Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Barbara was effusively, gushingly proud of Dwayne and let Richard know every chance she had how smart their son was, implying that Richard couldn’t hold a candle to his son. This, of course, caused Richard to resent Dwayne, and sometimes, when angry, he’d stare at his son with a dreadful gleam in his eyes. In fact, one time just after dinner Richard grabbed Barbara, manhandled her in front of Dwayne, and the boy immediately got up and put himself between Richard and Barbara.

For a second it appeared that Richard might clobber him, but Richard turned away, saying, “I knew it would come to this.”

“Don’t… don’t do that,” Barbara warned Dwayne. “Never do that!” He didn’t answer her, but no matter what—even if he died—Dwayne would not allow Richard to hurt his mother. Thus, the stage was set for a terrible tragedy, with dire Shakespearean implications.

In no time Richard and Robert Pronge became… friends. The more Richard learned about Pronge, the more he liked him… at first. In addition, Richard had been looking for an out-of-the-way garage he could rent; he needed a place to stash stolen items and sometimes kill people, and he wound up renting a garage near where Pronge kept his truck.

Pronge now told Richard he had a job that he had to do in Connecticut and invited Richard to come along. Pronge wanted to show Richard how well the cyanide spray worked. This was, he explained, something he had personally developed, and he was obviously proud of it.

The mark lived in a nice stone house on a quiet street. He went to work the same time every day and returned the same time every night. This kind of pattern made an assassin’s work relatively easy. Pronge parked about one hundred feet away from the mark’s home. He and Richard sat there, waiting for the mark to arrive home. There was, Pronge pointed out, no wind. “You cannot ever use this stuff in the wind—don’t forget that.”

When the mark pulled onto the block, Pronge slipped on a pair of gloves and boldly got out of the car, saying, “I’ll be right back.”

As the mark parked, Pronge was nearly to his car. The mark opened the car door and stepped out of the car, and at just that moment Pronge sprayed the man right in the face. Pronge turned and calmly walked back toward his car. He hadn’t taken ten steps when the mark fell over. He was soon dead.

Richard sat there quite amazed, impressed—not an easy task. Pronge got back in the car and off they went.

“Wow,” Richard said. “So he’s dead?”

“He is by now.”

“Smooth. Very smooth. I like it.”

“Just never use it in the wind if you are outdoors.”

“Of course,” Richard said, feeling close to his newfound friend, Robert Pronge, who had, before they left, put another license plate on his car with magnets. He now removed the bogus plate.

Richard had to have one of these cyanide sprays, and back at the garage where Pronge kept his Mister Softee truck, he showed Richard how to mix it and put it into the special spray bottle he had. Richard couldn’t wait to use it; he was a kid with a new toy.

But on the next job that came his way, he would not be able to use this unique killing tool. It would have to be done the old-fashioned way, with guns and bullets at close range. This would be the most important murder contract Richard had filled to date: the killing of the head of a Mafia family—a milestone in his bloody career.

Just how the Gambino family became involved in the murder of the notorious Carmine Galante is a long, convoluted story with many twists and turns, betrayals and colorful characters.

Carmine Galante was “one tough cocksucker,” as a rival boss put it. He was born in Riva Del Gotta, Sicily. As a young man he had thick, wavy black hair and the dark, fearless eyes of a predatory killer. Galante came up the Mafia ladder the hard way, gleefully breaking heads and killing people as he went. His early association with the Mafia began with Vito Genovese, who many say Mario Puzo used as a model for his immortal Don Vito Corleone.

The young Galante was a hit man for Genovese. When someone had to die, Genovese sent Galante. Genovese was a staunch Fascist, an ardent fan of Benito Mussolini, and Genovese ordered Galante to kill an Italian journalist, Carlo Tresca, who worked for Il Progresso and was an outspoken critic of Mussolini. Galante shot him four times, twice in the head, twice in the chest.

Eventually, however, Galante was inducted into the Bonanno crime family, not the Genovese clan. Joe Bonanno was a far less volatile and violent man than Genovese, but he used Galante to commit murder when necessary. In the early 1950s Joe Bonanno sent Galante to Montreal. Though Bonanno openly condemned dealing in drugs, he put Galante in charge of the Bonanno family’s Montreal rackets—extortion, shylocking—and Galante soon turned Montreal—with Bonanno’s silent blessing—into the main transit point for heroin coming out of Marseille, into America, instigating and encouraging the so-called French Connection. Thus Galante worked his way up in the Bonanno family, and by 1962 he was the underboss of the family. Thinking he was above the law, invisible (very much like Roy DeMeo), Galante ran afoul of the law, was arrested in Brooklyn for drug trafficking, and sent away for twenty years. While he was in prison a psychiatrist announced that Galante was a psychopath… no shit, Sherlock; and while in prison Galante methodically plotted and planned his ascension to the very top position of La Cosa Nostra: capo crimini/capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses.

Tough as rusted nails, Galante picked fights with large black guys in prison, got in front of them on food lines, saying, “Get the fuck outta my way, nigger.” From prison Galante boldly let it be known that he planned to take charge of the Bonanno family, that he planned to be capo di tutti capi. By now Carlo Gambino was the boss of bosses, and Galante regularly told anyone who would listen how he would get rid of Gambino, that Gambino was afraid of his own shadow, that Carlo Gambino was a “spineless prick.”

No one looked forward to Galante’s release, least of all his own crime family, but he was let out of prison in the fall of 1974, having served twelve years. He never testified against anyone. He never tried to cut a deal. He kept his mouth shut and did his time. Not like the mob guys of today.

Now Galante was balding, wore large black plastic glasses, had a perpetual scowl about his hard face as if he’d been sucking on lemons all the years he’d been away. Bitter, angry, and very dangerous, Carmine Galante quickly managed to take charge of the Bonanno family. By now Joe Bonanno had effectively retired and lived in Tucson, and Galante quickly bullied the family leadership away from Rusty Rastelli.

Galante immediately plunged the family into heroin distribution. He believed that’s where the most money was, and that’s where he concentrated the family’s resources, energy, and power. This was the beginning of the end: Galante was recklessly leading the family down a ruinous road. He also began ordering the murders of other mob members who, he felt, were competing with his interest. In one year he had killed nine Genovese people (all made men) who dealt in drugs; it was painfully clear to anyone who looked that Carmine Galante would not stop killing until he completely dominated and controlled the exceedingly lucrative drug trade and the entire American Mafia. Yes, he and his family were making truckloads of money, but he was also writing his own death warrant.

Galante became so out of control, so greedy, so violent, that the heads of the other four families, as well as the powerful New Orleans boss Santo Trafficante, secretly met in Boca Raton, Florida, and decided that Galante had to go or he would eventually destroy La Cosa Nostra single-handedly.