Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

“It works?”

“Absofuckinlutely. Watch this,” he said, obviously proud of his creation.

There was a stray cat lolling about some garbage cans there. Pronge walked up to it, acting as if he had something to eat for the cat. When he was close enough, he checked the wind, held his breath, sprayed the cat right in the face, and quickly backed off. The cat immediately went down and started to die.

“Fuckin’ amazing,” Richard said. “I never knew something like that existed. Will it work on a human?”

“Absofuckinlutely,” Pronge said, and the two of them shared war stories about how they killed people. This was a one-in-a-million coincidence—that Richard Kuklinski and Robert Pronge would run into each other. It seemed like some kind of ungodly-unholy contrivance Satan had to have a hand in….

Robert Pronge was a former Special Forces soldier. He had one passion in life and it was killing people. He was thirty-six years old, a guy with an extremely diabolical mind, a seemingly normal man who drove an ice-cream truck but in truth was an unhinged psychopath. Richard would later say of him, The two most dangerous men I ever met in my life were Roy DeMeo and Bob Pronge. Pronge was completely nuts. At least Roy had some semblance of being normal, but Pronge was way way out there… dangerous beyond belief. Far more dangerous than Roy.

Robert Pronge was an obsessed assassin. He hated the world, everyone in it, and most all his waking hours were devoted to devising new, unorthodox ways to murder people. In his garage he had stacks of Special Forces and survivalist magazines, boxes of books about how to kill people… how to use explosives, poisons, booby traps, pistols, rifles equipped for nighttime use.

Pronge, like Richard, filled contracts for the Mafia, and these two hit it off like long-lost relatives. Richard took an immediate liking to Pronge, who liked Richard. After sharing notes with each other for a while, Richard said he had to get back to work, and he left after they made plans to meet again soon.

The following evening, Richard managed to park his van close to the mark’s Lincoln. Richard had the tranquilizer gun close at hand. He had practiced with it and was sure he could score a bull’s-eye at close range. A little after midnight, the mark left the hotel and approached his car. Just as he reached it, Richard shot him with the dart, hit him in the left buttock. Startled, the mark turned, began to reach for a weapon, but never made it. He went right down. Richard picked him up, put him in the van, handcuffed his hands and feet together, put duct tape over his mouth, and headed for the caves in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

This job required torture, and Richard was going to feed him to the rats. He was very pleased at how well the dart gun had worked and planned to use it again. By the time he arrived in Bucks County it was almost 4:00 A.M. Richard parked the van, pulled the mark out, uncuffed his ankles, and walked him to the cave. The guy was hysterical now, crying like a baby, but his mouth was taped and all he could do was grunt and moan. Richard didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. He had heard it all before and didn’t want to hear it again.

Richard says he didn’t get any particular kick out of doing this. It was just a job, nothing more, he says. In the cave, using a powerful flashlight, Richard made the mark lie down, again cuffed his ankles together. He used his knife and cut the man’s arms so he’d bleed. The blood, Richard knew, would quickly draw the rats to him. Richard set up the camera and light and left.

When Richard returned two days later the mark was completely gone. There was only a stain on the ground where he had been. This time the rats took even his bones.

Richard retrieved the camera and that night he watched the video in his war room on Spring Street, and sure enough it was, again, all on film: how the rats first approached, took tentative bites, soon completely covered the mark. Richard proceeded to take the video to Hoboken and showed it to the De Cavalcante captain who had ordered the job. He loved it. Clapped his hands, patted Richard on the back.

“You’re the fuckin’ best!” he proclaimed, and gladly gave Richard forty thousand dollars.

Another job well done, another customer satisfied, Richard headed back home, looking in his rearview as he went, pulling off the highway suddenly to make sure he wasn’t being trailed. Besides country music, Richard was fond of oldies, and he sat there listening to “Blue Moon.” The oldies, he now says, relaxed him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Richard knew this couldn’t go on forever, that sooner or later, if he didn’t stop, there would be trouble. He didn’t worry for himself but for his family, his children. If what he was doing came out it would be a terrible thing for them to have to live through. He shook his head at the thought of the embarrassment and humiliation they’d suffer if he was ever exposed. The thought of it shook him to the core of his being. He would, he resolved, make enough money to retire, then walk away from the life and go straight.

He still had the fantasy-daydream of having a house on the beach in Southern California. He had mentioned it to Barbara numerous times, but she didn’t want to leave Jersey. She liked Jersey. It was where she’d been born and raised, where most her family lived, where her children went to school and had friends.

“I’m not moving to California. Forget it,” she said, with grave finality. But still Richard had this hope… this dream.

What I wanted to do was walk away from it all, go to LA, only deal in porn out there—it’s big out there—but Barbara wouldn’t go and so that was that. Barbara made all the decisions when it came to those things… about the family and all.

Richard and Barbara’s son, Dwayne, was a truly gifted child. He was always first in his class, and this in the prestigious Sacred Heart/Elizabeth Marrow School. Dwayne had grown into an intense dark-haired boy with curious eyes, intelligent beyond his years. His eyes seemed like the eyes of a middle-aged man who had been around the block a few times, not a child’s eyes.

Barbara, Chris, and Merrick still did their best to shield Dwayne from Richard’s tirades and outbursts. Most weekends he was sent to stay with Barbara’s mom. Richard did try to exhibit more control when Dwayne was around. He seemed to know instinctively that if Dwayne saw him be violent toward Barbara, as the girls did, it would only be a matter of time before Dwayne attacked him, and he’d have to hurt his son.

Dwayne was painfully shy around strangers, but he was open and gregarious once he got to know someone. Dwayne was endlessly curious, still always reading, a polite, very well-behaved boy any parent would be proud of. Barbara and the girls thought they had protected Dwayne from Richard well, and little if any damage had been done him, his development, how he viewed the world, his take on life, his psyche.

But in truth, Dwayne knew what was going on. This was a very sharp little guy. He saw the marks on his mother, the black eyes and bruises, the broken furniture, and he well knew his father was responsible.

At first this exceedingly bright, curious child accepted what he saw, thinking such things were normal. But it didn’t take Dwayne long to piece together the reality of his father’s actions, and it made him terribly angry. Dwayne loved his mother and sisters deeply, and the thought of his father hurting his mom, terrorizing his sisters, left him cold and angry deep inside. Dwayne started planning how he’d defend himself against his father, what he’d do if Richard came to hurt him, even kill him. He began leaving knives and swords Richard had given him in strategic places in his room. When Richard gave Dwayne a BB gun, Dwayne plotted how he could use it to blind his father. Surely if he blinded his father the way Ulysses had blinded the Cyclops, Dwayne could handle Richard, do him in if it came to that. When Richard gave Dwayne a bow-and-arrow set, Dwayne made it part of his arsenal. He practiced with the bow to be able to hit his father, if necessary.