But the shadow of Trujillo obscured their horizon, and they were unable ever to forget the source of their good fortune. Flor recalled that their presence was required every day for lunch in the presidential mansion—“plain fare, rice and beans, no drinks, no cigarettes, no small talk: it was a bit like two slaves dining with the master.”
Along with all the gifts, Porfirio was given real work to do. Having decided against dispatching the couple to London, Trujillo appointed his son-in-law undersecretary to the president in April 1933, and then, the following July, undersecretary of foreign relations. In that post, Porfirio took charge of some genuinely sensitive responsibilities, such as communicating with Gerardo Machado y Morales, the Cuban president who’d been exiled to the United States after a coup in August; several rounds of correspondence between the two, with Porfirio gently dissuading the elder man from attempting to enlist Trujillo’s help in regaining his position, would survive. When foreign dignitaries came to the capital, Flor and Porfirio, the stylish, French-speaking face of the modern Dominican Republic, were trotted out to meet the visitors. A Haitian newspaper columnist was so charmed that he praised them as the “best-dressed, best-educated, most popular couple in town”; Trujillo, cross at having failed to be mentioned himself in a similar light, found in these compliments a slight, which he avenged by adopting a calculated iciness toward the couple.
There was phony work as well. In May 1933, Porfirio, who had never taken a course in business and had never had a bank account in his own name, was named president of the Compañía de Seguros San Rafael, an insurance firm established by Trujillo—like the other leading companies in virtually every field of Dominican commerce—as a false front for his private monopolization of the nation’s economy. The entire Trujillo family—the president’s many brothers and sisters, countless nieces and nephews and cousins—would be enriched through the years via such schemes. And not only blood relatives but in-laws and the relations of in-laws; Flor said of Porfirio’s kin, who’d so scorned the sight of him in his uniform barely a year earlier, “His family didn’t much cotton to Trujillo, but after the wedding they suddenly got big positions in the government.”
A lot of Dominican men would have been satisfied with this routine: the sinecures, the luxurious home, the servants, the prestige, the $50,000 bank account (controlled by Trujillo and in Flor’s name, but still). Not Porfirio. He was living within easy walking distance of his old haunts, the bars and brothels and clubs where he’d idled before he joined the army. He settled into a double life, half the time an obedient son-in-law, half a notorious rake participating in marathon drinking-and-whoring bouts: parrandas. When news of this behavior filtered back home, as it inevitably would, there were dustups with Flor. At least once Porfirio went so far as to hit her; she ran off to the palace, interrupting a meeting to tell her father of her husband’s violence; summoned by Trujillo, Porfirio mollified him by declaring that he’d struck her for failing to respect him under his own roof, a provocation with which any true tíguere would sympathize.
Even as he forgave that trespass, Trujillo harbored little warmth for his son-in-law. “I think that at bottom he never forgave me for marrying his daughter,” Porfirio surmised. “That his daughter could love someone other than him seemed impossible to him.” The president’s withering remoteness, coupled with Porfirio’s own restless inability to settle into the life of a bureaucrat, impelled him to ask for reinstatement to the Army, where he’d so enjoyed the life of vigor and male camaraderie. Trujillo consented, posting him at the rank of captain, assigning him no specific duties, and doing little to couch his disgust at Porfirio’s apparent contentment with his new station.
The source of the president’s contempt was, in Porfirio’s view, obvious: Little Ramfis had been commissioned as a senior officer in the Army the previous year; as Porfirio put it, “What sort of son-in-law would be content to be captain when [Trujillo’s] own five-year-old son was already a colonel?” (A letter from Robert L. Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” offices in New York would arrive on Trujillo’s desk in February 1936, seeking confirmation of Ramfis’s position in the Army and asking whether he wore full uniform and collected the appropriate salary for his rank. By that time, the young soldier had been seen beside his father at several official functions wearing elaborate military uniforms and partaking of champagne toasts.)
But Porfirio endured the Benefactor’s scorn because he simply wanted to be his own man. Without responsibilities as a soldier, he could look for private opportunities around the city. “I had very little to do,” he recalled, “and I wanted to learn about business.” But, as he should have known from his brief stint at the insurance company, nobody did business in Ciudad Trujillo without doing business with Trujillo. And it was a uniquely bold and crafty businessman indeed who could make a success at that.
Félix Benítez Rexach wore his hair to his shoulders, wasn’t too particular about washing or combing it, and habitually topped it with battered straw hats. His clothes weren’t much more presentable: He could show up at official functions in torn and muddy outfits as if oblivious entirely to protocol. He looked for all the world like a hobo, but it was a calculated guise. He was actually a millionaire engineer willing to stand up to gangsters and governments to see his business interests come to fruition. Born in Puerto Rico, he traveled widely and grew especially fond of France, where he owned homes in Paris and on the Riviera. There was suspicious talk about his sexuality, but he had two wives, the second being the onetime Parisian flower girl Gaby Montbre, who had a sort-of musical career as La Môme Moineau (literally, “the bratty sparrow”), a chanteuse in the vein of Edith Piaf. There was suspicious talk as well about his engineering credentials, but he had built himself a yacht from his own design (his wife would become more famous for being photographed by French magazines on its decks in sailing clothes than for her singing), and he had successfully overseen the creation of deep-water harbors in Puerto Rico, where he had additional interests in the resort hotel business.
Benítez Rexach showed up in Ciudad Trujillo in 1934 when Trujillo’s government announced plans to enlarge the harbor at the mouth of the Ozama River; until then, the largest ships arriving in the capital had to anchor a short distance out at sea and have their passengers and cargo ferried ashore. The project would require the use of a massive shipboard dredge—and whoever successfully completed the job could hope on doing further business with Trujillo at other ports around the country.
Benítez Rexach read all the implications of the situation, including the nepotistic nature of Dominican political and business affairs, and he sought a pry hole that would get him into the president’s good graces. He found one in Trujillo’s tomcatting son-in-law. He dangled his wife as bait in front of Porfirio, cynically affording him ample opportunity to sample her favors. (Flor knew about the affair and so, she claimed, did the whole city, including her father.) To tie the knot tighter, Benítez Rexach suggested a business partnership: If Porfirio acquired a dredge, and Benítez Rexach knew of one available in New Orleans, then the engineer would rent it for the duration of the job; they drew up an agreement.
For Benítez Rexach, it was politics: cozen the son-in-law to get to the real power. But for Porfirio and Flor, it was a lifeline—and a gamble. “Neither of us had much business sense,” Flor recalled. She and her husband “were alike in so many ways, neither of us really good-looking, both mixed-up Dominicans, in love with the high life, hungry for what money could buy, but unable to earn an honest living on our own.” Success in the harbor project, however, would mean autonomy from Trujillo’s money and influence. The risk was worth it.
The first obstacle would be getting the capital necessary to buy the dredge. Flor’s father still controlled the $50,000 dowry; would he be willing to open the purse for the project? Willing wasn’t exactly the word. “I don’t have much faith in second-hand machinery or in this investment,” the president told his daughter even as he agreed to her request. Rubi sent an emissary, cash in hand, to buy the dredge, a vessel called the Tenth of February, and bring it back to Ciudad Trujillo.
While he was risking his fortune and good name, such as they were, in this scheme, Porfirio was also upholding his share of the bargain