CUBA: Death in Marianao

For Major Mario Salabarria, 34-year-old head of the Havana police's special investigations department, it had been a bad week. Salabarria was in jail, charged with murder. The man he had set out to get was dead, but a hero, and the Army was in control of the police department.

For months, Salabarria had fretted over a rival who he felt threatened his power in the department—Emilio Tro, young (29), able police major who fought in the Spanish Civil War (on the Loyalist side) and with the U.S. Army in Europe and the Pacific.† Tro, among other things, had accused Salabarria...