Whenever something like this happened, the cops were required to write up an Amended Wiretap (Shanks was given the task) detailing a possible conspiracy to commit murder. The revised affidavit was submitted to the same judge who approved the original application. The legal time frame to keep the wiretap up and running was automatically extended.
Eventually, Raul Fernandez asked around among his associates for a “friendly” private investigator who might help them track down the kidnappers without revealing anything about their criminal enterprise. The person recommended was Raul Diaz, a notorious former Metro-Dade cop.
Back in 1981, Detective Raul Diaz had been appointed boss of Centac-26, a prestigious narcotics unit comprised exclusively of homicide detectives that worked cases jointly with DEA. Diaz was given the authority to handpick his own team of detectives. Among those he selected was Julio Ojeda. At the time, Ojeda was riding high from having served as lead detective on the Ernestico Torres murder case, which resulted in the conviction of José Miguel Battle. Within months of Ojeda’s selection for Centac-26, he became enmeshed in the criminal case that would result in his conviction on narcotics and racketeering charges. Not long afterward, the high-flying Diaz became entangled in a controversy of his own. Eventually, under a cloud of corruption charges and at the peak of his notoriety, he was forced to resign from the police department. He went on to become a private detective.
Raul Fernandez hired the disgraced ex-cop to find the people who had kidnapped and robbed his son. Shanks and his detective partners now found themselves surveilling Diaz, a former police colleague, and his PI associates. This lasted for a few weeks until Fernandez felt that the investigation wasn’t leading anywhere and grew weary of paying Diaz’s exorbitant fees—a fact he complained about on the phone with anyone who would listen.
The kidnapping and robbery of Mayito had raised an interesting question. Since most of the stolen money was in the form of checks, wouldn’t the robbers reveal themselves if and when they sought to cash or deposit those checks? Shanks and his supervisor, Sergeant Boyd, had discussed the likelihood that Fernandez and his organization must have some mechanism for tracking checks, in the event that one bounced or, in this case, was stolen.
This quandary revealed itself one afternoon following the robbery when Fernandez called Luis Bordon at Gulf Liquors and asked him to be on the lookout for any checks that came in with a circled number 14 written on the front.
For Shanks and the cops, this answered the question of how the organization was tracking their checks, but even more important, it suggested that Bordon and Gulf Liquors were being used as a way for the Fernandez organization to launder their bolita proceeds.
“This is a big deal,” Shanks said to Sergeant Boyd. It meant that the investigation would now expand to take in Gulf Liquors and Luis Bordon. A bolita investigation was now also a money-laundering investigation. To Shanks, these were isolated bricks in a big wall, potential predicate acts in what he still dreamed about on an almost daily basis—a multicount racketeering case against the man he believed was the Godfather of everything, José Miguel Battle.
SO FAR, THE INVESTIGATORS HAD NOT ESTABLISHED THAT THE FERNANDEZ OPERAtion, as active as it was, was in any way connected to the Corporation. That would all change with the introduction of Luis Bordon. The connection was criminal, but it was also personal and historical, rooted, as were many things related to the Corporation, in the legacy of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Thirty-two years earlier, at the age of twenty-one, Luis Bordon arrived at the Bay of Pigs as a paratrooper in the 2506 Brigade. Dropping from a World War II–vintage C-47 airplane, he landed near the town of San Blas. From the beginning, it was an immersion into hell, as the brigade was hit from all sides. For three days, Bordon fought alongside his men, until it was clear that defeat was certain. Unlike the majority of the men, who were either killed or captured, Bordon was able to escape and make his way on foot into the Escambray Mountains, forty miles east of where he landed. He lived in the wild for a month, scavenging for food and shriveling up from dehydration.
Finally, on the verge of starvation, he was discovered by a campesino. Unlike most of the country people in the Escambray area, this campesino was anti-Castro. He took Bordon into his home, gave him food to eat and water to drink, and nursed him back to health. He also hid and protected him from squads of Fidelista soldiers who were patrolling the area looking for stray brigadistas. That campesino’s name was Raul Fernandez.
Bordon owed Fernandez his life. It was an act of charity he would never forget.
He was able to secure a raft. Along with six others, he made the perilous journey that so many others would attempt in the decades to come. He crossed the Florida Strait and six months after the invasion arrived in Miami as one of the few brigade veterans to escape the island.
In the mid-1960s, Bordon married and made the move to Union City, the land of opportunity for many Cuban émigrés, though the streets were mean and the winters were brutal. Luis and his wife had two sons, Luis Jr. and Adel. Bordon worked in the produce business, but he also began running numbers as a listero for the bolita operation of two fellow brigadistas, José Miguel Battle and Angel Mujica.
What Bordon did not know was that his savior, Raul Fernandez, had also left Cuba and settled across the river from him in New York City. Fernandez, who had been a bolitero back in Cuba, also made his living through the illegal lottery, working with Spanish Raymond Marquez, the Puerto Rican bolita boss of East Harlem.
These two men—Bordon and Fernandez—lived and worked on opposite sides of the Hudson River without knowing the other was there.
In the early 1970s, Fernandez made the move to Miami and expanded from bolita into bookmaking. In the mid-1970s, Bordon made the same move. Finally, the two men met and traded stories about their similar paths.
Bordon managed a number of Miami supermarkets in the 1970s, and in 1979 he had the opportunity to purchase partial ownership of his own location, a medium-sized market in the neighborhood of Little Havana. He went to his friend and savior Raul Fernandez for financial backing. Fernandez said yes, but as part of the agreement he requested that Bordon allow him to use the market as a means to launder checks from his bolita business. Bordon agreed.
For ten years, the men maintained their mutual arrangement, which was highly profitable for both of them. Then Bordon sold the store. Later, he opened Gulf Liquors in Hialeah. Before long, he was in financial trouble. He sought out his old friend, Raul, and suggested that they could operate the same sort of money-laundering operation as they had before. Fernandez, whose operation had grown considerably, thought that was a splendid idea.
By the 1980s, Bordon’s money-laundering business included not only Fernandez but also many satellite boliteros and bookies who worked with Fernandez. Many of these men, including Gilberto Borges, were also affiliated with the Corporation.
To all of them—Bordon, Fernandez, and now José Miguel Battle—it seemed like a strange kind of fate: Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion, bolita, New Jersey, New York, Miami. And now here they all were as viejos still treading the same path, feeding at the same trough.
David Shanks and his investigators set up surveillance of Gulf Liquors, including wiretaps of various phone lines at the location.
Right away, the cops learned that Bordon’s two closest associates were his sons, Luis Jr. and Adel. Luis Jr. was an ex–U.S. Marine who still looked like one, with a flattop haircut and bulging muscles. Adel was the taller of the two, heavyset and soft around the middle. The cops surmised that if they were able to flip one of the sons, it would likely be Adel.
The surveillance at Gulf Liquors turned out to provide a major bounty of information for the cops. The location was a hub for boliteros picking up and dropping off cash. A who’s who of the Miami faction of the Corporation, including Borges and others, passed through on a daily basis. Bordon and Fernandez spoke on the phone numerous times every day, with Mayito Fernandez, the son, making d
aily money drops on those occasions when he wasn’t dodging kidnappers.
The surveillance continued for two months, with cops compiling phone records of gambling transactions, wiretaps of conversations, and photos of key players meeting at the location. All they needed now was actual physical evidence—cash proceeds, betting slips, business ledgers, and whatever else they might find. David Shanks felt it was time for a major raid, and Sergeant Boyd agreed.
On June 24, 1994—a Friday—the cops were ready. They had acquired two dozen search warrants to be executed at various locations, starting with Gulf Liquors but also including the homes and businesses of many of the boliteros they targeted. In total, there were twenty-four different locations spread out around the city. It would require a coordinated effort, with over one hundred detectives, including sergeants, lieutenants, and other supervisors.
At 6:30 P.M., rush hour, the entire team of officers fanned out and executed their warrants. After Gulf Liquors, the most important locale was the Fernandez home. Raul, Rita, and the sons basically ran their entire operation out of the house, so the cops knew there had to be business records on the premises.
The house was a veritable fortress. Two dozen cops were used to search the location, and still nobody was finding anything useful until a lieutenant found a garage door opener in the master bedroom. Why would there be a garage door opener in the bedroom? The lieutenant pushed the button and—voilà—a six-foot section of the wall opened up to reveal a secret walk-in safe. Inside, stacked on shelves, was the mother lode: business ledgers going back years, canceled checks, plus a stockpile of cash, gold jewelry, and other valuables.
At Gulf Liquors, the cops discovered two sets of books— one that the Bordons kept for the benefit of the IRS, and a second to keep track of everything that was left out of the first.
It took seven hours for the cops to execute all the warrants, secure the locations, gather evidence, and bring it all back to the police station property room. Dave Shanks went to bed around 6 A.M. the next morning. But he could hardly wait to get up and go into work later that afternoon. In the bounty of evidence, there had to be some gems.
It was actually three days later that the gem was uncovered, and it had nothing to do with any criminal evidence, per se. At one of the locations where a stack of papers and ledgers had been confiscated, there was a Spanish-language newspaper called El Comercio. The paper was from Lima, Peru. On the paper’s society page were a number of items involving notables from around the city of Lima. At the bottom was a photo of a Latin male, in his midsixties, dressed in a tuxedo, sitting at a table with a young woman.
The cop who found the paper said to Shanks, “Doesn’t that look like Battle?”
Shanks looked at the photo. “It sure does.” He examined the caption for the photo. “It says Alfredo Walled and his new bride. What the hell?”
Shanks called for Sergeant Boyd, who was standing nearby. Fluent in Spanish, Boyd read the caption out loud, translating it into English: “The wedding of the year. Mr. Alfredo Walled, a New York businessman and owner of the Casino Crillón, is no longer single. He has been snagged by the beautiful Evelyn Runciman, twenty years of age. To celebrate the event, the husband had a big party at the elegant five-star hotel. Walled arrived in Lima one year ago to inaugurate the Casino Crillón. Months later he met the young Runciman, with whom he initiated a torrid romance, culminating at the altar.”
The cops stood dumbfounded.
“That’s Battle,” said Shanks. “That’s our man. That’s why we haven’t been able to find him all this time.”
TO THE SURPRISE OF NEARLY EVERYONE, THE CASINO CRILLÓN IN ITS FIRST SIX months of operation was a smashing success. Considering that many of the key managers were new to the game, it may have been a case of beginner’s luck. People crowded around the roulette wheel and the baccarat tables. The blackjack tables were full, as were the poker tables. The slot machines were occupied round the clock, and they still had more slots coming in future shipments from Miami. In the opening weeks, on average, the casino took in $350,000 per week, and during the initial six months the casino reaped $3.5 million.
All of this could have been cause for celebration, but Battle was upset about one thing. There was a sizable discrepancy between the amount of money that was coming into the casino and the amount that was showing up as profit and being paid out to the shareholders. “Somebody,” said Battle, “is stealing.”
From Miami, Battle brought in Orestas Vidan, the Cook, accountant extraordinaire. The casino’s books were opened for Vidan to study; he would track the proceeds from the gambling tables all the way to the bank and determine where things didn’t add up.
After a week, Vidan came to Battle and said, “Your financial manager is skimming off the top.”
“Maurilio?” said Battle.
Vidan nodded.
Battle was not surprised. He’d heard that Maurilio Marquez had been inflating various costs and keeping money for himself. Battle had even heard that Maurilio had a safe in his room where he kept stolen cash.
Before confronting Maurilio, Battle had hotel security let him into his room. He brought a locksmith along to crack open the safe. Inside, he found $75,000 in cash.
On the floor of the casino, with other management people listening, he told Maurilio, “You’re fired. I want you out of the hotel by the end of the day.”
Maurilio tried to raise an objection, but Battle told him, “Listen, just because your brother is married to my sister doesn’t mean I won’t have you killed.”
Maurilio gathered his things and was not to be seen at the Crillón—or in Lima—any longer.
Nene Marquez did not get in the way of his brother’s firing. Many had seen it coming. Maurilio’s pilfering had been suspected by others. Battle did not hold it against Nene, though Marquez did take it upon himself to find a replacement. He had an idea—he traveled to Aruba and begged Harold Marchena to return.
The situation was now different: the casino was up and running, and it was turning a profit. Whatever operational matters had bothered Marchena enough to make him resign had obviously been fixed or at least were not damaging the profitability of the venture. Plus, Nene offered Marchena a hefty percentage of the casino take. This was no small thing since it had already been established that the venture was generating substantial revenue. Basically, the Battle organization was making Harold Marchena an offer he could not refuse.
Marchena returned to Lima to take over for Maurilio Marquez as the financial manager of the casino. A potential crisis had been averted.
Running a casino was like any other corporate enterprise. There were challenges from within, involving personnel and operational procedure, and there were environmental challenges. Casinos generate money, so there is the perception that on a daily basis the cash is flowing, which makes the business attractive to thieves and extortionists. Since the people of Peru did not know the Crillón was owned and run by a gangster, there was no reason to surmise that the owners could not be intimidated. The Crillón was as susceptible to the vagaries of Peruvian crime and politics as any other business in Lima.
In December 1993, an envelope was delivered to the management of the casino. Inside was a message from the Peruvian terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) stating that the Casino Crillón was an affront to the Marxist principles of the organization, and also an exploitation of the Peruvian people. Sendero Luminoso demanded a large cash payment from the casino, or, the message stated, there would be consequences. If anyone did not understand what those consequences might be, the senders of the message provided a visual aid. Inside the envelope, accompanying the message, was a single bullet.
The envelope and message were brought to Battle, who read it over and held the bullet in his fingers. “Hijo de puta,” he exclaimed.
As a former brigadista, a fellow traveler of the Cold War, and a onetime cop, Battle would have known about Sendero Luminoso. The organization had recently come to dominate newspa
per headlines in the Latin American press through its occasional bombings and political assassinations. In the ongoing worldwide war between radical leftists and right-wing authoritarianism (in which Battle was an adherent of the latter), Sendero Luminoso was the latest flowering of what some saw as the bitter fruit of Castroism.
The tactics of Sendero Luminoso were brutal. They set off bombs in commercial districts, leading to the deaths of innocent victims. Founded in 1980, the organization took its name from a statement by the founder of the Communist Party in Peru: “Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution.” The group’s leader, Abimael Guzmán, stated that “the triumph of the revolution will cost a million lives.” He was only slightly exaggerating. Throughout the 1980s, a guerrilla-style war between the group and the country’s repressive military regime created a vicious climate of terror. In an effort to enforce loyalty among the peasantry in rural Peru, Sendero Luminoso engaged in numerous mass slaughters, in which fifty and sixty people at a time were killed. Sometimes their throats were slit and their bodies left out in the open.
“Human rights are contradictory to the rights of the people,” stated Sendero Luminoso in a message to the world. “We reject and condemn human rights because they are bourgeois, reactionary, counterrevolutionary rights, and are today a weapon of revisionists and imperialists, principally Yankee imperialists.”
The government responded with its own reign of terror. Death squads known as rondas were armed by the military and sent out to round up and kill anyone believed to be sympathetic to Sendero Luminoso. Often this approach had the opposite effect of what the government wanted: it created the sense that in a war between two equally horrific options, it might be best to side with the “people.”
Alberto Fujimori had been elected president on a strong antiterrorism platform. One of his first acts was to issue a law giving legal status to the rondas, which were now officially known as Comités de Autodefensa (Committees of Self-Defense). Peruvian police scored a major success in September 1991 with the capture of Guzmán. President Fujimori touted the arrest as the end of Sendero Luminoso.
The Corporation Page 48