Havana World Series

by Jose Latour

  In his early thirties, Green Chips was somewhat fleshy for his medium height. He had light brown eyes, dark blond hair combed back, deep acne scars on his cheeks. The man knew how to make his money grow; Willy recalled having seen him once or twice before, always around midnight. The ball came to rest on 17. Green Chips won ten pesos for odd and black and lost ten because the number didn’t belong to the third column or the first dozen. White and Blue Chips, less gifted at combining probabilities with pure chance, lost fifteen and twenty-five pesos, respectively.

  “Make your bets, gentlemen.”

  Looking very sure of himself, Green Chips bet five on red, five on pair, five on the first column, and five on the third dozen before lighting a Partagás Superfino cigarette and spying Marvin Grouse by the dice table. Tilting his head backward, he blew smoke toward the ceiling, then stole glances at the cashier, the lobby door—guarded by a man in a brown suit—and the dial of his Ardath watch: 12:22 A.M. The lucky number was 28. Green Chips lost ten pesos for its being a black, even number, and won twenty because it belonged to the first column and the third dozen.

  Barry Caldwell recalled that the guy had started with sixty pesos and had ninety-odd a half hour later. Peanuts, of course, but he knew he should point him out to Grouse. That sort of customer had to be watched. If Green Chips limited himself to a monthly visit he would find the welcome mat out, for the moderate winner provides a glimmer of hope to systematic losers, but in the event he fancied making thirty or forty bucks on a daily basis, some beefy security man would coolly send him packing.

  At 12:30 Orestes Ordaz and Henry Bernstein replaced Willy Pi and Caldwell. Prior to taking his break, Caldwell whispered something in Grouse’s ear as the new supervisor watched baccarat. The man turned around, located the offender, nodded to Caldwell, and returned his attention to the card table. Following the dealer turnover, White Chips called it quits; the other customer kept at it. Green Chips blew frequent kisses to the beautiful girl with honey-colored skin, boyishly cut hair, and dark eyes escorting a Texan, far gone in bourbon and money, at the nearest roulette. Every few minutes Green Chips sipped beer from a tall cup close to his left hand, his gaze scanning the place, as though he was undecided between the wheel, a broad, or another form of entertainment.

  Three dealer turnovers later, Green Chips had a pile worth 135 pesos stacked in front of him. Like most of the other customers, Blue Chips had left after reducing his net worth by three hundred pesos. At 1:45 the casino was nearly empty. Closing time was postponed only if a high roller wanted to keep playing, but this particular night no table seemed to have a Croesus on a spending spree. Leaning on the girl, the drunk Texan had left at 1:15.

  Green Chips turned in his chair, snapped his fingers to a waiter, and ordered a fresh beer. The ball fell on the zero’s canoe; he was spared what he had bet on color, even, and high. Again he glanced at the cashier’s cubicle, where two men were going through a shop-closing routine. Suddenly, the gambler registered that the ball wasn’t spinning on the track; his eyes searched the dealer’s. The man stared over his head. Green Chips whirled around, looking up.

  “Good evening, sir,” Jimmy Brun, the chief inspector, said in passable Spanish. Clad in a tuxedo, the tall, red-haired American smiled at the gambler with the warmth of an Arctic Ocean walrus.

  “Good evening,” Green Chips replied, a touch of caution in his eyes.

  “I regret to tell you that we’ll close in fifteen minutes.”

  “It’s okay. I was leaving after this beer anyway,” Green Chips said as he reached for the full cup from the tray presented by the waiter.

  “I hope you’ll visit us again. It’s always a pleasure to see someone who knows how to.”

  “Not before November,” Green Chips said, and swallowed a mouthful.

  From the observation post, behind gray-tinted plate glass, Nick Di Constanzo and Marvin Grouse peered at the client as he calmly finished his beer and dropped the chips into the right pocket of his sports jacket.

  “He takes his time,” Di Constanzo commented.

  A close business associate of Frank Costello’s for thirty-five years, Di Constanzo had been in charge of Casino de Capri since it opened. Somewhere during his early forties he had started carefully cultivating what a girlfriend with literary ambitions had referred to as a “patrician countenance.” Since then, Di Constanzo had made enough money to wear Savile Row suits, handmade English shoes, and the most exclusive silk ties. Only the best barber in town took care of his wavy, thick, silvery hair. He observed how well-bred people behaved in public in order to copy and even improve upon their aloof and polished manners. Intellectually speaking, Di Constanzo was the opposite of the punctilious Grouse. He had no eye for detail, but his perception of relevant facts made him formidable on strategic issues. Meyer Lansky respected him for his wit, common sense, business experience, friendship with Costello, and the indisputable merit of having reached his sixtieth birthday with his skin intact.

  “Small fry. Takes seventy or eighty bucks from a table that grossed twelve hundred today,” Grouse said.

  They heard steps on the short staircase, turned around, and saw the chief inspector approaching. Brun lit a Camel, dragged at it, and for a second observed the departing gambler. “Says he’s coming back next month,” he reported.

  “See, Nick? Guy knows his trade; we won’t have to chase him off,” Grouse said.

  “I suppose so,” said Di Constanzo, but he kept pondering the fact that an expert who visited the twelve city casinos once a month and stuck to roulette, betting small amounts, not touching cards or dice, could average four or five hundred a month. He would have good and bad days, weeks of winning six hundred, months of losing a thousand, but he’d earn his bread and butter.

  “Anyway, I don’t like this kinda guy,” Di Constanzo said. “I hope he finds another way of making a living and quits giving free lessons to others.”

  Below, the man under discussion was the last to cash in. He pocketed 130 pesos before pushing through the door that opened into the hotel lobby. There he chose an easy chair facing the casino exit and lit a fresh cigarette.

  The delicate lighting matched the late hour and softened contrasts between furniture, curtains, carpets, and paintings, wrapping in shadows the few guests passing time. Sitting on a couch to the gambler’s right, two chorus girls from the nightclub waited for someone, their makeup bags resting on skintight jeans, a dash of frivolity in their hushed youthful giggling. The attendants of the two elevators, like the doorman and bellboy and both desk clerks, talked in whispers to lubricate the slow course of the small hours.

  From the inside breast pocket of his jacket the player extracted the evening’s copy of Alerta. He unfolded the newspaper and simulated reading it, elbows on the arms of the chair, while spying on the casino’s aluminum-and-glass swinging door through a small hole he’d punched in the page. At 2:16 the cashier and his assistant pushed it open; each carried a briefcase. Two men with identical brown suits escorted them. All four stepped into an elevator that ninety seconds later returned the guards to the ground floor. At 2:23 Nick Di Constanzo and Marvin Grouse came through the same door and boarded the elevator. Only then did Green Chips fold the newspaper, blow kisses at the chorus girls, wish the doorman a good night, and leave the building.

  Two

  Saturday morning was overcast too. A gale blew, huge waves smashed against the city’s seawall, and thirty-foot-high sheets of water came down on the few cars cruising by the new stretch of Malecón, between G Street and the tunnel under the Almendares River. Both the avenue and the tunnel had been part of the government’s public works, at the request of a few influential property developers, of whom Meyer Lansky was one. No road prolongation, no Havana Riviera.

  Shortly before noon, the parking valets, doormen, reception-desk clerks, and other attendants at the resplendent casino and hotel began speculating on the possibility that American gaming investors in Cuba would hold a meeting.

&nbs
p; Wilbur “Lefty” Clark and his second-in-command, Tom Magenty, from Casino Parisién, drove down Paseo Avenue in a majestic ’59 Cadillac De Ville at 11:29. They were followed ten minutes later by the Deauville’s Santos Trafficante and his partner, Joe Bischoff, riding in a sumptuous Chrysler Imperial with sixty-three miles on its odometer. At 11:57 Nick Di Constanzo and Marvin Grouse showed up in a brand-new Lincoln Continental.

  On the Riviera’s top floor, Meyer Lansky and Eddie Galuzzo—the second-generation American who managed the casino—bid them welcome at the sumptuous suite permanently reserved for visiting dignitaries. Though slightly distorted by the seawater mist on the glass, the coastline and the foam-speckled Florida Straits could be watched through the living room’s picture window, but neither hosts nor guests seemed predisposed to get lost in contemplation. Having exchanged greetings with the aplomb characteristic of leaders in all fields, the well-groomed lot reclined on soft seats, made jokes, munched shrimp fried in batter, and sipped fine liquors. The best hotel waiters, chosen to handle the cream of the crop, served them. Three TV sets, two in the living room and one in the dining room, were tuned to the third game of the World Series.

  After a few minutes, in conformity with the power structure, two groups formed. By the studio bar, Lansky and Trafficante perched on stools, Clark and Di Constanzo standing, the bigwigs conversed in low tones. Despite the apparently untroubled atmosphere and the irrelevancy of the topics, the deference bestowed on Number One was evident to all. A slightly looser mark of respect was shown to Trafficante, Havana’s second-in-command. Magenty, Bischoff, Grouse, and Galuzzo sat close by and chatted amiably, their ears flapping to overhear their bosses and keep up with trends, variations, and moods to make sure they would give the right answer if they were asked anything.

  At 1:02 P.M., from the dining room doorway, a maÎtre d’ gave a respectful nod to Lansky and the boss waved his guests to lunch. They followed the baseball game on a 21-inch RCA set while, interspersed among the comments that good plays induced, appreciative remarks were made on the consommé, the lobster Thermidor with ground almonds, the sauté meuniere red porgy basted in melted butter, and the 1949 Mersault. Bischoff gobbled down his food and slurped three glasses of wine; Lansky nibbled a few bites and didn’t touch the white. The rest ate and drank reasonably.

  Hank Bauer hit a single with bases loaded in the bottom of the fifth, scoring Siebern and McDougald. In the top of the seventh, the Braves lost an opportunity when Schoendienst was called out trying to score. In the same inning, Bauer slugged a 400-foot homer into the left field stands for two more runs, and Don Larsen’s good pitching kept the Braves’ hands tied in the eighth and ninth.

  After coffee the group returned to the living room and each man took a seat. Having settled himself onto a club chair with wings, Lansky shot a glance at Galuzzo, then shifted his gaze to the TV sets. Both were turned off. The guests realized that the meeting was about to begin. The agenda was unknown to all except Lansky, and the others were burning with curiosity. Conversation died out. Number One waited for Galuzzo to reach his armchair before making the introduction.

  “Okay, guys. I need to discuss something. You all know that last Saturday I took a plane to New York and had a talk with Frank,” Lansky began. “We discussed results here; they are excellent, more than anybody had hoped for. But we couldn’t reach a decision on expansion. The architects and engineers completed their calculations and are ready to begin the project you all know about—filling in the seabed down there to build eight casinos and hotels in a first stage.”

  Lansky paused and looked at the carpet, considering how to word his ideas.

  “It figures. Business logic says you invest in good times, fall back in hard times, so, if we look at the numbers, we should grow. But Frank says that last August he had a talk with Nick, who’s worried about this revolution in the eastern part of the island, the chances of survival of the present administration, and the outcome for us if this government falls.”

  When Lansky crossed his legs or emphasized something by waving a hand, he looked tired out. Having nodded a couple of times, Nick Di Constanzo now stared at Number One and remained unfazed. With one exception, the rest were getting ready to watch a very peculiar confrontation. The exception was Marvin Grouse. As a Di Constanzo protégé, he dreaded the possibility of being considered a party to such a serious disagreement, and furtively glanced at his boss.

  “Frank suggests,” Lansky went on, “we hear out Nick and sort this out. Now, I want to thank Nick for watching over our interests so closely. It’s always useful to hear a second opinion. Maybe I’ve overlooked something.”

  All caught the left-handed nature of the compliment. Galuzzo thought it wise to sneer at this and squinched up his face in a contemptuous look, directed squarely at Di Constanzo. He was peeved to discover that Lansky hadn’t observed his groveling.

  “I invited you here today so we could have lunch, listen to what Nick has to say, then learn what the rest of you guys think, one by one. So, if you please, Nick …”

  “Thank you, Meyer,” Di Constanzo said, then leaned forward, rubbed his hands, and gazed around the room. “ I… uh, flew to New York in late August to check out a deal my former hall supervisor, Angelo Dick, had cut with Joe Notaro, a capo in the Bonanno family some of you may know personally. …”

  The abortion-racket story took five minutes. Di Constanzo wanted to make very clear that it was the owner who first spotted the dog’s flea, not his next-door neighbor.

  “Before flying back I had dinner with Frank. I told him about Angelo, then we talked business here. Frank was optimistic, I was cautious; he wanted to know why and … Well, it’s a thirty-five-year friendship, guys. I didn’t realize I was unloading on him things I’d kept to myself. So, first of all I want to apologize to Meyer, and to the rest of you gentlemen, for going over your heads.”

  Voices overlapped in full understanding. Hands were waved, legs crossed and uncrossed, cigarettes lit.

  “For us, the present government is a blessing,” Di Constanzo continued; the others piped down. “This law allowing a casino in any new hotel that costs over a million bucks to build is great, Cuban unions finance part of the deal, the twenty-five thousand down payment for an operation permit and the two thousand monthly fee are pretty cheap, labor regulations make us legit here, police are cooperative, hundreds of thousands of tourists flood in, and the result of it all is: We’re making a bundle. It’s too good to be true, or to last. We move from our places to the casinos, pick up a broad, see a show, then go back to our places. We never leave a small section of the city, except to take a plane at the airport. But whoever cares to ask finds out that a rebellion is in full swing, that people on both sides are getting killed, and that the government is losing the fight. And I don’t base my opinion only on personal observation.”

  Di Constanzo paused to light a cigarette, dragged on it, then leaned back. As he resumed speaking, puffs of smoke came out with the first words.

  “Pan American Protective Service, besides transporting money and securities, runs a private investigations branch with agents all over the country. It has good contacts with the CIA, the FBI, the Cuban government, police brass. Maybe it has some people with the rebels as well, I don’t know for sure. Well, once I got back from New York, I ordered a survey of the political situation here from them. A month later one of their guys dropped in with a sixty-two-page report and a two-gee bill.”

  “Sixty-two pages?” an amazed Wilbur Clark asked.

  “Sixty-two, Lefty.”

  “How about that,” Clark quipped. “For me Cuban politics couldn’t fill three pages.”

  Everyone shared a laugh.

  “If I had known we were going to debate this, I would’ve brought it with me,” Di Constanzo said, making it clearer that he had been hit below the belt. “But everything is considered, and it adds up like this: The government controls the western provinces and one named Cam … something.”

&n
bsp; “Camagúey,” Lansky volunteered with a condescending smile.

  “Right. In Las Villas, rebel actions are increasing; in Oriente the government’s no longer in charge. Ninety percent of Oriente is either in rebel hands or a free-fire zone; guerrillas collect taxes from sugar factories and big landowners, name provisional mayors, open up schools in the mountains, you name it. Batista controls cities and big towns where bombs go off at night, there’re blackouts, shoot-outs, corpses line the streets. What the government still holds is by force. Except for his cronies, almost everybody is against Batista: businessmen, lawyers, priests, Rotarians, Lions, Freemasons, students, doctors, terrified mothers, journalists, every-fucking-body. This coming election—November 3, right?—won’t change a thing; even snotty kids know it’ll be a comedy.”

  “And?” Trafficante made it sound patient.

  “And … in six months, a year maybe,” Di Constanzo pressed on, “a change seems inevitable. Either the Army overthrows the new president or the rebels win the war, but an anti-Batista administration will be in power. Can anyone be sure that our concessions will last? Suppose they do—will we keep operating tax-free? Get fresh financing from Cuban unions if new labor leaders are elected? I don’t have definite, clear-cut answers to these questions, and that’s why I think it would be best to wait, see how the next rulers react to our line of work. And those are my worries, in a nutshell.”

  “Thank you, Nick,” Lansky said as he pressed a button close to his right hand. The maÎtre d’ showed up and the boss asked for two Alka-Seltzers in half a glass of mineral water. The man scrawled orders for coffee, cordials, cigarettes, then departed. In the ensuing pause, some discussed weather and sports. Not Nick Di Constanzo, though, who stared at the ceiling as if it were the Sistine Chapel’s. Santos Trafficante also remained silent, and examined the toecap of his shoes through the thick glasses that corrected his advanced myopia. The maÎtre d’ came back, followed by a waiter pushing a wheeled table. Having served everything, both employees left.