by Philip Carlo
“My pleasure,” Richard said, and he meant it.
Within two days Richard snatched the playboy and took him to the caves in Bucks County where he knew the rats lived. Richard had with him thin strips of rawhide. He wanted to try out something new. He stripped the playboy, wet the rawhide strips, wrapped one around his testicles, one around each arm, one around his forehead. It was a mild September day. As the rawhide grew taut, Richard watched the playboy suffering, amused, detached, telling the playboy why this was happening. Richard took some Polaroid photos of the playboy’s distress, his now tomato red balls. He stayed there for some time with the playboy, watching him suffer, hearing his pleas. Unfazed, Richard studied the man’s suffering as a scientist doing research would examine infectious bacteria under a microscope. For Richard this was a learning experience, seeing how the rawhide strips cut into his flesh…how the rats began to gather near the mark. So many rats appeared that Richard was finally forced to leave, though he took more Polaroids of the playboy before he left.
He returned two days later. There was nothing left of the man but some of his gnawed skeleton. The rats had even eaten the rawhide strips. The fetid smell of the rats and their grisly droppings filled the air. Richard threw the paltry remains down a mine shaft.
When Richard showed the Sicilian father the Polaroids, he was quite pleased, had a smile from ear to ear, and with newfound respect for “the Big Guy” gave Richard an extra ten grand. Another happy customer.
Richard took to wondering why seeing and doing such things—committing such barbarous acts—didn’t bother him in the least. He thought long and hard on this. It was troubling and, to some degree, disconcerting to him.
Why, he wondered, could he be so cold, so indifferent to people’s suffering. It made him feel, for a while, that there was something wrong with him. He explained: Since I was a kid I always felt like an outsider, like I didn’t belong, and now, because of these things I did, I was really feeling that way again. But from another angle, for the most part, it didn’t bother me…I got used to it. But why—why, I wondered, am I like this? I mean so cold, so indifferent to people’s feelings. Their pain. Was I born like that, or was I made that way? Even my own family—how mean I could be to them, the only people I truly ever cared for. I didn’t like that; I didn’t want to be that way, I mean to my family.
I thought about going to see a psychiatrist, seeing if I could get, you know, some help, maybe some medication, but of course I couldn’t do that. I mean what would I say to a shrink: I torture and kill people for money and I like my work? I don’t think so.
This “introspective Richard” was much in contrast to the stone-cold killer whose reputation as a homicide superstar was clearly established in mob circles across the country. Known as “the Big Guy,” Richard was becoming a much-sought-out killer. He was efficient and tight-lipped, and did not hang out with wiseguys. He was a true “family man” who happened to be a contract killer. For the longest time, this kept Richard off police and FBI radar. Very few people even knew his real name. He did not socialize with mob guys. He did not go to their weddings, funerals, or family functions.
People, even Roy DeMeo, had only his beeper number. That was the only way he could be reached, and that’s the way he wanted it. He never brought any mob guys to his home or told them where he lived. He kept all that far away from his family.
One of the few people that Richard had a personal relationship with was Phil Solimene over in Patterson. Richard considered Solimene a friend, didn’t have designs to kill him (rare for him), and did a lot of business with Solimene: sold him porn, bought and sold hijacked goods from him, murdered people Solimene set up in bogus business deals and rip-offs. Barbara and Richard even socialized with Solimene and his wife, Anne. It would be this one relationship—this one friendship—that would ultimately make Richard vulnerable. It was a chink in his carefully constructed and well-worn armor.
The Achilles’ heel of his size 14 foot.
Meanwhile, Roy DeMeo was out of control, a runaway train heading for disaster. He had taken to thinking of himself as invincible, above the law, that he could do anything when and how and where the fuck he pleased. DeMeo had turned the small apartment in the back of the Gemini Lounge into a virtual slaughterhouse. He and his crew of serial killers were murdering, cutting up, and dismembering scores of people; several a week; sometimes two a day. All these murders were going to Roy’s head. He began to think of himself as untouchable, a god among mortals. He had several NYPD detectives on his payroll and thus was given frequent information he was able to use to stay out of trouble, avoid arrest. One of these crooked cops was a beady-eyed detective out of the Brooklyn hot-car unit. His name was Peter Calabro. He had dark, receding hair, dark hooded eyes, full lips, and was in his midthirties, relatively young to be a detective.
Peter Calabro was in deep with Roy DeMeo. When Calabro wanted to get rid of his estranged wife, Carmella, Roy did the job for him, had her abducted in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, drowned, and left in the ocean. But by chance her body was discovered floating near New Jersey’s Sandy Hook by the Coast Guard. Carmella’s mother, Antonia, was positive Calabro was responsible and told every cop who would listen to her that Peter Calabro killed her daughter, that he was a low-life murderer, “a scumbag,” she said. The case was even presented to a Brooklyn grand jury, but Calabro had an airtight alibi and there was insufficient evidence to indict. It couldn’t clearly be established if Carmella’s death was in fact a homicide or a suicide.
Richard had nothing to do with the murder of Carmella Calabro, but DeMeo personally drowned her and left her body adrift. DeMeo, unlike Richard, had no qualms about killing women.
This killing, DeMeo knew, would forever cement his relationship with Calabro, and because of it DeMeo had an everlasting inside track into most of the investigations into his exceedingly nefarious business dealings—particularly his booming, very lucrative stolen-car operation. DeMeo was like a greedy octopus—he had his tentacles in everything. He also paid Calabro handsomely for his assistance. One of the many “favors” Detective Calabro did for DeMeo—and others in the Gambino family—was to provide him with clean VIN numbers for stolen cars.
Richard’s business with the very busy Roy DeMeo was twofold—murder and porn—and they were now both making money hand over fist. When DeMeo had a special “piece of work,” he called upon Richard, “the Big Guy.” Richard also became known as “the Polack.” He didn’t particularly like that name, though any name, he knew, was better than his real name. It’s no accident all mob guys have nicknames.
With Richard’s deadly assistance, DeMeo became the well-oiled killing apparatus for the Gambino family, and because DeMeo was not made yet, he was filling murder contracts for almost anyone who wanted someone dead.
Nino Gaggi, Roy’s rabbi, kept telling Roy to cool it, to be more discreet, to stop killing so many people, but the huge amounts of cash DeMeo was giving Gaggi put to rest most of Gaggi’s concerns. Gaggi was absolutely money hungry, greedy to a fault, and Roy DeMeo regularly gave him brown paper bags filled with cash; and during the holidays DeMeo still showed up at the Gaggi home with truckloads (literally) of presents, expensive jewelry for Nino’s wife, Rose, toys for all the kids. A kind of Italian Santa Claus from hell.
Over the ensuing months after the Hoffa hit, Richard met with DeMeo a dozen times at the diner near the Tappan Zee Bridge, and every contract DeMeo gave Richard, Richard carried out successfully, without problem or repercussion, complication or mishap.
It was during this time that Richard brought more and more marks to the caves for the rats to eat and filmed their deaths. He even took to sitting down in his house when everyone was asleep and watching these ghastly videos as he had a late-night snack—turkey on rye, a bit of mayo. He wasn’t so much viewing the films for entertainment as trying to understand himself, his reactions to them…why, he says, such things didn’t trouble him in the least; this…concerned him, he recently explain
ed.
He even showed one of the films to DeMeo, a bona fide psychopath, to see his reaction—and even DeMeo couldn’t stand to see them. Because of the films, DeMeo knew that Richard was a rare individual, indeed a man—as he thought of him—with no soul.
“He’s fuckin’ ice,” he told his crew. “I…mean…ice.”
And, too, these films created a perverse bond—“friendship”—between Roy and Richard, and they actually enjoyed each other’s company…two peas in a bloody pod.
Still, though, Richard was waiting for the chance to kill Roy, to beat him and humiliate him and end his life. For Richard that was the ultimate cure-all. Richard used murder to get rid of his problems the way people used aspirin to get rid of headaches.
Besides contract killing, Richard was murdering people he did business with, men he fronted porn to who decided they were not going to pay him. One such individual had a porno shop in downtown Los Angeles, a bear of a man who prided himself on being tough, independent, not afraid of anyone. He owed Richard ten thousand dollars and, arrogantly, stopped even taking Richard’s calls.
Angry, Richard got on a plane and went to see the guy. He had brought with him in his luggage two fragmentation hand grenades that he’d gotten from DeMeo. A grenade in each pocket, Richard walked unannounced into the guy’s store. The mark was behind the chest-high counter, sitting on a tall, pillow-covered stool, big and heavy and mean faced, not liking the world or anyone in it.
“Hello, my friend,” Richard said, approaching him, walking on the balls of his feet, his mouth twisted off to the left, that soft clicking sound issuing from it.
“Hey, Big Guy,” the mark said, not pleased to see Richard suddenly in his shop.
“Been trying to reach you, my friend,” said Richard.
“Yeah, well I been busy, you know how it is.”
“You have a bill with me, my friend.”
“Yeah, well I don’t have all the money just yet.”
“What do you have?” asked Richard.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yeah, zero,” he said, smiling, showing cigar-stained crooked teeth. As if he had just heard a joke, a joke Richard was deaf to.
“Funny guy,” Richard said.
“A real comedian: I used to do stand-up before I got into this,” he said, expansively indicating the shop, as though it were an accomplishment of note, something to write home about.
“What about my money? I need it,” Richard said.
“How about you come back in…in say, a month.”
“That wasn’t our agreement.”
“Yeah, well it is now.”
“Say you?”
“Say I.”
Richard smiled. It was not a pleasant smile to see. Ti-ti-ti came the clicking sound from his lips.
Richard took out a grenade and pulled the pin, though the shop owner didn’t see it because of the high counter. Richard handed the pin to the guy behind the counter.
“What’s this?” he demanded.
“A surprise,” Richard said as he began walking out of the store.
“What surprise?”
“This one,” Richard said, and tossed the grenade behind the counter just next to the guy. Richard exited the store. The grenade went off and blew the belligerent guy to pieces.
This incident, like many others Richard was involved with, was not so much about the money as about the principle of the thing. If one guy on the street could get over on you, everyone would soon be doing the same thing. True, by killing this man, Richard lost ten thousand dollars, but he figured in the long run he’d earn much more because people would pay what they owed. On the street, as Richard had learned so many years ago in Jersey City, might was truly right.
I didn’t give a flying fuck about the money, Richard explained. I wasn’t about to let this stiff make a fool out of me, and I capped him to make a point. An exclamation point, I guess you could say.
Again, the cops did not tie Richard to this homicide by hand grenade, as Richard refers to it.
Richard grew to like Los Angeles, the accommodating weather, the relaxed lifestyle, the palm trees. Porn was very popular in Southern California, and Richard made more money there distributing porn than on the East Coast. He liked going to the “porn conventions,” thought they were fun, he says. He had a lot of business there and enjoyed spending time in Los Angeles. He enjoyed LA so much he rented an apartment in West Hollywood, just off Sunset Boulevard. He liked to sit at outdoor cafés in the warm weather and watch the world go by—the colorful circus that LA always is, the fancy cars, the fancy women, the fancy clothes. Barbara knew nothing of this apartment. She didn’t even know where Richard was when he went off on “business trips.” Barbara’s only concern—her whole life—was her children, especially Dwayne. She focused all her energy on them. When Richard wasn’t home the house was peaceful, calm…normal. Only Merrick missed Richard when he wasn’t home, though she was not encouraged to express such emotions.
When Richard returned from Los Angeles, he was given a contract by the Gigante family that had to be filled at a Howard Johnson just off Route 46. No problem. The mark was going to a breakfast meeting at this Howard Johnson, a setup. Richard chose the .22 Ruger rifle, cut down to a mere fifteen inches and equipped with a blue-black silencer. He was in the parking lot when the mark arrived early that morning for his meeting with a Gigante lieutenant. Richard watched the two of them have breakfast, pancakes, shake hands, and part in the parking lot as if friends. As the mark reached his car, Richard raised the weapon and shot him nine times in two seconds, in rapid succession. The mark fell to the ground, dead. Richard calmly pulled away. It looked as if the mark had had a heart attack until you saw all the blood coming from these sudden little holes. Another job well done. Another murder never linked to Richard by police.
It didn’t take long for a host of new contracts to come in from the Gigante people, which Richard gladly filled. There was no contract he would not take—except, of course, the killing of a woman or a child. That was taboo for Richard, a line he would not cross.
There were, however, female contract killers, lethal femme fatales, who could readily get close to a mark, offering warm embraces, hot sex, a lustful blow job, but delivering sudden death. These women, Richard felt, were fair game, and he would kill one as quickly as any man. But this had not yet come to pass.
When, in the fall of 1976, Carlo Gambino died of natural causes, everything suddenly changed, and the stage was set for a tumultuous earthquake that would rock the very foundations of Mafiadom.
34
Rolling Over in His Grave
Because Carlo Gambino so fervently believed in family ties—fidelity and loyalty—he appointed his brother in-law, Paul Castellano, as his successor as the head of the family, now the biggest, most successful crime family in history. This would prove to be a monumental error in judgment.
Paul Castellano was not cut out for this position; he did not have the inherent instincts, the cunning, or the street smarts to master the multifaceted operation he was suddenly put in charge of. Yes, Castellano was a good businessman, but the head of a crime family—no.
His first in a series of serious blunders was demanding that all twenty captains in the Gambino crime family come to see him once a week at a social club called the Veterans and Friends Club he began on Brooklyn’s Eighty-sixth Street, just off Fifteenth Avenue. This directive enabled the FBI to take extensive surveillance photos and video of who came and went, and thus the government suddenly knew who all the Gambino capos were, which proved to be the beginning of the end—the very unnecessary exposure of the family’s star players, the inner circle, the virtual engines that ran the family.
The second fatal error Castellano made was not detecting the FBI’s listening devices in his fortresslike Staten Island home; because of these bugs the FBI—for the first time ever—got a fly-on-the-wall view of all the inner workings of a Mafia chieftain, who did what, whe
n, where, and even how.
The third fatal error Castellano made was having a carnal affair with the Columbian housekeeper his wife, Carlo’s sister, had hired, while his wife was actually in the house—an unspeakable thing that surely caused Carlo Gambino to roll over in his grave. This, for a Sicilian, was the ultimate infamy, unforgivable—a blasphemy!
And because of the excellent listening devices in the Castellano kitchen, the FBI heard all the ridiculous syrupy conversations Castellano had with his lover while his wife was in the house. These conversations would eventually be made public, printed in a book, excerpts of which appeared in New York magazine, making Paul Castellano a despised laughingstock of every made member of all crime families in all places, even in Sicily, which sealed Castellano’s fate; interestingly, Richard Kuklinski would play a large role in that fate.
The only capo pleased about Castellano’s promotion was Nino Gaggi. Gaggi had for thirty years been a very close personal friend and confidant to Castellano, and this put Gaggi in an excellent position—and by extension, Roy DeMeo too.
DeMeo still wanted more than anything to be made, get his button, and now with Castellano as the boss that possibility loomed large in the very near future.
Castellano, like Gaggi, was a particularly greedy man—whatever he got, it was never enough. DeMeo was a moneymaking machine, and Castellano was impressed with the money he was receiving—via Gaggi—from DeMeo. Gaggi kept petitioning Castellano to make DeMeo, but Castellano was reluctant: he thought DeMeo too loud, too brash—a psychopath that would eventually draw police attention—and said no.
Then DeMeo really stirred up a hornets’ nest when he brought the infamous Westies into the Gambino fold—another large mistake.
The Westies were a loose-knit group of Irishmen who ran Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side. They specialized in shakedowns of local stores, bookmaking, shylocking, numbers running—and murder.
