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

All you have to is follow Lansky’s Brothel Brick Road and you'll be waving your own magic wand in the Wizards Wonderland of Sex where you can mount the "Dorothy" of your choice and soon you too will be saying..."There's no place like her vagina..there's no place like her vagina... as you play with her "ruby red" between your fingers. So don't be a cowardly lion...firm up the straw filled sex drive and turn it into a hard as nails fully erect Tin Man hard on and go to town. Just don’t tell Auntie Em...she might be working there too!

Brothels and booze were on hold for the time being. I arrived at the apartments and grabbed my bags, paid the cabbie, tipped the cabbie, thanked the cabbie, who then gave me a soiled business card for future reference. He, Rojas, would end up as my unofficial chauffeur for the next year, as well as my best friend and valuable partner in crime in this hotbed of politics and poverty and injustice.

Right now I wanted a shower, a go at Lansky’s gaming tables and early to bed with a bottle of rum and a long legged Cuban hooker under the sheets until the dawn’s early light. Tonight I wanted sex and feel the rockets red glare fueled by Latin heat.

I was hoping to set up shop at the ornate Nacional Hotel gracing the promontory on the Loma de Taganana formerly  a Spanish fortification that occupied the site during the golden age of pirates, privateers and British war ships   hellbent on conquest for God and Empire over their Spanish adversary.

Now the British, along with Americans and others from around the world came to bombard the idyllic island once again.  This time they came as tourists hungry for hot salsa nights and sun filled days armed with money, various degrees of gambling addiction and a sex drive on overdrive.
The  pirates had changed as well. Cuban politicians and secret police dominated a Batista dictatorship rife with corruption while achieving monetary orgasm in bed with the American Mafia while the everyday Cuban was hanging on by an economic thread dangling precariously over a societal cesspool of poverty.

Proximity closer to the nightlife and the gaming action was a personal addiction of my own that was initially obscuring my vision of the  purpose of this foray that could turn into folly at the drop of a sombrero, but the US government was not a finger popping hipster when it came down to that sort of thing.

My cover had to be completely undercover, so by staying at the CIA owned and operated apartment safe-house complex I would be shielded  from the  prying eyes that were everywhere in Havana in those days. Alert, hungry  eyes that would sell you out for a greedy non-political handful of American greenbacks to the nearest KGB dime a dance interrogation room along with a one-way one shot one kill bullet to the base of the skull  once you’ve spilled your guts.

Staying in a safe house building  made sense as it made it more convenient to pass the intelligence information suppository  along securely and safely up Washington’s ass through the resident Company agent in Havana, while at the same time   not leaving a tell tale  incriminating Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail leading to me or my covert  comrades and any innocent contacts who may, in the course of “business” become guilty by association as well as expendable should the mission hit the fan.  

I was stuffing the dossier material back in the packet when Rojas stopped his cab outside the Americana Apartments.  I was resigned to take up residence here ready or not, here I come. Grabbing my bags from the backseat filled with notebooks and a few changes of clothing I stepped through the Looking Glass to begin my spiraling journey down the rabbit hole of revolution, Latin sex and politics.

Once inside I made my way to the landlord sitting behind a desk in a nondescript office. I started to introduce myself but, not surprisingly, he knew exactly who I was. Those CIA boys and girls don’t miss a trick.

“Welcome, Senor Russo. I trust you had a most pleasant flight over and that you enjoyed the brief tour from the airport through our beautiful city. We are very proud of our city and happy you will be staying here at the Americana. My name is Franco Reyes and anything you want, anything, all you have to do is ask.”

I knew the name immediately from the dossier packet the CIA had furnished me. Franco was the Cuban contact who would start the ball rolling to get me into Castro’s inner circle. I knew also that he was a slippery character. One of those Peter Lorre “Maltese Falcon” types who would sell you out for a few bucks. I also was aware that as a CIA stooge he was watched very carefully by the Company’s resident Havana agent to make sure he wasn’t double dipping in the espionage pool. He was paid well as an informant and should he get out of line he knew he would disappear deep into the military prison bowels of Guantanamo.  I learned later that he  was at times fed false intel information to test his loyalty. If the Russians were in his corner...we’d soon know about it.

In addition to CIA Company agents coming in and out of Cuba, the Americana was also a rogues gallery of agents from Britain’s Mi-5 as well as  the French intelligence agency. My mission was all laid out in plain English. To maintain my cover, I would file my  news copy from Havana’s Record-Bulletin Newspaper office via courier from the field, or mountain, or jungle, or wherever I might me tramping along with this new Lawrence of Arabia with a beard and cigar continually clenched in his teeth.

All intel gathered on Castro would be coded  in the field and  handed off to my “rebel” contact who I had not yet met, to be given to our CIA “handler” at the Americana, who would then spirit it  to the US Embassy for transmission to Langley. Cut and dry, clean and smooth, leaving me and my rebel contact without, hopefully, a target pinned to our backs.


The “landlord” had the room CIA ready for me. Completely furnished in a “motel chic” motif. A refrigerator full of ice cold beer was begging me to liberate them one by one,but more surprising was the inclusion of a Wollensak reel to reel tape recorded as big as a ‘57 Buick and a brand new Royal typewriter to bang out my articles  for syndication through our New York office. Monday I would check into  the newspaper office to establish my cover story as a visiting journalist.  The employees there were unaware of the real purpose of my mission or so I hoped. Curiosity could get this hep cat killed. First, a hot shower, a cold beer and a few hours sack time were on my agenda. Once refreshed I’d take in a floor show at Lansky’s Tropicana Club.

I awoke refreshed five hours later looking for all the world as a red eye Lazarus ready to mambo into the dawn. After another quick shower and shave I got  dressed in my casual white cotton pants and a Cuban guayabera shirt I had purchased in Miami on my layover between flights. It was 8 PM and I knew the action was non-stop at Lansky’s Tropicana Casino. My pump was primed and  I was ready to ride the bucking bronco of Havana nightlife... torrid, tempestuous and tantalizing.  


Lansky, Luciano,  and the mob, along with local kingpin Indalecio Pertierra had created a glamorous neon and glitter Garden of Hedon that included race tracks, casinos, hotels, bordellos and some of the most fabulous floor shows north of Rio. Batista and his cronies were paid handsomely for their “partnership” and got rich off the mobs establishment. Without the government’s blessing the mob couldn’t operate. Without the mobs greasing his sweaty palms, Batista would be just another ten cent bully in a palm tree palace. It was a marriage made in heaven or hell. Depending on your outlook.

The foundation for this empire and its attraction  to mostly American tourists was sex. Fantastically beautiful Cuban women with voluptuous amounts of  flesh where patrons could get up close and personal to the scantily clad dancers who were usually available. Then of course there were backstreet sex clubs run by locals with blessing of the mob and Batista as long as they got their share of the profits. Some of these backstreet clubs offered a variety of entertainment from lesbians on stage to bizarre acts involving animals. This was not Sesame Street.

The streets in the nightclub district were awash not only in brilliant neon but also in Latin music including the ever popular sultry sexy mambo designed for mutual seduction of the couple  created by Damaso Perez Prado and his band a decade earlier.

Locking my apartment door, I headed out for the three block trek  to the Tropicana Casino. I had to laugh. I had locked my apartment door! For what? It was all CIA furnished equipment...my money was on me. Locking the door seemed superfluous. As if that would do any good anyway in a building populated by CIA spooks who could kill you with a simple pencil. Certainly they could force a lock open faster than Willie Sutton could break out of his prison cell.

Smiling, I quickened my pace as I couldn’t wait to meet up with my old pal Lansky. He was expecting me so I knew the night ahead would be one of nostalgia while I filled him in on the latest New York street rumors and gossip. In exchange I’d get ripped on booze, probably lose a few hundred at roulette betting on blacks while reds ruled. The Tropicana also had the best looking showgirls on the island, so if I was really lucky I would be wrapped in thunderous Cuban thighs until the dawn yawned to begin another day. Right now...the night was just beginning….

Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, at one time the Boss of Bosses of the American Cosa Nostra, set up a sportsmen’s playground of gambling and prostitution in Havana after his deportation from the USA to Italy in 1946. He traveled