I had seen him watching me for several days. The driveway leading out of Havana’s Hotel Nacional might have been 50 yards or more, and he seemed to be standing there at the end of it every day.
Clever
One of the smartest guys I knew in the blue-collar, predominantly black neighborhood where I grew up in Detroit was a voracious reader and an all-city basketball player.
He read so much and was knowledgeable on so many subjects that guys in the neighborhood began calling him Clever. We were all intellectually curious and outstanding students, and during summer vacations, we would sit late into the evening on someone’s porch, holding forth on subjects ranging from Mao’s Long March in China to Napoleon’s campaign in Russia.
El Gordo Thrives in the U.S. of A.
Back in my ill-spent youth, when I thought it was more valuable to float around the world with one bag and a double-digit bankroll rather than map out a career, I landed in Madrid during the dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
COLUMN ONE : Past Haunts Ex-Panther in New Life
Julius Butler’s testimony helped convict Geronimo Pratt of murder. Now, the First A.M.E. Church official’s prominence upsets some who say Butler was an FBI informant–a claim he denies.