The Ice Man Page 31

  Pronge had a piece of work to do in Queens. He used his Mister Softee truck to scope out the mark’s house. Intrigued, Richard went along with him to observe. Pronge pulled up right in front of the mark’s house and actually sold ice cream to the mark’s children. Later that night Pronge—with Richard still tagging along—went back to the mark’s home, opened the mark’s car with a master key he had, and planted a fragmentation grenade right under the front seat.

  In the morning, now in Pronge’s car, Pronge and Richard watched the mark get into his car and pull away. They followed him. Pronge had the triggering device in his hand. He had many good opportunities to set it off, but he waited, clearly enjoying toying with the mark’s life, which troubled Richard. He seemed to enjoy too much having control over when and where he died. Richard kept asking him to do it; he wanted to see how the grenade worked and to get this over with, but Pronge kept drawing it out, as if it were good sex he didn’t want to end. Richard began to wonder about Pronge’s sanity.

  Finally, after two hours of following the mark around, Pronge set off the grenade, and boy did it work well. It not only killed the mark, but blew the lower half of his body apart. Richard was impressed. He bought four of the radio-activated grenades from Pronge.

  The police had no idea who had blown up the man, or why. There was, of course, no connection between Pronge and the victim.

  Richard, in turn, took Pronge on a job. Together they abducted the mark from a parking lot using Richard’s animal-tranquilizer dart. This was a situation where the order was for the mark to suffer, to be tortured, and Richard took him to the caves in Bucks County, and Pronge watched Richard prepare the mark for the rats, set up the camera, the lights, the motion detector.

  Pronge thought all this was just great, the best idea since the wheel. “Fucking excellent!” he exclaimed.

  When Pronge and Richard returned the next day, Pronge’s eyes got all wide and he couldn’t get over Richard’s “great fuckin’ idea,” as he called it: the rats had eaten the man alive, and Richard had it on tape. Wide-eyed, Pronge watched the tape and kept congratulating Richard on his “great idea.”

  On another job Pronge had, the mark never left his apartment. Pronge asked Richard what he’d do. Richard told him to go knock on the guy’s door and shoot him with a .357 when he saw the mark approach through the peephole. Pronge tried it and it worked like a well-oiled clock.

  For one of the few times in his life, other than Phil Solimene, Richard had a friend…someone he had much in common with; but that wouldn’t last long.

  Richard’s daughter Chris was troubled. After witnessing her father’s temper tantrums and sudden violence against Barbara and their home, she had lost part of her individuality, who she was; and to get that back, to feel whole again, like a complete person in charge of her own life, her destiny, she let boys take advantage of her. Actually, she says, she was using them. She came to think that if she did what she wanted that way, romantically, she was asserting her individuality, taking charge of her life, controlling her destiny. She became very popular in school, was voted most popular girl in class two years running, and it was, she recently explained, because she was having relations with most every boy in school, amused by the memories, laughing about it now.

  Interestingly, it would seem that Merrick would be doing such things, not Chris. Merrick dressed wildly. Merrick had friends her mom and dad didn’t approve of. Merrick had a very giving nature, was all about peace and love. But Merrick was a prude about sex. She wouldn’t let a boy so much as touch her that way. It became, for Chris, like a dangerous game she played with herself. She’d let boys come over to the house and “fool around” with them in her lower-level bedroom—while Richard was home!

  If Richard had known what she was doing, he would have gone absolutely bananas. He was very conservative about sex—even though he was now thought of as the porn king of New York—and if he had known his young daughter was having relations right there in the house, he would’ve exploded.

  Chris was not enjoying any of these liaisons. She was doing these things to get back at her father the only way she knew how—with her body. As time went by and Chris started hanging out with boys who could drive, she’d actually have relations in cars and vans parked right out in front of the house.

  Richard, of course, didn’t realize what was going on, because he just never in a million years would suspect his daughter Chris, Little Miss Goody Two-shoes, of all this flagrante delicto right in front of and even in the house. Ironically, Richard thought Merrick might be fooling around, and he actually followed Merrick, went to parties and dances she attended.

  Merrick recently explained: My dad would suddenly just show up. I’d be, you know, at a party and he suddenly would be there, looking at me. He used to hide behind trees and bushes and watch me. I only saw him if he wanted me to. He had this…this kind of amazing ability to blend, to not be seen if he didn’t want to. He was like a ghost. I never did anything I shouldn’t because I never knew where my father was.

  Of course, Merrick had no way of knowing that her father stalked people all the time, that he was a professional stalker. Considering Richard’s huge size, he did have an amazing ability to not be seen if he didn’t want to be.

  Yet, he never knew his daughter Chris was voted most popular girl in school because most of the boys had relations with her.

  Off the Record

  This was a very delicate, dangerous business for a whole host of reasons.

  Nino Gaggi and Roy DeMeo found a great cocaine connection: two Brazilian brothers who were processing coca leaves from Bolivia into pure, high-grade cocaine. The brothers had apparently found a German scientist to expertly refine the coca leaves into a highly desirable product, called “mother-of-pearl” because of its unique luminous, bluish-pink tint.

  The problem was drug dealing was a no-no for made men, forbidden by the Mafia commission. Carmine Galante had been killed because of it. Yet, most captains were involved with it in one way or another—“off the record,” as they referred to it. There was just too much money to be made, so the rank and file of all the families across the country had their greedy, gluttonous fingers in this highly profitable business.

  The seventies were coming to a close and cocaine was the in drug, the most popular drug of all time. It was served up at swank parties from Bel Air to Park Avenue. Everyone everywhere was doing it. And the Mafia could not resist the temptation and profit it readily presented for them.

  So DeMeo contacted Richard to come for a meeting with Gaggi. They again met at the Villa on Twenty-Sixth Avenue and had a nice meal, and when it was finished Gaggi got to the point: “We know,” he said, in his low, formal tone, “you can be trusted. You’ve proven that many times. We have this situation we’d like to involve you in. If you don’t want to get involved, no problem. But if you say you want in you must be in all the way…you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “We have two brothers, the Mediros. They live in Rio de Janeiro. They are processing babagna [cocaine] there in Brazil and bringing it over in ships, in those containers. They have, Roy tells me, the best stuff on the market. We want you to go there, meet them, see the operation, and make the deal if you think it’s right. They will deliver it to us here, to a warehouse we have in south Brooklyn. You will receive it and watch it until it’s picked up by our people. Basically that’s it. You will get fifteen percent of all the profit. You want in?”

  “Yeah, sure, definitely,” Richard said, pleased he was being asked. This he thought, was payoff for killing Galante.

  “So be it,” Gaggi said, shaking Richard’s enormous hand, and it was done.

  Several days later, Richard was on a plane to Rio de Janeiro. It was a long, arduous trip but he had a first-class seat and managed to sleep most of the eleven-hour flight. He’d never been to South America before. Always curious, Richard enjoyed seeing new places, peoples, cultures. He was met by a man who worked for the Mediro
brothers after he went through customs. He was taken to a hotel in the center of Rio called the Copacabana Palace, right across the street from the famous Copacabana Beach on Avenida Atlantica. He looked in awe at the beautiful stretch of white beach—Lima, Copacabana, and Ipanema elegantly stretched out before him in a gentle horseshoe shape from one end of this glimmering city on the Atlantic to the other.

  Arrangements were made for Richard to be picked up in a few hours. He freshened up in his room and went for a walk along Avenida Atlantica, marveling at the beauty of Rio, the coastline, Sugarloaf Mountain—the huge statue of Christ standing guard, it seemed, over the entire city. As is the custom, Brazilian women walked about the streets in tongas—the skimpiest of bikinis, their posteriors completely exposed—and Richard was taken aback by their outrageously beautiful, curvaceous curves and mocha-colored suntans. He’d never seen such beautiful women before. I can’t stay here too long, he thought, or I’ll get in trouble.

  As planned he was picked up and taken to the Mediro home, a sprawling white house surrounded by a gorgeous, sweet-smelling garden. It was in the area where the Christ was, on a mountain overlooking the city.

  The Mediro brothers were two intense, very polite Brazilians. Richard first met Eduardo, a handsome dark-haired man with flashing white teeth, dark predatory eyes, jet-black hair slicked back. Richard and Eduardo went out on a veranda, had cold drinks, and talked. As they talked, Eduardo’s brother, John Carlo, showed up. John Carlo was very dark, seemed, Richard thought, a Negro. He sat down, and they discussed the deal, price, delivery. Richard was on his best behavior. When he wanted, he could be amazingly polite—the perfect gentleman. The brothers seemed to take to him. Eduardo had a gorgeous little girl, two or three years old, and she came running out onto the veranda, was completely fascinated by Richard, taken by his huge size and white skin. Her name was Yada. Richard loved children, and he immediately began playing with Yada, picked her up and tickled her as she squealed with delight. A maid came and got her and took her for a nap.

  “She is so very fascinated by people,” Eduardo explained, very much liking how Richard responded to his daughter. Now that the particulars of the business were out of the way, Eduardo said he’d like to show Richard their processing lab; then they’d go to eat.

  “Fine,” said Richard. They piled into a yellow Mercedes sedan the brothers had and went for a two-hour drive, over a very long bridge, up into thick green hills. The lab was in a huge cinder-block warehouse. Armed guards sat in chairs in front of it. They jumped to attention when they saw the brothers’ yellow car.

  Inside, Richard was stunned by all the cocaine. There were large squares of it, tightly wrapped in thick plastic, neatly piled up from floor to ceiling. In the back, off to the left, was the lab. Huge vats of coca leaves were being turned into a nearly pure white powder. Eduardo offered Richard “a taste.” He declined, said he never did drugs. Eduardo liked that too.

  Impressed, Richard saw the whole operation, thinking he would surely make a fortune. He was, he knew, taking a big risk getting involved with so much cocaine, but he didn’t think he’d get caught; the risks seemed worth it, as he put it.

  From the warehouse, they went back to Rio, to an upscale barbecue restaurant in Ipanema, where they cooked all kinds of meats on metal spits over a wood fire in the center of the restaurant, and Richard had the biggest, best steak in his life, he would later say. After this wonderful dinner, the brothers offered to take Richard sightseeing and horseback riding the next day, but Richard politely declined, said he needed to get back home. He missed his family.

  “As you wish,” Eduardo said, and they took him back to his hotel. Richard called DeMeo and let him know all was good, the flight he’d be returning on. DeMeo said he’d come pick him up. Later that evening Richard was taken out to the airport and managed to catch a flight out of Rio to New York, with a brief stopover in Lima, Peru.

  Richard was startled to see Gaggi with Roy at the airport. As they drove to a restaurant in nearby Bensonhurst, Richard told them about all that he’d seen. Gaggi said he had spoken already with the Mediro brothers and they really liked Richard…even said how nice he was to the little girl Yada.

  “You did a good job,” Gaggi said; then they had a dinner and finalized plans to receive the first shipment of cocaine the following month.

  George Malliband was a large, boisterous man, a two-bit hustler, a degenerate gambler that happened to weigh three hundred pounds. Richard first met Malliband at Phil Solimene’s store; they did a little business together, developed a relationship of sorts. George lived on a farm in Pennsylvania and Richard went hunting there with him once in a while. When Malliband overextended himself and borrowed money from loan sharks because of gambling debts, he painted himself into a corner—a particularly dangerous corner. Like many other people, Malliband heard stories about how dangerous Richard could be, and he turned to Richard for help. Richard, in his own way, had taken a shine to Malliband, or Georgie-Boy, as he called him, and he reluctantly came to his assistance: he arranged for the loan sharks to wait a few days for their money, and introduced Malliband to DeMeo, who wound up loaning Malliband thirty-five thousand dollars, at “a friend’s rate.”

  Malliband paid off the Jersey sharks and people he owed money in Vegas. He had promised up and down he’d pay DeMeo back in a timely fashion, sworn on his mother and father and everyone else, but he soon stopped making payments to DeMeo, and Roy put the squeeze on him. Malliband again ran to Richard for help.

  “Look,” Richard said, “I can’t help you. You swore on your word of honor, on all your relatives, you’d do the right thing here, and now you’re obligated. DeMeo…you can’t fuck around with this guy, see. He’s fuckin’ dangerous.”

  “Yeah, well, you can fix it for me, Rich. I know you can,” Malliband said. “I just need a little more time here, that’s all.”

  “How much more?”

  “A week, let’s say a week.”

  Again, Richard extended himself, went to see DeMeo and got Malliband a week.

  Again, though, George Malliband had a song and dance instead of the money, and again, Richard had a heart-to-heart talk with him, explained that DeMeo was hot, that DeMeo was talking about hurting him. They were now in Richard’s van, driving along.

  Malliband said, “Big Guy…I know too much about what you do; I don’t think you’d ever let DeMeo hurt me. Fact is I know you won’t. Remember, Big Guy, I know where you live; where your family lives. You won’t let anything happen to me,” he said, thinking himself sly.

  This incensed Richard. His face paled. His lips twisted off to the left. That soft clicking came from him. A threat to his family, by Jesus Christ himself, was something he could not tolerate. He was nearly blind with red-hot rage.

  “You know, Georgie-Boy, you’re wrong,” Richard said, pulling over to the curb, and without another word he whipped out a .38 and shot Malliband five times, killing him.

  I could see, he’d later say, the bullets tearing into his clothes.

  Richard proceeded to take Malliband to the large North Bergen garage he used as a warehouse and a place to kill people, near where Pronge kept his Mister Softee truck. Richard stuffed Malliband’s huge body into a fifty-five-gallon drum. But Malliband was too big for Richard to properly fit him into the drum, no matter how hard he pushed and squeezed, all the while talking to Malliband, saying: “See, Georgie, see what you made me do? I didn’t want to do this. See what you made me do?”

  In the end Richard had to get a saw and cut one of Malliband’s legs so he could bend it into the black metal drum, which he sealed and put into his van. It was over three hundred pounds, yet Richard picked it up easily. He now drove to Jersey City, his old stomping ground. There was a big chemical plant on Hope Street called Chemtex. Out back was a kind of dumping ground. It was February now, a bitterly cold day, snowing lightly. Everything was frozen and brittle. Frigid winds ripped off the Atlantic. Richard backed his van to this impromptu dump
ing area, pulled the drum out of the van, rolled it down a steep embankment that abutted an old railroad yard, got back in the van, and left. For years people had been using this area as a convenient dumping site, and Richard believed Malliband wouldn’t be found for a long time, maybe never.

  He was wrong. When the barrel hit a rock at the bottom of the ravine, the top popped off.

  The man who owned the plant opened the rear door of the place and was standing there having a smoke when he noticed something odd—what looked like a man’s leg sticking out of a big drum. He investigated and nearly fell down when he saw what was in the barrel, a very large dead man, his leg all cut up, his femur bone visible. The man ran to call the police.

  The identity of the dead man was soon established. His family was contacted. Malliband’s brother said George had been going to meet Richard Kuklinski of Dumont the day he disappeared. The police questioned Richard. He, of course, said he knew nothing about the murder. But this was the first time he’d ever been connected to a homicide he’d done, though it didn’t go any further. It stopped, for now, right there.

  Richard was mad at himself. He should have buried Malliband, dumped him down one of the bottomless holes in the caves, fed him to the rats. I must, he told himself, be more careful.

  As much as Richard loved his home life, being a “family man,” he came to believe that being married, having children, was making him…soft, he explained, taking away the razor-sharp edge a professional killer must have. He vowed to be more careful. He would get his razor edge back. In a bad mood now, he had a temper tantrum in the house and began breaking things.