The Corporation

by T. J. English

  Over the following weeks, the entire Battle investigation zeroed in on the mysterious Roberto Parsons and his nephew. Detectives in Miami and New York became energized, believing that if they could build a case against Parsons for the hired killings, they could use him to get to Battle. Then, in late summer, came a major break.

  The man identified as the third wheel in the team of assassins—Jorge Gonzalez—was arrested on a major cocaine importation case in Anaheim, California. Gonzalez’s alleged co-conspirators in this case were Roberto and Juan Carlos Parsons. Not only that, but Gonzalez had begun to cooperate with the DEA. Though he made no admission about his role in the Moranga or Mujica murders, he did admit to being present during another murder by Roberto Parsons that took place in Miami.

  A task force of agents and officers from three different jurisdictions— New York, Miami, and Los Angeles—took part in the interrogation of Gonzalez. What they learned was mind-boggling. Gonzalez told them that Parsons liked to brag about his days in the CIA; he claimed to have assassinated officials in the government of Fidel Castro both before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion. He also admitted to having been a covert operative doing political killings for the CIA in Latin America in the 1960s.

  The murder Gonzalez claimed to have witnessed took place in Miami. A dope dealer named Francisco “Paco” Felipe had received delivery of a cocaine shipment from Parsons but failed to pay for it. Consequently, Parsons lured Felipe to the upscale town of Miramar, 55 miles north of Miami, under the guise of discussing terms of payment. Gonzalez was Parsons’s driver that day. He drove his partner to a deserted park, where they met Felipe, who was driving a black Chevy Suburban. Parsons got out of Gonzalez’s car and walked up to the driver’s side window of the Black Suburban. From inside, Felipe lowered the window. Parsons calmly pulled out a .25-caliber automatic pistol and shot Felipe twice in the head. He opened the door and pushed the body over to the passenger side of the front seat, then he climbed into the driver’s seat and put the car in drive. On his way out of the parking area, he pulled up to Gonzalez’s car and said, “Follow me. We’re going for a ride.”

  Gonzalez followed Parsons south through Miami along Tamiami Trail until, after ninety minutes or so, they stopped at a rest stop out in the Everglades. It was a classic sweltering South Florida day, with high humidity and swarms of mosquitoes and flies. Parsons stripped the body of Felipe of all valuables—cash, wallet, a Rolex watch, even an expensive pair of sunglasses. Then he wiped down the black Suburban, eliminating all fingerprints or other telltale evidence. Leaving the body to rot in the stifling afternoon heat, Parsons hopped into Gonzalez’s car. They drove back to Miami, to Calle Ocho in Little Havana, where Parsons went to a pawnshop and hocked the Rolex watch of his victim for $1,000.

  In his detailing of the Felipe murder and other criminal acts by Parsons, Gonzalez never mentioned his own involvement in the Pepe Moranga murder in New York. A witness to the Moranga murder had identified a photo of Gonzalez from a six-pack as having been the getaway driver. The investigators kept this fact quiet. They allowed Gonzalez to believe he was helping them make a case against Parsons. The fact that Gonzalez was withholding evidence about his own culpability in a murder, or murders—clearly a violation of any cooperation deal he might reach with the authorities—was something that would come back to cause him major problems in the future.

  In the meantime, an arrest warrant was issued for Roberto Parsons and his nephew. Grand jury hearings began in Manhattan on the Pepe Moranga murder, and in Miami a case was opened on the murder of Paco Felipe.

  SHANKS AND THE MIAMI COPS HAD REASON TO BE OPTIMISTIC. ALONG WITH THE PARsons investigation, a recent wiretap at the home of a Corporation bookmaker named Mario Arcacha brought about a stellar result. On the phone wiretap they came across the voice of Abraham Rydz, who frequently called Arcacha to place large personal wagers.

  Rydz, the investigators knew, was a degenerate gambler. He took part in high-stakes card games, regularly went to the track, and was a frequent visitor to the Miccosukee casino, operated by the Indian tribe of the same name in West Miami.

  It was exciting enough to hear Rydz on the wire, but then one day they heard him make a statement that, to the investigators, was like an early Christmas gift. Rydz and Arcacha were having a conversation about a $10,000 debt that Arcacha was alleged to owe a fellow Corporation bookie. Arcacha disputed the claim and was refusing to make the payment. Said Rydz over the phone, “Listen, many years ago, when I was sitting in your seat and I was taking a beating, Battle used to say to me, ‘Don’t get upset about a bad loss or a day here and there. We make our money from the long run. It’s the balance sheet at the end of the year that counts, not what you lose one day that matters. So don’t worry and never panic or take unnecessary risks.’ So, what José Miguel told me back then, I’ve repeated to you now.”

  Arcacha continued to argue the point. Finally, Rydz sternly advised, “Listen to me. This relatively small amount of money isn’t worth your life. Los Batlles (the Battles) are dangerous people, and you could get killed over this. José Miguel has had people hit for less. If needed, I’ll pay the money, just to keep the peace.”

  Shanks and the other cops were astounded. Professional criminals rarely spoke so openly over the phone.

  On a separate surveillance, detectives followed Arcacha making a money drop to Rydz at the office of YMR Fashions, where both Rydz and Battle Jr. showed up every day for work. Immediately, Shanks went to work writing an affidavit request for a wiretap to be installed at YMR Fashions. The affidavit was submitted to Dade County State’s Attorney Janet Reno.

  By now, every active cop in the state was familiar with Reno, the tough-as-nails prosecutor who had since 1978 been state’s attorney, the first female to hold the job. She was a local legend, born near the Everglades and raised by a father who had been a police reporter for forty years. At six foot one, with a gruff, no-nonsense manner, Reno could be intimidating. Shanks would never forget one time when he and a Florida state prosecutor submitted an affidavit to Reno in her office. She looked it over, and then literally threw the forty-page document at the investigators, telling them it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

  This time, Shanks labored over the issue of probable cause, laying out the connection between Arcacha, Rydz, and YMR Fashions to the larger network of boliteros and bookmakers in Miami.

  It was late on Friday, August 21, when Shanks delivered his affidavit directly to Reno’s home in Kendall. She answered the door herself. “She was very gracious,” remembered Shanks. “She promised to read it over the weekend and get back to me.”

  Shanks didn’t hear back from Reno. Over the weekend, a storm hit South Florida that literally altered the landscape.

  METEOROLOGICALLY, LATE SUMMER IS A TREACHEROUS TIME IN THE TROPICS. EUPHEmistically, it is referred to as “the rainy season.” In reality, it is a time of heavy storm patterns that frequently intensify to the level of hurricane conditions.

  A tropical weather pattern designated as Hurricane Andrew had been brewing out over the mid-Atlantic for days. By the time it came ashore, it was a Category 5 storm, with winds in excess of 165 miles per hour. Andrew hit South Florida with the impact of an atom bomb. The winds were devastating to property, and torrential rains caused flooding from Key Largo to Miami. Sixty-five people were killed. It was the most destructive storm ever to hit the United States.

  Much of the area was immobilized. More than twenty-five thousand homes were destroyed in Dade County alone. Many localities were without electricity for days. Government services came to a standstill, as people took account of what was lost and tried to put their lives back together.

  For Dave Shanks, the personal toll was immense. He’d been living in a house on stilts in Key Largo, sixteen feet above sea level, that he had built with his own hands. His marriage had not been going well, due in part to the tremendous man-hours and attention that he had been devoting to the Battle case. As a native of Sou
th Florida, Shanks knew to take the storm warnings seriously. He drove to his uncle’s house nearby. In recent years, he and his mother’s brother had become like father and son. The uncle was an irascible Floridian who refused to evacuate. “I’m going to ride it out,” he said.

  Shanks returned to his house. He and his wife boarded up the place, loaded their parrots and other valuables into two cars, and headed for the mainland. Shanks’s wife was a registered nurse. They drove to the home of a fellow nurse and stayed with her. The woman had one small child and was seven months pregnant.

  It turned out that the storm hit the Dade County mainland harder than it did the Keys. Shanks and his wife were sleeping in a guest room at the house when he heard part of the roof being blown off. He rose and attempted to investigate, but the howling winds and flying debris forced him back into the bedroom. He noticed that the window in the bedroom seemed as though it was about to buckle. Just as Shanks removed the mattress from the bed and positioned it as a shield, the window exploded, with shards of glass blowing inward.

  Shanks gathered up his wife, then the lady of the house and her child, and led them to the master bathroom on the ground floor. Everyone climbed into the Jacuzzi, with a mattress on top of them for protection. There they remained for the next four hours, until the winds began to die down.

  There was so much destruction and scattered debris, with downed telephone poles scattered like twigs across roads, and flooding that had turned entire neighborhoods into swampland, that Shanks was not able to get back to Key Largo for days. By then, the National Guard had been called in. Roads were blocked off. Shanks was only able to get through the roadblocks established by the National Guard because of his police identification.

  His own house was in decent shape, but his uncle’s house and been badly damaged, with part of the roof caved in. The uncle was nowhere to be seen. After hours of searching local shelters and hospitals, he found him in a hospital in Key West. The uncle was in bad shape. He had chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes for his entire adult life. Shanks didn’t know it, but weeks earlier he’d been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The stress from his roof caving in on him had pushed him over the edge. He died within the week.

  The losses in South Florida were catastrophic, both personal and financial. When Shanks tried to return to work, he was met with chaos. Phone lines were dead. Many cops and detectives were unaccounted for, mostly because they had become absorbed in trying to put their lives back together. It would be weeks before many of them reported for duty. Court dates went unmet. Criminal affidavits went unfiled and unread. For the time being, nearly all police and fire department man-hours were spent dealing with the crisis at hand.

  One day, while working with a rescue and cleanup crew in South Miami, Shanks, out of curiosity, decided to drive by El Zapotal. The eye of the storm had passed right over Battle’s hacienda in Redland. Shanks heard reports that the house had been hit hard, with the roof having been ripped off. But by the time Shanks arrived to check it out—two weeks after the storm—a construction crew of what looked like fifty Latino immigrants were hard at work. Huge stacks of plywood, drywall, roofing materials, and floor tiles were piled around the property. A generator was being used to pump rainwater from the grounds. The roof of the main house had mostly been restored.

  In the effort to salvage his property, Battle was far ahead of the average citizen, though it was a job undertaken solely by his minions. On the two or three occasions Shanks drove by to check out the goings-on at El Zapotal, El Padrino was nowhere to be seen.

  16

  STORMY WEATHER

  ABRAHAM RYDZ WAS NO LONGER RECEIVING HIS 17 PERCENT FROM THE CORPORAtion’s bolita profits. It had been his choice to opt out of the tens of millions of dollars the organization generated on an annual basis. On the other hand, the business structure that Rydz and Battle Jr. had created, the network of legitimate businesses and shell companies and secret overseas accounts, was generating as much as or more than the bolita business. Conservatively, Rydz was taking in $3 million a year and paying taxes on only a small percentage of the total. He was doing well for himself.

  In early November 1992, Rydz was at Hialeah Park racetrack one afternoon betting on the ponies. There were a number of friends and associates in his box, and eventually the conversation turned to the subject of a casino that Jose Miguel Battle Sr. and some partners were inaugurating in Lima, Peru. Rydz listened to the conversation, though he pretended like he was not. When one of the friends asked him, “Polaco, you know anything about this casino?” Rydz simply said, “No, I do not.”

  He was not surprised. Over the years, Rydz had heard Battle express his admiration for Lansky and Trafficante and the other mobsters who owned and ran the casinos in Havana back in the day. It was a smart business move, Battle would say. A casino was a legal business, licensed by the government, ideal for laundering money. Given the amount of money that streamed through a casino on a daily basis, it was impossible for the Internal Revenue Service or anyone else to establish what was legitimate and what was not.

  Rydz knew Battle well enough to surmise that his interest in being a casino boss was less about money laundering and more about ego. Battle believed that by becoming a casino impresario he would be acquiring the stature of a true Mob boss. He would be putting himself in the same league as Meyer and Santo.

  Right away, alarm bells went off for Rydz. His major concern was that Battle might be using partners in this new casino venture that could somehow be linked to the web of companies that he and Miguelito had created. Rydz did not doubt for a minute that this casino venture was a disaster in the making. José Miguel may have loved the idea of owning a casino, but he knew nothing about the business. And given that Battle put a high premium on loyalty over knowledge or experience, he was likely to use as his advisers and partners others who were equally ignorant. Nene Marquez, for one. And others whose main qualification was that they played poker with Battle or bet money at the cockfights.

  As soon as Rydz left the racetrack, he called Miguelito. “You know anything about this casino?” he asked.

  Miguelito was hardly speaking with his father anymore. The latest indignity was that his father had a new mistress, a Guatemalan immigrant named Effugenia Reyes who was younger than Junior. His father squired her around Miami, much to the embarrassment of his wife, Miguelito’s mother. “I heard some rumors,” said Miguelito.

  “Here’s what worries me,” said Rydz. He explained that it was likely that Battle would bring Nene Marquez, his brother-in-law, in on the venture. If Nene was being brought in, then it was also possible they would want to use Nene’s brother Maurilio, the Venezuelan.

  Rydz did not have to explain to Miguelito what a potential disaster it would be if the casino partners used Maurilio Marquez in any way. Maurilio was the person Rydz and Miguelito had used as the front man for their many offshore companies. Their entire business operation, including many of their Swiss bank accounts, were in his name. If Battle Sr. used Maurilio as an investor or in any other way, and the casino operation became entangled in legal improprieties or financial complications, as it very well might, then Rydz and Miguelito were fucked. All that they had patiently worked for over the last decade—a seamless, nearly legal financial empire—could come crashing down.

  Said Rydz, “I don’t want our financial future tied into this cockamamie casino. I don’t want a situation where if it goes down, we go down.”

  “I hear you,” said Miguelito.

  Rydz suggested that Junior contact Nene Marquez himself and tell him that under no circumstances could they use his brother’s name in their casino venture.

  Miguelito called Nene Marquez and got right back to Rydz. “He assured me they would not use Maurilio. I made him promise, and he assured me on his mother’s grave.”

  “Good,” said Rydz. He should have felt reassured. A potential calamity had been averted. But he knew José Miguel well enough to have his doubts. A sense of unease s
tayed with El Polaco, like a grumbling stomach, gaseous and unsettled after a big, greasy meal.

  BY OCTOBER, THE METRO-DADE POLICE DEPARTMENT HAD, AFTER NEARLY EIGHT weeks of disruption and recovery from Hurricane Andrew, finally returned to regular duties. Shanks and the Organized Crime Bureau under Sergeant Jimmy Boyd resumed the Battle investigation with a renewed sense of focus.

  They had reason to be optimistic. In November, Detective Kenny Rosario received a tip from an informant that a close associate of Battle’s—Oracio Altuve—had been arrested in Miami on cocaine importation charges. Altuve was one of the original boliteros from Cuba and a high-ranking banker with the Corporation. His roots in the Battle organization went back to its earliest beginnings in Union City.

  Altuve first came to the United States in 1950, but was deported in 1954 after being convicted of assault with a knife. In the early 1960s, with Castro’s communist gulag in full force, he made his way back to the New York area and went to work for what was then the Battle/Mujica organization.

  Altuve had an extensive rap sheet. He was arrested eleven times by the NYPD from August 1963 to January 1991 on virtually every possible charge related to bolita—possession of policy slips; operating a policy business; policy pickup man; promoting gambling; felony gambling banker; and a charge known as “keeping a policy location.” Many of these charges were dismissed, and on those occasions when the charges stuck he paid fines ranging from $200 to $2,000. Altuve was Battle’s age, sixty-three years old. He had no desire to spend the rest of his life in jail.