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?
THE ORGAN GRINDERBY MAAN MEYERS
Lower East Side
Antonio Cerasani rolled the mobile contraption over the broken cobble where Broome Street met Jefferson. The barrel organ had two wheels and handled like a pushcart. Every part of it gleamed in the bright sunshine. Even the country scene painted on its side seemed to glow with its own light.
He settled the cart as close to the curb as possible in the least of the refuse that layered the streets. With the cart in place, he began to crank the organ. Music poured from the barrel with sweet abundance, almost blocking out the other sounds: babes howling, the scraping of thick shoes on the asphalt pavement, metal-clad hooves and wheels clamoring on the cobblestones, passersby in screaming conversations.
The cacophony of everyday life. But here the very intensity of it was an abomination.
Indifferent to the heat of the day, Tony wore heavy trousers, a vest, and a long brown coat. His shabby, dark brown hat sat atop his black hair. An enormous mustache hid his mouth. Only a wisp of smoke from the stub of the twisted black cigar gave any indication of where it was.
The bitter tang of the cigar almost wiped away the stench of horse shit. Almost. The organ grinder hated the smell from when he was a boy in Palermo and had to sleep in the stable of his father’s padrone. New York was like a giant stable full of horse dung, particularly in this neighborhood where the White Wings, the street sweeping brigade, seldom ventured. Here the streets were ankle deep in dung and garbage, and the air, only barely modified by the briny reek of seaweed from the East River, was putrid with the rot of humanity.
“La Donna e Mobile” rolled from Tony’s machine. He sang in a rich tenor voice. “Women are fickle, like a feather in the wind.” And as always, the children on the street laughed and danced haphazardly to the organ grinder’s music.
He searched the tenement windows where once-white sheets stirred languidly in the tepid breeze. Several pennies wrapped in paper dropped from the windows and landed at his feet. The organ grinder, never stopping his music, tipped his hat to his benefactors, collected the coins, and dropped them into his coat pockets.