even as the boats bringing tourists from Florida and the Keys sat idle and empty against the jetties and docks, Castro knew he could not win. That money, the same money that had been creamed as graft from these dens of iniquity, was the finance that had kept Cuba alive. Castro also knew that the Syndicate possessed the only people who could make the casinos and hotels run at a profit, and thus he retracted his decree and gambling was legalized once more. Now state-run and overseen, where Batista had charged $250,000 for each license, and more again beneath the table, Castro’s regime levied a fee of $25,000 plus twenty percent of the profits from each casino. He made it illegal for anyone other than naturalized Cubans to act as croupiers, and the Americans came in as ‘official teachers’. Castro hired advertising agencies to promote the high-life of Havana; the hotels were rebuilt and refurbished after the ravages of his people on the eve of his assumption; the tourists came back in their thousands, and with them a reputed annual revenue exceeding fifty million dollars.
A little more than twenty years earlier a different sequence of events had begun that would bring to Havana one of the most influential organized crime figures in history. In January 1936 a government special prosecutor named Thomas E. Dewey began a series of raids on New York’s brothels. The raids continued until March when a ninety-count indictment was brought against Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano. Luciano fled New York to a gambling club in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and this was where he was arrested. He was extradited to New York City, and on 13 May 1936 his trial began. On 7 June of the same year a jury found Luciano guilty of sixty-two counts of prostitution, and he was sentenced to thirty to fifty years in Dannemora Prison in upstate New York. On 7 May 1945, a petition for executive clemency and freedom was made to the now governor, Thomas Dewey, and Dewey agreed to a reduction of sentence. On 3 January 1946, Dewey announced that Luciano would be freed, but he was to be deported to his native Sicily. Luciano was released from Great Meadow and taken to Ellis Island. Here he boarded the vessel
In Havana Luciano was met by his childhood friend and ally Meyer Lansky, and taken to the Hotel Nacional. It was in that same hotel that Luciano and Lansky arranged what would later be known as the Havana Conference for the third week of December 1946. Luciano moved into a plush and extravagant home in the Miramar suburb. Lansky traveled back and forth between Miami and Havana, keeping Luciano informed of the arrangements for the Conference.
On Christmas Eve the Conference took a break. Wives and girlfriends arrived and a party in honor of Frank Sinatra – an up-and-coming star who had arrived with the Fischetti brothers – was held.
The Havana casinos flourished, even under Castro’s regime, and Meyer Lansky, the man Batista had employed to make Cuba the place for America to gamble away its hard-earned millions, now made those millions for Castro. He had cleaned up the Sans Souci and Montmartre clubs, had leaned on major operators like Norman Rothman and forced them to straighten up their acts, had had many of the crooked American casino managers deported, and instigated the practice of dealing blackjack from a six-deck shoe, a practice which stacked the odds heavily in favor of the casinos and prevented cheating by both players and dealers.
The Italians carried gambling in their blood and bones, they were the most proven and successful impresarios in the business, and their willingness to pay government officials for the right to operate their business was legend. Lansky brought with him the cream of the crop from Vegas, Reno and New York. At his right hand was his own brother, Jake, installed as the floor manager in the Nacional’s casino. From Florida came Santo Trafficante who was given an interest in the Sans Souci, the Comodoro and the Capri. Joseph Silesi and the actor George Raft bought pieces of the business, along with Fat the Butch from New York’s Westchester County and Thomas Jefferson McGinty from Cleveland. There was no opposition, and thus there was no need for the heavy-handed tactics employed on the mainland. The tourists had no worry about loaded dice, stacked decks or magnetic clips beneath the roulette wheels. The business was as clean as it could get, and with decades of experience behind them the Syndicate established Cuba as the place to be. Pit bosses, dealers and stickmen were ferried in from the States, and they trained the Cuban croupiers and house-staffs in the ways of the world. Castro’s denunciation of gambling had at one time sent the tourists out to the La Concha Hotel in San Juan or the Arawak Hotel in Jamaica, but his reversal had brought them home once more, and it was into this world that Ruben and I stepped unknowingly in the beginning of 1960.
The scam still ran, the ‘little bird’ scam for the queer businessmen and switch-hitter Cubans, and while Fidel Castro Ruz curried favor with the USSR, while he instigated agreements to buy Russian oil, while he generated friction with the US by taking American-owned properties and giving insufficient compensation, Ruben and I were busy making our mark and loading our own dice.
It was a Friday night, 5 February, and it was Ruben’s idea that we head up to the car lot back of the Nacional and check out the trade. It was new territory, but Ruben had heard that the tricks up there were prepared to pay upwards of twenty dollars a time to get their balls emptied by some young Cuban stud. If they carried that much for a blowjob, Ruben said, then what kind of bankroll had they pocketed when they went out for the night?
I was twenty-two years old, I looked no more than eighteen or nineteen, and when I walked from the car to the edge of the lot, when I stood leaning against the railing that separated the lot from the walkway, dressed in white linen pants, an oversized ivory-colored shirt and canvas boat shoes, when I lit my cigarette and flicked the hair from my eyes, I could tell that there weren’t many of those old boys that could have resisted me. It was an act, a performance, a face I wore for the world, and I wore it well. Like a professional.
The car that drew alongside me was a deep burgundy Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, a hardtop, and the way the silk paintwork shined, the way the chrome runners and wheel-hubs reflected a million lights from the Nacional behind me, I knew I was right up there with the players.
The driver was no Cuban. His manner, his voice, his clothes – everything about him told me he was Italian. He smiled wide. He winked. He told me ‘Hi there’, asked if I was waiting for someone in particular, if he could give me a ride somewhere.
‘Kind of ride would you be speaking about?’ I asked him.
‘Any kind of ride you might be interested in,’ he said.
‘Kind that pays maybe twenty dollars?’ I asked.
‘Maybe,’ the man said, and again he smiled, and then he winked, and I walked around back of the car and slid in through the passenger side door.
‘I got a little place,’ the man said, and then he placed his hand on my knee.
I pressed myself against the seat, and there in the rear waistband of my pants I could feel the handle of my shiv. I smiled to myself. He was not a big man. He dressed too well to be a heavy hitter for the mob. Dressed well enough to carry a handsome bankroll for his night out on the town.
‘Where we going?’ I asked.
‘See when we get there,’ he said, and I watched as his hands tightened on the steering wheel. He had on a wedding band, a plain gold hoop, and I wondered where his wife was, what his children were doing right that second, and I asked myself how these sick-minded motherfuckers ever believed there wouldn’t be some night when they would be nailed for what they were doing.
We drove for no more than five or six minutes, and then we turned left down a driveway ahead of a roadside motel. I could feel the tension in every sinew, every nerve, could feel the muscles tensing in the backs of my legs and my shoulders. I was frightened, I cannot deny it, but I was also excited. How many times we had pulled this scam I could not recall, and experience had proved that I could do this thing alone. Ruben was somewhere back near the Nacional; he would wait for me there, wait for me to return with as many dollars as I could take from this trick, and then we would party. On my side was fear. It was that simple. These guys were frightened of discovery, frightened that something would be said, frightened that they would be found out for what they were, and it was that fear that caused them not only to give in when faced with a youth with a knife, but also to say nothing of what had happened. Where would they go? Who would they report this to? The police? Their Mafia contacts? Somehow I didn’t think so.
The man drew the car to a halt back of a motel cabin. He killed the engine, took the keys and tucked them inside his jacket pocket, and before he exited he offered me a cigarette from a gold cigarette case. I took one and the man lit it for me, one for himself also. I followed him as he walked from the car to the front door of the cabin. With the same key chain he unlocked the door, stepped aside to let me enter, and then followed me in. It was a
