That could
be true. For example, a gentleman in white tights, white face, and a red nose
has just greeted me—silently—by offering his hand and then posing in still life
for several seconds. So if you’re a clown, or a writer, or a pirate—well, where
else do you go?
Which may
have been why it wasn’t surprising, somehow, when Lady, the owner of the café,
told me the news, “Montalvo’s in jail.”
“What,” I
said, “what did he do?”
“He stole a
parrot!”
“Yeah, from
the parrot guy, who works down by the cruise ships, when they come in. You
know, he has five or six parrots, and he charges twenty bucks for a picture of
the parrots resting on your arms and shoulders. Good business….”
“Montalvo stole
one of that guy’s parrots?!”
“Yeah, and
then he went running into La Perla, where he lives, and the cops were
chasing after him, and now he’s in prison in Bayamón….”
“Wow—didn’t
think the police went into La Perla…”
“Well, they
usually don’t,” said Lady, “but they did for Montalvo!”
My friend
Sonia once described La Perla as a modern medieval city; medieval because it
sprang up without planning between the walls of Old San Juan and the sea. It’s
a hodgepodge of streets, alleys, walkways and once ramshackle wood houses that
sheltered the poor but honest people who worked in Old San Juan. Now? Well,
it’s rumored to be a haven for drug dealers. The only time the police go into
La Perla, in general, is when they can do it essentially as the Army went into
Iraq: shock and awe.
“So what
are we going to do about Montalvo,” I asked Lady.
“His mother
called me—and she doesn’t want me to bail him out. He’s 21 years old, and she
wants him to learn his lesson. So she told me—no bail.”
Montalvo,
you see, has worked for the café seven times, and has also been fired from the
café seven times. At the time of his arrest, he was in the fired phase, and
thus had no money.
“So why did
he steal the parrot,” I asked.
“It was his
mother’s birthday, and he didn’t have anything to give her!”
“So he
stole the parrot!”
“Well, for
his mother….” said Lady defensively, and then she started to laugh.
“I just
have this picture of Montalvo running like crazy with the parrot on his
shoulder, and the cops with their billy-clubs chasing after him, like the Keystone Cops….”
OK—so his mother
didn’t want him out on bail. The plan then became to visit on Saturday,
possibly with a cake with a metal file in it.
That was
until yesterday.
“Eight
whole fucking days, and not one fucking person called to find out how I was! I
was in there over a fucking week, and who calls? So today, I call all the
missed calls, and guess what? They all wanted something—not one of them was
calling about me! So fuck all of them!”
He’s angry,
and also buzz-cut—prison apparently takes after the army that way. We talk him
down.
“Well, I
was high, up to my tits,” he said. “And the thing was, the parrot came to me! I
mean, the guy was texting or screwing around with his phone—he wasn’t even
paying attention to his birds! And then the parrot jumped on my lap! So there I
am, patting this bird and really getting into him and he’s looking at me with
these intense eyes, and the next thing I know, I’m walking—fucking WALKING, not
running—away with the bird. I mean, I even stopped and took selfies of me and
the bird! I mean, look.”
He handed
over the phone….
“It’s sort
of a twist on the Monty Python routine,” I said. “’I ain’t stealing the parrot, it was
restin’ on my shoulder….’”
We passed
the phone around.
“The bird
looks great,” I said, “but Jesus, Montalvo, you look stoned!”
“…to my
tits,” he repeated.
“And what
kind of bird was it,” I said. “Gorgeous color….”
“That’s the
thing,” said Montalvo, “of all the fucking birds, I had to go steal the most
expensive one: a Blue Macaw.
I mean, there are like 3,000 of them in the entire world, and there’s a
list of everyone who owns one. So what the hell was I going to do with a Blue
Macaw in La Perla? I didn’t have a cage, I didn’t have anything to feed it, I
didn’t have any money to buy it food….”
“Champagne
taste,” I told him.
“So how
much was the bird worth,” I asked.
“That’s the
thing—I had to go steal a 25,000 dollar bird!”
“What!”
“Yeah,
25,000 fucking dollars.
“Yeah, the
cops were telling me ‘if you had stolen one of the $500 dollar birds, your bail
would have been a lot less’ and they were right,’ he said. And went on to say,
“you know, I’m really glad they arrested me, because if not, the dealers in La
Perla would have killed me and fed me to the sharks….”
Justice
outside the walls of the city is a little different.
“Do you
have any experience representing parrot rustlers,” I asked Kayla. Because,
guess what? It’s four PM, and Montalvo has his preliminary hearing in court at
8:30 the next morning. And Montalvo, with the twelve dollars in his pocket?
Right—it’s
now Adventures in Paternity, or Fatherhood 101, or maybe a sort of alternative
to the old TV show, “This Is Your Life”—all
the people who weren’t in your life. Because I’m now feeling quite father-like.
“He’s a
basically good kid,” I told Kayla, who’s a lawyer. “So I haven’t told him what
my father told my brother….”
“What was
that,” she said.
“Montalvo,
you are going to HAVE to be honest, because you are too goddamned STUPID to be
a criminal!”
“Did he
wince,” said Kayla.
“Well, he
looked down at the floor,” I told her. “So I guess that’s a wince.”
Guess what?
Lawyers drink coffee, which is really good news, since Lady looked up and
realized with a start: that wasn’t a customer, that was the cavalry coming over
the hill.
The moment
comes.
“How are we
doing this,” I ask her. The lawyer has been getting Montalvo’s side of the
story. But there’s a problem—he’s not a criminal lawyer, and he’s not sure that
he’s up to the job. So he wants to consult his partner—who is a criminal
lawyer.
“Half and
half,” said Lady. “That’s how we always do it, right?”
Who knows
how much it’ll be, but what are we going to do? The judge told him, the day she
set bail, that if convicted, Montalvo could face eight years in jail.
“I’m gonna
go out and find that parrot guy,” said Lady. “What if he dropped the charges?
We’ll tell him that Montalvo’s the future national poet of Puerto Rico, he’s
21, he was stoned.”
“Up to my
tits,” said Montalvo, who apparently likes the phrase.
“I’d go
with an animal activist defense,” said Jessica, who had drifted by, kissed
Montalvo, rubbed his buzz cut. “The bird was clearly abused and was attracted
to Montalvo’s energy.”
“He was
probably attracted to Montalvo’s dope fumes,” I said, “since we now know that
Montalvo…”
“Up to…”
I cut him
off.
“Do you
have a tie?” I asked Montalvo. It’s now several hours later, and it occurred to
me—what was he going to wear to court? So there Montalvo was, in my apartment,
rummaging for shoes to wear.
“Too bad
the shoes aren’t black,” I told him. “Otherwise, with the white shirt, black
pants, and a tie, you make a perfect Mormon missionary!”
So we tied
his tie for him, loosened it, and sent him on his way. I tell Raf that Montalvo
is one stupid kid, but what could I do?
“Look at it
this way,” he said, “at least you never had to change his diaper….”
