Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

CHAIRMAN: Can you tell us when that was?

  TRAFFICANTE: I cannot tell you the exact date…I got news that Cuban officials were looking for me to put me in jail because one of the things was that I was a Batista collaborator. They raided my apartment. They were looking for money. They tore up all the furniture. They used to come and get me at nighttime, take me out in the woods, trying [to get me] to tell where I had my money, this and that, until I finally went into hiding. And they kept on…I mean, these were a bunch of—most of them were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. They had weapons; it was a bad time to be around.

  Santo was arrested at his Vedado apartment on June 8 and incarcerated at Triscornia detention camp—the same facility where Charlie Luciano had been held while awaiting deportation twelve years earlier. The Havana Mob had come full circle: from being outcasts to being the ultimate insiders to being outcasts again. The world had shifted on its axis.

  Trafficante was not alone at Triscornia. The Cuban government had come to the conclusion that if the mobsters could not generate profits in the casinos, then what were they good for? They were rounded up. Trafficante, Jake Lansky, Dino Cellini, and John Martino, gambling manager at the Deauville, were all incarcerated for being “undesirable aliens.” Meyer Lansky and Norman Rothman were out of the country by then, or they too would most likely have been arrested.

  Joe Stassi was in Havana. On the night Trafficante, Jake Lansky, and the others were incarcerated, Stassi called the Capri. “Joe,” he was told by the casino manager, “don’t come down here. They just pinched everybody.” Stassi had been arrested numerous times since Castro took over, but he was always let go. The fact that Santo and Jake had been collared was enough for Stassi to realize that this time the authorities were serious. He went into hiding and eventually left Cuba in late 1959.

  Stassi’s son, Joe Jr., was not so lucky. Because Stassi Jr. had married into a family strongly associated with the Batista regime, he was constantly being arrested. He was determined to stay in Havana with his wife and newborn child and make it in the casino-gambling business, but the new government had other ideas. He wound up spending a total of 112 days in jail before he eventually gave up and left the island in 1961.

  Trafficante had it the worst of all. The day of his arrest, his attorney Frank Ragano got a call at his Tampa office. It was Santo, informing him that this time it looked as if the Cuban government was not going to let him go. “It’s not exactly a jail,” said Trafficante of his cell at Triscornia. “It’s a big house across the bay from the Malecón and I’ve been ordered to stay here until a decision on my case is made.”

  “Are you all right?” asked Ragano.

  “I can hear them shooting Batista people down the road. But I’ll be okay.”

  Trafficante’s biggest concern was that he had scheduled his oldest daughter’s wedding to take place at the Hilton Hotel on Father’s Day, June 21. His daughter was determined to have the wedding as planned, with her father in attendance. As the date approached, it was uncertain whether the government would allow Trafficante to view his daughter’s wedding vows. Somehow, Santo’s wife, Josephine, was able to get a personal message through to Castro and he authorized a brief furlough for the Mob boss to participate in the ceremony.

  Ragano flew in for the wedding, which Trafficante presided over wearing a white dinner jacket and black bow tie. There were about two hundred guests in the reception room at the Hilton, with more than a dozen armed soldiers standing on the perimeter of the festivities. Immediately afterward, Trafficante was taken into custody and returned to Triscornia.

  During his stay in Havana, Ragano noticed the stark difference from when he was last in town. “A happy-go-lucky atmosphere had been replaced by a grim military barracks lifestyle. Bearded sentries, barely out of their teens, patrolled the streets on foot or screeched about in armored cars. I stayed at Lansky’s Riviera, a virtual ghost hotel, and could hear the echoes of my footsteps on the marble floor of the vacant lobby.”

  By early August, Jake Lansky and Dino Cellini had been released from incarceration and had left the country. Lewis McWillie moved up the ladder from pit boss to casino manager at the Tropicana, and later at the Capri.

  Trafficante was still being held. In fact, in a state of panic he called his attorney to say, “They’re going to execute me! I’m on the damn list!” He implored his attorney to get on a plane, fly to Havana, and try to negotiate for his freedom. Ragano flew back to the island and began a torturous negotiation process with bureaucrats of the revolutionary government. He was told: “In the first place, [Trafficante] was a Batista supporter and Batista made life miserable for the Cuban people, except for the rich. Furthermore, Mr. Trafficante is a drug trafficker and there is no room for drug traffickers under the new government.”

  Asked Ragano, “What evidence is there that he’s a drug trafficker?”

  “Because of the name he uses—Trafficante. One who traffics in illegal drugs—that’s what the name means in Spanish.”

  Ragano explained that Trafficante was Santo’s real name and that he had never been charged with drug trafficking in the United States or anywhere else. “If you’re going to judge him by his name,” continued Ragano, “then he’s a saint, since Santo, in Italian, means saint.”

  Eventually Trafficante was brought to meet with Raúl Castro, who was now defense minister. Afterward, the former casino kingpin was released from custody. In subsequent conversations with Ragano, Santo was cryptic about how he convinced Raúl to let him go, but the lawyer was certain there had to have been a bribe. “Either Santo used his own money that he had hidden in Cuba,” said Ragano, “or he had one of his wealthy Cuban friends reach someone in Castro’s government.” The amount Trafficante was rumored to have paid for his freedom was one hundred thousand dollars.

  Many years later, Santo denied under oath that there was ever such a payment. He did admit, however, that Raúl Castro played a role in his release. “I think he helped,” Trafficante told the 1978 House Committee on Assassinations. When asked if he ever encountered Raúl after he got out of prison, the Mob boss recalled:

  I met Raúl Castro one time at the Hilton Hotel. I happened to be there and [a friend] told me that if you want to thank him, he is upstairs in some kind of place, some kind of room, like a public bar or something. So I went up there and he was going down the stairs. So this fellow called to [Raúl] and he stopped. I went there and thanked him. He said, “Well, just behave yourself and don’t give nothing to nobody, don’t let nobody shake you down or nothing like that. Just behave and you’ll be all right. You don’t have to leave. You don’t have to go no place.”

  By October of 1959, Santo had left the island, never to return.

  MEYER LANSKY MADE ONE last trip to Havana. He arrived in March and stayed in his favorite suite at the Hotel Nacional. Mostly he was there to see if he could deal with the Castro regime and salvage his hotel-casino business; he was also there to try to find his mistress, Carmen. His plan was to help her leave the island and resettle in Miami or New York. But the Jewish Mob boss could not locate his clandestine paramour; she had moved out of the apartment on the Prado and maybe even left Cuba. No one seemed to know for sure.

  It didn’t take Lansky long to realize that business prospects for the mobsters in Cuba were dead. At that time, political executions at La Cabaña fortress took place at a rate of two or three a day (there would be an estimated three hundred executions in the first two months of Castro’s leadership). Meyer recognized Cuba’s new government as the same sort of totalitarian regime as had forced his family out of Russia early in the century. He offered his opinions to Armando Jaime Casielles, who he was surprised to hear had decided to stay in Cuba under the Castro government. Recalled Jaime:

  When he invited me to go out of the country, he said that this revolution was a communist revolution. I said that it wasn’t a communist revolution, that this was fidelista revolution. “I am in this revolution because it is fidelista,” I said.<
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  Lansky had a hard time accepting that Jaime wanted to stay; he seemed to take it as a personal rejection. Meyer, after all, had for most of his adult life been in the thrall of the bourgeoisie; he dressed and behaved in a manner that was supposed to connote class and breeding, though he and his other mobster associates mostly came from the lower rungs of society. As the top man in the Havana Mob, Lansky catered to the well dressed and well fed. His entire existence was based on creating the illusion that life was one big party, with champagne, music, and exquisite women all around. It was a vision shared by his most powerful partner—President Batista. The revolutionaries—Castro and his ilk—were something else entirely. Bearded, unwashed, intellectual, and doctrinaire in a way that Lansky could never understand, they were an affront to the Havana Mob. They smelled bad, and they tracked mud across the carpets at the Hilton, Tropicana, Riviera, and other treasures of the Mob in Havana. It was a clash of cultures that could never be reconciled.

  “The problem,” said Lansky to his driver, “is that you don’t really know who I am.” They were sitting on a bench in the garden of the Hotel Nacional, surrounded by palm trees and bougainvillea.

  “I know you are Meyer Lansky,” said Jaime, “my boss, my teacher, and an American citizen.”

  “No. I am not American. I am from a small town that has been disputed over the years between Poland and Russia. I am more than anything a Jew, a Russian Jew, and I left Russia with a revolution going on when I was twelve and a half years old, when the communist revolution triumphed. I know a communist revolution when I see one, and this is a communist revolution.”

  “Well, if it is as you say, then it is for the benefit of the people.”

  “Yes, but what about your source of income, your livelihood? If they close down the casinos for good, you will be out of work.”

  Jaime shrugged. “You’ve been more than a boss to me. You’ve been a mentor. But I am staying here in Cuba.” The two men said their good-byes; they never saw each other again.

  Lansky remained in Havana less than a month. He flew back to Miami, then to New York, monitoring the situation in Cuba from afar. Technically, he was still the owner of the Riviera. His Compañía Hotelera la Riviera was still the primary shareholder, though Meyer, as before, was down on paper as the “kitchen manager.” The hotel’s owners stayed afloat by borrowing money from various financial institutions on the island until they, like most of the other hotel-casino entities in Havana, were operating under a mountain of debt.

  When, in October 1960, the Gaceta Oficial de la República de Cuba announced the confiscation and nationalization of the Havana Riviera, it was the final nail in the coffin. The gazette announced the same fate for other hotel-casinos, as well as 165 other U.S. enterprises, including franchises of Texaco, Goodyear, Kodak, and General Motors.

  The Castro government had simply confiscated all U.S. holdings on the island: the legacy of the United Fruit Company, the foreign-owned sugar mills, the huge U.S. mining corporations, and all holdings of the Havana Mob were now the official property of the Cuban government.

  It was the most audacious in a series of hostile economic maneuvers between the U.S. government and Castro that had begun the moment the 26th of July Movement took power. The new administration of John F. Kennedy pressured Castro to hold elections and continue to give U.S. companies the kinds of tax breaks they had received under previous regimes. In numerous interviews on American television, Fidel continued to promise democracy. He promised elections and denied that he had any interest in officially holding office in Cuba. Soon, however, Castro revealed himself to be the latest version of La Engañadora. Elections kept getting delayed until it was apparent there would be no elections. The tenor of government in Cuba became more and more totalitarian, as Fidel became the sole decision-maker in all matters of state. Many who had played major roles in the Revolution became disenchanted and spoke out—they were either shot or given decades-long prison sentences, or fled into exile. Eventually Fidel proclaimed proudly that he was a Marxist, and the new slogan of the government became “Socialismo o muerte”—socialism or death.

  Ninety miles to the north, Castro’s young American counterpart needed to show that he was tough; Kennedy had made it an issue during his election campaign that his opponent, Richard M. Nixon, was soft on Cuba. Consequently, the American president who had once enjoyed the gift of an orgy from the Havana Mob established an economic blockade against Cuba—an embargo that remains in effect half a century later.

  Kennedy continued to flex his muscles vis-à-vis Cuba, but for Lansky, Trafficante, and others of the Havana Mob the damage was done. They were big losers in Cuba. Certainly none were as lucky as the ex-president, who, in the weeks before he fled, was able to ship suitcases full of cash from the island into private Swiss bank accounts and elsewhere. It is estimated that Batista plundered Cuba to the tune of three hundred million dollars. One indication of his bounty was that he was able to leave close to three million dollars in a safe in his office in the presidential palace. A brigade of revolutionaries found the cash and showed it off to the press. Apparently, Batista didn’t need the money; perhaps he left it behind as a tip.

  Even more telling was the Cuban bank account in Batista’s name, the balance of which he’d been unable to transfer before it was seized. The balance—which would be used to help stabilize the new government—was a cool twenty million.

  Lansky and his friends certainly could have used that kind of bread. Given the fluid nature of casino bookkeeping and the proclivity of mobsters to hide their profits, it is impossible to calculate exactly how much they lost, but the figures had to be staggering. The Hotel Riviera alone had cost fourteen million dollars to build and equip, according to official records, or eighteen million by an estimate that Lansky himself later gave to friends. Of that investment, six million was provided by the Batista government under the provisions of Hotel Law 2074. A fair estimate of the Havana Mob’s personal investment in the hotel would be eight to twelve million.

  According to the hotel’s own records, gambling at the Riviera before Castro arrived showed a profit of three million dollars annually—and that was without factoring in the skim, which was undoubtedly in the millions. And that was only one casino in one hotel; the Hilton, Capri, Deauville, Comodoro, Sans Souci, Tropicana, Nacional, Plaza, St. John’s, Presidente, and other holdings of the Havana Mob had all been highly profitable.

  The money was only part of what the mobsters lost in Cuba. Men like Luciano, Lansky, Trafficante, Anastasia, and others with financial interests in Havana were among the founding fathers of organized crime in America. In many ways what they created in Cuba was the most grandiose achievement ever for the Mob—a dream come true. They had infiltrated a sovereign nation and taken control of financial institutions and the levers of power from the top to the bottom. In the underworld, it was sometimes said in an exaggerated way that mobsters “ran” a town or city; in Havana, the Mob actually did run the place. There had never been anything like it before.

  The level of attainment for the mobsters guaranteed that the fall would be big—and it was. In the end, Cuba was the Mob’s most costly defeat. They had positioned themselves as legitimate businessmen in Cuba. They had placed all their faith in the brute power of American capitalism. The more Castro’s incipient Revolution gained traction, the more the mobsters invested, in the belief that they could drown out the will of the people through a massive infusion of capital. Rampant development would trump Revolution—or at least that was how it was supposed to go. In the end, the Cuban people made their own choice, and the mobsters were chased out of town.

  Santo Trafficante never would say how much he lost in Cuba, but the word back in Tampa was that he was flat broke. The others—Rothman, the Clarks Lefty and Wilbur, Blackjack McGinty, Charley the Blade, Dino Cellini, et al.—scattered far and wide, most of them maintaining some connection to the casino-gambling business in Las Vegas, Reno, the Bahamas, or Europe. Joe Stassi wa
s so broke that he was forced into the heroin-smuggling business, something he had never done before in his long life as a gangster. He was eventually incarcerated on narcotics charges and spent the better part of his remaining years behind bars. In 1999 Stassi did an interview with writer/filmmaker Richard Stratton in which he said, “I haven’t had an erection in forty years”—placing his last protuberance right around the time he was forced out of Havana.

  As for Lansky, his hopes of expanding his gambling interests to the Dominican Republic were dashed for good in 1961 when dictator Rafael Trujillo was assassinated. (Four years later, the U.S. government—fearing another Castro-like uprising in the Americas—staged a military invasion of the island.) For Meyer, it was probably a blessing in disguise. He opened a couple of big casinos in the Bahamas and in England, but they were nothing compared with what he had in Havana. Over the years, he would sometimes think back ruefully on what he had gained—and lost—in the Pearl of the Antilles. He told friends he had to leave behind seventeen million dollars in cash, which just missed being shipped out and distributed to his various partners via Switzerland. But seventeen million was nothing compared to the dream deferred—the dream of a mobster paradise in Cuba and beyond.

  The Little Man had gambled everything—and come up empty. Years later, with the wisdom of age, he could have been speaking for the entire Havana Mob when he said of his time in Cuba: “I crapped out.”

  Along the Malecón, the winds still sweep down from the north and the ocean sometimes pounds the shoreline. Where there were once mobsters, there are now revolutionaries. ¡Viva Fidel! ¡Viva la patria! ¡Socialismo o muerte!

  EPILOGUE

  ON APRIL 15, 1961, ALMOST TWO AND A HALF YEARS after Castro took power in Cuba, a small army of Cuban exiles attempted to invade the island and seize control. The event is known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, after the area in Matanzas Province where the insurgents first came ashore. The attack was a disaster for the invaders: from an army of nearly 1,500 men, 115 were killed and the rest captured and jailed in Cuba. Some were later executed for treason.