murders. His immediate boss, his captain, was Nino Gaggi, who reported directly to Paul Castellano, the recently appointed head of the Gambino crime family, the largest, most successful crime family in New York’s rough-and- tumble history. Castellano had inherited the mantle from a genuine organized-crime legend: his brother-in-law, Carlo Gambino himself.
The camera, gray duct tape, and handcuffs needed for what Richard had in mind were in his trunk. Richard knew the mark left for work every day at 10:00 A.M. He had carefully plotted the mark’s route to work and planned to snatch him at a desolate corner where there was a stop sign, where he had to stop to make a turn. Richard preferred not to work in broad daylight, but he’d do whatever the job called for; and, he knew, people tended to be less defensive in the light of day, a natural element he repeatedly exploited.
When the mark came down the road toward the stop sign, Richard was there, innocently standing next to his car, its hood and trunk open, emergency lights blinking, a pleasant smile about his handsome face. He had a .357 Magnum in his hand, which was hidden in his coat pocket. Richard flagged the man down. As the mark reached the corner, Richard made sure to approach him on the driver’s side. Somewhat annoyed, the mark rolled down the window. “Yeah?” he demanded.
“Thanks for stopping, pal,” Richard began, and in the next instant, really just the bat of an eye, Richard pressed the thick blue-black .357 to the man’s head while with his other hand he quickly snatched the car keys from the ignition, done so quick it was like a magic trick.
“What the fuck?” the man exclaimed. He was a large heavyset individual with a huge round face, several double chins, a bald head. Richard opened the door, pulled him out, and, keeping the gun in his side, quickly made him get in the open trunk of Richard’s car.
“I’ll pay you—I’ll give you—”
“Shut up.” Richard stopped him, cuffed his hands behind his back, and taped his mouth shut.
“Make any noise and I’ll kill you!” Richard said in a practiced modulation that was a chilling thing to hear, like the growl of a nearby hungry lion. Richard closed the trunk and hood of his car, got into it, and slowly pulled away. In a matter of seconds he had snatched the mark without anyone seeing him. The first aspect of the job was done.
By now the leaves of the trees in Bucks County had taken on colors, bright reds, hot oranges, bold yellows. Slowly falling leaves seemed like multicolored butterflies on the first days of spring. Richard parked his car in a remote spot. He pulled the mark from the trunk and led him to the cave he’d found, and located the spot where he had laid out the meat. He made the mark lie down here and carefully wrapped duct tape around his ankles and legs and arms, tightly bound him as a diligent spider wraps silk around its prey. The man’s panic-stricken eyes bulged out of his large round face. He desperately tried to talk, to offer Richard all the money he had, anything he wanted, but the gray duct tape held tight and only panicky, mumbled grunts came from him. What he wanted to say Richard had heard many times over. They were words he had become deaf to. Richard had no remorse, no conscience, no compassion. He was doing a job, and none of those feelings even remotely came into play. Richard calmly went back to his car. He retrieved the camera and tripod, and a light and a motion detector that would trigger both the light and camera when the rats came out. Richard carefully set up the camera, the light and motion detector just so. Satisfied, he cut the man’s clothes off—he had dirtied himself—and left him there like that.
As Richard made his way back down the hill to his car, he was curious, even a bit amused, to see what would happen; would the rats in fact eat a man while he was still alive? Curious, also, to see his own reaction to such a thing. Richard often wondered why he could be so cold-blooded. Was he born that way or made that way—was it nature or nurture that made him the remorseless monster he’d become? It was a question he’d been asking himself for many years now, since he was a young boy.
Today, Richard had promised to take his daughters Merrick and Chris to Lobels, a specialty shop that sold parochial-school uniforms. Barbara was feeling a bit under the weather and didn’t go. Both the girls enjoyed shopping with their dad because he bought them whatever they wanted. All either of them had to do was look at something and it was suddenly theirs. Richard had been brought up in extreme poverty, had to steal food to eat as a boy in Jersey City, and his own children would never want for anything.
Excited, the girls sat next to their dad in the front seat. They both knew that their father often got into arguments with people about how they drove, and the girls silently hoped that nothing like that happened today. It was a kind of ritual they had—hoping their dad would not explode as he drove.
Barbara explained:
Each of the girls needed four blouses and two skirts for the school year. At the shop in Emerson, Richard bought them five gray pleated skirts, fifteen blouses, two dozen pairs of knee-high socks, two blue blazers, five vests, and a half dozen pairs of gym outfits. Going shopping with dad was like Christmas morning.
Pleased his girls were happy, Richard paid with cash, and off they went. They were now going to stop in Grand Union to pick up some groceries and return home. Two blocks from the shop, a woman in a station wagon cut Richard off. Incensed, he stopped next to her at a light, rolled down his window, and berated her for cutting him off. There were several children in the backseat of the wagon.
“Daddy—Daddy, don’t get mad,” Merrick begged. “Please, Daddy.” But the woman gave Richard a dirty, condescending look and ignored him as if he were crazy, a fool. In the next instant, Richard was out of the car. He quickly walked to the station wagon, opened the door, and actually ripped the door right off its hinges in two powerful pulls.
Terrified, the woman stared at Richard.
Satisfied, he got back in his car and pulled away.
“Please, Daddy, please calm down,” Chris now begged.
“Quiet!” he demanded, the word seeming more like a growl than any word in the English language.
Four days later, Richard returned to the cave. The rats had eaten the man alive. All his flesh was gone. In the pale yellow glow of Richard’s flashlight, the mark was now only disjointed, haphazard bones—an unspeakable sight.
Curious, Richard stared at his work, this monster he had created. He made sure the camera had captured what had happened…how the huge rats first approached the hapless man with trepidation as he furiously squirmed to free himself; how the rats, more and more of them, bolder and bolder still, began taking bites out of him, first his ears, then his eyes.
Richard retrieved his equipment and left. A gentle snowfall had covered the forest with a pearly white blanket. Everything was white and clean and storybook lovely. A solemn white silence had descended upon the forest. He knew the fresh snow would cover any tracks he left.
Richard took the videotape of the mark being eaten alive to the man who had ordered the hit.
“Did he suffer?” the man asked, his voice gruff, his manner callous, his eyes dead, like two bullet holes.
“Oh yeah, he really suffered,” Richard said.
“Really?” the man asked.
“Really,” Richard said, and gave him the tape. They both watched it. Overjoyed, yet slightly appalled that Richard would even think of, let alone do, such a thing, the man gave him ten thousand dollars for the contract, and a second ten thousand dollars for the incredible suffering the mark had experienced.
“You did a good job,” he said. Richard liked to please his customers; that was how his business had grown over the years. Richard did not know what the mark had done to deserve such a fate. He didn’t care. None of that was his business. The less he knew, the better.
After a job well done, Richard made his way home, again wondering why such things didn’t bother him, how he had become so cold, so devoid of human feelings. He thought about his childhood, and his jaw muscles clenched into tight knots and he made that slight clicking sound out of the left side of his heart-shaped mouth. He took a long, deep breath, turned on the radio and tuned in a country music station. Richard liked country music. The simple lyrics and meandering repetition soothed him.
Still thinking about his childhood, the barbaric cruelty he had suffered, Richard made his way home, where he
