Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,93

the Hellhound had always been unusually passionate. He was particularly susceptible to hallucinations. Physically prepared, you might say, to receive the word of God.

Age fourteen. The young man made his first appearance in the ring. He was a luchador now. He had spent the last two years training four hours daily, and expectations were high for this newcomer able to pull off impeccable high-flying moves. In Mexico, fourteen was not considered a young age to debut as a wrestler. And of course lucha libre was the preeminent form of popular entertainment. People watched, captivated, as the struggle between good and evil played itself out in the ring. Cheering for (or jeering at) the luchador who stood for goodness and jeering at (or cheering) the luchador who stood for evil offered a means of letting out the stress that accumulated in day-to-day life. Wrestling was a world of fantasy. And so the boy entered the ring. Watch me. Be happy!

This was his solution to the moral dilemma that plagued him.

His family’s business was evil. Well then, he would serve the public by becoming a luchador, showing his audiences a good time!

Thus he assuaged the prickings of his conscience.

His ring name was the Hellhound. He had chosen a dogman as his character, obviously, out of respect for his father’s dog—his family, teacher, and close friend. The various techniques he had picked up horsing around with the dog as a child played an important role in his fighting, albeit in more refined forms. That was how, at the age of fourteen, the Hellhound became the Hellhound. He was transformed from an ordinary human into a human capable of turning, at any moment, into a dogman.

The Hellhound was never, however, exclusively a wrestler. He continued attending school until he turned sixteen, and then he started helping his father. By then he had already found his way out of his moral quandary. He was doing good as a luchador, so even if he was involved in organized crime, and organized crime was evil, that was okay. By giving himself over to these two different aspects of his life, he achieved a kind of balance.

Once again, two.

The public face, the hidden face.

His father was assassinated by a competing organization in the winter of the Hellhound’s twenty-second year. The Hellhound took over the leadership of the cartel. Of course, even then he didn’t retire from the ring; the Hellhound remained his public face. Two. He was now the second man in his family to run the cartel. For two years, he struggled to keep things going, both in public and behind the scenes. By then everyone he worked with as a luchador—from his manager to his handlers, his drivers, everyone else—belonged to the organization. They made certain that security at stadium entrances was very strict and took extra precautions to prevent information relating to the Hellhound’s true identity from being leaked. The Hellhound’s underworld doings kept him so busy early on, when he first took over, that he competed in matches only in Mexico City and the small cities nearby. Even so, he managed to appear in 150 matches a year. At the same time, he worked hard to keep his other business thriving as it had when his father ran the organization. He found ways, little by little, to get in with corrupt state police officers and buy off tax officials, gaining a reputation as a promising newcomer in the world of North and Central American drug trafficking.

All this in order to be recognized by La Familia.

To convince the Don to give him a dog like the one his father had received.

That, ultimately, was his dream. That was the future he could hardly wait to make real. Then I’ll be just like you, right, Dad? He heard no answer from heaven, but he knew that if only he could get that dog, he would be number two. The second leader, a powerful presence in the underworld with a dog, an alter ego, as a symbol of his status.

He turned twenty-four. At last, he was presented with a dog. The Don sent the Hellhound a male pup, three months old. The dog’s father—his seed—was a boxer, and something about his features brought to mind a bulldog. Young as he was, he had incredible fighting instincts. When you got him going he would rear up on his hind legs, looking as if he were really getting ready to box. At the same time, he obviously had more than