Kick Ass Part 4

(The appearance of indignation is vital to all pre-indictment press conferences. Equally important is cooking up a lurid conspiracy theory to explain why you are being singled out for prosecution.) Hernandez and Llama are in hot water because of what happened last fall off the coast of Puerto Rico. A 46-foot boat, La Esperanza, was boarded by the Coast Guard after reporting mechanical problems. A search turned up ammunition, bipods and two .50-caliber sniper rifles.

One of the Cuban exiles on the boat reportedly admitted they were on their way to the Venezuelan island of Margarita to shoot Castro. The Cuban president was going there for the Ibero-American Summit.

At first it seemed like just another bungled a.s.sa.s.sination plan. People are constantly plotting against Castro, and often the schemes end up on some broken-down boat, loaded with incriminating ammo.

What made this one different was that the boat was owned by "Tofiin" Llama, and that one of the .50-caliber sniper rifles belonged to Pepe Hernandez. Both men have high-profile roles in CANF, the dominant anti-Castro lobby that claims not to support violence or terrorism.

La Esperanza's fateful voyage began at a private dock in Coral Gables, one of many things that attracted the curiosity of U.S. authorities. Shortly after the exile crew was arrested, a San Juan grand jury began taking testimony. Indictments of Hernandez and Llama are expected Tuesday.

At least that's the word from their attorneys, who did all of the talking at the pre-indictment press conference. One, the ubiquitous Jose Quinon, said the case against his clients was "politically motivated."

Another lawyer, Manny Vasquez, elaborated: "The enemies of the embargo [against Cuba] are behind this action. When Castro snaps his fingers, our government jumps."

It's a fabulous crock, of course, but even the flimsiest of conspiracy yarns appeals to some Castro haters and talk-radio addicts.

Notably missing from the CANF leaders' pre-indictment press conference was a plausible counter-explanation for the suspicious facts of the case. On matters of evidence, the indignant attorneys and their indignant clients remained mum.

How, for example, did Llama's boat come to be used in this screwball mission? Was he in the habit of loaning it to heavily armed pals for leisurely excursions to South America?

And how did Hernandez's .50-caliber sniper rifle get aboard La Esperanza? Why does he even own such a ridiculous weapon-it's a tad excessive for plugging deer or squirrels, and the bulky bipod makes it impractical for everyday self-defense.

Maybe it's all innocent coincidence-the boat, the sniper guns, the trip timed to Castro's arrival. Or maybe unnamed "enemies of the embargo" somehow orchestrated the whole fiasco-at-sea. But how?

These and other questions that weren't answered at the pre-indictment press conference could be asked at trial-or again even later, if there's a post-conviction press conference, which is also becoming a South Florida custom.

Murder and Mayhem

Can gun laws solve Dade's murder wave?

July 31, 1985 The FBI says Dade County is once again the murder capital of the United States, and we've been swamped with statistics to support the fact.

The new numbers are ugly and they make headlines. Headlines, of course, inspire Civic Leaders to form committees and place blame and offer brilliant solutions.

One says it's just drug dealers killing each other off; another sees a reprise of Mariel violence. Still another says the answer is putting more cops on the street.

They've been saying all this for five years, and one gets the idea they might be missing the big picture. Murder is not just a pa.s.sing public relations problem; it's here to stay.

"It's too easy for people in public positions to give an easy answer," says Dr. William Wilbanks, criminal justice professor at Florida International University. "In a year in which murders are down, everybody wants credit. When murder goes up, everybody says, 'Don't look at me'."

In the first place, the numbers aren't as bad as they seem. The body count actually has dropped dramatically since the nightmare years of 1980-1981.

Secondly, the numbers aren't always complete. Experts point out that federal per capita murder statistics rely on outdated Dade County population figures that exclude thousands of illegal aliens and winter residents. If the murder rate were recomputed accurately, we'd surely lose our No. i national ranking.

Thirdly, the numbers are not always compatible. The FBI reported that 425 people were murdered here in 1984.The Dade County medical examiner's office, where the corpses wound up, counted 462. This is how they were killed: gunshot wound (359), stabbing (40), beating (27), strangulation (8), child abuse (6), drowning (2), fire (7) and others (13).

Wilbanks suggests that this is not a crime wave, but a way of life. His book, Murder in Miami, meticulously charts the fluctuations in Dade County's homicide pattern from 1917 through 1983. It is a sobering doc.u.ment that avoids plat.i.tudes and simplistic solutions, which is probably why it's not easily understood by politicians.

"Everybody wants to make it some alien force affecting our community," he says. "But it's not any one factor. My argument is, it's more of a murder culture."

Chilling words, but no cause for panic. Yet.

There are traditional categories of urban murder-domestics, drug feuds, robberies-that always will exist in a volatile, gun-happy community. And while a high murder rate is deplorable, it doesn't always mean that Joe Citizen stands a greater chance of being randomly gunned down on his way to the K mart.

Mike Gonzalez, dean of Miami homicide cops, says that 75 to 90 percent of all murder victims know their a.s.sailant. His favorite axiom: "If you're not a dope dealer, and you don't settle your domestic arguments with a gun, and you're halfway sensible about where you go at night, you haven't got a chance in the world of being killed."

I asked Gonzalez what can be done to stop the killing, and he talked about controlling handguns.

"With a gun, it's so easy, so efficient, so impersonal. There are more people killed in Miami than are killed in Great Britain, West Germany and Tokyo put together. And it's because of guns.

"Everybody buys a gun because they're gonna shoot the crooks, right? How many crooks do you think are killed this way?" the detective asked. "Children in back seats get killed with those guns. Ma and Pa get killed. The evidence is, they don't protect themselves with these guns, they kill each other."

And that's half our homicides right there.

Civic Leaders, of course, would much rather rail about drug a.s.sa.s.sins or crazed Mariels than suggest tough gun laws.

Gonzalez is no politician, but he's investigated about a thousand murders. What that makes him is an expert.

On the beach, reality doesn't take a vacation August 9, 1985 We beat the ambulance by two minutes.

The emergency room at Mount Sinai was filling with gray-suited men wearing plastic IDs, and out front were the cops-motormen, patrol officers, detectives, SWAT commandos, all with the same haggard look in their eyes. The look of the Grim Wait.

The call had gone out as a hostage situation, then a sniper and then this: "We have two police officers down!"

Racing across the Julia Tuttle Causeway, we'd heard another voice on the radio: "They're on the way to Sinai. We need a trauma team. We need a trauma team!"

And both of us, the photographer and I, thought the worst. Somebody murdered some cops, we thought.

At the emergency room we were told that the number was four. Four police officers shot during-what else-a drug deal.

In the sw.a.n.k Doral Beach Hotel, of all places. In the middle of a dead summer, in the murder capital of America.

What exactly had gone wrong was not clear, but it certainly wasn't Crockett andTubbs gliding through a TV bust. Four cops down was life gravely mocking art.

It doesn't matter how long you do this sort of thing, the sight of the first ambulance always turns your throat to sandpaper.

Because the first ambulance usually is where they put the one who took the worst shot.The first ambulance tells the story-just how bad it's going to be.

The doors swung open and there lay Detective Jim Mahle. His head was wrapped to cover two bullet holes in the right side of his skull. But one hand was moving. Best of all, he was conscious.

Then came Detective Joe White, bearded and s.h.i.+rtless, his white shorts bloodied. His eyes were open and he was holding his own IV bag. Sgt. Mike Lowe, a crimson smear on his forehead, walked into the emergency room on his own.

Another ambulance delivered undercover man James Scarberry ("I'm OK," he said), and then came the wounded police informant, pale, and moaning into an oxygen mask.

A few minutes later, a woman in a pink outfit gingerly made her way past the police cordon. A reporter asked if she were related to one of the victims. "No, my daughter just had a baby," the woman said, smiling. "I'm here for a happy occasion."

Soon a trauma specialist came out to announce that the policemen were going to make it. Miraculously, none of the injuries was life-threatening.

Over at the Doral, a man with a mop swabbed the front steps. The place was quiet.

"I got to work and I saw all these cop cars," said Rocky Hile, the downstairs bartender. "I thought they were shooting another episode of MiamiVice. I saw the blood on the steps and I thought: Boy, they really go all out. Then I come in and turn on the news at six o'clock and that's when I found out ...

"I had a guy at the bar earlier tonight who was on the loth floor when it happened. Heard all the shots and thought it was some kind of celebration," Rocky said. "Then the elevator door opens and there's a guy on a stretcher, all covered with blood. It still didn't occur to the guy that somebody had actually been shot.

"Until he got downstairs and saw the SWAT team."

I thought about that poor tourist-gaping at the stretcher in the elevator, finding the elegant lobby taken over by men with automatic weapons. I imagined the fellow turning to his wife and muttering, "You were right. We should've gone to Epcot Center."

Or maybe not. Maybe he knew what to expect from the South Florida vacation package: four days-three nights-one shootout.

That evening, by the hotel pool, Pfizer and Co. threw a private party attended by trim executives with new golf-course tans. There was an open bar and a twirling ice sculpture of a sailfish.

Upstairs, in a suite on the 11th floor, forensic experts hunted for bullet fragments and measured the bloodstains on the carpet.

Appalling gore fails to daunt film audiences October 16, 1985 Imagine this: It's a sunny holiday afternoon in autumn. Birds sing. Teenagers lounge on Haulover Beach. Joggers trot through the Grove.

Yet in a dark downtown theater, redolent of foul hot dogs, more than 40 people are watching one of the most abominable movies of all time.

The film is called The Mutilator. Its profoundly repugnant newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt features a gleaming marlin gaff and promises: "By sword. By ax. By pick. Bye bye."

I have not come to review this motion picture, but rather the audience. I antic.i.p.ate a cavalcade of geeks, troglodytes and sociopaths-who else would pay $2.50 to watch a bunch of dumb white college kids get hacked into corned beef?

But a quick survey before the action starts offers these demographics: A well-dressed young couple, sharing Polaroid snapshots; a moody guy in a dingy tank top, girlfriend on his lap; several teenagers, slightly rowdy but too muscular to rebuke; up front, an entire family, including a 6-year-old, a toddler and a nursing infant.

And, of course, sitting by himself: the obligatory strange pale man with the baggy pants and bucket of popcorn. You know the one.

The film begins, and even before the opening credits there is a gruesome killing that would send most normal folks scurrying for the door or the restrooms. Not this bunch-a true gore corps.

The t.i.tles flash: The Mutilator. "Written and directed by Buddy Cooper." Enough said.

Then the actors, none of whose names are remotely familiar (aliases, no doubt).

Then: "Special appearance by Ben Moore."

Who the heck is Ben Moore? No one seems to know, but instinct suggests that he plays the t.i.tle role.

The plot unfolds: A group of boisterous, beer-guzzling college kids talks a pal into cras.h.i.+ng Dad's beachfront townhouse for the weekend. The father happens to be a demented lunatic who sleeps under some gardening tools in the garage and has a respiratory disorder so severe that his breathing can be heard all the way to Seattle.

Beyond this, The Mutilator follows the identical script of Friday the Thirteenth, Halloween and all other teen slasher movies: 1. The Trampy Co-Ed is the first to die, but only after the mandatory semi-nude swimming scene.

2. The Dumb Blond Jock is the next to be mangled.

3. The Goofy Comic-Relief Guy is third on the menu (and the only character whose mutilation seems to sadden the audience).

4. Next is the Concerned Cop, who gets beheaded.

5. Then there's quite a tedious Stalking Sequence, with lots of bad camera work and ba.s.s violas.

6. The climax is the tired old Car-Won't-Start-Scene, with Mr. Mutilator clumsily hacking his way through the convertible top.

7. Finally the killer is gored, stabbed, burned and run over by the young collegiate heroine, who is (I swear) a self-proclaimed virgin and proud of it. She also is a master of kung fu, as any Southern California virgin must be.

During all this carnage I expect raucous outbursts from the crowd, but the theater is reverently quiet, as if we are watching Olivier do Hamlet.

According to my notes, the only audible exclamation comes during the decapitation scene when a man in the back row cries, "Oh s-!" Which pretty much sums up my sentiments, too.

Sitting one row ahead of me is a handsome gray-haired woman with an embroidered shopping bag. She watches the entire film silently, without a murmur or a flinch. In fact, she is sitting so still that I begin to worry that she might have pa.s.sed away during the marlin-gaff scene.

But, moments after the final mutilation, the old woman bolts for the exit, understandably eager to escape before the house lights come on. I catch up with her and ask what she thought of The Mutilator.

She smiles and says, "It's incredible, yes?"

Oh yes.

Crowd gripped by "real" crime drama April 12, 1986 One color of death was bright yellow.

Yellow were the police ribbons that stretched from tree to tree, to keep people away. The ribbons fluttered in the morning breeze, and crisscrossed in mock gaiety the Kendall neighborhood. Outside the ribbons, crowds stood and stared. On the inside, men with radios and clipboards and tape measures and cameras moved grimly from one corpse to the next. There were four corpses in all.

Yellow was the color of the plastic sheets that covered the two FBI agents, who lay dead in the shade of a black olive tree. Occasionally the breeze would lift the sheets, and a policeman or federal agent would hurry forward to cloak them again.

The dead killers lay b.l.o.o.d.y and uncovered.

Incredibly, seven agents had been shot here. It was the bloodiest day in the FBI's history. A federal prosecutor who knew the dead agents watched and wept. He was not alone.

From an elevated parking ramp, reporters, photographers, TV cameramen and dozens of bystanders looked down on the tableau, at the intersection of Southwest 82nd Avenue and 122nd Street. Construction workers drank beer and guessed about how it had happened. A lady shopper with an Instamatic snapped a picture.

It was a bright cloudless day, a day when all the colors of death were vivid.

The broad bloodstain in the middle of the road was already burgundy, turning to brown in the heat.

A shotgun lay nearby, five empty green sh.e.l.ls s.h.i.+ning like emeralds on the pavement. A few feet away was a black-barreled pistol and, beyond that, what looked like an automatic rifle.

During the chase, two cars had crunched into a bottlebrush tree, its blossoms crimson; beneath its outer branches were two cream-colored FBI Buicks, one pocked by bullet holes. The brake lights were still on.

Once all this had been noted and absorbed, there was little else to see.The shooting had lasted only minutes. It had been quiet for hours now, and still we stood and watched. The wounded were gone, die dead were silent.

Up the ramp came several Palmetto High School students, some skipping cla.s.s, others taking an extra-long lunch break. None of them was clowning around, but the distance from the bodies made casual talk an easier thing.

A blond teenager in a sleeveless T-s.h.i.+rt watched for a few minutes, then turned to go. "Death in Miami," he said to some friends. "It's nice to know we live in such a nice city."

Another student, Mark Saymon, asked to borrow a photographer's telephoto lens, to get a closer look. He said this was his third shoot-out scene; the others were a bank holdup and a Farm Store robbery. "Nothing like this," Saymon said. "I can't believe they let that dude lie in the sun."