by Philip Carlo
The projects were filled with low-income blue-collar people, and there were many potential friends and playmates for Richard. He had grown into a tall, skinny, very shy boy with glistening blond hair, almond-shaped light brown eyes, and excessively protruding ears. The boys of the projects quickly took to teasing Richard; they made fun of his appearance, his clothes, his thinness, his shaggy blond hair, his ears.
“Hey, you dumb Polack,” was a frequent insult.
“The project boys,” a gang of five or six of them that were always in a group, not only teased Richard but took to physically abusing him, pushing him, slapping him, throwing his baseball cap to and fro, demanding that he give them money. Richard had little money, which caused him more and more abuse, slaps, and kicks in the ass as he walked. Whatever fires of discontent were already burning inside of Richard, the abuse he suffered from the project boys was further fueling it.
The leader of this group of punks was a big dark-haired kid named Charley Lane. He was a few years older than Richard, a foot taller, and much stockier. He seemed to get the most joy out of making Richard’s life miserable.
Richard had no friends. He was a loner. There was no one he could confide in, talk to, throw a ball with. He wanted friends, someone to be his ally, his buddy, to stick up for him, but all the boys in the projects wanted was to taunt and tease him, bring him down and call him names: “Hey, dumb Polack; hey, locked brain!”
Richard’s brother, Joseph, was too young to be his friend, and his sister, Roberta, had her own interests and little in common with her older brother.
As it happened, Richard found solace in true-crime magazines. He discovered them in a neighborhood candy store and with his sticky, nimble fingers managed to steal new, exciting, eye-opening issues every few weeks. Richard had grown into a bold, particularly adept thief; he was, he would later confide, a born thief. He already knew his lot in life would be crime—on the outside of the law, the underbelly of society—and learned to readily accept that fact, indeed to embrace it.
For the most part, Richard did not enjoy reading, but he devoured these true-crime magazines. He’d read slowly, using his long, thin fingers to keep his place, often having to go over the same passage several times to comprehend the words, their hidden, secret meanings. Because he was so drawn to the subject of crime, he made it his business to understand the words, to turn over the words in his young mind, to imagine the larcenies, robberies, and murders they vividly described in short, simple sentences. When the weather was nice, Richard liked to go down by the Hudson River and read there by the silent, swift-moving water. Here it was quiet and no one harassed or bothered him. Just opposite Jersey City, he could see lower Manhattan, a teeming, lively place filled with tall, stately buildings and rich people who ate steak and fancy food every day, all they wanted, as much as they wanted, Richard was sure.
What interested Richard the most was how crimes, especially murders, were solved. For hours on end, Richard buried his face in these true-crime magazines, and they gave him an insight into criminal behavior he could find nowhere else, insights he would put to good use. The words in these simply written pulp magazines with colorful covers, brimming with violence, filled Richard’s head like sinister clouds of poison gas with fantasies of violence, of murder, of striking back at those who abused him, taunted him, called him names. He began thinking about hurting people…killing people. Getting even. Having revenge.
Like all teenage boys, Richard wanted to do grown-up things. He pined to own a car, to drive around and show the world that he had the wherewithal to own a car, to go where he pleased, even to go to Manhattan, “the city,” if he had a mind to. Just down Sixteenth Street, near his house, there was a parking lot, and Richard took to stealing cars, parking them in the lot, and taking them on short, exciting jaunts around Jersey City. He was tall for his age now and quickly learned the nuances of the steering wheel, brake, and gas pedal. Richard savored these little sojourns. Someday, he resolved, he’d own a fancy car—a Caddy or maybe a Lincoln Continental. He wanted to drive through the Holland Tunnel, go visit the city, but he was afraid one of the tollbooth operators would stop him, question him. All this Richard did by himself, and doing this made him feel grown up and more independent. He was just thirteen years old, proud that he had the balls to do such things.
That winter the situation with the project boys became intolerable. They wouldn’t leave him alone; the taunts and pointed barbs became more and more frequent, violent, vicious. He tried to fight back one day, and they gave him a terrible beating—four of them kicked him, punched him, and spit on him when he was down. He was so beaten up that he couldn’t leave the apartment for a solid week. Anna Kuklinski wanted to go to the police and have the boys arrested, but Richard wouldn’t do that. “I’m no rat!” he kept saying. “I’ll settle this my own way.”
Already, Richard knew the strict rules of the street—and the cardinal rule was never go to the cops. Nearby Hoboken had a large Mafia contingent, indeed was a Mafia hub, the home base for the notorious De Cavalcante family (who in later years would become the inspiration for the HBO hit The Sopranos), and the young Richard already knew well that only rats went to the cops.
No, he would take care of this in his own way, in his own time. The boy Charley Lane, the leader of the project boys, had hurt Richard the most, and Richard’s wrath and need for revenge were centered on this oversized bully who swaggered like an ape when he walked. Plans of destruction ran through Richard’s head night and day, for days on end, all during his convalescence. He thought about stabbing Charley, hitting him with a wrench, dropping a cinder block on his head as he made his way about the narrow walkways that crisscrossed the project grounds. He would, he decided, stalk and attack Charley late at night.
It happened on a biting cold Friday evening. Richard removed the closet pole, a two-foot-long, thick wooden dolly, from the hall closet. It was perfect for what he had in mind, light and lethal. Just next to the hall closet there was a photograph of Florian, which Anna always kissed as she went out—Anna still had much guilt over what had happened to her firstborn, that Stanley had gotten away with killing him, that she had conspired to cover up the murder, and it was a suffocating, colossal weight she would carry with her for the rest of her days. The weight would slowly drag her down, round her shoulders, actually make her appear smaller, shorter; the weight would eventually speed up her demise. There were also pictures of a pained Jesus and a virtuous Mary in a blue dress next to Florian’s picture, which the hyper-religious Anna also kissed on her way out. The only other photograph in the house was of Anna’s brother Micky. He lived in upstate New York with his wife, Julia. Micky was a kind, gregarious man and gave his sister what he could. He was the only person who had ever been kind to Richard, gave him a watch when he graduated grade school. One summer Richard spent a few weeks at Uncle Micky’s house, and it was a dreamlike experience he would savor for his entire life.
My uncle Micky, Richard explained, was the only adult that was ever good to me. He was a real nice guy, and I’ll never forget him.
In Micky’s house everything was clean and shining and all the food was first-class, and for the first time Richard saw that people lived another way, a better way, and he would never forget that either. It would always be something he coveted for himself.
The powerful winds that frigid January night howled through the project grounds, bending trees and rattling windows. It had snowed that week and glistening sheets of ice covered the walkways. Richard had one warm coat—a peacoat so threadbare that his elbows showed through. Richard donned a few tattered sweaters, slipped the wooden dolly up the worn sleeve of his peacoat, and went out to find Charley Lane with a need for revenge burning inside him like a tropical fever. He positioned himself facing the New Jersey Avenue entrance of the project, his back up against the wall of the building in which the Kuklinski family lived. More than likely, he knew, Charley would come home via this entrance. He had seen him do so many
times. The redbrick wall Richard stood against contained the flue for the building’s incinerator, and the warmth gave Richard some comfort, but the fire burning inside him was what really kept him warm. He watched men who lived in the projects leave the bar across the street, a place his father, Stanley, sometimes went. Standing there in the Jersey City cold, Richard thought about his father; the hatred he had for him had grown inside him like a festering tumor, and Richard often thought about getting his hands on a gun, going and killing Stanley. He didn’t think of him as his father anymore. He thought of him as just Stanley, and would for the rest of his life refer to him as “Stanley,” never “my father” or “Dad.”
Richard had no idea how long he’d been standing there, and he was just about to give up and go back upstairs when he saw Charley come off New Jersey Avenue and start onto the project grounds. He was by himself. Richard’s stomach tightened. His heart began to race. At just the right moment, Richard left his hiding place. Charley sneered when he saw Richard suddenly in front of him. “What the fuck do you want, Polack?” he demanded. Richard stayed mute, just stared at him with calm, cold hatred. “Get the fuck outta my way or I’ll give you another beating, fuckin’ dumb Polack!”
“Yeah, try,” Richard said, and Charley quickly came at Richard, but Richard pulled out his secreted weapon and without a moment’s hesitation swung with all his might and hit Charley square on the side of the head, just above the ear. Shocked, Charley held his head, backed up, his eyes filling with rage, surprise, and indignation.
With a combination of fear and pent-up animosity filling him, Richard went after Charley—struck him on the head and knocked him down. And Richard kept hitting him, hitting him, hitting him. He didn’t want to kill the boy; he just wanted to teach him a lesson he’d never forget, wanted only to be left alone. But all the rage Richard had stored up inside, a world of it, came to the surface, and Richard kept striking the prostrate boy with all his might. When he was finally finished, Charley didn’t move. Richard kicked him, again and again, cursing him, crying with rage. Still, Charley Lane didn’t move. Richard demanded that he get up, fight. “Come on, come on,” he hissed through clenched teeth. Charley stayed still as a log. Richard slapped him, moved him over, and felt for a pulse in his neck—he knew about such a thing because of the true-crime magazines. Nothing.
Stunned, horrified, the young Richard realized that Charley Lane was dead and he had killed him. His mind reeled with the dire implications of such a thing. He would be sent to prison, the dreaded big house, for the rest of his life. He stood and staggered. As much as he hated Charley, he had wanted only to hurt him, certainly not kill him. He had wanted to make Charley suffer the way Charley had made him suffer, cause him pain and anxiety. Not this. What to do, where to turn? There was no one he could tell about this—not his mother, not his uncle Micky, no one. Richard forced himself to take long, deep breaths, to think, to form a plan, his mind racing furiously to and fro.
By instinct Richard knew the only way out of this was to get rid of the body. But how? Where?
He had a stolen car in the lot down on Sixteenth Street, a dark blue Pontiac he had found two days ago in front of a store on Hudson Boulevard with the keys inside. He now hurried to get it, drove it to New Jersey Avenue, and parked just by the project entrance. Charley was very heavy—dead weight. Richard grabbed him by the coat, made sure the coast was clear, and boldly pulled the body toward the Pontiac, using the slippery ice to slide it across the frigid ground. He opened the trunk and managed to pick up the dead boy and get him in the trunk. As he closed the trunk he noticed a battered tool: on one side it was a hatchet, and on the other a hammer. Before getting into the car he looked around and made certain that no one was looking at him from one of the project windows. All seemed clear. He got into the car, drove onto the nearby Pulaski Skyway, and headed south. He wasn’t sure what he’d do or how he’d do it, but Richard was intent upon not getting caught. He put on the car’s heater and calmed himself, knowing if he was pulled over by the police he’d be in deep shit, so he purposely drove at the speed limit, and as he drove, a different feeling slowly swept over Richard: a feeling of power and omnipotence. A kind of invincibility. He remembered all the abuse he had suffered over the years because of Charley, the taunts and put-downs, the random punches and slaps and kicks, and he was suddenly glad he’d killed him. He’d been fantasizing about killing people for the longest time, almost as far back as he could remember, and now he’d done it, and he liked the way it made him feel.
“I will never,” he said out loud in the quiet interior of the moving car, “ever allow anybody to fucking abuse me again.” And he never did.
After two hours of driving, his mind playing over what he’d do, Richard reached South Jersey, an area filled with desolate marshland and pine forests. He pulled over on a small bridge above a frozen pond surrounded with tall blond-colored reeds, which he could see in the car’s headlights. There was no one about. The wind howled. He got out of the Pontiac and opened the trunk. Charley Lane was much heavier than he’d been before. Rigor mortis had not set in yet, and he was still malleable. Struggling, Richard got him out of the car, laid him on the frozen ground, and returned with the ax-hammer. Knowing Charley’s teeth could be used to identify him and put the murder on his doorstep, Richard used the hammer to knock out all of Charley’s teeth. He then laid out the lifeless hands and chopped the tips of his fingers off. He gathered up the fingertips and teeth, planning to get rid of them elsewhere. Last, he made sure Charley had no ID on him, found some paper money, took it, picked up the body, and dumped it off the small bridge. It broke through the ice. He returned to the car and turned back toward Jersey City, stepping on the gas. As he went he got rid of the other pieces of Charley he’d retrieved, knowing birds and animals would eat them sooner or later. All this he had learned by avidly reading true-crime magazines. Thus Richard’s path in life was set irrevocably and forever.
By the time Richard got back to Jersey City, a frigid pale dawn was rapidly coming on. He watched the sky in the east turn a tawny winter orange. He figured it would be best to get rid of the car now, so he left it in a parking area in Hoboken and walked back home, forever changed.
Proud of himself, how cool he was under pressure, how clever his actions were, he lay in bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He felt, for the first time in his entire life, like a someone, a person who merited respect. He could control who lived and who died, when and where and how. The last thought Richard had before he finally fell asleep was: Fuck with me and I’ll kill you…. I will kill you!
5
Reborn
In the ensuing days, Richard saw the project boys, but without Charley to lead and egg them on, encourage and compel them, they left Richard alone. But Richard didn’t leave them alone. They had tormented him for years, a thing he’d not forgotten. Using a length of two-by-four he found, he went after them all one by one and beat them mercilessly, and from then on they did not trouble Richard again. Indeed, they moved out of his way when they saw him coming, wouldn’t even look him in the eye.
It was then I learned it was better to give than receive, Richard recently explained.
There were a lot of questions about what happened to Charley, but no one ever tied his sudden disappearance to Richard, the closet pole, the stolen Pontiac. Richard believed he had committed the perfect crime, came to think of himself as a cunning, dangerous criminal, a force to be reckoned with. He went from a cowering boy to a dangerous man in just a few days. He began carrying around a baseball bat and was quick to use it on anyone, man or boy, who bothered him. He had a lot of old scores to settle, and he methodically went about Jersey City, seeking out, finding, and beating anyone who had ever bullied or abused him. He was very tall for his age and had a long-limbed, wiry strength beyond his years. In no time he garnered a reputation as a tough guy, no one to fuck with, and he liked that—a lot.
The bat, however, was too large and conspicuous, so instead Richard
started carrying an inexpensive hunting knife, and he had no qualms about using it with very bad intentions.
Richard never thought about Charley Lane. He was dead and gone and to hell with him. Whether it was all of Stanley’s brutality, his mother’s beatings, the many head traumas Richard had suffered, or the way he’d been born—with some kind of bad gene—Richard had no concern, no guilt, no qualms about cutting someone across the face, even taking a life.
The thought of murder was the natural result of living in a jungle, and Richard had come to know the world as a brutal jungle, and he resolved to be a predator, not prey. Richard was, it was apparent even back then, a natural-born killer.
Richard had little use for school and barely went anymore. He began hanging out in smoke-filled pool halls and bars with pool tables. He really liked the game of pool, its neat precision, its rules, its timing and strategy. He practiced constantly, for hours at a time, perfecting his skills, his hand-eye coordination, the correct stroke needed to make good, then very difficult shots. With his tall, thin body and unusually long arms he was able to lean into difficult shots and make them easily. He soon learned you could make money if you shot pool well, and he had visions of becoming a famous pool shark, a slick, soft-spoken hustler who could beat the pants off all challengers.
Richard had an uncanny ability to move quietly. He naturally walked on just the balls of his enormous feet, and he could readily move up on people without their noticing. One afternoon he came home unexpectedly. Walking into the house, he heard a strange noise, heavy breathing, rhythmic grunting. He slowly moved forward and looked into the living room, and there was his mother, having sex with a man on the couch—a married man with three children who lived next door. His mother’s legs were high in the air, wide open, and the man was pumping into her, his fat, white, hairy ass exposed. Richard wanted to plunge his knife into the man’s back, but instead he quietly turned and left, disgusted, hating his mother. She was always talking about how dirty sex was, don’t do this, don’t do that, and there she was in broad daylight fucking the married guy next door. What a hypocrite, what a tramp—a whore, he thought, and went back to Jake’s pool hall in Hoboken and began to practice.
