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Ray Kowalski knows: how to throw a punch, a jab, an uppercut. The left hook drives off the left foot-- pull the right elbow in close to the body, the right hand tight to the cheek. The upper body's torsion adds power to the blow. Knights get stronger as they advance up the board. When you station your knight to attack, defend it with a pawn. Most people won't attack a pawn with anything but another pawn. A full house beats a flush beats a straight. If your tires are worn in the middle and not on the sides, let some air out. If there's wear on the inside and outside edges, add some air in. When playing chess, go complex. When the shit hits the fan, go simple. When dancing, stop thinking.
He doesn't know much about art. He knows what he likes: Monet, the Impressionists, the kind of thing that looks more real with his glasses off. Don't fuck with the radiator cap or hoses when the engine's hot, and don't pour used coolant in the gutter. Don't say Who lit the fuse on her tampon? around the Mountie. Any Mountie. Sometimes Ray feels like the pawn to Fraser's knight, the useless accessory doomed to play dumb. Sometimes he feels like he's going under, and he doesn't know how to swim.
Benton Fraser knows: how to tie a bowline knot, tiller's hitch, sheepshank or sailor's knot. Under ideal conditions, over four thousand stars can be seen with the naked eye. To make pemmican, slice your kill into long strips, knead in salt, and smoke the meat over green twigs. When deprived of water, hold a pebble in your mouth to stimulate saliva production and reduce feelings of thirst. It is the duty of all members who are peace officers, subject to the orders of the commissioner, to perform those duties that are assigned to them as peace officers in relation to the preservation of peace and the prevention of crime and offenses against the laws of Canada.
When birds fly low to the ground, a storm is coming. A wolf's feet will track closer together than a dog's tracks will. In protected environments, wolves can live up to sixteen years. Revenge is a wild kind of justice; the more man's nature runs to it, the more ought law to weed it out. Fraser hasn't been entirely successful at weeding certain impulses out of his own nature. Alternately, sometimes he thinks he may have so thoroughly rooted them out that nothing will ever grow again. It's a complicated knot, and he doesn't know how to untie it on his own.
Ray Vecchio knows: who to tip, and how much. What to say to the concierge, the maitre d' and the sommelier; the bookie, the junkie and the fence. How to talk to women, whether strippers, nuns or assistant state's attorneys. That the Criminal Courts Building on 26th has the most felony courtrooms under one roof in the entire country. That as a general rule, you can't go wrong if your trousers match your socks. There have been over a thousand permanently unsolved gang-related murders in Chicago in the last hundred years. A quality red should be served at a temperature between fifty-nine and sixty-five degrees. Some are born killers but nobody's wholly innocent. You can love your kids, love your mother, go to church every Sunday and still, in the moment, make a mistake.
There's no us and them. No line-- thin, blue or otherwise-- between civilians and offenders. Anyone can be that desperate, that stupid, that angry. Anyone. He didn't know that Fraser took Victoria's gun away from her before she got on that train. It was the kind of thing Fraser expected him to know, the kind of thing he'd always counted on Ray knowing. He should've known but he didn't. He pulled the trigger.
The best game in Vegas is blackjack. Only suckers play the slots.