After only five hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict. Battle was convicted on two counts: conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder. He was found not guilty on the third count, first-degree murder. It was a stunning defeat for him.
That night, there was a party at Mario Escandar’s house. Ojeda and his fellow detectives were there, as were Charley and Idalia. There were also prostitutes, known drug dealers, and at least one ex-magistrate judge. Cases of Dom Pérignon were trucked in, and there was much white powder and marijuana. Escandar presented Ojeda with an imitation Cartier watch and a gold chain.
Three weeks later, Judge Fuller sentenced Battle to the maximum: thirty years in prison.
WITH THE VERDICT AND SENTENCING, IT SEEMED AS THOUGH THE CAREER OF JOSÉ Miguel Battle was over. A Mob boss can run his operations from prison in the short term. Knowing that the boss will be back on the street one day, or that he still has the juice to make and back up vital decisions, is sometimes enough to keep everyone in line. But when a boss is put away for what is essentially a life sentence, a shift in the organizational structure is likely. Often the result is a hostile maneuvering for power, with much underworld mayhem and many dead bodies.
Battle was not about to allow this to happen. For one thing, he was not going to take the verdict lying down. And for good reason. Even before the trial was over, his lawyers informed him that there were solid grounds for an appeal. The trial, they said, never should have been held in the state of Florida. Under both state and federal statutes, for someone to be tried on conspiracy charges they must be tried in the state where that conspiracy was hatched. The evidence put forth in The People of the State of Florida v. José Miguel Battle clearly showed that the conspiracy to murder Ernesto Torres had been initiated in New Jersey. Battle’s lawyers believed that the grounds for an appeal were strong. They believed they could get the verdict overturned.
But it was going to take time. “You’ll have to be patient,” Blumenfeld told his client in the visiting room at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, in the northern part of the state, near Jacksonville. Battle had been transferred to Raiford nine days after the verdict. Said his lawyer, “The case law is strongly in our favor. Chances for an appeal are better than average, but this will take years to work its way through the courts. Stay positive, but you can put off buying season tickets to the Yankees for a couple seasons.”
There was, however, an additional complication. On the day he was sentenced, Battle was hit with another indictment, this one stemming from his and his brothers’ arrest for gun possession in New Jersey in 1974. Back then, Officer Diego Mella, in one of his last acts as a Union City cop, had called the local office of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), a federal agency. Realizing that local law enforcement in Hudson County was corrupt and would never bring charges against Battle, he reached out to the feds. Would they be interested in bringing federal gun charges against the Godfather of the Cuban underworld? Mella met with federal agents, but even he did not know what they had done with the case, until just before the start of the Ernesto Torres murder trial. After consulting with Detectives Kalafus in New York and Ojeda in Miami, the feds agreed to hold off until the murder trial was over.
Being hit with the gun possession indictment on the same day as being sentenced for conspiracy to commit murder might have seemed like a double whammy, but Mssrs. Brown and Blumenfeld were not overly concerned. If they could get the murder charges thrown out, they felt there was a good chance they could negotiate a plea deal on the gun possession charge.
In March 1978, Battle was transferred from Raiford prison to the federal correctional facility in Manhattan, officially named the Manhattan House of Detention for Men (MHD) but more commonly known as the Tombs. To be charged with gun possession, Battle needed to be brought to the New York area on a writ of habeas corpus, an order to literally “produce the body.” At the same time, his lawyers worked out an ingenious plea deal.
Battle would plead guilty to the gun possession charge, but only if the sentence was served concurrently with the Florida murder conviction. The feds agreed. Battle received a sentence of five years in prison. His lawyers surmised that if they could get the murder conviction overturned in a court of appeals, the concurrent sentence for gun possession would also be thrown out. By pleading guilty and folding the gun possession sentence into the murder sentence, they were pursuing a strategy that might possibly negate all charges.
Battle would eventually be transferred back to Raiford to await his appeal, but while incarcerated at the Tombs, he seized on the opportunity to address a couple of matters crucial to the continuation of his bolita enterprise.
From prison, Battle summoned Abraham Rydz, one of his organization’s most crucial bankers. Heretofore, Battle had had a mixed relationship with Rydz. The two men had known each other since they both arrived in Union City way back in 1960, before the Bay of Pigs invasion. Battle admired Rydz’s brains and financial acumen. All of the Cuban bankers thought of Rydz as their Meyer Lansky. He was a Polish Jew and financial wizard who had even had a couple years of college, where he studied business. But Battle had come to believe that Rydz was too close to Isleño Dávila. He may have respected him, but he never completely trusted him because of his ties to Isleño.
On the other hand, in recent years, Rydz had also become friendly with Miguelito Battle. Battle Jr. had also attended college and saw himself more as a businessman than a gangster. Now that José Miguel would be away in prison for at least a couple years, he intended to put Miguelito in charge of the bolita business. El Padrino was worried. Did Junior have the knowledge and experience to assume the role of boss? And would he have the protection on the street to maintain the business if someone attempted a hostile takeover?
Rydz was called to meet with Battle to address the first of these concerns. In the visiting room at the Tombs, Battle said to him, “I want to ask you a favor.”
“Okay,” said Rydz.
“I want you to look out for my boy, Miguelito. It’s time for him to step up and take control of the business, but I’m worried. I’m not sure he has what it takes.” Having to ask for a favor was not something that came easily to Battle. “You and him have always been close.”
“He’s a good kid. I like him.”
Battle nodded. “Yes. Well, can you school him about the business, teach him what he needs to know? I need someone to look after him while I’m gone.”
“Sure,” said Rydz, “I’ll talk to him. I don’t want to impose myself, but I’ll talk to him and offer my help in any way I can.”
Battle said thanks. They talked about his legal situation and about the old days in Havana, and said their goodbyes.
The other matter that Battle needed to address involved Fat Tony Salerno. It just so happened that Salerno was being held at the Tombs. He had recently reached a plea deal on his tax evasion indictment and been given a sentence of eighteen months.
For Battle and Salerno, it was not that different from their semi-regular meetings at the Palma Boys Social Club. Battle arranged to have a face-to-face meeting with Salerno in his cell, at which he explained to the Mafia boss that while he was locked up, he was putting his son in charge of his bolita business. He wanted to make sure this was understood, and he was hoping that Salerno could put the word out on the street that Miguelito was the man until he, José Miguel, was able to resolve his legal entanglements and reenter the free world.
“Sure, no problem,” said Salerno. “You know who you need to meet? Fish Cafaro. He handles the numbers racket for us. I’ll have him come down here and we’ll set up a sitdown.”
Salerno made arrangements for Vincent “Fish” Cafaro, an up-and-comer with the Family, to visit him and Battle in the visiting room at the Tombs. Fat Tony did most of the talking. “Fish, this here is Mike Battle. He’s with the Cubans. They been making a lot of money for us. Mike has been our guy for years, and now his son is taking over. Make sure you treat the ki
d right.”
Battle and Fish said hello. El Padrino explained a little bit about the business. He was especially concerned that others might try to present themselves as the boss of bolita while he was gone.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Fish. “I take my orders from Mr. Tony. If he says your kid is our guy, that’s all I need to hear.”
As far as Battle was concerned, the meetings with Rydz and Fat Tony had gone well. His ducks were now aligned in order.
A week later, he was transferred back down to Raiford prison. Some men might have bided their time, laid low, in anticipation of some good news from their attorneys. Not Battle.
THE GHOST OF PALULU WAS STILL OUT THERE, HAUNTING EL PADRINO. THE MAN WHO had killed his brother had been released from prison around the same time that Battle had been arrested for the murder of Ernestico. The contract remained open, and there was no shortage of suitors who hoped to endear themselves to the Cuban Mob boss by exterminating the cucaracha that killed his brother.
Upon his release, Palulu found an apartment in the Bronx. He was now one-legged and broke, with few of the connections that had once made him a major cocaine dealer. Seeing that his nemesis, Battle, was in prison on what appeared to be a life sentence, he tentatively began running numbers. He knew it was dangerous; the Battle organization still controlled the bolita business in the New York area. But Palulu had bills to pay—lawyers’ fees, medical bills, rent. He had to make a living the only way he knew how.
On the afternoon of August 4, Palulu and his bodyguard, Gerardo Juan, were walking on a South Bronx street when they were ambushed by a hit man with the street name of Matanzas, so named after the province in Cuba. Everyone was armed, and the men traded gunfire. Matanzas was wounded, but Palulu and his bodyguard received the worst of it. Palulu took a bullet in the chest. Gerardo Juan was hit multiple times; he was dead.
Matanzas stumbled away from the scene. Sirens sounded, as police and eventually an ambulance arrived to collect Palulu and rush him to the hospital. There, cops arrested him for illegal possession of an unregistered firearm.
The saga of Palulu had become like a broken phonograph record, or a short cartoon film running on a loop. Hospital, arrest, then, over his lawyer’s objections, a repeat visit by Palulu to “gen pop,” or general population at Dannemora prison. It was, as Yogi Berra once famously said, déjà vu all over again. In keeping with this theme, Palulu was even stabbed again in the yard by an inmate, just as he had been two years earlier. He survived the attack, and, after an extended stay in the prison medical ward, was housed in the prison’s isolation wing, as he had been during his previous incarceration.
Hearing the details, Battle might have laughed, except that this was the man who killed Pedro. José Miguel would stop at nothing until this man was dead.
10
CORRUPTION
THE HELLHOUNDS OF JUSTICE, NIPPING AT THE HEELS OF FATE, FINALLY CAUGHT UP with Julio Ojeda and the other Miami detectives who were in cahoots with Mario Escandar. It had been fun while it lasted. There were parties with hookers and cocaine, and possibly Escandar had even occasionally delivered on his promise to provide information on others in the criminal underworld. But within this relationship between Centac-26 and the narco kingpin was a built-in flaw: Escandar was a professional snitch. When his legal situation with the U.S. government became complicated, he simplified matters for himself by agreeing to deliver the dirty cops on a silver platter.
In 1978, the FBI planted a bug in Escandar’s home where the parties were going on. One year later, the feds had accumulated enough evidence to put the squeeze on two detectives who were targets of the investigation. The detectives became informants against their fellow officers.
A search warrant was executed at the home of Mario Escandar. The agents felt that even though Escandar was their informant, he probably was not telling them everything. That’s the kind of guy he was. Sure enough, among the items found at his house was the case file for the Ernesto Torres murder investigation. It was the original file, not a copy. A Dade police spokesperson was quoted in the press saying that he was “concerned.” Among other things, the file—found in the home of a notorious criminal—revealed the name of a cooperating witness. The police spokesperson cited the danger of “jeopardizing the department’s credibility with other informants and witnesses.” Apparently the spokesperson did not know that the cooperating witness—Idalia Fernandez—had been living at Escandar’s home, smoking weed every day and sleeping with one of the detectives in the case.
As it turned out, the case of the missing file was a small matter. Detective Julio Ojeda and the others had bigger things to worry about.
In 1979, Ojeda and seven other Dade homicide detectives were named in a forty-one-count indictment that alleged a staggering array of crimes, including a conspiracy to violate the RICO Act. It was a dark day in the history of the Dade County Public Safety Department.
BY THE TIME THE POLICE CORRUPTION SCANDAL EXPLODED IN THE MEDIA, DAVID Shanks had been a Miami cop for five years. Like most clean cops on the force, he was disgusted by what he read in the press. He did not know Ojeda or any of the other indicted detectives, but he knew the type. By now the city was awash in cocaine and drug money, and it would lead to the downfall of certain cops who didn’t have the integrity to resist temptation.
The issues or scandals that dominated the media were not what normally determined the daily realities of the job. Out on the street, fate bowed to no man or woman who put himself in the position of being an officer of the law. And unexpected events were sometimes just around the corner.
Take, for example, the afternoon of Wednesday, May 16, 1979. It was a typically warm day in Miami when Shanks received an urgent radio call of an officer shot on a corner in Liberty City, one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods.
Shanks was nearby and raced to the scene. When he arrived, another cop, Detective Don Blocker, was also arriving in a separate vehicle. What they both saw was a gunman, later identified as twenty-one-year-old Lewis Randall Pearsall, an Army deserter, standing over an unconscious reserve officer named Scott Lincoln. Pearsall was about to fire a shot directly into Lincoln’s face.
A few minutes earlier, Lincoln and his partner, Billy Cook, had arrived at the corner in response to a police radio call of an armed kidnapping in progress. Pearsall had abducted his estranged wife at gunpoint and forced her into a car. They hadn’t driven more than three blocks before police vehicles arrived on the scene. Lincoln and Cook used their car to block Pearsall from the front. Another officer, Keith DiGenova, blocked Pearsall from the rear.
The cops had Pearsall penned in. They got out of their cars and drew their guns. Positioning themselves at various locations around Pearsall and his wife, they aimed their weapons and told the gunman, “Drop your gun! Release the hostage! Now!”
Officer DiGenova crawled up to the car from the rear. It was his intention to free Pearsall’s wife. He got to the side of the car, popped up, and tried to snatch Pearsall’s weapon from his hands. What DiGenova did not know was that Pearsall’s weapon was empty. Pearsall let DiGenova have his weapon and immediately grabbed for the cop’s loaded gun. A struggle ensued.
Meanwhile, the other cops, seeing the tussle, ran up on the opposite side of the car in an attempt to rescue Pearsall’s wife. But she had already bolted out of the car. A large woman weighing over two hundred pounds, she ran into officer Lincoln, knocking him off his feet. Lincoln’s head hit the pavement, and he fell unconscious.
While this was going on, Pearsall wrested the gun from Officer DiGenova and shot him in the head. DiGenova fell to the ground.
From the rear of the car, Officer Cook took a shot at Pearsall. He saw blood spurt from Pearsall’s forehead. Pearsall dropped. Assuming he had shot Pearsall, Cook immediately went to check on Officer DiGenova.
It turned out Cook had not hit Pearsall. The bullet had ricocheted off the frame of the car’s open door, and a piece of metal from the door had splin
tered and hit Pearsall in the forehead. Stunned by the impact, he had dropped to the ground. But within seconds, he regained consciousness. He felt the blood from his forehead running down his face; he stood up, collected himself, and fired a wild shot at Officer Cook. The shot ricocheted off the same doorframe as before and hit Cook in the side. He collapsed to the ground.
By now, another officer had come on the scene. Bob Edgarton, a veteran cop, arrived as the exchange of gunfire was taking place. He saw Cook go down. He jumped from his car, pulled out his service revolver, and shot Pearsall twice in the back. Pearsall convulsed and fell face-first into the open front seat of the car.
Sure that Pearsall was dead, Edgarton rushed to check on Cook. “Billy, hold tight, an ambulance is on the way,” he said. While tending to Cook, Edgarton sensed that something was not right. He looked up and saw a bloody hand with a gun sticking through the open window of the car door. The gun fired and hit Edgarton in the stomach. He fell to the ground.
Lewis Randall Pearsall emerged from inside the car, like something out of Night of the Living Dead. He’d been hit in the head by a metal projectile, shot twice in the torso, but he was alive. He had shot two of the cops; they were down and looked as though they were dead. But there was another cop—Scott Lincoln—who was lying on the ground, unconscious, though he had not been shot. Pearsall stumbled over to Lincoln, stood over him, and prepared to shoot the officer in the head.
This was when Shanks and Detective Blocker arrived on the scene. Both jumped out of their vehicles and unholstered their weapons.
Seeing the cops, Pearsall, who had been about to shoot Lincoln, quickly turned his gun and took a shot at Blocker. The detective ducked down behind his car; as he did so, he stuck his arm and gun over the hood of the car. Blindly, he squeezed off one shot. The shot miraculously hit Pearsall, severing his spine and killing him instantly. Pearsall collapsed and fell on top of Lincoln on the ground.
The Corporation Page 27
