Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Peter Calabro was in deep with Roy DeMeo. When Calabro wanted to get rid of his estranged wife, Carmella, Roy did the job for him, had her abducted in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, drowned, and left in the ocean. But by chance her body was discovered floating near New Jersey’s Sandy Hook by the Coast Guard. Carmella’s mother, Antonia, was positive Calabro was responsible and told every cop who would listen to her that Peter Calabro killed her daughter, that he was a low-life murderer, “a scumbag,” she said. The case was even presented to a Brooklyn grand jury, but Calabro had an airtight alibi and there was insufficient evidence to indict. It couldn’t clearly be established if Carmella’s death was in fact a homicide or a suicide.

Richard had nothing to do with the murder of Carmella Calabro, but DeMeo personally drowned her and left her body adrift. DeMeo, unlike Richard, had no qualms about killing women.

This killing, DeMeo knew, would forever cement his relationship with Calabro, and because of it DeMeo had an everlasting inside track into most of the investigations into his exceedingly nefarious business dealings—particularly his booming, very lucrative stolen-car operation. DeMeo was like a greedy octopus—he had his tentacles in everything. He also paid Calabro handsomely for his assistance. One of the many “favors” Detective Calabro did for DeMeo—and others in the Gambino family—was to provide him with clean VIN numbers for stolen cars.

Richard’s business with the very busy Roy DeMeo was twofold—murder and porn—and they were now both making money hand over fist. When DeMeo had a special “piece of work,” he called upon Richard, “the Big Guy.” Richard also became known as “the Polack.” He didn’t particularly like that name, though any name, he knew, was better than his real name. It’s no accident all mob guys have nicknames.

With Richard’s deadly assistance, DeMeo became the well-oiled killing apparatus for the Gambino family, and because DeMeo was not made yet, he was filling murder contracts for almost anyone who wanted someone dead.

Nino Gaggi, Roy’s rabbi, kept telling Roy to cool it, to be more discreet, to stop killing so many people, but the huge amounts of cash DeMeo was giving Gaggi put to rest most of Gaggi’s concerns. Gaggi was absolutely money hungry, greedy to a fault, and Roy DeMeo regularly gave him brown paper bags filled with cash; and during the holidays DeMeo still showed up at the Gaggi home with truckloads (literally) of presents, expensive jewelry for Nino’s wife, Rose, toys for all the kids. A kind of Italian Santa Claus from hell.

Over the ensuing months after the Hoffa hit, Richard met with DeMeo a dozen times at the diner near the Tappan Zee Bridge, and every contract DeMeo gave Richard, Richard carried out successfully, without problem or repercussion, complication or mishap.

It was during this time that Richard brought more and more marks to the caves for the rats to eat and filmed their deaths. He even took to sitting down in his house when everyone was asleep and watching these ghastly videos as he had a late-night snack—turkey on rye, a bit of mayo. He wasn’t so much viewing the films for entertainment as trying to understand himself, his reactions to them… why, he says, such things didn’t trouble him in the least; this… concerned him, he recently explained.

He even showed one of the films to DeMeo, a bona fide psychopath, to see his reaction—and even DeMeo couldn’t stand to see them. Because of the films, DeMeo knew that Richard was a rare individual, indeed a man—as he thought of him—with no soul.

“He’s fuckin’ ice,” he told his crew. “I… mean… ice.”

And, too, these films created a perverse bond—“friendship”—between Roy and Richard, and they actually enjoyed each other’s company… two peas in a bloody pod.

Still, though, Richard was waiting for the chance to kill Roy, to beat him and humiliate him and end his life. For Richard that was the ultimate cure-all. Richard used murder to get rid of his problems the way people used aspirin to get rid of headaches.

Besides contract killing, Richard was murdering people he did business with, men he fronted porn to who decided they were not going to pay him. One such individual had a porno shop in downtown Los Angeles, a bear of a man who prided himself on being tough, independent, not afraid of anyone. He owed Richard ten thousand dollars and, arrogantly, stopped even taking Richard’s calls.

Angry, Richard got on a plane and went to see the guy. He had brought with him in his luggage two fragmentation hand grenades that he’d gotten from DeMeo. A grenade in each pocket, Richard walked unannounced into the guy’s store. The mark was behind the chest-high counter, sitting on a tall, pillow-covered stool, big and heavy and mean faced, not liking the world or anyone in it.

“Hello, my friend,” Richard said, approaching him, walking on the balls of his feet, his mouth twisted off to the left, that soft clicking sound issuing from it.

“Hey, Big Guy,” the mark said, not pleased to see Richard suddenly in his shop.

“Been trying to reach you, my friend,” said Richard.

“Yeah, well I been busy, you know how it is.”

“You have a bill with me, my friend.”

“Yeah, well I don’t have all the money just yet.”

“What do you have?” asked Richard.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, zero,” he said, smiling, showing cigar-stained crooked teeth. As if he had just heard a joke, a joke Richard was deaf to.

“Funny guy,” Richard said.

“A real comedian: I used to do stand-up before I got into this,” he said, expansively indicating the shop, as though it were an accomplishment of note, something to write home about.

“What about my money? I need it,” Richard said.

“How about you come back in… in say, a month.”

“That wasn’t our agreement.”

“Yeah, well it is now.”

“Say you?”

“Say I.”

Richard smiled. It was not a pleasant smile to see. Ti-ti-ti came the clicking sound from his lips.

Richard took out a grenade and pulled the pin, though the shop owner didn’t see it because of the high counter. Richard handed the pin to the guy behind the counter.

“What’s this?” he demanded.

“A surprise,” Richard said as he began walking out of the store.

“What surprise?”

“This one,” Richard said, and tossed the grenade behind the counter just next to the guy. Richard exited the store. The grenade went off and blew the belligerent guy to pieces.

This incident, like many others Richard was involved with, was not so much about the money as about the principle of the thing. If one guy on the street could get over on you, everyone would soon be doing the same thing. True, by killing this man, Richard lost ten thousand dollars, but he figured in the long run he’d earn much more because people would pay what they owed. On the street, as Richard had learned so many years ago in Jersey City, might was truly right.

I didn’t give a flying fuck about the money, Richard explained. I wasn’t about to let this stiff make a fool out of me, and I capped him to make a point. An exclamation point, I guess you could say.

Again, the cops did not tie Richard to this homicide by hand grenade, as Richard refers to it.

Richard grew to like Los Angeles, the accommodating weather, the relaxed lifestyle, the palm trees. Porn was very popular in Southern California, and Richard made more money there distributing porn than on the East Coast. He liked going to the “porn conventions,” thought they were fun, he says. He had a lot of business there and enjoyed spending time in Los Angeles. He enjoyed LA so much he rented an apartment in West Hollywood, just off Sunset Boulevard. He liked to sit at outdoor cafés in the warm weather and watch the world go by—the colorful circus that LA always is, the fancy cars, the fancy women, the fancy clothes. Barbara knew nothing of this apartment. She didn’t even know where Richard was when he went off on “business trips.” Barbara’s only concern—her whole life—was her children, especially Dwayne. She focused all her energy on them. When Richard wasn’t home the house was peaceful, calm… normal. Only Merrick missed Richard when he wasn’t home, though she was not encouraged to express such emotions.