Mexican Hat Trick
by T.S. O’Neil
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GENRE: Contemporary,
Action/Adventure
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BLURB:
Mexican
Hat Trick reunites Retired Sheriff’s Department Detective turned Private
Investigator, Eidetic Eddie Doyle with Former Force Recon Marine, Michael
Blackfox, in a rollicking tale of murder, counterfeiting and kidnapping south
of the border. A rogue’s gallery of new villains, including a pathological
ex-French Foreign Legionnaire, a bloodthirsty drug kingpin, and a conniving
corporate attorney, conspire to corner the counterfeit apparel market. Mexican
Hat Trick is Florida Glare—south of the border.
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EXCERPTS:
Chapter 1 Chewy Mendelevich
Jesus Juan Carlo Rodriguez Mendelevich or Chewy for
short was scared. The portly man sweated profusely in the noonday sun. His body
generated rivulets of sweat that cascaded down his corpulent frame in
continuous flows. Part of the cause was Torreon’s climate; the other was his nervousness.
Chewy had scheduled the meeting at Casa Portofino, a restaurant in one of the
more upscale and tranquil areas of the city. The neighborhood was a series of
walled compounds, behind which sat multi-story villas protected by
shotgun-toting security guards. Chewy waited under the blue canopy of the
Mediterranean style white stucco building, hoping to see whether the man he was
scheduled to meet arrived alone as was agreed. He was expecting a Gringo named
Eddie Doyle, an emissary sent by the owner of the clothing company Chewy
supplied.
Torreon was a dangerous place—there were over a
thousand murders the previous year. Most were drug related as the Zeta cartel
called it their territory and home—while other gangs disagreed. It was also the
industrial heart of Mexico with much of the manufacturing scattered around the
city in a series of walled and guarded industrial parks.
Chewy was the product of a May-September romance
between a Jewish immigrant and a Mexican seamstress. His father, Isaac, a talented
and well-connected tailor, had fled the Soviet Union in the early fifties. He
had served many senior officials within the Communist Party ¬¬—a connection
that would save his life. In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, a plot had been
discovered to seize power by assassinating select high party officials. A group
of Jewish doctors was implicated and vilified. Some were executed, others
imprisoned—Isaac had been a non-practicing Jew, but nonetheless was swept up in
the purge that followed. He escaped via a connection he had with a Mexican
diplomat.
Over the remainder of his life, Isaac Mendelevich
had grown a one tailor shop into a lucrative cut & sewn operation that
employed over sixty seamstresses. Chewy had neither his father’s patience nor
his virtue, but he did have higher aspirations.
For the past eleven years, Chewy’s company,
Estrella de David S.A., had served as a foreign contractor of an American
apparel manufacturer. The cloth was cut in El Paso and shipped to his Estrella
Fabrica Una in Torreon—he only had one factory, but he could still dream big.
His seamstresses rapidly turned the fabric into shirts and pants, he paid them
poorly and reaped the reward. He had developed a pretty lucrative gig—the work
was good, and Chewy prospered. He lived in a three level walled home outside of
town, drove a late model Range Rover, and vacationed in a rented villa in
Tuscany.
The Range Rover handled Torreon’s rough streets
better than the Ferraris or Lamborghinis he saw in Italy—still, the Rover was
not as stylish. He was originally pissed when he found out the Chinese had
copied the storied vehicle and sold the counterfeit version, called the
Landwind X7 for half the price of the original. But that anger gave way to
grudging admiration after he involved himself in a similar pursuit.
Chewy dated the better-looking members of his
staff—oblivious to the warning about fishing from the company pier—apparently,
there is no similar expression in Spanish. The work was lucrative but limited.
He often finished the entire consignment that the North American manufacturer
shipped him in record time, which left him with an idle factory. He had plans
for an early retirement to his own villa in Italy or along the Spanish Coast,
and that took serious money.
Before his current girlfriend, Angelina, came to
work for him—she had been employed for a short time in a factory stitching
counterfeit shirts. The shirts were such good quality that they were often sold
in the same retail shops that sold originals. She liked the work—the factory
was in an old warehouse close to her home, the pay was in dollars, and they fed
her lunch. Sure the work was hard—twelve hour days using old sewing machines,
learning the strange stitching design and getting yelled at when she screwed
something up, but they let her bring home the leftover tamales, and they paid
her each day in currency.
On her one month anniversary a team from the
Prosecutor’s Office arrived—all dressed in black military-style uniforms and
carrying automatic weapons. The two Mexican Americans running the factory were
summarily arrested—cuffed and stuffed as the gringos say, and carted off in a
detention vehicle, not doubt to the infamous Gómez Palacio prison.
The gringos’ arrests left a vacuum in the market
and after some subtle inquiries, Chewy filled it with a vigor. He now produced
a regular run of clothing, in this case, a trademark known as Mountain Man (MM)
and then produced a second line of high-quality fakes. The clothing line had a
distinctive trademark—an inch high double M with crossed legs. The patterns
were the same, and much of the output was repurposed seconds or new jeans made
with locally bought denim. The quality of his counterfeits was high enough to
fool the trademark inspectors and even some of the manufacturer’s
investigators.
They filled a container of legitimate product for
which Mountain Man’s in-country manager paid in cash a sum that was both
gratifying and underwhelming. His shop floor otherwise idle, he would put his
seamstresses to work with remnants and leftover sundries, to turn out another
line of high-quality counterfeits. He knew others were doing the same. The fake
jeans went straight into a shipping container that arrived on a regular
basis—he assumed they were exported as he never saw them in the ‘Tianguis’ or
local flea markets.
Chewy was initially happy. That together with what
he was earning in regular work meant he was garnering over one-half million
dollars a year. Still, it was not enough. The villa in Italy that he wanted
costs over two and one-half million dollars and his prolific use of cocaine,
100% agave aged Tequila and high-class prostitutes, limited his ability to
save. He needed, as the computer geeks say, a killer app—something lucrative
enough to put him over the top. Two million dollars would get him there, and he
figured that the information he had to share was well worth that price.
My Review:
If you like action/adventure novels you'll probably like this one. From page one until the end you get nonstop action, blood, and gore. The book seems authentic when it comes to criminal activity. It has a good plot, and some of the dialogue is snappy. It keeps you guessing about the outcome until the end of the story. Four out of five stars.
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AUTHOR Bio and
Links:
TS O’Neil graduated with Honors from Northeastern University in
Boston, Massachusetts with a Degree in Criminal Justice and graduated with High
honors from the University of Phoenix with a Master’s in Business
Administration in Technology Management.
He served as a Rifleman with the Marine Corps Reserve, an Officer in the
Military Police Corps of the United States Army, and retired from the Army of
the United States (AUS) as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2012. He is a veteran of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. TS is currently employed as a Senior Security
Consultant, specializing in Information Security. He lives in Seminole, FL with
his beautiful wife, Suzanne. He has written
four books, Tampa Star, Starfish Prime, Mudd’s Luck and Mexican Hat Trick.
All are available on Amazon.com
www.tsoneil.com
https://www.amazon.com/T.S.-ONeil/e/B00DK8VL1Q/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7200359.T_S_O_Neil
https://www.facebook.com/TampStar
https://twitter.com/tselliot3
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and
RAFFLECOPTER CODE
The author will be
awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner and a $20 Amazon or
B/N GC to another randomly drawn winner, both via rafflecopter during the tour. Use the link below to enter.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
