Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Richard became better and better at shooting pool and actually did start making money. With his shy ways and innocent baby face most people he played were sure they could beat him, but would inevitably lose to him. He got into arguments and fights with guys in pool halls and bars, and he was quick to smack with a pool stick anyone who got in his face or reneged on a bet. He quickly came to realize that if you struck first with a lot of force, you won, the fight was over, the dispute settled. End of story. Might really was always right.

His reputation quickly spread all over Jersey City and Hoboken and few wanted to tangle with Richard Kuklinski. Several times Richard got into runs-ins with guys who were with friends, and even then he wouldn’t back down. He was fearless to the point of being reckless. One such time he fought two brothers who with a third guy got the better of him. But Richard waited for these three guys to leave the bar, followed them home, found out where they lived, and went back a few nights later. He waited in the shadows for the right moment and stabbed, from behind, one of the brothers. He then went after the friend and stabbed him in the stomach as he went up the stairs to his home. He tried to find the second brother, but he had hightailed it out of Jersey City. Richard earned a reputation as a genuinely dangerous guy. Other toughs his age quickly gravitated to him. He was a natural leader, had a quick acerbic wit, and would cut a throat as readily as spit on a soiled sidewalk.

Soon Richard had his own gang of sorts. There were five of them—three Polish guys (including Richard), an Irish kid, and an Italian. They called themselves the Coming Up Roses, and each of them got a tattoo on his left hand of a parchment scroll with those words, “Coming Up Roses.” For them the words meant that there were bright things ahead, and that if anyone fucked with any of them he’d end up plant fertilizer. They swore an oath of loyalty and soon began plotting robberies and stick-ups together.

Richard bought his first gun from a guy he played pool with. It was an old .38 revolver with a six-inch barrel. He and his gang went to the abandoned Jersey City waterfront and took target practice. They were all the children of two-fisted, heavy-drinking, blue-collar people, high school dropouts, antisocial toughs, fearless and reckless; trouble waiting to happen.

The second individual Richard killed was a man named Doyle, a red-faced Irishman that talked out the side of a thin-lipped mouth. He hung around a pool hall–bar in Hoboken called Danny’s. He drank a lot, and when he drank he became loud, mean, and abusive. Richard was playing pool for money with Doyle, winning game after game, and Doyle began calling Richard names—“dumb Polack,” “cheater.”

Everyone knew Doyle was a Jersey City cop, and even Richard, with his homicidal hair-trigger temper, would not assault him out in the open. But the more Doyle abused Richard, the madder Richard became. Doyle very much reminded Richard of his father—a fatal resemblance. Rather than tangle with Doyle in the open, Richard quietly put down the pool cue, left the bar, and waited for Doyle. After a time Doyle also left the bar, got into his car parked down the block, lit up a cigarette, and just sat there. Richard soon realized that Doyle had fallen asleep. As always, Richard had a knife on him. But Doyle was a cop, and if Richard stabbed him he’d have to kill him, and he’d be first on the list of likely suspects, a thing Richard was intent upon avoiding. He turned away, went to a nearby gas station, bought a quart of gas, and quickly made his way back to the sleeping Doyle. The driver’s window was open. Without a second thought, Richard quickly and silently poured the gas into the car, on Doyle, struck a match, and threw it in the car. A fireball exploded. Doyle was quickly consumed and killed by the ferocious flames and intense heat. Richard stayed nearby and actually enjoyed hearing Doyle scream, the smell of his burned flesh coming to him on a strong breeze off the nearby Hudson River. Satisfied, actually smiling, Richard made his way home; he never said a word to anyone about what he had done, not even his Coming Up Roses cronies.

Richard had grown into a very tall, handsome young man. He had light blond hair, honey colored almond-shaped eyes, wide Slavic cheekbones, and heart-shaped lips. He looked like a young Jimmy Stewart and had a beguiling shy way about him that women were drawn to. In most all the bars and pool halls where Richard hung out, there were older women, as he had come to think of them, and they soon found their way to Richard and invited him home with them, and thus Richard lost his virginity. It didn’t take him long to realize that women found him attractive, which he enjoyed, and he began dressing to please women, but he was still painfully shy and unless a woman approached him he was hard-pressed to strike up a conversation.

Often, however, women approached him.

One such woman, a twenty-five-year-old named Linda, took Richard home when he was sixteen, and he began to live with her. She always wanted to have sex and he was always happy to accommodate her. She was short with black hair, attractive in a simple way. But she was always “in the mood,” it seemed, and Richard gave her what she wanted, when she wanted it—and how and where she wanted it. He had a particularly large member she couldn’t seem to get enough of.

By now Richard had come to hate his mother and visited her less and less. His sister, Roberta, had acquired a reputation as a loose girl, easy to have, and Richard didn’t like that. He warned her several times to “keep your drawers on,” to no avail. His younger brother, Joseph, like him, was tall and thin with a thick mop of blond hair. Joseph did not do well in school, was always in fights; he had punched out a teacher. At Anna’s urging Richard spoke to Joe, tried to get him to behave, but it was like talking to a wall.

Joseph, like Richard, had an antisocial personality, was clearly a budding psychopath… would think nothing of breaking a bottle and cutting someone’s face wide open. Richard’s father, Stanley, was a short man with black hair, five foot seven or so, yet both Richard and Joseph were well over six feet and still growing. This sometimes caused Richard to wonder if Stanley was really his father. Richard had come to think of his mother as an unkempt, slovenly whore and had little use for her. However, when he found out that Stanley came around the house, yelling at and slapping Anna, he went and found his father, put a .38 to his head, pulled the hammer back, and warned him through tight lips and clenched teeth that if he ever went near his family again, he’d kill him and dump him in the river. After that, Richard didn’t speak to his father for many years, and Stanley never troubled Anna again. Truth is, Richard was heartfelt sorry he didn’t kill Stanley and often thought about going back and finishing the job.

Even now, so many years later, Richard regrets not having blown Stanley away. He confided: Stanley was a first-grade, sadistic prick. He shouldn’t’ve never been allowed to have children. A thousand times if once I wondered why I didn’t kill him. If I had to do it over, I would’ve done the job right for sure.

The Coming Up Roses gang, under Richard’s leadership, committed more and more crimes: broke into warehouses, held up liquor stores and drugstores, burglarized rich people with nice homes in Jersey City Heights and Lincoln Park, the most exclusive areas in Jersey City. Because Richard was cautious and carefully planned all their jobs, thought about them from numerous angles, they were successful. In all his short life Richard excelled at three things: playing pool, sudden violence, and crime.