Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Stunned, horrified, the young Richard realized that Charley Lane was dead and he had killed him. His mind reeled with the dire implications of such a thing. He would be sent to prison, the dreaded big house, for the rest of his life. He stood and staggered. As much as he hated Charley, he had wanted only to hurt him, certainly not kill him. He had wanted to make Charley suffer the way Charley had made him suffer, cause him pain and anxiety. Not this. What to do, where to turn? There was no one he could tell about this—not his mother, not his uncle Micky, no one. Richard forced himself to take long, deep breaths, to think, to form a plan, his mind racing furiously to and fro.

By instinct Richard knew the only way out of this was to get rid of the body. But how? Where?

He had a stolen car in the lot down on Sixteenth Street, a dark blue Pontiac he had found two days ago in front of a store on Hudson Boulevard with the keys inside. He now hurried to get it, drove it to New Jersey Avenue, and parked just by the project entrance. Charley was very heavy—dead weight. Richard grabbed him by the coat, made sure the coast was clear, and boldly pulled the body toward the Pontiac, using the slippery ice to slide it across the frigid ground. He opened the trunk and managed to pick up the dead boy and get him in the trunk. As he closed the trunk he noticed a battered tool: on one side it was a hatchet, and on the other a hammer. Before getting into the car he looked around and made certain that no one was looking at him from one of the project windows. All seemed clear. He got into the car, drove onto the nearby Pulaski Skyway, and headed south. He wasn’t sure what he’d do or how he’d do it, but Richard was intent upon not getting caught. He put on the car’s heater and calmed himself, knowing if he was pulled over by the police he’d be in deep shit, so he purposely drove at the speed limit, and as he drove, a different feeling slowly swept over Richard: a feeling of power and omnipotence. A kind of invincibility. He remembered all the abuse he had suffered over the years because of Charley, the taunts and put-downs, the random punches and slaps and kicks, and he was suddenly glad he’d killed him. He’d been fantasizing about killing people for the longest time, almost as far back as he could remember, and now he’d done it, and he liked the way it made him feel.

“I will never,” he said out loud in the quiet interior of the moving car, “ever allow anybody to fucking abuse me again.” And he never did.

After two hours of driving, his mind playing over what he’d do, Richard reached South Jersey, an area filled with desolate marshland and pine forests. He pulled over on a small bridge above a frozen pond surrounded with tall blond-colored reeds, which he could see in the car’s headlights. There was no one about. The wind howled. He got out of the Pontiac and opened the trunk. Charley Lane was much heavier than he’d been before. Rigor mortis had not set in yet, and he was still malleable. Struggling, Richard got him out of the car, laid him on the frozen ground, and returned with the ax-hammer. Knowing Charley’s teeth could be used to identify him and put the murder on his doorstep, Richard used the hammer to knock out all of Charley’s teeth. He then laid out the lifeless hands and chopped the tips of his fingers off. He gathered up the fingertips and teeth, planning to get rid of them elsewhere. Last, he made sure Charley had no ID on him, found some paper money, took it, picked up the body, and dumped it off the small bridge. It broke through the ice. He returned to the car and turned back toward Jersey City, stepping on the gas. As he went he got rid of the other pieces of Charley he’d retrieved, knowing birds and animals would eat them sooner or later. All this he had learned by avidly reading true-crime magazines. Thus Richard’s path in life was set irrevocably and forever.

By the time Richard got back to Jersey City, a frigid pale dawn was rapidly coming on. He watched the sky in the east turn a tawny winter orange. He figured it would be best to get rid of the car now, so he left it in a parking area in Hoboken and walked back home, forever changed.

Proud of himself, how cool he was under pressure, how clever his actions were, he lay in bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He felt, for the first time in his entire life, like a someone, a person who merited respect. He could control who lived and who died, when and where and how. The last thought Richard had before he finally fell asleep was: Fuck with me and I’ll kill you…. I will kill you!

In the ensuing days, Richard saw the project boys, but without Charley to lead and egg them on, encourage and compel them, they left Richard alone. But Richard didn’t leave them alone. They had tormented him for years, a thing he’d not forgotten. Using a length of two-by-four he found, he went after them all one by one and beat them mercilessly, and from then on they did not trouble Richard again. Indeed, they moved out of his way when they saw him coming, wouldn’t even look him in the eye.

It was then I learned it was better to give than receive, Richard recently explained.

There were a lot of questions about what happened to Charley, but no one ever tied his sudden disappearance to Richard, the closet pole, the stolen Pontiac. Richard believed he had committed the perfect crime, came to think of himself as a cunning, dangerous criminal, a force to be reckoned with. He went from a cowering boy to a dangerous man in just a few days. He began carrying around a baseball bat and was quick to use it on anyone, man or boy, who bothered him. He had a lot of old scores to settle, and he methodically went about Jersey City, seeking out, finding, and beating anyone who had ever bullied or abused him. He was very tall for his age and had a long-limbed, wiry strength beyond his years. In no time he garnered a reputation as a tough guy, no one to fuck with, and he liked that—a lot.

The bat, however, was too large and conspicuous, so instead Richard started carrying an inexpensive hunting knife, and he had no qualms about using it with very bad intentions.

Richard never thought about Charley Lane. He was dead and gone and to hell with him. Whether it was all of Stanley’s brutality, his mother’s beatings, the many head traumas Richard had suffered, or the way he’d been born—with some kind of bad gene—Richard had no concern, no guilt, no qualms about cutting someone across the face, even taking a life.

The thought of murder was the natural result of living in a jungle, and Richard had come to know the world as a brutal jungle, and he resolved to be a predator, not prey. Richard was, it was apparent even back then, a natural-born killer.

Richard had little use for school and barely went anymore. He began hanging out in smoke-filled pool halls and bars with pool tables. He really liked the game of pool, its neat precision, its rules, its timing and strategy. He practiced constantly, for hours at a time, perfecting his skills, his hand-eye coordination, the correct stroke needed to make good, then very difficult shots. With his tall, thin body and unusually long arms he was able to lean into difficult shots and make them easily. He soon learned you could make money if you shot pool well, and he had visions of becoming a famous pool shark, a slick, soft-spoken hustler who could beat the pants off all challengers.

Richard had an uncanny ability to move quietly. He naturally walked on just the balls of his enormous feet, and he could readily move up on people without their noticing. One afternoon he came home unexpectedly. Walking into the house, he heard a strange noise, heavy breathing, rhythmic grunting. He slowly moved forward and looked into the living room, and there was his mother, having sex with a man on the couch—a married man with three children who lived next door. His mother’s legs were high in the air, wide open, and the man was pumping into her, his fat, white, hairy ass exposed. Richard wanted to plunge his knife into the man’s back, but instead he quietly turned and left, disgusted, hating his mother. She was always talking about how dirty sex was, don’t do this, don’t do that, and there she was in broad daylight fucking the married guy next door. What a hypocrite, what a tramp—a whore, he thought, and went back to Jake’s pool hall in Hoboken and began to practice.