by John Glatt
To make matters even worse, some of his fellow police cruelly ridiculed his stuttering behind his back. “They would make offhanded remarks over the radio,” said Matthews, “which I found very disturbing. They never did it in front of him … just behind his back.”
* * *
Ben Novack Jr. often went out partying with his friends from the Miami Beach Police Department. He particularly loved the local strip clubs, where he had a reputation as a big spender who was more than generous to any stripper who took his fancy.
One night in August 1983 he was at the Follies International Club in Hialeah, Florida, when a beautiful, young, blond Ecuadorian stripper named Sylvia caught his eye. He stayed all night, slipping dollar bills into her garter whenever she danced.
On his way out, he gave her his business card, asking her to call him.
Later, in the girls’ dressing room, Sylvia, whose real name was Narcisa Cira Veliz Pacheco, asked the other girls who the tall, generous bearded man was. When she was told that Ben Novack Jr. was the wealthy heir to the Fontainebleau hotel fortune, she tucked his card safely away in her pocketbook for safekeeping.
EIGHTEEN
NARCY
Ben Hadwin Novack Jr. and Narcisa Cira Veliz Pacheco’s childhoods could not have been more different. Whereas Ben had been raised like royalty in the Fontainebleau’s seventeenth-floor penthouse, Narcisa, or Narcy, as everyone knew her, came from humble peasant stock.
She claimed to have been born on November 28, 1956, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, although she would later be accused of being older. Known as the Pearl of the Pacific, Guayaquil is the biggest city in Ecuador, resting on the banks of the Guayas River, which flows into the Pacific Ocean.
Founded by the Spanish in 1538, Guayaquil has a violent and troubled history. In 1687 it was ransacked by pirates, who massacred the male population before kidnapping the women for their pleasure.
Over the next several hundred years, Guayaquil was continually occupied by several countries, including Spain and Peru.
On May 24, 1822, the Republic of Ecuador was established after gaining independence from Spain.
With a population today of more than thirteen million, Ecuador is one of the poorest places on earth. The average annual wage in 2011 was just $4,500, and 65 percent of the population was officially below the poverty line.
While Narcy was growing up, her parents owned a grocery story and a large dairy farm and grew cocoa beans. They had six children: Estilita, Leticia, Blanca, Carlos, Cristobal, and Narcy, who was the baby of the family.
In Guayaquil, the practice of voodoo, brought over by African slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is commonplace. As a young girl, Narcy learned voodoo spells and the various herbal mixtures for hexes and other dark arts. Later, she would claim to be a voodoo queen of the dark underground religion.
Cristobal and his sister Estilita first came to America in July 1974 on tourist visas, remaining in Brooklyn after those visas ran out. Two days after arriving, twenty-one-year-old Cristobal found a job in a bakery.
“In Ecuador they grew up together,” said Cristobal’s Chinese-born fiancée Laura Law. “They all came over at different times.”
The next sibling to come to America was Carlos, who lived in Queens. Then, in 1978, their little sister Narcisa, then twenty-three and affectionately known in the family as Mi Niña (meaning “Little One”), moved over with her husband, Angel Abad, and two-year-old daughter, May Azalea, settling in Hialeah, in southern Florida.
Hialeah had a strong Latin American population, and the religion of Santeria, as well as voodoo, flourished there. When the marriage broke up several years later, Narcy sent May to live with her elder brother Cristobal, who was now living in Richmond, Queens.
“I was like her father,” said Cristobal. “I taught May how to read and write.”
Back in Hialeah, to make ends meet, Narcy found a job as an exotic dancer in a seedy strip joint called Follies International Club, by the Hialeah Speedway.
“Sylvia was the name she used,” recalled Big Fannie Annie, the club’s featured entertainer. “A lot of girls come like she did, very quiet and innocent at the beginning. But once they start dealing with men they get a little more hardcore. There are a lot of gold diggers.”
At first the heavily accented Sylvia worked days, when there were far fewer customers than at night. Annie befriended the unsophisticated Ecuadorian girl, taking her under her wing and showing her the ropes.
“I tried to help her,” Annie explained. “I sold her a few costumes, to get her going. At the beginning she was a little shy, but it doesn’t take a girl long to see that money out there and how to get it. She soon got more confident and more cocky.”
Follies International was an all-nude club, and Sylvia could earn anywhere between $500 to $1,500 when she worked nights.
“The girls would get totally nude,” said Annie, “and get up on the tables to dance. Then [the customers] chose the girls they liked.”
In the beginning, the diminutive Sylvia often stood alone on the table naked, as the predominantly Latin clientele preferred American girls. “They wanted a blonde with big boobs—something they weren’t getting at home,” Annie explained. “So Sylvia went blond, and it did help, although she had small breasts.”
The seasoned strip club veteran also had Sylvia shave off her pubic hair, as it was losing her tips. “Those girls loved to bend [over] when they’re dancing on the tables and give the men a little show,” said Annie. “So Sylvia shaved her bush down.”
As she got to know Sylvia, Big Fanny Annie was struck at how she never talked about her past. “Most of the girls will tell you everything,” she said, “but Sylvia was kind of private about that. I knew that she had been married and then separated, and sometimes she’d bring her little girl into the club around Christmas. She was cute.”
Sylvia was not popular with the other girls, as she was often irritable and had a bad temper, which could explode without warning.
“I’ll never forget one Christmas,” Annie said. “She was sitting with some guy, and his wife came in and started yelling, ‘Come home! You have children!’ And Sylvia screamed at her, ‘Bitch. Can’t you leave him alone!’ She told her to leave him alone because she was making money off him. But that really pissed off the wife, and in the end the owner told [Sylvia] to go into the back room or she’d be fired.”
Another Follies stripper, Cynthia Johns, who danced under the name Stormy Shea, remembers Sylvia having an affair with one of her wealthy customers. “He was a guy we called the Silver Fox,” Johns said. “He was a lot older, with silver hair, but he had money.”
Cocaine was rampant at the club, according to Big Fanny Annie. “Cocaine was why those girls changed,” she explained. “And they changed hard. I know the people she went with, and they were heavy into it.”
Sylvia also became close with an older stripper named Brenda Ryan (not her real name), who used her as an interpreter for her Latin customers.
“Brenda was smart and a hustler,” said Annie. “She broke Sylvia in. Real hardcore. She kind of trained her.”
Brenda taught Sylvia the art of giving customers hard-luck stories, to get bigger tips.
“I’ve sat and listened to her stories,” said Annie. “You tell them your mother’s dying and you need money, or my baby’s sick and I need to buy medicine, or I don’t have the money to pay my rent. She would just pour it on for maximum sympathy and of course money.”
There was also big money to be made from meeting customers for sex, after the club closed.
“After work,” said Annie, “the girls all met up with whoever was paying the most. Or they’d get the money and then go out the back door to meet the guys in the parking lot. I mean these girls were as tough as they come, and Sylvia learned to be real tough to survive. She soon changed and adapted.”
All the strippers at Follies International knew Ben Novack Jr., who often came in with his policeman friends. The tall, b
earded businessman never had any shortage of nude table dancers, as it was common knowledge that he bought his favorite girls new boob jobs.
“Ben was a party guy and had a little entourage,” Annie said. “All the girls liked him because he threw money around. Somebody said that his father owned that hotel, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s good. This is the wrong place for him to be.’ Somebody was going to latch on to him. Obviously it was Sylvia.”
* * *
In the summer of 1984, within a couple of months of meeting Ben Novack Jr., Narcy Veliz quit Follies International and moved into his Pompano Beach house. But he refused to allow her daughter, May, to live with them, so the eight-year-old girl moved to Naples, Florida, to live with Narcy’s sister Leticia.
Soon after Narcy moved in, Ben Jr. brought her to one of his cosmetic surgeons, to watch her get a new pair of breasts, designed to his exact specifications. It would be the first of several breast augmentations he would have her undergo over the next few years.
Officer Charlie Seraydar first met Narcy at a Miami Beach Police Department social function. “He told me that he had a girlfriend that was a bombshell,” Seraydar recalled. “And of course I know Ben’s taste and that she was going to be a blond bimbo.” However, Seraydar was impressed with Narcy, soon giving her his stamp of approval. “She was a really nice lady,” he remembered, “and took care of him hand and foot. Ben was demanding, not just in business but in his personal life. And this lady Narcy knew exactly what to do to take care of him.”
* * *
On July 21, 1984, Miami Beach Reserve Officer Ben Novack Jr. won a commendation after rounding up a major auto-theft ring. Now finally assigned to the detectives’ division, Officer Novack had been on patrol in Miami Beach in an unmarked police car when he noticed a black Datsun driving erratically, with two white males inside.
“At that point,” wrote his superior officer Sergeant Tom Hunker in his official letter of commendation, “Novack attempted to stop the vehicle by using the revolving blue light in their police vehicle. However, the Datsun increased speed and began to flee.”
Officer Novack pursued the Datsun at high speed through the streets of South Beach. The two suspects eventually bailed out of their vehicle and made a run for it. Novack apprehended one, while the other was stopped by another officer.
“Due to [Officer Novack’s] actions,” wrote Sergeant Hunker, “a potentially dangerous situation was kept in hand. Reserve Officer Novack interviewed both subjects, who admitted to having stolen at least five cars in the last thirty days. Due to Novack’s interrogation and follow-up investigation, numerous auto thefts are to be cleared by auto theft detectives.”
* * *
A few weeks later, Ben Novack Jr. was with Charlie Seraydar, testing out his new forty-two-foot Hatteras yacht, when his mobile phone rang. It was Narcy, who had just discovered that Ben was seeing another woman on the side.
“Narcy was threatening to burn the house down on Atlantic Boulevard,” Seraydar said. “And he’s pleading with her not to burn it down and to calm down. ‘No, don’t do anything. I don’t have anybody else.’ Apparently she was very jealous.
“I thought, ‘Boy, are you in for a long, fucking hard ride.’”
NINETEEN
“I AM MR. FONTAINEBLEAU”
On Saturday, November 19, 1983—after being forced out of the North Bay Village Racquet Club in a lengthy legal battle—Ben Novack Sr. auctioned off his personal collection of Fontainebleau furniture, furnishings, and memorabilia to raise money. Nearly six years after losing his beloved hotel, the seventy-six-year-old iconic hotelier was a shadow of his former self. And he had little sentiment for all the French Provincial furniture and furnishings that had once adorned the Fontainebleau.
All his debts had now been paid, so the profits from the auction block would be his.
The preview for the auction was held on a chilly Thursday morning in a shabby warehouse on the outskirts of Miami. Bernice Novack attended, along with Ben Sr.’s other two ex-wives, Bella and Janie.
“After losing the hotel,” Bernice said later, “the fire wasn’t in him. He was older and wasn’t well.”
At the warehouse, a visibly ailing Ben Novack Sr. slowly escorted reporters on a tour of several hundred of his Fontainebleau treasures. His once-fashionable clothes had been replaced by plain peach-colored slacks, a short beige jacket, and a matching hat.
“You’re looking at the end of an empire,” he announced. “These are the shreds of an empire. The courts took all the sentiment out of me. These, these are things. Just things. Why should I be sad?”
But it was sad to witness the now-frail senior citizen, cane in hand, trying to recall some of his treasures, helped by auctioneer Jim Gall.
“God bless the people who acquire some of these things,” Novack reflected. “Let them enjoy them. I never really enjoyed them.”
Miami Herald reporter Mary Voboril accompanied Novack on his unsentimental journey.
He passed by a smallish Russian clock flanked by little onion domes [Voboril later wrote], marble desks fitted with gilt inkwells and bronze lions but no pens, lampstands fashioned out of gamboling bronze nymphs, rows of delicate crystal.
“I had more glasses,” Novack said. “Lots and lots of glasses; boxes of glasses.”
“I think they were Lalique,” said auctioneer Jim Gall.
“A lot of what?” said Novack, bending closer.
“His hearing is not as good as it once was. Neither is his memory.”
During the tour, he suddenly lashed out at Miami Beach for not doing more to help him save his Fontainebleau.
“I did enough for Miami Beach,” he snapped, “but I did not get them to reciprocate. They got what they deserved. Decline.”
His mood only brightened when he proudly told the Herald reporter and photographer how he had won a retraction from their newspaper after it dared accuse him of Mafia involvement.
“The Miami Herald tried to bury me as Mafia,” he declared, “until they apologized to me in the front section of the paper. The Knight Boys apologized. Hah. They said, ‘Ben, don’t go to court against us.’”
When asked how much money he expected to make from the weekend auction, Novack replied he hoped to get just enough to buy Bernice a lavalier that she particularly wanted.
“I hold my weight down,” he suddenly said out of nowhere, “because I have no money to buy food.”
Then, a few minutes later, he announced that he had enough money to last him for the rest of his life.
At the end of the tour, Novack was asked if he would like to be remembered as the man who built the Fontainebleau.
“I am Mr. Fontainebleau,” he replied, after a brief pause. “Look, I have it right here.”
Then, reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a miniature replica of the crescent-shaped Fontainebleau on the end of a heavy gold chain. Somebody then asked how he had got it, but he could only scratch his head, unable to remember.
The following day, Ben Novack Sr. was admitted to the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure, and was too ill to attend the auction.
* * *
On Saturday morning, almost five hundred people turned up to bid on the Fontainebleau treasures. Bernice Novack came with some friends, immaculately dressed in white hose and tan heels, her trademark red hair perfectly styled for the occasion. She appeared indifferent, downplaying any feelings she might have had about witnessing the final nail in the Fontainebleau’s coffin.
“You lose the sentiment for it,” she told a reporter. “They just become objects. I hope the people who buy them find great happiness with them.”
There was no shortage of buyers, as item after item was eagerly snapped up, raising a total of $200,000. A Chinese palace vase on a rosewood pedestal went for $6,750, while a cigar box given to Ben Novack Sr. by former Cuban president Fulgencio Batista fetched $125.
Among the other items for sale was a montage of photos of Ben Novack Sr. with movi
e star Ann-Margret, going for $25, and a chamber pot for $75.
However, some of the most valuable Fontainebleau items had long since found their way to Bernice Novack’s Fort Lauderdale home, where they were now housed in a special museum.
* * *
Three weeks after the auction, Ben Novack Sr. bounced back, sinking more than $1 million into a brand-new nightclub in Boynton Beach. He had now relocated to the scenic oceanfront community sixty miles south of Miami Beach, vowing to transform his club into a world-class resort.
“It looks like a lovely area for good clean exploitation of nice people,” Novack explained to The Miami Herald. “We’re here. We’re full of ego and ready to go.”
His latest idea was Alcatraz, a prison-themed entertainment park. He had transformed an old A&P supermarket on South Federal Highway into an entertainment prison, complete with a restaurant, bar, and disco.
After entering through a velvet rope, guests were first “booked” by staff dressed as prison guards, before having their mug shots taken. Then they were escorted to individual cells, either to be seated on toilet seats behind bars, or to be placed in a mesh-screened booth to prevent “contact visits.”
Dinner was served by waiters in full warden outfits. Afterward, “inmates” were directed outside into “the Yard,” to play on a huge pool table dug into the ground, using croquet mallets instead of cues.
At the December grand opening, a wheelchair-bound Ben Novack Sr. was so confident of success that he was already planning franchises in three other Florida locations.
“People don’t want to spend the big prices anymore,” he explained, as his former Miss Uruguay girlfriend looked on admiringly. “We built something we think will be for the everyday public.”
Bernice Novack also attended the Alcatraz opening, with her personal hairdresser, Emmanuel Buccola, and his partner, Guy Costaldo.