n a cozy, ramshackle apartment in what used to be the
swanky part of Havana, a senior citizen of the black liberation
movement waits out an exile linked irrevocably to the fate of
Fidel Castro. William Lee Brent, 65-year-old Black Panther and
air pirate, is a retiree in Communist Cuba. He has a salt-and-
pepper goatee and a swashbuckling gold earring, with gray stubble
fighting a comeback on his shaved head. While his longhaired
dachshunds Jason and Rufus yip and waddle about, pausing in their
frantic rounds to make a mess on the balcony, Brent sits
shirtless on his rattan couch looking out at the banyon trees in
the park across the street. John Coltrane's "Gentle Side'' plays
on the CD player. Down on Quinta Avenida Cubans wheel by on their
Chinese-made bicycles, too broke to buy gas in this forlorn but
defiant outpost of the fallen Soviet empire. Out past the park
lie the beach and the open sea, deep and tantalizing in its
infinite blue reach toward the Florida Keys, 90 miles away.
Twenty-seven years ago, Brent shot and wounded three San
Francisco police officers in a gunbattle outside the Hall of
Justice. Rather than face the California justice system, Brent
hopped bail and hijacked a plane to Cuba on June 17, 1969.
The shootout followed a surreal, almost farcical episode at a gas station. Brent and other Panthers had pulled their van into the station to gas up. When Brent opened his jacket to pay, the attendant saw a gun in Brent's waistband, assumed he was being robbed and shoved wads of money at him. High on beer and dexedrine, Brent simply took the money, filled up the van's tank and drove off. The other Panthers weren't even aware of what had gone down until the police started to chase them.
The pictures still play in Brent's mind: the cops running
toward his parked van as he crouched and took aim, the cops 20
yards away with drawn guns, the strange sense of calm as he
squeezed the trigger -- squeeze, don't pull.
Next page: A lone wolf idealist in a collapsing land