The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

To humor Polifrone and play out the sting, Richard agreed to meet him early Wednesday morning, December 17, to get the egg sandwiches and cyanide. The cyanide he’d use to kill Pat Kane. That was Richard’s plan.

 53

 With a Wiggle

It was December 17, 1986, a day that would live in infamy.

As usual, Richard was up early. He had coffee and toast and sat in the living room staring at the floor, wondering if he should go meet Polifrone or not. He had, he says, an uncomfortable feeling about this whole setup; but he decided he’d see how it went. After all, he reasoned, he’d put so much time into this thing already, he might as well see how it played out. He stood up, put on a waist-length black jacket, and headed out the door. Barbara wasn’t feeling well and was still in bed.

At 8:45 A.M., ATF Agent Dominick Polifrone was standing at the usual spot in front of the bank of the phones at the Lombardi rest stop. It was a bitterly cold day. Frigid winds tore across the rest area. People hurried to and from their cars to one of the six fast-food outlets. The sky was filled with churning, angry clouds that seemed at war with one another; traffic whizzed by; planes roared low overhead.

Polifrone had a white paper bag in his hand. It contained three egg sandwiches. In the pocket of his coat he had a thumb-sized glass vial, the supposed cyanide, which would be used to poison one of the sandwiches. Polifrone was armed to the teeth, wired up. Task-force detectives monitored his every move. Everyone was tense. This was it. This was D-day. This was the day it would go down. Everyone knew Richard was lethal—definitely armed, wouldn’t hesitate to kill. Polifrone looked forward to getting this done once and for all. He’d been on this cursed case now for nearly nineteen months. He was tired of it, tired of the bullshit, tired of the Ice Man task force, tired of walking on the edge. He stared at the access road and spotted Richard’s Oldsmobile Calais with Richard’s unmistakable, huge form behind the wheel.

“There he is,” he whispered, his words instantly transmitted to all the members of the task force. Pat Kane, Bob Carroll, Paul Smith, and Ron Donahue were hidden in a dark Chevy van with tinted windows and had a clear view of Polifrone.

Pat Kane could barely sleep the night before. All his effort, all his sweat and tears and sleepless nights, were finally paying off. He had never believed this day would come, but it was here. Richard Kuklinski would soon be behind bars, or dead. Those were the only two options. Bob Carroll had promised him that when the time came to arrest Kuklinski, he, Pat Kane, could do it—tell him he was under arrest and actually put the cuffs on him. This would be the highlight of Kane’s career, his life. As he lay in bed thinking about what would happen, he prayed— gave thanks for the help he was sure God had given him, given Polifrone and the task force, given Bob Carroll. Kane was sure God’s hand had played an integral role in all this, in all that would happen. Surely God, he believed, had provided Dominick Polifrone. As far as he was concerned, Richard Kuklinski was an instrument of Satan himself, and now, finally, he would be getting his due.

“How you doin’, Dom?” Richard asked as he approached.

“Good. I spoke to the kid last night. It’s all set. Here’s the sandwiches. I’ll go get him and be back in fifteen minutes.” Richard took the bag.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Polifrone assured. He didn’t like the way Richard was acting; he seemed distant…wary. “I’ll go get the kid and be back in fifteen minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll go get the van. It isn’t far from here. Just down the next exit. It’s just a ten-minute ride,” Richard said.

“What color is it, so I’ll know?”

“Blue.”

“Now where are you gonna park it so I can bring him right there?”

“Right here. We might as well do it over here out of the way of everybody. I’ll be sitting in the driver’s seat. You can’t miss it.”

“Okay, I’m gonna bring him right into the back of the van to let him test the coke.”

“Okay.”

Polifrone now took a small bag out of his jacket pocket. “Here’s the cyanide,” he said, amplifying the word “cyanide” loud and clear so it would certainly be recorded. Polifrone said there was enough of the deadly poison to kill a lot of people. He asked where Richard was going to get rid of the coke buyer’s body.

“I’m going to put it away for safekeeping,” he said, and laughed. It was an ice-cold laugh filled with malice, no mirth, his breath fogging in the cold. Richard now spotted the task force black van with the tinted windows. Something wasn’t right about it…was hinky, he would later explain.

“Let’s walk,” Richard said, and started across the lot, right to the van. They saw him coming; all quickly got down.

“Where you going?” Polifrone asked, concerned, his hand moving toward his piece.

“Just to walk a little,” Richard said. He got up to the van and actually looked inside. He couldn’t see anything. Now he started back toward his car, Polifrone following him, trying to get Richard to use the word “murder.” Richard opened his trunk and put the sandwiches inside, got in his car, and started the engine. He assured Polifrone he’d be back with the van, said it was two toned, light and dark blue. Richard’s plan was to come back in his car, and if the rich Jewish kid was there, he’d say the van wouldn’t start, the coke was in his warehouse, and they should follow him there. Once inside the warehouse, Richard would kill both Polifrone and the coke buyer. Richard had, in fact, tried to borrow a van the day before from Jimmy DiVita, but his van had too many windows. Anyway, the warehouse would be a better place to do the double homicide. Richard said he’d be back in twenty minutes. Polifrone said he’d be back with the coke buyer in exactly thirty minutes. Richard pulled away. As he went, he passed the bank of phones. In one was Deputy Chief Bob Buccino, making believe he was talking. He’d been listening to every word said. He had a nine-millimeter wrapped in a newspaper, was ready to blow Richard away. The chief truly hated Richard and was looking for an excuse to end it all right there, no long, expensive trial.

They could have arrested Richard there and then, but Bob Carroll wanted Richard to put the white powder on the sandwich and actually give it to Detective Paul Smith; that, he felt, would strengthen the case, tie Kuklinski directly to the murder of Gary Smith. When Richard returned they’d nail him “red-handed.” The parking lot was saturated with attorney general’s people and ATF and FBI agents, all ready to pounce, to bring down this serial killer who poisoned, shot, and stabbed people with impunity, as though he had some divine right.

Richard drove out of the rest stop. He went a half mile down the road, pulled over, put on plastic gloves, and carefully opened the vial. It didn’t look, he immediately thought, like cyanide. He ever so carefully sniffed the air—no distinct scent of almonds, the odor of cyanide.

This is fuckin’ bullshit! he thought, and sat there wondering what was up, more perplexed than anything else. He put the car back in gear and drove a ways, spotted a mangy dog sniffing around a group of garbage pails. He pulled into a restaurant, bought a hamburger, took it to the car, carefully—just in case —put some of the white powder on the burger, and walked over to the large rust-colored mutt. The dog smelled the meat, and his ears perked right up. Richard offered it the burger. With trepidation, as though he’d been tricked before, the dog took the burger and quickly gobbled it down as Richard curiously watched to see what would happen, his head tilted to the left with curiosity.

Happy, the dog moved off down the road, wagging its scrawny tail as it went.

Fucking liar! Richard thought. He didn’t yet know what the hell Polifrone was up to, but he wanted nothing more to do with it, whatever it was. He began thinking that Polifrone was maybe a contract killer who was, in fact, trying to set him up.

“Fuck ’im,” Richard said out loud, and drove to a phone booth and called Barbara to see how she felt. For the last two days her arthritis had been acting up, and she had a slight headache and a low-grade fever.

“I’m okay. I’m lying down,” she said.

“Would you like to go for breakfast?” he asked.

“Sure, I guess…okay.”

“I’m going to stop and pick up some things at the store and then come home.”

“Fine,” she said, and hung up. Richard drove over to the Grand Union and bought some groceries. As always,