by Philip Carlo
In Florida, they stayed with Barbara’s father. He now had a house on the Intra-coastal Waterway and had a twenty-two-foot Chris-Craft fishing boat. He gladly took the kids out on fishing trips—Barbara did not go because she became seasick—and they gleefully caught snappers, blue runners, and blow fish that Al cleaned and grilled that night. Barbara’s dad was an excellent cook, and it was always a big treat to eat anything he prepared. Chris recently observed, Never on any of these fishing trips would Dad go off, because my mom wasn’t there to upset him.
Sometimes they saw sharks in the water, a very dramatic thing. Once a small tiger shark took a snapper Richard was reeling in. The children were both horrified and fascinated; the sharks gave Richard macabre ideas.
Barbara very much enjoyed going to fine outdoor restaurants along the water in Naples and having sumptuous meals. Like most married women with three children, she liked to be waited on. The children were all exceedingly well behaved, like three small adults, never acted up or made any kind of fuss. Richard always insisted on taking care of the check. He wouldn’t even let Al put his hand in his pocket. Richard paid with cash, never any credit cards. He carried around a roll of hundred-dollar bills that could choke a horse. All his money was earned illegally now—he had no “straight employment” and there couldn’t be any record of the money he spent so readily. There was one fancy restaurant, Phillipe’s, that Barbara particularly liked. All the waiters wore stiff white shirts, black bow ties, and vests. Al would inevitably get the children in trouble by making them laugh—he’d hang onion rings on his ears, tickle them, and grab their feet under the table. Al Pedrici loved his grandchildren to no end and couldn’t get enough of them.
After a few days at Al’s house, the Kuklinskis drove to Disney World and stayed in the Contemporary Hotel, the best one in the Disney complex. It was expensive, but you could get the monorail right there straight to the rides, where all the action was. The family would get up early so they could enjoy as much as possible before it became too hot. As much as Barbara loved Florida—going for long swims, watching the children play on the beach—she didn’t like the heat or the humidity. It made her tired and irritable, and when Barbara was irritable she and Richard inevitably clashed. Still, the Florida vacations were great fun.
They were, Merrick explained, some of the best times of my childhood…but you never knew when Dad might go off, so it was always—well there was always this kind of tension lurking.
32
Blood Money
For Richard Kuklinski, money mattered. With money you were a successful man; without it you were a failure, a needy no one who had to watch the good things in life go speeding by.
After Richard killed Paul Rothenberg, he was in good with DeMeo, but more important, he was in solid with Nino Gaggi and by extension the Gambino family. Roy invited Richard to dinner in an Italian restaurant called the Villa in Bensonhurst. It was on Twenty-sixth Avenue, in an old-fashioned home with large pillars out front. The restaurant served first-rate home-style Neapolitan cooking, Nino’s favorite. Everyone there knew who Nino was, and he was waited on as though he were Italian royalty; the best of everything, food and wine and service, was immediately his. Richard was impressed. It was hard not to be. Nino was obviously pleased that Richard had done away with Paul Rothenberg, and he promised that Richard would “earn with us.”
DeMeo acted as if he had created and molded Richard…a kind of secret Frankenstein’s monster killing machine who would faithfully carry out any contract, no questions asked, no piece of work too dangerous.
Because of DeMeo, Richard would become an integral part of the killing arm of the Gambino crime family. The fact that Richard was not Italian and did not hang out with wiseguys proved to be a big plus and would eventually get him involved in taking down the heads of two different crime families—a unique distinction.
After the sumptuous dinner with Gaggi and DeMeo at the Villa, Richard headed back to his family in Dumont. Dumont was as different from Bensonhurst as the sun is from the moon. In Dumont, Richard was able to wrap himself in a cloak of respectability: he was the good neighbor, the guy who drove his daughters’ friends all over, a faithful, stoic usher at Sunday Mass. Richard had no use for the church or its hypocritical teachings, but Barbara insisted that all her children attend private parochial schools, which were quite expensive, and that the family attend Sunday Mass together every week. In these things Barbara was the boss. Richard had nothing to say. He acceded to all of Barbara’s demands and directives when it came to the children—where they went to school, how they dressed, who their friends were, their table manners.
The following week Richard was beeped by DeMeo and went to meet him at the diner near the Tappan Zee Bridge.
“Hey, Rich,” DeMeo greeted him, and they warmly hugged and kissed, these two stone-cold killers, and began to walk around the parking lot.
“Got a special piece a work for you. This Cuban cocksucker down in Miami beat up and raped the fourteen-year-old daughter of an associate of ours. She couldn’t pick him out in a lineup because he wore a fuckin’ bandanna, but we know who he is; he works as a maintenance guy in the complex where they have a place. It’s called the Castaway right in Miami, on Collins Avenue. Richie, you go see him and make sure he fuckin’ suffers…really suffers! You understand?”
“My pleasure,” Richard said, and he meant it.
“This is from our associate,” Roy said, and slipped Richard an envelope with twenty thousand dollars in it. Mob guys make trainloads of money, and twenty thousand was a mere drop in the bucket, though it was enough for Richard to leave for Miami the following day. Now he did not stop for lunch or stay at a nice hotel on the way down. He drove straight through. When he bought gas and oil he paid with cash. Even if he had a credit card he would not use it, because he wanted no record of this trip. There was no photo of the mark, but DeMeo told him the kind of car he drove and that he parked it in the designated area for hotel employees; he even gave him the license-plate number.
The only people Richard hated more than bullies were rapists. As he drove he thought about how he’d feel if one of his girls were attacked that way…the rage and hatred he’d know. As cold and indifferent as Richard could be to human suffering, he had great empathy for a young woman who had been raped. This killing was a piece of work he’d enjoy. This was a piece of work he’d gladly have done for free.
As always, Richard was careful about not speeding, even though he was in a hurry—indeed looked forward to—doing the job. He had with him a .38 loaded with hollow-point rounds and a razor-sharp hunting knife with a curved blade and a hardwood handle. The handle had four notches on it—Richard liked to notch his knives when he used them to kill someone. He explained, I didn’t know how I picked up the habit, but I always liked to notch my knives. Like gunfighters used to. Over the years I had dozens of knives I used to kill. Some of them had ten to fifteen notches on them. Then I’d just get rid of them.
Richard planned to use a knife for this particular job. He very much enjoyed, he says, killing with a knife because it was so personal; you had to be close to the victim. He liked to see life leave the eyes of those he killed; especially a rapist. This would be…fun.
The Castaway was a sprawling three-story condo complex on Collins Avenue, near 163rd Street, on both the ocean side of Collins and the street side. Richard checked into a hotel near the place, had a nice lunch, and drove to the parking lot, looking for the mark’s car. It wasn’t there. Richard quickly found out there were two shifts, 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., then 4:00 P.M. to midnight. It was now the middle of the winter, 1974, and the parking lot was full. He would have to be careful, he knew, about being seen taking the mark.
He left, returned at 3:30 P.M., and waited. He didn’t have to wait long, for the mark soon pulled into the lot and parked, not a care in the world, singing to himself. He drove a beat-up red Chevy. The license plate matched. Richard smiled when he saw the guy, a tall, skinny Latin with a
thick, greasy head of black hair combed straight back. Richard quickly saw how the job should be done and soon left.
Now it was only a matter of time.
At eleven thirty that night Richard was back in the parking lot of the Castaway. Just across the street was a hangout for young people called Nebas, and a huge crowd of kids were mingling. Richard parked his van as close to the mark’s car as possible, got out of it, walked to the red Chevy, gave it a flat, then calmly returned to the van. This was a tried and proven method Richard would use many times over. He already knew where he’d take the mark once he snatched him—a desolate stand of palms about a half an hour north of the hotel, right by the ocean.
Near midnight, the mark came bopping over to his car. He spotted the flat, cursed out loud, and opened his trunk. As he bent to pull the spare out, Richard stole up behind him and put the .38 in his lower back.
“My friend, I need you to come with me,” he said, his voice faraway and detached, as if it were coming from a machine, a telephone recording. Richard let him see the gun now, took his skinny arm and marched him to the van, put him inside, handcuffed him, put a sock in his mouth, and taped his mouth shut with heavy-duty gray duct tape. Richard calmly got behind the wheel and pulled out of the lot. The whole thing took less than two minutes. As Richard drove north on Collins, he talked to the mark.
“My friend,” he said, “I want you to know that I’ve been sent by friends of the girl you beat up and raped.”
With that the mark began to moan and flop around like a fish suddenly out of water.
“If you don’t stop making a fuss, I’m going to hurt you.”
The mark became still, silent. What was so unsettling about what Richard said was not so much the words. It was the cold, detached way he said them, each word like the cut of a jagged knife.
“So, my friend, I want you to know that you have to suffer before I kill you. They paid me well for that, but truth is I’d gladly do this for free. I want you to know that.”
“Hmm! Hmm!” the mark mumbled, panic-stricken.
“If you believe in God, my friend, you better start praying because you’ve reached the end of the line. The train is going to soon stop and it’s time to get off.”
Richard was purposely tormenting the mark, letting the caustic words be the last words he heard in this life.
“Did you really think you could do such a thing and go about your business like nothing happened? Well, my friend, you picked the wrong girl this time.”
Richard turned right, shut off the lights, and made his way onto a rough road that went all the way down to the beach. There was a nearly full moon in a velvet black sky. The moonlight, white and clean and lovely, reflected off the calm sea, laying a glistening lunar highway on the still surface of the water. Richard stopped, sat, and listened. All was quiet and still. No sound but the gentle lapping of small waves on the fine white sand of the beach.
Richard put on blue plastic gloves, pulled the rapist from the van, dragged him to a wide, particularly curved palm, and tied him to the tree with yellow nylon rope. Now the mark was in a frenzied panic. Richard showed him the gleaming curved blade, the moonlight reflecting ominously on the razor-sharp steel.
“So, my friend, let’s get started.”
And with that Richard roughly pulled down the mark’s pants, took tight hold of both his testicles, and pulled so hard he literally tore them off the mark—
White-hot pain exploded where his testicles had just been. His eyes burst open. Richard showed him his balls.
“How’s that feel?” he asked, smiling. “My friend.”
Richard gave time for the shock to wear off a bit and for the pain to set in.
“Nice night, isn’t it?” he asked. “Look at the moon, how pretty.”
Now he used the knife; he grabbed hold of the mark’s penis—“This is what got you in all the trouble, you don’t need it anymore”—and easily cut it off. He showed it to the rapist as blood gushed from the sudden fleshy stump Richard had created. He went back to the van and put the severed member in a Ziploc sandwich bag he’d brought for this purpose.
He returned to the mark, ripped all his clothes off him, and began slowly slicing away fillets of flesh—kind of like pieces of skirt steak, making sure to show him the pieces he was methodically taking away, smiling as he worked.
The mark was soon a monstrous sight, terrible to see in the pale silver light of the Miami moon. Richard again returned to the van. He had brought along a large container of fine kosher salt and he now poured the salt all over the exposed flesh. The salt would bring, Richard knew, a whole new symphony of pain. He gave time for the salt to work.
Now Richard forced the blade into the mark’s lower abdomen and slowly pulled it up with his superhuman strength. The mark’s guts spilled forth and were suddenly just hanging there like a nervous cluster of blue-red snakes.
Richard cut him free, put a life preserver on him, grabbed his ankle, and dragged him down to the water’s edge, talking as he went: “My friend, I know the tide’s going out now, I checked, and you’re going out with it. I put the life vest on you because I don’t want you to drown. I’ll bet you my last dollar that the sharks’ll find you in no time. I hear there are big nasty tiger sharks here.” And with that Richard swung him up and around and tossed him into the water and watched him drift out. Then he turned and went back to the van, retrieved what he had cut from the mark, threw it all in the water, and returned to his hotel, where he had a nice sandwich—his favorite, turkey and mayo on rye—and slept like a baby. Richard always slept particularly well after a good piece of work.
In the morning, after a leisurely breakfast and a nice walk, Richard started back home, calm, relaxed, listening to country music as he went. He had very much enjoyed this job and wondered how long it had been before the sharks found the rapist. He knew they prowled the shoreline at night and was sure it hadn’t taken long at all.
As Richard was going through South Carolina, a van with a rebel flag in the window pulled up alongside him. There were three guys in it. They began to taunt Richard, called him a “nigger lover,” gave him the finger. Of all the people in the world to pick on, they chose the wrong guy. Richard told them to fuck off, to get lost. They again gave him the finger, all serious faced, as if they had bad intentions, wanted to hurt him. He pulled ahead of them, spotted a rest stop off the highway, and drove into it. They too pulled into the rest stop. Richard retrieved his gun from under the seat. The three of them got out of the van. One of them had some kind of club. Richard got out of his van and without so much as one word shot all three of them dead, got back in his van, and pulled away. In less than ten hours he had killed four people without a second thought, other than to wonder how long it took for the sharks to find the rapist; he was proud of his work, his imaginative ingenuity, the justice he had served up. When the police found the three dead men at the rest stop, there was little they could do with no tangible link—witnesses, clues, tire marks—to these bodies and the person responsible for the three homicides.
Back in Brooklyn, Richard went to see DeMeo. He met him at the Gemini Lounge, told him what he had done, and gave him the severed member.
Roy smiled. This he liked. “Good, great!” Roy exclaimed. “I’ll show it to our friend. He’ll be pleased. Excellent job. Fuckin’ beautiful. You’re the best…. Ju eat yet, big guy?”
“No, you?”
“Let’s go grab a bite,” Roy said, and they went and had a good meal in a restaurant Roy liked in Coney Island called Carolina’s, and over a large, colorful platter of antipasto, Richard provided more details of how the rapist met his end. Roy just loved it, smiled and laughed and had newfound respect for Richard.
“You’re fuckin’ one in a million!” he exclaimed happily.
Richard smiled along with Roy, ate with gusto; but Richard had not forgotten the beating Roy had given him or how Roy had pointed the cocked Uzi at him. It would be, Richard knew, just a matter of time be
fore he had revenge. For now he’d wait, bide his time, smile and be friendly and make money with Roy. He’d profit. Richard was, in fact, a very good actor; he could effortlessly sit and eat and drink and laugh along with a man whom he knew he would surely kill. Until he killed DeMeo, however, he wouldn’t quite be whole. That’s how he looked at it. That’s how it was.
Because of DeMeo, news of Richard’s homicide acumen quickly spread in the circles all mob guys frequented. Made men are a clannish lot, a close-knit society, and talk incessantly among themselves; like old washwomen they are incorrigible gossips.
Richard began keeping a record of new ideas he had about ways to torture and kill people, writing down these new inspirations in a small spiral reporter’s notebook. He’d be sitting home watching TV, see something, and write it down; the idea of using salt on the rapist came from a pirate movie he’d seen; the idea of using wet strips of rawhide and pouring hot water into people’s noses also came from a film. Richard even took inspiration from cartoons, especially the Road Runner with Wile E. Coyote: the use of heavy weights, fires, booby traps, throwing people out of windows, all came from Road Runner cartoons. He also found inspiration for mayhem and chaos from Popeye cartoons.
Meanwhile, Richard’s porno business was thriving. He consigned almost everything he produced or Roy fronted him within a day or two of receiving it. Now that Paul Rothenberg was gone, Richard and Roy were filling the vacuum created by his sudden demise. Richard only wished he had killed Rothenberg sooner.
The next job Richard did for the Gambinos was in Los Angeles. As usual Richard traveled first class. He got a big kick out of the fact that he was a professional killer, sitting there like all the other businesspeople, except that his business was the business of taking life, quickly or slowly, whatever the client preferred.
Through Gambino family ties in Los Angeles, Richard secured a .22 with a silencer, rented a van, and went to fill the contract. He had a photo of the guy and his address, and knew he used the same phone booth at the same time every day. The mark was a made man and this was a sanctioned hit. He was giving information to the feds and had to go.