Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Richard began making good money and usually walked around with a large roll of bills. He soon acquired a penchant for gambling, playing cards and going to the racetracks, and as quickly as he made money, he pissed it away. He said he was “nigger rich,” and had no comprehensive concept of money, how to manage it, save it, and parlay it into more. For him, money was for spending, when and where and how he wished. Easy come, easy go.

Wanting to look good— sharp, as he says—he bought garish suits for himself, bright yellows and pinks. Thus attired, Richard and the Coming Up Roses made the rounds of all the Hoboken bars. There were, literally, two or three bars on every block, more bars per capita than anywhere in the country. They also went to dance halls. Once in a while men made comments about how Richard dressed, and he assaulted these individuals quickly and violently. He’d pull out his knife and use it at the drop of a hat, and it got so that no one commented on his outlandish outfits. Still, he was quite a sight in a pink, large-collared suit, tall and thin and gangly, particularly broad at the shoulders, with his light blond hair combed straight back and his intense honey-colored eyes. Even then it was an unsettling experience, having Richard Kuklinski stare directly at you with his pale, deadpan face.

Richard took to drinking more than he should, and when he drank he, like his father and more than likely his grandfather, became mean and belligerent. He and the Coming Up Roses often got into bar brawls, and they rarely, if ever, lost a fight, because all of them were vicious in the extreme and were always sending people to the hospital with gaping knife wounds, cracked heads, broken bones. Richard and his friends became notorious, not an easy feat in the tough blue-collar cities of Hoboken and Jersey City, each filled with the notorious. It didn’t take long for members of the De Cavalcante crime family to notice the Coming Up Roses gang.

His name was Carmine Genovese, no relationship to the infamous Vito Genovese. Carmine was a made man, a cunning individual who had his sausage-thick fingers in many juicy pies. He was short and round like a meatball, with a large round head that was also round like a meatball. Indeed, his nickname was “Meatball.” Carmine heard about the Coming Up Roses crew many times over the years, that they were very violent, stand-up and fearless, all neighborhood kids who had come up the hard way, looking to earn. He invited them to his home one afternoon and sat them down in the kitchen as he prepared a meat gravy sauce for pasta. With his heavy tough-guy accent, talking out of the left side of his mouth, he said, “I’m hearing all the time about you and I like what I hear. I got a piece a work for you. You do this good, I’ll make sure you earn big.” He added some hot sausages to the gravy pot. “There’s this guy in Lincoln Park. Here’s his address and his picture. He’s a problem. He’s got his head up his ass; he’s gotta go. You do a good job, I make sure you earn, capisce? I did everything for you already—just finish the work. He’s gotta go… understand?” With that he handed Richard a black-and-white photograph of a man getting in his car, a black Lincoln. Richard passed it to the others. They all looked. Richard knew this could be a golden opportunity for his crew, that the door was opening to a bona fide in with organized crime—a thing they had always hoped for. Because four of them were not Italians, they could never be made, but they could become “independent contractors.”

The mob, they all knew, controlled New Jersey commerce, had an absolute stranglehold on the unions, the piers, all vices, hijackings, robberies, shylocking, and murder.

Carmine then added a pile of neat, round meatballs to the gravy. “You want the work?” he asked, looking at them out of the corner of his reptilian eyes.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Richard said.

“Good. This gotta happen quick, understand? Anything goes wrong, you call me. We own the cops here, okay?”

“Okay,” Richard said as the others nodded in solemn agreement.

“You guys stay. Eat lunch with me,” Carmine said, and soon they all sat down to a simple though hearty meal of spaghetti, meat sauce, and salad with big green Sicilian olives that Carmine had cured—one of his hobbies, he explained.

When the Coming Up Roses left Carmine, they went to a Hoboken bar near the waterfront called the Final Round. There they sat down to discuss this sudden opportunity, all of them except Richard nervous and unsure. Barroom brawls were one thing, but cold-blooded murder was a horse of another color. The baddest of the group was a tall, bull-like guy named John Wheeler. He was an amateur heavyweight boxer, tough as nails. Despite his anxiety he said, “I’ll do it. I’ll pull the trigger. No problem.”

Good, okay, that was settled. Richard said, “Let’s do this quick and let’s do it right. Guys, this is a great chance for us, okay? We don’t wanna blow it.”

They all agreed and piled into John’s car and drove over to Lincoln Park. Richard was behind the wheel. John had the gun, a mean little .32 revolver. This was a good neighborhood. People who lived here were rich. The Coming Up Roses had robbed numerous houses in the area. They found the address, a stately wood-frame house with fancy columns and porticoes and a beautiful, well-tended garden. It was early spring and already the grounds were bursting with young flowers. This was a far cry from where these guys had grown up; this was the proverbial other side of the tracks. As they sat there discussing how to do the job, the mark walked right out the front door, as if on cue, without a care in the world it seemed. All of the Coming Up Roses were nervous, had butterflies in their stomachs.

“There he is, go do it, John,” Richard said.

But John didn’t move. He froze, got pale. The mark slid into his fancy Lincoln and drove away.

“What happened?” Richard asked, annoyed.

“I don’t know…. I just, I just—I don’t know,” big, tough-as-nails Wheeler said.

“Okay, not to worry, we’ll follow him, nail him in his car, okay, at a light,” Richard said.

“Yeah—yeah, okay,” Wheeler said. Richard put the car in gear and off they went, this inexperienced impromptu hit team.

They caught up with the Lincoln at a light on West Side Avenue. “Get ready,” Richard said, easing up right next to the Lincoln. Wheeler’s hands, however, were trembling so much he couldn’t even take proper aim.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, and the others asked the same thing.

“I don’t fuckin’ know. I can’t.”

The light turned green. The mark drove off.

“We have to do this,” Richard said. “We have no choice anymore.” They trailed the mark to a Hoboken bar, watched him belly up to the bar, have a drink and shoot the breeze with the bartender.

“I’ll do it,” Richard solemnly said, and took the gun from Wheeler. Silently, contemplatively, they sat there. Night came on quickly. It began to rain. The mark left the bar and headed for his Lincoln. He seemed a little wobbly now. The coast was clear. Without a word, Richard stepped from the car, quickly made his way to the Lincoln, deadly purpose in each step, made sure no one was looking, put the gun up close to the mark’s head, and pulled the trigger, boom, one shot to the left side of his head, just above the ear. It was done.

Calm, cool, collected, Richard walked back to the car and got in, and they drove away. Wow! was the collective feeling of the others, but no one said anything, each of them looking at Richard with a newfound respect.

Finally, after several blocks, the big, bad Wheeler said, “Man, Rich, you’re cold like ice.”

“Cool as a fuckin’ cucumber,” another said.