t invite Fraser to sit, so he didn’t. He merely stood
in front of her desk, his Stetson hanging from his hand and asked, “I’d just
like to ask you about the couple I saw in your office and later at the airport.
The people who were going to adopt Joey Webber. Did they get another child?”
Morisot’s professional poise wasn’t enough to stop her
from sneering. “If you think I’m going to divulge confidential information to
you – after what you two did - you’ve got to be as ignorant as your flat-footed
friend. What happened to those people is none of your god-damned business.”
“What we two did, Ms. Morisot, is save the life of one
man, possibly more if the crossfire had gone astray, and apprehended three
violent criminals. As an instrument of the law yourself, you must allow . . .”
“Leave my office!” declared the lawyer. “Out, or I’m calling security.”
Neither her vehemence nor the threat would have deterred
Fraser if he had sensed there was any information to be gained from her by
staying. But he didn’t think any Inuit story, Ray’s faith in those notwithstanding,
would bend Ms. Morisot at this point. Unlike Vinnie had been that night, she
was sure of her ground and technically she was in the right. So he settled his
Stetson back on his head, nodded to her and withdrew.
Fraser shared his musing and subsequent visit to Morisot
with Ray as they drove to the Webbers’ new address two days later.
“Remember I told you that breaking your heart over someone
else’s kid wasn’t smart, Benny?”
“I remember, Ray.”
“So, and pay attention to this, breaking your heart over
rich people is even not-smarter.”
“Money can’t buy happiness, Ray.”
“Your grandparents teach you that?”
Fraser was about to virtuously declaim that they did
indeed teach him that, but then stopped to think about it.
“Well?” Ray insisted.
“They did teach me that, but, now that I think of it, they
may not have been qualified. They didn’t have much of either.”
They drove along in silence for a while. Finally Ray said, “Money and happiness.
Those things don’t get given out fairly, do they? You’d think at least they’d
work it so if you don’t get one you could get the other. Just doesn’t seem fair sometimes.”
“Money can’t buy happiness,” Fraser quoted, “but it can
buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.
Of course, you can use money to make other people happy, not just
yourself.”
Ray frowned and craned his neck forward to read a street
sign as he drove. “Benny, isn’t that the street?”
Fraser consulted the party invitation he had in his hand.
“Yes. Turn left here. The numbers increase as you go north.”
“I know that, Benny” Ray grunted as he made the turn. “But
what you said about making other people happy when you have money, see, that
kind of bugs me. I mean, remember at the end of Christmas Carol when everybody
loves Scrooge? Well, that never seemed right to me.”
“Oh?” Fraser inquired, curious about this turn of the
conversation.
“If he didn’t have all that money to buy a turkey and a
coal scuttle and all that, well you think everybody would have loved him so
much?”
Fraser frowned, “That’s a rather cynical way of looking at
it, Ray. I’d rather enjoy a happy
ending in the spirit of the holidays without reading too much into it.” Having
said that, he felt slightly hypocritical. He hadn’t taken the Webbers’ happy
ending at face value, had he?
Then he located the street number they were looking for
and Ray pulled into the visitor’s parking lot of prosperous looking high-rise.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Ray said, “What,
did Vinnie win the Powerball or something? They can’t afford this place!”
“Apparently they can, Ray,” Fraser said, but that was only
an automatic response. He was as surprised as his friend was.
The five of them were sitting around the kitchen table,
Fraser, Ray, Louise and Vinnie on regular kitchen chairs and Joey in a
highchair. Fraser’s and Ray’s invitations weren’t the only ones that had been
haphazardly addressed, it seemed, leaving Louise lots of food left over, which
she had put in the freezer. Certain foods had survived the freezing well, such
as the cake, and others, such as the devilled eggs, had not.
Fraser reflected, as he manfully consumed both kinds of
food, that Elaine’s idea about these people needing life-skill training wasn’t
far off the mark.
The gift certificate was duly presented. Louise slipped it into a cookie jar. “Oh
this is lovely. I’ve got my eye on some new curtains,” and bussed both visitors
on their respective cheeks.
They talked about the weather and other non-specific things
for a time before Ray started probing for details about their life.
“So, you moved?” he began.
Vinnie let Louise tell the story. Ray and Fraser exchanged looks of
astonishment as she relayed what had happened during the last several months.
“Those people who wanted to take Joey, their names are
Jack and Jill Forrester. They wanted to
meet us. So, well, we told them about how Vinnie was getting into all this
trouble . . .”
“Ah, geez, Louise,” Vinnie interrupted, but Louise ignored
him.
“ . . . and that he couldn’t find a job anywhere. Well,
Mr. Forrester hired him for one of his factories right here in Chicago. Put him
in charge of the loading dock. Vinnie’s great at it. And he’s getting all kinds
of overtime.”
“The guy with the plane? He gave Vinnie a job?” Ray asked,
duly astonished, while Fraser only sat with his mouth hanging open.
“He really is a nice guy, it turns out,” Vinnie to told
them.
“But, did they get another child?” Fraser wasn’t going to
be satisfied until he knew this.
“They got one from Romania. The sweetest little girl –
they flew over there to get her. One of those starving orphans they have
there. He didn’t want to deal with
Morisot anymore. Well, I think all that shooting freaked them out.”
“Then, you see them fairly often?”
“Oh yeah." We get together sometimes when he’s in
town. Jill takes me shopping,” Louise
told them. “She gets me all kinds of nice things for Joey, but I don’t let her
buy anything for Vinnie and me.”
Ray and Fraser exchanged a smile. “Okay, Benny, you win,” Ray whispered to his
friend, “I’ll take the happy ending at face value.”
The End