Ferer presided over these financial maneuverings, knowing full well that they constituted a criminal act. As far as he was concerned, the horse had left the barn. The Casino Crillón had been announced in the local media in Lima, and many prominent personages in government, the business community, and entertainment had taken an interest. The casino’s grand opening would be a huge social event, one of the biggest soirées in Lima in a long time. There was simply no room for failure.
At the same time, Ferer was no dummy. He could see that the financial underpinnings of the venture were not only shaky, they were steeped in corruption.
As bad as it looked, Ferer did not yet know the half of it.
17
BEGINNER’S LUCK
ONE THING THAT COULD BE SAID— AND OFTEN WAS— ABOUT JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE WAS that he had big balls. Cojones. In Latin culture, as in most patriarchal societies, being noted for having big balls was a metaphor for courage and the highest form of praise. Machismo is the logical manifestation of this philosophy, the belief that all life originates with the male organ and the precious seed that is, after all, conjured from within the testicles. Big balls connote power, because a person with big balls is a person without fear.
There are at least two sides to every story. If you were a soldier on the battlefield, say, a brigadista pinned down behind enemy lines at the Bay of Pigs, having a platoon mate with cojones could be the difference between life and death. Instinctively, that platoon mate attempts to come to your rescue, because a person with big balls does not wither in the face of risk. He does not care about the odds. He acts. Duty calls. He takes that chance because he has big balls. In any given situation, there is normally a fifty-fifty chance that a person will have made the wrong choice. Having big balls has little to do with intelligence. Sometimes the guy with an excess of moxie is the dumbest guy on the block.
José Miguel Battle invested a lot of money in opening the Casino Crillón. He paid off customs officials in Peru so that the shipping costs of large items like slot machines, air-conditioning units, and electric generators—and smaller items such as chips, dice, and thousands of tokens for the slots—were grossly undervalued. Thus his import tax liability was minimal. Even so, when all was said and done, he shelled out $4.5 million to launch what most people around him, including some of his partners and employees, thought was at best a high-risk venture.
It would be easy to say that Battle followed this course because he was a man with big balls but no brains. That does not tell the full story. He was also a romantic. To him, a casino represented the impossible dream. If this made him seem like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, he did not see this as a liability. Life was meant to be lived. He did not invest only his money in the Casino Crillón—he invested his hopes and dreams.
On May 29, 1993, the casino opened with a lavish party in the Sky Room, attended by the shareholders, the casino management, and many Peruvian dignitaries, including people from the Fujimori government.
The Peruvian shareholders, casino management, staff, and bankers with an interest in the casino met Battle for the first time. He was introduced to them individually as Alfredo Walled. Some were told that he was a shareholder, but some were not. Battle simply showed up on the scene; it was up to the hired help to determine whether or not he held an important role in the management of the casino.
It was not hard to figure out. From the start, Battle conducted himself as if he were the capo di tutti capi, boss of all bosses. He moved into one of three hotel suites that were reserved for casino upper management, a spacious apartment on the sixteenth floor. The suite next door was occupied by his three bodyguards. He shared his suite with Effugenia Reyes, who had already made her presence felt by casino employees for her insistence on the hiring of her friends and family members.
If anyone doubted Battle’s role in the operation, he told them. “I am the Godfather,” he said to Felix Ferer the first time they met. Ferer thought the man was joking. His amused expression was met with a chilling glare from El Padrino.
The other two Peruvian investors, Chiang and Chau, were with Ferer at the time. Years later, Ferer remembered, “When we met this man, we did not like him. He was a very unpleasant person. And he would say he’s the owner of the business. And not only that, but it bothered him that we had anything to say there. We didn’t like the way he spoke. We didn’t like the way he acted. He walked around with a revolver stuck in the back of his trousers, under his coat.”
Chito Quandas, who had been elevated from a trainer of dealers and pit bosses to one of the casino’s three managers, was having a hard time figuring out the pecking order between the Marques brothers, Luis DeVilliers, and Battle. So Battle told him, “If I tell those men to lick the bottom of my shoes, they have to do it.”
Within the first month of Battle’s arrival, it was clear that he was there to do whatever he wanted. He spent a lot of time cultivating men in the political establishment, most notably military and police authorities. He established a standing rule at the Crillón that when a high-ranking general or police captain came onto the floor, he was automatically given $1,000 to $5,000 worth of chips with which to gamble. Some of them played blackjack for a few minutes and then cashed out, keeping the rest of the money for themselves.
Battle did not care. It was clear from the start that this brash Cuban from the United States had an agenda for the casino that was quite different from that of the rest of the investors and staff. Battle was there to exert his power, and to allow his ego free rein.
He was also there for a good time. From the day he arrived, he started drinking; he appeared to be intoxicated much of the time. It was difficult to tell whether he was there to make money or to party. Actually, it wasn’t hard to tell: he was there to party.
Casino management hired a public relations man, a venerable sixty-year-old Peruvian actor named Luis “Lucho” Cabrera. In movies, telenovelas, and, most notably, in a popular Peruvian television ad for Honda, Lucho Cabrera was a comic presence. He was also popular with the ladies. Though he was past his prime as a performer, he was still a star of sorts, who was employed as a meeter and greeter. This was a casino tradition that Battle remembered from Havana. In the 1950s, the Casino Capri, owned by Santo Trafficante, had hired George Raft, the American movie star, who earlier in his life had made a career out of playing suave tough guys. Raft was known to have grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. He was on a first-name basis with many mobsters. He became something of a house mascot for the Mob in Havana.
Cabrera was hired for his popularity, but primarily his duties involved rounding up women and cocaine for Battle and his friends.
Sometimes, the debauchery was for fun, and sometimes it was done for a specific purpose. Once, a special party was arranged at the Crillón for a deputy minister who was allowed to gamble for free and then retire to a room on the eleventh floor. A bevy of women known as the Chin Chin Girls, who performed a popular strip show in Lima, were hired to give the deputy minister a private show. The highly intoxicated deputy minister lay on the floor while the women stood over him and stripped. Battle arranged for the entire encounter to be secretly videotaped, for blackmail purposes, should he ever need the aid of a deputy minister in future criminal endeavors.
Battle’s use of a fictitious name in Lima seemed to be merely pro forma. With his co-shareholders and casino staff, he did not try to hide who he was. In fact, he bragged about it often. To Ferer, Quandas, and many others, he related his personal history as the Godfather of the Cuban Mafia in the United States. He explained that he made his money from bolita, and that he personally cleared $3 million per year. He told them he had ordered the killing of many men on his rise to the top, and he would be willing to do it again if it proved to be necessary.
Though he insisted that everyone refer to him as Señor Walled, it was with a wink and a smile. Whenever he reached into the breast pocket of one of his tailored silk
or linen suits, he held open the coat long enough so that they could see embroidered in the lining Made Exclusively for José Miguel Battle, and also the initials J.M.B.
In its first few months of operation, the casino ran surprisingly smoothly, and patronage was brisk. The city of Lima had never seen anything quite like it, a Las Vegas–style casino in one of its most venerable old hotels. Everybody wanted to be seen at the Crillón; it was the place to be. And at the center of the action was the swaggering, slightly mysterious Señor Walled.
EFFUGENIA REYES HAD BEEN A PRESENCE AROUND THE CASINO EVEN BEFORE BATTLE, so most of the staff knew who she was. Once Battle arrived, it became apparent that she was either his special lady friend or his wife. She referred to Battle as “my husband,” which was interesting to the staff because they knew Battle as a skirt chaser whose tastes tended toward the young end of the spectrum. He had begun a none-too-secret dalliance with a recently hired cashier named Evelyn Runciman. She was nineteen going on twenty.
In a workplace that contained within its walls over two hundred hotel rooms at your service, it wasn’t difficult for Battle and his new mistress to find ways to consummate their affair. For a while, he was able to keep it secret. He was sleeping around with Evelyn while still sharing a bed at night with Effugenia. Their combined ages were equal to that of his son.
Effugenia had spies and snitches among the casino staff, and before long she found out what was going on. She did not immediately confront Battle. Instead, she began an affair of her own with Juan Solano Loo, an accountant at the casino.
The problem with spies and snitches was that everyone had them. Battle certainly did.
Velario Cerron was the stepfather of Evelyn Runciman. He worked at the casino as a slot machine mechanic. Cerron learned that Effugenia was having an affair. He approached Battle and said, “Señor Walled, I think there’s something you should know.” He told Battle about Effugenia’s affair with Solano.
A ripple of tension passed through the entire casino; everyone could feel it.
Solano, learning that Battle knew of the affair, quit his job and disappeared from the premises. On top of what he had learned about Battle from the man’s behavior at the casino, and the stories circulating about his long life of crime, Effugenia had likely filled his head with stories of El Padrino’s murderous lust for revenge. The rumor was that he fled into the hills outside Lima, where the altitude was high and small towns were not easily accessible. Apparently his life was more important to him than whatever amorous entanglements he had with Battle’s “wife.”
Effugenia and Battle had it out, right on the floor of the casino for all to see. No one knew who initiated the confrontation—Battle or Effugenia—but it escalated into a shouting match, with profane accusations of infidelity on both sides, and Effugenia eventually being reduced to tears.
Within days, Effugenia announced that she was leaving El Padrino. She intended to make a trip to Miami to retrieve all of her belongings at El Zapotal, and then she would be flying back to Guatemala to live with her family.
One person who derived great pleasure from this development was Velario Cerron. He had been angling for his stepdaughter to win the undivided affection of El Padrino, and now the coast was clear. Cerron’s own agenda involved the rise of Evelyn, and, by extension, his own fortunes within the world of Alfredo Walled. Everything was on the right track.
DAVE SHANKS HAD BEEN OFF THE BATTLE INVESTIGATION FOR NINE MONTHS WHEN HE received word that his services were requested back at the offices of OCB. The news was delivered without fanfare. There was no departmental announcement or welcome wagon. Whatever bureaucratic fault lines that had opened up leading to his banishment to Siberia had miraculously been spackled over and forgotten. The detective was brought back into Jimmy Boyd’s bolita squad as if he had never left.
The first thing Shanks learned was that the crew who had assumed leadership of his investigation had completely lost track of Battle. He had not been sighted in Miami in months, and no one knew where he was. With El Padrino off the grid, the investigation had come to a standstill. Shanks was chagrined that the trail had gone cold, but he was most annoyed that the investigators had used the disappearance of Battle as an excuse to stall the investigation.
Shanks had always seen the investigation as being more about the Corporation than about Battle. Yes, El Padrino was el jefe, the big rooster, but the most important thing Shanks had learned in his many years on the case was that the Battle operation was like a private social club, with members and fellow travelers in every nook and cranny of the underworld. The Corporation seemed to encompass every bolitero and bookmaker in Miami, not to mention narcotraficantes and corrupt lawmen. If Battle was not around, there were always others in the Corporation network of hoodlums, some of them key players, who could be pursued.
The Battle investigation team had changed since Shanks was away, but luckily he still had Kenny Rosario, who had the best street sources Shanks had ever seen.
For some time, the squad had been aware of an old-time bolita banker named Raul Fernandez. Now seventy years old, Fernandez had followed the tried-and-true bolita trail from Cuba to New Jersey to Miami. For a number of years he had been in retirement, but the detectives heard from one of Kenny Rosario’s informants that he was back on the scene. Working together with his wife and three sons, he had what the informant described as the largest illegal gambling business currently operating in Miami.
With Fernandez’s long criminal history, it was not difficult to write up an affidavit for a sixty-day wiretap, with tracers being put on a number of phone lines at the bolita banker’s home in the Dadeland area.
Janet Reno was no longer Dade County state’s attorney, a job she had held for fifteen years. In March 1993, she was appointed U.S. attorney general by President Clinton. With Reno gone, the standard for securing approval from the State Attorney’s Office had been lowered, but the process had become less personal and more chaotic. Eventually, the investigators were able to get authorization and install tracers. What they discovered was surprising.
The Fernandez operation was indeed massive. Raul and his wife, Rita, kept two phone lines singing sixteen hours a day. They also had an additional fax line that cranked out over thirty pages of bets twice a week. Between husband and wife and three sons, all of whom were active in the operation, Shanks figured the Fernandez family had over 120 numbers writers circulating in Miami on any given day, taking down bets and submitting them to the organization.
It was so busy that one of the sons, Mayito, brought in his daughter Esperanza to take over some of the numbers writers, to ease the burden. She was set up in an apartment on Bird Road, on the west side of 67th Avenue. The cops were also able to place a tracer on her phone.
All in all, with the Fernandez family also taking layoff bets from some forty other boliteros outside their own thriving policy operation, it was clear that this multigenerational Cuban family had become the central bank of all bolita in Miami.
One afternoon, investigators monitoring the Fernandez wire overheard a conversation between Raul, the patriarch, and an old friend named Luis Adel Bordon. On the phone, Bordon complained that Mayito, Raul’s son, had not showed up for a scheduled appointment to make a money drop at “the store,” which the cops learned was a reference to Gulf Liquors, a convenience store owned by Bordon in Hialeah. The two men talked back and forth, bad-mouthing Mayito, with Raul finally saying, “Let me look into it, find out what happened.”
Raul called Mayito’s wife and learned that he had left the house on time that morning to go to the meeting at Gulf Liquors. She had not heard from him since, which was unusual. After a series of frantic calls between Raul, Rita, and others in the Fernandez universe, they became genuinely concerned. It was not like Mayito to disappear with a briefcase full of money and no explanation.
About three hours later, Raul Fernandez received a call from his son. “I was kidnapped and robbed,” he said. He told his father to come pick hi
m up at the apartment of a friend just north of Bird Road.
With wiretap operations, in addition to the human monitors stationed in a nearby apartment or in a van, there was always a surveillance crew on call. Dave Shanks happened to be part of the surveillance crew that day. He and two other cops immediately drove to the apartment building that Mayito had mentioned. From a distance, Shanks watched through binoculars as Raul arrived and picked up his son, who, the detective noted, looked disheveled and shaken up.
According to Mayito, that morning on the way to Gulf Liquors, he stopped at an Office Depot on Ives Dairy Road to pick up some supplies. In the parking lot, he was grabbed at gunpoint by two men and forced into a white van with two additional men. They blindfolded him and tied him up. Using his car keys, they retrieved his car, where they found in his briefcase more than $22,000 in bolita customer checks and $7,000 in cash.
The kidnappers wanted more. They drove Mayito around in the van for hours, berating and pistol-whipping him, trying to get him to reveal where his father kept his bolita cash reserves. Mayito said he didn’t know. Eventually, they dumped him on a deserted street. Once Mayito figured out where he was, he made his way to a friend’s apartment and called Raul.
At the listening post, the police monitors listened to a wave of phone calls within the Fernandez family, with Mayito, now safe, describing to everyone what had happened. To his wife, he said, “[Those kidnappers] could search for years and never find the safe with the cash and records. And it’s big, the kind of safe you can walk into.”
Over the next few days, the investigators heard many phone conversations between Raul Fernandez and people in his organization. Raul told a fellow bolitero that if one of the kidnappers was found, he would likely have to be tortured to reveal the identities of the other three.
The Corporation Page 47
