Publicly Fidel Castro had denied that he was a Communist, saying that he was going to allow elections. But even with those statements, Menoyo was still wary. Castro wouldn’t rest until the one rebel force still standing in his way was gone.
Beyond the front doors of the Capri, the black and red flags of the 26th of July Movement hung from balconies along La Rampa, the main drag. Outside the stores and nightclubs along the busy street, men wearing 26th of July armbands clenched their guns.
Morgan turned a corner and came to a stop. As he and Olga sat in the Jeep, he noticed that people in cars were pointing to them. Morgan thought maybe it was the rebel fatigues. But even when they returned and walked through the Capri entrance, it was the same. Other rebels were coming and going in the lobby without attracting attention, but everyone was looking at Morgan.
Finally, one of the bellboys came up to him. “Ju are Weel-yam Morgan?”
Morgan nodded.
He wasn’t just another barbudo. For days, the newspapers in Havana had been telling the story of the Americano. The Associated Press had just run a lengthy article about Morgan and his leadership of the Segundo Frente through more than a dozen battles. But Morgan remained oblivious to the publicity.
Olga heard people whispering his name as they passed. As he stood near the elevator, a hotel worker asked for his autograph. After signing his name, he and Olga went to their room on the fourteenth floor.
Inside, Olga looked ashen. “I worry about you,” she said.
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” he said. “We have nothing to worry about.”
Morgan signing autographs Courtesy of Morgan Family Collection
But she wasn’t concerned about the public. Most Cubans in the 1950s had a fondness for America even if they didn’t always express it. Many had grown up watching black-and-white movies starring James Cagney and John Wayne. They read about American baseball teams like the New York Yankees. In many ways, Morgan represented the American archetype: a rugged, handsome gunslinger who fought for the Cuban people.
No, Olga worried about Guevara, the Castros, and the Cuban Communist Party reading the stories. Even some Directorio members had trashed the Second Front.
“These people are beyond anything you know,” Olga said. “You don’t know my people like I do.”
No one despised Americans more than Che and Raúl. In his own way, so did Fidel. America was the bogeyman. They blamed the United States for every social and economic ill inflicted on the Cuban people. Nor was it a new stance. Anti-Americanism had been a side note of Cuban politics for generations. “The Colossus of the North” was the familiar name for the United States. Now Morgan was in their midst. The more they heard about him, the less the leaders of the 26th of July Movement liked him.
Raúl Castro ushered the men into the meeting room. He had been waiting for Menoyo and Fleites to arrive. The new government saw the Second Front everywhere. They had camped at the high school in Vedado. They had camped at Menoyo’s family home. They had camped at the Capri hotel with William Morgan.
“What are you doing?” Castro asked. Menoyo had failed to understand there was only one revolutionary army, and it fell under the direction of the new government, Castro stated. There was no need for a Second Front anymore.
Before Menoyo could respond, Che jumped into the fray. First, he said, the Second Front needed to merge with the Revolutionary Army, but he wasn’t sure which rebels were worthy. There were so many comandantes running around that he didn’t know if the Second Front even had any foot soldiers.
“That’s none of your concern,” Menoyo said, trying to stay calm. “Why don’t you meddle with your own people and leave mine alone.”
Che raised his voice and kept going: The Second Front had preyed on the guajiros, he said. They had forced the farmers to buy raffle tickets and had taken the people’s money as a tax. “You corrupted the people,” Che said.
Menoyo had watched his unit get pushed out of any role in the new government, but he wasn’t going to allow Che to fabricate vile stories about the Second Front. He pushed away from the table and pulled out his submachine gun, pointing it at Che. “You are a liar,” he said.
To the surprise of everyone in the room, Che ripped open the top of his shirt and displayed his bare chest. “Go ahead!” he screamed. “Shoot me!”
At that point, “everyone pulled their guns,” recalled Fleites.
Castro needed to think fast, otherwise he was going to be presiding over a bloodbath. He jumped up on the table, putting himself between everyone, Fleites remembered.
“This meeting is over!” Castro shouted. “Everyone out!”
Menoyo and Fleites put down their guns, turned around, and, without saying another word, walked out the door.
29
Morgan and Olga had come to Havana with a dozen men, but each day more showed up in the lobby of the Capri hotel. Wearing old, dirty fatigues, the men hoped to get jobs in the new government, but no one got any offers. When the forlorn rebels came to the hotel, Morgan and Olga couldn’t say no. Morgan asked the hotel manager that they be allowed to run tabs, too.
For Olga, it was the worst time. She had gone to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Clinic with Morgan and Isabelle Rodriguez, one of the early Second Front supporters who lived in Havana. Rodriguez, a doctor, saw that Olga was feeling faint and not eating. She convinced her to see a physician for tests. The results: She was pregnant.
Olga was beside herself. She walked across the examination room and hugged Morgan in front of the doctor and nurses. Morgan lifted her up and smiled like he hadn’t in weeks. “I’m going to have a son!” he said.
“No, we are going to have a baby,” she corrected.
It came as a surprise to them both. They had talked many times in the mountains about having children and raising a family, but that was supposed to come later.
During the ride back to the Capri, Morgan beamed, but Olga grew quiet. She had been feeling ill for days, but she didn’t want to believe that she was pregnant. Not now, not with everything happening. They were under so much pressure.
Morgan could tell she was troubled. “I don’t want you to think about it,” he said. “No one is going to hurt us.”
Olga shook her head. If they could get out of Cuba, if they could move to America, no one could do anything to them. They would be able to raise their child without any fear for their safety, she said.
After they returned, they told the rebels staying with them their news, and everyone hugged one another. In their short time in the mountains, they had become like a family. Many of them knew Morgan before he had met Olga. They had watched the couple’s love grow during one of the most trying periods of their lives. Now they had an even greater reason to protect one another.
At dawn, Loretta Morgan was already bundling up in her thick coat and boots and quietly walking out the door to trudge to the church. Too much was happening for her to feel settled. She had picked up the paper and read about the government turning to firing squads, and that was enough to send her into a panic.
She had pangs for her son, and no one could tell her to calm down. She didn’t give a damn what they had to say. The more others told her to stop thinking the worst, the angrier she became.
Billy.
Everything she saw was a reminder of him: The porch where he built his first toy car. The roof he almost jumped off wearing a toy parachute. The backyard where he whirled imaginary swords. Every day was the same: Visits to the church in the morning to deliver the linens she volunteered to wash, and then as the sun filtered through the den, she unfurled her rosary and whispered her prayers into the early evening.
One night, the phone rang. Loretta was always worried about the night calls. They were never good.
“Mom,” said the voice on the other end.
He had finally called. Hearing his voice sent her heart soaring, and for a moment, she was beside herself. She knew he was alive from the news articles that had been appearing in the paper, but to hear his voice. His voice.
“My God,” she said. “Bill, I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
Morgan listened as his mother spoke. She had so much to tell him. She didn’t care that it was long distance. Billy and Annie were fine; they were living with their mother in another part of town. Carroll Ann, his sister, was fine.
But beyond that, she worried about him. She had been reading about the executions in Havana. Even members of Congress were talking about it. With the revolution over, he needed to come back to the United States, back to Ohio, back to his family.
Morgan listened. He didn’t want to alarm her. “No one is going to hurt us, Mom,” he said. He assured her that the new government was moving forward with new plans and that Cuba would succeed as a nation. Then he changed the subject. He had his own news to share.
“Mom,” he said, “this is important.” He told her that when he was in the mountains, he had met a woman who was helping her people, someone who believed in him. A few months ago, they had married. “Her name is Olga,” he said.
Loretta had heard of the marriage from reading one of the articles, but she didn’t believe it. She had put up with her son’s antics for a long time, but this was all too much. She didn’t know anything about this Olga, her family, her background.
But Morgan wasn’t finished. He had to tell her the rest. “She is expecting, Mom.”
At first, it sounded to Morgan as if the phone went dead.
This was all happening too fast, far too fast. He still had a son and daughter in Toledo. But she would talk to him later about everything else. She was glad he was still alive. She asked when she would see him again.
Soon, he hoped. “I want you to meet her,” he told her. He had to stay in Cuba for a while longer. He did have a request for her—just one. Could she send him some money? Just enough to tide them over. Morgan couldn’t tell her, but he didn’t need the money just for himself. He needed it to help the men. So many were depending on him.
30
Morgan was no longer a private person. Cubans were coming to the Capri to catch glimpses of him. American tourists asked about him. During walks down La Rampa, people stopped him, wanting to talk. He tried to shrug off the attention. After all, the well-being of his men meant more to him now.
The revolution had become so popular that one enterprising company was printing trading cards of the rebel heroes, including Morgan. The public remained largely oblivious to the tension between the two rebel groups. All they saw were men in fatigues with guns.
By early February, the situation was getting decidedly worse. More and more of the barbudos were coming to him for support, counsel, and even pocket change.
“They need me,” he told Olga.
Sitting in the hotel’s lounge, Morgan had plenty of time to think. To the emerging government, he was persona non grata, a Yanqui comandante who had interjected himself into their struggle. He couldn’t broker any deals with Che or the Castro brothers. Other than waging war, there was no way out. Either way, he wasn’t going to give up his rank or his gun. He and Menoyo had already made that decision, as had the other commanders.
Morgan looked up and spotted someone who looked vaguely familiar. At more than six feet tall with thick, black hair and dark, brooding eyes, the man was the tallest person in the room. As Morgan squinted through the smoke and haze, he noticed that workers in the casino also knew the man who was now walking toward Morgan’s table. It was Dominick Bartone, an old fixer from Cleveland with a penchant for gambling and guns. It had been years, but Bartone looked the same.
A known member of Cleveland’s organized-crime family, Bartone ran in some of the same circles as the men who operated Toledo’s gambling clubs. In the tight-knit world of racketeers, there were few degrees of separation.
The two men shook hands.
Bartone had heard about Morgan’s exploits as a rebel fighter, and he also knew about the split between the rebel groups. As one of the Cleveland mob’s point men, he had a keen understanding of the thorny conflicts playing out in the new government. The future of Cuba’s gambling wealth depended on Castro.
For years, gangsters such as “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky had been greasing Batista with millions raked in from the proceeds. Estimates put the Cuban Caudillo’s take at between 10 and 30 percent of the revenues. Castro and Che had condemned the casinos publicly during the revolution, charging that the American mobsters had more influence over Batista than his own generals. Cubans already depended hopelessly on the United States for trade, and the gaming houses had become a critical part of the Cuban economy.
But Bartone wasn’t in Cuba to gamble. The mob had vested interests in the casinos. If they could sway the direction of the new government, they might be able to save their investments. It was no accident that Bartone found Morgan. The crime bosses desperately wanted a contact with someone who had ties to the new government. Among the Ohio crime families, Morgan still had an impeccable reputation for loyalty.
Bartone had a proposition. If Morgan, Menoyo, and the others wanted to promote the Second Front as the true proponents of the revolution, he would help them. So would the other casino interests. The Second Front’s goals for democracy and elections had been drowned by the 26th of July Movement. In America, most of the debate focused on whether the government was going to turn Communist. Morgan and Menoyo could go to the United States on a speaking tour and talk about their unit and its struggles to galvanize support among the public for democracy. That could help pressure Fidel into recognizing the Second Front and, more importantly, cancel out Che’s influence.
But Bartone’s offer wasn’t just about goodwill. The mob wanted something in return: Keep the casinos open. If the Communists took over, the party ended. They’d fold up the craps tables and seize the properties.
Morgan listened. On the one hand, a mobster was giving the Second Front diplomatic advice. But on the other, promoting the Second Front made sense. It could raise the profile of the unit and even help shield the men.
Morgan needed time to vet the plan with other unit leaders. He didn’t care what happened to the casinos, he later told Olga. He cared about his men. If they were going to survive, they had to do something drastic.
“Fidel would like to see you,” said Celia Sánchez Manduley, Castro’s social secretary and mistress.
It was odd that of all the comandantes in the Second Front, Castro was asking for him and not Menoyo. Armando Fleites walked down the long hall. Armed guards wearing 26th of July armbands were waiting outside the door.
Cuba’s new leader had heard much about the twenty-eight-year-old doctor who had given up everything to join Menoyo in the Escambray. Following in his father’s footsteps, Fleites had pursued a medical degree at the University of Havana. But like so many others of his generation, he was idealistic and angry. He left his fledgling practice and joined Menoyo in the mountains. For Fleites, it was about taking back the country.
He reached room 2324 of the Havana Hilton. Waiting near the door, Castro waved him inside. Smoking a cigar, the leader had been pacing the floor inside the hundred-dollar-a-night suite, which he had turned into his headquarters. Castro asked Fleites to sit. Without further niceties, Castro extolled the fighting in the Escambray and the Second Front’s efforts to drive the army from the mountains. He put Fleites at ease by telling him that Menoyo impressed him. Castro even knew Menoyo’s family history from the days when Menoyo’s father and brothers fought Franco in Spain.
“He spoke for a long time,” Fleites recalled.
All along, Castro watched the younger man like a cat. Then he slipped into a rant. “I am disturbed about two things. One is William Morgan, who is an American. We don’t know who
he is. We don’t know if he’s part of the CIA. This is one thing I am worried about.” Then Fidel addressed the other problem: Jesús Carreras. He didn’t like him. Carreras drank too much and had executed peasants in the Escambray. As far as Fidel was concerned, Carreras had no place in the new government.
Fleites was taken aback. Castro’s government had been executing more prisoners than Batista ever did during his reign of terror. But Fleites held his tongue. Castro was trying to drive a wedge in the Second Front, and he was trying to use Fleites to do it. For all of Castro’s kind words about the Second Front, he didn’t like the unit, and he didn’t like Menoyo. Fleites collected himself and waited for Castro to allow him to speak.
When his opportunity came, Fleites jumped in. First, he defended Morgan, calling him “a brother” and “a good commander. His duty was impeccable.” For Carreras, it was the same. Yes, he could be heavy-handed, but every execution Carreras ever carried out was justified. Spies in the mountains needed to be eliminated, but Carreras “never went into battle under the influence of alcohol.”
“You know, Fidel, these are our people,” Fleites said. “They have our backing. We will remain solid in our brotherhood.”
If they thought Fleites was the weak link, they were wrong, Fleites recalled. Castro rose. The meeting was over. As Fleites was leaving, he realized that it wasn’t just Che and Raúl who viewed the Second Front as a threat. So did the most powerful person in Cuba.
The Capri was no longer safe. Too many people knew that it had become the Second Front’s headquarters. Reporters were milling around the lobby. Morgan and Olga had to leave.
Morgan found an apartment about ten blocks away in the Vedado. At the corner of G and 13th Streets, the upper-floor unit provided far more security than the hotel. It had just one bedroom and one bathroom for a dozen other rebels, but at least Olga would be safe when Morgan was gone.
The Yankee Comandante Page 14