The Iceman Read Online Free PDF

yelling for him to get dressed and get to school. It was an ordeal getting his clothes on. Thank God, she had already left for work by the time he finished. She’d put some cereal and milk out on the table for his breakfast, but the sight of it nauseated him, and he threw up in the kitchen sink. He leaned on the edge, waiting for more to come up, and through the closed kitchen window he could still hear the police down in the courtyard. He decided to skip school and stay home.
    He was afraid to go out, afraid to go to the windows, afraid they’d find him and take him away. He lay in bed, imagining the worst. The other kids in Johnny’s gang would tell the police that he was the one who probably had done it, that he hated Johnny because Johnny picked on him. Maybe Mr. Butterfield hadn’t been that drunk last night. Maybe he’d seen Richie holding the pole and told the police about it. They’d come up to the apartment, beat the door down, and drag him away. He wondered what they did to kids who killed other kids. Did they throw kids in jail? He’d heard about reform schools, but he didn’t really know what they were. He’d
killed
Johnny. Maybe they’d kill him. Strap him to the electric chair and pull the switch, same as they did to adult killers.
    Richie bounced off his bed and ran to the closet. He threw the few clothes that were hanging onto the floor and pulled the pole down again. In the bathtub he ran hot water and scrubbed the pole with a washcloth, just in case, then dried it with a towel and put it back.
    It wasn’t enough, though. He paced the apartment long into the afternoon, wondering what the police knew, what kind of evidencethey could have, when they’d come for him. He shivered and his teeth chattered as he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering when they’d finally come. The pillow was soaked with sweat when he finally passed out as if in a fever.
    When his mother returned that night after picking up his four-year-old brother and three-year-old sister from the neighbor who watched them, Richie pretended that he’d gone to school, that everything was normal. His mother didn’t mention Johnny. As usual, she was too exhausted to talk about anything. For a while that afternoon he’d thought maybe he could tell her and get it off his chest. But now he knew he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t tell anyone.
    That night he couldn’t sleep. He kept hearing Johnny’s voice out in the courtyard. That, and the whomp of the closet pole as it kept hitting Johnny’s head.
    The next morning Richie lingered in bed and deliberately made himself late, intending to stay home again. He was never going to go back to school. He was never going to leave the house. He was going to die here. He was going to starve to death because he couldn’t eat and he couldn’t stop throwing up.
    All he did was lie in bed, thinking about Johnny, thinking about that moment when the cops would break down the door.
    But that moment didn’t come.
    He stayed home for the rest of the week, worrying, pacing, sweating.
    But nothing happened.
    The nuns notified his mother that he hadn’t been to school all week and asked why she hadn’t sent a note if he was sick. She got so mad she beat him with the broomstick and told him that he was going to school on Monday and that he’d better not try to pull a stunt like that again. She also made him go to church on Sunday, and the sweat poured off him as he sat through Mass, glancing at the pews all around him, looking for the one boy in the gang whowould point at him and yell out that Richard Kuklinski was the one who had killed Johnny.
    But that didn’t happen.
    On Monday morning he told his mother he was sick for real, but she didn’t buy it, and she made him leave the apartment with her. Walking to school, he tried not to be obvious, but he couldn’t help looking back whenever he heard a car coming up from behind. He kept expecting a police car to come and take him away.
    But