IN SEPTEMBER 1995, SERGEANT JIMMY BOYD ANNOUNCED HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE Metro-Dade Police Department. After thirty-five years of service, it was a long time coming. Boyd was a local legend, revered by many for his knowledge of the city, which predated the infusion of Cuban exiles, the arrival of the Marielitos, the Cocaine Cowboy era of the 1980s, and the reign of José Miguel Battle.
The relationship between Boyd and Dave Shanks had always been uneasy. Shanks had the impression that Boyd respected his acumen as a detective, but when it came to investigative matters Boyd had a hard time sharing credit. Years earlier, the sergeant had resisted Shanks’s contention that Battle was becoming a major player in Miami gambling circles. And Shanks would always harbor a degree of resentment that Boyd had not backed him up when he had his office scuffle with Bert Perez, his former partner.
Both, however, were team players who were willing to let bygones be bygones. Shanks respected Boyd for his years of service, and the sergeant had come to value Shanks for his intelligence and dedication. It was enough that they were both professional cops; they didn’t have to be best friends.
The retirement party for Boyd was a major event. It was held at Miami International Airport, inside the 94th Aero Squadron, a restaurant with plate-glass windows overlooking the airport’s west runway, in view of modern jetliners taking off and landing. The restaurant was decorated to look like a World War I French chateau that had been turned into a wartime headquarters for a flying squadron.
The party followed the pattern of most retirement events, only on a more grandiose scale. Over the years, Boyd had himself served as a master of ceremonies for many events of this type, so it was especially enjoyable for many veteran cops to roast the retiree and regale the audience with stories from the epic career of Jimmy Boyd. In a show of Boyd’s stature in the culture of the Metro-Dade Police Department, the director of the department was on hand to present a special plaque and declare the day as “Jimmy Boyd Day.”
Later that night, as the party wound down, Boyd and Shanks sat off to the side and made peace with each another. Not that there had been a major rift, but Boyd wanted Shanks to know that his contribution to the Battle case had been stellar, and that his continued involvement was essential. Said Boyd, “If the investigation ever does make it to the RICO level, you will be the man who gets it there.”
In fact, the reason Boyd pulled Shanks aside was to let him know that he would be hearing from the new state prosecutor, Tony Gonzalez. Now that Boyd was retiring, the State Attorney’s Office was going to need a new “expert witness” from the Organized Crime Bureau. Boyd had recommended Shanks for the role.
A few days later, Shanks had a meeting with Gonzalez. A first-generation Cuban American who had grown up in the Hialeah area, Gonzalez was something of a department wunderkind. Having graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and completed undergraduate studies at the University of Miami, he finished law school at the top of his class. He passed the bar exam on the first try and, in 1991, at the age of twenty-two, was hired by the Dade County State Attorney’s Office as an entry-level prosecutor. He rose through various departments— Misdemeanor, Juvenile, Public Corruption—until he had tried cases in many jurisdictions, including federal court. He was ambitious and driven, with a reputation for putting in long hours on a case.
Shanks and Gonzalez hit it off immediately. They had a similar approach to their work, and it helped that they both had a sharp wit and appreciated a good glass of red wine.
They talked about what it would take to build a federal case against Battle. One problem was that most of what would make up the “predicate acts” in an indictment against Battle would be largely historical in nature. They needed to come up with more recent criminal charges as well. Both agreed that El Padrino’s recent foray in Peru might prove to be the key. No doubt, Battle had set up and used the casino as a money-laundering scheme, which would be crucial to a superseding indictment. This meant that the investigators had much work ahead of them building a fresh evidentiary base for taking down Battle. It was agreed that a search of Battle’s home would be essential. If they could uncover documents relating to the financing and mismanagement of the Casino Crillón, they would be on their way.
Shanks was not the first person to notice that Gonzalez reminded him of a Miami version of Rudolf Giuliani, the New York prosecutor who made a name for himself taking down a number of major Mafia bosses, including Anthony Salerno. Giuliani was an Italian American and could therefore not be accused of being anti-Italian in his prosecutions. Miami was ripe for a bold, crusading Cuban American prosecutor to take on the same role in Magic City.
EL PADRINO SPENT MONTHS UPON HIS RETURN TO MIAMI TRYING TO GET HIS HOUSE IN order. Now that his true love, Evelyn Runciman, was living with him at El Zapotal, he did not want to lose her. Evelyn applied for a Florida driver’s license, took the exam, and passed. She received a license in her name on August 23. The following month, she and José Miguel devised a scheme so that she could become a U.S. citizen. They arranged for her to marry Battle’s thirty-seven-year-old nephew, José Angel Battle. Once they were wed and she became a citizen, Evelyn and José Angel were divorced.
There were still some loose ends with Casino Crillón. Technically, Battle was still one of the shareholders. A new managing director was hired, a man named José Mendez whom Battle interviewed for the position at El Zapotal. Mendez took over and was informed by Banco Banex in Lima that the casino needed $2.7 million to continue operating. The money was smuggled into Peru by all the usual suspects, including Luis DeVilliers and Nene Marquez, in ten different “body shipments” over four weeks. The casino had developed such a bad reputation that even with the infusion of capital, it continued to lose money.
In August 1996, Battle made the decision to suspend operations. “Why should I pay more money into a casino I can’t even walk around in anymore?” he said to a gathering of shareholders at El Zapotal. For a time, they tried to negotiate the sale of the casino for $4.8 million to Allied Gaming, a small company based in Reno, Nevada. The sale fell through, and on December 31 the casino officially closed its doors and went out of business. Estimates put Battle’s loses on the venture at more than $12 million.
THE TIME HAD COME FOR THE RAID ON EL ZAPOTAL. IT WOULD BE THE RESULT OF meticulous planning. The raid would include four Metro-Dade Special Response Teams (SRT), or SWAT teams, accompanied by fifty Metro-Dade detectives, three IRS agents, six immigration officials, and a representative of the Humane Society to deal with the various dogs and roosters. The fact that Battle’s primary residence was surrounded by a secondary residence, a barn, hundreds of rooster coops, dozens of doghouses, and acres of mamey groves made carrying out the raid a potentially dangerous undertaking. There were many areas where the SRT teams and detectives could theoretically encounter resistance. The cops weren’t anticipating armed confrontation with Battle and his staff, but any raid had to be planned as if that were a possibility.
On the morning of December 18, 1996, the entire team of agents and cops gathered at a staging area, the parking lot of a convenience store on Krome Avenue at SW 200th Street. The Op Plan, prepared by Sergeant Ed Hinman, was twenty pages in length, with pictures and diagrams of the property. It was distributed to various supervisors, including Shanks.
A reconnaissance team was sent to Battle’s home to scout it out before the order was given to commence the raid. The detectives arrived at the house at 8 A.M. Everything was in order, except for one problem. Battle was not home. His Cadillac was not in the driveway.
Everyone waited. After about an hour, the decision was made to proceed whether Battle was there or not.
The first to arrive at the front gate of the property was an SRT team in a specially equipped wrecker truck with sideboards, so that a crew of six cops, riding on both sides of the vehicle, could hop off and deploy quickly. Behind that was a van with more SRT cops. Then came a green-and-white Metro-Dade police car containing Shanks and other detec
tives. Behind that was a bevy of vehicles filled with agents and cops. Other law enforcement personnel were stationed at the back gate and other points of egress, to prevent the possibility that anyone might try to escape from the property.
Once everyone was in position, the lead SRT team quickly wrapped chain cables around the wrought-iron gate of El Zapotal. The cables were securely affixed to the rear of the wrecker truck. As the truck pulled away, there was a loud boom as the gate was pulled off its hinges and torn away from the concrete columns to which it was bolted.
The raid teams flooded onto the property. As a supervisor, Shanks hung back, communicating with the various team leaders via walkie-talkie.
The first order of business was to secure the two homes, both the main residence and the back residence, where the farm workers and hired help lived. Once that was done, Shanks radioed to make sure the perimeter of the property was secure. Once everything was on lockdown, the search teams could begin to execute the warrants.
Evelyn Runciman was in the house; she was placed under arrest. Others among the workers and house staff were rounded up and interviewed by INS agents. Some of the workers were undocumented; this was their unlucky day. A half dozen were taken away to a detention facility, to later be deported.
The house was a beehive of activity. Shanks had stepped out to his squad car to retrieve a notebook when he noticed Battle’s white Cadillac coming down SW 192nd Street toward the house. The Cadillac suddenly stopped, and the driver began to navigate a U-turn on the narrow street. Shanks jumped into the cruiser, turned the ignition, and floored it. He came up alongside the Cadillac while it was in the process of turning around.
Jumping out of the police car with a Remington 870 pump-action shotgun in his hand, Shanks blocked the Cadillac with his body. He pointed the shotgun directly at the front windshield. He could see José Aluart, the driver, and in the passenger seat, José Miguel Battle.
“Out of the car! Hands above your head! Now!” shouted the detective.
Both Battle and Aluart complied.
Shanks lined them spread-eagled against the hood of the Cadillac. He switched from the shotgun to his service handgun and searched them both for weapons, at the same time calling for a backup unit.
Shanks handcuffed Battle and put him in the back of his squad car. Backup cops arrived, and they took away the handcuffed Aluart.
Shanks drove Battle back toward the original staging area for the raid, the parking lot on Krome. He looked in the rearview mirror: there was the man he had been hunting for nearly nine years now. El Padrino. It was hard to believe he finally had him sitting in his car.
After the initial shock of being arrested, Battle seemed resigned to his fate. Ever since he’d been deported from Peru and brought back to Miami, he had to have known this day was coming. The arrest represented a new stage in his struggle to remain free.
In the parking lot, Shanks had Battle get out of the car so he could be more thoroughly searched. Shanks and another cop took everything out of Battle’s pockets, including a wad of $3,000 in cash. In the light, Shanks noticed how much Battle had aged since the last time he’d seen him, at the hospital in Miami Beach having knee surgery five years earlier. El Padrino appeared sallow. His skin color was off—not the rich suntan he usually had but yellowish, as if he were having liver or kidney issues.
They put Battle back in the squad car and drove back to the house. Shanks left Battle under the watchful eye of two armed officers and went into the house to help with the search.
The interior of the house was impressive, but not lavish. The walls were light gray, with matching Italian tile floors. There were many fine furnishings, including artwork from South America. There were surveillance cameras inside the house, and also, in Battle’s office, surveillance monitors showing different angles from around the outer property. The master bedroom suite was spacious, with sliding glass doors that opened onto a back patio and pool.
The investigators were not there to look at furnishings or take in the surroundings; they were there in search of criminal evidence. Narco-sniffing dogs were brought in. Unlike the previous time, when Effugenia Reyes had let them in to the house and they’d found nothing, these dogs immediately sniffed out a spot near the headboard to the bed. A cop from Technical Support removed the top of the headboard and discovered $87,400 neatly stacked in tight packets.
Shanks and a team of detectives searched a large walk-in closet—so large that, along with more than fifty expensive Italian suits of different styles and colors, it accommodated an antique mahogany desk. The desk was stuffed with paperwork. The investigators loaded up boxes with the contents of the desk. This material, which included bank statements, tax returns, business records relating to El Zapotal, Inc., and other documents, would be examined back at the police station.
It was like perusing the hidden caverns of an ancient pharaoh. Shanks felt as if there might be a jewel around every corner. On a shelf in the closet he found a file entitled “2506/66,” which contained newspaper and magazine articles pertaining to Brigade 2506 and also regarding Alpha 66, the Miami-based anti-Castro militant organization. There were letters from representatives of Alpha 66 and other anti-Castro groups, thanking Battle for his financial contributions, a testament to his support for the never-ending struggle to kill Castro and take back Cuba.
Nearby were two framed photos, one of President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, at the Orange Bowl, paying tribute to the brigade members who had just been released from prison.
The other photo was even more startling: Battle, in a formal setting, at a dinner or award banquet or fund-raiser of some type, seated next to Jimmy Carter, the forty-second president of the United States. It turned out that the photo was from a political fund-raiser in New Jersey in 1975, when Carter was a presidential candidate. Shanks and the other cops gathered around the photo. It was Battle’s testament to his stature as a player at the highest levels.
Ledgers, phone and address books, audiotapes, personal correspondence, and more were boxed up and carted away, but one legal file of documents immediately caught Shanks’s attention. It was labeled “Crillón.”
Inside were documents detailing expenditures and payouts. There were minutes from shareholders’ meetings. On one document, a spreadsheet of the casino’s weekly expenses, Battle had handwritten in the margins words like “liars” and “thieves.” Numbers were circled, with an arrow pointing to where Battle had written, “This is the point where they started to steal from me.”
Reading these notations, Shanks realized for the first time that Battle must have had a falling-out with his partners, DeVilliers and Marquez. If that wasn’t startling enough, the file also contained faxes of receipts from the casino to Battle for money that had been brought into the country via cash couriers. Here was perhaps explicit documentation that the casino was being used to launder bolita proceeds from the United States.
Finally, the pièce de résistance was a loaded rifle and handgun the cops found in Battle’s bedroom. As a convicted felon, it was against the law for Battle to be in possession of a firearm. The guns alone were going to be enough to hold El Padrino in jail without bail.
IT TURNED OUT THAT SHANKS WAS RIGHT ABOUT BATTLE. HE WAS NOT HEALTHY. HE was suffering from kidney failure and had begun dialysis treatment the week before the raid on El Zapotal. Now that he was in federal custody, the government was responsible for his medical care.
As a convicted felon who had once been charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Battle fit the definition of a flight risk; he was held without bail at the federal holding cell in downtown Miami. Evelyn Runciman, charged with passport fraud, was released on bond.
David Shanks and the investigators set out to devise a legal strategy that would neutralize Battle’s ability to operate while they continued to build toward what they hoped would be a RICO case against the Corporation. Battle was charged with passport fraud as well as possession of a firearm by a convicted felo
n.
Since these were federal charges, and Shanks would be working these and other Battle-related prosecutions, the decision was made that the detective would be moved to the main U.S. Attorney’s Office in Fort Lauderdale, forty miles up the coast from downtown Miami. Shanks was deputized as an agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and also as a special deputy U.S. marshal. If there was any doubt that his law enforcement career had become swallowed up by his pursuit of the Corporation, it was now official.
During the search at El Zapotal, many significant documents had been uncovered, some with handwritten notations. Shanks suspected that the notations had been written by Battle, but in order to establish this as fact, they needed a court-authorized handwriting sample. A documents examiner told Shanks, “You need to get samples from José Miguel Battle. Have him write until his hand falls off.”
Shanks brought Detective Kenny Rosario to Jackson Memorial Hospital Ward D, the prisoner ward for the Dade County Department of Corrections. Though Battle was being held in federal custody, he was temporarily housed in the county facility so that he could get his dialysis treatments with fewer logistical difficulties.
When Shanks and Rosario arrived at the hospital, Battle was sitting in a chair in his room, watching television. He looked slightly better than on the night of his arrest, but not much. His complexion was yellowish, and he looked worn and depleted. He was dressed in a baggy green hospital shirt with matching drawstring pants. The feared Mob boss was now just another patient in a jail ward.
The Corporation Page 53
