Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

My eyes welled up. “I think you are.” I couldn’t speak above a whisper, and I couldn’t look at him.

“No, no, come on. Hey. I wish I could give you a tissue, but I don’t have any on me. Can you wipe your eyes on your sleeve and look at me? There you go. I hate to see anyone cry. Especially over me. I don’t deserve it, believe me.”

Now that I stopped sniffling, I got angry. “I think you do. You gave us all hope. You came from Washington Heights, and you made it. Everyone who has a TV saw that a Puerto Rican could be an important person.”

“Most people thought I was Mexican because of the character I played on Chico and the Man ,” he said quietly. “And look at the kind of work Chico did on the show.”

I thought I understood. It wouldn’t be fitting for someone who would one day become a saint to brag. He must be practicing up by being modest with me. But I knew what he had done for me and countless others in el barrio. He was our symbol of possibilities.

I had another question. “Why’d you have to die so soon?”

There was no way to communicate to him the emptiness he left in my heart and soul when he abandoned me and all his other fans. Why couldn’t he have waited until I was older and could handle his death better?

“Every life lasts exactly as long as it’s supposed to,” he said gently. “I was here just the right amount of time.”

I hung my head and mumbled, “I wish you could have been here longer.”

“No, come on. Anyway, I’m here now because I have something important to tell you. You listening? Okay, here it is: You’re supposed to join the NYPD.”

I didn’t understand. “I’m only fourteen.”

“Yeah, well, this is a little ahead of schedule, but trust me. This is what you need to do. Listen, I have to get going now. It was nice to meet you.” He started to fade.

“Hey! Do you think you could say it before you go?”

“You mean, Looooking goo…? ”

The last sound was drowned out by the pounding in my ears, which receded long after Freddie had disappeared.

I couldn’t understand why Freddie Prinze had told me to become a cop. There weren’t a lot of female officers, and I certainly didn’t know any Puerto Rican ones. It didn’t make any sense. I considered that he might be wrong. But could a saint be wrong? He must be a saint, because I’d heard of the Virgin Mary appearing in people’s oven windows, and she was certainly a saint if anyone was. He had the humility thing down, too, very important for those to be canonized.

But he had made those remarks about heaven and purgatory. Was it possible for a saint to be wrong? I didn’t think so. I thought the saints were like the Pope, always right, even if other people didn’t understand their logic.

I tested the waters with my mother. “Do you think saints can be wrong?” I asked her.

“Whaddaya talking about, wrong? Go wash up for supper,” she told me.

When I broached the subject of my confirmation name with her, I knew I had to be well prepared to counter the inevitable argument. “I want to take the name Frederika, after Frederick of Utrecht,” I said. “He was a Bishop who got stabbed to death during Mass in the year 838.”

My mother didn’t even glance away from her mending. “And you want to follow in his footsteps, maybe get stabbed to death on the street?” She finally looked up at me, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, young lady. María . You’re going to take the name María,” she said in a voice that would brook no further argument.

But I had to try once more. “Sister says that you’re supposed to pick a saint’s name if the saint means something to you personally.”

“And this Frederick of Utrecht is a big idol for you, hmm? I think you didn’t know who he was until you looked him up in a book.” She shook her needle and thread at me. “I know which Frederick you’re interested in, and believe me, he was no saint.” My crush on Freddie Prinze was legendary.

“Maybe he will be one day,” I said stubbornly.

“Oh, I don’t think so, mija , ” she said. “No, you’ll take María, like a good girl, and that’s final.”

Sister Mary Claire wasn’t any help, either. When I asked her how to go about proposing someone for canonization, she was immediately suspicious. She wanted to know who I had in mind, but I was cagey enough to pretend I was just asking in general. I don’t think it was an accident that the priest came in right after that and talked to us for a whole day about piety and the Catholic woman’s duty in the home.

I continued to pray for Freddie Prinze’s soul and to say the Rosary twice every January 29, but he didn’t come back the next year, even though I kept my eyes open long after I went to bed. I wracked my brain trying to remember the exact prayers that I had uttered in order to bring him back again. Each anniversary, I tried to repeat the magic formula, but it didn’t work until the year I was eighteen.

I was on my knees in the bedroom saying the Rosary fast because it had become a ritual, but my mind was more on meeting my friends. It was a Friday night, and we were going to a party at a boy’s house. I was thinking about the shoes I’d just bought when I saw Freddie standing against the wall.

This time, the first thing he said was, “Looooking good, mamacita ! Whew, you’ve really grown up.” He nodded approvingly.

I was flattered, but still a little mad that he’d ignored me for the last three years. I tried to play it cool. “What took you so long?” I asked.

“Where I am now, time doesn’t work the same way it does here,” he said. “Seems like it’s been just a few weeks. That’s why it’s amazing that you’re all grown up.” He grinned.

I softened. I was thrilled to see him; why let my petty feeling of abandonment get in the way? “What’s up?” I asked. I was dying to find out what he had to tell me this time.

“You still haven’t joined the NYPD,” he said. “I’ve been checking.” He shook his finger at me.

“I’m not old enough yet. You have to be twenty-one.”

“Oh. Right.” He shrugged. “The time thing, you know?”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Like a guardian angel, you mean?”

He gave me a funny half-smile. “Something like that.”

“So, do you see everything I do?” I worried about whether he observed me in the shower.

“Not everything, don’t worry. But the important things.”

I decided to test him. “Like what?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, I know about you and Julio Marquez down the block.”

I blushed hard. I had experienced my first French kiss with Julio. I knew it was a sin, but I did it anyway. Then I went to Confession.

“Do you know other things, too?” I asked. “Like what horse is going to win?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” He squirmed. “But don’t ask me to tell you. I’m not supposed to.”

I immediately thought of what I could do with the winnings from OTB. Get my family out of Washington Heights and away from the drug dealers, for one thing. “Please? Could you just tell me the winner for one race? I’d never ask you again, I promise.”

“I’m really not supposed to,” he said.

I rose. “Isn’t there any way I could persuade you?”

He eyed me at chest level. “Um, I suppose just once wouldn’t hurt.” He beckoned me closer. I could feel his hot breath in my ear, but when I reached out to touch him, my hand hit the wall. “Okay, Broken Nose in the seventh at Aqueduct.”