Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

It didn’t take long for Richard to spot street urchins dealing drugs along the sidewalk on the beach side of the wide avenue, on the other side of the street. They were tough little tykes, and as the sun began to set behind Sugarloaf Mountain, Richard approached a tall, skinny cappuccino-colored kid. The kid saw him coming from across the street, thinking Richard was a gringo who wanted to suck his dick. Many such men approached him for he was a handsome boy, maybe fifteen. He smiled at Richard, willing to let anyone who paid him suck his dick to his heart’s content.

Using mime, his street savvy, Richard quickly managed to let the boy know he wanted to buy a gun, a pistol, a .38. The street kid, an outlaw, immediately understood exactly what Richard wanted and, using his fingers, let him know how much such a gun would be. More or less a hundred bucks. Richard said okay. They agreed to meet in this same spot at twelve the following afternoon. The boy asked for the money now; Richard said no—he’d get paid when he brought the “pistola.”

Not sure if the kid would deliver, Richard went back to the café and watched the busy thoroughfare some more. When darkness engulfed the city he returned to his room and called Barbara. They talked about the kids. He said nothing about where he was. She didn’t ask. He went back downstairs, had dinner, went for another long walk, and retired early.

At noon the following day, Richard crossed the street, and the boy was there, holding a brown paper bag. Richard looked inside. Sure enough it was a .38 Smith & Wesson. Richard paid him. They shook hands and parted. Back in his room, Richard took the gun apart. It was old and somewhat beat-up, but all the components worked. He cleaned and oiled it.

Now carrying the gun, Richard went back out and walked away from the beach, into Rio Central. He located a hardware store, bought a hammer, pliers, and screwdriver, walked on. He found a quiet street and quickly managed to steal a van, using the tools he’d just bought. Now with wheels, he headed straight for the hills overlooking Rio, and using the giant Christ as a point of direction he actually managed to locate the Mediros’ home within several hours. He smiled, parked down the street, and waited, not sure what to do or how to do it. He wasn’t there an hour when the electronic gate suddenly opened and out came the yellow Mercedes. Both brothers and two other men were in it. Richard followed them back down to the beach area along Avenida Atlantica. They parked and went into a secluded restaurant on a quiet Ipanema street. Richard had six bullets. He knew every shot had to count, that surely they were armed and he had to move quickly. He managed to park near the Mercedes. He let the air out of the front left tire, went back to the van, and waited, tense like a coiled spring, a giant cat about to strike, but calm inside; ice cold inside… an Ice Man. Richard was in his element. This is what Richard did. Stalk to kill. After two hours, they came out. They had obviously been drinking, were now laughing, relaxed. As they approached the Mercedes, Eduardo first noticed the flat. After appropriate curses, one of the other guys opened the trunk of the Mercedes and pulled its spare tire out. The others waited. They lit cigarettes. Richard stepped out of the van and calmly walked right toward them, staying in shadows as he went. John Carlo first spotted him—but he couldn’t quite conceive that it was truly Richard. Richard pulled out the pistol and in a matter of several seconds fired four times, dropped all of them. However, he had to fire a second shot to finish off Eduardo.

The job done, Richard got into the van and pulled away. Shocked diners and waiters poured from the restaurant. Richard drove to the other side of the city, to Lemi, and left the van there after carefully wiping all his prints off it. He threw the gun into the ocean and returned to the hotel. The following day Richard left Rio on the first flight out.

Richard was very proud of this piece of work. It was the kind of accomplishment he wanted to tell people about, brag about, but of course he couldn’t.

He got into his car and drove back to New Jersey, checking his rearview and taking U turns as he went. Near his home, he beeped DeMeo from a phone booth. Roy called him within minutes. Richard let him know the brothers weren’t a concern anymore.

“Big Guy, you’re the fuckin’ best—the fuckin’ best, you hear!” DeMeo said.

Richard thanked him, hung up, and went home, pleased and proud of himself, but thinking DeMeo and Gaggi were greedy bastards.

Several days later, Richard met DeMeo at the diner near the Tappan Zee Bridge, and DeMeo gave him, as promised, a paper bag with sixty thousand dollars in it, in one-hundred-dollar bills. They hugged and kissed each other on the cheek and went their separate ways.

Sammy Gravano was born and raised in the heart of Mafia country, Bensonhurst Brooklyn.

As a youth Gravano was a tough kid, a member of the notorious street gang called the Rambers. It was headed by Gerald Pappa, a vicious, extremely tough street fighter with jet-black hair and light blue eyes, one of the roughest guys in all of Brooklyn—no easy task. Gerald Pappa was known as Pappa Bear because of his unusual strength. He, like Gravano, would eventually be inducted into one of the five New York crime families, the Gigante clan, while Sammy would be made by the Gambinos. Sammy Gravano and Pappa were very close as teenagers. Gravano would eventually name his only son Gerald, in honor of Pappa.

Gravano had a bad habit of killing his friends and business partners; he murdered his own brother-in-law, Eddie Garofalo. He was known as a greedy, black-hearted backstabber. If Gravano called you up and invited you for dinner, a friendly drink, an espresso, it was a good idea to leave town in a hurry.

John Gotti would later take a shine to Gravano and promote him to underboss of the Gambino family—a fatal mistake—after the two of them successfully conspired to kill Paul Castellano on December 15, 1985, in front of Sparks Steak House. Now it was early March 1980. Richard Kuklinski knew Gravano; they had met at restaurants and Roy’s place over the years.

According to Richard, when Gravano had a “special piece of work to do”—the killing of a cop—he contacted DeMeo, and DeMeo referred him to Richard and strongly vouched for him. DeMeo wanted nothing to do with killing a cop, even a crooked cop. No matter how you looked at that, it spelled trouble, and DeMeo knew it. It was Peter Calabro.

DeMeo let Richard know Gravano would be calling, and a meeting was set up at a diner on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. They met in the parking lot, shook hands. Gravano came with a driver. As Richard and Gravano walked and talked, Gravano’s car slowly followed. Gravano wasted no time. “I’ve been hearing good things about you for a long time, Rich. I have a special piece of work I’d like you to do. It’s gotta be done pretty quickly.”

“I’m available,” Richard said.

“The guy lives in Jersey. I’ve got his address and photo for you, even the weapon—a shotgun. You okay with that?” Gravano said, not mentioning that the mark was a cop.

“Sure. They’re messy but they work.”

“Okay, there’s twenty-five large in it for you.”

“Sounds good.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Just down the ramp here.”

“I’ll give you everything right now, all right?”

“Sure.”

Richard led them to his parked car. Gravano had his driver open the trunk of his car. In it was a green canvas bag, like a small army duffel bag. Gravano opened it. Inside was the shotgun, a walkie-talkie, and a photo of the mark, a nice-looking dark haired man with an oval-shaped face. Gravano still said nothing about him being a detective out of the Brooklyn hot-car division. He had been working with the Gambino family for years now, providing a laundry list of services, some of which had caused people to be murdered. It was Calabro’s wife, Carmella, that DeMeo had murdered. Calabro had gotten himself in trouble, and both Gravano and DeMeo were concerned he would turn on them. He had to go. Richard took the canvas bag and put it in the trunk of his car.