Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub

by Rosa Lowinger

By 1946, gangland-style political killings were common enough in Havana that a term, gangsterismo, “gangsterism,” was coined, and stories were written about the violence in both Time and Newsweek. Also in 1946, despite Grau’s sanctimonious stance towards the Cuban gamblers, Havana’s Hotel Nacional became the site of the first meeting of the American underworld since 1932. Charles “Lucky” Luciano, who had been deported to Italy from the United States after serving ten years of a thirty-year sentence for aiding and abetting prostitution, arrived in October under enormous secrecy, to keep the American government from learning of his proximity to American shores. He was received by his old friend and boyhood colleague from the Lower East Side, Meyer Lansky, who arranged for a six-month extension of Luciano’s visa with Grau’s minister of the interior, and rented him a mansion in Miramar, the most elegant neighborhood in the city. In December, Lansky and Luciano were joined by Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Joe Bonanno, Tommy Lucchese, Joe Profaci, Giuseppe Magliocco, Willie Moretti, Augie Pisano, Mike Miranda, Tony Accardo, the brothers Fischetti, Phil Castell, and Santo Trafficante—essentially a who’s who of the American Mafia—for a weeklong series of meetings that, according to Luciano’s as-told-to biography, began with the men putting up the money so Luciano could purchase a $150,000 interest in the Hotel Nacional casino. At the time, the Nacion...