Little Havana Exile

by Hale Chamberlain

  Paco led the way to the mansion across a well-kept lawn. The place was monumental, over six thousand square feet for sure, Teddy reckoned. The house had unfettered access to Biscayne Bay, with Miami’s skyline visible in the distance. This all looked very impressive to an eighteen-year-old boy from a foggy English metropolis and only contributed to building up further the anticipation of his meeting Joaquin Herrera.

  A gorgeous swimming pool spanned the length of the villa, with lines of palm trees planted on both ends like a guard of honor. But Teddy’s attention was drawn elsewhere. A flock of ravishing women in bikinis were chatting on sunbeds by the poolside. Five of them, maybe six curvy, deliciously tanned stunners. The bastard’s living the life. I don’t remember seeing so much candy in the whole of Birmingham.

  Teddy turned his stare toward the terrace. A behemoth of a man, dressed in a flamboyant pink suit and wearing an outrageous amount of gold jewelry, was sat on the largest chair in front of the pool, blocking access to the main glazed entry door of the villa.

  “Is this Joaquin Herrera?” Teddy inquired, as they pressed on into the domain.

  “That guy?” Paco laughed. “No, it’s one of the bodyguards, Carlos. He watches over the estate, amongst other things.”

  “More like he’s watching the babs by the pool,” Teddy joked.

  “The what?” Paco asked, unfamiliar with Brummagem jargon.

  Without warning, the patio window swung open, and all eyes turned to peek at what would come out of it. The middle-aged man that stepped out was nothing like the stereotypical drug lord. Joaquin Herrera was well groomed, fair skinned with short silver hair in good trim, unpretentiously dressed in white shirt and light-grey linen pants. There was no mustache, no long curly dark hair, no shiny watches or gang tattoos.

  Yet, as they got closer to him, Teddy could feel his compelling presence. He couldn’t tell why, but the man radiated power. His gait was steady and composed, but just like any powerful men he had encountered or seen on TV.

  When he got to speaking distance, Teddy understood why he felt overwhelmed and somewhat ill-at-ease. Joaquin Herrera’s large, hypnotic green eyes struck him like lightning. Those were eyes of a ruthless man, of a man that gave no second chance. He fought the urge to look away.

  “Welcome to my home, Teddy,” Joaquin Herrera said, extending his arms in a sign of hospitality, “a place of peace.” He paused an instant to gauge his guest, before adding, “I heard you’ve created quite a mess back in England.” The man was showing no emotion, yet his eyes were blinkering emerald sparkles that felt like a blinding light during a police interrogation.

  Paco glanced at Teddy, and anticipating an impending malaise, he said, “He’s a good kid, moving from a British city to Miami can be quite unsettling.”

  Joaquin stepped a few inches closer to the two men and laid his hand on Paco’s shoulder. “Tell me, what can be so unsettling in this paradise?” The intensity of Herrera’s voice was excruciating, and Teddy could feel the man’s eyes pierce through Paco’s soul. Those two must have had their ups-and-downs, Teddy thought. After another moment of discomfort, Teddy took it upon himself to break the creepy silences Joaquin seemed to enjoy imposing on them.

  “Thank you for arranging my arrival in such short notice, Sir,” he said politely.

  Joaquin Herrera let out a controlled but genuine laughter, relieving the heavy pressure in an already tropical atmosphere. “Of course, of course. Friends of my friends can always count on my support.” Teddy and Paco raised an uncomfortable smile.

  “Let us all sit down.” Herrera motioned at the chairs by the side of the pool.

  Carlos the bodyguard carried the throne to his boss, placing it right behind his legs, and walked in deference to the corner of the house.

  “Alright, Paco surely told you about our organization. Paco’s effectively the co-manager of this enterprise, he’s more street-smart than any of us. A man with no outstanding skills, yet a man that can do everything.” Teddy was bewildered. Is Paco leading this organization?

  Herrera continued, “In this business, we can never have too many competent men. Nothing comes easy here. So, if you want to stay in Miami, you work for me. We’ll have you start as a courier. That’ll teach you how things work here, and more importantly, it’s the best way to get to know the city.”

  “What business are we talking here? Gambling?” Teddy asked, eager to find out what the old Wilkinson had signed him for.

  Herrera threw a furtive glance at Paco, and said, “No Teddy…Gambling is only a small part of our organization’s revenues. Paco’s in charge of the gambling activities, but I see that he failed to mention that.” He stopped and took one step closer. His stare was so consuming that Teddy had to consciously rebuff the impulse to run away.

  “The cocaine business, Teddy. That’s what I’m talking about here. This is what brings in the profits that ultimately take care of the livelihood of hundreds of our employees. I’ve been told you’re a reliable man. But tell me Teddy, are you a reliable man?”

  Teddy froze, unsure what the man wanted to hear. After an awkward silence where the sun seemed to come down, he said at last, “I’ll do what you ask me to do.”

  “Good. You know what that means?” Joaquin asked. “You’re officially part of the most infamous underworld organization in Miami, the so-called Corporacion. We’ll fill you in.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Three months after he set foot in Florida for the first time, Teddy felt acclimated to life amongst the Hispanics. He had moved in with Paco in a renovated thousand-dollar-a-month condominium in Little Havana, which proved extremely convenient for his job as a delivery boy, or transaction agent, as he would call it in conversations with outsiders. Despite this marked step down from his brief but eventful position as the head of a local crime organization, Teddy was behaving with an uncharacteristic maturity and humility. He was still waiting for news from Rob Harper or Adam Wilkinson, but he wasn’t holding his breath anymore.

  His time in Miami had been a fascinating experience so far, and the more he learned about the inner workings of the Corporacion, the more he realized the Brummagem Crew were a bunch of unsuspecting amateurs. The Cubans were showing a much high degree of professionalism and commitment.

  Paco proved to be a walking encyclopedia, and Teddy would sometimes spend entire evenings questioning his flatmate about the history of the Cuban organized crime and the Corporacion while sharing homemade daiquiris.

  It was clear that the Cubans were astute businessmen. In the span of fifteen years following the Castro revolution, they had managed to build a crime syndicate that spawned all across Florida. No other group involved in illicit activities had experienced such blistering growth. Paco liked to point out that the Cuban mafia was nothing like the Italian Costa Nostra in New York and other parts of the East Coast. The Hispanics knew no Capodecinas, Consiglieres, or Commissions. They were notoriously brutal, unpredictable and had little use for the clean reputation and good public image the Costa Nostra were actively seeking.

  Teddy was hardly convinced by the argument; all groups fancied themselves as the mightiest, meanest on a specific territory, he knew that much. The Brummagem Crew had thought itself as untouchable.

  The true strength of the Cuban mafia, Teddy later understood, was their nebulous, blurry organizational structure, which made law-enforcement incredibly difficult. Contrary to the Italian mob, they weren’t structured in families or ranks. The face of the Cuban mob resembled more a constellation of loosely linked groups of men, each with different responsibility levels, but without formal titles, and all brought together by the prospect of riches. Not by family ties, and not by blood loyalty.

  Once profit from a venture was wavering for whatever reason, the financial backer would close the tap of cash and disband the group. Members would have no qualms looking for another organization that may need their services. This was where Joaquin Herrera’s man superior management skills came into the picture. H
e was the best at treading unsteady waters, at leveraging the mercenary system instituted by his fellow countrymen, and he had ample reserves to draw from. The swift, under-the-radar rise of the Cuban mafia has been unparalleled in the history of crime in this country. Half a million Cuban migrated to the United States from the late fifties up to 1980, and one in four citizens in Dade County was now of Cuban origin.

  Above all else, Teddy Harper was dying to learn about the past of the merciless kingpin that left such a lasting impression on him. He had only met Joaquin Herrera twice after their first encounter, and each time he had been seized with an implacable feeling of reverence and fear.

  It was thus with great interest that he listened to Paco delve into the man’s tortured history.

  “Once the revolution was consumed and Castro solidified his grip on power, thousands of angry Cubans were recruited by the CIA. The Americans were planning to overthrow the communist dictator. Believe it or not, the US secret services played a major part in the breakneck ascent of the Cuban syndicate.” Paco said with pride. He added, “The agency trained them in the use of guns, explosives and covert methods of operation. Can you believe those fools? They knowingly trained swathes of immigrants coming to their land uninvited in the art of clandestine warfare. Most of them, petty criminals back home, had become deadly soldiers. Anyone of those old school Cuban could take on ten Italians with his bare hands.

  “Then in April 1961, the CIA released those men on the shores of Cuba. The Bay of Pigs invasion, they called it. A complete fiasco. In less than three days, the militia was defeated by the revolutionary armed forces, under the direct command of Casto. A hundred men of the counter-revolutionary military group died there, with a hundred more summary executions. Over a thousand men were captured.”

  “Mate, it’s all a sad story, but what happened to Herrera?” Teddy interrupted.

  “Patience, I’m coming to it. Joaquin Herrera was part of those prisoners. The hate he still entertains for Castro is beyond imagination, and sometimes I wonder if he’s not building this empire with the sole aim to be able to exert revenge on him.

  “After his capture, he was transported to the worst prison in Cuba. Eight of his brothers in arm died of asphyxia in the truck carrying them there. He never mentioned it himself, but other survivors told me all about it. That’s the thing about Cubans, pop open a bottle of rum and you can ask them anything.

  “Anyway, in the months that followed, the jailers tried to break the prisoners psychologically on a daily basis. Revolutionary soldiers would pick a few prisoners each day at random. Half of those prisoners would be tortured for hours, the other half executed. Joaquin must have been wondering every morning whether he would still be alive at the end of the day. He saw some of his comrades come back with missing fingers, ears, sometimes entire hands. When you have everything taken away from you, that’s when your true character emerges. That’s when Joaquin Herrera became the ruthless man that he is today.”

  “How did he end up in Miami then? Did he escape?” Teddy asked.

  “No, he had a lucky break.” Paco’s eyes had turned dark. “In late 1962, Castro signed the release of some of the prisoners in exchange for US$50 million in medicine and food supplies. Joaquin was freed but refused to move back to the United States without his parents. Bear in mind he was in his early twenties at that time. He went underground in passive resistance with what remained of the Batista regime. For almost two decades. Most of the highest-ranking men in the Corporacion are men he met during that time.”

  “You mentioned you met him on a boat,” Teddy said, still unable to put the pieces together.

  “That’s right. The Marielitos, that’s how they called us. Tens of thousands of migrants rushing to the US after Castro finally agreed to open up the paradisiac island that he had transformed into a jail. Joaquin had become utterly disillusioned with the communist regime, and seeing no end in sight for the reign of the military junta, he decided to let go at last and seized that opportunity to flee with his family. That’s when I met him. That’s when, on the very boat that brought us to Miami, we swore to conquer this new land, together, for our Cuban brothers.”

  CHAPTER 12

  At the turn of the summer, Paco decided, without consulting Joaquin Herrera, that it was time for Teddy to drop his delivery boy outfit, and take a deserved step up. The young Englishman knew more about the organization and its inner workings than most of the low-level dealers and bodyguards. Over the next few months, he would allow the boy to shadow him.

  As they drove along Calle Ocho, Paco felt it was time to tell Teddy how the Corporacion actually began. It would be necessary to fulfill his own selfish ambitions.

  The seed money hadn’t come from thin air. Joaquin Herrera and he had come to Florida with less than fifty pesos in their pockets. In fact, they probably wouldn’t be where they are at right now if it hadn’t been for the generosity of Diego Acosta, one of the original Cuban immigrants who moved to the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The man had a habit of taking Cuban migrants who had landed in Dade County under his wing, providing them with a paid occupation, putting a roof over their head, doing them favors. The benefactor had done more for the Cuban community in Florida than anyone else, most notably by setting up bolita outlets all over Little Havana. In a two-year span, Joaquin Herrera had become Acosta’s right-hand man, and when the old man died a year later, the succession war that ensued decided the fate of many a man in the organization.

  Knowing they had to act decisively, if not ruthlessly, Herrera and Paco had put together a death squad composed of Cuban immigrants and eliminated all pretenders to the throne in a night that was to be remembered as La Purga. He took over Acosta’s bolita operations – effectively forming La Corporacion – and extended them to include shylocking, something Paco had vigorously disagreed with and at the origin of many violent confrontations between the two men. The face-offs eventually saw Herrera come on top, and the man was now reaping the rewards of his ambitions, while Paco became a mere minion within the vast organization.

  Within half a decade, Herrera had taken the bolita operations from a community game to a highly profitable venture. His handle on the Cuban lottery only was $50,000 per week or over $2.5 million per year.

  It was this boon that had allowed Herrera to move into the big boy’s league. Apart from the few who began their journey dealing in minute quantities of narcotics and then ramping up their operations into the big time, most notorious drug kingpins used profits from illegal gambling operations as a platform to propel themselves into the opiate business. The massive sums of cash required for top-level deals originate systematically from the same source – illegal gambling – which then financed all other types of illicit ventures. For La Corporacion, this meant the bolita game and its millions of Hispanic adepts. Most of the legal ventures now owned by the organization – and used to front all types of illicit activities, from liquor shipments to cocaine smuggling – had been established in the hub of Dade County by profits from the illegal bolita ring.

  The Cadillac Eldorado stopped in front of a van parked on SW 20th Street. The two men got out of the car, heading for the open stand installed on the other side of the vehicle.

  “Abuelita, how are we going today?” Paco asked the old lady behind the counter.

  “Amor, I only see you when I owe you money. How sad is that?” The woman said, handing over a pile of cash as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “You know you’re my favorite girl Cristina. I’ll see you next week. I might even bring you flowers.”

  “I’ve been waiting for this for over ten years, Pequeño, I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  The two men walked back toward the old Cadillac, but as they got nearer it was obvious that someone was waiting for them there. A man dressed in plain clothes was sat on the car’s hood, with an impudence that almost threw Paco into an instant rage.

  “Calm down boys, Agent Parker,
DEA.” The man announced hastily upon seeing Paco’s burning eyes. He pointed to an unmarked police car across the street, with three men inside. He then produced an official agency card that left nothing to doubt. The man was the real deal.

  Teddy was amused by the unexpected encounter. “DEA, what’s that?” He said. “I’m sorry officer, I haven’t been diligent with my police series lately, I’ve got at least fifty episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street to catch up to, my jargon is outdated.”

  The man chuckled. “Paco, you cheeky criminal, you’ve got yourself a clown! I’m sure I’ll like that one, a welcome change from the mute meatheads you’re typically hanging out with.”

  Teddy was taken aback and looked at Paco in confusion. Do those men know each other?

  “Agent Parker, it’s always a pleasure to chat with you. But we’ve got a meeting to attend, so if you don’t have any official business with us, we’ll be on our way.” Paco remained polite through the interaction, although every second that this goddam man spent on his precious ride’s hood was a second closer to the physical materialization of Paco’s inner murderous intent.

  “Go now, but remember, we’re watching you. Your little lottery fun is tolerated. Your narco business, once unraveled, won’t be. We’re just waiting for a misstep,” agent Parker said as he got off the car’s hood at last.

  “You’ve been waiting for over ten years, my friend,” Paco said, as he started the engine, and drove away as slowly as he could.

  The truth was La Corporacion’s drug business was flourishing, and Paco reluctantly devoted several days each week to ensure the entire network remained covert. This was no easy feat, as the organization drug supply chain spanned three continents, across multiple oceans and trade routes, and involved hundreds of people.