1973.

They followed each other out of the Kronos-Kola bottling plant with their wrists bound, each one chained to the next. And like a mother duck leading her little ducklings behind her, first in line came Otto von Kemp, a.k.a. the Buzzard, bald and hook-nosed, his fur-collared coat drenched in explosions of beverage equipment from the factory he had been using to launder money.

He sneered at the arresting officers who pushed him forward, “You keep your filthy hands off me! Don’t you know who I am? My attorneys will eat you alive, every one of you! You’ll see! You’ll all see!”

Behind him came all the crooked cops who had served on his payroll, the kind who believed that enforcing the law placed them above it. Most had been around a long time, and they scowled at the junior officers arresting them. 

Not one of their faces surprised Lieutenant Goodman, who stood apart, surveying the scene. He had risen through the ranks beside these men as Titan City’s first Black police officer. They tried to make his career a short one. For a year, they denied him a locker. When Goodman finally got one, they filled it with a crude spear, a cheetah-skin tunic, and a chicken bone with a note wrapped around it — “to put in your hair”.

Back then, he never gave them the satisfaction of knowing how much they got to him, and he wouldn’t let them see how happy he felt watching them receive their due. But Officer Jorge Villagrana marveled without restraint at their parade of shame.

“It’s like Christmas!” said Villagrana. “Christmas and New Year’s and Thanksgiving in one!”

“Let’s not celebrate too hard. Remember, men died for this.”

“Sí, good men like O’Neil. And it’s all there in the papers we found inside, everything the DA could ask for to stick the Buzzard and the rest of those pinches pendejos for racketeering, extortion, illegal gambling, narcotics, and murder.”

“A victory for justice,” said Goodman.

“Yes, sir. But who was the Santa Claus who delivered all these presents to us?”

Goodman looked at him gravely. “Now, Officer Villagrana, you know better than to tug at Santa’s beard.”

Villagrana saluted. “Yes, sir. Whoever he is, just know that you can thank him for me.” He looked once more to his former colleagues being shoved into the back of the police van. “Feliz Navidad…” and returned to assist the others.

Goodman never could explain how he knew when he was suddenly joined by his old friend, the Crimson Wraith. It came with a tingling at the back of his neck that he first felt twenty years before, the night the “Scarlet Stranger” saved his life.

He had turned out to be the first responder at the break-in of a savings and loan in Little Italy. Things hadn’t gone well, and he had gotten pinned down behind a parked car, taking crossfire from two assailants. With his face to the ground, young Officer Goodman wished that he had said more to his wife about how much he loved the apple crumble she had baked for dessert — and how much he loved her.

Then one gun had fallen silent, and then another. Unsure of what that meant, he had stayed right where he was until he felt that tingle on the back of his neck and looked up to gaze for the first time upon the skull that made wrongdoers tremble.

Goodman didn’t need to hear the crunch of leather boots on gravel or see a flutter of a cloak in the shadows. He felt that tingle again and knew that he was once more in the presence of the Crimson Wraith.

“It was all there,” Goodman said without turning his head, “Everything we could ask for to send these crooks up the river for a long, long time.”

He heard the Crimson Wraith whisper, “Good.”

“Not hurt, are you?”

“Not in any way that matters.”

Lieutenant Goodman nodded and then felt a touch of emotion almost overtake him. “I know that you’re not him. You’re not the one I first met in that mask. The way you move, that’s not something that’s in a man who’s been fighting over thirty years. But you’re doing right by him, honoring his memory.”

The Crimson Wraith gave no response. 

Goodman continued, “I counted him as a friend, you know. Funny to say that, seeing how we never spoke without that mask between us. But it’s true. This isn’t the kind of city that gives a man a lot of reasons for hope. There were times when I was certain I’d had all I could take, but if he kept fighting, I knew I had to as well.

“And I never believed any of the things they said about him and that boy, not for one second. If he is still around somewhere, please tell him that, from me. Tell him I never doubted him.”

No answer came, and Goodman knew he was alone again. The silence hung around him, heavy and hollow, like the silence that follows prayer.