by Philip Carlo
The seventies were coming to a close and cocaine was the in drug, the most popular drug of all time. It was served up at swank parties from Bel Air to Park Avenue. Everyone everywhere was doing it. And the Mafia could not resist the temptation and profit it readily presented for them.
So DeMeo contacted Richard to come for a meeting with Gaggi. They again met at the Villa on Twenty-Sixth Avenue and had a nice meal, and when it was finished Gaggi got to the point: “We know,” he said, in his low, formal tone, “you can be trusted. You’ve proven that many times. We have this situation we’d like to involve you in. If you don’t want to get involved, no problem. But if you say you want in you must be in all the way…you understand?”
“I understand.”
“We have two brothers, the Mediros. They live in Rio de Janeiro. They are processing babagna [cocaine] there in Brazil and bringing it over in ships, in those containers. They have, Roy tells me, the best stuff on the market. We want you to go there, meet them, see the operation, and make the deal if you think it’s right. They will deliver it to us here, to a warehouse we have in south Brooklyn. You will receive it and watch it until it’s picked up by our people. Basically that’s it. You will get fifteen percent of all the profit. You want in?”
“Yeah, sure, definitely,” Richard said, pleased he was being asked. This he thought, was payoff for killing Galante.
“So be it,” Gaggi said, shaking Richard’s enormous hand, and it was done.
Several days later, Richard was on a plane to Rio de Janeiro. It was a long, arduous trip but he had a first-class seat and managed to sleep most of the eleven-hour flight. He’d never been to South America before. Always curious, Richard enjoyed seeing new places, peoples, cultures. He was met by a man who worked for the Mediro brothers after he went through customs. He was taken to a hotel in the center of Rio called the Copacabana Palace, right across the street from the famous Copacabana Beach on Avenida Atlantica. He looked in awe at the beautiful stretch of white beach—Lima, Copacabana, and Ipanema elegantly stretched out before him in a gentle horseshoe shape from one end of this glimmering city on the Atlantic to the other.
Arrangements were made for Richard to be picked up in a few hours. He freshened up in his room and went for a walk along Avenida Atlantica, marveling at the beauty of Rio, the coastline, Sugarloaf Mountain—the huge statue of Christ standing guard, it seemed, over the entire city. As is the custom, Brazilian women walked about the streets in tongas—the skimpiest of bikinis, their posteriors completely exposed—and Richard was taken aback by their outrageously beautiful, curvaceous curves and mocha-colored suntans. He’d never seen such beautiful women before. I can’t stay here too long, he thought, or I’ll get in trouble.
As planned he was picked up and taken to the Mediro home, a sprawling white house surrounded by a gorgeous, sweet-smelling garden. It was in the area where the Christ was, on a mountain overlooking the city.
The Mediro brothers were two intense, very polite Brazilians. Richard first met Eduardo, a handsome dark-haired man with flashing white teeth, dark predatory eyes, jet-black hair slicked back. Richard and Eduardo went out on a veranda, had cold drinks, and talked. As they talked, Eduardo’s brother, John Carlo, showed up. John Carlo was very dark, seemed, Richard thought, a Negro. He sat down, and they discussed the deal, price, delivery. Richard was on his best behavior. When he wanted, he could be amazingly polite—the perfect gentleman. The brothers seemed to take to him. Eduardo had a gorgeous little girl, two or three years old, and she came running out onto the veranda, was completely fascinated by Richard, taken by his huge size and white skin. Her name was Yada. Richard loved children, and he immediately began playing with Yada, picked her up and tickled her as she squealed with delight. A maid came and got her and took her for a nap.
“She is so very fascinated by people,” Eduardo explained, very much liking how Richard responded to his daughter. Now that the particulars of the business were out of the way, Eduardo said he’d like to show Richard their processing lab; then they’d go to eat.
“Fine,” said Richard. They piled into a yellow Mercedes sedan the brothers had and went for a two-hour drive, over a very long bridge, up into thick green hills. The lab was in a huge cinder-block warehouse. Armed guards sat in chairs in front of it. They jumped to attention when they saw the brothers’ yellow car.
Inside, Richard was stunned by all the cocaine. There were large squares of it, tightly wrapped in thick plastic, neatly piled up from floor to ceiling. In the back, off to the left, was the lab. Huge vats of coca leaves were being turned into a nearly pure white powder. Eduardo offered Richard “a taste.” He declined, said he never did drugs. Eduardo liked that too.
Impressed, Richard saw the whole operation, thinking he would surely make a fortune. He was, he knew, taking a big risk getting involved with so much cocaine, but he didn’t think he’d get caught; the risks seemed worth it, as he put it.
From the warehouse, they went back to Rio, to an upscale barbecue restaurant in Ipanema, where they cooked all kinds of meats on metal spits over a wood fire in the center of the restaurant, and Richard had the biggest, best steak in his life, he would later say. After this wonderful dinner, the brothers offered to take Richard sightseeing and horseback riding the next day, but Richard politely declined, said he needed to get back home. He missed his family.
“As you wish,” Eduardo said, and they took him back to his hotel. Richard called DeMeo and let him know all was good, the flight he’d be returning on. DeMeo said he’d come pick him up. Later that evening Richard was taken out to the airport and managed to catch a flight out of Rio to New York, with a brief stopover in Lima, Peru.
Richard was startled to see Gaggi with Roy at the airport. As they drove to a restaurant in nearby Bensonhurst, Richard told them about all that he’d seen. Gaggi said he had spoken already with the Mediro brothers and they really liked Richard…even said how nice he was to the little girl Yada.
“You did a good job,” Gaggi said; then they had a dinner and finalized plans to receive the first shipment of cocaine the following month.
George Malliband was a large, boisterous man, a two-bit hustler, a degenerate gambler that happened to weigh three hundred pounds. Richard first met Malliband at Phil Solimene’s store; they did a little business together, developed a relationship of sorts. George lived on a farm in Pennsylvania and Richard went hunting there with him once in a while. When Malliband overextended himself and borrowed money from loan sharks because of gambling debts, he painted himself into a corner—a particularly dangerous corner. Like many other people, Malliband heard stories about how dangerous Richard could be, and he turned to Richard for help. Richard, in his own way, had taken a shine to Malliband, or Georgie-Boy, as he called him, and he reluctantly came to his assistance: he arranged for the loan sharks to wait a few days for their money, and introduced Malliband to DeMeo, who wound up loaning Malliband thirty-five thousand dollars, at “a friend’s rate.”
Malliband paid off the Jersey sharks and people he owed money in Vegas. He had promised up and down he’d pay DeMeo back in a timely fashion, sworn on his mother and father and everyone else, but he soon stopped making payments to DeMeo, and Roy put the squeeze on him. Malliband again ran to Richard for help.
“Look,” Richard said, “I can’t help you. You swore on your word of honor, on all your relatives, you’d do the right thing here, and now you’re obligated. DeMeo…you can’t fuck around with this guy, see. He’s fuckin’ dangerous.”
“Yeah, well, you can fix it for me, Rich. I know you can,” Malliband said. “I just need a little more time here, that’s all.”
“How much more?”
“A week, let’s say a week.”
Again, Richard extended himself, went to see DeMeo and got Malliband a week.
Again, though, George Malliband had a song and dance instead of the money, and again, Richard had a heart-to-heart talk with him, explained that DeMeo was hot, that DeMeo was
talking about hurting him. They were now in Richard’s van, driving along.
Malliband said, “Big Guy…I know too much about what you do; I don’t think you’d ever let DeMeo hurt me. Fact is I know you won’t. Remember, Big Guy, I know where you live; where your family lives. You won’t let anything happen to me,” he said, thinking himself sly.
This incensed Richard. His face paled. His lips twisted off to the left. That soft clicking came from him. A threat to his family, by Jesus Christ himself, was something he could not tolerate. He was nearly blind with red-hot rage.
“You know, Georgie-Boy, you’re wrong,” Richard said, pulling over to the curb, and without another word he whipped out a .38 and shot Malliband five times, killing him.
I could see, he’d later say, the bullets tearing into his clothes.
Richard proceeded to take Malliband to the large North Bergen garage he used as a warehouse and a place to kill people, near where Pronge kept his Mister Softee truck. Richard stuffed Malliband’s huge body into a fifty-five-gallon drum. But Malliband was too big for Richard to properly fit him into the drum, no matter how hard he pushed and squeezed, all the while talking to Malliband, saying: “See, Georgie, see what you made me do? I didn’t want to do this. See what you made me do?”
In the end Richard had to get a saw and cut one of Malliband’s legs so he could bend it into the black metal drum, which he sealed and put into his van. It was over three hundred pounds, yet Richard picked it up easily. He now drove to Jersey City, his old stomping ground. There was a big chemical plant on Hope Street called Chemtex. Out back was a kind of dumping ground. It was February now, a bitterly cold day, snowing lightly. Everything was frozen and brittle. Frigid winds ripped off the Atlantic. Richard backed his van to this impromptu dumping area, pulled the drum out of the van, rolled it down a steep embankment that abutted an old railroad yard, got back in the van, and left. For years people had been using this area as a convenient dumping site, and Richard believed Malliband wouldn’t be found for a long time, maybe never.
He was wrong. When the barrel hit a rock at the bottom of the ravine, the top popped off.
The man who owned the plant opened the rear door of the place and was standing there having a smoke when he noticed something odd—what looked like a man’s leg sticking out of a big drum. He investigated and nearly fell down when he saw what was in the barrel, a very large dead man, his leg all cut up, his femur bone visible. The man ran to call the police.
The identity of the dead man was soon established. His family was contacted. Malliband’s brother said George had been going to meet Richard Kuklinski of Dumont the day he disappeared. The police questioned Richard. He, of course, said he knew nothing about the murder. But this was the first time he’d ever been connected to a homicide he’d done, though it didn’t go any further. It stopped, for now, right there.
Richard was mad at himself. He should have buried Malliband, dumped him down one of the bottomless holes in the caves, fed him to the rats. I must, he told himself, be more careful.
As much as Richard loved his home life, being a “family man,” he came to believe that being married, having children, was making him…soft, he explained, taking away the razor-sharp edge a professional killer must have. He vowed to be more careful. He would get his razor edge back. In a bad mood now, he had a temper tantrum in the house and began breaking things.
The cocaine from Brazil arrived and was delivered to a warehouse Gaggi and DeMeo had found in south Brooklyn, down by the waterfront, near the old armory.
Richard, seriously armed, was there to receive it. It was a lot more than he thought. The cocaine was on wooden skids, two of them, all neatly wrapped in plastic. Richard set up a cot for himself, put broken glass all over the floor, even installed two electronically activated beams at the entrance so no one could sneak in. He had to stay with the coke until it was picked up. Those were his orders. That night a few of DeMeo’s guys did show up and took the load away. Richard’s job was done. He soon received a big bag of money from DeMeo, minus what Malliband had owed, of course. But DeMeo didn’t charge any vig at all.
For months this went on flawlessly. The loads came in; Richard received and guarded them until they were picked up; a short while later he was given a bag filled with hundred-dollar bills. Richard was pleased. It was all working out well. Everyone was making money. There were no problems.
That soon changed.
DeMeo beeped Richard; they met near the Tappan Zee Bridge.
“We’ve got problems,” DeMeo said, “with the Brazilians.”
“What happened?” Richard asked, concerned.
DeMeo explained that he and Gaggi had found a better coke contact, Colombians out of Medellín, that sold coke for far less than the Mediro brothers, and DeMeo had not paid the Brazilians for the last load; furthermore, he wasn’t going to pay them, he said.
“How much is involved?” Richard asked, thinking this was a stupid thing for DeMeo and Gaggi to be doing. Why, he wondered, were these Italians always so greedy?
“Little more than half a million. And they…well, they threatened us.”
“Of course. Roy, these are serious guys. I wouldn’t fuck with them. Give them—”
“We ain’t,” he interrupted.
“And what do you want me to do?”
“Go there with a few of the guys and kill the cocksuckers,” DeMeo said.
“In Brazil?”
“Yeah.”
“Roy, Rio is a big place; I don’t know my way around.”
“I’ll send you with three of the guys.”
Richard thought about this. It was a risky proposition, he knew…but he liked the challenge, even the danger, of it. “If I go I want to do this by myself,” he said.
“Any way you think is best. There’s sixty large in it for you.”
“Okay,” Richard said, intrigued by the challenge, how the odds were stacked against him; his death wish was again coming into play.
“When can you go? The sooner the better,” DeMeo said.
“I’ll leave tomorrow,” Richard said. “That soon enough?”
“Good man,” DeMeo said, and hugged and kissed Richard. They both got back into their cars and went in opposite directions, Richard’s mind playing over, as if he were studying a giant life-and-death chess match, what he would do, how he would do it.
By now you know, he recently explained, what I liked most was the hunt, the challenge of what the thing was. The killing for me was secondary. I got no rise as such out of it at all…for the most part. But the figuring it out, the challenge—the stalking and doing it right, successfully—that excited me a lot. The greater the odds against me, the more juice I got out of it.
Gambling, it was all about gambling, I guess, you know, and I was betting my life, all I had; that was the bet. Me, alone, against them…I don’t mean these guys necessarily, the Brazilian brothers, anyone I was going up against. This involved me, only me—it didn’t put my family in danger at all. That I’d never do. Gamble with them. Their lives. Their well-being.
Richard didn’t seem to realize that he was, in fact, putting his family in jeopardy. Serious jeopardy. South Americans, as a matter of course, regularly strike at enemies’ families. For them it was the norm. For Richard it was anathema. For South Americans, the first, logical place to strike was to kill a man’s family, and it was, they knew, much more painful and lasting than even doing in the intended target.
Moreover, Richard didn’t seem to connect what he was doing to the full spectrum of calamities that could and would befall his family if he was found out. Such a thing was so painful for him, he didn’t think about it. Perhaps he couldn’t think about it. He pushed it away somewhere in a dark corner of his mind and left it there.
Getting weapons to Rio, Richard knew, would be the first order of business. That night he took apart two Italian automatics with silencers, put them in a wooden box, lined it with pieces of styrofoam. In the morning he mailed it
and a box of nine-millimeter bullets to himself at the Copacabana Palace. (He was using a bogus name.)
As usual, he didn’t say one word to Barbara about where he was going or what he was doing. He kissed her so long, drove himself to Kennedy Airport, left his car in the parking lot, and boldly caught a Pan Am flight—of course first-class—directly to Rio de Janeiro.
The plane ran into a fierce thunderstorm and Richard was tossed about in his seat. He was a superstitious man, and he hoped the storm wasn’t some kind of bad omen. As much as Richard could like someone, he liked the Mediro brothers; he very much liked Eduardo’s little girl Yada. That weighed on him for a while, but he soon forgot about her. Richard was very good at compartmentalizing his feelings, and he focused his thoughts, his energy, on murdering the brothers and getting away with it unscathed. That was all that mattered. That was the job at hand.
He took a cab from the airport directly to the lovely Copacabana Palace, checked in under his false name, and went up to the luxurious room. It had a sweeping view of the beach, and Richard stood at the window admiring the tawny-colored beach and the beautiful nearly naked females all over the place.
The guns were supposed to arrive that day, but they never came. They were, no doubt, stolen by a customs agent, and now Richard was in Rio with no weapons, feeling as if he were in band with no instrument to play.
This was, of course, a dilemma. Richard knew no one here, didn’t speak a word of Portuguese, didn’t even know how to get to their home. He walked onto Copacabana Beach, down to the water’s edge, turned, and faced the bustling, steaming city. Using the giant Christ as a point of reference, Richard had an idea where the house was, but he had no car.
Perplexed, concerned, he walked all the way to the Ipanema district and back. He sat at a shaded outdoor café, ordered an iced tea, and watched the Brazilian people go about their fast-paced hot-blooded lives. Here it was like summer and the temperature was in the low nineties. The sun, so close to the equator, was much stronger than back in the States. Richard could see its searing heat rising from the black-and-white mosaic tiled sidewalk in sensuous undulating waves. He just sat there watching people, the gorgeous women, thinking this thing out.
