The Corporation by T. J. English

Author:T. J. English
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760559335
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

13

COCKFIGHTER

MIGUELITO BATTLE HAD STOPPED TALKING WITH HIS FATHER. THE REASONS FOR THIS were cumulative—a lifetime of emotional baggage and strained relations—but there had been a last straw. Sometime in early 1985, Maria Josefa Battle—Miguelito’s mother and José Miguel’s long-suffering wife—came home to El Zapotal one day to find her husband in bed with two young women. It was a final insult after years of José Miguel’s philandering. Maria Battle moved out of El Zapotal to a home at 350 Island Drive in Key Biscayne near her son. There was no talk of divorce, but from then on, she and her husband lived separate lives. She never again set foot on her husband’s estate, with the mamay trees and crowing roosters and women so young and nubile they could have been José Miguel’s granddaughters.

José Miguel’s treatment of Maria had been a sore spot with Miguelito for some time. Years before, he had been brought along by his father to a jewelry store in Manhattan to purchase a diamond ring for someone special. Miguelito assumed the ring was for his mother, but was disgusted to learn that José Miguel was buying it for his mistress. Which raised the question: what kind of man brings his son along to purchase an expensive gift for his mistress? To Miguelito, it was a personal insult; his father was rubbing it in his face that he was cheating on his mother. In a sense, Miguelito never forgave José Miguel for this transgression. He talked about it often with Abraham Rydz, the man who became his surrogate father.

And yet the two men, Battle Sr. and Jr., were still financially entangled in ways that made it impossible for them to simply ignore one another. Junior and Rydz had created a business empire that was at its core dependent on the stature and reputation of El Padrino. It was true that the Corporation was now a multitentacled operation, and that the bolita business in New York more or less ran itself. But contrary to the belief of Miguelito and Rydz that Union Financial Research and the other corporate subsidiaries comprised a self-sustaining business, in the mind of El Padrino, without his reputation—his legend—they were nothing.

In the Cuban American underworld, Battle was still the man. This could be either a good or a bad thing, depending on the motives of those who were banking on the boss’s stature. Bosses were feared, but they also became targets. And sometimes their sons became targets by association.

In 1985, not long after the Presidential Crime Commission wrapped up its hearings in New York and José Miguel Battle returned to Miami, his son was kidnapped. This was not an event that would make the newspapers or television news. The entire event was kept quiet by all involved, including the cops and federal agents who responded to the call.

Oscar Vigoa was at the time a sergeant in the Metro-Dade Police Department working a general investigations unit in the Midwest District. One afternoon, his unit received a

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