and friendly. When they were a little way out, DeMeo full-throttled the boat and off they went, straight out to open waters. Richard sat and enjoyed the ride, the fresh air. Though Roy’s guys still hadn’t warmed to Richard—nor he to them—they had learned to accept him; but they were wary of him.
Since he was a kid in Jersey City, Richard loved the ocean and he enjoyed being on a boat, the clean, fresh smell of the Atlantic coming to him. Joey and Anthony were talking to this Bob guy, making jokes with him, telling him how these two gorgeous girls had given Roy a double suck.
When they were way out, Roy slowed the boat, shut the engines, and announced that this was a good place to fish, but first they had to put chum in the water.
“What are we fishing for?” Bob asked.
“Sharks,” Roy told him.
Bob was a short, square guy with the face of a bulldog. He had a slight accent Richard couldn’t place. Maybe Canadian. After lowering a chum basket in a net into the water and putting a couple of baits on big hooks, Roy broke out the sandwiches, and they had lunch, drinking beer and white wine and telling dirty jokes. There were no other boats to be seen. Richard was curious to see sharks up close and personal, though he really didn’t believe there were sharks in these waters. He had an open mind though and was excited by the prospect. Roy, however, was sure there were sharks here, said he caught a lot of them in this very spot.
Richard sensed something in the air—danger; but he didn’t know why. All seemed okay. He was, as always, armed, had a gun and a knife on him. DeMeo was in a great mood. As they were finishing lunch, Chris spotted a shark, its cobalt blue dorsal fin cutting the water. They all stood to see it as it moved closer.
“See, I told ya!” DeMeo announced. Soon there were other sharks; they suddenly seemed all over the place. DeMeo moved to where Bob was standing. DeMeo said, his demeanor suddenly changing, “I know you’re a fuckin’ rat. Calabro told me what you’ve been up to,” and with that DeMeo pulled out a pistol and shot Bob in the face. The hapless man screamed and fell down. The others grabbed him and tossed him in the water.
Wide eyed and screaming, he tried to keep afloat, but was having difficulty. Chris wanted to shoot him, but Roy wouldn’t let him.
“Let the sharks do him,” Roy said. Bob was bleeding profusely; his heart, no doubt, was pumping away furiously, and blood came from the hole in his face in a pulsating torrent of red; and it didn’t take long for the sharks to gather near him, swim around him, as Bob screamed and flailed about wildly. This Richard watched in awe, amused, enjoying it. It didn’t take long for the sharks, no doubt stirred on by the blood, to begin taking nips, then bites out of the screaming, pleading, begging Bob, and he soon went under and didn’t come back up. DeMeo and the others thought it was entertaining, great fun, better than any Broadway show; they high-fived one another, laughing and smiling. Richard too thought it entertaining, liked its originality.
“Fuckin’ rat got what he deserved. I only wished it lasted longer, you know,” DeMeo said.
They all agreed. They caught a few sharks, shot them in the head when they were close to the boat, then headed back to the marina. As they went the sky abruptly changed, became gray and dark. It began to rain. With the rain came winds, thunder, lightning. The water became choppy. Whitecaps hurried across the suddenly rough sea. Richard began to feel seasick and wanted to get back on solid land. They arrived at the dock all right. Richard thanked Roy for a “very entertaining afternoon.”
“You’re full of surprises,” Richard said.
“Got a million a them,” Roy said.
As Richard made his way along Flatbush Avenue—it was dark by now—a car filled with black guys wearing red bandannas on their heads pulled up alongside him and for no reason began harassing him, calling him “cracker” and “honky.” They reached a red light.
“Hey, motherfucker!” one of them said, only a few feet from Richard now. “Get the fuck outta this neighborhood.”
“My seven friends don’t like that talk,” Richard said.
“What seven friends?” the driver demanded, looking at Richard as if he were nuts.
“These seven friends,” Richard said, showing them his gun, which contained seven bullets. The guy went through the red light, tires screaming, burning rubber. Richard drove onto the Belt and headed west, back to Dumont, his wife and children, turning over the day in his mind. He liked the idea of feeding people to sharks, thought it was a novel way to get rid of a body.
He began thinking of new ways to kill, expanding his repertoire. He wondered about poisons. He knew assassins had successfully been using poisons for many years. Deciding it was something he needed to look into, he began across the wide expanse of the Verrazano Bridge, admiring the view as he went, how a multitude of colored lights glistened on the water like giant piano keys. He remembered how he used to admire how the lights of Manhattan glistened on the Hudson River when he was a boy back in Jersey City.
Richard’s one friend, Phil Solimene, could get his hands on anything if he put his mind to it. Richard was still going to Solimene’s store on Friday nights to play high-stakes games of poker, and he usually stopped in a few times a week to shoot the breeze, see what was in the wind, have some coffee. Richard was gambling again, more and more.
If New Jersey had a Fagan it was Philip Solimene. It seemed every thief and larceny-hearted hustler knew Phil. Richard asked Phil offhandedly if he knew where he could get some poison.
“What kind?” Phil asked.
“To kill rats—big rats, ha ha—cyanide, strychnine, arsenic.”
“I’ll ask around,” Phil said. That’s what Solimene always said when people asked him for different items. Solimene never said no, and he most often came through.
Solimene knew firsthand just how deadly Richard was. He had set up people for Richard to rob and kill. He would offer different merchandise for sale—perfumes, drugs, blank tapes, porno, guns—and when the people showed up with the cash, Solimene would call Richard, who’d come over, bullshit the buyer, get him alone, kill him, and split the cash with Solimene. Solimene had actually seen Richard kill people.
Solimene liked Richard, thought he was stand-up, always kept his word, was tight-lipped and steely eyed and had balls. If, of all the people in the world, Solimene had to be in a foxhole with someone, he would want it to be Richard—hands down.
Four days later, Solimene called Richard and asked him to come by that night. Richard made his way to the store, and Solimene told him that he had a friend, a Union City pharmacist and “player,” who’d sell him all the poison he wanted. Thus Paul Hoffman entered, for a relatively short while, Richard Kuklinski’s life.
Hoffman was average in size, overweight, a particularly greedy individual. He was always looking for an angle, a way to get over, more than what he was fairly and equitably entitled to. He had a good profession, a successful business, but it wasn’t enough; he always wanted more. He had been buying hijacked loads of drugs from Solimene for years. He’d buy anything—aspirins, barbiturates, diet pills, antibiotics, ulcer medication, perfume, razor blades—for a fraction of the real worth and then sell it at retail prices, making a big profit. When Richard first met Hoffman at Phil’s store, he didn’t like him. Of course, Richard liked very few people.
Not only would Hoffman sell Richard all the poison he wanted, but he told him how to administer the proper dose for the desired—for the maximum—effect. He actually sat down with Richard and gave him detailed instructions, insights, and pharmaceutical advice on the proper application and use of the most dangerous toxins known to man, warning him that if he used too much the police could determine the cause of death, too little and it wouldn’t work at all. He even gave Richard a tiny measuring spoon for doling out proper dosages. Richard first bought cyanide; it came in a thick glass vial adorned with a skull and bones. Richard got the strangest sensation when he held the deadly little vial. It gave him, not surprisingly, a feeling of power and omnipotence.
This, indeed, was a very dangerous combination—Richard Kuklinski and cyanide.
The hit was of a lieutenant in the Bonanno family, a paranoid, crafty individual—a hard man to kill because he knew people were looking to do him in, and because he always went around with two grim bodyguards. His name was Tony Scavelli. He was known as “Dapper” because he always dressed to the nines. He was quite the ladies’ man, had a beautiful girlfriend who liked to go to the best restaurants, out clubbing afterward…to the upscale Regine’s on Park Avenue and Xenon on West Forty-fifth Street. For ten days Richard stalked Dapper but could never get close enough to make a decisive move.
