Grifter

 Once a month, we would clamber into the family car and drive into Dade to visit our grandmother. She lived in a condo on Miami Beach, nestled close to what would eventually become (nowadays) ground zero for celebrities and wannabe celebrities in South Florida- South Beach. But in 1980, it was as far from trendy as you could imagine.  A place of dilapidated art deco apartment buildings filled with the elderly and those new to the States, slowly dying antique shops, bodegas, and the occasional tourist trap filled with everything you could stick a shell to. It was the opposite of the 80s suburban landscape of one story single family homes my parents had bought into in Broward.

 It was an adventure.

 These trips were relegated to once a month, on a weekend, because we lived in Broward and my dad was a very busy man™. Each visit would follow a pattern. Drive down in the morning when the highway was less crowded and parking was guaranteed. Climb the stairs to her apartment, and be greeted by the smell of arroz con pollo (the only dish Abuela Carmen ever made). Spend one hour with her after having lunch, then leave.

On one visit when I was seven, our Tio Pepe also showed up to visit. This was not the first time I had met my uncle, but it was the most memorable.

   Tio Pepe was what most people would call a confidence artist, and had been for as long as anyone could remember. He was also the polar opposite of my father, who was (and has always been) a stickler for rules and order. My father always had a contentious relationship with his younger brother. As dad was the elder son, he was always charged by my grandmother with looking out for Pepe. During their childhood, dad watched over Tio Pepe, and continued to do so when they emigrated to their new home in the United States. Then Vietnam happened. Both sons enlisted, and while my father returned to civilian life after completing his tour of duty...

...Tio Pepe did not.

 My father, as the story goes, was told a story by Pepe about being forced into a second tour. Understandably upset at the thought that something like this had happened to his baby brother, my father took my uncle to the nearest recruitment office to sort things out. That was when he found out that my uncle had actually signed up for a second tour, of his own volition. Disgusted, my father left him to his fate. From that point forward, their relationship was comprised of Tio Pepe trying to enlist my father's help to get out of increasing shadier scenarios involving cars, houses, insurance, credit cards, investment 'opportunities'...

His actions, over time, made believing anything Tio Pepe said increasingly more unlikely.

   When we arrived at Abuela's, Pepe was already ensconced in an armchair by the tv, a briefcase propped next to him. As usual, our family performed the ritual of arrival . Everyone greeted everyone else with smiles and cheek kisses (even if the gesture was disingenuous), the offer of beverages (coffee for the adults, cola for the children) was made and accepted. We all moved to take our places in the old prewar living room. My brother and I in the corner, focusing on setting up a checker board housed within a shell-encrusted box. Our parents moved to their places around the television.
 Tio Pepe had other ideas. Briefcase in hand, his speech swung from English to Spanish, beckoning them away from the living room, to the dining table. This act of changing languages was like blowing a whistle. Adults were speaking, in a language they (erroneously) believed we were ignorant about- a fact that delighted and amused Abuela to no end. It drew our attention away from the (admittedly less exciting) seashell checkerboard and to the drama unfolding at the table. Pepe was telling our parents that he was leaving Florida, with his family, for California. That day. He set the case down, and with a flourish opened it to reveal the contents.

Money.
Lots of money.
A briefcase full of money.

  As you could imagine, my dad wanted no part in knowing the details of how Tio Pepe got the money, much less where they would be living in California once they left Florida. My mom, well aware of the trouble Pepe frequently got into, was looking at the briefcase like it was a cobra. Seeing that he was not getting the desired response, Pepe shut the briefcase, and the conversation ended.

It would be another 15 years before we would hear from Tio Pepe again.

  In the mid 90s, Pepe returned with a new wife, and son. His first wife had divorced him at some point and returned to the west coast of Florida with their kids. Pepe was now back on the east coast, and involved in real estate again. Over the next five years, we would only hear about him indirectly. Someone would see him out and about, or at another extended family member's home. Lenders would call my father about paperwork Pepe filled out that included his name as a guarantor.
  After his second divorce, the contact escalated, becoming an epic game of tit for tat between the brothers. Each interaction between Pepe and my father became increasingly adversarial. He would contact our grandmother, who lived off of a very fixed income, for loans. My father would get a call from her about these requests. Our father (who supplemented our grandmother's expenses) would then call Pepe, irate at his younger brothers attempts to secure money from their mother. This cycle repeated itself, with slight variations, time and again. Occasionally he would call my father directly, to chat, and these conversations would eventually lead to a pitch for something my father would ultimately deny. Near the end of my Abuela's life, the calls became solely about her finances. When she died, he attempted to clear out his mother's apartment of valuables while our family was at the hospital.

Our father, assuming this would occur, had already removed anything of value from the apartment.

 After the funeral, we didn't hear from Pepe for awhile. He disappeared again into the wilds of Florida, where there was no shortage of colorful characters, and we went on with our lives. The next time he resurfaced was in early 2000. He was living in the palm beaches with a girlfriend, and my mom ran into him while visiting friends. They talked, and he told her he'd been attending Santeria services, and spiritual groups. He had even begun to affect the dress and mannerisms of a Babalawo.

Then he mentioned he had cancer.

 She didn't believe him, but she did pass on the story to us. We didn't believe it. How could we? Pepe had always been a colorful, unreliable character that was constantly in flux, for as long as we'd known him. His antics had only become more pronounced as the years passed, the antithesis of our father's rigid and ordered self. Eventually, my father found out about Pepe's condition. After grandmother's funeral he'd ceased talking to Pepe - even going so far as to change his landline telephone numbers, an act which seems old school now. I don't think he believed Pepe either, but in that moment the possibility that it might be real managed to crack his seemingly iron resolve. Enough so that he got his brother's new number, and called it.

 We didn't know he called until after the fact. Pepe had told him that it was stage 4 colon cancer. They started talking regularly after that first call. He visited him in the hospital, and arranged for his belongings to be secured when Pepe's girlfriend tried to take them during a hospital stay. If our father still had any issue with his brother, he kept quiet about it. Over the next year, he would act as a guardian for Pepe as his condition worsened. When he finally succumbed to cancer, father arranged for Pepe's military funeral and burial. Aside from our parents, my brother, and I only Pepe's second wife, and their grown son showed.

After the service they asked for the keys to Pepe's Mercedes Benz from our father. He gave them the keys, but kept the folded flag.

Last year, at our old home, I had put a package of water bottles outside, next to the front door of our home but out of sight from the road. This package of bottled water had been in our home for a few years, untouched since its purchase during a home leave a few tours back. One day, I was inside the house cleaning, and the kids were outside playing. Halfway through cleaning, the kids came back in, giggling and clutching quarters and dollar bills. I asked them where they got the money.

My son, beaming his big effortless smile, "We saw some people working, so we gave them water."
My daughter grinned, "They gave us money for it!"

Staring down at their smiling, happy faces I realized they were selling the water I'd set outside.

I have no doubt Tio Pepe would be proud.

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