Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

DeMeo’s crew, however, didn’t like Richard. They thought he was aloof and unfriendly—he was—and he was a non-Italian… he was Polish. They made fun of Richard behind his back, told one another silly Polish jokes at Richard’s expense. Richard sensed the hostility, the cold stares, the sneers, but Richard didn’t care. He figured they were just jealous of his relationship with Roy, and he was right.

As months passed, Roy and Richard’s “friendship” grew. By now Roy had learned that Richard had killed well and discreetly for the De Cavalcante family, and one day, when Richard went to the Gemini to drop off some money, Roy sat him down in the rear apartment.

“I hear,” Roy said, “that you are cold like ice and do special work. That true?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“I have a lot of special work…. You interested?”

“Definitely.”

“Definitely?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll do it with no questions asked?”

“I’m not a curious man.”

Roy stared at Richard. Being stared at by Roy, with his penetrating black eyes, was like having two drills bore into you.

Roy had to see for himself if, in fact, Richard could do a piece of work, coldly and methodically.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s take a ride; you game?”

“Sure,” Richard said, and Roy, his cousin Joe Guglielmo, and Richard piled into Roy’s car. Joe was driving. Richard sat in the back.

“Let’s go to the city,” Roy ordered. He always ordered people to do things—never asked. In silence they drove to Manhattan. It was a nice cloudless day. The sky was blue. The sun shone. Someone was going to die. As they were going through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Roy turned around and handed Richard a short-barreled .38 with a suppressor on it.

“Use this,” he said.

“Okay,” Richard said, and casually slipped the gun into his waistband. They continued uptown and wound up on the west side of Greenwich Village, on a quiet tree-lined street. Richard’s old hunting ground. They passed a lone man walking a dog.

“Pull over,” Roy ordered. “See that guy with the dog?” he asked Richard.

“Yeah.”

“Cap him.”

“Here, now?”

“Here, now.”

Richard calmly stepped out of the car and walked toward the man with the dog, who was to the rear of the car, maybe twenty steps. After Richard passed him, he stopped and turned around and tailed the hapless man. He wanted to do the job right in front of Roy and Joe. Just as the dog walker passed the Lincoln, Richard caught up with him, made sure he was unobserved, quickly pulled out the gun, and fired, shooting the man in the back of the head.

He never even knew he died, or why.

He went down like a laundry bag, Richard confided.

Richard calmly walked back to the car and got in. “You’re fuckin’ cold like ice. Well done,” Roy said, smiling. “You’re one of us.” And they went back to Brooklyn. Richard had just proven to Roy, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was a stone-cold killer, and that murder that day cemented their bloody relationship. When they arrived back at the Gemini Lounge and went into the rear apartment, Joey Testa, Anthony Senter, Chris Goldberg, and Henry Borelli were all there.

“The big guy,” Roy announced, “is fuckin’ cold. I just saw him do a piece of work right in the middle of the fuckin’ street. He’s one of us.”

Thus, Richard became a part of a coven of serial killers never seen before or since; they would, in years to come, make homicide history.

Richard, however, didn’t like any of this: he didn’t want any of these guys knowing about him, what he did, what “special work” he performed. He didn’t trust them and didn’t like them; he thought it was just a matter of time before they caused problems, for themselves, for Roy, and for him.

Richard needed to use the john and went inside the bathroom. There was an odd, thick, fetid smell hanging in the air. As he was taking a leak, he looked around the shower curtain and there, hanging over the tub, was a dead man. His throat had been cut and there was a black-handled butcher knife sticking out of his chest. His blood, rubbery and thick, was slowly draining into the tub. They were bleeding him.

These fucking guys are really into it, Richard thought, and went back inside.

“You see the guy taking a shower?” Roy asked, laughing out loud at his joke. The others laughed too.

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Richard said, and they sat down and had a meal of spaghetti olio and broccoli rabe. Roy enjoyed cooking and loved to eat. As they sat there and ate, drinking red wine—with the guy hanging over the tub—they made jokes, talked about sports, about a girl both Joey and Anthony had fucked the night before.

After having espresso, Chris and Anthony spread a blue plastic tarp on the floor. They brought the guy out of the bathroom and proceeded to cut him into “manageable pieces,” as Roy put it. “Makes getting rid of him easier,” he told Richard. They had a professional autopsy kit, with razor-sharp saws and knives made for the sole purpose of cutting up bodies. Within minutes they cut him into five pieces. Each piece was wrapped in brown paper, then put into heavy-duty black garbage bags. Richard watched this through amused eyes, thinking, These guys are something else, admiring how easily and expertly they disassembled the body. They’d obviously had a lot of practice and knew what they were doing. Chris Goldberg especially seemed to enjoy taking apart the body.

When Richard was ready to leave and go back to his family, he asked to speak to Roy on the side. They went outside. By now the sun was setting. A nice breeze blew in from Jamaica Bay.

“Look, Roy,” Richard said. “Don’t get me wrong here, but I’d rather just work with you on any special jobs.”

“You’re reading my mind,” Roy said. “Big guy, you are my secret weapon. I ain’t mixing you up with my crew. Don’t worry. They are all good, very fuckin’ stand-up guys—Chris is like my son—but I ain’t mixing you up with them.”

“Okay,” Richard said. They hugged and kissed on the cheek, and Richard went back to his family in New Jersey. Like this, Richard Kuklinski became Roy DeMeo’s “secret weapon.”

The police could find no witnesses to the murder of the man walking his dog in the Village, no likely suspects, no rhyme or reason for the killing—still another unsolved New York homicide Richard Kuklinski had committed.

Richard was scrupulously careful to keep what he was doing far from his family. Barbara had no idea what he was really up to; she didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell her.

Besides distributing porn, Richard rented a warehouse in North Bergen and from it sold counterfeit sweaters, handbags, jeans, and even perfumes. He bought large lots of these knockoff goods, had women sew brand-name labels into them, and sold them to wholesalers, who in turn sold them at flea markets all over the country. Money was rolling in. Richard still dabbled in hijacking, acting as the middleman between the hijackers and the buyers and always making a profit. He stopped drinking hard alcohol and tried not to gamble. He loved his family deeply and profoundly and didn’t want to do anything to undermine it. On the one hand, he was the perfect husband and father, considerate, loving, and generous to a fault. He’d gladly drive his daughters and their friends to movies and restaurants they liked; he took great joy in buying them nice clothing, two of everything; nothing was too good for his children. He constantly bought Barbara clothes and shoes and jewelry, mink coats—whatever she wanted. They went out to fancy restaurants every weekend. Richard always made sure Barbara’s favorite wine, Montrachet, was already at the table in an ice bucket waiting for her. He opened doors for her. He graciously pulled out her chair so she could sit down.