Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Pronge thought all this was just great, the best idea since the wheel. “Fucking excellent!” he exclaimed.

When Pronge and Richard returned the next day, Pronge’s eyes got all wide and he couldn’t get over Richard’s “great fuckin’ idea,” as he called it: the rats had eaten the man alive, and Richard had it on tape. Wide-eyed, Pronge watched the tape and kept congratulating Richard on his “great idea.”

On another job Pronge had, the mark never left his apartment. Pronge asked Richard what he’d do. Richard told him to go knock on the guy’s door and shoot him with a .357 when he saw the mark approach through the peephole. Pronge tried it and it worked like a well-oiled clock.

For one of the few times in his life, other than Phil Solimene, Richard had a friend… someone he had much in common with; but that wouldn’t last long.

Richard’s daughter Chris was troubled. After witnessing her father’s temper tantrums and sudden violence against Barbara and their home, she had lost part of her individuality, who she was; and to get that back, to feel whole again, like a complete person in charge of her own life, her destiny, she let boys take advantage of her. Actually, she says, she was using them. She came to think that if she did what she wanted that way, romantically, she was asserting her individuality, taking charge of her life, controlling her destiny. She became very popular in school, was voted most popular girl in class two years running, and it was, she recently explained, because she was having relations with most every boy in school, amused by the memories, laughing about it now.

Interestingly, it would seem that Merrick would be doing such things, not Chris. Merrick dressed wildly. Merrick had friends her mom and dad didn’t approve of. Merrick had a very giving nature, was all about peace and love. But Merrick was a prude about sex. She wouldn’t let a boy so much as touch her that way. It became, for Chris, like a dangerous game she played with herself. She’d let boys come over to the house and “fool around” with them in her lower-level bedroom—while Richard was home!

If Richard had known what she was doing, he would have gone absolutely bananas. He was very conservative about sex—even though he was now thought of as the porn king of New York—and if he had known his young daughter was having relations right there in the house, he would’ve exploded.

Chris was not enjoying any of these liaisons. She was doing these things to get back at her father the only way she knew how—with her body. As time went by and Chris started hanging out with boys who could drive, she’d actually have relations in cars and vans parked right out in front of the house.

Richard, of course, didn’t realize what was going on, because he just never in a million years would suspect his daughter Chris, Little Miss Goody Two-shoes, of all this flagrante delicto right in front of and even in the house. Ironically, Richard thought Merrick might be fooling around, and he actually followed Merrick, went to parties and dances she attended.

Merrick recently explained: My dad would suddenly just show up. I’d be, you know, at a party and he suddenly would be there, looking at me. He used to hide behind trees and bushes and watch me. I only saw him if he wanted me to. He had this… this kind of amazing ability to blend, to not be seen if he didn’t want to. He was like a ghost. I never did anything I shouldn’t because I never knew where my father was.

Of course, Merrick had no way of knowing that her father stalked people all the time, that he was a professional stalker. Considering Richard’s huge size, he did have an amazing ability to not be seen if he didn’t want to be.

Yet, he never knew his daughter Chris was voted most popular girl in school because most of the boys had relations with her.

This was a very delicate, dangerous business for a whole host of reasons.

Nino Gaggi and Roy DeMeo found a great cocaine connection: two Brazilian brothers who were processing coca leaves from Bolivia into pure, high-grade cocaine. The brothers had apparently found a German scientist to expertly refine the coca leaves into a highly desirable product, called “mother-of-pearl” because of its unique luminous, bluish-pink tint.

The problem was drug dealing was a no-no for made men, forbidden by the Mafia commission. Carmine Galante had been killed because of it. Yet, most captains were involved with it in one way or another—“off the record,” as they referred to it. There was just too much money to be made, so the rank and file of all the families across the country had their greedy, gluttonous fingers in this highly profitable business.

The seventies were coming to a close and cocaine was the in drug, the most popular drug of all time. It was served up at swank parties from Bel Air to Park Avenue. Everyone everywhere was doing it. And the Mafia could not resist the temptation and profit it readily presented for them.

So DeMeo contacted Richard to come for a meeting with Gaggi. They again met at the Villa on Twenty-Sixth Avenue and had a nice meal, and when it was finished Gaggi got to the point: “We know,” he said, in his low, formal tone, “you can be trusted. You’ve proven that many times. We have this situation we’d like to involve you in. If you don’t want to get involved, no problem. But if you say you want in you must be in all the way… you understand?”

“I understand.”

“We have two brothers, the Mediros. They live in Rio de Janeiro. They are processing babagna [cocaine] there in Brazil and bringing it over in ships, in those containers. They have, Roy tells me, the best stuff on the market. We want you to go there, meet them, see the operation, and make the deal if you think it’s right. They will deliver it to us here, to a warehouse we have in south Brooklyn. You will receive it and watch it until it’s picked up by our people. Basically that’s it. You will get fifteen percent of all the profit. You want in?”

“Yeah, sure, definitely,” Richard said, pleased he was being asked. This he thought, was payoff for killing Galante.

“So be it,” Gaggi said, shaking Richard’s enormous hand, and it was done.

Several days later, Richard was on a plane to Rio de Janeiro. It was a long, arduous trip but he had a first-class seat and managed to sleep most of the eleven-hour flight. He’d never been to South America before. Always curious, Richard enjoyed seeing new places, peoples, cultures. He was met by a man who worked for the Mediro brothers after he went through customs. He was taken to a hotel in the center of Rio called the Copacabana Palace, right across the street from the famous Copacabana Beach on Avenida Atlantica. He looked in awe at the beautiful stretch of white beach—Lima, Copacabana, and Ipanema elegantly stretched out before him in a gentle horseshoe shape from one end of this glimmering city on the Atlantic to the other.

Arrangements were made for Richard to be picked up in a few hours. He freshened up in his room and went for a walk along Avenida Atlantica, marveling at the beauty of Rio, the coastline, Sugarloaf Mountain—the huge statue of Christ standing guard, it seemed, over the entire city. As is the custom, Brazilian women walked about the streets in tongas—the skimpiest of bikinis, their posteriors completely exposed—and Richard was taken aback by their outrageously beautiful, curvaceous curves and mocha-colored suntans. He’d never seen such beautiful women before. I can’t stay here too long, he thought, or I’ll get in trouble.

As planned he was picked up and taken to the Mediro home, a sprawling white house surrounded by a gorgeous, sweet-smelling garden. It was in the area where the Christ was, on a mountain overlooking the city.