The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

John, even though they both sported plaid bandannas over their faces. Word quickly reached a De Cavalcante soldier. Knowing Richard led the Coming Up Roses and that they worked with Genovese, this soldier—his name was Albert Parenti—found Richard and solemnly sat him down in a quiet corner of a bar called Phil’s. Parenti was a barrel-chested Italian American of Sicilian extraction, balding, weasel faced, so bowlegged he walked like he just got off a horse. He said, “I know two of your guys stuck up my game on Washington Street. I also know you had nothing to do with it or I wouldn’t be talking nice. I’m coming to you here like this as a courtesy, see. We all know you are a stand-up guy; we hear only good things about you. That’s why I’m talking to you nice like this, see. Those guys of yours gotta go. There ain’t no other way.”

Angry but controlling himself, Richard knew better than to try and deny his guys’ involvement or to become belligerent in any way. What he did was plead for mercy.

“First let me say I appreciate you talking to me like this,” he said. “I had no idea ’bout any of this. I’m real sorry. I’ll make sure every fuckin’ penny is paid back, all—”

“It’s not the money I’m talking about here, it’s the principle.”

“I know that, I’m just saying—”

“Look, let me cut to the chase: these guys gotta go. And you gotta do it, see. They’re your responsibility, see.”

This hit Richard like a bare-knuckled punch in the face. In his own quiet way he loved John and Jack; they were his first and only friends. How could he kill them? But Richard knew enough about the rhyme and rhythm of street justice to know that if he didn’t do what Parenti was asking—actually demanding!—he himself could very well be marked for removal.

He tried again: “Let me talk to them, let me make sure they leave town and never, I mean never, come back.”

“They gotta go. That’s it. You do it or we do it, capisce?”

“Capisce,” Richard said, seeing clearly the handwriting on the wall; and it was written in John and Jack’s blood, and if he was not careful, his blood.

“Good. I’m glad that’s settled,” Parenti said with solemn finality. He stood up and left, the two goons he traveled with close behind. A heavy life-and-death weight suddenly on his shoulders, Richard sat there as still as a tombstone, knowing he and his small crew could never fight with the De Cavalcantes. They were many, and notoriously violent, and defying or fighting with them would only mean sure death for all of them. Richard knew too that John and Jack had fucked up big-time, gone against the basic tenets of the street, and his strict rule of never taking off any mob guys. They had, he knew, sealed their own fates. Richard got up slowly, left the bar, first found Jack, shot him in the head before he knew it, and left him where he dropped. He then found John leaving his girlfriend’s apartment and shot him down, killing him, leaving him on the street so the De Cavalcantes would know the deed was truly done. They both died without pain—before they knew what hit them.

Still, Richard felt terrible. He had just killed two of the people he’d been closest to, whom he loved more than brothers. They had done much together. Now they were dead, dead by his hand.

It was them or me, he kept telling himself, but that didn’t help much, he later confided.

The De Cavalcantes immediately heard, of course, about what Richard had done, and it didn’t take long for them to realize that Richard Kuklinski could be a great asset to them—a made-to-order killer who knew what to do and how to do it, and kept his mouth shut…something all mob families in all places are always scouting for. True, Richard could never be made, but he could surely work as an independent contractor if he proved he could keep his mouth shut, that he understood that silence was golden. Before they’d approach him with anything more, they’d wait and see if he could be trusted.

The Jersey City police found no witnesses…no links to Richard; no one knew anything about the murders of John and Jack, and they soon became forgotten; just two hoods that got their just desserts.

 8

 Long Walks, Short Piers

It was the spring of 1954. Richard was just nineteen years old but comported himself as if he were much older. He had a stoic seriousness about him beyond his years. Perhaps it was because of his parents’ brutality; perhaps it was because he’d always been an outsider, put-upon, victimized; perhaps it was because he’d never had any kind of childhood. Perhaps, because he had killed his two best friends. Whatever it was, Richard was no longer a boy. He was a man about to make his mark on the world.

Like many Poles, Richard had a penchant for walking, the outdoors and fresh air. He’d regularly walk miles at a time. He didn’t believe in exercise, lifting weights, working out in a gym, jogging, but he loved to walk and think as he went. Though he didn’t exercise, Richard was endowed with unusual strength. He did menial work between his financial highs and lows, loading and unloading trucks—always keeping an eye out for something he could rob and turn into hard cash. His strength, however, seemed something he was born with, in his genes. The Poles from northern Poland, where his father had come from, were a hardy, powerful lot—and all the best physical traits of his bloodline seemed to manifest themselves in Richard. When recently asked if he exercised as a young man, went to a gym, lifted weights, he said: The only exercise I ever got was carrying dead bodies.

Curious to see more of New York, Richard took the ferry to Manhattan, marveling as the boat crossed the river at the multicolored, rich skyline—how different it was from Jersey City and Hoboken. He had been to the city several times already with the Coming Up Roses crew, but never by himself. Now the Coming Up Roses were a thing of the past, part of his youth. There were rumors on the street that Richard had killed John and Jack, and the other members steered clear of him. As it happened, they soon began using heroin, and Richard in turn stayed away from them. He did not like drugs, or the people who used them. He viewed drug users as weak and unreliable—people you couldn’t trust. Richard had become a kind of solemn, slow-moving, very dangerous lone wolf—an attribute that would serve him well for many years to come. He enjoyed being alone. He avoided friends.

When Richard stepped off the ferry near Fortieth Street, he took a right and began to walk downtown along the riverfront, under the West Side Highway. This was a dark, dank, desolate place. Most of the great piers that had once lined West Street, bustling with commerce, ships, and affluent people, were now rusting and dying, mere skeletons of their former selves. Here there were few streetlamps, and the streets were rough cobblestone, slick when wet. Richard now always carried a knife or a gun. He didn’t feel fully dressed unless he was armed, a trait that would stay with him all his professional life. He didn’t, he says, have any designs on hurting anyone on this first lone foray into Manhattan, but a nasty bum with an attitude approached him, asking for money. Richard ignored him. The bum followed, demanding money, and still Richard walked on. The bum, a large, dirty, bearded bear of a man, grabbed Richard by the shoulder and swung him around.

“Hey, you deaf, motherfucker?” he said. Smiling, Richard quickly turned and, before the bum realized it, pulled out his knife and slammed it into the bum’s chest in two swift movements.

“Get the fuck away from me!” Richard growled as the bum went to his knees and hit the ground hard. It was all over in a split second. Richard watched the light in his eyes go out, wiped his blade on him, and walked on, knowing he had killed the man, glad he had killed him.

I enjoy seeing the lights go out. I enjoy killing up close and personal. I always wanted the last image they had to be my face, he explained.

Richard had come to enjoy having control over who lived and who died. It made him feel omnipotent. He viewed the man he just killed as a vermin, and he kept his eyes open for more vermin. He walked all the way to the Battery Tunnel and solemnly stared at Jersey City just across the water, remembering how he used to read crime magazines over there when he was a kid, remembering his brother Florian, remembering his father’s brutality, remembering the friends he had killed. He could just about see the place where he had shot John Wheeler to death. Hell of a thing, he thought.

His handsome face a mask of unfeeling granite, Richard turned and made his way back uptown, passing the bum he had killed as he went, enjoying the sight of him there like that, dead at his hand, still lying where he had left him, though now a ghostly pale in the forlorn yellowish light of a streetlamp.

Richard knew this murder would not be tied to him, that the New York police would definitely not communicate with the Jersey police.