We would always tease my dad because he dressed like a gangster. The most ubiquitous accessory was his dark sunglasses, that he would even wear inside the house at night. He’d fall asleep in front of the TV with them on and we wouldn’t know until he began snoring. It was only later that he began telling me stories about his days in the union in Cuba, when he’d worked as muscle, driving the communists out and whatever else needed doing. The most common phrase in those days was, “you don’t want Wilfredo to come down here.” In the States he got mixed up with the counterrevolutionaries, planning the Bay of Pigs and trying to invade Haiti. I recorded whatever he’d tell me as my wife listened and ate breakfast on an infinite number of Saturday brunches in first Chelsea, then Union City, the heart of the old Cuban community in the Northeast. She’d later say, “theirs only three things I could understand from your father’s Cuban accent; armas, drogas and the Bronx.”