The Mob Is Back

A low-flying sports plane towed a banner above Miami last week to spread the news to any beach lounger looking for action: CASINOS REOPEN IN HAVANA. In

a major retreat from his "purification" campaign, Prime Minister Fidel Castro restored legal gambling in all its old splendor of brocade draperies, deep carpets, clicking dice and turning wheels. Running the show from behind the scenes were the same U.S. mobsters who bossed gambling for Batista.

Castro was moved to action by the slump in the tourist trade and the angry demands of 2,000 card dealers, croupiers, cashiers, musicians, barmen, waiters and entertainers, all thrown out of work by the revolution. Senorita Pastora NuNez, director of National Savings and Housing Institute (formerly the government lottery), called in the casino owners and found them willing to meet her requirement of seven weeks' back pay for all employees. "I highly disapprove of the way you make a living," she lectured, "but we are reconsidering our earlier decision."

The decree reopened all the big-time rooms--at the Hotels Hilton. Nacional. Riviera, Capri, Comodoro and Saint John's, and at the Tropicana, Sans Souci and Montmartre nightclubs. At first the government talked of barring Cubans from play unless they could prove sufficient wealth by testimonial from the internal revenue bureau, but in the end even that requirement was dropped. Senorita Nunez kept padlocks on five casinos that drew a mostly Cuban crowd. She also banned slot machines--at least for now.

With a quiet smile the gamblers slipped fresh boutonnieres into their black silk lapels and got the games going for slim crowds on the day the decree came out. Florida Mobster Santo Trafficante Jr., who attended the famous gangland congress at Apalachin, N.Y. in November 1957, is still bossing the games at the Comodoro and the Sans Souci. He also keeps an eye on the Capri casino, where his associate is Mobster Charles ("The Blade") Tourine. Gambler Joseph Silesi. wanted for questioning after the New York barbershop murder of Top Hood Albert Anastasia, is casino manager at the Hilton. None of the mob makes a move without consulting Miami's Meyer Lansky, 57, gangland boss of the southeastern U.S. and board chairman of the Havana show.

Pastora NuNez warned that the present permits, good only for 60 days, would not be renewed for mobster-owned casinos. The hoods hope that a batch of clean front men will meet the government inspection. One of them posed Castro's dilemma neatly: "Only gamblers can run casinos--you can't get a priest or a garage mechanic." The mob was quite happy to be working with a government noted for purity. Said one operator last week: "Me, I'm glad those greedy Batista crooks got bounced."

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