Constanzo followed in his mother's footsteps, cruising Miami gay bars in his teens, indulging in petty crime. A poor student of anything but black magic, he graduated near the bottom of his high school class and dropped out of junior college after one embarrassing semester.

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire interests lay elsewhere, learning the secrets of witchcraft from his mentor. Together they robbed graves to stock the priest's caldron and spilled blood over voodoo dolls to curse their enemies. palo mayombe is an amoral religion, drawing no line between "black" and "white" magic, leaving each practitioner to choose his own path without prejudice. Drug dealers frequently trusted its tenets to protect their outlaw enterprise, but Constanzo's godfather had stern words of advice for his protégé. "Let the nonbelievers kill themselves with drugs," he counseled. "We will profit from their foolishness."