Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

“Say what?”

“Rich, I saw Linda and Sammy James go into a room at the Hudson Hotel.”

“What!” Richard demanded, his voice rising, his face flushing strawberry red.

“Don’t go getting mad at me, Rich; I just thought you should know.”

“What room, you know?”

“Yeah, number sixteen, on the ground floor, just near the Coke machine.”

“Thanks, Joe,” Richard said, and he jumped into his car and sped over to the Hudson Hotel.

True, Richard and Linda were mostly estranged at this point, but Richard still thought of her as his wife—and as his property. He pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, which was in a secluded area near the river. It was a place where people went to have sex, for the most part. Richard knew Sammy James. They had played pool as partners. Richard stormed up to number 16 and smashed the door wide open with his enormous right foot.

There they were, both naked, in bed, actually having intercourse. Linda’s eyes nearly popped out of her shocked face. Richard grabbed James, a tall, muscular guy with curly black hair, and pummeled him. Linda, in shock, looked on.

“You treacherous bastard!” Richard told James. “I’m going to break every bone in your body but one, and you go near her again, I’ll find out and break that bone.” And Richard proceeded to methodically smash and break almost every bone in James’s body but the femur of his left leg, repeatedly getting on the bed and jumping on him, kicking him, stomping him, punching him.

Finished with James, Richard turned his wrath on Linda, drew out a knife.

“If you weren’t the mother of my sons,” he said, “I’d kill you, but now I’m just going to teach you a lesson you will never forget.” He grabbed for her left breast. She tried to resist him. He slapped her unconscious, grabbed her left breast, and cut off its nipple. He then did the same thing to her other breast and left her there like that, storming out of the room like a hurricane.

From that day on Richard had little to do with Linda. He’d see his boys now and then; that was it. James left town and never came back to Jersey City.

Philip Marable was a captain in the Genovese crime family. He owned a popular Italian restaurant in Hoboken and lived in nearby Bloomfield. The name of the restaurant was Bella Luna. They served good southern Italian food at reasonable prices. There were yellow oilcloths on each table and candles in empty wine bottles covered with different-colored wax.

Marable was a good dresser, always perfectly coiffed, handsome with thick black hair and dark menacing eyes… a dandy. He reached out to Richard and had him come to the restaurant, greeted him warmly, sat him down, insisted he eat a good meal. Richard kept wondering what he wanted. After they finished eating and had anisette-infused espresso, Marable said, “You know George West, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Richard said.

“We have a problem with this guy. He’s been holding up my runners”—people who collect bets on the numbers racket—“and I don’t want him around no more,” Marable explained.

“Could be arranged,” Richard said.

“Make sure a message is sent—understand—that this kind’a shit can’t be goin’ on, okay?”

“I understand,” Richard said, pleased, seeing his career horizons broadening.

With that Marable adroitly slipped a white envelope across the table, as if it were a practiced trick. The envelope was filled with cash. Richard pocketed it. Dinner was over. Richard knew that Marable’s giving him a piece of work was a good opportunity, and Richard immediately went looking for George West. He searched high and low for West but couldn’t find him. He staked out his house, bars he frequented, kept missing him. But Richard was determined to fill the contract quickly and successfully, and he kept looking for West, like a shark following the scent of blood. Under the front seat of his car Richard had a cut-down .22 Magnum rifle with a silencer and a thirty-clip magazine. It was a vicious little weapon, an assassin’s tool, easy to carry, easy to conceal—deadly. Richard had an unlimited, convenient supply of weapons. He knew a guy named Robert, known as “Motorboat” because his ears protruded excessively, who sold all kinds of guns out of the trunk of his car, new guns still in boxes. Richard never killed two people with the same weapon. As soon as he used one in a killing, he got rid of it. This habit would serve him well for many years to come, for it kept his activities off police radar. He also purposely shot people to death with two different-caliber weapons, so it would appear as if there were two shooters. Motorboat the gun salesman had a big old Lincoln Continental with a huge trunk filled with handguns, rifles, and silencers. He was a tall, skinny guy with thick rose-colored glasses. He was also a mechanic and made suppressors for nearly all the guns he sold. When in need, all Richard had to do was call Motorboat, and he’d come around with his wide-ass Lincoln. Richard even bought hand grenades from Motorboat. The cut-down .22 he was going to use on George West he’d gotten from Motorboat.

For nine days Richard couldn’t find West, no matter how hard he searched for him, yet he knew West was in town because people saw him. It was the end of April 1958 now and it rained just about every day.

By happenstance as Richard was driving away from a bar in Bayonne where he’d picked up money for Carmine Genovese, he passed an old-fashioned silver boxcar diner a little way down the road, and George West was sitting there plain as day eating a sandwich. Not believing this bit of luck, Richard nearly hit the car in front of him, he was staring at West so hard. He made a U-turn and pulled into a parking lot next to the diner, found West’s car, and positioned his own car so he’d have a clear shot. It was raining hard. Richard liked to kill in the rain. There were fewer people about. Everyone was in a hurry, not paying attention to anything but where he was going.

Soon West left the diner and made his way to his car, using a toothpick as he went. Richard calmly took a bead on him, pulled the trigger of the semiauto .22, and in two seconds shot West numerous times. Because of the silencer the gun made only a soft popping sound, like a ladyfinger firecracker going off, Richard explained. Wanting to be sure West was dead, Richard calmly got out of his car and walked over to West. No one noticed Richard. No one cared. West was still alive. Blood was squirting from a dime-sized bullet hole in his neck. Richard made sure he was unobserved and put two slugs in West’s head, walked back to his car and returned to Jersey City. He would’ve liked to torture West a bit, that had been the directive, but circumstances hadn’t permitted such a luxury. It had taken him nine days to find West, and he hadn’t wanted to give him a chance to get away. Richard did not tell Marable of the hit, how it had happened; he’d find out soon enough, Richard knew; indeed, it was bad form to talk about a murder after it was ordered and went down.

Marable liked what Richard had done and gave him several more contracts over the next year. One was a man who owed Marable over fifty thousand dollars from gambling debts but refused to pay, was bragging to people all over Jersey that he wasn’t going to pay, that he wasn’t afraid of Marable—“Fuck him!” Richard gave this guy a flat, and as he was changing the tire, Richard crept up on him and struck him with an L-shaped tire iron in the head so hard he actually opened his skull up and the mark’s brain splashed all over the car and on Richard’s trousers. Bummer.

Richard soon began to carry a change of clothes with him all the time because murdering people, he came to know, could be a messy business. The next hit for Philip Marable was a man who owned a boat in Edgewater. Richard didn’t know why the guy had to die; he didn’t care; that was not his business. However, he had known the mark for a few years and didn’t like anything about him, thought of him as a loudmouth braggart. On the evening Richard went to see him it was the middle of July, a hot, humid night. The boat was moored at a quiet marina, and Richard parked in the dirt lot there, found the boat in a slip at the end of the dock, a small blue-and-white cabin cruiser. It was 11:00 P.M. Richard could see inside the little portal windows of the boat, and there was the mark, having sex with a young woman, not his wife, Richard knew. He could easily have sneaked up on them, but he did not want to hurt the girl, so he went back to his car and waited for the mark to finish. He sat there for three hours, thinking, You better enjoy it because it’s the last piece of ass you’ll ever have.