The Corporation

by T. J. English

  The bottom line was that a climate of ongoing violence was never good for business—especially with bolita, which was supposed to be nonviolent. Little old ladies and priests bet the number, and if they were made to feel as though they were taking part in something that was violent or overtly connected to organized crime, they would stop participating, and the business would dry up.

  Hopkins’s deal with La Compañía, Isleño’s group, was going well. With Isleño’s know-how and Hopkins’s connections, business was booming. La Compañía had opened well over one hundred bolita holes in central Harlem alone. With the volume of betting that took place, one numbers hole in Harlem was worth four in Brooklyn. For a spot in Brooklyn, a decent take was $6,000 to $8,000 a week in bets. In Harlem, you didn’t see spots that took in less than $20,000 to $25,000 a week. Everyone was getting rich. If things continued to run smoothly, the deal that Hopkins and Isleño had put together would become the most profitable numbers consortium that ever existed.

  And then it happened: in the summer of 1982 a series of events in Brooklyn threatened the whole arrangement.

  The cause of the crisis was an aspect of the arrangement between the Cubans and the Italians that went back decades. From the beginning, the two factions had established what they called “the two-block rule.” This unwritten law stated that no organization, Cuban or Italian, could open a bolita hole closer than two blocks to a preexisting one run by the other camp. The rule, which had been agreed to by Fat Tony, Battle, Isleño, and everyone else who did bolita business in New York, had held strong since the late 1960s, when it was first instituted. But there was a loophole in the rule that would lead to a dispute.

  In Brooklyn, a prominent bolita hole belonging to La Compañía— located at 50 Albany Avenue in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant—was shut down in a police raid. This alone was enough to cause Hopkins and Isleño consternation, but more to the point, it exposed a flaw in the two-block rule. What happened when a spot was shut down through no fault of its own? If a bolita spot were burned down, for instance, did that mean a competitor could move in and open a spot? And if there were disputes, how would they be settled?

  Nene Marquez, who was now leader of the Corporation’s operations in Brooklyn, did not wait around for answers. Within a week of La Compañía’s spot being closed down by the police, Marquez—acting on behalf of José Miguel Battle and the Corporation—opened a new spot at 75 Albany Avenue, across the street and half a block away from where La Compañía’s spot had been located.

  A few weeks after the original police raid, La Compañía’s spot reopened. Now the Corporation and La Compañía had competing bolita holes across the street from one another. This was no way to run a business. The Corporation responded by assigning Lalo Pons and his SS squad to firebomb La Compañía’s bolita location and burn it to the ground. Before the embers had even been fully extinguished, there was talk of revenge.

  Robert Hopkins found himself caught in between. The boss of the Lucchese family, for one, was angry. Since the Luccheses were in a partnership with La Compañía, they saw the burning down of the Brooklyn bolita hole as a potential act of war against them. Hopkins was told, “You better settle this fucking dispute among those Cubans or we got a war on our hands.”

  Hopkins called up Isleño in Fort Lauderdale and said, “Look, my friend, I need you to set up a sitdown with Battle. We need to resolve this matter before it gets out of hand.” The meeting was set to take place at Isleño’s home on the intracoastal waterway in Fort Lauderdale.

  Hopkins flew down to Florida and met the two Cubans. He was struck by how similar in appearance were Battle and Isleño. Both men were somewhere around 270 pounds, corpulent, with hefty appetites and gregarious personalities. They seemed to respect each other, but clearly their partnership, which had straddled the line between partners and competitors for years, had reached an impasse.

  Said Hopkins, “I’m here to see if we can’t settle this thing before it causes any more problems.”

  The setting was magnificent. Isleño’s home, surrounded on three sides by water, reeked of South Florida nouveau riche. There were the pumas in their cages outside on the property, and inside, cockatoos and parrots that occasionally squawked. Large leisure boats passed by outside the windows. These men were a long way from the soot and cramped spaces of Harlem and Brooklyn, where they had turned a grimy little game of nickels and dimes into a financial empire.

  Battle was adamant. “Mira (look), there are people opening up spots less than two blocks away from our spots, and you know it. And another thing, you have people paying seven hundred dollars even though the sign says six hundred to one. We know that they are paying eighty on the bolita, not sixty-four. You know this has to stop or it’s going to be a problem.”

  “Wait a minute,” Isleño said to Battle, “I been a bolitero since I was a kid in Guanajai, since before you were even a cop in La Habana. You can’t tell me how to run my business.”

  The discussion went back and forth; it was not going well. Hopkins felt as though he was trapped between two stubborn Cubans, and that passion, not common sense, was likely to rule the day.

  At one point, Isleño went into the kitchen to get a drink. His wife and kids were hanging out there. He said to his wife, “It’s going to get ugly in New York and the grenades are going to fly.” Then he said to the wife and kids, “Go upstairs for now. Until this is settled.”

  Eventually the men hashed out an agreement. Hopkins proposed that Battle be allowed to keep his bolita location at 75 Albany Avenue in Brooklyn, but that he would pay $50,000 as compensation to Isleño. Everyone agreed, but neither Battle nor Isleño seemed particularly happy about the resolution.

  Later that night, Hopkins boarded a flight back to New York. A crisis had been averted, but the Irishman felt uneasy. He had been hoping that the long partnership that had existed between these two men would hold up, and that cooler heads would prevail. His Mafia bosses were expecting him to keep the peace. Right now, even though this particular dispute had been resolved, Hopkins felt that the entire arrangement was like an incendiary device that could explode unexpectedly at any moment.

  11

  SMOKE AND FIRE

  PALULU.

  All you had to do was say the name and Battle would tighten up; he would breathe in deeply, his ears would turn red, and his blood pressure would rise to levels that were clinically unhealthy for a man of his girth. Palulu was the stone in his shoe, the thorn in his side. If one of Battle’s men mentioned the name of Palulu in his presence, he would find himself on the receiving end of a stare so chilling, so filled with bad intent that his gonads would inadvertently shrivel up in his scrotum.

  It had been eight years since El Padrino first called for Palulu’s head. Now the mere fact of Palulu’s existence was, in Battle’s mind, a rebuke to his manhood. If someone had put Fidel Castro and Palulu in front of him and said to kill whomever you must, Battle would first have to kill Palulu and then go after Fidel. Palulu had killed his brother in a very public way. Palulu had pissed on his family’s name. Palulu, who by now had already survived half a dozen attempts on his life, just by the fact that he breathed the same air as José Miguel was an abomination. Palulu was making José Miguel Battle and the Corporation look foolish. This was a problem that had to be dealt with—pronto. Or Battle might as well retire to his finca in South Miami and spend the rest of his days stroking his rooster.

  On April 30, 1982, Palulu Enriquez walked out of Dannemora prison after having served two years and five months for illegal possession of a weapon. From the moment he hit the streets, he must have felt like violating the terms of his release by doing the very thing that got him incarcerated. A gun was certainly what he needed. He knew there was a bounty on his head.

  And yet, like a creature of habit, he returned to the streets of New York.

  Throughout his legal troubles, Palulu maintained ownership of a condominium at 3240 Riverdale Avenue, in an upper-middle-cla
ss section of the Bronx. Riverdale was a pleasant neighborhood, mostly Jewish, with tree-lined streets. Over the years, Palulu had rented out the condo and lived off the proceeds. Ever since he had fallen afoul of the Battles, he had resided mostly in small one-room studios spread out around the boroughs of New York.

  In December, eight months after his release from Dannemora, Palulu was limping along a street in Brooklyn, where he now lived. For a man who had lost a leg, suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and been stabbed on two occasions, he still got around.

  The weather was unseasonably warm. December 2 had set a record of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, and the mild temperatures continued throughout the month.

  Palulu was overdressed, wearing a heavy overcoat, which is what you expected to wear in New York in the winter. He was accompanied by his new bodyguard, Argelio Cuesta, who was a recent refugee from Cuba, part of a wave known as the Mariel boatlift.

  The “Marielitos” were refugees whose exodus had been negotiated by President Jimmy Carter. At the time, Cuba was experiencing one of its periodic refugee crises. In Castro’s Cuba, securing a travel visa to leave the country was a near impossibility. It was one of the more pernicious aspects of modern Cuba that the island had become like a penal colony. If you wanted to leave for any reason, it became necessary to create some kind of homemade vessel—a raft or inner tube or makeshift boat—and attempt to cross the ocean at nightfall. Already, thousands of Cubans had died attempting to make this journey, and in the decades ahead thousands more would perish.

  In April 1980, President Carter announced that the United States would take in refugees from Cuba if Castro would allow them to leave. A week later, Fidel announced that anyone who wanted to could leave. They would be allowed to embark from Mariel Harbor.

  Over the next six months, from April through September, Cuba would experience an exodus unlike anything that had been seen before. Packed onto boats and other sailing vessels, a total of 125,000 asylum seekers flooded into the United States. They were processed primarily at immigration camps in Miami and elsewhere in South Florida. The majority were granted political asylum. Some journeyed beyond Miami to other localities with sizable Cuban populations, such as Hudson County in New Jersey, and New York City.

  The Marielitos came from extreme economic deprivation. Some were criminals and mental defectives, whom, unbeknownst at the time to the United States, Castro had taken the opportunity to release as part of the exodus.

  In the Cuban American underworld, the Marielitos represented an influx of desperate men, some of whom were willing to do anything for a price. They were recruited as gangland hit men, criminal errand boys, or, in the case of Argelio Cuesta, as bodyguards for someone with a longtime bounty on his head—a job not many people would want to undertake.

  In Brooklyn, Cuesta and his boss, Palulu, were enjoying the mild December air when a team of hit men drove up and opened fire. Both men returned fire. Palulu was hit, but the wound was not fatal. Having Cuesta as his bodyguard probably saved his life. Palulu was rushed to the hospital.

  Gunshot wounds; hospital emergency room; a visit from the cops; and once again charged with possession of a weapon—a routine so familiar to Palulu. But at least he was alive; he had survived another hit attempt.

  Upon learning of this latest failure, Battle was angry enough to cause the earth to rumble. In a way, he blamed himself. It had been a half-assed attempt, one that was beneath the dignity of a true Mob boss. Partly it was because he had put out an open contract on the street. The attempts to kill Palulu had become like a turkey shoot, where anyone with a gun had an opportunity to collect the $100,000 fee.

  Battle needed to step up his game. And so he turned to Lalo Pons, the head of his SS squad, who had distinguished himself as an organizer of hits and other acts of mayhem on behalf of the Corporation. Pons was given the assignment to exterminate Palulu.

  By April 1983, Palulu had been released from the hospital and was out on bond awaiting yet another trial for possession of an illegal weapon. He had done something he did not want to do: he had moved into his condo in Riverdale. The condo was Palulu’s symbol of achievement that he had not wanted to tarnish by dragging into his life of crime and violence. But he had no choice. The condo was the closest thing he had to a sanctuary. Far removed from the teeming Cuban enclaves of Union City, Brooklyn, or the South Bronx, it created for him the illusion of safety.

  On a blustery evening, Palulu returned to the condo with Cuesta, his trusty Marielito. He entered the building, using his key, and pushed the button for the elevator.

  Neither Palulu nor Cuesta noticed that there was a man hiding in a mass of artificial shrubbery that decorated the lobby. The man crept out from behind the shrubbery and rushed up on the two men from the rear.

  Clearly this attempt had been designed so that the gunman could get as close to his target as possible. This would not be a drive-by shooting, or someone taking potshots from a distance. This would be up close and personal.

  The gunman put the gun to the back of Palulu’s head and pulled the trigger. Blood sprayed on impact, and Palulu fell to the marble floor. The shooter then quickly fired two shots at Cuesta, hitting him twice in the back. The bodyguard also collapsed onto the floor. The gunman ran out of the building.

  A first-floor neighbor heard the gunshots and came into the lobby, where the two men were lying in pools of blood. Fire/rescue units arrived, and Palulu and Cuesta were rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, across the Harlem River at the upper tip of Manhattan.

  There, in the emergency room, it would be determined that the bullet that entered Palulu’s head had miraculously skirted around his skull and never penetrated his brain. He was alive. In fact, it wasn’t even that bad an injury. The bodyguard, Cuesta, had also survived.

  From his hacienda south of Miami, Battle received the news of yet another failed attempt on Palulu. Each time that his nemesis survived, Battle felt as if it took years off his own life.

  Rumors circulated that Palulu was somehow protected by the orishas, the Santería spirits. He was protected by a bembe. This necessitated that Battle visit a babalawo and do his own bembe to overpower Palulu’s bembe. The effort to kill the one-legged gangster was now not just a matter for mortal men; it was a war between the spirits, competing babalawos, who conjured the power of various deities to manipulate the course of events in their favor.

  Even after a full Santería ceremony with lots of candles, a sacrificial chicken, chicken’s blood, some rum, and lots of cigar smoke, Battle left nothing to chance. He got on a plane and flew to New York.

  This time, the hit would be painstakingly plotted out. Lalo Pons recruited a hit team of two Cuban American brothers, Gabriel and Ariel Pinalaver. The brothers were considered to be fearless killers who could get the job done. They would be backed up by a second team of hit men.

  The hit would take place in a section of the Bronx known as Belmont, a working-class Italian neighborhood. Palulu had recently opened a lottery office on East 180th Street, from which he ran a modest bolita operation. After Palulu was followed for weeks to establish his routine, it was determined that he arrived at his lottery office late at night. The hit men would stake out the location, wait for Palulu, and shoot him outside his office.

  Battle wanted to be there, near enough to the location so that he could respond immediately when the shooting occurred and verify for himself that Palulu was dead.

  On the night of September 28, an hour before midnight, Palulu arrived in Belmont in his car. He drove around the block a few times looking for a parking space and eventually wound up having to park a couple blocks away from the building where his office was located, near the corner of 180th Street and Arthur Avenue. He got out of his car, locked the car door, and began limping along 180th Street. When he got near the intersection with Arthur Avenue, suddenly two cars approached, coming from different directions. One car pulled up in front of Palulu, blocking his way; Palulu turned to flee, but the other ca
r screeched to a halt from behind, blocking that direction. Out of the car popped the Pinalaver brothers, armed to the gills with assorted weapons. They opened fire on Palulu, riddling him with eleven bullets.

  Palulu twisted in the street and fell face-first onto the pavement.

  He was pretty sure he was dead. Or maybe not. He could hear the sound of voices, feet walking on the pavement. He heard someone walk over to him, sensed the presence of someone looking down at him, felt someone put a foot underneath his torso and flip kick his body over onto his back. He could feel the blood oozing from his body, blood gurgling from his mouth. Barely able to open his eyes, in a haze, he looked up and saw someone hunched over looking down at him. He squinted, tried to focus. Looked like . . . could it be? It was. El Padrino. José Miguel Battle. The boss was standing over Palulu. And he was laughing. This was the last thing Palulu saw before his whole world descended into darkness, and he fell unconscious.

  Was this the end for Palulu?

  A fire/rescue unit arrived and rushed Palulu to the hospital. One miscalculation made by Lalo Pons and his hit team was that there was a hospital just three blocks away. Palulu arrived at St. Barnabas Hospital already on life support. A trauma team began immediate heart surgery. They were able to restart his heart, but he soon lapsed into a coma and stayed that way, in grave condition, for the next few days.

  Battle stayed in the New York area, at his condominium apartment in Union City, which he maintained even though he had now fully relocated to Miami. He intended to remain in New York until he received word that Palulu was dead.

  On October 2, five days after the shooting, Battle received word from a contact in the Bronx. The prognosis was not good. Not only had Palulu come out of his coma, but that afternoon Detective Kalafus of the NYPD had made a visit to his room. The pendejo was alive, and he was talking. Word was that he was in critical condition, but he had survived the shooting and given a statement to the New York detective who dressed like he was a cowboy from out west.