by Philip Carlo
“Son of a bitch—beautiful…you did good, son of a bitch,” Genovese said, realizing he had found a rare man in this giant Polack. “Very good! Molto bravo…molto bravo!” he added.
“Want me to get rid of it?” Richard asked.
“No…leave it here. I want to show it to my friend. Did he suffer?” asked Genovese.
“Yeah, he suffered good,” Richard said, and Genovese paid him ten thousand dollars cash on the spot for, he said, “a good job well done.”
The cash in his pocket making a pleasant bulge, Richard left Genovese, knowing his reputation as an efficient contract killer was assured.
The Enforcer
Richard still frequently thought about killing his father Stanley. He’d start thinking about him, remember the brutal, callous treatment he’d suffered, get all mad inside, and want to beat him to death. On several occasions he actually went to a bar where Stanley hung out near the projects, looking to put a bullet in his head, but Stanley wasn’t there.
It was like kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing, Richard explained. He was lucky because when I was looking for him he wasn’t around. Even now, I mean sitting here and talking about him, I regret a lot not capping him—the prick…the sadistic prick!
Stanley never realized how close he’d come to being killed by his second son.
Joseph, Richard’s younger brother, was also extremely violent, in frequent difficulties in school, always getting into trouble, stealing things, drinking excessively. Richard wanted to reach out to him, give him advice, put some money in his hands, but he loathed his mother so much now that he wouldn’t even go near their apartment anymore.
After being given the head of the car salesman, Carmine Genovese took a shine to Richard. Carmine had a lot of money on the street, and he now used Richard as his chief collector and enforcer. Had Richard been Italian, Genovese would surely have sponsored him for induction into the family, but he was Polish and that could not happen. Still, Carmine gave him a lot of work. Richard was collecting money for him from people up and down the East Coast. He was reliable, honest, and very violent when necessary, sometimes too violent. Richard was always knocking on Carmine’s door with brown paper bags of money in his hand. He never stole a dime from Carmine; indeed, he never even thought about it, which only made Carmine that much more fond of him. Most everyone that borrowed money from Carmine Genovese knew the ground rules out of the gate and paid it back quickly, as agreed to. Not to do so, everyone also knew, could be fatal.
For the most part Richard enjoyed working for Genovese. He made money—most of which he pissed away. People respected him and showed him deference, and his reputation as a dangerous “mob-connected guy” spread all over Jersey. Nobody fucked with him. Even other mob guys stayed clear of Richard Kuklinski. He became known as “the Polack.” That became his street name.
Richard took to always carrying two guns and a knife whenever he went out. If he wasn’t armed to the teeth, he felt naked. He was fond of over-and-under .38 derringers. They were so small that they could readily fit in the palm of a hand, and at close range they were lethal. Richard enjoyed killing up close and personal, and to kill someone with a derringer you had to be right on top of him; that is why, he says, he also enjoyed killing with a knife.
It’s intimate. You can feel the blade going in, the bones breaking, see the shock on the guy’s face—watch his light go out.
When asked if he believed in God, that it was a sin to kill a human being, he said:
The only God I believe in is a loaded pistol with a hair trigger. Funny how before I killed a lot of guys they’d call me God. “Oh, God, no! Oh God no!” he says, smiling, amused by the memories.
Richard’s wife, Linda, gave birth to a baby boy they named Richard. Richard felt no love for or emotional attachment to his child. He was a natural extension of a sex act—nothing more. Richard didn’t even go to the hospital when Linda gave birth, nor did he help bring her home. He acted as though it were someone else’s child, not his; but it didn’t take long for Linda to become pregnant again.
Linda saw all of Richard’s weapons but never questioned what they were for. She knew how violent and psychotic Richard could be and acted as if she were blind. She knew too that if she questioned him, demanded information, asked questions, he might very well explode and hit her. In this Richard was a carbon copy of his father—the man he most hated in the world—but he did not, never would, hit his son, or strike any of the five children he would eventually have.
Richard was, for the most part, fond of children, saw them as put-upon innocents, and became enraged when he saw an adult hitting a child. One time he beat the hell out of a man he saw hitting his kids in a parking lot; in years to come he’d kill a friend of his because the man asked him to murder his wife and eight-year-old son.
I don’t kill women and I don’t kill children. And anyone that does doesn’t deserve to live, explained Richard. As cold and completely indifferent as Richard was to the suffering of men, he could not stand to see a child harmed. He also hated rapists—tree jumpers, he calls them—and was always on the lookout for sexual predators. He viewed them as vermin that need immediate eradication.
Richard was still taking trips to Manhattan’s West Side, where he killed anyone who got in his way, was pushy, or rude. He very much enjoyed killing aggressive panhandlers, so quickly that they didn’t even realize what had happened until they hit the ground.
One night Richard came upon two burly leather-clad men raping a young boy behind a red eighteen-wheeler parked just near the Hudson. He was walking along, admiring how the lights on the Jersey side of the river played 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 attaché 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 definitely have the money real soon.”
“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.
But nobody showed up. The bar was closing. Finally, De Peti said they should rent a room in a nearby hotel, that he’d definitely have the money “in the morning.”
“In the morning?” Richard repeated.
“I swear.”
Reluctantly, Richard called Genovese, who said it was okay to wait. They checked into a nearby hotel. Richard washed up and, tired, lay down on one of the two beds there, as did De Peti. But Richard was wary and sleep did not come easily. He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but he sensed, in this half-asleep state, movement nearby. He opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the dark he could just discern De Peti skulking through the room, moving toward him, past him, and to the window. De Peti slid it open and began to creep, snakelike, out onto the fire escape. In two swift movements Richard was up, grabbed him, and yanked him back into the room, where he pummeled him. Richard moved shockingly fast for such a big man, which caught many people off guard. Richard turned on the light.
“You slimy motherfucker, you been playing me all along.” Richard kicked him so hard he moved across the floor. Oh how Richard wanted to kill him, shoot him in the head, and throw him out the window, but those luxuries were not his, he knew. This guy owed Carmine a lot of money, and Richard couldn’t just go killing him. Instead, Richard called Carmine in Hoboken.
“The fuckin’ asshole tried to fly,” he said. “I caught him sneaking out on the fire escape.”
“Son of a bitch; put him on’a da phone!”
Blood running from his mouth, De Peti told Carmine that he was only looking to get some fresh air, not escape…certainly not trying to get away. “I swear, I swear on my mother,” he cried, histrionically holding his heart for maximum effect.
“Where’s the money?” Carmine demanded.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I swear!” De Peti pleaded.
Richard got back on the phone. Carmine said, “Give ’im until tomorrow. He don’t come up with the money, throw him out a window with no fuckin’ fire escape, okay?”
“Okay,” Richard said. “Gladly.”
The next day, it was the same story, running around to different bars and lounges, looking for different people who had the money. It was like, Richard was thinking, De Peti was playing a shell game, a three-card monte shuffle. Again, De Peti went to use a phone.
There was a door near the phone, and Richard could see De Peti eyeing it. He hung up, came back, said they had to go to a pizza place. They waited there an hour, then went to two more bars.
Richard was tired of De Peti’s bull. “He’ll be here, he’ll be here,” he kept telling Richard, and no one showed up.
Pissed, Richard took De Peti back to the hotel and, without another word, hung him by his feet out of the window. Begging, De Peti now said he’d get him “all the money,” that it was in a place he owned over on the South Side—
“You lying to me, I’ll kill you on the spot!” Richard promised.
“I ain’t lying! I ain’t lying!” he pleaded, cars and trucks and buses moving on the wide avenue ten stories below.
Richard pulled him inside. “Let’s go.”
It was a kind of go-go place. Half-naked girls who had seen better days danced around, wiggling their breasts and shaking ample asses in Day-Glo red lights. De Peti took Richard straight to a rear office, opened a safe hidden in a closet wall, grabbed a pile of currency, and gave him the thirty-five g’s.
“My God, if you had the money all the time, why didn’t you just give it to me?” Richard asked, really annoyed now, anger rising in him.
“Because I didn’t want to pay,” De Peti sheepishly admitted.
That made Richard see red; his balls, as he says, were all twisted already, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Really,” he said, smiling slightly, making the soft clicking sound out of the side of his mouth.
“Let me get one of the girls in here to clean your pipes out,” De Peti offered.
“Naw, that’s okay,” Richard said.
After counting the money, Richard suddenly pressed the little .38 derringer hard to De Peti’s chest and pulled the trigger. Boom. The report of the gun was muffled by De Peti’s chest and drowned out by the music coming from the club.