The Iceman Read online

  “I hear you.” Kuklinski laughed, but it sounded forced.

  “Okay, you beep me over the weekend, and we’ll set up a date. I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’ll want these pieces, but I wanna make sure. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’ll be talking to you.”

  “Take it easy.”

  Dominick hung up and stared blankly at traffic whizzing by on Route 23. He wondered what Kuklinski was thinking. Did he think Dominick was stalling him? And why did he want to meet at the Vince Lombardi Service Area? Why there? It was a busy place, good for getting lost in the crowd, but a lot of bad stuff went down there. Where exactly at Lombardi would he suggest they meet? In the men’s room? No way. Too hard to place backups in a bathroom. Besides, it was an enclosed space. What if he had a little nasal spray bottle full of cyanide?

  Dominick headed back to his car. He knew he was going to have to meet Kuklinski again sometime, and it looked like he might have to go along with Richie’s meeting place of choice, the Lombardi Service Area. The problem was, how would they control the situation there?

  He turned the key in the ignition and started the engine. As he pulled back out into traffic, he wondered how quickly he could react if he was sprayed in the face. Would he stand a chance if he held his breath? Maybe he’d better find out some more about this stuff. His eyes stung just thinking about it.

  FOURTEEN

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1986—2:45 P.M.

  The Vince Lombardi Service Area off the New Jersey Turnpike in Ridgefield, New Jersey, is always busy. It’s the last rest stop before the highway becomes I-95 again and crosses the George Washington Bridge, going into New York City. Coming the other way, it’s the first rest stop you can see from the road after leaving New York, an oasis for travelers who’ve been keeping their knees together waiting for a bathroom, choosing not to risk the ominous exits along I-95 as it winds through Harlem and the Bronx, where dingy tenements and monolithic housing projects loom and the stripped remains of abandoned cars litter the shoulders like big-game carcasses after the vultures were through with them.

  The main building at the Vince Lombardi Service Area has two fast-food restaurants—a Roy Rogers and a Bob’s Big Boy—as well as several smaller concessions. Outside there’s a Shell gas station and two large parking lots—one for cars, the other for trailer trucks. If you look west from the parking lot, you can see vehicles crossing an elevated section of the turnpike, the loud diesel engines roaring through the sky. To the east is the Manhattan skyline. Fields of seven-foot-high grasses and cattails in the swampy wetlands surround the service area, which is bordered by a ribbon of access road. It takes about three and a half minutes to drive around this access road and circle both parking lots if you drive a little faster than the speed limit, as practically everyone does. On this cool, cloudy Thursday in October, Deputy Attorney General Bob Carroll and Investigator Paul Smith knew exactly how long it took. They’d been doing it for the past forty minutes.

  Paul Smith was driving the silver gray sedan; Bob Carroll was in the passenger seat. In their suits and ties they could easily be mistaken for a Mutt and Jeff pair of traveling salesmen, Smith being the junior trainee even though he was actually only two years younger than Carroll.

  Investigator Ron Donahue was crouched on the floor of an otherwise unoccupied state police car parked at the curb near the entrance to the Roy Rogers. Two other investigators—a man and a woman—were “making eyes at each other” in another unmarked car in the lot near the bank of telephone booths. They were all watching Dominick Polifrone, who was sitting on a picnic table on the grass near the phone booths, his foot propped up on the seat. They were all waiting for Richard Kuklinski.

  Paul Smith sighed and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “So where the hell is he?”

  Bob Carroll’s eyes swept the parking lots like a constant lighthouse beacon. “For all we know, Richie could already be here.”

  Smith shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  They both knew how Kuklinski could be. He was the most cautious criminal they’d ever come across. He’d come to meetings early and just stand around, surveying the scene; then he’d stay late afterward, doing the same. Once, when the state police were following him in an unmarked car on the Garden State Parkway, he just pulled over to the side of the road and sat there for an hour, waiting and watching. They could never figure out how he knew they were following him. He was either superparanoid or supernatural.

  As Paul Smith drove by the rows of gas pumps at the Shell station one more time, the AID radio receiver in the attaché case on the seat between him and Bob Carroll hummed and crackled with background noise. Dominick was wearing a concealed Kel transmitter as well as a Nagra tape recorder. Ron Donahue and the “couple” had similar receivers. They were all listening to the same thing, the rustle and squeak of Dominick’s leather jacket whenever he moved. In other words, they were listening to nothing.

  “I can just hear Ronny now,” Smith commented with a wry laugh. “Curled up under the dash like that for all this time—he’s gonna let Dominick know about it. You can bet on that.”

  Bob Carroll grinned at the thought of Ron Donahue chewing out Dominick for his sore back, but his eyes never stopped scanning.

  Suddenly the receiver broadcast the sound of a beeper. Looking back over the seat, Carroll could see Dominick standing up and going over to the bank of phone booths.

  Dominick’s voice came through the receiver. “It’s him. The home number.”

  Smith and Carroll listened intently to the AID receiver as they glided around the access road. Dominick was calling Kuklinski back.

  “Hey, Rich, it’s me. Where the fuck are you? I been waiting here for a half hour already.… Then why didn’t you call sooner? … Oh … All right, but don’t make me wait too long. I got people to meet, you know what I mean? … Okay, I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  The receiver picked up the sound of Dominick banging the phone as he hung up.

  “So what’d he say, Dom?” Paul Smith asked even though he knew Dominick couldn’t hear him.

  “He says he got tied up with a bunch of phone calls. He said he’s coming now.” The disgust and mistrust in his voice reflected the rest of the team’s feelings.

  Smith and Carroll continued to circle the access road on their mobile surveillance, driving and waiting. They had to wait another thirty-five minutes before the blue Chevy Camaro finally came down the exit ramp off the turnpike. They watched it heading for the bank of phone booths, Paul Smith maintaining a steady speed.

  The slam of a car door came through the receiver, then Kulinski’s voice.

  “I got stuck on the phone with this guy. I finally looked at my watch and said, ‘Holy Christ, I got someone waiting for me. Lemme hit this guy’s beeper before he scrams.’ That’s when I called you. It takes me a half an hour to get here.”

  “I thought something happened to you.”

  Kuklinski’s voice was a little fainter than Dominick’s because he was farther from the mike, but the transmission was still loud and clear, which pleased Bob Carroll. A cassette tape recorder in the attaché case was recording the transmission just in case Dominick’s Nagra malfunctioned.

  As Paul Smith drove around the bend and started back toward the bank of phone booths, Bob Carroll frowned. He could hear Kuklinski’s voice, but he couldn’t see him. All he could see was Dominick, who looked like he was talking to the booth on the end. But as Smith drove closer and the perspective shifted, Carroll could see that Kuklinski was standing in the doorway of the booth, filling it completely. He was dressed entirely in black. With Dom looking up at him like that, he appeared to be enormous. Bob Carroll suddenly recalled the Mighty Joe Young movies they used to show on the Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 when he was a kid. The only difference was the gorilla in the movie was friendly.

  “So whattaya wanna do?” Dominick said.

  “I got the thing in the trunk.” Kuklinski he
aded back to his car. Dominick followed him.

  As Dominick and Kuklinski passed between two parked cars, a shivering, emaciated dog came out of nowhere and was nearly hit by a passing pickup truck.

  “Look at that poor little dog,” Dominick said with genuine sympathy in his voice.

  Paul Smith nearly jumped out of his seat. “What the hell is wrong with him? He’s supposed to be a bad guy. He’s not supposed to give a shit about poor little dogs.” He gestured at the windshield. “What the hell is wrong with you, Dominick?”

  Bob Carroll shushed him.

  Kuklinski opened the trunk of his car. “This is a twenty-two long-barrel military capacity with a screw-off front. You screw the suppressor on.”

  “Right. This is everything?”

  “Everything’s here.”

  “Okay. Now I’m gonna bring this back to the girl. She’ll show it to her people.”

  “All right.”

  “Now you said you can do the quantity with these. I don’t want to be embarrassed with these people, so if you can’t do it, tell me now. That’s all I’m saying. Otherwise, if you make an agreement with them and then you disappoint them, you can kiss your sweet ass good-bye.”

  “How many do they want?”

  “Hey, I’m talking big bucks. They may start out with a couple hundred thousand in the beginning. I don’t know.”

  “My guy tells me that right now they got ten thousand suppressors and the equipment to go with them. So hey, that’s a pretty good order.”

  “Lemme take a look at this thing.” The sound of rustling paper came through the receiver.

  “Here you go,” Kuklinski said.

  “Just don’t use it on me, you fuck you.” They both laughed.

  “Here. You take it. I don’t wanna touch it. I already wiped it down, but I’ll show you what we got here. This here, this piece screws off. And this screws on.”

  Bob Carroll and Paul Smith looked at each other. Kuklinski was showing Dominick how to put the silencer on. Bob Carroll’s face was tight. Selling Dominick the gun was good—they could indict Kuklinski on that—but to get a murder indictment, Dominick would have to draw Kuklinski out, get him to talk, get him to say something incriminating, get him to talk about cyanide again. If they could get more of that on tape, Bob Carroll knew he could get a conviction in court.

  “Now, Rich, what about the explosives and stuff for these people?”

  “My guy says he can get that.”

  “Grenades, fragmentation, all that shit. That’s what they want.”

  Dominick and Kuklinski got into a discussion about grenades and other military explosives and how it was always best to deal with one connection at a time when you were buying weapons like this. Paul Smith drove around the bend again and approached the phone booths. They could see Dominick and Kuklinski standing by the open trunk of the blue Camaro. Bob Carroll glanced down at the turning reels of the cassette in the attaché case.

  “Listen, Rich. Remember you were telling me about how you use cyanide?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got this fucking rich Jewish kid I been supplying with a lot of coke. He wants me to get him two kilos now, which I can do, but the kid’s a real fucking pain in my balls, you know? So what I’m asking is, you think it’s possible we can dope up the coke with cyanide?”

  “Definitely.”

  “What I was figuring we can make a quick score. Do the kid and go halfsies on the bread he brings for the two keys.”

  “Does he always come alone?”

  “Yeah, he always comes alone.”

  “And he brings cash?”

  “The kid’s rich from his old man. He’s rolling in it. Money’s not the problem. He’s the problem. I can’t stand the little fuck anymore.”

  Silence. Kuklinski was thinking about it.

  Bob Carroll bit his bottom lip.

  “All right. Just tell me when.”

  The deputy attorney general’s face lit up. He could see the words typed up on an indictment: conspiracy to commit murder.

  As Paul Smith drove past the blue Camaro, Kuklinski changed the subject. “Dom, you understand that the price for these pieces goes up after this one, right? It’s eleven for this one, but it’ll be fifteen a piece, even in quantity.”

  “Without the nose?”

  “No, with the nose. The same as you got here, except it’ll be fifteen hundred, not eleven.”

  “What caliber?”

  “I didn’t even ask. Probably twenty-two.”

  “Hey, what the fuck do I care? It’s the Irish broad’s money, not mine. I don’t give a fuck. Personally I could give two shits about their cause over there. I’m gonna give you your price today. Whatever it is tomorrow is her problem.”

  “Whatever. I’m just telling you, Dom. And as for that other guy, that sounds very interesting. Fuck it, I’ll hit a Jew in a minute. Who the fuck cares?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not only that, you say we can make a nice buck off this.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, Rich. You know what we can do? I don’t know if you wanna do this, but I can bring the kid here someday. I’ll meet him here for coffee, and you can come and take a look at him if you want.”

  “No problem. Tell him you’ll meet him over by the phones, and I’ll park over there so I can see what he looks like.”

  “Good, good. Only thing is, Rich, I don’t want him whacked. His old man’s got money up the ass. He’ll hire private investigators and all kinds of shit. That’s why it’s gotta look like an OD. You know what I’m saying?”

  “No problem. I can do it, but you gotta get me the cyanide. I’ll make it up and hit him in the face with it. I can make the—you know. Then just one hit, and that’s it. He goes to sleep.”

  “Or we put it in the coke. I don’t give a shit really, just as long as he’s gone and it looks like an overdose.”

  “My friend, there’s more than one way to do it. You don’t want him shot, we can do it another way. There’s millions of ways.”

  “An OD, that’s what I want.”

  “Well, we can give him some pure shit and make him really OD.”

  “Whatever. I gotta run now, but we’ll talk about this some more later. All right, big guy?”

  “You got it. See you later.”

  Paul Smith slowed the car down as he came back around. Kuklinski was closing the trunk of his car. He had a paper bag in his hand. Dominick was walking away holding a small gym bag. Dominick had the hit kit, and Kuklinski had eleven one-hundred-dollar bills provided by the state of New Jersey.

  Smith looked over at Bob Carroll. “So what’re we gonna do about this ‘rich Jewish kid’ business?” Since they had heard Kuklinski making anti-Semitic remarks on previous surveillances, the Operation Iceman task force had been toying with the idea of luring Kuklinski with a Jewish “victim.”

  Carroll was fiddling with the tape recorder. “I was thinking we could play it out a little more, see how far we can go with it.”

  Paul Smith glanced at him again as he drove. “You thinking about introducing somebody or you just gonna let Dominick talk it up?”

  “No, I thought we might introduce somebody. Not right off, but maybe down the line.”

  Smith pulled the car over to the side and looked at Bob Carroll again. “Who were you thinking of?”

  Carroll frowned, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged as if he hadn’t given it much thought. “Actually I was thinking about you.”

  Paul Smith rolled his eyes toward the deputy attorney general and exhaled a weary laugh. “I figured.” Through the windshield he could see Kuklinski’s blue Camaro heading for the entrance ramp to the turnpike.

  FIFTEEN

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1986—11:45 A.M.

  Richard Kuklinski used his last triangle of toast to wipe up the egg yolk from his otherwise empty plate. From his booth at the diner he could see a strip mall on the other side of the road. He looked at his watch. He’d beeped D
ominick a while ago and given him the pay phone number here at the diner. He wished Dominick would call him back before the place got crowded for lunch so they could talk with a little privacy.

  He chewed and sipped coffee, staring out at the sunny fall day. The leaves hadn’t started to turn yet down here in south Jersey, but it wouldn’t be long. The days were getting crisper, and it was beginning to feel like fall.

  The pay phone by the cash register started to ring. Kuklinski sipped his coffee, waiting for one of the waitresses to get it. The old blonde with the tinted glasses answered it.

  “Hello? … Who? … Hold on a minute.” The waitress looked around the diner. When she spotted the big bald man with the gray beard sitting by himself, she went over to him. “Sir, are you waiting for a call from a Dominick?” she asked Kuklinski.

  “Yes, I am.” Kuklinski got out of the booth.

  “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

  He looked over his shoulder at his empty coffee cup. “Yeah, sure. How about a refill?” He continued toward the phone and made sure no one was nearby before he picked up the receiver.

  “How ya doing?”

  “Rich?”

  “Yeah, how’s it going?”

  “All right. Who was that who answered the phone?”

  “That was the waitress here at the restaurant.”

  “So what’re you doing?”

  “Not much. I called to see if anything is happening with your girl.”

  “As a matter of fact, everything’s fine with her.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re very pleased with what I showed them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So it looks like good business, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Good. And how did you make out with the rich kid? Is he gonna do that thing with you?”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna do that. You know …”

  Kuklinski grinned. “Well, whenever you’re ready, give me a beep.”

  “Yeah, all right. How long you gonna be down there in south Jersey?”