by Jose Latour
Almost simultaneously, at 3:20 P.M., Jacob Shaifer notified his boss that Frank Costello was on the line. Meyer Lansky, who had just got up from his customary nap, hurried to the library. He hoped his close friend and business partner had something on Elias Naguib. Last Saturday morning, talking casually on the phone with Costello, Lansky had revealed that a casino dealer had shot dead a jeweler before killing himself. He’d mentioned Naguib’s name, said he’d come from New York twenty-odd years earlier, and asked his partner in the Havana operation to see whether anybody in the Big Apple remembered who the guy had been. Lansky felt sure the shrewd Sicilian would realize Naguib was somehow involved in the Capri heist Silesi and Cellini had reported to him.
“Hello, Frank?”
“How’re you doing, you damn Jewish bastard?”
“Can’t complain. I’m sixty-two, my fucking heartburn keeps me awake at nights, hypertension is busting the veins in my face, and still a lot of gorgeous chicks try to hook me.”
“You were always a handsome fellow.”
“Yeah. Gotta lot of charm in the roll … of bills.”
Costello laughed softly, and for a couple of minutes they performed a ritual conceived to drain off bile. They made jokes on themselves and indulged in a small measure of self-criticism not to be shared with subordinates. Then they became cautious, just in case.
“… weaker with each passing day, Meyer,” Costello said of his mother-in-law. “The tumor is malignant. She’s getting the best therapy money can buy, including this radium, but I have no hopes, ’cause when you least expect it, the patient dies on you, like this guy we used to know, remember him? The one who loved banana splits? Died when he looked his best. So I say to the wife, ‘Get used to the idea, any moment your mama …’”
Lansky immediately identified and decoded the message. If he wanted to learn the whole story, all he had to do was send a man to New York. But details were useless. Elias Naguib had been a Bonanno man. Joe Bananas and Joe Profaci had organized the heist. Realizing that Angelo Dick had been just a decoy made him blush like a schoolboy caught jerking off.
“Meyer?” Costello asked after a two-second pause.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Frank. Please, call me the minute it happens. I want to personally give my condolences to your wife. We attend more funerals with each passing day.”
“Sad truth. We share so many friends that when I give condolences to someone I also do it in your name.”
Lansky smiled. Frank would let Bonanno know his man had been snuffed; make it seem as though they had got to the guy one day after pulling off the heist. “Thanks, pal. Friends should know that even if I’m away I share their moments of grief.”
“Give me a ring when you feel like it,” Costello said.
“I’ll drop around as soon as I fix a couple of things here.”
“You’re always welcome. Watch your blood pressure.”
“I’ll do that. Bye, Frank.”
“See you, Meyer.”
Frank Costello returned the receiver to the cradle and smiled in anticipation of his next call. Close to retirement, the Commission’s first among equals wholeheartedly enjoyed every pleasant moment life presented him with. He poured a goblet of an exquisite Marsala wine, lifted the glass against the light to admire its dark amber color, and sampled the traces of burnt sugar suggested in its flavor. He lit a Marlboro and between sips and streams of smoke gazed at the not-too-fascinating Central Park view that could be seen from the window of his apartment on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-first Street, on Manhattan’s East Side. When the wine and the cigarette were halfway gone, he dialed.
“Yeah?”
“Is Joe in?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Frank.”
“Oh … one moment, Mr. Costello.”
The Sicilian dragged on his cigarette, then let it rest on an ashtray. No more than ten seconds went by.
“How are you, Frank?
“Fine, Joe. How’s Fay and the kids?”
“Fine, thank you. I heard about your mother-in-law. How is she?”
“Not so well. I suppose in a couple of months she’ll be gone.”
“What a shame. Such a fine lady.”
“Life is full of sad moments, Joe. I’ve got some bad news for you, too.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Remember Elias Naguib?”
A short silence ensued as Bonanno tried to pull himself together. Three days earlier the Lebanese had called to report, with restrained satisfaction, the successful conclusion of their joint venture, and now … Beaming and waiting, Costello sipped some more wine.
“The name does ring a bell, but I don’t recall the face,” said Bonanno at last.
“A Lebanese used to work for you back in the thirties.”
“Oh … yeah. I remember now. Smart kid, too. He moved to Mexico and was doing well last time I heard.”
“Cuba,” Costello butted in. “He moved to Cuba.”
“That’s right. Cuba. More or less the same thing. Lots of Indians, right? But I haven’t heard from him since … Oh, I don’t know, maybe ’47, ’48. What happened to him?”
“Somebody bumped him off, says Meyer. He asked me to give you his condolences.”
Bonanno recovered fast, but not fast enough. “Thanks. You know if there’s an address to send flowers or something?”
“No. Will you fly over?”
“Well … he was a good guy, but he went on his own a long time ago.”
“Then, I apologize for the interruption.”
“No, on the contrary. I’m very grateful, both to Meyer and yourself.”
“Bye, Joe.”
“Bye, Frank.”
As a nonplussed Joseph Bonanno tried to figure out what had gone wrong and ascribed a high mark for efficiency to the Lansky-Costello organization that in this case it didn’t merit, Colonel Orlando Grava was reading the dispatch that would be immediately radioed to all police cruisers, motorcycles, and unmarked cars. It instructed officers on duty to look for a ’56 light green Buick Special, license plate 112 127. At the bottom of the sheet, Grava scrawled, “Do not detain. Inform position and probable route. Follow at maximum permissible range,” then handed it back to his aide, who turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Grava had spent the morning poring over all sorts of written material impounded at Naguib’s residence and apartment. He hadn’t found incriminating evidence against himself, and now had a unique opportunity to rise in the estimation of both Lansky and the FBI’s Walburn by feeding them photocopies of the Lebanese’s business dealings. Naguib’s phone book contained 162 numbers, of which 19 had obviously been scrambled. Under the G and O pages, the colonel closely inspected two coded numbers until he felt sure neither was one of his own. He had no way of knowing that Naguib had committed nine telephone numbers to memory, among them Grava’s direct line. The voice of his aide crackled on the intercom.
“With your permission, Colonel.”
“Speak up,” Grava said, pressing and releasing a key.
“A suspect in the Château Miramar double murder has been taken into custody.”
“Really? Who is he?”
“Fermín Rodríguez, aka Gallego.”
…
According to parish records, on February 7, 1891, the priest of the town of Limonar, in the province of Matanzas, had christened the black baby “Liberata”—Liberated—based on the consideration that she was the only one of her mother’s five children that was born free. The venerable old clergyman, secretly a Jacobin and an abolitionist, had wanted to partly compensate the child for the surname she would carry all her life—Milanés. It belonged to the rich sugar-mill owner on whose barracks the baby’s father had been born forty-odd years earlier.
Liberata had grown up in horrifying misery. She had walked barefoot on red clay until she turned seventeen, had performed all kinds of household chores in the family hut since she was five, had reeked of firewood smoke up t
o the day when she fled Matanzas. Liberata never attended school and became a woman in one stroke when a neighbor six years her senior raped her in the cool shadows of a guava plantation. She was ten years old at the time.
Eight years later, after countless anorgasmic copulations and a bloody abortion that left her barren for life, Liberata Milanés had fallen in love with a handsome, light-skinned Negro violinist during the festivities held to honor the patron saint of Limonar. She eloped with him, but the four-day Havana honeymoon ended with her being dumped in a San Isidro brothel, where for twenty-three years she made a living turning tricks at rock-bottom rates with mostly underprivileged, generally foul-smelling clients. In 1932, while the Machado dictatorship and the Great Depression afflicted Cuba, Liberata had struck out for six consecutive days. The following afternoon, the madam in charge had stared at her for nearly a minute before decreeing that Liberata should make up her mind: Either she substituted for the appallingly bad homosexual cook, or she would have to find some other place to work and live.
And the illiterate, humble, gentle Negro woman had discovered her gift for cooking. When Liberata lightly fried onions, garlic, and red pepper in olive oil, the entire block salivated. Hustlers closed their eyes to better savor her bean potajes. Her rice was always loose, sparkling. Sliced fried plantains, if ripe, tasted like a delicate confection; if green and salted, crunched noisily when chewed. Ground beef, seasoned with olives, raisins, onions, and green pepper, left the chippies speechless.
The madam hadn’t known what to do when her longtime customers started regularly sampling the full-blown dishes prepared by the former whore. At the outset, it had been just a spoonful of the milk-and-rice dessert sparkled with ground cinnamon; this progressed a month later to a cup of chicken broth or mamey ice cream; then her hot thick cocoa became a winter favorite. “This ain’t a fucking boardinghouse, for Chrissake,” the madam complained, but she operated on the principle that the customer is always right, and patrons assuaged her concerns with adulation. Then, on a certain Saturday evening, two of the boldest had brought five pounds of kidney beans, two of smoked pork, and five Spanish red-peppered sausages for a Sunday-noon cocido to be prepared by the woman who had come to be San Isidro’s most famous cook.
Eventually the Sunday brunches became part of the neighborhood’s folklore, and at one of them, in May 1942, Liberata Milanés had met Fermín Rodríguez. On Fridays the whores and their cook performed a lottery, sort of. A dozen folded pieces of paper with the names of prospective guests, one for each woman, were deposited in an iron pot. Then Liberata drew next Sunday’s two male table companions. Pimps, boyfriends, relatives, neighbors, and the owners of close-by businesses had been eligible, but they had to be aware of the special nature of the invitation and know that guests weren’t allowed more than two beers and that hard liquor was banned.
When Fermín and Liberata met he was twenty-seven, she fifty-one. After so many misfortunes the woman reacted well to flattery, and the then-handsome short man had praised her dishes with the solemnity he usually reserved for political debates. He’d made her explain step by step how she prepared each course. Mutual feelings developed. One year later they were engaging in long conversations on a thousand different topics, swapping jokes, and discussing which lottery numbers to play on Saturday afternoons, based on the dreams they had had along the week. Liberata committed her first dishonest act ever on a Friday, when she had cheated at the raffle—hiding between her fingers a paper with Fermín’s name on it—to make sure he would be one of the guests at brunch that Sunday.
Unaware of maternal or filial undertones, they became like mother and son. Liberata proudly introduced him to strangers as her godson; Fermín called her godmother. She cared for him when he caught colds; he took her to the town of Regla, across the bay, to worship the Virgin. If for some reason they hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks, their next meeting was a sight to smiling onlookers. Some evenings, once she’d finished washing the dishes, they took leisurely strolls along Alameda de Paula. Those who had studied them realized they were not blood-related only by reason of the racial difference. In all other respects they behaved like a loving mother and her affectionate son. The well-known sexual preference of Spaniards and their descendants for beautiful mulatas had made some suspect that Liberata was the bald man’s mother-in-law.
Their friendship had endured short- and long-term separations, including Fermín’s prison stretch. A cigarette-induced emphysema weakened Liberata, and in 1956 Fermín had persuaded her to quit working and to live her remaining years in peace. For the second time in his life, the pimp had taken outstanding care of an old woman, just as he’d looked after his own mother before she passed away. Liberata and her protector had visited dozens of rooms before finding one she approved of and could afford at Estrella Street between Ángeles and Águila. From then on, every Wednesday evening and at noon on Sundays, Liberata had served Fermín his favorite dishes at her modest abode.
Two weeks before the heist, with cash advanced by Contreras, Fermín had started looking for a safe hideout. He rented a small apartment in a six-story building where three streets—Galiano, Dragones, and Zanja—formed a triangle. Nearby, a four-story general market spawned round-the-clock surging crowds, and tenants entering or leaving his building went unnoticed. Fermín also valued two other important advantages: The apartment had a phone and Liberata lived three blocks away. He’d bought a few pieces of old furniture and a mattress at a nearby flea market, plus kitchenware, groceries, a battery-operated radio, and some linen.
On October 5, a Sunday, the ex-con had lunch with Liberata, listened to the fourth World Series game on her radio, and before leaving for the Sloppy Joe’s meeting told the old lady he would be away for a couple of months on important business. As he remorsefully left the building, wondering who would take care of Liberata should she fall seriously ill, one of her neighbors bumped into him. The middle-aged, communicative, blessed soul had happily said hello to Fermín. And then, on an impulse, he made a crass error of judgment. He fed her the same important-business fib and scribbled down his new phone number, saying it belonged to a friend of a friend, and that these buddies might be able to contact him should anything happen to Liberata.
After learning that Fermín was one of the Capri thieves, police routine collided with a stroke of luck. On Monday morning, the most senior and trusted San Isidro informer denied knowing where Gallego was, but suggested Liberata’s place as a possible hideout. Sergeant Gabriel Castillo thought it highly improbable; he was experienced enough to know that most hardened criminals did all they could to never involve close relatives and guiltless friends in their doings. But he had no better lead to follow.
Fifty minutes later, with three plainclothesmen as backup, Castillo knocked on the old lady’s front door at the end of a long, ground-floor hallway. From their own doorframes or windowsills, several housewives watched the tall, stylishly dressed Negro come in. They exchanged puzzled expressions, wondering what the man wanted from Liberata. Castillo presented himself as a close friend of Fermín’s, declined a cup of fresh espresso, and sitting on her best rocking chair told the old woman that he’d just arrived from Costa Rica and was doing a twenty-four-hour Havana stopover on his way to the Dominican Republic. A Cuban lady residing in San José had sent Gallego $400. Did Liberata know where he could find her godson? Liberata shook her head and explained that Fermín would be out of town for two or three months, on business.
Castillo had to waste six more minutes of his time. How could a friend of her godson come to his godmother’s and refuse a “little sip”? After sampling the espresso, he stared at Liberata. It was the best demitasse he’d had in a long time. The cop had bid farewell to Liberata and was about to leave the building when the middle-aged, communicative, blessed soul couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer and courteously asked him who he was looking for.
Castillo knew his country and his people a lot better than Fermín Rodríguez did. He
estimated that 95 percent of Cuba’s decent and hardworking housewives loved gossip, that maybe 90 percent would go out of their way to help a stranger, that probably 80 percent would be willing to make a small sacrifice if assisting a stranger also meant helping an acquaintance. Accordingly, he repeated the story fed to Liberata. Then, absolutely convinced that she was doing Gallego a big favor, the woman ran back to her room and recovered the piece of paper with the phone number. Castillo jotted it down as she pointed out that maybe Fermín’s friend could tell him where to send the money.
At 1:25 P.M., Gallego was awakened from his afternoon nap by the ringing phone. It was the first call he had got since moving to the apartment.
“Hello,” he said guardedly.
“Is this 5-6639?” a strange, quavering woman’s voice asked over background noise that included traffic.
“Yes.”
“Oh, señor, look, the kerosene stove blew up and Fredesvinda wants you to tell Fermín that Liberata is badly burned and on her way to the hospital,” the woman blubbered.
“What?”
“Liberata, the godmother of a man … Oh, señor, don’t you know who Fermín is? Short guy, bald, middle-aged …?”
“Yeah, yeah, but what happened?”
“Her stove blew up, or turned over, I’m not sure, and the poor old lady got burned all over. She’s been taken to the Hospital de Emergencias.”
