Philip Carlo: The Ice Man

When Richard arrived home that day, Barbara was preparing dinner. She never knew what kind of mood he’d be in when he walked in the house, and always greeted him with a kind of wary trepidation. She did not smile until he smiled. He smiled now and kissed her and the children hello. She immediately knew he was not in a bad mood.

Barbara was married to two different men, the good Richard and the bad Richard, as she had come to think of them. Thankfully, now, he was the good Richard. After washing up, Richard assembled a red fire truck for Dwayne, patiently sitting on the floor with his boy and the toy and a screwdriver.

Barbara tried her best to shelter Dwayne from the bad Richard. Just about every weekend she sent him off to her mother’s home to keep him out of harm’s way, and she was quick to ferret Dwayne out of the house if she saw Richard’s mood changing, his lips tightening against his teeth, his face paling. Whenever he made a soft clicking sound out of the left side of his mouth, they all knew it was time to run. That sound was like an air-raid siren warning of attack.

Richard’s daughter Merrick was his favorite. She had had a failing kidney since she was a very young child, often had to be hospitalized, and had undergone several operations. Richard was always there for her, by the side of her bed, holding her hand, stroking her head. He could not have been more caring and attentive, Barbara said.

Merrick never held anything her father did against him. The beatings he gave Barbara, the furniture he broke, the toys he tore apart, the cups and keepsakes smashed, all was forgiven. None of it was his fault. He couldn’t help himself. He just couldn’t control his anger, he had explained to Merrick—only Merrick—and she believed him. He was her daddy. She would love him deeply and profoundly no matter what.

However, daughter Chris remembered and held all her father’s outbursts against him, particularly how he abused her mother. Chris, too, loved her father; he was the only dad she had ever known, and when he was nice he was truly golden, but she hated the man her father became when he flew into one of his irrational rages. No matter how mad Richard became, though, he never hit either of his daughters or Dwayne.

If, Barbara explained, he ever laid a finger on any of my children, I would’ve found a way to kill him, and he knew it.

Still, Barbara did not take into account, or perhaps just could not accept, the realities of the psychological damage Richard’s outbursts were causing her girls deep inside. Both Chris and Merrick had golden blond hair and sweet heart-shaped faces—the best features of both their parents. Chris had light blue eyes, Merrick’s were honey colored. They were both particularly attractive, with Richard’s wide Slavic cheekbones, Barbara’s long, perfectly straight nose and strong jawline, and the fair skin of the Polish. They looked so much alike that people often mistook them for twins. Barbara enjoyed buying them twin outfits, always two of everything. In most family pictures the girls are dressed alike, and there is a discernible sadness behind the smiles for the camera. The girls attended parochial school and were shy and polite, perfect little ladies. Warm and giving and quick to smile, they both made friends easily.

Chris and Merrick were now helping their mom set the table. The family soon sat down for dinner, roasted chicken and potatoes, one of Richard’s favorite meals. To an outsider they seemed perfectly normal, a well-adjusted, happy family. In truth, however, the man sitting at the head of the table, patiently slicing the roasted chicken, lovingly doling out preferred pieces, was America’s most prolific contract killer.

The contract came down in the first week of September. The mark had to suffer. That was the order. If he did suffer, the price would be doubled, the client said, from ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars, cash money. The mark lived in Nutley, New Jersey, in a fancy house with a curved driveway and elegant white pillars on either side of a large mahogany door with a big brass knocker in the shape of a ram’s head. Richard didn’t know anything about the mark other than that he had to suffer before he died. Richard preferred it that way. The less he knew about the mark, the better.

Richard had access to the camera because he produced pornographic movies for distribution all over the East and West Coasts and everywhere in between. Richard’s partner, the man who fronted Richard the money to start the production company, was the infamous Roy DeMeo—a psychopathic soldier attached to the Gambino family. DeMeo was an excellent moneymaker. He dealt in stolen cars, drugs, shylocking, pornography, and murder. He ran the most brutal, feared crew of killers organized crime ever knew. They were responsible for literally hundreds of murders. His immediate boss, his captain, was Nino Gaggi, who reported directly to Paul Castellano, the recently appointed head of the Gambino crime family, the largest, most successful crime family in New York’s rough-and-tumble history. Castellano had inherited the mantle from a genuine organized-crime legend: his brother-in-law, Carlo Gambino himself.

The camera, gray duct tape, and handcuffs needed for what Richard had in mind were in his trunk. Richard knew the mark left for work every day at 10:00 A.M. He had carefully plotted the mark’s route to work and planned to snatch him at a desolate corner where there was a stop sign, where he had to stop to make a turn. Richard preferred not to work in broad daylight, but he’d do whatever the job called for; and, he knew, people tended to be less defensive in the light of day, a natural element he repeatedly exploited.

When the mark came down the road toward the stop sign, Richard was there, innocently standing next to his car, its hood and trunk open, emergency lights blinking, a pleasant smile about his handsome face. He had a .357 Magnum in his hand, which was hidden in his coat pocket. Richard flagged the man down. As the mark reached the corner, Richard made sure to approach him on the driver’s side. Somewhat annoyed, the mark rolled down the window. “Yeah?” he demanded.

“Thanks for stopping, pal,” Richard began, and in the next instant, really just the bat of an eye, Richard pressed the thick blue-black .357 to the man’s head while with his other hand he quickly snatched the car keys from the ignition, done so quick it was like a magic trick.

“What the fuck?” the man exclaimed. He was a large heavyset individual with a huge round face, several double chins, a bald head. Richard opened the door, pulled him out, and, keeping the gun in his side, quickly made him get in the open trunk of Richard’s car.

“I’ll pay you—I’ll give you—”

“Shut up.” Richard stopped him, cuffed his hands behind his back, and taped his mouth shut.

“Make any noise and I’ll kill you!” Richard said in a practiced modulation that was a chilling thing to hear, like the growl of a nearby hungry lion. Richard closed the trunk and hood of his car, got into it, and slowly pulled away. In a matter of seconds he had snatched the mark without anyone seeing him. The first aspect of the job was done.

By now the leaves of the trees in Bucks County had taken on colors, bright reds, hot oranges, bold yellows. Slowly falling leaves seemed like multicolored butterflies on the first days of spring. Richard parked his car in a remote spot. He pulled the mark from the trunk and led him to the cave he’d found, and located the spot where he had laid out the meat. He made the mark lie down here and carefully wrapped duct tape around his ankles and legs and arms, tightly bound him as a diligent spider wraps silk around its prey. The man’s panic-stricken eyes bulged out of his large round face. He desperately tried to talk, to offer Richard all the money he had, anything he wanted, but the gray duct tape held tight and only panicky, mumbled grunts came from him. What he wanted to say Richard had heard many times over. They were words he had become deaf to. Richard had no remorse, no conscience, no compassion. He was doing a job, and none of those feelings even remotely came into play. Richard calmly went back to his car. He retrieved the camera and tripod, and a light and a motion detector that would trigger both the light and camera when the rats came out. Richard carefully set up the camera, the light and motion detector just so. Satisfied, he cut the man’s clothes off—he had dirtied himself—and left him there like that.