Getting Up To Speed: Your Damned Backstory
Guadalajara 1 — We meet Juanito, a homeless orphan bastard who shines shoes in the main historic plazas of Guadalajara. It’s a tough life–and the contrast between the squalor and historic grandeur the old French capitol are richly detailed. Juanito needs to move out of shining shoes because he getting older and people are all wearing sneakers. He tries breathing flame…then spots something new: his future.
Guadalajara 2 — What Juanito discovers is boxing. He forces his way in to the government ring in the Plaza to face an older, larger boy who starts punishing him heavily. But Juanito comes into his own right then and there: the combination of his toughness and craftiness, the desire to beat the bully, and the sight of money tossed on the cavas for the winner drive him to an upset–and an entry into what will become his profession. He returns to his old haunts just once–to create a holocaust goodbye–then embarks on a stellar career of beating people down for money.
Guadalajara 3 — Under his new professional name, Martillo–Martillo, the hammer–our boy heads straight for the top, becoming a national ring figure and a local legend. And, of course deeply involved with the Mob, which in that area means narcotrafficantes. But his hot blood trips him up at the threshold of international acclaim: he beats a man to death over a woman. And not just any man, the son of a family too powerful and influential to be bought or scared off. Stripped of his belts and titles, barred from the ring, Martillo, nee Juanito, becomes the bodyguard for another legend: Armando Lios, whose use of aircraft in the narco-biz earned him the sobriquet, the Nayarit Eagle.
Chapter 1 — Switching to the present and to the glitzy resort of Cabo San Lucas, we meet the beautiful, athletic, rich and exasperating Dancy Russell, nee O’Donough. Her father an American drug czar, her husband an ex NFL jock and very corrupt. So corrupt that he’s rigging up a major drug deal with Armando Lios, protected by his status on his father-in-law’s staff. Armando, however, has eyes only for Dancy, moving with grace and devastation on the tennis court. He jokes that he’d like to steal her away and is amazed when her husband, “Russ” says it might just be arranged.
Chapter 2 — Dancy is what you’d might called spoiled, but mostly just arrogantly inhabiting the wealth, beauty and skills that life delivered to her. And very, very bored. Her husband watches her beat the local tennis pro, not aware that her wager was access to her body. And as she winds up the game, he is already plotting with Armando to get her out of his hair, his life, and the complicated corporate/inheritance package he is counting on gaining contol of.
Chapter 3 — Her drinks drugged after the game, Dancy comes out the shower lulled and sleepy, collapses naked on the bed in her luxury suite…an easy mark for two of Armando’s men: Ramos, the fey killer, and Santiamen, the huge, affable dummy. But not as easy as they would have thought. Dancy snaps out of her lethargy, grabs an aluminum racket and defends her virtue quite handily, leading to broken noses and cracked arm bones. But as she bounds around the room in her golden naked glory, the drugs take their toll. She ends up in a laundry cart covered with sheets and towels, being rolled away from her old life towards whatever these gangsters have in mind for her.
Chapter 4 — Dancy’s father, Con O’Donough–a powerful political king-maker and currently head honcho in the War On Drugs–shows up in Cabo to direct the search for her. He nets a beach drifter named Doc Hardesty–with a record as soldier, mercenary, bodyguard and smuggler–for the search.
Chapter 5 — Dancy wakes up naked in a luxurious bed–that turns out to be in a jet flying high above the ocean and about to move inland to the Sierra Madre of upstate Nayarit. Armando’s jet, of course, and he tries to explain to her how drugging and swiping her isn’t exactly kidnapping or rape, but an opportunity for adventure. Her reaction to that frustrates the hell out of him. Dancy looks out the window as th plane lowers into a valley…and suddenly realizes there is no way it pull up in time to avoid hitting the ground.
Chapter Six — Doc walks out of the SolMar, already regretting having agreed to help one more shadow-government type. And is shocked when the beauty and peace of the beach and cliffs are violated by some American punks tagging the rock. He ends up injuring them and taking their paint… and caught up in one more depressing indication that the violence that has stalked his life since his teens is not going to just go away.
Chapter Seven — Armando’s plane lands safely in a remote valley in the Sierra and Dancy gets the grand tour of his plantation and his amazing castle/mansion/fortress overlooking it from a crest between two rivers.
Chapter Eight — Doc contacts Primo a young Mexican journalist who has already found out that Dancy was taken away on Armando’s plane. Doc hires him to help with the search.
Chapter Nine — Dancy’s husband is shocked at how much Doc has learned about the kidnapping and tries to head him off the job. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Doc starts his investigation with a piano player in a bar.
Chapter Ten — At the meeting with Dancy’s husband and father, Doc introduces Primo and adds him to the search as a guide. “Russ” Russell tries to deflect this, but it’s a done deal. So Russ adds himself to the party as a sort of co-ordinator. A solution happy to nobody involved, but he’s stuck with Russ as liason to authorities.
Chapter Eleven — After a lavish dinner at Armando’s castle, Dancy gets a tour of his collection of masks, ranging from peasant creations to jade faces she suspects of having been stolen from museums. Impressed in spite of herself, Dancy accepts an invitation to go hunting next day with Armando.