Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

There were some empty boxes against the back wall of the garage. Richard said they held the Tagamet. Hoffman pulled his car into the garage, thinking he was finally getting his hands on the much-sought-after drug. The moment was right. Richard pulled out a .25 auto and shot Hoffman in the neck without a moment’s hesitation. Richard pulled the trigger again, but the auto jammed and couldn’t fire—

Like a man possessed, Hoffman leaped from his car and attacked Richard with a lionlike ferocity. Hoffman was fighting for his very life. He was not a big or particularly strong man, but his adrenaline gave him nearly superhuman strength, and he fought Richard so hard he almost took control of the situation, even with a bullet in his neck, bleeding profusely. Richard finally managed to grab a tire iron and with it beat Hoffman over the head, finally subduing him, destroying him, killing him there in the garage.

Richard was covered with Hoffman’s blood. It was everywhere. Even inside his shoes. As usual, Richard had a change of clothes in his trunk. After he washed up and changed he put what was left of Paul Hoffman in one of the fifty-five-gallon black metal drums, sealed it well, and put it in his van. He next drove over to Solimene’s store and offered to split the money with him, but Solimene told Richard to keep it all when he heard what had happened. Richard kept the twenty-five thousand.

Richard wanted to get rid of Hoffman’s body, so he drove over to Harry’s Luncheonette on Route 46 in Hackensack. He had a roast beef sandwich and a diet Pepsi, and decided to put the barrel with Hoffman in it right behind Harry’s Luncheonette. He discarded it there as though it were a used tire that had outlived its purpose. For the longest time the barrel was there; a few times Richard actually had his lunch, a nice Harry’s sandwich, right on the barrel. Then one day it just disappeared, and no one said anything about finding a body. Richard was amused by the whole thing. To this day he has no idea where the barrel with Paul Hoffman in it disappeared to.

Roy DeMeo had gotten himself into a heap of trouble. His egotistic, nothing-can-touch-me attitude had finally caught up to him and now had a stranglehold around his bull-like neck.

First, the senseless murder of Vinnie Governara had come back to haunt him. Nino Gaggi’s nephew Dominick Montiglio had gotten himself in trouble because of drugs and wound up making a deal with the feds to get himself out of trouble, if he gave up his uncle Nino—and Roy DeMeo—which is exactly what he did. Additionally, DeMeo was arrested for dealing in stolen cars, and he was responsible for Nino Gaggi getting arrested for killing Jimmy Esposito and his son Jimmy junior. There had been bad blood between DeMeo and Jimmy junior, stemming from a coke deal in which Jimmy junior believed he was beaten for several thousand dollars. The senior Esposito, an old-time Sicilian made by Carlo Gambino himself, complained to Paul Castellano that Nino and Roy were selling coke. In the old days, under Carlo’s reign, this might have been a death sentence for Nino and Roy; Esposito was, in fact, trying to get them killed. But times had changed. Castellano himself had been taking a lot of money “made off the record,” and he ultimately gave Nino the proverbial nod to take out both Jimmy senior and Jimmy junior.

This, however, was not an easy task. The senior Esposito was a wily Sicilian. He didn’t trust Gaggi, definitely didn’t trust DeMeo. Nino finally managed to lure Jimmy senior to “a friendly sit-down” at Roy’s place. On the way there, at a stop along the Belt Parkway, Nino and DeMeo shot both Espositos to death, which proved to be a stupid, ill-conceived crime, for people driving on the Belt Parkway actually saw it happen, the police were summoned, and after a brief chase Nino Gaggi was arrested. DeMeo managed to get away, but this had all essentially been his plan, and he was now in deep shit: he had indirectly caused his boss—a Mafia captain—to be arrested and charged with a double homicide. A potential death sentence.

Roy believed his days were numbered now. The strain was taking an obvious toll on him. He didn’t look or act in charge anymore. He seemed like a beaten man, disheveled, confused, drinking too much, a man about to crack; a man who might very well go to the police and try to make a deal for himself, for his family, to keep his money, for a new identity. The underworld knew DeMeo had a cousin that was a noted, highly respected law professor, Paul DeMeo, and rumors began to circulate that DeMeo couldn’t be trusted, that his cousin was advising him to make a deal with the government. This numbered the days DeMeo had left. Men in all the crime families began sitting down and talking about the danger DeMeo posed, how much he knew; they talked about taking Roy DeMeo out.

Richard, of course, heard these drumbeats resonating loudly through the underworld jungle.

Detective Pat Kane’s investigation was going nowhere fast. He couldn’t find Danny Deppner anywhere. Barbara Deppner hadn’t heard a word from him, and she kept telling Kane that he was surely dead, that Richard Kuklinski had killed him. But there was no proof of that, no body—nothing.

Still, Detective Kane believed that Richard was a stone-cold contract killer, master criminal getting away with murder. This was having a bad effect on the young Kane. His belief in what was right and just and proper was being turned upside down. He was beginning to drink more than he should. The relationship with his wife, Terry, was becoming strained. Even his colleagues thought he was “seeing more into this than there really was.”

But Kane wasn’t about to give up. He kept tirelessly working the case, kept looking into what he believed was the bold, insidious lie that was Richard Kuklinski’s life. Kane knew Richard was liked by his neighbors, was thought of as a devoted family man. He knew also that Richard went to church every Sunday, was even a church usher. Still, he was sure that Richard was a monster, an agent of the devil himself disguised as a family man. Kane was a religious individual—he fervently believed in the Catholic Church and all its teachings and mandates. He was sure he was on a God-given mission to put an end to Richard Kuklinski’s bloody career, a mission he could not fail.

Kane couldn’t get out of his mind how Kuklinski had killed Gary Smith with a poisoned hamburger because he’d gone to see his little girl. What the hell kind of man was capable of such a thing? He thought too about how Richard had smashed his fist through the windshields of a teenager’s and a woman’s car over everyday driving incidents.

With nowhere else to turn, Kane began back at the beginning and went to see Percy House. House was still in jail, still couldn’t make bail.

Percy House was a brutal outlaw, a sneering, mean-faced bully who abused anyone weaker than he. He beat up both Gary Smith and Danny for not following his orders; he beat up Barbara Deppner; he even beat up her children.

Richard didn’t like anything about Percy House. One time he had seen Gary after Percy gave him a beating and he looked like he’d run into a truck. Richard would surely have killed Percy House if it weren’t for the fact that his sister was married to Phil Solimene. House had been stewing in jail for many months now, and his nasty disposition had soured even more, if such a thing was possible. Right off Kane came to the point: “I want Kuklinski. I know who he is and what he does. You help me nail him, I’ll see to it that you make a plea bargain. Something you can live with. You help me, I’ll help you. My word of honor. If you don’t, I’ll make sure you rot in jail! I mean rot!” he added.