The Iceman (26 page)

He drew boxes as he ticked off his achievements in his head.

He had done Gary Smith and Danny Deppner.

He had done Louis Masgay and put him in the freezer.

He had done Paul Hoffman, the pharmacist.

He had done George Malliband, a deadbeat who pushed his luck a little too far.

He’d done Mister Softee.

Johnny, the bully at the projects.

The pool hustler in Hoboken when he was nineteen.

He’d done a few jobs for Roy DeMeo.

He’d done the guy in California through the peephole with Softee.

He’d done the Asian guy who fell out his hotel-room window in Hawaii.

He’d done the wiseguy in Manhattan on Christmas Eve, the guy who wouldn’t pay up. Afterward he went home to put a wagon together for Dwayne, and he saw it on the TV news: “Mysterious Mob-Related Slaying in Midtown.” He couldn’t get the goddamn wheels on the wagon.

He had done one on a bet, shot the guy in the throat and waited to see if it would take at least five minutes for him to bleed to death. He’d lost the bet.

He’d done the guy who stopped at a red light and started to light a cigar. Blew the guy’s head off before he even took a puff.

Then there was the kid who had cut him off on the highway. He ran the kid’s car off the road, beat him to pulp with a baseball bat, then backed over his body before he left. Just because the kid pissed him off.

He’d gotten away with doing a loan shark who worked for a Gambino captain. Stiffed the guy, then whacked him after he complained to the wrong people.

There was the guy in Switzerland.

The guy in the Howard Johnson’s parking lot on Route 46.

The guy who shit his pants praying to God, begging for mercy.

The guy with the wavy white hair who owed money in Oklahoma. Shot in the head by the golf course.

The contract job where they wanted the tongue cut out and shoved up the ass.

There was the guy in the garage who was working on his truck.

The guy who got it in the ear with an ice pick.

The two guys who had made the mistake of sticking up a mob-sanctioned card game.

The big black guy in that bar in Harlem, splattered his head like a watermelon with one shotgun blast.

There was the guy who looked so surprised when he suddenly realized the big Polack was holding a little two-shot derringer on him. Two dumdum bullets were more than enough.

There was the guy he’d done in Dracula’s apartment, shot the top of his head right off.

The guy out walking his dog.

The guy from the video arcade, three .22s to the back of the head.

Then there were the ones in Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Colorado.…

When he finally couldn’t think of any more, the page was full of boxes. A whole page of them. He smiled down at the pad. The butterflies weren’t fluttering in his chest anymore. His headache was gone. He gazed at all his little secrets on the page. They were his and no one else’s.

He stared at the telephone as he leaned back in his chair. Maybe it was time to give Dominick a call, he thought. He was smiling as he opened the top drawer to get his address book.

The sky was overcast at the Vince Lombardi Service Area. Sea gulls hovered and soared, scouting the parking lot for tasty litter. Two gulls picked through the green barrel near the bank of phone booths and pulled out a discarded hamburger bun. Dominick Polifrone watched them feast, his hands jammed in the pockets of his black leather jacket, a white silk scarf tied loosely around his neck.

Out in the parking lot Bob Carroll and Paul Smith sat in the silver sedan. Another investigator was posted by the entrance to the service area. Dominick watched for the coffee cup on the silver sedan’s dashboard to disappear, his signal that Kuklinski had arrived.

This meeting with Kuklinski had been hastily arranged, and they were short of manpower today, so these were the only backups Dominick had. He was also wearing only the Nagra tape recorder. They couldn’t get the Kel transmitter to work, so Dominick’s backups wouldn’t be able to monitor what went on between him and Kuklinski today.

Standing inside a phone booth, Dominick wondered what kind of attitude his “friend” would be wearing today.
They hadn’t seen each other in over a month. Kuklinski had pulled back, and the task force had decided to let him be. But that had given him a lot of time to think things over. He might be happy to see Dominick, more anxious than ever to do the arms deal with him. Or he could be mad as hell that Dominick was wasting his time, that Dominick was all talk and no show. Or Kuklinski could be any shade of gray in between. There was no telling until he got there.

The gulls squawked and flapped their wings, fighting over the hamburger bun. Dominick glanced over at the silver sedan. The cup was gone from the dash. He scanned the cars pulling into the lot, looking for the blue Camaro. He wasn’t expecting the white Cadillac that rolled into a space on the far side of the phone booths.

The Caddy’s door swung open, and out stepped Kuklinski, dressed in a dark suit and tie under a black cashmere overcoat. Dominick was stunned. He hadn’t expected this either.

Dominick extended his hand as Kuklinski approached. “Jesus, Rich, you look like the board of health here, all dressed up nice.”

Kuklinski flashed a toothy smile as he shook Dominick’s hand. “So whatcha been doing, guy?”

“Same shit.”

“Oh, yeah?”

They moved over to the picnic table. Dominick sat on the tabletop. Kuklinski put his foot up on the bench and leaned on his knee.

Dominick lowered his voice. “You know, Rich, I gotta tell you something. I was at that greasy spoon next door to ‘the store’ the other day, and there were these two detectives there. From the state police, I think. They were asking questions about you.”

Kuklinski shrugged. He seemed unconcerned.

“I’m just telling you to let you know, Rich. You better be careful now.”

“Dom, they been on my ass since 1980, and they still haven’t
got me. Maybe someday they will. Who knows? But in the meantime, what the hell’m I gonna do about it?”

“Well, I’m just passing it on. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah, Kane and Volkman, I know all about them.”

“One of them, his name was Pat something or other, he asked me if I knew you. I told him I didn’t know nobody. Whatta they want you for?”

The big man tilted his head from one side to the other. “They’re after me because—well, let’s just say there were some people who got hurt. Some … problems.”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Then there’s this one guy who turned out to be a pointer. The police got him in protective custody now. Problem is they can’t get anybody to back up his bullshit. I been trying to find him.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I hope he gets a bad cold and drops dead.”

Dominick laughed. “That would be nice.”

“This guy who turned out to be a pointer had a couple of friends who had accidents. I was lucky with them. But these goddamn troopers got a bug up their asses about me. They want to get me for murder.”

“No shit.”

“Yup. I’d love for this other guy, the pointer, to have an accident like his buddies. But like I said, they got him in protective custody.” He shook his head. “Percy House,” he grumbled in disgust.

Dominick couldn’t believe it. Kuklinski had come right out and said he was looking for Percy House. He mentioned Percy House
by name
. But why was Kuklinski telling him this?

“Yeah, those goddamn troopers are dying to get me. I’m probably a thorn in their side, just like Percy’s a thorn in mine. I mean, face it, I’m no virgin. I done a lot of shit in my time. The cop that gets me won’t be getting no virgin. He’ll be getting an old whore with me.”

“So whattaya gonna do about this?”

“Nothing. I’ll do just what I been doing. Being careful, and staying out of sight. That’s why I don’t go to ‘the store’ no more. I haven’t been there in two years.”

“Well, Rich, if there’s anything I can help you out with, just let me know.”

“There’s nothing that can be done, Dom. If they get me, they get me. But they got nothing on me. If they did, they wouldn’t be going around asking everybody questions about me. Right? So until they have something they can use, I intend to just go about my business and do what I have to do.”

“That’s all you can do, I guess. Listen, I had that stuff you wanted. You know what I’m talking about?”

Kuklinski’s eyebrows rose. “The powder?”

“The special order you put in. I had it in my trunk, a little vial of the stuff. I called you a couple of times, but there was no answer. I didn’t want to be carrying that shit around with me, so I brought it back and told the guy to hold it for me until I found you.”

“Jeez, that’s just what I could use right now.”

“How come no one answers that phone, Rich?”

“When I’m not there, I unplug that line. That’s my special line. If there’s no answer or you get an answering machine, you know I’m not around.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Dominick brought up Tim then and renewed his interest in buying ten hit kits for his wiseguy customer in New York as well as completing the big arms deal for the Irish Republican Army. That morning Bob Carroll had coached him on what he should get Kuklinski to talk about, and they’d discussed how Dominick might draw him out. But Kuklinski didn’t need any drawing out today. He was running on at the mouth, more talkative than he’d ever been, acknowledging his criminal career, stressing his need to get rid of Percy House, referring to the murders of Gary Smith and Danny Deppner. After a while Dominick had to keep himself from
looking at his watch to see how long they’d been there. He couldn’t believe this. Why was Kuklinski telling him so much? Why was he sharing all this incriminating information?

The answer was obvious, and it came as no surprise to Dominick. Kuklinski intended to kill him. Why else would he be talking so much? Dominick only hoped that the task force’s assumption about the Iceman was correct, that he killed only when there was a profit to be made. As long as Dominick didn’t have any large quantities of cash with him, he was safe. Nevertheless, he kept his hand on the gun in his pocket. And even with that, he paid close attention to which way the wind was blowing, so that he’d know where to move if Kuklinski tried to spray him in the face.

“So, Rich, you still interested in doing the kid with me?” Dominick said, steering the conversation toward the matter of killing the “rich Jewish kid.”

“That’s
your
game, Dom. You tell me when. I’m ready to do whatever you want to do with him.”

“We do him with cyanide, no? The way you told me, right?”

“Okay.”

“So how do we do it?”

Kuklinski frowned and shrugged. “You bring him back here. I’ll have a van. You tell the kid to get in the back of the van so you can do the deal, and we’ll do it there.”

“And you’re sure the cyanide won’t show up when they find him?”

“If they do a regular zip-zap job and throw him out, it don’t matter, they won’t find it. If they do certain tests on him, it might show up. But like I’m saying, it all depends on how thorough the coroner is. If he’s not thorough, he’s in a hurry to get the fuck home and he just slaps it together, you got it made.”

“How about just making him disappear completely?”

“There’s some old abandoned mine shafts in Philadelphia. Drop something down there, you don’t even hear the fucking thing bounce.”

“All right. That’s possible. And how about the car? You think we should leave it or get rid of it?”

“Either way. We could sell it for parts. I know a place—bang, bang, bang—they cut it up and get rid of the parts the same day. They don’t keep anything around to get ’em in trouble.”

Dominick wrinkled his face and looked doubtful. He wanted Kuklinski to talk some more about murder. “You sure about all that stuff about fooling the coroner? They got all kinds of ways to find out things, don’t they?”

“Hey, you think those people are smart? Listen to me. They found this one guy, and when the autopsy was done, they said he was only dead two and a half weeks. But see, he wasn’t. He’d been dead two and a half
years
. Those guys got their little nuts twisted on that one.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dominick knew exactly who he was talking about.

A sly grin stretched across the Iceman’s face. “In a freezer nothing changes, my friend.”

“You mean, the freezer maintains—”

“Everything. It’s like pulling a steak out of the fridge.”

Dominick shook his head in amazement. The Iceman had just admitted to the freezing of Louis Masgay. Unbelievable.

“Cyanide?” Dominick asked.

“In that case, no.”

Dominick knew that was true. Masgay had been shot. Dominick almost wanted to thank Kuklinski for his unusual cooperation. He suddenly became very aware of his Nagra. The goddamn tape recorder better be working, he thought. Kuklinski was giving him gold here.

The conversation then moved on to how they would administer the cyanide to the rich kid, and Kuklinski weighed the pros and cons of each method. Putting it in a spray was possible, but as he’d already explained, you always had to be sure you were downwind of the mist or else you could end up spraying yourself.

Putting it in cocaine could work very well, too, but when someone
is sampling from a big bag of coke, slipping cyanide into his line without detection could be awkward, if not impossible.

Putting it on food was a much better bet. As long as you could get the guy to eat something thick and wet, like a sauce or a gravy, where the poison could be mixed in and disguised. If it’s simply sprinkled on a piece of meat, say, it’ll cake and make the food unappealing. “Don’t put just a fucking sprinkle, put enough to spread it over,” Kuklinski advised. “I mean as long as it’s something gooky, spread it over, let it blend in, let him have enough to have a
bon appétit
.”

Ketchup was a great thing to mix cyanide with, Kuklinski said. Mix it in with the ketchup on a guy’s hamburger and he’ll never know it’s in there. Kuklinski recounted the time he gave a guy a poisoned hamburger and he practically ate the whole thing before it affected him. “The fucker must have had the constitution of a fucking bull.” He was talking about Gary Smith.