Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

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.

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.