Manhattan Noir

“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.

Tio 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