Good Times — The Land of No Heroes

The lights on the palm tree in the front yard came on red and went green and came back red, and it came in through the window of the kids’ room and lay across the floor and the bed and the blanket and the boy under the blanket, and changed, and came back.

Red. Green. Red.

Apollo had the covers pulled up to his nose, and above the covers his eyes were open.

“Eyes closed, soldier,” Jack said from the door.

“They’re closed.”

“I can see them from here.”

The eyes closed. After a moment one of them opened again, a little, and closed.

“You go to sleep early, Santa comes. You stay up, he goes to the kid next door and gives him your presents.” Jack pointed at him. “Those are the rules of engagement.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Christmas. And Christmas doesn’t negotiate.”

On the nightstand a plastic boxing glove glowed orange from the inside.

Jenny was waiting for him in the hallway with her arms folded, in pajamas with feet, and the light from the window came along the carpet as far as her toes and stopped there. Down the hall the television in the living room was on with the sound low, a man in a suit standing in front of a big clock, and under the clock it said 7 DAYS.

“Santa doesn’t exist.”

Jack looked back at the door. Then he got down on one knee in front of her.

“You’re a very smart girl.”

“I know.”

“And your brother believes in him. So that’s classified. Top secret. Understood?”

She didn’t say understood. She looked at the badge on his belt, and then at his face.

“You’re not going to be here tomorrow either. Like my birthday.”

“I’ll be here.”

“You said that.”

“I’ll be here. I promise.”

“If you’re not here, I’m going to hate you forever.”

“That’s fair.”

He held out his little finger between them.

“Jack ‘The Ace’ Maverick never breaks a pinky promise.”

She looked at the finger for a long time. In the living room the studio audience laughed at something, and stopped, and laughed again. Then she hooked her finger around his and pulled, hard, and did not let go right away.

In the kitchen his wife was wrapping a present on the counter under the light over the stove, with a strip of tape between her teeth. She did not look up.

“I thought you were taking the night off.”

“Chief wants to see me.”

“It’s Christmas Eve, Jack.”

“Ten minutes. In and out.”

He took his jacket off the back of the chair, and the pager on his belt knocked against the wood.

“You’re gonna miss me.”

She took the tape out of her teeth and stuck it on the edge of the present.

“Like always.” She turned around. “Come here. Give me a hug.”

He gave her one, and lifted her off the floor with it, and she said Jack, Jack, the stove, with her slippers hanging a few inches over the tiles. When he put her down she had one hand up over both their heads, and in the hand was a little sprig of mistletoe with a red ribbon on it.

Jack looked up at it.

“So it was a trap.”

He kissed her. Behind her on the counter the paper had little Santas on it, hundreds of them, all the same, all waving.

* * *

Every house on the street had lights. Across the street the neighbor was up a ladder in his bathrobe with a string of bulbs that didn’t work, taking them out one by one and holding them up and putting them back.

“Jack! You ready for Y2K?”

Jack stopped by the car with the keys in his hand.

“Had the computer guy at the station check my machine. Forty gallons of water in the garage. Six months of canned food. Batteries. Generator.”

The neighbor laughed, up on the ladder, with a bulb in his hand.

Jack didn’t.

“First the computers go down,” he said. “Then the machines rise.”

“That’s a movie, Jack.”

Jack opened the car door.

“They got the date wrong.”

He got in. The neighbor shook his head up on the ladder.

“Merry Christmas, Jack.”

Jack rolled the window down.

“I’ll be back.”

He pulled out. Behind him the palm tree went red and green and red, and across the street the neighbor unscrewed another bulb and held it up against the sky and looked at it for a long time.

* * *

Half the lights in the station were off. Somebody had put a plastic Christmas tree on the front desk, two feet tall, with one ornament on it, and it leaned. A radio behind the desk was playing “Jingle Bells” for nobody, and a phone was ringing somewhere in the back, and nobody was picking it up.

The chief’s office had the blinds down. There was one lamp on, and it made a circle of yellow on the desk and nothing else, and the chief’s hands were in the circle, folded.

Jack sat down without being asked. On the edge of the desk there was a snow globe, a little town with a church in the middle of it. He picked it up and shook it, and the snow went up and came down slow over the roof of the church.

“Jack. I’m taking you off the case.”

The snow came down on the church, and on the street, and on the little people in the street.

“It’s a complicated case. I need you on other things.” The chief looked at his own hands. “And you’ll have more time with your family. It’s Christmas.”

Jack turned the globe upside down, and the whole town hung there in the lamplight, and the snow fell up, toward the church.

“You can’t pull me now, Chief. I’m close. I’m this close.”

“Jack.”

“This close.”

The chief’s hands came apart on the desk, and came back together.

“Please,” he said. “Please drop it.”

Jack looked at him. Then he set the snow globe down on the desk, right side up, and the snow started again from the bottom.

“Sorry, Chief. Nobody gets away from me.” He stood and pulled his jacket straight. “Relax, big guy. I always win.”

He left the door open.

Out in the squad room the radio went on to another song, and the phone in the back rang twice more and stopped.

The chief did not move. He sat in the yellow light with his hands on the desk and looked at the snow globe and breathed, in and out, slow, while the snow came down over the little church and settled on the roofs and the street and the steps, until there was none of it left in the air, and he was still breathing, and he was still looking at it.

* * *

“Maverick.” The officer at the front desk didn’t look up from his magazine. “Somebody left you something. Your desk.”

It was in the middle of his desk, between the files and two cold cups of coffee. A box in red paper with a gold bow on it. No card.

Jack stood and looked at it. The phone in the back had started again. The ornament on the little tree turned, slowly, on its string, and showed its other side, and turned back.

He pulled the ribbon. Inside there was tissue paper, and under the tissue paper a Polaroid, face down.

He turned it over.

Axel. Tied to a chair under a single bulb, a strip of tape across his mouth, one eye swollen shut and the other one open, looking at the camera, looking at him.

On the back, in black marker, an address. And under the address:

COME ALONE, ACE. MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Jack looked at the photograph for a long time. The radio moved on to another song.

Then he looked up at the clock over the door.

Ten fifty-two.

He had time.

* * *

Joshua McAllister was leaning on the hood of a patrol car in the lot behind the station, eating something out of a paper bag, and when he saw Jack come out the back door he stood up straight and put the bag behind his back.

“Where you going, Ace?”

“Looks like somebody threw me a surprise party.” Jack didn’t stop walking. “Be rude not to show.”

“Oh.” Joshua looked into the bag. “Sounds important.”

“It is.” Jack had his keys out. “You catch that pickpocket in the park yet?”

“I’m close.”

Jack opened the door of the Mustang, black, a 5.0, and grinned at him over the roof.

“Thirtieth time’s the charm.”

He got in. The engine turned over on the first try, loud, and the whole lot heard it. Joshua stood by the patrol car and watched the taillights go out of the lot and around the corner.

“Thirtieth time’s the charm,” he said to the empty lot.

He balled up the paper bag and threw it at the trash can by the door.

Missed.

* * *

The streets were empty. Every few blocks a house with lights, and a tree in a window, and then nothing for a while, and then another one. At a red light Jack sat with the engine going and the Polaroid on the seat next to him, face down, and when the light changed he did not look at it.

The warehouse was down by the water, behind a chain-link fence with the gate standing open. One bulb over the loading door. On the guard booth somebody had hung a single string of Christmas lights, and they blinked, and nobody was in the booth.

He parked and turned the engine off. It ticked as it cooled.

The radio under the dash came on.

“—Maverick. Maverick, come back.”

Jack looked at it.

“Maverick, what’s your twenty—”

He turned it off.

The engine ticked. Out past the fence the water moved against something, slow, and went back, and moved again.

He took out his gun. He dropped the magazine into his hand and looked at it and pushed it back in until it clicked, and pulled the slide, and put the gun in the holster under his arm. He pushed up his left sleeve and checked the little one strapped to his forearm, and slid it back and forth on its rail once, and pulled the sleeve down over it. Then he reached behind the seat for the canvas vest and put it on, and buttoned his jacket over it, and sat there one more second with his hand on his chest.

Then he got out and walked. Gravel under his shoes. The lights on the booth went on and off behind him.

The loading door was open a few feet. Inside, a big dark room full of crates, and in the middle of it one work light on a stand, and in the light a man was standing with his hands loose at his sides.

He was smiling.

Jack stopped at the edge of the light.

“Let’s see what you got, Bruce Lee.”

The man moved.

Fast. Down. Spinning on his knees, legs out, the floor singing under him. One kick. Two. Three. Jack back. Back again. A foot went past his chin. His hair moved. Another one hit a crate and the wood split.

Jack stepped in.

Low kick. The man’s leg went out from under him. He dropped to his knees.

Jack flicked his thumb across his nose.

The man looked up.

Kick.

He went down and stayed down.

Jack stood over him a moment, breathing. Then he stepped over him and walked on past the light, into the dark, where the crates were.

Axel was at the back, under a single bulb, tied to a chair. The same chair. The same bulb. The tape was still on his mouth. One eye swollen shut. Around him, in the dark between the crates, men. Six, seven. More.

One of them came forward into the light. He had a patch over one eye.

“Remember me, Maverick?” He smiled. “Remember what you did to me?”

Jack looked at the patch.

“Tonight I get even.” The man spread his hands. “Looks like your friends got tired of you.”

Behind him Axel made a sound through the tape. His good eye was wet.

“Oh.” The man with the patch turned his head. “Looks like your partner has something to say.”

He ripped the tape off.

“Jack.” Axel’s voice was broken. “Why’d you come? You knew it was you they wanted. You shouldn’t have come.”

The man with the patch put the barrel of his gun against Axel’s head.

“Guns. On the floor.”

Jack took his gun out of the holster slowly, with two fingers, and put it on the floor, and kicked it away into the dark.

“Jack, no—”

The man hit Axel across the face with the gun.

“I did what you wanted,” Jack said. “You want me? Here I am.”

The man with the patch nodded at the dark.

“Get him.”

They came out from between the crates.

“Stop.”

Jack opened his jacket.

The vest. Red sticks, taped in rows, wires, all around him.

“One more step,” he said. “Kaboom.”

Nobody took one more step.

The bulb over Axel’s chair swung a little on its cord, and the light went back and forth across the floor and the men and the vest, and back.

“What are you waiting for?” The man with the patch didn’t take the gun away from Axel’s head. “He’s bluffing.”

Jack reached into his jacket pocket and took out one more stick, loose. A Zippo. He lit the fuse and looked at it burning for a second, and tossed it underhand into the far corner, over the crates.

“Three.”

They watched it go.

“Two.”

“One.”

The corner went white. The sound came after, and the crates came apart, and dust and splinters came down over everything, and when it cleared the men were all looking at Jack.

“I’ve got nothing against you boys,” Jack said. “Walk out now and you get to live.” He shrugged. “It’s Christmas, after all.”

They ran. All of them, out through the loading door, into the lot, gone.

All but one.

“What’s the matter?” Jack said. “Not going to celebrate with your friends?”

The man with the patch looked at him for a long moment. Then he lowered the gun, and put up his hands.

“All right. I’m going.”

He backed toward the door. Jack watched him to the edge of the light, and then turned and went to Axel and got down on one knee behind the chair and took out his pocketknife.

“You’re an idiot,” Axel said.

“Hold still.”

The shot.

Jack went forward onto the floor.

In the doorway, the man with the patch lowered the gun.

He walked back into the light. Slow.

“Jack!” Axel pulled at the ropes. “Jack!”

Jack pushed himself up off the concrete. One knee. Then the other. There was blood coming through his shirt, and he looked at it, and then he put his hands up.

The man with the patch stopped in front of him and pointed the gun at his face.

“Looks like I’m the one who won.”

Jack looked up at him with his hands in the air, breathing.

His left wrist turned.

Something small and black came out of his sleeve into his hand.

Two shots.

The man with the patch sat down on the floor, and then lay down, and did not get up.

Jack looked at him from his knees.

“Yippee-ki-yay.”

* * *

Axel drove. He drove the Mustang with both hands on the wheel and the ropes still hanging off one wrist, and Jack sat next to him in the passenger seat with his hand pressed under his jacket.

“You drive,” Jack had said, in the lot. “I’ve got a scratch. Kind of annoying.”

Now Axel went through a red light without slowing down.

“We’re going to the hospital. Hang on.”

“It’s nothing.” Jack’s head was against the window. “You know me. Jack Maverick never dies. How many times has this happened?”

He took his hand out from under his jacket. The palm was red, all of it, to the wrist. He wiped it on his pants and put it back.

“How far?”

“Five minutes.”

Jack nodded.

“Plenty of time.”

The houses went by. A tree in a window. Lights on a roof. Lights on a palm tree.

Red. Green. Red.

Axel kept his eyes on the road.

“You’re a tough guy, Jack.”

“I’m a little tired,” Jack said. “I’m gonna sleep a little.”

“Don’t sleep.”

“Just a little.”

“Jack. Don’t sleep.”

Jack didn’t answer, and Axel drove, and the houses went by one after another with their lights on, and the light came in through the windshield and went across Jack’s face, and went away, and came back, red and then green and then red, and his head was against the glass where it had been, and his hand was under his jacket where it had been, and on the seat under him the dark had spread out to the edge of the leather and stopped there.

On the dashboard the clock said 11:59.

“Jack.”

Axel took one hand off the wheel and shook him by the shoulder, and Jack’s head came away from the glass and fell back against it, and stayed there.

The clock said 12:00.

Red. Green. Red.

Jack did not blink.

The Mustang slowed down in the middle of the street, under a palm tree full of lights, and stopped there, with the engine running, and Axel sat with both hands on the wheel and did not say anything. The engine ran. Somewhere a long way off a church bell started, and counted, slow, one and then another and then another, and it went on counting, and then it stopped.

It was Christmas.

“JAAAAAACK!”