Mar

5

People don't venture after dark onto the Iquitos waterfront because of the rats with two or four legs. So, three years ago when a shadow cast by a yellow lamplight danced over my shoulder I reflected that it belonged to someone who wanted me to know his approach.

´Excuse, mate!´ hailed a cheery tenor. I whirled to peer down on a wiry man with a crooked grin and blue eyes that sparkled in the night. ´Tourists shouldn't come here, ya know.´

I laughed, and thrust my hand; as he withdrew and hid his behind his back. With his left he grasped the outside of my fingers and shook, saying, ´Let me explain.´

´Please.´

´I was just robbed! Two blocks away two teen Peruvian thugs flashed a broken fluorescent light in my face. ´I'm a Brit!´ I retorted, and the next instant we were rolling on the ground. One pinned me, the other stuck the bulb in my hand, and as I swooned from pain they stole every Dollar, Pound and Sole I own.´

Slowly, he brought around the right that was bleeding with the little finger stuck out at an awkward angle.

´What are you going to do?´

´That´s the pity. I make my living playing the saxophone, and unless I get 100 Soles ($40) to fix the hand…´ he nearly shed tears.

´Look,´ I advised. I wouldn't be down here looking for a hostel if I had a lot of money. Here’s ten Soles to get you in a doctor's door, and then just plead your case.´

´Thanks!´ he gushed. ´If you see any more tourists out tonight, tell ém Byron the Brit is still searching…´

´I hope I haven't heard the end of your saxophone playing…´ and he vaporized along the wharf.

The next morning I stopped by the Yellow Rose of Texas Café for a macho omelette, and related the incident to Gerald Mayeaux, the expat owner and living record of Iquitos, whom I’ve known for thirteen years. He shook his head, and filled in a remarkable backdrop.

´
Byron is the most prolific con man in the history of Iquitos…´ He hunts for unsuspecting tourists along the streets of downriver Iquitos telling sob stories and tall tales for a few Soles to support his drug habit. He used to be an upstanding young man playing beautiful saxophone at La Noche and along the malecon for a few years until he gradually grew disheveled and strung out. Now hornless, he is the only gringo tough enough to live in the Belen waterfront where he crashes in crack houses, and prowls the streets at night for tourists. He has conned his way into the souls of old ladies and exclusive hotels where he smokes pasta with the air conditioning running, flicking cable channels. His face is on wanted posters around town and he’s been beaten up by robbed victims, but always rebounds as charming as ever.

´But his bleeding hand…´

´The prey was no doubt the predator,´ Gerald insisted. ´I’m truly sorry since it was a great sax hand. I listened to his music for years, and loaned him money… until my heart strings wore out. One day my wife gave him $100, and a week later he showed up desperate for more and ready to cut a deal. I wanted our money back, and so loaned him another $300 and took his hock ticket for the sax at a local pawn shop. After two years the deal wasn't closed, and I took the ticket to the pawn shop and paid $60 to get it out of hock. I didn't know its worth, except that for once I had out-con the Con Man of his saxophone.´

She was a diamond in the rough. The Selmer Mark VI is considered Henri Selmer´s finest saxophone. It is universally regarded as one of the best saxophone models ever produced by any manufacturer and was preferred by the most famous jazz musicians. The first models came out of France in 1954 with the Selmer engraving on the bell and serial numbers. It is called the most famous horn on the planet.

Gerald in the telling brought up Kaleb Whitaker, another expat businessman and musician I've known who would write an account of the sax in his blog Jungle Love. ´I offered Gerald a thousand dollars cash, on the spot, for the sax,´ says Kaleb. He never did take me up on my offer… Yes,the sax is Gerald´s now and, with a broken pinkie, will Byron be able to play like Charlie Parker?´

Charlie who? Jazz may be defined in the four words Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong. Parker was a jazz soloist and leading developer of Bebop with fast tempos, virtuosic technique and improvisation. His tone ranged from clean penetration to cherry sweet through jazz and on into Blues, Latin and Classical. He was an ideal in the hipster and later Beat Generation subcultures. He blew many saxophones over the years, and toward the end of his life on March 12, 1955 he blew the earliest Mark VI´s.

She was stolen from a display case at the Hard Rock Café in Hong Kong by Byron and his Brit sidekick whom I’ll call Noel. Noel testified to Gerald and Kaleb that one year he and Byron broke a display case at the Hard Rock Cafe which claimed it was Charlie Parker’s horn. It wasn't their first globetrotting nick. Byron simply wanted to play it.

I haven't seen Byron since the night he conned me, but he’s reported still running around the streets of Iquitos trying to kick the habit, buy his horn back, and get his life in shape. He is called by the poor under the dim lamplight the Robin Hood of Iquitos who prefers to give away everything he doesn´t need at the end of the day, and starting out fresh each morning without a dime in his pocket. So who conned whom?

He’s crushed the sax is gone but is unaware the Selmer Mark VI was just appraised and refurbished by a New Orleans virtuoso. It is a vintage 1954 Selmer Mark VI with a serial number that dates the production in Paris on April 27, 1954, one of the first Mark VI´s ever produced. A Selmer Mark VI sells at Ebay and auction houses in the $8-20,000 range. Did Charlie Parker blow on it ´Ýardbird Suite´and ´What Price Love´?

Likely, and the most a Charlie Parker saxophone has brought is $267,000.


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