Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

  The detectives arrested Lansky on a charge of vagrancy, an obvious “fuck-you” charge sometimes used by police when they wanted to harass someone. Lansky called his attorney, but it was the following morning before Moses Polakoff made it to the precinct house with a bond of one thousand dollars to get his client out on bail. The charge of vagrancy was eventually dismissed by a judge.

  A team of detectives continued to follow the Jewish Mob boss around while he was in New York. One afternoon Detective William Graff was seated in the lobby of the Hotel Novarro on Central Park South, where Lansky was staying. Graff was part of the police surveillance team that was supposed to be operating unbeknownst to Lansky. On this particular snowy afternoon, Lansky entered the hotel and spotted the detective, who was acting as if he just happened to be there. Lansky walked over to him and sat down. Without bothering to introduce himself, the Mob boss began rubbing his stomach and complaining about his ulcers.

  “I’ve got something on my mind,” he said to Graff.

  The detective sat forward expectantly. What if Lansky were about to divulge an important fact about his criminal life? He nodded for Lansky to continue.

  “It’s the chickens,” said Meyer.

  Huh? The detective had no idea what the mobster was talking about.

  “The chickens,” repeated Lansky. “You can’t get good chickens in Havana.”

  Detective Graff listened, dumbfounded, as the famous Meyer Lansky gave him a treatise on how difficult it was to find fresh chickens in Havana. Beef—no problem. His hotel, the Riviera, had the best steaks in Cuba, he said. Nor was it hard to find lamb or seafood. But chickens—forget it. Cuban chickens were scrawny and malnourished. That was why he had come to New York—to arrange for a supply of decent chickens to be shipped by air to Havana.

  The detective smiled politely and tried to steer the conversation in a more relevant direction, but Meyer could not be budged. All he would talk about were his worsening ulcers—and chickens. “He was playing with me,” the detective told author Robert Lacey years later.

  As had been the case periodically in his life, Lansky’s notoriety was again causing him problems. In March, Life magazine published an article entitled “Mobsters Move in on Troubled Havana.” Complete with photos of Meyer, Jake Lansky, Trafficante, Fernández Miranda, and Batista—a virtual who’s who of the Havana Mob—the article suggested that the mobsters were swooping in to take advantage of political instability in Cuba. Of course, nothing could have been further from the truth. The mobsters had been there from the beginning. The article spelled out in greater detail than ever before the nature of financial arrangements between Lansky and Batista, describing Havana’s gambling trade as “a private pension against the day the strongman is overthrown or the day his term expires, whichever comes first.”

  Lansky’s arrest in New York and the article in Life created problems for U.S. diplomats in Cuba, who had taken an active interest in Batista’s political future. Ever since the charismatic Fidel Castro appeared in the pages of the New York Times and on American television, public opinion in the United States had swayed in favor of “the tropical Robin Hood” and away from Batista. Now that El Presidente’s business relationship with American mobsters was being laid bare, it reinforced Castro’s claims that Batista was corrupt and an embezzler. Pressure was applied on the U.S. diplomatic corps to apply pressure on Batista. El Presidente was approached by U.S. ambassador Earl E. T. Smith, who inquired, “Isn’t there anything you can do about the mobsters in your midst?” Smith made particular reference to Lansky, whose criminal charge of vagrancy was still pending at the time.

  In mid-March, Batista announced publicly that Lansky would be banned from Cuba as long as he was facing criminal charges. Lansky knew better than to take the edict seriously. Years later, he told a biographer:

  Batista played a little joke on me. He announced publicly that I wouldn’t be allowed to return to Havana so long as these “serious charges” were outstanding against me. Naturally, [the charges] were dismissed. And when I returned to Cuba, Batista and I had a good laugh over the whole thing.

  The Lansky-Batista relationship was at the center of the Havana Mob, but sightings of the two men together were almost as rare as sightings of Fidel Castro. The Mob boss and the dictator had constructed a financial universe that changed the course of Cuban history, but both men realized that the more successful their business ventures became, the more necessary it was to maintain the appearance of separation. Ralph Rubio, who as Lansky’s credit manager at the Riviera interacted with his boss on an almost daily basis, never saw the two men together. Armando Jaime Casielles occasionally drove Lansky to meetings with Batista at the presidential palace, or at Kuquine, Batista’s estate. One of the meetings at Kuquine took place on an afternoon in early 1958. Jaime waited in the car while Lansky met with the president in his library office—the same room where Batista had first met with a young Fidel Castro years earlier.

  Lansky came out of the meeting obviously annoyed, which was rare for him. For a long time, as Jaime drove back into the city and along the Malecón, Meyer said nothing. Eventually he mumbled, almost to himself, “This guy every time wants more and more.”

  Jaime realized he was talking about Batista. “More of what?” he asked Lansky.

  “Pasta, Jaime, pasta,” said Lansky, using a colloquial Spanish word for money. “More and more. He’s insatiable.”

  One person who did see Lansky and Batista together was a California attorney named Joe Varon. Varon had represented Lansky on a few minor matters and was in Havana to attend the formal opening of a hotel-casino. He was there with Lansky when Batista made a surprise appearance. In Little Man, Varon is quoted as saying, “They [Lansky and Batista] were very, very close. Like brothers.” According to author Robert Lacey:

  Varon was impressed by how well Batista spoke English, and by the president’s evident warmth towards Meyer. Batista kept hugging and embracing his little American friend in a most Latin fashion…Meyer seemed distinctly uncomfortable with this aspect of the relationship, wriggling unhappily in the bear hug of the nation’s strongman. Such public fraternization was not the Lansky way.

  Mostly, the two men were content to operate through middlemen. Every Monday at noon, a Lansky-appointed bagman was allowed into the presidential palace through a side door. He carried with him a satchel filled with cash, part of a monthly payment of $1.28 million that was to be delivered to the president. Batista himself never met the man; he always used a relative as an intermediary. This was the way Lansky and Batista liked it: there was no need to call attention to the fact that they were partners in a financial arrangement that was diverting millions from the casinos into their own pockets. Better to create the illusion of autonomy. Some things were more important than friendship.

  chapter 13

  THE SUN ALMOST RISES

  THE MARCH 1958 GRAND OPENING FESTIVITIES FOR THE Havana Hilton hotel and casino were surprisingly subdued. There seemed to be as many members of the military police as there were dignitaries—the consequence of recent bombings and kidnappings. The establishment of the Hilton name along the Havana skyline was important to President Batista, who viewed the hotel as the biggest step yet in the city’s attempts to present itself as the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean. Even so, Batista did not attend the event, though he did send his wife, Marta. Many viewed his absence as the result of security concerns, but there was another reason. In the weeks leading up to the grand opening, many Cuban businessmen had told U.S. ambassador Smith that Batista was so unpopular among his own people that they did not want to be seen in his company. Although most U.S. industrialists were still wholeheartedly behind the president, Cuban business leaders had begun to abandon what they viewed as a sinking ship.

  For the Havana Mob, the opening of the Hilton was yet another plum in their basket. Located in Vedado not far from many of their other holdings, the hotel had a 660-room capacity, which made it even larger than the Riviera. The H
ilton also included a large nightclub called El Caribe, a cabaret-lounge known as Turquino, and of course a massive gambling casino. With Albert Anastasia removed from the list of investors, ownership of the casino and nightclub was spread among fifteen different parties, including the Sindicato Gastronómico. The mortgage holder for the hotel was BANDES, the economic high command of the Havana Mob.

  Lansky was not directly linked to the Hilton, but as with all major commercial developments in Havana, the business owed its existence to a climate of gambling and nightlife created by the mobsters.

  The prestige of the Hilton name carried great weight throughout the hospitality industry, and the hotel’s opening in Havana resonated as far away as Las Vegas.

  Ever since the Cuban capital’s gambling boom began in the early 1950s, Havana and Las Vegas had found themselves competing for the same entertainment dollars. For the most part, these two citadels of chance had coexisted peaceably. Many gambling investors, concessionaires, and mobsters owned stock in both cities. Since gambling in Havana was seasonal, dozens of casino employees bounced back and forth between the two biggest employers of gambling personnel in North America. Entertainers moved on from bookings at the big showrooms in Vegas to the cabarets in Havana and back again. The two cities revolved around the same axis of gambling and entertainment.

  In recent years, Vegas had begun to stumble. In the early and mid-1950s, a building frenzy led to the rapid construction of no fewer than six major hotel-casinos and the creation of the Vegas Strip. The most recently opened hotels were all experiencing financial difficulties. The Nevada Gaming Commission came to the conclusion that the Havana Riviera, the Capri, the Nacional, and now the Havana Hilton were hurting business in their desert paradise. The action they decided to take would have profound consequences for the Havana Mob.

  In April, just weeks after the opening of the Hilton, the gaming board in Vegas announced that anyone holding a Nevada gaming license who was also operating in Cuba would either have to give up their license or pull out of Havana. The commission specifically named nine men, including Moe Dalitz, Blackjack McGinty, Sam Tucker, Morris Kleinman, and Wilbur Clark, all leaseholders at the Hotel Nacional casino. Eddie Levinson of Las Vegas’s Fremont Hotel was identified as a proprietor at the Riviera.

  The announcement was a stunner for those involved. The men were being forced to make a choice between Havana and Las Vegas. They all hired attorneys and fought the decision, but in the end they were forced to safeguard their holdings in the United States. Within months of the announcement, they sold out their considerable interests in Havana. At the time, it must have looked like a financial tragedy. But as it turned out, the mobsters who were forced out of Havana by the commission would wind up looking like the luckiest gamblers in all of Cuba.

  As the 1957–58 tourist season headed into its final weeks, Havana labored under a weird mix of good times and political paranoia. The problem was that relaxation and revolution were inherently incompatible. The city, which had always taken pride in having a wild side, now became even darker and more clandestine. Many years later, using the poetic imagery of history, some would say that these weeks and months in Havana resembled the last gasps of the Roman Empire.

  Attorney Frank Ragano remembered coming to the city in 1958 to visit his client Trafficante. As he often did on his visits to Cuba, Ragano made the rounds with Santo, who loved to show off his “world.” Trafficante escorted the lawyer to a number of casinos, including his favorite, the Sans Souci. Like Lansky, Santo never gambled. “Bartenders don’t drink, because they see the consequences,” he told Ragano. “I know the odds are stacked against the players. You can’t beat the casinos.”

  Trafficante led his friend into the counting room at the Sans Souci. The room was small and stuffy, with armed guards at the door. At a table in the center of the room, two men—one wearing a head visor and the other making entries in a ledger—were seated surrounded by stacks and stacks of money. Explained Trafficante, “This is the most important room in any casino. We deal in cash and either you make it or lose it by what goes on in this room.” Trafficante nodded toward the man with the ledger and an adding machine. “This is Henry. Henry is from Tampa and he watches that the count is right and that nothing gets lost. These people will steal you blind,” he said, referring to the Cuban employees, “so I bring people from Tampa to watch the counting room.”

  Ragano was impressed with his client’s holdings—hotels, casinos, nightclubs. He asked Trafficante, “Santo, you’re making so much money through legitimate business here in Havana. Why not use the money to turn an honest dollar back home?”

  Trafficante smiled. “Frank, a man who is blind in one eye has a great deal of vision among the blind.” Ragano took Santo’s statement to mean that corruption and loose standards made it possible for him to gain an edge in Cuba.

  Ragano was no greenhorn. He had attended sex shows in Cuba and knew that the city had acquired a reputation for loose morality. He admired his client and saw that Havana gave him a kind of perverted confidence. He wanted to go along for the ride. As he wrote in Mob Lawyer:

  I became a different man in Cuba. In Havana, my traditional values became less important, and Santo’s became more honest and less hypocritical than those of most people. He extracted all the pleasure he could out of life without the slightest twinge of moral guilt and he was absolutely uncritical of himself. I wanted to fit into his life, emulate him, gain his respect.

  Later, Ragano had his doubts:

  I sometimes wondered if I had discarded my ethical standards in Havana. Then I would reflect on Santo’s theme that Havana’s lifestyle was created to be enjoyed, and since everyone else was savoring its delights, why should I be the exception?

  The sexual depravity that had been the province of places like the Shanghai Theater now moved out into the community. Trafficante took his lawyer and friend to las exhibiciones, live sex shows that had become the talk of the town. “We don’t want to go to the tourist traps,” Santo told Ragano. “The first thing every secretary, schoolteacher, and nurse wants to see when they come here is una exhibición.”

  Trafficante had his valet drive Ragano and himself to a house in one of Havana’s better neighborhoods. At the house, a hostess ushered them in and set them up in a room that had been converted into a cocktail lounge. “When you gentlemen are ready to see the show, let me know,” the woman said. The two men had a drink. Trafficante explained to Ragano what was to take place. Normally, he said, the shows were presented to groups of six to eight people, but he had arranged for a private show.

  “Across the hall,” said Santo, “there is a room where they present three men and three women, and you select a pair who will be the performers. The charge is twenty-five dollars—pretty cheap when you consider the kind of show they put on.”

  The Mob boss and his lawyer carried their drinks into the other room. There, three men and three women wearing robes were presented for inspection. Trafficante did not wait for Ragano to make a choice. “We’ll have El Toro and that girl over there,” he told the hostess, pointing to the most well-endowed woman in the room.

  The hostess nodded and asked Santo and Ragano to follow her into an adjoining room furnished with sofas and comfortable chairs. A crescent-shaped platform stage surrounded by mirrors had been set up in the middle of the room. On the walls were paintings of nude men and women.

  The two men sipped their cocktails. The hostess clapped her hands and El Toro and the big-breasted woman entered the room and took the stage. They dropped their robes and proceeded to engage in sex, utilizing every position known to the human species, finishing off with oral sex.

  Ragano was stunned by what he saw. Afterward, he asked Trafficante about El Toro.

  0 “His cock is supposed to be fourteen inches long,” explained Santo. “He’s quite a guy. They also call him Superman.”

  Realizing this was the famous Superman who had become a legend in his own time in 1950s Havana, Raga
no asked if he could use his Super-8-millimeter camera to film the show. Trafficante applied his influence to obtain permission. Using existing light, the lawyer captured Superman on film. The finished product is grainy and dark, but in a room surrounded by paintings of nudes, Superman’s appendage is on display. He and the woman followed the same routine as before. It is the only known footage of Cuba’s most renowned sex performer from the era of the Havana Mob.

  “Incredible,” concluded Ragano. “How can people do that for a living?” he asked Trafficante.

  “Frank, you’ve got to remember, over here there’s something for everybody. You want opera, they have opera. You want baseball, they have baseball. You want ballroom dancing, they have ballroom dancing. And if you want sex shows, they have live sex shows. That’s what makes this place so great.”

  In the following days, Trafficante offered Ragano a chance to “buy in.” Now that many of the Vegas mobsters had been forced to divest, there were openings for selected friends. A new casino was in the planning stages and shares were being sold privately at twenty-five thousand dollars for each 1 percent, or point, of the total investment. Ragano was tempted. He consulted his wife, Nancy, on the subject.

  “Hasn’t Santo heard about that revolutionary, Castro?” she asked her husband. “They say he’s trying to take over the country.”

  Ragano mentioned Castro and his rebel insurrection to Trafficante, who sneered whenever the subject was brought up. As far as the Tampa Mob boss was concerned, the rebels were a joke. Besides, he figured that even if Castro were to achieve the impossible and take over the country, little would change.

  “I’m sure Fidel will never amount to anything,” said Santo. “But even if he does, they’ll never close the casinos. There is so much damned money here for everybody.”

  BY THE SECOND WEEK OF APRIL, Trafficante had good reason to cast aspersions on Castro and his Revolution. The planned nationwide strike, which had been announced with great fanfare by Fidel, turned out to be a flop. The 26th of July Movement had envisioned a total shutdown, especially in Havana. Virtually everyone in the city was supposed to stay home from work, creating chaos and bringing the city to a standstill. It never happened. The casinos, nightclubs, bars, and las exhibiciones stayed open. The show went on as if nothing had changed.