Manhattan Noir

FREDDIE PRINZE IS MY GUARDIAN ANGELBY LIZ MARTÍNEZ

Washington Heights

Freddie Prinze had been dead for four years when he spoke to me the first time. I was in my room in my family’s apartment in Washington Heights, saying the Rosary, when he appeared. At first, I thought the dark spot on my wall was a shadow, and I closed my eyes tightly, trying to concentrate with fervor. I was preparing for my confirmation, and I knew that the ability to pray without distraction from the outside world was important.

He must have gotten impatient waiting for me to finish because he cleared his throat. I jumped at the sound, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid to see him standing in my room in the fading January light. He winked at me. “Hey, mamacita,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?”

I wasn’t really sure how to talk to a celebrity, but he was just slouching against the wall, the way I’d seen him do in Ed Brown’s garage on TV. He looked a lot taller in my room. In the living room, he was only about six inches high and sort of grayish on the old RCA. He also jumped up and down a lot because the vertical hold was busted. Here he was relatively still and looked like the older brother of one of my friends.

“Hi,” I said shyly. I immediately wondered if he knew I was saying the Rosary twice because today was the fourth anniversary of his death.

“So what are you doing?” he asked.

I guessed that he couldn’t read my mind after all. I breathed a little easier and held up the Rosary beads.

He nodded. “My mom does that all the time.”

He seemed very much at ease, but my knees were shaking like Bill Cosby’s Jell-O Pudding. I was glad I was kneeling so he couldn’t see. Did he know I had a huge crush on him, still?

“I hear you’re my number one fan,” he said.

I wanted to die. I felt my face turning red-hot. “Who told you that?” I asked, trying to be cool, sending up a quick prayer that my brother wouldn’t pick this moment to burst into my room.

He shrugged elaborately. “You know, you hear things when you’re…”

“Dead?” I whispered.

“Yeah.” He examined his fingernails.

“What’s it like?” I asked.

“Being dead? It’s not so bad,” he said.

“I mean… heaven. What’s heaven like? Do you get to meet all the saints?”

He snorted. “Naw. Haven’t met any yet.”

I was puzzled. This was not jibing with what the nuns had told me for the last eight years. An idea struck me. “Are you in, you know, purgatory?” I wondered if it was rude to ask, sort of like mentioning someone’s deformity that you’re not supposed to notice because it isn’t polite.

“No, no. It doesn’t really work that way.”

“What do you mean?” I was stunned.

He seemed to lose interest all of a sudden. “Listen, Raquel, I don’t have much time. I have to be getting back. I just came to tell you something important.”

He looked at me to make sure he had my full attention. Like I could concentrate on anything else.

He pointed his finger at me. “You’re going to have to make a decision soon, and it will affect the rest of your life.”

I nodded importantly. At last, something I could understand. “I know. I have to choose a confirmation name. I want to take Frederika. After you, you know?” I looked at the floor.

“Aw, kid. Don’t do this. I’m not-I wasn’t that important, really. I mean, I’m flattered as hell that you think so much of me, but I’m not worth it. Really.”

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.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” I clapped my hands together. I was already spending the money.

“Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat. “You still need to become a police officer, okay?”

“I don’t see why,” I said. “It’s not like it’s what I really want to do or anything.”

“What would you rather do?”

“I want to be an actress. I’m even going to Performing Arts High School, just like you did.” I couldn’t keep the pride from my voice.

“Hey, kid, why do you wanna do that? No, no. It’s not in the cards for you. You join the NYPD like I told you, okay?”

“I guess. But I thought that if I could have a TV show like yours…”

“That’s not what’s right for you, believe me. Now, I got something else to tell you, so listen up, ’cause I gotta go soon,” he said.

“All right.” I was disappointed about the acting. I still wanted to follow in his footsteps.

“Come on, don’t sulk. This is important, so remember it, okay?”

I nodded to assure him that I was all ears.

“You’re gonna meet someone called Jumbo. He’s going to make you an offer, and it’ll sound real good to you. Don’t take it. If you do, you’ll get into really bad trouble. You understand?”

“Don’t accept Jumbo’s offer,” I repeated. “Who’s Jumbo and what’s he going to offer me?”

“No more time now. I gotta go.” He began to fade.

“Wait! Will you come back again?”

“Count on it, mami,” he said as he disappeared.

I broke open my piggy bank and counted the money. Not enough to bet on Broken Nose. On my way to the party, I picked up a copy of the Post, hoping to find the odds. Broken Nose wasn’t listed, but a horse named Jumbo was running in the seventh. It reminded me of Freddie’s warning, and I wondered about it again.

At the party, I tried to talk Julio and a few of my girl-friends into putting some money down on Broken Nose. I’d had a hot tip, I told them. Nobody believed me, especially when I couldn’t tell them when the race was, just that it was the seventh.

I checked the paper the next day. Jumbo was the winner in the seventh race. If I had put down fifty bucks, I would have been so rich… I didn’t even want to think about it. Why did Freddie give me the wrong tip? Maybe it was to keep me from gambling. He wasn’t supposed to tell me, and if he did, I wasn’t supposed to act on his tip. It must have been like a test. But for which one of us?

After I graduated from high school, I went to City College on a partial scholarship. I was so busy with my new life that I hardly ever thought about Freddie anymore. The first two years, I flew through the Rosary on the anniversary of his death, but the third year, I forgot to say it at all. I remembered two weeks later, but I was studying for a chemistry test and I didn’t want to take the time to pray. Besides, I was still a little sore about Jumbo.

During my senior year, I got involved with a Spanish theater group. I felt alive on the stage. I was looking into having head shots taken and putting my sparse acting credits together for a resume. At the school job fair, I filled out an application for an agency that was holding a model and talent search.

It was hard to believe that the guy taking applications worked for a modeling agency. He was tall and gangly with big ears and a nose that looked as though it had been broken more than once. As soon as I stopped by the table to talk to him, he latched onto me, though. He wanted to know everything: about my background, my training, acting classes, which productions I had performed in. It was very flattering to be asked to go to his agency to meet with his boss, a woman who could get me a lot of bookings, he said. He also liked my friend Gabriela. We looked somewhat alike, and he thought he could get us photo shoots together, when they needed sisters or look-alikes. He wanted us to come to his studio for an initial photo shoot over the weekend.

Gabriela was enchanted. “Think about how much money we could make,” she whispered.

But in the back of my mind, I wondered whether this man with the broken nose was the one that Freddie had warned me against. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, look at this guy. No way he’s legit. He probably wants to get us to take off our clothes or something. Nah. I’m not going.”

Gabriela kept pestering me but I wouldn’t budge. She went by herself, and the next thing I knew, she was off to Florida to shoot a Coca-Cola commercial. She quit school because she got one booking after the next. She made so much money that she moved her mother to a house in Westchester. I tried to get her to convince her agent to let me try out for him, but she froze me out.

“You had your chance,” she said. We didn’t speak again after that.

I was kind of mad at Freddie, too, if you want to know the truth. Here he was supposed to be some kind of pre-saint or something, and he’d steered me wrong twice. What kind of guardian angel was he?

He showed up again that year. I didn’t really want to have much to do with him, but it’s kind of hard to ignore a dead guy who’s standing in your room.

“Hey, mami, looooking good!” he said, leaning against the wall.

I thought his whole act was kind of immature. He obviously hadn’t grown up much.

“Hey, mamita, what’s the problem?” he asked me. “You’re not happy to see me?”

“You gave me some bad advice,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, the Jumbo and Broken Nose thing,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I came to tell you that I got them mixed up. You don’t have to worry about that guy Jumbo.”

I curled my lip. “Jumbo was the horse,” I said. “The guy with the broken nose wanted to set me and my friend up as models. She made a zillion dollars, but I turned him down because of you.” Something struck me. “What do you mean, you got them mixed up? How can you get this stuff wrong? You’re in heaven, right? Don’t you hear things from God?”

He laughed. “No, no, I don’t get to talk to God. Like I told you before, it’s not really the way you think it is up there.”

I crossed my arms. “Well, how is it, then?”

“It’s… hard to explain. It’s just different, that’s all.”

“Well, anyway, why do you keep coming to visit me? I’m not saying the Rosary anymore, you know.”

“The Rosary isn’t like a magic trick. You didn’t call me up by praying with your beads,” he said.

“I didn’t? Then how come you appeared?”

His voice was gentle. “I told you, it’s my job.”

I snickered. “All those years, you told everybody, It’s not my job. Now you’re saying different.”

“That was just comedy. This is serious stuff. I’ve gotta watch over you or I won’t be able to-well, it’s sort of like getting a promotion. I have to do a certain number of things right before I can move up.”

“I knew it! You are in purgatory, aren’t you?”

“Naw. That’s not exactly how it works. But listen, my time is almost up here. I have to remind you about your calling. The NYPD is where you belong.”

“I’m not interested in police work at all.”

“Do you remember praying for a vocation when you were younger, to see if you were supposed to be a nun?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Try it again. You’ll find out what you need through prayer. I gotta go. Don’t forget, okay?”

He faded out, leaving me more confused than ever. I thought about it for a while, then hunted down my Rosary beads. Okay, God, I thought, if I’m supposed to have some sort of vocation, then let me know what you want me to do.

Nothing happened that night, but I thought I ought to give God more of a chance than that to show me His will. I said the Rosary every night, but I didn’t receive any celestial direction.

On the fourteenth day, my father’s younger sister Alma and her husband dropped by. They had a friend of my Uncle Juan’s with them. Sal was an absolute doll. He had a mustache and dimples that flashed when he laughed, which was often. He told jokes that cracked everyone up. His hair was dark and wavy, and I longed to run my fingers through it even though he was almost twice my age. I sat on my hands to make sure they didn’t jump out and touch him without my permission.

Tío Juan clapped Sal on the back repeatedly. They were celebrating his promotion from patrolman to sergeant. Juan kept saying how proud he was of Sal, one of the guys from the neighborhood making it: a good civil-service job, benefits, a pension. But I could hear the envy underneath my uncle’s words. He was a baker, but he never managed to get into a union. He would speak about others in the family who had landed union jobs as though they had hit the lottery. It was clear that he thought his life would have been easier if he had made it like they did. When he started getting obnoxious, my aunt pulled him out the door.

Sal lingered behind, saying goodnight to everyone, thanking my father for his hospitality. “It was very nice to meet you,” he said, looking into my eyes. His cheeks were made apple-round by his smile.

I wanted to touch his dimples, so I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep them out of trouble.

He had been so easygoing and confident all evening that when he stuttered a little, I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.

“I, uh, that is, do you think you might like-”

My father had had a few glasses of wine and was watching us from his chair in the living room. “Oh, for chrissake,” he said, disgusted, “just ask her out already.”

Sal blushed and grinned at the same time. “Really? Would that really be okay with you?”

My father leaned back in the chair, his eyes almost closed. He flapped his hand in Sal’s direction, like, Don’t bother me.

Sal cleared his throat. “Would you like to go-”

“Yes!” I said.

He laughed. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask you.”

Now it was my turn to blush.

He started again. “Would you like to go to a movie this weekend?”

I pretended to think it over. “Sounds good.”

“I’ll pick you up on Friday at 7.”

“See you then,” I said.

I dated Sal for three months before the attraction wore off. He was a gorgeous Latin male, but he was a Latin male. It was 1987, and the idea that I would be subservient because he was the guy grew old quickly.

After we broke up, I found myself missing the stories he told about his job. I didn’t miss him too much, but the day I saw a sign on the subway advertising the next police exam, I realized that I’d been bitten by the bug. I signed up to take it, and I went into the Academy right after my college graduation.

I was glad for the time I’d spent with Sal-it was good preparation for all the crap I had to put up with from the other cops. But I just laid low and smiled through the practical jokes, even the nasty ones. After a while, they stopped. I was pulling my weight, and then some. I started making some good busts, and a few of the old hairbags even gave me some grudging respect. I bumped into Sal once or twice at rackets, and he always made sure to let me know that he was dating a busty blonde. I didn’t care.

When I had five years on the job, I was assigned to a detail that focused on getting the homeless off the streets. The mayor wanted the city to look clean-he didn’t actually want to clean it up, he just wanted it to look better temporarily for political reasons.

One night, after a tour that dragged into overtime, I staggered back to the studio apartment I was renting on the East Side, exhausted. All I wanted was to go to bed because I had to be up again in six hours to head back to work. I had just laid down when Freddie Prinze appeared-on the ceiling this time.

I groaned. “I’m really tired. Do we have to do this now?”

“Hey, what’s the matter? You’re not happy to see me?” He sounded genuinely hurt.

“No, no, it’s great, really. I’m just very tired. Can you come back another time?” This dead guy in my house was just too much after the day I’d had.

“I have something important to tell you. That’s why I show up, you know. It’s my job to let you know this stuff.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes open one more second. “I’m sorry. I really have to go to sleep.” I was out like a light.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed, only I was fourteen again. I looked down at my knobby knees and tried to figure out what was going on. Freddie was slouching against the wall in Ed’s garage. What was my bed doing in California?

“It’s a dream,” Freddie said. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

I didn’t feel tired at all, so when he spoke, I was happy to listen. I even enjoyed his company.

“If you’re too tired to stay awake, I’ll just have to talk to you while you’re sleeping,” he said. “Here’s the thing: You’re gonna have to make a tough choice very soon. I don’t want you going down the wrong path.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt floaty and good.

“These homeless guys you’re dealing with-one of them is going to try to hurt you. Your instinct will be to shoot him. Do not shoot. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Think about this. It’s the most important thing you’re ever going to hear.”

He started fading out, and then I wasn’t aware of anything else until the alarm woke me. The noise startled me back into the world, and I wondered whether my dream had been real. I didn’t have time to ponder it later that morning as I hustled homeless people into the converted trailers we had waiting for them.

Scraps of the dream came back to me as the day wore on. Do not shoot. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. I didn’t need a guardian angel to tell me that. I’d been around long enough to know what happens to cops who shoot and kill somebody. They get really messed up.

We were almost ready to go back to the station house when one of the street guys pulled a knife out from under his seventeen layers of clothing and stuck it in my face. My adrenaline jump-started me, and I kicked out at the guy. He was wearing too much clothing for the blow to have any impact. It just made him madder. He slashed at my face with the knife. I felt a trickle down my cheek, and a moment later, fire blazed the same trail. I pulled my weapon.

All my police training screamed at me to shoot. My finger started to pull back on the trigger. I aimed at the lunatic’s torso, just as I was taught at the range, but the view of my target was suddenly clouded. The sounds of the city were blocked out. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. Each second felt like a month. Over the roar in my head, Freddie’s words came back. Don’t shoot… You’ll regret it…

I lowered my gun. The crazed homeless guy jumped on top of me. Bulletproof vests aren’t designed to stop knives, and mine didn’t slow this one down.

The knife slid in between my ribs, and I felt as though someone had disconnected my electrical charger from the wall socket. My essence just drained away.

I had felt pain at first, but now I didn’t. I noticed a cop lying on the ground, red blood staining the blue uniform. It was me, I realized. What was I doing down there?

Wait a minute, where was down there? Where was I?

I looked around. The street appeared the same as it had moments before, except that I was seeing it from above. Holy Christ, was I dead?

Freddie appeared. “How you doin’? You all right?”

“All right? I think I’m dead.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said and looked down. Paramedics were covering the dead cop-me-with a white sheet.

“Why’d you warn me against shooting?” I asked him. Then I realized that I didn’t have to ask. I knew without his telling me that he was just doing his job as my guardian angel.

Then I knew something else. I wasn’t supposed to be dead. Freddie had screwed it up.

“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging my newfound understanding. “What did you expect?”

I thought about it. I really had no one to blame but myself for being dead. After all, what could I expect with Freddie Prinze as my guardian angel?