Storm Clouds Over Havana by Mike Marino (novel24 .txt) 📕

Prelude - Dateline, Oct. 1957 

Chapter 1 - The Banana Republics

Chapter 2 - Latina Heat

Chapter 3- The Grey Lady

Chapter 4 - Wiseguys & Revolution

Chapter 5 - The Man in the Shadows

Chapter 6 - First Base Box Seats

Chapter 7 - Latin Heat & Cuban Wet Dreams

Chapter 8 - Mobsters and Showgirls

Chapter 9 - The Legacy of Lucky Luciano

Chapter 10 - The Princess Princess Hooker

Chapter 11 - Pilar Ybanez & the School of Rebellion

Chapter 12- The Riots Begin

Chapter 13 - CiA and Blood on the Campus

Chapter 14 - Telephone of the Immaculate Conception

Chapter 15 - The Old Man and the Sea

Chapter 16 - Sloppy Joes & the CIA Funhouse of Booze

Chapter 17 - Storm Clouds Over Havana

Chapter 18 - Hemingway's Boat & A Bottle of Rum

Chapter 19 - Salty Dogs of the Caribbean

Chapter 20 - A Mariin Named Brando 

Chapter 21 - The Sierrra Maestra

Chapter 22 - The Double Cross

Chapter 23 - Fight to Win, Fight to Die

Chapter 24 - Battle of La Plata

Chapter 25 - Strange Bedfellows

Chapter 26 - Cross Hairs of the Kill Zone

Chapter 27 - Bullets for Breakfast

Chapter 28 - Dirty Laundry

Chapter 29 - The Aftermath

Chapter 30 - Last Man Standing 

Dateline Havana: Oct. 9, 1957

Cuban government sources say Havana’s “People’s Record Bulletin” news editor, Francisco Santiago was shot by unidentified gunmen on motorcycles as he drove to work in the city suburbs.
He died from head wounds after nearly three hours of surgery, doctors say.
News reports in the past  say Senor Santiago had numerous run-ins with the government. Other journalists in Cuba  have also suffered a string of recent attacks and left wing and right wing  freedom groups agree on one thing.. intimidation and violence make it one of the most difficult countries in the world in which to report the truth.

Television pictures of Santiago’s car showed blood-stained seats and bullet holes in the windshield.
"We tried our best to revive him but we couldn't," hospital director Antonio Garcia  told the MMN news agency. Police spokesmen are investigating the attack and  said gunmen on two motorcycles had escaped after carrying out the attack. No arrests have been made.

Mr. Santiago always tried to be objective in his criticism of the Fulgencio Batista regime by collecting and verifying  the facts, which was why so many politicians feared him. Senor Santiago, although sympathetic to the leftist rebel cause would also point out in editorials injustices perpetrated by the revolutionaries. In a recent interview with a Miami radio station he said, “There must be balance in reporting. I want both sides to know I will report and print the facts of injustice inflicted by either side.”

A spokesman for the President Batista released a statement saying “Francisco and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was a fair man in every respect. We are living in an era of revolution and political upheaval in our nation. We always could talk and discuss our differences of opinion and the points we shared in common. He will be sorely missed and we will do all we can, to make every effort to bring the assassins, no matter who they are, to be punished for this crime.  I have my suspicions of who is responsible, but will observe silence for now on the issue out of respect for my dear friend, Francisco Santiago. He will be missed by all of us.”

End Transmission.

The breaking  story of Francisco Santiago’s assassination came across the teletype machine in it’s usual cacophony of clatter chatter filling the air of our newsroom in New York  with the droning mantra of chunka-chunka noise as it spat out each sentence with the force of a Gatling gun from our Miami newswire service affiliate. Although it was describing that day’s horrific events in Havana, we as seasoned newsmen and women were  almost  immune to the urgency generated by the teletype noise over the years. They only time we put or coffee down in a hurry was when the alarm bell rang declaring URGENT! URGENT!

Then hungover or not  we would dash to the machine like lemmings for a quick read of the copy to see what was breaking news in the world around us.

The mind raced in anticipation. Had the world ended? Did Moscow launch nukes at us? Was the President killed in a plane crash? Important questions? Yes, if humanity was on the brink of imminent destruction, every news agency wanted to scoop the competing newsrooms that we fought with on a daily basis.  We all wanted to be first even if it was the last blast of a nuclear attack.

This was October 1957. There were more important things on our minds this warm  fall evening than planetary destruction  This is New York after all. We are the world! The Center of the Universe! The Big Apple! We only wanted to know one thing. Would the Yankees win the ‘57 series over Milwaukee? Hell we had Mickey Mantle, Old Number 7 and the Braves were drunks, and worse, they had Irish roots as the Boston Braves.  Time would tell. Hell, this was New York and the office pool was Yankee Town USA. If the Soviets were gonna nuke us….fine...just wait until the series if over.

The night  the Santiago murder broke over the wire service, I was acting night editor that evening. Once a week one of the reporters would rotate in that position so Lew Abrams could have a night off after pulling six 12 hour shifts in a row. Could be worse. I could be the night editor. He had been doing it since 1946 after his years as a roving correspondent on the front lines in the Pacific. He was on Iejima, a small island northwest of Okinawa interviewing troops for Stars and Stripes, the same day and island where his good friend and fellow correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by enemy machine gun fire.

I was no Ernie Pyle. Hell, I wasn’t even Lew Abrams. Instead I was happy being me. Mickey Russo, loose cannon reporter of NYC sports initially (boxing and baseball),  then graduated and was now covering the local crime beat. Good training and material for “that great American novel”  I wanted to write someday. Getting down and dirty in the grit and grime of New York’s underworld gutter of organized crime, gamblers, junkies and hookers.  I laid off the bookmakers. I am a degenerate gambler and needed them to place bets and hope I will at least break even.

I was working for a small sports newspaper, The Sports Gazette in 1947 when my series of articles ran about Jackie Robinson as the first African American in major league baseball. He was signed by my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and in the process broke through the color barrier in his first game against, those Beantown drunks, the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field.

My series did not go unnoticed.  I was  hired by the Record Bulletin newspaper and news service as a sports writer at first until placed on the crime beat, my second passion, by its fearless leader and editor, Hymie Bachman, the take no prisoners Jewish journalist with an eye for news as keen as a grifter who can spot a mark at ten paces. In another life he  could have been an exemplary stogie smoking hotel detective at the Waldorf catching jewel thieves and unmasking sexual peccadillos of cheating spouses sweating up the sheets and stealing towels.

Tonight was no different than any of the other night shifts I had filled in for Lew. I ripped the wire copy from the machine after a quick cursory glance. Oh hell. Another killing in a banana republic. The have political assassinations and coups on a regular basis. Just this year in Columbia, General Rojas was overthrown by his own military with the backing of all political parties. It was fair payback as  he had overthrown the former Gomez administration in 1953 with the same military. Everybody wants be king at one point in their lives. In South America, anyone with enough guns can.

Haiti was now being run and ruined by the Duvalier regime which would make it one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere with a legacy of political murder, executions and a shutdown of a free press and free expression while, Cuba was merely another Caribbean paper hat kingdom run by the thug Batista with the help and influence of the US Mafia spearheaded by Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky.  The Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford of Team Mafia, New York

While the Mob ruled the nightclubs and gambling and prostitution rackets, Batista turned a blind eye and enjoyed the kickbacks and wealth pouring into his private banks accounts. The Cuban people were poor and frustrated. There had been a small revolutionary movement underway but had made little progress since it’s inception in 1953 when a small band of rebels attacked the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba. The leader of the revolt,  a young Cuban, Fidel Castro and some of his cadre were  arrested and imprisoned. He and others were eventually released in 1955 when Fidel and his brother Raul went to Mexico City to meet  man with a plan. An Argentine firebrand named Ernesto Che Guevara.

They formulated a plan to foment a successful revolt and set sail on the Good Ship Lollipop Revolution from Mexico sailing back to Cuba in covert secrecy in 1956.  Now it’s 1957 and  it’s anybody’s ball game, or revolution.  The Braves or the Yankees? Batista or the Rebels?

I didn’t usually keep up on Banana Republic coups, revolts, or civil wars. My beat was the New York streets….until tonight. By mid-morning next I would be packing my bags and heading into the Cuban maelstrom on assignment from my editor, Hymie Bachman after a meeting with him behind closed doors and a mysterious man with shiny shoes and  I could guess had a large bag of dirty trick government secrets locked in a vault at Area 51 where deadly force is encouraged.

Within the next 24 hours I would begin  a two year journey in a tropical paradise as a foreign correspondent investigating the Francisco Santiago murder. I would also find myself in the throes of  love with a female revolutionary