Manhattan Noir by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Anthologies, ebook, book
ISBN: 9781936070374
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2006-04-01T10:00:00+00:00

FREDDIE PRINZE IS MY GUARDIAN ANGEL

BY 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.

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