The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

“Tell me about it. Will you help?”

“The question isn’t will I help, of course I will. It’s how do I get my bosses to okay it?”

Polifrone worked for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and they did not investigate murders; homicides were not their jurisdiction, which of course Pat Kane already well knew, and he had a ready answer:

“I’ll tell you how,” he said. “Firearms—he deals in firearms,” Kane said.

“Straight up?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll fuckin’ do it.” Polifrone went and made a few phone calls, ran down for his superiors what Kane had told him, and within an hour he was given the green light. He and Kane shook hands.

“Let’s get this fuckin’ guy!” Dominick said, and thus a rare coupling between the New Jersey State Police and the federal government was done. This pairing would grow to be one of the largest state-federal law enforcement efforts ever, a task force unequaled in New Jersey’s history.

But “Let’s get this fuckin’ guy” was a lot easier said than done.

Richard Kuklinski was a very untrusting, dangerous man. He could smell a cop a mile away. It was a talent he had developed, indeed honed, from a lifetime of crime, stalking and killing at will, a lifetime of being an alpha predator in a very dangerous jungle, as he perceived his world. How, they wondered, could they get Dominick Polifrone near Kuklinski, let alone get his faith and confidence? This was the million-dollar question, a giant mountain to climb.

All excited, very pleased, Pat Kane arrived home that evening, a man reborn. For one of the first times in far too long he was smiling, not quiet and morose. For the first time since this ever expanding case fell into his lap, Kane could see light at the end of a dark, treacherous tunnel strewn with the many rotting corpses of Richard Leonard Kuklinski’s victims.

When Richard arrived home from Zurich that weekend, he was in a good mood. He was always in a good mood when he made money. The following day he went to see John Spasudo and told him about the trip, how well it had gone.

“I told you, I told you, Rich!” Spasudo said, shaking Richard’s enormous hand.

“That you did, my friend—that you did,” Richard said, and the two of them soon split the profit from the Nigerian currency exchange; it was a good amount of money, and there was the prospect of making even more money. A lot more money. Richard hadn’t believed it would be that easy, but now he was a true believer, and John Spasudo was—for now—his new best friend.

Why didn’t Richard just kill Spasudo, take his share of the money and be done with him? When recently asked that question he said, ’Cause I had a use for him. If he could pull this off, there was no telling what he could do, I was thinking.

But Richard didn’t like John Spasudo, and the more he got to know him, the less he liked him. For instance, when Richard met Spasudo’s wife, Spasudo told Richard, in a winking, conspiratorial tone, “If you like, you can fuck her,” which stunned Richard, who was still very much a prude. What kind of man, Richard wondered, offered his wife like she was a favorite golf club? Spasudo also had a girlfriend, Sherry, and when Richard met her, Spasudo told him he could fuck her too.

“No thanks,” Richard said, thinking Spasudo surely had loose screws and nuts in his head. Then, something occured that completely turned Richard off to John Spasudo, indeed, numbered the days Spasudo had left on this planet. Richard was asked if he could get a few hundred pounds of pot. As usual, Richard would sell anything to turn a buck. He turned to Spasudo and asked him if he knew someone.

“Sure,” Spasudo said, only too happy to show Richard that he had contacts for anything, that he was a man of many talents and resources; and Spasudo took Richard to see “a friend.”

This friend lived in a nice house in an exclusive area of North Jersey. He was a bookish, nerd type, as Richard refers to him. He had a secret panel in the living room, behind which he had neatly stacked bales of marijuana wrapped in rough burlap. Richard got two hundred pounds, paid the guy a fair price, and put the grass in his van. Back in the house, the dealer asked Richard if he’d like to “see his toys.”

“What toys would that be?” asked Richard, and the dealer led Richard and Spasudo to a narrow stairwell, hidden in a panel under the main stairs to the second landing. They followed him down a narrow set of wooden steps into a secret finished basement. When Richard reached the bottom of the stairs, he was shocked to see children, ranging in ages from seven to fourteen, boys and girls, black and white, about a dozen of them. They were all quiet and wide-eyed, forlorn and frightened.

“Would you like one of them?” the dealer asked, as if they were tasty, fresh desserts on a tray in a busy restaurant.

“No, no thanks,” Richard growled as white-hot anger slowly welled up inside of him. The soft clicking sound immediately issued from his lips. John Spasudo had a big grin on his face. It was all Richard could do not to take out his gun and kill both of them on the spot. He quietly turned and went back up the stairs, his wide shoulders filling the space, making a silent promise that he’d return—for one reason only.

Seeing the children like that had an unusually bad effect on Richard. If there was one thing he hated, it was seeing children abused in any way. It caused a flood of repressed memories to come to the surface. No longer smiling, no longer friendly, Richard stared at the dealer with icy disdain. Richard recently explained: I couldn’t get the sight of those little kids out of my head…. It was eating at me. I had to do something. I couldn’t stop thinking about them; I’m getting mad even now, so many years later, at the thought of it—the memory, you know.

Outside, Richard told Spasudo that he didn’t approve of such things, in fact he deplored them. Spasudo thought it was a big joke. For Richard there was nothing funny about it.

The following day, Richard left for Georgia to open a checking account to facilitate the cashing of the stolen bank checks. He wasn’t sure if this was for real, if it would work, but Remi had come through once, with the Nigerian money. It had gone as smoothly as a Swiss clock, and Richard was optimistic. But as he drove down to Georgia, he kept thinking of the children, what was being done to them. He thought too about their parents and families—how he’d feel if one of his three children was in such a position. He put on the radio and listened to country music, trying to get his mind away from those children, what was in their eyes, the sadness about their small faces, his own childhood, but not having much luck.

Richard was opening the new corporate checking account in Georgia because he had sold a lot of porn in Georgia over the years and was familiar with the place, liked its live-and-let-live attitude. He had no difficulty opening the account under the name of the Mercantile Corporation.

As Richard drove back to New Jersey, his mind returned to the children. He resolved to go back to that house the following day, but John Spasudo called and told Richard that Remi had contacted him and that he had to go back to Zurich as soon as possible.

“Tell him I’m on my way,” Richard said, and the next day Richard was on his way back to Zurich. Barbara was used to these sudden trips and didn’t think twice about his abrupt departure. She says she preferred it when he was gone. There was peace in the house, she explained.

 46

 “The Store”

The key to getting close to Richard Kuklinski, Pat Kane had long believed, was Phil Solimene, the owner of “the store,” in Paterson, and Richard’s only friend.

Solimene was, perhaps, the only person in the world—aside from Barbara—that Richard trusted, that Richard considered…a friend. Richard had known him for well over twenty years, had committed every imaginable crime with him, including murder. Solimene even knew where Richard and his family lived, had been to the Kuklinski home for drinks and coffee several times, with his wife, Percy House’s sister.

Because of Kane’s constant pressure, Percy House finally agreed to be a snitch to get out of jail; he wore a wire and went to “the store,” where he managed to get Phil junior to admit his involvement in a burglary gone sour in which an elderly man had been murdered, beaten to death. House also tried to get Richard to incriminate himself on a secreted tape, but Richard didn’t trust him, indeed flat-out threatened to kill him, and Percy House hurried from the store as though his ass were on fire and never went back.