Guadalajara 3
Juanito slept in a middle-class hotel that night, with luxuries like white towels, running water, and television that he already took for granted. He fell asleep listening to Jacobo Jarelewski talking in suave anchorman tones about Mexico’s deepening payment problems and the necessity for foreign investments. He dreamed of Joan of Arc, tied to a post in a churchyard with faggots blazing up around her feet and huge breasts bared like the covers of the paperback picture books sold in the streets. He fought his way to her and cut her free, carried her over his shoulder up the bleeding path he knifed through the nuns and shopkeepers and cops, threw her into his black, red and gold Buick and accelerated into the scattering crowd. The very next day he started proving to the men with the boxing gloves that he was their best bright hope and an unholy terror.
Twelve years later, a lot of people knew about Juanito, but by then they called him El Martillo and street urchins wore T-shirts emblazoned with his trademark of a vertical sledgehammer. As he demolished a carefully picked and increasingly important string of professional ring opponents he was widely seen a coming kid with realistic expectations to become nationally or even internationally significant. He was a people’s champion from the start and a sure sellout. Unfortunately he ran into something he just had to have.
Another young man, evidently unaware of or insufficiently impressed by Martillo’s reputation, disputed his claim to a girl in a Mexico City tavern and ended up beaten to death in nothing flat, Martillo having become unaccustomed to fighting with gloves and no longer really knowing his own true menace.
This wouldn’t have been a problem for a man of Martillo’s popularity and powerful, if mysterious connections, but the dead man was a “Junior”, son of a ranking official in the ruling party, an arrogant PRI aristocrat. Juanito/Martillo escaped punishment, but his ring career was over. He became a folk martyr at once, and for several years almost every shoeshine box, street stand and taxicab dashboard in Guadalajara had a decal of the black hammer rampant on a field of red with a gold motto that read, “He could take you.”
Martillo’s backers were understandably very upset that such a likely investment had aborted on them just as it was ready to mature. They sat down in the private salon of a little known but extremely expensive restaurant in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa and told Martillo as much. He was very contrite at having cost them after all they had done for him and tore open his shirt to them, exposing himself to their mercy, a gesture which touched the older men. They assured him that they would get by all right, that they understood all about what a man had to do, and that Juniors and politicians and judges were all a bunch of assholes in the first place.
They said it was they who felt remorse that such an outstanding young athlete and true son of the people had taken the punishment and risks of the hard part of his career without arriving at the enjoyment due him at its peak or savoring the world’s adulation in his old age. Everyone nodded vigorously at that speech, made by one of the dozen most powerful gangsters in the country, and said with true tears in his eyes. Martillo, the former Juanito del Dios, nee Juan Nadie, was very touched by the emotion but couldn’t help but wonder where it was all heading. And, of course, how he was going to come out of it.
It turned out that they wanted him to think of them as his family, a concept that surprised the ex-urchin by tugging sharply at his throat and tear ducts. He would always have a place in their bosom and work would be found for him commensurate with his stature and talents. To start with he could work for a certain man of some influence in Guadalajara. They wished him great success in his life; expected it of him. Before leaving, each man in the room embraced him to the breast. They were all very wealthy and powerful men, with great accomplishments and acquaintances; but every one of them, until their old age, would tell people that not only had they seen El Martillo fight his vicious, slashing, unpredictable fights–but had received of him an abrazo and shaken his hand.
Back in Guadalajara, in a palatial home on the edge of the canyon, Martillo’s new sponsor sent him to a tailor and a barber, entertained him a few days, then asked him what he’d like to do in the way of work. The man laughed heartily at the reply that all he knew how to do was fight and shine shoes. It happened that he knew some fellows who needed their shoes shined, and perhaps Martillo could drop by and convince them of the importance of proper appearances in the world of modern Mexico. Martillo went into the plush bar/floorshow/whorehouse alone, but he had a slim automatic pistol tucked into his waistband under the stylishly cut suit coat. He spoke convincingly to the owner and to three large men that worked for him. In fact he convinced all four to spend some time in the hospital. The next day his patron received a phone call in the spirit he’d been awaiting.
Martillo had chosen a very busy time to drop by the delinquent bar, and word got around that he was a human whirlwind of very bad omen. After a few similar catastrophes he could be as convincing on the telephone as he was in person. He worked five years as a one-man complaint department/accounts receivable/health consultant, refining his style in many things, including English, literacy, and pistol marksmanship.
He had quickly become more than just a bodyguard (or “backguard” as the Mexicans would put it), he became the right-hand man, privy to all facets of marijuana cultivation, harvesting, processing, transport and resale. He encouraged his boss to move early and heavily into the increasing commerce in heroin produced in nearby Sinaloa. He still had a vision of foreigners as monied, silly and possessed of endless appetites for junk. He could smell other opportunities on the horizon.
Martillo was fairly content for the moment. not aware of anything he really wanted, not missing the hungry fire in his belly. His superiors and contemporaries thought him a natural-born drug trafficker, who would go far. They were glad he had no appetite for drugs himself–nobody would have been very comfortable being around Martillo if he wanted anything all that badly.