Dwayne had never been close to his father. Though Barbara and his sisters tried mightily to shield Dwayne from the truth, he knew Richard beat his mother, broke up furniture, tore things apart. Dwayne figured it would be just a matter of time before his father turned his wrath on him. Dwayne would gladly defend his mother with his life, and he often thought about just that—trying to stop his father from abusing his mother and suddenly becoming the target himself. Dwayne still always made sure to have weapons ready, so when and if the time came to defend his mother from Richard, defend himself, he’d be prepared, ready for action.
But Dwayne had no idea just how dangerous, truly deadly, Richard was, and regardless of what preparations he made he’d never be able to do any kind of combat with his father and survive.
Richard did his best to please his son; he tried to be a good dad. He was buying Dwayne gifts all the time, mostly some sort of weapon: a sword, all kinds of knives, BB guns, a crossbow. Not just any crossbow, but a superdeluxe one designed to bring down a bear, with razor-sharp arrows, made to kill, readily pierce flesh and muscle and break bones. Dwayne didn’t take to any of these weapons, rarely used the crossbow—but he did think about using it against his father, indeed killing him with it to protect his mother. Dwayne was very close to Barbara, but he was by no means a mama’s boy. Dwayne loved sports and rough-and-tumble action, lifted weights, and had a long, lean, muscular body. Dwayne’s passion was wrestling, and he was very good at it, winning most of his matches. His whole family, including Richard, went to his wrestling matches and cheered him on wildly. Richard’s attending Dwayne’s matches was one of the few things Richard participated in that his son liked. Richard did not take him to baseball, soccer, or football games, didn’t go fishing with him, never did any of the things a father and son might do together. But Dwayne did enjoy when his father came to his wrestling heats and cheered him on.
Richard seemed to thrive on family life. He very much enjoyed being home, with his family, cooking at barbecues, watching movies together, shopping for groceries, even going to church with the family on Sunday mornings. A healthy, loving family was what Richard had always wanted, coveted, and now he finally had it. Yet, his enjoyment, his obvious love of home life, could turn to explosive rage at the drop of a dime. He still struck Barbara, broke her nose, gave her black eyes. Though these incidents were certainly less frequent than in years past, they still happened. Both Merrick and Chris had grown into large, physically strong young women and would run to get between Richard and their mother when he had one of his outbursts.
Richard was bipolar and should have been taking medication to stabilize his behavior, his sudden highs and lows, but going to see a psychiatrist was out of the question. He’d be admitting that something was wrong with him, and he’d never do that.
Conversely, family life was, he was beginning to think, making him soft, taking away his razor edge, and because of that he was becoming…
He often fantasized now about making a lot of money and retiring from crime, going straight, buying a house near the ocean and enjoying the view every day, going for long walks with Barbara. Richard knew he’d been lucky for a very long time now, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that someday his luck would change, had to change, the laws of average dictated that.
Still, Richard did little to lessen his exposure, to step back and look at his life with a critical, rational eye. He plunged forward, intent upon one thing, making money, providing for his family, and retiring one day. But he needed a lot of money for that, and the risks he was taking became secondary. They were a natural part of the landscape and he accepted that. He vowed to be more careful, to plan and plot methodically and move only when the time was right.
Another potential problem for Richard was his explosive, homicidal temper. He was still getting into arguments with people about how they drove, which could quickly escalate into sudden violence, even murder. Someone who cut Richard off in traffic was taking his life in his hands.
One evening Richard was returning to New Jersey and had just crossed the George Washington Bridge when he passed a tall, lanky hitchhiker. The man tried to wave him down, but Richard kept moving, and the hitchhiker gave him the finger. For some reason this disrespect always outraged Richard; he couldn’t let such a thing pass. He doubled back, taking a gun from the holster on his calf, rolled down the window, drove right up to the hitchhiker, and shot him in the chest, killing him. The hitchhiker was found by a biker; the police were summoned. There were no witnesses, no motives, no weapons, no clues. Another unsolved killing for the homicide books.
Another time Richard wanted to try out a new weapon—a small black metal crossbow made in Italy. It seemed like a good assassin’s weapon because it was so silent, so small, the size of a catcher’s mitt, but would it really work? he wondered. To test it Richard went out in his car looking for someone he could shoot with the crossbow. He wasn’t angry, hadn’t been drinking; it was just a test to see if the small crossbow would kill a human being, he explained. He spotted a man, his guinea pig, walking innocently on a secluded street, slowed, pulled up, and asked for directions in his friendly way. The man approached Richard’s car to answer and in the next instant Richard shot him in the forehead with the six-inch steel-shafted arrow. The man went right down, the arrow in his brain, not knowing what hit him or why…and was soon dead.
44
The Elusive Muskie
A man in Vineland, New Jersey, owed mob guys a lot of money—over one hundred thousand dollars. He was a degenerate gambler and a sexual degenerate, and got himself in deep with loan sharks of Italian persuasion. He paid his debt with a check that bounced—twice. Richard was asked to go see this man. His name was John Spasudo, and he would wind up playing an important role in Richard’s life.
Like Richard, Spasudo was a large man, though with long dark hair. He had perfected the gift of gab to a high art form, could talk the spots off a running cheetah if he had a mind to. Richard, however, had heard it all before many times over and did not fall for Spasudo’s line of bull. Richard calmly explained the facts of life to Spasudo, and Richard did end up getting all the money due after a few days.
In the course of these days, Spasudo told Richard about this “great opportunity” he had to make money buying and selling Nigerian currency and South African Krugerrands, a coin made of pure gold. And he told Richard about this idea he was developing with Louis Arnold, a wealthy Pennsylvania businessman, to open a series of rest stops specifically designed for trucks all along the interstate—a hotel, restaurant, and garage where mechanical problems could be quickly addressed. It sounded like a reasonably good idea and piqued Richard’s interest.
Richard, as always, was looking for new ways to make money, and he listened to Spasudo with an open mind, heard more about how much could be made with gold coins and currency trading, and soon was on his way to Zurich, Switzerland with a whole new spectrum of opportunities before him, and a new list of victims to be sent to the grave.
Pat Kane hurried excitedly into Lieutenant Leck’s office. He was sure he had found the rope they could use to hang Richard Kuklinski.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “I have here clear, irrefutable proof that links Kuklinski to the York Hotel. He called the place on December 21, when Deppner and Smith were staying there. Let’s see him try and deny this.”
“Good, very good work,” Leck said; while this was only circumstantial proof and did not mean that Kuklinski had killed anyone, it did tie Kuklinski directly to the place where Gary Smith had been found.
Though in Pat Kane’s mind it was further proof of what he’d been saying for years. This was not enough proof, however, to go out and handcuff Kuklinksi. More than anything he had ever wanted in his life, Kane wanted to arrest Richard Kuklinski and put him in a cell—cage him like the deranged animal Kane believed he was. This investigation had all been very frustrating and disheartening for Kane. He knew Kuklinski was a mob contract killer, a distributor of pornography, had killed five people that he was aware of—Masgay, Hoffman, Malliband, Smith, and Deppner—and he couldn’t do anything about it, at least not yet. Kane was becoming quiet and morose. Terry could barely get him to talk, to acknowledge her or the children. He had always been a loving, extremely devoted, and attentive husband, a doting father, but now he was like another man entirely: there, in the house, in the bed next to his wife, but not really present, a part of the family.
If Kane was going to get Kuklinski, stop his bloody one-man crime spree, he needed tangible, irrefutable
