Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Richard just listened. Back at the Gemini, Richard did not go into the club. He knew DeMeo’s people were inside, and he didn’t want to be around them. DeMeo thanked Richard for coming, and hugged and kissed him, and soon Richard was on the way back to his family, feeling in his gut that there really would be trouble someday because of John Gotti. It was clear in Gotti’s eyes, the way he moved, his body language, even how he gestured with his hands. He was, Richard thought, a storm waiting to happen.

Richard never drove straight home anymore. He always took roundabout routes, would suddenly pull off the parkway and wait for cars to pass him. He didn’t want to be followed home. He didn’t want anyone to know where he lived. Above all else, Richard wanted to protect his family, to keep the street and what he did far away from them.

Barbara still had no idea what Richard did, that he was one of the most proficient killers organized crime had ever known. However, one time she did find a gun wrapped in a rag in the garage, up on a high shelf. She put it right back, didn’t even mention it to him, not sure how he would react.

Richard was still losing his temper and abusing Barbara. He would often come home in a bad mood and get into an argument with Barbara over something small and inconsequential, she’d get in his face, he’d lose it and do damage—slap her, rant and rave, break things with his superhuman strength.

Barbara had bought a gorgeous dining table. It was made of thick Italian marble and had wide marble legs. It cost a fortune, but she wanted it, so they bought it. What Barbara wanted, Barbara got. The table was so heavy it took four burly men to pick it up and carry it inside the house and place it where Barbara wanted it. One afternoon Richard came home in a foul mood. He and Barbara got into it, and the two of them were arguing; he started to lose it. He wanted to slap her, wring her neck, throw her up against the wall. But rather than hurt her, he actually picked up the beautiful marble dining table and tossed it right out the large bay window that faced the street.

Aghast, Barbara berated him, having no idea just how truly dangerous Richard was, whom she was arguing with.

She would later say, Mind you, we are talking about a table that took four men to bring in the house. He picked it up like nothing and tossed it right out the window, shaking her head at the memory, smoking.

Unfortunately, these kinds of outbursts were happening in front of Merrick and Chris, though not Dwayne. It was Merrick that would usually calm her father down. She had a soothing effect on him. She talked softly to him, got him to leave the house, got him to take her to feed the ducks.

Over in the town of Demarest, a ten-minute drive away (the place where Pat Kane was born and raised), there was a small freshwater pond in the center of a park, called the Demarest Pond. Flocks of wild ducks always gathered there. Richard enjoyed going to this tranquil pond and feeding the ducks. He’d buy bread in a nearby store, sit on a green park bench just near the calm water’s edge, and feed the ducks. He often took Merrick there with him, and together they’d toss the ducks small pieces of bread, which they quickly gobbled up, and as they sat there Merrick would calm her father, talk to him about his childhood, make him forget his anger at Barbara, his anger at the world. Merrick had, for some unfathomable reason, a very calming, soothing effect on her dad. Chris rarely did this with her father, though Barbara did often come here with Richard too. They both enjoyed sitting on the bench, close to the calm pond, feeding the different ducks, talking quietly… at peace. The pond truly had a calming effect on Richard. The ducks knew Richard and would come waddling over at the first sight of him.

Richard’s daughter Chris drew further and further into herself, away from her father—away from the family. For Chris the arguments and violence were extremely upsetting and debilitating.

Chris was now a very attractive twelve-year-old. She had a long, slender body; long, thick blond hair; and a sweet, heart-shaped face with big blue eyes. One summer evening Barbara and Richard were arguing after dinner and he began to break things. Chris silently got up and left the house. She couldn’t deal with the violence, the yelling, her father’s temper, her mother’s “big mouth,” as she thought of it, and would later relate. She walked to the corner and sat on a wooden bench near the bus stop there, trying to figure out what to do, whom she could talk to, where she could get help, where she could turn.

Once, Chris had thought that all parents argued, that surely all dads tore the house apart; but now she knew that wasn’t the case at all, that her father was unique, and that her mother too was unique. As she sat there, dusk coming on quickly, lightning bugs starting to appear, a man in a red van pulled up and said hello to her, offered to take her where she was going.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Chris said in a small voice, knowing she shouldn’t be talking to a stranger. Barbara had warned her many times about talking to strangers.

“Would you like to go for a ride?” the man asked. He was in his midthirties, had blond hair, was attractive, seemed nice—seemed… interested in her.

“Okay, sure,” she said, and got in the van with the stranger, knowing she shouldn’t, knowing her parents would be angry, punish her severely for such a thing, but she didn’t care. She was taking control; she was in charge; that was it.

It didn’t take long for Chris to find out exactly what the blond man was interested in: He asked if she’d like to go to a secluded place he knew of and “fool around.”

“Okay,” she said, even before she realized she’d said it. He took her to a small clearing in some nearby woods and began kissing her. She let him; she didn’t resist him. He took her into the back of the van, undressed her, and proceeded to have all forms of relations with her, including intercourse, which she willingly let him do. This was Chris’s way of taking control of her life. Her body was hers, hers only, nobody could take that away from her—and she was going to use it, let it be used, any way she wished. She certainly didn’t enjoy what he was doing, what he had her do. She was doing it to assert her own individuality, to rebel. Chris knew that if her father saw such a thing he would probably kill her, and would surely tear this man apart, literally. But she didn’t care….

When it was over, he was done, he thankfully took Chris back to the bus stop, the bench where he had found her, and she got out of the van, thanking him as she went, polite and sweet, not traumatized at all. He didn’t ask to see her; she didn’t volunteer any information. She didn’t want to see him again. They both knew what had happened was wrong—very wrong, sinfully wrong, against-the-law wrong.

Chris slowly walked back home, a virgin no more. Barbara asked her where she’d been.

“At a friend’s house,” she said.

Richard knew his violent outbursts were wrong, and he didn’t like himself because of them. He knew he shouldn’t be violent with Barbara, but he had no control over his volatile temper. It was as if a bomb exploded inside him. Richard decided to rent an office, to have a place he could go when he wasn’t in a good mood, a place where he could prepare himself for hits, calm himself after a job was done. He had come to realize that he shouldn’t be around his family at such times. It wasn’t fair to them. It was outright dangerous, he also knew.

From Argrila the porn producer Richard heard that there was office space available in a commercial building on Spring, just off Lafayette, perfect for what he had in mind, and it was in the city. Richard was often in the city now on business, and this little office would serve him well. He rented it and proceeded to buy some office furniture, a bed, a big desk, a safe, a fridge. He had phones installed and suddenly Richard Kuklinski had an office—a place from where he could conduct business, his criminal dealings, murder contracts. He stashed a host of weapons in the safe, hand grenades, handcuffs, and some of his expanding library of poisons.