Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

When Richard returned from Los Angeles, he was given a contract by the Gigante family that had to be filled at a Howard Johnson just off Route 46. No problem. The mark was going to a breakfast meeting at this Howard Johnson, a setup. Richard chose the .22 Ruger rifle, cut down to a mere fifteen inches and equipped with a blue-black silencer. He was in the parking lot when the mark arrived early that morning for his meeting with a Gigante lieutenant. Richard watched the two of them have breakfast, pancakes, shake hands, and part in the parking lot as if friends. As the mark reached his car, Richard raised the weapon and shot him nine times in two seconds, in rapid succession. The mark fell to the ground, dead. Richard calmly pulled away. It looked as if the mark had had a heart attack until you saw all the blood coming from these sudden little holes. Another job well done. Another murder never linked to Richard by police.

It didn’t take long for a host of new contracts to come in from the Gigante people, which Richard gladly filled. There was no contract he would not take—except, of course, the killing of a woman or a child. That was taboo for Richard, a line he would not cross.

There were, however, female contract killers, lethal femme fatales, who could readily get close to a mark, offering warm embraces, hot sex, a lustful blow job, but delivering sudden death. These women, Richard felt, were fair game, and he would kill one as quickly as any man. But this had not yet come to pass.

When, in the fall of 1976, Carlo Gambino died of natural causes, everything suddenly changed, and the stage was set for a tumultuous earthquake that would rock the very foundations of Mafiadom.

Because Carlo Gambino so fervently believed in family ties—fidelity and loyalty—he appointed his brother in-law, Paul Castellano, as his successor as the head of the family, now the biggest, most successful crime family in history. This would prove to be a monumental error in judgment.

Paul Castellano was not cut out for this position; he did not have the inherent instincts, the cunning, or the street smarts to master the multifaceted operation he was suddenly put in charge of. Yes, Castellano was a good businessman, but the head of a crime family—no.

His first in a series of serious blunders was demanding that all twenty captains in the Gambino crime family come to see him once a week at a social club called the Veterans and Friends Club he began on Brooklyn’s Eighty-sixth Street, just off Fifteenth Avenue. This directive enabled the FBI to take extensive surveillance photos and video of who came and went, and thus the government suddenly knew who all the Gambino capos were, which proved to be the beginning of the end—the very unnecessary exposure of the family’s star players, the inner circle, the virtual engines that ran the family.

The second fatal error Castellano made was not detecting the FBI’s listening devices in his fortresslike Staten Island home; because of these bugs the FBI—for the first time ever—got a fly-on-the-wall view of all the inner workings of a Mafia chieftain, who did what, when, where, and even how.

The third fatal error Castellano made was having a carnal affair with the Columbian housekeeper his wife, Carlo’s sister, had hired, while his wife was actually in the house—an unspeakable thing that surely caused Carlo Gambino to roll over in his grave. This, for a Sicilian, was the ultimate infamy, unforgivable—a blasphemy!

And because of the excellent listening devices in the Castellano kitchen, the FBI heard all the ridiculous syrupy conversations Castellano had with his lover while his wife was in the house. These conversations would eventually be made public, printed in a book, excerpts of which appeared in New York magazine, making Paul Castellano a despised laughingstock of every made member of all crime families in all places, even in Sicily, which sealed Castellano’s fate; interestingly, Richard Kuklinski would play a large role in that fate.

The only capo pleased about Castellano’s promotion was Nino Gaggi. Gaggi had for thirty years been a very close personal friend and confidant to Castellano, and this put Gaggi in an excellent position—and by extension, Roy DeMeo too.

DeMeo still wanted more than anything to be made, get his button, and now with Castellano as the boss that possibility loomed large in the very near future.

Castellano, like Gaggi, was a particularly greedy man—whatever he got, it was never enough. DeMeo was a moneymaking machine, and Castellano was impressed with the money he was receiving—via Gaggi—from DeMeo. Gaggi kept petitioning Castellano to make DeMeo, but Castellano was reluctant: he thought DeMeo too loud, too brash—a psychopath that would eventually draw police attention—and said no.

Then DeMeo really stirred up a hornets’ nest when he brought the infamous Westies into the Gambino fold—another large mistake.

The Westies were a loose-knit group of Irishmen who ran Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side. They specialized in shakedowns of local stores, bookmaking, shylocking, numbers running—and murder.

The leaders of the gang were James Coonan and Micky Featherstone, two stone-cold killers. Featherstone was a rather frail-looking guy, about 145 pounds, with little baby hands and a baby face, but he’d shoot someone in the head as readily as batting an eye. Coonan was just the opposite, broad shouldered, big boned, square jawed, red faced, with a bulbous nose; he had whitish blond hair in a military-style crew cut.

DeMeo liked these guys because they were utterly ruthless. At DeMeo’s suggestion they began cutting up their victims and burying dismembered bodies in the abandoned train yards on the far reaches of the West Side of Manhattan.

One afternoon when Richard went to drop off some money at the Gemini Lounge, DeMeo asked him to go up to Harlem with Freddie DiNome and see a black guy who owned a bar there. He owed DeMeo a lot of money and wasn’t paying it back as promised.

“Big Guy, I want you to go see him and let him know he’s walking on thin fuckin’ ice here, okay?”

“No problem,” Richard said. “Sure.”

“You go pick up Eddie Mack. He knows the Muli, and he’s got brass balls, okay?”

“Sure, Roy,” Richard said, and he and Freddie DiNome, an ugly guy with curly brown hair and a giant potato for a nose, left to go to the city. DiNome was a car freak who helped Roy give stolen cars legit makeovers. He had a pet chimpanzee who one day punched DiNome and knocked him out cold. Richard had no monetary interest in this business; he was just doing DeMeo a favor.

These days DeMeo was very “up.” He was figuring he’d surely be made soon, the thing he had coveted since he was a little fat kid victimized by neighborhood bullies. For him, in a sense, being made was the holy grail and winning the lottery rolled into one.

Eddie Mack was part of the Westies gang, a tough Irishman and another stone-cold killer. Richard liked the Westies, thought they had balls. But he also thought they were out of control, should be kept on leashes, indeed in cages. Be that as it may, he went to the city with DiNome and picked up Mack, a stocky guy with long blond hair, and together they went up to Harlem. The bar was on Third Avenue. Eddie said he’d go in and talk to the owner, said that they knew each other from jail.

“I’ll go in with you,” Richard offered.

“Nah, that’s okay,” Mack said, and got out of the car and went inside.

As always, Richard was armed. He sat there wondering why the hell he’d been asked to come along if Mack didn’t want him to go in. Within minutes, however, there was a commotion inside, things breaking, a shot fired. Richard jumped out of the car and hurried inside. Just as he entered the place, he got struck in the forehead with a bat. He fell back but didn’t go down. Chirping birds moved before his eyes. The sidewalk spun. He drew a .38 derringer and began back in, pissed off. Eddie Mack came out. He was holding his stomach.