In the middle of 1960, the Cuban government tried to have Duarte extradited back to their country. The United States had not yet severed diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba (the embargo against it would be imposed by President Kennedy on October 19). Duarte was brought before federal judge George Whitehurst. His attorney argued that sending him back to Cuba would be the equivalent of sentencing him to death. Judge Whitehurst denied the plea for extradition and instead levied a $300 fine for illegal entry.
In America, cocaine may have been the substance that brought the former revolutionary into conflict with the Battle brothers, but no doubt the ghosts of the past also had something to do with it. Back in Havana, Duarte and the Battle brothers had been on opposite sides of the political divide. Likely, Duarte was aware of José Miguel’s reputation as a vice cop in Havana back in the day. The Battles certainly knew Duarte’s history. It was a conflict waiting to happen.
On the day after Christmas, December 26, 1969, Gustavo Battle was in a car dealership located at NW 27th Avenue and 30th Street. It was late in the day, around 4:30 P.M. He had just treated himself to an extravagant after-Christmas gift, a new four-door Buick sedan, which he paid for in cash. Apparently his cocaine business was doing well. As he completed his purchase and prepared to leave the dealership, he noticed three cars filled with men parked outside. They seemed to be waiting for something. Gustavo could see that in one of the cars was Hector Duarte.
“Could I use your phone?” Gustavo asked the car dealer.
“Sure,” said the dealer.
Gustavo called his brother Pedro and said, “I think we got a problem.” He explained that Duarte and a few carloads of gunmen had surrounded the dealership. “I need you to get over here pronto,” he said. “And come well armed.”
Gustavo was thought to be a bit of a wild man. Though he was loyal to his older brother, José Miguel, he sometimes resented being told what to do. His dealing narcotics against his brother’s wishes was one example. Leaner and more rough around the edges than José Miguel, Gustavo seemed often to be looking for ways to demonstrate his independence.
Pedro, on the other hand, seemed to worship José Miguel, but he was also close to Gustavo. With thick black hair and bedroom eyes, six feet tall and trim, Pedro was considered the most handsome of the brothers. But as a force on the street, he did not have the fearsome reputation of either José Miguel or Gustavo.
Upon ending the phone call with his brother, Pedro hopped into his late-model Plymouth Valiant and drove to the Buick dealership. It took twenty minutes. He parked as close to the entrance as he could and entered the building, where he met Gustavo. Through the plate-glass windows of the dealership’s show floor, they could see Duarte and the others waiting for them. They got their weaponry together: Gustavo and Pedro each had a pair of .45-caliber pistols. Said Gustavo, “We’re gonna make a run for it. I’ll go first in the Buick. You follow.”
The Battles headed toward their cars, jumped in, started their engines, and pulled out of the parking lot, with Gustavo in the lead and Pedro following in his Valiant. They were immediately chased by the other cars—a Mustang, a Chevy sedan, and, in the lead, a VW Beetle. In each car were two men; Duarte was in the VW.
In was nearing rush hour and traffic was substantial, but that didn’t matter to the hunters and the hunted. The chase was on. A wild pursuit ensued through the streets of Little Havana, with shots fired from all vehicles. The high-speed shootout continued for nearly half an hour, with much squealing rubber, reckless navigation, and the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire echoing through the streets.
Eventually, Gustavo’s Buick and Duarte’s Beetle arrived on Flagler Street, heading west. The Mustang and Chevy had apparently gotten lost during the chase.
Pedro Battle, who had been trailing behind, arrived on Flagler just as the VW crashed into his brother’s brand-new Buick. The driver of the VW, Manuel Chacon, stumbled out of the VW first; he was brandishing a 9mm handgun. Then came Duarte with a .30-caliber military carbine, which had been modified to shoot automatically and handle a thirty-round banana clip.
Gustavo ducked behind his Buick and opened fire. An insane shootout followed, with Duarte standing in the middle of the street blasting away with the machine gun. Gustavo was hit, but he still returned fire. Bleeding heavily, he took aim at Duarte. The former student rebel, who had survived the attack on the presidential palace of Batista a decade earlier, took three .45-caliber bullets in the chest and died instantly.
It wasn’t over yet. Duarte’s accomplice, Chacon, was still firing from over the hood of the VW. He and the Battle brothers traded gunfire, and then Chacon ran off on foot, northward on Red Road. Gustavo, badly wounded, stumbled back into his now damaged Buick. With metal scraping the pavement and the engine smoking, he floored it and took off after Chacon.
Running down the street, Chacon fired shots over his shoulder at Gustavo’s vehicle. Gustavo sped up and ran over him. Then his Buick veered out of control and crashed into another car.
Pedro, following the pursuit in his car, saw his brother’s car slam into the other vehicle. He wasn’t sure what to do. Police and emergency sirens were sounding from all directions. Believing that his brother was dead, he fled the scene. It was an act he would regret the rest of his life.
Gustavo was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital. After police sorted out all the mayhem, it was determined that there was one man dead: Duarte. Chacon, who had survived being run over by Gustavo’s Buick, was charged with aggravated assault. But Gustavo refused to cooperate with police, so the charge was dropped.
The shootout on the streets of Little Havana lit up the Miami underworld. Everyone was talking about it. To some, the incident would become a historical signpost, an opening salvo in the city’s cocaine wars, a notorious era that would become even more crazed and homicidal in the decades ahead.
LIKE MANY GANGLAND EVENTS, THE BATTLE- DUARTE SHOOTOUT HAD A RESIDUAL effect for those involved. Gustavo’s reputation as a badass in Miami may have been enhanced, and the name Battle, if it was not known before, was now uttered with reverence among some in the underworld. But there were also negative consequences: Gustavo Battle would spend a month in the hospital recovering from his gunshots wounds, and he also had legal issues to deal with that would change the direction of his criminal career.
With all the attention garnered by the shootout, local prosecutors were inclined to charge Gustavo with something. For law enforcement, it was bad business to have a wild shootout take place in broad daylight during rush hour and not have somebody be held accountable. Consequently, on February 5, 1970, a Miami coroner’s inquest was held in the courtroom of Judge John V. Ferguson.
José Miguel Battle flew down to Miami for the occasion. Though he himself would not testify at the inquest, El Padrino had arranged for a number of Bay of Pigs veterans to speak at the hearing. These men were iconic figures in the community, and to have them testify on Gustavo’s behalf was powerful.
Hector Duarte’s checkered career as a rebel was explained to the judge. Along with his political and criminal activities, it was noted that Duarte had recently been recruited by Castro’s Cuban Intelligence Service as an operative in the United States. It was surmised by Gustavo’s Bay of Pigs defenders that Duarte was on a professional assassination mission to kill the Battle brothers. The attempted murder of Gustavo, they explained, was a kind of political hit.
Given the climate of the times, it was not a difficult case to make. Ever since the release of prisoners from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban exile underground had been swarming with spies and counterspies, with acts of espionage and murder that few were aware of outside the corridors of the CIA, or the cafecitos and bars along Calle Ocho in Miami and Bergenline Avenue in Union City.
Judge Ferguson had no trouble grasping the implications. He concluded that the assailants had fired first and that Gustavo Battle acted in self-defense. The case was ruled a justifiable homicide.
Gustavo had avoided a h
omicide or manslaughter charge, but the victory was short-lived. The forces of the law had set their sights on Gustavo Battle, with a high degree of prosecutorial scrutiny. The Drug Enforcement Agency quickly threw together a case against Gustavo. In July, just five months after having been cleared in the Duarte shooting, he was arrested for the sale and possession of cocaine.
The case against him was strong enough that he admitted guilt and took a plea deal. He was sentenced to six to eight years in prison. He would be the first of the Battle brothers to do time in America.
José Miguel was beside himself. Gustavo was going off to prison; that was bad enough. But also, the Godfather had been telling his men not to deal narcotics. It was wrong, and it was too risky. Given his own brother’s violation of that proclamation, he had good reason to be upset, and he was not above telling anyone who would listen: I told you so.
FOR THE CUBAN MAFIA, THE TEMPORARY LOSS OF GUSTAVO WAS UNFORTUNATE, BUT as a new decade dawned, José Miguel had other problems to deal with.
Since the mid-1960s, the FBI had been tracking the militant Cuban exile community in the United States. Partly this was a result of the Bureau’s JFK Task Force, which sometimes overlapped with the Cuban Task Force.
The American public had been spoon-fed a theory of the Kennedy assassination as presented by the 888-page Warren Commission Report. That report concluded that the murder was the act of a lone gunman, with no conspirators. Many in the intelligence community suspected otherwise. The CIA–Cuban exile militant alliance was a source of rumor and confidential investigation within the FBI, and would remain so for decades.
In May 1966, an internal memo was sent from the Miami office of the FBI to the regional office in Newark. Special agents in Miami had been tracking a number of Cuban exiles, including a suspect named Bernardo de Torres. Through an informant, Miami agents had garnered a piece of information they felt would be of interest to the Newark office:
C.I. (confidential informant) advised SA FRANCIS J. DUFFIN on 4/28/66 that JOSE MIGUEL BATTLE is rumored to be a very big bolita banker in New Jersey. He is reputed to be very rich. BERNARDO DE TORRES, the brother of CARLOS DE TORRES, was in La Brigada during the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. BERNARDO is a very good friend of Battle.
The Miami agents further noted that they had been investigating Battle “in connection with possible espionage and security activity.” As a result, they contacted the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to follow up on details regarding Battle’s status, and they were informed by an INS investigator that their office “would not be conducting an active investigation with regard to the subject since it is their belief that the subject is anti-Castro and anti-communist in his beliefs.”
The Cuban Task Force in Miami was not closing the books on Battle, but they thought it important to pass along what they were hearing about his bolita activities.
Normally, FBI agents do not get too excited about gambling or policy cases. These investigations and prosecutions are usually left to local law enforcement. But what they were hearing from Miami coincided with what they were hearing in New Jersey—that in a few short years the Battle organization had become substantial, and that the so-called Cuban Mafia was conducting their business with the full cooperation of the Italian Mafia.
Starting in June 1966, the Newark office of the FBI began sending out surveillance teams to follow José Miguel Battle and others. The idea was to accumulate working knowledge about the structure of the organization and determine where they did business.
One of the more startling discoveries of the FBI investigators was that Battle was seen meeting with Peter Kelly, a man in his sixties, an old-time policymaker, or bookie, going back three decades in northern New Jersey. In the towns of Union City and West New York, Kelly and his brothers—Peter, James, Thomas, and Joseph—were well known to many in the police departments and political clubhouses of Hudson County. Back when the area was largely Irish and Italian, before the Cubans arrived, the Kelly brothers, an Irish American clan, were major conduits between the bookmakers and the cops. In 1936, they had been arrested together in a major policy raid, which only enhanced their reputations. Peter was the last remaining Kelly with ties to the old structure of gambling bosses making payoffs to people in the police and political precincts so that their operations would not be busted.
Battle’s meeting with Kelly was like a passing of the baton, from the Irish to the Cubans. Battle may not have needed an old-timer like Kelly to rustle up customers; they were everywhere among the area’s growing Latino population. But if he hoped to control the cops, it was wise to reach out to an old-school gambling kingpin like Pete Kelly.
It didn’t take long for the agents to figure out what the Battle-Kelly relationship was all about. On June 23, 1966, an FBI agent who had Battle’s apartment building under physical surveillance filed the following report:
9:50 A.M., Jose Battle walked down the steps of 405 New York Ave. and entered a 1966 Buick Wildcat. Battle was carrying a brown paper bag. Battle drove north on New York Ave. . . .
At 9:55 A.M. Battle parked across from the side entrance of the Union City, N.J. Police Department and entered the basement carrying the brown paper bag.
At 9:59 A.M. Battle left the Police Department carrying the brown paper bag. He entered his car and drove north on Hudson Ave.
It was a eureka moment for the investigators. Battle was either making payoffs to the Union City police, or taking betting action, or probably a combination of both.
The agents followed Battle. He drove to a Tony’s Barbershop on 48th Street. He parked and entered the barbershop, then almost immediately reappeared.
At 10:05 A.M. Battle came out of the barbershop and walked east on 48th. He was carrying the above brown paper bag which appeared half full as he was swinging it as he walked.
They followed Battle as he entered a nearby bank, approached a teller, and completed a transaction. Then he returned to the barbershop.
The agents had captured Battle on his usual morning routine, collecting and dispensing cash among cops and other customers in his town.
Eventually, the FBI surveillance expanded well beyond Battle. Slowly and methodically over the next fifteen months, the agents began to formulate a set of target subjects who they felt comprised an inner circle of what was shaping up to be a large-scale gambling operation.
Angel Mujica emerged as a prime suspect, as did Battle’s two younger brothers, Aldo and Hiram, who had only recently arrived from Miami.
The agents monitored these men and a dozen others as they met in places like the Cuban Coffee Shop on 22nd Street in Union City, at Mujica’s home in West New York, at Battle’s home, and at other locations. They documented the transfer of cash, mostly in brown paper bags and manila envelopes, and betting slips. More important, they followed the various suspects as they traveled over the bridges and through the tunnels to Manhattan.
In terms of the FBI’s investigation, this was the most significant activity. By traveling from New Jersey into New York, the boliteros were engaging in a conspiracy involving interstate commerce in furtherance of an unlawful activity. That alone was enough to put Battle and his people away for five years or more.
It was something of an irony: the reason that Battle believed Union City was such a good location for starting a bolita business in New York City was because the two locales were in different states. He felt that that would make it harder for competing prosecutors to make a case against him. Apparently he was not aware of laws pertaining to interstate commerce. The very thing he thought would protect him from being prosecuted was exactly the thing federal investigators were using to build a case against him.
To document the existence of a conspiracy with multiple co-conspirators, it would take the FBI agents many months of observing and recording activity—trips back and forth by Battle and his minions between the two states. But they were definitely on the trail.
Battle was unaware of it, but his newly prosperous g
ambling operation was being monitored by the feds on a near daily basis.
4
THE RAIN IN SPAIN
JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE HAD A WAY WITH PEOPLE. EVEN THOUGH HE COULD BE CRUDE, and he was obviously someone you did not want to cross, on a personal level he was charismatic and appealing. He projected a mix of ego and humility at the same time. He was down-to-earth, and he made friends easily.
There were close associates who had once been cops with him in Havana, like Joaquin Deleon Sr., now a bolita banker; there were associates who had been with him at the Bay of Pigs, like Angel Mujica and others; and there were friends and associates that he made around the poker table.
One such friend was Carlos Rodriguez, whom Battle met during a poker game in 1970. Rodriguez was known by the nickname “Trio de Trés.” A trio of threes is not a great hand in poker. Carlos had a habit of losing at cards; his nickname was a reference to his bad luck.
Rodriguez knew very little about Battle when they sat down with three or four other Cubans to play poker at a flophouse casino in Union City. One of the first things he noticed was that Battle was cheating. He had surreptitiously retrieved a card that had been discarded from his hand. Rather than make a commotion about it, Rodriguez said to Battle, “Que buen caballo que lo montan dos jinetes en la misma carrera (What a good horse that two jockeys can ride him in the same race).” It was his way of letting Battle know that he knew he was cheating without making an issue of it.
Battle looked at Trio de Trés, assessing this slick hombre he had just met. The Godfather’s lips tightened into a slight smile. Rodriquez nodded in acknowledgment. And a great friendship was born.
After the card game, Battle gave Rodriguez a business card and said, “I like your style. If you ever need anything, call me at the number on my card. I will help you out.”
Rodriguez left the poker game that day with no idea that he would ever need to call Battle. He asked around about the guy and was told that he was the bolita king of New York and New Jersey. He learned of Battle’s reputation as a hero at the Bay of Pigs invasion and of the time he spent in Castro’s hellhole of a prison on the Isle of Pines. Some friends told him that if he were to have José Miguel Battle as a friend, he would have a friend for life. That’s the kind of guy he is, they told him.
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