A warm breeze blew through the Shark’s open window as Dominick Polifrone cruised across the old steel girder bridge and crossed the river. The sun was peeking through gray clouds, and the sky was blue on the horizon as the rain tapered off. The hiss of tires on the wet blacktop came in through the open window, but Dominick was oblivious to the sound. He was thinking about Richard Kuklinski, focusing on his mark, trying not to outpsych himself for the meet, just trying to be himself. That was the key to good undercover work: Just be yourself.
Dominick had learned from experience that elaborate cover stories and aliases just get you into trouble on an undercover. You can’t hesitate when you’re in with bad guys. If it takes you a second to answer to your cover name, they may get suspicious. And bad guys seldom sit on their suspicions. You slip up once, you can get hurt. You slip up with the wrong people, it could mean your life.
That’s why Dominick Polifrone wasn’t that different from his cover, “Michael Dominick Provenzano.” He’d told the guys he’d met at “the store” that some of his wiseguy connections in the city knew him as Sonny, but he told everyone just to call him Dom.
The address on his driver’s license was a huge high rise in Fort Lee, and that, he’d say, was his girlfriend’s apartment, his goomata’s place.
Michael Dominick Provenzano was a tough kid from a lower-middle-class section of Hackensack, New Jersey. So was Dominick Polifrone.
Michael Dominick Provenzano ran numbers when he was a kid. So had Dominick Polifrone.
Dominick Polifrone might have ended up being just like Michael Dominick Provenzano if he hadn’t gotten a football scholarship to the University of Nebraska. Not that football or the Midwest turned his head around. Far from it. Dominick blew into Nebraska like an Italian-American twister. Coming from the East, he was easily the hippest guy on campus. He wore bell-bottoms before the farm kids even knew they were the fashion. Whenever he returned from school vacations, he brought back a suitcase full of the latest albums, stuff that wouldn’t be in the stores in Nebraska for weeks. If Dominick was cocky in Hackensack, he was a wild man in Nebraska. By his sophomore year trashing bars on Friday nights had become his weekly ritual, and spending the night in jail was starting to become part of that ritual. That’s when a sergeant on the Omaha police force took a special interest in this young pain in the ass from New Jersey and hauled him back to campus to have a little talk with Dominick’s coach. It was that meeting with the coach and the sergeant that turned Dominick’s head around. They put it to him straight: Either you calm down and start acting like a civilized human being or go back to Hackensack for good. The sergeant, however, felt that the warning by itself wasn’t enough, so he strongly suggested that Dominick drop his current major, physical education, and take up a new one, law enforcement. The coach concurred. That Saturday afternoon meeting in the coach’s office set Dominick’s life in a new direction.
He still raised hell now and then, and he continued to play football and box with a vengeance, winning the Southeast District Heavyweight Golden Gloves Championship in 1969. But in his mind he knew who he was now. The bad guy in training was gone. Dominick Polifrone thought of himself as one of the good guys now.
And that was what made him so outstanding as an undercover agent. He could talk like a bad guy, look like a bad guy, and act like a bad guy because that was all a part of him, but deep down he knew he was one of the good guys.
That’s why Dominick wasn’t concerned with his undercover image as he drove across that bridge, heading for the Dunkin’ Donuts. He knew he was convincing. What he was concerned about was meeting Richard Kuklinski by himself without any backups.
The situation had come down too fast to call in for help. Kuklinski was supposedly waiting for him. It was a five-minute drive to the doughnut shop from “the store.” If he took too long getting there, Kuklinski wouldn’t wait, he was sure of that. The guy was cautious to a fault. If anything made Kuklinski suspicious about Dominick, he would disappear, and Dominick could forget about ever meeting him again. That’s why this first meeting was important. Dominick would know in the first five minutes whether he could pull this off or not. The important thing was control. He was a bad guy, and he wanted something. No matter how much he wanted to get close to Kuklinski, he could not kowtow to him. It would destroy his credibility as a player. And if Kuklinski thought he was bullshit, he’d have nothing to do with him.
Dominick reached into his pocket and felt the butt of his gun, a Walther PPK 380 automatic. Despite the balmy temperature, Dominick wore the leather jacket. It was part of his undercover uniform and served to conceal the bulge of his weapon. Considering Kuklinski’s reputation, he planned to keep his hand in his pocket with his finger on the trigger.
Kuklinski was reputed to have taken part in dozens of murders, but the police had never been able to come up with enough evidence on any one crime to arrest him. Dominick had a gut feeling that the killings they knew about were only a fraction of Kuklinski’s total body count. From all indications he was just too proficient at killing.
Sometimes Kuklinski killed alone, and sometimes he brought help. Sometimes he worked as a killer for hire; sometimes the killings were his own doing. Sometimes it was business; sometimes it was just blind rage. He was known to have used weapons as small as a two-shot derringer and as large as a twelve-gauge shotgun. On at least two occasions he’d killed with hand grenades. He’d used baseball bats, tire irons, rope, wire, knives, ice picks, screwdrivers, even his bare hands when necessary. And for some reason that no one could quite figure out, he kept one of his victims frozen solid for over two years before he dumped the body, which earned him the nickname Iceman in New Jersey police circles after he became the prime suspect in that murder. But according to state police reports, one of Kuklinski’s favorite methods was cyanide poisoning. Dominick knew from sixteen years of working undercover that you never take any criminal lightly, but Richard Kuklinski was unlike any other bad guy he’d ever encountered. He was not a demented serial killer; killing apparently did not satisfy any kind of psychosexual need for him. Sometimes he killed weeks apart; sometimes he waited years before taking his next victim. He didn’t smoke, drink, gamble, or womanize. He fitted no easy pattern, and there was no single word to describe what he was—except monster. Dominick let out a slow breath and took his hand out of his pocket.
A traffic light up ahead turned red, and Dominick quickly pulled the long black Lincoln into the left lane and stopped behind a white police car. He noticed the cop behind the wheel looking at him in his side mirror. Dominick glanced ahead at the Dunkin’ Donuts on the other side of the intersection. A paranoid chill crept through his stomach. What if these two cops decided to pull him over? He hadn’t signaled when he pulled into the left lane. What if he fitted the description of some other meatball they were looking for? Kuklinski was supposed to be waiting for him at the Dunkin’ Donuts. If Kuklinski saw the cops questioning him, he’d probably scram. Worse than that, it would lower Dominick in Kuklinski’s eyes, make him seem like a street hood, some jerk the cops could push around just for the hell of it. Kuklinski wasn’t interested in little guys, and Dominick had gone to great lengths to establish himself as someone with solid connections to the mob families in New York. After seventeen months of hard work, rubbing elbows with some of the worst scum imaginable, he didn’t want to blow his one chance to finally meet the Iceman, not like this.
The cop behind the wheel kept looking at him in the side mirror, and his partner was turning around now, staring at Dominick through the security grille that separated the unit’s front and back seats.
Dominick gritted his teeth. Not now, guys. Please, not now.
The light turned green. The cars in the right lane started to move, but the police car didn’t budge. The driver was staring at him.
Christ Almighty, not now. Dominick glanced at the orange, pink, and white Dunkin’ Donuts sign across the intersection. He stared at the unit’s brake lights.
Please.
Dominick considered going around them, but that could have been what they were waiting for. Maybe they wanted to get a look at his profile as he passed, then they could pull him over. Goddammit. He knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here acting suspicious.
But just as he was about to go around the cruiser, its brake lights suddenly blinked off and it started to move forward. Dominick let out a long breath as he pressed the accelerator and went through the intersection. He switched on his left directional. The doughnut shop was just ahead.
There were only three vehicles in the Dunkin’ Donut’s small parking lot: a black Toyota pickup truck with hot pink Oakley windshield wipers, a beige VW Rabbit with a bashed-in fender, and a blue Chevy Camaro, at least six or seven years old. Dominick pulled up next to the Camaro. From what he knew about Kuklinski’s size, Dominick had a feeling his target wouldn’t be coming in an imported compact.
Dominick cut the engine and looked to his right. A large, heavyset man was sitting behind the wheel of the Camaro, perusing the newspaper propped on the steering wheel. He was bald except for the longish gray hair on the sides, which was carefully combed up and over his ears. He wore a trim full beard and mustache, mostly gray now, though his dirty blond coloring was still in evidence. Oversize windowpane sunglasses covered his eyes. The man turned his head slowly and looked at Dominick. Dominick knew the face very well from the dozens of surveillance photographs he’d seen. It was him, the Iceman.
Dominick had to force himself from putting his hand in his pocket. The Iceman was sizing him up, and Dominick knew it, but he met Kuklinski’s gaze with his own unconcerned stare. He had to establish control right off the bat, before they even exchanged a single word. You give a guy like Kuklinski the upper hand and he’ll eat you alive.
Kuklinski closed his newspaper, folded it in half, and got out of the car. Dominick opened his door and got out of the Lincoln, and it was only then, looking over the roof of his car, that he realized just how big Kuklinski really was. At six feet even, Dominick had certainly never thought of himself as small or even medium, but compared with Richard Kuklinski, a thoroughbred would have looked small. The physical descriptions in the reports didn’t do the man justice. “Six-four, 270 lbs” didn’t convey the whole truth of the matter. The man wasn’t just big, he was BIG.
“Richie?” Dominick asked.
Kuklinski nodded, no expression. He put the newspaper under his arm. “You wanna coffee?”
“Sure.”
Kuklinski walked around the back of the Shark and extended his hand to Dominick.
Dominick shook his hand, deliberately keeping his face expressionless so his true feelings didn’t show. He was shaking the hand of a killer, a hand that had taken many, many lives. He had been prepared for a bully’s grip, but instead it was disarmingly gentle.
“They call you Dom?” The Iceman’s voice matched his handshake, soft and low, almost lilting.
“Yeah. Dom. I go by my middle name.”
Kuklinski nodded as if he were thinking something over. “Call me Rich.”
Dominick nodded. “Okay.”
They walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts together in silence. The place was dead. A young black girl in a beige gingham waitress uniform was rearranging doughnuts on the large metal trays that lined the back wall. A Hispanic kid in ripped jeans and high tops, cat scratches shaved into the scalp on the sides of his head, was devouring a huge honey-dip doughnut, sipping soda from a wax cup. The faint sound of easy-listening music drifted out from the back room.
Kuklinski nodded toward the seats at the far end of the counter, away from the waitress and the Hispanic kid. He wanted privacy. So would “Michael Dominick Provenzano.”
The waitress came over as they sat down. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. Two coffees,” Dominick said. He looked at Kuklinski. “You wanna doughnut or anything?”
Kuklinski spoke to the waitress. “I’ll have a cinammon bun if you’ve got one.”
The girl nodded, then turned to Dominick. “Anything for you, sir?”
Dominick thought about it for a second, but then shook his head no. Normally he would have ordered a plain doughnut or a cruller, something small, but seeing Kuklinski’s girth changed his mind. Dominick tried to stay fit. He jogged every day he could and worked out regularly, but when he didn’t watch himself, he could put on ten pounds overnight, it seemed, and undercover work was not conducive to healthy habits. Bad guys like Michael Dominick Provenzano tend to spend ninety percent of their time hanging out, drinking coffee, eating crap, talking shit.
Dominick watched Kuklinski sitting there, quietly waiting for his coffee. With that sculpted beard of his, he looked like an evil duke from some mythical kingdom calmly contemplating his next murderous plot. Dominick knew not to say what was on his mind just yet. It wasn’t the way bad guys operated. They had to feel each other out first, circle each other like boxers in the first round. They had to talk shit first.
“So you keeping busy, Rich?”
Kuklinski nodded. “Yeah. I do what I can. How about you?”
“Yeah, I’m doing all right. Can always do better, though. I know I ain’t gonna hit the lottery, so I gotta make it myself. You know what I mean?”
“Yup.”
Kuklinski’s newspaper was folded on the counter by his elbow. He seemed to be reading it, not really paying attention to Dominick. The waitress returned with two mugs of coffee and a cinnamon bun the size of a saucer. Kuklinski peeled the tops off two plastic containers of half-and-half and poured them into his coffee. Dominick stirred in one container and took a sip from his mug.
Kuklinski nodded toward the plate glass window behind them to the Shark. “How do you like the Lincoln?”
“It’s nice. I used to have an Eldorado, but I like this one better. Better ride with the Lincoln.”
Kuklinski bit into his cinnamon bun. “You’re right. Lincoln’s a nice car. Nice and roomy up front.”
They talked cars for a while, comparing different models, wondering why really rich people were abandoning the Caddys and Lincolns for Mercedeses, reminiscing about good cars they’d had in the past. It was all very friendly, and it gave Dominick a chance to ease into his undercover role with his target, but they were just talking shit, still circling each other. Finally Dominick decided it was time to get down to business. He saw an opportunity to steer the conversation into it.
“You know, Rich, one car I could never get used to was the Corvette. The Stingray, you know what I mean? I always feel like I’m sitting on the floor in those damn things. I know Lenny’s got one, and he says he loves it, but I dunno … It’s not for me.”
Kuklinski didn’t say anything for a moment, just chewed and sipped his coffee. “Corvette’s not a bad car.”
Dominick knew from the state police reports that Kuklinski had driven Corvettes in the past, stolen vehicles. That was probably why he wasn’t anxious to share his enthusiasm for that particular model. He wasn’t sure about Dominick yet. Dominick had to keep talking and hope that he could find some common ground with Kuklinski, something that would gain a little bit of his trust and open the door for him. He decided to push a little farther.
“Yeah, that Lenny, he’s something else, isn’t he?”
“Yeah … He’s something else.” Kuklinski was distracted, staring down at his newspaper again.
Dominick knew that if he didn’t connect with Kuklinski soon, he might as well pack in the whole thing. He had to make Kuklinski warm up to him, just a little bit, but now he felt stuck. He thought Kuklinski would respond to his mentioning Lenny DePrima. Kuklinski supposedly trusted DePrima.
Dominick took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t want to keep bringing up DePrima’s name. He was afraid that if he kept harping on DePrima, Kuklinski would think he was a nobody showing off the only real contact he had. Kuklinski wasn’t interested in wannabes. If Dominick smelled like bullshit, Kuklinski would just walk away and have nothing to do with him, ever. Dominick needed to connect with this guy, but he had to be careful.
Just to keep the ball rolling, Dominick was about to bring up the New York Giants, who had beaten the Steelers in an exhibition game that Sunday, ask if Kuklinski was a fan, anything to jump-start the conversation. But then Kuklinski took off his sunglasses and looked Dominick in the eye. Dominick met his gaze. He couldn’t come off as submissive in any way, or Kuklinski would pick up on it like a bloodhound. Dominick already intended to grab the check when the waitress brought it. It would be his treat.
“I hear you got some connections, Dom.” Kuklinski was still staring at him.
“Yeah. I got a few connections.” Dominick sipped his coffee, but his eyes never left Kuklinski’s.
Kuklinski lowered his voice. “Can you get the white stuff?”
Dominick paused, sizing him up for effect. “We talking about the cheap white stuff or the expensive kind?” Cocaine or heroin?
“The cheaper one.”
Dominick shrugged. “Maybe. How much you want?”
Kuklinski stuck out his bottom lip and tilted his head. “Ten. Maybe more later.”
“Yeah, sure. I can do that.”
“How much per?”
Dominick stroked his mustache and thought about it. “Thirty-one five.” Thirty-one thousand five hundred dollars a kilo.
Kuklinski nodded and sipped his coffee as he thought about it. “Kinda steep, Dom. I know a guy, I think I can get it for between twenty-five and thirty.”
“So get it from him and don’t waste my time,” Dominick snapped back. He wasn’t about to dicker with Kuklinski because he didn’t want Kuklinski to think he needed the sale. He had to establish his control over the situation, even if he had to risk turning Kuklinski off for good. This had always been Dominick’s strict personal policy.
Kuklinski tore off a piece of his cinnamon bun and put it in his mouth. He seemed unperturbed by Dominick’s attitude. “How about cyanide?” he asked.
“What?” Dominick’s heart stopped. He wished to hell he were wearing a wire.
“Cyanide. Can you get any?”
“Whatta’you, funny? You need cyanide, go to a hardware store, get some rat poison. They got all the fucking cyanide you want.”
Kuklinski shook his head. “Not that stuff. I need pure cyanide. Lab quality. The kind of stuff they make you sign for when you try to buy it.”
“Whattaya need that for?”
“Something personal I gotta take care of.”
Dominick shrugged as if it didn’t make one bit of difference to him what Kuklinski wanted to do with pure cyanide, but inside, he couldn’t believe Kuklinski had come right out and asked for the poison on their very first meeting. Kuklinski was a suspect in several cyanide poisonings. It was supposed to be one of his favorite methods of killing. Dominick never expected to get this lucky, not this fast. But immediately he was suspicious. Why was Kuklinski asking him for cyanide? They’d just met. And why couldn’t Kuklinski get it for himself? From all indications he’d never had any trouble getting it before. Was he really that desperate for the poison? And who did he plan to use it on?
“So can you get it for me, Dom?”
“Yeah, sure. I know a guy. I’m pretty sure he can get it. How much you need?”
“Not much. You don’t need a whole lot of that stuff.”
“A little dab’ll do ya, huh?”
“Yup.” Kuklinski tore off another piece of his cinnamon bun. “Tell you what, Dom. You see if you can get me that stuff, and in the meantime, I’ll take ten of the white stuff off your hands.”
“What you told me. Thirty-one five.”
“I thought you could get it for twenty-five.”
“Yeah, I could maybe, but that guy’s a jerk-off. He’s not that careful about his business. I don’t like people who aren’t careful. You know what I’m saying?”
“Absolutely. Guys like that you don’t need. They’re fucking liabilities.”
“Exactly.”
Dominick signaled to the waitress that he wanted a refill. “Listen, Rich. Maybe there’s something you can help me with.” He leaned closer to Kuklinski and lowered his voice. “I got a buyer who’s looking for heavy steel. Not street stuff. Military grade. Machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, that kind of stuff. Silencers, too. Small-caliber guns fitted with silencers.”
“You’re looking for hit kits.”
“Right. Hit kits and heavy steel.”
Kuklinski raised his eyebrows. “What’s your buyer wanna do? Take over a country?”
Dominick glared at him. “Never mind about my buyer.”
“Hey, don’t get hot. I don’t wanna know who your buyer is. I would never try to go around you and cut you out. I don’t work that way.”
“Good. So can you help me out here?” Dominick was both relieved and grateful that Kuklinski hadn’t been turned off by his quick temper. Kuklinski’s question was out of line, and he’d realized that after he’d said it. Dominick’s response was totally appropriate.
“Just tell me this, Dom. Does your buyer want this merchandise delivered, or would he be willing to pick it up?”
“Gotta be delivered. To New York.” Dominick already had a cover story prepared. He was buying for the Irish Republican Army, and his usual sources couldn’t get him what his customer wanted in the quantity they needed. But he wasn’t going to tell Kuklinski that right away. At this point it was none of Kuklinski’s business.
“Hmm …” Kuklinski stroked his beard. “Gotta be delivered to New York. That might make it a little hard.”
“It won’t be staying in New York. It’s going somewhere else.”
“But they can’t pick it up? Say, in Delaware?”
Dominick shook his head. “They won’t go for it. I know these people. It’s gotta be delivered or there’s no deal.”
“They good customers?”
“The best. They pay top dollar, and they don’t dick around. You get ’em what they want, and they pay on the line. No bullshit with these people.”
“They sound like good customers.”
“Like I said, the best. If you can get me the right kind of stuff—military stuff, I’m talking—you can make a lot of money off these people. We both can.”
Kuklinski laughed. “Can’t argue with that, brother.”
“I can almost guarantee it. I’m not talking about small quantities here. This’ll be a big order. Big.” Dominick knew that the bait had to be enticing or Kuklinski wouldn’t bite.
“Lemme just ask you this. These people from New York, your customers, they connected?”
Dominick shook his head. “I buy for the wiseguys now and then, too. But this is different. This has nothing to do with the families.”
Kuklinski nodded, sucking his teeth. “I think I can get what you want. I’ll have to make a few calls to see what’s around. I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay, fine. But don’t take too long. They don’t like to wait around, these people. They find a better deal, forget about it, they’re gone.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know something. Just tell me how I can get in touch with you.”
Dom pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and wrote down a phone number on a paper napkin. “Here. This is my beeper number. You put your number in the system, and I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.”
“Great.”
“Now like I said, you come up with the right merchandise and we could make a lot of do-re-mi with these people. Believe me.”
“I believe you, Dom. But don’t forget about those things I want.”
“I won’t forget. I got a good memory, Rich. Ten of the white stuff and the rat poison.”
“Pure. I need it pure.”
“I gotcha, Rich. Don’t worry.”
The waitress came over then, carrying a Pyrex pot of coffee. She refilled the mugs without asking.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Dominick said to her. “Hey, Rich, you want another bun? Go ’head, I’m buying.”
A slow grin spread under Kuklinski’s mustache as he looked at Dominick. “Sure. Why not?”