Sinatra had a special affection for Luciano. His Italian ancestors were from Lercara Friddi, the same village in Sicily where Salvatore Lucania was born. Although in later years Sinatra would deny that he was ever a close friend of Luciano, witnesses at the Hotel Nacional painted a different picture.
According to a report hidden away in the files of the U.S. Narcotics Bureau, at some point during Sinatra’s stay in Havana, he and Luciano took part in an orgy together. The details were corroborated by Robert Ruark, a syndicated newspaper columnist who was the first to report on Sinatra’s arrival in Cuba. In an in-house memorandum that Ruark wrote to his executive editor at the New York World-Telegram, Ruark noted, “I was told by Mr. Larry Larrea [Hotel Nacional general manager] that Frank Sinatra was vacationing in Havana and—to Mr. Larrea’s evident horror—was spending most of his waking hours with Lucky Luciano, Mr. Luciano’s bodyguard, and an assorted group of gamblers and hoodlums.” In a face-to-face meeting with the general manager, Ruark was informed that Sinatra, at that very moment, was upstairs with Luciano.
“I wouldn’t advise your going up there,” Mr. Larrea warned the columnist. “The best you can expect is to get thrown out. They are pretty tough fellows. They’ve got a lot of women with them, and I don’t know how much they’ve been drinking.” Ruark remembered that he was also warned by the manager “not to file my stories concerning Sinatra and Luciano by Western Union. [The manager] said it was a practice of the Cuban wireless office to immediately call subject people in stories of the type I intended to write, and that there would be a good chance of the story being lost, badly garbled, or distorted. He also said that the writer of such a story might be likely to wind up with a ‘knot’ on his head.”
The orgy at the Hotel Nacional caused quite a stir. An informant later told the FBI that “a planeload of call girls” had been sent to Havana courtesy of the Fischetti brothers. They were supplied for “a party at the Hotel Nacional attended by Sinatra.” Along with Luciano, another guest at the party was Al Capone’s younger brother, Ralph.
In the midst of a ribald bacchanalia, somehow a contingent of Cuban Girl Scouts escorted by a Catholic nun were allowed to visit Sinatra’s suite. According to an account preserved in the files of the Narcotics Bureau, the Girl Scouts were there to present Sinatra with an award of some sort and had been allowed past security “through a series of disastrous mistakes by various personnel.” The call girls were quickly hidden away in a back bedroom. When the Girl Scouts entered the suite, there were bottles on the floor, lingerie was hanging from lampshades, and the air was filled with the stench of stale perfume. Sinatra entered the front room in a robe and silk scarf as if nothing were wrong. The ruse was exposed when four naked bodies fell giggling into the front room. The nun and her charges quickly left the suite in a state of shock.
Sinatra and Luciano may have had a good laugh at the screw-up, but the fallout would prove disastrous. Columnist Robert Ruark filed a story, dateline Havana, which appeared in numerous American newspapers. Although he left out the part about the orgy, in his attack on Sinatra Ruark revealed for the first time in the media that Lucky Luciano was living in Havana:
I am puzzled as to why Frank Sinatra, the fetish of millions, chooses to spend his vacation time in the company of convicted vice operators and assorted hoodlums…He was here for four days last week and his companion in public was Luciano, Luciano’s bodyguard and a rich collection of gamblers…There were considerable speculations of a disgusted nature by observers who saw Frankie, night after night, with Mr. Luciano at the Gran Casino Nacional, the dice emporium and the horse track.
The article was explosive. Sinatra denied it all, saying, “Any report that I fraternize with goons and racketeers is a vicious lie.” He later threatened to sue, complaining that his integrity had been impugned.
For Luciano, the consequences were worse. He had been outed as having left Italy and settled just 90 miles off the shores of the United States. Given his reputation as perhaps the world’s premiere vice lord, the U.S. government was not likely to sit idly by while Lucky violated the terms of his release from prison and flaunted his freedom. Evil was on the loose. Something would have to be done.
FOR THE U.S. BUREAU of Narcotics, the fact that Luciano was living in Cuba was no secret. From almost the day he arrived in Havana, information had been filtering through to agents from at least two informants on the staff at the Hotel Nacional about his activities on the island. American authorities could have gone after the infamous Mob boss immediately if they had wanted to, but Harry Anslinger decided it would be better to place him under surveillance. A tracing device was put on Luciano’s phone that allowed the Bureau to keep a log of calls to and from his house in Miramar. His whereabouts were reported upon by a number of informants, including Luciano’s Cuban maid and members of the National Secret Police.
The narcotics agent in charge of the Luciano case was J. Ray Olivera, a fluent Spanish speaker. From November 1946 onward, Olivera filed a series of reports about Luciano’s activities in Cuba. Through his network of Cuban informants Olivera heard about the many U.S. mobsters who passed through Havana. He also heard that a casino in the elegant Hotel Presidente was owned by Frank Costello, and that the former boxing champion Jack Dempsey frequently acted as a cash courier for the Mob, à la Frank Sinatra.
Among the events Olivera received information about was an attempt on the life of Luciano.
Apparently, on the night of either December 27 or 28, just a day or two after the conclusion of the Havana conference, gunmen came after Luciano inside the Gran Casino Nacional, located in the Havana suburb of Marianao. According to Agent Olivera, after the attempt was made on Luciano’s life, “he was taken out by the servants’ entrance of the casino and the killers, aware of the movement, jumped in their car and gave chase through the dark streets surrounding the casino. But Luciano was able to elude the killers since a Cuban radio car appeared on the scene and gave chase.”
In a report to his district supervisor, Olivera stated that the following day Luciano was back at the casino. He was seated at a table with a number of Cuban dignitaries that included his friend Senator Eduardo Suarez Rivas; the senator’s son Pablito Suarez Arostegui, who was a noted racketeer; Dr. Indalecio “Neno” Pertierra, a member of Congress whom Agent Olivera described as “the axle of Cuban and American gangsters”; and Senator Paco Prío Socarrás, older brother of the prime minister, whom the U.S. Narcotics Bureau believed to be a major narcotrafficante on the island. Also seated at the table was Chester Simms, floor manager at the Gran Casino Nacional, an American whom Meyer Lansky first brought to Havana back in the late 1930s to oversee reforms at the casino and who had stayed on to become a big shot in Cuban gambling circles.
While seated at their table, Luciano and his group were approached by a colonel and a major with the National Police. After briefly questioning Luciano and Simms, the policeman announced that they both were to be placed under arrest. The Cuban dignitaries at the table immediately protested. They pulled aside the two high-powered cops and a payoff was made. The cops left but not before warning Luciano and Simms: “Be careful. Those killers from last night are still out there, and they may try again.”
After the policemen departed, Senator Paco Prío insisted that Luciano go to his private estate and hide out there.
“No,” said Pertierra, the congressman. “He should go to my apartment at the Jockey Club, where there are armed men at all times.”
“Nonsense,” said Luciano’s friend Senator Suarez. “Charlie will stay at my house, and Chester can go hide out at my farm.”
One consequence of the attempt on Luciano’s life was that he was assigned two Cuban bodyguards, Armando Feo and Miguelito Garcia. Feo, an expert gunman and former dealer at the Montmartre casino, was known to be exceedingly polite. Garcia, nicknamed “Trabuco,” was a killer and legendary ladies’ man. According to Luciano’s maid, who was later interviewed by Agent Olivera, “Those bodyguards ate and sl
ept with Luciano, although Luciano did not sleep every night at the house. Sometimes he would not come home for a week at a time.”
Feo and Garcia worked as a team: one would drive Luciano’s car while the other sat in the back with the Mob boss, a sawed-off shotgun lying within easy reach on the floor.
Another visible member of Luciano’s security team was Clemente Carreras, nicknamed “Sungo,” a former Havana baseball player of some renown. Sungo was in the employ of Congressman Indalecio Pertierra, who was also owner of the Jockey Club. Pertierra sometimes loaned Sungo out as a personal assistant. The retired player was often seen eating meals in the kitchen of Luciano’s home in Miramar and driving his car, though he denied being Luciano’s chauffeur. He did, however, tell Agent Olivera a story that belongs in the American mobster Hall of Fame.
Sungo was driving for Luciano on the day the Mob boss heard the news that the most murderous gangster of all time, Al Capone, had died. Capone had been living in Miami and battling the effects of tertiary syphilis when he suffered a heart attack and passed away on January 25, 1947. According to Sungo, when Luciano received the news he sat in the backseat of his car and cried like a baby. He then looked at Sungo and said, “Al was a fine person.”
The Narcotics Bureau would have been content to follow Luciano around, interview those who knew him, and compile a dossier on his dealings in Havana were it not for the article by Robert Ruark. In its wake, Harry Anslinger changed his tune entirely and, through the U.S. State Department, formally requested that the Cuban government deport Luciano to Italy.
The Cuban government balked. Inside the presidential palace, President Grau San Martín held a meeting with a group of powerful political figures. In attendance was Prime Minister Carlos Prío and also Alfredo Pequeño, minister of the interior. It was the opinion of all that Luciano was in Cuba on a legitimate Italian passport, that his visa was in order, and that he had done nothing illegal in Havana. There was no legislative requirement to expel Luciano as long as he continued to behave in a lawful manner.
In an internal memo, President Grau decreed that the Luciano matter was “of no importance.” Interior Minister Pequeño held a meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Havana and explained the government’s position—a position no doubt influenced by the fact that Luciano and Lansky had spread bribes far and wide in Cuba. From the beginning, their plan for Havana had involved laying the proper groundwork. Key government figures—congressmen, senators, and political operatives reaching into the presidential palace—were bought off and compromised the same way they had been in New York, Chicago, Miami, and other cities where the mobsters had long ago founded their underworld empire.
When the Cuban government declined to respond favorably to the State Department’s request, Narcotics Bureau commissioner Anslinger turned to President Harry S Truman. He familiarized the president with Luciano’s criminal history, which included narcotics arrests in his youth. He produced memos and reports from agents in the field that suggested narcotics smuggling in the region had increased and that Luciano was most likely a major player. He requested that Truman take whatever steps were necessary to force Cuba to deport Luciano, and he made sure his request received public attention in the New York Times and elsewhere. After further negotiations with the Cuban government stalled, Truman took an extraordinary step: he authorized the U.S. State and Treasury departments to cut off all supplies of legitimate medical drugs to Cuba until the American Mob boss was sent packing.
“U.S. Ends Narcotics Sales to Cuba While Luciano Is Resident There” read the February 22 page-one headline in the Times. An official with the Narcotics Bureau was quoted in the article:
There are hundreds of [Luciano’s] old Mob just waiting for the day their master can return. It is an interesting coincidence that in the three months that Luciano has been [in Cuba] we received in this country the first large shipment of European heroin—$250,000 worth…We believe the best place for him is that place most distant from this nation. He should not be permitted to reside where he can exercise his dangerous influence over the American underworld.
The evidence that Luciano was directly involved in heroin smuggling in Cuba was slight. Commissioner Anslinger admitted as much in a confidential memo to the secretary of state in Washington on February 21. Anslinger wrote that he was acting “on suspicion,” not hard evidence. Nonetheless, to the public, Luciano’s narcotics involvement was presented as a conspiracy in full flower.
From his estate in the Miramar district of Havana, Luciano kept up with events. He couldn’t help but begin to have that sinking feeling he’d had in the waning days of his prostitution trial back in 1936:
I called Meyer and Frank Costello over to Havana and we talked about the situation. I knew that the American system where you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty didn’t hold up for me. Look what happened to me with Dewey. So, if somebody said that Charlie Lucky is runnin’ junk out of Havana, well, them guys in Washington are sure I hadda be doin’ it. Things didn’t look good.
Luciano wasn’t about to give up without a fight. When approached by officials in the Cuban government, who asked him to leave the country under his own volition, Lucky refused. Knowing that his future as leader of the American underworld hung in the balance, he hired a Cuban attorney to concoct a plan to counter the U.S. medical supplies embargo by having Cuba cut off sugar shipments to the United States. The plan never materialized.
On February 23—a Saturday afternoon—Luciano was having lunch at a restaurant in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana when six police officers arrived and placed him under arrest. Police Chief Benito Herrera, who was known to be in the pocket of Luciano and Lansky, was nowhere to be seen. “[He] didn’t have the heart to do this to me personally,” believed Luciano.
He was given a few days to settle his affairs and then incarcerated in the Triscornia Immigration Camp until his ultimate fate was decided. Luciano had seen it all before:
[Triscornia] is the Cuban version of Ellis Island, but what a difference. It was surrounded by a big swamp, hot as a son of a bitch and so humid your clothes just stuck to your body. I knew I couldn’t take that very long. It was the same old story of what happened to me in Italy. When the big United States started to put the squeeze on a little country like Cuba, what choice did they have?
MEYER LANSKY had been following his friend’s high-stakes diplomatic battle mostly from Hallendale, north of Miami, where he presided over the Colonial Inn gambling casino, and also from New York City, where he owned an apartment on Central Park West. The situation with Luciano was troubling for a variety of reasons. First, there was Lucky’s overweening attempt to reestablish himself as “boss” and somehow get back into the United States—an issue separate from the development of Cuba as a base of operations. Then there was Luciano’s counterproductive penchant for the high life. Among his many exploits in Havana, Lucky had struck up a romance with a beautiful New York socialite named Beverly Paterno. They made the rounds at all the Havana nightspots: the Sans Souci nightclub, the grand mansions on Paseo Street, the roulette wheels at the Montmartre casino. Miss Paterno was so proud of her dalliance with the famous mobster that she hired a public relations firm to plant gossip items in the Havana Post, the city’s English-language daily newspaper. This, along with Luciano’s highly publicized fraternizing with Frank Sinatra, had virtually sealed his fate.
Even though Meyer might have come to the conclusion that he was better off without Luciano in Havana, he dutifully approached Fulgencio Batista to see if anything could be done. Batista, who had left the Cuban presidency in 1944, was living in Daytona Beach, Florida, and also in a luxury suite at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. Although Batista was no longer resident on the island, both Lansky and Luciano believed he was still the puppet master when it came to Cuban politics. Lansky convinced Batista to put heat on the government of Ramón Grau San Martín, but nothing could be done. Cuba simply could not withstand the pressure of having all U.S. pha
rmaceuticals cut off. Luciano would have to go.
On March 29, Luciano was loaded onto a rusty Turkish freighter named the SS Bakir. The ship chugged out to sea, passing El Morro, the colonial fortress and lighthouse at the mouth of Havana Bay. After five months, Luciano’s Cuban adventure ended as it had begun: on the high seas. Forever after, the memory of his time in Havana would live on, swathed in nostalgia for an era of lust, high life, and sweet corruption.
To Lansky, the banishment back to Italy of his lifelong pal and closest associate was a stunning turn of events. Publicly and with his business partners, he maintained the view that it was a great injustice. Luciano had done nothing wrong or illegal; he was being persecuted. But history shows that the removal of Lucky from Cuba was the best thing that could have happened to Lansky. With his penchant for high-profile skirt-chasing and cavorting in public with celebrities, Charlie Lucky had been more trouble than he was worth. The good news was that the Mob’s plans for Havana had been inaugurated at the conference at the Hotel Nacional, and nobody could put that horse back in the barn. Even better for Lansky, with Luciano out of the picture he was now the undisputed top man in Cuba. He was free to organize and pursue the matter as he saw fit, the Lansky way—quietly, behind closed doors, in smoke-filled rooms, with no diversionary hassles from nosy entertainment reporters or meddling lawmen looking to bag a famous mobster.
If American mafiosi wanted to gamble on Havana and the hope that it would one day be a major source of revenue, they had no choice. They now had to put their money on one man and one man only: Lansky.
Havana Nocturne Page 6
