PG-13
(spoilers for ‘Strange Bedfellows’ and ‘They Eat Horses, Don’t They?’ It would be helpful to know those eps for this story to make much sense)
“So essentially ‘the closet’ is a symbol of societal repression? Is that what you mean?”
“Well, yeah,” Frannie rolled her
head on her neck in a way that was probably designed to change the course of the
conversation. Fraser remained locked on target. “I don’t know where it…that
expression…comes from….don’t they say it up in
Fraser had to nip that idea right
in the bud. “Well, I find that I’m not particularly well-versed in many
idiomatic expressions, Francesca. And many of the expressions we used in
“Oh, of course not,” Frannie shrugged slightly and took a sip of her diet soda, “There would have been no reason for you to know.”
“That is why …your brother….seemed to find that practice so exasperating? I had assumed at the time that he was merely unaccustomed to having conversations in darkness.”
“Yeah, afraid of the dark since we were kids,” Frannie cackled. “Sure, I mean, I’m sure …Ray…would have thought it was a little weird, until he realized that it was just your way.” She rolled her hand around her wrist encouragingly.
“My way?” Fraser was carefully blank, with the studied “polite interest” face.
“Yeah, you know, your…Canadian…way.”
In the face of her unexpected
kindness (for substituting “Canadian” for “unutterably strange” or some other
adjective) Fraser smiled widely at Frannie and thanked her sincerely.
“Thank you so much, Francesca, for clearing up that little mystery for me. I wouldn’t want to use that phrase incorrectly and potentially cause offense. You are a real cultural ambassador.”
Frannie pressed her lips together and widened her eyes in a way that Fraser considered many men would find very appealing. “Oh, anytiiiiiime,” she breathed, “I’m always here to answer your questions. Whatever they might be.”
Fraser backed away, still smiling and thought to himself that it was like easing away from an angry grizzly. Well, apart from the smiling. And the eye contact. A quote floated through his head, “Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.” Mark Twain. Or Oscar Wilde.
Dief whuffed at him as soon as they were safely out of earshot.
“You can kindly keep your opinions to yourself.” Fraser snapped.
Well, it was not as if he wasn’t grateful. After much agonizing, he had decided that Francesca was the most likely to answer his seemingly innocent questions without needless teasing and a minimum of suspicion. He felt slightly guilty for taking advantage of her feelings in this fashion. Her feelings which would keep her willfully blind to the full implications of …well that was just ridiculous. No need to go jumping to conclusions.
You could not live long in the stark landscapes of the far northwest without developing a rich and varied inner life. Until recently, Fraser had considered his imagination one of his greatest assets. The ability to retreat into his own mind had served him well on countless patrols, stakeouts, guard duty, a thousand and one sleepless nights…he sighed. The problem was that he had grown far too accustomed to simply accepting his own version of reality. It was bound to get him into trouble, which was why he was taking such pains to confirm his intuition independently.
The original Ray Vecchio had reacted just as he had described to Francesca. The first time he had yanked his friend into the supply closet to close out the station’s excessive sensory input and assist his memory, Ray had seemed very nervous of the dark and exasperated with Fraser, but he didn’t seem, what was the word? Defensive?
Guiding his partner into the closet had seemed the only practical solution at the time, but most Americans, despite their pragmatic bent, seemed to walk around with a large unwritten list of what constituted appropriate masculine behavior, however impractical and counterintuitive those conventions might seem under dispassionate observation.
When Fraser had overheard the expression ‘in the closet’ tossed off casually, he’d had his suspicions. But he had wanted independent confirmation, because apparently prolonged contact with Fraser himself could slowly erode some preconceived notions of propriety. Lt. Harding Welsh, that stalwart individual, had drawn Fraser into the supply closet for a private word just yesterday.
He thumped down the stairs clutching his Stetson. He thought of himself as a reasonably confident individual. Surely there was some diplomatic way of ascertaining what he wanted to know…
“Hey, Frase!”
Fraser’s eyes flew up to meet Ray’s grinning visage and it was like looking through binoculars that suddenly focused. Everything suddenly seemed drawn into sharper relief. As Ray drew level to him in that leaping, loping hop-step up the stairs, Fraser couldn’t help but feel a little lighter himself. It was quite pleasant to find Ray so upbeat. In the wake of their last encounter with the Stella (Fraser couldn’t quite help thinking of her that way, it was singularly apt), Ray had been subdued and oddly absent.
But for the moment, Ray was snapping and crackling like a well-made fire. He made a clever little series of hand gestures as he approached Fraser, clicking and pointing his fingers in some kind of esoteric tribal greeting. Fraser reversed on his heels to follow Ray back up the stairs.
Ray rounded the bullpen with a quick word of acknowledgement for everyone with varying degrees of familiarity. He grabbed a file off his desk and spun around quickly before throwing himself backward into his chair, which rolled to stop just at the point where Ray could put his feet on the desk.
Momentarily, Fraser found himself envying Ray’s comfortable groove and shimmy with the physical world. Where Fraser dominated in the running, jumping and hurdling, Ray prevailed in the graceful sidestep, the swift, well-executed dance move. Fraser tilted his head to take in Ray’s sprawl, wondering if he could ever emulate Ray’s easy style. Ray was, to use the modern idiom, ‘cool’ in a way Fraser was sure he’d never be.
Ray looked up and raised an eyebrow, “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
Fraser snapped his head back upright so quickly, a muscle twinged in protest. “I beg your pardon, Ray. I was just wondering, ah, where you’d…purchased that shirt?”
As distracting conversational gambits went, it wasn’t one of Fraser’s best endeavors as the shirt in question was a ratty long-sleeved t-shirt with a distinctly unusual black and white pattern on it surrounded by the words ‘Nausea’ and ‘Extinction’.
Ray looked at him disbelievingly for a moment, and then pointedly raked his eyes over the serge. He tilted his chair back to an alarming angle, put his hands behind his head and grinned. “Big punk fan, are you, Frase? Gonna take me out this weekend to see Slaughter and the Dogs?”
Dief yipped anxiously and Ray shifted his focus from Fraser’s reddening face. He reached down to give Dief a quick, reassuring pet. “Laundry day, you know, this was all that was semi-clean at the back of the drawer. Let’s start again, okay? Good morning, Frase.”
“Good morning, Ray.”
“Got an idea last night, something you said at dinner.”
Fraser half-sat on one side of the desk. “The west side deaths.”
“Uh…yeah,” Ray punctuated this with a pause that said what else?
Fraser leaned forward avidly. A series of baffling deaths over the past two days scattered over the affluent Westside had the whole city in an uproar. A straight-A college student, two middle-aged housewives, a sought-after hairstylist and stock boy at a supermarket had all died in suspicious circumstances that the coroner finally ruled drug overdose just in time for the eleven o’clock news.
“Tribune led with it this morning,” Ray stuck one corner of a rubber band in his mouth and chewed meditatively. “Got kind of hysterical.”
“Five deaths, Ray,” Fraser returned.
“Yeah, and citizens.” Ray leaned forward, scowling. “So like you were saying last night, something about it just feels….wrong. Like you said, this is coming all out of the blue sky, and we’re all looking at it from the wrong angle. Not like these people who’ve never ridden the pony before are gonna suddenly start getting experimental with the big guns.”
“Ridden the pony, Ray?” Fraser took off the Stetson and cupped it.
Ray looked up from his file. “Done heroin, Frase.”
“Ah,” Fraser leaned back. “I stand by my theory of accidental ingestion.”
Ray bobbed his head. “And I’m right there with you, buddy.”
“But how?” Fraser asked the Stetson. He’d been turning this particular problem over in his head for two entire stints of guard duty. Heroin wasn’t typically something that you could ingest accidentally. Plus the victims didn’t patronize any of the same shops or restaurants where they might have eaten something contaminated and their lifestyles varied wildly.
Ray broke into his reverie. “I made some phone calls last night while you were doing whatever it is you do when you’re not here. Called in some favors.”
Fraser raised his eyebrows, “Favors like?”
“Coroner’s reports. Had to do some fast talking to land all five. It’s like cross-jurisdictional and everything.” Ray brandished his file. “Take a look-see.”
Fraser bent his head to the file, feeling Ray’s eyes on his face like warmth. He sifted through the faxes and photocopies of five different catalogues of death. Different generations, different races, genders, nothing seemed to match except that their autopsies had all come back with no evidence of force or coercion, just frighteningly high doses of opiates..
Ray leaned over, sticking his elbows on his knees. “Check the stomach contents.”
Fraser scanned the page. “Spaghetti, meatloaf, casserole…”
He could feel his fingers tingling as his awareness heightened. Fraser looked up into Ray’s grinning face. “Ground beef…”
“Bingo.” Ray spun the chair back to the desk. “Dinner of champions. So I’m looking….”
“Hard at the stock boy,” Fraser murmured.
“Clean.” Ray’s fingers danced over his filing system. “Clean as a whistle. Taking night classes in web design.”
Ray flipped open the file and slammed it down on the desk for emphasis. “So it’d be nice if they all shopped at the place the kid was working, right? But they don’t.”
Ray sucked on his lower lip and looked at Fraser expectantly. Fraser took the boy’s file off Ray’s desk unconsciously. His mind was starting to warm up and appreciate the complexities of the problem.
Lt. Welsh stuck his head out of the door and shouted, “Vecchio!”
“Sir!” Ray stood up, sending his wheeled chair into the wall, narrowly missing Dief who had also leaped up on the off chance that there were doughnuts.
Welsh flapped a hand in a way that was more command than invitation.
“Follow my lead, Frase,” Ray muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
Fraser nodded even while he realized that Ray couldn’t see him. Ray was already making a beeline for the Lieutenant’s office.
Ray squared up in front of Welsh’s desk in a carefully insouciant lean. Fraser made himself unobtrusive next to the door; this was Ray’s show. He loved to watch Ray interact with his superiors, the back-and-forth, the well-placed defiance, and all the wily, subtle ways that Ray prevailed over institutional inertia.
“That Marconi thing?” Welsh grunted when the door had swung shut.
“Done,” Ray made a show of slapping his hands together. “Dusted.”
“Where are you on Hodges?” Welsh’s questions came as fast as signals in semaphore.
“ASA’s gonna file, maybe not gonna file…” Ray shrugged. “They have every damn thing we got, and believe me, we…” He gestured lazily back at Fraser. “…squeezed that scumbag until he squeaked.”
Welsh seemed mollified by that. “What are you working on now?”
Ray tilted his head up and flicked an eye at Fraser. “We got a theory about the west side thing.”
“West side?” Welsh sat up a little. “This your lust for glory, Detective?”
Fraser could practically hear Ray’s eyeroll. “Certainly sir, I’m only in this to get my name in the paper…” Ray tapped a finger on his forehead. “…wait a second, what’s my name again?”
Welsh grimaced, which was Fraser’s cue to jump in and outline the salient parts of their theory, with Ray chiming in as needed.
“Again with the meat, Constable?” Welsh said tiredly.
“It might be tenuous, sir, but it
is something.” Fraser exercised all
his dignity at once. “I am given to understand that there isn’t much of a meat
processing industry left in
Welsh leaned back and tucked his hands behind his head. His normally impassive face got even more impassive as he thought. “That’s a hard business. You gotta be hard to do it.”
“You’re telling me,” Ray said under his breath, while Fraser covered. “So, we could probably ascertain the most obvious prospects with a minimum of surveillance and from there..”
Welsh waved a dismissive hand, unconcerned with the details.
“You have a day to work on this.” Welsh said with finality. “Get out there and get me something fast.”
Ray side-stepped out of Welsh’s office and regarded the room with an unseeing frown. “C’mon, gotta move, helps me think. Loop with me.”
Fraser fell into step with Ray as they walked in a circle around the halls of the station.
“We gonna pin all our hopes on the stomach contents?” Ray rubbed the tips of his fingers together. “Feels kind of thin.”
“It may seem a little farfetched on the face of it,” Fraser conceded. “But putting the theory into context…”
“That’s what we need here,” Ray interrupted. “Context.” Momentarily, he played invisible drumsticks on top of a filing cabinet.
“I mean enough heroin to kill you, it’d taste bitter, it’d make something taste off.” Ray wasn’t talking himself out of the theory, he was putting it out there for Fraser to attack or augment. He swiped a doughnut out of the communal box, took one enormous bite and alley-ooped the rest at Dief.
“But put it in something that is usually served highly spiced…” Fraser visualized the flimsy little bulbs of cellophane and Styrofoam that guarded most ground beef. Most people tried to touch minced meat as little as possible, most packages got sliced open and upended.
“Ground beef, where do you get it?” Ray asked rhetorically.
“Your local supermarket,” Fraser chimed in like he was the straight man in the comedy duo.
“And where do they get it?” Ray asked in a slight sing-song.
“Once, they’d have had their own
butcher’s department.” Fraser surmised. “But it’s uneconomical in a city like
Ray frowned expansively and flicked his thumbnail against his forehead a quick dozen times. He stopped abruptly, and waved Fraser through the door on the right.
In the limited confines of the supply closet, Ray’s spiky hair and elbows made him take up more space than was quite fair.
“People who deal with heroin are usually careful with it, Frase.” Ray folded his fingers over the top half of his face.
“But not because they’re careful people, Ray,” Fraser rejoined.
“No, you got me there,” Ray conceded. “They’re only careful ‘cause it’s worth a shedload of cash. Seems kind of far-fetched, though, getting hard drugs mixed in with meat.”
“Imagine a slaughterhouse. An abattoir.”
Ray unfolded his hands and squinted with disgust. “Yeeach.”
“Exactly, Ray. Not a place that gets casual visitors.”
Ray started tapping his knuckles together. “Yeah, yeah, now I see it. They’re half and halfing. They can use the distribution channels for the meat, just as easily as they can the horse, no one gets suspicious….”
“Deliveries that fool the casual observer…” Fraser started.
“Even the un-casual observer…” Ray finished. “It’s a good setup until someone fucks up and Grandpa Luigi makes a pasta puttanesca with a little extra kick.”
“So if we can find out where the victims purchased their meat, then work back to find out who supplied them…”
Ray laughed with pleasure. “Frase, I love you. We’re gonna get this sewn up by lunchtime.”
Fraser had been rocketing along with their theory when Ray’s casual admission kind of put a kink in his works. He fingered the smooth edge of the Stetson. Ray wasn’t in any way sincere, just communicating approval. Again, context. Context was everything.
Just then the door opened.
Huey blinked and said drily, “You guys still in the closet?”
Ray curled his lip up and laughed so exaggeratedly that he almost looked grotesque. “You’re hysterical.”
“I just want a pencil sharpener,” Huey put a guarding hand up. “No funny stuff.”
“Here,” Ray handed over a boxful of pencils, unsharpened, Fraser noticed. “These’re about as sharp as you.”
“Ha. Ha.” Huey rolled his eyes and shook his head at them as Ray bounced out the door and Fraser followed more sedately.
At the first red light, Ray fished out his cell phone and put it on the bench seat between them. “Call Francesca, see if she’s got anything yet.”
“It’s been twenty-two minutes since we gave her the particulars, Ray,” Fraser observed.
“So?”
Fraser thumbed his eyebrow, “Perhaps we shouldn’t expect essentially instantaneous results.”
“Hah,” Ray said. “You talk funny, you know that?” He grinned sidelong, and Fraser felt a little shiver of affection.
“Didn’t we have a case like this once?” Ray asked with that particular intonation on the pronoun that meant ‘you and Vecchio’.
Fraser nodded. “Similar. Only that started with the unsavory proposition that there were distinct capital advantages to cutting ground beef with ground horse. Real horse, I mean.”
Ray snorted disgustedly. “That is so wrong.”
“Indeed, Ray.” And Dief yipped his agreement from the backseat.
“Man, this whole thing is so…” Ray turned a shrug into a shiver. “Imagine it, stuff you buy at the supermarket every week except the one time it kills you. No rhyme or reason to it.”
“I feel it too, Ray.” Off Ray’s questioning look, Fraser explained. “The injustice.”
“Be nice if death only came to those who went looking for it,” Ray mused.
Fraser started. “Well, Ray, you know that…”
The cell phone trilled with what seemed like more than average urgency. Ray scooped it up, snapped it open and said without preamble.
“Hey, Frannie, what’d you get?”
Again it was like a dance move, and Fraser found himself admiring the way Ray talked out of the side of his mouth, checked the mirrors, tapped the horn and drove. Ray punctuated the one-sided conversation with a lot of ‘uh-huh’s and ‘Really?’s. He rang off and Fraser waited. Ray started talking as they pulled up to a stop sign.
“So she thinks she’s got something,” Ray quirked an eyebrow. Fraser quirked an eyebrow back at him.
Ray grinned and shifted into gear ostentatiously. “Used to be our main industry but, lucky for us, there aren’t that many meat processors left in town.”
“We just need one,” Fraser returned.
Ray shot him with a fingertip. “Bingo. She found one. Foreman don’t have much of a sheet. Kited some checks. But apparently he’s known associates with a whole raft of guys who don’t stick at much. And get this…place has been filing it’s paperwork, place has been hiring.”
Fraser’s mind raced. “I suppose there are money laundering opportunities galore…”
“It’s called Eickman’s Preferred Meats,” Ray interrupted. “Down on Seward, near the lake.”
Fraser braced himself, as Ray let the rev climb until the GTO roared.
“Man, that smell,” Ray shuddered exaggeratedly. “Haven’t smelled that since I was a kid. Can you imagine when the whole city smelled like that?”
“Yes, well,” Fraser focused hard
on the door, “It’s been a while since the days of the Jungle. Since
Ray narrowed his eyes, “Do not. I repeat, do not quote the poem at me.”
“Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler.” Fraser couldn’t slow his momentum in time.
Ray held up one finger and hissed ‘Quoting the poem!” as if it were the sharpest of rebukes.
Everything at the meat packing plant looked normal. That is to say it looked kind of noxious and depressing, but Fraser acknowledged to himself that that was the normal state of play for what was essentially a slicked-up slaughterhouse.
“When do you think the day shift ends?” Fraser passed the binoculars back to Ray who was starting to fidget.
Ray shrugged, “They probably do a seven-to-three, or maybe six-to-two? Dunno.”
From their vantage point in a convenient alleyway, they had a clear view of what was not just a loading dock, but also appeared to be the main entrance. A few tired-looking men in oddly pristine white coats and tall rubber boots had been standing around smoking when they arrived, but had vanished back inside with an air of reluctance after a few moments.
Fraser glanced at Ray’s cell phone, it was a couple of minutes past two now. And sure enough, tough-looking, heavyset men began to dribble out in clusters, some heaving themselves tiredly into beat-up cars, others walked out of eyeshot up the street toward the bus stop.
Ray was flicking the hollow of his cheek in a way that made a tick-tocking noise louder than Fraser would have thought possible. He considered asking Ray if he’d ever lived among the Kalahari Bushmen, then dismissed the possibility as remote.
Just then Ray leaned forward, suddenly the picture of alertness. Even the spikes of his hair looked sharp and ready. “Check that out, Frase.”
Fraser turned back to the loading dock where a panel truck had backed into one of the open bays. Fraser leaned forward to observe at an oblique angle where a couple of nervous-looking men were loading innocuous-looking white boxes.
“Does it look legit?” Ray didn’t have the same unobstructed view and had slid over the bench seat to crane his neck at the truck. He was suddenly surprisingly close.
Fraser touched his tongue to the back of his lower lip. “No.”
Ray frowned at the scene, lifted the binoculars and let his frown deepen. “Looks legit to me.”
“Look closer,” At this distance, Fraser could smell each separate component of Ray’s morning toilette. It was strangely dizzying. “Those boxes are labeled USDA prime cuts.”
“So?” Ray hitched himself forward and his jacket’s cuffs brushed Fraser’s sleeve.
When he turned his head, he could almost whisper in Ray’s ear. “Note how they’re carrying them. If those boxes were what they said they were; they would be heavier.”
Ray glanced at him then, and grinned. “You da man, Fraser.”
“Perhaps,” Fraser reached for the door handle.
“Whoa,” Ray grabbed his sleeve, like a snake striking. “Where are you going?”
“See the edge of that window, Ray?” Fraser pointed. “I could get a better idea of the interior layout with one look. Plus ascertain if the day shift workers are implicated.”
For a second he thought Ray would demur, but Ray just scrutinized him for a second and released his arm. Fraser turned around and held his finger to his lips, encouraging Diefenbaker to stay silent. They took care not to slam the car doors.
When they had made their way to the windows of the plant with sufficient stealth, Fraser took his Stetson off to minimize his shadow, stood up straight and filled his eyes with the dim fluorescent interior of the factory. The day was overcast, for which he was thankful. Ray looked a question at him and Fraser nodded toward the back of the building which covered the whole city block.
Ray nodded and Fraser made his way back through a series of alleyways to where he had noticed an unguarded door on the opposite side. Ray stopped him at the mid-way point, “What’s the story, do I call in back-up? What did you see?”
Fraser kept his eyes moving, but so far they appeared to have gone unseen. “If we can gain entry on this side, there should be several points where we can observe the floor without being seen….”
“Fraser, this is sounding like a backup-type situation here,” Ray was shaking his head. “I mean, either we go in there with the shields out, or we keep…”
“Ray, considering all the media coverage,” Fraser focused hard on Ray’s chin which was looking particularly stubborn. “Time is of the essence. We should simply ascertain quickly if this is a dead end. We can call the station as soon as we’ve established that our persons of interest are here.”
Ray frowned but he fell into step. By the time they’d circled the back lot, Ray had shoved on his glasses.
The back door was open. Which did not bode well for the establishment being a hive of drug crime, but then, obviously, these people were careless. He looked at Ray who nodded and they X-ed through the door, one-two and then they were inside back-to-back. They were up on a landing, semi-guarded from sight by a thick pylon.
The smells, sounds and assorted sensory overload of the rather disgusting business of protein supply were muted; indicating definitively that the shift had ended. Fraser gestured silently and Ray nodded, they crept toward the sound of voices that filtered up from the floor twelve feet below.
The metal of the landing chinked when they walked, but there was enough noise to cover it. Fraser kept low and stopped abruptly when a white-coated, hard-hat-wearing man passed diagonally on the floor far below. The man glanced up at him, but didn’t slow. Fraser glanced back at Ray who was shaking his head in disbelief.
The air was chopped with currents of steam heat and icy chill and overlaid with a truly hallucinatory combination of scents. Ray jerked his chin toward a row of vats toward the back where a cluster of the white coats appeared to be discussing something avidly.
Four of the white coats were remonstrating with a large man who wore a puffy jacket that doubled his already-ample proportions. Unexpectedly, the man’s voice was almost childishly petulant and he was practically stomping his feet in annoyance.
“Lou, why do I gotta be the one driving
the product over to
“Look, I’m not the cocksucker who got his panties so twisted when the FSIS showed up, that he ended up dumping product into the grinder!” Lou sounded terminally aggravated. “Cause of you, we could get permanent heat. You’re an asshole and you’re our driver, so that’s it.”
“But Lou, it ain’t…” the big man tried once more, sounding if possible, even more strained and high-pitched.
“It ain’t up for discussion!” the foreman bellowed. “Get moving!”
“Fraser,” Ray’s voice came over his shoulder in an urgent whisper. “If they move…”
“We’ll just have to slow them down, Ray.” Fraser funneled the words out of the corner of his mouth. Luckily, the white-coated men moved off swiftly, leaving the hapless driver to uncrush his hat and fish his keys out of his pocket. Fraser took a deep, satisfied breath and leaped over the landing’s rail directly in front of the by-now-very-surprised driver.
“Excuse me,” Fraser said, thrusting out his hand for the keys. “If you would give those to me, please.”
The big man actually boggled for a moment, before he decided to throw a punch. Fraser had ample time to plan the graceful feint and twist that jerked the man’s hamlike hand behind his back. Fraser unthreaded the jingling ring of keys from his fingers easily and tossed them to Ray who was still rocketing down the stairs.
Ray plucked the keys out of the air. He rattled them in his hand and made what Fraser interpreted as a ‘let’s get the hell out of here’ gesture.
Unexpectedly, the big man stomped a foot down on Fraser’s boot and elbowed him hard in the solar plexus. Then displaying the sudden grace of a gazelle, the driver bulled up the stairs, right over Ray, snatching the keys from his hand. Dief growled and snapped at the man, keeping him from the back door, but he hared off down the landing, deep into the heart of the plant.
Fraser managed to make the staircase in four strides and Ray was on his heels in seconds. Ray had drawn his gun and it pulled his arms down into a deep V. Ray nodded at him when Fraser glanced back. Fraser continued further into the bowels of the plant, placing his feet lightly for maximum speed with minimum noise.
Fraser could hear their target, his steps sounded muffled now and mixed with the screech and rumble of meat on hooks, the jittering, juddering hum of a conveyor belt. Fraser took a breath and isolated the steps from the rest of the noise. This way…
The big man darted into the open and Fraser threw himself over the side of the catwalk again, missing the soft landing of the man’s broad, down-covered back by inches. The keys went skittering, but Fraser barely noticed. The thrill of the chase was starting to tunnel his vision and he rolled up to his feet and dashed after their prey who was even now disappearing through a blue-lit doorway. Fraser could feel Ray’s labored breathing behind him as he ran. Through the door, Fraser lost sight contact with their suspect…they were in a maze of beef.
As soon as he pulled up out of his headlong dash, he felt the peculiar muted chill and fleshy scent slap into his face. He looked back at Ray who was panting, helplessly flushed and glaring about angrily as if his eyes were laser beams. Fraser had no trouble isolating the sound of their quarry; he even caught a flash of the man’s bug-eyed face as he tore through the sides of beef. The crunch, crunch, crunch of rubber boots on frost was easy to follow as was…
A steel door clanging shut.
Oh dear.
Ray made a quick circuit of the confines of their prison
“Fraser, we’re stuck in here!” Ray’s voice had a note in it that Fraser hadn’t heard before. Panic, perhaps. Ray didn’t seem to be giving into it yet, but his usual energy seemed now almost manic as he turned frantically back and forth.
“Yes,” Fraser examined every wall in turn for an emergency release switch. Unfortunately, the freezer unit appeared to have been manufactured before 1982 when all such units became required by law to include emergency release switches and often internal temperature controls. However, this unit appears to have been constructed sometime circa 1979 and thus…
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAhHHHHHH!”
Fraser’s internal monologue was interrupted by Ray’s bellow. Ray’s yell reverberated through the frozen shell of the locker and seemed to set all the carcasses to swaying. Ray had turned his head up to roar like a lion. Then Ray was looking at him with eyes like twin blue flames. Then he realized that maybe his monologue hadn’t been quite as internal as he’d thought.
“The big issue isn’t the goddamned age of the fucking freezer unit, Fraser,” Ray said, cutting off his words very precisely. “Though I appreciate that only you would know that. Only you.”
Typically, by this point, Ray would be very close to exploding, so Fraser responded by merely raising his eyebrows.
Apparently that was just enough to set Ray off.
“Only you, would say hey ‘we should simply ascertain blah, blah, blah’… And only you would take off after them without fucking pausing to call for back-up and only me with my special brand of luck would we find ourselves locked in a meatlocker, Fraser. A meatlocker! With meat!” Ray punctuated his angry tirade by gesturing at sides of beef as if he’d like to introduce them but couldn’t remember their names.
“Don’t worry, Ray,” Fraser held up what he hoped was a reassuring hand. “This has happened to me before.”
Ray continued as fast as if Fraser hadn’t actually spoken. “And now you tell me that this has somehow happened to you before? That locked-in-a-meat-locker is not a unique life experience for Constable Benton Fraser, RCMP?”
“Well,” Fraser extemporized. Often if Ray’s rage couldn’t be deterred, it could at least be distracted. “The experience was somewhat different.”
Ray tapped his foot as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. His whole posture was bent to the question, different how?
Fraser continued cautiously, “For example, Ray Vecchio and I were imprisoned with illegal wild horse meat…And this appears to be quite legal, farm-bred American beef.”
“That’s comforting, Frase.” Ray sneered. “Good to know that I’m gonna die in good company.”
“I assure you, Ray that Diefenbaker is even now going for help.”
Ray narrowed his eyes, “Frase, you do realize that this is a meat locker, which is attached to a slaughterhouse and that, as you mentioned before, there is a lot of farm-bred American beef lying around. Dief’s only human. He’s gonna take a detour or two.”
“Ray, Diefenbaker has never let his appetites get in the way of his duty.” Fraser couldn’t stop the collar-tug. “Except for…well, then when…well, never more than twice.”
Ray mumbled, “I can’t believe this.”
“I’m sorry, Ray,” Fraser said, his whole chest aching with sincerity and the sharp bite of the super-cooled air.
“I gotta say, it’s a unique life experience for me,” Ray raised his head to glare at Fraser piercingly. “But at the same time, it is just so fucking typical.”
Stung, Fraser turned back to tap on the door. He jerked on a shelving unit, wondering if he could perhaps re-purpose it as a battering ram or a lever. Stalactites of frost rendered it almost immovable.
“Whatarewegonnadowhatarewegonnadowhatarewegonnado?” Ray shuffled on the floor like he was in a boxing ring. He’d closed his eyes and bowed his head while rubbing his knuckles compulsively, Ali putting on his game face.
“Think warm thoughts, Ray.” Fraser said before he could stop himself.
“That’s it? That’s the big Mountie trick?” Ray’s head snapped up. “Think fucking warm thoughts? What the fuck are warm thoughts, Fraser?”
“Well, you could…”
Ray was now bouncing and jerking like every moment of contact with the floor was giving him tiny electric shocks. “Thoughts aren’t warm, Fraser. Take a thought, put it with a feeling that could be warm. Warmish. Take a thought, add feeling and then do something and then, maybe, you’re cooking. Then maybe you’re on fire.”
Fraser watched very closely, but Ray didn’t make a move for his gun to blast the lock. Ray seemed to have already sensed the innate futility in that course of action. Ray contented himself with bobbing up and down, and then punched one of the carcasses like it was a heavy bag. Ray recoiled with a yelp and shook his bruised knuckles. Fraser winced in sympathy and turned away. There weren’t any chairs, but he found the remains of a rather large cardboard box and dragged it out to the space at the front of the locker.
Ray was closing his cell phone with a grimace. Fraser noticed that he was already having trouble stuffing it back into his pocket.
“Ray,” Fraser didn’t make too much of an effort to sound bluff and hearty, surely Ray had already realized that their circumstances were far from dire. “Frannie and by extension Lieutenant Welsh know where we are. Diefenbaker is also on the case, so at this point it is only a waiting game. The ambient temperature is…”
Ray waved his hand impatiently as if saying it out loud would make it so. Fraser shut up.
“Fraser it’s really f-f-f-f-fucking c-c-c-cold in here,” Ray’s jitters had taken on an even more desperate quality that made Fraser’s chest ache from more than cold. “What do we do?”
Ray blinked rapidly and then seemed to make a conscious effort to stop shivering. “I mean, you survived this before, right? What do we do?” He repeated several times under his breath whatdowedo, whatdowedo. It almost sounded like a bird call.
“Well,” Fraser sighed. The vision of last time this had happened telescoped back into his memory with stark clarity. “We could take cuts of this meat and drape it over ourselves. It would insulate us somewhat against the air and buy us some time from hypothermia.”
Ray looked at him with eyes so wide that Fraser could see the whites all the way around Ray’s irises. “Are you insane? Isn’t there something else we could do? Without festooning ourselves in flesh?”
“Well,” Fraser took a deep breath. “We could button our coats together and huddle very closely…share our body heat and…”
But Ray was already bulling forward, practically thrusting his hands into Fraser’s tunic’s cuffs. “Yeah, thank you for the freaking obvious suggestion. I mean, really, what’s wrong with you? What’s it gonna take for you to think like a normal person? Drape ourselves in meat!” As Ray shook his head, he was snugging his chin down into Fraser’s neck and jamming his hands up under Fraser’s armpits.
Fraser took a deep breath which nearly made him cough with the chill. “Not like that. Like this.”
He unbuttoned his tunic and Ray guided his hands instinctively underneath his sleeves and around his back. Ray’s breath was steamy-cool on the side of his neck. Fraser threaded his own arms under Ray’s collar and along his shoulder blades. He was instantly warmer, if slightly more uncomfortable.
“What do we do now?” Ray’s hair brushed his eyebrow.
“Come with me,” Fraser tugged Ray who went willingly, like the better-than-average dance partner he undoubtedly was. Fraser stepped onto the piece of cardboard like it was the winning move in a chess game. He started to kneel and after a second, Ray went with him, except it wasn’t quite so graceful. More like wrestling than dancing. They finally got settled in a crouching, half-lean that was in no way comfortable, but the effort had warmed Fraser and Ray was hitching in what Fraser finally realized were chuckles.
“Thought we should s-stay up?” Ray snickered into his ear. “Heat rises and all?”
“You should stop talking,” Fraser said firmly into Ray’s hairline. “Wastes heat. Heat does usually rise, but in here the cooling units are up at those ducts,” Fraser indicated with his chin. “So we’ll stay low.”
Ray paused for almost a minute, and then shook his head a little. “Sorry, but this is t-too weird if I don’t talk.”
“Fine,” Fraser sighed. “Please talk.”
Ray hesitated. Perhaps he’d been expecting an argument. Fraser blinked and tried not to flinch or twitch as Ray’s breath tickled the side of his neck rhythmically.
“My dad did this….did I ever tell you that?” Ray started.
Fraser was suddenly full of warmth, an upwelling in his belly, a slight sting in his cheeks. Something like shame and sympathy warred for dominance in his chest. “I can see it’s a hard job.”
“It’s the f-fucking worst,” Ray coughed a little and shrugged lightly. Fraser felt the ripple of his shoulders underneath the tent of the tunic. Ray went on, “OK, maybe being a coal miner is worse. Dunno. But the old man did this every day for twenty-five years, so…he wasn’t…. He wasn’t just half a hardass, right?”
Fraser swallowed. “Was that…?”
“Yeah,” Ray paused again. “Yeah, it was.”
“He must’ve been glad you escaped,” Fraser surmised blindly.
Ray took a deep breath, “I don’t think I can really say I’ve escaped now, can I, Frase?”
Ray lifted one shoulder and it bumped Fraser on the chin. “I mean, here we are in the thick of it: drugs and death and blood and corruption…”
“There will be a little less,” Fraser forced assurance into his voice. “By the end of the day.”
“Yeah, well, by then I’ll be a Copsicle and I won’t get to enjoy it,” Ray said, direly. “Of all the ways to go, ‘stuck with Fraser in a freezer’ didn’t even crack my top ten. My mom’s gonna have fits trying to write my obituary.”
“Ray,” Fraser took a chance and pressed the side of his cheek into Ray’s hairline. “We’re not going to die.”
“Says you,” Ray said softly. Fraser blinked. He wondered when Ray had stopped shivering; surely he should have noticed when Ray had stopped shivering. He squeezed Ray tightly, tight enough to make Ray grunt in alarm.
“Hey quit it,” Ray glared and Fraser’s heart rejoiced. “How’d you do that thing, earlier?”
“Could you be more specific?” Fraser leaned down to nudge the brim of the Stetson up, so Ray could push in a little closer.
“That thing where that guy looked straight at you and then, like, through you like you were invisible.”
“Ah,” Fraser tilted his chin and Ray obligingly arched into Fraser’s neck. “A form of cognitive dissonance, Ray.”
“What’s a cognitive dissonance ray?” Ray asked after a second. “That’s like some kind of neuraliser, like from Men in Black?”
“Uhm, no,” Fraser blinked and wondered how far Ray’s hypothermia had progressed. He didn’t seem to be making much sense. “Cognitive dissonance is the difficulty that most people have experiencing two contradictory ideas at once.”
“You’re losing me,” Ray rubbed his nose in Fraser’s collar.
“Simply the psychological fact that if people see something sufficiently out of the ordinary in the span of their ordinary day, they will not actually ‘see’ it.” Fraser took turns flexing one muscle, then another.
“Are you saying,” Ray let out a chuckle in a cloud of condensation. “That you’re too weird to be seen?”
“How often does the average Chicagoan expect to see a Mountie?” Fraser asked and in his own mind he sounded very reasonable. “In their place of business, I mean?”
Ray snorted a little, “Yeah, you got me there. Not me though.” He pulled back and Fraser could feel Ray’s peripheral gaze. “I’d always notice you.”
“Well,” Fraser said. “You’re trained to observe.”
Ray laughed softly and then was quiet for almost five minutes.
“You’ve almost frozen to death before, haven’t you?
“Yes.” Fraser sighed and it made Ray twitch. “Several times.”
“Tell me.”
He wondered when that story,
which had been if not easy to tell, at least tellable, had become such a leaden
weight. He opened his mouth and thought, I caught this morning, morning’s
minion…and shuddered. Instead, he said quickly, “They tell me you are wicked and I believe
them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm
boys…”
He expected Ray to protest, but Ray just
snickered softly again, the faintest warm breath in his ear. Ray even recited
along with him for a while, “Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging
magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger
set vivid against the little soft cities…” Ray’s voice caught on the tall
and bold. His face was putty-white.
But then Ray’s head lolled back alarmingly
and Fraser twisted his arm free to reach up and clutch at him, crackling fingers
in Ray’s hair, shaking Ray a little, speaking over him like it was an
incantation: “Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man
laughs, Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a
battle…”
Not
this time, thought Fraser.
Not now.
He tightened his arm and gathered Ray closer
in, lover-close, wanting to feel Ray recoil, feel him protest. “Ray, open your
eyes now.” Under his wrist is the
pulse…Ray’s eyes fluttered a flash of ice-blue for a second, then
closed.
Ray was far too relaxed. His hands on
Fraser’s back felt held in place by Fraser’s tunic drawn tight. He looked young;
the iridescent hollows around his eyes made him look young and ethereal, like
some kind of postmodern inversion of Sleeping Beauty. Fraser shook him and Ray’s
head was heavy and limp on his forearms. Fraser pressed their foreheads
together, it was slightly reassuring to feel Ray’s faint breath on his lips.
“I’m sorry, Ray,” Fraser didn’t mean to, but it came out as a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
Ray’s eyelashes fluttered again, so fragile. Ray lolled into Fraser’s sleeve, but his lips were moving.
Fraser curled down to hear what Ray was saying, when he heard a distinctive yip! and the door clanged open so violently that it knocked frost off the walls. Jack Huey leaned in and then back out hollering, ‘In here! Get the medics!” Fraser managed to pull himself upright slowly, feeling like his bones might just crack. When he bent to help Ray, Diefenbaker started enthusiastically licking his frozen ears.
He had lifted Ray into a half lean which would make Ray easy to drag out through the sudden rush of warmer air, when Ray fluttered into action like a trout flicking back to life when placed back in a river.
He placed Ray back up on his feet carefully and Ray managed to stay there after a couple of false starts. Welsh’s bulk blotted out the light from the plant for a moment.
Ray slurred slightly, but managed to say perfectly audibly, “Sir, please tell me that you’ve got all those douchebags in custody.”
“I have an impressive inventory of douchebags, Vecchio,” Welsh looked almost comfortable in his greatcoat. “Perhaps even enough to satisfy you.”
Welsh grabbed Ray as he started to sag forward. With Fraser bookending him, they managed to get Ray out into the plant which now felt as humid and tropical as a greenhouse.
“Sir, did Diefenbaker…” Fraser wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to ask.
“They were moving out, Constable,” Lieutenant Welsh said sonorously. “As our people say: good save.”
Lieutenant Welsh examined Ray critically. Ray was already exchanging some curt and unhelpful phrases with the EMT who was trying to wrap him in a thermal. “Look, I am not playing pig in a blanket with you, buddy. I’m fine. I just need a couple of cups of coffee…”
Fraser sighed. Welsh looked at him, not without sympathy.
“Go home, Constable,” Welsh advised. “Defrost.”
Hours later, when he’d finally managed to draw himself down onto his cot, he turned the day back and forth in his mind. He couldn’t read tonight, or listen to the radio. He’d walked for miles with Dief and he was still restless. Too close today. The food he’d forced himself to eat still sat below his chest, brick-like. He lectured himself for a long moment until the bed practically swayed underneath him.
Post lecture, he relaxed. Ray was tough. Fraser struggled to find an adequate simile, but they all seemed woefully insufficient. Tough as old hickory. Tough as nails. Ray would be fine.
He relaxed further. When a wave of sleepiness broke over him, he stirred uneasily for a moment. The prickle of his wool blanket reassured him. Dief’s furry warmth radiated up from the floor. It was safe now, he could sleep.
Memory slinked over him like a thief.
He still felt the crackle of Ray’s hair in his fingers. If he brushed his fingernail over the curve of his top lip, he could almost imagine it was Ray’s eyebrow.
The thin shadow of those words from Ray’s blue-tinged mouth. Only you, Fraser, only you.
Context, Fraser reflected, was everything.
The end.
HOG Butcher for the
World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of
Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's
Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky,
brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I
believe them, for I
have seen your painted women
under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And
they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On
the
faces of women and children I have seen the
marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I
turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city,
and I give them back the sneer
and say to
them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong
and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job
on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid
against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping
for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the
wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building,
breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing
with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of
destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing
even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never
lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the
pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the
people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter
of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be
Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player
with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the
Nation.