After years these things are coming back to me......
I married a full blooded "white" Cuban girl. When I say "white" I mean that all her families roots can be traced directly back to Spain.
White or not she had some really bad seeds in that clan of hers. At this very moment her brother is doing life in prison for drug sales.
She had two first cousins who were pretty big coke dealers in the 1980's. Ricky did about 9 years, and the other one did close to 13 years in jail.
Its sort of strange, one of the first dates we went on was to one of her other cousins wedding. These two guys that I mentioned above kept asking e if I wanted to see their gold Rolex watches. Then they told me that I (along with my future Wife) were invited to go down and hang out at Coconut Grove with them. They said that they had rented a limo and plenty of Dom on ice.
Anyway, I choose not to go. Not only was the constant bragging driving me crazy, but cocaine has never been my drug of choice.
They were saying shit like...."Yeah these gold rolexes cost 18,000.00 dollars but because they are a mechanical movement I'll bet your 20.00 watch keeps better time". They made me feel so damn poor.
Within the next two years both were locked up.
My wife had another cousin who's nickname was "Toti". Now Toti was a big tie smuggler, had his own planes and everything. Was a really nice guy, a gentlemen to his core, never ever bragged and also helped a lot of people with his money.
Some of Toti's investments was opening up a small chain of video rental stores and buying tons of rental properties. He was smart and a very nice guy.
Well this poor guy met with a Johnny Roselli type ending. They found him off the coast of the Bahamas chopped up and stuffed in an oil drum.
The video stores all went under, but he was smart enough to leave a couple of nice duplexes for his only daughter to have when she turned 21.
Miami was absolutely fucking crazy in the 1980's.
Miami was loaded with coke dealers.
And Broward and Palm Beach counties were just chock full of NY wiseguys. All the night clubs and hotel bars were just full of LCN guys during the winter months.
Sal
