The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer

by Anthony Bruno

  “Yeah, I know. I just thought he would’ve told you something.… You know what I mean?”

  Kuklinski didn’t answer. He took out his dark glasses and put them on so he could face the sun and soak up the warmth. The hook was in. Sposato had dollar signs in his eyes. He was ready to do anything to make this deal happen. Same thing with Dominick. He was eager to make this buy. Maybe not as eager as Sposato, but he’d get there. They all do. It never fails. They all want the easy buck, and they all get stupid. Just like the pharmacist.

  He adjusted his glasses and soaked up the warm Indian summer sunshine. It felt nice. It was gonna be a nice day.

  TWELVE

  The pharmacist had thought of himself as a player, but he wasn’t. His name was Paul L. Hoffman, from Cliffside Park, New Jersey, and in 1982 he was fifty-one years old. He used to show up at “the store” now and then, looking for a deal on anything he could move in his drugstore, Farmacia San Jose in Union City. He bought a lot of hot perfume, especially Charlie, which was a popular item with his Hispanic customers.

  The regulars at “the store” thought Hoffman was a pest, a bullshitter who tried to convince everyone that he was a big deal, a player, but he never brought in any merchandise to sell, he only bought. They tolerated him, though, because he always paid cash up front.

  One day when he showed up at “the store,” Lenny DePrima pulled him aside and asked him if he knew anything about some little white pills called Tagamet. Hoffman explained that Tagamet was a prescription drug for ulcers. It was the ulcer medication; everybody who had ulcers took it. Tagamet was probably the most prescribed drug in America, Hoffman said. He asked why DePrima wanted to know. The fence said that he’d gotten one of those big plastic jars of it, a couple of thousand pills, and some guy bought it off him right away, treated it like it was gold. When Hoffman found out how much DePrima had sold it for, his jaw dropped. It was a third of the price he had to pay for Tagamet legitimately. He begged DePrima to get him some, as much as he could get.

  DePrima knew that the jar of Tagamet was just a one-time deal, something that just happened to come in with a bigger load. He didn’t have a connection who could get him more, but he didn’t tell Hoffman that. He figured he’d bust the pesky pharmacist’s balls a little, string him along and make him crazy. But it turned out that DePrima’s balls were the ones that were getting busted because Hoffman wouldn’t leave him alone about the Tagamet. He called every day, twice a day, stopped by just to remind DePrima that he was still interested and that he had cash on the barrelhead.

  One day when Hoffman showed up at “the store,” Richard Kuklinski happened to be there. Disgusted with the pain-in-the-ass pharmacist, DePrima pointed across the room to Kuklinski and told Hoffman to go ask him about the Tagamet, hoping to get rid of him. He figured anyone with half a brain wouldn’t bother the guy they called the one-man army.

  But DePrima was wrong. Hoffman went right over to Kuklinski. But he didn’t ask him outright. He tried to be clever about it. Knowing that Kuklinski sold pornography, Hoffman told him that he could get porno into Israel and suggested that they might go into a deal together. He bought five 8mm reels from Kuklinski to prove that he was serious. Kuklinski played along with him just to make the sale. He knew how DePrima felt about the guy. But neither one of them wanted to tell Hoffman to go take a hike because he always did have cash. Kuklinski gave Hoffman a phone number where he could be reached, figuring he might be able to sell anything to a character like this.

  But Kuklinski hadn’t counted on Hoffman’s persistence. Over the next couple of months he called Kuklinski sixty-two times, always wanting the same thing: “The Tagamet, Rich. Did you get it yet?” Kuklinski stopped returning his calls.

  Then early on the morning of April 29, 1982, Hoffman called Kuklinski at home, and Kuklinski happened to pick up the phone. Hoffman told him he had to meet him right away. He sounded both desperate and testy. He said he was serious about this, that he wanted to get some Tagamet right away. He told Kuklinski to meet him at a diner on Bergen Boulevard in Cliffside Park. Hoffman said he’d be bringing cash, twenty-five thousand dollars.

  Kuklinski didn’t like Hoffman’s attitude, but he held his tongue, remembering that the pharmacist always paid cash. But was the guy really stupid enough to carry twenty-five grand to a meeting where he wasn’t even sure there’d be any merchandise to buy? Hoffman was a real piece of work, more nerve than brain. He just might.

  Kuklinski couldn’t believe it. The guy was practically begging for it.

  He met Hoffman at the diner and told him it was all set up. His connection would be delivering some Tagamet to his garage in North Bergen. He told Hoffman to follow him in his car.

  But as Kuklinski sat in his car, watching Hoffman go to his car in the rearview mirror, he started to have doubts. Who did this guy think he was kidding? He had a beat-up station wagon from the year one. He didn’t have any cash, not that much, not twenty-five grand.

  But then again Kuklinski did know of a few guys with money who lived like paupers. So maybe Hoffman was telling the truth; maybe he did have the money. It was possible.

  As soon as Hoffman got his old heap started, Kuklinski pulled out of the parking lot and headed for his garage on Newkirk Avenue near Seventieth Street in North Bergen, about two miles from the diner.

  The garage was one of five that were tucked away behind a two-story building in an overpopulated, mixed commercial-residential area. A steep, narrow driveway led down to a muddy courtyard that was too small for a car to make the sharp turn into Kuklinski’s garage without a lot of maneuvering. Kuklinski unlocked his garage and lifted the green overhead door. He pulled his car in, then let Hoffman back his old station wagon in. Hoffman turned off his engine, and Kuklinski walked up to his window and told him to get comfortable. It would take the guy with the Tagamet at least two hours to get here. He went over and closed the garage door then. He’d already made up his mind that he was going to kill the pharmacist.

  Hoffman got out of his car and started yammering again. Talk, talk, talk—all this guy ever did was talk. He talked about his kids, his wife, his drugstore, his customers, anything and everything. He wanted to hear about Kuklinski’s family, and he kept asking questions about them. Kuklinski didn’t say much. His family was none of anybody’s business. He leaned against the trunk of his own car, his foot propped up on the bumper, watching the pharmacist go on and on like some kind of crazy mynah bird. Kuklinski just nodded and smiled, not even listening to what he said, thinking instead about the .25-caliber pistol in the pocket of his jacket. He’d just picked it up yesterday, hadn’t even fired it yet.

  But as Hoffman kept talking, Kuklinski changed his mind again. This guy really was bullshit. He didn’t have any money. No way. And if he didn’t have any money, what good was killing him? Kuklinski figured he might have to beat the shit out of the guy to teach him a lesson, but why bother killing the little bastard?

  But the pharmacist’s nonstop yakking got faster and more agitated then. Hoffman was getting huffy. He needed that Tagamet, he said, and he didn’t understand why it was taking so long. After they’d been there for about an hour, he asked if Richie had a phone in the garage. He had to call one of his employees to tell him to open up the drugstore because he was going to be late today.

  Kuklinski shrugged and told him he didn’t have a phone here. Hoffman said he’d have to go find one. Kuklinski felt the weight of the gun in his pocket as he watched Hoffman lift the garage door and let himself out to go find a pay phone. Here’s his chance to save himself a lot of pain and grief, Kuklinski thought. If he’s smart, he won’t come back.

  But twenty minutes later Hoffman did come back, and he was all worked up now. He couldn’t find anyone to open up the drugstore, and now he was losing money sitting here, waiting. If he waited around much longer, the money he’d make on the hot Tagamet might not make up for the lost income from having the store closed. The guy was in a real state, telling Kuklinski that
he didn’t want to wait around forever, that he wasn’t shitting around, that he was serious about this. He went to the back of his station wagon, pulled out his car keys, and opened the gate. He threw back the carpeting over the spare tire well. Wedged in around the spare were packets of dollar bills, tens and twenties bound with rubber bands. It looked like a lot of money.

  Kuklinski moved closer and stared down at all the cash. Son of a bitch, he thought. The guy did have it.

  “See, Rich? I got it,” Hoffman said, almost pleading. “You didn’t think I had it, did you? Well, I do have it. Now where’s the merchandise?”

  Kuklinski pulled the gun out of his pocket and stuck it under the pharmacist’s chin. “There is no merchandise.”

  He pulled the trigger, and Hoffman’s head flew back with the impact of the first shot. But when Kuklinski pulled the trigger again to finish him off, the goddamn thing jammed. Hoffman was on his knees, clutching his throat. He was gurgling, blood pouring out of his mouth. But he wasn’t dead. Kuklinski grabbed the tire iron from the spare tire well and smashed him over the head. The pharmacist scrambled to his feet and tried to run, but Kuklinski hit him again and again. Hoffman collapsed to the floor, flat on his face. Kuklinski stood over him with the tire iron in his hand, watching the blood pool around his head, then branch off like a snake slowly feeling its way along the oily floor to the drain in the middle of the garage.

  Richard Kuklinski waited and watched the still body to make sure Paul Hoffman was really dead before he started to remove the packets of money from the spare tire well. He did a quick count. There was only about twenty thousand. Hoffman had said he had twenty-five. Kuklinski smirked and shook his head as he put the money in a plastic bag and locked it in the trunk of his own car. He then went to the back of the garage where he had a fifty-five-gallon steel drum. He rolled it on its rim to Hoffman’s body, filling the enclosed space with a noise that sounded like a gathering thunderstorm. He turned it on its side and shoved Hoffman’s body in. After setting it upright, he put the lid on but didn’t seal it.

  He took the keys out of the tailgate of Hoffman’s station wagon and drove the car down the hill to Route 440 to a Rickel Home Center in Jersey City. He bought five bags of Sakrete instant concrete and returned to the garage.

  He removed the lid from the drum and dumped the instant concrete over Hoffman’s body, turning away so he wouldn’t have to breathe in the powdery mixture. He shook the drum after each bag so that it would all sift down. After the fifth bag of Sakrete, he uncoiled the garden hose that was attached to a spigot near the front of the garage and filled the drum with water. When it started to overflow, he turned the spray to the floor and washed all the blood and excess concrete down the drain. He took his time washing the blood off the tire iron, then wiped it down with a rag before he threw it back into the tire well of Hoffman’s station wagon. He re-coiled the hose, then checked the drum to make sure no part of the body was sticking through the surface. He wanted it to look like nothing but solid concrete after it hardened. Satisfied that the pharmacist was totally submerged, he put the lid back on, sealed it, and left it there.

  A month later Kuklinski decided it was time to get rid of the drum. He’d read some stories in the local papers about police efforts to find the missing pharmacist, but that didn’t concern him. The damn barrel was just getting in the way. He rented a van and rolled the heavy drum into the back. Then, after dark, he headed down the hill to Routes 1 and 9. The hill was steep, and the barrel shifted as he took a corner, smashing into the sidewall of the van. Kuklinski slowed down and looked over his shoulder. One of the windows had shattered. He turned around in his seat and stepped on the accelerator. Good thing he had taken the insurance, he thought.

  He drove north on 1 and 9, then west on Route 46, stopping at a motel in Little Ferry that was next to a little hot dog joint he liked called Harry’s Corner. He pulled the van up alongside the motel and rolled the heavy barrel out the back, letting it drop to the pavement. He rolled it up against the wall so it would be out of the way, turned it upright, and left it there.

  A few days later he stopped by Harry’s Corner and ordered two hot dogs with mustard and chili. He sat on a stool at the counter that ran along the window overlooking the driveway between Harry’s and the motel. The drum was still there, right where he’d left it.

  Every week he managed to stop by Harry’s Corner for a couple of hot dogs, and he always sat at that counter, staring at the fifty-five-gallon drum as he ate. Then one day he came in and noticed that it was gone. Someone from the motel must have gotten sick of having it there and decided to have it hauled away and dumped somewhere. He just assumed the body was never discovered or else he would have heard about it at Harry’s. It would have been big news if a body in a steel drum full of concrete had been found next door.

  Richard Kuklinski bit into his first hot dog. Staring at the spot where the drum had been, he chewed and wiped chili from the ends of his mustache. He took a second bite. It was a good thing they hadn’t found Hoffman, he thought. Harry made a pretty good hot dog. If they’d found the body, he’d have to stop coming here for a while.

  THIRTEEN

  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1986—1:00 P.M.

  Dominick Polifrone still couldn’t believe it. He was grinning as he drove the Shark through the intersection of Bloomfield Avenue and Route 23, passing a White Castle hamburger joint on the corner. The cassette, a copy of the recording he’d made of the telephone conversation he’d had with Richard Kuklinski and “Tim” that morning, was in his pocket. He was coming from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms offices in Newark, where he’d returned Kuklinski’s call on a phone rigged to a tape recorder. The Operation Iceman task force had been hastily summoned for a meeting, and he was heading for the Organized Crime Bureau offices in Fairfield.

  Dominick couldn’t wait to see Bobby Carroll’s face when he heard what was on this tape. The deputy attorney general was gonna get up and do a dance on the table. Kuklinski had actually admitted to killing with cyanide. It was on tape. And that business about putting it in a spray mist—Jesus! How could a jury not convict this guy when they heard that? Carroll was gonna think it was his birthday.

  A traffic light turned red up ahead, and Dominick pulled to a stop. There was a small shopping center with a Newberry’s on the right and a Chinese restaurant called the Great Wall of China on the left. Suddenly Dominick’s beeper went off. He pulled the device out of his pocket and glanced at the number on the LCD readout just as the light turned green. Area code 609-327.… It was the same number in south Jersey that Kuklinski had called from that morning. The car behind him honked its horn, telling him to go.

  Dominick gave it some gas and drove on, wondering what he should do. His policy was to make Kuklinski wait, to maintain his control over the situation, but he had a feeling that might not be the best thing to do right now. He’d asked Kuklinski to find military arms for him; he’d told him it would be a big order, up to a half million dollars’ worth. Even Michael Dominick Provenzano wouldn’t play it cool for a deal that big. It wouldn’t make sense, and Kuklinski could get suspicious. If Kuklinski was as paranoid as most bad guys were, he might think Dominick always took his time getting back to him because he needed time to set up recording equipment. Kuklinski might start to think that he was working with the cops or that he even was a cop. Dominick decided it might be smart to return this call right away. He spotted a phone booth outside a diner up ahead on the left, turned on his signal, and pulled into the lot.

  In the phone booth he read the number off his beeper and punched it out. It rang twice before it was picked up.

  “Hello?” It was Kuklinski.

  “Hello, Rich? It’s me.”

  “Hey, Dom. How’s it going?”

  “Good. What’s up?”

  “You at a pay phone?”

  “Yeah, we can talk.”

  “Okay, listen. We made some calls, and Tim’s getting a sample for you.”r />
  “Oh, yeah? What’s he getting?”

  “A hit kit.”

  “What caliber?”

  “It’ll be a twenty-two, already fitted with a screw-on silencer.”

  “What’s the price?”

  “Eleven hundred dollars for this one. You place a bigger order, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “That’s eleven hundred for the set, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, that sounds good to me. I’ll give the girl a call and see if she’s interested.”

  “Okay. And if she is, we can get together so you can look the piece over. Gotta check the merchandise out before you buy it, right?” Kuklinski was chuckling.

  “Of course. Whattaya think?” Dominick laughed with him.

  “You know the Vince Lombardi exit off the turnpike up north?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We can meet there.”

  “Okay … that sounds possible.” Dominick was still wondering why he wanted to meet there.

  “When do you want to get together then?”

  “Well, lemme talk to my girl first. She may not want this kind of stuff.”

  “Whattaya mean, Dom?” Kuklinski’s good humor faded. “I thought you told Tim you were looking for hit kits?”

  Dominick turned on the attitude. “I did, Rich. But you know how broads are. They ever give you a fucking reason for changing their minds?”

  “No, but—”

  “Is there a problem with holding on to the piece until I can talk to her?”

  “No, that’s not it—”

  “Then lemme find her so I can make sure this is what everybody wants. That okay with you?” Dominick was on the border between aggressive and belligerent. He was stalling Kuklinski, but he couldn’t make it sound like he was stalling.

  “All right, I tell you what, Dom. I’ll beep you in a couple of days, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Beautiful.”