The Iceman (30 page)

“Kuklinski’s at home. Trainor and Cortez just spotted him. They just called it in. We’re gonna take him down there.”

“What about the van? Does he have the blue van with him?”

“I don’t think so. I gotta go now, Dom.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you at the house—”

“No,” Buccino ordered. “You go back to the courthouse in Hackensack and wait for us.”

“But, I can—”

“No,” Buccino barked. “I don’t want you at Kuklinski’s house.
You’re not supposed to know where he lives. If he spots you there, he’ll know something’s up, and I don’t want a shoot-out in the middle of the street. You stay away.”

Bobby Buccino hung up, and Dominick was left listening to the dial tone. He knew Buccino was right, he should stay away, but he couldn’t help feeling left out. After all the time he’d put into this thing, he was going to miss the arrest. It wasn’t that he wasn’t going to “get the collar.” That was television bullshit. This was a shared operation, and that had been understood from the very beginning. The glory belonged to everyone. What he regretted was that he wasn’t going to see the look on Richie’s face when he found out that “Dominick Provenzano” was really a cop. Dominick knew it was going to be a priceless moment, but unfortunately he was going to have to find out about it secondhand.

As he walked back to the Shark and blew into his cold fingers, he could see the flashing dome lights on the highway in the distance as the arrest team sped off toward Dumont. He got into the car, started the engine, and just sat there for a moment, thinking, wondering where Richie had the blue van stashed, wondering why he hadn’t come back, wondering what the hell he was up to.

As he put the car into reverse and backed out of the space, he realized that all that didn’t really matter because in a half hour they’d have him in handcuffs. He still wished he could see Richie’s face when they took him down, though, even if it was from the back of the crowd. He could stay out of sight. No one would ever know he was there. It would be a shame to miss the arrest after all he’d gone through with this investigation. A
damn
shame …

The only thing Barbara Kuklinski could think about as she got into the red car was getting through breakfast and getting to the doctor. She felt weak and listless, and the fever wasn’t going away.

Richard got in on the driver’s side and looked at her. “You sure you don’t want to stay home and let me make something?”

She shook her head. “No. Let’s just go, so I can see the doctor.”

He started the car but didn’t put it in gear right away. When she looked up, she caught him staring at her. His expression was strange. She couldn’t tell if he was concerned or angry at her. “Let’s go, Rich,” she said gently. “I’ve got an appointment.”

He put the Calais into gear and backed out of the driveway. She glanced sideways at his profile. She couldn’t figure out if this was the good Richard or the bad Richard.

As he pulled out onto Sunset Street and headed toward the end of the block, she noticed the Christmas decorations on the neighbors’ houses and worried about the upcoming holidays. Richard hated Christmas. It always
made him surly and suspicious because it reminded him of all the things he hadn’t had as a child. She worried that he wouldn’t keep his black mood to himself this year and that he’d ruin the holidays for her and the kids.

She looked at him again as he signaled to turn left at the end of the block. “Rich?” she said.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Do you want—”

Suddenly a big black shape appeared right in front of them. A black van was coming straight at them.

“Rich! Look out!”

The van’s brakes screeched, and it swerved right into their path, blocking the road ahead. Barbara felt the pull of their car as her husband stomped on the brakes. Her heart was pounding. Her only thought was that the driver had just had a heart attack, that he’d lost control of the van and was going to plow right into them. But when she saw three men jumping out of the van with weapons drawn and pointed at them, she didn’t know what to think.

“Oh, God! Rich! What’s going on?”

Her husband grumbled something under his breath, but she was too scared to understand what he was saying.

Investigator Paul Smith didn’t wait for ATF Special Agent Ray Goger to stop the car they were in before he jumped out. They had just cruised by the Kuklinski house and seen Richard Kuklinski getting into the red Oldsmobile. Smith, who was in constant radio contact with the black van, had given the order: “Go! Take him! Take him down!”

As more cars arrived on the scene and plainclothes officers spilled into the street, Paul Smith drew his gun and led the pack running down the street toward the black van to assist with the arrest. His boss, Deputy Chief Bobby Buccino, was a few feet behind him.

Suddenly Smith heard the unexpected screech of spinning tires.
Up ahead the red Oldsmobile Calais was mounting the curb, doing an end run around the black van. The Calais ran over a lawn, then bounced back into the street, metal scraping the pavement and tires smoking. The engine roared.

Standing in the middle of the street, the red car coming right at him, Paul Smith could see Kuklinski’s large frame behind the wheel. The options flew through Smith’s mind: He could either jump out of the way and hope he wouldn’t get run over, or he could shoot. But as he gripped his weapon, he could see that there was someone else in the car with Kuklinski. Maybe one of the kids, he thought. If he touched off the shooting, the gunfire would be so heavy the person in the passenger seat would die for sure. Then there was the matter of stray bullets ricocheting off the vehicle. This was a residential neighborhood; someone could get hit. But the red car was bearing down on him now, and it wasn’t going to hit just him. Kuklinski was going to mow down every man in his way, men Smith had known and worked with for years. Paul Smith’s finger tightened on the trigger. The red car kept coming. He started to squeeze the trigger, resolved to shoot, but then suddenly the red car bucked and started to slow down. It was moving forward but very slowly as if Kuklinski had taken it out of gear and just let it roll under its own momentum.

The three state troopers from the black van—Detectives Pat Kane, Ernie Volkman, and Dennis Vecchiarelli—were running toward the car from behind, shouting as they came, but Paul Smith, who was now the closest man to the car, kept his eye on Kuklinski at the wheel. As he rushed up to the car, leading with his weapon, he couldn’t see the big man’s eyes behind the dark glasses. Smith whipped the door open, and Kuklinski leaned forward. He appeared to be reaching under the seat for something. Before he could get his hand back up, Paul Smith jammed his gun into Kuklinski’s ear and pinned the Iceman’s head to his other shoulder.

“Freeze! Police officer! Put your hands on the dash or I’ll blow
your friggin’ head off,” Smith yelled into Kuklinski’s face as loud as he could.

Kuklinski didn’t move a muscle; then slowly he brought his hands up and put them on the steering wheel. There were at least four muzzles pointed at Kuklinski’s head now.

Investigator Smith grabbed the Iceman by the shirtfront, keeping the gun in his ear, and started to pull him out of the car. Kuklinski said nothing and put up no resistance at all. Smith tipped him over on his side, and Pat Kane grabbed a fistful of Kuklinski’s jacket, hauling him all the way out of the car and onto the ground. The Iceman just let it happen.

On the other side of the car Deputy Chief Buccino, who had just come as close to pulling the trigger and shooting someone as he ever had in his entire career, had his arm across Barbara Kuklinski’s chest, pinning her against the seat back to get her out of his line of fire in case he had to shoot. When her husband was out of the car, he pulled her out, too, and held her to the ground, still concerned that there would be gunfire.

Barbara Kuklinski did not understand that these men were policemen, and she had no idea why this man with a gun was holding her down. In her panic and confusion she screamed out to her husband.

“Rich! Rich! Help me!”

Detective Kane had just managed to get the handcuffs on Kuklinski’s huge wrists—and it had been a struggle just to get them to click on the last notch—when all of a sudden the ground seemed to shake. Hearing Barbara’s cries, Kuklinski erupted, bursting to his feet and bulling his way through the crush. He let out an ungodly roar as he lunged for the roof of the car, trying to get to his wife.

“Leave her alone!”

Members of the arrest team jumped on his back and tried to secure him, but he turned on them and shrugged them off. More men converged on him, and he shrugged them off, too. Finally
enough men came so that they were able to wrestle Kuklinski back to the ground. It took five men to hold him down. Pat Kane was ready with a pair of the largest leg irons he could find. Unfortunately they didn’t fit around Kuklinski’s ankles. Unwilling to risk letting Kuklinski get back to his feet without leg restraints, they carried him horizontally to the black van.

Barbara Kuklinski, crying and still confused, was also handcuffed and then handed over to a female officer, who took her away to another car.

Paul Smith, in the meantime, searched the red Oldsmobile and found a .25-caliber Beretta automatic pistol under the driver’s seat. This was what Kuklinski had been reaching for under the seat.

In the trunk of the car they found the three egg sandwiches, each one wrapped in butcher’s paper and placed in the white paper bag. In a plastic bucket filled with rolled coins and loose change, they found the brown paper bag containing the brown glass vial of quinine. The vial was not full.

Later that morning Kuklinski’s house was searched, but the two-tone blue van he had told Dominick about was not found in either the driveway or the garage. Officers searched the areas around Kuklinski’s home and the Vince Lombardi Service Area for days, looking for an abandoned blue van. They never found one.

While Richard Kuklinski was being read his rights, Dominick Polifrone was in Hackensack, pacing the floor, wondering what the hell was going on at Kuklinski’s house. He had fought the urge to go see the arrest for himself and had gone back to the Bergen County courthouse complex to wait. When the word finally came in that Richard Kuklinski was under arrest and was being brought in, Dominick rushed from the offices of the Bergen County Homicide Unit, where he’d been waiting, to the Sheriff’s Department next door.

The Bergen County courthouse complex is a stately building with marble columns and a huge domed rotunda, but the Sheriff’s
Department is housed in a small addition to the courthouse that is tucked away on the parking lot side. Its designer must have had a dark sense of humor because the structure has a decided medieval facade complete with crenellated battlements along the roofline. In the Sheriff’s Department Dominick found an empty office off the main staircase that leads up to the holding cells. If he couldn’t see Kuklinski’s face, maybe he’d at least be able to hear the big son of a bitch when they brought him in. He left the door partway open.

Dominick watched from a window as the caravan of vehicles returning from the arrest pulled up to the entrance to the Sheriff’s Department. From that window he couldn’t see them bringing the Iceman out of the van, but he had no trouble hearing Kuklinski after they had him inside.

Kuklinski’s arrogant voice carried up the stairwell. “You know what your trouble is? You guys been watching too many movies.”

Dominick furrowed his brow. He thought he could hear a woman crying in the midst of a jumble of male voices.

“Hey! I told you guys to leave my wife alone,” Kuklinski bellowed. “She didn’t do nothing. This has nothing to do with her. Now get those fucking cuffs off her.”

The sound of shuffling feet carried up the stairwell.

Dominick wondered if Kuklinski was really giving them a hard time or just mouthing off. He couldn’t tell for sure. He was dying to go down and see Kuklinski’s face, but he figured he’d better stay out of sight just in case Kuklinski got out on a technicality and he had to approach him again as “Michael Dominick Provenzano.”

Dominick strained to hear what was going on down there, but it was hard to tell. He had already heard that they couldn’t get Kuklinski in leg irons, and he had imagined the big man struggling to get free, kicking and thrashing his head and swinging his shoulders. But it was pretty quiet down there now. Dominick listened to the scrape of shoes on the steps as the pack passed by on its way upstairs to the holding cells. Kuklinski wasn’t talking.

But when the cell door upstairs finally slammed shut, that’s when Kuklinski started. He yelled and roared, taunting and threatening the police who’d brought him in, demanding to know what they were doing to his wife.

“Hey! What’re you gonna do with my wife? You let her go. She didn’t do nothing. Let her the fuck go or I’ll kill somebody.”

His bellowing was so loud Dominick was certain they could hear it in all the courtrooms next door. They could probably hear it across the street.

Dominick sat down at a desk and just shook his head. It was finally over. The Iceman was behind bars. After all this time it was hard to believe.

“Dominick. What the hell did you do?” Lieutenant Alan Grieco, Dominick’s best friend, was standing in the doorway. His tie was askew, and his eyes were wide.

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend Kuklinski is up there shaking the bars like he’s King Kong. I can’t believe you went undercover with that animal. You
must
be crazy.”

Dominick could only shrug. “Hey, Alan, you do what you gotta do in this business. You know that.”

Grieco was about to say something when the Iceman’s roar rang through the building.

“I’ll kill you bastards! I’ll kill all of you!”

The two men just looked at each other and shook their heads.

After his arrest Richard Kuklinski appeared before New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter Ciolino and was charged with nineteen offenses, including five murder counts for the killings of George Malliband, Louis Masgay, Paul Hoffman, Gary Smith, and Danny Deppner. The Attorney General’s Office decided not to charge him for conspiracy to murder the “rich Jewish kid,” so the question of what Kuklinski’s real intentions were on the morning of his arrest would have to wait. The state was more interested in building a solid case against him for the five murders at hand. Kuklinski’s bail was set at two million dollars, and he was transferred to the Bergen County Jail.