Harlem was the crown jewel of the numbers racket. Since the time of Prohibition, the famous African American neighborhood in upper Manhattan had been the most lucrative domain for numbers in all of the United States. Part of it was the density of the population, thousands of people packed on top of one another in tenements, wooden shacks, and brownstones. And most everyone was looking for a miracle, so they put down nickels, dimes, and dollars on a game of chance that required no real skill or education, just luck.
Harlem’s numbers racket was under the control of the Mafia, specifically the Lucchese family based in Brooklyn. The Luccheses made sure that Fat Tony Salerno, Fish Cafaro, and the Genovese family got their cut, but mostly the Luccheses were left alone to run Harlem as they saw fit.
In the spring of 1978, soldatos (soldiers) of the Lucchese family noticed that Cuban bolita spots were opening up around the neighborhood, in all the prime locations. Isleño did not try to hide what he was doing. As an experienced bolitero, he knew that you wanted bolita spots in well-traveled areas—near a supermarket, or a fish market, or around the corner from a bus stop. You needed to know if there was a dope spot nearby, because you did not want to locate your bolita hole anywhere near it.
One of the first gangsters to take note of the Cuban’s sudden bolita expansion in Harlem was neither a Cuban nor an Italian, but rather an Irish American mobster named Robert Hopkins, who was affiliated with the Lucchese family.
Traditionally, the Luccheses were more open than some families to doing business with non-Italian associates. Irish, Cuban, black American—it didn’t really matter. If you could be trusted—if you were a goodfella—and you had the connections to pull off a score or conduct criminal business, you were partnership material. In Queens, the Lucchese family had recently partnered with a multiethnic crew of hoods, including, notably, the Irish American gangster Jimmy Burke and half-Irish Henry Hill, to pull off the Lufthansa heist, at the time the largest airport cargo robbery in history. Neither Burke nor Hill could be “made men,” given that they were not of pure Sicilian ancestry. But both had been actively affiliated with the Lucchese family since the beginnings of their criminal careers.
Robert Hopkins was cut from the same mold as Burke and Hill. He was not a tough guy but was believed to have brains. In the mid-1970s he was assigned to the numbers racket, a business that required organizational skills and a head for figures.
Hopkins was told about the Cuban bolita spots that had recently opened in Harlem. He checked them out and saw that they were being professionally run by someone who knew what he was doing. Technically, the Cubans were not authorized to do business in central Harlem. Spanish Harlem, yes, but not central Harlem. Hopkins could have immediately sought to deliver a message, to force the Cubans out of Harlem. But that’s not what he did. First, he checked in with a prominent Cuban bolitero he knew named Omar Broche. In Latino bolita circles, Broche was well known.
“Who’s behind these new bolita stores?” Hopkins asked Broche.
“Humberto Dávila,” said Broche. “They call him Isleño. Biggest banker in New York and New Jersey. That guy knows what he’s doing.”
Hopkins asked Broche if he could set up a meeting. Of course, said Broche, but it would take a while. Isleño spent most of his time in Fort Lauderdale. Every month, he came to New York for a week or so.
Within a couple weeks, at a restaurant in Manhattan, Isleño and Omar Broche sat down with Hopkins, along with a couple of his people. Hopkins said to the Cuban, “I see you know what you’re doing. From what I hear, you know more about numbers than I do. The people I work for, they feel they have the right to run you out, but maybe there’s a better way.”
“Okay,” said Isleño. “What are you suggesting?”
Said the Irishman, “Harlem is a big pie. There’s enough for everybody. Why don’t we find a way to work together, reach an agreement that makes us all happy?”
“Fifty-fifty,” said Isleño. It was asking a lot, going fifty-fifty with the Mafia, but Isleño knew he was playing a strong hand.
“I gotta clear that with my friends,” said Hopkins. “But I don’t see any problem.”
They shook hands.
So Isleño was now partners with the Lucchese family. And Hopkins became an intermediary between the Cubans and the Italians, successfully keeping the peace—for a while.
BOB HOPKINS WAS BORN AND RAISED IN QUEENS, IN A MIDDLE- CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD far from the denizens of organized crime. He was a good kid, destined for college, until he fell in with a group of friends from the wrong side of the subway tracks. One of Hopkins’s best friends as a young man was Peter “Petey Beck” DiPalermo, the son of a Lucchese family capo. DiPalermo and two of his brothers formed an up-and-coming crew of aspiring mafiosi based on Prince Street in the heart of Little Italy. The mafiosi liked Hopkins, the Irish kid with a big mop of auburn hair, rosy cheeks, and an inclination toward the criminal life. Hopkins did not promote himself as a tough guy, though he could handle himself in the streets. His true value was as a hustler and breadwinner who could be trusted.
Along with his prospects as a budding goodfella, Hopkins liked to sing. He entertained the wiseguys with his renditions of songs made famous by the likes of Neil Diamond, Dion and the Belmonts, and others.
In 1976, Hopkins was taken under the wing of a Lucchese family soldier named Willie Monk. It was Monk who taught him the ins and outs of being an illegal lottery operator.
On the face of it, the business seemed simple. People bet money on a combination of numbers. They hit the number, or they did not. Monk warned Hopkins that the game itself may have been simple, but the business was not. With proper accounting, policy could be one of the underworld’s most lucrative endeavors. If poorly organized, it could descend into a free-for-all of reckless profiteering and infighting.
The key, said Willie Monk, was that there had to be rules. And those rules had to be followed.
Even before Hopkins met Isleño Dávila, he’d met a number of the Latino boliteros. Along with Omar Broche, he met Raul Rodriguez, a powerful independent bolita banker. He met “Spanish” Raymond Márquez, a legendary Puerto Rican bolitero who had been doing business with the Mafia since the 1960s. He also did business with Luis DeVilliers, owner of the Colonial restaurant and veteran bolita banker, and the team of Manny Alvarez Sr. and Jr., based in Brooklyn.
Many of these men were independent bolita bankers who financed operations that paid a percentage to the Mafia, in order to operate free of territorial disputes. It had always been a nice arrangement for the Italians, who received proceeds from the Cubans without having to do any of the work.
As Isleño and Hopkins forged their partnership, many of these super-bankers began to coalesce around Isleño. When word spread that Battle had a good shot at receiving a favorable ruling on his appeal, being set free, and returning to the business, Isleño sensed there might be a problem. He knew that if he continued to operate under the auspices of what was now known as the Corporation, it was probable that Battle would want to take over the Harlem bolita business. Isleño did not want to give that up; it was a landmark merger that he had negotiated with Hopkins. He felt it was all his. So Isleño did something risky. He formed his own bolita consortium and called it La Compañía, the Company.
If Battle wanted to view La Compañía as a subsidiary of the Corporation, that was okay with Isleño, as long as he understood that it was an independent operation, with an independent revenue stream. Battle would still get his percentage, but auditing and personnel decisions would be made by Isleño.
On phone calls from Fort Lauderdale, Isleño warned Hopkins, his new partner, about El Padrino. “When he gets out, we may have problems. He makes his own decisions. He’s bullheaded. And he usually gets what he wants.”
“I’m not too worried,” said Hopkins. “I try to get along with everybody. And, really, how bad can this guy be?”
SINCE HIS RELEASE FROM PRISON, BATTLE HAD BEEN SETTLING OLD SCORES. FOR A Mob b
oss, time in the joint sometimes presents an opportunity for underlings to become bold. When the cat is away, the mice will play. Over the years, the Corporation had become a multileveled enterprise, from street operators, to midlevel managers, all the way up to super-bankers like Battle, Isleño, and others. There was much room for pilfering or insubordination or outright betrayal.
In the years since Battle Jr. and Abraham Rydz had taken over the daily running of the organization, they had shown little inclination toward internal discipline or acts of retribution against enemies. Violence was not their style. Battle, on the other hand, seemed to feel as though the reputation of the organization needed to be established with an iron hand.
Chino Acuna was no longer around to act as Battle’s enforcer. Consequently, the boss needed to find a new man, which he did, in the person of Conrad “Lalo” Pons.
Pons had started out in the organization as a numbers writer, a person who sits in a policy hole and writes down wagers as they are placed by people in the neighborhood. He quickly rose to the level of manager of the numbers location. Pons was responsible for hiring and supervising personnel, and also, twice a day, picking up money from the spot and delivering it to the “bank” or office where the money was stored.
A scrappy Cuban émigré, just five feet six inches tall and 130 pounds, Pons was what cops refer to as a “stone-cold killer.” According to NYPD intelligence files, he had been a professional criminal back in Cuba, and in the United States he seized upon the Corporation as a suitable vehicle for his criminal ambitions. Like many boliteros, he used Union City as his home but commuted into New York for work. His base of operations was Brooklyn, where he maintained a bolita spot on Tompkins Avenue that served as his headquarters.
It was Battle’s brother-in-law, Manuel “Nene” Marquez, who recommended Pons to the Godfather. Marquez was in charge of Brooklyn, and he liked the way Pons conducted business.
A meeting was held at which it was explained to Pons that the Corporation was looking to establish what Battle referred to as his SS squad. This squad would be comprised of “men of action,” killers, people willing to do the dirty work on behalf of the organization. The squad would be financed via a special fund, in which each of the organization’s super-bankers would make a monthly contribution of $10,000. The fund was sardonically known as the “UNESCO fund,” so named after the international relief organization associated with the United Nations. Money from the UNESCO fund would be used to finance hits, for emergency legal fees, and for taking care of the families of boliteros who, for one reason or another, wound up behind bars.
Pons was offered the job of being in charge of the SS squad.
“It would be my honor,” he told Battle.
Firstly, there was the issue of the Corporation having gone soft in Battle’s absence. There had been a rash of robberies of Cuban bolita holes, and something needed to be done about it. There were myriad other disciplinary issues that Battle felt needed to be addressed.
Between 1980 and 1983, there were more than a dozen gangland murders related to bolita. Most of these were contract hits arranged by Lalo Pons in his role as chief of Battle’s new SS squad. Local cops, even those with some knowledge of the Cuban underworld, were caught off guard by the unprecedented spasm of violence. Detectives from the NYPD’s Cuban Task Force, led by Detective Kalafus, reached out to their C.I.s (confidential informants), and the intelligence reports piled up. These files read like a catalogue of intrigue, treachery, and a commitment to the concept of revenge as a primary operating principle. Some samples:
10/17/81: Informant stated that at the time of the homicide he was employed as a collector for Jose Miguel Battle, as was the deceased. Informant knew the deceased as VIEJO, and would only see him in the meetings with Battle and the other collectors . . . Informant stated that on the night of this homicide there was a meeting of the collectors at an after hours club on W. 172 Street off St. Nicholas Ave. Battle stated that he had put $25,000 on the street for information on who had killed VIEJO and that an additional $25,000 had been paid out to DIABLO to locate and kill the person or persons involved in this killing and other stickups of his collectors and spots . . . Informant stated that a few days after the contract was given out Battle received information that it was DIABLO who had killed VIEJO and had been sticking up his collectors and policy spots. A male Cuban named Victor was given the contract to kill DIABLO.
10/7/82: C.I. stated that FRANCISCO “FRANK” IRRIZARY was shot by one [name redacted] on order from the Corporation, the reason was that IRRIZARY was suspected of being involved with his cousin [name redacted] in the stick-up of several policy locations operated by the Corporation . . . A contract was put out on the cousin by Battle. Both the cousin and IRRIZARY answer to the name “Venezuela.” And both resemble each other. Allegedly, DOMINGO thought he was shooting the cousin when he shot IRRIZARY.
8/17/83: C.I. states that [name recacted] killed two (2) male blacks, possibly Jamaican, on Eastern Pky and New York Ave, approx one year ago during the daytime hours. Reasons for shooting, Male blacks attempted to rob Cuban policy locations on New York Ave and Eastern Pky, 71 Pct.
8/23/83: Subject deceased, MARIO CABALLERO, male Hispanic, was found on January 7, 1982 on Cambridge Place and Fulton Street, dead of gunshot wounds. C.I. states that deceased is known to him as ITALIANO and that he worked for the Battle policy operation as a bodyguard for a pickup man. Further he stated that the reason CABALLERO was killed was because he was seeing Battle’s girlfriend.
Intelligence files were like the gossip pages of a newspaper, filled with rumor and, occasionally, disinformation planted by wily gangsters. It was incumbent upon detectives to follow up on the information, check out the details, and see what turned out to be true. In the case of the Cuban underworld, most of the information checked out. Fear was a powerful motivator: it could scare low-level operators into silence, or it could make them feel desperate, with nowhere to turn except the law.
The irony was that as Battle reasserted his tendency toward brutality as a solution to most problems—thus creating something approaching a reign of terror in the Cuban underworld—he was rarely seen in New York or New Jersey anymore.
In prison, Battle had made the decision that it was time to move his personal base of operations to Miami. Way in the back of his mind, it had always been the plan. For Cuban Americans living in the frozen tundra of the Northeast, whether the concrete jungle of New York City or the gritty back alleyways of Union City, the dream of South Florida was ever present. There was sunshine every day and fellow Cubans at every level of the social strata.
In South Florida, Battle could re-create certain aspects of the homeland—not the homeland of Havana in the 1950s, with its bustling streets and torrid nightclubs, but that of his youth in Oriente. Wide-open spaces, the sound of the rooster in the morning, soil to till, and the sight of mamey trees blossoming in the afternoon sun. This was the Cuba that existed in Battle’s memory and in his heart. If he could recreate this sense memory in Florida, it would signify that he had achieved something valuable with his life. Perhaps he could find peace and retire from the bolita business.
He and his wife, Maria, found a place in Redland, a rural area southwest of Miami, not far from the Everglades. The house was on 4.8 acres. It was nice, but hardly a mansion. There was a pool. And important for Battle, there was an area for raising roosters for cockfighting. Most appealing of all was that the house was surrounded by a number of large vacant lots. It was Battle’s intention to buy up the property around the house so he could plant a large grove of mamey trees and begin harvesting the fruit for commercial purposes. It would be a smart way to launder his bolita money, but more important, it would connect him with his Cuban roots.
The entire setting could not have been more different than Union City and the beastly metropolis of New York. The idea was for Battle to remove himself from the maelstrom of the criminal underworld, to free himself from the stress and the constant nee
d to prove himself. That was the idea, anyway.
ROBERT HOPKINS KNEW THAT AT SOME POINT HE WOULD HAVE TO MEET JOSÉ MIGUEL Battle. For more than a year, the young Mafia liaison had been putting it off. Isleño had warned him about Battle. He was a war hero, Isleño had said. Some people worshipped him as a Cuban patriot. And he had some good qualities. He was generous. He was a strong leader. If you were to go into battle with Battle, you would want him at your side, or, more accurately, out front leading your platoon. But he also had another side. He cheated at cards. And if he felt you had done him wrong in some way, he was psychotic. He would turn over the entire mamey cart to get at one piece of fruit.
In the months since Battle had returned to the bolita business, Hopkins sat back while the Cuban underworld was roiled with shootings and killings. Hopkins had seen this before. Back in the early 1970s, the Lucchese family had gone through growing pains. The capo di tutti capi was incarcerated, and there was much vying for who would take over as boss. Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo took over leadership of the family, but not until many soldiers and underbosses had wound up dead in the trunks of cars, stuffed into cast-iron barrels, or dumped in one of the city’s many waterways.
With the Cubans, it was Hopkins’s intention to stay out of the way. In a sense, it only mattered to the extent that the violence affected his bolita business. The mayhem so far had not caused the police to crack down on the bolita spots. Traditionally, the Public Morals department was kept at bay through judicious payoffs to whoever in the department had the power to keep raids from happening. It had worked that way for decades. But if the killings became too outrageous, and it became obvious they were related to the policy business, pressure from the media and public officials would lead to a police crackdown.
The Corporation Page 29
