Philip Carlo - The Ice Man

When Kane left the bar, he got into his car, not realizing he was being watched—stalked—and drove straight home. By force of habit he checked his rearview—most cops do—but Richard was exceedingly adept at trailing people unnoticed and soon learned where Pat Kane lived with his wife and two children.

The thing Pat Kane had dreaded from the very beginning had just happened.

Now, Richard thought, it was just a matter of figuring out how best to do this—dispose of Pat Kane once and for all and for it not to come back to him. To amuse himself, Richard took a bead on Kane with the rifle as he stepped from his car. Bang, you’re dead, he whispered, though he didn’t pull the trigger.

The more Richard thought about killing Kane, the more he realized the law-enforcement firestorm he’d bring down on his own head. The link between anything happening to Kane and him would be immediate, he knew. To do this job properly, he decided, he had to make Kane’s murder look like an accident; that was the key, and he was sure he could do that, but he needed poison. He needed the cyanide spray to pull it off, though he didn’t have any. He began asking people he knew in the underworld in Jersey City, Hoboken, and New York if anyone could get his hands on some cyanide. No luck. Richard’s plan was to spray Kane in the face as he was leaving the bar after a few drinks; he’d keel over dead right there. Everyone would believe it was a heart attack. Perfect. Applied with the right dosage, cyanide was very difficult to detect.

He’d first give Kane a flat, and as he was changing the tire, he’d get him. It’d be a piece of cake. He smiled at the thought, knowing it would work. However, he was having a hard time finding high-grade, lab cyanide. He had only one shot at this, he knew, and it had to work. There would be no second chance. Kane was armed and dangerous.

Richard was supposed to go to Zurich that Friday, but he put off the trip until the following week. He’d plot and plan Pat Kane’s murder.

Now, for the second time in less than a week, strange men came knocking on Richard’s door, and this second incident upset Richard to the point of absolute distraction. It was, for him, a Waterloo of sorts—in a sense the beginning of the end. It all had to do with John Spasudo.

So far, with Richard, John Spasudo had made a small fortune, but he was a degenerate gambler, and not only pissed the money away but indebted himself to drug dealers, to cocaine wholesalers. He was apparently taking drugs on consignment, selling them, and losing the money gambling, and he had got himself in hot water with some Colombians. Spasudo had never been to Richard’s home. However, by using a trace on Richard’s license plates, he was able to find out Richard’s address.

When the Colombians put a squeeze on Spasudo, he got it in his head to tell them Richard had their money, which wasn’t at all true, and Spasudo actually took two of them to Richard’s home. Spasudo believed Richard wasn’t in town, that he’d gone to Zurich, but he was actually in the house when they knocked on the door. Richard saw them through the curtain—Spasudo sitting in the car—and was angry beyond words that street people, thugs, had come to his home.

This was not supposed to happen.

Richard had always been scrupulously careful about keeping the street, his nefarious dealings, far away from his home, his family. Now the street was actually knocking on his door, ringing his bell. He recently explained: I realized that day that I’d made mistakes. I’d allowed what I was doing to touch my family. It was what I’d always dreaded and yet it happened. For me… for me it was like getting hit by a speeding train. I would fix it. I had to fix it. My plan was to kill them all. To kill everyone close to me—I mean everyone!

As the Colombians stood there, Dwayne innocently pulled into the drive. The two of them approached Dwayne and asked where his dad was. They were friendly, but there was an undercurrent of danger, of threat.

“He’s out of town,” Dwayne said.

That seemed to placate them for now. They told Dwayne to tell his dad they’d been there and would be back. One of them touched Dwayne’s arm as he spoke. Richard saw this from the window and nearly exploded with rage. His lips twisted into a snarl. He wanted to run outside and kill them with his bare hands, but that would have to wait. He controlled himself, gritting his teeth, as the soft clicking sound came from his lips. They got back into their car and left. As they pulled away, Richard stared at Spasudo there in the backseat. Rage made his head spin. He actually had to sit down.

Early that evening, Richard went and found Spasudo. He was shocked to see Richard.

Richard bellowed, “How fucking dare you bring those spics to my house!”

“Rich, I thought you were out of town. I was just trying to stall them. I’m sorry; I’m sorry, Rich!”

If, Richard recently explained, he hadn’t been doing things with Spasudo, he’d have killed him right then and there, gotten rid of his body—fed him to the rats. But that luxury, for now, wasn’t his; though Spasudo’s days were now numbered. Richard pulled out a pistol and stuck it right in Spasudo’s mouth, pulled the hammer back.

“You ever bring someone near my home again, I’ll kill you, John. You understand?”

“I do, I swear, I understand!” he mumbled.

Richard then went to kill the two Colombians. By doing this, he was getting Spasudo out of debt, but that certainly was not his intention. He just wanted to kill the men who had dared to come to his door.

Next would be Pat Kane.

Now, out of irrational desperation, Richard did what Pat Kane and Dominick Polifrone had been hoping and praying for all along: he used a pay phone and called Phil Solimene. Polifrone was, by pure happenstance, sitting in the store playing cards.

“Hey, Big Guy,” Solimene greeted Richard.

“That friend you have, this Dom, he around?” Richard asked.

“Yeah, he’s sitting right here.”

“Put him on.”

“Hey, Dom,” Solimene called out. “It’s for you: Big Rich.” He smiled and winked as he handed the phone to Dominick.

“How ya doin?” Dominick said, very pleased that finally, after all these months, he was actually making contact with the elusive Richard Kuklinski. The devil himself was calling.

“I’m good. I hear you have some good contacts.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“Let’s talk. I need something special. I don’t want to come there. Can you meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street?”

“Sure, Rich, no problem,” the agent said.

“Five minutes?”

“Okay,” Polifrone said, and hung up.

Solimene was smiling. “I told you he’d call.”

“That you did,” Dom said. “He wants to meet me at the Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“I’ll be here,” Phil said, and Dominick left.

Dominick walked outside. There was no time to contact Kane or even his own ATF people. He was truly on his own, and he had to move fast. He slid into his black Lincoln sedan and drove over to the Dunkin’ Donuts. He knew he should have been wearing a wire, but there was no time for that. It was 10:45 A.M. The sky was filled with somber grays. Dominick was nervous, excited, concerned, all at the same time. He had been planning this for so long, had begun to think it would never happen. But it was. He’d just spoken to the devil himself. Dom was armed. He had a Walther PPK in his pocket. He was an excellent shot. He didn’t think Kuklinski would try to pull something in broad daylight, at a Dunkin’ Donuts, but he had no real idea what was up, what Kuklinski wanted—what was in the wind. As he pulled into the parking lot, he spotted Richard. He was in Dwayne’s silver Camaro. Polifrone parked and walked over, swaggering as he went, now seriously in his wiseguy mode.