Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

“The fuckin’ nigga shot me,” he said.

“Let’s go get ’im,” Richard said.

“Forget it. There’s a whole fuckin’ tribe a them,” Mack said, getting back in the car. “The motherfuckers.”

“What happened?” Freddie asked.

“He got cute, I went after him, and one of them shot me in the side. It’s dark in there and all I saw was teeth and eyes. I ain’t laying down on this. Take me home. I got some serious heat—I wanna get it and come right fuckin’ back.”

“Let’s go,” Richard said. They returned to Hell’s Kitchen. Freddie called Roy and told him what had happened, said they wanted to load up and go back. Cursing, DeMeo gave them the green light. Eddie Mack had an old steamer trunk filled with weapons—heavy-duty armaments he’d gotten from DeMeo. Richard chose a street sweeper, a twelve-gauge shotgun with a large round clip, like an old-fashioned tommy gun. Both DiNome and Mack grabbed Mac-10s, machine-gun pistols that fired thirty nine-millimeter rounds a second. Richard helped Mack put a bandage on the bullet hole, which was on his extreme left side, in line with his belly button, and off they went, straight back to the bar, and parked in front. Richard, his forehead all swollen, burst from the car, was the first in, and let loose with the shotgun. Soon both Freddie and Mack cut loose with the Mac-10s, and they literally blew the place apart and shot whoever was standing.

Satisfied, they left and went back to Brooklyn, making jokes about how you couldn’t see the black guys in the dark bar. At the Gemini, DeMeo got a doctor he knew to treat Mack’s wound. The bullet had apparently passed right through his side. Freddie told everyone how Richard had gone in with the shotgun and let loose.

“The Big Guy’s got elephant balls,” DeMeo proudly said.

Richard now had a lump on his forehead the size of a navel orange. He also had a splitting headache. DeMeo thanked him a half dozen times and gave him a big basket filled with Italian delicacies. “Your wife’ll love this,” he said, and Richard went home, angry this whole thing had happened. He could have been killed, he knew, for nothing, a thing he had no stake in. He now had something else against DeMeo.

Barbara’s eyes got wide when she saw Richard’s head. “What happened?” she asked, concerned.

“I fell,” he said, nothing more. She prepared an ice bag for him. He took a few aspirin and sat in his easy chair in the family room and watched a Clint Eastwood movie and stewed. His favorite actors were, not surprisingly, Eastwood and Charles Bronson.

Word quickly spread in mob circles how the Big Guy went up to Harlem and blew apart a bunch of “uppity niggers” that needed to be put in place, to be killed, and Richard was more in demand than ever. His murderous exploits were taking on legendary proportions; yet, still, few people even knew his real name.

Also, stories of how he was feeding live people to ravenous rats were making the rounds, both amusing and appalling those who heard them.

The Big Guy was much in demand.

It began as an insignificant event on Bensonhurst’s Eighty-sixth Street. Nino Gaggi was sitting in his car, double-parked in front of the Hy Tulip, a popular Jewish deli just off Twentieth Avenue, under the West End elevated train. Gaggi was waiting for his brother Roy’s wife, Marie Gaggi. Marie was a dark-haired beauty with blue eyes. When she walked down the street most every man’s head turned. When Marie left the deli that day—February 14, 1975—a few neighborhood youths made some inappropriate comments, wolf whistled. Seeing this, Nino Gaggi leaped from his car with a hammer and started swinging it at the youths, looking to break some heads. From the old school, Nino Gaggi could not tolerate such disrespect. One of the teenagers was named Vincent Governara. He did not know who Nino was—a capo in the Gambino family—nor did Nino know who Governara was—an excellent boxer, a Golden Gloves champion. Governara, a wiry, muscular youth, ducked the hammer and hit Nino with a left hook, knocking Nino right down and breaking his nose.

This was an insult Nino would never forget, and he vowed to kill Governara.

Word quickly spread all over Bensonhurst that Gaggi wanted Governara, wanted blood. Vinnie Governara was known as Vinnie Mook because, mentally, he was not the swiftest guy, but he was a truly superb athlete, a great handball player and baseball player, as well as a champion boxer. He looked like an Italian Jerry Lewis, had a wide mouth. Vinnie Mook was also an excellent dancer. He’d go to the Hollywood Terrace on Eighteenth Avenue on Latin night and dance up a storm. He was such a good dancer that people always moved out of his way to give him room to tear up the dance floor. Vinnie was also a vicious fighter, would hit people with extremely fast combinations. He never lost a street fight. When Vinnie heard whom exactly he had hit, he left Brooklyn and went down to Florida. Vinnie had been born and raised in Bensonhurst and he well knew the consequences of punching out a made man: death.

Vinnie Mook would end up playing an instrumental role in Roy DeMeo finally aquiring his much coveted button.

Some months after Governara broke Nino’s nose he returned to the neighborhood, and his car was spotted parked on Bath Avenue, just a few blocks south of Eighty-sixth Street. Nino Gaggi had his nephew Dominick, a Vietnam War vet with Special Forces training, rig up a concussion grenade to go off when Governara opened his car door. Roy DeMeo happily provided said grenade.

However, when Governara opened the door, releasing the pin from the grenade, he didn’t close the door right away, and when the grenade went off most of the concussion escaped out of the open door. Still, the explosion broke Governara’s leg and threw him across Bath Avenue, a main thoroughfare running directly through Mafiaville.

Needless to say, Governara again hightailed it out of Bensonhurst, went back to Florida, and wisely stayed away for a while—but not long enough; and when he returned to Bensonhurst his car was spotted on Twentieth Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street, just two blocks away, coincidentally, from the Hy Tulip where this all began.

It was now June 12, 1976, the birthday of Dominick’s wife’s, Denise Montiglio. In the Gaggi house birthdays were always a big deal. Roy DeMeo happened to be there that day and he gave Denise—a beautiful neighborhood girl of Neopolitan extraction with long black hair and a big lovely smile—a diamond-studded watch. Denise was Nino’s niece by marriage, and Roy would do anything he could to please Nino, ingratiate himself with Nino.

When word reached Nino that Vinnie Governara’s car had been seen on Twentieth Avenue, he, his nephew, and Roy DeMeo quickly left the house and Denise’s birthday party to go kill Vinnie Governara for a slight, a broken nose, made now some fifteen months ago. Nino’s nephew Dominick had dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones. He had seen a lot of action in Vietam, and since he’d returned he was quiet and sullen, and seemed to walk around with a dark storm cloud hanging over his head.

Nino put on a ridiculous false mustache, and he, Dominick, and Roy drove over to Twentieth Avenue in Roy’s car and waited for Vinnie Governara. It was the middle of the afternoon, a Saturday. A lot of shoppers were out. None of that was going to stop Nino Gaggi from getting his revenge. This was, in fact, a stupid, very risky enterprise, killing a man in broad daylight near Eighty-sixth Street, but that wasn’t about to dissuade Nino. He was willing to sacrifice all he had to get even with Vinnie Governara, just a young man struggling to find his way in life with a good punch.

Nino Gaggi didn’t have to wait long. They soon spotted Governara walking to his car, an old Plymouth, without a care in the world. Nino and Roy were soon behind him. Governara spotted them and began to run. Right there, in broad daylight, Roy and Nino took aim at the fleeing Governara and let loose a fusillade of .38 bullets, shooting Governara down. Dominick did not fire the .22 he had. As they were hurrying back to Roy’s car, bystanders began to chase them. Gaggi raised his .38. Everyone hit the ground. The killers quickly got into DeMeo’s car and off they went, making a clean getaway. Governara died of his wounds a few days later at Coney Island Hospital.