Cabron meaning “male goat.” Not, of course, that he would have preferred your being a goat or anything like that. In Spanish, the word cabron was used as slang in various senses, all negative. You could call someone cabron when you wanted to point out that he was a fucking shit, or a pathetic loser, or to ridicule him for letting another man sleep with his woman. This last meaning was the meaning the Hellhound had in mind. You were the cuckold. Not that anyone had slept with your wife. That had happened, not to you, but to your master.
La Familia was impressed with your master. They anticipated that in time, he would become an even more capable boss than his father. So they invested in him. In his future, his promise—his youth. When La Familia presented a man with a dog, as it had presented you to your master, it showed that he had been recognized as “one of the family.” Your master got more than just you, however. The Don also sent your twenty-four-year-old master his eighteen-year-old second daughter. You and his new bride had both come down from Texas at the same time, to Mexico City, to the twentieth parallel north. Naturally, the Hellhound was delirious with joy. Now he and La Familia really were family! The Don was his dad, and the Don’s wife was his mom! And to top it all off, his new wife was a pretty piece of work—not exactly the slim big-breasted type he usually preferred, but he certainly had no complaints.
The Hellhound was happy. He threw himself more wholeheartedly than ever into his work—his secret work, that is—and into his wrestling. His new wife couldn’t believe it. She had been looking forward to immersing herself in the delicious, melting joy of newlywed life, and instead just look at this guy! What was he thinking, going off and leaving her like this, packing whatever time was left after he finished dealing with business into that silly pro wrestling, and taking it so seriously? His new wife was Mexican-American, not a true Mexican, and she had no sense of the significance of lucha libre. Her husband’s side of their double bed was often empty, and so naturally she began bringing in a lover to share it with her. This had been going on for a year when her husband found out.
The new wife left the compound. The Hellhound couldn’t just rub out the jerk she’d slept with because she had the upper hand. “Listen,” she told him, “if you kill my lover, I’m going to have my great-uncle cut you out of La Familia’s business.” And so, in an instant, the Hellhound was plunged into despair. That was when he decided, rather masochistically, to rename his dog Cabron. Your master was fond of you, Cabron. He kept you constantly in his presence. And he took a sort of bitter, self-mocking pleasure in talking to you, addressing you by your new name. Hey, cuckold, how about it, cuckold? Don’t you agree, cuckold? At the same time, the Hellhound wasn’t the sort of simple young man to do this simply to vent his emotions; the new name was the result of careful thought. If someone in the business ever happened to call him “cabron,” even as a joke, he might fly into a rage and shoot the guy dead before he even realized what he was doing. That would be really bad.
But what if that word were also the name of his constant companion, this dog?
What, your master thought, if it were your name?
“It’s okay,” he could tell himself then, “he’s just talking to my dog.”
And so you became Cabron. Three months into your second year. Your master was twenty-five. He was still emotionally malleable. Day after day, as he talked to you, called you by your name—Cabron! Cabron!—he began to forget his pain. Hey, what’s the big deal? It’s a dog’s name. And though his wife had now run off with another man, he remained as tight as ever with La Familia. No, please, the Don said, call me Dad, just like before. Your master had been “bought,” as it were, as a promising young leader in the business, and his position in La Familia didn’t change. He was still free to come and go as he pleased in the orchard in Texas. He was family. And there was someone there who tried to comfort him as best she could. “I’m sorry my sister was such a bonehead,” the girl said. She was the Don’s third daughter. Thirteen years old. “Don’t let it get you down. I think you’re great.”
Huh? Me? You do?
Six months later, he had recovered.
So that was your master’s story. The melodrama of your alter ego’s life until 1971. But you, Cabron, you were living your own melodrama. From the time you turned eight months old and spilled seed for the first time, you rarely had a problem getting it. Who could resist you? As long as your alter ego had his private face on, no bitch’s owner would ever refuse to let you have her. And when he wore his public face, they let you have their bitches because of the love and desire they themselves felt for the Hellhound—they were more than happy to let the Hellhound’s dog knock up their pets. And then there were the strays who knelt for you, overwhelmed. You mated with this bitch, took that one, littered all of Mexico City with your progeny. You… you betrayed your name. You were no cuckold; you were a lady-killer. But then, toward the end of 1974, everything changed. You fell in love.
Love. Melodrama.
Your master had gotten involved in something big. His bodyguard had brought him the lead. The bodyguard was a huge dude from American Samoa, upward of six foot two and a champion underground boxer. He had an astonishingly thick neck, fat arms, and a massive stomach. Samoans and Tongans were legendary among professional boxers. Lucha libre wasn’t real fighting, of course, but this only gave the Hellhound greater respect for true strength. He was still a fighter, he told himself, even if he wasn’t much of one. And what point was there in being protected by bodyguards weaker than he was? He had first been introduced to this guy, whose arms and torso and thighs were covered with traditional Samoan tattoos, by the nephew of the Don’s wife, a producer. The introduction alone wasn’t enough to convince him to hire the Samoan. If the bodyguard was going to be with him all the time, he had to be totally sure he was trustworthy. The Samoan had two other characteristics that made him attractive. One was that this towering giant, who spoke Spanish with a Samoan-English accent, was a twin. “You mean you’ve got a brother exactly like you?” “That’s right, man. An identical twin.” “That’s so cool! It’s like having a fucking alter ego!” It turned out, furthermore, that the older twin—the bodyguard—was also a devout Christian. “Are you kidding? The Samoan Islands are Catholic?” “Sure, man. The first missionaries came to Samoa in 1830, so what do you expect? Sometimes when I hear a hymn I get teary.” “That’s terrific!” “My brother, though, he’s Muslim.” “He’s a… but why?” “Lives in Asia. Went there to work. Does the same kind of shit I do, in Indonesia I think it is. Or maybe it’s Pakistan? He swore to obey the Koran in order to get in good with the people there.” “That’s awesome! That’s the kind of dedication I like to see in this line a work!”
So the Hellhound hired the Samoan hulk—who was simultaneously an older twin and a championship underground boxer—as his bodyguard, and the two survived several bloodbaths together, and the Hellhound came to see that he could trust the Samoan absolutely, and then to regard him as his right-hand man. In 1974, this right-hand bodyguard was one of the main movers in a major incident: he helped lead the Hellhound to attack an officer in the Mexican Federal Police. “This dude’s bad, man,” the Samoan had muttered. “And I mean bad.” “Is he?” the Hellhound asked. “He’s building his own secret organization, Boss. Fixing it so he has access to all the confiscated drugs, building ties with the Colombians, putting all the department heads in Customs in his pocket.” “What the hell? Are you kidding? That is bad. I was thinking the paperwork guys in Customs seemed kind of unfriendly lately—so it’s this guy’s doing, huh?” “It is, Boss.” “How’d you figure this out? Who snitched? One of the little guys in the state police?” “No one snitched, Boss. More like I got him to talk. Gave him a hook to the jaw, smashed the bone. Brraahahahahah! It’s hard work getting these guys to talk, Boss.” “Hilarious. Hahahahah.” “You know that business we got going on in Cabo San Lucas, dropping drugs from the sky? I got wind someone was trying to interfere, so I had ’em tie him up and bring him to me. And let me tell you, when that guy started talking, boy did he start talking.” “So what’s this plan you got for me?”