Prudencio Crespo was lucky to have escaped. The two boliteros inside were not so fortunate. Carlos Rivera and Angel Castro choked to death on the thick black smoke, and their bodies were incinerated in the fire.
1625 Westchester Avenue, the Bronx
It had been a sweltering summer in the city when, on August 23, Edna Rodriguez entered the bolita spot on a busy stretch of Westchester Avenue to place a bet. The location was a legitimate bodega with the policy operation in a rear room. Edna visited the place a couple times every day. Inside, she saw many familiar faces, including Trinidad “Trini” Rodriguez (no relation to Edna), who was taking the bets, and another woman, seventy-four-year-old Blossom Layton.
Down the street, Willie Diaz and Red Morgan exited the subway. Morgan was carrying a pail lined with a plastic bag that was filled with gas. Given the density of traffic on Westchester Avenue, the two arsonists decided it would be better to do this burning on foot, using the subway as their getaway vehicle.
Inside the bodega, Edna Rodriguez noticed a black male enter, carrying what she thought was a plastic bag. He set down the bag and bent over as if he were tying his shoe. Nothing seemed strange to Edna, until she saw the man leave the location and break into a run. The next thing she knew, the store was engulfed by smoke and flames.
Edna was able to help a customer out of the store, but the fire was too intense to help the others. Trinidad Rodriguez and Blossom Layton were trapped inside. Fire department units arrived and battled the blaze, but there was little they could do to rescue anyone. The charred bodies of Rodriquez and Layton were removed from the scene. A third woman, Marlene Francis, had fled to a bathroom to escape the flames. She survived for a week in the hospital burn unit, but the poisoning from the carbon monoxide and the infection from the first-degree burns on her body destroyed her immune system. She died a slow and painful death.
410 West 56th Street, Manhattan
A shoe repair shop in Hell’s Kitchen, on West 56th Street between 9th and 10th avenues, served as a popular Mafia-controlled numbers spot. Victor Hernandez, who ran the place, had previously received a threatening phone call that he needed to stop taking bets or there would be trouble. Knowing that there were tensions between the Cubans and the Italians, and that there had been a rash of arsons at bolita spots around the city, Hernandez took the call seriously. It was his intention to shut down bolita operations in the back of the shoe repair store within the next couple days.
Willie Diaz was given the assignment to hit this spot by his boss, Lalo Pons. Willie put together a team that included himself, Red Morgan, Hector Aviles, and Nelson Guzman.
On the afternoon of October 27, following the usual routine, Willie went into the bolita location to place a bet and check it out. Then he departed and retrieved his car to serve as the getaway driver. The plan was for Aviles and Guzman to block the front door to the shop so no one could enter, while Red Morgan lit the fire in the rear of the shop.
Just before the arsonists arrived, Victor Hernandez received a visit at the shoe store from his girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Laura Sirgo. She had brought along a little girl she was babysitting that day, Jannin Toribio, who happened to be celebrating her fourth birthday.
Victor was so pleased to see Laura and the little birthday girl that he hardly noticed a guy with a gas can slip by him toward the back of the store.
Suddenly, there was a loud explosion that knocked Victor off his feet. By the time he stood up, smoke and flames had engulfed the store. Victor found Laura and Janin and tried to lead them out of the store. Somehow the flames had circled in front of them and were blocking the exit. Victor and the two females were separated. His eyes singed in the fire, Victor was able to crawl out of the store, but the girls did not make it.
Little Jannin Toribio died from smoke inhalation. Laura Sirgo lived for twelve days at St. Clare’s Hospital, in a coma, until she also succumbed to her injuries as a result of the fire.
ALL IN ALL, IT WAS AN UNPRECEDENTED CAMPAIGN OF TERROR AND DEATH, CULMINATING in this unfathomable tragedy, the killing of an innocent four-year-old child.
Lalo Pons was concerned. This latest atrocity received extensive coverage in the city’s tabloid newspapers, the Daily News and the Post, and on the television news.
By this point, the Corporation’s crews had committed more than fifty arsons, and Willie Diaz’s team had done at least half of them. The Italians had retaliated and burned down nearly forty of the Corporation’s spots. Twenty-five people had died on both sides, forty more had been injured, many seriously, and one man had been wrongfully convicted for the murder of his fiancée. Among themselves, many of the boliteros expressed revulsion. These were family men, with wives and children. The deaths of innocent women and children was sickening. And yet through it all, no one called for it to be stopped. No one demanded that the arsons be immediately discontinued.
The war between the Corporation and the Mafia had become a scourge of biblical proportions, an uncontrollable conflagration of smoke and flames tearing through the House of Bolita.
12
A PRAYER FOR IDALIA
IN SOUTH MIAMI, JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE HAD CREATED HIS OWN TROPICAL PARADISE. IT was located far from the fetid streets and crowded housing projects of places like Union City and New York, where the burning embers of the arson wars had yet to be extinguished. At El Zapotal, his hacienda in Redland, Battle could till the soil and feed the roosters, as if the troubles of the big city were a galaxy away. At El Zapotal, Battle was not a gangster; he was a gentleman farmer.
By late 1983, Battle had successfully purchased the five parcels of land that surrounded his home at 17249 SW 192nd Street, four blocks east of Krome Avenue. Altogether, Battle’s property, purchased in the early 1980s at a cost of $1.5 million, now covered twenty-two and a half acres. There were two homes on the property, the one where Battle and his wife lived—a modest ranch-style, three-bedroom house with a pool—and a house for the men and women who worked there, located approximately two hundred yards to the rear of the main house.
To the west of both houses, Battle and his farmhands had cultivated the soil, planted seedlings, and in some cases grafted offspring from previously grown mamey trees. It was something that he had dreamed of since his youth in Oriente, where mamey trees grew wild and strong.
The mamey sapote was like Battle himself, a robust organism with a thick central trunk and large limbs. The fruit of the mamey is the size of a cantaloupe, shaped somewhat like a football, varying in length from six to nine inches. Its skin is thick, with a rough russet brown surface. The Cuban version of the fruit is known as mamey colorado, because its pulp is salmon pink to red, soft and smooth in texture. The flavor is sweet, almond-like, with a unique aftertaste.
Among Cuban Americans in South Florida, mamey has a nostalgic popularity, its presence in the kitchen a reminder of the island. As well as being eaten raw, it is used to make milkshakes, ice cream, jams, and jellies.
By the time it was up and running, Battle’s ten-acre grove of more than one hundred mamey sapote was a thing of beauty. The fruit was harvested in the spring and sold throughout South Florida under the name of Battle’s company, El Zapotal, Inc. El Padrino employed a dozen workers to oversee his grove, some of whom lived on the property. Growing and selling the fruit was more than just an act of nostalgia for Battle. It served as a front for his bolita business, the profits of which could be laundered by way of the blessed fruit of his youth.
Along with his new farming enterprise, Battle had on his property at any given time more than two hundred fighting roosters. He built a valla, or arena, for staging cockfights, but it was used mostly for training the birds, not staging actual fights. Cockfights were illegal and usually staged at clandestine locations.
Battle loved his birds and treated them with great care. Each bird had its own individual pen and was tended to by the half dozen trainers that Battle employed.
Cockfighting was deeply rooted in the culture of Latin Ame
rica. Battle had seen his first cockfight as a child in Oriente, and in Havana, when he was a vice cop, the cockfights were important meeting places for cops and criminals. They were also hugely popular gambling events, where a man could make a name for himself either through the size of his bets or the quality of his cocks.
The day started early at El Zapotal. Imagine the sound of hundreds of roosters crowing and cackling at the crack of dawn. Battle loved it. The only thing he enjoyed more than the sound of the roosters in the morning was their sound at night, when they were fighting in an arena, squawking, strutting, and flapping their wings as they clawed each other with their sharp spurs, and the losing birds sometimes bled out while wads of cash were passed back and forth among the spectators.
Another feature of El Zapotal were the dozens of stray dogs that Battle picked up off the street and brought to his property for safe-keeping. Many of his underlings could attest to his affection for the dogs. Carlos “Trio de Trés” Rodriguez, who, like a number of Battle’s key associates, made the move to Miami to help facilitate El Padrino’s life in Florida, often would be driving with Battle when he would spot a stray dog in the street, looking emaciated and weak. “Stop the car!” Battle would command. He would swing open the door and call for the dog. The animal would be taken back to his property, where it would be bathed and fed and become part of El Padrino’s herd of lost canines.
At El Zapotal, Battle had much of what he wanted—his favorite fruit, his roosters, and his dogs. Most of all, he had peace of mind. A primary reason for moving to El Zapotal was that he needed to separate himself from the violence that was being perpetrated in his name far away in New York. This was especially true as the arson wars raged in the boroughs. The Corporation’s organizational structure—and geography—insulated El Padrino. Those unfortunate killings in Brooklyn and Manhattan were far away, out of sight and out of mind; they did not reflect his daily life. As the arsons gave rise to a ghastly body count, Battle and the other bolita bankers told themselves that it had nothing to do with them. Ask them who was behind these killings and they would tell you that they didn’t know, that it must be some sort of street-level dispute between the various owners and operators of the bolita holes themselves. No one in the Corporation or in La Compañía would take responsibility for the arsons, much less the killings that were a consequence of them.
Even José Miguel, who was not shy about owning up to his violent acts, denied that he had anything to do with the arsons in New York. Especially after the killing of Jannin Toribio, a four-year-old child, no one would admit that the arsons were part of a strategy of payback against the Mafia. Only one man among them had the audacity to underwrite such a scheme. When asked who or what was behind the arson campaign, the boliteros would change the subject, but they knew. It was José Miguel Battle Sr.
In the criminal underworld, violence was often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes people used violence because they believed it was a solution to a problem. Other times, it was a reflective impulse, the equivalent for some men of thinking with their penis. Anyone who functioned as a criminal boss—and particularly someone who had been doing so for some time—had to know that violence begat violence. Choosing it as a course of action was like lifting the lid off the collective id; you never knew exactly how your enemies were going to respond, but you had to know that it might possibly be with a commensurate level of mayhem.
Battle was impulsive, but he was also a strategist. He chose violence knowing that there would be consequences, knowing that there would be collateral damage. War is hell. Battle knew this because he had lived it. He may have moved far away from the battlefield, which allowed him the illusion of blamelessness, but he never separated himself from the use of violence as a legitimate strategy. He might be innocent today, but he reserved the right to be guilty tomorrow.
The problem with violence was that its demands were often retroactive. You could kill to get ahead in the world, but just as often you might kill as a way of settling old scores. This was something to which El Padrino could attest. Revenge was sometimes impetuous, but sometimes it was merely a necessity, the response to a set of irrefutable facts in which for professional killers and criminals it seemed like the only logical course of action.
Such was the case in March 1984, when El Padrino learned that his old bodyguard and accessory in the murder of Ernestico Torres had been apprehended in Miami. Though there had been an active warrant out for Chino Acuna for eight years, for the last four of those years he had been circulating openly in Miami, albeit under a number of assumed names, including José A. Canales and José A. Chacon. For the last year he had been running a modest bolita office at NE 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in downtown Miami. It was a seamy area, just east of the Over-town slums, with a large homeless population and street sex workers of the bargain-basement variety.
At 11 A.M. on Wednesday, March 28, Acuna was walking along NE 2nd Avenue when he was surrounded by an armed team of FBI agents from the Apprehension Squad. Acuna surrendered without incident. He was charged on the federal warrant of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
With Acuna in custody, the FBI notified the Metro-Dade Police Department (formerly the Dade County Public Safety Department). Sergeant David Rivers of Metro-Dade, knowing Acuna’s status as a wanted murderer, arranged to have him transferred to Dade County jail. Sergeant Rivers then contacted the prosecutor’s office. Everyone was excited. The Ernestico Torres murder case was going to be reopened. Chino Acuna, who they believed was one of the primary culprits, would be charged with the murder of Ernestico and also the attempted murder of Idalia Fernandez.
The cops and prosecutors may have been excited, but the likely witnesses in the case—Idalia and Charley Hernandez—were not. The trial had been excruciating for all involved. Charley had been separated from his family, with his daughters Kelly and Carol having had their childhoods irreparably altered. Idalia Fernandez, if anything, had an even more difficult time. Her testimony had proven vital in the conviction of Battle. Though she had held back on the crucial detail that Battle was one of the gunmen that day, she had detailed how she and Ernestico had been on the run because Battle, along with others, wanted to kill them. On the witness stand, Idalia made it clear that Chino Acuna was the man who had shot her in the face. If Acuna was going on trial, Idalia would be the star witness.
Furthermore, what if she had decided to tell the full truth this time, that Battle was one of the gunmen that day? Battle had done time for conspiracy to commit murder, but now, in light of new evidence, he could possibly be retried for murder.
With the arrest of Chino and the prospect of a new murder trial, the Corporation had a big problem on its hands.
SINCE THE ERNESTICO MURDER TRIAL HAD ENDED IN NOVEMBER 1977, SEVEN YEARS earlier, Idalia Fernandez had been living a transitional existence. For a while, she stayed in Miami with her youngest daughter. Having testified at the trial, she was a marked woman. She lived under an assumed name and had a hard time holding a steady job. Though she had never been officially diagnosed, she suffered from post-traumatic stress from having been brutalized, having her boyfriend murdered, and from the anxiety of the trial, which, as it turned out, continued well after it was over.
She needed to get away from Miami, where these events had taken place. The only people who mattered to her were her mother and her three children. Since the trial, her oldest child had been living with her grandmother in New York City. Idalia needed to be closer to the ones she loved, and so in 1980 she moved back to Manhattan and found an apartment just two blocks away from her grandmother in upper Manhattan.
For Idalia, life had never been easy. Throughout her adulthood, most of her male companions were troubled men, much like Ernesto Torres had been. She had turned to men for protection, for financial support, and for sex. It usually ended badly, though never as badly as with Ernestico.
In New York, Idalia lived off welfare payments from the government, and also she sold weed on the side.
Her one-bedroom apartment was in a tenement building at 133 West 90th Street, just a few blocks from Riverside Park, where she used to take her youngest child, Erika, in a stroller when he was still a baby. Erika was now five, and Idalia’s boy was eleven.
Idalia learned of the arrest of Chino Acuna through a prosecutor in Miami, who called to tell her there was going to be another trial. The news hit Idalia with a force similar to the pummeling she had taken from Chino. She thought about gathering up her kids and going on the run before she could be served with a subpoena, but she was too tired to do that. Recently, on March 20, she had turned forty years old. In some ways, she was amazed to have made it to that age. She no longer had the energy to outrun the law.
In April, not long after she first learned about Chino Acuna’s arrest, Idalia was called on by an unexpected visitor—the former detective Julio Ojeda.
In 1982, at a dramatic trial in Miami, Ojeda had been convicted on racketeering charges and booted from the police department. His relationship with drug kingpin Mario Escandar had ruined his career. Ojeda had appealed his conviction and was out on bail, pending a decision from the Third District Court of Appeal.
At the trial, it did come up that Ojeda had had an “improper” sexual relationship with Idalia, though in light of the multiple sensational charges against the detective, people hardly seemed to notice. Since his conviction, while out on appeal, Ojeda had been working as a private investigator for, of all people, Jack Blumenfeld. Battle’s attorney had known Ojeda since the days when Blumenfeld was an A-line prosecutor and Ojeda had just been transferred to the homicide section of the Public Safety Department. Blumenfeld was well aware of Ojeda’s legal baggage, so he kept the former detective’s name out of the official paperwork, and hence out of the court records.
Idalia was not thrilled to see Ojeda at her door in Manhattan. Since hearing of Acuna’a arrest, she had been living in fear, knowing that she was being dragged back into the realm of José Miguel Battle and everything he represented. Seeing Ojeda was like a visit from the ghost of Christmas past. She had followed his criminal case in the newspapers and knew that he’d been convicted on serious charges. He likely would be going away to prison. Ojeda had the aura of a desperate man.
The Corporation Page 33