that one of the things she had done was to become involved in the development of Grand Bahama. At the time that worried me very much because Grand Bahama was turning sour.
Wallace Groves was an American who had a dream and that dream was Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama. He persuaded Sir Stafford Sands, then Minister of Finance in the Bahamian Government, to sell him over 200 square miles of government land on Grand Bahama upon which he would build a city – Freeport. His intention, not actually realized in his lifetime, was to create a duty-free area for the benefit of American corporations where they could avoid American taxes. In 1963 the scheme was not working; no immediate enthusiasm was being shown by any corporation anywhere. Groves switched the emphasis to tourism, recreation and residential housing, and twisted Sands’s arm to allow the building of a casino to attract custom.
Sands was a quintessential Bay Street Boy who could catch a dollar on the fly no matter how fast it went. It was he who was primarily responsible for the vast increase of tourist traffic. Reasoning that the tourist needs much more than mere sun and sand he saw to it that the whole infrastructure of the tourist industry was built and maintained. He acceded to Groves’s request and the casino opened in 1964.
It was the worst mistake Sands could ever have made. The shadowy figure supervising the running of the casino was Meyer Lansky who used to run casinos in Havana until he was tossed out of Cuba by Castro. Having put out a contract on Castro for $1 million Lansky looked for somewhere else to operate and found Grand Bahama. The gangsters had moved in.
Politics and economics walk hand in hand, largely revolving around the question of who gets what, and the black Bahamians saw the wealth created by the tourist industry going into the pockets of the white Bay Street Boys who also controlled the House of Assembly and ran the country in the interest of the whites. Something had to give, and in 1967 the largely black Progressive Liberal Party led by Lynden Pindling squeaked into power with a two-seat majority. The following year Pindling unexpectedly held another election and the PLP got in with twenty-nine seats out of the thirty-eight.
This landslide came about because of the mistake made by Stafford Sands. As soon as Pindling came to power he decided to take a closer look at Freeport and, in particular, the casino. He found that Groves and Lansky were giving kick-backs to Sands and others in the form of dubious ‘consultancy fees’ and that Sands himself was reputed to have taken over $2 million. When this was disclosed all hell broke loose; Sands was discredited and fell, bringing his party down with him.
But Groves had been right – the casino had brought prosperity to Grand Bahama, and Freeport had boomed and was thriving. There were plans for vast residential developments – great areas were already laid out in streets, complete with sewerage and electricity. The streets even had names; all that was missing were the houses on the building plots.
But investors were wary. To them a Caribbean revolution had taken place and what would those crazy blacks do next? They ignored the fact that it had been a democratic election and that the composition of the Assembly now compared with the ethnic composition of the Bahamas; they just pulled out and took their money with them and the economy of Grand Bahama collapsed again and is only now recovering.
And what was I doing while this was going on? I was trying to keep things together by fast footwork and trying not to get my hands too dirty. To tell the truth I voted for Pindling. I could see that the rule of the Bay Street Boys’ oligarchy was an anachronism in a fast changing world and that, unless the black Bahamian was given a share in what was going, there would be a revolution and not a peaceful election.
And among other things I got married.
Julie Pascoe was the daughter of an American doctor and lived in Maryland. When I left Harvard we kept up a correspondence. In 1966 she visited the Bahamas with her parents and I took them around the Islands; showing off, I suppose. We married in 1967 and Susan was born in 1969. Karen came along in 1971. The propensity of the Mangans to breed daughters had not failed.
Although I had been worried about the investments on Grand Bahama, three years ago I decided that an upswing was due. I floated a company, the West End Securities Corporation, a holding company which I control and of which I am President. More importantly I moved my base of operations from Nassau to Freeport, and built a house at Lucaya on Grand Bahama. Nassau is an old town, a little stuffy and set in its ways. Brave new ideas do not sprout in an environment like that so I left for Grand Bahama where Wally Groves’s dream seems about to come true.
I suppose I could have been pictured as a very lucky man – not worrying where my next dollar was coming from, happily married to a beautiful wife with two fine children, and with a flourishing business. I was a lucky man, and I thought nothing could go wrong until the events I am about to recount took place.
Where shall I begin? I think with Billy Cunningham who was around when it happened just before the Christmas before last. It was the worst Christmas of my life.
Billy Cunningham was a scion of the Cunningham clan; his father, uncle, brother and assorted cousins jointly owned a fair slice of Texas – they ran beef, drilled for oil, were into shipping, newspapers, radio and television, hotels, supermarkets and other real estate, and owned moderate tracts of downtown Dallas and Houston. The Cunningham Corporation was a power to be reckoned with in Texas, and Prince Billy was in the Bahamas to see what he could see.
I had first met him at Harvard Business School where, like me, he was being groomed for participation in the family business, and we had kept in touch, meeting at irregular intervals. When he telephoned just before Christmas asking to meet me on my own ground I said, ‘Sure. You’ll be my guest.’
‘I want to pick your brains,’ he said. ‘I might have a proposition for you.’
That sounded interesting. The Cunningham Corporation was the kind of thing I was trying to build West End Securities into, though I had a long way to go. I had a notion that the Cunninghams were in a mind for expansion and Billy was coming to look over the chosen ground. I would rather cooperate than have them as competitors because they were a tough crowd, and I hoped that was what Billy had in mind. We fixed a date.
I met him at Freeport International Airport where he arrived in a company jet decked in the Cunningham colours. He had not changed much; he was tall, broad-shouldered and blond, with a deep tan and gleaming teeth. The Cunninghams seemed to run to film star good looks, those of them I had met There was nothing about him to indicate he was American, no eccentricity of style which might reasonably be expected of a Texan. Texans are notorious, even in the United States, for their unselfconscious and nostalgic frontier rig. If he ever wore them, then Billy had left his ten-gallon hat, string tie and high-heeled boots at home, and was dressed in a lightweight suit of obviously English cut. Being a Cunningham he would probably order them casually by the half-dozen from Huntsman of Savile Row.
‘How’s the boy?’ he said as we shook hands. ‘I don’t think you’ve met Debbie – this is my little cousin.’
Deborah Cunningham was as beautiful as the Cunningham menfolk were handsome; a tall, cool blonde. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Cunningham.’
She smiled. ‘Debbie, please.’
‘Tell me,’ said Billy. ‘How long is the runway?’
That was a typical Billy Cunningham question; he had an insatiable curiosity and his questions, while sometimes apparently irrelevant, always had a bearing on his current train of thought. I said, ‘The last time I measured it came to 11,000
