“Because if it’s the same man, you are my sister.”
But she didn’t bat an eye. She continued to wield her pole, jiggling it, hoping to get a bite. “Do you know how many brothers I have? All from him. Do you see any of them trying to help me feed him?”
“I want to help you,” I responded. “I have something for him.”
She quickly took her eyes off the sea. “Give it to me,” she demanded more than asked. She held the pole with one hand and stuck out the other toward me. “Give it to me and I’ll give it to our father.”
“Can you take me to him?”
“What is it that you have for him?”
I wasn’t about to tell her. It was a long story. And I was not sure if she was telling me the truth.
“If you want to see the Capeman,” she had both hands back on the pole, “you have to roam the streets of Old San Juan at night. That viejo only comes out late at night.”
I had been searching for him only in the daytime; somehow she knew this.
“You’ll find him by a tourists store that sells Cuban cigars under the counter,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Magaly.”
I found him. Standing outside the cigar store on Calle Fortaleza, late at night, just like Magaly had said. He was wearing his cape. He was old but he was so tall that it gave him the appearance of having a lot of life left in him. He was light-skinned, almost white, with hazel eyes. The eyes saw me and smiled, and it was in the way he called me papo that I knew he felt comfortable both on the mainland and on the island.
“You see, papo, many people don’t know me because I made myself invisible.” He laughed a little laugh and he had a huge gap between his big front teeth. I saw that his cape was really worn out, the satin fading. His pants were thin too, as was his shirt, both fabrics disappearing into strings. His hair was long, parted in the middle, and held together with a rubber band. He reminded me of a broken-down Jesus Christ, ragged and old, whose disciples had long ago deserted him.
“My name is Julio,” I said.
“Yes, I know.” He peered at the night sky as if he had lost something there. “I gave you that name.” His tone and his slumped shoulders told me he was harmless. No longer that kid who had killed people.
“I’d like to begin again. But you see, I can’t do that, papo. So I live here in the night now and I try and forget, you know?”
“My name is Julio,” I repeated because I didn’t want him to keep calling me papo.
“Okay, papo, Julio,” he said and smiled a bit. “Your sister told me you have something for me?”
“Yes, I have me. Your son.” I don’t know what I expected of him. I myself felt very little love. This was the first time I had ever seen him, talked to him. Why would I think he would feel any different?
“A son is always a good thing,” he said with some joy, but no excitement.
“Mama is dead.” I felt a pang of sadness just by saying this. I saw how it hurt him too. We were outside, on the sidewalk, with insects flying around us and drunken tourists walking by. He sat down on the warm cement and held his heart. I kneeled down and grabbed him because he was about to topple over in a sitting position. For the first time I saw his face up close. His eyes were faint glimmers in a nest of wrinkles.
“I’m sorry.” I helped him get back up, leaned him against the wall of the cigar shop. “She didn’t suffer.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” He crouched now, hunching his shoulders like he was humbling himself. Like I’ve seen many tall people do when they feel inferior for being so tall. “I loved your mother,” he said in almost a whisper, “I did love your mother.” But no tears rolled down his face.
“But you left us and never came back.” I had little sympathy for him. I was here only for Mama. “You left us.”
He didn’t look at me but at the night sky, as if he could find the past there. Then he looked at the concrete below us. A cricket was hopping by. Then he looked at the taxis driving tourists. Then at the night sky again, as if he wasn’t sure where to start. When he did face me, his hazel eyes were huge like on an Egyptian’s coffin at the Met. He scanned my face like nervous radar, deciding if he should answer.
“I needed to go,” he placed a hand on my shoulder, “I needed to live in the darkness.” His eyes were watery and his nose was running. “After what I did to those kids. The light, Julio, it shames me.” And he embraced me. I embraced him too.
I took him back with me to the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino. I wanted to talk to him all night about many things, as if in one night I could make up for decades of his absence. I felt happy when we reached the hotel; he placed an arm around me and excitedly told people, “This is my son.” He kept proudly saying this all night, to anyone who passed us, so that all could hear: “This is my son.” That night he told me everything about how he became the Capeman. The killings of which most I already knew. Everything he said I had heard or read about, but hearing it from him made it all part of my life too, by being his son.
One night we went swimming at the nearby San Sebastian beach. It was there, when I tasted the salt of the Caribbean, that I felt he was truly my father.
“When you swim this sea,” he said while we were in the water, the air cooling my temples, “you don’t feel poor.”
I knew I had to give him the envelope. All he had to do was sign it, show proof of who he was, and he’d have more money than he’d ever need.
“In America we could never taste the salt of the sea and feel the heat of the island, so we felt poor, we were poor, but here, Julio, I’m rich with nothing but my island.”
I had stayed in San Juan for two weeks. Two weeks with my father talking at night, as he only came out at night. We talked about many things, catching up on our lives. Soon, my vacation time was over. I would need to go back to work. My intention was to go see him before I took the plane. Tell him about the contract and give it to him. Let him know I would send money so he could return to New York City. Stay with me while he straightened out and collected the money that the wealthy musician had set aside for him. And then it would be up to him.
At the Sheraton desk I received the checkout bill.
“He said many times he was your father. You’re his son, right?” the hotel clerk said. I was being billed for thousands of dollars in casino gambling. “You are his son? And he was always with you?”
I had not stepped one foot in the casino, but he had. Many times, under my name and room number.
Before taking a cab to the airport I went looking for Magaly; I knew where I’d find her.
“You and him got me pretty good,” I said. She was fishing the sea in a terrible spot since the men had taken all the good ones. “What’s his real name?”
“Listen,” she replied, continuing to hold her fishing pole steady, “everyone here is trying to make a living, okay? This island is poor. You are all tourists. Even if you are Puerto Rican, you don’t live on the island; you are a tourist, and because of that, you have more money than us.”
She wasn’t going to tell me anything. She might really be his daughter. But it didn’t matter.
“Magaly...” I handed her the contract. The piece of paper that Mama had kept for so many years, hoping that our ship would one day come in and like Columbus we would find riches. “Tell him that if he can play the part of the Capeman as well as he played it with me, there’s money for him and you.”