Juan Roberto Melendez
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what was going on and to see if they might be able help. They asked Juan if he would look after their place while they were gone. Juan was more than happy to oblige them. The Carrucinis had animals that needed cared for, and Juan also agreed to do some painting while he was staying at the house. David Luna Falcon had been in and out of mental hospitals and diagnosed with undi=erentiated schizophrenia, compounded by cocaine use and heroin addiction. He supported his habit by whatever illegal means he could and o=ered police the occasional tip to keep out jail. But the game had gone bad for David Falcon. He had made the wrong people mad in the world of the Puerto Rican underground, and feared for his life. Prompted by his father and stepmother’s o=er of assistance, David Falcon fled Puerto Rico and returned with them to Florida. Perhaps it was Pa Luna’s anxiety over his son that caused him to lash out at Juan when they got back, upbraiding him. “He did not find the house like he wanted,” Juan says with a wounded shrug. He had taken on the responsibility as a favor. He was angry and hurt. He no longer felt welcome in the Carrucini home. And as for David Falcon, Juan had no use for him. Falcon’s half-sister Millie had filled Juan in on Dave’s addiction and checkered past. “She told me he was bad business, that he brings trouble wherever he goes. She warned me not to hang out with him.” Juan used to buddy around with David Falcon’s half-brother, Gilbert. “Gilbert changed, once Dave got a hold on him,” Juan recalls wistfully. Juan and David Falcon’s paths crossed on one or two occasions, and that was enough. Juan chose to keep his distance. Juan and Pa Luna might have made amends eventually, but David Falcon’s appearance on the scene strained Juan’s relationship with the entire family.6 During January and February of 1984, Juan worked with his regular crew, picking oranges and grapefruit. In late February, a brutal freeze wrecked havoc in the Florida citrus groves. The trees shed their fruit, much of it still immature. “We picked up what we could salvage from the oranges and grapefruit on the ground, but that was the end of the harvest. We were out of a job.” Juan traveled with the foreman and crew to a farm in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, to prune apple and peach trees. The pruning job paid meager piecework wages, $2.50 per tree. The gusting wind was bone chilling for the men working on ladders in the orchards, but Juan needed the income. Meanwhile, back in Florida, Juan was being framed for murder. The reason behind what happened in Lakeland, Florida, in Juan’s absence, is a matter of some speculation. David Falcon, a man with a drug