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Abraham had once called me "a cancer" in the Quiñones family. I turned out to be benign. Nobody detected the real cancer, which appeared in the form of a tall, homely man named Giovanni López.
I first met Giovanni shortly before Adonis and I were married, when we were still seeing each other in secret. My first memories of Giovanni are vague. I used to see him at some of our shows, usually in Hampton. Occasionally he would be on the bus, too, visiting with Adonis and Angelo. Once I became acquainted with him, I might say, "Hey, what's up?" if I walked by Giovanni at a show or on the bus, but that was it.
Beyond that, everything I knew about Giovanni at first was hearsay. To me, he was just another friend of the Quiñones family--a friend whom everyone seemed to like and trust. I was polite to him but that was as far as our relationship went in those early years.
I had heard somewhere that Giovanni, a former registered nurse, attended one of Adonis's concerts in 1991, and was apparently so entranced by Adonis's music that he had approached Mercedes, who was in charge of Adonis's merchandising. Giovanni had proposed starting a fan club in Hampton.
I hadn't paid much attention to this story at the time. Adonis had so many fans, and by the time Adonis and I were a couple, Giovanni seemed to do a great job as his fan club president, rapidly adding members in the Hampton area. Members could pay to belong to the fan club and receive T-shirts, posters, and other souvenirs in exchange for a membership fee. Or, they could belong for free, and receive a monthly newsletter with a schedule of where we were playing.
Giovanni seemed to live for his job as Adonis's fan club president. He was older than we were, and acted very sincere and professional. He seemed to want nothing more than to help Adonis in any way he could, acting paternal toward him at first, very sweet and caring.
What none of us knew at the time is that Giovanni had first approached Dorian Pettigrew, whom I played with before joining The Delegation, with the same kind of proposition. Dorian's father, Fred, had turned Giovanni down. Dorian was the one who initially introduced Giovanni to Mercedes.
We also had no idea that Giovanni had a history of legal troubles. He had defaulted on his student loan and one of his employers, a dermatologist, had sued Giovanni in 1983, claiming that he had stolen money from his business.
So why did Abraham, usually so cautious, trust Giovanni? Probably because Giovanni seemed so harmless and played his cards just right. He was sweet, very soft-spoken, and extremely respectful towards Abraham. Mercedes had introduced Giovanni to him, and he liked the idea of having someone outside the family manage the fan club, since the rest of them were so overwhelmed. Giovanni proved to be especially useful in Hampton, where we often stayed to work in the studio or play in shows. The Quiñoneses and the band all came by bus, so Mercedes, Adonis, and Angelo were stranded unless Giovanni took them to run errands in his car.
For whatever reasons, Abraham, usually so mistrustful of outsiders, welcomed Giovanni into the inner circle of people who were known and trusted by the Quiñoneses.
"Fan clubs can really fuck you up if things aren't run the right way and people don't get the items or the newsletters they were promised," Adonis explained to me. "I'm real happy that Giovanni is running things the way he is. The fan club is continuing to grow and everybody's happy."
To show how grateful he was to Giovanni, Adonis often gave him gifts. Giovanni had a thing for cologne, for instance, so Adonis bought him an expensive Gucci cologne bottle. He also bought him a whole cologne set from Versace on a trip to Los Angeles. Slowly, Giovanni was becoming closer to Angelo and Adonis, who both treated him like another brother. So when it was time to make Adonis's big dream come true, it seemed natural for him to call upon his good friend for help.
