Carlito's Way: Rise to Power by Edwin Torres Read Free Book Online Page A

that don’ cut no ice ’round heah; we’ll put yo’ ass on the chain gang, yo’all heah, the chain gang.”
    If he was trying to scare me, he sure as hell was succeeding—I was scared shitless.
    “Yeah, you lil’ ol’ boys are in trouble—serious trouble. Now, whut kind of car was that? A Cadillac, eh? Lemme talk to the driver. Take this heah other boy out.”
    They took me to a back room. My ass was low—I’ll be breaking rocks in a chain gang and if I’m lucky the warrant will come down on the N.Y. homicide.
    After a while, Vinnie came to get me with the bulls; they drove us to a bus depot. Not a word was said. Then they put Vinnie and me on a bus headed for Miami.
    “The man wanted the car?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Man got the car?”
    “Yeah.” End of conversation.

3
    H AVANA WAS REALLY JUMPING IN THOSE DAYS—BEST town I was ever in. Tropicana, Montmartre, with chorus lines of mulatas that put anything in N.Y. to shame. You could party twenty-four hours a day—Olga Guillot, Benny More, Rolando La Serie, they were all there. La Aragon, Casino la Playa, Cascarita—gambling, pussy, coke—wide open. Fidel sure fucked up a good thing.
    The mob was into all the casinos and I was hanging around the tables a lot. Pretty soon I teamed up with this Cuban named Nacho Reyes. He was the bodyguard for a senator and had connections all the way to the president. The setup was different there; every politico had his own crew working for him—like private little armies. Everybody was robbing, but you had to be in the government, so at election time things would get rough; murders were all right as long as you had your rabbi— cops and robbers were all mixed up. If your man was inyou were a cop, uniform and all—if not, you’d be a robber trying to get him in. Wild.
    Nacho was a stone killer, he iced a guy when he was sixteen years old and kept right on going. He had bullet holes all over his body. I never saw him eat anything, but he would snort coke day and night. With a piece in his hand he was like a cat, a bad-ass. He said he had heard about me in New York—that I had cojones . I learned a lot from Nacho. One night we walked into this joint and right away I could see it was a setup. The door was closed behind us, the jukebox was loud—the bartender looked like he was going to start crying. The hairs on the back of my neck said, “These motherfuckers are going to kill us.”
    Nacho saved our ass. He threw his arms around the bossman there—“ Mi hermano , I have come to your house to have a drink with you as your guest; Carlito from New York, I have spoken to him about our Cuban hospitality …”
    Nacho ate crow but he saved our lives. After we left, he said, “Only a fool throws himself head first—when you are outgunned and your only exit is death, you compromise; le comes el cerebro , when the time is right, you strike—but you never hesitate. That is why I am alive and have buried a dozen men. The coke is in my nose but not my brain—”
    I WAS IN C UBA FOR OVER A YEAR HAVING A HIGH OLD TIME. I was in a beach club, had a Cuban old lady—Earl wouldsend me money when I needed it. My Cubana was a hooker, but she was a classy broad and moved in good circles. She spoke very refined Spanish and had elegant hands—I’d forget she was turnin’ tricks. She’d tell me how great I was, how I wasn’t cut out to be a knock-around guy. She was going to con a con man. Ha!
    Then I got the word from Earl. Everything is set, come on home. Adiós, Cubita la bella .
    I SURRENDERED TO THE D.A.’ S OFFICE ACCOMPANIED BY my lawyer, Morris Steinhardt. They took me to the sixth floor, Homicide Bureau, for interrogation before arraignment. They got to be kidding. They questioned me in teams, the first team was threatening me, hooping and hollering; the second team was going to save me from the first, only I got to tell them the truth about the murder. Name and address, that’s all they get.
    I’m arraigned in Central