by Jose Latour
Lansky sighed. “Gentlemen, we’ve been had,” he said. “Tomorrow at ten A.M. I want you to hand Nick a list of all your close Cuban friends, with their home addresses. If some guy was curious about how the casino operates, asked a lot of questions, place a check mark next to the name. Whoever asks what happened here tonight is told you were working late, the door lock broke, and you couldn’t get out. Not one word more. Sleep well, if you can.”
“Gimme your keys, Lee,” Di Constanzo said to the accountant.
The four men slipped into their jackets and left. For a while Lansky, Di Constanzo, and Shaifer discussed their next moves. Next the bodyguard lightened Grouse of his wallet, keys, watch, and rings before rolling the handcart requested by Di Constanzo into the office. Assisted by the Capri man, Shaifer lifted the body and placed it prone on the handcart, chest over folded knees, towels under the wound to absorb any flow there might be. Once the corpse was covered with clean sheets, they hurried to Bertier Pérez’s office to make several phone calls.
Lansky’s counterattack began at 4:53 A.M., just after the handcart moved from the Capri’s freight platform to a ’57 GMC panel truck. The driver, Fat Butch, helped Shaifer dump the body at a vacant lot on Twenty-seventh Street. In the Havana Riviera they tore the cart apart, threw away the wheels, then burned the sheets, towels, and canvas in the incinerator. Butch took Shaifer back to the Capri, then drove through the tunnel under Havana Bay to get rid of the cart’s wooden parts along the deserted coastline, near the town of Cojímar.
Joe Silesi from Casino de Capri and Dino Cellini from the Havana Riviera Casino dashed along the passenger terminal of Havana’s international airport at 5:23 A.M. They were under orders to hop a plane bound for New York, report to Costello, and fly back ASAP. Fifteen minutes later, Charles White and Eddie Galuzzo hurried into the same terminal to collect in Miami and bring to Havana the half-million dollars won with the covering bet on the seventh game’s result.
But Lansky didn’t want to welsh on what he owed to those who bet on the Yankees; rumors would be spreading all over town if they didn’t get their money in the course of the day. So, at 5:40 A.M. he phoned Roberto Suárez—Cuban senator, legal consultant of the Havana Riviera Corporation and close friend for twenty-one years—to ask for a cash loan of five hundred thousand pesos to be paid back three days later at a flat 1 percent interest rate. Half an hour later a half-awake Martín Balbuena, vice president of Banco de los Colonos, learned of Lansky’s request. Since the money had to be available by 9:00 A.M., Balbuena made fourteen phone calls from his home before getting back to Suárez at 7:55 to report that the cash would be available at a 1.5 percent interest rate.
Bertier Pérez was ordered to sound out desk, lobby, and elevator attendants for anything unusual that had happened between midnight and 1:00 A.M. When the general manager reported the acute respiratory crisis endured by an invalid staying in suite 406, Lansky smiled faintly, glanced at Di Constanzo, and suggested a look-over. At 6:02 both men stared at the shotguns on the red couch.
The sun was rising when a servant in the residence of Santiago Tey—former secretary of the interior in the Batista cabinet, senator, and lawyer—took the message that Mr. Meyer Lansky requested an interview at Mr. Tey’s earliest convenience. Mr Lansky suggested 9:00 A.M. at the senator’s home at 552 Twenty-first Street.
Tey was a compulsive gambler who fifteen months earlier had persuaded Lansky to install a roulette wheel in his home and to send attendants whenever he felt like playing. Back then, Tey used to spend more time at casinos than at his ministerial post, frequently losing thirty or forty grand in a couple of hours. The adverse publicity had caught up with him, and Havana gossip claimed it was one of the minor reasons he had been sacked. The major reason, according to what were euphemistically called “reliable sources,” was that Tey had been shaving the president’s cut of the graft money he made by selling influence, pardons, and driver’s licenses, collecting bribes from suppliers, and inflating the payroll with nonexistent employees. Over the course of time, the civilian who had been in charge of the Cuban police force became one of Lansky’s best customers.
By 9:06 A.M., with José Guzmán interpreting, the unflappable Lansky worded one of the weirdest requests the Cuban senator had yet heard. According to the Hebrew, a Cuban with a record of armed robbery had seduced the daughter of an American industrial tycoon who manufactured world-renowned candies and cookies. The father—one of Lansky’s very close friends—didn’t want the press to learn that his beloved daughter had eloped with an ex-con, and he had hired private investigators to unearth information that could reveal the whereabouts of the seducer and his innocent victim. Lansky hoped that Tey would exert his considerable influence with police brass and have them move their files and mug shots to the Riviera, where the multimillionaire’s PIs would examine them.
Batista’s crony stared at Lansky. The Hebrew looked back self-assuredly. Tey appreciated the courtesy of Lansky’s having devoted five or six minutes to concoct a story that would allow him to keep up appearances. On the other hand, he wanted Lansky to owe him.
“I can’t do it, Meyer. I can’t ask the Bureau of Investigations to take their armed-robbers files to the Riviera and leave them there for a day or two. It’s … too much. But maybe I can ask Colonel Grava to bring them here tonight and pick them up tomorrow night. He might say yes or he might say no; we’ll see. But if, as a very big personal favor to me, he agrees, these … private eyes could drop by my library and take a peek at them.”
“That’ll be fine, Santiago. Tomorrow at nine A.M.?”
“We’ll see.”
“There’s no less than ten dicks hunting this dude, so it’s better if they come in three groups, at nine and eleven in the morning and at one or two in the afternoon. No problem with that?”
“I’ll talk to Grava and call you later, okay?”
“I’d really appreciate it if you lend me a hand with this, Santiago.”
“It’ll take a lot of persuasion, Meyer. But we’ll see.”
…
In the master bedroom of the sequestered house, the booty lay on an oilcloth spread on the floor. Silence presided as the five criminals stared at the bundle of money. None of them had ever seen $627,000 before. The count had been completed a few moments earlier and even Melchor Loredo, the least proficient in arithmetic, realized he’d get over sixty thousand pesos. Each man lost himself in his daydream; time slipped by unnoticed.
The open windows revealed a thin layer of clouds sifting the glow of the sun. The distant whining of an industrial siren and the roar of an approaching bus marred the sound of whispering foliage and the chirping of birds.
The celebration had taken hours. While waiting for Loredo, who had to ditch the Ford on the other side of the port and make his way back behind the wheel of Contreras’s Chevy, some light drinking and solid cooking had taken place. After Loredo’s safe return, well-done steaks and French fries were washed down with red wine. Sipping brandy before dawn, in a swirling fog of cigar and cigarette smoke, a buoyant Heller had described the highlights of the days spent at the hotel to Fermín, Rancaño, and Loredo, occasionally asking for confirmation from Contreras, who just smiled and nodded. In a more sober tone, Fermín recounted to the driver and the scout what had taken place in the mezzanine. The news of Grouse’s assassination had made Rancaño and Loredo frown. The Pope’s death was discussed in amazement, and when Contreras was unanimously complimented on his foresight, the others realized that the organizer had hardly said a word and the conversation fizzled out.
“You had to do this guy, Ox?” Loredo asked unexpectedly, sort of wet-blanketing the celebration.
Contreras raised his eyebrows before presenting his case. “Suppose I didn’t. We’d have had to start an argument—in the hallway, in the middle of the night, three armed and masked men arguing with two casino execs. What would’ve happened if somebody came along, if one of them hollered for help? Suppose we finally got in without cap
ping anyone and found the safe closed. We’d have to beg them to open it up. Di Constanzo would’ve known we didn’t want to go all the way. I’m sorry for the poor bastard, but …”
Loredo’s forehead furrowed in resignation, and Rancaño didn’t like it either. Heller and Fermín, pretending to be unconcerned, kept up their tough-macho act as they glanced at the booty. In light of which Contreras said:
“I suppose we ought to see how much’s in there.” Then he stood, dusted off the seat of his pants, and lifted the pillowcases. From a closet, Fermín extracted an old beige oilcloth a former tenant had left behind. The floor was littered with empty plates and bottles, cigarette butts, old newspapers. “Let’s go upstairs,” Heller suggested.
It took them almost thirty minutes, because Contreras insisted on making sure every stack had one hundred bills. Fermín was asked to jot down numbers on a piece of paper and add them up at the end. When the total was announced, they all kept quiet for so long the mice and ants and cockroaches and spiders may very well have paused and wondered.
Heller was the first to snap out of it. He had regained his color and typical sense of humor after the steak and half a bottle of wine. “Well, gentlemen, here’s a pen,” he said, pulling a ballpoint from the pocket of his dress shirt. On a corner of the oilcloth, he wrote the total. “Let’s see, six-twenty-seven divided by two … hm … yeah, one left, I bring down the zero … Mr. X gets 313,500 pesos, half of it. And each of us gets …” After nearly thirty seconds spent dividing by five he joyously hooted, “62,700 coconuts!”
“Holy Mother of God!” Loredo whispered from the floor, where he sat with arms locked over crossed legs.
“I wanna say something,” Fermín, hunkering down, announced. “We agreed to cut it five ways, but Ox was in charge. He rounded us up, figured out how to ace in and beat the joint. Had to finish a guy off, too. I propose each of us hand him the twenty-seven hundred pesos and keep a clean sixty thousand, so he can come out with a little over seventy thousand.”
Contreras weakly tried to oppose a motion he in fact considered fair, but Heller and Loredo gave their immediate and enthusiastic approval, compelling Rancaño to halfheartedly agree. The money was divided into six piles: an impressive 50 percent that belonged to Naguib, four with 60,000 pesos each, one with 73,500.
With the intense concentration of a man who’s actually manipulating his future, Loredo placed his cut in a brown paper bag, then conscientiously folded the top over. Rancaño put his share in a cardboard cake box, then tied it up with a thin cord. Fermín stuffed his money in his adman briefcase. Heller crammed his cut into a paper bag he’d found on the ground floor that had originally contained the two towels and the bar of soap that Fermín had bought five days earlier for the country house. Contreras went downstairs and came back with a half-full can of crackers, which he emptied on the bedroom floor. He placed his money at the bottom, then covered it with crackers.
“Bring the suitcase, Gallego,” he said while pressing the lid on the can.
All five were helping pack the Lebanese’s money into a medium-sized suitcase when Rancaño verbalized what Loredo and Heller were only thinking.
“How can this bird find out if we take him for fifty grand?”
Kneeling on the floor, Contreras looked up, noticed four pairs of eyes locked on his own, then smiled with the bitterness of those who see a nasty prediction fulfilled.
“He’s got an inside man, that’s for sure,” Contreras said, trying to sound patient, “and he’ll learn exactly how much silver we made off with. This dude has been around: If we fuck him he either sends a goon to get me or crosses me off his nice-fellows list and when he figures out a new angle gives the job to someone else. He doesn’t know who you guys are, just like you don’t know who he is. I’m the one who has to hand this to him—wait till he counts it, case you didn’t know. So it’s no, we don’t take him for nothing.”
“It was just an idea,” Rancaño mumbled in a mollifying tone.
They resumed storing away Naguib’s cut. When all was in the suitcase, the lid was lowered and the spring locks snapped. All rose. Contreras picked up the suitcase and his can of crackers, turned to go downstairs, took two steps, then turned around. He heaved a deep sigh. For a moment it appeared as though he wanted to say something to the others and was wondering whether he should. He had been so quiet all morning that everybody was curious.
“What is it, Ox?” Heller asked.
Contreras squinted. “Listen, I’ll be seeing Gallego once again, but I won’t see the rest of you for a long time. I wanna thank you for the cut you took to give me some more silver. I really appreciate that.” His eyes went to the floor for a second. “You’ve all got good knockers, did a good job; I have no complaints. But before leaving I wanna tell you guys about my plans, ’cause I’m pretty sure in less than a week this Mafia mob will find out about Abo and myself, maybe about Gallego, too, and they’re gonna come after us. And I mean fucking come. If they find me they won’t take me to the nearest police station and I might go wrong, so I don’t wanna know where any of you guys are holing up.”
Contreras made eye contact with each man for an instant before going on. “I’m gonna elope. México? Panamá? Cacocum? Aguada de Pasajeros? All of them are fair bets.” He paused briefly and smiled. “Havana won’t see this kisser for six months; bet your lives on it. Now, giving unsolicited advice is a waste of time and I won’t do that, but I hope you guys figure out what’s best for you. What I’ll do is lock up my silver”—he shook the can, and the crackers rattled—“and keep some, two or three thousand, so I can spend a year like a toad under a stone. No parties, few drinks, and when I approach a dame it’s to screw her, not to tell her the story of my life. Whoever starts throwing away his mazuma slips his head into the hangman’s noose. Well …”
Contreras deposited the suitcase and the can on the floor, shook hands all around, recovered the money, and went down the creaky stairs, followed by the others. In the foyer, he waited until Loredo opened the front door for him, then crossed the verandah, descended four steps, approached his Chevy, and stored the suitcase and the can in the trunk as Fermín opened the padlock, removed the chain, and pulled open the Cyclone-fence gate. The car started, backed out. From the two-lane road Contreras waved at the group, then sped away.
Rancaño kept his eyes on the Chevy until it disappeared. Then he did a big stretch, yawned hugely, and said: “If he thinks I’m gonna wait six months to open my gambling joint …”
Smacks of carelessness, Fermín thought. What he said was: “Let’s vacate the shack.”
They went back inside. The dirty kitchenware and the glasses and cutlery were wrapped in old newspapers and stored in cardboard boxes, which were then hoisted to the pickup’s bed. The radio and an unopened bottle of wine were placed on the front seat. Two raw steaks, five sausages, the surplus eggs, sugar, rice, potatoes, onions, coffee, and salt ended up in the garbage can. Fermín showed how attentive to detail he was by disconnecting the electric meter as the others closed windows and doors.
Loredo and Rancaño headed for the bus stop, and the short bald man, watching them from the gate, confirmed the reason cops could spot wrongdoers so easily. The driver and the scout kept glancing around, and they held the brown paper bag and the cake box the way shipwrecked sailors hold lifelines. Fermín slipped behind the wheel of the pickup. Loredo and Rancaño boarded a bus at the same moment Heller was fastening the padlock to the gate’s chain. When his pal got in and closed the passenger door, Fermín sped away.
Ten minutes later, as the pickup approached the intersection of Diez de Octubre and Acosta, Heller asked, “Where did Wheel leave the Ford?”
“In Regla. Then he boarded the public launch and drove Ox’s Chevy to the house.”
Heller grinned. “He probably threw copper pennies to the Virgin. This is what I have faith in,” he said, patting the shopping bag.
“Don’t run wild, Abo.”
“I won’t, don’t
worry. I’m not stupid. But I’ll revel all night long; get the stiff outta my mind, if you catch my meaning.”
“Keep the wine.”
“Such a spender.”
“Fuck you.”
“Just kidding. Thanks for the ride, Gallego. Slow down. I’m getting off right there, at the taxi stand.”
Fermín jettisoned the leftovers into a garbage can off Lawton, abandoned the pickup on Luyanó Avenue, then took a cab to the corner of Monte and Someruelos. A two-story mansion that at the turn of the century had been the lavish residence of a very rich man, had over the years been downgraded to a tenement house whose thirty-eight residents shared four bathrooms and two kitchens. Fermín entered the place, went up to his room, stored away the briefcase in his oak wardrobe, and sat for a while on his bed, mulling things over. Then he undressed, set the alarm of his old Westclox for 1:30, and a few minutes later was sound asleep.
After the nap he put on a green bathrobe, dropped everything he needed into pockets, wrapped a towel around his neck, and marched to one of the communal bathrooms. He showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, then went back to his room. At 2:10 P.M., carrying his briefcase with what he hoped seemed confident detachment, he went into the Monte Street branch office of Banco Agrícola e Industrial. He rented a safe-deposit box under an assumed name, emptied the briefcase into it, counted out three thousand pesos, slipped them into the inner breast pocket of his peach-colored sports jacket, and left the bank at five minutes to three.
A half hour later, Valentín Rancaño finished stowing fifty-five thousand pesos between the picture tube and other parts of an old Emerson TV set. TeleHogar was a radio-and-TV repair shop on the corner of Zanja and Belascoaín where the scout, who couldn’t tell apart a condenser from a resistor, had been driving a panel truck and sweeping floors for fifty pesos a month since last April.