Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Now, when he knew he had a job to do early in the morning, a contract that had to be filled in the city, he’d sleep at the office, his war room, as he thought of it. There was even a bathroom with a shower stall. He didn’t tell Barbara about it. He told Barbara very little.

Another piece of work came Richard’s way, the killing of a Genovese soldier. He was using drugs, making mistakes, compromising the family; he had to go. Richard knew the mark, Henry Marino, was a coke hound, and decided to use that as the way to kill Henry. Richard bought a few grams of pure coke and carefully laid it out on his desk in his new office, on a piece of mirror. Richard did not use coke; he didn’t do any drugs. But he knew about drugs, their applications and effects. After chopping up the coke with a razor, he put on white plastic gloves and carefully mixed enough cyanide with the coke to kill a man. That done, he put the coke into a vial, and he was soon on a plane to Las Vegas. Richard had always loved Vegas, since he was a kid, and now he was going there to do a piece of work and get paid well for it. He had it, far as he was concerned, made in the shade.

Richard knew the mark was staying at a swank hotel on the Strip. He checked into the hotel, went down to the bar near 9:00 P.M., and had a beer. Richard rarely, if ever, drank when on a job, but he knew Henry Marino liked to hold court at the bar, pick up babes, that he’d show up sooner or later, and Richard wanted to look as if he belonged, act as though their meeting were purely coincidental.

It didn’t take long. Henry Marino soon came strolling in, a tall thin man with thinning hair. He saw Richard; they shook hands, said hello. Richard bought him a drink before he had a chance to say no. They began to shoot the breeze. After a time Richard offhandedly mentioned that he had just ripped off a Colombian coke dealer and had a few keys of high-grade coke he wanted to unload.

“You know anyone?” Richard asked, somewhat conspiratorially; this caused Henry’s ears to immediately perk up.

“Good stuff?” he asked, equally conspiratorially.

“Pure, straight from Medellín,” Richard said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to the Colombians?”

“Went fishing.”

“Sure. I might be interested—if it’s really good and the price is right.”

“I got some with me; wanna taste?” Richard innocently asked, springing the trap.

“Sure,” Henry said.

Richard discreetly handed him the vial. Henry smiled, winked, and walked off to the bathroom, newfound purpose in his hurried step. Richard paid for his drinks and left.

Henry Marino was found dead in the bathroom, a vial of coke on the floor nearby, and his passing was written up as a heart attack, not a homicide.

Later that same evening Richard went out gambling. He was again beginning to gamble large amounts of money. Money was rolling in; he had it; why not? he reasoned. He so enjoyed the thrill of gambling, the challenge of it. The higher the stakes, the more he got out of it. He won sometimes, but mostly lost. He didn’t know when to quit. That was his problem in a nutshell. He lost, in fact, all the money he had earned killing Henry Marino. He felt doubly bad about losing because he had a family now, a wife that wanted and demanded nice things: that the children go to top private schools, that everything was the best, their clothes, their cars, the restaurants they went to, the wines they drank. Angry at himself for losing forty thousand dollars in a few hours, Richard went back to New Jersey in a foul mood.

Richard came to truly enjoy killing with poison. Now whenever possible he used poison. Most often these hits were written up as suicides or natural deaths, mainly because Richard was scrupulously careful about using the right dosage: just enough to kill, not enough to be readily detected. But in one interesting instance the cause of death could not be put down as natural.

Richard was still involved with hijacks and B and E jobs (breaking and entering). He’d pretty much do anything to turn a buck. His life was all about crime, and there was nothing he would not do except kill women or children. This particular job, all told, involved six people. A B and E crew of four (with Richard, five) and the insurance guy who spotted the job, the “inside man.”

A wealthy businessman in Montclair, New Jersey, had an expensive collection of coins and rare stamps. He kept them in a tall narrow safe in his home, built into a fancy cedar closet. The insurance guy knew about the coins and stamps because the company he worked for had insured the collection. He also had the combination of the safe.

Richard knew this B and E crew from his wild and woolly days back in Jersey City. There was a possibility that the owner would show up unexpectedly, and it would be Richard’s job to take him out quickly and quietly. The gang met in Jersey City, got into the house without trouble, opened the safe without incident, found the coins and stamps, and made a clean getaway. So far it was a perfect job, had gone like clockwork.

Back at the home of one of the gang, Ralphie the Snake, they looked over their loot, the rare coins, the precious stamps. Beforehand, all had agreed to a six-way split. But they got to arguing among themselves about who would and should get what. This was exactly why Richard hated working with people, this kind of ridiculous bickering, backstabbing… greed.

Losing patience, Richard said, “Hey look guys, this all went perfectly, a piece of cake, let’s not fudge it up by arguing amongst ourselves. The deal was a six-way split; that’s it, okay? I mean, come on.”

Still, they argued on: about who had the largest part, about how the split should be made. Richard became more and more annoyed.

One of the guys said he was hungry; another said Harry’s was still open. Harry’s was a small take-out restaurant in Jersey City, little more than a greasy spoon, but they made great sandwiches with a renowned “special sauce.” Richard magnanimously said he’d go get the sandwiches, diligently wrote down what the others wanted, and off he went. These days Richard had taken to carrying around, especially when he went on a job, a vial of cyanide. He had it with him now. He recently explained:

So I’m driving over to get the sandwiches, when the idea first came to me. I mean, I was going to completely play it straight here with these guys, but now… now I’m thinking to myself they’re all a bunch of greedy stiffs and I decided it was going to be a one-way split—one way my way. I’d show them what greed really was.

Richard dutifully ordered the sandwiches, some sodas, and coffee.

Outside, in the quiet solitude of his car, he put his sandwich on the side and put on plastic gloves (Richard always kept an economy box of plastic gloves in his car), opened each of the other four sandwiches, and ever so carefully sprinkled cyanide on them in such a way that anyone who ate one would get the full dose, each dose about what you’d find in a salt packet at any McDonald’s. He put the sandwiches back in the bag, his right on top, took off the gloves, and returned to the house and the still-squabbling gang. Richard took his sandwich, announced he was starved, went in a corner, and ate with gusto—he really was hungry; and as he ate he watched the others consume their delicious Harry’s sandwiches with the special sauce as they still bickered. Within minutes the poison had an effect; suddenly they were all frozen in place, eyes wide open, spittle coming from suddenly lax mouths, which actually hung open, as though their jaws had become unhinged. Richard carefully watched them, eating his sandwich, got up and looked at them closely, learning firsthand, like a scientist in a lab observing monkeys, the actual effect of the poison. One of them tried to stand, but that was impossible. Motor movement was gone. Richard carefully put all that was left of the sandwiches, the soda, and the coffee back in the bag. He then wiped away all his fingerprints, moving slowly, methodically. Satisfied, he took the loot and the garbage and left, closing the door softly as he went.