IN SOUTH MIAMI, JOSÉ MIGUEL BATTLE HAD CREATED HIS OWN TROPICAL PARADISE. IT was located far from the fetid streets and crowded housing projects of places like Union City and New York, where the burning embers of the arson wars had yet to be extinguished. At El Zapotal, his hacienda in Redland, Battle could till the soil and feed the roosters, as if the troubles of the big city were a galaxy away. At El Zapotal, Battle was not a gangster; he was a gentleman farmer.
By late 1983, Battle had successfully purchased the five parcels of land that surrounded his home at 17249 SW 192nd Street, four blocks east of Krome Avenue. Altogether, Battle’s property, purchased in the early 1980s at a cost of $1.5 million, now covered twenty-two and a half acres. There were two homes on the property, the one where Battle and his wife lived—a modest ranch-style, three-bedroom house with a pool—and a house for the men and women who worked there, located approximately two hundred yards to the rear of the main house.
To the west of both houses, Battle and his farmhands had cultivated the soil, planted seedlings, and in some cases grafted offspring from previously grown mamey trees. It was something that he had dreamed of since his youth in Oriente, where mamey trees grew wild and strong.
The mamey sapote was like Battle himself, a robust organism with a thick central trunk and large limbs. The fruit of the mamey is the size of a cantaloupe, shaped somewhat like a football, varying in length from six to nine inches. Its skin is thick, with a rough russet brown surface. The Cuban version of the fruit is known as mamey colorado, because its pulp is salmon pink to red, soft and smooth in texture. The flavor is sweet, almond-like, with a unique aftertaste.
Among Cuban Americans in South Florida, mamey has a nostalgic popularity, its presence in the kitchen a reminder of the island. As well as being eaten raw, it is used to make milkshakes, ice cream, jams, and jellies.
By the time it was up and running, Battle’s ten-acre grove of more than one hundred mamey sapote was a thing of beauty. The fruit was harvested in the spring and sold throughout South Florida under the name of Battle’s company, El Zapotal, Inc. El Padrino employed a dozen workers to oversee his grove, some of whom lived on the property. Growing and selling the fruit was more than just an act of nostalgia for Battle. It served as a front for his bolita business, the profits of which could be laundered by way of the blessed fruit of his youth.
Along with his new farming enterprise, Battle had on his property at any given time more than two hundred fighting roosters. He built a valla, or arena, for staging cockfights, but it was used mostly for training the birds, not staging actual fights. Cockfights were illegal and usually staged at clandestine locations.
Battle loved his birds and treated them with great care. Each bird had its own individual pen and was tended to by the half dozen trainers that Battle employed.
Cockfighting was deeply rooted in the culture of Latin America. Battle had seen his first cockfight as a child in Oriente, and in Havana, when he was a vice cop, the cockfights were important meeting places for cops and criminals. They were also hugely popular gambling events, where a man could make a name for himself either through the size of his bets or the quality of his cocks.
The day started early at El Zapotal. Imagine the sound of hundreds of roosters crowing and cackling at the crack of dawn. Battle loved it. The only thing he enjoyed more than the sound of the roosters in the morning was their sound at night, when they were fighting in an arena, squawking, strutting, and flapping their wings as they clawed each other with their sharp spurs, and the losing birds sometimes bled out while wads of cash were passed back and forth among the spectators.
Another feature of El Zapotal were the dozens of stray dogs that Battle picked up off the street and brought to his property for safe-keeping. Many of his underlings could attest to his affection for the dogs. Carlos “Trio de Trés” Rodriguez, who, like a number of Battle’s key associates, made the move to Miami to help facilitate El Padrino’s life in Florida, often would be driving with Battle when he would spot a stray dog in the street, looking emaciated and weak. “Stop the car!” Battle would command. He would swing open the door and call for the dog. The animal would be taken back to his property, where it would be bathed and fed and become part of El Padrino’s herd of lost canines.
At El Zapotal, Battle had much of what he wanted—his favorite fruit, his roosters, and his dogs. Most of all, he had peace of mind. A primary reason for moving to El Zapotal was that he needed to separate himself from the violence that was being perpetrated in his name far away in New York. This was especially true as the arson wars raged in the boroughs. The Corporation’s organizational structure—and geography—insulated El Padrino. Those unfortunate killings in Brooklyn and Manhattan were far away, out of sight and out of mind; they did not reflect his daily life. As the arsons gave rise to a ghastly body count, Battle and the other bolita bankers told themselves that it had nothing to do with them. Ask them who was behind these killings and they would tell you that they didn’t know, that it must be some sort of street-level dispute between the various owners and operators of the bolita holes themselves. No one in the Corporation or in La Compañía would take responsibility for the arsons, much less the killings that were a consequence of them.
Even José Miguel, who was not shy about owning up to his violent acts, denied that he had anything to do with the arsons in New York. Especially after the killing of Jannin Toribio, a four-year-old child, no one would admit that the arsons were part of a strategy of payback against the Mafia. Only one man among them had the audacity to underwrite such a scheme. When asked who or what was behind the arson campaign, the boliteros would change the subject, but they knew. It was José Miguel Battle Sr.
In the criminal underworld, violence was often a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sometimes people used violence because they believed it was a solution to a problem. Other times, it was a reflective impulse, the equivalent for some men of thinking with their penis. Anyone who functioned as a criminal boss—and particularly someone who had been doing so for some time—had to know that violence begat violence. Choosing it as a course of action was like lifting the lid off the collective id; you never knew exactly how your enemies were going to respond, but you had to know that it might possibly be with a commensurate level of mayhem.
Battle was impulsive, but he was also a strategist. He chose violence knowing that there would be consequences, knowing that there would be collateral damage. War is hell. Battle knew this because he had lived it. He may have moved far away from the battlefield, which allowed him the illusion of blamelessness, but he never separated himself from the use of violence as a legitimate strategy. He might be innocent today, but he reserved the right to be guilty tomorrow.
The problem with violence was that its demands were often retroactive. You could kill to get ahead in the world, but just as often you might kill as a way of settling old scores. This was something to which El Padrino could attest. Revenge was sometimes impetuous, but sometimes it was merely a necessity, the response to a set of irrefutable facts in which for professional killers and criminals it seemed like the only logical course of action.
Such was the case in March 1984, when El Padrino learned that his old bodyguard and accessory in the murder of Ernestico Torres had been apprehended in Miami. Though there had been an active warrant out for Chino Acuna for eight years, for the last four of those years he had been circulating openly in Miami, albeit under a number of assumed names, including José A. Canales and José A. Chacon. For the last year he had been running a modest bolita office at NE 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street in downtown Miami. It was a seamy area, just east of the Over-town slums, with a large homeless population and street sex workers of the bargain-basement variety.
At 11 A.M. on Wednesday, March 28, Acuna was walking along NE 2nd Avenue when he was surrounded by an armed team of FBI agents from the Apprehension Squad. Acuna surrendered without incident. He was charged on the federal warrant of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
With Acuna in custody, the FBI notified the Metro-Dade Police Department (formerly the Dade County Public Safety Department). Sergeant David Rivers of Metro-Dade, knowing Acuna’s status as a wanted murderer, arranged to have him transferred to Dade County jail. Sergeant Rivers then contacted the prosecutor’s office. Everyone was excited. The Ernestico Torres murder case was going to be reopened. Chino Acuna, who they believed was one of the primary culprits, would be charged with the murder of Ernestico and also the attempted murder of Idalia Fernandez.
The cops and prosecutors may have been excited, but the likely witnesses in the case—Idalia and Charley Hernandez—were not. The trial had been excruciating for all involved. Charley had been separated from his family, with his daughters Kelly and Carol having had their childhoods irreparably altered. Idalia Fernandez, if anything, had an even more difficult time. Her testimony had proven vital in the conviction of Battle. Though she had held back on the crucial detail that Battle was one of the gunmen that day, she had detailed how she and Ernestico had been on the run because Battle, along with others, wanted to kill them. On the witness stand, Idalia made it clear that Chino Acuna was the man who had shot her in the face. If Acuna was going on trial, Idalia would be the star witness.
Furthermore, what if she had decided to tell the full truth this time, that Battle was one of the gunmen that day? Battle had done time for conspiracy to commit murder, but now, in light of new evidence, he could possibly be retried for murder.
With the arrest of Chino and the prospect of a new murder trial, the Corporation had a big problem on its hands.
SINCE THE ERNESTICO MURDER TRIAL HAD ENDED IN NOVEMBER 1977, SEVEN YEARS earlier, Idalia Fernandez had been living a transitional existence. For a while, she stayed in Miami with her youngest daughter. Having testified at the trial, she was a marked woman. She lived under an assumed name and had a hard time holding a steady job. Though she had never been officially diagnosed, she suffered from post-traumatic stress from having been brutalized, having her boyfriend murdered, and from the anxiety of the trial, which, as it turned out, continued well after it was over.
She needed to get away from Miami, where these events had taken place. The only people who mattered to her were her mother and her three children. Since the trial, her oldest child had been living with her grandmother in New York City. Idalia needed to be closer to the ones she loved, and so in 1980 she moved back to Manhattan and found an apartment just two blocks away from her grandmother in upper Manhattan.
For Idalia, life had never been easy. Throughout her adulthood, most of her male companions were troubled men, much like Ernesto Torres had been. She had turned to men for protection, for financial support, and for sex. It usually ended badly, though never as badly as with Ernestico.
In New York, Idalia lived off welfare payments from the government, and also she sold weed on the side. Her one-bedroom apartment was in a tenement building at 133 West 90th Street, just a few blocks from Riverside Park, where she used to take her youngest child, Erika, in a stroller when he was still a baby. Erika was now five, and Idalia’s boy was eleven.
Idalia learned of the arrest of Chino Acuna through a prosecutor in Miami, who called to tell her there was going to be another trial. The news hit Idalia with a force similar to the pummeling she had taken from Chino. She thought about gathering up her kids and going on the run before she could be served with a subpoena, but she was too tired to do that. Recently, on March 20, she had turned forty years old. In some ways, she was amazed to have made it to that age. She no longer had the energy to outrun the law.
In April, not long after she first learned about Chino Acuna’s arrest, Idalia was called on by an unexpected visitor—the former detective Julio Ojeda.
In 1982, at a dramatic trial in Miami, Ojeda had been convicted on racketeering charges and booted from the police department. His relationship with drug kingpin Mario Escandar had ruined his career. Ojeda had appealed his conviction and was out on bail, pending a decision from the Third District Court of Appeal.
At the trial, it did come up that Ojeda had had an “improper” sexual relationship with Idalia, though in light of the multiple sensational charges against the detective, people hardly seemed to notice. Since his conviction, while out on appeal, Ojeda had been working as a private investigator for, of all people, Jack Blumenfeld. Battle’s attorney had known Ojeda since the days when Blumenfeld was an A-line prosecutor and Ojeda had just been transferred to the homicide section of the Public Safety Department. Blumenfeld was well aware of Ojeda’s legal baggage, so he kept the former detective’s name out of the official paperwork, and hence out of the court records.
Idalia was not thrilled to see Ojeda at her door in Manhattan. Since hearing of Acuna’a arrest, she had been living in fear, knowing that she was being dragged back into the realm of José Miguel Battle and everything he represented. Seeing Ojeda was like a visit from the ghost of Christmas past. She had followed his criminal case in the newspapers and knew that he’d been convicted on serious charges. He likely would be going away to prison. Ojeda had the aura of a desperate man.
Ojeda told Idalia that he was there to warn her about the potential dangers ahead if she were to testify.
“You could have told me that over the phone,” said Idalia.
Ojeda said that he did not want there to be any record of their having communicated.
After Ojeda departed, Idalia was not reassured. The visit from the convicted ex-detective was unnerving. He was a dirty cop. She didn’t know that Ojeda was now working for Battle’s attorney. If she had known, it would have made his appearance even more ominous.
A couple of weeks later, Idalia was visited by another cop—Detective Richard Kalafus of the NYPD. She knew Kalafus from Ernestico’s murder case. She told him about Ojeda’s visit. Kalafus seemed concerned; he told Idalia to contact him immediately if Ojeda tried to contact her again.
In September, Idalia heard that Charley Hernandez had been deposed for the upcoming trial in Miami. The deposition had taken place at the 19th Precinct station house in Manhattan, and was conducted by prosecutors from Miami. Idalia was told that she would likely be deposed the following month.
Idalia wondered whether Battle would let her live long enough to testify against Chino Acuna.
At times, the anxiety was crippling. She tried to live a normal life. Each day, she sent her two children off to school. Then she spent the rest of the day selling and smoking weed.
One day, she was at a supermarket on West 97th Street near her apartment when she saw a man she thought was José Miguel Battle. How could that be? She followed the man, sneaking between the aisles of the market. Yes, it was Battle. She was certain.
Even though she was terrified, Idalia kept up appearances. She had a boyfriend, a forty-three-year-old Cuban named Armando who worked at an auto garage farther uptown. Armando was not the father of either of her children, but he helped her out financially in exchange for sex.
For Idalia, sex was something of a survival mechanism. Her children were all from different men. She used sex because she could, in the hope that it would improve her situation in life, but her relationships usually made things worse.
In her building, many of her neighbors knew that she was occasionally sleeping with a tenant named Roberto. She had met him through Angie, her babysitter. At first, Roberto was a customer; he bought weed from her. They got high together and had sex a few times, but it was only casual.
There was another guy in the building who was sweet on Idalia. His name was Ramon. He had moved into the building earlier that year after being released from Sing Sing prison and lived in an apartment next door to Idalia (she was in 11D and he was in 11C).
Ramon often saw Idalia in the hallway, and he liked what he saw. He once encountered her in the building stairwell. They talked, and he leaned over to give her a kiss. She did not resist. Ramon took this as a sign, and he began following her. Eventually, Idalia had to tell him, “Look, I’m not interested in having a relationship with you. Stay away from me, stay away from my kids.” She told him she was already having an affair with Roberto, whom Ramon knew from having seen him around the building.
This did not go down well with Ramon, who was the jealous type. He cursed at Idalia and threatened her. Idalia was frightened enough to tell a neighbor, Brenda, in 14A, that she believed the guy who lived next to her, Ramon, was going to try to get her and stab her.
“Why?” asked the neighbor.
“Because he wants to have an affair, but I have no interest in that man.”
Unbeknownst to Idalia, Ramon began following Roberto around the neighborhood. He did not like that Roberto was sleeping with Idalia, while he had been rejected.
On the night of November 24, Ramon and Roberto had it out on the sidewalk in front of their building. Roberto, who was young and bigger than Ramon, kicked his ass. He gave him two black eyes and a bloody nose.
Ramon was humiliated, and he was irate. On his way back to his room, he stopped outside Idalia’s apartment and spread blood from his battered nose all over her front door.
Idalia was not flattered to hear that the two men had had a fight over her. She was more frightened than ever about Ramon.
The day after the fight, an older tenant named Juan, who was part of a tenant patrol group, ran into Idalia in the lobby of the building. She was coming from the laundry room in the basement, carrying a bag of laundry. She asked Juan if he would escort her to her apartment.
“Is there a problem?” Juan asked.
She explained that she had a neighbor, Ramon in apartment 11C, who had been bothering her and banging on her door. Juan walked Idalia to her apartment.
In times of stress, Idalia lit up a joint. She had men all around her— lovers, wannabe lovers, gangsters, cops, ex-cops, and prosecutors. Few of them had her best interests in mind. Some wanted to use her, and some wanted to do her harm.
THE ARSON WARS HAD BEEN GOING WELL, AS FAR AS THE CORPORATION WAS CONcerned. Yes, there had been some bad publicity, but the feeling was that it would all blow over eventually. Meanwhile, the death of Jannin Toribio brought about a cessation of arsons for the time being.
Willie Diaz stayed busy. He did some goon work for Lalo Pons, roughing up deadbeats who owed money to the Corporation, or doing some vandalism to deliver a message on behalf of the organization. He felt as though his stature was rising, especially after he was introduced one day to Nene Marquez, who was basically the New York boss of the Corporation. “I hear you been doing good work,” Nene told Willie.
For a street hood like Willie Diaz, a Puerto Rican, to be recognized by the Cuban Mafia was flattering. He felt as though he was being groomed for something special. That “something” arrived on a day in mid-November when Lalo Pons approached him in Brooklyn and asked, “There’s a very important contract I want to ask you about. It involves shooting someone, finishing them off. Do you think you can do it?”
Willie said that he could.
“Good,” said Lalo. “El Gordo himself will want to talk to you about this. Meet me here tomorrow. I’ll take you to see the guy you’ll be working with.”
The next day, Pons and Willie drove to a small park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Willie met a guy named Angel. Later, Willie would remember, “I thought he was a faggot. He had makeup all over his neck and some on his face. It was weird.”
There was a pay phone in the park. Pons dialed a number and spoke to someone, then he handed the phone to Willie. “He wants to talk to you.”
Willie took the phone and said, “Hello.”
It was El Padrino on the line. “He told me what a great job I had been doing for the organization, first as a bolitero and then for the arsons. He asked me, ‘If I need you to do something special for me, you would do it?’”
Willie said yes, he would. He was proud to be doing a hit for the Corporation, but then he was startled when Battle explained that his first job would involve the killing of a woman. “He told me he wanted me to kill a woman going by the name of Maria Castro. He said that she had testified against him years ago and she’d been in hiding using this name. I later found out her real name was Idalia Fernandez.”
Battle was very clear about how he wanted the hit done. “I want no mistakes,” he said. “Deliver a coup de grâce . . . shoot her directly between the eyes. And you’re going to have to get rid of the body. Burn it or bury it, I don’t care how you do it. But I don’t want the police to find that body, much less be able to identify it . . . Listen to me: we found this woman because she’s a marijuanera, a pothead. We have a plan. Lalo will tell you all about it. He’ll give you anything you need—money, guns, cars.”
“Okay,” said Willie, “sounds good.” He hung up the phone.
Willie, Pons, and Angel discussed the plan. Pons explained, “The reason we’re in this park is because the target lives right over there.” He pointed out Idalia’s building, which was across West 90th Street and half a block away. He pulled out a manila envelope and produced some pictures. One of them was an old Polaroid photo of “Maria Castro” that appeared to be a police mug shot. Then Pons showed Willie some more recent photos that were of the woman entering and exiting her apartment building.
Pons told Willie, “You’re gonna pose as a weed dealer, to gain her confidence. You’ll meet her here in this park. She comes here with her kids almost every day. Be friendly, offer her a hit off your joint. Tell her there’s plenty more where that came from. You just bought a pound of Colombian Gold. You wanna give her a free sample, but you don’t want to pull it out in a public place. Ask her if she lives in the neighborhood. What you want to do is drop it by her place.”
Willie listened carefully. He was picturing the hit in his mind.
Angel spoke up, with self-assurance, like someone who had done this kind of thing before. “Once you get to her apartment, there’s two ways we can handle this. You can kill her yourself, and I’ll come in behind you to help get rid of the body. Or you can get her to open the door, let you in, then I’ll burst in and kill her. Either way.”
Pons interrupted, saying to Willie, “You do the shooting yourself and you get the larger share. That’s how it goes.”
Willie said, “Let me think about it.”
They went to a nearby coffee shop to have something to eat. As they were sitting there talking, it came out that Angel supposedly knew the target from a time when she lived down in Miami.
“Oh, so she knows you from Miami?” asked Willie.
“Yeah, she knows me,” said Angel.
Willie thought about it and said, “Well, in that case, you do the shooting. I’ll take the smaller share.”
Two days later, Willie met with Pons to get the money to buy the pound of weed to trick Idalia. Again, Pons put Willie on the phone with the boss down in Miami. As Willie remembered later, “[Battle] told me that he changed his mind . . . that he wanted the woman’s body left in the apartment afterwards as a message to the feds.”
After Willie and Battle were off the phone, Pons gave Willie some money for the weed. “I’ll have a car for you tomorrow. And clean guns. Listen to me: it’s important that you don’t use any gun I may have given you before. And the one I give you tomorrow, if you use it for any reason, bring it back here to me.” Pons explained that guns, if used, would have to be destroyed. He told Willie that the Corporation had their own “armorers” whose job it was to line up guns—.45s, .38s, and 9mm automatics. It was also their job to make the murder weapons disappear by melting them down after they were used.
The next day, the getaway car and guns never arrived. Willie checked with Pons, who told him, “Stand by. I’ll get you those items when the time is right.” Then another day went by, and then another.
Willie was ready to take part in the hit. At first he had misgivings about being involved in the killing of a female, which was frowned upon in some circles, like on the streets or in prison. But in the interest of getting ahead in life, he was willing to do it. He would be acting on direct orders from the boss, El Gordo, the man in Miami. What could be more prestigious than that?
ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOVEMBER 30, IDALIA WAS HOME WITH A SLIGHT HEADACHE. After getting the kids off to school that morning, she had gone back to bed and slept in late. Rising around noon, she did what she often did after rolling out of bed: she lit up a joint.
Idalia needed to do some shopping, but she was hesitant to leave her apartment alone. Ever since she had seen the man she thought was José Miguel Battle in her neighborhood, she was afraid to go out. Also, there was Ramon next door, who had splattered her door with blood. You could say she was paranoid—but with good reason. If someone knocked at her door, she looked through the peephole to make sure it was someone she knew.
That morning there was a knock at Idalia’s door. A neighbor down the hall from her would later say that she saw two men, well dressed in suits and ties, at the door of apartment 11D.
Idalia answered the door and let the two men into her apartment. It was unlikely that she would have done that if she did not know them. She knew them well enough that she let them in and turned her back on them. She did not notice that they were wearing gloves.
With her back to the two men, Idalia heard a click. She turned around to see one of the men fiddling with the chamber of a gun. The click had been the sound of the man pulling the trigger, but the weapon—a .22-caliber automatic with a silencer attached—had jammed. This required that the shooter eject the bad round and manually feed a new round into the chamber.
Idalia ran frantically for the kitchen, toward the phone.
The shooter raised his gun and fired two quick shots, hitting Idalia in the back of the neck and the back of the head. As she fell, he fired two more times, hitting her on the right side of the head and on top of the head.
Idalia slumped to the floor, her blood and brain matter smearing the wall.
The gunman reracked his gun, stepped forward, and pressed the cold barrel of the silencer to Idalia’s face. He pulled the trigger, splattering more flesh and bone matter.
There were five shots in all to Idalia’s neck, head, and face, with immediate traumatic injury to the brain and spinal cord. She was likely dead before the two hit men quietly exited the building.
That afternoon, Idalia’s children, Erika and Freddy, arrived home from school around 3:30 P.M. Mommy had told them that she would be there when they got home. When they arrived at the apartment, they thought it was strange that the door was slightly ajar. The two kids opened the door and entered the apartment. Immediately they saw their mother’s body lying on the floor, faceup. At first they thought she might be playing some kind of joke. But as they approached, they saw the blood.
The two children stood over their mother’s bullet-riddled body. Blood was flowing from her mouth.
The kids screamed and ran out of the apartment. They knew better than to bang on the door of 11C; that’s where the man who had been hassling their mother lived. They ran to door on the other side, 11B, and banged with all their might. “Please, help us! There’s something wrong with Mommy! Help!”
One of the first detectives to receive a call that day was Kalafus. His heart sank. Since the arrest of Chino Acuna earlier that year, he had been the point man in touch with Idalia on a regular basis. After she had seen someone she thought was José Miguel Battle in her neighborhood, Kalafus had suggested she have a round-the-clock police guard stationed at her apartment. She had not wanted that, feeling it would only terrify her children. She wanted to hold on to the illusion that she was living a normal life. Kalafus understood that, but he realized now that, at the very least, they should have stationed a police car on guard duty outside the building, whether Idalia wanted it or not.
In the days following the murder, Kalafus showed up at the building in his usual attire of cowboy hat and leather boots, looking like Mc-Cloud. He interviewed five or six of Idalia’s neighbors, and others in the building. He heard about the fight over Idalia that Ramon and Roberto had just six days before the murder, how Ramon had smeared blood on Idalia’s door. In other circumstances, Ramon might have been suspect number one in Idalia’s murder, but Kalafus knew better. One neighbor he interviewed told the detective that he had seen two men knock on Idalia’s apartment door. They were well dressed and did not appear to be tenants in the building. When Kalafus began showing to the neighbor photos of possible suspects from his Cuban gangster file, the person became nervous and uncooperative. “I don’t want to end up like Idalia,” said the neighbor.
The next day, Kalafus received a call from Charley Hernandez. “I heard a rumor that Idalia was murdered. Is that true?”
“It is,” admitted the detective.
“That’s it. I’m out. There’s no way I will testify.”
“Now, Charley, you’re still under subpoena.”
“I’ve got a family to protect. Do you hear me? I don’t want to be the next one to have my brains blown out. Goodbye.”
The next day, Kalafus tried to call Charley, but his phone had been disconnected. “He’s disappeared,” said Kalafus to the prosecutor in Miami.
In truth, Charley had only moved his family eighty-five miles south to Toms River, New Jersey, but if the cops and prosecutors wanted to believe that he had gone into hiding far away in California, or Canada, or Mexico, that was fine with him.
A FEW DAYS AFTER THE MURDER OF IDALIA, WILLIE DIAZ RECEIVED A PHONE CALL FROM Lalo Pons. He was told, “Never mind about that hit. It’s been taken care of.” Lalo never came right out and named Angel as the killer, but he did say, “That guy you met killed her.”
Sensing Willie’s disappointment at losing out on a big score, Lalo added, “Don’t worry. We’ll find another good-paying job for you in the future.”
Willie nursed his disappointment with cocaine and hookers. It was true that he had missed out on a nice payday, but now he was in tight with Pons and the Godfather himself. He had no doubt there would be other opportunities to rise up in the organization.
WITH THEIR MAIN WITNESS DEAD AND CHARLEY HERNANDEZ IN HIDING, AUTHORITIES in Florida had no case against Chino Acuna. The prosecutor, Michael Cornely, told a District Court judge in Miami that he could not produce Idalia Fernandez for deposition because she was deceased. He then told the judge something oddly discordant with the facts: “There is no evidence the murder of Fernandez was an attempt to eliminate a witness in this case.”
The murder of Idalia sent ripples of fear throughout the Latin underworld in the United States. The killing was reported in the Spanish-language press, and it even made headlines in the New York Times and the Miami Herald (“Only Witness to ’76 Murder Slain in New York”). As with the murder of Palulu, given the number of years that had passed, it was a revenge killing of epic proportions. This killing had the added purpose of obliterating the government’s case against Chino Acuna. Coupled with the arson killings of the previous eighteen months, the concept of a violent Latin American criminal underworld was beginning to take shape in the public consciousness.
Cops and federal agents were increasingly aware that some form of Cuban-centric organized crime was under way in the United States, but to most non-Latino citizens it was a foreign concept. Ever since the Godfather movies captured the public imagination a decade earlier, the only version of organized crime that registered for most people was Italian. This had consequences for more than just popular culture. Within law enforcement, at both local and federal levels, it was difficult if not impossible for agents to generate interest or enthusiasm among their superiors for cases involving any crime groups other than the Mafia. Arrests and indictments of Mafia figures made headlines and advanced careers; the others did not.
The lethal arsons at known gambling spots throughout New York, and the killing of a prospective witness in a murder trial, signaled the beginnings of a shift. Cops and investigators were hearing more and more about the Corporation. Those in the know were aware that Cuban American gangsters had a controlling interest in bolita, but what they were hearing now was that the organizational structure, and the profits, were vaster than anything they had imagined.
Throughout 1984 and into 1985, law enforcement intelligence about the Corporation began to work its way upstream from the streets to the hallowed halls of the federal government.
The President’s Commission on Organized Crime was an investigative body created on July 28, 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12435. The purpose of the commission was “to make a full national and regional analysis of organized crime; define the nature of traditional organized crime as well as emerging organized crime groups, the sources and amounts of organized crime’s income; develop in-depth information on the participants in organized crime networks; and evaluate federal laws pertinent to the effort to combat organized crime.”
Though the commission would not have the power to arrest or indict people (it was not a law enforcement entity), it did have the power to issue federal subpoenas, compelling witnesses to testify under rule of law.
The commission was governed by a panel of nineteen dignitaries and crime experts appointed by President Reagan. In November 1983, it began hearing public testimony on the changing nature of organized crime, and by October 1984 an interim report was issued, with the title The Cash Connection: Organized Crime, Financial Institutions, and Money Laundering.
By early 1985, the commission had turned its attention to the subject of illegal gambling as a long-standing, persistent criminal racket. The intention was to focus on the activities of the Mafia, but then the arsons in New York began to happen, and the idea to focus specifically on the illegal lottery, and the Cubans, gained critical mass.
The hearings were held at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan, in the financial district and near federal and state courthouse buildings. The room was laid out for maximum dramatic effect, with the twenty commissioners seated as a panel, nameplates in front of each commissioner. Behind the panel were the flag of the United States and the insignia of the president. Witnesses giving testimony would sit at a table facing the panel. The rest of the room was set up for spectators, and there was a large area for the media.
The chairman of the commission was Irving R. Kaufman, circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and a former judge on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In a prologue to the first day of testimony, on June 24, Judge Kaufman noted, “Gambling is as old as our nation’s history, and the incestuous relationship between illegal activities and gambling has existed for almost as long. Periodically every form of commercial gambling has been infected by organized crime groups . . . Horse racing, casino operations, professional sports, state-run lotteries—legal gambling of all kinds has been infiltrated in some form, at some time or other, by organized crime. Not only the traditional organized crime groups but also numerous emerging groups participate in the lucrative illegal gambling market.”
One of the first witnesses to testify was a commission investigator named Anthony Lombardi, a former agent of the Internal Revenue Service. Lombardi was on hand to talk specifically about the Corporation, which would emerge as the most newsworthy angle at the hearings.
Lombardi started by saying, “Mr. Chairman, commissioners, members of the commission, I am about to present a profile of José Miguel Battle Sr. A comprehensive review of the files of various federal, international, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and independent investigation by the staff of the commission, clearly reveals the existence of a tightly knit, well-financed, armed, and powerful group of Cuban racketeers known as the Corporation. These individuals are sometimes CIA trained and anti-Castro sympathizers that had taken part in the Bay of Pigs invasion . . . The evidence you are about to hear represents the first effort to develop a national picture of the Cuban organized crime group known as the Corporation.”
To give the commissioners an idea of the scope of what he was talking about, Lombardi estimated that the illegal lottery profits of the organization, based on seized records, reflected a weekly gross of over $2 million. “From this information,” said Lombardi, “we extrapolate that the Corporation earns a minimum annual net profit of $45 million from New York City gambling operations alone. This net profit has been estimated as high as $100 million.”
Lombardi’s presentation took close to an hour. It was startling in its details. The investigator gave an overview of the life of José Miguel Battle Sr. He presented an organizational chart that named all the key players. Along with Battle Sr. were Abraham Rydz, Battle Jr., Nene Marquez, Lalo Pons, and others. Lombardi described recent events that had been in the newspapers, such as the arson deaths and the murder of Idalia, but he also broke new ground by detailing methods of the Corporation that were not commonly known. One of those revelations had to do with the Corporation’s use of the Puerto Rican lottery to launder criminal proceeds.
Through an IRS investigation known as Operation Greenback, the feds had uncovered the scheme. Working with corrupt banking officials in Puerto Rico, the Corporation would determine who had won the Puerto Rican lottery. The organization would then purchase the winning ticket from that person who won for a price considerably more than he or she was to receive. If a bettor had a winning ticket for, say, a prize of $125,000, the Corporation would contact that person and offer to buy the ticket for $150,000. Explained Lombardi, “The winner is told that if he travels to Puerto Rico to collect the $125,000, then reports will have to be made to the IRS and the individual will only get a small portion of the winning ticket. The winners always take the $150,000 offer. The Corporation then takes the ticket to Puerto Rico, cashes the ticket, and pays the IRS the full amount of tax due. Our source advised that this is the way the Corporation launders its money. The Corporation has so much money that its members are willing to pay twice as much in illegal money in order to obtain legitimate money.”
In an effort to illustrate how expendable large sums of cash were to the Corporation, Lombardi introduced the customs agent who had encountered Abraham Rydz and Battle Jr. at Kennedy Airport. The agent described how Rydz and Battle Jr. were transporting nearly half a million dollars in cash, wrapped up as Christmas gifts. The two travelers claimed the money was not theirs, and furthermore, though they claimed to have been delivering that money to a person in Miami, they had no idea who the man was they were delivering it to. Of special interest was Battle Jr.’s effort to destroy a piece of paper he had been carrying. The commission produced that paper, which had been salvaged by the customs agent and pieced back together. Investigator Lombardi explained that this paper, which he described as a weekly “tally sheet” for the Corporation’s New York numbers operation, would be explained in detail by an upcoming witness.
That witness was of particular interest; in fact, this unnamed witness, touted as a high-ranking member of the Corporation, was the main reason the hearing room was filled with media and with spectators. Among those spectators was none other than Battle himself.
A month earlier, while tending to his mamey grove in Miami, Battle had been served with a federal subpoena to appear before the commission. He immediately contacted his lawyers, Raymond Brown and Jack Blumenfeld. Legally speaking, it was a no-brainer: Battle would refuse to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment privilege on the grounds that any testimony he gave would be self-incriminating. For that reason, the commission decided not to call Battle. Instead, he came as a spectator, tanned, well dressed in a dark blue suit, and sat in the spectators’ gallery.
He was there to see for himself the witness to whom Lombardi had referred. The identity of this witness was a secret, and it had been learned that the person’s face would not be shown. Already to those in the Corporation, the witness was being referred to as “El Enmascarado,” the Masked One.
Battle wanted to hear for himself what this turncoat had to say, and also he would thumb his nose at this presidential commission that, he believed, could quote all the numbers and statistics they wanted about illegal lottery profits in New York, but couldn’t do a damn thing about putting him in prison and keeping him there.
THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR FINDING EL ENMASCARADO AND DELIVERING HIM TO the commission was Detective Kalafus. For nearly a decade, Kalafus had been working Cuban organized crime cases in the New York area, and he had developed some impressive sources. Some he had coerced into cooperation when they were facing criminal charges; others were people who had run afoul of the Corporation and came to him. In the case of El Enmascarado, Kalafus didn’t have to do much. The man reached out on his own, motivated by a fear of El Padrino.
Among the small group of super-bankers who kept the Corporation afloat, the man met regularly with Battle and the other bankers. He believed that he had their trust and they had his. They didn’t prick their fingers to extract blood and pledge allegiance to the group, as the Mafia did, but without a doubt, loyalty to the organization was believed to be the highest value.
One evening about six weeks before the commission hearings, the man was kidnapped off the street by three young hoodlums. At gunpoint, he was taken to an abandoned building. He was tied and bound to a chair and then doused with a can of gasoline. The man’s eyes felt as if they were on fire, and the stench of the gasoline made him feel as if he was going to vomit. One of the thugs stood over him with a lighter and said, “We know you are a snitch. We know you talked to the cops. Tell us the truth or you will be set on fire.”
At that point, the man had never snitched, so it was easy for him to proclaim, “That’s a lie. I never snitched in my life.”
“El Gordo knows you are the snitch. If you confess, you can save your life. Tell us the truth.”
The man was terrified, but he knew that if he “admitted” he was a snitch, he would be killed immediately. “It’s not true,” he said. “Whoever told you I’m a snitch, that’s the man you want.”
It went back and forth for half an hour, with the kidnappers threatening to light the man on fire, and him holding firm that they had the wrong man.
Eventually, out of the shadows walked Battle himself. He told his men to untie the man. To the man, he said, “Mira (look), I’m sorry. But this had to be done. I’m afraid we have a rat amongst us. I had to be sure that it wasn’t you.”
The man left that abandoned warehouse that night still shaking from the experience. If Battle didn’t trust him now, he would always be under suspicion. He was happy to be alive, but the sense of relief was tempered by the realization that he would never be safe as a banker with the Corporation.
The man found a pay phone and called Detective Kalafus, whom he had never met, but who everyone knew was the cop covering the Cuban gangster beat. “Let’s meet,” the man said. He and the detective met at a secret location. The man said, “I am a marked man. I want to get out of the Corporation. But it’s not that simple. If I leave, given what I know, I will be hunted down and killed. If you can give me a new identity, relocate me somewhere, I will tell you all I know about the organization.”
“Well,” said Kalafus, “how much do you know?”
“I know a lot. Since 1980, I’ve been in on every meeting, part of every major decision. I can tell you who the players are—El Gordo, Battle Jr., El Polaco, Nene Marquez, their hired assassin, Lalo Pons. I know everybody.”
Kalafus thought about what the man was offering. It took him a while to figure out how best to utilize this golden opportunity that had fallen into his lap. The man had not been directly involved in murders. He alone was not enough to make a racketeering case against Battle, but what he knew and was willing to divulge was unprecedented. Kalafus was still mulling it over when he learned about the upcoming presidential commission hearings. He met with investigators from the commission and was told, “Are you kidding? Having this guy as a witness would be tremendous.”
Kalafus said, “I don’t know if he’ll do it. The guy is living in fear. We have to be able to guarantee that his identity will not be divulged.”
The investigators explained that they would have a hood over his head while he was testifying. They would use an interpreter, so that when a question was posed by one of the commissioners, the man would whisper the answer to the interpreter, who would answer for him. “No one will see his face or hear his voice,” promised the investigator.
It took Kalafus a while to convince the man to testify. A presidential commission? Public hearings covered by the news media? Are you trying to get me killed? Kalafus explained that here it was, his chance to escape the Corporation. After his testimony, he would be relocated—not immediately, because they did not want Battle to know that he was the witness. But eventually they would lay the groundwork so that he could make a complete break from the Corporation without El Padrino ever knowing that he was El Enmascarado.
On the day of the hearings, the witness was brought through a basement garage into Federal Hall. Not only was he fitted with a black hood, but he was dressed in a loose-fitting black gown that looked like a cross between a judge’s robe and a prison jumpsuit.
The room was packed with spectators and media personnel as the witness was led into the room and seated at the witness table. A female, Spanish-speaking interpreter sat down next to him.
After a few preliminary questions to establish the witness’s bona fides as a member of the Corporation, the questioner asked, “Does the Corporation have a leader?”
“Yes,” said the witness.
“What is his name?”
“José Miguel Battle.”
“Is he also known by the name Padrino?”
“Godfather. Yes.”
It was probably to the witness’s advantage that he did not know Battle was in the room that day watching from the spectators’ gallery. Having to testify was unnerving enough, much less knowing that the man you had just fingered for the first time ever in a public forum as the boss of the Cuban Mafia was in the room, staring you down.
Battle was shocked by what he saw and heard. Not only did the witness identify by name the primary bankers in the organization, but there were organizational charts, with photos of Battle Sr., Battle Jr., Abraham Rydz, and others displayed in the room for all to see. This was, to put it mildly, a potential disaster for the Corporation. For a criminal conspiracy that had been functioning mostly in the shadows, benefiting greatly from the culture and law enforcement’s singular obsession with the Italian Mafia, they were now being “outed” in a big way.
Battle was apoplectic, but he knew there were news cameras on him that day. He had to appear as if he had nothing to hide. Afterward, when a photographer from the Daily News asked to take his picture, Battle did not object. On the surface, he was placid, but anyone who knew him would have known that below the surface was a smoldering volcano.
Battle had called for an emergency meeting of the super-bankers, to take place immediately following the testimony of the commission’s star witness. The meeting was to take place at their old standby, the Colonial restaurant on St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights.
As a reigning banker in the Corporation, the Hooded Witness, as he was now referred to by the media, was expected to be an attendee at the meeting called by Battle. After his testimony, Hoodie, as Kalafus and the investigators preferred to call him, was rushed to the basement garage. Inside a van, he removed his hood and black robe. He was driven to a location where he had parked his own car, in which he drove to the Colonial restaurant. He was seated inside the restaurant with a couple of the other bankers before Battle had even arrived.
When he did arrive, Battle was spilling over with rage. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew we had a rat in our midst. We must determine who is this son of a bitch. We must find him and have him killed, otherwise, who are we? Men, or weaklings?”
Battle proposed that a contract of $50,000 be extended to anyone who could find and kill the Hooded Witness. It was agreed that they would all pay an equal share of $10,000 to bankroll the contract.
Hoodie, as one of the boliteros, voted with the others to kick in his share. He contributed ten grand to what was essentially his own death warrant.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE COMMISSION HEARINGS TO BE felt. First, there was a flurry of media attention. The New York Times ran an article that focused on the Corporation’s gambling empire, quoting the Hooded Witness, who claimed that the organization had twenty-five hundred people working at seven hundred bolita sites. The most lavish coverage of the hearings was in the Miami Herald. “Crime Boss Rules with a Deadly Fist” was the above-the-fold headline of a front-page story that focused almost exclusively on Battle. Though José Miguel declined to comment for the article, the reporters asked lawyer Jack Blumenfeld if his client had a response. “Bullshit, that’s his response,” Blumenfeld was quoted as saying. “If he’s guilty of all these things, then arrest him . . . He’s being accused by dead men and confidential sources . . . It’s hard to fight shadows.” Blumenfeld added, “He’s a Cuban patriot.”
The media reporting was so detrimental that Battle did something he had never done before: he devised a public relations counterstrategy. He allowed two reporters from the Miami News, a rival of the Herald, into his home. “Everything the commission said isn’t true,” he told the reporters. “None of it is true.” Battle gave the reporters a tour of El Zapotal. He even let them look in his refrigerator. “This is the refrigerator of a millionaire? I eat yogurt.” The newspaper provided Battle with the press he desired, a portrait of a contented retiree far removed from the hustle and bustle of life in New York and New Jersey. The article was even accompanied by a photo of Battle playing with his pet monkey.
Back in New York, the fallout from the hearings was worse than just bad press. In September, Lalo Pons and ten others were arrested and charged with arson and multiple counts of murder. The prosecutor’s star witness would be Willie Diaz, who, after being investigated by cops and threatened with arrest, quickly agreed to become a cooperating witness. Throughout the summer, shortly after the federal commission hearings concluded, Willie had worn a wire and helped gather evidence against Lalo.
At a press conference to announce the indictment, Benjamin Ward, the city’s first black police commissioner, noted that all of these men were members of the Corporation, a group headed by Battle.
For years, El Padrino and his gambling syndicate had mostly operated with little attention from the mainstream press and not much more from law enforcement. Now that had changed.
Among those who saw the writing on the wall was Isleño Dávila, whose name had also been highlighted at the commission hearings. In August, a unit of the NYPD’s Public Morals division hit dozens of bolita holes belonging to La Compañía. Isleño came to New York to figure out what was happening. He was picked up for questioning by two detectives and driven around Harlem. They showed him where many of his spots had been padlocked and put out of business. “It’s over,” the detectives told him.
First the arsons, then the commission hearing had brought an unprecedented level of unwanted attention for the boliteros. Now, with the arrest and subsequent trial of Lalo Pons, the inner workings of the bolita empire would be further exposed.
Isleño returned to his home in Fort Lauderdale and immediately began a process of moving his millions out of the country. He made no public announcement that he was out of the bolita business, but those who knew him well—his family, friends, and associates—could see what was happening. Isleño was finished with bolita. Within the year, he had quietly moved out of the United States to Spain and eventually on to Panama. He was rarely seen again in New York, New Jersey, or South Florida, the locations where he had once held sway as a legendary bolita boss.