The Corporation

by T. J. English

  Lincoln regained consciousness around the same time Pearsall was being shot. He struggled to get the body off him.

  Shanks ran over and helped extricate Lincoln from Pearsall’s dead body. Then he ran over to Cook, who did not look good. Shanks had seen that look before; he knew that Cook was either dead or very close to being so.

  By now, fire/rescue units and paramedics were arriving, sirens wailing. Shanks ran over and took care of traffic management, trying to get cars to pull over to the side of the road so the rescue trucks could get through.

  It was a day of utter carnage that affected everyone involved. Shanks had at one time or another been platoon mates with all of the cops. He was especially close to Billy Cook, who died that day. Scott Lincoln, who had been knocked unconscious and survived, had been recruited and trained by Shanks. He was one of the men most emotionally scarred by the incident. He carried heavy survivor’s guilt.

  DiGenova, the cop who was shot in the head, went into emergency surgery. Shanks talked to the neurosurgeon, who told him DiGenova’s prospects for survival were good. “The brain is an amazing organ,” he told Shanks. “With gunshot wounds to the head, if a surgeon can get inside quickly and stop the flow of blood, undamaged parts of the brain will recuperate, and so will the person.” The neurosurgeon told Shanks that if parts of the brain died or had to be excised, whatever memories they contained would be lost, but that other parts could be trained to take over. DiGenova would have to relearn how to walk, talk, read, and write, but after years of physical and occupational therapy he would be a new man.

  Having known so many of the players in this tragedy, Shanks assumed the role of consoler in chief. One of the more difficult tasks was at the funeral of Billy Cook, where he escorted Cook’s widow and mother. It was a huge event, with hundreds of police cars in a motorcade arriving at the cemetery. At the gravesite, there was the flag-draped coffin, a high mass, and a final salute. The widow and mother held up well, until they were presented with the flag; they both broke down crying and became inconsolable.

  The aftereffects of the shooting became deeply ingrained in the psyches of the survivors. Shanks, for one, took it to heart. He thought about Ojeda and those dirty homicide detectives who were under indictment, their corrupt activities in the media every day, and he thought about the good cops he had known—Billy Cook, who was dead; Keith DiGenova and Scott Lincoln, who would never be the same. He could be depressed and immobilized by what had been lost, or he could carry on in the memory of those men. He could be the good cop who did his job even though there was corruption all around him.

  It was this principle that Shanks would draw on in the years ahead when he became involved in the case against José Miguel Battle. Few utilized corruption to their advantage as well as Battle. His ability to compromise the system would become, to Shanks and anyone else who investigated the bolita methodology, one of the Godfather’s distinguishing characteristics.

  IN OCTOBER 1979, LESS THAN TWO YEARS AFTER HIS CONVICTION IN THE ERNESTICO murder trial, Battle received some extraordinary news. All this time, Jack Blumenfeld and Alan Silber, a lawyer from Raymond Brown’s law firm who specialized in appeals, had been filing motions in appeals court. The first of these filings had been in the Third District Court of Appeal in Miami. A panel of judges had looked at the case and ruled that the original indictment had been “defective.” Their ruling hinged on the repetitive use of the word “or” instead of “and” in the indictment, especially as it pertained to the conspiracy count against Battle. The indictment read, “The defendant conspired with Julio Acuna or Charley Hernandez or . . . other persons unknown.” Had that phrase read, “Julio Acuna and Charley Hernandez and other person unknown,” Battle’s lawyer might have lost his appeal. The judicial panel felt that the wording made the indictment too “vague,” and left the defense having “to guess as to the conspiracy.” This unfairly hindered defense lawyers in their efforts to mount a defense. In the opinion of the Third District, Battle’s conviction should be thrown out.

  The State Attorney’s Office disagreed and appealed the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court, the highest court in the state. It took months for the court to reach its decision. In a majority vote, it decided against hearing the case at all, and kicked it back to the Third District. This meant that the original decision still held sway. Battle’s conviction was overturned. The only question was whether he would be put on trial again for the same charges.

  Meanwhile, El Padrino was still being held in prison to serve out his gun possession conviction. Technically, he still had three years to serve on that charge.

  The October decision was crucial. Since Battle’s conviction, the original judge who sentenced him had retired and a new judge was assigned to make a decision regarding a retrial. Judge Alfonso Sepe now presided over Battle’s case. It was one of those strokes of luck that sometimes happen; Jack Blumenfeld had been mentored by Sepe back when they were both prosecutors in the State Attorney’s Office.

  In response to a motion filed by Blumenfeld and Silber, Sepe ruled that Battle could only be retried on one count, conspiracy to commit murder.

  The defense lawyers saw an opening. They immediately hunkered down with representatives of the State Attorney’s Office and began negotiating a plea deal.

  Oftentimes when negotiating a deal, defense lawyers have one slight advantage. The criminal justice system in the United States is so overloaded, primarily with minor narcotics cases, that the government is prone to accept any deal that will keep the system moving forward. Resolving cases is key, cleaning sludge from the clogged pipes. Retrying Battle on one simple count was not cost-effective. If Battle were willing to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, allowing the State Attorney’s Office to save face without having to go to trial, there was a deal to be made.

  This meant that Battle’s fate would truly be in the hands of the sentencing judge.

  The appellant was to appear in circuit court in Miami. A date was set—December 17, eight days before Christmas. In the courtroom of Judge Sepe, Battle would plead guilty to the one count of conspiracy to commit murder. It would be up to the judge to decide if he would walk free that day, or if his incarceration would be prolonged by various other legal entanglements.

  BETWEEN THE TIME OF THE OCTOBER RULING AND THE DECEMBER DATE TO DETERMINE Battle’s fate, an event occurred that reminded everyone that the anti-Castro movement in the United States was alive and well.

  On November 25, in Union City, Eulalio José Negrin, age thirty-eight, was getting into a car with his twelve-year-old son, Richard. Negrin was a political activist, which in the vengeance-driven world of the anti-Castro underground was a potentially perilous endeavor.

  Already Negrin had incurred the wrath of Omega 7 by forming an organization called Committee of 75, which had been negotiating with the Castro government for the release of thirty-six hundred political prisoners in Cuba. Many of these prisoners had relatives in the Union City area. Negrin and others with the Committee of 75 viewed their effort as a humanitarian gesture, but the hard-line militants could not countenance any kind of negotiation with the Castro government, even if the intentions were benign. To negotiate with Castro was to legitimize his government, which Omega 7 saw as a treasonous act punishable by death.

  In the previous four years, the militant anti-Castro group had been especially active. They blew a hole in the Venezuelan consulate in Manhattan; attacked a Soviet freighter in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey; blew up a sporting goods store near Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. They planted a bomb in the doorway of Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, where the acclaimed Cuban ensemble Orquesta Oregón was scheduled to perform. The bomb blew out glass three stories up in the famous concert hall and caused the orchestra to cancel its remaining Manhattan performances. That same night, they detonated another bomb at the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Later, an operative of Omega 7 checked a suitcase bomb onto a TWA flight from JFK to Los Angeles. Omega 7 want
ed the airline to cease commercial flights to Havana. Only a premature explosion in a baggage cart on the tarmac saved the passengers on board the flight.

  In the case of Eulalio José Negrin, there were ominous warning signs. A year earlier, a prominent member of Negrin’s organization was murdered in Puerto Rico. A Catholic priest in Union City, Reverend Andre Reyes, had been moved out of Holy Family Roman Catholic Church to a parish in Newark because of death threats. In March, the storefront of the New Jersey Cuban Association in Weehawken, which Negrin headed, was bombed. Omega 7 claimed responsibility for that bombing and also the attempted bombing of the TWA flight at JFK Airport, which occurred the same day.

  Just one week earlier, Negrin had called a reporter from the Hudson Dispatch, a local newspaper, to say he feared for his life. He told the reporter that he’d received more death threats recently, including a letter from Omega 7 that said he had only two months to live.

  November 25 was a Sunday. The streets of Union City were mostly quiet as Negrin and his son approached their car outside 711 10th Street. It was 9:50 A.M. Because of the recent threats, Negrin was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt and coat.

  Negrin put his son in the backseat on the passenger side and was walking around the front of the car to the driver’s side when a Ford Granada with a red roof came speeding down the road. A man wearing a black ski mask leaned out of the car with a MAC-10 submachine gun and opened fire on him.

  The bulletproof vest did Negrin no good. Whoever was doing the shooting seemed to know he was wearing one; he was shot five times in the face, neck, and arm.

  Young Richard Negrin, from the backseat of the car, watched in horror as his father was assassinated in the street.

  The hit men sped away.

  Negrin was still alive when police reached the scene, though he was unable to respond to questions. He was rushed to Riverside General Hospital in Secaucus, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

  Negrin had been carrying $7,400 in a briefcase when he was killed. The assassins had no interest in the money. “It was a hit,” a cop on the scene told a reporter with the Dispatch.

  Reverend Reyes was quoted saying, “I think the whole community is aware of what is being done. These men are armed and that is [causing terror] in the community.”

  Police chief Herman Bolte warned that Union City cops couldn’t protect the enemies of Omega 7 and other militant groups. “I just don’t think any Committee of 75 member would be safe walking the streets of Union City at night. The feelings of the Cuban people here just run too deep concerning Castro.”

  Late on the night of the shooting, the Associated Press office in New York received a telephone call from a man who said he was a member of Omega 7. The man claimed responsibility for the shooting, and, in what the AP described as a Spanish accent, he said, “We will continue with these executions until we have eliminated all of the traitors living in this country.”

  The FBI in recent years had stepped up their investigations of Omega 7. In the wake of recent bombings, the Bureau’s Cuban Terrorism Task Force had nearly doubled in size. Led by Special Agent Lawrence Wack, the task force had been accumulating intelligence and gathering forensic evidence at various bombing sites. Through a network of informants on the street, they had been able to construct a hierarchy of Omega 7’s internal leadership.

  Guillermo Novo was currently in prison serving a life sentence for the car bomb assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier (that conviction would later be overturned in appeals court and Novo set free). The leader of the organization was now Eduardo Arocena, one of the original founders. The FBI believed that Arocena was the mastermind of most of the recent bombings for which Omega 7 had claimed credit.

  The political assassinations seemed to emanate from a separate cell within the organization. Sometimes these hits were contracted out to gangland killers. An inside source in Miami told task force agents that the Negrin hit had been put in motion by Omega 7 but that the killers were professional gunmen supplied by the organization of José Miguel Battle.

  For years the FBI had been attempting to establish such a link. Back in 1974, a source told them that Battle had contracted Omega 7 to murder José Elías de la Torriente in Miami. What they were hearing about the Negrin hit was the reverse: Omega 7 contracting out the hit to Battle.

  Street chatter was sometimes reliable, and sometimes not. But more and more it was beginning to appear to the FBI’s Cuban Terrorism Task Force that the anti-Castro militant underground and the Cuban Mafia underworld led by Cuban gangster José Miguel Battle were one and the same.

  At the time, none of this had any bearing on Battle, who was in Raiford prison in Florida awaiting his sentencing date in December. If Battle had in any way facilitated the political assassination of Eulalio José Negrin, he had done so from within the prison walls, which was entirely possible. For a professional racketeer like Battle, behind prison walls or out on the street was all part of the same universe.

  ON DECEMBER 17, BATTLE WAS BROUGHT BEFORE JUDGE ALFONSO SEPE IN MIAMI DIStrict court. As instructed by the state supreme court, the prosecutors had reconfigured the indictment so that it now stood at one count of conspiracy to commit murder. As a result, a plea deal had already been arranged.

  “How do you plead?” asked the judge.

  “Guilty, Your Honor,” said Battle.

  The judge was ready to impose a sentence. He sentenced Battle to “credit time served” for the two years and nine months he had already spent in jail since his arrest for murder. As for the remainder of his sentence—also two years and nine months—the judge gave him probation. He was free to walk out of court.

  The prosecutors were stunned. They had not been expecting the judge to give Battle probation and immediately set him free.

  For Battle and his attorneys, it was a big victory. The appeal had worked. José Miguel would be home in time for Christmas.

  Forever after, Battle would occasionally refer to Judge Sepe’s sentencing as one of his great sleights of hand. “That judge and his wife had a nice vacation in Vegas thanks to me,” he said to Joaquin Deleon Jr., a bolitero who would follow Battle wherever he led. Deleon had no doubt what he meant. “Ben Franklin got Battle that light sentence,” he later said, meaning that El Padrino had made an under-the-table cash payment to the judge.

  There would be no proof of such a payment, except that several years after the sentencing, Judge Sepe was caught in a major sting operation known as Operation Court Broom, one of the largest federal and state investigations ever into judicial corruption. A bug was planted in Sepe’s chambers. Eventually, the judge pleaded guilty to accepting $150,000 in bribes to fix cases and was removed from the bench. He had been taking money for years. The possibility that he had accepted a bribe from Battle was in keeping with his general modus operandi, one that would bring his illustrious career to a sudden and ignominious end.

  WHILE EL PADRINO WAS AWAY, THERE HAD BEEN SOME SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE New York–New Jersey bolita universe. For one thing, Miguelito Battle and Abraham Rydz had taken over the running of the enterprise. It was their intention to structure the operation almost as a legitimate business. Battle Jr. insulated himself from the enforcers and other street-level aspects of the business. He and Rydz committed fully to the concept of bolita holes. There would be no more numbers runners: the bolita holes were more profitable, and they made it possible to streamline personnel. More important, Battle Jr. and Rydz initiated the process of creating shell companies based in South Florida as a way to launder the operation’s huge cash profits in New York.

  Given the refurbished organizational structure, and the new emphasis on reinvesting profits, the two men began referring to their version of the Cuban Mafia by an entirely different name. They called it the Corporation.

  The name had been around for a while. The first to use it was Angel Mujica, who had returned to New York from Spain around the time Battle was arrested for murder. Mujica
had opened up a number of bolita holes, mainly in his old stomping grounds of the Bronx. He called his business the Corporation, which was grandiose considering its modest size. In 1979, he let Abraham Rydz know that he was looking to cash out. He was willing to sell his bolita business to Rydz and Battle Jr. for $300,000. Rydz and Battle took him up on the offer. They took over his network of bolita holes, and they kept the name.

  With the Battle organization having taken it over, the name caught on. Calling themselves a corporation seemed to fit the image the bolita bankers had of themselves. Ever since these men left Cuba, their identities had been formed in counterbalance to what was happening back in their homeland, under the reign of a man they considered a communist diablo. Economically speaking, Cuba had became a Marxist backwater, with more and more refugees fleeing the island every year. Meanwhile, the Bay of Pigs generation, cured in a toxic brew of humiliation and exile, exalted their identity as capitalists. What was more capitalist than the concept of the corporation, a financial conglomerate that was endowed with the rights of the individual? A corporation was everything a Marxist despised; to the capitalist, it was the ultimate expression of Adam Smith’s dictum that “All money is a matter of belief.” Believe in the corporation, and you shall be rich.

  And what was the point of having a powerful name if you did not advertise? In bolita holes around the city, a sign was sometimes posted on the wall. Occasionally it was artistically drawn, while in other places it might be written in a scrawl. Sometimes it was written in Spanish, sometimes in English. And sometimes it was translated into both languages: Este es un lugar de la Corporación/This is a Corporation spot.

  The Corporation rose from the womb of the Cuban Mafia to become an entity in the underworld as notorious as the Italian Mafia.

  One person who was in a position to capitalize on the newly invigorated reputation of the Cuban boliteros, reborn as the Corporation, was Isleño Dávila. Battle’s sometimes partner and sometimes competitor was especially active during El Padrino’s incarceration. For a time, it had looked as though Battle might never be returning to the free world. Isleño began to expand rapidly. From 1978 to the early 1980s, the number of bolita holes operating in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx under his umbrella expanded from one hundred to two hundred. And he even took a chance by opening a dozen bolita spots in central Harlem.