on the water, the giant piano keys of light they made, when he heard a plaintive cry, moaning, meaty thumps. He slowly walked behind the truck and there he actually saw the rape—a boy was being forced to fellate one man while the other sodomized him. They were laughing. They were drunk. They were now in trouble. Richard pulled out a .38 derringer and without a word shot both the rapists dead.
“Thank you, mister, thank you!” the boy said, pulling up his pants, wiping blood from his nose.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Richard said, and proceeded to cut open the stomach cavities of the two leather- clad men, silently cursing them, then dumped them in the river. Richard knew that with their stomachs eviscerated, gases could not build up, so the bodies would sink and stay down.
He so enjoyed killing these two rapists.
Richard had become addicted to killing people. After he committed a murder he felt relaxed, whole, and good—at peace with himself and the world. Richard was very much like a junkie who needs a fix to soothe the pangs of addiction. Murder, for Richard Kuklinski, became like a fix of pure heroin—the best high ever. And the NYPD never suspected that a huge man of Polish extraction from Jersey City was killing all the men they kept finding. There were no witnesses, no clues; no one knew anything.
Retired NYPD captain of detectives Ken Roe recently said: “Back then there were no citywide records of homicides being kept, as there are today. The local precinct had a file, but that was it, and because most all these killings were of bums, people no one really gave a fuck about, there was no incentive to properly work the case. You see, because he was killing in all different ways, the cops didn’t think one guy was doing it. In a sense…in a very real sense, they were inadvertently giving him a license to kill. Hell of a thing.”
Richard’s mentor, Carmine Genovese, had another special job for him. A man in Chicago named Anthony De Peti owed Carmine seventy thousand dollars, wasn’t paying as promised, had stories instead of the money. After Carmine explained the facts of life to him, De Peti promised he’d have the money in two days, “on Wednesday.”
“Okay, I’ll send Richie to come and get it,” Carmine said, and called Kuklinski.
“You go to Chicago. This guy is going to meet you in the bar-lounge in the Pan Am terminal, give you the money he owes, seventy g’s, you bring it right back, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Be careful; he’s slippery like a fuckin’ wet eel,” Carmine told him.
Richard enjoyed going out to the Newark Airport and flying to Chicago. It made him feel like a successful businessman. These days Richard sported a Fu Manchu mustache and long sideburns that tapered off at sharp angles just above his jawline. Stern and forbidding to begin with, he looked even more scary and unsettling with the curved mustache and long daggerlike burns. Already his hair was thinning on top, highlighting his high, wide brow and the severe planes of his Slavic cheekbones. He had, of course, a .32 and a knife with him, as well as one of his beloved derringers. Back then there was no problem carrying weapons onto a plane.
Richard arrived in Chicago’s sprawling, very busy O’Hare Airport and went straight to the lounge, sat down, and waited for De Peti to show himself, not expecting any bloodshed. This was a simple pickup, he thought. He sat and looked around, wondering where the hell De Peti was, becoming a little annoyed. Finally, he stood up and walked all over the lounge, making certain every man there saw him. He was hard to miss at six foot five and 250 pounds. Nothing, no recognition from anyone. Hmm. He was about to call Carmine when a man who’d been sitting not ten feet away from him all along stood up and said, “Rich?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Anthony De Peti—”
“Why the hell didn’t you say something—you saw me sittin’ here?”
“I wanted to make sure you were alone,” De Peti said. Richard didn’t like that answer. It immediately made him suspicious. He looked at De Peti with jaundiced eyes.
“You got the money?” he asked.
“Yeah, right here,” said De Peti. He was a head shorter than Richard, though wide in the shoulders, with a long, narrow hatchet face and buckteeth. Hairs, like the antennae of an insect, protruded from his narrow nose. He handed Richard a black attache case.
“But it’s not all there,” he said.
“How much is here?” Richard asked.
“Thirty-five, half.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“I’ll have the rest in a day or two.”
“Hey, buddy, I’m here now and you’re supposed to have it all, here now. I gotta get on a plane back to Jersey soon. He ain’t going to like this.”
“I swear I’ll have it in a day or two.”
“Yeah, well I gotta call him. Come on,” Richard said, and led De Peti over to a nearby bank of phones. Richard got Genovese on the line. “You find him all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s right here, but he don’t have it all.”
“Son of a bitch, how much does he have?”
“Half…thirty-five, he says. He says he’ll have the rest in a day or two. What do you want me to do?”
“Put him on the phone!”
Richard handed De Peti the phone. Smiling, De Peti explained how he’d have the money soon, “in a day, the most, I swear,” he proclaimed, making sure Richard saw his smiling face, like all was okay, no problem here; Carmine was his friend; what the hell. He gave the phone back to Richard, flight announcements booming on a nearby loudspeaker.
“Yeah,” said Richard, not liking De Peti. Richard had an uncanny ability to read people, like some kind of animal-in-a-jungle thing, and he did not like this guy, did not trust him.
“Rich, you stay with him, don’t let him out of your sight. He says people owe him money, that he’ll
“All right. What do you want me to do with what he gave me?”
“You hold on to that! Don’t let him out of your sight, understand?”
“Yeah,” Richard said, hanging up.
“See, I told ya,” said De Peti. “It’s all okay.”
“It’ll be all okay when you give me the rest of the money,” Richard said.
With that they left the airport, and De Peti took Richard from bar to bar, looking for different people he could never seem to find. After ten hours of this, in and out of different bars, Richard was thinking this guy was trying to give him the slip, buying time De Peti could not afford. They ended up in a crowded place on the South Side called the Say Hi Inn. It was filled with a rough clientele. They ordered drinks. De Peti went to use the phone; Richard kept an eagle eye on him, and saw him talking to a big burly guy whose face was so pockmarked it looked like gravel. Richard clearly saw something he did not like in the big man’s eyes. In his right hand in his pocket Richard held the white-handled, chrome-plated .38 derringer. There were two hollow-nosed rounds in the gun—better known as dumdums—which spread out on contact, making horrific wounds. De Peti came back to the bar, drank some of his drink. “He’ll be here soon,” he told Richard.
“The guy with the money?” Richard asked.
“Yeah, guaranteed.”
Soon, though, Gravel Face made his way over to the bar. Purposely, he shouldered Richard, looking, Richard instinctively knew, to start a fistfight with him so De Peti could slip away. Richard slowly turned to him.
“You like your balls?” Richard asked.
“What? What da fuck?” the guy said.
“If you want to keep your nuts, get the fuck outta here,” Richard said, now showing him the mean little derringer pointed directly at his crotch. “Or I’ll blow them both the fuck off here and now.”
Gravel Face turned and left. Richard turned to De Peti. “So you’re looking to play games.”
“No games—what’re you talking about?”
“If I start playing games you are going to end up very hurt. I’m losing my patience. You think I’m a fool?” Richard asked.
“He’ll be here with the dough,” De Peti said.
