"They call this the city of promise, Arturo, but it is a city of promises and very few of those promises are true." Passionate music, latin dancers, compulsive romancers. Smoke filled rooms and bottles of rum. One lover lost, two others will come. In the 1940s, Mexico City is at its freewheeling best. Vivid imagination texture history to capture the drama of a golden decade. Cadillac cars and splendid avenues. There's a US ambassador, the president, real life film and music stars. Diego Rivera, Frida, Cole Porter, too. Stately residences and chic neighborhoods in a city where symbols of affluence contradict sprawling slums and squalor of central city tenements ... and life. A complex undercity where the "respectable people" are the mobsters and the forces of greed and political privilege keep it that way. "Well my darling one, at least you come looking for me every time there is a new bullet hole in you." Young, ambitious Arturo Fuentes is caught in their sights. He didn't arrive from Veracruz in search of a marginal life. Arturo is here to make promises of "the good life" come true. Problem is, he's pinned in a battle the common man isn't allowed to win.