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He was waiting for a knock on the door of an apartment that was starting to feel a lot like a cage. Nothing to eat in the fridge, nothing worth watching on tv, nothing but brick and grime out the blind alley window. Benny was gone; Ray’d come back from the airport without him half an hour ago, and the back of him in flannel with the stetson on top was probably the last he’d ever see of the man. His family was across town, but at least he’d have another week in which to dread saying his goodbyes to them before the Feds threw him into the snakepit.
Ray crossed the tiny, barely-furnished hole the Feds used as a secret briefing room and opened a closet door to reveal a small vault. Too small to hide in, he thought with a flicker of a smile. He unlocked it, combination long-since memorized, and took out a folder to peruse while he waited for Agents Blowhard and Dumbass to bring him the latest updates. They were supposed to stagger their arrivals by a few minutes, so he had some time to kill. He moved to the ratty old couch and sat down to a rusty chorus of springs, feeling like his rake thin frame somehow held a thousand pounds.
He opened the file but didn’t look at it. “How did I end up here?” he said out loud, on the off-chance St. Jude or Gabriel or someone would fly in through the window and make sense out of this insanity.
“Well, Ray, from what I’ve seen in that file you’re reading, it seems that you’re the only man for a rather improbable, yet exceedingly — perhaps excessively — important job.”
It figured Fraser would give him the insane answer.
“I realize that, Fraser. I’m saying metaphysically. What did I do to deserve this? Was I Jack the Ripper in a past life? Does God just hate me? It’s not like I’ve led a sin-free life, I know this, but I always figured that’s what all the Hail Marys were for.”
“Oh now Ray, I don’t believe deserving has anything to do with this.” Ray could almost see him sitting beside him on the couch, decked out in the brown uniform (hey, it was his own mind at work here) and looking like the patron saint of lost Vecchios.
“Then what does? Bad luck?”
“Well, perhaps. But if anything I think it’s fortuitous. After all, the odds of Langoustini’s double not only growing up in the same neighbourhood as the Chicago mob, but being a gifted undercover officer and therefore one of the few men capable of surviving this mission, are remarkably slim.”
“Not slim enough,” Ray said with a sigh, and let his head fall back against the cushion, tossing the file onto the wooden coffee table in front of him. He closed his eyes and breathed the stale, dusty air in deep before jiggling the dagger in his side like some kind of masochist. “I could still back out,” he said.
“Will you?” Fraser’s tone was the leading one he used on the witnesses and perps who turned into heroes as soon as someone in a red suit put faith in them. Ray opened his eyes and met Fraser’s.
“You know, Benny, before I met you I wouldn’t’ve even gotten to this point. I’d’ve said ‘no’ the instant the Feds showed up at my desk.”
Fraser was still regarding him with the kind of respectful solemnity purse-snatchers and would-be murderers saw more often than he did. “No, I don’t believe that. Dangerous or not, it’s the right thing to do — this mission could save countless lives. The potential for good is incalculable.”
“Believe it. The only good I would’ve saw three years ago was the money I’d leave behind for my family after the Iguanas whacked me, and it wouldn’t’ve been that good.”
“And now?”
“God, I don’t know.” He leaned forward, pressed his palms to his forehead and sighed. Then he looked back up at Fraser. If he was ever gonna really wish he’d never met the guy, now would be the time, but he guessed he never would. “You know, if you were coming with me I wouldn’t even think twice?”
“I think,” Fraser said, his lips quirking in a way that, in contrast to the respect, looked familiar directed at him, “taking me undercover with you would considerably lessen your odds of survival.”
Ray laughed — he couldn’t deny that. “Yeah, but — I don’t know, somehow we’re just so good as a team. I mean, okay, sure, it’s mostly you, but even I’m better when you’re around.” He stood up abruptly and began to pace, feeling hot and jittery all of a sudden. “Maybe I just try harder when I got someone to impress. Or some crazy Canadian ideal to live up to.”
Fraser rubbed his brow with a thumb as he said, almost regretfully, “I do seem to arouse a sense of duty in others.”
“It’s the uniform,” Ray said absently, wondering what the hell it was himself. Since Fraser had walked into his life he’d risked it nearly fifty times and counting. His number of open cases went down, his total hours spent staring at off-white hospital walls went up, and on top of it all he’d started wearing suits again, like it mattered, like he mattered. Overall, Ray guessed his life was better now than it was before, but he doubted he’d be thinking the same in a month’s time with a lizard’s gun pressed to the back of his head.
Because the thing was he wasn’t even considering backing out. Heaven knew he wanted to, but luck or fate or God had dealt him this hand and if he folded — his family would thank him, Welsh would understand, the Feds would be pissed off which was always a good thing in Ray’s book, but Benny… Benny would look at him with that resigned disappointment that made Ray feel lower than dirt. How could Ray look him in the eye if he told the Feds to fuck off now? Knowing that he could have, hell, could’ve brought down the mob’s highest ups, maybe, and half the organization with them, if he threw himself against this domino.
He could take on anything but Fraser’s disappointment, and that was the damned truth. He leaned heavily against the counter in the little kitchen corner where he found himself and slammed the palm of his hand down hard on the press-board top. The thud was dull and mostly absorbed by the counter which just frustrated him more.
He’d known for a long time that Fraser would get him killed someday. The man was a menace with his uniforms and his stories and his big brown eyes. Ray looked at him, there on his couch, life-size and vivid as the real thing. Fraser returned his gaze with pure, comforting understanding and support, the kind that would crumble into resigned disappointment if his impossible standards remained unmet.
Two hours ago, in the Riv on the way to the airport, Ray had turned to Fraser, his hands tight on the steering wheel, and said, “Hey Benny, tell me an Inuit story.”
“You want to hear an Inuit story?” Fraser had asked in disbelief. Ray’s knuckles were turning white.
“What, is that a crime? I can never get you to shut up, but the one time I express a little interest in your abiding passion for storytelling you got nothing?”
“Well, what would you like to hear?”
“Your favourite. Tell me your favourite, never-fails-to-save-the-day, strength-in-the-face-of-adversity-and-snow story. Please.”
Fraser had hesitated. “I try to be aware of what any given person needs to hear at the right moment. I don’t have a favourite. I often make them up on the spot.”
“Like I couldn’t’ve guessed. But you’ve gotta have a favourite story.”
“Well… I have a favourite song that might be applicable. Would you like me to sing it?”
“Not on your life,” he answered, turning onto the highway. He started to speed up so he could pass the station wagon crawling down the road in front of him but then decided against it. Fraser had a good two hours to navigate Canadian customs, where they probably accepted a sincere promise that you weren’t smuggling drugs into the country. He wasn’t gonna rush. “Just give me the gist.”
“Northwest Passage, by Stan Rogers.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s about a man traveling through northern Canada, retracing the steps taken by the old explorers like John Franklin. I suppose it’s really about feeling out of place, and finding a sense of purpose. Legend has it that Franklin froze to death reaching out for the Beaufort Sea — his destination. The narrator is on a quest to find his reaching hand and complete the journey.”
That wasn’t anything like what Ray had been hoping to hear. “Kinda morbid,” he managed in response.
“Yes,” Fraser agreed. “I always admired the idea of a man so resolute that even in death he was reaching for his goal.”
“And you’re the most out-of-place guy I know. Yeah I can see why you’re a big fan of this song.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, and though he honestly did try to contain himself, he couldn’t manage it for more than a few seconds. “See, this is your problem in a nutshell, Benny. There are more important things out there than dying in the line of duty. Things like family and friends and, and classic cars and homemade lasagna and wolves. Going out of your way to die alone in the cold on the off-chance you do some good while you’re out there is the stupidest thing I can think of.”
He stopped, and wondered if Fraser’s hackles were going to rise, if they were going to spend probably their last few minutes together arguing because Ray couldn’t shut up. Because he was terrified of dying, and terrified of somehow making it out alive and coming back to Chicago only to find that Fraser’s apparently improvised Inuit stories had finally failed him while Ray was thousands of miles away from the trajectory of whatever bullet had left a hole a few inches below his hat.
Fraser glanced at him, looking curious from what Ray could see out of the corner of his eye. Trust Sherlock the Mountie to figure out that something was up beyond Ray’s typical complaining. He didn’t ask though. Instead he said, “You know, Ray — the last verse of the song may be more pertinent: ‘I left a settled life, I threw it all away to seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men — to find there but the road back home again.’”
“So what, at the end of the day he gives up and goes home?” Ray wasn’t sure that helped.
“I would suggest, rather, that he found what he was looking for in the course of his journey, and at the end of it his home was still waiting for him when he returned.”
“You have terrible taste in music,” he told the phantom sitting on the couch.
“Northwest Passage is considered by many to be Canada’s unofficial national anthem,” Fraser said, affecting an air of woundedness.
“What, not the hockey night in Canada theme?”
“To my knowledge it’s never been put to a vote.” Ray was really gonna miss that little twitch of Fraser’s lips that wasn’t a smile itself but let you infer a smile if you knew him well enough.
At the airport Ray had pulled up to departures and gotten out to help Fraser with his suitcase, unnecessarily. Then he’d asked if Fraser wanted him to come in and see him off, like a total sap.
“I think I can manage,” Fraser had said with that curious look again, like he knew that Ray was going crazy under his skin but couldn’t fathom why. “If you’d like to, however—”
“Nah,” he’d said quickly. “I’ll, uh — I’ll see you. Have fun in Canada.” Then before he could consciously stop himself he pulled Fraser into a brief, but fierce hug, glad that at least he had the willpower to keep from kissing him goodbye. Fraser returned the hug after a moment of surprise or bewilderment or awkwardness or discomfort, and then Ray broke away, practically ran around the car, jumped in, and waved before pulling away. His last glimpse of Fraser was through the rearview mirror as he hefted his suitcase up and walked through the airport doors.
And yeah, he’d cried a little as he turned into the flow of traffic and left the first, and best, piece of his life behind him. Saying goodbye to his family would be a piece of cake after this; at least he’d be able to tell them an outline of the truth.
“Think I’ll make it back home?” he asked Fraser.
“Yes,” Fraser said unequivocally. Ray wished he had that confidence. Maybe if it was really Fraser he was talking to and not a figment of his imagination, he would. He could put his trust in Fraser in a way he could never completely trust himself. Damn the Feds for forcing him to keep it a secret. Right now, in this empty, miserable, dreadful as in full-of-dread apartment, he’d do anything for that kind of reassurance. But Fraser was gone, and soon Ray would be gone too, and all he could take with him was himself. Maybe not even that.
“I’m gonna miss you,” he said.
There was a tenderness in Fraser’s eyes, and it was something he’d seen before, here and there. Usually after Ray’d gotten shot or blown up or drowned. He treasured that look.
“And I, you,” Fraser said, like something out of a victorian novel. God, why did he find that so endearing?
He heard footsteps outside the door, followed by a knock. One, two-and-three. Ray knocked back in the same rhythm. It felt so juvenile, like the secret password to a kid’s treehouse, but they wanted as little attention on these meetings as possible, which meant no tech. Two interchangeable men in suits stepped in, one carrying a new folder of intel for him to memorize. One more piece of the shoddiest disguise this side of Halloween. Fraser faded from his mind as business and survival took over.
Ray’s hopes were lower than the unmarked grave waiting for him in the Nevada desert, two thousand miles away from Chicago, and Fraser. But he’d try to keep an eye open for that road back home.