Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

  OF ALL THE MOBSTERS rooted in Cuba, Santo Trafficante was the one who should have known better. Thanks to his Cuban friends and associates in Tampa, Santo had close access to the island’s troubled history. Rebellion was nothing new. If Trafficante wanted to know, any of Ybor City’s legion of Cuban exiles could have told him of the island’s cycle of dictatorship, corruption, and political turmoil. This cycle had been recurring at least since the violent fall of Machado back in the early 1930s, when Trafficante’s father was running booze and narcotics through the Pearl of the Antilles.

  It was Trafficante’s contention that whatever form of government followed Batista, it would still be dependent on the flow of capital that came from the casinos. In conversations with his lawyer Ragano, the Tampa Mob boss hinted that he had already begun covering his ass for the eventuality that Castro and his Revolution succeeded. Ragano took this to mean that Santo was secretly sending guns or money—or both—to the rebels in the Sierra Maestra.

  There is no conclusive evidence linking Trafficante to gun smuggling, but it is a fact that certain characters in Havana associated with Santo’s faction of the Mob were attempting to transport guns into the mountains.

  Norman Rothman had been involved in gambling in Cuba even before Batista’s coup of 1953; he was a partner of Trafficante at both the Sans Souci and Tropicana casinos. He had no particular allegiance to Batista; as a free-market capitalist in Cuba, Rothman would back whoever was in power, as long as that person was sympathetic to his gambling interests. If Castro were to take over—as it was beginning to appear he might—Rothman wanted to be in good standing; to this end, he established contact with the 26th of July Movement.

  In August 1958, just weeks before the beginning of the new tourist season, Rothman met with José Aleman, a Cuban living in Miami who was actively involved in the anti-Batista resistance. The two men met at Rothman’s off-season residence in Surfside, north of Miami. According to Aleman, who testified about the meeting years later before a U.S. congressional hearing, Rothman had in his possession several hundred Cuban pesos of various denominations. Rothman told Aleman that the pesos were counterfeit. He proposed that these pesos and others like them could be used to flood the market in Cuba, destabilize the local economy, and hasten the downfall of Batista.

  Aleman examined the bills and then suggested that he would pass the idea along to the chief of the 26th of July Movement in Miami. Apparently the movement was suspicious of Rothman’s motives. They turned him down flat.

  The gambling boss was determined to put himself in good standing with the Revolution. For Rothman and others representing the Trafficante faction of the Havana Mob, the Revolution presented an opportunity. If they could establish back-channel ties with Castro—and Castro took over—they could use the relationship to minimize the power of Lansky, who was closely identified with Batista. It was a dangerous game, but it made sense. The Trafficante and Lansky factions in Havana were uneasy partners, always on the lookout for ways to maneuver events to their advantage.

  With this in mind, Rothman reached out to Sammy and Kelly Mannarino, the two brothers who had owned the gambling concession at the Sans Souci before Batista and Lansky took over in Havana. Rothman most likely suggested to the Mannarinos that by cuddling up to Castro they might work their way back into the Cuban gambling picture. It is unlikely that Rothman would have made such an offer to the Mannarinos without the backing of his underworld boss, Santo Trafficante.

  On October 14, 317 weapons were stolen from a National Guard armory in Canton, Ohio. The Mannarinos contacted Rothman, who rented a plane for six thousand dollars to run the guns to Cuba. Rothman intended to pay for the guns via a Swiss bank account, using stolen securities as collateral for a loan. The weapons were in the process of being shipped when they were spotted on radar by the U.S. border patrol. The shipment was busted before leaving the United States, and most of the conspirators were indicted, including Rothman and the Mannarinos.

  Rothman remained free on bail, and the Revolution continued. In fact, the 26th of July Movement was able to get its guns from other unlikely sources, including the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

  At the same time the Trafficante faction of the Havana Mob was attempting to endear itself to the Revolution, a CIA case officer named Robert D. Weicha was arranging for a shipment of weapons to Raúl Castro’s “Second Front.” According to the late investigative journalist Tad Szulc, Weicha—who was in Cuba under the cover of the consulate general as a vice consul—had already made a series of payments totaling fifty thousand dollars to the 26th of July Movement in Santiago. Weicha’s activities were top secret and have never been declassified. There is also evidence that the CIA was involved in smuggling shipments of weapons to the rebels. Since no one from the CIA has ever explained their thinking at the time, the reasons for financing and arming the movement cannot be easily explained. It is a sound assumption, however, that the agency wished to hedge its bets in Cuba and purchase goodwill among some members of the movement for future contingencies. This would have been consistent with CIA policy elsewhere in the world whenever local conflicts affected U.S. interests.

  Cuba was becoming a cauldron of secret plots, double agents, and revolutionary conspiracies. And not all the weapons being sent to the island were destined for Castro. In March, the U.S. government had suspended all arms shipments to Batista on the grounds that the weapons were for self-defense against a foreign power and not to be used against fellow Cubans. This action on the part of the U.S. Congress came as a shock to Batista, who was now forced to arrange for guns to be shipped to his army via a third-party country. A major shipment arrived from the Dominican Republic; others were scheduled to arrive from Central America.

  Multiple planeloads of guns flooded the island—some destined for the rebels and some for the Cuban Army. In the airspace over the island and surrounding waters, these planes most likely passed other planes that were leaving Havana with a different kind of precious cargo: money.

  Nearly all the various factions of the Havana Mob had their own special bagmen, whose job it was to ferry cash and checks off the island into private bank accounts in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere in the Caribbean. Trafficante had Ralph Reina, the old-timer from Tampa who had been part of the Trafficante family operation going back to the 1930s. Lansky had Dan “Dusty” Peters, a lean, dapper character who had once been a host at the Colonial Inn and Meyer’s other Florida gambling joints. At the Havana Riviera, where the high rollers thought nothing of writing a check for twenty or thirty thousand dollars to cover a gambling debt, it was dapper Dusty’s job to take those checks on an early-morning flight to Miami, where they were express-cleared and deposited in a special account at the Bank of Miami Beach. Later, Lansky was also known to use Castle Bank in the Bahamas for large cash deposits.

  Batista was believed to have various people for this duty, cabinet ministers and members of the secret police, whose job it was to transport suitcases full of cash and other valuables for deposit in private accounts in Switzerland.

  At the Tropicana, owner Martín Fox had Lewis “Mack” McWillie, a fifty-year-old former blackjack dealer from Las Vegas who came to Havana in September 1958, ostensibly to work as a pit boss and later credit manager. McWillie was brawny and gruff, with thinning hair and an expanding belly. He was a knockaround guy originally from Dallas whom the FBI described as a murderer. McWillie had been around gangsters and gamblers most of his adult life. Years later, in front of the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations (investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy), McWillie explained his role in Havana:

  McWILLIE: I managed the Tropicana some and then the government took it over and I was sent to the Hotel Capri by Martín, who said you could get a job there, so go there.

  CHAIRMAN: Well, isn’t it true that you made trips to Miami?

  McWILLIE: To take money for Fox.

  CHAIRMAN: From Cuba, to deposit money?

  McWILLIE: Yes,
sir.

  CHAIRMAN: Explain that to us; tell us what you were doing.

  McWILLIE: They would ask me to go, if I would go to Miami and deposit some money for them, and I would do it.

  CHAIRMAN: By what you were doing, you were sort of running for them, is that right?

  McWILLIE: Well, I was a casino manager, and if they wanted me to do that for them, I did it.

  CHAIRMAN: The effect of what you were doing is they were getting their money out of Cuba into banks or deposit boxes here in the States, is that right?

  McWILLIE: Well, the money I took over there was—I took it to a teller and she put it in their account…

  Lewis McWillie was typical of the kind of characters who descended upon Havana for the 1958–59 tourist season. It was in newspapers all over the world: Havana was teeming with revolutionary intrigue and possibly on the verge of a major change. For underworld fringe players like McWillie, the idea that a once all-powerful dictatorship might be experiencing a major reshuffling of the deck was a golden opportunity. If Havana were to fall, presumably gambling and other rackets once controlled by the Havana Mob would be broken wide open. The old guard would be out on their asses and a whole new cast of characters would be there like carrion, ready to pick over the corpse.

  The promise of a new dawn approached, and a fresh set of hoodlums arrived: hangers-on, mercenaries, spooks, leeches, and bottom-feeders.

  Even so, Lansky, Trafficante, and other stalwarts of the mobster elite believed they were still on solid ground. As long as the money flowed from the casinos and nightclubs, they were able to cling to their illusions. If the world beyond was changing, they would be the last to know.

  chapter 14

  “GET THE MONEY”

  THE MOST GRANDIOSE HOTEL-CASINO EVER CONSTRUCTED in Cuba was to be called the Monte Carlo de La Habana. On paper, it was breathtaking: a massive, all-encompassing resort complex with a marina, interior canals and berths for yachts, a landing pad for helicopters and hydroplanes, and a golf course, along with the usual casino, nightclub, piano lounge, restaurant, etc. The Monte Carlo would have a capacity of 656 rooms, and a modern design created by one of the world’s best-known architects. Though the project had not yet been announced publicly, construction began in August 1958. The hotel and surrounding installations were projected to cost twenty million dollars, a new record for Havana. Financing would be assumed primarily by BANDES.

  The Monte Carlo was to be the summation of everything that had come before, a hotel, leisure, and entertainment complex that was to be one in a series of similar hotel-casinos all along the Malecón. In this new phase of development in Havana, what had come before was a mere prelude—a pittance compared to what Lansky and the Havana Mob had in mind for the future.

  “Havana will be a magical city,” Meyer told his driver, Jaime, one afternoon while standing near the construction site for the Monte Carlo. “Hotels like jewels built right on top of the coral reef that supports the Malecón. Fabulous casinos, nightclubs, and bordellos as far as the eye can see. More people than you can imagine.”

  Lansky’s driver listened; he could see the glint in Lansky’s eyes but also the doubt. “Impossible,” Meyer would say in a huff. Then he would take a deep breath of salty air and regain his optimism. “It could be, Jaimito. It could happen.”

  The Havana Mob’s latest creation was to be run by a company called La Compañía Hotelera de Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo Hotel Company had on its board of directors some of the most famous names in the world of business, politics, and entertainment. The most noteworthy stockholder was none other than “Chairman of the Board” Frank Sinatra.

  Sinatra’s interest in Havana went back at least as far as the 1946 Mob conference at the Hotel Nacional, when he allegedly transported a suitcase filled with cash to Charlie Luciano. After years of fraternizing with mobsters, Ol’ Blue Eyes was ready to buy in. He had visited Havana numerous times but, surprisingly, had never officially performed there. If all went according to plan, that was about to change in a big way. Sinatra was not only listed as a stockholder and prospective board member for the Hotel Monte Carlo, but he also had plans to stage a weekly variety show from the hotel that would be televised live in the United States and—presumably—around the world. In a report to BANDES, lawyers representing the company explained Sinatra’s intentions:

  [Sinatra] wants to televise the hotel’s properties from Cuba to the United States weekly, given that he is a producer and as an interested party in his programs intends to fulfill a double function: first, to put the hotel he manages in the spotlight; and second, to divert the profits produced by contracting the show in Cuba to a Cuban American company that will produce shows and movies from Cuba with panoramic vistas of the hotel serving as a backdrop.

  Joining Sinatra in this venture were the singer and actor Tony Martin, a frequent performer in Havana, actor and dancer Donald O’Connor, who had recently been nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Singin’ in the Rain, and New York restaurateur William Miller, who was also a producer of entertainment programs. Of Miller, the Monte Carlo lawyers were effusive in their praise:

  Mr. Miller is considered within the United States as the only person capable of what Americans call raising the dead. In other words, he has long experience staging shows that are huge tourist attractions in the United States, and he has contacts and connections with first-rate artistic businesses. As a guarantee, he has offered to bring to Cuba the 20 most important stars in the United States to promote international publicity in favor of the government directed by Major General Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar.

  Along with acting as a shill for the Batista dictatorship, the hotel’s management was to have considerable political sway in the United States as well. Another of the proposed directors at the Monte Carlo was Walter Kirschner, who had lived in the White House for twelve years as a key adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt. It was noted in the lawyer’s report that Kirschner had a personal relationship with the current occupant of the White House, Dwight Eisenhower, and he also had powerful connections in Vatican City, where he served as an envoy for the U.S. government. Kirschner knew the president and had a mainline to the Pope: what more could a Mob-affiliated dictatorship ask for?

  The Monte Carlo was to be the epitome of all that the Mob had hoped for in Cuba—a mix of celebrities, powerful businessmen, well-connected politicos, and mobsters. The very name of the place—Monte Carlo—evoked everything that Lansky had dreamed about. The city had arrived: Havana was to be arguably the most glamorous vacation spot in the world, a veritable money machine whose proceeds from gambling and other leisure activities in Cuba would finance Mob ventures around the globe. The Monte Carlo was the latest phase of a plan so ambitious that it was sure to awaken the ghosts of Jimmy Walker, Al Capone, Arnold “The Brain” Rothstein, and every other mobster or mobster acolyte who had hitched his wagon to the dream of a mobster’s paradise in Cuba. It was all within grasp, so close that Lansky, Trafficante, Batista, and the others could taste it, hold it in their hands, savor the aroma of money, power, and sex that was the fulfillment of their wildest criminal fantasies.

  So close and yet so far: for a dream that had evolved over decades of planning, manipulation, and repression, it was to have a relatively brief shelf life. The Monte Carlo may have been a “done deal” on paper, but in reality the project never got off the ground. The Cuban people had other ideas.

  IT WAS HARD FOR ANYONE to tell whether the Revolution was a pipe dream or a foregone conclusion. Censorship made it difficult to know. Articles about the war in Diario de la Marina were based on army press releases, with the emphasis invariably on surrender: “Five outlaws were arrested yesterday after surrendering near Trinidad and saying they were sorry they ever went to the mountains.” On one occasion, it was alleged that eight surrendered, saying, “They were sorry they had been fighting with the rebels.” Sometimes there were reports of an actual battle: “40 Rebels, 5 Soldiers Die, Army Reports.�
� Or “180 Casualties Reported in Oriente.” Rebel casualties were always high, army deaths always low. If you read only the mainstream press in Cuba, you might have thought the government was holding its own.

  By December, Los Nortes swept down from the Gulf and waves began to pound the seawall along the Malecón, as they sometimes did with the onset of winter. Even with the press blackout, the city was rife with rumors that Batista could not last much longer. Communications with the rest of the island had been shut off because the rebels had severed telephone wires and bombed electrical installations. Highways leading to the city were blockaded by revolutionary militias, hindering supplies of food. Many of Havana’s best restaurants were forced to drastically reduce their hours of operation or shut down completely because they had no produce, meat, or dairy. On an island where sugarcane was more common than grass, there was a sugar shortage as a result of rebel sabotage; the sugar that survived was used for export.

  Havana had never been more isolated. The hotels, casinos, and cabarets still functioned but with greatly reduced profits. To believe things were going well required that a person spend twenty-four hours a day in a casino, where there were no rebels, no broadcasts of Radio Rebelde, and no clocks, calendars, or windows. At night, the only vehicles that moved freely on the streets were blue-and-white police cars, the olive-green Oldsmobiles of the SIM, and the battered old autos carrying the men of Los Tigres. In recent weeks, senator Rolando Masferrer’s gang had moved from Santiago to Havana in anticipation of the showdown between the regime and the rebels that seemed likely to occur.

  In his office at the presidential palace, Fulgencio Batista conducted the country’s business from behind windows that had been outfitted with steel plates to block out sniper attacks. The president rarely attended public functions, where his mere appearance might touch off an act of civil disobedience, a riot, or, worst of all, an assassination attempt. Outside of an occasional proclamation over the radio, Batista had removed himself from the public discourse. Most of his time was spent at Kuquine, his palatial estate thirty minutes outside the city. He had lately begun to engage in strange behavior. He would eat huge meals that lasted for hours, then disappear into his back garden, where he stuck his finger down his throat and vomited in violent bursts. He would then return to the table, wipe his mouth with a white linen handkerchief, and resume eating. Was it vanity or a compulsive behavior disorder? Either way, El Mulato Lindo had begun to exhibit tendencies that were well known to the average Havana showgirl, a type of behavior commonly known as bulimia.