Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

Another potential problem for Richard was his explosive, homicidal temper. He was still getting into arguments with people about how they drove, which could quickly escalate into sudden violence, even murder. Someone who cut Richard off in traffic was taking his life in his hands.

One evening Richard was returning to New Jersey and had just crossed the George Washington Bridge when he passed a tall, lanky hitchhiker. The man tried to wave him down, but Richard kept moving, and the hitchhiker gave him the finger. For some reason this disrespect always outraged Richard; he couldn’t let such a thing pass. He doubled back, taking a gun from the holster on his calf, rolled down the window, drove right up to the hitchhiker, and shot him in the chest, killing him. The hitchhiker was found by a biker; the police were summoned. There were no witnesses, no motives, no weapons, no clues. Another unsolved killing for the homicide books.

Another time Richard wanted to try out a new weapon—a small black metal crossbow made in Italy. It seemed like a good assassin’s weapon because it was so silent, so small, the size of a catcher’s mitt, but would it really work? he wondered. To test it Richard went out in his car looking for someone he could shoot with the crossbow. He wasn’t angry, hadn’t been drinking; it was just a test to see if the small crossbow would kill a human being, he explained. He spotted a man, his guinea pig, walking innocently on a secluded street, slowed, pulled up, and asked for directions in his friendly way. The man approached Richard’s car to answer and in the next instant Richard shot him in the forehead with the six-inch steel-shafted arrow. The man went right down, the arrow in his brain, not knowing what hit him or why… and was soon dead.

Aman in Vineland, New Jersey, owed mob guys a lot of money—over one hundred thousand dollars. He was a degenerate gambler and a sexual degenerate, and got himself in deep with loan sharks of Italian persuasion. He paid his debt with a check that bounced—twice. Richard was asked to go see this man. His name was John Spasudo, and he would wind up playing an important role in Richard’s life.

Like Richard, Spasudo was a large man, though with long dark hair. He had perfected the gift of gab to a high art form, could talk the spots off a running cheetah if he had a mind to. Richard, however, had heard it all before many times over and did not fall for Spasudo’s line of bull. Richard calmly explained the facts of life to Spasudo, and Richard did end up getting all the money due after a few days.

In the course of these days, Spasudo told Richard about this “great opportunity” he had to make money buying and selling Nigerian currency and South African Krugerrands, a coin made of pure gold. And he told Richard about this idea he was developing with Louis Arnold, a wealthy Pennsylvania businessman, to open a series of rest stops specifically designed for trucks all along the interstate—a hotel, restaurant, and garage where mechanical problems could be quickly addressed. It sounded like a reasonably good idea and piqued Richard’s interest.

Richard, as always, was looking for new ways to make money, and he listened to Spasudo with an open mind, heard more about how much could be made with gold coins and currency trading, and soon was on his way to Zurich, Switzerland with a whole new spectrum of opportunities before him, and a new list of victims to be sent to the grave.

Pat Kane hurried excitedly into Lieutenant Leck’s office. He was sure he had found the rope they could use to hang Richard Kuklinski.

“Lieutenant,” he said, “I have here clear, irrefutable proof that links Kuklinski to the York Hotel. He called the place on December 21, when Deppner and Smith were staying there. Let’s see him try and deny this.”

“Good, very good work,” Leck said; while this was only circumstantial proof and did not mean that Kuklinski had killed anyone, it did tie Kuklinski directly to the place where Gary Smith had been found.

Though in Pat Kane’s mind it was further proof of what he’d been saying for years. This was not enough proof, however, to go out and handcuff Kuklinksi. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, Kane wanted to arrest Richard Kuklinski and put him in a cell—cage him like the deranged animal Kane believed he was. This investigation had all been very frustrating and disheartening for Kane. He knew Kuklinski was a mob contract killer, a distributor of pornography, had killed five people that he was aware of—Masgay, Hoffman, Malliband, Smith, and Deppner—and he couldn’t do anything about it, at least not yet. Kane was becoming quiet and morose. Terry could barely get him to talk, to acknowledge her or the children. He had always been a loving, extremely devoted, and attentive husband, a doting father, but now he was like another man entirely: there, in the house, in the bed next to his wife, but not really present, a part of the family. He was somewhere else most all the time, Terry Kane would explain. Kane wasn’t sleeping well either. He’d lie in bed, toss and turn. Dark circles formed under his eyes. Sometimes at night, he’d hear a sound outside, get out of bed, and go outside with a cocked gun in his hand. If Kuklinski came around looking to hurt him or his family, he’d kill him. End of story.

If Kane was going to get Kuklinski, stop his bloody one-man crime spree, he needed tangible, irrefutable evidence, he knew—the proverbial smoking gun, eyewitnesses, fingerprints, real evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Pat Kane went for grueling runs, pounded his heavy bag, thinking only about this case, how to get Kuklinski off the streets. He fantasized often about getting into a shootout with Kuklinski and killing him. Kane was an excellent shot and wished he could face Kuklinski man to man. Kane believed that if anyone needed killing, it was surely Richard Kuklinski. But Kane knew such a thing was not possible. He had played it straight, within the rules and regulations of society, his whole life and he wasn’t about to change now, become a killer, because of Kuklinski. Still, he wished Kuklinski would give him cause to shoot him down like the rabid dog Kane was sure he was.

It was while fishing for muskellunge one Sunday—his favorite pastime—that an idea first came to Kane that could, he believed, move the investigation forward, perhaps even bring it to a successful conclusion. The muskellunge is a very clever, some say cunning, predator in the pike family. Known as muskies, these fish live in hard-to-reach spots in freshwater lakes. They are very hard to catch, cannot be fooled easily by lures and baits. They can grow to six feet in length, are fast and furious and have razorlike teeth. They are so vicious that they not only feed on other fish, but actually attack and eat ducks, muskrats, and other warm-blooded vertebrates. If there is a ruthless serial killer in the fresh waters of northern New Jersey, it is surely the muskie. As Kane was trying to catch the shadowy muskie that Sunday, with live bait, he first got the idea of using live bait to get Kuklinski.

Kuklinski was very much like a muskie, Kane was thinking—struck at will, was cunning, a hard-to-catch killer.

Yes, what Kane needed to get Kuklinski was live bait, a beguiling decoy that could fool him and draw him out in the open. Pat Kane started asking around about a man who could get close to Kuklinski, an adept undercover cop who could draw him out in the open.

John Spasudo also had his fingers in many pies. His passport had been taken away because he was on bail in a forgery case, so he had asked Richard to go overseas to consummate this currency-exchange deal. Some crooked Nigerian government officials had stolen a lot of cash and managed to get it out of the country, to Zurich. The problem was that the money could not be turned into any other currency because no one wanted it. There was, however, another government official in Nigeria who would allow the currency back into the country for an under-the-table fee of ten cents on each dollar. This official would stamp the money as legitimate and cause a check to be issued to a second corporation Richard would start, which would be paid in dollars.