He was seventeen by the time he stumbled back into Tepito, back into his mother’s apartment with no money and no prospects. His mother looked none too pleased to see him. He didn’t really feel like joining a gang again, though he half-heartedly hung out with his old friends and spent his days bored out of his skull for about two months until the afternoon when he stole theIllustrated Laroussefrom a Porrúa bookstore. He’d known a classmate who’d owned one of those, and he’d found it fascinating. It was a big, bulky book to steal, but he managed it and thought that maybe his future lay in books.
Books! He, who couldn’t spell when he was stressed, the letters still jumbled in his head. But he did like to read, and having stolen one gigantic book he figured he could steal more, then resell them through the vendors along Donceles. He quickly got to stealing, reading, and reselling. Then, realizing that the used bookstores and those pricks from Donceles paid him a pittance and made a huge profit, he installed himself in an alleyway near Palacio de Minería. A few vendors brought folding tables; others simply set their books on flat pieces of cardboard. Elvis brought a tablecloth and stacked his wares.
After a little while he figured out the most profitable line of commerce: textbooks. University students would come around, ask if he had something, and he’d promise to obtain it for them. This meant he’d steal it from whatever bookstore was easiest and then sell it to the student.
Thieving turned out to be Elvis’s talent. After a couple of weeks he decided to augment his book sales with vinyl records, which was a sensible choice. He had aspirations to open up his own little shop, down in Donceles, and sit behind a cash register, book in hand and his Presley records playing.
That didn’t happen, because one day a bunch of fuckers appeared in his alleyway and started beating the vendors. Elvis had heard of things like this happening around the city, with cops, or other motherfuckers who must work for cops, chasing away the street sellers and beggars. They wanted to clean up the city for the Olympics.
But despite simmering violence, Elvis had been lucky. Well, not anymore. Everyone began to grab their wares and run away. Elvis began picking up his wares too, intent on simply making a quick exit with no fuss, but then an asshole decided to smash the copy of “Jailhouse Rock” Elvis had been proudly displaying, and he lost it.
Though he wasn’t terribly strong, though he wasn’t really a fighter, Elvis grabbed a thick tome of Rousseau and started beating the son of a bitch in the face with it. Within a few minutes some of the guy’s buddies realized what was going on and intervened, treating Elvis like a human piñata, until after several punches and spitting, he heard an older man speak.
“Let him be,” he said.
The thugs holding Elvis stopped punching him. He sat down, out of breath. The older man stood in front of Elvis. He was dressed impeccably, with a suit jacket, a burgundy tie, and shiny shoes. He looked at Elvis curiously.
“You put up quite a fight,” the man said, reaching into his pocket and holding out a handkerchief.
Elvis stared at the man’s hand. The man waved the handkerchief again, and Elvis slowly grabbed it and pressed it against his mouth, wiping the blood away.
“If it’d been fair I would’ve messed up that guy real good,” Elvis said.
“I know. You are fast. Good reflexes.”
“I guess,” Elvis said, not wanting to specify that stealing requires good reflexes and the ability to pick up speed in case an employee catches you in the act and you have to sprint your way to safety.
“Is this your merchandise?” the man asked, leaning down and grabbing a book:20,000 Leagues under the Sea.
“Aha,” Elvis said.
The man ran his hands down the spine. He glanced at Elvis again. “How old are you, boy? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Almost eighteen, yup,” he said. “But what’s it to you?”
“A job, maybe,” the man said. “They call me El Mago. You know why? Because I can get people out of tight situations, like Houdini. And I can also make things appear and disappear.”
“And these guys,” Elvis said, pointing at the thugs who were shooing away the last remaining street sellers, “are these the people who help you pull rabbits out of hats?”
“Every magician needs an assistant, does he not? Maybe you have the chops for it.”
“I wouldn’t look too good in leotards or being sawed in half, mister.”
El Mago smiled. He had a treacherous smile. It was warm and made you think he was your best friend in the world, even when he was watching a guy get his kidneys ground into nothing by one of his men, as Elvis would later find out. But right then he didn’t know better, and he thought it was a pleasant smile.
El Mago gave Elvis a card with his phone number and told him to call him if he wanted to stop fooling around and make real cash. Elvis made an appointment to meet with El Mago. He hadn’t been too confident anything would come of it, but he remembered that Colonel Tom Parker had discovered Presley and plucked him from the shadows to turn him into a superstar. So obviously weird shit like that did happen sometimes. Maybe El Mago was the real deal, an important man, or maybe he was nothing. But Elvis needed to find out. He went to El Mago’s apartment, curious and unsure of what to expect.
It was a great apartment. El Mago had bookshelf after bookshelf lined with fancy tomes and an amazing stereo console. Interesting records too. Not rock or anything Elvis had heard about, but jazz. He had a bar cart, with a decanter and matching glasses and a cocktail shaker. When he asked Elvis if he wanted a smoke, he took out a silver cigarette case.
Cash. Yeah, Elvis smelled cash, but more than anything he was enchanted by El Mago’s way of life. This is exactly what he wanted: to have an apartment with high ceilings and bookcases going all the way up, the hardwood floors and the coffee table of glass and polished metal.
El Mago was kingly. Elvis had never seen anything like it, such assurance in manner, suchclass. He was a gentleman. Elvis had never met a gentleman; he had grown up with scum and shitheads, and here was this man, extending his hand—and it felt to him it was the hand of god, that’s how impressed he was—and lifting him from the muck.
The only thing that Elvis had ever won in his life were the plastic Hanna-Barbera figurines that came in Tuinkys. This was like finding a damn diamond inside the snack.
Of course Elvis accepted El Mago’s job offer and joined the Hawks. He became one of Mago’s boys. That’s what he called them: my boys.
It hadn’t been easy, all the training and the rules. The Hawks were run military style, and since a bunch of the members had been lowlife assholes like himself, picking up routines and following commands wasn’t first nature. But he persevered through the drills, mastered the tactics they were taught: how to bug a room, how to tail someone without being found out, the works. Apparently some of the Hawks had even been trained by the CIA, who didn’t want commies in Latin America and were assisting the Mexican government, which meant that Elvis received a top-notch education.
