Immunity Ended

When Benito Remedies' roosters lost cockfights, Cubans said, he wrung the cowards' necks with his own hands. Once, when a brand-new $7,500 Cadillac refused to start, he riddled its recalcitrant carburetor with bullets.

The hot-tempered lord of an $8,000,000 sugar, tobacco and pineapple kingdom, hulking Benito Remedies, 64, was more or less a law unto himself. To make good & sure, he had for 20 years bought a seat in Congress from one party or another ("I'll pay twice as much as anyone else," was his slogan). That gave him the comfortable protection of congressional immunity from arrest for such peccadillos as slugging impertinent policemen or beating up bus drivers. Over the years 76 charges, none of which had been prosecuted, piled up against him.

One day last week Remedies stopped his shiny sedan at a busy downtown Havana intersection and told his chauffeur to wait. Traffic Policeman Carlos Gutierrez presently walked over and handed the chauffeur a parking ticket. Returning, Remedies leaped at the cop, grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. "You can't do that to me," he snarled. "I am Representative Benito Remedies and I am going to kill you."

Snatching at the cop's holster to keep him from drawing, Remedios reached for his own pistol. But in the scuffle Remedios slipped on the curb and fell, dragging Gutierrez down. Landing on top, Gutierrez grabbed for his pistol and fired five times into the Congressman's back and head. Remedios, still clutching his own gun, rolled over, dying.

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