by Jose Latour
Like most men leading organizations, Lansky was a shrewd politician. He entered the synagogue with Galuzzo one minute before eight, then dedicated no less than ten minutes to asking and learning about the Jewish community in Cuba; he also offered to help in whatever way he could. Lansky made it appear as though the note was a secondary matter when Ashkenazi handed it over to him at 8:14.
Lansky read and pocketed the piece of paper. A meaningful glance at Eddie Galuzzo made the Riviera manager produce a sheaf of bills that he passed to his boss. Lansky counted one thousand dollars and begged Ashkenazi to accept his modest contribution. Once Galuzzo and Lansky left, Ashkenazi entered the two thousand in the synagogue’s records as anonymous offerings and forgot the whole thing.
Back at the Riviera, Lansky read the note respectfully. The night before, totally aware that he couldn’t hide the National Library fiasco from the Commission’s ambassador, Grava had given Lansky a grossly exaggerated version: Contreras and four gunmen had rescued Gallego; two police officers had been killed; the incompetent man in charge had been suspended. Lansky decided to exclude the Cuban colonel from the negotiations to avoid his frustrating interference. Next he sent for Bonifacio García, showed him the note, and, accompanied by Galuzzo, they waited for the call in Lansky’s suite.
That same evening, a little before seven, Mariano Contreras pushed in the swinging doors of the Two Brothers, a bar with a bad reputation on Avenida del Puerto. Good-looking hookers and unadulterated liquor had made it the favorite watering hole for many sailors and stevedores, but the Two Brothers was also infamous for the deals cut at the left end of its long, solid-wood bar. Once shady waterfront transactions had been successfully completed, a lot of money changed hands as smugglers collected from their clients and Customs inspectors took their bribes. The owners of the place donated five hundred pesos monthly to the police station’s captain to be left alone; two bouncers kicked out the uninitiated who once in a while started a fight. In fact, the Two Brothers was one of the safest bars in Havana. Pickpockets and con men left it alone, pimps waited for their women outside, cops never went in, despite the fact that, when a pleasant breeze blew, the marijuana smoke billowing out of the locale could be sniffed a block away.
When Contreras made his entrance and scanned the place, five men out of thirty-odd clients exchanged worried glances. One of the owners, two professional smugglers, and two dope wholesalers knew that if a snitch reported that Ox had entered the Two Brothers, ten squad cars would converge on the block and all bets would be off. No police captain in his right mind would turn a blind eye on one of the most wanted men in Havana, perhaps the most wanted man, excluding revolutionaries. What had happened at the National Library the previous evening had spread like a firestorm among those who had reason to know: cops and criminals. The smugglers and the dope wholesalers dropped bills on the bar, waved or winked at Contreras, then left. The owner smiled sheepishly at his new client.
It was common knowledge that Silvio Molledo always ended the day quietly sipping a double shot of Palma rum at the Two Brothers. One double shot, nothing more. Nobody interrupted him because people knew the best way to make Molledo mad was to try to cut a deal with him when he was having his drink. You could talk to him before or after, but never during. Contreras spotted him at the farthest end of the bar, perched on a high, four-legged wooden stool. He sashayed directly over to him.
“How’re you doing, Molledo?” he said, his back to the bar, elbows on the bartop, eyes roving around the entrances. He wore the blue suit, a narrow-brimmed hat in vogue, and Ray-Bans.
The most knowledgeable man on the waterfront turned his head and stared at Contreras. “Fine. Hey, you screwing some young chick?”
“Why?”
“Dyed your sideburns.”
Contreras just smiled.
“I heard you’re in trouble.”
“You heard right.”
“Wanna talk to me?”
“Yeah.”
“Shoot.”
“Shouldn’t I wait till you finish your drink?”
Molledo guffawed. “Nah. Maybe your day was rougher than mine. Go ahead.”
Contreras lifted his eyes to the owner and nodded. The man half-filled a bucket glass with Palma rum, hurried to his latest client, and returned to his position by the cashier.
“I need to arrange whatever has to be arranged to get six men on board one of those fruit ships sailing to Honduras. There’s one leaving on the eighth.”
Molledo sipped some rum. Contreras didn’t touch his drink.
“Including passports and visas?” Molledo needed to know.
“No, I’ll take care of that.”
For nearly half a minute Molledo considered something. “I guess it can be done.”
“No guess, Molledo. It’s either yes or no. I can’t plan ahead on a guess.”
Molledo turned to face Contreras. “Can I be sure I won’t die tomorrow? Can I be sure one of my contacts won’t die on me the day after? Can I be sure the fucking ship won’t sink in a coupla days? No, right? So, I guess it can be done. Take it or leave it, Ox.”
Contreras grinned and shook his head. He turned and sipped some rum. “I take it. Do your best, Molledo. I really need it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Contreras turned again to face the bar’s entrance. “How much?”
Molledo pulled down the corners of his mouth and tilted his head sideways twice. “Three thousand. If I need more I’ll let you know. If it’s less I’ll give you the change.”
From the inner breast pocket of his jacket Contreras produced a package wrapped in a newspaper page. He dropped it on the bartop, close to Molledo’s right hand. “Here’s five. No change; it’s all yours. I’ll call you here the day after tomorrow, around seven o’clock, to check how things are going. Okay?”
Molledo nodded. Contreras turned and took another sip.
“Gotta leave, friend.”
“Good luck, Ox.”
“You gonna pay for my drink?”
“Rich guy like you? You pay for your own rum.”
It was Contreras’s turn to guffaw. He dropped a onepeso bill on the bartop and left the Two Brothers.
At ten sharp, from a pay phone outside the Sierra nightclub, on the other side of the city, Contreras dialed the Riviera number and asked for “Mr. Meyer Lansky.” The three operators on duty had been warned, and the call was transferred immediately to the suite. Bonifacio García answered.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Lansky, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
“The tobacco grower.”
“Are you fluent in English?” García asked.
“No.”
“Mr. Lansky doesn’t speak Spanish. He wants me to interpret for him. He’s right here, at my side.”
There was a short silence at the other end. “Okay. Tell him I’ll give back my cut for my freedom and for the release from jail of my men.”
Being a lawyer, García was surprised to find out that so much could be said in so few words, but he translated faithfully. Lansky half-closed his eyes, tilted his head to the right, and said, “I’m interested.” García concluded that this was verbal-economy day and said it in Spanish over the mouthpiece.
“That’s what I figured,” Contreras said. “Tomorrow evening, at seven, a car with your negotiator ought to wait by the curb at the corner of Paseo and Línea, on the right side of Paseo coming from the sea. One of my men will get in and bring him to me. Then we’ll talk.”
García prayed for a refusal while Lansky mulled it over. The lawyer didn’t like to stick his neck out and felt sure he’d be asked to come along and interpret. He preferred low-risk shady deals that yielded good profits, and with each passing day he feared more and more his involvement in the aftermath of the heist. He saw himself on his way to some unknown place to meet with a guy who had killed four men in three weeks. Sweat appeared on his forehead.
Lansky nodded
.
“Agreed,” García said.
“Tell me the make, year, and color of the car.”
After swift deliberation, Lansky chose Galuzzo’s car, a ’58 black Thunderbird with Dade County plates. García passed over the description.
“Okay. No cops. Some other car follows the Bird the deal’s off.”
García was midway through the translation when he heard a receiver being placed in its cradle.
“He hung up,” the bewildered lawyer said.
Lansky shrugged his shoulders. “What else had to be said? Okay. Now, Eddie, I want you to cut a deal with this guy. García will go with you. We know what the man wants; let’s discuss what we can deliver.”
…
Sunday, November 2, 8:30 A.M. Wearing a bus driver’s uniform purchased by Pedro, the night watchman, at El Zorro, a clothing store specializing in all sorts of uniforms, Fermín Rodríguez boarded a cab at the entrance to the clinic and asked to be taken to La Palma. Five minutes after reaching the busy crossroads, he flagged down a second taxi and ordered the cabbie to take him to the middle-class suburb of Mulgoba, very close to Havana’s international airport. It took him forty minutes to get there; he could have made it in ten if he’d gone straight from the clinic, but he was following every rule in the book, including taking roundabout routes.
Fermín was smoking La Corona cigarettes—which tasted like shit to him—to change his usual cigar-chewing expression. The uniform was intended to further alter his appearance by hiding his attention-getting bald head beneath the cap, and to provide justification for the dark sunglasses many bus drivers wore. The gloves had been discussed extensively. Few Cuban drivers wore them, what with the predominantly humid, hot weather, but showing his bare hands would have been even worse, so Contreras ordered a pair of skin-colored thin cotton gloves from Pedro. The night watchman couldn’t find the required color and bought a white pair. Fermín tried to keep his hands out of sight as much as possible, and had a story ready: He suffered a skin rash and the doctor had ordered him to protect his hands from the sun’s rays.
Some bus drivers also carried a small handbag with their pack of cigarettes, matches, a little flask of espresso, eyeglasses, keys, driver’s license, wallet, and other things that would make their pockets bulge. Fermín’s handbag held only one article, with a full clip, a round in the chamber, and the safety off. This time they wouldn’t get him alive, he’d told himself.
He dismissed the cab at the suburb’s tree-lined, two-lane entrance and went in, looking at street signs and consulting the classifieds of Información. Twenty minutes later he pressed the doorbell affixed to the left post of a padlocked wooden gate. Set back maybe forty yards, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence enclosing a hundred-square-yard lot, stood an unpretentious three-bedroom house with a roof of red Spanish tile. Tire tracks with wild grass in between had made kind of a short dirt road from the gate to the porch. A yellow dog bolted out, barking ferociously. It was followed by a man in his sixties wearing khaki pants and a white undershirt who kept ordering the dog to pipe down. Fermín sighed patiently.
“What can I do for you, señor?”
“It says here this house is for rent,” Fermín said, pointing to the newspaper.
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m interested.”
An hour later the deal was closed and Fermín pocketed the keys and a receipt stating that Señor Francisco Marrero had paid 160 pesos; half of it covered the rent for November, the other half was a one-month deposit. Fermín took his time trying to find out how everything worked, inspecting the closets, sitting on the living room couch, testing the mattresses for comfort. He wanted to give the impression that his family of four hoped to spend many months, if not the rest of their lives, at the furnished house. Before leaving, José, the man taking care of the place for the owner, wanted to know why Señor Marrero wore gloves. Fermín told him. “Ahh …,” said José before putting on his shirt. He lived in the nearby town of Santiago de las Vegas and left immediately, his dog happily wiggling its tail. Fermín closed up, walked back to the highway, and took a cab.
At 4:30 P.M. the bus driver went into the Trianon movie house, located on Línea between A Street and Paseo, to watch the double feature. In the foyer, the woman standing behind the wooden container accepted his ticket, tore it in two, then stared at the gloved hands. At 6:30, when the main feature had just begun, the short man left. The attendant stared some more as he paused to light a La Corona and put on his sunglasses before going outside.
Fermín crossed Línea and reached Paseo. The six-lane avenue had a wide, landscaped median divider. Its flowerbeds, ornamental trees, and cast-iron public benches with closely spaced boards on their seats and backs provided a nice shady place where people could sit and chat. The allure of the cool sea breeze from the nearby Malecón was a factor as well. In the afternoons, boys and girls rode bicycles and skated and threw balls and climbed trees and occasionally broke a leg as their parents, or the servants who cared for them, exchanged opinions on child-rearing. In the evenings, couples necked on the benches; after midnight some acrobatic lovemaking had been known to take place there.
The bus driver chose an empty bench on Paseo between Línea and Eleventh Street to keep an eye on the block where Galuzzo’s Thunderbird would park. Fermín wiped his hands dry on the legs of his pants, gave a pull on his cigarette, and stepped on the butt. He had never been able to stand the taste of burnt paper. At 6:57 a car that fitted the description crept along the agreed-on block looking for a parking space, didn’t find it, turned right on Línea. The same thing happened two minutes later. At 7:02 its driver finally managed to squeeze the big vehicle between a Chevy and a Nash, then killed the lights. Fermín kept his eyes glued to the vehicle for over a minute. Nobody left the car.
Night had fallen. The children and the adults had left for supper; it was too early for the young couples. Fermín unzipped his handbag and rose to his feet. He sauntered down Paseo, crossed Línea, and, gripping the butt of the automatic, approached the Bird’s passenger door.
“I’m supposed to take you somewhere,” he said to Eddie Galuzzo.
Galuzzo didn’t understand a word of Spanish. He turned to Bonifacio García, sitting behind the wheel.
García ducked and addressed Fermín in Spanish. “Hop in.”
Fermín opened the right rear door and got in.
“Where to?” García asked as he turned the ignition.
“The airport.”
Nothing more was said for the next fifteen minutes.
…
Fermín Rodríguez released the padlock of the wooden gate, swung open both halves, and stood back to let García drive in. As he closed the gate and reinserted the padlock in the chain, the car’s lights went off and the ignition was cut. The front door of the house was pulled open, but no one stood in the doorway. From their seats, Galuzzo and García peered at the softly illuminated interior. García lacked the training to figure out that the man inside didn’t want to become an easy target by silhouetting himself against the light burning in the living room, but Galuzzo smiled knowingly. The sonofabitch! he thought.
This time Fermín approached the driver door. “You can get out now.”
Galuzzo and García confronted Contreras in the dining room. There were nods and a laconic exchange of cool hellos; no hands were shaken. Contreras signaled to the chairs and they all sat. García had seen Contreras’s mug shot, but stared at the man as if he were a Martian. After the Château Miramar murders and the National Library shoot-out, the lawyer had come to expect a pirate minus eye patch, someone tall and heavy with a bushy black mustache and a nasty scar on his left cheek. But he faced a plain-looking guy wearing a rumpled, dark jacket over a white open-necked shirt. He had the appearance of a tired, widowed accountant who’d just arrived home after a day of number-crunching. What took García out of his own thoughts was the smoke from Fermín’s cigar. The bus driver was pampering himself, feeling he had earned it. Garcí
a made a face.
“I have over two hundred grand of your money,” Contreras said, looking Galuzzo right in the eye. García began interpreting. “As far as we know, police have nailed three of my men. This one here had 213,000 stashed away and 1,800 on him. The other two took a 120,000 cut and didn’t have time to spend more than four or five thousand, so you’ve recovered at least 320, perhaps as much as 330. If I give you back two hundred thousand, you’d recover no less than 520, and we grabbed 627 and a half. So, you’d lose 108.”
“Just a minute,” García said as he produced his notebook and a fancy fountain pen from his pockets. “Let me jot down the numbers; I’m getting confused. Let’s start from the top, okay?”
Contreras nodded. “I have over two hundred grand …”
When he got to the point at which he’d been interrupted a minute ago, Contreras paused. García finished translating as Galuzzo looked at the figures on the page. “Tell him to go on,” Galuzzo said.
“A fifth man has his sixty-thousand cut, or what’s left of it,” Contreras carried on, “but I don’t know where he is, and it seems the police haven’t found him either. Anyway, he might refuse to give back his money; I can’t force him.”
Contreras paused again and García finished translating, a smile playing on his lips. Contreras had a bad feeling. Had anything happened to Wheel? Something these bastards knew about? García nodded at him to go on.
“We’ve had some expenses and will have some more before this is settled. So, from where I stand, I figure a 108 loss might be more … amenable to Mr. Lansky than a 308 loss. I’m willing to give back two hundred thousand if the Bureau frees Heller and Rancaño, and the fifth man too, if he is in jail. Aside from that, I need five Cuban passports with visas for México, Panamá, and Honduras, and I want Lansky himself to escort us to the plane or ship we’ll board. One of you two will stay with us until we reach our destination safely. I’ll hand over my money once we’re inside the plane or ship. And that’s it.”