by Philip Carlo
When, conversely, Richard was kind he was the nicest, most easygoing, giving guy in the world: attentive, polite, considerate, and very romantic. On a regular basis he brought Barbara long-stemmed red roses and loving cards with romantic sayings. Barbara felt like she was on a roller coaster. A roller coaster she desperately wanted to get off. But she did not know how.
The couple was now having intercourse on a regular basis. Richard had rented an apartment, and they went there for romantic interludes. Richard refused to wear a condom, Barbara didn’t have access to any kind of birth control, and the inevitable happened: Barbara became pregnant. It seemed that’s what Richard was planning all along—to make her pregnant, to force her deeper into a relationship with him.
Barbara became despondent. She was normally an upbeat, optimistic woman; she was now depressed, cornered…trapped, she explained.
Richard talked about getting married. He said he was glad she was pregnant, that he’d wanted to have children with her all along, from their first date. Barbara decided she didn’t want to marry Richard, did not want to have his child, and finally—after much soul-searching—she went to her mother and told her the truth….
“I knew it!” Genevieve said, her face stern and cold and angry. “I told you. I warned you. That’s all he wanted, and you gave it to him—a married man with kids. How could you? How could you allow this to happen? You know better. I taught you better—”
Disgusted, Barbara turned away from her mother.
Nana Carmella was far more understanding. She didn’t know anything about Richard’s past. His shy, polite ways had grown on her. True, he wasn’t Italian, but she had, with some difficulty, learned to accept that, to accept him. Nana Carmella hugged Barbara and assured her everything would be okay.
But Barbara knew better. She knew she was in quicksand and sinking rapidly. She was a good Catholic and did not believe in abortion. Even if she had, that would have been, back then, a hard thing to come by. She’d have the baby, she resolved. But she wanted nothing more to do with Richard. That was, she was sure, a one-way ticket to a place she didn’t want to go. She’d make the best of this bad situation she’d gotten herself into. How right Sol Goldfarb had been about Richard. If only she had listened to him, she mused over and over again.
Barbara went to the bank, withdrew all her savings, and took off—left town without telling Richard anything. She went to the only person in the world who would understand, who would protect her, who loved her unconditionally and didn’t judge her no matter what—her father, Albert Pedrici. Mr. Pedrici lived in Miami Beach, and when Barbara boarded the plane, and it taxied and took off, she felt as if she were leaving a bad dream, a nightmare, behind. Little did she know that she was actually speeding toward the nightmare her life would become.
19
Betrayal
Al Pedrici was a tall, handsome Venetian who loved life and made the most of it. He was quick to laugh, quick to make friends, a naturally gregarious man—the exact opposite of Barbara’s mother. Albert’s father had come to America through Ellis Island in 1906, and bought a house in the Italian enclave of Hoboken, on the same block where the Sinatras lived. The Pedricis opened a small food shop in Hoboken, and the family did well, never wanted for anything. Albert met Barbara’s mother when he was twenty-two, she nineteen. It was a kind of, sort of love at first sight, that resulted in an ill-conceived marriage that did not work out. Albert and Genevieve were divorced when Barbara was two years old.
During the years Barbara was growing up, she’d seen her father as much as circumstances allowed. Albert gave Barbara whatever she wanted. All she had to do was point and it was hers. He spoiled her. Barbara was much closer to her father than to her mother, even though they lived apart. When he moved to Miami, they spoke on the phone often, wrote detailed letters to each other. Albert very much enjoyed living in Miami, the fair weather, the glorious sunshine, being near the sea, the city’s bustling nightlife. He and his second wife, Natalie, socialized a lot, went to parties and clubs all over Miami. Albert liked to dance, and just about every weekend the couple went out “high stepping,” as Albert was fond of saying.
When Richard learned that Barbara had fled New Jersey, he was distraught. He kept asking Genevieve and Nana Carmella where Barbara had gone. They wouldn’t tell. Richard became obsessed. He kept coming back to the house. He wouldn’t leave them alone. He did not get aggressive, rude, or threatening, but Genevieve sensed he could very well become violent. Extremely violent. She had heard stories about his violence from Sadie and Armond. Still, in no uncertain terms, Genevieve told Richard to forget Barbara, to get on with his life, to find a nice Polish girl his own age.
“You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head in dismay. “I love Barbara, I love her with all my heart. I’ve never—never—cared for anyone like I care for Barbara—”
“Richard,” Genevieve interrupted, “you’re a married man.”
“I’m getting divorced. That woman, that marriage, never meant anything to me.”
“You’ve been saying that for months now and you still aren’t divorced. What’s that about?”
“I’m…I’ve had a run of bad luck. I need money for the lawyer. I already spoke to him, a lawyer over in Hoboken, and he won’t do it until I pay him. Linda, my ex, she doesn’t mean anything to me. I met her when I was a kid. I never loved her. The children, they just happened. I wasn’t planning that—you know, to settle down, anything like that. Barbara is pregnant with my child. I want to marry her. I wanted to marry Barbara and have a family with her from the first time we went out—I swear. Barbara is all class. I never met anyone like her.”
There was a long, heavy pause. Finally, Genevieve said, “If I give you the money for the Hoboken lawyer, you’ll get a divorce?”
“Right away, like tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“On my life!”
Genevieve looked at him long and hard; he was a very handsome man. She was, in fact, beguiled by Richard. When he wanted to, he could be extremely charming…indeed disarming.
“How much?” she asked.
“A thousand,” he said.
“Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you,” she said.
“No…really?”
“Yes. Really. I wouldn’t kid about something like this.”
Richard picked up Genevieve like a doll and hugged her so hard he nearly broke her ribs. “Then you’ll tell me where she is?” he asked, all hopeful.
“Yes, only after you’ve gotten a divorce—and you prove it.”
“I will, I promise I will,” he said.
He came back the next day, got the thousand dollars from Genevieve—every dollar hard-earned—hurried to Hoboken, paid the lawyer, the papers were drawn up, and Richard had Linda sign them. He gave her no option. He then signed them, and with the lawyer’s help, Richard and Linda were soon legally divorced. Richard had never loved Linda, and he’d hated her since he caught her in the hotel. He was glad to be rid of her.
Proof in hand, Richard went back to see Genevieve, and she now actually told him where Barbara was—a thing Barbara would hold against her mother for the rest of her life.
That May was unbearably hot and humid in Miami. When the sun went down mosquitoes filled the air. You couldn’t go outside, there were so many mosquitoes. Barbara didn’t like Miami. She wasn’t used to all the heat; the pregnancy was making her particularly uncomfortable. She was afraid Richard would hurt her family. He’d said a dozen times that he would, and she was haunted to distraction—sleepless—that at any moment the phone would ring and she’d hear the terrible, unspeakable news—Richard killed your family: Nana, your mother, your aunt Sadie….
What, Barbara wondered, had she done to deserve such a fate? She’d been a good, God-fearing person all her life. Since she’d known the difference between right and wrong, she’d always done right. And now this. This living, breathing, snake-eyed nightmare. She began to think she had t
o have committed some heinous, terrible crime in another life to be condemned to such an unfair state of affairs. God…there was no God. What kind of God would condemn her to such a fate?
She began to wonder if it was all because she’d had sex with Richard—wanton, lustful sex whenever he pleased. Surely that was it. That’s what had brought this black curse, this psychotic Polack from Jersey City, down upon her. He was, she came to think, punishment for her carnal passions.
Barbara very much enjoyed the company of her father. He was supportive and loving and didn’t criticize her at all, had nothing negative to say. He kept telling her everything would work out well, that she had her whole life before her, that she could stay with him and his wife as long as she wished. No pressure. Just love. Unconditional love, given without expecting anything in return.
Aunt Sadie called her every day, and she too was supportive and optimistic, and they talked about the joy of having a child. Aunt Sadie said she’d be more than happy to babysit for the baby—she was sure it was going to be a girl—when Barbara was ready to go back to work. With each passing day Barbara became stronger and more resigned to her fate. She stopped beating up on herself; she began going for long walks along the glorious Atlantic Ocean, and she enjoyed swimming in the early morning as the Florida sun slowly climbed out of the east. She got dark with the sun and looked quite beautiful with a radiant tan, a baby rapidly growing in her ever-expanding stomach.
A storm from the south came tearing into Miami. The sky abruptly darkened, became the deep gray color of gunpowder. Strong winds bent palm trees, made them seem as if they were dancing to Latin music. Lightning bolts tore the darkening sky apart at will. Thunder trembled the air. Since she’d been a little girl, Barbara had never liked storms. They seemed to be harbingers of bad things to come.
Barbara was sitting in the screened-in porch of her father’s house, watching the storm, the lightning bolts, how the wind abused the palm trees, when she saw out of the corner of her eye a taxi come to a slow stop in front of the house; a lone man, a large man, got out of the cab. He carried one piece of luggage. He began to walk up the path to the house. Barbara suddenly realized, as if she’d been struck by a thunderbolt, that it was Richard. She wanted to get up and run, but where could she go? Where could she run? He walked up to the screen door and knocked. Barbara went to the door, not pleased, actually scowling.
“I found you,” he said.
“Yes, I see that.”
“Why’d you run away?”
“Why do you think I ran away?”
“You look so beautiful. You’ve changed. Guess it’s true.”
“What’s that?”
“That women become more beautiful when they’re pregnant.”
“So you say?”
“Can I come in?”
“I’d rather you didn’t if you want to know the truth.”
They stared at each other through the screen. It began to rain. He just stood there in the rain getting wet.
“I got divorced,” he said, taking out the divorce papers so she could see. “See, they’re signed by a judge.” The papers were getting wet.
“I’m shocked…. I didn’t think you would.”
“I said I would and I did. I love you, Barbara. I love you so much it hurts,” he told her. And thus Richard insinuated his way back into Barbara’s life, a storm-filled purple sky and lightning bolts behind him, as if nature were trying to send Barbara a message.
When Barbara found out that her mother had paid for Richard’s divorce and told him where Barbara was, she called her mother and berated her nonstop for fifteen minutes. Genevieve’s answer was, “I don’t want you to have a child without a husband. How would that look? It’s not right. It’s not…natural.”
“I don’t care how it’ll look! You had no right telling him I’m here. No right—no right!” Barbara hung up on her mother.
Young and inexperienced and particularly vulnerable now with this sudden unwanted pregnancy, Barbara was soon convinced that Richard would change, that his love for her would make everything good and right, and they would be happy.
Al Pedrici readily accepted Richard. He could see that Richard was nuts about his daughter and resolved not to do anything to get in their way. He figured things would work themselves out, that Barbara—whose pregnancy was more evident every day—was certainly better off with a husband than without. Al had no idea about Richard’s violence toward Barbara, his homicidal threats, how calm and cold he was when he made them, or that he was always armed. Even now, she was sure, he had a gun with him.
Barbara and Richard went for long walks and talked. Barbara, aware now that Richard had drinking and gambling problems, made him swear off those vices, which he readily did. Al managed to get Richard a job driving a delivery truck, and he dutifully went to work every day, not complaining, toeing the line, intent upon proving that he would be a good provider. A good husband. A better man. He resolved also to stay away from crime. Killing people. The Mafia. Days quickly melted into weeks then into months. Florida’s summer arrived with even more thick, stuffy humidity, as well as more giant mosquitoes. As Barbara’s stomach grew, the heat and humidity bothered her more and more. Richard kept insisting that they get married, Barbara finally agreed, and as the summer grew to a close, Barbara and Richard were married by a justice of the peace at Miami’s city hall. Al and his wife attended. That night they went out for a nice dinner in a fish restaurant. Toasts were made. There was no honeymoon, no money for that, and suddenly Barbara Pedrici became Barbara Kuklinski.
That was, she recently confided, the worst day of my life. Now that I think of it I should have thrown myself in the ocean and drowned rather than marry Richard. But I did, and the die was cast.
When, one evening after dinner, Richard saw his new wife smoking a cigarette, he became disproportionately angry: he ripped the cigarette from her hand and stomped on it.
“I’ll smoke if I want to,” Barbara said, annoyed.
Richard’s answer was to step on her right foot with all his weight—and turn it, fracturing her large toe.
“Are you crazy!” she asked, grimacing with pain. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You aren’t smoking,” he said. “You will do what I say!” And that night Richard would not allow Barbara to even come to bed. He made her sit on a gray metal stool on the screened-in patio the whole night.
“You move, I’ll kill your father in front of you,” he said, dead serious, and left Barbara there like that.
Convinced that Richard would truly kill her dad, Barbara sat on that hard metal stool the whole friggin’ night, as she put it. The temperature dropped suddenly, as it always did, and she was so cold she began shivering. Certainly Barbara should have hurried to the police, told them what Richard had done, what he was making her do; but she was so frightened for her father that she sat there shivering and freezing all night long, silently cursing heaven and hell, and her mother for telling Richard where she was.
Barbara lost the baby the next day. She was sure what Richard had made her do was the reason. Whatever affection Barbara once had for Richard was inexorably being replaced by another emotion entirely—and that emotion was hate.
20
Love and Marriage and a Baby Carriage
October 15, 1962, Barbara and Richard Kuklinski returned to New Jersey. It was a bitterly cold night. Uncle Armond met them at the airport, all smiles, hugs, and kisses. Barbara was overjoyed to see her uncle and be back home. When Barbara saw Nana Carmella they both cried, they were so happy, and hugged each other for the longest time. Now that Barbara and Richard were married, the family readily accepted him, for better or for worse. Richard’s dream of making Barbara’s family his family came true. That’s what he’d wanted, and that’s what he’d gotten. Seeing that the newlyweds had little money and nowhere to live, Genevieve graciously invited them to stay with her and Nana until they “got on their feet.” Richard was quite serious about his marriage with Bar
bara working. He swore off drinking hard liquor and gambling, and he stuck to his word…for the most part. Barbara still had no true idea about Richard’s involvement in crime, in murder, and Richard knew that if he was serious about the marriage and having a family with Barbara, he had to give up all that. He had to go straight. Become a working stiff, a civilian, he says.
Because he had no education and no skills as such, Richard’s opportunities for employment were inherently limited. Barbara’s uncle Tony, however, managed to get him a job at the 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab off Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Richard didn’t like having to go to the city every day, but he dutifully took the bus, carrying his lunch, prepared by Barbara, in a brown paper bag. The job consisted of lugging and shelving boxes and large reels of film, getting things for people, cleaning up discarded pieces of film. He was beginning at the bottom of the totem pole. The 20th Century Deluxe Film Lab made prints from masters to be distributed to movie theaters across the country. Richard, being a quick study, always looking for angles, wanting to move up within the company, began to watch carefully how the printers made copies on the machines. There was a carrot redheaded printer named Tommy Thomas, who patiently showed Richard how to make prints, step by step. After a few months Richard did, in fact, begin working as a printer. He received a raise and was making ninety dollars a week. He had grown to like the job; and it didn’t take long for Richard to find a way to make some extra cash; by bootlegging masters and selling them on the black market. The lab printed all of the Disney Company’s masters on the East Coast, and Richard began running pirated prints of Cinderella, Bambi, and Pinocchio, for which there was a ready market. It was now already the spring and Richard made pirating Disney cartoons a business.