The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

He told her that his marriage was, in fact, on the rocks; that he barely ever saw his wife and kids; that he was getting divorced, which was essentially all true, and Barbara believed him, took him at his word. Why shouldn’t she? There was no reason for him to lie. Plus, lies and deceit had never played a part in her short life. They were foreign to her. When they left the pizza parlor, Richard made sure he opened the door, and he hurried to open the door for her when she got into his car, an old Chevy. In front of Nana Carmella’s house, he didn’t try to kiss her good night, was too shy. She thanked him for a nice evening and went inside, not sure she’d ever see him again.

As Richard made his way back to Jersey City, he couldn’t stop thinking of Barbara, her smile, her lovely eyes, how her dark hair contrasted with her fair skin. It was as if someone had put a spell on him, as if Cupid had shot him with an arrow, a particularly pointed arrow. Until then Richard had only known “bar women.” Women who were loose, whores and tramps, as he thought of them. He also met many married women who fucked like rabbits in heat when their husbands weren’t around, he says.

Richard had grown to think of most women—certainly his own mother—as whores. He would never forget his mother screwing the next-door neighbor, a slovenly guy with three kids, right in the middle of the afternoon. That image, her naked with her legs wide open, her feet up in the air, was seared into his strange mind.

But not Barbara; she was different; she was good and innocent and pure as the driven snow. He wanted her, he resolved. He’d move heaven and hell to get her. But how? he wondered. How could he get her to fall for him? He didn’t have much to offer her. This was a dilemma. Still, he wanted to own her, possess her, to make her his.

But how?

That night when Barbara went inside, her mother immediately started complaining about Richard: he was too old for her; he lived in Jersey City; he seemed rough around the edges; he was not Italian. Biggest sin of all. Nana Carmella had nothing to say. If Barbara liked him, he was fine with her. Aunt Sadie, however, would have much to say. She would hire a private detective to look into this Richard Kuklinski of Jersey City.

It was Sunday morning, an unusually cold fall day. Barbara liked to sleep late on Sundays. She was still sound asleep when her mother shook her and woke her up with some urgency.

“That man you went out with last night is here,” she said, obviously not pleased about it.

“Here, where?”

“Downstairs!”

“Richard?”

“Yes.”

Surprised to the point of shock, Barbara climbed out of bed, freshened up, and went downstairs. She found Richard sitting in the living room. He popped up when he saw her. In his left hand he had a big bouquet of flowers, and in his right hand a white stuffed toy: Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Speechless, though touched, Barbara just stood there, her mouth slightly agape. No one had ever paid such attention to her. What was this about?

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s…that’s okay. How thoughtful of you,” she said, taking the flowers and Casper, smiling politely.

Richard had never courted a girl in his life; he had no idea how it was done, what was good form and what was not. Barbara offered him some coffee and put the nice roses in a vase. This was also another first—no boy had ever given her flowers.

It was painfully obvious to Genevieve that this Polish guy from Jersey City, certainly an undesirable place filled with ruffians, had designs on her daughter—her only child—and she didn’t like it. Her daughter was good girl, a virgin…. Where did this guy get off coming around early Sunday morning with flowers and lovesick eyes? Genevieve believed an older guy like him was after one thing—sex; and he wasn’t going to get any of that from her daughter, her Barbara. Forget it.

Genevieve was cold and indifferent to Richard, and Barbara knew it was best to get him out of the house, away from her mother, ASAP. She showered and dressed, and she and Richard left. They went to Journal Square in Jersey City, a main shopping street lined with beautiful old art deco movie houses—the Loews and the Stanley—and all kinds of nice shops. They went for a Sunday brunch at an Italian restaurant called Guido’s, walked up and down the wide street looking in store windows and talking.

Richard felt close to Barbara, as if he’d known her a long time. For some inexplicable reason he…he trusted her. They even talked about sex that day, and Barbara told him she was a virgin and was proud of it. This really bowled Richard over. How could a girl so attractive, so sexy and desirable, still be a virgin? That didn’t make sense, he thought, and told her so.

“Yeah, well I am,” she said, adamant, not pleased he didn’t take her word, but in truth he did believe her, and that made him want her all the more. She really was, he was more sure than ever, a good girl—someone he could trust. They saw another movie, Otto Preminger’s Exodus, and Richard took Barbara back home. He tried now to kiss her good night but she wouldn’t let him. She didn’t invite him inside; she wanted to keep him and her mother apart.

That Monday, when Barbara left work, Richard was outside waiting for her, and he had still more flowers with him.

This all caught her off guard, made her…a little uneasy. There was no plan for him to be here, but here he was insisting on taking her home, and of course she had to get into his car; after all, he was only being nice. How could she decline? She did have plans to meet a girlfriend and go to the record shop, but now that had to be scrapped.

Barbara recently explained, If I’d had any sense I would’ve seen the handwriting on the wall then and there and ended it. But I’d never met anyone like Richard…so…attentive, and I had no real point of reference.

Barbara went to the record shop in North Bergen with Richard and he insisted that she let him buy her the records she wanted. She tried to pay but he wouldn’t let her.

“Forget it, let me…. I want to,” he told her.

When he took her home, Nana Carmella saw them and made him come in for dinner. Barbara had to go along with this, though she felt his presence was being forced on her. Genevieve worked hard all day and had no real interest in cooking, but Grandmother Carmella was an amazingly good cook, and she served up eggplant parmesan, no big deal, but Richard raved about how good it was.

Genevieve was not thrilled he was there—she knew what he was after; but she tolerated him and was…pleasant enough. After dinner and some sweets Nana Carmella had made, they sat in the living room and watched The Sid Caesar Show, everyone but Genevieve laughing out loud. Though shy and awkward, Richard felt oddly at ease, felt at home. He’d never in his life been around a family that wasn’t severely dysfunctional, and he admired the warmth in Barbara’s home. He wanted this for himself. He’d do anything he had to do to get it. Nothing would stop him from having Barbara—from having his own family with Barbara.

He came to view Barbara as a valuable means to an end, sure she could show him a part of life he knew nothing about. He could, he was equally sure, know real love if he made Barbara his. He didn’t so much see her as an intelligent, independent woman; he saw her as a potential possession, a thing to acquire, own and control, hang above the mantel; a prized trophy everyone could admire.

Outwardly, Richard was a perfect gentleman, soft-spoken, fervently polite; inside he was a churning volcano…intent upon owning and possessing Barbara Pedrici, no matter what. His wife, Linda, was forgotten; a thing of the past.

Every day when Barbara left work, Richard was there. She quickly became so used to his presence that she began to take it for granted, accept it; she didn’t tell him she had other plans; she didn’t tell him that she wanted to go shopping with her friends, hang out and talk and have fun with the girls. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. As it happened, Richard didn’t even give her the chance to protest; he was just always there with that handsome face and those intense almond-shaped eyes, flowers, his shy smile, his polite ways. How could she say no? How could she resist him? In fact, she began to grow fond of his undivided attention. After all, he was a handsome older guy, obviously nuts about her, and she felt…well, she felt flattered. The attention and the admiration appealed to her ego; none of her friends had a tall, gorgeous older guy waiting on them, always there, opening doors, being polite, a caring, considerate gentleman out to please.

Little by little Barbara was becoming more and more fond of Richard. His seduction was bearing fruit. Now when he kissed her she let him; indeed, she kissed him back…passionately. But that was it. She refused to have sex with him. Her mother had warned her many times over the years to never, never have sex before being married. That had been ingrained in Barbara since she was a young girl.

But the more she resisted Richard’s impassioned pleas, the more he wanted her. Had to have her. He began to tease Barbara about her virginity, said the reason she wouldn’t have sex with him was because she really wasn’t a virgin at all, that she was “hiding the truth.” At first he said this jokingly, toying with her, but the more she said no, the more he teased her, and dared her to show him. Prove it.

Barbara, a strong-willed, independent young woman by nature, finally gave in to Richard’s entreaties, more to shut him up and prove she was a virgin than anything else. The first time they were intimate was in a motel in Jersey City, and it was not a particularly pleasant experience for Barbara. In fact, it hurt. But Richard had reached the top of Mount Everest, and Barbara proved there in the hotel that she was, indeed, a virgin, for her blood was there to prove it. This made Richard want her all the more. Barbara was the only virgin he’d ever known, and he was intent upon making her his.

He was intent upon marrying her.

17

Aunt Sadie

Barbara’s aunt Sadie was more like a mother to Barbara than Genevieve had ever been. Cold and aloof, Genevieve was not a people person. She didn’t seem to like anyone. She’d go to work, come home, eat, watch a little TV, and go to sleep; that was her life; that’s what life was all about.

Aunt Sadie, on the other hand was outgoing, warm and friendly, loved movies, loved opera, enjoyed going out, had a giving, effusive southern Italian way about her. Sadie was also a crafty, cunning woman, as is also the way of southern Italians, of Neapolitans. If Barbara, who was surely more like a daughter than a niece, wanted to be involved with this big Polish guy, that was okay with her. But Aunt Sadie wanted to know more about him—who he was, where he came from, what kind of family he had. Whenever the subject of his family came up, Richard became quiet and changed the subject. Sadie wondered why, and she resolved to make it her business to find out. Her brother Armond was a part-time cop in Cliffside Park, and with his help, Sadie found a private investigator who, for a fee, went to Jersey City and Hoboken and began snooping around and asking questions about Richard Kuklinski.

It didn’t take long for him to find out that Richard was a player, that he hurt a lot of people, that he hijacked trucks, that he had a hair-trigger temper, that he had drinking and gambling problems; and that he had associations with organized crime. He even heard rumors that Richard had murdered people in sudden bar altercations, and for money! Mama mia! Richard had no kind of police record, but he had a reputation as a dangerous guy: a thug, a hustler with a violent streak who carried a gun and a knife. All this Armond summarily reported back to Sadie. She was appalled and immediately dispatched Armond to go to talk to Richard, intent upon ending the relationship before it went any further. Armond found Richard in a Jersey City bar and said he needed to talk with him….

“Sure,” Richard said, wary that Armond had suddenly come to Jersey City to talk with him: “What’s on your mind?”

“Barbara,” Armond began, “is a good girl—”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I like her,” said Richard.

“Look, I found out all about you, Richard. I know who you are. And me…me and the family want you to stay away from Barbara.”

“Really,” Richard said, his lips tightening, his eyes narrowing.

“Yeah, really,” Armond told him, acting tough.

“And what if I don’t?” Richard asked.

“It won’t be good for you,” Armond said.

“You threatening me? Are you threatening me, Armond?”

“I’m telling you to leave Barbara alone. She’s a good girl.”

“My intentions toward her are only honorable.”

“You are married with two kids…. What’s honorable about that?”

“I’m getting a divorce.”

“You aren’t for her.”

“Says who?”

“Me. Says me. The family wants you to steer clear of Barbara. Don’t you get it?”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t, okay.”

“That wouldn’t be…good for you.”

“You are threatening me. Look, Armond, if you wanna go to war over this that’s fine with me, but I can tell you right now, right here, like a friend, that only one of us is going to come out of it, and it ain’t—listen to me—it ain’t going to be you. Take that to the bank.” Richard let his words sink in. Armond was not a particularly tough man. He was tall and thin, not powerful. But he had fought in World War II, was highly decorated, had killed a lot of Japanese soldiers, and he did carry a gun. He had one on him right now, a .38 with a four-inch barrel, his service revolver. Richard had two guns on him. They stared at each other.

“My niece is a good girl!” Armond repeated with firm conviction. “Don’t you get it?”

If Armond hadn’t been Barbara’s uncle, Richard might’ve taken him outside and shot him there on the spot, then got rid of his body. Instead, he said, “Like I told you, my intentions toward Barbara are only honorable. Tell the family that; tell them I’m getting a divorce; tell them I love Barbara and’ll never do anything to hurt her. Tell them that…. Okay?”

“Okay, I will,” Armond said, seeing clearly the resolve in Richard’s face, and he went back to his sister Sadie and told her what Richard had said.

“I’ll talk to Barbara,” Sadie said, and she sat Barbara down and told her all she had learned, none of which was particularly troubling to Barbara. Whatever Richard had done, she said, was in the past. “He’s nice and kind and real good to me,” Barbara said, trying to defend the indefensible.

“He’s married with children,” Sadie said. “He’s a gangster.”

“He’s getting divorced,” Barbara said. “He’s no gangster. When I met him he was working. Working hard. He got fired for talking to me—you believe that? For just talking to me.”

“He’s hurt a lot of people,” Sadie said.

“I’m sure they deserved it,” Barbara said, having no idea of how severely Richard hurt a lot of people: that indeed he was a full-blown serial killer.

“Barbara,” Sadie said, “I love you. I’m only telling you this because I care. I don’t think you know what you’re getting involved with here.”

“I know, and I love you too, and I appreciate your caring, your looking out for me. Listen, we’re only dating, okay? I mean, I’m not marrying him; we aren’t going to rush off and elope. Don’t worry. Please, don’t worry.”

“But I do. I don’t want to see you hurt. You can do better than this guy, I promise you.”

“We are only dating,” Barbara repeated.

“Okay…but you be careful. Don’t go falling in love with him; don’t go letting him make you pregnant.”

“Of course not,” Barbara said, and hugged her aunt Sadie long and hard. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Aunt Sadie said, having a very bad feeling deep inside her gut about this Richard Kuklinski from Jersey City with the shy, crooked smile and shifty eyes.

That Christmas Barbara decided to invite Richard to join her family for both the Christmas Eve fish dinner and the Christmas Day meal, which would be a customary five-course feast lasting all day and part of the night. For Barbara’s family, like most Italian American families across the country, Christmas was a special time of year—a wonderful opportunity to give and laugh and sing and eat and bring everyone together. Barbara, a talented artist, painted colorful Christmas scenes on the windows with watercolor paint, and there was a big tree in the living room.

Barbara saw this as a good opportunity for her family to get to know how kind and polite and sweet Richard really was. When Barbara told her mother she wanted to invite Richard for the holidays, Genevieve was not happy, but she reluctantly accepted it, as did the rest of the family. If that’s what Barbara wanted, so be it. Unless she had her way, she’d have a long, sour face, and would let everyone know she wasn’t happy.

When Barbara told Richard she’d like him to join her family over the holidays, he was caught off guard, but he was pleased too, and readily accepted the gracious invitation and looked forward to it. He knew Barbara was close to her people, and if he wanted her, he knew they had to accept him. Simple. But he was nervous. His family never had a Christmas tree or any special foods; for him Christmas had meant nothing—zero. He usually went to a diner to eat, and that was it. No big shakes. This would be a whole new experience.

18

This Is for You, Richard

December 24, 1961, Christmas Eve, Richard arrived at Barbara’s house in North Bergen.

This stone-cold, remorseless killer was nervous, indeed had butterflies in his stomach; he’d never been to such a function, had no idea what to expect, what to do, how to act, what was expected of him. Barbara’s whole family was there, fifteen people in all. Grandma Carmella had been cooking nonstop for days. Huge, colorful platters of food were ready to be served. Barbara introduced Richard, awkward and painfully shy, to cousins, aunts, and uncles he’d not met yet. It was now that Richard met Barbara’s cousin Carl. “He’s my favorite cousin,” she told Richard. Of course her aunt Sadie was there, and she was warm enough to Richard, but she didn’t like him, didn’t like anything about him—what he did, where he came from, where he was going. Still, she resolved to be nice, to make him feel welcomed no matter what. After all, it was Christmas Eve, the time of love and family unity, and if her Barbara wanted him there, so be it. She’d make the best of it, hoping it was only a passing phase.

Drinks were soon poured. Toasts were made. The smell of delicious southern Italian foods permeated the air, mixing with the strong smell of pine coming from the Christmas tree. Richard knew better than to drink whiskey, and he only had a glass of white wine to be social.

When they all sat to eat at the long, glorious table Barbara and Nana and Aunt Sadie had carefully set, Richard sat next to Barbara. They started with colorful platters filled with antipasto, red peppers in oil, salamis, prosciutto, all kinds of cheese, stuffed peppers, olives, artichoke hearts. They then had the customary spaghetti and clams, followed by fried fillet of sole, stuffed shrimp and shrimp scampi, stuffed calamari, and grilled lobster tails. This was followed by fruits and nuts and more cheese, followed by Neapolitan stuffed artichokes, to help with digestion. Then, of course, the desserts.

Richard had never even seen a home-cooked Italian meal like this, let alone eaten one, and he was amazed at how good everything was. Warmed and flushed by the beautiful meal, he was even more touched by how the family openly showed affection, readily touched and kissed and hugged, the constant banter and laughter. He was seeing something he had never known existed: a tight-knit family enjoying one another’s company, openly showing tender feelings. By the time espresso was served with sweets Carmella had made—also sambuca and grappa—it was near twelve, the time when gifts were given. Richard hadn’t brought any gifts. He didn’t know you were supposed to, and when Aunt Sadie handed him a carefully wrapped gift and said, “This is for you, Richard, merry Christmas,” he was touched. He was speechless. And there were still more gifts for him, from Barbara, from Nana Carmella, even from Barbara’s mother. Richard was so moved that tears actually filled his eyes, and like this he opened his gifts—a sweater, some cologne, a nice suede jacket from Barbara. All choked up, Richard tried on the jacket. It fit perfectly. It was the nicest gift anyone had ever given him.

“Is it always like this?” he asked Barbara.

“What do you mean?” she asked, smiling.

“Everyone so nice and warm and giving,” he said.

“Of course—it’s Christmastime,” she said. “It’s always like this, Richard.”

The following day, Richard returned to Nana Carmella’s house carrying gifts. He had shopped all morning and made sure he’d gotten something for everyone that would be there. He gleefully handed out the gifts, receiving thank-yous, kisses and hugs. He never knew people could be so warm and effusive, readily expressing their feelings.

Soon they all sat down to eat again, and this meal was even larger than the meal the night before. There was antipasto, lasagna, and eggplant parmesan, followed by ham and lamb, with three different kinds of potatoes, stuffed mushrooms, rice balls, huge bowls of salad, and fruit, sweets, and fennochio (fennel). They ate for hours, taking a break after each course; much wine was poured, toasts were made, there was laughter, and old and new jokes were shared, some a little bawdy. They also sang Christmas carols.

That Christmas Barbara’s family grew to accept Richard: his shyness, how much he obviously enjoyed being there, the considerate gifts he’d brought, won them over. Though he was not Italian, they made him feel welcomed and loved, as if he were truly one of them. Part of the family. He wanted to reach out and hug them all, wrap his powerful arms around them and hold them tight. With a warm glow, he sat there eating and smiling, and maybe—truly for the first time in his entire life—Richard was glad to be alive. Richard felt…loved. He was so moved, so touched, that he went out on the back screened-in patio and cried in his cupped hands. Barbara found him there like that and she took him in her arms and held him tight, thinking he was just a big baby.

If she’d only known.

After the holidays passed and the New Year began, Richard and Barbara saw each other more and more. But Barbara was beginning to feel stifled, boxed in. Richard was always there. No matter which way she turned he was there, waiting for her, opening doors for her, demanding her undivided attention. He had cut her off from seeing her friends, certainly from dating anyone else, and she felt that she was trapped. She had grown very fond of Richard, but she wanted a little room to breathe, to go for sodas, to go shopping and have long talks with her girlfriends. She resolved to tell him. She had the right. She was only nineteen years old and couldn’t do anything on her own anymore. She thought of the best way to do this, turned it over in her mind. She did not ask any of her friends or anyone in her family for advice because she didn’t want to let anyone know how hemmed in she felt.

Meanwhile, Richard decided to take her to his favorite haunt in Hoboken, Sylvia’s Ringside Inn. Richard had told Sylvia all about Barbara, the wonderful time he’d had over the holidays, the feast they’d served. Barbara didn’t particularly want to go to the Ringside Inn. That was a part of Richard’s life she wanted nothing to do with. But being polite, she agreed to go, and Richard proudly introduced Barbara to the crowd there, and to Sylvia. Sylvia was outright rude, even hostile. She felt Barbara had been keeping Richard away from the place. Richard’s pool playing had been a draw. She’d been making money because of him. Sylvia resented Barbara and had no reservations about letting her know. The feeling was mutual—Barbara thought she was the rudest, ugliest person she’d ever met and told Richard so. “I don’t like being here,” she said. “It’s dirty, it smells. I don’t like the people; I don’t like this Sylvia character! My God, what a face; could stop a clock, could stop Big Ben. I want to leave, Richard.”

For the life of him Richard couldn’t understand Barbara’s animus or why Sylvia was so unfriendly, and the couple left.

“I don’t ever want to go back there,” Barbara said, “and truth is, I don’t see why you would either. It’s below you, Richard.”

“Okay, guess it was a bad idea to bring you,” Richard said. They never went back as a couple, and soon Richard stopped going altogether.

Several days later Barbara finally mustered the courage to tell Richard how she felt. He had come to pick her up at work. When she got in the car she still had no idea how dangerous Richard was, that he carried a gun and a knife with him all the time. However, she would soon learn.

“Richard, I need to talk with you,” she began.

“Sure,” he said, sensing he was about to hear something he wouldn’t like.

“Look, Richard, I’m very fond of you. You know that. It’s…well, I feel trapped. Everywhere I turn, you’re there. I want some space; I want to hang out with my friends. I’d like to go out on a Saturday night with my girlfriends like I used to do.” She went on to describe, her voice kind and considerate, warm and sincere, how she needed space. She was very young and didn’t, she said, want such a “serious commitment.”

Maybe, she said, she’d even like to…you know, date other guys.

Barbara’s words cut Richard like broken glass. They hurt. They made him bleed. As she talked he actually began to pale, and his lips twisted off to the left. Barbara did not see him reach down and pull out the razor-sharp hunting knife he always kept strapped to his calf, and as she talked he reached out his arm and held it behind her. He looked at her and smiled as she prattled on about freedom and space and her being so young. He raised his hand and jabbed her in the back, just behind her left shoulder, with the knife.

“Ow,” she said. “What was that?” Then she saw the glistening knife in his hand. “My God, you stabbed me—why?” Seeing the blood, her eyes filled with shock and dismay.

“‘Why?’ As a warning,” he said, in a sickeningly calm voice. “You’re mine…understand? You aren’t seeing anyone else, understand? You do what I tell you!”

“Really, that’s—”

“Listen, Barbara, if I can’t have you no one can. Got it?”

“That’s what you think. Who the hell do you think you are? How could you stab me like that? What kind of person are you? Where’d this knife come from?” She was aghast. “I’m going to tell my family. I’m going—”

“Really,” he said, his voice calm and icy cold—a voice she’d never heard before, detached, inhuman. “How about this: how about I’ll kill your whole family, your mother and your cousins and Uncle Armond. How about that?” he asked.

Now really angry, she began to yell at him, to berate him. He grabbed her by the neck and throttled her until she was unconscious. When she came to he was driving along as if nothing had happened, calm, cool, collected…as if they were on the way to a movie.

“Take me home,” she said, making it a point not to be too aggressive. Aggression obviously didn’t work. Barbara now viewed him as a very dangerous man, a nut, a psycho, didn’t trust him, was deathly afraid of him. She had to get away from him. But how? When she arrived home, he warned her again that he’d kill “anyone who meant anything to you…understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” she said, her mind reeling with the dire consequences of his words. Dizzy, nauseated, she got out of his car and slowly walked inside. He pulled away.

That day, Barbara’s life took an irreversible turn for the worse. Indeed, her life was about to become a long series of nightmares, of terror, and there was nothing anyone could do for her.

Not her family.

Not the police.

Not Jesus Christ himself.

Richard was outraged. How could Barbara want to stop seeing him, feel hemmed in by him? He’d been nothing but kind and gentle to her. Where had he gone wrong? What could he do to win her back? His mind turned like an out-of-control merry-go-round. He felt dizzy; his head throbbed. He resolved he would murder her and bury her in South Jersey if she left him. If she was dead, she couldn’t hurt him.

Murder, as always, was the answer.

The following day, when Barbara left work, Richard was waiting outside. He had flowers for her, a cute little teddy bear, an abundance of sweet words. He told her how sorry he was—that he loved her too much, that was the problem.

“Barbara,” he said, “I never felt like this for anyone. The thought of losing you…well it just makes me, you know, crazy. I’m sorry.”

“And the threats?”

“I just can’t lose you. I…I couldn’t handle it,” he said. “I’d go over the deep end. Please let’s make this work; let’s try. I love you. I want to marry you.”

“Richard, you’re already married, with children!”

“I’m getting a divorce. I promise. I swear. My word.”

And like this Richard convinced Barbara, gullible and young, that they would have a wonderful future together. Truth is, Barbara did want children, did want to have a family and a loving dedicated husband, and she knew that no one could ever be more dedicated than Richard.

Had Barbara been older, more mature, had she seen more of the world, known herself better, she would have found a way to end this then and there. But she truly believed Richard would hurt the people she cared for the most, and she succumbed to Richard’s sincere, seemingly heartfelt, endless entreaties.

That night Richard had dinner at Nana Carmella’s house. He had grown to love Nana Carmella’s cooking and really enjoyed eating there. He was, in a sense, making Barbara’s family his own family; he was co-opting them for himself, filling a deep void he had inside. Barbara’s mother had learned to accept Richard, and he felt at home and at peace when he was there.

Over the coming weeks and months, as spring grew near, Barbara was caught up in a kind of sticky spiderweb she could not get out of. The more she twisted and turned, the more entangled she became. Most of the time Richard was nice enough, fawningly polite. He could be very funny, and good company. But he had no reservations about striking her, choking her, threatening to kill her—and her family. Barbara’s mind-set became: It’s better he hurts me than anyone in my family.

At one point she did go talk to the police, she says, and learned that if he was arrested for assaulting her he’d soon be out of jail, and she believed he’d come looking to kill her. She knew now he also carried guns as well as a knife.

Barbara repeatedly thought about telling her uncle Armond and Nana Carmella’s brother, the chief of police in North Bergen, but Barbara was absolutely convinced that if she told them about Richard’s abuse, they’d surely confront him, and just as surely Richard would end up killing them and burying them somewhere. He flat-out told her he would. She believed him. She stayed quiet and endured the abuse, which only became worse and worse still.

Barbara came to realize that Richard could be outright sadistic in the extreme, as cold as ice, as she puts it. Richard had, in fact, all the worst qualities of both his parents magnified many times over. He had Stanley’s capacity for prolonged, sudden cruelty, and Anna’s indifference to people’s feelings. Richard had taken those elements to new, staggering heights; he was far more dangerous and cruel than Stanley Kuklinski had ever been.

When, conversely, Richard was kind he was the nicest, most easygoing, giving guy in the world: attentive, polite, considerate, and very romantic. On a regular basis he brought Barbara long-stemmed red roses and loving cards with romantic sayings. Barbara felt like she was on a roller coaster. A roller coaster she desperately wanted to get off. But she did not know how.

The couple was now having intercourse on a regular basis. Richard had rented an apartment, and they went there for romantic interludes. Richard refused to wear a condom, Barbara didn’t have access to any kind of birth control, and the inevitable happened: Barbara became pregnant. It seemed that’s what Richard was planning all along—to make her pregnant, to force her deeper into a relationship with him.

Barbara became despondent. She was normally an upbeat, optimistic woman; she was now depressed, cornered…trapped, she explained.

Richard talked about getting married. He said he was glad she was pregnant, that he’d wanted to have children with her all along, from their first date. Barbara decided she didn’t want to marry Richard, did not want to have his child, and finally—after much soul-searching—she went to her mother and told her the truth….

“I knew it!” Genevieve said, her face stern and cold and angry. “I told you. I warned you. That’s all he wanted, and you gave it to him—a married man with kids. How could you? How could you allow this to happen? You know better. I taught you better—”

Disgusted, Barbara turned away from her mother.

Nana Carmella was far more understanding. She didn’t know anything about Richard’s past. His shy, polite ways had grown on her. True, he wasn’t Italian, but she had, with some difficulty, learned to accept that, to accept him. Nana Carmella hugged Barbara and assured her everything would be okay.

But Barbara knew better. She knew she was in quicksand and sinking rapidly. She was a good Catholic and did not believe in abortion. Even if she had, that would have been, back then, a hard thing to come by. She’d have the baby, she resolved. But she wanted nothing more to do with Richard. That was, she was sure, a one-way ticket to a place she didn’t want to go. She’d make the best of this bad situation she’d gotten herself into. How right Sol Goldfarb had been about Richard. If only she had listened to him, she mused over and over again.

Barbara went to the bank, withdrew all her savings, and took off—left town without telling Richard anything. She went to the only person in the world who would understand, who would protect her, who loved her unconditionally and didn’t judge her no matter what—her father, Albert Pedrici. Mr. Pedrici lived in Miami Beach, and when Barbara boarded the plane, and it taxied and took off, she felt as if she were leaving a bad dream, a nightmare, behind. Little did she know that she was actually speeding toward the nightmare her life would become.

19

Betrayal

Al Pedrici was a tall, handsome Venetian who loved life and made the most of it. He was quick to laugh, quick to make friends, a naturally gregarious man—the exact opposite of Barbara’s mother. Albert’s father had come to America through Ellis Island in 1906, and bought a house in the Italian enclave of Hoboken, on the same block where the Sinatras lived. The Pedricis opened a small food shop in Hoboken, and the family did well, never wanted for anything. Albert met Barbara’s mother when he was twenty-two, she nineteen. It was a kind of, sort of love at first sight, that resulted in an ill-conceived marriage that did not work out. Albert and Genevieve were divorced when Barbara was two years old.

During the years Barbara was growing up, she’d seen her father as much as circumstances allowed. Albert gave Barbara whatever she wanted. All she had to do was point and it was hers. He spoiled her. Barbara was much closer to her father than to her mother, even though they lived apart. When he moved to Miami, they spoke on the phone often, wrote detailed letters to each other. Albert very much enjoyed living in Miami, the fair weather, the glorious sunshine, being near the sea, the city’s bustling nightlife. He and his second wife, Natalie, socialized a lot, went to parties and clubs all over Miami. Albert liked to dance, and just about every weekend the couple went out “high stepping,” as Albert was fond of saying.

When Richard learned that Barbara had fled New Jersey, he was distraught. He kept asking Genevieve and Nana Carmella where Barbara had gone. They wouldn’t tell. Richard became obsessed. He kept coming back to the house. He wouldn’t leave them alone. He did not get aggressive, rude, or threatening, but Genevieve sensed he could very well become violent. Extremely violent. She had heard stories about his violence from Sadie and Armond. Still, in no uncertain terms, Genevieve told Richard to forget Barbara, to get on with his life, to find a nice Polish girl his own age.

“You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head in dismay. “I love Barbara, I love her with all my heart. I’ve never—never—cared for anyone like I care for Barbara—”

“Richard,” Genevieve interrupted, “you’re a married man.”

“I’m getting divorced. That woman, that marriage, never meant anything to me.”

“You’ve been saying that for months now and you still aren’t divorced. What’s that about?”

“I’m…I’ve had a run of bad luck. I need money for the lawyer. I already spoke to him, a lawyer over in Hoboken, and he won’t do it until I pay him. Linda, my ex, she doesn’t mean anything to me. I met her when I was a kid. I never loved her. The children, they just happened. I wasn’t planning that—you know, to settle down, anything like that. Barbara is pregnant with my child. I want to marry her. I wanted to marry Barbara and have a family with her from the first time we went out—I swear. Barbara is all class. I never met anyone like her.”

There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Genevieve said, “If I give you the money for the Hoboken lawyer, you’ll get a divorce?”

“Right away, like tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“On my life!”

Genevieve looked at him long and hard; he was a very handsome man. She was, in fact, beguiled by Richard. When he wanted to, he could be extremely charming…indeed disarming.

“How much?” she asked.

“A thousand,” he said.

“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you,” she said.

“No…really?”

“Yes. Really. I wouldn’t kid about something like this.”

Richard picked up Genevieve like a doll and hugged her so hard he nearly broke her ribs. “Then you’ll tell me where she is?” he asked, all hopeful.

“Yes, only after you’ve gotten a divorce—and you prove it.”

“I will, I promise I will,” he said.

He came back the next day, got the thousand dollars from Genevieve—every dollar hard-earned—hurried to Hoboken, paid the lawyer, the papers were drawn up, and Richard had Linda sign them. He gave her no option. He then signed them, and with the lawyer’s help, Richard and Linda were soon legally divorced. Richard had never loved Linda, and he’d hated her since he caught her in the hotel. He was glad to be rid of her.

Proof in hand, Richard went back to see Genevieve, and she now actually told him where Barbara was—a thing Barbara would hold against her mother for the rest of her life.

That May was unbearably hot and humid in Miami. When the sun went down mosquitoes filled the air. You couldn’t go outside, there were so many mosquitoes. Barbara didn’t like Miami. She wasn’t used to all the heat; the pregnancy was making her particularly uncomfortable. She was afraid Richard would hurt her family. He’d said a dozen times that he would, and she was haunted to distraction—sleepless—that at any moment the phone would ring and she’d hear the terrible, unspeakable news—Richard killed your family: Nana, your mother, your aunt Sadie….

What, Barbara wondered, had she done to deserve such a fate? She’d been a good, God-fearing person all her life. Since she’d known the difference between right and wrong, she’d always done right. And now this. This living, breathing, snake-eyed nightmare. She began to think she had to have committed some heinous, terrible crime in another life to be condemned to such an unfair state of affairs. God…there was no God. What kind of God would condemn her to such a fate?

She began to wonder if it was all because she’d had sex with Richard—wanton, lustful sex whenever he pleased. Surely that was it. That’s what had brought this black curse, this psychotic Polack from Jersey City, down upon her. He was, she came to think, punishment for her carnal passions.

Barbara very much enjoyed the company of her father. He was supportive and loving and didn’t criticize her at all, had nothing negative to say. He kept telling her everything would work out well, that she had her whole life before her, that she could stay with him and his wife as long as she wished. No pressure. Just love. Unconditional love, given without expecting anything in return.

Aunt Sadie called her every day, and she too was supportive and optimistic, and they talked about the joy of having a child. Aunt Sadie said she’d be more than happy to babysit for the baby—she was sure it was going to be a girl—when Barbara was ready to go back to work. With each passing day Barbara became stronger and more resigned to her fate. She stopped beating up on herself; she began going for long walks along the glorious Atlantic Ocean, and she enjoyed swimming in the early morning as the Florida sun slowly climbed out of the east. She got dark with the sun and looked quite beautiful with a radiant tan, a baby rapidly growing in her ever-expanding stomach.

A storm from the south came tearing into Miami. The sky abruptly darkened, became the deep gray color of gunpowder. Strong winds bent palm trees, made them seem as if they were dancing to Latin music. Lightning bolts tore the darkening sky apart at will. Thunder trembled the air. Since she’d been a little girl, Barbara had never liked storms. They seemed to be harbingers of bad things to come.

Barbara was sitting in the screened-in porch of her father’s house, watching the storm, the lightning bolts, how the wind abused the palm trees, when she saw out of the corner of her eye a taxi come to a slow stop in front of the house; a lone man, a large man, got out of the cab. He carried one piece of luggage. He began to walk up the path to the house. Barbara suddenly realized, as if she’d been struck by a thunderbolt, that it was Richard. She wanted to get up and run, but where could she go? Where could she run? He walked up to the screen door and knocked. Barbara went to the door, not pleased, actually scowling.

“I found you,” he said.

“Yes, I see that.”

“Why’d you run away?”

“Why do you think I ran away?”

“You look so beautiful. You’ve changed. Guess it’s true.”

“What’s that?”

“That women become more beautiful when they’re pregnant.”

“So you say?”

“Can I come in?”

“I’d rather you didn’t if you want to know the truth.”

They stared at each other through the screen. It began to rain. He just stood there in the rain getting wet.

“I got divorced,” he said, taking out the divorce papers so she could see. “See, they’re signed by a judge.” The papers were getting wet.

“I’m shocked…. I didn’t think you would.”

“I said I would and I did. I love you, Barbara. I love you so much it hurts,” he told her. And thus Richard insinuated his way back into Barbara’s life, a storm-filled purple sky and lightning bolts behind him, as if nature were trying to send Barbara a message.

When Barbara found out that her mother had paid for Richard’s divorce and told him where Barbara was, she called her mother and berated her nonstop for fifteen minutes. Genevieve’s answer was, “I don’t want you to have a child without a husband. How would that look? It’s not right. It’s not…natural.”

“I don’t care how it’ll look! You had no right telling him I’m here. No right—no right!” Barbara hung up on her mother.

Young and inexperienced and particularly vulnerable now with this sudden unwanted pregnancy, Barbara was soon convinced that Richard would change, that his love for her would make everything good and right, and they would be happy.

Al Pedrici readily accepted Richard. He could see that Richard was nuts about his daughter and resolved not to do anything to get in their way. He figured things would work themselves out, that Barbara—whose pregnancy was more evident every day—was certainly better off with a husband than without. Al had no idea about Richard’s violence toward Barbara, his homicidal threats, how calm and cold he was when he made them, or that he was always armed. Even now, she was sure, he had a gun with him.

Barbara and Richard went for long walks and talked. Barbara, aware now that Richard had drinking and gambling problems, made him swear off those vices, which he readily did. Al managed to get Richard a job driving a delivery truck, and he dutifully went to work every day, not complaining, toeing the line, intent upon proving that he would be a good provider. A good husband. A better man. He resolved also to stay away from crime. Killing people. The Mafia. Days quickly melted into weeks then into months. Florida’s summer arrived with even more thick, stuffy humidity, as well as more giant mosquitoes. As Barbara’s stomach grew, the heat and humidity bothered her more and more. Richard kept insisting that they get married, Barbara finally agreed, and as the summer grew to a close, Barbara and Richard were married by a justice of the peace at Miami’s city hall. Al and his wife attended. That night they went out for a nice dinner in a fish restaurant. Toasts were made. There was no honeymoon, no money for that, and suddenly Barbara Pedrici became Barbara Kuklinski.

That was, she recently confided, the worst day of my life. Now that I think of it I should have thrown myself in the ocean and drowned rather than marry Richard. But I did, and the die was cast.

When, one evening after dinner, Richard saw his new wife smoking a cigarette, he became disproportionately angry: he ripped the cigarette from her hand and stomped on it.

“I’ll smoke if I want to,” Barbara said, annoyed.

Richard’s answer was to step on her right foot with all his weight—and turn it, fracturing her large toe.

“Are you crazy!” she asked, grimacing with pain. “What’s wrong with you?”

“You aren’t smoking,” he said. “You will do what I say!” And that night Richard would not allow Barbara to even come to bed. He made her sit on a gray metal stool on the screened-in patio the whole night.

“You move, I’ll kill your father in front of you,” he said, dead serious, and left Barbara there like that.

Convinced that Richard would truly kill her dad, Barbara sat on that hard metal stool the whole friggin’ night, as she put it. The temperature dropped suddenly, as it always did, and she was so cold she began shivering. Certainly Barbara should have hurried to the police, told them what Richard had done, what he was making her do; but she was so frightened for her father that she sat there shivering and freezing all night long, silently cursing heaven and hell, and her mother for telling Richard where she was.

Barbara lost the baby the next day. She was sure what Richard had made her do was the reason. Whatever affection Barbara once had for Richard was inexorably being replaced by another emotion entirely—and that emotion was hate.

20

Love and Marriage and a Baby Carriage

October 15, 1962, Barbara and Richard Kuklinski returned to New Jersey. It was a bitterly cold night. Uncle Armond met them at the airport, all smiles, hugs, and kisses. Barbara was overjoyed to see her uncle and be back home. When Barbara saw Nana Carmella they both cried, they were so happy, and hugged each other for the longest time. Now that Barbara and Richard were married, the family readily accepted him, for better or for worse. Richard’s dream of making Barbara’s family his family came true. That’s what he’d wanted, and that’s what he’d gotten. Seeing that the newlyweds had little money and nowhere to live, Genevieve graciously invited them to stay with her and Nana until they “got on their feet.” Richard was quite serious about his marriage with Barbara working. He swore off drinking hard liquor and gambling, and he stuck to his word…for the most part. Barbara still had no true idea about Richard’s involvement in crime, in murder, and Richard knew that if he was serious about the marriage and having a family with Barbara, he had to give up all that. He had to go straight. Become a working stiff, a civilian, he says.

Because he had no education and no skills as such, Richard’s opportunities for employment were inherently limited. Barbara’s uncle Tony, however, managed to get him a job at the 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab off Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Richard didn’t like having to go to the city every day, but he dutifully took the bus, carrying his lunch, prepared by Barbara, in a brown paper bag. The job consisted of lugging and shelving boxes and large reels of film, getting things for people, cleaning up discarded pieces of film. He was beginning at the bottom of the totem pole. The 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab made prints from masters to be distributed to movie theaters across the country. Richard, being a quick study, always looking for angles, wanting to move up within the company, began to watch carefully how the printers made copies on the machines. There was a carrot redheaded printer named Tommy Thomas, who patiently showed Richard how to make prints, step by step. After a few months Richard did, in fact, begin working as a printer. He received a raise and was making ninety dollars a week. He had grown to like the job; and it didn’t take long for Richard to find a way to make some extra cash; by bootlegging masters and selling them on the black market. The lab printed all of the Disney Company’s masters on the East Coast, and Richard began running pirated prints of Cinderella, Bambi, and Pinocchio, for which there was a ready market. It was now already the spring and Richard made pirating Disney cartoons a business.

Richard and Barbara’s mother didn’t get along. She didn’t like how he treated Barbara. Richard did, however, like Carmella—it was hard not to; she was gracious and kind and exceedingly giving.

Time seemed to fly by. Soon the holidays were upon them, and Richard very much enjoyed being at the joyously decorated Christmas dinner table with Barbara’s family, now as Barbara’s husband. Proud and content, he ate and drank and laughed and even sang along with the family. He was one of them.

Romantically, Richard couldn’t get enough of Barbara. The couple did not subscribe to any kind of birth control, and it didn’t take long for Barbara to become pregnant again. But she lost this child too, a miscarriage through natural causes. Doctors told her she had weak muscles along the vaginal canal and her muscles weren’t giving the proper support to the fetus, a condition none of the other females in her family had. But both Barbara and Richard wanted children, a family of their own, and quickly set out to make that happen.

Richard had no reservations about hitting Barbara in front of Nana or Genevieve. He viewed a man striking his wife, physically dominating her at will, as the normal order of things. That’s all he’d ever known growing up; and he slapped and pushed Barbara right in front of her mother.

“Richard, don’t do that!” Genevieve would admonish him, but he couldn’t care less. He once even threw a pillow at Genevieve and told her to mind her own business.

The couple finally rented a small apartment in West New York. What little money the couple had saved up was quickly exhausted. Richard hated being broke, wanting for things—furniture, clothes, a new car, a larger TV, a stereo player. It reminded him of the suffocating poverty and sacrifice of his youth. He became depressed, mean, short-tempered, and vented on Barbara, who had grown to view his abuse as a twisted though intrinsic part of her marriage, and she stoically learned to accept it. But Barbara grew further and further away from Richard. At times she felt she was a prisoner, not his wife, and surprisingly she often stood up to him, answered him back, disagreed with him, lashed him with her sharp, acerbic wit, which only fueled his anger. Barbara had always been an outspoken, independent person with an edge to her personality, and her overgrown husband wasn’t about to take that away from her. He broke her nose for smoking; he fractured ribs when she didn’t spread peanut butter on his sandwich the way he liked; he gave her black eyes; yet, she stood up to him, had shocking courage given Richard’s size and near-superhuman strength. Barbara was constantly amazed by his strength, how he could carry a refrigerator, a stove, a porcelain sink up to the second landing of their apartment all by himself, easily.

Barbara’s third pregnancy occurred, and under doctor’s orders, she took it easy, did exercises to strengthen her weak muscles. Richard was attentive, would not let her carry anything heavy. But he still struck her, abused her, if she angered him or gave him lip.

“Big man, tough guy, you’re nothing but a bully,” she’d say.

Often when Richard came home from work he talked about the film lab and his gay colleague Tommy Thomas. Though Barbara had never met him, she knew what he looked like because Richard had described him; he had a freckled hatchet face and carrot red hair.

One evening, when the couple was in bed watching The Milton Berle Show on TV, a funny-looking man with bright red hair appeared. Barbara offhandedly commented how odd he looked, that she imagined that’s how Tommy looked. Without warning Richard threw Barbara a beating, broke her nose, beat her so violently that she began bleeding from her vagina. He called her mother. Genevieve hurried over, took one look at her daughter, and called an ambulance. Barbara was now five months pregnant. The baby was coming out prematurely; its leg was actually sticking out of Barbara when the emergency doctors examined her. They helped the baby out; it was a boy. It was dead.

Barbara was distraught. She hated Richard. She so wanted to have a child, a boy; she was inconsolable. She thought about telling the authorities what had happened, but was deathly afraid of what Richard would do to her family, to her mother, to her cousin Carl, whom Barbara was very fond of, Richard knew; so she kept her mouth shut about the beating and how she had really lost the child.

In the afternoon, Richard showed up at the hospital as if nothing had happened, carrying beautiful fresh red roses and a big box of expensive chocolates. He didn’t say anything about what had occurred other than that it was Barbara’s fault, to which she said, “Yeah, sure, I beat myself up, I’m responsible for losing the child. Bullshit!” He ignored her. She came home two days later. She was quiet and sullen and wondered about her life with Richard, how she could deal with this violent madman she had married. The thought of suicide played in her head. She wondered if he’d physically abuse children they might have.

When Richard wanted to have sex with Barbara, she flat-out refused for the longest time, but he was not about to take no for an answer, and Barbara became pregnant still again, the fourth time. Richard promised he wouldn’t hit her, but if he came home in a bad mood, and something she did didn’t please him, he’d slap her. As Barbara’s stomach began to grow again, she summoned up the courage to tell him, “Richard, listen to me carefully…real carefully—if God blesses us with a child, and you hurt that child, hit that child, I swear I’ll kill you. I’ll cut your throat while you’re sleeping. I’ll poison your food…. I’ll kill you. Hitting me, abusing me, is one thing. You ever so much as lift a finger to my child, you’re dead.”

Strangely enough, Richard readily accepted this; he didn’t even answer her.

Barbara and Richard moved again, to a cute little garden apartment in Cliffside Park. The fourth pregnancy was very difficult for Barbara. For the last several months she was bedridden. She saw a pediatrician every week. Between doctor visits and everything else, money was short. To help make ends meet and have a little nest egg for the baby’s arrival, Richard took a second job driving a delivery truck. He worked all day at the lab, took the bus home, had a quick dinner, went and drove the delivery truck most of the night; then he would sleep a few hours before he had to go back to the lab. He was always tired, in a bad mood, his body aching, and still he was coming up short. Having a child was an expensive proposition. The harder I worked, it seemed, the less we had. I felt like I was…I was drowning, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stay afloat, Richard explained.

Against his better judgment and the solemn promise he’d made to himself, Richard decided to become a player again; now, however, he would be much more careful and judicious, not take any undue chances, he vowed.

And he soon turned to his old friend—crime.

Richard contacted a couple of fellows he knew back in Jersey City, two hard-boiled Irishmen who were quiet and stand-up, discreet and tough, professional hijack artists. One was John Hamil, the other Sean O’Keefe. They had contacts with guys who worked in different trucking companies and sometimes got tips about good loads. They knew that Richard was reliable and tough, that he kept his mouth shut—and that he was deadly. The three of them, tipped off by a loader, staked out a trucking company in Union.

They saw how truckers just pulled into the yard, hooked up to a rig, and drove away, waving to the security guard as they went. This, they decided, would be an easy way to get their hands on valuable loads without so much as a how-do-you-do. Richard even went to a truck-driving school to learn the intricacies of handling an eighteen-wheeler. He was the only one who had the balls to just drive onto the lot and hook up to a rig as if he had every right, so outright bold no one even thought of questioning him.

When the newly formed gang learned that there was a load of valuable jeans, they stole a cab. Richard dressed up as a truck driver, even donned a truckers-union cap, and drove the cab onto the lot, hooked up to the jean rig, and pulled away, making a point to wave to the security guard, who smiled and waved back. It all went like clockwork. Now all they had to do was get the rig to a buyer in Teaneck and get paid, and the job was done. Richard was pleased with how well the heist had gone. But he was still nervous: now, for the first time in his life, he had something to lose—a wife he loved and a child he would love, unconditionally. The plan was for John and Sean to follow Richard to the Teaneck warehouse, but to keep up with Richard they went through a light and were pulled over by a New Jersey state trooper. Richard drove on, apprehensive and unsure of this huge rig on the open road. He calmed himself, reminded himself to drive slowly, to not do anything to get pulled over. The rig and cab were stolen and he had a gun on him, a .38 revolver with a two-inch barrel. If a cop did pull him over for some reason, he’d kill him and continue on. He would not, he vowed, go to prison, be taken away from the only person he’d ever cared for…and his unborn child. This child he would love and cherish, make sure it wanted for nothing.

As Richard thought about the future, hoping no cops came along, he inadvertently cut off a red Chevy. There were young men in it. They pulled up alongside and began cursing him, calling him names, then pulled ahead of him and slowed, forcing him to jam on the heavy air brakes. Richard made a fist at them. They gave him the finger, a thing that always enraged Richard. They kept it up. He figured they were drunk and hoped they would leave him alone. But they continued forcing him to slow up and slam on the brakes. This went on for miles. Richard was concerned now that a state trooper would see him driving erratically and pull him over, and he’d have real trouble. He decided to pull over himself and stop, let the two jerks go on their way, which is what he did. But the car also stopped and backed up. Oh shit, Richard thought. All I’m trying to do is avoid trouble, but trouble won’t leave me alone.

Shaking his head, Richard got out of the cab, hoping his huge size would calm the situation, but the two guys got out of their car, cursing Richard. One had a cut-down bat.

“Look, fellas,” Richard said. “I don’t want no trouble here. Go on your way. I’m just trying to do a job here.”

“Fuck you, fuckin’ asshole!” said the guy with the bat, who kept coming at Richard.

“Fuck me, no, fuck you,” Richard said, and he pulled out the .38 and shot them both down. He walked up to them and put a bullet in each of their heads, wanting to be sure they were dead, could tell no tales. With that he calmly got back into the cab and pulled away. Without further incident he made it to the warehouse, received his end of the money, and went home.

Always tight-lipped, he said nothing to Sean and John about what had happened.

With the proceeds of the job, twelve thousand dollars, Richard bought a nicer car, a large color TV, and some things they needed for the house, and put a little something on the side. Barbara didn’t ask him where he got the money; she knew better than to question him…about anything. If he had something to say, he’d tell her.

Richard was pleased. He had put it on the line, made a score; he was a man, a good provider. He’d prevail.

He didn’t even think about the two men he’d killed. They were, for him, like two insects who had smashed up against the windshield; they were roadkill, nothing more. But he did get rid of the gun he’d used to do the job.

These two murders were never linked to Richard—no witnesses, no clues, just two men shot to death on the road.

As Barbara’s stomach grew, Richard tried to control his temper. He didn’t want to hurt her, cause her to lose another child. He didn’t want to become, he recently explained, what his father had been. When I get mad, I just see red and go off like a bomb. I didn’t like that about myself. Still don’t. I didn’t want to hurt Barbara. I loved Barbara. Problem was, I guess I was obsessed with her. After I…after I struck her or became abusive, I was always mad at myself. Real mad. I’d look in the mirror and I really didn’t like what I saw.

Richard still had the gambling bug inside him.

Wanting to parlay the money he had made in the hijacking into more, he went to a high-stakes card game in Paterson. When Richard arrived he had six thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in his pocket. He had a golden winning streak for a few hours, but wound up losing the whole six grand. Mad at himself, he went back home. Barbara had no idea about the money he’d had and lost. In a foul, dark mood, he walked in the door. It was just getting light out, but Barbara knew better than to question her erratic husband. She made him some eggs. He said they were overcooked, threw them on the floor, and went to bed. Good riddance, thought Barbara.

Barbara’s aunt Sadie passed away. Her bad heart finally failed and she died peacefully in her sleep. Barbara was devastated. She’d been very close to Sadie. Richard had liked Sadie—he didn’t care for many people—and he attended the funeral with Barbara, dutifully sat there with the appropriate demeanor. When Barbara cried, he consoled her. He had never seen the way Italians openly express their grief, and he was taken aback by it. For Richard, death was just a natural process of nature—nothing to fall apart about. He seemed oddly removed and detached from the normal grief people experience after a loved one’s passing. It was a classic symptom of his psychotic personality: no empathy. Stanley Kuklinski had, very successfully, beaten that out of Richard. Richard had never seen Barbara so upset, not even when she had lost the baby the year before.

When, that evening, they had to go for the final eulogy by the parish priest, Father Casso, Barbara and Richard were late because he went somewhere and picked her up after the service began. She was upset. He couldn’t understand why.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked.

“That’s not the point. The point is to show the proper respect.”

He had no good answer, no point of reference, no real concept of this kind of respect.

Merrick Kuklinski was born in March 1964, a seemingly healthy baby girl. Barbara was overjoyed. She’d lost three children, and with Richard’s irrational explosions, who knew what could happen? Unlike the birth of the children he had with Linda, Richard viewed this child as a prized blessing, and he was very attentive to Barbara. He couldn’t have been more considerate about everything. Did she want something to drink, to eat? What could he get her? Barbara was beginning to think she had, in fact, married two distinctly different men, the good Richard and the bad Richard. When, she explained, he was the good Richard, he couldn’t have been nicer, more giving and considerate. When he was the bad Richard, he was the meanest bastard on the face of the earth….

When it was time for Merrick to come home, Richard proudly carried his little girl to the car, being ever so careful, a big smile about his high-cheekboned face. He’d wanted a little girl, and he had her. Strangely enough, he felt a male child would eventually have competed for Barbara’s affection, so he wanted only female children. At this point, he saw very little of the two boys he had with Linda. It was as though a different man had fathered them, not Richard. He felt no tie to those children as he did to Merrick.

When Merrick was brought home Barbara’s whole family came over to see her. Everyone was thrilled for Barbara, knowing that she’d lost three children in a row. Barbara’s Nana Carmella went to church to light candles, to thank God, sure he had intervened and blessed her granddaughter with a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Drinks were poured. Expansive toasts were made. Richard proudly gave out cigars, the beaming father. Life was good.

Soon, however, they realized that Merrick wasn’t as healthy as she seemed. She had a urinary block, which quickly caused kidney problems, high fevers, convulsions. She was in constant pain, and she had to make frequent trips to the doctor’s office to undergo numerous procedures and surgeries.

Meanwhile, Barbara became pregnant again. Her fifth pregnancy was a comparatively easy one, though during the last several months of it she was again bedridden. This was a difficult time for her. She was not easy to get along with, was sometimes demanding and short. She had to make frequent trips to the doctor. Bills piled up. Richard felt as if he were swimming upstream and could make no headway no matter how hard he tried. He hustled, took chances, but still had difficulty making ends meet. He felt trapped. Barbara gave birth to a second girl they named Christin.

As Merrick grew into an attractive child with large round eyes, she frequently had to stay in the hospital. Richard could not have been more attentive. He stayed by his first daughter’s side, stroked her hair, hurried to get her anything she needed. He even slept, as did Barbara, in her hospital room with her, on the floor with just a pillow and a thin blanket. Barbara was pleasantly surprised at what a caring, devoted father Richard was. For the first time she realized what a truly good man Richard could be, and she was glad he was her partner in this crisis.

Doctor and hospital bills mounted. The couple was soon deep in debt. Though Barbara’s mother and grandmother did what they could, Richard was forced to work more and more hours at the lab. Sometimes he’d do his shift, then stay the whole night printing pirated copies of popular films and cartoons. But no matter how hard he worked, how many overtime hours he put in, how many pirated films he printed and sold, there was never enough money. Barbara became pregnant yet again. The family moved to a larger apartment in Cliffside Park. Bills kept mounting. Richard recently put it like this: I felt like I was in a sinking hole, and the more I worked, the harder I tried, I was sinking deeper and deeper. This straight life wasn’t working for me!

Richard called John Hamil in Jersey City. “You guys got anything good coming up?” he asked.

“Fact is we do, Rich.”

This job involved a truckload of Casio watches, which were popular and easy to turn into cash. There was a guy in Teaneck who’d buy the whole load. Richard, John, and Sean went to see him. He had a warehouse just off Route 4. He was a big burly individual who talked out of the side of his mouth as though he had lockjaw. He confirmed that he’d take the whole load; a price was agreed upon. “Everyone wants one of those fuckin’ watches. I’ll take five truckloads if you guys can get your hands on ’em,” he assured them.

With that settled, Richard and his partners went about hijacking the load of Casio watches. They’d gotten a tip about the load, when and where it would be; they followed the truck and made the driver pull over and stop by showing phony police badges. Richard got in the cab and off they went, leaving the driver tied up on the side of the road. As always, Richard was wearing gloves. No matter what he did, if it was illegal, he wore gloves. They managed to get to the warehouse in Teaneck. The man who had agreed to purchase the load was all smiles. But he insisted his crew of three guys unload the truck to make sure there was a full load—one hundred thousand watches.

“Hey, my friend, they’re all there,” Richard said. “We didn’t even open the rig.”

“I’ve gotta check,” was his answer.

“Okay,” Richard said, “no problem, my friend,” wanting to get this over with, to get the money and go home to his family. He was, of course, armed. He had two pistols stuck into his pants under his jacket.

The three other guys used two high-lows to unload crates off the rig. Richard, Sean, and John watched them, not pleased. When they had the load on the ground they proceeded to open the crates and actually count the boxes of watches; there were exactly one hundred thousand of them. This took all of two hours.

Richard was becoming impatient. “See, I told you, my friend,” he said, knowing the more time he spent there, the greater the risk. Richard was becoming tense, and when that happened people often suddenly died.

“Come on in the office,” the buyer said. Richard had a bad feeling—something unsavory was in the air.

“Wanna drink?” the buyer offered, speaking out of the side of his mouth.

“No thanks, just the money,” Richard said.

“You know, I wanted to talk to you about that,” said the buyer, who looked more like a weasel by the minute.

“About what?” Richard asked, knowing the answer.

“The money.”

“What’s there to say, my friend? We agreed upon a price. You have the watches. Time for us to have the money. Simple.”

“Not so simple; I’m thinking I’d like to…renegotiate.”

“Come again?” Richard said, his high, wide brow creasing, his eyes growing cold, icelike, distant.

“Fifty large instead of seventy-five. I’m more comfortable with that,” said the weasel.

“My ass,” said Richard. “We agreed upon seventy-five. And now after you had your guys unload the watches you want to renegotiate? Funny, guy…. You know you’re a funny guy, my friend.” Richard looked at Sean and John, his eyes telling them to get ready because there was going to be trouble. Gunplay.

“You know Tommy Locanada from Hoboken. He’s my goombah. Let’s call him and he’ll tell you fifty is a good price.”

This really disturbed Richard. “You can call Jesus fuckin’ Christ himself if you want. We ain’t taking fifty. We agreed upon seventy-five. That’s what it is.”

“No it ain’t,” the buyer said, and with that Richard ran out of patience, whipped out the pistol, and shot the buyer in the head. He was dead before he even hit the ground, before he even knew his life was over. Richard hurried inside and quickly killed the three other guys—bullets to the head.

“We can’t have witnesses,” he said, and they put the watches back in the truck and split, making sure they left no clues. When the bodies were discovered the next day, the police summoned, the murders were put down as “mob related” and were never solved; never attached to Richard Kuklinski.

They managed to sell the load to Phil Solimene, a player Richard had known well for many years now. Solimene was a feral-looking man with thick dark hair slicked back. He was charming and affable. Solimene had his fingers in many pies, all of them illegal. He had a discount variety store in Paterson with no sign out front. He sold everything, and everything he sold was stolen: small appliances, perfumes, coffee and dried fruits, all kinds of canned goods—all hijacked, stolen stuff. Above the store he had a few girls who worked as prostitutes, and he sold porno movies too, even ones involving hard-core bestiality, any kind you wanted—women screwing and fellating dogs and Shetland ponies. There was a big market for that stuff, and Solimene was happy to fill it. He’d sell anything, including his own mother. He also ran a burglary gang, acting as a front for all kinds of thieves who stole from people’s homes all over New Jersey. He was, in a sense, the Fagan of New Jersey. On weekend nights Solimene hosted poker games in the back of the store. Richard liked him because he was a born outlaw, a slick operator, would do anything to turn a buck; they spoke the same language. Though Solimene was not a born killer, as Richard apparently was, he had no qualms about setting someone up to be robbed and killed. Solimene was one of the few friends Richard ever had—which proved to be a fatal mistake.

Now the idea of returning full-time to a life of crime loomed larger every day, like a glistening pot of gold at the end of a long rainbow. Richard wanted more out of life. A bigger, juicier slice of the proverbial American dream. He even thought about “hurting people” for money again—contract killing. It was something he did well, enjoyed, and found challenging; but now he had a family, something to lose.

Still, he went to work every day at the film lab, stole more and more from it. He now noticed, he said, that the three men who owned the place were all stealing from one another, absconding with stock (huge cans of films) and masters they could make copies from and sell on the side.

Once Richard sniffed what was in the wind, they suddenly had a fourth partner—him. He became bolder and bolder and began to sell expensive rolls of film, as well as the movies and cartoons he was pirating.

The lab, as a matter of course, also printed and developed XXX-rated movies. They were perfectly legal, and the lab processed most of the porno movies produced on the East Coast.

Richard began pirating these productions, would sometimes stay all night running four and five machines at a time. He partnered with another guy in the lab, a developer, and together they printed and developed all kinds of pornography.

For the first time in his life, Richard was seeing hard-core porn on a regular basis. He says little of it turned him on; he viewed the women in these films as whores and sluts and was not turned on by them at all. He did, however, get a rise out of the “girl-on-girl” productions. They also processed porn movies involving bestiality, one of which starred the not yet famous Linda Lovelace, giving a very happy German shepherd a lustful blow job. Richard sold some of these films to Phil Solimene, and they seemed to fly off the shelves. He never mentioned any of this to Barbara. She knew he was bootlegging cartoons and thought nothing of that, didn’t see it as any big deal.

Wanting to earn still more money, Richard spoke to a “connected guy” he met at the labs, Anthony Argrila, an associate of the Gambino crime family. Argrila said he and his partner, Paul Rothenberg, would buy all the films Richard could pirate, and like that, overnight, Richard was inadvertently selling bootleg porn to the Gambino crime family, who had a lock on porn shops all over the entire country.

John Hamil called Richard to tell him that a load of television sets was leaving a trucking company in nearby Pennsylvania. “We got the number of the truck and everything,” John explained.

“Count me in.”

“Rich, we have to move quickly.”

“I’m ready to go,” said Richard, and the following night Richard, Sean, and John headed to Pennsylvania. Rather than drive a hot rig to New Jersey with no buyer lined up, they decided to find a safe stash for the rig while they found a buyer. It was always better to sell the whole lot at once—wholesale, not retail, was the way to go. John knew a guy who had a farm and barn in Bucks County, and this man agreed to let them stash the hot rig in his barn for five hundred cash, no questions asked.

The truck was hijacked without difficulty. The driver had a gun put to him as he stopped for a light on a lonely stretch of road. He was tied to a light pole and left there for the authorities to find. Richard and his partners wore masks. The driver couldn’t give a description even if he wanted to, which he didn’t. Nothing of his had been stolen. Why put his head in a noose? Richard drove the load to the farm. They left it in the barn and went to find a buyer. This was always the best way to off a hot load—not in a hurry, shop it around. In fact, it took them eight days to find a guy who’d buy the entire load at a fair price, COD. They returned to the farm for the load. The barn was empty, the truck gone. The man who owned the farm—a tall, skinny dude who needed a shave and a bath, had long hair, was missing front teeth—said he had “no idea” where the truck was, looking the three hijackers square in the eyes, scratching his head as he did so.

“What?” Richard said.

“I have no idea what happened,” he said.

“My friend, there is no way anyone could have driven off with that load without you knowing. Do I look stupid here?”

“I have no fuckin’ idea what happened to it,” the owner repeated. “I swear!”

“We paid you good to stash the truck here. We want it. Where is it?”

“I don’t know—I swear on my mother’s life, I don’t know,” he said, adamant.

Richard took a long, deep breath. “Don’t make me hurt you—I will hurt you bad,” he said. “Where’s our truck?”

“Honest, guys, I don’t know! It was just suddenly gone.”

“My friend…this is a your last chance—where’s our truck?”

“I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know!”

Richard had John and Sean tie the guy to a tree near the barn. This was a very desolate place, no other houses around for miles. That was one of the reasons they had chosen it. Now the skinny guy was pleading and telling them how he knew nothing. Richard slapped him a few times.

“I swear, I don’t know!” he wailed, a little blood streaming from his lip.

A diabolical idea came to Richard; he calmly walked back to the car. He had two red flares, the kind used for road emergencies, in the trunk. He grabbed one and returned to the guy. “I’m telling you I’m going to hurt you bad. Where’s our load?” he asked, showing the man the flare.

“Buddy, I don’t know!” The skinny man’s bleeding lower lip was quivering now.

Richard had Sean and John take off the guy’s shoes and socks. It was a nice spring day. Birds chirped. The sky was clear and friendly. The sun shone. Butterflies danced in the air. Richard lit the flare. A sudden tongue of white-hot flame leaped from it. Richard brought it to the man’s left foot, just close enough to blister the flesh, not burn it. He was trying to give the guy a chance to talk, to spill the beans.

“Please, I’m telling you I don’t know—I swear!”

With that, Richard shoved the burning flare against his foot. The guy screamed and screamed, but denied any knowledge of the truck. The smell of burned flesh filled the air. Richard knew how intensely painful this was, and he was beginning to think that maybe the guy really didn’t know. To be sure, Richard kept it up. When the guy’s left foot looked like a charred piece of meat, Richard stopped. The bones of his toes were plainly visible; most of the flesh was gone; it didn’t quite look like a foot anymore.

“Where’s our truck?” demanded Richard.

“On my mother’s life I don’t know, on my mother’s life!” he screamed, crying, his face a mask of tormented sincerity.

“Tell us and we’ll take you to a hospital, you can get your foot taken care of, and we’ll be on our merry way. There’s no way anyone could have gotten that rig off this farm without you knowing. It sounds like a fucking jet taking off.”

“I wasn’t here twenty-four hours a day, I swear I don’t know!”

Richard smiled his deviant wolf grin, went to work on the other foot, soon burned that to a bloody, seared mess, all the while the guy screaming bloody fucking murder.

By now the first flare was all used up. Richard, John, and Sean walked off to confer.

“I think if he knew he’d’ve told,” said Sean.

“So do I,” John agreed.

“Yeah, I’m beginning to think so too,” Richard said, watching the guy crying like a baby. “Maybe he really don’t know,” Richard said.

But something, a sixth sense, told him the guy did know. Richard walked back to the car, retrieved the second flare, and went back to the distraught farm owner.

“Why,” Richard asked, “are you causing yourself to suffer like this? Tell us. We’ll drop you off at the hospital and it’ll all be over and done—”

“But I don’t knowww!” he pleaded.

Richard lit the second flare. “Okay, here goes, now I’m through playing fuckin’ games here. No more games. You tell us where our fucking load is or I’m burning your balls off.” He brought the white-hot flare to the guy’s crotch.

“Jesus Mary mother of God, I don’t know!” he wailed, his eyes popping out of his head, cartoonlike.

With that Richard calmly pushed the flame up against his crotch. The intense flame quickly burned through the fabric, and Richard held the searing heat to the man’s suddenly exposed testicles. He screamed and wailed, begging, promising, swearing he didn’t know. When the man’s balls were burned to a shriveled knob of flesh, Richard took away the flare. The guy was so distraught now he could hardly talk.

Richard, a bona fide sadistic psychopath, felt no sympathy for the guy. John and Sean were slightly appalled. It was hard not to be. The man was a sorry sight.

“Where’s our load, my friend?” Richard asked. “This is just the beginning.”

“I…I…I…don’t know,” he managed to cry.

“Okay, here goes your dick,” Richard said. “I’m going to burn your fucking cock off.” He brought the flare to him—

“Don’t! I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you!”

“Where is it?” Richard asked, really pissed now.

“On a farm down the road. My friend Sammy has it.”

“Sammy has it,” Richard said. “You fuckin’ moron. Why didn’t you tell us in the first place and avoid all this?”

“Because I thought…I thought I could fool you,” the farm owner gasped, as if he’d been running full out.

“Does it look like you fooled us?” Richard asked.

“No.”

“You could have avoided all this pain.”

“I didn’t want to do it. My girl needed an abortion. I was desperate for money.”

“You think money is worth your balls…. My friend, you don’t have any balls anymore.”

“I knooow,” he wailed.

“Idiot,” Richard said, “fuckin’ idiot!”

Richard sent John and Sean to the farm while he stayed with Burned Balls.

Sammy came walking out of the door of the farmhouse when they pulled up.

“You got our truck?” Sean said.

“What truck?” came the reply.

“Here we go again,” John said.

“Jon Atkins says you got our truck.”

“Jon said that? I don’t have any truck,” said Sammy. He was a short burly guy with a big round head. There were food crumbs in his beard. Flies buzzed around his huge head. If you looked up “white trash” in the dictionary, you might very well see a picture of this individual. Sean called Richard and told him what Sammy had said.

“Put some hurt on him,” Richard suggested. They whipped out their guns and began to pistol-whip Sammy. He immediately gave it all up, said the truck was behind a stand of trees out back, took them there, and lo and behold, they finally found their truck.

Back at Burned Balls’ farm, Richard decided both of these guys had to die. He figured it would be just a matter of time before the guy whose feet and balls he’d ruined would come looking for revenge, and without a moment’s hesitation he shot them both in the head, and off the hijackers went, back to New Jersey, where they sold the load at the agreed-upon price.

Money, however, seemed to burn a hole in Richard Kuklinski’s pocket. He took the family for a vacation to Florida, and he lost a lot of money at poker and baccarat tables. Nevertheless, with some of the money from the score and money Barbara’s mother and Nana Carmella gave them, Richard and Barbara managed to buy a new home, a two-family house in West New York. Richard had always wanted a house of his own, a castle he could be king of. He finally had it, and he would rule his castle with an iron hand.

21

Enter the Lone Ranger

It was late 1970, and a young man who would eventually play a pivotal role in Richard’s life was just finishing a four-year stint in the air force. His name was Patrick Kane.

Kane was a tall, handsome twenty-two-year-old with a wiry, muscular body and a thick head of dark hair that he combed straight back. He had large walnut-shaped brown eyes filled with hope and optimism set into a symmetrical oval-shaped face. Kane had been brought up in Demarest, New Jersey, a small town where everyone knew one another. The youngest of three boys, Pat was an upbeat though pensive young man, still not quite sure what exactly he wanted to do with his life. He was thinking of working on a 250-acre farm a friend of his owned in Pennsylvania. What was drawing him to the farm was the fact that he’d be outdoors all day. Since Pat Kane had been a kid he had always coveted the outdoors.

Pat Kane was a superb athlete and excelled at all the sports he played—wrestling, baseball, football, and basketball. He was very fast and strong and had excellent natural reflexes and coordination. But his favorite sport was fishing. He loved to fish on quiet, out-of-the-way lakes and streams, eating what he caught. He did not like hunting, because he felt it was inherently unfair to shoot an unsuspecting, unarmed animal who couldn’t fire back.

Kane had been stationed in Sacramento, California, and Iceland. He met his sweetheart, Terry McLeod, while stationed in California. They met on a blind date and it was love at first sight. Pat had just left her, and already missed her a lot.

The day Pat returned home, his brother Eddie, a New Jersey state trooper, came to pick him up at Newark Airport. Ed was wearing his immaculate gold-and-black trooper uniform and driving a shiny state police car. The two brothers hugged long and hard. The Kane family were all very close. While Eddie was driving him to their parents’ home, Eddie said: “Pat, the test’s next Tuesday.”

“What test?” asked Pat.

“To be a state trooper.”

“Eddie, I’m not sure what I want to do yet.”

“Pat, it’s a great job. The money and benefits are good, and you’ve got a chance to make a difference, to make this world we live in a better place. You’d be a good cop, Pat, I’m sure.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“The test is next Tuesday,” Eddie repeated. “Pat, we are the first and last defense against the bad guys. Without us, society would fall apart.”

Pat knew his brother had a point; he just didn’t know if he wanted to live the regimented life of a state trooper. The New Jersey State Police was, he knew, run like a military operation; you had to follow strict guidelines, rules, and regulations, something Pat had been doing now for the last four years. He wanted some space, room to breathe, not to jump from one uniform to another.

When Eddie and Pat reached the Kane home, Patrick senior and Helene Kane, Pat’s parents, came hurrying out of the front door, both of them hugging and kissing Pat and welcoming him home. He was their youngest, and they’d been worried about him; he had never lived away from home before he left for the air force. Now he was back safe and sound, and they were very pleased.

“Welcome home, son. Welcome home,” Patrick Kane said, holding his last born hard. Pat was so happy to be home and with his parents that tears came to his eyes.

“Come on inside, son. I’ve cooked you a wonderful meal,” Helen Kane said.

As it happened, it took a full year for Pat to decide what he wanted to do with his life. During that time he worked at menial jobs, did a lot of fishing, spoke to his sweetheart on the phone several times a week, went to visit her when he had the funds. Pat had little money; his parents weren’t wealthy people, and cash was tight.

Several factors finally convinced Pat to become a state trooper. First and foremost was his brother Ed. Just about every day Pat saw Ed in his slick state trooper uniform, his gun prominent on his right hip. Second, Pat came to realize just how vitally important law-enforcement officers really were. They were, just as Eddie had said, the first and last defense society had against the rapists, murderers, thieves, and desperadoes that so permeated society. Every day Pat heard about the unspeakable atrocities people committed on one another. You couldn’t read a newspaper or watch the news without learning about another heinous crime. The third reason Pat was drawn to becoming a state trooper was the challenge. The physical tests and requirements were extremely difficult. You had to be in tip-top shape to qualify. On the average only fifty out of five thousand applicants met the physical mandates. Last, he was drawn to the state police because he’d be working outdoors most of the time.

In the spring of 1971, Pat Kane applied to be a state trooper. He readily passed both the written and physical tests, and toward the end of that winter he became a Jersey state trooper. His parents and brothers came to the graduation ceremony. Pat Kane cut a dashing, handsome figure in his spanking new uniform, and he looked forward—in a big way, he recently explained—to making a difference; to trying to make this volatile world we live in a better place, keeping the wolves at bay.

One of the first things Pat did after graduating the trooper academy was to ask Terry to marry him. She said yes, and soon she moved up to Demarest, New Jersey, leaving her family and all her friends behind, and married Pat.

Pat Kane now felt he had everything a man could hope for: a good job that was meaningful, rewarding and challenging, and kept him outdoors, and a beautiful, devoted wife who thought the world of him.

Terry, Pat recently explained, gave up everything, her family, her home, her friends, surroundings she was familiar with, to be with me. To be my wife. As far as I was concerned I was the luckiest guy in the world.

Thus the die was cast, the stage set for one of the most important, shocking murder investigations in the annals of modern crime history anywhere in America, indeed, the world.

PART III

VERY BAD GOODFELLAS

22

Making Ends Meet

Richard Kuklinski was still putting in a lot of overtime hours, though at another film lab. Now he was pirating mostly porno movies; there was a large, ever expanding market for porn, and Richard was dutifully filling it.

All the overtime hours he was putting in, however, were causing guys in the lab to complain to the film printers’ union, and a union delegate came around the lab to talk with Richard. The delegate was a broad-shouldered Irishman with an attitude problem, the type of guy who doesn’t know how to wield authority—a bully. He stopped Richard as he was leaving work. The lab he was working at now was on West Fifty-fourth. They went into the DeWitt Clinton Park on Twelfth Avenue to talk. By now it had gotten dark.

“We got complaints,” the union guy began, “that you’re taking all the overtime.”

“Hey,” Richard said, “they ask me if I want the time, I say yes. I got a wife and child. What’s the problem?”

“Problem is you’re stealing from the other guys.”

“My ass. They’re saying they don’t want the work. I do. Take a walk.” Richard started on his way. The union guy grabbed Richard’s shoulder, and Richard spun and hit him a solid roundhouse right. As the union man went down he struck his head hard on the edge of a park bench. Unmoving, he stayed on the ground.

Richard checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Oh shit! he thought. I’m in hot water now.

He knew people had seen them together and figured someone at the union knew the guy had come out to talk with him, and now he was dead. Not good. Richard quickly hid the body in some bushes there, went to a nearby hardware store, bought some strong rope, and hustled back to the park. He spotted a wooden milk crate in front of a bodega and grabbed it. Richard made sure no one was watching, dragged the guy to a tree, tied the rope around his neck, threw the other end over a thick branch, hoisted the guy up, tied the loose end of the rope to a park bench, put the milk box under his dangling feet, and left him there like that, quite dead, swinging in a breeze off the nearby Hudson River, no one the wiser.

When the police found the body of the union official, they first believed it was indeed a suicide but soon suspicion fell upon the notorious Westies gang. This was their turf, the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. The leaders, Micky Featherstone and James Coonan, were picked up and questioned. They truthfully said they knew nothing. Richard was never even suspected, let alone questioned. He had amazing luck when it came to killing people.

For the most part Richard now stayed clear of his mother and his sister, Roberta. He had grown to genuinely hate his mother, thought of her as “cancer,” and he despised Roberta, thought of her as a whore; however, after several years had passed he did have some contact with his brother Joseph. What had happened in the bathroom stall was forgotten. Richard felt he could have done more to help Joseph: give him advice, direction, a brotherly helping hand. Richard now saw his brother once a month or so. They’d meet in a bar for a drink, Richard would give him a few dollars, and that was it. Though he didn’t like it, Richard had learned to accept his brother’s homosexuality.

Joseph, like Richard, had a hair-trigger, homicidal temper, and hurt people with broken bottles, chains, and stools in bar fights. Several times Richard had to go to Jersey City to get Joseph out of jams. Each time Richard helped Joe, he warned him it was the last time, said he had a family now and couldn’t be coming to get him out of trouble all the time.

Richard received a call from Joe late one Saturday afternoon. “Richie, I got a problem,” Joseph said.

“Yeah, what now?”

“I’m in a bar. There’s four guys here and they won’t let me leave.”

“Why not?”

“They say I owe them money.”

“Do you?”

“We were playing cards and I guess I lost.”

“How much?”

“Not much.”

“Just walk out, Joe.”

“They won’t let me. I tried. There’s four of them. They got…bats.”

“Bats?”

“Yeah.”

Richard took a long, exasperated breath. “This is the last time I’m going to help you—understand?” he said.

“Yeah,” Joe said.

Richard hung up.

Everyone knew Joseph Kuklinski was his brother, and Richard didn’t like the idea of a group of guys holding him hostage, threatening him with bats; where did they get off thinking they could get away with such a thing?

Richard had a locked attaché case he kept hidden in the garage. From it he retrieved two .38 over-and-under derringers loaded with dumdum bullets and put them in his jacket pockets. Then he put a hunting knife in his sock and drove to Jersey City, getting angrier with each mile. Angry that his brother was such a fuckup, angry that these guys would dare to hold him hostage. Richard parked his car a few blocks away from the bar, made sure no one was laying for him, and walked into the bar. His brother was sitting at a table off to the left. There were indeed four burly guys sitting around him. One of them, Richard could see, had a bat under the table.

“Come on, Joe, let’s go,” Richard ordered. Joe began to get up. The largest of the four guys walked over to Richard.

“He ain’t goin’ anywhere till he pays what he owes. I’m glad you came, Rich. We know you’re a stand-up guy.”

“How much does he owe?”

“Five fifty.”

“I’ll make sure he does his best to pay you back. Come on, Joe, let’s go,” Richard ordered again.

“Hey, I says he ain’t goin’.”

“Joe, walk toward the fucking door,” Richard ordered.

“We know all about you, Rich, that you always carry a gun. Why don’t you pay what he owes?”

“I ain’t paying you anything. If you know all about me you know I’m not going to let you hold my brother against his will. Joe, come on over here!” Joe began to stand.

“Stop him,” the one close to Richard said.

Richard ran out of patience. He pulled his right hand out of his pocket, let them see the gun in his hand.

“I got a slug for each of you,” Richard said. “Come on, Joe!”

With that the four guys backed up. Joseph joined Richard. They both walked out the door.

“Thank you, Rich,” Joe said.

“This is the last time. You gotta stop this shit.”

“They cheated. That’s what this is all about—they set me up.”

“I don’t give a hoot. Joe, I can’t be doing this stuff. I got a wife and two kids. Merrick is sick. She needs me. I can’t be doing this anymore…okay?”

“Okay…I understand,” Joe said.

By now they were half a block away from the bar. They began to cross the street, when a car, the four guys in it, came barreling down on them. The driver tried to run the brothers over. Richard pulled out one of the derringers and fired two shots. One of the bullets hit the trunk lock, and the trunk popped open. Within seconds, it seemed, police sirens filled the air. Richard tossed both the derringers away. Police cars blocked off each end of the street. The driver of the car told how Richard had shot a gun at them. Richard, of course, denied it.

“What gun, where?” Richard said.

But the cops found the two bullet holes in the car and began looking for the gun, and they found one of the derringers. Everyone was cuffed and arrested. Richard was fit to be tied. He needed this like a hole in the head. At the police station, Richard denied having any gun, and he warned the four guys in the car to keep their mouths shut.

“You don’t say anything and we’ll all walk, got it?”

They nodded, but Joseph again began arguing with them, saying they had cheated him, they had set him up, they had called the cops.

“Shut up—all of you shut the fuck up,” Richard demanded. “The cops are listening.” They became quiet. Detectives interrogated them. Everyone kept his mouth shut, but the detectives knew what had happened and kept badgering Richard. He wouldn’t even talk to them. Richard didn’t like cops; they were corrupt bullies with guns and badges, and he had no reservations about letting his animus show.

Finally able to make a call, Richard phoned a criminal attorney in Jersey City and told him what had happened. The attorney came over to the jail and told Richard he needed money to “resolve the matter.” Jersey City was one of the most corrupt municipalities in America. Cops and judges could be bought and sold for little more than a song and dance. Richard quickly made another call, got John Hamil on the phone, told him what had happened, and asked him to get three grand to the lawyer.

“Done, brother,” John said.

Richard and the others stayed in jail overnight. Richard called Barbara to say he was working at the lab. Richard often stayed at the lab overnight, making overtime.

In the morning they were all taken to court for arraignment. In a foul mood, Richard made sure no one said anything. His lawyer found them in the holding pen, winked, and said, “Everything is taken care of.” They soon appeared before the judge—who had been given the three g’s by Richard’s lawyer. The judge said he didn’t see “reasonable cause” to hold over the case, levied a small fine, and dismissed it on the spot.

As Richard and the others were walking out of the courtroom, one of the detectives—not a happy camper—walked up to Richard. “Here’s your gun back,” he offered, holding out Richard’s derringer.

“That’s not my gun,” Richard said, and walked out of the courtroom.

Outside, he told his brother, “This is it. Get yourself in another jam, I am not going to help you. You understand?”

“Yeah,” said Joseph sheepishly. “I understand.”

23

Murder Runs in the Family

The dog had a broken leg and was in shock, shaking and trembling and barking nonstop in the yard of a building on Jersey City’s Central Avenue, number 438. It was 12:30 A.M., September 16, 1970, and the dog was disturbing people trying to sleep. The dog belonged to Pamela Dial, a twelve-year-old girl, small for her age and thin. Pamela had black hair and large, round, dark eyes. She was a straight-A student at nearby St. Anne’s Parochial School. She lived at 9 Bleeker Street with her mother and father and brothers John and Robert, just around the corner from Central Avenue, the block on which lived Joseph and Anna Kuklinski.

Pamela loved her dog, Lady, a little black-and-white mutt. They were always together; wherever Pam went, the dog was with her, wagging its tail and unusually attentive to Pamela.

Earlier, near eleven o’clock that fateful Tuesday night, Pamela had left the house looking for her dog. She had not finished her homework yet; it was still spread out on her bed. Nor did she tell her family she was going out to find Lady. Her parents were watching the eleven o’clock news when she left and didn’t even know she’d gone.

Pamela did find her dog and was walking home when she ran into Joseph Kuklinski.

Joseph and Pam knew each other from the neighborhood. Joseph was tall and handsome, thin and muscular, had glistening long blond hair, a Fu Manchu mustache. He was now twenty-five years old. The two talked. Joseph asked Pamela if she’d like to be alone with him. Not knowing exactly what he had in mind, she innocently said okay and followed Joseph Kuklinski into a four-story building, 438 Central Avenue, and up to the roof. Joseph lived at 434 Central Avenue with his mother, just two buildings away. Joseph had used the roofs along Central Avenue for sexual liaisons many times over the years, with both girlfriends and boyfriends. Pamela had no idea of what Joseph was after. He was known in the neighborhood as Cowboy Joe, and she thought he was cute. She liked the idea that he paid attention to her, that he wanted to be alone with her. Unaware of the demons inside of Joseph Kuklinski’s head, Pamela willingly went up to the roof.

Joseph had been drinking, was buzzed, smelled of alcohol. On the roof he quickly came to the point and tried to have sex with Pam. She refused. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He forced himself on her, sodomized her, then choked her to death; all the while, little Lady was barking like mad. Joseph tried to catch the dog but couldn’t.

When Joseph was finished with Pamela, he picked up her lifeless body as if it were a rag doll and tossed her off the roof. She hit the cement backyard of 438 Central Avenue with a meaty, bone-breaking thud. Joseph then managed to catch the dog and tossed it off the roof too. The hapless animal landed near Pamela, and its legs and several ribs broke. Lady crawled to Pamela’s lifeless body and began to cry, then howl and bark nonstop. People called the police to complain about the insistent barking and howling. A squad car was dispatched. The police discovered Pamela Dial’s lifeless, broken body.

The murder of a child, even in rough-and-tumble Jersey City, was a rare event, an outrage. Early that morning every available detective and uniformed cop in Jersey City was looking for Pamela’s killer, canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, stopping people driving by. Detectives soon learned that Pamela had been seen talking to Joseph Kuklinski the night before. When detective Sergeant Ben Riccardi came knocking on the Kuklinskis’ door, Joseph was still sleeping and hung over. When he was taken to the police station and threatened by angry Jersey City detectives, he admitted what he’d done.

“I threw her off the roof,” he said. With that Joseph was roughly handcuffed and placed under arrest.

Later that day, Anna Kuklinski called Richard and told him how Joseph had been arrested for the killing of a twelve-year-old girl. This bowled Richard over. He couldn’t conceive of his brother doing such a thing. It had to be some kind of mistake. As much as Richard wanted nothing to do with his mother, he hurried to Jersey City. Just the day before, Richard had gone to see Joseph. He’d waited in a bar on Central Avenue for Joseph, but Joe hadn’t shown up. Richard had known that Joseph was home, out of work, but he hadn’t knocked on the door to get his brother, because he didn’t want to see his mother; he had grown to despise Anna to that degree. The few times she had come to his home, Anna always tried to instigate trouble with Barbara, who also grew to loathe Anna, but tolerated her. Barbara had no choice; she was Richard’s mother, after all.

My mother was cancer; she slowly killed whatever she touched, Richard recently said.

At first Richard was willing to try and help Joseph, get him a lawyer. He found his younger brother at the Jersey City jail, and Joseph readily admitted to Richard that he had raped and killed the girl and thrown her and her dog off the roof.

“Why the fuck would you do such a thing?” Richard demanded, so angry he wanted to beat his brother, beat him to death. Richard had two daughters, and the thought of someone doing that to either of them left him cold and empty inside—outraged.

“Because,” Joseph said, “she wanted it.”

With that Richard stood up and walked away; he would never talk to his brother Joseph again.

That day I washed my hands of him, wanted nothing to do with him anymore. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a brother. I didn’t have a family. To hell with them all…

Within several months Joseph Kuklinski was convicted of Pam Dial’s murder, given a life sentence, and sent to the Trenton State Prison. As far as Richard was concerned he had no brother. No mother. No sister. No family.

24

Let’s Do the Twist

The film lab where Richard worked now moved to a new space on Forty-sixth Street, not far from the famous Peppermint Lounge on Forty-fifth Street, the place where Joey D. and the Starlighters made the Twist so popular all over the world. Richard sometimes liked to go there in the early evening, before he started a double shift bootlegging porn, for a cocktail or two. Richard well knew he shouldn’t drink hard liquor, but it mellowed him; he was, in a sense, self-medicating, for the liquor tended to calm him; but he also became nasty when he drank, just like his father and brother. On this night he made an off-color remark to a woman at the bar; she took offense and complained to her boyfriend, who in turn said something nasty to Richard. The boyfriend was a friend of the bartender. Soon in an argument with the bartender, Richard reached over the bar and grabbed the bartender by the tie. He was going to sock him, but the bouncer interceded, coming out of nowhere, and made Richard leave, said he’d call the cops.

On the sidewalk outside, Richard was talking to the bouncer, trying to explain how the bartender had a big mouth, when suddenly the bouncer sucker punched Richard.

“Why’d you do that?” Richard asked, more shocked and embarrassed than hurt.

“’Cause you got a big fuckin’ mouth. Come back and I’ll send you to the hospital,” the bouncer promised.

“Thanks for the warning,” Richard said. “I will be back. Count on it, my friend.” Richard went back to the lab, fuming. The punch had cut his lip and he was bleeding slightly. Richard wasn’t really physically hurt, but this incident ate at him. He couldn’t forget it. Another guy might have written it off as a stupid occurrence that meant nothing.

But not Richard.

His mood fouled.

He couldn’t think of anything but this bouncer and getting even. Having revenge. Killing him. But how? Forty-fifth Street was a very busy street. The club was popular, people were always there, moving in and out.

Richard took out his anger on Barbara, abused her for not making a sandwich correctly, not cutting off the crust of the bread just so, the way he liked. Though Richard never touched either of his daughters, he frequently abused Barbara in front of them, broke furniture in front of them.

That night Richard couldn’t sleep; he couldn’t stop thinking about how the bouncer had embarrassed him, disrespected him, hit him with a sneaky punch. Richard resolved to murder the bouncer; come hell or high water, he was dead.

Some three days later Richard was ready. He had it all worked out. He left the house that morning carrying a change of clothes, those of a laborer. He had a .22 with him, in a paper bag with his lunch, two turkey-on-rye sandwiches with extra mayo, his favorite.

Late that afternoon, Richard went to the bathroom, which was in the hall. He changed into the clothes he had brought, put a peak cap on his head, pulled the brim down in front of his face, and went downstairs. Richard knew the bouncer began work at about 4:00 P.M., and Richard stood in front of the building with the gun in his coat pocket, staring, waiting, looking for an opportunity to strike, like a hungry predatory cat with his eyes on a potential meal. The club had a large picture window, and he could readily see into it. It was a chilly fall day in 1971 and Richard had murder on his mind.

What this bouncer had done was, for Richard, exactly what his father had done to him—strike him for nothing when he least expected it—and as Richard stared at the club, memories of Stanley’s brutality, in stark, harsh black-and-white images, flashed before his eyes. These memories often came back to Richard like this, as if an old silent movie.

A band began to rehearse inside the club. Richard could hear the music across the street. Everyone at the bar looked toward the stage. This was the moment to move, to strike. Quickly, catlike, Richard crossed the narrow street and opened the door. The bouncer was right there. Perfect. Without a moment’s hesitation, Richard put the .22 close to his head and fired, turned, and calmly walked out, not looking back. He took a right, grabbed a cab on the corner, and had it take him to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Forty-first Street. Here Richard changed back into his clothes, threw away the outfit he had been wearing, and walked back to work. Now there were cop cars and ambulances in front of the Peppermint Lounge, spinning red lights. A big crowd had gathered. Richard stopped and looked for several moments, just another curious guy, then went into the building where he worked, feeling good and whole—now at peace. He wasn’t even remotely suspected of the killing, was never questioned about it, never connected to it.

A change of sorts had come over Richard: these recent killings reminded him of his past, and he coveted having power over life, deciding who would live and who would die, when and where and how.

Murder, Richard knew, was one of the few things in life that he truly excelled at. It seemed, he mused, that he had a gift for it, and he began to think seriously of again hiring himself out as a contract killer, making that his profession, his job, his specialty, committing himself as a killer for hire.

But now, he reminded himself, he had a wife and two adorable little girls. He couldn’t do anything to jeopardize them. Yet, he believed if you planned a killing carefully, meticulously, didn’t hurry it, it was relatively easy to get away with because there was no tangible link between the killer and the victim. This, he knew, was the reason serial killers were so hard to catch—the randomness of the crimes made it nearly impossible for the police to connect the killer to the victims. Richard would exploit this element over and over again.

With these life-and-death musings in his head, Richard returned to Jersey City and Hoboken and let it be known that he was available for “special work.” He also went to see Tony Argrila, the porn distributor. He found Argrila at his office on Spring Street in downtown Manhattan. Argrila was in his midforties, balding, short, and heavy, had a thick Brooklyn accent. He and Paul Rothenberg were responsible for most all the porn produced in New York. They had a silent partner named Roy DeMeo.

“I need to make some serious money,” Richard began. “I want to get back in the life. I—”

“Listen to me,” Argrila stopped him. “You really want to make money, get into porn; there’s truckloads a money to make. We’ll front you whatever you want. No problem.”

Richard didn’t see much of a future making porn movies. He thought of it as dirty and didn’t want to get that involved in it. Pirating it was one thing; making it himself was another. Murder—murder was okay, nothing wrong with that. But producing porn movies was sleazy… beneath him, as it were.

“I’m tellin’ you, there’s a ton a fuckin’ money in it,” Argrila repeated.

“Really?”

“Absofuckinlutely. No fuss, no-muss, and it’s perfectly legal. We’ll give you all the product you need. I know you’re a stand-up right guy. Just pay us for what you take when you get paid, and you’re in business.”

“I’ll think about it,” Richard said, ultimately warming to the idea because it was, in fact, perfectly legal. The more he thought about it, the more appealing the idea seemed, and he decided to try it, what the hell. But he knew if he did delve into this he had to make a go of it, not fuck up, because the money involved was mob money, and he had to pay it back in a timely fashion. He didn’t like owing mob people anything, but for such an enterprise, he also knew, there was nowhere else to turn: I couldn’t go to a bank and say I got three naked girls and two guys with hard-ons and I want to make movies, he recently explained.

So Richard began taking large shipments of porn on consignment from Argrila and Rothenberg and wholesaling it out all over the East Coast. Money began pouring in. Richard was surprised at how much in demand porn was, and the dirtier and kinkier it was, the better. Because he was selling most of the product he was getting from Argrila on consignment, the bill he had with Argrila quickly grew to seventy-five thousand dollars, since Richard was spending money he should have been giving Argrila.

Richard wasn’t even sure Argrila and his partner were really mob connected. Guys were always saying they were “mobbed up,” and Richard kept taking product and was slow in paying it back. He also got it in his head to make his own movies, to have his own line, and decided to use the money he owed Argrila to start his own business. This proved to be, as Richard would soon find out, a near-fatal mistake in judgment.

Richard quit working in the film lab and immersed himself in the porn business full-time. Argrila and Rothenberg kept asking for money, and Richard kept stalling them. From working in film labs over the years, Richard did know quite a few people who made porno movies—line producers, camera people, even directors. He began talking to some of these individuals and quickly realized that he could indeed make his own porno movies from scratch. Using Argrila’s money, that’s exactly what he did—he began producing porno films, hired directors he knew, made deals with them, and let them run the show. He was only interested in the finished product—making money.

Richard’s daughter Merrick’s health was not improving. She was frequently in pain and had raging fevers, sometimes up to 106 degrees. Her sickness and distress embittered Richard even more. Her suffering, any child’s suffering, was so unfair that surely, he thought, there was no God. How could any God allow a child to suffer? Richard had great empathy for children, though absolutely none for adults. He and Barbara did all they could for Merrick, but whatever they did didn’t work; at least he was making money now and had the funds needed for Merrick’s care.

Richard was thinking he’d deal in porn for a short while—a few years at the most—make some serious money, and get the hell out of the business. Maybe move to the West Coast, buy a house on the beach and relax. That was Richard’s dream: to have a first-class white house on a beach and enjoy the view, the glorious sunsets, watch the girls frolic in the surf.

Richard said nothing to Barbara about what he was doing or his plans for the future. He knew she wouldn’t like it. As much as Richard dominated and abused Barbara, he had much respect for her, valued her opinion, valued her judgment. She often explained things to him he read in the newspapers that he didn’t understand. An avid reader, Barbara told him about books she enjoyed. She was always reading a book, both popular novels and classics. Richard was, of course, still dyslexic and had comprehension problems when it came to the written word. The only thing he ever truly enjoyed reading were the true-crime magazines; those, for some reason, he never had any trouble understanding.

The movies Richard was producing were shot in dilapidated warehouses—no doubt now fashionable lofts—in SoHo. Richard never went to any of the shoots. He was not interested in seeing the films being made. He thought little of the people who did such things and didn’t want to be around them. For him this was a strictly moneymaking proposition. He had no prurient interests at all. He was, when it came to sexual matters, a bit of a prude. Because all the films Richard was distributing were given out on consignment and were paid for after the retailer sold them, there was a mandatory period of time that the producers had to wait to get paid. There was no getting around that.

When Richard was sober and not in a bad mood, he was relatively easy to get along with. People he did business with tended to like him. He had a keen sense of humor and would readily pay for drinks and meals. For the most part, he tried to keep his word. Because of that he expected people to keep their word, which all too often didn’t happen. One individual who let him down was named Bruno Latini. He was a short, balding, mobbed-up guy who owned a bar on Eighth Avenue. Richard had given him fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of films on consignment. Because the fifty-two-year-old Latini had mob connections (his brother was Gambino captain Eddie Lino, who would, it would later be alleged, be murdered by crooked cops Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa at the behest of Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso), he thought he could get away without paying. He kept stalling Richard, then stopped returning Richard’s calls. This incensed Richard, ate at him.

Christmas was still very much a big deal to Barbara and she went out of her way for the holidays to be special; she bought dozens of wonderful gifts, had a huge tree, decorated the house beautifully. That Christmas Eve Richard was quiet and morose. He was thinking of Latini, not his family. When everyone went to bed, Richard quietly got into his car and drove to the city looking for Latini, looking to kill him. It was snowing hard but that didn’t stop Richard. When he reached the bar, he learned that Latini just left. Richard went to the lot on the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Tenth Avenue and found Latini sitting in his car. Latini invited Richard into the car and gave him a song and dance about the fifteen hundred dollars. Richard pulled out a .38 and shot him twice in the head. For a minute or two he was blinded and couldn’t hear because of the report of the gun in the enclosed space. Richard found Latini’s wallet. There was several thousand dollars in it. Richard took his fifteen hundred and put the wallet back with the rest of the money still in it. Odd. He finally stepped from the car, went back to his Caddy, and returned to New Jersey.

In the morning on Christmas Day a parking attendant found Latini with his destroyed head, quite dead. Police discovered his wallet on him and there was sixteen hundred dollars in it. This murder was never linked to Richard by the police or by the mob.

I killed him, Richard explained, out of principle. He thought he could treat me like a piece of wood.

Though Barbara made a big deal of the holidays, they tended to depress Richard. They reminded him of his childhood, and that always made him…angry. He still thought about his father, about killing him.

Tony Argrila kept hounding Richard for the money he owed. Richard kept stalling, giving excuses, not money, to Argrila. Just when Argrila began getting hot under the collar, Richard would give him some money—but not what he said he would—to shut him up. Richard was planning to pay him and was doing his best, but his best wasn’t good enough. Finally, Argrila lost his patience and called his silent partner, Roy DeMeo, and suddenly everything took a serious turn for the worse.

Roy DeMeo was an out-of-control psychopath, an associate of the Gambino crime family, who would eventually become the subject of a popular true-crime book appropriately entitled Murder Machine, by journalists Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain.

25

The Gambinos

Roy DeMeo was born and raised in Canarsie, a tough neighborhood in one of the toughest towns anywhere in the world—Brooklyn, USA. As a boy Roy had been overweight, Humpty Dumpty–like, and was regularly put upon and abused by neighborhood bullies. He had thick black hair, dark eyes, olive-colored skin, and a huge belly, and waddled like a penguin. His older brother Anthony, known as Toby, was a tough, muscle-bound kid—always there to protect Roy—but he joined the marines, went to fight in Vietnam, and never came back. Thus fat little Roy was left to fend for himself on Canarsie’s mean streets.

The young Roy DeMeo always admired neighborhood mob guys, of whom there were many. They were all over Canarsie, mostly members of the Lucchese crime family, with their fancy cars, fancy women, fancy clothes, and huge rolls of hundred-dollar bills. That’s what Roy wanted for himself; that was Roy’s dream; that’s what Roy saw in his future. Roy’s heroes were Lucky Luciano, Al Capone, and Albert Anastasia, infamous killers all. Those were the people Roy looked up to, wanted to emulate. He longed to be respected and feared like them.

Though a bright child and good with numbers, Roy did not do well in school. School didn’t interest him in the least. He knew that what he wanted he could never get in any classroom. What he wanted you could learn only on the street, so that’s where Roy spent his time; that’s where he went to school; that’s where Roy DeMeo applied himself.

The first order of business was to lose weight and to get muscular, and the young DeMeo began to diet and lift weights with a vengeance, and soon enough he lost the baby fat and protruding stomach, and his muscles became large and rock hard. Now when anyone bothered him, Roy gladly beat him to a pulp. He was an extremely dirty fighter, biting and gouging people’s eyes, and soon—as he planned—he secured a reputation as a tough guy, as someone who was stand-up, dangerous; no one to trifle with—not an easy task in Canarsie.

As a young teen, DeMeo began loaning out (shylocking) the money he earned working at a supermarket. If someone didn’t pay back on time, Roy took apparent delight in beating him up. He quickly became a loudmouthed bully, mean and sadistic, swaggering around with his mouth twisted up as if he’d been sucking on lemons. He had a chip on his wide shoulder and dared people to try and knock it off. He was trouble looking to happen.

DeMeo loaned money to a kid named Chris Rosenberg, who sold nickel bags of pot. With the money Roy loaned him, Chris was able to buy weight and was soon selling ounces and even pounds. Roy made Chris his partner, co-opted him and his pot business. This would be a recurring theme in DeMeo’s bloody, infamous life of crime: he made people who owed him money and couldn’t pay him on time his partner. This was, in fact, a classic Mafia ploy, used from its very inception. The word mafia in lowercase means a man of respect, an individual who has pride and honor and walks with his head high. Mafia, capitalized, has come to mean the criminal enterprise that began in Sicily in the mid-1800s and spread its insidious tentacles all over the globe. For many years the Mafia was a highly secretive, highly successful criminal enterprise the likes of which the world had never known; all its members took a blood oath to the particular family they were inducted into. Until Joe Valachi, at the 1963 McClellan Senate hearings in Washington, told about the intricacies of the Mafia—where it began, how it worked, its structure—law enforcement had no comprehensive understanding of the Sicilian Mafia. In fact, there are three distinctly different criminal organizations in Italy: the Camorra from Naples, the ’Ndrangheta from Calabria, and the Mafia from Sicily. Of the three the Camorra was—and still is—the most violent and vicious.

The infamous John Gotti was one of the few Neapolitans who was allowed into the ranks of the Sicilian Mafia, into the Gambino family, which many say was a fatal error in judgment on Carlo Gambino’s part. An exceedingly cunning individual, Carlo Gambino was a small, frail, unassuming Sicilian who dressed and acted like a simple peasant from Sicily, when in truth he ran the largest and most successful of the five New York crime families. Carlo opened the books to John Gotti because Gotti killed a man who was stupid enough to kidnap Carlo’s nephew Sal and murder him after a ransom was paid; that, of course, was a one-way ticket to a graveyard, and John Gotti gladly killed the jerk who masterminded this ill-conceived kidnapping and killing.

Carlo would later make a second grave error in judgment, and that was appointing his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, the head of the family when he died in October 1976.

Paul Castellano was a tall, gaunt, sallow, and dark-eyed man who had a butcher shop on Eighteenth Avenue, just off Eighty-sixth Street, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, another very tough, Mafia-ridden neighborhood. If the Mafia had a graduate school, it was surely the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Made men—soldiers, lieutenants, captains, underbosses, and bosses from all the five families—lived in Bensonhurst. Here they bought homes, baptized and married off their children, celebrated holidays, lived their lives. The Bensonhurst public schools were filled with children who were the offspring of made men.

Paul Castellano was a good businessman, though a very bad mob boss. He parlayed his butcher shop into a large chicken and meat wholesale business that made him a wealthy man. Paul married Carlo’s sister, Kathy, and it was mainly that marriage that caused Paul to rise quickly within the Gambino hierarchy.

Paul was a notoriously greedy individual, did not come from the street as such, and was resented by most of the twenty-one captains in the Gambino family. Resentment of Castellano’s greed eventually caused Castellano to be killed in front of Sparks Steak House in December 1985. He and his bodyguard-chauffeur, Tommy Bilotti, were killed at the behest of John Gotti and Sammy “the Bull” Gravano by a hit team; one of those men was, in fact, Richard Leonard Kuklinski.

In theory, Roy DeMeo should have been associated with and inducted into the Lucchese family; they were centered in Canarsie, had scores of junkyards and chop shops in the area. But Roy wanted more for himself; he wanted to become a member of the Gambino family; they were Mafia royalty, and that’s where Roy wanted to be made. DeMeo was an excellent moneymaker—had interests in unions, stolen cars and credit cards, drugs and shylocking, had partnerships in restaurants and bars, had a lot of money on the street. But DeMeo was loud and boisterous and readily drew attention to himself, all traits shunned by mob guys, and he had a very bad temper…would scream and yell and pull guns at the drop of a hat. He believed the best way to get people’s respect was to bully them, to beat them up, to make them bleed.

“I don’t give a flyin’ fuck if anyone likes me; what I care about is that they fear me,” was a favorite saying of his, and people did fear him, with good cause, for Roy DeMeo was a bona fide raging psychopath. Besides all his other enterprises, he killed people for both sport and money. He filled mob-sanctioned hits as well as hits civilians wanted done and were willing to pay for. Essentially, he retailed murder. Roy had worked as a butcher in Key Food, a Brooklyn food store, and he was particularly adept at cutting people up to get rid of bodies.

“Disassembling,” he called it, laughing. With expert knife work he dismembered those he killed, cut them up into six convenient pieces—the head, arms, legs, and torso—all of which he cleverly disposed of in different places, the head in a garbage bin, the arms in the nearby Atlantic Ocean, the legs in the mountain-high Canarsie garbage dump over near the Belt Parkway.

DeMeo put together his own little killing crew, a bunch of cold-blooded serial killers named Joey Testa, Anthony Senter, Chris Goldberg, Henry Borelli, Freddie DiNome, and DeMeo’s cousin, Joe Guglielmo, who was known as Dracula, and they shot and stabbed and bludgeoned their way to prominent positions in the Mafia homicide hall of fame. Before they were finally brought to justice, the DeMeo crew murdered over two hundred people. Many of the murders were carried out in the rear apartment of a bar DeMeo owned called the Gemini Lounge on Troy Avenue.

DeMeo made the acquaintance of Nino Gaggi, a made man in the Gambino family and a close personal friend of Paul Castellano. Both Gaggi and DeMeo dealt in stolen cars. DeMeo had a contact in the Department of Motor Vehicles and provided Gaggi with clean vehicle identification numbers (VIN) and paperwork for stolen cars. DeMeo was only too happy to help Gaggi in any way he could. He saw Gaggi as his entry into the Gambino family.

Nino Gaggi lived at 1929 Cropsy Avenue in Bensonhurst. It was a redbrick three-family house with small yards in front and out back. Gaggi was from the old school, quiet and reserved, a slight man with small, seemingly frail hands, but he was tough like coarse sandpaper, with a bad temper. Everything about him was understated. He didn’t particularly like DeMeo, because he was so loud, so bold, so in your face. But DeMeo was a hell of a moneymaker, so Gaggi tolerated him and, as time passed, did more and more with him. During the Christmas holidays, DeMeo brought carloads of gifts for Gaggi’s three children and diamond bracelets and watches for Nino’s wife, Rose, an attractive blonde who was fiercely loyal to her husband. Gaggi had a vicious German shepherd named Duke. He loved the dog because it was tough and wanted to bite everyone, man or beast. Duke was so vicious that he used to climb up the eight-foot chain-link fence around the backyard, using his teeth and paws, to get at the sanitation guys on Bay Twenty-second Street. Gaggi had to have a chain-link overhang installed so Duke couldn’t escape and wreak havoc on the neighborhood. Duke’s tenacity gave Nino a big kick and he loved that dog as much as one of his own sons.

It was an inconsequential incident on Bensonhurst’s Eighty-sixth Street that eventually caused Roy DeMeo to be inducted into the Gambino family: when a neighborhood tough, a Golden Gloves champion named Vincent Governara, known as Vinnie Mook, hit Gaggi and broke his nose, Gaggi turned to DeMeo and asked Roy to kill him. Whatever Nino asked of DeMeo, Nino got; and he later sponsored DeMeo to be made by the Gambino family, making DeMeo’s long-cherished dream come true.

Because DeMeo lived and worked out of the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, a few miles away from JFK International Airport, he had a lot of contacts at the airport and helped mastermind numerous cargo thefts, heisting all kinds of merchandise from all over the world: wines and champagnes from Italy and France, exotic foods, jewelry, cash money, and guns. Lots of guns. Crates of pistols, revolvers, and even machine guns, Berettas from Italy, Walther PPKs from Germany, Uzi machine guns from Israel.

Roy was a genuine gun fanatic and truly loved firearms. He had an extensive collection of them, enough guns to arm a small army, and he happily and easily sold all the stolen armaments from Kennedy Airport to members of organized crime. Because of Roy DeMeo, crates upon crates of clean, untraceable guns found their way to the New York and New Jersey underworld, and thus DeMeo was inadvertently responsible for scores of mob killings all across America.

When Tony Argrila, a friend of DeMeo’s, went to Roy and told him that Richard Kuklinski was behind on his payments and had an “attitude problem,” DeMeo said he’d talk to Kuklinski.

26

Partnership Born in Hell

It was a blistering hot August day, 1973, the humidity near 100 percent, the temperature in the low nineties. No one was in a hurry to go anywhere. People seemed to move in slow motion. DeMeo was in a foul mood, on his way to the office–film lab of Argrila and Rothenberg to collect his end of the business.

A year earlier, DeMeo had gone to see them and told them he was their new partner. Rothenberg laughed. DeMeo took out a pistol and slapped the shit out of him. Argrila and Rothenberg had a new partner. Theirs was a quasi-legal business, and neither Argrila nor Rothenberg had the balls to go to the police at that point.

That August day all DeMeo knew about Richard was that he was big, acted tough, and was behind on his payments. DeMeo was at the office when Richard showed up for some product. Acting tough, DeMeo was heavy-handed with Richard. Richard had no idea who DeMeo was and that he was truly connected, and Richard was curt and nasty with DeMeo. Richard didn’t like this loudmouthed Italian guy trying to strong-arm him.

“I’m a friend of Tony’s here,” DeMeo said.

“And so?” Richard said.

“And so I’m here because you’re behind and you got a bad attitude, I hear.”

“Like I told them, I’ll pay back everything I owe when I have it.”

“Yeah, and when’s that?” Roy demanded, getting mad, not liking this big Polish guy’s attitude one bit.

“Hard to say,” Richard said, a slight smirk on his chiseled face. “You know how it is. The product’s out there. I’m waiting to get paid; when I get paid, they’ll get paid—simple.”

“You think you’re cute?” DeMeo asked.

“I think I don’t like you coming around and trying to put the squeeze on me,” Richard told him, and these two very dangerous men—neither knowing anything about the other yet—stared at each other with angry, homicidal eyes, like two white sharks eyeing each other, sizing each other up.

DeMeo could see that Kuklinski was not scared of him and would readily fight. Like all bullies, DeMeo was not about to tangle with a guy as big and tough as Richard apparently was.

“We’ll see,” DeMeo said, and he turned and stormed off.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Richard said to his back.

Argrila now, for the first time, told Richard who DeMeo was, that he was a connected guy. “I don’t wanna see you hurt, Rich. Leave, leave before he comes back.” With that Richard turned, went into the hall, and pushed the elevator button.

DeMeo was steaming. There was no way he was going to let this big Polack trifle with him, disrespect him. Downstairs, in his white Lincoln, were his cousin Joe Guglielmo, Anthony Senter, and Joey Testa. Guglielmo was gray haired and resembled Bela Lugosi, thus his nickname, Dracula. Anthony Senter and Joey looked so alike that they appeared to be brothers, but they weren’t. They were both dark eyed and handsome with a thick head of black hair, each six feet, muscular, and athletic.

Now, with his guys behind him, DeMeo went back upstairs to see Richard, and they found him in the hall waiting for the elevator. Richard was suddenly surrounded, guns pointing at him.

“So, tough guy,” DeMeo said. “You wanna die, you fuckin’ wanna die?” And with that he struck Richard hard in the head with the butt of his gun. Knowing his life was on the line here, Richard did nothing. He had a .38 derringer in his pocket, but he didn’t draw it. DeMeo hit him several more times. Richard went down. Guglielmo hit him in the back of the head and kicked him in his right knee. Now they all proceeded to pummel Richard. Though they didn’t knock him unconscious, they beat him good. Richard had never gotten a beating like this in his entire life. He was angry beyond words, but he knew that DeMeo would kill him on the spot if he fought back. He had only a two-shot derringer on him. DeMeo found Richard’s derringer and took it.

“You come up with the money or you’re fuckin’ dead—fuckin’ dead, motherfucker!” DeMeo said, and they left.

Richard was suddenly alone, bleeding all over the floor. He stood up, went into a bathroom off the hall, and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a mess.

Cursing out loud, using paper towels to wipe away the blood, Richard vowed to kill DeMeo. The wounds he’d gotten from the pistol-whipping were deep, and Richard had to go to St. Vincent’s Hospital on Seventh Avenue to have them stitched up. He received thirty-eight stitches on three different mean gashes on his head. His eyes blackened, his lip swollen, all stitched up, Richard slowly went back to New Jersey. He was so beat up that he didn’t want Barbara and his daughters to see him, so he went to his mother-in-law’s house. Shocked when she saw him, Genevieve let him in the house and got an ice bag for him. He told her, and later Barbara, that he’d been mugged, jumped by four guys and robbed. He slept that night at Genevieve’s house—mostly tossed and turned, planning how he’d torture Roy DeMeo.

It didn’t take long for Richard to find out who Roy DeMeo really was—an associate in good standing of the Gambino family, who ran a ruthless band of serial killers. Richard knew if he killed Roy now, he’d surely be killed in turn, and quickly. He was so mad over what DeMeo and the others had done that if he hadn’t been married with children, he might have gone and found DeMeo and killed him anyway. But because of Barbara and his family, he had to play it cool—for now. No easy thing for Richard Kuklinski. But Richard knew that there would be, in the future, an opportunity for him to get revenge; he’d bide his time. But, he vowed, he would one day pistol-whip and kill Roy DeMeo.

The first thing Richard did was make arrangements with Tony Argrila to pay him back the money. That done, Richard went to Brooklyn, to the Gemini Lounge, and asked for DeMeo. DeMeo was shocked to see Richard at the bar by himself.

“I hear,” DeMeo said, “you’re doing the right thing. You got balls coming here like this.”

“I wanted to talk with you.”

“Yeah, well, talk.”

“First off, I didn’t know who you were,” Richard diplomatically, and uncharacteristically, said. “Second, Rothenberg and Tony are stealing from each other—I’ve seen it myself. Sure I’m a little behind, but nothing like they’re saying. All the time Rothenberg is trying to give me material on the side. That’s the truth, Roy.”

Richard figured, correctly, that it was Rothenberg who had sicced Roy on him, and now he was returning the favor.

“I’ll tell you, big guy, you got balls; you got some pair a nuts coming here like this. I’m thinking maybe we got off on the wrong foot here—I got mad when I should’a been talking. I asked around ’bout you and I know you’re a stand-up guy. You had a gun on you, and didn’t use it…you got balls.”

“Roy, I want to make money with you, not fight with you. That’s all I want to do here is make money…do business.”

“I hear you got contacts all over the place; we can do something together. You just play straight with me and you’ll make money—a lotta money.”

“Sounds good.”

“Let’s shake on it,” Roy said, and these two killers shook hands, a slight smirk on each of their faces.

“I hear,” Roy said, “you got an Italian wife. Take a ride with me,” Roy offered. They got into his car and drove to an Italian food shop a few blocks away.

“Come on,” Roy said.

They went inside. The place had sawdust on the floor, salami and giant rolls of provolone hanging from the ceiling. Roy picked out all kinds of meats, Italian sweet sausages and giant blocks of different cheeses and a head-sized piece of mozzarella in water.

“They make mozzeralla fresh a few times a day,” he told Richard. Roy paid for everything—$150—and gave Richard four big bags.

“You bring this stuff home to your wife. She’ll like it, I bet you. Call me in a couple of days and we’ll do business, okay? I got a few lines of my own and I’ll front you all you want.”

“Okay,” Richard said, genuinely taken aback by this little-seen generous side of Roy DeMeo.

“Thanks, Roy,” Richard said, and it was done.

27

Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

Anna McNally, Richard’s mother, was terminally ill, dying of liver cancer. When Roberta, Richard’s sister, called to tell him of their mother’s impending death, he didn’t even want to go see her. Finally, he thought, she’s getting her due. But Barbara convinced him that he should go see his mother one last time, so he and Barbara went. Barbara had no use for Anna; she knew what a rotten mother she’d been to Richard. But still she was his mother, and Barbara felt he should see her one last time before she died. It was the right thing to do.

As the years had gone by Richard grew to despise his mother more and more. He pretty much blamed her for everything: for marrying Stanley; for having children with Stanley; for how Stanley mercilessly beat Florian—killed Florian—for how Stanley beat him.

When they arrived at the hospital, however, Anna did not even acknowledge his presence. She was facing the wall, holding blue rosary beads, repeating over and over “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” nonstop, as if it were a Tibetan chant. Richard spoke to her. He tried to say good-bye. But she wouldn’t even look at him. It seemed as though she were already dead and gone but her body didn’t yet realize it. She had shrunken to a mere shell of the robust, attractive woman she had once been. For Anna McNally, life had been cruel—a constant bitter struggle filled with heartache, hard menial labor, pain, suffering, and want. For Anna death would be a blessing, certainly better than her life had been, and she welcomed it.

She did in fact die later that night. Richard reluctantly went to the wake only because Barbara convinced him he should go. He did not cry. He showed no emotion.

Stanley Kuklinski also came to the wake, and Richard didn’t even say hello to him. It was all he could do to keep from taking Stanley by the neck in front of everyone and choking the cold heartless bastard to death, right there. With great effort he held himself back. Barbara could see he was getting all bent out of shape at the sight of his father, his lips twisting up, his face flushing. Sitting there next to Barbara, all Richard could think of was killing Stanley; harsh black-and-white images of what Stanley had done to him moving in his head like a grainy old slow-motion film. It took much restraint for Richard not to take his father outside, put him in his car, kill him, and dump him down a Pennsylvania mine shaft. Richard told Barbara he wanted to leave. In the car on the way back home, she said, “You okay, Richard?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I just…when I see Stanley it all comes back. That man should never have been allowed to have children.” Here he stopped talking. He didn’t want Barbara to hear the truth, what Stanley truly had done to him: how he had murdered Florian.

28

The Porn King of New York

True to his word, DeMeo gave Richard, on consignment, all the pornography he wanted. Richard bought himself a van, went to Brooklyn, and picked up boxes of porn produced by Roy, one hundred films per box. By now Richard had many contacts in the porn business across the country. He was distributing porn—both his and DeMeo’s—to wholesalers everywhere, and business boomed. For the first time Richard was making good money on a steady basis.

Richard was scrupulously careful about giving Roy all he was due, on time as promised. Roy began to take a shine to Richard. He admired his temerity, the fact that he had taken the beating “like a man,” as he told his crew. The fact that Richard had a gun in his pocket and didn’t use it; the fact that he came to the Gemini by himself. That, he knew, took balls.

DeMeo’s crew, however, didn’t like Richard. They thought he was aloof and unfriendly—he was—and he was a non-Italian…he was Polish. They made fun of Richard behind his back, told one another silly Polish jokes at Richard’s expense. Richard sensed the hostility, the cold stares, the sneers, but Richard didn’t care. He figured they were just jealous of his relationship with Roy, and he was right.

As months passed, Roy and Richard’s “friendship” grew. By now Roy had learned that Richard had killed well and discreetly for the De Cavalcante family, and one day, when Richard went to the Gemini to drop off some money, Roy sat him down in the rear apartment.

“I hear,” Roy said, “that you are cold like ice and do special work. That true?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“I have a lot of special work…. You interested?”

“Definitely.”

“Definitely?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll do it with no questions asked?”

“I’m not a curious man.”

Roy stared at Richard. Being stared at by Roy, with his penetrating black eyes, was like having two drills bore into you.

Roy had to see for himself if, in fact, Richard could do a piece of work, coldly and methodically.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s take a ride; you game?”

“Sure,” Richard said, and Roy, his cousin Joe Guglielmo, and Richard piled into Roy’s car. Joe was driving. Richard sat in the back.

“Let’s go to the city,” Roy ordered. He always ordered people to do things—never asked. In silence they drove to Manhattan. It was a nice cloudless day. The sky was blue. The sun shone. Someone was going to die. As they were going through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Roy turned around and handed Richard a short-barreled .38 with a suppressor on it.

“Use this,” he said.

“Okay,” Richard said, and casually slipped the gun into his waistband. They continued uptown and wound up on the west side of Greenwich Village, on a quiet tree-lined street. Richard’s old hunting ground. They passed a lone man walking a dog.

“Pull over,” Roy ordered. “See that guy with the dog?” he asked Richard.

“Yeah.”

“Cap him.”

“Here, now?”

“Here, now.”

Richard calmly stepped out of the car and walked toward the man with the dog, who was to the rear of the car, maybe twenty steps. After Richard passed him, he stopped and turned around and tailed the hapless man. He wanted to do the job right in front of Roy and Joe. Just as the dog walker passed the Lincoln, Richard caught up with him, made sure he was unobserved, quickly pulled out the gun, and fired, shooting the man in the back of the head.

He never even knew he died, or why.

He went down like a laundry bag, Richard confided.

Richard calmly walked back to the car and got in. “You’re fuckin’ cold like ice. Well done,” Roy said, smiling. “You’re one of us.” And they went back to Brooklyn. Richard had just proven to Roy, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was a stone-cold killer, and that murder that day cemented their bloody relationship. When they arrived back at the Gemini Lounge and went into the rear apartment, Joey Testa, Anthony Senter, Chris Goldberg, and Henry Borelli were all there.

“The big guy,” Roy announced, “is fuckin’ cold. I just saw him do a piece of work right in the middle of the fuckin’ street. He’s one of us.”

Thus, Richard became a part of a coven of serial killers never seen before or since; they would, in years to come, make homicide history.

Richard, however, didn’t like any of this: he didn’t want any of these guys knowing about him, what he did, what “special work” he performed. He didn’t trust them and didn’t like them; he thought it was just a matter of time before they caused problems, for themselves, for Roy, and for him.

Richard needed to use the john and went inside the bathroom. There was an odd, thick, fetid smell hanging in the air. As he was taking a leak, he looked around the shower curtain and there, hanging over the tub, was a dead man. His throat had been cut and there was a black-handled butcher knife sticking out of his chest. His blood, rubbery and thick, was slowly draining into the tub. They were bleeding him.

These fucking guys are really into it, Richard thought, and went back inside.

“You see the guy taking a shower?” Roy asked, laughing out loud at his joke. The others laughed too.

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Richard said, and they sat down and had a meal of spaghetti olio and broccoli rabe. Roy enjoyed cooking and loved to eat. As they sat there and ate, drinking red wine—with the guy hanging over the tub—they made jokes, talked about sports, about a girl both Joey and Anthony had fucked the night before.

After having espresso, Chris and Anthony spread a blue plastic tarp on the floor. They brought the guy out of the bathroom and proceeded to cut him into “manageable pieces,” as Roy put it. “Makes getting rid of him easier,” he told Richard. They had a professional autopsy kit, with razor-sharp saws and knives made for the sole purpose of cutting up bodies. Within minutes they cut him into five pieces. Each piece was wrapped in brown paper, then put into heavy-duty black garbage bags. Richard watched this through amused eyes, thinking, These guys are something else, admiring how easily and expertly they disassembled the body. They’d obviously had a lot of practice and knew what they were doing. Chris Goldberg especially seemed to enjoy taking apart the body.

When Richard was ready to leave and go back to his family, he asked to speak to Roy on the side. They went outside. By now the sun was setting. A nice breeze blew in from Jamaica Bay.

“Look, Roy,” Richard said. “Don’t get me wrong here, but I’d rather just work with you on any special jobs.”

“You’re reading my mind,” Roy said. “Big guy, you are my secret weapon. I ain’t mixing you up with my crew. Don’t worry. They are all good, very fuckin’ stand-up guys—Chris is like my son—but I ain’t mixing you up with them.”

“Okay,” Richard said. They hugged and kissed on the cheek, and Richard went back to his family in New Jersey. Like this, Richard Kuklinski became Roy DeMeo’s “secret weapon.”

The police could find no witnesses to the murder of the man walking his dog in the Village, no likely suspects, no rhyme or reason for the killing—still another unsolved New York homicide Richard Kuklinski had committed.

29

Family Man

Richard was scrupulously careful to keep what he was doing far from his family. Barbara had no idea what he was really up to; she didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell her.

Besides distributing porn, Richard rented a warehouse in North Bergen and from it sold counterfeit sweaters, handbags, jeans, and even perfumes. He bought large lots of these knockoff goods, had women sew brand-name labels into them, and sold them to wholesalers, who in turn sold them at flea markets all over the country. Money was rolling in. Richard still dabbled in hijacking, acting as the middleman between the hijackers and the buyers and always making a profit. He stopped drinking hard alcohol and tried not to gamble. He loved his family deeply and profoundly and didn’t want to do anything to undermine it. On the one hand, he was the perfect husband and father, considerate, loving, and generous to a fault. He’d gladly drive his daughters and their friends to movies and restaurants they liked; he took great joy in buying them nice clothing, two of everything; nothing was too good for his children. He constantly bought Barbara clothes and shoes and jewelry, mink coats—whatever she wanted. They went out to fancy restaurants every weekend. Richard always made sure Barbara’s favorite wine, Montrachet, was already at the table in an ice bucket waiting for her. He opened doors for her. He graciously pulled out her chair so she could sit down.

On the other hand, he could lose his temper over some little thing and become tyrannical, mean, a menace. The Kuklinski home could be, one moment, a tranquil Shangri-la, the next moment a storm-besieged island in the middle of a dangerous, turbulent sea.

When my dad was normal, he was golden. When he lost it he was…he was a maniac, his daughter Chris recently explained.

Richard bought himself a new white Cadillac. The family began looking for a new house in a better part of Jersey. West New York, Hudson County, was changing; many minority groups were moving in, and Richard and Barbara wanted to move to “greener pastures.”

They wound up buying a split-level ranch-style home in Dumont, New Jersey, with a garage and three bedrooms. This was a nice upper-middle-class neighborhood, a good place to bring up children, a reasonably juicy slice of the American dream come true. Barbara wanted a pool and the grounds covered with bright green healthy sod—no problem; whatever Barbara wanted, Richard was anxious and only too happy to provide. He still had no concept of money and readily spent it as quickly as it came in.

On weekends, the Kuklinskis had extravagant barbecues, invited everyone on the block. Richard was, for the most part, outgoing and friendly—a good neighbor, quick to offer a helping hand. He’d don a cooking apron and happily grill burgers and franks for his children and all their friends. He watched them play in the pool, making sure no one was hurt. He gladly doled out towels and helped dry his children off, happily cleaned the yard after a day of the kids playing. The Kuklinskis had also been blessed by the birth of a son. Barbara had always wanted a boy and her dream had come true. They named the boy Dwayne, after a country singer Richard was fond of.

When Richard did get mad, however, he’d explode. He didn’t seem capable of controlling his anger, and when he became angry his cruelty knew no bounds. It was as if he became a different person; he’d break his children’s toys and keepsakes, smash chairs and tables and knickknacks. After Barbara had the kitchen redone, all new appliances and cabinets installed, Richard lost it and actually tore the cabinets right off the wall, and he pulled the kitchen sink out and tossed it through one of the kitchen windows.

Afterward, he always felt bad, indeed hated what he’d done. He was so angry at himself that he couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror. When he was like that, in one of his out-of-control tirades, all Barbara and the children could do was stay the hell out of his way, and they did, as best they could.

Also, when Richard was mad at Barbara, he had no reservations about abusing her in front of the children. It was as though he didn’t even know they were there. He slapped her, pushed her, beat her. Horrified, his daughters watched this, begging that he stop, screaming and crying and pleading with him to stop. If not for his daughters’ intervention, their pleas, he might well have killed Barbara in a fit of rage. If he had killed her in such a fit, he would also have killed his children.

“If Mommy dies, Merrick,” he actually told his firstborn, “you know I’ll have to kill you and your sister. I couldn’t leave any witnesses…you understand?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Merrick said.

Barbara was, she said, trapped. There was nowhere for her to turn. If she went to the police and showed them her injuries, her black eyes and bruises, he might be arrested; but she knew that he’d be out on bail soon enough and he’d come looking to kill her. He had told her as much in plain language on numerous occasions.

And she believed him.

In her heart Barbara was certain, she explained, that Richard would destroy her if she ever went to the authorities or did anything to cause him to lose his family. Before that he’d kill them all.

However, as odd as this sounds, Barbara was not cowed by Richard. She’d stand up to him, defy him, point her finger in his face and dare him to hit her again—which he usually did. “Big shot, think you’re so tough, beating up a woman—you aren’t tough. You ain’t tough at all!” she’d say, right in his face.

If, daughter Merrick recently explained, my mom had kept her mouth shut it wouldn’t’ve been so bad. She made things worse—a bad situation even worse. It was like she wanted to egg him on. I used to tell her to be quiet—“Mommy, be quiet”—not to answer him back, not to stand up to him—“Mommy, shut up”—but she didn’t.

Barbara’s only way of fighting back, of not losing her own identity, who she was, was to stand up to her husband, and she did, and she regularly suffered the consequences.

Daughter Chris explained it this way: My father married the wrong woman. If, say, Mom was more meek, I mean less outspoken, the tirades would’ve ended much more quickly. But she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut and made it worse. Even when he was actually striking her, beating on her, my mom would taunt, berate, and belittle my dad. My mother…my mother encouraged it.

Barbara, however, does not feel that way: There was no way, she explained, that I was going to allow him to walk all over me and I was going to keep my mouth shut and let him abuse me. I had nowhere to turn, no one to ask for help, and so I told him…I told him how I felt. Maybe, I mean now looking back on it, I was encouraging him, enabling him, but I was not about to let him make a doormat out of me and keep my mouth shut; forget that.

Afterward, Richard was always angry at himself for terrorizing his daughters. Dwayne was still too young to know what was going on. Yet, Richard never said he was sorry or that it wouldn’t happen again. He acted as though nothing had occurred; everything was just peachy and dandy. It was as though a terrible storm had come and gone and the destruction was just a natural consequence of the storm. Nothing more. He had nothing to do with it. It was all the storm’s fault.

Daughter Chris took to calling the operator after one of her father’s tirades and hanging up when she heard the operator’s voice; she somehow felt comforted and reassured knowing that there was someone at the other end of the phone, someone out there who would help. Chris and her sister began to pack an “escape bag,” as they called it. In it were some clothes, a favorite toy or two, an extra pair of shoes for each of them. They figured it was only a matter of time before their father really did kill their mother, and they wanted to have an escape kit ready to go so they could run out the door when the time came.

In no uncertain terms, Barbara again told Richard that if he ever laid a finger on her children, she’d cut his throat when he was sleeping. She said this with such cold, calm sincerity that he believed her. Besides, he would cut his hands off before he ever physically hurt any of his children.

Barbara…Barbara was another matter entirely.

Sometimes, when Richard was losing it, his face paling, his lips twisting up, that terrible clicking sound coming from his lips, he’d actually strike himself with his fist so hard he’d knock himself out cold. This was, he recently confided, the only way he could avoid striking Barbara and terrorizing his little girls: to knock himself out, and he did.

Richard knocking himself unconscious was a frightening, unsettling, sobering thing to see. Not only did he hit himself, he banged his head against the wall so hard he’d knock himself out cold, come to after a while, and silently leave the house, like a tornado going away—quietly disappearing over the horizon.

True, Richard did not strike his children or physically abuse them in any way, but he was causing them great anxiety and pain inside…a thing Barbara seemed oblivious to. Outwardly, Chris and Merrick appeared well adjusted and happy, but inside they were in turmoil. They did, however, make friends easily, were outgoing and gregarious, and did reasonably well in school.

Merrick, though, was still plagued by kidney and bladder problems, high fever, infections, and convulsions, and spent a lot of time in the hospital, and consequently missed an inordinate amount of school, several months of every year.

When Merrick was hospitalized, her father was always there, getting her whatever she needed and making sure she was comfortable and receiving good treatment. He catered not only to his daughter but to all the other children on whatever ward she was housed. He was always bringing dolls and toys and candy to the kids on the ward. He had tremendous empathy for these sick children and would gladly do anything he could, including paying for procedures and medication children needed that their parents could not afford. One child, a seven-year-old girl in the room next to Merrick’s, was dying of cancer, had only a few days left. Her parents could not afford the hospital TV, and it was disconnected. When Richard came to see Merrick and heard what had happened, he was outraged that the child’s TV was disconnected, went and found the technician, paid him, and made him immediately activate the child’s television. Richard was a true Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No matter what he did, however, what kind of outburst he had, no matter how afraid of him she was, Merrick always forgave her father, never ever held anything against him. These two, Richard and Merrick, had some kind of special bond that neither Barbara nor Chris had with Richard.

Both Chris and Barbara held Richard’s outbursts against him, would never forgive or forget what he did. But never Merrick. To this day, after all that has happened, Merrick does not have a bad word to say about her dad, holds nothing against him. He is her sunrise and sunset, and she will be there for him to the very end, no matter what, no matter where, come hell or high water. Richard was somewhat jealous of his son Dwayne, because of the attention he received from Barbara.

He confided that he actually didn’t want a boy because he felt somewhere deep inside that he’d become competition for Barbara’s undivided attention, even for his daughters’ attention. Richard was jealous in the extreme of any other male.

30

Hit Man

“Can you meet me at the diner on my side of the Tappan Zee Bridge?” Roy DeMeo asked.

“Sure, be there in an hour,” said Richard, and he was soon on his way to meet Roy in his flashy new white Cadillac El Dorado. Roy and Richard had developed and perfected this simple clandestine way of talking. Roy would call Richard on his beeper and punch in the number of a Brooklyn phone booth, Richard would use a phone booth near his house to phone him back, and like this they managed to talk without fear of an FBI tap, a constant, very real concern among mob guys. Goodfellas were falling like flies because of the newly developed and cleverly applied Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. All anyone had to do to be convicted of RICO and go to jail was talk about committing a crime, or conspire, as the statute says; no crime actually had to be committed.

As Richard drove to his meeting with Roy, he wondered what piece of work he had. Since the day Richard had blown away the dog walker in the Village, he had undergone a radical metamorphosis; he had now totally committed himself to murder, to killing for profit.

Cold, detached, and exceedingly calculating—sober now—Richard was about to embark on a violent journey that would leave scores of people dead, mangled, tortured, buried and burned alive, thrown into bottomless pits, fed while still alive to ravenous rats, fed to crabs along the abandoned piers of Manhattan’s West Side.

Whatever murders Roy DeMeo was committing with his Brooklyn crew of serial killers, he kept his promise and never involved Richard in any of those. No, DeMeo would use Richard for special jobs, as he thought of them. DeMeo had become the premier assassin for the Gambino family. He was filling hits for them—and other families—left and right, several a week. His reputation as an efficient, brutal killer had grown to monumental proportions. Even the notorious Gotti brothers, Gene and John, steered clear of DeMeo and his serial killers. His bar, the Gemini Lounge, had aptly become known as “the Slaughterhouse.”

Richard and Roy met at a busy diner near the Westchester side of the Tappan Zee Bridge. They greeted each other with a hug and kiss on the cheek, as is the Italian way. Roy chose this place because most people that went to a diner were on their way somewhere and probably wouldn’t come back, and this place was off the beaten path of mob guys; here, it was highly unlikely that anyone in “the life” would see them together. Their business was the business of murder—a serious life-and-death enterprise for all involved. There was no room for mistakes or oversight, for bad timing or miscalculations.

“I got a piece of work for you,” DeMeo said. “Nothing fancy, just make sure it’s done quickly and that no one knows about it…got it?”

“Got it.”

DeMeo handed Richard a photograph with a Queens address on the back. “This is him. He always carries; be careful.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Richard said. Roy handed him an envelope. There was twenty thousand dollars cash in it. Nothing else had to be said. The less said the better. They hugged and kissed each other good-bye and went their separate ways.

Still, in the back of his mind, Richard remembered the beating Roy had given him.

The following day Richard was parked on a residential street in Queens, two blocks from Calvary Cemetery. The mark lived in a two-family redbrick house, on the ground level. He had, Richard quickly discerned, a pretty wife and two little boys. The fact that the mark had a family didn’t matter to Richard, had nothing to do with the job at hand, though he would not kill him in front of his family. After a time the mark left his house, got into his car, and drove off. Richard followed him to an outdoor four-level garage on Queens Boulevard and parked in the spot just next to the mark’s car. Richard first flattened the front left tire of the mark’s car; then he unlocked the trunk of his Caddy, sat in his car, and calmly waited for the mark to return. Richard had unusual patience in these situations. He could sit still for hours on end, his mind drifting all over the place, but never losing focus on the job. This time it didn’t take long for the mark to return, carrying packages. When he saw the flat, he grimaced, then opened the trunk of his car. The moment was perfect. Richard moved quickly, silently slid out of the car.

“Got a flat?” Richard asked the mark, stopping and looking as if he cared, as if he were a concerned good Samaritan.

“Yeah,” the mark said, and before he knew it Richard had a gun to his head and made him get in the trunk of the Caddy, on his stomach. Richard now handcuffed him, taped his mouth shut, and warned him to be quiet. He closed the trunk and drove out of the garage. He had a pistol under his seat and one in his pocket. If a cop pulled him over, he’d kill him—simple.

Listening to country music, Richard made his way to the bottomless pits in Pennsylvania. When he arrived there, a desolate area he knew well, he pulled the mark from his car, marched him to a mine shaft, shot him once in the head, and let him drop down the gaping hole, which seemed to swallow up the hapless man. Richard casually disposed of him as if he were discarding a bag of trash. He turned, went back to his car, and drove home to his wife and children…just another guy returning home after a day’s work.

It didn’t take long for people in organized crime to learn that Richard was available for hire, up and running and particularly reliable. The fact that he was non-Italian and could never be made was a plus because it enabled him to work for any of the seven East Coast crime families—the Pontis and the De Cavalcantes of New Jersey, and the Gambino, Lucchese, Colombo, Genovese, and Bonanno factions of New York—without conflict, problem, or needing to explain to anyone. He did not have to ask permission to fill a contract. He was a freelance agent, and was soon receiving contracts from skippers (captains) affiliated with different families.

Richard carried out each hit with great care, with patience and cunning, never in a hurry. He didn’t tell anyone what he was doing, when or where or how; that was his business; he kept to himself. He didn’t hang out with mob guys and always went home to his family.

Barbara had no idea where he was going when he left home. She learned not to question her mercurial, exceedingly moody husband. Barbara had learned to live with Richard, accept him for what he was, stoically tolerated his mood swings, his temper, even his abuse. She had, in reality, no other choice. As long as he didn’t hit her children, she accepted his abuse. It was blatantly obvious to Barbara, even now, that Richard resented Dwayne; he was not nearly as warm to him as he’d been to Merrick and Chris, and this greatly concerned Barbara. She knew that in a fit of rage, Richard could very well hurt Dwayne…accidentally break his neck…

For Richard, killing by contract became a kind of life-and-death cat-and-mouse game, a lethal chess match that he was intent upon winning. He knew that if he was caught and exposed, he’d lose his family, truly the only thing in the world he’d ever cared about. Yet, Richard continued taking contracts and filling them. He would go talk to anyone, as he puts it. He figured if he was careful, meticulous, and sober, he could earn enough money to retire, buy a stately home on the beach somewhere, and live well, provide all his family needed. They would want for nothing.

It didn’t, of course, work out that way.

Through his new friend, partner, and crime associate, Roy DeMeo, Richard managed to secure all kinds of handguns, shotguns, and semi-automatic .22 Magnum rifles, which Richard cut down—both the stock and the barrel—creating a perfect weapon with which to kill human beings at close range. Roy had an inexhaustible supply of armaments, which were regularly pillaged from Kennedy Airport, conveniently located a mere ten minutes from the Gemini Lounge.

DeMeo had weapons all over the Slaughterhouse. He often held them, fondled and caressed them like a woman’s breast, as though they were warm, cute, cuddly teddy bears, not instruments of sudden death. A gun, in DeMeo’s hand, was a means to an end: dead people.

One day when Richard went to the lounge to drop off money for Roy, his end of porn profits, Roy was all smiles and hugs and happy to see him. The usual group of serial killers was present, Anthony and Joey, Chris and Freddie DiNome, and Roy’s cousin Dracula. They all sat around the big round table and had steak and potatoes and homemade red wine. Off on the left there were weights and a heavy bag.

Richard didn’t like any of these people, but he sat there like one of the boys, bantering and laughing and eating. Roy ate like a slob, talked with food in his mouth, a real gavone (an ill-mannered man).

At the end of the meal, Roy’s mood suddenly changed—he was even more mercurial than Richard—and he picked up an Uzi with a long, ominous-looking silencer, a weapon that fires fifteen nine-millimeter parabellum rounds per second.

“Beautiful fuckin’ piece,” he said, suddenly pointing the gun at Richard and chambering it, a sickening metallic sound—click-click.

Everyone around the table quickly moved back, as if on cue, no one smiling or laughing or merry now. In the bat of the eye, Richard knew, his chest could be filled with gushing bullet holes. He stared at Roy curiously.

“Why you coming at me like this, Roy? What the fuck?” he said.

“I hear,” Roy said, “you’re saying shit about me.”

“That’s bullshit. I have anything to say about you, I’ll say it to your face. Bring the motherfucker here who said that; I want to hear this for myself. It’s bullshit!” Richard said, getting hot. The Uzi still pointing at Richard’s wide chest, Roy stared at him with his black, white-shark eyes. Outwardly, Richard appeared tough and defiant, but inside he was all tight. He well knew Roy was a psychotic killer, that the Uzi could literally tear him apart in seconds. Roy’s finger was, he could see, actually on the trigger. The silence in the room—the Slaughterhouse—became thick and heavy. Stark images of the guy they had bled over the tub came to Richard.

“Yeah, you would,” Roy finally said, lowering the Uzi. “You got balls, big guy. I know you got balls,” and he laughed this sickening hyenalike cackle he had, and everyone moved back to the table. The moment passed as quickly as it came. Roy put down the Uzi as if it never happened. Soon Roy and Richard moved outside. Roy sort of said he was sorry. Richard assured him of his friendship. The two hugged. Richard was soon on his way back to New Jersey. As he went, he cursed DeMeo under his breath; DeMeo had pulled a gun on him twice, bullied him—embarrassed him. All the way back to Dumont, Richard vowed to kill the prick.

When Richard arrived home, Barbara immediately knew he was in a foul mood, and she and the girls steered clear of him. Barbara made sure Dwayne stayed in his room. Richard put on the television and watched a cowboy movie—his favorite—and seethed about Roy DeMeo. Yes, he would kill Roy; but he’d wait, he’d be patient; he’d do it when the right time came. Meanwhile, he’d use him.

Just as Richard had thought, Barbara fussed constantly over their son. She couldn’t get enough of him, and Richard did outwardly resent little Dwayne. He never felt like that about his daughters, but he did about Dwayne. Barbara tried to play down Richard’s jealousy, but inside she worried that Richard might actually do something to hurt Dwayne; she worried that he’d explode over an inconsequential event and vent his anger on little Dwayne.

“Hurt my son and you’re dead,” she told Richard on numerous occasions.

If Barbara had known whom she was talking to, she would have, she says now, packed, grabbed her children, and run for the hills. Still, she knew no matter where she fled, he’d find her, he’d never let her go. She became so concerned about Dwayne that she began bringing him to her mother’s home for the weekend so he’d be “out of harm’s way,” as she put it.

The porn distributor Paul Rothenberg, Tony Argrila’s partner, was becoming a problem. Rothenberg was an in-your-face guy, pushy, belligerent, and curt, a stocky individual with a potatolike nose. He had been arrested numerous times over the years for making and distributing pornography, which itself was not illegal, but Rothenberg pushed the envelope and sold bestiality films and films involving minors, heavy sadism—films in which blood was drawn, golden shower films—and was arrested for the distribution of these types of products.

“If people didn’t want to see them, I couldn’t sell them,” he was fond of saying, and he went on selling these exceedingly hard-core, kinky productions, which were generating a lot of profit. The more perverse and kinky they were, the more they sold, indeed flew off shelves in stores across America.

Richard had a hard-on for Rothenberg: he blamed him for his initial troubles with DeMeo and was biding his time to have revenge. Richard firmly, obsessively, believed in revenge. He could never turn the other cheek. That was as foreign to him as the moon. If someone did him a disservice, he didn’t feel complete until he hurt that person.

The NYPD raided the film lab and confiscated truckloads of porn, valued by Rothenberg’s lawyer at a quarter of a million dollars. The NYPD well knew that organized crime had muscled into the porn business, and the police and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau were intent on exposing this insidious business. They were sure that the Gambino family was deeply involved—everyone on the street knew that—but they needed proof, tangible evidence that they could use in a court of law. No easy task, for someone would have to be willing to take the stand and point a finger.

The police also confiscated Argrila and Rothenberg’s books, and there they found checks made out to Roy DeMeo, who had cashed the checks through the Borough of Brooklyn Credit Union, the first direct connection to the Gambino family.

The cops suspected Roy had links to organized crime, but had no proof. Detectives began trailing DeMeo all over, though he often managed to lose them. “He was wily like a fox during the first days of hunting season,” an NYPD detective recently confided.

Roy obviously knew that if Argrila and Rothenberg cooperated with the police, he’d be in trouble; not only him, but Nino Gaggi as well: Gaggi had been there the day Roy strong-armed Rothenberg. Roy knew he had to protect Gaggi at all costs: if Gaggi was busted because of this shakedown, Roy would be in deep shit, might very well have to be killed. Nino Gaggi had murdered people for a lot less.

DeMeo didn’t think Tony Argrila would talk, but he didn’t trust Rothenberg. DeMeo contacted Rothenberg and took him for a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant in Flatbush, to feel him out, and he didn’t like what he felt. Roy, like many people who come from and were educated on the street, had an overly developed sense of danger, and he sensed that Paul Rothenberg couldn’t be trusted, that he was resentful of the money Roy had been shaking him down for; that he felt his, Rothenberg’s, troubles with the law were being disproportionately magnified because of Roy DeMeo. Acting like a concerned friend, Roy gave Rothenberg a few thousand cash to help pay his lawyers, saying he’d be there if, in fact, Rothenberg needed more money. For Rothenberg it was not about money. He’d always resented Roy, the beating he’d given him, and felt no kind of friendship or kinship at all with DeMeo.

“He’s a fuckin’ punk and I ain’t taking any heat for him,” he told one of the girls who worked in the lab. When asked if he felt in danger he said, “I know too much for anyone to hurt me”—a fatal mistake in judgment. It didn’t take long for this quote to reach DeMeo.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office office urged Rothenberg’s lawyer to convince his client that he should tell about how the Mafia was shaking him down. The district attorney’s office didn’t give a flying fuck about the porn Rothenberg and Argrila were making and distributing: they wanted the mob; that’s where the headlines were, and all prosecutors in all places love headlines. A good example of this would, of course, be former federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani: “He never saw a camera he didn’t like” was a running joke among reporters covering Giuliani’s much publicized war against organized crime.

There were several meetings between Rothenberg’s lawyer, Herb Kassner, and assistant DAs. DeMeo, who had extensive connections in the NYPD—i.e., crooked cops who sold him information—soon learned what was in the wind. He immediately called Richard to a meeting in Brooklyn.

When Richard arrived, Nino Gaggi himself was there. He was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt and large aviator-type glasses. Introductions were made. What Roy wanted done, the murder of Rothenberg, he would not entrust to any of his guys. Rothenberg knew them all, and Roy wanted a professional to do this job. His guys were great for killing and dismembering in the Gemini apartment, but Roy knew better than to involve them in a job that required finesse, careful planning…discretion.

Roy, as usual, got right to the point: “This fuckin’ Jew Rothenberg’s a problem,” he said. “Did you hear what he said about knowing so much we couldn’t hurt him?” he asked, incredulous.

“I heard,” Richard said.

“Our friend here is concerned. It’s because of him that we’re able to earn; it’s because of him no one bothers us.” Richard nodded respectfully; he understood.

Gaggi spoke now for the first time. “I made the mistake of letting this kike see me. He knows who I am. It’s a problem. The cocksucker can put me away.”

Nino Gaggi dreaded the thought of going to jail. He viewed himself as a businessman who just happened to rob and kill, and jail never played into the equation. Most mob guys know—never forget—that jail is an inherent part of the territory, but not Nino Gaggi. He was above that. Jail wasn’t for him.

“I can take care of this problem,” Richard offered. He now knew why he’d been called to Brooklyn, and he knew this was a good chance to get in good with Gaggi and the Gambino people. “I’ll be happy to go see him,” Richard added.

“Good,” Roy said, and told Richard where Paul Rothenberg lived, the type of car he drove, even the license plate number. Nothing else had to be said. Now it was just a matter of time.

When Richard went out on a “piece of work” he usually took his van with tinted windows. He brought a supply of club soda and a plastic container he could use to relieve himself.

Being an efficient contract killer was all about planning and patience—being able to sit and watch and wait for the right moment to strike; this was the part of a piece of work that Richard enjoyed the most, what he excelled at, the stalking and planning.

Sunday July 29 was a hot, humid day. Richard discreetly parked his van a block away from Rothenberg’s house and sat there waiting. Roy had told Richard that Rothenberg was married, and that he often took his wife shopping. Rothenberg also had a black girlfriend. Richard had met her several times. Richard had with him today a .38 with a silencer. Patient and calm, he sat there in the July heat waiting for Rothenberg, listening to country music.

When Rothenberg finally walked out of the house, he took a rag from the trunk and began cleaning the windows of his car. Roy had asked Richard to call him when he spotted Rothenberg, which Richard now did from a phone booth on the corner there. He beeped in the number. Roy called him right back.

“What’s cookin’?” Roy asked.

“I’m looking at him right now. He’s in front of his house cleaning the windows of his car,” Richard said. “Looks like he’s going somewhere.”

“Call me and let me know where he goes. If possible I want to see this go down.”

“Roy, that complicates—”

“Rich, just call,” Roy insisted, always the bully, always the boss.

Richard hung up. He didn’t like the idea of letting Roy know when and where the hit would go down, but he’d do as Roy asked.

Soon Rothenberg’s wife left the house. They both got in the car and off they went, Richard following. Richard did not know the area well, but he managed to trail Rothenberg to a mall. Because it was the weekend there were many shoppers. Rothenberg parked, his wife got out of the car and went into a store. Rothenberg began reading the sports section of the Daily News. Richard called Roy and told him where he was, that he was planning to pop him right there. Because of the silencer he’d be able to do the job if the right moment presented itself.

“I’m on my way,” Roy said. “Wait for me!” he added.

“Are you nuts?” Richard began, but Roy hung up. Angry about this, Richard went back to his van. Shaking his head in disgust, he sat there, watching Rothenberg read the paper. He knew that once his wife came out of the store, the moment would pass. He would not kill him in front of his wife. Rothenberg was parked off to the left of the large lot, near an alley between two cinder-block buildings where goods were unloaded from trucks.

Sure enough, Richard spotted DeMeo’s white Lincoln come speeding into the lot, tires screeching. Richard rolled his eyes. There were three guys in the car: Freddie, Dracula, and Chris. Freddie spotted Richard’s van and pointed to it, Richard could see. They started toward Richard. Roy got out of the car and walked over to the van.

“Where is he?” Roy asked.

“There, but I don’t understand—what’s this all about? Why’d you bring your army?”

Before Roy could answer, Richard watched Rothenberg get out of his car and start toward the alley, moving quickly, looking over his shoulder, fear about his face.

“He spotted you,” Richard said, pissed off. He stuck the .38 into his pants, got out of the van, and went after Rothenberg, who now began to run into the alley. When Richard reached the alley, he pulled out the .38, aimed carefully, fired two times, and dropped Rothenberg. He hid the gun, turned, and made his way back to the van.

Roy approached him. “Fuckin’ great shot, Rich,” he said, smiling.

“Yeah,” Richard said, getting into his van, keeping his anger to himself.

“You mad, Rich?”

“Roy, come on, I just popped someone, I want to get the fuck outta here,” Richard said, and pulled away.

Richard got lost but soon found his way to the Belt Parkway and headed for home, thinking that Roy DeMeo was nuts, that he had watched too many gangster movies. And Richard didn’t like the fact that three other guys had seen the hit; this was still another thing Richard had against Roy DeMeo. The list was growing.

As Richard drove back to his family, a man in a red Mustang cut him off. Richard pulled up alongside the red Mustang and began to curse the guy, made a fist at him. The driver of the Mustang gave Richard the finger. Incensed, Richard followed him off the parkway and caught up with him at a light. Just the two of them were there. The guy jumped out of his car. Richard shot him dead, made a turn, and left him there by his car, another unsolved murder done by Richard. With no witnesses and no apparent motive, the police could do nothing. He soon dropped the .38 in a creek, but he kept the silencer. He had used the gun to kill two people within the span of forty minutes.

Richard returned home, had a turkey-on-rye sandwich, sat down in the living room, and watched TV with Barbara. The children were sleeping.

Angry, serious-faced detectives immediately went and picked up Roy DeMeo and questioned him about Paul Rothenberg’s murder. He had nothing to say other than his name and address. Anthony Argrila—lucky for him—had been boating when his partner was murdered by Richard. He swore he knew nothing about Roy DeMeo, nothing about anything, said that his partner had “a lot of dealings with people I know nothing about.”

“Truth is,” he told skeptical detectives, “he dealt with people I never even met. Truth is, I think, no I’m sure, he was stealing from me, you know,” he said.

However, the police trailed Tony Argrila and actually saw him meet with DeMeo several times, proving that he lied through his teeth; but there wasn’t much they could do about it at this point.

More than anything in the world, Roy DeMeo wanted to be made, and he was hoping this murder would do the trick. A big smile about his pudgy, dark-eyed face, Roy went to Nino Gaggi at his Bensonhurst home on Cropsy Avenue and proudly told his boss, hopefully his sponsor—the man that could have him inducted into the Gambino family—that Rothenberg was dead, and that he’d actually seen him go down. Gaggi wanted all the details, which Roy gladly regaled him with.

“Good, good job!” Nino told Roy, proud of him. How quickly he had disposed of this potentially serious problem. He hugged and kissed Roy, as is the custom. Little did Nino Gaggi know that Roy DeMeo would soon bring the world crashing down on his balding head.

Richard did not ask for or receive any payment for this hit. It was a favor. But Roy later told him, “The slate’s clean between us,” forgiving fifty thousand dollars Richard owed Roy for porn. All nice and neat and tidy, it seemed.

31