The Ice Man

by Philip Carlo

  This year Thanksgiving in the Kuklinski home was quiet and somber. Richard barely talked, barely ate. He had grown noticeably pale. He was there at the head of the table but seemed to be somewhere else. No one could cheer him up, not even Merrick. A pall hung over the table. After the meal, he went up to his office, sat at his desk, and stared at Kane’s card. He had left Zurich in such a hurry, he hadn’t even gotten the check. This one was supposed to be for seven hundred thousand dollars.

  He sat there fantasizing about killing Kane, cutting him up, shooting him, torturing him, hanging him, feeding him to rats. But those things were all luxuries he knew didn’t have. The only way to murder Kane and get away with it clean was with cyanide—a quick spray in his face as he was changing his tire. Hey, buddy, pssst—all over. Case closed. It would look like a natural death; he could get away with it.

  Once Kane was gone, he reasoned, the case would fold on itself. No matter what Barbara Deppner and Percy House had said, it wasn’t enough to arrest him, Richard believed (correctly), or he would already have been arrested.

  Richard called Kane and told him to stop coming around his home, that he had no right to do that, that if he wanted to talk with him he should let him know and he’d come over to the barracks with his attorney. Richard made it a point to be pleasant, not wanting to alarm Kane in any way. Kane said he understood and would do as Richard asked. He too was polite.

  “Thank you,” Richard said, and hung up.

  Kane…

  Kane had to go! But he had to get cyanide to pull that off…. His mind went back to Polifrone. As much as Richard believed Polifrone was a bunch of hot air, full of shit, maybe he really could get his hands on cyanide. If you knew the right person, it wasn’t actually that hard. Richard picked up the phone and beeped Polifrone.

  Pleased, Polifrone called him back within the hour, and still another meeting was arranged at the Vince Lombardi Service Area. Richard also contacted Solimene and asked him if he knew where he could get some poison, “preferably cyanide,” he said.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Solimene said.

  December 6, a Saturday, was another cold gray day. The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 A.M. Because it was a Saturday morning, the rest stop was more crowded than usual. Polifrone was waiting for Richard at the bank of telephones, a prearranged spot. On time, Richard pulled up in his gleaming white Cadillac and stepped from the car wearing a blue silk shirt, a suit and tie, and a wool overcoat with a high collar. He looked sharp. Polifrone greeted him warmly. Bob Carroll and other task force members were watching from strategic locations around the rest stop. Carroll had carefully prepped Polifrone on what to say to get Richard to incriminate himself further. The first thing Polifrone did, as though he were Richard’s friend, was tell him that Kane and Volkman had stopped him coming out of the store and asked him a whole bunch of questions about Richard Kuklinski.

  “What did you say?” Richard asked.

  “Nothing. I told him I don’t know a fuckin’ thing about any fuckin’ body. A guy named Pat…”

  “Kane.” Richard spit out the word. “He’s been up my ass since 1980. He don’t know shit. He’s got a couple of rats, but no one will believe their bullshit. If he had anything he’d have booked me already,” he said, and then he went on to describe how he’d gotten rid of Smith and Deppner, and how Percy House was a “pointer” (a rat).

  Polifrone was both surprised and delighted, and wondered why Kuklinski was being so forthcoming. Either Kuklinski had a really big mouth (not likely), or he was planning to kill him. He believed it was the latter. Polifrone explained that he had gotten the cyanide and had called him a half dozen times to tell him.

  “Great,” Richard said. “I could really use it now.”

  “Yeah, well,” Polifrone said, “I brought it back to the guys I got it from. I didn’t wanna fuckin’ be driving around with that shit. But I can get it for ya.”

  Richard was obviously pleased; he actually smiled. It was a chilling smile to see.

  Now Polifrone again brought up the rich Jewish kid looking for coke. Richard said he was still interested; he’d bring his van, and they’d get the kid in the van, take his money, and kill him. Simple. He talked about murder, Polifrone noted, as if he were discussing the weather.

  Ice Man was the perfect nickname for him, Polifrone was thinking.

  If, Richard said, they wanted to make the body “disappear,” they could throw the corpse down some abandoned mine shafts he knew about. “They are so deep,” he said, “you don’t even hear them bounce.”

  Ice-fuckin’-Man indeed, Polifrone thought. “Good, sounds good. What about his car? Should we leave it or get rid of it?” the agent asked.

  “Either or. We could sell it for parts. I know a place—bam, bam, they cut it up and sell it for parts the same day.”

  Polifrone asked questions about being able to fool the coroner if, in fact, they poisoned the rich kid and left him in his car, and incredibly, Richard said the ME would be fooled and went on to tell Polifrone how he had once frozen a victim, which had confused the ME. Polifrone knew he was talking about Louis Masgay. Bingo. Polifrone prayed the tape was recording all this; it was far more than they had ever hoped for.

  Richard went on to describe, again, the best ways to administer the cyanide, said that putting it in food was much better, easier, and safer to administer. He talked too about retiring, getting out of “this dirty business.” He even said he had set some money aside, “out of the country,” he volunteered.

  Why Richard was telling Polifrone all this was strange indeed…perplexing. Even if he was planning to kill him eventually, it didn’t make sense. He barely knew Polifrone, who now wanted to shake Richard’s hand and thank him for being so helpful. After an hour of Richard digging his own grave, the meeting ended. The two men agreed to meet again soon. Polifrone promised Richard the cyanide and said that he’d call him when he had the rich Jewish kid set up and the kid had the money. They shook hands. Richard got back into his shiny white Caddie and took off. Polifrone soon checked the tape. It had been working.

  We got him by the balls, he thought, and soon he handed the Nagra tape recorder to Detective Paul Smith.

  PART V

  HOMICIDE SUPERSTAR

  The Quiet Before the Storm

  Christmas was in the air. Barbara Kuklinski had her shopping list prepared, was buying and wrapping gifts. Most homes on the Kuklinski block had Christmas decorations up already. Barbara was feeling a little under the weather, but the prospect of Christmas cheered and motivated her.

  Richard was talking to Remi several times a day. He was most often using stolen phone cards to make these calls. He believed, correctly, that his phones were tapped—thanks to Kane—and was careful about what he said. Remi kept saying that another check was “forthcoming.” Richard said he’d leave when Remi had it, that he didn’t want to sit around in Zurich waiting for it just right now. Richard made several trips to Jersey City and Hoboken, his old stomping grounds, trying to find someone who had access to cyanide; he wasn’t having much luck. He now thought seriously about just making Kane disappear, but that, he decided, would be worse than killing him because the cops wouldn’t rest until they knew what had happened to him. He thought too about giving Kane a flat, killing him with a blow to the head, then putting his head under the wheel and kicking the jack out of place, crushing his head and making it impossible to discern that a blow to the head had done him in. But he knew that to do such a thing he would need more privacy than the bar parking lot would afford.

  Barbara was concerned about her husband. He had become more and more distant. He was not the same man anymore. He hadn’t lost his temper or raised his voice once for many weeks. Strange.

  It was, she decided, the quiet before the storm. Something was brewing; something was in the air; she just didn’t know what it was. Rather than worry, she focused her energy on preparing for Christmas, shopping, buying gifts—spending money, one of her favorite
pastimes.

  Again, at Bob Carroll’s insistence, Polifrone contacted Richard and told him he had the coke buyer all set up; everything was “a go,” and the cyanide was forthcoming. Another meeting at the Lombardi rest stop was set up.

  Richard’s reservations about Polifrone were outweighed by two considerations: getting his hands on cyanide to properly kill Pat Kane, and taking off this rich Jewish kid, keeping all the money, and finally getting rid of Polifrone and his bad wig once and for all. It all fit together perfectly. To some degree the fact that Polifrone had been laid-back, hadn’t chased Richard, made him believe Polifrone might very well get the cyanide; have access to a rich kid looking to buy coke: after all, coke was the in drug. Almost everyone was doing it, even mob guys, and all the hip, fancy people.

  This third meeting between Richard and Polifrone took place on December 12. It had snowed a few days earlier, and the rest stop was pocked with mounds of dirty snow. Richard showed up on time, at 11:00 A.M.

  Polifrone said: “Listen to this. The Jewish kid asked me if I can get him three kilos. I said yeah, of course. Eighty-five thousand, cash. Wednesday morning he’s coming. He’ll be here around nine fuckin’ thirty. Now here’s the thing. I’ll pick up the cyanide that morning from my guy.”

  “Doesn’t give me enough time. I need a couple of days to get it ready.” Richard went on to describe how he had to have a chemist mix a special liquid—the DSMO—with the cyanide. That would take a few days. Such a thing couldn’t be rushed.

  Polifrone, wanting to move this thing forward and finally have Richard arrested, suggested they instead give the coke buyer “an egg sandwich” and kill him that way. He went on to say the Jewish kid loved egg sandwiches, was always ordering them.

  “But will the kid eat?” Richard asked.

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Then that’ll work.”

  “Guaranteed. It’ll be an egg sandwich. Every time I meet this kid, he orders an egg sandwich. We’ll get him an egg sandwich.”

  “We can do that. Do they sell egg sandwiches here? I don’t even know if they do.”

  Polifrone took care of this by saying he’d bring the egg sandwich, and the vial of cyanide.

  This should have set off alarms in Richard’s head—giving the coke buyer an egg sandwich Polifrone would bring—but it didn’t. He seemed to accept what Polifrone was laying down. For him, none of this really mattered, though: in his mind both Polifrone and the coke buyer were going to die. Simple. He’d shoot them both in the head with a .22 equipped with a silencer, the same type of weapon he had sold to Polifrone weeks earlier.

  That evening there was still another meeting in the war room at the attorney general’s office. The task force sat around the large table listening to the most recent tape and debating how to bring the case to a close. The final act of this drama was about to unfold, they all knew, one way or another. The question was what was the best way to finally arrest Richard. Bob Carroll suggested that they use an apartment and get Kuklinski on film actually giving the coke buyer—Detective Paul Smith—the cyanide-laced egg sandwich.

  Smith didn’t like this idea at all. “What if he just decides to pull out a gun and shoot me—and Dom?”

  He had a point.

  It was decided, therefore, that the final act would play out at the Lombardi rest stop.

  Polifrone contacted Richard the following day. The deal would go down, it was agreed, on Wednesday, December 17. He would bring the coke buyer to the Lombardi stop. Richard said he’d get a van so they could get the kid in the van. Polifrone said he’d meet with Richard earlier and give him three egg sandwiches and a vial of cyanide (actually harmless white powder), which Richard would use to poison the coke buyer’s sandwich as he saw fit.

  For Richard the sandwich had become irrelevant nonsense; as soon as the coke buyer and Polifrone were in the van, Richard was going to kill them. End of story. He planned to borrow a van from Jimmy DiVita, a small-time hustler from New London, Connecticut. He would take the bodies to Pennsylvania and dump them in an abandoned mine shaft.

  To humor Polifrone and play out the sting, Richard agreed to meet him early Wednesday morning, December 17, to get the egg sandwiches and cyanide. The cyanide he’d use to kill Pat Kane. That was Richard’s plan.

  With a Wiggle

  It was December 17, 1986, a day that would live in infamy.

  As usual, Richard was up early. He had coffee and toast and sat in the living room staring at the floor, wondering if he should go meet Polifrone or not. He had, he says, an uncomfortable feeling about this whole setup; but he decided he’d see how it went. After all, he reasoned, he’d put so much time into this thing already, he might as well see how it played out. He stood up, put on a waist-length black jacket, and headed out the door. Barbara wasn’t feeling well and was still in bed.

  At 8:45 A.M., ATF Agent Dominick Polifrone was standing at the usual spot in front of the bank of the phones at the Lombardi rest stop. It was a bitterly cold day. Frigid winds tore across the rest area. People hurried to and from their cars to one of the six fast-food outlets. The sky was filled with churning, angry clouds that seemed at war with one another; traffic whizzed by; planes roared low overhead.

  Polifrone had a white paper bag in his hand. It contained three egg sandwiches. In the pocket of his coat he had a thumb-sized glass vial, the supposed cyanide, which would be used to poison one of the sandwiches. Polifrone was armed to the teeth, wired up. Task-force detectives monitored his every move. Everyone was tense. This was it. This was D-day. This was the day it would go down. Everyone knew Richard was lethal—definitely armed, wouldn’t hesitate to kill. Polifrone looked forward to getting this done once and for all. He’d been on this cursed case now for nearly nineteen months. He was tired of it, tired of the bullshit, tired of the Ice Man task force, tired of walking on the edge. He stared at the access road and spotted Richard’s Oldsmobile Calais with Richard’s unmistakable, huge form behind the wheel.

  “There he is,” he whispered, his words instantly transmitted to all the members of the task force. Pat Kane, Bob Carroll, Paul Smith, and Ron Donahue were hidden in a dark Chevy van with tinted windows and had a clear view of Polifrone.

  Pat Kane could barely sleep the night before. All his effort, all his sweat and tears and sleepless nights, were finally paying off. He had never believed this day would come, but it was here. Richard Kuklinski would soon be behind bars, or dead. Those were the only two options. Bob Carroll had promised him that when the time came to arrest Kuklinski, he, Pat Kane, could do it—tell him he was under arrest and actually put the cuffs on him. This would be the highlight of Kane’s career, his life. As he lay in bed thinking about what would happen, he prayed—gave thanks for the help he was sure God had given him, given Polifrone and the task force, given Bob Carroll. Kane was sure God’s hand had played an integral role in all this, in all that would happen. Surely God, he believed, had provided Dominick Polifrone. As far as he was concerned, Richard Kuklinski was an instrument of Satan himself, and now, finally, he would be getting his due.

  “How you doin’, Dom?” Richard asked as he approached.

  “Good. I spoke to the kid last night. It’s all set. Here’s the sandwiches. I’ll go get him and be back in fifteen minutes.” Richard took the bag.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Polifrone assured. He didn’t like the way Richard was acting; he seemed distant…wary. “I’ll go get the kid and be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay. I’ll go get the van. It isn’t far from here. Just down the next exit. It’s just a ten-minute ride,” Richard said.

  “What color is it, so I’ll know?”

  “Blue.”

  “Now where are you gonna park it so I can bring him right there?”

  “Right here. We might as well do it over here out of the way of everybody. I’ll be sitting in the driver’s seat. You can’t miss it.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna bring him
right into the back of the van to let him test the coke.”

  “Okay.”

  Polifrone now took a small bag out of his jacket pocket. “Here’s the cyanide,” he said, amplifying the word “cyanide” loud and clear so it would certainly be recorded. Polifrone said there was enough of the deadly poison to kill a lot of people. He asked where Richard was going to get rid of the coke buyer’s body.

  “I’m going to put it away for safekeeping,” he said, and laughed. It was an ice-cold laugh filled with malice, no mirth, his breath fogging in the cold. Richard now spotted the task force black van with the tinted windows. Something wasn’t right about it…was hinky, he would later explain.

  “Let’s walk,” Richard said, and started across the lot, right to the van. They saw him coming; all quickly got down.

  “Where you going?” Polifrone asked, concerned, his hand moving toward his piece.

  “Just to walk a little,” Richard said. He got up to the van and actually looked inside. He couldn’t see anything. Now he started back toward his car, Polifrone following him, trying to get Richard to use the word “murder.” Richard opened his trunk and put the sandwiches inside, got in his car, and started the engine. He assured Polifrone he’d be back with the van, said it was two toned, light and dark blue. Richard’s plan was to come back in his car, and if the rich Jewish kid was there, he’d say the van wouldn’t start, the coke was in his warehouse, and they should follow him there. Once inside the warehouse, Richard would kill both Polifrone and the coke buyer. Richard had, in fact, tried to borrow a van the day before from Jimmy DiVita, but his van had too many windows. Anyway, the warehouse would be a better place to do the double homicide. Richard said he’d be back in twenty minutes. Polifrone said he’d be back with the coke buyer in exactly thirty minutes. Richard pulled away. As he went, he passed the bank of phones. In one was Deputy Chief Bob Buccino, making believe he was talking. He’d been listening to every word said. He had a nine-millimeter wrapped in a newspaper, was ready to blow Richard away. The chief truly hated Richard and was looking for an excuse to end it all right there, no long, expensive trial.